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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranbrook_Royals | Cranbrook Royals | The Cranbrook Royals were a senior men's AAA level ice hockey team that played in the Western International Hockey League from 1965 to 1987.
The Cranbrook Royals won the Allan Cup as senior ice hockey champions of Canada in 1982. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_the_Greater_Houston_Area | List of airports in the Greater Houston Area | Houston, Texas has many airports due to it being the 4th largest city in the United States. Here are some of the airports:
== List == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln,_Nebraska | Lincoln, Nebraska | Lincoln is the capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska. The city covers 103.9 square miles (269.1 km2) and had a population of 291,082 as of the 2020 census (300,619 estimated in 2024). It is the second-most populous city in Nebraska and the 72nd-most populous in the United States. The county seat of Lancaster County, Lincoln is the economic and cultural anchor of the Lincoln, Nebraska metropolitan area, home to approximately 345,000 people.
Lincoln was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster on the wild salt marshes and arroyos of what became Lancaster County. Renamed after President Abraham Lincoln, it became Nebraska's state capital in 1869. The Bertram G. Goodhue–designed state capitol building was completed in 1932, and is the nation's second-tallest capitol. As the city is the seat of government for the state of Nebraska, the state and the U.S. government are major employers. The University of Nebraska was founded in Lincoln in 1869. The university is Nebraska's largest, with 23,954 students enrolled, and the city's third-largest employer. Other primary employers fall into the service and manufacturing industries, including a growing high-tech sector. The region makes up a part of what is known as the Midwest Silicon Prairie.
Designated as a "refugee-friendly" city by the U.S. Department of State in the 1970s, the city was the 12th-largest resettlement site per capita in the country by 2000. Refugee Vietnamese, Karen (Burmese ethnic minority), Sudanese and Yazidi (Iraqi ethnic minority) people, as well as refugees from Iraq, the Middle East and Afghanistan, have resettled in the city. During the 2025–26 school year, Lincoln Public Schools provided support for about 3,500 students who spoke 67 different languages.
== History ==
=== Natives ===
Before the expansion westward of settlers, the prairie was covered with buffalo grass. Plains Indians, descendants of indigenous peoples who occupied the area for thousands of years, lived in and hunted along Salt Creek. The Pawnee, which included four tribes, lived in villages along the Platte River. The Great Sioux Nation, including the Ihanktonwan-Ihanktonwan and the Lakota, to the north and west, used Nebraska as a hunting and skirmish ground, but did not have any long-term settlements in the state. An occasional buffalo could still be seen in the plat of Lincoln in the 1860s.
=== Founding ===
Lincoln was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster and became the county seat of the newly created Lancaster County in 1859. The village was sited on the east bank of Salt Creek. The first settlers were attracted to the area due to the abundance of salt. Once J. Sterling Morton developed his salt mines in Kansas, salt in the village was no longer a viable commodity. Captain W. T. Donovan, a former steamer captain, and his family settled on Salt Creek in 1856. In 1859, the village settlers met to form a county. A caucus was formed and the committee, which included Donovan, selected Lancaster as the county seat. The county was named Lancaster. After the passage of the 1862 Homestead Act, homesteaders began to inhabit the area. The first plat was dated August 6, 1864.
By the end of 1868, Lancaster had a population of approximately 500. The township of Lancaster was renamed Lincoln, with the incorporation of the city of Lincoln on April 1, 1869. In 1869, the University of Nebraska was established in Lincoln by the state with a land grant of about 130,000 acres. Construction of University Hall, the first building, began the same year.
=== State capital ===
Nebraska was granted statehood on March 1, 1867. The capital of the Nebraska Territory had been Omaha since the creation of the territory in 1854. Most of its population lived south of the Platte River. After much of the territory south of the Platte was considered annexation to Kansas, the territorial legislature voted to place the capital south of the river and as far west as possible. Before the vote to remove the capital from Omaha, Omaha Senator J. N. H. Patrick made a last-ditch effort to derail the move by having the future capital named after recently assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Many of the people south of the Platte had been sympathetic to the Confederate cause in the recently concluded Civil War. It was assumed that senators south of the river would not vote to pass the measure if the future capital was named after Lincoln. In the end, the motion to name the future capital Lincoln was ineffective in blocking the measure and the vote to move the capital south of the Platte was successful, with the passage of the Removal Act in 1867.
The Removal Act called for the formation of a Capital Commission to site the capital on state-owned land. On July 18, 1867, the commission, composed of Governor David Butler, Secretary of State Thomas Kennard, and State Auditor John Gillespie, began to tour sites for the new capital. The village of Lancaster was chosen, in part due to its salt flats and marshes. Lancaster had approximately 30 residents. Disregarding the original plat of the village of Lancaster, Kennard platted Lincoln on a broader scale. The plat of the village of Lancaster was not dissolved nor abandoned; it became Lincoln when the Lincoln plat files were finished on September 6, 1867. To raise money for the construction of a capital, an auction of lots was held.
Newcomers began to arrive and Lincoln's population grew. The Nebraska State Capitol was completed on December 1, 1868, a two-story building constructed with native limestone with a central cupola. The Kennard house, built in 1869, is the oldest remaining building in the original plat of Lincoln.
In 1888, a new capitol building was constructed on the site of the first to replace the structurally unsound former capitol. The second building was a classical design by architect William H. Willcox. It, too, had significant structural issues that, by the 1920s, made clear the need for the construction of a replacement. Construction began on a third capitol building in 1922. Bertram G. Goodhue was selected in a national competition as its architect. By 1924, the first phase of construction was completed and state offices moved into the new building. In 1925, the Willcox-designed capitol building was razed. The Goodhue-designed capitol was constructed in four phases, with the completion of the fourth phase in 1932. It is the second-tallest capitol building in the United States.
=== Growth and expansion ===
The worldwide economic depression of 1890 saw Lincoln's population fall from 55,000 to 40,169 by 1900 (per the 1900 census). Volga-German immigrants from Russia settled in the North Bottoms neighborhood and as Lincoln expanded with the growth in population, the city began to annex nearby towns. Normal was the first town annexed in 1919. Bethany Heights, incorporated in 1890, was annexed in 1922. In 1926, the town of University Place was annexed. College View, incorporated in 1892, was annexed in 1929. Union College, a Seventh Day Adventist institution, was founded in College View in 1891. In 1930, Lincoln annexed the town of Havelock. Havelock actively opposed annexation to Lincoln and only relented due to a strike by the Burlington railroad shop workers which halted progress and growth for the city.
The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad's first train arrived in Lincoln on June 26, 1870, and the Midland Pacific (1871) and the Atchison and Nebraska (1872) soon followed. The Union Pacific began service in 1877. The Chicago and North Western and Missouri Pacific began service in 1886. The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific extended service to Lincoln in 1892. Lincoln became a rail hub.
As automobile travel became more common, so did the need for better roads in Nebraska and throughout the U.S. In 1911, the Omaha-Denver Trans-Continental Route Association, with support from the Good Roads Movement, established the Omaha-Lincoln-Denver Highway (O-L-D) through Lincoln. The goal was to have the most efficient highway for travel throughout Nebraska, from Omaha to Denver.
In 1920, the Omaha-Denver Association merged with the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway Association. As a result, the O-L-D was renamed the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway (D-L-D) with the goal of having a continuous highway from Detroit to Denver. The goal was eventually realized by the mid-1920s; 1,700 mi (2,700 km) of constantly improved highway through six states. The auto route's success in attracting tourists led entrepreneurs to build businesses and facilities in towns along the route to keep up with the demand. In 1924, the D-L-D was designated as Nebraska State Highway 6. In 1926, the highway became part of the Federal Highway System and was renumbered U.S. Route 38. In 1931, U.S. 38 was renumbered as a U.S. 6/U.S. 38 overlap and in 1933, the U.S. 38 route designation was dropped.
In the early years of air travel, Lincoln had three airports and one airfield. Union Airport, was established northeast of Lincoln in 1920. The Lincoln Flying School was founded by E.J. Sias in a building he built at 2145 O Street. Charles Lindbergh was a student at the flying school in 1922. The flying school closed in 1947. Some remnants of the Union Airport are still visible between N. 56th and N. 70th Streets, north of Fletcher Avenue; mangled within a slowly developing industrial zone. Arrow Airport was established around 1925 as a manufacturing and test facility for Arrow Aircraft and Motors Corporation, primarily the Arrow Sport. The airfield was near Havelock; or to the west of where the North 48th Street Small Vehicle Transfer Station is today. Arrow Aircraft and Motors declared bankruptcy in 1939 and Arrow Airport closed roughly several decades later. An Arrow Sport is on permanent display, hanging in the Lincoln Airport's main passenger terminal.
As train, automobile, and air travel increased, business flourished and the city prospered. Lincoln's population increased 38.2% from 1920 to a population of 75,933 in 1930. In 1930, the city's small municipal airfield was dedicated to Charles Lindbergh and named Lindbergh Field for a short period as another airfield was named Lindbergh in California. It was north of Salt Lake, in an area known over the years as Huskerville, Arnold Heights and Air Park; and was approximately within the western half of the West Lincoln Township. The air field was a stop for United Airlines in 1927 and a mail stop in 1928.
In 1942, the Lincoln Army Airfield was established at the site. During World War II, the U.S. Army used the facility to train over 25,000 aviation mechanics and process over 40,000 troopers for combat. The Army closed the base in 1945, but the Air Force reactivated it in 1952 during the Korean War. In 1966, after the Air Force closed the base, Lincoln annexed the airfield and the base's housing units. The base became the Lincoln Municipal Airport, and later the Lincoln Airport, under the Lincoln Airport Authority's ownership. The two main airlines that served the airport were United Airlines and Frontier Airlines. The Authority shared facilities with the Nebraska National Guard, who continued to own parts of the old Air Force base.
In 1966, Lincoln annexed the township of West Lincoln, incorporated in 1887. West Lincoln voters rejected Lincoln's annexation until the state legislature passed a bill in 1965 that allowed cities to annex surrounding areas without a vote.
=== Revitalization and growth ===
The downtown core retail district from 1959 to 1984 saw profound changes as retail shopping moved from downtown to the suburban Gateway Shopping Mall. In 1956, Bankers Life Insurance Company of Nebraska announced plans to build a $6 million shopping center next to their new campus on Lincoln's eastern outskirts. Gateway Shopping Center, now called Gateway Mall, opened at 60th and O streets in 1960. By 1984, 75% of Lincoln's revenue from retail sales tax came from within a one-mile radius of the Mall. The exodus of retail and service businesses led the downtown core to decline and deteriorate.
In 1969, the Nebraska legislature legislated laws for urban renewal. Soon afterward, Lincoln began a program of revitalization and beautification. Most of the urban renewal projects focused on downtown and the near South areas. Many ideas were considered and not implemented. Successes included Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, designed by Philip Johnson; new branch libraries, new street lighting, the First National Bank Building and the National Bank of Commerce Building designed by I.M. Pei.
In 1971, an expansion of Gateway Mall was completed. 1974 marked a new assembly facility in Lincoln, a subsidiary of Kawasaki Heavy Industries in Japan to produce motorcycles for the North American market. Lincoln's first woman mayor, Helen Boosalis, was elected in 1975. Mayor Boosalis was a strong supporter of the revitalization of Lincoln with the downtown beautification project being completed in 1978. In 1979, the square-block downtown Centrum was opened and connected to buildings with a skywalk. The Centrum was a two-level shopping mall with a garage for 1,038 cars. With the beautification and urban renewal projects, many historic buildings were razed in the city. In 2007 and 2009, the city of Lincoln received beautification grants for improvements on O and West O Streets, west of the Harris Overpass, commemorating the history of the D-L-D.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnamese refugees created a large residential and business community along the 27th Street corridor alongside Mexican eateries and African markets. Lincoln was designated as a "Refugee Friendly" city by the U.S. Department of State in the 1970s. In 2000, Lincoln was the twelfth-largest resettlement site per capita in the country. As of 2011, Lincoln had the second largest Karen (Burmese ethnic minority) population in the United States (behind Omaha), with an estimated 1,500 in 2019. As of the same year, Nebraska was one of the largest resettlement sites for the people of Sudan, mostly in Lincoln and Omaha. In 2014, some social service organizations estimated that up to 10,000 Iraqi refugees had resettled in Lincoln. In recent years, Lincoln had the largest Yazidi (Iraqi ethnic minority) population in the U.S., with over 2,000–3,000 having settled within the city (as of late 2017). In a three-year period, the immigrant and refugee student population at Lincoln Public Schools increased 52% - from 1,606 students in 2014, to 2,445 in 2017.
The decade from 1990 to 2000 saw a significant rise in population from 191,972 to 225,581. North 27th Street and Cornhusker Highway were redeveloped with new housing and businesses built. The boom housing market in south Lincoln created new housing developments including high end housing in areas like Cripple Creek, Williamsburg and The Ridge. The shopping center Southpointe Pavilions was completed in competition of Gateway Mall.
=== Into the 21st century ===
In 2001, Westfield America Trust purchased the Gateway Mall and named it Westfield Shoppingtown Gateway. In 2005, the company renamed it the Westfield Gateway. Westfield made a $45 million makeover of the mall in 2005 including an expanded food court, a new west-side entrance and installation of an Italian carousel. In 2012, Westfield America Trust sold Westfield Gateway to Starwood Capital Group. Starwood reverted the mall's name from Westfield Gateway to Gateway Mall and has made incremental expansions and renovations. In 2021, Gateway Mall was sold to a subsidiary of Strategic Value Partners.
In 2015, ALLO Communications announced it would bring ultra-high speed fiber internet to the city. Speeds up to 1 gigabit per second were available for business and households by building off of the city's existing fiber network. Construction on the citywide network began in March 2016 and was estimated to be complete by 2019, making it one of the largest infrastructure projects in the United States. Telephone and cable TV service were also included, making it the third company to compete for such services within the same Lincoln footprint. In April 2016, Windstream Communications announced that 2,300 customers in Lincoln had 1 gigabit per second fiber internet with an expected expansion of services to 25,000 customers by 2017. On November 29, 2017, Lincoln was named a Smart Gigabit Community by U.S. Ignite Inc. and in early 2018, Spectrum joined the ranks of internet service providers providing 1 gigabit internet within the city. In 2025, 2 gigabit internet service was available by ALLO.
In 2021, Lincoln's second-tallest skyscraper was completed downtown. Second in height to the State Capitol by law, the Lied Place Residences was 250 feet, or 20 floors. The Lied Place Residences surpassed the U.S. Bank Tower (formerly the First National Bank Building), completed in 1970, by 30 feet. A least one taller building had been proposed since 2021, but any construction had been delayed due to inflation.
In 2022, the City of Lincoln adopted a new flag, called "All Roads Lead to Lincoln". In late 2022, Nebraska Highway 2 was diverted onto a newly constructed 11-mile long freeway, dubbed the South Beltway, on the Lincoln's south edge. The realignment marked the first time the eastern segment of Nebraska 2 was largely outside of the city in its history.
In 2023, unbeknownst to local leaders, Governor Jim Pillen announced that a new state correctional facility would be built on the east edge of Lincoln. The new facility would replace the aging Nebraska State Penitentiary. Controversy ensued as the area selected by the state was stated for future housing development by the city. Months later, the city entered an agreement with the state for a land swap and the new facility would instead be built on the northeast edge of the city. It is unclear whether the old Nebraska State Penitentiary would be closed after the new facility is completed.
Also in 2023, Google announced that a large data center was to be constructed on Lincoln's northeast edge. Construction began prior to the announcement the same year. An upgrade of U.S. Highway 77 (Homestead Expressway) to freeway standards began in 2025, along with a renewed push by regional leaders for an East Beltway.
== Geography ==
Lincoln has an area of 103.901 square miles (269.102 km2), of which 102.54 square miles (265.577 km2) is land and 1.361 square miles (3.525 km2) is water, according to the United States Census Bureau in 2024.
Lincoln is one of the few large cities of Nebraska not along either the Platte River or the Missouri River. The city was originally laid out near Salt Creek and among the nearly flat saline wetlands of northern Lancaster County. The city's growth has led to development of the surrounding land, much of which is composed of gently rolling hills. In recent years, Lincoln's northward growth has encroached on the habitat of the endangered Salt Creek tiger beetle.
=== Metropolitan area ===
The Lincoln Metropolitan Statistical Area consists of Lancaster County and Seward County. Seward County was added to the metropolitan area in 2003. Lincoln is also in the Lincoln-Beatrice Combined Statistical Area which consists of the Lincoln metropolitan area and the micropolitan area of Beatrice. The city of Beatrice is the county seat of Gage County. The Lincoln-Beatrice combined statistical area is home to 372,313 people (2024 estimate) making it the 109th-largest combined statistical area in the United States.
=== Neighborhoods ===
Lincoln's neighborhoods include both old and new development. Some neighborhoods in Lincoln were formerly small towns that Lincoln later annexed, including University Place in 1926, Belmont, Bethany (Bethany Heights) in 1922, College View in 1929, Havelock in 1930, and West Lincoln in 1966. A number of Historic Districts are near downtown Lincoln, while newer neighborhoods have appeared primarily in the south and east. As of December 2013, Lincoln had 45 registered neighborhood associations within the city limits.
One core neighborhood that has seen rapid residential growth in recent years is the downtown Lincoln area. In 2010, there were 1,200 downtown Lincoln residents; in 2016, there were 3,000 (an increase of 140%). Around the middle of the same decade, demand for housing and rent units began outpacing supply. With Lincoln's population expected to grow to more than 311,000 people by 2020, prices for homes and rent costs have risen. Home prices rose 10% from the first quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016; rent prices rose 30% from 2007 to 2017 with a 5–8% increase in 2016 alone.
=== Climate ===
Located in the Great Plains, far from the moderating influences of mountains and large bodies of water, Lincoln has a highly variable four season humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa, Trewartha Dcao): Winters are cold; summers are hot and humid. With little wet precipitation during the winter, precipitation is instead concentrated during the warmer months. When thunderstorms do transverse, occasional tornadoes are produced. Snow averages 26.0 inches (66 cm) per season, but seasonal accumulations have ranged from 7.2 in (18 cm) in 1967–1968 to 55.5 in (141 cm) in 2018–2019. Snow tends to fall in lighter amounts, though variable and blizzards are possible. There is an average of 38 days with a snow depth of 1 in (2.5 cm) or more. The average window for freezing temperatures is from October 7 through April 25, allowing for a growing season of 164 days.
The monthly daily average temperature range is from 25.0 °F (−3.9 °C) in January to 78.1 °F (25.6 °C) in July. However, the city is subject to episodes of bitter cold during the winter and heat waves in the summer, with 10.1 nights of 0 °F (−18 °C) or lower for lows, 41.8 days of 90 °F (32 °C)+ and 3.5 days of 100 °F (38 °C)+ for highs. The city straddles the boundary of USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 5b and 6a. Temperature extremes have ranged from −33 °F (−36.1 °C) on January 12, 1974, to 115 °F (46.1 °C) on July 25, 1936. Readings as high as 105 °F (41 °C) or as low as −20 °F (−29 °C) occur somewhat rarely; the last occurrence of each was August 24, 2023 and February 16, 2021. The second lowest temperature ever recorded in Lincoln was −31 °F (−35.0 °C) on February 16, 2021, which broke the monthly record of −26 °F (−32.2 °C) set a day earlier. It occurred during the wider February 13–17, 2021 North American winter storm, which impacted the Great Plains, Midwestern and Northeastern United States as a whole.
On May 5, 2019, an EF2 tornado hit parts of western Lincoln, although no major injuries occurred. On April 26, 2024, a stronger EF3 tornado destroyed the Garner Industries building in northeast Lincoln, causing three injuries. However, in recent years with the changing climate, severe hail and windstorms have become increasingly more common. Based on 30-year averages obtained from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center for December, January and February, the Weather Channel ranked Lincoln the seventh-coldest major U.S. city in a 2014 article. In 2014, the Lincoln-Beatrice area was among the "Cleanest U.S. Cities for Ozone Air Pollution" in the American Lung Association's "State of the Air 2014" report.
== Demographics ==
Lincoln is Nebraska's second-most-populous city. In the 1970s, The U.S. government designated Lincoln a refugee-friendly city due to its stable economy, educational institutions, and size. Initially, refugees from Vietnam settled in Lincoln. Later, more refugees came from other countries, including Mexico, Guatemala and India, as well as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan and Myanmar. In 2013, Lincoln was named one of the "Top Ten Most Welcoming Cities in America" and in 2025, 4-star Certified Welcoming by Welcoming America.
=== 2020 census ===
The 2020 United States census counted 291,082 people, 115,930 households, and 67,277 families in Lincoln. The population density was 2,937.6 per square mile (1,134.2/km2). There were 122,048 housing units at an average density of 1,231.7 per square mile (475.6/km2). The racial makeup was 78.66% (228,956) White, 4.67% (13,605) Black or African-American, 0.89% (2,589) Native American, 4.77% (13,871) Asian, 0.07% (196) Pacific Islander, 3.5% (10,175) from other races, and 7.45% (21,690) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race was 7.0% (22,321) of the population.
Of the 115,930 households, 26.9% had children under the age of 18; 43.8% were married couples living together; 27.1% had a female householder with no husband present. 31.0% of households consisted of individuals and 9.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.4 and the average family size was 3.0.
21.9% of the population was under the age of 18, 15.7% from 18 to 24, 26.8% from 25 to 44, 20.8% from 45 to 64, and 13.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32.9 years. For every 100 females, the population had 100.8 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older, there were 99.4 males.
The 2016-2020 5-year American Community Survey estimates show that the median household income was $60,063 (with a margin of error of +/- $1,248) and the median family income $79,395 (+/- $1,992). Males had a median income of $37,646 (+/- $1,251) versus $27,411 (+/- $805) for females. The median income for those above 16 years old was $31,869 (+/- $455). Approximately, 7.5% of families and 12.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 13.4% of those under the age of 18 and 6.2% of those ages 65 or over.
== Economy ==
Lincoln's economy is fairly typical of a mid-sized American city; most economic activity is derived from the service and manufacturing industries. Government and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln are both large contributors to the local economy. Other prominent industries in Lincoln include finance, insurance, publishing, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, railroads, high technology, information technology, medical, education and truck transport.
For September 2025, the Lincoln Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) unemployment rate was 2.7% (not seasonally adjusted). With a tight labor market, Lincoln has seen rapid wage growth. From the summer of 2014 to the summer of 2015, the average hourly pay for both public and private employees have increased by 11%. From October 2014 to October 2015, wages were also up by 8.4%.
One of the largest employers is Bryan Health, which consists of two major hospitals and several large outpatient facilities across the city. Healthcare and medical jobs account for a large portion of Lincoln's employment: as of 2009, full-time healthcare employees in the city included 9,010 healthcare practitioners in technical occupations, 4,610 workers in healthcare support positions, 780 licensed and vocational nurses, and 150 medical and clinical laboratory technicians.
Several national business were originally established in Lincoln; these include student lender Nelnet, Ameritas, Assurity, Fort Western Stores, CliffsNotes and HobbyTown USA. Several regional restaurant chains began in Lincoln, including Amigos/Kings Classic, Runza Restaurants, and Valentino's.
The Lincoln area makes up a part of what is known as the greater Midwest Silicon Prairie. The city is also a part of a rapidly growing craft brewing industry.
=== Principal employers ===
According to the city's 2024 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the principal employers of the city are:
=== Automotive and technology ===
1974 saw the establishment of a Kawasaki motorcycles assembly facility named the American Kawasaki Motors Corporation (KMC), to complete Japan-produced components into finished products for the North American market. Incorporated in 1981, Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corp. (KMM) and assumed control of KMC. As of 2022, their webpresence named tallies "All-Terrain Vehicles, Utility Vehicles, Personal Watercraft, Recreation Utility Vehicles, and Passenger Rail Cars" as their range.
Kawasaki is one of Lincoln's largest private employers with over 2,400 employees, and it has the largest square footage of manufacturing space. Newer product lines are rail cars and aircraft cargo doors.
=== Military ===
The Nebraska Air and Army National Guard's Joint Force Headquarters are in Lincoln along with other major units of the Nebraska National Guard. During the early years of the Cold War, the Lincoln Airport was the Lincoln Air Force Base; the Nebraska Air National Guard and the Nebraska Army National Guard now have joint-use facilities with the Lincoln Airport. Alongside the National Guard, the 55th Wing of Offutt Air Force Base was temporarily headquartered in Lincoln through September 2022.
== Arts and culture ==
Since Pinnacle Bank Arena opened in 2013, Lincoln's music scene has grown to the point where it is sometimes called a "Music City". Primary venues for live music include Pinnacle Bank Arena, Bourbon Theatre, Duffy's Tavern, and the Zoo Bar. The Pla-Mor Ballroom is a classic Lincoln music and dance scene with its in-house Sandy Creek Band. Pinewood Bowl hosts a range of performances, from national music performances to local plays, during the summer.
The Lied Center is a venue for national tours of Broadway productions, concert music, and guest lectures, and regularly features its resident orchestra, the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra. Lincoln has several performing arts venues. Plays are staged by UNL students in the Temple Building; community theater productions are held at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, the Loft at The Mill, and the Haymarket Theater.
Lincoln has a growing number of arts galleries, including the Sheldon Museum of Art, Burkholder Project and Noyes Art Gallery.
For movie viewing, Marcus Theatres owns 32 screens at four locations, and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center shows independent and foreign films. Standalone cinemas in Lincoln include the Joyo Theatre and Rococo Theater. The Rococo Theater also hosts benefits and other engagements. The downtown section of O Street is Lincoln's largest bar and nightclub district.
Lincoln is the hometown of Zager and Evans, known for their international hit record "In the Year 2525" (1969). It is also the hometown of several notable musical groups, such as Remedy Drive, VOTA, For Against, Lullaby for the Working Class, Matthew Sweet, Dirtfedd, The Show is the Rainbow and Straight. Lincoln is home to Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine.
=== Annual cultural events ===
Annual events in Lincoln have come and gone throughout time, such as Band Day at the University of Nebraska's Lincoln campus and the Star City Holiday Parade. However, some events have never changed while new traditions have been created. Current annual cultural events in Lincoln include the Lincoln National Guard Marathon and Half-Marathon in May, Celebrate Lincoln in early June, the Uncle Sam Jam around July 3, and Boo at the Zoo in October. A locally popular event is the Haymarket Farmers' Market, running from May to October in the Historic Haymarket, one of several farmers markets throughout the city.
=== Tourism ===
Tourist attractions and activities include the Sunken Gardens, basketball games at Pinnacle Bank Arena, the Lincoln Children's Zoo, the Dairy Store at UNL's East Campus, and Mueller Planetarium on the city campus. The Nebraska State Capitol, which is also the tallest building in Lincoln, offers tours.
The Speedway Motors Museum of American Speed preserves, interprets, and displays physical items significant in racing and automotive history. The National Museum of Roller Skating extends public knowledge of roller skating history and seeks to preserve its legacy for future generations.
The Lester F. Larsen Tractor Museum, operated by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, is a small museum featuring vintage American tractors and documenting the history of Nebraska's tractor test law. The museum is housed in the original Nebraska Tractor Test Lab building, located at the university's east campus.
=== Library ===
The city's public library system is Lincoln City Libraries, which has eight branches as well as a bookmobile. As of 2025, Lincoln City Libraries circulated roughly three million items per year to the residents of Lincoln and Lancaster County. The library system is also home to Polley Music Library and the Jane Pope Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska authors.
== Sports ==
Lincoln is home to the University of Nebraska's sports teams, the Cornhuskers. In total, the university fields 22 men's and women's teams in 14 NCAA Division I sports. Nebraska football began play in 1890. Of the 128 Division I-A football teams, Nebraska is one of nine to have won 900 or more games. Notable coaches include Tom Osborne and Bob Devaney. Devaney coached from 1962 to 1972; the university's indoor arena, the Bob Devaney Sports Center, is named for him. Osborne coached from 1972 to 1997.
Other sports teams are the Nebraska Wesleyan Prairie Wolves, an NCAA Division III University; the Lincoln Saltdogs, an American Association independent minor league baseball team; the Lincoln Stars, a USHL junior ice hockey team; and the No Coast Derby Girls, a member of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association.
Lincoln Airpark hosts SCCA Solo Nationals each September.
== Parks and recreation ==
Lincoln has an extensive park system, with over 168 individual parks connected by a 186 mi (299 km) system of recreational trails, along with other additional facilities. The MoPac Trail is a bicycling, equestrian and walking trail built on an abandoned Missouri Pacific Railroad corridor which runs for 27 miles (43 km) from the University of Nebraska's Lincoln campus eastward to Wabash, Nebraska.
Regional parks include Antelope Park from S. 23rd and "N" Streets to S. 33rd Street and Sheridan Boulevard, Holmes Park at S. 70th Street and Normal Boulevard, and Union Plaza between N. 21st and N. 22nd Streets, north of "O" Street. Pioneers Park includes the Pioneers Park Nature Center at S. Coddington Avenue and W. Calvert Streets.
Community parks include Ballard Park, Belmont Park, Bethany Park, Bowling Lake Park, Densmore Park, Fleming Fields Recreational Sports Park, Erwin Peterson Park, Huskerville Park, Irvingdale Park, Mahoney Park, Max E. Roper Park East and West, Oak Lake Park, Peter Pan Park, Peterson Park, Sawyer Snell Park, Seacrest Park, Seng Park at University Place, Sherman Field, Tierra Park, Van Dorn Park, and Woods Park.
Other notable parks include Cascade Fountain, Hamann Rose Garden, Iron Horse Park, Tower Square, Nine Mile Prairie owned by the University of Nebraska Foundation, Sunken Gardens, Veterans Memorial Garden, and Wilderness Park. Smaller neighborhood parks are scattered throughout the city. Additionally, there are six public recreation centers, nine outdoor public pools, five public golf courses not including private facilities, and five dog runs in Lincoln.
== Government ==
Lincoln has a mayor–council government. The mayor and a seven-member city council are selected in nonpartisan elections. Four members are elected from city council districts; the remaining three members are elected at-large. Lincoln's health, personnel, and planning departments are joint city/county agencies; most city and Lancaster County offices are in the County/City Building. The most recent city general election was held on May 2, 2023.
Since Lincoln is the state capital, many Nebraska state and United States Government offices are in Lincoln. The city lies within the Lincoln Public Schools school district. The Lincoln Fire and Rescue Department shoulders the city's fire fighting and emergency ambulatory services while private companies provide non-emergency medical transport and volunteer fire fighting units support the city's outlying areas.
== Education ==
=== Primary and secondary education ===
Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) is the public school district which includes the majority of the city limits. It includes eight traditional high schools: Lincoln High, East, Northeast, Northwest, North Star, Southeast, Southwest, and Standing Bear. LPS is also home to special interest high school programs, including the Air Force JROTC, Arts and Humanities Focus Program, Aviation and Technical Education Focus Program, Bay High Focus Program, Bryan College of Health Sciences Focus Program, the Lincoln High International Baccalaureate Program, Nebraska Business Focus Program, Science Focus Program (Zoo School), and The Career Academy. Other specialty programs include Bryan Community School, the Don D. Sherrill Education Center, Graduation Pathways, Independence Academy, Nuernberger Education Center, Pathfinder Education Program, the Student Support Program, and the Yankee Hill Educational Center.
Some outerlying sections of Lincoln are in other school districts: Norris School District 160 and Waverly School District 145.
There are several private parochial elementary and middle schools throughout the community. Like Lincoln Public Schools, these schools are broken into districts, but most will allow attendance outside of boundary lines. Lincoln's private high schools are College View Academy, Lincoln Christian, Lincoln Lutheran, Parkview Christian School and Pius X High School.
=== Colleges and universities ===
Lincoln has twelve colleges and universities. The University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the main campus of the University of Nebraska system, is the largest university in Nebraska, with 19,378 undergraduate, 3,959 postgraduate students and 617 professionals enrolled in 2025. Out of the 23,954 enrolled, 453 undergraduate and 1,094 postgraduate students/professionals were international. With approximately 60 countries outside of the U.S. represented, the five countries with the highest international enrollment were Brazil, China, Ghana, India, and Vietnam. Recent and ongoing student visa concerns on the national level has led to a concerning overall steady decrease of international students at the university.
Nebraska Wesleyan University, as of 2020, has 1,924 undergraduate and 151 postgraduate students. The school teaches in the tradition of a liberal arts college education. It remains affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Union Adventist University is a private Seventh-day Adventist four-year coeducational university with 911 students enrolled 2013–14.
Bryan College of Health Sciences offers undergraduate degrees in nursing and other health professions; a Masters in Nursing; a Doctoral degree in nurse anesthesia practice, as well as certificate programs for ancillary health professions. Universities with satellite locations in Lincoln are Bellevue University, Concordia University (Nebraska) and Doane University. Lincoln also hosts the College of Hair Design and Joseph's College of Cosmetology.
Southeast Community College is a community college system in southeastern Nebraska, with three campuses in Lincoln and an enrollment of 9,505 students as of spring 2024. The two-year Academic Transfer program is popular among students who want to complete their general education requirements before they enroll in a four-year institution. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is the most popular transfer location.
== Media ==
=== Television ===
Lincoln has four licensed broadcast full power television stations; and one serving the city, but licensed to an area outside its limits:
KSNB-TV (Channel 4; 4.1 DT) - NBC affiliate
MyNetworkTV affiliate 4.2
ION affiliate 4.3
Oxygen affiliate 4.5
Outlaw affiliate 4.6
KLKN (Channel 8; 8.1 DT) – ABC affiliate
Grit affiliate 8.2
Ion Mystery affiliate 8.3
Laff affiliate 8.4
Bounce affiliate 8.6
KOLN (Channel 10; 10.1 DT) – CBS affiliate
Start TV affiliate 10.2
Court TV affiliate 10.3
H&I affiliate 10.4
365BLK affiliate 10.5
True Crime Network affiliate 10.6
KUON (Channel 12; 12.1 DT) – PBS affiliate, Nebraska Public Media Television flagship station
NE-W (World)
NE-C (Create)
NE-KIDS (PBS Kids)
NE-FNX (First Nations Experience) affiliate
KFXL (Channel 15; 51.1 DT) – Fox affiliate
The headquarters of Nebraska Public Media, which is affiliated with the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, are in Lincoln. The city has two low power digital TV stations in Lincoln area: including the translator KFDY-LD (simulcast of (KOHA-LD)) owned by Flood Communications of Nebraska LLC, including for main Spanish-language network affiliate Telemundo on 27.1, NCN (Ind.) on 27.2, and religious network affiliate 3ABN on 27.3 in Lincoln area only, on virtual channel 27, digital channel 27; and another low power digital KCWH-LD on CW+ affiliate, owned by Gray on channel 18.1 included sub-channels like Ion on 18.2, and CBS (Simulcast of KOLN) on 18.3.
=== Radio ===
There are 18 radio stations licensed in Lincoln, not including radio stations licensed outside of the city that serve the Lincoln area. Most areas of Lincoln also receive radio signals from Omaha and other surrounding communities.
FM stations include:
KLCV (88.5) – Religious talk
KZUM (89.3) – Independent Community Radio
KRNU (90.3) – Alternative / UNL college radio
KUCV (91.1) – National Public Radio
K220GT (91.9) – Contemporary Christian
K233AN (94.5) – Top 40
KNNA-LP (95.7) – Christian
KDPP-LP (97.3) - Independent Community / Urban
K255CS (98.9) – Christian
K257GN (99.3) - News/Talk
K268DF (101.5) – News/Talk
K277CA (103.3) – Hot AC
KLNC (105.3) – Classic Rock
KFRX (106.3) – Top 40
K294DJ (106.7) – Christian
KBBK (107.3) – Hot AC
KJTM-LP (107.9) – Contemporary Christian
AM stations include:
KFOR (1240) – News/Talk
KLIN (1400) – News/Talk
=== Print ===
The Lincoln Journal Star is the city's major daily newspaper. The Nebraska Examiner, headquartered in Lincoln, is an independent and non-profit state news publishing wire service. The Daily Nebraskan, UNL's student newspaper, publishes daily news on its website and a monthly print magazine, and The DailyER is the university's biweekly satirical paper. Other university newspapers include the Reveille, the official periodical campus paper of Nebraska Wesleyan University and the Clocktower, the official weekly campus paper of Union Adventist University.
== Infrastructure ==
=== Transportation ===
==== Major highways ====
Lincoln is served by Interstate 80 via seven interchanges, connecting the city to San Francisco in the west and Teaneck, New Jersey in the New York City metropolitan area in the east. Other Highways that serve the Lincoln area are Interstate 180, U.S. Route 6, U.S. Highway 34, U.S. Highway 77 and nearby Nebraska Highway 79. The eastern segment of Nebraska Highway 2 is a primary trucking route that connects the Kansas City metropolitan area (Interstate 29) to the I-80 corridor in Lincoln. A few additional minor State Highway segments are located within the city as well.
==== Mass transit ====
A public bus transit system, StarTran, operates in Lincoln. StarTran's fleet consists of 67 full-sized buses and 13 Handi-Vans. The transit system has 18 bus routes, with a circular bus route downtown. Annual ridership for the fiscal year 2017–18 was 2,463,799.
StarTran also offers a door-to-door van service called VANLNK to customers with the mobile app. The service has vehicles that are smaller than StarTran's buses. Departures can only be in the Lincoln city limits, and the service is a shared-ride service, meaning it optimizes trips to carry people along routes on the same schedule. All VANLNK vehicles are accessible by disabled people using lifts and ramps. However, although service animals are allowed, non-service animals must be on a pet carrier.
==== Intercity transit ====
The Lincoln Airport currently provides passengers with daily non-stop service to Chicago O'Hare International Airport, and Denver International Airport, with bi-weekly non-stop service to Orlando International Airport. General aviation support is provided through several private aviation companies. The Lincoln Airport was among the emergency landing sites for the NASA Space Shuttle. The site was chosen chiefly because of a 12,901 feet (3,932 m) runway; the longest of three at the airport.
Lincoln is served by both Express Arrow and Burlington Trailways for regional bus service between Omaha, Denver and points beyond. Megabus, in partnership with Windstar Lines, provides bus service between Lincoln and Chicago with stops in Omaha, Des Moines, Iowa City and Moline.
Amtrak provides service to Lincoln station, operating its California Zephyr daily in each direction between Chicago and Emeryville, California, using BNSF's Lincoln – Denver route through Nebraska. The city is an Amtrak crew-change point.
==== Rail freight ====
Rail freight travels coast-to-coast, to and through Lincoln via BNSF Railway, the Union Pacific Railroad, Lincoln's own Omaha, Lincoln and Beatrice Railway Company and an Omaha Public Power District rail line. Lincoln was once served by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (Rock Island), the Missouri Pacific Railroad (MoPac) and the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company (C&NW). The abandoned right-of-way of these former railroads have since been turned into bicycle trails.
==== Cycling modes ====
Lincoln has a third-generation dock-based bike share program that began in mid-April 2018, called BikeLNK. The first phase of the program included 19 docks and 100 bicycles, scattered throughout downtown and around the UNL City, UNL East & Nebraska Innovation campuses. A second phase in 2019 increased the number of docks to 21, total bicycles to 105 and expanded to a location outside of downtown. Lincoln also has a fleet of commercial pedicabs that operates in the downtown area.
==== Modal characteristics ====
In 2016, 80.5 percent of working Lincoln residents commuted by driving alone, 9.6 percent carpooled, 1.1 percent used public transportation, and 3.1 percent walked. About 2.4 percent used all other forms of transportation, including taxis, bicycles, and motorcycles as well as ride-sharing services such as Lyft and Uber which entered the Lincoln market in the summer of 2014. About 3.3 percent worked at home.
In 2015, 6.3 percent of city of Lincoln households were without a car, which decreased slightly to 5.8 percent in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Lincoln averaged 1.78 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8 per household.
=== Utilities ===
Power in Lincoln is provided by the Lincoln Electric System (LES). The LES service area covers 200 square miles (520 km2), serving Lincoln and several other communities outside of the city. A public utility, as of 2023, LES's electric rates are the 10th lowest in the nation, according to a nationwide competitive market study conducted by LES in 2025. Current LES power supply resources are 35% renewable, 34% oil and gas and 31% coal. Renewable resources have increased with partial help from the addition of an LES-owned five megawatt solar energy farm put into service June, 2016. The solar farm produces enough energy to power 900 homes. LES once owned two wind turbines, the first in the state, on the northeast edge of the city but were removed in 2024 due to age and state acquisition of part of the property that they stood on.
Water in Lincoln is provided through the Lincoln Water System. In the 1920s, the city of Lincoln undertook the task of building the Lincoln Municipal Lighting and Waterworks Plant (designed by Fiske & Meginnis). The building worked as the main hub for water from nearby wells and power in Lincoln for decades until it was replaced and turned into an apartment building. Most of Lincoln's water originates from wells along the Platte River near Ashland, Nebraska. Wastewater is in turn collected by the Lincoln Wastewater System. The city of Lincoln owns both systems.
Natural gas is provided by Black Hills Energy.
Landline telephone service has had a storied history within the regional Lincoln area with the Lincoln Telephone & Telegraph Company, founded in 1880. In its history, LT&T introduced the first rotary dial telephone exchange in the U.S. in 1904; the first Radiotelephone in 1946; and piloted the first 911 system in the nation in 1968. Many years later, LT&T was renamed Aliant Communications and shortly thereafter merged in 1998 with Alltel. In 2006, Windstream Communications was formed with the spinoff of Alltel and a merge with VALOR Communications Group. Windstream Communications provides telephone service both over VoIP and conventional telephone circuits to the Lincoln area. Spectrum offers telephone service over VoIP on their cable network. In addition, ALLO Communications provides telephone, television and internet service over their underground fiber network to all parts of the city.
=== Health care ===
Lincoln has three major hospitals within two health care systems serving the city: Bryan Health and CHI Health St. Elizabeth. Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital is a geriatric facility and a physical medicine & rehabilitation center. Lincoln has two specialty hospitals: Lincoln Surgical Hospital and the Nebraska Heart Institute. A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Community-Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC) is in Lincoln (Lincoln VA Clinic, part of the Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System).
=== Police ===
The Lincoln Police Department has just under 375 police officers. The police per capita rate is extremely low at 1.2 officers per 1,000 people (the average being approximately 1.94 in 2020), and the violent crime rate of 354 per 100,000 people. The department is nationally accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies and was the first law enforcement agency in Nebraska to become so. LPD shares its headquarters with the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_the_United_States | List of capitals in the United States | This is a list of capital cities of the United States, including places that serve or have served as federal, state, insular area, territorial, colonial and Native American capitals.
Washington, D.C. has been the federal capital of the United States since 1800. Each U.S. state has its own capital city, as do many of its insular areas. Most states have not changed their capital city since becoming a state, but the capital cities of their respective preceding colonies, territories, kingdoms, and republics typically changed multiple times. There have also been other governments within the current borders of the United States with their own capitals, such as the Republic of Texas, Native American nations, and other unrecognized governments.
== National capitals ==
The buildings in cities identified in the chart below served either as official capitals of the United States under the United States Constitution, or, prior to its ratification, sites where the Second Continental Congress or Congress of the Confederation met. The United States did not have a permanent capital under the Articles of Confederation.
The U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1787, and gave the Congress the power to exercise "exclusive legislation" over a district that "may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States." The 1st Congress met at Federal Hall in New York. In 1790, it passed the Residence Act, which established the national capital at a site along the Potomac River that would become Washington, D.C. For the next ten years, Philadelphia served as the temporary capital. There, Congress met at Congress Hall. On November 17, 1800, the 6th United States Congress formally convened in Washington, D.C. Congress has met outside of Washington only twice since: on July 16, 1987, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of ratification of the Constitution; and at Federal Hall National Memorial in New York on September 6, 2002, to mark the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Both meetings were ceremonial.
== State capitals ==
Each state has a capital that serves as the seat of its government. Ten of the thirteen original states and 15 other states have changed their capital city at least once; the last state to move its capital city was Oklahoma in 1910.
In the following table, the "Since" column shows the year that the city began serving as the state's capital (or the capital of the entities that preceded it). The MSA/μSA and CSA columns display the population of the metro area the city is a part of, and should not be construed to mean the population of the city's sphere of influence or that the city is an anchor for the metro area. Fields colored light yellow denote that the population is a micropolitan statistical area.
== Insular area capitals ==
An insular area is a United States territory that is neither a part of one of the fifty states nor a part of the District of Columbia, the nation's federal district. Those insular areas with territorial capitals are listed below.
== Former national capitals ==
Four of the 50 U.S. states, Hawaii, Texas, California, and Vermont, were once de jure sovereign states with diplomatic recognition from the international community. California did not have a capital during its time as a sovereign nation.
=== Hawaii ===
During its history as a sovereign nation (Kingdom of Hawaii, 1795–1893; Republic of Hawaii, 1894–1898), five sites served as the capital of Hawaii:
Waikīkī, 1795–1796
Hilo, 1796–1803
Honolulu, 1803–1812
Kailua-Kona, 1812–1820
Lahaina, 1820–1845
Honolulu, 1845–1898
Annexed by the United States in 1898, Honolulu remained the capital, first of the Territory of Hawaii (1900–1959), and then of the state (since 1959).
=== Texas ===
During its history as a sovereign nation (Republic of Texas, 1836–1845), seven sites served as the capital of Texas:
Washington (now Washington-on-the-Brazos), 1836
Harrisburg (now part of Houston), 1836
Galveston, 1836
Velasco, 1836
West Columbia, 1836
Houston, 1837–1839
Austin, 1839–1845
Annexed by the United States in 1845, Austin remains the capital of the state of Texas.
=== Vermont ===
Three sites have served as the capital of the Vermont Republic:
Westminster, 1777
Windsor, 1777–1791
Castleton, 1791
When the state was admitted to the Union in 1791, Burlington was chosen to be the capital and it remained as such until 1805, when it was changed to Montpelier, where it remains today.
== Native American capitals ==
Some Native American tribes, in particular the Five Civilized Tribes, organized their states with constitutions and capitals in Western style. Others, like the Iroquois, had long-standing, pre-Columbian traditions of a 'capitol' longhouse where wampum and council fires were maintained with special status. Since they did business with the U.S. Federal Government, these capitals can be seen as officially recognized in some sense.
=== Cherokee Nation ===
New Echota 1825–1832
New Echota, now near Calhoun, Georgia, was founded in 1825, realizing the dream and plans of Cherokee Chief Major Ridge. Major Ridge chose the site because of its centrality in the historic Cherokee Nation which spanned parts of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama, and because it was near the confluence of the Conasauga and Coosawattee rivers. The town's layout was partly inspired by Ridge's many visits to Washington D.C. and to Baltimore, but also invoked traditional themes of the Southeastern ceremonial complex. Complete with the Council House, Supreme Court, Cherokee syllabary printing press, and the houses of several of the Nation's constitutional officers, New Echota served as the capital until 1832 when the state of Georgia outlawed Native American assembly in an attempt to undermine the Nation. Thousands of Cherokee would gather in New Echota for the annual National Councils, camping along the nearby rivers and holding long stomp dances in the park-like woods that were typical of many Southeastern Native American settlements.
Red Clay 1832–1838
The Cherokee National council grounds were moved to Red Clay, Tennessee, on the Georgia state line, in order to evade the Georgia state militia. The log cabins, limestone springs, and park-like woods of Red Clay served as the capital until the Cherokee Nation was removed to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) on the Trail of Tears.
Tahlequah 1839–1907, 1938–present
Tahlequah, in present-day Oklahoma, served as the capital of the original Cherokee Nation after Removal. After the Civil War, a turbulent period for the Nation which was involved in its own civil war resulting from pervasive anger and disagreements over removal from Georgia, the Cherokee Nation built a new National Capitol in Tahlequah out of brick. The building served as the capitol until 1907, when the Dawes Act finally dissolved the Cherokee Nation and Tahlequah became the county seat of Cherokee County, Oklahoma. The Cherokee National government was re-established in 1938 and Tahlequah remains the capital of the modern Cherokee Nation; it is also the capital of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.
Cherokee 20th century–present (Eastern Band of Cherokee)
Approximately four to eight hundred Cherokees escaped removal because they lived on a separated tract, purchased later with the help of Confederate Colonel William Holland Thomas, along the Oconaluftee River deep in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Some Cherokees fleeing the Federal Army, sent for the "round up", fled to the remote settlements separated from the rest of the Cherokee Territory in Georgia and North Carolina, in order to remain in their homeland. In the 20th century, their descendants organized as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians; its capital is at Cherokee, North Carolina, in the tribally-controlled Qualla Boundary.
=== Muscogee Creek Nation ===
Hot Springs, Arkansas c. 1837–1866
After Removal from their Alabama-Georgia homeland, the Creek national government met near Hot Springs which was then part of their new territory as prescribed in the Treaty of Cusseta. Because some Creeks fought with the Confederacy in the American Civil War, the Union forced the Creeks to cede over 3,000,000-acre (1,200,000 ha) - half of their land in what is now Arkansas.
Okmulgee 1867–1906
Served as the National capital after the American Civil War. It was probably named after Ocmulgee, on the Ocmulgee river in Macon, a principle Coosa and later Creek town built with mounds and functioning as part of the Southeastern ceremonial complex. However, there were other traditional Creek "mother-towns" before removal. The Ocmulgee mounds were ceded illegally in 1821 with the Treaty of Indian Springs.
=== Iroquois Confederacy ===
Onondaga (Onondaga privilege c. 1450–present)
The Iroquois Confederacy or Haudenosaunee, which means "People of the Longhouse", was an alliance between the Five and later Six-Nations of Iroquoian language and culture of upstate New York. These include the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and, after 1722, the Tuscarora Nations. Since the Confederacy's formation around 1450, the Onondaga Nation has held privilege of hosting the Iroquois Grand Council and the status of Keepers of the Fire and the Wampum —which they still do at the official Longhouse on the Onondaga Reservation. Now spread over reservations in New York and Ontario, the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee preserve this arrangement to this day in what they claim to be the "world's oldest representative democracy."
==== Seneca Nation of Indians ====
Jimerson Town (Allegany Reservation)
Irving (Cattaraugus Reservation)
The Seneca Nation republic was founded in 1848 and has two capitals that rotate responsibilities every two years. Jimerson Town was founded in the 1960s following the formation of the Allegheny Reservoir. The Senecas also have an administrative longhouse in Steamburg but do not consider that location to be a capital.
=== Navajo Nation ===
Window Rock
Window Rock (Navajo: Tségháhoodzání), Arizona, is a small city that serves as the seat of government and capital of the Navajo Nation (1936–present), the largest territory of a sovereign Native American nation in North America. It lies within the boundaries of the St. Michaels Chapter, adjacent to the Arizona and New Mexico state line. Window Rock hosts the Navajo Nation governmental campus which contains the Navajo Nation Council, Navajo Nation Supreme Court, the offices of the Navajo Nation President and Vice President, and many Navajo government buildings.
== Unrecognized national capitals ==
There have been a handful of self-declared or undeclared nations within the current borders of the United States which were never officially recognized as legally independent sovereign entities; however, these nations did have de facto control over their respective regions during their existence.
=== Colonies of British America ===
Prior to the independence of the United States from Great Britain, declared July 4, 1776, in the Declaration of Independence and ultimately secured in the American Revolutionary War, several congresses were convened on behalf of some of the colonies of British America. However, these bodies did not address the question of independence from England, and therefore did not designate a national capital. The Second Continental Congress encompassed the period during which the United States declared independence but had not yet established a permanent national capital.
‡ (continuing after independence until December 12, 1776)
=== State of Franklin ===
The State of Franklin was an autonomous, secessionist United States territory created not long after the end of the American Revolution from territory that later was ceded by North Carolina to the federal government. Franklin's territory later became part of the state of Tennessee. Franklin was never officially admitted into the Union of the United States and existed for only four years.
Jonesborough, Tennessee, 1784–1785
Greeneville, Tennessee, 1785–1788
=== State of Muskogee ===
The State of Muskogee was a Native American state in Spanish Florida created by the Englishman William Augustus Bowles, who was its "Director General", author of its Constitution, and designer of its flag. It consisted of several tribes of Creeks and Seminoles. It existed from 1799 to 1803. It had one capital:
Miccosukee, 1799–1803
=== Republic of West Florida ===
The Republic of West Florida was a short-lived nation that broke away from the territory of Spanish West Florida in 1810. It comprised the Florida Parishes of the modern state of Louisiana and the Mobile District of the modern states of Mississippi and Alabama. (The Republic of West Florida did not include any part of the modern state of Florida.) Ownership of the area had been in dispute between Spain and the United States, which claimed that it had been included in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Within two months of the settlers' rebellion and the declaration of an independent nation, President James Madison sent American forces to peaceably occupy the new republic. It was formally annexed by the United States in 1812 over the objections of Spain and the land was divided between the Territory of Orleans and Territory of Mississippi. During its brief existence, the capital of the Republic of West Florida was:
St. Francisville, Louisiana, 1810
=== Republic of Indian Stream ===
The Republic of Indian Stream was an unrecognized independent nation within the present state of New Hampshire.
The area that would become Pittsburg, New Hampshire, 1832–1835
=== California Republic ===
Before being annexed by the United States in 1848 (following the Mexican–American War), a small portion of north-central California declared itself the California Republic, in an act of independence from Mexico, in 1846 (see Bear Flag Revolt). The republic only existed a month before it disbanded itself to join the advancing American army; its claimed territory later became part of the United States as a result of the Mexican Cession.
The very short-lived California Republic was never recognized by the United States, Mexico or any other nation. The flag, featuring a silhouette of a California grizzly bear, a star, and the words "California Republic", became known as the Bear Flag and was later the basis for the official state flag of California.
There was one de facto capital of the California Republic:
Sonoma, 1846
=== Confederate States ===
The Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) had three capitals during its existence. The first capital was established February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, and remained there until it was moved to Richmond, Virginia, on May 29, 1861, after Virginia seceded on May 23.
The individual state capitals remained the same in the Confederacy as they had been in the Union (U.S.A.), although as the advancing Union Army used those cities for military districts, some of the Confederate governments were relocated or moved out of state, traveling along with secessionist armies.
Montgomery, Alabama, February 4, 1861 – May 29, 1861
Richmond, Virginia, May 29, 1861 – April 3, 1865
Danville, Virginia, April 2, 1865- May 10, 1865
==== Free State of Jones ====
In 1863 and 1864, Jones County, Mississippi revolted against Confederate rule and became practically independent under the name Free State of Jones. The Free State fought a number of skirmishes with Confederate troops. By the spring of 1864 the Jones County rebels had taken effective control of the county from the Confederate government, raised an American flag over the courthouse in Ellisville, and sent a letter to Union General William T. Sherman declaring Jones County's independence from the Confederacy.
Scholars have disputed whether the county truly seceded, with some concluding it did not fully secede. Lack of documentation makes the situation difficult to assess. The rebellion in Jones County has been variously characterized as consisting of local skirmishes to being a full-fledged war of independence.
Ellisville, Mississippi
== Historical state, colonial, and territorial capitals ==
Most of the original Thirteen Colonies had their capitals occupied or attacked by the British during the American Revolutionary War. State governments operated where and as they could. The City of New York was occupied by British troops from 1776 to 1783. A similar situation occurred during the War of 1812, during the American Civil War in many Confederate states, and during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680–1692 in New Mexico.
Twenty-two state capitals have been a capital longer than their state has been a state, since they served as the capital of a predecessor territory, colony, or republic. Boston, Massachusetts, has been a capital city since 1630; it is the oldest continuously running capital in the United States. Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the oldest capital city, having become capital in 1610 and interrupted only by the aforementioned Pueblo Revolt. An even older Spanish city, St. Augustine, Florida, served as a colonial capital from 1565 until about 1820, more than 250 years.
The table below includes the following information:
The state, the year in which statehood was granted, and the state's capital are shown in bold type. NOTE: For the first thirteen states, formerly the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain on the Atlantic seaboard, the year of statehood is shown as 1776 (United States Declaration of Independence) rather than the subsequent year each state ratified the 1787 United States Constitution. (See List of U.S. states by date of admission to the Union.)
The year listed for each capital is the starting date; the ending date is the starting date for the successor unless otherwise indicated.
In many cases, capital cities of historical jurisdictions were outside of a state's present borders. (Those cities are generally indicated with the two-letter abbreviation for the U.S. state in which the former administrative capital is now located.) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem | Three-body problem | In physics, specifically classical mechanics, the three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses orbiting each other in space and then to calculate their subsequent trajectories using Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation.
Unlike the two-body problem, the three-body problem has no general closed-form analytic solution. The differential equations that govern the movements of three gravitating bodies are not integrable and cannot be solved to give explicit formulas for the positions of the bodies as a function of time. For most initial conditions, the dynamical system for three orbiting bodies is chaotic, and the only way to predict their motions is to estimate them using numerical methods.
The three-body problem is a special case of the n-body problem. Historically, the first specific three-body problem to receive extended study was the one involving the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. In an extended modern sense, a three-body problem is any problem in classical mechanics or quantum mechanics that models the motion of three particles.
== Mathematical description ==
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3
−
r
2
)
|
r
3
−
r
2
|
3
.
{\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}{\ddot {\mathbf {r} }}_{1}&=-Gm_{2}{\frac {\left(\mathbf {r} _{1}-\mathbf {r} _{2}\right)}{\ \left|\mathbf {r} _{1}-\mathbf {r} _{2}\right|^{3}}}-Gm_{3}{\frac {\left(\mathbf {r} _{1}-\mathbf {r} _{3}\right)}{\ \left|\mathbf {r} _{1}-\mathbf {r} _{3}\right|^{3}}}\ ,\\{\ddot {\mathbf {r} }}_{2}&=-Gm_{3}{\frac {\left(\mathbf {r} _{2}-\mathbf {r} _{3}\right)}{\ \left|\mathbf {r} _{2}-\mathbf {r} _{3}\right|^{3}}}-Gm_{1}{\frac {\left(\mathbf {r} _{2}-\mathbf {r} _{1}\right)}{\ \left|\mathbf {r} _{2}-\mathbf {r} _{1}\right|^{3}}}\ ,\\{\ddot {\mathbf {r} }}_{3}&=-Gm_{1}{\frac {\left(\mathbf {r} _{3}-\mathbf {r} _{1}\right)}{\ \left|\mathbf {r} _{3}-\mathbf {r} _{1}\right|^{3}}}-Gm_{2}{\frac {\left(\mathbf {r} _{3}-\mathbf {r} _{2}\right)}{\ \left|\mathbf {r} _{3}-\mathbf {r} _{2}\right|^{3}}}~.\end{aligned}}}
where
G
{\displaystyle \ G\ }
is the gravitational constant.
As astronomer Juhan Frank describes, "These three second-order vector differential equations are equivalent to 18 first order scalar differential equations." As June Barrow-Green notes with regard to an alternative presentation, if
P
i
{\displaystyle P_{i}}
represent three particles with masses
m
i
{\displaystyle m_{i}}
, distances
P
i
P
j
=
r
i
j
,
{\displaystyle \ P_{i}P_{j}=r_{ij}\ ,}
and coordinates
q
i
j
{\displaystyle \ q_{ij}\ }
(
i
,
j
=
1
,
2
,
3
)
{\displaystyle \ (i,j=1,2,3)\ }
in an inertial coordinate system ... the problem is described by nine second-order differential equations.
The problem can also be stated equivalently in the Hamiltonian formalism, in which case it is described by a set of 18 first-order differential equations, one for each component of the positions
r
i
{\displaystyle \ \mathbf {r} _{i}\ }
and momenta
p
i
{\displaystyle \ \mathbf {p} _{i}\ }
:
d
r
i
d
t
=
∂
H
∂
p
i
,
d
p
i
d
t
=
−
∂
H
∂
r
i
,
{\displaystyle {\frac {\mathrm {d} \ \mathbf {r} _{i}}{\mathrm {d} \ t}}={\frac {\partial \ {\mathcal {H}}}{\partial \ \mathbf {p} _{i}}}\ ,\qquad {\frac {\mathrm {d} \ \mathbf {p} _{i}}{\mathrm {d} \ t}}=-{\frac {\partial \ {\mathcal {H}}}{\partial \ \mathbf {r} _{i}}}\ ,}
where
H
{\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}}
is the Hamiltonian:
H
=
−
G
m
1
m
2
|
r
1
−
r
2
|
−
G
m
2
m
3
|
r
3
−
r
2
|
−
G
m
3
m
1
|
r
3
−
r
1
|
+
|
p
1
|
2
2
m
1
+
|
p
2
|
2
2
m
2
+
|
p
3
|
2
2
m
3
.
{\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}\ =\ -{\frac {Gm_{1}m_{2}}{\left|\mathbf {r} _{1}-\mathbf {r} _{2}\right|}}\ -\ {\frac {Gm_{2}m_{3}}{\left|\mathbf {r} _{3}-\mathbf {r} _{2}\right|}}\ -\ {\frac {Gm_{3}m_{1}}{\left|\mathbf {r} _{3}-\mathbf {r} _{1}\right|}}\ +\ {\frac {\left|\mathbf {p} _{1}\right|^{2}}{2m_{1}}}\ +\ {\frac {\left|\mathbf {p} _{2}\right|^{2}}{2m_{2}}}\ +\ {\frac {\left|\mathbf {p} _{3}\right|^{2}}{2m_{3}}}~.}
In this case,
H
{\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}}
is simply the total energy of the system, gravitational plus kinetic.
=== Restricted three-body problem ===
In the restricted three-body problem formulation, in the description of Barrow-Green,two... bodies revolve around their centre of mass in circular orbits under the influence of their mutual gravitational attraction, and... form a two body system... [whose] motion is known. A third body (generally known as a planetoid), assumed massless with respect to the other two, moves in the plane defined by the two revolving bodies and, while being gravitationally influenced by them, exerts no influence of its own. Per Barrow-Green, "[t]he problem is then to ascertain the motion of the third body."
The restricted three-body problem is easier to analyze theoretically than the full problem. It is of practical interest as well since it accurately describes many real-world problems, the most important example being the Earth–Moon–Sun system. For these reasons, it has occupied an important role in the historical development of the three-body problem.
The restricted 3-body problem has a 4-dimensional phase space, but only one conserved quantity, the Jacobi integral. It was shown by Heinrich Bruns that there are no more algebraic conserved quantities, and by Henri Poincaré in 1889 that there are no more analytic conserved quantities. Therefore, since the dimension of the phase space is larger than the number of constants of motion, the system is not exactly solvable; in fact, it is chaotic.
Depending on the value of the Jacobi integral, a body initially orbiting the larger mass may be able to be captured by the secondary mass or be ejected via Lagrange points L2 or L3.
A variant of this problem, where the two large bodies both exert radiation pressure, results in the addition of four additional equilibrium points in addition to the five classical Lagrange points.
== Solutions ==
=== General solution ===
There is no general closed-form solution to the three-body problem. In other words, it does not have a general solution that can be expressed in terms of a finite number of standard mathematical operations. Moreover, the motion of three bodies is generally non-repeating, except in special cases.
However, in 1912 the Finnish mathematician Karl Fritiof Sundman proved that there exists an analytic solution to the three-body problem in the form of a Puiseux series, specifically a power series in terms of powers of t1/3. This series converges for all real t, except for initial conditions corresponding to zero angular momentum. In practice, the latter restriction is insignificant since initial conditions with zero angular momentum are rare, having Lebesgue measure zero.
An important issue in proving this result is the fact that the radius of convergence for this series is determined by the distance to the nearest singularity. Therefore, it is necessary to study the possible singularities of the three-body problems. As is briefly discussed below, the only singularities in the three-body problem are binary collisions (collisions between two particles at an instant) and triple collisions (collisions between three particles at an instant).
Collisions of any number are somewhat improbable, since it has been shown that they correspond to a set of initial conditions of measure zero. But there is no criterion known to be put on the initial state in order to avoid collisions for the corresponding solution. So Sundman's strategy consisted of the following steps:
Using an appropriate change of variables to continue analyzing the solution beyond the binary collision, in a process known as regularization.
Proving that triple collisions only occur when the angular momentum L vanishes. By restricting the initial data to L ≠ 0, he removed all real singularities from the transformed equations for the three-body problem.
Showing that if L ≠ 0, then not only can there be no triple collision, but the system is strictly bounded away from a triple collision. This implies, by Cauchy's existence theorem for differential equations, that there are no complex singularities in a strip (depending on the value of L) in the complex plane centered around the real axis (related to the Cauchy–Kovalevskaya theorem).
Find a conformal transformation that maps this strip into the unit disc. For example, if s = t1/3 (the new variable after the regularization) and if |ln s| ≤ β, then this map is given by
σ
=
e
π
s
2
β
−
1
e
π
s
2
β
+
1
.
{\displaystyle \sigma ={\frac {e^{\frac {\pi s}{2\beta }}-1}{e^{\frac {\pi s}{2\beta }}+1}}.}
This finishes the proof of Sundman's theorem.
The corresponding series converges extremely slowly. That is, obtaining a value of meaningful precision requires so many terms that this solution is of little practical use. Indeed, in 1930, David Beloriszky calculated that if Sundman's series were to be used for astronomical observations, then the computations would involve at least 108000000 terms.
=== Special-case solutions ===
In 1767, Leonhard Euler found three families of periodic solutions in which the three masses are collinear at each instant. In 1772, Lagrange found a family of solutions in which the three masses form an equilateral triangle at each instant. Together with Euler's collinear solutions, these solutions form the central configurations for the three-body problem. These solutions are valid for any mass ratios, and the masses move on Keplerian ellipses. These four families are the only known solutions for which there are explicit analytic formulas. In the special case of the circular restricted three-body problem, these solutions, viewed in a frame rotating with the primaries, become points called Lagrangian points and labeled L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5, with L4 and L5 being symmetric instances of Lagrange's solution.
In work summarized in 1892–1899, Henri Poincaré established the existence of an infinite number of periodic solutions to the restricted three-body problem, together with techniques for continuing these solutions into the general three-body problem.
In 1893, Meissel stated what is now called the Pythagorean three-body problem: three masses in the ratio 3:4:5 are placed at rest at the vertices of a 3:4:5 right triangle, with the heaviest body at the right angle and the lightest at the smaller acute angle. Burrau further investigated this problem in 1913. In 1967 Victor Szebehely and C. Frederick Peters established eventual escape of the lightest body for this problem using numerical integration, while at the same time finding a nearby periodic solution.
In the 1970s, Michel Hénon and Roger A. Broucke each found a set of solutions that form part of the same family of solutions: the Broucke–Hénon–Hadjidemetriou family. In this family, the three objects all have the same mass and can exhibit both retrograde and direct forms. In some of Broucke's solutions, two of the bodies follow the same path.
In 1993, physicist Cris Moore at the Santa Fe Institute found a zero angular momentum solution with three equal masses moving around a figure-eight shape. In 2000, mathematicians Alain Chenciner and Richard Montgomery proved its formal existence. The solution has been shown numerically to be stable for small perturbations of the mass and orbital parameters, which makes it possible for such orbits to be observed in the physical universe. But it has been argued that this is unlikely since the domain of stability is small. For instance, the probability of a binary–binary scattering event resulting in a figure-8 orbit has been estimated to be a small fraction of a percent.
In 2013, physicists Milovan Šuvakov and Veljko Dmitrašinović at the Institute of Physics in Belgrade discovered 13 new families of solutions for the equal-mass zero-angular-momentum three-body problem.
In 2015, physicist Ana Hudomal discovered 14 new families of solutions for the equal-mass zero-angular-momentum three-body problem.
In 2017, researchers Xiaoming Li and Shijun Liao found 669 new periodic orbits of the equal-mass zero-angular-momentum three-body problem. This was followed in 2018 by an additional 1,223 new solutions for a zero-angular-momentum system of unequal masses.
In 2018, Li and Liao reported 234 solutions to the unequal-mass "free-fall" three-body problem. The free-fall formulation starts with all three bodies at rest. Because of this, the masses in a free-fall configuration do not orbit in a closed "loop", but travel forward and backward along an open "track".
In 2023, Ivan Hristov, Radoslava Hristova, Dmitrašinović and Kiyotaka Tanikawa published a search for "periodic free-fall orbits" three-body problem, limited to the equal-mass case, and found 12,409 distinct solutions.
=== Numerical approaches ===
Using a computer, the problem may be solved to arbitrarily high precision using numerical integration. There have been attempts at creating computer programs that numerically solve the three-body problem (and by extension, the n-body problem) involving both electromagnetic and gravitational interactions, and incorporating modern theories of physics such as special relativity. In addition, using the theory of random walks, an approximate probability of different outcomes may be computed.
== History ==
The gravitational problem of three bodies in its traditional sense dates in substance from 1687, when Isaac Newton published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton, having solved the two-body problem, tried to discover whether any long-term stability is possible for a system such as the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. Guided by major Renaissance astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, Newton introduced later generations to the beginning of the gravitational three-body problem. In Proposition 66 of Book 1 of the Principia, and its 22 Corollaries, Newton took the first steps in the definition and study of the problem of the movements of three massive bodies subject to their mutually perturbing gravitational attractions. In Propositions 25 to 35 of Book 3, Newton also took the first steps in applying his results of Proposition 66 to the lunar theory, the motion of the Moon under the gravitational influence of Earth and the Sun. Later, this problem was also applied to other planets' interactions with the Earth and the Sun.
The physical problem was first addressed by Amerigo Vespucci and subsequently by Galileo Galilei, as well as Simon Stevin, but they did not realize what they contributed. Though Galileo determined that the speed of fall of all bodies changes uniformly and in the same way, he did not apply it to planetary motions. Whereas in 1499, Vespucci used knowledge of the position of the Moon to determine his position in Brazil. It became of technical importance in the 1720s, as an accurate solution would be applicable to navigation, specifically for the determination of longitude at sea, solved in practice by John Harrison's invention of the marine chronometer. However the accuracy of the lunar theory was low, due to the perturbing effect of the Sun and planets on the motion of the Moon around Earth.
Jean le Rond d'Alembert and Alexis Clairaut, who developed a longstanding rivalry, both attempted to analyze the problem in some degree of generality; they submitted their competing first analyses to the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1747. It was in connection with their research, in Paris during the 1740s, that the name "three-body problem" (French: Problème des trois Corps) began to be commonly used. An account published in 1761 by Jean le Rond d'Alembert indicates that the name was first used in 1747.
From the end of the 19th century to early 20th century, the approach to solve the three-body problem with the usage of short-range attractive two-body forces was developed by scientists, which offered P. F. Bedaque, H.-W. Hammer and U. van Kolck an idea to renormalize the short-range three-body problem, providing scientists a rare example of a renormalization group limit cycle at the beginning of the 21st century. George William Hill worked on the restricted problem in the late 19th century with an application of motion of Venus and Mercury.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Karl Sundman approached the problem mathematically and systematically by providing a functional theoretical proof to the problem valid for all values of time. It was the first time scientists theoretically solved the three-body problem. However, because there was not a qualitative enough solution of this system, and it was too slow for scientists to practically apply it, this solution still left some issues unresolved. In the 1970s, implication to three-body from two-body forces had been discovered by V. Efimov, which was named the Efimov effect.
In 2017, Shijun Liao and Xiaoming Li applied a new strategy of numerical simulation for chaotic systems called the clean numerical simulation (CNS), with the use of a national supercomputer, to successfully gain 695 families of periodic solutions of the three-body system with equal mass.
In 2019, Breen et al. announced a fast neural network solver for the three-body problem, trained using a numerical integrator.
In September 2023, several possible solutions have been found to the problem according to reports.
== Other problems involving three bodies ==
The term "three-body problem" is sometimes used in the more general sense to refer to any physical problem involving the interaction of three bodies.
A quantum-mechanical analogue of the gravitational three-body problem in classical mechanics is the helium atom,
in which a helium nucleus and two electrons interact according to the inverse-square Coulomb interaction. Like the
gravitational three-body problem, the helium atom cannot be solved exactly.
In both classical and quantum mechanics, however, there exist nontrivial interaction laws besides the inverse-square force that do lead to exact analytic three-body solutions. One such model consists of a combination of harmonic attraction and a repulsive inverse-cube force. This model is considered nontrivial since it is associated with a set of nonlinear differential equations containing singularities (compared with, e.g., harmonic interactions alone, which lead to an easily solved system of linear differential equations). In these two respects it is analogous to (insoluble) models having Coulomb interactions, and as a result has been suggested as a tool for intuitively understanding physical systems like the helium atom.
Within the point vortex model, the motion of vortices in a two-dimensional ideal fluid is described by equations of motion that contain only first-order time derivatives. I.e. in contrast to Newtonian mechanics, it is the velocity and not the acceleration that is determined by their relative positions. As a consequence, the three-vortex problem is still integrable, while at least four vortices are required to obtain chaotic behavior. One can draw parallels between the motion of a passive tracer particle in the velocity field of three vortices and the restricted three-body problem of Newtonian mechanics.
The gravitational three-body problem has also been studied using general relativity. Physically, a relativistic treatment becomes necessary in systems with very strong gravitational fields, such as near the event horizon of a black hole. However, the relativistic problem is considerably more difficult than in Newtonian mechanics, and sophisticated numerical techniques are required.
Even the full two-body problem (i.e. for arbitrary ratio of masses) does not have a rigorous analytic solution in general relativity.
== n-body problem ==
The three-body problem is a special case of the n-body problem, which describes how n objects move under one of the physical forces, such as gravity. These problems have a global analytical solution in the form of a convergent power series, as was proven by Karl F. Sundman for n = 3 and by Qiudong Wang for n > 3 (see n-body problem for details). However, the Sundman and Wang series converge so slowly that they are useless for practical purposes; therefore, it is currently necessary to approximate solutions by numerical analysis in the form of numerical integration or, for some cases, classical trigonometric series approximations (see n-body simulation). Atomic systems, e.g. atoms, ions, and molecules, can be treated in terms of the quantum n-body problem. Among classical physical systems, the n-body problem usually refers to a galaxy or to a cluster of galaxies; planetary systems, such as stars, planets, and their satellites, can also be treated as n-body systems. Some applications are conveniently treated by perturbation theory, in which the system is considered as a two-body problem plus additional forces causing deviations from a hypothetical unperturbed two-body trajectory. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman | Milton Friedman | Milton Friedman ( ; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism before shifting their focus to new classical macroeconomics in the mid-1970s. Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Nobel laureates Gary Becker (1992), Robert Fogel (1993), and Robert Lucas Jr. (1995).
Friedman's challenges to what he called "naive Keynesian theory" began with his interpretation of consumption, which tracks how consumers spend. He introduced the permanent income hypothesis, a theory which would later become part of mainstream economics and he was among the first to propagate the theory of consumption smoothing. During the 1960s, he became the main advocate opposing both Marxist and Keynesian government and economic policies, and described his approach (along with mainstream economics) as using "Keynesian language and apparatus" yet rejecting its initial conclusions. He theorized that there existed a natural rate of unemployment and argued that unemployment below this rate would cause inflation to accelerate. He argued that the Phillips curve was in the long run vertical at the "natural rate" and predicted what would come to be known as stagflation. Friedman promoted a macroeconomic viewpoint known as monetarism and argued that a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the preferred policy, as compared to rapid and unexpected changes. His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization, and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s. His monetary theory influenced the Federal Reserve's monetary policy in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
After retiring from the University of Chicago in 1977, and becoming emeritus professor in economics in 1983, Friedman served as an advisor to Republican U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Conservative British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. His political philosophy extolled the virtues of a free market economic system with minimal government intervention in social matters. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated policies such as a volunteer military, freely floating exchange rates, abolition of medical licenses, a negative income tax, school vouchers, and opposition to the war on drugs and support for drug liberalization policies. His support for school choice led him to found the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, later renamed EdChoice.
Friedman's works cover a broad range of economic topics and public policy issues. His books and essays have had global influence, including in former communist states. A 2011 survey of economists commissioned by the EJW ranked Friedman as the second-most popular economist of the 20th century, following only John Maynard Keynes. Upon his death, The Economist described him as "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century ... possibly of all of it".
== Early life ==
Friedman was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on July 31, 1912. His parents, Sára Ethel (née Landau) and Jenő Saul Friedman, were Jewish working-class immigrants from Beregszász in Carpathian Ruthenia, Kingdom of Hungary (now Berehove in Ukraine). They emigrated to the United States in their early teens. They both worked as dry goods merchants. Milton was the youngest of four children and only son. Shortly after his birth, the family relocated to Rahway, New Jersey. Friedman's father died during Friedman's senior year of high school, leaving Friedman and two older sisters to care for their mother.
In his early teens, Friedman was injured in a car accident, which scarred his upper lip. A talented student and an avid reader, Friedman graduated from Rahway High School in 1928, just before his 16th birthday. He was the first in his family to attend a university. Friedman was awarded a competitive scholarship to Rutgers University and graduated in 1932.
Friedman initially intended to become an actuary or mathematician, however, the state of the economy, which was at this point in a depression, convinced him to become an economist. He was offered two scholarships to do graduate work, one in mathematics at Brown University and the other in economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman chose the latter, earning a Master of Arts degree in 1933. He was strongly influenced by Jacob Viner, Frank Knight, and Henry Simons. Friedman met his future wife, economist Rose Director, while at the University of Chicago. Friedman was also the student of Friedrich Hayek.
During the 1933–1934 academic year, he had a fellowship at Columbia University, where he studied statistics with statistician and economist Harold Hotelling. He was back in Chicago for the 1934–1935 academic year, working as a research assistant for Henry Schultz, who was then working on Theory and Measurement of Demand.
During the 1934–1935 academic year, Friedman formed what would later prove to be lifetime friendships with George Stigler and W. Allen Wallis, both of whom later taught with Friedman at the University of Chicago. Friedman was also influenced by two lifelong friends, Arthur Burns and Homer Johnson. They helped Friedman better understand the depth of economic thinking.
== Public service ==
Friedman was unable to find academic employment, so in 1935 he followed his friend W. Allen Wallis to Washington, D.C., where Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was "a lifesaver" for many young economists. At this stage, Friedman said he and his wife "regarded the job-creation programs such as the WPA, CCC, and PWA appropriate responses to the critical situation", but not "the price- and wage-fixing measures of the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration". Foreshadowing his later ideas, he believed price controls interfered with an essential signaling mechanism to help resources be used where they were most valued. Indeed, Friedman later concluded that all government intervention associated with the New Deal was "the wrong cure for the wrong disease", arguing the Federal Reserve was to blame, and that they should have expanded the money supply in reaction to what he later described in A Monetary History of the United States as "The Great Contraction". Later, Friedman and his colleague Anna Schwartz wrote A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, which argued that the Great Depression was caused by a severe monetary contraction due to banking crises and poor policy on the part of the Federal Reserve. Robert J. Shiller describes the book as the "most influential account" of the Great Depression.
During 1935, he began working for the National Resources Planning Board, which was then working on a large consumer budget survey. Ideas from this project later became a part of his Theory of the Consumption Function, a book which first described consumption smoothing and the permanent income hypothesis. Friedman began employment with the National Bureau of Economic Research during the autumn of 1937 to assist Simon Kuznets in his work on professional income. This work resulted in their jointly authored publication Incomes from Independent Professional Practice, which introduced the concepts of permanent and transitory income, a major component of the permanent income hypothesis that Friedman worked out in greater detail in the 1950s. The book hypothesizes that professional licensing artificially restricts the supply of services and raises prices.
Incomes from Independent Professional Practice remained quite controversial within the economics community because of Friedman's hypothesis that barriers to entry, which were exercised and enforced by the American Medical Association, led to higher than average wages for physicians, compared to other professional groups. Barriers to entry are a fixed cost which must be incurred regardless of any outside factors such as work experience, or other factors of human capital.
During 1940, Friedman was appointed as an assistant professor teaching economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but encountered antisemitism in the Economics department and returned to government service. From 1941 to 1943 Friedman worked on wartime tax policy for the federal government, as an advisor to senior officials of the United States Department of the Treasury. As a Treasury spokesman during 1942, he advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation. He helped to invent the payroll withholding tax system, since the federal government needed money to fund the war. He later said, "I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn't found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now." In Milton and Rose Friedman's jointly written memoir, he wrote, "Rose has repeatedly chided me over the years about the role that I played in making possible the current overgrown government we both criticize so strongly."
== Academic career ==
=== Early years ===
In 1940, Friedman accepted a position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but left because of differences with faculty regarding United States involvement in World War II. Friedman believed the United States should enter the war. In 1943, Friedman joined the Division of War Research at Columbia University (headed by W. Allen Wallis and Harold Hotelling), where he spent the rest of World War II working as a mathematical statistician, focusing on problems of weapons design, military tactics, and metallurgical experiments. He was a member of the Statistical Research Group. He was consulted during the Battle of the Bulge as an expert on the proximity fuzes of air burst shells.
In 1945, Friedman submitted Incomes from Independent Professional Practice (co-authored with Kuznets and completed during 1940) to Columbia as his doctoral dissertation. The university awarded him a PhD in 1946. Friedman spent the 1945–1946 academic year teaching at the University of Minnesota (where his friend George Stigler was employed). On February 12, 1945, his only son, David D. Friedman, who would later follow in his father's footsteps as an economist, was born.
=== University of Chicago ===
In 1946, Friedman accepted an offer to teach economic theory at the University of Chicago (a position opened by the departure of his former professor Jacob Viner to Princeton University). Friedman would work for the University of Chicago for the next 30 years. There, he contributed to the establishment of an intellectual community that produced a number of Nobel Memorial Prize winners, known collectively as the Chicago school of economics.
At the time, Arthur F. Burns, who was then the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and later chairman of the Federal Reserve, asked Friedman to rejoin the Bureau's staff. He accepted the invitation, and assumed responsibility for the Bureau's inquiry into the role of money in the business cycle. As a result, he initiated the "Workshop in Money and Banking" (the "Chicago Workshop"), which promoted a revival of monetary studies. During the latter half of the 1940s, Friedman began a collaboration with Anna Schwartz, an economic historian at the Bureau, that would ultimately result in the 1963 publication of a book co-authored by Friedman and Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960.
In 1951, Friedman was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, which at the time was awarded every other year to the best economist under the age of 40, by the American Economic Association.
=== University of Cambridge ===
Friedman spent the 1954–1955 academic year as a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. At the time, the Cambridge economics faculty was divided into a Keynesian majority (including Joan Robinson and Richard Kahn) and an anti-Keynesian minority (headed by Dennis Robertson). Friedman speculated he was invited to the fellowship because his views were unacceptable to both of the Cambridge factions. Later his weekly columns for Newsweek magazine (1966–84) were well read and increasingly influential among political and business people, and helped earn the magazine a Gerald Loeb Special Award in 1968. From 1968 to 1978, he and Paul Samuelson participated in the Economics Cassette Series, a biweekly subscription series where the economist would discuss the days' issues for about a half-hour at a time.
==== A Theory of the Consumption Function ====
One of Milton Friedman's most popular works, A Theory of the Consumption Function, challenged traditional Keynesian viewpoints about the household. This work was originally published in 1957 by Princeton University Press, and it reanalyzed the relationship displayed "between aggregate consumption or aggregate savings and aggregate income".
Friedman's counterpart Keynes believed people would modify their household consumption expenditures to relate to their existing income levels. Friedman's research introduced the term "permanent income" to the world, which was the average of a household's expected income over several years, and he also developed the permanent income hypothesis. Friedman thought income consisted of several components, namely transitory and permanent. He established the formula
y
=
y
p
+
y
t
{\displaystyle y=y_{p}+y_{t}}
to calculate income, with p representing the permanent component, and t representing the transitory component. Milton Friedman's research changed how economists interpreted the consumption function, and his work pushed the idea that current income was not the only factor affecting people's adjustment household consumption expenditures. Instead, expected income levels also affected how households would change their consumption expenditures. Friedman's contributions strongly influenced research on consumer behavior, and he further defined how to predict consumption smoothing, which contradicts Keynes' marginal propensity to consume. Although this work presented many controversial points of view which differed from existing viewpoints established by Keynes, A Theory of the Consumption Function helped Friedman gain respect in the field of economics. His work on the permanent income hypothesis is among the many contributions which were listed as reasons for his Sveriges-Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences. His work was later expanded on by Christopher D. Carroll, especially in regards to the absence of liquidity constraints.
The permanent income hypothesis faces some criticism, mainly from Keynesian economists. The primary criticism of the hypothesis is based on a lack of liquidity constraints.
==== A Monetary History of the United States ====
A Monetary History of the United States is the second major book written by Milton Friedman, which he co-authored with Anna J. Schwartz in 1963. In this book, Friedman discusses how the changes in the money supply caused the major economic crises. Friedman and Schwartz used historical data and economic analysis to demonstrate that a large change in the money supply affected the U.S economy significantly. They further assert that changes in the money supply can lead to adverse consequences, and good monetary policies are essential for achieving economic stability. In the book, the authors explained the role of the Federal Reserve in the Great Depression. They claimed that the Federal Reserve’s failure to maintain a stable supply of money when most of the other banks failed between 1929–1933 was the main reason the Great Depression occurred. This book changed the way economists think about recession and was influential in the development of monetarism. It also inspired lots of policymakers and guided them to make modern monetary policies.
==== Capitalism and Freedom ====
His book Capitalism and Freedom, inspired by a series of lectures he gave at Wabash College, brought him national and international attention outside academia. It was published in 1962 by the University of Chicago Press and consists of essays that used non-mathematical economic models to explore issues of public policy. It sold over 400,000 copies in the first eighteen years and more than half a million since 1962. Capitalism and Freedom was translated into eighteen languages. Friedman talks about the need to move to a classically liberal society, that free markets would help nations and individuals in the long-run and fix the efficiency problems currently faced by the United States and other major countries of the 1950s and 1960s. He goes through the chapters specifying an issue in each respective chapter from the role of government and money supply to social welfare programs to a special chapter on occupational licensure. Friedman concludes Capitalism and Freedom with his "classical liberal" stance that government should stay out of matters that do not need it and should only involve itself when absolutely necessary for the survival of its people and the country. He recounts how the best of a country's abilities come from its free markets while its failures come from government intervention.
== Post-retirement ==
In 1977, at the age of 65, Friedman retired from the University of Chicago after teaching there for 30 years. He and his wife moved to San Francisco, where he became a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. From 1977 on, he was affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
During 1977, Friedman was approached by Bob Chitester and the Free to Choose Network. They asked him to create a television program presenting his economic and social philosophy.
Friedman and his wife Rose worked on this project for the next three years, and during 1980, the ten-part series, titled Free to Choose, was broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The companion book to the series (co-authored by Milton and his wife, Rose Friedman), also titled Free To Choose, was the bestselling nonfiction book of 1980.
Friedman served as an unofficial adviser to Ronald Reagan during his 1980 presidential campaign, and then served on the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board for the rest of the Reagan Administration. Ebenstein says Friedman was "the 'guru' of the Reagan administration". In 1988, he received the National Medal of Science and Reagan honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Friedman is known now as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Friedman continued to write editorials and appear on television. He made several visits to Eastern Europe and to China, where he also advised governments. He was also for many years a Trustee of the Philadelphia Society.
== Personal life ==
Friedman had two children, David and Jan. He met his wife, Rose Friedman (née Director), at the University of Chicago in 1932, and wed six years later, in 1938.
Friedman was noticeably shorter than some of his colleagues; he measured 5 feet 0 inches (1.52 m), and has been described as an "Elfin Libertarian" by Binyamin Appelbaum.
Rose Friedman, when asked about Friedman's successes, said that "I have never had the desire to compete with Milton professionally (perhaps because I was smart enough to recognize I couldn't). On the other hand, he has always made me feel that his achievement is my achievement."
During the 1960s, Friedman built (and subsequently maintained) a cottage in Fairlee, Vermont. Friedman also had an apartment in Russian Hill, San Francisco, where he lived from 1977 until his death.
=== Religious views ===
According to a 2007 article in Commentary magazine, his "parents were moderately observant Jews, but Friedman, after an intense burst of childhood piety, rejected religion altogether". He described himself as an agnostic. Friedman wrote extensively of his life and experiences, especially in 1998 in his memoirs with his wife, Rose, titled Two Lucky People. In this book, Rose Friedman describes how she and Milton Friedman raised their two children, Janet and David, with a Christmas tree in the home. "Orthodox Jews of course, do not celebrate Christmas. However, just as, when I was a child, my mother had permitted me to have a Christmas tree one year when my friend had one, she not only tolerated our having a Christmas tree, she even strung popcorn to hang on it."
=== Death ===
Friedman died of heart failure at the age of 94 years in San Francisco on November 16, 2006. He was still a working economist performing original economic research; his last column was published in The Wall Street Journal the day after his death. He was survived by his wife, Rose Friedman (who would die on August 18, 2009), and their two children, David D. Friedman, known for The Machinery of Freedom, as well as his unique anarcho-capitalism from a Chicago School perspective, and attorney and bridge player Jan Martel.
== Scholarly contributions ==
=== Economics ===
Friedman was best known for reviving interest in the money supply as a determinant of the nominal value of output, that is, the quantity theory of money. Monetarism is the set of views associated with modern quantity theory. Its origins can be traced back to the 16th-century School of Salamanca or even further; however, Friedman's contribution is largely responsible for its modern popularization. He co-authored, with Anna Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (1963), which was an examination of the role of the money supply and economic activity in the U.S. history.
Friedman was the main proponent of the monetarist school of economics. He maintained that there is a close and stable association between inflation and the money supply, mainly that inflation could be avoided with proper regulation of the monetary base's growth rate. He famously used the analogy of "dropping money out of a helicopter", to avoid dealing with money injection mechanisms and other factors that would overcomplicate his models.
Friedman's arguments were designed to counter the popular concept of cost-push inflation, that the increased general price level at the time was the result of increases in the price of oil, or increases in wages; as he wrote:
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
Friedman rejected the use of fiscal policy as a tool of demand management; he also held the belief that the government's role in the guidance of the economy should be restricted severely. Friedman wrote extensively on the Great Depression, and he termed the 1929–1933 period the Great Contraction. He argued that the Depression had been caused by an ordinary financial shock and the duration and seriousness of which were greatly increased by the subsequent contraction of the money supply caused by the misguided policies of the directors of the Federal Reserve.
The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.
This theory was put forth in A Monetary History of the United States, and the chapter on the Great Depression was then published as a stand-alone book entitled The Great Contraction, 1929–1933. Both books are still in print from the Princeton University Press, and some editions include as an appendix a speech at a University of Chicago event honoring Friedman in which Ben Bernanke made this statement:
Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression, you're right. We did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.
Friedman also argued for the removal of government intervention in currency markets, thereby spawning an enormous literature on the subject, as well as promoting the practice of freely floating exchange rates. His close friend George Stigler explained, "As is customary in science, he did not win a full victory, in part because research was directed along different lines by the theory of rational expectations, a newer approach developed by Robert Lucas, also at the University of Chicago." The relationship between Friedman and Lucas, or new classical macroeconomics as a whole, was highly complex. The Friedmanian Phillips curve was an interesting starting point for Lucas, but he soon realized that the solution provided by Friedman was not quite satisfactory. Lucas elaborated a new approach in which rational expectations were presumed instead of the Friedmanian adaptive expectations. Due to this reformulation, the story in which the theory of the new classical Phillips curve was embedded radically changed. This modification, however, had a significant effect on Friedman's own approach, so, as a result, the theory of the Friedmanian Phillips curve also changed. Moreover, new classical adherent Neil Wallace, who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago between 1960 and 1963, regarded Friedman's theoretical courses as a mess, highlighting the strained relationship between monetarism and new classical schools.
Friedman was also known for his work on the consumption function, the permanent income hypothesis (1957), which Friedman himself referred to as his best scientific work. This work contended that utility-maximizing consumers would spend a proportional amount of what they perceived to be their permanent income. Windfall gains would mostly be saved because of the law of diminishing marginal utility.
Friedman's essay "The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953) provided the epistemological pattern for his own subsequent research and to a degree that of the Chicago School. There he argued that economics as science should be free of value judgments for it to be objective. Moreover, a useful economic theory should be judged not by its descriptive realism but by its simplicity and fruitfulness as an engine of prediction. That is, students should measure the accuracy of its predictions, rather than the 'soundness of its assumptions'. His argument was part of an ongoing debate among such statisticians as Jerzy Neyman, Leonard Savage, and Ronald Fisher.
While being an advocate of the free market, Friedman believed that the government had two crucial roles. In an interview with Phil Donahue, Friedman argued that "the two basic functions of a government are to protect the nation against foreign enemy, and to protect citizens against its fellows". He also admitted that although privatization of national defense could reduce the overall cost, he has not yet thought of a way to make this privatization possible.
=== Rejection and subsequent evolution of the Phillips curve ===
Other important contributions include his critique of the Phillips curve and the concept of the natural rate of unemployment (1968). This critique associated his name, together with that of Edmund Phelps, with the insight that a government that brings about greater inflation cannot permanently reduce unemployment by doing so. Unemployment may be temporarily lower, if the inflation is a surprise, but in the long run unemployment will be determined by the frictions and imperfections of the labor market. If the conditions are not met and inflation is expected, the "long run" effects will replace the "short term" effects.
Through his critique, the Phillips curve evolved from a strict model emphasizing the connection between inflation and unemployment as being absolute, to a model which emphasized short term unemployment reductions and long term employment stagnations.
Friedman's revised and updated Phillips Curve also changed as a result of Robert Lucas's idea of Rational expectations, replacing the adaptive expectations Friedman used.
=== Statistics ===
One of his most famous contributions to statistics is sequential sampling. Friedman did statistical work at the Division of War Research at Columbia, where he and his colleagues came up with the technique. It became, in the words of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, "the standard analysis of quality control inspection". The dictionary adds, "Like many of Friedman's contributions, in retrospect it seems remarkably simple and obvious to apply basic economic ideas to quality control; that, however, is a measure of his genius."
=== Corporate social responsibility ===
Friedman criticised corporate social responsibility, most famously in an op-ed in the New York Times Magazine in 1970. Friedman argued that businesses often used claims about social responsibility to increase returns and described them as "hypocritical window dressing". Managers were also poorly prepared to make decisions about social causes and these outlays diverted funds that belonged instead to shareholders. Friedman believed that only monopolistic corporations could routinely make altruistic expenditures on social responsibility, because in a competitive market such costs would undermine the business.
== Public policy positions ==
=== Federal Reserve and monetary policy ===
Although Friedman concluded the government does have a role in the monetary system he was critical of the Federal Reserve due to its poor performance and felt it should be abolished. He was opposed to Federal Reserve policies, even during the so-called "Volcker shock" that was labeled "monetarist". Friedman believed the Federal Reserve System should ultimately be replaced with a computer program. He favored a system that would automatically buy and sell securities in response to changes in the money supply.
The proposal to constantly grow the money supply at a certain predetermined amount every year has become known as Friedman's k-percent rule. There is debate about the effectiveness of a theoretical money supply targeting regime. The Fed's inability to meet its money supply targets from 1978 to 1982 led some to conclude it is not a feasible alternative to more conventional inflation and interest rate targeting. Towards the end of his life, Friedman expressed doubt about the validity of targeting the quantity of money. To date, most countries have adopted inflation targeting instead of the k-percent rule.
Idealistically, Friedman actually favored the principles of the 1930s Chicago plan, which would have ended fractional reserve banking and, thus, private money creation. It would force banks to have 100% reserves backing deposits, and instead place money creation powers solely in the hands of the US Government. This would make targeting money growth more possible, as endogenous money created by fractional reserve lending would no longer be a major issue.
Friedman was a strong advocate for floating exchange rates throughout the entire Bretton-Woods period (1944–1971). He argued that a flexible exchange rate would make external adjustment possible and allow countries to avoid balance of payments crises. He saw fixed exchange rates as an undesirable form of government intervention. The case was articulated in an influential 1953 paper, "The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates", at a time when most commentators regarded the possibility of floating exchange rates as an unrealistic policy proposal.
=== Foreign policy ===
While Walter Oi is credited with establishing the economic basis for a volunteer military, Friedman was a proponent, and was credited with ending the draft, stating that the draft was "inconsistent with a free society".
In Capitalism and Freedom, he argued conscription is inequitable and arbitrary, preventing young men from shaping their lives as they see fit. During the Nixon administration he headed the committee to research a conversion to paid/volunteer armed force. Friedman did, however, believe the introduction of a system of universal military training as a reserve in cases of war-time could be justified. He still opposed its implementation in the United States, describing it as a "monstrosity".
Biographer Lanny Ebenstein noted a drift over time in Friedman's views from an interventionist to a more cautious foreign policy. He supported US involvement in the Second World War and initially supported a hard-line against Communism, but moderated over time. However, Friedman did state in a 1995 interview that he was an anti-interventionist. He opposed the Gulf War and the Iraq War. In a spring 2006 interview, Friedman said the US's stature in the world had been eroded by the Iraq War, but that it might be improved if Iraq were to become a peaceful and independent country.
=== Libertarianism and the Republican Party ===
Friedman was an economic advisor and speech writer in Barry Goldwater's failed presidential campaign in 1964. He was an advisor to California governor Ronald Reagan and was active in Reagan's presidential campaigns. He served as a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board starting in 1981. In 1988, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science.
In a 1995 interview with Reason magazine, Friedman criticized Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand as "cult builders" and "dogmatists", citing this as justification for not joining the U.S. Libertarian Party. Friedman stated that he was a member of the Republican Party, "not because they have any principles, but because that's the way I am the most useful and have most influence." He described his philosophy as "clearly libertarian", though distanced himself from "zero-government" libertarianism, which he called "infeasible", citing the lack of historical examples of that philosophy succeeding. Friedman attended the libertarian Future of Freedom Conference in 1990.
His citation for the Presidential Medal of Freedom reads: "He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision: the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions. That vision has changed America, and it is changing the world. All of us owe a tremendous debt to this man's towering intellect and his devotion to liberty."
=== Governmental involvement in the economy ===
In a 1962 essay that builds on arguments made by A. V. Dicey, Friedman argued that a "free society" would constitute a desirable but unstable equilibrium, due to an asymmetry between the visible benefits and the hidden harms of government intervention; he uses tariffs as an example of a policy that brings noticeable financial benefits to a visible group, but causes worse harms to a diffuse group of workers and consumers.
Friedman was supportive of the state provision of some public goods that private businesses are not considered as being able to provide. However, he argued that many of the services performed by government could be performed better by the private sector. Above all, if some public goods are provided by the state, he believed that they should not be a legal monopoly where private competition is prohibited; for example, he wrote:
There is no way to justify our present public monopoly of the post office. It may be argued that the carrying of mail is a technical monopoly and that a government monopoly is the least of evils. Along these lines, one could perhaps justify a government post office, but not the present law, which makes it illegal for anybody else to carry the mail. If the delivery of mail is a technical monopoly, no one else will be able to succeed in competition with the government. If it is not, there is no reason why the government should be engaged in it. The only way to find out is to leave other people free to enter. In 1962, Friedman criticized Social Security in his book Capitalism and Freedom, arguing that it had created welfare dependency. However, in the penultimate chapter of the same book, Friedman argued that while capitalism had greatly reduced the extent of poverty in absolute terms, "poverty is in part a relative matter, [and] even in [wealthy Western] countries, there are clearly many people living under conditions that the rest of us label as poverty." Friedman also noted that while private charity could be one recourse for alleviating poverty and cited late 19th century Britain and the United States as exemplary periods of extensive private charity and eleemosynary activity, he made the following point:
It can be argued that private charity is insufficient because the benefits from it accrue to people other than those who make the gifts – ... a neighborhood effect. I am distressed by the sight of poverty; I am benefited by its alleviation; but I am benefited equally whether I or someone else pays for its alleviation; the benefits of other people's charity therefore partly accrue to me. To put it differently, we might all of us be willing to contribute to the relief of poverty, provided everyone else did. We might not be willing to contribute the same amount without such assurance. In small communities, public pressure can suffice to realize the proviso even with private charity. In the large impersonal communities that are increasingly coming to dominate our society, it is much more difficult for it to do so.
Suppose one accepts, as I do, this line of reasoning as justifying governmental action to alleviate poverty; to set, as it were, a floor under the standard of life of every person in the community. [While there are questions of how much should be spent and how, the] arrangement that recommends itself on purely mechanical grounds is a negative income tax. ... The advantages of this arrangement are clear. It is directed specifically at the problem of poverty. It gives help in the form most useful to the individual, namely, cash. It is general and could be substituted for the host of special measures now in effect. It makes explicit the cost borne by society. It operates outside the market. Like any other measures to alleviate poverty, it reduces the incentives of those helped to help themselves, but it does not eliminate that incentive entirely, as a system of supplementing incomes up to some fixed minimum would. An extra dollar earned always means more money available for expenditure.
Friedman argued further that other advantages of the negative income tax were that it could fit directly into the tax system, would be less costly, and would reduce the administrative burden of implementing a social safety net. Friedman reiterated these arguments 18 years later in Free to Choose, with the additional proviso that such a reform would only be satisfactory if it replaced the current system of welfare programs rather than augment it. According to economist Robert H. Frank, writing in The New York Times, Friedman's views in this regard were grounded in a belief that while "market forces ... accomplish wonderful things", they "cannot ensure a distribution of income that enables all citizens to meet basic economic needs". Friedman also criticized urban renewal programs in the United States due to their racially discriminatory and economically regressive effects.
In 1979, Friedman expressed support for environmental taxes in general in an interview on The Phil Donahue Show, saying "the best way to [deal with pollution] is to impose a tax on the cost of the pollutants emitted by a car and make an incentive for car manufacturers and for consumers to keep down the amount of pollution." In Free to Choose, Friedman reiterated his support for environmental taxes as compared with increased environmental regulation, stating "The preservation of the environment and the avoidance of undue pollution are real problems and they are problems concerning which the government has an important role to play. ... Most economists agree that a far better way to control pollution than the present method of specific regulation and supervision is to introduce market discipline by imposing effluent charges."
In his 1955 article "The Role of Government in Education", Friedman proposed supplementing publicly operated schools with privately run but publicly funded schools through a system of school vouchers. Reforms similar to those proposed in the article were implemented in, for example, Chile in 1981 and Sweden in 1992. In 1996, Friedman, together with his wife, founded the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice to advocate school choice and vouchers. In 2016, the Friedman Foundation changed its name to EdChoice to honor the Friedmans' desire to have the educational choice movement live on without their names attached to it after their deaths.
Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute and Friedman hosted a series of conferences from 1986 to 1994. The goal was to create a clear definition of economic freedom and a method for measuring it. Eventually this resulted in the first report on worldwide economic freedom, Economic Freedom in the World. This annual report has since provided data for numerous peer-reviewed studies and has influenced policy in several nations.
With sixteen other distinguished economists he opposed the Copyright Term Extension Act, and signed on to an amicus brief filed in Eldred v. Ashcroft. Friedman jokingly described it as a "no-brainer".
Friedman argued for stronger basic legal (constitutional) protection of economic rights and freedoms to further promote industrial-commercial growth and prosperity and buttress democracy and freedom and the rule of law generally in society.
Friedman suggested medical savings accounts, repealing tax exemptions of employer-provided medical care and income-based deductibles as ways to lower health care costs in America. Friedman also argued that federal involvement in health care should be restricted, with state and local governments financing health care for the poor.
Friedman believed the government should not operate national parks. He argued that Yellowstone National Park should be sold for private development.
=== Social issues ===
Friedman also supported libertarian policies such as legalization of drugs and prostitution. During 2005, Friedman and more than 500 other economists advocated discussions regarding the economic benefits of the legalization of marijuana. He compared prohibition of recreational drugs to the historical prohibition of alcohol in the United States, and to a hypothetical ban on overeating food. Friedman stated that drug prohibition was not primarily an economic issue, but that "if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel."
Friedman was also a supporter of gay rights. He never specifically supported same-sex marriage, instead saying "I do not believe there should be any discrimination against gays."
Friedman favored immigration, saying "legal and illegal immigration has a very positive impact on the U.S. economy". However, he suggested that immigrants ought not to have access to the welfare system. Friedman stated that immigration from Mexico had been a "good thing", in particular illegal immigration. Friedman argued that illegal immigration was a boon because they "take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take, they provide employers with workers of a kind they cannot get" and they do not use welfare. In Free to Choose, Friedman wrote:
No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, color, religion, sex, nor any other irrelevant characteristic should determine the opportunities that are open to a person – only his abilities.Friedman also famously argued that the welfare state must end before immigration, or more specifically, before open borders, because immigrants might have an incentive to come directly because of welfare payments. Economist Bryan Caplan has disputed this assertion, arguing that welfare is generally distributed not among immigrants, but instead retirees, through Social Security.
Friedman was against public housing as he believed it was also a form of welfare. He believed that one of the main arguments politicians have for public housing is that regular low-income housing was too expensive due to the imposed higher cost of a fire and police department. He believed that it would only increase taxes and not benefit low-income people in the long run. Friedman was an advocate for direct cash instead of public housing believing that the people would be better off that way. He argued that liberals would never agree with this idea due to them not trusting their own citizens. He also stated that regression has already happened with more land being left vacant due to slow construction. Friedman argued that public housing instead encourages juvenile delinquency.
Friedman was also against minimum wage laws; he saw them as a clear case as one can find that the precise opposite is happening when this was attempted. Minimum wage laws would increase unemployment in his eyes and that employers would not hire back workers that were already there for less pay. In his view, this would leave low-income people worse off because the voters for minimum wage laws would then become the victims of unemployment. He believed that these ideas of new minimum wage laws came from Northern factories and Unions, in an attempt to reduce competition from the South.
== Honors, recognition and legacy ==
George H. Nash, a leading historian of American conservatism, says that by "the end of the 1960s he was probably the most highly regarded and influential conservative scholar in the country, and one of the few with an international reputation". In 1971, Friedman received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Friedman allowed the libertarian Cato Institute to use his name for its biennial Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty beginning in 2001. A Friedman Prize was given to the late British economist Peter Bauer in 2002, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto in 2004, Mart Laar, former Estonian Prime Minister in 2006 and a young Venezuelan student Yon Goicoechea in 2008. His wife Rose, sister of Aaron Director, with whom he initiated the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, served on the international selection committee.
Upon Friedman's death, Harvard President Lawrence Summers called him "The Great Liberator", saying "any honest Democrat will admit that we are now all Friedmanites." He said Friedman's great popular contribution was "in convincing people of the importance of allowing free markets to operate".
Stephen Moore, a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, said in 2013: "Quoting the most-revered champion of free-market economics since Adam Smith has become a little like quoting the Bible." He adds, "There are sometimes multiple and conflicting interpretations."
Although post-Keynesian economist J. K. Galbraith was a prominent critic of Friedman and his ideology, he observed that "The age of John Maynard Keynes gave way to the age of Milton Friedman."
=== 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences ===
Friedman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the sole recipient for 1976, "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy". His appointment was controversial, mainly for his association with military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Some economists, such as Institutional economist and 1974 Nobel Prize winner Gunnar Myrdal, criticized Friedman, and Myrdal's own 1974 Nobel Prize partner Friedrich Hayek, for being reactionaries. Myrdal's criticism caused some economists to oppose the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel itself.
=== Hong Kong ===
Friedman said, "If you want to see capitalism in action, go to Hong Kong." He wrote in 1990 that the Hong Kong economy was perhaps the best example of a free market economy.
One month before his death, he wrote "Hong Kong Wrong – What would Cowperthwaite say?" in The Wall Street Journal, criticizing Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of Hong Kong, for abandoning "positive non interventionism". Tsang later said he was merely changing the slogan to "big market, small government", where small government is defined as less than 20% of GDP. In a debate between Tsang and his rival Alan Leong before the 2007 Hong Kong Chief Executive election, Leong introduced the topic and jokingly accused Tsang of angering Friedman to death (Friedman had died only a year prior).
=== Chile ===
During 1975, two years after the military coup that brought military dictator Augusto Pinochet to power and ended the government of Salvador Allende, the economy of Chile experienced a severe crisis. Friedman and Arnold Harberger accepted an invitation of a private Chilean foundation to visit Chile and speak on principles of economic freedom. He spent seven days in Chile giving a series of lectures at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the University of Chile. One of the lectures was entitled "The Fragility of Freedom" and according to Friedman, "dealt with precisely the threat to freedom from a centralized military government."
In a letter to Pinochet of April 21, 1975, Friedman considered the "key economic problems of Chile are clearly ... inflation and the promotion of a healthy social market economy". He stated that "There is only one way to end inflation: by drastically reducing the rate of increase of the quantity of money" and that "cutting government spending is by far and away the most desirable way to reduce the fiscal deficit, because it ... strengthens the private sector thereby laying the foundations for healthy economic growth". As to how rapidly inflation should be ended, Friedman felt that "for Chile where inflation is raging at 10–20% a month ... gradualism is not feasible. It would involve so painful an operation over so long a period that the patient would not survive." Choosing "a brief period of higher unemployment" was the lesser evil.. and that "the experience of Germany, ... of Brazil ..., of the post-war adjustment in the U.S. ... all argue for shock treatment". In the letter Friedman recommended to deliver the shock approach with "a package to eliminate the surprise and to relieve acute distress" and "for definiteness let me sketch the contents of a package proposal ... to be taken as illustrative" although his knowledge of Chile was "too limited to enable [him] to be precise or comprehensive". He listed a "sample proposal" of 8 monetary and fiscal measures including "the removal of as many as obstacles as possible that now hinder the private market. For example, suspend ... the present law against discharging employees". He closed, stating "Such a shock program could end inflation in months". His letter suggested that cutting spending to reduce the fiscal deficit would result in less transitional unemployment than raising taxes.
Sergio de Castro, a Chilean Chicago School graduate, became the nation's Minister of Finance in 1975. During his six-year tenure, foreign investment increased, restrictions were placed on striking and labor unions, and GDP rose yearly. A foreign exchange program was created between the Catholic University of Chile and the University of Chicago. Many other Chicago School alumni were appointed government posts during and after Pinochet's dictatorship; others taught its economic doctrine at Chilean universities. They became known as the Chicago Boys.
Friedman defended his activity in Chile on the grounds that, in his opinion, the adoption of free market policies not only improved the economic situation of Chile but also contributed to the amelioration of Pinochet's rule and to the eventual transition to a democratic government during 1990. That idea is included in Capitalism and Freedom, in which he declared that economic freedom is not only desirable in itself but is also a necessary condition for political freedom. In his 1980 documentary Free to Choose, he said the following: "Chile is not a politically free system, and I do not condone the system. But the people there are freer than the people in Communist societies because government plays a smaller role. ... The conditions of the people in the past few years has been getting better and not worse. They would be still better to get rid of the junta and to be able to have a free democratic system." In 1984, Friedman stated that he has "never refrained from criticizing the political system in Chile". In 1991, he said: "I have nothing good to say about the political regime that Pinochet imposed. It was a terrible political regime. The real miracle of Chile is not how well it has done economically; the real miracle of Chile is that a military junta was willing to go against its principles and support a free market regime designed by principled believers in a free market. ... In Chile, the drive for political freedom, that was generated by economic freedom and the resulting economic success, ultimately resulted in a referendum that introduced political democracy. Now, at long last, Chile has all three things: political freedom, human freedom and economic freedom. Chile will continue to be an interesting experiment to watch to see whether it can keep all three or whether, now that it has political freedom, that political freedom will tend to be used to destroy or reduce economic freedom." He stressed that the lectures he gave in Chile were the same lectures he later gave in China and other socialist states. He further stated "I do not consider it as evil for an economist to render technical economic advice to the Chilean Government, any more than I would regard it as evil for a physician to give technical medical advice to the Chilean Government to help end a medical plague."
During the 2000 PBS documentary The Commanding Heights (based on the book), Friedman continued to argue that "free markets would undermine [Pinochet's] political centralization and political control", and that criticism over his role in Chile missed his main contention that freer markets resulted in freer people, and that Chile's unfree economy had caused Pinochet's rise. Friedman advocated for free markets which undermined "political centralization and political control".
Because of his involvement with the government of Chile, which was a dictatorship at the time of his visit, there were international protests, spanning from Sweden to America when Friedman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1976. Friedman was accused of supporting the military dictatorship in Chile because of the relation of economists of the University of Chicago to Pinochet, and a seven-day trip he took to Chile during March 1975 (less than two years after the coup that ended with the death of President Salvador Allende). Friedman answered that he was never an advisor to the dictatorship, but only gave some lectures and seminars on inflation, and met with officials, including Augusto Pinochet the head of the military dictatorship, while in Chile.
After a 1991 speech on drug legalization, Friedman answered a question on his involvement with the Pinochet regime. Friedman said that he was never an advisor to Pinochet (also mentioned in his 1984 Iceland interview), but that a group of University of Chicago students were involved in Chile's economic reforms. Friedman credited these reforms with high levels of economic growth and with the establishment of democracy that has subsequently occurred in Chile. In October 1988, after returning from a lecture tour of China during which he had met with Zhao Ziyang, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Friedman wrote to The Stanford Daily asking if he should anticipate a similar "avalanche of protests for having been willing to give advice to so evil a government? And if not, why not?"
=== Iceland ===
Friedman visited Iceland during the autumn of 1984, met with important Icelanders and gave a lecture at the University of Iceland on the "tyranny of the status quo". He participated in a lively television debate on August 31, 1984, with socialist intellectuals, including Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, who later became President of Iceland. When they complained that a fee was charged for attending his lecture at the university and that, hitherto, lectures by visiting scholars had been free-of-charge, Friedman replied that previous lectures had not been free-of-charge in a meaningful sense: lectures always have related costs. What mattered was whether attendees or non-attendees covered those costs. Friedman thought that it was fairer that only those who attended paid. In this discussion Friedman also stated that he did not receive any money for delivering that lecture.
=== Estonia ===
Although Friedman never visited Estonia, his book Free to Choose influenced Estonia's then 32-year-old prime minister, Mart Laar, who has claimed that it was the only book on economics he had read before taking office. Laar's reforms are often credited with responsibility for transforming Estonia from an impoverished Soviet republic to the "Baltic Tiger". A prime element of Laar's program was introduction of the flat tax. Laar won the 2006 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, awarded by the Cato Institute.
=== United Kingdom ===
After 1950, Friedman was frequently invited to lecture in Britain; by the 1970s, his ideas had gained widespread attention in conservative circles. For example, he was a regular speaker at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a libertarian think tank. Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher closely followed IEA programs and ideas and met Friedman there in 1978. He also strongly influenced Keith Joseph, who became Thatcher's senior advisor on economic affairs, as well as Alan Walters and Patrick Minford, two other key advisers. Major newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Financial Times all promulgated Friedman's monetarist ideas to British decision-makers. Friedman's ideas strongly influenced Thatcher and her allies when she became Prime Minister in 1979. Galbraith strongly criticised the "workability of the Friedmanite formula" for which, he said, "Britain has volunteered to be the guinea pig".
=== United States ===
After his death a number of obituaries and articles were written in Friedman's honor, citing him as one of the most important and influential economists of the post-war era. Milton Friedman's somewhat controversial legacy in America remains strong within the conservative movement. However, some journalists and economists like Noah Smith and Scott Sumner have argued Friedman's academic legacy has been buried under his political philosophy and misinterpreted by modern conservatives.
=== Criticism of published works ===
Friedman's exogenous money supply theory has been deeply criticized by British Post-Keynesian economist Nicholas Kaldor in the 1970s. While Friedman and monetarist economists claimed that the money supply was exogenously created by a powerful central bank, Kaldor claimed that the money was created by second-tier banks through the distribution of credits to households and companies. In the Post-Keynesian framework, central banks simply refinance second-tier banks on demand but are not in the core of monetary creation. Milton Friedman and Nicholas Kaldor were involved in a fierce debate in 1969–70, in which the monetarist economist had the upper hand. In 1982, Kaldor published a book entitled The Scourge of Monetarism, deeply criticizing monetarist-inspired policies.
Econometrician David Hendry criticized part of Friedman's and Anna Schwartz's 1982 Monetary Trends. When asked about it during an interview with Icelandic TV in 1984, Friedman said that the criticism referred to a different problem from that which he and Schwartz had tackled, and hence was irrelevant, and pointed out the lack of consequential peer review amongst econometricians on Hendry's work. In 2006, Hendry said that Friedman was guilty of "serious errors" of misunderstanding that meant "the t-ratios he reported for UK money demand were overstated by nearly 100 per cent", and said that, in a paper published in 1991 with Neil Ericsson, he had refuted "almost every empirical claim ... made about UK money demand" by Friedman and Schwartz. A 2004 paper updated and confirmed the validity of the Hendry–Ericsson findings through 2000. Some commentators believe that Friedman was not open enough, in their view, to the possibility of market inefficiencies. Economist Noah Smith argues that while Friedman made many important contributions to economic theory not all of his ideas relating to macroeconomics have entirely held up over the years and that too few people are willing to challenge them.
Political scientist C. B. Macpherson disagreed with Friedman's historical assessment of economic freedom leading to political freedom, suggesting that political freedom actually gave way to economic freedom for property-owning elites. He also challenged the notion that markets efficiently allocated resources and rejected Friedman's definition of liberty. Friedman's positivist methodological approach to economics has also been critiqued and debated. Finnish economist Uskali Mäki argued some of his assumptions were unrealistic and vague.
Friedman has been criticized by some prominent Austrian economists, including Murray Rothbard and Walter Block. Block called Friedman a "socialist" and was critical of his support for a central banking system, saying "First and foremost, this economist supported the Federal Reserve System all throughout his professional life. That organization of course does not own the money stock, but controls it. Friedman was an inveterate hater of the gold standard, denigrating its advocates as 'gold bugs'." Rothbard criticized Friedman's conclusion that the Great Depression happened as a result of a deflationary spiral, arguing that this is inconsistent with the data, even though during the period described by Friedman as "The Great Contraction", the money supply did in fact decrease year-over-year by over 10 percentage points.
Although the book was described by the Cato Institute as among the greatest economics books in the 20th century, and A Monetary History of the United States is widely considered to be among the most influential economics books ever made, it has endured criticisms for its conclusion that the Federal Reserve was to blame for the Great Depression. Some economists, including noted Friedman critic Peter Temin, have raised questions about the legitimacy of Friedman's claims about whether or not monetary quantity levels were endogenous rather than exogenously determined, as A Monetary History of the United States posits. Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman argued that the 2008 recession proved that, during a recession, a central bank cannot control broad money (M3 money, as defined by the OECD), and even if it can, the money supply does not bear a direct or proven relationship with GDP. According to Krugman, this was true in the 1930s, and the claim that the Federal Reserve could have avoided the Great Depression by reacting to what Friedman called The Great Contraction is "highly dubious".
James Tobin questioned the importance of velocity of money, and how informative this measure of the frequency of transactions is to the understanding of the various fluctuations observed in A Monetary History of the United States.
Economic historian Barry Eichengreen argued that because of the gold standard, which was at this point in time the chief monetary system of the world, the Federal Reserve's hands were tied. This was because, to retain the credibility of the gold standard, the Federal Reserve could not undertake actions like dramatically expanding the money supply as proposed by Friedman and Schwartz.
Lawrence Mishel, distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute, argues that wages have been kept low in the United States because of the Friedman doctrine, namely the adoption of corporate practices and economic policies (or the blocking of reforms) at the behest of business and the wealthy elite, which resulted in the systematic disempowerment of workers. He argues that the lack of worker power caused wage suppression, increased wage inequality, and exacerbated racial disparities. Notably, mechanisms such as excessive unemployment, globalization, eroded labor standards (and their lack of enforcement), weakened collective bargaining, and corporate structure changes that disadvantage workers, all collectively functioned to keep wages low. From 1980 to 2020, while economy-wide productivity rose almost 70 percent, hourly compensation for typical workers increased less than 12 percent, while the earnings of the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent increased 158 percent and 341 percent, respectively.
== Selected bibliography ==
=== Books ===
A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957) ISBN 1614278121.
A Program for Monetary Stability (Fordham University Press, 1960) 110 pp. online version Archived November 1, 2011, at the Wayback Machine ISBN 0823203719
Capitalism and Freedom (1962), highly influential series of essays that established Friedman's position on major issues of public policy (excerpts)
A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, with Anna J. Schwartz, 1963; part 3 reprinted as The Great Contraction
"The Role of Monetary Policy", American Economic Review, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar. 1968), pp. 1–17 JSTOR presidential address to American Economics Association
"Inflation and Unemployment: Nobel Lecture", 1977, Journal of Political Economy. Vol. 85, pp. 451–472. JSTOR 1830192
Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, with Rose Friedman, (1980), highly influential restatement of policy views
The Essence of Friedman, essays edited by Kurt R. Leube, (1987) (ISBN 0817986626)
Two Lucky People: Memoirs (with Rose Friedman) ISBN 0226264149 (1998) excerpt and text search
Milton Friedman on Economics: Selected Papers by Milton Friedman, edited by Gary S. Becker (2008)
=== Articles ===
Friedman, Milton (1959). "The Demand for Money: Some Theoretical and Empirical Results". Journal of Political Economy. 67 (4): 327–51. doi:10.1086/258194.
— (1968). "The Role of Monetary Policy" (PDF). American Economic Review. 58 (1): 1–17.
— (1977). "Nobel Lecture: Inflation and Unemployment". Journal of Political Economy. 85 (3): 451–72. doi:10.1086/260579.
— (1978). "The Limitations of Tax Limitation". Quadrant. 22 (8): 22–24. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Miami_Dolphins_season | 2000 Miami Dolphins season | The 2000 Miami Dolphins season was the franchise's 31st season in the National Football League, the 35th overall and was their first under new head coach Dave Wannstedt who was named the fourth head coach in franchise history on January 16, 2000, the same day that Jimmy Johnson announced his retirement from coaching. For the first season since 1982, Dan Marino was not on the opening day roster, as he announced his retirement prior to the season. Believed by many as the greatest Miami Dolphin of all time, Marino led the Dolphins to ten playoff appearances, one of which ended in Super Bowl XIX, and is the winningest quarterback to have not won a Super Bowl. Jay Fiedler, who left the Jacksonville Jaguars, succeeded Marino as starting quarterback. Damon Huard remained a backup quarterback and started for Fiedler in one game during the season.
Although Marino was no longer on the team, the Dolphins hoped to improve from their 9–7 record in the previous season. The Dolphins began the season strong, with a 6–2 record halfway through. Both losses were by small margins. The second loss occurred during a road game dubbed the Monday Night Miracle, against the New York Jets, which scored 30 points in the fourth quarter and then defeated the Dolphins by a field goal in overtime. The Dolphins fared only slightly worse in the second half of the season, winning five games and losing three. The team finished with a record of 11–5, their best record since 1992. This was the Dolphins' fourth consecutive winning season and the first time the club won the AFC East title since 1994.
Additionally, this was the Dolphins' fourth consecutive season in which they advanced to the playoffs. In the wild card round, they defeated the Indianapolis Colts by a score of 23–17 in overtime. However, the Dolphins were shut out 27–0 by the Oakland Raiders in the divisional round the following week. As of the 2025 season, this is the most recent time Miami has won a playoff game, making it 25 straight years that the Miami Dolphins have failed to win a playoff game. The Dolphins would not sweep the New England Patriots during the regular season again until 2021. Seven Dolphins players were selected for the Pro Bowl.
== Offseason ==
=== NFL draft ===
=== Undrafted free agents ===
== Staff ==
== Roster ==
== Preseason ==
== Regular season ==
=== Schedule ===
=== Games summaries ===
==== Week 1: vs. Seattle Seahawks ====
Jay Fiedler started as quarterback in the first Miami Dolphins season opener without Dan Marino since 1983. Fiedler threw for 134 yards, completing 15 out of 24 passes, with no turnovers. In contrast, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Jon Kitna was intercepted four times and lost a fumble. Two of the four interceptions were caught by cornerback Sam Madison. Overall, Seattle had six turnovers. Kitna completed 6 out of 13 passes for only 54 yards, before being benched early in the third quarter due to poor performance and being replaced by Brock Huard, brother of Damon Huard. Dolphins running back Lamar Smith rushed for 145 yards. Winning 23–0, Miami caused Seattle to have their first shutout defeat since their 0–19 loss to the Los Angeles Raiders in October 1992. Miami opened the season with a record of 1–0 for the ninth consecutive year.
==== Week 2: at Minnesota Vikings ====
Miami traveled to Minneapolis for their first road game of the season against the Minnesota Vikings on September 10. Although Minnesota dominated Miami in terms of yardage, the game remained close throughout because mistakes by both teams kept them of out the opponent's end zone until the fourth quarter. Fiedler threw for 175 yards, completing only 12 of 31 passes and throwing an interception to Keith Thibodeaux in the third quarter. Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper threw for 355 yards and completed 23-for-37, but had three interceptions. Minnesota scored first during the first quarter with a field goal by Gary Anderson. However, neither team would record another score until the fourth quarter. After another field goal from Anderson and a touchdown pass from Culpepper to Randy Moss, the score was 13–0 in favor of Minnesota with 1:56 left in the game. Miami finally scored with a 2-yard touchdown pass from Fiedler to Thurman Thomas with barely a minute on the clock. After that, the Dolphins attempted an onside kick, but the ball was recovered by Orlando Thomas of the Vikings, effectively ending the game with a 13–7 win for Minnesota. Miami fell to 1–1.
==== Week 3: vs. Baltimore Ravens ====
The Dolphins returned to Miami to play against the Baltimore Ravens on September 17. Fiedler threw 11-for-16 with 160 yards, including a touchdown pass and an interception. In the second half, all seven of his pass attempts were successful. Miami scored in each quarter, with a field goal from Olindo Mare in the first and second periods and a pair of touchdowns by Lamar Smith in the third and fourth quarters. Following the fourth quarter touchdown, Mare missed the extra point, only the second time in his 99 career attempts. On the Ravens team, quarterback Tony Banks threw for 189 yards with 19 out of 31 completions, but was sacked six times, intercepted once, and fumbled twice. Facing constant pressure from the Miami defense, Banks was often forced to throw short passes. Unable to reach the Miami end zone, Baltimore had to settle for two field goals from Matt Stover, one each in the third and fourth quarters. Although the Ravens had four more total yards than the Dolphins, Miami was able to win the game with a score of 19–6. The Dolphins improved to 2–1.
During halftime, a 19-minute ceremony was held to honor Dan Marino and retire number 13. The ceremony was begun by former quarterback Bob Griese and included video highlights of Marino's career with the Dolphins. Former head coach Don Shula inducted Marino into the Miami Dolphins Honor Roll. Miami Dolphins president Eddie Jones then presented a life-size statue of Marino on the grounds of Pro Player Stadium. As a result of the ceremony, more than 90 Dolphins alumni were in attendance at this game.
==== Week 4: vs. New England Patriots ====
In the Dolphins first division rivalry game of the season, the New England Patriots traveled to play Miami at home on September 24. Neither team performed exceptionally well in terms of passing, rushing, or scoring. Fiedler completed only 50% of his passes, throwing 12-for-24 with 153 yards, which included one touchdown and two interceptions. The first interception, which occurred late in the first quarter, would allow New England to score first, with a field goal by Adam Vinatieri early in the second quarter. Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe had a slightly worse pass completion percentage than Fiedler and was 16-for-33 with 161 yards at the end of the game. With New England leading 3–0 at 14:43 left in the second quarter, Miami answered with a 53-yard touchdown pass from Fiedler to Bert Emanuel about three minutes later. The Dolphins reinforced their lead with a field goal from Mare with only seconds left in the second quarter. Neither Miami nor New England would score for the rest of the game. The Patriots attempted to force overtime or win the game with a touchdown at just 1:08 left in the fourth quarter. However, the pass from Bledsoe to Eric Bjornson on fourth down at the Miami 5-yard line was incomplete, turning the ball over to Miami with barely a minute on the clock. Thus, the Dolphins won 10–3 and improved to 3–1. The 2000 Miami Dolphins became the first NFL team to allow only one touchdown in the first four games and had only allowed 22 points by the end of this game.
==== Week 5: at Cincinnati Bengals ====
In week 5, Miami traveled to Cincinnati for a match-up against the Bengals on October 1. Fiedler passed 155 yards and completed 14 out of 21, but threw an interception. He also rushed for 45 yards. Bengal quarterback Akili Smith completed 20 out of 38 passes for 178 yards, while rushing for 43 yards. Additionally, Corey Dillon of the Bengals rushed for 110 yards. During the game, Cincinnati held Miami scoreless at 13–0 until near the end of the second quarter. The Dolphins proceeded to score five times from late in the second quarter to early in the fourth quarter, beginning with a field goal by Mare. As the clock ran out during the second quarter, Jason Taylor was able to recover a fumble by Cincinnati and return the ball for a touchdown, ending the first half with a score of 13–10 in favor of Cincinnati. Miami scored two touchdowns in the third quarter, the first an 18-yard rush by Lamar Smith and the second a 7-yard pass from Fiedler to Oronde Gadsden. The Dolphins scored another touchdown early in the fourth quarter, also a reception from Fiedler to Gadsden. About midway through the fourth quarter, the Bengals finally scored again with a field goal by Neil Rackers. Cincinnati was unable to stage a comeback, with Miami winning 31–16. The Dolphins record improved to 4–1.
==== Week 6: vs. Buffalo Bills ====
In week 6, the Miami Dolphins fought the Buffalo Bills at home on October 8. Thurman Thomas, who played for the Bills from 1988–1999, competed against his former team in this game. Fiedler completed 14 out of 24 passes with a total of 142 yards. Rob Johnson, who started this game as quarterback for the Bills, threw 178 yards and went only 11-for-26 on pass completions. Johnson was sacked five times, losing 40 yards. After the tendinitis in Johnson's throwing elbow flared up, he was replaced by Doug Flutie late in the fourth quarter. Flutie would complete three out of six passes for 44 yards, but he was sacked and intercepted once. After both teams each scored a field goal in the first quarter, Miami proceeded to score 12 points before Buffalo scored again in the fourth quarter. Buffalo narrowed the score to 15–13 in favor of Miami and attempted to take the lead late in the final period. However, Bills running back Sammy Morris fumbled on Buffalo's 16 yard line, with the ball being recovered by Madison and returned for a touchdown. Flutie being intercepted with 2:00 left on the clock prevented Buffalo from scoring again. Miami won 22–13 and improved to 5–1. This was the first regular season game since week 2 in 1998 that the Dolphins defeated the Bills.
==== Week 8: at New York Jets ====
Coming off of bye week, the Dolphins traveled to the Giants Stadium to challenge division rival New York Jets on October 23, a Monday Night Football game. Fiedler passed for 250 yards, going 16-for-35 in completions. However, he was intercepted three times. Lamar Smith rushed for 155 yards on 23 attempts, one of which was 68 yards. Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde completed 36 out of 59 completions for 378 yards, but was also intercepted three times. The Dolphins dominated the game for the first three quarters. The Jets did not obtain a first down until 8:04 in the second quarter, by which time the Dolphins already scored 20 points, including two touchdowns and two field goals. Late in the second quarter, New York score a touchdown with a pass from Testaverde to Wayne Chrebet, but Miami responded with another field goal as the first half of the game ended. With 15 seconds remaining in the third quarter, the Dolphins scored another touchdown.
At the beginning of the fourth quarter, Miami led New York 30–7. The Jets then proceeded to quickly close the 23-point deficit throughout the fourth quarter. By 3:55 left in the game, New York tied the game at 30–30, after scoring three touchdowns and a field goal, with a failed two-point conversion. About 22 seconds later, Miami scored a touchdown to re-take the lead. However, New York answered with another touchdown with 42 seconds left in regulation. Neither team scored again and the game went into overtime because of a 37–37 tie. In the fourth quarter, the Dolphins had only 1 first down versus 20 for the Jets, which was more than 15 other NFL teams had in their entire game in week 8. During overtime, Fiedler was intercepted about one minute in by Marcus Coleman, but Coleman fumbled and Miami recovered. However, Fiedler was soon intercepted again by Coleman; this time, the Dolphins were overturned. The Jets then drove the ball to Miami's 23 yard line. With 8:13 left in overtime, John Hall kicked a field goal, ending the game 40–37 in favor of New York. The Dolphins fell to 5–2.
==== Week 9: vs. Green Bay Packers ====
Miami returned home to play against the Green Bay Packers on October 29. Fiedler went 16-for-25, throwing for 158 yards. Packers quarterback Brett Favre threw 194 yards, completing 21 out of 34 passes. The Packers scored first and by early in the second quarter, they had accumulated 17 points, with two touchdowns and a field goal. Green Bay did not allow Miami any points until 1:15 left in the second quarter, at which time the Dolphins scored a touchdown by a 1-yard rush from Fiedler. In the third quarter, Miami scored three touchdowns, one of which occurred shortly after a fake punt by Larry Izzo, while another was a punt return by Jeff Ogden. Holding Green Bay scoreless in the third quarter, Miami took the lead with a score of 28–17. The Packers scored again in the fourth quarter with a field goal to cut the Dolphins lead to 8 points. However, Green Bay was overturned twice on their final two possessions, first a Brock Marion interception of Favre and later Favre fumbled after being sacked by Trace Armstrong, with the ball being recovered by Kenny Mixon. The game ended with a score of 28–20 in favor of Miami. The Dolphins improved to 6–2.
==== Week 10: at Detroit Lions ====
Miami traveled to Detroit for a game against the Lions on November 5. Fiedler threw 112 yards on 13 out of 18 successful completions. Lions quarterback Charlie Batch went 8-for-16 on pass completions for 95 yards. However, Batch was injured in the third quarter and replaced by Stoney Case, who threw 7 out of 11 passes for 74 yards, with one interception. Miami dominated throughout the game. After Jason Hanson of the Lions kicked off, it was returned to about midfield by Autry Denson. Smith then ran for 46 yards, scoring a touchdown on the first play. Mare's onside kick was recovered by Terrance Shaw of the Dolphins. Miami capitalized on this and scored another touchdown, leaving Detroit losing 0–14 near the middle of the first quarter, having yet to make a single play. In the second and third quarters, Mare kicked a total of three field goals. The Dolphins held the Lions scoreless until early in the fourth quarter, when Detroit made a touchdown and a subsequent 2-point conversion. Neither team scored again in the fourth quarter, causing the game to end 23–8 in favor of Miami. The Dolphins improved to 7–2.
==== Week 11: at San Diego Chargers ====
Miami traveled to San Diego for a match-up against the Chargers on November 12. Fiedler threw 13–for–20 for 160 yards. Miami accumulated 84 rushing yards, with 69 yards from Lamar Smith. San Diego used three quarterbacks. The starter, Moses Moreno, completed 9 out of 21 passes for 67 yards and was intercepted twice, before leaving the game early in the third quarter due to injury. Ryan Leaf also went 9-for-21, throwing 92 yards and was intercepted once. He remained in the game until being injured late in the fourth quarter. Jim Harbaugh then played, throwing 2 out of 5 passes for 19 yards, as well as one interception. Thus, this game was the first since 1993 where three quarterbacks for a team threw interceptions in one game. The Dolphins led in scoring throughout the game, beginning with a touchdown as a result of a 2-yard run from Smith early in the first quarter. Smith rushed 6 yards for another touchdown early in the second quarter. Miami's defense limited San Diego to only 55 offense yards in the first half. In the third quarter, the Dolphins scored again with a field goal by Mare. The Chargers finally scored early in the fourth quarter with an 8-yard touchdown pass from Leaf to Fred McCrary. However, San Diego was unable to complete a comeback and the game ended with a 17–7 win for Miami. The Dolphins improved to 8–2.
==== Week 12: vs. New York Jets ====
After two weeks on the road, Miami returned to Pro Player Stadium for another game against the New York Jets on November 19. Just 12 seconds into the game, Fiedler was sacked by Mo Lewis and suffered an injury that forced him to head for the sideline. Fiedler was replaced by Damon Huard, who went 16–for–29 for 128 yards, but also threw three interceptions. Vinny Testaverde of the Jets performed similarly, completing 14 out of 29 passes for 113 yards and being intercepted twice. The contest remained close until the fourth quarter. In the first half, New York scored two field goals, while Miami had one, ending the half 6–3 for the Jets. Neither team gained points in the third quarter. About halfway through the fourth quarter, New York scored a touchdown with an 18-yard rush from Bernie Parmalee, a former Dolphin. With another rushing touchdown from Parmalee a few minutes later, the Jets sealed their victory with a score of 20–3. Prior to this game, Miami allowed only three touchdowns at home during the 2000 season. New York limited Miami to only 200 yards of offense. The Dolphins fell to 8–3.
==== Week 13: at Indianapolis Colts ====
==== Week 14: at Buffalo Bills ====
==== Week 15: vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers ====
==== Week 16: vs. Indianapolis Colts ====
==== Week 17: at New England Patriots ====
== Playoffs ==
=== AFC Wild Card game vs. Indianapolis Colts ===
Miami advanced to the playoffs after winning the AFC East title. In the Wildcard round they hosted their division rivals, the Indianapolis Colts. Fiedler threw for 185 yards, completing 19 passes from 34 attempts. However, he threw three interceptions, all in the first half of the game. Lamar Smith rushed for 209 yards on 40 attempts, a club record held until Ricky Williams rushed for 42 attempts against the Buffalo Bills during week 3 in 2003. The Dolphins won 23–17 in overtime on a 17-yard run by Smith. This is the most recent post-season win for the Miami Dolphins.
After the Detroit Lions won the 2023 NFC Wild Card Round against the Los Angeles Rams, the Dolphins now hold the longest playoff win drought in the NFL.
== Standings ==
== Awards and honors ==
Trace Armstrong, AFC Pro Bowl Selection,
Larry Izzo, AFC Pro Bowl Selection,
Sam Madison, AFC Pro Bowl Selection,
Brock Marion, AFC Pro Bowl Selection,
Tim Ruddy, AFC Pro Bowl Selection,
Jason Taylor, AFC Pro Bowl Selection,
Zach Thomas, AFC Pro Bowl Selection,
== Notes and references == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election | 2019 United Kingdom general election | A general election was held in the United Kingdom on 12 December 2019, with 47,074,800 registered voters entitled to vote to elect 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The governing Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, won a landslide victory with a majority of 80 seats, a net gain of 48, on 43.6 per cent of the popular vote, the highest percentage for any party since the 1979 general election, though with a narrower popular vote margin than that achieved by the Labour Party over the Conservatives at the 1997 general election. This was the second national election to be held in 2019 in the United Kingdom, the first being the 2019 European Parliament election.
After it lost its parliamentary majority at the 2017 general election, the Conservative Party governed in minority with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The prime minister, Theresa May, resigned in July 2019 after repeatedly failing to pass her Brexit withdrawal agreement in parliament. Johnson succeeded her as the leader of the Conservative Party and as prime minister in July 2019. Johnson could not persuade Parliament to approve a revised withdrawal agreement by the end of October, and chose to call a snap election, which the House of Commons supported under the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019. Opinion polls showed a firm lead for the Conservatives against the opposition Labour Party throughout the campaign.
The Conservatives won 365 seats, their highest number and proportion since the 1987 general election, and recorded their highest share of the popular vote since 1979; many of their gains were made in seats once considered previously safe for Labour, dubbed the red wall, which had voted strongly in favour of British withdrawal from the EU in the 2016 European Union (EU) membership referendum. Labour won 202 seats, its fewest since the 1935 general election. The Scottish National Party (SNP) made a net gain of 13 seats with 45 per cent of the vote in Scotland, winning 48 of the 59 seats there. The Liberal Democrats increased their vote share to 11.6 per cent, but won only 11 seats, a net loss of one since the last election. The party's leader, Jo Swinson, lost her seat to the SNP, thus triggering the 2020 party leadership election, which was won by Ed Davey. The DUP won a plurality of seats in Northern Ireland. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI) regained parliamentary representation as the DUP lost seats.
The election result gave Johnson the mandate he sought from the electorate to formally implement the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, and to complete the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972 on 31 January 2020. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour's leader at the election, resigned, triggering the 2020 party leadership election, which was won by his shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer. Jane Dodds, the Liberal Democrats' leader in Wales, was also unseated in Brecon and Radnorshire. In Northern Ireland, Irish nationalist MPs outnumbered unionists for the first time, although the unionist popular vote remained higher at 43.1 per cent, and the seven Sinn Féin MPs did not take their seats due to their tradition of abstentionism.
Despite being elected with a large majority, Johnson went on to resign amid a government crisis in 2022, being followed by Liz Truss for fifty days and then by Rishi Sunak, who went on to lead the Conservatives to a landslide defeat in the subsequent election. This was the last election to be held under the reign of Elizabeth II.
== Background ==
In July 2016, Theresa May was elected Prime Minister to succeed David Cameron, who had resigned following the 2016 Brexit referendum. The Conservative Party had governed since the 2010 general election, initially in coalition with the Liberal Democrats and then alone with a small majority following the 2015 general election. In the 2017 general election, May lost her majority but was able to resume office as a result of a confidence and supply agreement with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), known as the Conservative–DUP agreement. In the face of opposition from the DUP and Conservative backbenchers, the second May ministry was unable to pass its Brexit withdrawal agreement by 29 March 2019, so some political commentators considered that an early general election was likely.
The opposition Labour Party called for a 2019 vote of confidence in the May ministry but the motion, held in January, failed. May resigned following her party's poor performance in the 2019 European Parliament election during the first extension granted by the European Union for negotiations on the withdrawal agreement. Boris Johnson won the 2019 Conservative leadership election and became the prime minister on 24 July 2019. Along with attempting to revise the withdrawal agreement arranged by his predecessor's negotiations, Johnson made three attempts to hold a snap election under the process defined in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which required a two-thirds supermajority in order for an election to take place.
All three attempts to call an election failed to gain support; Parliament insisted that Johnson "take a no-deal Brexit off the table first" and secure a negotiated Withdrawal Agreement, expressed in particular by its enactment against his will of the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019, often called the Benn Act, after Labour MP Hilary Benn, who introduced the bill. After failing to pass a revised deal before the first extension's deadline of 31 October 2019, Johnson agreed to a second extension on negotiations with the European Union and finally secured a revised withdrawal agreement.
Parliament agreed to an election through a motion proposed by the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party (SNP) on 28 October. The Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019 (EPGEA) was passed in the House of Commons by 438 votes to 20; an attempt to pass an amendment by opposition parties for the election to be held on 9 December failed by 315 votes to 295. The House of Lords followed suit on 30 October, with royal assent made the day after for the ratification of the EPGEA.
== Date of the election ==
The deadline for candidate nominations was 14 November 2019, with political campaigning for four weeks until polling day on 12 December. On the day of the election, polling stations across the country were open from 7 am, and closed at 10 pm. The date chosen for the 2019 general election made it the first to be held in December since the 1923 general election.
=== Voting eligibility ===
Individuals eligible to vote had to be registered to vote by midnight on 26 November. To be eligible to vote, individuals had to be aged 18 or over; residing as an Irish or Commonwealth citizen at an address in the United Kingdom, or be a British citizen overseas who registered to vote in the last 15 years; and not legally excluded (on grounds of detainment in prison, a mental hospital, or on the run from law enforcement), or disqualified from voting. Anyone who qualified as an anonymous elector had until midnight on 6 December to register.
=== Timetable ===
== Contesting political parties and candidates ==
Most candidates are representatives of a political party, which must be registered with the Electoral Commission's Register. Those who do not belong to one must use the label Independent or none. In the 2019 election 3,415 candidates stood: 206 being independents, the rest representing one of 68 political parties.
== Campaign ==
=== Campaign background ===
The Conservative Party and Labour Party have been the two biggest political parties, and have supplied every Prime Minister since the 1922 general election. The Conservative Party had governed since the 2010 election, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats from 2010 to 2015. At the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party committed to offering a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should leave the European Union (EU) and won a majority in that election. A referendum was held in June 2016, and the Leave campaign won by 51.9% to 48.1%.
United Kingdom invocation of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union came in March 2017, and Theresa May triggered a snap election in 2017, in order to demonstrate support for her planned negotiation of Brexit. Instead, the Conservative Party lost seats. They won a plurality of MPs but not a majority, and the result was a hung parliament. They formed a minority government, with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) as their confidence and supply partner. Neither May nor her successor Boris Johnson, the winner of the 2019 Conservative leadership election, was able to secure parliamentary support either for a deal on the terms of the country's exit from the EU, or for exiting the EU without an agreed deal. Johnson later succeeded in bringing his withdrawal agreement to a second reading in Parliament, following another extension until January 2020.
After Johnson's 2019 win, a new Withdrawal Agreement Bill was introduced in 2020. Compared to its 2019 October predecessor, this bill offered, in the words of political scientist Meg Russell, "significantly weaker parliamentary oversight of Brexit ... giving parliament no formal role in agreeing the future relationship negotiating objectives, and a diminished role in approving any resulting treaty."
During the lifespan of the 2017 Parliament, twenty MPs resigned from their parties, mostly due to disputes with their party leaderships; some formed new parties and alliances. In February 2019, eight Labour and three Conservative MPs left their parties to sit together as The Independent Group. Having undergone a split and two name changes, at dissolution, this group numbered five MPs who sat as the registered party The Independent Group for Change under the leadership of Anna Soubry.
Two MPs sat in a group called The Independents, which at its peak had five members. One MP created the Birkenhead Social Justice Party, while a further 20 MPs who began as Labour or Conservative ended Parliament as unaffiliated independents. Seven MPs, from both the Conservatives and Labour, joined the Liberal Democrats during Parliament, in combination with a gain after the 2019 Brecon and Radnorshire by-election. By the time Parliament was dissolved, the Liberal Democrats had raised their number from 12 at the election to 20 at dissolution.
One reason for the defections from the Labour Party was the ongoing row over alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party. Labour entered the election campaign while under investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The Jewish Labour Movement declared that it would not generally campaign for Labour. The Conservative Party was also criticised for not doing enough to tackle the alleged Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. The Conservatives ended the previous parliamentary period with fewer seats than they had started with because of defections and also saw the 2019 suspension of rebel Conservative MPs for going against the party line by voting to prevent a no-deal Brexit. Of the 21 expelled, 10 were subsequently reinstated, while the others continued as independents.
=== Policy positions ===
==== Brexit ====
The major parties had a wide variety of stances on Brexit. The Conservative Party supported leaving under the terms of the withdrawal agreement as negotiated by Johnson (amending May's previous agreement), and this agreement formed a central part of the Conservative campaign via the slogan "Get Brexit Done". The Brexit Party was in favour of a no-deal Brexit, with its leader Nigel Farage calling for Johnson to drop the deal.
The Conservative manifesto read "If we elect a majority of Conservative MPs to Parliament, we will start putting our deal through Parliament before Christmas and we will leave the European Union in January" which ultimately happened.
The Labour Party proposed a renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement, towards a closer post-withdrawal relationship with the EU, and would then put this forward as an option in a referendum alongside the option of remaining in the EU. The Labour Party's campaigning stance in that referendum would be decided at a special conference. In a Question Time special featuring four party leaders, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that he would stay neutral in the referendum campaign.
The Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru, The Independent Group for Change, and the Green Party of England and Wales were all opposed to Brexit, and proposed that a further referendum be held with the option, for which they would campaign, to remain in the EU. The Liberal Democrats originally pledged that if they formed a majority government, which was considered a highly unlikely outcome by observers, they would revoke the Article 50 notification immediately and cancel Brexit. Part-way through the campaign, the Liberal Democrats dropped the policy of revoking Article 50 after the party realised it was not going to win a majority in the election.
The Democratic Unionist Party was in favour of a withdrawal agreement in principle but opposed the deals negotiated by both May and Johnson, believing that they created too great a divide between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Sinn Féin, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland all favoured remaining in the EU. The UUP did not see a second referendum as a necessary route to achieving this goal.
==== The environment ====
The Labour Party promised what they described as a green industrial revolution. This included support for renewable energies and a promise to plant 2 billion trees by 2040. The party also promised to transition to electrify the United Kingdom's bus fleet by 2030. The Liberal Democrats promised to put the environment at the heart of their agenda with a promise to plant 60 million trees a year. They promised to significantly reduce carbon emissions by 2030 and hit zero carbon emissions by 2045. By 2030, they planned to generate 80% of the country's energy needs from renewable energies such as solar power and wind and retrofit 26 million homes with insulation by 2030. They also promised to build more environmentally friendly homes and to establish a new Department for the Climate Crisis.
The Conservatives pledged net zero emissions by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution. They also pledged to plant 30 million trees and boost wind and solar energy.
==== Tax and spending commitments ====
In September 2019, the Conservative government performed a spending review, where they announced plans to increase public spending by £13.8 billion a year, and reaffirmed plans to spend another £33.9 billion a year on the National Health Service (NHS) by 2023. Chancellor Sajid Javid said the government had turned the page on 10 years of austerity in the United Kingdom.
During the election, the parties produced manifestos that outlined spending in addition to that already planned. The Conservative Party manifesto was described as having "little in the way of changes to tax" by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). The decision to keep the rate of corporation tax at 19%, and not reduce it to 17% as planned, was expected to raise £6 billion a year. The plan to increase the national insurance threshold for employees and self-employed to £9,500 would cost £2 billion a year. They committed to not raise rates of income tax, National Insurance, or VAT.
There were increased spending commitments of £3 billion current spending and £8 billion investment spending. Overall, this would have led to the country's debt as a percentage of GDP remaining stable. The IFS assessed that it would rise in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The Labour Party manifesto planned to raise an extra £78 billion a year from taxes over the course of Parliament, with sources including:
£24bn – raising the headline rate of corporation tax to 26%
£6.3bn – tax the global profits of multinationals according to the United Kingdom's share of global employment, assets, and sales, not British profits
£4.0bn – abolish patent box and R&D tax credit for large companies
£4.3bn – cutting unspecified corporation tax reliefs
£9bn – financial transactions tax
£14bn – dividends and capital gains
£6bn – anti-avoidance
£5bn – increases in income tax rates above £80,000 a year
£5bn – other
In addition, Labour was to obtain income from the Inclusive Ownership Fund, windfall tax on oil companies, and some smaller tax changes. There were increased spending commitments of £98 billion current spending and £55 billion investment spending. Overall, this would have led to the national debt as a percentage of GDP rising. Labour's John McDonnell said borrowing would only be for investment and one-offs (e.g. compensating WASPI women, not shown above), and not for day-to-day spending.
The Liberal Democrats manifesto planned to raise an extra £36 billion per year from taxes over the course of Parliament, with sources including:
£10bn – raising corporation tax to 20%
£7bn – 1% point rise in all rates of income tax
£5bn – abolish the capital gains tax allowance
£5bn – air passenger duty on frequent flyers
£6bn – anti-avoidance
£3bn – other
There were increased commitments of £37 billion current spending and £26 billion investment spending, which would overall lead to the debt as a percentage of GDP falling, partly due to improved economic conditions which would result from staying in the EU.
===== Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis =====
The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), an influential research body, released on 28 November its in-depth analysis of the manifestos of the three main national political parties. The analysis provided a summary of the financial promises made by each party and an inspection of the accuracy of claims around government income and expenditure. The IFS reported that neither the Conservatives nor the Labour Party had published a "properly credible prospectus".
Its analysis of the Conservative manifesto concluded there was "essentially nothing new in the manifesto", that there was "little in the way of changes to tax, spending, welfare or anything else", and that they had already promised increased spending for health and education whilst in government. The Labour manifesto was described as introducing "enormous economic and social change", and increasing the role of the state to be bigger than anything in the last 40 years.
The IFS highlighted a raft of changes in including free childcare, university, personal care, and prescriptions, as well as nationalisations, labour market regulations, increases in the minimum wage, and enforcing "effective ownership of 10% of large companies from current owners to a combination of employees and government". The IFS said that Labour's vision "is of a state not so dissimilar to those seen in many other successful Western European economies", and presumed that the manifesto should be seen as "a long-term prospectus for change rather than a realistic deliverable plan for a five-year parliament". They said that the Liberal Democrats manifesto was not as radical as the Labour manifesto but was a "decisive move away from the policies of the past decade".
The Conservative manifesto was criticised for a commitment not to raise rates of income tax, National Insurance, or VAT, as this put a significant constraint on reactions to events that might affect government finances. One such event could be the "die in a ditch" promise to terminate the Brexit transition period by the end of 2020, which risked harming the economy. The IFS also stated that it is "highly likely" spending under a Conservative government would be higher than in that party's manifesto, partly due to a number of uncosted commitments. Outside of commitments to the NHS, the proposals would leave public service spending 14% lower in 2023–2024 than it was in 2010–2011, which the IFS described as "no more austerity perhaps, but an awful lot of it baked in".
The IFS stated it had "serious doubt" that tax rises proposed would raise the amount Labour suggested, and said that they would need to introduce more broad based tax increases. They assessed that the public sector does not have the capacity to increase investment spending as Labour would want. The IFS further assessed the claim that tax rises would only hit the top 5% of earners as "certainly progressive" but "clearly not true", with those under that threshold impacted by changes to the marriage allowance, taxes on dividends, or capital gains, and lower wages or higher prices that might be passed on from corporation tax changes. Some of Labour's proposals were described as "huge and complex undertakings", where significant care is required in implementation.
The IFS was particularly critical of the policy to compensate the WASPI women, announced after the manifesto, which was a £58bn promise to women who are "relatively well off on average" and would result in public finances going off target. They said that Labour's manifesto would not increase UK public spending as a share of national income above Germany. They found that Labour's plan to spend and invest would boost economic growth but that the impact of tax rises, government regulation, nationalisations, and the inclusive ownership fund could reduce growth, meaning the overall impact of Labour's plan on growth was uncertain.
The IFS described the plans of the Liberal Democrats as a radical tax and spend package, and said that the proposals would require lower borrowing than Conservative or Labour plans. The report said they were the only party whose proposals would put debt "on a decisively downward path", praising their plan to put 1p on income tax to go to the NHS as "simple, progressive and would raise a secure level of revenue". The IFS also said plans to "virtually quintuple" current spending levels on universal free childcare amounted to "creating a whole new leg of the universal welfare state". The IFS said that the SNP's manifesto was not costed. Their proposals on spending increases and tax cuts would mean the government would have to borrow to cover day-to-day spending. They concluded that the SNP's plans for Scottish independence would likely require increased austerity.
==== Other issues ====
The Conservatives proposed increasing spending on public services, including the NHS and education. They also proposed increased funding for childcare and on the environment. They proposed more funding for care services and to work with other parties on reforming how care is delivered. They wished to maintain the triple lock on pensions. They proposed investing in local infrastructure, including rail, bus, cycle, and electric cars. They pledged to build a high speed new rail line between Leeds and Manchester.
Labour proposed significantly increasing government spending to 45% of national output, which would be high compared to most of British history. This was to pay for an increased NHS budget; stopping state pension age rises; introducing a National Care Service providing free personal care; move to a net-zero carbon economy by the 2030s; nationalising key industries; scrapping Universal Credit; free bus travel for under-25s; building 100,000 council houses per year; and other proposals.
Within this, the Labour Party proposed to take rail-operating companies, energy supply networks, Royal Mail, sewerage infrastructure, and England's private water companies back into public ownership. Labour proposed nationalising part of the BT Group and to provide free broadband to everyone, along with free education for six years during each person's adult life. Over a decade, Labour planned to reduce the average full-time weekly working hours to 32, with resulting productivity increases facilitating no loss of pay. Labour's spending plans were endorsed by more than 160 economists and academics and characterised as a "serious programme" to deal with internal problems.
The main priority of the Liberal Democrats was opposing Brexit. Other policies included increased spending on the NHS; free childcare for two-to-four-year-olds; recruiting 20,000 more teachers; generating 80% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030; freezing train fares; and legalising cannabis. The Brexit Party was also focused on Brexit. It opposed privatising the NHS. It sought to reduce immigration, cutting net migration to 50,000 per year; cutting VAT on domestic fuel; banning the exporting of waste; free broadband in deprived regions; scrapping the BBC licence fee; and abolishing inheritance tax, interest on student loans, and High Speed 2. It also wanted to move to a United States-style supreme court.
The policies of the SNP included a second referendum on Scottish independence to be held in 2020, as well as one on Brexit, removing the Trident nuclear deterrent, and devolution across issues like as employment law, drug policy, and migration. The Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the SNP, and Labour all supported a ban on fracking in the United Kingdom, whilst the Conservatives proposed approving fracking on a case-by-case basis.
=== Party positions in the event of a hung parliament ===
The Conservatives and Labour insisted they were on course for outright majorities, while smaller parties were quizzed about what they would do in the event of a hung parliament. The Liberal Democrats said that they would not actively support Johnson or Corbyn becoming Prime Minister but that they could, if an alternative could not be achieved, abstain on votes allowing a minority government to form if there was support for a second referendum on Brexit. The SNP ruled out either supporting the Conservatives or a coalition with Labour but spoke about a looser form of support, such as a confidence and supply arrangement with the latter, if they supported a second referendum on Scottish independence.
The DUP previously supported the Conservative government but withdrew that support given their opposition to Johnson's proposed Brexit deal. It said that it would never support Corbyn as prime minister but could work with Labour if that party were led by someone else. Labour's position on a hung parliament was that it would do no deals with any other party, citing Corbyn to say: "We are out here to win it." At the same time, it was prepared to adopt key policies proposed by the SNP and Liberal Democrats to woo them into supporting a minority government. The UUP said they would never support Corbyn as prime minister, with their leader Steve Aiken also saying that he "can't really see" any situation in which they would support a Conservative government either. Their focus would be on remaining in the EU.
=== Tactical voting ===
Under the first-past-the-post electoral system, there is often concern, especially in marginal seats, that if voters of similar ideological leanings are split between multiple different parties they may allow a victory for a candidate with significantly different views. In the early stages of the campaign, there was considerable discussion of tactical voting, generally in the context of support or opposition to Brexit, and whether parties would stand in all seats or not.
There were various electoral pacts and unilateral decisions. The Brexit Party chose not to stand against sitting Conservative candidates but stood in most other constituencies. The Brexit Party alleged that pressure was put on its candidates by the Conservatives to withdraw, including the offer of peerages, which would be illegal. This was denied by the Conservative Party. Under the banner of Unite to Remain, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, and the Green Party of England and Wales agreed an electoral pact in some seats; some commentators criticised the Liberal Democrats for not standing down in some Labour seats.
A number of tactical voting websites were set up in an attempt to help voters choose the candidate in their constituency who would be best placed to beat the Conservative one. The websites did not always give the same advice, which Michael Savage, political editor of The Guardian, said had the potential to confuse voters. One of the websites, named GetVoting.org and set up by Best for Britain, was accused of giving bogus advice in Labour/Conservative marginal seats. The website, which had links to the Liberal Democrats, was criticised for advising pro-Remain voters to back the Liberal Democrats, when doing so risked pulling voters away from Labour candidates and enabling the Conservative candidate to gain most votes.
The website changed their controversial recommendation in Kensington to Labour, which had won it in 2017 by 20 votes, and lined up with Tacticalvote.co.uk in this seat. Describing itself as a progressive grassroots campaign not affiliated with any political party, Tacticalvote.co.uk was previously known as Tactical2017. Gina Miller's Remain United and People's Vote kept their recommendation for the Liberal Democrats. This caused a lot of confusion around tactical voting, as it was reported that the sites did not match one another's advice.
Further into the election period, tactical voting websites that relied on multilevel regression with poststratification, such as Best for Britain, People's Vote, Remain United, and Survation, changed their recommendations on other seats because of new data. The effectiveness of their tactical voting has also been questioned, and the loss of Kensington, which was a Labour gain in 2017, was blamed by Labour MPs on Liberal Democrats for splitting the vote.
In the final weekend before voting, The Guardian cited a poll suggesting that the Conservative Party held a 15% lead over Labour; on the same day, the Conservative-backing Daily Telegraph emphasised a poll indicating a lower 8% lead. Senior opposition politicians from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the SNP launched a late-stage appeal to anti-Conservative voters to consider switching allegiance in the general election, amid signs that tactical voting in a relatively small number of marginal seats could deprive Johnson of a majority in parliament.
Shortly before the election, The Observer newspaper recommended Remainers tactically vote for 50 Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP, and independent candidates across Great Britain; of these, 13 triumphed, 9 of which were SNP gains in Scotland (in line with a broader trend of relative success for the party), along with four in England divided equally between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The pollster responsible argued in the aftermath that the unpopularity of the Labour leadership limited the effectiveness of tactical voting. Other research suggested it would have taken 78% of people voting tactically to prevent a Conservative majority completely, and it would not have been possible to deliver a Labour majority.
=== Canvassing and leafleting ===
Predictions of an overall Conservative majority were based on their targeting of primarily Labour-held, Brexit-backing seats in the Midlands and the north of England. At the start of the election period, Labour-supporting organisation Momentum held what was described as "the largest mobilising call in UK history", involving more than 2,000 canvassers. The organisation challenged Labour supporters to devote a week or more to campaigning full-time; by 4 December, 1,400 people had signed up. Momentum also developed an app called My Campaign Map that updated members about where they could be more effective, particularly in canvassing in marginal constituencies. Over one weekend during the campaign period, 700 Labour supporters campaigned in Iain Duncan Smith's constituency, Chingford and Woodford Green, which was regarded as a marginal, with a majority of 2,438 votes at the 2017 general election.
The Liberal Democrats were considered possible winners of a number of Conservative-held southern English constituencies; a large swing was postulated that might even topple Dominic Raab in Esher and Walton. At the beginning of the 2019 campaign, they had been accused of attempting to mislead voters by using selective opinion polling data, and use of a quotation attributed to The Guardian rather than to their leader Jo Swinson. They were also accused of making campaign leaflets look like newspapers, although this practice had been used by all major British political parties for many years, including by Labour and the Conservatives during this election.
The Liberal Democrats won a court case stopping the SNP from distributing a "potentially defamatory" leaflet in Swinson's constituency over false claims about funding she had received. Two Labour Party campaigners, both in their seventies, were verbally abused and physically assaulted in separate attacks on the weekend of 23–24 November. One attack occurred in Bromyard, Herefordshire, and the other in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Party officials in Bromyard, where Labour campaigners experienced red-baiting and had been called "Marxists", decided that activists should only canvass in pairs.
=== Online campaigning ===
The use of social media advertising was seen as particularly useful to political parties as it could be used to target people of particular demographics. Labour was reported to have the most interactions, with The Times describing Labour's "aggressive, anti-establishment messages" as "beating clever Tory memes". In the first week of November, Labour was reported to have four of the five most liked tweets by political parties, many of the top interactions of Facebook posts, as well as doing very well on Instagram, where younger voters are particularly active. Bloomberg News reported that between 6 and 21 November the views on Twitter/Facebook were 18.7/31.0 million for Labour, 10/15.5 million for the Conservatives, 2.9/2.0 million for the Brexit Party, and 0.4/1.4 million for the Liberal Democrats.
Brexit was the most tweeted topic for the Conservative Party (~45% of tweets), the Liberal Democrats, and the Brexit Party (~40% each). Labour focused on health care (24.1%), the environment, and business, mentioning Brexit in less than 5 per cent of its tweets. Devolution was the topic most tweeted about by the SNP (29.8%) and Plaid Cymru (21.4%), and the environment was the top issue for the Green Party (45.9%) on Twitter. The Conservatives were unique in their focus on taxation (16.2%), and the Brexit Party on defence (14%).
Prior to the campaign, the Conservatives contracted New Zealand marketing agency Topham Guerin, which had been credited with helping Australia's Liberal–National Coalition unexpectedly win the 2019 Australian federal election. The agency's social media approach was described as purposefully posting badly-designed social media material that becomes viral and so would be seen by a wider audience. Some of the Conservative social media activity created headlines challenging whether it was deceptive, including by the BBC, amid disinformation concerns. This included editing a clip of Keir Starmer to give the appearance that he was unable to answer a question about Labour's Brexit policy. In response to criticism over the doctored Starmer footage, Conservative Party chairman James Cleverly said the clip of Starmer was satire and "obviously edited".
==== Veracity of statements by political parties ====
During the 19 November debate between Johnson and Corbyn hosted by ITV, the press office of the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) re-branded their Twitter account (@CCHQPress) as factcheckUK (with "from CCHQ" in small text appearing underneath the logo in the account's banner image), which critics suggested could be mistaken for that of an independent fact-checking body, and published posts supporting the Conservative's position. In defence, Conservative chairman Cleverly stated: "The Twitter handle of the CCHQ press office remained CCHQPress, so it's clear the nature of the site", and as "calling out when the Labour Party put what they know to be complete fabrications in the public domain."
In response to the re-branding on Twitter, the Electoral Commission, which does not have a role in regulating election campaign content, called on all campaigners to act "responsibly". Fact-checking body Full Fact criticised this behaviour as "inappropriate and misleading", and Twitter stated that it would take "decisive corrective action" if there were "further attempts to mislead people".
First Draft News released an analysis of Facebook ads posted by political parties between 1 and 4 December. The analysis reported that 88% of the 6,749 posts the Conservatives made had been "challenged" by fact checker Full Fact. 5,000 of these ads related to a "40 new hospitals" claim, of which Full Fact concluded only six had been costed, with the others only receiving money for planning, with building uncosted and due to occur after 2025. 4,000 featured inaccurate claims about the cost of Labour's spending plans to the tax payer. 500 related to a "50,000 more nurses" pledge, consisting of 31,500 new nurses, and convincing 18,500 nurses already in post to remain.
16.5% of Liberal Democrats posts were highlighted, which related to claims they are the only party to beat Labour, the Conservatives, or the SNP "in seats like yours". None of the posts made by Labour in the period were challenged, although posts made on 10 December stating that a "Labour government would save households thousands in bills" and the Conservative Party had "cut £8bn from social care" since 2010 were flagged as misleading. According to the BBC, Labour supporters had been more likely to share unpaid-for electioneering posts, some of which included misleading claims.
=== Television debates ===
ITV aired a head-to-head election debate between Johnson and Corbyn on 19 November, hosted by Julie Etchingham. ITV Cymru Wales aired a debate featuring representatives from the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, and the Brexit Party on 17 November, hosted by Adrian Masters. Johnson cancelled his ITV interview with Etchingham, scheduled for 6 December, whilst the other major party leaders agreed to be interviewed.
On the BBC, broadcaster Andrew Neil was due to separately interview party leaders in The Andrew Neil Interviews, and BBC Northern Ireland journalist Mark Carruthers to separately interview the five main Northern Irish political leaders. The leaders of the SNP, Labour, Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats, and the Brexit Party were all interviewed by Neil and the leader of the Conservative Party was not, leading Neil to release a challenge to Johnson to be interviewed. The Conservatives dismissed Neil's challenge. BBC Scotland, BBC Cymru Wales, and BBC Northern Ireland also hosted a variety of regional debates.
Channel 4 cancelled a debate scheduled for 24 November after Johnson would not agree to a head-to-head with Corbyn. A few days later, the network hosted a leaders' debate focused on the climate. Johnson and Farage did not attend and were replaced on stage by ice sculptures with their party names written on them. The Conservatives alleged this was part of a pattern of bias at the channel, complained to Ofcom that Channel 4 had breached due impartiality rules as a result of their refusal to allow Michael Gove to appear as a substitute, and suggested that they might review the channel's broadcasting licence. In response, the Conservatives, as well as the Brexit Party, did not send a representative to Channel 4's "Everything but Brexit" on 8 December, and Conservative ministers were briefed not to appear on Channel 4 News. Ofcom rejected the Conservatives' complaint on 3 December, as "other participants had only agreed to attend on the basis that they would be debating against other leaders".
Sky News was due to hold a three-way election debate on 28 November, inviting Johnson, Corbyn, and Swinson. Swinson confirmed she would attend the debate, which was later cancelled after agreements could not be made with Corbyn or Johnson.
=== Campaign events ===
Before candidate nominations closed, several planned candidates for Labour and for the Conservatives withdrew, principally because of past social media activity. At least three Labour candidates and one Conservative candidate stood down, with two of the Labour candidates doing so following allegedly antisemitic remarks. Two other Conservative candidates were suspended from the Conservative Party over antisemitic social media posts, but retained their candidacy for the party. The Liberal Democrats removed one of its candidates over antisemitic social media posts, and defended two others.
Several former Labour MPs critical of Corbyn endorsed the Conservatives. Meanwhile, several former Conservative MPs, including former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine, endorsed the Liberal Democrats and independent candidates. A week before election day, former Conservative prime minister John Major warned the public against enabling a majority Conservative government, to avoid what he saw as the damage a Johnson-led government could do to the country through Brexit. Major encouraged voters to vote tactically and to back former Conservative candidates instead of those put forward by the Conservative Party.
The 2019–20 United Kingdom floods started hitting parts of England from 7 to 18 November. Johnson was criticised for what some saw as his late response to the flooding, after he said they were not a national emergency. The Conservatives banned Daily Mirror reporters from Johnson's campaign bus. On 27 November, Labour announced it had obtained leaked government documents; they said these showed that the Conservatives were in trade negotiations with the US over the NHS. The Conservatives said Labour was peddling "conspiracy theories", with Dominic Raab later suggesting this was evidence of Russian interference in the election. The election also saw the 2019 London Bridge stabbing, a terrorist stabbing attack that occurred in London on 29 November; owing to this, the political parties suspended campaigning in London for a time.
The 2019 London summit of NATO was held in Watford on 3–4 December 2019. It was attended by 29 heads of state and heads of government, including then United States president Donald Trump. On 6 December, Labour announced it had obtained leaked government documents that they said showed that Johnson had misled the public about the Conservatives' Brexit deal with the EU, specifically regarding customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which are part of the Good Friday Agreement and that Johnson had said would not exist.
=== Third-party campaigns ===
In February 2021, an investigation by openDemocracy found that third-party campaign groups "pushed anti-Labour attack ads to millions of voters ahead of the 2019 general election spent more than £700,000 without declaring any individual donation". These included Capitalist Worker and Campaign Against Corbynism, both of which were set up less than three months before the election and quickly disappeared thereafter. A further investigation, also reported by the Daily Mirror, found that a group run by Conservative activist Jennifer Powers had spent around £65,000 on dozens of advertisements attacking Corbyn and Labour on housing policy without declaring any donations.
During the campaign, i had reported that Powers was "a corporate lobbyist who is a former employee of the Conservative Party" and that her group had been one of "16 registrations completed since 5 November". Meanwhile, openDemocracy reported on the new phenomenon of United States-style, Super PAC-esque groups in British elections. Adam Ramsay, who wrote the article, contacted Powers and got her to admit to being an associate at the trade consultancy firm Competere, which was set up by lobbyist Shanker Singham, who works for the neoliberal think tank, the Institute for Economic Affairs. Powers' group "Right to Rent, Right to Buy, Right to Own" made claims that Labour wanted to "attack property rights in the UK" and "your mortgage will be harder to pay under Labour".
Additionally, openDemocracy reported that, during the election campaign, the pro-Labour group Momentum spent more than £500,000, the European Movement for the United Kingdom spent almost £300,000 and the anti-Brexit groups Led By Donkeys and Best for Britain spent £458,237 and more than one million pounds respectively. Following these reports, former Liberal Democrats MP Tom Brake, who lost his seat in the election and was now director of the pressure group Unlock Democracy, wrote to the Electoral Commission, urging them to investigate. These calls were echoed by John McDonnell, Labour MP and former Shadow Chancellor, who insisted that "a serious and in-depth inquiry into third-party campaigning" was needed.
== Religious groups' opinions on the parties ==
Many ethnic minority and religious leaders and organisations made statements about the general election. Leaders of the Church of England stated people had a "democratic duty to vote", that they should "leave their echo chambers", and "issues need to be debated respectfully, and without resorting to personal abuse".
Antisemitism in the Labour Party, especially new antisemitism was persistently covered in the media in the lead up to the election. In his leader's interview with Jeremy Corbyn, Andrew Neil dedicated the first third of the 30-minute programme entirely to discussion of Labour's relationship with the Jewish community. This interview drew attention as Corbyn refused to apologise for antisemitism in the Labour Party, despite having done so on previous occasions. The British chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis made an unprecedented intervention in politics, warning that antisemitism was a "poison sanctioned from the top" of the Labour Party, and saying that British Jews were gripped by anxiety about the prospect of a Corbyn-led government. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Hindu Council UK supported Mirvis's intervention, if not entirely endorsing it. The Jewish Labour Movement said they would not be actively campaigning for Labour except for exceptional candidates. The pro-Corbyn Morning Star reported that Jewish Voice for Labour and the Jewish Socialist Group said that Mirvis did not represent all Jews, with some people within the religious groups being keen to express that no one person or organisation represents the views of all the members of the faith.
The Catholic Church in the United Kingdom urged voters to respect the right to life, opposing abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide, along with a peaceful solution to Brexit, support the poor, care for the homeless, and attention to human rights.
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) spokesman stated that Islamophobia "is particularly acute in the Conservative Party" and that Conservatives treat it "with denial, dismissal and deceit". In addition they released a 72-page document, outlining what they assess are the key issues from a British Muslim perspective. The MCB specifically criticised those who "seek to stigmatise and undermine Muslims"; for example, by implying that Pakistanis ("often used as a proxy for Muslims") vote "en bloc as directed by Imams". The Sunday Mirror stated that many of the candidates campaigning for the Brexit Party were Islamophobic. This scenario resulted in many Muslim individuals & organisations publicly endorsing the Labour Party.
The Times of India reported that supporters of Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were actively campaigning for the Conservatives in 48 marginal seats, and the Today programme reported that it had seen WhatsApp messages sent to Hindus across the country urging them to vote Conservative. Some British Indians spoke out against what they saw as the BJP's meddling in the election. The Hindu Council UK was strongly critical of Labour, going as far as to say that Labour is "anti-Hindu", and objected to Corbyn's condemnation of the Indian government's actions resulting in the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. Labour's perceived introduction of a white parachute candidate into Leicester East (where both the Conservatives & Liberal Democrats had fielded Hindu candidates) disappointed many with Hindu heritage (who had become the single largest ethnic group in Leicester); more specifically, no candidates of Indian descent were interviewed. Jeremy Corbyn was very unpopular among the Hindus due to his anti-Indian sentiments & his past disparaging comments on the caste system, with many of the community seeing him to be under the influence of Pakistani Muslims, with whom he shared a common pro-Palestinian stance. The party selected or re-selected only one candidate of Indian descent among its 39 safest seats. Jeremy Corbyn receiving endorsement by the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, a Pakistan sponsored Islamist separatist group designated as a terrorist organisation by the Indian government known for forcibly expelling Kashmiri Hindus out of the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s, also made him unpopular with Hindus, especially those who migrated from Kashmir as a result of this incident.
== Endorsements ==
Newspapers, organisations, and individuals had endorsed parties or individual candidates for the election.
== Media coverage ==
=== Party representation ===
According to Loughborough University's Centre for Research in Communication and Culture (CRCC), media coverage of the first week of the campaign was dominated by the Conservatives and Labour, with the leaders of both parties being the most represented campaigners (Johnson with 20.8%; Corbyn with 18.8%). Due to this, the election coverage was characterised as increasingly 'presidential' as smaller parties have been marginalised.
In television coverage, Boris Johnson had a particularly high-profile (30.4% against Corbyn's 22.6%). Labour (32%) and the Conservative Party (33%) received about a third of TV coverage each. In newspapers, Labour received two-fifths (40%) of the coverage and the Conservatives 35%. Spokespeople from both parties were quoted near equally, with Conservative sources being the most prominent in both press and TV coverage in terms of frequency of appearance. Sajid Javid and John McDonnell featured prominently during the first week because the economy of the United Kingdom was a top story for the media. McDonnell had more coverage than Javid on both TV and in print.
A large proportion of the newspaper coverage of Labour was negative. Writing in the British Journalism Review, James Hanning said that, in its leadership reporting and commentary, Conservative supporting newspapers made little mention of Johnson having "a track record that would have sunk any other politician". In the Loughborough analysis, during the first week of the campaign, for example, the Conservatives had a positive press coverage score of +29.7, making them the only party to receive a positive overall presentation in the press. Meanwhile, Labour had a negative score of −70, followed by the Brexit Party on −19.7 and the Liberal Democrats on −10. Over the whole campaign, press hostility towards Labour had doubled compared with during the 2017 election, and negative coverage of the Conservatives halved.
The Liberal Democrats were the party with the most TV coverage in the first week after Labour and the Conservatives, with an eighth of all reporting (13%). In newspapers, they received less coverage than the Brexit Party, whose leader Nigel Farage received nearly as much coverage (12.3%) as Johnson and Corbyn (17.4% each). Most of this coverage regarded the Brexit Party's proposed electoral pact with the Conservatives. The Brexit Party (7%) and the SNP (5%) were fourth and fifth in terms of TV coverage, respectively.
=== Dominant issues ===
As during the 2017 election and in line for British elections, the electoral process was the most covered media topic for this election at 31% of all coverage. Brexit was the most prominent policy issue on both TV (18%) and in the press (11%), followed by the economy, and health (8% and 7% of all coverage, respectively). Sky News referred to the election as "The Brexit Election", a strapline which Labour complained to Ofcom unduly favoured the Conservatives, a complaint that was rejected. There was little focused analysis of what the implementation of Brexit policies might mean, which contrasted with the more detailed analysis often undertaken of other manifesto commitments, such as those on the economy.
Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland's place within the United Kingdom received some prominence on TV but little coverage in the press. "Standards/scandals" and "Minorities/religion" received relatively significant discussion in large part relating to allegations of antisemitism in the Labour party and in the prior case an incident when Johnson was accused of reacting unsympathetically to an image of an ill child without a bed in hospital. Coverage of immigration and border controls fell overall from to 2017, while focus on environmental issues slightly increased.
=== Gender balance ===
Of the 20 most prominent spokespeople in media coverage of the first week of the election period, five were women, with Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and first minister of Scotland, in seventh place, the most featured. Women including citizens, experts, pollsters, businesspeople, trade union representatives, and the like featured in 23.9% of coverage and men in 76.1%. Men spoke three times as much as women in TV coverage, and five times as much in newspaper coverage.
== Members of Parliament not standing for re-election ==
74 members of Parliament (MPs) who held seats at the end of Parliament did not stand for re-election. Of these, 32 were Conservative MPs, 20 were Labour, 3 were Liberal Democrats, and 16 were independents. The number of MPs retiring was higher than the 2017 general election, when 31 stood down.
== Opinion polling ==
The chart below depicts the results of opinion polls, mostly only of voters in Great Britain, conducted from the 2017 general election until the election. The line plotted is the average of the last 15 polls and the larger circles at the end represent the actual results of the election. The graph shows that the Conservatives and Labour polled to similar levels from mid-2017 to mid-2019.
Following Johnson's election in July, the Conservatives established a clear lead over Labour, and simultaneously support for the Brexit Party declined from its peak in summer 2019. The Spreadex columns below cover bets on the number of seats each party would win, with the midpoint between asking and selling price.
=== Predictions three weeks before the vote ===
The first-past-the-post system used in the United Kingdom general elections means that the number of seats won is not directly related to vote share. Thus, several approaches are used to convert polling data and other information into seat predictions. The table below lists some of the predictions.
=== Predictions two weeks before the vote ===
Note: Elections Etc. does not add up to 650 seats due to rounding, the speaker is shown under "Others" and not "Labour", and majority figures assume all elected members take up their seats.
=== Predictions one week before the vote ===
Below are listed predictions based upon polls.
Note: Elections Etc. does not add up to 650 seats due to rounding, the speaker is shown under "Others" and not "Labour", and majority figures assume all elected members take up their seats.
Below are listed predictions based upon betting odds, assuming the favourite wins in each constituency.
Note: The speaker is shown under "Others" and not "Labour", and majority figures assume all elected members take up their seats.
=== Final predictions ===
=== Exit poll ===
An exit poll conducted by Ipsos MORI for the BBC, ITV, and Sky News was published at the end of voting at 10 pm, predicting the number of seats for each party.
== Results ==
The Conservative Party won, securing 365 seats out of 650, giving them an overall majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons. They gained seats in several Labour Party strongholds in Northern England that had been held by the party for decades and which had formed the red wall; for instance, the constituency of Bishop Auckland, which elected a Conservative MP for the first time in its 134-year history. This marked a fourth consecutive general election defeat for the Labour Party. In the worst result for the party in 84 years, despite a better vote share than other losses as in 1931, 1983, 1987, and 2010, Labour won 202 seats, which was the lowest number since 1935 and a loss of 60 compared to the previous election.
The Liberal Democrats won 11 seats, down 1, despite significantly increasing their share of the popular vote. Ed Davey, former Cameron–Clegg coalition cabinet minister and MP for Kingston and Surbiton, was the winner of the 2020 Liberal Democrats leadership election. This came after Jo Swinson lost her seat to Amy Callaghan of the SNP by 150 votes and was disqualified from continuing as leader of the party. Swinson also became the first party leader to lose their seat since Liberal Party leader Archibald Sinclair in 1945.
While the Conservatives gained support in England and Wales, they lost support in Scotland in the face of a major SNP advance. The Conservatives won in England, advancing by 1.7% and gaining 48 seats to win 345 out of 533, while Labour fell back by 8% and lost 47 seats to win just 180. Labour won in Wales but lost 8% of its 2017 vote share and six seats, retaining 22 out of 40, while the Conservatives advanced by 2.5% and gained six seats, winning 14 in total.
The SNP advanced by 8.1% and gained 13 seats to win 48 out of 59, gaining several seats from the Conservatives and Labour. The Conservatives lost 3.5% of their 2017 vote share and half their seats, while Labour was reduced to one Scottish seat, Edinburgh South. This is the same Scottish seat that returned Ian Murray in the 2015–17 Parliament as the country's sole Labour MP. Among the Labour MPs who lost their seats in Scotland was Lesley Laird, deputy leader of Scottish Labour and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland. In Northern Ireland, nationalist political parties won more seats than unionist ones for the first time. Nigel Dodds, the DUP's leader in Westminster, lost his seat in Belfast North.
=== Analysis ===
The results have been attributed to Leave-supporting areas backing the Conservatives, the Conservatives broadening their appeal to working-class voters, and the Conservatives making gains in the Midlands and the north of England. Most notable was the red wall turning blue in the election, which greatly contributed to the Conservative majority. In exit polls conducted by Opinium, 43% of voters who did not vote for the Labour Party cited 'the leadership' as their reason. Among those who did not vote for the Conservative Party, the cited reason was equally split between 'their stance on Brexit' and 'the leadership', with both at 26%. Several commentators stated that the party's loss was due to a complicated manifesto and Brexit policy, a poor approach to campaigning, and the unpopularity of Corbyn's leadership.
A YouGov post-election survey determined that the age over which voters were more likely to opt for the Conservatives than for Labour was 39, down from 47 in the 2017 election. In contrast to previous elections, the YouGov survey additionally found that a plurality of voters in the DE's NRS social grade — comprising the unemployed, state pensioners, and semi-skilled and unskilled workers — had opted for the Conservatives over Labour. This change reflects the collapse of the 'Red Wall' which has a plurality of people in the DE classification according to the ONS.
Between 26% and 33% of voters engaged in tactical voting, as they said that they were trying to prevent a victory by the party they liked least. Recommendation by tactical voting websites had some benefit for Liberal Democrat candidates. The new Parliament reportedly had the highest number of openly LGBT MPs in the world, with 20 Conservative MPs, 15 Labour MPs, and 10 SNP MPs who identify as LGBT. For the first time in both cases, the majority of elected Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs were female. The election also returned a record number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) MPs, with 65 MPs (10%) describing themselves as BAME.
In a post-election review featuring Labour MPs, trade union officials and activists one of several reasons attributed to the electoral defeat was due to the declining popularity of Jeremy Corbyn in relation to the Brexit position and allegations of party antisemitism. The review projected that Labour would have retained 38% of the vote had Corbyn's popularity levels retained at its peak level in 2017.
=== Summary ===
A summarised results of the parties that won seats at the election is shown below.
=== Full results ===
In total, the Green Party of England and Wales, Scottish Greens, and Green Party Northern Ireland received 865,715 votes (2.70%). This may be unclear from the table and sources which cite the total of the Greens in the whole of the United Kingdom rather than by region.
=== Voter demographics ===
==== Ipsos MORI ====
Below is listed Ipsos MORI's demographic breakdown.
==== YouGov ====
Below is listed YouGov's demographic breakdown.
== Seats changing hands ==
=== Seats which changed allegiance ===
== Reaction and aftermath ==
In his victory speech, Johnson described the result as a mandate for leaving the EU and promised to do so by 31 January. The United Kingdom left the EU on 31 January 2020 but continued using EU trading rules until 23:00 on 31 December.
The election led to both Labour and the Liberal Democrats having leadership contests: the former as Corbyn resigned, the latter as Swinson failed to be elected as an MP. Corbyn portrayed the 2019 election results primarily as a consequence of attitudes surrounding Brexit rather than a rejection of Labour's social and economic policies. In an interview held on 13 December 2019, Corbyn said the election was "taken over ultimately by Brexit", and said that he was "proud of the [Labour] manifesto".
The Labour leadership campaign was marked by conflicting analyses of what had gone wrong for the party in the general election. There was debate as to whether Corbyn's unpopularity or their position on Brexit was more significant. The 2020 Labour Together report, published by internal Labour party figures after Keir Starmer was elected as leader, highlighted issues like Corbyn's unpopularity, the party's Brexit policy, and poor seat targeting, as well as long-term changes in Labour's electoral coalition. In openDemocracy, Jo Michell and Rob Calvert Jump argued that the report underplayed the fact the geographical redistributions, stating that "Labour's decline in the North, Midlands and Wales is not the result of a dramatic collapse in its vote share, but changes in the distribution of votes between parties and constituencies."
Successful Liberal Democrats MPs were critical in private of how the party had decided to advocate revoking the exercise of Article 50, and the communication of that policy. Some criticised the election campaign for being hubristic, with its initial defining message that Swinson could be the country's next prime minister. Ed Davey, the party's co-acting leader after the election, argued that the unpopularity of Corbyn lost the Liberal Democrats votes to the Conservatives. Wera Hobhouse, who was re-elected by a majority of 12,322, argued that the party had been wrong to pursue a policy of equidistance between Labour and the Conservatives in the general election campaign. Instead, she argued that the party should have concentrated more on campaigning against the Conservatives. The SNP's leader Nicola Sturgeon described the result as a clear mandate to hold a new referendum for Scottish independence. The British government said that it would not agree to a referendum being held and the Scottish government announced a few months later that it would put the issue on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricoh_2A03 | Ricoh 2A03 | The Ricoh 2A03 or RP2A03 (NTSC version) / Ricoh 2A07 or RP2A07 (PAL version) is an 8-bit microprocessor manufactured by Ricoh for the Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. It was also used as a sound chip and secondary CPU by Nintendo's arcade games Punch-Out!! and Donkey Kong 3.
== Technical details ==
The Ricoh 2A03 contains a derivative of the MOS Technology 6502 core, modified to disable the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode. It also integrates a programmable sound generator (also known as APU, featuring twenty two memory-mapped I/O registers), rudimentary DMA, and game controller polling.
== Sound hardware ==
The Ricoh 2A03's sound hardware has 5 channels, separated into two APUs (Audio Processing Units). The first APU contains two general purpose square wave channels with 4 duty cycles, similar to the sound generators seen on earlier platforms. The second APU contains three channels; a pseudo-triangle wave generator, an LFSR-based noise generator, and a 1-bit Delta modulation-encoded PCM (DPCM) channel.
The triangle wave is generated by automatically stepping a 4-bit volume control from 0 to 15 and then back down. The rate of these steps can be controlled to produce different frequencies for the resulting tone. Because of the discrete stepping, an overtone is created four octaves higher at 1⁄8 the volume of the primary tone, giving the resulting tone a "buzzing" quality. Because the volume is being used to create the triangle, this channel does not have a separate volume control.
A majority of the NES library uses only the four programmed channels due to the amount of memory needed to encode DPCM signals. Later games use the 5th DPCM channel due to cartridge memory expansions becoming cheaper. For example, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Kirby's Adventure use the DPCM channel for simple drum sounds. An interesting quirk of the DPCM channel is that the bit order is reversed compared to what is normally expected for 1-bit PCM. Many developers were unaware of this detail, causing samples to be distorted during playback.
The output of each channel is mixed non-linearly in their respective APU before being combined. This means that the volume of the channels changes when the volume of other channels changes. This can make the balancing of the channels in complex passages difficult. This is a particular problem with the triangle wave, as its volume cannot be separately adjusted to make up for this effect.
On Famicom systems, expansion sound chips may add their own sound to the output via a pin on the game cartridge. Expansion audio capabilities were removed from international NES systems, but can be restored by modifying the expansion port located on the bottom of the system.
== Regional variations ==
PAL versions of the NES (sold in Europe, Asia, and Australia) use the Ricoh 2A07 or RP2A07 processor, which is a 2A03 with modifications to better suit the 50 Hz vertical refresh rate used in the PAL television standard. However, most developers lacked the resources to properly adjust their games' music from NTSC to PAL, leading to many PAL games sounding slower, slightly lower-pitched, and in some cases, out-of-tune compared to their original NTSC releases. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olgivanna_Lloyd_Wright | Olgivanna Lloyd Wright | Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (December 27, 1898 – March 1, 1985) was the third and last wife of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They met in November 1924 and married in 1928. Together they established the Taliesin Fellowship, an architectural apprentice programme and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. After Frank's death in 1959, Olgivanna became president of the foundation, a position she held until one month before her own death.
== Early life ==
Olga Ivanovna (also known as Olgivanna) Lazović was born on December 27, 1898, in Cetinje, Montenegro.
Her parents were Jovan Lazović, who served as Montenegro's first Chief Justice, and Milica Markov Popović, the daughter of Field Marshal Marko Miljanov, a Montenegrin writer, voivode, and leader of the Kuči tribe. Milica enlisted as a volunteer in the Serbian Army, pretending to be a man. Olgivanna was the youngest of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. When her father lost his sight, Olgivanna would read court documents to him. When she was 9, Olgivanna went to live with her sister Julia and her husband, Constantin Siberakov, in Russia.
== Career ==
In Russia, Olgivanna met Vladimar Hinzenberg. They married in 1917, when Olgivanna was 19.
In 1917, following the birth of her daughter Svetlana, Olgivanna met G. I. Gurdjieff. She left Hinzenberg and Svetlana to follow Gurdjieff to France. Olgivanna spent roughly seven years working with Gurdjieff. She began as his student, learning Gurdjieff movements, which she later taught to her own students, including Diana Huebert. In 1923, while in France, Olgivanna nursed Katherine Mansfield on her deathbed.
In August 1924, Gurdjieff was involved in a car accident. He encouraged Olgivanna to go to the United States to join Hinzenberg and Svetlana, who was at her brother's home in New Jersey. After a short while, Olgivanna realized that the marriage was over, so she went to Chicago and taught Gurdjieff movements to the children of her friends. In late November 1924, she met Frank Lloyd Wright at a Sunday matinee featuring dancer Tamara Karsavina. Wright wrote about this chance meeting her in the 1943 edition of his autobiography:In a sentence or two she criticized Karsavina from our point of view, showing unusual familiarity with dancing and dancers. No longer quite so strange, the emissary of Fate, mercy on my soul, from the other side of the known world, bowed her head to my invitation to tea at the nearby Congress. She accepted with perfect ease and without artificial hesitation.
I was in love with her.
It was as simple as that.
Both were married, but they quickly began a romantic relationship, and Olgivanna and Svetlana came to live with Wright at Taliesin, in Wisconsin. By February 1925, Olgivanna was pregnant with their daughter, Iovanna. In April 1925, an electrical fire destroyed Taliesin's living quarters. Wright's estranged second wife refused to divorce Wright. In October 1926, Olgivanna and Wright were arrested in Tonka Bay, Minnesota, and accused of violating the Mann Act, but the charges were later dropped. Wright got a divorce in 1927. He and Olgivanna married on August 25, 1928, in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and honeymooned in Phoenix.
=== The Taliesin Fellowship ===
In 1932, Frank and Olgivanna started the Taliesin Fellowship, an architectural apprentice program.
In his book Apprentice to Genius: Years With Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Tafel wrote that the "marriage to Olgivanna was a tremendous stabilizing element for [Wright] — her devotion and strength brought his genius forward again. She knew how to take care of him." The last quarter-century of Wright's life (1935–59), when he, Olgivanna and the Taliesin Fellowship spent their winters in Arizona building Taliesin West, have been argued to be his most productive.
Tafel, who was in the Fellowship from 1932 to 1941, also wrote that Olgivanna's background with Gurdjieff and his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Mangave her the background to organize the operation of Taliesin and to bring another dimension to the life of the Fellowship. In this way, her experience with Gurdjieff did influence the form of the Fellowship and some of the activities envisioned from the beginning. Mrs. Wright was the force that kept the Fellowship in working order, from the very start. A remarkable woman.
Olgivanna continued to run the Taliesin Fellowship after Wright's death in 1959.
In 1970, she invited Svetlana Alliluyeva, the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin, to Taliesin West, the winter compound of the Taliesin Fellowship. Alliluyeva met William Wesley "Wes" Peters there. They married three weeks later and stayed married for 20 months. (Peters had previously been married to Olgivanna's daughter Svetlana, who died in a car accident in 1946.) Alliluyeva came away with a less-than-glowing impression of Olgivanna and her management of Taliesin:
Mrs. Wright's word was law. She had to be adored and worshipped and flattered as often as possible; flowers sent by mail and presented by hand she enjoyed and encouraged. She gave advice to the architects, guided a drama circle, a dance group and a choir, and counselling on private lives and relationships, expecting everyone to make personal confessions to her. She was a "spiritual leader" and self-appointed minister, preaching on Sunday mornings on matters of God and man.
== Death ==
Olgivanna died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on March 1, 1985 at the age of 86. She had arranged for Wright's body to be removed from its Wisconsin grave. It was then "cremated, mixed with her ashes and used in the walls of a memorial garden" at Taliesin West. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_Olympic_gold_medalists_at_a_single_Games | List of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games | This is a list of athletes who have won multiple gold medals at a single Olympic Games.
== List of most gold medals won at a single Olympic Games ==
This is a list of most gold medals won in a single Olympic Games. Medals won in the 1906 Intercalated Games are not included. It includes top-three placings in 1896 and 1900, before medals were awarded for top-three placings.
=== Timeline ===
The historical progression of the leading performance(s).
== List of most individual gold medals won at a single Olympic Games ==
=== Timeline ===
The historical progression of the leading performance(s). |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promised_Land_(Queensrÿche_album) | Promised Land (Queensrÿche album) | Promised Land is the fifth studio album by American progressive metal band Queensrÿche and their highest charting record to date. It was released by EMI on October 18, 1994, four years after their successful Empire album. The album was re-released on June 10, 2003, in a remastered edition with bonus tracks.
== Song overview ==
The album opens with "9.28 a.m.", a musique concrète sequence put together by drummer Scott Rockenfield. The band wanted to create a cinematic and moody intro, and Rockenfield was given complete freedom to make something. Rockenfield recorded natural sounds using a portable ADAT tape recorder, which he processed through a rack of effects and designed his own sound effects out of it. Some of the recorded sounds appear on other tracks, such as the sound of a train on "Disconnected". "9.28 a.m." follows a soul from death through the ether into a reincarnation, and rebirth, followed by the sound of a crying baby. The title refers to the time Rockenfield was born.
"9.28 a.m." segues into "I Am I". This song is driven by a heavy riff and Geoff Tate's vocals to a background of percussion instruments. Chris DeGarmo performs cello and sitar parts as well as the guitar solo. After almost four minutes it merges into "Damaged", a straightforward heavy rocker.
"Out of Mind" and the subsequent "Bridge" are quiet acoustic pieces, with lyrics written by Chris DeGarmo. The last one deals with the relationship with his father, who died during the Promised Land sessions.
The eight-minute title track is the first track in the Queensrÿche catalogue to be credited to the entire group. It is a dark piece, full of Rockenfield tape effects, DeGarmo/Wilton twin guitar work, and marks Tate's first appearance as a saxophonist. On this track, the theme deals with the drawbacks of success. It ends in a bar scene of people talking and drinking (slightly reminiscent of the ending of "Welcome to the Machine" on Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, which deals with a similar subject matter). These sound effects merge into "Disconnected," an alienating piece dealing with American consumer society. It features Tate on sax again.
The subsequent "Lady Jane" deals with the similar theme of the influence of commercials. It is a ballad featuring DeGarmo on piano and another twin solo.
"My Global Mind" is another rock song dealing with globalization. After that, "One More Time" is an acoustic rocker, with lyrics in the vein of the title track.
The album's final track, "Someone Else?", only features Tate on vocals and DeGarmo on piano.
== Legacy ==
In July 2014, Guitar World ranked Promised Land at number 23 in their "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list.
== Track listing ==
All credits adapted from the original liner notes.
== Personnel ==
Queensrÿche
Geoff Tate – vocals, saxophone, keyboards
Michael Wilton – guitars
Chris DeGarmo – guitars, piano, cello, sitar
Eddie Jackson – bass
Scott Rockenfield – drums, percussion, tape effects
Production
Queensrÿche – production, engineering, mixing at Bad Animals Studio, Seattle, Summer 1994
James Barton – production, engineering, mixing
Phil Brown – assistant production
Tom Hall – engineering
Eric Fischer – assistant engineering
Matt Gruber – assistant mixing
Don Tyler – digital editing
Stephen Marcussen – mastering
Evren Göknar – 2003 remastering
Hugh Syme – art direction, design, illustrations
== Charts ==
== Certifications == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeMar_DeRozan | DeMar DeRozan | DeMar Darnell DeRozan (born August 7, 1989) is an American professional basketball player for the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the USC Trojans and was selected ninth overall by the Toronto Raptors in the 2009 NBA draft. Nicknamed "Deebo", DeRozan is a six-time NBA All-Star and a three-time All-NBA Team member. DeRozan is currently sixth among active NBA players on the all-time scoring list.
DeRozan spent nine seasons with the Raptors, where he became the franchise's all-time leading scorer and led the team to five playoff runs. He was traded to the San Antonio Spurs in the summer of 2018 and the Chicago Bulls in 2021. He was traded to the Sacramento Kings in the summer of 2024. DeRozan won a gold medal with the United States national team in the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. He is considered one of the best scorers and midrange shooters in NBA history.
== Early life ==
DeRozan was born on August 7, 1989 in Compton, California to Frank and Diane DeRozan. Frank died in 2021.
== High school career ==
DeRozan attended Compton High School and was ranked as one of the top college recruits in the nation from the class of 2008. He was ranked No. 3 in the nation by Rivals.com and No. 6 by Scout.com. He played on the varsity basketball team for all four years of high school. As a freshman, he averaged 26.1 points and 8.4 rebounds. During his sophomore year, he averaged 22.6 points and 8.4 rebounds, while as a junior he averaged 22.3 points, 7.8 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 3.2 steals.
As a senior averaging 29.2 points and 7.9 rebounds per game, DeRozan led Compton High School to a 26–6 record, a second consecutive Moore League championship and the CIF Division IAA Southern Section quarter-finals. For his efforts he was awarded the Moore League Most Valuable Player Award and named to the California All-State team. DeRozan was a member of the 2008 McDonald's All-American Team, and also won the 2008 McDonald's All-American Slam Dunk Competition. He was also invited to play in the 2008 Jordan Brand Classic at Madison Square Garden and the Nike Hoop Summit, where he scored a team-high 17 points. DeRozan's achievements on the court in his senior year saw him earn first-team Parade All-American honors and First Team Best in the West honors.
== College career ==
In November 2007, DeRozan signed a letter of intent to play basketball at USC. He chose USC over Arizona and North Carolina.
In his first game for the Trojans, DeRozan scored a team-high 21 points with seven rebounds in an exhibition game against Azusa Pacific, an 85–64 victory at the Galen Center. DeRozan had 14 points in his first career regular season game in a win over UC Irvine. He scored 21 points along with a career-high 13 rebounds against UCLA in the Pac-10 Tournament semifinals, before scoring a career-high 22 points on 10-for-16 shooting to lead his team to a 61-49 win over Arizona State in the Pac-10 Tournament final. His efforts in the tournament saw him earn First Team Pac-10 All-Freshman honors in addition to being named Pac-10 Tournament MVP. The Trojans went to the 2009 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament as a 10th seed, where they lost in the 2nd round to Michigan State.
DeRozan started all 35 season games for the Trojans, scoring in double figures 28 times and posting four double-doubles. He ranked third on team in points (13.9 ppg), second in rebounds (5.7 rpg), third in assists (1.5 apg), and second in field-goal percentage (.523, eighth-best in conference). DeRozan followed his regular-season efforts by averaging 19.8 points in USC's five postseason games. His 485 points ranks third all-time and his 201 rebounds is fourth all-time for a USC freshman.
== Professional career ==
=== Toronto Raptors (2009–2018) ===
==== Early years (2009–2013) ====
On April 8, 2009, DeRozan announced his decision to enter the 2009 NBA draft and forgo his final three years of eligibility at USC. On June 25, 2009, he was selected ninth overall by the Toronto Raptors in the 2009 draft. He stated that part of the reason he left for the NBA after only one year at USC was to help take better care of his mother, who has lupus.
On July 9, 2009, DeRozan signed his rookie scale contract with the Raptors. As the fourth contestant in the 2010 Sprite Slam Dunk Competition, DeRozan lost in the final round against three-time champion Nate Robinson. The final percentage was 51% to 49%. DeRozan was selected to compete for the 2011 Sprite Slam Dunk Competition as a replacement for injured guard Brandon Jennings. He finished in third place.
On December 31, 2010, DeRozan scored a then career-high 37 points against the Houston Rockets. He matched that career high two more times over the next three years—against the Utah Jazz on November 12, 2012, and against the Chicago Bulls on November 15, 2013.
==== First All-Star appearance (2013–2015) ====
On January 22, 2014, DeRozan scored a then career-high 40 points against the Dallas Mavericks, shooting 15-of-22 from the field. On January 30, DeRozan was selected for the 2014 NBA All-Star Game as a reserve guard for the Eastern Conference All-Star team. He finished the game with 8 points, 3 rebounds, and 2 assists in 15 minutes. On February 1, he recorded a 36 points and a career-high 12 assists in a loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. On March 28, he led the Raptors to a playoff berth for the first time since 2008, with a victory over the Boston Celtics. He scored 30 points in the win, along with 3 rebounds, 4 assists, and 1 steal. On April 13, he scored 30 points against the Detroit Pistons to lead the Raptors to tie a franchise record of 47 wins.
DeRozan's 2013–14 season was a breakout year, averaging career-highs of 22.7 points, 4.3 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 30% from beyond the arc, and finished fourth in total free-throws made and seventh in attempts. He led the Raptors to a 48–34 record and a third-seed finish in the Eastern Conference.
In DeRozan's first playoff game against the Brooklyn Nets on April 19, 2014, DeRozan scored 14 points on a 3-of-13 shooting as the game resulted in a loss. In Game 2, DeRozan bounced back and scored 30 points on 9-of-21 shooting in a 100–95 win. On April 25, he recorded 30 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists in a loss. That 30-point game made DeRozan the first Raptor to score 30 points in back-to-back playoffs games, and the first Raptor to score 30 in multiple playoff games since Vince Carter. The Raptors went on to lose to the Nets in seven games.
In the Raptors' season opening game of the 2014–15 season against the Atlanta Hawks in Toronto, DeRozan recorded career-highs with 11 rebounds and six steals, along with 15 points, in a 109–102 win. On November 29, 2014, he was ruled out indefinitely with a torn left adductor longus tendon. He sustained the injury the night before at the 8:23 mark of the third quarter against the Dallas Mavericks and did not return. On January 14, 2015, he returned to action, scoring 20 points on 9-of-14 shooting in a 100–84 win over the Philadelphia 76ers. On March 2, he scored a season-high 35 points in a 114–103 win over the Philadelphia 76ers. On March 30, DeRozan scored a career-high 42 points in a 99–96 win over the Houston Rockets. On April 17, he was named Eastern Conference Player of the Month for April, joining Kyle Lowry (December 2014) and Chris Bosh (January 2007) as the only players in team history to be named Player of the Month.
On April 24, in Game 3 of the Raptors' first-round playoff series with the Washington Wizards, DeRozan scored a playoff career-high 32 points while scoring a franchise playoff-record 20 points in the first quarter, surpassing Vince Carter's previous record of 19 points in a first quarter of a playoff game.
==== Conference Finals loss (2015–2016) ====
On November 10, 2015, DeRozan scored a then season-high 29 points in a loss to the New York Knicks. Reaching the 15-point mark for the eighth straight game to start the season, he became the first Raptor since Chris Bosh in 2009–10 to accomplish the feat. On December 14, DeRozan was named Eastern Conference Player of the Week for games played December 7–13, earning the honor for the first time in his seven-year career and became the seventh player in team history to be named Player of the Week. On January 8, he scored a then season-high 35 points in a 97–88 win over the Washington Wizards. On January 28, he was named an Eastern Conference All-Star reserve for the 2016 NBA All-Star Game, earning his second All-Star nod in three years. On February 2, DeRozan and teammate Kyle Lowry were selected as co-winners for Eastern Conference Player of the Month for January. The pair helped the Raptors go 12–2 during the month and recorded a franchise-record 11-game win streak. On February 22, he became the winningest player in Raptors history, passing Chris Bosh and Morris Peterson with his 233rd career win. With 22 points, he helped the Raptors defeat the New York Knicks 122–95. On March 4, he scored a season-high 38 points in a 117–115 win over the Portland Trail Blazers. In that game, he set an NBA record with 24 consecutive free throws made in one game. On March 12, he tied his season-high of 38 points while also recording 10 rebounds and seven assists in a 112–104 overtime win over the Miami Heat. On March 30, he scored 26 points in a 105–97 win over the Atlanta Hawks, helping the Raptors record a 50-win season for the first time in franchise history. On April 10, he scored 27 points in a 93–89 win over the New York Knicks in New York, setting a franchise record with 23 road victories in a season. DeRozan also moved ahead of Vince Carter for second on the Raptors' career scoring list, trailing only Chris Bosh.
The Raptors finished the regular season as the second seed in the Eastern Conference with a 56 – 26 record. In the first round of the playoffs, the Raptors faced the seventh-seeded Indiana Pacers, and in a Game 5 win on April 26, DeRozan scored 34 points to help the Raptors take a 3–2 series lead. In Game 7 of the series, DeRozan scored 30 points to help the Raptors win a best-of-seven series for the first time in franchise history. With a 4–3 series victory over the Pacers, the Raptors moved on to the second round to face the Miami Heat. In Game 5 of the Raptors' series with the Heat, DeRozan again scored 34 points to help the Raptors take a 3–2 series lead with a 99–91 win. In Game 7 of the series, he scored 28 points in a 116–89 win over the Heat, helping the Raptors advance to the conference finals for the first time in franchise history. In Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers, DeRozan scored 32 points to help the Raptors win 105–99 and tie the series at 2–2. The Raptors went on to lose the next two games to bow out of the playoffs with a 4–2 defeat.
==== First All-NBA selection (2016–2017) ====
On July 14, 2016, DeRozan re-signed with the Raptors to a five-year, $139 million contract. In the Raptors' season opener on October 26, 2016, DeRozan had his third career 40-point outing in a 109–91 win over the Detroit Pistons. Two days later, he had a 32-point effort in a 94–91 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. DeRozan's combined 72 points bested Vince Carter's franchise record of 65 for the most points through the first two games of a season, set in the 2003–04 season. With a 33-point effort on October 31 against the Denver Nuggets, DeRozan became the first ever Raptor with three straight 30-point games to begin a season. With 40 points against the Washington Wizards on November 2, DeRozan tied Mike James' franchise record with four consecutive 30-point games. He passed that mark two days later, scoring 34 points in a 96–87 win over the Miami Heat. His five straight 30-point games set the best such start to a season since Michael Jordan did it for six straight games to open the 1986–87 season. On November 12, he scored 33 points against the New York Knicks for his eighth 30-point game in nine games, becoming only the fourth player to register 30-plus points in eight of the first nine games of a season, joining Michael Jordan, World B. Free, and Tiny Archibald. With 34 points against the Golden State Warriors on November 16, DeRozan became the first NBA player with nine 30-point games in his team's first 11 games since Jordan in 1987–88. DeRozan's six field goals against the Los Angeles Lakers on December 2 saw him pass Vince Carter (3,536) for second on the franchise's all-time list; Chris Bosh still led at the time with 3,614. On December 28, he scored 29 points against Golden State and became Toronto's career scoring leader (10,290), passing Bosh's 10,275 points.
On January 8, 2017, DeRozan scored 36 points in a 129–122 loss to the Houston Rockets, setting a career high with his 18th 30-plus-point game of the season. Two days later, he recorded a season-high 41 points and a career-high 13 rebounds in a 114–106 win over the Boston Celtics. On January 19, DeRozan was named a starter on the Eastern Conference All-Star team for the 2017 NBA All-Star Game, becoming the fourth Raptors player to be named a starter after Vince Carter, Chris Bosh and Kyle Lowry. On February 6, 2017, after missing seven of the team's previous eight games with a sprained ankle, DeRozan shot 50 percent from the field and put up 31 points in a 118–109 win over the Los Angeles Clippers. On February 24, he scored a career-high 43 points to help the Raptors rally from a 17-point deficit to beat the Boston Celtics 107–97. DeRozan shot 15 of 28 from the floor as he surpassed his 42-point effort against the Houston Rockets on March 30, 2015. After scoring 42 points against Chicago on March 21, DeRozan scored 40 points against Miami two days later, thus registering back-to-back 40-point games for the first time in his career. On March 31, he scored 40 points in a 111–100 win over the Indiana Pacers. It was DeRozan's seventh 40-point game of the season and 30th game of 30 points or more, tying Vince Carter's 2000–01 franchise mark. With 38 points against Miami on April 7, DeRozan broke Carter's franchise record with his 31st 30-point game of the season. On April 9, DeRozan shot 11-for-15 from the field for 35 points against the New York Knicks and became the second player in franchise history with a 2,000-point season—Carter scored 2,107 in 1999–00 and 2,070 in 2000–01. The win over the Knicks was the Raptors' 50th of the season and helped them lock up at least the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference. DeRozan finished the season with a career-high 2,020 points, while his 27.3 average marked the second highest in franchise history—Carter averaged 27.6 in 2000–01.
On April 27, 2017, DeRozan scored 32 points in a 92–89 win over the Milwaukee Bucks, helping the Raptors take their first-round playoff series in six games. The Raptors went on to lose in a clean sweep to the Cavaliers in the second round. DeRozan appeared in all 10 playoff games, averaging 22.4 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.4 steals per game. On May 18, 2017, DeRozan was named in the All-NBA Third Team for the first time in his career.
==== Final year in Toronto (2017–2018) ====
On November 3, 2017, DeRozan scored 37 points in a 109–100 win over the Utah Jazz, with 17 points and his third career four-point play coming in the third quarter. On December 13, 2017, he matched his season high with 37 points in a 115–109 win over the Phoenix Suns. On December 21, 2017, he set a career high with 45 points in a 114–109 win over the Philadelphia 76ers. He also set a career high with six 3-pointers in nine attempts. On January 1, 2018, DeRozan scored a franchise-record 52 points to help the Raptors beat the Milwaukee Bucks 131–127 in overtime, matching the team record with their 12th consecutive home victory. DeRozan was the first player in NBA history to score 50+ points on New Years Day. He also became the third player in Raptors history to score 50 or more in a single game—the others being Vince Carter and Terrence Ross, who each had 51. On January 8, 2018, he scored 35 points, including a go-ahead three-point play with 26.1 seconds left in overtime, to lift the Raptors to a 114–113 win over the Brooklyn Nets. On January 13, 2018, he had a 42-point effort in a 127–125 loss to the Golden State Warriors. On January 18, 2018, DeRozan was chosen to as an NBA All-Star starter for the second consecutive season, marking his fourth overall selection to the game, leaving him third overall in franchise history behind Vince Carter and Chris Bosh at the time, both of whom had been selected on five occasions. DeRozan joined Carter and Kyle Lowry as the only player with consecutive NBA All-Star Starter selections. On February 1, 2018, he was named Eastern Conference Player of the Month for January. On February 2, 2018, he scored 35 points in a 130–105 win over the Portland Trail Blazers. DeRozan made 11 of 22 shots and matched his career high by making six 3-pointers to finish 6 for 10 from long range. On March 7, 2018, he scored 42 points in a 121–119 overtime win over the Detroit Pistons.
In Game 2 of the Raptors' first-round playoff series against the Washington Wizards, DeRozan matched his career playoff-high with 37 points, as Toronto took a 2–0 lead in a playoff series for the first time in franchise history with a 130–119 win. It was his 12th career 30-point game in the postseason. In Game 4, DeRozan recorded 35 points, six assists, and six rebounds in a 106–98 loss. The Raptors went on to win the series in six games. In the second round, the Raptors were once again swept by the Cleveland Cavaliers. To add insult to injury, DeRozan was ejected for a flagrant 2 foul on Jordan Clarkson late in the 4th quarter in Game 4. This was his final game with Toronto. For the season, DeRozan was named to the All-NBA Second Team. DeRozan finished the 2017–18 season as the franchise leader in a number of categories, including regular season games played, wins, total minutes, field goals both attempted and made, and free throws both made and attempted. DeRozan received intensive criticism for his benching in Toronto's game 3 loss to Cleveland where Toronto would make a comeback with DeRozan on the bench.
=== San Antonio Spurs (2018–2021) ===
==== First-round playoff exit (2018–2019) ====
On July 18, 2018, DeRozan was traded, along with Jakob Poeltl and a protected 2019 first round draft pick, to the San Antonio Spurs in exchange for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green. The trade was controversial because DeRozan was a fan favorite in Toronto and had not been consulted about the trade by Raptors president Masai Ujiri beforehand; however, there was a perception that DeRozan was not a strong playoff performer, and trading away DeRozan's large contract freed up significant salary cap space.
In his debut for the Spurs in their season opener on October 17, 2018, DeRozan had 28 points in a 112–108 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. On October 22, he had 32 points and 14 assists in a 143–142 overtime win over the Los Angeles Lakers. On October 29, he had 34 points and nine assists in a 113–108 overtime win over the Dallas Mavericks. On November 3, he scored 26 points in a 109–95 win over the New Orleans Pelicans, thus scoring at least 25 points in seven of the team's first eight games. The only other San Antonio player to do so was George Gervin in 1978–79. On December 2, he had a season-high 36 points in a 131–118 win over the Portland Trail Blazers. On December 7, he recorded 36 points and nine assists in a 133–120 win over the Lakers. On January 3, he recorded his first career triple-double with 21 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists in a 125–107 win over his former team, the Toronto Raptors. DeRozan also recorded his first double-double in a half. On February 22, he played his first game in Toronto in a Spurs uniform. He finished the game with 23 points, 4 rebounds and 8 assists.
On April 16, 2019, during Game 2 of the first round of the playoffs, DeRozan scored 31 points in a 105–114 loss to the Denver Nuggets. The Spurs would go on to lose the series in seven games. His old team the Raptors would go on to win the 2019 NBA Finals.
==== Back-to-back postseason absences (2019–2021) ====
On January 29, 2020, DeRozan scored a season-high 38 points, alongside five assists, in a 127–120 win over the Utah Jazz. On March 10, he logged a season-high 12 assists, along with 13 points, in a 119–109 win over the Dallas Mavericks. After the NBA season was suspended in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Spurs were one of 22 teams invited to the NBA Bubble. However, after finishing with a record of 32–39, the team failed to qualify for the playoffs, marking the first time since 2013 that DeRozan's team did not reach the postseason.
On April 26, 2021, DeRozan scored a season-high 37 points, alongside ten assists, in a 146–143 overtime win over the Washington Wizards. Four days later, he logged a career-high tying 14 assists in a 140–143 overtime loss to the Boston Celtics. Although they qualified for the newly implemented play-in tournament, the Spurs suffered a 96–100 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on May 19, eliminating the team from playoff contention for the second straight season.
=== Chicago Bulls (2021–2024) ===
==== Bounce-back and third All-NBA selection (2021–2022) ====
On August 11, 2021, DeRozan signed with the Chicago Bulls on a three-year, $85 million contract in a sign-and-trade deal; the Bulls sent Thaddeus Young, Al-Farouq Aminu, a protected first-round draft pick, and two second-round draft picks to the Spurs in exchange. As his usual number 10 was retired by the Bulls in honor of Bob Love, DeRozan switched to wear number 11.
On October 20, DeRozan made his Bulls debut, putting up 17 points, seven rebounds, two assists, and three steals in a 94–88 win over the Detroit Pistons. On November 1, he scored a then season-high 37 points on 15-of-20 shooting, along with 7 rebounds, to lead the Bulls to a 128–114 comeback victory over the Boston Celtics, overcoming a 19-point deficit on the road. He would match those 37 points two days later, while grabbing 10 rebounds, in a 103–98 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers. On December 31, DeRozan hit a game-winning one-legged three at the buzzer to award the Bulls a 108–106 road victory over the Indiana Pacers, on a night where he recorded 28 points and six assists.
On January 1, 2022, DeRozan had 28 points, and made yet another game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer, giving Chicago a 120–119 road victory over the Washington Wizards, and becoming the first player in NBA history with a game-winning buzzer beater on consecutive days. On January 23, DeRozan scored a then season-high 41 points on 15-of-21 shooting from the field in a 114–95 loss to the Orlando Magic. On January 27, DeRozan was selected to his 5th NBA All-Star Game, his third start and his first All-Star Selection since 2018 where he started in his hometown for the 2018 NBA All-Star Game. On February 6, DeRozan scored a then season-high 45 points, along with 9 rebounds and 7 assists, in a 119–108 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers. On February 14, DeRozan scored 19 of his 40 points in the fourth quarter and delivered 7 assists in a 120–109 win over his former team, the San Antonio Spurs. This was his sixth straight 35-point game, breaking Michael Jordan's franchise record of five straight 35-point games; he also tied Wilt Chamberlain's record of the longest consecutive streaks of such games while shooting at least 50 percent (DeRozan shot 50, 59.3, 60, 63.6, 66.7, and 68.4 percent). On February 16, in a 125–118 victory over the Sacramento Kings, DeRozan broke the record by scoring 38 points, with 6 rebounds and 6 assists, to become the first player in NBA history to score 35 or more points and shoot 50 percent or better in seven consecutive games. By the end of February, the Bulls were in contention for the best record in the East and DeRozan was considered a MVP frontrunner.
The 2022 NBA All-Star Game in Cleveland was DeRozan's third time as a starter and the first since 2018, and fifth selection overall. Selected by LeBron James, his squad defeated Kevin Durant's 163–160. On February 24, in a 112–108 victory over the Atlanta Hawks, DeRozan scored 37 points, including the winning basket, and he pushed his league mark of scoring at least 35 points while shooting 50% or better to eight consecutive games. On February 27, DeRozan scored 31 points and grabbed 7 rebounds in a 116–110 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies; it marked DeRozan's tenth consecutive 30-point game, the longest such streak by a Bulls player since Michael Jordan in 1990–91; as DeRozan shot 10 of 29 from the field, this game ending his NBA-record run of eight games of scoring at least 35 while shooting 50% or better, and was ejected in the closing seconds. On March 3, DeRozan was named Eastern Conference Player of the Month for February; it was his fourth career Player of the Month nod. On March 31, DeRozan scored 27 of his season-high 50 points in the 4th quarter and overtime (just two points shy of his career high), along with 5 rebounds and 6 assists, in a 135–130 overtime win over the Los Angeles Clippers. DeRozan finished the regular season as the NBA leading scorer in the fourth quarter with 612 points. On April 20, during Game 2 of the first round of the playoffs, DeRozan scored a career playoff-high 41 points in a 114–110 win over the reigning champions Milwaukee Bucks. The Bulls would go on to lose to the Bucks in five games.
==== 20,000 points (2022–2024) ====
Since the 2022–23 season, DeRozan has joined an elite group of players to reach 20,000 points in their career. On October 19, DeRozan posted 37 points, 6 rebounds, and 9 assists in a 116–108 win over the Miami Heat, making him and Michael Jordan the only players in Bulls history to tally at least 35 points, five rebounds, and five assists in a season opener. On October 28, DeRozan scored 33 points in a 129–124 loss against his former team, the San Antonio Spurs, and he became just the 50th player in NBA history to achieve 20,000 career points. On November 4, DeRozan scored a then season-high 46 points in a 123–119 loss to the Boston Celtics. On December 28, DeRozan recorded 42 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, and 2 blocks in an 119–113 overtime win over the Milwaukee Bucks.
On January 2, 2023, DeRozan scored 44 points in a 145–134 overtime loss against the Cleveland Cavaliers. On February 2, DeRozan was selected to play as an Eastern Conference reserve in the 2023 NBA All-Star Game, his second consecutive selection as a member of the Bulls. On March 17, DeRozan put up season highs 49 points and 14 rebounds, while Zach LaVine put up 39 points, in a 139–131 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. Their 88 combined points surpassed Michael Jordan and Horace Grant's previous record of 85, to become the most points scored in a game by a duo in Bulls history.
On December 12, 2023, DeRozan passed Clyde Drexler for 35th in the NBA All-Time Scoring List in loss to the Denver Nuggets. On March 13, 2024, DeRozan scored a season-high 46 points and grabbed 9 rebounds in a 132–129 overtime win over the Indiana Pacers. He also passed Elgin Baylor, Dwyane Wade, and Adrian Dantley to enter 32nd place on the NBA All-Time Scoring List. He made a fadeaway midrange shot at the buzzer in the same game to send it into overtime. DeRozan finished the season as the runner-up for the Clutch Player of the Year award.
=== Sacramento Kings (2024–present) ===
On July 8, 2024, DeRozan signed with the Sacramento Kings on a three-year, $74 million contract in a sign-and-trade deal that also involved one of his former teams, the San Antonio Spurs, with Chris Duarte, RaiQuan Gray and draft considerations to going to Chicago and Harrison Barnes to San Antonio.
On February 10, 2025, DeRozan scored a season-high 42 points, including a baseline floater with 2 seconds left in overtime to lead the Kings to a 129–128 win over the Dallas Mavericks. On March 20, DeRozan scored 22 points in a 128–116 loss to the Chicago Bulls, becoming the 27th player to achieve 25,000 career points. On April 11, DeRozan moved past Reggie Miller into 25th place on the NBA All-Time Scoring List. DeRozan finished the season averaging 22.2 points per game and in the process became just the sixth player in NBA history (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, LeBron James) to average 20+ points per game in 12 or more straight seasons (minimum 60 games played per season).
On January 14, 2026, DeRozan recorded 27 points, six rebounds and five assists in a 112–101 win over the New York Knicks. He passed Kevin Garnett to move into 22nd place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. On February 26, DeRozan moved into 20th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, surpassing John Havlicek and Paul Pierce during a 130–121 win over the Dallas Mavericks. On March 15, DeRozan scored a season-high 41 points and recorded 11 assists to lead the Kings to a 116–111 victory over the Utah Jazz. With the performance, he became the oldest player in NBA history to record a 40-point, 10-assist game.
== Career statistics ==
=== NBA ===
==== Regular season ====
==== Playoffs ====
=== College ===
== NBA career records ==
=== Toronto Raptors franchise records ===
==== Regular season ====
Most games played (675)
Most minutes played (22,986)
Most points scored (13,296)
Most field goals (4716)
Most 2-point field goals (4391)
Most free throws made (3539)
== Awards and honors ==
=== High school and college ===
2006 All-Moore League First Team
2007 All-Moore League First Team
2007 Named to the Los Angeles Times First Team
2008 Parade Magazine All-America First Team
2008 Long Beach Press-Telegram's Best in the West First Team
2008 McDonald's High School All-American
2008 Jordan Brand All-American Classic
2008 Southern California Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association I-AA Player of the Year (tied with two others)
2008 All-State Team
2009 Pac-10 Tournament Champion
2009 Named Most Outstanding Player in Pac-10 Tournament
No. 10 retired by USC Trojans
=== NBA achievements ===
All-NBA Second Team: 2018, 2022
All-NBA Third Team: 2017
NBA All-Star: 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2022, 2023
NBA All-Star Rising Star: 2011
NBA minutes played leaders: (2024)
Magic Johnson Award: 2018
NBA Eastern Conference Player of the Month: April 2015, January 2016, January 2018, February 2022
NBA Eastern Conference Player of the Week: December 7–13, 2015; November 7–13, 2016; December 12–18, 2016; January 9–15, 2017; March 20–26, 2017; November 13–19, 2017; December 18–24, 2017; January 1–7, 2018; February 26 – March 4, 2018; November 29 - December 5, 2021; December 27, 2021 - January 2, 2022; February 7–13, 2022; March 4–10, 2024
NBA Western Conference Player of the Week: January 6–12, 2020
== National team career ==
DeRozan was a member of the United States national team that won the gold medal in the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup. In nine games, he averaged 4.8 points, 1.0 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game. He made a second appearance for Team USA at the 2016 Summer Olympics. DeRozan averaged 6.6 points, 1.4 rebounds and 0.9 assists in seven games for Team USA in helping them win the Olympic gold medal.
== Personal life ==
DeRozan is the son of Frank and Diane DeRozan. DeRozan's mother was diagnosed with lupus when he was little. While with the Raptors, DeRozan helped raise awareness and educate Canadians on the disease in part by partnering with Lupus Canada. DeRozan lost his father Frank DeRozan on February 19, 2021 after battling several longtime health issues. He said he would regularly fly to Los Angeles from San Antonio or any city he was playing in to be by his side throughout his last moments.
DeRozan has a daughter born in 2013 named Diar, who gained national attention in 2023 after consistently shrieking during free throws in the Bulls' play-in tournament game against the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors shot just 18-of-36 from the free throw line, with many calling Diar an integral piece of the Bulls' 109–105 victory. After the game, Raptors forward Scottie Barnes admitted that the screaming had an impact on Toronto's free throw shooting. Diar later received several online threats.
DeRozan also has depression, and is an advocate for others suffering with it. After DeRozan and fellow NBA player Kevin Love spoke publicly on mental health it prompted the NBA to add a new rule that requires a team to have at least one full time licensed mental health professional on their staff. The duo also appeared in a PSA video by the NBA that launched the new mental health professional program alongside a new website with various mental health resources. In 2024, DeRozan's book, Above the Noise: My Story of Chasing Calm, was published by Harmony Books. The book describes his experiences with depression, growth, and the slow process of healing.
DeRozan is nicknamed "Deebo" after the character from the 1995 film Friday. He received the name as a sixth grader when he beat up an eighth grader during a basketball game at school. DeRozan has reflected on the awareness of his neighborhood nickname: "When people call me that, you have to know me from back home, so when it started carrying over to the NBA, I was just like I don't know how it got to the league."
DeRozan was mentioned in "Not Like Us", a diss track by the American rapper and fellow Compton native Kendrick Lamar, amidst his highly publicized feud with the Canadian rapper Drake in May 2024. He was invited on stage during the 2024 The Pop Out: Ken & Friends concert held on Juneteenth, where Lamar first performed "Not Like Us" live, along with fellow NBA player and Los Angeles area native Russell Westbrook. DeRozan additionally had a cameo in the music video of "Not Like Us", which was symbolically released on July 4, 2024. It won the 67th Grammy Award for Best Music Video.
DeRozan got into an altercation with a fan at a sushi restaurant on April 19, 2025, after the fan shone the light from his phone in DeRozan's face. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratovolcano | Stratovolcano | A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a typically conical volcano built up by many alternating layers (strata) of hardened lava and tephra. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes are characterized by a steep profile with a summit crater and explosive eruptions. Some have collapsed summit craters called calderas. The lava flowing from stratovolcanoes typically cools and solidifies before spreading far, due to high viscosity. The magma forming this lava is often felsic, having high to intermediate levels of silica (as in rhyolite, dacite, or andesite), with lesser amounts of less viscous mafic magma. Extensive felsic lava flows are uncommon, but can travel as far as 8 kilometres (5 miles).
The term composite volcano is used because strata are usually mixed and uneven instead of neat layers. They are among the most common types of volcanoes; more than 700 stratovolcanoes have erupted lava during the Holocene Epoch (the last 11,700 years), and many older, now extinct, stratovolcanoes erupted lava as far back as Archean times. Stratovolcanoes are typically found in subduction zones but they also occur in other geological settings. Two examples of stratovolcanoes famous for catastrophic eruptions are Krakatoa in Indonesia (which erupted in 1883 claiming 36,000 lives) and Mount Vesuvius in Italy (which erupted in 79 A.D killing an estimated 2,000 people). In modern times, Mount St. Helens (1980) in Washington State, US, and Mount Pinatubo (1991) in the Philippines have erupted catastrophically, but with fewer deaths.
The existence of stratovolcanoes on other bodies of the Solar System has not been conclusively demonstrated. Zephyria Tholus is one of two mountains in the Aeolis region of Mars that have been proposed as possible stratovolcanoes.
== Distribution ==
Stratovolcanoes are common at subduction zones, forming chains and clusters along plate tectonic boundaries where an oceanic crust plate is drawn under a continental crust plate (continental arc volcanism, e.g. Cascade Range, Andes, Campania) or another oceanic crust plate (island arc volcanism, e.g. Japan, Philippines, Aleutian Islands).
Stratovolcanoes also occur in some other geological settings, for example as a result of intraplate volcanism on oceanic islands far from plate boundaries. Examples are Teide in the Canary Islands, and Pico do Fogo in Cape Verde.
Stratovolcanoes have formed in continental rifts. Examples in the East African Rift are Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania, and Longonot in Kenya.
== Formation ==
Subduction zone volcanoes form when hydrous minerals are pulled down into the mantle on the slab. These hydrous minerals, such as chlorite and serpentine, release their water into the mantle which decreases its melting point by 60 to 100 °C (110 to 180 °F). The release of water from hydrated minerals is termed "dewatering", and occurs at specific pressures and temperatures for each mineral, as the plate descends to greater depths. This allows the mantle to partially melt and generate magma. This is called flux melting. The magma then rises through the crust, incorporating silica-rich crustal rock, leading to a final intermediate composition. When the magma nears the top surface, it pools in a magma chamber within the crust below the stratovolcano.
The processes that trigger the final eruption remain a question for further research. Possible mechanisms include:
Magma differentiation, in which the lightest, most silica-rich magma and volatiles such as water, halogens, and sulfur dioxide accumulate in the uppermost part of the magma chamber. This can dramatically increase pressures.
Fractional crystallization of the magma. When anhydrous minerals such as feldspar crystallize out of the magma, this concentrates volatiles in the remaining liquid, which can lead to a second boiling that causes a gas phase (carbon dioxide or water) to separate from the liquid magma and raise magma chamber pressures.
Injection of fresh magma into the magma chamber, which mixes and heats the cooler magma already present. This could force volatiles out of solution and lower the density of the cooler magma, both of which increase pressure. There is considerable evidence for magma mixing just before many eruptions, including magnesium-rich olivine crystals in freshly erupted silicic lava that show no reaction rim. This is possible only if the lava erupted immediately after mixing since olivine rapidly reacts with silicic magma to form a rim of pyroxene.
Progressive melting of the surrounding country rock.
These internal triggers may be modified by external triggers such as sector collapse, earthquakes, or interactions with groundwater. Some of these triggers operate only under limited conditions. For example, sector collapse (where part of the flank of a volcano collapses in a massive landslide) can only trigger the eruption of a very shallow magma chamber. Magma differentiation and thermal expansion also are ineffective as triggers for eruptions from deep magma chambers.
== Hazards ==
In recorded history, explosive eruptions at subduction zone (convergent-boundary) volcanoes have posed the greatest hazard to civilizations. Subduction-zone stratovolcanoes, such as Mount St. Helens, Mount Etna and Mount Pinatubo, typically erupt with explosive force because the magma is too viscous to allow easy escape of volcanic gases. As a consequence, the tremendous internal pressures of the trapped volcanic gases remain and intermingle in the pasty magma. Following the breaching of the vent and the opening of the crater, the magma degasses explosively. The magma and gases blast out with high speed and full force.
Since 1600 CE, nearly 300,000 people have been killed by volcanic eruptions. Most deaths were caused by pyroclastic flows and lahars, deadly hazards that often accompany explosive eruptions of subduction-zone stratovolcanoes. Pyroclastic flows are swift, avalanche-like, ground-sweeping, incandescent mixtures of hot volcanic debris, fine ash, fragmented lava, and superheated gases that can travel at speeds over 150 km/h (90 mph). Around 30,000 people were killed by pyroclastic flows during the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean. During March and April 1982, El Chichón in the State of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico, erupted 3 times, causing the worst volcanic disaster in Mexico's history and killing more than 2,000 people in pyroclastic flows.
Two Decade Volcanoes that erupted in 1991 provide examples of stratovolcano hazards. On 15 June, Mount Pinatubo erupted and caused an ash cloud to shoot 40 km (25 mi) into the air. It produced large pyroclastic surges and lahar floods that caused a lot of damage to the surrounding area. Mount Pinatubo, located in Central Luzon 90 km (56 mi) west-northwest of Manila, had been dormant for six centuries before an eruption in 1991. This eruption was the second largest in the 20th century. It produced a large cloud of volcanic ash that affected global temperatures, lowering them as much as 0.5 °C. The cloud consisted of 22 million tons of sulfur dioxide which combined with water droplets to create sulfuric acid. In 1991 Japan's Mount Unzen also erupted, after 200 years of inactivity. It's located on the island of Kyushu about 40 km (25 mi) east of Nagasaki. Beginning in June, a newly formed lava dome repeatedly collapsed. This generated a pyroclastic flow that flowed down the mountain's slopes at speeds as high as 200 km/h (120 mph). The 1991 eruption of Mount Unzen caused 43 deaths. In 1792, Mount Unzen was responsible for one of the worst volcanic disasters in Japan's history, killing more than 15,000 people.
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD is the most famous example of a hazardous stratovolcano eruption. Pyroclastic surges completely smothered the nearby ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum with thick deposits of ash and pumice ranging from 6–7 meters deep. Pompeii had 10,000–20,000 inhabitants at the time of eruption. Mount Vesuvius is recognized as one of the most dangerous of the world's volcanoes, due to its capacity for powerful explosive eruptions coupled with the high population density of the surrounding Metropolitan Naples area (totaling about 3.6 million inhabitants).
=== Ash ===
In addition to potentially affecting the climate, volcanic ash clouds from explosive eruptions pose a serious hazard to aviation. Volcanic ash clouds consist of silt- or sand-sized pieces of rock, mineral, volcanic glass. Volcanic ash grains are jagged, abrasive, and don't dissolve in water. For example, during the 1982 eruption of Galunggung in Java, British Airways Flight 9 flew into the ash cloud, causing it to sustain temporary engine failure and structural damage. Although no crashes have happened due to ash, more than 60, mostly commercial aircraft, have been damaged. Some of these incidents resulted in emergency landings. Ashfalls are a threat to health when inhaled and are also a threat to property. A square yard of a 4-inch thick volcanic ash layer can weigh 120–200 pounds and can get twice as heavy when wet. Wet ash also poses a risk to electronics due to its conductive nature. Dense clouds of hot volcanic ash can be expelled due to the collapse of an eruptive column, or laterally due to the partial collapse of a volcanic edifice or lava dome during explosive eruptions. These clouds are known as pyroclastic surges and in addition to volcanic ash, they contain hot lava, pumice, rock, and volcanic gas. Pyroclastic surges flow at speeds over 50 mph and are at temperatures between 200 °C – 700 °C. These surges can cause major damage to property and people in their path.
=== Lava ===
Lava flows from stratovolcanoes are generally not a significant threat to humans or animals because the highly viscous lava moves slowly enough for everyone to evacuate. Most deaths attributed to lava are due to related causes such as explosions and asphyxiation from toxic gas. Lava flows can bury homes and farms in thick volcanic rock which greatly reduces property value. However, not all stratovolcanoes erupt viscous and sticky lava. Nyiragongo, near Lake Kivu in central Africa, is very dangerous because its magma has an unusually low silica content, making it much less viscous than other stratovolcanoes. Low viscosity lava can generate massive lava fountains, while lava of thicker viscosity can solidify within the vent, creating a volcanic plug. Volcanic plugs can trap volcanic gas and create pressure in the magma chamber, resulting in violent eruptions. Lava is typically between 700 and 1,200 °C (1,300–2,200 °F).
=== Volcanic bombs ===
Volcanic bombs are masses of unconsolidated rock and lava that are ejected during an eruption. Volcanic bombs are classified as larger than 64mm (2.5 inches). Anything from 2 to 64mm is classified as lapilli. When erupted, volcanic bombs are still molten and partially cool and solidify on their descent. They can form ribbon or oval shapes that can also flatten on impact with the ground. Volcanic bombs are associated with Strombolian and Vulcanian eruptions and basaltic lava. Ejection velocities ranging from 200 to 400 m/s have been recorded causing volcanic bombs to be destructive.
=== Lahar ===
Lahars (from a Javanese term for volcanic mudflows) are a mixture of volcanic debris and water. Lahars can result from heavy rainfall during or before the eruption or interaction with ice and snow. Meltwater mixes with volcanic debris causing a fast moving mudflow. Lahars are typically about 60% sediment and 40% water. Depending on the abundance of volcanic debris the lahar can be fluid or thick like concrete. Lahars have the strength and speed to flatten structures and cause great bodily harm, gaining speeds up to dozens of kilometers per hour. In the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia, pyroclastic surges melted snow and ice atop the 5,321 m (17,457 ft) high Andean volcano. The ensuing lahar killed 25,000 people and flooded the city of Armero and nearby settlements.
=== Volcanic gas ===
As a volcano forms, several different gases mix with magma in the volcanic chamber. During an eruption the gases are then released into the atmosphere which can lead to toxic human exposure. The most abundant of these gases is H2O (water) followed by CO2 (carbon dioxide), SO2 (sulfur dioxide), H2S (hydrogen sulfide), and HF (hydrogen fluoride). If at concentrations of more than 3% in the air, when breathed in CO2 can cause dizziness and difficulty breathing. At more than 15% concentration CO2 causes death. CO2 can settle into depressions in the land, leading to deadly, odorless pockets of gas. SO2 classified as a respiratory, skin, and eye irritant if come into contact with. It is known for its pungent egg smell and role in ozone depletion and has the potential to cause acid rain downwind of an eruption. H2S has an even stronger odor than SO2 as well as being even more toxic. Exposure for less than an hour at concentrations of over 500 ppm causes death. HF and similar species can coat ash particles and once deposited can poison soil and water. Gases are also emitted during volcanic degassing, which is a passive release of gas during periods of dormancy.
== Eruptions that affected global climate ==
As per the above examples, while eruptions like Mount Unzen have caused deaths and local damage, the impact of the June 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo was seen globally. The eruptive columns reached heights of 40 km (25 mi) and dumped 17 megatons of SO2 into the lower stratosphere. The aerosols that formed from the sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon dioxide (CO2), and other volcanic gases dispersed around the world. The SO2 in this cloud combined with water (both of volcanic and atmospheric origin) and formed sulfuric acid, blocking a portion of the sunlight from reaching the troposphere. This caused the global temperature to decrease by about 0.4 °C (0.72 °F) from 1992 to 1993. These aerosols caused the ozone layer to reach the lowest concentrations recorded at that time. An eruption the size of Mount Pinatubo affected the weather for a few years; with warmer winters and cooler summers observed.
A similar phenomenon occurred in the April 1815, the eruption of Mount Tambora on Sumbawa island in Indonesia. This eruption is recognized as the most powerful eruption in recorded history. Its eruption cloud lowered global temperatures as much as 0.4 to 0.7 °C (0.72 to 1.26 °F). In the year following the eruption, most of the Northern Hemisphere experienced cooler temperatures during the summer. In the northern hemisphere, 1816 was known as the "Year Without a Summer". The eruption caused crop failures, food shortages, and floods that killed over 100,000 people across Europe, Asia, and North America.
== List == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_XI#Results | WrestleMania XI#Results | WrestleMania XI was a 1995 professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). It was the 11th annual WrestleMania and took place on April 2, 1995, at the Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut. Seven matches were contested at the event.
The main event featured former National Football League linebacker Lawrence Taylor against Bam Bam Bigelow, a match which came as the result of an argument that took place between the two at the 1995 Royal Rumble. Taylor won the match, which led to Bigelow being kicked out of Ted DiBiase's Million Dollar Corporation. Shawn Michaels faced WWF Champion Diesel in a title match but was unable to win the championship. Jeff Jarrett retained his WWF Intercontinental Championship against Razor Ramon. Owen Hart and his mystery partner, Yokozuna, challenged The Smoking Gunns for the WWF Tag Team Championship and won the title belts.
The match between Taylor and Bigelow brought the WWF mainstream press coverage. The reactions to the match were mixed; some people thought that Taylor performed surprisingly well for a non-wrestler. Others thought that the WWF pushing a football player to defeat a wrestler made professional wrestling look bad. Reviews of the event as a whole were mixed, with the event called both the worst WrestleMania of all time and the event that saved the WWF.
== Production ==
=== Background ===
WrestleMania is considered the World Wrestling Federation's (WWF, now WWE) flagship professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event, having first been held in 1985. It has become the longest-running professional wrestling event in history and is held annually between mid-March to mid-April. It was the first of the WWF's original four pay-per-views, which includes Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, which were dubbed the "Big Four", and was considered one of the "Big Five" PPVs, along with King of the Ring. WrestleMania XI was scheduled to be held on April 2, 1995, at the Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut.
Special Olympian Kathy Huey sang a rendition of "America the Beautiful" during the event, replacing the previously advertised band, Fishbone. Prior to Lawrence Taylor's match against Bam Bam Bigelow, Salt-n-Pepa sang Whatta Man. Several other celebrities also had roles at WrestleMania. Nicholas Turturro, one of the stars of NYPD Blue, conducted interviews and served as a guest ring announcer. Jonathan Taylor Thomas of Home Improvement was a guest timekeeper for the match between Diesel and Shawn Michaels. WrestleMania XI marked the first time that the WWF featured an interview on the Internet as Diesel and Shawn Michaels were interviewed by Bob Ryder.
On September 30, 1995, a one-hour special including the Diesel vs. Shawn Michaels match and the Lawrence Taylor vs. Bam Bam Bigelow match was broadcast on the FOX Network. At the WrestleMania weekend, the WWF also held its Fan Fest, a promotional event during which wrestlers interacted with fans and signed autographs.
=== Storylines ===
The most heavily promoted feud going into the event was between Bam Bam Bigelow and Lawrence Taylor. At the 1995 Royal Rumble, Bigelow teamed with Tatanka in the final round of a tournament for the WWF Tag Team Championship. Bigelow was pinned at the end of the match, which led to the crowd heckling him. He responded by pushing NFL player Lawrence Taylor, who was sitting at ringside. Bigelow refused to apologize and instead challenged Taylor to a wrestling match. Taylor agreed and trained with WWF Champion Diesel to prepare for the match. The storyline between Bigelow and Taylor brought the WWF much mainstream exposure, as the match was discussed by several news outlets.
The other main event at WrestleMania was a match for the WWF Championship between Diesel and Shawn Michaels. Diesel had originally entered the WWF as Michaels's bodyguard but later began wrestling and forming a tag team with Michaels. The pair held the WWF Tag Team Championship together in 1994. At Survivor Series 1994, Michaels accidentally kicked Diesel in the face. This led to an argument during which Diesel dissolved the tag team and vacated the championship. Three days later, Diesel defeated Bob Backlund to become the new WWF Champion. Michaels won the main event match at the Royal Rumble, which earned him a match against Diesel for the title belt at WrestleMania.
The WWF Intercontinental Championship was also defended at WrestleMania. Jeff Jarrett, the champion, had been feuding with Razor Ramon, the challenger, for several months. At the Royal Rumble, Jarrett was accompanied by The Roadie, who interfered on Jarrett's behalf and helped Jarrett win the championship. To even the sides in the rematch at WrestleMania, Ramon was accompanied by his friend, the 1–2–3 Kid.
The Smoking Gunns defended their WWF Tag Team Championship against Owen Hart and a mystery partner. Hart refused to tell anyone the name of his partner, which left the Gunns uncertain who they would be facing and led to much speculation about the identity of the mystery partner.
Bret Hart and Bob Backlund began feuding the previous summer, when Hart defended the WWF Championship against Backlund. Backlund mistakenly thought he won the match and began celebrating, but Hart pinned him to retain the title. After the match, Backlund turned heel by attacking Hart. This led to a title match at Survivor Series 1994, in which Backlund won the title from Hart. Although Backlund soon lost the belt, the feud continued and Backlund attacked Hart during Hart's match at the Royal Rumble. This led to an "I Quit" match at WrestleMania.
Also at the Royal Rumble, The Undertaker faced Irwin R. Schyster as part of The Undertaker's feud with Ted DiBiase's Million Dollar Corporation. During the match, King Kong Bundy, another Corporation member, interfered and enabled the Corporation to steal The Undertaker's urn, which was said to be the source of his power.
== Event ==
In the opening match, The Allied Powers (Davey Boy Smith and Lex Luger) faced the Blu Brothers (Eli Blu and Jacob Blu). Smith started out on the offensive, but Jacob gained control with a running bulldog throw. The Blus capitalized on the fact that they are identical twins by switching places without tagging while the referee was not looking. Luger came into the match near the end and performed a running forearm smash on Eli. Jacob tried to throw Luger with a powerbomb, but Luger tagged in Smith, who performed a sunset flip to pin Jacob and win the match.
The second match pitted Razor Ramon, with the 1–2–3 Kid in his corner, against WWF Intercontinental Champion Jeff Jarrett, who had The Roadie in his corner. Ramon took control at the beginning of the match by using power moves against Jarrett. Jarrett tried to leave the match, but the 1–2–3 Kid forced him back into the ring. Jarrett took advantage of one of Ramon's mistakes to gain the advantage. He applied a sleeper hold on Ramon, who used his strength advantage to escape the move. After Ramon threw Jarrett, the Kid attempted to interfere but was kicked by Jarrett. Ramon jumped off the ropes to attack Jarrett, but Jarrett avoided the move and applied a figure four leglock on Ramon. Ramon reversed the move to place the pressure on Jarrett's legs. He then threw Jarrett to the mat with a suplex from the second rope and prepared to execute the Razor's Edge, his finishing move. The Roadie entered the ring and attacked Ramon, prompting the referee to disqualify Jarrett; because titles cannot change hands on a disqualification, Jarrett retained his championship.
In the next match, The Undertaker faced King Kong Bundy. Ted DiBiase was at ringside holding the urn that his wrestlers had stolen from The Undertaker. Larry Young, a legit American League umpire, was the special referee for the match. Young's storyline was as an out-of-work sports official because of the recently ended MLB Players Association strike and a lockout of the Major League Umpires Association umpires (which led to the eventual dissolution of the MLUA in 2000; prior to the new union, umpires were split by league). The Undertaker took control at the beginning of the match by jumping off the top rope and hitting Bundy. He then performed several clothesline attacks on Bundy. Bundy responded with a clothesline that knocked The Undertaker out of the ring. Seeing DiBiase close, The Undertaker took back his urn. After The Undertaker returned to the ring, DiBiase called Kama, another Corporation member, to the ring. Kama stole the urn, and Bundy attacked The Undertaker in order to let Kama escape backstage. Bundy picked The Undertaker up and powerslammed him to the mat. He then performed an Avalanche Splash to crush The Undertaker against the corner of the ring. The Undertaker was unharmed, however, and performed a powerslam and a clothesline on Bundy before pinning him to win the match.
The Smoking Gunns defended their WWF Tag Team Championship in the next match against Owen Hart and his mystery partner, who was revealed to be Yokozuna. The Gunns worked together to control the match at the beginning, but Yokozuna gained control by performing a leg drop on Billy Gunn. Hart attempted to perform a dropkick from the top rope but accidentally hit Yokozuna. The Gunns briefly took control until Yokozuna performed a belly to belly suplex and landed on Billy. He then performed a Banzai Drop, jumping from the second rope and sitting on Billy's chest. Hart tagged in and considered performing the Sharpshooter submission hold; instead, he pinned Billy Gunn to win the title belts for his team.
The next match, an "I Quit" match, took place between Bret Hart and Bob Backlund, with Roddy Piper as the guest referee. It was explained that, in order to win the match, a wrestler must force his opponent to say "I quit" into a microphone held by Piper. Hart attempted to perform the Sharpshooter early in the match; when Backlund blocked it, Hart executed a figure four leglock instead. Backlund escaped the hold and began trying to injure Hart's arm with an armbar hold. Hart then tried to attack Backlund in the corner of the ring, but Backlund moved and Hart hit his shoulder against the ring post. Backlund tried to perform the crossface chickenwing, his signature submission hold. Hart blocked him and performed the same hold on Backlund instead. Backlund made an unintelligible sound into the microphone, and Piper determined that he had submitted. As a result, the win was awarded to Bret Hart.
In the next match, which was for the WWF Championship, challenger Shawn Michaels was accompanied to the ring by Jenny McCarthy and Diesel, the champion, was escorted by Pamela Anderson. Michaels relied on his quickness in the opening stages, while Diesel used his strength advantage against Michaels. Diesel threw Michaels out of the ring and onto the arena floor, but Michaels later performed a clothesline that knocked Diesel out of the ring. Michaels capitalized on his advantage by performing several aerial moves, including a flying crossbody, flying bulldog throw, and a diving elbow drop. He was unable to pin Diesel, however, so he performed a sleeper hold to wear Diesel down. They brawled outside the ring, after which Michaels performed Sweet Chin Music, his finishing move, but Sid, Michaels's bodyguard, had the referee distracted and unable to count the pinfall. Diesel recovered and controlled the remainder of the match with power moves before throwing Michaels to the mat with a botched Jackknife and getting the pinfall victory.
The final bout of the event was the main event match between Bam Bam Bigelow and Lawrence Taylor. Bigelow was accompanied by the members of DiBiase's Million Dollar Corporation: King Kong Bundy, Tatanka, Irwin R. Schyster, Kama, and Nikolai Volkoff. To prevent the Corporation members from interfering, Taylor brought several football players: Ken Norton Jr., Chris Spielman, Rickey Jackson, Carl Banks, Reggie White, and Steve McMichael. Taylor gained the advantage early and performed a clothesline that knocked Bigelow out of the ring. Once he returned to the ring, Bigelow took control of the match by kicking Taylor repeatedly and performing a Boston crab submission hold to hurt Taylor's back. Taylor got out of the hold and threw Bigelow with a suplex. Bigelow recovered and performed several headbutts on Taylor before executing a moonsault flip to knock Taylor down to the mat. Taylor began to take control of the match again, but Bigelow kicked him in the back of the head and then performed a headbutt from the top rope. Bigelow was unable to pin Taylor, however. Taylor climbed to the second rope, jumped off, and used his forearm to hit Bigelow. He then covered Bigelow to win the match.
== Reception ==
The event was attended by 15,000 fans, who paid a total of $750,000 in admission fees. This was down from the previous year's attendance of 18,065, but the decline could be attributed to the smaller size of the venue for WrestleMania XI. The attendance figure was also lower than the following year's figure of 18,852 fans at WrestleMania XII. The pay-per-view buyrate for WrestleMania XI was 1.3, which was lower than the 1.68 buyrate for WrestleMania X but higher than the 1.2 buyrate for WrestleMania XII.
Writing for 411mania, columnist Dustin James rated the event as the seventeenth best of the first twenty-three WrestleManias. He stated that the event did not have any truly amazing matches but that Lawrence Taylor put on a solid performance. John Powell of SLAM! Wrestling rated the event as the worst WrestleMania of all time. The specific concerns he mentioned in his review are Diesel's championship reign and WWF allowing a football player to defeat a wrestler in what he describes as a "sham of a match". In contrast, Pro Wrestling Illustrated columnist Dave Rosenbaum stated that WrestleMania "saved" the WWF in its feud with rival World Championship Wrestling (WCW). He argued that Taylor "looked like a pro" and contributed to an "incredible" match. He also observed that the tag team matches helped rejuvenate an area of wrestling that had been suffering in the WWF and that the match between Michaels and Diesel was a candidate for match of the year. Bret Hart was critical about his match against Bob Backlund, claiming it was "probably my worst pay-per-view match I ever had".
== Aftermath ==
Shortly after WrestleMania, Diesel offered Shawn Michaels a rematch. Michaels blamed Sid for the loss and informed him that he would not be needed during the match. Sid got angry and attacked Michaels until Diesel saved him. Diesel and Michaels became allies once again, and they teamed up to win the WWF Tag Team Championship later that year. Diesel feuded with Sid and defeated him at the In Your House 1 and In Your House 2 pay-per-view events. The animosity lingered between Michaels and Sid, but they did not face each other to settle the feud until the September 11, 1995 episode of Monday Night Raw.
Bam Bam Bigelow was embarrassed after losing to Lawrence Taylor. To redeem himself, he challenged Diesel to a match for the WWF Championship. During the match, Tatanka turned on Bigelow and caused him to get pinned. Bigelow was kicked out of the Million Dollar Corporation and attacked by DiBiase's wrestlers. Diesel saved Bigelow from the attack, which led to a friendship being formed between the two. Bigelow defeated Tatanka in a dark match at In Your House 2. At King of the Ring 1995, Sid, DiBiase's latest addition to the Corporation, teamed with Tatanka in a loss to the team of Diesel and Bigelow.
Razor Ramon and the 1–2–3 Kid was scheduled to face Jeff Jarrett and The Roadie at In Your House 1 the month after WrestleMania. The Kid sustained a legit injury, however, and was unable to compete. As a result, Ramon wrestled a two-on-one handicap match against Jarrett and The Roadie instead. Ramon won the bout, but the feud continued. At In Your House 2, The Roadie faced the 1–2–3 Kid and defeated him. Ramon and Jarrett wrestled several times, and Ramon regained the Intercontinental Championship on May 19, 1995. He held the belt for three days before dropping it back to Jarrett.
After WrestleMania, Kama melted down The Undertaker's urn and made it into a necklace. The Undertaker defeated Kama in a dark match at In Your House 1, and again in a casket match at In Your House 2. He then won another casket match against Kama at SummerSlam 1995 to end the feud. The Undertaker was not able to recapture the remnants of the urn until he ended his feud with King Mabel in another Casket match. The Undertaker's streak of 21 consecutive WrestleMania victories was first acknowledged during his entrance for his encounter with King Kong Bundy by play-by-play commentator Vince McMahon, who stated, "The Undertaker, on his way to the ring—a man who's never lost at WrestleMania".
The Smoking Gunns were given a rematch for the WWF Tag Team Championship at In Your House 1. Hart pinned Bart Gunn to retain the championship for his team. Hart and Yokozuna then moved on to face other competition, and the Gunns did not become serious contenders for the title again until late in 1995 when they defeated Hart and Yokozuna to regain the championship.
Steve McMichael, who accompanied Lawrence Taylor, joined World Championship Wrestling (WCW) later in 1995 as a color commentator then eventually as an in-ring performer, joining the famous Four Horseman when he turned on and betrayed his tag team partner and former NFL star Kevin Greene at The Great American Bash '96 near the end of their tag team match against Ric Flair and Arn Anderson. Going by the name "Mongo" McMichael, he eventually went on to win the WCW United States Heavyweight Championship.
The WWF released the event on VHS in North America in 1995. The VHS version was then re-released on March 2, 1999. The event was also released on DVD in North America as part of the WrestleMania Complete Anthology boxed set on November 1, 2005. In the United Kingdom, the event was released on VHS on July 10, 1995. Packaged together with WrestleMania XII, it was then released on DVD in the United Kingdom as part of the WWE Tagged Classics line on August 7, 2006.
== Results == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_volcanoes | Lists of volcanoes | These lists cover volcanoes by type and by location.
== Type ==
Active volcano
List of crater lakes
List of extraterrestrial volcanoes
List of largest volcanic eruptions
List of shield volcanoes
List of stratovolcanoes
List of volcanoes by elevation
== Location ==
=== Africa ===
=== Americas ===
=== Asia ===
=== Europe ===
=== Oceania, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and Antarctica === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wizard_of_Earthsea | A Wizard of Earthsea | A Wizard of Earthsea is a fantasy novel written by American author Ursula K. Le Guin and first published by the small press Parnassus in 1968. It is regarded as a classic of children's literature and of fantasy, within which it is widely influential. The story is set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea and centers on a young mage named Ged, born in a village on the island of Gont. He displays great power while still a boy and joins a school of wizardry, where his prickly nature drives him into conflict with a fellow student. During a magical duel, Ged's spell goes awry and releases a shadow creature that attacks him. The novel follows Ged's journey as he seeks to be free of the creature.
The book has often been described as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, as it explores Ged's process of learning to cope with power and come to terms with death. The novel also carries Taoist themes about a fundamental balance in the universe of Earthsea, which wizards are supposed to maintain, closely tied to the idea that language and names have power to affect the material world and alter this balance. The structure of the story is similar to that of a traditional epic, although critics have also described it as subverting this genre in many ways, such as by making the protagonist dark-skinned in contrast to more typical white-skinned heroes.
A Wizard of Earthsea received highly positive reviews, initially as a work for children and later among a general audience. It won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award in 1969 and was one of the final recipients of the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979. Margaret Atwood called it one of the "wellsprings" of fantasy literature. Le Guin wrote five subsequent books that are collectively referred to as the Earthsea Cycle, together with A Wizard of Earthsea: The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), Tehanu (1990), The Other Wind (2001), and Tales from Earthsea (2001). George Slusser described the series as a "work of high style and imagination", while Amanda Craig said that A Wizard of Earthsea was "the most thrilling, wise, and beautiful children's novel ever".
== Background ==
Early concepts for the Earthsea setting were developed in two short stories, "The Rule of Names" (1964) and "The Word of Unbinding" (1964), both published in Fantastic. The stories were later collected in Le Guin's anthology The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975). Earthsea was also used as the setting for a story she wrote in 1965 or 1966, which was never published. In 1967, Herman Schein (the publisher of Parnassus Press and the husband of Ruth Robbins, the illustrator of the book) asked Le Guin to try writing a book "for older kids", giving her complete freedom over the subject and the approach. She had no previous experience specifically with the genre of young adult literature, which rose in prominence during the late 1960s. Drawing from her short stories, she began work on A Wizard of Earthsea. She has said that the book was in part a response to the image of wizards as ancient and wise, and to wondering where they come from. She later said that she chose the medium of fantasy, and the theme of coming of age, with her intended adolescent audience in mind.
The short stories published in 1964 introduced the world of Earthsea and important concepts in it, such as Le Guin's treatment of magic. "The Rule of Names" also introduced Yevaud, a dragon who features briefly in A Wizard of Earthsea. Her depiction of Earthsea was influenced by her familiarity with Native American legends as well as Norse mythology. Her knowledge of myths and legends, as well as her familial interest in anthropology, have been described by scholar Donna White as allowing her to create "entire cultures" for the islands of Earthsea. The influence of Norse lore in particular can be seen in the characters of the Kargs, who are blonde and blue-eyed, and worship two gods who are brothers. The influence of Taoist thought on Le Guin's writing is also visible in the idea of a cosmic "balance".
== Book ==
=== Setting ===
Earthsea is an archipelago. In the fictional history of this world, the islands were raised from the ocean by a being called Segoy. The world is inhabited by both humans and dragons, and most or all humans have some innate magical gift, some are more gifted sorcerers or wizards. The world is shown as being based on a delicate balance, which most of its inhabitants are aware of, but which is disrupted by somebody in each of the original trilogy of novels. Earthsea is pre-industrial and has diverse cultures within the widespread archipelago. Most of the characters are of the Hardic peoples, who are dark-skinned, and who populate most of the islands. Four large eastern islands are inhabited by the white-skinned Kargish people, who despise magic and see the Hardic folk as evil sorcerers: the Kargs, in turn, are viewed by the Hardic people as barbarians. The far western regions of the archipelago are the realm of the dragons.
=== Plot summary ===
The novel follows a young boy called Duny, nicknamed "Sparrowhawk", born on the island of Gont. Discovering that the boy has great innate power, his aunt, a witch, teaches him the little magic she knows. When his village is attacked by Kargish raiders, Duny summons a fog to conceal the village and its inhabitants, enabling the residents to drive off the Kargs. Hearing of this, the powerful mage Ogion takes him as an apprentice, later revealing Duny's "true name"—Ged. Ogion tries to teach Ged about the "equilibrium", the concept that magic can upset the natural order of the world if used improperly. In an attempt to impress a girl, however, Ged searches Ogion's spell books and inadvertently summons a strange shadow, which has to be banished by Ogion. Sensing Ged's eagerness to act and impatience with his slow teaching methods, Ogion asks if he would rather go to the renowned school for wizards on the island of Roke. Ged loves Ogion, but decides to go to the school.
At the school, Ged meets Jasper, and is immediately on bad terms with him. He is befriended by an older student named Vetch, but generally remains aloof from anyone else. Ged's skills inspire admiration from teachers and students alike. He finds a small creature—an otak, named Hoeg, and keeps it as a pet. During a festival, Jasper acts condescendingly towards Ged, provoking the latter's proud nature. Ged challenges him to a duel of magic, and casts a powerful spell intended to raise the spirit of a legendary dead woman. The spell goes awry and instead releases a shadow creature, which attacks him and scars his face. The Archmage Nemmerle drives the shadow away, but at the cost of his life.
Ged spends many months healing before resuming his studies. The new Archmage, Gensher, describes the shadow as an ancient evil that wishes to possess Ged, and warns him that the creature has no name. Ged eventually graduates and receives his wizard's staff. He then takes up residence in the Ninety Isles, providing the poor villagers protection from the dragons that have seized and taken up residence on the nearby island of Pendor, but discovers that he is still being sought by the shadow. Knowing that he cannot guard against both threats at the same time, he sails to Pendor and gambles his life on a guess of the adult dragon's true name. When he is proved right, the dragon offers to tell him the name of the shadow, but Ged instead extracts a promise that the dragon and his offspring will never threaten the archipelago.
Chased by the shadow, Ged flees to Osskil, having heard of the stone of the Terrenon. He is attacked by the shadow, and barely escapes into the Court of Terrenon. Serret, the lady of the castle, and the same girl that Ged had tried to impress, shows him the stone, and urges Ged to speak to it, claiming it can give him limitless knowledge and power. Recognizing that the stone harbors one of the Old Powers—ancient, powerful, malevolent beings—Ged refuses. He flees and is pursued by the stone's minions, but transforms into a swift falcon and escapes as Serret, having taken the form of a gull, is killed. Ged also loses his otak to the shadow.
Ged flies back to Ogion on Gont. Unlike Gensher, Ogion insists that all creatures have a name and advises Ged to confront the shadow. Ogion is proved right; when Ged seeks out the shadow, it flees from him. Ged pursues it in a small sailboat, until it lures him into a fog where the boat is wrecked on a reef. Ged recovers with the help of an elderly pair marooned on a small island since they were children; the woman gives Ged part of a broken bracelet as a gift. Ged patches his boat and resumes his pursuit of the creature into the East Reach. On the island of Iffish, he meets his friend Vetch, who insists on joining him. They journey east far beyond the last known lands before they finally come upon the shadow. Naming it with his own name, Ged merges with it and joyfully tells Vetch he is healed and whole.
=== Illustrations ===
The first edition of the book, published in 1968, was illustrated by Ruth Robbins. The cover illustration was in color, and the interior of the book contained a map of the archipelago of Earthsea. In addition, each chapter had a black-and-white illustration by Robbins, similar to a woodcut image. The images represented topics from each chapter; for instance, the very first image depicted the island of Gont, while the illustration for the chapter "The Dragon of Pendor" pictured a flying dragon. The image shown here depicts Ged sailing in his boat Lookfar, and was used in the 10th chapter, "The Open Sea", in which Ged and Vetch travel from Iffish eastward past all known lands to confront the shadow creature.
=== Publication ===
A Wizard of Earthsea was first published in 1968 by Parnassus Press in Berkeley, a year before The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin's watershed work. It was a personal landmark for Le Guin, as it represented her first attempt at writing for children; she had written only a handful of other novels and short stories prior to its publication. The book was also her first attempt at writing fantasy, rather than science fiction. A Wizard of Earthsea was the first of Le Guin's books to receive widespread critical attention, and has been described as her best known work, as part of the Earthsea series. The book has been released in numerous editions, including an illustrated Folio Society edition released in 2015. It was also translated into a number of other languages. An omnibus edition of all of Le Guin's Earthsea works was released on the 50th anniversary of the publication of A Wizard of Earthsea in 2018.
Le Guin originally intended for A Wizard of Earthsea to be a standalone novel, but decided to write a sequel after considering the loose ends in the first book, and The Tombs of Atuan was released in 1971. The Farthest Shore was written as a third volume after further consideration, and was published in 1972. The Tombs of Atuan tells of the story of Ged's attempt to make whole the ring of Erreth Akbe, half of which is buried in the tombs of Atuan in the Kargish lands, from where he must steal it. There, he meets the child priestess Tenar, on whom the book focuses. In The Farthest Shore, Ged, who has become Archmage, tries to combat a dwindling of magic across Earthsea, accompanied by Arren, a young prince. The first three books are together seen as the "original trilogy"; in each of these, Ged is shown as trying to heal some imbalance in the world. They were followed by Tehanu (1990), Tales from Earthsea (2001), and The Other Wind (2001), which are sometimes referred to as the "second trilogy".
== Reception ==
=== As children's literature ===
Initial recognition for the book was from children's-book critics, among whom it garnered acclaim. A Wizard of Earthsea received an even more positive response in the United Kingdom when it was released there in 1971, which, according to White, reflected the greater admiration of British critics for children's fantasy. In her 1975 annotated collection Fantasy for Children, British critic Naomi Lewis described it in the following terms: "[It is not] the easiest book for casual browsing, but readers who take the step will find themselves in one of the most important works of fantasy of our time." Similarly, literary scholar Margaret Esmonde wrote in 1981 that "Le Guin has ... enriched children's literature with what may be its finest high fantasy", while a review in The Guardian by author and journalist Amanda Craig said it was "The most thrilling, wise and beautiful children's novel ever, [written] in prose as taut and clean as a ship's sail."
In discussing the book for a gathering of children's librarians, Eleanor Cameron praised the world building in the story, saying "it is as if [Le Guin] herself has lived on the archipelago." Author David Mitchell called the titular character Ged a "superb creation", and argued that he was a more relatable wizard than those featured in prominent works of fantasy at the time. According to him, characters such as Gandalf were "variants on the archetype of Merlin, a Caucasian scholarly aristocrat amongst sorcerers" with little room to grow, whereas Ged developed as a character through his story. Mitchell also praised the other characters in the story, who he said seemed to have a "fully thought-out inner life" despite being fleeting presences. The 1995 Encyclopedia of Science Fiction said that the Earthsea books had been considered the finest science fiction books for children in the post-World War II period.
=== As fantasy ===
Commentators have noted that the Earthsea novels in general received less critical attention because they were considered children's books. Le Guin herself took exception to this treatment of children's literature, describing it as "adult chauvinist piggery". In 1976, literary scholar George Slusser criticized the "silly publication classification designating the original series as 'children's literature'". Barbara Bucknall stated that "Le Guin was not writing for young children when she wrote these fantasies, nor yet for adults. She was writing for 'older kids.' But in fact she can be read, like Tolkien, by ten-year-olds and by adults. These stories are ageless because they deal with problems that confront us at any age." Only in later years did A Wizard of Earthsea receive attention from a more general audience. Literary scholar Tom Shippey was among the first to treat A Wizard of Earthsea as serious literature, assuming in his analysis of the volume that it belonged alongside works by C. S. Lewis and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others. Margaret Atwood said that she saw the book as "a fantasy book for adults", and added that the book could be categorized as either young adult fiction or as fantasy, but since it dealt with themes such as "life and mortality and who are we as human beings", it could be read and enjoyed by anybody older than twelve. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction echoed this view, saying the series's appeal went "far beyond" the young adults for whom it was written. It went on to praise the book as "austere but vivid", and said the series was more thoughtful than the Narnia books by C. S. Lewis.
In his 1980 history of fantasy, Brian Attebery called the Earthsea trilogy "the most challenging and richest American fantasy to date". Slusser described the Earthsea cycle as a "work of high style and imagination", and the original trilogy of books a product of "genuine epic vision". In 1974, critic Robert Scholes compared Le Guin's work favorably to that of C. S. Lewis, saying, "Where C. S. Lewis worked out a specifically Christian set of values, Ursula LeGuin works not with a theology but with an ecology, a cosmology, a reverence for the universe as a self-regulating structure." He added that Le Guin's three Earthsea novels were themselves a sufficient legacy for anybody to leave. In 2014, David Pringle called it "a beautiful story—poetic, thrilling, and profound".
=== Accolades ===
A Wizard of Earthsea won or contributed to several awards for Le Guin. It won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award in 1969, and was one of the last winners of the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award ten years later. In 1984 it won the Złota Sepulka or the "Golden Sepulka" in Poland. In 2000 Le Guin was given the Margaret A. Edwards Award by the American Library Association for young adult literature. The award cited six of her works, including the first four Earthsea volumes, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Beginning Place. A 1987 poll in Locus ranked A Wizard of Earthsea third among "All-Time Best Fantasy Novels", while in 2014 Pringle listed it at number 39 in his list of the 100 best novels in modern fantasy.
=== Influence ===
The book has been seen as widely influential within the genre of fantasy. Margaret Atwood has called A Wizard of Earthsea one of the "wellsprings" of fantasy literature. The book has been compared to major works of high fantasy such as J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The notion that names can exert power is also present in Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 film Spirited Away; critics have suggested that that idea originated with Le Guin's Earthsea series. Novelist David Mitchell, author of books such as Cloud Atlas, described A Wizard of Earthsea as having a strong influence on him, and said that he felt a desire to "wield words with the same power as Ursula Le Guin".
Modern writers have credited A Wizard of Earthsea for introducing the idea of a "wizard school", which would later be made famous by the Harry Potter series of books, and with popularizing the trope of a boy wizard, also present in Harry Potter. Reviewers have also commented that the basic premise of A Wizard of Earthsea, that of a talented boy going to a wizard's school and making an enemy with whom he has a close connection, is also the premise of Harry Potter. Ged also receives a facial scar from the shadow, as Harry Potter does from Voldemort. Commenting on the similarity, Le Guin said that she did not feel that J. K. Rowling "ripped her off", but that Rowling's books received too much praise for supposed originality, and that Rowling "could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn't one of them. That hurt."
== Themes ==
=== Coming of age ===
A Wizard of Earthsea focuses on Ged's adolescence and coming of age, and along with the other two works of the original Earthsea trilogy forms a part of Le Guin's dynamic portrayal of the process of growing old. The three novels together follow Ged from youth to old age, and each of them also follow the coming of age of a different character. The novel is frequently described as a Bildungsroman. Scholar Mike Cadden stated that the book is a convincing tale "to a reader as young and possibly as headstrong as Ged, and therefore sympathetic to him". Ged's coming of age is also intertwined with the physical journey he undertakes through the novel.
Ged is depicted as proud and yet unsure of himself in multiple situations: early in his apprenticeship he believes Ogion to be mocking him, and later, at Roke, feels put upon by Jasper. In both cases, he believes that others do not appreciate his greatness, and Le Guin's sympathetic narration does not immediately contradict this belief. Cadden writes that Le Guin allows young readers to sympathize with Ged, and only gradually realize that there is a price to be paid for his actions, as he learns to discipline his magical powers. Similarly, as Ged begins his apprenticeship with Ogion, he imagines that he will be taught mysterious aspects of wizardry, and has visions of transforming himself into other creatures, but gradually comes to see that Ogion's important lessons are those about his own self.
The passage at the end of the novel, wherein Ged finally accepts the shadow as a part of himself and is thus released from its terror, has been pointed to by reviewers as a rite of passage. Jeanne Walker, for example, wrote that the rite of passage at the end was an analogue for the entire plot of A Wizard of Earthsea, and that the plot itself plays the role of a rite of passage for an adolescent reader. Walker goes on to say, "The entire action of A Wizard of Earthsea ... portrays the hero's slow realization of what it means to be an individual in society and a self in relation to higher powers." Many readers and critics have commented on similarities between Ged's process of growing up and ideas in Jungian psychology. The young Ged has a scary encounter with a shadow creature, which he later realizes is the dark side of himself. It is only after he recognizes and merges with the shadow that he becomes a whole person. Le Guin said that she had never read Jung before writing the Earthsea novels.
Le Guin described coming of age as the main theme of the book, and wrote in a 1973 essay that she chose that theme since she was writing for an adolescent audience. She stated that "Coming of age ... is a process that took me many years; I finished it, so far as I ever will, at about age thirty-one; and so I feel rather deeply about it. So do most adolescents. It's their main occupation, in fact." She also said that fantasy was best suited as a medium for describing coming of age, because exploring the subconscious was difficult using the language of "rational daily life". The coming of age that Le Guin focused on included not just psychological development, but moral changes as well. Ged needs to recognize the balance between his power and his responsibility to use it well, a recognition which comes as he travels to the stone of Terrenon and sees the temptation that that power represents.
=== Equilibrium and Taoist themes ===
The world of Earthsea is depicted as being based on a delicate balance, which most of its inhabitants are aware of, but which is disrupted by somebody in each of the original trilogy of novels. This includes an equilibrium between land and sea (implicit in the name Earthsea), and between people and their natural environment. In addition to physical equilibrium, there is a larger cosmic equilibrium, which everybody is aware of, and which wizards are tasked with maintaining. Describing this aspect of Earthsea, Elizabeth Cummins wrote, "The principle of balanced powers, the recognition that every act affects self, society, world, and cosmos, is both a physical and a moral principle of Le Guin's fantasy world." The concept of balance is related to the novel's other major theme of coming of age, as Ged's knowledge of the consequences of his own actions for good or ill is necessary for him to understand how the balance is maintained. While at the school of Roke, the Master Hand tells him: But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
The influence of Taoism on Le Guin's writing is evident through much of the book, especially in her depiction of the "balance". At the end of the novel, Ged may be seen to embody the Taoist way of life, as he has learned not to act unless absolutely necessary. He has also learned that seeming opposites, like light and dark or good and evil, are actually interdependent. Light and dark themselves are recurring images within the story. Reviewers have identified this belief as evidence of a conservative ideology within the story, shared with much of fantasy. In emphasizing concerns over balance and equilibrium, scholars have argued, Le Guin essentially justifies the status quo, which wizards strive to maintain. This tendency is in contrast to Le Guin's science fiction writing, in which change is shown to have value.
The nature of human evil forms a significant related theme through A Wizard of Earthsea as well as the other Earthsea novels. As with other works by Le Guin, evil is shown as a misunderstanding of the balance of life. Ged is born with great power in him, but the pride that he takes in his power leads to his downfall; he tries to demonstrate his strength by bringing a spirit back from the dead, and in performing this act against the laws of nature, releases the shadow that attacks him. Slusser suggests that although he is provoked into performing dangerous spells first by the girl on Gont and then by Jasper, this provocation exists in Ged's mind. He is shown as unwilling to look within himself and see the pride that drives him to do what he does. When he accepts the shadow into himself, he also finally accepts responsibility for his own actions, and by accepting his own mortality he is able to free himself. His companion Vetch describes the moment by saying that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.
Thus, although there are several dark powers in Earthsea (like the stone of Terrenon and the Nameless Ones of Atuan), the true evil was not one of these powers, or even death, but Ged's actions that went against the balance of nature. This is contrary to conventional Western and Christian storytelling, in which light and darkness are often considered opposites, and are seen as symbolizing good and evil, which are constantly in conflict. On two different occasions, Ged is tempted to try to defy death and evil, but eventually learns that neither can be eliminated: instead, he chooses not to serve evil, and stops denying death.
=== True names ===
In Le Guin's fictional universe, to know the true name of an object or a person is to have power over it. Each child is given a true name when they reach puberty, a name which they share only with close friends. Several of the dragons in the later Earthsea novels, like Orm Embar and Kalessin, are shown as living openly with their names, which do not give anybody power over them. In A Wizard of Earthsea, however, Ged is shown to have power over Yevaud. Cadden writes that this is because Yevaud still has attachment to riches and material possessions, and is thus bound by the power of his name. Wizards exert their influence over the equilibrium through the use of names, thus linking this theme to Le Guin's depiction of a cosmic balance. According to Cummins, this is Le Guin's way of demonstrating the power of language in shaping reality. Since language is the tool we use for communicating about the environment, she argues that it also allows humans to affect the environment, and the wizards' power to use names symbolizes this. Cummins went on to draw an analogy between the wizards' use of names to change things with the creative use of words in fictional writing. Shippey wrote that Earthsea magic seems to work through what he called the "Rumpelstiltskin theory", in which names have power. He argued that this portrayal was part of Le Guin's effort to emphasize the power of words over objects, which, according to Shippey, was in contrast to the ideology of other writers, such as James Frazer in The Golden Bough. Esmonde argued that each of the first three Earthsea books hinged on an act of trust. In A Wizard of Earthsea, Vetch trusts Ged with his true name when the latter is at his lowest ebb emotionally, thus giving Ged complete power over him. Ged later offers Tenar the same gift in The Tombs of Atuan, thereby allowing her to learn trust.
== Style and structure ==
=== Language and mood ===
A Wizard of Earthsea and other novels of the Earthsea cycle differ notably from Le Guin's early Hainish cycle works, although they were written at a similar time. George Slusser described the Earthsea works as providing a counterweight to the "excessive pessimism" of the Hainish novels. He saw the former as depicting individual action in a favorable light, in contrast to works such as "Vaster than Empires and More Slow". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction said the book was pervaded by a "grave joyfulness". In discussing the style of her fantasy works, Le Guin herself said that in fantasy it was necessary to be clear and direct with language, because there is no known framework for the reader's mind to rest upon.
The story often appears to assume that readers are familiar with the geography and history of Earthsea, a technique which allowed Le Guin to avoid exposition: a reviewer wrote that this method "gives Le Guin's world the mysterious depths of Tolkien's, but without his tiresome back-stories and versifying". In keeping with the notion of an epic, the narration switches from looking ahead into Ged's future and looking back into the past of Earthsea. At the same time, Slusser described the mood of the novel as "strange and dreamlike", fluctuating between objective reality and the thoughts in Ged's mind; some of Ged's adversaries are real, while others are phantoms. This narrative technique, which Cadden characterizes as "free indirect discourse", makes the narrator of the book seem sympathetic to the protagonist, and does not distance his thoughts from the reader.
=== Myth and epic ===
A Wizard of Earthsea has strong elements of an epic; for instance, Ged's place in Earthsea history is described at the very beginning of the book in the following terms: "some say the greatest, and surely the greatest voyager, was the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his day became both dragonlord and Archmage." The story also begins with words from the Earthsea song "The Creation of Éa", which forms a ritualistic beginning to the book. The teller of the story then goes on to say that it is from Ged's youth, thereby establishing context for the rest of the book. In comparison with the protagonists of many of Le Guin's other works, Ged is superficially a typical hero, a mage who sets out on a quest. Reviewers have compared A Wizard of Earthsea to epics such as Beowulf. Scholar Virginia White argued that the story followed a structure common to epics in which the protagonist begins an adventure, faces trials along the way, and eventually returns in triumph. White went on to suggest that this structure can be seen in the series as a whole, as well as in the individual volumes.
Le Guin subverted many of the tropes typical to such "monomyths"; the protagonists of her story were all dark-skinned, in comparison to the white-skinned heroes more traditionally used; the Kargish antagonists, in contrast, were white-skinned, a switching of race roles that has been remarked upon by multiple critics. Critics have also cited her use of characters from multiple class backgrounds as a choice subversive to conventional Western fantasy. At the same time, reviewers questioned Le Guin's treatment of gender in A Wizard of Earthsea, and the original trilogy as a whole. Le Guin, who later became known as a feminist, chose to restrict the use of magic to men and boys in the first volume of Earthsea. Initial critical reactions to A Wizard of Earthsea saw Ged's gender as incidental. In contrast, The Tombs of Atuan saw Le Guin intentionally tell a female coming-of-age story, which was nonetheless described as perpetuating a male-dominated model of Earthsea. Tehanu (1990), published as the fourth volume of Earthsea 18 years after the third, has been described both by Le Guin and her commentators as a feminist re-imagining of the series, in which the power and status of the chief characters are reversed, and the patriarchal social structure questioned. Commenting in 1993, Le Guin wrote that she could not continue [Earthsea after 1972] until she had "wrestled with the angels of the feminist consciousness".
Several critics have argued that by combining elements of epic, Bildungsroman, and young adult fiction, Le Guin succeeded in blurring the boundaries of conventional genres. In a 1975 commentary Francis Molson argued that the series should be referred to as "ethical fantasy", a term which acknowledged that the story did not always follow the tropes of heroic fantasy, and the moral questions that it raised. The term did not become popular. A similar argument was made by children's literature critic Cordelia Sherman in 1985; she argued that A Wizard of Earthsea and the rest of the series sought "to teach children by dramatic example what it means to be a good adult".
== Adaptations ==
A condensed, illustrated version of the first chapter was printed by World Book in the third volume of Childcraft in 1989. Multiple audio versions of the book have been released. BBC Radio produced a radioplay version in 1996 narrated by Judi Dench, and a six-part series adapting the Earthsea novels in 2015, broadcast on Radio 4 Extra. In 2011, the work was produced as an unabridged recording performed by Robert Inglis.
Two screen adaptations of the story have also been produced. An original mini-series titled Legend of Earthsea was broadcast in 2004 on the Sci Fi Channel. It is based very loosely on A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan. In an article published in Salon, Le Guin expressed strong displeasure at the result. She stated that by casting a "petulant white kid" as Ged (who has red-brown skin in the book) the series "whitewashed Earthsea", and had ignored her choice to write the story of a non-white character, a choice she said was central to the book. This sentiment was shared by a review in The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy, which said that Legend of Earthsea "totally missed the point" of Le Guin's novels, "ripping out all the subtlety, nuance and beauty of the books and inserting boring cliches, painful stereotypes and a very unwelcome 'epic' war in their place".
Studio Ghibli released an adaptation of the series in 2006 titled Tales from Earthsea. The film very loosely combines elements of the first, third, and fourth books into a new story. Le Guin commented with displeasure on the film-making process, saying that she had acquiesced to the adaptation believing Hayao Miyazaki would be producing the film himself, which was eventually not the case. Le Guin praised the imagery of the film, but disliked the use of violence. She also expressed dissatisfaction with the portrayal of morality, and in particular the use of a villain who could be slain as a means of resolving conflict, which she said was antithetical to the message of the book. The film received generally mixed responses. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#Presidents | List of presidents of the United States#Presidents | The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States, indirectly elected to a four-year term via the Electoral College. Under the U.S. Constitution, the officeholder leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.
The first president, George Washington, won a unanimous vote of the Electoral College. The incumbent president is Donald Trump, who assumed office on January 20, 2025. Since the office was established in 1789, 45 men have served in 47 presidencies. The discrepancy is due to the nonconsecutive terms of Grover Cleveland (counted as the 22nd and 24th president) and Trump (counted as the 45th and 47th president).
The presidency of William Henry Harrison, who died 31 days after taking office in 1841, was the shortest in American history. Franklin D. Roosevelt served the longest, over twelve years, before dying early in his fourth term in 1945. He is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms. Since the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1951, no person may be elected president more than twice, and no one who has served more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected may be elected more than once.
Four presidents died in office of natural causes (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt), four were assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy), and one resigned (Richard Nixon, facing impeachment and removal from office). John Tyler was the first vice president to assume the presidency during a presidential term, setting the precedent that a vice president who does so becomes the fully functioning president with a new, distinct administration.
Throughout most of its history, American politics has been dominated by political parties. The Constitution is silent on the issue of political parties, and at the time it came into force in 1789, no organized parties existed. Soon after the 1st Congress convened, political factions began rallying around dominant Washington administration officials, such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Concerned about the capacity of political parties to destroy the fragile unity holding the nation together, Washington remained unaffiliated with any political faction or party throughout his eight-year presidency. He remains the only U.S. president who never affiliated with a political party.
== Presidents == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Marvel_vs._Capcom_3 | Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 | Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a 2011 crossover fighting game developed by Capcom in collaboration with Eighting. It is an updated version of Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. The game features characters from both Capcom's video game franchises and comic book series published by Marvel Comics. It was originally released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in November 2011, then as a launch title for the PlayStation Vita in 2012, and later re-released on PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One.
In Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, players select a team of three characters to engage in combat and attempt to knock out their opponents. As an update, the game utilizes largely identical gameplay mechanics to the original. However, both the aerial combat and X-Factor systems, introduced in Fate of Two Worlds, have received adjustments. In addition to gameplay modifications and new playable characters, the game features several aesthetic changes.
After the events of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disrupted the development schedule for downloadable content for Fate of Two Worlds, the additional content was created into a standalone title, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, for a discounted retail price. The game received generally positive reviews upon release; critics praised the expanded character roster and improved online experience, but criticized the lack of new features and game modes. A sequel, titled Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, was released in 2017.
== Gameplay ==
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is an updated version of Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, an arcade-style fighting game, and changes little from the basic gameplay of the original. Players select teams of three different characters to engage in one-on-one combat. The game utilizes the same tag team-based fighting mechanics as its predecessors; players may choose to swap between their characters at any point during a match. Players must use the various attacks in their arsenal, such as character assists, special moves, and hyper combos, to exhaust their opponent's life gauge and defeat the entire enemy team, or have the most cumulative health when time runs out. While the core mechanics remain the same, a number of aesthetic changes have been made in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, with a stronger emphasis on the comic book motif. The HUD, character selection, and stage selection screens have been redesigned. In addition, many returning characters receive balancing changes, which include new moves and animation tweaks.
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 uses the same simplified, three-button control scheme of undefined light, medium, and heavy attacks introduced in Fate of Two Worlds. The "exchange button", used to launch opponents into the air and switch between characters while performing air combos, returns. The aerial exchange feature has been altered in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3; players can either remove meter from their opponent's Hyper Combo gauge, add meter to their own gauge, or simply deal more damage. The "X-Factor" mechanic, which grants increased damage output, speed, and health regeneration for a limited time, also reappears from Fate of Two Worlds. In Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the attack and speed boosts for each character while using X-Factor have been adjusted. X-Factor can now be used while in the air, as opposed to the previous game, in which activation was restricted to characters on the ground.
=== Modes ===
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 includes several game modes from the original, including Arcade Mode, where the player fights against AI-controlled opponents to reach the final boss character, Galactus; Versus Mode, where two players engage in combat; Mission Mode, which includes a series of trials for each playable character; and Training Mode. "Heroes and Heralds" is a free downloadable single-player and multiplayer team-based mode where players earn new abilities with upgrade cards, customize their characters with new powers, and compete in factions as either the heroes defending Earth or as one of Galactus' Heralds. The "ability cards", which feature various characters from the Marvel and Capcom universes, unlock special power-ups, such as invisibility and projectile invincibility, for use during mode-specific combat. Up to three different cards may be equipped at once, with more than 100 cards available to collect. A new offline mode, called "Galactus Mode", allows players to fight as Galactus against AI-controlled opponents.
An optimized netcode is present in the game, providing smoother online play compared to Fate of Two Worlds. A new spectator mode allows up to six players to watch online matches between other players. Rematch features and leaderboard functionality have also been improved to enhance the game's online experience.
=== Playable characters ===
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 features the original 36 characters from Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and introduces 12 new playable fighters. Jill Valentine and Shuma-Gorath, the two characters released as downloadable content (DLC) for the previous game, remained available for download, up until all DLC for the game was removed from online stores in December 2013; they are included in the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC re-releases. Characters added to Ultimate are marked in bold.
==== Marvel characters ====
==== Capcom characters ====
== Development ==
On July 20, 2011, at San Diego Comic-Con, Capcom announced that an updated version of Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds was under development. The update, titled Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, would add new characters, stages, modes, and other enhancements to improve the game's balance and online functionality. According to Capcom, many new features and refinements, such as the addition of a spectator mode and tweaks to X-Factor, were the results of fan feedback. At the 2011 Tokyo Game Show, Capcom video game producer, Yoshinori Ono, would later announce that the game would also be released as a launch title for the PlayStation Vita. The handheld edition promised to contain the same content as the console versions, in addition to touchscreen control support.
After the release of Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, the game's development team had plans to release more downloadable content. However, after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, in addition to staff health issues, delayed the development schedule, producer Ryota Niitsuma and his team decided to release the proposed DLC, along with rebalanced gameplay and other additions, as a separate installment. As a result, the makeup of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is split "about half and half" between DLC meant for Fate of Two Worlds and brand new content.
Character selection was a collaborative process between Capcom and Marvel. According to Seth Killian, a former community manager for Capcom, Marvel presented a list of their own characters that they were interested in seeing in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Capcom then provided input regarding moveset possibilities in order to reach a consensus. Each company also had their own set of interests and priorities. Marvel characters, such as Rocket Raccoon and Nova, were chosen to cross-promote upcoming products. On the other hand, Capcom sought to bring more diversity into the cast. For example, Capcom wanted a monster-like character that could fight while in the air, leading to the inclusion of Firebrand.
== Release ==
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 15, 2011, in North America, November 17 in Japan, and November 18 in Europe. The PlayStation Vita version was released on December 17, 2011, in Japan, and February 22, 2012, in North America and Europe. People who ordered the PlayStation Vita "First Edition" bundle in North America were able to receive an early copy of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on February 15, 2012, one week ahead of the console's official launch date.
To promote Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, special retailer-exclusive costume packs were available as pre-order bonuses. If the game was pre-ordered from GameStop, the players received the Femme Fatale Pack (Chun-Li, Morrigan, Storm, X-23). Amazon offered the New Age of Heroes Costume Pack (Akuma, Doctor Doom, Sentinel, Strider Hiryu), while Best Buy gave access to the Villains Costume Pack (C. Viper, M.O.D.O.K., Super-Skrull, Wesker). After the game's launch, several other costume packs became available for purchase on specific dates through the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network. The Ancient Warriors Costume Pack, consisting of Arthur, Firebrand, Hulk, and Magneto, was originally planned to be released on December 20, 2011, but, on December 19, Capcom announced that the pack would be delayed until March 6 following year, due to existing controversy with Magneto's alternate costume. The costume in question, which was based on Magneto's appearance in Marvel's House of M series, bore similarities to the attire of the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, and was later removed from the pack.
Prior to the release of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, both Capcom and Marvel announced that the game would include reversible packaging. The front cover art featured the work of Capcom illustrator Shinkiro, while the reverse side featured the art of Marvel Comics' Mark Brooks. Brook's alternate cover featured all twelve of the game's new characters in his own comic book style. Both pieces of art were printed on a single reversible cover for the entire first run of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in North America.
On December 13, 2013, Capcom announced that digital versions of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and its DLC would be removed from online platforms towards the end of the month, following the apparent expiration of Capcom's licensing contracts with Marvel Comics. The game was pulled from the PlayStation Network on December 17 and 19 in North America and Europe, respectively, and from the Xbox Live Arcade on December 26.
Later, on December 3, 2016, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was re-released digitally for the PlayStation 4, coinciding with the announcement of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite; digital re-releases for Windows and Xbox One were released on March 7, 2017. These versions included all previously released downloadable content, including Jill Valentine and Shuma-Gorath, a new gallery mode containing artwork from Marvel vs. Capcom: Official Complete Works, and an improved 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second. Physical copies of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions were made available for a limited time through GameStop and EB Games. The physical editions included updated cover art and an exclusive 10-page comic book featuring the artwork of Marvel Comics' Sean Chen and Gerardo Sandoval.
== Reception ==
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was released to generally favorable reviews, garnering scores of 80/100 and 79/100 from Metacritic for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, respectively. The PlayStation Vita version received a score of 80/100 from Metacritic.
The game received praise for addressing several gameplay issues prevalent in Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and refining the online experience. Daniel Maniago of G4 praised the game for its "simple, yet deep gameplay", character roster, and improved online features. 1UP.com's Neidel Crisan cited the game as a major improvement over the original. GameSpot's Maxwell McGee stated that Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was unquestionably the superior version, highlighting the series' "unique blend of structured insanity".
A common criticism amongst reviewers for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was the lack of additional on-disc content beyond the expanded character roster and gameplay tweaks. While IGN's Steven Hopper praised the inclusion of new characters, he criticized the lack of new features and modes. As a result, he stated that the game's US$40 price tag was "a little hard to swallow". Tim Turi of Game Informer stated that while hardcore fans would appreciate Capcom's balancing tweaks, casual fans who already played Fate of Two Worlds and were only interested in new characters would "likely be left wanting".
Reviewers praised the PlayStation Vita version for its technical performance, despite hardware constraints, and for providing the full console version experience on a portable system. Hopper complimented the graphics, stating that the Vita port matched the visual fidelity of the console versions. Martin Robinson of Eurogamer claimed Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was one of the Vita's "finer-looking launch games", praising its detail and faithfulness to the original. However, he criticized the addition of touchscreen controls, stating its implementation fell short of the mark laid down by Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition.
During the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 for "Fighting Game of the Year", but lost to Mortal Kombat.
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 reached number 19 in the United Kingdom PlayStation 3 sales chart and number 24 for the Xbox 360. The game sold approximately 600,000 units worldwide for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 during the first two months of its release. By March 2015, the game had sold 1.20 million units for the PS3 and Xbox 360. As of March 2024, it has sold 3 million units across the PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, PC, and Xbox One.
== Sequel ==
Following the release of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 for the PlayStation Vita in 2012, Marvel's new parent company, The Walt Disney Company, which acquired Marvel in 2009, chose not to renew Capcom's license with the Marvel characters, instead opting to put them in its own self-published Disney Infinity series. As a result, Capcom had to pull both Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes off Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network in 2013. However, in 2016, Disney decided to cancel its Disney Infinity series, discontinue self-publishing efforts, and switch to a licensing-only model, allowing them to license their characters to third-party game developers, including Capcom. On December 3 that year Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was officially unveiled during Sony's PlayStation Experience event. The game was released on September 19, 2017, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_NHL_entry_draft#Round_one | 2007 NHL entry draft#Round one | The 2007 NHL entry draft was the 45th entry draft for the National Hockey League. It was held at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, on June 22, 2007. The draft consisted of seven rounds, with rounds two through seven taking place on June 23, 2007. The draft was televised on TSN and RDS, with the first round simulcasted in the United States on Versus and in Europe on NASN.
Columbus Blue Jackets' president and general manager Doug MacLean and the NHL announced the event on March 21, 2006. On March 13, 2007, it was reported that NHL owners had voted in favor of changes to the team ranking system which would begin at the 2007 draft. This draft marked the first time in NHL history in which American players were selected with the top two picks, with Patrick Kane and James van Riemsdyk being selected by the Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers, respectively. It also tied the record of the most Americans being selected in the first round with ten players.
As of 2026, there are 11 active NHL players from this draft year.
== Lottery system ==
Starting with the 2007 NHL entry draft, the Stanley Cup champion and runner-up will receive the 30th and 29th picks, respectively. The conference finalists will get the 28th and 27th picks, and all other playoff teams will get picks based on their regular season point totals, but with the division winners getting the latest picks even if they had fewer points during the regular season than a non-division winner.
The draft order of the first 14 picks was determined by a lottery involving the non-playoff teams on April 10.
Under the weighted lottery system, the club with the fewest regular-season points had the greatest chance (25%) of winning the Draft Drawing, have a 48.2% chance to pick first overall, and could pick no lower than second at the 2007 entry draft. The winner of the drawing would move up a maximum of four places, with all other clubs' draft order being adjusted accordingly (no team moving down more than one spot).
The Chicago Blackhawks, originally slated to draft in fifth place, won the lottery and as a result had the first overall pick in the draft.
== Draft day trades ==
== Central Scouting final rankings ==
Source: NHL Central Scouting Bureau
=== Skaters ===
=== Goaltenders ===
== Selections by round ==
=== Round one ===
Notes
The St. Louis Blues' first-round pick went to the San Jose Sharks as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent Toronto's first and second-round picks in 2007 (13th and 44th overall) and a third-round pick in 2008 to St. Louis in exchange for this pick.
The Toronto Maple Leafs' first-round pick went to the St. Louis Blues as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent a first-round pick in 2007 (9th overall) to San Jose in exchange for Toronto's second-round pick in 2007 (44th overall), a third-round pick in 2008 and this pick.
San Jose previously acquired this pick as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent Vesa Toskala and Mark Bell to Toronto in exchange for a second-round pick in 2007 (44th overall), a fourth-round pick in 2009 and this pick.
The New York Islanders' first-round pick went to the Edmonton Oilers as the result of a trade on February 27, 2007 that sent Ryan Smyth to New York in exchange for Robert Nilsson, Ryan O'Marra and this pick.
The Tampa Bay Lightning's first-round pick went to the Minnesota Wild as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent a first and compensatory second-round pick both in 2007 (19th and 42nd overall) to Anaheim in exchange for this pick.
Anaheim previously acquired this pick as the result of a trade on February 24, 2007 that sent Shane O'Brien and Colorado's third-round pick in 2007 to Tampa Bay in exchange for Gerald Coleman and this pick.
The Calgary Flames' first-round pick went to the St. Louis Blues as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent Atlanta's first-round pick and a third-round pick both in 2007 (24th and 70th overall) to Calgary in exchange for this pick.
The Minnesota Wild's first-round pick went to the Anaheim Ducks as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent Tampa Bay's first-round pick in 2007 (16th overall) to Minnesota in exchange for a compensatory second-round pick in 2007 (42nd overall) and this pick.
The Dallas Stars' first-round pick went to the Edmonton Oilers as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent Anaheim's first-round pick and a second-round pick both in 2007 (30th and 36th overall) to Phoenix in exchange for this pick.
Phoenix previously acquired this pick as the result of a trade on February 12, 2007 that sent Ladislav Nagy to Dallas in exchange for Mathias Tjarnqvist and this pick.
The San Jose Sharks' first-round pick went to the Montreal Canadiens as the result of a trade on February 25, 2007 that sent Craig Rivet and a fifth-round pick in 2008 to San Jose in exchange for Josh Gorges and this pick.
The Nashville Predators' first-round pick was re-acquired as the result of a trade on June 18, 2007 that sent Kimmo Timonen and Scott Hartnell to Philadelphia in exchange for this pick.
Philadelphia previously acquired this pick as the result of a trade on February 15, 2007 that sent Peter Forsberg to Nashville in exchange for Ryan Parent, Scottie Upshall, a third-round pick in 2007 and this pick.
The Atlanta Thrashers' first-round pick went to the Calgary Flames as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent a first-round pick in 2007 (18th overall) to St. Louis in exchange for a third-round pick in 2007 (70th overall) and this pick.
St. Louis previously acquired this pick as the result of a trade on February 25, 2007 that sent Keith Tkachuk to Atlanta in exchange for Glen Metropolit, a third-round pick in 2007, a conditional first-round pick in 2008, a second-round pick in 2008 and this pick.
The New Jersey Devils' first-round pick went to the St. Louis Blues as the result of a trade on February 27, 2007 that sent Bill Guerin to San Jose in exchange for Ville Nieminen, Jay Barriball and this pick.
San Jose previously acquired this pick as the result of a trade on October 1, 2006 that sent Alexander Korolyuk and Jim Fahey to New Jersey in exchange for Vladimir Malakhov and this pick (being conditional at the time of the trade). The condition – San Jose will receive a first-round pick in 2007 if Malakhov does not resume his NHL career – was converted as Malakhov never played another game professionally after this trade.
The Buffalo Sabres' first-round pick went to the San Jose Sharks as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent Carolina's second-round pick in 2007 and a second-round pick in 2008 to Washington in exchange for this pick.
Washington previously acquired this pick as the result of a trade on February 27, 2007 that sent Dainius Zubrus and Timo Helbling to Buffalo in exchange for Jiri Novotny and this pick.
The Anaheim Ducks' first-round pick went to the Phoenix Coyotes as the result of a trade on June 22, 2007 that sent Dallas' first-round pick in 2007 (21st overall) to Edmonton in exchange for a second-round pick in 2007 (36th overall) and this pick.
Edmonton previously acquired this pick as the result of a trade on July 3, 2006 that sent Chris Pronger to Anaheim in exchange for Joffrey Lupul, Ladislav Smid, a conditional first-round pick in 2008, a second-round pick in 2008 and this pick.
=== Round two ===
=== Round three ===
=== Round four ===
=== Round five ===
=== Round six ===
=== Round seven ===
== Draftees based on nationality ==
=== North American draftees by state/province === |
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal | Coal | Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as layers called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is a fossil fuel, formed when plants decay into peat which is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits formed from wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the tropics during the late Carboniferous and early Permian.
Coal is used primarily as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited until the Industrial Revolution. With the invention of the steam engine, coal consumption increased. In 2020, coal supplied about a quarter of the world's primary energy and over a third of its electricity. Some iron and steel-making and other industrial processes burn coal.
The extraction and burning of coal damages the environment and human health, causing premature death and illness, and is the largest source of carbon dioxide contributing to climate change. Over fifteen billion tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted by burning coal in 2024, which was more than a quarter of total global greenhouse gas emissions.As part of worldwide energy transition, many countries have reduced or eliminated their use of coal power. The United Nations Secretary General asked governments to stop building new coal plants by 2020.
A record amount of coal was burnt in 2024, but consumption is expected to peak before 2030. To meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming below 2 °C (3.6 °F) coal use needs to halve from 2020 to 2030, and "phasing down" coal was agreed upon in the Glasgow Climate Pact.
The largest consumer and importer of coal is China, which mines almost half the world's coal, followed by India with about a tenth. Indonesia and Australia export the most, followed by Russia.
== Etymology ==
The word originally took the form col in Old English, from reconstructed Proto-Germanic *kula(n), from Proto-Indo-European root *g(e)u-lo- "live coal". Germanic cognates include the Old Frisian kole, Middle Dutch cole, Dutch kool, Old High German chol, German Kohle and Old Norse kol. Irish gual is also a cognate via the Indo-European root.
== Formation of coal ==
The conversion of dead vegetation into coal is called coalification. At various times in the geologic past, the Earth had dense forests in low-lying areas. In these wetlands, the process of coalification began when dead plant matter was protected from oxidation, usually by mud or acidic water, and was converted into peat. The resulting peat bogs, which trapped immense amounts of carbon, were eventually deeply buried by sediments. Then, over millions of years, the heat and pressure of deep burial caused the loss of water, methane and carbon dioxide and increased the proportion of carbon. The grade of coal produced depended on the maximum pressure and temperature reached, with lignite (also called "brown coal") produced under relatively mild conditions, and sub-bituminous coal, bituminous coal, or anthracite coal (also called "hard coal" or "black coal") produced in turn with increasing temperature and pressure.
Of the factors involved in coalification, temperature is much more important than either pressure or time of burial. Subbituminous coal can form at temperatures as low as 35 to 80 °C (95 to 176 °F) while anthracite requires a temperature of at least 180 to 245 °C (356 to 473 °F).
Although coal is known from most geologic periods, 90% of all coal beds were deposited in the Carboniferous and Permian periods. Paradoxically, this was during the Late Paleozoic icehouse, a time of global glaciation. However, the drop in global sea level accompanying the glaciation exposed continental shelves that had previously been submerged, and to these were added wide river deltas produced by increased erosion due to the drop in base level. These widespread areas of wetlands provided ideal conditions for coal formation. The rapid formation of coal ended with the coal gap in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, where coal is rare.
Favorable geography alone does not explain the extensive Carboniferous coal beds. Other factors contributing to rapid coal deposition were high oxygen levels, above 30%, that promoted intense wildfires and formation of charcoal that was all but indigestible by decomposing organisms; high carbon dioxide levels that promoted plant growth; and the nature of Carboniferous forests, which included lycophyte trees whose determinate growth meant that carbon was not tied up in heartwood of living trees for long periods.
One theory suggested that about 360 million years ago, some plants evolved the ability to produce lignin, a complex polymer that made their cellulose stems much harder and more woody. The ability to produce lignin led to the evolution of the first trees. But bacteria and fungi did not immediately evolve the ability to decompose lignin, so the wood did not fully decay but became buried under sediment, eventually turning into coal. About 300 million years ago, mushrooms and other fungi developed this ability, ending the main coal-formation period of earth's history. Although some authors pointed at some evidence of lignin degradation during the Carboniferous, and suggested that climatic and tectonic factors were a more plausible explanation, reconstruction of ancestral enzymes by phylogenetic analysis corroborated a hypothesis that lignin degrading enzymes appeared in fungi approximately 200 MYa.
One likely tectonic factor was the Central Pangean Mountains, an enormous range running along the equator that reached its greatest elevation near this time. Climate modeling suggests that the Central Pangean Mountains contributed to the deposition of vast quantities of coal in the late Carboniferous. The mountains created an area of year-round heavy precipitation, with no dry season typical of a monsoon climate. This is necessary for the preservation of peat in coal swamps.
Coal is known from Precambrian strata, which predate land plants. This coal is presumed to have originated from residues of algae.
Sometimes coal seams (also known as coal beds) are interbedded with other sediments in a cyclothem. Cyclothems are thought to have their origin in glacial cycles that produced fluctuations in sea level, which alternately exposed and then flooded large areas of continental shelf.
=== Chemistry of coalification ===
The woody tissue of plants is composed mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Modern peat is mostly lignin, with a content of cellulose and hemicellulose ranging from 5% to 40%. Various other organic compounds, such as waxes and nitrogen- and sulfur-containing compounds, are also present. Lignin has a weight composition of about 54% carbon, 6% hydrogen, and 30% oxygen, while cellulose has a weight composition of about 44% carbon, 6% hydrogen, and 49% oxygen. Bituminous coal has a composition of about 84.4% carbon, 5.4% hydrogen, 6.7% oxygen, 1.7% nitrogen, and 1.8% sulfur, on a weight basis. The low oxygen content of coal shows that coalification removed most of the oxygen and much of the hydrogen a process called carbonization.
Carbonization proceeds primarily by dehydration, decarboxylation, and demethanation. Dehydration removes water molecules from the maturing coal via reactions such as
2 R–OH → R–O–R + H2O
Decarboxylation removes carbon dioxide from the maturing coal:
RCOOH → RH + CO2
while demethanation proceeds by reaction such as
2 R-CH3 → R-CH2-R + CH4
R-CH2-CH2-CH2-R → R-CH=CH-R + CH4
In these formulas, R represents the remainder of a cellulose or lignin molecule to which the reacting groups are attached.
Dehydration and decarboxylation take place early in coalification, while demethanation begins only after the coal has already reached bituminous rank. The effect of decarboxylation is to reduce the percentage of oxygen, while demethanation reduces the percentage of hydrogen. Dehydration does both, and (together with demethanation) reduces the saturation of the carbon backbone (increasing the number of double bonds between carbon).
As carbonization proceeds, aliphatic compounds convert to aromatic compounds. Similarly, aromatic rings fuse into polyaromatic compounds (linked rings of carbon atoms). The structure increasingly resembles graphene, the structural element of graphite.
Chemical changes are accompanied by physical changes, such as decrease in average pore size.
=== Macerals ===
Macerals are coalified plant parts that retain the morphology and some properties of the original plant. In many coals, individual macerals can be identified visually. Some macerals include:
vitrinite, derived from woody parts
lipinite, derived from spores and algae
inertite, derived from woody parts that had been burnt in prehistoric times
huminite, a precursor to vitrinite.
In coalification huminite is replaced by vitreous (shiny) vitrinite. Maturation of bituminous coal is characterized by bitumenization, in which part of the coal is converted to bitumen, a hydrocarbon-rich gel. Maturation to anthracite is characterized by debitumenization (from demethanation) and the increasing tendency of the anthracite to break with a conchoidal fracture, similar to the way thick glass breaks.
=== Types ===
As geological processes apply pressure to dead biotic material over time, under suitable conditions, its metamorphic grade or rank increases successively into:
Peat, a precursor of coal
Lignite, or brown coal, the lowest rank of coal, most harmful to health when burned, used almost exclusively as fuel for electric power generation
Sub-bituminous coal, whose properties range between those of lignite and those of bituminous coal, is used primarily as fuel for steam-electric power generation.
Bituminous coal, a dense sedimentary rock, usually black, but sometimes dark brown, often with well-defined bands of bright and dull material. It is used primarily as fuel in steam-electric power generation and to make coke. Known as steam coal in the UK, and historically used to raise steam in steam locomotives and ships
Anthracite coal, the highest rank of coal, is a harder, glossy black coal used primarily for residential and commercial space heating.
Graphite, a difficult to ignite coal that is used mostly in pencils, or in powdered form for lubrication.
Cannel coal (sometimes called "candle coal"), a variety of fine-grained, high-rank coal with significant hydrogen content, that consists primarily of liptinite. It is related to boghead coal.
There are several international standards for coal. The classification of coal is generally based on the content of volatiles. However the most important distinction is between thermal coal (also known as steam coal), which is burnt to generate electricity via steam; and metallurgical coal (also known as coking coal), which is burnt at high temperature to make steel.
Hilt's law is a geological observation that (within a small area) the deeper the coal is found, the higher its rank (or grade). It applies if the thermal gradient is entirely vertical; however, metamorphism may cause lateral changes of rank, irrespective of depth. For example, some of the coal seams of the Madrid, New Mexico coal field were partially converted to anthracite by contact metamorphism from an igneous sill while the remainder of the seams remained as bituminous coal.
== History ==
The oldest intentional use of black coal was documented in Ostrava, Petřkovice, in a settlement from the older Stone Age on the top of Landek Hill. According to radiocarbon dating, the site falls within the period 25,000–23,000 years BC.
In China, the earliest recognized use is from the Shenyang where by 4000 BC Neolithic inhabitants had begun carving ornaments from black lignite. Coal from the Fushun mine in northeastern China was used to smelt copper as early as 1000 BC. Marco Polo, the Italian who traveled to China in the 13th century, described coal as "black stones ... which burn like logs", and said coal was so plentiful, people could take three hot baths a week. In Europe, the earliest reference to the use of coal as fuel is from the geological treatise On Stones(c. 371–287 BC):
Outcrop coal was used in Britain during the Bronze Age (3000–2000 BC), where it formed part of funeral pyres. In Roman Britain, "the Romans were exploiting coals in all the major coalfields in England and Wales by the end of the second century AD". Coal from the Midlands was transported via the Car Dyke for use in drying grain. Coal cinders have been found in the hearths of villas and Roman forts, particularly in Northumberland, dated to around AD 400. In the west of England, contemporary writers described the wonder of a permanent brazier of coal on the altar of Minerva at Aquae Sulis (modern day Bath), although in fact easily accessible surface coal from what became the Somerset coalfield was in common use in quite lowly dwellings locally. Evidence of coal's use for iron-working in the city during the Roman period has been found. In Eschweiler, Rhineland, deposits of bituminous coal were used by the Romans for the smelting of iron ore.
No evidence exists of coal being of great importance in Britain before about AD 1000, the High Middle Ages. Coal came to be referred to as "seacoal" in the 13th century; the wharf where the material arrived in London was known as Seacoal Lane, so identified in a charter of King Henry III granted in 1253. Initially, the name was given because much coal was found on the shore, having fallen from the exposed coal seams on cliffs above or washed out of underwater coal outcrops. In 1257–1259, coal from Newcastle upon Tyne was shipped to London for the smiths and lime-burners building Westminster Abbey. Coal continues to arrive on beaches around the world from both natural erosion of exposed coal seams and windswept spills from cargo ships. Many homes in such areas gather this coal as a significant, and sometimes primary, source of home heating fuel.
These easily accessible sources had largely become exhausted (or could not meet the growing demand) by the 13th century, when underground extraction by shaft mining or adits was developed. The alternative name was "pitcoal", because it came from mines.
Cooking and home heating with coal (in addition to firewood or instead of it) has been done in various times and places throughout human history, especially in times and places where ground-surface coal was available and firewood was scarce, but a widespread reliance on coal for home hearths probably never existed until such a switch in fuels happened in London in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Historian Ruth Goodman has traced the socioeconomic effects of that switch and its later spread throughout Britain and suggested that its importance in shaping the industrial adoption of coal has been previously underappreciated.
The development of the Industrial Revolution led to the large-scale use of coal, as the steam engine took over from the water wheel. In 1700, five-sixths of the world's coal was mined in Britain. Britain would have run out of suitable sites for watermills by the 1830s if coal had not been available as a source of energy. In 1947 there were some 750,000 miners in Britain, but the last deep coal mine in the UK closed in 2015.
A grade between bituminous coal and anthracite was once known as "steam coal" as it was widely used as a fuel for steam locomotives. In this specialized use, it is sometimes known as "sea coal" in the United States. Small "steam coal", also called dry small steam nuts (DSSN), was used as a fuel for domestic water heating.
Coal played an important role in industry in the 19th and 20th century. The predecessor of the European Union, the European Coal and Steel Community, was based on the trading of this commodity.
== Composition ==
Coal is a mixture of diverse organic compounds and polymers. Several kinds exist, with variable dark colors and composition. Young coals (brown coal, lignite) are not completely black. The two main black coals are bituminous, which is more abundant, and anthracite. The type of coal with the highest percentage of carbon in its chemical composition is anthracite, followed by bituminous, then lignite, and finally brown coal. The fuel value of coal varies in the same order. Some anthracite deposits contain pure carbon in the form of graphite.
For bituminous coal, the elemental composition on a dry, ash-free basis is 84.4% carbon, 5.4% hydrogen, 6.7% oxygen, 1.7% nitrogen, and 1.8% sulfur by weight. This composition partly reflects the composition of the precursor plants. The second main fraction of coal is ash, an undesirable, noncombustable mixture of inorganic minerals. The composition of ash is often discussed in terms of oxides obtained after combustion in air:
Of particular interest is the sulfur content of coal, which can vary from less than 1% to as much as 4%. Most of the sulfur and most of the nitrogen is incorporated into the organic fraction in the form of organosulfur compounds and organonitrogen compounds. This sulfur and nitrogen are strongly bound within the hydrocarbon matrix. These elements are released as SO2 and NOx upon combustion. They cannot be removed, economically at least, otherwise. Some coals contain inorganic sulfur, mainly in the form of iron pyrite (FeS2). Being a dense mineral, iron pyrite can be removed from coal by mechanical means, e.g. by froth flotation. Some sulfate occurs in coal, especially weathered samples. It is not volatilized and can be removed by washing.
Minor components include:
As minerals, Hg, As, and Se are not problematic for the environment, especially since they are only trace components. They become mobile (volatile or water-soluble), however, when these minerals are combusted.
== Uses ==
Most coal is used as fuel. 27.6% of world energy was supplied by coal in 2017 and Asia used almost three-quarters of it. Other large-scale applications also exist. The energy density of coal is roughly 24 megajoules per kilogram (approximately 6.7 kilowatt-hours per kg). For a coal power plant with a 40% efficiency, it takes an estimated 325 kg (717 lb) of coal to power a 100 W lightbulb for one year.
=== Electricity generation ===
In 2022, 68% of global coal use was used for electricity generation.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated global coal demand to be 5,946 Megatonnes in 2024, and 5,964 Mt in 2025.
Coal burnt in coal power stations to generate electricity is called thermal coal. It is usually pulverized and then burned in a furnace with a boiler.
The furnace heat converts boiler water to steam, which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators and produce electricity. The thermodynamic efficiency of this process varies between about 25% and 50% depending on the pre-combustion treatment, turbine technology (e.g. supercritical steam generator) and the age of the plant.
A few integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants have been built, which burn coal more efficiently. Instead of pulverizing the coal and burning it directly as fuel in the steam-generating boiler, the coal is gasified to create syngas, which is burned in a gas turbine to produce electricity (just like natural gas is burned in a turbine). Hot exhaust gases from the turbine are used to raise steam in a heat recovery steam generator which powers a supplemental steam turbine. The overall plant efficiency when used to provide combined heat and power can reach as much as 94%. IGCC power plants emit less local pollution than conventional pulverized coal-fueled plants. Other ways to use coal are as coal-water slurry fuel (CWS), which was developed in the Soviet Union, or in an MHD topping cycle. However these are not widely used due to lack of profit.
In 2017 38% of the world's electricity came from coal, the same percentage as 30 years previously. In 2018 global installed capacity was 2 TW (of which 1 TW was in China) which was 30% of total electricity generation capacity.
The most dependent major country was South Africa, with over 80% of its electricity generated by coal; but in 2020 China alone generated more than half of the world's coal-generated electricity. Efforts around the world to reduce the use of coal have led many regions to switch to natural gas and renewable energy. In 2018 coal-fired power station capacity factor averaged 51%, that is they operated for about half their available operating hours.
=== Coke ===
Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue that is used in manufacturing steel and other iron-containing products. Coke is made when metallurgical coal (also known as coking coal) is baked in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1,000 °C, driving off the volatile constituents and fusing together the fixed carbon and residual ash. Metallurgical coke is used as a fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. The carbon monoxide produced by its combustion reduces hematite (an iron oxide) to iron.
2 Fe2O3 + 6 CO → 4 Fe + 6 CO2
Pig iron, which is too rich in dissolved carbon, is also produced.
The coke must be strong enough to resist the weight of overburden in the blast furnace, which is why coking coal is so important in making steel using the conventional route. Coke from coal is grey, hard, and porous and has a heating value of 29.6 MJ/kg. Some coke-making processes produce byproducts, including coal tar, ammonia, light oils, and coal gas.
Petroleum coke (petcoke) is the solid residue obtained in oil refining, which resembles coke but contains too many impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications.
=== Production of chemicals ===
Chemicals have been produced from coal since the 1940s.
Coal can be used as a feedstock in the production of a wide range of chemical fertilizers and other chemical products. The main route to these products was coal gasification to produce syngas. Primary chemicals that are produced directly from the syngas include methanol, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide, which are the chemical building blocks from which a whole spectrum of derivative chemicals are manufactured, including olefins, acetic acid, formaldehyde, ammonia, urea, and others. The versatility of syngas as a precursor to primary chemicals and high-value derivative products provides the option of using coal to produce a wide range of commodities. In the 21st century, the use of coalbed methane has become more important.
Because the slate of chemical products that can be made via coal gasification can in general also use feedstocks derived from natural gas and petroleum, the chemical industry tends to use whatever feedstocks are most cost-effective. Therefore, interest in using coal tended to increase for higher oil and natural gas prices and during periods of high global economic growth that might have strained oil and gas production.
Coal to chemical processes require substantial quantities of water. Much coal to chemical production is in China where coal dependent provinces such as Shanxi are struggling to control its pollution.
=== Liquefaction ===
Coal can be converted directly into synthetic fuels equivalent to gasoline or diesel by hydrogenation or carbonization. Coal liquefaction emits more carbon dioxide than liquid fuel production from crude oil. Mixing in biomass and using carbon capture and storage (CCS) would emit slightly less than the oil process but at a high cost. State owned China Energy Investment runs a coal liquefaction plant and plans to build 2 more.
Coal liquefaction may also refer to the cargo hazard when shipping coal.
=== Gasification ===
Coal gasification, as part of an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal-fired power station, is used to produce syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2) gas to fire gas turbines to produce electricity. Syngas can also be converted into transportation fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, through the Fischer–Tropsch process; alternatively, syngas can be converted into methanol, which can be blended into fuel directly or converted to gasoline via the methanol to gasoline process. Gasification combined with Fischer–Tropsch technology was used by the Sasol chemical company of South Africa to make chemicals and motor vehicle fuels from coal.
During gasification, the coal is mixed with oxygen and steam while also being heated and pressurized. During the reaction, oxygen and water molecules oxidize the coal into carbon monoxide (CO), while also releasing hydrogen gas (H2). This used to be done in underground coal mines, and also to make town gas, which was piped to customers to burn for illumination, heating, and cooking.
3C (as Coal) + O2 + H2O → H2 + 3CO
If the refiner wants to produce gasoline, the syngas is routed into a Fischer–Tropsch reaction. This is known as indirect coal liquefaction. If hydrogen is the desired end-product, however, the syngas is fed into the water gas shift reaction, where more hydrogen is liberated:
CO + H2O → CO2 + H2
== Coal industry ==
=== Mining ===
About 8,000 Mt of coal are produced annually, about 90% of which is hard coal and 10% lignite. As of 2018 just over half is from underground mines. The coal mining industry employs almost 2.7 million workers. More accidents occur during underground mining than surface mining. Not all countries publish mining accident statistics so worldwide figures are uncertain, but it is thought that most deaths occur in coal mining accidents in China: in 2017 there were 375 coal mining related deaths in China. Most coal mined is thermal coal (also called steam coal as it is used to make steam to generate electricity) but metallurgical coal (also called "metcoal" or "coking coal" as it is used to make coke to make iron) accounts for 10% to 15% of global coal use.
=== As a traded commodity ===
China mines almost half the world's coal, followed by India with about a tenth. At 471 Mt and a 34% share of global exports, Indonesia was the largest exporter by volume in 2022, followed by Australia with 344 Mt and Russia with 224 Mt. Other major exporters of coal are the United States, South Africa, Colombia, and Canada. In 2022, China, India, and Japan were the biggest importers of coal, importing 301, 228, and 184 Mt respectively. Russia is increasingly orienting its coal exports from Europe to Asia as Europe transitions to renewable energy and subjects Russia to sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
The price of metallurgical coal is volatile and much higher than the price of thermal coal because metallurgical coal must be lower in sulfur and requires more cleaning. Coal futures contracts provide coal producers and the electric power industry an important tool for hedging and risk management.
In some countries, new onshore wind or solar generation already costs less than coal power from existing plants.
However, for China this is forecast for the early 2020s and for southeast Asia not until the late 2020s. In India, building new plants is uneconomic and, despite being subsidized, existing plants are losing market share to renewables.
In many countries in the Global North, there is a move away from the use of coal and former mine sites are being used as a tourist attraction.
=== Market trends ===
In 2022, China used 4520 Mt of coal, comprising more than half of global coal consumption. India, the European Union, and the United States, were the next largest consumers of coal, using 1162, 461, and 455 Mt respectively. Over the past decade, China has almost always accounted for the lion's share of the global growth in coal demand. Therefore, international market trends depend on Chinese energy policy.
Although the government effort to reduce air pollution in China means that the global long-term trend is to burn less coal, the short and medium term trends may differ, in part due to Chinese financing of new coal-fired power plants in other countries.
Preliminary analysis by International Energy Agency (IEA) indicates that global coal exports reached an all-time high in 2023. Through to 2026, the IEA expects global coal trade to decline by about 12%, driven by growing domestic production in coal-intensive economies such as China and India and coal phase-out plans elsewhere, such as in Europe. While thermal coal exports are expected to decline by about 16% by 2026, exports of metallurgical coal are expected to slightly increase by almost 2%.
== Damage to human health ==
The use of coal as fuel causes health problems and deaths. The mining and processing of coal causes air and water pollution. Coal-powered plants emit nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate pollution, and heavy metals, which adversely affect human health. Coalbed methane extraction is important to avoid mining accidents.
The deadly London smog was caused primarily by the heavy use of coal. Globally coal is estimated to cause 800,000 premature deaths every year, mostly in India and China.
Burning coal is a major contributor to sulfur dioxide emissions, which creates PM2.5 particulates, the most dangerous form of air pollution.
Coal smokestack emissions cause asthma, strokes, reduced intelligence, artery blockages, heart attacks, congestive heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias, mercury poisoning, arterial occlusion, and lung cancer.
Annual health costs in Europe from use of coal to generate electricity are estimated at up to €43 billion.
In China, early deaths due to air pollution coal plants have been estimated at 200 per GW-year, however they may be higher around power plants where scrubbers are not used or lower if they are far from cities. Improvements to China's air quality and human health would grow with more stringent climate policies, mainly because the country's energy is so heavily reliant on coal. And there would be a net economic benefit.
A 2017 study in the Economic Journal found that for Britain during the period 1851–1860, "a one standard deviation increase in coal use raised infant mortality by 6–8% and that industrial coal use explains roughly one-third of the urban mortality penalty observed during this period."
Breathing in coal dust causes coalworker's pneumoconiosis or "black lung", so called because the coal dust literally turns the lungs black. In the US alone, it is estimated that 1,500 former employees of the coal industry die every year from the effects of breathing in coal mine dust.
Huge amounts of coal ash and other waste is produced annually. Use of coal generates hundreds of millions of tons of ash and other waste products every year. These include fly ash, bottom ash, and flue-gas desulfurization sludge, that contain mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic, and other heavy metals, along with non-metals such as selenium.
Around 10% of coal is ash. Coal ash is hazardous and toxic to human beings and some other living things. Coal ash contains the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. Coal ash and other solid combustion byproducts are stored locally and escape in various ways that expose those living near coal plants to radiation and environmental toxics.
== Damage to the environment ==
Coal mining, coal combustion wastes, and flue gas are causing major environmental damage.
Water systems are affected by coal mining. For example, the mining of coal affects groundwater and water table levels and acidity. Spills of fly ash, such as the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill, can also contaminate land and waterways, and destroy homes. Power stations that burn coal also consume large quantities of water. This can affect the flows of rivers, and has consequential impacts on other land uses. In areas of water scarcity, such as the Thar Desert in Pakistan, coal mining and coal power plants contribute to the depletion of water resources.
One of the earliest known impacts of coal on the water cycle was acid rain. In 2014, approximately 100 Tg/S of sulfur dioxide (SO2) was released, over half of which was from burning coal. After release, the sulfur dioxide is oxidized to H2SO4 which scatters solar radiation, hence its increase in the atmosphere exerts a cooling effect on the climate. This beneficially masks some of the warming caused by increased greenhouse gases. However, the sulfur is precipitated out of the atmosphere as acid rain in a matter of weeks, whereas carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Release of SO2 also contributes to the widespread acidification of ecosystems.
Disused coal mines can also cause issues. Subsidence can occur above tunnels, causing damage to infrastructure or cropland. Coal mining can also cause long lasting fires, and it has been estimated that thousands of coal seam fires are burning at any given time. For example, Brennender Berg has been burning since 1668, and is still burning in the 21st century.
The production of coke from coal produces ammonia, coal tar, and gaseous compounds as byproducts which if discharged to land, air or waterways can pollute the environment. The Whyalla steelworks is one example of a coke producing facility where liquid ammonia was discharged to the marine environment.
=== Climate change ===
The largest and most long-term effect of coal use is the release of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that causes climate change. Coal-fired power plants were the single largest contributor to the growth in global CO2 emissions in 2018, 40% of the total fossil fuel emissions, and more than a quarter of total emissions. Coal mining can emit methane, another greenhouse gas.
In 2016 world gross carbon dioxide emissions from coal usage were 14.5 gigatonnes. For every megawatt-hour generated, coal-fired electric power generation emits around a tonne of carbon dioxide, which is double the approximately 500 kg of carbon dioxide released by a natural gas-fired electric plant. The emission intensity of coal varies with type and generator technology and exceeds 1200 g per kWh in some countries. In 2013, the head of the UN climate agency advised that most of the world's coal reserves should be left in the ground to avoid catastrophic global warming. To keep global warming below 1.5 °C or 2 °C hundreds, or possibly thousands, of coal-fired power plants will need to be retired early.
=== Underground fires ===
Thousands of coal fires are burning around the world. Those burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be extinguished. Fires can cause the ground above to subside, their combustion gases are dangerous to life, and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface wildfires. Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact with a mine fire or surface fire. Lightning strikes are an important source of ignition. The coal continues to burn slowly back into the seam until oxygen (air) can no longer reach the flame front. A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of coal seams on fire. Coal fires in China burn an estimated 120 million tons of coal a year, emitting 360 million metric tons of CO2, amounting to 2–3% of the annual worldwide production of CO2 from fossil fuels.
== Pollution mitigation and carbon capture ==
Systems and technologies exist to mitigate the health and environmental impact of burning coal for energy.
=== Precombustion treatment ===
Refined coal is the product of a coal-upgrading technology that removes moisture and certain pollutants from lower-rank coals such as sub-bituminous and lignite (brown) coals. It is one form of several precombustion treatments and processes for coal that alter coal's characteristics before it is burned. Thermal efficiency improvements are achievable by improved pre-drying (especially relevant with high-moisture fuel such as lignite or biomass). The goals of precombustion coal technologies are to increase efficiency and reduce emissions when the coal is burned. Precombustion technology can sometimes be used as a supplement to postcombustion technologies to control emissions from coal-fueled boilers.
=== Post combustion approaches ===
Post combustion approaches to mitigate pollution include flue-gas desulfurization, selective catalytic reduction, electrostatic precipitators, and fly ash reduction.
=== Carbon capture and storage ===
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be used to capture carbon dioxide from the flue gas of coal power plants and bury it securely in an underground reservoir. Between 1972 and 2017, plans were made to add CCS to enough coal and gas power plants to sequester 161 million tonnes of CO2 per year, but by 2021 98% of these plans had failed. Cost, the absence of measures to address long-term liability for stored CO2, and limited social acceptability have all contributed to project cancellations. As of 2024, CCS is in operation at only four coal power plants and one gas power plant worldwide.
=== "Clean coal" and "abated coal" ===
Since the mid-1980s, the term "clean coal" has been widely used with various meanings. Initially, "clean coal technology" referred to scrubbers and catalytic converters that reduced the pollutants that cause acid rain. The scope then expanded to include reduction of other pollutants such as mercury. Recently, the term has come to encompass the use of carbon capture and storage to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In political discourse, the term has been erroneously used to imply that coal itself can be clean. For instance, it has been suggested that "clean coal" can be produced and exported. Even with scrubbers and some CCS, coal still has a fairly high environmental impact.
In discussions on greenhouse gas emissions, another common term is "abatement" of coal use. In the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, an agreement was reached to phase down unabated coal use. Since the term abated was not defined, the agreement was criticized for being open to abuse. Without a clear definition, is possible for fossil fuel use to be called "abated" if it uses CCS only in a minimal fashion, such as capturing only 30% of the emissions from a plant.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers fossil fuels to be unabated if they are "produced and used without interventions that substantially reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted throughout the life-cycle; for example, capturing 90% or more from power plants."
== Economics ==
In 2018 US$80 billion was invested in coal supply but almost all for sustaining production levels rather than opening new mines.
In the long term coal and oil could cost the world trillions of dollars per year. Coal alone may cost Australia billions, whereas costs to some smaller companies or cities could be on the scale of millions of dollars. The economies most damaged by coal (via climate change) may be India and the US as they are the countries with the highest social cost of carbon. Bank loans to finance coal are a risk to the Indian economy.
China is the largest producer of coal in the world. It is the world's largest energy consumer, and coal in China supplies 60% of its primary energy. However two fifths of China's coal power stations are estimated to be loss-making.
Air pollution from coal storage and handling costs the US almost 200 dollars for every extra ton stored, due to PM2.5. Coal pollution costs the €43 billion each year. Measures to cut air pollution benefit individuals financially and the economies of countries such as China.
=== Subsidies ===
Subsidies for coal in 2021 have been estimated at US$19 billion, not including electricity subsidies, and are expected to rise in 2022. As of 2019 G20 countries provide at least US$63.9 billion of government support per year for the production of coal, including coal-fired power: many subsidies are impossible to quantify but they include US$27.6 billion in domestic and international public finance, US$15.4 billion in fiscal support, and US$20.9 billion in state-owned enterprise (SOE) investments per year. In Indonesia, coal power is subsidized through a ceiling on the price that coal producers can charge from domestic consumers. At the same time, the producers are obliged to provide specific amounts of coal to domestic consumers. This ensures that domestic consumers get coal at a discounted price and the producers lose money that they could otherwise have earned from selling the coal on the international market.
In the EU state aid to new coal-fired plants is banned from 2020, and to existing coal-fired plants from 2025. As of 2018, government funding for new coal power plants was supplied by Exim Bank of China, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Indian public sector banks. Coal in Kazakhstan was the main recipient of coal consumption subsidies totalling US$2 billion in 2017. Coal in Turkey benefited from substantial subsidies in 2021.
=== Stranded assets ===
Some coal-fired power stations could become stranded assets, for example China Energy Investment, the world's largest power company, risks losing half its capital. However, state-owned electricity utilities such as Eskom in South Africa, Perusahaan Listrik Negara in Indonesia, Sarawak Energy in Malaysia, Taipower in Taiwan, EGAT in Thailand, Vietnam Electricity and EÜAŞ in Turkey are building or planning new plants. As of 2021 this may be helping to cause a carbon bubble which could cause financial instability if it bursts.
== Politics ==
Countries building or financing new coal-fired power stations, such as China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Turkey and Bangladesh, face mounting international criticism for obstructing the aims of the Paris Agreement. In 2019, the Pacific Island nations (in particular Vanuatu and Fiji) criticized Australia for failing to cut their emissions at a faster rate than they were, citing concerns about coastal inundation and erosion. In May 2021, the G7 members agreed to end new direct government support for international coal power generation.
== Cultural usage ==
Coal is the official state mineral of Kentucky, and the official state rock of Utah and West Virginia. These US states have a historic link to coal mining.
Some cultures hold that children who misbehave will receive only a lump of coal from Santa Claus for Christmas in their stockings instead of presents.
It is also customary and considered lucky in Scotland to give coal as a gift on New Year's Day. This occurs as part of first-footing and represents warmth for the year to come. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushpuppy | Hushpuppy | A hushpuppy is a small, savory, deep-fried round ball made from cornmeal-based batter.
Hushpuppies are frequently served as a side dish with seafood and other deep-fried foods.
== History ==
The use of ground corn in cooking originated with Native Americans, who first cultivated the crop. Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole cooking introduced one of its main staples into Southern cuisine: corn, either ground into meal or limed with an alkaline salt to make hominy, in a Native American technology known as nixtamalization. Cornbread was popular during the American Civil War because it was inexpensive and could be made in many different shapes and sizes. It could be fashioned into high-rising, fluffy loaves or simply fried for a quick meal.To a far greater degree than anyone realizes, several of the most important food dishes that the Southeastern Indians live on today is the "soul food" eaten by both black and white Southerners. ... Indian boiled cornbread is present in Southern cuisine as "corn meal dumplings", ... and as "hush puppies"...
Some have assigned influence to the founding ceremony of the convent of Ursuline nuns who settled in New Orleans after leaving France, where they served croquettes de maïs (corn croquettes).
Hushpuppies are strongly associated with the Southern United States. A southern hushpuppy championship was held annually in Lufkin, Texas between 1972 and 2022, and they are also available throughout the United States at restaurants serving deep-fried seafood.
== Name ==
The first recorded use of the word dates to 1899. The name has no verified origin. Etymology is attributed to a variety of sources; one such source alleges that the food was given the name when hunters and fishers would feed the food to dogs they brought with them in order to "hush them", or get them to quiet down. Although there are many possible origins for the dish, it is found to be akin to "red-horse bread", named after the red horse fish of the South Carolina rivers. Associated with formerly enslaved chef Romeo Govan, "red horse bread" is said to have been similar in consistency and ingredients. "Red horse bread" of South Carolina then became "hushpuppies" in Georgia around 1927, then gained national traction around 1943 in Florida.
== Characteristics and preparation ==
Typical hush puppy ingredients include cornmeal, wheat flour, eggs, salt, baking soda, milk or buttermilk, and water, and may include onion, spring onion (scallion), garlic, whole kernel corn, and peppers. Sometimes pancake batter is used. The batter is mixed well, adjusting ingredients until thick, and dropped a spoonful at a time into hot oil. Many older recipes call for the batter to be cooked in the same oil as the fish it accompanies. The small corn dumplings are fried until crispy golden brown, and cooled. Hush puppies are often served with seafood or barbecued foods. They are commonly made at home or served in restaurants advertising home-style food.
== Caribbean ==
In Jamaica, such fried bread dumplings are known as "festivals", and are made from a flour and cornmeal dough, with added salt and sugar, which is then formed into hot dog bun shapes and deep-fried. They are sweeter than hushpuppies, which often contain onion or garlic. They are served with jerked meats such as pork or chicken. Mostly, it is served with fried or escoveitch (see also escabeche and ceviche) fish.
In Puerto Rico, hushpuppies are made in the shape of a short sausage and are called "sorullos" or the diminutive "sorullitos", for smaller sizes. Sugar is added to the cornmeal and can be stuffed with cheddar cheese or cream cheese with guava. They are served with coffee, guava dipping sauce, or fry sauce. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_(musical) | Rent (musical) | Rent (stylized in all caps) is a rock musical with music, lyrics, and book by Jonathan Larson. Loosely based on the 1896 opera La bohème by Giacomo Puccini, Luigi Illica, and Giuseppe Giacosa, it tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in Lower Manhattan's East Village, in the thriving days of the bohemian culture of Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.
The musical was first seen in 1993 in a workshop production at New York Theatre Workshop, the off-Broadway theatre which was also where the musical began performances on January 26, 1996. The show's creator, Jonathan Larson, had died suddenly of an aortic dissection the night before. The musical moved to Broadway's larger Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996.
On Broadway, Rent gained critical acclaim and won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical. The Broadway production closed on September 7, 2008, after 12 years, making it one of the longest-running shows on Broadway. The production grossed over $280 million.
The success of the show led to several national tours and numerous foreign productions. In 2005, it was adapted into a motion picture featuring six of the eight principal cast members from the 1996 stage premiere.
== Concept and genesis ==
In 1988, playwright Billy Aronson wanted to create "a musical based on Puccini's La Bohème, in which the luscious splendor of Puccini's world would be replaced with the coarseness and noise of modern New York." In 1989, Jonathan Larson, a 29-year-old composer, began collaborating with Aronson on this project, and the two composed together "Santa Fe", "Rent", and "I Should Tell You". Larson suggested setting the play "in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan. He suggested making "Rent" the title; Aronson agreed. In 1991, he asked Aronson if he could use Aronson's original concept and make Rent his own. Larson had ambitious expectations for Rent; his ultimate dream was to write a rock opera "to bring musical theater to the MTV generation". Aronson and Larson made an agreement that if the show went to Broadway, Aronson would share in the proceeds and be given credit for "original concept & additional lyrics".
Jonathan Larson focused on composing Rent in the early 1990s, waiting tables at the Moondance Diner to support himself. Over the course of years, Larson wrote hundreds of songs and made many drastic changes to the show, which in its final incarnation contained 42 songs. In the fall of 1992, Larson approached James Nicola, artistic director of New York Theatre Workshop, with a tape and copy of Rent's script. When Rent had its first staged reading at New York Theatre Workshop in March 1993, it became evident that, despite its very promising material and moving musical numbers, many structural problems needed to be addressed, including its cumbersome length and overly complex plot.
As of 1994, the New York Theatre Workshop version of Rent featured songs that never made it into the final version, such as:
"Cool/Fool"
"Do a Little Business", the predecessor of "You'll See", featuring Benny, Mark, Roger, Collins and Angel
"Female to Female A & B", featuring Maureen and Joanne
"He's a Fool"
"He Says"
"Right Brain", later rewritten as "One Song Glory", featuring Roger
"Over It", the predecessor of "Tango: Maureen", featuring Mark and Maureen
"Real Estate", a number wherein Benny tries to convince Mark to become a real estate agent and drop his filmmaking
"Open Road", the predecessor of "What You Own", with a backing track similar to this in "Your Eyes"
This workshop version of Rent starred Anthony Rapp as Mark and Daphne Rubin-Vega as Mimi. Larson continued to work on Rent, gradually reworking its flaws and staging more workshop productions.
On January 24, 1996, after the musical's final dress rehearsal before its off-Broadway opening, Larson had his first (and only) newspaper interview; music critic Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times – who had been attracted by the coincidence that the show was debuting exactly 100 years after Puccini's opera – requested the interview. Larson would not live to see Rent's success; he died from an undiagnosed aortic dissection (believed to have resulted from Marfan syndrome) early the next morning, January 25, 1996. Friends and family gathered at the New York Theatre Workshop, and the first preview of Rent became a sing-through of the musical in Larson's memory.
The show premiered as planned and quickly gained popularity fueled by enthusiastic reviews and the recent death of its composer. It proved extremely successful during its off-Broadway run, selling out all its shows at the 150-seat New York Theatre Workshop. Due to such overwhelming popularity and a need for a larger theater, Rent moved to Broadway's then-under-renovation Nederlander Theatre on 41st Street and opened on April 29, 1996.
== Sources and inspiration ==
Larson's inspiration for Rent's content came from several different sources. Many of the characters and plot elements are drawn directly from Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème, the world premiere of which was in 1896, a century before Rent's premiere. La Bohème was also about the lives of poor young artists. Tuberculosis, the plague of Puccini's opera, is replaced by HIV/AIDS in Rent; 1800s Paris is replaced by New York's East Village in the late 1980s or early 1990s. The names and identities of Rent's characters also heavily reflect Puccini's original characters, though they are not all direct adaptations. For example, Joanne in Rent represents the character of Alcindoro in Bohème, but is also partially based on Marcello.
Other examples of parallels between Larson's and Puccini's work include Larson's song "Light My Candle", which draws melodic content directly from "Che gelida manina"; "Quando me'n vo'" ("Musetta's Waltz"), a melody taken directly from Puccini's opera; and "Goodbye Love", a long, painful piece that reflects a confrontation and parting between characters in both Puccini's and Larson's work. "Quando me'n vo'" is paralleled in the first verse of "Take Me or Leave Me", when Maureen describes the way people stare when she walks in the street. It is also directly referred to in the scene where the characters are celebrating their bohemian life. Mark says, "Roger will attempt to write a bittersweet, evocative song..." Roger plays a quick piece, and Mark adds, "...that doesn't remind us of 'Musetta's Waltz'." This part of "Musetta's Waltz" is also later used in "Your Eyes", a song Roger writes.
Rent is also a somewhat autobiographical work, as Larson incorporated many elements of his life into his show. Larson lived in New York for many years as a starving artist with an uncertain future. He sacrificed a life of stability for his art, and shared many of the same hopes and fears as his characters. Like his characters he endured poor living conditions, and some of these conditions (e.g. illegal wood-burning stove, bathtub in the middle of his kitchen, broken buzzer [his guests had to call from the pay phone across the street and he would throw down the keys, as in "Rent"]) made their way into the musical . Part of the motivation behind the storyline in which Maureen leaves Mark for a woman (Joanne) is based on the fact that Larson's own girlfriend left him for a woman. The Mark Cohen character is based on Larson's friends, cinematographer and producer Jonathan Burkhart and documentary filmmaker Eddie Rosenstein. Larson also attended Friends In Deed, an AIDS support group that formed in 1991, which influenced the musical.
Playwright Sarah Schulman alleged that Rent bore striking similarities to her novel People in Trouble. Schulman's 1998 book Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America details these similarities and discusses her critiques of the musical.
The line, "I'm more of a man than you'll ever be... and more of a woman than you'll ever get!", attributed to Angel Dumott Schunard at her funeral, was previously used by the character Hollywood Montrose, who appeared in the films Mannequin (1987) and Mannequin Two: On the Move (1991). Like Angel, Hollywood performs a song and dance number and sometimes wears women's clothing. This line was originally in the film Car Wash (1976), delivered by Antonio Fargas as a flamboyant homosexual cross dresser named Lindy.
The earliest concepts of the characters differ largely from the finished products. Everyone except Mark had AIDS, including Maureen and Joanne; Maureen was a serious, angry character who played off Oedipus in her performance piece instead of Hey Diddle Diddle; Mark was, at one point, a painter instead of a filmmaker; Roger was named Ralph and wrote musical plays; Angel was a jazz philosopher, while Collins was a street performer; Angel and Collins were both originally described as Caucasian; and Benny had a somewhat enlarged role in the story, taking part in songs like "Real Estate", which was later cut.
Many actual locations and events are included in, or are the inspiration for, elements of the musical. Life Café, where the "La Vie Bohème" numbers are set, was an actual restaurant (closed 2013) on 10th Street and Avenue B in the East Village of New York City. The riot at the end of the first act is based on the East Village riot in 1988 that arose as a result of the city-imposed curfew in Tompkins Square Park.
"Will I?", a song which takes place during a Life Support meeting and expresses the pain and fear of living a life with AIDS, was inspired by a real event. Larson attended a meeting of Friends in Deed, an organization that helps people deal with illness and grief, much like Life Support. After that first time, Larson attended the meetings regularly. During one meeting, a man stood up and said that he was not afraid of dying. He did say, however, that there was one thing of which he was afraid: Would he lose his dignity? From this question stemmed the first line of this song. The people present at the Life Support meeting in the show, such as Gordon, Ali and Pam, carry the names of Larson's friends who died. In the Broadway show, the names of the characters in that particular scene (they introduce themselves) were changed nightly to honor the friends of the cast members who were living with or had died from AIDS.
The scene and song "Life Support" were also based on Friends in Deed, as well as on Gordon, Pam, and Ali. Originally, the members of Life Support had a solid block of the "forget regret" refrain, and they talked about remembering love. When Jonathan's HIV positive friends heard this scene, they told him that having AIDS was not so easy to accept: it made you angry and resentful too, and the song did not match that. Jonathan then added a part where Gordon says that he has a problem with this "credo...my T-cells are low, I regret that news, okay?" Paul, the leader of the meeting, replies, "Okay...but, Gordon, how do you feel today?" Gordon admits that he is feeling the best that he has felt all year. Paul asks, "Then why choose fear?" Gordon says, "I'm a New Yorker. Fear's my life."
== Lynn Thomson lawsuit ==
Lynn Thomson was a dramaturge who was hired by New York Theatre Workshop to help rework Rent. She claimed that between early May and the end of October 1995, she and Larson co-wrote a "new version" of the musical, and that she had a verbal agreement with Larson to a percentage of the royalties. She sued Jonathan Larson's estate for $40 million and sought 16 percent of the show's royalties, ultimately losing that suit. A revised suit claiming she had written a significant portion of the lyrics and the libretto of the "new version" of Rent was filed later. The estate settled out of court.
During the trial, according to a partner in the firm representing the Larson estate, Thomson could not recall the lyrics to the songs that she allegedly wrote, nor the structures of the libretto she claimed to have created. The judge ruled against her and gave Larson's estate full credit and right to Rent. A federal appellate court upheld the original ruling on appeal. In the judgement, the court ruled against Thomson saying "she had brought the wrong suit." Thomson had sued over a verbal agreement she claimed to have with Larson, which she could not prove. However, the court stated in the judgment that her claim to have written some of the material in RENT, including the lyrics to the song "Glory," was credible and that she had standing to sue for ownership of some of the material in RENT. She filed suit with revised claims. In August 1998, the case was settled out of court. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
== Synopsis ==
=== Act I ===
On Christmas Eve in Manhattan's East Village, two roommates—Mark, a filmmaker, and Roger, a rock musician—struggle to stay warm and produce their art ("Tune Up #1"). Mark's mother leaves him a voicemail wishing him a Merry Christmas and trying to comfort him since his ex-girlfriend Maureen dumped him ("Voice Mail #1"). Their friend Tom Collins, a gay anarchist professor of computer-age philosophy at New York University, calls and plans to surprise them at their apartment, but is mugged before entering. At the same time, Mark and Roger's former roommate and friend Benny, who has since become their harsh new landlord, has reneged on an earlier agreement and now demands last year's rent, before shutting down their electrical power ("Tune Up #2"). However, Mark and Roger stubbornly resolve against paying the rent, which they were promised would not be a problem ("Rent"). Meanwhile, Angel, a cross-dressing street drummer (presently out of drag), finds Collins wounded in an alley and tends to him ("You Okay Honey?") - the two are immediately attracted to each other, each learning that the other is HIV positive. It is revealed that Roger also has HIV, which he contracted from his last girlfriend, who died by suicide after learning of her diagnosis, causing Roger to fall into depression. Mark leaves the loft while Roger stays home ("Tune Up #3"), trying to compose on his guitar without success; he wishes desperately to write one last song to be remembered by before he dies ("One Song Glory"). Their neighbor Mimi, an exotic dancer and drug addict, arrives at their apartment asking for help with lighting her candle, flirting with Roger in the process; however, he is clearly hesitant to return her affections ("Light My Candle"). Meanwhile, Joanne, a lawyer and Maureen's girlfriend, receives a voicemail from her parents ("Voice Mail #2").
At last, the missing Collins enters the apartment, presenting Angel, who is now in full drag; she amusingly shares the money she earned from killing an affluent couple's dog by loudly playing nonstop for an hour ("Today 4 U"). Mark comes home, and Benny arrives, speaking of Maureen's upcoming protest against his plans to evict the homeless from a lot where he is hoping to build a cyber arts studio. Benny offers that, if they can successfully convince Maureen to cancel the protest, then Mark and Roger can officially remain rent-free tenants. However, the two rebuff Benny's offer and he leaves ("You'll See"). Mark leaves the loft again to go help Maureen with the sound equipment for the protest, unexpectedly meeting Joanne at the stage. Initially hesitant with each other, the two eventually bond over their shared distrust of Maureen's "gaslighting" and promiscuous behavior ("Tango: Maureen"). Mark then joins Collins and Angel to film their HIV support group meeting ("Life Support"), while Mimi attempts to seduce Roger alone in his apartment ("Out Tonight"). Extremely upset by Mimi's intrusion, he demands that she leave him alone and resists any romantic feelings he may harbor for her ("Another Day"). After Mimi leaves, Roger reflects on his fear of dying an undignified death from AIDS, while the Life Support group echoes his thoughts ("Will I").
Collins, Mark, and Angel protect a homeless woman from police harassment using Mark's camera, but she chastises them, believing their intent was for Mark to make a name for himself from her situation ("On the Street"). To lighten the mood, Collins talks about his dream of escaping New York City to open a restaurant in Santa Fe ("Santa Fe"). Soon, Mark leaves to check up on Roger; while alone, Collins and Angel confess their love for each other ("I'll Cover You"). Joanne hectically prepares for Maureen's show, trying to balance the simultaneous multiple calls ("We're Okay"). Before the performance, Roger apologizes to Mimi, inviting her to come to the protest and the dinner party his friends are having afterwards. At the same time, police, vendors, and homeless people prepare for the protest ("Christmas Bells"). Maureen performs in an avant-garde, if not over-the-top, manner, basing her piece on "Hey Diddle Diddle" ("Over the Moon"). At the post-show party at the Life Café, Benny arrives, criticizing the protest and the group's bohemian lifestyle while also revealing that his wife Alison's Akita, Evita, died due to Angel's actions; Mark and his group defiantly respond by celebrating their status ("La Vie Bohème"). Mimi and Roger each discover that the other is HIV-positive and hesitantly decide to continue their relationship ("I Should Tell You"). At the end of the Act, Joanne explains that Mark and Roger's building has been padlocked and a riot has broken out; Roger and Mimi, unaware of the violence, share their first kiss. The celebration continues ("La Vie Bohème B").
=== Act II ===
The cast lines up to sing together before the plot of the second act begins, affirming that one should measure life "in love" ("Seasons of Love"). On New Year's Eve, Mark, Mimi, Roger, Maureen, Joanne, Collins and Angel gather to break back into Mark and Roger's apartment which they have been locked out of. ("Happy New Year"). Once Mark, Joanne and Maureen break in through the window, a voicemail reveals that Mark's footage of the riot has earned him a job offering at a tabloid news company called Buzzline ("Voice Mail #3"). The others finally break through the door just as Benny arrives, saying he wants to call a truce and revealing that Mimi, a former girlfriend of his, convinced him to change his mind. Mimi denies rekindling her relationship with Benny, but Roger is upset, and although they apologize to each other, Mimi goes to her drug dealer for a fix ("Happy New Year B").
Around Valentine's Day, Mark tells the audience that Roger and Mimi have been living together, Collins and Angel are nowhere to be found, and Maureen and Joanne are preparing another protest; during rehearsal, Maureen criticizes Joanne's controlling behavior, while Joanne criticizes Maureen's promiscuity. They break up dramatically following an ultimatum ("Take Me or Leave Me"). Time progresses to spring ("Seasons of Love B"), where Roger and Mimi's relationship is strained by Mimi's escalating heroin usage and Roger's lasting jealousy and suspicion of Benny. Each alone, Roger and Mimi sing of love and loneliness, telling each other how they feel, as they watch Collins nurse Angel, whose health is declining due to AIDS ("Without You"). By the end of the summer, Mark continues to receive calls offering a corporate job at Buzzline ("Voice Mail #4"). A dance is performed representing all the couples' sex lives ("Contact"). At the climax of the number, the two former couples break up, and Angel suddenly dies in Collins' arms. At the funeral, the friends briefly come together to share their memories, with Collins being the last to reminisce ("I'll Cover You [Reprise]"). Mark expresses his fear of being the sole survivor when his friends eventually die of AIDS, and he finally accepts the corporate job offer ("Halloween"). Roger reveals that he is leaving for Santa Fe, which sparks an argument about commitment between him and Mimi, while Maureen and Joanne argue. Collins arrives and admonishes the entire group for fighting on the day of Angel's funeral, causing Maureen and Joanne to reconcile, but not Mimi and Roger. The group share a sad moment, knowing that between deaths and leaving, their close-knit friendships will become undone. Everyone leaves except Mark and Roger, where Mark tries to convince Roger to stay in New York. Roger, unable to handle Mimi's declining health, becomes furious with Mark and leaves. Mimi returns to say goodbye, overhearing everything Roger had said and, terrified, agrees to go to rehab, which Benny pays for ("Goodbye Love"). Collins is forcibly removed from the church for being unable to pay for Angel's funeral; Benny shows compassion by paying and offering Mark and Collins drinks. Collins accepts, causing the latter and Benny to rekindle their old friendship, but Mark turns down the offer due to work commitments.
Some time later, both Mark and Roger simultaneously reach an artistic epiphany, as Roger finds his song in Mimi and Mark finds his film in Angel's memory; Roger decides to return to New York in time for Christmas, while Mark quits his job to devote his efforts to working on his own film ("What You Own"). The characters' parents, concerned and confused about their respective situations, leave several worried messages on their answering machines ("Voice Mail #5"). On Christmas Eve, exactly one year having passed, Mark prepares to screen his now-completed film to his friends. Roger has written his song, but apparently, Mimi is missing, and no one has seen her. Benny's wife, discovering Benny's past relationship with Mimi, has pulled him out of the East Village. The power suddenly blows and Collins enters with handfuls of cash, revealing that he reprogrammed an ATM at a grocery store to provide money to anybody with the code 'ANGEL'. Maureen and Joanne abruptly enter carrying Mimi, who had been homeless and is now weak and close to death. She begins to fade, telling Roger that she loves him ("Finale"). Roger tells her to hold on as he plays her the song he wrote for her, revealing the depth of his feelings for her ("Your Eyes"). Mimi appears to die, but abruptly awakens, claiming to have been heading into a white light before a vision of Angel appeared, telling her to go back and stay with Roger. The remaining friends gather together in a final moment of shared happiness and resolve to enjoy whatever time they have left with each other, affirming that there is "no day but today" ("Finale B").
== Musical numbers ==
== Roles ==
=== Main characters ===
Mark Cohen: A struggling Jewish-American documentary filmmaker and the narrator of the show. He is Roger's roommate; at the start of the show, he has recently been dumped by Maureen.
Roger Davis: A once-successful-but-now-struggling musician and ex-lead singer and rock guitarist who is HIV-positive and an ex-junkie. He hopes to write one last meaningful song before he dies. He has difficulty coping with his own mortality as well as that of his friends. His girlfriend, April, killed herself after finding out that she was HIV-positive. He is roommates with Mark.
Mimi Márquez: A Latina stripper and drug addict. She lives downstairs from Mark and Roger, is Roger's love interest, and, like him, is HIV-positive. She is also Benny's ex-lover.
Tom Collins: A gay anarchist professor with AIDS. He is described by Mark as a "computer genius, teacher, and vagabond anarchist who ran naked through the Parthenon." Collins dreams of opening a restaurant in Santa Fe, where the problems in New York will not affect him and his friends. He was formerly a roommate of Roger, Mark, Benny, and Maureen, now just Roger and Mark, until he moves out.
Angel Dumott Schunard: A young drag queen who is addressed as female when in drag and as male when out of drag. Angel, who has AIDS, is a street percussionist with a generous disposition as well as Collins' love interest.
Maureen Johnson: A performance artist who is Mark's ex-girlfriend and Joanne's current girlfriend. She is very flirtatious and cheated on Mark. Larson considered Maureen a lesbian, despite her previous relationships with men, and he specifically identified her as "lesbian" in the script itself.
Joanne Jefferson: An Ivy League-educated public interest lawyer and a lesbian. Joanne is the woman for whom Maureen left Mark. Joanne has very politically powerful parents (one is undergoing confirmation to be a judge, the other is a government official).
Benjamin "Benny" Coffin III: The landlord of Mark, Roger, and Mimi's apartment building and ex-roommate of Mark, Collins, Roger, and Maureen. Now married to Alison Grey of the Westport Greys, a very wealthy family involved in real estate, and he is considered yuppie scum and a sell-out by his ex-roommates. He at one time had a relationship with Mimi.
=== Minor characters ===
Mrs. Cohen: Mark's stereotypical Jewish mother. Her voicemail messages are the basis for the songs Voicemail #1, Voicemail #3, and Voicemail #5.
Alexi Darling: The producer of Buzzline, a sleazy tabloid company that tries to employ Mark after his footage of the riot makes primetime. Sings Voicemail #3 and Voicemail #4.
Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson: The wealthy parents of Joanne Jefferson, they leave her Voicemail #2. Mr. Jefferson is also one of the a cappella singers in Voicemail #5. Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson's actors usually sing the solos in Seasons of Love.
Mrs. Davis: Roger's confused mother who calls in Voicemail #5, asking continuously, "Roger, where are you?"
Mrs. Marquez: Mimi's Spanish-speaking mother who sings in Voicemail #5, wondering, in Spanish, where she is.
Mr. Grey: Benny's father-in-law who wants to buy out the lot.
The Man: The local drug dealer whom Mimi buys from and Roger used to buy from. Based on the character Parpignol from La Bohème.
Paul: The man in charge of the Life Support group.
Gordon: One of the Life Support members.
Steve: One of the Life Support members.
Ali: One of the Life Support members
Pam: One of the Life Support members
Sue: One of the Life Support members.
In Larson's script, the roles of all of the Life Support members are encouraged to take on the name that someone in the cast (or production) knows or has known to have succumbed to AIDS. In the final Broadway performance, Sue is renamed Lisa.
Squeegee Man: A homeless person who chants "Honest living!" over and over during "Christmas Bells".
The Waiter: A waiter at Life Cafe.
The Woman with Bags or Homeless Woman: A woman who calls Mark out for trying to use her to assuage his guilt during "On The Street".
The Preacher or The Pastor: The Preacher kicks Collins out of the church because he can't pay for Angel's funeral.
There are also many other non-named roles such as Cops, Bohemians, Vendors, Homeless People.
In professional productions, all the minor characters are played by the seven members of the ensemble. The usual doubling is as follows:
Mark's Mother/Pam
Mrs. Jefferson/Woman with Bags/Coat Vendor/Mimi's Mother/Ali/Seasons of Love Soloist
Alexi Darling/Roger's Mother/Sue
Mr. Jefferson/Christmas Caroler/Preacher/Seasons of Love Soloist
Gordon/The Man/Mr. Grey
Steve/Waiter/Squeegee Man
Paul/Cop/Vendor
== Reception ==
Rent received several awards including a Pulitzer Prize and four Tony Awards.
Critical reception of Rent was positive not only for its acting and musical components, but also for its representation of HIV-positive individuals. Many critics praised the portrayal of characters such as Angel and Collins as being happy, with positive outlooks on life, rather than being resigned to death. While critics and theatre patrons had largely positive reviews of the show, it was criticized for its stereotypically negative portrayal of lesbian characters and the "glamourization" of the East Village in the late 1980s.
Billy Aronson said, "For the record, although I was ambivalent about Jonathan's ideas for Rent when we were working together on it, I have come to love the show. And as tragic as it is that he didn't live to see his work become a huge success, I believe he knew it would be. In our last conversation I asked how the show was going and he said, with complete assurance, that it was incredible."
== Cultural impact and legacy ==
The song "Seasons of Love" became a successful pop song and often is performed on its own. Because of its connection to New Years and looking back at times past, it is sometimes performed at graduations or school holiday programs.
=== RENT-heads ===
Rent gathered a following of fans who refer to themselves as "RENT-heads". The name originally referred to people who would camp out at the Nederlander Theater for hours in advance for the discounted $20 rush tickets to each show, though it generally refers to anyone who is obsessed with the show. These discounted tickets were for seats in the first two rows of the theater reserved for sale by lottery two hours prior to each show. Other Broadway shows have followed Rent's example and now also offer cheaper tickets in efforts to make Broadway theater accessible to people who would otherwise be unable to afford the ticket prices.
=== Popular culture references ===
The film Team America: World Police includes a character who plays a lead role in Lease, a Broadway musical parody of Rent. In 2017, the song "Out Tonight" was covered by the characters Josie and the Pussycats in an episode of the television series Riverdale. Satirist Randy Rainbow parodied "Seasons of Love" as "Seasons of Trump" for his 2021 look back at the Trump administration, and "Tango: Maureen" as "Tango: Vaccine" to highlight purveyors of COVID-19 misinformation.
Rent has also been referenced in other musicals. Yitzhak in Hedwig and the Angry Inch wears a Rent T-shirt and speaks of his aspiration to play the role of Angel. The off-Broadway musical revue Forbidden Broadway Strikes Back includes parodies of Rent songs such as "Rant" ("Rent"), "Ouch! They're Tight" ("Out Tonight"), "Season of Hype" ("Seasons of Love"), "Too Gay 4 U (Too Het'ro 4 Me)" ("Today 4 U"), "Pretty Voices Singing" ("Christmas Bells") and "This Ain't Boheme" ("La Vie Bohème"). Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer and writer of the Broadway show Hamilton, has cited Rent as a main source of inspiration. He also referenced the show in a verse of the song "Wrote My Way Out" on The Hamilton Mixtape in the line "Running out of time like I'm Jonathan Larson's rent check".
== Casts ==
=== Additional 1993 workshop cast members ===
Bob Golden as Rudy Ramirez
Bambi Jones as Mrs. Chance
David Levine as Dogman
Rusty Magee as Congressman Otam A. DeSnofla
=== Notable replacements ===
==== Broadway (1996–2008) ====
Mark Cohen: Matt Caplan, Joey Fatone, Christopher Hanke, Adam Kantor, Drew Lachey, Tony Vincent, Gilles Chiasson (u/s), David Driver (u/s), Sebastian Arcelus (u/s), Richard H. Blake (u/s), Norbert Leo Butz (u/s), Will Chase (u/s), Luther Creek (u/s), Colin Hanlon (u/s), Chad Richardson (u/s)
Roger Davis: Sebastian Arcelus, Declan Bennett, Richard H. Blake, Norbert Leo Butz, Will Chase, Luther Creek, Tim Howar, Jeremy Kushnier, Gilles Chiasson (u/s), David Driver (u/s), Colin Hanlon (u/s), Chad Richardson (u/s), Tony Vincent (u/s)
Mimi Márquez: Mel B, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Tamyra Gray, Marcy Harriell, Jaime Lee Kirchner, Antonique Smith, Lorraine Vélez, Lisa Simone (u/s), Yassmin Alers (u/s), Karen Olivo (u/s), Shayna Steele (u/s), Caren Lyn Tackett (u/s)
Tom Collins: Alan Mingo Jr., Troy Horne, Michael McElroy, Darius de Haas (u/s)
Angel Dumott Schunard: Wilson Cruz, Jose Llana, Jai Rodriguez, Mark Setlock (u/s), Darius de Haas (u/s), Telly Leung (u/s), Andy Señor Jr. (u/s), Robin de Jesús (u/s)
Maureen Johnson: Carla Bianco, Jessica Boevers, Eden Espinosa, Kelly Karbacz, Tamara Podemski, Sherie Rene Scott, Yassmin Alers (u/s), Karen Olivo (u/s), Antonique Smith (u/s), Caren Lyn Tackett (u/s)
Joanne Jefferson: Natalie Venetia Belcon, Merle Dandridge, Tracie Thoms, Lisa Simone (u/s), Frenchie Davis (u/s), Shayna Steele (u/s)
Benjamin Coffin III: Rodney Hicks, Darius de Haas (u/s)
==== 1st, 2nd & 3rd US National Tours (1996–2010) ====
Mark Cohen: Luther Creek, Neil Patrick Harris, Matt Caplan, Kristoffer Cusick (u/s), Curtis Cregan (u/s), Josh Strickland (u/s), Aaron Tveit (u/s), Brandon Uranowitz (u/s)
Roger Davis: Jeremy Kushnier, Adrian Lewis Morgan, Curtis Cregan (u/s), Josh Strickland (u/s), Aaron Tveit (u/s), John Partridge, Norbert Leo Butz
Mimi Márquez: Lisa Simone, Sharon Leal, Karen Olivo, Yassmin Alers, Saycon Sengbloh, Lexi Lawson, Caren Lyn Tackett (u/s)
Tom Collins: Michael McElroy
Angel Dumott Schunard: Wilson Cruz, Kristoffer Cusick, Andy Señor Jr., Telly Leung (u/s), Justin Johnston
Maureen Johnson: Carrie Hamilton, Amy Spanger, Carla Bianco, Yassmin Alers (u/s), Anika Larsen (u/s), Caren Lyn Tackett (u/s), Nicolette Hart, Tracy McDowell
Joanne Jefferson: Haneefah Wood, Merle Dandridge
Benjamin Coffin III: Brian M. Love
== Productions ==
=== New York workshops and Off-Broadway production ===
Rent had its first staged reading at New York Theatre Workshop in March 1993. A further two-week New York Theatre Workshop version was performed in 1994 starring Anthony Rapp as Mark and Daphne Rubin-Vega as Mimi, and more workshops followed. The show opened in 1996, again at New York Theatre Workshop, and quickly gained popularity off-Broadway, receiving enthusiastic reviews. The New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley called it an "exhilarating, landmark rock opera" with a "glittering, inventive score" that "shimmers with hope for the future of the American musical." Another reviewer wrote, "Rent speaks to Generation X the way that the musical Hair spoke to the baby boomers or those who grew up in the 1960s," while the New York Times similarly called it "a rock opera for our time, a Hair for the 90s." The show proved extremely successful off-Broadway, selling out all of its performances at the 150-seat theatre.
=== Original Broadway production ===
Due to its overwhelming popularity and the need for a larger theater, Rent moved to Broadway's previously derelict Nederlander Theatre on 41st Street on April 29, 1996. On Broadway, the show achieved critical acclaim and word-of-mouth popularity. The production's ethnically diverse principal cast originally included Taye Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Fredi Walker.
The production's controversial topics and innovative pricing, including same day-of-performance $20 tickets, helped to increase the popularity of musical theater amongst the younger generation. The production was nominated for ten Tony Awards in 1996 and won four: Best Musical, Best Book, Best Original Score and Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical (Heredia).
On April 24, 2006, the original Broadway cast reunited for a one-night performance of the musical at the Nederlander Theatre. This performance raised over $2,000,000 for the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation, Friends In Deed and New York Theatre Workshop. Former cast members were invited, and many from prior tours and former Broadway casts appeared, performing an alternate version of "Seasons of Love" as the finale of the performance.
Rent closed on September 7, 2008, after a 12-year run and 5,123 performances, making it the seventh-longest-running Broadway show at that time, and currently the twelfth-longest-running Broadway show. The production grossed over $280 million.
Original cast ensemble members Rodney Hicks and Gwen Stewart returned to the cast at the time of the Broadway closing. Hicks played Benny and Stewart played the role she created, the soloist in the song "Seasons of Love". In addition, actress Tracie Thoms joined the cast at the end of the run playing Joanne, the role she portrayed in the 2005 film version. The last Broadway performance was filmed and screened in movie theaters as Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway in September 2008. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray formats on February 3, 2009.
=== North American touring productions ===
Successful United States national tours, the "Angel Tour" and the "Benny Tour", launched in the 1990s. Later, the non-Equity tour started its run. There was also a Canadian tour (often referred to as the "Collins Tour").
The Angel tour began in November 1996 at the Shubert Theatre in Boston, where it ran for approximately six months. Anthony Rapp joined the cast for the Chicago run, and Daphne Rubin-Vega joined for the Los Angeles run. The tour finished in San Francisco in September 1999. Other members of the Angel cast included Carrie Hamilton, Amy Spanger, Luther Creek, Kristoffer Cusick, Lisa Simone, Queen Esther, and Tony Vincent.
The Benny Tour began in July 1997 in San Diego, California, at the LaJolla Playhouse. Michael Grief, the original director of the Broadway show was also the artistic director of the LaJolla Playhouse and was instrumental in arranging for the Benny tour to begin in the smaller city of San Diego rather than Los Angeles, California. It originally featured Neil Patrick Harris as Mark Cohen in his first musical theatre role. The Benny tour generally played shorter stops and often-smaller markets than the Angel Tour did. Other cast members included Wilson Cruz and d'Monroe.
Tours ran each season from 2005 to 2008. Cast members throughout the run included Aaron Tveit, Ava Gaudet, Declan Bennett, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Constantine Maroulis, Dan Rosenbaum, Heinz Winckler, Anwar Robinson, Christine Dwyer, Caissie Levy and Karen Olivo. In 2009, a national tour starring Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp, reprising their original Broadway roles, launched in Cleveland, Ohio. Original Broadway Cast member Gwen Stewart also appeared, alongside Michael McElroy as Collins, The tour ended on February 7, 2010, in Sacramento, California. A 20th anniversary non-Equity touring production began in Bloomington, Indiana on September 12, 2016, and ran through March 1, 2020. A 25th anniversary non-Equity tour kicked off on September 30, 2021, at the Carson Center in Paducah, Kentucky.
=== UK productions ===
The show made its UK premiere on April 21, 1998, at the West End's Shaftesbury Theatre and officially opened on May 12, 1998. The original cast included Krysten Cummings as Mimi Marquez, Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Angel Schunard, Bonny Lockhart as Benny, Jesse L. Martin as Tom Collins, Adam Pascal as Roger Davis, Anthony Rapp as Mark Cohen, and Jessica Tezier as Maureen Johnson. The show closed on October 30, 1999, after one-and-a-half years. Limited revivals took place at the Prince of Wales Theatre from December 4, 2001, to January 6, 2002; December 6, 2002, to March 1, 2003 (featuring Adam Rickett as Mark and Caprice as Maureen). There was also a successful production for a limited run in Manchester in 2006 with an additional 'goodbye' performance in 2008 from the Manchester cast.
On October 16, 2007, the heavily revised production titled Rent Remixed opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in London's West End. Directed by William Baker, it was set in the present day. The cast included Oliver Thornton (Mark), Luke Evans (Roger), Craig Stein (Benny), Leon Lopez (Collins), Francesca Jackson (Joanne), Jay Webb (Angel), Siobhán Donaghy (Mimi), and Denise Van Outen (Maureen). From December 24, 2007, the role of Maureen was played by Jessie Wallace. The production received generally unfavorable reviews. The Guardian gave it only one out of five stars, writing, "They call this 'Rent Remixed'. I'd dub it 'Rent Reduced', in that the late Jonathan Larson's reworking of La Bohème, while never a great musical, has been turned into a grisly, synthetic, pseudo pop concert with no particular roots or identity." The production closed on February 2, 2008.
The production radically altered elements of the musical including defining the characters of Mimi, Angel and Mark as British. Songs were reordered (including Maureen's first appearance as the Act I finale). The rehaul of the score was masterminded by Steve Anderson and featured radically rearranged versions of Out Tonight, Today 4 U, Over the Moon and Happy New Year.
A one-off Rent - The 20th Anniversary Concert was held at the Blackpool Opera house Monday November 11, 2013. A 20th anniversary tour opened at Theatr Clwyd in October 2016 before playing a two-month run at the St James Theatre, London. The cast included Layton Williams as Angel and Lucie Jones as Maureen. The production then continued to tour the UK.
In 2018 an immersive production of RENT premiered at Frogmore Paper Mill in Apsley, Hemel Hempstead. The cast included Aran Macrae (Roger), Connor Dyer (Mark) and Lizzie Emery (Mimi). The show opened on July 10, 2018, and ran until July 28.
The Hope Mill Theatre revival, originally scheduled for late July 2020, ran from October 30 to December 6 after COVID-19-related delays. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the audience was socially distanced and measures were in place around the theatre. The cast included Blake Patrick Anderson (Mark), Tom Francis (Roger), Maiya Quansah-Breed (Mimi), Dom Hartley-Harris (Collins), Alex Thomas-Smith (Angel), Millie O'Connell (Maureen), Jocasta Almgill (Joanne), and Ahmed Hamad (Benny). The production was professionally filmed, which was broadcast from November 27 to December 20 on weekends.
In 2023, the musical was revived at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a sold out, acclaimed run at Paradise St Augustine's Theatre. The cast included Ethan Baird (Mark), Nick Tomlinson (Roger), Freya Rivero (Mimi), Andrew Gardiner (Collins), Rory McKeon (Angel), Nicola Alexander (Maureen), Felicity Halfpenny (Joanne), and Greg McAfferty (Benny). This production was subsequently nominated for an Offie Award for Best [Regional] Musical .
=== Off-Broadway revival ===
The show was revived off-Broadway at Stage 1 of New World Stages with previews starting July 14, 2011, and a scheduled opening of August 11, 2011. This was the first New York Revival of the show since the original production closed less than three years earlier. The production was directed by Rent's original director Michael Greif. Almost the entire show was different from the original, yet the reinvention did not please the critics, who complained that the new actors did not have a feel for the characters they were playing and that it made the show feel contrived. The off-Broadway production of Rent closed on September 9, 2012.
=== Additional productions ===
In 1999, an Australian production featured Justin Smith as Mark, Rodger Corser as Roger and Christine Anu as Mimi. The tour began in Sydney and finished in Melbourne. A production in Perth, Western Australia was mounted in 2007 and featured Anthony Callea as Mark, Tim Campbell as Roger, Courtney Act as Angel and Nikki Webster as Maureen. Another Australian production began in Brisbane in January 2024 and ended in Canberra in June 2024. The cast features Nick Afoa as Collins, Martha Berhane as Mimi, Carl De Villa as Angel, Tana Laga'aia as Benny, Noah Mullins as Mark, Calista Nelmes as Maureen, Jerrod Smith as Roger, and Thndo as Joanne. A Sydney production based on this tour is currently playing at the Sydney Opera House, which began in September 2025, and will end in October. The Sydney cast features Jesse Dutlow as Angel, Googoorewon Knox as Collins, Tana Laga'aia as Benny, Calista Nelmes as Maureen, Kristin Paulse as Mimi, Henry Rollo as Mark, Harry Targett as Roger, and Imani Williams as Joanne.
The Dublin production had an extended run at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin in 2000. It starred Sean Pol McGreevy as Mark, Rachel Tucker as Maureen and Allyson Brown as Mimi under the direction of Phil Willmot.
The Swedish production premiered in January, 2001 at Göta Lejon, Sweden, with an extensive national tour the following year. Sarah Dawn Finer played Joanne. The first Swedish production had an altered ending, later productions has kept the original ending.
Rent veteran Neil Patrick Harris directed a production at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, CA. The production played a three night engagement, August 6–8, 2010. The cast included Vanessa Hudgens as Mimi, Aaron Tveit as Roger, Skylar Astin as Mark, Wayne Brady as Collins, Telly Leung as Angel, Tracie Thoms as Joanne, Nicole Scherzinger as Maureen, Collins Pennie as Benny, and Gwen Stewart as Seasons of Love soloist (and additional roles).
In 2017, the first tour for the German speaking countries was mounted by Berlin theatrical producer Boris Hilbert. The leading German musical theatre magazine musicals - Das Musicalmagazin described the production as "in terms of vocal quality, the performance was one of the best that has ever been seen in Germany" (issue 188 of Dec 2017). The show traveled Germany, Austria and Switzerland and was directed by the British opera director Walter Sutcliffe.
=== Rent: School Edition ===
In 2007, an abridged edition of Rent was made available to five non-professional acting groups in the United States for production, primarily adapted by Jennifer and Peter Jones of Stuart, Florida's StarStruck Theatre. Billed as Rent: School Edition, this version omits the song "Contact" and eliminates some of the coarse language and tones down some public displays of affection in the original. Shorewood High School in Shorewood, Wisconsin, became the first high school to perform an early version of the adaptation in May 2006. The high school was selected to present a workshop performance as part of Music Theatre International's work to adapt the musical for younger actors and potentially more conservative audiences. As of 2008, Music Theatre International began licensing "Rent School Edition" for performances by schools and non-professional amateur theaters in the United States and around the world.
=== International productions ===
Rent has been performed in countries around the world, including Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Greece, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Panama, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, South Africa, Australia, Guam, New Zealand, Israel, Puerto Rico, Austria, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Czech Republic, Colombia, Turkey and Guatemala.
The musical has been performed in twenty-six languages: Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, Greek, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hebrew, Czech, Turkish, and Catalan.
== Recordings ==
=== Rent (Original Broadway Cast Recording) ===
A cast recording of the original Broadway cast recording was released in 1996; it features all the music of the show on a double-disc "complete recording" collection along with a remixed version of the song "Seasons of Love" featuring Stevie Wonder. A second one-disc album was released in 1999 containing highlights from the original cast album.
=== Rent: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack ===
The 2005 film version (see below) also resulted in a double-disc cast recording of the complete score used in the movie. The two-disc soundtrack, contained 28 tracks, and was originally packaged in eight different slipcovers, each featuring one of the eight most prominent characters in the film.
=== Rent (Original Soundtrack of the Fox Live Television Event) ===
The 2019 Fox Live Television Event, featuring Jordan Fisher as Mark and Brennin Hunt as Roger, directed by Micheal Greif and Alex Rudzinski and performed at Fox Studios, was recorded and is available to listen to on Spotify.
=== Other recordings ===
There are also many foreign cast recordings of international productions of the show.
== Adaptations ==
=== Film ===
In 2005, Rent was adapted into a movie directed by Chris Columbus with a screenplay by Stephen Chbosky. With the exception of Daphne Rubin-Vega (who was pregnant at the time of filming) and Fredi Walker (who felt she was too old for her role), who played Mimi and Joanne respectively, the original Broadway cast members reprised the principal roles. Released on November 23, 2005, the film remained in the box office top ten for three weeks, receiving mixed reviews. Several plot elements were changed slightly, and some songs were changed to spoken dialogue or cut entirely for the film. The soundtrack was produced by Rob Cavallo, engineered by Doug McKean and features session musicians Jamie Muhoberac, Tim Pierce and Dorian Crozier.
=== Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway ===
The final performance of the Broadway production of Rent, which took place on September 7, 2008, was filmed live and, cut together with close-up footage from a day of filming in August of the same year, was released as Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway in cinemas with high definition digital projection systems in the U.S. and Canada between September 24 and 28, 2008. Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway was released on February 3, 2009, on DVD & Blu-ray formats.
=== Rent: Live ===
In May 2017, Fox announced plans to air a live television production of Rent. It aired Sunday, January 27, 2019, and starred Jordan Fisher as Mark, Brennin Hunt as Roger, Tinashe as Mimi, Brandon Victor Dixon as Tom, Valentina as Angel, Vanessa Hudgens as Maureen, Kiersey Clemons as Joanne, and Mario as Benny. While the filmed version was billed as a live-to-the-public performance, Brennin Hunt, who played Roger, broke his foot before the final act, and the network was forced to air an earlier dress rehearsal of act 2.
== Related documentaries ==
=== No Day But Today: The Story of Rent ===
Jeffrey Schwarz directed this 2006 documentary about the musical Rent, from Jonathan Larson's original idea to his death and, finally, to the adaptation of Rent into a major motion picture. The nearly two-hour documentary was included in a two-disc special edition of the DVD release of the 2005 film.
=== Revolution Rent ===
Filmmaker and Rent alumnus Andy Señor Jr. produced this documentary, following his journey producing the musical in Cuba in late 2014. This production of Rent was the first Broadway musical to premiere in Cuba since diplomatic relations between the two countries became strained during the Cold War. The documentary was released March 13, 2020.
== Awards and honors ==
=== Original Broadway production ===
=== Original West End production === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideki_Matsuyama | Hideki Matsuyama | Hideki Matsuyama (Japanese: 松山 英樹, romanized: Matsuyama Hideki; IPA: [ma̠t͡sɨja̠ma̠ çide̞kʲi]; born 25 February 1992) is a Japanese professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour. He is the first Japanese golfer to win a men's major golf championship – the 2021 Masters Tournament.
As of January 2025, Matsuyama has 20 worldwide wins, an Olympic bronze medal, ten career top-10 finishes in major championships, and six Presidents Cup appearances. Matsuyama is a two-time winner of tournaments in the World Golf Championships, two-time winner of the Waste Management Phoenix Open, eight-time Japan Golf Tour winner, two-time winner of the Asian Amateur Championship, and most recently winner of the FedEx St. Jude Championship. His 11 wins on the PGA Tour make him the most successful Japanese member of the PGA Tour in history.
Matsuyama was ranked first in the World Amateur Golf Ranking in 2012. As a professional, he has been ranked as high as second in the Official World Golf Ranking, doing so in June 2017.
== Early life and amateur career ==
Matsuyama was born on 25 February 1992 in Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan. He was introduced to golf at the age of four by his father. During eighth grade, he transferred to Meitoku Gijuku Junior & Senior High School in Kochi Prefecture, in search of a better golf environment.
Matsuyama studied at Tohoku Fukushi University in Sendai. He won the 2010 Asian Amateur Championship with a score of 68-69-65-67=269. This gave him the chance to compete as an amateur in the 2011 Masters Tournament, becoming the first Japanese amateur to do so. At the Masters, Matsuyama was the leading amateur and won the Silver Cup, which is presented to the lowest scoring amateur. He was the only amateur to make the cut. A week after his victory, he finished in a tie for third at the Japan Open Golf Championship, which is an event on the Japan Golf Tour.
In 2011, Matsuyama won the gold medal at the 2011 World University Games. He also led the Japan team to the gold medal in the team event. In October 2011, he also successfully defended his title at the Asian Amateur Championship. In November, Matsuyama won the Mitsui Sumitomo Visa Taiheiyo Masters on the Japan Golf Tour while still an amateur.
In August 2012, Matsuyama reached number one in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.
== Professional career ==
=== Japan Golf Tour ===
Matsuyama turned professional in April 2013 and won his second professional tournament, the 2013 Tsuruya Open on the Japan Golf Tour. Five weeks later, Matsuyama won his third title on the Japan Golf Tour at the Diamond Cup Golf tournament. Following a top 10 finish at the 2013 U.S. Open, Matsuyama entered the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking. He won his fourth Japan Golf Tour event in September at the Fujisankei Classic. Matsuyama would win his fifth Japan Golf Tour event in December at the Casio World Open. The win also made Matsuyama the first rookie to lead the Japan Tour's money list.
=== PGA Tour ===
For 2014, Matsuyama qualified for the PGA Tour through non-member earnings. In just seven PGA Tour-sanctioned events, Matsuyama had six top-25 finishes, including a T-6 at the 2013 Open Championship.
Matsuyama earned his first PGA Tour win at the 2014 Memorial Tournament, beating Kevin Na in a playoff and moving to a career-high OWGR ranking of 13th. The win was the first for a Japanese player since Ryuji Imada in 2008. In his first full season as a PGA tour member, he finished 28th in the FedEx Cup standings.
Matsuyama would win his sixth Japan Golf Tour event late in the 2014 season. In November, the victory came at the Dunlop Phoenix in a playoff over Hiroshi Iwata.
Matsuyama finished fifth at the 2015 Masters Tournament, the best major finish of his career to that point. He finished 16th in the FedEx Cup standings. In 8–11 October, he played for the International Team in the 2015 Presidents Cup and went 2–1–1 (win–loss–half).
On 7 February 2016, Matsuyama won the Waste Management Phoenix Open in a playoff with Rickie Fowler. He secured his victory on the fourth hole. The win moved him to 12th in the Official World Golf Ranking, the highest in his career.
On 16 October 2016, Matsuyama captured the Japan Open by three strokes over Yuta Ikeda and Lee Kyoung-hoon. The win was Matsuyama's first title at his country's national open and his seventh victory in Japan. The title gives Matsuyama victories in four of the Japan Golf Tour's five ¥200,000,000 events.
On 30 October 2016, Matsuyama followed up his Japan Open triumph by winning the WGC-HSBC Champions, colloquially known as "Asia's Major", in Shanghai. Matsuyama became the first Asian golfer to claim a World Golf Championship since the series was inaugurated in 1999. With the victory, Matsuyama rose to number 6 in the Official World Golf Ranking, his highest position and the second highest ever by a Japanese player after Masashi Ozaki, who achieved a ranking of fifth. He later moved up to fifth in the world after the Farmers Insurance Open. On 13 November 2016, Matsuyama won his second Taiheiyo Masters, following his victory as a 19-year-old amateur in 2011. He romped to a seven-shot win over South Korea's Song Young-han. On 4 December 2016, Matsuyama won the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas.
Although he was the highest ranked male Japanese golfer at the time, Matsuyama withdrew from participating in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games out of concern about the 2016 Zika virus epidemic, which caused several of the world's top players to withdraw from the Olympic golf event.
In Matsuyama's return to the Waste Management Phoenix Open, he again entered a playoff on Sunday to defend his title, this time against Webb Simpson. On the fourth playoff hole, Matsuyama made birdie to win the tournament for the second time in as many years. After finishing second in the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, while the top three players in the world at the time (Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day) failed to make the cut, Matsuyama reached 2nd in the Official World Golf Ranking, his highest ever, and the highest ever for a male Japanese golfer.
The 2017 season has been a breakthrough year with Matsuyama winning three Tour titles, including his first World Golf Championship, and three second-place finishes in his first 15 events, as well as winning $5,945,990, putting him second on the money list behind Dustin Johnson, before the month of July. He then won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in August, shooting a course record-tying 61 in the final round to win by five strokes.
At the 2017 PGA Championship, Matsuyama had opening rounds of 70–64 to share the 36-hold lead, with Kevin Kisner at Quail Hollow.
In December 2019, Matsuyama played on the International team at the 2019 Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne Golf Club in Australia. The U.S. team won, 16–14. Matsuyama went 2–1–1 and halved his Sunday singles match against Tony Finau.
On 11 April 2021, Matsuyama won the Masters Tournament, becoming both the first Japanese player and the first Asian-born player to win the tournament. He finished with an overall score of 278 (−10), one shot ahead of runner-up Will Zalatoris. At the conclusion of the tournament, Matsuyama's caddie, Shota Hayafuji, bowed to the 18th fairway of the Augusta course as a gesture of Japanese respect.
In August, Matsuyama finished in a tie for 3rd place at the Olympic Games. He lost in a 7-man playoff for the bronze medal. The following week Matsuyama was tied for the lead after 72 holes at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. He was beaten in the playoff when Abraham Ancer birdied the second extra hole.
In October 2021, Matsuyama won the Zozo Championship at Narashino Country Club. The Zozo Championship is the only PGA Tour event held in Japan. Matsuyama won by five strokes over Cameron Tringale and Brendan Steele.
On 16 January 2022, Matsuyama won the Sony Open in Hawaii; having made up a five-shot deficit on the back nine to get into a playoff with Russell Henley, he made an eagle on the first extra hole to claim the victory. It was his eighth win on the PGA Tour, tying K. J. Choi for most tour victories by an Asian-born player.
On 2 June 2022, at the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, Matsuyama was disqualified midway through his first round due to having a white paint-like substance on the face of his 3-wood. The substance was said to have been applied by his equipment technician to help with alignment.
Matsuyama qualified for the International team at the 2022 Presidents Cup; he won one, tied one and lost three of the five matches he played.
On 18 February 2024, Matsuyama won the Genesis Invitational. He entered the final round six strokes off the lead, but overcame the deficit, shooting a 62 to win his first PGA Tour event since the 2022 Sony Open in Hawaii. Matsuyama posted the second-lowest round in course history. It was also the lowest in the fourth round of a tournament at Riviera Country Club.
In August, Matsuyama won the bronze medal at the 2024 Olympic Games. He finished two shots behind Scottie Scheffler, the gold medalist, and one shot behind Tommy Fleetwood, the silver medalist, with a score of 267 (−17). Later that month, he won the FedEx St. Jude Championship by two strokes with a score of 263 (−17). Matsuyama nearly lost control of a five shot lead in the final round after errant shots on the back nine, but birdies on the last two holes brought him his 10th victory on the PGA Tour.
In January, Matsuyama won The Sentry, three strokes ahead of Collin Morikawa. His winning score of 35-under 257 broke the PGA Tour scoring record in relation to par, previously set by Cameron Smith in 2022 at 34-under total, also at The Sentry.
== Personal life ==
Matsuyama and his wife Mei (married in January 2017) have a daughter born in July 2017.
After winning a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics in August 2024, Matsuyama became the victim of a robbery in London, while in the city during a layover to Memphis, Tennessee for the FedEx St. Jude Championship. His wallet was stolen, and both his caddie and his coach had their passports stolen. Matsuyama's Olympic medal was not among the stolen items.
== Amateur wins ==
2010 Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship
2011 Japan Collegiate Championship, World University Games, Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship
2012 Japan Collegiate Championship
== Professional wins (21) ==
=== PGA Tour wins (11) ===
1Co-sanctioned by the Japan Golf Tour, but unofficial event on that tour.
PGA Tour playoff record (4–2)
=== Japan Golf Tour wins (8) ===
Japan Golf Tour playoff record (2–0)
=== Other wins (2) ===
Other playoff record (1–0)
== Major championships ==
=== Wins (1) ===
=== Results timeline ===
Results not in chronological order in 2020.
LA = low amateur
CUT = missed the half-way cut
"T" indicates a tie for a place
NT = no tournament due to COVID-19 pandemic
=== Summary ===
Most consecutive cuts made – 19 (2020 PGA – 2025 Masters)
Longest streak of top-10s – 2 (2013 U.S. Open – 2013 Open Championship)
== Results in The Players Championship ==
CUT = missed the halfway cut
"T" indicates a tie for a place
C = cancelled after the first round due to the COVID-19 pandemic
== World Golf Championships ==
=== Wins (2) ===
=== Results timeline ===
Results not in chronological order before 2015.
1Cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic
WD = Withdrew
QF, R16, R32, R64 = Round in which player lost in match play
NT = No tournament
"T" = tied
Note that the Championship and Invitational were discontinued from 2022. The Champions was discontinued from 2023.
== PGA Tour career summary ==
* As of the 2023 season
== Team appearances ==
Amateur
Eisenhower Trophy (representing Japan): 2008, 2012
World University Games (representing Japan): 2011 (winners)
Bonallack Trophy (representing Asia/Pacific): 2012
Professional
Presidents Cup (representing the International team): 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2024
World Cup (representing Japan): 2016 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Brothers#Members | Jonas Brothers#Members | The Jonas Brothers () are an American pop rock band formed in 2005 comprising brothers Kevin Jonas, Joe Jonas, and Nick Jonas. Raised in Wyckoff, New Jersey, the Jonas Brothers moved to Little Falls, New Jersey, in 2005, where they wrote their first record that made its release on Hollywood Records, a Disney-owned record label, after which they gained popularity from their appearances on Disney Channel. They starred in the 2008 Disney Channel Original Movie Camp Rock and its 2010 sequel, Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam. They also starred in their own Disney Channel series Jonas, which was rebranded as Jonas L.A. for its second season. The band has released seven albums: It's About Time (2006), Jonas Brothers (2007), A Little Bit Longer (2008), Lines, Vines and Trying Times (2009), Happiness Begins (2019), The Album (2023) and Greetings from Your Hometown (2025).
In 2008, the group was nominated for the Best New Artist award at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards and won the award for Breakthrough Artist at the American Music Awards. Before the release of Lines, Vines and Trying Times, they had sold over eight million albums worldwide. After a hiatus between 2010 and 2011 to pursue solo projects, the group reunited in 2012 to record a new album, which was cancelled following their break-up on October 29, 2013. As of that year, they had sold over 17 million albums worldwide.
Six years following their split, the group reunited with the release of "Sucker" on March 1, 2019. The song became the 34th song in history to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and became the Jonas Brothers' first number one single on the chart. Their fifth studio album, Happiness Begins, was released on June 7, 2019, topping the US Billboard 200.
The brothers released their sixth studio album, The Album, on May 12, 2023, preceded by two singles, "Waffle House" and "Wings". The 12-track record was produced by Jon Bellion.
Their seventh studio album, Greetings from Your Hometown, was released on August 8, 2025.
== History ==
=== 2005–2007: It's About Time ===
In 2005, Joe, Kevin and Nick recorded "Please Be Mine", their first song recorded. Upon hearing the song, the Columbia Records president Steve Greenberg decided to sign the brothers as a group. They considered naming their group "Sons of Jonas" before settling on the name Jonas Brothers. While working on their debut studio album, the band toured throughout 2005 with artists such as Jump5, Kelly Clarkson, Jesse McCartney, the Backstreet Boys, and the Click Five, among others. They spent the latter portion of the year on a tour with Aly & AJ and the Cheetah Girls. Additionally, they opened for the Veronicas in early 2006. For their first album, titled It's About Time, the band collaborated with several writers, including Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne), Michael Mangini (Joss Stone), Desmond Child (Aerosmith, Bon Jovi), Billy Mann (Destiny's Child, Jessica Simpson) and Steve Greenberg. The album was initially supposed to be released in February 2006, but was pushed back several times, due to executive changes at Sony (the parent company of Columbia) and the executives' desire to have "another lead single" on the album. For the album, the Jonas Brothers covered two hit songs by UK band Busted – "Year 3000" and "What I Go to School For". The Jonas Brothers' first single, "Mandy", was released on December 27, 2005. Its music video was shown on MTV's Total Request Live on February 22, 2006, and reached number four. Another song, "Time for Me to Fly", was released on the Aquamarine soundtrack, also in February. In March, "Mandy" was featured in the Nickelodeon television film Zoey 101: Spring Break-Up and the Zoey 101: Music Mix soundtrack album, with Nicholas Jonas listed as the artist name. The group's music was also featured on Cartoon Network's Friday night programming block Fridays.
The band covered "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)" from Pirates of the Caribbean for the Disneymania 4 album, released on April 4, 2006. Over the summer of 2006, the Jonas Brothers went on tour with Aly & AJ. The Jonas Brothers also created the theme song for the second season of American Dragon: Jake Long, airing from June 2006 to September 2007 on the Disney Channel. It's About Time was finally released on August 8, 2006. According to the band's manager, it was only a "limited release" of 50,000 copies, so the album's price can rise as high as $200–$300 USD on auction sites like eBay. Because Sony was not interested in further promoting the band, the Jonas Brothers considered switching labels. On October 3, 2006, Nick's 2004 solo single, "Joy to the World (A Christmas Prayer)", was re-released on Joy to the World: The Ultimate Christmas Collection. The same month, the Jonas Brothers covered "Poor Unfortunate Souls" from The Little Mermaid. Along with a music video, the song was released on a two-disc special-edition release of The Little Mermaid soundtrack. The second single from It's About Time was "Year 3000", the music video of which premiered on the Disney Channel in January 2007. The band was ultimately dropped by Columbia Records in early 2007.
=== 2007–2008: Jonas Brothers ===
After being without a label for a short time, the Jonas Brothers signed with Hollywood Records in February 2007. Around the same time, the brothers began appearing in commercials for Baby Bottle Pops, singing the jingle. On March 24, two additional songs on two different albums were released: "Kids of the Future", from the Meet the Robinsons soundtrack (spoof of Kim Wilde's "Kids in America"), and "I Wanna Be Like You", from Disneymania 5. The Jonas Brothers made their first appearance at the White House on Monday, April 9, 2007, during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, where they sang the National Anthem. They returned on Wednesday June 27, 2007, during a Celebrating Women in Sports Tee Ball game on the South Lawn. They sang the National Anthem again, and, after the game, the Jonas Brothers entertained at the picnic-reception with a selection of their hits. Their self-titled second album was released on August 7, 2007. It reached number five on the Billboard Hot 200 chart in its first week. Two singles with music videos were also released around this time – "Hold On" two weeks before, and "S.O.S.", four days before the release of the album. In August 2007, the Jonas Brothers made several appearances on television. On August 17, they guest-starred in an episode of the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana titled "Me and Mr. Jonas and Mr. Jonas and Mr. Jonas".
They also performed "We Got the Party" with Miley Cyrus in the episode, which premiered after High School Musical 2 and was viewed by 10.7 million people that night. On August 24, the Jonas Brothers performed two songs at the Miss Teen USA contest. On August 26, the Jonas Brothers co-presented an award with Miley Cyrus at the Teen Choice Awards. On November 18, 2007, they performed at the American Music Awards, performing the song "S.O.S." On November 22, the brothers appeared in the 81st annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. For their final performance of 2007, the three brothers performed their singles "Hold On" and "S.O.S." at Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. The Jonas Brothers kicked off their When You Look Me in the Eyes Tour on January 31, 2008, in Tucson, Arizona. They performed several new songs on the tour that were slated to be on their third studio album, A Little Bit Longer. The Jonas Brothers made their acting debut in Season 2 of the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana, where they guest starred and performed "We Got The Party With Us" on the episode "Me and Mr. Jonas and Mr. Jonas and Mr. Jonas". In 2008, they collaborated with Miley Cyrus on her 3D concert film Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, filmed during Cyrus' Best of Both Worlds Tour, where they sang "We Got The Party With Us" with Cyrus as Hannah Montana. While on the When You Look Me in the Eyes Tour, the Jonas Brothers filmed a Disney Channel reality short series entitled, Jonas Brothers: Living the Dream, that premiered on Disney Channel.
=== 2008–2009: A Little Bit Longer and acting ===
The Jonas Brothers' third studio album, A Little Bit Longer, was released in the United States on August 12, 2008. On June 24, 2008, iTunes announced that it would release four songs from A Little Bit Longer, one roughly every two weeks. The purchase of each of the songs applies to the cost of the entire album, which could be purchased via iTunes' Complete the Album feature after release. Each song released also featured a podcast. Each song occupied the number one spot on iTunes for at least three days. After the Look Me in the Eyes Tour ended on March 22, 2008, the Jonas Brothers announced that they would be opening up for Avril Lavigne's The Best Damn Tour along with Boys Like Girls, for the second leg of the tour in Europe, which lasted from late May to late June 2008. While filming Camp Rock, the Jonas Brothers co-wrote and co-produced six songs for fellow Disney Channel star Demi Lovato, for Lovato's album Don't Forget. The album, co-produced by the Jonas Brothers, was released on September 23, 2008. A soundtrack was released for Camp Rock on June 17, 2008, debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 188,000 copies sold in its first week. The Jonas Brothers also did a half-hour variety special on Disney Channel entitled, Studio DC: Almost Live, that featured The Muppets and other Disney Channel stars. During this time, the Jonas Brothers also appeared on the Olympics-based special miniseries the Disney Channel Games, for the third annual show.
During the summer of 2008, the Jonas Brothers started the Burnin' Up Tour in North America, promoting A Little Bit Longer. The tour began on July 4, 2008, at Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto, Ontario. The band made their film debut in the Disney Channel Original Movie Camp Rock, in which they played a band called Connect Three. Joe Jonas plays the lead male role and lead singer Shane Gray, Nick Jonas plays the role of Nate, a guitarist, and Kevin Jonas plays the role of Jason, another guitarist. The film premiered on June 20, 2008, in the United States on Disney Channel, and Canada on Family, receiving mixed reviews. On the Disney Channel, the film was followed by the premiere of the music video for "Burnin' Up", which featured cameos from Selena Gomez, Robert Davi, Danny Trejo and David Carradine. Directed by Brendan Malloy, the video earned nominations for Video of the Year and Best Pop Video at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards.
A Disney Digital 3-D production crew filmed the two shows of theirs Burnin' Up Tour in Anaheim on July 13 and 14, 2008, including a performance by Lovato with the Jonas Brothers on "This Is Me" and Taylor Swift with the brothers on "Should've Said No". Both shows and additional footage recorded while on tour were used for the theatrical release of their 3D concert biopic, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, on February 22, 2009.
On July 14, they announced on stage that the band had already written five songs for their fourth studio album. The band was featured in the July 2008 issue of Rolling Stone magazine and became the youngest band to be on the cover of the magazine. The Jonas Brothers visited downtown Cleveland, Ohio's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before their sold-out concert on the evening of August 22, 2008, at Blossom Music Center. They presented the suits and pants they wore on the cover artwork of A Little Bit Longer to Jim Henke, vice president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The suits are part of the Right Here, Right Now! exhibit. In December 2008, the Jonas Brothers were nominated for the Best New Artist award at the 51st Grammy Awards. The Jonas Brothers appeared as musical guest on Saturday Night Live's 34th season on February 14, 2009, making their SNL debut. The band also announced on March 11, 2009, that they will be embarking on a world tour in mid-2009. They were joined by the popular Korean girl band Wonder Girls, who debuted in America, as their opening act. In April 2009, the Jonas Brothers finished filming the first season of their Disney Channel Original Series, Jonas and was premiered on May 2, 2009. The Jonas Brothers also voiced three stone cherubs in the film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which was released on May 22, 2009.
=== 2009–2010: Jonas and Lines, Vines and Trying Times ===
The brothers finished recording their fourth studio album, Lines, Vines and Trying Times, and began to talk about the album in the beginning of 2009. They said on several occasions that they had been working on writing and recording songs since their Burnin' Up tour in mid-2008. On March 11, 2009, the Jonas Brothers announced that their fourth studio album, Lines, Vines and Trying Times, would be released on June 15, 2009. They said about the title in the interview with Rolling Stone that, "Lines are something that someone feeds you, vines are the things that get in the way, and trying times, well, that's obvious." They also told Billboard, "We're trying to learn as much as we can, continuing to grow." Kevin added that, "The overall message is it's the same old Jonas Brothers, in a sense, but we're adding more and more music, including different musical instruments that are going to add and build to the sound we already have." Nick also said the songs on the album are "our journal in songs, about all things we've gone through, personal experiences we get inspiration from. We've also been working on trying to use metaphors.. to kind of mask a literal thing that happens to us.". Before the release of Lines, Vines and Trying Times, they released two singles, "Paranoid" (a month before) and "Fly with Me" (seven days before). Lines, Vines and Trying Times debuted at number one, thus becoming their second No. 1 album.
On July 7, 2009, the Jonas Brothers announced that they had signed Honor Society to the record label they started with Hollywood Records. A month later, "Send It On" was released on Radio Disney. The radio single was performed with Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, and Demi Lovato for Disney's Friends for Change. On August 9, 2009, the Jonas Brothers hosted and performed on the 2009 Teen Choice Awards. Hollywood Records announced via YouTube Demi Lovato and Jonas Brothers' Walmart CD+DVD Soundcheck. Joe was a guest judge on American Idol during the Dallas auditions, which aired January 27, 2010. After the success of Camp Rock, a sequel was in immediate development. Production on the film began on September 3, 2009, and wrapped on October 16, 2009. The film, entitled Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam, was aired on Disney Channel on September 3, 2010. The movie was filmed in Ontario, Canada. In late 2010, the Brothers took part in a concert at the White House honoring Paul McCartney's reception of a Gershwin Prize for Popular Music by U.S. President Barack Obama. As a personal request from McCartney, they covered "Drive My Car" from the Beatles' Rubber Soul.
=== 2011–2013: Hiatus, LiVe and split ===
In 2011, the brothers took a hiatus to focus on their solo careers – Joe released his debut album Fastlife, Nick embarked on 2011 Tour with his band Nick Jonas & the Administration and Kevin studied music production. In addition, they parted ways with Hollywood Records, who had been their label since February 2007. In December 2011, a new song leaked on the internet, "Dance Until Tomorrow", but they never released it. Despite rumors that they had split, Kevin said the band would release new material in the future: "I think the tides are perfectly lining up for the future of the Jonas Brothers again". In August 2012, Kevin starred in the E! reality series Married to Jonas alongside his wife Danielle and brothers Nick and Joe, documenting the young couple's domestic life.
On August 17, 2012, after two years of their last work together, they announced a new concert tour, the World Tour 2012/2013. On October 3, 2012, a preview of the song "Meet You in Paris" was released on Cambio. The new tour started on October 11, 2012, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, where they performed several songs from their previous albums along with a new song entitled "Let's Go". During the reunion concert, they also performed other new songs: "Wedding Bells", "First Time" and "Neon". They performed at Jingle Ball at L.A. Live on December 1, 2012, and announced several tour dates to take place in South America. They performed at the Viña del Mar International Song Festival on February 28, 2013, in Chile. Their fifth studio album, which would have been their first not to be released through Hollywood Records since 2006 and their first record since 2009's Lines, Vines and Trying Times, was scheduled to be released in 2013. The album would be titled V (pronounced: Five), the Roman numeral for five. The lead single, "Pom Poms", was released on April 2, 2013. The music video for the song was filmed in February 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and premiered on E! on April 2, 2013. "First Time", the second single from their fifth album, was released on June 25, 2013. In June they embarked the Jonas Brothers Live 2013 tour to promote the new songs.
On October 9, 2013, the group cancelled 23 tour dates between October and December, citing a "deep rift within the band" over "creative differences". On October 29, 2013, the Jonas Brothers officially confirmed their split. During an interview, Nick Jonas stated that the album wouldn't be released but decided to release songs in a live album: "We want to do something special for our fans because they've been so supportive of us for so many years. What we've decided to do is package an album with 10 live tracks from the summer tour and four of the songs that would have been on 'V', and if you count 'Pom Poms' and 'First Time', it's actually 6 songs that would have been on 'V'. We’ll be sending that out soon for the fans." The album was released with the title Live, noting the letter "V" in caps as a reference to their would-be fifth studio album of the same name.
=== 2019–2022: Reunion and Happiness Begins ===
On February 28, 2019, the Jonas Brothers announced their comeback via social media.
On March 1, they released a new single, "Sucker", under Republic Records. They appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden each night from March 4 to 7 to promote the track. The song debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and the US Hot Digital Songs chart, with 88,000 copies sold in its first week, becoming the Jonas Brothers' first number-one song and the first number one by a boy band on the chart since 2003's "Bump, Bump, Bump" by B2K. It became the band's first entry on the chart since 2013's "Pom Poms" and their first top 10 since 2008's "Tonight". The Jonas Brothers also became the second group in history to have a song debut at number one after Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" and the first group in this century to achieve this. In its April 13, 2019, issue, "Sucker" became the Jonas' first top 10 on Dance/Mix Show Airplay, surging 20–6 in its third week of charting. On April 5, the group released the single "Cool". On April 22, the band announced their upcoming album Happiness Begins, which was released on June 7, 2019, and preceded by a documentary titled Chasing Happiness, which premiered on June 4 on Amazon Prime Video. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, marked the biggest debut of 2019 and maintained the record until Taylor Swift's seventh studio album, Lover, was released on August 23 of the same year. The group embarked on their tenth headlining tour, the "Happiness Begins Tour", performing 92 shows around the globe.
On June 8, the band performed at Capital's Summertime Ball 2019 in the United Kingdom; the setlist included performing "Year 3000" with the original band behind the song, Busted. On June 18, the band released the promotional single "Greenlight" from their episode of Songland. On June 21, they were featured on Latino singers Sebastián Yatra, Daddy Yankee, and Natti Natasha's single called "Runaway". On July 2, the band released "Only Human", the third single off Happiness Begins, followed by the music video on August 13. On September 27, Diplo released a single titled "Lonely", which featured the Jonas Brothers. On November 8, the group released a Christmas song titled "Like It's Christmas". The subsequent year, the band made a cameo appearance on the series Dash & Lily and performed the single.
On January 17, 2020, the band released the single "What a Man Gotta Do". On January 24, they announced a residency show in Las Vegas named Jonas Brothers in Vegas at the Park Theater at Park MGM beginning on April 1, with eight other dates during the month keeping them in place until the 18th. The residency was ultimately cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The band performed at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards on January 26, revealing a new song titled "Five More Minutes". On May 15, they released a two-track bundle titled XV, which contains the singles "X" and "Five More Minutes", the former of which features Colombian singer Karol G. On May 16, they made an appearance on Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020 to perform their new song. On October 30, they released another Christmas song titled "I Need You Christmas". On March 15, 2021, a deluxe version of Nick Jonas' fourth studio album, Spaceman, was released. The record included the song "Selfish", which featured the Jonas Brothers.
On May 19, 2021, the Jonas Brothers announced that they would be embarking on their eleventh headlining tour, Remember This Tour, consisting of 44 shows at outdoor venues around the United States, with the tour beginning on August 20, 2021, in Las Vegas. During their Remember This Tour tour, the Jonas Brothers required all fans attending their shows to present a proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative COVID-19 test. The brothers released a statement on social media saying "We believe this is the best thing we can do for our fans, our hard working crew, and the communities we're visiting." Kelsea Ballerini was announced as a special guest for a majority of shows. On May 21, DJ Marshmello released "Leave Before You Love Me", a single featuring the Jonas Brothers. Two days later, they performed the single at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards, with Nick Jonas also serving as the host for the ceremony. The single "Remember This" premiered on June 18 and was used in NBC's coverage of the 2020 Summer Olympics. They recorded the song "Mercy" for the soundtrack of Space Jam: A New Legacy which was released on July 9.
On September 5, 2021, during the band's Remember This Tour, the Jonas Brothers premiered a song titled "Who's in Your Head" while performing at the Red Rocks Parks and Amphitheater in Colorado. The single was released on September 17. On March 1, 2022, they announced a 5-dates residency show in Las Vegas named Jonas Brothers: Live in Vegas, taking place from June 3 to 11. It was followed by a second 3-dates residency, which took place in November of the same year.
=== 2023–present: The Album, 20th Anniversary and Greetings from Your Hometown ===
In January 2023, while appearing on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Nick Jonas announced that the band's new album was completed. On January 30, 2023, the Jonas Brothers received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and announced that their sixth studio album, titled The Album, would be released on May 5, 2023, later delayed to and released on May 12. The Album debuted at number three on Billboard 200 chart, marking the Jonas Brothers' seventh top ten album on the chart. The record was preceded by its lead single, "Wings", which was released on February 24 of the same year. "Waffle House" was released as the second single on April 7, 2023. The third single, "Summer Baby", was sent to adult contemporary radio on June 5, 2023. In support of The Album, the band embarked the tour "Five Albums. One Night. The World Tour".
The single "Do It Like That", a collaboration with South Korean boy band Tomorrow X Together from the album The Name Chapter: Freefall, was released on July 7, 2023. On July 27, 2023, Busted released "Year 3000 2.0", which features the Jonas Brothers in a collaboration celebrating the 20th anniversary of Busted. The song is included in the compilation album Greatest Hits 2.0. The single "Strong Enough", a collaboration with Bailey Zimmerman, was released on November 10, 2023. The band performed at the halftime show at the 111th Grey Cup on November 17, 2024, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. On January 17, 2025, the Jonas Brothers released the single "Slow Motion" as their second collaboration with Marshmello. On January 31, the band released a collaboration with country music trio Rascal Flatts entitled "I Dare You".
In January 2025, it was announced the band would be producing and starring as fictionalized versions of themselves in a Christmas comedy film for Disney+ as they "face a series of escalating obstacles as they struggle to make it from London to New York in time to spend Christmas with their families." The film, A Very Jonas Christmas Movie, was released on Disney+ on November 14, 2025. The original soundtrack was released on the same day and features 10 songs, including "Coming Home This Christmas" (featuring Kenny G), and the band's 2019 song "Like It's Christmas".
JonasCon, a fan convention celebrating the 20th anniversary of the band, took place on March 23, 2025, in East Rutherford, New Jersey. During the event, the Jonas Brothers announced that their seventh studio album, Greetings from Your Hometown, would be released on August 8, 2025. The lead single, "Love Me to Heaven", was released on March 21, 2025. The second single, "No Time to Talk", was released on June 20, 2025. "I Can't Lose" was released as the album's third single on July 15, 2025. The album debuted at number six on the Billboard 200, becoming the Jonas Brothers' eighth top ten album on the chart.
In support of the record, the band begun embarking on the Jonas20: Greetings from Your Hometown Tour on August 10, 2025. During the first concert, they were joined by their Camp Rock co-star Lovato, with whom they performed "This Is Me" and "Wouldn't Change a Thing". A month later, Camp Rock 3 was announced by Disney with the Jonas Brothers serving as executive producers, while reprising their roles from the first two movies.
On November 25, 2025, MGK released a remix of his single "Cliché" featuring the Jonas Brothers. On December 3, they were honored with a hand and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
== Philanthropy ==
The Jonas Brothers earned an estimated $12 million in 2007, and have donated 10% of their earnings to their charity, Change for the Children Foundation. Change for the Children Foundation, started by the Jonas Brothers, has contributors donate to charities such as Nothing But Nets, American Diabetes Foundation, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and Summer Stars Camp for the Performing Arts. Since August 6, 2008, Bayer Diabetes Care has partnered with Nick Jonas as a diabetes ambassador to promote the idea that young people should manage their diabetes, as Nick was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was 13. Jonas testified in the U.S. Senate to promote more research funding for the disease.
The Jonas Brothers have been strong supporters of Do Something. In 2007, the brothers filmed a public service announcement raising awareness about teenage homelessness and encouraging teens to begin "jeans drives" in their communities to donate to the homeless. In 2010, Nick further volunteered his efforts for Do Something by offering his time as a prize to teens who donated jeans to Do Something and Aeropostale's "Teens for Jeans" campaign. Further, Nick filmed another public service announcement, this one in support of Do Something's "Battle of the Bands" campaign for the advancement of music education in schools.
The Jonas Brothers have made several appearances at We Day, an event that encourages young people to do local and global acts of charity. In a post on Twitter, the band also announced that a portion of every ticket purchased for their Toronto show would be donated to WE to help provide secondary school scholarships to young girls in Kenya.
In August 2021, the Jonas Brothers partnered with NGO Feeding America to promote donations to the organization by holding a competition to have dinner with a selected fan at a Los Angeles restaurant. The Jonas Brothers have continued to advocate to fight hunger worldwide by partnering, in early 2022, with Global Citizen, which fights extreme poverty, among other issues.
== Musical style ==
The Jonas Brothers' musical style has generally been described as rock, pop rock, pop punk, and power pop.
== Members ==
== Accolades ==
== Discography ==
It's About Time (2006)
Jonas Brothers (2007)
A Little Bit Longer (2008)
Lines, Vines and Trying Times (2009)
Happiness Begins (2019)
The Album (2023)
Greetings from Your Hometown (2025)
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
=== Television ===
=== Web === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Kauff | Benny Kauff | Bennie Michael "Benny" Kauff ( KOWF; January 5, 1890 – November 17, 1961) was an American professional baseball player, who played center field and batted and threw left-handed. Kauff was known as the "Ty Cobb of the Feds." Kauff was banned from baseball in 1921 amid charges of auto theft; despite his acquittal, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis refused to overturn the ban. Kauff would not be reinstated until 2025, when Rob Manfred announced all bans that continued after death were eliminated.
== Baseball career ==
=== Early career (1912–1915) ===
Kauff played his first game in the majors with the New York Highlanders on April 20, 1912. He played only five games with the Highlanders, playing the rest of the year in the minors.
After spending the 1913 season in the minors, he appeared with the Indianapolis Hoosiers of the short-lived third major league, the Federal League. Indianapolis rode his league-leading bat to the first league crown in 1914, but traded him to the Brooklyn Tip-Tops before the 1915 season. The Tip-Tops, unable to capitalize on Kauff's hitting, finished seventh in the Federal League's second, and last, season.
Kauff was called "Ty Cobb of the Feds" for his dominant hitting during both years of the Federal League's existence. In 1914, he led the league in batting average (.370; still the rookie record for league-leading batting average), on-base percentage (.447), runs (120), hits (211), total bases (305), doubles (44) and stolen bases (75), while finishing 2nd in slugging percentage (.534) and 3rd in runs batted in (95) and walks (72).
He followed with an almost equally impressive season in 1915. That year he led the Federal League in batting average (.342), on-base percentage (.446), slugging percentage (.509) and steals (55) while finishing 2nd in walks (85), 3rd in home runs (12) and 4th in runs batted in (83), runs (92) and hits (165).
=== New York Giants (1916–1920) ===
When the Federal League folded after just two seasons, the National League New York Giants purchased his contract from Brooklyn for $35,000 ($1,036,000 today). Kauff was a Giant from 1916 to 1920, winning the pennant in 1917, but never regained his Federal League hitting prowess.
On May 26, 1916, he earned the dubious distinction of being the only player in the 20th century to be picked off first base three times in one game.
But also in his first year as a Giant, he was 2nd in the NL in stolen bases (40) and triples (16), 4th in runs batted in (74), home runs (9) and walks (68), and 9th in slugging percentage (.408).
His best season in the National League was 1917, when he was 3rd in runs (89) and stolen bases (30), 4th in batting average (.308), 5th in on-base percentage (.479), 6th in hits (172), and 7th in runs batted in (68) and walks (59). That year, the Giants made it to the World Series, but lost to the Chicago White Sox 4 games to 2, in Chicago's last World Series victory until 2005. Kauff's two-homer game was the only one achieved by a National League player in the World Series until Bob Elliott of the Boston Braves did it in 1948. His best Series performance was in Game 4, with two home runs and three runs batted in during the Giants' 5–0 victory.
His 1918 campaign was shortened by service in World War I.
In 1919, he led the NL in extra-base hits (44) and was 2nd in home runs (10), 4th in runs batted in (67) and doubles (27), 5th in runs (73) and 7th in slugging percentage (.422).
In December of that year, however, Kauff and his brother were implicated in a car theft. According to the criminal complaint, Kauff and two of his employees, James Shields and James Whalen, sold a car to Ignatz Engel after stealing it and giving it a new paint job. Kauff adamantly denied the charges, claiming he did not know the car was stolen. He claimed that Shields and Whalen had given him what turned out to be a false bill of sale, thus leading him to believe the car had been acquired legally. After only 55 games in 1920, the Giants traded him to Toronto of the International League.
=== Career statistics ===
In 859 games over eight seasons, Kauff posted a .311 batting average (961 hits in 3094 at bats) with 521 runs, 169 doubles, 57 triples, 49 home runs, 455 runs batted in, 234 stolen bases, 367 bases on balls, a .389 on-base percentage and a .450 slugging percentage. He also recorded a .960 fielding percentage playing at all three outfield positions. In the 1917 World Series, he batted .160 (4-for-25) but hit two home runs with five runs batted in.
=== Acquittal and banishment ===
Kauff was slated to return to the Giants in 1921, but Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis suspended Kauff until his auto theft case was resolved. The case finally went to trial on May 10, 1921. Kauff argued that he had not only been deceived by his employees, but also presented evidence that showed he had been eating dinner with his wife at the time the car was stolen. The jury acquitted Kauff on May 13 after deliberating for less than an hour.
Nonetheless, Landis refused to reinstate him. In a letter to Kauff, Landis said that even though he was acquitted, the trial revealed serious questions about his character and reputation that would raise questions about baseball's integrity if he were ever allowed to play again. He also told baseball writer Fred Lieb that he personally believed Kauff was guilty, and claimed his acquittal "smelled to high heaven" and was "one of the worst miscarriages of justice that ever came under my observation." According to Kauff's attorney, Emil Fuchs (who would go on to own the Boston Braves), another factor in Landis' refusal to reinstate Kauff was that Kauff tried to compensate Engel for the purchase price of the car after finding out it was stolen—something which Kauff had done on Fuchs' advice. Kauff appealed his banishment in court on the basis of his acquittal, but to no avail. On January 17, 1922, he lost his appeal to a higher court. In his ruling, Justice E. G. Whitaker of the New York State Supreme Court did agree that "an apparent injustice has been done the plaintiff [Kauff]," because "at his time there is no contract between him and the defendant.
Even though banned from playing, he served as a baseball scout for 22 years before becoming a clothing salesman for John R. Lyman Co. He died on November 17, 1961, in Columbus, Ohio.
Kauff was reinstated by Commissioner Rob Manfred on May 13, 2025, along with other deceased players who were on the ineligible list. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Formula_One | History of Formula One | Formula One automobile racing has its roots in the European Grand Prix championships of the 1920s and 1930s, though the foundation of the modern Formula One began in 1946 with the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile's (FIA) standardisation of rules, which was followed by a World Championship of Drivers in 1950.
The sport's history parallels the evolution of its technical regulations. In addition to the world championship series, non-championship Formula One races were held for many years, the last held in 1983 due to the rising cost of competition. National championships existed in South Africa and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s.
== History ==
=== Early years and continuation of pre-World War II supercharged engines (1946–1950) ===
Formula One was first defined in 1946 by the Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI) of the FIA, forerunner of FISA, as the premier single-seater racing category in worldwide motorsport to become effective in 1947. This new "International Formula" was initially known variously as Formula A, Formula I, or Formula 1 with the corresponding "Voiturette" formula being titled Formula B, Formula II, or Formula 2. When the 500cc formula was internationally recognised as Formula 3 in 1950 it was never titled as "Formula C" so the three International Formulae were then "officially" titled Formula 1, Formula 2 and Formula 3.
In the beginning, the formula was largely based on pre-World War II regulations defined by engine capacity. The regulation expected to bring a new balance between supercharged and normally aspirated cars. Non-supercharged 4.5-litre pre-war Grand Prix cars were allowed to race against the pre-war 1.5-litre supercharged 'voiturettes', while pre-war supercharged 3-litre Grand Prix cars were banned.
There is some debate as to what can be considered to be the first Formula 1 race. The first race under the new regulations was the 1946 Turin Grand Prix held on 1 September, the race being won by Achille Varzi in an Alfa Romeo 158 Alfetta - but this was before the Formula was officially in place. The next contender is the 1947 Swedish Winter Grand Prix which was won by Reg Parnell driving an ERA - but this race was run on ice and some consider that it therefore was not a "proper" race (there is also some doubt whether it was a Formula 1 race or a Formule Libre race). The third claimant is the 1947 Pau Grand Prix which was won by Nello Pagani driving a Maserati 4CL, which is irrefutable.
Championships for drivers or constructors were not introduced immediately. In the early years there were around 20 races held from late Spring to early Autumn (Fall) in Europe, although not all of these were considered significant. Most competitive cars came from Italy, particularly Maserati. Races saw pre-war heroes like Rudolf Caracciola, Manfred Von Brauchitsch and Tazio Nuvolari end their careers, while drivers like Alberto Ascari and Juan Manuel Fangio rose to the front.
=== Era of factory Italian and Mercedes front-engine cars (1950–1957) ===
The Motorcycle World Championships was introduced in 1949. In 1950, the FIA responded with the first ever official World Championship for Drivers. The championship series, to be held across six of the 'major' Grands Prix of Europe plus the Indianapolis 500, was in effect a formalization of what had already been developing in Grand Prix racing during the previous years. Italian teams of Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, and Maserati were best positioned to dominate the early years. Other national manufacturers – such as the French manufacturer Talbot or the British BRM – competed, although less successfully. A number of private cars also took part in local races. The Italian and German factory teams in those days often employed 2 to 3 drivers whose nationality was the same as the team's and at least 1 foreign driver; for example the Alfa Romeo team in 1950 consisted of Italian drivers Giuseppe Farina, Luigi Fagioli and Piero Taruffi; and Argentine driver Juan Manuel Fangio.
Alfa Romeo dominated all before them in the 1950 season, winning every race but one in the championship with the pre-war "Alfetta" 158s. The sole exception was the Indianapolis 500, which was part of the championship (1950 to 1960), although not run to Formula One regulations and never contested by the teams that participated on the regular Formula One circuit (Alberto Ascari in 1952 and Juan Manuel Fangio in 1958 being the only regular Formula One drivers to bother with the Indianapolis 500 during this period). The Indianapolis 500 would never be important for Formula One and was no longer part of the championship after 1960. Nino Farina won the inaugural championship, Juan Manuel Fangio taking it in 1951 with the Alfa-Romeo 159, an evolution of the 158. The Alfetta's engines were extremely powerful for their capacity: in 1951 the 159 engine was producing around 420 bhp (310 kW) but this was at the price of a fuel consumption of 125 to 175 litres per 100 km (2.26 to 1.61 mpg imp/1.88 mpg to 1.34 mpg US). Enzo Ferrari, who had raced the Alfettas before the war, and his engine designer Aurelio Lampredi, were the first to understand that the 1.5-litre supercharged engine was a dead end: any increase in power meant more fuel to carry or more time lost in the pits for refuelling, so for the last races of 1950 Ferrari sent his 1.5-litre supercharged 125s to the museum, and fielded the new V12 4.5-litre normally aspirated 375s. With a fuel consumption of around 35 litres per 100 kilometres (8.1 mpg‑imp; 6.7 mpg‑US) the 375s offered fierce opposition to the Alfettas towards the end of the 1951 season. Alfa Romeo, at the time a state-owned company, decided to withdraw after a refusal of the Italian government to fund the expensive design of a new car. Surprisingly, Alfa Romeo involvement in racing was made with a very thin budget, using mostly pre-war technology and material during the two seasons. For instance, the team won two championships using only nine pre-war built engine blocks.
No Alfa Romeo, a supporting cast of privateer Lago-Talbot entries and an almost undriveable, unreliable BRM would make Ferrari effectively invincible. The FIA was in an embarrassing position as it had already announced that current Formula One regulations would last until 1954 before switching to 2.5-litre atmospheric engines. Major manufacturers were already working to develop cars for the future regulation and it was obvious that nobody would develop a new car for only two years. The promoters of the World Championship Grands Prix, mindful of the lack of serious competition for the Alfettas, eventually all adopted Formula Two regulations for two years. However, Ferrari's dominance went on with the light 4-cylinder powered 500s, bringing Italian Alberto Ascari his two championships in the 1952 and 1953 seasons. Ferrari's Formula One cars continued to race very successfully in non-championship Formula One and Formula Libre races through this period. Ironically, during this period the only World Championship race for which Formula One cars were eligible was the Indianapolis 500. In 1952 Ferrari entered four Formula One 375s with Alberto Ascari as lead driver, but with little success.
Discounting the Indianapolis 500, the World Championship was entirely based in Europe until 1953 when the season opened in Argentina. Since then, there has always been at least one race outside Europe each year. As planned, the World Championship races returned to Formula One regulations for the 1954 season, now based on a new 2.5-litre atmospheric engine regulation. This successfully brought more entrants to the field. Lancia and Mercedes-Benz came to the formula, hiring the best drivers of the era: Ascari for Lancia, Fangio for Mercedes. Featuring desmodromic valves, fuel injection, magnesium and exotic alloys parts, "streamlined" bodywork and other advanced features, the brand new Mercedes began the 1954 season with Fangio taking pole position at the "Grand Prix de l'ACF" at Reims-Gueux with the first lap over 200 km/h (124 mph) in Formula One before winning the race after a duel with other Mercedes driver Karl Kling, who finished second.
The Mercedes cars swept the next two seasons with Fangio and Moss winning all but three of the races. However, at the end of the 1955 season Mercedes vanished as swiftly as they had come. They had proven the superiority of their technology, but the crash of one of their sportscars that year at Le Mans, killing 82 people, was also a significant factor. The company would not return to Formula One for forty years. After Le Mans, four of the year's remaining Grands Prix were cancelled. The Monaco Grand Prix saw a spectacular incident when Ascari and his Lancia crashed into the harbour after missing a chicane. Ascari was pulled out of the water alive and apparently well. However, there was speculation over an undetected internal injury when four days later Ascari was killed at Monza while testing a sportscar. After Ascari's death, Lancia followed Mercedes out of the category, passing their engines, cars, information and technology to Ferrari. The 1956 season saw Fangio make good use of the Lancia-born Ferrari to win his fourth championship. Driving for Maserati, he took his fifth championship in the 1957 season, a record which would not be beaten for 46 years. Ferrari developed a new engine for 1957, the V6 "Dino" engine, it was competitive by 1958 and Mike Hawthorn became the first British F1 World Champion, though his victory was short-lived: he died the following winter.
=== "Garagistes" and the rear-mid engine revolution (1958–1961) ===
See 1958 season, 1959 season, 1960 season and 1961 season.
==== 1958 ====
1958 was a watershed year, with 47-year-old Juan Manuel Fangio racing only twice, setting pole and fastest lap in his home race as last hurrah, and retiring after the 1958 French Grand Prix as Maserati was outclassed even with him at the wheel. Instead of the Romance languages that had dominated Grand Prix racing unless German factories entered, all F1 champions from 1958 to 1969 would speak English, and hail from three different continents, with five British drivers and an American occupying the first six places in 1958. Nearly the same applied for car makers, with only Scuderia Ferrari winning two races, while barely known British makers of chassis and engines won all other rounds. Some had succeeded in 1500cc Formula Two with new approaches, like making or even buying only a chassis, and using a third party engine, mainly the Coventry Climax FPF DOHC 4-cylinder, which in case of Cooper was already installed behind the driver in the Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout that would dominate F1 from 1959 onwards. In single seaters with front engine, the driver either had to sit very high on top of a symmetric drive train, or next to the drive shaft in an asymmetric construction. Such complicated front engine layouts were used until 1960 even though the Auto Union racing cars of the 1930s had demonstrated the benefits of having the driver sitting low in front of a compact drivetrain unit that also included a Limited-slip differential, another old Porsche innovation that had been neglected.
Although the basic 2500cc formula remained unchanged in 1958, engines now had to run on commercial petrol instead of specialised alcohol or methanol-based racing fuels that often contained toxic components. e.g. Benzene (Benzol). While the fuel was now similar to sports car racing, Grand Prix racing started to distinguish itself from very long sports car races with pits stops for changes of drivers and tyres, and consideration for endurance and reliability, by putting emphasis on uninterrupted high speed driving of one pilot in his own car, as GP length was shortened from around 500 km/300miles to 300 km/200 miles. This mostly eliminated the need for scheduled pit stops even though tyres still were skinny.
1958 saw the introduction of an International Cup for F1 Manufacturers, with points allocated on an 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 basis to the first six cars in the race (i.e. unlike in the Drivers' Championship, there was no point for fastest lap). Furthermore, points were only awarded to the highest placed car of each make, i.e. if a make finished 1st and 2nd they would receive only eight points for 1st. The 2nd placed car would not earn extra points, but made sure that the next car would only receive 4 points for 3rd place. The Indianapolis 500, which was included in the World Championship of Drivers until 1960, did use quite different chassis makers in the 1950s, and did not count towards the International Cup for F1 Manufacturers. Later, some chassis makers won both F1 Championships and the Indy 500 in the same year, Lotus with Jim Clark in 1965, and McLaren in 1974, with Emerson Fittipaldi winning Indy in later decades.
The British Vanwall team won six of the nine races it entered, and took the maiden Constructors' Championship that season, but ruined their Drivers' Championship aspirations by having two drivers that either won or had to retire, with only two other results in a whole season. Third placed Tony Brooks won three GPs, had to retire five times, and had a 7th place. Stuart Lewis-Evans suffered the worst, three finishes in the points versus five DNF, the last even fatal after the engine seized. Stirling Moss had won the first GP for Cooper, won three more races with Vanwall, was beaten only once to second place, but also had to retire from five Grands Prix, thus had fewer chances to score the extra point for fastest race lap.
Mike Hawthorn in a Ferrari took the 1958 Drivers' Championship – becoming the first English driver to earn a title, by winning only one race, with only two DNF and consistent finishes on the podium, mostly 2nd. He demonstrated speed with four poles, and earned the Championship by also scoring four extra points for five fastest lap, and often while chasing the leader. Moss, despite having more wins than Hawthorn, had fewer poles, only three fastest laps, and lost the championship by the one point difference by fewer fastest laps. It is often attributed to high sportsmanship that cost Moss the 1958 title, but this barely holds up. After the 1958 Portuguese Grand Prix, Hawthorn, who finished second and had set fastest lap, was threatened with disqualification for going in the wrong direction while push-starting his Ferrari downhill, following a spin in which the sputtering engine stalled. Race winner Moss was in the process of lapping Hawthorn, witnessed the whole incident, and argued to stewards on Hawthorn's behalf that no other car was still running, thus none put in jeopardy. The six plus one points were not taken away, and Hawthorn kept his lead in the championship standings, with two more races to go. With only the six best race results counting, Hawthorn had to give up all 7 points from his first three GPs, a 3rd and 5th place plus fastest lap before the Monaco DNF, thus he kept 38 for a win and five second places in the latter part of the season, equal to Moss' 38 for four wins and a second, without a sixth finish, but a sixth countable achievement, 1 point for the fastest lap in the German GP DNF. The difference were the fast laps. Only 4 of 5 were counted for Hawthorn, all 3 for Moss, thus Hawthorn 42 (of 49) points, Moss 41.
The 1958 season also saw a woman driving in Formula One for the first time with Maria Teresa de Filippis racing a private Maserati at the Belgian Grand Prix.
1958 was a watershed in several crucial ways for Formula One. Against a small field of only nine Ferraris and Maseratis, with many European teams still tuning engines for new fuel regulations rather than travelling to the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix in January, Vanwall driver Stirling Moss choose to drive the mid-engined Cooper T43 entered by the private team of Rob Walker. Powered only by an undersized 2-litre Coventry-Climax Straight-4, Moss could not win on outright speed, and compared to the Italians with Centerlock wheel, the four-stud wheel hubs of Cooper would lose additional time in a tyre change. When the race distance was reduced due to hot weather, the team gambled on not making a pit stop at all. With others in the pits, Moss took over the lead. Realizing too late that the little car would not come in, the more powerful Italian cars did not start in time to chase Moss down. Winning with worn out tyres by two seconds, it was the first victory for a car with the engine mounted behind the driver in Formula One resp. Grand Prix racing since the mid-engined Auto Union racing cars had been successful in the 1930s. It was also the first World Championship GP win for a private entrant (excepting the Indianapolis 500 where all the entries were technically private entrants using bought-in chassis) as well as the first win for a car powered by an engine built by a third party manufacturer, and not even with full capacity. The next Grand Prix in Monaco was also won by the same private team, this time with a newer Cooper T45 driven by Maurice Trintignant and facing more substantial opposition, with 30 entrants trying to qualify for 16 spots on the grid in the city. Still powered by undersized F2-derived engines, the Cooper and Lotus and Porsche 718 remained underdogs in 1958. As soon as the Coventry Climax FPF engine was available with full 2.5-litre size, the little British cars went on to dominate Formula One.
==== 1959 ====
The 1959 season was effectively the mid-engine revolution, and this season saw fierce competition between the works Cooper of Australian Jack Brabham and the private Cooper of Rob Walker driven by Moss. The Getrag-modified Citroën Traction Avant transaxle proved to be the Achilles heel of the Coopers, so Walker switched to a transaxle manufactured by ex-Maserati engineer Valerio Colotti. The special transmission turned out to be more unreliable than the standard part, and Brabham took the title with Moss second.
==== 1960 ====
In 1960, Brabham in the Cooper-Climax dominated the F1 season, Moss in the Lotus won also, and eyes were on F2 races to see what the future would bring when capacity was reduced from 2500c in 1960 to 1500cc from 1961 onwards.
Enzo Ferrari adopted a conservative attitude, claiming "the horses pull the car rather than push it." It was probably disinformation: at the same time Ferrari was preparing for 1961 by designing mid-engined F2 and F1 cars. The Italian front-engined red cars were not only being effectively beaten by the British teams but thoroughly outclassed- the British rear mid-engined cars had considerably better road holding than the front-engined cars. Although down on power, the British cars' superior handling and lesser demands on tyres more than made up the power deficit. It was obvious to everyone that rear-mid engined cars were the way to go at that point in time. Lotus and BRM introduced mid-engined machines. Walker's team switched to a Lotus 18 chassis. Moss gave Lotus its first Formula One victory at Monaco but his season was ruined by a serious crash at Spa, Belgium. Brabham took a second title with his Cooper, but Moss returned in time to win the final race of the season, the U.S. Grand Prix at Riverside, California.
The mid-engined revolution, together with downsizing of the engines, rendered another potentially revolutionary car concept obsolete. The front-engined four-wheel drive Ferguson P99 raced in British Formula One races up to 1961, winning the non-Championship 1961 Oulton Park International Gold Cup under heavy rain. Compared to the new breed of mid-engined machines that had good traction and a Limited-slip differential, and now less torque and fewer horses to deal with, the front-engine 4WD car was too heavy, too complex. In a front engine single seater that drives the rear wheels, the driver has to sit on the drive shaft, or next to an asymmetric drive train. While adding front wheel drive to a front-engine car can be considered simple, adding FWD to a modern rear-mid engine monoposto would re-introduce the problem of bypassing the driver. Later in the 1960s, when F1 and Indycars had more power, with 3 litre engines and turbos and turbines, Lotus, Matra, Cosworth etc. tried to race 4WD cars, but this time it was wings and slick tyres that provided additional grip, making 4WD a problem, not a solution.
By 1961, British specialist teams such as Lotus, Cooper and BRM, and later McLaren, Tyrrell and Williams, small organizations created purely for producing, developing and competing very few purpose-built open-wheel racing cars, had overtaken the industrial manufacturing powers such as Ferrari, Mercedes, Maserati and Alfa Romeo that produced many more cars. The only major automotive manufacturer with a full works effort was Ferrari- which was really a manufacturer that made road cars to fund its racing in F1 and endurance racing. Whereas the big continental manufacturers, with much money to spend, built the whole car including the drivetrain systems themselves, (excluding BRM), the British teams, with only limited amounts of money only built their chassis; they bought their engines and gearboxes from independent manufacturers such as Coventry-Climax and later Ford-badged Cosworth engines, and Hewland gearboxes. The only British team that was also a manufacturer of road cars like Ferrari was Lotus; but even so, that company grew considerably but never to the size of Mercedes or Alfa Romeo, or even Porsche, which pulled out of F1 after 1962. From 1957 to 1961, Formula One had transformed from a scattershot industrial manufacturer sideshow of technology to a seriously competitive business for team owners and engineers wanting to come up with new technologies to out-do the opposition and also to sell their technology to big manufacturers or other interested parties. People like Cooper and Lotus founders John Cooper and Colin Chapman proved that competitiveness and developing new automotive technology was about fresh thinking, not industrial might. These British teams were regularly beating manufacturer teams like Ferrari, whom company founder Enzo Ferrari referring to these new British teams as garagistes – Italian for garage teams, which is effectively how all these British teams operated – their cars were built in small sheds or garages.
1960 was the last year with 2500cc engines, as for 1961, in an attempt to curb speeds, Formula One was downgraded from 2.5 to 1.5-litre non-supercharged engines, or in other words, essentially the then-current Formula Two was upgraded to F1. As a result, even the 1500cc Porsche 718, which started as a sportscar, and had been entered in F2 races and selected F1 GPs, now could run a whole GP season without being an underdog based on engine size only.
The 1500cc Formula One would remain for the next five years, with a sudden "return to power" in 1966. Forced induction by Supercharger, common from the 1920s to 1951, was still an option, but since 1954 limited to 750 cc, and no one seriously considered the option, as supercharging had proven limiting to fuel consumption. Turbochargers were mainly used in Diesels, but soon appeared in US cars like the Corvair. Turbos dominate Indy racing since the 1968 Indy 500.
Ferrari had developed the 65° V6 Ferrari Dino engine for the front-engined 1957 Dino 156 F2. A larger version of the engine debuted as the Scuderia's first mid-engined monoposto Ferrari 246 P at the 1960 Monaco Grand Prix. Fitted with the small F2 engine, now a Ferrari 156 P, and driven by Wolfgang von Trips, the chassis spoiled Porsche's home race by winning the 1960 Solitude Non-championship F2 race. The F2 also had to endure the 1960 Italian Grand Prix that was run on the banked oval to give the front engine Ferrari 246 F1, winless in 1960, a last chance for victory. Most British teams boycotted, Ferrari won with ease.
==== 1961 ====
For 1961, Ferrari could have used its already proven 156 P, but preferred to go two steps forward, by designing a very sophisticated smaller chassis, the Ferrari 156 F1 "shark nose". In addition, the Scuderia produced a lower 120° V6, and the considerably more powerful and efficient engine led to the Maranello outfit dominating the 1961 season as the British teams scrambled to come up with a suitable engine as existing F2 powerplants proved to be a stop gap only. American Phil Hill won the 1961 title in a works Ferrari. His teammate, Wolfgang von Trips of Germany, died along with 14 spectators in a horrific crash on the first lap of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Formula One World Championship was merely the tip of the iceberg when it came to races run to Formula One regulations. The total number of races run to Formula One regulations remained about the same as it had been before the introduction of the World Championship. Many famous races, such as the Pau and Syracuse Grands Prix, the BRDC International Trophy, the Race of Champions and the Oulton Park Gold Cup, were not part of the World Championship, but nonetheless continued to draw top drivers and teams to compete for prize money and fame.
=== Anglophone drivers and 1.5-litre engines (1962–1967) ===
See 1962 season, 1963 season, 1964 season, 1965 season, 1966 season and 1967 season.
In 1962, the Lotus team ran the Lotus 25 powered by the new Coventry-Climax FWMV V8 engine. The car had an aluminium sheet monocoque chassis instead of the traditional spaceframe design. This proved to be the greatest technological breakthrough since the introduction of mid-engined cars, but the Lotus was unreliable at first. Jim Clark finished second that year leaving the title to Graham Hill and his new V8 powered BRM.
As soon as the car and the engine became reliable, the era of the Lotus and of Jim Clark began. Clark won the title twice in three years, 1963 and 1965, the latter being the only occasion to date of a driver winning both the Championship and the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race in the same year. For 1964 Lotus introduced the new Lotus 33 and Ferrari made considerable technological and financial effort to win the title. Ferrari used no less than three different engines in the season – the existing V6, a V8 and a flat-12, while Lotus was struggling with the teething troubles of a new car. The title went to John Surtees and Ferrari. Surtees' title was especially notable, as he became the only driver ever to win the World Championship for both cars and motorcycles. The 1965 Mexican Grand Prix, the last race of the 1.5 litres Formula One, saw Richie Ginther give Honda its first victory at the end of the second season for the Japanese newcomer. This was the first victory by a Japanese car and, as of today, the only one by a car powered by a transverse engine.
1966 saw a 'Return to Power' as Formula One changed the engine rules once again, allowing engines of 3.0-litre normally aspirated, or 1.5-litre supercharged or forced induction. 1966 was a transitional year for most teams, however, the year did see the first use of composite materials, a technology which would later revolutionise the sport. The McLaren M2B, designed by Robin Herd, used an aluminium-wood laminate known as Mallite for much of its monocoque, although the car's design did not make best use of the new material. Given the shift to 1500 cc forced induction, it is surprising that any teams did not seriously consider fielding turbocharged versions of their 1500 cc naturally aspirated engines right from that point, Coventry Climax had considered it for their FWMW flat 16, but the company had decided to end its Formula 1 racing activities and the idea stopped there. It would be eleven years before a team exploited the 1500 cc forced induction option again.
Ferrari was the great favorite with a 3-litre version of his well tested powerful sports car V12 design, but the new cars were very heavy, probably in an excess of self-confidence. An enlarged V6 held some promise but Surtees left mid-season after a dispute with team manager Eugenio Dragoni at the 24 Hours of Le Mans sportscar race. Coventry-Climax, formerly supplier to much of the field, pulled out of the sport leaving teams like Lotus to struggle with enlarged versions of obsolete Climax engines. Cooper turned to a development of an otherwise obsolete Maserati V12 that was originally designed for the Maserati 250 F in the late 1950s, while BRM made the choice to design an incredibly heavy and complex H-16. The big winner was Jack Brabham, whose eponymous racing team took victory two years running with a light and compact spaceframe chassis powered by the aluminium-block stock-derived Repco-Brabham V8 unit. With SOHC heads and no more than 330 bhp, the Repco was one of the least powerful of the new 3-litre engines but unlike the others it was light, reliable and available right from the start of the new rules. 1966 was Jack's year, while 1967 went to his teammate, New Zealander Denny Hulme, as Jack tried new parts on his car.
In 1967, Lotus introduced the Lotus 49, powered by the Ford-Cosworth DFV V-8 engine that was to dominate Formula One for the next decade. Like the Repco the Cosworth was light and compact but it was a real racing engine using 4-valve DOHC heads and delivered much more power. Cosworth had aimed for 400 bhp (300 kW) and exceeded this when the engine first ran. The DFV was designed to be fully stressed (an idea pioneered by the Lancia D50). This allowed Chapman to design a monocoque that ended just after the driver's seat while the Brabham were still using a very classic tubular frame that supported the engine, the gearbox, and the rear suspension wishbones. The newborn DFV suffered from frequent failures due to excessive vibration from the flat-plane crank, forcing Keith Duckworth to redesign several parts and allowing Hulme to win the World Drivers' Crown on reliability.
1967 also saw a remarkable result by Rhodesian driver John Love with a 2.7-litre four-cylinder Cooper-Climax. Love, who was in his forties and although seen as one of the finest drivers in Southern Africa was not a major star, led and finished second in that year's South African Grand Prix. Love's obsolete Cooper was originally designed for the short races of the Tasman Series; to run a full Grand Prix, Love added two auxiliary fuel tanks. Unfortunately, the auxiliary tank's fuel pump failed and forced him to refuel after having led most of the race.
By the late 1960s, overseas races outside Europe formed about a third of the championship in any year. The core of the season remained the European season run over the Northern Hemisphere summer, with overseas races usually falling at the start or end of the season, a pattern which has continued to this day. There were also a number of non-championship races run outside Europe; the South African Grand Prix was occasionally one of these. British and English-native speaking drivers dominated the racing scene in the 1960s. Britons Graham Hill, Jim Clark, John Surtees and Jackie Stewart won 7 championships combined in that decade- Australian Jack Brabham won 2 championships, New Zealander Denny Hulme won a championship in 1967 and American Phil Hill won a championship in 1961. In addition to British and English-native speaking drivers, the British teams dominated the racing scene during this period as well, with British-built Cooper, BRM, Lotus, Brabham and McLaren cars as well as French-built Matra cars entered by the British privateer team Matra International of Ken Tyrrell.
=== DFV engine, 12-cylinder engines, and the arrival of sponsorship, safety, and aerodynamics (1968–1976) ===
See 1968 season, 1969 season, 1970 season, 1971 season, 1972 season, 1973 season, 1974 season, 1975 season and 1976 season.
In 1968, Lotus lost its exclusive right to use the DFV. McLaren built a DFV-powered car and a new force appeared on the scene when Ken Tyrrell entered his team using Cosworth-powered French Matra chassis driven by ex-BRM Jackie Stewart as lead driver. Clark took his last win at the 1968 season opening South African Grand Prix. On 7 April 1968, the double champion was killed at Hockenheim in a Formula Two event.
The season saw three significant innovations. The first was the arrival of unrestricted sponsorship, which the FIA decided to permit that year after the withdrawal of support from automobile related firms like BP, Shell and Firestone. Team Gunston, a South African privateer team, was the first Formula One team to paint their cars in the livery of their sponsors when they entered a private Brabham for John Love, painted in the colours of Gunston cigarettes, in the 1968 South African Grand Prix. In the next round at the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix, Team Lotus, initially using the British racing green, became the first works team to follow this example, with Graham Hill's Lotus 49B entered in the Red, Gold and White colors of the Imperial Tobacco's Gold Leaf brand.
The second innovation was the introduction of wings as seen previously on various cars including the Chaparral 2F sports car. Colin Chapman introduced modest front wings and a spoiler on Graham Hill's Lotus 49B at the 1968 Monaco Grand Prix. Brabham and Ferrari went one better at the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix with full width wings mounted on struts high above the driver. Lotus replied with a full-width wing directly connected to the rear suspension that required a redesign of suspension wishbones and transmission shafts. Matra then produced a high mounted front wing connected to the front suspension. This last innovation was mostly used during practice as it required a lot of effort from the driver. By the end of the season, most teams were using sophisticated wings. There were several cases of wings, struts, or even suspension collapsing.
Lastly, the third innovation was the introduction of a full-face helmet for drivers, with Dan Gurney becoming the first driver to wear such helmet at the 1968 German Grand Prix. Lotus won both titles in 1968 with Graham Hill with Stewart second.
1968 was the year that former double World Champion Jim Clark died in a Formula 2 race in Germany. This was a tragedy for the sport and many of its fans and within the next few years, many of the drivers campaigned for more safety at races to stop more deaths from happening. The 1968 Matra's most innovative feature was the use of aviation-inspired structural fuel tanks but the FIA decided to ban the technology for 1970. For 1969 Matra made the radical decision to withdraw its works team and build a new car using structural tanks for the Tyrrell team, even though it would be eligible for only a single season. The 1969 season started with cars using larger and more sophisticated wings than the previous year. When both Lotus cars broke their wings' struts and crashed at the Spanish Grand Prix, the FIA banned wings for the next race at Monaco. They were reintroduced later in the season but were to be restricted in size and height and attached directly to the chassis in a fixed position.
Safety became a major issue in Formula One and the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa did not take place as the drivers boycotted the circuit after safety upgrades were not installed as demanded. Stewart won the 1969 title easily with the new Matra MS80, a spectacular achievement from a constructor and a team that had only entered Formula One the previous year. It remains the only title won by a chassis built in France. 1969 also saw a brief resurgence of interest in four-wheel drive with a record of four such cars on the field at the British Grand Prix. Johnny Servoz-Gavin became the one and the only driver to score a point with a 4WD, finishing sixth with the Matra MS84 at the Canadian Grand Prix, although the front wheel transmission was actually disconnected. Wide tyres and downforce had proved to be better means of increasing grip, and the technology was largely abandoned. Jacky Ickx finished second in the championship for Brabham, competitive again after dropping its Repco engines in favour of the DFV.
For 1970 Tyrrell was asked by Matra to use their V12, but decided to retain the Cosworth instead. As Matra was now a Chrysler affiliate and Tyrrell derived much of its income from Ford and Elf (associated with Renault) the partnership ended. Ken Tyrrell bought March 701 chassis as an interim solution while developing his own car for the next season. The new wedge-shaped Lotus 72 was a very innovative car featuring variable flexibility torsion bar suspension, hip-mounted radiators, inboard front brakes, and an overhanging rear wing. The 72 originally had suspension problems, but once resolved the car quickly showed its superiority, and Lotus's new leader, the Austrian Jochen Rindt, dominated the championship until he was killed at Monza when a brake shaft broke. He took the 1970 title posthumously for Lotus. 1970 saw the introduction of slick tyres by Goodyear. Ferrari's new flat-12 engine proved to be more powerful than the Ford-Cosworth DFV; but slightly heavier. Their performance started to improve at the end of that season, and Belgian Jacky Ickx won 3 races- but this proved to not be enough to overhaul Rindt's points total; Ickx later said he was happy to not have won the championship that year.
After Rindt's death, the Lotus team had a desultory 1971 season with its two new and inexperienced drivers – Emerson Fittipaldi and Reine Wisell. The team spent a lot of time experimenting with a gas turbine powered car, and with four-wheel drive again. After Jack Brabham's retirement, his old team went into a steep decline. Using their own chassis heavily inspired by the Matra MS80 but with conventional tanks, Tyrrell and Stewart easily took success in 1971. Focusing again on the type 72 chassis, now fielded in John Player Special's black and gold livery, Lotus took the 1972 championship by surprise with 25-year-old Brazilian driver Emerson Fittipaldi becoming the then youngest world champion. Stewart came second, his performance compromised by a stomach ulcer.
In 1973, Lotus teammates Fittipaldi and Ronnie Peterson raced each other while Stewart was supported by François Cevert at Tyrrell. Stewart took the Drivers' title, but then at the final race of the season, the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, Cevert crashed during Saturday practice in the notorious esses and was killed instantly. Stewart, temporary hire Chris Amon, and Tyrrell withdrew from the race effectively handing the Constructors' title to Lotus. At the end of the season, Stewart made public his decision to retire, a decision that was already made before the U.S. Grand Prix.
McLaren, having fully recovered from the death of its founder, ended the 1973 season with three wins and several poles. The new M23, an updated interpretation of the Lotus 72 concept, appeared to many as the best design on the field. Fittipaldi made the choice to leave Lotus for McLaren that offered him true lead driver status that Chapman refused to him.
The 1974 season went to pre-season favourites McLaren and Fittipaldi but was a far closer result than expected. Ferrari bounced back from a dismal 1973 season with its first true monocoque cars, the flat-12 powered 312 B3s driven by young Austrian Niki Lauda and the experienced Clay Regazzoni. Despite the failure of the new Lotus 76, Peterson managed to win Grands Prix with the four-year-old 72. Brabham driver Carlos Reutemann was also able to win with the new BT44 and young talent Jody Scheckter ended most of the races in the points, including winning the Swedish Grand Prix with the M23-lookalike Tyrrell 007. Lauda's season fizzled out after a crash on the first lap of the German Grand Prix. Only the last race of the season decided the Drivers' title between Fittipaldi, Regazzoni, and Scheckter.
By this time the innovations introduced by the Lotus 49 and 72 had changed car design. Fully stressed engine and variable flexibility suspension was now the norm, most cars had wedge shaped bodywork and airboxes towered over driver's heads. The main innovation of this era came in 1975, when the Ferrari 312T appeared, its transverse gearbox allowing better weight distribution.
Ferrari won the Constructors titles in 1975, 1976, and 1977. Lauda took a relatively straightforward first Drivers' title in 1975. The main surprise of the season came when the tiny Hesketh team won the Dutch Grand Prix with James Hunt. Despite entering only one car and refusing sponsorship the team finished 4th in the Constructors' Championship. That year also saw Lella Lombardi score the first points by a woman in Formula One for 6th place at the Spanish Grand Prix.
For 1976, Fittipaldi made the surprising decision to drive for the Brazilian Fittipaldi Automotive team of his brother Wilson, sponsored by Copersucar. James Hunt, who knew that Hesketh's future was doomed by its lack of sponsorship (Lord Hesketh had tried to obtain major backing once he realised Hunt was a likely title contender and that he could no longer afford to run the team out of his own pocket), signed for McLaren. In 1976 Lauda's second successive title seemed inevitable until he crashed on the second lap at the Nürburgring, suffering severe burns as well as lung and blood damage. He was given the last rites but unbelievably was back in his Ferrari six weeks later. He lost the championship by a single point to James Hunt in heavy rain at the final round at Fuji in Japan when he pitted his car and refused to continue, declaring that the risk was too great and that from now on he would refuse to race under extreme conditions.
The most radical innovation of 1976 was the 6-wheeled Tyrrell P34. The P34 was a good car, often finishing third or fourth and winning the Swedish Grand Prix, but it was not superior to the best 4-wheeled cars. 1976 also saw the Lotus team fitting brushes or plastic skirts under its rather uncompetitive 77; McLaren and Brabham also experimented with air-dams and splitters in an attempt to cause low-pressure areas under the car but found no significant effect on performance, in fact, nobody knew what was in Chapman's mind.
The incident at Fuji damaged Lauda's relationship with Enzo Ferrari and Lauda officially became the second driver of the Scuderia with Carlos Reutemann as the leader. Lauda signed for Brabham before the end of the 1977 championship, having taken the title easily before Enzo Ferrari refused him a car for the end of the season. His second title was mostly built on regularity and reliability. Despite his conflict with the "Commendatore" and his second driver status Lauda enjoyed immense respect from the Ferrari team, which did its best to give him a good car. There was in fact a very competitive field that year but no single challenger to the Austrian emerged and points taken away from Ferrari were shared between many teams and drivers. Surprisingly, the new Wolf team, born from the ashes of Frank Williams Racing Cars and Hesketh, made excellent use of its legacy with Jody Scheckter finishing second to Niki Lauda.
=== Ground-effect era (1977–1982) ===
See 1977 season, 1978 season, 1979 season, 1980 season, 1981 season and 1982 season.
1977 also saw two radical technical innovations that would change the future of Formula One. The purpose of Lotus's experimentation in 1976 was revealed with the Lotus 78, which brought ground effect to Formula One for the first time, using wing-profiled sidepods sealed to the ground by sliding lexan skirts. Generating radically increased downforce with significantly less drag, the Lotus 78s driven by Mario Andretti and Gunnar Nilsson won five Grands Prix in 1977. Renault unveiled the second when their RS01 made its first appearance powered by a 1.5-litre turbocharged engine, derived from their sportscar unit. Although supercharged engines were successful in the 1950s and the regulations allowing for turbocharged engines had existed for 11 years, no Formula One team had built one, feeling that the fuel consumption and turbo lag (boost lag) would negate its superior power. Motor engineer Bernard Dudot, who had observed the turbocharged Offenhauser engines used in Indy car racing in the US, pushed for this choice.
The entry of Renault also brought Michelin's radial tyres to Formula One. Goodyear, who enjoyed a monopoly before the entry of Michelin, was still using the cross ply design for racing. Goodyear saw the entry of Michelin as a serious threat and made a notable effort in research and development to develop its own radial tyres. Tyrrell's 1977 season was disastrous because Goodyear was too busy to continue to develop the unique small tyres required by the P34. Without continuing development, the tyres became less competitive and the six-wheeled concept had to be dropped. Michelin eventually left F1 after the 1984 season.
For 1978 the new Lotus 79 made more radical and mature use of the ground effect concept. Many other teams began experimenting with the technology, but Lotus had a head start and Mario Andretti won the Championship in the "Black Beauty", becoming the first driver to win both the American IndyCar championship and the Formula One title. Brabham outbid Lotus in generating downforce with BT46B "fan car", a revival of the "sucker car" concept used by Jim Hall's Chaparral 2J in the Can-Am series in the early 1970s. The car exploited a loophole in the regulations, but the team, led by Bernie Ecclestone who had recently become president of the Formula One Constructors Association, withdrew the car before it had a chance to be banned after winning its only race with Niki Lauda at the wheel at the Swedish Grand Prix. Late in the season, Ronnie Peterson crashed into the barriers in the first lap at Monza and his Lotus burst into flames. James Hunt heroically pulled him out of the car and the medical prognosis was initially good but the Swede died the next day because of an embolism. Hunt would retire after the following season's Monaco Grand Prix.
For 1979 Ligier, the up-and-coming Williams team and surprisingly Ferrari, despite the handicap of the Flat-12 that obstructed wind tunnels, produced wing-cars designs that were more effective than the Lotus 79. This forced Lotus to hastily introduce the new 80 that overplayed the ground effect concept (it was originally intended to run with no drag-inducing wings, merely ground-effect sidepods) and never proved competitive. Renault persisted with the turbo engine, despite frequent breakdowns that resulted in the nickname of the 'Little Yellow Teapot', and finally won for the first time at Dijon in 1979 with the RS10 that featured both ground effect and turbo engine.
The new technologies introduced by Renault and Lotus became entangled in the FISA–FOCA war of the early 1980s. Turbo engines were complex machines whose layout limited the ground effect 'tunnels' under the car. They were an emerging technology and so they were difficult and expensive to develop and build and make reliable. It was mostly manufacturer-supported teams, such as Renault, Ferrari, and Alfa Romeo which took that route. In contrast, the cheap, reliable, and narrow Ford-Cosworth DFV engine, still used by most teams more than a decade after its introduction, lent itself well to highly efficient ground effect aerodynamics. These two groups were represented by two political bodies – the sport's governing body FISA, headed by Jean-Marie Balestre; and FOCA, headed up by Bernie Ecclestone. The first group supported a strict limitation of ground effect to gain full advantage from their powerful turbos while the other relied on unrestricted ground effect to balance their horsepower deficit. There were also financial considerations. Faced with large constructors with unrestricted budgets, the smaller constructors wanted a larger share of Formula One's income to remain competitive.
The battles between FISA and FOCA during the first years of the 1980s overshadowed the events on track. Jody Scheckter took Ferrari's last title for 21 years in 1979, but attention there was already being focused on young Canadian Gilles Villeneuve. Alan Jones and Keke Rosberg brought success to Frank Williams at last in 1980 and 1982, while young Brazilian Nelson Piquet won titles for Brabham team owner Ecclestone in 1981 and 1983.
Patrick Depailler was killed in 1980, probably due to high lateral acceleration causing a black out in Hockenheim's fast Ostkurve. The double blow struck to Ferrari in 1982, of the death of Gilles Villeneuve and the crippling injury to teammate Didier Pironi only a few weeks later, helped bring this crisis into the spotlight, and helped both sides settle the dispute for the good of the sport.
The old fashioned DFV helped make the UK domestic Aurora Formula One series possible between 1978 and 1980. As in South Africa a generation before, second hand cars from manufacturers like Lotus and Fittipaldi Automotive were the order of the day, although some, such as the March 781, were built specifically for the series. In 1980 the series saw South African Desiré Wilson become the only woman to win a Formula One race when she triumphed at Brands Hatch in a Williams in a non-championship event.
After several years in darkness McLaren merged with Ron Dennis's Formula Two Project-4 team. The McLaren MP4/1 (McLaren Project-4) introduced the first carbon fiber composite chassis in 1981, an innovation which, despite initial doubts over its likely performance in a crash, had been taken up by all the teams by the middle of the decade. The use of carbon fibre composite in place of aluminium honeycomb produced cars that were significantly lighter, yet also far stiffer which improved grip and therefore cornering speed. Significant skepticism regarding the use of carbon fiber chassis remained, but John Watson's 1981 crash in the MP4/1 showed that the new technology was sufficiently safe, with the violent accident leaving Watson unscathed, where similar previous incidents had resulted in death or serious injury.
=== 1.5-litre turbo-charged engines (1983–1988) ===
See 1983 season, 1984 season, 1985 season, 1986 season, 1987 season and 1988 season.
The 1983 drivers' title, won by Piquet for the BMW-powered Brabham team of Bernie Ecclestone, was the first-ever won by a turbocharged engine. By 1983, the dispute between FISA and FOCA had been resolved and although FOCA emerged with the stronger hand, the teams had seen the writing on the wall. Renault had proven in 1979 and 1980 that turbo-charged engines were a more efficient means of getting more performance from the powertrain with the FIA regulations. The turbo cars were faster on almost all of the high speed (Hockenheim, Österreichring, Monza, Silverstone) and high-altitude tracks (Interlagos, Kyalami), but by 1982, the turbo cars were fastest just about everywhere. The 1982 season made it obvious to all the competing Formula One teams that turbocharged engines were the way to go if anyone wanted to be competitive in Formula 1. By 1983, the reliability of the turbo-charged engines had been ironed out and made more reliable, and in 1984, only Tyrrell still struggled on with the old DFV engines. 1983 also saw the last non-championship Formula One race: The 1983 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, won by reigning World Champion Keke Rosberg in a Williams-Ford/Cosworth in a close fight with American Danny Sullivan.
After nearly 50 years the power achieved by the turbocharged cars could finally match the 640 hp (477 kW) produced by the supercharged 1937 Mercedes-Benz W125, without a huge consumption of special fuel. By 1986, some engines were producing over 1,350 bhp (1,010 kW) in short bursts in qualifying. BMW's 1,000 bhp (750 kW) dynamometer was incapable of measuring the output of their qualifying engines – Paul Rosche estimated that it might be as much as 1,400 bhp (1,000 kW). First fuel consumption and then turbocharger boost were restricted to 4-bar in 1987 and 1.5-bar in 1988. By 1988, the turbos were only slightly more powerful than the lighter 3.5-litre naturally aspirated cars that had been introduced the previous year. The thirsty turbo engines briefly saw refuelling introduced into the sport, but this was banned for 1984.
With controversy at last left behind, the Formula One teams flourished through the remainder of the 1980s and into the 1990s. Despite the overwhelming dominance of some teams during some seasons, this period is regarded (perhaps ironically) as one of the brightest spots in F1's history. Niki Lauda, coming out of retirement for a hefty sum in 1982, pipped his teammate Alain Prost to the title in 1984 by a mere half-point, the closest ever finish in Formula One history. That half-point in itself was controversial in that it came at the rain-shortened Grand Prix of Monaco, which resulted in half points, Prost won the race, but Ayrton Senna made the stronger impression in his Toleman car by finishing 2nd and rapidly closing on Prost, It was the start of a rivalry between the two men that would continue for nearly a decade. But in the early years, Prost held the advantage, driving for the McLaren team with the Porsche-built TAG turbo engine which took three world titles in a row.
1986 provided another close finish. The Honda-powered Williams cars of Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell looked untouchable, but too often they took points from each other, allowing McLaren's Prost to stay in touch. Although Williams easily won the Constructors' Championship that year, it was not until the season-ending Grand Prix of Australia that the Drivers' title was decided, Prost making the most of both Williams drivers tyre problems. 1987 saw the Williams grow only stronger, with Piquet driving more consistent races to take his 3rd title ahead of Mansell who crashed in Japan in practice forcing him to sit out for the final 2 races.
1987 also saw the return of atmospheric engines to Formula One, after the turbo-only year of 1986. Capacity was increased to 3.5 litres, and the turbo engines were restricted in boost pressure and fuel capacity to limit their effect, with a total ban to be introduced in 1989. Nevertheless, while turbo engines lasted, they dominated, with Williams-Honda winning easily in 1987, and then Honda teaming up with McLaren in 1988 that resulted in the super-team of Prost and Senna winning 15 of 16 races, a record beaten only by Red Bull Racing in 2023. It was Senna who emerged the victor, claiming the first of his three World Titles.
=== 3.5-litre naturally-aspirated engines, active suspension, and electronic driver aids (1989–1993) ===
See 1989 season, 1990 season, 1991 season, 1992 season and 1993 season.
In 1989, turbos were banned and new regulations allowing only naturally aspirated engines up to 3.5 litres were put in their place. The dominance of McLaren-Honda continued for the next 3 seasons, Prost winning the title in 1989, Senna in 1990 and 1991. The V10 and V12 engines produced by the Japanese manufacturer proved to be just as good as the turbo V6s before them, and the V10 was the best engine over the two seasons it was used and developed by Honda. The championship was marred however by the fierce rivalry between the two men, culminating in a pair of clashes at the Japanese Grands Prix of 1989 and 1990. They both dominated Formula One from 1988 to 1990, winning 37 of the 48 Grand Prix staged and each scoring almost twice as many points as the third-place driver in those championships. In 1989 Prost 'closed the door' on his overtaking teammate while Senna later freely admitted to deliberately driving into Prost in the 1990 race, drawing stiff condemnation from all quarters of Formula One. Senna, however, was more concerned with the threat (and opportunity) afforded by the resurgent Williams, now powered by Renault (the French giant's innovative engine technology resulted in major progress) and designed by aerodynamics genius Adrian Newey which were to dominate Formula One for the next 7 years.
In the early 1990s, teams started introducing electronic driver aids, whose use spread rapidly. Active suspension, (pioneered by Lotus in 1987), semi-automatic gearboxes (Ferrari in 1989), and traction control (Ferrari in 1990) All enabled cars to reach higher and higher speeds provided the teams were willing to spend the money. The FIA, due to complaints that technology was determining the outcome of races more than driver skill, banned many such aids in 1994. However, many observers felt that the ban on driver aids was a ban in name only as the FIA did not have the technology or the methods to eliminate these features from the competition. Even this controversy did not diminish the pleasure British fans of the sport felt in 1992, when Nigel Mansell finally won the title, after a decade of trying, nor French fans in 1993 when Alain Prost took his 4th Championship, both drivers piloting Williams-Renault cars.
Lightweight television cameras attached to the cars became common in the early 1990s (following an American network TV practise actually pioneered in Australia). As well as boosting audience figures this also made the sport more attractive to sponsors beyond the traditional cigarette companies. Safety improvements also meant that the major car manufacturers were more inclined to attach themselves to teams on a rolling basis. 1994 then seemed ripe to produce a stunning season. Ayrton Senna had moved to Williams to replace Prost, who retired from the sport. Young German driver Michael Schumacher had Ford power for his Benetton. McLaren had high hopes for its new Peugeot engine (which had been developed through the French marque's Le Mans sportscar racing program) which ultimately did not happen and Ferrari were looking to put the tumultuous seasons of 1991–93 behind them with Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi. The season was stunning but for all the wrong reasons.
=== Safety, rules, and regulations (1994) ===
See 1994 season.
By 1994, the previous death in Formula One was nearly a decade past, that of Elio de Angelis during testing at the Circuit Paul Ricard in 1986. There had been several horrifying accidents (for example Nelson Piquet and Gerhard Berger at Imola, or Martin Donnelly at Jerez), but no fatalities. The speed of Formula One cars had continuously risen over 8 years, despite turbocharged engines being made illegal, the width of tyres being reduced and driver aids eventually being removed. There was an "air of invincibility" in Formula One, a belief that the cars were inherently safe and no more drivers would die.
At the San Marino Grand Prix weekend this belief was crushed completely with the serious injuries sustained by Rubens Barrichello in practice and the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger during qualifying and Ayrton Senna in the race on 1 May 1994. Furthermore, Karl Wendlinger was left comatose after a crash two weeks later at the Monaco Grand Prix. The shock from the sudden injuries and deaths was stunning. Not only had two drivers been killed, but one of them was a triple world champion and arguably the best F1 driver at the time. The FIA reacted swiftly and harshly with major changes to be enforced from that year onwards, and it was the beginning of the FIA's push to increase safety in Formula One.
While significant changes could not be made to cars in 1994, the FIA required all Formula One cars' airboxes to be perforated to reduce their "ram-air" effect, to reduce power. For the same reason special racing fuels, previously an exotic mixture of benzenes and toluenes, were banned and only those with similar characteristics to everyday unleaded petrol would be permitted. To reduce downforce, and therefore the cornering speed of the cars, a wooden "plank" was to be fitted beneath the central portion of the chassis, forcing a large section of the floor further away from the track. If the plank was worn over a certain tolerance (approximately 10 mm), the car would be deemed illegal. This wooden plank remains under F1 cars today.
Further, from 1995 designs were required to be drawn from a reference plane (template), and strict limitations were enforced as to the minimum and maximum tolerances for aspects of the vehicle such as the size of the cockpit opening (an idea well known in Champ Car for a decade) and of aerodynamic devices, commonly called wings. Further, maximum engine displacement was reduced from 3.5 to 3 litres. Further changes were mandated as the FIA continued to try to curb the increase in speeds of Formula One cars as the years progressed. These changes included the increase in the size of the cockpit opening (to ensure driver egress was easy and to minimise possible side head impacts), introducing grooved tyres (to reduce cornering speeds by reducing grip) and narrower bodywork (this would complicate cooling and also reduce cornering speed), raising and reducing wing sizes and elements (cutting aerodynamic downforce, thus reducing cornering speed), and introducing comprehensive checks on stiffness tolerances and measurements to ensure cars conformed completely with the regulations (for example, weight tests on wings and bodywork to ensure that they maintained integrity and did not flex to give an aerodynamic advantage in a straight line).
The rapid introduction of all of these new rules and regulations, particularly those introduced in 1994, made the atmosphere even more chaotic for Formula One. Michael Schumacher had to fight desperately for his first World Drivers' Championship, as his Benetton team found itself in frequent violations of FIA regulations and Schumacher was suspended for two races as a result. Even his championship-clinching race in Australia was controversial, as he collided with rival Damon Hill (son of Graham) and ensured himself of the title.
=== 3-litre engines (1995–1999) ===
See 1995 season, 1996 season, 1997 season, 1998 season and 1999 season.
By 1995, things had settled down somewhat. The downgraded 3-litre formula had no effect of the domination of the Renault V10, and Schumacher took his second Drivers' title, and Benetton their first Constructors' title, with relative ease, defeating the Williams team of Hill and David Coulthard. The Renault engine which powered both teams was virtually unbeatable, with only Ferrari claiming a single win at the Canadian Grand Prix for Alesi, his only career win.
For 1996, the FIA mandated a much larger minimum size cockpit area, along with driver's head protection, to ensure the driver's head was less exposed (ironically, this limited driver visibility and contributed to accidents). As part of his plan to rebuild Ferrari, Jean Todt brought Michael Schumacher to the team from Benetton that year, essentially in exchange for his 1995 drivers Alesi and Berger. There was an immediate effect, in his first year with the Scuderia Schumacher won three races, more than the team had managed in the previous five years. Ferrari were not championship contenders though and Damon Hill made a strong run to the title, finally claiming the crown after 3 years of almost but not quite.
In 1997, another son of an F1 racing legend took the titles for Williams once again, as Jacques Villeneuve became the 4th driver to take both the Formula One and CART championship (the others being Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Nigel Mansell). Villeneuve also became the only Canadian to have won a Formula 1 Drivers' title. The 1997 season was much closer than 1996, and Villeneuve only clinched the Drivers' Championship at the final race. Once again, Michael Schumacher collided with his championship rival at the final race, but unlike 1994 events turned against him. Schumacher not only found himself knocked out of the race, but was found to have deliberately tried to run Villeneuve off of the road. Schumacher was stripped of second place in the Championship and was disgraced.
At the end of 1997 Renault withdrew from Formula One. McLaren-Mercedes took the Drivers' Crown for the next two years, both being claimed by Mika Häkkinen. The Finn was nearly untouchable as he took his first title while Schumacher and Villeneuve could only watch. 1999 provided a stiffer contest for the title. Villeneuve was out of the picture at the brand-new BAR but Schumacher was in contention when he crashed and broke his leg at Silverstone. His teammate Eddie Irvine eventually lost by only two points to Mika Häkkinen, but his efforts contributed to Ferrari's first Constructors' Championship since 1983.
Behind the title races, however, there were signs of trouble brewing in Formula One. The long-established, highly respected Lotus name vanished from the starting grids, following Brabham's demise in mid-1992. French manufacturer Ligier found themselves in desperate straits, and were sold to Alain Prost. Ken Tyrrell's team floundered on, despite dismal results, until 1998, when BAR bought the team. And the colourful era of the small, private teams finally came to an end. Names like Larrousse, Dallara, Simtek, Pacific, MasterCard Lola, Life Racing Engines, March Engineering, Onyx Grand Prix, Coloni, Andrea Moda, Fondmetal, Osella, Footwork, AGS, Lambo, Leyton House Racing, EuroBrun and Forti would no longer be seen on the starting grids, with only Jordan, Sauber, Arrows and Minardi managing to survive somehow. The flourishing of Jordan in 1998 and 1999, under the leadership of Damon Hill, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Ralf Schumacher (Michael's younger brother) proved to be a last hurrah of the privateer, not a sign of health in the sport. Even once-mighty Benetton champions only a few years before were barely surviving. Jackie Stewart fronted his own team from 1997 to 1999 with backing from Ford but even then sold out as the team transformed into Jaguar.
=== V10 engines and rise of road car manufacturer participation (2000–2005) ===
See 2000 season, 2001 season, 2002 season, 2003 season, 2004 season and 2005 season.
After the banning of turbocharged engines in 1989, V10 became the most popular engine configuration in Formula One, because it offered the best compromise between power and fuel consumption. From the 1998 season onwards, all competing teams had V10 engines in their cars. V12s were powerful but thirsty, while V8s were more fuel-efficient but lacked power. 2000 saw the grids of Formula One start to revert to normal, as Jordan rapidly faded out of sight, and Williams, looking forward to a new partnership with BMW started to reassert itself. The fight at the front, however, was very much between Häkkinen and Schumacher, each two-time champion, driving cars closely matched in performance. Ferrari had been steadily improving since their low point in the early 1990s and in 2000 Schumacher prevailed, becoming the first three-time Champion since Senna, and bringing the World Drivers' title to Ferrari for the first time since Jody Scheckter in 1979. The 2001 season saw Ferrari start to leave the rest of the grid behind, and Schumacher won the championship by the Hungarian Grand Prix, which tied him as second quickest championship winner with Nigel Mansell. 2001 also saw the reintroduction of electronic driver aids after a seven-year absence, starting at the Spanish Grand Prix, which included fully-automatic gearboxes, launch control, and traction control, marking the first time since the 1993 season that these systems were allowed to be used. For 2002, the season was a red-wash. Ferrari finished every race and won 15 of 17. Michael Schumacher scored more points than the second and third-placed drivers combined, after gaining a podium in all of the races (Schumacher had only a single third place, in Malaysia). In this season, he wrapped up the championship at the French Grand Prix (Round 11 of 17), becoming the earliest ever championship winner.
While Ferrari celebrated their dominance, the sport itself was seen by many to be in trouble. Two more privateers, Prost and Arrows, had closed their doors for good, while Benetton was bought out by Renault. Even more troubling was the one team in seemingly no danger of disappearing: Ferrari. While Formula One was no stranger to teams monopolizing the winner's stand, Ferrari's actions throughout the 2002 season annoyed many; in particular, the staged finishes of the Austrian Grand Prix and the US Grand Prix. It seemed to many that it was possible to take the dictum of 'win at all costs' too far. Ratings and attendance noticeably declined in the latter half of 2002, a serious problem for a sport which was by far the most expensive (and, more importantly, most lucrative) in the world by this time.
A number of major car manufacturers had joined Formula One since 2000 – there were as many as eight manufacturers participating in Formula One at most. BMW and Honda had returned as works engine manufacturers in 2000, while Ford had rebranded the Stewart team as Jaguar and developed engines through its Cosworth subsidiary. In 2001, Renault also returned as a works engine maker and bought the Enstone-based Benetton team, which it rebranded as Renault in 2002. Toyota joined the series in 2002, developing both chassis and engine at its facility in Cologne. Mercedes continued its participation as engine manufacturer in association with Ilmor, and part-owned McLaren.
In 2003, despite heavy rule changes (such as a new points system) in order to prevent another year of Ferrari dominance, Schumacher won the championship once more. He was run close by both Kimi Räikkönen and Juan Pablo Montoya, but Schumacher prevailed, taking the championship by two points at Suzuka. It seemed that 2003 was the perfect balm to ease the memories of the previous season, with 8 different race winners (including first-time victories for Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen and Giancarlo Fisichella) and 5 different teams, including both Renault (for the first time in twenty years) and Jordan, who grabbed a lucky win in a wild Brazilian Grand Prix.
In 2004, Ferrari and Schumacher returned to almost total dominance of the championships, winning both with ease – in the first thirteen races of the season, Schumacher managed to win twelve. A new race in Bahrain made its debut in April and another new race in China debuted in September. It was initially thought that in introducing these new races, older Grands Prix in Europe, like the British Grand Prix, might be removed from the championship, but instead, the number of races was increased to eighteen. According to Ecclestone, the move was to increase Formula One's global reach, though the steady tightening of restrictions on tobacco advertising in Europe and elsewhere may also have been a factor. This move saw the percentage of races held outside Formula One's traditional European home climb to around fifty percent – meaning the World Championship, which visits four of the six continents, truly deserves its name. 2004 was Michael Schumacher's most recent of his record seven World Championships. Schumacher also held the record for the most races won – with ninety-one, and now remains the driver with the second most wins ever. The 2004 season also saw a big change in technical regulations, including the banning of two electronic driver aid systems; namely fully-automatic gearboxes and launch control, both of which had been used for the last three seasons, marking the first time since 1994 that cars competed without using these systems. This was done to ensure that costs were kept down for a competitive F1 team, as well as keeping the skill of driving a Formula 1 car relevant to the driver. However, the use of traction control was still permitted by the FIA, and was used for the next three seasons, until an effort to ban the system led to the FIA finally outlawing it for the 2008 season.
Despite Ferrari's dominance (taking 15 wins from the 18 races), the battle back in the pack was much more open than 2002, as powerhouses McLaren and Williams got off to horrendous starts with radical new cars. As could have been expected, Renault was quick to capitalize on the misfortunes of the two older British teams, but the real shock came from British American Racing, led by Jenson Button. Although failing to win a race, Button was a regular sight on the 2nd or 3rd step of the podium, and with teammate Takuma Sato who had finished 3rd at the US Grand Prix behind the Ferraris managed to clinch 2nd in the Constructors' Championship, leaving Renault 3rd, Jarno Trulli's win in Monaco some consolation. Montoya and Räikkönen each managed a solitary win for their teams, which finished 4th and 5th in the results. The Ford Motor Company's decision to pull out of Formula One at the end of 2004 exposed the vulnerabilities of some small teams. Not only was their works Jaguar team sold to Austrian drinks company Red Bull, but the few remaining small independent teams, who traditionally had used Ford engines, found their engine supply in a precarious state.
In 2005, Formula One saw Ferrari and BAR rapidly fade out of sight, as the works Renault team dominated the early part of the season, and Fernando Alonso forged a clear championship lead. In the latter part of the season, McLaren was significantly the stronger team, with consistently better results and a win tally of 6 from 7 races. However, their early record of poor reliability had meant that catching Renault in either Drivers' or Constructors' Championships was a tall order.
For a while, it looked close between Räikkönen and Alonso, but by Brazil Alonso had become Formula One's youngest ever champion. The Constructors' Championship looked even more likely for McLaren, widely regarded as the faster car and with reliability much improved. However, a retirement for Juan Pablo Montoya in the season finale at Shanghai secured the Constructors' title for Renault. One statistic proved the two teams' dominance: they together won all but one of the races, the controversial U.S. Grand Prix, in which neither of the two teams participated, which was Schumacher and Ferrari's only win of the year.
Arguably, the final small specialist racing team disappeared with the September 2005 purchase of Minardi by Red Bull to be renamed as Scuderia Toro Rosso and run as a separate entity alongside Red Bull Racing. Jordan had been bought by Russo-Canadian steel company Midland early in 2005 and was renamed Midland F1 for the 2006 season. In June 2005, BMW bought a majority stake in Sauber, which became their factory entry. The Williams team ceased their partnership with BMW as a result, entering a commercial arrangement with Cosworth instead. From 2006 manufacturer teams had an unprecedented level of involvement in the sport. Honda also bought BAR.
2005 marked the end of the V10-era in Formula One. To keep costs down, the configuration had been made mandatory in 2000 (although only V10s had been in use since 1998, Toyota were planning on entering Formula One with a V12 and had to delay their entry by a year to redesign) so that engine builders would not develop and experiment with other configurations. Over this period, the statistics show the supremacy of the Renault and Ferrari engines, with Renault clinching six Constructors and five Drivers' Championships as engine suppliers for Williams and Benetton from 1992 to 1997, and their first-ever Drivers' and Constructors' Championships in a 100% Renault car in 2005. Ferrari also enjoyed great success in the V10 era, winning six Constructors' Championships and five Drivers' Championships from 1999 to 2004.
=== 2.4-litre V8 engines (2006–2008) ===
See 2006 season, 2007 season and 2008 season.
2006 was the last season with two tyre manufacturers: Japanese manufacturer Bridgestone and French company Michelin. In December 2005, the FIA announced that from the 2008 season, there would be only one tyre-supplier. Five days later, Michelin announced it would quit Formula One at the end of the 2006 season, leaving Bridgestone as the sole supplier from 2007. Renault and Fernando Alonso established early leads in both the Constructors' and Drivers' Championships. By mid-season, Ferrari appeared to be making a comeback. The Italian Grand Prix saw Schumacher reduce Alonso's lead to only two points as Alonso suffered an engine failure. The race also saw Ferrari pull ahead of Renault for the first time in 2006. The race results were largely overshadowed by Schumacher announcing, during the post-race press conference, that he would retire at the end of the season. An engine failure for Schumacher at the Japanese Grand Prix, along with costly puncture in the final round in Brazil allowed Alonso to secure the Drivers' Championship for the second year running, with Renault also securing the Constructors' Championship.
The 2007 Formula One season saw a much more competitive McLaren, with current world champion Alonso alongside rookie Lewis Hamilton. However, Hamilton surprised everyone with a run of nine consecutive podiums in his first nine races seeing him take a significant lead in the Drivers' Championship. Alonso's relationship with McLaren deteriorated as the season progressed, as he believed it was his right as world champion to be favoured above his teammate. A mistake by Hamilton in China and a mechanical problem in Brazil ruined his championship. Alonso, however, was not able to fully capitalise
on the situation, and Ferrari's Kimi Räikkönen took the championship after a strong second half to the season. Räikkönen turned around a 17-point deficit with two races to go to win by a single point.
Both McLarens finished the Championship on 109 points. Fernando Alonso was placed third, behind Lewis Hamilton through countback. Renault had a much less successful season in 2007 than in previous years and struggled to match the pace of McLaren and Ferrari. Ferrari also clinched the Constructors' Championship after McLaren's disqualification over the controversy over the suspicion that McLaren had Ferrari information. 2007 marked the seventh and final season, since its reintroduction in 2001, that the use of traction control was permitted in F1. Standardised ECUs were mandated by the FIA from the 2008 season onwards, which prevented teams from using this kind of technology. The 2008 season also marked the first time since the 2001 San Marino Grand Prix that all cars competed without using traction control. For the 2008 and 2009 seasons Fernando Alonso returned to Renault, but having little success he joined Ferrari in 2010.
2008 again saw McLaren and Ferrari have the most competitive cars. However, the season was much more open, with winners from three other teams. After agonising defeat in 2007, Hamilton clinched the Drivers' Championship in dramatic fashion, overtaking Timo Glock in the Toyota to secure the fifth place he needed in the last corner of the last lap of the final Grand Prix. Felipe Massa had won the race, and would also have won the Drivers' Championship if it had not been for Hamilton's crucial overtake. Despite this, Ferrari secured the Constructors' Championship for the eighth time in ten years.
=== Cost-cutting measures and departure of car manufacturers (2009–2013) ===
See 2009 season, 2010 season, 2011 season, 2012 season and 2013 season.
During the 2000s, Formula One cars had become extremely complex, efficient, and reliable, so much so that actual racing between drivers began to become less and less common. 2009 saw the introduction of many new rules and regulations (including engine RPM limits, an adjustable front wing, and disproportionate wing sizes) to encourage overtaking. Engine RPM reached 20,000 rpm (and over for Renault and Cosworth) in 2006, and was initially limited to 19,000 rpm for 2007; this was lowered to 18,000 from 2009 to 2013.
The most significant system introduced in F1 was the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS), a system that stores energy, created by braking, through a flywheel; this energy is then channeled to the car's drivetrain to increase acceleration. A few well-funded teams had tested this technology the previous year but it remained too experimental; all of the teams' KERS systems needed more development, so none of them would be ready for 2009. Due to the global economic recession, many more rule changes were brought in to reduce the cost of participating in Formula One. Initially a standardised engine was proposed, but this idea was rejected by the teams, who came up with their own cost-cutting measures. These included a huge reduction in testing times and an increase in the required engine and gearbox mileage. Many teams voiced concerns over the cost of KERS and have suggested a standardised unit, but so far no such opportunity exists. The new rules and regulations saw a new order in 2009, with new teams Brawn GP and Red Bull Racing and their drivers leading the way, with Ferrari and McLaren having a poor season. However, Ferrari started by the British Grand Prix to make the most of their car with a string of podium finishes and a race victory in Belgium, while a redesign of the McLaren challenger helped Lewis Hamilton to win two races and gain more points than any other driver after it was upgraded at the German Grand Prix.
After dominating the beginning of the season with six out of seven race wins, Jenson Button eventually clinched the Drivers' Championship in Brazil, with Brawn GP winning the Constructors' Championship in its only season, before being taken over by Mercedes. Rubens Barrichello, Jenson Button's teammate, was second in the Drivers' Championship for the whole season until he had a problem at the Brazilian Grand Prix and was overtaken (in points) by Sebastian Vettel, a Red Bull driver, who won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to finish eleven points behind Button. Also, the major manufacturer teams were starting to disappear rapidly due to the worldwide economy crisis. In addition to Ford/Jaguar which had left in 2004, Honda had departed in 2008 also due to uncompetitiveness, Toyota and BMW both departed entirely in 2009 (BMW sold Sauber, a team it had bought in 2005 after its split with Williams even though in 2010 the team was still called BMW Sauber), Renault changed their involvement as a full works effort to engine supplier in 2011 and Cosworth departed entirely as an engine supplier in 2013.
2010 saw more changes in the way of rules and regulations. KERS and double diffusers were banned for the 2010 season, but new innovative features on the cars such as F-ducts were introduced. An allocated eight engines, per driver, for the whole season was also introduced as part of more cost-cutting methods. The biggest change in the points scoring system in F1 history happened between 2009 & 2010. The 10–8–6–5–4–3–2–1 point system for the top eight finishers (which had been running since 2003), was replaced with the drastically different 25–18–15–12–10–8–6–4–2–1 for the top-10 finishers.
Red Bull Racing returned to have a great season in 2010, thanks to their hiring of designer Adrian Newey in 2007. They won the Constructors' Championship in the penultimate round in Brazil, and Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel won the championship in the final round of the 2010 season at Abu Dhabi. Mercedes GP (formerly Brawn GP) had a much less successful and winless season than 2009 with their two new drivers – seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher had returned to Formula One, but was regularly beaten by fellow German, Nico Rosberg.
McLaren and Ferrari had better seasons in 2010, finishing respectively second and third among the constructors. The Drivers' Championship was very closely fought, with six drivers leading the championship at various points, in the joint longest ever (nineteen-race) season. For most of the season, the title looked like it could have gone to either Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel or Mark Webber, or either McLaren's Lewis Hamilton or reigning World Champion Jenson Button (also at McLaren). But, the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso clawed back 47 points after the British Grand Prix, to be leading the Drivers' Championship with two races left. A record four drivers were still in contention for the title going into the final round in Abu Dhabi. They were Alonso, Webber, Vettel and Hamilton (placing in that order in number of points before the race). They did not finish that way though, with Vettel winning the race and the title when the others finished too far down the field. Vettel became the youngest ever World Champion in the history of the sport.
After a controversial race in Hockenheim, 2010 led to the ban on team orders being dropped. When Ferrari asked Felipe Massa to move over to allow their No.1 driver Fernando Alonso into the lead of the race and take the win, they were fined $100,000. The FIA decided that the rule was too vague, and there was nothing they could do to enforce it. This led to an end to the ban on team orders for the 2011 Formula One season. Other changes included a re-introduction KERS, the introduction of the Drag reduction system (DRS) (a driver activated moveable flap on the cars rear wing), and a change in tyre supplier from Bridgestone to Pirelli. Vettel and Red Bull lead their respective championship from the start until the end of the season, dominating and taking their second successive titles. Vettel also became the youngest double world champion when he clinched the title at the 2011 Japanese Grand Prix, Red Bull took the Constructors' Championship at the following race in South Korea.
McLaren and Ferrari finished second and third in the standings once again, albeit much further behind. Button eventually took second place in the standings, with Webber in third once again. Vettel took 11 victories throughout the course of the year, broke the record for the most pole positions in a season (15) and the most championship points (392). After a slow start to the 2012 season, Vettel won 4 races in a row and challenged Fernando Alonso and Ferrari all the way through. Eventually, the German Vettel took the lead from the Spanish Alonso and Vettel opened up a 13-point gap come the last round in Brazil. Vettel won his third consecutive Drivers' title after finishing 6th at Interlagos, while Alonso finished 2nd. 2013 also went Vettel's way: the superiority of the Red Bull in race trim allowed the German to open up a small lead early in the season, and starting with the Belgian Grand Prix (after F1's 4-week summer break), the superiority of the Red Bull car began to show. The British-based Austrian team had developed an engine-mapping system that gave their car a type of traction control (actual traction control systems are illegal), and Vettel used this to his considerable advantage. He won in Belgium and after that, the rest of the remaining races in the season (9 races total). The German and the Red Bull team simply ran away with the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships, both of which they won in India – Vettel won his 4th consecutive Drivers' Championship there. Come the Korean round, 2 rounds before the Indian one, Red Bull had developed a special aerodynamic diffuser that gave the cars a considerable cornering advantage. Vettel and his Australian teammate Mark Webber were leading 1–2 for most of those 9 races, and the cars often qualified in the top 3 grid spots; and when they qualified 1–2, it was often by considerable amounts of time.
=== Introduction of 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 hybrid power units and cost cap (2014–2021) ===
See 2014 season, 2015 season, 2016 season, 2017 season, 2018 season, 2019 season, 2020 season, 2021 season and Formula One engines.
Formula One entered its second turbocharged era in 2014. Australia was the location of the end of the first era (Adelaide 1988) and start of the second (Melbourne 2014). The series is being run under the most radical engine regulation changes since 1995. All cars entering any Formula One championship race must run with 1.6-litre single turbocharged 6-cylinder engines with a rev limit of 15,000 rpm and maximum fuel flow of 100 kg/hr. New car regulations will also be enforced, and the minimum weight regulations will be raised from 642 kg (1,415 lb) to 690 kg (1,521 lb). Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault produced engines from 2014 with Honda producing engines from 2015; Cosworth did not participate from 2014 and beyond. In-season engine development returned; the previous V8's development was frozen. The new turbo engines produce 600 bhp (the previous V8s produce approximately 750 hp); but the new energy recovery system (ERS) would be twice as powerful as the previous KERS system; this new ERS system would give the drivers up to the equivalent of 160 hp when activated, whereas the previous KERS gave cars an extra 80 hp when activated. Since 2017 new rules about aerodynamics and the consistent improvement of the engines, that now reach around 1000 hp, have made the cars finally faster than the 2004 ones, breaking numerous track records.
The Mercedes team and their drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg dominated the start of the hybrid era, winning 51 of the 59 races (31 for Hamilton and 20 for Rosberg) between 2014 and 2016 as well as all titles during that period (Hamilton was champion in 2014 and 2015 while Rosberg won in 2016). This success was the result of Mercedes' development of the "split turbocharger", a system in which the compressor and turbine components of the turbo charger are placed at separate sides of the engine and connected by a rod running through the V of the engine. This new technology gave Mercedes and their customer teams many advantages over their competitors due to the need for less cooling and a more compact power unit.
Ferrari and their driver Sebastian Vettel emerged as strong title contenders in 2017 and 2018 after rule changes in aerodynamic design were implemented for 2017, but despite mid-season championship leads for Vettel in both seasons, Hamilton and Mercedes ultimately won the titles with multiple races to spare. Mercedes subsequently won both championships comfortably in 2019 and 2020 along with an additional constructors' title in 2021, with Hamilton managing to equal Michael Schumacher's record of seven World Championships. In 2021, Mercedes faced stiff competition from the Honda-powered Red Bull team, whose driver Max Verstappen won the Drivers' Championship after a season-long battle with Hamilton to end the run of Mercedes only winning titles in the hybrid era.
=== Ground effect cars and aerodynamic changes for closer racing (2022–2025) ===
See 2022 season, 2023 season, 2024 season, 2025 season
In 2022, the FIA designed a new set of rules designed to promote "closer racing." This mostly included aerodynamic changes. Citing a loss of downforce in a trailing car caused by dirty air, the FIA introduced a new type of car designed around using ground effect to create downforce. This was the first time ground effect was used since venturi tunnels under cars were banned in 1983. In the previous cars, air led off the car in a chaotic pattern, creating "dirty air" that decreased the downforce of the car right behind it. The new 2022 car uses ground effect to create downforce, meaning there is less drag and dirty air behind the car. This promotes closer racing as it allows attacking cars to get up closer to the leading car, increasing the number of risky overtakes per race. This is done by simplifying the exterior of the car and instead using the floor to generate downforce, instead of sending air outwards or under the car into the diffuser. A newer front wing is designed to prevent outwash. Ground effect features in the car also allow the car to follow leading cars better by decreasing the effect of dirty air on its downforce. Bargeboards were eliminated and a newer front wing with simpler endplates to decrease the complexity of aerodynamic components. The front wings were also required to directly attach to the nosecone, which has an increased height. The wider rear wings are mounted higher, and regulations limit the teams' ability to use exhaust gases to increase downforce. The number of aerodynamic upgrades a team can make to the car was decreased, to cut the costs of competing. Although the cars used the same 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 hybrid engines from the previous era, the engines also included new sensors and standard components. This increases the FIA's ability to monitor the power units. However, there were changes made to the type of fuel in the engines. In 2022, the percentage of bio-components in fuel increased from 5.75% in previous years to 10%, moving to E10 (ethanol) fuels. This is designed to make Formula 1 more sustainable, as well as align better with road car fuel regulations.
After a slow season beginning dominated by Scuderia Ferrari, Red Bull Racing dominated the season. Their drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez dominated most races. The season ended with Verstappen winning the World Drivers' Championship and Red Bull winning the Constructors' Championship. Verstappen ended the season with 454 points, the highest number of points in one season ever recorded. He was 146 points ahead of Charles Leclerc in second place and his teammate Pérez in third.
In 2023, Verstappen cruised to his third consecutive Drivers' Championship title clinching it at the Qatar Grand Prix, winning a record 19 out of 22 Grands Prix held and finishing on the podium 21 times (also a record number for most podiums in a season) by the end of the championship. His team, Red Bull Racing achieved their sixth Constructors' Championship title, the second consecutively, at the preceding Japanese Grand Prix. Red Bull Racing won 21 out of 22 Grands Prix, breaking the team record for highest percentage of Grand Prix wins in a season at 95.45%, beating McLaren's 1988 season, the only 2023 Grand Prix to elude them being the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix won by Carlos Sainz in a Ferrari. Verstappen also broke the record for the highest Grand Prix win percentage for drivers, with a win rate percentage of 86.36%, beating the previous record set by Alberto Ascari in 1952.
The 2024 season started in similarly dominant fashion for Verstappen and Red Bull with the Dutchman winning 7 of the first 10 rounds of the season. However, as the season progressed other team notably McLaren and Ferrari began to overhaul Red Bull in terms of performance . Whilst Verstappen would win nine Grand Prix in 2024 and prove consistent enough win a fourth consecutive drivers title clinching it at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. McLaren's improved performance level in 2024 would see them become constructors champions for the ninth time overall and for the first time since 1998 at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with Ferrari as runners-up and Red Bull third. McLaren driver Lando Norris would finish as runner-up to Verstappen in the 2024 drivers standings.
The 2025 season marked the last season of the ground effect cars that were introduced in 2022 and the last year of the Drag Reduction System (DRS) overtaking aid that was first introduced in 2011 as well as the last year for the Motor Generator Unit Heat (MGU-H) which had been part of the V6 hybrid power units since they were introduce in 2014. The season also saw the end of Max Verstappens' title winning streak as Lando Norris overcame early season form wobbles to hold off a late season surge from the Dutch defending champion to win his first drivers title at the season finale in Abu Dhabi from Verstappen by just two points with Norris' McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri finishing third in the drivers standings a further eleven points behind Verstappen putting him thirteen points behind new World Champion Norris. The championship win for Norris marked McLarens' first drivers title success since Lewis Hamilton in 2008. Piastri had led the drivers championship by thirty-four points from Norris and by one-hundred four points from Verstappen after the fifteenth round of the season at the Dutch Grand Prix (which he won) but a significant slump in form and results in the latter part of the season saw him overhauled in the points table by both Verstappen and Norris by the end of the season. McLaren had easily sealed their second consecutive constructors title earlier that season with six rounds to spare at the Singapore Grand Prix.
== Relative importance of car quality to driver skill (1950–2020) ==
In 2020, the British magazine The Economist ranked champion drivers by the relative importance of car quality to driver skill, based on a study by Andrew Bell of the University of Sheffield, UK. This ranking considers the relative statistical significance of the car maker's contributions:
Juan Manuel Fangio (2.9)
Jim Clark (2.6)
Alain Prost (2.1)
Jackie Stewart (1.95)
Michael Schumacher (1.9)
Lewis Hamilton (1.8)
Alberto Ascari (1.75)
Ayrton Senna (1.7)
The ranking illustrates that over time car quality has become more important. For example, Michael Schumacher won 5 of his 7 titles (1994–2004) with a single car maker (Ferrari). Lewis Hamilton won all of his 7 titles (2008–2020) with a Mercedes-Benz engine (one of them in conjunction with McLaren). In the 1950s, Juan Manuel Fangio won his 5 titles (1951–1957) with four different teams: Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Maserati. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Khaled | DJ Khaled | Khaled Mohammed Khaled (; Arabic: خالد محمد خالد, romanized: Khālid Muḥammad Khālid; born November 26, 1975), known professionally as DJ Khaled, is an American DJ and record producer. Originally a Miami-based radio personality, Khaled has since become known for enlisting high-profile music industry artists to perform on singles and albums, for which he often serves as producer and hype man. Known as the "Anthem King", his distinctions are his booming voice presence, "motivational" abstractions, maximalist production style and numerous catchphrases.
Khaled was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Palestinian immigrant parents. He first gained recognition as a radio host in the 1990s for the radio station 99 Jamz, and translated his popularity by working with Fat Joe's hip hop collective, Terror Squad, as a DJ for their live performances and as a producer for the group. Following his production credits on the group's material, Khaled enlisted several hip hop artists associated with the group and his native Miami to perform on his debut studio album, Listennn... the Album (2006). His second album, We the Best (2007), spawned the hit single "I'm So Hood" (featuring T-Pain, Trick Daddy, Rick Ross and Plies). His two subsequent releases—We Global (2008) and Victory (2010)—both peaked within the top ten of the Billboard 200; the latter was supported by the single "All I Do Is Win" (featuring T-Pain, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg and Rick Ross), which received triple platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
His fifth studio album and major label debut, We the Best Forever (2011), saw continued commercial success and brought Khaled to mainstream prominence by spawning his first Billboard Hot 100-top ten single, "I'm on One" (featuring Drake, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne). His following three albums—Kiss the Ring (2012), Suffering from Success (2013), and I Changed a Lot (2015)—were released to moderate critical and commercial reception. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Khaled gained wider recognition as a public figure due to his social media activity. This, along with several Internet memes, foresaw the release of his ninth studio album, Major Key (2016), which was met with further critical and commercial success as it debuted atop the Billboard 200 and was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards.
His tenth album, Grateful (2017), became his second consecutive number-one album and was preceded by the singles "I'm the One" (featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper and Lil Wayne) and "Wild Thoughts" (featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller), which peaked at numbers one and two on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. His eleventh album, Father of Asahd (2019), contained the song "Higher" (featuring Nipsey Hussle and John Legend), which won Best Rap/Sung Performance at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards—Khaled's first Grammy Award win. His eponymous twelfth album (2021) and thirteenth album, God Did (2022), both debuted atop the Billboard 200. The latter's title track (featuring Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend and Fridayy) earned three nominations at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards: Song of the Year, Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance. Khaled is scheduled to release his fourteenth studio album, Aalam of God, in 2025.
Outside of music, Khaled has gained success as a writer, with his book The Keys featuring on the New York Times Best Seller list. He has also performed as an actor for the films Bad Boys for Life (2020) and its sequel Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024), and had a voice role in the animated film Spies in Disguise (2019). His record label, We the Best Music Group, has distributed his releases since its formation in 2008, though Khaled signed other artists to the imprint including Ace Hood, Kent Jones, Mavado, Flipp Dinero, and Vado, among others.
== Early life ==
Khaled Mohammed Khaled was born on November 26, 1975, in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Palestinian parents who immigrated to the United States; his father was from Al-Mazra'a ash-Sharqiya and his mother was from Ramallah. His brother Alec Ledd (Alaa Khaled) is an actor.
His musician parents played Arabic music; Khaled started developing an interest in rap and soul music at a young age, and his parents supported his interest. He worked in a local Merry-Go-Round record store.
== Career ==
During his early career, Khaled became acquainted with several young artists and helped them before their breakthrough; these include Birdman, Lil Wayne, and Mavado. One of his first jobs was at the New Orleans record store, Odyssey, where he met both Birdman and Lil Wayne in 1993. After leaving Odyssey, he began DJing in reggae sound clashes, mixing dancehall and hip-hop. His first radio gig was on a pirate station. In 1998, he moved to Miami and co-hosted The Luke Show on WEDR "99 Jamz" with 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell. In 2003, he started hosting a weeknight radio show on 99 Jamz called The Takeover.
During his career, Khaled has used many monikers, including "Arab Attack", "Big Dog Pitbull", "Terror Squadian" (used during his time with the hip hop group Terror Squad), Beat Novacane (a moniker under which he produces beats), The Don Dada, Mr. Miami etc. Khaled explained that "Arab Attack" meant "attack with music"; he stopped using it after the September 11 attacks to avoid appearing insensitive.
=== 2006–2008: Listennn... the Album, We the Best, and We Global ===
On June 6, 2006, his debut album, Listennn... the Album, was released by Koch Records; it premiered on the US Billboard 200 chart at number 12. We the Best (2007) was his second album, whose release was preceded with singles "I'm So Hood" (with T-Pain, Trick Daddy, Plies, and Rick Ross) and "We Takin' Over" (with Akon, T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Birdman, and Lil Wayne). "We Takin' Over" peaked at number 28 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 11 on the US Hot Rap Tracks chart and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on November 20, 2007. Khaled made a guest appearance on Birdman's 2007 album 5 * Stunna on the single "100 Million", which also features Rick Ross, Dre, Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne. That year, Khaled won two Ozone Awards: one for Best Video ("We Takin' Over") and another for Best Radio DJ.
In 2008, Khaled's third album, We Global, came out with singles "Out Here Grindin" (with Akon, Rick Ross, Lil' Boosie, Trick Daddy, Ace Hood, and Plies) followed by "Go Hard" (featuring Kanye West and T-Pain). RIAA certified the single "I'm So Hood" Platinum on June 4, 2008. That year, Khaled won DJ of the Year awards from the BET Hip Hop Awards and Ozone Awards. He was appointed the president of Def Jam South in February 2009. That same month, 50 Cent released a video titled "A Psychic Told Me" in which he spoke of harming Khaled's mother and showed alleged footage of her and her workplace. Following this, Khaled refused to comment, not wanting to give 50 Cent the publicity, simply stating: "I'm not gonna let him bait me".
=== 2010–2012: Victory, We the Best Forever, and Kiss the Ring ===
His fourth studio album Victory was released on March 2, 2010. The album featured guest appearances from Drake, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Nas, Snoop Dogg, Ludacris, Nelly, and more. The single "All I Do Is Win" featuring Ludacris, Rick Ross, Snoop Dogg, and T-Pain was certified as a double-platinum single. Other singles include: "Put Your Hands Up" featuring Ross, Young Jeezy, Plies, and Schife, and "Fed Up" featuring Usher, Drake, Ross, and Jeezy. The album had low sales and debuted at number 12 on the Billboard 200. DJ Khaled announced the title of his next album, We the Best Forever, on Twitter. On August 19, Khaled signed to Cash Money Records along to Universal Motown, the album will be released under the label, also under E1 Entertainment, Terror Squad, Def Jam South, and Khaled's own label We the Best Music Group, with confirmed guests as Fat Joe, Chris Brown, Keyshia Cole, Cee Lo Green, Cool & Dre, Rick Ross, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Nas, Birdman, Lil Wayne, T.I., Akon, Drake, and Nicki Minaj
The first single, "Welcome to My Hood", featuring Rick Ross, Plies, Lil Wayne and T-Pain was released on January 13, 2011; it was produced by the Renegades, and co-produced by DJ Khaled himself along with the Nasty Beatmakers. The song was his first release under Cash Money Records and Universal Motown Records, a music video was filmed in Miami, Florida, and directed by Gil Green, featuring cameos by Flo Rida, Bow Wow, Busta Rhymes, and other artists. The next single, "I'm on One", featuring Drake, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne, was released on May 20, 2011. Khaled performed the song at BET Awards 2011, which aired on June 26, 2011. On December 10, 2011, DJ Khaled announced the title of his next album, Kiss the Ring, in an online video, with the release date as "coming soon" in 2012. Guests on the album include T-Pain, French Montana, Future, Wiz Khalifa, Nas, Plies, Ace Hood, Kanye West, Rick Ross, Meek Mill, Big Sean, 2 Chainz, Jadakiss, Kirko Bangz, Mack Maine, Tyga, T.I., J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Big K.R.I.T., Mavado, and Wale. Khaled mentioned that he had a verse from someone "very special", which was later revealed as Scarface. The first single released was "Take It to the Head", featuring Chris Brown, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne. The second single was "I Wish You Would", featuring Kanye West and Rick Ross. Kiss the Ring was released on August 21, 2012 and debuted at number four on the Billboard 200. The third single was "Bitches and Bottles" featuring T.I., Lil Wayne, and Future. In 2012, Khaled and other producers, including No I.D., worked with Kanye West on his sixth studio album Yeezus, although Khaled's contributions were ultimately omitted from the album.
=== 2013–2015: Suffering from Success and I Changed a Lot ===
In January 2013, Khaled announced that he began work on his seventh album, Suffering from Success. After attending a doctor due to a bald spot on his beard, Khaled was told that he was "suffering from success", which inspired the album's title. The first single from the album, "No New Friends", features Drake, Lil Wayne and Rick Ross, and was produced by Canadian producers Boi-1da and Noah "40" Shebib. On April 14, 2013, Khaled released a promotional video for Suffering for Success, and the music video for the aforementioned single. The single was premiered the following day and released to iTunes of April 19, 2013. "No New Friends" has since debuted at #55 on the Billboard Hot 100. On June 10, 2013, it was announced that Suffering from Success would be released on September 24, 2013. On July 25, 2013, Khaled publicly "proposed" to fellow Cash Money artist Nicki Minaj via MTV. He supported his offer with a 10-karat diamond ring from Rafaello & Co., valued at about $500,000. Later, he reaffirmed his proposal in an interview with Power 106's DJ Felli Fel, stating: "I ain't a young boy no more. I'm on my thinking the future. I just had to be honest. I always liked her. She's my friend, of course. And I like her. It's more than a crush." On July 29, 2013, in an interview with Funkmaster Flex, Minaj denied Khaled's proposal, saying: "Khaled is my brother and Khaled was not serious with that damn proposal, y'all. Please let it go. He was kidding." The same day, Flex premiered Khaled's new single, "I Wanna Be with You", which featured Minaj, as well as frequent collaborators Future and Rick Ross. This lead some to believe that his proposal was a publicity stunt to promote his new single.
On April 28, 2014, DJ Khaled announced in an interview with MTV that Jay-Z would be featured on his new single. The interview was noted due to Khaled "cursing, gesturing, and tossing the microphone to the floor in an effort to convey the importance and impact of the music he has coming this summer." A few hours after that, he released the single called "They Don't Love You No More", also featuring frequent collaborators Rick Ross, Meek Mill and French Montana. The song was included on his eighth studio album, I Changed a Lot, which was released in 2015. The following day, "They Don't Love You No More" was serviced to mainstream urban radio in the United States.
On July 1, 2014, Khaled announced that he has partnered with Danish audio company Bang & Olufsen to launch his own brand of headphones, titled "We the Best Sound". The brand is advertised in the video "They Don't Love You No More." On August 8, 2014, Khaled released the official artwork for the second single from I Changed A Lot entitled "Hold You Down" which features Chris Brown, August Alsina, Future and Jeremih, and is produced by Bkorn, Lee on the Beats and LDB. The single was released on August 11, 2014, along with a music video, directed by Gil Green. On November 3, 2014, Khaled released the remix to "Hold You Down" featuring Usher, Rick Ross, Fabolous, and Ace Hood. On May 11, 2015, DJ Khaled revealed that he had amicably parted ways with Cash Money Records. "I'm not signed to Cash Money at all. I've been off for a minute," Khaled revealed. "It's not that I'm here to promote that I've been off. That's family. But, nah, it's just We The Best. Nothing negative, everything's beautiful." On the same day, DJ Khaled released the third single off the album I Changed a Lot titled "How Many Times", featuring Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Big Sean produced Bkorn, Lee on the Beats and OZ. DJ Khaled revealed that his long-delayed album, I Changed A Lot, would be released on October 23, 2015, and also revealed the album's artwork.
=== 2016–2019: Major Key, Grateful and Father of Asahd ===
On February 5, 2016, DJ Khaled premiered the debut his new We The Best Radio show on Beats 1 with the premiere of Future's fourth studio album EVOL. On February 14, 2016, DJ Khaled announced that he would debut French Montana's new mixtape on We The Best Radio. The Wave Gods titled mixtape premiered on February 19, 2016. On February 29, 2016, Khaled signed a management-only deal with Jay Z's company, Roc Nation and announced his ninth studio album, Major Key, was going to be released in 2016, specifically on July 29, and has a lion on the cover. On June 3, 2016, Khaled released the first single off Major Key, "For Free", which was produced by the OVO team of Nineteen85 and Jordan Ullman. He announced his album would feature Jay Z, Future, Kanye West, Big Sean, Lil Wayne, and Rick Ross. He later released a track called "I Got the Keys" with Jay Z and Future, that premiered after the 2016 BET Awards. In late 2015 to early 2016, a number of Snapchat videos of Khaled's detailing his "key to success" received significant attention on the internet due to his larger-than-life persona. This newfound online recognition caused him to gain popularity; becoming an "internet phenomenon", with some now describing him as a "living meme" or "meme in human form". In October 2016, he appeared in advertising for the alcoholic beverage Cîroc Mango and starred in "Let's Get It: Khaled's Odyssey", an episode of Let's Get It.
On December 24, 2016, Khaled announced on Twitter that he was working on his tenth studio album. In January 2017, he was seen in the studio on his Snapchat with potential collaborators, such as Chance the Rapper, Justin Bieber, Migos and Mariah Carey. On February 9, DJ Khaled announced his tenth studio album would be titled Grateful and said that it was going to be released in June. On February 12, DJ Khaled released "Shining", the lead single of Grateful which features Beyoncé and Jay-Z. He had a cameo appearance in promotional material for Spider-Man: Homecoming, and later appeared as a fictionalized version of himself in Pitch Perfect 3 (2017), in which his character is featured as both a performer and a major plot point. Also that year, he announced he would join Demi Lovato as the opening act for their Tell Me You Love Me Tour.
On March 1, 2018, Khaled announced his eleventh studio album would be titled Father of Asahd, titled after his older son Asahd. The album's lead single, "Top Off", featuring Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Future, was released the following day, on March 2. On July 23, Khaled announced the next single, titled "No Brainer", featuring Justin Bieber, Chance the Rapper and Quavo, which was released on July 27. On March 5, 2019, Khaled announced that the album would be released in May 2019. It was released on May 17, 2019. He released several music videos for the album's singles on that day through May 20, including one for "Higher", featuring late rapper Nipsey Hussle and John Legend, a track which also garnered Khaled his first Grammy Award.
=== 2020–present: Khaled Khaled, God Did and Aalam of God ===
On July 17, 2020, Khaled released two singles simultaneously, titled "Popstar" and "Greece", both featuring Canadian rapper Drake. Two days prior, on July 15, Khaled announced his twelfth studio album would be titled Khaled Khaled, after his legal name. The announcement was accompanied with a video trailer documenting his life and career, including the birth of his sons Asahd and Aalam, who both would executive produce the album, and winning his first Grammy Award. In March 2021, Khaled collaborated with Dolce & Gabbana on a collection of ready-to-wear and beachwear pieces. On April 30, 2021, Khaled released his 12th studio album, Khaled Khaled. The title of the album is taken from Khaled's real name, Khaled Khaled. Allah is, as well as Khaled's two sons, credited as an executive producer due to the Khaled family's religious beliefs and spirituality in Islam. The album included 14 tracks and song features with the likes of Nas, Beyoncé and Jeremih. Two days after the release of the album, Khaled revealed an updated track listing that added the track "Big Paper", which features American rapper Cardi B, which was not on the previous track listing.
On July 6, 2022, he announced the title of his upcoming 13th studio album, God Did, and released the album on August 26, 2022.
On August 10, 2023, DJ Khaled announced via Instagram that he will release his upcoming fourteenth studio album Til Next Time, promoted by its lead single, "Supposed to Be Loved", which features rappers Future, Lil Baby and Lil Uzi Vert. The title of the album was later changed to Aalam of God.
== Artist relationships ==
=== Rick Ross ===
Rick Ross has been described as one of Khaled's "longest-running collaborators". With reference to Khaled, Ross has stated: "He knows what's going to get me excited… He'll run in the room yelling, 'I got some shit, Rozay!' — and nine times out of 10, when he's that excited, it's something that's going to end up feeling good. That's always been the dynamic, since "I'm So Hood," and the list goes on." On their relationship, Khaled states: "Ross is my brother," he said. "That's Day 1. That's family. Me and him come from the bottom, the mud, to marble floors. When he's shouting me out on that record, that's what you call a real friend, family. [He] loves me and I love him back. Me and him are forever. Music or no music. It's Khaled and Ross forever."
In 2006, Khaled produced the song "I'm a G" (featuring Lil Wayne and Brisco) on Ross's debut, Port of Miami. The same year, Ross made guest performances on two singles from Khaled's debut Listennn... the Album: "Born-N-Raised" and "Holla at Me". In 2007, Ross featured on the hit single "I'm So Hood" as part of Khaled's second album, We the Best. Ross also contributed vocals to "We Takin' Over", a song on the same album, which peaked at number 28 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 11 on the US Hot Rap Tracks chart and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on November 20, 2007. The same year, both Ross and Khaled made a guest appearance on the single "100 Million" as part of Birdman's 2007 album 5 * Stunna. In 2008, Ross featured on the single "Out Here Grindin" as part of Khaled's third album, We Global. In 2010, Ross featured on the hit single "All I Do Is Win", part of Khaled's fourth album Victory. The track became triple platinum-certified. In 2011, Ross featured on what became a Billboard Hot 100 top ten single, "I'm on One", as part of Khaled's fifth studio album, We the Best Forever. Ross also featured on the song "Welcome to My Hood" in the same album. In 2012, Ross featured on two singles from Khaled's sixth album, Kiss the Ring: "Take It to the Head" and "I Wish You Would".
In early 2013, Ross featured on the single "No New Friends" as part of Khaled's seventh album, Suffering from Success. On 16 May 2013, Birdman and Ross announced that their collaborative album The H would be released as a mixtape hosted by Khaled on 23 May 2013. In April 2014, Ross featured on the song "They Don't Love You No More", the first single from Khaled's eighth studio album I Changed a Lot. In August 2014, both Khaled and Ross featured on "Don't Shoot", a single by American rapper the Game. In November 2014, Ross also featured on the remix to "Hold You Down". In 2016, Ross featured on two songs from Khaled's ninth studio album, Major Key: the single "Do You Mind" and the track "Fuck Up the Club". In 2017, Ross featured on three tracks from Khaled's tenth studio album, Grateful: "On Everything", "Down for Life" and "Whatever".
In 2019, Ross featured on one track from Khaled's eleventh studio album, Father of Asahd: "Big Boy Talk". In 2021, Ross featured on one song from Khaled's twelfth studio album, Khaled Khaled: "This Is My Year". In 2022, Ross rapped the first verse of the title track of Khaled's thirteenth album, God Did. The song earned three nominations at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards: Song of the Year, Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance. The same year, Ross and Khaled both featured on the GQ Hype Debate Show, debating the greatest snack of all time. Ross was a proponent of his own Rap Snacks whereas Khaled endorsed Cinnamon Toast Crunch. In 2023, Khaled produced the song "Above the Law" from Rick Ross' thirteenth album, Too Good to Be True.
=== Drake ===
The relationship between Drake and Khaled has been described as "uniquely fruitful".
=== Lil Wayne ===
Lil Wayne has stated: "DJ Khaled is one of one… He's produced so many memorable tracks. There's no one like him."
== Public image ==
Jeff Ihaza of the Rolling Stone has described Khaled thus: "Khaled wears a pristinely lined haircut. His beard follows sharp angles that enforce a perfect symmetry along his face. When he's trying to muster up the right word, either for clarity or comedic timing, his eyes carry a piercing seriousness, like an athlete laser-focused on a play. But he's largely instinctive in his delivery — in plucking whatever he's trying to convey from his brain and placing it into yours." He has also been described as "a natural in front of the camera". Khaled is known for his social media presence; he states: "I don't do too many interviews… cause I've got my own interview: I say what I want to say anytime I want."
== Personal life ==
Khaled and his wife Nicole Tuck have a son, Asahd Tuck Khaled, born on October 23, 2016. On January 20, 2020, Tuck gave birth to their second son, Aalam Tuck Khaled.
In January 2017, Khaled purchased Robbie Williams' former house in Mulholland Estates, a gated community in Los Angeles, California. In 2018, Khaled purchased a waterfront home in Miami for $25.9 million. The mansion is larger than 12,000 square-feet and has been dubbed as "the Resort" by Khaled. Khaled owns several cars, including a Maybach which is one of 150 special-edition models custom-designed by Virgil Abloh. Khaled has named this vehicle the "Cappuccino". Khaled reportedly had a fear of flying for nearly 10 years after experiencing an unpleasant flight on a small aircraft. However, he overcame his fear in 2017 and, by 2021, purchased a $56 million Bombardier Global 6500.
In 2014, Khaled described himself as a devout Muslim. In December 2022, he visited Mecca with Mike Tyson to participate in the Umrah pilgrimage.
== Other ventures ==
=== Film ===
Khaled provided a voice in the animated film Spies in Disguise, which was released on December 25, 2019. He also appeared in Bad Boys for Life and Bad Boys: Ride or Die.
=== Literature ===
In 2016, he wrote a book, The Keys: A memoir, which includes his opinions on success, recounts life stories, and describes contributions from other musicians. The book became a New York Times bestseller.
=== Furniture ===
Inspired by his own home and lifestyle, he designed a new luxury furniture line "We the Best Home" and launched it in August 2018.
=== Golfing ===
Khaled is known for his love of golf, paired with his catchphrase: "Let's go golfing!" He has appeared on the cover of Golf Digest and is a frequenter of the Miami Beach Golf Club. Khaled's We the Best Foundation hosted its inaugural golf tournament in 2023, raising thousands for organisations which aid youth in Miami. Sean Combs alone reportedly donated $150,000 to the cause.
=== 2018 SEC settlement ===
In November 2018, together with Floyd Mayweather Jr., Khaled agreed to a total settlement of $750,000 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for failing to disclose payments accepted from issuers of an initial coin offering, specifying a personal $50,000 promotional payment from beleaguered cryptocurrency firm Centra Tech Inc., whose co-founders were indicted for fraud in May 2018. According to the SEC, "they are its first cases involving charges for violating rules on touting investments in so-called initial coin offerings, or ICOs." As part of the settlement, Khaled agreed to not enter any endorsement or promotional agreement with a securities participant for two years.
== Discography ==
Studio albums
Listennn... the Album (2006)
We the Best (2007)
We Global (2008)
Victory (2010)
We the Best Forever (2011)
Kiss the Ring (2012)
Suffering from Success (2013)
I Changed a Lot (2015)
Major Key (2016)
Grateful (2017)
Father of Asahd (2019)
Khaled Khaled (2021)
God Did (2022)
Aalam of God (2026)
== Filmography ==
== Awards and nominations == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooey_Deschanel | Zooey Deschanel | Zooey Claire Deschanel (born January 17, 1980) is an American actress and singer. She made her film debut in Mumford (1999) and had a supporting role in Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous (2000). Deschanel is known for her deadpan roles in comedy films such as The Good Girl (2002), The New Guy (2002), Elf (2003), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Failure to Launch (2006), Yes Man (2008), 500 Days of Summer (2009), and Our Idiot Brother (2011). She has also ventured into dramatic film territory with Manic (2001), All the Real Girls (2003), Winter Passing (2005), Bridge to Terabithia (2007), The Happening (2008), and The Driftless Area (2015). From 2011 to 2018, she starred as Jessica Day on the Fox sitcom New Girl, for which she received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and three Golden Globe Awards.
For a few years starting in 2001, Deschanel performed in the jazz cabaret act If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies with actress Samantha Shelton. In 2006, Deschanel teamed up with M. Ward to form She & Him, and subsequently released their debut album, Volume One, in 2008. They have since released six albums: Volume Two (2010), A Very She & Him Christmas (2011), Volume 3 (2013), Classics (2014), Christmas Party (2016), and Melt Away: A Tribute to Brian Wilson (2022). She received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Song Written for Visual Media for "So Long," which was featured on the soundtrack of the 2011 film Winnie the Pooh. Besides singing, she plays keyboards, percussion, banjo, and ukulele.
Deschanel was also a co-founder of the female-focused website HelloGiggles, which was acquired by Time Inc. in 2015.
== Early life ==
Zooey Claire Deschanel was born in Los Angeles, California, the younger daughter of cinematographer and director Caleb Deschanel and actress Mary Jo Deschanel (née Weir). Her paternal grandfather was French, from Oullins, Rhône, and her paternal grandmother came from a Quaker family; she also has Swiss, Dutch, English, Irish, and other French ancestry. She was named after Zooey Glass, the protagonist of J. D. Salinger's 1961 novella Franny and Zooey. Her older sister is actress Emily Deschanel, who starred in the Fox crime comedy-drama series Bones.
Deschanel lived in Los Angeles, but spent much of her childhood traveling because her father shot films on location. She hated the traveling, which involved leaving her friends and interacting with unfamiliar cultures. However, Deschanel later mentioned being happy for the experience.
She attended Crossroads, a private preparatory school in Santa Monica, and befriended future co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Kate Hudson there. Deschanel sang throughout high school, planning to pursue a career in musical theatre and attending French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts. She attended Northwestern University for nine months before dropping out to pursue acting.
== Acting career ==
=== 1997–2002: Early acting credits ===
Deschanel had a guest appearance on the television series Veronica's Closet in 1998. She made her film debut in Lawrence Kasdan's comedy Mumford (1999), revolving around the neurotic residents in a small town and co-starring Hope Davis, Jason Lee, Alfre Woodard and Mary McDonnell.
That same year, she appeared in a non-singing role in the music video for The Offspring's single "She's Got Issues", which premiered on September 27, 1999. Deschanel was a judge for the ninth Independent Music Awards. In 2005, she modeled for Chanel and Clements Ribeiro, and in 2010, she signed to represent Rimmel.
Deschanel co-starred in Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical Almost Famous (2000), where she played Anita Miller, the rebellious older sister of a teenage journalist. Despite a modest box office response, the film received critical praise, winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Film – Musical or Comedy. Deschanel appeared in the independent drama Manic (2001), as the love interest of a troubled teen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). The film was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and received a limited theatrical release. The New York Times found Deschanel to be "particularly spontaneous, unaffected and emotionally direct" in her role.
Following early notice, Deschanel took on supporting parts in four feature films released throughout 2002: Big Trouble, The New Guy, The Good Girl, and Abandon. In the comedy Big Trouble, with Tim Allen and Rene Russo, she played the daughter of a devoted and reluctant woman, and in the teen comedy The New Guy, starred as a guitar player in a band. Deschanel portrayed a cynical, plain-spoken young woman working in a big-box store in the black dramedy The Good Girl, opposite Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhaal. The psychological thriller Abandon saw her play the roommate of a woman involved in her boyfriend's disappearance. Deschanel also made a one-episode appearance in Frasier, as Roz's out-of-control cousin, Jen. The New York Times reported that Deschanel was "one of Hollywood's most sought-after young stars" in 2002, and the Los Angeles Times wrote in early 2003 that Deschanel had become a recognizable type, due to "her deadpan, sardonic and scene-stealing [film] performances" as the protagonist's best friend. Deschanel objected to her typecasting, arguing, "A lot of these roles are just a formula idea of somebody's best friend, and it's like, I don't even have that many friends. In high school, I stayed home all the time, so I don't know how I'm everybody's best friend now."
=== 2003–2010: Breakthrough ===
Deschanel obtained her first leading film role in the independent drama All the Real Girls (2003) as Noel, a sexually curious 18-year-old virgin who has a life-changing romance with an aimless 22-year-old. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was an arthouse success. Her performance received wide critical acclaim, and Variety remarked: "Performances are all credible and naturalistic, but standing out from the rest is Deschanel's work, which evinces an impressively direct connection to her character's emotions. The actress does a wonderful job presenting a young woman who is trying, with varying degrees of success, to give voice to all sorts of things she has never felt or expressed before". She received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Actress. Also in 2003, Deschanel starred opposite Will Ferrell in the Christmas comedy Elf as a deadpan department store worker and the love interest of a man raised by Santa's elves. Reviewers found the film to be a "spirited, good-natured family comedy" as part of an overall positive critical response. Elf earned US$220.4 million worldwide against a budget of US$33 million.
In 2004, Deschanel starred in Eulogy, and in 2005 she played Trillian in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams's science fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. She acted in Winter Passing (2005), co-starring Will Ferrell. Deschanel next appeared in Failure to Launch (2006), as the neurotic roommate of Sarah Jessica Parker's character. She also had a recurring role in four episodes of the Showtime television series Weeds from 2006 to 2007 where she played Kat, Andy Botwin's ex-girlfriend. In September 2006, it was announced that Deschanel had signed on to play 1960s singer Janis Joplin in the film The Gospel According to Janis, to be co-written and directed by Penelope Spheeris. The film was scheduled to begin shooting in 2006, but was then postponed indefinitely; it was then resurrected again, with a planned release date of 2012, before being cancelled altogether in 2011. Deschanel expressed frustration with the cancellation, saying she had spent three years working on imitating Joplin's scratchy singing voice.
In 2007, Deschanel played Ms. Edmunds in Bridge to Terabithia, and the voice of a penguin in the animated film Surf's Up. She had a small role as Dorothy Evans in the revisionist Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and starred in the B comedy Flakes, which was released in only one theater. Deschanel starred as DG in the Syfy miniseries Tin Man, a re-imagined science fiction version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It aired in December 2007. Deschanel also narrated the children's book Players in Pigtails. She voiced characters including Mary, Cletus's daughter, in four episodes of The Simpsons since debuting in the April 27, 2008 (Season 19) episode, "Apocalypse Cow", returning in seasons 24 (twice) and 36.
In M. Night Shyamalan's thriller The Happening (2008), she starred opposite Mark Wahlberg as a couple trying to escape from an inexplicable natural disaster. Despite largely negative reviews, critic Roger Ebert felt that Wahlberg and Deschanel's performances "bring a quiet dignity to their characters", and globally, the film made US$163 million. She starred in the independent comedy Gigantic (2008), which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and was distributed for a limited release in certain parts of the United States only. In the comedy Yes Man (also 2008), she played an unorthodox singer and the girlfriend of Jim Carrey's character. The film grossed US$223.1 million around the world.
Deschanel reunited with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the independent romantic drama about the development and demise of a relationship (500) Days of Summer (2009). The film garnered critical acclaim and became a "sleeper hit", earning over $60 million in worldwide returns, far exceeding its $7.5 million budget. Mark Adams of the Daily Mirror found the film to be a "modern romance for grown-ups" and a "sweet-natured, funny, deeply-romantic tale" blessed with "top-notch performances by Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt, who are both charming and have real chemistry". In December 2009, Deschanel guest-starred in a Christmas episode of the Fox crime procedural comedy-drama Bones, which was the first-ever on-screen pairing of the Deschanel sisters.
=== Since 2010: New Girl and other projects ===
Deschanel was originally the top choice for Janet van Dyne / The Wasp in an early draft of Joss Whedon's The Avengers in which she would have played a prominent role. However, once Scarlett Johansson was cast as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow, Deschanel was no longer in consideration to portray The Wasp with Janet's daughter Hope van Dyne taking up the mantle in the Infinity Saga, played by Evangeline Lilly.
Deschanel starred in the comedy Our Idiot Brother (2011) as the independent and bisexual sister of a dimwitted but idealistic man (Paul Rudd). The production was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, to a generally positive critical reception. She played Princess Belladonna in the stoner fantasy-comedy Your Highness (2011), with Danny McBride and James Franco. The film received negative reviews and bombed at the box office. Describing her role, Roger Ebert noted in its review for the film: "[Deschanel is] brought onstage, quickly kidnapped by an evil sorcerer, spends a good deal of time as a captive in his lair, is rescued and lives happily ever after. She might as well be a mannequin, for all she's given to say and do. This intelligent, nuanced actress, standing there baffled. Used as a placeholder".
Deschanel signed on to star as a bubbly and offbeat teacher Jessica "Jess" Day on the Fox sitcom New Girl, created by Elizabeth Meriwether. She became a producer on the show and helped build the character, which she has described as a part of her, especially in regards to "the sort of enthusiasm and optimism" of her youth. The series premiered in September 2011, and USA Today described her performance as "a role tailored to launch her from respected indie actor to certified [television] star, Deschanel soars, combining well-honed skills with a natural charm". She has received an Emmy Award nomination and three Golden Globe nominations for her role. The series finale ran on May 15, 2018.
Deschanel hosted Saturday Night Live on February 11, 2012. That same year, she was featured in a commercial for the iPhone 4S (Siri).In Rock the Kasbah (2015), she played a Los Angeles singer taken to Afghanistan by her former manager (Bill Murray). Despite a US$15 million budget, the comedy only made US$3 million at the North American box office. She obtained the role of a mysterious woman in the neo-noir drama The Driftless Area (2015), screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and released on video on demand and home media. She voiced a kind-hearted Bergen, Bridget, in the animated family comedy Trolls (2016), which grossed US$344 million worldwide. She reprised the role in its sequels Trolls World Tour (2020) and Trolls Band Together (2023).
In December 2020, Deschanel appeared in the music video for Katy Perry's song "Not the End of the World". In 2021, she co-hosted the ABC television series The Celebrity Dating Game with Michael Bolton.
In January 2022, she began co-hosting Welcome to Our Show, a New Girl rewatch podcast with co-stars Hannah Simone and Lamorne Morris, distributed by IHeartRadio. Deschanel appears as Kelly in season 3 of Physical released on August 2, 2023 and Nancy in Dreamin' Wild, released on August 4, 2023. She also appears as Terry in Harold and the Purple Crayon, which was released on August 2, 2024.
In March 2024, Deschanel was cast in the Amazon MGM romantic comedy film Merv (2025), directed by Jessica Swale. The film centres on an estranged couple who, after discovering that their shared dog is depressed following their breakup, decide to take the dog on a holiday to Florida in an attempt to lift its spirits.
== Music career ==
=== Singing and performing ===
In 2001, Deschanel formed If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies, a jazz cabaret act with fellow actress Samantha Shelton. The pair performed around Los Angeles.
In March 2007, Deschanel contributed vocals to two songs "Slowly" and "Ask Her to Dance" on the album Nighttiming by Jason Schwartzman's band Coconut Records. It was reported that Deschanel and M. Ward, who had previously performed with Deschanel on-stage, were recording music under the moniker She & Him. Their first album, titled Volume One, was released by Merge Records on March 18, 2008. It received a strong response from critics, with Paste magazine voting it the No. 1 Album of 2008. Patrick Caldwell of the Austin American Statesman wrote: "The album gently rambled through 13 tracks of sun-dappled pop, with a gentle Orbisonian charm and sweet, wistful vocals from Deschanel."
Deschanel recorded "The Fabric of My Life" for a 2009 advertising campaign for Cotton Incorporated. On March 23, 2010, the second She & Him album, Volume Two, was released. Deschanel and M. Ward both featured on The Place We Ran From (2010), the album by Snow Patrol member Gary Lightbody's side project, Tired Pony. Deschanel contributed vocals to the tracks "Get on the Road" and "Point Me at Lost Islands", while M. Ward contributed vocals and guitar to the track "Held in the Arms of Your Words" and guitar to the track "That Silver Necklace".
Deschanel performed "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch in game three of the National League Championship Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants on October 19, 2010, at AT&T Park in San Francisco. On October 23, 2011, Deschanel performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" before game four of the World Series between the Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas. Deschanel contributed a cover of Buddy Holly's "It's So Easy" for the tribute album Listen to Me: Buddy Holly, released on September 6, 2011. She had previously appeared on Rave On Buddy Holly, with She & Him performing "Oh, Boy!", released in June 2011.
A Very She & Him Christmas was announced on Pitchfork.com in September 2011. The 12-track Christmas album was released October 25, 2011, under Merge Records. On December 28, 2011, she and Joseph Gordon-Levitt recorded an informal version of "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" for her HelloGiggles YouTube channel. It was immensely popular and within four days had over 6 million views. Deschanel was featured on bandmate M. Ward's sixth solo album, A Wasteland Companion (2012).
During a May 2012 performance at the Ryman Auditorium, country music singer Loretta Lynn announced that she was in the development stages of creating a Broadway musical from her autobiography and Deschanel would play the title role., saying, "There's a little girl back stage that's going to do the play of 'Coal Miner's Daughter' on Broadway". She then brought Deschanel onstage and the two sang a duet of the title song. On September 21, 2012, it was announced that Deschanel was producing the comedy Must Be Nice, written by New Girl consulting producer J. J. Philbin.
She and Him's next album, Volume 3 was released by Merge Records in May 2013. In the 15-track album, Deschanel wrote eleven songs, while three others are cover songs. It debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200. The band's fifth studio album, Classics, received a December 2014 release by Columbia Records, and it features 13 covers of classic songs, recorded live and accompanied by a 20-piece orchestra. Response towards the album was positive, with Robert Hamm for Alternative Press writing that Deschanel "is a delight, at times coy and romantic, and in other moments, moody and pensive". She also appeared as a guest vocalist on Brian Wilson's album No Pier Pressure (2015). She & Him's second Christmas album and sixth album overall, Christmas Party, was released in 2016.
=== Film-related music ===
Deschanel made her on-screen singing debut in The New Guy (2002). In Elf (2003), she sings "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Will Ferrell in the bathroom shower scene and with Leon Redbone on the soundtrack, and "Auld Lang Syne" with James Caan on piano. Her piano composition "Bittersuite" was used thematically in the dark dramedy Winter Passing (2006), in which she co starred with Ferrell and Ed Harris, and also sings "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean" in the film.
In 2007, other singing credits followed: the television musical Once Upon a Mattress ("An Opening for a Princess", "In a Little While", "Normandy", and "Yesterday I Loved You"); an old cabaret song in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ("A Bird in a Gilded Cage"); and the short film Raving ("Hello, Dolly!"). Deschanel and a cast of school children sing the Steve Earle song "Someday" and War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?" in Bridge to Terabithia.
In Yes Man (2008), Deschanel sings several songs featured in the film and on the film soundtrack, and is shown singing "Uh-Huh" and "Sweet Ballad" with San Franciscan all-girl electro soul-punk group Von Iva in a fictional band called "Munchausen by Proxy". In 500 Days of Summer (2009), Deschanel sings a cover of The Smiths's "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" and it appears on the soundtrack of the film, as performed by She & Him. She also sings a cover of "Sugar Town" by Nancy Sinatra. Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a music video, called Bank Dance, directed by 500 Days of Summer director Marc Webb, to accompany the film. It uses the She & Him song "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?", and some complicated choreography, choreographed by Michael Rooney. Mason Novick, the film's producer said, "We made the short because Zooey came in and said, 'I have this idea ... because I didn't get to dance in the movie'" (as Gordon-Levitt did).
Deschanel sings "The Greatest Most Beautiful Love Song in All the Land" with James Franco in the comedy Your Highness (2011). She also appears with M. Ward in a number of songs on the soundtrack album for Disney's animated version of Winnie the Pooh (2011), earning a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media nomination for "So Long". Deschanel wrote and performed the theme song to New Girl. Also, in season three's episode "Prince", the song "Fallinlove2nite" is sung by Deschanel and Prince. In Rock the Kasbah (2015), she sang a cover of Meredith Brooks's "Bitch", which is featured in the soundtrack for the film. In 2016, Deschanel voiced Bridget, the scullery maid in the animated film Trolls.
== Other work ==
In May 2011, after the success of her HelloGiggles YouTube channel, Deschanel, along with producer Sophia Rossi and writer Molly McAleer, founded the website HelloGiggles.com, an entertainment website geared towards women. HelloGiggles.com was acquired by Time, Inc. in 2015.
In 2023, Deschanel hosted the Max informational show What Am I Eating?. It was based on a previous series Deschanel did for ATTN:, Your Food's Roots.
== Personal life ==
Deschanel is allergic to eggs, dairy products, and soy. She had a gluten allergy but stated in a 2022 interview on Armchair Expert that she no longer suffers from it. She used to be a vegan, which she gave up because she found it difficult to eat enough calories on a vegan diet due to her sensitivities to wheat and soy. A year prior to giving up her vegan diet, she was featured on episode eight of season one of Bravo's Top Chef Masters, in which the chefs participating in the competition were challenged to cater a vegan lunch party for her family and friends using no soy or gluten. As of 2023 Deschanel is a pescetarian.
In December 2008, Deschanel became engaged to musician Ben Gibbard, lead vocalist for Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service. They married on September 19, 2009, near Seattle, Washington. The couple announced their separation in November 2011, and Deschanel filed for divorce the next month due to "unhappy and irreconcilable differences". The divorce was finalized on December 12, 2012.
Deschanel confirmed her engagement to film producer Jacob Pechenik in January 2015, and they married on June 21, 2015. They have two children, a daughter and a son. The couple separated on January 8, 2019. Pechenik filed for divorce that October, which was finalized on June 1, 2020.
In August 2019, Deschanel met Property Brothers star Jonathan Scott while filming an episode of Carpool Karaoke: The Series. On August 13, 2023, Deschanel and Scott announced their engagement at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland.
In January 2025, Emily and Zooey Deschanel's childhood home in Pacific Palisades was destroyed by the January 2025 Southern California wildfires and the Palisades Fire.
== Awards and nominations == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apriona_brunneomarginata | Apriona brunneomarginata | Apriona brunneomarginata is a species of beetle in the family Cerambycidae. It was described by Stephan von Breuning in 1948. It is known from Borneo. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_date_of_admission_to_the_Union | List of U.S. states by date of admission to the Union | A state of the United States is one of the 50 constituent entities that shares its sovereignty with the federal government. Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside, due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the federal government. Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names.
States are the primary subdivisions of the United States. They possess all powers not granted to the federal government nor prohibited to them by the Constitution of the United States. In general, state governments have the power to regulate issues of local concern, such as regulating intrastate commerce, running elections, creating local governments, public school policy, and non-federal road construction and maintenance. Each state has its own constitution grounded in republican principles, and government consisting of executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
All states and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each state is represented by two senators, and at least one representative, while the size of a state's House delegation depends on its total population, as determined by the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census. Additionally, each state is entitled to select a number of electors to vote in the Electoral College, the body that elects the president and vice president of the United States, equal to the total of representatives and senators in Congress from that state.
Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to 50. Each new state has been admitted on an equal footing with the existing states.
== List of U.S. states ==
The following table is a list of all 50 states and their respective dates of statehood. The first 13 became states in July 1776 upon agreeing to the United States Declaration of Independence, and each joined the first Union of states between 1777 and 1781, upon ratifying the Articles of Confederation, its first constitution. (A separate table is included below showing AoC ratification dates.) These states are presented in the order in which each ratified the 1787 Constitution and joined the others in the new (and current) federal government. The date of admission listed for each subsequent state is the official date set by Act of Congress.
== Articles of Confederation ratification dates ==
The Second Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation for ratification by the individual states on November 15, 1777. The Articles of Confederation came into force on March 1, 1781, after being ratified by all 13 states. On March 4, 1789, the general government under the Articles was replaced with the federal government under the present Constitution. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver | Beaver | Beavers (genus Castor) are large semiaquatic rodents of the Northern Hemisphere. There are two extant species: the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) and the Eurasian beaver (C. fiber). Beavers are the second-largest living rodents, after capybaras, weighing up to 50 kg (110 lb). They have stout bodies with large heads, long chisel-like incisors, brown or gray fur, hand-like front feet, webbed back feet, and tails that are flat and scaly. The two species differ in skull and tail shape and fur color. Beavers can be found in a number of freshwater habitats, such as rivers, streams, lakes and ponds. They are herbivorous, consuming tree bark, aquatic plants, grasses and sedges.
Beavers build dams and lodges using tree branches, vegetation, rocks and mud; they chew down trees for building material. Dams restrict water flow, forming ponds, and lodges (usually built in ponds) serve as shelters. Their infrastructure creates wetlands used by many other species, and because of their effect on other organisms in the ecosystem, beavers are considered a keystone species. Adult males and females live in monogamous pairs with their offspring. After their first year, the young help their parents repair dams and lodges; older siblings may also help raise newly born offspring. Beavers hold territories and mark them using scent mounds made of mud, debris, and castoreum—a liquid substance excreted through the beaver's urethra-based castor sacs. Beavers can also recognize their kin by their anal gland secretions and are more likely to tolerate them as neighbors.
Historically, beavers have been hunted for their fur, meat, and castoreum. Castoreum has been used in medicine, perfume, and food flavoring; beaver pelts have been a major driver of the fur trade. Before protections began in the 19th and early 20th centuries, overhunting had nearly exterminated both species. Their populations have since rebounded, and they are listed as species of least concern by the IUCN Red List of mammals. In human culture, the beaver symbolizes industriousness, especially in connection with construction; it is the national animal of Canada.
== Etymology ==
The English word beaver comes from the Old English word beofor or befor and is connected to the German word biber and the Dutch word bever. The ultimate origin of the word is an Indo-European root for 'brown'. Cognates of beaver are the source for several European placenames, including those of Beverley, Bièvres, Biberbach, Biebrich, Bibra, Bibern, Bibrka, Bobr, Bober, Bóbrka, Bjurholm, Bjurälven, and Bjurum. The genus name Castor has its origin in the Greek word κάστωρ kastōr and translates as 'beaver'.
== Taxonomy ==
Carl Linnaeus coined the genus name Castor as well as the specific (species) epithet fiber for the Eurasian species. German zoologist Heinrich Kuhl coined C. canadensis in 1820. Many scientists considered both names synonymous for one same species until the 1970s, when chromosomal evidence became available confirming both as separate where the Eurasian has 48 chromosomes, while the North American has 40. The difference in chromosome numbers prevents them from interbreeding. Twenty-five subspecies have been classified for C. canadensis, and nine have been classified for C. fiber.
There are two extant species: the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) and the Eurasian beaver (C. fiber). The Eurasian beaver is slightly longer and has a more lengthened skull, triangular nasal cavities (as opposed to the square ones of the North American species), a lighter fur color, and a narrower tail.
=== Evolution ===
Beavers belong to the rodent suborder Castorimorpha, along with Heteromyidae (kangaroo rats and kangaroo mice), and the gophers. Modern beavers are the only extant members of the family Castoridae. They originated in North America in the late Eocene and colonized Eurasia via the Bering Land Bridge in the early Oligocene, coinciding with the Grande Coupure, a time of significant changes in animal species around 33 million years ago (myr).
The more basal castorids had several unique features: more complex occlusion between cheek teeth, parallel rows of upper teeth, premolars that were only slightly smaller than molars, the presence of a third set of premolars (P3), a hole in the stapes of the inner ear, a smooth palatine bone (with the palatine opening closer to the rear end of the bone), and a longer snout. More derived castorids have less complex occlusion, upper tooth rows that create a V-shape towards the back, larger second premolars compared to molars, absence of a third premolar set and stapes hole, a more grooved palatine (with the opening shifted towards the front), and reduced incisive foramen. Members of the subfamily Palaeocastorinae appeared in late-Oligocene North America. This group consisted primarily of smaller animals with relatively large front legs, a flattened skull, and a reduced tail—all features of a fossorial (burrowing) lifestyle.
In the early Miocene (about 24 mya), castorids evolved a semiaquatic lifestyle. Members of the subfamily Castoroidinae are considered to be a sister group to modern beavers, and included giants like Castoroides of North America and Trogontherium of Eurasia. Castoroides is estimated to have had a length of 1.9–2.2 m (6.2–7.2 ft) and a weight of 90–125 kg (198–276 lb). Fossils of one genus in Castoroidinae, Dipoides, have been found near piles of chewed wood, though Dipoides appears to have been an inferior woodcutter compared to Castor. Researchers suggest that modern beavers and Castoroidinae shared a bark-eating common ancestor. Dam and lodge-building likely developed from bark-eating, and allowed beavers to survive in the harsh winters of the subarctic. There is no conclusive evidence for this behavior occurring in non-Castor species.
The genus Castor likely originated in Eurasia. The earliest fossil remains appear to be C. neglectus, found in Germany and dated 12–10 mya. Mitochondrial DNA studies place the common ancestor of the two living species at around 8 mya. The ancestors of the North American beaver would have crossed the Bering Land Bridge around 7.5 mya. Castor may have competed with members of Castoroidinae, which led to niche differentiation. The fossil species C. praefiber was likely an ancestor of the Eurasian beaver. C. californicus from the Early Pleistocene of North America was similar to but larger than the extant North American beaver.'
== Characteristics ==
Beavers are the second-largest living rodents, after capybaras. They have a head–body length of 80–120 cm (31–47 in), with a 25–50 cm (10–20 in) tail, a shoulder height of 30–60 cm (12–24 in), and generally weigh 11–30 kg (24–66 lb), but can be as heavy as 50 kg (110 lb). Males and females are almost identical externally. Their bodies are streamlined like marine mammals and their robust build allows them to pull heavy loads. A beaver coat has 12,000–23,000 hairs/cm2 (77,000–148,000 hairs/in2) and functions to keep the animal warm, to help it float in water, and to protect it against predators. Guard hairs are 5–6 cm (2.0–2.4 in) long and typically reddish brown, but can range from yellowish brown to nearly black. The underfur is 2–3 cm (0.8–1.2 in) long and dark gray. Beavers molt every summer.
Beavers have large skulls with powerful chewing muscles. They have four chisel-shaped incisors that continue to grow throughout their lives. The incisors are covered in a thick enamel that is colored orange or reddish-brown by iron compounds. The lower incisors have roots that are almost as long as the entire lower jaw. Beavers have one premolar and three molars on all four sides of the jaws, adding up to 20 teeth. The molars have meandering ridges for grinding woody material. The eyes, ears and nostrils are arranged so that they can remain above water while the rest of the body is submerged. The nostrils and ears have valves that close underwater, while nictitating membranes cover the eyes. To protect the larynx and trachea from water flow, the epiglottis is contained within the nasal cavity instead of the throat. In addition, the back of the tongue can rise and create a waterproof seal. A beaver's lips can close behind the incisors, preventing water from entering their mouths as they cut and bite onto things while submerged.
The beaver's front feet are dexterous, allowing them to grasp and manipulate objects and food, as well as dig. The hind feet are larger and have webbing between the toes, and the second innermost toe has a "double nail" used for grooming. Beavers can swim at 8 km/h (5 mph); only their webbed hind feet are used to swim, while the front feet fold under the chest. On the surface, the hind limbs thrust one after the other; while underwater, they move at the same time. Beavers are awkward on land but can move quickly when they feel threatened. They can carry objects while walking on their hind legs.
The beaver's distinctive tail has a conical, muscular, hairy base; the remaining two-thirds of the appendage is flat and scaly. The tail has multiple functions: it provides support for the animal when it is upright (such as when chewing down a tree), acts as a rudder when it is swimming, and stores fat for winter. It also has a countercurrent blood vessel system which allows the animal to lose heat in warm temperatures and retain heat in cold temperatures.
The beaver's sex organs are inside the body, and the male's penis has a cartilaginous baculum. They have only one opening, a cloaca, which is used for reproduction, scent-marking, defecation, and urination. The cloaca evolved secondarily, as most mammals have lost this feature, and may reduce the area vulnerable to infection in dirty water. The beaver's intestine is six times longer than its body, and the caecum is double the volume of its stomach. Microorganisms in the caecum allow them to process around 30 percent of the cellulose they eat. A beaver defecates in the water, leaving behind balls of sawdust. Female beavers have four mammary glands; these produce milk with 19 percent fat, a higher fat content than other rodents. Beavers have two pairs of glands: castor sacs, which are part of the urethra, and anal glands. The castor sacs secrete castoreum, a liquid substance used mainly for marking territory. Anal glands produce an oily substance which the beaver uses as a waterproof ointment for its coat. The substance plays a role in individual and family recognition. Anal secretions are darker in females than males among Eurasian beavers, while the reverse is true for the North American species.
Compared to many other rodents, a beaver's brain has a hypothalamus that is much smaller than the cerebrum; this indicates a relatively advanced brain with higher intelligence. The cerebellum is large, allowing the animal to move within a three-dimensional space (such as underwater) similar to tree-climbing squirrels. The neocortex is devoted mainly to touch and hearing. Touch is more advanced in the lips and hands than the whiskers and tail. Vision in the beaver is relatively poor; the beaver eye cannot see as well underwater as an otter. Beavers have a good sense of smell, which they use for detecting land predators and for inspecting scent marks, food, and other individuals.
Beavers can hold their breath for as long as 15 minutes but typically remain underwater for no more than five or six minutes. Dives typically last less than 30 seconds and are usually no more than 1 m (3 ft 3 in) deep. When diving, their heart rate decreases to 60 beats per minute, half its normal pace, and blood flow is directed more towards the brain. A beaver's body also has a high tolerance for carbon dioxide. When surfacing, the animal can replace 75 percent of the air in its lungs in one breath, compared to 15 percent for a human.
== Distribution and status ==
The IUCN Red List of mammals lists both beaver species as least concern. The North American beaver is widespread throughout most of the United States and Canada and can be found in northern Mexico. The species was introduced to Finland in 1937 (and then spread to northwestern Russia) and to Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, in 1946. As of 2019, the introduced population of North American beavers in Finland has been moving closer to the habitat of the Eurasian beaver. Historically, the North American beaver was trapped and nearly extirpated because its fur was highly sought after. Protections have allowed the beaver population on the continent to rebound to an estimated 6–12 million by the late 20th century; still far lower than the originally estimated 60–400 million North American beavers before the fur trade. The introduced population in Tierra del Fuego is estimated at 35,000–50,000 individuals as of 2016.
The Eurasian beaver's range historically included much of Eurasia, but was decimated by hunting by the early 20th century. In Europe, beavers were reduced to fragmented populations, with combined population numbers being estimated at 1,200 individuals for the Rhône of France, the Elbe in Germany, southern Norway, the Neman river and Dnieper Basin in Belarus, and the Voronezh river in Russia. The beaver has since recolonized parts of its former range, aided by conservation policies and reintroductions. Beaver populations now range across western, central, and eastern Europe, and western Russia and the Scandinavian Peninsula. Beginning in 2009, beavers have been successfully reintroduced to parts of Great Britain. In 2020, the total Eurasian beaver population in Europe was estimated at over one million. Small native populations are also present in Mongolia and northwestern China; their numbers were estimated at 150 and 700, respectively, as of 2016. Under New Zealand's Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996, beavers are classed as a "prohibited new organism" preventing them from being introduced into the country.
== Ecology ==
Beavers live in freshwater ecosystems such as rivers, streams, lakes and ponds. Water is the most important component of beaver habitat; they swim and dive in it, and it provides them refuge from land predators. It also restricts access to their homes and allows them to move building objects more easily. Beavers prefer slower moving streams, typically with a gradient (steepness) of one percent, though they have been recorded using streams with gradients as high as 15 percent. Beavers are found in wider streams more often than in narrower ones. They also prefer areas with no regular flooding and may abandon a location for years after a significant flood.
Beavers typically select flat landscapes with diverse vegetation close to the water. North American beavers prefer trees being 60 m (200 ft) or less from the water, but will roam several hundred meters to find more. Beavers have also been recorded in mountainous areas. Dispersing beavers will use certain habitats temporarily before finding their ideal home. These include small streams, temporary swamps, ditches, and backyards. These sites lack important resources, so the animals do not stay there permanently. Beavers have increasingly settled at or near human-made environments, including agricultural areas, suburbs, golf courses, and shopping malls.
=== Food and feeding ===
Beavers have an herbivorous and a generalist diet. During the spring and summer, they mainly feed on herbaceous plant material such as leaves, roots, herbs, ferns, grasses, sedges, water lilies, water shields, rushes, and cattails. During the fall and winter, they eat more bark and cambium of woody plants; tree and shrub species consumed include aspen, birch, oak, dogwood, willow and alder. There is some disagreement about why beavers select specific woody plants; some research has shown that beavers more frequently select species which are more easily digested, while others suggest beavers principally forage based on stem size.
Beavers may cache their food for the winter, piling wood in the deepest part of their pond where it cannot be reached by other browsers. This cache is known as a "raft"; when the top becomes frozen, it creates a "cap". The beaver accesses the raft by swimming under the ice. Many populations of Eurasian beaver do not make rafts, but forage on land during winter.
=== Infrastructure ===
Beavers need trees and shrubs to use as building material for dams, which restrict flowing water to create a pond for them to live in, and for lodges, which act as shelters and refuges from predators and the elements. Without such material, beavers dig burrows into a bank to live. Dam construction begins in late summer or early fall, and they repair them whenever needed. Beavers can cut down trees up to 15 cm (6 in) wide in less than 50 minutes. Thicker trees, at 25 cm (10 in) wide or more, may not fall for hours. When chewing down a tree, beavers switch between biting with the left and right side of the mouth. Tree branches are then cut and carried to their destination with the powerful jaw and neck muscles. Other building materials, like mud and rocks, are held by the forelimbs and tucked between the chin and chest.
Beavers start building dams when they hear running water, and the sound of a leak in a dam triggers them to repair it. To build a dam, beavers stack up relatively long and thick logs between the banks. Heavy rocks keep them stable, and grass is packed between them. Beavers continue to pile on more material until the dam slopes in a direction facing upstream. Dams can range in height from 20 cm (8 in) to 3 m (10 ft) and can stretch from 0.3 m (0.98 ft) to several hundred meters long. Beaver dams are more effective in trapping and slowly leaking water than man-made concrete dams. Lake-dwelling beavers do not need to build dams.
Beavers make two types of lodges: bank lodges and open-water lodges. Bank lodges are burrows dug along the shore and covered in sticks while the more complex freestanding, open-water lodges are built over a platform of piled-up sticks. The lodge is mostly sealed with mud, except for a hole at the top which acts as an air vent. Both types are accessed by underwater entrances. The above-water space inside the lodge is known as the "living chamber", and a "dining area" may exist close to the water entrance. Families routinely clean out old plant material and bring in new material.
North American beavers build more open-water lodges than Eurasian beavers. Beaver lodges built by new settlers are typically small and sloppy. More experienced families can build structures with a height of 2 m (6 ft 7 in) and an above-water diameter of 6 m (20 ft). A lodge sturdy enough to withstand the coming winter can be finished in just two nights. Both lodge types can be present at a beaver site. During the summer, beavers tend to use bank lodges to keep cool and use open-water lodges during the winter. The air vent provides ventilation, and newly added carbon dioxide can be cleared in an hour. The lodge remains consistent in oxygen and carbon dioxide levels from season to season.
Beavers in some areas will dig canals connected to their ponds. The canals fill with groundwater and give beavers access and easier transport of resources, as well as allow them to escape predators. These canals can stretch up to 1 m (3 ft 3 in) wide, 0.5 m (1 ft 8 in) deep, and over 0.5 km (0.3 mi) long. It has been hypothesized that beavers' canals are not only transportation routes but an extension of their "central place" around the lodge and/or food cache. As they drag wood across the land, beavers leave behind trails or "slides", which they reuse when moving new material.
=== Environmental effects ===
The beaver works as an ecosystem engineer and keystone species, as its activities can have a great impact on the landscape and biodiversity of an area. Aside from humans, few other extant animals appear to do more to shape their environment. When building dams, beavers alter the paths of streams and rivers, allowing for the creation of extensive wetland habitats. In one study, beavers were associated with large increases in open-water areas. When beavers returned to an area, 160% more open water was available during droughts than in previous years, when they were absent. Beaver dams also lead to higher water tables in mineral soil environments and in wetlands such as peatlands. In peatlands particularly, their dams stabilize the constantly changing water levels, leading to greater carbon storage.
Beaver ponds, and the wetlands that succeed them, remove sediments and pollutants from waterways, and can stop the loss of important soils. These ponds can increase the productivity of freshwater ecosystems by accumulating nitrogen in sediments. Beaver activity can affect the temperature of the water; in northern latitudes, ice thaws earlier in the warmer beaver-dammed waters. Beavers may contribute to climate change. In Arctic areas, the floods they create can cause permafrost to thaw, releasing methane into the atmosphere.
As wetlands are formed and riparian habitats are enlarged, aquatic plants colonize the newly available watery habitat. One study in the Adirondacks found that beaver engineering lead to an increase of more than 33 percent in herbaceous plant diversity along the water's edge. Another study in semiarid eastern Oregon found that the width of riparian vegetation on stream banks increased several-fold as beaver dams watered previously dry terraces adjacent to the stream. Riparian ecosystems in arid areas appear to sustain more plant life when beaver dams are present. Beaver ponds act as a refuge for riverbank plants during wildfires, and provide them with enough moisture to resist such fires. Introduced beavers at Tierra del Fuego have been responsible for destroying the indigenous forest. Unlike trees in North America, many trees in South America cannot grow back after being cut down.
Beaver activity impacts communities of aquatic invertebrates. Damming typically leads to an increase of slow or motionless water species, like dragonflies, oligochaetes, snails, and mussels. This is to the detriment of rapid water species like black flies, stoneflies, and net-spinning caddisflies. Beaver floodings create more dead trees, providing more habitat for terrestrial invertebrates like Drosophila flies and bark beetles, which live and breed in dead wood. The presence of beavers can increase wild salmon and trout populations, and the average size of these fishes. These species use beaver habitats for spawning, overwintering, feeding, and as havens from changes in water flow. The positive effects of beaver dams on fish appear to outweigh the negative effects, such as blocking of migration. Beaver ponds have been shown to be beneficial to frog populations by protecting areas for larvae to mature in warm water. The stable waters of beaver ponds also provide ideal habitat for freshwater turtles.
Beavers help waterfowl by creating increased areas of water. The widening of the riparian zone associated with beaver dams has been shown to increase the abundance and diversity of birds favoring the water's edge, an impact that may be especially important in semi-arid climates. Fish-eating birds use beaver ponds for foraging, and in some areas, certain species appear more frequently at sites where beavers were active than at sites with no beaver activity. In a study of Wyoming streams and rivers, watercourses with beavers had 75 times as many ducks as those without. As trees are drowned by rising beaver impoundments, they become an ideal habitat for woodpeckers, which carve cavities that may be later used by other bird species. Beaver-caused ice thawing in northern latitudes allows Canada geese to nest earlier.
Other semi-aquatic mammals, such as water voles, muskrats, minks, and otters, will shelter in beaver lodges. Beaver modifications to streams in Poland create habitats favorable to bat species that forage at the water surface and "prefer moderate vegetation clutter". Large herbivores, such as some deer species, benefit from beaver activity as they can access vegetation from fallen trees and ponds.
=== Mortality and health ===
Beavers usually live up to 10 years. Felids, canids, and bears may prey upon them. Beavers are protected from predators when in their lodges, and prefer to stay near water. Parasites of the beaver include the bacteria Francisella tularensis, which causes tularemia; the protozoan Giardia duodenalis, which causes giardiasis (beaver fever); and the beaver beetle and mites of the genus Schizocarpus. They have also been recorded to be infected with the rabies virus.
== Behavior ==
Beavers are mainly nocturnal and crepuscular, and spend the daytime in their shelters. In northern latitudes, beaver activity is decoupled from the 24-hour cycle during the winter, and may last as long as 29 hours. They do not hibernate during winter, and spend much of their time in their lodges.
=== Family life ===
The core of beaver social organization is the family, which is composed of an adult male and an adult female in a monogamous pair and their offspring. Beaver families can have as many as ten members; groups about this size require multiple lodges. Mutual grooming and play fighting maintain bonds between family members, and aggression between them is uncommon.
Adult beavers mate with their partners, though partner replacement appears to be common. A beaver that loses its partner will wait for another one to come by. Estrus cycles begin in late December and peak in mid-January. Females may have two to four estrus cycles per season, each lasting 12–24 hours. The pair typically mate in the water and to a lesser extent in the lodge, for half a minute to three minutes.
Up to four young, or kits, are born in spring and summer, after a three or four-month gestation. Newborn beavers are precocial with a full fur coat, and can open their eyes within days of birth. Their mother is the primary caretaker, while their father maintains the territory. Older siblings from a previous litter also play a role.
After they are born, the kits spend their first one to two months in the lodge. Kits suckle for as long as three months, but can eat solid food within their second week and rely on their parents and older siblings to bring it to them. Eventually, beaver kits explore outside the lodge and forage on their own, but may follow an older relative and hold onto their backs. After their first year, young beavers help their families with construction. Beavers sexually mature around 1.5–3 years. They become independent at two years old, but remain with their parents for an extra year or more during times of food shortage, high population density, or drought.
=== Territories and spacing ===
Beavers typically disperse from their parental colonies during the spring or when the winter snow melts. They often travel less than 5 km (3 mi), but long-distance dispersals are not uncommon when previous colonizers have already exploited local resources. Beavers are able to travel greater distances when free-flowing water is available. Individuals may meet their mates during the dispersal stage, and the pair travel together. It may take them weeks or months to reach their final destination; longer distances may require several years. Beavers establish and defend territories along the banks of their ponds, which may be 1–7 km (0.6–4.3 mi) in length.
Beavers mark their territories by constructing scent mounds made of mud and vegetation, scented with castoreum. Those with many territorial neighbors create more scent mounds. Scent marking increases in spring, during the dispersal of yearlings, to deter interlopers. Beavers are generally intolerant of intruders and fights may result in deep bites to the sides, rump, and tail. They exhibit a behavior known as the "dear enemy effect"; a territory-holder will investigate and become familiar with the scents of its neighbors and react more aggressively to the scents of strangers passing by. Beavers are also more tolerant of individuals that are their kin. They recognize them by using their keen sense of smell to detect differences in the composition of anal gland secretions. Anal gland secretion profiles are more similar among relatives than unrelated individuals.
=== Communication ===
Beavers within a family greet each other with whines. Kits will attract the attention of adults with mews, squeaks, and cries. Defensive beavers produce a hissing growl and gnash their teeth. Tail slaps, which involve an animal hitting the water surface with its tail, serve as alarm signals warning other beavers of a potential threat. An adult's tail slap is more successful in alerting others, who will escape into the lodge or deeper water. Juveniles have not yet learned the proper use of a tail slap, and hence are normally ignored. Eurasian beavers have been recorded using a territorial "stick display", which involves individuals holding up a stick and bouncing in shallow water.
== Interactions with humans ==
Beavers sometimes come into conflict with humans over land use; individual beavers may be labeled as "nuisance beavers". Beavers can damage crops, timber stocks, roads, ditches, gardens, and pastures via gnawing, eating, digging, and flooding. They occasionally attack humans and domestic pets, particularly when infected with rabies, in defense of their territory, or when they feel threatened. Some of these attacks have been fatal, including at least one human death. Beavers can spread giardiasis ('beaver fever') by infecting surface waters, though outbreaks are more commonly caused by human activity.
Flow devices, like beaver pipes, are used to manage beaver flooding, while fencing and hardware cloth protect trees and shrubs from beaver damage. If necessary, hand tools, heavy equipment, or explosives are used to remove dams. Hunting, trapping, and relocation may be permitted as forms of population control and for removal of individuals. The governments of Argentina and Chile have authorized the trapping of invasive beavers in hopes of eliminating them. The ecological importance of beavers has led to cities like Seattle designing their parks and green spaces to accommodate the animals. The Martinez beavers became famous in the mid-2000s for their role in improving the ecosystem of Alhambra Creek in Martinez, California.
Zoos have displayed beavers since at least the 19th century, though not commonly. In captivity, beavers have been used for entertainment, fur harvesting, and for reintroduction into the wild. Captive beavers require access to water, substrate for digging, and artificial shelters. Archibald Stansfeld "Grey Owl" Belaney pioneered beaver conservation in the early 20th century. Belaney wrote several books, and was first to professionally film beavers in their environment. In 1931, he moved to a log cabin in Prince Albert National Park, where he was the "caretaker of park animals" and raised a beaver pair and their four offspring. Dorothy Burney Richards, inspired by Belaney, lived with beavers in her home at Beaversprite.
=== Commercial use ===
Beavers have been hunted, trapped, and exploited for their fur, meat, and castoreum. Since the animals typically stayed in one place, trappers could easily find them and could kill entire families in a lodge. Many pre-modern people mistakenly thought that castoreum was produced by the testicles or that the castor sacs of the beaver were its testicles, and females were hermaphrodites. Aesop's Fables describes beavers chewing off their testicles to preserve themselves from hunters, which is impossible because a beaver's testicles are internal. This myth persisted for centuries, and was corrected by French physician Guillaume Rondelet in the 1500s. Beavers have historically been hunted and captured using deadfalls, snares, nets, bows and arrows, spears, clubs, firearms, and leg-hold traps. Castoreum was used to lure the animals.
Castoreum was used for a variety of medical purposes; Pliny the Elder promoted it as a treatment for stomach problems, flatulence, seizures, sciatica, vertigo, and epilepsy. He stated it could stop hiccups when mixed with vinegar, toothaches if mixed with oil (by administering into the ear opening on the same side as the tooth), and could be used as an antivenom. The substance has traditionally been prescribed to treat hysteria in women, which was believed to have been caused by a "toxic" womb. Castoreum's properties have been credited to the accumulation of salicylic acid from willow and aspen trees in the beaver's diet, and has a physiological effect comparable to aspirin. Today, the medical use of castoreum has declined and is limited mainly to homeopathy. The substance is also used as an ingredient in perfumes and tinctures, and as a flavouring in food and drinks.
Various Native American groups have historically hunted beavers for food, they preferred its meat more than other red meats because of its higher calorie and fat content, and the animals remained plump in winter when they were most hunted. The bones were used to make tools. In medieval Europe, the Catholic Church considered the beaver to be part mammal and part fish, and allowed followers to eat the scaly, fishlike tail on meatless Fridays during Lent. Beaver tails were thus highly prized in Europe; they were described by French naturalist Pierre Belon as tasting like a "nicely dressed eel".
Beaver pelts were used to make hats; felters would remove the guard hairs. The number of pelts needed depended on the type of hat, with Cavalier and Puritan hats requiring more fur than top hats. In the late 16th century, Europeans began to deal in North American furs due to the lack of taxes or tariffs on the continent and the decline of fur-bearers at home. Beaver pelts caused or contributed to the Beaver Wars, King William's War, and the French and Indian War; the trade made John Jacob Astor and the owners of the North West Company very wealthy. For Europeans in North America, the fur trade was a driver of the exploration and westward exploration on the continent and contact with native peoples, who traded with them. The fur trade peaked between 1860 and 1870, when over 150,000 beaver pelts were purchased annually by the Hudson's Bay Company and fur companies in the United States. The contemporary global fur trade is not as profitable due to conservation, anti-fur and animal rights campaigns.
=== In culture ===
The beaver has been used to represent productivity, trade, tradition, masculinity, and respectability. References to the beaver's skills are reflected in everyday language. The English verb "to beaver" means working with great effort and being "as busy as a beaver"; a "beaver intellect" refers to a way of thinking that is slow and honest. Though it typically has a wholesome image, the beaver's name has been used as a sexual term for the human vulva.
Native American myths emphasize the beaver's skill and industriousness. In the mythology of the Haida, beavers are descended from the Beaver-Woman, who built a dam on a stream next to their cabin while her husband was out hunting and gave birth to the first beavers. In a Cree story, the Great Beaver and its dam caused a world flood. Other tales involve beavers using their tree chewing skills against an enemy. Beavers have been featured as companions in some stories, including a Lakota tale where a young woman flees from her evil husband with the aid of her pet beaver.
Europeans have traditionally thought of beavers as fantastical animals due to their amphibious nature. They depicted them with exaggerated tusk-like teeth, dog- or pig-like bodies, fish tails, and visible testicles. French cartographer Nicolas de Fer illustrated beavers building a dam at Niagara Falls, fantastically depicting them like human builders. Beavers have also appeared in literature such as Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and the writings of Athanasius Kircher, who wrote that on Noah's Ark the beavers were housed near a water-filled tub that was also used by mermaids and otters.
The beaver has long been associated with Canada, appearing on the first pictorial postage stamp issued in the Canadian colonies in 1851 as the so-called "Three-Penny Beaver". It was declared the national animal in 1975. The five-cent coin, the coat of arms of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the logos for Parks Canada and Roots Canada use its image. Frank and Gordon are two fictional beavers that appeared in Bell Canada's advertisements between 2005 and 2008. However, the beaver's status as a rodent has made it controversial, and it was not chosen to be on the Arms of Canada in 1921. The beaver has commonly been used to represent Canada in political cartoons, typically to signify it as a friendly but relatively weak nation. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ballets_choreographed_by_Frederick_Ashton | List of ballets choreographed by Frederick Ashton | The following is a list, by decade, of ballets created by the English choreographer Frederick Ashton.
== 1920s ==
A Tragedy of Fashion (music by Eugene Goossens, arranged by Ernest Irving) (1926)
Various dances for a Purcell Opera Society production of The Fairy-Queen: (music by Henry Purcell) (1927)
Pas de deux (music by Fritz Kreisler) (1927)
Suite de danses (music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) (1927)
Argentine Dance (music by Artello) (1927)
Nymphs and Shepherds (music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) (1928)
Leda (music by Christoph Willibald Gluck) (1928)
Various dances for Jew Süss (incidental music arranged by Constant Lambert) (1929)
== 1930s ==
Capriol Suite (music by Peter Warlock) (1930)
Pomona (music by Constant Lambert) (1930)
Regatta (music by Gavin Gordon) (1931)
La Péri (music by Léo Delibes) (1931)
Façade (music by William Walton) (1931)
The Lady of Shalott (music by Jean Sibelius) (1931)
Foyer de danse (music by Lord Berners) (1932)
Les Masques (music by Francis Poulenc) (1933)
Les Rendezvous (music by Daniel Auber, arranged by Constant Lambert) (1933)
Pavane pour une enfante défunte (music by Maurice Ravel) (1933)
Mephisto Valse (music by Franz Liszt) (1934)
Le Baisier de la fée (music by Igor Stravinsky) (1935)
Apparitions (music by Franz Liszt, arranged by Constant Lambert and orchestrated by Gordon Jacob) (1936)
Nocturne (music by Frederick Delius) (1936)
Les Patineurs (music by Giacomo Meyerbeer, arranged by Constant Lambert) (1937 )
A Wedding Bouquet (music by Lord Berners) (1937)
Horoscope (music by Constant Lambert) (1938)
The Judgement of Paris (music by Lennox Berkeley) (1938)
Cupid and Psyche (music by Lord Berners) (1939)
== 1940s ==
Dante Sonata (music by Franz Liszt, orchestrated by Constant Lambert) (1940)
The Wise Virgins (music by J S Bach, orchestrated by William Walton), (1940)
The Wanderer (music by Franz Schubert) (1941)
The Quest (music by William Walton) (1943)
Symphonic Variations (music by César Franck) (1946)
Les Sirènes (music by Lord Berners, orchestrated by Roy Douglas) (1946)
various dances for a Royal Opera production of The Fairy-Queen (music by Henry Purcell, arranged by Constant Lambert) (1946)
Valses nobles et sentimentales (music by Maurice Ravel) (1947)
Scènes de ballet (music by Igor Stravinsky) (1948)
Don Juan (music by Richard Strauss) (1948)
Cinderella (music by Sergei Prokofiev) (1948)
Le Rêve de Léonor (music by Benjamin Britten, orchestrated by Arthur Oldham) (1949)
== 1950s ==
Illuminations (music by Benjamin Britten) (1950)
Daphnis et Chloé (music by Maurice Ravel) (1951), created for Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes
Tiresias (music by Constant Lambert) (1951)
Sylvia (music by Léo Delibes) (1952)
Picnic at Tintagel (music by Arnold Bax) (1952)
Homage to the Queen (music by Malcolm Arnold) (1953)
Madame Chrysanthème (music by Alan Rawsthorne) (1955)
Romeo and Juliet (music by Sergei Prokofiev) (1955)
Rinaldo and Armida (music by Malcolm Arnold) (1955)
La Péri (music by Paul Dukas) (1956)
Birthday Offering (music by Alexander Glazunov, arranged by Robert Irving) (1956)
Ondine (music by Hans Werner Henze) (1958), created for Dame Margot Fonteyn
La Valse (music by Maurice Ravel) (1958)
== 1960s ==
La fille mal gardée (music by Ferdinand Hérold - John Lanchbery (1960)
Persephone (music by Igor Stravinsky) (1961)
The Two Pigeons (music by André Messager, arranged by John Lanchbery) (1961)
Marguerite and Armand (music by Franz Liszt, orchestrated by Humphrey Searle) 1963). Soloists: Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev
The Dream after Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (music by Felix Mendelssohn, some music arranged by John Lanchbery) (1964)
Monotones (music by Erik Satie, orchestrated by Claude Debussy) (1965)
Jazz Calendar (music by Richard Rodney Bennett) (1968)
Enigma Variations (music by Edward Elgar) (1968)
== 1970s ==
Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus) (music by Ludwig van Beethoven) (1970)
Lament of the Waves (music by Gérard Masson) (1970)
The Walk to the Paradise Garden (music by Frederick Delius) (1972)
Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan (music by Johannes Brahms) (1976) (expanded from Brahms Waltz, 1975)
A Month in the Country (music by Frédéric Chopin, arranged by John Lanchbery) (1976)
Voices of Spring (music by Johann Strauss II) (1977)
== 1980s ==
Rhapsody (music by Sergei Rachmaninoff) (1980)
Pas de légumes (music by Gioachino Rossini) (1982)
La chatte métamorphosée en femme (music by Jacques Offenbach) (1985) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Sinclair,_1st_Viscount_Thurso | Archibald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso | Archibald Henry Macdonald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso, (22 October 1890 – 15 June 1970), known as Sir Archibald Sinclair between 1912 and 1952, and often as Archie Sinclair, was a British politician and leader of the Liberal Party.
== Background and education ==
Sinclair was born in 1890 in Caithness, Scotland. Sinclair was the son Clarence Granville Sinclair, and his American wife Mabel Sands, daughter of Mahlon Day Sands, and half-sister of Ethel Sands. His mother died shortly after his birth, and his father in 1895. He was brought up in families including those of his paternal grandfather Sir Tollemache Sinclair, 3rd Baronet, his uncle William Macdonald Sinclair, and Owen Williams, married to his aunt Nina.
Educated at Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Sinclair was commissioned into the Life Guards in 1910. In 1912, he succeeded his grandfather as the fourth Baronet of Ulbster. He became one of the largest landowners in the United Kingdom, owning an estate of about 100,000 acres (40,000 ha) in Caithness. His recreations included polo and flying: he was a keen aviator. At this period he made a friend of Winston Churchill.
Colin Coote in his memoirs wrote of Sinclair's "irresistible charm, allied to the face and figure of an Adonis". The handsome Sinclair was at this period thought of as a possible husband for Nellie Hozier, younger sister of Clementine Churchill.
== Military career ==
Sinclair served on the Western Front during World War I, in 1915 as aide de camp to J. E. B. Seely who commanded the Canadian Cavalry Brigade. He rose to the rank of Major in the Guards Machine Gun Regiment.
After Winston Churchill resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty, Sinclair served as his second-in-command when Churchill took up command at the beginning of 1916 of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. Churchill arranged the transfer with Douglas Haig, who turned down the request that Seely should be moved too, and also refused him Edward Spears. They were stationed in the Ploegsteert Wood sector of the Western Front.
== Working with Churchill ==
From 1919 to 1921 Sinclair served as Personal Military Secretary to Churchill, when he returned to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for War, and then accompanied him to the Colonial Office as Private Secretary.
Sinclair's duties included acting as liaison for Churchill with the Secret Intelligence Service. He had dealings with George Alexander Hill and Malcolm Wollcombe, agent in the Soviet Union for Mansfield Smith-Cumming. Stewart Menzies who had the official liaison role at the War Office was a personal friend. Sinclair collated humint and technical intelligence for Churchill, for example on Leonid Krasin. He also assisted in the delicate handling of Boris Savinkov, who was brought to London. It was Sinclair who introduced the prominent British agent Sidney Reilly to Nikolai Alekseyev, intelligence chief of the White Russian leader Alexander Guchkov.
== Political career 1922–1939 ==
In 1922, Sinclair entered the House of Commons as a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Caithness and Sutherland, supporting David Lloyd George and defeating the incumbent Liberal supporter of H. H. Asquith. He rose through the Liberal ranks as the party shrank in Parliament, becoming Chief Whip by 1930. At this period he worked on land policy with Lloyd George, including the "Tartan Book" that addressed Scottish devolution.
In July 1931, a meeting took place at Sinclair's house, where Oswald Mosley and Harold Nicolson met Churchill, Lloyd George and Brendan Bracken, to discuss a political alliance. About a month later, the Liberal Party joined the National Government of Ramsay MacDonald, with Sinclair appointed Secretary of State for Scotland. He was sworn of the Privy Council at the same time. In 1932, he, together with other Liberal ministers led by Herbert Samuel, resigned from the government in protest at the Ottawa Conference introducing Imperial Preference.
In the 1935 general election, Herbert Samuel lost his seat, and Sinclair became the Liberal Party's leader at the head of 20 MPs. During the Abdication Crisis of 1936, his name was put forward as a possible leader of a government that might be formed if Edward VIII held onto the throne against the wishes of the Baldwin administration. Churchill came to support the King's position, and Lord Beaverbrook entertained the idea of Sinclair as Prime Minister. Both Clement Attlee for Labour and Sinclair for the Liberals, however, in late November ruled out forming a government under those circumstances.
Sinclair consistently opposed the continental dictatorships and kept the National Liberals at arms length. He supported the League of Nations and collective security. He backed, as did Attlee, Churchill's book Arms and the Covenant. He joined the Anti-Nazi Council of Eugen Spier, with Churchill and Violet Bonham Carter, Margaret Bondfield and Hugh Dalton. Public opinion at this point of the later 1930s by no means agreed, and John Alfred Spender attacked Sinclair in The Times on foreign policy, claiming that he, like the League of Nations Union, wished for war with the Axis powers.
At the time of the Munich Crisis in September 1938, Sinclair was one of the anti-appeasement group who gathered around Churchill, with Leo Amery, Robert Boothby, Robert Cecil, Harold Macmillan and Harold Nicolson. During parliamentary debate over the Munich Agreement he attacked Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for "wilting" to Nazi Germany and tossing "justice and respect for treaties... to the winds." On a personal level, Violet Bonham Carter was a frequent guest of the Sinclairs at Dalnawillan Lodge in the Flow Country, as were Harcourt Johnstone and Lady Gwendoline Churchill, wife of Jack Churchill and Winston's sister-in-law. Bonham Carter was a Liberal activist, close follower of Churchill, anti-appeaser and League of Nations Union member.
== Second World War ==
When Churchill formed an all-party coalition government in 1940, Sinclair entered the cabinet as Secretary of State for Air. During the May 1940 British war cabinet crisis after the fall of France he sided with Churchill against Lord Halifax's plan to seek a negotiated settlement with Nazi Germany mediated by Fascist Italy.
Sinclair's first task was to work with the Royal Air Force in planning the Battle of Britain. Towards the end of the war, he found himself at odds with Churchill, arguing against Bomber Harris' strategy for the Bombing of Dresden and other German cities. He was not a strong political personality: Max Hastings reports that he was often regarded as the "Head of School's fag" to Churchill, and as the political mouthpiece rather than the master of Air Chief Marshals Portal and Harris. However, in 1942 he did convince Churchill and his cabinet not to carry out reprisals on German villages for war atrocities such as the Lidice massacre.
Sinclair remained a minister until May 1945, when the coalition ended. In the 1945 general election, he lost his seat. His margin of defeat was narrow: he came in third place, with the victor Eric Gandar Dower having 61 votes more.
== Last years ==
At the 1950 general election, Sinclair again stood for his old seat, coming second. In 1952, the year of his first stroke, he accepted elevation to the House of Lords as Viscount Thurso of Ulbster in the County of Caithness. A more serious stroke in 1959 left him largely bedridden and in a state of precarious health, until he died at his home in Twickenham in 1970.
== Family ==
In 1918 Sinclair married Marigold Forbes (1897–1975), daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel James Stewart Forbes and Lady Angela Forbes. They had four children:
Catherine (1919–2007), married 1957 Kazimierz Zielenkiewicz.
Elizabeth (1921–1994), married in 1942 Archibald Michael Lyle, son of Sir Archibald Lyle, 2nd Baronet, and was mother of Veronica Linklater.
Robin (1922–1995), married 1952 Margaret Beaumont Robertson, and was father of John Sinclair, 3rd Viscount Thurso
Angus John (1925–2003), married firstly in 1955 Pamela Karen Bower, daughter of Dallas Bower (dissolved 1967), secondly in 1968 Judith Anne Percy (dissolved 1992), thirdly in 1992 Kate Fry.
== Legacy ==
The Southern Railway named a Battle of Britain Class Light Pacific steam locomotive "Sir Archibald Sinclair". The ceremonial naming of the locomotive was performed by Sir Archibald himself at Waterloo station on 24 February 1948. The locomotive is preserved on the Bluebell Railway. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digimon | Digimon | Digimon (Japanese: デジモン, Hepburn: Dejimon; branded as Digimon: Digital Monsters), short for "Digital Monsters" (デジタルモンスター Dejitaru Monsutā), is a Japanese media franchise, which encompasses virtual pet toys, anime, manga, video games, films, and a trading card game. The franchise focuses on the eponymous creatures who inhabit a digital world, a parallel universe which originated from Earth's various communication networks.
The franchise was created in 1997 as Digital Monster, a series of digital pets, and it was intended as the masculine counterpart to Tamagotchi. The creatures were designed to look cute and iconic on the devices' small screens. Later developments had them created with a harder-edged style, which was influenced by American comics. The franchise gained momentum with an early video game, Digimon World, originally released in Japan in January 1999. Several anime series and films have been released; the video game series has expanded into various genres, such as role-playing, racing, fighting, and MMORPGs. The franchise generated over $500 million in sales by 2000.
== Conception and creation ==
The Digimon franchise began as a series of virtual pets created by WiZ and Bandai, intended as a masculine counterpart to the more female-oriented Tamagotchi pets. It was released in June 1997 with the name Digital Monster, shortened to Digimon. This device shows to players a virtual pet composed entirely of data and designed to play and fight. In February 1998, the DigiMon fighting game was announced. It was developed by Rapture Technologies. The one-shot manga C'mon Digimon, designed by Tenya Yabuno, was published in the Japanese magazine V-Jump by Shueisha in 1997.
A second generation of virtual pets was marketed six months after the launch of the first, followed by a third in 1998. Each player starts with a baby-level digital creature that has a limited number of attacks and transformations and to make the creature stronger by training and nourishing the creature; when the player is successful in a workout, the Digimon becomes strong, when the player fails, the Digimon becomes weak. Two devices can be connected, allowing two players to battle with their respective creatures, an innovation at the time, however, the battle is only possible from the moment the creature is in the child level or bigger. Playgrounds and subways were where the majority of users of the apparatus were concentrated; the virtual pet was banned in some Asian schools, being considered by parents and teachers as very noisy and violent. The first Digimon were created by Japanese designer Kenji Watanabe, influenced by American comics, which were beginning to gain popularity in Japan, and as such began to make his characters look stronger and "cool." Other types of Digimon, which until the year 2000 totalled 279, came from extensive discussions and collaborations between the Bandai company members.
The original Digital Monster model that was released in 1997 sold 14 million units worldwide, including 13 million units in Japan and 1 million overseas, up until March 2004. By 2005, more than 24 million Digital Monster units had been sold worldwide.
== Premise ==
Several media in the franchise are contained within their own continuity; however, they all share a similar setting and premise. For instance, most Digimon stories begin with a human child, who comes into contact with a Digimon. This generally occurs either through an accidental entrance into the so-called Digital World or an encounter with a Digimon who has come into the human world. The child or children then often find themselves equipped with a "digivice", which is a device modelled after the series' virtual pets; this device enables them to empower their partner Digimon.
While some Digimon act like wild beasts, there are many who form small societies and follow governing bodies. Digimon can change through evolution (or "digivolution" in most English-language dubs), where they absorb additional data that allows them to change forms. This process is normally linear, but there are other methods, depending upon the media within the franchise. For example, "Jogress" (a portmanteau of "joint progress"; "DNA Digivolution" in most English-language dubs) is when two or more Digimon combine into a single being. Though evolution can occur naturally, Digimon can progress into stronger forms more quickly, when they are partnered with a human.
== Media ==
=== Anime ===
==== Television series ====
Multiple Digimon anime series have been produced by Toei Animation since 1999. The first of these was Digimon Adventure; it began as a short film, but after its storyboard was finished, a request for the film to become a television series was made. The film debuted in theaters a day before the series debuted on TV.
There are seven Digimon series adapted into English for release in Western markets, with the first four treated as a single show under the collective title Digimon: Digital Monsters. The sixth series, Digimon Fusion, was only partially dubbed; its third season was never dubbed into English.
==== Films ====
Several Digimon films were released in Japan, with some of them seasonal tie-ins for their respective television series. Footage from the first three films was used for the American-produced Digimon: The Movie.
==== OVA ====
==== Distribution and localization ====
In the United States, the first three series/seasons that made up Digimon: Digital Monsters first aired on Fox Kids from August 14, 1999 to June 8, 2002. The localized series was produced by Saban Entertainment, which was acquired by The Walt Disney Company during the show's Fox Kids run. Some scenes from the original shows were modified or omitted in order to comply with Fox's standards and practices. The show also featured more jokes and added dialogue, along with a completely different musical score. As a cross-promotional stunt, 2001 and 2002 saw Digi-Bowl specials co-produced with Fox Sports; NFL on Fox commentator Terry Bradshaw provided interstitial segments in-between episodes as if the episodes were actually a football game.
Disney's acquisition of Saban resulted in Digimon airing on Disney's TV networks and programming blocks. Reruns of the show began airing on the cable network ABC Family on March 4, 2002, while the fourth series/season, Digimon Frontier (which serves as the final season of Digimon: Digital Monsters), premiered on the Disney's Animation Weekdays block on UPN, and the ABC Kids block on ABC. UPN aired the series until late August 2003, when they severed their ties to Disney. Frontier also aired in reruns on ABC Family and Toon Disney under the Jetix branding. An English version of Digimon Data Squad, produced and dubbed by Studiopolis, premiered October 1, 2007, on Toon Disney. Around this time, the remaining Digimon Adventure 02 movie, both Tamers movies and the Frontier movie were dubbed and aired on Toon Disney in the US, with most actors from the TV series reprising their roles. The Data Squad/Savers movie however have not had a North American localised English dub produced.
In September 2012, Saban Brands, a successor to Saban Entertainment, announced it had re-acquired the Digimon anime franchise. Saban announced an English dub for Digimon Xros Wars, retitled Digimon Fusion, for broadcast on Nickelodeon and Nicktoons in the United States starting September 7, 2013. Saban Capital Group sold most of Saban Brands' entertainment properties to Hasbro in 2018 and shutter the division in July of that year.
The Digimon Adventure tri. series were distributed in North America by Eleven Arts, while Saban was not involved with licensing of the film series. The English dub utilized localized names from Saban's original dub, reunite several voice actors from the original cast, and feature a remixed version of the English opening theme, while retaining the original Japanese score. Shout! Factory acquired the broadcast and home media distribution rights for the films.
==== International ====
In Canada, the English versions of Digimon were broadcast on YTV, with the exception of Data Squad, which aired in Family Channel's Jetix block. YTV acquired Digimon Fusion, but only the first 26 episodes were shown.
In the United Kingdom, Digimon first aired on Fox Kids. ITV's children's slot CITV broadcast Adventure, Adventure 02 and several episodes of Tamers during after school hours from 2001–2002. The rest of Tamers aired on Fox Kids from 2002–03. Digimon Frontier was originally announced to be broadcast on Jetix, but the series was later dropped. The series eventually saw a release on October 29, 2018. In 2011, Digimon Data Squad aired on Kix!.
According to Fox Kids' (2000–03) and Kix's (2010–) BARB Television ratings, Adventure, Adventure 02 and Tamers have been the most popular series'/seasons in the United Kingdom and was consistently in the weekly top 10 broadcasts for both channels for new episodes. Broadcast rights and merchandising sub-licensing rights for Digimon Fusion in the UK have been acquired by ITV Studios Global Entertainment. Digimon Fusion had aired since Spring 2014 on digital terrestrial channel, CITV.
In the Philippines, Digimon was first aired on ABS-CBN in Filipino English language from June 2, 2000 to October 21, 2001. And later, it was shift to Filipino on April 6, 2002.
=== Comics ===
Digimon first appeared in narrative form in the one-shot manga C'mon Digimon, released in the summer of 1997. C'mon Digimon spawned the popular Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01 manga, written by Hiroshi Izawa, which began serialization on November 21, 1998.
==== Digimon Next ====
Written by Tatsuya Hamazaki and illustrated by Takeshi Okano, Digimon Next (デジモンネクスト, Dejimon Nekusuto) was serialized in Shueisha's magazine V Jump from 2005 to 2008. Shueisha collected its chapters in four tankōbon volumes, released from July 4, 2006, to February 4, 2008. The story follow Tsurugi Tatsuno and his digimon partner, Greymon (later Agumon). Tsurugi makes contact with the Digital World through his virtual pet device called Digimon Mini and a "Battle Terminal", a virtual reality interface. Digimon can use the technology to materialize in the human world as well.
==== Digimon Dreamers ====
In 2021, a manga called Digimon Dreamers was announced.
==== Yuen Wong Yu manhua ====
A Chinese manhua was written and drawn by Yuen Wong Yu, who based its storyline on the television series. This adaptation covers Digimon Adventure in five volumes, Digimon Adventure 02 in two, Digimon Tamers in four, and Digimon Frontier in three. The original stories are heavily abridged, though on rare occasions events play out differently from the anime. The Chinese-language version was published by Rightman Publishing Ltd. in Hong Kong. Yu also wrote D-Cyber.
Two English versions were also released. The first one was published by Chuang Yi in Singapore. The second one, which was adapted by Lianne Sentar, was released by Tokyopop in North America.The three volumes for Digimon Frontier have been released by Chuang Yi in English. These have not been released by TOKYOPOP in North America or Europe. However, the Chuang Yi releases of Digimon Frontier were distributed by Madman Entertainment in Australia.
==== Dark Horse ====
Dark Horse Comics published American-style Digimon comic books, adapting the first thirteen episodes of the English dub of Digimon Adventure in 2001. The story was written by Daniel Horn and Ryan Hill, and illustrated by Daniel Horn and Cara L. Niece.
==== Panini ====
The Italian publishing company Panini published Digimon titles in several ways in different countries. Germany had their own adaptations of episodes, the UK reprinted the Dark Horse titles and translated some of the German adaptations of Adventure 02 episodes. Eventually the UK comics had their own original stories, which appeared in both the UK's Digimon Magazine and the UK Fox Kids companion magazine Wickid. These original stories roughly followed the continuity of Adventure 02. When the comic switched to the Tamers series the storylines adhered to continuity more strictly; sometimes it expanded on subject matter not covered by the original Japanese anime (such as Mitsuo Yamaki's past) or the English adaptations of the television shows and movies (such as Ryo's story or the movies that remained undubbed until 2005). In a money saving venture, the original stories were later removed from Digimon Magazine, which returned to printing translated German adaptations of Tamers episodes. Eventually, both magazines were cancelled.
=== Video games ===
The Digimon series has inspired various video games, including the Digimon World and Digimon Story sub-series of role-playing video games. Other genres have included life simulation, adventure, video card game, strategy, and racing games.
By March 2001, Bandai had sold approximately 1 million video games worldwide, including 400,000 in Japan. In February 2010, a website for the MMORPG Digimon Battle Online was launched. On September 22, 2011, online game publisher Joymax announced the release of an MMORPG game called Digimon Masters, which was developed by the Korean publisher DIGITALIC. In June 2021 it was announced that they were developing a new MMORPG titled Digimon Super Rumble.
In 2011, a new entry in the Digimon World series was announced after a seven-year hiatus, titled Digimon World Re:Digitize. The game was released in Japan on July 19, 2012, followed by an enhanced version for Nintendo 3DS released in 2013.
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth was first released in Japan in 2015. It is the first game in the Digimon Story series to be released in North America under its original title; Digimon World DS and Digimon World Dawn and Dusk were originally marketed as entries in the Digimon World series, with the latter game being the last to be released in the West for nine years until Cyber Sleuth's release on February 2, 2016.
There have been several mobile games. Digimon Links was active from March 2016 to July 2019, and was similar to the Story games in that the player raised digimon in a farm and fought enemies using a team of three of their Digimon. It was succeeded by Digimon ReArise, which launched June 2018 in Japan and October 2019 in America.
=== Web novel ===
In February 2023, Bandai announced a web novel titled Digimon Seekers (デジモンシーカーズ, Dejimon Shīkāzu) to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the franchise. The novel will serialize on the Digimon Web website for about a year, starting on April 3, simultaneously in English, Chinese, and Japanese.
=== Webcomic ===
In December 2023, Bandai announced a webcomic titled Digimon Liberator for Spring 2024.
=== Card game ===
The Digimon Collectible Card Game is a card game based on Digimon, first introduced in Japan in 1997 and published by Bandai. The third season (Digimon Tamers) utilized this aspect of the franchise by making the card game an integral part of the season. Versions of the card game are also included in some of the Digimon video games including Digital Card Battle and Digimon World 3.
During the fourth anime (Digimon Frontier), Bandai created the D-Tector Card Game to tie in to their own D-Tector virtual pet toys. This was a West-only card game. From February 25, 2011 to September 28, 2012, Digimon Jintrix was an online card game supported by physical card releases. It was followed up by the mobile game Digimon Crusader, which lasted from December 2012 to December 2017. In 2020 a new card game was launched to coincide with Digimon Adventure: using a new system, this was released in the West in January 2021. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudhoney | Mudhoney | Mudhoney is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, on January 1, 1988, following the demise of Green River. Its members are singer and rhythm guitarist Mark Arm, lead guitarist Steve Turner, bassist Guy Maddison and drummer Dan Peters. Original bassist Matt Lukin left the band in 1999, but rejoined the band in December 2000 for a tour that lasted through January 2001.
Mudhoney's early releases on the Sub Pop label, particularly their debut single "Touch Me I'm Sick" and the Superfuzz Bigmuff EP, were instrumental in the creation of the grunge genre. Although the band found little commercial success and remained somewhat 'underground' and non-mainstream, Mudhoney has released eleven studio albums and inspired countless grunge and alternative rock musicians during their long career.
== History ==
=== Mr. Epp and the Calculations: 1978–1984 ===
Mark Arm and Steve Turner met through their association with Mr. Epp and the Calculations. This band formed in 1978 in Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. While at Bellevue Christian High School, Mark McLaughlin (later known as Mark Arm) and some friends started Mr. Epp and the Calculations, a band named after a math teacher of his. Initially the band was essentially a joke band rather than a serious one; their first "show" was in class singing Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up", using rolled-up maps as guitars because they could not actually play any instruments. Mr. Epp and the Calculations played their first real show in 1981, three years after they formed. To make the band seem more serious, Mr. Epp added a second guitarist, Steve Turner, who was in a small garage band called The Ducky Boys. Arm and Turner became instant friends. In 1983, three songs of Mr. Epp were included in First Strike: a compilation, the first cassette in the BCT catalog. Mr. Epp and the Calculations appeared on KZAM radio and were introduced as "the worst band in the world." They played their last show on February 3, 1984, with Malfunkshun at Seattle's Metropolis. Arm and Turner formed a joke-punk band called The Limp Richerds in 1984 near the end of Mr. Epp but this band ended shortly after Mr. Epp's ending as well.
=== Green River: 1984–1987 ===
Green River was formed in 1984 when Arm and Turner recruited Alex Vincent as drummer, who had previously played with Turner in the short-lived Spluii Numa. Bassist Jeff Ament joined the band after arriving in Seattle with his band Deranged Diction. Stone Gossard, another of Turner's former bandmates, was recruited as second guitarist. Green River recorded their debut EP, Come on Down, in 1985, and it is considered the first grunge record because it was released several months before the Deep Six album (which featured music by Green River and five other Seattle grunge bands). Turner left the band after its release due to his distaste of the band's hard rock leanings. He was replaced by another Deranged Diction member, Bruce Fairweather. After recording another EP (Dry As a Bone) and a full-length album (Rehab Doll), the band disbanded in late 1987. Gossard, Ament, and Fairweather went on to join Mother Love Bone. Following lead singer Andrew Wood's death, Gossard and Ament went on to form Pearl Jam, and Fairweather joined Love Battery.
=== Sub Pop: 1988–1991 ===
Turner wanted to start a band that practiced before playing to a live audience. He and Arm began songwriting with Bundle of Hiss drummer Dan Peters. The trio decided that Matt Lukin, who had recently left Melvins, should join the band as bassist. The band's first practice with its full original lineup was on January 1, 1988 and their first show took place later that year, on April 19. The band named themselves after the Russ Meyer film Mudhoney.
In early 1988, Arm played Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt a poor boombox recording Mudhoney had made. Pavitt suggested the band record with producer Jack Endino and offered to release it on Sub Pop. This recording session resulted in Mudhoney's first single, "Touch Me I'm Sick". The band recorded and released their debut EP, Superfuzz Bigmuff, also on Sub Pop. Mudhoney quickly became Sub Pop's flagship band.
Sonic Youth, who were fans of Mudhoney, took the band out on a tour of the West Coast and the Southwest, followed by a two-week jaunt through the United Kingdom. According to Arm, their association with Sonic Youth endeared British audiences to them: "The U.K. was crazy, and Sonic Youth, at that point, were like total walking gods. The previous tour, they had Dinosaur Jr. with them, which made that band in the U.K. They could bring someone over and basically anoint them." After this tour Superfuzz Bigmuff entered the British indie charts and the band received a respectable amount of press coverage.
Upon returning from Europe, Mudhoney played the Sub Pop-organized Lamefest alongside Nirvana and Tad on June 6, 1989. The festival, held at Seattle's Moore Theatre, sold out, and is seen by Bruce Pavitt as "the definitive turning point in the Seattle music scene." The band released their first album, Mudhoney that same year.
Kurt Cobain listed Superfuzz Bigmuff as one of his favourite albums in his journal in 1993.
They released their second album, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, in 1991. After the album's release they were offered a deal with Reprise Records, and they joined the label in 1992.
=== Reprise: 1992–1999 ===
Mudhoney's first album with Reprise was Piece of Cake. In a 2008 Mojo magazine article, Turner explained the album references "how easily things had come to them ... the songs were kinda half-baked ..." They also contributed a track "Overblown" at this time to the soundtrack to the film Singles.
With their 1995 album My Brother the Cow they mixed their earlier and more recent sound, but Turner explained in an article in Mojo, "There was a backlash after Kurt [Cobain] killed himself. The English press were so angry that we were still around. Those were some of the worst reviews we'd ever gotten. We were mocked for still existing." The press was not all negative, as the album received praise in certain U.S. publications, including People magazine: "Leave the brooding anthems to Pearl Jam. Mudhoney delivers pure grunge—messy music that casts a powerful spell."
In 1996, Mudhoney appeared in the comedy movie Black Sheep, starring Chris Farley and David Spade. The band was shown performing at an MTV concert and then speaking with Farley backstage. Tomorrow Hit Today was released in September 1998. The album demonstrated a blues-rock influence, and the band used record producer Jim Dickinson, who worked with The Rolling Stones. They recorded the set in three different cities.
After a few years of touring, Reprise decided to cut ties with Mudhoney. Subsequently, Lukin left the band. They released March to Fuzz, a retrospective compilation album.
=== After Matt Lukin: 2000–present ===
Mudhoney continued to play some concerts in the Pacific Northwest and recruited permanent bassist Guy Maddison (of Monroe's Fur and Lubricated Goat) who had played with Arm in one of his many side projects, Bloodloss. In 2002, following their return to Sub Pop, the band recorded and released a new studio album, Since We've Become Translucent. This was followed by a major South American tour.
In early 2003 the band entered the studio to record "Hard-On For War", that would appear exclusively on Buddyhead Presents: Gimme Skelter compilation album. Later that year the band recorded Under a Billion Suns on which a new version of the song appeared. The album was released in 2006 and received favorable reviews. In 2006 the band also helped to curate an edition of the British All Tomorrow's Parties festival.
During 2007, Mudhoney played in Brazil again and went on a brief European tour. In November that year, the band released a live album entitled Live Mud, containing songs recorded at a concert in Mexico.
In 2008, Mudhoney began recording their next album with producer Tucker Martine, The Lucky Ones, which was released in May 2008. Shortly thereafter, Sub Pop released a deluxe, remastered edition of Superfuzz Bigmuff. The reissue contained the original EP in its correct running order, along with singles, demos, and two live recordings from 1988. In the liner notes of the reissued Superfuzz Bigmuff, Jay Hinman wrote: My feeling—and I know I'm not alone in this one—is that for all the play and worldwide attention several Seattle-area bands got during the 1988–92 period, at the end of the day (and even at the time), there was Mudhoney—and then there was everybody else. To me, you, and everyone else paying close attention to underground rock music during those years, Mudhoney still sound like the undisputed kingpins of roaring, surging, fuzzed-out, punk music.
In 2009, Mudhoney announced a series of live dates. This included an extensive tour of Europe which started in Edinburgh, Scotland with Sub Pop labelmates The Vaselines. The tour ended on October 26. The group performed at the Nelsonville Music Festival in Nelsonville, Ohio, in May 2009. The group played at the ATP New York 2010 music festival in Monticello, New York in September 2010, where they performed Superfuzz Bigmuff in its entirety.
In 2011, Pearl Jam had Mudhoney open for them on their 20th Anniversary tour. They were chosen by Mogwai to perform in May 2012 at the All Tomorrow's Parties 'I'll Be Your Mirror' festival at Alexandra Palace, London. In April 2013 the band put out their ninth studio album Vanishing Point, followed by 2018's Digital Garbage.
In 2021, Mudhoney and Sub Pop celebrated the 30-year anniversary of Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge with a remastered deluxe version. This included remastered and re-released music videos and songs, as well as previously unreleased songs and demos.
Plastic Eternity was released by Sub Pop on April 6, 2023.
== Musical style and influences ==
Mark Deming of AllMusic called Mudhoney "a group with a penchant for metal muscle, punk attitude, and garage rock primitivism." He further described the band's discography as "big, loud, purposefully sloppy, a little bit menacing, and even more funny." Mudhoney have cited numerous bands and artists as influences, including the Stooges, Spacemen 3, Wipers, Dinosaur Jr., Neil Young, Black Flag, Feedtime, and the Scientists.
== Legacy ==
According to Mark Deming of AllMusic: "Nirvana may have been the band that put an entire generation in flannel, and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden both sold a lot more records, but Mudhoney were truly the band that made the '90s grunge rock movement possible. Mudhoney were the first real success story for Sub Pop Records; their music laid the groundwork for the movement that would (briefly) make Seattle, Washington the new capitol of the rock & roll universe. They took the sweat-soaked and beer-fueled mixture of heavy metal muscle, punk attitude, and garage rock primitivism that would become known as "grunge" to the hipster audience for the first time [...] and those fans would in turn sell it to a mass audience ready for something new. [...] Their importance on the Seattle scene cannot be underestimated, and their body of work [...] has stood the test of time better than their well-known colleagues."
== Members ==
=== Current members ===
Mark Arm – lead vocals, rhythm guitar (1988–present)
Dan Peters – drums, percussion, backing vocals (1988–present)
Steve Turner – lead guitar, backing vocals (1988–present)
Guy Maddison – bass guitar, backing vocals (2001–present)
=== Former members ===
Matt Lukin – bass guitar, backing vocals (1988–2001)
== Discography ==
Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988)
Mudhoney (1989)
Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (1991)
Piece of Cake (1992)
My Brother the Cow (1995)
Tomorrow Hit Today (1998)
Since We've Become Translucent (2002)
Under a Billion Suns (2006)
The Lucky Ones (2008)
Vanishing Point (2013)
Digital Garbage (2018)
Plastic Eternity (2023) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Winter_Olympics | 1992 Winter Olympics | The 1992 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XVI Olympic Winter Games (French: XVIes Jeux Olympiques d'hiver) and commonly known as Albertville '92 (Arpitan: Arbèrtvile '92), were a winter multi-sport event held from 8 to 23 February 1992 in and around Albertville, France. Albertville won the bid to host the Winter Olympics in 1986, beating Sofia, Falun, Lillehammer, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Anchorage, and Berchtesgaden. The 1992 Winter Olympics were the last winter games held in the same year as the Summer Olympics. The next Winter Olympics were held two years after this one instead of the usual four, which allowed the Olympic Games to take place on every even-numbered year instead of every four years. The Games were the fifth Olympic Games held in France and the country's third Winter Olympics, after the 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix and the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble. This games was the first of two consecutive Olympic games to be held in Western Europe, preceding the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.
18 events in Figure skating, short track speed skating, speed skating, and the opening and closing ceremonies took place in Albertville. The 39 other events were held in the nearby 9 villages and resorts around Savoie: Courchevel, La Plagne, Les Arcs, Les Menuires, Les Saisies, Méribel, Pralognan-la-Vanoise, Tignes, and Val d'Isère. Sixty-four National Olympic Committees and 1,801 athletes participated in six sports and fifty-seven events. This included both the Unified Team, representing the non-Baltic former Soviet republics, and Germany, newly consolidated again as a team following the reunification of the former East and West Germany in 1990. The event also saw the debut of eight nations in the Winter Olympics. The Winter Olympic program has grown this time with the addition of 11 new events. While sports that were already on the program received 5 new events (2 new events in cross-country skiing, at the same time women were allowed to compete in biathlon for the first time and won 3 events exclusive to them.) Another 6 events were added with the implementation of 2 sports that were demonstrated 4 years earlier (freestyle skiing and short track speed skating). These were the last Winter Olympics to include demonstration sports, consisting of curling, aerials and ski ballet, and speed skiing. Due to a rule change implemented in 1986, this was the last edition in the history of the Winter Olympic Games in which all speed skating events were held in an open-air venue.
== Host city selection ==
A record-breaking seven locations bid for the games. The non-winning bids were from Anchorage, Berchtesgaden, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Falun, Lillehammer, and Sofia. The 91st IOC Session, held in Lausanne on 17 October 1986, voted Albertville the host of the Games.
== Opening ceremony ==
== Highlights ==
Bjørn Dæhlie and Vegard Ulvang dominated the men's cross-country skiing races, both taking home three gold medals with Norway taking a medal sweep in the event. 16-year-old Ski jumper Toni Nieminen became the youngest male gold medalist in a Winter Olympic event until 2002. Petra Kronberger won both the combined event and the slalom of alpine skiing, while Bonnie Blair won both the 500 m and 1000 m speed skating events, and Gunda Niemann took both of the longest races.
Three National Olympic Committees in Asia-Pacific region won their first medals at the Winter Olympics, one in a sport making its debut at the Games (short track speed skating.) Kim Ki-hoon's gold medal in 1000 m short track speed skating signified South Korea's first medal in the Winter Olympics, while Ye Qiaobo's silver medal in women's 500 m speed skating represented China's first Winter Olympics medal. Annelise Coberger from New Zealand became the first Oceanian athlete to win a medal in women's alpine skiing slalom, making her the first athlete from the southern hemisphere to mount the podium at the Winter Games.
Swiss speed skier Nicolas Bochatay died on the penultimate day of the Games, when he crashed into a snow-grooming vehicle during a training run.
== Legacy ==
The 1992 Olympic Winter Games marked the last time both the Winter and Summer games were held in the same year. The 1992 Winter Olympics also marked the last time France hosted the Olympics until 2024, when Paris became the second city to host the Summer Olympics three times. France is set to host the Winter Games in 2030 in the French Alps, 38 years after Albertville played host and will host it again in 2030.
=== Cost and cost overrun ===
The Oxford Olympics Study established the outturn cost of the Albertville 1992 Winter Olympics at US$2.0 billion (in 2015-dollars) and cost overrun at 137% in real terms. This includes sports-related costs only, that is: (i) operational costs incurred by the organizing committee to stage the Games, e.g., expenditures for technology, transportation, workforce, administration, security, catering, ceremonies, and medical services; and (ii) direct capital costs incurred by the host city and country or private investors to build, e.g., the competition venues, the Olympic village, international broadcast center, and media and press center, which are required to host the Games. Indirect capital costs were not included, e.g. road, rail, or airport infrastructure, or hotel upgrades or other business investment incurred in preparation for the Games but not directly related to their staging. In comparison, the cost and cost overrun of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics were US$2.5 billion and 13%, respectively, while the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (the most costly Olympics to date) had costs and cost overrun at US$51 billion and 289%, respectively. The average cost for the Winter Games since 1960 is US$3.1 billion, while the average cost overrun is 142%.
== Mascot ==
The 1992 Winter Games mascot, Magique (Magic), was a small imp in the shape of a star and a cube. The mascot was created by Philippe Mairesse and replaced the bid mascot, which was a mountain goat. The star shape symbolized dreams and imagination, while the mascot's red and blue colors originated from the French flag.
== Sports ==
There were 57 events contested in 6 sports (12 disciplines). See the medal winners, ordered by sport:
=== Demonstration sports ===
This was the last time demonstration events were included in the Winter Olympics program. Of the 8 events that were under evaluation, 4 received the endorsement to be included in an official form in future editions of the Games (Curling tournaments and the aerials events on the freestyle skiing). The other four events (speed skiing and skiing ballet events on the freestyle skiing) were rejected and have not since returned.
Curling – Was an official sport in the Olympic program in 1924, after which it was a demonstration sport twice, in 1932 and 1988. There was a possibility of re-inclusion in Lillehammer 1994, but in 1990 the IOC Executive Committee rejected its return as an official sport. The IOC accepted its return in Nagano 1998.
Freestyle skiing – Like curling, it was a demonstration sport four years previously before becoming part of the official program. Only moguls skiing received this status, while aerials and ballet remained demonstration events. Aerials became an official event two years later, while ballet skiing appeared in the games for the last time, going into a progressive decline and losing its status as a competitive discipline by the International Ski Federation (FIS) in 2000.
Speed skiing – Considered one of the most dangerous events in the sporting world, the discipline won a chance to be evaluated by the International Olympic Committee and the FIS for possible inclusion in a future program. The event, hosted at Les Arcs, was a success, pushing the world record to 229.299 km/h (142mph). Tragically, after qualifying for the final, Swiss skier Nicolas Bochatay ran into a snow-grooming vehicle while skiing on an adjacent public slope with a teammate, dying instantly. According to reports, Bochatay crested a small hill and crashed into the machine which he had not seen. The discipline has not been featured on an Olympic Games program since then.
== Participating nations ==
Sixty-four nations sent competitors to the 1992 Olympics, including seven nations making their first appearance at a Winter Olympics. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, six former-Soviet bloc nations chose to form a Unified Team, while the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania competed as independent nations for the first time since 1936. Czechoslovakia made its last appearance in the Winter Olympics before its dissolution at the end of 1992. United Nations Security Council Resolution 757 took effect on 30 May 1992 (97 days after the closing ceremonies), and Yugoslav athletes were able to participate under their country's national symbols. It also suspended the activities of the Yugoslav Olympic Committee, making the country's athletes ineligible to compete on the 1992 Summer Olympics. Despite this, some of their athletes classified in individual sports and gained authorization to compete as Independent Olympic Participants (which also happened at the 1992 Summer Paralympics). Yugoslav athletes returned to the Olympic Games in the 1996 Summer Olympics, when only Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo were still part of the country. The 1992 Winter Olympics were the first time since the 1964 Summer Olympics that Germany competed with a unified team. Seven National Olympic Committees sent their first delegations to the Winter Olympics: Algeria, Bermuda, Brazil, Honduras, Ireland, Swaziland, Croatia, and Slovenia (the last two making their first appearances at any Olympics, just a few months after their respective declarations of independence from Yugoslavia). Through the 2022 Winter Olympics, this has been the only participation of Swaziland (now Eswatini) and Honduras in an edition of the Winter Olympics.
=== Number of athletes by National Olympic Committees ===
== Venues ==
The 1992 Games are the last in which the speed skating venue was outdoors.
Albertville Olympic Park
Halle Olympique – Figure skating and short-track speed skating
L'anneau de vitesse – Speed skating
Théâtre des Cérémonies – Ceremonies (opening & closing)
Les Arcs – Speed skiing
Courchevel – Ski jumping and Nordic combined
Les Ménuires – Alpine skiing (slalom men)
Méribel – Alpine skiing (women)
Méribel Ice Palace – Ice hockey
La Plagne – Bobsleigh and luge
Pralognan-la-Vanoise – Curling
Les Saisies – Biathlon, cross-country skiing
Tignes – Freestyle skiing
Val d'Isère – Alpine skiing (men combined, downhill, giant slalom, and super-giant slalom)
== Medal table ==
(Host nation is highlighted.)
* Host nation (France)
(1 combined team with athletes from 6 nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States; the team only appeared in these Winter Olympics)
=== Podium sweeps ===
== Schedule == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Academy_Film_Prize | Japan Academy Film Prize | The Japan Academy Film Prize (日本アカデミー賞, Nippon Akademii-shou), often called the Japan Academy Prize, the Japan Academy Awards, and the Japanese Academy Awards, is a series of awards given annually since 1978 by the Japan Academy Film Prize Association (日本アカデミー賞協会, Nippon Akademii-shou Kyoukai) for excellence in Japanese film. Award categories are similar to the Academy Awards.
== Venue ==
Since 1998, the venue is regularly held at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa of Prince Hotels in Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo. Admission tickets for this award ceremony are also sold to regular customers.
As of 2015, there is a charge of 40,000 Yen which includes a French cuisine course dinner named after the award ceremony. Spectators are expected to attend in semi-formal attire. Elementary school students and younger are not permitted.
== Award ==
The winners are selected from the recipients of the Award for Excellence. The award statue of the winner measures 27 cm × 11 cm × 11 cm (10.7 in × 4.4 in × 4.4 in). The recipients of the Award for Excellence receive a smaller statue.
== Categories ==
== Award winners == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharina_Molitor | Katharina Molitor | Katharina Molitor (born 8 November 1983) is a German sportswoman who competes as a javelin thrower and volleyball player. As a javelin thrower, she is a World Champion, having won gold in 2015, and her personal best throw is 67.69 m. As a volleyball player, she represents Bayer Leverkusen in the Erste Volleyball-Bundesliga, the highest tier of German volleyball.
She is a two-time Olympian, having competed in the javelin throw for Germany at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics. She finished eighth in 2008, and improved to sixth in 2012. She won gold at the 2010 German Championships and has since competed in every European and World Championships. Her best result is first place at the 2015 World Championships.
== Competition record == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_City_A.F.C. | Bradford City A.F.C. | Bradford City Association Football Club is an English professional football club in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The club competes in EFL League One, the third tier of English football, and is managed by Graham Alexander.
The club was founded in 1903 and immediately elected into the Football League Second Division. Promotion to the top tier followed as they won the 1907–08 Second Division title and then they went on to win the 1911 FA Cup final, which remains the club's only major honour. They were relegated in 1922 and again in 1927, before winning the Third Division North title in 1928–29. Another relegation in 1937 did allow the club to go on to win the Third Division North Cup in 1939, however a further relegation followed in 1962 to leave the club in the newly created Fourth Division. They secured promotions back into the third tier in 1969 and 1977, but were relegated in 1972 and 1978. They found success in the 1980s under the stewardship of first Roy McFarland and then Trevor Cherry, winning promotion in 1981–82 and following this up with the Third Division title in 1984–85, though they were relegated out of the Second Division in 1990.
Bradford were promoted back into the second tier via the play-offs in 1996, before securing another promotion in 1998–99 to reach the Premier League, marking a return to the top-flight after a 77-year absence. They entered Europe and reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 2000–01 but ended the campaign with relegation from the Premier League. A succession of financial crises followed as the club entered administration twice in two years and further relegations followed in 2004 and 2007 to leave the club back in the fourth tier. They found success under the management of Phil Parkinson by reaching the 2013 League Cup final and then going on to win that year's League Two play-off final but were relegated from League One in 2019.
The club's home ground is the 24,840-capacity Valley Parade, which was the site of the Bradford City stadium fire on 11 May 1985, which took the lives of 56 supporters. They are the only professional football club in England to wear claret and amber, and have worn these colours throughout their history. They have though been known by various nicknames, with the "Bantams" being the most commonly used nickname as it appears on the current club crest. Supporters hold West Yorkshire derby rivalries with Huddersfield Town and Leeds United, as well as a historic Bradford derby rivalry with the now non-league side Bradford (Park Avenue).
== History ==
Bradford City were formed in 1903 as a result of a series of meetings called by James Whyte, a sub-editor of the Bradford Observer, with Football Association representatives and officials at Manningham F.C., a rugby league side. The Football League saw the invitation as a chance to promote association football in the rugby league-dominated county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. It duly elected the new club into the Second Division, in place of Doncaster Rovers. Four days later, at the 23rd annual meeting of Manningham FC, the committee decided to change codes from rugby league to association football. Bradford City Association Football Club were formed without having played a game, taking over Manningham's colours of claret and amber, and their Valley Parade ground.
Robert Campbell was appointed the club's first manager and with the help of the new committee, he assembled a playing squad at the cost of £917 10s 0d. City's first game was a 2–0 defeat at Grimsby Town on 1 September 1903, six days before their first home game attracted 11,000 fans. The club finished 10th in their first season. Peter O'Rourke took over as manager in November 1905, and he led City to the Second Division title in 1907–08 and with it promotion to the First Division. Having narrowly avoided relegation in their first season in the top flight, City recorded their highest finish of 5th in 1910–11. The same season they won the FA Cup, when a goal from captain Jimmy Speirs won the final replay against Newcastle United. City's defence of the cup, which included the first Bradford derby against Bradford Park Avenue, was stopped by Barnsley after a run of 12 consecutive clean sheets.
City remained in the top flight in the period up to the First World War and for three seasons afterwards, but were relegated in 1921–22 along with Manchester United. Back in the Second Division, attendances dropped and City struggled for form, with five consecutive finishes in the bottom half of the table. They suffered a second relegation to the Third Division (North) in 1926–27. Two seasons later, O'Rourke, who had initially retired in 1921 following the death of his son, returned and guided City to promotion with a record haul of 128 goals. O'Rourke left for a second time after one more season, and although City spent a total of eight seasons back in the Second Division, they rarely looked like earning promotion back to the top flight. Instead in 1936–37, the club were relegated back to the Third Division (North). City won their third piece of silverware two seasons later, when they lifted the Third Division North Challenge Cup, but they were unable to defend the trophy because competitive football was suspended for the Second World War.
After the war, City went through two managers in the first two seasons, and were consistently in the bottom half of the Third Division (North) table until 1955–56. After three successive top half finishes, City were placed in the new national Third Division in 1958–59. Bradford spent just three seasons in the Third Division, but during their relegation season in 1960–61, they upset First Division side Manchester United in the inaugural season of the League Cup. With 34 goals from David Layne, City nearly earned promotion the following season 1961–62, but did also suffer a record 9–1 defeat to Colchester United. Layne left for Sheffield Wednesday, and without him City finished second from bottom of the league and had to apply for re-election. Bradford City just failed to win promotion in 1963–64, winning more games than any other team in the division that season, twenty five, with Rodney Green top scoring with 29 league goals. There followed three difficult seasons during which time manager Grenville Hair died following a heart attack in training, City returned to the Third Division after getting promoted in 1968–69. City's stay in the Third Division lasted just three years, when they finished bottom in 1971–72. Promotion via fourth spot was won again in 1976–77 but it was instantly followed by a relegation season.
City failed to win promotion for three successive seasons, until the board appointed former England centre back Roy McFarland as manager in May 1981. McFarland won promotion in his first season, but was poached by his former club Derby County just six months later. City won compensation from Derby and installed another England international Trevor Cherry as McFarland's replacement. Cherry, with former teammate Terry Yorath as his assistant manager, failed to win for two months, but eventually the pair guided City to safety from relegation. During the summer, however, the club chairman Bob Martin had to call in the official receivers. The club was saved by former chairman Stafford Heginbotham and former board member Jack Tordoff, but to ensure the club could start the new season, prize asset, striker Bobby Campbell was sold to Derby. City struggled but so did Campbell, and when he returned, the club went on a record run of ten successive victories. Although they missed out on promotion, City won the league the following season 1984–85, to return to the second tier of the Football League. However, City's triumph was overshadowed when the main stand at Valley Parade caught fire during the final game of the season, killing 56 people.
City played games away from Valley Parade for 19 months. But just ten days after the new £2.6 million ground was opened, Cherry was sacked. His replacement, Terry Dolan, steered City away from possible relegation, before he mounted a promotion challenge the following season. City went top of the table in September 1987, but fell away during Christmas and missed out on promotion on the final day of the season. Instead, they entered the play-offs but were defeated in the semi-finals by Middlesbrough. Two years later City were relegated back to the Third Division. For three seasons, City finished mid-table in the third tier, which was renamed Division Two following the formation of the Premier League in 1992.
In January 1994, Geoffrey Richmond came from Scarborough to take over as chairman, and promised to guide City to the Premier League within five years. He cleared the debts and after four months sacked manager Frank Stapleton to appoint his own manager, Lennie Lawrence. Lawrence left after little more than a year to join Luton Town but his successor, Chris Kamara, took City to the play-offs and their first game at Wembley Stadium. They defeated Notts County 2–0 in the final to earn promotion to Division One. City avoided relegation the following season by winning their last two league games, 1–0 against Charlton Athletic and then beating Queens Park Rangers 3–0 on the final day of the season, but Kamara was sacked in January 1998. Paul Jewell took over, initially on a temporary basis, before he was given a permanent contract. He bought the club's first £1 million signings and guided the club to the Premier League — the first time they had been in the top flight for 77 years — with a second-place finish. The following season, Jewell continued to defy the critics, who labelled his team Dad's Army, by avoiding relegation again on the last day with a 1–0 victory over Liverpool, with a goal from David Wetherall.
However, Jewell left shortly afterwards. His assistant Chris Hutchings was promoted to the manager's position, and despite a series of new expensive signings, he was sacked by November 2000, with City second from bottom of the league. Jim Jefferies took over but could not save the club from relegation. At the end of the first season back in Division One, City were placed in administration with debts of nearly £13 million. Two years later, the club suffered a second spell in administration and a second relegation. Two top-half finishes followed, but the club were relegated for a third time in seven seasons in 2006–07 meaning the following season would be their first in the bottom tier for 26 seasons. Former player Stuart McCall was appointed the new manager, and although he said anything less than promotion would be a failure, he finally led the team to a 10th-place finish. McCall eventually left Bradford City on 8 February 2010 following a board meeting after a run of poor results.
In September 2011, the club became linked with American amateur side SC United Bantams.
In January 2013, City became the first club from the fourth tier of English football since Rochdale in 1962 to reach the League Cup final, and the first fourth tier club ever to reach a major Wembley Cup final. They defeated three Premier League sides en route to the final – Wigan Athletic 4–2 on penalties in the fourth round, Arsenal 3–2 on penalties in the quarter-finals and Aston Villa 4–3 on aggregate over the two legs of the semi-final. They met Premier League side Swansea City in the final at Wembley but lost 5–0.
The run to the final is thought to have been worth at least £1.3 million to the club, with joint chairman Mark Lawn stating that the final itself could be worth an additional £1 million, taking the club's total earnings to £2.3 million during their cup campaign. On 18 May 2013, the club returned to Wembley where they defeated Northampton Town 3–0 in the League Two play-off final to secure a place in League One for 2013–14.
On 24 January 2015, Bradford City caused an upset by beating Premiership leaders Chelsea 4–2 away in the FA Cup. The victory sent Bradford through to the fifth round for the first time in eighteen years. They beat Sunderland, another Premier League club, 2–0 at home in the next round on 15 February 2015. In the quarter-finals, the Bantams faced Reading at home, in a game that ended in a goalless draw. The replay was played on 16 March 2015 at the Madejski Stadium, where Reading won 3–0.
The club was relegated to League Two at the end of the 2018–19 season.
In December 2021, the club was approached by American investors known as WAGMI United (who use cryptocurrency and NFTs) about a possible buyout. The offer was rejected.
On 24 February 2022, Mark Hughes was appointed manager of the club on a contract until the summer of 2024. He was sacked on 4 October 2023, with player Kevin McDonald becoming player-caretaker manager. Later that month, assistant manager Mark Trueman replaced McDonald as caretaker manager. On 6 November, Graham Alexander was signed as manager until the end of the 2026–27 season, with Chris Lucketti as assistant manager.
Bradford City were promoted to League One on the last day of the 2024–25 EFL season after their victory over Fleetwood Town which secured the third-place promotion place.
== Colours and club crest ==
Bradford City is the only professional football club in England to wear claret and amber. The club colours were inherited from Manningham FC, when the club converted to football upon Bradford City's foundation in 1903. However, whereas Manningham played in hoops, the new football club adopted claret and amber stripes. Manningham RFC adopted the colours in 1884 before the move to Valley Parade in 1886. Having originally worn black shirts with white shorts, the club's first game in claret and amber was against Hull on 20 September 1884, at Carlisle Road.
The reason Manningham chose claret and amber is not documented but the colours were the same as those of The Prince of Wales's Own West Yorkshire Regiment, which was based at Belle Vue Barracks on nearby Manningham Lane. Both Manningham, from 1886, and Bradford City, from 1903 to 1908, used the barracks as changing and club rooms.
Bradford City has worn claret and amber, with either white or black, since it was founded. Since the fire in 1985, the club has used black on the kit as a memorial to the 56 supporters who died. The club's away shirt has traditionally been white and to a lesser extent also blue, but there has been a profusion of other colours and designs particularly in more recent years. The away kit for the 2008–09 season was all white. For the 2009–10 season, the away kit was all black with a thin claret and amber stripe down the centre-left.
City scarves have also sold in large numbers in recent years to fans of Harry Potter, because the colours are the same as Harry's house scarf at Hogwarts School.
A number of other clubs across the world wear claret and amber. They include Scottish club Motherwell, who originally wore blue and white until they wore claret and amber for the first time on 23 August 1913, against Celtic. It is erroneously believed that Motherwell chose the claret and amber colours because they were the racing colours of Lord Hamilton; it is more likely that Motherwell were influenced by Bradford City's English FA cup win in 1911.
The club's crest combines a series of logos from over the years. In 1974, City adopted a contemporary style crest incorporating the club's initials, with a B-C logo. At the time, the new logo maintained the previous nickname of the Paraders. By December 1981, the club relaunched the Bantams as the official identity with a bantam on the new crest. The crest maintains the club colours and also includes the words The Bantams.
== Nickname ==
Bradford City have had a number of nicknames during their history. In their early years, they were referred to as the "Robins" or "Wasps", taking over the nickname of Manningham FC, as a result of Manningham's claret and amber hoops. Other nicknames have been the "Citizens" or "Paraders", but the club is better known as the "Bantams".
The "Bantams" nickname is thought to have become popular during the First World War, when the club's stadium Valley Parade was used as a recruiting station for the West Yorkshire Regiment which was raising Pals Battalions, with some of them called "Bantams Battalions" due to the short height of many of the recruits being, between 5 ft (1.5m) tall and no more than 5 ft 3in (1.6m).The Bradford Pals had Bantam soldiers within its ranks.
== Stadium ==
Valley Parade was the site of a quarry on the hillside below Manningham, Bradford, owned by Midland Railway Company, in 1886, when Manningham RFC bought one-third of the land and leased the remainder, because they had been forced to find a new home. They spent £1,400 erecting a ground with a capacity of 20,000, club facilities and levelling the land. When Bradford City were formed in 1903, they took over the ground at Valley Parade, which was also at this time the headquarters of The 2nd West Riding Brigade Royal Field Artillery (Territorial Force), playing their first home game on 5 September 1903 against Gainsborough Trinity, drawing a crowd of 11,000. Five years later, the club won promotion to the First Division, and so commissioned football architect Archibald Leitch to redevelop the ground. The capacity was increased to 40,000 by December 1908 with a 5,300-seater main stand, a terraced paddock in front, a Spion Kop, and an 8,000-capacity Midland Road stand. Its first game against Bristol City on Christmas Day attracted a crowd of 36,000. On 11 March 1911, Valley Parade attracted its highest attendance of 39,146, for an FA Cup game between Bradford City and Burnley during Bradford's FA Cup winning run.
Until 1952, by which time Bradford City had bought the remaining two-thirds of the ground to own it outright, the ground remained virtually unchanged. However, twice during the next decade, the club's Midland Road stand had to be demolished. Club officials first closed part of the stand in 1952, as a result of the Burnden Park disaster six years earlier. Its frame was sold to Berwick Rangers and a replacement stand built in 1954. Six years later, the new stand was itself demolished, and Valley Parade remained a three-sided ground until 1966, when the pitch was moved, and a new stand built.
On 11 May 1985, Valley Parade was the scene of a fatal fire, during which 56 supporters were killed and at least 265 were injured. The game was the final match of the 1984–85 season, before which City were presented with the Third Division championship trophy. The fire destroyed the wooden main stand in just nine minutes. The club played its home games at Odsal Stadium, a rugby league ground in Bradford, Elland Road, Leeds, and Leeds Road, the former home of Huddersfield Town, until December 1986, while Valley Parade was redeveloped. The club spent £2.6 million building a new main stand and improving the Kop and reopened the new ground on 14 December 1986 for an exhibition match against an England international XI.
In 1991, the Bradford end of the ground was the next to be redeveloped and was converted into a two-tier stand with a scoreboard. In 1996, following City's promotion to Division One, club chairman Geoffrey Richmond announced the construction of a 4,500 seater stand on the Midland Road side. Ahead of promotion to the Premiership in 1999, Richmond spent another £6.5 million to convert the Kop into a two-tier 7,500-seat capacity stand. A corner stand between the Kop and main stand was opened in December 2000, taking the capacity to 20,000 for the first time since 1970. The following summer, the main stand was also converted into a two-tier stand, taking the capacity to 24,840. Further projects were planned until the club went into administration in May 2002 so none have taken place.
In August 2003, Valley Parade was sold to Gibb's pension fund for £5 million, with the club's offices, the shop and car park sold to London-based Development Securities for £2.5 million, but these (club offices, shop and car park) were bought back by the club's joint chairmen in the summer of 2011. The club's annual rent and maintenance costs to Gibb's pension fund is £1.2m, and so as of February 2009, the club is considering a return to Odsal. The club and Bradford Bulls would share the new £50m complex, which would also feature cricket, cycling and athletics facilities. Valley Parade has had several other names under sponsorship naming deals. In July 2016 it became the Northern Commercials Stadium, and in July 2019 it became the Utilita Energy Stadium. This partnership came to an end in July 2022. The University of Bradford subsequently became title sponsor of Valley Parade.
== Supporters ==
The club spearheaded an initiative in 2007 to slash the price of watching professional football for the 2007–08 season. As a result, season tickets to watch Bradford City were the cheapest in England at £138, the equivalent of £6 per match. When the offer finished, the club confirmed the amount of season tickets sold was 12,019. The scheme enabled the club to top the average league attendances for Football League Two during the 2007–08 season, attracting more than three times more than any other club. The club won the Perform Best Fan Marketing campaign category in The Football League Awards for the scheme and earned them an invitation to the Houses of Parliament. The club aimed to attract 20,000 fans for the 2008–09 by offering a free season ticket to anyone buying a season ticket as long as 9,000 adults sign up, but they fell 704 short of the target.
For the 2015–16 season, the club announced its latest season ticket scheme aimed at continuing to make football affordable for fans. Season ticket prices were set at £149 for adults, senior citizens and students, while admission for under-11s was free when purchased with an adult ticket. An initial campaign target of 15,000 was set. On 6 July, the club announced a record-breaking 18,000 tickets had been sold following a successful campaign. The campaign was repeated for the 2016–17 season, where the club sold in excess of 17,000 tickets.
Bradford City announced 'Own The Moment' 2022–23 season ticket sales of 14,190 in September 2022. The figure was a League Two record for the club. It surpassed the previous fourth-tier season-ticket sales record of 13,614 in 2019–20.
On 4 March 2023, Bradford City set a new attendance record for Football League Two at a 2–0 victory against Colchester United, with an attendance of 20,383, including 345 away fans. The Bantams then broke this record again in a home fixture on 8 May 2023 against Leyton Orient, with 22,576 supporters in attendance, including 1,902 Leyton Orient fans.
== Rivalry ==
Bradford City have participated in the Bradford derby with city rivals Bradford Park Avenue. The West Yorkshire derby is held between City and local rivals Leeds United and Huddersfield Town. A "friendly" rivalry also existed with now-defunct club Halifax Town.
According to a survey conducted in August 2019, Bradford City fans also see Burnley, Barnsley and Oldham Athletic as rivals.
== European football ==
Bradford City's only participation in European football to date came in the 2000 UEFA Intertoto Cup.
== Players ==
=== Current squad ===
As of 2 February 2026
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
==== Out on loan ====
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
=== Player of the Year ===
== Staff ==
=== Current staff ===
As of 12 September 2025
=== Former managers ===
== Honours and records ==
League
Second Division / First Division (level 2)
Champions: 1907–08
Runners-up: 1998–99
Third Division North / Third Division / Second Division (level 3)
Champions: 1928–29, 1984–85
Play-off winners: 1996
Fourth Division / League Two (level 4)
Runners-up: 1981–82
Promoted: 1968–69, 1976–77, 2024–25
Play-off winners: 2013
Cup
FA Cup
Winners: 1910–11
Football League Cup
Runners-up: 2012–13
Third Division North Challenge Cup
Winners: 1938–39
West Riding County FA Challenge Cup
Winners: 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909
=== Records ===
Record league victory: 11–1 v Rotherham United, Third Division (North), 25 August 1928
Record FA Cup victory: 11–3 v Walker Celtic, first round replay, 1 December 1937
Record League Cup victory: 7–2 v Darlington, Second Round Second Leg, 25 September 2000
Record league defeat: 0–8 v Manchester City, Second Division, 7 May 1927 / 1–9 v Colchester United, Fourth Division, 30 December 1961
Record FA Cup defeat: 1–6 v Newcastle United, third round, 7 March 1963 / 0–5 v Burnley, fifth round replay, 3 February 1960 / 0–5 v Tottenham Hotspur, third round, 7 January 1970
Record home attendance: 39,146 v Burnley, FA Cup fourth round, 11 March 1911
Record gate receipts: £300,000 v Arsenal, Football League Cup quarter-final, 11 December 2012
Longest unbeaten run : 21 1968 to 1969
Longest run of wins: 10 1983 to 1984
Most appearances : 574 Ces Podd
Most league appearances: 502 – Ces Podd
Most goals scored : 143 – Bobby Campbell
Most league goals: 121 – Bobby Campbell
Most goals in a season: 36 – David Layne, 1961–62
Most goals scored in a match: 7 – Albert Whitehurst v Tranmere Rovers, Third Division (North), 6 March 1929
Highest transfer fee paid: £2.5 million – David Hopkin, from Leeds United, July 2000
Highest transfer fee received: £2 million – Des Hamilton, to Newcastle United, March 1997 / Andy O'Brien, to Newcastle United, March 2001
Most team league goals in a season: 128 – Third Division (North), 1928–29
Most points (three points for a win): 94 – Third Division, 1984–85
Most points (two points for a win): 63 – Third Division (North), 1928–29
All records from Bradford City F.C. official website.
== Sponsors ==
=== Kit and main sponsors ===
Tables of kit suppliers and shirt sponsors appear below:
=== Stadium ===
1995–1999 The Pulse
2005–2007 Bradford & Bingley
2007 Intersonic
2007–2016 Coral Windows
2016–2019 Northern Commercials
2019–2022 Utilita Energy
2022–present University of Bradford |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996%E2%80%9397_AC_Milan_season | 1996–97 AC Milan season | During the 1996–97 season Milan Associazione Calcio competed in Serie A, Coppa Italia, UEFA Champions League and Supercoppa.
== Summary ==
Milan Associazione Calcio fell into pieces once Fabio Capello left his job to join Real Madrid. The new organisation with Óscar Tabárez as technical director completely miscued its signings, with neither Jesper Blomqvist, Edgar Davids, Christophe Dugarry or Michael Reiziger being successful. After a Supercoppa Italiana defeat against Fiorentina at home at the San Siro, a 2–3 loss at Piacenza for the league cost the Uruguayan his position. Tabarez was replaced by former championship winning coach Arrigo Sacchi, the change did not happen and days later due to a 2–1 defeat to Rosenborg at home in the Champions League the team was not qualified to Quarterfinals. The Rossoneri eventually finished 11th managed to save the reigning champions' contract in Serie A by just six points.
The miserable season also prompted captain Franco Baresi to end his active career, with Milan retiring the #6 shirt in his honour.
== Squad ==
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
=== Transfers ===
==== Winter ====
=== Kits ===
== Results ==
=== Pre-season and friendlies ===
==== Friendlies ====
==== Costantino Rozzi Memorial ====
==== Trofeo de Navarra ====
==== Opel Master Cup ====
==== Amsterdam Arena Cup ====
==== Luigi Berlusconi Trophy ====
== Competitions ==
=== Supercoppa ===
=== Serie A ===
==== League table ====
==== Results summary ====
==== Results by round ====
==== Matches ====
=== Coppa Italia ===
==== Second Round ====
==== Round of 16 ====
==== Quarterfinals ====
=== UEFA Champions League ===
==== Group stage ====
===== Matches =====
== Statistics ==
=== Appearances and goals ===
=== Clean sheets ===
=== Disciplinary record ===
Players in italics left the team during the season. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower | Dwight D. Eisenhower | Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. Earlier, during World War II, he became a General of the Army, and was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. Eisenhower planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of the War: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944.
Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, and raised in Abilene, Kansas. His family had a strong religious background, and his mother became a Jehovah's Witness. Eisenhower, however, belonged to no organized church until 1952. He graduated from West Point in 1915 and later married Mamie Doud, with whom he had two sons. During World War I, he was denied a request to serve in Europe and instead commanded a unit that trained tank crews. Between the wars he served in staff positions in the US and the Philippines, reaching the rank of brigadier general shortly before the entry of the US into World War II in 1941. After further promotion Eisenhower oversaw the Allied invasions of North Africa and Sicily before supervising the invasions of France and Germany. After the war ended in Europe, he served as military governor of the American-occupied zone of Germany (1945), Army Chief of Staff (1945–1948), president of Columbia University (1948–1953), and as the first supreme commander of NATO (1951–1952).
In 1952, Eisenhower entered the presidential race as a Republican to block the extremist policies of Senator Robert A. Taft, who opposed NATO and sought to undo the New Deal. Eisenhower won that year's election and the 1956 election in landslides, both times defeating Adlai Stevenson II. Eisenhower's main goals in office were to contain the spread of communism and reduce federal deficits. In 1953, he considered using nuclear weapons to end the Korean War and may have threatened China with nuclear attack if an armistice was not reached quickly. China did agree and an armistice resulted, which remains in effect. His New Look policy of nuclear deterrence prioritized "inexpensive" nuclear weapons while reducing funding for expensive Army divisions. He continued Harry S. Truman's policy of recognizing Taiwan as the legitimate government of China, and he won congressional approval of the Formosa Resolution. His administration provided aid to help the French try to fight Vietnamese Communists in the First Indochina War. After the French left, he gave strong financial support to the new state of South Vietnam.
He supported regime-changing military coups in Iran and Guatemala orchestrated by his own administration. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, he condemned the Israeli, British, and French invasion of Egypt, and he forced them to withdraw. He also condemned the Soviet invasion during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but took no action. He deployed 15,000 soldiers during the 1958 Lebanon crisis. Near the end of his term, a summit meeting with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was cancelled when a US spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Eisenhower approved the Bay of Pigs Invasion, which was left to John F. Kennedy to carry out.
Eisenhower continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. He covertly opposed Joseph McCarthy and contributed to the end of McCarthyism by openly invoking executive privilege. He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders which integrated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. His administration undertook the development and construction of the Interstate Highway System, which remains the largest construction of roadways in American history. In 1957, following the Soviet launch of Sputnik, Eisenhower led the American response which included the creation of NASA and the establishment of a stronger, science-based education via the National Defense Education Act. The Soviet Union began to reinforce their own space program, escalating the Space Race. His two terms saw unprecedented economic prosperity except for a minor recession in 1958. In his farewell address, he expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers, which he dubbed "the military–industrial complex". Historical evaluations of his presidency place him among the upper tier of US presidents.
== Family background ==
The Eisenhauer (German for 'iron hewer' or 'iron miner') family migrated from the German village of Karlsbrunn to the Province of Pennsylvania in 1741. Accounts vary as to how and when the German name Eisenhauer was anglicized.
David Jacob Eisenhower, Eisenhower's father, was a college-educated engineer, despite his own father's urging to stay on the family farm. Eisenhower's mother, Ida Elizabeth (Stover) Eisenhower, of predominantly German Protestant ancestry, moved to Kansas from Virginia. She married David on September 23, 1885, in Lecompton, Kansas, on the campus of their alma mater, Lane University.
David owned a general store in Hope, Kansas, but the business failed due to economic conditions and the family became impoverished. The Eisenhowers lived in Texas from 1889 until 1892, and later returned to Kansas, with $24 (equivalent to $860 in 2025) to their name. David worked as a railroad mechanic and then at a creamery. By 1898, the parents made a decent living and provided a suitable home for their large family.
== Early life and education ==
Eisenhower was born David Dwight Eisenhower in Denison, Texas, on October 14, 1890, the third of seven sons born to Ida and David. His mother soon reversed his two forenames after his birth to avoid the confusion of having two Davids in the family. He was named Dwight after the evangelist Dwight L. Moody. All of the boys were nicknamed "Ike", such as "Big Ike" (Edgar) and "Little Ike" (Dwight); the nickname was intended as an abbreviation of their last name. By World War II, only Dwight was still called "Ike".
In 1892, the family moved to Abilene, Kansas, which Eisenhower considered his hometown. As a child, he was involved in an accident that cost his younger brother Earl an eye, for which he was remorseful for the remainder of his life. Eisenhower developed a keen and enduring interest in exploring the outdoors. He learned about hunting and fishing, cooking, and card playing from a man named Bob Davis who camped on the Smoky Hill River. While his mother was against war, it was her collection of history books that first sparked Eisenhower's interest in military history; he became a voracious reader on the subject. Other favorite subjects early in his education were arithmetic and spelling.
Eisenhower's parents set aside specific times at breakfast and at dinner for daily family Bible reading. Chores were regularly assigned and rotated among all the children, and misbehavior was met with unequivocal discipline, usually from David. His mother, previously a member (with David) of the River Brethren (Brethren in Christ Church) sect of the Mennonites, joined the International Bible Students Association, later known as Jehovah's Witnesses. The Eisenhower home served as the local meeting hall from 1896 to 1915, though Dwight never joined. His later decision to attend West Point saddened his mother, who felt that warfare was "rather wicked", but she did not overrule his decision. Speaking of himself in 1948, Eisenhower said he was "one of the most deeply religious men I know" though unattached to any "sect or organization". He was baptized in the Presbyterian Church in 1953.
Eisenhower attended Abilene High School and graduated in 1909. As a freshman, he injured his knee and developed a leg infection that extended into his groin, which his doctor diagnosed as life-threatening. The doctor insisted that the leg be amputated but Dwight refused to allow it, and surprisingly recovered, though he had to repeat his freshman year. He and brother Edgar both wanted to attend college, though they lacked the funds. They made a pact to take alternate years at college while the other worked to earn the tuitions.
Edgar took the first turn at school, and Dwight was employed as a night supervisor at the Belle Springs Creamery. When Edgar asked for a second year, Dwight consented. At that time a friend, Edward "Swede" Hazlett, was applying to the Naval Academy and urged Dwight to apply, since no tuition was required. Eisenhower requested consideration for either Annapolis or West Point with his Senator, Joseph L. Bristow. Though Eisenhower was among the winners of the entrance-exam competition, he was beyond the age limit for the Naval Academy. He accepted an appointment to West Point in 1911.
At West Point, Eisenhower relished the emphasis on traditions and on sports, but was less enthusiastic about the hazing, though he willingly accepted it as a plebe. He was also a regular violator of the more detailed regulations and finished school with a less than stellar discipline rating. Academically, Eisenhower's best subject by far was English. Otherwise, his performance was average, though he thoroughly enjoyed the typical emphasis of engineering on science and mathematics.
In athletics, Eisenhower later said that "not making the baseball team at West Point was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, maybe my greatest". He made the varsity football team and was a starter at halfback in 1912, when he tried to tackle the legendary Jim Thorpe of the Carlisle Indians. Eisenhower suffered a torn knee while being tackled in the next game, which was the last he played; he reinjured his knee on horseback and in the boxing ring, so he turned to fencing and gymnastics.
Eisenhower later served as junior varsity football coach and cheerleader, which caught the attention of General Frederick Funston. He graduated from West Point in the middle of the class of 1915, which became known as "the class the stars fell on", because 59 members eventually became general officers. After graduation in 1915, Second Lieutenant Eisenhower requested an assignment in the Philippines, which was denied; because of the ongoing Mexican Revolution, he was posted to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, under the command of General Funston. In 1916, while stationed at Fort Sam Houston, Funston convinced him to become the football coach for Peacock Military Academy; he later became the coach at St. Louis College, now St. Mary's University, and was an honorary member of the Sigma Beta Chi fraternity there.
== Personal life ==
While Eisenhower was stationed in Texas, he met Mamie Doud of Boone, Iowa. They were immediately taken with each other. He proposed to her on Valentine's Day in 1916. A November wedding date in Denver, Colorado, was moved up to July 1 due to the impending American entry into World War I; Funston approved 10 days of leave for their wedding. The Eisenhowers moved many times during their first 35 years of marriage.
The Eisenhowers had two sons. In late 1917 while he was in charge of training at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia, his wife Mamie had their first son, Doud Dwight "Icky" Eisenhower, who died of scarlet fever at the age of three. Eisenhower was mostly reluctant to discuss his death. Their second son, John Eisenhower, was born in 1922 in Denver.
Eisenhower was a golf enthusiast later in life, and he joined the Augusta National Golf Club in 1948. He played golf frequently during and after his presidency and was unreserved in his passion for the game, to the point of golfing during winter; he ordered his golf balls painted black so he could see them better against snow. He had a basic golf facility installed at Camp David, and he became close friends with the Augusta National Chairman Clifford Roberts, inviting Roberts to stay at the White House on numerous occasions. Roberts, an investment broker, also handled the Eisenhower family's investments.
He began oil painting while at Columbia University, after watching Thomas E. Stephens paint Mamie's portrait. Eisenhower painted about 260 oils during the last 20 years of his life. The images were mostly landscapes but also portraits of subjects such as Mamie, their grandchildren, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. Wendy Beckett stated that Eisenhower's paintings, "simple and earnest", caused her to "wonder at the hidden depths of this reticent president". A conservative in both art and politics, Eisenhower in a 1962 speech denounced modern art as "a piece of canvas that looks like a broken-down Tin Lizzie, loaded with paint, has been driven over it".
Angels in the Outfield was Eisenhower's favorite movie. His favorite reading material for relaxation were the Western novels of Zane Grey. With his excellent memory and ability to focus, Eisenhower was skilled at cards. He learned poker, which he called his "favorite indoor sport", in Abilene. Eisenhower recorded West Point classmates' poker losses for payment after graduation and later stopped playing because his opponents resented having to pay him. A friend reported that after learning to play contract bridge at West Point, Eisenhower played the game six nights a week for five months. Eisenhower continued to play bridge throughout his military career. While stationed in the Philippines, he played regularly with President Manuel Quezon, earning him the nickname the "Bridge Wizard of Manila". An unwritten qualification for an officer's appointment to Eisenhower's staff during World War II was the ability to play bridge. He played even during the stressful weeks leading up to the D-Day landings. His favorite partner was General Alfred Gruenther, considered the best player in the US Army; he appointed Gruenther his second-in-command at NATO partly because of his skill at bridge. Saturday night bridge games at the White House were a feature of his presidency. He was a strong player, though not an expert by modern standards. The great bridge player and popularizer Ely Culbertson described his game as classic and sound with "flashes of brilliance" and said that "you can always judge a man's character by the way he plays cards. Eisenhower is a calm and collected player and never whines at his losses. He is brilliant in victory but never commits the bridge player's worst crime of gloating when he wins." Bridge expert Oswald Jacoby frequently participated in the White House games and said, "The President plays better bridge than golf. He tries to break 90 at golf. At bridge, you would say he plays in the 70s."
== World War I (1914–1918) ==
Eisenhower served initially in logistics and then the infantry at various camps in Texas and Georgia until 1918. When the US entered World War I, he immediately requested an overseas assignment but was denied and assigned to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. In February 1918, he was transferred to Camp Meade in Maryland with the 65th Engineers. His unit was later ordered to France, but, to his chagrin, he received orders for the new tank corps, where he was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel in the National Army. He commanded a unit that trained tank crews at Camp Colt – his first command. Though Eisenhower and his tank crews never saw combat, he displayed excellent organizational skills as well as an ability to accurately assess junior officers' strengths and make optimal placements of personnel.
His spirits were raised when the unit under his command received orders overseas to France. This time his wishes were thwarted when the armistice was signed a week before his departure date. Completely missing out on the warfront left him depressed and bitter for a time, despite receiving the Distinguished Service Medal for his work at home. In World War II, rivals who had combat service in the Great War (led by Gen. Bernard Montgomery) sought to denigrate Eisenhower for his previous lack of combat duty, despite his stateside experience establishing a camp for thousands of troops and developing a full combat training schedule.
== Between the Wars (1918–1939) ==
=== In service of generals ===
After the war, Eisenhower reverted to his regular rank of captain and a few days later was promoted to major, a rank he held for 16 years. The major was assigned in 1919 to a transcontinental Army convoy to test vehicles and dramatize the need for improved roads. Indeed, the convoy averaged only 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h) from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco; later the improvement of highways became a signature issue for Eisenhower as president.
He assumed duties again at Camp Meade, Maryland, commanding a battalion of tanks, where he remained until 1922. His schooling continued, focused on the nature of the next war and the role of the tank. His new expertise in tank warfare was strengthened by a close collaboration with George S. Patton, Sereno E. Brett, and other senior tank leaders. Their leading-edge ideas of speed-oriented offensive tank warfare were strongly discouraged by superiors, who considered the new approach too radical and preferred to continue using tanks in a strictly supportive role for the infantry. Eisenhower was even threatened with court-martial for continued publication of these proposed methods of tank deployment, and he relented.
From 1920, Eisenhower served under a succession of talented generals – Fox Conner, John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall. He first became executive officer to General Conner in the Panama Canal Zone, where, joined by Mamie, he served until 1924. Under Conner's tutelage, he studied military history and theory (including Carl von Clausewitz's On War), and later cited Conner's enormous influence on his military thinking, saying in 1962 that "Fox Conner was the ablest man I ever knew." Conner's comment on Eisenhower was, "[He] is one of the most capable, efficient and loyal officers I have ever met." On Conner's recommendation, in 1925–1926 he attended the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he graduated first in a class of 245 officers.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Eisenhower's career stalled somewhat, as military priorities diminished; many of his friends resigned for high-paying business jobs. He was assigned to the American Battle Monuments Commission directed by General Pershing, and with the help of his brother Milton Eisenhower, then a journalist at the Agriculture Department, he produced a guide to American battlefields in Europe. He then was assigned to the Army War College and graduated in 1928. After a one-year assignment in France, Eisenhower served as executive officer to General George V. Moseley, Assistant Secretary of War, from 1929 to February 1933. Major Eisenhower graduated from the Army Industrial College in 1933 and later served on the faculty (it was later expanded to become the Industrial College of the Armed Services and is now known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy).
His primary duty was planning for the next war, which proved most difficult in the midst of the Great Depression. He then was posted as chief military aide to General Douglas MacArthur, Army Chief of Staff. In 1932, he participated in the clearing of the Bonus March encampment in Washington, D.C. Although he was against the actions taken against the veterans and strongly advised MacArthur against taking a public role in it, he later wrote the Army's official incident report, endorsing MacArthur's conduct.
=== Philippine tenure (1935–1939) ===
In 1935, Eisenhower accompanied MacArthur to the Philippines, where he served as assistant military adviser to the Philippine government in developing their army. MacArthur allowed Eisenhower to handpick an officer whom he thought would contribute to the mission. Hence he chose James Ord, a classmate of his at West Point. Having been brought up in Mexico, which inculcated into him the Spanish culture which influenced both Mexico and the Philippines, Ord was deemed the right pick for the job. Eisenhower had strong philosophical disagreements with MacArthur regarding the role of the Philippine Army and the leadership qualities that an American army officer should exhibit and develop in his subordinates. The antipathy between Eisenhower and MacArthur lasted the rest of their lives.
Historians have concluded that this assignment provided valuable preparation for handling the challenging personalities of Winston Churchill, George S. Patton, George Marshall, and Bernard Montgomery during World War II. Eisenhower later emphasized that too much had been made of the disagreements with MacArthur and that a positive relationship endured. While in Manila, Mamie suffered a life-threatening stomach ailment but recovered fully. Eisenhower was promoted to the rank of permanent lieutenant colonel in 1936. He also learned to fly with the Philippine Army Air Corps at the Zablan Airfield in Camp Murphy under Capt. Jesus Villamor, making a solo flight over the Philippines in 1937, and obtained his private pilot's license in 1939 at Fort Lewis. Also around this time, he was offered a post by the Philippine Commonwealth Government, namely by then Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon on recommendations by MacArthur, to become the chief of police of a new capital being planned, now named Quezon City, but he declined the offer.
== World War II (1939–1945) ==
Eisenhower returned to the United States in December 1939 and was assigned as commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis, Washington, later becoming the regimental executive officer. In March 1941 he was promoted to colonel and assigned as chief of staff of the newly activated IX Corps under Major General Kenyon Joyce. In June 1941, he was appointed chief of staff to General Walter Krueger, Commander of the Third Army, at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. After successfully participating in the Louisiana Maneuvers, he was promoted to brigadier general on October 3, 1941.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Eisenhower was assigned to the General Staff in Washington, where he served until June 1942 with responsibility for creating the major war plans to defeat Japan and Germany. He was appointed Deputy Chief in charge of Pacific Defenses under the Chief of War Plans Division (WPD), General Leonard T. Gerow, and then succeeded Gerow as Chief of the War Plans Division. Next, he was appointed Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of the new Operations Division (which replaced WPD) under Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, who spotted talent and promoted accordingly.
At the end of May 1942, Eisenhower accompanied Lt. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces, to London to assess the effectiveness of the theater commander in England, Maj. Gen. James E. Chaney. He returned to Washington on June 3 with a pessimistic assessment, stating he had an "uneasy feeling" about Chaney and his staff. On June 23, 1942, he returned to London as Commanding General, European Theater of Operations (ETOUSA), based in London and with a house in Coombe, Kingston upon Thames, and took over command of ETOUSA from Chaney. He was promoted to lieutenant general on July 7.
=== Operations Torch and Avalanche ===
In November 1942, Eisenhower was also appointed Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force of the North African Theater of Operations (NATOUSA) through the new operational Headquarters Allied (Expeditionary) Force Headquarters (A(E)FHQ). The word "expeditionary" was dropped soon after his appointment for security reasons. The campaign in North Africa was designated Operation Torch and was planned in the underground headquarters within the Rock of Gibraltar. Eisenhower was the first non-British person to command Gibraltar in 200 years.
French cooperation was deemed necessary to the campaign and Eisenhower encountered a "preposterous situation" with the multiple rival factions in France. His primary objective was to move forces successfully into Tunisia and intending to facilitate that objective, he gave his support to François Darlan as High Commissioner in North Africa, despite Darlan's previous high offices in Vichy France and his continued role as commander-in-chief of the French armed forces. The Allied leaders were "thunderstruck" by this from a political standpoint, though none had offered Eisenhower guidance with the problem in planning the operation. Eisenhower was severely criticized for the move. Darlan was assassinated on December 24 by Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, a French antifascist monarchist. Eisenhower later appointed as High Commissioner General Henri Giraud, who had been installed by the Allies as Darlan's commander-in-chief.
Operation Torch also served as a valuable training ground for Eisenhower's combat command skills; during the initial phase of Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel's move into the Kasserine Pass, Eisenhower created some confusion in the ranks by interference with the execution of battle plans by his subordinates. He also was initially indecisive in his removal of Lloyd Fredendall, commanding II Corps. He became more adroit in such matters in later campaigns. In February 1943, his authority was extended as commander of Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) across the Mediterranean basin to include the British Eighth Army, commanded by General Sir Bernard Montgomery. The Eighth Army had advanced across the Western Desert from the east and was ready for the start of the Tunisia Campaign.
After the capitulation of Axis forces in North Africa, Eisenhower oversaw the invasion of Sicily. Once Mussolini, the Italian leader, had fallen in Italy, the Allies switched their attention to the mainland with Operation Avalanche. But while Eisenhower argued with President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill, who both insisted on unconditional surrender in exchange for helping the Italians, the Germans pursued an aggressive buildup of forces in the country. The Germans made the already tough battle more difficult by adding 19 divisions and initially outnumbering the Allied forces 2 to 1.
=== Supreme Allied commander and Operation Overlord ===
In December 1943, President Roosevelt decided that Eisenhower – not Marshall – would be Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. The following month, he resumed command of ETOUSA and the following month was officially designated as the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), serving in a dual role until the end of hostilities in Europe in May 1945. He was charged in these positions with planning and carrying out the Allied assault on the coast of Normandy in June 1944 under the code name Operation Overlord, the liberation of Western Europe and the invasion of Germany.
Eisenhower, as well as the officers and troops under him, had learned valuable lessons in their previous operations, and their skills had all strengthened in preparation for the next most difficult campaign against the Germans—a beach landing assault. His first struggles, however, were with Allied leaders and officers on matters vital to the success of the Normandy invasion; he argued with Roosevelt over an essential agreement with De Gaulle to use French resistance forces in covert operations against the Germans in advance of Operation Overlord. Admiral Ernest J. King fought with Eisenhower over King's refusal to provide additional landing craft from the Pacific. Eisenhower also insisted that the British give him exclusive command over all strategic air forces to facilitate Overlord, to the point of threatening to resign unless Churchill relented, which he did. Eisenhower then designed a bombing plan in France in advance of Overlord and argued with Churchill over the latter's concern with civilian casualties; de Gaulle interjected that the casualties were justified, and Eisenhower prevailed. He also had to skillfully manage to retain the services of the often unruly George S. Patton, by severely reprimanding him when Patton earlier had slapped a subordinate, and then when Patton gave a speech in which he made improper comments about postwar policy.
The D-Day Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, were costly but successful. Two months later (August 15), the invasion of Southern France took place, and control of forces in the southern invasion passed from the AFHQ to the SHAEF. Many thought that victory in Europe would come by summer's end, but the Germans did not capitulate for almost a year. From then until the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945, Eisenhower, through SHAEF, commanded all Allied forces, and through his command of ETOUSA had administrative command of all US forces on the Western Front north of the Alps. He was ever mindful of the inevitable loss of life and suffering that would be experienced by the troops under his command and their families. This prompted him to make a point of visiting every division involved in the invasion. Eisenhower's sense of responsibility was underscored by his draft of a statement to be issued if the invasion failed. It has been called one of the great speeches of history:
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.
=== Liberation of France and victory in Europe ===
Every ground commander seeks the battle of annihilation; so far as conditions permit, he tries to duplicate in modern war the classic example of Cannae.
Once the coastal assault had succeeded, Eisenhower insisted on retaining personal control over the land battle strategy and was immersed in the command and supply of multiple assaults through France on Germany. Field Marshal Montgomery insisted priority be given to his 21st Army Group's attack being made in the north, while Generals Bradley (12th US Army Group) and Devers (Sixth US Army Group) insisted they be given priority in the center and south of the front (respectively). Eisenhower worked tirelessly to address the demands of the rival commanders to optimize Allied forces, often by giving them tactical latitude; many historians conclude this delayed the Allied victory in Europe. However, due to Eisenhower's persistence, the pivotal supply port at Antwerp was successfully, albeit belatedly, opened in late 1944.
In recognition of his senior position in the Allied command, on December 20, 1944, he was promoted to General of the Army, equivalent to the rank of Field Marshal in most European armies. In this and the previous high commands he held, Eisenhower showed his great talents for leadership and diplomacy. Although he had never seen action himself, he won the respect of front-line commanders. He interacted adeptly with allies such as Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and General Charles de Gaulle. He had serious disagreements with Churchill and Montgomery over questions of strategy, but these rarely upset his relationships with them. He dealt with Soviet Marshal Zhukov, his Russian counterpart, and they became good friends.
In December 1944, the Germans launched a surprise counteroffensive, the Battle of the Bulge, which the Allies successfully repelled in early 1945 after Eisenhower repositioned his armies and improved weather allowed the Army Air Force to engage. German defenses continued to deteriorate on both the Eastern Front with the Red Army and the Western Front with the Western Allies. The British wanted to capture Berlin, but Eisenhower decided it would be a military mistake for him to attack Berlin and said orders to that effect would have to be explicit. The British backed down but then wanted Eisenhower to move into Czechoslovakia for political reasons. Washington refused to support Churchill's plan to use Eisenhower's army for political maneuvers against Moscow. The actual division of Germany followed the lines that Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had previously agreed upon. The Soviet Red Army captured Berlin in a very bloody large-scale battle, and the Germans finally surrendered on May 7, 1945.
Throughout 1945, the allied armies liberated numerous Nazi concentration camps throughout Europe. As the allies learned the full extent of the Holocaust, Eisenhower anticipated that, in the future, attempts to recharacterize Nazi crimes as propaganda (Holocaust denial) would be made, and took steps against it by demanding extensive photo and film documentation of Nazi extermination camps.
== After World War II (1945–1953) ==
=== Military Governor of the American-occupied zone of Germany ===
Following the German unconditional surrender, Eisenhower was appointed military governor of the American-occupied zone of Germany, located primarily in Southern Germany, and headquartered in Frankfurt am Main. Upon discovery of the Nazi concentration camps, he ordered camera crews to document evidence for use in the Nuremberg Trials. He reclassified German prisoners of war (POWs) in US custody as Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEFs), who were no longer subject to the Geneva Convention. Eisenhower followed the orders laid down by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in directive JCS 1067 but softened them by bringing in 400,000 tons of food for civilians and allowing more fraternization. In response to the devastation in Germany, including food shortages and an influx of refugees, he arranged distribution of American food and medical equipment. His actions reflected the new American attitudes of the German people as Nazi victims not villains, while aggressively purging the ex-Nazis.
=== Army Chief of Staff ===
In November 1945, Eisenhower returned to Washington to replace Marshall as Chief of Staff of the Army, making him the first Chief of Staff in the history of the post who did not serve in the Philippine–American War. His main role was the rapid demobilization of millions of soldiers, which was delayed by lack of shipping. Eisenhower was convinced in 1946 that the Soviet Union did not want war and that friendly relations could be maintained; he strongly supported the new United Nations and favored its involvement in the control of atomic bombs. However, in formulating policies regarding the atomic bomb and relations with the Soviets, Truman was guided by the State Department and ignored Eisenhower and the Pentagon. Indeed, Eisenhower had opposed the use of the atomic bomb against the Japanese, writing, "First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon." Initially, Eisenhower hoped for cooperation with the Soviets. He even visited Warsaw in 1945. Invited by Bolesław Bierut and decorated with the highest military decoration, he was shocked by the scale of destruction in the city. However, by mid-1947, as east–west tensions over economic recovery in Germany and the Greek Civil War escalated, Eisenhower agreed with a containment policy to stop Soviet expansion.
=== 1948 presidential election ===
In June 1943, a visiting politician had suggested to Eisenhower that he might become president after the war. Believing that a general should not participate in politics, Merlo J. Pusey wrote that "figuratively speaking, [Eisenhower] kicked his political-minded visitor out of his office". As others asked him about his political future, Eisenhower told one that he could not imagine wanting to be considered for any political job "from dogcatcher to Grand High Supreme King of the Universe", and another that he could not serve as Army Chief of Staff if others believed he had political ambitions. In 1945, Truman told Eisenhower during the Potsdam Conference that if desired, the president would help the general win the 1948 election, and in 1947 he offered to run as Eisenhower's running mate on the Democratic ticket if MacArthur won the Republican nomination.
As the election approached, other prominent citizens and politicians from both parties urged Eisenhower to run. In January 1948, after learning of plans in New Hampshire to elect delegates supporting him for the forthcoming Republican National Convention, Eisenhower stated through the Army that he was "not available for and could not accept nomination to high political office"; "life-long professional soldiers", he wrote, "in the absence of some obvious and overriding reason, [should] abstain from seeking high political office". Eisenhower maintained no political party affiliation during this time. Many believed he was forgoing his only opportunity to be president as Republican Thomas E. Dewey was considered the probable winner and would presumably serve two terms, meaning that Eisenhower, at age 66 in 1956, would be too old to run.
=== President at Columbia University and NATO Supreme Commander ===
In 1948, Eisenhower became President of Columbia University, an Ivy League university in New York City, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. The choice was subsequently characterized as not having been a good fit for either party. During that year, Eisenhower's memoir, Crusade in Europe, was published. It was a major financial success. Eisenhower sought the advice of Augusta National's Roberts about the tax implications of this, and in due course Eisenhower's profit on the book was substantially aided by what author David Pietrusza calls "a ruling without precedent" by the Department of the Treasury. It held that Eisenhower was not a professional writer, but rather, marketing the lifetime asset of his experiences, and thus, he had to pay only capital gains tax on his $635,000 advance instead of the much higher personal tax rate. This ruling saved Eisenhower about $400,000.
Eisenhower's stint as the president of Columbia was punctuated by his activity within the Council on Foreign Relations, a study group he led concerning the political and military implications of the Marshall Plan and The American Assembly, Eisenhower's "vision of a great cultural center where business, professional and governmental leaders could meet from time to time to discuss and reach conclusions concerning problems of a social and political nature". His biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook suggested that this period served his "political education", since he had to prioritize wide-ranging educational, administrative, and financial demands for the university. Through his involvement in the Council on Foreign Relations, he also gained exposure to economic analysis, which became the bedrock of his understanding of economic policy. "Whatever General Eisenhower knows about economics, he has learned at the study group meetings", one Aide to Europe member claimed.
Eisenhower accepted the presidency of the university to expand his ability to promote "the American form of democracy" through education. He was clear on this point to the trustees on the search committee. He informed them that his main purpose was "to promote the basic concepts of education in a democracy". As a result, he was "almost incessantly" devoted to the idea of the American Assembly, a concept he developed into an institution by the end of 1950.
Within months of becoming university president, Eisenhower was requested to advise Secretary of Defense James Forrestal on the unification of the armed services. About six months after his appointment, he became the informal Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. Two months later, he fell ill with what was diagnosed as acute gastroenteritis, and he spent over a month in recovery at the Augusta National Golf Club. He returned to his post in New York in mid-May, and in July 1949 took a two-month vacation out-of-state. Because the American Assembly had begun to take shape, he traveled around the country during summer and fall 1950, building financial support for it, including from Columbia Associates, a recently created alumni and benefactor organization for which he had helped recruit members.
Eisenhower was unknowingly building resentment and a reputation among the Columbia University faculty and staff as an absentee president who was using the university for his own interests. As a career military man, he naturally had little in common with the academics. The contacts gained through university and American Assembly fundraising activities would later become important supporters in Eisenhower's bid for the Republican party nomination and the presidency. Meanwhile, Columbia University's liberal faculty members became disenchanted with the university president's ties to oilmen and businessmen.
In July of 1950, Eisenhower met then California congressman Richard Nixon for the first time when both men were guests of former president Herbert Hoover at a small group lunch party at the named Cave Man Camp, part of the 2,700-acre private campground the Bohemian Grove located 70 miles north of San Francisco, with Hoover having beem a member of the Bohemian club since 1913. At the lunch, Hoover gave a toast, and Eisenhower gave a short speech, followed by time spent around a campfire, with most of the conversation being about what Eisenhower had said. Nixon, reflected on Eisenhower's speech, saying: "It was not a polished speech, but he delivered it without notes, and he had the good sense not to speak too long," on the reaction of the group Nixon said: "The only line that drew significant applause was his comment that he did not see why anyone who refused to sign a loyalty oath should have the right to teach at a state university". In July 1950, Nixon, for his part, was in the middle of his successful Senate campaign. The rising political star had impressed Hoover with his political ability, especially for playing a big role in taking down Alger Hiss for committing perjury before the House Un-American Activities Committee, concerning charges of having committed espionage. Well, Eisenhower was the guest of honor; it was more his political future, more so than his respected military career or his role as president of one of the country's top universities that interested the group. Hoover, his associates and friends, who were old-guard conservatives like Hoover himself, were ostensibly more inclined to support Ohio senator Robert A. Taft in the upcoming 1952 United States presidential election, but were nonetheless interested in hearing what the potential future president had to say. At the table during lunch, Nixon sat a few seats down on the left across from Eisenhower, who sat to the right next to Hoover, who sat at the head of the table; at some point during the gathering, Eisenhower and Nixon had a brief conversation that seemed to leave little to no impact on Eisenhower as he is never known to have commented on it in later life.
He did have some successes at Columbia. Puzzled as to why no American university had undertaken the "continuous study of the causes, conduct and consequences of war", Eisenhower undertook the creation of the Institute of War and Peace Studies, a research facility to "study war as a tragic social phenomenon". Eisenhower was able to use his network of wealthy friends and acquaintances to secure initial funding for it. Under its founding director, international relations scholar William T. R. Fox, the institute began in 1951 and became a pioneer in international security studies, one that would be emulated by other institutes in the United States and Britain later in the decade. The Institute of War and Peace Studies thus became one of the projects which Eisenhower considered his "unique contribution" to Columbia. As the president of Columbia, Eisenhower gave voice to his opinions about the supremacy and difficulties of American democracy. His tenure marked his transformation from military to civilian leadership. His biographer, Travis Beal Jacobs, also suggested that the alienation of the Columbia faculty contributed to sharp intellectual criticism of him for many years.
The trustees of Columbia University declined to accept Eisenhower's offer to resign in December 1950, when he took an extended leave from the university to become the Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and he was given operational command of NATO forces in Europe. Eisenhower retired from active service as an army general on June 3, 1952, and he resumed his presidency of Columbia. Meanwhile, Eisenhower had become the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States, a contest that he won on November 4. Eisenhower tendered his resignation as university president on November 15, 1952, effective January 19, 1953, the day before his inauguration.
At home, Eisenhower was more effective in making the case for NATO in Congress than the Truman administration had been. By the middle of 1951, with American and European support, NATO was a genuine military power. Nevertheless, Eisenhower thought that NATO would become a truly European alliance, with the American and Canadian commitments ending after about ten years.
=== Presidential campaign of 1952 ===
President Truman sensed a broad-based desire for an Eisenhower candidacy for president, and he again pressed him to run for the office as a Democrat in 1951. But Eisenhower voiced his disagreements with the Democrats and declared himself to be a Republican. A "Draft Eisenhower" movement in the Republican Party persuaded him to declare his candidacy in the 1952 presidential election to counter the candidacy of non-interventionist Senator Robert A. Taft. The effort was a long struggle; Eisenhower had to be convinced that political circumstances had created a genuine duty to offer himself as a candidate and that there was a mandate from the public for him to be their president. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and others succeeded in convincing him, and he resigned his command at NATO in June 1952 to campaign full-time.
Eisenhower defeated Taft for the nomination, having won critical delegate votes from Texas. His campaign was noted for the simple slogan "I Like Ike". It was essential to his success that Eisenhower express opposition to Roosevelt's policy at the Yalta Conference and to Truman's policies in Korea and China—matters in which he had once participated. In defeating Taft for the nomination, it became necessary for Eisenhower to appease the right-wing Old Guard of the Republican Party; his selection of Richard Nixon as the vice-president on the ticket was designed in part for that purpose. Nixon also provided a strong anti-communist reputation, as well as youth to counter Eisenhower's more advanced age.
Eisenhower insisted on campaigning in the South in the general election, against the advice of his campaign team, refusing to surrender the region to the Democrats. The campaign strategy was dubbed "K1C2" and was intended to focus on attacking the Truman administration on three failures: the Korean War, Communism, and corruption.
Two controversies tested him and his staff, but they did not damage the campaign. One involved a report that Nixon had improperly received funds from a secret trust. Nixon spoke out adroitly to avoid potential damage, but the matter permanently alienated the two candidates. The second issue centered on Eisenhower's relented decision to confront the controversial methods of Joseph McCarthy on his home turf in a Wisconsin appearance. Eisenhower condemned "wickedness in government", an allusion to gay government employees who were conflated with communism during McCarthyism.
Eisenhower defeated Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson II in a landslide, with an electoral margin of 442 to 89, marking the first Republican return to the White House in 20 years. He also brought a Republican majority in the House, by eight votes, and in the Senate, evenly divided with Vice President Nixon providing Republicans the majority.
Following his 1952 victory, Eisenhower became the oldest president-elect at age 62 since James Buchanan in 1856. He was the third commanding general of the Army to serve as president, after George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant, and the last not to have held political office prior to becoming president until Donald Trump entered office in January 2017.
=== Election of 1956 ===
In the United States presidential election of 1956, Eisenhower, the popular incumbent, was re-elected with an electoral margin of 457 to 73. The election was a re-match of 1952, as his opponent in 1956 was Stevenson, a former Illinois governor, whom Eisenhower had defeated four years earlier. Compared to the 1952 election, Eisenhower gained Kentucky, Louisiana, and West Virginia from Stevenson, while losing Missouri. His voters were less likely to bring up his leadership record. Instead what stood out this time "was the response to personal qualities — to his sincerity, his integrity and sense of duty, his virtue as a family man, his religious devotion, and his sheer likeableness."
== Presidency (1953–1961) ==
Truman and Eisenhower had minimal discussions about the transition of administrations due to a complete estrangement between them as a result of campaigning. Eisenhower selected Joseph M. Dodge as his budget director, then asked Herbert Brownell Jr. and Lucius D. Clay to make recommendations for his cabinet appointments. He accepted their recommendations without exception; they included John Foster Dulles and George M. Humphrey with whom he developed his closest relationships, as well as Oveta Culp Hobby. His cabinet consisted of several corporate executives and one labor leader, and one journalist dubbed it "eight millionaires and a plumber". The cabinet was known for its lack of personal friends, office seekers, or experienced government administrators. He also upgraded the role of the National Security Council in planning all phases of the Cold War.
Before his inauguration, Eisenhower led a meeting of advisors at Pearl Harbor where they set goals for his first term: balance the budget, end the Korean War, defend vital interests at lower cost through nuclear deterrent, and end price and wage controls. He also conducted the first pre-inaugural cabinet meeting in history in late 1952; he used this meeting to articulate his anti-communist Russia policy. His inaugural address was exclusively devoted to foreign policy and included this same philosophy as well as a commitment to foreign trade and the United Nations.
Eisenhower made greater use of press conferences than any previous president, holding almost 200 over his two terms. He saw the benefit of maintaining a good relationship with the press, and he saw value in them as a means of direct communication with the American people.
Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower adhered to a political philosophy of dynamic conservatism. He described himself as a "progressive conservative" or a "dynamic conservative", and used terms such as "progressive moderate" to describe his approach. He continued all the major New Deal programs still in operation, especially Social Security. He expanded its programs and rolled them into the new Cabinet-level agency of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, while extending benefits to an additional ten million workers. He implemented racial integration in the Armed Services in two years, which had not been completed under Truman.
In a private letter, Eisenhower wrote:
Should any party attempt to abolish social security and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course, that believes you can do these things [...] Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
When the 1954 Congressional elections approached, it became evident that the Republicans were in danger of losing their thin majority in both houses. Eisenhower was among those who blamed the Old Guard for the losses, and he took up the charge to stop suspected efforts by the right wing to take control of the GOP. He then articulated his position as a moderate, progressive Republican: "I have just one purpose ... and that is to build up a strong progressive Republican Party in this country. If the right wing wants a fight, they are going to get it ... before I end up, either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism or I won't be with them anymore."
Eisenhower initially planned on serving only one term, but he remained flexible in case leading Republicans wanted him to run again. He was recovering from a heart attack late in September 1955 when he met with his closest advisors to evaluate the GOP's potential candidates; the group concluded that a second term was well advised, and he announced that he would run again in February 1956. Eisenhower was publicly noncommittal about having Nixon as the Vice President on his ticket; the question was an especially important one in light of his heart condition. He personally favored Robert B. Anderson, a Democrat who rejected his offer, so Eisenhower resolved to leave the matter in the hands of the party, which chose Nixon nearly unanimously. In 1956, Eisenhower faced Adlai Stevenson again and won by an even larger landslide, with 457 of 531 electoral votes and 57.6 percent of the popular vote. His campaigning was curtailed by health considerations.
Eisenhower made full use of his valet, chauffeur, and secretarial support; he rarely drove or even dialed a phone number. He was an avid fisherman, golfer, painter, and bridge player. On August 26, 1959, he became the first president to travel on a jet plane when he flew aboard the VC-137A aircraft that would be designated as Air Force One and which replaced the Columbine as the presidential aircraft.
=== Atoms for Peace ===
Eisenhower gave the Atoms for Peace speech to the United Nations General Assembly on December 8, 1953, advocating for constructive use of nuclear fission for electrical energy and nuclear medicine instead of nuclear arms race proliferation. The speech led to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 which allowed the civilian world to develop nuclear fission technology for peaceful and prosperous purposes.
=== Interstate Highway System ===
Eisenhower championed and signed the bill that authorized the Interstate Highway System in 1956. He justified the project through the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 as essential to American security during the Cold War.
Eisenhower's goal to create improved highways was influenced by his involvement in the Army's 1919 Transcontinental Motor Convoy. He was assigned as an observer for the mission, which involved sending a convoy of Army vehicles coast to coast. His subsequent experience with the German autobahn convinced him of the benefits of an Interstate Highway System. The system could also be used as a runway for airplanes, which would be beneficial to war efforts. Franklin D. Roosevelt put this system into place with the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944. He thought that an interstate highway system would be beneficial for military operations and would support continued economic growth. The legislation initially stalled in Congress over the issuance of bonds to finance the project, but the legislative effort was renewed and Eisenhower signed the law in June 1956.
=== Advanced Research Projects Agency ===
The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was put together by Eisenhower and his Science Advisory Committee in early 1958 in response to the successful launch of the first orbital satellite from the Soviet Union, Sputnik 1. ARPA eventually created the ARPANET, which was a predecessor to the internet.
=== Foreign policy ===
==== Space Race ====
Eisenhower and the CIA had known since at least January 1957, nine months before Sputnik, that Russia had the capability to launch a small payload into orbit and was likely to do so within a year.
Eisenhower's support of the nation's fledgling space program was officially modest until the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, gaining the Cold War enemy enormous prestige. He then launched a national campaign that funded not just space exploration but a major strengthening of science and higher education. The Eisenhower administration determined to adopt a non-aggressive policy that would allow "space-crafts of any state to overfly all states, a region free of military posturing and launch Earth satellites to explore space". His Open Skies Policy attempted to legitimize illegal Lockheed U-2 flyovers and Project Genetrix while paving the way for spy satellite technology to orbit over sovereign territory, but Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev declined Eisenhower's proposal at the Geneva conference in July 1955. In response to Sputnik being launched in October 1957, Eisenhower created NASA as a civilian space agency in October 1958, signed a landmark science education law, and improved relations with American scientists.
Fear spread through the United States that the Soviet Union would invade and spread communism, so Eisenhower wanted to not only create a surveillance satellite to detect any threats but ballistic missiles that would protect the United States. In strategic terms, it was Eisenhower who devised the American basic strategy of nuclear deterrence based upon the triad of strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).
NASA planners projected that human spaceflight would pull the United States ahead in the Space Race; however, in 1960, an Ad Hoc Panel on Man-in-Space concluded that "man-in-space can not be justified" and was too costly. Eisenhower later resented the space program and its gargantuan price tag—he was quoted as saying, "Anyone who would spend $40 billion in a race to the moon for national prestige is nuts."
==== Korean War, Free China and Red China ====
In late 1952, Eisenhower went to Korea and discovered a military and political stalemate. Once in office, when the Chinese People's Volunteer Army began a buildup in the Kaesong sanctuary, he considered using nuclear weapons if an armistice was not reached. Whether China was informed of the potential for nuclear force is unknown. His earlier military reputation in Europe was effective with the Chinese communists. The National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Strategic Air Command (SAC) devised detailed plans for nuclear war against Red China. With the death of Stalin in March 1953, Russian support for a Chinese communist hard-line weakened and China decided to compromise on the prisoner issue.
In July 1953, an armistice took effect with Korea divided along approximately the same boundary as in 1950. The armistice and boundary remain in effect today. The armistice, which concluded despite opposition from Secretary Dulles, South Korean President Syngman Rhee, and also within Eisenhower's party, has been described by biographer Stephen E. Ambrose as the greatest achievement of the administration. Eisenhower had the insight to realize that unlimited war in the nuclear age was unthinkable, and limited war unwinnable.
A point of emphasis in Eisenhower's campaign had been his endorsement of a policy of liberation from communism as opposed to a policy of containment. This remained his preference despite the armistice with Korea. Throughout his terms Eisenhower took a hard-line attitude toward China, as demanded by conservative Republicans, with the goal of driving a wedge between China and the Soviet Union.
Eisenhower continued Truman's policy of recognizing the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the legitimate government of China, not the Peking (Beijing) regime. There were localized flare-ups when the People's Liberation Army began shelling the islands of Quemoy and Matsu in September 1954. Eisenhower received recommendations embracing every variation of response; he thought it essential to have every possible option available to him as the crisis unfolded.
The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China was signed in December 1954. He requested and secured from Congress their "Free China Resolution" in January 1955, which gave Eisenhower unprecedented power in advance to use military force at any level in defense of Free China and the Pescadores. The Resolution bolstered the morale of the Chinese nationalists and signaled to Beijing that the US was committed to holding the line.
During the First Taiwan Strait crisis, Eisenhower threatened to use nuclear weapons against PRC military targets in Fujian. These threats prompted Mao Zedong to launch China's nuclear weapons program. He authorized a series of bomb tests labeled Operation Teapot. Nevertheless, he left the Chinese communists guessing as to the exact nature of his nuclear response. This allowed Eisenhower to accomplish all of his objectives—the end of this communist encroachment, the retention of the Islands by the Chinese nationalists and continued peace. Defense of the Republic of China from an invasion remains a core American policy.
China invited some American reporters to China in 1956, having previously ousted American reporters after the PRC's founding. Eisenhower upheld the US ban on travel to China. US newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post criticized the Eisenhower's administration decision as antithetical to the free press.
==== Southeast Asia ====
Early in 1953, the French asked Eisenhower for help in French Indochina against the Communists, supplied from China, who were fighting the First Indochina War. Eisenhower sent Lt. General John W. O'Daniel to Vietnam to assess the French forces there. Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgway dissuaded the President from intervening by presenting a comprehensive estimate of the massive military deployment that would be necessary. Eisenhower stated prophetically that "this war would absorb our troops by divisions."
Eisenhower did provide France with bombers and non-combat personnel. After a few months with no success by the French, he added other aircraft to drop napalm for clearing purposes. Further requests for assistance from the French were agreed to but only on conditions Eisenhower knew were impossible to meet – allied participation and congressional approval. When the French fortress of Dien Bien Phu fell to the Vietnamese Communists in May 1954, Eisenhower refused to intervene despite urging from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice President and the head of NCS.
Eisenhower responded to the French defeat with the formation of the SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) Alliance with the UK, France, New Zealand and Australia in defense of Vietnam against communism. At that time the French and Chinese reconvened the Geneva peace talks; Eisenhower agreed the US would participate only as an observer. After France and the Communists agreed to a partition of Vietnam, Eisenhower rejected the agreement, offering military and economic aid to southern Vietnam. Ambrose argues that Eisenhower, by not participating in the Geneva agreement, had kept the US out of Vietnam; nevertheless, with the formation of SEATO, he had put the US back into the conflict.
In late 1954, Gen. J. Lawton Collins was made ambassador to "Free Vietnam", effectively elevating the country to sovereign status. Collins' instructions were to support the leader Ngo Dinh Diem in subverting communism, by helping him to build an army and wage a military campaign. In February 1955, Eisenhower dispatched the first American soldiers to Vietnam as military advisors to Diem's army. After Diem announced the formation of the Republic of Vietnam (commonly known as South Vietnam) in October, Eisenhower immediately recognized the new state and offered military, economic, and technical assistance.
In the years that followed, Eisenhower increased the number of US military advisors in South Vietnam to 900. This was due to North Vietnam's support of "uprisings" in the south and concern the nation would fall. In May 1957 Diem, then President of South Vietnam, made a state visit to the United States. Eisenhower pledged his continued support, and a parade was held in Diem's honor in New York City. Although Diem was publicly praised, in private Secretary of State John Foster Dulles conceded that Diem had been selected because there were no better alternatives.
After the election of November 1960, Eisenhower, in a briefing with John F. Kennedy, pointed out the communist threat in Southeast Asia as requiring prioritization in the next administration. Eisenhower told Kennedy he considered Laos "the cork in the bottle" with regard to the regional threat.
==== Legitimation of Francoist Spain ====
The Pact of Madrid, signed on September 23, 1953, by Francoist Spain and the United States, was a significant effort to break international isolation of Spain, together with the Concordat of 1953. This development came at a time when other victorious Allies and much of the rest of the world remained hostile to a fascist regime sympathetic to the cause of the former Axis powers and established with Nazi assistance. This accord took the form of three separate executive agreements that pledged the United States to furnish economic and military aid to Spain.
==== Middle East and Eisenhower doctrine ====
Even before he was inaugurated, Eisenhower accepted a request from the British government to restore the Shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) to power. He therefore authorized the CIA to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. This resulted in increased strategic control over Iranian oil by American and British companies.
In November 1956, Eisenhower forced an end to the combined British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt in response to the Suez Crisis, receiving praise from Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Simultaneously, he condemned the brutal Soviet invasion of Hungary in response to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He publicly disavowed his allies at the United Nations and used financial and diplomatic pressure to make them withdraw from Egypt. Eisenhower explicitly defended his strong position against Britain and France in his memoirs, published in 1965.
After the Suez Crisis, the United States became the protector of unstable friendly governments in the Middle East via the "Eisenhower Doctrine". Designed by Secretary of State Dulles, it held the US would be "prepared to use armed force ... [to counter] aggression from any country controlled by international communism". Further, the US would provide economic and military aid and, if necessary, use military force to stop the spread of communism in the Middle East.
Eisenhower applied the doctrine in 1957–1958 by dispensing economic aid to Jordan, and by encouraging Syria's neighbors to consider military operations against it. More dramatically, in July 1958, he sent 15,000 Marines and soldiers to Lebanon as part of Operation Blue Bat, a non-combat peacekeeping mission to stabilize the pro-Western government and to prevent a radical revolution. The Marines departed three months later. Washington considered the military intervention successful since it brought about regional stability, weakened Soviet influence, and intimidated the Egyptian and Syrian governments, whose anti-West political position had hardened after the Suez Crisis.
Most Arab countries were skeptical about the "Eisenhower doctrine" because they considered "Zionist imperialism" the real danger. However, they did take the opportunity to obtain free money and weapons. Egypt and Syria, supported by the Soviet Union, openly opposed the initiative. However, Egypt received American aid until the Six-Day War in 1967.
As the Cold War deepened, Dulles sought to isolate the Soviet Union by building regional alliances against it. Critics sometimes called it "pacto-mania".
==== 1960 U-2 incident ====
=== Civil rights ===
While President Truman's 1948 Executive Order 9981 had begun the process of desegregating the Armed Forces, actual implementation had been slow. Eisenhower made clear his stance in his first State of the Union address in February 1953, saying "I propose to use whatever authority exists in the office of the President to end segregation in the District of Columbia, including the Federal Government, and any segregation in the Armed Forces". When he encountered opposition from the services, he used government control of military spending to force the change through, stating "Wherever Federal Funds are expended ..., I do not see how any American can justify ... a discrimination in the expenditure of those funds". When Robert B. Anderson, Eisenhower's first Secretary of the Navy, argued that the US Navy must recognize the "customs and usages prevailing in certain geographic areas of our country which the Navy had no part in creating," Eisenhower overruled him: "We have not taken and we shall not take a single backward step. There must be no second class citizens in this country."
The administration declared racial discrimination a national security issue, as Communists around the world used the racial discrimination and history of violence in the US as a point of propaganda attack.
Eisenhower told Washington, D.C. officials to make the city a model for the rest of the country in integrating black and white public-school children. He proposed to Congress the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and signed those acts into law. The 1957 act for the first time established a permanent civil rights office inside the Justice Department and a Civil Rights Commission to hear testimony about abuses of voting rights. Although both acts were much weaker than subsequent civil rights legislation, they constituted the first significant civil rights acts since 1875.
In 1957, Arkansas refused to honor a federal court order to integrate their public school system stemming from the Brown decision. Eisenhower demanded that Arkansas governor Orval Faubus obey the court order. When Faubus balked, the president placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal control and sent in the 101st Airborne Division. They protected nine black students' entry to Little Rock Central High School, an all-white public school, marking the first time since the Reconstruction Era the federal government had used federal troops in the South to enforce the Constitution. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote to Eisenhower to thank him for his actions, writing "The overwhelming majority of southerners, Negro and white, stand firmly behind your resolute action to restore law and order in Little Rock".
==== Lavender Scare ====
Eisenhower's administration contributed to the anti-gay McCarthyist Lavender Scare with Eisenhower issuing Executive Order 10450 in his first year in office in 1953. The order subjected all federal employees and their friends and family to invasive in-depth investigations and interviews for the purpose of terminating the employment of (in large part) lesbian, gay, and bisexual federal employees. The indifference of Eisenhower to the extreme application of his order allowed for mass persecution of queer people within federal agencies, resulting in thousands of job losses, public outing of sexual orientation, and some suicides. During Eisenhower's two presidential terms, thousands of applicants were barred from federal employment and over 5,000 to 10,000 federal employees were fired under suspicions of being homosexual. From 1947 to 1961 the number of firings based on sexual orientation were far greater than those for membership in the Communist Party, and government officials intentionally campaigned to make "homosexual" synonymous with "Communist traitor" such that non-heterosexual people were treated as a national security threat.
=== Relations with Congress ===
Eisenhower had a Republican Congress for only his first two years in office; in the Senate, Republicans held the majority by a one-vote margin. Despite being Eisenhower's political opponent for the 1952 Republican presidential nomination, Senator Majority Leader Robert A. Taft assisted Eisenhower a great deal by promoting the President's proposals among the "Old Guard" Republican Senators. Taft's death in July 1953—six months into Eisenhower's presidency—affected Eisenhower both personally and professionally. The President noted he had lost "a dear friend" with Taft's passing. Eisenhower disliked Taft's successor as Majority Leader, Senator William Knowland, and the relationship between the two men led to tension between the Senate and the White House.
This prevented Eisenhower from openly condemning Joseph McCarthy's highly criticized methods against communism. To facilitate relations with Congress, Eisenhower decided to ignore McCarthy's controversies and thereby deprive them of more energy from the involvement of the White House. This position drew criticism from a number of corners. In late 1953, McCarthy declared on national television that the employment of communists within the government was a menace and would be a pivotal issue in the 1954 Senate elections. Eisenhower was urged to respond directly and specify the various measures he had taken to purge the government of communists.
Among Eisenhower's objectives in not directly confronting McCarthy was to prevent him from subjecting the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) into his investigations, which might interfere with the AEC's work on hydrogen bombs and other weapons programs. In December 1953, Eisenhower learned that nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer had been accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Although Eisenhower never really believed these allegations, in January 1954 he ordered that "a blank wall" be placed between Oppenheimer and all defense-related activities. The Oppenheimer security hearing later that year resulted in the physicist losing his security clearance. The matter was controversial at the time and remained so in later years, with Oppenheimer achieving a certain martyrdom. The case would reflect poorly on Eisenhower, but the president had never examined it in any detail and had instead relied excessively upon the advice of his subordinates, especially that of AEC chairman Lewis Strauss. Eisenhower later suffered a major political defeat when his nomination of Strauss to be Secretary of Commerce was defeated in the Senate in 1959, in part due to Strauss's role in the Oppenheimer matter.
In May 1954, McCarthy threatened to issue subpoenas to White House personnel. Eisenhower was furious, and issued an order as follows: "It is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the Executive Branch be in a position to be completely candid in advising with each other on official matters ... it is not in the public interest that any of their conversations or communications, or any documents or reproductions, concerning such advice be disclosed." This was an unprecedented step by Eisenhower to protect communication beyond the confines of a cabinet meeting, and soon became a tradition known as executive privilege. Eisenhower's denial of McCarthy's access to his staff reduced McCarthy's hearings to rants about trivial matters and contributed to his ultimate downfall.
In early 1954, the Old Guard put forward a constitutional amendment, called the Bricker Amendment, which would curtail international agreements by the Chief Executive, such as the Yalta Agreements. Eisenhower opposed the measure. The Old Guard agreed with Eisenhower on the development and ownership of nuclear reactors by private enterprises, which the Democrats opposed. The President succeeded in getting legislation creating a system of licensure for nuclear plants by the AEC.
The Democrats gained a majority in both houses in the 1954 election. Eisenhower had to work with the Democratic Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (later US president) in the Senate and Speaker Sam Rayburn in the House. Joe Martin, the Republican Speaker from 1947 to 1949 and again from 1953 to 1955, wrote that Eisenhower "never surrounded himself with assistants who could solve political problems with professional skill. There were exceptions, Leonard W. Hall, for example, who as chairman of the Republican National Committee tried to open the administration's eyes to the political facts of life, with occasional success. However, these exceptions were not enough to right the balance."
Speaker Martin concluded that Eisenhower worked too much through subordinates in dealing with Congress, with results, "often the reverse of what he has desired" because Members of Congress, "resent having some young fellow who was picked up by the White House without ever having been elected to office himself coming around and telling them 'The Chief wants this'. The administration never made use of many Republicans of consequence whose services in one form or another would have been available for the asking."
Eisenhower was relatively active with legislative vetoes, with 181 vetoes of which only two were overridden.
=== Judicial appointments ===
==== Supreme Court ====
Eisenhower appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
Earl Warren, 1953 (Chief Justice)
John Marshall Harlan II, 1954
William J. Brennan, 1956
Charles Evans Whittaker, 1957
Potter Stewart, 1958
Whittaker was unsuited for the role and retired in 1962, after Eisenhower's presidency had ended. Stewart and Harlan were conservative Republicans, while Brennan was a Democrat who became a leading voice for liberalism. In selecting a Chief Justice, Eisenhower looked for an experienced jurist who could appeal to liberals in the party as well as law-and-order conservatives, noting privately that Warren "represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court ... He has a national name for integrity, uprightness, and courage that, again, I believe we need on the Court".
=== States admitted to the Union ===
Two states were admitted to the Union during Eisenhower's presidency.
Alaska – January 3, 1959 (49th state)
Hawaii – August 21, 1959 (50th state)
=== Health issues ===
Eisenhower began chain smoking cigarettes at West Point, often three or four packs a day. He joked that he "gave [himself] an order" to stop cold turkey in 1949. However, Evan Thomas says the true story was more complex. At first, he removed cigarettes and ashtrays, but that did not work. He told a friend:
I decided to make a game of the whole business and try to achieve a feeling of some superiority ... So I stuffed cigarettes in every pocket, put them around my office on the desk ... [and] made it a practice to offer a cigarette to anyone who came in ... while mentally reminding myself as I sat down, "I do not have to do what that poor fellow is doing."
He was the first president to release information about his health and medical records while in office, but people around him deliberately misled the public about his health. On September 24, 1955, while vacationing in Colorado, he had a serious heart attack. While Eisenhower convalesced at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center, Howard McCrum Snyder, his personal physician, misdiagnosed the symptoms as indigestion, and failed to call in help that was urgently needed. Snyder later falsified his own records to cover his blunder and to allow Eisenhower to imply that he was healthy enough to do his job.
The heart attack required six weeks' hospitalization, during which time Nixon, Dulles, and White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams assumed administrative duties and provided communication with the president. He was treated by Paul Dudley White, a cardiologist with a national reputation, who regularly informed the press of the president's progress. Snyder recommended a second presidential term as essential to his recovery.
As a consequence of his heart attack, Eisenhower developed a left ventricular aneurysm, which caused a mild stroke during a cabinet meeting on November 25, 1957, when Eisenhower suddenly found himself unable to move his right hand or to speak. The president also suffered from Crohn's disease, which necessitated surgery for a bowel obstruction on June 9, 1956. To treat the intestinal block, surgeons bypassed about ten inches of his small intestine. His scheduled meeting with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was postponed so he could recover at his farm. He was still recovering from this operation during the Suez Crisis. Eisenhower's health issues forced him to give up smoking and make some changes to his diet, but he still drank alcohol. During a visit to England on August 29, 1959, he complained of dizziness and had to have his blood pressure checked; however, his physician, Snyder, recalled that before dinner at the prime minister's manor house Chequers the next day, Eisenhower "drank several gin-and-tonics, and one or two gins on the rocks ... three or four wines with the dinner".
Eisenhower's health during the last three years of his second term in office was relatively good. After leaving the White House, he suffered several additional and ultimately crippling heart attacks. A severe heart attack in August 1965 largely ended his participation in public affairs. On December 12, 1966, his gallbladder was removed, containing 16 gallstones. After Eisenhower's death in 1969, an autopsy revealed an undiagnosed adrenal pheochromocytoma, a benign adrenalin-secreting tumor that may have made him more vulnerable to heart disease. Eisenhower had seven heart attacks from 1955 until his death.
=== End of presidency ===
The 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, which set a two-term limit on the presidency, was ratified in 1951. Eisenhower was the first president constitutionally prevented from serving a third term.
Eisenhower was also the first outgoing president to come under the protection of the Former Presidents Act. Under the act, Eisenhower was entitled to a lifetime pension, state-provided staff and a Secret Service security detail.
In the 1960 election to choose his successor, Eisenhower endorsed Nixon over Democrat John F. Kennedy. He told friends, "I will do almost anything to avoid turning my chair and country over to Kennedy." He actively campaigned for Nixon in the final days, although he may have done Nixon some harm. When asked by reporters at the end of a televised press conference to list one of Nixon's policy ideas he had adopted, Eisenhower joked, "If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don't remember." Kennedy's campaign used the quote in one of its campaign commercials. Nixon narrowly lost to Kennedy. Eisenhower, who was, at 70, the oldest president to date, was succeeded by 43-year-old Kennedy, the youngest elected president.
It was originally intended for Eisenhower to have a more active role in the campaign as he wanted to respond to attacks Kennedy made on his administration. However, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower expressed concern to Second Lady Pat Nixon about the strain campaigning would put on his heart, and wanted the president to withdraw, without letting him know of her intervention. Vice President Nixon himself was informed by Major General Howard Snyder, the White House physician, that he could not approve a heavy campaign schedule for the president, whose health problems had been exacerbated by Kennedy's attacks. Nixon then convinced Eisenhower not to go ahead with the expanded campaign schedule and limit himself to the original schedule. Nixon reflected that if Eisenhower had carried out his expanded campaign schedule, he might have had a decisive impact on the outcome of the election, especially in states that Kennedy won with razor-thin margins. Mamie did not tell Dwight why Nixon changed his mind on Dwight's campaigning until years later.
On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower gave his final televised Address to the Nation from the Oval Office. In his farewell speech, Eisenhower raised the issue of the Cold War and role of the armed forces. He described the Cold War: "We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method ..." and warned about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals. He continued with a warning that "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex." Eisenhower elaborated, "we recognize the imperative need for this development ... the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist ... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Because of legal issues related to holding a military rank while in a civilian office, Eisenhower had resigned his permanent commission as General of the Army before assuming the presidency. Upon completion of his presidential term, his commission was reactivated by Congress.
== Post-presidency (1961–1969) ==
Following the presidency, Eisenhower moved to the place where he and Mamie had spent much of their post-war time, a working farm adjacent to the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. They also maintained a retirement home in Palm Desert, California.
After leaving office, Eisenhower did not completely retreat from political life. He flew to San Antonio, where he had been stationed years earlier, to support John W. Goode, the unsuccessful Republican candidate against the Democrat Henry B. Gonzalez for Texas's 20th congressional district seat. He addressed the 1964 Republican National Convention, in San Francisco, and appeared with party nominee Barry Goldwater in a campaign commercial. That endorsement came somewhat reluctantly, because Goldwater had in the late 1950s criticized Eisenhower's administration as "a dime-store New Deal". On January 20, 1969, the day Nixon was inaugurated as President, Eisenhower issued a statement praising his former vice president and calling it a "day for rejoicing".
=== Death ===
At 12:25 p.m. on March 28, 1969, Eisenhower died from congestive heart failure at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., at age 78. His last words were: "I've always loved my wife, my children, and my grandchildren, and I've always loved my country. I want to go. God, take me." The following day, his body was moved to the Washington National Cathedral's Bethlehem Chapel, where he lay in repose for 28 hours. He was then transported to the United States Capitol, where he lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda on March 30 and 31. A state funeral was conducted at the Washington National Cathedral on March 31. The president and first lady, Richard and Pat Nixon, attended, as did former president Lyndon B. Johnson. Former President Harry S. Truman was unable to attend due to a vacation. Also among the 2,000 guests invited were UN Secretary-General U Thant and 191 foreign delegates from 78 countries, including 10 foreign heads of state and government—among them President Charles de Gaulle of France, who was in the United States for the first time since the state funeral of John F. Kennedy, Chancellor Kurt-Georg Kiesinger of West Germany, King Baudouin of Belgium and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran.
The service included the singing of Faure's "The Palms", and the playing of the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers". That evening, Eisenhower's body was placed on a special funeral train for its journey from the capital to his hometown of Abilene, Kansas. First incorporated into President Abraham Lincoln's funeral in 1865, a funeral train would not be part of a US state funeral again until 2018. On April 2, 1969, Eisenhower was buried inside the Place of Meditation, the chapel on the grounds of the Eisenhower Presidential Center in Abilene. As requested, he was buried in a Government Issue casket, wearing his World War II uniform, decorated with Army Distinguished Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters, Navy Distinguished Service Medal, and the Legion of Merit. Buried alongside Eisenhower are his son Doud, who died at age 3 in 1921, and wife Mamie, who died in 1979.
President Richard Nixon eulogized Eisenhower in 1969, saying:
Some men are considered great because they lead great armies or they lead powerful nations. For eight years now, Dwight Eisenhower has neither commanded an army nor led a nation; and yet he remained through his final days the world's most admired and respected man, truly the first citizen of the world.
== Legacy and memory ==
=== Public and scholarly assessments of presidency ===
During his two terms as president, Eisenhower's approval ratings were consistently high, only briefly falling below 50 percent in 1958 and again in 1960. His overall average of 63 percent in the Gallup poll remains the second highest in history. With the popularity of his successor, John F. Kennedy, Eisenhower's reputation declined in the years after he left office. He was widely seen by critics as an inactive, uninspiring, golf-playing president, which was in stark contrast to Kennedy, who was 26 years his junior. Critics also compared Eisenhower with the likes of Calvin Coolidge as a "do nothing president". Despite his unprecedented use of Army troops to enforce a federal desegregation order at Central High School in Little Rock, Eisenhower was criticized for his reluctance to support the civil rights movement to the degree that activists wanted. Eisenhower also attracted criticism for his handling of the 1960 U-2 incident and the associated international embarrassment, for the Soviet Union's perceived leadership in the nuclear arms race and the Space Race, and for his failure to publicly oppose McCarthyism. In particular, Eisenhower was criticized for failing to defend George C. Marshall from attacks by Joseph McCarthy, though he privately deplored McCarthy's tactics.
Following the access of Eisenhower's private papers, his reputation changed amongst presidential historians. Historian John Lewis Gaddis has summarized a more recent turnaround in evaluations by historians:
Historians long ago abandoned the view that Eisenhower's was a failed presidency. He did, after all, end the Korean War without getting into any others. He stabilized, and did not escalate, the Soviet–American rivalry. He strengthened European alliances while withdrawing support from European colonialism. He rescued the Republican Party from isolationism and McCarthyism. He maintained prosperity, balanced the budget, promoted technological innovation, facilitated (if reluctantly) the civil rights movement and warned, in the most memorable farewell address since Washington's, of a "military–industrial complex" that could endanger the nation's liberties. Not until Reagan would another president leave office with so strong a sense of having accomplished what he set out to do.
Since 1982, scholars and historians have typically ranked Eisenhower among the ten best US presidents. Rexford Tugwell, a top aide to Franklin Roosevelt, referred to Eisenhower as "the least partisan president since George Washington." Historian Garry Wills called Eisenhower "a political genius" for making difficult foreign policy goals "look easy" to the general public to prevent further stress.
=== Political views and practice ===
Although conservatism in politics was strong during the 1950s, and Eisenhower generally espoused conservative sentiments, his administration concerned itself mostly with foreign affairs and pursued a hands-off domestic policy. He looked to moderation and cooperation as a means of governance, which he dubbed "The Middle Way". American historian and policy advisor Bruce Bartlett has described Eisenhower as a "true centrist who really belonged to neither party".
Although he sought to slow or contain the New Deal and other federal programs, he did not attempt to repeal them outright. In doing so, Eisenhower was popular among the liberal and left-leaning wing of the Republican Party. Conservative critics of his administration thought that he did not do enough to advance the goals of the right; according to Hans Morgenthau, "Eisenhower's victories were but accidents without consequence in the history of the Republican party." Eisenhower was a self-described ideological moderate and progressive conservative. He supported moderate fiscal conservatism and disdained ideological extremism, saying of his governing style:
In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative.
Eisenhower introduced the office of White House Chief of Staff – an idea he borrowed from the United States Army. Every president after Lyndon Johnson has appointed staff to this position. As president, Eisenhower also initiated the "up or out" policy that still prevails in the US military. Officers who are passed over for promotion twice are then usually honorably but quickly discharged to make way for younger and more able officers.
On December 20, 1944, Eisenhower was appointed to the rank of General of the Army, placing him in the company of George Marshall, Henry "Hap" Arnold, and Douglas MacArthur, the only four men to achieve the rank in World War II. Along with Omar Bradley, they were the only five men to achieve the rank since the August 5, 1888, death of Philip Sheridan, and the only five men to hold the rank of five-star general. The rank was created by an Act of Congress on a temporary basis, when Public Law 78-482 was passed on December 14, 1944, as a temporary rank, subject to reversion to permanent rank six months after the end of the war. The temporary rank was declared permanent on March 23, 1946, by Public Law 333 of the 79th Congress, which also awarded full pay and allowances in the grade to those on the retired list. It was created to give the most senior American commanders parity of rank with their British counterparts holding the ranks of field marshal and admiral of the fleet.
Eisenhower founded People to People International in 1956, believing that citizen interaction would promote cultural interaction and world peace. The program includes a student ambassador component, which sends American youth on educational trips to other countries.
During his second term as president, Eisenhower awarded a series of specially designed US Mint presidential appreciation medals. Eisenhower presented the medal to individuals as an expression of his appreciation. The development of the appreciation medals was initiated by the White House and executed by the United States Mint, through the Philadelphia Mint. The medals were struck from September 1958 through October 1960. A total of twenty designs are cataloged with a total mintage of 9,858. Prior to the end of his second term as president, 1,451 medals were turned in to the Bureau of the Mint and destroyed. The Eisenhower appreciation medals are part of the Presidential Medal of Appreciation Award Medal Series.
=== Tributes and memorials ===
The Interstate Highway System is officially known as the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways". It was inspired in part by Eisenhower's experiences in World War II, where he recognized the advantages of the autobahn system in Germany. Commemorative signs reading "Eisenhower Interstate System" and bearing Eisenhower's permanent 5-star rank insignia were introduced in 1993 and now are displayed throughout the Interstate System. Several highways are also named for him, including the Eisenhower Expressway (Interstate 290) near Chicago, the Eisenhower Tunnel on Interstate 70 west of Denver, and Interstate 80 in California.
Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy is a senior war college of the Department of Defense's National Defense University in Washington, DC. Eisenhower graduated from this school when it was known as the Army Industrial College. Eisenhower was honored on the Eisenhower dollar, minted from 1971 to 1978. His centenary was honored on the Eisenhower commemorative dollar issued in 1990.
In 1969 four major record companies – ABC Records, MGM Records, Buddha Records and Caedmon Audio – released tribute albums in Eisenhower's honor.
In 1999, the United States Congress created the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission, to create an enduring national memorial in Washington, D.C. In 2009 the commission chose the architect Frank Gehry to design the memorial. The groundbreaking ceremony of the memorial was held on November 3, 2017, and was dedicated on September 17, 2020. It stands on a 4-acre (1.6 ha) site near the National Mall on Maryland Avenue, across the street from the National Air and Space Museum.
In December 1999 he was listed on Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th century. In 2009 he was named to the World Golf Hall of Fame in the Lifetime Achievement category for his contributions to the sport. In 1973, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
In August 2009 the Pittsford National Fish Hatchery — a component of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's National Fish Hatchery System in Vermont — was renamed the Dwight D. Eisenhower National Fish Hatchery to commemorate a June 1955 visit Eisenhower made to the hatchery. A few months after his visit, Eisenhower had secured funding for a complete reconstruction of the hatchery.
On October 27, 2023, Fort Gordon was redesignated Fort Eisenhower.
== Honors ==
=== Awards and decorations ===
=== Freedom of the City ===
Eisenhower received the Freedom honor from several locations, including:
Freedom of the City of London on June 12, 1945
Freedom of the City of Belfast on August 24, 1945
Freedom of the City of Edinburgh in 1946
Freedom of the Burgh of Maybole in October 1946
=== Honorary degrees ===
Eisenhower received many honorary degrees from universities and colleges around the world. These included:
== Promotions == |
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_Hero | Raw Hero | Raw Hero (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Hiramoto. It was serialized in Kodansha's Evening from September 2018 to August 2020, with its chapters collected in six tankōbon volumes. In North America, the manga is licensed for English release by Yen Press.
== Publication ==
Raw Hero is written and illustrated by Akira Hiramoto. It was serialized in Kodansha's Evening from September 25, 2018, to August 11, 2020. Kodansha collected its chapters in six tankōbon volumes, released from February 22, 2019, to September 23, 2020.
In North America, the series is licensed for English release by Yen Press.
=== Volumes === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streatham_(UK_Parliament_constituency) | Streatham (UK Parliament constituency) | Streatham was a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament.
In the 2016 EU referendum, Streatham was estimated to have voted to remain in the European Union by 79%. This was the second highest remain vote in the United Kingdom, behind Vauxhall.
Further to the completion of the 2023 review of Westminster constituencies, the seat was abolished. The four southern wards, comprising the town of Streatham, were included in the new constituency of Streatham and Croydon North. Northern areas (Brixton Hill, Clapham Common, Thornton, and Tulse Hill) form part of the new constituency of Clapham and Brixton Hill.
== Boundaries and boundary changes ==
=== 1918–1974 ===
The constituency was formed primarily from the existing of constituency Wandsworth
=== 1974–1983 ===
Clapham Park and Thornton were transferred from the abolished constituency of Clapham. The wards of Streatham Park and Furzedown ward were transferred to the constituency of Tooting.
=== 1983–1997 ===
The Town Hall ward was transferred from the abolished constituency of Lambeth Central.
=== 1997–2010 ===
The St Martin's and Tulse Hill wards were transferred from the abolished constituency of Norwood.
=== 2010–2024 ===
The wards of Coldharbour, Herne Hill and Thurlow Park were transferred to the constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood.
=== Summary ===
Streatham was a long constituency comprising the south-west portion of the London Borough of Lambeth. The town of Streatham constituted the four wards in the southern half of the constituency. At its north-western tip the seat included half of Clapham Common; the north-east takes in part of Brixton which was shared with neighbouring Vauxhall and Dulwich and West Norwood.
The northern boundary followed Clapham Park Road, Acre Lane, and Coldharbour Lane through Clapham and Brixton to Lambeth Town Hall. The north-eastern boundary generally followed Effra Road and Tulse Hill, but ran east of the main road to include the part of the Tulse Hill estate and the Cressingham Gardens estate west of Brockwell Park. The boundary skirted the Tulse Hill district centre, following Hardel Rise, Christchurch Road and Norwood Road, and then ran along Leigham Vale and Leigham Court Road. The southern and western constituency boundaries followed Lambeth's borough boundaries with Croydon, Merton and Wandsworth.
=== Historic boundaries ===
The constituency of Streatham was contested under this name at the 1918 general election, when it approximately followed the historic parish boundaries of Streatham, including a substantial part of Balham, a 19th-century founded and primarily urban parish by that time.
The constituency was carved out of the former constituency of Wandsworth in the same way as Putney, Wandsworth Central and Balham and Tooting under the Representation of the People Act 1918, the fourth major UK reform, that settled upon single member constituencies, and roughly equal electorates.
The 1918 boundaries remained unchanged until the 1965 changes to Greater London local government became reflected in the parliamentary constituencies, at the February 1974 general election. This resulted in a net reduction in the size of the area. The western district Streatham Park (location of the Streatham Conservative Club) and the remainder of Furzedown ward went into the Tooting seat.
The rest of the constituency, including the town of Streatham has since 1965 been in the London Borough of Lambeth. Three other constituencies covered Lambeth from 1974, Vauxhall, Norwood and Lambeth Central. The Clapham constituency was abolished as part of the 1974 changes. The Clapham Park area and Hyde Farm (commonly thought of as part of Balham) came into the Streatham seat, whereas the rest of Clapham went into the Vauxhall seat creating an enduring split.
On abolition of Lambeth Central at the 1983 election, the constituency gained much of southern Brixton. Following further population decline, Lambeth was paired with Southwark in the next boundary review, and from the 1997 election, Streatham constituency gained areas around Tulse Hill from the former Norwood constituency, the rest of which became part of Dulwich and West Norwood.
== History ==
=== Local government results ===
The constituency shared boundaries with the Streatham electoral division for election of councillors to the Greater London Council at elections in 1973, 1977 and 1981.
The local government wards in the constituency are currently represented by 20 Labour councillors, 1 Conservative councillor and 3 Green councillors, including Jonathan Bartley, the leader of the opposition on Lambeth Council, and former London MEP Scott Ainslie.
Nine Liberal Democrat councillors previously represented the wards of Streatham Hill, Streatham Wells and St Leonard's, with one additional councillor elected for Clapham Common in 2010. All Streatham wards had been represented by the Liberal Democrats from 1990 to 2014, before Labour subsequently gained seven seats from them at the 2014 council elections. The Liberal Democrats were unsuccessful in gaining any seats back at the 2018 local elections. In a 2019 Thornton Ward by-election, the Lib Dems came within 19 votes of winning the seat.
In 2018, the Conservatives held one seat and lost two to Labour in Clapham Common by a very narrow margin, whilst the Greens took the other two seats from Labour in St Leonard's.
=== Political history ===
Streatham was for a few decades solidly Tory suburbia overall: the Conservatives won Streatham when Labour gained large majorities in 1945 and 1966, and it was the only seat in the former LCC area (Inner London) apart from the Chelsea/Kensington/Westminster/City central core to remain consistently Conservative. More recently, demographic and voting pattern changes combined with unfavourable boundary changes converted Streatham into a marginal seat, then into a mid-ranking safe Labour seat.
Streatham has modestly swung against the Conservative Party since the 1980s, even more than other similar seats in South London (such as Croydon North, Dulwich and West Norwood, Lewisham East and West).
The Conservative Party lost Streatham in 1992, despite winning the general election that year with a small majority, having held it since 1918. The Conservative candidate was beaten into third place by a Liberal Democrat in 2001, and there were swings from Labour to the Liberal Democrats at the two subsequent general elections. In 2010, when the Labour incumbent, Keith Hill, retired and Chuka Umunna stood for the party, there was a serious Liberal Democrat campaign resulting in their best showing to date in the seat, but there was also a marginal increase in the Conservative vote share and Umunna was elected. The 2015 result was the re-election of Umunna, which made the seat the 96th safest of Labour's 232 seats by percentage of majority.
In 2015 the Conservatives moved into second place with a sharp increase in numerical vote share, and remained there in 2017. However, in 2019, they reverted to third place behind the Liberal Democrats.
=== 2016 European Union referendum ===
In the 2016 referendum on European Union membership, Streatham is estimated to have posted the highest proportion of support for Remain of any constituency, at 79.5%.
== Constituency profile ==
Among the most ethnically diverse constituencies, Streatham - which covered parts of Clapham, Brixton, Tulse Hill and Streatham itself - was in the south London borough of Lambeth. Only 58.2% of residents were white and it had among the most mixed race and black residents in the country, according to the 2011 Census. It also had Polish, Portuguese and Hispanic communities.
The bulk of residents were aged 25–44, with relatively few pensioners. Although it is a residential area, it is more popular with young workers than families, having good transport links into central London. Many residents rent, and there is a large social housing sector. Commercially, Streatham High Road is home to over 400 businesses, whilst a £26m ice rink and leisure centre opened in November 2013, part of continuing investment. The population is highly qualified and a high percentage are in full-time work.
As of 2016, at just over 6% of the population, Streatham (which is located in the London Borough of Lambeth), had the largest proportion of LGBT+ people in the country.
== Members of Parliament ==
== Elections ==
=== Elections in the 2010s ===
17% was the largest vote share increase in a Labour held seat for the Liberal Democrats at the 2019 general election.
=== Elections in the 2000s ===
=== Elections in the 1990s ===
=== Elections in the 1980s ===
=== Elections in the 1970s ===
=== Elections in the 1960s ===
=== Elections in the 1950s ===
=== Elections in the 1940s ===
=== Elections in the 1930s ===
=== Elections in the 1920s ===
=== Elections in the 1910s === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courteney_Cox | Courteney Cox | Courteney Bass Cox (born June 15, 1964) is an American actress and producer. She rose to international prominence by playing Monica Geller in the NBC sitcom Friends (1994–2004) and Gale Weathers in the horror film franchise Scream (1996–present). Her accolades include a Screen Actors Guild Award, nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Cox had a recurring role in the NBC sitcom Family Ties (1987–1989), and starred in the FX drama series Dirt (2007–2008), the ABC/TBS sitcom Cougar Town (2009–2015), and the Starz horror comedy series Shining Vale (2022–2023). Her film credits include the action fantasy Masters of the Universe (1987), the comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), the animated comedy Barnyard (2006), the fantasy comedy Bedtime Stories (2008), and the independent drama Mothers and Daughters (2016).
Cox owned the production company Coquette Productions, which she founded with her then-husband, David Arquette. She has directed the television drama film TalhotBlond (2012), the black comedy drama film Just Before I Go (2014), and executive produced the game show Celebrity Name Game (2014–2017).
== Early life ==
Courteney Bass Cox was born June 15, 1964, in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised there. She is a daughter of businessman Richard Lewis Cox (1931–2001) and Courteney Copeland (née Bass; 1934–2020). Cox has two older sisters, Virginia and Dorothy, and an older brother, Richard Jr. Her parents divorced in 1974 and her mother then married businessman Hunter Copeland (uncle to music promoter and business manager Ian Copeland and the Police drummer Stewart Copeland).
After graduating from Mountain Brook High School, Cox left for Mount Vernon College in Washington, D.C. (later part of George Washington University), but did not complete her architecture course, opting instead to pursue a career in modeling and acting. Cox’s father is of British (English and Scottish and Welsh) descent, and her mother had Norman and Irish ancestry; researching her family tree for the series Who Do You Think You Are?, Cox discovered she is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror and Edward I of England.
== Career ==
=== Early work ===
Cox was chosen from a casting call by director Brian De Palma to appear in the 1984 music video for Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark", as the young woman pulled onstage at the St. Paul Civic Center to dance with Springsteen. Her early television work includes a starring role as Gloria Dinallo in the short-lived NBC science fiction series Misfits of Science (1985), and guest-starring roles in the ABC comedy-drama series The Love Boat (1986) and the CBS crime drama series Murder, She Wrote (1986). She also appeared in a 1985 Tampax ad notable for making her the first person to use the word "period" in an American television commercial. She later had a recurring role as Lauren Miller, the girlfriend of Michael J. Fox's character Alex P. Keaton in the NBC comedy series Family Ties (1987–1989). Cox's early film roles include Masters of the Universe (1987), Cocoon: The Return (1988), and I'll Be Home for Christmas (1988). She also played Jewel Jagger, the tough-as-nails assistant of Larry Burrows (James Belushi), in Mr. Destiny (1990).
=== 1990s: International breakthrough ===
In 1993, Cox co-starred in the short-lived CBS sitcom The Trouble with Larry, alongside Bronson Pinchot and Perry King. The following year, shortly before the debut of the sitcom Friends, Cox starred alongside Jim Carrey in the comedy film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and as Jerry Seinfeld's girlfriend, Meryl, in the Seinfeld episode "The Wife".
In 1994, Cox was asked to audition for the starring role of Rachel Green on a new sitcom, Friends; she was cast as Monica Geller instead. At first the most famous cast member of the new show, Cox joined Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay), Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani), Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing) and David Schwimmer (Ross Geller) for what became her most famous role, lasting for ten seasons until 2004. The series is commonly referred to as one of the greatest of all sitcoms. According to the Guinness Book of World Records (2005), Cox (along with her female co-stars) became the highest-paid TV actress of all time, with her US$1 million-per-episode fee for the final two seasons of Friends. Syndication of the series earned Cox and her co-stars an estimated $20 million in annual residuals. In 1995, she was cast in Toad the Wet Sprocket's music video "Good Intentions". The song was also featured on the Friends soundtrack.
Between seasons five and six, she married David Arquette and consequently changed her name to Courteney Cox Arquette. A joke reference to this is made in the opening credits of the episode "The One After Vegas", where the rest of the cast has "Arquette" added to their names. The dedication "For Courteney and David, who did get married" – a reference to Monica and Chandler's decision not to marry in the episode – appears during the fade out to the tag scene.
Cox received further recognition and critical acclaim for her starring role as reporter Gale Weathers in the high-profile slasher horror film Scream (1996), and its sequels Scream 2 (1997) and Scream 3 (2000). The series is one of the highest grossing and critically acclaimed horror franchises of all time. Cox's character was well known for her "snappy remarks and being brilliantly bossy". She met her future ex-husband, David Arquette, who played her on-screen love interest, Dwight "Dewey" Riley, while filming the first Scream film. He also was in an episode of the TV Show Friends Cox also hosted an episode of the variety sketch series Saturday Night Live in April 1995, and appeared in the crime thriller film The Runner (1999).
=== 2000s: Continued success ===
Cox's major films during this period include the crime drama 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001) and the comedy The Shrink Is In (2001). In late 2003, Cox and Arquette produced one season of the reality television series Mix It Up. The lifestyle series, which aired on the WE cable channel, struggled with low ratings and was not renewed for a second season. After the conclusion of Friends, Cox was producer Marc Cherry's first choice to be offered a starring role as Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, but Cox was unavailable due to her pregnancy and the role later went to Teri Hatcher. A few years later, Cox signed a deal with ABC Studios (formerly Touchstone Television) to star in her own series.
She starred in the independent drama film November (2005), which had a limited theatrical release. She had a cameo appearance in the big-budget remake The Longest Yard (2005) as Lena, the girlfriend of Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler), and co-starred with Tim Allen in the critically derided Zoom (2006). Cox voiced Daisy the Cow in the animated film Barnyard (2006). A Friends reunion film was rumored to be in production following the success of Sex and the City (2008), but this was later denied by Warner Bros. and others.
Cox starred as Lucy Spiller, a cynical tabloid editor, in the FX television drama series Dirt, which premiered in 2007. Cox and her then-husband David Arquette were the executive producers of the series. The series was eventually canceled after the second season in 2008. In July 2008, Entertainment Weekly announced that Cox signed on to star in a three-episode arc for the television medical comedy series Scrubs. Also that year, she starred in the fantasy comedy film Bedtime Stories, reuniting with co-star Adam Sandler. She went to executive produce the short drama film The Butler's in Love, directed by David Arquette.
Cox guest-starred in a three-episode story arc on former Friends co-star Lisa Kudrow's web comedy series Web Therapy (2009). Also in 2009, she began her role as the star of the single-camera ABC comedy series Cougar Town, playing a newly single 40-year-old mother on the hunt for new experiences. It is notably Cox's most successful work since Friends, earning her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. The series' third season was set to premiere in November 2011 but moved to February 14, 2012. Cox directed two episodes of the series' fifteen episodes that season. The fourth season premiered on January 8, 2013. The series came to an end on March 31, 2015, after six seasons.
=== 2010s: Directorial debut and expansion ===
Cox reprised her role as Gale Weathers from the Scream trilogy for the sequel Scream 4. The film was released in theaters on April 15, 2011. She made her directorial debut and had a cameo appearance in a Lifetime television drama film TalhotBlond, which premiered on the network on June 23, 2012.
In 2014, Cox directed and produced the black comedy film Just Before I Go, starring Seann William Scott and Elisha Cuthbert. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 24, 2014, and it was released in select theaters on April 24, 2015. From 2014 to 2017, she executive produced the syndicated game show Celebrity Name Game, hosted by Craig Ferguson. It ended after three seasons. The series earned her a nomination for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show.
In 2016, Cox starred in the independent drama film Mothers and Daughters, alongside Susan Sarandon, Mira Sorvino, and Sharon Stone. The film was released to generally negative reviews on May 6, 2016. In 2019, she created and executive produced the Facebook Watch documentary series 9 Months with Courteney Cox, which focuses on "people from across the country of various race, religion, and class as they self-document their 9-month journey of pregnancy". It lasted for three seasons until 2021. In 2019, it was reported she would executive produce and star as Brittany Wagner in the Spectrum Originals adaptation of the documentary series Last Chance U.
=== 2020s: Current work ===
In 2020, she guest starred in the ABC sitcom Modern Family. Cox reunited with her Friends co-stars for a reunion special titled Friends: The Reunion, which was released on May 27, 2021, on HBO Max. The special earned Cox a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded). In the same year she launched her line of home products, named Homecourt. She also participated in the Celebrity Escape Room special to raise $150,000 for Red Nose Day.
Cox reprised her role as Gale Weathers for the fifth Scream film, which was directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. The film was released on January 14, 2022, to box office success and positive reviews. Also in 2022, she signed on to star alongside Greg Kinnear in the Starz horror comedy series Shining Vale, from creators Sharon Horgan and Jeff Astrof; she plays Patricia "Pat" Phelps, who moves her family "from the 'crazy' of the city to a large, old house in the suburbs where evil and humor collide."
Cox again reprised her role as Gale Weathers for the sixth Scream film, which she also executive produced. The film was released on March 9, 2023, to box office success and positive reviews. Also in 2023, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
== Personal life ==
Cox dated actor Michael Keaton from 1989 to 1995. Cox married her Scream co-star David Arquette on June 12, 1999, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The couple have a daughter, born in June 2004. Jennifer Aniston is her godmother. Cox revealed that she suffered from postpartum depression six months after the birth of her child. On October 11, 2010, Cox and Arquette announced that they had separated, although they still maintain a close friendship and ongoing business relationship in Coquette Productions. In June 2012, Arquette filed for divorce after nearly two years of separation from Cox. The divorce became final in May 2014. Cox began dating Snow Patrol band member Johnny McDaid in late 2013. The couple announced their engagement in June 2014. Soon afterward they called off the engagement, but they have remained a couple.
In 2017, Cox was the subject of an episode of the television programme Who Do You Think You Are?, during which she learned that she is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror.
In 2020, Cox said that she did not remember much about the episode plots of Friends and that she had begun binge-watching the show. Cox is a practitioner of Budokan karate.
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
=== Television ===
=== Music videos ===
== Awards and honors ==
=== Accolades ===
=== Honors ===
1995: Honored as the Female Discovery of the Year by the Golden Apple Awards.
2010: Honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Women's Image Network.
2010: Honored with the Lucy Award by the Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards.
2023: Honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV | Louis XIV | Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715) was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. He is a symbol of the Age of Absolutism in Europe for styling himself as Le Roi Soleil ('The Sun King'), which portrayed him as a total ruler. He presided over a great expansion of the French colonial empire and a patronage of arts in his court at the Palace of Versailles that defined the Baroque style of French architecture. His reign of 72 years and 110 days remains the longest of any monarch in history.
Louis XIV began his personal rule of France in 1661 after the death of his chief minister Cardinal Mazarin. A believer in the divine right of kings, Louis XIV continued Louis XIII's work of creating a centralized state governed from a capital. Louis XIV sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France by compelling many members of the nobility to reside at his lavish Palace of Versailles. In doing so, he succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many of whom had participated in the Fronde rebellions during his minority. He consolidated a system of absolute monarchy in France that endured until the French Revolution. Louis XIV enforced uniformity of religion under the Catholic Church. His revocation of the Edict of Nantes abolished the rights of the Huguenot Protestant minority and subjected them to a wave of dragonnades, effectively forcing Huguenots to emigrate or convert, virtually destroying the French Protestant community.
During Louis' long reign, France emerged as the leading European power and regularly made war. A conflict with Spain marked his entire childhood, while during his personal rule, Louis fought three major continental conflicts, each against powerful foreign alliances: the Franco-Dutch War, the Nine Years' War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. In addition, France contested shorter wars such as the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined Louis's foreign policy, impelled by his personal ambition for glory and power: "a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique". His wars strained France's resources to the utmost, while in peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. Upon his death in 1715, Louis XIV left his great-grandson and successor, Louis XV, a powerful but war-weary kingdom, in major debt after the War of the Spanish Succession that had raged on since 1701.
Some of his other notable achievements include the construction of the 240 km (150 mi) Canal du Midi in Southern France, the patronage of artists (the playwrights Molière, Racine, the man of letters Boileau, the composer and dancer Lully, the painter Le Brun and the landscape architect Le Nôtre, all contributed to the apogee of French classicism, described during his lifetime as the "Grand Siècle", or even "the century of Louis XIV"), and the founding of the French Academy of Sciences.
== Early years ==
Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was named Louis Dieudonné (Louis the God-given) and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin. At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years. His mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as a divine gift and his birth a miracle.
Louis' relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time. Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre. This long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis' journal entries, such as:
Nature was responsible for the first knots which tied me to my mother. But attachments formed later by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed merely by blood.
It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule.
During his childhood, he was taken care of by the governesses Françoise de Lansac and Marie-Catherine de Senecey. In 1646, Nicolas V de Villeroy became the young king's tutor. Louis XIV became friends with Villeroy's young children, particularly François de Villeroy, and divided his time between the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hotel de Villeroy.
== Minority and the Fronde ==
=== Accession ===
Sensing imminent death in the spring of 1643, King Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order for his four-year-old son Louis XIV. Not trusting the judgement of his Spanish wife Queen Anne, who would normally have become the sole regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf, with Anne at its head.
Louis XIII died on 14 May 1643. On 18 May Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement of Paris, a judicial body of nobles and high-ranking clergy, and she became sole regent. She exiled her husband's ministers Chavigny and Bouthilier and appointed the Count of Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs. Anne kept the direction of religious policy strongly in hand until her son's majority in 1661.
She appointed Cardinal Mazarin as chief minister, giving him the daily administration of policy. She continued the policies of her late husband and Cardinal Richelieu, despite their persecution of her, in order to win absolute authority in France and victory abroad for her son. Anne protected Mazarin by exiling her followers the Duke of Beaufort and Marie de Rohan, who conspired against him in 1643.
The best example of Anne's loyalty to France was her treatment of one of Richelieu's men, the Chancellor Pierre Séguier. Séguier had brusquely interrogated Anne in 1637 (like a "common criminal", as she recalled) following the discovery that she was giving military secrets to her father in Spain, and Anne was virtually under house arrest for years. By keeping the effective Séguier in his post, Anne sacrificed her own feelings for the interests of France and her son Louis.
The Queen sought a lasting peace between Catholic nations, but only after a French victory over her native Spain. She also gave a partial Catholic orientation to French foreign policy. This was felt by the Netherlands, France's Protestant ally, which negotiated a separate peace with Spain in 1648.
In 1648, Anne and Mazarin successfully negotiated the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War in which France had actively taken part to further its interests. Its terms formally confirmed the extensive autonomy that the various states of the Holy Roman Empire had enjoyed before the war. It granted Sweden seats on the Imperial Diet and territories controlling the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser Rivers. France, however, profited most from the settlement. Austria, ruled by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III, ceded all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace to France and acknowledged her de facto sovereignty over the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Moreover, many petty German states sought French protection, eager to emancipate themselves from Habsburg domination. This anticipated the formation of the 1658 League of the Rhine, which further diminished Imperial power.
=== Early acts ===
As the Thirty Years' War came to an end, a civil war known as the Fronde erupted in France. It effectively checked France's ability to exploit the Peace of Westphalia. Anne and Mazarin had largely pursued the policies of Cardinal Richelieu, augmenting the Crown's power at the expense of the nobility and the Parlements. Anne was more concerned with internal policy than foreign affairs; she was a very proud queen who insisted on the divine rights of the King of France.
All this led her to advocate a forceful policy in all matters relating to the King's authority, in a manner that was much more radical than the one proposed by Mazarin. The Cardinal depended totally on Anne's support and had to use all his influence on the Queen to temper some of her radical actions. Anne imprisoned any aristocrat or member of parliament who challenged her will; her main aim was to transfer to her son an absolute authority in the matters of finance and justice. One of the leaders of the Parlement of Paris, whom she had jailed, died in prison.
The Frondeurs, political heirs of the disaffected feudal aristocracy, sought to protect their traditional feudal privileges from the increasingly centralized royal government. Furthermore, they believed their traditional influence and authority was being usurped by the recently ennobled bureaucrats (the Noblesse de Robe, or "nobility of the robe"), who administered the kingdom and on whom the monarchy increasingly began to rely. This belief intensified the nobles' resentment.
In 1648, Anne and Mazarin attempted to tax members of the Parlement de Paris. The members refused to comply and ordered all of the king's earlier financial edicts burned. Buoyed by the victory of Louis, duke of Enghien (later known as le Grand Condé) at the Battle of Lens, Mazarin, on Queen Anne's insistence, arrested certain members in a show of force. The most important arrest, from Anne's point of view, concerned Pierre Broussel, one of the most important leaders in the Parliament of Paris.
People in France were complaining about the expansion of royal authority, the high rate of taxation, and the reduction of the authority of the Parlement de Paris and other regional representative entities. Paris erupted in rioting as a result, and Anne was forced, under intense pressure, to free Broussel. Moreover, on the night of 9–10 February 1651, when Louis was twelve, a mob of angry Parisians broke into the royal palace and demanded to see their king. Led into the royal bed-chamber, they gazed upon Louis, who was feigning sleep, were appeased, and then quietly departed. The threat to the royal family prompted Anne to flee Paris with the king and his courtiers.
Shortly thereafter, the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia allowed Condé's army to return to aid Louis and his court. Condé's family was close to Anne at that time, and he agreed to help her attempt to restore the king's authority. The queen's army, headed by Condé, attacked the rebels in Paris; the rebels were under the political control of Anne's old friend Marie de Rohan. Beaufort, who had escaped from the prison where Anne had incarcerated him five years before, was the military leader in Paris, under the nominal control of Conti. After a few battles, a political compromise was reached; the Peace of Rueil was signed, and the court returned to Paris.
Unfortunately for Anne, her partial victory depended on Condé, who wanted to control the queen and destroy Mazarin's influence. It was Condé's sister who pushed him to turn against the queen. After striking a deal with her old friend Marie de Rohan, who was able to impose the nomination of Charles de l'Aubespine, marquess of Châteauneuf as minister of justice, Anne arrested Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, and the husband of their sister Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, duchess of Longueville. This situation did not last long, and Mazarin's unpopularity led to the creation of a coalition headed mainly by Marie de Rohan and the duchess of Longueville. This aristocratic coalition was strong enough to liberate the princes, exile Mazarin, and impose a condition of virtual house arrest on Queen Anne.
All these events were witnessed by Louis and largely explained his later distrust of Paris and the higher aristocracy. "In one sense, Louis's childhood came to an end with the outbreak of the Fronde. It was not only that life became insecure and unpleasant – a fate meted out to many children in all ages – but that Louis had to be taken into the confidence of his mother and Mazarin on political and military matters of which he could have no deep understanding". "The family home became at times a near-prison when Paris had to be abandoned, not in carefree outings to other chateaux but in humiliating flights". The royal family was driven out of Paris twice in this manner, and at one point Louis XIV and Anne were held under virtual arrest in the royal palace in Paris. The Fronde years planted in Louis a hatred of Paris and a consequent determination to move out of the ancient capital as soon as possible, never to return.
Just as the first Fronde (the Parliamentary Fronde of 1648–1649) ended, a second one (the Fronde of the Princes of 1650–1653) began. Unlike that which preceded it, tales of sordid intrigue and half-hearted warfare characterized this second phase of upper-class insurrection. To the aristocracy, this rebellion represented a protest for the reversal of their political demotion from vassals to courtiers. It was headed by the highest-ranking French nobles, among them Louis's uncle Gaston, Duke of Orléans and first cousin Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, known as la Grande Mademoiselle; Princes of the Blood such as Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, and their sister the Duchess of Longueville; dukes of legitimised royal descent, such as Henri, Duke of Longueville, and François, Duke of Beaufort; so-called "foreign princes" such as Frédéric Maurice, Duke of Bouillon, his brother Turenne (the Marshal of France), and Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse; and scions of France's oldest families, such as François de La Rochefoucauld.
Queen Anne played the most important role in defeating the Fronde because she wanted to transfer absolute authority to her son. In addition, most of the princes refused to deal with Mazarin, who went into exile for a number of years. The Frondeurs claimed to act on Louis's behalf, and in his real interest, against his mother and Mazarin.
Queen Anne had a very close relationship with the Cardinal, and many observers believed that Mazarin became Louis XIV's stepfather by a secret marriage to Queen Anne. However, Louis's coming-of-age and subsequent coronation deprived them of the Frondeurs' pretext for revolt. The Fronde thus gradually lost steam and ended in 1653, when Mazarin returned triumphantly from exile. From that time until his death, Mazarin was in charge of foreign and financial policy without the daily supervision of Anne, who was no longer regent.
During this period, Louis fell in love with Mazarin's niece Marie Mancini, but Anne and Mazarin ended the king's infatuation by sending Mancini away from court to be married in Italy. While Mazarin might have been tempted for a short time to marry his niece to the King of France, Queen Anne was absolutely against this; she wanted to marry her son to the daughter of her brother, Philip IV of Spain, for both dynastic and political reasons. Mazarin soon supported the Queen's position because he knew that her support for his power and his foreign policy depended on making peace with Spain from a strong position and on the Spanish marriage. Additionally, Mazarin's relations with Marie Mancini were not good, and he did not trust her to support his position. All of Louis's tears and his supplications to his mother did not make her change her mind. The Spanish marriage would be very important both for its role in ending the war between France and Spain, because many of the claims and objectives of Louis's foreign policy for the next 50 years would be based upon this marriage, and because it was through this marriage that the Spanish throne would ultimately be delivered to the House of Bourbon.
== Personal reign and reforms ==
=== Coming of age and early reforms ===
Louis XIV was declared to have reached the age of majority on the 7th of September 1651. On the death of Mazarin, in March 1661, Louis personally took the reins of government and astonished his court by declaring that he would rule without a chief minister:
Up to this moment I have been pleased to entrust the government of my affairs to the late Cardinal. It is now time that I govern them myself. You [secretaries and ministers] will assist me with your counsels when I ask for them. I request and order you to seal no orders except by my command ... I order you not to sign anything, not even a passport ... without my command; to render account to me personally each day and to favor no one.
Capitalizing on the widespread public yearning for peace and order after decades of foreign and civil strife, the young king consolidated central political authority at the expense of the feudal aristocracy. Praising his ability to choose and encourage men of talent, the historian Chateaubriand noted: "it is the voice of genius of all kinds which sounds from the tomb of Louis".
Louis began his personal reign with administrative and fiscal reforms. In 1661, the treasury verged on bankruptcy. To rectify the situation, Louis chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Controller-General of Finances in 1665. However, Louis first had to neutralize Nicolas Fouquet, the powerful Superintendent of Finances. Although Fouquet's financial indiscretions were not very different from Mazarin's before him or Colbert's after him, his ambition worried Louis. He lavishly entertained the king at the opulent château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, flaunting a wealth which could hardly have accumulated except through embezzlement of government funds.
Fouquet appeared eager to succeed Mazarin and Richelieu in power, and he indiscreetly purchased and privately fortified the remote island of Belle Île. These acts sealed his doom. Fouquet was charged with embezzlement; the Parlement found him guilty and sentenced him to exile; and finally Louis altered the sentence to life imprisonment.
Fouquet's downfall gave Colbert a free hand to reduce the national debt through more efficient taxation. The principal taxes included the aides and douanes (both customs duties), the gabelle (salt tax), and the taille (land tax). The taille was reduced at first, and certain tax-collection contracts were auctioned instead of being sold privately to a favoured few. Financial officials were required to keep regular accounts, revising inventories and removing unauthorized exemptions: up to 1661 only 10 per cent of income from the royal domain reached the king. Reform had to overcome vested interests: the taille was collected by officers of the Crown who had purchased their post at a high price, and punishment of abuses necessarily lowered the value of the purchase. Nevertheless, Colbert achieved excellent results, with the deficit of 1661 turning into a surplus by 1666, with interest on the debt decreasing from 52 million to 24 million livres. The taille was reduced to 42 million in 1661 and 35 million in 1665, while revenue from indirect taxation progressed from 26 million to 55 million. The revenues of the royal domain were raised from 80,000 livres in 1661 to 5.5 million in 1671. In 1661, the receipts were equivalent to 26 million British pounds, of which 10 million reached the treasury. The expenditure was around 18 million pounds, leaving a deficit of 8 million. In 1667, the net receipts had risen to 20 million pounds sterling, while expenditure had fallen to 11 million, leaving a surplus of 9 million pounds.
Money was the essential support of the reorganized and enlarged army, the panoply of Versailles, and the growing civil administration. Finance had always been the weakness of the French monarchy: tax collection was costly and inefficient; direct taxes dwindled as they passed through the hands of many intermediate officials; and indirect taxes were collected by private contractors called tax farmers who made a handsome profit.
The main economic weakness arose from an old bargain between the French crown and nobility: the king might raise taxes on the nation without consent if only he exempted the nobility. Only the "unprivileged" classes paid direct taxes, which came to mean the peasants only, as most bourgeois finagled exemptions in one way or another. The system laid the whole burden of state expenses on the backs of the poor and powerless. After 1700, with the support of Louis's pious secret wife Madame de Maintenon, the king was persuaded to change his fiscal policy. Though willing enough to tax the nobles, Louis feared the political concessions which they would demand in return. Only towards the close of his reign under the extreme exigency of war, was he able, for the first time in French history, to impose direct taxes on the aristocracy. This was a step toward equality before the law and toward sound public finance, though it was predictably diminished by concessions and exemptions won by the insistent efforts of nobles and bourgeois.
Louis and Colbert also had wide-ranging plans to grow French commerce and trade. Colbert's mercantilist administration established new industries and encouraged manufacturers and inventors, such as the Lyon silk manufacturers and the Gobelins tapestry manufactory. He invited manufacturers and artisans from all over Europe to France, such as Murano glassmakers, Swedish ironworkers, and Dutch shipbuilders. He aimed to decrease imports while increasing French exports, hence reducing the net outflow of precious metals from France.
Louis instituted reforms in military administration through Michel le Tellier and his son François-Michel le Tellier, successive Marquis de Louvois. They helped to curb the independent spirit of the nobility, imposing order on them at court and in the army. Gone were the days when generals protracted war at the frontiers while bickering over precedence and ignoring orders from the capital and the larger strategic picture, with the old military aristocracy (noblesse d'épée, nobility of the sword) monopolizing senior military positions and the higher ranks. Louvois modernized the army and reorganised it into a professional, disciplined, well-trained force. He was devoted to the soldiers' material well-being and morale, and even tried to direct campaigns.
=== Relations with the major colonies ===
Louis's legal reforms were enacted in his numerous Great Ordinances. Prior to that, France was a patchwork of legal systems, with as many traditional legal regimes as there were provinces, and two co-existing legal systems—customary law in the north and Roman civil law in the south. The Great Ordinance of Civil Procedure of 1667, the Code Louis, was a comprehensive legal code imposing a uniform regulation of civil procedure throughout the kingdom. Among other things, it prescribed baptismal, marriage and death records in the state's registers, not the church's, and it strictly regulated the right of the Parlements to remonstrate. The Code Louis later became the basis for the Napoleonic Code, which in turn inspired many modern legal codes.
One of Louis's more infamous decrees was the Great Ordinance on the Colonies of 1685, the Code Noir (black code). Although it sanctioned slavery, it attempted to humanise the practice by prohibiting the separation of families. Additionally, in the colonies, only Roman Catholics could own slaves, and these had to be baptised.
Louis ruled through a number of councils:
Conseil d'en haut ("High Council", concerning the most important matters of state)—composed of the king, the crown prince, the controller-general of finances, and the secretaries of state in charge of various departments. The members of that council were called ministers of state.
Conseil des dépêches ("Council of Messages", concerning notices and administrative reports from the provinces).
Conseil de Conscience ("Council of Conscience", concerning religious affairs and episcopal appointments).
Conseil royal des finances ("Royal Council of Finances") headed by the chef du conseil des finances (an honorary post in most cases)—this was one of the few posts in the council available to the high aristocracy.
== Early wars in the Low Countries ==
=== Spain ===
The death of Louis's maternal uncle King Philip IV of Spain in 1665 precipitated the War of Devolution. In 1660, Louis had married Philip IV's eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, as one of the provisions of the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees. The marriage treaty specified that Maria Theresa was to renounce all claims to Spanish territory for herself and all her descendants. Mazarin and Lionne, however, made the renunciation conditional on the full payment of a Spanish dowry of 500,000 écus. The dowry was never paid and would later play a part persuading his maternal first cousin Charles II of Spain to leave his empire to Philip, Duke of Anjou (later Philip V of Spain), the grandson of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa.
The War of Devolution did not focus on the payment of the dowry; rather, the lack of payment was what Louis XIV used as a pretext for nullifying Maria Theresa's renunciation of her claims, allowing the land to "devolve" to him. In Brabant (the location of the land in dispute), children of first marriages traditionally were not disadvantaged by their parents' remarriages and still inherited property. Louis's wife was Philip IV's daughter by his first marriage, while the new king of Spain, Charles II, was his son by a subsequent marriage. Thus, Brabant allegedly "devolved" to Maria Theresa, justifying France to attack the Spanish Netherlands.
=== Relations with the Dutch ===
During the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648) with Spain, France supported the Dutch Republic as part of a general policy of opposing Habsburg power. Johan de Witt, Dutch Grand Pensionary from 1653 to 1672, viewed this as crucial for Dutch security and a counterweight against his domestic Orangist opponents. Louis provided support in the 1665-1667 Second Anglo-Dutch War but used the opportunity to launch the War of Devolution in 1667. This captured Franche-Comté and much of the Spanish Netherlands; French expansion in this area was a direct threat to Dutch economic interests.
The Dutch opened talks with Charles II of England on a common diplomatic front against France, leading to the Triple Alliance, between England, the Dutch and Sweden. The threat of an escalation and a secret treaty to divide Spanish possessions with Emperor Leopold, the other major claimant to the throne of Spain, led Louis to relinquish many of his gains in the 1668 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Louis placed little reliance on his agreement with Leopold and as it was now clear French and Dutch aims were in direct conflict, he decided to first defeat the Republic, then seize the Spanish Netherlands. This required breaking up the Triple Alliance; he paid Sweden to remain neutral and signed the 1670 Secret Treaty of Dover with Charles, an Anglo-French alliance against the Dutch Republic. In May 1672, France invaded the Republic, supported by Münster and the Electorate of Cologne.
Rapid French advance led to a coup that toppled De Witt and brought William III to power. Leopold viewed French expansion into the Rhineland as an increasing threat, especially after they seized the strategic Duchy of Lorraine in 1670. The prospect of Dutch defeat led Leopold to an alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia on 23 June, followed by another with the Republic on 25th. Although Brandenburg was forced out of the war by the June 1673 Treaty of Vossem, in August an anti-French alliance was formed by the Dutch, Spain, Emperor Leopold and the Duke of Lorraine.
The French alliance was deeply unpopular in England, and only more so after the disappointing battles against Michiel de Ruyter's fleet. Charles II of England made peace with the Dutch in the February 1674 Treaty of Westminster. However, French armies held significant advantages over their opponents; an undivided command, talented generals like Turenne, Condé and Luxembourg and vastly superior logistics. Reforms introduced by Louvois, the Secretary of War, helped maintain large field armies that could be mobilised much more quickly, allowing them to mount offensives in early spring before their opponents were ready.
The French were nevertheless forced to retreat from most of the Dutch Republic, which deeply shocked Louis; he retreated to St Germain for a time, where no one, except a few intimates, was allowed to disturb him. French military advantages allowed them however to hold their ground in Alsace and the Spanish Netherlands while retaking Franche-Comté. By 1678, mutual exhaustion led to the Treaty of Nijmegen, which was generally settled in France's favour and allowed Louis to intervene in the Scanian War. Despite the military defeat, his ally Sweden regained much of what it had lost under the 1679 treaties of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Fontainebleau and Lund imposed on Denmark–Norway and Brandenburg. Yet Louis's two primary goals, the destruction of the Dutch Republic and the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands, had failed.
Louis was at the height of his power, but at the cost of uniting his opponents; this increased as he continued his expansion. In 1679, he dismissed his foreign minister Simon Arnauld, marquis de Pomponne, because he was seen as having compromised too much with the allies. Louis maintained the strength of his army, but in his next series of territorial claims avoided using military force alone. Rather, he combined it with legal pretexts in his efforts to augment the boundaries of his kingdom. Contemporary treaties were intentionally phrased ambiguously. Louis established the Chambers of Reunion to determine the full extent of his rights and obligations under those treaties.
Cities and territories, such as Luxembourg and Casale, were prized for their strategic positions on the frontier and access to important waterways. Louis also sought Strasbourg, an important strategic crossing on the left bank of the Rhine and theretofore a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire, annexing it and other territories in 1681. Although a part of Alsace, Strasbourg was not part of Habsburg-ruled Alsace and was thus not ceded to France in the Peace of Westphalia.
Following these annexations, Spain declared war, precipitating the War of the Reunions. However, the Spanish were rapidly defeated because the Emperor (distracted by the Great Turkish War) abandoned them, and the Dutch only supported them minimally. By the Truce of Ratisbon, in 1684, Spain was forced to acquiesce in the French occupation of most of the conquered territories, for 20 years.
Louis's policy of the Réunions may have raised France to its greatest size and power during his reign, but it alienated much of Europe. This poor public opinion was compounded by French actions off the Barbary Coast and at Genoa. First, Louis had Algiers and Tripoli, two Barbary pirate strongholds, bombarded to obtain a favourable treaty and the liberation of Christian slaves. Next, in 1684, a punitive mission was launched against Genoa in retaliation for its support for Spain in previous wars. Although the Genoese submitted, and the Doge led an official mission of apology to Versailles, France gained a reputation for brutality and arrogance. European apprehension at growing French might and the realisation of the extent of the dragonnades' effect (discussed below) led many states to abandon their alliances with France. Accordingly, by the late 1680s, France became increasingly isolated in Europe.
=== Non-European relations and the colonies ===
French colonies multiplied in Africa, the Americas, and Asia during Louis's reign, and French explorers made important discoveries in North America. In 1673, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette discovered the Mississippi River. In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, followed the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the vast Mississippi basin in Louis's name, calling it Louisiane. French trading posts were also established in India, at Chandernagore and Pondicherry, and in the Indian Ocean at Île Bourbon. Throughout these regions, Louis and Colbert embarked on an extensive program of architecture and urbanism meant to reflect the styles of Versailles and Paris and the 'gloire' of the realm.
Meanwhile, diplomatic relations were initiated with distant countries. In 1669, Suleiman Aga led an Ottoman embassy to revive the old Franco-Ottoman alliance. Then, in 1682, after the reception of the Moroccan embassy of Mohammed Tenim in France, Moulay Ismail, Sultan of Morocco, allowed French consular and commercial establishments in his country. In 1699, Louis once again received a Moroccan ambassador, Abdallah bin Aisha, and in 1715, he received a Persian embassy led by Mohammad Reza Beg.
From farther afield, Siam dispatched an embassy in 1684, reciprocated by the French magnificently the next year under Alexandre, Chevalier de Chaumont. This, in turn, was succeeded by another Siamese embassy under Kosa Pan, superbly received at Versailles in 1686. Louis then sent another embassy in 1687, under Simon de la Loubère, and French influence grew at the Siamese court, which granted Mergui as a naval base to France. However, the death of Narai, King of Ayutthaya, the execution of his pro-French minister Constantine Phaulkon, and the siege of Bangkok in 1688 ended this era of French influence.
France also attempted to participate actively in Jesuit missions to China. To break the Portuguese dominance there, Louis sent Jesuit missionaries to the court of the Kangxi Emperor in 1685: Jean de Fontaney, Joachim Bouvet, Jean-François Gerbillon, Louis Le Comte, and Claude de Visdelou. Louis also received a Chinese Jesuit, Michael Shen Fu-Tsung, at Versailles in 1684. Furthermore, Louis's librarian and translator Arcadio Huang was Chinese.
== Height of power ==
=== Centralisation of power ===
By the early 1680s, Louis had greatly augmented French influence in the world. Domestically, he successfully increased the influence of the crown and its authority over the church and aristocracy, thus consolidating absolute monarchy in France.
Louis initially supported traditional Gallicanism, which limited papal authority in France, and convened an Assembly of the French clergy in November 1681. Before its dissolution eight months later, the Assembly had accepted the Declaration of the Clergy of France, which increased royal authority at the expense of papal power. Without royal approval, bishops could not leave France, and appeals could not be made to the pope. Additionally, government officials could not be excommunicated for acts committed in pursuance of their duties. Although the king could not make ecclesiastical law, all papal regulations without royal assent were invalid in France. Unsurprisingly, the Pope repudiated the Declaration.
By attaching nobles to his court at Versailles, Louis achieved increased control over the French aristocracy. According to historian Philip Mansel, the king turned the palace into:
an irresistible combination of marriage market, employment agency and entertainment capital of aristocratic Europe, boasting the best theatre, opera, music, gambling, sex and (most important) hunting.
Apartments were built to house those willing to pay court to the king. However, the pensions and privileges necessary to live in a style appropriate to their rank were only possible by waiting constantly on Louis. For this purpose, an elaborate court ritual was created wherein the king became the centre of attention and was observed throughout the day by the public. With his excellent memory, Louis could then see who attended him at court and who was absent, facilitating the subsequent distribution of favours and positions. Another tool Louis used to control his nobility was censorship, which often involved the opening of letters to discern their author's opinion of the government and king. Moreover, by entertaining, impressing, and domesticating them with extravagant luxury and other distractions, Louis not only cultivated public opinion of him, but he also ensured the aristocracy remained under his scrutiny.
Louis's extravagance at Versailles extended far beyond the scope of elaborate court rituals. He took delivery of an African elephant as a gift from the king of Portugal. He encouraged leading nobles to live at Versailles. This, along with the prohibition of private armies, prevented them from passing time on their own estates and in their regional power bases, from which they historically waged local wars and plotted resistance to royal authority. Louis thus compelled and seduced the old military aristocracy (the "nobility of the sword") into becoming his ceremonial courtiers, further weakening their power. In their place, he raised commoners or the more recently ennobled bureaucratic aristocracy (the "nobility of the robe"). He judged that royal authority thrived more surely by filling high executive and administrative positions with these men because they could be more easily dismissed than nobles of ancient lineage and entrenched influence. It is believed that Louis's policies were rooted in his experiences during the Fronde, when men of high birth readily took up the rebel cause against their king, who was actually the kinsman of some. This victory over the nobility may thus have ensured the end of major civil wars in France until the French Revolution about a century later.
=== France as the pivot of warfare ===
Under Louis, France was the leading European power, and most wars pivoted around its aggressiveness. No European state exceeded it in population, and no one could match its wealth, central location, and very strong professional army. It had largely avoided the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. Its weaknesses included an inefficient financial system that was hard-pressed to pay for its military adventures, and the tendency of most other powers to gang up against it.
During Louis's reign, France fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the Nine Years' War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. There were also two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. The wars were very expensive but defined Louis XIV's foreign policy, and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled "by a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique", Louis sensed that war was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime, he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. By 1695, France retained much of its dominance but had lost control of the seas to England and Holland, and most countries, both Protestant and Catholic, were in alliance against it. Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, France's leading military strategist, warned Louis in 1689 that a hostile "Alliance" was too powerful at sea. He recommended that France fight back by licensing French merchant ships to privateer and seize enemy merchant ships while avoiding its navies:
France has its declared enemies Germany and all the states that it embraces; Spain with all its dependencies in Europe, Asia, Africa and America; the Duke of Savoy [in Italy], England, Scotland, Ireland, and all their colonies in the East and West Indies; and Holland with all its possessions in the four corners of the world where it has great establishments. France has ... undeclared enemies, indirectly hostile, hostile, and envious of its greatness, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Venice, Genoa, and part of the Swiss Confederation, all of which states secretly aid France's enemies by the troops that they hire to them, the money they lend them and by protecting and covering their trade.
Vauban was pessimistic about France's so-called friends and allies:
For lukewarm, useless, or impotent friends, France has the Pope, who is indifferent; the King of England [James II] expelled from his country; the Grand Duke of Tuscany; the Dukes of Mantua, Modena, and Parma [all in Italy]; and the other faction of the Swiss. Some of these are sunk in the softness that comes of years of peace, the others are cool in their affections....The English and Dutch are the main pillars of the Alliance; they support it by making war against us in concert with the other powers, and they keep it going by means of the money that they pay every year to... Allies.... We must therefore fall back on privateering as the method of conducting war which is most feasible, simple, cheap, and safe, and which will cost least to the state, the more so since any losses will not be felt by the King, who risks virtually nothing....It will enrich the country, train many good officers for the King, and in a short time force his enemies to sue for peace.
== Edict of Fontainebleau ==
Louis decided to persecute Protestants and revoke the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which awarded Huguenots political and religious freedom. He saw the persistence of Protestantism as a disgraceful reminder of royal powerlessness. After all, the Edict was the pragmatic concession of his grandfather Henry IV to end the longstanding French Wars of Religion. An additional factor in Louis's thinking was the prevailing contemporary European principle to assure socio-political stability, cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion"), the idea that the religion of the ruler should be the religion of the realm (as originally confirmed in central Europe in the Peace of Augsburg of 1555).
Responding to petitions, Louis initially excluded Protestants from office, constrained the meeting of synods, closed churches outside of Edict-stipulated areas, banned Protestant outdoor preachers, and prohibited domestic Protestant migration. He also disallowed Protestant-Catholic intermarriages to which third parties objected, encouraged missions to the Protestants, and rewarded converts to Catholicism. This discrimination did not encounter much Protestant resistance, and a steady conversion of Protestants occurred, especially among the noble elites.
In 1681, Louis dramatically increased his persecution of Protestants. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio generally also meant that subjects who refused to convert could emigrate, but Louis banned emigration and effectively insisted that all Protestants must be converted. Secondly, following the proposal of René de Marillac and the Marquis of Louvois, he began quartering dragoons in Protestant homes. Although this was within his legal rights, the dragonnades inflicted severe financial strain on Protestants and atrocious abuse. Between 300,000 and 400,000 Huguenots converted, as this entailed financial rewards and exemption from the dragonnades.
On 15 October 1685, Louis issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which cited the redundancy of privileges for Protestants given their scarcity after the extensive conversions. The Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the Edict of Nantes and repealed all the privileges that arose therefrom. By his edict, Louis no longer tolerated the existence of Protestant groups, pastors, or churches in France. No further churches were to be constructed, and those already existing were to be demolished. Pastors could choose either exile or secular life. Those Protestants who had resisted conversion were now to be baptised forcibly into the established church.
Historians have debated Louis's reasons for issuing the Edict of Fontainebleau. He may have been seeking to placate Pope Innocent XI, with whom relations were tense and whose aid was necessary to determine the outcome of a succession crisis in the Electorate of Cologne. He may also have acted to upstage Emperor Leopold I and regain international prestige after the latter defeated the Turks without Louis's help. Otherwise, he may simply have desired to end the remaining divisions in French society dating to the Wars of Religion by fulfilling his coronation oath to eradicate heresy.
Many historians have condemned the Edict of Fontainebleau as gravely harmful to France. In support, they cite the emigration of about 200,000 highly skilled Huguenots (roughly one quarter of the Protestant population, or 1% of the French population) who defied royal decrees and fled France for various Protestant states, weakening the French economy and enriching that of Protestant states. On the other hand, some historians view this as an exaggeration. They argue that most of France's preeminent Protestant businessmen and industrialists converted to Catholicism and remained.
What is certain is that the reaction to the Edict was mixed. Even while French Catholic leaders exulted, Pope Innocent XI still argued with Louis over Gallicanism and criticized the use of violence. Protestants across Europe were horrified at the treatment of their co-religionists, but most Catholics in France applauded the move. Nonetheless, it is indisputable that Louis's public image in most of Europe, especially in Protestant regions, was dealt a severe blow.
In the end, however, despite renewed tensions with the Camisards of south-central France at the end of his reign, Louis may have helped ensure that his successor would experience fewer instances of the religion-based disturbances that had plagued his forebears. French society would sufficiently change by the time of his descendant, Louis XVI, to welcome tolerance in the form of the 1787 Edict of Versailles, also known as the Edict of Tolerance. This restored to non-Catholics their civil rights and the freedom to worship openly. With the advent of the French Revolution in 1789, Protestants were granted equal rights with their Roman Catholic counterparts.
== Nine Years' War ==
=== Causes and conduct of the war ===
The Nine Years' War, which lasted from 1688 to 1697, initiated a period of decline in Louis's political and diplomatic fortunes. It arose from two events in the Rhineland. First, in 1685, the Elector Palatine Charles II died. All that remained of his immediate family was Louis's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Charlotte. German law ostensibly barred her from succeeding to her brother's lands and electoral dignity, but it was unclear enough for arguments in favour of Elizabeth Charlotte to have a chance of success. Conversely, the princess was demonstrably entitled to a division of the family's personal property. Louis pressed her claims to land and chattels, hoping the latter, at least, would be given to her. Then, in 1688, Maximilian Henry of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne, an ally of France, died. The archbishopric had traditionally been held by the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, but the Bavarian claimant to replace Maximilian Henry, Prince Joseph Clemens of Bavaria, was at that time not more than 17 years old and not even ordained. Louis sought instead to install his own candidate, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, to ensure the key Rhenish state remained an ally.
In light of his foreign and domestic policies during the early 1680s, which were perceived as aggressive, Louis's actions, fostered by the succession crises of the late 1680s, created concern and alarm in much of Europe. This led to the formation of the 1686 League of Augsburg by the Holy Roman Emperor, Spain, Sweden, Saxony, and Bavaria. Their stated intention was to return France to at least the borders agreed to in the Treaty of Nijmegen. Emperor Leopold I's persistent refusal to convert the Truce of Ratisbon into a permanent treaty fed Louis's fears that the Emperor would turn on France and attack the Reunions after settling his affairs in the Balkans.
Another event Louis found threatening was England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. Although King James II was Catholic, his two Anglican daughters, Mary and Anne, ensured the English people a Protestant succession. But when James II's son James Francis Edward Stuart was born, he took precedence in succession over his sisters. This seemed to herald an era of Catholic monarchs in England. Protestant lords called on the Dutch Prince William III of Orange, grandson of Charles I of England, to come to their aid. He sailed for England with troops despite Louis's warning that France would regard it as a provocation. Witnessing numerous desertions and defections, even among those closest to him, James II fled England. Parliament declared the throne vacant, and offered it to James's daughter Mary II and his son-in-law and nephew William. Vehemently anti-French, William (now William III of England) pushed his new kingdoms into war, thus transforming the League of Augsburg into the Grand Alliance. Before this happened, Louis expected William's expedition to England to absorb his energies and those of his allies, so he dispatched troops to the Rhineland after the expiry of his ultimatum to the German princes requiring confirmation of the Truce of Ratisbon and acceptance of his demands about the succession crises. This military manoeuvre was also intended to protect his eastern provinces from Imperial invasion by depriving the enemy army of sustenance, thus explaining the preemptive scorched earth policy pursued in much of southwestern Germany (the "Devastation of the Palatinate").
French armies were generally victorious throughout the war because of Imperial commitments in the Balkans, French logistical superiority, and the quality of French generals such as Condé's famous pupil, François Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de Luxembourg. He triumphed at the Battles of Fleurus in 1690, Steenkerque in 1692, and Landen in 1693, although, the battles proved to be of little of strategic consequence, mostly due to the nature of late 17th-century warfare.
Although an attempt to restore James II failed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, France accumulated a string of victories from Flanders in the north, Germany in the east, and Italy and Spain in the south, to the high seas and the colonies. Louis personally supervised the captures of Mons in 1691 and Namur in 1692. Luxembourg gave France the defensive line of the Sambre by capturing Charleroi in 1693. France also overran most of the Duchy of Savoy after the battles of Marsaglia and Staffarde in 1693. While naval stalemate ensued after the French victory at the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 and the Allied victory at Barfleur-La Hougue in 1692, the Battle of Torroella in 1694 exposed Catalonia to French invasion, culminating in the capture of Barcelona. The Dutch captured Pondichéry in 1693, but a 1697 French raid on the Spanish treasure port of Cartagena, Spain, yielded a fortune of 10,000,000 livres.
In July 1695, the city of Namur, occupied for three years by the French, was besieged by an allied army led by William III. Louis XIV ordered the surprise destruction of a Flemish city to divert the attention of these troops. This led to the bombardment of Brussels, in which more than 4,000 buildings were destroyed, including the entire city centre. The strategy failed, as Namur fell three weeks later, but harmed Louis XIV's reputation: a century later, Napoleon deemed the bombardment "as barbarous as it was useless".
Peace was broached by Sweden in 1690. By 1692, both sides evidently wanted peace, and secret bilateral talks began, but to no avail. Louis tried to break up the alliance against him by dealing with individual opponents but did not achieve his aim until 1696 when the Savoyards agreed to the Treaty of Turin and switched sides. Thereafter, members of the League of Augsburg rushed to the peace table, and negotiations for a general peace began in earnest, culminating in the Peace of Ryswick of 1697.
=== Peace of Ryswick ===
The Peace of Ryswick ended the War of the League of Augsburg and disbanded the Grand Alliance. By manipulating their rivalries and suspicions, Louis divided his enemies and broke their power.
The treaty yielded many benefits for France. Louis secured permanent French sovereignty over all of Alsace, including Strasbourg, and established the Rhine as the Franco-German border (as it is to this day). Pondichéry and Acadia were returned to France, and Louis's de facto possession of Saint-Domingue was recognised as lawful. However, he returned Catalonia and most of the Reunions.
French military superiority might have allowed him to press for more advantageous terms. Thus, his generosity to Spain with regard to Catalonia has been read as a concession to foster pro-French sentiment and may ultimately have induced King Charles II to name Louis's grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou, heir to the Spanish throne. In exchange for financial compensation, France renounced its interests in the Electorate of Cologne and the Palatinate. Lorraine, which had been occupied by the French since 1670, was returned to its rightful Duke Leopold, albeit with a right of way to the French military. William and Mary were recognised as joint sovereigns of the British Isles, and Louis withdrew support for James II. The Dutch were given the right to garrison forts in the Spanish Netherlands that acted as a protective barrier against possible French aggression. Though in some respects the Treaty of Ryswick may appear a diplomatic defeat for Louis since he failed to place client rulers in control of the Palatinate or the Electorate of Cologne, he did fulfil many of the aims laid down in his 1688 ultimatum. In any case, peace in 1697 was desirable to Louis, since France was exhausted from the costs of the war.
== War of the Spanish Succession ==
=== Causes and build-up to the war ===
By the time of the Peace of Ryswick, the Spanish succession had been a source of concern to European leaders for well over forty years. King Charles II ruled a vast empire comprising Spain, Naples, Sicily, Milan, the Spanish Netherlands, and numerous Spanish colonies. He produced no children, however, and consequently had no direct heirs.
The principal claimants to the throne of Spain belonged to the ruling families of France and Austria. The French claim derived from Louis XIV's mother Anne of Austria (the older sister of Philip IV of Spain) and his wife Maria Theresa (Philip IV's eldest daughter). Based on the laws of primogeniture, France had the better claim as it originated from the eldest daughters in two generations. However, their renunciation of succession rights complicated matters. In the case of Maria Theresa, nonetheless, the renunciation was considered null and void owing to Spain's breach of her marriage contract with Louis. In contrast, no renunciations tainted the claims of Emperor Leopold I's son Charles, Archduke of Austria, who was a grandson of Philip III's youngest daughter Maria Anna. The English and Dutch feared that a French or Austrian-born Spanish king would threaten the balance of power and thus preferred the Bavarian Prince Joseph Ferdinand, a grandson of Leopold I through his first wife Margaret Theresa of Spain (the younger daughter of Philip IV).
In an attempt to avoid war, Louis signed the Treaty of the Hague with William III of England in 1698. This agreement divided Spain's Italian territories between Louis's son le Grand Dauphin and Archduke Charles, with the rest of the empire awarded to Joseph Ferdinand. William III consented to permitting the Dauphin's new territories to become part of France when the latter succeeded to his father's throne. The signatories, however, omitted to consult the ruler of these lands, and Charles II was passionately opposed to the dismemberment of his empire. In 1699, he re-confirmed his 1693 will that named Joseph Ferdinand as his sole successor.
Six months later, Joseph Ferdinand died. Therefore, in 1700, Louis and William III concluded a fresh partitioning agreement, the Treaty of London. This allocated Spain, the Low Countries, and the Spanish colonies to the Archduke. The Dauphin would receive all of Spain's Italian territories. Charles II acknowledged that his empire could only remain undivided by bequeathing it entirely to a Frenchman or an Austrian. Under pressure from his German wife, Maria Anna of Neuburg, Charles II named Archduke Charles as his sole heir.
=== Acceptance of the will of Charles II and consequences ===
On his deathbed in 1700, Charles II of Spain unexpectedly changed his will. The clear demonstration of French military superiority for many decades before this time, the pro-French faction at the court of Spain, and even Pope Innocent XII convinced him that France was more likely to preserve his empire intact. He thus offered the entire empire to the Dauphin's second son Philip, Duke of Anjou, provided it remained undivided. Anjou was not in the direct line of French succession, thus his accession would not cause a Franco-Spanish union. If Anjou refused, the throne would be offered to his younger brother Charles, Duke of Berry. If the Duke of Berry declined it, it would go to Archduke Charles, then to the distantly related House of Savoy if Charles declined it.
Louis was confronted with a difficult choice. He could agree to a partition of the Spanish possessions and avoid a general war, or accept Charles II's will and alienate much of Europe. He may initially have been inclined to abide by the partition treaties, but the Dauphin's insistence persuaded him otherwise. Moreover, Louis's foreign minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Torcy, pointed out that war with the Emperor would almost certainly ensue whether Louis accepted the partition treaties or Charles II's will. He emphasised that, should it come to war, William III was unlikely to stand by France since he "made a treaty to avoid war and did not intend to go to war to implement the treaty". Indeed, in the event of war, it might be preferable to be already in control of the disputed lands. Eventually, therefore, Louis decided to accept Charles II's will. Philip, Duke of Anjou, thus became Philip V, King of Spain.
Most European rulers accepted Philip as king, some reluctantly. Depending on one's views of the war's inevitability, Louis acted reasonably or arrogantly. He confirmed that Philip V retained his French rights despite his new Spanish position. Admittedly, he may only have been hypothesising a theoretical eventuality and not attempting a Franco-Spanish union. But his actions were certainly not read as disinterested. Moreover, Louis sent troops to the Spanish Netherlands to evict Dutch garrisons and secure Dutch recognition of Philip V. In 1701, Philip transferred the asiento (the right to supply slaves to Spanish colonies) to France, as a sign of the two nations' growing connections. As tensions mounted, Louis decided to acknowledge James Stuart, the son of James II, as King of England, Scotland and Ireland on the latter's death, infuriating William III. These actions enraged Britain and the Dutch Republic. With the Holy Roman Emperor and the petty German states, they formed another Grand Alliance and declared war on France in 1702. French diplomacy secured Bavaria, Portugal, and Savoy as Franco-Spanish allies.
=== Commencement of fighting ===
Even before war was officially declared, hostilities began with Imperial aggression in Italy. Once finally declared, the War of the Spanish Succession lasted almost until Louis's death, at great cost to him and France.
The war began with French successes, but the talents of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and Eugene of Savoy checked these victories and broke the myth of French invincibility. The duo allowed the Palatinate and Austria to occupy Bavaria after their victory at the Battle of Blenheim. Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, had to flee to the Spanish Netherlands. The impact of this victory won the support of Portugal and Savoy. Later, the Battle of Ramillies delivered the Low Countries to the Allies, and the Battle of Turin forced Louis to evacuate Italy, leaving it open to Allied forces. Marlborough and Eugene met again at the Battle of Oudenarde, which enabled them to invade France.
France established contact with Francis II Rákóczi and promised support if he took up the cause of Hungarian independence.
Defeats, famine, and mounting debt greatly weakened France. Between 1693 and 1710, over two million people died in two famines, made worse as foraging armies seized food supplies from the villages. In desperation, Louis ordered a disastrous invasion of the English island of Guernsey in the autumn of 1704 with the aim of raiding their successful harvest. By the winter of 1708–09, he was willing to accept peace at nearly any cost. He agreed that the entire Spanish empire should be surrendered to Archduke Charles, and also consented to return to the frontiers of the Peace of Westphalia, giving up all the territories he had acquired over 60 years. But he could not promise that Philip V would accept these terms, so the Allies demanded that Louis single-handedly attack his grandson to force these terms on him. If he could not achieve this within the year, the war would resume. Louis would not accept these terms.
=== Turning point ===
The final phases of the War of the Spanish Succession demonstrated that the Allies could not maintain Archduke Charles in Spain just as surely as France could not retain the entire Spanish inheritance for Philip V. The Allies were definitively expelled from central Spain by the Franco-Spanish victories at the Battles of Villaviciosa and Brihuega in 1710. French forces elsewhere remained obdurate despite their defeats. The Allies suffered a Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Malplaquet with 21,000 casualties, twice that of the French. Eventually, France recovered its military pride with the decisive victory at Denain in 1712.
French military successes near the end of the war took place against the background of a changed political situation in Austria. In 1705, Emperor Leopold I died. His elder son and successor, Joseph I, followed him in 1711. His heir was none other than Archduke Charles, who secured control of all of his brother's Austrian landholdings. If the Spanish empire then fell to him, it would have resurrected a domain as vast as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's in the 16th century. To the maritime powers of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, this would have been as undesirable as a Franco-Spanish union.
=== Conclusion of peace ===
As a result of the fresh British perspective on the European balance of power, Anglo-French talks began, culminating in the 1713 Peace of Utrecht between Louis, Philip V of Spain, Anne of Great Britain, and the Dutch Republic. In 1714, after losing Landau and Freiburg, the Holy Roman Emperor also made peace with France in the Treaties of Rastatt and Baden.
In the general settlement, Philip V retained Spain and its colonies, while Austria received the Spanish Netherlands and divided Spanish Italy with Savoy. Britain kept Gibraltar and Menorca. Louis agreed to withdraw his support for James Stuart, son of James II and pretender to the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland, and ceded Newfoundland, Rupert's Land, and Acadia in the Americas to Anne. Britain gained the most from the treaty, but the final terms were much more favourable to France than those being discussed in peace negotiations in 1709 and 1710. France retained Île-Saint-Jean and Île Royale, and Louis acquired a few minor European territories, such as the Principality of Orange and the Ubaye Valley, which covered transalpine passes into Italy. Thanks to Louis, his allies the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne were restored to their prewar status and returned their lands.
== Personal life ==
=== Marriages and children ===
Louis and his wife Maria Theresa of Spain had six children from the marriage contracted for them in 1660. However, only one child, the eldest, survived to adulthood: Louis le Grand Dauphin, known as Monseigneur. Maria Theresa died in 1683, whereupon Louis remarked that she had never caused him unease on any other occasion.
Despite evidence of affection early on in their marriage, Louis was never faithful to Maria Theresa. He took a series of mistresses, both official and unofficial. Among the better documented are Louise de La Vallière (with whom he had five children; 1661–1667), Bonne de Pons d'Heudicourt (1665), Catherine Charlotte de Gramont (1665), Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan (with whom he had seven children; 1667–1680), Anne de Rohan-Chabot (1669–1675), Claude de Vin des Œillets (one child born in 1676), Isabelle de Ludres (1675–1678), and Marie Angélique de Scorailles (1679–1681), who died at age 19 in childbirth. Through these liaisons, he produced numerous illegitimate children, most of whom he married members of cadet branches of the royal family.
Louis proved relatively more faithful to his second wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon. He first met her through her work caring for his children by Madame de Montespan, noting the care she gave to his favourite, Louis Auguste, Duke of Maine. The king was, at first, put off by her strict religious practice, but he warmed to her through her care for his children.
When he legitimized his children by Madame de Montespan on 20 December 1673, Françoise d'Aubigné became the royal governess at Saint-Germain. As governess, she was one of very few people permitted to speak to him as an equal, without limits. It is believed that they were married secretly at Versailles on or around 10 October 1683 or January 1684. This marriage, though never announced or publicly discussed, was an open secret and lasted until his death.
=== Piety and religion ===
Louis was a pious and devout king who saw himself as the head and protector of the Catholic Church in France. He made his devotions daily regardless of where he was, following the liturgical calendar regularly. Under the influence of his very religious second wife, he became much stronger in the practice of his Catholic faith. This included banning opera and comedy performances during Lent.
Towards the middle and the end of his reign, the centre for the King's religious observances was usually the Chapelle Royale at Versailles. Ostentation was a distinguishing feature of his daily Mass, annual celebrations (such as those of Holy Week), and special ceremonies. Louis established the Paris Foreign Missions Society, but his informal alliance with the Ottoman Empire was criticised for undermining Christendom.
=== Patronage of the arts ===
Louis supported the royal court of France and those who worked under him. He brought the Académie Française under his patronage and became its "Protector". He promoted classical French literature by protecting such writers as Molière, Racine, and La Fontaine. Louis also patronised the visual arts by funding and commissioning artists such as Charles Le Brun, Pierre Mignard, Antoine Coysevox, and Hyacinthe Rigaud. Composers and musicians such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, and François Couperin thrived. In 1661, Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse, and in 1669, the Académie d'Opéra, important events in the evolution of ballet. He also attracted, supported and patronized such artists as André Charles Boulle, who revolutionised marquetry with his art of inlay, today known as "Boulle work". Always on the lookout for new talent, the king launched music competitions: in 1683, Michel-Richard de Lalande thus became deputy master of the Royal Chapel, composing his Symphonies for the Soupers du Roy along with 77 large scale Grand Motets.
Over the course of four building campaigns, Louis converted a hunting lodge commissioned by Louis XIII into the spectacular Palace of Versailles. Except for the current Royal Chapel (built near the end of his reign), the palace achieved much of its current appearance after the third building campaign, which was followed by an official move of the royal court to Versailles on 6 May 1682. Versailles became a dazzling, awe-inspiring setting for state affairs and the reception of foreign dignitaries. At Versailles, the king alone commanded attention.
Several reasons have been suggested for the creation of the extravagant and stately palace, as well as the relocation of the monarchy's seat. The memoirist Saint-Simon speculated that Louis viewed Versailles as an isolated power centre where treasonous cabals could be more readily discovered and foiled. There has also been speculation that the revolt of the Fronde caused Louis to hate Paris, which he abandoned for a country retreat, but his sponsorship of many public works in Paris, such as the establishment of a police force and of street-lighting, lend little credence to this theory. As a further example of his continued care for the capital, Louis constructed the Hôtel des Invalides, a military complex and home to this day for officers and soldiers rendered infirm either by injury or old age. While pharmacology was still quite rudimentary in his day, the Invalides pioneered new treatments and set new standards for hospice treatment. The conclusion of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668 also induced Louis to demolish Paris's northern walls in 1670 and replace them with wide tree-lined boulevards.
Louis renovated and improved the Louvre and other royal residences. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was originally to plan additions to the Louvre; however, his plans would have meant the destruction of much of the existing structure, replacing it with an Italian summer villa in the centre of Paris. Bernini's plans were eventually shelved in favour of the elegant Louvre Colonnade designed by three Frenchmen: Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun, and Claude Perrault. With the relocation of the court to Versailles, the Louvre was given over to the arts and the public.
During his visit from Rome, Bernini also executed a renowned portrait bust of the king.
== Image and depiction ==
Few rulers in world history have commemorated themselves in as grand a manner as Louis. He cultivated his image as the Sun King (le Roi Soleil), the centre of the universe "without equal". Louis used court ritual and the arts to validate and augment his control over France. With his support, Colbert established from the beginning of Louis's personal reign a centralised and institutionalised system for creating and perpetuating the royal image. The King was thus portrayed largely in majesty or at war, notably against Spain. This portrayal of the monarch was to be found in numerous media of artistic expression, such as painting, sculpture, theatre, dance, music, and the almanacs that diffused royal propaganda to the population at large.
=== Evolution of royal portraiture ===
Over his lifetime, Louis commissioned numerous works of art, including over 300 formal portraits. The earliest portrayals of Louis already followed the pictorial conventions of the day in depicting the child king as the majestically royal incarnation of France. This idealisation of the monarch continued in later works, which avoided depictions of the effect of smallpox that Louis contracted in 1647. In the 1660s, Louis began to be shown as a Roman emperor, the god Apollo, or Alexander the Great, as can be seen in many works of Charles Le Brun, such as sculpture, paintings, and the decor of major monuments.
Grandiose images of the king in allegorical or mythological guises followed conventions of historiated portraiture that had been common since the Renaissance. There is no better illustration of this than Hyacinthe Rigaud's 1701 Portrait of Louis XIV, where a 63-year-old Louis appears to stand on a set of unnaturally young legs.
Rigaud's portrait exemplified the height of royal portraiture during Louis's reign. Although Rigaud crafted a credible likeness of Louis, the portrait was neither meant as an exercise in realism nor to explore Louis's character. Certainly, Rigaud was concerned with detail and depicted the king's costume with great precision, down to his shoe buckle.
However, Rigaud intended to glorify the monarchy. Rigaud's original, now housed in the Louvre, was originally meant as a gift to Louis's grandson, Philip V of Spain. However, Louis was so pleased with the work that he kept the original and commissioned a copy to be sent to his grandson. That became the first of many copies, both in full and half-length formats, to be made by Rigaud, often with the help of his assistants. The portrait also became a model for French royal and imperial portraiture down to the time of Charles X over a century later. In his work, Rigaud proclaims Louis's exalted royal status through his elegant stance and haughty expression, the royal regalia and throne, rich ceremonial fleur-de-lys robes, as well as the upright column in the background, which, together with the draperies, serves to frame this image of majesty.
=== Other works of art ===
In addition to portraits, Louis commissioned at least 20 statues of himself in the 1680s, to stand in Paris and provincial towns as physical manifestations of his rule. He also commissioned "war artists" to follow him on campaigns to document his military triumphs. To remind the people of these triumphs, Louis erected permanent triumphal arches in Paris and the provinces for the first time since the decline of the Roman Empire.
Louis's reign marked the birth and infancy of the art of medallions. Sixteenth-century rulers had often issued medals in small numbers to commemorate the major events of their reigns. Louis, however, struck more than 300 to celebrate the story of the king in bronze, that were enshrined in thousands of households throughout France.
He also used tapestries as a medium of exalting the monarchy. Tapestries could be allegorical, depicting the elements or seasons, or realist, portraying royal residences or historical events. They were among the most significant means to spread royal propaganda prior to the construction of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
=== Ballet ===
Louis loved ballet and frequently danced in court ballets during the early half of his reign. In general, Louis was an eager dancer who performed 80 roles in 40 major ballets. This approaches the career of a professional ballet dancer.
His choices were strategic and varied. He danced four parts in three of Molière's comédies-ballets, which are plays accompanied by music and dance. Louis played an Egyptian in Le Mariage forcé in 1664, a Moorish gentleman in Le Sicilien in 1667, and both Neptune and Apollo in Les Amants magnifiques in 1670.
He sometimes danced leading roles that were suitably royal or godlike (such as Neptune, Apollo, or the Sun). At other times, he would adopt mundane roles before appearing at the end in the lead role. It is considered that, at all times, he provided his roles with sufficient majesty and drew the limelight with his flair for dancing. For Louis, ballet may not have merely been a tool for manipulation in his propaganda machinery. The sheer number of performances he gave as well as the diversity of roles he played may serve to indicate a deeper understanding and interest in the art form.
Ballet dancing was used by Louis as a political tool to hold power over his state. He integrated ballet deeply into court social functions and fixated his nobles' attention on upholding standards in ballet dancing, effectively distracting them from political activities. In 1661, the Royal Academy of Dance was founded by Louis to further his ambition. Pierre Beauchamp, his private dance instructor, was ordered by Louis to come up with a notation system to record ballet performances, which he did with great success. His work was adopted and published by Feuillet in 1700 as Choregraphie. This major development in ballet played an important role in promoting French culture and ballet throughout Europe during Louis's time.
Louis greatly emphasized etiquettes in ballet dancing, evidently seen in "La belle danse" (the French noble style). More challenging skills were required to perform this dance with movements very much resembling court behaviours, as a way to remind the nobles of the king's absolute power and their own status. All the details and rules were compressed in five positions of the bodies codified by Beauchamp.
=== Unofficial image ===
Besides the official depiction and image of Louis, his subjects also followed a non-official discourse consisting mainly of clandestine publications, popular songs, and rumours that provided an alternative interpretation of Louis and his government. They often focused on the miseries arising from poor government, but also carried the hope for a better future when Louis escaped the malignant influence of his ministers and mistresses, and took the government into his own hands. On the other hand, petitions addressed either directly to Louis or to his ministers exploited the traditional imagery and language of monarchy. These varying interpretations of Louis abounded in self-contradictions that reflected the people's amalgamation of their everyday experiences with the idea of monarchy.
=== In fiction ===
==== Literature ====
Alexandre Dumas portrayed Louis in his two sequels to his 1844 novel The Three Musketeers: first as a child in Twenty Years After (1845), then as a young man in The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847–1850), in which he is a central character. The final part of the latter novel recounts the legend that a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask was actually Louis's twin brother and has spawned numerous film adaptations generally titled The Man in the Iron Mask.
In 1910, the American historical novelist Charles Major wrote "The Little King: A Story of the Childhood of King Louis XIV".
Louis is a major character in the 1959 historical novel Angélique et le Roy ("Angélique and the King"), part of the Angélique series. The protagonist, a strong-willed lady at Versailles, rejects the King's advances and refuses to become his mistress. A later book, the 1961 Angélique se révolte ("Angélique in Revolt"), details the dire consequences of her defying this powerful monarch.
A character based on Louis plays an important role in The Age of Unreason, a series of four alternate history novels written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gregory Keyes.
==== Films ====
The film, The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (1966), directed by Roberto Rossellini, shows Louis's rise to power after the death of Cardinal Mazarin.
The film, Le Roi Danse (2000; translated: The King Dances), directed by Gérard Corbiau, reveals Louis through the eyes of Jean-Baptiste Lully, his court musician.
Julian Sands portrayed Louis in Roland Jaffe's Vatel (2000).
Alan Rickman directed, co-wrote, and stars as Louis XIV in the film, A Little Chaos, which centres on construction in the gardens of Versaille, at the time immediately before and after the death of Queen Maria Theresa.
The 2016 film The Death of Louis XIV, directed by Albert Serra, is set during the last two weeks of Louis XIV's life before dying of gangrene, with the monarch played by Jean-Pierre Léaud.
==== Television ====
George Blagden portrays Louis XIV in the Canal+ series Versailles which aired for three seasons from 2015.
==== Musicals ====
Emmanuel Moire portrayed Louis XIV in the 2005-07 Kamel Ouali musical Le Roi Soleil.
== Health and death ==
Despite the image of a healthy and virile king that Louis sought to project, evidence exists to suggest that his health was not very good. He had many ailments: for example, symptoms of diabetes, as confirmed in reports of suppurating periostitis in 1678, dental abscesses in 1696, along with recurring boils, fainting spells, gout, dizziness, hot flushes, and headaches.
From 1647 to 1711, the three chief physicians to the king (Antoine Vallot, Antoine d'Aquin, and Guy-Crescent Fagon) recorded all of his health problems in the Journal de Santé du Roi (Journal of the King's Health), a daily report of his health. On 18 November 1686, Louis underwent a painful operation for an anal fistula that was performed by the surgeon Charles-François Félix de Tassy, who prepared a specially shaped curved scalpel for the occasion. The wound took more than two months to heal.
Louis died of gangrene at Versailles on 1 September 1715, four days before his 77th birthday, after 72 years on the throne. Enduring much pain in his last days, he finally "yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle going out", while reciting the psalm Deus, in adjutorium me festina (O Lord, make haste to help me). His body was laid to rest in the Basilica of Saint-Denis outside Paris. It remained there undisturbed for about 80 years until revolutionaries exhumed and destroyed all of the remains found in the Basilica. In 1848, at Nuneham House, a piece of Louis's mummified heart, taken from his tomb and kept in a silver locket by Lord Harcourt, Archbishop of York, was shown to the Dean of Westminster, William Buckland, who ate a part of it. It is reported that a part of his heart and that of Louis XIII were used to obtain mummy-brown by Martin Drolling.
Cardinal Armand Gaston Maximilien de Rohan gave Last Rites (confession, viaticum, and unction) to king Louis XIV.
=== Succession ===
Louis outlived most of his immediate legitimate family. His last surviving legitimate son, Louis, Dauphin of France, died in 1711 of smallpox and barely a year later, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the eldest of the Dauphin's three sons and then heir-apparent to Louis, died of measles. Burgundy's elder son, Louis, Duke of Brittany, died of the same disease a few weeks later. Thus, on his deathbed, Louis's heir-apparent was his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis, Duke of Anjou, Burgundy's younger son.
Louis foresaw that his successor would not yet be mature and sought to restrict the power of his nephew Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who, as his closest surviving legitimate relative in France, would probably become regent to the prospective Louis XV. Accordingly, the king created a regency council as Louis XIII had in anticipation of Louis XIV's own minority, with some power vested in his illegitimate son Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, Duke of Maine. Orléans, however, had Louis's will annulled by the Parlement of Paris after his death and made himself sole regent. He stripped Maine and his brother, Louis-Alexandre, Count of Toulouse, of the rank of Prince of the Blood that Louis had granted them and significantly reduced Maine's power and privileges.
==== Line of succession in 1715 ====
Below is the line of succession to the French throne at the time of the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Louis XIV's only surviving legitimate grandson, Philip V, was not included in the line of succession because he had renounced the French throne after the war of the Spanish Succession, a 13-year conflict following the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700.
Further down the French line of succession in 1715 was the House of Condé, followed by the House of Conti (a cadet branch of the House of Condé). Both of these royal houses were descended in the male line from Henri II, Prince of Condé, a second cousin of French King Louis XIII (the father of Louis XIV) in the male line.
== Legacy ==
=== Reputation ===
According to Philippe de Courcillon's Journal, Louis on his deathbed advised his heir with these words: Do not follow the bad example which I have set you; I have often undertaken war too lightly and have sustained it for vanity. Do not imitate me, but be a peaceful prince, and may you apply yourself principally to the alleviation of the burdens of your subjects.
Some historians point out that it was a customary demonstration of piety in those days to exaggerate one's sins. Thus they do not place much emphasis on Louis's deathbed declarations in assessing his accomplishments. Rather, they focus on military and diplomatic successes, such as how he placed a French prince on the Spanish throne. This, they contend, ended the threat of an aggressive Spain that historically interfered in domestic French politics. These historians also emphasise the effect of Louis's wars in expanding France's boundaries and creating more defensible frontiers that preserved France from invasion until the Revolution.
Arguably, Louis also applied himself indirectly to "the alleviation of the burdens of [his] subjects." For example, he patronised the arts, encouraged industry, fostered trade and commerce, and sponsored the founding of an overseas empire. Moreover, the significant reduction in civil wars and aristocratic rebellions during his reign are seen by these historians as the result of Louis's consolidation of royal authority over feudal elites. In their analysis, his early reforms centralised France and marked the birth of the modern French state. They regard the political and military victories as well as numerous cultural achievements as how Louis helped raise France to a preeminent position in Europe. Europe came to admire France for its military and cultural successes, power, and sophistication. Europeans generally began to emulate French manners, values, goods, and deportment. French became the universal language of the European elite.
Louis's detractors have argued that his considerable foreign, military and domestic expenditure impoverished and bankrupted France. His supporters, however, distinguish the state, which was impoverished, from France, which was not. As supporting evidence, they cite the literature of the time, such as the social commentary in Montesquieu's Persian Letters.
Alternatively, Louis's critics attribute the social upheaval culminating in the French Revolution to his failure to reform French institutions while the monarchy was still secure. Other scholars counter that there was little reason to reform institutions that largely worked well under Louis. They also maintain that events occurring almost 80 years after his death were not reasonably foreseeable to Louis and that in any case, his successors had sufficient time to initiate reforms of their own.
Louis has often been criticised for his vanity. The memoirist Saint-Simon, who claimed that Louis slighted him, criticised him thus: There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it. For his part, Voltaire saw Louis's vanity as the cause for his bellicosity:It is certain that he passionately wanted glory, rather than the conquests themselves. In the acquisition of Alsace and half of Flanders, and of all of Franche-Comté, what he really liked was the name he made for himself.
On the other hand, Saint-Simon pointed out that, in contrast to the situation at the other European courts, Louis's birthday and that of the members of his family always went unobserved "to the point that there never was even the slightest mention of it, that day being no different from all the other days of the year".
Nonetheless, Louis has also received praise. The anti-Bourbon Napoleon described him not only as "a great king", but also as "the only King of France worthy of the name". Leibniz, the German Protestant philosopher, commended him as "one of the greatest kings that ever was". And Lord Acton admired him as "by far the ablest man who was born in modern times on the steps of a throne". The historian and philosopher Voltaire wrote: "His name can never be pronounced without respect and without summoning the image of an eternally memorable age". Voltaire's history, The Age of Louis XIV, named Louis's reign as not only one of the four great ages in which reason and culture flourished, but the greatest ever.
=== Quotes ===
Numerous quotes have been attributed to Louis XIV by legend. The well-known "I am the state" ("L'État, c'est moi") was reported from at least the late 18th century. It was widely repeated but also denounced as apocryphal by the early 19th century. He did say, "Every time I appoint someone to a vacant position, I make a hundred unhappy and one ungrateful." Louis is recorded by numerous eyewitnesses as having said on his deathbed: "Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours." ("I depart, but the State shall always remain.")
== Arms ==
== Order of Saint Louis ==
On 5 April 1693, Louis also founded the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis (French: Ordre Royal et Militaire de Saint-Louis), a military order of chivalry. He named it after Louis IX and intended it as a reward for outstanding officers. It is notable as the first decoration that could be granted to non-nobles and is roughly the forerunner of the Légion d'honneur, with which it shares the red ribbon (though the Légion d'honneur is awarded to military personnel and civilians alike).
== Family ==
=== Patrilineal descent ===
=== Issue ===
This is an incomplete list of Louis XIV's illegitimate children. He reputedly had more, but the difficulty in fully documenting all such births restricts the list only to the better-known or legitimised. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australia | South Australia | South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of 984,314 square kilometres (380,046 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which includes some of the most arid parts of the continent. With 1.9 million people as of June 2025, it is the 17th-largest subdivision in the world and the fifth-largest in Australasia. It is the second-most highly centralised state in the nation after Western Australia, with more than 67% of South Australians living in the capital Adelaide or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; with Mount Gambier being the second-largest centre, with a population of 26,878.
South Australia shares borders with all the other mainland states. It is bordered to the west by Western Australia, to the north by the Northern Territory, to the north-east by Queensland, to the east by New South Wales, and to the south-east by Victoria. To the south, its border is the ocean, the Great Australian Bight.
The state comprises less than 6.7% of the Australian population and ranks fifth in population among the six states and two territories. The majority of its people reside in greater Metropolitan Adelaide. Most of the remainder are settled in fertile areas along the south-eastern coast and River Murray. The state's colonial origins are unique in Australia as a freely settled, planned British province, rather than as a convict settlement. Colonial government commenced on 28 December 1836, when the members of the council were sworn in near the Old Gum Tree.
As with the rest of the continent, the region has a long history of human occupation by numerous groups and languages. The South Australian Company established a temporary settlement at Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, on 26 July 1836, five months before Adelaide was founded. The guiding principle behind settlement was that of systematic colonisation, a theory espoused by Edward Gibbon Wakefield that was later employed by the New Zealand Company. The goal was to establish the province as a centre of civilisation for free immigrants, promising civil liberties and religious tolerance. Although its history has been marked by periods of economic hardship, South Australia has remained politically innovative and culturally vibrant. Today, it is known for its fine wine and numerous cultural festivals. The state's economy is dominated by the agricultural, manufacturing and mining industries.
== History ==
Evidence of human activity in South Australia dates back as far as 20,000 years, with flint mining activity and rock art in the Koonalda Cave on the Nullarbor Plain. In addition wooden spears and tools were made in an area now covered in peat bog in the South East. Kangaroo Island was inhabited long before the island was cut off by rising sea levels. According to mitochondrial DNA research, Aboriginal people reached Eyre Peninsula 49,000-45,000 years ago from both the east (clockwise, along the coast, from northern Australia) and the west (anti-clockwise).
The first recorded European sighting of the South Australian coast was in 1627 when the Dutch ship the Gulden Zeepaert, captained by François Thijssen, examined and mapped a section of the coastline as far east as the Nuyts Archipelago. Thijssen named the whole of the country eastward of the Leeuwin "Nuyts Land", after a distinguished passenger on board; the Hon. Pieter Nuyts].
The coastline of South Australia was first mapped by Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin in 1802, excepting the inlet later named the Port Adelaide River which was first discovered in 1831 by Captain Collet Barker and later accurately charted in 1836–37 by Colonel William Light, leader of the South Australian Colonisation Commissioners' 'First Expedition' and first Surveyor-General of South Australia.
The land which now forms the state of South Australia was claimed for Britain in 1788 as part of the colony of New South Wales. Although the new colony included almost two-thirds of the continent, early settlements were all on the eastern coast and only a few intrepid explorers ventured this far west. It took more than forty years before any serious proposal to establish settlements in the south-western portion of New South Wales were put forward.
On 15 August 1834, the British Parliament passed the South Australia Act 1834 (Foundation Act), which empowered His Majesty to erect and establish a province or provinces in southern Australia. The act stated that the land between 132° and 141° east longitude and from 26° south latitude to the southern ocean would be allotted to the intended colony, and it would be convict-free.
In contrast to the rest of Australia, terra nullius did not apply to the new province. The Letters Patent, which used the enabling provisions of the South Australia Act 1834 to fix the boundaries of the Province of South Australia, provided that "nothing in those our Letters Patent shall affect or be construed to affect the rights of any Aboriginal Natives of the said Province to the actual occupation and enjoyment in their own Persons or in the Persons of their Descendants of any Lands therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such Natives." Although the patent guaranteed land rights under force of law for the indigenous inhabitants, it was ignored by the South Australian Company authorities and squatters. Despite strong reference to the rights of the native population in the initial proclamation by the Governor, there were many conflicts and deaths in the Australian Frontier Wars in South Australia.
Survey was required before settlement of the province, and the Colonisation Commissioners for South Australia appointed William Light as the leader of its 'First Expedition', tasked with examining 1500 miles of the South Australian coastline and selecting the best site for the capital, and with then planning and surveying the site of the city into one-acre Town Sections and its surrounds into 134-acre Country Sections.
Eager to commence the establishment of their whale and seal fisheries, the South Australian Company sought, and obtained, the Commissioners' permission to send Company ships to South Australia, in advance of the surveys and ahead of the Commissioners' colonists.
The company's settlement of seven vessels and 636 people was temporarily made at Kingscote on Kangaroo Island, until the official site of the capital was selected by William Light, where the City of Adelaide is currently located. The first immigrants arrived at Holdfast Bay (near the present day Glenelg) in November 1836.
The commencement of colonial government was proclaimed on 28 December 1836, now known as Proclamation Day.
South Australia is the only Australian state to have never received British convicts. However, some emancipated or escaped convicts or expirees made their own way there, and constituted 1–2% of the early population. The plan for the province was that it would be an experiment in reform, addressing the problems perceived in British society. There was to be religious freedom and no established religion. Sales of land to colonists created an Emigration Fund to pay the costs of transferring a poor young labouring population to South Australia. In early 1838 the colonists became concerned after it was reported that convicts who had escaped from the eastern states may make their way to South Australia. The South Australia Police was formed in April 1838 to protect the community and enforce government regulations. Their principal role was to run the first temporary gaol, a two-room hut.
The current flag of South Australia was adopted on 13 January 1904, and is a British blue ensign defaced with the state badge. The badge is described as a piping shrike with wings outstretched on a yellow disc. The state badge is believed to have been designed by Robert Craig of Adelaide's School of Design.
== Geography ==
The terrain consists largely of arid and semi-arid rangelands, with several low mountain ranges. The most important (but not tallest) is the Mount Lofty-Flinders Ranges system, which extends north about 800 kilometres (500 mi) from Cape Jervis to the northern end of Lake Torrens. The highest point in the state is not in those ranges; Mount Woodroffe (1,435 metres (4,708 ft)) is in the Musgrave Ranges in the extreme northwest of the state.
The south-western portion of the state consists of the sparsely inhabited Nullarbor Plain, fronted by the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. Features of the coast include Spencer Gulf and the Eyre and Yorke Peninsulas that surround it. The Temperate Grassland of South Australia is situated to the east of Gulf St Vincent.
The principal industries and exports of South Australia are wheat, wine and wool. More than half of Australia's wines are produced in the South Australian wine regions which principally include Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, McLaren Vale, Coonawarra, the Riverland and the Adelaide Hills. See South Australian wine.
=== South Australian boundaries ===
South Australia has boundaries with every other Australian mainland state and territory except the Australian Capital Territory and the Jervis Bay Territory. The Western Australia border has a history involving the South Australian government astronomer, G.F. Dodwell, and the Western Australian Government Astronomer, H.B. Curlewis, marking the border on the ground in the 1920s.
In 1863, that part of New South Wales to the north of South Australia was annexed to South Australia, by letters patent, as the "Northern Territory of South Australia", which became shortened to the Northern Territory on 6 July 1863. The Northern Territory was handed to the federal government in 1911 and became a separate territory.
According to Australian maps, South Australia's south coast is flanked by the Southern Ocean, but official international consensus defines the Southern Ocean as extending north from the pole only to 60°S or 55°S, at least 17 degrees of latitude further south than the most southern point of South Australia. Thus the south coast is officially adjacent to the south-most portion of the Indian Ocean. See Southern Ocean: Existence and definitions.
=== Climate ===
The southern part of the state has a Mediterranean climate, while the rest of the state has either an arid or semi-arid climate. South Australia's main temperature range is 29 °C (84 °F) in January and 15 °C (59 °F) in July.
The highest maximum temperature ever recorded was 50.7 °C (123.3 °F) at Oodnadatta on 2 January 1960, which is the highest official temperature recorded in Australia. The lowest minimum temperature was −8.2 °C (17.2 °F) at Yongala on 20 July 1976. The region's overall dry weather is owed to the Australian High on the Great Australian Bight.
== Economy ==
As of 2016, South Australia had 746,105 people employed out of a total workforce of 806,593, giving an unemployment rate of 7.5%. South Australia's largest employment sector is health care and social assistance, making up 14.8% of the state's total employment, followed by retail (10.7%), education and training (8.6%), manufacturing (8%), and construction (7.6%). South Australia's economy relies on exports more than any other state in Australia.
South Australia's credit rating was upgraded to AAA by Standard & Poor's in September 2004 and to AAA by Moody's in November 2004, the highest credit ratings achievable by any company or sovereign. The state had previously lost these ratings in the State Bank collapse. However, in 2012 Standard & Poor's downgraded the state's credit rating to AA+ due to declining revenues, new spending initiatives and a weaker than expected budgetary outlook.
South Australia receives the least amount of federal funding for its local road network of all states on a per capita and a per kilometre basis.
During 2019–20: South Australia's gross state product (GSP) fell 1.4% in chain volume (real) terms (nationally, gross domestic product (GDP) fell 0.3%). South Australia came out of the COVID-19 recession better than the other Australian states, with the economy growing by 3.9% in the 2020–21 financial year. This was the first time since the Australian Bureau of Statistics began collecting data in 1990 that South Australia had outperformed the other states. The recovery was driven in part by growth in the agricultural sector, which increased its production by almost 24% thanks to the end of a drought.
=== Agriculture ===
==== Cereals, legumes and oilseeds ====
Wheat, barley, oats, rye, peas, beans, chickpeas, lentils and canola are grown in South Australia.
==== Fruit and vegetables ====
Apples, pears, cherries and strawberries are grown in the Adelaide Hills. Tomatoes, capsicums, cucumbers, brassicas, lettuce and carrots are grown on the Northern Adelaide Plains at Virginia. Almonds, citrus and stone fruit are grown in the Riverland. Potatoes, onions and carrots are grown in the Murray Mallee region. Potatoes are grown on Kangaroo Island.
==== Viticulture ====
South Australia produces more than half of all Australian wine, including almost 80% of Australia's premium wines.
=== Energy ===
South Australia has the lead over other Australian states for its commercialisation and commitment to renewable energy. It is now the leading producer of wind power in Australia. Renewable energy is a growing source of electricity in South Australia, and there is potential for growth from this particular industry of the state's economy. The Hornsdale Power Reserve is a bank of grid-connected batteries adjacent to the Hornsdale Wind Farm in South Australia's Mid-North region. At the time of construction in late 2017, it was billed as the largest lithium-ion battery in the world.
=== Mining ===
The Olympic Dam mine near Roxby Downs in northern South Australia is the largest deposit of uranium in the world, possessing more than a third of the world's low-cost recoverable reserves and 70% of Australia's. The mine, owned and operated by BHP, presently accounts for 9% of global uranium production. The Olympic Dam mine is also the world's fourth-largest remaining copper deposit, and the world's fifth largest gold deposit. There was a proposal to vastly expand the operations of the mine, making it the largest open-cut mine in the world, but in 2012 the BHP Billiton board decided not to go ahead with it at that time due to then lower commodity prices.
The remote town of Coober Pedy produces more opal than anywhere else in the world. Opal was first discovered near the town in 1915, and the town became the site of an opal rush, enticing immigrants from southern and eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II.
=== Education and research ===
Higher education and research in Adelaide forms an important part of South Australia's economy. The South Australian Government and educational institutions have attempted to position Adelaide as Australia's education hub and have marketed 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. 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.
Adelaide is home to research institutes, including the Royal Institution of Australia, established in 2009 as a counterpart to the two-hundred-year-old Royal Institution of Great Britain. Most of the research organisations are clustered in the Adelaide metropolitan area:
The east end of North Terrace: SA Pathology; Hanson Institute; National Wine Centre.
The west end of North Terrace: South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), located next to the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
The Waite Research Precinct: SARDI Head Office and Plant Research Centre; AWRI; ACPFG; CSIRO research laboratories. SARDI also has establishments at Glenside and West Beach.
Edinburgh, South Australia: DSTO; BAE Systems (Australia); Lockheed Martin Australia Electronic Systems.
Technology Park (Mawson Lakes): BAE Systems; Optus; Raytheon; Topcon; Lockheed Martin Australia Electronic Systems.
Research Park at Thebarton: businesses involved in materials engineering, biotechnology, environmental services, information technology, industrial design, laser/optics technology, health products, engineering services, radar systems, telecommunications and petroleum services.
Science Park (adjacent to Flinders University): Playford Capital.
The Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research in Woodville the research arm of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide
The Joanna Briggs Institute, a global research collaboration for evidence-based healthcare with its headquarters in North Adelaide.
== Government ==
South Australia is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as sovereign, and the Governor of South Australia as his representative. It is a state of the Commonwealth of Australia. The bicameral Parliament of South Australia 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 2022 election.
Initially, the Governor of South Australia held almost total power, derived from the letters patent of the imperial government to create the colony. He was accountable only to the British Colonial Office, and thus democracy did not exist in the colony. A new body was created to advise the governor on the administration of South Australia in 1843 called the Legislative Council. It consisted of three representatives of the British Government and four colonists appointed by the governor. The governor retained total executive power.
In 1851, the Imperial Parliament enacted the Australian Colonies Government Act, which allowed for the election of representatives to each of the colonial legislatures and the drafting of a constitution to properly create representative and responsible government in South Australia. Later that year, propertied male colonists were allowed to vote for 16 members on a new 24 seat Legislative Council. Eight members continued to be appointed by the governor.
The main responsibility of this body was to draft a constitution for South Australia. The body drafted the most democratic constitution ever seen in the British Empire and provided for universal manhood suffrage. It created the bicameral Parliament of South Australia. For the first time in the colony, the executive was elected by the people, and the colony used the Westminster system, where the government is the party or coalition that exerts a majority in the House of Assembly. The Legislative Council remained a predominantly conservative chamber elected by property owners.
Women's suffrage in Australia took a leap forward – enacted in 1895 and taking effect from the 1896 colonial election, South Australia was the first government in Australia and only the second in the world after New Zealand to allow women to vote, and the first in the world to allow women to stand for election. In 1897 Catherine Helen Spence was the first woman in Australia to be a candidate for political office when she was nominated to be one of South Australia's delegates to the conventions that drafted the constitution. South Australia became an original state of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901.
Although the lower house had universal suffrage, the upper house, the Legislative Council, remained the exclusive domain of property owners until the Labor government of Don Dunstan managed to achieve reform of the chamber in 1973. Property qualifications were removed and the Council became a body elected via proportional representation by a single state-wide electorate.
Since the following 1975 South Australian state election, no one party has had control of the state's upper house with the balance of power controlled by a variety of minor parties and independents.
=== Local government ===
Local government in South Australia is established by the Constitution Act 1934 (SA), the Local Government Act 1999 (SA), and the Local Government (Elections) Act 1999 (SA). South Australia contains 68 councils and 6 Aboriginal and outback communities. Local councils, elected on a four-yearly basis, are responsible for local roads and stormwater management, waste collection, planning and development, fire prevention and hazard management, dog and cat management and control, parking control, public health and food inspections, and other services for their local communities. Councils have the power to raise revenue for their activities, which is mostly achieved through "council rates", a tax based on property valuations. Council rates make up about 70% of council revenue, but account for less than 4% of total taxes paid by Australians.
== Demographics ==
As of June 2025 the population of South Australia was 1,902,300.
A majority of the state's population lives within Greater Adelaide's metropolitan area which had an estimated population of
1,333,927 in June 2017. Other significant population centres include Mount Gambier (29,505), Victor Harbor-Goolwa (26,334), Whyalla (21,976), Murray Bridge (18,452), Port Lincoln (16,281), Port Pirie (14,267), and Port Augusta (13,957).
=== Ancestry and immigration ===
At the 2016 census, the most commonly nominated ancestries were:
28.9% of the population was born overseas at the 2016 census. The five largest groups of overseas-born were from England (5.8%), India (1.6%), China (1.5%), Italy (1.1%) and Vietnam (0.9%).
2% of the population, or 34,184 people, identified as Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders) in 2016.
=== Language ===
At the 2016 census, 78.2% of the population spoke only English at home. The other languages most commonly spoken at home were Italian (1.7%), Standard Mandarin (1.7%), Greek (1.4%), Vietnamese (1.1%), and Cantonese (0.6%).
=== Religion ===
At the 2016 census, overall 53.9% of responses identified some variant of Christianity. 9% of respondents chose not to state a religion. The most commonly nominated responses were 'No Religion' (35.4%), Catholicism (18%), Anglicanism (10%) and Uniting Church (7.1%).
South Australia was the first Australian colony not to have an official state religion, and the colony became attractive to people who had experienced religious discrimination, including Methodists and Unitarians. South Australia also had thousands of Prussian Old Lutheran immigrants, some of whom established their own form of Lutheranism. As a result, the Lutheran Church of Australia remains separate from the German Lutheran church to this day. South Australia was the location of the first Muslim mosque in Australia.
Most of the state's original colonists were Christian, but of many denominations, most with their own meeting place in the city square. Adelaide has been known as the "City of Churches" since at least 1868. Some of the oldest remaining buildings in the city are churches.
== Education ==
=== Primary and secondary ===
On 1 January 2009, the school leaving age was raised to 17 (having previously been 15 and then 16). Education is compulsory for all children until age 17, unless they are working or undergoing other training. The majority of students stay on to complete their South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE). School education is the responsibility of the South Australian government, but the public and private education systems are funded jointly by it and the Commonwealth Government.
The South Australian Government provides, to schools on a per student basis, 89% of the total Government funding while the Commonwealth contributes 11%. Since the early 1970s, it has been an ongoing controversy that 68% of Commonwealth funding (increasing to 75% by 2008) goes to private schools that are attended by 32% of the states students. Private schools often counter this by saying that they receive less State Government funding than public schools, and in 2004 the main private school funding came from the Australian government, not the state government.
On 14 June 2013, South Australia became the third Australian state to sign up to the Australian Federal Government's Gonski Reform Program. This will see funding for primary and secondary education to South Australia increased by $1.1 billion before 2019.
The academic year in South Australia generally runs from the end of January until mid-December for primary and secondary schools. The SA schools operate on a four-term basis. Schools are closed for the South Australia public holidays.
=== Tertiary ===
There are two public and two private universities in South Australia. The two public universities are Adelaide University(merged in 2026 from the University of Adelaide and UniSA) and Flinders University (est. 1966). The two private universities are Torrens University Australia (est. 2013), and CQUniversity's Adelaide Campus. All four have their main campus in the Adelaide metropolitan area: Adelaide University on North Terrace in the city; Flinders at Bedford Park; Torrens University on Wakefield St in the city; and CQUniversity's Adelaide Campus in Wayville.
The University of Adelaide is part of the Group of Eight, a company of Australia's eight leading research universities. As of 2022, it is ranked by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings as one of the top 100 universities in the world. It was the first university in Australia to admit women to academic courses, doing so in 1881. In 2018, the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia announced plans to merge, but these plans did not at that time come to fruition due in part to disagreements over what to name the new university and which of the university's vice-chancellors would become the vice-chancellor of the amalgamated university. The two institutions have since agreed merger terms.
There are also private higher education providers in Adelaide which offer tertiary degrees, such as Tabor College, Millswood; and pathway colleges such as Eynesbury College.
==== Vocational education ====
Tertiary vocational education is provided by a range of Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) which are regulated at Commonwealth level. The range of RTOs delivering education include public, private and 'enterprise' providers i.e. employing organisations who run an RTO for their own employees or members.
The largest public provider of vocational education is TAFE South Australia which is made up of colleges throughout the state, many of these in rural areas, providing tertiary education to as many people as possible. In South Australia, TAFE is funded by the state government and run by the South Australian Department of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology (DFEEST). Each TAFE SA campus provides a range of courses with its own specialisation.
== Transport ==
=== Historical transport in South Australia ===
After settlement, the major form of transport in South Australia was ocean transport. Limited land transport was provided by horses and bullocks. In the mid 19th century, the state began to develop a widespread rail network, although a coastal shipping network continued until the post war period.
Roads began to improve with the introduction of motor transport. By the late 19th century, road transport dominated internal transport in South Australia.
=== Railway ===
South Australia has four interstate rail connections, to Perth via the Nullarbor Plain, to Darwin through the centre of the continent, to New South Wales through Broken Hill, and to Melbourne–which is the closest capital city to Adelaide.
Rail transport was important for many mines in the north of the state.
The capital Adelaide has a commuter rail network made of electric and diesel electric powered multiple units, with 7 lines between them.
=== Roads ===
South Australia has extensive road networks linking towns and other states. Roads are also the most common form of transport within the major metropolitan areas with car transport predominating. Public transport in Adelaide is mostly provided by buses and trams with regular services throughout the day.
=== Air transport ===
Adelaide Airport provides regular flights to other capitals, major South Australian towns and many international locations. The airport also has daily flights to several Asian hub airports. Adelaide Metro buses J1 and J1X connect to the city (approx. 30 minutes travel time), as well as other services to other parts of Adelaide. Standard fares apply and tickets may be purchased from a ticket machine at the airport bus stop. Maximum charge (September 2016) for Metroticket is $5.30; off-peak and seniors discounts may apply.
=== River transport ===
The River Murray was formerly an important trade route for South Australia, with paddle steamers linking inland areas and the ocean at Goolwa.
=== Sea transport ===
South Australia has a container port at Port Adelaide. There are also numerous important ports along the coast for minerals and grains.
The passenger terminal at Port Adelaide intermittently plays host to an array of cruise liners.
Kangaroo Island is dependent on the Sea Link ferry service between Cape Jervis and Penneshaw.
== Cultural life ==
South Australia has been known as "the Festival State" for many years, for its abundance of arts and gastronomic festivals. While much of the arts scene is concentrated in Adelaide, the state government has supported regional arts actively since the 1990s. One of the manifestations of this was the creation of Country Arts SA, created in 1992.
Diana Laidlaw did much to further the arts in South Australia during her term as Arts Minister from 1993 to 2002, and after Mike Rann assumed government in 2002, he created a strategic plan in 2004 (updated 2007) which included furthering and promoting the arts in South Australia under the topic heading "Objective 4:
Fostering Creativity and Innovation".
In September 2019, with the arts portfolio now subsumed within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet (DPC) after the election of Steven Marshall as Premier, and the 2004 strategic plan having been deleted from the website in 2018, the "Arts and Culture Plan, South Australia 2019–2024" was created by the department. Marshall said when launching the plan: "The arts sector in South Australia is already very strong but it's been operating without a plan for 20 years". However the plan does not signal any new government support, even after the government's A$31.9 million cuts to arts funding when Arts South Australia was absorbed into DPC in 2018. Specific proposals within the plan include an "Adelaide in 100 Objects" walking tour, a new shared ticketing system for small to medium arts bodies, a five-year-plan to revitalise regional art centres, creation of an arts-focussed high school, and a new venue for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
South Australia has a public library system, and state library. Some public libraries in South Australia in rural areas are joint school and community libraries.
== Sport ==
=== Australian rules football ===
Australian rules football is the most popular spectator sport in South Australia. In 2006, South Australians had the highest attendance rate for the sport of any state, with 31% of South Australians attending a match in the previous twelve months. South Australia fields two teams in the Australian Football League (AFL): the Adelaide Football Club and Port Adelaide Football Club. The two teams have an intense rivalry called the Showdown. The traditional home of Australian rules football in South Australia was Football Park in the western suburb of West Lakes, which was the home ground of both AFL teams until 2013. Since 2014, both teams have used Adelaide Oval, near the city centre, as their home ground.
The South Australian National Football League (SANFL), which was the premier league in the state before the advent of the Australian Football League, is a popular local league comprising ten teams: Sturt, Port Adelaide, Adelaide, West Adelaide, South Adelaide, North Adelaide, Norwood, Woodville/West Torrens, Glenelg and Central District.
The Adelaide Footy League comprises 68 member clubs playing over 110 matches per week across ten senior divisions and three junior divisions. It is one of Australia's largest and strongest Australian rules football associations.
=== Cricket ===
Cricket has a long history in South Australia, with the first matches being played in 1839. Regular club matches were organised following the establishment of the South Australian Cricket Association (SACA) in 1871. Presently, SACA governs the South Australian Premier Cricket competition in addition to all forms of domestic cricket in the state. Cricket is the most popular summer sport in South Australia, with 39,000 club players at both junior and senior levels in 2023.
At the professional level, the South Australia cricket team represent the state in men's competitions including the Sheffield Shield and One-Day Cup. The South Australia women's cricket team represent the state in the Women's National Cricket League. South Australia also hosts the Adelaide Strikers in the Twenty20 Big Bash League and their women's team in the Women's Big Bash League. Matches are held at Adelaide Oval and Karen Rolton Oval in the Adelaide Parklands.
International cricket is also held in South Australia, with matches being played at Adelaide Oval. The venue was used to host matches in both the men's 1992 Cricket World Cup and 2015 Cricket World Cup. Adelaide Oval also saw use during the 2022 ICC Men's T20 World Cup. Outside of Adelaide, international cricket has also been played in Berri, South Australia with Berri Oval hosting a singular match during the 1992 Cricket World Cup.
=== Association football ===
Adelaide United represents South Australia in soccer in the men's A-League and women's W-League. The club's home ground is Hindmarsh Stadium (Coopers Stadium), but previously played occasional games at Adelaide Oval.
The club was founded in 2003 and are the 2015–16 season champions of the A-League. The club was also premier in the inaugural 2005–06 A-League season, finishing 7 points clear of the rest of the competition, before finishing 3rd in the finals. Adelaide United was also a Grand Finalist in the 2006–07 and 2008–09 seasons. Adelaide is the only A-League club to have progressed past the group stages of the Asian Champions League on more than one occasion.
Adelaide City remains South Australia's most successful club, having won three National Soccer League titles and three NSL Cups. City was the first side from South Australia to ever win a continental title when it claimed the 1987 Oceania Club Championship and it has also won a record 17 South Australian championships and 17 Federation Cups.
West Adelaide became the first South Australian club to be crowned Australian champion when it won the 1978 National Soccer League title. Like City, it now competes in the National Premier Leagues South Australia and the two clubs contest the Adelaide derby.
=== Basketball ===
Basketball also has a big following in South Australia, with the Adelaide 36ers playing in the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. The 36ers have won four championships in the last 20 years in the National Basketball League. The Adelaide Entertainment Centre, located in Hindmarsh, is the home of basketball in the state.
Mount Gambier also has a national basketball team – the Mount Gambier Pioneers. The Pioneers play at the Icehouse (Bern Bruning Basketball Stadium), which seats over 1,000 people and is also home to the Mount Gambier Basketball Association. The Pioneers won the South Conference in 2003 and the Final in 2003; this team was rated second in the top five teams to have ever played in the league. In 2012, the club entered its 25th season, with a roster of 10 senior players (two imports) and three development squad players.
=== Motorsport ===
Australia's premier motorsport series, the Supercars Championship, has visited South Australia each year since 1999. South Australia's Supercars event, the Adelaide 500, is staged on the Adelaide Street Circuit, a temporary track laid out through the streets and parklands to the east of the Adelaide city centre. Attendance for the 2022 event totalled 258,200. An earlier version of the Adelaide Street Circuit played host to the Australian Grand Prix, a round of the FIA Formula One World Championship, each year from 1985 to 1995.
Mallala Motor Sport Park, a permanent circuit located near the town of Mallala, 58 km north of Adelaide, caters for both state and national level motor sport throughout the year.
The Bend Motorsport Park is another permanent circuit, located just outside of Tailem Bend.
=== Rugby league ===
The state rugby league federation is the South Australian Rugby League. The game traces its roots in the state back to the 1940s, when the Port Adelaide rugby union team split in four, and defected to rugby league.
South Australia's only professional rugby league team, the Adelaide Rams, had a short but eventful existence. After debuting in the Super League competition in 1997, in 1998 they were selected to join the 20-team National Rugby League; however they were to be axed from the 1999 season as part of a rationalisation of teams (from 20 to 14) in the competition.
At present however, the South Australian Rugby League still operates a local semi-professional competition consisting of both junior and adult teams from across Adelaide.
Adelaide Oval hosted State of Origin series games in both 2020 and 2023, with the latter drawing a state record rugby league attendance of 48,613.
=== Other sports ===
Sixty-three percent of South Australian children took part in organised sports in 2002–2003.
The ATP Adelaide was a tennis tournament held from 1972 to 2008 that then moved to Brisbane. Since 2020, South Australia has hosted the Adelaide International tennis tournament. Also, the Royal Adelaide Golf Club has hosted nine editions of the Australian Open, with the most recent being in 1998.
The state has hosted the Tour Down Under cycle race since 1999.
== Places ==
== Crime ==
Crime in South Australia is managed by the South Australia Police (SAPOL), various state and federal courts in the criminal justice system and the state Department for Correctional Services, which administers the prisons and remand centre.
Crime statistics for all categories of offence in the state are provided on the SAPOL website, in the form of rolling 12-month totals. Crime statistics from the 2017–18 national ABS Crime Victimisation Survey show that between 2008–09 and 2017–18, the rate of victimisation in South Australia declined for assault and most household crime types.
In 2013, Adelaide was ranked the safest capital city in Australia. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium | Uranium | Uranium is a chemical element; it has symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium radioactively decays, usually by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of this decay varies between 159,200 and 4.5 billion years for different isotopes, making them useful for dating the age of the Earth. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are uranium-238 (which has 146 neutrons and accounts for over 99% of uranium on Earth) and uranium-235 (which has 143 neutrons). Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead and slightly lower than that of gold or tungsten. It occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite.
Many contemporary uses of uranium exploit its unique nuclear properties. Uranium is used in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons because it is the only naturally occurring element with a fissile isotope – uranium-235 – present in non-trace amounts. However, because of the low abundance of uranium-235 in natural uranium (which is overwhelmingly uranium-238), uranium needs to undergo enrichment so that enough uranium-235 is present. Uranium-238 is fissionable by fast neutrons and is fertile, meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239 in a nuclear reactor. Another fissile isotope, uranium-233, can be produced from natural thorium and is studied for future industrial use in nuclear technology. Uranium-238 has a small probability for spontaneous fission or even induced fission with fast neutrons; uranium-235, and to a lesser degree uranium-233, have a much higher fission cross-section for slow neutrons. In sufficient concentration, these isotopes maintain a sustained nuclear chain reaction. This generates the heat in nuclear power reactors and produces the fissile material for nuclear weapons. The primary civilian use for uranium harnesses the heat energy to produce electricity. Depleted uranium (238U) is used in kinetic energy penetrators and armor plating.
The 1789 discovery of uranium in the mineral pitchblende is credited to Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who named the new element after the recently discovered planet Uranus. Eugène-Melchior Péligot was the first person to isolate the metal, and its radioactive properties were discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. Research by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Enrico Fermi and others, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer starting in 1934 led to its use as a fuel in the nuclear power industry and in Little Boy, the first nuclear weapon used in war. An ensuing arms race during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union produced tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that used uranium metal and uranium-derived plutonium-239. Dismantling of these weapons and related nuclear facilities is carried out within various nuclear disarmament programs and costs billions of dollars. Weapon-grade uranium obtained from nuclear weapons is diluted with uranium-238 and reused as fuel for nuclear reactors. Spent nuclear fuel forms radioactive waste, which mostly consists of uranium-238 and poses a significant health threat and environmental impact.
== Characteristics ==
Uranium is a silvery white, weakly radioactive metal. It has a Mohs hardness of 6, sufficient to scratch glass and roughly equal to that of titanium, rhodium, manganese and niobium. It is malleable, ductile, slightly paramagnetic, strongly electropositive and a poor electrical conductor. Uranium metal has a very high density of 19.1 g/cm3, denser than lead (11.3 g/cm3), but slightly less dense than tungsten and gold (19.3 g/cm3).
Uranium metal reacts with almost all non-metallic elements (except noble gases) and their compounds, with reactivity increasing with temperature. Hydrochloric and nitric acids dissolve uranium, but non-oxidizing acids other than hydrochloric acid attack the element very slowly. When finely divided, it can react with cold water; in air, uranium metal becomes coated with a dark layer of uranium dioxide. Uranium in ores is extracted chemically and converted into uranium dioxide or other chemical forms usable in industry.
In 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered that barium was a product of bombarding Uranium-235 with neutrons, and a year later Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch developed the theory of nuclear fission to explain this new phenomenon, making U-235 the first fissile isotope to be discovered. On bombardment with slow neutrons, uranium-235 most of the time splits into two smaller nuclei, releasing nuclear binding energy and more neutrons. If too many of these neutrons are absorbed by other uranium-235 nuclei, a nuclear chain reaction occurs that results in a burst of heat or (in some circumstances) an explosion. In a nuclear reactor, such a chain reaction is slowed and controlled by a neutron poison, absorbing some of the free neutrons. Such neutron absorbent materials are often part of reactor control rods (see nuclear reactor physics for a description of this process of reactor control). Other naturally occurring isotopes such as Uranium-238 are fissionable, but not fissile, meaning that they only undergo fission when absorbing high energy (fast) neutrons.
As little as 15 lb (6.8 kg) of uranium-235 can be used to make an atomic bomb. The nuclear weapon detonated over Hiroshima, called Little Boy, relied on uranium fission. However, the first nuclear bomb (the Gadget used at Trinity) and the bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki (Fat Man) were both plutonium bombs.
Uranium metal has three allotropic forms:
α (orthorhombic) stable up to 668 °C (1,234 °F). Orthorhombic, space group No. 63, Cmcm, lattice parameters a = 285.4 pm, b = 587 pm, c = 495.5 pm.
β (tetragonal) stable from 668 to 775 °C (1,234 to 1,427 °F). Tetragonal, space group P42/mnm, P42nm, or P4n2, lattice parameters a = 565.6 pm, b = c = 1075.9 pm.
γ (body-centered cubic) from 775 °C (1,427 °F) to melting point—this is the most malleable and ductile state. Body-centered cubic, lattice parameter a = 352.4 pm.
== Applications ==
=== Military ===
The major application of uranium in the military sector is in high-density penetrating projectiles. This ammunition consists of depleted uranium (DU) alloyed with 1–2% other elements, such as titanium or molybdenum. At high impact speed, the density, hardness, and pyrophoricity of the projectile enable the destruction of heavily armored targets. Tank armor and other removable vehicle armor can also be hardened with depleted uranium plates. The use of depleted uranium became politically and environmentally contentious after the use of such munitions by the US, UK and other countries during wars in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans raised health questions concerning uranium compounds left in the soil (see Gulf War syndrome).
Depleted uranium is also used as a shielding material in some containers used to store and transport radioactive materials. While the metal itself is radioactive, its high density makes it more effective than lead in halting radiation from strong sources such as radium. Other uses of depleted uranium include counterweights for aircraft control surfaces, as ballast for missile re-entry vehicles and as a shielding material. Due to its high density, this material is found in inertial guidance systems and in gyroscopic compasses. Depleted uranium is preferred over similarly dense metals due to its ability to be easily machined and cast as well as its relatively low cost. The main risk of exposure to depleted uranium is chemical poisoning by uranium oxide rather than radioactivity (uranium being only a weak alpha emitter).
During the later stages of World War II, the entire Cold War, and to a lesser extent afterwards, uranium-235 has been used as the fissile explosive material to produce nuclear weapons. Initially, two major types of fission bombs were built: a relatively simple device that uses uranium-235 and a more complicated mechanism that uses plutonium-239 derived from uranium-238. Later, a much more complicated and far more powerful type of fission/fusion bomb (thermonuclear weapon) was built, that uses a plutonium-based device to cause a mixture of tritium and deuterium to undergo nuclear fusion. Such bombs are jacketed in a non-fissile (unenriched) uranium case, and they derive more than half their power from the fission of this material by fast neutrons from the nuclear fusion process.
=== Civilian ===
The main use of uranium in the civilian sector is to fuel nuclear power plants. One kilogram of uranium-235 can theoretically produce about 20 terajoules of energy (2×1013 joules), assuming complete fission; as much energy as 1.5 million kilograms (1,500 tonnes) of coal.
Commercial nuclear power plants use fuel that is typically enriched to around 3% uranium-235. The CANDU and Magnox designs are the only commercial reactors capable of using unenriched uranium fuel. Fuel used for United States Navy reactors is typically highly enriched in uranium-235 (the exact values are classified). In a breeder reactor, uranium-238 can also be converted into plutonium-239 through the following reaction:
23892U + n → 23992U + γ β−→ 23993Np β−→ 23994Pu
Before (and, occasionally, after) the discovery of radioactivity, uranium was primarily used in small amounts for yellow glass and pottery glazes, such as uranium glass and in Fiestaware.
The discovery and isolation of radium in uranium ore (pitchblende) by Marie Curie sparked the development of uranium mining to extract the radium, which was used to make glow-in-the-dark paints for clock and aircraft dials. This left a prodigious quantity of uranium as a waste product, since it takes three tonnes of uranium to extract one gram of radium. This waste product was diverted to the glazing industry, making uranium glazes very inexpensive and abundant. Besides the pottery glazes, uranium tile glazes accounted for the bulk of the use, including common bathroom and kitchen tiles which can be produced in green, yellow, mauve, black, blue, red and other colors.
Uranium was also used in photographic chemicals (especially uranium nitrate as a toner), in lamp filaments for stage lighting bulbs, to improve the appearance of dentures, and in the leather and wood industries for stains and dyes. Uranium salts are mordants of silk or wool. Uranyl acetate and uranyl formate are used as electron-dense "stains" in transmission electron microscopy, to increase the contrast of biological specimens in ultrathin sections and in negative staining of viruses, isolated cell organelles and macromolecules.
The discovery of the radioactivity of uranium ushered in additional scientific and practical uses of the element. The long half-life of uranium-238 (4.47×109 years) makes it well-suited for use in estimating the age of the earliest igneous rocks and for other types of radiometric dating, including uranium–thorium dating, uranium–lead dating and uranium–uranium dating. Uranium metal is used for X-ray targets in the making of high-energy X-rays.
== History ==
=== Pre-discovery use ===
The use of pitchblende, uranium in its natural oxide form, dates back to at least the year 79 AD, when it was used in the Roman Empire to add a yellow color to ceramic glazes. Yellow glass with 1% uranium oxide was found in a Roman villa on Cape Posillipo in the Gulf of Naples, Italy, by R. T. Gunther of the University of Oxford in 1912. Starting in the late Middle Ages, pitchblende was extracted from the Habsburg silver mines in Joachimsthal, Bohemia (now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic) in the Ore Mountains, and was used as a coloring agent in the local glassmaking industry. In the early 19th century, the world's only known sources of uranium ore were these mines.
=== Discovery ===
The discovery of the element is credited to the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth. While he was working in his experimental laboratory in Berlin in 1789, Klaproth was able to precipitate a yellow compound (likely sodium diuranate) by dissolving pitchblende in nitric acid and neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide. Klaproth assumed the yellow substance was the oxide of a yet-undiscovered element and heated it with charcoal to obtain a black powder, which he thought was the newly discovered metal itself (in fact, that powder was an oxide of uranium). He named the newly discovered element "Uranit" after the planet Uranus (named after the primordial Greek god of the sky), which had been discovered eight years earlier by William Herschel. He later renamed it "Uranium" to conform to the naming standard.
In 1841, Eugène-Melchior Péligot, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (Central School of Arts and Manufactures) in Paris, isolated the first sample of uranium metal by heating uranium tetrachloride with potassium.
Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity by using uranium in 1896. Becquerel made the discovery in Paris by leaving a sample of a uranium salt, K2UO2(SO4)2 (potassium uranyl sulfate), on top of an unexposed photographic plate in a drawer and noting that the plate had become "fogged". He determined that a form of invisible light or rays emitted by uranium had exposed the plate.
During World War I when the Central Powers suffered a shortage of molybdenum to make artillery gun barrels and high speed tool steels, they routinely used ferrouranium alloy as a substitute, as it presents many of the same physical characteristics as molybdenum. When this practice became known in 1916 the US government requested several prominent universities to research the use of uranium in manufacturing and metalwork. Tools made with these formulas remained in use for several decades, until the Manhattan Project and the Cold War placed a large demand on uranium for fission research and weapon development.
=== Fission research ===
A team led by Enrico Fermi in 1934 found that bombarding uranium with neutrons produces beta rays (electrons or positrons from the elements produced; see beta particle). The fission products were at first mistaken for new elements with atomic numbers 93 and 94, which the Dean of the Sapienza University of Rome, Orso Mario Corbino, named ausenium and hesperium, respectively. The experiments leading to the discovery of uranium's ability to fission (break apart) into lighter elements and release binding energy were conducted by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Hahn's laboratory in Berlin. Lise Meitner and her nephew, physicist Otto Robert Frisch, published the physical explanation in February 1939 and named the process "nuclear fission". Soon after, Fermi hypothesized that fission of uranium might release enough neutrons to sustain a fission reaction. Confirmation of this hypothesis came in 1939, and later work found that on average about 2.5 neutrons are released by each fission of uranium-235. Fermi urged Alfred O. C. Nier to separate uranium isotopes for determination of the fissile component, and on 29 February 1940, Nier used an instrument he built at the University of Minnesota to separate the world's first uranium-235 sample in the Tate Laboratory. Using Columbia University's cyclotron, John Dunning confirmed the sample to be the isolated fissile material on 1 March. Further work found that the far more common uranium-238 isotope can be transmuted into plutonium, which, like uranium-235, is also fissile by thermal neutrons. These discoveries led numerous countries to begin working on the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Despite fission having been discovered in Germany, the Uranverein ("uranium club") Germany's wartime project to research nuclear power and/or weapons was hampered by limited resources, infighting, the exile or non-involvement of several prominent scientists in the field and several crucial mistakes such as failing to account for impurities in available graphite samples which made it appear less suitable as a neutron moderator than it is in reality. Germany's attempts to build a natural uranium / heavy water reactor had not come close to reaching criticality by the time the Americans reached Haigerloch, the site of the last German wartime reactor experiment.
On 2 December 1942, as part of the Manhattan Project, another team led by Enrico Fermi was able to initiate the first artificial self-sustained nuclear chain reaction, Chicago Pile-1. An initial plan using enriched uranium-235 was abandoned as it was as yet unavailable in sufficient quantities. Working in a lab below the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, the team created the conditions needed for such a reaction by piling together 360 tonnes of graphite, 53 tonnes of uranium oxide, and 5.5 tonnes of uranium metal, most of which was supplied by Westinghouse Lamp Plant in a makeshift production process.
=== Nuclear weaponry ===
Two types of atomic bomb were developed by the United States during World War II: a uranium-based device (codenamed "Little Boy") whose fissile material was highly enriched uranium, and a plutonium-based device (see Trinity test and "Fat Man") whose plutonium was derived from uranium-238. Little Boy became the first nuclear weapon used in war when it was detonated over Hiroshima, Japan, on 6 August 1945. Exploding with a yield equivalent to 12,500 tonnes of TNT, the blast and thermal wave of the bomb destroyed nearly 50,000 buildings and killed about 75,000 people (see Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
In 1943 the Manhattan Project contracted two private companies, Union Carbide and Chevron, to quietly compile a survey of uranium deposits around the world. As the survey results came in, two geology professors studied the results and suggested general guidelines for new sources, including uranium associated with gold mines in the Rand area in South Africa.
Initially it was believed that uranium was relatively rare, and that nuclear proliferation could be avoided by simply buying up all known uranium stocks, but within a decade large deposits of it were discovered in many places around the world.
=== Reactors ===
The X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, formerly known as the Clinton Pile and X-10 Pile, was the world's second artificial nuclear reactor (after Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile) and was the first reactor designed and built for continuous operation. Argonne National Laboratory's Experimental Breeder Reactor I, located at the Atomic Energy Commission's National Reactor Testing Station near Arco, Idaho, became the first nuclear reactor to create electricity on 20 December 1951. Initially, four 150-watt light bulbs were lit by the reactor, but improvements eventually enabled it to power the whole facility (later, the town of Arco became the first in the world to have all its electricity come from nuclear power generated by BORAX-III, another reactor designed and operated by Argonne National Laboratory). The world's first commercial scale nuclear power station, Obninsk in the Soviet Union, began generation with its reactor AM-1 on 27 June 1954. Other early nuclear power plants were Calder Hall in England, which began generation on 17 October 1956, and the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, which began on 26 May 1958. Nuclear power was used for the first time for propulsion by a submarine, the USS Nautilus, in 1954.
=== Prehistoric naturally occurring fission ===
In 1972, French physicist Francis Perrin discovered fifteen ancient and no longer active natural nuclear fission reactors in three separate ore deposits at the Oklo mine in Gabon, Africa, collectively known as the Oklo Fossil Reactors. The ore deposit is 1.7 billion years old; then, uranium-235 constituted about 3% of uranium on Earth. This is high enough to permit a sustained chain reaction, if other supporting conditions exist. The capacity of the surrounding sediment to contain the health-threatening nuclear waste products has been cited by the U.S. federal government as supporting evidence for the feasibility to store spent nuclear fuel at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
=== Contamination and the Cold War legacy ===
Above-ground nuclear tests by the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s and by France into the 1970s and 1980s spread a significant amount of fallout from uranium daughter isotopes around the world. Additional fallout and pollution occurred from several nuclear accidents.
Uranium miners have a higher incidence of cancer. An excess risk of lung cancer among Navajo uranium miners, for example, has been documented and linked to their occupation. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, a 1990 law in the US, required $100,000 in "compassion payments" to uranium miners diagnosed with cancer or other respiratory ailments.
During the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, huge stockpiles of uranium were amassed and tens of thousands of nuclear weapons were created using enriched uranium and plutonium made from uranium. After the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, an estimated 600 short tons (540 metric tons) of highly enriched weapons grade uranium (enough to make 40,000 nuclear warheads) had been stored in often inadequately guarded facilities in the Russian Federation and several other former Soviet states. Police in Asia, Europe, and South America on at least 16 occasions from 1993 to 2005 have intercepted shipments of smuggled bomb-grade uranium or plutonium, most of which was from ex-Soviet sources. From 1993 to 2005 the Material Protection, Control, and Accounting Program, operated by the federal government of the United States, spent about US$550 million to help safeguard uranium and plutonium stockpiles in Russia. This money was used for improvements and security enhancements at research and storage facilities.
Safety of nuclear facilities in Russia has been significantly improved since the stabilization of political and economical turmoil of the early 1990s. For example, in 1993 there were 29 incidents ranking above level 1 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, and this number dropped under four per year in 1995–2003. The number of employees receiving annual radiation doses above 20 mSv, which is equivalent to a single full-body CT scan, saw a strong decline around 2000. In November 2015, the Russian government approved a federal program for nuclear and radiation safety for 2016 to 2030 with a budget of 562 billion rubles (ca. 8 billion USD). Its key issue is "the deferred liabilities accumulated during the 70 years of the nuclear industry, particularly during the time of the Soviet Union". About 73% of the budget will be spent on decommissioning aged and obsolete nuclear reactors and nuclear facilities, especially those involved in state defense programs; 20% will go in processing and disposal of nuclear fuel and radioactive waste, and 5% into monitoring and ensuring of nuclear and radiation safety.
== Occurrence ==
Uranium is a naturally occurring element found in low levels in all rock, soil, and water. It is the highest-numbered element found naturally in significant quantities on Earth and is almost always found combined with other elements. Uranium is the 48th most abundant element in the Earth's crust. The decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium-40 in Earth's mantle is thought to be the main source of heat that keeps the Earth's outer core in the liquid state and drives mantle convection, which in turn drives plate tectonics.
Uranium's concentration in the Earth's crust is (depending on the reference) 2 to 4 parts per million, or about 40 times as abundant as silver. The Earth's crust from the surface to 25 km (15 mi) down is calculated to contain 1017 kg (2×1017 lb) of uranium while the oceans may contain 1013 kg (2×1013 lb). The concentration of uranium in soil ranges from 0.7 to 11 parts per million (up to 15 parts per million in farmland soil due to use of phosphate fertilizers containing uranium impurities), and its concentration in sea water is 3 parts per billion.
Uranium is more plentiful than antimony, tin, cadmium, mercury, or silver, and it is about as abundant as arsenic or molybdenum. Uranium is found in hundreds of minerals, including uraninite (the most common uranium ore), carnotite, autunite, uranophane, torbernite, and coffinite. Significant concentrations of uranium occur in some substances such as phosphate rock deposits, and minerals such as lignite, and monazite sands in uranium-rich ores (it is recovered commercially from sources with as little as 0.1% uranium).
=== Origin ===
Like all elements with atomic weights higher than that of iron, uranium is only naturally formed by the r-process (rapid neutron capture) in supernovae and neutron star mergers. Primordial thorium and uranium are only produced in the r-process, because the s-process (slow neutron capture) is too slow and cannot pass the gap of instability after bismuth. Besides the two extant primordial uranium isotopes, 235U and 238U, the r-process also produced significant quantities of 236U, which has a shorter half-life and so is an extinct radionuclide, having long since decayed completely to 232Th. Further uranium-236 was produced by the decay of 244Pu, accounting for the observed higher-than-expected abundance of thorium and lower-than-expected abundance of uranium. While the natural abundance of uranium has been supplemented by the decay of extinct 242Pu (half-life 375,000 years) and 247Cm (half-life 16 million years), producing 238U and 235U respectively, this occurred to an almost negligible extent due to the shorter half-lives of these parents and their lower production than 236U and 244Pu, the parents of thorium: the 247Cm/235U ratio at the formation of the Solar System was (7.0±1.6)×10−5.
=== Biotic and abiotic ===
Some bacteria, such as Shewanella putrefaciens, Geobacter metallireducens and some strains of Burkholderia fungorum, can use uranium for their growth and convert U(VI) to U(IV). Recent research suggests that this pathway includes reduction of the soluble U(VI) via an intermediate U(V) pentavalent state.
Other organisms, such as the lichen Trapelia involuta or microorganisms such as the bacterium Citrobacter, can absorb concentrations of uranium that are up to 300 times the level of their environment. Citrobacter species absorb uranyl ions when given glycerol phosphate (or other similar organic phosphates). After one day, one gram of bacteria can encrust themselves with nine grams of uranyl phosphate crystals; this creates the possibility that these organisms could be used in bioremediation to decontaminate uranium-polluted water.
The proteobacterium Geobacter has also been shown to bioremediate uranium in ground water. The mycorrhizal fungus Glomus intraradices increases uranium content in the roots of its symbiotic plant.
In nature, uranium(VI) forms highly soluble carbonate complexes at alkaline pH. This leads to an increase in mobility and availability of uranium to groundwater and soil from nuclear wastes which leads to health hazards. However, it is difficult to precipitate uranium as phosphate in the presence of excess carbonate at alkaline pH. A Sphingomonas sp. strain BSAR-1 has been found to express a high activity alkaline phosphatase (PhoK) that has been applied for bioprecipitation of uranium as uranyl phosphate species from alkaline solutions. The precipitation ability was enhanced by overexpressing PhoK protein in E. coli.
Plants absorb some uranium from soil. Dry weight concentrations of uranium in plants range from 5 to 60 parts per billion, and ash from burnt wood can have concentrations up to 4 parts per million. Dry weight concentrations of uranium in food plants are typically lower with one to two micrograms per day ingested through the food people eat.
=== Production and mining ===
Worldwide production of uranium in 2024 was 60,213 tonnes, of which 23,270 t (39%) was mined in Kazakhstan. Other important uranium mining countries are Canada (14,309 t), Namibia (7,333 t), Australia (4,598 t), Uzbekistan (4,000 t), and Russia (2,738 t).
Uranium ore is mined in several ways: open pit, underground, in-situ leaching, and borehole mining. Low-grade uranium ore mined typically contains 0.01 to 0.25% uranium oxides. Extensive measures must be employed to extract the metal from its ore. High-grade ores found in Athabasca Basin deposits in Saskatchewan, Canada can contain up to 23% uranium oxides on average. Uranium ore is crushed and rendered into a fine powder and then leached with either an acid or alkali. The leachate is subjected to one of several sequences of precipitation, solvent extraction, and ion exchange. The resulting mixture, called yellowcake, contains at least 75% uranium oxides U3O8. Yellowcake is then calcined to remove impurities from the milling process before refining and conversion.
Commercial-grade uranium can be produced through the reduction of uranium halides with alkali or alkaline earth metals. Uranium metal can also be prepared through electrolysis of KUF5 or
UF4, dissolved in molten calcium chloride (CaCl2) and sodium chloride (NaCl) solution. Very pure uranium is produced through the thermal decomposition of uranium halides on a hot filament.
=== Resources and reserves ===
It is estimated that 6.1 million tonnes of uranium exists in ores that are economically viable at US$130 per kg of uranium, while 35 million tonnes are classed as mineral resources (reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction).
Australia has 28% of the world's known uranium ore reserves and the world's largest single uranium deposit is located at the Olympic Dam Mine in South Australia. There is a significant reserve of uranium in Bakouma, a sub-prefecture in the prefecture of Mbomou in the Central African Republic.
Some uranium also originates from dismantled nuclear weapons. For example, in 1993–2013 Russia supplied the United States with 15,000 tonnes of low-enriched uranium within the Megatons to Megawatts Program.
An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be dissolved in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s showed that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was technically feasible). There have been experiments to extract uranium from sea water, but the yield has been low due to the carbonate present in the water. In 2012, ORNL researchers announced the successful development of a new absorbent material dubbed HiCap which performs surface retention of solid or gas molecules, atoms or ions and also effectively removes toxic metals from water, according to results verified by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
=== Supplies ===
In 2005, ten countries accounted for the majority of the world's concentrated uranium oxides: Canada (27.9%), Australia (22.8%), Kazakhstan (10.5%), Russia (8.0%), Namibia (7.5%), Niger (7.4%), Uzbekistan (5.5%), the United States (2.5%), Argentina (2.1%) and Ukraine (1.9%). In 2008, Kazakhstan was forecast to increase production and become the world's largest supplier of uranium by 2009; Kazakhstan has dominated the world's uranium market since 2010. In 2021, its share was 45.1%, followed by Namibia (11.9%), Canada (9.7%), Australia (8.7%), Uzbekistan (7.2%), Niger (4.7%), Russia (5.5%), China (3.9%), India (1.3%), Ukraine (0.9%), and South Africa (0.8%), with a world total production of 48,332 tonnes. Most uranium was produced not by conventional underground mining of ores (29% of production), but by in situ leaching (66%).
In the late 1960s, UN geologists discovered major uranium deposits and other rare mineral reserves in Somalia. The find was the largest of its kind, with industry experts estimating the deposits at over 25% of the world's then known uranium reserves of 800,000 tons.
The ultimate available supply is believed to be sufficient for at least the next 85 years, though some studies indicate underinvestment in the late twentieth century may produce supply problems in the 21st century.
Uranium deposits seem to be log-normal distributed. There is a 300-fold increase in the amount of uranium recoverable for each tenfold decrease in ore grade.
In other words, there is little high grade ore and proportionately much more low grade ore available.
== Compounds ==
=== Oxidation states and oxides ===
==== Oxides ====
Calcined uranium yellowcake, as produced in many large mills, contains a distribution of uranium oxidation species in various forms ranging from most oxidized to least oxidized. Particles with short residence times in a calciner will generally be less oxidized than those with long retention times or particles recovered in the stack scrubber. Uranium content is usually referenced to U3O8, which dates to the days of the Manhattan Project when U3O8 was used as an analytical chemistry reporting standard.
Phase relationships in the uranium-oxygen system are complex. The most important oxidation states of uranium are uranium(IV) and uranium(VI), and their two corresponding oxides are, respectively, uranium dioxide (UO2) and uranium trioxide (UO3). Other uranium oxides such as uranium monoxide (UO), diuranium pentoxide (U2O5), and uranium peroxide (UO4·2H2O) also exist.
The most common forms of uranium oxide are triuranium octoxide (U3O8) and UO2. Both oxide forms are solids that have low solubility in water and are relatively stable over a wide range of environmental conditions. Triuranium octoxide is (depending on conditions) the most stable compound of uranium and is the form most commonly found in nature. Uranium dioxide is the form in which uranium is most commonly used as a nuclear reactor fuel. At ambient temperatures, UO2 will gradually convert to U3O8. Because of their stability, uranium oxides are generally considered the preferred chemical form for storage or disposal.
==== Aqueous chemistry ====
Salts of many oxidation states of uranium are water-soluble and may be studied in aqueous solutions. The most common ionic forms are U3+ (brown-red), U4+ (green), UO+2 (unstable), and UO2+2 (yellow), for U(III), U(IV), U(V), and U(VI), respectively. A few solid and semi-metallic compounds such as UO and US exist for the formal oxidation state uranium(II), but no simple ions are known to exist in solution for that state. Ions of U3+ liberate hydrogen from water and are therefore considered to be highly unstable. The UO2+2 ion represents the uranium(VI) state and is known to form compounds such as uranyl carbonate, uranyl chloride and uranyl sulfate. UO2+2 also forms complexes with various organic chelating agents, the most commonly encountered of which is uranyl acetate.
Unlike the uranyl salts of uranium and polyatomic ion uranium-oxide cationic forms, the uranates, salts containing a polyatomic uranium-oxide anion, are generally not water-soluble.
==== Carbonates ====
The interactions of carbonate anions with uranium(VI) cause the Pourbaix diagram to change greatly when the medium is changed from water to a carbonate containing solution. While the vast majority of carbonates are insoluble in water (students are often taught that all carbonates other than those of alkali metals are insoluble in water), uranium carbonates are often soluble in water. This is because a U(VI) cation is able to bind two terminal oxides and three or more carbonates to form anionic complexes.
==== Effects of pH ====
The uranium fraction diagrams in the presence of carbonate illustrate this further: when the pH of a uranium(VI) solution increases, the uranium is converted to a hydrated uranium oxide hydroxide and at high pHs it becomes an anionic hydroxide complex.
When carbonate is added, uranium is converted to a series of carbonate complexes if the pH is increased. One effect of these reactions is increased solubility of uranium in the pH range 6 to 8, a fact that has a direct bearing on the long term stability of spent uranium dioxide nuclear fuels.
=== Hydrides, carbides and nitrides ===
Uranium metal heated to 250 to 300 °C (482 to 572 °F) reacts with hydrogen to form uranium hydride. Even higher temperatures will reversibly remove the hydrogen. This property makes uranium hydrides convenient starting materials to create reactive uranium powder along with various uranium carbide, nitride, and halide compounds. Two crystal modifications of uranium hydride exist: an α form that is obtained at low temperatures and a β form that is created when the formation temperature is above 250 °C.
Uranium carbides and uranium nitrides are both relatively inert semimetallic compounds that are minimally soluble in acids, react with water, and can ignite in air to form U3O8. Carbides of uranium include uranium monocarbide (UC), uranium dicarbide (UC2), and diuranium tricarbide (U2C3). Both UC and UC2 are formed by adding carbon to molten uranium or by exposing the metal to carbon monoxide at high temperatures. Stable below 1800 °C, U2C3 is prepared by subjecting a heated mixture of UC and UC2 to mechanical stress. Uranium nitrides obtained by direct exposure of the metal to nitrogen include uranium mononitride (UN), uranium dinitride (UN2), and diuranium trinitride (U2N3).
=== Halides ===
All uranium fluorides are created using uranium tetrafluoride (UF4); UF4 itself is prepared by hydrofluorination of uranium dioxide. Reduction of UF4 with hydrogen at 1000 °C produces uranium trifluoride (UF3). Under the right conditions of temperature and pressure, the reaction of solid UF4 with gaseous uranium hexafluoride (UF6) can form the intermediate fluorides of U2F9, U4F17, and UF5.
At room temperatures, UF6 has a high vapor pressure, making it useful in the gaseous diffusion process to separate the rare uranium-235 from the common uranium-238 isotope. This compound can be prepared from uranium dioxide and uranium hydride by the following process:
UO2 + 4 HF → UF4 + 2 H2O (500 °C, endothermic)
UF4 + F2 → UF6 (350 °C, endothermic)
The resulting UF6, a white solid, is highly reactive (by fluorination), easily sublimes (emitting a vapor that behaves as a nearly ideal gas), and is the most volatile compound of uranium known to exist.
One method of preparing uranium tetrachloride (UCl4) is to directly combine chlorine with either uranium metal or uranium hydride. The reduction of UCl4 by hydrogen produces uranium trichloride (UCl3) while the higher chlorides of uranium are prepared by reaction with additional chlorine. All uranium chlorides react with water and air.
Bromides and iodides of uranium are formed by direct reaction of, respectively, bromine and iodine with uranium or by adding UH3 to those element's acids. Known examples include: UBr3, UBr4, UI3, and UI4. UI5 has never been prepared. Uranium oxyhalides are water-soluble and include UO2F2, UOCl2, UO2Cl2, and UO2Br2. Stability of the oxyhalides decrease as the atomic weight of the component halide increases.
== Isotopes ==
Uranium, like all elements with an atomic number greater than 82, has no stable isotopes. All isotopes of uranium are radioactive because the strong nuclear force does not prevail over electromagnetic repulsion in nuclides containing more than 82 protons. Nevertheless, the two most stable isotopes, 238U and 235U, have half-lives long enough to occur in nature as primordial radionuclides, with measurable quantities having survived since the formation of the Earth. These two nuclides, along with thorium-232, are the only confirmed primordial nuclides heavier than nearly-stable bismuth-209.
Natural uranium consists of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (99.28% natural abundance), uranium-235 (0.71%), and uranium-234 (0.0054%). There are also five other trace isotopes: uranium-240, a decay product of plutonium-244; uranium-239, which is formed when 238U undergoes spontaneous fission, releasing neutrons that are captured by another 238U atom; uranium-237, which is formed when 238U captures a neutron but emits two more, which then decays to neptunium-237; uranium-236, which occurs in trace quantities due to neutron capture on 235U and as a decay product of plutonium-244; and finally, uranium-233, which is formed in the decay chain of neptunium-237. Additionally, uranium-232 would be produced by the double beta decay of natural thorium-232, though this energetically possible process has never been observed.
Uranium-238 is the most stable isotope of uranium, with a half-life of about 4.463×109 years, roughly the age of the Earth. Uranium-238 is predominantly an alpha emitter, decaying to thorium-234. It ultimately decays through the uranium series, which has 18 members, into lead-206. Uranium-238 is not fissile, but is a fertile isotope, because after neutron activation it can be converted to plutonium-239, another fissile isotope. Indeed, the 238U nucleus can absorb one neutron to produce the radioactive isotope uranium-239. 239U decays by beta emission to neptunium-239, also a beta-emitter, that decays in its turn, within a few days into plutonium-239. 239Pu was used as fissile material in the first atomic bomb detonated in the "Trinity test" on 16 July 1945 in New Mexico.
Uranium-235 has a half-life of about 7.04×108 years; it is the next most stable uranium isotope after 238U and is also predominantly an alpha emitter, decaying to thorium-231. Uranium-235 is important for both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, because it is the only uranium isotope existing in nature on Earth in significant amounts that is fissile. This means that it can be split into two or three fragments (fission products) by thermal neutrons. The decay chain of 235U, which is called the actinium series, has 15 members and eventually decays into lead-207. The constant rates of decay in these decay series makes the comparison of the ratios of parent to daughter elements useful in radiometric dating.
Uranium-236 has a half-life of 2.342×107 years and is not found in significant quantities in nature. The half-life of uranium-236 is too short for it to be primordial, though it has been identified as an extinct progenitor of its alpha decay daughter, thorium-232. Uranium-236 occurs in spent nuclear fuel when neutron capture on 235U does not induce fission, or as a decay product of plutonium-240. Uranium-236 is not fertile, as three more neutron captures are required to produce fissile 239Pu, and is not itself fissile; as such, it is considered long-lived radioactive waste.
Uranium-234 is a member of the uranium series and occurs in equilibrium with its progenitor, 238U; it undergoes alpha decay with a half-life of 245,500 years and decays to lead-206 through a series of relatively short-lived isotopes.
Uranium-233 undergoes alpha decay with a half-life of 160,000 years and, like 235U, is fissile. It can be bred from thorium-232 via neutron bombardment, usually in a nuclear reactor; this process is known as the thorium fuel cycle. Owing to the fissility of 233U and the greater natural abundance of thorium (three times that of uranium), 233U has been investigated for use as nuclear fuel as a possible alternative to 235U and 239Pu, though is not in widespread use as of 2022. The decay chain of uranium-233 forms part of the neptunium series and ends at nearly-stable bismuth-209 (half-life 2.01×1019 years) and stable thallium-205.
Uranium-232 is an alpha emitter with a half-life of 68.9 years. This isotope is produced as a byproduct in production of 233U and is considered a nuisance, as it is not fissile and decays through short-lived alpha and gamma emitters such as 208Tl. It is also expected that thorium-232 should be able to undergo double beta decay, which would produce uranium-232, but this has not yet been observed experimentally.
All isotopes from 232U to 236U inclusive have minor cluster decay branches (less than 10−10%), and all these bar 233U, in addition to 238U, have minor spontaneous fission branches; the greatest branching ratio for spontaneous fission is about 5×10−5% for 238U, or about one in every two million decays. The shorter-lived trace isotopes 237U and 239U exclusively undergo beta decay, with respective half-lives of 6.752 days and 23.45 minutes.
In total, 28 isotopes of uranium have been identified, ranging in mass number from 214 to 242, with the exception of 220. Among the uranium isotopes not found in natural samples or nuclear fuel, the longest-lived is 230U, an alpha emitter with a half-life of 20.23 days. This isotope has been considered for use in targeted alpha-particle therapy (TAT). All other isotopes have half-lives shorter than one hour, except for 231U (half-life 4.2 days) and 240U (half-life 14.1 hours). The shortest-lived known isotope is 221U, with a half-life of 660 nanoseconds, and it is expected that the hitherto unknown 220U has an even shorter half-life. The proton-rich isotopes lighter than 232U primarily undergo alpha decay, except for 229U and 231U, which decay to protactinium isotopes via positron emission and electron capture, respectively; the neutron-rich 240U, 241U, and 242U undergo beta decay to form neptunium isotopes.
=== Enrichment ===
In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2742%) and uranium-235 (0.7204%). Isotope separation concentrates (enriches) the fissile uranium-235 for nuclear weapons and most nuclear power plants, except for gas cooled reactors and pressurized heavy water reactors. Most neutrons released by a fissioning atom of uranium-235 must impact other uranium-235 atoms to sustain the nuclear chain reaction. The concentration and amount of uranium-235 needed to achieve this is called a 'critical mass'.
To be considered 'enriched', the uranium-235 fraction should be between 3% and 5%. This process produces huge quantities of uranium that is depleted of uranium-235 and with a correspondingly increased fraction of uranium-238, called depleted uranium or 'DU'. To be considered 'depleted', the 235U concentration should be no more than 0.3%. The price of uranium has risen since 2001, so enrichment tailings containing more than 0.35% uranium-235 are being considered for re-enrichment, driving the price of depleted uranium hexafluoride above $130 per kilogram in July 2007 from $5 in 2001.
The gas centrifuge process, where gaseous uranium hexafluoride (UF6) is separated by the difference in molecular weight between 235UF6 and 238UF6 using high-speed centrifuges, is the cheapest and leading enrichment process. The gaseous diffusion process had been the leading method for enrichment and was used in the Manhattan Project. In this process, uranium hexafluoride is repeatedly diffused through a silver-zinc membrane, and the different isotopes of uranium are separated by diffusion rate (since uranium-238 is heavier it diffuses slightly slower than uranium-235). The molecular laser isotope separation method employs a laser beam of precise energy to sever the bond between uranium-235 and fluorine. This leaves uranium-238 bonded to fluorine and allows uranium-235 metal to precipitate from the solution. An alternative laser method of enrichment is known as atomic vapor laser isotope separation (AVLIS) and employs visible tunable lasers such as dye lasers. Another method used is liquid thermal diffusion.
The only significant deviation from the 235U to 238U ratio in any known natural samples occurs in Oklo, Gabon, where natural nuclear fission reactors consumed some of the 235U some two billion years ago when the ratio of 235U to 238U was more akin to that of low enriched uranium allowing regular ("light") water to act as a neutron moderator akin to the process in humanmade light water reactors. The existence of such natural fission reactors which had been theoretically predicted beforehand was proven as the slight deviation of 235U concentration from the expected values were discovered during uranium enrichment in France. Subsequent investigations to rule out any nefarious human action (such as stealing of 235U) confirmed the theory by finding isotope ratios of common fission products (or rather their stable daughter nuclides) in line with the values expected for fission but deviating from the values expected for non-fission derived samples of those elements.
== Human exposure ==
A person can be exposed to uranium (or its radioactive daughters, such as radon) by inhaling dust in air or by ingesting contaminated water and food. The amount of uranium in air is usually very small; however, people who work in factories that process phosphate fertilizers containing uranium impurities, live near government facilities that made or tested nuclear weapons, live or work near a modern battlefield where depleted uranium weapons have been used, or live or work near a coal-fired power plant, facilities that mine or process uranium ore, or enrich uranium for reactor fuel, may have increased exposure to uranium. Houses or structures that are over uranium deposits (either natural or man-made slag deposits) may have an increased incidence of exposure to radon gas.
The health impacts of natural and of depleted uranium are chemical rather than due to radiation.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the permissible exposure limit for uranium exposure in the workplace as 0.25 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of 0.2 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday and a short-term limit of 0.6 mg/m3. At 10 mg/m3, uranium is immediately dangerous to life and health.
Most ingested uranium is excreted during digestion. Only 0.5% is absorbed when insoluble forms of uranium, such as its oxide, are ingested, whereas absorption of the more soluble uranyl ion can be up to 5%. However, soluble uranium compounds tend to quickly pass through the body, whereas insoluble uranium compounds, especially when inhaled by way of dust into the lungs, pose a more serious exposure hazard. After entering the bloodstream, the absorbed uranium tends to bioaccumulate and stay for many years in bone tissue because of uranium's affinity for phosphates. Incorporated uranium becomes uranyl ions, which accumulate in bone, liver, kidney, and reproductive tissues.
Elements of high atomic number like uranium exhibit phantom or secondary radiotoxicity through absorption of natural background gamma and X-rays and re-emission of photoelectrons, which in combination with the high affinity of uranium to the phosphate moiety of DNA cause increased single and double strand DNA breaks.
Uranium is not absorbed through the skin, and alpha particles released by uranium cannot penetrate the skin.
Uranium can be decontaminated from steel surfaces and aquifers.
=== Effects and precautions ===
Normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and other systems can be affected by uranium exposure, because, besides being weakly radioactive, uranium is a toxic metal. Uranium is also a reproductive toxicant. Radiological effects are generally local because alpha radiation, the primary form of 238U decay, has a very short range, and will not penetrate skin. Alpha radiation from inhaled uranium has been demonstrated to cause lung cancer in exposed nuclear workers. The Centers for Disease Control have published one study stating that neither natural nor depleted uranium have been classified with respect to carcinogenicity. Exposure to its decay products, especially radon, is a significant health threat, and uranium processing produces wastes contaminated with radium which in turn produces radon gas. Because of its long half-life, purified uranium will not produce significant amounts of daughter nuclides for millions of years. Exposure to strontium-90, iodine-131, and other fission products is unrelated to uranium exposure, but may result from medical procedures or exposure to spent reactor fuel or fallout from nuclear weapons.
Although accidental inhalation exposure to a high concentration of uranium hexafluoride has resulted in human fatalities, those deaths were associated with the generation of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid and uranyl fluoride rather than with uranium itself. Finely divided uranium metal presents a fire hazard because uranium is pyrophoric; small grains will ignite spontaneously in air at room temperature.
Uranium metal is commonly handled with gloves as a sufficient precaution. Uranium concentrate is handled and contained so as to ensure that people do not inhale or ingest it. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Keane | Mike Keane | Michael John Keane (born May 29, 1967) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey winger. Undrafted, Keane played over 1,100 games in the National Hockey League from 1988 until 2004. He then played five seasons for his hometown Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League until he retired in 2010. Keane is a three-time Stanley Cup champion, having won with the Montreal Canadiens in 1993, Colorado Avalanche in 1996, and the Dallas Stars in 1999. He is one of only 11 players in NHL history to win the Cup with three or more different teams. On September 3, 2013, the Winnipeg Jets announced the hiring of Keane as Assistant of Player Development.
== Playing career ==
Keane began his junior hockey career in the Junior A Manitoba Junior Hockey League (MJHL) with the Winnipeg South Blues. He then joined the major junior ranks in the Western Hockey League (WHL) with the Moose Jaw Warriors.
Undrafted out of junior hockey, Keane signed as a free agent on September 25, 1985, with the Montreal Canadiens and started his NHL career in 1988. He helped the Canadiens to a Stanley Cup championship in 1993, his fifth NHL season. He spent eight seasons in Montreal and was captain of the team from April 1995 to December 1995. After Kirk Muller was traded near the end of the 1994–95 season, Keane was named as the 24th captain of the Montreal Canadiens. Keane was subject to media scrutiny after speaking to Mathias Brunet of La Presse (a French language newspaper). Keane declared that he had no intention of learning French. He drew controversy in the French media after saying he did not believe it was necessary to speak French, since players on the team spoke predominantly English.
During the 1995–96 NHL season, Keane was traded along with Patrick Roy to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for Jocelyn Thibault, Andrei Kovalenko, and Martin Ručinský. He won his second Stanley Cup that season, helping the Avalanche defeat the Florida Panthers in four games in the Finals. Keane spent another season with the Avalanche, before becoming a free agent in the summer of 1997. He signed with the New York Rangers, where he played for half a season before the Rangers traded Keane, Brian Skrudland, and the Rangers' 1998 6th round draft choice (Pavel Patera) to the Dallas Stars in exchange for Todd Harvey, Bob Errey, and the Stars' 1998 4th round draft choice (Boyd Kane). Keane played in Dallas until 2000–01, helping the Stars win the Stanley Cup in 1999 and returning to the finals the next year. He started the 2001–02 NHL season with the St. Louis Blues but finished that season back with Colorado. Keane stayed in Colorado until he left for the Vancouver Canucks at the start of the 2003–04 NHL season.
After the 2004–05 lockout, Keane signed with his hometown team, the Manitoba Moose, for the 2005–06 AHL season. Keane played five seasons for the Moose. He was named captain in 2005 and remained Manitoba's captain until July 20, 2010, when his contract was not renewed. Keane was also captain of the AHL All-Star Team Canada in 2007. Keane's number 12 jersey was retired February 12, 2011, when the Manitoba Moose took on the San Antonio Rampage at Bell MTS Place. Keane's number was the first number retired in Manitoba Moose history.
== International play ==
Keane competed for Team Canada at the 1987 World Junior Championships in Czechoslovakia. While playing for the gold medal against the Soviet Union, both teams were disqualified as a result of the infamous Punch-up in Piestany.
== Career statistics ==
=== Regular season and playoffs ===
=== International ===
== Awards and honours == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Director | Academy Award for Best Director | The Academy Award for Best Director (officially known as the Academy Award of Merit for Directing) is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given in honor of a film director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the film industry.
The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with the award being split into "Dramatic" and "Comedy" categories; Frank Borzage and Lewis Milestone won for 7th Heaven and Two Arabian Knights, respectively. However, these categories were merged for all subsequent ceremonies. Nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the directors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the academy.
For the first eleven years of the Academy Awards, directors were allowed to be nominated for multiple films in the same year. However, after the nomination of Michael Curtiz for two films, Angels with Dirty Faces and Four Daughters, at the 11th Academy Awards, the rules were revised so that an individual could only be nominated for one film at each ceremony. That rule has since been amended, although the only director who has received multiple nominations in the same year was Steven Soderbergh for Erin Brockovich and Traffic in 2000, winning the award for the latter.
The Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 92 films that won Best Picture and were also nominated for Best Director, 71 won the award. The award has been criticised in recent years for failing to recognise female directors. Of the 260 individual directors nominated in the history of the award, only 9 have been women, with only 2 women having been nominated more than once (compared to 101 men), and only 3 of the 78 individual winners have been women.
Since its inception, the award has been given to 75 different directors or directing teams. As of the 98th Academy Awards ceremony, American filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is the most recent winner in this category for his work on One Battle After Another.
== Winners and nominees ==
In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County, California; the ceremonies are always held the following year. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31. For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.
=== 1920s ===
=== 1930s ===
=== 1940s ===
=== 1950s ===
=== 1960s ===
=== 1970s ===
=== 1980s ===
=== 1990s ===
=== 2000s ===
=== 2010s ===
=== 2020s ===
== Multiple wins and nominations ==
=== Multiple wins ===
=== Three or more nominations ===
== Age superlatives ==
== Records ==
John Ford has received the most awards in this category, with four. Frank Capra and William Wyler won three each.
Wyler has the most nominations, with 12—including a record four years in a row. Martin Scorsese is currently second, with 10 nominations.
Clarence Brown has the most nominations without a win (6). Alfred Hitchcock and King Vidor each received 5 nominations without a win.
Four directors have won twice for films that did not win Best Picture: Frank Borzage, George Stevens, Ang Lee, and Alfonso Cuarón.
Of John Ford's four wins, the only film which also won Best Picture was How Green Was My Valley (1941).
Ford (1940–1941), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1949–1950), and Alejandro González Iñárritu (2014–2015) are the only directors to have won the award in two consecutive years.
Francis Ford Coppola is the only director to be nominated for each film of a trilogy, The Godfather trilogy, winning for the second film.
Four directing teams have been nominated together (a total of five times, winning on three occasions): Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961, winners); Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait (1978); Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men (2007, winners) and True Grit (2010); and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022, winners).
The Coen Brothers are the only siblings to have won the award.
Six directors won the award for their feature film debut: Delbert Mann for Marty (1955), Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961), Robert Redford for Ordinary People (1980), James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment (1983), Kevin Costner for Dances With Wolves (1990), and Sam Mendes for American Beauty (1999).
Robbins is the only director to have won for his only career directing credit.
Lina Wertmüller was the first woman nominated in the category, for Seven Beauties (1976).
Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the award, for The Hurt Locker (2009).
Chloé Zhao is the first woman of color to win the award, for Nomadland (2020). She became the second woman nominated twice for the award for Hamnet (2025).
Jane Campion is the first woman to be nominated twice for the award: The Piano (1993) and The Power of the Dog (2021)—winning for the latter.
John Singleton is the first Black (and youngest) nominee for Boyz n the Hood (1991).
Steve McQueen is the first Black nominee to direct a Best Picture winner, for 12 Years a Slave. Barry Jenkins subsequently did the same three years later, with Moonlight (2016).
David Lean was the first non-American to win—and twice, for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). This did not recur for five decades with any other non-American directors, until Ang Lee, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro González Iñárritu each won twice themselves.
Lee was the first Asian director to win the award, for Brokeback Mountain (2005). He won again for Life of Pi (2012).
Cuarón was the first Mexican (and Latin American) director to win the award, for Gravity (2013). He won again for Roma (2018).
No married or ex-married couple have won the award for the same film, though James Cameron (1997's Titanic) and Kathryn Bigelow (2008's The Hurt Locker) were the first (and so far, only) ex-married couple to both win the award.
It was also the first time in Oscar history that ex-married couple were nominated against each other in competition for an award in the same year. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye,_Farewell_and_Amen | Goodbye, Farewell and Amen | "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" is a television film that served as the series finale of the American television series M*A*S*H. The 2½-hour episode first aired on CBS on February 28, 1983, ending the series' original run. The episode was written by eight collaborators, including series star Alan Alda, who also directed. As of 2025, it remains the most-watched single episode of any television series in U.S. history, and for twenty-seven years was the most-watched single broadcast in television history.
The episode's plot chronicles the final days of the Korean War at the 4077th MASH; it features several storylines intended to show the war's effects on the individual personnel of the unit and to bring closure to the series. After the ceasefire goes into effect, the members of the 4077th throw a party before taking down the camp for the last time. After tear-filled goodbyes, the main characters go their separate ways, leading to the final scene of the series.
== Plot ==
The film begins with Hawkeye Pierce being treated at a psychiatric hospital by Sidney Freedman. It is revealed he suffered a PTSD-induced nervous breakdown while in the operating room. He tells Freedman about a recent beach outing of camp staff. They picked up some refugees and wounded soldiers on their return home. Forced to pull off the road to avoid an enemy patrol, Hawkeye remembers telling a refugee to keep her chicken quiet, causing her to smother it. With Sidney’s help, he realizes he was repressing a memory.
Conditions back at the 4077th are chaotic with the camp now home to large numbers of refugees and prisoners of war. A wounded tank driver demolishes the camp latrine and abandons the tank in the camp. Afterwards, Charles Winchester meets five Chinese soldiers on a motorcycle-sidecar combination eager to surrender. The men are revealed to be musicians and Winchester marches them to camp while they play "Oh! Susanna". B.J. eagerly takes possession of the motorcycle while Winchester begins to teach the prisoners classical music. Despite a language barrier, the musicians recognize Mozart's name and Winchester teaches them to play Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.
Margaret Houlihan and Winchester discuss their postwar careers. Houlihan is offered an Army administrative post while Winchester is disappointed to find his absence from Boston has left a less talented colleague as the front-runner for a coveted chief surgeon spot. Winchester eventually receives a letter confirming his appointment to the position, but becomes angry after learning from Klinger that Margaret had intervened in the selection process by having a relative pull strings.
Klinger falls in love with a refugee named Soon-Lee Han, who wants to return to the combat zone to find her missing parents. B.J. Hunnicutt receives repatriation orders and prepares to leave once Colonel Potter can get a replacement surgeon. The chaos in the camp is intensified by enemy mortar fire on the abandoned tank. Father Mulcahy loses his hearing while saving POWs under fire in their holding area. He swears B.J. to secrecy about the nature of his injury, afraid the Army will return him home, away from the local orphans he has tended throughout his time in Korea.
Hawkeye's treatment progresses, and he eventually realizes that the woman on the bus had actually smothered her baby to prevent it from being heard by the enemy patrol, not a chicken as Hawkeye had initially thought in a false memory. He breaks down at the realization and vents anger at Sidney for making him remember the true nature of the incident. Sidney explains it is necessary for his recovery and returns Hawkeye to duty. B.J. meanwhile is offered a chance to fly out in time for his daughter's birthday and leaves. Hawkeye returns to find B.J. left without a farewell, as Trapper John had earlier in the series. When the mortar fire intensifies, Hawkeye impulsively drives the tank into a garbage dump to draw fire away from the camp, raising renewed concerns about his mental health and prompting Sidney to return to check on him.
A nearby forest fire causes the camp to relocate. A helicopter bringing B.J.'s replacement arrives, and it is revealed to be Hunnicutt himself, who had made it to Guam before being sent back to Korea. He celebrates his daughter's birthday at a party for orphaned refugee children. Hawkeye is unable to watch the party due to his experiences, and discusses his postwar future with Sidney, fearing he can no longer be around children without being reminded of his recent trauma. When Hawkeye finds he can operate on an injured young girl, Sidney leaves the 4077th with Hawkeye's thanks.
Winchester's musicians leave camp as part of a prisoner exchange, playing Mozart's Clarinet Quintet as they depart. The ceasefire is announced ending hostilities in the war. The 4077th returns to its campsite with wounded soldiers continuing to arrive in the last hours of the war. Winchester is shocked to find the body of one of the musicians among the wounded - he had died en route to the camp, and the others had been killed outright. Dazed, Winchester returns to The Swamp and tries to listen to the Mozart piece he had taught the musicians but soon smashes the record in anger.
The camp personnel throw a final party and reveal their postwar plans. Hawkeye will open up a practice in his hometown of Crabapple Cove, Maine, with the intention of getting to know his patients; B.J. will return home to his wife and daughter; Colonel Potter will retire from the Army and go home to his wife Mildred; Houlihan will work in a hospital stateside; Winchester will become the head of thoracic surgery at Boston Mercy Hospital, though he admits he will never be able to enjoy music again due to his experiences; Mulcahy will leave the priesthood to work with the deaf; Sergeant Rizzo plans to breed frogs to sell to French restaurants; Private Igor will take up pig farming; Nurse Kellye will be reassigned to her hometown of Honolulu; and Klinger will marry Soon-Lee and ironically, given his attempts throughout the series to be sent home, remain in Korea to help her search for her missing parents. Mulcahy officiates their wedding while the camp is dismantled. Camp staff say their goodbyes and leave in different ways. Winchester apologizes to Houlihan for his earlier poor treatment of her, and gives her a signed book of her favorite poetry. Houlihan says goodbye to Potter, B.J. and Winchester before Hawkeye steals a long kiss. Winchester then leaves in a garbage truck, saying “what better way to leave a garbage dump” before departing. Potter takes a final ride on Sophie, the horse that was gifted to him earlier in the series, before donating her to the orphanage. Hawkeye and B.J. give him a final parting gift, a heartfelt salute, which Potter tearfully returns.
In the final scene of the series, B.J. gives Hawkeye a ride to his chopper on the motorcycle and agree that they enjoyed their shared experiences at the camp. Just before the chopper takes off, B.J. shouts that he promises to track Hawkeye down in America, but left a note this time just in case they never see each other again before riding away on his bike. Hawkeye does not understand until the helicopter gains altitude and he sees the word GOODBYE spelled out with rocks on the ground below. He smiles as the chopper carries him away.
== Production ==
The script was written between April and September 16, 1982, with filming taking place in late September and early October. After a wildfire through Malibu Creek State Park on October 9 destroyed much of the set, two additional scenes were written to incorporate a fire into the story. Harry Morgan and Kellye Nakahara returned to the set on October 15 to film a short scene among the still smoldering ruins.
== Cultural reaction and impact ==
The anticipation before the airing of "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" was unprecedented, especially for a regular television series (in contrast to awards shows, sporting events, or special events). Interest from advertisers prompted CBS, the network broadcasting M*A*S*H, to sell 30-second commercial blocks for $450,000 each (equivalent to $1.45 million in 2025) – costlier than during NBC's airing of the Super Bowl of that year.
On the night the episode aired, large areas of California (particularly the San Francisco Bay Area) suffered power outages due to unusually stormy winter weather, which prevented many viewers from watching the series finale.
=== Reaction and AfterMASH ===
In the United States, the episode drew 105.97 million total viewers and a total audience of 121.6 million, more than both Super Bowl XVII and the Roots miniseries. The episode surpassed the single-episode ratings record that had been set by the Dallas episode that resolved the "Who Shot J.R.?" cliffhanger. From 1983 until 2010, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" remained the most watched television broadcast in American history, passed only in total viewership (but not in ratings or share) in February 2010 by Super Bowl XLIV. As of 2025, it still stands as the most-watched single episode of any television series in U.S. history.
As M*A*S*H was one of the most successful shows in TV history, in order not to lose the franchise completely, CBS quickly created a new series, AfterMASH, that followed the postwar adventures of Colonel Potter, Max Klinger, and Father Mulcahy in a stateside veterans hospital. Despite wide popularity in its premiere episodes, script problems and constant character changes led to a sharp decline in viewers, and the show was canceled by CBS after only two seasons. Another would-be spin-off, W*A*L*T*E*R, was a pilot made in 1984 that was never picked up. It starred Gary Burghoff, who reprised his M*A*S*H character.
"Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" was not initially included in the syndication package for M*A*S*H's final season; however, in 1992, the episode made its syndication premiere in time for its 10th anniversary. Local stations aired it as a part of a Movie of the Week. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_3:_Nemesis | Resident Evil 3: Nemesis | Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is a 1999 survival horror video game developed and published by Capcom originally for the PlayStation. It is the third main installment in the Resident Evil series and takes place almost concurrently with the events of Resident Evil 2. The player must control former elite agent Jill Valentine as she escapes from Raccoon City, which has been overrun by zombies. The game uses the same engine as its predecessors and features 3D models over pre-rendered backgrounds with fixed camera angles. Choices through the game affect how the story unfolds and which ending is achieved.
Resident Evil 3 was developed concurrently with Resident Evil – Code: Veronica and was conceived as a spin-off featuring a different protagonist. It was designed to have a more action-oriented gameplay than its predecessors and features a larger number of enemies for the player to defeat. It also introduces Nemesis, a creature that periodically pursues the player throughout the game and that was inspired by the T-1000 Terminator from the 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Resident Evil 3 received critical acclaim and sold more than three million copies worldwide. Critics praised the setting, detailed graphics and Nemesis as an intimidating villain, but some criticized its short length and simple story. In the years following its release on the PlayStation, Resident Evil 3 was ported to Windows, Dreamcast, and GameCube with varying degrees of critical success. In particular, the GameCube version was criticized for its relatively high retail price and outdated graphics. A remake, entitled Resident Evil 3, was released in 2020.
== Gameplay ==
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is a survival horror game where the player controls the protagonist, Jill Valentine, from a third-person perspective to interact with the environment and enemies. The player takes control of another character for a brief portion of the game. To advance, the player explores a city while avoiding, outsmarting and defeating enemies. The player can interact with the environment in several ways, such as opening doors, pushing objects or climbing obstacles. Scattered throughout the city are weapons, ammunition and other items, which can be collected and put in the player's inventory. Items can be examined, used, or combined with others. The inventory is limited to a certain number of slots, and the player must often move items from the inventory to a storage box located in special rooms to manage space.
The player can use a variety of firearms to defeat enemies, ranging from pistols to a rocket launcher. Aside from enemies, parts of the environment, such as explosive barrels, can be shot at, causing them to explode and damage nearby enemies. The game also introduces the ability for players to dodge attacks or perform a quick 180-degree turn to evade enemies. The player has a certain amount of health which decreases when attacked by enemies. Health is regained with first aid sprays, as well as herbs, which can be used separately or mixed together to increase their healing effect. The game also features an ammunition creation system that allows players to create new ammunition from different varieties of gunpowder. In addition to engaging in combat, the player must often solve puzzles that focus on logical and conceptual challenges.
During certain situations, the player will be put in a perilous situation, where they will be prompted to choose between two possible actions or suffer a certain penalty, if not instant death. These choices affect how the story unfolds and which ending is achieved. Additionally, a creature called Nemesis is encountered multiple times throughout the game as a recurring boss. Nemesis is considerably more powerful than the player and has the ability to use a rocket launcher as a weapon, dodge incoming fire, and pursue the player from one area to the next. During one of these encounters, the player can choose to either fight Nemesis or run until he is evaded. A variety of encounters are possible, with some being mandatory, and some varying in nature and location based on certain choices made by the player. Even if evaded or defeated during one of these encounters, Nemesis will inevitably continue to pursue the player until the end of the game.
Once the player completes the game, a mode called The Mercenaries - Operation: Mad Jackal is unlocked. In this mode, the player must control mercenaries that Jill encounters during the main game and run from one side of the city to the other within a limited amount of time and resources. However, the starting time limit given is insufficient to actually perform this task directly, and the player must continuously receive time extensions by performing certain actions such as defeating enemies, rescuing civilians and exploring hidden areas. Depending on the rank received and difficulty chosen, completing the main game may unlock alternate costumes for Jill and epilogue files that detail the activities of different characters following the events of the game. The Mercenaries mode and alternate costumes for Jill do not need to be unlocked in the Windows and Dreamcast versions of the game.
== Plot ==
On September 28, 1998, 24 hours prior to the events of Resident Evil 2, former Special Tactics And Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) member Jill Valentine attempts to escape from Raccoon City. Most of the population has been transformed into zombies by an outbreak of the T-virus, the gruesome biological weapon secretly developed by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella Corporation. After fighting through zombies and mutants on her way to the Raccoon City Police Department, Jill runs into fellow team member Brad Vickers, who is later killed by a new enemy. This creature, Nemesis-T Type, is a bio-organic weapon programmed to target the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members, who had knowledge of Umbrella's experiments. After she evades Nemesis, Jill encounters three surviving members of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service (U.B.C.S.): Carlos Oliveira, Mikhail Victor, and Nikolai Zinoviev. Nikolai explains to Jill that a rescue helicopter can be contacted if they manage to reach the city's Clock Tower to ring the bell.
When they are finished repairing a cable car, Nikolai goes missing and is presumed dead. Nemesis then corners the remaining members of the group onto the car as they head to the tower. Mikhail sacrifices himself with a grenade, causing the car to crash into the tower's central courtyard and separating Jill and Carlos briefly. At the Clock Tower, Jill summons the helicopter by ringing the Clock Tower's bell before being confronted by Nemesis, which destroys the helicopter and infects Jill with the T-virus. Jill manages to temporarily defeat Nemesis but she falls unconscious due to the T-virus infection given by Nemesis. Carlos finds Jill and takes her to safety within the Clock Tower. Three days later, he finds a vaccine for Jill's T-virus infection in a nearby Umbrella owned hospital, then returns and administers it to her, saving her.
After she regains consciousness on the morning of October 1, 1998, Jill proceeds towards the Raccoon Park to search for an escape route and enters the park caretaker's cabin. There, she runs into Nikolai, who reveals that he is a "supervisor" sent into Raccoon City to gather combat data on Umbrella's bioweapons. Nikolai retreats, and Jill later is confronted by the Gravedigger, a massive worm-like creature. Jill defeats it and escapes to an abandoned Umbrella factory at the edge of town through the worm’s tunnels. Inside the factory, Jill meets up with Carlos, who tells her that the U.S. government is planning to launch an experimental thermobaric missile into Raccoon City to eradicate the T-virus infestation. After confronting Nemesis and grabbing a keycard needed to escape, Jill learns that the missile attack on Raccoon City has begun, with only a short time left before the city is destroyed.
Depending on the path taken by the player, Jill's final encounter with Nikolai will differ. In one version of the events, Nikolai will attempt to start a gunfight with Jill, only to be ambushed and killed by Nemesis. In another event, Nikolai will hijack Jill's intended escape chopper, and the player must either reason with Nikolai or destroy the helicopter. If Jill negotiates with Nikolai, he reveals that he has killed the other supervisors and boasts about collecting the bounty placed on Jill by Umbrella before escaping. Regardless of Nikolai's fate, Jill makes her way to the rear yard and confronts Nemesis again. After an intense battle, Jill defeats Nemesis with the help of a large prototype railgun before meeting up with Carlos and escaping the city via a helicopter. If the previous escape chopper was stolen by Nikolai, Jill and Carlos will instead meet up with S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team's weapons specialist Barry Burton, who helps them escape in his helicopter. At sunrise, the missile vaporizes Raccoon City, and Jill swears revenge on Umbrella. A newscast then briefly details the destruction and offers condolences for the lost lives.
== Development ==
Resident Evil 3 was developed by Capcom and produced by Shinji Mikami, who had directed the original Resident Evil and produced Resident Evil 2. After Resident Evil 2 was released, Capcom was working on multiple Resident Evil projects, with Hideki Kamiya directing what was planned to be the next main installment. This game would take place on a cruise ship and would involve HUNK attempting to bring back a sample of the G-Virus. However, Capcom cancelled the project after Sony announced the PlayStation 2, claiming that its development would not be completed before the PlayStation 2's launch. Because Capcom did not want fans to wait years for a new Resident Evil on PlayStation, it promoted one of its side projects as the third main game while Kamiya's team moved onto Resident Evil 4.
The selected project was a spin-off developed by an inexperienced team led by director Kazuhiro Aoyama. It was intended to introduce a new character who would escape from an infected Raccoon City. However, after the promotion, Capcom made Resident Evil protagonist Jill Valentine the main character and decided that Raccoon City would be destroyed. Unlike the majority of the early scripts in the series, the story was not created by Capcom's Flagship studio but by internal Capcom writer Yasuhisa Kawamura, who had little experience with Resident Evil. Kawamura played the original game to familiarize himself with its fictional universe. The story was proofread and sanctioned by Flagship to avoid continuity errors with other games, an issue that was also given attention in monthly meetings between all directors and producers.
Resident Evil 3 uses the same game engine as its predecessors. The environments consist of 2D pre-rendered backgrounds while moving objects, such as enemies and some interactive elements, consist of 3D polygon graphics. The developers chose this technique because having full 3D graphics would not allow them to create graphically rich and detailed environments. According to project supervisor Yoshiki Okamoto, "the number of polygons allocated for the enemies would not be sufficient. We did not want to have blocky, pixelated zombies." Interaction with the environment was improved so that the player could shoot objects such as explosive barrels to damage enemies. The developers also added more zombie varieties, which can take the form of policemen, doctors, and ordinary citizens, among others.
Unlike previous Resident Evil games, which mostly took place inside buildings, Resident Evil 3 takes place largely in the streets of Raccoon City. This allowed the developers to create more varied environments. Capcom introduced more action mechanics, which resulted in the addition of the 180-degree turn and a dodge feature to avoid attacks. Additionally, the developers designed the game so that up to nine enemies can appear at the same time, and improved their artificial intelligence to hunt the player up and down stairs. The Nemesis creature was inspired by the liquid-metal T-1000 from the 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgment Day. According to Mikami, "I wanted to introduce a new kind of fear into the game, a persistent feeling of paranoia. The Nemesis brings that on in spades. When it disappears after the first confrontation, you live in constant dread of the next attack. The idea is to make you feel like you're being stalked."
The game was developed concurrently with the Dreamcast version of Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. It was originally referred to as Biohazard 1.9 or Biohazard 1.5 because it takes place between the first two Resident Evil games. Although Code: Veronica is set after Resident Evil 2, Capcom wanted Nemesis to be the third numbered game to keep the PlayStation games consistent. Development began with a team of 20 people, but the size gradually increased to between 40 and 50 staff members. Unlike Resident Evil 2, which features two discs with two different protagonists, Resident Evil 3 is a single-CD game that centers on Jill Valentine. Capcom chose her as the only protagonist because she was "the only suitable character remaining", noting that Claire Redfield and Chris Redfield had already been chosen for Code: Veronica.
== Marketing and release ==
Resident Evil 3 was featured at the Tokyo Game Show in March 1999. A playable version was available at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 1999. At the time, the dodging feature had not been completed and was absent from the demo. To promote the game, Capcom included a brief demo of Resident Evil 3 in the US shipments of their earlier game, Dino Crisis, which had a successful launch in Japan. Prior to the release of the game, Capcom spent US$20 million on advertisement campaigns for Resident Evil 3 and Dino Crisis, as well as the Nintendo 64 version of Resident Evil 2. The marketing campaign included dedicated television advertising, print advertising, and incentives to the consumer. A double soundtrack album, composed by Masami Ueda, Saori Maeda and Shusaku Uchiyama, was released on September 22, 1999. A novelization, Nemesis, written by S. D. Perry, was published in 2000.
Resident Evil 3 was released for the PlayStation video game console on September 22, 1999 in Japan and November 11, 1999 in North America. The first 500,000 units of the game included additional demo discs of Dino Crisis. The game was a commercial hit, selling more than 1 million units worldwide by early October. According to NPD, Resident Evil 3 was the top-selling game for the PlayStation in the US during the first two weeks of November 1999. In Europe, the game was released on February 21, 2000 and became a bestseller in the UK, where it received a "Gold" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, indicating sales of at least 200,000 copies. As of June 2012, a total of 3.5 million copies of the PlayStation version had been sold.
== Reception ==
Upon its release on the PlayStation console, Resident Evil 3 received "universal acclaim", according to Metacritic. GameSpot editor James Mielke considered it the most sophisticated and accomplished Resident Evil game in terms of graphics and gameplay. Official UK PlayStation Magazine called Resident Evil 3 "a modern-day classic", concluding that the game "creates a believable environment, populates it with a host of evil adversaries and uses Raccoon City's urban sprawl to enhance the fiendish puzzles." Computer and Video Games (CVG) remarked that the game preserves the best features of its predecessors and adds "some exciting new elements". Similarly, Edge described it as "engrossing", despite its similarity to its predecessors, and found the Mercenaries mode a valuable addition.
The pre-rendered backgrounds were credited for their rich details and dark art style. According to IGN editor Doug Perry, "Crashed cars, rubbish and rubble, totally destroyed city streets, and scattered broken glass and debris, all are housed in a suburban area that truly looks devastated in the worst possible way." GameSpot felt that the 3D modeling of Jill Valentine was greatly improved compared to the "blocky" models in the original game. The music and sound effects received similar praise, with GamePro remarking that the game "keeps the action hot by hiding what you shouldn't see, but telling you about it through the audio". The introduction of the Nemesis creature was praised. Official UK PlayStation Magazine described the first encounter as shocking, while CVG said that the creature increases the tension level "to an insane degree" because the player never knows when he will appear.
GameSpot praised the prompted choices during certain points in the game as they encourage replay value, but felt the game was too short compared to Resident Evil 2, with only one disc and one protagonist. Perry praised the live-action-choice feature, stating that it "speeds up the pace, increases the tension, and forces a decision that varies the following scene". He found the 180-degree turn and dodge moves as welcome and necessary additions. In contrast, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine criticized the dodge feature as impractical and for relying too much on timing, resulting in doing more harm to the player. GameRevolution and Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine criticized the simple premise and voice acting, while Next Generation said that the game might be a bit tiresome for players familiar with its predecessors. Resident Evil 3 was nominated for GameSpot's 1999 Adventure Game of the Year.
== Legacy ==
=== Ports and re-releases ===
Resident Evil 3 was ported to the Microsoft Windows and Dreamcast platforms in 2000, featuring enhanced 3D character models and higher resolution graphics. The Dreamcast version includes more alternate costumes than in the PlayStation version. Critical reception for these ports was not as positive. The Microsoft Windows version was criticized for not being optimized for keyboard and mouse and for not letting players save their progress at any time. Critics noted that some of the pre-rendered backgrounds in the Dreamcast version of the game were not improved, resulting in them looking not as good as the PlayStation version's due to the Dreamcast's higher graphic fidelity. CVG generally praised the Dreamcast version, but admitted that the difference in graphical quality between Resident Evil 3 and Code: Veronica was very large.
A GameCube version of the game was released in 2003 as part of an exclusivity agreement between Capcom and Nintendo. It received mixed reviews from critics and was mainly criticized for its relatively high retail price and outdated graphics. AllGame noted that the fact that the game was not priced as a budget title could mislead buyers into thinking that it was an enhanced update similar to the 2002 Resident Evil on the GameCube. GamePro remarked that, while the game's graphics on the GameCube were not like those of the 2002 Resident Evil or Resident Evil Zero, they were better-looking than previous versions of the game. As of November 2003, 41,395 copies of the GameCube version had been sold in the U.S. Resident Evil 3 was digitally released on the PlayStation Network in Japan in 2008 and North America in 2009, allowing PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable users to play the PlayStation version of the game via emulation.
On June 26, 2024, Resident Evil was released on GOG.com, with Resident Evil 2 released on August 27, and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis released on September 25. The titles were sold both individually and as a $24.99 bundle. The game will get enhanced 3D character models and higher-resolution graphics on its release.
On August 19, 2025, Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis released on the PlayStation 4 and 5 platforms.
=== Remake ===
A remake, entitled Resident Evil 3, was released in 2020. The game is played from an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective and runs on Capcom's proprietary RE Engine. Although it features the same premise as the original game, many parts were rearranged in favor of a more focused story. Some features such as the original game's multiple endings, several locations and The Mercenaries - Operation: Mad Jackal mode were removed. The game received generally positive reviews from critics. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_winners_of_the_Lenore_Marshall_Poetry_Prize | List of winners of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize | The Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize is administered by the Academy of American Poets selected by the New Hope Foundation in 1994. Established in 1975, this $25,000 award recognizes the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year.
The Prize was created in 1975 by the New Hope Foundation of Pennsylvania, which was a philanthropic foundation created by Lenore Marshall and her husband, James Marshall, to "support the arts and the cause of world peace"; Lenore Marshall, a poet, novelist, editor, and peace activist, had died in 1971. Receipt of the prize has been among the distinctions noted by the Library of Congress when the Poet Laureate of the United States is named.
The Prize was initially administered by the Saturday Review magazine. Following the folding of Saturday Review, the Prize was administered by The Nation magazine. In 1995, administration of the Prize became the responsibility of the Academy; the Prize has a permanent endowment. The Prize is still sponsored by The Nation, which usually publishes an article about the poetry of each year's finalists and winner. The cash value of the prize is currently $25,000.
== Winners == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Sam_(film) | Savage Sam (film) | Savage Sam is a 1963 American Western film sequel to Old Yeller based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Fred Gipson. Norman Tokar directed the live-action film, which was released by Walt Disney Productions on June 1, 1963. It did not enjoy the success of the original.
== Plot ==
In 1870, 18-year-old Travis Coates is left in charge of his precocious 12-year-old brother, Arliss, on the family farm in Southwest Texas, while their parents visit an ailing grandmother. While Arliss and his dog, Savage Sam, are tracking a bobcat, Travis is warned by Bud Searcy that renegade Apaches are in the area. When Travis joins Bud's 17-year-old daughter, Lisbeth, in a search for Arliss, all three are captured by a band of Apaches led by a Comanche. The boys' Uncle Beck Coates witnesses the scene and manages to wound the leader, but Beck's horse is shot by one of the braves, allowing the Comanche and his followers to escape with the captives. Beck alerts the U. S. Cavalry, but the Indians split into three groups and ride for the hills; in the confusion, Travis escapes but is knocked unconscious and left to die. Beck and his posse of five find Travis and his dog, set out in pursuit of the other captives, and eventually find the Indians in a valley fighting over Lisbeth. Although posse member Pack Underwood, bent on revenge for the massacre of his family, fires a shot that alerts the Indians to their planned ambush, the youngsters are saved and the renegades captured.
== Cast ==
Brian Keith as Uncle Beck Coates
Tommy Kirk as Travis Coates
Kevin Corcoran as Arliss Coates
Dewey Martin as Lester White
Jeff York as Bud Searcy
Marta Kristen as Lisbeth Searcy
Rafael Campos as Young Warrior
Slim Pickens as Willy Crup
Royal Dano as Pack Underwood
Rodolfo Acosta as Bandy Legs
Pat Hogan as Broken Nose
Dean Fredericks as Comanche Chief
Brad Weston as Ben Todd
== Behind the scenes ==
Walt Disney bought the film rights to the novel in September 1961, prior to its publication in February 1962. The price was $25,000.
Gipson was then hired to write the screenplay. He started in October at $1,250 a week. Gipson was an alcoholic by this time and he was frequently incapacitated by rages.
On June 14, 1962, Mike Gipson, Fred Gipson's son, found the Gipson family dog, the inspiration for Savage Sam, chained and clubbed to death in a shed behind the new family home. The next day, Mike returned to university in shock, and committed suicide that weekend. Gipson's wife would leave him a month after the premiere of Savage Sam.
It was one of the first films from director Norman Tokar. Walt Disney said, "I got him from TV. I like young talent. When people get to be institutions, they direct pictures with their left hand and do something else with their right."
Pat Hogan appears as tribesman Broken Nose. Dean Fredericks, formerly Steve Canyon on NBC, played a Comanche chief in this film.
Filming started August 6, 1962. It was mostly shot around the San Fernando Valley.
== Critical reception ==
The film received poor reviews and fell short of box office expectations, paling in comparison with Old Yeller. According to Gipson's biographer, "criticized as clichéd and overdirected, the production was especially faulted for inconsistency with Gipson's tone".
The Washington Post called it a "dogged, listless effort". Los Angeles Times called it "action melodrama with a formula plot". The Chicago Tribune said "the members of the cast are all capable enough, but they are all handicapped by a lurid plot which looks like it was made up by all the action scenes in a bunch of old television scripts." |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Cohen_(writer) | Joshua Cohen (writer) | Joshua Aaron Cohen (born September 6, 1980) is an American novelist and story writer, best known for his works Witz (2010), Book of Numbers (2015), and Moving Kings (2017). Cohen won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Netanyahus (2021).
== Life ==
Cohen grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, spent his summers in Cape May, New Jersey and went to school at Trocki Hebrew Academy before transferring to Mainland Regional High School. He lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He reads both German and Hebrew and has translated works in both languages into English. He is married to Israeli journalist Lee Yaron.
== Work and career ==
Cohen graduated from the Manhattan School of Music with a degree in music composition in 2001. He does not have an MFA, and has expressed disdain for the degree, but has taught the course "Long Century, Short Novels" at Columbia University's School of the Arts's MFA program. In 2017, Granta Magazine named him to its decennial list of the Best Young American Writers. Cohen lived in various cities in Eastern Europe between 2001 and 2006, working as a journalist.
Cohen's works have received acclaim. Witz was named a Best Book of 2010 by The Village Voice. Four New Messages was named a Best Book of 2012 by The New Yorker.
In an interview by Cohen for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Harold Bloom said, "Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West, Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth, and quite possibly your Book of Numbers are the four best books by Jewish writers in America. Your Moving Kings is a strong and rather hurtful book, but that helps validate it. Book of Numbers, however, is shatteringly powerful. I cannot think of anything by anyone in your generation that is so frighteningly relevant and composed with such continuous eloquence. There are moments in it that seem to transcend our impasse."
Cohen's essays have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, The Jewish Daily Forward, Nextbook, Tablet Magazine, Triple Canopy (online magazine), Denver Quarterly, The Believer, The New York Observer, The London Review of Books, N+1 online, Guernica Magazine, and elsewhere.
In 2015, Cohen wrote PCKWCK, a live-written novel.
Cohen was involved with writing the memoir of Edward Snowden, Permanent Record. According to Snowden, Cohen "help[ed] to transform my rambling reminiscences and capsule manifestos into a book.” The New York Times wrote: "It’s like a recursive loop of life imitating art imitating life; in Cohen’s Book of Numbers, published in 2015, a novelist named Joshua Cohen is hired to ghostwrite the autobiography of a mysterious tech billionaire ... whose search-engine company happens to be sharing information with government agencies." The New Republic wrote: "Despite Macmillan’s black op to keep the book under wraps, over the past year, New York literary circles have buzzed with the news that novelist (and a contributor to The New Republic) Joshua Cohen had signed on as the famed whistle-blower’s literary interlocutor, traveling to Russia over the course of eight months to help Snowden, now 36, organize and improve his narrative."
The Netanyahus won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Blume | Judy Blume | Judith Marcia Blume (née Sussman; born February 12, 1938) is an American writer of children's, young adult, and adult fiction. She began writing in 1959 and has published more than 26 novels. Among her best-known works are Superfudge (1980), Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (1970), Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), Deenie (1973), Blubber (1974) and Double Fudge (2002). Blume's books have significantly contributed to children's and young adult literature. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.
Blume was born and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and graduated from New York University in 1961. As an attempt to entertain herself in her role as a homemaker, Blume began writing stories. Blume was one of the first young adult authors to write novels focused on such controversial topics as masturbation, menstruation, teen sex, birth control, and death. Her novels have sold over 82 million copies and have been translated into 32 languages.
Blume's novels have been praised for teaching children and young adults about their bodies. However, in the United States, the topics of her works have generated criticism, controversy and she is one of the most frequently banned authors in US schools and libraries. There have been several film adaptations of Blume's novels, including Tiger Eyes, released in 2012 with Willa Holland starring as Davey, and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., released in 2023. A large collection of her papers is held at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.
== Biography ==
=== Early life ===
Blume was born Judith Marcia Sussman on February 12, 1938, and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey in a Jewish family, the daughter of homemaker Esther Sussman (née Rosenfeld) and dentist Rudolph Sussman. She has a brother, David, who is five years older. Blume described her upbringing as culturally rather than religiously Jewish. She witnessed hardships and death throughout her childhood. When she was in third grade, Blume's older brother had a kidney infection that led Blume, her brother, and her mother to temporarily move to Miami Beach to help him recover for two years. Blume's father stayed behind to continue working. Additionally, in 1951 and 1952, there were three airplane crashes in her hometown of Elizabeth (1951 Miami Airlines C-46 crash, American Airlines Flight 6780, and National Airlines Flight 101). A total of 121 people died in these crashes, and Blume's father, who was a dentist, helped to identify the unrecognizable remains. Blume says that she "buried" these memories until she began writing her 2015 novel In the Unlikely Event, the plot of which revolves around the crashes. Throughout her childhood, Blume participated in many creative activities such as dance and piano. She describes her love of reading as a trait passed on by her parents. Blume has recalled spending much of her childhood creating stories in her head. Despite the love of stories, Blume did not dream of being a writer growing up.
Blume graduated from the all-girls' Battin High School in 1956, then enrolled in Boston University. A few weeks into the first semester, she was diagnosed with mononucleosis and took a brief leave from school. In 1959, Blume's father died. That same year, on August 15, 1959, she married lawyer John M. Blume, whom she had met while a student at New York University. Blume graduated from New York University in 1961 with a bachelor's degree in Education.
=== Adult life ===
After college, Blume gave birth to daughter Randy Lee Blume in 1961 and became a homemaker. In 1963, her son Lawrence Andrew Blume was born. Blume began writing when her children began nursery school. John M. Blume and Judy Blume were divorced in 1975. John M. Blume later died on September 20, 2020. Shortly after her separation, Blume met Thomas A. Kitchens, a physicist. The couple married in 1976, and moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico for two years for Kitchens' work. They got divorced in 1978.
A few years later, a mutual friend introduced Blume to George Cooper, a former law professor turned non-fiction writer. They got married in 1987. Cooper has one daughter from a previous marriage, Amanda, to whom Blume is very close.
In August 2012, Blume announced that she was diagnosed with breast cancer after undergoing a routine ultrasound before leaving for a five-week trip to Italy. Six weeks after her diagnosis, Blume underwent a mastectomy and breast reconstruction. Blume was cancer-free following this surgery and able to recover.
Randy Blume became a therapist with a sub-specialty in helping writers complete their works. She has one child, Elliot Kephart, who is credited with encouraging his grandmother, Judy Blume, to write the most recent "Fudge" books. Lawrence Blume is now a movie director, producer, and writer. As of 2021, Cooper and Blume resided in Key West.
=== Career ===
A lifelong avid reader, Blume first began writing through New York University courses when her children were attending preschool. Following two years of publisher rejections, Blume published her first book, The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo, in 1969. A year later, Blume published her second book, Iggie's House (1970), which was originally written as a story in Trailblazer magazine but then rewritten by Blume into a book. The decade that followed proved to be her most prolific, with 13 more books being published. Her third book was Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (1970), which was a breakthrough best-seller and a trailblazing novel in young adult literature and established Blume as a leading voice in young adult literature. Some of Blume's other novels during the decade include Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great (1972), and Blubber (1974).
In 1975, Blume published the now frequently banned novel Forever, which was groundbreaking in young adult literature as the first novel to display teen sex as normal. Blume explained that she was inspired to write this novel when her daughter, 13 years old at the time, said she wanted to read a book where the characters have sex but do not die afterward. These novels tackled complex subjects such as family conflict, bullying, body image, and sexuality. Blume has expressed that she writes about these subjects, particularly sexuality, because it is what she believes children need to know about and was what she wondered about as a child.
After publishing novels for young children and teens, Blume tackled another genre—adult reality and death. Her novels Wifey (1978) and Smart Women (1983) reached the top of The New York Times Best Seller list. Wifey became a bestseller with over 4 million copies sold. Blume's third adult novel, Summer Sisters (1998), was widely praised and sold more than three million copies. Despite its popularity, Summer Sisters (1998) faced a lot of criticism for its sexual content and inclusion of homosexual themes. Several of Blume's books appear on the list of top all-time bestselling children's books. As of 2020, her books have sold over 82 million copies and they have been translated into 32 languages. Although Blume has not published a novel since 2015 (In the Unlikely Event), she continues to write. In October 2017, Yale University acquired Blume's archive, which included some unpublished early work.
As well as writing, Blume has been an activist against the banning of books in the United States. In the 1980s, when her books started facing censorship and controversy, she began reaching out to other writers, as well as teachers and librarians, to join the fight against censorship. This led Blume to join the National Coalition Against Censorship which aims to protect the freedom to read. As of 2020, Blume is still a board member for the National Coalition Against Censorship. She is also the founder and trustee of The Kids Fund, a charitable and educational foundation. Blume serves on the board for other organizations such as, the Authors Guild; the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators; the Key West Literary Seminar; and the National Coalition Against Censorship." In 2018, Blume and her husband opened a non-profit book store called Books & Books located in Key West.
== Reception ==
Blume's novels have been read by millions and have flourished throughout generations. The element in her work readers are said to love most is Blume's openness and honesty regarding issues like divorce, sexuality, puberty, and bullying. Her first-person narrative writing has gained positive appraisal for its relatability and its ability to discuss difficult subjects without judgment or harshness. Following the publishing of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (1970), Blume received many letters from young girls telling her how much they loved the book and identified with Margaret. Female novelists have praised Blume for her “taboo-trampling” literature that left readers feeling like they learned something about their bodies from reading her books. For example, Deenie (1973) explained masturbation and Forever (1975) taught young women about losing their virginity. Blume's children's books have also been praised for their delicate way of portraying the hardships that kids can face at a young age. It’s Not the End of the World (1972) helped many kids understand divorce and the Fudge book series explored the various aspects of loving siblings despite the rivalry.
Blume's novels have received much criticism and controversy. Parents, librarians, book critics, and political groups have wanted her books to be banned. When her first books were published in the 1970s, Blume has recalled facing little censorship. Since 1980, Blume's novels have been a central topic of controversy in young adult literature. Critics of Blume's novels say that she places too much emphasis on the physical and sexual sides of growing up, ignoring the development of morals and emotional maturity. Five of Blume's books were included in the American Library Association (ALA) list of the top 100 most banned books of the 1990s, with Forever (1975) in seventh place. Forever is censored for its inclusion of teen sex and birth control. Blume recalls that the principal of her children's elementary school would not put Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in the library because the story involves menstruation. Conservative and religious groups continuously attempt to ban Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret for the novel's portrayal of a young girl going through puberty claiming that it violates certain religious views. Blume's children's novels have also been criticized for these reasons, especially Blubber (1974), which many believed sent the message to readers that kids could do wrong and not face punishment.
== Awards and honors ==
Judy Blume has won more than 90 literary awards, including three lifetime achievement awards in the United States. In 1994, she received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. The ALA Margaret A. Edwards Award recognizes one author who has made significant contributions to young adult literature. Blume won the annual award in 1996 and the ALA considered her book Forever, published in 1975, was groundbreaking for its honest portrayal of high school seniors in love for the first time. In April 2000, the Library of Congress named her to its Living Legends in the Writers and Artists category for her significant contributions to America's cultural heritage. Blume received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Mount Holyoke College and was the main speaker at their annual commencement ceremony in 2003. In 2004 she received the annual Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Medal of the National Book Foundation for her enrichment of American literary heritage. In 2009, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) honored Blume for her lifelong commitment to free speech and her courage to battle censorship in literature. Blume also received the 2017 E.B. White Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for lifetime achievement in children's literature. In 2020, Blume was named an Honoree for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community by the Authors Guild Foundation.
== Media adaptations ==
The first media adaptation of Blume's novels was the production of a TV film based on Blume's novel Forever that premiered on CBS in 1978. Forever is the story of two teenagers in high school, Katherine Danziger and Michael Wagner, who fall in love for the first time. The film starred Stephanie Zimbalist as Katherine Danziger and Dean Butler as Michael Wagner. A decade later, in 1988, Blume and her son wrote and executive produced a small film adaptation of Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great. The film was later shown on ABC. In 1995, a Fudge TV series was produced based on Blume's novel Fudge-a-Mania. The show ran from 1995 to 1997 with the first season aired on ABC and the second on CBS. The series starred Jake Richardson as Peter Warren Hatcher, the storyteller, and Luke Tarsitano as Farley Drexel "Fudge" Hatcher.
In 2012, Blume's 1981 novel Tiger Eyes was adapted into a film version. This was the first of Blume's novels to be turned into a theatrical feature film. Tiger Eyes is the story of a teenage girl, Davey, who struggles to cope with the sudden death of her father, Adam Wexler. The screenplay was co-written by Blume and her son, Lawrence Blume, who was also the director. Tiger Eyes stars Willa Holland as Davey and Amy Jo Johnson as Gwen Wexler.
Blume is the subject of the 2018 song "Judy Blume" by Amanda Palmer. Thematically, the song explains to the listener Blume's role in Palmer's adolescent life. The song explains Blume's books as influential in Palmer's understanding of intimate and female-centered subjects such as puberty, menstruation, and the male gaze, and universal subjects like molestation, eating disorders, poverty, grief, and parental divorce.
Blume is the subject of the Peabody Award-winning documentary Judy Blume Forever, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. was released as a feature film in 2023.
In 2025, Blume's novel Forever was adapted into a Netflix series show.
== Works ==
=== Children's books ===
The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo (1969)
Iggie's House (1970)
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972)
Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great (1972)
The Pain and the Great One (1974)
Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself (1977)
Freckle Juice (1978)
Superfudge (1980)
Fudge-a-Mania (1990)
Double Fudge (2002)
Soupy Saturdays with the Pain and the Great One (2007)
Cool Zone with the Pain and the Great One (2008)
Going, Going, Gone! With the Pain and the Great One (2008)
Friend or Fiend? With the Pain and the Great One (2008)
=== Young adult books ===
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (1970)
Then Again, Maybe I Won't (1971)
It's Not the End of the World (1972)
Deenie (1973)
Blubber (1974)
Forever... (1975)
Tiger Eyes (1981)
Just as Long as We're Together (1987)
Here's to You, Rachel Robinson (1993)
Places I Never Meant to Be (1999)
=== Adult books ===
Wifey (1978)
Smart Women (1983)
Summer Sisters (1998)
In the Unlikely Event (2015)
=== Collaborative short stories ===
It's Fine to Be Nine (2000)
It's Heaven to Be Seven (2000)
=== Non-fiction books ===
The Judy Blume Diary (1981)
Letter to Judy: What Your Kids Wish They Could Tell You (1986)
The Judy Blume Memory Book (1988)
== Other awards ==
Blume's other awards include:
1970: Outstanding Book of the Year from The New York Times for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
1974: Outstanding Book of the Year from The New York Times for Blubber
1981: Children’ Choice Award from the International Reading Association and Children's’ Book Council for Superfudge
1983: Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award
1984: Carl Sandberg Freedom to Read Award, from the Chicago Public Library
1986: Civil Liberties Award from the Atlanta Civil Liberties Union
1988: South Australian Youth Media Award for Best Author
2005: Time magazine All-Time 100 Novels List for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
2009: University of Southern Mississippi Medallion for lifelong contributions to children's literature
2010: Inducted into New Jersey Hall of Fame
2010: Inducted into Harvard Lampoon
2011: Smithsonian Associates: The McGovern Award
2013: Chicago Tribune: Young Adult Literary Prize
2013: New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) Legacy Award
2013: The NAIBA Legacy Award
2013: Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) Award
2013: National Coalition of Teachers of English (NCTE) National Intellectual Freedom Award
2015: Catholic Library Association: Regina Award
2018: Carl Sandburg Literary Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation
2025: Women's National Book Association: WNBA Award |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_1942 | August 1942 | The following events occurred in August 1942:
== August 1, 1942 (Saturday) ==
The Germans cut the railway line linking Stalingrad to Krasnodar.
1942–1944 musicians' strike: The American Federation of Musicians went on strike against the major U.S. recording companies because of disagreements over royalty payments.
Andrey Yeryomenko met with Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin and accepted command of one of Stalingrad's southern fronts.
German submarines U-226 and U-448 were commissioned.
Born:
Jerry Garcia, singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Grateful Dead, in San Francisco, California (d. 1995);
Giancarlo Giannini, actor and dubber, in La Spezia, Italy
Brianda Domecq, writer and environmentalist, in New York, USA.
== August 2, 1942 (Sunday) ==
The German 4th Panzer Army captured Kotelnikovo.
After spending most of the day studying maps of Stalingrad and the surrounding area, Andrey Yeryomenko had a second conference with Stalin. Yeryomenko protested that two Russian fronts in the same area meant that trying to co-ordinate Stalingrad's defence with another commander would be "utterly confusing, if not tragically impossible," and asked to command the Stalingrad Front in the north rather than the Southeastern Front. Stalin firmly said that everything would be left as it was already outlined.
A man named José Gallardo Díaz was found unconscious and dying on a road near a swimming hole in Commerce, California. He was rushed to the hospital but died shortly after. 17 Mexican-American youths were soon arrested in a case that came to be known as the Sleepy Lagoon murder.
Born:
Isabel Allende, writer, in Lima, Peru
== August 3, 1942 (Monday) ==
The British launched Operation Pedestal, an effort to get desperately needed supplies to Malta.
German submarine U-335 was torpedoed and sunk southeast of the Faroe Islands by the British submarine Saracen.
American destroyer USS Tucker struck a mine off Espiritu Santo late in the day and sank early on August 4.
Died:
James Cruze, 58, American film actor and director;
Richard Willstätter, 69, German organic chemist
== August 4, 1942 (Tuesday) ==
The German 4th Panzer Army crossed the Aksay River in its drive on Stalingrad.
Yeremenko flew down to Stalingrad in a Douglas transport aircraft. Commissar Nikita Khrushchev met him at the airport with a car and they drove to the city's headquarters.
The Bracero program was initiated when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico.
German submarine U-372 was depth charged and sunk off Haifa by a Vickers Wellington bomber.
Citing documents seized in a raid on Indian National Congress headquarters in Allahabad, the British government accused Mahatma Gandhi and the majority of his party of working toward "appeasement" of Japan.
The musical film Holiday Inn starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire with music by Irving Berlin premiered in New York City.
Born: David Lange, 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand, in Otahuhu, New Zealand (d. 2005)
== August 5, 1942 (Wednesday) ==
German forces took Voroshilovsk.
Anthony Eden announced in the House of Commons that the Munich Agreement of 1938 would play no part in the postwar settlement of Czechoslovakia's borders, because the British government no longer considered itself bound to that agreement since the Germans destroyed it.
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands visited the White House and addressed U.S. Congress.
German submarines U-188, U-304 and U-415 were commissioned.
== August 6, 1942 (Thursday) ==
German forces on the Eastern Front captured Tikhoretsk and Armavir.
Dzyatlava massacre: During the liquidation of the Zdzięcioł Ghetto several thousand Jews were murdered at the local Jewish cemetery.
For aiding an escaped German prisoner of war, Detroit restaurant owner Max Stephan became the first American sentenced to execution for treason since the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.
The British submarine HMS Thorn went missing off southern Crete, probably sunk by the Italian torpedo boat Pegaso.
The Germans lost three submarines in one day. U-210 was rammed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by the Canadian destroyer Assiniboine, U-612 sank off Gotenhafen, Germany after colliding with U-444, and U-578 went missing in the Bay of Biscay. Her fate remains unknown.
German submarine U-634 was commissioned.
Born: Evelyn Hamann, actress, in Hamburg, Germany (d. 2007)
== August 7, 1942 (Friday) ==
The Guadalcanal Campaign and the Battle of Tulagi and Gavutu–Tanambogo began. Allied forces consisting mostly of U.S. Marines made amphibious landings in the southern Solomon Islands in the first major offensive by the Allies against Japan.
The German 6th Army crossed the Don at Kalach.
Winston Churchill visited the British troops at El Alamein.
Alfonso López Pumarejo became the 16th President of Colombia.
Born:
Tobin Bell, actor, in Queens, New York City;
Garrison Keillor, author and radio personality, in Anoka, Minnesota
Sir Richard Sykes, British microbiologist, chair of the Vaccine Taskforce, in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England
Caetano Veloso, Brazilian musician, in Santo Amaro, Bahia
Died:
William Gott, 44, British Army officer (plane shot down in North Africa);
Janusz Korczak, 63 or 64, Polish-Jewish educator, children's author and pediatrician (killed at Treblinka)
== August 8, 1942 (Saturday) ==
U.S. Marines captured the unfinished Japanese airbase on Guadalcanal. The base was named Henderson Field after the Battle of Midway hero Lofton R. Henderson.
The Battle of Savo Island, the first major naval engagement of the Guadalcanal Campaign, began.
German Army Group B captured Surovikino.
The American attack transport USS George F. Elliott was bombed and sunk in Ironbottom Sound by a Mitsubishi G4M.
German submarine U-379 was depth charged and sunk southeast of Cape Farewell, Greenland by the Royal Navy corvette Dianthus.
Mahatma Gandhi made the Quit India speech.
Died: Edward H. Ahrens, 22, United States Marine Raider (killed in action during the Guadalcanal campaign)
== August 9, 1942 (Sunday) ==
The Battle of Tulagi and Gavutu–Tanambogo ended in Allied victory.
The Battle of Savo Island ended in tactical Japanese victory. American cruisers Astoria, Quincy and Vincennes and the Australian cruiser Canberra were all sunk while three Japanese cruisers were damaged.
American destroyer Jarvis was sunk by Japanese aircraft off Guadalcanal.
German Army Group A captured Krasnodar and the Soviet oil centre of Maykop.
The Leningrad première of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 occurred while the city was still under siege by German forces.
Bombay police arrested Mahatma Gandhi and fifty other members of the Indian National Congress a few hours before a massive civil disobedience campaign was to begin. Five people were killed later in the day when police fired on crowds of people who were jeering and throwing stones.
Ahmad Qavam became Prime Minister of Iran for the third time.
The Walt Disney animated film Bambi had its world premiere in London.
The New York Times Best Seller list switched from a local survey to a national one compiled from booksellers in 22 cities. The first Fiction Best Seller under the new system was And Now Tomorrow by Rachel Field.
Died: Edith Stein, 50, German Jewish philosopher and Catholic saint (murdered at Auschwitz)
== August 10, 1942 (Monday) ==
The German 6th Army crossed the lower Don River and reached the outskirts of Stalingrad.
Forward elements of German Army Group A reached Pyatigorsk.
In the second phase of the Battle of Kokoda, Australian troops which had briefly recaptured Kokoda on the 8th are now forced to withdraw, ending the engagement.
Japanese cruiser Kako was torpedoed and sunk off Simbari Island, New Ireland by the American submarine USS S-44.
The Italian submarine Scirè was sunk off Haifa by the British armed trawler Islay.
While on his way to Moscow, Winston Churchill stopped at Tehran and had lunch with the Shah of Iran.
== August 11, 1942 (Tuesday) ==
Pierre Laval reached an agreement with the Germans that 150,000 French workers would go to Germany in exchange for 50,000 French prisoners of war.
The British aircraft carrier HMS Eagle was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-73 during Operation Pedestal.
Sixty-one people died in riots in New Delhi.
Al Milnar of the Cleveland Indians and Tommy Bridges of the Detroit Tigers had one of the most epic pitchers' duels in baseball history. With the game locked in a scoreless tie in the top of the ninth inning, Milnar lost a no-hitter with two out when Doc Cramer singled to right field. Both pitchers maintained their shutouts until the fifteenth inning when the game was finally called in a 0–0 tie.
Died: Sabina Spielrein, 56, Russian physician and psychoanalyst (murdered by an SS death squad)
== August 12, 1942 (Wednesday) ==
The Second Moscow Conference began. In attendance were Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and U.S. representative W. Averell Harriman.
Elements of German Army Group A reached Slavyansk.
During Operation Pedestal the British cruiser Cairo and British destroyer Foresight were sunk, and the tanker Ohio was severely damaged and had to be taken under tow.
Movie star Clark Gable entered a U.S. Army recruiting station in Los Angeles and enlisted as a private at the age of 41.
German submarines U-468, U-526, U-527 and U-709 were commissioned.
Died: Phillips Holmes, 35, American film actor (mid-air plane collision)
== August 13, 1942 (Thursday) ==
Bernard Montgomery took over command of the British Eighth Army following the death of William Gott.
On the Eastern Front, German forces captured Elista.
During Operation Pedestal the British cruiser Manchester was torpedoed and heavily damaged by two Italian motor torpedo boats and then scuttled.
Japan passed the Enemy Airmen's Act, stating that Allied airmen participating in bombing raids against Japanese-held territory would be treated as "violators of the law of war" and subject to trial and punishment if captured.
German submarine U-635 was commissioned.
The play Flare Path by Terence Rattigan premiered at the Apollo Theatre in London.
Born: Arthur K. Cebrowski, admiral, in Passaic, New Jersey (d. 2005)
== August 14, 1942 (Friday) ==
Dwight D. Eisenhower was named Anglo-American commander for Operation Torch.
British Commandos carried out Operation Barricade, an overnight raid on an anti-aircraft gun and radar site northwest of Pointe de Saire, France.
Born: Molefi Kete Asante, leading scholar of African-American Studies, in Valdosta, Georgia
Died: Rafaela Ottiano, Italian-American actress (b. 1888)
== August 15, 1942 (Saturday) ==
Operation Pedestal ended in tactical disaster but strategic victory for the British.
German troops captured Georgiyevsk and reached the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.
5,000 Jews were arrested in Vichy France.
German submarines U-189, U-358 and U-759 were commissioned.
Born: Friede Springer, publisher and spouse of Axel Springer, in Oldsum, Germany
== August 16, 1942 (Sunday) ==
The Kriegsmarine began Operation Wunderland with the objective of entering the Kara Sea and destroying as many Russian vessels as possible.
The Russians evacuated Maykop.
Axis positions in Egypt were bombed by American warplanes for the first time.
In Bilbao, Spain, a mass was held at the Basilica of Begoña to commemorate members of the Begoña Regiment who died in the Civil War. After the service there was some shouting between the Falangist and Carlist factions, and during the ensuing scuffle a Falangist threw two hand grenades and wounded 30 people.
== August 17, 1942 (Monday) ==
U.S. Marines conducted the Makin Island raid.
The Second Moscow Conference ended.
1,700 Jews were massacred in the Polish village of Łomazy by Reserve Police Battalion 101.
German Army Group A established bridgeheads across the Kuban River.
The USAAF made its first air raid on occupied Europe, bombing railroad marshaling yards at Sotteville-lès-Rouen.
Died: Clyde A. Thomason, 28, United States Marine and posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor (killed in action during the Makin Island raid)
== August 18, 1942 (Tuesday) ==
900 Japanese troops landed at Taivu Point on Guadalcanal, while another 500 landed at Kokumbona. These landings were the first run of what the U.S. Marines nicknamed the Tokyo Express.
In Stalingrad Oblast, Soviet forces withdrew southwest of Kletskaya while the Germans renewed their offensive northeast of Kotelnikovo.
Hitler issued Directive No. 46, Instructions for Intensified Action Against Banditry in the East.
Born: Judith Keppel, £1,000,000 winner on the UK edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England; Wu Ma, filmmaker, in Tianjin, China (d. 2014)
== August 19, 1942 (Wednesday) ==
The Dieppe Raid took place on the northern coast of France. The operation was virtually a complete failure and almost 60% of the 6,086 men who made it ashore were killed, wounded or captured. The British destroyer Berkeley was crippled by Focke-Wulf Fw 190s and scuttled.
The Soviets began the Sinyavino Offensive on the southern shore of Lake Ladoga.
The Battle of Kupres ended with the forces of the Independent State of Croatia successfully defending the town against the Yugoslav Partisans.
Mahatma Gandhi's son Devdas was arrested in New Delhi for publishing an article on the Indian civil disobedience campaign in violation of the Defence of India Act.
German submarine U-269 was commissioned.
Born: Fred Thompson, politician and actor, in Sheffield, Alabama (d. 2015)
Died: Heinrich Rauchinger, 84, Kraków-born painter, in Theresienstadt (b. 1858)
== August 20, 1942 (Thursday) ==
Chinese forces recaptured Guangfeng and Shangrao in Jiangxi Province from the Japanese.
German submarine U-464 was depth charged and crippled in the Atlantic Ocean by a Consolidated PBY Catalina and then scuttled.
U.S. Twelfth Air Force was established.
German submarine U-636 was commissioned.
The comedy-drama film The Talk of the Town starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman was released.
Born: Isaac Hayes, soul singer, songwriter and actor, in Covington, Tennessee (d. 2008)
Died: István Horthy, 37, Hungarian politician, fighter pilot and son of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy (plane crash)
== August 21, 1942 (Friday) ==
The Battle of the Tenaru was fought on Guadalcanal, resulting in Allied victory.
German infantry companies of LI Army Corps crossed the Don in inflatable boats and quickly established a bridgehead near the village of Luchinsky.
Chinese forces recaptured Yingtan.
== August 22, 1942 (Saturday) ==
Brazil declared war on Germany and Italy after the sinking of several Brazilian ships.
The German 16th Panzer Division began crossing the Don as soon as the bridgehead was ready.
The American destroyer USS Blue was torpedoed and crippled at Ironbottom Sound during the Battle of Guadalcanal by the Japanese destroyer Kawakaze. She was scuttled the next day after salvage attempts failed.
Chinese forces captured Yujiang.
German submarine U-654 was depth charged and sunk in the Caribbean by an American Douglas B-18 Bolo bomber.
The American destroyer USS Ingraham sank off the coast of Nova Scotia after colliding in heavy fog with the oil tanker Chemung.
German submarines U-227 and U-449 were commissioned.
Died: Michel Fokine, 62, Russian choreographer and dancer
== August 23, 1942 (Sunday) ==
The Battle of Stalingrad began.
The Luftwaffe conducted the first major bombing raid on Stalingrad. A rain of incendiary and explosive bombs killed more than 40,000 civilians and reduced most of the city to rubble.
The German 16th Panzer Division came within striking distance of the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, the Soviet Union's largest producer of T-34 tanks.
At about 1:45 am, 45-year-old Martha Hansen of Twin Falls, Idaho, was fatally mauled by a brown bear or grizzly bear she encountered while walking from her cabin at Yellowstone National Park to the ladies' restroom. Hansen would die of her injuries on August 27.
Died: Heinrich-Wilhelm Ahnert, 27, German flying ace (shot down over Koptevo, USSR)
== August 24, 1942 (Monday) ==
The German 6th Army attacked the northern suburbs of Stalingrad.
The Battle of the Eastern Solomons began. The Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō was sunk by aircraft from USS Saratoga.
The Charge of the Savoia Cavalleria at Isbuscenskij occurred, one of the last cavalry charges in history.
An earthquake in Peru killed 30 people.
Winston Churchill returned to England from Moscow.
German submarine U-193 was commissioned.
The war film Wake Island, recounting the December 1941 Battle of Wake Island, premiered at the U.S. Marine base at Camp Elliott in San Diego, California.
Born: Hans Peter Korff, actor, in Hamburg, Germany (d. 2025)
== August 25, 1942 (Tuesday) ==
The Battle of the Eastern Solomons ended in a draw, but strategic Allied success. The Japanese destroyer Mutsuki was crippled by four B-17s and had to be scuttled.
The Battle of Milne Bay began in eastern New Guinea.
A citywide evacuation effort began in Stalingrad. First priority went to specialists and workers whose factories had been destroyed.
German submarine U-339 was commissioned.
Born: Ivan Koloff, born Oreal Perras, professional wrestler, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (d. 2017)
Died: Prince George, Duke of Kent, 39, British royal (plane crash)
== August 26, 1942 (Wednesday) ==
The Battle of Isurava, part of the Kokoda Track Campaign, begins, with Japanese forces attacking the Australian positions there.
A round-up of Jews began in Nazi-occupied France.
The British government lifted the ban on the communist newspaper The Daily Worker.
Died: Junichi Sasai, 24, Japanese fighter ace (killed during the Battle of Guadalcanal)
== August 27, 1942 (Thursday) ==
German Army Group B captured Prokhladny, pushing closer to the oil prize of Grozny.
British and American bombers raided Rotterdam.
German submarine U-637 was commissioned.
Born: "Captain" Daryl Dragon, keyboardist and one-half of the pop music duo Captain & Tennille, in Los Angeles, California (d. 2019)
== August 28, 1942 (Friday) ==
Japanese destroyer Asagiri was sunk en route to Guadalcanal by American SBD Dauntless dive bombers.
German submarine U-94 was sunk off Haiti by depth charges from an American PBY Catalina flying boat and ramming by the Canadian corvette Oakville.
A German fighter-bomber flying at 20,000 feet dropped a 500lb bomb into the centre of the English city of Bristol, killing 45 and wounding 56 people.
1942 Suō-nada Typhoon, a violence 935 to 942 hectopascal level, violence wind and tidal wave hit around Suō-nada, Yatsushiro Sea, Ariake Sea, southwestern Honshu and Kyushu Island, Japan. According to Japanese government official document figures, killing 1,158 persons, injures 1,438 persons.
Born: José Eduardo dos Santos, President of Angola, in Luanda, Angola (d. 2022)
== August 29, 1942 (Saturday) ==
British destroyer Eridge was permanently disabled off El Daba, Egypt by an Italian torpedo boat.
The German Tiger I tank made its battlefield debut southeast of Leningrad.
Japanese submarine Ro-33 was depth charged and sunk near Port Moresby by the Australian destroyer Arunta.
The Red Cross announced that Japan had refused free passage of ships carrying food, medicine and other necessities for American prisoners of war.
German submarine U-385 was commissioned.
Died: Charles Urban, 75, American-born British film producer and distributor
== August 30, 1942 (Sunday) ==
The Battle of Alam el Halfa began south of El Alamein.
The U.S. Army occupied Adak Island. Runways would be constructed there over the next two weeks allowing for air strikes against the nearby Japanese-held islands of Attu and Kiska.
Born: Jonathan Aitken, politician, in Dublin, Ireland
== August 31, 1942 (Monday) ==
The Battle of Isurava ends in a Japanese victory, as Australian forces conduct a strategic withdrawal under Japanese pressure.
The American aircraft carrier USS Saratoga was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-26 and had to undergo three months of repairs.
Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen of the anti-Nazi resistance group known as the Red Orchestra were arrested by the Gestapo.
British Commandos began Operation Anglo, a raid on the island of Rhodes.
Born: Isao Aoki, golfer, in Abiko, Chiba, Japan |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Sanger | Frederick Sanger | Frederick Sanger (; 13 August 1918 – 19 November 2013) was a British biochemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice.
He won the 1958 Chemistry Prize for determining the amino acid sequence of insulin and numerous other proteins, demonstrating in the process that each had a unique, definite structure; this was a foundational discovery for the central dogma of molecular biology.
At the newly constructed Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, he developed and subsequently refined the first-ever DNA sequencing technique, which vastly expanded the number of feasible experiments in molecular biology and remains in widespread use today. The breakthrough earned him the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with Walter Gilbert and Paul Berg.
He is one of only three people to have won multiple Nobel Prizes in the same category (the others being John Bardeen in physics and Karl Barry Sharpless in chemistry), and one of five persons with two Nobel Prizes.
== Early life and education ==
Frederick Sanger was born on 13 August 1918 in Rendcomb, a small village in Gloucestershire, England, the second son of Frederick Sanger, a general practitioner, and his wife, Cicely Sanger (née Crewdson). He was one of three children. His brother, Theodore, was only a year older, while his sister May (Mary) was five years younger. His father had worked as an Anglican medical missionary in China but returned to England because of ill health. He was 40 in 1916 when he married Cicely, who was four years younger. Sanger's father converted to Quakerism soon after his two sons were born and brought up the children as Quakers. Sanger's mother was the daughter of an affluent cotton manufacturer and had a Quaker background, but was not a Quaker.
When Sanger was around five years old the family moved to the small village of Tanworth-in-Arden in Warwickshire. The family was reasonably wealthy and employed a governess to teach the children. In 1927, at the age of nine, he was sent to the Downs School, a residential preparatory school run by Quakers near Malvern. His brother Theo was a year ahead of him at the same school. In 1932, at the age of 14, he was sent to the recently established Bryanston School in Dorset. This used the Dalton system and had a more liberal regime which Sanger much preferred. At the school he liked his teachers and particularly enjoyed scientific subjects. Able to complete his School Certificate a year early, for which he was awarded seven credits, Sanger was able to spend most of his last year of school experimenting in the laboratory alongside his chemistry master, Geoffrey Ordish, who had originally studied at Cambridge University and been a researcher in the Cavendish Laboratory. Working with Ordish made a refreshing change from sitting and studying books and awakened Sanger's desire to pursue a scientific career. In 1935, prior to heading off to college, Sanger was sent to Schule Schloss Salem in southern Germany on an exchange program. The school placed a heavy emphasis on athletics, which caused Sanger to be much further ahead in the course material compared to the other students. He was shocked to learn that each day was started with readings from Hitler's Mein Kampf, followed by a Sieg Heil salute.
In 1936 Sanger went to St John's College, Cambridge, to study natural sciences. His father had attended the same college. For Part I of his Tripos he took courses in physics, chemistry, biochemistry and mathematics but struggled with physics and mathematics. Many of the other students had studied more mathematics at school. In his second year he replaced physics with physiology. He took three years to obtain his Part I. For his Part II he studied biochemistry and obtained a 1st Class Honours. Biochemistry was a relatively new department founded by Gowland Hopkins with enthusiastic lecturers who included Malcolm Dixon, Joseph Needham and Ernest Baldwin.
Both his parents died from cancer during his first two years at Cambridge. His father was 60 and his mother was 58. As an undergraduate Sanger's beliefs were strongly influenced by his Quaker upbringing. He was a pacifist and a member of the Peace Pledge Union. It was through his involvement with the Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group that he met his future wife, Joan Howe, who was studying economics at Newnham College. They courted while he was studying for his Part II exams and married after he had graduated in December 1940. Sanger, although brought up and influenced by his religious upbringing, later began to lose sight of his Quaker related ways. He began to see the world through a more scientific lens, and with the growth of his research and scientific development he slowly drifted farther from the faith he grew up with. He had nothing but respect for the religious and states he took two things from it, truth and respect for all life. Under the Military Training Act 1939 he was provisionally registered as a conscientious objector, and again under the National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939, before being granted unconditional exemption from military service by a tribunal. In the meantime he undertook training in social relief work at the Quaker centre, Spicelands, Devon and served briefly as a hospital orderly.
Sanger began studying for a PhD in October 1940 under N.W. "Bill" Pirie. His project was to investigate whether edible protein could be obtained from grass. After little more than a month Pirie left the department and Albert Neuberger became his adviser. Sanger changed his research project to study the metabolism of lysine and a more practical problem concerning the nitrogen of potatoes. His thesis had the title, "The metabolism of the amino acid lysine in the animal body". He was examined by Charles Harington and Albert Charles Chibnall and awarded his doctorate in 1943.
== Research and career ==
=== Sequencing insulin ===
Neuberger moved to the National Institute for Medical Research in London, but Sanger stayed in Cambridge and in 1943 joined the group of Charles Chibnall, a protein chemist who had recently taken up the chair in the Department of Biochemistry. Chibnall had already done some work on the amino acid composition of bovine insulin and suggested that Sanger look at the amino groups in the protein. Insulin could be purchased from the pharmacy chain Boots and was one of the very few proteins that were available in a pure form. Up to this time Sanger had been funding himself. In Chibnall's group he was initially supported by the Medical Research Council and then from 1944 until 1951 by a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research.
Sanger's first triumph was to determine the complete amino acid sequence of the two polypeptide chains of bovine insulin, A and B, in 1952 and 1951, respectively. Prior to this it was widely assumed that proteins were somewhat amorphous. In determining these sequences, Sanger proved that proteins have a defined chemical composition.
To get to this point, Sanger refined a partition chromatography method first developed by Richard Laurence Millington Synge and Archer John Porter Martin to determine the composition of amino acids in wool. Sanger used a chemical reagent 1-fluoro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (now, also known as Sanger's reagent, fluorodinitrobenzene, FDNB or DNFB), sourced from poisonous gas research by Bernard Charles Saunders at the Chemistry Department at Cambridge University. Sanger's reagent proved effective at labelling the N-terminal amino group at one end of the polypeptide chain. He then partially hydrolysed the insulin into short peptides, either with hydrochloric acid or using an enzyme such as trypsin. The mixture of peptides was fractionated in two dimensions on a sheet of filter paper, first by electrophoresis in one dimension and then, perpendicular to that, by chromatography in the other. The different peptide fragments of insulin, detected with ninhydrin, moved to different positions on the paper, creating a distinct pattern that Sanger called "fingerprints". The peptide from the N-terminus could be recognised by the yellow colour imparted by the FDNB label and the identity of the labelled amino acid at the end of the peptide determined by complete acid hydrolysis and discovering which dinitrophenyl-amino acid was there.
By repeating this type of procedure Sanger was able to determine the sequences of the many peptides generated using different methods for the initial partial hydrolysis. These could then be assembled into the longer sequences to deduce the complete structure of insulin. Finally, because the A and B chains are physiologically inactive without the three linking disulfide bonds (two interchain, one intrachain on A), Sanger and coworkers determined their assignments in 1955. Sanger's principal conclusion was that the two polypeptide chains of the protein insulin had precise amino acid sequences and, by extension, that every protein had a unique sequence. It was this achievement that earned him his first Nobel prize in Chemistry in 1958. This discovery was crucial to the later sequence hypothesis of Francis Crick for developing ideas of how DNA codes for proteins.
=== Sequencing RNA ===
From 1951 Sanger was a member of the external staff of the Medical Research Council and when they opened the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1962, he moved from his laboratories in the Biochemistry Department of the university to the top floor of the new building. He became head of the Protein Chemistry division.
Prior to his move, Sanger began exploring the possibility of sequencing RNA molecules and began developing methods for separating ribonucleotide fragments generated with specific nucleases. This work he did while trying to refine the sequencing techniques he had developed during his work on insulin.
The key challenge in the work was finding a pure piece of RNA to sequence. In the course of the work he discovered in 1964, with Kjeld Marcker, the formylmethionine tRNA which initiates protein synthesis in bacteria. He was beaten in the race to be the first to sequence a tRNA molecule by a group led by Robert Holley from Cornell University, who published the sequence of the 77 ribonucleotides of alanine tRNA from Saccharomyces cerevisiae in 1965. By 1967 Sanger's group had determined the nucleotide sequence of the 5S ribosomal RNA from Escherichia coli, a small RNA of 120 nucleotides.
=== Sequencing DNA ===
Sanger then turned to sequencing DNA, which would require an entirely different approach. He looked at different ways of using DNA polymerase I from E. coli to copy single-stranded DNA. In 1975, together with Alan Coulson, he published a sequencing procedure using DNA polymerase with radiolabelled nucleotides that he called the "Plus and Minus" technique. This involved two closely related methods that generated short oligonucleotides with defined 3' termini. These could be fractionated by electrophoresis on a polyacrylamide gel and visualised using autoradiography. The procedure could sequence up to 80 nucleotides in one go and was a big improvement on what had gone before, but was still very laborious. Nevertheless, his group were able to sequence most of the 5,386 nucleotides of the single-stranded bacteriophage φX174. This was the first fully sequenced DNA-based genome. To their surprise they discovered that the coding regions of some of the genes overlapped with one another.
In 1977 Sanger and colleagues introduced the "dideoxy" chain-termination method for sequencing DNA molecules, also known as the "Sanger method". This was a major breakthrough and allowed long stretches of DNA to be rapidly and accurately sequenced. It earned him his second Nobel prize in Chemistry in 1980, which he shared with Walter Gilbert and Paul Berg. The new method was used by Sanger and colleagues to sequence human mitochondrial DNA (16,569 base pairs) and bacteriophage λ (48,502 base pairs). The dideoxy method was eventually used to sequence the entire human genome.
=== Postgraduate students ===
During the course of his career Sanger supervised more than ten PhD students, two of whom went on to also win Nobel Prizes. His first graduate student was Rodney Porter who joined the research group in 1947. Porter later shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Gerald Edelman for his work on the chemical structure of antibodies. Elizabeth Blackburn studied for a PhD in Sanger's laboratory between 1971 and 1974. She shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak for her work on telomeres and the action of telomerase.
=== Sanger's rule ===
... anytime you get technical development that's two to threefold or more efficient, accurate, cheaper, a whole range of experiments opens up.
This rule should not be confused with Terence Sanger's rule, which is related to Oja's rule.
=== Awards and honours ===
As of 2015, Sanger is one of the only two people to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice (the other being Karl Barry Sharpless in 2001 and 2022), and one of only five two-time Nobel laureates: The other four were Marie Curie (Physics, 1903 and Chemistry, 1911), Linus Pauling (Chemistry, 1954 and Peace, 1962), John Bardeen (twice Physics, 1956 and 1972), and Karl Barry Sharpless (twice Chemistry, 2001 and 2022).
Elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1954
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) – 1963
Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) – 1981
Member of the Order of Merit (OM) – 1986
Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science – 1982
William Bate Hardy Prize – 1976
Nobel Prize in Chemistry – 1958, 1980
Corday–Morgan Medal – 1951
Royal Medal – 1969
Gairdner Foundation International Award – 1971
Copley Medal – 1977
G.W. Wheland Award – 1978
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University – 1979
Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research – 1979
Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities Award – 1994
Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement – 2000
Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society – 2016
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (formerly the Sanger Centre) is named in his honour.
== Personal life ==
=== Marriage and family ===
Sanger married Margaret Joan Howe (not to be confused with Margaret Sanger, the American pioneer of birth control) in 1940. She died in 2012. They had three children—Robin, born in 1943, Peter born in 1946 and Sally Joan born in 1960. He said that his wife had "contributed more to his work than anyone else by providing a peaceful and happy home."
=== Later life ===
Sanger retired in 1983, aged 65, to his home, "Far Leys", in Swaffham Bulbeck outside Cambridge.
In 1992, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council founded the Sanger Centre (now the Sanger Institute), named after him. The institute is on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus near Hinxton, only a few miles from Sanger's home. He agreed to having the Centre named after him when asked by John Sulston, the founding director, but warned, "It had better be good." It was opened by Sanger in person on 4 October 1993, with a staff of fewer than 50 people, and went on to take a leading role in the sequencing of the human genome. The Institute had about 900 people in 2020 and is one of the world's largest genomic research centres.
Sanger said he found no evidence for a God so he became an agnostic. In an interview published in the Times newspaper in 2000 Sanger is quoted as saying: "My father was a committed Quaker and I was brought up as a Quaker, and for them truth is very important. I drifted away from those beliefs – one is obviously looking for truth, but one needs some evidence for it. Even if I wanted to believe in God I would find it very difficult. I would need to see proof."
He declined the offer of a knighthood, as he did not wish to be addressed as "Sir". He is quoted as saying, "A knighthood makes you different, doesn't it, and I don't want to be different." In 1986 he accepted admission to the Order of Merit, which can have only 24 living members.
In 2007 the British Biochemical Society was given a grant by the Wellcome Trust to catalogue and preserve the 35 laboratory notebooks in which Sanger recorded his research from 1944 to 1983. In reporting this matter, Science noted that Sanger, "the most self-effacing person you could hope to meet", was spending his time gardening at his Cambridgeshire home.
Sanger died in his sleep at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge on 19 November 2013. As noted in his obituary, he had described himself as "just a chap who messed about in a lab", and "academically not brilliant".
== Global policy ==
He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution. As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth.
== Selected publications == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska | Alaska | Alaska ( ə-LASS-kə) is a non-contiguous U.S. state located in the northwestern regions of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is considered to be the northernmost, westernmost, and, longitudinally, the easternmost state in the United States. It is a semi-exclave of the U.S., bordering the Canadian territory of Yukon and the province of British Columbia to the east. It shares a western maritime border in the Bering Strait with Russia's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and is closer to another continent (Asia) than any other U.S. state. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean lie to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the south.
Alaska is the largest U.S. state by area—comprising more total area than the next three largest states of Texas, California, and Montana combined—and is the world's largest exclave and seventh-largest subnational division. With a population of 740,133 in 2024, it is the third-least populous and most sparsely populated state in the U.S., but the most populous territory in North America located mostly north of the 60th parallel, with more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. Alaska contains the four largest cities in the United States by area, including the state capital of Juneau. Alaska's most populous city is Anchorage, and approximately half the state's residents live within its metropolitan area.
Indigenous people have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, and it is widely believed that the region served as the entry point for the initial settlement of the Americas by way of the Bering land bridge. The Russian Empire was the first to actively colonize the area beginning in the 18th century, eventually establishing Russian America, which spanned most of the current state and promoted and maintained a native Alaskan Creole population. The expense and logistical difficulty of maintaining this distant possession prompted its sale to the U.S. in 1867 for US$7.2 million, equivalent to $166 million in 2025. The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.
An abundance of natural resources—including commercial fishing and the extraction of natural gas and oil—has enabled Alaska to have one of the highest per capita incomes in the United States, despite having one of the smallest economies. U.S. Armed Forces bases and tourism also contribute to the economy; more than half of Alaska is federally owned, containing national forests, national parks, and wildlife refuges. It is among the most irreligious states and one of the first to legalize recreational marijuana. Alaska has the highest proportion of Native Americans of any U.S. state, at 22 percent.
== Etymology ==
The name "Alaska" (Russian: Аля́ска, romanized: Aljáska) was introduced during the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the Alaska Peninsula. It was derived from an Aleut-language idiom, alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland" or, more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed".
== History ==
=== Pre-colonization ===
Numerous Indigenous peoples occupied Alaska for thousands of years before the arrival of European peoples to the area. Linguistic and DNA studies done here have provided evidence for the settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. At the Upward Sun River site in the Tanana Valley in Alaska, remains of a six-week-old infant were found. The baby's DNA showed that she belonged to a population that was genetically separate from other Native groups present elsewhere in the New World at the end of the Pleistocene. Ben Potter, the University of Alaska Fairbanks archaeologist who unearthed the remains at the Upward Sun River site in 2013, named this new group Ancient Beringian.
The Tlingit people developed a society with a matrilineal kinship system of property inheritance and descent in what is present Southeast Alaska, along with parts of British Columbia and the Yukon. Also in Southeast were the Haida, now well known for their unique arts. The Tsimshian people came to Alaska from British Columbia in 1887, when President Grover Cleveland, and later the U.S. Congress, granted them permission to settle on Annette Island and found the town of Metlakatla, Alaska. All three of these peoples, as well as other Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, experienced smallpox outbreaks from the late 18th through the mid-19th century, with the most devastating epidemics occurring in the 1830s and 1860s, resulting in high fatalities and social disruption.
=== Colonization ===
Some researchers believe the first Russian settlement in Alaska was established in the 17th century. According to this hypothesis, in 1648 several koches of Semyon Dezhnyov's expedition came ashore in Alaska by storm and founded this settlement. This hypothesis is based on the testimony of Chukchi geographer Nikolai Daurkin, who had visited Alaska in 1764–1765 and who had reported on a village on the Kheuveren River, populated by "bearded men" who "pray to the icons". Some modern researchers associate the Kheuveren with the Koyuk River.
The first European vessel to reach Alaska is generally held to be the St. Gabriel under the authority of the surveyor M. S. Gvozdev and assistant navigator I. Fyodorov on August 21, 1732, during an expedition of Siberian Cossack A. F. Shestakov and Russian explorer Dmitry Pavlutsky (1729–1735). Another European contact with Alaska occurred in 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia with sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia toward the Aleutian Islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784.
Between 1774 and 1800, Spain sent several expeditions to Alaska to assert its claim over the Pacific Northwest, which it considered part of New Spain, administered from Mexico City, Mexico. In 1789, a Spanish settlement and fort were built in Nootka Sound. These expeditions gave names to places such as Valdez, Bucareli Sound, and Cordova. Later, the Russian-American Company carried out an expanded colonization program during the early-to-mid-19th century. Sitka, renamed New Archangel from 1804 to 1867, on Baranof Island in the Alexander Archipelago in what is now Southeast Alaska, became the capital of Russian America. It remained the capital after the colony was transferred to the United States. The Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the colony was never very profitable. Evidence of Russian settlement in names and churches survives throughout southeastern Alaska.
In 1867, William H. Seward, the United States Secretary of State under President Andrew Johnson, negotiated the Alaska Purchase, referred to pejoratively as Seward's Folly, with the Russians for $7.2 million. Russian emperor Alexander II also planned the sale. The purchase was made on March 30, 1867. Six months later the commissioners arrived in Sitka and the formal transfer was arranged. The flag-raising took place at Fort Sitka on October 18, 1867. In the ceremony, 250 uniformed U.S. soldiers marched to the governor's house at "Castle Hill", where the Russian troops lowered the Russian flag and the U.S. flag was raised. This event is celebrated as Alaska Day, a legal holiday on October 18.
Alaska was loosely governed by the military initially and was administered as a district starting in 1884, with a governor appointed by the United States president. A federal district court was headquartered in Sitka. For most of Alaska's first decade under the United States flag, Sitka was the only community inhabited by American settlers. They organized "a provisional city government", which was Alaska's first municipal government, but not in a legal sense. Legislation allowing Alaskan communities to legally incorporate as cities arrived in 1900, and home rule for cities was extremely limited or unavailable until statehood took effect in 1959.
=== U.S. territorial incorporation ===
Starting in the 1890s and stretching in some places to the early 1910s, gold rushes in Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. From 1879 to 1920, Alaska produced a cumulative total of over $460,000,000, equivalent to $7,392,857,143 in 2025, of mineral production. In 1912, Alaska was incorporated as an organized territory. Alaska's capital, which had been in Sitka until 1906, was moved north to Juneau. Construction of the Alaska Governor's Mansion began that same year. European immigrants from Norway and Sweden also settled in southeast Alaska, where they entered the fishing and logging industries.
During World War II, the Aleutian Islands Campaign focused on Attu, Agattu and Kiska, all of which were occupied by the Empire of Japan. During the Japanese occupation, an American civilian and two United States Navy personnel were killed at Attu and Kiska respectively, and almost 50 Aleut civilians and eight sailors were interned in Japan. About half of the Aleuts died during the period of internment. Unalaska/Dutch Harbor and Adak became significant bases for the United States Army, United States Army Air Forces and United States Navy. The United States Lend-Lease program involved flying American warplanes through Canada to Fairbanks and then Nome. Soviet pilots took possession of these aircraft, ferrying them to fight the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The construction of military bases contributed to the population growth of some Alaskan cities.
=== Statehood ===
Statehood for Alaska was an important cause of James Wickersham early in his tenure as a congressional delegate. Decades later, the statehood movement gained its first real momentum following a territorial referendum in 1946. The Alaska Statehood Committee and Alaska's Constitutional Convention soon followed. Statehood supporters also found themselves fighting major battles against political foes, mostly in the U.S. Congress but also within Alaska. Statehood was approved by the U.S. Congress on July 7, 1958. Alaska was officially proclaimed a state on January 3, 1959.
=== Good Friday earthquake ===
On March 27, 1964, the massive Good Friday earthquake killed 133 people and destroyed several villages and portions of large coastal communities, mainly by the resultant tsunamis and landslides. It was the fourth-most-powerful earthquake in recorded history, with a moment magnitude of 9.2 (more than a thousand times as powerful as the 1989 San Francisco earthquake). The time of day (5:36 pm), time of year (spring) and location of the epicenter were all cited as factors in potentially sparing thousands of lives, particularly in Anchorage.
The Good Friday earthquake lasted 4 minutes and 38 seconds. Six hundred miles (970 km) of fault ruptured at once and moved up to 60 ft (18 m), releasing about 500 years of stress buildup. Soil liquefaction, fissures, landslides, and other ground failures caused major structural damage in several communities and much damage to property. Anchorage sustained great destruction or damage to many inadequately earthquake-engineered houses, buildings, and infrastructure (paved streets, sidewalks, water and sewer mains, electrical systems, and other human-made equipment), particularly in the several landslide zones along Knik Arm. Two hundred miles (320 km) southwest, some areas near Kodiak were permanently raised by 30 feet (9 m). Southeast of Anchorage, areas around the head of Turnagain Arm near Girdwood and Portage dropped as much as 8 feet (2.4 m), requiring reconstruction and fill to raise the Seward Highway above the new high tide mark.
In Prince William Sound, Port Valdez suffered a massive underwater landslide, resulting in the deaths of 32 people between the collapse of the Valdez city harbor and docks, and inside the ship that was docked there at the time. Nearby, a 27-foot (8.2 m) tsunami destroyed the village of Chenega, killing 23 of the 68 people who lived there; survivors out-ran the wave, climbing to high ground. Post-quake tsunamis severely affected Whittier, Seward, Kodiak, and other Alaskan communities, as well as people and property in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. Tsunamis also caused damage in Hawaii and Japan. Evidence of motion directly related to the earthquake was also reported from Florida and Texas.
Alaska had never experienced a major disaster in a highly populated area before and had very limited resources for dealing with the effects of such an event. In Anchorage, at the urging of geologist Lidia Selkregg, the City of Anchorage and the Alaska State Housing Authority appointed a team of 40 scientists, including geologists, soil scientists, and engineers, to assess the damage done by the earthquake to the city. The team, called the Engineering and Geological Evaluation Group, was headed by Ruth A. M. Schmidt, a geology professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The team of scientists came into conflict with local developers and downtown business owners who wanted to immediately rebuild; the scientists wanted to identify future dangers to ensure that the rebuilt infrastructure would be safe. The team produced a report on May 8, 1964, just a little more than a month after the earthquake.
The United States military, which has a large active presence in Alaska, also stepped in to assist within moments of the end of the quake. The U.S. Army rapidly re-established communications with the lower 48 states, deployed troops to assist the citizens of Anchorage, and dispatched a convoy to Valdez. On the advice of military and civilian leaders, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared all of Alaska a major disaster area the day after the quake. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard deployed ships to isolated coastal communities to assist with immediate needs. Bad weather and poor visibility hampered air rescue and observation efforts the day after the quake, but on Sunday the 29th the situation improved and rescue helicopters and observation aircraft were deployed. A military airlift immediately began shipping relief supplies to Alaska, eventually delivering 2,570,000 pounds (1,170,000 kg) of food and other supplies.
Broadcast journalist, Genie Chance, assisted in recovery and relief efforts, staying on the KENI air waves over Anchorage for more than 24 continuous hours as the voice of calm from her temporary post within the Anchorage Public Safety Building. She was effectively designated as the public safety officer by the city's police chief. Chance provided breaking news of the catastrophic events that continued to develop following the magnitude 9.2 earthquake, and she served as the voice of the public safety office, coordinating response efforts, connecting available resources to needs around the community, disseminating information about shelters and prepared food rations, passing messages of well-being between loved ones, and helping to reunite families.
In the longer term, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers led the effort to rebuild roads, clear debris, and establish new townsites for communities that had been completely destroyed, at a cost of $110 million. The West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center was formed as a direct response to the disaster. Federal disaster relief funds paid for reconstruction as well as financially supporting the devastated infrastructure of Alaska's government, spending hundreds of millions of dollars that helped keep Alaska financially solvent until the discovery of massive oil deposits at Prudhoe Bay. At the order of the U.S. Defense Department, the Alaska National Guard founded the Alaska Division of Emergency Services to respond to any future disasters.
=== Oil boom ===
The 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay and the 1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System led to an oil boom. Royalty revenues from oil have funded large state budgets from 1980 onward.
Oil production was not the only economic value of Alaska's land. In the second half of the 20th century, Alaska discovered tourism as an important source of revenue. Tourism became popular after World War II when military personnel stationed in the region returned home praising its natural splendor. The Alcan Highway, built during the war, and the Alaska Marine Highway System, completed in 1963, made the state more accessible than before. Tourism has become increasingly important in Alaska, and today more than 1.4 million people visit the state each year.
With tourism more vital to the economy, environmentalism rose in importance. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 added 53.7 million acres (217,000 km2) to the National Wildlife Refuge system, parts of 25 rivers to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, 3.3 million acres (13,000 km2) to National Forest lands, and 43.6 million acres (176,000 km2) to National Park land. Because of the Act, Alaska now contains two-thirds of all American national parklands. Today, more than half of Alaskan land is owned by the Federal Government.
In 1989, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling more than 11 million gallons (42 megalitres) of crude oil over 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of coastline. Today, the battle between philosophies of development and conservation is seen in the contentious debate over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the proposed Pebble Mine.
== Geography ==
Located at the northwest corner of North America very near to Asia, Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States, but also has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska is the only non-contiguous U.S. state on continental North America; about 500 miles (800 km) of Canadian territory consisting of British Columbia (in Canada) separates Alaska from Washington. It is technically part of the continental U.S., but is not usually included in the colloquial use of the term; Alaska is not part of the contiguous U.S., often called "the Lower 48". The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system. The largest lake in Alaska is Lake Illiamna.
Alaska is bordered by Canada's Yukon and British Columbia to the east (making it the only state to border only a Canadian territory); the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean to the south and southwest; the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and Chukchi Sea to the west; and the Arctic Ocean to the north. Alaska's territorial waters touch Russia's territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island and Alaskan Little Diomede Island are only 3 miles (4.8 km) apart. Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U.S. states combined.
At 663,268 square miles (1,717,856 km2) in total area, Alaska is by far the largest state in the United States. Alaska is more than twice the size of the second-largest U.S. state (Texas), and it is larger than the next three largest states (Texas, California, and Montana) combined. Alaska is the seventh largest subnational division in the world. If it was an independent nation, it would be the 18th largest country in the world; almost the same size as Iran.
With its myriad islands, Alaska has nearly 34,000 miles (55,000 km) of tidal shoreline. The Aleutian Islands chain extends west from the southern tip of the Alaska Peninsula. Many active volcanoes are found in the Aleutians and in coastal regions. Unimak Island, for example, is home to Mount Shishaldin, which is an occasionally smoldering volcano that rises to 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above the North Pacific. The chain of volcanoes extends to Mount Spurr, west of Anchorage on the mainland. Geologists have identified Alaska as part of Wrangellia, a large region consisting of multiple states and Canadian provinces in the Pacific Northwest, which is actively undergoing continent building.
One of the world's largest tides occurs in Turnagain Arm, just south of Anchorage, where tidal differences can be more than 35 feet (10.7 m).
Alaska has more than 409,000 natural lakes at least one hectare or bigger. Marshlands and wetland permafrost cover 188,320 square miles (487,700 km2) (mostly in northern, western and southwest flatlands). Glacier ice covers about 28,957 square miles (75,000 km2) of Alaska. The Bering Glacier is the largest glacier in North America, covering 2,008 square miles (5,200 km2) alone.
=== Regions ===
==== Southcentral ====
The most populous region of Alaska contains Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and the Kenai Peninsula. Rural, mostly unpopulated areas south of the Alaska Range and west of the Wrangell Mountains also fall within the definition of South Central, as do the Prince William Sound area and the communities of Cordova and Valdez.
==== Southeast ====
Also referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the contiguous states. As such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase. The region is dominated by the Alexander Archipelago as well as the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States. It contains the state capital Juneau, the former capital Sitka, and Ketchikan, at one time Alaska's largest city. The Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital surface transportation link throughout the area and country, as only three communities (Haines, Hyder and Skagway) enjoy direct connections to the contiguous North American road system.
==== Interior ====
The Interior is the largest region of Alaska; much of it is uninhabited wilderness. Fairbanks is the only large city in the region. Denali National Park and Preserve is located here. Denali, federally designated as Mount McKinley, is the highest mountain in North America and is also located here.
==== North Slope ====
The North Slope is mostly tundra peppered with small villages. The area is known for its massive reserves of crude oil and contains both the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska and the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field. The city of Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow, is the northernmost city in the United States and is located here. The Northwest Arctic area, anchored by Kotzebue and also containing the Kobuk River valley, is often considered part of this region. The respective Inupiat of the North Slope and of the Northwest Arctic seldom consider themselves to be one people.
==== Southwest ====
Southwest Alaska is a sparsely inhabited region stretching some 500 miles (800 km) inland from the Bering Sea. Most of the population lives along the coast. Kodiak Island is also located in the Southwest. The massive Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, one of the largest river deltas in the world, is here. Portions of the Alaska Peninsula are considered part of the Southwest, with the Aleutian Islands often (but not always) being grouped in as well.
==== Aleutian Islands ====
While primarily part of Southwest Alaska when grouped economically, the Aleutian islands are sometimes recognized as an alternate group from the rest of the region due to the geographic separation from the continent. More than 300 small volcanic islands make up this chain, which stretches more than 1,200 miles (1,900 km) into the Pacific Ocean. Some of these islands fall in the Eastern Hemisphere, but the International Date Line was drawn west of 180° to keep the whole state, and thus the entire North American continent, within the same legal day. Two of the islands, Attu and Kiska, were occupied by Japanese forces during World War II.
=== Land ownership ===
As of 2023 the United States Bureau of Land Management manages 290 million surface and subsurface acres as public lands, including a multitude of national forests, national parks, national wildlife refuges, and federal mineral estate land. Of these, the Bureau of Land Management manages 87 million acres (35 million hectares), or 23.8% of the state. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. It is the world's largest wildlife refuge, comprising 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares).
Of the remaining land area, the state of Alaska owns 101 million acres (41 million hectares), its entitlement under the Alaska Statehood Act. A portion of that acreage is occasionally ceded to the organized boroughs presented above, under the statutory provisions pertaining to newly formed boroughs. Smaller portions are set aside for rural subdivisions and other homesteading-related opportunities. These are not very popular due to the often remote and roadless locations. The University of Alaska, as a land grant university, also owns substantial acreage which it manages independently.
Another 44 million acres (18 million hectares) are owned by 12 regional, and scores of local, Native corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971. Regional Native corporation Doyon, Limited often promotes itself as the largest private landowner in Alaska in advertisements and other communications. Provisions of ANCSA allowing the corporations' land holdings to be sold on the open market starting in 1991 were repealed before they could take effect. Effectively, the corporations hold title (including subsurface title in many cases, a privilege denied to individual Alaskans) but cannot sell the land. Individual Native allotments are sold on the open market.
Various private interests own the remaining land, totaling about one percent of the state. Alaska is, by a large margin, the state with the smallest percentage of private land ownership when Native corporation holdings are excluded.
=== Alaska Heritage Resources Survey ===
The Alaska Heritage Resources Survey (AHRS) is a restricted inventory of all reported historic and prehistoric sites within the U.S. state of Alaska; it is maintained by the Office of History and Archaeology. The survey's inventory of cultural resources includes objects, structures, buildings, sites, districts, and travel ways, with a general provision that they are more than fifty years old. As of 31 January 2012, more than 35,000 sites have been reported.
=== Cities, towns and boroughs ===
Alaska is not divided into counties, like Louisiana's parishes and unlike most of the other U.S. states, but it is divided into boroughs. Delegates to the Alaska Constitutional Convention wanted to avoid the pitfalls of the traditional county system and adopted their own unique model. Many of the more densely populated parts of the state are part of Alaska's 16 boroughs, which function somewhat similarly to counties in other states. Unlike county-equivalents in the other states, the boroughs do not cover the state's entire land area. The area not part of any borough is referred to as the Unorganized Borough.
The Unorganized Borough has no government of its own, but the U.S. Census Bureau in cooperation with the state divided the Unorganized Borough into 11 census areas solely for the purposes of statistical analysis and presentation. A recording district is a mechanism for management of the public record in Alaska. The state is divided into 34 recording districts which are centrally administered under a state recorder. All recording districts use the same acceptance criteria, fee schedule, etc., for accepting documents into the public record.
Whereas many U.S. states use a three-tiered system of decentralization—state/county/township—most of Alaska uses two tiers—state/borough. Owing to the low population density, most of the land is located in the Unorganized Borough. As the name implies, it has no intermediate borough government but is administered directly by the state government. In 2000, 57.71% of Alaska's area has this status, with 13.05% of the population.
In 1975, Anchorage merged the city government with the Greater Anchorage Area Borough to form the Municipality of Anchorage, containing the city proper and the communities of Eagle River, Chugiak, Peters Creek, Girdwood, Bird, and Indian. Fairbanks has a separate borough (the Fairbanks North Star Borough) and municipality (the City of Fairbanks).
Alaska's most populous city is Anchorage, home to 291,247 people in 2020. The richest location in Alaska by per capita income is Denali ($42,245). Yakutat, Sitka, Juneau, and Anchorage are the four largest cities in the U.S. by area.
==== Cities and census-designated places (by population) ====
In the 2020 United States census, Alaska has 355 incorporated cities and census-designated places (CDPs). The tally of cities includes four unified municipalities, essentially the equivalent of a consolidated city–county. The majority of these communities are located in the rural expanse of Alaska known as "The Bush" and are unconnected to that contiguous North American road network. The table at the bottom of this section lists the 100 largest cities and census-designated places in Alaska, in population order.
Of Alaska's 2020 U.S. census population figure of 733,391, 16,655 people, or 2.27% of the population, did not live in an incorporated city or census-designated place. Approximately three-quarters of that figure were people who live in urban and suburban neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city limits of Ketchikan, Kodiak, Palmer and Wasilla. CDPs have not been established for these areas by the United States Census Bureau. Seven CDPs were established for the Ketchikan-area neighborhoods in the 1980 census (Clover Pass, Herring Cove, Ketchikan East, Mountain Point, Alaska Route 7, Pennock Island and Saxman East), but have not been used since. The remaining population was scattered throughout Alaska, both within organized boroughs and in the Unorganized Borough, in largely remote areas.
=== Climate ===
Alaska is the coldest state in the United States. The climate in the south and southeastern Alaska is a mid-latitude oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfb), and a subarctic oceanic climate (Köppen Cfc) in the northern parts, with cool summers and relatively mild winters. On an annual basis, the southeast is both the wettest and warmest part of Alaska with milder temperatures in the winter and high precipitation throughout the year. Juneau averages over 50 in (130 cm) of precipitation a year, and Ketchikan averages over 150 in (380 cm). This is also the only region in Alaska in which the average daytime high temperature is above freezing during the winter months.
The climate of Anchorage and south central Alaska is mild by Alaskan standards due to the region's proximity to the seacoast. While the area gets less rain than southeast Alaska, it gets more snow, and days tend to be clearer. On average, Anchorage receives 16 in (41 cm) of precipitation a year, with around 75 in (190 cm) of snow, although there are areas in the south central which receive far more snow. It is a subarctic climate (Köppen: Dfc) due to its brief, cool summers.
The climate of western Alaska is determined in large part by the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. It is a subarctic oceanic climate in the southwest and a continental subarctic climate farther north. The temperature is somewhat moderate considering how far north the area is. This region has a tremendous amount of variety in precipitation. An area stretching from the northern side of the Seward Peninsula to the Kobuk River valley (i.e., the region around Kotzebue Sound) is technically a desert, with portions receiving less than 10 in (25 cm) of precipitation annually. On the other extreme, some locations between Dillingham and Bethel average around 100 in (250 cm) of precipitation.
The climate of the interior of Alaska is subarctic and is a classic example of a continental subarctic climate, except in a few valleys where the climate approaches humid continental (Köppen: Dfb). Some of the highest and lowest temperatures in Alaska occur around the area near Fairbanks. Summers are warm, albeit generally short, and may have temperatures reaching into the 90s °F (the low-to-mid 30s °C). In the long and very cold winters, the temperature can fall below −60 °F (−51 °C). Precipitation is sparse in the Interior, often less than 10 in (25 cm) a year, but what precipitation falls in the winter tends to stay the entire winter.
The highest and lowest recorded temperatures in Alaska are both in the Interior. The highest is 100 °F (38 °C) in Fort Yukon, which is just 8 mi or 13 km inside the arctic circle, on June 27, 1915, making Alaska tied with Hawaii as the state with the lowest high temperature in the United States. The lowest official Alaska temperature is −80 °F (−62 °C) in Prospect Creek on January 23, 1971, one degree above the lowest temperature recorded in continental North America (in Snag, Yukon, Canada).
The climate in the extreme north of Alaska, north of the Brooks Range, is Arctic (Köppen: ET) with long, very cold winters and short, cool summers. Even in July, the average low temperature in Utqiaġvik is 34 °F (1 °C). Precipitation is light in this part of Alaska, with many places averaging less than 10 in (25 cm) per year, mostly as snow which stays on the ground almost the entire year.
=== Fauna ===
== Demographics ==
The United States Census Bureau found in the 2020 United States census that the population of Alaska was 733,391 on April 1, 2020, a 3.3% increase since the 2010 United States census. In the 2010 United States Census, Alaska had a population of 710,231, an increase of 13.3%, up from 626,932 at the 2000 U.S. census.
In 2020, Alaska ranked as the 48th largest state by population, ahead of only Vermont and Wyoming. Alaska is the least densely populated state, and one of the most sparsely populated areas in the world, at 1.2 inhabitants per square mile (0.46/km2). The next state, Wyoming, has 5.8 inhabitants per square mile (2.2/km2). Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state by area, and the tenth wealthiest, per capita income. As of 2018 due to its population size, it is one of 14 U.S. states that still have only one telephone area code.
In HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 2,320 homeless people in Alaska.
=== Race and ethnicity ===
The 2019 American Community Survey estimated 60.2% of the population was white, 3.7% black or African American, 15.6% American Indian or Alaska Native, 6.5% Asian, 1.4% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 7.5% two or more races, and 7.3% Hispanic or Latin American. At the survey estimates, 7.8% of the total population was foreign-born from 2015 to 2019.
In 2015, 61.3% were white, 3.4% black or African American, 13.3% American Indian or Alaska Native, 6.2% Asian, 0.9% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 0.3% some other race, and 7.7% multiracial. Hispanics and Latin Americans were 7% of the state population in 2015. From 2015 to 2019, the largest Hispanic and Latin American groups were Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans. The largest Asian groups living in the state were Filipinos, Korean Americans, and Japanese and Chinese Americans.
In 2010, Alaska was 64.1% white, 14.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 5.4% Asian, 3.3% black or African American, 1.0% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 1.6% from some other race, and 7.3% from two or more races in 2010. Hispanics or Latin Americans made up 5.5% of the population in 2010. As of 2011, 50.7% of Alaska's population younger than one year of age belonged to minority groups (i.e., did not have two parents of white ancestry). In 1960, the United States Census Bureau reported Alaska's population as 77.2% white, 3% black, and 18.8% American Indian and Alaska Native.
In 2018, the top countries of origin for Alaska's immigrants were the Philippines, Mexico, Canada, Thailand and South Korea.
=== Languages ===
In the 2011 American Community Survey, 83.4% of people over the age of five spoke only English at home. About 3.5% spoke Spanish at home, 2.2% spoke another Indo-European language, about 4.3% spoke an Asian language (including Tagalog), and about 5.3% spoke other languages at home. In 2019, the American Community Survey determined 83.7% spoke only English, and 16.3% spoke another language other than English. The most spoken European language after English was Spanish, spoken by approximately 4.0% of the state population. Collectively, Asian and Pacific Islander languages were spoken by 5.6% of Alaskans. Since 2010, 5.2% of Alaskans speak one of the state's 20 Indigenous languages, known locally as "Native languages". Alaska is also known for a distinctive dialect of Russian, named Alaskan Russian.
The Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks claims that at least twenty Alaska Native languages exist and there are also some languages with different dialects. Most of Alaska's Native languages belong to either the Eskimo–Aleut or Na-Dene language families. Some languages are thought to be isolates (e.g., Haida) or have not yet been classified (e.g., Tsimshianic). In 2014, nearly all of Alaska's Native languages were classified as either threatened, shifting, moribund, nearly extinct, or dormant languages.
In October 2014, the governor of Alaska signed a bill declaring the state's 20 Indigenous languages to have official status. This bill gave them symbolic recognition as official languages, though they have not been adopted for official use within the government. In May 2024, a bill replaced Tanana with Middle Tanana and Lower Tanana, added Cupʼig and Wetał. The 23 languages that were included in the bill are:
=== Religion ===
Multiple surveys have ranked Alaska among the most irreligious states.
In 2010, per the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), about 34% of Alaska residents were members of religious congregations. Of the religious population, roughly 4% were Mormon, 0.5% Jewish, 0.5% Muslim, 1% Buddhist, 0.2% Baháʼí, and 0.5% Hindu.
In 2010, the largest religious denominations in Alaska were the Catholic Church with 50,866 adherents; non-denominational Evangelicals with 38,070 adherents; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with 32,170 adherents; and the Southern Baptist Convention with 19,891 adherents. Alaska has been identified, along with Washington and Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, as being the least religious states in the United States, in terms of church membership.
The Pew Research Center in 2014 determined 62% of the adult population practiced Christianity. Of the Christian denominations, Catholicism was the largest Christian group. When Protestant denominations were combined, Protestantism was the largest Christian tradition, with Evangelicalism being the largest movement within the Protestant group. The unaffiliated population made up the largest non-Christian religious affiliation at 37%. Atheists made up 5% of the population and the largest non-Christian religion was Buddhism. In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) determined 57% of adults were Christian. By 2022, Christianity increased to 77% of the population according to the PRRI.
Through the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020, its Christian population was dominated by non/inter-denominational Protestantism as the single largest Christian cohort, with 73,930 adherents. Roman Catholics were second with 40,280 members; throughout its Christian population, non-denominational Christians had an adherence rate of 100.81 per 1,000 residents, and Catholics 54.92 per 1,000 residents. Per 2014's Pew study, religion was seen as very important to 41% of the population, although 29% considered it somewhat important.
In 2014, Pew determined roughly 55% believed in God with absolute certainty, and 24% believed fairly certainly. Reflecting the separate 2020 ARDA study, the 2014 Pew study showed 30% attended religious services once a week, 34% once or twice a month, and 36% seldom/never. In 2018, The Gospel Coalition published an article using Pew data and determined non-churchgoing Christians nationwide did not attend religious services often through the following: practicing the faith in other ways, not finding a house of worship they liked, disliking sermons and feeling unwelcomed, and logistics.
In 1795, the first Russian Orthodox Church was established in Kodiak. Intermarriage with Alaska Natives helped the Russian immigrants integrate into society. As a result, an increasing number of Russian Orthodox churches gradually became established within Alaska. Alaska also has the largest Quaker population (by percentage) of any state. In 2009, there were 6,000 Jews in Alaska, for whom observance of halakha may pose special problems.
Alaskan Hindus often share venues and celebrations with members of other Asian religious communities, including Sikhs and Jains. In 2010, Alaskan Hindus established the Sri Ganesha Temple of Alaska, making it the first Hindu Temple in Alaska and the northernmost Hindu Temple in the world. There are an estimated 2,000–3,000 Hindus in Alaska. The vast majority of Hindus live in Anchorage or Fairbanks.
Estimates for the number of Muslims in Alaska range from 2,000 to 5,000. In 2020, ARDA estimated there were 400 Muslims in the state. The Islamic Community Center of Anchorage began efforts in the late 1990s to construct a mosque in Anchorage. They broke ground on a building in south Anchorage in 2010 and were nearing completion in late 2014. When completed, the mosque was the first in the state and one of the northernmost mosques in the world. There is also a Baháʼí center, and there were 690 adherents in 2020. Additionally, there were 469 adherents of Hinduism and Yoga altogether in 2020, and a small number of Buddhists were present.
== Economy ==
In October 2022, Alaska had a total employment of 316,900. The number of employer establishments was 21,077. As of August 2025, the unemployment rate was 4.7%. The state's historically lowest unemployment rate was recorded in August 2022 at 3.8%, and its highest in May 2020 at 11.7%.
The 2018 gross state product was $55 billion, 48th in the U.S. Its per capita personal income for 2018 was $73,000, ranking 7th in the nation. According to a 2013 study by Phoenix Marketing International, Alaska had the fifth-largest number of millionaires per capita in the United States, with a ratio of 6.75 percent. The oil and gas industry dominates the Alaskan economy, with more than 80% of the state's revenues derived from petroleum extraction. Alaska's main export product, excluding oil and natural gas, is seafood, primarily salmon, cod, pollock and crab.
Agriculture represents a minuscule fraction of the Alaskan economy. Agricultural production is primarily for consumption within the state and includes nursery stock, dairy products, vegetables, and livestock. Manufacturing is limited, with most foodstuffs and general goods imported from elsewhere.
Employment is primarily in government and industries such as natural resource extraction, shipping, and transportation. Military bases are a significant component of the economy in Anchorage and the Fairbanks North Star and Kodiak Island boroughs. In 2025, 99.1% of Alaska businesses are small businesses and employ 54.2% of the state's workforce. Federal subsidies are also an important part of the economy, allowing the state to keep taxes low. Its industrial outputs are crude petroleum, natural gas, coal, gold, precious metals, zinc and other mining, seafood processing, timber and wood products. There is also a growing service and tourism sector. Tourists have contributed to the economy by supporting local lodging.
=== Energy ===
Alaska has vast energy resources, although its oil reserves have been largely depleted. Major oil and gas reserves were found in the Alaska North Slope (ANS) and Cook Inlet basins, but according to the Energy Information Administration, by February 2014 Alaska had fallen to fourth place in the nation in crude oil production after Texas, North Dakota, and California.
Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope is still the second highest-yielding oil field in the United States, typically producing about 400,000 barrels per day (64,000 m3/d), although by early 2014 North Dakota's Bakken Formation was producing over 900,000 barrels per day (140,000 m3/d). Prudhoe Bay was the largest conventional oil field ever discovered in North America, but was much smaller than Canada's enormous Athabasca oil sands field, which by 2014 was producing about 1,500,000 barrels per day (240,000 m3/d) of unconventional oil, and had hundreds of years of producible reserves at that rate.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline can transport and pump up to 2.1 million barrels (330,000 m3) of crude oil per day, more than any other crude oil pipeline in the United States. Additionally, substantial coal deposits are found in Alaska's bituminous, sub-bituminous, and lignite coal basins. The United States Geological Survey estimates that there are 85.4 trillion cubic feet (2,420 km3) of undiscovered, technically recoverable gas from natural gas hydrates on the Alaskan North Slope. Alaska also offers some of the highest hydroelectric power potential in the country from its numerous rivers. Large swaths of the Alaskan coastline offer wind and geothermal energy potential as well.
Alaska's economy depends heavily on increasingly expensive diesel fuel for heating, transportation, electric power and light. Although wind and hydroelectric power are abundant and underdeveloped, proposals for statewide energy systems were judged uneconomical (at the time of the report, 2001) due to low (less than 50¢/gal) fuel prices, long distances and low population. The cost of a gallon of gas in urban Alaska is usually thirty to sixty cents higher than the national average; prices in rural areas are generally significantly higher but vary widely depending on transportation costs, seasonal usage peaks, nearby petroleum development infrastructure and many other factors.
==== Permanent Fund ====
The Alaska Permanent Fund is a constitutionally authorized appropriation of oil revenues, established by voters in 1976 to manage a surplus in state petroleum revenues from oil, largely in anticipation of the then recently constructed Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. The fund was originally proposed by Governor Keith Miller on the eve of the 1969 Prudhoe Bay lease sale, out of fear that the legislature would spend the entire proceeds of the sale (which amounted to $900 million) at once. It was later championed by Governor Jay Hammond and Kenai state representative Hugh Malone. It has served as an attractive political prospect ever since, diverting revenues which would normally be deposited into the general fund.
The Alaska Constitution was written so as to discourage dedicating state funds for a particular purpose. The Permanent Fund has become the rare exception to this, mostly due to the political climate of distrust existing during the time of its creation. From its initial principal of $734,000, the fund has grown to $50 billion as a result of oil royalties and capital investment programs. Most if not all the principal is invested conservatively outside Alaska. This has led to frequent calls by Alaskan politicians for the Fund to make investments within Alaska, though such a stance has never gained momentum.
Starting in 1982, dividends from the fund's annual growth have been paid out each year to eligible Alaskans, ranging from an initial $1,000 in 1982 (equal to three years' payout, as the distribution of payments was held up in a lawsuit over the distribution scheme) to $3,269 in 2008 (which included a one-time $1,200 "Resource Rebate"). Every year, the state legislature takes out 8% from the earnings, puts 3% back into the principal for inflation proofing, and the remaining 5% is distributed to all qualifying Alaskans. To qualify for the Permanent Fund Dividend, one must have lived in the state for a minimum of 12 months, maintain constant residency subject to allowable absences, and not be subject to court judgments or criminal convictions which fall under various disqualifying classifications or may subject the payment amount to civil garnishment.
The Permanent Fund is often considered to be one of the leading examples of a basic income policy in the world.
=== Cost of living ===
The cost of goods in Alaska has long been higher than in the contiguous 48 states. Federal government employees, particularly United States Postal Service (USPS) workers and active-duty military members, receive a Cost of Living Allowance usually set at 25% of base pay because, while the cost of living has gone down, it is still one of the highest in the country.
Rural Alaska suffers from severely high prices for food and consumer goods compared to the rest of the country, due to the relatively limited transportation infrastructure.
=== Agriculture and fishing ===
Due to the northern climate and short growing season, relatively little farming occurs in Alaska. Most farms are in either the Matanuska Valley, about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Anchorage, or on the Kenai Peninsula, about 60 miles (97 km) southwest of Anchorage. The short 100-day growing season limits the crops that can be grown, but the long sunny summer days make for productive growing seasons. The primary crops are potatoes, carrots, lettuce, and cabbage.
The Tanana Valley is another notable agricultural locus, especially the Delta Junction area, about 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Fairbanks, with a sizable concentration of farms growing agronomic crops; these farms mostly lie north and east of Fort Greely. This area was largely set aside and developed under a state program spearheaded by Hammond during his second term as governor. Delta-area crops consist predominantly of barley and hay. West of Fairbanks lies another concentration of small farms catering to restaurants, the hotel and tourist industry, and community-supported agriculture.
Alaskan agriculture has experienced a surge in growth of market gardeners, small farms and farmers' markets in recent years, with the highest percentage increase (46%) in the nation in growth in farmers' markets in 2011, compared to 17% nationwide. The peony industry has also taken off, as the growing season allows farmers to harvest during a gap in supply elsewhere in the world, thereby filling a niche in the flower market.
Alaska, with no counties, lacks county fairs. Instead, a small assortment of state and local fairs (with the Alaska State Fair in Palmer the largest), are held mostly in the late summer. The fairs are mostly located in communities with historic or current agricultural activity, and feature local farmers exhibiting produce in addition to more high-profile commercial activities such as carnival rides, concerts and food. "Alaska Grown" is used as an agricultural slogan.
Alaska has an abundance of seafood, with the primary fisheries in the Bering Sea and the North Pacific. Seafood is one of the few food items that is often cheaper within the state than outside it. Many Alaskans take advantage of salmon seasons to harvest portions of their household diet while fishing for subsistence, as well as sport. This includes fish taken by hook, net or wheel.
Hunting for subsistence, primarily caribou, moose, and Dall sheep is still common in the state, particularly in remote Bush communities. An example of a traditional native food is Akutaq, the Eskimo ice cream, which can consist of reindeer fat, seal oil, dried fish meat and local berries.
Alaska's reindeer herding is concentrated on Seward Peninsula, where wild caribou can be prevented from mingling and migrating with the domesticated reindeer.
Most food in Alaska is transported into the state from "Outside" (the other 49 U.S. states), and shipping costs make food in the cities relatively expensive. In rural areas, subsistence hunting and gathering is an essential activity because imported food is prohibitively expensive. Although most small towns and villages in Alaska lie along the coastline, the cost of importing food to remote villages can be high because of the terrain and difficult road conditions, which change dramatically due to varying climate and precipitation changes. Transport costs can reach 50¢ per pound ($1.10/kg) or higher in some remote areas during times of inclement weather or rough terrain conditions, if these locations can be reached at all. The cost of delivering a gallon (3.8 L) of milk is about $3.50 in many villages where per capita income can be $20,000 or less. Fuel cost per gallon is routinely twenty to thirty cents higher than the contiguous United States average, with only Hawaii having higher prices.
== Culture ==
Some of Alaska's popular annual events are the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race from Anchorage to Nome, World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, the Blueberry Festival and Alaska Hummingbird Festival in Ketchikan, the Sitka Whale Fest, and the Stikine River Garnet Fest in Wrangell. The Stikine River attracts the largest springtime concentration of American bald eagles in the world.
The Alaska Native Heritage Center celebrates the rich heritage of Alaska's 11 cultural groups. Their purpose is to encourage cross-cultural exchanges among all people and enhance self-esteem among Native people. The Alaska Native Arts Foundation promotes and markets Native art from all regions and cultures in the State, using the internet.
=== Music ===
Influences on music in Alaska include the traditional music of Alaska Natives as well as folk music brought by later immigrants from Russia and Europe. Prominent musicians from Alaska include singer Jewel, traditional Aleut flautist Mary Youngblood, folk singer-songwriter Libby Roderick, Christian music singer-songwriter Lincoln Brewster, metal/post hardcore band 36 Crazyfists and the groups Pamyua and Portugal. The Man.
There are many established music festivals in Alaska, including the Alaska Folk Festival, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, the Anchorage Folk Festival, the Athabascan Old-Time Fiddling Festival, the Sitka Jazz Festival, the Sitka Summer Music Festival, and the Anchorage Chamber Music Festival. The most prominent orchestra in Alaska is the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, though the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and Juneau Symphony are also notable. The Anchorage Opera is currently the state's only professional opera company, though there are several volunteer and semi-professional organizations in the state as well.
The official state song of Alaska is "Alaska's Flag", which was adopted in 1955; it celebrates the flag of Alaska.
=== Film and television ===
The 1983 Disney movie Never Cry Wolf was at least partially shot in Alaska. The 1991 film White Fang, based on Jack London's 1906 novel and starring Ethan Hawke, was filmed in and around Haines. Steven Seagal's 1994 On Deadly Ground, starring Michael Caine, was filmed in part at the Worthington Glacier near Valdez.
Many reality television shows are filmed in Alaska. In 2011, the Anchorage Daily News found ten set in the state.
== Sports ==
The following is a list of sporting venues, events, and teams based in Alaska.
=== Anchorage ===
==== Venues ====
Alyeska Resort
Chugach State Park, a 495,000-acre (2,000 km2) high alpine park.
Anchorage has many groomed cross-country skiing trails within the urban core. There are 105 miles (169 km) of maintained ski trails in the city, some of which reach downtown.
Mulcahy Stadium
Sullivan Arena
Alaska Airlines Center
==== Teams ====
Anchorage Wolverines
Anchorage Bucs
Anchorage Glacier Pilots
Alaska-Anchorage Seawolves men's ice hockey
Rage City Rollergirls
Arctic Rush (soccer)
Cook Inlet SC (soccer)
Pioneer United FC (men's soccer)
==== Events ====
Great Alaska Shootout, an annual NCAA Division I basketball tournament
Sadler's Ultra Challenge wheelchair race between Fairbanks and Anchorage
The Tour of Anchorage is an annual 50-kilometer (31-mile) ski race within the city.
World Eskimo Indian Olympics
=== Fairbanks ===
==== Venues ====
Carlson Center
==== Teams ====
Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks
Alaska Nanooks men's ice hockey
Fairbanks Ice Dogs
Fairbanks Rollergirls
Fairbanks SC (soccer)
==== Events ====
Sadler's Ultra Challenge wheelchair race between Fairbanks and Anchorage
Sonot Kkaazoot
World Eskimo Indian Olympics
=== Elsewhere ===
==== Teams ====
MatSu United FC (men's soccer)
Denali Destroyer Dolls
Kenai River Brown Bears
Mat-Su Miners
Peninsula Oilers
==== Events ====
Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic
Arctic Winter Games
Mount Marathon Race
World Extreme Skiing Championship
==== Dog mushing ====
Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race
Iron Dog
Junior Iditarod
Kuskokwim 300
Tustumena 200
Yukon Quest
== Public health and safety ==
The Alaska State Troopers are Alaska's statewide police force. They have a long and storied history, but were not an official organization until 1941. Before the force was officially organized, law enforcement in Alaska was handled by various federal agencies. Larger towns usually have their own local police and some villages rely on "Public Safety Officers" who have police training but do not carry firearms. In much of the state, the troopers serve as the only police force available. In addition to enforcing traffic and criminal law, wildlife Troopers enforce hunting and fishing regulations. Due to the varied terrain and wide scope of the Troopers' duties, they employ a wide variety of land, air, and water patrol vehicles.
Many rural communities in Alaska are considered "dry", having outlawed the importation of alcoholic beverages. Suicide rates for rural residents are higher than urban.
Domestic abuse and other violent crimes are also at high levels in the state; this is in part linked to alcohol abuse. Alaska has the highest rate of sexual assault in the nation, especially in rural areas. The average age of sexually assaulted victims is 16 years old. In four out of five cases, the suspects were relatives, friends, or acquaintances.
=== Health insurance ===
As of 2022, CVS Health and Premera account for 47% and 46% of private health insurance, respectively. Premera and Moda Health offer insurance on the federally-run Affordable Care Exchange.
=== Hospitals ===
Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage is the largest hospital in the state as of 2021; Anchorage also hosts Alaska Regional Hospital and Alaska Native Medical Center.
Alaska's other major cities such as Fairbanks and Juneau also have local hospitals. In Southeast Alaska, Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, runs healthcare facilities across 27 communities as of 2022, including hospitals in Sitka and Wrangell; although it originally served Native Americans only, it has expanded access and combined with other local facilities over time.
== Education ==
The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development administers many school districts in Alaska. In addition, the state operates a boarding school, Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka, and provides partial funding for other boarding schools, including Nenana Student Living Center in Nenana and The Galena Interior Learning Academy in Galena.
There are more than a dozen colleges and universities in Alaska. Accredited universities in Alaska include the University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Southeast, and Alaska Pacific University. Alaska is the only state that has no collegiate athletic programs that are members of NCAA Division I, although both Alaska-Fairbanks and Alaska-Anchorage maintain single sport membership in Division I for men's ice hockey.
The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development operates AVTEC, Alaska's Institute of Technology. Campuses in Seward and Anchorage offer one-week to 11-month training programs in areas as diverse as Information Technology, Welding, Nursing, and Mechanics.
Alaska has had a problem with a "brain drain". Many of its young people, including most of the highest academic achievers, leave the state after high school graduation and do not return. As of 2013 Alaska did not have a law school or medical school. The University of Alaska has attempted to combat this by offering partial four-year scholarships to the top 10% of Alaska high school graduates, via the Alaska Scholars Program.
Beginning in 1998, schools in rural Alaska must have at least ten students to retain funding from the state, and campuses not meeting the number close. This was due to the loss in oil revenues that previously propped up smaller rural schools. In 2015, there was a proposal to raise that minimum to 25, but legislators in the state largely did not agree.
== Transportation ==
=== Road ===
Alaska has few road connections compared to the rest of the U.S. The state's road system, covering a relatively small area of the state, linking the central population centers and the Alaska Highway, the principal route out of the state through Canada. The state capital, Juneau, is not accessible by road, with access only by ferry or flight; this has spurred debate over decades about moving the capital to a city on the road system, or building a road connection from Haines. The western part of Alaska has no road system connecting the communities with the rest of Alaska.
The Interstate Highways in Alaska consists of a total of 1,082 miles (1,741 km); however, these are mostly not built to Interstate Highway standards and their status as such is largely notional. One unique feature of the Alaska Highway system is the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, an active Alaska Railroad tunnel that provides a paved roadway link with the isolated community of Whittier on Prince William Sound to the Seward Highway about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Anchorage at Portage. At 2.5 miles (4.0 km), the tunnel was the longest road tunnel in North America until 2007. The tunnel is the longest combination road and rail tunnel in North America.
Southwest Alaska is largely coastal, sparsely populated, and unconnected to the road system. Access to most communities in Southwest Alaska is primarily by air taxi, although larger towns like Kodiak, Bethel, King Salmon, Dillingham, and Dutch Harbor are accessible by scheduled air service. Additionally, some coastal communities can be reached via the Alaska Marine Highway ferry.
=== Rail ===
Built around 1915, the Alaska Railroad (ARR) played a key role in the development of Alaska through the 20th century. It links shipping lanes on the North Pacific with Interior Alaska with tracks that run from Seward by way of South Central Alaska, passing through Anchorage, Eklutna, Wasilla, Talkeetna, Denali, and Fairbanks, with spurs to Whittier, Palmer and North Pole. The cities, towns, villages, and region served by ARR tracks are known statewide as "The Railbelt". In recent years, the ever-improving paved highway system began to eclipse the railroad's importance in Alaska's economy.
The railroad played a vital role in Alaska's development, moving freight into Alaska while transporting natural resources southward, such as coal from the Usibelli coal mine near Healy to Seward and gravel from the Matanuska Valley to Anchorage. It is well known for its summertime tour passenger service.
The Alaska Railroad was one of the last railroads in North America to use cabooses in regular service and still uses them on some gravel trains. It continues to offer one of the last flag stop routes in the country. A stretch of about 60 miles (100 km) of track along an area north of Talkeetna remains inaccessible by road; the railroad provides the only transportation to rural homes and cabins in the area. Until construction of the Parks Highway in the 1970s, the railroad provided the only land access to most of the region along its entire route.
In northern Southeast Alaska, the White Pass and Yukon Route also partly runs through the state from Skagway northwards into Canada (British Columbia and Yukon Territory), crossing the border at White Pass Summit. This line is now mainly used by tourists, often arriving by cruise liner at Skagway. It was featured in the 1983 BBC television series Great Little Railways.
These two railroads are connected neither to each other nor any other railroad. The nearest link to the North American railway network is the northwest terminus of the Canadian National Railway at Prince Rupert, British Columbia, several hundred miles to the southeast. In 2000, the U.S. Congress authorized $6 million to study the feasibility of a rail link between Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48. As of 2021 the Alaska-Alberta Railway Development Corporation is in receivership.
Some private companies provides car float service between Whittier and Seattle.
=== Sea ===
Many cities, towns, and villages in the state do not have road or highway access; the only modes of access involve travel by air, river, or the sea.
Alaska's well-developed state-owned ferry system (known as the Alaska Marine Highway) serves the cities of southeast, the Gulf Coast and the Alaska Peninsula. The ferries transport vehicles as well as passengers. The system also operates a ferry service from Bellingham, Washington and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, in Canada through the Inside Passage to Skagway. The Inter-Island Ferry Authority also serves as an important marine link for many communities in the Prince of Wales Island region of Southeast and works in concert with the Alaska Marine Highway.
In recent years, cruise lines have created a summertime tourism market, mainly connecting the Pacific Northwest to Southeast Alaska and, to a lesser degree, towns along Alaska's gulf coast. The population of Ketchikan for example fluctuates dramatically on many days—up to four large cruise ships can dock there at the same time.
=== Air ===
Cities not served by road, sea, or river can be reached only by air, foot, dogsled, or snowmachine, accounting for Alaska's extremely well developed bush air services—an Alaskan novelty. Anchorage, and to a lesser extent Fairbanks, is served by many major airlines. Because of limited highway access, air travel remains the most efficient form of transportation in and out of the state. Anchorage recently completed extensive remodeling and construction at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to help accommodate the upsurge in tourism (in 2012–2013, Alaska received almost two million visitors).
Making regular flights to most villages and towns within the state commercially viable is difficult, so they are heavily subsidized by the federal government through the Essential Air Service program. Alaska Airlines is the only major airline offering in-state travel with jet service (sometimes in combination cargo and passenger Boeing 737-400s) from Anchorage and Fairbanks to regional hubs like Bethel, Nome, Kotzebue, Dillingham, Kodiak, and other larger communities as well as to major Southeast and Alaska Peninsula communities.
The bulk of remaining commercial flight offerings come from small regional commuter airlines such as Ravn Alaska, PenAir, and Frontier Flying Service. The smallest towns and villages must rely on scheduled or chartered bush flying services using general aviation aircraft such as the Cessna Caravan, the most popular aircraft in use in the state. Much of this service can be attributed to the Alaska bypass mail program which subsidizes bulk mail delivery to Alaskan rural communities. The program requires 70% of that subsidy to go to carriers who offer passenger service to the communities.
Many communities have small air taxi services. These operations originated from the demand for customized transport to remote areas. Perhaps the most quintessentially Alaskan plane is the bush seaplane. The world's busiest seaplane base is Lake Hood, located next to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, where flights bound for remote villages without an airstrip carry passengers, cargo, and many items from stores and warehouse clubs.
In 2006, Alaska had the highest number of pilots per capita of any U.S. state. In Alaska there are 8,795 active pilot certificates as of 2020.
=== Snow ===
Another Alaskan transportation method is the dogsled. In modern times (that is, any time after the mid- to late‑1920s), dog mushing is more of a sport than a true means of transportation. Various races are held around the state, but the best known is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a 1,150-mile (1,850 km) trail from Anchorage to Nome (although the distance varies from year to year, the official distance is set at 1,049 miles or 1,688 km). The race commemorates the famous 1925 serum run to Nome in which mushers and dogs like Togo and Balto took much-needed medicine to the diphtheria-stricken community of Nome when all other means of transportation had failed. Mushers from all over the world come to Anchorage each March to compete for cash, prizes, and prestige. The "Serum Run" is another sled dog race that more accurately follows the route of the famous 1925 relay, leaving from the community of Nenana (southwest of Fairbanks) to Nome.
In areas not served by road or rail, primary transportation in summer is by fourwheeler and in winter by snowmachine.
== Communication ==
Alaska's internet and other data transport systems are provided largely through the two major telecommunications companies: GCI and Alaska Communications. GCI owns and operates what it calls the Alaska United Fiber Optic system and, as of late 2011, Alaska Communications advertised that it has two fiber optic paths to the lower 48 and two more across Alaska. In January 2011, it was reported that a $1 billion project to connect Asia and rural Alaska was being planned, aided in part by $350 million in stimulus from the federal government.
== Law and government ==
=== State government ===
Like all other U.S. states, Alaska is governed as a republic, with three branches of government: an executive branch consisting of the governor of Alaska and their appointees which head executive departments; a legislative branch consisting of the Alaska House of Representatives and Alaska Senate; and a judicial branch consisting of the Alaska Supreme Court and lower courts.
The state of Alaska employs approximately 16,000 people statewide.
The Alaska State Legislature consists of a 40-member House of Representatives and a 20-member Senate. Senators serve four-year terms and House members two. The governor of Alaska serves four-year terms. The lieutenant governor runs separately from the governor in the primaries, but during the general election, the nominee for governor and nominee for lieutenant governor run together on the same ticket.
Alaska's court system has four levels: the Alaska Supreme Court, the Alaska Court of Appeals, the Superior Court and the district courts. The superior and district courts are trial courts. Superior courts are courts of general jurisdiction, while district courts hear only certain types of cases, including misdemeanor criminal cases and civil cases valued up to $100,000.
The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals are appellate courts. The Court of Appeals is required to hear appeals from certain lower-court decisions, including those regarding criminal prosecutions, juvenile delinquency, and habeas corpus. The Supreme Court hears civil appeals and may in its discretion hear criminal appeals.
=== State politics ===
Although in its early years of statehood Alaska was a Democratic state, since the early 1970s it has been characterized as Republican-leaning. Local political communities have often worked on issues related to land use development, fishing, tourism, and individual rights. Alaska Natives, while organized in and around their communities, have been active within the Native corporations. These have been given ownership over large tracts of land, which require stewardship.
Alaska was formerly the only state in which possession of one ounce or less of marijuana in one's home was completely legal under state law, though the federal law remains in force.
The state has an independence movement favoring a vote on secession from the United States, with the Alaskan Independence Party.
Six Republicans and four Democrats have served as governor of Alaska. In addition, Republican governor Wally Hickel was elected to the office for a second term in 1990 after leaving the Republican party and briefly joining the Alaskan Independence Party ticket just long enough to be reelected. He officially rejoined the Republican party in 1994.
Alaska's voter initiative making marijuana legal took effect on February 24, 2015, placing Alaska alongside Colorado and Washington, as well as Washington D.C., as the first three U.S. states where recreational marijuana is legal. The new law means people over 21 can consume small amounts of cannabis. The first legal marijuana store opened in Valdez in October 2016.
=== Voter registration ===
=== Taxes ===
To finance state government operations, Alaska depends primarily on petroleum revenues and federal subsidies. This allows it to have the lowest individual tax burden in the United States. It is one of five states with no sales tax, one of seven states with no individual income tax, and—along with New Hampshire—one of two that has neither. The Department of Revenue Tax Division reports regularly on the state's revenue sources. The department also issues an annual summary of its operations, including new state laws that directly affect the tax division. In 2014, the Tax Foundation ranked Alaska as having the fourth most "business friendly" tax policy, behind only Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nevada.
While Alaska has no state sales tax, 89 municipalities collect a local sales tax, from 1.0 to 7.5%, typically 3–5%. Other local taxes levied include raw fish taxes, hotel, motel, and bed-and-breakfast 'bed' taxes, severance taxes, liquor and tobacco taxes, gaming (pull tabs) taxes, tire taxes and fuel transfer taxes. A part of the revenue collected from certain state taxes and license fees (such as petroleum, aviation motor fuel, telephone cooperative) is shared with municipalities in Alaska.
The fall in oil prices after the fracking boom in the early 2010s has decimated Alaska's state treasury, which has historically received about 85 percent of its revenue from taxes and fees imposed on oil and gas companies. The state government has had to drastically reduce its budget, and has brought its budget shortfall from over $2 billion in 2016 to under $500 million by 2018. In 2020, Alaska's state government budget was $4.8 billion, while projected government revenues were only $4.5 billion.
=== Federal politics ===
Alaska regularly supports Republicans in presidential elections and has done so since statehood. Republicans have won the state's electoral college votes in all but one election that it has participated in (1964). No state has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate fewer times. Alaska was carried by Democratic nominee Lyndon B. Johnson during his landslide election in 1964, while the 1960 and 1968 elections were close. Since 1972, Republicans have carried the state by large margins.
In 2008, Republican John McCain defeated Democrat Barack Obama in Alaska, 59.49% to 37.83%. McCain's running mate was Sarah Palin, the state's governor and the first Alaskan on a major party ticket. Obama lost Alaska again in 2012, but he captured 40% of the state's vote in that election, making him the first Democrat to do so since 1968. In 2020, Joe Biden received 42.77% of the vote for president, marking the high point for a Democratic presidential candidate since Johnson's 1964 victory.
The Alaska Bush, central Juneau, midtown and downtown Anchorage, and the areas surrounding the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and Ester have been strongholds of the Democratic Party. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the Kenai Peninsula, the majority of Fairbanks (including North Pole and the military base), and South Anchorage typically have the strongest Republican showing.
=== Elections ===
Alaska has a history of primary defeats for incumbent U.S. Senators, including Ernest Gruening, Mike Gravel, and Lisa Murkowski. However, Murkowski won re-election with a write-in campaign. Despite this, Alaska has also seen long-serving members of Congress, such as Ted Stevens, who served as a U.S. Senator for 40 years, and Don Young, who held Alaska's sole U.S. House seat for 49 years (from 1973 to 2022).
In the 2020 election cycle, Alaskan voters approved Ballot Measure 2. The measure passed by a margin of 1.1%, or about 4,000 votes. The measure requires campaigns to disclose the original source and any intermediaries for campaign contributions over $2,000. The measure also establishes non-partisan primaries, sometimes called jungle primaries, for statewide elections (like in Washington state and California) and ranked-choice voting (like in Maine). Measure 2 makes Alaska the third state with nonpartisan primaries for all statewide races, the second state with ranked choice voting, and the only state with both.
The 2022 special election to fill Alaska's only U.S. House seat, left vacant by the death of Don Young, was won by Mary Peltola. She became the first Democrat to win the House seat since 1972 and the first Alaskan Native elected to the United States Congress in history. After winning a full term in the 2022 general election, Peltola lost reelection in 2024 to Republican Nick Begich III. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colson_Whitehead | Colson Whitehead | Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020, making him one of only four writers ever to win the prize twice. He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.
== Early life ==
Whitehead was born in New York City on November 6, 1969, and grew up in Manhattan. He is one of four children of successful entrepreneur parents, his father Arch and mother, Mary Anne Whitehead who owned an executive recruiting firm. As a child in Manhattan, Whitehead went by his first name Arch. He later switched to Chipp, before switching to Colson. He attended Trinity School in Manhattan and graduated from Harvard University in 1991. In college, he became friends with poet Kevin Young.
== Career ==
After graduating from college, Whitehead wrote for The Village Voice. While working at the Voice, he began drafting his first novels.
Early in his career, Whitehead lived in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Whitehead has since produced 11 book-length works—nine novels and two nonfiction works, including a meditation on life in Manhattan in the style of E. B. White's famous 1949 essay Here Is New York. Whitehead's books are The Intuitionist (1999); John Henry Days (2001); The Colossus of New York (2003); Apex Hides the Hurt (2006); Sag Harbor (2009); 2011's Zone One, a New York Times bestseller; 2016's The Underground Railroad, which earned a National Book Award for Fiction; The Nickel Boys (2019); Harlem Shuffle (2021); and Crook Manifesto (2023). Esquire magazine named The Intuitionist the best first novel of the year, and GQ called it one of the "novels of the millennium". Novelist John Updike, reviewing The Intuitionist in The New Yorker, called Whitehead "ambitious", "scintillating", and "strikingly original", adding: "The young African-American writer to watch may well be a thirty-one-year-old Harvard graduate with the vivid name of Colson Whitehead."
The Intuitionist was nominated as the Common Novel at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The Common Novel nomination was part of a longtime tradition at the Institute that included such authors as Maya Angelou, Andre Dubus III, William Joseph Kennedy, and Anthony Swofford.
Whitehead's nonfiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, and Harper's.
His nonfiction account of the 2011 World Series of Poker, The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky & Death, was published by Doubleday in 2014.
Whitehead has taught at Princeton University, New York University, the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and Wesleyan University. He has been a writer-in-residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming.
In 2015, he joined The New York Times Magazine to write a column on language.
The Underground Railroad was a selection of Oprah's Book Club 2.0, and was chosen by President Barack Obama as one of five books on his summer vacation reading list. In 2017, the novel was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction at the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Colson was honored with the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for fiction presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. The Underground Railroad won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Judges of the prize called the novel "a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America".
Whitehead's seventh novel, The Nickel Boys, was published in 2019. It was inspired by the story of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, where children convicted of minor offenses suffered violent abuse. In conjunction with its publication, Whitehead was featured on the cover Time magazine's July 8, 2019, edition, alongside the strap-line "America's Storyteller". The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Judges of the prize called the novel "a spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption". It was Whitehead's second win, making him the fourth writer to win the prize twice. In 2022, it was announced that Whitehead will executive produce the upcoming film adaptation of the same name.
Whitehead's eighth novel, Harlem Shuffle, was conceived and begun before he wrote The Nickel Boys. It is a work of crime fiction set in Harlem during the 1960s. Whitehead spent years writing it, and finished it in "bite-sized chunks" during the months he spent in quarantine in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harlem Shuffle was published by Doubleday on September 14, 2021. Crook Manifesto, Whitehead's ninth novel and a follow-up to Harlem Shuffle, was published on July 18, 2023. Cool Machine, Whitehead's tenth novel and the conclusion to his "Harlem Trilogy," will be published on July 21, 2026.
== Personal life ==
Whitehead lives in Manhattan and also owns a home in Sag Harbor on Long Island. His wife, Julie Barer, is a literary agent. They have two children.
== Honors ==
2000: Whiting Award
2002: MacArthur Fellowship
2007: Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars Fellowship
2012: Dos Passos Prize
2013: Guggenheim Fellowship
2018: Harvard Arts Medal
2020: Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction
2023: National Humanities Medal
2024: Langston Hughes Medal
=== Literary awards ===
== Works ==
=== Fiction ===
—— (1999). The Intuitionist (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385492997.
—— (2001). John Henry Days (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385498197.
—— (2006). Apex Hides the Hurt (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385507950.
—— (2009). Sag Harbor (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385527651.
—— (2011). Zone One (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385528078.
—— (2016). The Underground Railroad (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385542364.
—— (2019). The Nickel Boys (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385537070.
—— (2021). Harlem Shuffle (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385545136.
—— (2023). Crook Manifesto (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385545150.
—— (2026). Cool Machine (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385550505.
=== Non-fiction ===
—— (2003). The Colossus of New York (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385507943.
—— (2014). The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death (hardcover 1st ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 9780385537056.
=== Essays ===
"Lost and Found". The New York Times Magazine. November 11, 2001.
"A Psychotronic Childhood". The New Yorker. June 4, 2012.
"Hard Times in the Uncanny Valley". Grantland. ESPN. August 24, 2012.
"Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia". Grantland. ESPN. May 19, 2013.
=== Short stories ===
"Down in Front". Granta (86: Film). Summer 2004.
"The Gangsters". The New Yorker. December 22, 2008.
"The Match". The New Yorker. April 1, 2019.
"The Theresa Job". The New Yorker. July 26, 2021. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Book_Fair_International | Miami Book Fair International | The Miami Book Fair is an annual street fair and literary festival organized by Miami Dade College.
== History ==
Miami Book Fair International, originally known as "Books by the Bay," was founded in 1984 by Miami Dade College President Eduardo J. Padrón, Books & Books owner Mitchell Kaplan, Craig Pollock of BookWorks, and other local bookstore owners in cooperation with the Miami-Dade Public Library System. The two primary organizers of the inaugural 1984 Book Fair from the Miami-Dade Public Library System were Head of Community Relations Margarita Cano and Wolfsonian campus librarian Juanita Johnson.
== Community Partners and Sponsors ==
=== Florida Center for the Literary Arts (FCLA) ===
The Florida Center for the Literary Arts (FCLA) is affiliated with the Miami Book Fair International. A permanent endowment for the FCLA was established with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Full programming began in January 2002.
As a department of Miami Dade College, FCLA generates programs to support authors and writing, journalism, play and screen writing, reading and literacy, as well as the Miami Book Fair International. Outreach consists of reading campaigns and book discussions, writing workshops, author presentations, panel discussions, and master classes. The Center collaborates with Florida-based cultural institutions and other partners to advance literary initiatives.
== Events ==
=== Festival of Authors ===
Typically more than 300 authors from around the world participate in the Fair's international Festival of Authors. Writers come from across the United States and other countries including Argentina, Bosnia, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Dominican Republic, England, France, Finland, Guatemala, Haiti, Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Trinidad, among others.
=== Evenings With...Series ===
The "Evenings With… series" features readings by writers every evening for six consecutive festival days. Past guest authors have included recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Casa de las Americas Prize, Pushcart Prize, O'Henry Award, National Magazine Award, Commonwealth Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, and Edgar Award.
=== Street Fair ===
The three-day outdoor festival gathers hundreds of booksellers and exhibitors from major publishing houses, small presses, scholarly imprints, and foreign publishers. Sellers of used books, including signed first editions, original manuscripts, and other collectibles, also participate. Millions of books in multiple languages are available, along with book signings and musical entertainment, during the weekend Fair activity.
=== Comix Galaxy ===
Comic Galaxy is a Fair program offering information on graphic novels and the comics world. It celebrates their place in United States literary life and their increasing popularity and integration into mainstream literature, culture, and education. The School of Comics, a prominent part of Comic Galaxy, is a day-long program with six sessions for teachers, librarians, parents, and others interested in the format, and special training for established comic book creators.
=== Children's Alley ===
Children's Alley, designed for young readers, features storytelling, puppets, theatrical performances, educational games, and hands-on activities. Generation Genius, a program within Children's Alley, hosts thousands of school-aged children annually. Miami Book Fair International also offers workshops and presentations to local teachers, librarians, and educators as part of Generation Genius. Programs are provided in cooperation with Miami Art Museum, HistoryMiami, Miami Children's Museum, Miami Science Museum, Early Learning Coalition of Miami Dade/Monroe, and Florida Blue.
=== Ibero-American Authors ===
Ibero-American Authors is Miami Book Fair International's Spanish and Portuguese language author program. More than 50 authors from various Latin American countries are featured during the eight days of the Fair. Readings take place nightly during the week and throughout the weekend.
=== Twilight Tastings and the Kitchen ===
Miami Book Fair International also includes hors d'oeuvre, complimentary cocktails, and nightly entertainment before weeknight author presentations. The Kitchen combines cooking demonstrations and author readings by featured cookbook authors and chefs as they recreate recipes from their books.
=== LGBTQIA+ Topics ===
Authors writing on LGBTQIA+ topics are represented throughout the festival with titles in fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and erotica. Many featured authors are Lambda Award winners or finalists.
=== Miami Writer's Institute ===
Center for Literature and Theatre faculty, authors, and agents provide workshops related to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and publishing. The center offers one and three-day workshops, with several taking place in Spanish.
== Recent-Year Highlights ==
=== 2014 ===
In 2014, the Miami Book Fair International partnered with the National Book Foundation to offer programming focused on 2014 National Book Award nominees and winners. Some of the authors appearing at Miami Book Fair International 2014 included:
Robert Baer
Richard Blanco
John Cleese
Andy Cohen
Michael DeForge
Angela DiTerlizzi
Tony DiTerlizzi
Sheila E
Grace Ellis
Annabelle Gurwitch
James W. Hall
Ben Hatke
Kazu Kibuishi
Nicholas Kristof
Norman Lear
Brad Meltzer
Lauren Miller
Susan Minot
George O'Connor
Lauren Oliver
Ann Patchett
Ed Piskor
Valerie Plame
Questlove
Anne Rice
Tavis Smiley
Raina Telgemeier
John Waters
Cornel West
Eveline Pierre
=== 2013 ===
The 30th edition of the Fair celebrated the culture and literature of Spain. Authors appearing at Miami Book Fair International 2013 included:
Jeff Abbott
Mitch Albom
Reza Aslan
Paul Auster
Holly Black
Stanley Crouch
Kwame Dawes
Delia Ephron
Ana Fuentes
Nikki Giovanni
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Dr. Carl Hart
John Heilemann
Anjelica Huston
Andrew Kaufman
Gordon Korman
Diane Ladd
Wally Lamb
Adam Mansbach
Chris Matthews
D.T. Max
Terry McMillan
Brad Meltzer
David N. Meyer
Jacquelyn Mitchard
=== 2012 ===
The featured country of 2012's Miami Book Fair International was Paraguay. Paraguayan culture was showcased through film, dance, and fine and folkloric arts.
Authors at Miami Book Fair International 2012 included:
Martin Amis
Nate Berkus
Justin Cronin
Aline Crumb
Andre Debus III
Junot Díaz
Emma Donoghue
Tim Dorsey
Carolina Garcia-Aguilera
Chris Hayes
Mark Helprin
Jamal Joseph
Daniel Kirk
Anne Lamott
Jessica Martinez
Diana McCaulay
Andrew McCarthy
Christopher Pike
Bill O'Reilly
Lemony Snicket
Jake Tapper
Jeffrey Toobin
Irvine Welsh
Sherri Winston
Tom Wolfe
=== 2011 ===
Miami Book Fair International 2011 included demonstrations of Chinese culture and art and discussions of social issues facing contemporary China. An international symposium on Chinese language, culture, and communication was also held.
Authors participating in Miami Book Fair International 2011 included:
Dr. Arthur Agatston
Tom Angleberger
David Brooks
Dan Clowes
John Connolly
Bob Edwards
Jeffrey Eugenides
Cristina García
Dr. Paul George
Lev Grossman
Sandra Gutierrez
Ellen Hopkins
Jeff Kinney
Megan McDonald
Michael Moore
Elizabeth Nunez
Susan Orlean
Chuck Palahniuk
Christopher Paolini
Karen Russell
Esmeralda Santiago
Jon Scieszka
Touré
Calvin Trillin
Belle Yang
=== 2010 ===
The fair dedicated its international space to Mexico, in celebration of the bicentennial of the nation's independence and the centennial of its 1910 revolution. Events included author presentations and roundtables, Ballet performances, art and photography exhibitions, a movie series, and theater performances.
Authors participating in Miami Book Fair International 2010 included:
Maha Akhtar
Kim Anthony
Dan Archer
Ann Beattie
Susanna Daniel
Edwidge Danticat
Kate DiCamillo
Tony DiTerlizzi
Dave Eggers
Jonathan Franzen
Willie Geist
James W. Hall
Vicki Hendricks
Sebastian Junger
Chip Kidd
Hari Kunzru
Meghan McCain
Ben Mezrich
Walter Mosley
Beatriz Rivera
Scott Turow
Lisa Unger
Judith Viorst
Scott Westerfeld
Simon Winchester
=== 2009 ===
Environmental issues were a focus of Miami Book Fair International 2009. The college used native plants on stages and entrances, which were later planted in the community. Bike Valet parking service was available, and recycling programs were promoted.
Authors appearing at Miami Book Fair International 2009 included:
Lidia Bastianich
Edna Buchanan
Meg Cabot
Susie Essman
Dan Goldman
Al Gore
Senator Bob Graham
Heather Graham
James Grippando
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
John Hodgman
Gwen Ifill
Sid Jacobson
Wally Lamb
Peter Lerangis
Jonathan Lethem
Tao Lin
Jeff Lindsay
Ralph Nader
Joyce Carol Oates
Iggy Pop
Sherman Alexie
Luis Alberto Urrea
Larry Wilmore |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Crosby | Sidney Crosby | Sidney Patrick Crosby (born August 7, 1987) is a Canadian professional ice hockey player who is a centre and captain for the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League (NHL). Nicknamed "Sid the Kid" and dubbed "The Next One", he was selected first overall by the Penguins in the 2005 NHL entry draft. Born and raised in Halifax, Crosby was one of the most lauded prospects in ice hockey history and is widely regarded as one of the greatest ice hockey players of all time.
During his two-year major junior career with the Rimouski Océanic, he earned many awards and led his club to the 2005 Memorial Cup final. Océanic and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League retired Crosby's jersey number 87 in 2019, and the QMJHL began presenting their Rookie of the Year award as the “Sidney Crosby Trophy” in 2025. Crosby debuted in the NHL during the 2005–06 season, recording 102 points and finishing as runner-up for the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL Rookie of the Year. At 18 years and 253 days, he is the youngest player to date to reach 100 points in an NHL season. By his second season, he led the NHL with 120 points to capture the Art Ross Trophy, becoming the youngest player and the only teenager to win a scoring title in any major North American sports league. That same season, Crosby won the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league's most valuable player (MVP) and the Lester B. Pearson Award for most outstanding player as judged by his peers. He started the 2007–08 season with the team's captaincy and subsequently led them to the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals, where they were defeated by the Detroit Red Wings in six games. The Penguins returned to the Finals against Detroit the following year and won in seven games; Crosby became the youngest captain in NHL history to win the Stanley Cup. Crosby also led Pittsburgh to Stanley Cup championships in 2016 and 2017, becoming the third player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP) in consecutive years.
In 2009–10, he received the Mark Messier Leadership Award and scored 51 goals, winning the Maurice Richard Trophy as the NHL's leading goal scorer, was also the runner-up for the Art Ross Trophy and a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy. In early 2011, Crosby sustained a concussion that left him sidelined for the rest of the season and for most of the 2011–12 campaign. In 2013, Crosby won his second career Ted Lindsay Award and was a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy the same season. In 2014, Crosby again won the Hart Memorial Trophy as well as his second career Art Ross Trophy (104 points) and his second consecutive Ted Lindsay Award and third altogether while also being a finalist for the award in 2010 and 2021. In 2017, he won his second Richard Trophy and was named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players in history.
Internationally, Crosby has represented Canada on numerous occasions. He won gold at the 2005 World Junior Championships, and was later named to Team Canada for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Playing against the United States in the gold medal game, he scored the game-winning goal in overtime. Crosby captained Team Canada at the 2014 Winter Olympics, winning his second consecutive Olympic gold medal. A year later, he led his country to gold in the World Championship in Prague, thus becoming a member of the Triple Gold Club and the only player in the club to have captained all three winning teams. In 2016, Crosby captained Canada to gold in the World Cup of Hockey and was elected MVP by a unanimous vote. In 2025, Crosby captained Canada to a championship win in the inaugural 4 Nations Face-Off, and a silver medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
== Early life ==
Crosby was born in the Grace Maternity Hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on August 7, 1987, to Troy and Trina (née Forbes) Crosby. Crosby's jersey number (87) and 2007 contract signing ($8.7 million per year) reflect his birthdate (8/7/87). Crosby grew up in nearby Cole Harbour and has a younger sister named Taylor. His father Troy was a goaltender who played for the Verdun Junior Canadiens in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). He helped the team win the 1985 President's Cup which led them to the 1985 Memorial Cup. Troy was drafted 240th overall by the Montreal Canadiens in 1984, was invited to training camps, but never played at the NHL level. Growing up, Crosby admired Steve Yzerman and, like his father, was a Canadiens fan. Crosby began playing hockey by himself in his basement at the age of two, shooting pucks in a net that had the family dryer behind it, leading to a longstanding misconception that he was actually practising with the dryer; he learned to skate at age three.
From age 12 to 15, Crosby attended Astral Drive Junior High School. He was a straight-A student and, according to the vice-principal, "an amazing role model, who was really kind to students in the learning centre and to special needs kids". At age 15, Crosby transferred to Shattuck-Saint Mary's in Faribault, Minnesota to play with the school's hockey program. While playing for the Rimouski Océanic of the then-QMJHL, Crosby went to Harrison Trimble High School in Moncton, New Brunswick, where he graduated in 2005.
== Playing career ==
=== Minor hockey ===
Early in his minor hockey years, Crosby began attracting media attention for his play and gave his first newspaper interview at age seven. When Crosby was 13, Nova Scotia's Minor Hockey Council refused to allow him to play midget, a level of minor hockey designated for 15- to 17-year-olds. His family sued but lost. The following year, he entered the midget level with the triple-A Dartmouth Subways and went on to score a combined 217 regular season and playoff points, leading Dartmouth to a second-place finish at the 2002 Air Canada Cup. He was named the MVP and Top Scorer awards at the national tournament at the tournament banquet held after the preliminary round and he finished the tournament with 24 points (11 goals and 13 assists) in 7 games. Crosby was called up as a 14-year-old to play two games with the Maritime Junior A Hockey League's Truro Bearcats that season. Crosby had been drafted by the Bearcats in the 2001 MJAHL Draft as a 13-year-old.
During his midget season, Crosby appeared on the CBC's Hockey Day in Canada telecast. He has recalled numerous instances in which opposing players intentionally attempted to injure him, as well as constant verbal abuse from parents on and off the ice. Parents taunted and threatened Crosby so harshly, he took to not wearing his jersey between tournament games while he waited to play so that he would not be recognized. Due to this treatment, he elected to play for the American hockey program at Shattuck-Saint Mary's Boarding School, Minnesota for the 2002–03 hockey season. In 57 games with the Sabres, he recorded 72 goals and 162 points, leading the team to a U18 AAA national championship.
=== Junior career ===
==== Rimouski Océanic (2003–2005) ====
Crosby was selected first overall in the 2003 Midget Draft by the Rimouski Océanic of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). In his first exhibition game, he scored eight points, leading his teammates to nickname him "Darryl" (in reference to Darryl Sittler's ten-point NHL game in 1976). In his first regular season game in the QMJHL, he scored one goal and added two assists. He was named QMJHL Player of the Week for two consecutive weeks at the start of the season and won the honour four more times as the season progressed. He was named QMJHL Player of the Month and Canadian Hockey League (CHL) Player of the Week three times each. Crosby finished his rookie QMJHL season with 54 goals and 81 assists over 59 games to capture the Jean Béliveau Trophy as the league's leading point-scorer. He was further recognized with the RDS/JVC Trophy (overall rookie of the year) and Michel Brière Memorial Trophy (most valuable player), becoming the first QMJHL player to win all three major awards at once. Rounding out Crosby's accolades for the 2003–04 regular season were QMJHL All-Rookie and first All-Star team honours, as well as Offensive Rookie, Offensive Player and Personality of the Year Awards. As a team, the Océanic led the Eastern Division with 34 wins and 76 points. After receiving a first-round bye in the 2003 QMJHL playoffs, they defeated the Shawinigan Cataractes in the quarterfinals, then were eliminated by the Moncton Wildcats in the semifinals. Crosby recorded 16 points (7 goals and 9 assists) over 9 playoff games.
During the off-season, the World Hockey Association, a major professional league proposed to rival the NHL, held an entry draft on July 17, 2004. Holding the first overall selection, Toronto chose Crosby. The following month, it was reported that Crosby turned down a US$7.5 million contract over three years to play for Hamilton. Crosby told reporters that while "it took a lot to say no to that much money", he "work[ed] hard most of his life to play in the NHL". The contract would have paid him US$2.5 million annually and an additional US$2 million payout regardless of whether the WHA was realized as a legitimate league or not. However, it was not clarified how Hamilton could have signed Crosby, as Toronto held his WHA playing rights. Nevertheless, the WHA never materialized.
Returning to the Océanic for the 2004–05 season, Crosby continued dominating the league, leading the league with 66 goals, 102 assists and 168 points over 62 games to capture his second consecutive Beliveau Trophy. Joining Crosby on Rimouski's top line were wingers Dany Roussin and Marc-Antoine Pouliot, who finished second and third in league-scoring with 116 and 114 points respectively. In addition to his scoring title, Crosby was once again awarded Most Valuable Player, Offensive Player and Personality of the Year, while repeating as a QMJHL First All-Star. The Océanic finished the regular season with the best record in the league, registering 45 wins and 98 points, including a league record-setting 28-game undefeated streak. They went on to capture the President's Cup as QMJHL playoff champions, defeating the Halifax Mooseheads in the finals. Crosby led the playoffs with 31 points (14 goals and 17 assists) over 13 games, earning him the Guy Lafleur Trophy as postseason MVP. With their QMJHL championship, the Océanic qualified for the 2005 Memorial Cup, Canada's national major junior tournament. Meeting the London Knights in the final, the Océanic were shut-out 4–0. Despite the loss, Crosby was named to the Tournament All-Star team and captured the Ed Chynoweth Trophy as the competition's leading scorer with 11 points (six goals and five assists) over five games. Knights forward Corey Perry was awarded the Stafford Smythe Memorial Trophy as the MVP. Soon after, he attended the NHL prospect combine in preparation for the 2005 NHL entry draft.
The Rimouski Océanic retired jersey number 87 in Crosby's honor in September 2019, and the QMJHL also retired the number for all of its teams.
=== Pittsburgh Penguins (2005–present) ===
==== Rise to superstardom (2005–2007) ====
Entering the 2005 NHL entry draft, Crosby was listed first overall in the NHL Central Scouting Bureau and International Scouting Services' respective rankings of prospects. He also won the Mike Bossy Trophy as the QMJHL's best prospect. Crosby was selected first overall in the draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins on July 30, 2005. Due to the labour lockout that suspended the entire 2004–05 NHL season, positioning for the 2005 draft was conducted via a weighted lottery based on each team's playoff appearances and draft lottery victories in the last four years. This lottery system led to the draft being popularly referred to as the "Sidney Crosby Lottery" or the "Sidney Crosby Sweepstakes".
"Sid the Kid", a nickname given to him by the media early in his career, made his NHL debut on October 5, 2005, against the New Jersey Devils, and registered an assist on the team's first goal of the season, scored by Mark Recchi in a 5–1 loss. He scored his first NHL goal in the Penguins' home opener on October 8 against goaltender Hannu Toivonen of the Boston Bruins. Despite having registered two assists for a three-point night, the Penguins were defeated 7–6 in overtime. Crosby began his rookie season playing alongside Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux, though Lemieux was forced to retire due to an irregular heartbeat after having played just 26 games into the season. Near the midway point of the season, Penguins head coach Ed Olczyk was fired and replaced by Michel Therrien on December 15, 2005. The following day, Therrien designated Crosby as an alternate captain for the Penguins. The move drew criticism from some hockey pundits, including commentator Don Cherry, who claimed that Crosby did not have the experience for the position. Cherry said, "An 18-year-old kid says he's going to give us ideas. What, from the Quebec League, he's going to give them ideas? Come on. That's ridiculous." Although hopes were high in Pittsburgh for the club to succeed, largely in part to the beginning of Crosby's NHL career and bolstered by the acquisitions of Sergei Gonchar, Žigmund Pálffy, and Mark Recchi, the Penguins still finished with the worst record in the Eastern Conference with only 22 wins and 58 points, just one point better than St. Louis Blues in the Western Conference. Nevertheless, Crosby's first NHL campaign was a personal success as he established franchise records in assists (63) and points (102) for a rookie, both of which were previously held by Mario Lemieux. He also scored 39 goals and became the youngest player in NHL history to score 100 points in a single season, and only the seventh rookie ever to hit the benchmark. Overall, Crosby finished sixth in the NHL scoring race and seventh in the NHL in assists. Among Canadian NHL players, he trailed only Joe Thornton and Dany Heatley. Throughout the season, Crosby had battled with Washington Capitals winger and 2004 first-overall pick Alexander Ovechkin for the rookie scoring lead. He finished second to Ovechkin's 106 points and also lost to the Capitals forward for the Calder Memorial Trophy as NHL rookie of the year. It marked the start of a rivalry that would help "define the league" for over a decade. Throughout his first season, Crosby was accused by opposing players and coaches of taking dives and complaining to officials, which was typically attributed to his youth. He became the first rookie to earn 100 penalty minutes and 100 points in the same season, which magnified his reputation for complaining to NHL officials. Hockey analyst Kelly Hrudey compared Crosby to Wayne Gretzky, who had a similar reputation as a "whiner" in his youth, and suggested that as Crosby matured, he would mellow out and his reputation would fade.
In his second NHL season, Crosby built on his rookie success. On October 28, 2006, Crosby scored his first NHL hat-trick in an 8–2 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers. His success against the Flyers continued as just over six weeks later, on December 13, he recorded the first six-point game of his career (one goal and five assists). The multi-point effort vaulted Crosby into the NHL scoring lead, which he would retain for the remainder of the season. He finished the 2006–07 with 36 goals and 84 assists for 120 points in 79 games to become the first teenager to lead the NHL in scoring since Wayne Gretzky in 1980. Being only 19 years old at the time, he became the youngest player in NHL history to win the Art Ross Trophy and the youngest scoring champion in any major North American professional sport.
Crosby's second NHL season also saw significant improvements for the Penguins franchise as a whole, as the emergence of rookie forwards, eventual Calder Trophy-winner Evgeni Malkin and runner-up Jordan Staal complemented the club's offence. As a result, the Penguins jumped from last place in the Eastern Conference the previous season to fifth for the club's first playoff appearance since 2001. Playing the Ottawa Senators in the opening round, Crosby scored a goal in his Stanley Cup playoff debut in a 6–3 loss. He finished the series with five points in all five games as the Penguins were ousted in a 4–1 by the eventual Stanley Cup runner-up.
==== Beginning of Penguins captaincy, runner–up and first Stanley Cup title (2007–2009) ====
Crosby was named Pittsburgh's team captain on May 31, 2007, making him (at 19 years, 9 months, and 24 days) the youngest team captain in NHL history. During the season, the Penguins offered him the captaincy, but he turned it down. In the press conference naming him the team captain, he explained:
"I just thought it wasn't right for me. As a team, we were playing great and you don't want to disrupt things like that. Individually, I was not ready to accept that responsibility quite yet. Going through the playoffs and having that experience has probably given me more confidence. I understand there is going to be a lot more responsibility on my shoulders with this, but it's something I'm ready for, I feel very comfortable with it and I'm just excited to get things going."
At the NHL's annual awards show two weeks later in June 2007, Crosby completed a rare off-season "hat-trick", winning the Hart Memorial Trophy and the Lester B. Pearson Award in addition to his previously clinched Art Ross Trophy. He became the youngest player in NHL history to win the Lester B. Pearson, and only the second youngest player ever to win the Hart (after Gretzky). He became the youngest player ever to be named to the NHL's first All-Star team.
With Crosby's initial three-year, entry-level contract set to expire at the end of the following season, the Penguins signed him to a five-year, $43.5 million contract extension on July 10, 2007, ensuring his stay with the Penguins through the 2012–13 season. Midway through the subsequent season, Crosby recorded a Gordie Howe hat-trick on December 20 in a game against the Boston Bruins. His first assist came 55 seconds into the first period. At 8:26 of the same period, Crosby scored to give the Penguins a 2–0 lead. Then, five minutes and nine seconds into the second frame, Crosby fought ex-Penguin defenceman Andrew Ference to complete the hat-trick. This was Crosby's first NHL fight. In the NHL's first Winter Classic (with a record crowd of 71,217 fans in attendance), Crosby scored the shootout winner in heavy snowfall to defeat the Buffalo Sabres. However, two and a half weeks later, on January 18, 2008, Crosby suffered a high ankle sprain crashing leg-first into the boards in a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. As a result, he missed the 2008 All-Star Game, to which he was named a starter. After missing 21 games, he returned on March 4 against the Tampa Bay Lightning and earned an assist on a Max Talbot goal. However, two games after his return, he felt his ankle was not up to shape and decided that he needed more time for it to heal. Crosby consequently sat out of the Penguins' next seven games and returned on March 27, 2008, to help the Penguins defeat the New York Islanders 3–1. Despite his injury-shortened campaign, Crosby still managed 72 points (24 goals, 48 assists) in just 53 games. Crosby's absence from the Penguins' line-up served as a stepping stone for teammate Evgeni Malkin, who, now in his second season, was developing into a superstar in his own right. Picking up the offensive slack, Malkin finished second in league scoring to Washington Capitals winger Alexander Ovechkin and was also a Hart Memorial Trophy nominee as MVP honours also went to Ovechkin. In addition to Crosby's return to the line-up late in the season, the Penguins acquired star winger Marián Hossa from the Atlanta Thrashers at the trade deadline, placing the club in a strong position to make a deep playoff run. Pittsburgh finished the season as Atlantic Division champions and just two points shy of the first-seeded Montreal Canadiens. In a rematch of the previous year's opening round, the Penguins began the 2008 playoffs facing the Ottawa Senators, whom they quickly swept in four games. After then defeating the New York Rangers and archrival Philadelphia Flyers, each in five games, the Penguins reached the final round for the first time since 1992, to face the Detroit Red Wings. After being shut-out as a team for the first two games of the series, Crosby scored the first two goals of game three as the series shifted to Pittsburgh to fuel a 3–2 win. The Penguins lost the next game and despite staving off defeat in game five, they were overcome by the Red Wings in six games. Crosby finished the playoffs with 27 points (six goals and 21 assists in all 20 games), tying forward and Conn Smythe-winner Henrik Zetterberg (13 goals and 14 assists in 22 games) for the playoff scoring lead.
Early in the following season, on October 18, 2008, Crosby scored one goal and three assists against the Toronto Maple Leafs to surpass benchmarks of 100 goals, 200 assists, and 300 points for his career. On the play in which Crosby scored, teammate Evgeni Malkin assisted to record his own 200th point. As a result, Crosby had a team trainer cut the puck in half so both players could commemorate the achievement. Minor injury troubles kept Crosby from five games early in the season as he was listed day-to-day, but he was, for the most part, able to bounce back from the previous injury-riddled season and stay healthy. He recorded 33 goals and 70 assists for 103 points to finish third in league scoring, as Evgeni Malkin captured his first career Art Ross Trophy. Entering the 2009 playoffs as the defending Prince of Wales Trophy winners, the Penguins defeated the Philadelphia Flyers in the opening round before meeting the Washington Capitals for a highly publicized second-round matchup. The series was heavily followed as it pitted Ovechkin of the Capitals against both Crosby and Malkin, who together finished as the league's top three scorers that season. In the second game, Crosby and Ovechkin recorded matching three-goal efforts for their first career playoff hat-tricks in a 4–3 Capitals victory. Despite being down 2–0 in the series, Crosby and the Penguins won the next three games and eventually defeated the Capitals in a seventh and deciding game, in which Crosby added another two goals. Following a sweep of the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference finals, Crosby opted against recent NHL tradition and picked up the Prince of Wales Trophy, which he had left untouched the previous year. In explanation of the change of heart, Crosby said, "We didn't touch the trophy last year, and obviously we didn't have the result we wanted ... Although we haven't accomplished exactly what we want ... we can still enjoy it." The Penguins met the Detroit Red Wings for the second straight year in the Stanley Cup Finals, and this time Crosby won his first Stanley Cup title in seven games. At 21 years, 10 months, and 5 days, Crosby became the youngest NHL captain to win the Stanley Cup since 1895. (The youngest captain to lead his team to the Stanley Cup in the history of the trophy is Mike Grant of the 1895 Montreal Victorias, who was 21 years and 2 months at the time.) In the deciding game seven, Crosby was forced to watch all but 32 seconds of the third period from the bench after suffering a knee injury less than halfway through the second period due to a hit from Wings' winger Johan Franzén. Following the game, Crosby was criticized by Detroit centre Kris Draper for neglecting to shake hands with some of Detroit's players in the handshake line, most notably Wings' defenceman and captain Nicklas Lidström. An irate Draper was quoted as saying, "Nick was waiting and waiting, and Crosby didn't come over to shake his hand. That's ridiculous, especially as their captain." Crosby replied afterward, saying, "I just won the Stanley Cup. I think I have the right to celebrate with my teammates. I know it's not easy waiting around... I understand if they don't feel like waiting around. But you know what? It's the easiest thing to do in the world, to shake hands after you win. I had no intentions of trying to skip guys and not shake their hands. I think that was a pretty unreasonable comment."
==== Injury–plagued years, back-to-back Stanley Cups and Conn Smythe Trophies (2009–2018) ====
In the 2009–10 season, Crosby tied Tampa Bay Lightning centre Steven Stamkos for the lead in goals scored, with 51 goals each, both earning the Rocket Richard Trophy. He also garnered 58 assists for a total of 109 points, enough to tie with Washington Capitals winger and captain Alexander Ovechkin for second in league points, trailing only Vancouver Canucks' centre Henrik Sedin's, who ended the season with 112. Crosby was also named a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award. Crosby won the Mark Messier Leadership Award, getting recognized as a "superior leader within the sport, setting a positive example through on-ice performance, motivation of team members and a dedication to the community". This was the second time he had received this honour, the other being in January 2007, during the award's first year when it was presented monthly. He was also included on NHL's all-decade second team of 2000s. Crosby's defending Stanley Cup champion and fourth-seeded Penguins were defeated in the second round of the 2010 playoffs, losing to the Montreal Canadiens in seven games, unable to build onto an initial 3–2 series lead. Crosby had 19 points (six goals, 13 assists) in all 13 games in the 2010 playoffs, though through seven games against the Canadiens, he had only one goal and four assists. Game seven was also the last game to be played at Mellon Arena, the Penguins' home rink since the start of the franchise. On July 27, 2010, Crosby joined his mentor from 2005 to 2006, his rookie year Mario Lemieux to be the first to skate on the new ice at the Consol Energy Center. The two skated for about five minutes before being joined on the ice by a group of young hockey fans all wearing Lemieux's 66 or Crosby's 87 jerseys.
In the 2010–11 season, Crosby had a 25-game point streak, which began on November 5, 2010, against the Anaheim Ducks and ended on December 28, 2010, against the New York Islanders. During this streak, he had 27 goals (including three hat-tricks) and 24 assists for 51 points. This streak was tied for 11th-longest point streak in NHL history. During this streak, Crosby scored his 200th NHL goal in a 4–1 win over the Calgary Flames on Flames' goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff on November 27 and he was named First Star of the Month in both November and December, respectively. On January 3, 2011, Crosby was selected as a 2011 All-Star, along with teammates Evgeni Malkin, Marc-André Fleury and Kris Letang. However, neither Crosby nor Malkin were available to play in the All-Star Game due to injuries, and rookie Jeff Skinner (along with Paul Stastny) were named as replacements. In consecutive games – the 2011 NHL Winter Classic on January 1, 2011, against the Washington Capitals and then January 5 against the Tampa Bay Lightning – Crosby suffered hits to his head from Dave Steckel and Victor Hedman respectively. After experiencing several concussion symptoms, Crosby did not return for the rest of the season, including the 2011 playoffs, where the fourth-seeded Penguins would lose in seven games in the first round coincidentally to the Lightning, who finished as the fifth seed and surrendered a 3–1 series lead in the process. The Penguins were further crippled when Malkin suffered a torn ACL and MCL on February 4, taking him out for the rest of the season and leaving the Penguins without their two highest-scoring players. Despite Crosby's injury and subsequent absence for the final 41 games of the season, he finished as the Penguins' leading scorer. His 66 points in 41 games were 16 points ahead of the second-highest team scorer, defenceman Kris Letang. In so doing, Crosby set an NHL record for fewest games played by an NHL team's points leader.
Crosby missed the first 20 games of the 2011–12 season due to the lingering effects of his concussion or possibly multiple. He returned on November 21, 2011, in a game against the New York Islanders, scoring two goals and two assists in a 5–0 shutout for the Penguins. However, after playing another seven games – scoring a total of 12 points in eight games – Crosby's concussion-like symptoms returned on December 5, possibly following an elbow hit by Boston Bruins centre David Krejčí in his eighth game of the season. Despite passing a successful ImPACT test, Crosby decided not to return on the ice until he felt perfectly fine, stating that he also must "listen to [his] body". Crosby returned to action on March 15, 2012, recording two assists on goals by Chris Kunitz and Pascal Dupuis in a 5–2 win against the New York Rangers. Despite only playing 22 games, Crosby recorded eight goals and 29 assists for 37 points. He later credited neurologists at UPMC and chiropractic neurologist Ted Carrick with helping him return to hockey. Crosby's return in advance of the 2012 playoffs resulted in many experts predicting that the Penguins would win their second Stanley Cup title in four years, and though the Penguins were accordingly picked to oust the Philadelphia Flyers in their first-round series, it was acknowledged that it would be a tough series for both teams. The Flyers shocked the Penguins by winning the first three consecutive games, the third of which saw the teams combine for 158 penalty minutes. After an 8–4 loss in game three, Crosby was widely criticized for his conduct during the game, and for his testy post-game interview. When asked about an incident where Flyers winger Jakub Voráček had dropped his glove and Crosby swatted it away with his stick before Voráček could pick it up, Crosby replied, saying, "I don't like any guy on their team there, so his glove was near me, went to pick it up, and I pushed it, so yeah, that's... [...] I don't like them. Because I don't like them. I don't like... I don't like any guy on their team." When the interviewer suggested that he could have skated away, Crosby replied, "Skate away? Yeah, well, I didn't that time." The Penguins went on to win the next two games, but ultimately lost the series in game six. Crosby finished with three goals and five assists for eight points in all six games.
On June 28, 2012, the Penguins announced that Crosby agreed to a 12-year, $104.4 million contract extension set to keep Crosby in Pittsburgh through to the end of the 2024–25 NHL season. The start of the 2012–13 season was postponed until January 2013 due to the owners locking out the players as negotiations took place to solidify a new collective agreement for the players. During this time, Crosby was a regular attendee of meetings taking place between National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) representatives and NHL owners. The lock-out began on September 15, 2012, and ended on January 6, 2013, with the NHL regular season beginning on January 19. During the 119-day lock-out, Crosby was often questioned about his future plans should the lockout persist, and said on more than one occasion that he was considering contract offers from various teams in European leagues (where many NHL players went so that they could continue playing in a professional capacity while waiting for the lock-out to end or for the NHL season to be officially cancelled). Crosby continued to practice and participated with other NHL players who did not go overseas in several exhibition games open to the public. With the season finally underway in January 2013, Crosby set the pace for scoring, totalling 31 points (nine goals and 22 assists) through the first 21 games. He remained hot through March, scoring another 25 points (six goals and 19 assists) in 15 games as the Penguins went unbeaten over this stretch. However, his regular season came to an abrupt end on March 30 in a home game against the New York Islanders. Crosby's teammate Brooks Orpik unleashed a slapshot which caught Crosby in the mouth, causing the centreman to lose several teeth. Crosby was down on the ice for several minutes before the medical staff was able to help him to the dressing room with Crosby holding a towel over his face. Initially, the prognosis was not severe, but it was discovered a short while later that Crosby had broken his jaw and would require several rounds of reconstructive dental surgery. He missed the final 12 games of the regular season and finished fourth in the scoring race, losing the title to Tampa Bay's Martin St. Louis by four points. Crosby returned to the ice May 5 for the Penguins' second game against their first-round playoff opponents, the New York Islanders, ironically, the team who Pittsburgh played when Crosby was injured weeks prior. Despite two goals from Crosby, Pittsburgh lost 3–2, tying the series at one game apiece. The top-seeded Penguins would ultimately prevail 4–2 in the series over the eighth-seeded Islanders with Crosby scoring nine points (three goals and six assists) in the five games in which he played. Crosby and the Penguins moved on to face the Ottawa Senators in the second round, with Crosby scoring a hat-trick in game two of the series. Pittsburgh quickly defeated Ottawa four games to one in the series with a still-hot Crosby finishing the series with four goals and two assists. The Eastern Conference finals came down to what many felt were the two best teams in the conference: Pittsburgh and Boston Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask put on an outstanding performance, shutting down Pittsburgh's potent offence with the help of a stifling defensive effort from his teammates. The Penguins were held to just two goals in the series, with Rask stopping 134 of 136 shots on goal (.985%). Crosby, who was strong for the Penguins in the regular season and through the first two rounds of the playoffs was held off the score sheet entirely, finishing the series with no goals and no assists on 13 shots within the four games as the Bruins swept the Penguins in four-straight games. In the off-season, Crosby was awarded his second Ted Lindsay Award and finished as runner-up to the Hart Memorial Trophy and Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy.
Crosby put together a healthy and productive campaign in 2013–14, playing 80 games for the first time since the 2009–10 season. Crosby finished the season with 36 goals and a league-leading 68 assists, marking the first time in his career that he led the league in assists. He also finished with a league-high 104 points, winning the Art Ross Trophy for the second time in his career. He also went on to win the Hart Memorial Trophy and the Ted Lindsay Award. Finishing first overall in the Metropolitan Division, the Penguins were matched-up with a new division rival, the Columbus Blue Jackets, in the first round of the 2014 playoffs. Despite a very back-and-forth series and not a single goal by Crosby, the Penguins defeated the Jackets in six games to advance to a second-round matchup with the New York Rangers. Going into their second-round series with the Rangers, Crosby looked to end a long playoff goal drought, which dated back to the 2013 conference finals against the Boston Bruins. After dropping the first game at home, Crosby broke his goal drought in game two as the Pens tied the series at 1–1 heading back to Madison Square Garden. The Penguins would capitalize on their game two win, taking the next two games and eliminating the Rangers' home-ice advantage. However, the Rangers rebounded, winning games 5, 6 and 7, sending the Penguins home without a prize for the fifth straight season and surrendering a 3–1 series lead. The team's collapse prompted Penguins ownership to fire general manager Ray Shero, replacing him with Jim Rutherford, the former general manager of the Carolina Hurricanes. Rutherford's first action as GM was to fire Dan Bylsma as head coach, and on June 25, he announced that Mike Johnston was the new head coach.
Crosby finished the 2014–15 season with the highest point-per-game average and a total of 84 points (28 goals, 56 assists), trailing only New York Islanders centre and captain John Tavares (86 points) and Art Ross winner and Dallas Stars winger and captain Jamie Benn (87 points). On November 26, 2014, Crosby scored his 800th career point against the Toronto Maple Leafs, becoming the sixth-fastest player in NHL history to reach that milestone. On April 1, 2015, in a game against goaltender Steve Mason of the Philadelphia Flyers, Crosby scored his 300th career NHL goal. Despite a strong start to the season, the injury-plagued Penguins narrowly entered the playoffs as the Eastern Conference's second wild card and eighth seed, beating the Boston Bruins by two points in the standings for the eighth and last playoff spot. Facing the Presidents' Trophy-winning New York Rangers in the opening round of the 2015 playoffs, Crosby helped even the series with two goals in game two on Rangers' goaltender Henrik Lundqvist. Despite this, the Penguins were defeated by the Rangers in five games and was eliminated in the first round for the first time since the 2012 playoffs.
In the 2015 off-season, the Penguins went through a major overhaul of their roster, adding a number of offensive players such as acquiring winger Phil Kessel from the Toronto Maple Leafs. Despite a line-up laced with some of the world's finest offensive talents, Crosby struggled to score points, as he and the team had for much of the Johnston era. By the time Johnston was fired on December 12, 2015, after posting a 15–10–3 record through 28 games, some media outlets began speculating that Crosby had aged out of his prime scoring years. On December 16, The Washington Post wrote, "Sidney Crosby has widely been regarded as the NHL's best player since he burst on the scene as a rookie in 2005 ... But Crosby just hasn't been himself this season, scoring just six goals and 13 assists for 19 points in the first 29 games and sitting with a plus/minus of minus-seven. All players go through slumps, but it is clear that the Crosby we knew has been on the decline for some time." His slow start was capped off by not being selected as a starter for the 2016 NHL All-Star Game. However, under new head coach Mike Sullivan, the 28-year-old turned his season around, outscoring all NHL players from December 12 through the end of the season. On February 2, Crosby scored three-straight goals against the Ottawa Senators for his first natural hat-trick in more than five years. Four days later, Crosby scored his 900th, 901st and 902nd career NHL points to fuel a 3–2 overtime comeback victory over the Florida Panthers. He tallied at least one point in 15 of Pittsburgh's 16 games in March, including six multi-point efforts, and was subsequently named the NHL's First Star of the Month. On April 2, Crosby recorded his 600th NHL assist as the Penguins clinched their berth in the 2016 playoffs. Six days later, he scored in overtime against the Washington Capitals to secure home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Crosby finished the 2015–16 season with 36 goals, 49 assists and 85 points in 80 games, including a career-high nine game-winning goals, and was voted team MVP for the sixth time in his career. His two-way game also received league-wide praise, with Hockey Hall of Fame head coach Scotty Bowman stating that Crosby would be a good candidate for the Frank J. Selke Trophy as the league's best defensive forward. Crosby's comeback also impressed Wayne Gretzky, who said, "He had a tough start, but the sign of an elite athlete is a guy that battles through it. He didn't point any fingers, he just battled through it, and I don't think there is any question the last 40 or so games, he made a case for the MVP. He was that good. He went to another level." On May 7, Crosby was named a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy which was eventually given to Chicago Blackhawks winger Patrick Kane. He finished as the first runner-up with 800 points and 11 first-place votes. After losing to New York Rangers in the past two playoffs, the Penguins eliminated the Rangers in the first round, winning in five games, after losing to the Rangers by the same series margin in the first round the previous year. Crosby led the team in scoring with three goals and five assists for eight points in the series. The Penguins then eliminated the Presidents' Trophy-winning Washington Capitals in six games, without much offensive production from either Crosby (two assists) or Malkin (one goal and one assist). Advancing to their first conference finals since 2013, Crosby scored the overtime winner against the Tampa Bay Lightning in game two. The goal was scored 40 seconds into overtime on Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy for a 3–2 win, the fastest overtime goal in Penguins' playoff history, and the first of his career in the playoffs. In the following game, he scored the game-winning goal in a 4–2 victory. After dropping the next two games, Crosby scored his third game-winning goal of the series on Vasilevskiy in game six, forcing a final game in Pittsburgh. Defeating the Lightning 2–1 in game seven, Crosby helped his team win the Eastern Conference championship, advancing to the Stanley Cup Finals against the San Jose Sharks and prevent the Lightning from clinching a second consecutive appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals of their own. In the Finals, the Penguins defeated the Sharks in six games to earn Crosby his second Stanley Cup title. He became the ninth player to win the Stanley Cup twice as well as two Olympic gold medals. Finishing the playoffs with 19 points (six goals and 13 assists), including the primary helper on the Cup-winning goal scored by Kris Letang, Crosby was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the playoffs.
Crosby missed the first six games of the 2016–17 season after being diagnosed with a concussion in practice just a few days before the season opener against the Washington Capitals. Upon his return, he scored 30 goals in his first 45 games, and on February 16, 2017, he registered an assist on a Chris Kunitz goal against the Winnipeg Jets to reach 1,000 NHL points, doing so in just his 757th game to become the 12th-fastest (and 11th-youngest) player to reach that milestone. He also participated in his first NHL All-Star Game since 2007, winning the shooting accuracy segment of the Skills Competition. He was named team MVP and finished the season with 89 points (44 goals, 45 assists) in 75 contests played. His 89 points tied with Chicago Blackhawks' Patrick Kane as the runner(s) up for the Art Ross Trophy. It marked the eighth time he finished a season in the top-three in NHL scoring, tying Mario Lemieux, Stan Mikita and Phil Esposito for the third-most instances in history behind only Wayne Gretzky (15 times) and Gordie Howe (12 times). With his 44 goals, Crosby captured the Rocket Richard Trophy for the second time in his career. Crosby was also named a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award with both awards eventually going to Edmonton Oilers centre and captain Connor McDavid. Entering the 2017 playoffs as the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Penguins defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets in five games before meeting the back to back Presidents' Trophy-winning Washington Capitals in the second round for the second consecutive year. After winning the first two games on the road, Crosby sustained a concussion after suffering an injury from a slash and cross-check from both Alexander Ovechkin and Matt Niskanen in game three. He missed game four but returned to practice the next day and played in game five. The Penguins eventually eliminated the Capitals in game seven, with Crosby assisting on the series-winning goal by Bryan Rust. The Penguins then defeated the Ottawa Senators in a gruelling seven-game series to secure their second consecutive trip to the Stanley Cup Finals. Crosby had the primary assist on the series-clinching goal, scored by Chris Kunitz in double overtime. Facing the eighth-seeded Nashville Predators in the Finals, Pittsburgh jumped out to a two-game lead, despite being outplayed for long stretches in both games. The Predators responded by tying up the series, winning games three and four at home. In game five, the Penguins' captain delivered a dominant performance, adding three assists in a 6–0 win to pass Lemieux for most Stanley Cup Finals points (20) in franchise history. After defeating the Predators 2–0 in game six, the Penguins became the first team to repeat as Stanley Cup champions since the 1997–98 Detroit Red Wings, and the first to do so in the salary cap era (since 2005–06). Crosby also won his second consecutive Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs, only the third player to do so after Bernie Parent (1974, 1975) and Mario Lemieux (1991, 1992). He finished second in scoring behind Evgeni Malkin with 27 points (eight goals and 19 assists) in 24 games.
In the 2017–18 season, Crosby appeared in all 82 of Pittsburgh's regular season games for the first time in his career, finishing with 29 goals and 60 assists for 89 points. On February 11, 2018, he scored his 400th NHL goal against Jake Allen of the St. Louis Blues, becoming the 95th player in NHL history to reach the milestone as the Penguins defeated the Blues 4–1. On March 21, he recorded his 700th career NHL assist on a Jake Guentzel goal in a 5–3 victory over the Montreal Canadiens. The Penguins began their 2018 playoff campaign against their inner-state rival, the Philadelphia Flyers. In game one of the Battle of Pennsylvania, Crosby recorded a natural hat-trick in a 7–0 win. On April 18, in game four, Crosby passed Mario Lemieux as the Penguins' all-time playoff points leader with 173. The Penguins ultimately defeated the fifth-seeded Flyers in six games, with Crosby recording six goals and seven assists for 13 points. After the series, retired Hockey Hall of Fame centre Bryan Trottier said of Crosby, "Sid has a wonderful gift to maintain his composure and not get rattled. You like the emotion he shows, too. I think he fires his team up, and that's why he's wearing the 'C' [for captain]." The Penguins were eventually eliminated in game six of the second round by the second-seeded and eventual Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals with Capitals' centre Evgeny Kuznetsov scoring the winning goal in overtime. Crosby finished with 21 points (nine goals and 12 assists) in all 12 games, pushing his career playoff total to 185, tied with Steve Yzerman for tenth-most all-time.
==== Early playoff exits (2018–2022) ====
On December 31, 2018, Crosby played his 900th NHL game in a 3–2 win over the Minnesota Wild, becoming the second player in Penguins history to reach the mark. On January 3, 2019, Crosby was selected to play in the NHL All-Star Game for the eighth time in his career. He scored four goals and four assists, helping the Metropolitan Division to victory; his efforts won him his first All-Star MVP award, making him the sixth in NHL history to have won that award after having won the Conn Smythe Trophy and Hart Memorial Trophy. During the 2018–19 season, Crosby passed Mario Lemieux to become the Penguins' all-time leader in games played (916), and moved into second place on the Pens' all-time scoring list with his 440th career goal in a 5–1 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on March 3. Two days later, he became the 48th player in NHL history to score at least 1,200 career points against the Florida Panthers. He finished the season with 100 points (35 goals and 65 assists), the first time he has reached the 100-point mark since scoring 104 points in 2013–14. Crosby finished 4th in voting for the Selke Trophy and became a Hart Trophy finalist for the seventh time in his career as the Selke eventually went to St. Louis Blues centre Ryan O'Reilly and the Hart getting awarded to Tampa Bay Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov, respectively. He was also elected team-MVP.
Crosby was selected to the NHL All-Decade First Team in January 2020. The Penguins finished fifth in the Eastern Conference in the COVID-19 pandemic-shortened 2019–20 season, facing the 12th-seeded Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference qualifying round. The Canadiens upset the Penguins in four games, eliminating Pittsburgh on August 7, 2020, Crosby's 33rd birthday.
In the pandemic-shortened 2020–21 season, Crosby led the team in scoring with 62 points (24 goals and 38 assists), and was the recipient of the team's MVP Award and the Players' Player Award. He was also a finalist for the Ted Lindsay Award which was eventually awarded to Edmonton Oilers centre and captain Connor McDavid. On February 20, 2021, Crosby became the first player in Penguins history to play 1,000 games with the franchise in a 3–2 win over the New York Islanders. The team clinched a playoff berth for the 15th consecutive season under Crosby's captaincy, the longest active postseason streak among all teams in the North American professional sports leagues. However, the Penguins were eliminated in the first round of the 2021 playoffs by the New York Islanders for the second time in three seasons.
On February 15, 2022, Crosby scored his 500th career goal on a power play against the Philadelphia Flyers, becoming the 46th player to score that many goals in NHL history and the 18th to have scored them all for a single team. He was the second Penguin to score 500 goals, after Lemieux. Continuing to hit new milestones, in an April 10 game against the Nashville Predators he recorded a goal and an assist in regulation time, before scoring the overtime-winning goal, his 1400th point in the NHL. Crosby finished the 2021–22 season with 31 goals and 53 assists for 84 points in 69 games played, while the Penguins were third in the Metropolitan Division. They advanced into the 2022 playoffs to meet the New York Rangers. With both Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang's contracts up in the summer, there was some question as to whether this would be the final outing for the core of the Penguins franchise in Crosby's era. In game three of the series against the Rangers, Crosby recorded his 197th career playoff point, passing Paul Coffey for sixth place in all-time playoff point standings. Two days later, he managed a goal and two assists in the Penguins' 7–2 victory in game four and 3–1 series lead, becoming the sixth player in league history to record 200 career points in the playoffs. Midway through the second period of game five in Madison Square Garden, with the Penguins up 2–0, Crosby took an elbow to the head from Rangers defenceman Jacob Trouba and exited the game. In his absence, the Rangers rallied to win 5–3 and stave off elimination, and Crosby's departure was widely cited as the game's turning point. Head coach Mike Sullivan said that Crosby was being evaluated. After missing game six, Crosby returned for game seven, alongside absent team goaltender Tristan Jarry and winger Rickard Rakell. However, the Penguins lost to the Rangers in overtime with Rangers winger Artemi Panarin scoring the winner for the Rangers to take a 4–3 win in the game and 4–3 win in the series, eliminating the Penguins. The Penguins surrendered a 3–1 series lead to the Rangers for the second time in less than a decade.
==== Recent years (2022–present) ====
In the 2022 off-season, it was reported that Crosby played a key role in facilitating a new deal between the Penguins and Evgeni Malkin, after the latter had initially announced he would test free agency. Crosby began the 2022–23 season by registering two goals and four assists in his first two games, being named the first star of the first week while leading the league in scoring. After strong initial results, the team struggled with a lengthy losing streak, but Crosby recorded his 900th career assist on a Jake Guentzel goal on November 5, 2022, a 3–2 loss to the Seattle Kraken. He was the sixth-fastest player to this feat in NHL history. On April 8, Crosby registered his 1500th career point in a 5–1 win against the Detroit Red Wings, the fifteenth NHL player to hit that milestone, and in the sixth-fewest games (1188). As the poor performance of the team continued into the spring, the Penguins' league-best 16-year playoff streak increasingly came into jeopardy, and by the final weeks of the season they were battling the Florida Panther] and the New York Islanders for the two Eastern Conference wildcard positions. A 5–2 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on April 11, at that moment the team at the bottom of the standings, in the penultimate game of the season, combined with an Islanders victory the following day, sealed the Penguins' missing the playoffs for the first time since 2005–06, Crosby's rookie season and for the first time in Crosby's captaincy. This happened despite Crosby playing all 82 games for only the second time in his career, and doing so alongside Evgeni Malkin for the first time. Much recrimination ensued among fans and commentators, with many calling for the sacking of Penguins general manager Ron Hextall for his perceived mistakes in constructing the team in the previous 2022 off-season. Hextall and team executive Brian Burke were both fired the day after the season ended, with owners Fenway Sports Group promising "the goal of contending for the Stanley Cup has not changed."
Shortly the 2023–24 season, his 19th season in the NHL, on November 4, 2023, Crosby skated in his 1,200th game, recording an assist in a 10–2 victory over the San Jose Sharks. About the achievement, Crosby said: "You don't just love it when it's good to you. You love it when it's tough and when it's difficult too. When that passion's not there, or that love's not there, it's probably time to stop doing it." On April 1, 2024, following a 5–2 win over the New York Rangers, Crosby became the second player in NHL history to average a point per game for the 19th consecutive season, joining Wayne Gretzky. On April 11, Crosby recorded his 1,000th NHL assist on a goal by Erik Karlsson in a 6–5 overtime win over the Detroit Red Wings to become the 14th player in league history and seventh fastest player to hit the mark (at 1,269 games). Crosby finished the season playing in all 82 contests played with 42 goals, 52 assists and 94 points recorded. Despite his continuation of individual productivity, the Penguins finished three points out of a playoff spot marking the first time in Crosby's tenure where the Penguins missed the playoffs in two consecutive seasons.
On September 16, 2024, Crosby signed a two-year $17.4 million extension ($8.7 million average) to remain with the Penguins. On November 23, Crosby scored his 600th NHL goal against goaltender Karel Vejmelka of the Utah Mammoth, becoming the 21st player in league history and second player in Penguins history to achieve the feat as the Penguins lost the game 6–1. The Penguins continued to struggle as a team, missing the playoffs for the third consecutive time and fourth time in Crosby's tenure, ending up 11 points short of the last playoff spot. Despite the team's struggles, Crosby remained productive individually as he finished the season with 33 goals and 58 assists for 91 points in 80 games. Despite these offensive statistics, he had a career-worst −20 plus-minus rating. On March 28, 2025 Crosby became the only player in NHL history to average over a point-per-game over 20 seasons.
On December 22, 2025, Crosby became the Penguins all-time points leader with 1,724 points, at the same time passing Mario Lemieux for 8th all-time in NHL scoring.
== International play ==
=== Junior ===
Crosby debuted internationally for Canada at the 2003 U-18 Junior World Cup. He was the youngest player on the under-18 team, having turned 16 shortly before the beginning of the tournament. After seven consecutive gold medals at the tournament, Canada lost in the bronze medal game to the Czech Republic 8–2. He scored four goals and six points over five tournament games.
Crosby went on to compete in two World Junior Championships with Canada under-20 team. When he was named to the team in December 2003, he became the fifth 16-year-old to represent Canada at the tournament, following Jay Bouwmeester, Jason Spezza, Eric Lindros and Wayne Gretzky. Competing in the 2004 World Junior Championships, he then became the youngest player to score a goal in the history of the tournament at 16 years, 4 months, and 21 days when he scored against Switzerland in a 7–2 win. This record would last until the 2012 World Juniors when Aleksander Barkov of Finland scored a goal aged 16 years, 4 months. Crosby finished the tournament with two goals and three assists in six games, helping Canada to a silver medal finish. The following year, he returned for Canada at the 2005 World Junior Championships. He improved to six goals and three assists as Canada earned gold. Crosby stated the following year that his most memorable ice hockey moment was winning his World Junior gold medal.
=== Senior ===
==== 2006–2016 ====
After completing his rookie season with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Crosby competed in the 2006 IIHF World Championship as an alternate captain for Canada. Scoring a tournament-best eight goals and eight assists in nine games, he became the youngest player ever to win a World Championship scoring title. Despite his performance, Canada failed to medal, being shut-out by Finland 5–0 in the bronze medal game. Crosby was named the tournament's top forward and to the competition's all-star team.
After being omitted from Canada's Olympic team in 2006, Crosby was named to the Canadian roster on December 30, 2009, as an alternate captain for the 2010 Winter Olympics. He scored the game-winning shootout goal for Canada in the second game of the preliminary round against Switzerland. After going pointless in the quarterfinal and semifinal against Russia and Slovakia respectively, Crosby scored the winning goal 7 minutes and 40 seconds into overtime against the United States in the gold medal game. The goal has later become known as the "Golden Goal" due to it being scored in the gold medal game. It is also regarded by some as "Canada's most iconic sports moment".
Following the Penguins' second-round elimination in the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs, Crosby declined an invitation to join Canada midway through the 2010 IIHF World Championship. Crosby was selected to represent Canada at the 2014 Winter Olympics and was later named team captain. Canada won gold, with Crosby contributing one goal and two assists in six games. He scored his only goal in the final against Sweden, further establishing his reputation as "a player who rises up in big games". In 2015, Crosby captained Canada to its first World Championship title since 2007, with the team winning all 10 games and scoring 66 goals. Crosby, scoring four goals and seven assists in nine games, became the 26th member of the Triple Gold Club. He is the first member of the club to captain all three championship teams, and the first member to be a first overall NHL draft pick.
In 2016, Hockey Canada named Crosby captain for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. Crosby, who led the tournament in scoring with 10 points, helping Canada win the championship, and was named the most valuable player. He joined Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky as the only players to win the Conn Smythe Trophy, Hart Memorial Trophy and World Cup MVP. Canada's head coach Mike Babcock described Crosby as a serial winner, saying, "He's that high-end competitor. He's a good leader because he tries to do it right all the time. He demands a lot out of himself. In doing so, he demands a lot out of his teammates."
==== 2017–present ====
In 2020, Crosby was named to the IIHF All-Time Canada Team and the Men's All-Decade Team. On October 3, 2021, Crosby was one of the first three players named to roster for Canada's team for the 2022 Winter Olympics, alongside Connor McDavid and Alex Pietrangelo. However, due to the NHL's subsequent decision not to attend the Winter Olympics as a result of the Omicron variant's impacts on scheduling, Crosby was unable to compete. He said afterward that "I've been fortunate enough to be part of two. I definitely feel for the guys who have missed numerous opportunities."
On June 28, 2024, Crosby was one of the first six players selected to represent Team Canada in the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off, the first international tournament with full NHL participation since 2016. He was later named captain of the team. Crosby missed the Penguins' final two games before the tournament due to injury, but confirmed that he would participate still. He had three assists in Team Canada's 4–3 opening victory against Sweden, including on the overtime winner. Canada went on to win the tournament, with Crosby finishing with five points. Later the same year, following Pittsburgh not qualifying for the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs, Crosby accepted an invitation to join Team Canada at the 2025 IIHF World Championship in Stockholm. This was to be his first appearance at the World Championship since 2015. Former Penguins teammate Marc-André Fleury, who had retired from the NHL at season's end, also announced that he would participate in the tournament as his final competition.
With NHL players returning to the 2026 Winter Olympics, after missing the previous two editions, Crosby was part of the Canadian Olympic team for the third time in his career. He was subsequently named the national team's captain again. Crosby recorded three points in Canada's 10–2 victory over France on February 15, bringing his Olympic total to 16. In doing so he surpassed former teammate Jarome Iginla as Team Canada's all-time leader in points scored at Olympics which allowed NHL players to participate, breaking Iginla's former record of 14. In Canada's February 18 quarterfinal meeting with Czechia, Crosby exited midway through the second period after successive hits by Czech players Radko Gudas and Martin Nečas, and was reported to have sustained a lower-body injury. He addressed the team in between the second and third periods, and was credited with helping inspire the team to victory despite not being able to play. He did not play in the team's semi-final or final, in his absence ceding the captaincy to Connor McDavid. Canada won the silver medal, the third Olympic medal of his career. Explaining his decision on whether he would be able to play in the final, Crosby indicated "ultimately, I think it was about what's best for our group and what gives us the best chance to win," adding: "If I'm not able to go, I'm not going to compromise our team, put myself ahead of that."
== Player profile ==
=== Style of play ===
As captain and first-line centre for Canada, Crosby played with different line mates in almost every game as the coaching staff struggled to find players capable of keeping pace with the superstar centre at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, and again at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. Crosby's fellow countryman and Olympic teammate, Rick Nash, was questioned by the media about this, at one point saying, "I think he's a tough guy to keep up with. He's so fast. The way he thinks about the game seems like it's far beyond everyone else's process. It's the same thing in the last Olympics, keep shuffling around until you found something that fit." Team Canada's assistant coach in Vancouver, Ken Hitchcock, recalled, "Sid thinks at a level, when the other team has the puck, that's above everyone else in the league [NHL]. His anticipation when the other team has the puck is so high, he knows where it's going ahead of time. He can pick off passes, make you make errors. And then he also knows where people are located on the ice, so he can turn that turnover into a scoring chance."
Other professional NHL players have particularly noted Crosby for his backhand shot. For example, in his column for The Players' Tribune in July 2015, Jonathan Quick of the Los Angeles Kings praised Crosby for having "the best backhand shot" in the NHL. "His blade is almost completely flat, which combined with his ridiculous forearm strength gives him the ability to go forehand to your five hole instantly or turn it over to the backhand and roof it (a lot of guys can't do this with a flat blade)."
=== Reputation ===
Noted for his on-ice vision, passing ability, leadership, work ethic, and complete overall game, Crosby is considered to be one of the greatest players of all time. Bobby Orr named Crosby among the five best players in the history of NHL. Gretzky said of Crosby in September 2016, "He's proven over and over that he's the best player in the game today. And it seems like the more important the game, the more impact that he makes on a game." Gordie Howe was also impressed by Crosby, "I met him and I've seen him play. Unless you put two guys on him, he'll kill you in a game." In October 2016, Mario Lemieux praised his protégé for his ability to play both sides of the puck: "I think he's more of a complete player. Defensively, I think he's improved a lot over the last couple of years." In an April 2018 article for The Washington Post, other players, teammates and coaches highlighted his work ethic and strive for greatness as a major factor to Crosby's lasting success. "While his natural ability – powerful skating, pistol-quick hands, uncommon feel – made him a phenom, his creative, distinct capacity for work has enabled him to stay atop the NHL." In March 2019, Pittsburgh head coach Mike Sullivan described Crosby as "best 200-foot player in the game" and the "heartbeat" of the Penguins.
On January 27, 2017, in a ceremony during the All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles, Crosby was named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players in history. In that same year, Fox Sports ranked Crosby 15th on their "21 greatest athletes of the 21st century (so far)" list, and TSN named him the eighth-best NHL player of all time. Four months before the 2022 Winter Olympics, Rob Rossi of The Athletic called him "arguably North America's most dominant team-sport Winter Olympian." In a survey conducted by Sportsnet in June 2017, Crosby was voted by Canadians to be the greatest athlete of the 21st century. A poll conducted by the NHLPA in March 2018 of more than 500 players resulted in Crosby being voted the "most difficult to play against, best role model, best team player, the player you'd want to win one game, and the player who would be a great coach upon retirement". In April 2018, Crosby was chosen as Nova Scotia's "Best athlete ever" by the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame. In March 2019, an anonymous survey conducted by The Athletic showed that Crosby was regarded the best all-around NHL player by his peers.
Considered a generational talent and a franchise player, drafting Crosby changed the fortunes of a struggling Pittsburgh Penguins. It helped secure funding for a new arena and ended speculation that the franchise would relocate to another city. In 2005–06, his presence helped Pittsburgh's attendance increase by 33%. Crosby's arrival also aided in reinvigorating and expanding the roots of hockey in the Pittsburgh area. Penguins CEO and president David Morehouse said, "We were in last place, we were last in revenues, we were last in attendance, our TV ratings were minimal and we were in the oldest building in the NHL... We were able to draw attention to us as a franchise because of the drafting of Sidney Crosby and the subsequent success we had."
Crosby is well known for welcoming new teammates with open arms. Former teammate and NHL veteran Matt Cullen has said that "[he watches] how he makes time to make a real effort to include guys and go out of his way to spend time with younger guys, and I know that goes a long way." Crosby often does research on new members of the organization, even players who have not yet made the roster, and makes sure to greet them.
Some current players who grew up watching Crosby, such as Jack Hughes of the New Jersey Devils, have said that as emerging youth hockey stars they tried to emulate not Crosby but other players, because "playing at his [Crosby's] level just wasn't realistic".
== Jerseys ==
Crosby's number 87 Pittsburgh Penguins jersey was the top seller on the NHL's website from September 2005 to February 2008. It has continued to be among the top-selling jerseys since his rookie season. In January 2005, an Air Canada baggage handler in Montreal stole Crosby's red Canada jersey from the World Junior Hockey Championship. It was recovered later in a mailbox. His white jersey from the tournament was temporarily delisted from an auction while the red one was missing. It eventually sold for CA$22,100, which went to youth hockey charities and 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake relief.
Less than a year later, one of Crosby's game-worn sweaters disappeared. The jersey he wore in his first NHL game, played against the New Jersey Devils, disappeared from his father's luggage during a flight from Pittsburgh to Buffalo. The jersey was later found at the Pittsburgh International Airport between a piece of equipment and a stairwell. Crosby's jersey from his third NHL game was the highest-selling NHL jersey in an auction for Hurricane Katrina relief – it sold for $21,010. During an online auction held by the NHL and the NHL Players Association to benefit Hockey Fights Cancer, Crosby's game-worn jersey from the first period of the 2007 All-Star Game earned the most money. Crosby's sold for US$47,520, more than eight times the next highest price—$5,681 for the jersey worn by Brendan Shanahan of the New York Rangers.
Following Crosby's Olympic gold medal victory with Canada in 2010, it was announced that his stick and glove were missing. It was initially suspected that they might have been stolen; Reebok Canada offered a reward of CA$10,000 for their return, "no questions asked". On March 10, the items were found: Crosby's stick had been placed in a shipment bound for the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame in Saint Petersburg, Russia, (the shipment was intercepted in Toronto) and his glove was found in a hockey bag belonging to Olympic teammate and Boston Bruins' centre Patrice Bergeron, whose stall was beside Crosby's in the locker room.
== Personal life ==
Crosby rarely discusses his personal life and avoids social media. Andy O'Brien, Crosby's fitness trainer for over 15 years, has said: "He [Crosby] wants to be one of the guys and doesn't really seek to separate himself or get special treatment in any way... He takes a lot of enjoyment in the regular, simple things in life and having a normal, ordinary routine". Greg Powers described Crosby as essentially the brother of Lemieux's son Austin, as he lived with Lemieux's family in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, from 2005 until 2010. In May 2010, Crosby purchased his own home in the same area. In June 2006, he had bought his first house on Grand Lake in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
On May 29, 2010, it was announced that Crosby would sign the richest endorsement contract in NHL history with Reebok, expected to pay Crosby $1.4 million per year for five to seven years. In 2015, he signed a six-year endorsement contract with Adidas. Crosby also has endorsement deals with Bell, Tim Hortons, and Gatorade. Regarded as one of Canada's "legendary goal-scorers and storied leaders", Crosby was featured in Canada Post's NHL Great Canadian Forwards stamp collection, alongside Phil Esposito, Guy Lafleur, Darryl Sittler, Mark Messier, and Steve Yzerman.
In September 2016, he won an Emmy Award for his role in There's No Place Like Home With Sidney Crosby. He also won for his participation in the Merci Sidney video that followed his return to Rimouski for his QMJHL jersey retirement ceremony.
Crosby has a younger sister named Taylor who is a hockey goaltender. Like her brother, she went to high school at Shattuck-Saint Mary's in Faribault, Minnesota, to play with the school's hockey program. In 2014, Taylor joined the Northeastern Huskies women's ice hockey team as a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston. In 2015, she transferred to Minnesota's St. Cloud State University and played with the St. Cloud State Huskies women's ice hockey team through to graduation at the end of the 2017–18 school year.
Crosby continues to be active in the community in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. He created the Sidney Crosby Foundation in 2009, an organization committed to helping charities benefiting children. In 2015, he started a hockey school in Cole Harbour. His "Little Penguins Program" has provided free equipment and lessons to more than ten thousand local youngsters in Pittsburgh.
== Career statistics ==
Biographical information and career statistics from NHL.com, or Eliteprospects.com, or Eurohockey.com, or Hockey-Reference.com, or The Internet Hockey Database.
=== Regular season and playoffs ===
Bold indicates led league
1999–2000 stats are from "Age-old question: Cole Harbour hockey association bars peewee player from bantam tourney". The Halifax Daily News. April 5, 2000.
=== International ===
== Honours and achievements ==
== Records ==
=== IIHF ===
Youngest player to win a World Championship scoring title
=== Pittsburgh Penguins ===
Assists (63) and points (102) in a season by a rookie
Most regular season overtime goals (13)
Most games played
Most playoff points
Most playoff assists
Most playoff games
Most points in the Stanley Cup Finals (20)
Most playoff multi-point games
=== NHL ===
First rookie to record 100 points and 100 penalty minutes in a season
Youngest player to record 100 points in a season (18 years, 253 days)
Youngest player to record 200 career points (19 years and 207 days)
Youngest player to record 2 consecutive 100-point seasons (19 years, 215 days).
Youngest player voted to the starting line-up in an All-Star Game
Youngest Art Ross Trophy and Lester B. Pearson Award winner
Youngest player to be named to the first All-Star team
Youngest player to lead NHL playoffs in scoring (20 years, 9 months, and 28 days)
Youngest NHL captain to win Stanley Cup (21 years, 10 months, and 5 days)
6th player in NHL history to win multiple Conn Smythe Trophies.
Fewest games played by an NHL team's leading scorer (his 66 points in 41 games were the most of any player on the 2010–11 Penguins squad)
Most seasons averaging at least 1 point per game: (20)
Most consecutive seasons averaging at least 1 point per game: (20)
=== Olympics ===
First male player to captain Team Canada at the Olympics twice |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4n | Hän | The Hän, Han or Hwëch'in / Han Hwech’in (meaning "People of the River, i.e. Yukon River", in English also Hankutchin) are a First Nations people of Canada and an Alaska Native Athabaskan people of the United States; they are part of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group. Their traditional lands centered on a heavily forested area around the Upper Yukon River (Chu Kon'Dëk), Klondike River (Tr'on'Dëk), Bonanza Creek (Gàh Dëk) and Sixtymile River (Khel Dëk) and straddling what is now the Alaska-Yukon Territory border. In later times, the Han population became centered in Dawson City, Yukon and Eagle, Alaska.
== Etymology ==
The name Hän or Han is a shortening of their own name as Hwëch'in / Han Hwech’in, and of the Gwich’in word Hangʷičʼin for the Hän, both literally meaning "People of the River, i.e. the Yukon River". This word has been spelled variously as Hankutchin, Han-Kootchin, Hun-koo-chin, Hong-Kutchin, An Kutchin, Han Kutchin, Han-Kutchín, Hăn-Kŭtchin´, Hän Hwëch'in, and Hungwitchin.
The Hän were often mistaken for just another Gwich'in (Kutchin) band, especially as part of the Dagoo Gwich'in / Tukudh Gwich'in and Teetł'it Gwich'in / Teetl'it Zheh Gwich'in. The French traders called the Hän Gens du fou, Gens de Fou, Gens de Foux, Gens des Foux, or Gens-de-fine. The name Gens de Foux (and variants) has also been used to refer to the Northern Tutchone (Dan or Huč’an). The Hankutchin were then known as Gens de Bois or Gens des Bois, in association with their forested territory.
== History of the Hän ==
The Hän were one of the last Northern Athabascan groups to have contact with European peoples. In 1851 Robert Campbell from the Hudson's Bay Company became the first white man known to have entered Han territory, when he traveled from Fort Selkirk to Fort Yukon. It was not until 1873 and 1874 (after the United States purchase of Alaska), that two trading posts were set up. One was established by Moses Mercier, a former employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, in Belle Isle across the Eagle River. The other, Fort Reliance, was established on the Yukon, just below the mouth of the Klondike River, near Dawson, by two Alaska Commercial Company traders, Leroy N. McQuesten and Frank Bonifield. Gradually trading with whites resulted in the Han shifting from their traditional fishing-hunting economy to a fur-trapping economy, as they grew increasingly reliant on such European goods as guns, clothing, and canvas from 1887 to 1895.
Bishop William Bompas established the first Anglican Church mission in Hän territory, and gradually the people shifted away from traditional religion. They also combined it with Christianity in a syncretic fashion.
The Han suffered high mortality during several epidemics of new infectious diseases, to which they had no immunity.
== Culture ==
=== Food ===
Historically, fish, especially salmon, comprised the main part of the Hän diet. King salmon was caught along the Yukon River in June and chum salmon in August. Fishing tools included weirs, traps, gill nets, dip nets, spears, and harpoons. Salmon was dried and stored for winter consumption.
Between the salmon runs from June–September, the river camps were abandoned. The Han men sought other fish, moose, caribou, birds, bears, and small game. Men hunted game (once after the salmon run and later for caribou in February and March) while women fished (for fish other than salmon). The women traditionally cooked by boiling food with water heated by stones that been placed in a fire and then dropped in woven spruce-root baskets.
=== Housing ===
A square half-recessed house was made of wooden poles and moss insulation (called a moss house). This served as the main type of housing.
The people erected temporary domed houses made of skin stretched over tied branches when they were traveling.
== Language ==
The Hän language is most similar to Gwich’in (Kutchin). It is more distantly related to Upper Tanana and Northern Tutchone. The language was used as a lingua franca by Gwich’in, Tutchone, Tagish, and Upper Tanana peoples toward the end of the 19th century during the Gold Rush in the Yukon. The language is now the most endangered language of Alaska, with only a few speakers (all are over 60 years of age). The language may have ancient, early Holocene origins in the region.
== In media ==
Members of the group are encountered on a number of occasions in James A. Michener's 1989 novel Journey in which a group of Europeans try to reach Dawson overland from Athabasca Landing in Alberta in 1897-99. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pernicious_anemia | Pernicious anemia | Pernicious anemia is a disease where not enough red blood cells are produced due to a deficiency of vitamin B12. Those affected often have a gradual onset. The most common initial symptoms are feeling tired and weak. Other symptoms may include shortness of breath, feeling faint, a smooth red tongue, pale skin, chest pain, nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, heartburn, numbness in the hands and feet, difficulty walking, memory loss, muscle weakness, poor reflexes, blurred vision, clumsiness, depression, and confusion. Without treatment, some of these problems may become permanent.
Pernicious anemia refers to a type of vitamin B12 deficiency anemia that results from lack of intrinsic factor. Lack of intrinsic factor is most commonly due to an autoimmune attack on the cells that create it in the stomach. It can also occur following the surgical removal of all or part of the stomach or small intestine; from an inherited disorder or illnesses that damage the stomach lining. When suspected, diagnosis is made by blood tests initially a complete blood count, and occasionally, bone marrow tests. Blood tests may show fewer but larger red blood cells, low numbers of young red blood cells, low levels of vitamin B12, and antibodies to intrinsic factor. Diagnosis is not always straightforward and can be challenging.
Because pernicious anemia is due to a lack of intrinsic factor, it is not preventable. Pernicious anemia can be treated with injections of vitamin B12. If the symptoms are serious, frequent injections are typically recommended initially. There are not enough studies that pills are effective in improving or eliminating symptoms. Often, treatment may be needed for life.
Pernicious anemia is the most common cause of clinically evident vitamin B12 deficiency worldwide. Pernicious anemia due to autoimmune problems occurs in about one per 1000 people in the US. Among those over the age of 60, about 2% have the condition. It more commonly affects people of northern European descent. Women are more commonly affected than men. With proper treatment, most people live normal lives. Due to a higher risk of stomach cancer, those with pernicious anemia should be checked regularly for this. The first clear description was by Thomas Addison in 1849. The term "pernicious" means "deadly", and this term came into use because, before the availability of treatment, the disease was often fatal.
== Signs and symptoms ==
Pernicious anemia often presents slowly, and can cause harm insidiously and unnoticeably. Untreated, it can lead to neurological complications, and in serious cases, death. The onset may be vague and slow and the condition can be confused with other conditions, and there may be few to many symptoms without anemia. Pernicious anemia may be present without a person experiencing symptoms at first, over time, feeling tired and weak, lightheadedness, dizziness, headaches, rapid or irregular heartbeat, breathlessness, glossitis (a sore red tongue), poor ability to exercise, low blood pressure, cold hands and feet, pale or yellow skin, easy bruising and bleeding, low-grade fevers, tremor, cold sensitivity, chest pain, upset stomach, nausea, loss of appetite, heartburn, weight loss, diarrhea, constipation, severe joint pain, feeling abnormal sensations including tingling or numbness to the fingers and toes (pins and needles), and tinnitus, may occur. Anemia may present with a number of further common symptoms, including hair thinning and loss, early greying of the hair, mouth ulcers, bleeding gums, angular cheilitis, a look of exhaustion with pale and dehydrated or cracked lips and dark circles around the eyes, as well as brittle nails.
In more severe or prolonged cases of pernicious anemia, nerve cell damage may occur. This may result in sense loss, difficulty in proprioception, neuropathic pain, difficulty walking, poor balance, loss of sensation in the feet, muscle weakness, blurred vision (either due to retinopathy or optic neuropathy), impaired urination, fertility problems, decreased sense of taste and smell, decreased level of consciousness, changes in reflexes, memory loss, mood swings, depression, irritability, cognitive impairment, confusion, anxiety, clumsiness, dementia, and, in more severe cases, psychosis. Anemia may also lead to cardiac murmurs and/or altered blood pressure (low or high). The deficiency may also present with thyroid disorders. In severe cases, the anemia may cause congestive heart failure. A complication of severe chronic PA is subacute combined degeneration of spinal cord, which leads to distal sensory loss (posterior column), absent ankle reflex, increased knee reflex response, and extensor plantar reflex response. Other than anemia, hematological symptoms may include cytopenias, intramedullary hemolysis, and pseudothrombotic microangiopathy. Vitamin B12 deficiency, which is reversible, is occasionally confused with acute myeloid leukemia, which is an irreversible condition presenting with some of the same hematological symptoms, including hypercellular bone marrow with blastic differentiation and hypersegmented neutrophils. Pernicious anemia can cause osteoporosis and may lead to bone fractures. Pernicious anemia can contribute to a delay in physical growth in children, and may also be a cause for delay in puberty for adolescents.
== Causes ==
Vitamin B12 cannot be produced by the human body, and must be obtained from the diet. When foods containing B12 are eaten, the vitamin is usually bound to protein and is released by proteases released by the pancreas into the small bowel. Following its release, most B12 is absorbed by the body in the small bowel (ileum) after binding to a protein known as intrinsic factor. Intrinsic factor is produced by parietal cells of the gastric mucosa (stomach lining) and the intrinsic factor-B12-complex is absorbed by enterocytes in the ileum's cubam receptors. PA is characterised by B12 deficiency caused by the absence of intrinsic factor. Other disorders that can disrupt the absorption of vitamin B12 in the small intestine include coeliac disease, surgical removal, Crohn's disease, and HIV.
PA may be considered as an end stage of autoimmune atrophic gastritis, a disease characterised by stomach atrophy and the presence of antibodies to parietal cells and intrinsic factor. Autoimmune atrophic gastritis, is localised to the body of the stomach, where parietal cells are located. Antibodies to intrinsic factor and parietal cells cause the destruction of the oxyntic gastric mucosa, in which the parietal cells are located, leading to the subsequent loss of intrinsic factor synthesis. Without intrinsic factor, the ileum can no longer absorb the B12. Atrophic gastritis is often a precursor to gastric cancer.
Although the exact role of Helicobacter pylori infection in PA remains controversial, evidence indicates H. pylori is involved in the pathogenesis of the disease. A long-standing H. pylori infection may cause gastric autoimmunity by a mechanism known as molecular mimicry. Antibodies produced by the immune system can be cross-reactive and may bind to both H. pylori antigens and those found in the gastric mucosa. The antibodies are produced by activated B cells that recognise both pathogen and self-derived peptides. The autoantigens believed to cause the autoreactivity are the alpha and beta subunits of the sodium-potassium pump. In a study, B12 deficiency caused by Helicobacter pylori was positively correlated with CagA positivity and gastric inflammatory activity, rather than gastric atrophy. Less commonly, H. pylori and Zollinger-Ellison syndrome may cause a form of nonautoimmune gastritis that can lead to pernicious anemia.
Impaired B12 absorption can also occur following gastric removal (gastrectomy) or gastric bypass surgery. In these surgeries, either the parts of the stomach that produce gastric secretions are removed or they are bypassed. This means intrinsic factor, as well as other factors required for B12 absorption, are not available. However, B12 deficiency after gastric surgery does not usually become a clinical issue. This is probably because the body stores many years' worth of B12 in the liver and gastric surgery patients are adequately supplemented with the vitamin.
Although no specific PA susceptibility genes have been identified, a genetic factor likely is involved in the disease. Pernicious anemia is often found in conjunction with other autoimmune disorders, suggesting common autoimmune susceptibility genes may be a causative factor. In spite of that, previous family studies and case reports focusing on PA have suggested that there is a tendency of genetic heritance of PA in particular, and close relatives of the PA patients seem to have higher incidence of PA and associated PA conditions. Moreover, it was further indicated that the formation of antibodies to gastric cells was autosomal dominant gene determined, and the presence of antibodies to the gastric cells might not be necessarily related to the occurrence of atrophic gastritis related to PA.
== Pathophysiology ==
Although the healthy body stores three to five years' worth of B12 in the liver, the usually undetected autoimmune activity in one's gut over a prolonged period of time leads to B12 depletion and the resulting anemia; pernicious anemia refers to one of the hematologic manifestations of chronic auto-immune gastritis, in which the immune system targets the parietal cells of the stomach or intrinsic factor itself, leading to decreased absorption of vitamin B12. The body needs enough intrinsic factor to absorb and reabsorb vitamin B12 from the bile, the lack of which reduces the time needed to develop a deficiency.
B12 is required by enzymes for two reactions: the conversion of methylmalonyl-CoA to succinyl-CoA, and the conversion of homocysteine to methionine. In the latter reaction, the methyl group of levomefolic acid is transferred to homocysteine to produce tetrahydrofolate and methionine. This reaction is catalyzed by the enzyme methionine synthase with B12 as an essential cofactor. During B12 deficiency, this reaction cannot proceed, which leads to the accumulation of levomefolic acid. This accumulation depletes the other types of folate required for purine and thymidylate synthesis, which are required for the synthesis of DNA. Inhibition of DNA replication in maturing red blood cells results in the formation of large, fragile megaloblastic erythrocytes. The neurological aspects of the disease are thought to arise from the accumulation of methylmalonyl- CoA due to the requirement of B12 as a cofactor to the enzyme methylmalonyl-CoA mutase.
== Diagnosis ==
The insidious nature of PA may mean that diagnosis is delayed. Diagnosis is not always straightforward and can be challenging and can take up to several years to receive a diagnosis from the onset of symptoms and almost 60% of those affected are misdiagnosed or not initially diagnosed at all. PA may be suspected when a patient's blood smear shows large, fragile, immature erythrocytes, known as megaloblasts. A diagnosis of PA first requires demonstration of megaloblastic anemia by conducting a full blood count and blood smear, which evaluates the mean corpuscular volume (MCV), as well the mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC). PA is identified with a high MCV (macrocytic anemia) and a normal MCHC (normochromic anemia). Ovalocytes are also typically seen on the blood smear, and a pathognomonic feature of megaloblastic anemias (which include PA and others) is hypersegmented neutrophils. Neuropsychiatric symptoms can precede hematological signs and are often the presenting manifestation of the disease.
Vitamin B12 serum levels are used to detect its deficiency, but do not distinguish its causes. Vitamin B12 levels can be falsely high or low and data for sensitivity and specificity vary widely. Normal serum levels may be found in cases of deficiency where myeloproliferative disorders, liver disease, transcobalamin II, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth are present. Low levels of serum vitamin B12 may be caused by other factors than B12 deficiency, such as folate deficiency, pregnancy, oral contraceptive use, haptocorrin deficiency, and myeloma. High serum levels may caused by supplementing with vitamin B12, present of antibodies to intrinsic factor, or due to underlying condition.
The presence of antibodies to gastric parietal cells and intrinsic factor is common in PA. Parietal cell antibodies are found in other autoimmune disorders and also in up to 10% of healthy individuals. However, around 85% of PA patients have parietal cell antibodies, which means they are a sensitive marker for the disease. Intrinsic factor antibodies are much less sensitive than parietal cell antibodies, but they are much more specific. They are found in about half of PA patients and are very rarely found in other disorders. These antibody tests can distinguish between PA and food-B12 malabsorption.
A buildup of certain metabolites occurs in B12 deficiency due to its role in metabolic processes and cellular functions. Methylmalonic acid (MMA) can be measured in both the blood and urine, whereas homocysteine is only measured in the blood. An increase in both MMA and homocysteine distinguishes B12deficiency from folate deficiency because homocysteine alone increases in the latter.
Elevated gastrin levels can be found in around 80–90% of PA cases, but they may also be found in other forms of gastritis. Decreased pepsinogen I levels or a decreased pepsinogen I to pepsinogen II ratio may also be found, although these findings are less specific to PA and can be found in food-B12 malabsorption and other forms of gastritis.
The diagnosis of atrophic gastritis type A should be confirmed by gastroscopy and stepwise biopsy. About 90% of individuals with PA have antibodies for parietal cells; however, only 50% of all individuals in the general population with these antibodies have pernicious anemia.
=== Differential diagnosis ===
Forms of vitamin B12 deficiency other than PA must be considered in the differential diagnosis of megaloblastic anemia. For example, a B12-deficient state which causes megaloblastic anemia and which may be mistaken for classical PA may be caused by infection with the tapeworm Diphyllobothrium latum, possibly due to the parasite's competition with host for vitamin B12.
The classic test for PA, the Schilling test, is no longer widely used, as more efficient methods are available. This historic test consisted, in its first step, of taking an oral dose of radiolabelled vitamin B12, followed by quantitation of the vitamin in the patient's urine over a 24-hour period via measurement of the radioactivity. A second step of the test repeats the regimen and procedure of the first step, with the addition of oral intrinsic factor. A patient with PA presents lower than normal amounts of intrinsic factor; hence, addition of intrinsic factor in the second step results in an increase in vitamin B12 absorption (over the baseline established in the first). The Schilling test distinguished PA from other forms of B12 deficiency, specifically, from Imerslund–Gräsbeck syndrome, a B12-deficiency caused by mutations in CUBN that codes for cubilin the cobalamin receptor.
Vitamin B12 deficiency is also prevalent in patients having Crohn's disease, so it should be differentiated.
== Treatment ==
Pernicious anemia is usually easily treated by providing the necessary level of vitamin B12 supplementation. Pernicious anemia can be treated with intramuscular injections of vitamin B12. Initially in high daily doses, followed by less frequent lower doses, as the condition improves. Activity may need to be limited during the course of treatment. As long as the body is saturated with vitamin B12 expected to result in cessation of anemia-related symptoms and there are no other symptoms, unless there are irreversible neurological complications. There are not enough studies on whether pills are as effective in improving or eliminating symptoms as intramuscular injections. Folate supplementation may affect the course and treatment of pernicious anemia if vitamin B12 not replaced. In some severe cases of anemia, a blood transfusion may be needed to resolve haematological effects. Treatment is lifelong.
The treatment of PA varies by country and area. Opinions vary over the efficacy of administration (parenteral/oral), the amount and time interval of the doses, or the forms of vitamin B12 (e.g. cyanocobalamin/hydroxocobalamin). More comprehensive studies are still needed in order to validate the feasibility of a particular therapeutic method for PA in clinical practices.
== Prognosis ==
A person with well-treated PA can live a healthy life. Failure to diagnose and treat in time, however, may result in permanent neurological damage, excessive fatigue, depression, memory loss, and other complications. In severe cases, the neurological complications of pernicious anemia can lead to death – hence the name, "pernicious", meaning deadly.
There is an increased risk of gastric cancer in those with pernicious anemia linked to the common feature of atrophic gastritis.
== Epidemiology ==
PA is estimated to affect 0.1% of the general population and 1.9% of those over 60, accounting for 20–50% of B12 deficiency in adults. A review of literature shows that the prevalence of PA is higher in Northern Europe, especially in Scandinavian countries, and among people of African descent, and that increased awareness of the disease and better diagnostic tools might play a role in apparently higher rates of incidence.
== History ==
A case of anemia with a first recognition of associated atrophic gastritis a feature of pernicious anemia, was first described in 1824 by James Combe. This was fully investigated in 1849, by British physician Thomas Addison, from which it acquired the common name of Addison's anemia. In 1871, the first accurate description of the disease in continental Europe was made by Michael Anton Biermer, a German physician who noted the insidious course of the condition. Because it was untreatable and fatal at the time, he first referred to it as "pernicious" anemia. Russell coined the term subacute combined degeneration of spinal cord.
In 1907, Richard Clarke Cabot reported on a series of 1,200 patients with PA; their average survival was between one and three years. Pernicious anemia was a fatal disease before about the year 1920; until the importance of the liver in hematopoiesis was recognized, the treatment of pernicious anemia was unsuccessful and arbitrary. It may have motivated George Whipple, who had a keen interest in liver diseases, to investigate the liver's role in hematopoiesis. Whipple began evaluating the effects of treatments for anemia caused by chronic blood loss. Whipple, Huber, and Robchett studied the effects on hemoglobin and blood regeneration of a variety of treatments, among which only raw liver showed real promise. Serendipity is said to have played a role in this discovery. Whipple observed that blood regeneration was poor in dogs fed cooked liver after chronic blood loss. Had it not been that a lazy laboratory technician gave the dogs raw liver, the much more dramatic response might not have been discovered then.
Around 1926, George Minot and William P. Murphy, who learned of Whipple's discovery, sought raw liver as a treatment for pernicious anemia. They later suggested a high-protein diet with high amounts of raw liver. This caused a rapid improvement in symptoms and a simultaneous rise in red blood cell counts. Fruit and iron were also part of the diet, and it appears that at this point, Minot and Murphy were not quite sure that the liver was a very important factor. It was thought that iron in liver tissue, not liver juice-soluble factor, cured hemorrhagic anemia in dogs. Thus, the discovery of liver juice as a treatment for pernicious anemia had been by coincidence. However, Minot, Murphy, and Whipple received the joint Nobel Prize for discovering a cure for a previously fatal disease of unknown cause in 1934, becoming the first Americans to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.
It is not easy to eat uncooked liver, and extracts were developed as a concentrate of liver juice for intramuscular injection. In 1928, chemist Edwin Cohn prepared an extract that was 50 to 100 times stronger than obtained from raw liver. This became part of the standard management of pernicious anemia until the 1950s. The active ingredient in the liver remained unknown until 1948. The anti-pernicious anemia factor was only isolated from the liver by Smith, Rex, and others. The substance was cobalamin, which the discoverers called "vitamin B12". They showed that giving a few micrograms could prevent relapse in the disease. Dorothy Hodgkin and co-workers went on to use X-ray crystallography to elucidate the structure of cobalamin for which she, too, was awarded a Nobel Prize.
Understanding of the pathogenesis of pernicious anaemia increased over subsequent decades. It had long been known that the disease was associated with defects in the gastrointestinal tract: patients had chronic gastritis and lack of acid secretion (achlorhydria). It is known that transport of physiological amounts of vitamin B12 depends on the combined actions of gastric, ileal and pancreatic components. The gastric moiety was discovered and named 'intrinsic factor' by William Castle in 1930. A further important advance was made in the early 1960s by Doniach with the recognition that pernicious anemia is an autoimmune disease. Pernicious anemia is eventually treated with only injections of B12; injections are typically 1 mg every other day, or twice weekly.
A medical author takes the view that Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of American President Abraham Lincoln, had pernicious anemia for decades and died from it in 1882.
== Research ==
=== Permeation enhancers ===
Treatment using oral drugs is an easier option in management but the bioavailability of vitamin B12 is low. This is due to low absorption in the intestine, and breakdown by enzyme activity. Research continues to focus on the use of permeation enhancers or permeation absorbers in combination with the treatment. One of the better performing enhancers studied is salcoprozate sodium (SNAC). SNAC is able to form a noncovalent complex with cobalamin while preserving its chemical integrity and protect vitamin B12 from gastric acidity. This complex is much more lipophilic than the water-soluble vitamin B12, so is able to pass through cellular membranes with greater ease. Molecular dynamics are used in experiments to gain an understanding of the molecular interactions involved in the different molecules used and the degree of ease achieved in absorption across the gastric epithelium. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramer_vs._Kramer | Kramer vs. Kramer | Kramer vs. Kramer is a 1979 American legal drama film written and directed by Robert Benton, based on Avery Corman's 1977 novel. The film stars Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Justin Henry and Jane Alexander. It tells the story of a couple's divorce, its effect on their young son, and the subsequent evolution of their relationship and views on parenting. Kramer vs. Kramer explores the psychology and fallout of divorce, and touches on emerging and prevailing social issues such as gender roles, fathers' rights, work-life balance, and single parents.
Kramer vs. Kramer was theatrically released December 19, 1979, by Columbia Pictures. The film emerged as a major commercial success at the box office, grossing more than $173 million on an $8 million budget, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1979 in the United States and Canada. It received widespread critical acclaim upon release, with high praise for its direction, story, screenplay and performances of the cast, with major praise directed towards Hoffman and Streep's performances.
Kramer vs. Kramer received a leading nine nominations at the 52nd Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor (for Henry) and Best Supporting Actress (for Alexander and Streep), and won a leading five awards – Best Picture, Best Director (for Benton), Best Actor (for Hoffman), Best Supporting Actress (for Streep) and Best Adapted Screenplay. At the 37th Golden Globe Awards, the film received a leading eight nominations, including Best Director (for Benton), Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture (for Henry) and Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (for Alexander), and won a leading four awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama (for Hoffman) and Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (for Streep). It also received six nominations at the 34th British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Direction (for Benton), Best Actor in a Leading Role (for Hoffman) and Best Actress in a Leading Role (for Streep).
== Plot ==
Ted Kramer, a workaholic advertising executive in New York City, has just landed an important account and job promotion. However, when he shares the news with Joanna, his wife of eight years, she shocks him by announcing she is leaving him. She walks out of the apartment without Billy, the couple's seven-year-old son, because she feels she is unfit to be a mother. The next morning when Billy asks about his mother, Ted explains that she went away to be alone for a while.
Ted drops off Billy at his elementary school, asking him what grade he attends, and leaves him with a woman at the entrance before rushing to work. At the ad agency, Ted confides in Jim O'Connor, his boss and friend. Jim is understanding but makes clear that Ted's situation must not interfere with his new responsibility as the lead person on the Mid-Atlantic Airlines account.
Initially, Ted and Billy struggle to adapt to their new living situation as Billy misses his mother and Ted has to do the housework usually done by Joanna. Father and son gradually settle into a routine, but Ted's work suffers. Billy and Ted have a fight one evening when Billy refuses to eat Salisbury steak and has ice cream instead, resulting in Billy crying for his mother. They later reconcile. When Billy worries that his mother's departure is his fault, Ted assures him that Joanna left because she was not happy in the marriage.
Meanwhile, Ted has become good friends with divorced neighbor Margaret Phelps, with whom Joanna was a confidante. One day, Billy has an accident when he falls off a jungle gym. Ted rushes him to the hospital and asks the doctor to let him stay by his son's side as he receives stitches.
After fifteen months, Ted receives a call from Joanna and meets her at a restaurant. Joanna reveals that she is happier after working in California and seeing a therapist. When she states that she is now ready to raise her son and wants Billy to live with her, Ted becomes furious and leaves. He consults with a divorce attorney John Shaunessy, who cautions that the court usually awards custody to the mother when the child is young.
At work, Jim notifies Ted the agency is letting him go because the Mid-Atlantic Airlines executives are displeased with his work. Knowing he has no chance at custody if he is unemployed, Ted tries to land a job within twenty-four hours, despite few ad firms hiring during the holiday season. He convinces two agency executives to consider his application immediately and accepts a lower-salaried position for which he is overqualified.
The custody hearing begins. In court, Joanna asserts that Ted never abused her or was unfaithful, but she lost her self-esteem as a stay-at-home mother. She insists she has since "become a whole person again" and believes her son needs her more than he does his father. Ted states that he has proven that he can parent as well as Joanna and insists that taking Billy away could cause "irreparable" harm.
The legal battle becomes contentious when the attorneys resort to character assassinations. Shaunessy brings Joanna to tears by forcing her to admit that she was part of the marriage's failure. Ted also admits he made mistakes as a father and husband. However, his job loss and Billy's accident are used to discredit him. Ted expresses resentment at Joanna for her attorney's aggressive tactics. Margaret testifies on behalf of Ted and implores Joanna to recognize that he has become a great father.
Later, Ted learns that Joanna was awarded custody. He decides not to appeal in order to spare Billy the burden of testifying in court. Billy becomes upset as Ted explains that they will still see each other, even though Billy will be living with his mother. On the morning Joanna is scheduled to pick up Billy, she sees Ted in the lobby alone and tearfully reveals that she is relinquishing custody because she does not want to take Billy away from his home. Ted reassures her as she takes the elevator up to inform their son.
== Cast ==
== Production ==
Producer Stanley R. Jaffe and writer and director Robert Benton read Avery Corman's source novel, and were so moved by the story that they bought the rights to make it into a film. Dustin Hoffman was the only actor they envisioned in the lead role of Ted Kramer.
Hoffman, going through a divorce at the time, initially turned down the role. He has since stated that, at that time, he had wanted to quit film acting and return to the stage, due to his depression and distaste for Hollywood. While Jaffe and Benton were courting Hoffman, James Caan was offered the role, but turned it down, as he was concerned the film would be a flop. Al Pacino was offered the role, but felt it was not for him. Jon Voight also turned down the role. Hoffman met with Jaffe and Benton at a London hotel during the making of Agatha (1979), and was convinced to accept the role. Hoffman has credited Benton and this film for rejuvenating his love of film acting, and inspiring the emotional level of many scenes. Hoffman was reminded of his love for children and "got closer being a father by playing a father".
Benton and Jaffe selected Justin Henry to play Billy. Hoffman worked extensively with Henry, then 7 years old, in each scene to put him at ease. Benton encouraged Henry to improvise to make his performance more natural. The ice cream scene in which Billy defies Ted by skipping dinner and eating ice cream was all improvised by Hoffman and Henry. Hoffman contributed many personal moments and dialogue; Benton offered shared screenplay credit but Hoffman declined.
Kate Jackson was offered the role of Joanna Kramer, but had to turn it down, as producer Aaron Spelling was unable to rearrange the shooting schedule of the TV series Charlie's Angels, in which Jackson was starring. The part was offered to Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda and Ali MacGraw before Meryl Streep was cast.
Streep was initially cast as Phyllis (the role eventually taken by JoBeth Williams), but she was able to force her way into auditioning for Joanna in front of Hoffman, Benton and Jaffe. She found the character in the novel and script unsympathetic ("an ogre, a princess, an ass", as she called her), and approached Joanna from a more sympathetic point of view. Hoffman believed the death of Streep's fiancé, John Cazale, only months earlier, gave her an emotional edge and "still-fresh pain" to draw on for the performance. Streep was contracted to work only 12 days on the film.
Gail Strickland was first cast as Ted's neighbor Margaret, but departed after a week of filming (due to "artistic differences", according to Columbia Pictures), and was replaced by Jane Alexander. Michael Schulman claims Strickland was so rattled by the intensity of filming with Hoffman that she developed a stammer, making her lines difficult to follow. Strickland disputes this account, saying she could not quickly memorize improvised lines Hoffman gave her, which agitated him, and she was fired two days later.
Cinematographer Néstor Almendros, a collaborator on numerous François Truffaut films, had been hired with the expectation that Truffaut would direct. Truffaut turned it down, as he was busy with his own projects, and suggested screenwriter Robert Benton direct the film.
JoBeth Williams worried about disrobing in the scene with a young Justin Henry. "I was afraid my nudity would traumatize the little boy", she said, but was relieved that he seemed unbothered.
== Controversy ==
Hoffman has been widely reported to have harassed Streep during the making of the film, and the two had a contentious working relationship. In a 1979 Time magazine interview, Streep claimed that Hoffman groped her breast on their first meeting, although a representative for Streep said the article was not "an accurate rendering of that meeting". When Streep advocated portraying Joanna as more sympathetic and vulnerable than she was written, she received pushback from Hoffman. According to one unauthorized biography of Streep, such was Hoffman's commitment to method acting, he would hurl insults and obscenities at Streep, taunt her with the name of her recently deceased fiancé, John Cazale, claiming it was designed to draw a better performance from her. He famously shattered a wine glass against the wall without telling her (only informing the cameraman beforehand to keep shooting), sending glass shards into her hair. Her response was, "Next time you do that, I'd appreciate you letting me know." In 2018, Streep claimed that Hoffman slapped her hard without warning while filming a scene. "This was my first film, and it was my first take in my first film, and he just slapped me. And you see it in the film. It was overstepping."
== Reception ==
Kramer vs. Kramer received widespread critical acclaim upon release, with high praise for its direction, story, screenplay and performances of the cast, with major praise directed towards Hoffman and Streep's performances.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 101 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.20/10. The website's consensus reads: "The divorce subject isn't as shocking, but Kramer vs. Kramer is still a thoughtful, well-acted drama that resists the urge to take sides or give easy answers." It has a score of 77 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on nine reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars, giving praise to Benton's screenplay. "His characters aren't just talking to each other, they're revealing things about themselves and can sometimes be seen in the act of learning about their own motives. That's what makes Kramer vs. Kramer such a touching film: We get the feeling at times that personalities are changing and decisions are being made even as we watch them."
Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it a "fine, witty, moving, most intelligent adaptation of Avery Corman's best-selling novel", with Streep giving "one of the major performances of the year", and Hoffman "splendid in one of the two or three best roles of his career."
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film four stars out of four, and wrote, "Kramer vs. Kramer never loses its low-key, realistic touch. You will sit at the end of the film wondering why we don't see more pictures like this. After all, its story is not all that unusual." He thought that Hoffman gave "one of his most memorable performances", and "should win the Academy Award next April".
Variety wrote, "Stories on screen about men leaving women, and women leaving men have been abundant as of late, but hardly any has grappled with the issue in such a forthright and honest fashion as Kramer ... While a nasty court battle ensues, the human focus is never abandoned, and it's to the credit of not only Benton and Jaffe, but especially Hoffman and Streep, that both leading characters emerge as credible and sympathetic."
Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times declared it "as nearly perfect a film as can be", and "a motion picture with an emotional wallop second to none this year."
Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called the film "a triumph of partisan pathos, a celebration of father-son bonding that astutely succeeds where tearjerkers like The Champ (1979) so mawkishly failed".
Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote, "All the people go through expected difficulties the way that runners take the hurdles in a track event: no surprise in it, it's just a question of how they do it. But the actors make it more."
Shortly after the film's release, The New York Times and Time magazine published separate articles in which members of the bar and bench criticized the court battle scenes as "legally out of date". According to the legal experts interviewed for the articles, a modern judge would have made use of psychological reports, and also would have considered the wishes of the child. Another criticism was that the option of joint custody was never explored.
In 2003, The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Ever list.
=== Box office ===
Kramer vs. Kramer grossed $5,559,722 in its opening week from 534 theaters. It went on to gross $106.3 million in the United States and Canada. In its first 13 weeks overseas, it grossed more than $67 million. It went on to become Columbia's highest-grossing film overseas, with theatrical rentals of $57 million, until surpassed in 1990 by Look Who's Talking (released by Columbia TriStar internationally).
=== Awards and nominations ===
American Film Institute Lists
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – Nominated
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – Nominated
AFI's 10 Top 10 – #3 Courtroom Drama
== Cultural influence ==
Kramer vs. Kramer reflected a cultural shift that occurred during the 1970s, when ideas about motherhood and fatherhood were changing. The film was widely praised for the way in which it gave equal weight and importance to both Joanna and Ted's points of view.
The film made use of the first movement of Antonio Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto in C Major, making the piece more familiar among classical music listeners.
Daniel Balavoine's "Mon fils ma bataille" (1980), a song about a painful divorce and a father's struggle to keep custody of his child, was inspired by the singer-songwriter's own parents' divorce, his guitarist Colin Swinburne's divorce, and by Kramer vs. Kramer.
== Adaptation ==
In 1987, the film was remade in Turkish as Oğulcan, directed and acted by Cüneyt Arkın, in Hindi as Akele Hum Akele Tum in 1995, starring Aamir Khan and Manisha Koirala, and in Urdu as Zindagi Kitni Haseen Hay in 2016, starring Sajal Ali and Feroze Khan. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Darwin | Ben Darwin | Ben Darwin (born 17 October 1976) is an Australian former rugby union player and coach. He played 28 times for the Wallabies, Australia's national team, from 2001 to 2003. During this time, Darwin played games against the British and Irish Lions and was part of the Wallabies' 2003 Rugby World Cup team. His usual position was tighthead prop, although on occasion he played on the loosehead side.
== Playing career ==
Darwin made his international debut for Australia in June 2001, coming off the bench against the touring Lions in Brisbane. He also played in the 2001 Tri Nations Series later that year, and was capped against Spain, England, France and Wales. He played in the 2002 Tri Nations Series, as well as being capped another four times during the end of year tour. He played 11 times for Australia in 2003, and was included in the 2003 World Cup squad. It was during the Wallabies' World Cup semi-final win against the All Blacks that Darwin sustained a neck injury that forced him to retire from rugby.
== Coaching career ==
After retirement, Darwin made the switch from player to coach, starting at club rugby level with Sydney's Northern Suburbs where he was appointed head coach in 2005. In 2006, Darwin was involved with the start up of the Super 14 club, the Western Force, as the Forwards Coach until mid-2006. In 2007, Darwin was selected to be a part of the commentary team covering the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France for the Australian television network, Channel 10. While he France, Darwin was also in training for his first Iron Man triathlon, which he completed in Port Macquarie in April 2008. He finished his second Iron Man, again at Port Macquarie, the following year.
At the beginning of June 2008, Darwin moved to Tokyo where he served as the Forwards Coach for the Japanese Top League Rugby team, the NTT Shining Arcs, a team owned by Japanese telecommunications giant NTT. Darwin was integral to the club's promotion from the 2nd Division Top East competition to Top League at the end of the 09/10 season.
At the beginning of 2010, Darwin married a writer/journalist from Melbourne. Shortly after, Darwin and his wife returned to Australia in order for Darwin to take up the Scrum Coach/Video Analyst position for the Melbourne Rebels Super Rugby franchise team.
Darwin writes regular columns on rugby matters for www.rugbyzone.com.
Darwin began Gain Line Analytics in 2013 and works with leading sporting clubs, national teams and corporate clients.
== Career Timeline ==
2005: Head Coach at Northern Suburbs, Sydney Australia
2006: Forwards Coach at Western Force, Perth, Australia
2008–10: Forwards Coach and Video Analyst at NTT Shining Arcs, Tokyo, Japan.
2010–12: Scrum Coach and Video Analyst/Head of IT at Melbourne Rebels, Melbourne, Australia.
2012–13: Forwards Coach for Suntory Sungoliath, Tokyo, Japan.
2013-:Co Founded Gain Line Analytics with Simon Strachan former senior interior designer with Holden Australia. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_waterfalls_by_height#By_overall_height | List of waterfalls by height#By overall height | The following are lists of waterfalls in the world by height, classified into two categories — natural and artificial. Natural waterfalls are further subdivided between overall height and tallest single drop. Each column (Waterfall, Height, Locality, Country) is sortable by using the up/down link in the column headings at the top of each column.
== World's tallest natural waterfalls ==
=== By overall height ===
This list consists of notable waterfalls which are known to have an overall height of at least 600 m (1,969 ft). Underwater falls, such as the 3,505 m (11,499 ft) Denmark Strait cataract, are not included.
=== By tallest single drop ===
This list consists of the waterfalls which are known to have a singular individual step with a vertical drop of at least 450 m (1,476 ft).
== World's tallest artificial waterfalls ==
These are some of the more notable artificial waterfalls. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Thornton | Christopher Thornton | Christopher Thornton (born March 29, 1967) is an American actor. He is known for his role as Kenny "Shammy" Shamberg in Magnum P.I., and has had numerous other film and television roles from 1990 to the present.
== Early life and education ==
Thornton was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father was an amateur opera singer who appeared in local theater. Christopher appeared in several plays while majoring in theater at the University of New Orleans, but quit college after two years to relocate to Los Angeles and train at the Stella Adler Conservatory.
== Career ==
Thornton made his first feature film appearance in the 1990 horror sequel Watchers II, playing a young man who gets his eyes gouged out by the mutant antagonist. Only two years later, at age 25, Thornton suffered a tragic accident while rock climbing which fractured two vertebrae and left him paralyzed from the waist down. He returned to mostly theater roles for the remainder of the 1990s. In 2000, he was cast to play Hamlet at the Lillian Theater in Los Angeles. Believed to be the first actor to ever play the iconic Shakespeare character in a wheelchair, Thornton's performance won rave reviews.
Thornton has gone on to appear in numerous film and television roles. He has recurred in TV series such as Any Day Now, Rules of Engagement and Vice Principals, and had guest roles in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Alias, Brothers & Sisters, My Name Is Earl, Grey's Anatomy and Will & Grace. From 2018 to 2024, he played recurring character Kenny "Shammy" Shamberg, a Marine veteran paralyzed during a tour of duty in Iraq, on the CBS reboot of Magnum P.I.
Thornton was both writer and lead actor for the 2010 film Sympathy for Delicious, playing disc jockey "Delicious" Dean O'Dwyer.
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
=== Television === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertius_Zongo | Tertius Zongo | Tertius Zongo (born 18 May 1957) was the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso from June 2007 to April 2011.
== Biography ==
Zongo was born in Koudougou. He has an extensive background in economics and accounting. He became Minister Delegate for Budget and Planning, under the Minister of the Economy, Finances, and Planning, in June 1995. In February 1996 he became Government Spokesman in addition to his role as Minister Delegate, and he remained Government Spokesman until November 2000. His portfolio was changed to that of Minister Delegate for Finance and Economic Development, under the Prime Minister, in September 1996; he was subsequently promoted to the post of Minister of the Economy and Finance on 10 June 1997. He remained in the latter position until November 2000. On 14 February 2002 he became Ambassador to the United States, serving in that post until he was named prime minister in June 2007.
Zongo also served as governor for Burkina Faso to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the African Development Bank and the Islamic Bank of Development. In 1992, he worked as director general of Cooperation at the Ministry of Finances and Planning and as chief of the Department of Multilateral Cooperation from 1988 to 1992. He has also been a professor of accounting, business economy and financial analysis at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. Zongo holds a master's degree in economic sciences from the Institut d'Administration des Entreprises in France.
== Prime minister ==
Following the May 2007 parliamentary election, Zongo was appointed prime minister by President Blaise Compaore on 4 June 2007. His government, composed of 34 members, was appointed on 10 June; its 34 members (excluding Zongo himself) included two ministers of state, 26 ministers, and six minister-delegates. Zongo took office as prime minister on 11 June, succeeding Paramanga Ernest Yonli.
Amidst serious unrest, Compaore appointed Luc-Adolphe Tiao to replace Zongo on 18 April 2011. Zongo was subsequently appointed to the Board of Directors of SEMAFO, a Canadian mining company with operations in Burkina Faso and other West African countries, in May 2012. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City | Vatican City | Vatican City, officially the Vatican City State (Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano; Latin: Status Civitatis Vaticanae), often shortened as the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state. Ruled by the pope, it is an enclave within the city of Rome, Italy, and serves as the administrative centre of the Catholic Church. Vatican City is governed by the See of Rome, commonly known as the Holy See, itself a sovereign entity under international law, which maintains its temporal power, governance, diplomacy, and spiritual independence. Vatican is also used as a metonym for the Holy See, which is the central governing body of the Catholic Church and Vatican City, comprising the pope and the Roman Curia. The independent state of Vatican City came into existence in 1929 via the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy, which spoke of it as a creation, not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756–1870), which had previously encompassed much of Central Italy.
With an area of 48.99 hectares (121 acres) and a population of about 882 in 2024, it is the smallest sovereign state in the world both by area and by population. It is the only country in the world with a population of under 1,000 people. It is among the least populated capitals in the world. As governed by the Holy See, Vatican City State is an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state ruled by the pope, who is the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church; the highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergy of various origins. The Holy See dates to early Christianity and is the principal episcopal see of the Catholic Church, which in 2018 had about 1.329 billion baptized Catholics in the world, in the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches. After the Avignon Papacy (1309–1377) the popes have mainly resided at the Apostolic Palace within what is now Vatican City, although at times residing instead in the Quirinal Palace in Rome or elsewhere.
Vatican City contains religious and cultural sites such as St Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican Apostolic Library, and the Vatican Museums. They feature some of the world's most famous paintings and sculptures. The economy of Vatican City is supported financially by donations from Catholic believers, by the sale of postage stamps and souvenirs, fees for admission to museums, and sales of publications. Vatican City has no taxes, and items are duty-free.
== Name ==
The name Vatican City was first used in the Lateran Treaty, signed on 11 February 1929, which established the modern city-state named after Vatican Hill, the geographic location of the state within the city of Rome. "Vatican" itself is derived from the name of an Etruscan settlement, Vatica or Vaticum, located in the general area the Romans called Ager Vaticanus, "Vatican territory".
The Italian-language name of the city is Città del Vaticano or, more formally, Stato della Città del Vaticano, meaning 'State of Vatican City'. Its Latin name is Status Civitatis Vaticanae; this is used in official documents by the Holy See, the Church and the pope.
== History ==
=== Early history ===
The name "Vatican" was already in use in the time of the Roman Republic for the Ager Vaticanus, a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome, located between the Janiculum, the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario, down to the Aventine Hill and up to the confluence of the Cremera creek. The toponym Ager Vaticanus is attested until the 1st century AD: afterwards, another toponym appeared, Vaticanus, denoting an area much more restricted: the Vatican Hill, today's St. Peter's Square, and possibly today's Via della Conciliazione. Because of its vicinity to Rome's archenemy, the Etruscan city of Veii (another naming for the Ager Vaticanus was Ripa Veientana or Ripa Etrusca), and for being subjected to the floods of the Tiber, the Romans considered this originally uninhabited part of Rome dismal and ominous.
The particularly low quality of Vatican wine, even after the reclamation of the area, was commented on by the poet Martial (AD 40 – c. AD 102). Tacitus wrote that in AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, when the northern army that brought Vitellius to power arrived in Rome, "a large proportion camped in the unhealthy districts of the Vatican, which resulted in many deaths among the common soldiery; and the Tiber being close by, the inability of the Gauls and Germans to bear the heat and the consequent greed with which they drank from the stream weakened their bodies, which were already an easy prey to disease".
During the Roman Empire, many villas were constructed there, after Agrippina the Elder (14 BC – 18 October AD 33) drained the area and laid out her gardens in the early-1st century AD. In AD 40 her son, the emperor Caligula, built in her gardens a circus for charioteers. It was later completed by the emperor Nero and named the Circus Gaii et Neronis, usually called, simply, the Circus of Nero.
The Vatican obelisk in St Peter's Square is the last visible remnant from the Circus of Nero. It was brought from Heliopolis in Roman Egypt by the emperor Caligula. The obelisk originally stood at the centre of the spina (median) of the Roman circus. The circus became the site of martyrdom for many Christians after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. Tradition states that it was in this circus that Saint Peter was crucified upside-down. In 1586, the obelisk was moved to its current position by Pope Sixtus V, using a method devised by the Italian architect Domenico Fontana.
Opposite the circus was a cemetery separated by the Via Cornelia. Funeral monuments, mausoleums, small tombs, and altars to pagan gods of all kinds of polytheistic religions, were constructed before the construction of the Constantinian Basilica of St. Peter in the first half of the 4th century. A shrine dedicated to the Phrygian goddess Cybele and her consort Attis remained active long after the ancient Basilica of St. Peter was built nearby.
Remains of this ancient necropolis were discovered during renovations by popes throughout the centuries, increasing in frequency during the Renaissance until it was systematically excavated from 1939 to 1941 on the order of Pope Pius XII.
The Constantinian basilica was built in 326 over what was believed to be the tomb of Saint Peter, buried in that cemetery. From then on, the land mass became more populated in connection with activity at the basilica. A palace was constructed nearby as early as the 5th century during the pontificate of Pope Symmachus (reigned 498–514).
=== Papal States ===
Popes gradually came to have a secular role as governors of regions near Rome. They ruled the Papal States, which covered a large portion of the Italian peninsula, for more than a thousand years until the mid-19th century, when all the territory belonging to the papacy was seized by the newly created Kingdom of Italy.
For most of this time, the popes did not live at the Vatican. The Lateran Palace, on the opposite side of Rome, was their habitual residence for about a thousand years. From 1309 to 1377, they lived in Avignon in France. On their return to Rome, they chose to live at the Vatican. They moved to the Quirinal Palace in 1583, after work on it was completed under Pope Paul V (1605–1621). In 1870, after the capture of Rome, popes have lived in the Vatican. Their prior residence at the Quirinal Palace was taken over by the King of Italy.
=== Under Italian rule (1871–1929) ===
In 1870 the pope's holdings were left in an uncertain situation when Rome was annexed by Italian forces, bringing to completion the Italian unification, after a nominal resistance by the papal forces. Between 1861 and 1929, the status of the pope of Rome was referred to as the "Roman Question".
Italy made no attempt to interfere with the Holy See within the Vatican walls. However, it confiscated church property in many places. In 1871 the Quirinal Palace was confiscated by the king of Italy and became the royal palace. Thereafter, the popes resided undisturbed within the Vatican walls, and certain papal prerogatives were recognized by the Law of Guarantees, including the right to send and receive ambassadors. The popes did not recognize the Italian king's right to rule in Rome, and they refused to leave the Vatican compound until the dispute was resolved in 1929. Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), the last ruler of the Papal States, was referred to as a "prisoner in the Vatican". Forced to give up secular power, the popes focused on spiritual issues.
=== Lateran treaties ===
This situation was resolved on 11 February 1929, when the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy was signed by Prime Minister and Head of Government Benito Mussolini on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel III and by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri for Pope Pius XI. The treaty, which was ratified and took effect on 7 June 1929, established the independent state of Vatican City and reaffirmed the special status of Catholic Christianity in Italy.
=== World War II ===
The Holy See, which governed the Vatican City, pursued a policy of neutrality during World War II under the leadership of Pope Pius XII. German troops occupied Rome after the September 1943 Armistice of Cassibile, with Allied forces pushing them out in 1944. Both sides respected the Vatican City's status as neutral territory.
One of the main diplomatic priorities of Pius XII was to prevent the bombing of Rome. A high level of sensitivity led him to protest even the dropping of pamphlets over Rome by the Royal Air Force, claiming that the few which landed within the Vatican City violated its neutrality. The British government's policy towards the Vatican, as expressed in the minutes of a Cabinet meeting, was "that we should on no account molest the Vatican City, but that our action as regards the rest of Rome would depend upon how far the Italian government observed the rules of war".
After the United States entered into the war, US officials were against bombing the Vatican City, fearful of offending Catholic members of the American military, but said that "they could not stop the British from bombing Rome if the British so decided". The US military even exempted Catholic servicemembers from air raids on Rome and other areas with a significant Catholic presence, unless they voluntarily agreed to participate. Notably, with the exception of Rome, and presumably the possibility of the Vatican, no Catholic US servicemember refused a mission within German-held Italy. On the other hand, the British insisted "they would bomb Rome whenever the needs of the war demanded".
In December 1942, the British envoy to the Holy See suggested that Rome be declared an open city, a suggestion that the Holy See took more seriously than was probably meant by the envoy, who did not want Rome to be an open city. Mussolini rejected the suggestion when the Holy See put it to him. In connection with the Allied invasion of Sicily, 500 United States Army Air Forces aircraft bombed Rome on 19 July 1943, targeting Rome's railway hub in particular. Approximately 1,500 people were killed, and Pius XII, who had been described in the previous month as "worried sick" about the possibility of Rome being bombed, toured the affected areas. Another Allied bombing raid took place on 13 August 1943, after Mussolini had been ousted from power. The following day, the new Italian government declared Rome an open city, after consulting the Holy See on the wording of the declaration.
=== Post-war history ===
Pius XII refrained from creating cardinals during the war. By the end of World War II, there were several prominent vacancies: Cardinal Secretary of State, Camerlengo, Chancellor, and Prefect for the Congregation for the Religious among them. Pius XII created 32 cardinals in early 1946, having announced his intention to do so in his preceding Christmas message.
In 1970 the Pontifical Military Corps, except for the Swiss Guard, was disbanded by Paul VI. The Gendarmerie Corps was transformed into a civilian police and security force.
In 1984 a new concordat between the Holy See and Italy modified provisions of the earlier treaty, including the position of Catholic Christianity as the Italian state religion, a position given to it by a statute of the Kingdom of Sardinia of 1848.
In 1995 construction of a new guest house, Domus Sanctae Marthae, adjacent to St Peter's Basilica was criticized by Italian environmental groups, backed by Italian politicians. They claimed the new building would block views of the Basilica from nearby Italian apartments. For a short while the plans strained the relations between the Vatican and the Italian government. The head of the Vatican's Department of Technical Services robustly rejected challenges to the Vatican State's right to build within its borders.
== Geography ==
The territory of Vatican City is part of the Vatican Hill, and of the adjacent former Vatican Fields. It is in this territory that St Peter's Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, the Sistine Chapel, and museums were built, along with other buildings. The area was part of the Roman rione of Borgo until 1929. Being separated from Rome, on the west bank of the river Tiber, the area was an outcrop of Rome that was protected by being included within the walls of Leo IV (847–855), and later expanded by the current fortification walls, built under Paul III (1534–1549), Pius IV (1559–1565), and Urban VIII (1623–1644).
When the Lateran Treaty of 1929 that gave the state its form was being prepared, the boundaries of the proposed territory were influenced by the fact that much of it was all but enclosed by this loop. For some tracts of the frontier, there was no wall, but the line of certain buildings supplied part of the boundary, and for a small part of the frontier a modern wall was constructed.
The territory includes St Peter's Square, distinguished from the territory of Italy only by a white line along the limit of the square, where it touches Piazza Pio XII. St. Peter's Square is reached through the Via della Conciliazione which runs from close to the Tiber to St Peter's. This grand approach was constructed by Benito Mussolini after the conclusion of the Lateran Treaty. St Peter's Square is also partially encircled by the Ricciolo d'Italia, a small strip of Italian territory.
According to the Lateran Treaty, certain properties of the Holy See that are located in Italian territory, most notably the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo and the major basilicas, enjoy extraterritorial status similar to that of foreign embassies. These properties, scattered all over Rome and Italy, house essential offices and institutions necessary to the character and mission of the Holy See.
Castel Gandolfo and the named basilicas are patrolled internally by police agents of Vatican City State and not by Italian police. According to the Lateran Treaty, St. Peter's Square, up to but not including the steps leading to the basilica, is normally patrolled by the Italian police.
There are no passport controls for visitors entering Vatican City from the surrounding Italian territory. There is free public access to Saint Peter's Square and Basilica and, on the occasion of papal general audiences, to the hall in which they are held. For these audiences and for major ceremonies in Saint Peter's Basilica and Square, tickets free of charge must be obtained beforehand. The Vatican Museums, incorporating the Sistine Chapel, usually charge an entrance fee. There is no general public access to the gardens. Guided tours for small groups can be arranged to the gardens and excavations under the basilica. Other Vatican locations are only open to individuals who have business to transact there.
=== Climate ===
Vatican City's climate is the same as Rome's: a temperate, Mediterranean climate Csa. It has mild, rainy winters from October to mid-May, and hot, dry summers from May to September. Some minor local features, principally mists and dews, are caused by the anomalous bulk of St Peter's Basilica, the elevation, the fountains, and the size of the large paved square. The highest temperature ever recorded was 40.8 °C (105.4 °F) on 28 June 2022.
In July 2007 the Vatican accepted a proposal by two firms based respectively in San Francisco and Budapest, to become the first carbon neutral state by offsetting its carbon dioxide emissions with the creation of a Vatican Climate Forest in Hungary, as a purely symbolic gesture to encourage Catholics to do more to safeguard the planet. Nothing came of the project.
In November 2008 the Vatican installed solar panels on the roof of the Paul VI Audience Hall.
=== Gardens ===
Within the territory of the Vatican City are the Vatican Gardens (Italian: Giardini Vaticani), which account for about half of the Vatican territory. The gardens, established during the Renaissance and Baroque era, are decorated with fountains and sculptures.
The gardens cover approximately 23 hectares (57 acres). The highest point is 60 metres (197 ft) above mean sea level. Stone walls bound the area in the north, south, and west.
The gardens date back to medieval times when orchards and vineyards extended to the north of the Papal Apostolic Palace. In 1279 Pope Nicholas III (1277–1280) moved his residence back to the Vatican from the Lateran Palace and enclosed this area with walls. He planted an orchard (pomerium), a lawn (pratellum), and a garden (viridarium).
== Governance ==
The politics of Vatican City takes place in the context of an absolute elective monarchy and being governed by the Holy See, in which the head of the Catholic Church holds power. The pope exercises principal legislative, executive, and judicial power over the State of Vatican City, which is a rare case of a non-hereditary monarchy.
=== State and Holy See ===
The Vatican City State, created in 1929 by the Lateran Pacts, provides the Holy See with a temporal jurisdiction and independence within a small territory. It is distinct from the Holy See. The state can thus be deemed a significant but not essential instrument of the Holy See. The Holy See itself has existed continuously as a juridical entity since Roman Imperial times and has been internationally recognized as a powerful and independent sovereign entity since Late Antiquity to the present, without interruption even at times when it was deprived of territory (e.g. 1870 to 1929).
Vatican City is one of the few widely recognized independent states that has not become a member of the United Nations. The Holy See, which is distinct from Vatican City State, has permanent observer status, with all the rights of a full member except for a vote in the UN General Assembly.
=== Structure ===
The government of Vatican City has a unique structure. As governed by the Holy See, the pope is the sovereign of the state, but he is supported by different bodies. Legislative authority is managed, in the pope's name, by the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, a body of cardinals appointed by the pope for five-year periods. Executive power is exercised by the president of that commission, who is consequently also the president of the governorate, assisted by the general secretary and the deputy general secretary. The state's foreign relations are entrusted to the Holy See's Secretariat of State and diplomatic service.
Nevertheless, the pope has absolute power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches over Vatican City,
and is thus the only absolute monarch in Europe.
Operationally, there are departments that deal with health, security, telecommunications and other matters.
==== Sede vacante ====
The Cardinal Camerlengo presides over the Apostolic Camera, to which is entrusted the administration of the property and protection of other papal temporal powers and rights of the Holy See during the period of the empty throne or sede vacante (papal vacancy). Those of the Vatican State remain under the control of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State. Acting with three other cardinals chosen by lot every three days, one from each order of cardinals (cardinal bishop, cardinal priest, and cardinal deacon), he in a sense performs during that period the functions of head of state of Vatican City. All the decisions these four cardinals take must be approved by the College of Cardinals as a whole.
==== Papal nobility ====
The nobility that was closely associated with the Holy See at the time of the Papal States continued to be associated with the Papal Court after the loss of these territories, generally with merely nominal duties (see Papal Master of the Horse, Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, Hereditary officers of the Roman Curia, Black Nobility). They also formed the ceremonial Noble Guard. In the first decades of the existence of the Vatican City State, executive functions were entrusted to some of them, including that of delegate for the State of Vatican City, now denominated president of the Commission for Vatican City. With the motu proprio Pontificalis Domus of March 1968, Pope Paul VI abolished the honorary positions that had continued to exist until then, such as Quartermaster general and Master of the Horse.
=== Head of state ===
As Vatican City is governed by the Holy See, the pope is ex officio the head of state, a function dependent on his primordial function as bishop of the diocese of Rome and head of the Catholic Church. The term "Holy See" refers not to the Vatican state but to the pope's spiritual and pastoral governance, largely exercised through the Roman Curia. His official title with regards to Vatican City is Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City.
Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, United States, was elected on 8 May 2025. His principal subordinate government official for Vatican City as well as the country's de facto head of government is the president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, who since 1952 exercises the functions previously belonging to the Governor of Vatican City. Since 2001, the president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State also has the title of president of the Governorate of the State of Vatican City. The president is the Italian sister Raffaella Petrini, who was appointed by Pope Francis on 1 March 2025, and was reconfirmed by Pope Leo XIV on 9 May 2025.
=== Government and justice ===
Legislative functions are administered by the pope, but are also delegated to the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, led by the president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State. Its members are cardinals appointed by the pope for terms of five years. Acts of the commission must be approved by the Pope, through the Holy See's Secretariat of State, and must be published in a special appendix of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Most of the content of this appendix consists of routine executive decrees, such as approval for a new set of postage stamps.
Executive authority is delegated to the president of the Governorate of Vatican City, who is also the president of the Pontificial Commission. In addition, the Governorate include two immediate collaborators of the president: the general secretary and the deputy general secretary, members of the General Secretariat, each appointed by the pope for five-year terms. Important actions of the Governorate must be confirmed by the Pontifical Commission and by the Pope through the Secretariat of State.
Both the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State and the president of the Governorate of Vatican City can be assisted by the councilors of Vatican City State in drafting legislation and other important issues. The president of the Governorate can convoke the members of the Council of Directors, together with external experts and people. The Governorate oversees the central governmental functions through several departments and offices. The directors and officials of these offices are appointed by the Pope for five-year terms.
The Governorate is organized into central offices, one for law and another for personnel matters, and directorates with roles in the following matters:
Infrastructure and services
Telecommunications and information systems
Security and civil protection services
Economy
Health and hygiene
Museums and cultural heritage
Pontifical villas
There are subsidiary bodies for monetary, disciplinary, personnel and personnel selection matters.
In the pope's name, judiciary functions (Vatican judiciary) are exercised by four bodies: a Supreme Court, a Court of Appeal, a Tribunal and a Sole Judge, whose roles are established by the Vatican codes of criminal and civil procedure, and the 2013 "Motu Proprio On the Jurisdiction of Judicial Authorities of Vatican City State in Criminal Matters". At the Vatican's request, sentences imposed can be served in Italy (see the section on crime, below).
Due to obvious territorial constraints, many headquarters and offices of the Holy See are located on Italian territory. They are granted the same immunity as diplomatic missions thanks to the Lateran Treaty and are commonly defined as "extraterritorial areas".
=== National and public security ===
As Vatican City is an enclave within Italy, its military defence is provided by the Italian Armed Forces. There is no formal defence treaty with Italy, as Vatican City is a neutral state. Vatican City has no armed forces of its own, although the Swiss Guard is a military corps of the Holy See responsible for the personal security of the pope, and residents in the state. Soldiers of the Swiss Guard are entitled to hold Vatican City State passports and nationality.
Swiss mercenaries were historically recruited by popes as part of an army for the Papal States. The Pontifical Swiss Guard was founded by Pope Julius II on 22 January 1506 as the pope's personal bodyguard and continues to fulfill that function. It is listed in the Annuario Pontificio under "Holy See", not under "State of Vatican City". In 2005, the Guard had 134 members. Recruitment is arranged by a special agreement between the Holy See and Switzerland.
All recruits must be Catholic, unmarried males with Swiss citizenship who have completed their basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces with certificates of good conduct, be between the ages of 19 and 30, and be at least 174 cm (5 ft 9 in) in height. Members are equipped with small arms and the traditional halberd, and trained in bodyguarding tactics. Together with the Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City, the Swiss Guard have roles in the Italy-Vatican border control. The Palatine Guard and the Noble Guard, the last armed forces of the Vatican City State, were disbanded by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
The entire territory of Vatican City has been listed on the International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection and, in 1984, among World Heritage Sites. Consequently, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict provides international legal protection against armed conflicts. A large part of the historical documents of the very extensive Vatican Apostolic Archive is stored in the "Bunker", which was inaugurated in 1980. This facility is a two-storey reinforced concrete vault, under the Cortile della Pigna, equipped with systems for fire protection, climate and humidity control, and physical security.
Civil defence is the responsibility of the Corps of Firefighters of the Vatican City State, the national fire brigade. Dating its origins to the early nineteenth century, the Corps in its present form was established in 1941. It is responsible for fire fighting, and civil defence scenarios including flooding, natural disasters, and mass casualty incidents. The Corps is governmentally supervised through the Directorate for Security Services and Civil Defence, which is also responsible for the Gendarmerie (see below).
The Gendarmerie Corps (Corpo della Gendarmeria) is the gendarmerie, or police and security force, of Vatican City and the extraterritorial properties of the Holy See. The corps is responsible for security, public order, border control, traffic control, criminal investigation, and other general police duties in Vatican City including providing security for the pope outside Vatican City. The corps has 130 personnel and is a part of the Directorate for Security Services and Civil Defence (which also includes the Vatican Fire Brigade), an organ of the Governorate of Vatican City.
Even though St Peter's Square is part of Vatican territory, it is normally safeguarded by Italian police forces.
==== Crime ====
Crime in Vatican City consists largely of purse snatching, pickpocketing and shoplifting by outsiders. The tourist foot-traffic in St Peter's Square is one of the main locations for pickpockets in Vatican City. If crimes are committed in the square, the perpetrators may be arrested and tried by the Italian authorities, since that area is normally patrolled by Italian police.
Under the Lateran Treaty, Italy will, at the request of the Holy See, punish individuals for crimes committed within the Vatican City and will itself proceed against the person who committed the offence, if that person takes refuge in Italian territory. Persons accused of crimes recognized as such both in Italy and in Vatican City that are committed in Italian territory will be handed over to the Italian authorities if they take refuge in the Vatican City or in buildings that enjoy immunity under the treaty.
The Vatican City has no prison system, apart from a few detention cells for pre-trial detention. People convicted of committing crimes in the Vatican serve terms in Italian prisons (Polizia Penitenziaria), with costs covered by the Vatican.
=== Foreign relations ===
Vatican City State is a recognized national territory under international law. The Holy See conducts diplomatic relations on its behalf, in addition to the Holy See's own diplomacy, entering into international agreements in its regard. Vatican City thus has no diplomatic service of its own.
Because of space limitations, Vatican City is one of the few countries in the world that are unable to host embassies. Foreign embassies to the Holy See are located in Rome. Only during the Second World War were the staff of some embassies accredited to the Holy See given what hospitality was possible within the narrow confines of Vatican City – embassies such as that of the United Kingdom while Rome was held by the Axis powers and Germany's when the Allies controlled Rome.
The size of Vatican City is unrelated to the large global reach exercised by the Holy See as an entity quite distinct from the state.
Vatican City State itself participates in some international organizations whose functions relate to the state as a geographical entity, distinct from the non-territorial legal persona of the Holy See. These organizations are much less numerous than those in which the Holy See participates either as a member or with observer status. They include the following eight, in each of which Vatican City State holds membership:
European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT)
European Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Eutelsat IGO)
International Grains Council (IGC)
International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS)
International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO)
Interpol
Universal Postal Union (UPU)
It also participates in:
World Medical Association
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
==== Non-party, non-signatory policy ====
The Vatican City is not a member of the United Nations (UN), but the Holy See was granted observer status to the United Nations General Assembly in 1968; the only other country in a similar position is the partially recognized State of Palestine. Since it is not a member of the UN, the Vatican City is not subjected to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It engages with UN specialized agencies through its observer status, including the Central Emergency Response Fund, to which it contributed US$20,000 between 2006 and 2022.
The Vatican City State is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In Europe, only Belarus is also a non-party, non-signatory state. Ukraine and Monaco are signatory states that have not ratified and Russia withdrew from it in 2016.
The Vatican City State is not a member of the Council of Europe nor a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, thus is not subject to the European Court of Human Rights. Among European states, Belarus is also not a member, while Russia has ceased to be part of it after being expelled from the Council of Europe following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The OECD's "Common Reporting Standard" (CRS), aiming at preventing tax evasion and money laundering, has also not been signed. The Vatican City State has been criticized for money-laundering practices in the past decades. The only other country in Europe that has not agreed to sign the CRS is Belarus.
The Vatican City State is one of few countries in the world that do not provide any publicly available financial data to the International Monetary Fund.
== Economy ==
The Vatican City State budget includes the Vatican Museums and post office and is supported financially by the sale of stamps, coins, medals and tourist mementos; by fees for admission to museums; and by publications sales. The incomes and living standards of lay workers are comparable to those of counterparts who work in the city of Rome. Other industries include printing, the production of mosaics, and the manufacture of staff uniforms.
The Institute for Works of Religion (IOR, Istituto per le Opere di Religione), also known as the Vatican Bank, is a financial agency situated in the Vatican that conducts worldwide financial activities. It has multilingual ATMs with instructions in Latin, possibly the only ATM in the world with this feature.
Vatican City issues its own coins and stamps. It has used the Euro as its currency since January 1999, owing to a special agreement with the European Union. Euro coins and notes were introduced on 1 January 2002 — the Vatican City does not issue euro banknotes. Issuance of euro-denominated coins is strictly limited by treaty. More coins than usual are allowed in a year with a new papacy. Because of their rarity, Vatican euro coins are highly sought by collectors. Until the adoption of the Euro, Vatican coinage and stamps were denominated in their own Vatican lira currency, which was on par with the Italian lira.
Vatican City State, which employs nearly 2,000 people, had a surplus of 6.7 million euros in 2007. It ran a deficit in 2008 of over 15 million euros.
In 2012 the US Department of State's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report listed Vatican City for the first time among the nations of concern for money-laundering, placing it in the middle category, which includes countries such as Ireland, but not among the most vulnerable countries, which include the United States itself, Germany, Italy, and Russia.
In February 2014 the Vatican announced it was establishing a secretariat for the economy, to be responsible for all economic, financial, and administrative activities of the Holy See and the Vatican City State, headed by Cardinal George Pell. This followed the charging of two senior clerics including a monsignor with money-laundering offences. Pope Francis appointed an auditor-general authorized to carry out audits of any agency at any time and engaged a US financial services company to review the Vatican's 19,000 accounts, to ensure compliance with international money-laundering practices. The pontiff appointed the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See as the Vatican's central bank, with responsibilities similar to other central banks around the world.
In 2022 the Vatican planned to release NFTs of its museum collection.
=== Transport ===
The Vatican City has a reasonably well-developed transport network considering its size, consisting mostly of a piazza and walkways. As a state that is 1.05 kilometres (1,150 yards) long and 0.85 km (930 yd) wide, it has a small transportation system, with no airports or highways.
The only aviation facility in Vatican City is the Vatican City Heliport. Vatican City is one of the few independent countries without an airport, and is served by the airports that serve the city of Rome, Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport and to a lesser extent Ciampino Airport.
There is a standard gauge Vatican Railway and a Vatican City railway station, mainly used to transport freight. It is connected to Italy's network at Rome's Roma San Pietro railway station by an 852-metre-long (932 yd) spur, 300 metres (330 yd) of which is within Vatican territory. Pope John XXIII was the first pope to use the railway. Pope John Paul II rarely used it.
The closest metro station is Ottaviano – San Pietro – Musei Vaticani.
=== Telecommunications and mass media ===
The City is served by an independent, modern telephone system named the Vatican Telephone Service.
The Vatican controls its own Internet top-level domain, which is registered as (.va). Broadband service is widely provided within Vatican City. Vatican City has a radio ITU prefix, HV, and this is sometimes used by amateur radio operators.
In 2015, Vatican News web portal, L'Osservatore Romano daily newspaper, Vatican Radio and Vatican Media (formerly Vatican Television Center) were brought together under the Dicastery for Communication, which is now the single point of reference of the Holy See for communication. Other institutions managed by the Dicastery for Communication are the Vatican Printing Press (founded in 1587), the Vatican Publishing House (founded in 1926) and the Vatican Film Archive.
Vatican Radio, which was organized by Guglielmo Marconi, broadcasts on short-wave, medium-wave and FM frequencies and on the Internet. Its main transmission antennae are located in Italian territory, and exceed Italian environmental protection levels of emission. For this reason, the Vatican Radio has been sued. Photo, audio and video services are provided through another entity, Vatican Media.
L'Osservatore Romano is the multilingual semi-official newspaper of the Holy See. It is published by a private corporation under the direction of Catholic laymen, but reports on official information. The official texts of documents are in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official gazette of the Holy See, which has an appendix for documents of the Vatican City State.
=== Postal service ===
A postal system (Poste Vaticane) was created on 13 February 1929. On 1 August, the state started to release its own postal stamps, under the authority of the Philatelic and Numismatic Office of the Vatican City State. The city's postal service is sometimes said to be "the best in the world", and faster than the postal service in Rome.
The international postal country code prefix is SCV. The postal code is 00120 – altogether SCV-00120.
=== Healthcare ===
=== Sustainability ===
The Vatican has implemented several environmental initiatives aimed to reduce its ecological footprint. Since 2008, the Vatican has expanded its solar energy systems, including the installation of photovoltaic panels at various locations such as the roof of the Paul VI Audience Hall. The city-state has introduced 35 electric vehicle charging stations to promote the use of electric vehicles and intends to gradually replace State-owned cars with electric vehicles.
Well before the European Union's 2021 deadline, Vatican City successfully banned single-use plastics in 2019, reducing plastic waste. The Vatican's waste management system has improved, achieving a recycling rate of 55 per cent for municipal solid waste, with a goal of reaching the EU standard of 70–75 per cent. Energy-efficiency measures, such as installing LED lighting in St Peter's Basilica and transitioning to digital document management, have been implemented to reduce energy consumption and paper use. These efforts reflect the Vatican's commitment to the vision of Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato si' and the Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum.
== Demographics ==
As of 2024 Vatican City has a population of 882 residents, regardless of citizenship. There are 372 Vatican citizens residing elsewhere, consisting of diplomats of the Holy See to other countries and cardinals residing in Rome.
The population is composed of clergy, other religious members, laypeople serving the state (such as the Swiss Guard) and their family members. In 2013 there were 13 families of the employees of the Holy See living in Vatican City. In 2019 there were 20 children of the Swiss Guards living at the Vatican. All citizens, residents, and places of worship in the city are Catholic. The city receives thousands of tourists and workers every day.
=== Languages ===
Vatican City has no formally enacted official language, but, unlike the Holy See which most often uses Latin for the authoritative version of its official documents, Vatican City uses only Italian in its legislation and official communications. Italian is the everyday language used by most of those who work in the state. In the Swiss Guard, Swiss German is the language used for giving commands. Individual guards take their oath of loyalty in their own languages: German, French, Italian or Romansh. The official websites of the Holy See and of Vatican City are primarily in Italian, with versions of their pages in a large number of languages, to varying extents.
=== Citizenship ===
Unlike citizenship of other states, which is based either on jus sanguinis (birth from a citizen, even outside the state's territory) or on jus soli (birth within the territory of the state), citizenship of Vatican City is granted on jus officii, namely on the grounds of appointment to work in a certain capacity in the service of the Holy See. This includes Cardinals resident either within Vatican City or elsewhere in Rome, diplomats of the Holy See, and any other person resident in Vatican City due to their occupation. It usually ceases upon the cessation of the appointment. Citizenship is extended to the spouse and children of a citizen, provided that they are living together in the city. Some individuals are authorized to reside in the city but do not qualify or choose not to request citizenship. Anyone who loses Vatican citizenship and does not possess other citizenship automatically becomes an Italian citizen, as provided in the Lateran Treaty.
The Holy See, not being a country, issues only diplomatic and service passports, whereas Vatican City issues ordinary passports for its citizens.
=== Statistical oddities ===
In statistics comparing countries in per capita or per area metrics, Vatican City is often an outlier – these stem from the state's small size and ecclesiastical function. For example, as most of the roles which would confer citizenship are reserved for men, the gender ratio of Vatican City citizenship is several men per woman. Further oddities are petty crimes against tourists, resulting in a very high per-capita crime rate, and the city-state leading the world in per-capita wine consumption due to its sacramental use. A jocular illustration of these anomalies is sometimes made by calculating a "popes per km2" statistic, which is greater than two because Vatican City is less than half a square kilometre in area.
== Culture ==
=== Cultural heritage ===
The Vatican City is home to some of the most famous art in the world. St Peter's Basilica, designed by a succession of architects including Bramante, Michelangelo, Giacomo della Porta, Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, is a renowned work of Renaissance architecture. The Sistine Chapel is famous for its frescos, which include works by Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Sandro Botticelli, as well as the ceiling and Last Judgment by Michelangelo. The interiors of the Vatican were decorated by artists including Raphael and Fra Angelico.
The Vatican Apostolic Library and the collections of the Vatican Museums are of the highest historical, scientific and cultural importance. Added by UNESCO to the List of World Heritage Sites in 1984, the Vatican is the only site to consist of an entire state. It is the only UNESCO site registered as a centre containing monuments in the "International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection" according to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
=== Science ===
Following in the footsteps of the Pontifical Academy of New Lincei founded by Pope Pius IX in 1847, Pope Pius XI founded the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1936. Located in the Casina Pio IV, it brings together scientists who made contributions to mathematical, physical and natural sciences, and medicine. It also focuses on epistemological issues and the history of science. Among the academicians, there are or were the astrophysicist Martin John Rees, the mathematician Cédric Villani, the theoretical physicist Edward Witten, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureates Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, and Ernest Rutherford, the geneticists Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Francis Collins, the head transplant pioneer Robert J. White, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Alexander Fleming.
The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences is another pontifical academy of the Holy See located in the Vatican City. The seat of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which deals with bioethics and ethics of technology, is at San Callisto complex, a Vatican extraterritorial property.
The Vatican Observatory, whose origins date back to the 16th century, continues to contribute to astronomical research, especially through a partnership with the University of Arizona and the infrared and optical Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope in Arizona, and to astronomical education and "popular science" projects. As a member of the International Astronomical Union and the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, it deals with research on cosmological models, stellar classification, binary stars, and nebulae. It has contributed to philosophical interdisciplinary studies at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, California and research on the history of astronomy thanks to its extensive library, which includes a meteorite collection.
The first telescopes of the Vatican Observatory in the Gardens of Vatican City and near St. Peter's Basilica were among those used to create the Carte du Ciel, but they progressively became useless for research purposes due to light pollution in the 1930s. Consequently, Pope Pius XI moved the observatory to the Vatican extraterritorial Palace of Castel Gandolfo.
=== Sport ===
The Vatican City is not a member of the International Olympic Committee and does not compete in the Olympic Games, though it has participated in some international sporting events, including the World Cycling Championships, the Championships of the Small States of Europe and the Mediterranean Games. Vatican City has its own athletics association, Athletica Vaticana.
Football in Vatican City is organized by the Vatican Amateur Sports Association, which holds the national championship, called the Vatican City Championship, with eight teams, including, for example, the Swiss Guard's FC Guardia and police and museum guard teams. The association organizes the Coppa Sergio Valci and the Vatican Supercoppa. It controls the Vatican City national football team, which is neither affiliated with UEFA nor FIFA. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryn_Celli_Ddu | Bryn Celli Ddu | Bryn Celli Ddu (Welsh pronunciation: [ˌbrɪn kɛɬi ˈðɨː]) is a prehistoric site on the Welsh island of Anglesey located near Llanddaniel Fab. Its name means 'the mound in the dark grove'. It was archaeologically excavated between 1928 and 1929. Visitors can get inside the mound through a stone passage to the burial chamber, and it is the centrepiece of a major Neolithic Scheduled Monument in the care of Cadw. The presence of a mysterious pillar within the burial chamber, the reproduction of the 'Pattern Stone', carved with sinuous serpentine designs, and the fact that the site was once a henge with a stone circle, and may have been used to plot the date of the summer solstice have all attracted much interest.
== The monument ==
Bryn Celli Ddu is generally considered to be one of the finest passage tombs in Wales. Its passage and burial chamber are complete, and it is still buried under a mound or cairn, reinstated following its excavation in 1929. Many stone chambered cairns have lost these features. As it now stands, the passage is 8.4 m (28 ft) long, the first 3.4 m (11 ft) being unroofed with a pair of portal stones. The main passage has walls of vertical rock slabs, roofed by a series of stone lintels. The mound, being substantially smaller than as originally made, no longer completely encloses the burial chamber, so the back wall is open to the air, allowing some natural light in.
Free-standing inside the burial chamber is a smooth pillar of blueschist, a metamorphic rock, some 2 m (6.6 ft) high, with a very rounded shape.
Beyond the back wall of the chamber, in a location that would once have been within the mound, is a replica of the 'Pattern Stone'. This was found buried under the mound, and has been put standing up in what is thought to have been its original location at a time when the site was a henge rather than a tomb. The patterns take the form of sinuous serpentine shapes that wind around both sides of the stone. Inside the tomb another stone has a small spiral pattern chipped into it, although its authenticity has been questioned.
Outside the tomb, a ring of kerbstones shows the original extent of the mound, and they also follow the line of the ditch of the earlier henge monument. Three of the stones, visible within the cairn mound, are thought to be from the stone circle of that time.
The passage is roughly aligned with the Summer Solstice sunrise, such that for some weeks around the summer solstice, sunlight can find its way through to the back wall of the burial chamber.
The monument is part of a cluster of Neolithic and Bronze Age features. Two further cairns have been identified just to the south of Bryn Celli Ddu, while in the field immediately to the west is a standing stone, and a rock outcrop with cupmarks carved into it.
== Original uses ==
The earliest identified remains at the site are a row of five postholes previously thought to have been contemporary with the tomb. Radiocarbon dating of pine charcoal from two of the pits, carried out in 2006, showed these to date from around 4000 BC, putting them at the end of the Mesolithic, 1,000 years before the next phase of use. Their purpose, however, is unknown.
=== Henge ===
Around 3000 BC, a henge monument was constructed. An outer circular bank and ditch would have defined the boundary, although only the ditch survives, some 21 m (69 ft) across. Within this, a stone circle would have provided the focus for a site of ritual significance. A ring of 17 stones formed an oval, many being in matched pairs either side of the centre. Cremated human remains were buried at the base of some of them, suggesting a central 'altar' During this period a pit was dug within the henge; a single human ear-bone was buried, and covered with a flat slab. A second stone known as 'The Pattern Stone' lay nearby, with the serpentine patterning on it. It is thought this would have stood upright within the henge, as the patterns cover both sides.
=== Passage grave ===
Around 1,000 years after the henge was built, the site was radically altered. All but one of the standing stones were intentionally damaged, some were knocked over and six were smashed with heavy stones. In its place, a passage grave was built. Much larger than the mound now remaining, it would have had a complete circle of kerbstones following the line of the old henge ditch, creating an impressive retaining wall around the mound, 26 m (85 ft) across. The burial chamber would have been entirely enclosed within the mound, rather than the back wall being open to the air, as in the reconstructed mound now seen. Individual human bones, both burnt and unburnt, were found within the chamber and passage, suggesting a variety of funeral practices, but in all cases re-using the tomb, and clearing aside the old remains.
At the end of its period of use the tomb was 'closed' by means of a large stone set across the entrance, between the two portal stones.
== Archaeology ==
The earliest archaeological descriptions date to around 1800. In 1796, it was included on a list of Anglesey cromlechs in the Cambrian Register. In 1802, John Skinner made a "Ten Days' Tour Through the Isle of Anglesea", an account of which he wrote up, but never published, describing the numerous archaeological sites he visited. It was finally published as a supplement to Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1908. On his visit to Bryn Celli Ddu, he was told how the passage tomb had been discovered a generation before, by a farmer looking for useful stone. The sight of the pillar stone had initially unnerved the discoverer, but the prospect of treasure tempted him back, and he uprooted the pillar.
Having suffered depredation of the more movable stones of the site, the monument was excavated by Wilfrid Hemp from 1928-1929. He revealed much of the sequence of use on the site, and found the 'Pattern Stone'. It has since been moved to the National Museum of Wales and replaced with a replica standing outside the back wall, but within the area of the original mound, and close to the spot where it was found. The Pillar was set back upright, and the earth and stone mound covering the passage and chamber was reinstated, but clearly there was much less material available than had been used originally. Some additional concrete roof supports have also been added at some point.
Norman Lockyer, who in 1906 published the first systematic study of megalithic astronomy, had argued that Bryn Celli Ddu marked the summer solstice. This was ridiculed at the time, but research by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas in 1997-1998 showed it to be true. Knight and Lomas also claimed that year-round alignments allowed the site to be used as an agricultural calendar. Steve Burrow, curator of Neolithic archaeology at Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum of Wales), has more recently supported the case for summer solstice alignment. This alignment links Bryn Celli Ddu to a handful of other sites, including Maes Howe, Orkney and Newgrange, Ireland, both of which point to the winter solstice. It has also been suggested that a feature similar to the 'lightbox' at Newgrange may be matched at Bryn Celli Ddu.
=== Multi-period landscape ===
Between 2015 and 2020, the 'Bryn Celli Ddu Public Archaeology Project' has been engaged in studies of the wider landscape around the site. This is a partnership between Cadw and Manchester Metropolitan University with the aim of involving local communities in archaeological investigation. This has resulted in study of known ancient rock art on a nearby outcrop, and also identified and uncovered a number of other rock outcrops close by that have 'cup mark' decorations chipped into them. A second burial chamber, 50 meters to the south of the extant one, had been leveled, but as part of the project a 2019 excavation has revealed a large circular burial cairn which radio-carbon dating has placed at 1900 BC, which is over a thousand years after the earlier passage grave was built.
== Media ==
The serpentine pattern and the passage tomb featured strongly in the short animated film, Songs from Stones, about some of Anglesey's evocative archaeological sites and artefacts, produced as part of the Cultural Olympiad in 2012.
The HeritageTogether project has used photogrammetry to create 3D models of the site and the standing stone.
Media company Mint Motion have produced an animated video of the site's development over time, and a flythrough of a pointcloud model of the site (see external links below).
The site was featured and explored in an episode of the US reality television series Expedition Unknown.
== Modern history ==
The site is used by the Anglesey Druid Order in ceremonies that celebrate the eight wheel of the year pagan festivals, including the summer and winter solstices.
== Gallery == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_16#1901%E2%80%93present_2 | August 16#1901–present 2 | August 16 is the 228th day of the year (229th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 137 days remain until the end of the year.
== Events ==
=== Pre-1600 ===
1 BC – Wang Mang consolidates his power in China and is declared marshal of state. Emperor Ai of Han, who died the previous day, had no heirs.
942 – Start of the four-day Battle of al-Mada'in, between the Hamdanids of Mosul and the Baridis of Basra over control of the Abbasid capital, Baghdad.
963 – Nikephoros II Phokas is crowned emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
1328 – The House of Gonzaga seizes power in the Duchy of Mantua, and will rule until 1708.
1513 – Battle of the Spurs (Battle of Guinegate): King Henry VIII of England and his Imperial allies defeat French Forces who are then forced to retreat.
1550 – Rabbi Moses Isserles issues his ruling in the Bragadin-Giustiniani dispute, one of the earliest instances of a copyright suit over any book.
1570 – The Principality of Transylvania is established after John II Zápolya renounces his claim as King of Hungary in the Treaty of Speyer.
=== 1601–1900 ===
1652 – Battle of Plymouth: Inconclusive naval action between the fleets of Michiel de Ruyter and George Ayscue in the First Anglo-Dutch War.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: The Americans led by General John Stark rout British and Brunswick troops under Friedrich Baum at the Battle of Bennington in Walloomsac, New York.
1780 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Camden: The British defeat the Americans near Camden, South Carolina.
1792 – Maximilien de Robespierre presents the petition of the Commune of Paris to the Legislative Assembly, which demanded the formation of a revolutionary tribunal.
1793 – French Revolution: A levée en masse is decreed by the National Convention.
1812 – War of 1812: American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit without a fight to the British Army.
1819 – Peterloo Massacre: Seventeen people die and over 600 are injured in cavalry charges at a public meeting at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England.
1837 – Three African soldiers in the 1st West India Regiment – Daaga, Edward Coffin and Maurice Ogston – were executed for their role in the St. Joseph Mutiny in the British colony of Trinidad.
1841 – U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.
1844 – Governor-general of the Philippines Narciso Claveria, signs a decree to reform the country's calendar by skipping Tuesday, December 31, as a solution to anomalies that had existed since Ferdinand Magellan's arrival in 1521.
1858 – U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. However, a weak signal forces a shutdown of the service in a few weeks.
1859 – The Grand Duchy of Tuscany formally deposes the exiled House of Lorraine.
1863 – The Dominican Restoration War begins when Gregorio Luperón raises the Dominican flag in Santo Domingo after Spain had recolonized the country.
1869 – Battle of Acosta Ñu: A Paraguayan battalion largely made up of children is massacred by the Brazilian Army during the Paraguayan War.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: The Battle of Mars-la-Tour is fought, resulting in a Prussian victory.
1876 – Richard Wagner's Siegfried, the penultimate opera in his Ring cycle, is premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
1891 – The Basilica of San Sebastian, Manila, the first all-steel church in Asia, is officially inaugurated and blessed.
1896 – Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
1900 – The Battle of Elands River during the Second Boer War ends after a 13-day siege is lifted by the British. The battle had begun when a force of between 2,000 and 3,000 Boers had surrounded a force of 500 Australians, Rhodesians, Canadians and British soldiers at a supply dump at Brakfontein Drift.
=== 1901–present ===
1906 – The 8.2 Mw Valparaíso earthquake hits central Chile, killing 3,882 people.
1913 – Tōhoku Imperial University of Japan (modern day Tohoku University) becomes the first university in Japan to admit female students.
1913 – Completion of the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary.
1916 – The Migratory Bird Treaty between Canada and the United States is signed.
1918 – The Battle of Lake Baikal was fought between the Czechoslovak Legion and the Red Army.
1920 – Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians is hit on the head by a fastball thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees. Next day, Chapman will become the second player to die from injuries sustained in a Major League Baseball game.
1920 – The congress of the Communist Party of Bukhara opens. The congress would call for armed revolution.
1920 – Polish–Soviet War: The Battle of Radzymin concludes; the Soviet Red Army is forced to turn away from Warsaw.
1923 – The United Kingdom gives the name "Ross Dependency" to part of its claimed Antarctic territory and makes the Governor-General of the Dominion of New Zealand its administrator.
1927 – The Dole Air Race begins from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, during which six out of the eight participating planes crash or disappear.
1929 – The 1929 Palestine riots break out in Mandatory Palestine between Palestinian Arabs and Jews and continue until the end of the month. In total, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs are killed.
1930 – The first color sound cartoon, Fiddlesticks, is released by Ub Iwerks.
1930 – The first British Empire Games are opened in Hamilton, Ontario, by the Governor General of Canada, the Viscount Willingdon.
1933 – Christie Pits riot takes place in Toronto, Ontario.
1942 – World War II: US Navy L-class blimp L-8 drifts in from the Pacific and eventually crashes in Daly City, California. The two-man crew cannot be found.
1943 – World War II: 317 Greek civilians are murdered by soldiers of the German 1st Mountain Division in the village of Kommeno, Greece.
1944 – First flight of a jet with forward-swept wings, the Junkers Ju 287.
1945 – The National Representatives' Congress, the precursor of the current National Assembly of Vietnam, convenes in Sơn Dương.
1946 – Mass riots in Kolkata begin; more than 4,000 people would be killed in 72 hours.
1946 – The All Hyderabad Trade Union Congress is founded in Secunderabad.
1954 – The first issue of Sports Illustrated is published.
1960 – Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
1960 – Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico, United States, at 102,800 feet (31,300 m), setting three records that held until 2012: High-altitude jump, free fall, and highest speed by a human without an aircraft.
1964 – Vietnam War: A coup d'état replaces Dương Văn Minh with General Nguyễn Khánh as President of South Vietnam. A new constitution is established with aid from the U.S. Embassy.
1966 – Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigations of Americans who have aided the Viet Cong. The committee intends to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 people are arrested.
1972 – In an unsuccessful coup d'état attempt, the Royal Moroccan Air Force fires upon Hassan II of Morocco's plane while he is traveling back to Rabat.
1975 – Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically hands over land to the Gurindji people after the eight-year Wave Hill walk-off, a landmark event in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, commemorated in a 1991 song by Paul Kelly and an annual celebration.
1986 – A Sudan Airways Fokker F27 Friendship is shot down near Malakal in present day South Sudan, killing 60.
1987 – Northwest Airlines Flight 255, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, crashes after takeoff in Detroit, Michigan, killing 154 of the 155 on board, plus two people on the ground.
1989 – A solar particle event affects computers at the Toronto Stock Exchange, forcing a halt to trading.
1991 – Indian Airlines Flight 257, a Boeing 737-200, crashes during approach to Imphal Airport, killing all 69 people on board.
2005 – West Caribbean Airways Flight 708, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, crashes in Machiques, Venezuela, killing all 160 people on board.
2008 – The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago is topped off at 1,389 feet (423 m), at the time becoming the world's highest residence above ground-level.
2010 – AIRES Flight 8250 crashes at Gustavo Rojas Pinilla International Airport in San Andrés, San Andrés y Providencia, Colombia, killing two people.
2012 – South African police fatally shoot 34 miners and wound 78 more during an industrial dispute at Marikana near Rustenburg.
2013 – The ferry St. Thomas Aquinas collides with a cargo ship and sinks at Cebu, Philippines, killing 61 people with 59 others missing.
2015 – More than 96 people are killed and hundreds injured following a series of air-raids by the Syrian Arab Air Force on the rebel-held market town of Douma.
2015 – Trigana Air Flight 267, an ATR 42, crashes in Oksibil, Bintang Mountains Regency, killing all 54 people on board.
2020 – The August Complex fire in California burns more than one million acres of land.
== Births ==
=== Pre-1600 ===
1355 – Philippa, 5th Countess of Ulster (died 1382)
1378 – Hongxi Emperor of China (died 1425)
1401 – Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut (died 1436)
1557 – Agostino Carracci, Italian painter and etcher (died 1602)
1565 – Christina, Grand Duchess of Tuscany (died 1637)
1573 – Anne of Austria, Queen of Poland (died 1598)
=== 1601–1900 ===
1637 – Countess Emilie Juliane of Barby-Mühlingen (died 1706)
1645 – Jean de La Bruyère, French philosopher and author (died 1696)
1650 – Vincenzo Coronelli, Italian monk, cosmographer, and cartographer (died 1718)
1682 – Louis, Duke of Burgundy (died 1712)
1744 – Pierre Méchain, French astronomer and surveyor (died 1804)
1761 – Yevstigney Fomin, Russian pianist and composer (died 1800)
1815 – John Bosco, Italian priest and educator (died 1888)
1816 – Octavia Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor (died 1820)
1816 – Sara Prinsep, British salon organiser (died 1887)
1820 – Andrew Rainsford Wetmore, Canadian lawyer and politician, 1st Premier of New Brunswick (died 1892)
1821 – Arthur Cayley, English mathematician and academic (died 1895)
1824 – John Chisum, American cattle baron (died 1884)
1831 – John Jones Ross, Canadian lawyer and politician, 7th Premier of Quebec (died 1901)
1832 – Wilhelm Wundt, German physician, psychologist, and physiologist (died 1920)
1842 – Jakob Rosanes, Ukrainian-German mathematician, chess player, and academic (died 1922)
1845 – Gabriel Lippmann, Luxembourger-French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1921)
1848 – Vladimir Sukhomlinov, Russian general (died 1926)
1855 – James McGowen, Australian politician, 18th Premier of New South Wales (died 1922)
1856 – Aparicio Saravia, Uruguayan general and politician (died 1904)
1858 – Arthur Achleitner, German author (died 1927)
1860 – Martin Hawke, 7th Baron Hawke, English-Scottish cricketer (died 1938)
1860 – Jules Laforgue, Uruguayan-French poet and author (died 1887)
1862 – Amos Alonzo Stagg, American baseball player and coach (died 1965)
1864 – Elsie Inglis, Scottish surgeon and suffragette (died 1917)
1865 – Mary Gilmore, Australian socialist, poet and journalist (died 1962)
1868 – Bernarr Macfadden, American bodybuilder and publisher, founded Macfadden Publications (died 1955)
1876 – Ivan Bilibin, Russian illustrator and stage designer (died 1942)
1877 – Roque Ruaño, Spanish priest and engineer (died 1935)
1882 – Désiré Mérchez, French swimmer and water polo player (died 1968)
1884 – Hugo Gernsback, Luxembourger-American author and publisher (died 1967)
1888 – T. E. Lawrence, British colonel, diplomat, writer and archaeologist (died 1935)
1888 – Armand J. Piron, American violinist, composer, and bandleader (died 1943)
1892 – Hal Foster, Canadian-American author and illustrator (died 1982)
1892 – Otto Messmer, American cartoonist and animator, co-created Felix the Cat (died 1983)
1894 – George Meany, American plumber and labor leader (died 1980)
1895 – Albert Cohen, Greek-Swiss author and playwright (died 1981)
1895 – Liane Haid, Austrian-Swiss actress and singer (died 2000)
1895 – Arthur Rose Eldred, First Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America (died 1951)
1900 – Ida Browne, Australian geologist and palaeontologist (died 1976)
=== 1901–present ===
1902 – Georgette Heyer, English author (died 1974)
1902 – Wallace Thurman, American author and playwright (died 1934)
1904 – Minoru Genda, Japanese general, pilot, and politician (died 1989)
1904 – Wendell Meredith Stanley, American biochemist and virologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1971)
1908 – Orlando Cole, American cellist and educator (died 2010)
1908 – William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., American editor, novelist, short story writer, and essayist (died 2000)
1909 – Paul Callaway, American organist and conductor (died 1995)
1910 – Gloria Blondell, American actress (died 1986)
1910 – Mae Clarke, American actress (died 1992)
1911 – E. F. Schumacher, German economist and statistician (died 1977)
1912 – Ted Drake, English footballer and manager (died 1995)
1913 – Menachem Begin, Belarusian-Israeli politician, Prime Minister of Israel, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1992)
1915 – Al Hibbler, American baritone singer (died 2001)
1916 – Iggy Katona, American race car driver (died 2003)
1917 – Matt Christopher, American author (died 1997)
1917 – Roque Cordero, Panamanian composer and educator (died 2008)
1919 – Karl-Heinz Euling, German captain (died 2014)
1920 – Charles Bukowski, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer (died 1994)
1922 – James Casey, English comedian, radio scriptwriter and producer (died 2011)
1922 – Ernie Freeman, American pianist and bandleader (died 2001)
1923 – Millôr Fernandes, Brazilian journalist and playwright (died 2012)
1924 – Fess Parker, American actor (died 2010)
1924 – Inez Voyce, American baseball player (died 2022)
1925 – Willie Jones, American baseball player (died 1983)
1925 – Mal Waldron, American pianist and composer (died 2002)
1927 – Lois Nettleton, American actress (died 2008)
1928 – Ann Blyth, American actress and singer
1928 – Eydie Gormé, American singer (died 2013)
1928 – Ara Güler, Turkish photographer and journalist (died 2018)
1928 – Eddie Kirkland, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2011)
1928 – Wyatt Tee Walker, American pastor, theologian, and activist (died 2018)
1929 – Bill Evans, American pianist and composer (died 1980)
1929 – Helmut Rahn, German footballer (died 2003)
1929 – Fritz Von Erich, American wrestler and trainer (died 1997)
1930 – Robert Culp, American actor, director, and screenwriter (died 2010)
1930 – Frank Gifford, American football player, sportscaster, and actor (died 2015)
1930 – Leslie Manigat, Haitian educator and politician, 43rd President of Haiti (died 2014)
1930 – Flor Silvestre, Mexican singer and actress (died 2020)
1933 – Reiner Kunze, German poet and translator
1933 – Tom Maschler, English author and publisher (died 2020)
1933 – Julie Newmar, American actress
1933 – Stuart Roosa, American colonel, pilot, and astronaut (died 1994)
1934 – Angela Buxton, British tennis player (died 2020)
1934 – Diana Wynne Jones, English author (died 2011)
1934 – Douglas Kirkland, Canadian-American photographer (died 2022)
1934 – Ketty Lester, American singer and actress
1934 – Pierre Richard, French actor, director, and screenwriter
1934 – John Standing, English actor
1934 – Sam Trimble, Australian cricketer (died 2019)
1935 – Cliff Fletcher, Canadian businessman
1935 – Andreas Stamatiadis, Greek footballer and coach
1936 – Anita Gillette, American actress and singer
1936 – Alan Hodgkinson, English footballer and coach (died 2015)
1937 – David Anderson, Canadian journalist, lawyer, and politician
1937 – David Behrman, American composer and producer
1937 – Ian Deans, Canadian politician (died 2016)
1937 – Boris Rõtov, Estonian chess player (died 1987)
1939 – Seán Brady, Irish cardinal
1939 – Trevor McDonald, Trinidadian-English journalist and academic
1939 – Billy Joe Shaver, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2020)
1939 – Eric Weissberg, American singer, banjo player, and multi-instrumentalist (died 2020)
1940 – Bruce Beresford, Australian director and producer
1942 – Lesley Turner Bowrey, Australian tennis player
1942 – Barbara George, American R&B singer-songwriter (died 2006)
1942 – Robert Squirrel Lester, American soul singer (died 2010)
1943 – Woody Peoples, American football player (died 2010)
1944 – Kevin Ayers, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2013)
1945 – Bob Balaban, American actor, director, and producer
1945 – Russell Brookes, English race car driver (died 2019)
1945 – Suzanne Farrell, American ballerina and educator
1945 – Gary Loizzo, American guitarist, singer, recording engineer, and record producer (died 2016)
1945 – Nigel Terry, British stage and film actor (died 2015)
1946 – Masoud Barzani, Iranian-Kurdish politician, President of Iraqi Kurdistan
1946 – Lesley Ann Warren, American actress
1947 – Carol Moseley Braun, American lawyer and politician, United States Ambassador to New Zealand
1947 – Katharine Hamnett, English fashion designer
1948 – Earl Blumenauer, American politician, U.S. Representative from Oregon
1948 – Barry Hay, Indian-born Dutch rock musician
1948 – Mike Jorgensen, American baseball player and manager
1948 – Pierre Reid, Canadian educator and politician (died 2021)
1948 – Joey Spampinato, American singer-songwriter and bass player
1949 – Scott Asheton, American drummer (died 2014)
1949 – Paul Pasqualoni, American football player and coach
1949 – Bill Spooner, American guitarist and songwriter
1950 – Hasely Crawford, Trinidadian runner
1950 – Marshall Manesh, Iranian-American actor
1950 – Jeff Thomson, Australian cricketer
1951 – Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, Nigerian businessman and politician, 13th President of Nigeria (died 2010)
1952 – Reginald VelJohnson, American actor
1953 – Kathie Lee Gifford, American talk show host, singer, and actress
1953 – James "J.T." Taylor, American R&B singer-songwriter
1954 – James Cameron, Canadian director, producer, and screenwriter
1954 – George Galloway, Scottish-English politician and broadcaster
1955 – Jeff Perry, American actor
1955 – James Reilly, Irish surgeon and politician, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs
1956 – Vahan Hovhannisyan, Armenian soldier and politician (died 2014)
1957 – Laura Innes, American actress and director
1957 – R. R. Patil, Indian lawyer and politician, Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra (died 2015)
1958 – Madonna, American singer-songwriter, producer, actress, and director
1958 – Angela Bassett, American actress
1958 – Anne L'Huillier, French physicist
1958 – José Luis Clerc, Argentinian tennis player and coach
1959 – Marc Sergeant, Belgian cyclist and manager
1960 – Rosita Baltazar, Belizean choreographer, dancer, and dance instructor (died 2015)
1960 – Timothy Hutton, American actor, producer and director
1960 – Franz Welser-Möst, Austrian-American conductor and director
1961 – Christian Okoye, American football player
1962 – Steve Carell, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1963 – Aloísio Pires Alves, Brazilian footballer and manager
1963 – Christine Cavanaugh, American voice artist (died 2014)
1964 – Jimmy Arias, American tennis player and sportscaster
1966 – Eddie Olczyk, American ice hockey player, coach, and commentator
1967 – Mark Coyne, Australian rugby league player
1967 – Ulrika Jonsson, Swedish journalist, actress, and author
1968 – Arvind Kejriwal, Indian civil servant and politician, 7th Chief Minister of Delhi
1968 – Andy Milder, American actor
1968 – Mateja Svet, Slovenian skier
1968 – Wolfgang Tillmans, German photographer
1970 – Bonnie Bernstein, American journalist and sportscaster
1970 – Manisha Koirala, Nepalese actress in Indian films
1970 – Seth Peterson, American actor
1971 – Stefan Klos, German footballer
1972 – Stan Lazaridis, Australian footballer
1972 – Emily Strayer, American singer and musician
1974 – Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Guyanese cricketer
1974 – Didier Cuche, Swiss skier
1974 – Krisztina Egerszegi, Hungarian swimmer
1974 – Iván Hurtado, Ecuadorian footballer and politician
1974 – Ryan Longwell, American football player
1975 – Didier Agathe, French footballer
1975 – Jonatan Johansson, Finnish footballer, coach, and manager
1975 – George Stults, American actor
1975 – Taika Waititi, New Zealand director, screenwriter and actor
1979 – Paul Gallacher, Scottish footballer
1979 – Ian Moran, Australian cricketer
1980 – Vanessa Carlton, American singer-songwriter
1980 – Bob Hardy, English bass player
1980 – Emerson Ramos Borges, Brazilian footballer
1980 – Piet Rooijakkers, Dutch cyclist
1981 – Roque Santa Cruz, Paraguayan footballer
1982 – Cam Gigandet, American actor
1982 – Joleon Lescott, English footballer
1983 – Nikolaos Zisis, Greek basketball player
1984 – Matteo Anesi, Italian speed skater
1984 – Candice Dupree, American basketball player
1984 – Konstantin Vassiljev, Estonian footballer
1985 – Cristin Milioti, American actress
1986 – Yu Darvish, Japanese baseball player
1986 – Martín Maldonado, Puerto Rican baseball player
1986 – Shawn Pyfrom, American actor
1987 – Carey Price, Canadian ice hockey player
1987 – Eri Kitamura, Japanese voice actress and singer.
1988 – Ismaïl Aissati, Moroccan footballer
1988 – Ryan Kerrigan, American football player
1988 – Rumer Willis, American actress
1989 – Cedric Alexander, American wrestler
1989 – Wang Hao, Chinese race walker
1989 – Moussa Sissoko, French footballer
1990 – Godfrey Oboabona, Nigerian footballer
1991 – José Eduardo de Araújo, Brazilian footballer
1991 – Evanna Lynch, Irish actress
1991 – Young Thug, American rapper, singer and songwriter
1992 – Diego Schwartzman, Argentinian tennis player
1993 – Cameron Monaghan, American actor and model
1996 – Sophie Cunningham, American basketball player
1996 – Caeleb Dressel, American swimmer
1997 – Greyson Chance, American musician
1999 – Karen Chen, American figure skater
2001 – Jannik Sinner, Italian tennis player
== Deaths ==
=== Pre-1600 ===
AD 79 – Empress Ma, Chinese Han dynasty consort (born 40)
856 – Theutbald I, bishop of Langres
963 – Marianos Argyros, Byzantine general (born 944)
1027 – George I of Georgia (born 998)
1153 – Bernard de Tremelay, fourth Grand Master of the Knights Templar
1225 – Hōjō Masako, Japanese regent and onna-bugeisha (born 1156)
1258 – Theodore II Laskaris, Byzantine-Greek emperor (born 1222)
1285 – Philip I, Count of Savoy (born 1207)
1297 – John II of Trebizond (born 1262)
1327 – Roch, French saint (born 1295)
1339 – Azzone Visconti, founder of the state of Milan (born 1302)
1358 – Albert II, Duke of Austria (born 1298)
1419 – Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia (born 1361)
1443 – Ashikaga Yoshikatsu, Japanese shōgun (born 1434)
1492 – Beatrice of Silva, Dominican nun
1518 – Loyset Compère, French composer (born 1445)
1532 – John, Elector of Saxony (born 1468)
=== 1601–1900 ===
1661 – Thomas Fuller, English historian and author (born 1608)
1678 – Andrew Marvell, English poet and author (born 1621)
1705 – Jacob Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and theorist (born 1654)
1733 – Matthew Tindal, English philosopher and author (born 1657)
1791 – Charles-François de Broglie, marquis de Ruffec, French soldier and diplomat (born 1719)
1836 – Marc-Antoine Parseval, French mathematician and theorist (born 1755)
1855 – Henry Colburn, English publisher (born 1785)
1861 – Ranavalona I, Queen consort of Kingdom of Madagascar and then sovereign (born 1778)
1878 – Richard Upjohn, English-American architect (born 1802)
1886 – Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Indian mystic and philosopher (born 1836)
1887 – Webster Paulson, English civil engineer (born 1837)
1888 – John Pemberton, American pharmacist and chemist, invented Coca-Cola (born 1831)
1893 – Jean-Martin Charcot, French neurologist and academic (born 1825)
1899 – Robert Bunsen, German chemist and academic (born 1811)
1900 – José Maria de Eça de Queirós, Portuguese journalist and author (born 1845)
=== 1901–present ===
1904 – Prentiss Ingraham, American soldier and author (born 1843)
1911 – Patrick Francis Moran, Irish-Australian cardinal (born 1830)
1914 – Carl Theodor Schulz, German-Norwegian gardener (born 1835)
1916 – George Scott, English footballer (born 1885)
1920 – Henry Daglish, Australian politician, Premier of Western Australia (born 1866)
1921 – Peter I of Serbia (born 1844)
1938 – Andrej Hlinka, Slovak priest, journalist, and politician (born 1864)
1938 – Robert Johnson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1911)
1945 – Takijirō Ōnishi, Japanese admiral (born 1891)
1948 – Babe Ruth, American baseball player and coach (born 1895)
1949 – Margaret Mitchell, American journalist and author (born 1900)
1952 – Lydia Field Emmet, American painter and academic (born 1866)
1956 – Bela Lugosi, Hungarian-American actor (born 1882)
1957 – Irving Langmuir, American chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1881)
1958 – Jacob M. Lomakin, Soviet Consul General in New York City, journalist and economist (born 1904)
1959 – William Halsey, Jr., American admiral (born 1882)
1959 – Wanda Landowska, Polish-French harpsichord player (born 1879)
1961 – Abdul Haq, Pakistani linguist and scholar (born 1870)
1963 – Joan Eardley, British artist (born 1921)
1971 – Spyros Skouras, Greek-American businessman (born 1893)
1972 – Pierre Brasseur, French actor and screenwriter (born 1905)
1973 – Selman Waksman, Ukrainian-American biochemist and microbiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1888)
1977 – Elvis Presley, American singer and actor (born 1935)
1978 – Alidius Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer, Dutch soldier and politician, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (born 1888)
1979 – John Diefenbaker, Canadian lawyer and politician, 13th Prime Minister of Canada (born 1895)
1983 – Earl Averill, American baseball player (born 1902)
1984 – Duško Radović, Serbian children's writer, poet, journalist, aphorist and TV editor (born 1922)
1986 – Ronnie Aird, English cricketer and administrator (born 1902)
1986 – Jaime Sáenz, Bolivian author and poet (born 1921)
1989 – Amanda Blake, American actress (born 1929)
1990 – Pat O'Connor, New Zealand wrestler and trainer (born 1925)
1991 – Luigi Zampa, Italian director and screenwriter (born 1905)
1992 – Mark Heard, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (born 1951)
1993 – Stewart Granger, English-American actor (born 1913)
1997 – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistani musician and Qawwali singer (born 1948)
1997 – Sultan Ahmad Nanupuri, Bangladeshi Islamic scholar and teacher (born 1914)
1998 – Phil Leeds, American actor (born 1916)
1998 – Dorothy West, American journalist and author (born 1907)
2002 – Abu Nidal, Palestinian terrorist leader (born 1937)
2002 – Jeff Corey, American actor (born 1914)
2002 – John Roseboro, American baseball player and coach (born 1933)
2003 – Idi Amin, Ugandan field marshal and politician, 3rd President of Uganda (born 1928)
2004 – Ivan Hlinka, Czech ice hockey player and coach (born 1950)
2004 – Balanadarajah Iyer, Sri Lankan journalist and poet (born 1957)
2004 – Carl Mydans, American photographer and journalist (born 1907)
2004 – Robert Quiroga, American boxer (born 1969)
2005 – Vassar Clements, American fiddler (born 1928)
2005 – Tonino Delli Colli, Italian cinematographer (born 1922)
2005 – William Corlett, English novelist and playwright (born 1938)
2005 – Frère Roger, Swiss monk and mystic (born 1915)
2006 – Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguayan general and dictator; 46th President of Paraguay (born 1912)
2007 – Bahaedin Adab, Iranian engineer and politician (born 1945)
2008 – Dorival Caymmi, Brazilian singer-songwriter and actor (born 1914)
2008 – Ronnie Drew, Irish musician, folk singer and actor (born 1934)
2008 – Masanobu Fukuoka, Japanese farmer and author (born 1913)
2010 – Dimitrios Ioannidis, Greek general (born 1923)
2011 – Mihri Belli, Turkish activist and politician (born 1916)
2012 – Princess Lalla Amina of Morocco (born 1954)
2012 – Martine Franck, Belgian photographer and director (born 1938)
2012 – Abune Paulos, Ethiopian patriarch (born 1935)
2012 – William Windom, American actor (born 1923)
2013 – David Rees, Welsh mathematician and academic (born 1918)
2014 – Patrick Aziza, Nigerian general and politician, Governor of Kebbi State (born 1947)
2014 – Vsevolod Nestayko, Ukrainian author (born 1930)
2014 – Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, Italian-South African lawyer and politician (born 1960)
2014 – Peter Scholl-Latour, German journalist, author, and academic (born 1924)
2015 – Jacob Bekenstein, Mexican-American physicist, astronomer, and academic (born 1947)
2015 – Anna Kashfi, British actress (born 1934)
2015 – Shuja Khanzada, Pakistani colonel and politician (born 1943)
2015 – Mile Mrkšić, Serb general (born 1947)
2016 – João Havelange, Brazilian water polo player, lawyer, and businessman (born 1916)
2016 – John McLaughlin, American television personality (born 1927)
2018 – Aretha Franklin, American singer-songwriter (born 1942)
2018 – Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Indian poet and 12th Prime Minister of India (born 1924)
2018 – Wakako Yamauchi, American-Japanese writer (born 1924)
2019 – Peter Fonda, American actor, director, and screenwriter. (born 1940)
2019 – Richard Williams, Canadian-British animator (born 1933)
2021 – Sean Lock, English comedian and actor (born 1963)
2023 – Howard S. Becker, American sociologist (born 1928)
== Holidays and observances ==
Bennington Battle Day (Vermont, United States)
Children's Day (Paraguay)
Christian feast day:
Ana Petra Pérez Florido
Armel (Armagillus)
Diomedes of Tarsus
Roch
Stephen I of Hungary
Translation of the Acheiropoietos icon from Edessa to Constantinople. (Eastern Orthodox Church)
August 16 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Gozan no Okuribi (Kyoto, Japan)
National Airborne Day (United States)
Restoration Day (Dominican Republic)
The first day of the Independence Days, celebrates the independence of Gabon from France in 1960.
Xicolatada (Palau-de-Cerdagne, France) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Congo | Belgian Congo | The Belgian Congo (French: Congo belge, pronounced [kɔ̃ɡo bɛlʒ]; Dutch: Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. It is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of the Belgians attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexploited Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold establishing a colony himself. With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition of the Congo Free State in 1885. By the end of the 19th century, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by creating the Belgian Congo in 1908.
Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the "colonial trinity" (trinité coloniale) of state, missionary and private-company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo and that individual regions became specialised. On many occasions, the interests of the government and of private enterprise became closely linked, and the state helped companies to break strikes and to remove other barriers raised by the indigenous population. The colony was divided into hierarchically organised administrative subdivisions and run uniformly according to a set "native policy" (politique indigène). This differed from the practice of British and French colonial policies in Africa, which generally favoured systems of indirect rule, retaining traditional leaders in positions of authority under colonial oversight.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the Belgian Congo experienced extensive urbanisation and the colonial administration began various development programmes aimed at making the territory into a "model colony". One result saw the development of a new middle-class of Europeanised African "évolués" in the cities. By the 1950s, the Congo had a wage labour force twice as large as that in any other African colony.
In 1960, as the result of a widespread and increasingly radical pro-independence movement, the Belgian Congo achieved independence, becoming the Republic of the Congo under Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and President Joseph Kasa-Vubu. Poor relations between political factions within the Congo, the continued involvement of Belgium in Congolese affairs, and the intervention by major parties (mainly the United States and the Soviet Union between the two world superpowers) during the Cold War led to a five-year-long period of war and political instability, known as the Congo Crisis, from 1960 to 1965. This ended with the seizure of power by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (later as "Mobutu Sese Seko" or simply "Mobutu") in November 1965. Mobutu established an authoritarian regime, later renaming the country, the Republic of Zaire in 1971. He ruled as a dictator for 32 years, establishing a highly centralized state with only one legal political party as the MPR until he was overthrown in May 1997 by the rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila during the First Congo War, following the 1994 Rwandan genocide that triggers Rwanda on the border with Zaire (now the DR Congo).
== Congo Free State ==
Until the later part of the 19th century, few Europeans had ventured into the Congo Basin. The rainforest, swamps and accompanying malaria and other tropical diseases, such as sleeping sickness, made it a difficult environment for European exploration. In 1876, King Leopold II of Belgium organised the International African Association with the cooperation of the leading African explorers and the support of several European governments for the promotion of the exploration and colonisation of Africa. After Henry Morton Stanley had explored the region in a journey that ended in 1878, Leopold courted the explorer and hired him to help his interests in the region.
Leopold II had been keen to acquire a colony for Belgium even before he ascended to the throne in 1865. The Belgian civil government showed little interest in its monarch's dreams of empire-building. Ambitious and stubborn, Leopold decided to pursue the matter on his own account.
European rivalry in Central Africa led to diplomatic tensions, in particular with regard to the Congo Basin, which no European power had claimed. In November 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened a 14-nation conference (the Berlin Conference) to find a peaceful resolution to the Congo situation. Though the Berlin Conference did not formally approve the territorial claims of the European powers in Central Africa, it did agree on a set of rules to ensure a conflict-free partitioning of the region. The rules recognised (inter alia) the Congo Basin as a free-trade zone. But Leopold II emerged triumphant from the Berlin Conference and his single shareholder "philanthropic" organisation received a large share of territory (2,344,000 km2 (905,000 sq mi)) to be organised as the Congo Free State.
The Congo Free State operated as a corporate state, privately controlled by Leopold II through a non-governmental organisation, the International African Association. The state included the entire area of the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, and existed from 1885 until 1908, when the government of Belgium reluctantly annexed the area. Under Leopold II's administration, the Congo Free State became a humanitarian disaster.
The lack of accurate records makes it difficult to quantify the number of deaths caused by the ruthless exploitation and the lack of immunity to new diseases introduced by contact with European colonists – like the 1889–1890 influenza pandemic, which caused millions of deaths on the European continent, including Prince Baudouin of Belgium, who died in 1891. William Rubinstein wrote: "More basically, it appears almost certain that the population figures given by Hochschild are inaccurate. There is, of course, no way of ascertaining the population of the Congo before the twentieth century and estimates like 20 million are purely guesses. Most of the interior of the Congo was literally unexplored if not inaccessible." Leopold's Force Publique, a private army that terrorised natives to work as forced labour for resource extraction, disrupted local societies and killed and abused natives indiscriminately. The Force Publique also became involved in the Congo–Arab War against African and Arab slavers like Zanzibari/Swahili strongman Tippu Tip.
Following the 1904 Casement Report on misdeeds and conditions, European (British included) and American press exposed the conditions in the Congo Free State to the public in the early 1900s. In 1904 Leopold II was forced to allow an international parliamentary commission of inquiry entry to the Congo Free State. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic manoeuvres led to the end of Leopold II's personal rule and to the annexation of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the "Belgian Congo".
== Belgian Congo ==
On 18 October 1908, the Belgian Parliament voted in favour of annexing the Congo as a Belgian colony. A majority of the socialists and the radicals firmly opposed this annexation and reaped electoral benefits from their anti-colonialist campaign, but some believed that the country should annex the Congo and play a humanitarian role to the Congolese population. Eventually, two Catholic MPs and half of the Liberal MPs joined the socialists in rejecting the Colonial Charter (forty-eight votes against) and nearly all the Catholics and the other half of the Liberal MP's approved the charter (ninety votes for and seven abstentions). This way, on 15 November 1908 the Belgian Congo became a colony of the Belgian Kingdom. This was after King Leopold II had given up any hope of excluding a vast region of the Congo from the government's control by attempting to maintain a substantial part of the Congo Free State as a separate crown property.
When the Belgian government took over the administration in 1908, the situation in the Congo improved in certain respects. The brutal exploitation and arbitrary use of violence, in which some of the concessionary companies had excelled, were curbed. The crime of "red rubber" was put to a stop. Article 3 of the new Colonial Charter of 18 October 1908 stated that: "Nobody can be forced to work on behalf of and for the profit of companies or privates", but this was not enforced, and the Belgian government continued to impose forced labour on the indigenous people of the area, albeit by less obvious methods.
The transition from the Congo Free State to the Belgian Congo was a turning point, but it was also marked by a considerable continuity. The last Governor-General of the Congo Free State, Baron Wahis, remained in office in the Belgian Congo, and the majority of Leopold II's administration with him. While conditions were improved somewhat relative to rule under King Leopold, reports by doctors such as Dr. Raingeard show the low importance the Belgian government placed on healthcare and basic education of the natives. Opening up the Congo and its natural and mineral riches for the Belgian economy remained the motive for colonial expansion.
=== Government ===
The governance of the Belgian Congo was outlined in the 1908 Colonial Charter. Executive power rested with the Belgian Minister of Colonial Affairs, assisted by a Colonial Council (Conseil Colonial). Both resided in Brussels. The Belgian Parliament exercised legislative authority over the Belgian Congo.
The highest-ranking representative of the colonial administration residing in the Belgian Congo was the Governor-General. From 1886 until 1926, the Governor-General and his administration were posted in Boma, near the Congo River estuary. From 1923, the colonial capital moved to Léopoldville, some 300 km further upstream in the interior. Initially, the Belgian Congo was administratively divided into four provinces: Congo-Kasaï, Equateur, Orientale, and Katanga, each presided over by a Vice-Governor-General. An administrative reform in 1932 increased the number of provinces to six, while "demoting" the Vice-Governors-General to provincial Governors.
The territorial service was the true backbone of the colonial administration. The colony was divided into four provinces (six after the administrative reforms of 1933). Each province was in turn divided into a few districts (24 districts for the whole Congo) and each district into a handful of territories (some 130–150 territories in all; some territories were merged or split over time). A territory was managed by a territorial administrator, assisted by one or more assistants. The territories were further subdivided into numerous "chiefdoms" (chefferies), at the head of which the Belgian administration appointed "traditional chiefs" (chefs coutumiers). The territories administered by one territorial administrator and a handful of assistants were often larger than a few Belgian provinces taken together (the whole Belgian Congo was nearly 80 times larger than the whole of Belgium and was roughly twice the size of Germany and France combined). The territorial administrator was expected to inspect his territory and to file detailed annual reports with the provincial administration.
In terms of the legal system, two systems co-existed: a system of European courts and one of indigenous courts (tribunaux indigènes). These indigenous courts were presided over by the traditional chiefs but had only limited powers and remained under the firm control of the colonial administration. In 1936 it was recorded that there were 728 administrators controlling the Congo from Belgium. Belgians living in the Congo had no say in the government and the Congolese did not either. No political activity was permitted in the Congo whatsoever. Public order in the colony was maintained by the Force Publique, a locally recruited army under Belgian command. It was only in the 1950s that metropolitan troops—i.e., units of the regular Belgian army—were posted in the Belgian Congo (for instance in Kamina).
The colonial state—and any authority exercised by whites in the Congo—was often referred to by the Congolese as bula matari ("break rocks"), one of the names originally given to Stanley. He had used dynamite to crush rocks when paving his way through the lower-Congo region. The term bula matari came to signify the irresistible and compelling force of the colonial state.
=== International conflicts ===
The Belgian Congo was directly involved in the two world wars. During World War I, an initial stand-off between the Force Publique and the German colonial army in German East Africa (Tanganyika) turned into open warfare with a joint Anglo-Belgian invasion of German colonial territory in 1916 and 1917 during the East African campaign. By 1916, the Belgian commander of the Force Publique, Lieutenant-General Charles Tombeur, had assembled an army of 15,000 men supported by local bearers – Reybrouck indicated that during the war no less than 260,000 native bearers were called upon – and advanced to Kigali (now the capital of Rwanda). Kigali was taken by 6 May 1916, and the army went on to take Tabora (now part of Tanzania) on 19 September after heavy fighting. In 1917, after Mahenge (now in Tanzania) had been conquered, the army of the Belgian Congo, by now 25,000 men, occupied one-third of German East Africa.
After World War I, under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany ceded control of the western section of the former German East Africa to Belgium, and Ruanda-Urundi would go on to become a League of Nations mandate territory, under Belgian administration. These areas did not become part of the Belgian Congo. Ruanda-Urundi would later become independent as the nations of Rwanda and Burundi, and the Belgian-controlled portions of German East Africa would join the nation of Tanganyika, followed by Tanzania.
During World War II, the Belgian Congo served as a crucial source of income for the Belgian government in exile in London after the occupation of Belgium by the Nazis. Following the occupation of Belgium by the Germans in May 1940, the Belgian Congo declared itself loyal to the Belgian government in exile in London. The Belgian Congo and the rest of the Free Belgian forces supported the war on the Allied side in the Battle of Britain with 28 pilots in the RAF (squadron 349) and in the Royal South African Air Force (350 Squadron) and in Africa. The Force Publique again participated in the Allied campaigns in Africa. Belgian Congolese forces (with Belgian officers) notably fought against the Italian colonial army in Italian East Africa, and were victorious in Asosa, Bortaï and in the Siege of Saïo under Major-general Auguste-Eduard Gilliaert during the second East African campaign of 1940–1941. On 3 July 1941, the Italian forces (under General Pietro Gazzera) surrendered when they were cut off by the Force Publique. A Congolese unit also served in the Far Eastern Theatre with the British army in the Burma campaign.
== Economic policy ==
The economic development of the Congo was one of the colony’s top priorities. An important tool was the construction of railways to open up the mineral and agricultural areas.
=== World War I ===
Rubber had long been the main export of the Belgian Congo, but its importance fell in the early 20th century from 77% of exports (by value) to only 15% as British colonies in Southeast Asia like British Malaya began to farm rubber. New resources were exploited, especially copper mining in Katanga province. The Belgian-owned Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, which would come to dominate copper mining, used a direct rail line to the sea at Beira. World War I increased demand for copper, and production soared from 997 tons in 1911 to 27,462 tons in 1917, then fell off to 19,000 tons in 1920. Smelters operated at Lubumbashi. Before the war the copper was sold to Germany; but the British purchased all the wartime output, with the revenues going to the Belgian government in exile. Diamond- and gold-mining also expanded during the war. The British firm of Lever Bros. greatly expanded the palm oil business during the war, and output of cocoa, rice and cotton increased. New rail and steamship lines opened to handle the expanded export traffic. During the First World War (1914–1918), the system of "mandatory cultivation" (cultures obligatoires) was introduced, forcing Congolese peasants to grow certain cash crops (cotton, coffee, groundnuts) destined as commodities for export. Territorial administrators and state agronomists had the task of supervising and, if necessary, sanctioning those peasants who evaded the mandatory cultivation.
=== Interbellum ===
Two distinct periods of investment in the Congo's economic infrastructure stand out during the period of Belgian rule: the 1920s and the 1950s.
In 1921, the Belgian government provided 300 million francs of loans to the Belgian Congo, to fund public infrastructure projects in support of the boom of the private companies in the colony. The Belgian government also privatised many of the government-owned companies that were active in the colony (the Kilo-Moto mines, La Société Nationale des transport fluviaux,..). After the First World War, priority was given to investments in transport infrastructure (such as the rail lines between Matadi and Léopoldville and Elisabethville and Port Francqui). From 1920 to 1932, 2,450 km of railroads were constructed. The government also invested heavily in harbour infrastructure in the cities of Boma, Matadi, Léopoldville and Coquilhatville. Electricity and waterworks in the main cities were also funded. Airports were built and a telephone line was funded that connected Brussels with Léopoldville. The government accounted for about 50% of the investments in the Belgian Congo; commercial companies accounted for the other 50%. The mining industry—with the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (U.M.H.K.) as a major player—, attracted the majority of private investments (copper and cobalt in Katanga, diamonds in Kasai, gold in Ituri). This allowed, in particular, the Belgian Société Générale to build up an economic empire in the Belgian Congo. Huge profits were generated by the private companies and for a large part siphoned off to European and other international shareholders in the form of dividends.
During the economic boom of the 1920s, many young Congolese men left their often impoverished rural villages and were employed by companies located near the cities; the population of Kinshasa nearly doubled from 1920 to 1940, and the population of Elizabethville grew from approximately 16,000 in 1923, to 33,000 in 1929. The necessary work-force was recruited by specialised recruiting firms (Robert Williams & Co, Bourse du Travail Kasaï,..) and was in some cases supported by governmental recruiting offices (Office de Travail-Offitra,..). In Katanga the main labour force were seasonal migrant workers from Tanganyika, Angola, Northern Rhodesia, and after 1926, also from Ruanda-Urundi.
In many cases, this huge labour migration affected the economic viability of rural communities: many farmers left their villages, which resulted in labour shortages in these areas. To counter these problems, the colonial government used maximum quotas of "able-bodied workers" that could be recruited from every area in the Belgian Congo. In this way, tens of thousands of workers from densely populated areas were employed in copper mines in the sparsely populated south (Katanga). In agriculture, too, the colonial state forced a drastic rationalisation of production. The state took over so-called "vacant lands" (land not directly used by the local population) and redistributed the territory to European companies, to individual white landowners (colons), or to the missions. In this way, an extensive plantation economy developed. Palm-oil production in the Congo increased from 2,500 tons in 1914 to 9,000 tons in 1921, and to 230,000 tons in 1957. Cotton production increased from 23,000 tons in 1932 to 127,000 in 1939.
The mobilization of the African workforce in the capitalist colonial economy played a crucial role in spreading the use of money in the Belgian Congo. The basic idea was that the development of the Congo had to be borne not by the Belgian taxpayers but by the Congolese themselves. The colonial state needed to be able to levy taxes in money on the Congolese, so it was important that they could make money by selling their produce or their labour within the framework of the colonial economy.
The economic boom of the 1920s turned the Belgian Congo into one of the leading copper-ore producers worldwide. In 1926 alone, the Union Minière exported more than 80,000 tons of copper ore, a large part of it for processing in Hoboken (Belgium). In 1928 King Albert I visited the Congo to inaugurate the so-called 'voie national' that linked the Katanga mining region via rail (up to Port Francqui) and via river transport (from Port Francqui to Léopoldville) to the Atlantic port of Matadi.
=== Great Depression ===
The Great Depression of the 1930s affected the export-based Belgian Congo economy severely because of the drop in international demand for raw materials and agricultural products (for example, the price of peanuts fell from 1.25 francs to 25 centimes (cents)). In some areas, as in the Katanga mining region, employment declined by 70%. In the country as a whole, the wage labour force decreased by 72,000 and many such labourers returned to their villages. In Léopoldville, the population decreased by 33%, because of this labour migration. In order to improve conditions in the countryside, the colonial government developed the so-called "indigenous peasantry programme", aimed at supporting the development of a stronger internal market that was less dependent of fluctuations in export demand, but also to combat the disastrous effects of erosion and soil exhaustion brought about by the mandatory cultivation scheme. This policy began to be implemented on a large scale throughout the Congo after the Second World War, by the colonial government. The scheme aimed to modernize indigenous agriculture by assigning plots of land to individual families and by providing them with government support in the form of selected seeds, agronomic advice, fertilizers, etc. The National Institute for Agronomic Study of the Belgian Congo, established in 1934, with its large experimental fields and laboratories in Yangambe, played an important role in crop selection and in the popularization of agronomic research and know-how.
=== World War II ===
During World War II, industrial production and agricultural output increased drastically. The Congolese population bore the brunt of the "war effort" – for instance, through a reinforcement of the mandatory cultivation policy. After Malaya fell to the Japanese (January 1942), the Belgian Congo became a strategic supplier of rubber to the Allies. The Belgian Congo became one of the major exporters of uranium to the US during World War II (and the Cold War), particularly from the Shinkolobwe mine. The colony provided the uranium used by the Manhattan Project, including in atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
=== Post World War II ===
After World War II, the colonial state became more active in the economic and social development of the Belgian Congo. An ambitious ten-year plan was launched by the Belgian government in 1949. It put emphasis on house building, energy supply, rural development and health-care infrastructure. The ten-year plan ushered in a decade of strong economic growth, from which, for the first time, the Congolese began to benefit on a substantial scale. At the same time, the economy had expanded and the number of Belgian nationals in the country more than doubled, from 39,000 in 1950 to more than 88,000 by 1960.
In 1953, Belgium granted the Congolese the right – for the first time – to buy and sell private property in their own names. In the 1950s a Congolese middle class, modest at first, but steadily growing, emerged in the main cities (Léopoldville, Elisabethville, Stanleyville, and Luluabourg).
There was rapid political development, forced by African aspirations, in the last years of the 1950s, culminating in the 1960 Belgian Congo general election.
== Civilising mission ==
Justifications for colonialism in Africa, taking as a given that tribal wars, cannibalism, human sacrifice, display of human trophies, bigamy, and other "primitive" practices were common place, often invoked as a key argument the civilizing influence of the European culture. The civilizing mission in the Congo went hand-in-hand with the economic and educational development. Conversion to Catholicism, basic Western-style education, and improved health-care were objectives in their own right, but at the same time helped to transform what Europeans regarded as a primitive society into the Western capitalist model, in which workers who were disciplined and healthy, and who had learned to read and write, could be assimilated into labour market. Some of the first notable missions into Africa were conducted by David Livingstone and John M. Springer during the late 19th century into the early 20th century.
=== Education ===
The educational system was dominated by the Catholic Church—as was the case for the rest of Belgium at the time—and, in some rare cases, by Protestant churches. Curricula reflected Christian and Western values. Even in 1948, 99.6% of educational facilities were run by Christian missions. Indigenous schooling was mainly religious and vocational. Children received basic education such as learning how to read, write and some mathematics. The Belgian Congo was one of the few African colonies in which local languages (Kikongo, Lingala, Tshiluba and Swahili) were taught at primary school. Even so, language policies and colonial domination often went hand in hand, as evidenced by the preference given to Lingala—a semi-artificial language spread through its common use in the Force Publique—over more local (but also more ancient) indigenous languages such as Lomongo and others.
In 1940 the schooling rates of children between 6 and 14 years old was 12%, reaching 37% in 1954, one of the highest rates in sub-Saharan Africa. Secondary and higher education for the indigenous population were not developed until relatively late in the colonial period. Black children, in small numbers, began to be admitted to European secondary schools from 1950 onward. The first university in the Belgian Congo, the Catholic Lovanium University, near Léopoldville, opened its doors to black and white students in 1954. Before the foundation of the Lovanium, the Catholic University of Louvain already operated multiple institutes for higher education in the Belgian Congo. The Fomulac (Fondation médicale de l'université de Louvain au Congo), was founded in 1926, with the goal of forming Congolese medical personnel and researchers specialized in tropical medicine. In 1932 the Catholic University of Louvain founded the Cadulac (Centres agronomiques de l'université de Louvain au Congo) in Kisantu. Cadulac was specialized in agricultural sciences and formed the basis for what was later to become Lovanium University. In 1956 a state university was founded in Elisabethville. Progress was slow though; until the end of the 1950s, no Congolese had been promoted beyond the rank of non-commissioned officer in the Force Publique, nor to a responsible position in the administration (such as head of bureau or territorial administrator).
In the late 1950s, 42% of the youth of school-going age was literate, which placed the Belgian Congo far ahead of any other country in Africa at the time. In 1960, 1,773,340 students were enrolled in schools around the Belgian Congo, of which 1,650,117 in primary school, 22,780 in post-primary school, 37,388 in secondary school and 1,445 in university and higher education. Of these 1,773,340 students, the majority (1,359,118) were enrolled in Catholic mission schools, 322,289 in Protestant mission schools and 68,729 in educational institutions organized by the state.
=== Health care ===
Health care, too, was largely supported by the missions, although the colonial state took an increasing interest. In 1906 the Institute of Tropical Medicine was founded in Brussels. The ITM was, and still is, one of the world's leading institutes for training and research in tropical medicine and the organisation of health care in developing countries. Endemic diseases, such as sleeping sickness, were all but eliminated through large-scale and persistent campaigns.
In 1925 medical missionary Dr. Arthur Lewis Piper was the first person to use and bring tryparsamide, the Rockefeller Foundation's drug to cure sleeping sickness, to the Congo. The health-care infrastructure expanded steadily throughout the colonial period, with a comparatively high availability of hospital beds relative to the population and with dispensaries set up in the most remote regions. In 1960 the country had a medical infrastructure that far surpassed any other African nation at that time. The Belgian Congo had 3,000 health care facilities, of which 380 were hospitals. There were 5.34 hospital beds for every 1000 inhabitants (1 for every 187 inhabitants). Great progress was also made in the fight against endemic diseases; the numbers of reported cases of sleeping sickness went from 34,000 cases in 1931 to 1,100 cases in 1959, mainly by eradicating the tsetse fly in densely populated areas. All Europeans and Congolese in the Belgian Congo received vaccinations for polio, measles and yellow fever. Vast disease prevention programmes were rolled out, aimed at eradicating polio, leprosy and tuberculosis. In the primary schools, disease prevention campaigns were implemented, and disease prevention classes were part of the curriculum.
=== Social inequality and racial discrimination ===
A system of racial segregation and discrimination existed in the Belgian Congo. There was an "implicit apartheid". The colony had curfews for Congolese city-dwellers and similar racial restrictions were commonplace. Léopoldville's system of racist curfews was particularly notable and was used as a blueprint in other European colonies, such as nearby French Equatorial Africa.
Though there were no specific laws imposing racial segregation, it was practiced socially and was more de facto in nature as blacks and whites were expected to be separate with the two rarely interacting with each other on a daily basis. Cities were designed with racial segregation in mind with certain areas being intended for whites and blacks. Public spaces such as shops, restaurants, hotels, etc. were racially segregated as some spaces were meant for whites and others for blacks but blacks could serve whites but could not often be serviced at facilities meant for whites. In the Force Publique, black soldiers could not pass the rank of non-commissioned officer. The black population in the cities could not leave their houses from 9 pm to 4 am. Starting in 1950 identity cards were issued to blacks who were deemed to be "civilized" allowing them to use white facilities and even be able to live in some white neighborhoods.
Because of the close interconnection between economic development and the 'civilizing mission', and because in practice state officials, missionaries and the executives of the private companies always lent each other a helping hand, the image has emerged that the Belgian Congo was governed by a "colonial trinity" of King-Church-Capital, encompassing the colonial state, the Christian missions, and the Société Générale de Belgique.
The paternalistic ideology underpinning colonial policy was summed up in a catchphrase used by Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans (1934–46): Dominer pour servir ("Dominate to serve"). The colonial government wanted to convey images of a benevolent and conflict-free administration and of the Belgian Congo as a true model colony. Only in the 1950s did this paternalistic attitude begin to change. In the 1950s the most blatant discriminatory measures directed at the Congolese were gradually withdrawn (among these: corporal punishment by means of the feared chicote—Portuguese word for whip). From 1953, and even more so after the triumphant visit of King Baudouin to the colony in 1955, Governor-General Léon Pétillon (1952–1958) worked to create a "Belgian-Congolese community", in which blacks and whites were to be treated as equals. Regardless, anti-miscegenation laws remained in place, and between 1959 and 1962 thousands of mixed-race Congolese children were forcibly deported from the Congo by the Belgian government and the Catholic Church and taken to Belgium.
In 1957, the first municipal elections open to black voters took place in a handful of the largest cities — Léopoldville, Élisabethville, and Jadotville.
=== Abolition of slavery ===
In the Congo Free State, thousands of men, women, and children were freed from Swahili Arab slave owners and slave traders in Eastern Congo between 1886 and 1892. They were then either enlisted in the militia (Force Publique) or given as prisoners to local chiefs who were allies, who then used them as laborers. Although chattel slavery was officially outlawed in 1910 when the Belgian Congo was formed, prisoners were still used as forced laborers for both public and private projects.
=== Colonists ===
In the Belgian Congo the presence of Belgian settlers along with white settlers in general was low and they were the minority of the population. Belgium did not encourage settlement in the colony and poor white people were not allowed to immigrate to the Belgian Congo. Belgian colonists made up 0.08% of the population in 1925 and 0.6% of the population in 1958. While the number of white settlers was at 0.13% in 1925 and 0.9% in 1958.
== Resistance ==
Congolese opposition against colonialism was continuous, sustained and took many different forms. It became more likely as modern ideas and education spread. Armed risings occurred sporadically and localized until roughly the end of the Second World War (e.g., revolt of the Pende in 1931, mutiny in Luluabourg 1944). From the end of the Second World War until the late 1950s, the era of what colonial propaganda called a "Pax belgica" prevailed. Until the end of colonial rule in 1960, passive forms of resistance and expressions of an anti-colonial sub-culture were nevertheless manifold and widespread (e.g., Kimbanguism, after the 'prophet' Simon Kimbangu, who was imprisoned by the Belgians).
Apart from active and passive resistance among the Congolese, the colonial regime over time also elicited internal criticism and dissent. Already in the 1920s, certain members of the Colonial Council in Brussels (among them Octave Louwers) voiced criticism regarding the often brutal recruitment methods employed by the major companies in the mining districts. The stagnation of population growth in many districts—in spite of spectacular successes in the fight against endemic diseases such as sleeping sickness—was another cause for concern. Low birth rates in the countryside and the depopulation of certain areas were typically attributed to the disruption of traditional community life as a result of forced labour migration and mandatory cultivation. Response was often made that that had been the point of the policies, and pointed to the increase of population in the cities, as well as the improvement in health and lifespan due to modern medicine and living conditions. Many missionaries who were in daily contact with Congolese villagers, took their plight in the transition at heart and sometimes intervened on their behalf with the colonial administration (for instance in land property questions).
The missions and certain territorial administrators also played an important role in the study and preservation of Congolese cultural and linguistic traditions and artefacts. One example among many is that of Father Gustaaf Hulstaert (1900–1990), who in 1937 created the periodical Aequatoria devoted to the linguistic, ethnographic and historical study of the Mongo people of the central Congo basin. The colonial state took an interest in the cultural and scientific study of the Congo, particularly after the Second World War, through the creation of the Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique Centrale (IRSAC, 1948).
== Toward independence ==
In the early 1950s, political emancipation of the Congolese elites, let alone of the masses, seemed like a distant event. But it was clear that the Congo could not forever remain immune from the rapid changes that, after the Second World War, profoundly affected colonialism around the world. The independence of the British, French and Dutch colonies in Asia shortly after 1945 had little immediate effect in the Congo, but in the United Nations pressure on Belgium (as on other colonial powers) increased. Belgium had ratified article 73 of the United Nations Charter, which advocated self-determination, and both superpowers put pressure on Belgium to reform its Congo policy; the Belgian government tried to resist what it described as 'interference' with its colonial policy.
Colonial authorities discussed ways to ameliorate the situation of the Congolese. Since the 1940s, the colonial government had experimented in a very modest way with granting a limited elite of so-called évolués more civil rights, holding out the eventual prospect of a limited amount of political influence. To this end "deserving" Congolese could apply for a proof of "civil merit", or, one step up, 'immatriculation' (registration), i.e., official evidence of their assimilation with European civilisation. To acquire this status, the applicant had to fulfill strict conditions (monogamous matrimony, evidence of good behaviour, etc.) and submit to stringent controls (including house visits). This policy was a failure. By the mid-1950s, there were at best a few thousand Congolese who had successfully obtained the civil merit diploma or been granted "immatriculation". The supposed benefits attached to it—including equal legal status with the white population—proved often more theory than reality and led to open frustration with the évolués. When Governor-General Pétillon began to speak about granting the native people more civil rights, even suffrage, to create what he termed a "Belgo-Congolese community", his ideas were met with indifference from Brussels and often with open hostility from some of the Belgians in the Congo, who feared for their privileges.
It became increasingly evident that the Belgian government lacked a strategic long-term vision in relation to the Congo. 'Colonial affairs' did not generate much interest or political debate in Belgium, so long as the colony seemed to be thriving and calm. A notable exception was the young King Baudouin, who had succeeded his father, King Leopold III, under dramatic circumstances in 1951, when Leopold III was forced to abdicate. Baudouin took a close interest in the Belgian Congo.
On his first state visit to the Belgian Congo in 1955, King Baudouin was welcomed enthusiastically by cheering crowds of whites and blacks alike, as captured in André Cauvin's documentary film, Bwana Kitoko. Foreign observers, such as the international correspondent of The Manchester Guardian or a Time journalist, remarked that Belgian paternalism "seemed to work", and contrasted Belgium's seemingly loyal and enthusiastic colonial subjects with the restless French and British colonies. On the occasion of his visit, King Baudouin openly endorsed the Governor-General's vision of a "Belgo-Congolese community"; but, in practice, this idea progressed slowly. At the same time, divisive ideological and linguistic issues in Belgium, which heretofore had been successfully kept out of the colony's affairs, began to affect the Congo as well. These included the rise of unionism among workers, the call for public (state) schools to break the missions' monopoly on education, and the call for equal treatment in the colony of both Belgian national languages: French and Dutch. Until then, French had been promoted as the sole colonial language. The Governor-General feared that such divisive issues would undermine the authority of the colonial government in the eyes of the Congolese, while also diverting attention from the more pressing need for true emancipation.
=== Political organisation ===
The participation of Congolese people in the Second World War and news of changes in other colonies resulted in their organising to gain more power. As a result of the inability of the colonial government to introduce radical and credible changes, the Congolese elites began to organise themselves socially and soon also politically. In the 1950s, two markedly different forms of nationalism arose among the Congolese elites. The nationalist movement—to which the Belgian authorities, to some degree, turned a blind eye—promoted territorial nationalism, wherein the Belgian Congo would become one politically united state after independence.
In opposition to this was the ethno-religious and regional nationalism that took hold in the Bakongo territories of the west coast, Kasai and Katanga. The first political organisations were of the latter type. ABAKO, founded in 1950 as the Association culturelle des Bakongo and headed by Joseph Kasa-Vubu, was initially a cultural association that soon turned political. From the mid-1950s, it became a vocal opponent of Belgian colonial rule. Additionally, the organization continued to serve as the major ethno-religious organization for the Bakongo and became closely intertwined with the Kimbanguist Church, which was extremely popular in the lower Congo.
In 1955, Belgian professor Antoine van Bilsen published a treatise called Thirty Year Plan for the Political Emancipation of Belgian Africa. The timetable called for the gradual emancipation of the Congo over a 30-year period—the time Van Bilsen expected it would take to create an educated elite who could replace the Belgians in positions of power. The Belgian government and many of the évolués were suspicious of the plan—the former because it meant eventually giving up the Congo, and the latter because Belgium would continue to rule for another three decades. A group of Catholic évolués responded positively to the plan with a moderate manifesto in a Congolese journal called Conscience Africaine; they raised issues as to the extent of Congolese participation.
In 1957, by way of experiment, the colonial government organised the first municipal elections in three urban centres (Léopoldville, Elisabethville and Jadotville), in which Congolese people were allowed to stand for office and cast their vote. Events in 1957–58 led to a sudden acceleration in the demands for political emancipation. The independence of Ghana in 1957 and President De Gaulle's August 1958 visit to Brazzaville, the capital of the French Congo, on the other side of the Congo river to Léopoldville, in which he promised France's African colonies the free choice between a continued association with France or full independence, aroused ambitions in the Congo. The World Exhibition organised in Brussels in 1958 (Expo 58) proved another eye-opener for many Congolese leaders, who were allowed to travel to Belgium for the first time.
In 1958, the demands for independence radicalised quickly and gained momentum. A key role was played by the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC). First set up in 1956, the MNC was established in October 1958 as a national political party that supported the goal of a unitary and centralised Congolese nation. Its most influential leader was the charismatic Patrice Lumumba. In 1959, an internal split was precipitated by Albert Kalonji and other MNC leaders who favoured a more moderate political stance (the splinter group was deemed Mouvement National Congolais-Kalonji). Despite the organisational divergence of the party, Lumumba's leftist faction (now the Mouvement National Congolais-Lumumba) and the MNC collectively had established themselves as by far the most important and influential party in the Belgian Congo. Belgium vehemently opposed Lumumba's leftist views and had grave concerns about the status of their financial interests should Lumumba's MNC gain power.
=== Independence ===
While the Belgian government was debating a programme to gradually extend the political emancipation of the Congolese population, it was overtaken by events. On 4 January 1959, a prohibited political demonstration organised in Léopoldville by ABAKO got out of hand. At once, the colonial capital was in the grip of extensive rioting. It took the authorities several days to restore order and, by the most conservative count, several hundred died. The eruption of violence sent a shockwave through the Congo and Belgium alike. On 13 January, King Baudouin addressed the nation by radio and declared that Belgium would work towards the full independence of the Congo "without delay, but also without irresponsible rashness".
Without committing to a specific date for independence, the government of prime minister Gaston Eyskens had a multi-year transition period in mind. They thought provincial elections would take place in December 1959, national elections in 1960 or 1961, after which administrative and political responsibilities would be gradually transferred to the Congolese, in a process presumably to be completed towards the mid-1960s. On the ground, circumstances were changing much more rapidly. Increasingly, the colonial administration saw varied forms of resistance, such as refusal to pay taxes. In some regions anarchy threatened. At the same time many Belgians resident in the Congo opposed independence, feeling betrayed by Brussels. Faced with a radicalisation of Congolese demands, the government saw the chances of a gradual and carefully planned transition dwindling rapidly.
In 1959, King Baudouin made another visit to the Belgian Congo, finding a great contrast with his visit of four years before. Upon his arrival in Léopoldville, he was pelted with rocks by black Belgo-Congolese citizens who were angry with the imprisonment of Lumumba, convicted because of incitement against the colonial government. Though Baudouin's reception in other cities was considerably better, the shouts of "Vive le roi!" were often followed by "Indépendance immédiate!" The Belgian government wanted to avoid being drawn into a futile and potentially very bloody colonial war, as had happened to France in Indochina and Algeria, or to the Netherlands in Indonesia. For that reason, it was inclined to give in to the demands for immediate independence voiced by the Congolese leaders.
Despite lack of preparation and an insufficient number of educated elites (there were only a handful of Congolese holding a university degree at that time), the Belgian leaders decided to accept the independence. In fact, the weakness of local elites was seen favorably by the Belgian government and business leaders, who hoped this would make it easier for them to remain in charge of key aspects of the country's politics and economy. This approach, different from both the colonial wars and the more gradual decolonization other European states engaged in, became known as "Le Pari Congolais"—the Congolese bet.
In January 1960, Congolese political leaders were invited to Brussels to participate in a round-table conference to discuss independence. Patrice Lumumba was discharged from prison for the occasion. The conference agreed surprisingly quickly to grant the Congolese practically all of their demands: a general election to be held in May 1960 and full independence—"Dipenda"—on 30 June 1960. This was in response to the strong united front put up by the Congolese delegation.
Political maneuvering ahead of the elections resulted in the emergence of three political alliances: a coalition of the federalistic nationalists consisting of six separatist parties or organizations, two of which were ABAKO and the MNC—Kalonji; the centralist MNC—Lumumba; and that of Moïse Tshombe, the strongman of Katanga, who wanted to preserve the business interests of the Union Minière (as Kalonji did with respect to the diamond exploitations in Kasaï). The parliamentary elections resulted in a divided political landscape, with both the regionalist factions—chief among them ABAKO—and the nationalist parties such as the MNC, doing well. A compromise arrangement was forced through, with Kasa-Vubu becoming the first president of the Republic of the Congo, and Lumumba its first head of government. As planned scarcely five months earlier, the hand-over ceremony by the Belgians took place on time on 30 June 1960 at the new residence of the Governor-General of the Belgian Congo in Léopoldville.
One week later, a rebellion broke out within the Force Publique against its officers, who were still predominantly Belgian. This was a catalyst for disturbances arising all over the Congo, mainly instigated by dissatisfied soldiers and radicalized youngsters. In many areas, their violence specifically targeted European victims. Within weeks, the Belgian military and later a United Nations intervention force evacuated the largest part of the more than 80,000 Belgians who were still working and living in the Congo.
== Congo Crisis and aftermath ==
The rebellion that had started in Thyssville in the Bas-Congo in July 1960 quickly spread to the rest of the Congo. In September 1960, the leaders split, with President Kasa-Vubu declaring prime minister Lumumba deposed from his functions, and vice versa. The stalemate was ended with the government's arrest of Lumumba. In January 1961, he was flown to the rich mining province of Katanga, which by that time had declared a secession from Léopoldville under the leadership of Moïse Tshombe (with active Belgian support). Lumumba was handed over to Katangan authorities, who executed him.
In 2002 Belgium officially apologised for its role in the assassination of Lumumba; the CIA has long been speculated of complicity, as they had seen Lumumba's politics were too far left. The Soviet Union during the Cold War years was active in expanding its influence in Africa against European powers, giving 'anti-colonialism' as a rationale for the increase of its power in the region. A series of rebellions and separatist movements seemed to shatter the dream of a unitary Congolese state at its birth. Although the nation was independent, Belgian paratroopers intervened in the Congo on various occasions to protect and evacuate Belgian and international citizens. The United Nations maintained a large peace-keeping operation in the Congo from late 1960 onward. The situation did not stabilise until 1964–65. Katanga province was re-absorbed and the so-called Simba Rebellion ended in Stanleyville (province Orientale). Shortly after that army colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu ended the political impasse by seizing power in a coup d'état.
Mobutu had some support in the West, and in particular in the United States, because of his strong anti-communist stance. Initially his rule favored consolidation and economic development (e.g., by building the Inga dam that had been planned in the 1950s). In order to distance himself from the previous regime, he launched a campaign of Congolese "authenticity". The government abandoned the use of colonial place names in 1966: Léopoldville was renamed as Kinshasa, Elisabethville as Lubumbashi, Stanleyville as Kisangani. During this period, the Congo generally maintained close economic and political ties with Belgium. Certain financial issues had remained unresolved after independence (the so-called "contentieux"), for instance, the transfer of shares in the big mining companies that had been held directly by the colonial state. In 1970, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of independence, King Baudouin paid an official state visit to the Congo.
Mobutu's régime became more radical during the 1970s. The Mouvement populaire de la Révolution (MPR), of which Mobutu was the président-fondateur, firmly established one-party rule. Political repression increased considerably. Mobutu renamed the Congo as the Republic of Zaire. The so-called "Zairisation" of the country in the mid-1970s led to an exodus of foreign workers and economic disaster. In the 1980s the Mobutu regime became a byword for mismanagement and corruption. Relations with Belgium, the former colonial power, went through a series of ups and downs, reflecting a steady decline in the underlying economic, financial and political interests. As there was no danger of the country falling into Soviet hands, the Western powers maintained a neutral stance.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, Mobutu lost support in the West. As a result, in 1990, he decided to end the one-party system and dramatically announced a return to democracy. But he dragged his feet and played out his opponents against one another to gain time. A bloody intervention of the Zairian Army against students on the Lubumbashi University Campus in May 1990 precipitated a break in diplomatic relations between Belgium and Zaire. Pointedly, Mobutu was not invited to attend the funeral of King Baudouin in 1993, which he considered a grave personal affront.
In 1997 Mobutu was forced from power by a rebel force headed by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who declared himself president and renamed Zaire as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Assassinated in 2001, Kabila was succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila. In 2006 Joseph Kabila was confirmed as president through the first nationwide free elections in the Congo since 1960. On 30 June – 2 July 2010, King Albert II and Yves Leterme, the Belgian Prime Minister, visited Kinshasa to attend the festivities marking the 50th anniversary of Congolese independence.
Certain practices and traditions from the colonial period have survived into the independent Congolese state. It maintains a strong centralising and bureaucratic tendency, and has kept the organizational structure of the education system and the judiciary. The influence of the Congo on Belgium has been manifested mainly in economic terms: through the activities of the Union Minière (now Umicore), the development of a nonferrous metal industry, and the development of the Port of Antwerp and diamond industry. To this day, Brussels Airlines (successor of the former Sabena) has maintained a strong presence in the DRC. It was estimated that in 2010, more than 4,000 Belgian nationals were resident in the DRC, and the Congolese community in Belgium was at least 16,000 strong. The "Matongé" quarter in Brussels is the traditional focal point of the Congolese community in Belgium.
== Culture ==
=== Music ===
In popular music, Latin music such as rumba was introduced from Cuba in the 1930s and 1940s during the colonial era, and Latin music was played extensively in the Belgian Congo. In the 1950s, American jazz was also widely accepted as African jazz. In 1956, Franco formed OK Jazz (later renamed TPOK Jazz).
Joseph Kabasele, also known as Le Grand Kallé (The Great Kallé), formed African Jazz. House bands became popular, and rumba congolaise were formed. Marlo Mashi is a musician of the same era. Congo's popular music evolved from continental rhythm, church music, Ghana's high life, and traditional Congo music. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin | Peter Kropotkin | Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (9 December [O.S. 27 November] 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist political philosopher and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism.
Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, Kropotkin attended the Page Corps and later served as an officer in Siberia, where he participated in several geological expeditions. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1874 and managed to escape two years later. He spent the next 41 years in exile in Switzerland, France (where he was imprisoned for almost four years), and England. While in exile, he gave lectures and published widely on anarchism and geography. Kropotkin returned to Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917, but he was disappointed by the Bolshevik state.
Kropotkin was a proponent of the idea of decentralized communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations of self-governing communities and worker-run enterprises. He wrote many books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread (1892) and Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1899), with Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) being his principal scientific offering. He contributed the article on anarchism to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica and left an unfinished work on anarchist ethical philosophy.
== Early life ==
Kropotkin was born in Moscow on 9 December 1842, in the Konyushennaya ("Equerries") district. His father, Alexey, was a typical royal officer who owned serfs in three provinces and whose family descended from the princes of Smolensk. His mother, Ekatarina Sulima, was the daughter of General Nikolai Sulima and a descendant of a Zaporozhian Cossack leader. Peter, the youngest of her four children, was three years old when she died of tuberculosis. Kropotkin's father remarried two years later. This stepmother was indifferent towards the Kropotkin children and had a streak of jealous vindictiveness, going to great lengths to remove the memory of Kropotkin's mother.
With his father mostly absent, Kropotkin and his older brother, Alexander, were raised by their German nurse. Kropotkin developed an enduring compassion for the estate's servants and serfs who cared for him and relayed stories of his mother's kindness. He was raised in the family's Moscow mansion and an estate in Nikolskoye, Kaluga Oblast, outside Moscow.
At the age of eight, Kropotkin attended Tsar Nicholas I's Royal Ball. Commending the child's costume, the tsar chose Kropotkin for his Page Corps, an elite school in St. Petersburg that combined military and court education and produced the tsar's imperial attendants. Kropotkin joined the Page Corps as a teenager and began a 14-year epistolary relationship with his brother that charts his intellectual and emotional development. By the time of his arrival, Kropotkin had already shown a populist position towards the emancipation of serfs and a nature of revolt against his father and the school's hazing. Kropotkin began his first underground revolutionary writings at the school, where he advocated for a Russian constitution. He developed an interest in science, reading, and opera. As a top student, Kropotkin became a sergeant-major in 1861 and was thrust into court life, serving as the emperor's personal Page de Chambre. His views of the tsar and court life soured as imperial policy changed over the next year. Privately, he was preoccupied with the need to live a societally useful life.
=== Siberia ===
For his tour of service, in 1862, he chose the Amur Cossacks in east Siberia, an undesirable post that would let him study the technical mathematics of artillery, travel, live in nature, and achieve financial independence from his father. He developed a firm worldview of compassion for the poor and contrasted the pride and dignity of the yeoman peasant farmers against the indignities of serfdom. He wrote approvingly of the cultivated Transbaikalia governor-general Boleslav Kukel, to whom Kropotkin reported. Kukel engaged Kropotkin in prison reform and city self-governance projects that the central government ultimately denied. The exiled poet and political prisoner Mikhail Larionovitch Mikhailov introduced Kropotkin to anarchism by recommending he read an essay by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Kropotkin's brother came to live with him in Irkutsk.
After Kukel's ouster in early 1863, Kropotkin found solace in geographical work. He led a disguised reconnaissance expedition to find a direct route through Manchuria from Chita to Vladivostok the next year. He explored the East Siberian Mountains in the north the year after. The mountain measurements from his 1866 Olekminsk-Vitimsk expedition confirmed his Manchurian hypothesis that the Siberian area from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean was a plateau and not a plain. This discovery of the Patom and Vitim Plateaus won him a gold medal from the Russian Geographical Society and led to the commercialization of the Lena gold fields. A range of mountains in this region was later named for him.
Kropotkin covered Siberia for St. Petersburg newspapers since his arrival, including the condition of the Polish political exiles who participated in the unsuccessful 1866 Baikal Insurrection. Kropotkin secured a promise from the governor-general to suspend the prisoners' death sentences, which was reneged upon. Disillusioned, Kropotkin and his brother resolved to leave the military. His time in Siberia taught him to appreciate peasant social organization and convinced him that administrative reform was an ineffectual means to improve social conditions.
After five years in Siberia, Kropotkin and his brother moved to St. Petersburg, where they continued their schooling and academic work. Kropotkin took a position with the Russian interior ministry with no duties. He studied mathematics, physics, and geography at the university. After presenting his Vitim expedition findings, Kropotkin accepted the Russian Geographical Society's part-time offer of its Physical Geography section Secretaryship. Kropotkin translated Herbert Spencer's work for additional income. He continued to develop a theory, which he considered his best scientific contribution, that the East Siberian mountains were part of a large plateau and not independent ridges. Kropotkin participated in a 1870 polar expedition plan that postulated the existence of what was later discovered as the Franz Josef Land Arctic archipelago.
In early 1871, he was commissioned to study the Ice Age in Scandinavian geography, in which Kropotkin developed theories of the glaciation of Europe and the glacial lakes of its northeast. His father died later that year, and Kropotkin inherited a wealthy estate in Tambov. Kropotkin turned down the Geographical Society's offer of its general secretary position, instead choosing to work on his Ice Age data and interest in bettering the lives of peasants.
=== Anarchism ===
While Kropotkin became increasingly revolutionary in his writings, he was not known for activism. He was spurred by the 1871 Paris Commune and the trial of Sergey Nechayev. He and his brother attended meetings on the Franco-Prussian War and revolutionism. Likely at the encouragement of a Swiss extended family member and his own desire to see the socialist workers' movement, Kropotkin set out to see Switzerland and Western Europe in February 1872. Over three months, he met Mikhail Sazhin in Zurich, worked and fell out with Nikolai Utin's Marxist group in Geneva, and was introduced to the Jura Federation's James Guillaume and Adhémar Schwitzguébel. The Jura were the main internal opposition to the Marxist-controlled First International, as followers of Mikhail Bakunin. Kropotkin was quickly impressed and was instantly converted to anarchism by the group's egalitarianism and independence of expression, but narrowly missed meeting the leading anarchist, Bakunin, while there. Kropotkin visited Belgium's movement before returning to Russia in May with contraband literature.
Back in St. Petersburg, Kropotkin joined the Chaikovsky Circle, a group of revolutionaries that Kropotkin considered more educational than revolutionary in their activities. Kropotkin believed in the inevitability of social revolution and the need for stateless social organization. His populist revolutionary program for the group emphasized the role of urban workers and peasants, whereas the group's moderates concentrated on students. Partially for this reason, he declined to contribute his personal wealth to the group. He viewed professionals as unlikely to forgo their privileges and judged them to not live societally useful lives. His program emphasized federated agrarian communes and a revolutionary party. While he could speak powerfully, Kropotkin was not a successful organizer.
Kropotkin's first political memo in November 1873 covered his basic plan for stateless social reconstruction, including common property, worker control of factories, shared physical labor towards societal need, and labor vouchers in lieu of money. He emphasized living among commoners and using propaganda to focus mass dissatisfaction. He rejected the Nechayev conspiracy model. Members of the circle began to be arrested in late 1873, and the Third Section secret police came for Kropotkin in March 1874.
His arrest for agitation, as a former page de chambre and officer, was scandalous. Kropotkin had just filed his Ice Age report and had been recently elected president of the Geographical Society's Physical and Mathematical Department. At the society's request, the tsar granted Kropotkin books to finish his glaciation report. Kropotkin was held in the Peter and Paul Fortress. His brother, who had also been radicalized as a follower of Lavrov, was also arrested and exiled in Siberia, where he committed suicide about a decade later.
Kropotkin was moved to the House of Detention prison military hospital in St. Petersburg for poor health, with the help of his sister. With assistance from friends, he escaped from the minimum-security prison in June 1876. By way of Scandinavia and England, Kropotkin arrived in Switzerland by the end of the year, where he met Italian anarchists Carlo Cafiero and Errico Malatesta. He visited Belgium and Zurich, where he met French geographer Élisée Reclus, who became a close friend.
== Exile ==
Kropotkin associated with the Jura Federation and began editing its publication. There he met Ukrainian Jewish student Sofia Ananieva-Rabinovich, and the two were married in 1878. In 1879, he started Le Révolté, a revolutionary fortnightly, in Geneva that published his personal articulation of anarchist communism, the idea of distributing work product communally based on need rather than by work. He became the philosophy's most prominent proponent, despite not creating it. The philosophy became part of the Jura program in 1880 at Kropotkin's advocacy. Le Révolté also published Kropotkin's best-known pamphlet, "An Appeal to the Young", in 1880.
Switzerland expelled Kropotkin at Russia's behest after the assassination of Alexander II in early 1881. He moved to Thonon-les-Bains, France, near Geneva, so that his wife could finish her Swiss education. Upon learning that the Holy League, a tsarist group, intended to kill him for his alleged association with the assassination, he moved to London, but could only bear to live there for a year. Upon his return in late 1882, the French arrested him for agitation, partly to appease Russia. He was sentenced to five years in Lyon. In early 1883, he was transferred to the Clairvaux Prison, where he continued his academic work. A public campaign of intellectuals and French legislators called for his release. Reclus published Words of a Rebel, a compilation of Kropotkin's Révolté writings while he was in prison, which became a main source of Kropotkin's thoughts on revolution. As Kropotkin's health worsened from scurvy and malaria, France released him in early 1886. He would stay in England through 1917, settling in Harrow, London, apart from brief trips to other European countries.
In London in late 1886, he co-founded Freedom, an anarchist monthly and the first English anarchist periodical, which he continued to support for almost three decades. His first and only child, Alexandra Kropotkin, was born the next year. He published multiple books over the coming years, including In Russian and French Prisons and The Conquest of Bread. His intellectual circle in London included William Morris and W. B. Yeats as well as old Russian friends Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky and Nikolai Tchaikovsky. Kropotkin contributed to the Geographical Journal and Nature.
After 1890, according to biographers George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumović, Kropotkin became more of a scholarly recluse and less of a propagandist. His works' revolutionary zeal subsided as he turned to social, ethical, and scientific questions. He joined the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He continued to contribute to Freedom but was no longer an editor.
Several of Kropotkin's books began as journal articles. His writings on anarchist communist social life were printed in the French successor to Le Révolté and later revised into The Conquest of Bread in 1892. Kropotkin's writings on decentralizing production and industry against the countervailing trend of centralized industrialization were compiled into his Fields, Factories, and Workshops in 1899. His research throughout the 1890s on the animal instinct for cooperation as a counterpoint to Darwinism became a series of articles in Nineteenth Century and, later, the book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which was widely translated.
Following a scientific congress in Toronto in 1897, Kropotkin toured Canada. His experience there led him to advise the Russian Doukhobors who sought to immigrate there. He helped facilitate their emigration in 1899. Kropotkin entered the United States and met Johann Most, Emma Goldman, and Benjamin Tucker. American publishers published his Memoirs of a Revolutionist and Fields, Factories, and Workshops by the end of the decade. He visited the United States again in 1901 at the invitation of the Lowell Institute to give lectures on Russian literature that were later published. He published The Great French Revolution (1909), The Terror in Russia (1909), and Modern Science and Anarchism (1913). His 70th birthday in 1912 had celebratory gatherings in London and Paris.
Kropotkin's support for Western entry into World War I, siding with Britain and France, divided the anarchist movement, which had been anti-war, and damaged his esteem as a luminary of socialism. He exacerbated this by insisting, with returning to Russia, that Russians support the war as well.
== Return to Russia ==
With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Kropotkin returned to Russia in June 1917. He refused the Petrograd Provisional Government's offer of a cabinet seat. In August, he advocated for defending Russia and the revolution at the National State Conference. Kropotkin applied for a residence in Moscow in 1918, which was personally approved by Vladimir Lenin, head of the Soviet government. Months later, finding life in Moscow difficult in his old age, Kropotkin moved with his family to a friend's home in the nearby town of Dmitrov.
In 1919, Emma Goldman visited his family there. Kropotkin met Lenin in Moscow and corresponded by mail to discuss political questions of the day. He advocated for workers' cooperatives and argued against the Bolsheviks' hostage policy and centralization of authority, while simultaneously encouraging Western comrades to stop their governments' military interventions in Russia. Kropotkin ultimately had little impact on the Russian revolution, but his advocacy work for political and anarchist prisoners in Russia, and for the anti-interventionist Russian Revolution, during the last four years of his life replenished some of the goodwill he had lost due to his support for the Western powers in World War I.
Kropotkin died of pneumonia on 8 February 1921. His family refused an offer of a state funeral. With his Moscow funeral, the Bolsheviks permitted the diminished Russian anarchist movement an official, restrained occasion to memorialize their figurehead. It was the last major anarchist demonstration of the period in Russia, because the movement and Kropotkin's writings were fully suppressed later that year.
== Philosophy ==
=== Critique of capitalism ===
Kropotkin critiqued what he considered to be the fallacies of the economic systems of feudalism and capitalism. He believed they create poverty and artificial scarcity and promote privilege. As an alternative, he proposed a more decentralized economic system based on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation. He argued that the tendencies for this kind of organization already exist, both in evolution and in human society.
Kropotkin disagreed in part with the Marxist critique of capitalism, including the labor theory of value, believing there was no necessary link between work performed and the values of commodities. His attack on the institution of wage labor was based more on the power employers exerted over employees, and not only on the extraction of surplus value from their labor. Kropotkin claimed this power was made possible by the state's protection of private ownership of productive resources. However, Kropotkin believed the possibility of surplus value was itself the problem, holding that a society would still be unjust if the workers of a particular industry kept their surplus to themselves, rather than redistributing it for the common good.
=== Critique of state socialism ===
Kropotkin believed that a communist society could be established only by a social revolution, which he described as, "... the taking possession by the people of all social wealth. It is the abolition of all the forces which have so long hampered the development of Humanity". However, he criticized forms of revolutionary methods (like those proposed by Marxism and Blanquism) that retained the use of state power, arguing that any central authority was incompatible with the dramatic changes needed by a social revolution. Kropotkin believed that the mechanisms of the state were deeply rooted in maintaining the power of one class over another, and thus could not be used to emancipate the working class. Instead, Kropotkin insisted that both private property and the state needed to be abolished together.
The economic change which will result from the Social Revolution will be so immense and so profound, it must so change all the relations based today on property and exchange, that it is impossible for one or any individual to elaborate the different social forms, which must spring up in the society of the future. [...] Any authority external to it will only be an obstacle, only a trammel on the organic labor which must be accomplished, and beside that a source of discord and hatred.
Kropotkin believed that any post-revolutionary government would lack the local knowledge to organize a diverse population. Their vision of society would be limited by their own vindictive, self-serving, or narrow ideals. To ensure order, preserve authority, and organize production the state would need to use violence and coercion to suppress further revolution, and control workers. The workers would be reliant on the state bureaucracy to organize them, so they would never develop the initiative to self-organize as they needed. This would lead to the re-creation of classes, an oppressed workforce, and eventually another revolution. Thus, Kropotkin wrote that maintaining the state would paralyze any true social revolution, making the idea of a "revolutionary government" a contradiction in terms:
We know that Revolution and Government are incompatible; one must destroy the other, no matter what name is given to government, whether dictator, royalty, or parliament. We know that what makes the strength and the truth of our party is contained in this fundamental formula — "Nothing good or durable can be done except by the free initiative of the people, and every government tends to destroy it;" and so the very best among us, if their ideas had not to pass through the crucible of the popular mind, before being put into execution, and if they should become masters of that formidable machine — the government — and could thus act as they chose, would become in a week fit only for the gallows. We know whither every dictator leads, even the best intentioned, — namely to the death of all revolutionary movement.
Rather than a centralized approach, Kropotkin stressed the need for decentralized organization. He believed that dissolving the state would cripple counter-revolution without reverting to authoritarian methods of control, writing, "In order to conquer, something more than guillotines are required. It is the revolutionary idea, the truly wide revolutionary conception, which reduces its enemies to impotence by paralyzing all the instruments by which they have governed hitherto." He believed this was possible only through a widespread "Boldness of thought, a distinct and wide conception of all that is desired, constructive force arising from the people in proportion as the negation of authority dawns; and finally—the initiative of all in the work of reconstruction—this will give to the revolution the Power required to conquer." Also, Kropotkin considered the dialectical social technology method popular among the Marxist at the time as superstition.
Kropotkin applied this criticism to the Bolsheviks' rule following the October Revolution. Kropotkin summarized his thoughts in a 1919 letter to the workers of Western Europe, promoting the possibility of revolution, but also warning against the centralized control in Russia, which he believed had condemned them to failure. Kropotkin wrote to Lenin in 1920, describing the desperate conditions that he believed to be the result of bureaucratic organization, and urging Lenin to allow for local and decentralized institutions. Following an announcement of executions later that year, Kropotkin sent Lenin another furious letter, admonishing him for the terror which Kropotkin saw as needlessly destructive.
=== Cooperation and competition ===
In 1902, Kropotkin published his book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which gave an alternative view of animal and human survival. At the time, some proponents of "social Darwinism" such as Francis Galton proffered a theory of interpersonal competition and natural hierarchy. Instead, Kropotkin argued that "it was an evolutionary emphasis on cooperation instead of competition in the Darwinian sense that made for the success of species, including the human". In the last chapter, he wrote:
In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense – not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species [...] in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits [...] and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development [...] are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay.
Contrary to popular belief, he did not deny the existence of selfishness or competitive struggle among organisms in nature, that is, "mutual struggle". He viewed cooperation and sociability among members of the same species as the best means to survive.
Biologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that Kropotkin's view was consistent with modern biological understanding. He agrees with Kropotkin's observations, noting that while Kropotkin did not deny the concept of competitive struggle, he believed that cooperative interactions were too often overlooked within it. He also points out that if cooperation increases the survival rate of an individual, there is no reason why it should be ruled out by natural selection, but rather, as he said, encouraged.
Kropotkin did not deny the presence of competitive urges in humans, but did not consider them the driving force of human history. He believed that seeking out conflict proved to be socially beneficial only in attempts to destroy injustice, as well as authoritarian institutions such as the state or the Russian Orthodox Church, which he saw as stifling human creativity and impeding human instinctual drive towards cooperation.
Kropotkin claimed that the benefits arising from mutual organization incentivize humans more than mutual strife. His hope was that in the long run, mutual organization would drive individuals to produce. Anarcho-primitivists and anarcho-communists believe that a gift economy can break the cycle of poverty. They rely on Kropotkin, who believed that the hunter-gatherers he had visited implemented mutual aid.
=== Mutual aid ===
In his 1892 book The Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin proposed a system of economics based on mutual exchanges made in a system of voluntary cooperation. He believed that in a society that is socially, culturally, and industrially developed enough to produce all the goods and services it needs, there would be no obstacle, such as preferential distribution, pricing, or monetary exchange, to prevent everyone from taking what they need from the social product. He supported the eventual abolition of money or tokens of exchange for goods and services.
Kropotkin believed that Mikhail Bakunin's collectivist economic model was just a wage system by a different name and that such a system would breed the same type of centralization and inequality as a capitalist wage system. He stated that it is impossible to determine the value of an individual's contributions to the products of labor and thought that anyone who was placed in a position of trying to make such determinations would wield authority over those whose wages they determined.
According to Kirkpatrick Sale, "[w]ith Mutual Aid especially, and later with Fields, Factories, and Workshops, Kropotkin was able to move away from the absurdist limitations of individual anarchism and no-laws anarchism that had flourished during this period and provide instead a vision of communal anarchism, following the models of independent cooperative communities he discovered while developing his theory of mutual aid. It was an anarchism that opposed centralized government and state-level laws as traditional anarchism did, but understood that at a certain small scale, communities and communes and co-ops could flourish and provide humans with a rich material life and wide areas of liberty without centralized control."
=== Self-sufficiency ===
Kropotkin's focus on local production led to his view that a country should strive for self-sufficiency by manufacturing its own goods and growing its own food, thus lessening the need to rely on imports. To these ends, he advocated irrigation and greenhouses to boost local food production.
=== Religion ===
Although in the past he harshly criticized religious morality, Kropotkin recognized the Christian anarchism of Leo Tolstoy as one of the four schools of thought in anarchism. Kropotkin and Tolstoy maintained, despite never meeting in person, a relationship of mutual respect. Kropotkin saw the origins of anarchism in Europe as found in various Christian movements, such as the Anabaptists and Hussites, mentioning figures such as the Italian Catholic bishop Marco Girolamo Vida and the German Anabaptist theologian Hans Denck.
Kropotkin admired Christianity and Buddhism, along with the figures of Jesus Christ and Buddha and their ethical teachings. Kropotkin did not see that Christianity introduced anything new in its defense of brotherhood and mutual aid, but considered Christian (and Buddhist) teaching on forgiveness to have been an innovation. In contrast with the ethics of vengeful pre-Christian cultures, the doctrine of Christ repudiates persecution and revenge. In the view of Kropotkin, "the true greatness of Christianity" lies in the words "do not take revenge on your enemies." Kropotkin also saw the Christian God as an improvement over the pagan gods, whom he considered vengeful and requiring submission on the part of the believer. Kropotkin's Ethics stated:
In the case of Christianity the love of the divine teacher for men, – for all men without distinction of nation or condition, and especially for the lowest, – led to the highest heroic sacrifice – to death on the cross for the salvation of humanity from the power of evil.
== Personal life ==
Kropotkin married Sofia, a Ukrainian Jewish student, in Switzerland in October 1878. She was over a decade younger than Kropotkin. Kropotkin references her as a primary source of criticism and feedback. Her published story, "The Wife of Number 4,237", was based on her own experience with her husband at Clairvaux prison. She created an archive in Moscow dedicated to his works before her death in 1941. Their only child, Alexandra, was born in London in 1887. Kropotkin was reserved about his private life.
As an individual, Kropotkin was known for having exceptional integrity and moral character that matched his beliefs. Henry Hyndman, an ideological adversary, recalled Kropotkin's charm and sincerity. These traits, wrote Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, contributed to Kropotkin's power as a public speaker. As a thinker, Kropotkin focused more acutely on issues of morality than of economics or politics and carried himself according to his own principles without imposition on others. In practice, this made him more of a "revolutionary humanitarian" than a revolutionist by deed. He was also known for being exceptionally kind and for forgoing material comforts to live a revolutionary, principled life by example. Gerald Runkle wrote that "Kropotkin with his scholarly and saintly ways ... almost brought respectability to the movement."
== Legacy ==
As the anarchists' leading theorist in his lifetime, Kropotkin wrote their most systematic doctrine in an accessible way; and led the development of anarchist-communist social doctrine. His works, inventive and pragmatic, were the most read anarchist books and pamphlets, with translations into major European and Eastern languages that influenced revolutionaries (e.g., Nestor Makhno and Emiliano Zapata) and non-anarchist reformers alike (e.g., Patrick Geddes, Ebenezer Howard), as well as a wide range of intellectuals (including the writers Ba Jin and James Joyce). Much of Kropotkin's impact was in his intellectual writings prior to 1914. He had little influence on the Russian revolution, despite returning for it.
Emma Goldman regarded Kropotkin as her "great teacher" and as among the greatest minds and personalities of the 19th century. "Historian Paul Avrich sees Kropotkin as the foremost libertarian theorist and most venerated figure of the anarchist movement ... Historian Alexander Gray maintained that Kropotkin was ... 'probably the most representative, as he is certainly the most attractive and engaging, of the modern anarchists'".
After Kropotkin's 1921 death, the Bolsheviks permitted Kropotkin's Moscow house to become a Kropotkin Museum. This closed in 1938 with his wife's death.
Kropotkin is the namesake for multiple regional entities. The Konyushennaya district in Moscow, where Kropotkin was born, is now known by his name, as the Kropotkinsky district, including the Kropotkinskaya metro station. He is the namesake for a large town in the North Caucasus (southwest Russia) and a small town in Siberia. The Kropotkin Range he was first to cross in the Siberian Patom Highlands was named for him, as was a peak in East Antarctica.
== Works ==
=== Books ===
In Russian and French Prisons, London: Ward and Downey, 1887.
The Conquest of Bread (Paris, 1892) Project Gutenberg e-text, Project LibriVox audiobook.
The Great French Revolution, 1789–1793 (French original: Paris, 1893; English translation: London, 1909). e-text (in French), Anarchist Library e-text (in English).
The State: Its Historic Role, 1896.
The Terror in Russia, 1909.
Words of a Rebel, 1885.
Fields, Factories, and Workshops (London and New York, 1898).
Memoirs of a Revolutionist, London: Smith, Elder, 1899. Anarchist Library e-text, Anarchy Archives e-text.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (London, 1902) Project Gutenberg e-text, Project LibriVox audiobook.
Modern Science and Anarchism, 1903.
Russian Literature: Ideals and Realities (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1905). Anarchy Archives e-text.
Ethics: Origin and Development (unfinished). Included as first part of Origen y evolución de la moral (Spanish e-text).
=== Pamphlets ===
=== Articles ===
== Primary sources about Kropotkin ==
Sentence of the French authorities against him at the Trial of the 66, Lyon Criminal Court, 19 January 1883 (in French) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover | Lou Henry Hoover | Lou Henry Hoover (March 29, 1874 – January 7, 1944) was an American philanthropist, geologist, and the first lady of the United States from 1929 to 1933 as the wife of President Herbert Hoover. She was active in community organizations and volunteer groups throughout her life, including the Girl Scouts of the USA, which she led from 1922 to 1925 and from 1935 to 1937. Throughout her life, Hoover supported women's rights and women's independence. She was a polyglot, fluent in Mandarin Chinese and well-versed in Latin, and was the primary translator from Latin to English of the complex 16th-century metallurgy text De re metallica.
Hoover was raised in California while it was part of the American frontier. She attended Stanford University, and became the first woman to receive a degree in geology from the institution. She met fellow geology student Herbert Hoover at Stanford, and they married in 1899. The Hoovers first resided in China; the Boxer Rebellion broke out later that year, and they were at the Battle of Tientsin. In 1901 they moved to London, where Hoover raised their two sons and became a popular hostess between their international travels. During World War I, the Hoovers led humanitarian efforts to assist war refugees. The family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1917, when Herbert was appointed head of the Food and Drug Administration, and Lou became a food conservation activist in support of his work.
Hoover became the First Lady of the United States when her husband was inaugurated as president in 1929. Her invitation of Jessie De Priest to the White House for tea was controversial for its implied support of racial integration and civil rights. She refused to give interviews to reporters, but she became the first first lady to give regular radio broadcasts. Hoover was responsible for refurbishing the White House during her tenure, and saw to the construction of a presidential retreat at Rapidan Camp. She minimized her public role as White House hostess, dedicating her time as first lady to her volunteer work.
Hoover's reputation declined alongside her husband's during the Great Depression as she was portrayed as uncaring of the struggles faced by Americans. Both the public and those close to her were unaware of her extensive charitable work to support the poor while serving as first lady, as she believed that publicizing generosity was improper. After Herbert lost his reelection campaign in 1932, the Hoovers returned to California, and they moved to New York City in 1940. Hoover was bitter about her husband's loss, blaming dishonest reporting and underhanded campaigning tactics, and she strongly opposed the Roosevelt administration. She worked to provide humanitarian support with her husband during World War II until her sudden death of a heart attack in 1944.
== Early life and education ==
Lou Henry was born in Waterloo, Iowa, on March 29, 1874. Her mother was Florence Ida (née Weed), a former schoolteacher, and her father was Charles Delano Henry, a banker. She was the older of two daughters, raised in Waterloo before moving to Texas, Kansas, and California. Most of her childhood was spent in the California towns of Whittier and Monterey. While she was a child, her father educated her in outdoorsmanship, and she learned to camp and ride. She took up sports, including baseball, basketball, and archery. Her parents taught her other practical skills, such as bookkeeping and sewing. Her family was nominally Episcopalian, but Lou sometimes attended Quaker services.
As a child, Henry attended Bailey Street School in Whittier until 1890. She was well-liked in school, known for the science and literature clubs she organized and for her tendency to ignore gender norms by engaging in athletics and outdoor activities. When she was ten, she was the editor of her school newspaper. She began her postsecondary schooling at the Los Angeles Normal School (now the University of California, Los Angeles). While in Los Angeles, she was a member of the school's Dickens Club that studied and collected specimens of plants and animals. She later transferred to San José Normal School (now San José State University), obtaining a teaching credential in 1893. She took a serious interest in politics during her college years; she joined the Republican Party based on its progressive platform, and she strongly supported women's suffrage.
After her graduation in 1893, Henry took a job at her father's bank as well as working as a substitute teacher. The following year, she attended a lecture by geologist John Casper Branner. Fascinated by the subject, she enrolled in Branner's program at Stanford University to pursue a degree in geology. It was there that Branner introduced her to her future husband, Herbert Hoover, who was then a senior. They bonded over their shared Iowa heritage and their common interests in science and outdoorsmanship, and their friendship developed into a courtship. She studied geology with the intention of doing field work, but she and Branner were unable to find any employers willing to accept a female geologist. She maintained her interest in sports while at Stanford, serving as president of the Stanford Women's Athletic Club in her final year. In 1898, Hoover became the first woman to receive a bachelor's degree in geology from Stanford, and she was one of the first women in the United States to hold such a degree. She continued to work with Branner, conducting research on his behalf and requesting geological samples for Stanford's collection. Branner credited her with making it one of the largest collections in the world. After graduating, Henry volunteered with the Red Cross to support American soldiers during the Spanish–American War.
== Marriage and travels ==
=== Marriage and travel to China ===
In 1897, Herbert was offered an engineering job in Australia. Before leaving, he had dinner with the Henrys and their engagement was informally agreed upon. Lou and Herbert maintained a long-distance relationship while he was in Australia. Herbert was hired as chief engineer of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company the following year, and he sent her a marriage proposal by cable, reading "Going to China via San Francisco. Will you go with me?". They were married in the Henrys' home on February 10, 1899. Lou also announced her intention to change her religious faith from Episcopalian to her husband's Quaker religion, but there was no Quaker Meeting in Monterey. Instead, they were married in a civil ceremony performed by a Spanish Roman Catholic priest.
The day after their marriage, Lou Hoover and her husband boarded a ship from San Francisco, and they briefly honeymooned at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu. While en route, they read extensively about China and its history. They arrived in Shanghai on March 8, spending four days in the Astor House Hotel. Hoover stayed with a missionary couple in the foreign colony in Tientsin (now Tianjin) while her husband was working, and they moved into a home of their own the following September. It was their first home as a married couple, a Western-style brick house at the edge of the colony. It was here that Hoover began homemaking and interior decoration; she managed a staff and entertained for guests. She also took up typing while in China, purchasing a typewriter and writing scientific articles on Chinese mining with her husband. Hoover worked closely with her husband, through both writing and field work. She also started a collection of Chinese porcelain that she would maintain throughout her life.
The Boxer Rebellion began while the Hoovers were in China; despite her husband's pleas, Lou refused to leave the country. As foreigners, they were both potential targets of the Boxer movement. During the Battle of Tientsin in 1900, Lou worked as a nurse and managed food supplies while Herbert organized barricades. For a month, Hoover carried a revolver while she ran supplies to soldiers on her bicycle. In one incident, a bullet struck her tire while she was riding. In another, shells struck around her home, but once it was clear the shelling was over, she calmly returned to her game of solitaire. At least one obituary was mistakenly published for her. The Hoovers left China after the end of the Boxer Rebellion that summer, traveling to London to make arrangements regarding control of Chinese mines. They returned to China once more with Lou's sister Jean for several months in 1901.
=== London and World War I ===
The Hoovers made their home in London in November 1901 after Herbert was offered a partnership with a British mining company. Their work took them throughout Europe and to many other countries, including Australia, Burma, Ceylon, Egypt, India, Japan, New Zealand, and Russia. Because of their travels, Hoover spent much of her time on steamboats. The trips were relatively comfortable, as they traveled in first class. She passed time on these months-long voyages by reading or by hosting social visits with other travelers using portable tea sets and tables. The Hoovers had two sons who accompanied them as they traveled: Herbert Hoover Jr. was born in 1903, and Allan Hoover was born in 1907.
The Hoovers became extremely wealthy after Herbert's decision to become an independent consultant in 1908. Lou's expertise in geology allowed her to participate in business talk with Herbert and his colleagues, and she thoroughly enjoyed this. The Hoovers played a role in standardizing the modern mining industry, particularly in regard to human management and business ethics. When they were in London, Lou often entertained large crowds. Their home became a social hub for their fellow expatriates and for Herbert's colleagues in the mining industry. The Hoovers engaged in philanthropy during their time in London, and Lou saw to it that her servants had their needs addressed. She joined the Friends of the Poor to work directly with people in poverty, and she joined social clubs such as the Society of American Women, the British affiliate of the General Federation of Women's Clubs; she participated in and eventually led the society's philanthropic committee.
When World War I began, the Hoovers had already spent time back in the United States and were preparing to move back permanently. Upon hearing that war had broken out, the Hoovers instead became involved with London relief efforts. When Herbert was chosen to direct relief efforts for Belgian refugees, Lou became heavily involved as well. She also reorganized the Society of American Women as a humanitarian group to facilitate the transport of Americans stranded in Britain. She traveled regularly to the United States and back to give speeches and collect donations for relief efforts, despite the danger of crossing the North Atlantic during the war. Her involvement with refugee assistance earned her a position on the American relief committee as the only female member, and she was the chairwoman of the women's American relief committee. Other projects of hers included the creation of a Red Cross hospital for British soldiers, a knitting factory in London to provide jobs for displaced women, and a maternity hospital in Belgium. As her humanitarian efforts increased, she found herself responsible for so many projects that she had to delegate several of them to other women. For her work, she was decorated in 1919 by King Albert I of Belgium.
The Hoovers returned to the United States in January 1917. When the U.S. entered World War I three months later, Herbert was appointed head of the Food and Drug Administration, and the Hoovers made their home in Washington, D.C. As with Herbert's previous endeavors, Lou worked closely alongside him. She joined her husband in promoting food conservation, traveling to give speeches promoting the cause. The Hoovers effectively became the public faces of the conservation movement. She also organized the construction of a home for her and her husband by Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, but this was seen as selfish by the public amid her humanitarian work, and she delayed the project until the end of the war. The war brought thousands of women to Washington to work as civil servants. The poor economic security of these women led Hoover to found women's groups and provide housing for the women that worked in her husband's department. She expanded her support for these women's groups to include medical treatment during the Spanish flu. Hoover paid for these programs with her own funds, describing them as loans but asking that they be repaid to someone that needed it more. After the war, Hoover continued her fundraising work in the U.S. while her husband was in Europe administrating relief efforts.
=== Cabinet member's wife ===
The Hoovers returned to Washington when Herbert was appointed Secretary of Commerce in 1921. Drawing from her experience as a hostess, Hoover made their new Washington home into a social hub, allowing her husband to build relationships in the city. She found the practice of calling on her fellow cabinet wives to be a waste of time, and her refusal to do so contributed to the end of the practice. As the wife of a cabinet member, Hoover sought involvement in many women's organizations, including the Girl Scouts of the USA, the Camp Fire Girls, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, and the League of Women Voters. By the time Hoover was a cabinet wife, she emphasized a distinction between her work and her husband's, refusing to answer reporters' questions about her husband's work in Washington. When Calvin Coolidge ascended to the presidency, Hoover became close friends with the new first lady, Grace Coolidge. The two of them began a tradition of exchanging flowers on Easter, and Hoover invited Coolidge to participate in Girl Scouts events.
Hoover had begun her involvement with the Girl Scouts in 1917, wishing to continue her work with children that she had begun in her war relief efforts. She was chosen as the group's president in 1922, and she held the position until 1925. She emphasized a "lead from behind" structure for Girl Scout troops in which she recommended that troop leaders "don't forget joy". Hoover's reforms, as well as her own personal popularity, led to a significant increase in membership and funds for the organization. She convinced first lady Edith Wilson to accept a position as honorary head of the Girl Scouts, establishing a tradition that Hoover herself would eventually take on as first lady. For girls living in rural areas, she founded the Lone Scout program so they could participate without a troop in their area. She also founded racially integrated Girl Scout troops in Washington and Palo Alto.
Hoover was also heavily involved with the National Amateur Athletic Foundation, and she was the only woman to serve as vice president within the organization. She first began working with the group in 1922, and she played an active role until her husband's election as president in 1928. With this position, she created a Women's Division that outlasted the original organization. The women's division was created with the goal of moving women's sports away from the practices of men's sports, which they argued were too competitive and failed to prioritize the well-being of the athletes. Hoover believed that sports were essential for one's health and she wished to see all young girls participate in a sport. As with her participation in the Girl Scouts, she used her skill for fundraising to greatly expand the organization's resources.
When Herbert was considered as a candidate for the 1928 presidential election, Lou did not approve of active campaigning, and Herbert often refrained from political talk when she was present. Though she accompanied her husband on his campaign, she refused to comment on the election or say anything that might be considered political. The 1928 election brought more attention to the candidates' wives than those of previous years. When her husband was chosen as the Republican Party's nominee, she found herself frequently compared to Catherine Smith, the wife of Democratic nominee Al Smith. Hoover was relatively popular compared to Mrs. Smith, who was an urbanite, a Catholic, and an alleged alcoholic—all things that made her unpopular with voters. Hoover was seen as better fit for the role, being athletic and well-traveled. After Herbert was elected president, Lou accompanied him on a goodwill tour of Latin America.
== First Lady of the United States ==
=== White House hostess ===
Hoover was not as successful in her role as White House hostess as she was in other projects; she was not eager to participate in Washington society except on her own terms, and her social position became increasingly precarious as the Hoovers' reputation diminished during the Great Depression. She did not prioritize public presentations as first lady, and when she took up the role, she declined to purchase new clothes or learn any new skills as incoming first ladies often did. She was often reclusive, ending the practice of greeting thousands of people during the New Year's Day reception because she deemed it unpleasant. Her husband later said that it was only her "rigid sense of duty" that prevented her from abolishing other receptions as well. She made sure to accommodate pregnant women, rejecting the social expectation of the time that pregnancy not be visible in public.
Hoover was more willing to invite individual guests to the White House, and such guests were present at every meal. Some days included additional teas to accommodate the constant flow of guests to the White House. On several occasions, White House staff found that due to last-minute invitations, they had to prepare and serve meals for several times as many people as originally expected. Unlike previous first ladies, Hoover emphasized political advantage when selecting guests, setting a precedent for future first ladies. At the beginning of her tenure, Hoover spent large sums of money to ensure that the White House had "the best of everything", using all of the funds allocated by Congress and then supplementing it with the family's personal funds. She expressed her love of music by inviting several renowned musicians to the White House, and she introduced the tradition of inviting a guest musician to play for visiting foreign leaders after she had her friend Mildred Dilling play for the King of Siam. The Great Depression brought an end to the White House's more extravagant social events as Hoover reduced her spending to serve as an example for the American people.
When African American candidate Oscar Stanton De Priest was elected to Congress, Hoover initiated a meeting for tea at the White House with his wife Jessie De Priest, as was tradition for the wives of all incoming Congressmen. Hoover was responsible for planning the event to ensure its success. She arranged the scheduling so that only women she trusted would attend, and she alerted White House security that Mrs. De Priest was to be expected and not barred entry. Hoover chose not to publicize the details of De Priest's attendance until after it occurred so as to avoid interruptions. The event became part of a larger debate on racial issues as Southern voters protested the invitation of a Black woman. It further complicated Hoover's relationship with the press, as she deemed Southern newspapers to be responsible for the criticism. The Hoovers reinforced the precedent by inviting other non-white musicians to play at the White House, including the Tuskegee Institute Choir.
=== Management of the White House ===
During her time as first lady, Hoover oversaw refurbishing of the White House, importing art and furniture to decorate the building. She worked in conjunction with a committee that had been formed in the previous administration to decorate the White House, though she sometimes declined to consult them and made her own changes. She hired her own assistant at personal expense to catalogue what already existed in the White House, creating the first full compilation for the history of the White House's furnishings. Her refurbishments included the reconstruction of the studies of Abraham Lincoln and James Monroe, which would later be converted into the Lincoln Bedroom and the Treaty Room, respectively. She also had a movie projector installed in the White House. Hoover's many projects meant that she frequently held meetings of her own in the White House, and she had bedrooms converted into sitting rooms so she and the president could both see several people each day.
Hoover played a critical role in designing and overseeing the construction of a rustic presidential retreat at Rapidan Camp in Madison County, Virginia. After the location was chosen, the Hoovers discovered the poverty in the area and added the construction of a school building to their project. Once Rapidan Camp was established as a second presidential home, the Hoovers stayed there each weekend. Hoover often practiced horseback riding while at the camp, where she often outpaced the military horsemen that accompanied her. The Hoovers undertook another philanthropic construction project in 1930 to build a Quaker Meeting House in Washington D.C.
The Hoovers' relationship with their staff is the subject of debate. Memoirs of staff members have portrayed them in a negative light, but it is unclear how much of this depiction originates from the books' ghostwriters. Hoover required the staff to remain out of sight, and a bell would be rung before she or her husband entered a room, signaling for the staff to leave the area. While managing White House events, she would use hand signals to communicate with the staff. Many innocuous gestures, such as raising a finger or dropping a handkerchief, indicated a command for them to follow. Even slight deviations from expected behavior, such as scraping plates or breaking composure when standing during mealtimes, risked a rebuke. Though she was strict, she also treated the staff generously, frequently paying for their food and other personal expenses. Besides the White House staff, Hoover had her own personal first lady staff. She had four women working directly for her, more than any previous first lady.
=== Politics and activism ===
Hoover was her husband's frequent adviser while he was president. Throughout her tenure, she refused to give interviews to the press, seeing them as intrusive and error-prone. Instead, she spoke to the public by giving speeches over the radio, and she was the first woman to make radio broadcasts as first lady. She took pride in her broadcasts, rehearsing them in a dedicated room and practicing her speaking technique. These broadcasts often used plain language and advocated feminist ideals. Hoover continued her involvement with volunteer and activist work, though much of it was reduced or ignored in favor of her responsibilities as first lady. She remained directly active with the Girl Scouts, continuing her oversight of its organizational and financial operations, and she touted it as an example of the volunteerism she felt was necessary to combat the Great Depression. Hoover also became a patron of the arts as first lady, particularly in her support of aspiring musicians. Using her influence as first lady, Hoover encouraged her husband to hire more women in his administration, and she expressed support for an executive order to ban sex discrimination in civil service appointments. She generally avoided any strong political statements or affiliations that might have interfered with her husband's administration.
During the Great Depression, Hoover regularly received requests for assistance from citizens who were struggling. She referred each one to a local charity organization or a person who could help so that each would get the needed assistance. Whenever she was unable to find a charity or a donor that could help, she sent her own money. She refused to publicize or draw attention to her charitable work, consistent with her lifelong belief that private generosity should not be promotional. Often she sent the money anonymously through a proxy so her name would not be associated with it. She also became responsible for the financial situation of her and her husband's relatives and family friends. Serving as a point of contact between her husband and those suffering poverty, she presented an image of empathy to contrast with the president's perceived aloofness. Hoover also helped organize fundraiser concerts for the American Red Cross with pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski. She was deeply affected by the criticisms leveled against her husband during the Great Depression, furious that a man whom she saw as caring and charitable was being criticized as the opposite. In support of her husband's stance on the economy, her radio broadcasts during the Great Depression focused on volunteerism, emphasizing women's role in volunteer work. She accompanied her husband on a presidential campaign again in 1932, but he was defeated in the 1932 presidential election.
== Later life and death ==
After leaving the White House, the Hoovers took their first true vacation in many years, driving through the Western United States. Hoover continued to receive letters requesting assistance, though far fewer than she had addressed while serving as first lady. She did not share her husband's desire to return to politics, but she was active in Republican Party women's groups. In 1935, she took up a project to purchase and restore her husband's birthplace cottage in Iowa. She also returned to the Girl Scouts the same year to serve as its president for another year. Hoover became involved with the Salvation Army to support its fundraising operations in 1937. The same year, she returned to Stanford University to develop the Friends of Music program, with which she was active for the rest of her life. She also supported a physical therapy program that she hoped would prove beneficial should the United States go to war. She maintained an active lifestyle throughout her later years, including a weeks-long horseback tour of the Cascade Range while she was in her sixties.
Hoover disapproved of the actions of the Roosevelt administration, and she became affiliated with the Pro-America movement that opposed the New Deal. At the onset of World War II, she once again worked to provide relief for war refugees with her husband, reminiscent of their work in World War I. She was enraged by the Japanese invasion of China, a place with which she always felt a personal connection. Despite this, she took an isolationist stance, hoping that the U.S. would not enter the second World War as it had entered the first. During the 1940 presidential election, the Hoovers campaigned on behalf of Republican candidate Wendell Willkie. They moved to New York in December 1940, as Herbert had been spending an increasing amount of time there on business.
Hoover died of a heart attack on January 7, 1944, while staying at the Waldorf Astoria New York. She was found by her husband when he returned to their room. Two services were held for her. The first, a joint Episcopalian-Quaker service in New York, was attended by about one thousand people, including two hundred girl scouts. The second was held in Palo Alto, where she was buried. After her death, her family found many checks she had received to repay her for her charity but which she had declined to cash. She was later reinterred in her husband's grave in West Branch, Iowa.
== Political beliefs ==
During her early life and career, Hoover was not politically vocal. She preferred to speak to nonpartisan issues, and she wished to avoid saying anything that might have political ramifications for her husband. To present a unified stance with her husband, she rarely expressed political ideas of her own except on women's issues. Hoover supported civil rights and deplored racism, though she was susceptible to the racial stereotyping that was common at the time, and she was unaware of problems faced by the African American community. One of the few issues on which she disagreed with her husband was her support for the prohibition of alcohol. She disposed of her husband's wine collection, and she refused to attend any event that served alcohol illegally.
Throughout her life, Hoover worked to support women's causes. She was an advocate of women's employment, encouraging housewives to start careers as well as keeping house. Her support for women's causes came about early in life, and she wrote school essays on the subject. She was a member of several women's groups, many of which engaged in philanthropic efforts to support women. When the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women's suffrage in the United States in 1920, Hoover said that women's responsibilities extended to civic duty. She chastised women who lived purely domestic lives as "lazy", arguing that household chores did not preclude a career. She was also critical of politically active women who focused exclusively on women's and children's rights issues, believing that women should participate in governance more broadly.
Hoover was a strong believer in philanthropy and business ethics, supporting her husband's decision to reimburse his employees at personal expense after a fellow partner defrauded them. She also ensured that the culprit's family was cared for financially after he fled the country. She believed that private charity was preferable to public assistance programs. Hoover was not vocal about her beliefs on philanthropy, believing that it was something that should be practiced privately. She opposed publicized philanthropy, and she gave funds to the needy throughout her life without telling others. The full extent of her philanthropy was not known until records were discovered after her death. She held a similar philosophy regarding religion, believing that practice was more important than sectarian identification.
While her husband was the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Hoover took up the cause of food conservation. She began a tradition of leaving one chair empty as a reminder of child starvation whenever she entertained company. In 1918, she invited reporters into her home for a special "Dining with the Hoovers" interview in which she detailed their household's dining habits and conservation strategies. The practice of self-imposed dietary restrictions to conserve, such as going one day a week without meat, became known as "Hoovering". She provided lessons and recipes for Americans that wished to grow or prepare their own food.
Amid the corruption of the Teapot Dome scandal, Hoover took an active stance in favor of government accountability. The scandal led her to call for more women in law enforcement, and she headed the Women's Conference on Law Enforcement in 1924. As first lady, Hoover provided indirect support to disabled veterans of the Bonus Army, though she believed that the able-bodied veterans had no claim to the additional support they were requesting. She was highly sensitive to political criticism as first lady, and she was strongly affected by remarks against her husband's presidency. Hoover became more conservative after her tenure as first lady, and she was critical of the Roosevelt administration. Hoover had a low opinion of the Roosevelts, believing that they caused her husband to be politically smeared and cost him a second term in the White House. She also felt that many of President Roosevelt's actions were unconstitutional. Later in life, she made political statements deploring the spread of communism and fascism.
== Languages ==
Hoover spoke five languages by the time she became first lady. She began her study of Mandarin Chinese while on the ship to China after her marriage. She took up instruction under a Chinese Christian scholar, eventually surpassing him in the Chinese vocabulary. She sometimes served as her husband's translator while they lived in China, and she would continue to practice Chinese with him afterward so that he would retain the little that he knew. When she wished to speak privately with her husband in the White House, Hoover would engage with him in Mandarin. Her Chinese name was 'Hoo Loo' (古鹿; Pinyin: Gǔ Lù【胡潞，Hú Lù】), derived from the sound of her name in English.
Hoover was also well versed in Latin, which she studied while at Stanford. She collaborated with her husband in translating Georgius Agricola's De re metallica, a 16th-century encyclopedia of mining and metallurgy. Lou was responsible for the translation from the Latin, while Herbert applied his knowledge of the subject matter and carried out physical experiments based on what they discerned from the text. The book had previously been considered unusable due to the difficulty of translating its technical language, some of which had been invented by its author. After its translation, the Hoovers published it at their own expense and donated copies to students and experts of mining. In recognition of their work, they received the gold medal of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America in 1914. They dedicated the book to Dr. Branner, the instructor who had introduced Lou to geology and to Herbert.
== Legacy ==
During her tenure as first lady, Hoover was variously seen as a homemaker, as was common for first ladies, and as an activist. Her reputation, along with that of her husband, languished as the Hoover administration was criticized for its response to the Great Depression. Hoover is often seen as a counterbalance to her husband as she took up the social responsibilities of their work in and out of the White House, her charisma and tact balancing his reputation of being shy and sometimes arrogant. She has since been consistently ranked in the upper half of first ladies in periodic polling of historians.
Hoover set an early precedent for the political role of first ladies in the 20th century by expressing an interest in women's issues and supporting her husband's platform with her own projects. Despite their political differences, Hoover has been compared to her successor Eleanor Roosevelt in their common approaches to political engagement and women's issues. Hoover's use of radio broadcasts proved similar to her successor's own use of media over the following years.
The first biography about Hoover was Lou Henry Hoover: Gallant First Lady, written by her friend Helen B. Pryor in 1969. Her husband requested that her papers remained sealed for twenty years after his own death, preventing any significant scholarly analysis of her life or her role as first lady until then. They were opened in 1985, allowing for increased scholarship on her life and her work. Her papers are relatively comprehensive for historical figures of the period, including over 220,000 items and encompassing every period of her life. Historical study of Hoover has been complicated by her private nature, as she would often refuse media attention and burn personal letters.
The Stanford home that Hoover designed was donated to the university by her husband, who requested that it be named the Lou Henry Hoover House. Two elementary schools were named in her honor: Lou Henry Hoover Elementary School of Whittier, California, in 1938 and Lou Henry Elementary School of Waterloo, Iowa, in 2005. Lou Henry Hoover Memorial Hall was built in 1948 at Whittier College. One of the brick dormitories at San Jose State University was named "Hoover Hall" in her honor until its demolition in 2016. Camp Lou Henry Hoover in Middleville, New Jersey, is named for her.
In May 2017, the Lou Henry Hoover Sculpture Park was dedicated in Waterloo, Iowa on the site of her torn down birthplace home. There are two statues of her in the Sculpture Park, one of her as a child & young lady and one of her as First Lady. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl | Super Bowl | The Super Bowl is the annual league championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game and also served as the final game of every American Football League season from 1966 to 1970 prior to the AFL–NFL merger replacing the AFL championship game. Since 2022, the game has been played on the second Sunday in February. Prior Super Bowls were played on Sundays in early to mid-January from 1967 to 1978, late January from 1979 to 2003, and the first Sunday of February from 2004 to 2021. Winning teams are awarded the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the coach who won the first two Super Bowls. Because the NFL restricts the use of its "Super Bowl" trademark, it is frequently referred to as the "big game" or other generic terms by non-sponsoring corporations. The day the game is held is commonly referred to as "Super Bowl Sunday" or "Super Sunday".
The game was created as part of a 1966 merger agreement between the NFL and the competing American Football League (AFL) to have their best teams compete for a championship. It was originally called the AFL–NFL World Championship Game until the "Super Bowl" moniker was adopted in 1969's Super Bowl III. The first four Super Bowls from 1967 to 1970 were played before the merger, with the NFL and AFL each winning two. After the merger in 1970, the 10 AFL teams and three NFL teams formed the American Football Conference (AFC) and the remaining 13 NFL teams formed the National Football Conference (NFC). Treating the pre-merger NFL and AFL as equivalent to the post-merger NFC and AFC, the NFC leads the AFC in total Super Bowl victories 29–27 or 31–29.
Among the NFL's current 32 teams, 20 (11 NFC, 9 AFC) have won a Super Bowl and 17 (8 AFC, 9 NFC) hold multiple titles. The AFC's Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots have the most Super Bowl titles at six each. The Patriots also have the most Super Bowl appearances at 12, and the most Super Bowl losses at six. The Baltimore Ravens of the AFC and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFC are the only franchises to be undefeated in multiple Super Bowls, having each won two. Among the 12 teams who have not won a Super Bowl, the NFC's Detroit Lions and the AFC's Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans, and Cleveland Browns are the only four to have not appeared in the game.
The Super Bowl is among the top-ten world's most-watched sporting events and frequently commands the largest audience among all American broadcasts during the year. Its viewership is bested by the UEFA Champions League final, FIFA World Cup, Tour de France, Cricket World Cup, FIFA Women's World Cup, Summer Olympic Games, and the Winter Olympic games as the most watched sporting event worldwide, and the seven most-watched broadcasts in American television history are Super Bowls. Its halftime shows feature top artists, the most recent of which being Bad Bunny. Headlining a Super Bowl is considered one of the highest honors in music. Commercial airtime during the Super Bowl broadcast is the most expensive of the year because of the high viewership, leading to companies regularly developing their most unique advertisements for the broadcast and commercial viewership becoming an integral part of the event. The Super Bowl is also the second-largest event for American food consumption, behind Thanksgiving dinner.
== Origin ==
Since the turn of the 20th century, college football teams from across the United States have scheduled "bowl games" against each other. The original "bowl game" was the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, California, which was first played in 1902 as the "Tournament East–West football game" as part of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses. In 1923, the Tournament East-West football game moved to the new Rose Bowl Stadium; the stadium got its name from the fact that the game played there was part of the Tournament of Roses and that it was shaped like a bowl, much like the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut. The Tournament of Roses football game thus eventually came to be known as the Rose Bowl Game. Exploiting the Rose Bowl Game's popularity, post-season college football contests were created for Miami (the Orange Bowl), New Orleans (the Sugar Bowl), and El Paso (the Sun Bowl) in 1935, and for Dallas (the Cotton Bowl) in 1937. By the time the first Super Bowl was played, the term "bowl" for any major American football game was well established.
For four decades after its 1920 inception, the NFL successfully fended off several rival leagues. In 1960, it encountered its most serious competitor when the American Football League (AFL) was formed. The AFL vied with the NFL for players and fans. After the AFL's inaugural season, AFL commissioner Joe Foss sent an invitation to the NFL on January 14, 1961, to schedule a "World Playoff" game between the two leagues' champions, beginning with the upcoming 1961 season. The first World Playoff game, if actually played, would have matched up the AFL champion Houston Oilers against the NFL champion Green Bay Packers.
In the mid-1960s, Lamar Hunt, owner of the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs, first used the term "Super Bowl" to refer to the AFL–NFL championship game in the merger meetings. Hunt later said the name was likely in his head because his children had been playing with a Super Ball toy; a vintage example of the ball is on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. In a July 25, 1966, letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Hunt wrote, "I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be improved upon."
The leagues' owners chose the name "AFL–NFL Championship Game", but in July 1966 the Kansas City Star quoted Hunt in discussing "the Super Bowl—that's my term for the championship game between the two leagues", and the media immediately began using the term. Green Bay safety Tom Brown used the name leading up to the first championship game: "I would guess you can't get any bigger in professional football than to play in the first Super Bowl game". In May 1967, The league stated that "not many people like it. It's a bad play on words. Everything became super this and super that". Rozelle was asking for suggestions, and early contenders included "Merger Bowl", "Summit Bowl", and "The Game". The Associated Press reported that "Super Bowl" "grew and grew and grew—until it reached the point that there was Super Week, Super Sunday, Super Teams, Super Players, ad infinitum". "Super Bowl" became official beginning with the third annual game.
Roman numerals are used to identify each Super Bowl, rather than the year in which it is held, since the fifth edition, in January 1971. The sole exception to this naming convention tradition occurred with Super Bowl 50, played on February 7, 2016, following the 2015 season. The following year, the nomenclature returned to Roman numerals for Super Bowl LI.
After the NFL's Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls, some team owners feared for the future of the merger. At the time, many doubted the competitiveness of AFL teams compared with their NFL counterparts, though that perception changed when the AFL's New York Jets defeated the heavily favored NFL contender Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in Miami. One year later, the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs defeated the NFL's Minnesota Vikings 23–7 in Super Bowl IV in New Orleans, which was the final AFL–NFL World Championship Game played before the merger. Beginning with the 1970 season, the NFL realigned into two conferences; the former AFL teams plus three NFL teams (the Baltimore Colts, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Cleveland Browns) would constitute the American Football Conference (AFC), while the remaining NFL clubs would form the National Football Conference (NFC). The champions of the two conferences would play each other in the Super Bowl.
The winning team receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the former coach of the Green Bay Packers, who won the first two Super Bowl games as well as five NFL championships preceding the merger (1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967). Following Lombardi's death in September 1970, the trophy was named after him. The first trophy awarded under the new name was presented to the Baltimore Colts following their win in Super Bowl V in Miami.
== Game history ==
The Super Bowl was held in January from its inception in 1967 until 2001. In 2002, a week of regular season games was postponed and rescheduled following the September 11 attacks; as a result, Super Bowl XXXVI became the first edition of the game played in February. Super Bowl XXXVII was held in January, but all subsequent games were held on the first Sunday in February until the schedule expansion of the 2021 season moved the game to the second Sunday.
The current NFL schedule begins on the weekend immediately after Labor Day (the first Monday in September). That weekend is the first of an 18-week regular season, followed by three weeks of playoff games and one week for the Pro Bowl. The Super Bowl is contested the week after the Pro Bowl. This schedule has been in effect since an 18th week and 17th regular season game were added to the NFL schedule for the 2021 season, with Super Bowl LVI on February 13, 2022, the first to be played under this format.
The Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots are tied with a record six Super Bowl wins. The Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers have five victories each, while the Packers, Chiefs and New York Giants have four. Fourteen other NFL franchises have won at least one Super Bowl.
The Patriots own the record for most Super Bowl appearances with twelve. The Cowboys, Steelers, Broncos and the 49ers are tied for second with eight appearances apiece, reaching that milestone in this respective order. Bill Belichick owns the record for the most Super Bowl wins (eight) and appearances (twelve: nine times as head coach, once as assistant head coach, and twice as defensive coordinator) by an individual. Tom Brady has the most Super Bowl starts (ten) and wins as a player (seven), while Charles Haley has the second-most wins among players with five.
Eight teams have appeared in Super Bowl games without a win. The Minnesota Vikings were the first team to appear four times without a win, while the Buffalo Bills played in a record four consecutive Super Bowls, losing all four matches. The Patriots have the most Super Bowl losses at six.
The Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Houston Texans, and Jacksonville Jaguars are the four teams to have never appeared in a Super Bowl, although the Browns and Lions both won NFL championships before the Super Bowl era. The Jaguars, who began play in 1995, and the Texans, who began play in 2002, are among the youngest franchises in the league.
=== 1960s: Early history and Packers dominance ===
The Packers won the first two AFL–NFL World Championship Games, later renamed Super Bowls, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders following the 1966 and 1967 seasons, respectively. The Packers were led by quarterback Bart Starr, who was named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) for both games. These two championships, coupled with the Packers' NFL championships in 1961, 1962, and 1965, amount to the most successful stretch in NFL History; five championships in seven years, and the second threepeat in NFL history (1965, 1966, and 1967). The Packers are the only team to threepeat, as they also accomplished the feat in the pre-playoff era (1929, 1930 and 1931). The first playoff game in the NFL was in 1932.
In Super Bowl III, the AFL's New York Jets defeated the 19.5-point favorite Baltimore Colts of the NFL, 16–7. The Jets were led by quarterback Joe Namath, who had said that he guaranteed a Jets win before the game, and former Colts head coach Weeb Ewbank, and their victory demonstrated that the AFL was competitive with the NFL. This was reinforced the following year when the Chiefs defeated the NFL's Vikings 23–7 in Super Bowl IV.
=== 1970s: Dominant franchises ===
After the AFL–NFL merger was completed in 1970, three franchises—the Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, and Steelers—would go on to dominate the 1970s, winning a combined eight Super Bowls between them in the decade, with the Steelers winning four of the eight.
The Baltimore Colts, now a member of the AFC, would start the decade by defeating the Cowboys in Super Bowl V, a game which is the only Super Bowl to date in which a player from the losing team won the Super Bowl MVP (Cowboys' linebacker Chuck Howley). Beginning with this Super Bowl, all Super Bowls have served as the NFL's championship game.
The Cowboys, coming back from a loss the previous season, won Super Bowl VI over the Dolphins. However, this would be the Dolphins' final loss for over a year, as the next year, the Dolphins would go 14–0 in the regular season and eventually win all their playoff games, capped off with a 14–7 victory in Super Bowl VII, becoming the first and only team in the Super Bowl era to finish an entire perfect regular and postseason undefeated. The Dolphins would repeat as league champions by winning Super Bowl VIII a year later with a 24–7 win over the Minnesota Vikings.
In the mid to late 1970s, the Steelers became the first NFL dynasty of the post-merger era by winning four Super Bowls (IX, X, XIII, and XIV) in six years. They were led by head coach Chuck Noll, the play of offensive stars Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, and Mike Webster, and their dominant "Steel Curtain" defense, led by "Mean" Joe Greene, L. C. Greenwood, Ernie Holmes, Mel Blount, Jack Ham, and Jack Lambert. Many of the team's key players were selected in the 1974 draft, in which Pittsburgh selected four future Hall of Famers, the most for any team in any sport in a single draft. A fifth player, Donnie Shell, was signed by Pittsburgh after going unselected in the 1974 NFL draft; he too was later enshrined in the Hall of Fame. The Steelers were the first team to win three and then four Super Bowls and appeared in six AFC Championship Games during the decade, making the playoffs in eight straight seasons. Pittsburgh still remains the only team to win back-to-back Super Bowls twice and four Super Bowls in a six-year period.
The Steelers' 1970s dynasty was interrupted only by the Raiders' first Super Bowl win in Super Bowl XI and the Cowboys' second Super Bowl win in Super Bowl XII. Conversely, the Vikings, with their Purple People Eaters defense, were the only other team to appear in multiple Super Bowls (IV, VIII, IX and XI) during the decade but failed to win each one.
=== 1980s and 1990s: The NFC's winning streak ===
In the 1980s and 1990s, the tables turned for the AFC, as the NFC dominated the Super Bowls of the new decade and most of those in the 1990s. The NFC won 16 of the 20 Super Bowls during these two decades, including 13 straight from Super Bowl XIX to Super Bowl XXXI.
The most successful team of the 1980s was the 49ers, which featured the West Coast offense of Hall of Fame head coach Bill Walsh. This offense was led by three-time Super Bowl MVP and Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, Super Bowl MVP and Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice, Hall of Fame running back Roger Craig, and Hall of Fame defensive safety/cornerback Ronnie Lott. Under their leadership, the 49ers won four Super Bowls in the decade (XVI, XIX, XXIII, and XXIV) and made nine playoff appearances between 1981 and 1990, including eight division championships, becoming the second dynasty of the post-merger NFL. The 1984 San Francisco 49ers were the first team to achieve an 18–1 record, doing so under Walsh. The 1989 San Francisco 49ers, under first-year head coach George Seifert, posted the most lop-sided victory in Super Bowl history, defeating the Denver Broncos by a score of 55–10 in Super Bowl XXIV.
The 1980s also produced the 1985 Chicago Bears, who posted an 18–1 record under head coach Mike Ditka; quarterback Jim McMahon; and Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton. Their team won Super Bowl XX in dominant fashion. The Washington Redskins and New York Giants were also top teams of this period; Washington won Super Bowls XVII, XXII, and XXVI. The Giants claimed Super Bowls XXI and XXV. Both teams won multiple Super Bowls with different starting quarterbacks; Washington won with Joe Theismann (XVII), Doug Williams (XXII) and Mark Rypien (XXVI), and the Giants with Phil Simms (XXI) and Jeff Hostetler (XXV). As in the 1970s, the Raiders were the only AFC team to interrupt the Super Bowl dominance of NFC teams; they won Super Bowls XV and XVIII (the latter as the Los Angeles Raiders).
Conversely, the Cincinnati Bengals (XVI and XXIII), Dolphins, (XVII and XIX), and Broncos (XXI, XXII and XXIV) made multiple Super Bowls in the 1980s without winning one.
Following several seasons with poor records in the 1980s, the Cowboys rose back to prominence in the 1990s. During this decade, the Cowboys made post-season appearances every year except for the seasons of 1990 and 1997. From 1992 to 1996, the Cowboys won their division championship each year. In this same period, the Buffalo Bills reached the Super Bowl for a record four consecutive years, but lost all four (XXV-XXVIII). After Super Bowl championships by division rivals New York (1990) and Washington (1991), the Cowboys won three of the next four Super Bowls (XXVII, XXVIII, and XXX) led by quarterback Troy Aikman, running back Emmitt Smith, and wide receiver Michael Irvin. All three of these players went to the Hall of Fame. The Cowboys' streak was interrupted by the 49ers, who were the first team to win their league-leading fifth title overall with Super Bowl XXIX with a dominant performance featuring the Super Bowl MVP and Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young (who threw a Super Bowl record 6 touchdown passes), Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice, and Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders; however, the Cowboys' victory in Super Bowl XXX the next year also gave them five titles overall and they did so with Sanders after he won the Super Bowl the previous year with the 49ers. The NFC's winning streak was continued by the Packers led by Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre, won Super Bowl XXXI, their first championship since Super Bowl II in 1967.
The Patriots made their maiden Super Bowl appearances in XX (1985) and XXXI (1996) but lost both times. However, the turn of the century would soon bring hope and glory to the franchise.
=== 2000s: AFC resurgence and the rise of the Patriots ===
Super Bowl XXXII saw quarterback John Elway and running back Terrell Davis lead the Denver Broncos to an upset victory over the defending champion Packers, snapping the NFC's thirteen-year winning streak. The following year, the Broncos defeated the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl XXXIII, Elway's fifth Super Bowl appearance, his second NFL championship, and his final NFL game. The back-to-back victories heralded a change in momentum in which AFC teams would win nine out of 12 Super Bowls. In the years between 1995 and 2018, five teams—the Steelers, Patriots, Broncos, Baltimore Ravens, and Indianapolis Colts—accounted for 22 of the 24 AFC Super Bowl appearances (including the last 16), with those same teams often meeting each other earlier in the playoffs. In contrast, the NFC saw a different representative in the Super Bowl every season from 2001 through 2010.
The New England Patriots became the dominant team throughout the early 2000s, winning the championship three out of four years early in the decade. They would become only the second team in the history of the NFL to do so (after the 1990s Dallas Cowboys). In Super Bowl XXXVI, first-year starting quarterback Tom Brady led his team to a 20–17 upset victory over the St. Louis Rams, who two seasons earlier won Super Bowl XXXIV. Brady would go on to win the MVP award for this game. The Patriots also won Super Bowls XXXVIII and XXXIX defeating the Carolina Panthers and the Philadelphia Eagles respectively. This four-year stretch of Patriot dominance was interrupted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' 48–21 Super Bowl XXXVII victory over the Oakland Raiders.
The Steelers and Colts continued the era of AFC dominance by winning Super Bowls XL and XLI in the 2005 and 2006 seasons, respectively defeating the Seattle Seahawks and Chicago Bears.
In the 2007 season, the Patriots became the fourth team in NFL history to have a perfect unbeaten and untied regular-season record, the second in the Super Bowl era after the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and the first to finish 16–0. They easily marched through the AFC playoffs and were heavy favorites in Super Bowl XLII. However, they lost that game to Eli Manning and the New York Giants 17–14, leaving the Patriots' 2007 record at 18–1.
The following season, the Steelers logged their record sixth Super Bowl title (XLIII) in a 27–23, final-minute victory against the Arizona Cardinals.
The 2009 season saw the New Orleans Saints defeat the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV by a score of 31–17 to take home their first championship. With this victory, the Saints joined the New York Jets as the only teams to have won in their sole Super Bowl appearance, a distinction the Ravens also enjoyed in winning Super Bowl XXXV after the 2000 season and the Buccaneers in 2002.
=== 2010s: Patriots reign; parity in the NFC ===
In the AFC, this era was dominated by the Patriots, with the only four other teams to represent the conference being the Steelers, Ravens, Broncos, and Chiefs. The Patriots had tied a record with the 1970s Dallas Cowboys for most Super Bowl appearances in a decade with five appearances (2011, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018). The Patriots also had four Super Bowl appearances in five years. They also had eight consecutive AFC championship appearances spanning 2011–2018.
The Super Bowls of the 2000s and 2010s saw strong performances from several of the participating quarterbacks, especially on the AFC side with repeated appearances by the same teams and players. In particular, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, or Peyton Manning appeared as the AFC team's quarterback in all but two of the Super Bowls from 2001 through 2018. Conversely, the only NFC teams to make the Super Bowl multiple times with the same quarterback in this era were the Seahawks, led by quarterback Russell Wilson, and the Giants, led by quarterback Eli Manning.
One of these teams was featured in the culmination of the 2010 season, Super Bowl XLV, which brought the Packers their fourth Super Bowl victory and record thirteenth NFL championship overall with the defeat of the Steelers in February 2011. This became Aaron Rodgers' only Super Bowl victory.
The following year, in Super Bowl XLVI, the Patriots made their first appearance of the decade, a position where they would become a mainstay. The Patriots, however, lost to the Eli Manning-led Giants, 21–17, who had beaten the Patriots four years before. This was the Giants' fourth Super Bowl victory.
In Super Bowl XLVII, the NFC's 49ers were defeated by the Ravens 34–31. The game had been dubbed as the 'Harbaugh Bowl' in the weeks leading up to the game, due to the fact that the coaches of the two teams, John Harbaugh and Jim Harbaugh, are brothers. During the third quarter, the Ravens had a commanding 28–6 lead. However, there was a blackout in New Orleans, where the game was being played. The game was delayed for 34 minutes, and after play resumed, San Francisco stormed back with 17 straight points, but still lost.
Super Bowl XLVIII, played at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium in February 2014, was the first Super Bowl held outdoors in a cold-weather environment. The Seahawks won their first NFL title with a 43–8 defeat of the Broncos, in a highly touted matchup that pitted Seattle's top-ranked defense against a Peyton Manning-led Denver offense that had broken the NFL's single-season scoring record.
In Super Bowl XLIX, the Patriots beat the defending Super Bowl champions, the Seahawks, by a score of 28–24. Down by 10, the Patriots mounted a late fourth quarter comeback to win the game with Tom Brady scoring two touchdowns in the fourth quarter. In a key play in the final seconds of the game, then-rookie free agent Malcolm Butler would intercept a pass by Russell Wilson at the one-yard line, allowing the Patriots to run out the clock and end the game. Tom Brady was awarded his third Super Bowl MVP, tying Joe Montana for the most Super Bowl MVP awards.
In Super Bowl 50, the first Super Bowl to be branded with Arabic numerals, the Broncos, led by the league's top-ranked defense, defeated the Panthers, who had the league's top-ranked offense, in what became the final game of quarterback Peyton Manning's career. Von Miller dominated, totaling 2.5 sacks and forcing two Cam Newton fumbles; both fumbles leading to Broncos touchdowns.
In Super Bowl LI, the first Super Bowl to end in overtime, the Atlanta Falcons led 28–3 late in the third quarter, but the Patriots came back to tie the game 28–28 with back-to-back touchdowns and two-point conversions, and the Patriots went on to win 34–28 in overtime. This 25-point deficit was the largest comeback win for any team in a Super Bowl, breaking the previous of a 10-point deficit to come back and win. The Patriots never held the lead until the game-winning touchdown in overtime. It was Tom Brady's 5th Super Bowl win and he was awarded his record fourth Super Bowl MVP, throwing a then-record 466 yards for 43 completions.
In Super Bowl LII, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the defending champion Patriots 41–33, ending a 57-year championship drought for the franchise. Nick Foles won the Super Bowl MVP. The Patriots totaled 613 yards in defeat, with Tom Brady breaking his previous Super Bowl record of 466 passing yards with an all-time playoff record of 505 passing yards in the high-scoring game; while the Eagles would gain 538 yards in the victory. The combined total for both teams of 1,151 yards of offense broke an NFL record (for any game) that had stood for nearly seven decades. The Patriots' 33 points were the highest losing score in Super Bowl history, a record held until 2023, when the Eagles lost Super Bowl LVII to the Kansas City Chiefs by a score of 38–35. It was the Eagles' third Super Bowl appearance and their first win in franchise history. With the Eagles' victory, the NFC East became the first division to have each team win at least one Super Bowl.
While Super Bowl LII produced the second highest-scoring Super Bowl, the following year's Super Bowl LIII became the lowest-scoring Super Bowl. The Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams, 13–3. In so doing, they became the team with the lowest point total by a winning team in Super Bowl history. Tom Brady would receive a record sixth Super Bowl championship, the most of any player in NFL history, surpassing his tie with Charles Haley for five wins. Brady would also become the oldest player to ever win a Super Bowl at age 41, while Bill Belichick would be the oldest coach to ever win a Super Bowl at age 66. Wide receiver Julian Edelman was named Super Bowl MVP.
=== 2020s: Beginning of the Chiefs' dominance ===
In Super Bowl LIV, the Chiefs defeated the 49ers in a comeback, 31–20, for their first Super Bowl title in 50 years. This victory marked the first time since 1991 that the NFC did not have more Super Bowl victories than the AFC. The Patriots were absent; after making it to the Super Bowl in each of the last three years and winning two of them, they had lost in the Wild Card round of the playoffs to the Tennessee Titans 20–13. That game represented Tom Brady's final game as a New England Patriot.
In Super Bowl LV, which took place in Tampa, Florida, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the defending champion Chiefs, 31–9. No player on the Buccaneers who scored points (Rob Gronkowski, Antonio Brown, Leonard Fournette, and Ryan Succop) was on the Buccaneers' roster the previous season. This marked a record seventh Super Bowl victory for Tom Brady, also more than any individual NFL franchise, and who would also break his own record for the oldest quarterback to win a championship at 43 years old. Tampa Bay head coach Bruce Arians would also break Bill Belichick's record for the oldest head coach to win a championship at 68. Super Bowl LV also marked the first time in the history of the modern league that a host city's professional football franchise got to play in a Super Bowl that was hosted in their home stadium.
A year later in Inglewood, California, the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23–20 to win Super Bowl LVI, becoming the second team to win the Super Bowl in its home stadium.
On February 12, 2023, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, the Chiefs overcame a 10-point deficit at halftime to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 38–35, winning Super Bowl LVII on a last-minute field goal.
On February 11, 2024, the Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium on an overtime touchdown. The first Super Bowl in Las Vegas, this was a rematch of Super Bowl LIV between the 49ers and the Chiefs, and was the Chiefs' fourth Super Bowl appearance in five years. The second Super Bowl to go into overtime, the Chiefs came back from another 10-point deficit to win their third Super Bowl in five years and secure back-to-back championships for the first time since the 2004 New England Patriots.
On February 9, 2025, at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Patrick Mahomes went to his fifth Super Bowl since he became the starting quarterback. This made the Chiefs the first team in NFL history to win back-to-back Super Bowls and then appear in the Super Bowl again the following year, and also the first team in NFL history to play in five Super Bowls over a six-year period. The Chiefs played the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX. This was the second time the Chiefs rematched another team in the Super Bowl. The Eagles successfully avenged their Super Bowl LVII defeat, winning 40–22 after leading 34–0 at the end of the third quarter and preventing the Chiefs from becoming the first team to win three straight Super Bowl championships. Jalen Hurts was named Super Bowl MVP.
On February 8, 2026 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, the Seattle Seahawks faced the New England Patriots. The game had a slow start, going 12–0 in the first half with four Seahawks field goals. The second half had a bit more action with a Seattle touchdown and interception. The Seahawks shutout the Patriots for the first three quarters of the Super Bowl LX, leading 12–0 without scoring any touchdowns. The Patriots eventually managed to score 13 points, but could not win. In the end, the Seahawks defeated the Patriots 29–13, making back to back super bowls where the teams avenge their defeat in a previous super bowl. Running back Kenneth Walker III was named Super Bowl MVP.
== Television coverage and ratings ==
The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched annual sporting events in the world, with viewership overwhelmingly domestic. The only other annual event that gathers more viewers is the UEFA Champions League final. For many years, the Super Bowl has possessed a large US and global television viewership, and it is often the most-watched United States originating television program of the year. The game tends to have a high Nielsen television rating, which is usually around a 40 rating and 60 shares. This means that, on average, more than 100 million people from the United States alone are tuned into the Super Bowl at any given moment.
In press releases preceding the game, the NFL has claimed that the Super Bowl has a potential worldwide audience of around one billion people in over 200 countries. However, this figure refers to the number of people able to watch the game, not the number of people who will actually be watching. Regardless, the statements have been frequently misinterpreted in the media as referring to the latter figure, leading to a misperception about the game's actual global audience. The New York-based media research firm Initiative measured the global audience for the Super Bowl XXXIX at 93 million people, with 98 percent of that figure being viewers in North America, which meant roughly two million people outside North America watched the Super Bowl that year.
Super Bowl LVIII holds the record for average number of US viewers, with 123.7 million, making the game the most-viewed television broadcast of any kind in American history. The halftime show set a record with 129.2 million viewers tuning in.
The highest-rated game according to Nielsen was Super Bowl XVI in 1982, which was watched in 49.1% of households (73 shares), or 40,020,000 households at the time. Super Bowl XVI still ranks fourth on Nielsen's list of top-rated programs of all time, with three other Super Bowls (XVII, XX, and XLIX) in the top ten.
Famous Super Bowl commercials include the 1984 introduction of Apple's Macintosh computer, the Budweiser "Bud Bowl" campaign, and the dot-com ads aired during Super Bowl XXXIV. As the television ratings of the Super Bowl have steadily increased over the years, commercial prices have also increased, with advertisers paying as much as $7 million for a thirty-second spot during Super Bowl LVI in 2022. A segment of the audience tunes into the Super Bowl solely to view commercials. In 2010, Nielsen reported that 51 percent of Super Bowl viewers tune in for the commercials.
Since 1991, the Super Bowl has begun between 6:19 and 6:40 PM EST so that most of the game is played during the primetime hours on the East Coast.
=== US television rights ===
Throughout most of its history, the Super Bowl has been rotated annually between the same American television networks that broadcast the NFL's regular season and postseason games.
Super Bowl I, played in 1967, is the only Super Bowl to have been broadcast in the United States by two different broadcasters simultaneously. At the time, NBC held the rights to nationally televise AFL games while CBS had the rights to broadcast NFL games. Both networks were allowed to cover the game, and each network used its own announcers, but NBC was only allowed to use the CBS feed instead of producing its own.
Beginning with Super Bowl II, NBC televised the game in even years and CBS in odd years. This annual rotation between the two networks continued through the 1970 AFL–NFL merger when NBC was given the rights to televise AFC games and CBS winning the rights to broadcast NFC games. Although ABC began broadcasting Monday Night Football in 1970, it was not added to the Super Bowl rotation until Super Bowl XIX, played in 1985. ABC, CBS and NBC then continued to rotate the Super Bowl until 1994, when Fox replaced CBS as the NFC broadcaster. CBS then took NBC's place in the rotation after CBS replaced NBC as the AFC broadcaster in 1998. As a result of new contracts signed in 2006, with NBC taking over Sunday Night Football from ESPN, and Monday Night Football moving from ABC to ESPN, NBC took ABC's place in the Super Bowl rotation. The rotation between CBS, Fox, and NBC will continue until the new contracts that took effect for the first time with Super Bowl LVIII, allowing ABC to return and starting a four-network rotation.
The four-year rotation beginning with Super Bowl LVIII also allows each broadcaster to offer simulcasts or alternative broadcasts on its sister networks and platforms. CBS's sister network Nickelodeon aired an alternate children-oriented telecast of Super Bowl LVIII. And ABC's rights include ESPN simulcasts and alternative broadcasts on other ESPN networks.
The NFL has broken the traditional broadcasting rotation if it can be used to bolster other major sporting events a network airs around the time game is played . For example, CBS was given Super Bowl XXVI (1992) after it won the rights to air the 1992 Winter Olympics, with NBC subsequently airing Super Bowl XXVII (1993) and Super Bowl XXVIII (1994) in consecutive years. Likewise, NBC aired Super Bowl LVI (2022) instead of CBS during the 2022 Winter Olympics, which were also aired by NBC. CBS received Super Bowl LV (2021) in return. Under the four-network rotation that will take effect beginning in 2024, the league will award NBC the Super Bowl during Winter Olympic years.
The first six Super Bowls were blacked out in the television markets of the host cities, due to league restrictions then in place. Super Bowl VII (1973) was telecast in Los Angeles on an experimental basis after all tickets were sold ten days before the game.
Game analyst John Madden is the only person to broadcast a Super Bowl for each of the four networks that have televised the game (five with CBS, three with Fox, two with ABC, and one with NBC).
Note: Years listed are the year the game was actually played (will be played) rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
^ *: The current TV contract with the networks expires after the 2033 season (or in early 2034). Under the deal, the Super Bowl is currently rotated annually between CBS, Fox, NBC, and ABC in that order. ABC returned to the rotation with that contract that took effect at the start of the 2023 season. The contract does have an opt-out clause after the 2029 season (or in early 2030), with the exception for ABC's contract, whose opt-out clause is after the 2030 season (or in early 2031).
^ **: The first Super Bowl was simultaneously broadcast by CBS and NBC, with each network using the same video feed (from CBS), but providing its own commentary.
=== Lead-out programming ===
The Super Bowl provides lead-in to programming following it on the same channel, the effects of which can last for several hours. For instance, in discussing the ratings of a local TV station, Buffalo television critic Alan Pergament noted that following Super Bowl XLVII, which aired on CBS: "A paid program that ran on CBS 4 (WIVB-TV) at 2:30 in the morning had a 1.3 rating. That's higher than some CW prime time shows get on WNLO-TV, Channel 4's sister station."
Because of this strong coattail effect, the network that airs the Super Bowl typically takes advantage of the large audience to air an episode of a hit series or to premiere the pilot of a promising new one in the lead-out slot, which immediately follows the Super Bowl and post-game coverage.
== Ceremonies and entertainment ==
Early Super Bowls featured a halftime show consisting of marching bands from local colleges or high schools; but as the popularity of the game increased, a trend emerged where popular singers and musicians performed during its pre-game ceremonies and the halftime show, or simply sang the national anthem of the United States, "America the Beautiful", or "Lift Every Voice and Sing".
The U.S. national anthem has been performed at all but one Super Bowl: Super Bowl XI in 1977 when Vikki Carr sang "America the Beautiful" in place of the anthem. Beginning with Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, "America the Beautiful" is sung before the national anthem every year and is followed by the presentation of the colors and a military flyover preceding the anthem. Beginning with Super Bowl LV in 2021, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" is sung prior to "America the Beautiful" in honor of Black History Month, although initially it was sung in memory of those who died during the Coronavirus pandemic in the United States, during which Super Bowl LV was played.
For many years, Whitney Houston's performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, during the Gulf War, had long been regarded as one of the best renditions of the anthem in history. Before Super Bowl XLVIII, soprano Renée Fleming became the first opera singer to perform the anthem.
Recently, the winner of the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award has been acknowledged before "America the Beautiful" and "The Star-Spangled Banner".
Since Super Bowl XII in 1978, a former football player, a celebrity, or another special guest participates in the coin toss ceremony to recognize their community involvement or significance.
The pre-game ceremonies usually go in the following order:
Presentation of the Most Valuable Players, occurred every ten years since 1986
"Lift Every Voice and Sing"
Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award presentation
"America the Beautiful"
Presentation of the Colors
"The Star-Spangled Banner" followed by flyover
Coin toss
Unlike regular season or playoff games, thirty minutes are allocated for the Super Bowl halftime. After a special live episode of the Fox sketch comedy series In Living Color caused a drop in viewership for the Super Bowl XXVI halftime show, the NFL sought to increase the Super Bowl's audience by hiring A-list talent to perform. They approached Michael Jackson, whose performance the following year drew higher figures than the game itself. U2 performed at Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002; during their third song, "Where the Streets Have No Name", the band played under a large projection screen which scrolled through names of the victims of the September 11 attacks.
The halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII attracted controversy, following an incident in which Justin Timberlake removed a piece of Janet Jackson's top, briefly exposing one of her breasts before the broadcast quickly cut away from the shot. The incident led to fines being issued by the FCC (and a larger crackdown over "indecent" content broadcast on television), and MTV (then a sister to the game's broadcaster that year, CBS, under Viacom) being banned by the NFL from producing the Super Bowl halftime show in the future. In an effort to prevent a repeat of the incident, the NFL held a moratorium on Super Bowl halftime shows featuring pop performers, and instead invited a single, headlining veteran act, such as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. This practice ended at Super Bowl XLV, which returned to using current pop acts such as the Black Eyed Peas, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga.
Minnesota Vikings announcer Alan Roach is the official public address announcer of the Super Bowl since Super Bowl XL in 2006, with the exceptions of Super Bowl XLVIII, XLIX and 50 when the Denver Broncos played in those games. Roach was also Denver's regular P.A. announcer during those years, and thus the league felt it was a potential competitive advantage. In those years, NFL on Westwood One host and NFL Films voice Scott Graham held the duties.
Excluding Super Bowl XXXIX, the "I'm going to Disney World!" advertising campaign took place in every Super Bowl since Super Bowl XXI in 1987, when quarterback Phil Simms from the Giants became the first player to say the tagline.
== Venues ==
As of Super Bowl LX, 30 of 60 Super Bowls have been played in three metropolitan areas: the Greater Miami area (eleven times), New Orleans (eleven times), and the Greater Los Angeles area (eight times). No market or region without an active NFL franchise has ever hosted a Super Bowl, and the presence of an NFL team in a market or region is now a de jure requirement for bidding on the game. For instance, while Los Angeles has been an eight-time host city, with its most recent being Super Bowl LVI in 2022, it did not host one from the departure of both its NFL teams in 1995 until the Rams and the Chargers subsequently returned to Los Angeles in 2016 and 2017 respectively. The Caesars Superdome in New Orleans has hosted eight Super Bowls, the most of any venue. The Orange Bowl was the only AFL stadium to host a Super Bowl and the only stadium to host consecutive Super Bowls, hosting Super Bowls II and III.
Seven Super Bowls have been held in a stadium other than the one the NFL team in that city was using at the time, a situation that has not arisen after Super Bowl XXVII's host stadium was selected on March 19, 1991. This was as the winning market was previously not required to host the Super Bowl in the same stadium that its NFL team used, if the stadium in which the Super Bowl was held was perceived to be a better stadium for a large high-profile event than the existing NFL home stadium in the same city; for example, five of Los Angeles's Bowls were played at the Rose Bowl, which has never been used by any NFL franchise outside of the Super Bowl. Besides the Rose Bowl, the only other Super Bowl venues that were not the home stadium to NFL teams at the time were Rice Stadium (the Houston Oilers had played in Rice Stadium previously but moved to the Astrodome several years before Super Bowl VIII) and Stanford Stadium. Starting with the selection of the Super Bowl XXVIII venue on May 23, 1990, the league has given preference in awarding the Super Bowl to brand new or recently renovated NFL stadiums, alongside a trend of teams demanding public money or relocating to play in new stadiums.
To date only two teams have qualified for a Super Bowl at their home stadiums: the 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who won Super Bowl LV hosted at Raymond James Stadium (selected on May 23, 2017), and the 2021 Los Angeles Rams the following season, who won Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium. Before that, the closest any team had come to accomplishing this feat were the 2017 Minnesota Vikings, who reached the NFC Championship Game but lost to the Eagles. In that instance, U.S. Bank Stadium became the first Super Bowl host stadium (selected on May 20, 2014) to also host a Divisional Playoff Game in the same season (which the Vikings won); all previous times that the Super Bowl host stadium hosted another playoff game in the same postseason were all Wild Card games. Two teams have played the Super Bowl in their home market but at a different venue than their home stadium: the 1979 Los Angeles Rams, who lost Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl instead of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum; and the 1984 San Francisco 49ers, who won Super Bowl XIX in Stanford Stadium instead of Candlestick Park, during a time when the league often picked a stadium that was not home to an NFL team to host the Super Bowl (see above).
Traditionally, the NFL does not award Super Bowls to stadiums that are located in climates with an expected average daily temperature less than 50 °F (10 °C) on game day unless the field can be completely covered by a fixed or retractable roof. Six Super Bowls have been played in northern cities: two in the Detroit area—Super Bowl XVI at Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, and Super Bowl XL at Ford Field in Detroit; two in Minneapolis—Super Bowl XXVI at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and Super Bowl LII at the U.S. Bank Stadium; one in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium for Super Bowl XLVI; and one in New Jersey—Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium. Only MetLife Stadium did not have a roof (be it fixed or retractable) but it was still picked as the host stadium for Super Bowl XLVIII in an apparent waiver of the warm-climate rule, with a contingency plan to reschedule the game in the event of heavy snowfall. MetLife Stadium's selection over Sun Life Stadium generated controversy as the league requested a roof to be added to Sun Life Stadium (a venue afflicted with a heavy rainstorm during Super Bowl XLI) in order to be considered for future Super Bowls, which was done during a remodeling from 2015 into 2016. It then hosted Super Bowl LIV.
There have been a few instances where the league has rescinded the Super Bowl from cities. Super Bowl XXVII in 1993 was originally awarded to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, but after Arizona voters elected not to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a paid state employees' holiday in 1990, the NFL moved the game to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. When voters in Arizona opted to create such a legal holiday in 1992, Super Bowl XXX in 1996 was awarded to Tempe. Super Bowl XXXIII in 1999 was awarded first to Candlestick Park in San Francisco, but when plans to renovate the stadium fell through, the game was moved to Pro Player Stadium in greater Miami. Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003 was awarded to a new stadium not yet built in San Francisco, but when that stadium failed to be built, the game was moved to Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Super Bowl XLIV, slated for February 2010, was withdrawn from New York City's proposed West Side Stadium, because the city, state, and proposed tenants (New York Jets) could not agree on funding. Super Bowl XLIV was then eventually awarded to Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 was originally given to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, but after two sales taxes failed to pass at the ballot box (a renovation proposal had passed successfully, but a second ballot question to add a rolling roof structure to be shared with Kaufmann Stadium critical for the game to be hosted was rejected), and opposition by local business leaders and politicians increased, Kansas City eventually withdrew its request to host the game. Super Bowl XLIX was then eventually awarded to University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Super Bowl LV in 2021 was first awarded to the yet-to-be completed SoFi Stadium, but construction delays forced the game to be moved to Raymond James Stadium and SoFi Stadium was then given Super Bowl LVI in 2022. Super Bowl LVIII in 2024 was first given to the Superdome, but the NFL's 2021 regular season expansion pushed the game from February 4 to February 11 in a direct conflict with New Orleans' Mardi Gras celebrations; Super Bowl LVIII was then moved to Allegiant Stadium in Nevada and New Orleans was given Super Bowl LIX in 2025.
=== Selection process ===
The location of the Super Bowl is chosen at a meeting of all NFL team owners, usually three to five years before the event. The game has never been played in a metropolitan area that lacked an NFL franchise at the time the game was played, although in 2007 NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suggested that a Super Bowl might be played in London, perhaps at Wembley Stadium.
Through Super Bowl LVI, teams were allowed to bid for the rights to host Super Bowls, where cities submitted proposals to host a Super Bowl and were evaluated in terms of stadium renovation and their ability to host, but this competition was rescinded in 2018. The league has made all decisions regarding hosting sites from Super Bowl LVII onward; the league chose a potential venue unilaterally, the chosen team put together a hosting proposal, and the league voted upon it to determine if it is acceptable.
In 2014, a document listing the specific requirements of Super Bowl hosts was leaked, giving a clear list of what was required for a Super Bowl host. Some of the host requirements include:
The host stadium must be in a market that hosts an NFL team and must have a minimum of 70,000 seats, with the media and electrical amenities necessary to produce the Super Bowl. Stadiums may include temporary seating for Super Bowls, but seating must be approved by the league. Stadiums where the average game day temperature is below 50 °F (10 °C) must either have a roof or a waiver given by the league. There must be a minimum of 35,000 parking spaces within one mile (1.6 km) of the stadium.
The host stadium must have space for the Gameday Experience, a large pregame entertainment area, within walking distance of the stadium.
The host city must have space for the NFL Experience, the interactive football theme park which is operated the week before the Super Bowl. An indoor venue for the event must have a minimum of 850,000 square feet (79,000 m2), and an outdoor venue must have a minimum of 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2). Additionally, there must be space nearby for the Media Center, and space for all other events involved in the Super Bowl week, including golf courses and bowling alleys.
The necessary infrastructure must be in place around the stadium and other Super Bowl facilities, including parking, security, electrical needs, media needs, communication needs, and transportation needs.
There must be a minimum number of hotel spaces within one hour's drive of the stadium equaling 35% of the stadium's capacity, along with hotels for the teams, officials, media, and other dignitaries. (For Super Bowl XXXIX, the city of Jacksonville docked several luxury cruise liners at their port to act as temporary hotel space.)
There must be practice space of equal and comparable quality for both teams within a twenty-minute drive of the team hotels, and rehearsal space for all events within a reasonable distance to the stadium. The practice facilities must have one grass field and at least one field of the same surface as the host stadium.
The stadium must have a minimum of 70,000 fixed seats, including club and fixed suite seating, during regular season operations.
Much of the cost of a Super Bowl is to be assumed by the host community, although some costs are enumerated within the requirements to be assumed by the NFL. New Orleans, the site of Super Bowl XLVII in 2013, invested more than $1 billion in infrastructure improvements in the years leading up to the game.
The NFL allocates backup stadiums for the Super Bowl every year, in the event of a last-minute relocation of the game.
=== Home team designation ===
The designated "home team" alternates between the NFC team in odd-numbered games and the AFC team in even-numbered games. This alternation was initiated with the first Super Bowl, when the Packers were the designated home team. Regardless of being the home or away team of record, each team has its team logo and wordmark painted in one of the end zones. Designated away teams have won 33 of 60 Super Bowls to date (approximately 55%).
Since Super Bowl XIII in 1979, the home team is given the choice of wearing its colored or white jerseys. Originally, the designated home team had to wear its colored jerseys, which resulted in the Cowboys donning their less exposed dark blue jerseys for Super Bowl V. While most of the home teams in the Super Bowl have chosen to wear their colored jerseys, there have been eight exceptions: the Cowboys in Super Bowls XIII and XXVII, the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XVII, the Steelers in Super Bowl XL, the Broncos in Super Bowl 50, the Patriots in Super Bowls LII and LX, and the Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV. The Cowboys have primarily worn white jerseys at home since 1964. Washington also primarily wore white at home during that period between 1981 and 2000. Although the Steelers always worn their black jerseys at home since the AFL–NFL merger in 1970, they opted for the white jerseys in Super Bowl XL after winning three consecutive playoff games on the road. For the Broncos in Super Bowl 50, Denver general manager John Elway simply stated, "We've had Super Bowl success in our white uniforms"; they previously had been 0–4 in Super Bowls when wearing their orange jerseys, losing those games in terrible fashion. It was unclear why the Patriots chose to wear their white jerseys in Super Bowl LII, since New England mostly worn their blue jerseys for home games during the pairing of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. The Patriots were 3–0 in their white uniforms in Super Bowls before Super Bowl LII with Belichick and Brady, and they may have been going on recent trends of teams who wear white for the Super Bowl game. New England later adopted a "road warrior" mentality under coach Mike Vrabel, going 9–0 (including postseason) on the road to advance to Super Bowl LX. For Super Bowl LV, when the Buccaneers became the first team to reach the Super Bowl that their own stadium hosted, the Buccaneers were designated the home team as per AFC-NFC rotation and elected to wear their white jerseys; the team often wears white at home during the first half of the regular season, and they had won both their divisional and championship post-season games on the road in white jerseys. White-shirted teams have won 37 of 60 Super Bowls overall, and won 15 of the last 21 Super Bowls since Super Bowl XXXIX (the only teams to win in their colored jerseys during these recent games are the Packers against the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV, the Eagles against the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, the Chiefs against the 49ers in Super Bowls LIV and LVIII, the Eagles against the Chiefs in LIX, and the Seattle Seahawks against the Patriots in Super Bowl LX).
The 49ers, as part of the league's 75th Anniversary celebration, used their 1955 throwback uniform in Super Bowl XXIX, which for that year was their regular home jersey. The Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII wore their royal blue and yellow uniforms, which was a throwback uniform but then turned into their primary colors over the navy blue and metallic gold uniform, which they have previously worn for six home games including a home playoff game. No team has yet worn a third jersey or Color Rush uniform for the Super Bowl. The 49ers reportedly requested to wear an all-white third jersey ensemble for Super Bowl LIV, which the San Francisco Chronicle noted they could do with special permission from the league; the league never granted such permission, and the 49ers instead opted for their standard uniform of white jerseys with gold pants.
=== Host cities/regions ===
Sixteen different regions have hosted Super Bowls.
Note: Years listed are the year the game was actually played (or will be played; future games are denoted through italics) rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
=== Host stadiums ===
A total of 27 different stadiums have either hosted, or are scheduled to host, a Super Bowl, with 14 of the stadiums having hosted, or are scheduled to host, more than one Super Bowl. Seven of the Super Bowl hosting stadiums have been demolished.
The years listed in the table below are the years the game was actually played (will be played) rather than the NFL season it concluded.
^ ^: Stadium has since been demolished.
^ ‡: Prior to the incorporation of Miami Gardens in 2003, the stadium was in unincorporated Miami-Dade County.
^ ††: The original Stanford Stadium, which hosted Super Bowl XIX, was demolished and a new stadium constructed on the site in 2006.
^ ˇ: Future Super Bowls, also denoted by italics.
==== Future venues ====
The Super Bowl has not yet been played in any region that lacked an NFL or AFL franchise at the time the game was played.
San Diego is the only metropolitan area as of 2021 that has hosted past Super Bowls, but does not currently have an NFL franchise: San Diego Stadium hosted three Super Bowls before their NFL franchise relocated to Los Angeles. Also, London, England, has occasionally been mentioned as a host city for a Super Bowl in the near future. Wembley Stadium has hosted several NFL games as part of the NFL International Series and is specifically designed for large, individual events, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has openly discussed the possibility on different occasions.
Time zone complications are a significant obstacle to a Super Bowl in London; a typical 6:30 p.m. EST start would result in the game beginning at 11:30 p.m. local time in London: this is an unusually late hour to be holding spectator sports, while the NFL has never in its history started a game later than 9:15 p.m. local time.
Although bids have been submitted for all Super Bowls through Super Bowl LIX, the soonest that any stadium outside the NFL's footprint could serve as host would be Super Bowl LXIII in 2029, but Las Vegas is currently negotiating with the NFL to host that edition.
Eight stadiums that hosted at least one Super Bowl no longer exist:
Tulane Stadium, on the Tulane University campus, which hosted three Super Bowls, was demolished in November 1979.
Tampa Stadium, which hosted two Super Bowls, was demolished in April 1999.
Stanford Stadium, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished and redeveloped in 2005–06.
The Orange Bowl, which hosted five Super Bowls, was demolished in May 2008. Today, LoanDepot Park sits on the former site of the Orange Bowl.
The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished in March 2014. Today, it is US Bank Stadium on the former site of the Metrodome.
The Georgia Dome in Atlanta, which hosted two Super Bowls, was demolished in November 2017.
The Pontiac Silverdome in suburban Detroit, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished in March 2018.
San Diego Stadium, which hosted three Super Bowls, closed in March 2020 and was demolished in early 2021.
== Super Bowl trademark ==
The NFL very actively seeks to prevent what it calls unauthorized commercial use of its trademarked terms "NFL", "Super Bowl", and "Super Bowl Sunday". As a result, many events and promotions tied to the game, but not sanctioned by the NFL, are asked to refer to it as "The Big Game", or other generic descriptions. A radio spot for Planters nuts parodied this, by saying "it would be super ... to have a bowl ... of Planters nuts while watching the big game!" and comedian Stephen Colbert began referring to the game in 2014 as the "Superb Owl". In 2015, the NFL filed opposition with the USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to a trademark application submitted by an Arizona-based nonprofit for "Superb Owl". Another entity has a service mark for "Superb Owl".
The NFL claims that the use of the phrase "Super Bowl" implies an NFL affiliation, and on this basis the league asserts broad rights to restrict how the game may be shown publicly; for example, the league says Super Bowl showings are prohibited in churches or at other events that "promote a message", while non-sporting event venues are also prohibited to show the Super Bowl on any television screen larger than 55 inches. Some critics say the NFL is exaggerating its ownership rights by stating that "any use is prohibited", as this contradicts the broad doctrine of fair use in the United States. Legislation was proposed by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 2008 "to provide an exemption from exclusive rights in copyright for certain nonprofit organizations to display live football games", and "for other purposes".
In 2004, the NFL started issuing cease-and-desist letters to casinos in Las Vegas that were hosting Super Bowl parties. "Super Bowl" is a registered trademark, owned by the NFL, and any other business using that name for profit-making ventures is in violation of federal law, according to the letters. In reaction to the letters, many Las Vegas resorts, rather than discontinue the popular and lucrative parties, started referring to them as "Big Game Parties".
In 2006, the NFL made an attempt to trademark "The Big Game" as well; however, it withdrew the application in 2007 due to growing commercial and public relations opposition to the move, mostly from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley and their fans, as the Stanford Cardinal football and California Golden Bears football teams compete in the Big Game, which has been played since 1892 (28 years before the formation of the NFL and 75 years before Super Bowl I). Additionally, the Mega Millions lottery game was known as The Big Game (then The Big Game Mega Millions) from 1996 to 2002.
== Traditions ==
Over the years, the Super Bowl has developed a number of traditions and mainstays. Some date back to the earliest Super Bowls, while others are more recent inventions.
=== Roman numerals ===
Unique among the major North American professional sports leagues, the NFL uses Roman numerals to designate its championship Super Bowl game. It was first used for Super Bowl V and applied retroactively to the preceding four editions. An exception to this rule occurred in Super Bowl 50 for marketing purposes.
=== Commercials ===
The Super Bowl is one of the few events in which more than 100 million people view the same content simultaneously, and has been called "one of the last remaining monocultural events in human history" and "the last bastion of true human-to-human connection". Super Bowl ads themselves have become a spectacle, a barometer of cultural relevance, "expos[ing] a deeper truth about contemporary capitalism". The cost of a 30-second ad grew from $37,500 ($362,088 in 2025) in 1967 to $8,000,000 in 2026 (over $266,000 per second), thus exemplifying the attention economy.
=== Presidential interview ===
Since George W. Bush, every President of the United States has sat for at least one pre-game Super Bowl interview. President Bush was interviewed before the game in 2004, but it did not become a regular tradition until the Presidency of Barack Obama, who was interviewed each year of his presidency. Donald Trump was interviewed in 2017, 2019, and 2020 and Joe Biden was interviewed in 2021 and 2022. In 2025, Trump was again interviewed during the first year of his second term. Interview topics were mostly apolitical and focused on football before 2014, but this changed when Bill O'Reilly conducted a more confrontational interview with President Obama before Super Bowl XLVIII. Since then, interviews have been more focused on politics and public policy. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Major | John Major | Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British retired politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. He previously held various Cabinet positions under Margaret Thatcher. Major was Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon, formerly Huntingdonshire, from 1979 to 2001. Since stepping down, Major has focused on writing and his business, sporting, and charity work, and commentating on political developments.
Major left school before 16, worked as an insurance clerk, joined the Young Conservatives in 1959, and became a highly active member. He was elected to Lambeth London Borough Council in 1968 and, a decade later, to parliament as a Conservative MP at the 1979 general election. Major held junior government positions under Thatcher from 1984 to 1987, including parliamentary private secretary and assistant whip. He served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 1987 to 1989, Foreign Secretary in 1989, and Chancellor from 1989 to 1990. Following Thatcher's resignation in 1990, Major stood in the 1990 Conservative leadership election and emerged victorious, becoming prime minister.
Major's mild-mannered style and moderate political stance contrasted with Thatcher. Major created the Citizen's Charter, replaced the Poll Tax with the Council Tax, committed British troops to the Gulf War, took charge of the UK's negotiations over the Maastricht Treaty, led the country during the early 1990s economic crisis, withdrew the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday, promoted the socially conservative back to basics campaign, privatised the railways and coal industry, and played a pivotal role in creating peace in Northern Ireland. Two years into his premiership, Major led the Conservatives to a fourth consecutive electoral victory, winning more than 14 million votes, which remains the highest won by a British political party. In 1995, Major resigned as party leader, amid internal divisions over UK membership of the EU, parliamentary scandals and questions over his economic credibility. Despite winning the 1995 leadership election, his government remained unpopular, and lost its majority. The Labour Party pulled ahead of the Conservatives in every local election during Major's premiership, which increased after Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994. The Conservatives were defeated by Labour in a landslide in the 1997 general election, ending 18 years of Conservative government.
After Blair became prime minister, Major served as Leader of the Opposition while the leadership election to replace him took place, won by William Hague. Major remained in the House of Commons as a backbencher, regularly attending and contributing in debates, until he stood down at the 2001 election, to focus on writing and his business, sporting and charity work. Major has maintained a low profile, occasionally making political interventions. He supported the unsuccessful Britain Stronger in Europe campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union, and has often criticised Brexit since the 2016 referendum. Major was appointed a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter (KG) in 2005 for services to politics and charity, and became a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1999 for his work on the Northern Ireland peace process. Though public favourability of Major has improved since he left office, his premiership is viewed as average in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers. As of 2026, he is the oldest living former British prime minister.
== Early life and education (1943–1959) ==
John Major was born on 29 March 1943 at St Helier Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children in St Helier, Surrey, to Gwen Major (née Coates, 1905–1970) and former music hall performer Tom Major-Ball (1879–1962), who was 63 years old when Major was born. He was christened "John Roy Major" but only "John Major" was recorded on his birth certificate; he used his middle name until the early 1980s. His birth had been a difficult one, with his mother suffering from pleurisy and pneumonia and John requiring several blood transfusions due to an infection, causing permanent scarring to his ankles.
The Major family—including John, his parents, and his two older siblings Terry and Pat)—lived at 260 Longfellow Road, Worcester Park, Surrey, a middle-class area where Major's father ran a garden ornaments business and his mother worked in a local library and as a part-time dance teacher. John Major later described the family's circumstances at this time as being "comfortable but not well off". Following a German V-1 flying bomb attack in the area in 1944 which killed several people, the Majors moved to the village of Saham Toney, Norfolk, for the remainder of the war.
John began attending primary school at Cheam Common School from 1948. His childhood was generally happy, and he enjoyed reading, sports (especially cricket and football) and keeping pets, such as his rabbits. In 1954 John passed the 11+ exam, enabling him to go to Rutlish School, a grammar school in Merton Park, though to John's chagrin his father insisted that he register as 'John Major-Ball'.
The family's fortunes took a turn for the worse, with his father's health deteriorating, and the business in severe financial difficulties. A recalled business loan which the family were unable to repay forced Tom Major to sell the house in Worcester Park in May 1955, with the family moving to a cramped, rented top-floor flat at 144 Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. With his parents distracted by their reduced circumstances, John's difficulties at Rutlish went unnoticed.
Acutely conscious of his straitened circumstances in relation to the other pupils, Major was something of a loner and consistently under-performed except in sports, especially cricket, coming to see the school as "a penance to be endured". Major left school just before his 16th birthday in 1959 with just three O-level passes in History, English Language and English Literature, to his parents' disappointment.
Major's interest in politics stems from this period, and he avidly kept up with current affairs by reading papers on his commutes from Brixton to Wimbledon. In 1956 Major met local MP Marcus Lipton at a local church fair and was invited to watch his first debate in the House of Commons, where Harold Macmillan presented his only Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Major has attributed his political ambitions to this event.
== Early post-school career (1959–1979) ==
Major's first job was as a clerk in the London-based insurance brokerage firm Price Forbes in 1959, but he found the job dull and offering no prospects and eventually quit. Major began working with his brother Terry at the garden ornaments business; this had been sold in 1959, enabling the family to move to a larger residence at 80 Burton Road, Brixton. Major's father died on 27 March 1962. John left the ornaments business the following year to care for his ill mother, though when she got better he was unable to find a new job and was unemployed for much of the latter half of 1962, a situation he says was "degrading".
After Major became prime minister, it was misreported that his failure to get a job as a bus conductor resulted from his failing to pass a maths test; he had in fact passed all of the necessary tests but had been passed over owing to his height. In the meantime he studied for a qualification in banking via correspondence course. Eventually in December 1962 he found a job working at the London Electricity Board (LEB) in Elephant and Castle.
In 1959, Major had joined the Young Conservatives in Brixton. He soon became a highly active member; this helped increase his confidence following the failure of his school days. Encouraged by fellow Conservative Derek Stone, he started giving speeches on a soap-box in Brixton Market. According to his biographer Anthony Seldon, Major brought "youthful exuberance" to the Tories in Brixton, but was sometimes in trouble with the professional agent Marion Standing. Major stood as a Councillor in the 1964 Lambeth London Borough Council election for Larkhall ward at the age of 21 in 1964, losing to Labour. He also assisted local Conservative candidates Kenneth Payne in the 1964 general election and Piers Dixon in the 1966 general election. Another formative influence on Major in this period was Jean Kierans, a divorcée 13 years his elder with two children who lived opposite the family on Burton Road, who became his mentor and lover. Seldon writes "She ... made Major smarten his appearance, groomed him politically, and made him more ambitious and worldly." Major later moved in with Kierans when his family left Burton Road in 1965; their relationship lasted from 1963 to sometime after 1968.
Major left the LEB and took up a post at District Bank in May 1965, though he soon left this to join Standard Bank the following year, largely because the latter offered the chance to work abroad. In December 1966 he was sent for a long secondment in Jos, Nigeria, which he enjoyed immensely, though he was put off by the casual racism of some of the ex-pat workers there. In May 1967 he was involved in a serious car crash in which he broke a leg and had to be flown home. Leaving hospital, he split his time between Jean Kierans' house and a small rented flat in Mayfair, working at Standard Bank's London office and resuming his banking diploma and activities with the Young Conservatives in his spare time.
Major stood again as Councillor in the 1968 Lambeth London Borough Council election, this time for Ferndale ward. Though a Labour stronghold, the Conservatives received a huge boost following Enoch Powell's anti-immigration 'Rivers of Blood speech' in April 1968 and Major won, despite strongly disapproving of Powell's views. Major took a major interest in housing matters, with Lambeth notorious for overcrowding and poor-quality rented accommodation. In February 1970 Major became Chairman of the Housing Committee, being responsible for overseeing the building of several large council estates. He also promoted more openness at the council, initiating a series of public meetings with local residents. Major also undertook fact-finding trips to the Netherlands, Finland and the Soviet Union. Despite the Lambeth housing team being well-regarded nationally, Major lost his seat in the 1971 Lambeth London Borough Council election.
Major met Norma Johnson at a Conservative party event in Brixton in April 1970, and the two became engaged shortly thereafter, marrying at St Matthew's Church in Brixton on 3 October 1970. John's mother died shortly before in September at the age of 65. John and Norma moved into a flat at Primrose Court, Streatham, which John had bought in 1969, and had their first child, Elizabeth, in November 1971. In 1974 the couple moved to a larger residence at West Oak, Beckenham, and had a second child, James, in January 1975. Meanwhile, Major continued to work at Standard Bank (renamed Standard Chartered from 1975), having completed his banking diploma in 1972. Major was promoted to head of the PR department in August 1976, and his duties necessitated the occasional foreign trip to East Asia.
Despite his setback at the 1971 Lambeth Council election, Major continued to nurse political ambitions, and with help from friends in the Conservative Party managed to get onto the Conservative Central Office's list of potential MP candidates. Major was selected as the Conservative candidate for the Labour-dominated St Pancras North constituency, fighting both the February and October 1974 general elections, losing heavily both times to Labour's Albert Stallard. Major then attempted to get selected as a candidate for a more promising seat, and despite numerous attempts was unsuccessful until December 1976. Growing increasingly frustrated, Major resolved to make one last attempt, applying for selection to the safe Conservative seat of Huntingdonshire and finally he succeeded. Major was in some ways an odd choice, being a born-and-bred Londoner in a largely rural constituency still home to many landed families; however, he was seen as being the most likely to win-over the increasingly large numbers of upwardly mobile London over-spill families living in the area, and he was helped to familiarise himself with the area by local MP David Renton.
In 1977 the Major family purchased a house at De Vere Close in the village of Hemingford Grey. Major took on a less demanding job at Standard Chartered, and started working part-time in 1978 so that he could devote more time to his constituency duties.
== Early parliamentary career (1979–1987) ==
Major won the Huntingdon seat by a large margin in the 1979 general election, which brought the Conservatives led by Margaret Thatcher to power. He made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 13 June 1979, voicing his support for the government's budget. Major assiduously courted contacts at all levels of the party in this period, joining the informal 'Guy Fawkes club' of Conservative MPs and attending various Committees. He became Secretary of the Environment Committee and also assisted with work on the Housing Act 1980, which allowed council house tenants the Right to Buy their homes. At this time Major lived in De Vere Close, Hemingford Grey.
Major's first promotion came when he was appointed as a Parliamentary private secretary in January 1981 to Patrick Mayhew and Timothy Raison, both Ministers of State at the Home Office. Seeking to gain more exposure to foreign affairs, he joined several Labour Party MPs on a fact-finding trip to the Middle East in April 1982. The group met with King Hussein of Jordan and Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Lebanon; in Israel they were briefly caught in the middle of a shooting incident between Israeli troops and a Palestinian rock-thrower.
Major later became an assistant whip in January 1983, responsible for East Anglian MPs. During this period Major became also involved in the response to protests at RAF Molesworth, which lay in his constituency; various peace groups were opposed to the siting of cruise missiles at the base and had established a permanent 'peace camp' there. Major addressed public meetings opposed to the protesters, organised by parish councillors, and also met Bill Westwood and separately Michael Heseltine to discuss the issue. The protesters were evicted in February 1984.
Major comfortably won re-election to the now slightly enlarged seat of Huntingdon at the 1983 general election. Shortly thereafter he and Norma moved to a larger house (Finings) in Great Stukeley; Major generally spent his weekends there, and weekdays at a rented flat in Durand Gardens, Stockwell. Major was invited to join the prestigious 'Blue Chip' group of rising stars in the Conservative Party, and he was promoted to Treasury Whip in October 1984. It was later revealed (in 2002) that during this period Major had conducted an affair with Edwina Currie, a Conservative backbencher and later Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Health and Social Security; the affair ended in 1988. Major narrowly avoided the IRA's Brighton hotel bombing in October 1984, having left the hotel only a few hours before the bomb went off. Also in this period, Major stood in for a Foreign Office minister on a trip to South America, visiting Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.
In September 1985, Major was made Parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS), before being promoted to become Minister of State in the same department in September 1986. The large size of the DHSS granted Ministers a greater degree of responsibility than in other departments, with Major assisting with work on the Social Security Act 1986 and improving provision for disabled people. Major began to gain a bigger profile, giving his first speech at the Conservative Party Conference in October 1986. He first attracted major national media attention in January 1987 over cold weather payments to the elderly, when Britain was in the depths of a severe winter. Amidst intense media criticism, Major discussed the issue with Margaret Thatcher and an increase in the payments was approved.
== In Cabinet (1987–1990) ==
=== Chief Secretary to the Treasury (1987–1989) ===
Following the 1987 general election, in which Major retained his seat with an increased majority, he was promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, making him the first MP of the 1979 intake to reach the Cabinet. The then-Chancellor Nigel Lawson generally made significant decisions with little input from others, and Major was put in charge of agreeing departmental budgets with the Secretaries of State. These discussions went well, and for the first time in several years budgets were agreed without recourse to the external adjudication of the so-called 'Star Chamber'. Major successfully concluded a second round of such spending reviews in July 1988.
Whilst Chief Secretary Major took part in discussions over the future funding of the NHS, against the background of an NHS strike in February 1988 over pay, resulting in the 'Working for Patients' white paper and subsequent National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. Major also insisted, in discussions with Thatcher, that government assistance should be provided to support the sale of Short Brothers to Bombardier, an aerospace company and major employer in Northern Ireland which might otherwise have collapsed.
=== Foreign Secretary (July–October 1989) ===
In 1987–1988, it became clear that Major had become a 'favourite' of Thatcher's and he was widely tipped for further promotion. Nevertheless, Major's appointment to Foreign Secretary in July 1989 came as a surprise due to his relative lack of experience in the Cabinet and unfamiliarity with international affairs. Major found the prospect daunting, and unsuccessfully attempted to convince Thatcher to allow him to stay on at the Treasury. There were also fears within the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) that Major would be Thatcher's 'hatchet-man', as her relations with the department under Geoffrey Howe had been poor and characterised by mutual distrust. Major accepted the job and began to settle into the department, living in an upstairs room at the FCO and devolving decision making where necessary, though he found the increased security burdensome and disliked the extensive ceremonial aspects of the role.
Amongst Major's first acts as Foreign Secretary was to cancel the sale of Hawk aircraft to Iraq, over concerns they would be used for internal repression. He represented Britain at the Paris Peace Conference to determine the future of Cambodia. Major also met with US secretary of state James Baker, with whom he primarily discussed the issue of Vietnamese boat people, and with Qian Qichen, Foreign Minister of China, becoming the first senior Western politician to meet with a Chinese official since the violent crackdown of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square the previous month. Discussions focused primarily on the future of Hong Kong, which Britain was scheduled to hand over to China in 1997.
Major spent most of a summer holiday that year in Spain conducting extensive background reading on foreign affairs and British foreign policy. Upon his return to the UK he and Thatcher met with French president François Mitterrand, in which the future direction of the European Community was discussed. In September 1989, Major delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, in which he pledged to support Colombia's effort to tackle the drugs trade and reiterated Britain's opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa. Major also met US president George H. W. Bush in Washington, D.C. and Domingo Cavallo, the Argentine foreign minister, the first such meeting since the end of the Falklands War seven years earlier.
Major's last major summit as Foreign Secretary was the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Malaysia. The meeting was dominated by the issue of sanctions on South Africa, with Britain being the only country to oppose them, on the grounds that they would end up hurting poorer South Africans far more than the apartheid regime at which they were aimed. The summit ended acrimoniously, with Thatcher controversially and against established precedent issuing a second final communiqué stating Britain's opposition to sanctions, with the press seizing on the apparent disagreement on the matter between Major and Thatcher.
=== Chancellor of the Exchequer (1989–1990) ===
After just three months as Foreign Secretary Major was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on 26 October 1989 following the sudden resignation of Nigel Lawson, who had fallen out with Thatcher over what he saw as her excessive reliance on the advice of her Economic Adviser Alan Walters. The appointment meant that, despite only being in the Cabinet for a little over two years, Major had gone from the most junior position in the Cabinet to holding two of the Great Offices of State. Major made tackling inflation a priority, stating that tough measures were needed to bring it down and that "if it isn't hurting, it isn't working." He delivered his first Autumn Statement on 15 November, announcing a boost in spending (mainly for the NHS) and with interest rates to be kept as they were.
As Chancellor, Major presented only one Budget, the first to be televised live, on 20 March 1990. He publicised it as a 'budget for savers', with the creations of the tax-exempt special savings account (TESSA), arguing that measures were required to address the marked fall in the household savings ratio that had been apparent during the previous financial year. Major also abolished the composite rate tax and stamp duty on share trades, whilst increasing taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and petrol. Tax cuts were also made which benefited football associations, the aim being to increase funding on safety measures following the Bradford City stadium fire and Hillsborough disaster. Extra funding was also made available to Scotland in order to limit the impact of the Community Charge (widely dubbed the 'Poll Tax'), which had been introduced there that year.
The European Community's push for full Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was another important factor in Major's time as Chancellor; in June 1990 he proposed that instead of a single European currency there could instead be a 'hard ECU', which different national currencies could compete against and, if the ECU was successful, could lead to a single currency. The move was seen as a wrecking tactic by France and Germany, especially when the increasingly Euro-sceptic Thatcher announced her outright opposition to EMU, and the idea was abandoned. More successfully, Major managed to get the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) located in London.
By early 1990, Major had become convinced that the best way to combat inflation and restore macroeconomic stability would be if the British pound were to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), and he and Douglas Hurd (Major's successor as Foreign Secretary) set about trying to convince a reluctant Thatcher to join it. The move was supported by the Bank of England, the Treasury, most of the Cabinet, the Labour Party, several major business associations and much of the press. With the 'Lawson Boom' showing signs of running out of steam, exacerbated by rising oil prices following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, there were fears of a potential recession and pressure to cut interest rates. Thatcher finally agreed on 4 October, and Britain's entry into the ERM at a rate of DM 2.95 to £1.00 (with an agreed 6% floating 'band' either side) was announced the following day. An interest rate cut of 1% (from 15%) was also announced on the same day.
The rest of Major's Chancellorship prior to the leadership contest was largely uneventful; he considered granting the Bank of England operational independence over monetary policy, with the ability to set interest rates, but decided against it. He also agreed a restructuring and write-off of some Third World debt at a Commonwealth Finance Ministers meeting in Trinidad and Tobago in September 1990.
==== Conservative Party leadership contest ====
Opposition within the Conservative Party to Margaret Thatcher had been brewing for some time, focusing on what was seen as her brusque, imperious style and the poll tax, which was facing serious opposition across the country. In December 1989, she had survived a leadership bid by Anthony Meyer; though she won easily, 60 MPs had not voted for her, and it was rumoured that many more had had to be strong-armed into supporting her. By early 1990, it was clear that bills for many under the new poll tax regime would be higher than anticipated, and opposition to the Tax grew, with a non-payment campaign gaining much support and an anti-poll tax demonstration in Trafalgar Square in March ending in rioting. The Conservatives lost the 1990 Mid Staffordshire by-election to Labour and the 1990 Eastbourne by-election to the Liberal Democrats, both Conservative seats, causing many Conservative MPs to worry about their prospects at the upcoming general election, due in 1991 or 1992. Thatcher's staunch anti-European stance also alienated pro-Europe Conservatives. On 1 November, the pro-European deputy prime minister Geoffrey Howe resigned, issuing a fiercely critical broadside against Thatcher in the House of Commons on 13 November.
The day after Howe's speech Michael Heseltine, Thatcher's former Secretary of State for Defence who had acrimoniously resigned in 1986 over the Westland affair, challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Both John Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd supported Thatcher in the first round. Major was at home in Huntingdon recovering from a pre-arranged wisdom tooth operation during the first leadership ballot, which Thatcher won but not by the required threshold, necessitating a second round. Following discussions with her cabinet, in which many stated that though supporting her they doubted she could win, Thatcher withdrew from the contest and announced that she would resign as prime minister once a new leader had been elected. Major subsequently announced on 22 November that he would stand in the second ballot, with Thatcher's backing. Major's platform was one of moderation on Europe, a review of the poll tax, and the desire to build a "classless society".
Unlike in the first ballot, a candidate only required a simple majority of Conservative MPs to win, in this case 187 of 372 MPs. The ballot was held on the afternoon of 27 November; although Major obtained 185 votes, 2 votes short of an overall majority, he polled far enough ahead of both Hurd and Heseltine to secure their immediate withdrawal. With no remaining challengers, Major was formally named Leader of the Conservative Party that evening and was duly appointed prime minister the following day. At 47, he was the youngest prime minister since Lord Rosebery some 95 years earlier.
== Prime Minister (1990–1997) ==
=== First Major ministry (1990–1992) ===
Major became prime minister on 28 November 1990 when he accepted the Queen's invitation to form a government, succeeding Margaret Thatcher. He inherited a majority government from Margaret Thatcher who had been the prime minister for the previous eleven years. The Conservatives' popularity was low, with some polling showing Labour's Neil Kinnock with a 23% lead over the Tories in April 1990 following the introduction of the Community Charge (poll tax). By the time of Major's appointment, Labour's lead had shrunk to 14%. However, by 1991, the Conservatives had narrowly retaken Labour in the polls.
Major's first ministry was dominated by the early 1990s recession which was believed to be caused by high interest rates, falling house prices and an overvalued exchange rate. The high interest rates led to more saving, less spending and less investment in the UK's sectors. Falling house prices stalled construction in the housing sector. Economic growth was not re-established until early 1993. By December 1991, unemployment was at 2.5 million (compared to 1.6 million 18 months earlier). Additionally, inflation was in double digits and interest rates reached 15%. However, opinion polling for Major's government remained stable during this period.
On 10 March 1992, Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont delivered his budget speech to the House of Commons, which included tax cuts widely perceived to achieve votes at the forthcoming general election. The next day, as universally expected, Major called an election for 9 April. To the surprise of many pollsters, the Conservatives won a majority at the 9 April election, with 336 seats, and earning 41.9% of the vote. With a high turnout, the Conservatives earned over 14 million votes which remains a record in any UK general election. This was the Conservatives' fourth consecutive election victory. Neil Kinnock was replaced by John Smith as Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition in July 1992.
=== Second Major ministry (1992–1997) ===
On 16 September 1992, the pound sterling crashed out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism after the Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont had invested heavily in trying to keep it there, adjusting interest rates four times in one day. This event would later be called Black Wednesday. Despite the recession finally ending in 1993, the Conservatives' popularity did not improve. Major's second ministry was also defined by conflicts within the Conservative Party regarding Europe following the government's defeat on the Maastricht Treaty.
On 12 May 1994, John Smith died from a heart attack and was replaced by Tony Blair who continued Labour's modernisation under the slogan of "New Labour". Some polling at the end of 1994 and the start of 1995 had Labour with a vote share of over 60%. The Tories remained divided over this era and in an attempt to silence his critics, Major resigned as Party leader. In the leadership election, Major comfortably beat John Redwood in June 1995. Following a string of by-election defeats, the Conservatives' majority of 21 had been eroded by 13 December 1996.
In the 1997 election on 1 May 1997, Labour won a 179-seat majority, ending their eighteen years in opposition. This was the worst general election result since the First World War at the time for the Conservatives (the Conservatives would suffer a much larger defeat 27 years later in 2024), seeing the loss of all the party's seats in Wales and Scotland. On the morning of 2 May 1997, on his final departure from Downing Street to offer his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II, Major announced his intention to step down as leader of the Conservative Party, stating in his exit speech that "when the curtain falls, it's time to get off the stage". He was succeeded as prime minister by Tony Blair.
== Final years in Parliament (1997–2001) ==
Speculation over Major's leadership had continued since his re-election in 1995, and intensified as it became increasingly likely that the Conservatives would suffer a landslide defeat in the upcoming general election. During this period, Michael Portillo had frequently been touted as the favourite to replace Major, but lost his seat in the election, thus eliminating him from the running. Although many Conservative MPs wanted Major to resign as leader immediately because of the 1997 election loss, there was a movement among the grassroots of the party, encouraged by his political allies, to have him stay on as leader until the autumn. Lord Cranborne, his chief of staff during the election, and the chief whip, Alastair Goodlad, both pleaded with him to stay on: they argued that remaining as leader for a few months would give the party time to come to terms with the scale of defeat before electing a successor. Major refused, saying: "It would be terrible, because I would be presiding with no authority over a number of candidates fighting for the crown. It would merely prolong the agony."
Major served as Leader of the Opposition for seven weeks while the leadership election to replace him was underway. He formed a temporary Shadow Cabinet, but with seven of his Cabinet ministers having lost their seats at the election, and with few senior MPs left to replace them, several MPs had to hold multiple briefs. Major himself served as shadow foreign secretary (having served as foreign secretary for three months in 1989) and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, and the office of Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland was left vacant until after the 2001 general election as the party no longer had any Scottish MPs. Major's resignation as Conservative leader formally took effect on 19 June 1997 after the election of William Hague.
Major's Resignation Honours were announced on 1 August 1997. He remained active in Parliament, regularly attending and contributing in debates. He stood down from the House of Commons at the 2001 general election, having announced his retirement from Parliament on 10 March 2000. Jonathan Djanogly took over as MP for Huntingdon, retaining the seat for the Conservatives at the 2001 election.
Like some post-war former prime ministers (such as Edward Heath), Major turned down a peerage when he retired from the House of Commons in 2001. He said that he wanted a "firebreak from politics" and to focus on writing and his business, sporting and charity work.
== Post-parliamentary life (2001–present) ==
Since leaving office, Major has tended to maintain a low profile in the media, occasionally commentating on political developments in the role of an elder statesman. In 1999 he published an autobiography, covering his early life and time in office, which was generally well received. Major went on to write a book about the history of cricket in 2007 (More Than a Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years) and a book about music hall (My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall) in 2012.
Major has further explored his love of cricket as President of Surrey County Cricket Club from 2000 to 2001 (and Honorary Life Vice-president since 2002). In March 2001 he gave the tribute to cricketer Colin Cowdrey at his memorial service in Westminster Abbey. In 2005 he was elected to the Committee of the Marylebone Cricket Club, historically the governing body of the sport, and still guardian of the laws of the game. Major left the committee in 2011, citing concerns with the planned redevelopment of Lord's Cricket Ground.
John Major has also been actively engaged in charity work, being President of Asthma UK, and a Patron of the Prostate Cancer Charity, Sightsavers UK, Mercy Ships, Support for Africa 2000, Afghan Heroes, and Consortium for Street Children. In February 2012, Major became chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, which was formed as part of the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II and is intended to support charitable organisations and projects across the Commonwealth, focusing on areas such as cures for diseases and the promotion of culture and education. Major was a Patron of the sight loss and learning disability charity SeeAbility from 2006 to 2012 and has been a vice-president since 2013.
Major has also pursued a variety of business interests, taking up appointments as senior adviser to Credit Suisse, chairman of the board of senior advisers at Global Infrastructure Partners, Global Adviser to AECOM, Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait, and Chairman of the European Advisory Council of the Emerson Electric Company. He was a member of the Carlyle Group's European Advisory Board from 1998 and was appointed Chairman of Carlyle Europe in May 2001. He stood down from the Group circa 2004–05. Major was also a director at the bus manufacturers the Mayflower Corporation from 2000 to 2003, which was liquidated in 2004 due to funding issues.
Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, Major was appointed a special guardian to Princes William and Harry, with responsibility for legal and administrative matters. As a result of this, Major was the only current or former prime minister out of the five then still alive invited to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018. Major has also attended the funerals of notable political figures, such as Nelson Mandela in December 2013, former US first lady Barbara Bush at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas on 21 April 2018 and the state funeral of George H. W. Bush on 5 December 2018.
=== Revelation of affair ===
In 1993 Major sued two magazines, New Statesman and Society and Scallywag, as well as their distributors, for reporting rumours of an affair with Clare Latimer, a Downing Street caterer, even though at least one of the magazines had said that the rumours were false. The allegations of an affair with Latimer were indeed proven false. However, an affair with Edwina Currie came out a decade later and both of these publications considered legal action to recover their costs when that happened.
In September 2002, it was revealed that, prior to his elevation to the Cabinet, Major had had a four-year-long extramarital affair with Edwina Currie, from 1984 to 1988. Commentators were quick to refer to Major's previous 'Back to Basics' platform to throw charges of hypocrisy at him. An obituary of Tony Newton in The Daily Telegraph claimed that if Newton had not kept the affair a closely guarded secret, "it is highly unlikely that Major would have become prime minister". In a press statement, Major said that he was "ashamed" by the affair and that his wife had forgiven him. In response, Currie said "he wasn't ashamed of it at the time and he wanted it to continue." The affair was the subject of a 2004 theatre play and a 2022 TV documentary by Channel 5.
=== Political engagement ===
Major has become an active after-dinner speaker, earning over £25,000 per engagement for his "insights and his own opinions" on politics and other matters according to his agency. Major is also actively involved in various think tanks: he is the chair of the Panel of senior advisers at Chatham House (having previously served as a president of Chatham House), a member of the International Advisory Boards of the Peres Center for Peace in Israel, the InterAction Council, the Baker Institute in Houston, and a Patron of the Atlantic Partnership. Major was also a director with the Ditchley Foundation from 2000 to 2009, and a president of the influential centre-right think tank the Bow Group from 2012 to 2014.
In February 2005, it was reported that Major and Norman Lamont delayed the release of papers on Black Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act. Major denied doing so, saying that he had not heard of the request until the scheduled release date and had merely asked to look at the papers himself. He told BBC News that he and Lamont had been the victims of "whispering voices" to the press. He later publicly approved the release of the papers.
In December 2006, Major led calls for an independent inquiry into Blair's decision to invade Iraq, following revelations made by Carne Ross, a former British senior diplomat, that contradicted Blair's case for the invasion.
He was touted as a possible Conservative candidate for the Mayor of London elections in 2008, but turned down an offer from the Leader of the Conservatives at the time, David Cameron. A spokesperson for Major said "his political career is behind him".
Following the 2010 general election, Major announced his support for the Cameron–Clegg coalition, and stated that he hoped for a "liberal conservative" alliance beyond 2015, criticising Labour under Ed Miliband for playing "party games" rather than serving the national interest. Nevertheless, in 2013 Major expressed his concern at the seeming decline in social mobility in Britain: "In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me, from my background, I find that truly shocking."
During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum Major strongly encouraged a "No" vote, stating that a vote for independence would be damaging both for Scotland and the rest of the UK. This was similar to his stance on devolution in Scotland before referendums were held on the subject both there and in Wales in 1997.
Major was a vocal supporter for the Remain campaign in the 2016 referendum on British membership of the European Union. Major supported a second referendum over Brexit, stating that the leave campaign put out a "fantasy case" during the referendum campaign, adding that to describe a second vote as undemocratic was "a rather curious proposition" and that he could see no "intellectual argument" against redoing the ballot. Major feared Brexit would make the UK poorer and could endanger the peace settlement in Northern Ireland.
On 30 August 2019, it was announced that Major intended to join a court case by Gina Miller against the proroguing of Parliament by the prime minister at the time, Boris Johnson. In the 2019 general election Major urged voters to vote tactically against candidates supporting Boris Johnson when those candidates wanted a hard Brexit. Major said Brexit is, "the worst foreign policy decision in my lifetime. It will affect nearly every single aspect of our lives for many decades to come. It will make our country poorer and weaker. It will hurt most those who have least. Never have the stakes been higher, especially for the young. Brexit may even break up our historic United Kingdom." In early 2020, after the UK formally left the EU with an initial deal, Major expressed his concerns about a future trading deal with the EU being "flimsy".
In February 2022, Major made a speech at the Institute for Government think-tank in London, in which he criticised Johnson over the Partygate scandal, suggesting that he ought to resign, and also the proposed policy for those seeking asylum which he called "un-British". In July 2022, immediately following Johnson's announcement he intended to resign as prime minister but would stay until a successor was chosen, Major called for Johnson's immediate replacement and removal "for the overall wellbeing of the country".
In February 2023, Major made a speech at the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee, where he said that Brexit was "a colossal mistake" and that Johnson agreed to the Brexit protocol knowing it was "a mess".
== Assessment and legacy ==
Major's mild-mannered style and moderate political stance contrasted with that of Thatcher and made him theoretically well placed to act as a conciliatory and relatively uncontroversial leader of his party. In spite of that, conflict raged within the parliamentary Conservative Party, particularly over the extent of Britain's integration with the European Union. Major never succeeded in reconciling the ‘Euro-rebels’ among his MPs to his European policy, who, although relatively few in number, wielded great influence because of his small majority and their wider following among Conservative activists and voters. Episodes such as the Maastricht Rebellion, led by Bill Cash and Margaret Thatcher, inflicted serious political damage on him and his government. The additional bitterness on the right wing of the Conservative Party at the manner in which Margaret Thatcher had been deposed did not make Major's task any easier, with many viewing him as a weak and vacillating leader. Ongoing sleaze-related scandals among leading Conservative MPs did Major and his government no favours either, decreasing support for the party amongst the public.
His task became even more difficult following the election in 1994 of the modernist and highly media-savvy Tony Blair as Labour leader, who mercilessly exploited Conservative divisions whilst shifting Labour to the centre, thus being perceived by some as making it much more electable. Whilst few observers doubted that Major was an honest and decent man, or that he made sincere and sometimes successful attempts to improve life in Britain and to unite his deeply divided party, he was also perceived as a weak and ineffectual figure, and his approval ratings for most of his time in office were low, particularly after ‘Black Wednesday’ in September 1992, which destroyed the Conservatives' reputation for effective economic management.
Major defended his government in his memoirs, focusing particularly on how under him the British economy had recovered from the recession of 1990–1993. He wrote that "during my premiership interest rates fell from 14% to 6%; unemployment was at 1.75 million when I took office, and at 1.6 million and falling upon my departure; and the government's annual borrowing rose from £0.5 billion to nearly £46 billion at its peak before falling to £1 billion". Major's Chancellor Ken Clarke stated in 2016 that Major's reputation looked better as time went by, in contrast to that of Tony Blair's which appeared to be in decline. Paddy Ashdown, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats during Major's term of office, was more sympathetic, writing in 2017 that Major was "one of the most honest, brave and sincere men to ever be Prime Minister" and that his time in office compares favourably with that of his successor Tony Blair.
Writing shortly after he left office, the historian and journalist Paul Johnson wrote that Major was "a hopeless leader" who "should never have been Prime Minister". The sentiments echoed that of much of the press at the time, which was generally hostile to Major, especially after Black Wednesday. The journalist Peter Oborne was one such figure, though writing in 2017 he stated that he now regrets his negative reporting, stating that he himself and the press in general were "grossly unfair to Major" and that this was motivated at least in part by snobbery at Major's humble upbringing. In 2012 Oborne had written that Major's government looks ever more successful as time goes by. Oborne singled out Major's achievements in the Northern Irish peace process, boosting the economy, keeping Britain out of the Eurozone, and his reforms of public services as being worthy of praise. Others remain unconvinced, however, and, writing in 2011, the BBC's Home editor Mark Easton judged that "Majorism" had made little lasting impact.
In academic circles Major's legacy has generally been better received. Mark Stuart, writing in 2017, stated that Major is "the best ex-Prime Minister we have ever had", praising him for initiating the Northern Ireland peace process, peacefully handing Hong Kong back to China, creating the National Lottery and leaving a sound economy to Labour in 1997. Dennis Kavanagh likewise states that Major did relatively well considering the unbridgeable divides that existed in the Conservative Party in the 1990s, chiefly over Europe, whilst also delivering economic growth, a more user-focused public sector and the basis of peace settlement in Northern Ireland. He also notes that Major's unexpected 1992 election victory effectively sealed in the Thatcher-era reforms and forced the Labour Party to ditch most of its more socialist-tinged policies, thereby permanently shifting the British political landscape to the centre ground. Anthony Seldon largely agrees with this assessment, adding that Major's deep dislike of discrimination contributed to the continuing decline in racism and homophobia in British society, and that his proactive foreign policy stance maintained Britain's influence in the world at a time of profound global change. He also notes that Major faced a deeply unfavourable set of circumstances: most of the obvious and pressing Conservative reforms (e.g. reining in the power of trade unions and privatising failing industries) had already been completed under Thatcher, the swift nature of his rise to power left him little time to formulate policy positions and upon becoming prime minister he was immediately thrust into having to deal with the Gulf War and a major recession. Furthermore, the narrow majority achieved after the 1992 election left him exposed to internal Conservative rebellions, which only worsened as time went by, abetted by a hostile press, as it became clear the Conservatives would lose the next election. Seldon concludes that "Major was neither non-entity nor failure. His will be judged an important if unruly premiership at the end of the Conservative century, completing some parts of an earlier agenda while in some key respects helping to define a Conservatism for the 21st century." Seldon reiterated these views in his contribution to the 2017 volume John Major: An Unsuccessful Prime Minister?
Political historian Robert Taylor, in his 2006 biography of Major, concurs with many of these points, summing up that "In the perspective provided by the years of New Labour government since May 1997, John Major's record as Prime Minister looked much better than his many critics liked to suggest... Britain's most extraordinary Conservative Prime Minister bequeathed an important legacy to this party and his country to build on. One day both yet may come to recognise and appreciate it." Noted political historian Dick Leonard, however, writing in 2004, was more harsh in his assessment, concluding that Major was "A man of evident decent instincts, but limited abilities: as Prime Minister he pushed these abilities to the limit. It was not enough."
== Representation in the media ==
During his leadership of the Conservative Party, Major was portrayed as honest ("Honest John") but unable to exert effective control over his fractious party. However, his polite, easy-going manner was initially well received by both his supporters and his critics. Major's appearance was noted for its greyness, his prodigious philtrum, and large glasses, all of which were exaggerated in caricatures. For example, in Spitting Image, Major's puppet was changed from a circus performer to that of a literally grey man who ate dinner with his wife in silence, occasionally saying "nice peas, dear", while at the same time nursing an unrequited crush on his colleague Virginia Bottomley – an invention, but an ironic one in view of his affair with Edwina Currie, which was not then a matter of public knowledge. By the end of his premiership his puppet would often be shown observing the latest fiasco and ineffectually murmuring "oh dear". Long-standing Conservative MP Enoch Powell, when asked about Major, stated "I simply find myself asking – does he really exist?", whereas Labour's Alastair Campbell dismissed him as a "piece of lettuce that passes for prime minister" and Labour MP Tony Banks said of Major in 1994 that, "He was a fairly competent Chairman of Housing on Lambeth Council. Every time he gets up now I keep thinking, 'What on earth is Councillor Major doing?' I can't believe he's here and sometimes I think he can't either."
The media (particularly The Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell) used the allegation by Alastair Campbell that he had observed Major tucking his shirt into his underpants to caricature him wearing his pants outside his trousers, as a pale grey echo of both Superman and Supermac, a parody of Harold Macmillan. Bell also used the humorous possibilities of the Cones Hotline, a means for the public to inform the authorities of potentially unnecessary traffic cones, which was part of the Citizen's Charter project established by John Major. Major was also satirised by Patrick Wright with his book 101 Uses for a John Major (based on a comic book of some 10 years earlier called 101 Uses for a Dead Cat), in which Major was illustrated serving a number of bizarre purposes, such as a train-spotter's anorak or as a flag-pole.
Private Eye parodied Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, age 13¾ to run a regular column The Secret Diary of John Major, age 47¾, in which Major was portrayed as naïve and childish, keeping lists of his enemies in a Rymans Notebook called his "Bastards Book", and featuring "my wife Norman" and "Mr Dr Mawhinney" as recurring characters. The magazine still runs one-off specials of this diary (with the age updated) on occasions when Major is in the news, such as on the breaking of the Edwina Currie story or the publication of his autobiography.
The impressionist comedian Rory Bremner often mocked John Major, for example depicting him as 'John 90', a play on 1960s puppet show Joe 90; his impersonation was so accurate that he managed to fool the MP Richard Body that he was really speaking to Major in a prank phone call. The incident prompted Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler to warn Channel 4 head Michael Grade against any further calls for fear that state secrets could be inadvertently leaked.
Major was often mocked for his nostalgic evocation of what sounded like the lost Britain of the 1950s (see Merry England); for example, his famous speech stating that "Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – 'old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'." Major complained in his memoirs that these words (which drew upon a passage in George Orwell's essay The Lion and the Unicorn) had been misrepresented as being more naive and romantic than he had intended, and indeed his memoirs were dismissive of the common conservative viewpoint that there was once a time of moral rectitude; Major wrote that "life has never been as simple as that". Throughout his time in office Major was often acutely sensitive to criticism of him in the press; his biographer Anthony Seldon posits this to an inner vulnerability stemming from his difficult childhood and adolescence. After leaving office, Major stated that "Perhaps up to a point I was too sensitive about some of the things in the press, I'm happy to concede that. But, the politicians who are said to have hides like rhinos and be utterly impervious to criticism, if they're not extinct, they are very rare and I freely confess I wasn't amongst them."
Major has been depicted on screen by Keith Drinkel in Thatcher: The Final Days (1991), Michael Maloney in Margaret (2009), Robin Kermode in The Iron Lady (2011), Marc Ozall in the TV series The Crown (fourth season), Gordon Griffin in Westminster on Trial and Roger Sansom in On the Record. Footage of Major's 1992 election win is used in Patrick Keiller's 1994 documentary film London. Major was also one of the prime ministers portrayed in the 2013 stage play The Audience. Less flatteringly, Major was the subject of the song John Major – Fuck You by Scottish punk band Oi Polloi.
Major was portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller in the fifth season of The Crown in 2022. Major called the series a "barrel-load of nonsense" for a fictitious storyline in which the then Prince Charles lobbies Major in 1991, attempting to oust Queen Elizabeth II from power. Netflix defended the series as a "fictional dramatisation".
In April 1992 John Major, in a nod to his occasional nostalgic descriptions of a relatively lowly background for a Conservative leader, was humorously depicted as a youth running away from a tediously dull life in the circus in order to train as an accountant. The Comic Strip Presents The Red Nose of Courage, a one hour television profile of Major, had the memorable scene of the then Prime Minister trying to explain to his unconvinced father Alexi Sayle the Circus boss that he was unable to muck out Jumbo the Elephant and the other circus animals the previous night because of an international summit with the USA and Russia. The show was broadly sympathetic to John Major despite the heavy satire.
== Personal life ==
=== Marriage to Norma Johnson ===
Major married Norma Johnson (now Dame Norma Major) on 3 October 1970 at St Matthew's Church, Brixton. She was a teacher and a member of the Young Conservatives. They met on polling day for the Greater London Council elections in London, and became engaged after only ten days. They have two children: a daughter, Elizabeth (born November 1971) and a son, James (b. January 1975). They continue to live at their constituency home, Finings, in Great Stukeley, Huntingdonshire. They also own a flat in London and a holiday home on the Norfolk coast at Weybourne, which they have in the past invited ex-soldiers to use for free as part of the Afghan Heroes charity. As with all former prime ministers, Major is entitled to round-the-clock police protection.
=== Children ===
Major's daughter, Elizabeth Major, a veterinary nurse, married Luke Salter on 26 March 2000 at All Saints' Church, Somerby, having been in a relationship with him since 1988. Salter died on 22 November 2002 from cancer. His son, James Major, a former retail manager and nightclub promoter, married gameshow hostess Emma Noble on 29 March 1999 in the Chapel Crypt at Westminster Abbey. They had a son, Harrison, born July 2000, who was later diagnosed with autism. The marriage ended in an acrimonious divorce in 2003, with Noble accusing Major of "unreasonable behaviour". James later married Kate Postlethwaite (née Dorrell), the mother of his second son.
=== Siblings ===
Major's elder brother, Terry, who died in 2007, became a minor media personality during Major's period in Downing Street, writing a 1994 autobiography, Major Major: Memories of an Older Brother, and appearing on TV shows such as Have I Got News for You. John's sister, Patricia Dessoy, kept a much lower profile; she died in 2017. After leaving office Major became aware that his father fathered two half-siblings extramaritally: Tom Moss and Kathleen Lemmon.
Research conducted by Paul Penn-Simkins, a genealogist formerly employed as a researcher at the College of Arms and as a heraldic consultant at Christie's, and subsequently corroborated by Lynda Rippin, a genealogist employed by Lincolnshire Council, showed that John Major and Margaret Thatcher were fifth cousins once removed, both descending from the Crust family, who farmed at Leake, near Boston, Lincolnshire.
=== Sports ===
Major has been keen on sports since his youth, most notably cricket; he is also a supporter of Chelsea F.C. and a Patron of British Gymnastics. He also enjoys gardening, listening to music and reading, Anthony Trollope being among his favourite authors. Major is a Christian, though his upbringing was never especially religious and he states that he is "a believer at a distance". He shied away from the topic when in office, stating that "I have always been a little wary of politicians who parade their faith, and prefer a little English reserve on the subject."
== Honours ==
In the 1999 New Year Honours List, Major was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for his work on the Northern Ireland peace process.
On 23 April 2005, Major was bestowed with a knighthood as a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II. He was installed at St George's Chapel, Windsor, on 13 June. Membership of the Order of the Garter is limited in number to 24, and as a personal gift of the Monarch is an honour traditionally bestowed on former prime ministers.
On 20 June 2008, Major was granted the Freedom of the City of Cork. He was also granted the Outstanding Contribution to Ireland award in Dublin on 4 December 2014.
On 8 May 2012, Major was personally decorated at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo by the Emperor of Japan with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun in recognition of his invaluable contributions to Japan–UK relations through his work in the political and economic arena, and also in promoting mutual understanding. While prime minister, Major had pursued energetic campaigns aimed at boosting bilateral trade: "Priority Japan" (1991–1994) and "Action Japan" (1994–1997). The 1991 Japan Festival also took place under his premiership. He was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D) by Queen's University Belfast on 10 November 2023.
=== Awards ===
In 2008, Major won the British Sports Book Awards (Best Cricket Book) for More Than a Game.
=== Public commemoration ===
An oil painting of Major, painted in 1996 by June Mendoza, is part of the Parliamentary collection, as is a bronze bust by Anne Curry, unveiled in the Members' Lobby on 16 October 2017. There is another bust of Major in the Norman Shaw Building North by Neale Andrew, sculpted in 1993 and installed in 2004; however, this is not accessible to the public.
A large bust of John Major by Shenda Amery in Huntingdon Library was unveiled by his wife, Norma, in 1993.
A painting of John Major by Diccon Swan is on display at the Carlton Club, and was unveiled by his wife Norma in 1994. The National Portrait Gallery holds two paintings of Major – the first official portrait of him as prime minister, painted by Peter Deighan in 1994, and one of John and Norma by John Wonnacott, painted in 1997.
There is a large John Major Suite at The Oval, home to Surrey County Cricket Club; the venue also contains a painting of Major.
There is a 'Heritage in Sutton' plaque on St Helier Hospital, where John Major was born in 1943, and a plaque commemorating him in Archbishop's Park next to Lambeth Palace, included as part of the Lambeth Millennium Pathway. There are also various plaques commemorating facilities opened by John Major: at Brampton Memorial Centre, Brampton (opened 1988), Hamerton Zoo Park, Hamerton (1990), Cadbury World, Birmingham (1991), a tree commemorating the restoration of the River Mill pub, Eaton Socon, the gardens at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Huntingdon (2009), the North Terminal extension at Gatwick Airport (2011), Huntingdonshire Football Association headquarters, Huntingdon (2015), and Alconbury Weald cricket pitch (2019).
In 2013, the town of Candeleda in Spain named a street after John Major (Avenida de John Major), since Major has holidayed there for many years. Major Close, in Loughborough Junction near where John grew up, is also named after him; the street was to be called 'Sir John Major Close' but this long name breached council guidelines.
In type theory, heterogeneous equality, that is, a form of equality predicate defined for pairs of elements of arbitrary type, not just from the same type, is sometimes referred to as John Major's equality (JMeq), following Conor McBride:
John Major's 'classless society' widened people's aspirations to equality, but also the gap between rich and poor. After all, aspiring to be equal to others than oneself is the politics of envy. In much the same way,
≃
{\displaystyle \simeq }
forms equations between members of any type, but they cannot be treated as equals (ie substituted) unless they are of the same type. Just as before, each thing is only equal to itself.
=== Arms === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Edinburgh | University of Edinburgh | The University of Edinburgh (Scots: University o Edinburgh, Scottish Gaelic: Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as Edin. in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the town council under the authority of a royal charter from King James VI in 1582 and officially opened in 1583, it is one of Scotland's four ancient universities and the sixth-oldest university in continuous operation in the English-speaking world. The university played a crucial role in Edinburgh becoming a leading intellectual centre during the Scottish Enlightenment and contributed to the city being nicknamed the "Athens of the North".
The three main global university rankings (ARWU, THE, and QS) place the University of Edinburgh within their respective top 40. It is a member of several associations of research-intensive universities, including the Coimbra Group, League of European Research Universities, Russell Group, Una Europa, and Universitas 21. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2025, the university had a total income of £1.437 billion, with £375.4 million from research grants and contracts. It has the third-largest endowment in the UK, behind only Cambridge and Oxford. The university occupies five main campuses in the city of Edinburgh, which include many buildings of historical and architectural significance, such as those in the Old Town.
Edinburgh is the fourth-largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment and the largest university in Scotland, receiving over 68,000 undergraduate applications per year, making it the fifth-most popular university in the UK by application volume. In 2021, Edinburgh had the seventh-highest average UCAS points among British universities for new entrants. The university maintains strong links to the royal family, with Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, serving as its chancellor from 1953 to 2010, and Anne, Princess Royal, holding the position since March 2011.
Notable alumni of the University of Edinburgh include inventor Alexander Graham Bell, naturalist Charles Darwin, philosopher David Hume, physicist James Clerk Maxwell, and writers such as Oliver Goldsmith, Sir J. M. Barrie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The university has produced several heads of state and government, including three British prime ministers. Additionally, four UK Supreme Court justices were educated at Edinburgh. As of October 2024, the university has been affiliated with 20 Nobel Prize laureates, four Pulitzer Prize winners, three Turing Award winners, an Abel Prize laureate, and a Fields Medalist. Edinburgh alumni have also won a total of ten Olympic gold medals.
== History ==
=== Early history ===
In 1557, Bishop Robert Reid of St Magnus Cathedral made a will containing an endowment of 8,000 merks to build a college in Edinburgh. Unusually for his time, Reid's vision for the college included the teaching of rhetoric and poetry, alongside more traditional subjects such as philosophy.
However, the bequest was delayed by more than 25 years due to the religious revolution that led to the Reformation Parliament of 1560. The plans were revived in the late 1570s through efforts by the Edinburgh Town Council, first minister of Edinburgh James Lawson, and Lord Provost William Little. When Reid's descendants were unwilling to pay out the sum, the town council petitioned King James VI and his Privy Council. The King arranged a monetary compromise and granted a royal charter on 14 April 1582, empowering the town council to create a college of higher education. A college established by secular authorities was unprecedented in newly Presbyterian Scotland, as all previous Scottish universities had been founded through papal bulls.
Named Tounis College (Town's College), the university opened its doors to students on 14 October 1583, with an attendance of 80–90. At the time, the college mainly covered liberal arts and divinity. Instruction began under the charge of a graduate from the University of St Andrews, theologian Robert Rollock, who first served as Regent, and from 1586 as principal of the college. Initially, Rollock was the sole instructor for first-year students, and he was expected to tutor the 1583 intake for all four years of their degree in every subject. The first cohort finished their studies in 1587, and 47 students graduated (or 'laureated') with an M.A. degree. When King James VI visited Scotland in 1617, he held a disputation with the college's professors, after which he decreed that it should henceforth be called the "Colledge [sic] of King James". The university was known as both Tounis College and King James' College until it gradually assumed the name of the University of Edinburgh during the 17th century.
After the deposition of King James II and VII during the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Parliament of Scotland passed legislation designed to root out Jacobite sympathisers amongst university staff. In Edinburgh, this led to the dismissal of Principal Alexander Monro and several professors and regents after a government visitation in 1690. The university was subsequently led by Principal Gilbert Rule, one of the inquisitors on the visitation committee.
=== 18th and 19th century ===
The late 17th and early 18th centuries were marked by a power struggle between the university and town council, which had ultimate authority over staff appointments, curricula, and examinations. After a series of challenges by the university, the conflict culminated in the council seizing the college records in 1704. Relations were only gradually repaired over the next 150 years and suffered repeated setbacks.
In 1708 the Principal William Carstares restructured the University, abolishing the regenting system and establishing a Dutch style system of Professors. The newly created Chairs, such as that of Greek and Humanity, were offered to the existing Regents. The university expanded by founding a Faculty of Law in 1707, a Faculty of Arts in 1708, and a Faculty of Medicine in 1726. In 1762, Reverend Hugh Blair was appointed by King George III as the first Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. This formalised literature as a subject and marks the foundation of the English Literature department, making Edinburgh the oldest centre of literary education in Britain.
During the 18th century, the university was at the centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment fell on especially fertile ground in Edinburgh because of the university's democratic and secular origin; its organisation as a single entity instead of loosely connected colleges, which encouraged academic exchange; its adoption of the more flexible Dutch model of professorship, rather than having student cohorts taught by a single regent; and the lack of land endowments as its source of income, which meant its faculty operated in a more competitive environment. Between 1750 and 1800, this system produced and attracted key Enlightenment figures such as chemist Joseph Black, economist Adam Smith, historian William Robertson, philosophers David Hume and Dugald Stewart, physician William Cullen, and early sociologist Adam Ferguson, many of which taught concurrently. By the time the Royal Society of Edinburgh was founded in 1783, the university was regarded as one of the world's preeminent scientific institutions, and Voltaire called Edinburgh a "hotbed of genius" as a result. Benjamin Franklin believed that the university possessed "a set of as truly great men, Professors of the Several Branches of Knowledge, as have ever appeared in any Age or Country". Thomas Jefferson felt that as far as science was concerned, "no place in the world can pretend to a competition with Edinburgh".
In 1785, Henry Dundas introduced the South Bridge Act in the House of Commons; one of the bill's goals was to use South Bridge as a location for the university, which had existed in a hotchpotch of buildings since its establishment. The site was used to construct Old College, the university's first custom-built building, by architect William Henry Playfair to plans by Robert Adam. During the 18th century, the university developed a particular forte in teaching anatomy and the developing science of surgery, and it was considered one of the best medical schools in the English-speaking world. Bodies to be used for dissection were brought to the university's Anatomy Theatre through a secret tunnel from a nearby house (today's College Wynd student accommodation), which was also used by murderers Burke and Hare to deliver the corpses of their victims during the 1820s.
The Edinburgh snowball riots of 1838 – also known as the 'Wars of the Quadrangle' – occurred when University of Edinburgh students started a snowball fight in "a spirit of harmless amusement". However, this turned into a two-day 'battle' at Old College with local Edinburgh residents on South Bridge, which led to the Lord Provost asking for an infantry regiment to be brought from Edinburgh Castle to quell the disturbance. The riot was immortalised in a humorous 92-page account written by the students entitled The University Snowdrop. In 1853, English landscape artist Sam Bough painted the event in watercolour.
After 275 years of governance by the town council, the Universities (Scotland) Act 1858 gave the university full authority over its own affairs. The act established governing bodies including a university court and a general council, and redefined the roles of key officials like the chancellor, rector, and principal.
The Edinburgh Seven were the first group of matriculated undergraduate female students at any British university. Led by Sophia Jex-Blake, they began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869. Although the university blocked them from graduating and qualifying as doctors, their campaign gained national attention and won them many supporters, including Charles Darwin. Their efforts put the rights of women to higher education on the national political agenda, which eventually resulted in legislation allowing women to study at all Scottish universities in 1889. The university admitted women to graduate in medicine in 1893. In 2015, the Edinburgh Seven were commemorated with a plaque at the university, and in 2019 they were posthumously awarded with medical degrees.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Old College was becoming overcrowded. After a bequest from Sir David Baxter, the university started planning new buildings in earnest. Sir Robert Rowand Anderson won the public architectural competition and was commissioned to design new premises for the Medical School in 1877. Initially, the design incorporated a campanile and a hall for examination and graduation, but this was seen as too ambitious. The new Medical School opened in 1884, but the building was not completed until 1888. After funds were donated by politician and brewer William McEwan in 1894, a separate graduation building was constructed after all, also designed by Anderson. The resulting McEwan Hall on Bristo Square was presented to the university in 1897.
The Students' Representative Council (SRC) was founded in 1884 by student Robert Fitzroy Bell. In 1889, the SRC voted to establish Edinburgh University Union (EUU), to be housed in Teviot Row House on Bristo Square. Edinburgh University Sports Union (EUSU) was founded in 1866, and Edinburgh University Women's Union (renamed the Chambers Street Union in 1964) in October 1905. The SRC, EUU and Chambers Street Union merged to form Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) on 1 July 1973.
=== 20th century ===
During World War I, the Science and Medicine buildings had suffered from a lack of repairs or upgrades, which was exacerbated by an influx of students after the end of the war. In 1919, the university bought the land of West Mains Farm in the south of the city for the development of a new satellite campus specialising in the sciences. On 6 July 1920, King George V laid the foundation of the first new building (now called the Joseph Black Building), housing the Department of Chemistry. The campus was named King's Buildings in honour of George V.
New College on The Mound was originally opened in 1846 as a Free Church of Scotland college, later of the United Free Church of Scotland. Since the 1930s it has been the home of the School of Divinity. Prior to the 1929 reunion of the Church of Scotland, candidates for the ministry in the United Free Church studied at New College, whilst candidates for the Church of Scotland studied in the university's Faculty of Divinity. In 1935 the two institutions merged, with all operations moved to the New College site in Old Town. This freed up Old College for Edinburgh Law School.
The Polish School of Medicine was established in 1941 as a wartime academic initiative. While it was originally intended for students and doctors in the Polish Armed Forces in the West, civilians were also allowed to take the courses, which were taught in Polish and awarded Polish medical degrees. When the school was closed in 1949, 336 students had matriculated, of which 227 students graduated with the equivalent of an MBChB and a total of 19 doctors obtained a doctorate or MD. A bronze plaque commemorating the Polish School of Medicine is located in the Quadrangle of the old Medical School in Teviot Place.
On 10 May 1951, the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College, founded in 1823 by William Dick, was reconstituted as the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies and officially became part of the university. It achieved full faculty status as Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in 1964.
In 1955 the university opened the first department of nursing in Europe for academic study. This department was inspired by the work of Gladys Beaumont Carter and a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
By the end of the 1950s, there were around 7,000 students matriculating annually, more than doubling the numbers from the turn of the century. The university addressed this partially through the redevelopment of George Square, demolishing much of the area's historic houses and erecting modern buildings such as 40 George Square, Appleton Tower and the Main Library.
On 1 August 1998, the Moray House Institute of Education, founded in 1848, merged with the University of Edinburgh, becoming its Faculty of Education. Following the internal restructuring of the university in 2002, Moray House became known as the Moray House School of Education. It was renamed the Moray House School of Education and Sport in August 2019.
=== 21st century ===
In the 1990s it became apparent that the old Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh buildings in Lauriston Place were no longer adequate for a modern teaching hospital. Donald Dewar, the Scottish Secretary at the time, authorised a joint project between private finance, local authorities, and the university to create a modern hospital and medical campus in the Little France area of Edinburgh. The new campus was named the BioQuarter. The Chancellor's Building was opened on 12 August 2002 by Prince Philip, housing the new Edinburgh Medical School alongside the new Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. In 2007, the campus saw the addition of the Euan MacDonald Centre as a research centre for motor neuron diseases, which was part-funded by Scottish entrepreneur Euan MacDonald and his father Donald. In August 2010, author J. K. Rowling provided £10 million in funding to create the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic, which was officially opened in October 2013. The Centre for Regenerative Medicine (CRM) is a stem cell research centre dedicated to the development of regenerative treatments, which was opened in 2012. CRM is also home to applied scientists working with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) and Roslin Cells.
In December 2002, the Edinburgh Cowgate fire destroyed a number of university buildings, including some 3,000 m2 (32,000 sq ft) of the School of Informatics at 80 South Bridge. This was replaced with the Informatics Forum on Bristo Square, completed in July 2008. Also in 2002, the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre (ECRC) was opened on the Western General Hospital site. In 2007, the MRC Human Genetics Unit formed a partnership with the Centre for Genomic & Experimental Medicine and the ECRC to create the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (renamed the Institute of Genetics and Cancer in 2021) on the same site.
In April 2008, the Roslin Institute – an animal sciences research centre known for cloning Dolly the sheep – became part of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. In 2011, the school moved into a new £60 million building on the Easter Bush campus, which now houses research and teaching facilities, and a hospital for small and farm animals.
Edinburgh College of Art, founded in 1760, formally merged with the university's School of Arts, Culture and Environment on 1 August 2011. In 2014, the Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Institute (ZJE) was founded as an international joint institute offering degrees in biomedical sciences, taught in English. The campus, located in Haining, Zhejiang Province, China, was established on 15 March 2016.
The university began hosting a Wikimedian in Residence in 2016. The residency was made into a full-time position in 2019, with the Wikimedian involved in teaching and learning activities within the scope of the University of Edinburgh WikiProject.
In 2018, the University of Edinburgh was a signatory to the £1.3 billion Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal, in partnership with the UK and Scottish governments, six local authorities and all universities and colleges in the region. The university committed to delivering a range of economic benefits to the region through the Data-Driven Innovation initiative. In conjunction with Heriot-Watt University, the deal created five innovation hubs: the Bayes Centre, Edinburgh Futures Institute, Usher Institute, Easter Bush, and one further hub based at Heriot-Watt, the National Robotarium. The deal also included creation of the Edinburgh International Data Facility, which performs high-speed data processing in a secure environment.
In September 2020, the university completed work on the Richard Verney Health Centre at its central area campus on Bristo Square. The facility houses a health centre and pharmacy, and the university's disability and counselling services. The university's largest expansion in the 2020s was the conversion of some of the historic Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh buildings in Lauriston Place, which had been vacated in 2003 and partially developed into the Quartermile. The £120 million project created a home for the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI), an interdisciplinary hub linking arts, humanities, and social sciences with other disciplines in the research and teaching of complex, multi-stakeholder societal challenges. The EFI officially opened its doors to the public on 4 June 2024.
=== Historical links ===
Edinburgh has several historical links to other universities, chiefly through its influential Medical School and its graduates, who established and developed institutions elsewhere in the world.
Columbia University: had its Medical School founded by Samuel Bard, an Edinburgh medical graduate.
Dalhousie University: Edinburgh alumnus George Ramsay, the 22nd Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, wanted to establish a non-denominational college in Halifax open to all. The school was modelled after the University of Edinburgh, which students could attend regardless of religion or nationality.
Dartmouth College: had its School of Medicine founded by Nathan Smith, an alumnus of Edinburgh Medical School.
Harvard University: had its Medical School founded by three surgeons, one of whom was Benjamin Waterhouse, an alumnus of Edinburgh Medical School.
McGill University: had its Faculty of Medicine founded by four physicians, which included Edinburgh alumni Andrew Fernando Holmes and John Stephenson.
University of Pennsylvania: had its School of Medicine founded by Edinburgh graduate John Morgan, who modelled it after Edinburgh Medical School.
Princeton University: had its academic syllabus and structure reformed along the lines of the University of Edinburgh and other Scottish universities by its sixth president John Witherspoon, an Edinburgh theology graduate.
University of Sydney: founded in 1850 by Sir Charles Nicholson, a graduate of Edinburgh Medical School.
College of William & Mary: the second-oldest college in the US was founded in 1693 by Edinburgh graduate James Blair, who served as the college's founding president for fifty years.
Yale University: had its School of Medicine co-founded by Nathan Smith, an alumnus of Edinburgh Medical School.
== Campuses and buildings ==
The university has five main sites in Edinburgh:
Central Area
King's Buildings
BioQuarter
Easter Bush
Western General
The university is responsible for several significant historic and modern buildings across the city, including St Cecilia's Hall, Scotland's oldest purpose-built concert hall and the second oldest in use in the British Isles; Teviot Row House, the oldest purpose-built students' union building in the world; and the restored 17th-century Mylne's Court student residence at the head of the Royal Mile.
=== Central Area ===
The Central Area is spread around numerous squares and streets in Edinburgh's Southside, with some buildings in Old Town. It is the university's oldest area, occupied primarily by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Informatics. The highest concentration of university buildings is around George Square, which includes 40 George Square (formerly David Hume Tower), Appleton Tower, Main Library, and Gordon Aikman Lecture Theatre, the area's largest lecture hall. Around nearby Bristo Square lie the Dugald Stewart Building, Informatics Forum, McEwan Hall, Potterrow Student Centre, Teviot Row House, and old Medical School, which still houses pre-clinical medical courses and biomedical sciences. The Pleasance, one of Edinburgh University Students' Association's main buildings, is located nearby, as is Edinburgh College of Art in Lauriston. North of George Square lies the university's Old College housing Edinburgh Law School, New College on The Mound housing the School of Divinity, and St Cecilia's Hall. Some of these buildings are used to host events during the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe every summer.
==== Pollock Halls ====
Pollock Halls, adjoining Holyrood Park to the east, is the university's largest residence hall for undergraduate students in their first year. The complex houses over 2,000 students during term time and consists of ten named buildings with communal green spaces between them. The two original buildings, St Leonard's Hall and Salisbury Green, were built in the 19th century, while the majority of Pollock Halls dates from the 1960s and early 2000s. Two of the older houses in Pollock Halls were demolished in 2002, and a new building, Chancellor's Court, was built in their place and opened in 2003. Self-catered flats elsewhere account for the majority of university-provided accommodation. The area also includes the John McIntyre Conference Centre opened in 2009, which is the university's premier conference space.
==== Holyrood ====
The Holyrood campus, just off the Royal Mile, used to be the site for Moray House Institute for Education until it merged with the university on 1 August 1998. The university has since extended this campus. The buildings include redeveloped and extended Sports Science, Physical Education and Leisure Management facilities at St Leonard's Land linked to the Sports Institute on the Pleasance. The £80 million O'Shea Hall at Holyrood was named after the former principal of the university Sir Timothy O'Shea and was opened by Princess Anne in 2017, providing a living and social environment for postgraduate students. The Outreach Centre, Institute for Academic Development (University Services Group), and Edinburgh Centre for Professional Legal Studies are also located at Holyrood.
=== King's Buildings ===
The King's Buildings campus is located in the south of the city. Most of the Science and Engineering College's research and teaching activities take place at the campus, which occupies a 35-hectare site. It includes the Alexander Graham Bell Building (for mobile phones and digital communications systems), James Clerk Maxwell Building (the administrative and teaching centre of the School of Physics and Astronomy and School of Mathematics), Joseph Black Building (home to the School of Chemistry), Royal Observatory, Swann Building (the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology), Waddington Building (the Centre for Systems Biology at Edinburgh), William Rankine Building (School of Engineering's Institute for Infrastructure and Environment), and others. Until 2012, the KB campus was served by three libraries: Darwin Library, James Clerk Maxwell Library, and Robertson Engineering and Science Library. These were replaced by the Noreen and Kenneth Murray Library opened for the academic year 2012/13. The campus also hosts the National e-Science Centre (NeSC), Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), Scottish Institute for Enterprise (SIE), Scottish Microelectronics Centre (SMC), and Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC).
=== BioQuarter ===
The BioQuarter campus, based in the Little France area, is home to the majority of medical facilities of the university, alongside the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. The campus houses the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic, Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Chancellor's Building, Euan MacDonald Centre, and Queen's Medical Research Institute, which opened in 2005. The Chancellor's Building has two large lecture theatres and a medical library connected to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh by a series of corridors.
=== Easter Bush ===
The Easter Bush campus, located seven miles south of the city, houses the Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education, Roslin Institute, Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, and Veterinary Oncology and Imaging Centre.
The Roslin Institute is an animal sciences research institute which is sponsored by BBSRC. The Institute won international fame in 1996, when its researchers Sir Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and their colleagues created Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. A year later Polly and Molly were cloned, both sheep contained a human gene.
=== Western General ===
The Western General campus, in proximity to the Western General Hospital, contains the Biomedical Research Facility, Edinburgh Clinical Research Facility, and Institute of Genetics and Cancer (formerly the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine).
== Organisation and administration ==
=== Governance ===
In common with the other ancient universities of Scotland, and in contrast to nearly all other pre-1992 universities which are established by royal charters, the University of Edinburgh is constituted by the Universities (Scotland) Acts 1858 to 1966. These acts provide for three major bodies in the governance of the university: the University Court, the General Council, and the Senatus Academicus.
==== University Court ====
The University Court is the university's governing body and the legal person of the university, chaired by the rector and consisting of the principal, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and of Assessors appointed by the rector, chancellor, Edinburgh Town Council, General Council, and Senatus Academicus. By the Universities (Scotland) Act 1889, it is a body corporate, with perpetual succession and a common seal. All property belonging to the university at the passing of the Act was vested in the Court. The present powers of the Court are further defined in the Universities (Scotland) Act 1966, including the administration and management of the university's revenue and property, the regulation of staff salaries, and the establishment and composition of committees of its own members or others.
==== General Council ====
The General Council consists of graduates, academic staff, current and former University Court members. It was established to ensure that graduates have a continuing voice in the management of the university. The Council is required to meet twice per year to consider matters affecting the wellbeing and prosperity of the university. The Universities (Scotland) Act 1966 gave the Council the power to consider draft ordinances and resolutions, to be presented with an annual report of the work and activities of the university, and to receive an audited financial statement. The Council elects the chancellor of the university and three Assessors on the University Court.
==== Senatus Academicus ====
The Senatus Academicus is the university's supreme academic body, with its core function being the regulation and supervision of teaching and overall planning of the academic work of the institution. It is chaired by the principal and consists of approximately 300 heads of schools and colleges, heads of departments, and elected professorial and non-professorial academic staff; the Senatus also includes 30 elected students. The Senatus elects four Assessors on the University Court. The Senatus typically meets four times per year; most documents for discussion and each meeting's minutes are accessible to all members of the university.
==== University officials ====
The university's three most significant officials are its chancellor, rector, and principal, whose rights and responsibilities are largely derived from the Universities (Scotland) Act 1858.
The office of chancellor serves as the titular head and highest office of the university. Their duties include conferring degrees and enhancing the profile and reputation of the university on national and global levels. The chancellor is elected by the university's General Council, and a person generally remains in the office for life. Previous chancellors include former prime minister Arthur Balfour and novelist Sir J. M. Barrie. Princess Anne has held the position since March 2011 succeeding Prince Philip. She is also Patron of the university's Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.
The principal is responsible for the overall operation of the university in a chief executive role. The principal is formally nominated by the Curators of Patronage and appointed by the University Court. They are the President of the Senatus Academicus and a member of the University Court ex officio. The principal is also automatically appointed vice-chancellor, in which role they confer degrees on behalf of the chancellor. Previous principals include physicist Sir Edward Appleton and religious philosopher Stewart Sutherland. The current principal is nephrologist Sir Peter Mathieson, who has held the position since February 2018.
The office of rector is elected every three years by the staff and matriculated students. The primary role of the rector is to preside at the University Court. The rector also chairs meetings of the General Council in absence of the chancellor. They work closely with students and Edinburgh University Students' Association. Previous rectors include microbiologist Sir Alexander Fleming, and former Prime Ministers Sir Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George. The current rector is activist and writer Simon Fanshawe, who has held the position since March 2024.
=== Colleges and schools ===
In 2002, the university was reorganised from its nine faculties into three 'Colleges'. While technically not a collegiate university, it comprises the Colleges of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS), Science & Engineering (CSE) and Medicine & Vet Medicine (CMVM). Within these colleges are 'Schools', which either represent one academic discipline such as Informatics or assemble adjacent academic disciplines such as the School of History, Classics and Archaeology. While bound by College-level policies, individual Schools can differ in their organisation and governance. As of 2021, the university has 21 schools in total.
==== Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences ====
The College took on its current name of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in 2016 after absorbing the Edinburgh College of Art in 2011. CAHSS offers more than 280 undergraduate degree programmes, 230 taught postgraduate programmes, and 200 research postgraduate programmes. Twenty subjects offered by the college were ranked within the top 10 nationally in the 2022 Complete University Guide. It includes the oldest English Literature department in Britain, which was ranked 7th globally in the 2021 QS Rankings by Subject in English Language & Literature. The college hosts Scotland's ESRC Doctoral Training Centre (DTC), the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science. The college is the largest of the three colleges by enrolment, with 26,130 students and 3,089 academic staff.
==== Medicine and Veterinary Medicine ====
Edinburgh Medical School was widely considered the best medical school in the English-speaking world throughout the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century and contributed significantly to the university's international reputation. Its graduates founded medical schools all over the world, including at five of the seven Ivy League universities (Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Yale); those in McGill, Montréal, Sydney, and Vermont; the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (now part of Imperial College London), and the London School of Medicine for Women (both now part of UCL).
In the 21st century, the medical school has continued to excel, and it is associated with 13 Nobel Prize recipients: seven recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and six of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2021, it was ranked third in the UK by The Times University Guide, and the Complete University Guide. In 2022, it was ranked the UK's best medical school by the Guardian University Guide, It also ranked 21st in the world by both the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings in 2021.
The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies is a world leader in veterinary education, research and practice. The eight original faculties formed four Faculty Groups in August 1992. Medicine and Veterinary Medicine became one of these, and in 2002 became the smallest of the three colleges, with 7,740 students and 1,896 academic staff. The university's teaching hospitals include the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Western General Hospital, St John's Hospital, Livingston, Roodlands Hospital, and Royal Hospital for Children and Young People.
==== Science and Engineering ====
In the 16th century, science was taught as "natural philosophy" in the university. The 17th century saw the institution of the University Chairs of Mathematics and Botany, followed the next century by Chairs of Natural History, Astronomy, Chemistry and Agriculture. It was Edinburgh's professors who took a leading part in the formation of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. Joseph Black, Professor of Medicine and Chemistry at the time, founded the world's first Chemical Society in 1785. The first named degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Science was instituted in 1864, and a separate Faculty of Science was created in 1893 after three centuries of scientific advances at Edinburgh. The Regius Chair in Engineering was established in 1868, and the Regius Chair in Geology in 1871. In 1991 the Faculty of Science was renamed the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and in 2002 it became the College of Science and Engineering. The college has 11,745 students and 2,937 academic staff.
==== Sub-units, centres and institutes ====
Some subunits, centres and institutes within the university are listed as follows:
=== Finances ===
In the financial year ending 31 July 2024, the University of Edinburgh had a total income of £1.386 billion (2022/23 – £1.341 billion) and total expenditure of £1.014 billion (2022/23 – £1.181 billion). Key sources of income included £527.2 million from tuition fees and education contracts (2022/23 – £513.7 million), £208.7 million from funding body grants (2022/23 – £210.9 million), £365.2 million from research grants and contracts (2022/23 – £339.5 million), £62.7 million from investment income (2022/23 – £42.2 million) and £25 million from donations and endowments (2022/23 – £55.7 million).
At year end, Edinburgh had endowments of £580.4 million (2023 – £559.8 million) and total net assets of £3.003 billion (2023 – £2.615 billion). It holds the third-largest endowment of any university in the UK.
=== Staff, community and networking ===
As of 3 April 2025, the University employed over 12,600 full time equivalent staff, an increase of 216 over the previous year:
As part of the university's support for researchers, each College has Research Staff Societies that include postdoc societies, and organisations specific to each school. Cross-curricula Research Networks bring together researchers working on similar topics.
Independently of the College hierarchy, aligned with the university's EDI policy, eight Staff Networks bring together and represent diverse staff groups:
Disabled Staff Network
Staff BAME Network
Edinburgh Race Equality Network
Jewish Staff Network
Staff Pride Network
University & College Unions incorporating the national academic union and the in-house Edinburgh University Union
Long-term Research Staff Network
Support for Technicians and Steering Committee
==== Industrial action ====
Staff at the university engaged in the sector-wide 2018–2023 UK higher education strikes called by the University and College Union over disputes regarding USS pensions, pay, and working conditions. A Marking and Assessment Boycott that commenced on 20 April 2023 was called off on 6 September 2023. However, the UCU voted to continue strike action throughout the rest of September.
In November 2024, Principal Mathieson warned staff of impending redundancies, citing "a multi-million pound increase to our salary bill" he said had been created by the Labour administration's National Insurance hike. Following Mathieson's announcement of £140 million in cuts on 25 February 2025, the UCU said that 59% of its members had turned out for a consulative ballot, with 75% willing to strike, and a further 10% prepared to work to rule including refusing to cover for absent colleagues. Mathieson's annual salary package exceeding £418,000 and comparable remunerations of other university executive staff also fell under heavy criticism in light of cuts staff were being asked to absorb. The UCU announced strike action for the university's Open Day in June 2025, and further actions to be taken in September 2025. On 28 October, in a re-ballot of members of the UCU at the university, with a turnout of 60%, 85% backed strike action, and 94% backed work to rule.
== Academic profile ==
The university is a member of the Russell Group of research-led British universities, and the Sutton 13 group of top-ranked universities in the UK. It is the only British university to be a member of both the Coimbra Group and the League of European Research Universities, and it is a founding member of Una Europa and Universitas 21, both international associations of research-intensive universities. The university maintains historically strong ties with the neighbouring Heriot-Watt University for teaching and research. Edinburgh also offers a wide range of free online MOOC courses on three global platforms Coursera, Edx and FutureLearn.
=== Admissions ===
The university is consistently designated as a 'high-tariff' institution by the Department for Education, with the average undergraduate entrant to the university in recent years amassing between 155–159 UCAS Tariff points in their top three pre-university qualifications – the equivalent of A*AA to A*A*A at A-Level. Based on 2022/23 HESA entry standards data published in domestic league tables, which include a broad range of qualifications beyond the top three exam grades, the average student at the University of Edinburgh achieved 197 points – the seventh highest in the United Kingdom. It gave offers of admission to 33% of its 18 year old applicants in 2022, the fourth lowest amongst the Russell Group.
In 2022, excluding courses within Edinburgh College of Art, the most competitive courses for Scottish applicants were Oral Health Science (9%), Business (11%), Philosophy & Psychology (14%), Social Work (15%), and International Business (15%). For students from the rest of the UK, the most competitive courses were Nursing (5%), Medicine (6%), Veterinary Medicine (6%), Psychology (8%), and Politics, Philosophy and Economics (10%). For international students, the most competitive courses were Medicine (5%), Nursing (7%), Business (11%), Politics, Philosophy and
Economics (12%), and Sociology (13%).
For the academic year 2019/20, 36.8% of Edinburgh's new undergraduates were privately educated, the second-highest proportion among mainstream British universities, behind only Oxford. As of August 2021, it has a higher proportion of female than male students with a male to female ratio of 38:62 in the undergraduate population, and the undergraduate student body is composed of 30% Scottish students, 32% from the rest of the UK, 10% from the EU, and 28% from outside the EU.
=== Graduation ===
Graduation ceremonies are held in the purpose-built McEwan Hall. At the ceremonies, graduates are 'capped' with the Geneva Bonnet, which involves the university's principal tapping them on the head with the cap while they receive their graduation certificate. The velvet-and-silk hat has been used for over 150 years, and legend says that it was originally made from cloth taken from the breeches of 16th-century scholars John Knox or George Buchanan. When the hat was restored in the early 2000s, a label dated 1849 was discovered bearing the name of Edinburgh tailor Henry Banks, casting doubt on the supposed 16th-century origin; however, it is unknown whether Banks manufactured or restored the hat. In 2006, a university emblem that had been taken into space by astronaut and Edinburgh graduate Piers Sellers was incorporated into the Geneva Bonnet.
=== Library system ===
Pre-dating the university by three years, Edinburgh University Library was founded in 1580 through the donation of a large collection by Clement Litill, and today is the largest academic library collection in Scotland. The Brutalist style eight-storey Main Library building in George Square was designed by Sir Basil Spence. At the time of its completion in 1967, it was the largest building of its type in the UK, and today is a category A listed building. The library system also includes many specialised libraries at the college and school level.
=== Exchange programmes ===
The university offers students the opportunity to study abroad at around 300 partner institutions in nearly 40 countries worldwide, with most partner universities being located in Europe, North America, and Asia.
University-wide exchanges are open to most, but not all, students on undergraduate degrees in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, and the College of Science and Engineering; most students in the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine are not eligible for exchanges. Students will normally go abroad in their third year. The list of partner institutions is shown as follows (part of):
Asia-Pacific: Fudan University, University of Hong Kong, University of Melbourne, Seoul National University, University of Sydney, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University
Europe: University of Amsterdam, University of Copenhagen, University of Helsinki, Lund University, Sciences Po, University College Dublin, Uppsala University
Latin America: National Autonomous University of Mexico, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, University of São Paulo
Northern America: Boston College, Barnard College of Columbia University, University of California (except for Merced and San Francisco), Caltech, University of Chicago, Cornell University, Georgetown University, McGill University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin, University of Toronto, University of Virginia, Washington University in St. Louis
Subject-specific exchanges are open to students studying in particular schools or subject areas, including exchange programmes with Carnegie Mellon University, Emory University, Ecole du Louvre, EPFL, ETH Zurich, ESSEC Business School, ENS Paris, HEC Paris, Humboldt University of Berlin, Karolinska Institute, Kyoto University, LMU Munich, University of Michigan, Peking University, Rhode Island School of Design, Sorbonne University, TU München, Waseda University, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and others.
=== Rankings and reputation ===
In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), which evaluated work produced between 2014 and 2021, Edinburgh ranked 4th by research power and 15th by GPA amongst British universities. The university fell four places in GPA when compared to the 2014 REF, but retained its place in research power. 90 per cent of the university's research activity was judged to be 'world leading' (4*) or 'internationally excellent' (3*), and five departments – Computer Science, Informatics, Sociology, Anthropology, and Development Studies – were ranked as the best in the UK.
In the 2015 THE Global Employability University Ranking, Edinburgh ranked 23rd in the world and 4th in the UK for graduate employability as voted by international recruiters. A 2015 government report found that Edinburgh was one of only two Scottish universities (along with St Andrews) that some London-based elite recruitment firms considered applicants from, especially in the field of financial services and investment banking. When The New York Times ranked universities based on the employability of graduates as evaluated by recruiters from top companies in 20 countries in 2012, Edinburgh was placed at 42nd in the world and 7th in Britain.
In 2026, Edinburgh was ranked 4th in the UK and 16th in the world universities ranking by Time magazine and Statista. It was ranked 24th in the world and 5th in the UK by the 2021 Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities, a league table based on the three major world university rankings, ARWU, QS and THE. In the 2022 U.S. News & World Report, Edinburgh ranked 32nd globally and 5th nationally. The 2022 World Reputation Rankings placed Edinburgh at 32nd worldwide and 5th nationwide. In 2023, it ranked 73rd amongst the universities around the world by the SCImago Institutions Rankings.
The disparity between Edinburgh's research capacity, endowment and international status on the one hand, and its ranking in national league tables on the other, is largely due to the impact of measures of 'student satisfaction'. Edinburgh was ranked last in the UK for teaching quality in the 2012 National Student Survey, with the 2015 Good University Guide stating that this stemmed from "questions to do with the promptness, usefulness and extent of academic feedback", and that the university "still has a long way to go to turn around a poor position". Edinburgh improved only marginally over the next years, with the 2021 Good University Guide still ranking it in the bottom 10 domestically in both teaching quality and student experience. Edinburgh was ranked 122nd out of 128 universities for student satisfaction in the 2022 Complete University Guide, although it was ranked 12th overall. The 2024 Guardian University Guide ranked Edinburgh 14th overall, but 50th out of 120 universities in teaching satisfaction, and lowest among all universities in satisfaction with feedback.
In the 2022 Complete University Guide, 32 out of the 49 subjects offered by Edinburgh were ranked within the top 10 in the UK, with Asian Studies (4th), Chemical Engineering (4th), Education (2nd), Geology (5th), Linguistics (5th), Mechanical Engineering (5th), Medicine (5th), Music (5th), Nursing (1st), Physics & Astronomy (5th), Social Policy (5th), Theology & Religious Studies (4th), and Veterinary Medicine (2nd) within the top 5. The 2021 THE World University Rankings by Subject ranked Edinburgh 10th worldwide in Arts and Humanities, 15th in Law, 16th in Psychology, 21st in Clinical, Pre-clinical & Health, 22nd in Computer Science, 28th in Education, 28th in Life Science, 43rd in Business & Economics, 44th in Social Sciences, 45th in Physical Sciences, and 86th in Engineering & Technology. The 2023 QS World University Rankings by Subject placed Edinburgh at 10th globally in Arts & Humanities, 23rd in Life Sciences & Medicine, 36th in Natural Sciences, 50th in Social Sciences & Management, and 59th in Engineering & Technology. According to CSRankings, computer science at Edinburgh was ranked 1st in the UK and 36th globally, and Edinburgh was the best in natural language processing (NLP) in the world.
== Student life ==
=== Students' Association ===
Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) consists of the students' union and the students' representative council. EUSA's buildings include Teviot Row House, The Pleasance, Potterrow Student Centre, Kings Buildings House, as well as shops, cafés and refectories across the various campuses. Teviot Row House is considered the oldest purpose-built student union building in the world. Most of these buildings are operated as Edinburgh Festival Fringe venues during August. EUSA represents students to the university and the wider world, and is responsible for over 250 student societies at the university. The association has five sabbatical office bearers – a president and four vice presidents. EUSA is affiliated with the National Union of Students (NUS).
=== Debate ===
The University of Edinburgh is home to the Diagnostic Society of Edinburgh which was founded in 1787. It claims to be the oldest student debating society in the UK. The society is indirectly associated with the university through the students union as an unincorporated society.
=== Performing arts ===
Amateur dramatic societies benefit from Edinburgh being an important cultural hub for comedy, amateur and fringe theatre throughout the UK, most prominently through the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
The Edinburgh University Music Society (EUMS) is a student-run musical organisation, which is Scotland's oldest student's musical society; it can be traced back to a concert in February 1867. It performs three concert series throughout the year whilst also undertaking a programme of charity events and education projects.
The Edinburgh University Theatre Company (EUTC), founded in 1890 as the Edinburgh University Drama Society, is known for running Bedlam Theatre, the oldest student-run theatre in Britain and venue for the Fringe. EUTC also funds acclaimed improvisational comedy troupe The Improverts during term time and the Fringe. Alumni include Sir Michael Boyd, Ian Charleson, Kevin McKidd, and Greg Wise.
The Edinburgh Studio Opera (formerly Edinburgh University Opera Club) is a student opera company in Edinburgh. It performs at least one fully staged opera each year. The Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group (EUSOG) is an opera and musical theatre company founded by students in 1961 to promote and perform the comic operettas of Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, collectively known as Savoy Operas after the theatre in which they were originally staged.
The Edinburgh University Footlights are a musical theatre company founded in 1989 and produce two large scale shows a year. One of the founders is the Theatre Producer Colin Ingram. Theatre Parodok, founded in 2004, is a student theatre company that aims to produce shows that are "experimental without being exclusive". They stage one large show each semester and one for the festival.
=== Media ===
The Student is a fortnightly student newspaper. Founded in 1887 by writer Robert Louis Stevenson, it is the oldest student newspaper in the United Kingdom. Former writers of the newspaper include politicians Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, and Lord Steel of Aikwood. It has been independent of the university since 1992, but was forced to temporarily fold in 2002 due to increasing debts. The newspaper won a number of student newspaper awards in the years following its relaunch.
The Journal was an independent publication, established in 2007 by three students and former writers for The Student. It was also distributed to other higher education institutions in the city, such as Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh Napier University, and Telford College. It was the largest such publication in Scotland, with a print run of 10,000 copies. Despite winning a number of awards for its journalism, the magazine folded in 2015 due to financial difficulties.
FreshAir, launched on 3 October 1992, is an alternative music student radio station. The station is one of the oldest surviving student radio stations in the UK, and won the "Student Radio Station of the Year" award at the annual Student Radio Awards in 2004.
In September 2015, the Edinburgh University Student Television (EUTV) became the newest addition to the student media scene at the university, producing a regular magazine-style programme, documentaries and other special events.
=== Sport ===
Student sport at Edinburgh consists of clubs covering the more traditional rugby, football, rowing and judo, to the more unconventional korfball, gliding and mountaineering. In 2021, the university had over 65 sports clubs run by Edinburgh University Sports Union (EUSU).
The Scottish Varsity, known as the "world's oldest varsity match", is a rugby match played annually against the University of St Andrews dating back over 150 years. Discontinued in the 1950s, the match was resurrected in 2011 and was staged in London at the home of London Scottish RFC. It is played at the beginning of the academic year, and since 2015 has been staged at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh.
The Scottish Boat Race is an annual rowing race between the Glasgow University Boat Club and the Edinburgh University Boat Club, rowed between competing eights on the River Clyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Started in 1877, it is believed to be the third-oldest university boat race in the world, predated by the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race and the Harvard–Yale Regatta.
Edinburgh athletes have repeatedly been successful at the Olympic Games: Sprinter Eric Liddell won gold and bronze at the 1924 Summer Olympics. At the 1948 Summer Olympics, alumnus Jackie Robinson won a gold medal with the American Basketball team. Trap shooter Bob Braithwaite secured a gold medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Cyclist Sir Chris Hoy won six gold and one silver medal between 2000 and 2012. Rower Dame Katherine Grainger won a gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, and four further silver medals between 2000 and 2016. Edinburgh was the most successful UK university at the 2012 Games with two gold medals from Hoy and one from Grainger.
=== Student activism ===
There are a number of campaigning societies at the university, including but not limited to the environment and poverty campaigning group People & Planet and the Amnesty International Society. International development organisations include Edinburgh Global Partnerships, which was established as a student-led charity in 1990. There is also a significant left-wing presence on campus, including an anti-austerity group, Edinburgh University Anarchist Society, Edinburgh University Socialist Society, Edinburgh Young Greens, Feminist Society, LGBT+ Pride, Marxist Society, and Justice for Palestine Society.
Protests, demonstrations and occupations are regular occurrences at the university. The activist group People & Planet took over Charles Stewart House in 2015 and again in 2016 in protest over the university's investment in companies active in arms manufacturing or fossil fuel extraction. In May 2015, a security guard was charged in relation to the occupations.
==== Gaza protest ====
In May 2024, student activists set up a protest camp in the Old College Quad, with some also beginning a hunger strike, and demanded divestment from companies they alleged supported the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. The campaign, backed by more than 600 staff and the students' union, specifically targeted the university's investments in Alphabet Inc. and Amazon, and its relationship with investment firm BlackRock. In response, Principal Mathieson emphasised that the university would respect peaceful protest rights, while also defending its investment practices. The university subsequently established a working group to review its investment policies related to "armaments and controversial weapons" and launched a consultation on ethical investing principles. The protest camp was dismantled in June. In March 2025, a student was attacked with a sharp object during a Gaza protest outside the main library; Edinburgh University Students' Association alleged that the university security's slow response was reflective of "the University's attitude towards students showing their support for Palestine." Nevertheless, Vice Principal Colm Harmon condemned the attack, and stated the university was taking the matter seriously. The attacker was arrested and subsequently sentenced to a 22-month jail term.
=== Student co-operatives ===
There are three student-run co-operatives associated with the University: Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative (ESHC), providing affordable housing for 106 students; the Hearty Squirrel Food Cooperative, providing local, organic and affordable food to students and staff; and the SHRUB Coop, a swap and re-use hub aimed at reducing waste and promoting sustainability. Of these, only the Hearty Squirrel Co-operative operates on campus. ESHC is based on the Bruntsfield Links south of the University's central campus, and hosts students from all three city universities and Edinburgh College. The SHRUB co-operative was formed partly by University of Edinburgh students but is now run by interested members from across Edinburgh. The co-operatives form part of the Students for Cooperation network.
== Notable people ==
The university is associated with numerous significant intellectual and scientific advancements, which include: the foundation of Antiseptic surgery (Joseph Lister); Bayesian statistics (Thomas Bayes); Economics (Adam Smith); Electromagnetism (James Clerk Maxwell); Evolution (Charles Darwin); Knot theory (Peter Guthrie Tait); modern Geology (James Hutton); Nephrology (Richard Bright); Endocrinology (Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer); Hematology (William Hewson); Dermatology (Robert Willan); Epigenetics (C. H. Waddington); Gestalt psychology (Kurt Koffka); Thermodynamics (William Rankine); Colloid chemistry (Thomas Graham); Wave theory (Thomas Young); the discovery of Brownian motion (Robert Brown); Magnesium, carbon dioxide, latent heat and specific heat (Joseph Black); chloroform anaesthesia (Sir James Young Simpson); the Hepatitis B vaccine (Sir Kenneth Murray); the Cygnus X-1 black hole (Paul Murdin); the Higgs mechanism (Sir Tom Kibble) and Higgs boson (Peter Higgs and Sir Tom Kibble); the structure of DNA (Sir John Randall); the HPV vaccine (Ian Frazer); Iridium and Osmium (Smithson Tennant); Nitrogen (Daniel Rutherford); Strontium (Thomas Charles Hope); SARS coronavirus (Zhong Nanshan); the invention of the Stirling engine (Robert Stirling); the Cavity magnetron (Sir John Randall); the ATM (John Shepherd-Barron); the refrigerator and artificial refrigeration (William Cullen); the diving chamber (John Scott Haldane); the reflecting telescope (James Gregory); the hypodermic syringe (Alexander Wood); the kaleidoscope (Sir David Brewster); the pneumatic tyre (John Boyd Dunlop); the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell); the telpherage (Fleeming Jenkin); and the vacuum flask (Sir James Dewar).
Other notable alumni and academic staff of the university have included signatories to the US Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush, James Wilson and John Witherspoon, actors Ian Charleson, Robbie Coltrane and Kevin McKidd, architects Robert Adam, William Thornton, William Henry Playfair, Sir Basil Spence and Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, astronaut Piers Sellers, biologists Sir Adrian Bird, Sir Richard Owen and Sir Ian Wilmut, business executives Tony Hayward, Alan Jope, Lars Rasmussen and Susie Wolff, composer Max Richter, economists Kenneth E. Boulding and Thomas Chalmers, historians Thomas Carlyle and Neil MacGregor, journalists Laura Kuenssberg and Peter Pomerantsev, judges Lord Reed and Lord Hodge, mathematicians Sir W. V. D. Hodge, Colin Maclaurin and Sir E. T. Whittaker, philosophers Benjamin Constant, Adam Ferguson, Ernest Gellner and David Hume, physicians Thomas Addison, William Cullen, Valentín Fuster, Thomas Hodgkin and James Lind, pilot Eric Brown, surgeons James Barry, Joseph Bell, Robert Liston and B. K. Misra, sociologists Sir Patrick Geddes and David Bloor, writers Sir J. M. Barrie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Fowles, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, Chancellors of the Exchequer John Anderson and Lord Henry Petty, Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand Sir Michael Cullen, Vice President of Syria Najah al-Attar, Director General of MI5 Stella Rimington, First Lords of the Admiralty Henry Dundas, Robert Dundas, Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound and George Douglas-Hamilton, Foreign Secretaries Robin Cook and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, acting First Minister of Scotland Jim Wallace, and Olympic gold medallists Bob Braithwaite, Katherine Grainger, Sir Chris Hoy and Eric Liddell.
=== Nobel and Nobel equivalent prizes ===
As of October 2024, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, with 20 awards, have been affiliated with the university as alumni, faculty members or researchers (three additional laureates acted as administrative staff), including one of the fathers of quantum mechanics Max Born, theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, Cognitive scientist Geoffrey E. Hinton (also a Turing Award winner), chemist Sir Fraser Stoddart, immunologist Peter C. Doherty, economist Sir James Mirrlees, discoverer of Characteristic X-ray (Charles Glover Barkla) and the mechanism of ATP synthesis (Peter D. Mitchell), and pioneer in cryo-electron microscopy (Richard Henderson) and in-vitro fertilisation (Sir Robert Edwards). Turing Award winners Robin Milner Leslie Valiant, and mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah, Fields Medalist and Abel Prize laureate, are associated with the university.
In the following table, the number following a person's name is the year they received the Nobel prize. In particular, a number with an asterisk (*) means the person received the award while they were working at the university (including emeritus staff). A name underlined implies that this person has been listed previously (i.e., multiple affiliations).
=== Heads of state and government ===
== In popular culture ==
The University of Edinburgh has featured prominently in a number of works of popular culture.
The events of the Burke and Hare murders, involving Edinburgh lecturer Robert Knox and the anatomical department, have made a wide range of appearances in popular culture. They became the basis for Robert Louis Stevenson's short story The Body Snatcher (1884), and most recently in 2010 for Burke & Hare, a black comedy film starring Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis. Scenes were filmed at the old School of Anatomy.
Many of Arthur Conan Doyle's works drew inspiration from his mentors at the university. Joseph Bell, a lecturer and surgeon famous for drawing conclusions from minute observations, became the archetype for Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. William Rutherford, Conan Doyle's physiology professor, provided the template for Professor Challenger, the protagonist of his science fiction work The Lost World (1912). Edinburgh is also Challenger's alma mater in the books.
Dr. Fu Manchu, a fictional supervillain created by Sax Rohmer in 1912, stated that "I am a doctor of philosophy from Edinburgh, a doctor of law from Christ's College, a doctor of medicine from Harvard. My friends, out of courtesy, call me 'Doctor'." In 2010, Fu Manchu's connections with the University where he supposedly obtained a doctorate were investigated in a mockumentary by Miles Jupp (also an Edinburgh alumnus) for BBC Radio 4.
In the movie Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), an adaptation of Jules Verne's novel of the same name, the protagonist Sir Oliver Lindenbrook is a Professor of Geology at the university. An early scene where Lindenbrook addresses the students is filmed at the central quadrangle of Old College.
The historical film Chariots of Fire (1981) is based on the story of Olympic runner and Edinburgh graduate Eric Liddell, and includes scenes filmed outside of Assembly Hall, New College. Liddell is played by Ian Charleson, who is also an Edinburgh alumnus.
In the novel The Last King of Scotland (1998) by Giles Foden, the fictional protagonist Dr. Nicholas Garrigan is a medical doctor recently graduated from Edinburgh. The 2006 film of the same name stars James McAvoy in the role of Dr. Garrigan with the same background.
In the American television show NCIS (2003–present), the chief medical examiner, Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard studied medicine at Edinburgh. Ari Haswari, the show's main antagonist for the first two seasons, also studied medicine at Edinburgh.
In the novel One Day (2009), the lead characters Dexter and Emma meet at their graduation from Edinburgh. A feature film based on the book, also titled One Day and starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess was released in August 2011, with some scenes filmed at the university. In 2021, Netflix commissioned a limited series adaptation of the movie, also called One Day, with filming occurring in the grounds of Old College in 2022; the series released in February 2024.
The BBC legal drama Garrow's Law (2009–2011) was largely filmed in Edinburgh, despite being set in London. Old College and the Playfair Library are prominently featured.
The thriller television series Clique (2017–2019) produced by BBC Three focuses on two students at the university. The series was shot largely on location in Edinburgh, including The Meadows, Old College, and Potterrow.
Fast & Furious 9 (2021), partly set in Edinburgh, featured scenes in and around Old College filmed in September 2019. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_number_ones_of_1991 | List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 1991 | This is a list of the U.S. Billboard magazine Hot 100 number-ones of 1991. The longest running number-one single of 1991 is "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" by Bryan Adams, which attained seven weeks at number-one. ("Black or White" by Michael Jackson would also spend a total of seven weeks at #1, but only four of those weeks were in the 1991 calendar year.)
That year, 14 acts earn their first number one song, such as Surface, C+C Music Factory, Freedom Williams, Timmy T, Londonbeat, Hi-Five, Extreme, EMF, Color Me Badd, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Loleatta Holloway, Karyn White, The New Power Generation, and P.M. Dawn. Mariah Carey and Paula Abdul were the only acts to hit number one more than once, with Mariah Carey having the most with three and Paula Abdul having two.
The November 30 chart ("Set Adrift on Memory Bliss") was the first Hot 100 to be compiled with Soundscan data.
== Chart history ==
An asterisk (*) by a date indicates an unpublished, "frozen" week, due to the special double issues that Billboard published in print at the end of the year for their year-end charts. This was the final year that there was no Hot 100 during this unpublished week. While the double issues continued beyond 1991, the charts themselves would still be compiled, available through their electronic and online services.
== Number-one artists == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Year_for_the_Culture_of_Peace | International Year for the Culture of Peace | The International Year for the Culture of Peace was designated by the United Nations as the year 2000, with the aim of celebrating and encouraging a culture of peace.
== Origins ==
Since 1959 the United Nations has designated specific years to emphasize issues which are part of the mission of the organization. The International Year for the Culture of Peace was proclaimed in a United Nations General Assembly resolution in 1997 on the basis of an Economic and Social Council resolution. The General Assembly invited a Declaration and Programme of Action from UNESCO and adopted it after ten months of difficult negotiation.
== The IYCP Taskforce ==
The lead organization for the International Year was UNESCO. There was a logic to this, in that UNESCO is the United Nations organization dealing with education, and also in that the constitutional mandate of UNESCO involves the encouragement of a global culture of peace. Within the UNESCO Secretariat in Paris, a specific International Year for the Culture of Peace Taskforce was established from 1998 to 2000, with the aim of co-ordinating the activities to publicize the International Year. Members of the Taskforce included: David Adams (Chair), Enzo Fazzino, Katherine Stoessel, Di Bretherton, Zeynep Varoglu and Jan Visser.
== International Year Strategies and Results ==
The strategies behind the International Year centred upon involving civil society as much as possible. The specific initiatives included the collection of some 75 million signatures worldwide in support of a culture of peace, with the Manifesto 2000 Project. Another initiative was the Culture of Peace News Network, otherwise known as the CPNN, a web-based news service reporting news in support of a culture of peace.
An extensive description of the results obtained during the International Year was published by UNESCO.
== Assessment of the International Year ==
Opinion is divided as to how effective the International Year was. It is possible to argue that there was much rhetoric in the International Year, and yet often the impact of such events can only be discerned many years later.
== Ongoing Commitment of the United Nations ==
The work of supporting and encouraging a culture of peace continues through the International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World, and the ongoing Culture of Peace News Network. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium | Belgium | Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the south, and the North Sea to the west. The country also shares a maritime boundary with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Belgium covers an area of 30,689 km2 (11,849 sq mi) and has a population of more than 11.8 million; its population density of 383/km2 (990/sq mi) ranks 22nd in the world and sixth in Europe. The capital and largest metropolitan region is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, Bruges, Namur, and Leuven.
Belgium is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a complex federal system structured on regional and linguistic grounds. The country is divided into three highly autonomous regions: the Flemish Region (Flanders) in the north, the Walloon Region (Wallonia) in the south, and the Brussels-Capital Region in the middle. Belgium is also home to two main linguistic communities: the Dutch-speaking Flemish Community, which constitutes about 60 percent of the population, and the French-speaking French Community, which constitutes about 40 percent of the population; a small German-speaking Community, comprising around one percent of the population, exists in the East Cantons. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Belgium is a developed country with an advanced high-income economy. It is one of the six founding members of the European Union, with its capital of Brussels serving as the de facto capital of the EU, hosting the official seats of the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Council, and one of two seats of the European Parliament (the other being Strasbourg). Brussels also hosts the headquarters of many major international organizations, such as NATO.
In antiquity, present-day Belgium was dominated by the Belgae before being annexed into the Roman Empire in the mid first century BC. During the Middle Ages, Belgium's central location kept it relatively prosperous and connected both commercially and politically to its larger neighbours; it was part of the Carolingian Empire, the succeeding Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently the Burgundian Netherlands. Following rule by Habsburg Spain (1556–1714), the Austrian Habsburgs (1714–1794), and Revolutionary France (1794–1815), most of modern-day Belgium was incorporated into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Centuries of being contested and controlled by various European powers earned Belgium the moniker "the Battlefield of Europe", a reputation reinforced in the 20th century by both world wars.
An independent Belgium was established in 1830 following the Belgian Revolution. In the 19th century it was one of the earliest participants of the Industrial Revolution, and the first country in continental Europe to become industrialised. By the early 20th century, it possessed several colonies, notably the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi, which gained independence between 1960 and 1962. The second half of the 20th century was marked by rising tensions between the Dutch-speakers and French-speakers, fueled by differences in political culture and the unequal economic development of Flanders and Wallonia. This has resulted in several far-reaching state reforms, including the transition from a unitary to federal structure between 1970 and 1993. Tensions persist amid ongoing reforms; the country faces a strong separatist sentiment among the Flemish, controversial language laws, and a fragmented political landscape that resulted in a record 589 days without a government formation following the 2010 federal election.
== History ==
=== Antiquity ===
In his account of the Roman invasion of Gaul, Roman leader Julius Caesar noted that the original Belgae inhabited the northern part of Gaul extending from the Seine and Marne rivers to the Rhine. They therefore inhabited most of modern Belgium, and significant parts of France, the Netherlands, and Germany. He described the Belgae as the bravest of the Gauls, and attributed this to their distance from the Roman Province, minimal contact with merchants importing luxury goods, and their continual warfare with the neighboring Germanic tribes across the Rhine. Within this broad region, Caesar referred to a specific area as "Belgium," which was politically dominant and located in what is now northern France.
Modern Belgium, along with neighboring regions of the Netherlands and Germany, corresponds to the territories of the northernmost Belgae tribes, including the Morini, Menapii, Nervii, Germani Cisrhenani, and Aduatuci. Julius Caesar described these tribes as particularly warlike and economically undeveloped, noting their kinship with the Germanic tribes east of the Rhine. Additionally, the area around Arlon in southern Belgium was part of the territory of the powerful Treveri tribe, whose lands extended into present-day Luxembourg and adjacent regions of France and Germany.
Following Caesar's conquests, Gallia Belgica became the Latin name for a large Roman province encompassing most of Northern Gaul, including the lands of the Belgae and Treveri. Subsequently, Roman Belgica was divided into two parts, and the regions closer to the lower Rhine frontier, such as the eastern part of modern Belgium, were incorporated into the frontier province of Germania Inferior. As the central government of the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the provinces of Belgica and Germania were inhabited by a mix of Romanized populations and Germanic-speaking Franks, who came to dominate the military and political spheres.
=== Middle Ages ===
During the 5th century, the area came under the rule of the Frankish Merovingian kings, who initially established a kingdom ruling over the Romanized population in what is now northern France, and then conquered the other Frankish kingdoms. During the 8th century, the empire of the Franks came to be ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, whose centre of power included the area which is now eastern Belgium. Over the centuries, it was divided up in many ways, but the Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the Carolingian Empire into three kingdoms whose borders had a lasting impact on medieval political boundaries. Most of modern Belgium was in the Middle Kingdom, later known as Lotharingia, but the coastal county of Flanders, west of the Scheldt, became the northernmost part of West Francia, the predecessor of France. In 870 in the Treaty of Meerssen, modern Belgium lands all became part of the western kingdom for a period, but in 880 in the Treaty of Ribemont, Lotharingia came under the lasting control of the eastern kingdom, which became the Holy Roman Empire. The lordships and bishoprics along the "March" (frontier) between the two great kingdoms maintained important connections between each other. For example, the county of Flanders expanded over the Scheldt into the empire, and during several periods was ruled by the same lords as the county of Hainaut.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, the cloth industry and commerce boomed especially in the County of Flanders and it became one of the richest areas in Europe. This prosperity played a role in conflicts between Flanders and the king of France. Famously, Flemish militias scored a surprise victory at the Battle of the Golden Spurs against a strong force of mounted knights in 1302, but France soon regained control of the rebellious province.
=== Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands ===
In the 15th century, the Duke of Burgundy in France took control of Flanders, and from there proceeded to unite much of what is now the Benelux, the so-called Burgundian Netherlands. "Burgundy" and "Flanders" were the first two common names used for the Burgundian Netherlands which was the predecessor of the Austrian Netherlands, the predecessor of modern Belgium. The union, technically stretching between two kingdoms, gave the area economic and political stability which led to an even greater prosperity and artistic creation.
Born in Belgium, the Habsburg Emperor Charles V was heir of the Burgundians, but also of the royal families of Austria, Castile and Aragon. With the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 he gave the Seventeen Provinces more legitimacy as a stable entity, rather than just a temporary personal union. He also increased the influence of these Netherlands over the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, which continued to exist as a large semi-independent enclave.
=== Spanish and Austrian Netherlands ===
The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) was triggered by the Spanish government's policy towards Protestantism, which was becoming popular in the Low Countries. The rebellious northern United Provinces (Belgica Foederata in Latin, the "Federated Netherlands") eventually separated from the Southern Netherlands (Belgica Regia, the "Royal Netherlands"). The southern part continued to be ruled successively by the Spanish (Spanish Netherlands) and the Austrian House of Habsburgs (Austrian Netherlands) and comprised most of modern Belgium. This was the theatre of several more protracted conflicts during much of the 17th and 18th centuries involving France, including the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), and part of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748).
=== French Revolution and United Kingdom of the Netherlands ===
Following the campaigns of 1794 in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Low Countries – including territories that were never nominally under Habsburg rule, such as the Prince-Bishopric of Liège – were annexed by the French First Republic, ending Austrian rule in the region. After the dissolution of the First French Empire and the abdication of Napoleon following his defeat on the battlefield of Waterloo, the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15 created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This buffer state, located between the major European powers, united the former territories of the Dutch Republic, the Austrian Netherlands and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, under King William I of Orange.
=== Independent Belgium ===
In 1830, the Belgian Revolution led to the re-separation of the Southern Provinces from the Netherlands and to the establishment of a Catholic and bourgeois, officially French-speaking and neutral, independent Belgium under a provisional government and a national congress. Since the installation of Leopold I as king on 21 July 1831, now celebrated as Belgium's National Day, Belgium has been a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a laicist constitution based on the Napoleonic Code. Although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 (with plural voting until 1919) and for women in 1949.
The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party and the Liberal Party, with the Belgian Labour Party emerging towards the end of the 19th century. French was originally the official language used by the nobility and the bourgeoisie, especially after the rejection of the Dutch monarchy. French progressively lost its dominance as Dutch began to recover its status. This recognition became official in 1898, and in 1967, the parliament accepted a Dutch version of the Constitution.
The Berlin Conference of 1885 ceded control of the Congo Free State to King Leopold II as his private possession. From around 1900 there was growing international concern for the extreme and savage treatment of the Congolese population under Leopold II, for whom the Congo was primarily a source of revenue from ivory and rubber production. Many Congolese were killed by Leopold's agents for failing to meet production quotas for ivory and rubber. In 1908, this outcry led the Belgian state to assume responsibility for the government of the colony, henceforth called the Belgian Congo. A Belgian commission in 1919 estimated that Congo's population was half what it was in 1879.
Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914 as part of the Schlieffen Plan to attack France, and much of the Western Front fighting of World War I occurred in western parts of the country. The opening months of the war were known as the Rape of Belgium due to German excesses. Belgium assumed control of the German colonies of Ruanda-Urundi (modern-day Rwanda and Burundi) during the war, and in 1924 the League of Nations mandated them to Belgium. In the aftermath of the First World War, Belgium annexed the Prussian districts of Eupen and Malmedy in 1925, thereby causing the presence of a German-speaking minority.
German forces again invaded the country in May 1940, and 40,690 Belgians, over half of them Jews, were killed during the subsequent occupation and the Holocaust. From September 1944 to February 1945 the Allies liberated Belgium. After World War II, a general strike forced King Leopold III to abdicate in 1951 in favour of his son, Prince Baudouin, since many Belgians thought he had collaborated with Germany during the war. The Belgian Congo gained independence in 1960 during the Congo Crisis; Ruanda-Urundi followed with its independence two years later. Belgium joined NATO as a founding member and formed the Benelux group of nations with the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Belgium became one of the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and of the European Atomic Energy Community and European Economic Community, established in 1957. The latter has now become the European Union, for which Belgium hosts major administrations and institutions, including the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the extraordinary and committee sessions of the European Parliament.
In the 1990s, Belgium saw several large scandals notably surrounding Marc Dutroux, Andre Cools, the Dioxin Affair, Agusta Scandal and the murder of Karel van Noppen.
== Geography ==
Belgium shares borders with France (620 km; 390 mi), Germany (162/167 km), Luxembourg (148 km; 92 mi), and the Netherlands (450 km; 280 mi). Its total surface, including water area, is 30,689 km2 (11,849 sq mi). Before 2018, its total area was believed to be 30,528 km2 (11,787 sq mi). However, when the country's statistics were measured in 2018, a new calculation method was used. Unlike previous calculations, this one included the area from the coast to the low-water line, revealing the country to be 160 km2 (62 sq mi) larger in surface area than previously thought. Its land area alone is 30,494 km2 (11,774 sq mi). It lies between latitudes 49°30' and 51°30' N, and longitudes 2°33' and 6°24' E.
Belgium has three main geographical regions; the coastal plain in the northwest and the central plateau both belong to the Anglo-Belgian Basin, and the Ardennes uplands in the southeast to the Hercynian orogenic belt. The Paris Basin reaches a small fourth area at Belgium's southernmost tip, Belgian Lorraine.
The coastal plain consists mainly of sand dunes and polders. Further inland lies a smooth, slowly rising landscape irrigated by numerous waterways, with fertile valleys and the northeastern sandy plain of the Campine (Kempen). The thickly forested hills and plateaus of the Ardennes are more rugged and rocky with caves and small gorges. Extending westward into France, this area is eastwardly connected to the Eifel in Germany by the High Fens plateau, on which the Signal de Botrange forms the country's highest point at 694 m (2,277 ft).
The climate is maritime temperate with significant precipitation in all seasons (Köppen climate classification: Cfb), like most of northwest Europe. The average temperature is lowest in January at 3 °C (37.4 °F) and highest in July at 18 °C (64.4 °F). The average precipitation per month varies between 54 mm (2.1 in) for February and April, to 78 mm (3.1 in) for July. Averages for the years 2000 to 2006 show daily temperature minimums of 7 °C (44.6 °F) and maximums of 14 °C (57.2 °F) and monthly rainfall of 74 mm (2.9 in); these are about 1 °C and nearly 10 millimeters above last century's normal values, respectively.
Climate change in Belgium has caused temperatures rises and more frequent and intense heatwaves, increases in winter rainfall and decreases in snowfall. By 2100, sea levels along the Belgian coast are projected to rise by 60 to 90 cm with a maximum potential increase of up to 200 cm in the worst-case scenario. The costs of climate change are estimated to amount to €9.5 billion a year in 2050 (2% of Belgian GDP), mainly due to extreme heat, drought and flooding, while economics gains due to milder winters amount to approximately €3 billion a year (0.65% of GDP). In 2023, Belgium emitted 106.82 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (around 0.2% of the global total emissions), equivalent to 9.12 tonnes per person. The country has committed to net zero by 2050.
Phytogeographically, Belgium is shared between the Atlantic European and Central European provinces of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the territory of Belgium belongs to the terrestrial ecoregions of Atlantic mixed forests and Western European broadleaf forests. Belgium had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 1.36/10, ranking it 163rd globally out of 172 countries. In Belgium forest cover is around 23% of the total land area, equivalent to 689,300 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, up from 677,400 hectares (ha) in 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forest covered 251,200 hectares (ha) and planted forest covered 438,200 hectares (ha). For the year 2015, 47% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership, 53% private ownership and 0% with ownership listed as other or unknown.
=== Provinces ===
The territory of Belgium is divided into three Regions, two of which, the Flemish Region and Walloon Region, are in turn subdivided into provinces; the third Region, the Brussels-Capital Region, is neither a province nor a part of a province.
== Politics and government ==
Belgium is a constitutional, popular monarchy and a federal parliamentary democracy. The bicameral federal parliament is composed of a Senate and a Chamber of Representatives. The former is made up of 50 senators appointed by the parliaments of the communities and regions and 10 co-opted senators. Prior to 2014, most of the Senate's members were directly elected. The Chamber's 150 representatives are elected under a proportional voting system from 11 electoral districts. Belgium has compulsory voting and thus maintains one of the highest rates of voter turnout in the world.
The King (currently Philippe) is the head of state, though with limited prerogatives. He appoints ministers, including a Prime Minister, that have the confidence of the Chamber of Representatives to form the federal government. The Council of Ministers is composed of no more than fifteen members. With the possible exception of the Prime Minister, the Council of Ministers is composed of an equal number of Dutch-speaking members and French-speaking members.
The judicial system is based on civil law and originates from the Napoleonic Code. The Court of Cassation is the court of last resort, with the courts of appeal one level below.
=== Political culture ===
Belgium's political institutions are complex; most political power rests on representation of the main cultural communities.
Since about 1970, the significant national Belgian political parties have split into distinct components that mainly represent the political and linguistic interests of these communities.
The major parties in each community, though close to the political center, belong to three main groups: Christian Democrats, Liberals, and Social Democrats.
Further notable parties came into being well after the middle of last century, mainly to represent linguistic, nationalist, or environmental interests, and recently smaller ones of some specific liberal nature.
A string of Christian Democrat coalition governments from 1958 was broken in 1999 after the first dioxin crisis, a major food contamination scandal. A "rainbow coalition" emerged from six parties: the Flemish and the French-speaking Liberals, Social Democrats and Greens. Later, a "purple coalition" of Liberals and Social Democrats formed after the Greens lost most of their seats in the 2003 election.
The government led by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt from 1999 to 2007 achieved a balanced budget, some tax reforms, a labor-market reform, scheduled nuclear phase-out and instigated legislation allowing more stringent war crime and more lenient soft drug usage prosecution. Restrictions on euthanasia were reduced. In 2003, Belgium became one of the first countries in the world to legalise same-sex marriage. The government promoted active diplomacy in Africa and opposed the invasion of Iraq. It is the only country that does not have age restrictions on euthanasia.
Verhofstadt's coalition fared badly in the June 2007 elections. For more than a year, the country experienced a political crisis. This crisis was such that many observers speculated on a possible partition of Belgium. From 21 December 2007 until 20 March 2008 the temporary Verhofstadt III Government was in office. This was a coalition of the Flemish and Francophone Christian Democrats, the Flemish and Francophone Liberals together with the Francophone Social Democrats.
On that day, a new government, led by Flemish Christian Democrat Yves Leterme, the actual winner of the federal elections of June 2007, was sworn in by the King. On 15 July 2008 Leterme offered the resignation of the cabinet to the King, as no progress in constitutional reforms had been made. In December 2008, Leterme once more offered his resignation after a crisis surrounding the sale of Fortis to BNP Paribas. At this juncture, his resignation was accepted and Christian Democratic and Flemish Herman Van Rompuy was sworn in as Prime Minister on 30 December 2008.
After Herman Van Rompuy was designated the first permanent President of the European Council on 19 November 2009, he offered the resignation of his government to King Albert II on 25 November 2009. A few hours later, the new government under Prime Minister Yves Leterme was sworn in. On 22 April 2010, Leterme again offered the resignation of his cabinet to the King after one of the coalition partners, the OpenVLD, withdrew from the government, and on 26 April 2010 King Albert officially accepted the resignation.
The Parliamentary elections in Belgium on 13 June 2010 saw the Flemish nationalist N-VA become the largest party in Flanders, and the Socialist Party PS the largest party in Wallonia. Until December 2011, Belgium was governed by Leterme's caretaker government awaiting the end of the deadlocked negotiations for formation of a new government. By 30 March 2011, this set a new world record for the elapsed time without an official government, previously held by war-torn Iraq. Finally, in December 2011 the Di Rupo Government led by Walloon socialist Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo was sworn in.
The 2014 federal election (coinciding with the regional elections) resulted in a further electoral gain for the Flemish nationalist N-VA. However, the incumbent coalition (composed of Flemish and French-speaking Social Democrats, Liberals, and Christian Democrats) maintained a solid majority in Parliament and all electoral constituencies. On 22 July 2014, King Philippe nominated Charles Michel (MR) and Kris Peeters (CD&V) to lead the formation of a new federal cabinet composed of the Flemish parties N-VA, CD&V, Open Vld and the French-speaking MR, which resulted in the Michel Government. It was the first time N-VA was part of the federal cabinet, while the French-speaking side was represented only by the MR, which achieved a minority of the public votes in Wallonia.
In May 2019 federal elections in the Flemish-speaking northern region of Flanders, the far-right Vlaams Belang party made major gains. In the French-speaking southern area of Wallonia, the Socialists were strong. The moderate Flemish nationalist party, the N-VA, remained the largest party in parliament. In July 2019, Prime Minister Charles Michel was selected to hold the post of President of the European Council. His successor Sophie Wilmès was Belgium's first female prime minister. She led the caretaker government since October 2019. The Flemish Liberal party politician Alexander De Croo became the new prime minister in October 2020. The parties had agreed on the federal government 16 months after the elections.
On 3 February 2025, Bart De Wever, leader of the New Flemish Alliance, became the new prime minister. He is the first Flemish nationalist to be named Belgian premier.
=== Communities and regions ===
Following a usage which can be traced back to the Burgundian and Habsburg courts, in the 19th century it was necessary to speak French to belong to the governing upper class, and those who could only speak Dutch were effectively second-class citizens. Late that century, and continuing into the 20th century, Flemish movements evolved to counter this situation.
While the people in Southern Belgium spoke French or dialects of French, and most Brusselers adopted French as their first language, the Flemings refused to do so and succeeded progressively in making Dutch an equal language in the education system. Following World War II, Belgian politics became increasingly dominated by the autonomy of its two main linguistic communities. Intercommunal tensions rose and the constitution was amended to minimize the potential for conflict.
Based on the four language areas defined in 1962–63 (the Dutch, bilingual, French and German language areas), consecutive revisions of the country's constitution in 1970, 1980, 1988 and 1993 established a unique form of a federal state with segregated political power into three levels:
The federal government, based in Brussels.
The three language communities:
the Flemish Community (Dutch-speaking);
the French Community (French-speaking);
the German-speaking Community.
The three regions:
the Flemish Region, subdivided into five provinces;
the Walloon Region, subdivided into five provinces;
the Brussels-Capital Region.
The constitutional language areas determine the official languages in their municipalities, as well as the geographical limits of the empowered institutions for specific matters. Although this would allow for seven parliaments and governments when the Communities and Regions were created in 1980, Flemish politicians decided to merge both. Thus the Flemings just have one single institutional body of parliament and government is empowered for all except federal and specific municipal matters.
The overlapping boundaries of the Regions and Communities have created two notable peculiarities: the territory of the Brussels-Capital Region (which came into existence nearly a decade after the other regions) is included in both the Flemish and French Communities, and the territory of the German-speaking Community lies wholly within the Walloon Region. Conflicts about jurisdiction between the bodies are resolved by the Constitutional Court of Belgium. The structure is intended as a compromise to allow different cultures to live together peacefully.
=== Locus of policy jurisdiction ===
The Federal State's authority includes justice, defense, federal police, social security, nuclear energy, monetary policy and public debt, and other aspects of public finances. State-owned companies include the Belgian Post Group and Belgian Railways. The Federal Government is responsible for the obligations of Belgium and its federalized institutions towards the European Union and NATO. It controls substantial parts of public health, home affairs and foreign affairs. The budget—without the debt—controlled by the federal government amounts to about 50% of the national fiscal income. The federal government employs around 12% of the civil servants.
Communities exercise their authority only within linguistically determined geographical boundaries, originally oriented towards the individuals of a Community's language: culture (including audiovisual media), education and the use of the relevant language. Extensions to personal matters less directly connected with language comprise health policy (curative and preventive medicine) and assistance to individuals (protection of youth, social welfare, aid to families, immigrant assistance services, and so on.).
Regions have authority in fields that can be broadly associated with their territory. These include economy, employment, agriculture, water policy, housing, public works, energy, transport, the environment, town and country planning, nature conservation, credit and foreign trade. They supervise the provinces, municipalities and intercommunal utility companies.
In several fields, the different levels each have their own say on specifics. With education, for instance, the autonomy of the Communities neither includes decisions about the compulsory aspect nor allows for setting minimum requirements for awarding qualifications, which remain federal matters. Each level of government can be involved in scientific research and international relations associated with its powers. The treaty-making power of the Regions' and Communities' Governments is the broadest of all the Federating units of all the Federations all over the world.
=== Foreign relations ===
Because of its location at the crossroads of Western Europe, Belgium has historically been the route of invading armies from its larger neighbors. With virtually defenseless borders, Belgium has traditionally sought to avoid domination by the more powerful nations which surround it through a policy of mediation. The Belgians have been strong advocates of European integration. The headquarters of NATO and of several of the institutions of the European Union are located in Belgium.
=== Armed forces ===
The Belgian Armed Forces had 23,200 active personnel in 2023, including 8,500 in the Land Component, 1,400 in the Naval Component, 4,900 in the Air Component, 1,450 in the Medical Component, and 6,950 in joint service, in addition to 5,900 reserve personnel. In 2019, Belgium's defense budget totaled €4.303 billion ($4.921 billion) representing .93% of its GDP. The operational commands of the four components are subordinate to the Staff Department for Operations and Training of the Ministry of Defense, which is headed by the Assistant Chief of Staff Operations and Training, and to the Chief of Defense. The Belgian military consists of volunteers (conscription was abolished in 1995), and citizens of other EU states, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, or Lichtenstein are also able to join. Belgium has troops deployed in several African countries as part of UN or EU missions, in Iraq for the war against the Islamic State, and in eastern Europe for the NATO presence there.
The effects of the Second World War made collective security a priority for Belgian foreign policy. In March 1948 Belgium signed the Treaty of Brussels and then joined NATO in 1948. However, the integration of the armed forces into NATO did not begin until after the Korean War. The Belgians, along with the Luxembourg government, sent a detachment of battalion strength to fight in Korea known as the Belgian United Nations Command. This mission was the first in a long line of UN missions which the Belgians supported. Currently, the Belgian Marine Component is working closely together with the Dutch Navy under the command of the Admiral Benelux.
According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Belgium is the 16th most peaceful country in the world.
== Economy ==
Belgium's strongly globalized economy and its transport infrastructure are integrated with the rest of Europe. Its location at the heart of a highly industrialized region helped make it the world's 15th largest trading nation in 2007. The economy is characterized by a highly productive work force, high GNP and high exports per capita. Belgium's main imports are raw materials, machinery and equipment, chemicals, raw diamonds, pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs, transportation equipment, and oil products. Its main exports are machinery and equipment, chemicals, finished diamonds, metals and metal products, and foodstuffs.
The Belgian economy is heavily service-oriented and shows a dual nature: a dynamic Flemish economy and a Walloon economy that lags behind. One of the founding members of the European Union, Belgium strongly supports an open economy and the extension of the powers of EU institutions to integrate member economies. Since 1922, through the Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union, Belgium and Luxembourg have been a single trade market with customs and currency union.
Belgium was the first continental European country to undergo the Industrial Revolution, in the early 19th century. Areas in Liège Province and around Charleroi rapidly developed mining and steelmaking, which flourished until the mid-20th century in the Sambre and Meuse valley and made Belgium one of the three most industrialized nations in the world from 1830 to 1910. However, by the 1840s the textile industry of Flanders was in severe crisis, and the region experienced famine from 1846 to 1850.
After World War II, Ghent and Antwerp experienced a rapid expansion of the chemical and petroleum industries. The 1973 and 1979 oil crises sent the economy into a recession; it was particularly prolonged in Wallonia, where the steel industry had become less competitive and experienced a serious decline. In the 1980s and 1990s, the economic center of the country continued to shift northwards and is now concentrated in the populous Flemish Diamond area.
By the end of the 1980s, Belgian macroeconomic policies had resulted in a cumulative government debt of about 120% of GDP. As of 2006, the budget was balanced and public debt was equal to 90.30% of GDP. In 2005 and 2006, real GDP growth rates of 1.5% and 3.0%, respectively, were slightly above the average for the Euro area. Unemployment rates of 8.4% in 2005 and 8.2% in 2006 were close to the area average. By October 2010, this had grown to 8.5% compared to an average rate of 9.6% for the European Union as a whole (EU 27). From 1832 until 2002, Belgium's currency was the Belgian franc. Belgium switched to the euro in 2002, with the first sets of euro coins being minted in 1999. The standard Belgian euro coins designated for circulation show the portrait of the monarch (first King Albert II, since 2013 King Philippe).
Despite an 18% decrease observed from 1970 to 1999, Belgium still had in 1999 the highest rail network density within the European Union with 113.8 km/1 000 km2. On the other hand, the same period, 1970–1999, has seen a huge growth (+56%) of the motorway network. In 1999, the density of km motorways per 1000 km2 and 1000 inhabitants amounted to 55.1 and 16.5 respectively and were significantly superior to the EU's means of 13.7 and 15.9.
From a biological resource perspective, Belgium has a low endowment: Belgium's biocapacity adds up to only 0.8 global hectares in 2016, just about half of the 1.6 global hectares of biocapacity available per person worldwide. In contrast, in 2016, Belgians used on average 6.3 global hectares of biocapacity - their ecological footprint of consumption. This means they required about eight times as much biocapacity as Belgium contains. As a result, Belgium was running a biocapacity deficit of 5.5 global hectares per person in 2016.
Belgium experiences some of the most congested traffic in Europe. In 2010, commuters to the cities of Brussels and Antwerp spent respectively 65 and 64 hours a year in traffic jams. Like in most small European countries, more than 80% of the airways traffic is handled by a single airport, the Brussels Airport. The ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge (Bruges) share more than 80% of Belgian maritime traffic, Antwerp being the second European harbor with a gross weight of goods handled of 115 988 000 t in 2000 after a growth of 10.9% over the preceding five years. In 2016, the port of Antwerp handled 214 million tons after a year-on-year growth of 2.7%.
There is a large economic gap between Flanders and Wallonia. Wallonia was historically wealthy compared to Flanders, mostly due to its heavy industries, but the decline of the steel industry post-World War II led to the region's rapid decline, whereas Flanders rose swiftly. Since then, Flanders has been prosperous, among the wealthiest regions in Europe, whereas Wallonia has been languishing. As of 2007, the unemployment rate of Wallonia is over double that of Flanders. The divide has played a key part in the tensions between the Flemish and Walloons in addition to the already-existing language divide. Pro-independence movements have gained high popularity in Flanders as a consequence. The separatist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) party, for instance, is the largest party in Belgium.
=== Science and technology ===
Contributions to the development of science and technology have appeared throughout the country's history. The 16th century Early Modern flourishing of Western Europe included cartographer Gerardus Mercator, anatomist Andreas Vesalius, herbalist Rembert Dodoens and mathematician Simon Stevin among the most influential scientists.
Chemist Ernest Solvay and engineer Zenobe Gramme (École industrielle de Liège) gave their names to the Solvay process and the Gramme dynamo, respectively, in the 1860s. Bakelite was developed in 1907–1909 by Leo Baekeland. Ernest Solvay also acted as a major philanthropist and gave his name to the Solvay Institute of Sociology, the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management and the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry which are now part of the Université libre de Bruxelles. In 1911, he started a series of conferences, the Solvay Conferences on Physics and Chemistry, which have had a deep impact on the evolution of quantum physics and chemistry. A major contribution to fundamental science was also due to a Belgian, Monsignor Georges Lemaître (Catholic University of Louvain), who is credited with proposing the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe in 1927.
Three Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine were awarded to Belgians: Jules Bordet (Université libre de Bruxelles) in 1919, Corneille Heymans (University of Ghent) in 1938 and Albert Claude (Université libre de Bruxelles) together with Christian de Duve (Université catholique de Louvain) in 1974. François Englert (Université libre de Bruxelles) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013. Ilya Prigogine (Université libre de Bruxelles) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977. Two Belgian mathematicians have been awarded the Fields Medal: Pierre Deligne in 1978 and Jean Bourgain in 1994. Belgium was ranked 24th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, and its ranking advanced to 21st in the index of 2025
== Demographics ==
As of 1 January 2024, the total population of Belgium according to its population register was 11,763,650. The population density of Belgium is 383/km2 (990/sq mi) as of January 2024, making it the 22nd most densely populated country in the world, and the 6th most densely populated country in Europe. The most densely populated province is Antwerp, the least densely populated province is Luxembourg. As of January 2024, the Flemish Region (Flanders) had a population of 6,821,770 (58.0% of Belgium), its most populous cities being Antwerp (545,000), Ghent (270,000), and Bruges (120,000). The Walloon Region (Wallonia) had a population of 3,692,283 (31.4% of Belgium), its most populous cities being Charleroi (204,000), Liège (196,000), and Namur (114,000). The Brussels-Capital Region (Brussels) had a population of 1,249,597 (10.6% of Belgium), consisting of 19 municipalities, its most populous cities being the City of Brussels (197,000), Schaerbeek (130,000), and Anderlecht (127,000).
In 2023 the average total fertility rate (TFR) across Belgium was 1.38 children per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1; it remains considerably below the high of 4.87 children born per woman in 1873. Belgium subsequently has one of the oldest populations in the world, with an average age of 41.6 years.
=== Migration ===
As of 2007, nearly 92% of the population had Belgian citizenship, and other European Union member citizens account for around 6%. The prevalent foreign nationals were Italian (171,918), French (125,061), Dutch (116,970), Moroccan (80,579), Portuguese (43,509), Spanish (42,765), Turkish (39,419) and German (37,621). In 2007, there were 1.38 million foreign-born residents in Belgium, corresponding to 12.9% of the total population. Of these, 685,000 (6.4%) were born outside the EU, and 695,000 (6.5%) were born in another EU Member State.
At the beginning of 2012, people of foreign background and their descendants were estimated to have formed around 25% of the total population i.e. 2.8 million new Belgians. Of these new Belgians, 1,200,000 are of European ancestry and 1,350,000 are from non-Western countries (most of them from Morocco, Turkey, and the DR Congo). Since the modification of the Belgian nationality law in 1984, more than 1.3 million migrants have acquired Belgian citizenship. The largest group of immigrants and their descendants in Belgium are Italian Belgians and Moroccan Belgians. 89.2% of inhabitants of Turkish origin have been naturalized, as have 88.4% of people of Moroccan background, 75.4% of Italians, 56.2% of the French and 47.8% of Dutch people.
Statbel released figures of the Belgian population in relation to the origin of people in Belgium. According to the data, as of 1 January 2021, 67.3% of the Belgian population was of ethnic Belgian origin, and 32.7% were of foreign origin or nationality, with 20.3% of those of a foreign nationality or ethnic group originating from neighbouring countries. The study also found that 74.5% of the Brussels-Capital Region were of non-Belgian origin, of which 13.8% originated from neighbouring countries.
=== Languages ===
Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French and German. A number of non-official minority languages are spoken as well. As no census exists, there are no official statistical data regarding the distribution or usage of Belgium's three official languages or their dialects. However, various criteria, including the language(s) of parents, of education, or the second-language status of foreign born, may provide suggested figures. An estimated 60% of the Belgian population are native speakers of Dutch (often referred to as Flemish), and 40% of the population speaks French natively. French-speaking Belgians are often referred to as Walloons, although the French speakers in Brussels are not Walloons.
The total number of native Dutch speakers is estimated to be about 6.23 million, concentrated in the northern Flanders region, while native French speakers number 3.32 million in Wallonia and an estimated 870,000 (or 85%) in the officially bilingual Brussels-Capital Region. The German-speaking Community is made up of 73,000 people in the east of the Walloon Region; around 10,000 German and 60,000 Belgian nationals are speakers of German. Roughly 23,000 more German speakers live in municipalities near the official Community.
Both Belgian Dutch and Belgian French have minor differences in vocabulary and semantic nuances from the varieties spoken respectively in the Netherlands and France. Many Flemish people still speak dialects of Dutch in their local environment. Walloon, considered either as a dialect of French or a distinct Romance language, is now only understood and spoken occasionally, mostly by elderly people. Walloon is divided into four dialects, which along with those of Picard, are rarely used in public life and have largely been replaced by French.
=== Religion ===
The Constitution of Belgium provides for freedom of religion, and the government respects this right in practice. Belgium officially recognizes three religions: Christianity (Catholic, Protestantism, Orthodox churches and Anglicanism), Islam and Judaism. During the reigns of Albert I and Baudouin, the Belgian royal family had a reputation of deeply rooted Catholicism.
Catholicism has traditionally been Belgium's majority religion; being especially strong in Flanders. However, by 2009 Sunday church attendance was 5% for Belgium in total; 3% in Brussels, and 5.4% in Flanders. Church attendance in 2009 in Belgium was roughly half of the Sunday church attendance in 1998 (11% for the total of Belgium in 1998). Despite the drop in church attendance, Catholic identity nevertheless remains an important part of Belgium's culture.
The European Social Survey in 2023 found that people who did not belong to a religion comprised 59% of the population. The share of Christians was 34%, with Catholicism being the largest denomination at 31% of the population. Protestants and other Christians comprised 2% and Orthodox Christians comprised 1%. Islam is the second largest religion with 6% of the population.
According to the Eurobarometer 2010, 37% of Belgian citizens believe in God, 31% in some sort of spirit or life-force. 27% do not believe in any sort of spirit, God, or life-force. 5% did not respond. According to the Eurobarometer 2021, 49% of the total population of Belgium adhered to Christianity, with Catholicism being the largest denomination with 44%. Protestants comprised 1% and Orthodox Christians were 1% of the total, other Christians were 3%. Non-religious people comprised 41% of the population and were divided between atheists (15%) and agnostics or non-believers (26%). A further 2% of the population was Muslim.
In the early 2000s, there were approximately 42,000 Jews in Belgium. The Jewish Community of Antwerp (numbering some 18,000) is one of the largest in Europe, and one of the last places in the world where Yiddish is the primary language of a large Jewish community (mirroring certain Orthodox and Hasidic communities in New York, New Jersey, and Israel). In addition, most Jewish children in Antwerp receive a Jewish education. There are several Jewish newspapers and more than 45 active synagogues (30 of which are in Antwerp) in the country.
Sociologist Jan Hertogen estimated that in 2022 approximately 9.6% of the Belgian population was Muslim. Muslims constituted 24.1% of the population of Brussels, 8% of Wallonia and 7.6% of Flanders.
=== Health ===
The Belgians enjoy good health. According to 2012 estimates, the average life expectancy is 79.65 years. Since 1960, life expectancy has, in line with the European average, grown by two months per year. Death in Belgium is mainly due to heart and vascular disorders, neoplasms, disorders of the respiratory system and unnatural causes of death (accidents, suicide). Non-natural causes of death and cancer are the most common causes of death for females up to age 24 and males up to age 44.
Healthcare in Belgium is financed through both social security contributions and taxation. Health insurance is compulsory. Health care is delivered by a mixed public and private system of independent medical practitioners and public, university and semi-private hospitals. Health care service are payable by the patient and reimbursed later by health insurance institutions, but for ineligible categories (of patients and services) so-called 3rd party payment systems exist. The Belgian health care system is supervised and financed by the federal government, the Flemish and Walloon Regional governments; and the German Community also has (indirect) oversight and responsibilities.
For the first time in Belgian history, the first child was euthanized following the 2-year mark of the removal of the euthanization age restrictions. The child had been euthanized due to an incurable disease that was inflicted upon the child. Although there may have been some support for the euthanization there is a possibility of controversy due to the issue revolving around the subject of assisted suicide.
Excluding assisted suicide, Belgium has the highest suicide rate in Western Europe and one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world (exceeded only by Lithuania, South Korea, and Latvia).
=== Education ===
Education is compulsory from 6 to 18 years of age for Belgians. Among OECD countries in 2002, Belgium had the third highest proportion of 18- to 21-year-olds enrolled in postsecondary education, at 42%. Though an estimated 99% of the adult population is literate, concern is rising over functional illiteracy. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), coordinated by the OECD, currently ranks Belgium's education as the 19th best in the world, being significantly higher than the OECD average. Education is organized separately by each community. The Flemish Community scores noticeably above the French and German-speaking Communities.
Mirroring the structure of the 19th-century Belgian political landscape, characterized by the Liberal and the Catholic parties, the educational system is segregated into secular and religious schools. The secular branch of schooling is controlled by the communities, the provinces, or the municipalities, while religious, mainly Catholic branch education, is organized by religious authorities, which are also subsidized and supervised by the communities.
== Culture ==
Despite its political and linguistic divisions, the region corresponding to today's Belgium has seen the flourishing of major artistic movements that have had tremendous influence on European art and culture. Nowadays, to a certain extent, cultural life is concentrated within each language Community, and a variety of barriers have made a shared cultural sphere less pronounced. Since the 1970s, there are no bilingual universities or colleges in the country except the Royal Military Academy and the Antwerp Maritime Academy.
=== Fine arts ===
Contributions to painting and architecture have been especially rich. The Mosan art, the Early Netherlandish, the Flemish Renaissance and Baroque painting and major examples of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture are milestones in the history of art. While the 15th century's art in the Low Countries is dominated by the religious paintings of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, the 16th century is characterized by a broader panel of styles such as Peter Breughel's landscape paintings and Lambert Lombard's representation of the antique. Though the Baroque style of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck flourished in the early 17th century in the Southern Netherlands, it gradually declined thereafter.
During the 19th and 20th centuries many original romantic, expressionist and surrealist Belgian painters emerged, including James Ensor and other artists belonging to the Les XX group, Constant Permeke, Paul Delvaux and René Magritte. The avant-garde CoBrA movement appeared in the 1950s, while the sculptor Panamarenko remains a remarkable figure in contemporary art. Multidisciplinary artists Jan Fabre, Wim Delvoye and the painter Luc Tuymans are other internationally renowned figures on the contemporary art scene.
Belgian contributions to architecture also continued into the 19th and 20th centuries, including the work of Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde, who were major initiators of the Art Nouveau style.
The vocal music of the Franco-Flemish School developed in the southern part of the Low Countries and was an important contribution to Renaissance culture. In the 19th and 20th centuries, there was an emergence of major violinists, such as Henri Vieuxtemps, Eugène Ysaÿe and Arthur Grumiaux, while Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1846. The composer César Franck was born in Liège in 1822. Contemporary popular music in Belgium is also of repute. Jazz musicians Django Reinhardt and Toots Thielemans and singer Jacques Brel have achieved global fame. Nowadays, singer Stromae has been a musical revelation in Europe and beyond, having great success. In rock/pop music, Telex, Front 242, K's Choice, Hooverphonic, Zap Mama, Soulwax and dEUS are well known. In the heavy metal scene, bands like Machiavel, Channel Zero and Enthroned have a worldwide fan-base.
Belgium has produced several well-known authors, including the poets Emile Verhaeren, Guido Gezelle, Robert Goffin and novelists Hendrik Conscience, Stijn Streuvels, Georges Simenon, Suzanne Lilar, Hugo Claus and Amélie Nothomb. The poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé is the best known of Franco-Belgian comics, but many other major authors, including Peyo (The Smurfs), André Franquin (Gaston Lagaffe), Morris (Lucky Luke), Willy Vandersteen brought the Belgian cartoon strip industry a worldwide fame. Additionally, famous crime author Agatha Christie created the character Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective, who has served as a protagonist in a number of her acclaimed mystery novels.
Belgian cinema has brought a number of mainly Flemish novels to life on-screen. Belgian directors include André Delvaux, Stijn Coninx, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne; well-known actors include Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jan Decleir and Marie Gillain; and successful films include Bullhead, Man Bites Dog and The Alzheimer Affair.
Belgium is also home to a number of successful fashion designers Category:Belgian fashion designers.
=== Folklore ===
Folklore plays a major role in Belgium's cultural life; the country has a comparatively high number of processions, cavalcades, parades, ommegangs, ducasses, kermesses, and other local festivals, nearly always with an originally religious or mythological background. The three-day Carnival of Binche, near Mons, with its famous Gilles (men dressed in high, plumed hats and bright costumes) is held just before Lent (the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter). Together with the 'Processional Giants and Dragons' of Ath, Brussels, Dendermonde, Mechelen and Mons, it is recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Other examples are the three-day Carnival of Aalst in February or March; the still very religious processions of the Holy Blood taking place in Bruges in May, the Virga Jesse procession held every seven years in Hasselt, the annual procession of Hanswijk in Mechelen, the 15 August festivities in Liège, and the Walloon festival in Namur. Originated in 1832 and revived in the 1960s, the Gentse Feesten (a music and theatre festival organized in Ghent around Belgian National Day, on 21 July) have become a modern tradition. Several of these festivals include sporting competitions, such as cycling, and many fall under the category of kermesses.
A major non-official holiday is Saint Nicholas Day (Dutch: Sinterklaas, French: la Saint-Nicolas), a festivity for children, and in Liège, for students. It takes place each year on 6 December and is a sort of early Christmas. On the evening of 5 December, before going to bed, children put their shoes by the hearth with water or wine and a carrot for Saint Nicholas' horse or donkey. According to tradition, Saint Nicholas comes at night and travels down the chimney. He then takes the food and water or wine, leaves presents, goes back up, feeds his horse or donkey, and continues on his course. He also knows whether children have been good or bad. This holiday is especially loved by children in Belgium and the Netherlands. Dutch immigrants imported the tradition into the United States, where Saint Nicholas is now known as Santa Claus.
=== Cuisine ===
Belgium is famous for beer, chocolate, waffles and French fries. The national dishes are steak and fries, and mussels with fries. Many highly ranked Belgian restaurants can be found in the most influential restaurant guides, such as the Michelin Guide. One of the many beers with the high prestige is that of the Trappist monks. Technically, it is an ale and traditionally each abbey's beer is served in its own glass (the forms, heights and widths are different). There are only eleven breweries (six of them are Belgian) that are allowed to brew Trappist beer.
Although Belgian gastronomy is connected to French cuisine, some recipes were reputedly invented there, such as French fries (despite the name, although their exact place of origin is uncertain), Flemish Carbonade (a beef stew with beer, mustard and bay laurel), speculaas (or speculoos in French, a sort of cinnamon and ginger-flavoured shortcrust biscuit), Brussels waffles (and their variant, Liège waffles), waterzooi (a broth made with chicken or fish, cream and vegetables), endive with bechamel sauce, Brussels sprouts, Belgian pralines (Belgium has some of the most renowned chocolate houses), charcuterie (deli meats) and Paling in 't groen (river eels in a sauce of green herbs).
Brands of Belgian chocolate and pralines, like Côte d'Or, Neuhaus, Leonidas and Godiva are famous, as well as independent producers such as Burie and Del Rey in Antwerp and Mary's in Brussels. Belgium produces over 1100 varieties of beer. The Trappist beer of the Abbey of Westvleteren has repeatedly been rated the world's best beer.
The biggest brewer in the world by volume is Anheuser-Busch InBev, based in Leuven.
=== Sports ===
Since the 1970s, sports clubs and federations are organized separately within each language community. The Administration de l'Éducation Physique et du Sport (ADEPS) is responsible for recognising the various French-speaking sports federations and also runs three sports centres in the Brussels-Capital Region. Its Dutch-speaking counterpart is Sport Vlaanderen (formerly called BLOSO).
Association football is the most popular sport in both parts of Belgium; also very popular are cycling, tennis, swimming, judo and basketball. The Belgium national football team has been among the best on the FIFA World Rankings ever since November 2015, when it reached the top spot for the first time. Since the 1990s, the team has been the world's number one for the most years in history, only behind the records of Brazil and Spain. The team's golden generations with the world class players in the squad, namely Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne, Jean-Marie Pfaff, Jan Ceulemans achieved the bronze medals at World Cup 2018, and silver medals at Euro 1980. Belgium hosted the Euro 1972, and co-hosted the Euro 2000 with the Netherlands.
Belgians hold the most Tour de France victories of any country except France. They also have the most victories on the UCI Road World Championships. With five victories in the Tour de France and numerous other cycling records, Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx is often regarded as one of the greatest cyclists of all time. Philippe Gilbert and Remco Evenepoel were the 2012 and 2022 world champions, respectively. Other well-known Belgian cyclists are Tom Boonen, Wout van Aert and Lotte Kopecky.
Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin both were Player of the Year in the Women's Tennis Association as they were ranked the number one female tennis player.
The Spa-Francorchamps motor-racing circuit hosts the Formula One World Championship Belgian Grand Prix. The Belgian driver, Jacky Ickx, won eight Grands Prix and six 24 Hours of Le Mans and finished twice as runner-up in the Formula One World Championship. Belgium also has a strong reputation in, motocross with the riders Joël Robert, Roger De Coster, Georges Jobé, Eric Geboers and Stefan Everts, among others.
Sporting events annually held in Belgium include the Memorial Van Damme athletics competition, the Belgian Grand Prix Formula One, and a number of classic cycle races such as the Tour of Flanders and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. The 1920 Summer Olympics were held in Antwerp. The 1977 European Basketball Championship was held in Liège and Ostend. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Schayer | Bobby Schayer | Bobby Schayer (born December 23, 1966, in Los Angeles, California) is an American drummer. He was a member of Bad Religion from 1991 to 2001. Schayer is from Encino, a suburb in the San Fernando Valley. He started drumming in 1976 at the age of 10, but it was not until 1980 that he became a student of original Circle Jerks drummer Lucky Lehrer.
Schayer has cited Tommy Ramone, Paul Cook, Clem Burke, Mick Tucker, Bun E. Carlos, Charlie Watts, and Keith Moon as some of his earliest drumming influences. He officially joined Bad Religion on April 1, 1991, after previous drummer, Pete Finestone, left the band after their fifth LP, Against the Grain. He was present on their sixth LP, Generator, in 1992. He also played drums on Recipe For Hate (1993), Stranger Than Fiction (1994), The Gray Race (1996), Tested (1997), No Substance (1998), and The New America in 2000. In 2001, he suffered an injury to his shoulder, and deciding to venture in a new direction, left Bad Religion. Schayer was replaced by Brooks Wackerman, formerly of Infectious Grooves and Suicidal Tendencies.
For over ten years from 2001 to 2011, Schayer was the drum tech for Sam Fogarino of the band Interpol.
Schayer currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Gillespie | Keith Gillespie | Keith Robert Gillespie ( ghih-LES-pee; born 18 February 1975) is a Northern Irish former professional footballer who plays as a winger for FC Mindwell in the Mid-Ulster Football League.
He began his career at Manchester United after winning the FA Youth Cup in 1992, before moving to Newcastle United, where he played in the UEFA Champions League. Gillespie also played in the Premier League for Blackburn Rovers, Leicester City and Sheffield United, helping Blackburn win the Football League Cup in 2002. Towards the end of his career, he played for Glentoran in the Irish League and Longford Town in the League of Ireland.
Gillespie earned 86 caps for Northern Ireland between 1994 and 2008, putting him 10th in their most capped players of all time. He had well-publicised issues with problem gambling during his career, and has since spoken out about gambling.
== Club career ==
=== Early career ===
Gillespie was born in Larne, County Antrim. His first years were spent in Islandmagee, County Antrim, where he attended Whitehead Primary School. He later moved to Bangor, County Down where he attended Rathmore Primary School and Bangor Grammar School. He was scouted playing for St Andrews FC from Belfast, playing in the DAWFL, and was the first professional footballer to come from this club.
=== Manchester United ===
Gillespie signed for Manchester United on leaving school in the summer of 1991, being a member of the FA Youth Cup winning side in 1992. Also in that team were Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Gary Neville and Robbie Savage.
Gillespie made his first senior appearance for Manchester United in the 1992–93 season. He scored on his debut against Bury in a 2–0 FA Cup third round triumph on 5 January 1993. He was issued with the number 31 shirt for the 1993–94 season with the introduction of squad numbers, but did not play any first team games and was loaned to Division Three club Wigan Athletic, scoring four goals in eight games.
Occasional appearances for United followed in 1994–95, but he was never able to displace Andrei Kanchelskis as United's first-choice right winger.
Gillespie scored his only league goal for Manchester United against Newcastle United in a 2–0 victory at Old Trafford in October 1994. He subsequently signed for Newcastle on 10 January 1995, as a £1 million component in the £7 million deal (£6 million cash) which took Andy Cole to Old Trafford.
=== Newcastle United ===
On 20 August 1995, the News of the World carried reports that Gillespie was subject of an approach from Alex Ferguson to return to Manchester United to fill the gap on the right wing being left by the sale of Andrei Kanchelskis to Everton, but the return to Old Trafford never happened and up-and-coming youngster David Beckham would go on to occupy that position. 18 years later, Gillespie confirmed that Ferguson did contact him regarding a possible return, but claims that he heard nothing more about the prospective transfer after that original telephone conversation with his former manager.
Gillespie stayed at Newcastle for three and a half years and during this time he played 143 games, including 15 European ties (in both the Champions League and UEFA Cup) and scored 13 goals. In both the 1995–96 and 1996–97 seasons he helped Newcastle to finish second in the Premier League (runners up to Gillespie's former club, Manchester United, on both occasions), being a key member of "The Entertainers". On the first occasion, the Magpies very nearly beat Gillespie's old club to the title, having been 10 points ahead of them by Christmas 1995 before a dismal final three months of the season saw the title sealed by Gillespie's former teammates. Initially injured from a Phil Neville tackle in a 0–2 defeat at Old Trafford on 27 December 1995 causing him to miss the following three games, at the end of the 1995–96 season Gary Lineker, then a BBC pundit, said that one of the main reasons that Newcastle lost out on the title race was because they dropped Gillespie (who had been supplying Newcastle's forwards with a stream of good crosses) for several key games in the latter part of the season.
In September 1996, Gillespie was outed as a problem gambler by The Sun. He then accepted a £5,000 payment by the same tabloid to publicly thank them for helping out his problem. Gillespie has publicly said that he would bet on matches involving his own team, and once lost £52,000 because Newcastle scored a late goal in a game against Stoke City that he had bet on them beating by less than 4 goals.
In his final full season at Newcastle, the 1997–98 season, Gillespie assisted two of Faustino Asprilla's three goals in a 3–2 Champions League victory over FC Barcelona on 17 September 1997. He also scored what he later claimed was his best goal for the club when playing up front due to an injury crisis at home to Blackburn Rovers in 1-1 draw on 25 October 1997. He also helped Newcastle to reach the FA Cup final. However, a foot injury sustained in a 0–2 defeat at Tottenham Hotspur on 25 April 1998 meant, despite a fitness test, he was not in the squad for the final and Newcastle lost to Arsenal. Despite being in manager Kenny Dalglish's plans, the following pre-season Gillespie failed a medical at Middlesbrough but eventually departed Tyneside in a £2.3 million move to Blackburn Rovers following the appointment of Ruud Gullit as manager and a final appearance in a 2–2 draw at Middlesbrough on 6 December 1998.
=== Blackburn Rovers ===
Gillespie was unable to help Blackburn avoid relegation in 1998–99, and manager Brian Kidd was sacked later in the year. Gillespie was initially out of favour with new manager Graeme Souness, and another loan spell at Wigan Athletic brought his total appearances for Athletic to 15, from which he scored four goals. He returned to the Blackburn side for the final months of the 2000–01 season, as the club gained promotion back to the Premier League. He also started in the 2002 Football League Cup Final, setting up a goal by Matt Jansen in the 2–1 victory over Tottenham Hotspur. Five seasons at Ewood Park brought 137 appearances and 6 goals.
=== Leicester City ===
Gillespie moved to newly promoted Leicester City on a free transfer on 8 July 2003, signing a two-year contract. He played 48 games and scored two goals in two seasons.
In March 2004, Gillespie and teammates Frank Sinclair and Paul Dickov were held in a prison cell for a week in La Manga, Spain, while charges were made against six more Leicester players. All nine men were cleared when forensic tests proved that none of them had any contact with the three women who accused them.
=== Sheffield United ===
Gillespie signed for Sheffield United on 5 August 2005, signing a one-year contract. This was then extended to June 2007 a month later. In his first season at the club, Gillespie played a role in Sheffield United's successful promotion campaign to the Premier League. Gillespie's most memorable goal for Sheffield United came against Charlton, where he scored the winner in the 88th minute with a stunning volley from 25 yards. This goal was also a nominee for the December Goal of the Month competition, which Paul Scholes eventually won.
On 20 January 2007, during a Premier League match against Reading at the Madejski Stadium, Gillespie was sent off for violent conduct, "throwing an elbow in the direction of" Reading's Stephen Hunt, "within 10 seconds" of coming on as a substitute - play had not even restarted following the substitution. As he made his way off the pitch, Gillespie "threw another punch" at Hunt. He submitted a transfer request soon afterwards, but in July of that year Gillespie recanted and signed a new two-year contract.
In July 2008, he limped out of a pre-season friendly at Bury and missed the start of the 2008–09 season. Having regained fitness he was unable to regain a first team place and was eventually loaned out to Charlton Athletic. He made only six appearances for the Addicks before being recalled to Bramall Lane as cover for mounting injuries.
Despite being recalled to Sheffield United, Gillespie failed to make another appearance and on 30 January 2009 his contract was terminated by mutual consent. He went to Bradford City with whose manager Stuart McCall Gillespie had been a teammate at Sheffield United. However, McCall insisted Gillespie was only training with the club to stay fit and help out the younger players, and not on trial.
=== Bradford City ===
Gillespie impressed McCall during training and told the manager he was very keen to gain match experience; as a result, Gillespie signed for Bradford City in March for the rest of the 2008–09 season. Gillespie was an unused substitute in their 1–0 defeat to Exeter City and so had to wait for his debut which came as a second-half substitute with City already 4–1 down to AFC Bournemouth three days later. After just three appearances Gillespie was not offered a long-term deal by Bradford City. In the summer of 2009 he had a trial with Hungarian side Ferencváros and had been linked with a move to the IFA Premiership.
=== Glentoran ===
In 2009, Gillespie made a shock move to the east Belfast club, Glentoran. It was believed that Gillespie's agents approached Glentoran. He made his debut for Glentoran against Ballymena United in the league, he had previously played for Glentoran the night before for the reserves against Ballymena; Glentoran lost 2–1 in his 1st senior appearance for, at the time, the current league champions. In June 2010, the club announced that Gillespie was to leave after just one season after he and the club failed to agree terms on a new deal.
=== Shamrock Rovers ===
In August 2010, Gillespie's former international teammate Michael O'Neill invited him to play in a friendly for Shamrock Rovers in a reserve game against his first club, Manchester United.
=== Darlington ===
In October 2010, Gillespie joined up with Conference National side Darlington, later signing with the club. He made three appearances before being released on 23 December 2010.
=== Longford Town ===
On 24 March 2011, Gillespie signed for League of Ireland First Division side Longford Town. Gillespie made his debut from the bench in a local derby against Athlone Town on 2 April with Gillespie's new side coming out on top by two goals to nil.
He was named on the League of Ireland First Division team of the season for 2012 and was also awarded Longford Town F.C. player of the year, as they lost in the promotion playoffs to Waterford United.
Gillespie scored his one and only Longford goal in May 2013 against Cobh Ramblers. Injuries hampered Gillespie during the 2013 season and he announced his retirement prior to the season's end. His final appearance was as a substitute during Longford's 3–1 victory at home to Finn Harps on 7 September 2013.
=== FC Mindwell ===
Gillespie came out of retirement in 2020, aged 45, to play for newly-formed Mid-Ulster Football League side FC Mindwell, a team set up to raise awareness of mental health issues.
== International career ==
Gillespie is currently tenth place in the list of appearances for Northern Ireland with 86 caps. He made his debut in September 1994 in a 2–1 home defeat by Portugal. He played an important role in his country's 3–2 qualifying win against Spain at Windsor Park on 6 September 2006. Gillespie was investigated by the Irish FA for his involvement in a fracas with George McCartney on the trip back home from a game in Iceland in September 2007. He was not involved with the Northern Ireland set-up since being omitted from the squad that faced San Marino in February 2009. His final cap was won in a 2–0 defeat by Hungary at Windsor Park in November 2008.
=== International goals ===
Scores and results list Northern Ireland's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Gillespie goal.
== Personal life ==
Gillespie was declared legally bankrupt on 1 October 2010 by the Belfast High Court. In 2013, he released his autobiography, How Not to Be a Football Millionaire, in which he describes his gambling addiction, estimating he lost more than £7 million. Reviewer Robbie Meredith of When Saturday Comes wrote that "It is too cliched to claim that Gillespie achieves redemption at the end of his tale. Rather he gains the uncertain gift of a better understanding of himself. In doing so, he provides a compelling glimpse into the dark void inherent in the modern age of adrenaline-fuelled football celebrity". Gillespie has supported the Gambling with Lives charity, which calls for tighter regulation of gambling and offers support for people with gambling problems.
== Honours ==
Manchester United
FA Charity Shield: 1994
FA Youth Cup: 1992
Blackburn Rovers
Football League Cup: 2001–02
Glentoran
Irish League Cup: 2009–10
Individual
PFAI First Division Team of the Year: 2012
Longford Town Supporters Player of the Year: 2012 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylotrupes_gideon | Xylotrupes gideon | Xylotrupes gideon, the brown rhinoceros beetle, is a species of large scarab beetle belonging to the subfamily Dynastinae.
== Subspecies ==
Seven subspecies have been identified.
Xylotrupes gideon australicus
Xylotrupes gideon borneensis Minck, 1920
Xylotrupes gideon gideon (Linnaeus, 1767)
Xylotrupes gideon kaszabi
Xylotrupes gideon lakorensis Silvestre, 2002
Xylotrupes gideon sawuensis Silvestre, 2002
Xylotrupes gideon sondaicus Silvestre, 2002
Xylotrupes gideon tonkinensis Minck, 1920
== Distribution ==
This species is widespread in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia: Java (nominotypical form), Borneo (borneensis), Sunda Islands and Moluccas.
== Description ==
Xylotrupes gideon can reach a length of 3.5–7 centimetres (1.4–2.8 in). As usual with rhinoceros beetles there is a great difference between the genders. Males are larger than females. They have two chitinous bifurcated horns, a thick thoracic horn and a smaller cephalic horn, which they use to eliminate their rivals during the mating period. These beetles are shiny dark red, dark brown, or black in coloration. The eyes are located on each side of the head. When disturbed these beetles make a hissing noise, produced by rubbing the tip of the abdomen against the edge the elytra.
Males with transverse, scantily punctured head; clypeus elongate, scantily and minutely punctured. Antenna with 10 segments. Pronotum and scutellum scantily and minutely punctured. Elytra and pygidium coriaceous, finely and scantily punctured. Dorsum of female is rugose, with coarsely and densely punctured pronotum. Pygidium finely rugose.
== Biology ==
One source gives the average duration of the different developmental stages; females lay about 55 eggs at one time in decaying logs; eggs mature in 21 days, where the larvae hatch from decaying coconut logs; the total larval period is 188 days, followed by 14 days of prepupal and 32 days of pupal periods; adult females are live about 102 days, whereas adult males survive 90 days. Other sources indicate that the larvae develop in decaying vegetable matter and usually take two years in development, the adult beetles live 2–4 months. A female can lay about 20-30 eggs but it depends on the place where they live.
This species is considered as a serious pest on coconut and also a minor pest on plum, okra, oil palm, sugarcane, Persea bombycina, rubber, banana, bamboo, Delonix regia, Cacao tree, poinciana, cassia, litchi, potato, apple and pear. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydbrook | Lydbrook | Lydbrook is a civil parish in the Forest of Dean, a local government district in the English county of Gloucestershire and is located in the Wye Valley. It is on the north west edge of the Forest of Dean's present legal boundary proper. It comprises the districts of Lower Lydbrook, Upper Lydbrook, Joys Green and Worrall Hill. It has a mile and a half long high street, reputed to be the longest high street of any village in England.
== Early history ==
The area now forming the present village of Lydbrook has been inhabited throughout history. Artifacts from Hangerberry and Eastbach on the south west corner of the parish, and Lower Lydbrook show evidence of widespread activity from the Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age 10,000–4000 BC) to the present. Flint stone tools from surrounding fields confirm that the area was occupied and farmed for more than 4,000 years.
Lydbrook was inhabited by the Romans as there is evidence of a Roman homestead along Proberts Barn Lane, Lower Lydbrook. The timber building detected on the site may date from the 1st century AD. A later building with stone walls was still inhabited in the 4th century. The site was a farming and agricultural centre in the Roman period. There is also evidence of Roman activity at Hangerberry with traces of a Roman pavement. A Roman road came from Ruardean through Lower Lydbrook (tracing the Wye) to English Bicknor. A further ancient road existed between Joys Green and English Bicknor via Bell Hill. Traces of a Roman Road also exist from Worrall Hill to Edge End. These Roman track ways show evidence of following previous prehistoric paths. In 1881 it was reported a large quantity of Roman coins were found at Lower Lydbrook. The Dean Archaeological Group's recent excavations in and around Lydbrook have recovered other coins from the Roman period, as well as other artefacts pre-dating and post dating this period.
== Parish boundaries ==
For those living today there may be differences as to what comprises Lydbrook. There is the village of Lydbrook which for many would include Worrall Hill, Hangerberry and Stowfield. There is also the Parish of Lydbrook which includes Joys Green, Hawsley and High Beech. The complexities of boundaries for Lydbrook have been greater in the past.
Before becoming part of Gloucestershire, prior to the 12th century, the Forest of Dean lay in Herefordshire. For example, Ruardean was an extension of the parish of Walford in Herefordshire and St John's church at Ruardean was a daughter church of Walford Church.
In the same time as the Forest of Dean came into Gloucestershire the Forest had become the preserve of the Crown. The area now covered by Upper Lydbrook and Joys Green, would have been served in times past by the church at Mitcheldean. However, from Norman times until the mid 19th century, it came under the Forest's Bailiff for Mitcheldean (in other words 'the Magna or Great Dean Bailiwick'), and thus was extra-parochial, or outside of a parish.
Lower Lydbrook was divided between the parishes of English Bicknor and Walford (served by the Church of St John the Baptist at Ruardean), with the Lyd forming the boundary. The mid-19th century saw the parochialisation of the Forest. Each area within the legal boundaries of the Forest came under both a church district and a civic district. In 1816 Upper Lydbrook and Joys Green came under the newly created church of Holy Trinity at Harrow Hill, with a mission chapel built in Upper Lydbrook in 1821. By 1842 this arrangement was formalised by the newly created ecclesiastical district of Holy Trinity (Harrow Hill, Drybrook).
The civic boundaries of the Forest differed from the church boundaries and from 1842 Lower Lydbrook and Upper Lydbrook became part of the Township of West Dean, with Joys Green coming within the westmost boundary of the Township of East Dean, the Railway line (constructed later in the 1860s) ran along this boundary. In 1852 Lower Lydbrook, Upper Lydbrook and Joys Green all became part of the newly created ecclesiastical parish of Lydbrook. It was much later in 1935 that the civic parish of Lydbrook was created.
Lower Lydbrook and Upper Lydbrook had developed as separate communities prior to the 17th century and remained so legally until the 19th century. A few of the older inhabitants of the village reported that a toll gate once existed between Lower and Upper Lydbrook.
Lower Lydbrook was settled as part of the parishes of English Bicknor and Ruardean, and was the focus of the iron industry.
You only have to look at the location of housing in Lower Lydbrook to see a defined community adjacent to the Wye River and Lyd brook. The pond also served as a focal point, as well a community meeting places. Lower Lydbrook people were buried in the churchyards of Ruardean and English Bicknor (as well as a number being buried at Welsh Bicknor across the Wye). Upper Lydbrook lay within the Forest boundary which had been part of the Bailiwick of Mitcheldean, and had been encroached (housing being built within what was once strictly a Crown preserve), serving as a focus for the mining community.
== Governance ==
Lydbrook falls in 'Lydbrook and Ruardean' electoral ward. This ward starts in the south east at Lydbrook and stretches to the north east at Ruardean. The total parish population taken at the 2011 census was 4,819.
== Present community ==
The present community of Lydbrook seems to have had its beginnings in the 13th century. In a record of a sale of trees in 1256, mention is made of 'the Mill of Lydbrook'. Further early notes on Lydbrook occur in a survey of the Forest of Dean in 1282. The Lyd (a brook, which flows into the River Wye, and not the one that flows to Lydney) formed, for part of its travels, the boundary between the Bailiwicks of Bikenore (English Bicknor) and Rywardin (Ruardean). Today many maps call the Lyd, Hough Brook, or Great Hough Brook, and How Brook which joins the Lyd is known on modern maps as Little Hough Brook. Listed in the 1282 entries of those who possessed cultivated land, William of Ludebrok (Lydbrook), appears under the parish of Bikenore, and under the parish of Rywardin. Rather than being two separate pieces of land in differing localities, it was probably that William's land will have included the brook, hence his inclusion in the records for both parishes. In addition, under the entry for Bikenore is recorded, Robert of Stoufeld (Stowfield). Thus the development of Lydbrook began at Lower Lydbrook. The village takes its name from the brook running its entire length – the 'loud brook' or lud brook to become Lyd Brook.
The village developed as a site for the local iron and coal industries with the houses as an encroachment into the Forest tracing the Lyd brook which provided the water needed for industry and domestic use. The development of the encroachment, continued into the Bailiwick of Magna Dean (Mitcheldean), the area which became known as Upper Lydbrook and Joys Green. The village only became a place of population of any size 17th century onwards, but grew steadily since to remain static for almost a century and a half at a population of about 2,500 between the 1850s and the beginning of the 1990s. However, from the beginning of the 1990s the community has begun to slowly depopulate. One call to fame of the recent past, which now is thankfully no longer true, is that Humphrey Phelps, in his book on the Forest of Dean recalls that in the 1950s Lydbrook had the highest incidence of tuberculosis in England.
== Lydbrook presently ==
Lydbrook has a shop and Post Office, a fish and chip shop, many local businesses and pubs which include; The Jovial Colliers Inn and Bunkhouse (recently rebranded in house as The Colliers Inn), The Royal Spring Inn, The Forge Hammer Inn, Waterloo Business Park and Lydbrook Valley Garage/Autospray as well as the River Wye Lodge which replaced former The Courtfield Arms. The village is home to the Lydbrook brass band, a flourishing ensemble whose TV appearances include the Lotto Advert in 2014 and Countryfile in 2019. In 2012 Lydbrook was featured on ITV and BBC news due to the fact that the centre of Lydbrook was flooded and under up to 4 feet (1.2 m) of water. This was despite being nearly 1⁄2 mile (0.80 km) away from the local River Wye which is situated at the bottom of Lydbrook. This was due to a blockage of an old culvert under the road which contains a stream and the surface drainage for the entire village. In 2017, the Forestry Commission commenced a project to introduce Eurasian beavers into an enclosed area of land uphill of the village, as part of a habitat-management programme: among the anticipated outcomes is the reduction in likelihood of further flash floods occurring.
=== Lydbrook Parish Council ===
In 1935, with the creation of the civic parish of Lydbrook, Joys Green became a full part of the parish.
== Industry ==
Although Lydbrook is now developing as a useful centre for exploring both the Wye Valley and the Forest of Dean with its several hotels and bed and breakfast establishments, its traditional connection is with industry especially with the iron, coal and timber industries.
The arrival of the Romans brought with them the iron industry into the forest. The proven presence of a Roman community in Lydbrook provides for the possibility of an early iron industry. There will certainly have been iron ore and coal mines, at low or outcrop level. Records for industry in the post Roman and pre Norman periods are scarce and it is only from the 13th century that numerous records can be found. However, details about Lydbrook can be difficult to isolate, as Lydbrook was not a parish in its own rights, and activity at Lydbrook, is activity at Ruardean or English Bicknor. One attraction of Lydbrook was the northward fast flowing Lyd.
In the 1590s records exist of what became known as the Upper Forge at Lydbrook built by Thomas Bainham and later owned by Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex. In 1628 it was described as standing on "Hangerbury Common, below the King's Forge". By 1668 the Upper Forge had disappeared. Three other forges existed. The Middle Forge built in the 1590s was opposite what is now Beard's bakery building. After the demise of the original Upper Forge, the Middle Forge eventually took on the name of Upper Forge. The Lower Forge was built in 1610 (standing within two hundred yards from the Wye). Standing up-stream from the Upper Forge was the King's Howbrook Forge (also known as the Lydbrook Forge) built in 1612/13. This stood opposite what is now Brook House (was once the Yew Tree Inn). In March 1650 the Forge was demolished. Not far away and built in the same period was the King's Furnace powered by the Lyd (where the How brook joins the Lyd) this ceased by 1674. By the early 18th century only two forges existed, the Upper Forge (the renamed old Middle Forge) and the Lower Forge. In 1702 a further forge existed, although its location is now unknown, the New Forge. This forge was somewhere between the two others as it took on the name of 'Middle Forge'. By 1818 after many changes of hands both owners and tenants, the Partridge family dominated the iron works at Lydbrook. In 1622 there are details of a grist mill and a battering works nearby a disused cornmill. The Lower Forge became in its turn a Corn Mill. Existing also in Lydbrook around the 1690s was an Anvil making works.
Roaring Meg (cannon), on display at Goodrich Castle, was made in Lydbrook in 1649.
By 1798 tinplate production began in Lydbrook through the agency of the Partridge and Allaway families (Thomas Allaway was a tenant of the Patridges). The Upper and Lower Forges had been converted to tinplate works by the Partridges and then were leased by Allaway in 1817. It has been argued that tinplate production began in Lydbrook in 1760, which would have made it the earliest centre for tinplate production. The Allaways firm became 'Pearce & Allaway' in 1820, and then in 1850 'Allaways, Partridge & Co'. In 1871 the business was leased to Richard Thomas who moved into the village and lived at the Poplars, Upper Lydbrook. Thomas expanded his business taking over Lydbrook Colliery and Waterloo Colliery. Richard Thomas died in 1916. The works were closed during the First World War and ceased operating in 1925. The early tin works and rolling mills stood where Meredith & Sons and Lydwood works are today.
In 1818 James Russell purchased the Ironworks upstream of the Upper Forge, opposite the Bell Inn, where he created a wireworks. The enterprise was run by the family until its closure between 1890 and 1900.
In 1912, Harold J Smith purchased land at Stowfield and erected the Lydbrook Cable Works. The First World War provided a number of contracts with employee numbers expanding from 40 to 650 with double shifts being worked. With the end of the War, came a slump in business, and in 1920 the Official Receiver was brought in ending Smith's connection with the factory. The business was bought in 1925 by Edison Swan Electric Company.
With the greater resources available the plant at Stowfield further expanded, and was well placed to help with the Second World War possessing one of only four machines for making lead alloy tube needed for P.L.U.T.O. – (Petroleum Lines Under The Ocean), which allowed fuel to be supplied to the Allied invasion force in Europe from Britain. In the late 1940s, Edison Swan was swallowed up by Associated Electrical Industries. Integrated with the Siemens Brothers Cable Works at Woolwich the Stowfield Factory at its height employed approximately 1,100 people. The Cable Works came to an end in 1966 when the factory was bought by Reed Paper Group, which in its turn was taken over by a Swedish Company SCA.
The 18th and 19th centuries saw the village grow through the rise of industry. The first commercially successful blast furnace was sited in Lydbrook and was working as early as 1608. By the 18th century, Lydbook was an important location for the production of tin plate, and a book published in 1861 compared Lydbrook to Sheffield. At the beginning of the 19th century the iron trade was in decline but the coal industry was growing fast. Lydbrook having its own collieries – Arthur & Edward (also called Waterloo as it opened in 1815), The Deep Level, The Old Soot Bag, The Old Engine, Worrall Hill Mine. Lower Lydbrook's situation by the Wye brought about its importance as being a loading place for coal to be taken by barge to Hereford. The flat bottomed barges were dragged originally by men – until the construction of a tow path in 1811. This trade declined after the construction of the Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal, but the canal was soon superseded by the railways, which as far as Lydbrook is concerned has 'come and gone'. The community was served by two railway stations and a halt, Upper Lydbrook (the Halt), Lower Lydbrook and Lydbrook Junction. Not even the famous Lower Lydbrook Viaduct remains which enabled the Severn and Wye Railway from Cinderford via Bilston and Serridge to connect with the Ross and Monmouth Railway. The viaduct rose some 87 feet above the roadway below, linking Forge Hill on the east with Randor on the west. It was built in 1872 and first used 26 August 1874. The line was closed to passengers in 1929 and to goods in 1951. It was dismantled in 1966.
New industries replaced the old with the rise of a cable works, but this closed in 1965, replaced by Reed Corrugated Cases (since mid-1991 renamed SCA Packaging Ltd). Others in Lydbrook found employment with Rank Xerox at Mitcheldean. Other employment in the village is offered through the existence of a small number of light engineering works and three saw mills. The new industries differ from the old because they did not grow out of the Forest because of the minerals, but because of the availability of a work force. Only the saw mills (employing a small number of people) represent a connection with traditional Forest industry. Modern road communications with the surrounding areas has opened the village up to outsiders with the new phenomenon of holiday homes, being once the cottages of the Foresters.
== Local schools ==
Almost forgotten as a fact is the place the churches played in providing education in Lydbrook. Situated in Lower Lydbrook was a school provided by the Goff Endowment Charity. The venture lasted from 1820 to the late 1830s. The school in Upper Lydbrook was founded by the Church of England, which had provided a series of schools throughout the Forest in Mitcheldean, Christ Church, Drybrook, Woodside, the Hawthornes, Lydbrook, Park End, and Cinderford.
The local school was founded by the Reverend Henry Berkin, as part of the National Schools, who erected a chapel schoolroom in 1822. The original building measured 50 feet long by 30 feet wide, and was fitted with benches with railed backs, and in the words of Henry Berkin "will contain about 400 persons". After 1851, with the erection of Holy Jesus Church, the chapel continued as a school and also served as the church hall. In 1872, fifty years on from 1822, the allocation of space being more generous per person, the school was (according to the record of the time) enlarged to "seat 250 pupils". On 20 January 1908 the beginnings of a new school had been erected as the 'Lydbrook Temporary Council School' to 'relieve the Lydbrook National School', with an intake of 35 boys. These will have been the senior boys. The new buildings were being erected across the main road from the old school on the west side of the village. By the autumn of 1909 the new school had been completed. The Headmaster, Mr Bishop transferred with the pupils on 6 September 1909. The school was due to be opened 30 August 1909, but the building work had not been completed so the children had the benefit of being granted an extra week's holiday. The registered number of 26937 belonging to the Lydbrook Church of England Infant School (allotted in April 1897) was transferred to the Lydbrook Council Infants' School, 30 August 1909.
Joys Green school was erected in 1882 as a result of the Education Act of 1870, and was implemented by the Dean School Board which in those years had the management of the schools in the area. School meals began in both schools in the early 1940s.
Currently now, Joys Green Primary School was closed and is now a Young Persons Directorate. All students were transferred to Lydbrook when this happened. Lydbrook School is still headed by Executive Headteacher Simon Lusted. The past two Ofsted reports that Lydbrook School have had have given them ratings of Outstanding and Good with Outstanding features.
== Other notable buildings ==
=== The Priory ===
The oldest surviving building in Lydbrook is today known as The Priory, which in fact had never been a Priory, but was originally known as Lidbrook Farm. Once the home of the Probert family. The architectural design requires a date in the mid-16th century for this building, owing to the close timbered framework when oak was more plentiful, as opposed to square timbered style of the later period. There is a secret room in this building and claims for tunnels extending from Courtfield and the Anchor Inn. A Priest hole has been argued for, but smuggling has been suggested as an alternative. The house is also reputed to be haunted.
=== The Old House ===
Further up the village, in Central Lydbrook, opposite The Anchor Inn is the second oldest house in the village. This is (rather confusingly) called The Old House, and is a red-bricked and square-timbered house which at one stage belonged to Roger Kemble, father of Sarah Siddons (née Kemble – a famous actress 1755–1831). It has an extension built on the side which boasts the date '1718'. It is a Grade II* listed building.
Both The Priory and The Old House are situated in the oldest parts of the village in Lower and Central Lydbrook. It would not be surprising if even older structures were eventually discovered within other houses in Lower Lydbrook.
=== Outlying neighbourhoods ===
The two largest centres of housing positioned west and east of the valley are Worrall Hill and Joys Green. The former district took its name from the Worrall family of English Bicknor and the name 'Joys Green' came from Jay's Green on account of the numerous Jays seen in that locality.
== Centres of community ==
=== Old School Rooms ===
The Church of England mission chapel completed in 1822, not only provided a place of Christian worship, but provided a school (hence its title of the old school rooms) and a church hall. After 1909 with a new school replacing the building, and a parish church replacing it as a chapel, the mission hall served as a parish hall with all manner of activities taking place.
=== Reading Rooms ===
Another early meeting place was the old 1 penny reading rooms in Mill Lane. The reading rooms were provided by the owners of the tinplate works which began in the mid-19th century. The reading rooms closed down in 1928/9.
=== Anchor Hall ===
The Anchor Hall adjacent to the Anchor public house provided a meeting place in the early part of the 20th century. A cinema was installed in 1914 run by the Albany Ward Company. The Anchor Hall closed in the mid-1920s.
=== Memorial Hall ===
During the Great War a committee was formed to provide items for the welfare of the servicemen on leave. After the War the committee was left with £100. The committee and the Men's Institute (founded in 1892) formed a general committee and proposed the building of a Memorial Hall. Public subscriptions were sought, and a grant from the United Services Fund of £88 was obtained. The local Women's Institute had an original aim of erecting their own headquarters but joined in with the Memorial Hall committee providing from their own funds £100. In 1920 the committee purchased the building and lands known as 'The Poplars', and on 11 November 1926 the Lydbrook Memorial Hall, Men's and Women's Institute came into being at a cost of £3,150 opened by the blind Victoria Cross holder of Coleford, Captain Angus Buchanan.
== History of Christian worship in Lydbrook ==
=== Church of England and the Lydbrook Mission Chapel ===
In 1809 the Reverend Henry Berkin began his appointment as an assistant curate of the parish of Mitcheldean. Adjoining this parish were Forest areas which have since become the parishes of Drybrook and Lydbrook. Henry Berkin became concerned as to the plight of the Foresters "destitute of churches or ministers whom they could call their own". In 1812 he travelled around the areas of Forest adjoining his parish, visiting cottages where families would gather to hear him teach. Large crowds of up to 200, would gather in some places to hear him explaining the Holy scriptures. In 1814 Henry Berkin moved to a curacy at Weston-under-Penyard, but maintained a connection with the Forest. At Harry Hill, the Foresters encouraged him to build a large place for a regular meeting. After meeting with the Bishop Dr Ryder, Henry Berkin set about building a church, the Foresters could call their own and in 1817 Holy Trinity Church was built, serving both Drybrook and Lydbrook, Henry Berkin becoming the first perpetual curate (now styled 'Vicar'). The missionary work still continued in the cottages at Lydbrook, but it was not too long before Henry Berkin built a small mission chapel to serve Lydbrook in 1821, completed in 1822 (on the site of the present vicarage). The chapel functioned as a school, a place of worship, and as a place for social gatherings. It was served by the assistant priests appointed by Henry Berkin, with residence in Lydbrook. The salary of the curate at Lydbrook was at least in 1835, according to the records, supplied by a gentleman who was above 90 years of age. Lydbrook chapel was the fourth church in the Forest. (Upper Lydbrook being within the Forest boundary). The first church within the Forest was Christ Church in 1816. The second being Holy Trinity. The third church within the Forest was St Paul's, Park End completed at the beginning of 1822.
==== Curates of Holy Trinity serving at the Lydbrook Mission Chapel ====
1821 – Isaac Bridgeman
1822 – J. Herbert
1822 – W. Marshall
1824 – W. Burkitt
1827 – J. Chell
1840 – R. T. Budd
1844 – W. C. Badger
1846 – J. G. Croker
1848 – G. Tatam
1851 – H. Algar
=== Methodist Church ===
In the second decade of the 19th century, the Reverend William Woodall, Wesleyan Methodist minister of Monmouth had established a preaching circuit within the Forest of Dean and as part of this venture, a house was registered for worship in Lydbrook on 15 May 1813. Despite this early foothold, it took until 1864 to build a small chapel in Lower Lydbrook. The chapel was situated almost under the viaduct. From 1824, James Roles of the Oakengates Primitive Methodist circuit had established a circuit of cottage meetings at Pillowell, Lydbrook, Broad Oak, Little Birch, West Hide, Shecknal, Coppice Wood, Garroway Common, and Yorkley. The usual custom of the Primitive Methodists was to name the chapels after Old Testament place names. By 1828 the Primitive Methodists had built the 'Ebenezer Chapel' at Upper Lydbrook. It had the honour of being the first Methodist church in the Forest. It was first enlarged in 1852 (the same year the new parish church was opened). The year after, in 1853 Charles Dickens had published his 'Christmas Stories' containing the 'Christmas Carol' which portrayed the character 'Ebenezer Scrooge' associating the name with a foreboding character. The chapel was further enlarged bringing about the present building completed in 1912, with the name 'Ebenezer' being omitted. A second primitive Methodist chapel 'Mount Tabor' was built at the Reddings in 1862. Schoolrooms were added in 1892. The Wesleyan chapel closed in 1956. The congregation and cause of the Wesleyans had never been very large in Lydbrook. The redundant Wesleyan chapel served as a warehouse until its demolition in 1966. After 1934 with the Methodist Church Union all the chapels belonged to the same denomination and were served by the same minister and two chapels still served the area. Mount Tabor chapel closed in 1960 and was sold and is currently being turned into flats. Sadly on Sunday 28 July 1991 the last of the Methodist chapels in Lydbrook closed. One consolation was that the Sunday school – 'Sandra's group' as it was known, transferred to the parish church to become 'The Sunday Club'.
=== Baptist Church ===
The Baptist church at Lower Lydbrook did not owe its impulse to the Coleford mission but to work carried on in Herefordshire. Mr Edward Goff who died in 1813 had left eleven thousand pounds to establish schools for the benefit of poor children in Herefordshire and places contingent. Schoolmasters were employed during the week for the education of the children, and on the Sunday were employed for preaching. A Mr Wright had established a schoolroom in 1820. The building doubled up for Baptist worship and preaching on Sundays and was licensed as such on 7 November 1823. The work continued in Lydbrook until sometime in the late 1830s. For nearly two decades there existed two chapel schoolrooms. The mission chapel at Upper Lydbrook would have been the larger of the two and by 1935 had grown to such a large size in congregation, thoughts were on enlarging the building. The fortunes of the Baptist cause may not have fared so well as the endowment grant was transferred to Lay Hill Baptist church in Herefordshire proper. Whilst the loss of the schoolmaster meant the loss of a full-time worker for the Baptist cause in Lydbrook, the main concern of the Goff Charity was education, and this was probably being served by the Anglican mission chapel founded a little after. In addition by the middle 1820s the Baptist were competing for the affections of the resident population with four other denominations (Anglican, Wesleyan Methodist, Primitive Methodist, Independent). The church did not survive the loss of the school and schoolmaster. In 1857 twelve members separated from Lays Hill Baptist and re-formed the Lydbrook Baptist Church in the old reading rooms. In 1863 the church appointed its first Minister, and the services at the Old Reading Room were packed to capacity, so land was purchased at Lower Lydbrook, and a church completed and opened in November 1864 at the cost of £700-0-0. In the spring of 1872 a foundation stone of an enlarged chapel was laid, but the work was held up owing to the local navvies taking up work with the creation of Lydbrook branch railway (presumably better paid!). The line was completed in August 1874 and allowed the building of the enlarged chapel to continue, and this was completed in September 1875.
=== United Reformed Church/Congregational ===
The founding of an Independent chapel in Lydbrook may well owe itself to a former Anglican priest. On 11 March 1821, the Reverend Isaac Bridgeman was appointed assistant curate to the Reverend Henry Berkin. In addition to the mission work at Lydbrook, Henry Berkin had founded a chapel-schoolroom at Littledean Hill. Curates to Berkin served at both mission chapels, but were based at Littledean. Bridgeman had developed an affection for nonconformists and often worshipped and worked with them. Due to this 'irregularity' on 4 November 1822, the Bishop of Gloucester revoked his licence and interdicted him from officiating in any church in the Diocese of Gloucester. Bridgeman stayed within the Forest and by 1823 had built up five congregations, one of which was sufficiently large enough to build a chapel 'The Tabernacle' at Brains Green, Blakeney Hill, this becoming Bridgeman's mission base. The congregation at Lydbrook met at the house of James Russell, ironmaster. Bridgeman will have used the following he built up at the Lydbrook Mission Chapel to create the independent congregation. Initially Bridgeman used the Church of England Liturgy but by 1825 had joined himself to the Congregationalists and thus further their missionary endeavours within the Forest of Dean. It was a further sixty one years before the Congregational chapel was built at Worrall Hill in 1884. The chapel was enlarged in 1888. In 1972 it became part of the United Reformed Church with the Union of the Congregational church and Presbyterian church.
=== Mission Chapel, Forge Hill ===
The last of the seven church buildings to be erected in Lydbrook was the Independent mission chapel on Forge Hill, built in 1889. The Reverend Arthur William Latham, Baptist minister at Lydbrook 1883–1900 appears on the Deeds as a Trustee and is also mentioned throughout the account rendered by the solicitor to the Trustees. The Baptist involvement was probably due to a dispute between the founders of the mission as to whether there should be a Trust Deed or not. Mr Latham, Baptist minister for Lydbrook was called in to advise on the Trust Deed. The mission seems to have been, and remained a joint venture between Non-conformists. It certainly always remained an independent venture. Once full to capacity, over the length of years the congregation declined to such a point where only occasional services were held, and the building eventually fell into disuse. Previously to this decline services were held most Sunday afternoons, with an average attendance of 8. A ladies' meeting was held on Thursday evenings. The chapel closed in 1980. When the last remaining Trustee of the mission died (Alderman Stan Hatton), the Charity Commission approached the vicar of Lydbrook (the Reverend Stuart Parker) who organised four new trustees (one from each of the four Lydbrook Churches) to consider the charity's future.
==== Church at Joys Green ====
On 20 August 1989 the first of a series of monthly church services was held at 6 pm at Joys Green School, sponsored by the parish church. The frequency was increased to fortnightly in October 1991. In the summer of 1991 the Baptist followed holding a monthly morning service in the school.
=== Church of Holy Jesus and the Parish of Lydbrook ===
In 1842 the Crown divided the Forest into ecclesiastical districts, one of which was the Holy Trinity district. Within that district, the Forest Church, served the village of Drybrook and the daughter church, the mission chapel served Upper Lydbrook. By the middle 1830s the congregation at the Lydbrook mission chapel had so grown, that in 1835 at a meeting of the Dean Forest Commissioners, following representations from the Bishop of the Diocese and clergy of the Forest, it was recommended that the mission chapel at Lydbrook be enlarged to the status of a church. Although this recommendation was not followed through, in the late 1840s a new church was planned. The work on Lydbrook parish church began in 1850 and was completed in 1851, when Lydbrook became a parish in its own rights and with its own vicar. Although the first building for worship in Lydbrook was erected in 1822, the church began well before then with Henry Berkin's itinerant preaching starting in 1812.
On Sunday 12 August 1850 the foundation stone of the new church was laid. The Reverend J Burdon, Rector of English Bicknor (who was responsible for the spiritual welfare of those living in the area of Lower Lydbrook within his parish) had worked hard to accomplish the building of the church, collaborating with the Reverend H G Nicholls, perpetual curarte of Drybrook, the Reverend William Penfold, perpetual curate of Ruardean (appointed March 1851, Ruardean having become an ecclesiastical parish in its own rights in 1844), and the Reverend E Machen, rector of Mitcheldean. The building cost the grand sum of £3,500. The largest proportion of this money -a generous donation of £2,000 was a gift from Edward T Machen, Deputy surveyor of the Royal Forest (father of the Rector of Mitcheldean) and his relatives. Messrs Allaway-Partridge gave £250 and a grant of £230 given by the 'Incorporated Society for Promoting the Enlargement, Building and Repairing of Churches and Chapels' on the condition that the seats were to be free for the use of the poor for ever. The word 'free' was to be painted in a conspicuous manner on each seat.
As the foundation stone was laid just after the feast of the Name of Jesus (7 August 1850) the dedication became 'The Holy Jesus'. The dedication was once thought to be unique, but two other churches have been discovered of similar dedication although having been built later; a Roman Catholic church in Manchester built in 1869–1872 by the architects J.A. & J.S. Harrison which was dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus and the Church of the Holy Name, Cumbernauld New Town, Glasgow, part of the Scottish Episcopal Church and dedicated in 1958. The Church at Lydbrook was consecrated on 4 December 1851 by Dr Ollivant, Bishop of Llandaff (Dr Monk, the Bishop of Gloucester being to ill to attend). Upwards of a 1,000 people attended, 50 of these being clergy.
From then on Lydbrook was a parish on its own. In 1858 the reported attendance was 150 attending Matins and 250 attending Evensong! The number of communicants for the parish in that year is given as 40 per week. The present day figure stands at around 35, with a higher average throughout the year of about 40 per week.
The original chapel served as a National Day School until 1909 and was used for church functions until its dilapidation in the 1960s. In 1975 it was demolished to make way for the present vicarage, which is the third in the village. The first vicarage, built in stone stands to the south east of the church 500 yards south, down the course of the old railway line. In May 1879, the vicar, the Reverend Henry Hoitt applied for permission to walk on the line from the vicarage to the church and schools. The Severn and Wye Railway granted this request but limited to Sundays only. The vicarage was sold in 1961 due to extensive repairs needed. The house now serves as a Bed and Breakfast establishment under the name 'The Old Vicarage'. A new house was purchased, 'Mirey Stock' in 1962, 3/4-mile south of the church. This served as the second vicarage. Its distance from the church in severe weather proved impracticable, hence the building of the present vicarage in 1975.
The patronage (or the right to present a priest for appointment as vicar) originally belonged jointly to the Crown and Queen's College, Oxford. The two patrons took turns in presenting new vicars. In 1884 the alternate right of patronage was transferred from Queen's College to the Bishop of Gloucester. In 1961 the Crown transferred its interest in the patronage to the Bishop, leaving the Bishop of the Diocese as the sole patron. Although legally, the Bishop has the right to appoint, advice has to be sought from representatives of the parochial church council.
== Railways ==
Lydbrook Junction was a former station on the Ross and Monmouth Railway between Ross-on-Wye and Monmouth Troy running through the scenic Wye Valley which ran from 1873 to 1959.
The station was constructed in the hamlet of Stowfield approximately half a mile from Lydbrook and its viaduct on the Severn and Wye Railway. It was located approximately 4 miles and 34 chains along the railway from Ross-on-Wye station. In 1874 the Severn and Wye Railway opened a branch from Serridge Junction and Cinderford, passenger services commenced in 1875. All passenger trains along the S&W branch were withdrawn from 1929. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Magazine | The Century Magazine | The Century Magazine was an illustrated monthly magazine first published in the United States in 1881 by The Century Company of New York City, which had been bought in that year by Roswell Smith and renamed by him after the Century Association. It was the successor of Scribner's Monthly Magazine. It was merged into The Forum in 1930.
== History ==
The initial editor was to have been Scribner's editor and co-owner Josiah G. Holland, but he died prior to the appearance of the first issue. He was succeeded by Richard Watson Gilder, the managing editor of Scribner's, who would go on to helm The Century for 28 years. Gilder largely continued the mixture of literature, history, current events, and high-quality illustrations that Holland had used at Scribner's.
The magazine was very successful during the 19th century, most notably for a series of articles about the American Civil War which ran for three years during the 1880s. It included reminiscences of 230 participants from all ranks of the service on both sides of the conflict. According to an author writing in The New York Times, the publication of The Century "made New-York, instead of London, the centre of the illustrated periodicals published in the English language…" The magazine was also a notable publisher of fiction, presenting excerpts of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884 and 1885 and Henry James' The Bostonians.
Upon Gilder's death in 1909, Robert Underwood Johnson replaced him as editor. According to Arthur John, the magazine's "later history was marked by sudden shifts in content, format, and editorial direction." Glenn Frank was editor from 1921 to 1925, a period during which The Century was known for its editorials on current events and began to cut back on illustrations, which were eliminated after Frank left the magazine. In 1929, due to competition from cheaper magazines and newspapers, The Century became a quarterly, and in 1930 it was merged with The Forum. At the time it folded, The Century had 20,000 subscribers, less than a tenth of its peak circulation of the late nineteenth century. Scribner's Monthly Magazine, the periodical that became The Century in 1881, should not be confused with the Scribner's Magazine that began publication in 1887.
The noted critic and editor Frank Crowninshield briefly served as the magazine's art editor.
== Philosophy and political positions ==
The tone and content of The Century changed over its long history. It began as an Evangelical Christian publication, but over time began to speak to a more general educated audience as it developed into the largest periodical in the country.
=== Religion ===
Novelist and poet Josiah G. Holland was one of the three original founders of Scribner's Monthly and wrote regular editorials for the periodical, setting the tone for the magazine's content. As Holland was deeply religious, Scribner's to a great extent reflected the views and concerns of the Evangelical Christian community. While hostile towards sectarianism within Protestantism, Scribner's initially took a strong stand against both Catholicism and those who doubted the divinity of Christ. In the first issue, under the heading "Papa and the Dogma", Holland claimed that it was freedom that made the Protestant nations of Europe strong while their Catholic neighbors were, as a result of their religion, in a state of decay. Less than one year later, the magazine attacked the skepticism of Henry David Thoreau. Mormon polygamy was also a frequent target. One contributor traveled to Utah to observe the Mormon settlement there and argued that the new sect would have to end its practice of plural marriage if it were to survive and American control could be exercised over the western territories.
At the same time, Scribner's Monthly, being non-dogmatic in its Protestantism, expressed little hostility towards modern science. For example, a three-part series discussed how believing Christians should meet the intellectual challenges of religious skepticism, and in 1874 two writers engaged one another in a debate over whether Christians should attempt to prove the divinity of Christ through science.
By the end of the 1870s, however, Scribner's had departed from its original Evangelical orientation. An April 1879 editorial declared all seekers of truth, whether believing Christians or not, to be allies, regarding this new view as simply an application of the Golden Rule. Catholics were said to have just as much to teach Protestants as Protestants had to teach Catholics. After the magazine became The Century in 1881, it continued to hold onto this secular outlook under Gilder. The break with the past was reflected in the magazine's changing treatment of the question of evolution. In 1875, Scribner's argued that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that Darwinism was true and attributed its wide acceptance to a contemporary bias towards novel ideas, even though the author did not on principle reject the idea that proof could be forthcoming. Upon the death of Charles Darwin in 1883, however, The Century published a laudatory tribute to the scientist written by Alfred Wallace. The magazine remained secular into its later days, in 1923 criticizing the "poisonous dogmatism" of the thought of William Jennings Bryan and what the magazine saw as his religious fundamentalism. Over the years, The Century published works by a large number of writers who were agnostics or atheists, including famous skeptic Bertrand Russell.
=== American nationalism ===
From the very beginning of his tenure as editor in 1881 to his death in 1909, The Century reflected the ideals of Gilder. He sought to create and help shape a "refined" American high culture, often contributing his own poetry to that end. Everything from its historical memoirs to political commentary reflected the influence of nineteenth century romanticism.
An unsigned May 1885 editorial expressed pride over the belief of the staff that the periodical had achieved wide circulation while remaining a quality product. This reflected the view that as a general matter there was usually a tradeoff between quality and quantity. The Century was generally seen as a conservative magazine and hoped to promote reconciliation between the North and South after the trauma of the Civil War. According to J. Arthur Bond, the magazine was instrumental in creating and shaping post-war American nationalism. In the words of one contemporary, Gilder's "spirited and tireless endeavor [ ] was to give the organic life of the American people purity of character and nobility of expression." During his tenure as editor, he promoted patriotism and the glorification of American historical figures. Seeing itself as having an "elevating" mission, its "mixture of nationalism and cultural advocacy informed even the most 'ordinary' of the magazine's articles." Often touching on many of these themes, Theodore Roosevelt wrote as a regular contributor to the magazine over three decades, a span which included one article he published while serving as president. Gilder developed relationships with several contemporary prominent figures, including a close friendship with Grover Cleveland which he wrote about upon the death of the former president. It has been argued that the decline in the popularity of the magazine from the 1890s on was connected to the general triumph of more egalitarian ideologies and the collapse of nineteenth century romanticism and idealism.
Concerns over national unity and the preservation of traditional American culture were reflected in the magazine's writings on immigration. An 1884 article discussed the composition and geographical distribution of immigrant populations, and expressed optimism over the prospect of the newer Americans assimilating into the larger population. At the same time, the article warned that measures should be taken against potential threats to national unity through fractionalization. As immigration increased over the next few decades, however, The Century became more alarmed over its effects on the future of the country, citing concerns over, among other matters, crime, illiteracy, and the overpopulation of cities. In 1904, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge took to the pages of the magazine to argue for the importance of keeping out "undesirable" immigrants. Twenty years later, editor Glenn Frank attacked the Ku Klux Klan and other nativists, but nonetheless wrote that "[t]he hour for very severe restrictions on immigration has come…" The same author returned to some of the same themes when he again attacked the KKK several months later for both its religious and racial doctrines.
=== Reconstruction and civil rights ===
In the immediate post-Reconstruction era, contributors to The Century debated what should be done about the postwar South and the newly free slaves, generally advocating for amicable relations between the regions and national unity. In 1873 and 1874, Scribner's ran a number of articles under the title "The Great South," a series which lasted fourteen issues. Based on Edward King's travels, the author's accounts generally portrayed the region in a sympathetic light and the series was warmly received by Southerners.
In 1876, Scribner's published a eulogy to Robert E. Lee, along with an editorial postscript praising the spirit of "sectional friendliness" of the piece.
On the question of the freedmen, a wide variety of contemporary views were represented. Writing for Scribner's in 1874, one author argued that blacks were unfit to be schooled with white children. On the other hand, an 1885 article by George W. Cable despaired over what he saw as the failure to protect the rights of southern blacks after the Civil War and argued that this was the result of the former confederate states evading federal law. Henry W. Grady, responding a few months later, disputed the earlier author's characterization of the situation, claiming that while legal rights had been granted, southern whites would never accept social integration between the races. Cable's criticisms of the ex-Confederacy also drew a rebuke by Robert Lewis Dabney.
Even when sympathetic to the cause of the newly freed slaves, writers who argued for helping them usually did so on paternalistic grounds. Bishop T. U. Dudley, for example, expressed doubt that much could be done to elevate the status of American blacks, but argued that Christian principles required helping them to the greatest extent possible.
The question of how much government policy could do to improve the circumstances of the former slaves continued to be debated over the decades. By the turn of the century, the debates were conducted in the language of science. Robert Bennett Bean, a medical doctor, published a 1906 article arguing that social policy should be based on realistic assessments of the relative mental capacities of blacks and whites. He claimed that blacks had, on average, smaller brains than Asians or Caucasians, a finding he attributed to heredity. Similarly, Charles Francis Adams Jr. spent two years in Egypt and the Sudan and referenced his experiences to argue in 1906 that the unfortunate circumstances of American blacks were mainly due to inherently low capabilities rather than history. In the same issue, however, the editors felt it necessary to mention the dissenting view of Franz Boas, who had painted a more optimistic picture of the potential of Africans in a different periodical two years earlier.
Booker T. Washington contributed four articles to the magazine in the first decade of the twentieth century, including one on "Heroes in Black Skins." and another that discussed efforts of blacks to become homeowners. A 1903 editorial sang the praises of Washington, calling him the "Moses of his people" and contrasting him favorably with W.E.B. Du Bois.
Reflecting the magazine's later shift leftward, Du Bois himself contributed an article to The Century in 1923. Several editorials around that time criticized the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Frank Tannenbaum, for example, wrote that the Klan of the Reconstruction era "was a reflex of the vindictiveness of Northern politicians and of the unscrupulous carpet-baggers who swooped down upon the South as a vulture upon a wounded and stricken victim." But the contemporary Klan, according to Tannenbaum, had no such justification and simply reflected fears of change and other pathologies of segments of the white population.
=== Progressive causes ===
The magazine championed several Progressive causes popular in its time. Among these were several civil service reforms including competitive examinations for public offices, which its writers saw as a way to promote good governance and reduce class privilege. Similarly, in 1894 Henry Cabot Lodge attacked the "un-American" practice of patronage. The Century also took up some of the environmental causes of its day, expressing satisfaction over the first attempts by the federal government to preserve the nation's forests, and in its later days supported women's suffrage. Finally, the magazine occasionally published articles in favor of eugenics. Frank, for example, while disparaging the racism of the KKK, encouraged what he called the better individuals of every race to use the tools of modern science to focus on improving the genetic quality of all populations.
=== Socialism and the labor movement ===
Scribner's generally defended the principles of classical economics and opposed socialism. William Graham Sumner wrote an article for the magazine in this vein praising traditional capitalist virtues such as self-reliance and individualism and attributing poverty to laziness and vice. On the other hand, Holland occasionally directed his ire towards "soulless" corporations that he accused of exploiting workers. In the view of the magazine, both capitalists and workers had moral obligations.
In its early days, The Century tended to adopt the same views as its predecessor. It defended capitalism, but refrained from unreflectively denouncing all forms of regulation. For example, an 1886 article opposed socialism but argued that in the future there would be more need for government activism than there had been in the past. Over the next few decades, The Century published several forceful denunciations of socialist theories and practice. In the 1890s Gilder and his editors took the position that labor unions were a foreign imposition, one of the many negative consequences of a relatively open immigration policy. Similarly, socialism was said to punish success, a concept that was anathema to the philosophy of his magazine.
Despite its conservative leanings, the magazine was open to dissenting views on economic issues in a way that it was not on deeper philosophical matters. The March 1904 issue allowed workers to publish contributions making the case for labor unions as appropriate checks on big business. Two years later, an editorial praised some of the accomplishments of the labor movement, while still maintaining that it needed to be reformed.
In its later years, after the Russian Revolution had brought the issue to the attention of the public, The Century opposed the spread of Communism. Employing Nietzschean terminology, Lothrop Stoddard in 1919 called Bolshevism "the heresy of the Underman," in contrast to Prussianism, the "heresy of the Overman," which had been defeated in World War I. He went on to argue that the Bolshevik Revolution had only been the local manifestation of a phenomenon that would have to be defeated worldwide and that Vladimir Lenin was "a modern Jenghiz Khan plotting the plunder of a world."
=== Turn-of-the-20th-century decline ===
While remaining extremely influential and well-regarded among the American elite, the popularity of The Century began to decline in the 1890s and never regained the prominence it had enjoyed as the leading American periodical of the late nineteenth century. By 1900, it had about 125,000 subscribers, half of the circulation it had in the 1880s. The Century suffered due to competition from other cheaper magazines, many of which Gilder and his staff considered vulgar.
Although Gilder had been a zealous reformer, as a conservative in politics and values he never embraced the Progressive movement. As its circulation declined, the magazine took a more pessimistic tone and began to write less and less about current events. An 1898 editorial criticized "the profusion in the literary and pictorial 'output' which has a tendency to befog the intellect and lower the standards of taste." A few months later the magazine lamented that the "age of reflection" had given way to the "age of agitation" spread by "[f]ast trains and cheap print…" Similarly, a 1902 editorial argued that divorce was a threat to civilization, and nothing would be more likely to cure this ill than literature "celebrating the sanctive and ever-lasting virtues of self-control, forbearance, devotion, and honor." Gilder characteristically saw a connection between a decline in morals and contemporary social problems and believed, conversely, that ennobling art could be a solution.
Even in an artistic sense, The Century of the late nineteenth century was slow to adapt to the times. In 1889, after much resistance it became the last major periodical to include photographic illustrations. The editors remained attached to painted drawings, which The Century had become renowned for. In the pages of the magazine Gilder explained this preference by complaining of the trend toward the "minute and literal representation of the visible world" seen in photography, as opposed to painting, which preserved only that which deserved to be recorded for posterity. He went on to argue that the spread of printing and writing would have a similar vulgarizing and cheapening effect on the written word.
Thus, the magazine maintained a great deal of self-awareness about the causes of its declining influence. According to one modern author, in the first decade of the twentieth century, Gilder and the other editors "continued to bear aloft the flame of the ideal" in a changing era and gave "no thought of cheapening the magazine to slow the steady drifting away of subscribers." After Gilder's death in 1909, The Century survived another two decades, but never regained its position as the leading American periodical.
=== Later years, 1909–1930 ===
Robert Underwood Johnson was editor of The Century from Gilder's death in 1909 until his resignation in 1913. The 1910s were marked by financial difficulties and a further decline, as the magazine competed with other periodicals of both similar and lesser quality. The Century still attracted some of the best fiction authors of the day, however. H. G. Wells' "prophetic trilogy" The World Set Free was serialized in the magazine in the first three issues of 1914.
Glenn Frank became editor of The Century in 1921, until he left this position in 1925 to become president of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He wrote a series of editorials in which he laid out his thoughts on the future of Western civilization. The editorials used colorful language and usually stressed the idea that contemporary social problems had created a need for social engineering and government activism in both domestic and international affairs. For example, in 1923, Frank wrote that Senator Lodge and his isolationist supporters were "the amoeba of politics, strange survivals from a prehistoric era of the lowest form of political intelligence." He later argued for what he called "an intelligently flexible conservatism." While warning of what he referred to as the dangers of reactionaries on the right and radicals on the left, Frank was also known for expressing a great deal of optimism over the prospect of using the social sciences to improve human affairs. This kind of enthusiasm for reform through science rather than moral progress was a noticeable break from the philosophy of the magazine during the eras of Holland and Gilder.
Other writers stressed similar themes throughout the Frank era. Reflecting the magazine's tilt to the left, a 1924 article called for "industrial democracy" to be adopted in American factories. Even the magazine's opposition to socialism was tempered, with Benjamin Stolberg arguing that the Red Scare had been an overreaction and that the Bolshevik threat to the United States had failed to materialize. The leftward shift during this time was not total, however, and, despite the tone that Frank's editorials gave to the magazine, The Century remained open to a wide variety of views. Noted conservative G.K. Chesterton, for example, contributed an essay that was highly critical of contemporary art.
Frank was succeeded in 1925 by Hewitt H. Howland, who remained as editor until the magazine merged with The Forum in 1930.
== Historical memoirs and major reporting ==
=== Civil War series ===
In 1877, Scribner's published a series of short accounts from those who took part in the Battle of Mobile Bay. The parent publishing house released a series of books, The Army in the Civil War, in 13 volumes penned by U.S. Army veterans who had participated in the operations that they wrote about. This series became a best-seller. The Century continued this kind of historical reporting with Alexander R. Boteler's first-person account of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry it published in 1883, followed in the same issue by a rejoinder from Frank B. Sanborn, a self-described "radical abolitionist" who had helped finance the mission.
Gilder, himself a Union veteran, soon began regularly running the reflections of major Civil War figures. Originally planned to run for twelve months, the series drew so much interest that it lasted for three years and eventually led to a four-volume book. Among the contributors to the series were Union generals Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and George B. McClellan. As The Century tried to avoid bias and promote American unity, it also sought out and accepted accounts from those on the Confederate side, including the generals James Longstreet and P. G. T. Beauregard. The contributions led readers who had served in the war to submit unsolicited recollections and previously unpublished documents to the magazine, in addition to criticisms and rebuttals of published pieces. These submissions were so numerous that in 1885 The Century began to include them in a section titled "Memoranda on the Civil War." The magazine had in effect become a forum for those who had fought each other in battle two decades earlier. In the pages of The Century, they could discuss their battles and mutually celebrate the bravery and heroism of both sides.
The idea for soliciting recollections of the Civil War originally came from assistant editor Clarence Buel, who later wrote of the difficulties he had in going about convincing former military leaders to share their experiences. In fact, Grant would not agree to contribute to the series until the former general and president had run into financial difficulties. The editors became engrossed in the Civil War project, and sometimes took tours of the famous battle sites, bringing along commanders to explain their exploits and artists to draw sketches of the scenes for the magazine. The Century office became a regular meeting place for former comrades and adversaries, as reflected in a letter an excited Gilder sent to his wife exclaiming "Grant one day and Beauregard the next!"
Before the publication of the series, Sherman was the only major figure of the war who had written a first-person account. Afterwards, the works that Grant, Sheridan, and McClellan contributed to The Century led to books by each of those generals.
As a result of the Civil War recollections, the number of subscribers to the magazine jumped to 250,000, a then unprecedented number for a magazine of its kind. Edward Weeks wrote that even by 1950 no "quality magazine" had ever had as many subscribers as The Century did in the 1880s, even though by that time the reading public had tripled in size. As of 1892, it was also the most widely circulated periodical of its price in England, with 20,000 subscribers.
=== Lincoln biography ===
The Century also acquired the rights to publish excerpts from the manuscript of a biography of President Abraham Lincoln written by his former secretaries John Hay and John G. Nicolay. The result was a series titled Abraham Lincoln: A History, which ran over three years. Decades later, The Century returned to Abraham Lincoln as a symbol of the republic's lost virtue. The February 1909 issue had a drawing of Lincoln on its cover and included twenty-two portraits of the former president within its pages along with pictures of his life mask and a cast of his hands. Gilder's contribution to the issue, "Lincoln the Leader", held the subject up as an ideal for modern statesmen to emulate.
=== Russian dissidents ===
In the late 1880s, George Kennan traveled to Russia and wrote a series of reports on the revolutionaries who had opposed Tsar Alexander II and been sent to prisons in Siberia. Seeing him as a writer sympathetic to the autocratic regime and hostile towards its opponents, the Russian government granted Kennan relative freedom to travel around the country. During his travels, however, the author changed his mind and wrote accounts that were highly critical of the regime. His reports included detailed illustrations of the suffering of those who suffered on account of their opposition to the government. In one article, Kennan told the story of how when the decision to assassinate the Tsar was made, 47 individuals volunteered to carry out the mission. Arguing that individuals fighting for civil liberties were rarely as fanatical as the Russian revolutionaries, Kennan wrote that he believed that it was the treatment of prisoners that led to such stringent opposition to the government. He noted that "playing upon the deepest and most intense of human emotions as a means of extorting information from unwilling witnesses" was routine in prisons holding political offenders. For example, a young woman was led to incriminate her loved ones by being told that they had already confessed. Sometimes, a revolutionary would be told that he was going to meet his mother, taken to her, and then stopped and later informed that he would only see her if he answered questions about his past activities. A twenty-two-year-old mother was falsely led to believe that if she did not cooperate with the authorities her infant could be taken from her. The author also reported that it was common practice for prisoners to be left in solitary confinement for years while government officials searched the empire for evidence with which the offenders could be charged. Kennan came to see himself as a voice for the Russian liberals and was subsequently banned from the country. His writings on Russia were eventually published in a two-volume book.
A representative of the Russian government replied to Kennan's arguments in The Century in 1893. and the magazine subsequently published a rebuttal by the author.
Kennan's writings on Russia and his subsequent activism were perhaps the main causes behind the rise of anti-Tsar sentiment and sympathy for the revolutionary cause among late nineteenth-century American elites. In addition to publishing magazine articles and books, the author also began to give popular lectures on the subject, including dozens of speeches in Chicago, New York City, and Boston. In order to make an impression on the crowd, Kennan would often appear in front of them in the ragged clothes and shackles of a Russian prisoner. This advocacy inspired the formation of a number of American organizations that took up the cause of the exiles, the most prominent of them being the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom.
=== Other histories and recollections ===
In the early 1900s, The Century continued to publish the writings of some of the most famous historians of the era along with first-person accounts of those who had worked in the highest levels of government.
Justin Harvey Smith published four articles on the American Revolution in The Century in 1902 and 1903. The next year, S. Weir Mitchell contributed a series on the life of George Washington as a young man.
In addition to Theodore Roosevelt, The Century claimed a handful of other presidents as contributors. Grover Cleveland provided an account of perhaps the tensest moment of his two presidential administrations, the 1895 Venezuela border controversy with Britain. Andrew D. White contributed a series titled "Chapters from My Diplomatic Life" on his experiences serving in Germany and Russia. In September 1901, Woodrow Wilson wrote "Edmund Burke and the French Revolution" while still a professor at Princeton. In 1907 future President William Howard Taft wrote about the Panama Canal while serving as Secretary of War.
Over the years, The Century also published first person accounts of individuals who had worked for various presidents. Col. William H. Cook, a bodyguard who served for over 50 years in the White House, shared his memories of the administrations of Andrew Johnson and Rutherford B. Hayes. Historian James Ford Rhodes also contributed an article on the Hayes Administration, which the editors called a kind of postscript to the last-published volume of his history of the United States.
== Science ==
In its early years, Scribner's Monthly published a regular feature titled "Nature and Science." Remaining consistent with its broad mission to educate the public, The Century published articles by some of the most prominent scientists and inventors of the day. Thomas Edison contributed to a symposium on roentgen rays and also once sat for an interview with the magazine. In the June 1900 issue, Nikola Tesla contributed a long article on "the problem of increasing human energy." In a piece that combined the magazine's interests in political and scientific issues, geneticist and Marxist J.B.S. Haldane published a 1923 article on the societal implications of technological progress.
== Literature and the arts ==
Gilder has been called the "literary arbiter of his time." Support for artistic excellence reflected his belief in the importance of self-improvement and the celebration of high standards. The works that appeared in his time also reflected the magazine's moralism, as they banned references to sex, vulgarity, and insults to Christianity.
The Century published the works of a number of major literary figures. In addition to the aforementioned works of Mark Twain and Henry James, pulp magazine author Ellis Parker Butler contributed 30 stories, articles and poems to the magazine between 1896 and 1913, including "My Cyclone-proof House", which appeared in the November 1896 issue. This short story was Butler's first piece published in a major magazine. His works were illustrated by such famous artists as Jay Hambidge, May Wilson Preston, Florence Scovel Shinn, Frederic Dorr Steele, and Frederic R. Gruger. The Century published a full-color portrait of Butler (with his wife Ada and daughter Elsie) in the December 1909 issue. The portrait was drawn by family friend Ernest L. Blumenschein. The magazine also published the work of Jack London and the first-person account and ink drawings from Tierra del Fuego of American painter Rockwell Kent.
Noted engraver Alexander Wilson Drake was a long-time contributor to both The Century Magazine and its earlier incarnation as Scribner's Monthly. The Century Company produced a memorial edition of Alexander Wilson Drake's fiction and art titled Three Midnight Stories in 1916. The Century also employed many notable editorial cartoonists, including Oscar Cesare.
Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák was another noted contributor to The Century Magazine, writing during his stay at the National Conservatory in New York in the 1890s. In 1894, The Century Magazine published his fine tribute to fellow composer Franz Schubert.
During the 1900s and 1910s the Anglo-Canadian poet, story writer and essayist Marjorie Pickthall was a regular contributor to The Century Magazine.
Marcus Eli Ravage, a Romanian-born Jewish-American essayist and biographer, published extensively in The Century Magazine during the 1910s and 1920s, covering immigration, Americanization, postwar Europe, and antisemitism; among these, his writings on antisemitism – including his provocative satirical essay "A Real Case Against the Jews" – were later stripped of their original ironic intent and misused by Nazi propaganda and post-war antisemitic discourse. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Lloyd | Earl Lloyd | Earl Francis Lloyd (April 3, 1928 – February 26, 2015) was an American professional basketball player and coach. He was the first African American player to play a game in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
An All-American player at West Virginia State University, Lloyd helped lead West Virginia State to an undefeated season in 1948. As a professional, Lloyd helped lead the Syracuse Nationals to the 1955 NBA Championship. In 1971, Lloyd was hired by the Detroit Pistons as head coach, becoming the first non-playing black head coach of the NBA and fourth overall black head coach in NBA history. Lloyd was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003.
== Early life ==
Earl Lloyd was born in Alexandria, Virginia, on April 3, 1928, to Theodore Lloyd Sr. and Daisy Lloyd. His father worked in the coal industry and his mother was a stay-at-home mom. Being a high school standout, Lloyd was named to the All-South Atlantic Conference three times and the All-State Virginia Interscholastic Conference twice. Lloyd did attend a segregated school but gives gratitude to his family and educators for helping him through the tough times and his success after school.
Lloyd was a 1946 graduate of Parker–Gray High where he played for Coach Louis Randolph Johnson. He received a scholarship to play basketball at West Virginia State University, home of the Yellow Jackets. In school he was nicknamed "Moon Fixer" because of his size and was known as a defensive specialist.
== College career ==
Lloyd led West Virginia State to two Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) Conference and Tournament Championships in 1948 and 1949. He was named All–Conference three times (1948–50) and was All-American twice, as named by the Pittsburgh Courier (1949–50). As a senior, he averaged 14 points and 8 rebounds per game, while leading West Virginia State to a second–place finish in the CIAA Conference and Tournament Championship. In 1947–48, West Virginia State was the only undefeated team in the United States, with a 30–0 record. Lloyd graduated from WVSU with his B.S. degree in physical education in 1950.
== Harlem Globetrotter ==
Prior to being drafted in the ninth round of the 1950 NBA draft, Lloyd starred in the lineup of the Harlem Globetrotters. Lloyd led the team to two wins over the reigning Minneapolis Lakers; this proved his talents beyond his race. Except for racial segregation, he was one of the finest artists of his time. Lloyd's talents were recognized amongst other black teammates, the two being Chuck Cooper and Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton. All three would go on to be drafted by the NBA, Clifton in 1950, Cooper in 1950, and Lloyd in 1950, the 100th overall pick.
== NBA career ==
Lloyd was drafted in the 9th round with pick #100 by the Washington Capitols in the 1950 NBA draft. Nicknamed "The Big Cat", Lloyd was one of three black players to enter the NBA at the same time. It was because of the order in which the team's season openers fell that Lloyd was the first to actually play in a game in the NBA, scoring six points on Halloween night. The date was October 31, 1950, one day ahead of Chuck Cooper of the Boston Celtics and four days before Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton of the New York Knicks.
Lloyd played in over 560 games in nine seasons. The 6-foot-5, 225-pound forward played in only seven games for the Washington Capitols before the team folded on January 9, 1951. He was then drafted into the U.S. Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. While fulfilling his military duty, the Syracuse Nationals picked him up on waivers. Lloyd served time fighting in the Korean War before coming back to basketball in 1952. In the 1953–54 season, Lloyd led the NBA in both personal fouls and disqualifications.
In 1954–1955, Lloyd averaged career highs of 10.2 points and 7.7 rebounds for Syracuse, which beat the Fort Wayne Pistons 4 games to 3 to win the 1955 NBA Championship. Lloyd and Jim Tucker became the first African Americans to play on an NBA championship team. Lloyd spent six seasons with Syracuse and two with the Detroit Pistons before retiring in 1961.
Regarding the racism black players faced in the early years of the NBA, Lloyd recalled being refused service multiple times and an incident where a fan in Indiana spit on him. He even went as far as to detail a time in which he was told to "go back" to Africa, and a plethora of times racial slurs were used towards him. However, Lloyd persevered and said that these instances only pushed him and made him play harder. Saying he didn't encounter racial animosity from teammates or opposing players, Lloyd said of fans' antics, “My philosophy was: If they weren’t calling you names, you weren’t doing nothing. If they’re calling you names, you were hurting them.”
"In 1950, basketball was like a babe in the woods; it didn't enjoy the notoriety that baseball enjoyed," Lloyd once said. "I don't think my situation was anything like Jackie Robinson's—a guy who played in a hostile environment, where some of his teammates didn't want him around. In basketball, folks were used to seeing integrated college teams. There was a different mentality."
"He's an unsung star. Anybody can score. Lloyd was an excellent defensive player. That was No. 1 on my roster", said his Syracuse coach Al Cervi.
In his NBA career with the Washington Capitols (1950–1951), Syracuse Nationals (1952–1958) and Detroit Pistons (1958–1960), Earl averaged 8.4 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 560 games over nine seasons.
== Coaching and scouting ==
According to Detroit News sportswriter Jerry Green, in 1965 Detroit Pistons general manager Don Wattrick wanted to hire Lloyd as the team's head coach. Dave DeBusschere was instead named Pistons player–coach. Lloyd was the first African American assistant coach and was named head coach for the 1971–72 season, making him the third African–American head coach, after John McLendon and Bill Russell. A 2–5 start to the following campaign resulted in Lloyd being relieved of his duties and replaced by assistant coach Ray Scott on October 28, 1972. He had an overall record of 22–55 with the Pistons.
Lloyd worked for the Pistons as a scout for five seasons. Lloyd is credited with helping draft Bailey Howell and discovering Willis Reed, Earl Monroe, Ray Scott and Wally Jones.
== Personal life ==
After his basketball career, Lloyd worked during the 1970s and 1980s as a job placement administrator for the Detroit public school system. During this time, Lloyd also ran programs for underprivileged children teaching job skills.
Lloyd served as Community Relations Director for the Bing Group, a Detroit manufacturing company in the 1990s.
Approached by a young African–American player who said he was indebted to Lloyd for opening the doors for future generations of black players, Lloyd replied that he owed him absolutely nothing.
“You cannot understand what an honor this is,” Lloyd said in 2007 about the court at T. C. Williams High School being named in his honor. “There’s no better honor than being validated by people who know you best. I will always, always treasure this.”
Lloyd and his wife, Charlita, had three sons and four grandchildren. Lloyd resided in Fairfield Glade, Tennessee, just outside Crossville, Tennessee, until his death on February 26, 2015.
== Honors ==
In 1993, Lloyd was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.
Lloyd was inducted into the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) Hall of Fame in 1998.
The state of Virginia, proclaimed on February 9, 2001, as "Earl Lloyd Day" by action of Virginia's Governor.
In 2003, Lloyd was inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor.
Lloyd was named to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Silver and Golden Anniversary Teams.
The newly constructed basketball court at T. C. Williams High School in Lloyd's home town of Alexandria, Virginia, was named in his honor in 2007. Lloyd attended Parker-Gray High School, as Alexandria's schools were racially segregated at the time. T.C. Williams—the subject of the motion picture Remember the Titans—was created as a combined, desegregated school two decades later.
In November 2009, Moonfixer: The Basketball Journey of Earl Lloyd, was released. Lloyd wrote this biography with Syracuse area writer, Sean Kirst.
In 2012, Lloyd was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.
In 2014, a statue of Earl Lloyd was unveiled at West Virginia State University in the Walker Convocation Center. That same year, the "Earl Lloyd Classic" began, hosted at West Virginia State.
In 2015 Lloyd, along with fellow basketball player Alonzo Mourning, was one of eight Virginians honored in the Library of Virginia's "Strong Men & Women in Virginia History" because of his contributions to the sport of basketball.
In 2018, the road running in front of the Walker Convocation Center at West Virginia State University was renamed "Earl Lloyd Way."
In 2022, the 200 block of Madison Street in the city of Syracuse was named "Earl Lloyd Way."
== NBA career statistics ==
=== Regular season ===
=== Playoffs ===
=== Head coaching record === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmela_Zumbado | Carmela Zumbado | Carmela Zumbado (born February 27, 1991) is an American actress. Her breakthrough role was as Delilah Alves in the Netflix thriller series You (2019). She subsequently earned praise for playing Ximena Arista in the drama film The Wall of Mexico (2019), and has additionally played Jeny B in the action film Need for Speed (2014) and Denise Martinez on the musical series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2019). She appeared on season nine of Chicago P.D. in a recurring role.
== Early life ==
Zumbado is a second-generation Cuban-American and was born and raised in Miami, Florida. She is the daughter of Emmy Award-winning photojournalist Tony Zumbado and Lilliam Zumbado.
She is also the oldest of three siblings and has younger sisters named Gigi and Marisela, who are also actresses.
== Career ==
Zumbado began acting in 2012, making her debut with two appearances on the television crime series America’s Most Wanted, appearing first as Karen Martinez, then as Teresa Martinez. In the same year, she appeared in the television film Freestyle Love Supreme as Rachel, a film which was later adapted onto Broadway. Zumbado continued to make appearances on shows such as Necessary Roughness and Graceland in 2013, and in the same year made a cameo appearance in the film Identity Thief, as a salesperson at a salon.
In 2014, she made her film debut as Jeny B in the action-thriller film Need for Speed. The film was a commercial success and critical failure. She made appearances on various television shows that same year, including a cameo appearance in the Netflix series Bloodline. Zumbado had a recurring role as Windi Stewart in the crime series NCIS: New Orleans and appeared as Susan in the crime series NCIS: Los Angeles. In 2016, she had a guest role as Denise Martinez on the comedic television series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which she later reprised in 2019.
In 2019, she starred as Ximena Arista in the drama film The Wall of Mexico, which was favorably received. In the same year, it was announced that she was cast in the role of Delilah Alves in the second season of the Netflix thriller series You. Zumbado had a guest role as Paloma Ball on the final season of the television series The Magicians, and played Gwen, the ex-wife of character Freddie Benson on the sitcom reboot iCarly. In 2023, she appeared as part of the main cast in season two of Power Book IV: Force as Mireya Garcia.
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
=== Television === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Wing | Fourth Wing | Fourth Wing is a new adult fantasy romance novel written by the American author Rebecca Yarros. It is the first book in the Empyrean series, following the journey of Violet Sorrengail, who is forced by her mother, General Sorrengail, to join the Basgiath War College and become a dragon rider in the kingdom of Navarre. Even though she has been trained her entire life to enter the Scribe Quadrant, Violet must endure deadly quests and competitions that push her to her limits while trying to avoid being killed by one of the most powerful riders in the quadrant, Xaden Riorson.
The book was published in the United States on May 2, 2023, by Red Tower Book, an imprint of Entangled Publishing. Its viral success within TikTok's reader community, BookTok, significantly contributed to its No. 1 ranking on The New York Times bestseller list. It won The International Book of the Year 2024 at the annual TikTok Book Awards. The book sold over 2.7 million copies in its first week and has been translated into approximately 30 languages.
Yarros has mentioned in interviews that the idea for Fourth Wing emerged when her publisher announced that they were going to start a romantic fantasy line, prompting her to submit five proposals. After several reviews, her publisher selected the third idea, which explored the Empyrean world. The inspiration for the story stems from her fascination with dragons, her military experience with her husband, and her personal struggles. Violet's physical fragility, as described in the book, was influenced by Yarros's own experience living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting both her and her children. Yarros has expressed a desire to represent people with chronic illnesses, showcasing that they can also be heroic.
== Plot summary ==
20-year old Violet Sorrengail is the youngest daughter of General Lilith Sorrengail, who leads the Basgiath War College in Navarre. Here, students choose to join one of four military branches: Infantry, Healer, Scribe, or Rider. Riders bond with a dragon, which allows them to develop a magical power known as a 'signet'. Despite having trained to be a scribe like her late father, and suffering from chronic pain and weak joints, Violet's mother orders her to join the Riders Quadrant - infamous for being deadly to new recruits. Many of the other Rider recruits' parents were involved in a rebellion years earlier, which was put down by General Sorrengail. As a sign of their parents' guilt, they are forever marked with a special sign. In Basgiath, Violet reunites with her childhood friend and longtime crush Dain Aetos, a second-year cadet. She also meets Xaden Riorson, a marked third-year whose father was executed by Violet's mother for his leading role in the rebellion. Violet joins Fourth Wing under the vengeful Xaden's command, with Dain as their squad leader. Against all odds, Violet manages to survive her training and bonds with two dragons, Tairn and Andarna. She even falls in love with Xaden and the two end up in a relationship. For their final challenge of the year, they are sent on a suicide mission designed by Dain's father to kill them. During this deployment, the truth about the rebellion of Xaden's father is revealed and Violet joins the re-emerging revolution.
== Characters ==
=== Main characters ===
Violet Sorrengail: The protagonist and primary point-of-view character. Smaller and physically weaker than the other riders, she only joins the Riders Quadrant at the demand of her mother, General Lilith Sorrengail. She is assigned to Fourth Wing. In an unprecedented turn of events, she bonds to two dragons, Tairneanach, or "Tairn", a black, morningstartail, behemoth of a dragon, and Andarnaurram, or "Andarna", a golden, feathertail dragon.
Xaden Riorson: A marked one, and wing leader of Fourth Wing who, through his bond with his dragon Sgaeyl, has the ability to wield shadows. He is the son of Fen Riorson, a rebellion leader who killed Violet's brother and was later marked by Violet's mother. Because of this, Xaden and Violet are incredibly hostile towards one another. Xaden is described as an extremely attractive person and is a love interest for Violet. Bonded to Sgaeyl, a navy-blue, daggertail dragon.
Dain Aetos: Violet's childhood best friend and son of Colonel Aetos. A second-year Rider, he is a squad leader in the Fourth Wing. Through his bond with his dragon Cath, he can read memories upon touching another person. He is a love interest for Violet. Bonded to Cath, a red swordtail; signet: retrocognition.
Rhiannon Matthias: A first-year member of the Riders Quadrant who is assigned to Fourth Wing. She becomes Violet's best friend. Bonded to Feirge, a green, daggertail; signet: retrieval.
Sawyer Henrick: A repeated first year, he and Rhiannon agree to help Violet with hand-to-hand combat if Violet tutors them in history. He becomes a good friend of Violet, Rhiannon, and Ridoc. Bonded to Sliseag, a red, swordtail dragon; signet: metallurgy.
Ridoc Gamlyn: A first-year member of the Riders Quadrant who is assigned to Fourth Wing. He is very humorous and becomes a good friend of Violet, Rhiannon, and Sawyer. Bonded to Aotrom, a brown swordtail; signet: ice-wielding.
Liam Mairi: A first-year Rider who grew up with Xaden after their parents were killed for leading the rebellion. Bonded to Deigh, a red daggertail; signet: farsight.
=== Other Basgiath War College students ===
Jack Barlowe: A violent first-year Rider who is assigned to First Wing and makes it his mission to kill Violet.
Jesinia Neilwart: a first-year in the Scribe Quadrant and Violet's friend.
Oren Seifert: a jealous first-year Rider who is assigned to First Wing and like Jack makes it his mission to kill Violet.
Amber Mavis: a wing leader and a close friend of Dain.
=== Notable Navarre military officials ===
Lilith Sorrengail: She is the Commanding General of Basgiath War College. Her signet is Storm Wielding, and she is bound to the Brown Dragon Aimsir. Lilith is known as a ruthless, stern, and powerful rider, which makes her respected and feared by those within and outside the Kingdom of Navarre. Lilith is also Asher Sorrengail's wife and Violet Sorrengail's mother. In addition, Lilith plays an important role in the life of Xaden Riorson, as she is responsible for the death of Fen Riorson.
Mira Sorrengail: Violet's older sister and a graduate of Basgiath War College. She strongly opposes her mother's decision to force Violet into the Riders Quadrant. Bonded with Teine, a green, clubtail dragon; signet: ward extension.
Augustine Melgren: General of all of Navarre's armies. His bonded black swordtail dragon, Codagh, gave rebellion relics to all of the rebels' children, or "the marked ones", offering some protection to them from Melgren's signet. Melgren is able to see the outcome of any battle, except when three or more marked ones are gathered.
Colonel Aetos: Dain's father. Dragon and signet are unknown.
=== Additional notable characters ===
Brennan Sorrengail: Violet's brother. Signet: mending. Bonded to an orange daggertail dragon named Marbh.
Asher Sorrengail: Violet's father
Fen Riorson: Xaden's father, Fen, was an infantryman and leader of the Tyrrish rebellion against the government of Navarre. Fen was a man of values who wanted Xaden to follow his footsteps. As a result of his actions against the government, as well as the death of Brennan Sorrengail, Fen Riorson was sentenced to death, with Lilith Sorrengail in charge of carrying out the execution.
Imogen Cardulo: A second-year rider at Basgiath War College as a supportive friend to Xaden and a potential ally for Violet.
Garrick Tavis: Xaden's best friend since childhood, Garrick is characterized by his loyalty and steadfast nature.
Professor Carr: A knowledgeable instructor at Basgiath War College.
== Reception ==
The book had a mostly positive critical reception. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, praising its worldbuilding, characters, and "sexy dark academia aesthetic". Alana Joli Abbott, in a review for Paste, praised its use of familiar tropes and compared it favorably to fantasy series like Blood Trials by N.E. Davenport and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. The book was one of the most borrowed titles in American public libraries during 2023 and 2024.
Fourth Wing became a viral phenomenon on BookTok, where the hashtags "#FourthWing" and "#RebeccaYarros" have more than a billion views combined. Its popularity led it to reach No. 1 on Amazon's bestseller list as well as the No. 1 spot on The New York Times Bestseller list, where it stayed for 18 weeks. It has been credited as helping to popularize the "romantasy" genre, which blends elements of romance and fantasy genres.
Kimberly Terasaki of The Mary Sue wrote about a phenomenon within the fandom of portraying Xaden, a primary love interest of the protagonist, as white in fan art despite the fact that he is described as dark-skinned in the book. Yarros also commented on the phenomenon and asserted that the character is not intended to be white.
There is a review available by Tamara Saarinen from the School Library Journal, who approached Fourth Wing from the perspective of a school library. She noted that the use of modern profanity and sexual scenes make this book more appropriate for older teen audiences. That said, she did give an overall positive verdict for school libraries, claiming it would attract “romantasy” fans.
The sequel, Iron Flame, was released on November 7, 2023. The third book, Onyx Storm, was released on January 21, 2025.
== Adaptations ==
In October 2023, Variety reported that a television adaptation of the series was in the works at Amazon MGM Studios. It was also revealed that Amazon and Outlier Society had acquired rights to all books in the series, with Rebecca Yarros and Liz Pelletier announced as executive producers of the series. In July 2024, Moira Walley-Beckett was announced to be the showrunner, but would later leave. Jac Schaeffer was in talks to replace her before Meredith Averill was announced to be the new showrunner.
In March 2025, Yarros announced graphic-novel adaptations are in the works for all three of books of The Empyrean series (Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, and Onyx Storm). Yarros has stated she will be adapting the text herself along with a team of comic creators. A total of six graphic-novels are planned to span all three books. This project is in partnership with Ten Speed Graphic, Piatkus, and Entangled Publishing. Release dates have not been announced.
A series of dramatised audiobooks was produced by American audiobook company GraphicAudio and released in 2023. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...Baby_One_More_Time_(song) | ...Baby One More Time (song) | |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istiklal_Mosque,_Sarajevo | Istiklal Mosque, Sarajevo | The Istiklal Mosque (Bosnian: Istiklal džamija) is a large mosque in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was named after Istiqlal Mosque, the national mosque of Indonesia, that is located in Jakarta. The mosque was a gift from the Indonesian people and Government of Indonesia for Bosnia and Herzegovina as a token of solidarity and friendship between the two nations. The name "Istiklal" is Arabic for 'independence', thus it is also meant to commemorate the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
== Activities ==
Other than its regular function as a house of prayers; the regular daily five-times salat and other prayers (Jumu'ah and Eids), Istiqlal mosque also hosts maktab and Quran recital competitions for children and adults. The mosque also served as Project Bureau Center for Islamic Architecture, arranging Islamic weddings, and also as Indonesian Cultural Center.
== History ==
During his visit to the war torn city of Sarajevo in March 1995 and a courtesy call to Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović, Indonesian President Suharto contemplated an idea to build a mosque in the city as a gift for the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Suharto mobilized his administrations to realize his idea, and appointed Fauzan Noe’man, one of Indonesia's foremost architect to design the mosque and proceed with the project. Noe'man was known for his works in constructing grand mosque of Batam, Baiturrahim mosque in Merdeka Palace complex, and also At-Tin mosque (1999) in East Jakarta near Taman Mini Indonesia Indah. The project is started in 1995, however because of the turmoil in Indonesia that led to Suharto's presidency ending in 1998, the construction process was stalled.
The mosque was completed and inaugurated in September 2001 by Indonesian Minister of Religious Affairs, Said Agil Al Munawar. A year later in September 2002 during her stately visit to Sarajevo, President Megawati Soekarnoputri also visited the mosque.
== Architecture ==
The Istiqlal Mosque of Sarajevo demonstrates postmodern interpretation of Islamic architecture as viewed from Indonesian perspective. The mosque built with simple geometric elements and patterns on metal-works made from stainless steel or aluminium and glass blocks applied on facade, windows and arches. The exterior were covered with white tiles, while the interior, especially in mihrab, minbar and window frames were adorned with Indonesian wooden carving of floral ornaments.
Built on 2,800 square metres (30,000 sq ft) on Otoka on western side of the city, the mosque is one among the largest mosque in Sarajevo and easily recognizable as the landmark in the neighbourhood. The mosque has a single copper-colored dome measured 27 metres (89 ft) hight and 27 metres (89 ft) in diameter. The dome is equipped with three horizontal openings around the dome to allow natural lights to enter the mosque's interior beneath the dome. This type of dome is similar to those of At-Tin mosque in Jakarta, also designed by Fauzan Noe’man. Two twin minarets flanking the entrance with reminiscent of Iranian iwan facade style, that are 48 metres (157 ft) high. The tip of the dome and twin minarets are adorned with three spherical pinnacles with star and crescent on top of it. The twin minarets symbolize two nations, as the mosque represents the friendship and solidarity between Indonesia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Ashton | Frederick Ashton | Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton (17 September 1904 – 18 August 1988) was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. He also worked as a director and choreographer in opera, film and revue.
Determined to be a dancer despite the opposition of his conventional middle-class family, Ashton was accepted as a pupil by Léonide Massine and then by Marie Rambert. In 1926 Rambert encouraged him to try his hand at choreography, and though he continued to dance professionally, with success, it was as a choreographer that he became famous.
Ashton was chief choreographer to Ninette de Valois, from 1935 until his retirement in 1963, in the company known successively as the Vic-Wells Ballet, the Sadler's Wells Ballet and the Royal Ballet. He succeeded de Valois as director of the company, serving until his own retirement in 1970.
Ashton is widely credited with the creation of a specifically English genre of ballet. Among his best-known works are Façade (1931), Symphonic Variations (1946), Cinderella (1948), La fille mal gardée (1960), Monotones I and II (1965), Enigma Variations (1968) and the ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971).
== Life and career ==
=== Early years ===
Ashton was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fourth of the five children of George Ashton (1864–1924) and his second wife, Georgiana (1869–1939), née Fulcher. George Ashton was manager of the Central and South American Cable Company and vice-consul at the British consulate in Guayaquil.
In 1907, the family moved to Lima, Peru, where Ashton attended a Dominican school. When they returned to Guayaquil in 1914, he attended a school for children of the English colony. One of his formative influences was serving as an altar boy, which inspired in him a love of ritual, as demonstrated in The Wise Virgins. Another, still more potent, influence was being taken to see Anna Pavlova dance in 1917. He was immediately determined that he would become a dancer.
Dancing was not a career acceptable to a conventional English family at that time. Ashton later recalled, "My father was horrified. You can imagine the middle-class attitude. My mother would say, 'He wants to go on the stage.' She could not bring herself to say 'into the ballet.'" Ashton's father sent him to England in 1919 to Dover College, where he was miserable. Homosexual, and with an accent that his classmates laughed at, he did not fit in at a minor public school of the early 1920s.
He was not academically inclined, and his father decided that, upon leaving the school in 1921, Ashton should join a commercial company. He worked for an import–export firm in the City of London, where his ability to speak Spanish and French as well as English was an advantage. In January 1924, George Ashton committed suicide. His widow was left financially dependent on her elder sons, who ran a successful business in Guayaquil. She moved to London to be with Ashton and his younger sister, Edith.
=== Massine and Rambert ===
Despite family disapproval (and at first in secret) Ashton pursued his ambition to dance professionally. He auditioned for Léonide Massine; at the unusually late age of twenty he was accepted as a pupil. After Massine left London, Ashton was taken on as a student by Marie Rambert. She encouraged him to try choreographing. His first attempt was in 1926 for a revue staged by Nigel Playfair and Rambert's husband Ashley Dukes. The Observer commented on "an engaging little ballet called A Tragedy of Fashion: or The Scarlet Scissors, which Mr. Eugene Goossens has set most suitably to music. Miss Marie Rambert, as an impudently vivacious mannequin, and Mr. Frederick Ashton as a distracted man modist, lead the dancing. It is as chic a trifle as Mr Playfair's modish establishment leads you to expect." The costumes and scenery were by Sophie Fedorovitch, who continued to work with Ashton for more than twenty years, and became, in his words, "not only my dearest friend but my greatest artistic collaborator and adviser".
Rambert sought to widen her students' horizons, taking them to see London performances by the Diaghilev Ballet. They had a great influence on Ashton—most particularly Bronislava Nijinska's ballet Les biches. In 1930 Ashton created an innovative ballet, Capriol Suite, using Peter Warlock's 1926 suite of the same name. The music was based on 16th-century French music, and Ashton researched the dances of the earlier era, and created a period piece with "basse danse, pavane, tordion, and bransle—smoothly mixing robust masculine leaps with courtly duets." The following year Rambert founded the Ballet Club, forerunner of the Ballet Rambert, with Alicia Markova as prima ballerina and Ashton as the main choreographer and one of the leading dancers.
Ashton's ballets of the early 1930s included La péri (1931), The Lady of Shalott (1931), Façade (1931), Foyer de danse (1932) and Les Masques (1933). He also contributed to West End revues and musicals, including The Cat and the Fiddle (1932) for C. B. Cochran, and Gay Hussar (1933), in which The Manchester Guardian singled out the "spirited and lovely choreography in the classic manner".
=== Vic-Wells ===
Ashton's association with Ninette de Valois, founder of the Vic-Wells Ballet, began in 1931, when he created a comic ballet, Regatta for her. It received mixed reviews; The Times thought it successful as "a piece of flippant amusement", but The Manchester Guardian considered that "it completely fails ... definitely a poor show". Nevertheless, Ashton was by now recognised as a choreographer of considerable talent and had gained a national, though not yet international, reputation.
In 1933 Ashton devised another work for de Valois and her company, the ballet-divertissement Les Rendezvous. Robert Greskovic describes the work as a "classically precise yet frothy excursion showcas[ing] big skirted 'ballet girls' and dashing swain partners". The piece was an immediate success, has been revived many times, and at 2013 remains in the Royal Ballet's repertoire eighty years after its creation. In 1935 de Valois appointed Ashton as resident choreographer of her company, where he worked alongside Constant Lambert, the musical director from 1931 until 1947, and a company including Markova, Anton Dolin and Robert Helpmann. The Times describes Ashton's first years with the Vic-Wells as a richly productive period: "His Apparitions in 1936 was by many compared favourably with Massine's Symphonie Fantastique on a similar theme, and that year saw also the touching Nocturne to Delius's Paris. These works have vanished, but the following year's witty A Wedding Bouquet and Les Patineurs are still with us."
In 1936–37, his homosexuality notwithstanding, Ashton had an affair with an American heiress and socialite, Alice von Hofmannsthal. After the affair ended, her love for him continued, though she had two subsequent marriages, both to gay Englishmen.
As the 1930s progressed, Ashton's career began to extend internationally. In 1934 he choreographed Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts in New York, and in 1939 he created his first ballet for a foreign company: Devil's Holiday (Le Diable s'amuse) for the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. He continued to create dances for other forms of theatre, from revues such as The Town Talks and Home and Beauty, to opera, including Clive Carey's production of Die Fledermaus at Sadler's Wells, and film, notably Escape Me Never, another collaboration with William Walton, following Façade four years earlier.
=== Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden ===
Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War Ashton was offered a position in New York with what was to become the American Ballet Theatre. He declined, and returned to de Valois' company, soon renamed "Sadler's Wells Ballet". He created some works along more sombre lines, including Dante Sonata, which symbolised the unending struggle between the children of darkness and the children of light. In Ballet magazine, Lynette Halewood commented in 2000, "No other work by Ashton is so disturbing and so bleak".
In 1941 Ashton was called up for war service. He was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Air Force, at first analysing aerial photographs and later as an intelligence officer. While in the RAF he was granted occasional spells of leave to carry on his work with the ballet. His collaboration with Walton continued with The Quest (1943). It was created and staged in a hurry, and Walton later said that it was not much of a success from anyone's point of view. It had a theme of knightly chivalry, though Walton observed that Helpmann in the lead looked more like the Dragon than St George. As with the 1940 Ashton-Walton collaboration The Wise Virgins, the music has survived but the ballet has not.
After the end of the war David Webster invited de Valois to move her company from Sadler's Wells to be resident at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden alongside the new opera company he was establishing. Ashton's first ballet for the company in its new home was Symphonic Variations (1946). The historian Montague Haltrecht writes of it, "It is a masterpiece created for the Opera House and for the company's dancers, and almost of itself defines a style of English dancing." Although the Covent Garden stage was much larger than that at Sadler's Wells, Ashton confined himself to six dancers, led by Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes. The work, which remains in the repertoire as at 2013, was a success from the outset.
Another plotless ballet was Scènes de ballet (1947), which remains a repertoire piece. In 1948, at the urging of de Valois, Ashton created his first major three-act ballet for a British company, his version of Prokofiev's Cinderella. The original cast included Moira Shearer as Cinderella, Somes as the Prince, Alexander Grant as the jester, and Ashton and Helpmann en travesti as Cinderella's stepsisters. Some critics have commented that Ashton was not yet fully in control of a full-length ballet, with intermittent weaknesses in the choreography, but the comedy of the stepsisters was, and has remained, a favourite with audiences. The ballet critic Laura Jacobs called it "slapstick of a celestial order", and recalled that she and her fellow New York critics were "struck speechless by this luminous ballet".
In the late 1940s and early 1950s Ashton worked more frequently for other ballet companies, creating works for the Ballets de Paris (Le Rêve de Léonor, 1949, to Britten's Bridge Variations) and the New York City Ballet (Illuminations, 1950, to Britten's Les Illuminations, and Picnic at Tintagel, 1952, to Bax's The Garden of Fand). He created dances for films, including The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and The Story of Three Loves (1953), and directed operas at Glyndebourne (Britten's Albert Herring, 1947) and Covent Garden (Massenet's Manon, 1947, and Gluck's Orpheus, 1953, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli with Kathleen Ferrier in the title role).
Ashton's second full-length ballet for de Valois' company was Sylvia (1952). Ashton's biographer Kathrine Sorley Walker considers that it works "even less well" than Cinderella, but contemporary reviews praised it with little or no reservation. In 2005, reviewing a New York revival, the critic Jennie Schulman called it a "blockbuster", "radiant" with "choreographic abundance to please even the most finicky of gods and the most demanding of balletomanes".
Ashton's third full-length ballet was Romeo and Juliet for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1955. It was a considerable success, but Ashton resisted attempts to present it at Covent Garden, which he thought too large a theatre and stage for his intimate treatment of the story. It was not seen in London until 1985 when it was produced by the London Festival Ballet rather than at Covent Garden.
=== Royal Ballet ===
In October 1956 Elizabeth II granted Sadler's Wells Ballet a charter, giving it the title of "the Royal Ballet" with effect from 15 January 1957. This recognised the eminence the company had achieved: internationally it was widely regarded as "the leading company outside Russia". De Valois remained the director of the company, with Ashton as principal choreographer.
One of Ashton's most celebrated ballets was created for the Royal Ballet in 1960: La fille mal gardée. The first ballet of that title had been presented in France in 1789, and several later versions had been staged in the 19th century, using music by various composers. Ashton did his customary careful research and decided to make use of Ferdinand Hérold's music (1828), arranged, with additions from other versions, by John Lanchbery. Walker says of the work, "He adhered closely to the original scenario, but created deliciously inventive new choreography that was the happiest amalgam of classical ballet and English folk-dance, while Osbert Lancaster's delightful designs were firmly related to French country life." It was an immediate success, and has been regularly staged since, not only by the Royal Ballet, but by companies in ten other European countries and in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa and the US.
When de Valois retired in 1963, Ashton succeeded her as director. His time in charge was looked on as something of a golden age. Under him, the corps de ballet was recognised as rivalling and even excelling the best anywhere else in the world. He continued to add to the repertoire with his own new productions, he persuaded his former mentor Bronislava Nijinska to revive her Les biches and Les noces, and he presented Mam'zelle Angot by his other mentor, Massine. He also brought in Antony Tudor, his English contemporary, better known in the US, to stage both new and old works. The ballet critic John Percival considered that despite the numerous glories of the company under Ashton's directorship, he was unsuited to and uninterested in management, and lacked de Valois' gift for strategic planning (though better in both these regards than his successor as director, Kenneth MacMillan). Percival believed that this weakened the company in the long term. Ashton's works for the company while he was director included The Dream (1964) (for Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley), the pas de trois Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar (1968) and Enigma Variations (My Friends Pictured Within) (1968).
Webster, due to retire in 1970 as general administrator of the Royal Opera House, decided that his departure should be accompanied by a change to the leadership of the two companies. Georg Solti, musical director of the opera company, was keen to concentrate on his new post as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and did not wish to renew his Covent Garden contract when it expired in 1971. Ashton had frequently told colleagues how he looked forward to his own retirement, but nonetheless was hurt by the abruptness with which his departure was arranged and announced by Webster. He stood down in July 1970 after a farewell gala organised by Michael Somes, John Hart and Leslie Edwards.
After his retirement, Ashton made several short ballets as pièces d'occasion, but his only longer works were the cinema film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter made in 1970 and released in 1971, and A Month in the Country (1976), a one-act piece, lasting about forty minutes, freely adapted from Turgenev's comedy of manners. The piece has been revived regularly, in every decade since the premiere.
Ashton's last years were marred by the death of his partner, Martyn Thomas, in a car crash in 1985 – a blow from which Ashton never fully recovered. He died in his sleep on 19 August 1988, at his country home in Suffolk, and was buried on 24 August at St Mary's Church, Yaxley, Suffolk.
== Choreography ==
Ashton created more than eighty ballets. In his Who's Who entry, he identified his best-known works as:
Full-length ballets
Cinderella (1948)
Sylvia (1952)
Romeo and Juliet (1955) – for Royal Danish Ballet.
Ondine (1958)
La fille mal gardée (1960)
Shorter works
Other notable Ashton ballets include:
La valse (1958)
Monotones I and II (1965)
The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1970 film)
Méditation from Thaïs (1971)
Voices of Spring (1977)
=== The Fred Step ===
Ashton included in many of his ballets a signature step, known to dancers as "the Fred step". It is defined by David Vaughan as "posé en arabesque, coupé dessous, small développé a la seconde, pas de bourrée dessous, pas de chat". Adrian Grater has enlarged the definition to include the transitional movements; this in Benesh notation is transcribed thus:
It was based on a step used by Anna Pavlova in a gavotte that she frequently performed. Alicia Markova recalled in 1994 that Ashton had first used the step in a short ballet that concluded Nigel Playfair's 1930 production of Marriage à la Mode. It is not seen in Ashton's 1931 Façade, but after that, it became a feature of his choreography. The critic Alastair Macaulay writes:
[T]he Fred step is often tucked away. He may give it to the ballerina (Antoinette Sibley as La Capricciosa in Varii Capricci, 1983) or to supporting dancers (Symphonic Variations, 1946). He may give it to a corps de ballet of peasants (Sylvia 1952), to junior dancers (a pair of dancing artichokes in the ... vegetable ballet he made for the 1979 film "Stories from a Flying Trunk"), or to a minor character (Moth in The Dream, 1964). Often the eye is distracted from it by action elsewhere onstage. In each instance, it is changed in some aspect (particularly its conclusion), so that the entire step seems metamorphosed.
Ashton himself danced the step as the timorous sister in Cinderella, and later he and Fonteyn danced a gentle version of it together in Salut d'amour, created by Ashton for her sixtieth birthday gala at Covent Garden. The Royal Ballet has a demonstration of the step on its website, explained by the company's ballet mistress, Ursula Hageli and danced by Romany Pajdak.
He also worked on the BBC production "The Mercury Ballet".
== Legacy ==
Ashton left the rights to many of his ballets to friends and colleagues, including Fonteyn (Daphnis and Chloe and Ondine), Dowell (The Dream and A Month in the Country), Michael Somes (Cinderella and Symphonic Variations), Alexander Grant (La fille mal gardée and Façade), Antony Dyson (Enigma Variations and Monotones), and Brian Shaw (Les Patineurs and Rendezvous). Rights to most of his other ballets were left to his nephew, Anthony Russell-Roberts, who was Administrative Director of the Royal Ballet from 1983 to 2009.
To perpetuate the legacy of Ashton and his ballets, the Frederick Ashton Foundation was set up in 2011. It is independent of, but works closely with, the Royal Ballet.
== Honours ==
Ashton was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1950 Birthday Honours, knighted in the 1962 Birthday Honours, appointed Companion of Honour (CH) in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to the ballet, and appointed to the Order of Merit (OM) in 1977.
His honours from other countries included the Legion of Honour (France, 1960) and the Order of the Dannebrog (Denmark, 1964). He received the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dance in 1959. He was awarded the Freedom of the City of London (1981), and received honorary doctorates from the universities of Durham (1962), East Anglia (1967), London (1970), Hull (1971) and Oxford (1976).
== Notes, references and sources ==
=== Notes ===
=== References ===
=== Sources === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome | Asperger syndrome | Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome or Asperger's, is a formerly used diagnostic category for a condition characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. It ceased to be a distinct diagnosis when it was merged into autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the DSM-5 (2013) and ICD-11 (2022). Previously, it had been classified as a pervasive developmental disorder.
AS was considered milder than other diagnoses. This change reflected a shift toward a unified understanding of autism-related conditions rather than a judgment about individuals previously diagnosed with AS. Despite its removal from contemporary medical classification systems, many people continued to identify with the term Asperger's because of its long-standing use, personal relevance, and the way it shaped their diagnostic history and community identity.
The syndrome was named in 1976 by English psychiatrist Lorna Wing after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger, who in 1944 described children in his care who struggled to form friendships, did not understand others' gestures or feelings, engaged in one-sided conversations about their favorite interests, and were clumsy. In 1990 (coming into effect in 1993), the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome was included in the tenth edition (ICD-10) of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases, and in 1994 it was also included in the fourth edition (DSM-4) of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. With the publication of DSM-5 in 2013, the syndrome was removed, and the symptoms regarded as an autism spectrum disorder along with classic autism and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS). It was similarly merged into autism spectrum disorder in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) in 2018 (published, came into effect in 2022).
The cause of autism, including what was formerly called Asperger syndrome, is not well understood. While it has high heritability, the underlying genetics have not been determined conclusively. Environmental factors are also believed to play a role. Brain imaging has not identified a common underlying condition. There is no single treatment, and the UK's National Health Service (NHS) guidelines suggest that "treatment" of any form of autism should not be a goal, since autism is not "a disease that can be removed or cured". According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, while co-occurring conditions might require treatment, "management of autism itself is chiefly about the provision of the education, training, and social support/care required to improve the person's ability to function in the everyday world". The effectiveness of particular interventions for autism is supported by only limited data. Interventions may include social skills training, cognitive behavioral therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, parent training, and medications for associated problems, such as mood or anxiety. Autistic characteristics tend to become less obvious in adulthood, but social and communication difficulties usually persist.
In 2015, Asperger syndrome was estimated to affect 37.2 million people globally, or about 0.5% of the population. The exact percentage of people affected has still not been firmly established. Autism spectrum disorder is diagnosed in males more often than females, and females are typically diagnosed at a later age. The modern conception of Asperger syndrome came into existence in 1981 and went through a period of popularization. It became a standardized diagnosis in the 1990s, and was merged into ASD in 2013. Many questions about the condition remain.
== Classification ==
The extent of the overlap between Asperger syndrome and other forms of autism, particularly what was sometimes called high-functioning autism is unclear. The ASD classification is to some extent an artifact of how autism was discovered, and it may not reflect the true nature of the spectrum; methodological problems have beset Asperger syndrome as a valid diagnosis from the outset. As noted above, in the 2010s, Asperger syndrome, as a separate diagnosis, was eliminated and folded into autism spectrum disorder in the DSM-5 and the ICD-11. Like the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome, the change was controversial.
The World Health Organization (WHO) previously defined Asperger syndrome (AS) as one of the pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), which are a spectrum of psychological disorders that are characterized by abnormalities of social interaction and communication that pervade the individual's functioning, and by restricted and repetitive interests and behavior. Like other neurodevelopmental conditions, ASD begins in infancy or childhood, has a steady course without remission or relapse, and has impairments that result from maturation-related changes in various systems of the brain.
== Characteristics ==
As a pervasive developmental disorder, Asperger syndrome is distinguished by a pattern of symptoms rather than a single symptom. It is characterized by qualitative impairment in social interaction, by stereotyped and restricted patterns of behavior, activities, and interests, and by no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or general delay in language. Intense preoccupation with a narrow subject, one-sided verbosity, restricted prosody, and physical clumsiness are typical of the condition, but are not required for diagnosis.
Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are a serious concern within the autistic population. One study found that adults with Asperger syndrome exhibited suicidal thoughts at 9 times the rate of the general population. Of autistic study participants, 66% had experienced suicidal ideation, while 35% had planned or attempted suicide.
=== Social interaction ===
A lack of demonstrated empathy affects aspects of social relatability for persons with Asperger syndrome. Individuals with Asperger syndrome experience difficulties in basic elements of social interaction, which may include a failure to develop friendships or to seek shared enjoyments or achievements with others (e.g., showing others objects of interest); a lack of social or emotional reciprocity; and impaired nonverbal behaviors in areas such as eye contact, facial expression, posture, and gesture.
People with Asperger syndrome may not be as withdrawn around others, compared with those with other forms of autism; they approach others, even if awkwardly. For example, a person with Asperger syndrome may engage in a one-sided, long-winded speech about a favorite topic, while misunderstanding or not recognizing the listener's feelings or reactions, such as a wish to change the topic of talk or end the interaction. This social awkwardness has been called "active but odd". Such failures to react appropriately to social interaction may appear as disregard for other people's feelings and may come across as rude or insensitive. However, not all individuals with Asperger syndrome will approach others. Some may even display selective mutism, not speaking at all to most people and excessively to specific others.
The cognitive ability of children with Asperger syndrome often allows them to articulate social norms in a laboratory context, where they may be able to show a theoretical understanding of other people's emotions; however, they typically have difficulty acting on this knowledge in fluid, real-life situations. People with Asperger syndrome may analyze and distill their observations of social interaction into rigid behavioral guidelines and apply these rules in awkward ways, such as forced eye contact, resulting in a demeanor that appears rigid or socially naïve. A history of failed attempts to establish reciprocal social relationships can cause autistic individuals to isolate themselves and cease attempts to engage; however, autistic people overwhelmingly report a desire for social contact and friendship.
==== Violent or criminal behavior ====
The hypothesis that individuals with Asperger syndrome are predisposed to violent or criminal behavior has been investigated but is unsupported by data. More evidence suggests that children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome are more likely to be victims, rather than offenders.
A 2008 review found that about 80% of reported violent criminals with Asperger syndrome also had other coexisting psychotic psychiatric disorders such as schizoaffective disorder. The sample size of this review was small (n = 37).
=== Empathy ===
People with an Asperger profile might not be recognized for their empathetic qualities, due to variation in the ways empathy is felt and expressed. Some people feel deep empathy, but do not outwardly communicate these sentiments through facial expressions or language. Some people come to empathy through intellectual processes, using logic and reasoning to arrive at the feelings. People with Asperger profiles may be bullied or excluded by peers, and might as a result be guarded around people, which could appear as lack of empathy. People with Asperger profiles can still be caring individuals; indeed, it is particularly common for those with the profile to feel and exhibit deep concern for individual rights, human welfare, animal rights, environmental protection, and other global and humanitarian causes.
Evidence suggests that in the "double empathy problem model, autistic people have a unique interaction style which is significantly more readable by other autistic people, compared to non-autistic people."
=== Restricted and repetitive interests and behavior ===
People with Asperger syndrome can display behavior, interests, and activities that are restricted and repetitive and are sometimes abnormally intense or focused. They may stick to inflexible routines, move in stereotyped and repetitive ways, preoccupy themselves with parts of objects, or engage in compulsive behaviors like lining objects up to form patterns.
The pursuit of specific and narrow areas of interest is one of the most striking among possible features of AS. Individuals with AS may collect volumes of detailed information on a relatively narrow topic such as weather data or star names without necessarily having a genuine understanding of the broader topic. For example, a child might memorize camera model numbers while caring little about photography. This behavior is usually apparent by age five or six. Although these special interests may change from time to time, they typically become more unusual and narrowly focused and often dominate social interaction so much that the entire family may become immersed. Because narrow topics often capture the interest of children, this symptom may go unrecognized.
Stereotyped and repetitive motor behaviors, called stimming, are a core part of the diagnosis of AS and other ASDs. Stims are believed to be used for self-soothing and regulate sensory input. They include hand movements such as flapping or twisting, and complex whole-body movements. These are typically repeated in longer bursts and look more voluntary or ritualistic than tics, which are usually faster, less rhythmical, and less often symmetrical. Stimming may have a connection with tics, and studies have reported a consistent comorbidity between AS and Tourette syndrome in the range of 8–20%, with one figure as high as 80% for tics of some kind or another, for which several explanations have been put forward, including common genetic factors and dopamine, glutamate, or serotonin abnormalities.
According to the Adult Asperger Assessment (AAA) diagnostic test, a lack of interest in fiction and a positive preference towards non-fiction is common among adults with AS.
=== Speech and language ===
Although individuals with Asperger syndrome acquire language skills without significant general delay and their speech typically lacks significant abnormalities; language acquisition and use is often atypical. Abnormalities include verbosity, abrupt transitions, literal interpretations and miscomprehension of nuance, use of metaphor meaningful only to the speaker, auditory perception deficits; unusually pedantic, formal, or idiosyncratic speech; and oddities in loudness, pitch, intonation, prosody, and rhythm. Echolalia has also been observed in individuals with AS.
Three aspects of communication patterns are of clinical interest: poor prosody, tangential and circumstantial speech, and marked verbosity. Although inflection and intonation may be less rigid or monotonic than in classic autism, people with AS often have a limited range of intonation: speech may be unusually fast, jerky, or loud. Speech may convey a sense of incoherence; the conversational style often includes monologues about topics that bore the listener, fails to provide context for comments, or fails to suppress internal thoughts. Individuals with AS may fail to detect whether the listener is interested or engaged in the conversation. The speaker's conclusion or point may never be made, and attempts by the listener to elaborate on the speech's content or logic, or to shift to related topics, are often unsuccessful.
Children with AS may have a sophisticated vocabulary at a young age and such children have often been colloquially called "little professors" but have difficulty understanding figurative language and tend to use language literally. Children with AS appear to have particular weaknesses in areas of nonliteral language that include humor, irony, teasing, and sarcasm. Although individuals with AS usually understand the cognitive basis of humor, they seem to lack understanding of the intent of humor to share the enjoyment with others. Despite strong evidence of impaired humor appreciation, anecdotal reports of humor in individuals with AS seem to challenge some psychological theories of AS and autism.
=== Motor and sensory perception ===
Individuals with Asperger syndrome may have signs or symptoms that are independent of the diagnosis but can affect the individual or the family. These include differences in perception and problems with motor skills, sleep, and emotions.
Individuals with AS often have excellent auditory and visual perception. Children with ASD often demonstrate enhanced perception of small changes in patterns such as arrangements of objects or well-known images; typically this is domain-specific and involves processing of fine-grained features. Conversely, compared with individuals with high-functioning autism, individuals with AS have deficits in some tasks involving visual-spatial perception, auditory perception, or visual memory. Many accounts of individuals with AS and ASD report other unusual sensory and perceptual skills and experiences. They may be unusually sensitive or insensitive to sound, light, and other stimuli; these sensory responses are found in other developmental disorders and are not specific to AS or to ASD. There is little support for increased fight-or-flight response or failure of habituation in autism; there is more evidence of decreased responsiveness to sensory stimuli, although several studies show no differences.
Hans Asperger's initial accounts and other diagnostic schemes include descriptions of physical clumsiness. Children with AS may be delayed in acquiring skills requiring dexterity, such as riding a bicycle or opening a jar, and may seem to move awkwardly or feel "uncomfortable in their own skin". They may be poorly coordinated or have an odd or bouncy gait or posture, poor handwriting, or problems with motor coordination. They may show problems with proprioception (sensation of body position) on measures of developmental coordination disorder (motor planning disorder), balance, tandem gait, and finger-thumb apposition. There is no evidence that these motor skills problems differentiate AS from other high-functioning ASDs.
Children with AS are more likely to have sleep problems, including difficulty in falling asleep, frequent nocturnal awakenings, and early morning awakenings. AS is also associated with high levels of alexithymia, which is difficulty in identifying and describing one's emotions. Although AS, lower sleep quality, and alexithymia are associated with each other, their causal relationship is unclear.
== Causes ==
Hans Asperger described common traits among his patients' family members, especially fathers, and research supports this observation and suggests a genetic contribution to Asperger syndrome. Although no specific genetic factor has yet been identified, multiple factors are believed to play a role in the expression of autism, given the variability in symptoms seen in children. Hundreds of genes have been linked to AS, and these genes play crucial role in a multitude of biological processes, exerting influence over the maturation and functioning of the brain. Evidence for a genetic link is that AS tends to run in families where more family members have limited behavioral symptoms similar to AS (for example, some problems with social interaction, or with language and reading skills). Most behavioral genetic research suggests that all autism spectrum disorders have shared genetic mechanisms. There may be shared genes in which particular alleles make an individual vulnerable, and varying combinations result in differing severity and symptoms in each person with AS.
A few ASD cases have been linked to exposure to teratogens (agents that cause birth defects) during the first eight weeks from conception. Although this does not exclude the possibility that ASD can be initiated or affected later, it is strong evidence that ASD arises very early in development. Many environmental factors have been hypothesized to act after birth, but none has been confirmed by scientific investigation. These environmental elements can act as independent and significant risk factors, or they can potentially influence pre-existing genetic factors in people who have a genetic predisposition.
== Mechanism ==
Asperger syndrome appears to result from developmental factors that affect many or all functional brain systems, as opposed to localized effects.
Although the specific underpinnings of AS or factors that distinguish it from other ASDs are unknown, and no clear pathology common to individuals with AS has emerged, it is still possible that AS's mechanism is separate from other ASDs.
Neuroanatomical studies and the associations with teratogens strongly suggest that the mechanism includes alteration of brain development soon after conception. Abnormal fetal development may affect the final structure and connectivity of the brain, resulting in altered neural circuits controlling thought and behavior. Several theories of mechanism are available; none are likely to provide a complete explanation.
=== General-processing theories ===
One general-processing theory is weak central coherence theory, which hypothesizes that a limited ability to see the big picture underlies the central disturbance in ASD. A related theory—enhanced perceptual functioning—focuses more on the superiority of locally oriented and perceptual operations in autistic individuals.
=== Mirror neuron system (MNS) theory ===
The mirror neuron system (MNS) theory hypothesizes that alterations to the development of the MNS interfere with imitation and lead to Asperger syndrome's core feature of social impairment. One study found that activation is delayed in the core circuit for imitation in individuals with AS. This theory maps well to social cognition theories like the theory of mind, which hypothesizes that autistic behavior arises from impairments in ascribing mental states to oneself and others; or hyper-systemizing, which hypothesizes that autistic individuals can systematize internal operation to handle internal events but are less effective at empathizing when handling events generated by other agents.
== Diagnosis ==
Standard diagnostic criteria require impairment in social interaction and repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, activities, and interests, without significant delay in language or cognitive development. Unlike the international standard, the DSM-IV-TR criteria also required significant impairment in day-to-day functioning; As noted above, in the 2010s, Asperger syndrome, as a separate diagnosis, was eliminated and folded into autism spectrum disorder in the DSM-5 and the ICD-11. Other sets of diagnostic criteria have been proposed by Szatmari et al. and by Gillberg and Gillberg.
Diagnosis of ASD (and previously AS) is most commonly made between the ages of four and eleven. A comprehensive assessment involves a multidisciplinary team that observes across multiple settings, and includes neurological and genetic assessment as well as tests for cognition, psychomotor function, verbal and nonverbal strengths and weaknesses, style of learning, and skills for independent living. The "gold standard" in diagnosing ASDs combines clinical judgment with the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), a semistructured parent interview; and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), a conversation and play-based interview with the child. Delayed or mistaken diagnosis can be traumatic for individuals and families; for example, misdiagnosis can lead to medications that worsen behavior.
Underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis may be problems. The cost and difficulty of screening and assessment can delay diagnosis. Conversely, the increasing popularity of drug treatment options and the expansion of benefits has motivated providers to overdiagnose ASD. There are indications AS has been diagnosed more frequently in recent years, partly as a residual diagnosis for children of normal intelligence who are not autistic but have social difficulties.
There are questions about the external validity of the AS diagnosis. That is, it is unclear whether there is a practical benefit in distinguishing AS from autism or PDD-NOS; different screening tools may render different diagnoses for the same person.
=== Differential diagnosis ===
Many children with AS are initially misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Diagnosing adults is more challenging, as standard diagnostic criteria are designed for children and the expression of AS changes with age. Adult diagnosis requires painstaking clinical examination and thorough medical history gained from both the individual and other people who know the person, focusing on childhood behavior.
Conditions that must be considered in a differential diagnosis along with ADHD include other ASDs, the schizophrenia spectrum, personality disorders, obsessive–compulsive disorder, major depressive disorder, semantic pragmatic disorder, nonverbal learning disorder, social anxiety disorder, Tourette syndrome, stereotypic movement disorder, bipolar disorder, social-cognitive deficits due to brain damage from alcohol use disorder, and obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD).
== Screening ==
Parents of children with Asperger syndrome can typically trace differences in their children's development to as early as 30 months of age. Developmental screening during a routine check-up by a general practitioner or pediatrician may identify signs that warrant further investigation. The United States Preventive Services Task Force in 2016 found it was unclear if screening was beneficial or harmful among children in whom there are no concerns.
Different screening instruments are used to diagnose AS, including the Asperger Syndrome Diagnostic Scale (ASDS); Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ); Childhood Autism Spectrum Test (CAST), previously called the Childhood Asperger Syndrome Test; Gilliam Asperger's disorder scale (GADS); Krug Asperger's Disorder Index (KADI); and the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ), with versions for children, adolescents, and adults. None have been shown to reliably differentiate between AS and other ASDs.
== Management ==
Treatment attempts to manage distressing symptoms and to teach age-appropriate social, communication, and vocational skills that are not naturally acquired during development. Intervention is tailored to the needs of the individual based on multidisciplinary assessment. Although progress has been made, data supporting the efficacy of particular interventions are limited.
=== Therapies ===
Managing ASD may involve multiple therapies that address core symptoms of the disorder. While many professionals agree that the earlier the professional support the better, there is no combination that is recommended above others. Professional support for ASD varies depending on the individual; it takes into account the linguistic capabilities, verbal strengths, and nonverbal vulnerabilities of individuals.
Many of those diagnosed with ASD or similar disorders advocate against behavioral therapies, like Applied behavior analysis (ABA) and Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), often as part of the autism rights movement, on the grounds that these approaches frequently reinforce the demand on autistic people to mask their neurodivergent characteristics or behaviors to favor a more 'neurotypical' and narrow conception of normality. ABA has faced a great deal of criticism over the years. Recently, studies have shown that ABA may be abusive and can increase PTSD symptoms in patients. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network campaigns against the use of ABA in autism.
In the case of CBT and talking therapies, the effectiveness varies, with many reporting that they appeared 'too self-aware' to gain significant benefit, as the therapy was designed with neurotypical people in mind. In autistic children, specifically, they also report that it is only mildly beneficial in aiding with their anxieties.
A typical program of professional support generally includes:
Applied behavior analysis (ABA) procedures, including positive behavior support (PBS)—or training and support of parents and school faculty in behavior management strategies to use in the home and school, and social skills training for more effective interpersonal interactions. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network campaigns against the use of ABA in autism;
Cognitive behavioral therapy to improve stress management relating to anxiety or explosive emotions and to help reduce obsessive interests (although this may produce negative impact by demonising special interests) and repetitive routines;
Medication for coexisting conditions such as major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders;
Occupational or physical therapy to assist with poor sensory processing and motor coordination; and,
Social communication intervention, which is specialized speech therapy to help with the pragmatics and give-and-take of normal conversation.
Of the many studies on behavior-based early intervention programs, most are case reports of up to five participants and typically examine a few problem behaviors such as self-injury, aggression, noncompliance, stereotypies, or spontaneous language; unintended side effects are largely ignored. Despite the popularity of social skills training, its effectiveness is not firmly established. A randomized controlled study of a model for training parents in problem behaviors in their children with AS showed that parents attending a one-day workshop or six individual lessons reported fewer behavioral problems, while parents receiving the individual lessons reported less intense behavioral problems in their AS children. Vocational training may be important to teach job interview etiquette and workplace behavior to older children and adults with AS, and organization software and personal data assistants can improve the work and life management of people with AS.
Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) is an innovative therapy for AS that aims to restore microbial balance in the patient's gastrointestinal tract by introducing healthy fecal microbiota acquired from people with a diverse microbial composition. This approach attempts to reconstruct the patient's gut microbiota by taking into account the intricate interactions between the human gut and the central nervous system via the gut-brain axis (GBA). Any disruption in gut health has been linked to an increased susceptibility to diverse neurodevelopmental disorders.
It is vital to remember that research of AS specifically operates upon the out-dated classification of this syndrome as external to ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). Similarly, we should also note that ASD is a spectrum and support varies dramatically depending on the individual.
=== Medications ===
No medications directly treat the core symptoms of AS. Although research into the efficacy of pharmaceutical intervention for AS is limited, it is essential to diagnose and treat comorbid conditions. Deficits in self-identifying emotions or in observing effects of one's behavior on others can make it difficult for individuals with AS to see why medication may be appropriate. Medication can be effective in combination with behavioral interventions and environmental accommodations in treating comorbid symptoms such as anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder, inattention, and aggression. The atypical antipsychotic medications risperidone, olanzapine and aripiprazole have been shown to reduce the associated symptoms of AS; risperidone can reduce repetitive and self-injurious behaviors, aggressive outbursts, and impulsivity, and improve stereotypical patterns of behavior and social relatedness. The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, and sertraline have been effective in treating restricted and repetitive interests and behaviors, while stimulant medication, such as methylphenidate, can reduce inattention. In addition, scientists have made a noteworthy finding that oxytocin, a hormone, plays a significant role in shaping human social behavior and the formation of interpersonal connections.
Care must be taken with medications, as side effects may be more common and harder to evaluate in individuals with AS, and tests of drugs' effectiveness against comorbid conditions routinely exclude individuals from the autism spectrum. Abnormalities in metabolism, cardiac conduction times, and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes have been raised as concerns with antipsychotic medications, along with serious long-term neurological side effects. SSRIs can lead to manifestations of behavioral activation such as increased impulsivity, aggression, and sleep disturbance. Weight gain and fatigue are commonly reported side effects of risperidone, which may also lead to increased risk for extrapyramidal symptoms such as restlessness and dystonia and increased serum prolactin levels. Sedation and weight gain are more common with olanzapine, which has also been linked with diabetes. Sedative side-effects in school-age children have ramifications for classroom learning. Individuals with AS may be unable to identify and communicate their internal moods and emotions or to tolerate side effects that for most people would not be problematic.
== Prognosis ==
There is some evidence that children with AS may see a lessening of symptoms; up to 20% of children may no longer meet the diagnostic criteria as adults, although social and communication difficulties may persist. As of 2006, no studies addressing the long-term outcome of individuals with Asperger syndrome are available and there are no systematic long-term follow-up studies of children with AS. Individuals with AS appear to have normal life expectancy, but have an increased prevalence of comorbid psychiatric conditions, such as major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders that may significantly affect prognosis. Although social impairment may be lifelong, the outcome is generally more positive than with individuals with lower-functioning autism spectrum disorders; for example, ASD symptoms are more likely to diminish with time in children with AS or forms of autism sometimes described as "high functioning". Most students with AS and forms of autism sometimes seen as "high functioning" have average mathematical ability and test slightly worse in mathematics than in general intelligence. However, mathematicians are at least three times more likely to have autism-spectrum traits than the general population, and are more likely to have family members with autism.
Although many attend regular education classes, some children with AS may attend special education classes such as separate classroom and resource room because of their social and behavioral difficulties. Adolescents with AS may exhibit ongoing difficulty with self-care or organization, and disturbances in social and romantic relationships. Despite high cognitive potential, most young adults with AS remain at home, yet some do marry and work independently. The "different-ness" adolescents experience can be traumatic. Anxiety may stem from preoccupation over possible violations of routines and rituals, from being placed in a situation without a clear schedule or expectations, or from concern with failing in social encounters; the resulting stress may manifest as inattention, withdrawal, reliance on obsessions, hyperactivity, or aggressive or oppositional behavior. Depression is often the result of chronic frustration from repeated failure to engage others socially, and mood disorders requiring treatment may develop. Clinical experience suggests the rate of suicide may be higher among those with AS, but this has not been confirmed by systematic empirical studies.
Education of families is critical in developing strategies for understanding strengths and weaknesses; helping the family to cope improves outcomes in children. Prognosis may be improved by diagnosis at a younger age that allows for early interventions, while interventions in adulthood are valuable but less beneficial. There are legal implications for individuals with AS as they run the risk of exploitation by others and may be unable to comprehend the societal implications of their actions.
== Epidemiology ==
Frequency estimates vary enormously. In 2015, it was estimated that 37.2 million people globally are affected. A 2003 review of epidemiological studies of children found autism rates ranging from 0.03 to 4.84 per 1,000, with the ratio of autism to Asperger syndrome ranging from 1.5:1 to 16:1; combining the geometric mean ratio of 5:1 with a conservative prevalence estimate for autism of 1.3 per 1,000 suggests indirectly that the prevalence of AS might be around 0.26 per 1,000. Part of the variance in estimates arises from differences in diagnostic criteria. For example, a relatively small 2007 study of 5,484 eight-year-old children in Finland found 2.9 children per 1,000 met the ICD-10 criteria for an AS diagnosis, 2.7 per 1,000 for Gillberg and Gillberg criteria, 2.5 for DSM-IV, 1.6 for Szatmari et al., and 4.3 per 1,000 for the union of the four criteria. Boys seem to be more likely to have AS than girls; estimates of the sex ratio range from 1.6:1 to 4:1, using the Gillberg and Gillberg criteria. Females with autism spectrum disorders may be underdiagnosed.
=== Comorbidities ===
Anxiety disorders and major depressive disorder are the most common conditions seen at the same time; comorbidity of these in persons with AS is estimated at 65%. Reports have associated AS with medical conditions such as aminoaciduria and ligamentous laxity, but these have been case reports or small studies and no factors have been associated with AS across studies. One study of males with AS found an increased rate of epilepsy and a high rate (51%) of nonverbal learning disorder. AS is associated with tics, Tourette syndrome and bipolar disorder. The repetitive behaviors of AS have many similarities with the symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder and obsessive–compulsive personality disorder, and 26% of a sample of young adults with AS were found to meet the criteria for schizoid personality disorder (which is characterised by severe social seclusion and emotional detachment), more than any other personality disorder in the sample. However many of these studies are based on clinical samples or lack standardized measures; nonetheless, comorbid conditions are relatively common.
=== Correlated characteristics ===
Research indicates that individuals with Aspergers have significantly higher rates of LGBT identities and feelings than the general population. They are also significantly more likely to be non-theistic.
== History ==
Asperger syndrome was named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger (1906–1980), but not coined by him. Asperger syndrome was a relatively new diagnosis in the field of autism, though a syndrome like it was described as early as 1925 by Soviet child psychiatrist Grunya Sukhareva (1891–1981). As a child, Asperger appears to have exhibited some features of the very condition named after him, such as remoteness and talent in language. In 1944, Asperger gave detailed descriptions of four representative children in his practice who had difficulty in integrating themselves socially and showing empathy towards peers. They also lacked nonverbal communication skills and were physically clumsy. Asperger described this "autistic psychopathy" as social isolation. Fifty years later, several standardizations of AS as a medical diagnosis were tentatively proposed, many of which diverge significantly from Asperger's original work.
Unlike what became known as AS, Asperger believed autistic psychopathy could be found in people of all levels of intelligence, including those with intellectual disability: as such, Asperger's understanding of autistic pathology was more akin to what is known as the autism spectrum today. Asperger defended the value of so-called "high-functioning" autistic individuals, writing: "We are convinced, then, that autistic people have their place in the organism of the social community. They fulfill their role well, perhaps better than anyone else could, and we are talking of people who as children had the greatest difficulties and caused untold worries to their care-givers." Asperger also believed some would be capable of exceptional achievement and original thought later in life.
Asperger's paper was published during World War II and in German, so it was not widely read elsewhere. Lorna Wing used the term Asperger syndrome in 1976, and popularized it to the English-speaking medical community in her February 1981 publication of case studies of children showing the symptoms described by Asperger, and Uta Frith translated Asperger's paper to English in 1991. Sets of diagnostic criteria were outlined by Gillberg and Gillberg in 1989 and by Szatmari et al. in the same year. AS became a standard diagnosis when it was included in the tenth edition of the World Health Organization's diagnostic manual, International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), published in 1990 and coming into effect in 1993; and in the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic reference, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), published in 1994.
Hundreds of books, articles, and websites later described AS and prevalence estimates increased dramatically for ASD, with AS recognized as an important subgroup. Whether AS should be seen as distinct from autism, particularly forms of autism sometimes described as "high functioning", became an issue receiving significant attention and disagreement, along with questions about the empirical validation of the DSM-IV and ICD-10 criteria.
With the publication of the next major editions of the DSM and ICD, the DSM-5 (published in 2013) and the ICD-11 (published in 2018, coming into effect in 2022), AS was eliminated as a separate diagnosis and folded into the autism spectrum. A scale of "severity" levels was included in the DSM-5, whereby most people previously diagnosed with AS would have been classified as "level 1"; but these levels are widely opposed by the autistic community and are not included in the ICD-11. The ICD-11 characterizes ASD with qualifiers describing the presence of disorders of intellectual development and the degree of functional language impairment; the former diagnosis of Asperger syndrome is characterized as autism spectrum disorder without disorder of intellectual development and with mild or no impairment of functional language.
== Society and culture ==
People identifying with Asperger syndrome may refer to themselves in casual conversation as aspies (a term first used in print in the Boston Globe in 1998). Some autistic people have advocated a shift in perception of autism spectrum disorders as complex syndromes, neurodivergences, and/or neurominority cognitive styles rather than diseases that must be cured. Proponents of this neurodiversity paradigm reject the notion that there is an "ideal" brain configuration and that any deviation from the norm is pathological; they promote tolerance of neurodiversity. These views are the basis for the autistic rights and autistic pride movements, within the broader neurodiversity movement. There is a contrast between the attitude of people with AS, who typically do not want to be cured and are proud of their identity; and parents of children with AS, who more often seek a "cure" of their children's autism.
Some researchers have argued that AS and other autism can be viewed as a different cognitive style, not a disorder, and that it should be removed from psychiatric and medical manuals classifying diseases (ICD) or mental disorders (DSM), much as homosexuality was removed.
Even some people typically associated with a pathology paradigm for autism are willing to consider AS a neutral difference. For example, in 2002, Simon Baron-Cohen wrote of those with AS: "In the social world, there is no great benefit to a precise eye for detail, but in the worlds of maths, computing, cataloging, music, linguistics, engineering, and science, such an eye for detail can lead to success rather than failure." Baron-Cohen cited two reasons why it might still be useful to consider AS to be a disability: to ensure provision for legally required special support, and to recognize emotional difficulties from reduced empathy, which was commonly associated with autism during that time but has since lost support. Baron-Cohen argues that the genes for ASD's combination of abilities have operated throughout recent human evolution and have made remarkable contributions to human history.
By contrast, Pier Jaarsma and Welin wrote in 2011 that the "broad version of the neurodiversity claim, covering low-functioning as well as high-functioning autism, is problematic. Only a narrow conception of neurodiversity, referring exclusively to high-functioning autists, is reasonable." They say that "higher functioning" individuals with autism may "not [be] benefited with such a psychiatric defect-based diagnosis ... some of them are being harmed by it, because of the disrespect the diagnosis displays for their natural way of being", but "think that it is still reasonable to include other categories of autism in the psychiatric diagnostics. The narrow conception of the neurodiversity claim should be accepted but the broader claim should not." |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_(supercomputer) | Frontier (supercomputer) | Hewlett Packard Enterprise Frontier, or OLCF-5, is the world's first exascale supercomputer. It is hosted at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) in Tennessee, United States, and became operational in 2022. As of November 2024, Frontier is the third fastest supercomputer in the world. It is based on the Cray EX and is the successor to Summit (OLCF-4). Frontier achieved an Rmax of 1.102 exaFLOPS, which is 1.102 quintillion floating-point operations per second, using AMD CPUs and GPUs.
Measured at 62.86 gigaflops/watt, the smaller Frontier TDS (test and development system) topped the Green500 list for most efficient supercomputer until it was dethroned in efficiency by the Flatiron Institute's Henri supercomputer in November 2022.
Frontier was superseded as the fastest supercomputer in the world by El Capitan in November 2024.
== Design ==
Frontier uses 9,472 AMD Epyc 7713 "Trento" 64 core 2 GHz CPUs (606,208 cores) and 37,888 Instinct MI250X GPUs (8,335,360 cores). They can perform double-precision operations at the same speed as single precision.
"Trento" is an optimized third-generation EPYC CPU ("Milan"), which is based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture.
It occupies 74 19-inch (48 cm) rack cabinets. Each cabinet hosts 64 blades, each consisting of 2 nodes.
Blades are interconnected by HPE Slingshot 64-port switches that provides 12.8 terabits/second of bandwidth. Groups of blades are linked in a dragonfly topology with at most three hops between any two nodes. Cabling is either optical or copper, customized to minimize cable length. Total cabling runs 145 km (90 mi). Frontier is liquid-cooled by 4 350-horsepower pumps, which flow around 6,000 gallons (22,712.47 Liters) of non-pre chilled water through the system each minute, allowing 5x the density of air-cooled architectures.
Each node consists of one CPU, 4 GPUs and 4 terabytes of flash memory. Each GPU has 128 GB of RAM soldered onto it, and each CPU has 512GB of local DDR4 memory. Each GPU has an idle power of about 100 W and a thermal design power (TDP) of about 500 W and 560 W at peak.
Frontier has coherent interconnects between CPUs and GPUs, allowing GPU memory to be accessed coherently by code running on the Epyc CPUs.
Frontier uses an internal 75 TB/s read / 35 TB/s write / 15 billion IOPS flash storage system, along with the 700 PB Orion site-wide Lustre filesystem.
Frontier consumes around 21 megawatts (MW) (which is equivalent to the power needed for 15,000 single-family homes), compared to its predecessor Summit's 13 MW.
== History ==
One of the largest challenges during development was power consumption. Existing information pointed to hundreds of thousands of GPUs being necessary to achieve 1 exaFLOP, with a total power consumption of 150-500 MW. Thus, high efficiency was a primary target of the project.
Oak Ridge partnered with HPE Cray and AMD to build the system at a cost of US$600 million. It began deployment in 2021 and reached full capability in 2022. It clocked 1.1 exaflops Rmax in May 2022, making it the world's fastest supercomputer as measured in the June 2022 edition of the TOP500 list, replacing Fugaku.
Upon its release, the supercomputer topped the Green500 list for most efficient supercomputer, measured at 62.68 gigaflops/watt. ORNL Director Thomas Zacharia declared, "Frontier is ushering in a new era of exascale computing to solve the world’s biggest scientific challenges." He added, "This milestone offers just a preview of Frontier’s unmatched capability as a tool for scientific discovery. It is the result of more than a decade of collaboration among the national laboratories, academia and private industry, including DOE's Exascale Computing Project, which is deploying the applications, software technologies, hardware and integration necessary to ensure impact at the exascale." |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhatusena_of_Anuradhapura#Early_life_and_becoming_king | Dhatusena of Anuradhapura#Early life and becoming king | |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple | Pineapple | The pineapple (Ananas comosus) is a tropical plant with an edible fruit; it is the most economically significant plant in the family Bromeliaceae.
The pineapple is indigenous to South America, where it has been cultivated for many centuries. The introduction of the pineapple plant to Europe in the 17th century made it a significant cultural icon of luxury. Since the 1820s, pineapple has been commercially grown in greenhouses and many tropical plantations. The fruit, particularly its juice, has diverse uses in cuisines and desserts.
Pineapples grow as a small shrub; the individual flowers of the unpollinated plant fuse to form a multiple fruit. The plant normally propagates from the offset produced at the top of the fruit or from a side shoot, and typically matures within a year.
== Etymology ==
The words, pine apple, first referred to the cone (fruit) of the pine tree in the 14th century. This name convention occurred because medieval botanists called any unfamiliar tree fruit an apple if it had a firm, round shape.
The generic name, pineapple, derived from a language of the indigenous people of Brazil, and by Gonzalo Hernandez Oviedo who described the piñas or pomme de pin (apple of pine) in Hispaniola around 1540. The first reference in English to the pineapple fruit was the 1568 translation from the French of André Thevet's The New Found World, or Antarctike where he refers to a Hoyriri, a fruit cultivated and eaten by the Tupinambá people, living near modern Rio de Janeiro, and now believed to be a pineapple. Later in the same English translation, Thavet described the fruit as a "Nana made in the manner of a Pine apple", where he used another Tupi word nanas. When it was first discovered by explorers, the Tupi-Guarani and Carib people used it as a staple food with the name, nanas. This usage was adopted in many European languages and led to the plant's scientific binomial Ananas comosus, where comosus ('tufted') refers to the stem of the plant.
In 1624, English explorer John Smith was one of the first to use the name "pineapple" referring to the tropical fruit, possibly because the naming practice for any newly-encountered, roundish fruit at that time was to call it an apple.
== Description ==
The pineapple is a herbaceous perennial, which grows to 1 to 1.5 m (3+1⁄2 to 5 ft) tall on average, although sometimes it can be taller. The plant has a short, stocky stem with tough, waxy leaves. When creating its fruit, it usually produces up to 200 flowers, although some large-fruited cultivars can exceed this. Once it flowers, the individual fruits of the flowers join together to create a multiple fruit. After the first fruit is produced, side shoots (called 'suckers' by commercial growers) are produced in the leaf axils of the main stem. These suckers may be removed for propagation, or left to produce additional fruits on the original plant. Commercially, suckers that appear around the base are cultivated. It has 30 or more narrow, fleshy, trough-shaped leaves that are 30 to 100 cm (1 to 3+1⁄2 ft) long, surrounding a thick stem; the leaves have sharp spines along the margins. In the first year of growth, the axis lengthens and thickens, bearing numerous leaves in close spirals. After 12 to 20 months, the stem grows into a spike-like inflorescence up to 15 cm (6 in) long with over 100 spirally arranged, trimerous flowers, each subtended by a bract.
In the wild, pineapples are pollinated primarily by hummingbirds. Certain wild pineapples are foraged and pollinated at night by bats. Under cultivation, because seed development diminishes fruit quality, pollination is performed by hand, and seeds are retained only for breeding. In Hawaii, where pineapples were cultivated and canned industrially throughout the 20th century, importation of hummingbirds was prohibited.
The ovaries develop into berries, which coalesce into a large, compact, multiple fruit. The fruit of a pineapple is usually arranged in two interlocking helices, often with 8 in one direction and 13 in the other, each being a Fibonacci number.
The pineapple carries out CAM photosynthesis, fixing carbon dioxide at night and storing it as the acid malate, then releasing it during the day in order to reduce photorespiration.
== Taxonomy ==
The pineapple comprises five botanical varieties, formerly regarded as separate species. The genomes of three varieties, including the wild progenitor variety bracteatus, have been sequenced.
== History ==
=== Precolonial cultivation ===
The wild plant originates from the Paraná–Paraguay River drainages between southern Brazil and Paraguay. Little is known about its domestication, but it spread as a crop throughout South America. Archaeological evidence of use is found as far back as 1200–800 BC (3200–2800 BP) in Peru and 200 BC – 700 AD (2200–1300 BP) in Mexico, where it was cultivated by the Mayas and the Aztecs. By the late 1400s, cropped pineapple was widely distributed and a staple food of Native Americans. The first European to encounter the pineapple was Christopher Columbus, in Guadeloupe on 4 November 1493. The Portuguese took the fruit from Brazil and introduced it into India by 1550. The 'Red Spanish' cultivar was also introduced by the Spanish from Latin America to the Philippines, and it was grown to produce piña fibers that would then be used to produce textiles from at least the 17th century.
Columbus brought the plant back to Spain and called it piña de Indes, meaning "pine of the Indians". The pineapple was documented in Peter Martyr's Decades of the New World (1516) and Antonio Pigafetta's Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo (1524–1525), and the first known illustration was in Oviedo's Historia General de Las Indias (1535).
=== Old World introduction ===
While the pineapple fascinated Europeans as a fruit of colonialism, it was not successfully cultivated in Europe until Pieter de la Court (1664–1739) developed greenhouse horticulture near Leiden. Pineapple plants were distributed from the Netherlands to English gardeners in 1719 and French ones in 1730. In England, the first pineapple was grown at Dorney Court, Dorney in Buckinghamshire, and a huge "pineapple stove" to heat the plants was built at the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1723. In France, King Louis XV was presented with a pineapple that had been grown at Versailles in 1733. In Russia, Peter the Great imported de la Court's method into St. Petersburg in the 1720s; in 1730, twenty pineapple saplings were transported from there to a greenhouse at Empress Anna's new Moscow palace.
Because of the expense of direct import and the enormous cost in equipment and labour required to grow them in a temperate climate, in greenhouses called "pineries", pineapple became a symbol of wealth. They were initially used mainly for display at dinner parties, rather than being eaten, and were used again and again until they began to rot. In the second half of the 18th century, the production of the fruit on British estates became the subject of great rivalry between wealthy aristocrats. John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, built a hothouse on his estate surmounted by a huge stone cupola 14 metres tall in the shape of the fruit; it is known as the Dunmore Pineapple. In architecture, pineapple figures became decorative elements symbolizing hospitality.
=== Since the 19th century: mass commercialization ===
Many different varieties, mostly from the Antilles, were tried for European glasshouse cultivation. The most significant cultivar was "Smooth Cayenne", first imported to France in 1820, then subsequently re-exported to the United Kingdom in 1835, and then from UK, the cultivation spread via Hawaii to Australia and Africa. The "Smooth Cayenne" cultivar (and sub-selections or clones of the "Smooth Cayenne") make up for the majority of world pineapple production today. Jams and sweets based on pineapple were imported to Europe from the West Indies, Brazil, and Mexico from an early date. By the early 19th century, fresh pineapples were transported direct from the West Indies in large enough quantities to reduce European prices. Later pineapple production was dominated by the Azores for Europe, and Florida and the Caribbean for North America, because of the short trade routes.
The Spanish had introduced the pineapple into Hawaii in the 18th century where it is known as the hala kahiki ("foreign hala"), but the first commercial plantation was established in 1886. The most famous investor was James Dole, who moved to Hawaii in 1899 and started a 24-hectare (60-acre) pineapple plantation in 1900 which grew into the Dole Food Company. Dole and Del Monte began growing pineapples on the island of Oahu in 1901 and 1917, respectively, and the Maui Pineapple Company began cultivation on Maui in 1909. James Dole began the commercial processing of pineapple, and Dole employee Henry Ginaca invented an automatic peeling and coring machine in 1911.
Hawaiian production started to decline from the 1970s because of competition and the shift to refrigerated sea transport. Dole ceased its cannery operations in Honolulu in 1991, and in 2008, Del Monte terminated its pineapple-growing operations in Hawaii. In 2009, the Maui Pineapple Company reduced its operations to supply pineapples only locally on Maui, and by 2013, only the Dole Plantation on Oahu grew pineapples in a volume of about 0.1 percent of the world's production. Despite this decline, the pineapple is sometimes used as a symbol of Hawaii. Further, foods with pineapple in them are sometimes known as "Hawaiian" for this reason alone.
In the Philippines, "Smooth Cayenne" was introduced in the early 1900s by the US Bureau of Agriculture during the American colonial period. Dole and Del Monte established plantations in the island of Mindanao in the 1920s; in the provinces of Cotabato and Bukidnon, respectively. Large scale canning had started in Southeast Asia, including in the Philippines, from 1920. This trade was severely damaged by World War II, and Hawaii dominated the international trade until the 1960s.
The Philippines remain one of the top exporters of pineapples in the world. The Del Monte plantations are now locally managed, after Del Monte Pacific Ltd., a Filipino company, completed the purchase of Del Monte Foods in 2014.
== Composition ==
=== Nutrition ===
Raw pineapple pulp is 86% water, 13% carbohydrates, 0.5% protein, and contains negligible fat (table). In a reference amount of 100 g (3.5 oz), raw pineapple supplies 209 kilojoules (50 kilocalories) of food energy, and is a rich source of manganese (40% of the Daily Value, DV) and vitamin C (53% DV), but otherwise contains no micronutrients in significant amounts (table).
=== Phytochemistry ===
Pineapple fruits and peels contain diverse phytochemicals, among which are polyphenols, including gallic acid, syringic acid, vanillin, ferulic acid, sinapic acid, coumaric acid, chlorogenic acid, epicatechin, and arbutin.
Present in all parts of the pineapple plant, bromelain is a mixture of proteolytic enzymes. It is present in stem, fruit, crown, core, leaves of pineapple itself. Bromelain is under preliminary research for treatment of a variety of clinical disorders, but has not been adequately defined for its effects in the human body, although studies have shown anti-inflammatory effects." Add new citations to this new phrase. Bromelain may be unsafe for some users, such as in pregnancy, allergies, or anticoagulation therapy.
Having sufficient bromelain content, raw pineapple juice may be useful as a meat marinade and tenderizer. Although pineapple enzymes can interfere with the preparation of some foods or manufactured products, such as gelatin-based desserts or gel capsules, their proteolytic activity responsible for such properties may be degraded during cooking and canning. The quantity of bromelain in a typical serving of pineapple fruit is probably not significant, but specific extraction can yield sufficient quantities for domestic and industrial processing.
== Varieties ==
=== Cultivars ===
Many cultivars are known. The leaves of the commonly grown "Smooth Cayenne" cultivar and its various clones are smooth, and it is the most commonly grown worldwide. Many cultivars have become distributed from its origins in Paraguay and the southern part of Brazil, and later improved stocks were introduced into the Americas, the Azores, Africa, India, Malaysia and Australia. Varieties include:
"Hilo" is a compact, 1.0- to 1.5-kg (2– to 3-lb) Hawaiian variant of smooth cayenne; the fruit is more cylindrical and produces many suckers, but no slips.
"Kona sugarloaf", at 2.5 to 3.0 kg (5–6 lb), has white flesh with no woodiness in the center, is cylindrical in shape, and has a high sugar content but no acid; it has an unusually sweet fruit.
"Natal queen", at 1.0 to 1.5 kg (2 to 3 lb), has golden yellow flesh, crisp texture, and delicate mild flavor; well-adapted to fresh consumption, it keeps well after ripening. It has spiny leaves and is grown in Australia, Malaysia, and South Africa.
"Pernambuco" ("eleuthera") weighs 1–2 kg (2–4 lb), and has pale yellow to white flesh. It is sweet, melting in texture, and excellent for eating fresh; it is poorly adapted for shipping, has spiny leaves, and is grown in Latin America.
"Red Spanish", at 1–2 kg (2–4 lb), has pale yellow flesh with a pleasant aroma, is squarish in shape, and well-adapted for shipping as fresh fruit to distant markets; it has spiny leaves and is grown in Latin America and the Philippines. It was the original pineapple cultivar in the Philippines grown for their leaf fibers (piña) in the traditional Philippine textile industry.
"Smooth cayenne", a 2.5- to 3.0-kg (5- to 6-lb), pale yellow– to yellow-fleshed, cylindrical fruit with high sugar and acid content, is well-adapted to canning and processing; its leaves are without spines. It is an ancient cultivar developed by Amerind peoples. In some parts of Asia, this cultivar is known as Sarawak, after an area of Malaysia in which it is grown. It is one of the ancestors of cultivars "73-50" (also called "MD-1" and "CO-2") and "73–114" (also called "MD-2"). Smooth cayenne was previously the variety produced in Hawaii, and the most easily obtainable in U.S. grocery stores, but was replaced over the course of the mid-1990s and 2000s by MD-2. The success of Del Monte's MD-2 caused Dole to obtain & grow its own MD-2 pineapples, leading to Del Monte Fresh Produce Co. v. Dole Food Co.
Some Ananas species are grown as ornamentals for color, novel fruit size, and other aesthetic qualities.
In the US, in 1986, the Pineapple Research Institute was dissolved and its assets divided between Del Monte and Maui Land and Pineapple. Del Monte took cultivar '73–114', dubbed 'MD-2', to its plantations in Costa Rica, found it to be well-suited to growing there, and launched it publicly in 1996 as 'Gold Extra Sweet', while Del Monte also began marketing '73–50', dubbed 'CO-2', as 'Del Monte Gold'. The Maui Pineapple Company began growing variety 73-50 in 1988 and named it Maui Gold. The successor company to MPC, the Hali'imaile Pineapple Company continues to grow Maui Gold on the slopes of Haleakala.
== Cultivation ==
In commercial farming, flowering can be induced artificially, and the early harvesting of the main fruit can encourage the development of a second crop of smaller fruits. Once removed during cleaning, the top of the pineapple can be planted in soil and a new plant will grow. Slips and suckers are planted commercially.
=== Storage and transport ===
Some buyers prefer green fruit, others ripened or off-green. A plant growth regulator, Ethephon, is typically sprayed onto the fruit one week before harvest, developing ethylene, which turns the fruit golden yellow. After cleaning and slicing, a pineapple is typically canned in sugar syrup with added preservative. A pineapple never becomes any riper than it was when harvested since it is a non-climacteric fruit.
=== Ethical and environmental concerns ===
Like most modern fruit production, pineapple plantations are highly industrialized operations. In Costa Rica particularly, the pineapple industry uses large amounts of insecticides to protect the crop, which have caused health problems in many workers. These workers often receive little compensation, and are mostly poor migrants, often Nicaraguan. Workers' wages also decrease every time prices are lowered overseas. In 2016, the government declared that it would be trying to improve the situation, with the help of various other groups.
Historically, tropical fruit agriculture, such as for pineapples, has been concentrated in so-called "banana republics".
==== Illegal drug trade ====
Export pineapples from Costa Rica to Europe are often used as a cover for narcotrafficking, and containers are impounded routinely in both locations.
==== Expansion into protected areas ====
In Costa Rica, pineapple cultivation has expanded into the Maquenque, Corredor Fronterizo, Barra del Colorado and Caño Negro wildlife refuges, all located in the north of the country. As those are protected areas and not national parks, limited and restricted sustainable activities are allowed, however pineapple plantations are industrial operations and many of these do not have the proper license to operate in the protected areas, or were started before either the designation of the area, recent regulations or the creation of the environmental regulatory agency (Setena) in 1996. The agency has registers for around 358.5 ha (1.384 sq mi) of pineapple plantations operating within protected areas, but satellite imagery from 2018 reports around 1,659 ha (6.41 sq mi).
=== Pests and diseases ===
Pineapples are subject to a variety of diseases, the most serious of which is wilt disease vectored by mealybugs typically found on the surface of pineapples, but possibly in the closed blossom cups. Other diseases include citrus pink disease, bacterial heart rot, anthracnose, fungal heart rot, root rot, black rot, butt rot, fruitlet core rot, and yellow spot virus. Pineapple pink disease (not citrus pink disease) is characterized by the fruit developing a brownish to black discoloration when heated during the canning process. The causal agents of pink disease are the bacteria Acetobacter aceti, Gluconobacter oxydans, Pantoea citrea and Tatumella ptyseos.
Some pests that commonly affect pineapple plants are scales, thrips, mites, mealybugs, ants, and symphylids.
Heart-rot is the most serious disease affecting pineapple plants. The disease is caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi and P. parasitica, fungi that often affect pineapples grown in wet conditions. Since it is difficult to treat, it is advisable to guard against infection by planting resistant cultivars where these are available; all suckers that are required for propagation should be dipped in a fungicide, since the fungus enters through the wounds.
== Production ==
In 2024, world production of pineapples was 29 million tonnes, led by Costa Rica, the Philippines, and Indonesia, each producing about 3 million tonnes.
== Uses ==
=== Culinary ===
The flesh and juice of the pineapple are used in cuisines around the world. In many tropical countries, pineapple is prepared and sold on roadsides as a snack. It is sold whole or in halves with a stick inserted. Whole, cored slices with a cherry in the middle are a common garnish on hams in the West. Chunks of pineapple are used in desserts such as fruit salad, as well as in some savory dishes, including Hawaiian pizza, or as a grilled ring on a hamburger. Traditional dishes that use pineapple include hamonado, afritada, kaeng som pla, and Hawaiian haystack. Crushed pineapple is used in yogurt, jam, sweets, and ice cream. The juice of the pineapple is served as a beverage, and it is also the main ingredient in cocktails such as piña colada and in the drink tepache.
In the Philippines, a traditional jelly-like dessert called nata de piña has also been produced since the 18th century. It is made by fermenting pineapple juice with the bacteria Komagataeibacter xylinus.
Pineapple vinegar is an ingredient found in both Honduran and Filipino cuisine, where it is produced locally. In Mexico, it is usually made with peels from the whole fruit, rather than the juice; however, in Taiwanese cuisine, it is often produced by blending pineapple juice with grain vinegar.
The European Union consumed 50% of the global total for pineapple juice in 2012–2016. The Netherlands was the largest importer of pineapple juice in Europe. Thailand, Costa Rica and the Netherlands are the major suppliers to the European Union market in 2012–2016. Countries consuming the most pineapple juice in 2017 were Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, having a combined consumption of 47% of the world total. The consumption of pineapple juice in China and India is low compared to their populations.
=== Textiles ===
The 'Red Spanish' cultivar of pineapples were once extensively cultivated in the Philippines. The long leaves of the cultivar were the source of traditional piña fibers, an adaptation of the native weaving traditions with fibers extracted from abacá. These were woven into lustrous lace-like nipis fabrics usually decorated with intricate floral embroidery known as calado and sombrado. The fabric was a luxury export from the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period and gained favor among European aristocracy in the 18th and 19th centuries. Domestically, they were used to make the traditional barong tagalog, baro't saya, and traje de mestiza clothing of the Filipino upper class, as well as women's kerchiefs (pañuelo). They were favored for their light and breezy quality, which was ideal in the hot tropical climate of the islands. The industry was destroyed in the Second World War and is only starting to be revived.
=== Houseplant ===
The variety A. comosus 'Variegatus' is occasionally grown as a houseplant. It needs direct sunlight and thrives at temperatures of 18 to 24 °C (64 to 75 °F), with a minimum winter temperature of 16 °C (61 °F). It should be kept humid, but the soil should be allowed to dry out between waterings. It has almost no resting period but should be repotted each spring until the container reaches 20 cm (8 in). |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_Carlisle_Indians_football_team | 1911 Carlisle Indians football team | The 1911 Carlisle Indians football team represented the Carlisle Indian Industrial School as an independent during the 1911 college football season. Led by tenth-year head coach Pop Warner, the Indians compiled a record of 11–1 and outscored opponents 298 to 49. The season included one of the greatest upsets in college football history. Against Harvard, Jim Thorpe scored all of the Indians' points in a shocking upset over the period powerhouse, 18–15. The only loss for Carlisle came at the hands of Syracuse the following week, 12–11. Walter Camp selected Thorpe first-team All-American. One source claims Thorpe was "recognized as the greatest player of the year and a man whose kicking is likely to revolutionize the game." College Football Hall of Fame members on the team include Thorpe, Gus Welch, and William "Lone Star" Dietz.
== Schedule ==
== Players ==
=== Line ===
=== Backfield === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_of_Montpellier, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_I_of_Aragon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_II_of_Majorca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sancho_of_Majorca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_III_of_Majorca | Marie of Montpellier, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James I of Aragon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James II of Majorca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sancho of Majorca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James III of Majorca | |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Biles | Simone Biles | Simone Arianne Biles Owens (née Biles; born March 14, 1997) is an American artistic gymnast. Her 11 Olympic medals and 30 World Championship medals make her the most decorated gymnast in history. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest gymnasts of all time, and one of the greatest female athletes in history. With 11 Olympic medals, she is tied with Věra Čáslavská as the second-most decorated female Olympic gymnast behind Larisa Latynina, and has the most Olympic medals earned by a U.S. gymnast.
At the Olympic Games, Biles is a two-time gold medalist in the individual all-around (2016, 2024). She is also a two-time champion on vault (2016, 2024), the 2016 champion and 2024 silver medalist on floor exercise, and a two-time bronze medalist on balance beam (2016, 2020). Biles led the gold medal-winning U.S. teams in 2016, dubbed the "Final Five," and in 2024, dubbed the "Golden Girls". At the 2020 Summer Olympics, where she was favored to win at least four of the six available gold medals, she withdrew from most of the competition after the qualification round due to "the twisties", a temporary loss of air awareness while performing twisting elements. She won a silver medal with the U.S. team nicknamed the "Fighting Four".
Biles is the most-decorated gymnast of the World Championships, with 30 medals, all but seven gold. She is a six-time all-around champion (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2023), six-time floor exercise champion (2013–2015, 2018–2019, 2023), and four-time balance beam champion (2014–2015, 2019, 2023), all record totals. She is also a two-time vault champion (2018–2019) and a member of a record five gold-medal-winning U.S. teams (2014–2015, 2018–2019, 2023). She is also a four-time silver medalist (2013–2014 and 2023 on vault, 2018 on uneven bars) and a three-time bronze medalist (2015 on vault, 2013 and 2018 on balance beam).
Domestically, Biles has won a record nine U.S. national all-around championships (2013–2016, 2018–2019, 2021, 2023–2024); in 2024, she became the oldest female gymnast to win the title. She is a seven-time champion on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise; a two-time uneven bars champion; and the only woman to win all five gold medals in a single championships twice (2018, 2024).
Biles is the sixth woman to win an individual all-around title at both the Olympics and the World Championships; she is the first since Lilia Podkopayeva in 1996 to hold both titles simultaneously. She is the tenth woman and first American woman to win a World medal on every event, and the first woman since Daniela Silivaș in 1988 to win a medal on every event at a single Olympics or World Championships. Biles is the originator of the most difficult skill on women's vault, balance beam, and floor exercise; so far, she is the only gymnast to attempt them.
In 2022, President Joe Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2023, she won her eighth U.S. Gymnastics title, breaking the 90-year-old record held by Alfred Jochim. Biles has won the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year four times (2017, 2019, 2020, 2025) and Comeback of the Year once (2024).
== Early life and education ==
Biles was born on March 14, 1997, in Columbus, Ohio, the third of four siblings. Her birth mother, Shanon Biles, was unable to care for Simone or her other children. All four went in and out of foster care.
In 2000, Biles's maternal grandfather, Ron Biles, and his second wife, Nellie Cayetano Biles, began caring temporarily for Shanon's children in the north Houston suburb of Spring, Texas, after learning his grandchildren were in foster care. In 2003, the couple formally adopted Simone and her younger sister Adria. Ron's sister, Shanon's aunt Harriet, adopted the two oldest children. Simone holds Belizean citizenship through her adoptive mother and considers Belize to be her second home. Biles and her family are Catholic.
Biles attended Benfer Elementary School in Harris County, Texas. In 2012, Biles switched from public school to home schooling, allowing her to increase her training from about 20 to 32 hours a week. She earned her high-school diploma in mid-2015. Biles verbally committed to UCLA on August 4, 2014, and signed a National Letter of Intent in November 2014, planning to defer enrollment until after the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Instead, on July 29, 2015, she announced that she would turn professional and forfeit her NCAA eligibility to compete for UCLA.
== Early gymnastics career ==
Biles first tried gymnastics at age 6 during a day-care field trip. The instructors suggested she continue with the sport, and Biles soon enrolled in an optional training program at Bannon's Gymnastics. She began training with coach Aimee Boorman at age eight.
=== 2011–12: Junior elite ===
Biles began her elite gymnastics career at age 14 on July 1, 2011, at the 2011 American Classic in Houston. She placed third all-around, first on vault and balance beam, fourth on floor exercise, and eighth on uneven bars. Later that month, Biles competed at the 2011 U.S. Classic in Chicago, Illinois, where she placed 20th all-around, fifth on vault and floor exercise.
Biles's first meet of 2012 was the American Classic hosted in Huntsville, Texas. She placed first all-around and on vault, tied for second on floor exercise, placed third on balance beam, and fourth on uneven bars.
Biles's placement in the American Classic secured her a spot to compete at the 2012 USA Gymnastics National Championships. She later competed at the 2012 U.S. Classic in Chicago. She finished first all-around and on vault, second on floor exercise, and sixth on balance beam. In June, she made her second appearance at the U.S. National Championships in St. Louis, Missouri. She finished third all-around, first on vault, and sixth on uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise. After this performance, Biles was named to the U.S. Junior National Team by a committee headed by Márta Károlyi, the National Team Coordinator (2001–2016).
== Senior gymnastics career ==
=== 2013 ===
Biles's senior international debut was in March at the 2013 American Cup, a FIG World Cup event. She and Katelyn Ohashi were named as replacements for Elizabeth Price and 2012 Olympic gold medalist Kyla Ross, both of whom withdrew from the competition because of injuries. Biles led for two rotations but finished second behind her teammate, Ohashi, after a fall off the beam.
Biles traveled to Jesolo, Italy, to compete at the 2013 City of Jesolo Trophy. She took the all-around, vault, balance beam, and floor exercise titles in addition to contributing to the U.S. team's gold medal. She and the U.S. delegation next competed at an international tri-meet in Chemnitz, Germany, against teams from Germany and Romania. The U.S. won the team gold medal. In addition, Biles won the vault, balance beam, and floor titles, and tied for second in the all-around, behind Kyla Ross, after a fall on the uneven bars.
In July, Biles competed at the 2013 U.S. Classic. She performed poorly, falling several times, and did not compete vault after twisting her ankle on the floor exercise. In the aftermath of this poor performance, Biles consulted a sports psychologist whom she credits with helping her anxiety and confidence issues and allowing her to begin her streak of dominance in the sport.
Biles competed at the 2013 U.S. National Gymnastics Championships in August, where she was crowned the national all-around champion. Biles also won silver in all four individual events. After the USA Gymnastics National Championships, Biles was named to the Senior National Team and was invited to the qualifying camp for the 2013 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Texas. She was selected for the World Championships team.
In October, Biles competed at the 2013 World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium. She qualified first in the all-around, second to the vault final, sixth to the uneven bars final, fifth to the balance beam final, and first to the floor final, making her the first American gymnast to qualify to the all-around and all four event finals since Shannon Miller in 1991. Biles competed cleanly during the women's individual all-around and won the competition with a score of 60.216, almost a point ahead of silver medalist Ross, and almost a point and a half better than the bronze medalist, 2010 world all-around champion Aliya Mustafina. Biles subsequently had surgery for bone spurs in her right tibia, sidelining her for three weeks.
At the age of 16, Biles became the seventh American woman and the first African American to win the world all-around title. In the event finals, she won silver on the vault, behind defending world champion and Olympic silver medalist McKayla Maroney and ahead of 2008 Olympic gold medalist Hong Un Jong of North Korea; bronze on the balance beam, behind Mustafina and Ross; and gold on the floor exercise, ahead of Italy's Vanessa Ferrari and Romania's Larisa Iordache. She finished fourth in the uneven bars final, behind China's Huang Huidan, Ross, and Mustafina.
=== 2014 ===
Biles missed the start of the season due to injury, sitting out the 2014 AT&T American Cup and the 2014 Pacific Rim Championships. Her debut that year was at the U.S. Classic in Chicago. She won the all-around by a wide margin and also took first place on vault, beam (tied with Ross), and floor. At the 2014 USA Gymnastics National Championships, Biles repeated as national all-around champion after two days of competition, finishing more than four points ahead of silver medalist Ross, despite a fall from the balance beam during her final routine of the meet. She won the gold on vault and floor, tied for the silver on balance beam with Alyssa Baumann, and finished fourth on the uneven bars. She was once again selected for the Senior National Team.
On September 17, Biles was selected to compete at the 2014 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Nanning, China. She dominated the preliminary round despite a major error on the uneven bars, qualifying in first place to the all-around, vault, beam, and floor finals, in addition to contributing to the U.S. team's first-place qualification into the team final. During the team final, Biles led the United States to its second consecutive world team championship, which they won over the second-place Chinese team by nearly seven points. In the all-around, Biles performed cleanly on all four events, bettering her bars score from qualifications by more than a point, and won her second consecutive world all-around title ahead of Ross and Romanian Larisa Iordache. Biles became the second American woman to repeat as world all-around champion, following Miller (1993 and 1994), and the first woman of any nationality to do so since Russia's Svetlana Khorkina (2001 and 2003). Biles finished behind North Korea's Hong Un Jong in the vault competition, taking her second consecutive silver medal in that event. She won the gold in the balance beam final ahead of China's Bai Yawen and the gold in the floor exercise final, again, ahead of Iordache. This brought her total of World Championship gold medals to six, the most ever by an American gymnast, surpassing Miller's five.
=== 2015 ===
Biles competed at the 2015 AT&T American Cup at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on March 7. She placed first with a score of 62.299, 4.467 points ahead of second-place finisher U.S. teammate MyKayla Skinner. Later that month, Biles was nominated for the James E. Sullivan Award. She ended the month at the 2015 City of Jesolo Trophy, winning the all-around title with 62.100.
On July 25, she competed at the U.S. Classic and finished first in the all-around, ahead of 2012 Olympic all-around champion Gabby Douglas and Maggie Nichols, with a score of 62.400. On the beam, she scored 15.250 and took first at the event, ahead of Douglas and 2012 Olympic beam bronze medalist Aly Raisman. She scored 16.050 on the floor and claimed first in the event, 1.050 points ahead of Douglas and also ahead of Nichols and Bailie Key. She had a small hop on her Amanar vault and scored 16.000. She then scored 15.150 on her second vault, to score an average of 15.575 and place first in the event, ahead of 2014 Worlds vault bronze medalist and teammate MyKayla Skinner, who averaged 14.950. Biles ended on bars and scored a 15.100 to claim the all-around title. She placed fourth in the event behind 2014 Worlds teammate Madison Kocian, Douglas, and Key.
At the 2015 U.S. National Championships, Biles secured her third all-around national title, becoming only the second woman ever to do so, 23 years after Kim Zmeskal (1990, 1991, 1992).
Biles, along with Douglas, Dowell, Kocian, Nichols, Raisman, and Skinner, was selected to represent the United States at the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Glasgow, Scotland. Biles once again qualified in first place in the all-around, vault, beam, and floor finals. Her uneven bars score would have qualified her in eighth place in that final as well, but she was excluded, as per the rules, after teammates Kocian and Douglas qualified ahead of her. In team finals, she helped the United States team win their third consecutive gold medal at a World Championships event. During the all-around final, Biles performed below her usual standard, taking a large hop on the vault, landing out of bounds on floor (which she stated was a first), and grasping the beam to prevent a fall. However, her final score of 60.399 was more than enough to secure the title with her largest margin of victory yet (over a point ahead of silver medalist Gabby Douglas and bronze medalist Larisa Iordache). With that victory, Biles became the first woman to win three consecutive all-around titles in World Gymnastics Championships history. During day one of event finals, Biles competed on vault, taking bronze behind Maria Paseka (RUS) and Hong Un Jong (PRK). On day two, she competed on the balance beam and floor exercise, retaining her world title in both events by large margins. This brought Biles's total World Championships medal count to 14, the most for any American, and total gold medal count to 10, the most for any woman in World Championships history.
=== 2016 ===
In April, Biles began her season at the Pacific Rim Championships, where she won the all-around title and had the highest score on vault (where she debuted a more difficult second vault), floor exercise (where she debuted a new floor routine), and balance beam. Additionally, the U.S. won the team title by a wide margin. Biles did not compete in the event finals. On June 4, Biles competed at the Secret U.S. Classic in two events only, the uneven bars and beam. She placed first on balance beam with a 15.650 and placed fifth on uneven bars with a 15.1.In the following weeks at the 2016 U.S. National Championships, Biles won the all-around title by a wide margin of 3.9 points over Aly Raisman. She won the gold medal on vault and floor exercise, receiving scores of at least 16 all four times. She also won the gold medal on the balance beam and placed fourth on uneven bars.
On July 10, Biles was named to the team for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, alongside Gabby Douglas, Laurie Hernandez, Madison Kocian, and Aly Raisman.
In September 2016, Biles's medical information was released, and she was accused of doping to enhance performance by the Russian media following the Russian cyber espionage group Fancy Bear's hack into the World Anti-Doping Agency. Biles then disclosed on Twitter that she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and was permitted to take medication for it, having applied for and received a therapeutic use exemption. She was applauded for opening up about ADHD.
==== 2016 Summer Olympics ====
In the runup to the 2016 Rio Games, Biles appeared in a Tide commercial ("The Evolution of Power") with gymnasts Dominique Dawes and Nadia Comăneci.
On August 7, Biles competed in the Women's Qualification at the 2016 Summer Olympics, helping the U.S. team to qualify in first place to the final with a score of 185.238 (9.959 points ahead of the second-place team, China). She also qualified as the top gymnast in four of the five individual finals: the all-around with a score of 62.416, vault with an average score of 16.050, balance beam with a score of 15.633, and floor exercise with a score of 15.733.
On August 9, Biles won her first Olympic gold medal in the gymnastics team event. The only gymnast for Team USA to compete in all four events in the final, she contributed an all-around score of 61.833 (15.933 on vault, 14.800 on bars, 15.300 on beam, and 15.800 on floor) as the Americans won the gold with a score of 184.897, more than 8 points ahead of the silver-medal Russian team.
Biles won the gold medal in the individual all-around on August 11, ahead of teammate Aly Raisman and Russia's Aliya Mustafina. Biles earned a total score of 62.198 with 15.866 on the vault, 14.966 on the uneven bars, 15.433 on the balance beam, and 15.933 on the floor. Biles had the highest scores on vault, balance beam, and floor; she had the only score over 15 on balance beam in the finals. She and Raisman became the second pair of American gymnasts to win gold and silver in the individual all-around, after Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson in 2008.
In the vault final, she scored 15.900 for her Amânar and 16.033 for her Cheng to win her second individual gold medal with an average score of 15.966, more than 0.7 points ahead of second-place finisher Maria Paseka of Russia and third-place finisher Giulia Steingruber of Switzerland.
In the balance beam final, she grabbed the beam with her hands (a mandatory 0.5-point deduction) after underrotating her front tuck and scored 14.733. Despite her mistake, she won the bronze behind teammate Laurie Hernandez, who won the silver with a score of 15.333, and Sanne Wevers of the Netherlands, who won the gold with a score of 15.466).
In the floor exercise final, she won the gold with a score of 15.966. Teammate Aly Raisman won the silver with a score of 15.500 and Amy Tinkler of Great Britain won bronze scoring 14.933. With Biles's five total medals along with Madison Kocian's silver medal on the uneven bars, Team USA claimed a medal in every women's artistic gymnastics event for the first time since 1984.
With four Olympic gold medals, Biles set an American record for most gold medals in women's gymnastics at a single Games, and equaled several other records with her medals won in Rio. Biles winning four gold medals was the first instance of a quadruple gold medallist in women's gymnastics at a single Games since Ecaterina Szabo (Romania) in 1984, and fifth overall, after Larisa Latynina (USSR, 1956), Agnes Keleti (Hungary, 1956), Věra Čáslavská (Czechoslovakia, 1968) and Szabo. Biles became the sixth female gymnast to have won an individual all-around title at both the World Championships and the Olympics—the others being Larisa Latynina, Věra Čáslavská, Ludmilla Tourischeva, Elena Shushunova, and Lilia Podkopayeva. Biles is the first female gymnast since Lilia Podkopayeva (Ukraine) in 1996 to win gold in the all-around as well as in an event final, and the first female gymnast since Podkopayeva to win the Olympic all-around title while holding the World and European/American individual all-around titles. She joined Latynina (1956–1960), Čáslavská (1964–1968), and Ludmilla Tourischeva (1968–1972), as the fourth female gymnast to win every major all-around title in an Olympic cycle.
Biles joined Mary Lou Retton in 1984, Shannon Miller in 1992, and Nastia Liukin in 2008, in winning five women's gymnastics medals at a single Olympics, along with Szabo (Roumania, 1984), Nadia Comaneci (Roumania, 1976), and Karin Janz (East Germany, 1972). Olga Mostepanova (USSR) also won five gold medals at the Alternate Olympics in 1984. The overall record for most women's Olympic gymnastics medals at a single game (majority gold), remains six medals (Latynina, 1956, 1960, and 1964, Keleti, 1956, Čáslavská, 1968, Daniela Silivas, 1988).
Biles and her teammate Gabby Douglas are the only American female gymnasts to win both the individual all-around gold and team gold at the same Olympics. Douglas won both at the 2012 London Games.
Biles was chosen by Team USA to be the flag bearer in the closing ceremonies, becoming the first American female gymnast to receive this honor.
=== 2017: Hiatus ===
Biles did not compete in 2017.
After the 2016 Rio Games, Biles co-wrote an autobiography with journalist Michelle Burford, Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, A Life in Balance, which reads: "I want people to reach for their dreams and there are so many people who have inspired me with their love and encouragement along the way and I want to pass on that inspiration to readers." The book reached number one on The New York Times best sellers Young Adult list the week of January 8, 2017 and was turned into a Lifetime biopic.
Biles competed on season 24 of Dancing with the Stars, attempting to replicate her Rio teammate Laurie Hernandez's win in season 23. Paired with professional dancer Sasha Farber, she was favored to win but was eliminated on May 15, 2017, one week before the finals, finishing in fourth place.
In August, during the 2017 P&G National Championships, Biles said that she had returned to the gym to start conditioning. Her longtime coach, Aimee Boorman, had moved to Florida with her family; in October Biles hired coach Laurent Landi, who had coached her Olympic teammate Madison Kocian.
=== 2018: Return to competition ===
Biles was added back to the National Team on March 1 after the Athlete Selection Committee viewed recent videos of her performances. Her first competition of the year was the U.S. Classic in July, where she won the all-around title ahead of Riley McCusker by 1.200 points. She also won the gold medal on floor and balance beam and recorded the highest single vault score. Her all-around score of 58.700 became the highest score recorded under the 2017–2020 Code of Points despite a fall on the uneven bars and an out-of-bounds penalty on floor exercise. She showed numerous upgrades to her routines from 2016, including a Fabrichnova (double-twisting double back dismount) and a Van Leeuwen on uneven bars, and a Moors (double-twisting double layout) on floor exercise.
In August, Biles competed at the 2018 National Championships. She placed first in every event over the two days of competition, the first woman to do so since Dominique Dawes in 1994. Biles won the all-around title 6.55 points ahead of second-place finisher and reigning world champion Morgan Hurd and set a record for the most national all-around titles with five. This placement also marked her fourth national vault title, third national balance beam and floor exercise titles, and first national uneven bars title. Her 60.100 all-around score from the first day of competition was the first score recorded above 60 since her own all-around victory at the 2016 Olympics. She was named to her seventh national team and was invited to the October selection camp for the 2018 World Championships.
At the 2018 Youth Olympics, the mixed multi-discipline teams were named for gymnastics legends, including Biles, Nadia Comăneci, and Kōhei Uchimura. The team named for Biles won gold.
In October, Biles participated in the World Team Selection Camp. She placed first in the all-around as well as first in vault and floor exercise. She placed second on the uneven bars behind McCusker, and fourth on the balance beam (due to hands touching the mat on dismount) behind Kara Eaker, McCusker, and Ragan Smith. Biles debuted a new vault: a Yurchenko with a half turn onto the table with a stretched salto forward off with two full twists (Cheng with an extra half twist). The following day she was named to the team to compete at the 2018 World Championships alongside McCusker, Hurd, Grace McCallum, Eaker, and alternate Ragan Smith.
==== 2018 World Championships ====
In late October, at the 2018 World Championships in Doha, Qatar, Biles went to an emergency room the night before the qualifying round because of stomach pains that turned out to be a kidney stone. After confirming that it was not appendicitis, she checked herself out of the hospital. The next day, she qualified to the all-around, vault, balance beam and floor exercise finals in first place, and to the uneven bars final in second place behind Nina Derwael of Belgium. After successfully performing the vault she premiered at the selection camp, it was named the Biles in the Code of Points, and given a difficulty value of 6.4 (for the 2017–2020 Code of Points), which was tied with the Produnova for the most difficult women's vault ever competed. The US also qualified for the team final in first place. During the team final, Biles competed on all four events, recording the highest score of any competitor on vault, uneven bars, and floor exercise. The U.S. team won the gold medal with a score of 171.629, 8.766 points ahead of second-place Russia, beating previous margin of victory records set in the open-ended code of points era at the 2014 World Championships (6.693) and 2016 Rio Olympics (8.209).
In the all-around final, Biles won the gold medal by a margin of 1.7 points despite falling on both the vault and the balance beam. The overwhelming difficulty gap between her and her competitors allowed her to claim the title with a score of 57.491 over silver medalist Mai Murakami of Japan and bronze medalist Morgan Hurd. Earning her fourth world all-around title, Biles set a new record for most women's World All-Around titles, surpassing the previous record of three held by Svetlana Khorkina. She also became the first defending Olympic women's all-around champion to earn a world all-around title since 1972 Olympic champion Lyudmilla Turischeva did so in 1974.
In the event finals, Biles won the gold medal in vault, her first-ever world vault title. The two vaults she competed in were a Cheng and an Amanar. This marked her thirteenth World gold medal, meaning Biles had won the most Gymnastics World Championships titles of any gender, breaking Soviet/Belarusian gymnast Vitaly Scherbo's previous record of twelve gold medals. She then won the silver medal on uneven bars behind Nina Derwael of Belgium. By winning a medal on uneven bars, Biles became the first American and the tenth female gymnast from any country to have won a World Championship medal on every event. The following day, she won the bronze medal on balance beam behind Liu Tingting of China and Ana Padurariu of Canada after a large balance check on her Barani. She then won the gold medal in floor exercise with a strong routine. In doing so, she became the first U.S. gymnast and first non-Soviet gymnast to win a medal on every event at a single World Championships, as well as the first gymnast from any country to do so since Elena Shushunova in 1987. Her 6 medals at this World Championships brought her total number of world medals to 20, which tied her with Khorkina for most world medals won.
==== Larry Nassar assault ====
On January 18, 2018, Biles said that former USA Gymnastics physician Larry Nassar had sexually assaulted her and that USA Gymnastics helped cover it up. She did not attend Nassar's sentencing hearings from January 16 to 24, 2018, saying that she "wasn't emotionally ready to face Larry Nassar again". Biles and the other survivors were awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2018. At the 2018 U.S. National Championships, Biles wore a teal leotard that she had designed to honor the survivors of Nassar's abuse, as a statement of unity. On September 15, 2021, Biles testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that she blamed "the entire system" for enabling and perpetuating Nassar's crimes, saying that USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee "failed to do their jobs". Three of her national-team teammates, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols, and Aly Raisman, testified with her.
=== 2019 ===
In early March, Biles competed at the Stuttgart World Cup, her first World Cup appearance not on American soil. She finished in first place, 3.668 points ahead of second-place Ana Padurariu of Canada.
In July, Biles competed at the 2019 GK US Classic. During podium training, she performed a triple-twisting double-tucked salto backwards (upgraded from a Silivas), but did not perform it during the competition. Biles won the all-around, 2.1 points ahead of second-place finisher Riley McCusker. Individually, she placed fifth on bars behind Morgan Hurd, Sunisa Lee, Grace McCallum and McCusker, third on beam behind Kara Eaker and McCusker, and first on floor exercise. She also had the highest single vault score, ahead of Jade Carey and MyKayla Skinner.
In August, Biles competed at the 2019 U.S. National Gymnastics Championships. She placed first in the all-around, with a two-day combined score of 118.500. In the competition, she became the first woman to complete a triple twisting double somersault on floor exercise and the first gymnast to complete a double twisting double somersault dismount off the balance beam. She placed first on vault, ahead of Jade Carey and MyKayla Skinner, first on balance beam ahead of Kara Eaker and Leanne Wong, first on floor exercise ahead of Carey and Sunisa Lee, and third on uneven bars behind Lee and Morgan Hurd.
In September, Biles competed at the US World Championships trials where she placed first in the all-around, despite falling on her dismount off the uneven bars, and earned a place on the team that would compete at the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart. The following day her teammates Sunisa Lee, Kara Eaker, MyKayla Skinner, Jade Carey, and Grace McCallum were also named to the team.
==== 2019 World Championships ====
During qualifications at the World Championships, Biles helped the USA qualify for the team final in first place, over five points ahead of second-place China. Individually, she qualified for the all-around, balance beam, and floor exercise finals in first place, the vault final in second place by a margin of one one-thousandth below teammate Jade Carey, and the uneven bars final in seventh place. She debuted two new eponymous skills: the Biles II on floor exercise, a triple-twisting double-tucked somersault, and the Biles on balance beam, a double-twisting double-tucked somersault dismount. Both elements were given the highest difficulty rating of J (1.0) for all elements on their respective apparatus, and the Biles II is the only element in artistic gymnastics to receive the J rating across all disciplines for both men and women.
In the team final, Biles led Team USA to its fifth consecutive team title, contributing scores of 15.400, 14.600, 14.433, and 15.333 on vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise, respectively. In doing so, Biles surpassed Russian gymnast Svetlana Khorkina as the most-decorated female gymnast in World Championship history. Her scores on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise were the highest of the day. During the all-around final Biles won gold with a score of 58.999, a record-setting 2.1 points ahead of second-place finisher Tang Xijing of China. Once again, she recorded the highest scores of the day on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise.
During the first day of event finals, Biles won the gold on vault, ahead of teammate Carey and Ellie Downie of Great Britain. After earning a medal on vault, her 23rd World Championships medal, Biles tied the record for most medals won at the World Championships with male Belarusian gymnast Vitaly Scherbo. During the uneven bars final, Biles earned a score of 14.700, ranking fifth, one-tenth behind bronze medalist and teammate Sunisa Lee.
On the second day of event finals, Biles scored 15.066 on the balance beam, earning the gold medal over reigning World balance beam Champion Liu Tingting and Li Shijia, both of China, by over 0.6 points. This marked Biles's 24th World Championships medal, surpassing Scherbo's record and making Biles the sole record holder for most World Championship medals won by a gymnast, whether male or female. Before the final, Biles credited her improved confidence on beam in the past year to her coach Cecile Canqueteau-Landi, who helped rework her routine following shaky performances in the event finals at the 2016 Summer Olympics and the 2018 World Championships. Biles and Landi removed inconsistent skills including the Barani, front pike, and front tuck saltos, replacing them with skills such as an aerial cartwheel (which Biles had not performed since 2014) and introducing the upgraded Biles dismount.
On floor exercise, Biles won gold with a score of 15.133, one point more than the silver medalist Lee. By winning five gold medals in Stuttgart, Biles tied the record of most gold medals won at a single World Championships with Larisa Latynina and Boris Shakhlin, who both accomplished this at the 1958 World Championships. Furthermore, by winning her fifth gold medal on floor exercise, Biles tied the record for most world titles on one apparatus with Italian Jury Chechi (who won five gold medals on still rings) and Russian Svetlana Khorkina (who won five gold medals on uneven bars).
=== 2020 ===
In February, it was announced that Biles was chosen to represent the United States at the Tokyo World Cup taking place on April 4. However, in March USA Gymnastics announced that Biles would not attend due to concerns about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic both domestically and worldwide (including Japan). The following day the Japanese Gymnastics Association announced that they had canceled the event.
=== 2021 ===
In May, Biles competed at the U.S. Classic. She debuted a Yurchenko double pike vault, which no woman had ever completed before, en route to another U.S. Classic all-around title. The new vault was given a preliminary D-score of 6.6, making it the highest-valued vault in women's gymnastics.
In June, Biles competed at the U.S. National Championships and won her 7th national all-around title and qualified for the Olympic Trials. In addition to winning the all-around title by 4.7 points, Biles also placed first in the vault, balance beam, and floor exercise, as well as third in the uneven bars. At the Olympic Trials, Biles placed first and earned an automatic spot on the Olympic team. She finished 2.266 points ahead of second-place finisher Sunisa Lee; however Lee's day two score of the competition (58.166) was higher than Biles's (57.533), which was the first time anyone had posted a higher single-day all-around score than Biles since Kyla Ross in 2013. Also named to the Olympic team were Lee, Biles's club teammate Jordan Chiles, and Grace McCallum.
==== 2020 Summer Olympics ====
At the 2020 Olympic Games, held in July and August 2021, Biles performed the all-around during the qualifications and helped the United States qualify for the team final, in second place behind the Russian team. She suffered several mishaps during qualifications: she bounced entirely off the floor landing on one of her tumbling passes and stepped one foot off the landing mat during her Cheng vault, and took several large stumbles back on her balance beam dismount. Despite these mistakes, Biles still qualified for the all-around final in first place. She also qualified in first place for the vault final, advanced to the floor exercise final in second place behind Vanessa Ferrari, and qualified for the balance beam and uneven bars finals. She was the only athlete to qualify for all the individual finals.
Following her qualifications performance, Biles stated on Instagram that she was "[feeling] the weight of the world on [her] shoulders" and that she felt affected by the pressure of the Olympics.
During warm-ups for the first rotation of the team final, Biles balked on her Amanar vault mid-air, performing 1.5 twists instead of the expected 2.5. She repeated this in the competition, balking and performing the 1.5 twist with a large lunge and near-fall on the landing, and scored just 13.766 with a difficulty score of 5.0 (rather than the Amanar's 5.8). She subsequently left the competition floor (although she returned to the floor a few minutes later) and withdrew from the rest of the team competition, citing mental health issues. Biles later explained that she was inspired by fellow female Olympian Naomi Osaka, who had withdrawn from the French Open and Wimbledon Championships earlier in the year for similar reasons. The U.S. team went on to win the silver medal behind the Russian athletes.
On July 28, 2021, Biles withdrew from the finals of the individual all-around competition, again citing mental health concerns. Following further medical evaluation on July 30, she also withdrew from the vault and uneven bars finals, both scheduled for the first day of the individual event finals. Due to a continued mental block, on July 31, Biles also withdrew from the floor final, scheduled for the second day of individual event finals, while still leaving the possibility of competing in the balance beam final on the last day of the event finals. She later confirmed on August 2 that she would compete in the beam final. Although Biles performed a relatively scaled-down routine with an easier double pike dismount in the beam final, she won the bronze medal behind China's Guan Chenchen and Tang Xijing. With the bronze, she tied Shannon Miller for most Olympic medals by an American female gymnast with seven total. Biles also tied Soviet/Russian female gymnast Larisa Latynina for most medals won by a woman of all time, with 32 combined World and Olympic medals. She called her bronze beam medal her most meaningful one, as she felt it symbolized her focus on mental health and her perseverance. Biles later revealed that her aunt had died unexpectedly two days before the beam event final.
Biles explained that she withdrew primarily due to experiencing "the twisties", a psychological phenomenon causing a gymnast to lose air awareness while performing twisting elements, throughout the Olympics. She noted that while it was not the first time she had had the twisties on vault or floor, it was the first time she experienced them on uneven bars and balance beam. Biles made the decision to withdraw after the first rotation of the team final because she felt that she had "simply got so lost [her] safety was at risk as well as a team medal". During the week, Juntendo University allowed Biles to practice at their gym, located an hour outside of Tokyo, where she could practice quietly away from the public eye.
Some commentators criticized Biles, accusing her of being a "quitter" or selfishly depriving another athlete of the chance to compete. She was also slandered with racist, sexist, and transphobic comments in the Russian state-owned media, as well as having been openly accused of being a drug cheat due to her therapeutic use exemption for ADHD medication. Multiple gymnasts, however, defended Biles's decision and relayed their own stories of struggling with the twisties. Biles's decision to prioritize her mental health was generally widely praised and credited with starting a wider conversation about the role of mental health in sports. Alongside Biles, other Olympians in Tokyo also showed greater willingness to discuss and publicly acknowledge mental health issues, indicative of a wider approach to sport where athletes are prioritizing their health over performance.
=== 2023 ===
In late June, it was announced that Biles would return to competition at the 2023 U.S. Classic, held on August 5 in the Chicago metropolitan area. She competed all four events for an all-around score of 59.100, finishing exactly five points ahead of runner-up Leanne Wong. Biles also placed first on balance beam (14.800) and floor exercise (14.900). Although she did not attempt a second vault, she did complete a Yurchenko double pike. Biles also obtained the necessary qualification score to advance to the 2023 U.S. National Championships. At the National Championships Biles won her eighth national all-around title ahead of Shilese Jones and Leanne Wong. Additionally, she placed first on balance beam and floor exercise and third on uneven bars behind Jones and Skye Blakely. With her eighth national title, Biles broke the record of Al Jochim, who won seven titles on the national level, the last one in 1933. Additionally Biles became the oldest woman to win the title at 26 years and 166 days old; she surpassed Linda Metheny Mulvihill, who was 24 and 100 days in 1971.
In September, Biles attended the U.S. women's selection camp for the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships and 2023 Pan American Artistic Gymnastics Championships, held in Katy, Texas. Despite two falls, she won the first day of competition with an all-around score of 55.700 which granted her automatic qualification to the U.S. Worlds team.
==== 2023 World Championships ====
At the World Championships, Biles qualified in first place in the all-around final with a score of 58.932, nearly two points ahead of teammate Shilese Jones. She also qualified in first place to every event final except for the uneven bars, where she placed 5th, earning a spot in that final. This made her the only gymnast to qualify for all individual event finals, at these World Championships.
In the team competition, Biles hit her routines on every event, contributing scores of 14.800, 14.466, 14.300, and 15.166 on vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise, respectively, to help the US to an unprecedented seventh consecutive team gold medal.
In the all-around competition, Biles hit all her routines, save for a small stumble during her choreography on floor exercise. She received the highest scores of the day on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise and earned her sixth world all-around gold medal with an overall score of 58.399, ahead of Brazil's Rebeca Andrade and Biles's teammate Jones. With this, Simone Biles surpassed Vitaly Scherbo as the most successful gymnast of all time at the Olympics and World Championships. In addition, she became the only gymnast besides Kōhei Uchimura to win the all-around title six times.
In the vault final, Biles fell on her first vault, the Yurchenko double pike, and also incurred a deduction of 0.5 due to her coach spotting her on the podium. Despite this, she earned the silver medal with an average score of 14.549, only 0.201 points behind Andrade. In the uneven bars final, she placed 5th with a score of 14.200. In the balance beam final, she placed first with a score of 14.800, one-tenth of a point ahead of the silver medalist Zhou Yaqin. During the floor exercise final she won the gold medal with a score of 14.633 after a one-tenth penalty for a step out of bounds, finishing with a lead of just .133 over Rebeca Andrade. By winning an unprecedented sixth gold medal on floor, Biles also became the first gymnast in world championships history to win that many titles on one apparatus.
=== 2024 ===
Biles opened her season at the Core Hydration Classic on May 18, where she placed first in the all-around and won her seventh career U.S. Classic all-around title. Additionally she recorded the highest single-vault score and placed first on floor exercise and second on uneven bars and balance beam behind Shilese Jones and Sunisa Lee respectively.
At the U.S. Gymnastics Championships, she won the gold medal in all events and became the first gymnast to win nine all-around titles at the event. She won 5.9 points ahead of second-place finisher Skye Blakely. Biles's all-around score on day one of 60.450 was the highest recorded score in this Olympic quad. As a result, she qualified for the Olympic trials.
At the Olympic trials, Biles placed first in the all-around, second on uneven bars, fourth on balance beam, and first on floor exercise. Despite falling off the balance beam on day two of the competition, she still won by over five points ahead of the runner-up Sunisa Lee. After the competition, she was selected to represent the United States at the 2024 Paris Olympics alongside Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles, Lee, and Hezly Rivera.
==== 2024 Summer Olympics ====
Biles became the fourth American female artistic gymnast to compete at three Olympic Games.
Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Biles submitted a new skill for the code of points for the uneven bars, a Weiler kip with 1.5 pirouette, which would make her the only female gymnast to have a skill named on every apparatus. She ultimately did not compete the skill.
During the qualification round, Biles and her team qualified for the team final in first place. Individually she qualified to the all around, vault, balance beam and floor exercise finals. Additionally she was the first reserve for the uneven bars final. During the team final Biles competed on all four apparatuses and helped the United States win the gold medal ahead of second place Italy.
During the all-around final, Biles placed first ahead of rival Rebeca Andrade and defending champion Sunisa Lee, despite an uncharacteristic mistake on the uneven bars that left her behind Andrade and Kaylia Nemour after two of four rotations. Biles recovered by recording the top scores on balance beam and floor exercise of the night to win the competition. In winning the all-around competition Biles became the third female artistic gymnast to win two Olympic all-around titles after Larisa Latynina (1956–1960) and Věra Čáslavská (1964–1968) and the first to do so non-consecutively. She is one of eight Olympic gymnasts in any discipline to win two all-around titles along with Latynina, Caslavska, Alberto Braglia (MAG), Viktor Chukarin (MAG), Sawao Kato (MAG), Kohei Uchimura (MAG), and Evgeniya Kanaeva (RG); no one has ever won three.
During the vault final, Biles performed her eponymous Biles II (Yurchenko double pike) and a Cheng to win the gold medal; as a result, she became the second woman after Čáslavská to win two Olympic vault titles. During the balance beam final, Biles fell off the apparatus and incurred a three-tenth neutral deduction for not properly saluting the judges at the conclusion of her routine. She finished fifth as a result. This marked the first time in her nine appearances in Olympic or World Championship beam finals that she did not win a medal; nevertheless, she is the most decorated gymnast on balance beam of all time with four gold and four bronze medals at Olympic and World Championship competition.
During the floor exercise final, Biles incurred six-tenths worth of neutral deductions for going out of bounds. She scored 0.033 points less than Rebeca Andrade and won the silver medal. This marked the first time ever in Biles's senior international career that she did not win floor exercise, ending her streak of 10 consecutive international gold medals on the apparatus.
After the gymnastics apparatus finals, Biles began wearing a medical boot for ceremonies and interviews due to a calf injury in her left leg that she had aggravated during the qualification round. At the closing ceremony, Biles was part of the ceremonial passing of the Olympic flag, signifying the end of the 2024 Paris Olympics and the transition into the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
== Awards and recognition ==
Biles was named Sportswoman of the Year by the Women's Sports Foundation in 2014, and after the world championships, she was named one of ESPNW's Impact 25. She was named Team USA Female Olympic Athlete of the Year in December 2015, the fourth person to win the honor. In December 2016, Biles was chosen as one of the sponsors of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, alongside Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer Katie Ledecky. They are the first Olympians to be given this honor. In 2016, Biles won the Glamour Award for the Record Breaker. That same year, she was chosen as one of BBC's 100 Women as well as ESPN's Woman of the Year. In 2016, Biles became the third gymnast, after Olga Korbut and Nadia Comăneci, to be named the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year.
In July 2017, Biles won the ESPY Award for Best Female Athlete, the second gymnast to win this award, after Nastia Liukin won it in 2009. In 2017, Simone won the Shorty Awards for the best in sports. At the 2017 Teen Choice Awards, Simone won favorite female athlete. In 2017, Biles won Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year. In 2017, Biles was awarded the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2018, Biles was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame. In May 2018, Biles and the other survivors were awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. In December, Biles was named ESPN The Magazine's most dominant athlete of 2018. In February 2019, Biles was named Laureus World Sports Award in the category of Sportswoman of the Year for the second time, beating out tennis players Simona Halep and Angelique Kerber, snowboarder Ester Ledecká, triathlete Daniela Ryf, and skier Mikaela Shiffrin. Biles was nominated for the 2019 ESPY Award for Best Female Athlete but lost to soccer player Alex Morgan. In November 2019, Biles won the People's Choice Award for Game Changer of 2019. In February 2020, Biles was awarded the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year for the second consecutive year and third time overall, beating out nominees Allyson Felix, Megan Rapinoe, Mikaela Shiffrin, Naomi Osaka, and Shelly-Ann Fraser. Biles has appeared on the covers of such magazines as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Essence, and People.
In February 2021, Biles criticized ESPN's SportsCenter for including no women in their "Greatest of All Time" photograph. In September 2021, she was named to the Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, for "championing mental health".
On July 7, 2022, Biles became the youngest person to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor given to civilians. She was among 17 honorees, including Megan Rapinoe, honored by President Joe Biden at the White House.
In December 2023, Biles was named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for the third time (2016, 2019, 2023) and named international female Champion of Champions by L'Équipe for the fourth time (2016, 2018, 2019, 2023).
In April 2024, Biles was awarded her fourth Laureus World Sports Award in the category of Comeback of the Year. In July 2024, she received the Best Comeback Athlete ESPY Award. Biles was named Sports Illustrated's 2024 Sportsperson of the Year for winning three gold medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics, for changing gymnastics in the United States, and altering conversations about athletes. In August 2024, the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) voted her as the third-best female athlete of the past 100 years, after Serena Williams and Nadia Comăneci.
In April 2025, Biles was awarded her fifth Laureus World Sports Award in the category of Sportswoman of the Year for the fourth time. The following month, Biles was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Washington University in St. Louis.
At the 2025 ESPY Awards, Biles won the Best Championship Performance award and Best Female Athlete ESPY Award, becoming the sixth person to win the latter award twice.
== Sponsors and endorsements ==
Biles signed with the Octagon sports agency in July 2015, which also markets fellow American gymnast Aly Raisman and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. In November 2015, she announced her sponsorship by Nike. On November 23, 2015, she signed a deal to allow GK Elite Sportswear to sell a line of leotards bearing her name. Later in 2015, Biles signed a deal with Core Power to become a spokesperson on its Everyday Awesome team of athletes. In August 2016, Kellogg's put the Final Five's picture on the Gold Medal Edition of Special berries; the back of the box showed Biles with one of her Rio gold medals. After the 2016 Rio games, Biles signed deals to endorse Procter & Gamble, The Hershey Company, and United Airlines. In September 2016, Biles became a spokesperson for Mattress Firm's program of supporting foster homes. In 2016, Biles signed a deal with Spieth America to create a line of gymnastics equipment, and another to become a spokesperson for Beats By Dr Dre. In 2018, she worked with Caboodles to create and market products for women with active lifestyles. In April 2021, Biles announced that she was leaving Nike for a new apparel sponsorship with the Gap's Athleta brand.
== Personal life ==
Biles was in a relationship with fellow gymnast Stacey Ervin Jr. from August 2017 to March 2020.
She began dating professional American football player Jonathan Owens in August 2020. They met through the dating app Raya. Biles announced her engagement to Owens on February 15, 2022, and they were married on April 22, 2023.
In September 2017, Biles spoke about having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) after her medical records were leaked online, revealing that she had been taking Ritalin (methylphenidate) to treat the condition during the Olympics. Having been diagnosed as a child, she had previously disclosed her condition to the World Anti-Doping Agency and obtained a medical exemption, allowing her to take the medication during competition. Biles said that ADHD is "nothing to be ashamed of and nothing that I'm afraid to let people know."
Biles underwent a breast augmentation in June 2025 and has openly discussed details of the procedure. She has also disclosed receiving other cosmetic plastic surgery procedures including a lower blepharoplasty and earlobe surgery.
== Skills ==
Biles is known for performing extraordinarily difficult skills well. Her 2023 routine on vault and her 2024 routine on floor exercise are the most difficult ever performed in women's artistic gymnastics. As of 2024, she is the sole gymnast to have competed four skills valued at H or higher in the 2022–2024 Code of Points on floor exercise.
Skills rated E or higher that she has performed in her senior career include:
=== Eponymous skills ===
Biles's named elements on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise introduced during the 2017–2021 quad are the most difficult elements on each apparatus (the Biles on beam, Biles on vault, and Biles II on floor). She was the sole gymnast to have performed any of these skills in an FIG international competition until Hillary Heron of Panama performed the Biles I on floor at the 2023 World Championships. In May 2021, she became the first woman to complete a Yurchenko double piked on the vault during competition.
== Competitive history ==
== Filmography ==
=== Documentary === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mansfield,_Baroness_Sandhurst | Margaret Mansfield, Baroness Sandhurst | Margaret Mansfield, Baroness Sandhurst (née Fellowes, ca. 1828 - 7 January 1892) was a suffragist who was one of the first women elected to a city council in the United Kingdom. She was also a prominent spiritualist.
== Personal life ==
Sandhurst was the youngest of the seven children of Robert Fellowes (1779–1869) of Shotesham Park, Norfolk, and his second wife, Jane Louisa Sheldon (d. 1871). In 1854, Sandhurst married Sir William Mansfield, an administrator in the British Raj, who was later made the first Baron Sandhurst. They had four sons and a daughter. After her husband's death in 1876 Lady Sandhurst became increasingly involved in both spiritualism and Liberal politics.
== Political activities ==
She was an active member of the Women's Liberal Association, and later of the Women's Liberal Federation, and was head of the order's Marylebone branch. An active philanthropist, Sandhurst ran her own home for sick children in the Marylebone Road.
In January 1889, Lady Sandhurst was elected to the London County Council at the head of the poll. However, because she was a woman, one of the defeated candidates, the Conservative Beresford Hope, petitioned against her election, and both the Court of Queen's Bench and the Court of Appeal ruled against her. Sandhurst's seat was given to Beresford Hope in May 1889, and Sandhurst was fined £5 for every vote she had given during her tenure on the council. In recognition of her sympathy towards Ireland, in September 1889, Sandhurst was awarded the Freedom of the City of Dublin.
That same year, she was also a council member of the Women's Franchise League, and supported the formation of the Women's Trade Union Association. From 1889, she was also a member of the executive committee of the Central National Society for Women's Suffrage. In 1890, she was elected president of the Society for Promoting the Return of Women as County Councillors, later (1893) renamed the Women's Local Government Society.
== Later life ==
Sandhurst wrote at least two pamphlets on her political interests, one of which, Conversations on Political Principles, was published by the Women's Liberal Federation. Lady Sandhurst died suddenly in London on 7 January 1892, at her home, 29 Park Road, Regent's Park, and was buried with her husband at Digswell, Hertfordshire.
Her descendants include the later Lord Sandhursts and the present Earl of Macclesfield |
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