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The House of Ascania () was a dynasty of German rulers. It is also known as the House of Anhalt, which refers to its longest-held possession, Anhalt. The Ascanians are named after Ascania (or Ascaria) Castle, known as Schloss Askanien in German, which was located near and named after Aschersleben. The castle was the seat of the County of Ascania, a title that was later subsumed into the titles of the princes of Anhalt. History The earliest known member of the house, Esiko, Count of Ballenstedt, first appears in a document of 1036. He is assumed to have been a grandson (through his mother) of Odo I, Margrave of the Saxon Ostmark. From Odo, the Ascanians inherited large properties in the Saxon Eastern March. Esiko's grandson was Otto, Count of Ballenstedt, who died in 1123. By Otto's marriage to Eilika, daughter of Magnus, Duke of Saxony, the Ascanians became heirs to half of the property of the House of Billung, former dukes of Saxony. Otto's son, Albert the Bear, became, with the help of his mother's inheritance, the first Ascanian duke of Saxony in 1139. However, he soon lost control of Saxony to the rival House of Guelph. Albert inherited the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1157 from its last Wendish ruler, Pribislav, and he became the first Ascanian margrave. Albert, and his descendants of the House of Ascania, then made considerable progress in Christianizing and Germanizing the lands. As a borderland between German and Slavic cultures, the country was known as a march. In 1237 and 1244, two towns, Cölln and Berlin, were founded during the rule of Otto and Johann, grandsons of Margrave Albert the Bear. Later, they were united into one city, Berlin. The emblem of the House of Ascania, a red eagle and bear, became the heraldic emblems of Berlin. In 1320, the Brandenburg Ascanian line came to an end. After the Emperor had deposed the Guelph rulers of Saxony in 1180, Ascanians returned to rule the Duchy of Saxony, which had been reduced to its eastern half by the Emperor. However, even in eastern Saxony, the Ascanians could establish control only in limited areas, mostly near the River Elbe. In the 13th century, the Principality of Anhalt was split off from the Duchy of Saxony. Later, the remaining state was split into Saxe-Lauenburg and Saxe-Wittenberg. The Ascanian dynasties in the two Saxon states became extinct in 1689 and in 1422, respectively, but Ascanians continued to rule in the smaller state of Anhalt and its various subdivisions until the monarchy was abolished in 1918. Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796, was a member of the House of Ascania, herself the daughter of Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst. List of states ruled by the House of Ascania County, Principality, and Duchy of Anhalt: c. 1100–1918 Duchy and Electorate of Saxony: 1112, 1139–1142, 1180–1422 County of Weimar-Orlamünde: 1112–1486 Margravate of Brandenburg: 1157–1320 Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg: 1269–1689 Principality of Lüneburg: 1369–1388 Principality and Duchy of Anhalt-Bernburg: 1252–1468 and 1603–1863 Principality of Anhalt-Zerbst: 1252–1396 and 1544–1796 Principality of Anhalt-Aschersleben: 1252–1315 Principality and Duchy of Anhalt-Köthen: 1396–1561 and 1603–1847 Principality and Duchy of Anhalt-Dessau 1396–1561 and 1603–1863 Principality of Anhalt-Plötzkau 1544–1553 and 1603–1665 Principality of Anhalt-Harzgerode 1635–1709 Principality of Anhalt-Mühlingen: 1667–1714 Principality of Anhalt-Dornburg: 1667–1742 Principality of Anhalt-Bernburg-Schaumburg-Hoym: 1718–1812 Russian Empire: 1762–1796 References Askanien, Meyers Konversationslexikon, 1888 Trillmich, Werner, Kaiser Konrad II. und seine Zeit, Bonn, 1991 External links Ducal Family of Anhalt (House of Ascania) - official website European Heraldry page (first page of a series) Stirnet: Brandenburg1 (genealogy of the Houses of Ascania and Brandenburg, including the most likely ancestry of the 11th-century House of Ascania) Stirnet: Ascania1 (an alternate possible ancestry of the 11th-century House of Ascania) Saxon nobility

Aargau ( ; in Italian and Romansch ; see also other names), more formally the Canton of Aargau, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eleven districts and its capital is Aarau. Aargau is one of the most northerly cantons of Switzerland. It is situated by the lower course of the Aare River, which is why the canton is called Aar-gau (meaning "Aare province"). It is one of the most densely populated regions of Switzerland. History Early history The area of Aargau and the surrounding areas were controlled by the Helvetians, a member of the Celts, as far back as 200 BC. It was eventually occupied by the Romans and then by the 6th century, the Franks. The Romans built a major settlement called Vindonissa, near the present location of Brugg. Medieval Aargau The reconstructed Old High German name of Aargau is Argowe, first unambiguously attested (in the spelling Argue) in 795. The term described a territory only loosely equivalent to that of the modern canton, including the region between Aare and Reuss rivers, including Pilatus and Napf, i.e. including parts of the modern cantons of Bern (Bernese Aargau, Emmental, parts of the Bernese Oberland), Solothurn, Basel-Landschaft, Lucerne, Obwalden and Nidwalden, but not the parts of the modern canton east of the Reuss (Baden District), which were part of Zürichgau. Within the Frankish Empire (8th to 10th centuries), the area was a disputed border region between the duchies of Alamannia and Burgundy. A line of the von Wetterau (Conradines) intermittently held the countship of Aargau from 750 until about 1030, when they lost it (having in the meantime taken the name von Tegerfelden). This division became the ill-defined (and sparsely settled) outer border of the early Holy Roman Empire at its formation in the second half of the 10th century. Most of the region came under the control of the ducal house of Zähringen and the comital houses of Habsburg and Kyburg by about 1200. In the second half of the 13th century, the territory became divided between the territories claimed by the imperial cities of Bern, Lucerne and Solothurn and the Swiss canton of Unterwalden. The remaining portion, largely corresponding to the modern canton of Aargau, remained under the control of the Habsburgs until the "conquest of Aargau" by the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1415. Habsburg Castle itself, the original seat of the House of Habsburg, was taken by Bern in April 1415. The Habsburgs had founded a number of monasteries (with some structures enduring, e.g., in Wettingen and Muri), the closing of which by the government in 1841 was a contributing factor to the outbreak of the Swiss civil war – the "Sonderbund War" – in 1847. Under the Swiss Confederation When Frederick IV of Habsburg sided with Antipope John XXIII at the Council of Constance, Emperor Sigismund placed him under the Imperial ban. In July 1414, the Pope visited Bern and received assurances from them, that they would move against the Habsburgs. A few months later the Swiss Confederation denounced the Treaty of 1412. Shortly thereafter in 1415, Bern and the rest of the Swiss Confederation used the ban as a pretext to invade the Aargau. The Confederation was able to quickly conquer the towns of Aarau, Lenzburg, Brugg and Zofingen along with most of the Habsburg castles. Bern kept the southwest portion (Zofingen, Aarburg, Aarau, Lenzburg, and Brugg), northward to the confluence of the Aare and Reuss. The important city of Baden was taken by a united Swiss army and governed by all 8 members of the Confederation. Some districts, named the Freie Ämter (free bailiwicks) – Mellingen, Muri, Villmergen, and Bremgarten, with the countship of Baden – were governed as "subject lands" by all or some of the Confederates. Shortly after the conquest of the Aargau by the Swiss, Frederick humbled himself to the Pope. The Pope reconciled with him and ordered all of the taken lands to be returned. The Swiss refused and years later after no serious attempts at re-acquisition, the Duke officially relinquished rights to the Swiss. Unteraargau or Berner Aargau Bern's portion of the Aargau came to be known as the Unteraargau, though can also be called the Berner or Bernese Aargau. In 1514 Bern expanded north into the Jura and so came into possession of several strategically important mountain passes into the Austrian Fricktal. This land was added to the Unteraargau and was directly ruled from Bern. It was divided into seven rural bailiwicks and four administrative cities, Aarau, Zofingen, Lenzburg and Brugg. While the Habsburgs were driven out, many of their minor nobles were allowed to keep their lands and offices, though over time they lost power to the Bernese government. The bailiwick administration was based on a very small staff of officials, mostly made up of Bernese citizens, but with a few locals. When Bern converted during the Protestant Reformation in 1528, the Unteraargau also converted. At the beginning of the 16th century a number of anabaptists migrated into the upper Wynen and Rueder valleys from Zürich. Despite pressure from the Bernese authorities in the 16th and 17th centuries anabaptism never entirely disappeared from the Unteraargau. Bern used the Aargau bailiwicks mostly as a source of grain for the rest of the city-state. The administrative cities remained economically only of regional importance. However, in the 17th and 18th centuries Bern encouraged industrial development in Unteraargau and by the late 18th century it was the most industrialized region in the city-state. The high industrialization led to high population growth in the 18th century, for example between 1764 and 1798, the population grew by 35%, far more than in other parts of the canton. In 1870 the proportion of farmers in Aarau, Lenzburg, Kulm, and Zofingen districts was 34–40%, while in the other districts it was 46–57%. Freie Ämter The rest of the Freie Ämter were collectively administered as subject territories by the rest of the Confederation. Muri Amt was assigned to Zürich, Lucerne, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug and Glarus, while the Ämter of Meienberg, Richensee and Villmergen were first given to Lucerne alone. The final boundary was set in 1425 by an arbitration tribunal and Lucerne had to give the three Ämter to be collectively ruled. The four Ämter were then consolidated under a single Confederation bailiff into what was known in the 15th century as the Waggental Bailiwick (). In the 16th century, it came to be known as the Vogtei der Freien Ämter. While the Freien Ämter often had independent lower courts, they were forced to accept the Confederation's sovereignty. Finally, in 1532, the canton of Uri became part of the collective administration of the Freien Ämter. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, the majority of the Ämter converted to the new faith. In 1529, a wave of iconoclasm swept through the area and wiped away much of the old religion. After the defeat of Zürich in the second Battle of Kappel in 1531, the victorious five Catholic cantons marched their troops into the Freie Ämter and reconverted them to Catholicism. In the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712, the Freie Ämter became the staging ground for the warring Reformed and Catholic armies. While the peace after the 1656 war did not change the status quo, the fourth Peace of Aarau in 1712 brought about a reorganization of power relations. The victory gave Zürich the opportunity to force the Catholic cantons out of the government in the county of Baden and the adjacent area of the Freie Ämter. The Freie Ämter were then divided in two by a line drawn from the gallows in Fahrwangen to the Oberlunkhofen church steeple. The northern part, the so-called Unteren Freie Ämter (lower Freie Ämter), which included the districts of Boswil (in part) and Hermetschwil and the Niederamt, were ruled by Zürich, Bern and Glarus. The southern part, the Oberen Freie Ämter (upper Freie Ämter), were ruled by the previous seven cantons but Bern was added to make an eighth. During the Helvetic Republic (1798–1803), the county of Baden, the Freie Ämter and the area known as the Kelleramt were combined into the canton of Baden. County of Baden The County of Baden was a shared condominium of the entire Old Swiss Confederacy. After the Confederacy conquest in 1415, they retained much of the Habsburg legal structure, which caused a number of problems. The local nobility had the right to hold the low court in only about one fifth of the territory. There were over 30 different nobles who had the right to hold courts scattered around the surrounding lands. All these overlapping jurisdictions caused numerous conflicts, but gradually the Confederation was able to acquire these rights in the county. The cities of Baden, Bremgarten and Mellingen became the administrative centers and held the high courts. Together with the courts, the three administrative centers had considerable local autonomy, but were ruled by a governor who was appointed by the Acht Orte every two years. After the Protestant victory at the Second Battle of Villmergen, the administration of the County changed slightly. Instead of the Acht Orte appointing a bailiff together, Zürich and Bern each appointed the governor for 7 out of 16 years while Glarus appointed him for the remaining two years. The chaotic legal structure and fragmented land ownership combined with a tradition of dividing the land among all the heirs in an inheritance prevented any large scale reforms. The governor tried in the 18th century to reform and standardize laws and ownership across the county, but with limited success. With an ever-changing administration, the County lacked a coherent long-term economic policy or support for reforms. By the end of the 18th century there were no factories or mills and only a few small cottage industries along the border with Zürich. Road construction first became a priority after 1750, when Zürich and Bern began appointing a governor for seven years. During the Protestant Reformation, some of the municipalities converted to the new faith. However, starting in 1531, some of the old parishes were converted back to the old faith. The governors were appointed from both Catholic and Protestant cantons and since they changed every two years, neither faith gained a majority in the county. After the French invasion, on 19 March 1798, the governments of Zürich and Bern agreed to the creation of the short lived canton of Baden in the Helvetic Republic. With the Act of Mediation in 1803, the canton of Baden was dissolved. Portions of the lands of the former County of Baden now became the District of Baden in the newly created canton of Aargau. After World War II, this formerly agrarian region saw striking growth and became the district with the largest and densest population in the canton (110,000 in 1990, 715 persons per km2). Forming the canton of Aargau The contemporary canton of Aargau was formed in 1803, a canton of the Swiss Confederation as a result of the Act of Mediation. It was a combination of three short-lived cantons of the Helvetic Republic: Aargau (1798–1803), Baden (1798–1803) and Fricktal (1802–1803). Its creation is therefore rooted in the Napoleonic era. In the year 2003, the canton of Aargau celebrated its 200th anniversary. French forces occupied the Aargau from 10 March to 18 April 1798; thereafter the Bernese portion became the canton of Aargau and the remainder formed the canton of Baden. Aborted plans to merge the two halves came in 1801 and 1802, and they were eventually united under the name Aargau, which was then admitted as a full member of the reconstituted Confederation following the Act of Mediation. Some parts of the canton of Baden at this point were transferred to other cantons: the Amt of Hitzkirch to Lucerne, whilst Hüttikon, Oetwil an der Limmat, Dietikon and Schlieren went to Zürich. In return, Lucerne's Amt of Merenschwand was transferred to Aargau (district of Muri). The Fricktal, ceded in 1802 by Austria via Napoleonic France to the Helvetic Republic, was briefly a separate canton of the Helvetic Republic (the canton of Fricktal) under a Statthalter ('Lieutenant'), but on 19 March 1803 (following the Act of Mediation) was incorporated into the canton of Aargau. The former cantons of Baden and Fricktal can still be identified with the contemporary districts – the canton of Baden is covered by the districts of Zurzach, Baden, Bremgarten, and Muri (albeit with the gains and losses of 1803 detailed above); the canton of Fricktal by the districts of Rheinfelden and Laufenburg (except for Hottwil which was transferred to that district in 2010). Chief magistracy The chief magistracy of Aargau changed its style repeatedly: first two consecutive Regierungsstatthalter : April 1798 – November 1801 Jakob Emmanuel Feer (1754–1833) 1802–1803 Johann Heinrich Rothpletz (1766–1833) Presidents of the Government Commission 10 March 1803 – 26 April 1803 Johann Rudolf Dolder (1753–1807) 26 April 1803 – 1815 a 'Small Council' (president rotating monthly) annual Amtsbürgermeister 1815–1831 annual Landammänner since 1815 Jewish history in Aargau In the 17th century, Aargau was the only federal condominium where Jews were tolerated. In 1774, they were restricted to just two towns, Endingen and Lengnau. While the rural upper class pressed incessantly for the expulsion the Jews, the financial interests of the authorities prevented it. They imposed special taxes on peddling and cattle trading, the primary Jewish professions. The Protestant occupiers also enjoyed the discomfort of the local Catholics by the presence of the Jewish community. The Jews were directly subordinate to the governor; from 1696, they were compelled to renew a letter of protection from him every 16 years. During this period, Jews and Christians were not allowed to live under the same roof, neither were Jews allowed to own land or houses. They were taxed at a much higher rate than others and, in 1712, the Lengnau community was "pillaged." In 1760, they were further restricted regarding marriages and procreation. An exorbitant tax was levied on marriage licenses; oftentimes, they were outright refused. This remained the case until the 19th century. In 1799, the Helvetic republic abolished all special tolls, and, in 1802, removed the poll tax. On 5 May 1809, they were declared citizens and given broad rights regarding trade and farming. They were still restricted to Endingen and Lengnau until 7 May 1846, when their right to move and reside freely within the canton of Aargau was granted. On 24 September 1856, the Swiss Federal Council granted them full political rights within Aargau, as well as broad business rights; however the majority Christian population did not fully abide by these new liberal laws. The time of 1860 saw the canton government voting to grant suffrage in all local rights and to give their communities autonomy. Before the law was enacted, it was however repealed due to vocal opposition led by the Ultramonte Party. Finally, the federal authorities in July 1863, granted all Jews full rights of citizens. However, they did not receive all of the rights in Endingen and Lengnau until a resolution of the Grand Council, on 15 May 1877, granted citizens' rights to the members of the Jewish communities of those places, giving them charters under the names of New Endingen and New Lengnau. The Swiss Jewish Kulturverein was instrumental in this fight from its founding in 1862 until it was dissolved 20 years later. During this period of diminished rights, they were not even allowed to bury their dead in Swiss soil and had to bury their dead on an island called Judenäule (Jews' Isle) on the Rhine near Waldshut. Beginning in 1603, the deceased Jews of the Surbtal communities were buried on the river island which was leased by the Jewish community. As the island was repeatedly flooded and devastated, in 1750 the Surbtal Jews asked the Tagsatzung to establish the Endingen cemetery in the vicinity of their communities. Geography The capital of the canton is Aarau, which is located on its western border, on the Aare. The canton borders Germany (Baden-Württemberg) to the north, the Rhine forming the border. To the west lie the Swiss cantons of Basel-Landschaft, Solothurn and Bern; the canton of Lucerne lies south, and Zürich and Zug to the east. Its total area is . Besides the Rhine, it contains two large rivers, the Aare and the Reuss. The canton of Aargau is one of the least mountainous Swiss cantons, forming part of a great table-land, to the north of the Alps and the east of the Jura, above which rise low hills. The surface of the country is diversified with undulating tracts and well-wooded hills, alternating with fertile valleys watered mainly by the Aare and its tributaries. The valleys alternate with hills, many of which are wooded. Slightly over one-third of the canton is wooded (), while nearly half is used from farming (). or about 2.4% of the canton is considered unproductive, mostly lakes (notably Lake Hallwil) and streams. With a population density of 450/km2 (1,200/sq mi), the canton has a relatively high amount of land used for human development, with or about 15% of the canton developed for housing or transportation. It contains the hot sulphur springs of Baden and Schinznach-Bad, while at Rheinfelden there are very extensive saline springs. Just below Brugg the Reuss and the Limmat join the Aar, while around Brugg are the ruined castle of Habsburg, the old convent of Königsfelden (with fine painted medieval glass) and the remains of the Roman settlement of Vindonissa (Windisch). Fahr Monastery forms a small exclave of the canton, otherwise surrounded by the canton of Zürich, and since 2008 is part of the Aargau municipality of Würenlos. Political subdivisions Districts Aargau is divided into 11 districts: Aarau with capital Aarau Baden with capital Baden Bremgarten with capital Bremgarten Brugg with capital Brugg Kulm with capital Unterkulm Laufenburg with capital Laufenburg Lenzburg with capital Lenzburg Muri with capital Muri Rheinfelden with capital Rheinfelden Zofingen with capital Zofingen Zurzach with capital Zurzach The most recent change in district boundaries occurred in 2010 when Hottwil transferred from Brugg to Laufenburg, following its merger with other municipalities, all of which were in Laufenburg. Municipalities There are (as of 2014) 213 municipalities in the canton of Aargau. As with most Swiss cantons there has been a trend since the early 2000s for municipalities to merge, though mergers in Aargau have so far been less radical than in other cantons. Coat of arms The blazon of the coat of arms is Per pale, dexter: sable, a fess wavy argent, charged with two cotises wavy azure; sinister: sky blue, three mullets of five argent. The flag and arms of the canton of Aargau date to 1803 and are an original design by Samuel Ringier-Seelmatter; the current official design, specifying the stars as five-pointed, dates to 1930. Demographics Aargau has a population () of . , 21.5% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of 11%. Migration accounted for 8.7%, while births and deaths accounted for 2.8%. Most of the population () speaks German (477,093 or 87.1%) as their first language, Italian is the second most common (17,847 or 3.3%) and Serbo-Croatian is the third (10,645 or 1.9%). There are 4,151 people who speak French and 618 people who speak Romansh. Of the population in the canton, 146,421 or about 26.7% were born in Aargau and lived there in 2000. There were 140,768 or 25.7% who were born in the same canton, while 136,865 or 25.0% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 107,396 or 19.6% were born outside of Switzerland. , children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 24.3% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 62.3% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 13.4%. , there were 227,656 people who were single and never married in the canton. There were 264,939 married individuals, 27,603 widows or widowers and 27,295 individuals who are divorced. , there were 224,128 private households in the canton, and an average of 2.4 persons per household. There were 69,062 households that consist of only one person and 16,254 households with five or more people. , the construction rate of new housing units was 6.5 new units per 1000 residents. The vacancy rate for the canton, , was 1.54%. The majority of the population is centered on one of three areas: the Aare Valley, the side branches of the Aare Valley, or along the Rhine. Historic population The historical population is given in the following chart: Politics In the 2011 federal election, the most popular party was the SVP which received 34.7% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SP/PS (18.0%), the FDP (11.5%) and the CVP (10.6%). The SVP received about the same percentage of the vote as they did in the 2007 Federal election (36.2% in 2007 vs 34.7% in 2011). The SPS retained about the same popularity (17.9% in 2007), the FDP retained about the same popularity (13.6% in 2007) and the CVP retained about the same popularity (13.5% in 2007). Federal election results FDP before 2009, FDP.The Liberals after 2009 "*" indicates that the party was not on the ballot in this canton. Part of the GPS Cantonal politics The Grand Council of the canton of Aargau is called Grosser Rat. It is the legislature of the canton, has 140 seats, with members elected every four years. Religion From the , 219,800 or 40.1% were Roman Catholic, while 189,606 or 34.6% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 11,523 members of an Orthodox church (or about 2.10% of the population), there were 3,418 individuals (or about 0.62% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 29,580 individuals (or about 5.40% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 342 individuals (or about 0.06% of the population) who were Jewish, and 30,072 (or about 5.49% of the population) who were Muslim. There were 1,463 individuals who were Buddhist, 2,089 individuals who were Hindu and 495 individuals who belonged to another church. 57,573 (or about 10.52% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 15,875 individuals (or about 2.90% of the population) did not answer the question. Education In Aargau about 212,069 or (38.7%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 70,896 or (12.9%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule). Of the 70,896 who completed tertiary schooling, 63.6% were Swiss men, 20.9% were Swiss women, 10.4% were non-Swiss men and 5.2% were non-Swiss women. Economy , Aargau had an unemployment rate of 3.6%. , there were 11,436 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 3,927 businesses involved in this sector. 95,844 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 6,055 businesses in this sector. 177,782 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 21,530 businesses in this sector. the total number of full-time equivalent jobs was 238,225. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 7,167, of which 6,731 were in agriculture, 418 were in forestry or lumber production and 18 were in fishing or fisheries. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 90,274 of which 64,089 or (71.0%) were in manufacturing, 366 or (0.4%) were in mining and 21,705 (24.0%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 140,784. In the tertiary sector; 38,793 or 27.6% were in the sale or repair of motor vehicles, 13,624 or 9.7% were in the movement and storage of goods, 8,150 or 5.8% were in a hotel or restaurant, 5,164 or 3.7% were in the information industry, 5,946 or 4.2% were the insurance or financial industry, 14,831 or 10.5% were technical professionals or scientists, 10,951 or 7.8% were in education and 21,952 or 15.6% were in health care. Of the working population, 19.5% used public transportation to get to work, and 55.3% used a private car. Public transportation – bus and train – is provided by Busbetrieb Aarau AG. The farmland of the canton of Aargau is some of the most fertile in Switzerland. Dairy farming, cereal and fruit farming are among the canton's main economic activities. The canton is also industrially developed, particularly in the fields of electrical engineering, precision instruments, iron, steel, cement and textiles. Three of Switzerland's five nuclear power plants are in the canton of Aargau (Beznau I + II and Leibstadt). Additionally, the many rivers supply enough water for numerous hydroelectric power plants throughout the canton. The canton of Aargau is often called "the energy canton". A significant number of people commute into the financial center of the city of Zürich, which is just across the cantonal border. As such the per capita cantonal income (in 2005) is 49,209 CHF. Tourism is significant, particularly for the hot springs at Baden and Schinznach-Bad, the ancient castles, the landscape, and the many old museums in the canton. Hillwalking is another tourist attraction but is of only limited significance. See also Aargauer Zeitung FC Aarau Grand Prix of Aargau Canton, bicycle race Notes Footnotes References External links Official website Official statistics Cantons of Switzerland Cantons of the Helvetic Republic Articles which contain graphical timelines States and territories established in 1803 1803 establishments in Switzerland

Events Pre-1600 753 BC – Romulus founds Rome (traditional date). 43 BC – Battle of Mutina: Mark Antony is again defeated in battle by Aulus Hirtius, who is killed. Antony fails to capture Mutina and Decimus Brutus is murdered shortly after. 900 – The Laguna Copperplate Inscription (the earliest known written document found in what is now the Philippines): the Commander-in-Chief of the Kingdom of Tondo, as represented by the Honourable Jayadewa, Lord Minister of Pailah, pardons from all debt the Honourable Namwaran and his relations. 1092 – The Diocese of Pisa is elevated to the rank of metropolitan archdiocese by Pope Urban II 1506 – The three-day Lisbon Massacre comes to an end with the slaughter of over 1,900 suspected Jews by Portuguese Catholics. 1509 – Henry VIII ascends the throne of England on the death of his father, Henry VII. 1526 – The last ruler of the Lodi dynasty, Ibrahim Lodi is defeated and killed by Babur in the First Battle of Panipat. 1601–1900 1615 – The Wignacourt Aqueduct is inaugurated in Malta. 1782 – The city of Rattanakosin, now known internationally as Bangkok, is founded on the eastern bank of the Chao Phraya River by King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke. 1789 – John Adams sworn in as 1st US Vice President (nine days before George Washington) 1789 – George Washington's reception at Trenton is hosted by the Ladies of Trenton as he journeys to New York City for his first inauguration. 1792 – Tiradentes, a revolutionary leading a movement for Brazil's independence, is hanged, drawn and quartered. 1802 – Twelve thousand Wahhabis sack Karbala, killing over three thousand inhabitants. 1806 – Action of 21 April 1806: A French frigate escapes British forces off the coast of South Africa. 1809 – Two Austrian army corps are driven from Landshut by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon as two French corps to the north hold off the main Austrian army on the first day of the Battle of Eckmühl. 1821 – Benderli Ali Pasha arrives in Constantinople as the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire; he remains in power for only nine days before being sent into exile. 1836 – Texas Revolution: The Battle of San Jacinto: Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat troops under Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna. 1856 – Australian labour movement: Stonemasons and building workers on building sites around Melbourne march from the University of Melbourne to Parliament House to achieve an eight-hour day. 1894 – Norway formally adopts the Krag–Jørgensen bolt-action rifle as the main arm of its armed forces, a weapon that would remain in service for almost 50 years. 1898 – Spanish–American War: The United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports. When the U.S. Congress issued a declaration of war on April 25, it declared that a state of war had existed from this date. 1901–present 1914 – Ypiranga incident: A German arms shipment to Mexico is intercepted by the U.S. Navy near Veracruz. 1918 – World War I: German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as "The Red Baron", is shot down and killed over Vaux-sur-Somme in France. 1926 – Al-Baqi cemetery, former site of the mausoleum of four Shi'a Imams, is leveled to the ground by Wahhabis. 1934 – The "Surgeon's Photograph", the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail (in 1999, it is revealed to be a hoax). 1945 – World War II: Soviet forces south of Berlin at Zossen attack the German High Command headquarters. 1948 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 47 relating to Kashmir conflict is adopted. 1952 – Secretary's Day (now Administrative Professionals' Day) is first celebrated. 1958 – United Airlines Flight 736 collides with a United States Air Force fighter jet near Arden, Nevada in what is now Enterprise, Nevada. 1960 – Brasília, Brazil's capital, is officially inaugurated. At 09:30, the Three Powers of the Republic are simultaneously transferred from the old capital, Rio de Janeiro. 1962 – The Seattle World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opens. It is the first World's Fair in the United States since World War II. 1963 – The first election of the Universal House of Justice is held, marking its establishment as the supreme governing institution of the Baháʼí Faith. 1964 – A Transit-5bn satellite fails to reach orbit after launch; as it re-enters the atmosphere, of radioactive plutonium in its SNAP RTG power source is widely dispersed. 1965 – The 1964–1965 New York World's Fair opens for its second and final season. 1966 – Rastafari movement: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Jamaica, an event now celebrated as Grounation Day. 1967 – A few days before the general election in Greece, Colonel George Papadopoulos leads a coup d'état, establishing a military regime that lasts for seven years. 1972 – Astronauts John Young and Charles Duke fly Apollo 16's Apollo Lunar Module to the Moon's surface, the fifth NASA Apollo Program crewed lunar landing. 1975 – Vietnam War: President of South Vietnam Nguyễn Văn Thiệu flees Saigon, as Xuân Lộc, the last South Vietnamese outpost blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, falls. 1977 – Annie opens on Broadway. 1982 – Baseball: Rollie Fingers of the Milwaukee Brewers becomes the first pitcher to record 300 saves. 1985 – The compound of the militant group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord surrenders to federal authorities in Arkansas after a two-day government siege. 1987 – The Tamil Tigers are blamed for a car bomb that detonates in the Sri Lankan capital city of Colombo, killing 106 people. 1989 – Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: In Beijing, around 100,000 students gather in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang. 1993 – The Supreme Court in La Paz, Bolivia, sentences former dictator Luis García Meza to 30 years in jail without parole for murder, theft, fraud and violating the constitution. 2004 – Five suicide car bombers target police stations in and around Basra, killing 74 people and wounding 160. 2010 – The controversial Kharkiv Pact (Russian Ukrainian Naval Base for Gas Treaty) is signed in Kharkiv, Ukraine, by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev; it was unilaterally terminated by Russia on March 31, 2014. 2012 – Two trains are involved in a head-on collision near Sloterdijk, Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, injuring 116 people. 2014 – The American city of Flint, Michigan switches its water source to the Flint River, beginning the ongoing Flint water crisis which has caused lead poisoning in up to 12,000 people, and 15 deaths from Legionnaires disease, ultimately leading to criminal indictments against 15 people, five of whom have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. 2019 – Eight bombs explode at churches, hotels, and other locations in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday; more than 250 people are killed. 2021 – Indonesian Navy submarine KRI Nanggala (402) sinks in the Bali Sea during a military drill, killing all 53 on board. Births Pre-1600 1132 – Sancho VI, king of Navarre (d. 1194) 1488 – Ulrich von Hutten, German religious reformer (d. 1523) 1523 – Marco Antonio Bragadin, Venetian lawyer and military officer (d. 1571) 1555 – Ludovico Carracci, Italian painter and etcher (d. 1619) 1601–1800 1619 – Jan van Riebeeck, Dutch founder of Cape Town (d. 1677) 1630 – Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten, Dutch-English painter (d. 1700) 1631 – Francesco Maidalchini, Catholic cardinal (d. 1700) 1642 – Simon de la Loubère, French mathematician, poet, and diplomat (d. 1729) 1651 – Joseph Vaz, Sri Lankan priest, missionary, and saint (d. 1711) 1652 – Michel Rolle, French mathematician and academic (d. 1719) 1671 – John Law, Scottish economist (d. 1729) 1673 – Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg (d. 1742) 1713 – Louis de Noailles, French general (d. 1793) 1730 – Antonín Kammel, Czech violinist and composer (d. 1788) 1752 – Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait, French engineer, hydrographer, and politician, French Minister of Marine and the Colonies (d. 1807) 1752 – Humphry Repton, English gardener and author (d. 1818) 1774 – Jean-Baptiste Biot, French physicist, astronomer, and mathematician (d. 1862) 1775 – Alexander Anderson, Scottish-American illustrator and engraver (d. 1870) 1790 – Manuel Blanco Encalada, Spanish-Chilean admiral and politician, 1st President of Chile (d. 1876) 1801–present 1810 – John Putnam Chapin, American politician, 10th Mayor of Chicago (d. 1864) 1811 – Alson Sherman, American merchant and politician, 8th Mayor of Chicago (d. 1903) 1814 – Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts, English art collector and philanthropist (d. 1906) 1816 – Charlotte Brontë, English novelist and poet (d. 1855) 1837 – Fredrik Bajer, Danish lieutenant and politician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1922) 1838 – John Muir, Scottish-American environmentalist and author (d. 1914) 1854 – William Stang, German-American bishop (d. 1907) 1864 – Max Weber, German economist and sociologist (d. 1920) 1868 – Alfred Henry Maurer, American painter (d. 1932) 1868 – Mary Rogers Miller, American author and educator (d. 1971) 1870 – Edwin Stanton Porter, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1941) 1874 – Vincent Scotto, French composer and actor (d. 1952) 1882 – Percy Williams Bridgman, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1961) 1885 – Tatu Kolehmainen, Finnish runner (d. 1967) 1887 – Joe McCarthy, American baseball manager (d. 1978) 1889 – Marcel Boussac, French businessman (d. 1980) 1889 – Paul Karrer, Russian-Swiss chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971) 1889 – Efrem Zimbalist, Sr., Russian-American violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1985) 1892 – Freddie Dixon, English motorcycle racer and racing driver (d. 1956) 1893 – Romeo Bertini, Italian runner (d. 1973) 1898 – Maurice Wilson, English soldier, pilot, and mountaineer (d. 1934) 1899 – Randall Thompson, American composer and academic (d. 1984) 1903 – Luis Saslavsky, Argentinian director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1995) 1904 – Jean Hélion, French painter (d. 1987) 1904 – Odilo Globocnik, Italian-Austrian SS officer (d. 1945) 1905 – Pat Brown, American lawyer and politician, 32nd Governor of California (d. 1996) 1911 – Ivan Combe, American businessman, developed Clearasil (d. 2000) 1911 – Kemal Satır, Turkish physician and politician (d. 1991) 1912 – Eve Arnold, Russian-American photojournalist (d. 2012) 1912 – Marcel Camus, French director and screenwriter (d. 1982) 1913 – Norman Parkinson, English photographer (d. 1990) 1914 – Angelo Savoldi, Italian-American wrestler and promoter, co-founded International World Class Championship Wrestling (d. 2013) 1915 – Garrett Hardin, American ecologist, author, and academic (d. 2003) 1915 – Anthony Quinn, Mexican-American actor (d. 2001) 1916 – Estella B. Diggs, American businesswoman and politician (d. 2013) 1918 – Eddy Christiani, Dutch singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2016) 1919 – Don Cornell, American singer (d. 2004) 1919 – Roger Doucet, Canadian tenor (d. 1981) 1919 – Licio Gelli, Italian financer (d. 2015) 1922 – Alistair MacLean, Scottish novelist and screenwriter (d. 1987) 1922 – Allan Watkins, Welsh-English cricketer (d. 2011) 1923 – John Mortimer, English lawyer and author (d. 2009) 1924 – Ira Louvin, American singer-songwriter and mandolin player (d. 1965) 1925 – Anthony Mason, Australian soldier and judge, 9th Chief Justice of Australia 1925 – John Swinton of Kimmerghame, English general and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire (d. 2018) 1926 – Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom and her other realms 1926 – Arthur Rowley, English footballer, manager and cricketer (d. 2002) 1927 – Ahmed Arif, Turkish poet and author (d. 1991) 1928 – Jack Evans, Welsh-Canadian ice hockey player and coach (d. 1996) 1930 – Hilda Hilst, Brazilian author, poet, and playwright (d. 2004) 1930 – Silvana Mangano, Italian actress (d. 1989) 1930 – Dieter Roth, German-Swiss illustrator and sculptor (d. 1998) 1930 – Jack Taylor, English footballer and referee (d. 2012) 1931 – Morgan Wootten, American high school basketball coach (d. 2020) 1932 – Slide Hampton, African-American trombonist and composer 1932 – Elaine May, American actress, comedian, director, and screenwriter 1932 – Angela Mortimer, English tennis player 1933 – Edelmiro Amante, Filipino lawyer and politician (d. 2013) 1933 – Easley Blackwood, Jr., American pianist, composer, and educator 1933 – Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, Iraqi patriarch (d. 2014) 1935 – Charles Grodin, American actor and talk show host (d. 2021) 1935 – Thomas Kean, American academic and politician, 48th Governor of New Jersey 1936 – James Dobson, American evangelist, psychologist, and author, founded Focus on the Family 1936 – Reg Fleming, Canadian-American ice hockey player (d. 2009) 1937 – Gary Peters, American baseball player 1937 – Ben Zinn, Israeli-born American academic and former international soccer player 1939 – John McCabe, English pianist and composer (d. 2015) 1939 – Sister Helen Prejean, American nun, activist, and author 1939 – Reni Santoni, American actor (d. 2020) 1940 – Jacques Caron, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1940 – Souleymane Cissé, Malian director, producer, and screenwriter 1941 – David L. Boren, American lawyer and politician, 21st Governor of Oklahoma 1942 – Geoffrey Palmer, New Zealand politician, 33rd Prime Minister of New Zealand 1945 – Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan, Indian cricketer and umpire 1945 – Mark Wainberg, Canadian researcher and HIV/AIDS activist (d. 2017) 1945 – Diana Darvey, English actress, singer and dancer (d. 2000) 1947 – Al Bumbry, American baseball player 1947 – Iggy Pop, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor 1947 – John Weider, English bass player 1948 – Gary Condit, American businessman and politician 1948 – Paul Davis, American singer-songwriter and musician (d. 2008) 1948 – Josef Flammer, Swiss ophthalmologist 1948 – Dieter Fromm, German runner 1949 – Patti LuPone, American actress and singer 1950 – Shivaji Satam, Indian actor 1951 – Tony Danza, American actor and producer 1951 – Michael Freedman, American mathematician and academic 1951 – Bob Varsha, American sportscaster 1951 – Steve Vickers, Canadian ice hockey player 1952 – Gerald Early, American author and academic 1952 – Cheryl Gillan, British businesswoman and politician, Secretary of State for Wales (d. 2021) 1953 – John Brumby, Australian politician, 45th Premier of Victoria 1954 – Ebiet G. Ade, Indonesian singer-songwriter and guitarist 1954 – James Morrison, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1955 – Murathan Mungan, Turkish author, poet, and playwright 1956 – Peter Kosminsky, English director, producer, and screenwriter 1956 – Phillip Longman, German-American demographer and journalist 1957 – Hervé Le Tellier, French linguist and author 1957 – Herbert Wetterauer, German painter, sculptor, and author 1958 – Andie MacDowell, American model, actress, and producer 1958 – Yoshito Usui, Japanese illustrator (d. 2009) 1958 – Michael Zarnock, American author 1959 – Tim Jacobus, American illustrator and painter 1959 – Robert Smith, English singer-songwriter and guitarist 1961 – David Servan-Schreiber, French physician, neuroscientist, and author (d. 2011) 1965 – Fiona Kelleghan, American academic, critic and librarian 1969 – Toby Stephens, English actor 1971 – Michael Turner, American author and illustrator (d. 2008) 1973 – Steve Backshall, English naturalist, writer, and television presenter 1977 – Gyula Koi, Hungarian scholar and educator 1979 – Virginie Basselot, French chef 1979 – James McAvoy, Scottish actor 1983 – Tarvaris Jackson, American football player (d. 2020) 1988 – Ricky Berens, American swimmer 1988 – Jencarlos Canela, American singer-songwriter and actor Deaths Pre-1600 234 – Emperor Xian of Han, Chinese emperor (b. 181) 586 – Liuvigild, king of the Visigoths 847 – Odgar, Frankish archbishop of Mainz 866 – Bardas, de facto regent of the Byzantine Empire 941 – Bajkam, de facto regent of the Abbasid Caliphate 1073 – Pope Alexander II 1109 – Anselm of Canterbury, Italian-English archbishop and saint (b. 1033) 1136 – Stephen, Count of Tréguier Breton noblemen (b. c. 1058/62) 1142 – Peter Abelard, French philosopher and theologian (b. 1079) 1213 – Maria of Montpellier, Lady of Montpellier, Queen of Aragon (b. 1182) 1329 – Frederick IV, Duke of Lorraine (b. 1282) 1400 – John Wittlebury, English politician (b. 1333) 1509 – Henry VII of England (b. 1457) 1557 – Petrus Apianus, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1495) 1574 – Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (b. 1519) 1591 – Sen no Rikyū, Japanese exponent of the tea ceremony (b. 1522) 1601–1900 1650 – Yagyū Jūbei Mitsuyoshi, Japanese samurai (b. 1607) 1668 – Jan Boeckhorst, Flemish painter (b. c. 1604) 1699 – Jean Racine, French playwright and poet (b. 1639) 1719 – Philippe de La Hire, French mathematician and astronomer (b. 1640) 1720 – Antoine Hamilton, Irish-French soldier and author (b. 1646) 1722 – Robert Beverley, Jr., English historian and author (b. 1673) 1736 – Prince Eugene of Savoy (b. 1663) 1740 – Thomas Tickell, English poet and author (b. 1685) 1758 – Francesco Zerafa, Maltese architect (b. 1679) 1815 – Joseph Winston, American soldier and politician (b. 1746) 1825 – Johann Friedrich Pfaff, German mathematician and academic (b. 1765) 1852 – Ivan Nabokov, Russian general (b. 1787) 1863 – Sir Robert Bateson, 1st Baronet, Irish politician (b. 1782) 1900 – Vikramatji Khimojiraj, Indian ruler (b. 1819) 1901–present 1910 – Mark Twain, American novelist, humorist, and critic (b. 1835) 1918 – Manfred von Richthofen, German captain and pilot (b. 1892) 1924 – Eleonora Duse, Italian actress (b. 1858) 1930 – Robert Bridges, English poet and author (b. 1844) 1932 – Friedrich Gustav Piffl, Bohemian cardinal (b. 1864) 1938 – Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistani National philosopher and poet (b. 1877) 1941 – Fritz Manteuffel, German gymnast (b. 1875) 1945 – Walter Model, German field marshal (b. 1891) 1946 – John Maynard Keynes, English economist and philosopher (b. 1883) 1948 – Aldo Leopold, American ecologist and author (b. 1887) 1952 – Leslie Banks, American actor, director and producer (b. 1890) 1954 – Emil Leon Post, Polish-American mathematician and logician (b. 1897) 1956 – Charles MacArthur, American playwright and screenwriter (b. 1895) 1965 – Edward Victor Appleton, English-Scottish physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1892) 1971 – François Duvalier, Haitian physician and politician, 40th President of Haiti (b. 1907) 1973 – Arthur Fadden, Australian accountant and politician, 13th Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1894) 1973 – Kemal Tahir, Turkish journalist and author (b. 1910) 1977 – Gummo Marx, American vaudevillian and talent agent (b. 1893) 1978 – Thomas Wyatt Turner, American biologist and academic (b. 1877) 1980 – Alexander Oparin, Russian biochemist and academic (b. 1894) 1980 – Sohrab Sepehri, Iranian poet and painter (b. 1928) 1983 – Walter Slezak, Austrian-American actor and singer (b. 1902) 1984 – Marcel Janco, Romanian-Israeli artist (b. 1895) 1984 – Hristo Prodanov, Bulgarian engineer and mountaineer (b. 1943) 1985 – Rudi Gernreich, Austrian-American fashion designer, created the monokini (b. 1922) 1985 – Tancredo Neves, Brazilian banker and politician, Prime Minister of Brazil (b. 1910) 1986 – Marjorie Eaton, American painter and actress (b. 1901) 1986 – Salah Jahin, Egyptian poet, playwright, and composer (b. 1930) 1987 – Gustav Bergmann, Austrian-American philosopher from the Vienna Circle (b. 1906) 1990 – Erté, Russian-French illustrator (b. 1892) 1991 – Willi Boskovsky, Austrian violinist and conductor (b. 1909) 1992 – Väinö Linna, Finnish author (b. 1920) 1996 – Abdul Hafeez Kardar, Pakistani cricketer (b. 1925) 1996 – Jimmy Snyder, American sportscaster (b. 1919) 1998 – Jean-François Lyotard, French sociologist and philosopher (b. 1924) 1999 – Buddy Rogers, American actor (b. 1904) 2003 – Nina Simone, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and activist (b. 1933) 2010 – Gustav Lorentzen, Norwegian singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1947) 2010 – Juan Antonio Samaranch, Spanish businessman, seventh President of the International Olympic Committee (b. 1920) 2010 – Kanagaratnam Sriskandan, Sri Lankan-English engineer and civil servant (b. 1930) 2011 – Catharina Halkes, Dutch theologian and academic (b. 1920) 2012 – Doris Betts, American author and academic (b. 1932) 2013 – Shakuntala Devi, Indian mathematician and astrologer (b. 1929) 2013 – Leopold Engleitner, Austrian Holocaust survivor, author, and educator (b. 1905) 2014 – George H. Heilmeier, American engineer (b. 1936) 2014 – Win Tin, Burmese journalist and politician, co-founded the National League for Democracy (b. 1930) 2016 – Prince, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor (b. 1958) 2017 – Ugo Ehiogu, English footballer (b. 1972) 2019 – Polly Higgins, Scottish barrister, author and environmental lobbyist (b. 1968) Holidays and observances Abdecalas Anastasius Sinaita Anselm of Canterbury Beuno Conrad of Parzham Holy Infant of Good Health Shemon Bar Sabbae Wolbodo Civil Service Day (India) Grounation Day (Rastafari) Heroic Defense of Veracruz (Mexico) Kang Pan-sok's Birthday (North Korea) Kartini Day (Indonesia) Local Self Government Day (Russia) National Tea Day (United Kingdom) National Tree Planting Day (Kenya) San Jacinto Day (Texas) Queen's Official Birthday (Falkland Islands) Tiradentes' Day (Brazil) Vietnam Book Day (Vietnam) References Sources External links BBC: On This Day Historical Events on April 21 Today in Canadian History Days of the year April

The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. It has been in power since the election of lawyer, activist and former political prisoner Nelson Mandela at the first free and fair elections in 1994, and has been re-elected at every election since, though with a reduced majority every time since 2004. Cyril Ramaphosa, the incumbent President of South Africa, has served as President of the ANC since 18 December 2017. The ANC was founded on 8 January 1912 by John Langalibalele Dube in Bloemfontein as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), its primary mission was to bring all Africans together as one people, to defend their rights and freedoms. This included giving full voting rights to Black South Africans and mixed-race South Africans and, to end the apartheid system introduced by the National Party government after their election victory in 1948. The ANC originally attempted to use non-violent protests to end apartheid; however, the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960, where 69 Black South Africans were shot and killed by police and hundreds wounded during a peaceful protest; contributed to deteriorating relations with the White minority government. On 8 April 1960, Governor-General Charles Robberts Swart declared the ANC illegal, and they would remain outlawed for the next thirty years. After being outlawed, the ANC formed the Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) to fight against apartheid utilising guerrilla warfare and sabotage. After thirty years in exile, during which many ANC members had been imprisoned or forced to flee abroad, the country began its move towards full non-racial democracy. On 3 February 1990, State President F. W. de Klerk repealed the ban on the ANC and released Nelson Mandela from Victor Verster Prison on 11 February 1990. On 17 March 1992, a referendum on the continuation of apartheid was held; but only White South Africans could vote. The majority of the electorate voted to abolish apartheid and the ANC were allowed to stand at the 1994 general election which, for the first time, allowed all South Africans regardless of race the right to vote. Since 1994, the ANC has polled better than 55% at all general elections, including the most recent 2019 general election; where the ANC received their worst electoral result to date. However, the party has been embroiled in a number of controversies since 2011 and has been steadily losing ground to smaller parties. History The founding of the SANNC was in direct response to injustice against black South Africans at the hands of the government then in power. It can be said that the SANNC had its origins in a pronouncement by Pixley ka Isaka Seme who said in 1911, "Forget all the past differences among Africans and unite in one national organisation." The SANNC was founded the following year on 8 January 1912. The government of the newly formed Union of South Africa began a systematic oppression of black people in South Africa. The Land Act was promulgated in 1913 forcing many black South Africans from their farms into the cities and towns to work, and to restrict their movement within South Africa. By 1919, the SANNC was leading a campaign against passes (an ID which black South Africans had to possess). However, it then became dormant in the mid-1920s. During that time, black people were also represented by the ICU and the previously white-only Communist party. In 1923, the organisation became the African National Congress, and in 1929 the ANC supported a militant mineworkers' strike. By 1927, J.T. Gumede (president of the ANC) proposed co-operation with the Communists in a bid to revitalise the organisation, but he was voted out of power in the 1930s. This led to the ANC becoming largely ineffectual and inactive, until the mid-1940s when the ANC was remodelled as a mass movement. The ANC responded to attacks on the rights of black South Africans, as well as calling for strikes, boycotts, and defiance. This led to a later Defiance Campaign in the 1950s, a mass movement of resistance to apartheid. The government tried to stop the ANC by banning party leaders and enacting new laws to stop the ANC, however these measures ultimately proved to be ineffective. In 1955, the Congress of the People officially adopted the Freedom Charter, stating the core principles of the South African Congress Alliance, which consisted of the African National Congress and its allies the South African Communist Party (SACP), the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats (COD) and the Coloured People's Congress. The government claimed that this was a communist document, and consequently leaders of the ANC and Congress were arrested. 1960 saw the Sharpeville massacre, in which 69 people were killed when police opened fire on anti-apartheid protesters. uMkhonto we Sizwe uMkhonto we Sizwe or MK, translated "The Spear of the Nation", was the military wing of the ANC. Partly in response to the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, individual members of the ANC found it necessary to consider violence to combat what passive protests had failed to quell. In co-operation with the South African Communist Party, MK was founded in 1961. MK commenced the military struggle against apartheid with acts of sabotage aimed at the installations of the state, and in the early stages was reluctant to target civilian targets. MK was responsible for the deaths of both civilians and members of the military. Acts committed by MK include the Church Street bombing, the Magoo's Bar bombing and bombing a branch of the Standard Bank in Roodepoort. It was integrated into the South African National Defence Force by 1994. The ANC and its members were officially removed from the US terrorism watch list in 2008. Ideology The ANC deems itself a force of national liberation in the post-apartheid era; it officially defines its agenda as the National Democratic Revolution. The ANC is a member of the Socialist International. It also sets forth the redressing of socio-economic differences stemming from colonial- and apartheid-era policies as a central focus of ANC policy. The National Democratic Revolution (NDR) is described as a process through which the National Democratic Society (NDS) is achieved; a society in which people are intellectually, socially, economically and politically empowered. The drivers of the NDR are also called the motive forces and are defined as the elements within society that gain from the success of the NDR. Using contour plots or concentric circles the centre represents the elements in society that gain the most out of the success of the NDR. Moving away from the centre results in the reduction of the gains that those elements derive. It is generally believed that the force that occupies the centre of those concentric circles in countries with low unemployment is the working class while in countries with higher levels of unemployment it is the unemployed. Some of the many theoreticians that have written about the NDR include Joe Slovo, Joel Netshitenzhe and Tshilidzi Marwala. In 2004, the ANC declared itself to be a social democratic party. The 53rd National Conference of the ANC, held in 2015, stated in its "Discussion Document" that "China economic development trajectory remains a leading example of the triumph of humanity over adversity. The exemplary role of the collective leadership of the Communist Party of China in this regard should be a guiding lodestar of our own struggle." It went on to state that "The collapse of the Berlin Wall and socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern European States influenced our transition towards the negotiated political settlement in our country. The cause of events in the world changed tremendously in favour of the US led imperialism." Tripartite Alliance The ANC holds a historic alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), known as the Tripartite Alliance. The SACP and COSATU have not contested any election in South Africa, but field candidates through the ANC, hold senior positions in the ANC, and influence party policy and dialogue. During Mbeki's presidency, the government took a more pro-capitalist stance, often running counter to the demands of the SACP and COSATU. 2008 schism Following Zuma's accession to the ANC leadership in 2007 and Mbeki's resignation as president in 2008, a number of former ANC leaders led by Mosiuoa Lekota split away from the ANC to form the Congress of the People. 2013 NUMSA split from Cosatu On 20 December 2013, a special congress of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the country's biggest trade union with 338,000 members, voted to withdraw support from the ANC and SACP, and form a socialist party to protect the interests of the working class. NUMSA secretary general Irvin Jim condemned the ANC and SACP's support for big business and stated: "It is clear that the working class cannot any longer see the ANC or the SACP as its class allies in any meaningful sense." Neoliberal turn Since the 1990s, academics have argued that the ANC has increasingly adopted neoliberal socio-economic policies. The economist Asghar Adelzadeh found that the shift from the Reconstruction and Development Programme, formulated in 1994, to the Growth Employment and Redistribution policy, implemented in 1996, constituted a move towards a neoliberal economic framework. Similarly, the social geographer Sagie Narsiah considers this shift as one from a socialist to a neoliberal development framework. Moreover, he considers the increasing reliance on privatisation as symptomatic of this shift. The social and political analyst Patrick Bond contends that the ANC failed to implement a program of radical transformation after 1994. He draws attention, in particular, to the convergence between political and business elites in the formation of social policy favouring "social contract capitalism." ANC flag The ANC flag comprises three equal horizontal stripes – black, green and gold. Black symbolises the native people of South Africa, green represents the land and gold represents the mineral and other natural wealth of South Africa. This flag was also the battle flag of uMkhonto we Sizwe. The Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach used an unrelated but identical flag from 1813 to 1897. The black, green and gold tricolor was also used on the flag of the KwaZulu 'bantustan'. Although the colours of the new national Flag of South Africa since the transition from apartheid in 1994 have no official meaning, the three colours of the ANC flag were included in it, together with red, white and blue. Party list Politicians in the party win a place in parliament by being on the Party List, which is drawn up before the elections and enumerates, in order, the party's preferred MPs. The number of seats allocated is proportional to the popular national vote, which determines the cut-off point. The ANC has also gained members through the controversial floor crossing process. Although most South African parties announced their candidate list for provincial premierships in the 2009 election, the ANC did not, as it is not required for parties to do so. ANC Today In 2001, the ANC launched an online weekly web-based newsletter, ANC Today – Online Voice of the African National Congress to offset the alleged bias of the press. It consists mainly of updates on current programmes and initiatives of the ANC. Election results National Assembly elections National Council of Provinces Provincial elections Municipal elections Role of the ANC in resolving the conflict The ANC represented the main opposition to the government during apartheid and therefore they played a major role in resolving the conflict through participating in the peacemaking and peace-building processes. Initially intelligence agents of the National Party met in secret with ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela, to judge whether conflict resolution was possible. Discussions and negotiations took place leading to the eventual unbanning of the ANC and other opposing political parties by then President de Klerk on 2 February 1990. The next official step towards rebuilding South Africa was the Groote Schuur Minute where the government and the ANC agreed on a common commitment towards resolving the existing climate of violence and intimidation and a commitment to stability and to a peaceful process of negotiations. The ANC negotiated the release of political prisoners and the indemnity from prosecution for returning exiles and moreover channels of communication were established between the Government and the ANC. Later the Pretoria Minute represented another step towards resolution where agreements at Groote Schuur were reconsolidated and steps towards setting up an interim government and drafting a new constitution were established as well as suspension of the military wing of the ANC – the Umkhonto we Sizwe. This step helped end much of the violence within South Africa. Another agreement that came out of the Pretoria Minute was that both parties would try and raise awareness that a new way of governance was being created for South Africa, and that further violence would only hinder this process. However, violence still continued in Kwazulu-Natal, which violated the trust between Mandela and de Klerk. Moreover, internal disputes in the ANC prolonged the war as consensus on peace was not reached. The next significant steps towards resolution were the Repeal of the Population Registration Act, the repeal of the Group Areas and the Native Land Acts and a catch-all Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act was passed. These measures ensured no one could claim, or be deprived of, any land rights on the basis of race. In December 1991 the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) was held with the aim of establishing an interim government. However, a few months later in June 1992 the Boipatong massacre occurred and all negotiations crumbled as the ANC pulled out. After this negotiations proceeded between two agents, Cyril Ramaphosa of the ANC, and Roelf Meyer of the National Party. In over 40 sessions the two men discussed and negotiated over many issues including the nature of the future political system, the fate of over 40,000 government employees and if/how the country would be divided. The result of these negotiations was an interim constitution that meant the transition from apartheid to democracy was a constitutional continuation and that the rule of law and state sovereignty remained intact during the transition, which was vital for stability within the country. A date was set for the first democratic elections on 27 April 1994. The ANC won 62.5% of the votes and has been in power ever since. Criticism and controversy Corruption controversies The most prominent corruption case involving the ANC relates to a series of bribes paid to companies involved in the ongoing R55 billion Arms Deal saga, which resulted in a long term jail sentence to then Deputy President Jacob Zuma's legal adviser Schabir Shaik. Zuma, the former South African President, was charged with fraud, bribery and corruption in the Arms Deal, but the charges were subsequently withdrawn by the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa due to their delay in prosecution. The ANC has also been criticised for its subsequent abolition of the Scorpions, the multidisciplinary agency that investigated and prosecuted organised crime and corruption, and was heavily involved in the investigation into Zuma and Shaik. Tony Yengeni, in his position as chief whip of the ANC and head of the Parliaments defence committee has recently been named as being involved in bribing the German company ThyssenKrupp over the purchase of four corvettes for the SANDF. Other recent corruption issues include the sexual misconduct and criminal charges of Beaufort West municipal manager Truman Prince, and the Oilgate scandal, in which millions of Rand in funds from a state-owned company were funnelled into ANC coffers. The ANC has also been accused of using government and civil society to fight its political battles against opposition parties such as the Democratic Alliance. The result has been a number of complaints and allegations that none of the political parties truly represent the interests of the poor. This has resulted in the "No Land! No House! No Vote!" Campaign which became very prominent during elections. In 2018, the New York Times reported on the killings of ANC corruption whistleblowers. During an address on 28 October 2021, former president Thabo Mbeki commented on the history of corruption within the ANC. He reflected that Mandela had already warned in 1997 that the ANC was attracting individuals who viewed the party as "a route to power and self-enrichment." He added that the ANC leadership "did not know how to deal with this problem." During a lecture on 10 December, Mbeki reiterated concerns about "careerists" within the party, and stressed the need to "purge itself of such members". Condemnation over Secrecy Bill In late 2011 the ANC was heavily criticised over the passage of the Protection of State Information Bill, which opponents claimed would improperly restrict the freedom of the press. Opposition to the bill included otherwise ANC-aligned groups such as COSATU. Notably, Nelson Mandela and other Nobel laureates Nadine Gordimer, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and F. W. de Klerk have expressed disappointment with the bill for not meeting standards of constitutionality and aspirations for freedom of information and expression. Role in the Marikana killings The ANC have been criticised for its role in failing to prevent 16 August 2012 massacre of Lonmin miners at Marikana in the North West. Some allege that Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega and Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa may have given the go ahead for the police action against the miners on that day. Commissioner Phiyega of the ANC came under further criticism as being insensitive and uncaring when she was caught smiling and laughing during the Farlam Commission's video playback of the 'massacre'. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has announced that he no longer can bring himself to exercise a vote for the ANC as it is no longer the party that he and Nelson Mandela fought for, and that the party has now lost its way, and is in danger of becoming a corrupt entity in power. Financial mismanagement Since at least 2017, the ANC has encountered significant problems related to financial mismanagement. According to a report filed by the former treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize in December 2017, the ANC was technically insolvent, as its liabilities exceeded its assets. These problems continued into the second half of 2021. By September 2021, the ANC had reportedly amassed a debt exceeding R200-million, including over R100-million owed to the South African Revenue Service. Beginning in May 2021, the ANC failed to pay monthly staff salaries on time. Having gone without pay for three consecutive months, workers planned a strike in late August 2021. In response, the ANC initiated a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for staff salaries. By November 2021, its Cape Town staff was approaching their fourth month without salaries, while medical aid and provident fund contributions had been suspended in various provinces. State capture In January 2018, the former President Jacob Zuma established the Zondo Commission to investigate allegations of state capture, corruption, and fraud in the public sector. Over the following four years, the Commission heard testimony from over 250 witnesses and collected more than 150,000 pages of evidence. After several extensions, the first part of the final three-part report was published on 4 January 2022. The report found that the ANC, including Zuma and his political allies, had benefited from the extensive corruption of state enterprises, including the South African Revenue Service. It also found that the ANC "simply did not care that state entities were in decline during state capture or they slept on the job – or they simply didn't know what to do." See also :Category:Members of the African National Congress – current and former members with Wikipedia articles Congress of South African Trade Unions Democratic Alliance State v. Ebrahim United Democratic Front (South Africa) References External links African National Congress official site Response by the ANC General Secretary to COSATU's assessment, 2004 "Today it feels good to be an African" – Thabo Mbeki, Cape Town, 8 May 1996 Interview with Nimrod Sejake, an ANC dissident, "The ANC has sold out!" (Archived 2009-10-24) Interviewed by Laurence Coates Offensiv 385 (10 February 2000) Attacks attributed to the ANC on the START terrorism database List of articles & videos about the ANC Anti-Apartheid organisations National liberation movements Organisations associated with apartheid Political parties in South Africa Social democratic parties in South Africa Full member parties of the Socialist International Political parties established in 1912 Organizations formerly designated as terrorist by the United States

Agostino Carracci (or Caracci) (16 August 1557 – 22 March 1602) was an Italian painter, printmaker, tapestry designer, and art teacher. He was, together with his brother, Annibale Carracci, and cousin, Ludovico Carracci, one of the founders of the Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of the Progressives) in Bologna. This teaching academy promoted the Carracci emphasized drawing from life. It promoted progressive tendencies in art and was a reaction to the Mannerist distortion of anatomy and space. The academy helped propel painters of the School of Bologna to prominence. Life Agostino Carracci was born in Bologna as the son of a tailor. He was the elder brother of Annibale Carracci and the cousin of Ludovico Carracci. He initially trained as a goldsmith. He later studied painting, first with Prospero Fontana, who had been Lodovico's master, and later with Bartolomeo Passarotti. He traveled to Parma to study the works of Correggio. Accompanied by his brother Annibale, he spent a long time in Venice, where he trained as an engraver under the renowned Cornelis Cort. Starting from 1574 he worked as a reproductive engraver, copying works of 16th century masters such as Federico Barocci, Tintoretto, Antonio Campi, Veronese and Correggio. He also produced some original prints, including two etchings. He traveled to Venice (1582, 1587–1589) and Parma (1586–1587). Together with Annibale and Ludovico he worked in Bologna on the fresco cycles in Palazzo Fava (Histories of Jason and Medea, 1584) and Palazzo Magnani (Histories of Romulus, 1590–1592). In 1592 he also painted the Communion of St. Jerome, now in the Pinacoteca di Bologna and considered his masterwork. In 1620, Giovanni Lanfranco, a pupil of the Carracci, famously accused another Carracci student, Domenichino, of plagiarizing this painting. From 1586 is his altarpiece of the Madonna with Child and Saints, in the National Gallery of Parma. In 1598 Carracci joined his brother Annibale in Rome, to collaborate on the decoration of the Gallery in Palazzo Farnese. From 1598 to 1600 is a triple Portrait, now in Naples, an example of genre painting. In 1600 he was called to Parma by Duke Ranuccio I Farnese to begin the decoration of the Palazzo del Giardino, but he died before it was finished. His friend the poet Claudio Achillini dedicated to him an epitaph after his death, later published by Carlo Cesare Malvasia in the life of the Carracci. Agostino's son Antonio Carracci was also a painter, and attempted to compete with his father's Academy. An engraving by Agostino Carraci after the painting Love in the Golden Age by the 16th-century Flemish painter Paolo Fiammingo was the inspiration for Matisse's Le bonheur de vivre (Joy of Life). Works Oil on canvas unless otherwise noted 1573 – Pietà (Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, Virginia) 1586 – Madonna and Child with Saints (Galleria nazionale di Parma) c.1586 – Lamentation or Pietà (Hermitage, St. Petersburg) c.1589–1595 – Reciprico Amore (engraving, Baltimore Museum of Art) c.1590 – Annunciation (Musée du Louvre, Paris) 1590–1595 – Portrait of a Woman as Judith (private collection) c. 1592–1593 – Assumption (Ss. Salvatore church, Bologna) 1592–1597 – The Last Communion of Saint Jerome (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna) c.1595 – Head of a Faun in a Concave (drawing in roundel, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) 1598–1600 – Triple Portrait of Arrigo, Pietro and Amon (National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples) Fresco collaborations with Annibale and Ludovico Life of Aeneas (Palazzo Fava, Bologna) Lives of Jason and Medea (Palazzo Fava, Bologna) Scenes from the Foundation of Rome (Palazzo Magnani, Bologna) Life of Hercules (Palazzo Sampieri Talon, Bologna) Undated The Penitent Magdalen (private collection) Carracci's erotic work (prints) See also The Carracci References External links 1557 births 1602 deaths 16th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 17th-century Italian painters Italian Baroque painters Painters from Bologna Italian printmakers Italian erotic artists Sibling artists Catholic painters Catholic decorative artists

Ab urbe condita ( 'from the founding of the City'), or anno urbis conditae (; 'in the year since the city's founding'), abbreviated as AUC or AVC, express a date in years since 753 BC, the traditional founding of Rome. It is an expression used in antiquity and by classical historians to refer to a given year in Ancient Rome. In reference to the traditional year of the foundation of Rome, the year 1 BC would be written AUC 753, whereas AD 1 would be AUC 754. The foundation of the Roman Empire in 27 BC would be AUC 727. The current common era year 2022 coincides with the AUC year 2775. Usage of the term was more common during the Renaissance, when editors sometimes added AUC to Roman manuscripts they published, giving the false impression that the convention was commonly used in antiquity. In reality, the dominant method of identifying years in Roman times was to name the two consuls who held office that year. In late antiquity, regnal years were also in use, as in Roman Egypt during the Diocletian era after AD 293, and in the Byzantine Empire from AD 537, following a decree by Justinian. Significance The traditional date for the founding of Rome, 21 April 753 BC, is due to Marcus Terentius Varro (1st century BC). Varro may have used the consular list (with its mistakes) and called the year of the first consuls "ab Urbe condita 245," accepting the 244-year interval from Dionysius of Halicarnassus for the kings after the foundation of Rome. The correctness of this calculation has not been confirmed, but it is still used worldwide. From the time of Claudius (fl. AD 41 to AD 54) onward, this calculation superseded other contemporary calculations. Celebrating the anniversary of the city became part of imperial propaganda. Claudius was the first to hold magnificent celebrations in honor of the anniversary of the city, in AD 48, the eight hundredth year from the founding of the city. Hadrian, in AD 121, and Antoninus Pius, in AD 147 and AD 148, held similar celebrations respectively. In AD 248, Philip the Arab celebrated Rome's first millennium, together with Ludi saeculares for Rome's alleged tenth saeculum. Coins from his reign commemorate the celebrations. A coin by a contender for the imperial throne, Pacatianus, explicitly states "[y]ear one thousand and first," which is an indication that the citizens of the empire had a sense of the beginning of a new era, a Sæculum Novum. Calendar era The Anno Domini (AD) year numbering was developed by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus in Rome in AD 525, as a result of his work on calculating the date of Easter. Dionysius did not use the AUC convention, but instead based his calculations on the Diocletian era. This convention had been in use since AD 293, the year of the tetrarchy, as it became impractical to use regnal years of the current emperor. In his Easter table, the year AD 532 was equated with the 248th regnal year of Diocletian. The table counted the years starting from the presumed birth of Christ, rather than the accession of the emperor Diocletian on 20 November AD 284 or, as stated by Dionysius: "sed magis elegimus ab incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi annorum tempora praenotare" ("but rather we choose to name the times of the years from the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ"). Blackburn and Holford-Strevens review interpretations of Dionysius which place the Incarnation in 2 BC, 1 BC, or AD 1. The year AD 1 corresponds to AUC 754, based on the epoch of Varro. Thus: See also Calendar era History of Italy List of Latin phrases Roman calendar Notes Citations External links 1st-century BC establishments in the Roman Empire 8th century BC in the Roman Kingdom Calendar eras Chronology Latin words and phrases Roman calendar Diocletian

The Apache HTTP Server ( ) is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software, released under the terms of Apache License 2.0. Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. The vast majority of Apache HTTP Server instances run on a Linux distribution, but current versions also run on Microsoft Windows, OpenVMS, and a wide variety of Unix-like systems. Past versions also ran on NetWare, OS/2 and other operating systems, including ports to mainframes. Originally based on the NCSA HTTPd server, development of Apache began in early 1995 after work on the NCSA code stalled. Apache played a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web, quickly overtaking NCSA HTTPd as the dominant HTTP server. In 2009, it became the first web server software to serve more than 100 million websites. , Netcraft estimated that Apache served 24.63% of the million busiest websites, while Nginx served 23.21% and Microsoft is in third place at 6.85% (for some of Netcraft's other stats Nginx is ahead of Apache), while according to W3Techs, Apache is ranked first at 35.0% and Nginx second at 33.0% and Cloudflare Server third at 17.3%. Name According to The Apache Software Foundation, its name was chosen "from respect for the various Native American nations collectively referred to as Apache, well-known for their superior skills in warfare strategy and their inexhaustible endurance", in a context in which it seemed the thereunto open internet, based on free exchange of open source code, appeared to be soon likely subjected to a kind of conquer by proprietary software vendor Microsoft, Behlendorf seeing his effort somewhat romantically to parallel that of Geronimo, Chief of the last of the free Apache peoples. But it conceded that the name "also makes a cute pun on 'a patchy web server'—a server made from a series of patches". There are other sources for the "patchy" software pun theory, including the project's official documentation in 1995, which stated: "Apache is a cute name which stuck. It was based on some existing code and a series of software patches, a pun on 'A PAtCHy' server." But in an April 2000 interview, Brian Behlendorf, one of the Apache's creators, asserted that the origins of Apache were not a pun, stating: When Apache is running under Unix, its process name is , which is short for "HTTP daemon". Feature overview Apache supports a variety of features, many implemented as compiled modules which extend the core functionality. These can range from authentication schemes to supporting server-side programming languages such as Perl, Python, Tcl and PHP. Popular authentication modules include mod_access, mod_auth, mod_digest, and mod_auth_digest, the successor to mod_digest. A sample of other features include Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security support (mod_ssl), a proxy module (mod_proxy), a URL rewriting module (mod_rewrite), custom log files (mod_log_config), and filtering support (mod_include and mod_ext_filter). Popular compression methods on Apache include the external extension module, mod_gzip, implemented to help with reduction of the size (weight) of web pages served over HTTP. ModSecurity is an open source intrusion detection and prevention engine for Web applications. Apache logs can be analyzed through a Web browser using free scripts, such as AWStats/W3Perl or Visitors. Virtual hosting allows one Apache installation to serve many different websites. For example, one computer with one Apache installation could simultaneously serve example.com, example.org, test47.test-server.example.edu, etc. Apache features configurable error messages, DBMS-based authentication databases, content negotiation and supports several graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It supports password authentication and digital certificate authentication. Because the source code is freely available, anyone can adapt the server for specific needs, and there is a large public library of Apache add-ons. A more detailed list of features is provided below: Loadable Dynamic Modules Multiple Request Processing modes (MPMs) including Event-based/Async, Threaded and Prefork. Highly scalable (easily handles more than 10,000 simultaneous connections) Handling of static files, index files, auto-indexing and content negotiation .htaccess per-directory configuration support Reverse proxy with caching Load balancing with in-band health checks Multiple load balancing mechanisms Fault tolerance and Failover with automatic recovery WebSocket, FastCGI, SCGI, AJP and uWSGI support with caching Dynamic configuration TLS/SSL with SNI and OCSP stapling support, via OpenSSL or wolfSSL. Name- and IP address-based virtual servers IPv6-compatible HTTP/2 support Fine-grained authentication and authorization access control gzip compression and decompression URL rewriting Headers and content rewriting Custom logging with rotation Concurrent connection limiting Request processing rate limiting Bandwidth throttling Server Side Includes IP address-based geolocation User and Session tracking WebDAV Embedded Perl, PHP and Lua scripting CGI support public_html per-user web-pages Generic expression parser Real-time status views FTP support (by a separate module) Performance Instead of implementing a single architecture, Apache provides a variety of MultiProcessing Modules (MPMs), which allow it to run in either a process-based mode, a hybrid (process and thread) mode, or an event-hybrid mode, in order to better match the demands of each particular infrastructure. Choice of MPM and configuration is therefore important. Where compromises in performance must be made, Apache is designed to reduce latency and increase throughput relative to simply handling more requests, thus ensuring consistent and reliable processing of requests within reasonable time-frames. For delivering static pages, Apache 2.2 series was considered significantly slower than nginx and varnish. To address this issue, the Apache developers created the Event MPM, which mixes the use of several processes and several threads per process in an asynchronous event-based loop. This architecture as implemented in the Apache 2.4 series performs at least as well as event-based web servers, according to Jim Jagielski and other independent sources. However, some independent but significantly outdated benchmarks show that it is still half as fast as nginx, e.g. Licensing The Apache HTTP Server codebase was relicensed to the Apache 2.0 License (from the previous 1.1 license) in January 2004, and Apache HTTP Server 1.3.31 and 2.0.49 were the first releases using the new license. The OpenBSD project did not like the change and continued the use of pre-2.0 Apache versions, effectively forking Apache 1.3.x for its purposes. They initially replaced it with Nginx, and soon after made their own replacement, OpenBSD Httpd, based on the Relayd project. Versions Version 1.1: The Apache License 1.1 was approved by the ASF in 2000: The primary change from the 1.0 license is in the 'advertising clause' (section 3 of the 1.0 license); derived products are no longer required to include attribution in their advertising materials, only in their documentation. Version 2.0: The ASF adopted the Apache License 2.0 in January 2004. The stated goals of the license included making the license easier for non-ASF projects to use, improving compatibility with GPL-based software, allowing the license to be included by reference instead of listed in every file, clarifying the license on contributions, and requiring a patent license on contributions that necessarily infringe a contributor's own patents. Development The Apache HTTP Server Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed at creating a robust, commercial-grade, feature-rich and freely available source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The project is jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the server and its related documentation. This project is part of the Apache Software Foundation. In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and documentation to the project. Apache 2.4 dropped support for BeOS, TPF, A/UX, NeXT, and Tandem platforms. Security Apache, like other server software, can be hacked and exploited. The main Apache attack tool is Slowloris, which exploits a bug in Apache software. It creates many sockets and keeps each of them alive and busy by sending several bytes (known as "keep-alive headers") to let the server know that the computer is still connected and not experiencing network problems. The Apache developers have addressed Slowloris with several modules to limit the damage caused; the Apache modules mod_limitipconn, mod_qos, mod_evasive, mod security, mod_noloris, and mod_antiloris have all been suggested as means of reducing the likelihood of a successful Slowloris attack. Since Apache 2.2.15, Apache ships the module mod_reqtimeout as the official solution supported by the developers. See also .htaccess .htpasswd ApacheBench Comparison of web server software IBM HTTP Server LAMP (software bundle) XAMPP List of Apache modules List of free and open-source software packages POSSE project suEXEC Apache Tomcat - another web server developed by the Apache Software Foundation References External links 1995 software HTTP Server Cross-platform free software Free software programmed in C Free web server software Reverse proxy Software using the Apache license Unix network-related software Web server software for Linux Web server software

An abatis, abattis, or abbattis is a field fortification consisting of an obstacle formed (in the modern era) of the branches of trees laid in a row, with the sharpened tops directed outwards, towards the enemy. The trees are usually interlaced or tied with wire. Abatis are used alone or in combination with wire entanglements and other obstacles. In Slavic languages it is known as zaseka, a position behind sharpened objects. History There is evidence it was used as early as the Roman Imperial period, and as recently as the American Civil War and the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. A classic use of an abatis was at the Battle of Carillon (1758) during the Seven Years' War. The 3,600 French troops defeated a massive army of 16,000 British and Colonial troops by fronting their defensive positions with an extremely dense abatis. The British found the defences almost impossible to breach and were forced to withdraw with some 2,600 casualties. Other uses of an abatis can be found at the Battle of the Chateauguay, 26 October 1813, when approximately 1,300 Canadian Voltigeurs, under the command of Charles-Michel de Salaberry, defeated an American corps of approximately 4,000 men, or at the Battle of Plattsburgh. Construction An important weakness of abatis, in contrast to barbed wire, is that it can be destroyed by fire. Also, if laced together with rope instead of wire, the rope can be very quickly destroyed by such fires, after which the abatis can be quickly pulled apart by grappling hooks thrown from a safe distance. An important advantage is that an improvised abatis can be quickly formed in forested areas. This can be done by simply cutting down a row of trees so that they fall with their tops toward the enemy. An alternative is to place explosives so as to blow the trees down. Modern use Abatis are rarely seen nowadays, having been largely replaced by wire obstacles. However, it may be used as a replacement or supplement when barbed wire is in short supply. A form of giant abatis, using whole trees instead of branches, can be used as an improvised anti-tank obstacle. Though rarely used by modern conventional military units, abatises are still officially maintained in United States Army and Marine Corps training. Current US training instructs engineers or other constructors of such obstacles to fell trees, leaving a stump, in such a manner as the trees fall interlocked pointing at a 45-degree angle towards the direction of approach of the enemy. Furthermore, it is recommended that the trees remain connected to the stumps and the length of roadway covered be at least . US military maps record an abatis by use of an inverted "V" with a short line extending from it to the right. See also Great Zasechnaya cherta Notes References External links Pamplin Historical Park & The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier includes large and authentic reproduction of abatis used in the U.S. Civil War. Fortifications by type Medieval defences

In ancient Roman religion, an aedicula (plural aediculae) is a small shrine, and in classical architecture refers to a niche covered by a pediment or entablature supported by a pair of columns and typically framing a statue. Aediculae are also represented in art as a form of ornamentation. The word aedicula is the diminutive of the Latin aedes, a temple building or dwelling place. The Latin word has been Anglicised as "aedicule" and as "edicule". Classical aediculae Many aediculae were household shrines (lararia) that held small altars or statues of the Lares and Di Penates. The Lares were Roman deities protecting the house and the family household gods. The Penates were originally patron gods (really genii) of the storeroom, later becoming household gods guarding the entire house. Other aediculae were small shrines within larger temples, usually set on a base, surmounted by a pediment and surrounded by columns. In ancient Roman architecture the aedicula has this representative function in the society. They are installed in public buildings like the triumphal arch, city gate, and thermae. The Library of Celsus in Ephesus (2. c. AD) is a good example. From the 4th century Christianization of the Roman Empire onwards such shrines, or the framework enclosing them, are often called by the Biblical term tabernacle, which becomes extended to any elaborated framework for a niche, window or picture. Gothic aediculae In Gothic architecture, too, an aedicula or tabernacle frame is a structural framing device that gives importance to its contents, whether an inscribed plaque, a cult object, a bust or the like, by assuming the tectonic vocabulary of a little building that sets it apart from the wall against which it is placed. A tabernacle frame on a wall serves similar hieratic functions as a free-standing, three-dimensional architectural baldaquin or a ciborium over an altar. In Late Gothic settings, altarpieces and devotional images were customarily crowned with gables and canopies supported by clustered-column piers, echoing in small the architecture of Gothic churches. Painted aediculae frame figures from sacred history in initial letters of illuminated manuscripts. Renaissance aediculae Classicizing architectonic structure and décor all'antica, in the "ancient [Roman] mode", became a fashionable way to frame a painted or bas-relief portrait, or protect an expensive and precious mirror during the High Renaissance; Italian precedents were imitated in France, then in Spain, England and Germany during the later 16th century. Post-Renaissance classicism Aedicular door surrounds that are architecturally treated, with pilasters or columns flanking the doorway and an entablature even with a pediment over it came into use with the 16th century. In the neo-Palladian revival in Britain, architectonic aedicular or tabernacle frames, carved and gilded, are favourite schemes for English Palladian mirror frames of the late 1720s through the 1740s, by such designers as William Kent. Other aediculae Similar small shrines, called naiskoi, are found in Greek religion, but their use was strictly religious. Aediculae exist today in Roman cemeteries as a part of funeral architecture. Presently the most famous aedicule is situated inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in city of Jerusalem. Contemporary American architect Charles Moore (1925–1993) used the concept of aediculae in his work to create spaces within spaces and to evoke the spiritual significance of the home. See also Portico Notes References Bibliography Adkins, Lesley & Adkins, Roy A. (1996). Dictionary of Roman Religion. Facts on File, inc. . External links Conservation glossary ´ Ancient Roman temples Architectural elements Ancient Roman architectural elements

Aelian or Aelianus may refer to: Aelianus Tacticus, Greek military writer of the 2nd century, who lived in Rome Casperius Aelianus, Praetorian Prefect, executed by Trajan Claudius Aelianus, Roman writer, teacher and historian of the 3rd century, who wrote in Greek Lucius Aelianus, one of the thirty tyrants under the Roman empire Aelianus Meccius, ancient Greek physician, tutor of Galen Tiberius Plautius Silvanus Aelianus, adopted nephew of Plautia Urgulanilla, first wife of Claudius; consul 45 and 74 AD Aelianus (rebel), leader of the Bagaudae peasant rebels Aelianus (comes), leader of the Roman defensive forces at the Siege of Amida in 359.

Abatement of debts and legacies is a common law doctrine of wills that holds that when the equitable assets of a deceased person are not sufficient to satisfy fully all the creditors, their debts must abate proportionately, and they must accept a dividend. In the case of legacies when the funds or assets out of which they are payable are not sufficient to pay them in full, the legacies abate in proportion, unless there is a priority given specially to any particular legacy. Annuities are also subject to the same rule as general legacies. The order of abatement is usually: Intestate property The residuary of the estate General Devises—i.e., cash gifts Demonstrative Devises—i.e., cash gifts from a specific account, stocks, bonds, securities, etc. Specific Devises—i.e., specified items of personal property, real property, etc. Non-probate property—i.e., life insurance policies—do not abate. Definitions A specific devise, is a specific gift in a will to a specific person other than an amount of money. For example, if James's will states that he is leaving his $500,000 yacht to his brother Mike, the yacht would be a specific devise. A general devise, is a monetary gift to a specific person to be satisfied out of the overall estate. For example, if James's will states that he is leaving $500,000 to his son Sam then the money would be a general devise. A demonstrative devise, is money given from a particular account. For example, "$10,000 to be paid from the sale of my GM stock." A residual devise is one left to a devisee after all specific and general devices have been made. For example, James's will might say: "I give all the rest, residue and remainder of my estate to my daughter Lilly." Lilly would be the residual devisee and entitled to James's residuary estate. References Common law Wills and trusts

ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (, 1162 Baghdad–1231 Baghdad), short for Muwaffaq al-Dīn Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf al-Baghdādī (), was a physician, philosopher, historian, Arabic grammarian and traveller, and one of the most voluminous writers of his time. Biography Many details of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī's life are known from his autobiography as presented in Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah's literary history of medicine. As a young man, he studied grammar, law, tradition, medicine, alchemy and philosophy. He focused his studies on ancient authors, in particular Aristotle, after first adopting Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) as his philosophical mentor at the suggestion of a wandering scholar from the Maghreb. He travelled extensively and resided in Mosul (in 1189) where he studied the works of al-Suhrawardi before travelling on to Damascus (1190) and the camp of Saladin outside Acre (1191). It was at this last location that he met Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad and Imad al-Din al-Isfahani and acquired the Qadi al-Fadil's patronage. He went on to Cairo, where he met Abu'l-Qasim al-Shari'i, who introduced him to the works of al-Farabi, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Themistius and (according to al-Latif) turned him away from Avicenna and alchemy. In 1192 he met Saladin in Jerusalem and enjoyed his patronage, then went to Damascus again before returning to Cairo. He journeyed to Jerusalem and to Damascus in 1207-8, and eventually made his way via Aleppo to Erzindjan, where he remained at the court of the Mengujekid Ala’-al-Din Da’ud (Dāwūd Shāh) until the city was conquered by the Rūm Seljuk ruler Kayqubād II (Kayqubād Ibn Kaykhusraw). ‘Abd al-Latif returned to Baghdad in 1229, travelling back via Erzerum, Kamakh, Divriği and Malatya. He died in Baghdad two years later. Account of Egypt ʿAbd al-Laṭīf was a man of great knowledge and of an inquisitive and penetrating mind. Of the numerous works (mostly on medicine) which Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah ascribes to him, one only, his graphic and detailed Account of Egypt (in two parts), appeared to be known in Europe. Archeology ʿAbd-al-Laṭīf was well aware of the value of ancient monuments. He praised Muslim rulers for preserving and protecting pre-Islamic artefacts and monuments, but he also criticized them for failing to do this. He noted that the preservation of antiquities presented a number of benefits for Muslims: "monuments are useful historical evidence for chronologies"; "they furnish evidence for Holy Scriptures, since the Qur'an mentions them and their people"; "they are reminders of human endurance and fate"; "they show, to a degree, the politics and history of ancestors, the richness of their sciences, and the genius of their thought". While discussing the profession of treasure hunting, he notes that poorer treasure hunters were often sponsored by rich businessmen to go on archeological expeditions. In some cases, an expedition could turn out to be fraudulent, with the treasure hunter disappearing with large amounts of money extracted from sponsors. Egyptology His manuscript was one of the earliest works on Egyptology. It contains a vivid description of a famine caused by the Nile failing to overflow its banks (which occurred during the author's residence in Egypt). He also wrote detailed descriptions on ancient Egyptian monuments. Autopsy Al-Baghdādī wrote that during the famine in Egypt in 597 AH (1200 AD), he had the opportunity to observe and examine a large number of skeletons, through which he came to the view that Galen was incorrect regarding the formation of the bones of the lower jaw [mandible], coccyx and sacrum. Translation Al-Baghdādī's Arabic manuscript was discovered in 1665 by the English orientalist Edward Pococke and is preserved in the Bodleian Library. Pococke published the Arabic manuscript in the 1680s. His son, Edward Pococke the Younger, translated the work into Latin, although he was only able to publish less than half of his work. Thomas Hunt attempted to publish Pococke's complete translation in 1746, although his attempt was unsuccessful. Pococke's complete Latin translation was eventually published by Joseph White of Oxford in 1800. The work was then translated into French, with valuable notes, by Silvestre de Sacy in 1810. Philosophy As far as philosophy is concerned, one may adduce that ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī regarded philosophers as paragons of real virtue and therefore he refused to accept as a true philosopher one lacking not only true insight, but also a truly moral personality as true philosophy was in the service of religion, verifying both belief and action. Apart from this he regarded the philosophers’ ambitions as vain (Endress, in Martini Bonadeo, Philosophical journey, xi). ʿAbd al-Laṭīf composed several philosophical works, among which is an important and original commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics (Kitāb fī ʿilm mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa). This is a critical work in the process of the Arabic assimilation of Greek thought, demonstrating its author's acquaintance with the most important Greek metaphysical doctrines, as set out in the writings of al-Kindī (d. circa 185-252/801-66) and al-Fārābī (d. 339/950). The philosophical section of his Book of the Two Pieces of Advice (Kitāb al-Naṣīḥatayn) contains an interesting and challenging defence of philosophy and illustrates the vibrancy of philosophical debate in the Islamic colleges. It moreover emphasises the idea that Islamic philosophy did not decline after the twelfth century CE (Martini Bonadeo, Philosophical journey; Gutas). ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī may therefore well be an exponent of what Gutas calls the “golden age of Arabic philosophy” (Gutas, 20). Alchemy ʿAbd al-Laṭīf also penned two passionate and somewhat grotesque pamphlets against the art of alchemy in all its facets. Although he engaged in alchemy for a short while, he later abandoned the art completely by rejecting not only its practice, but also its theory. In ʿAbd al-Laṭīf's view alchemy could not be placed in the system of the sciences, and its false presumptions and pretensions must be distinguished from true scientific knowledge, which can be given a rational basis (Joosse, Rebellious intellectual, 29–62; Joosse, Unmasking the craft, 301–17; Martini Bonadeo, Philosophical journey, 5-6 and 203–5; Stern, 66–7; Allemann). Spiritualism During the years following the First World War, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī's name reappeared within the spiritualistic movement in the United Kingdom. He was introduced to the public by the Irish medium Eileen J. Garrett, the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the spiritualist R.H. Saunders and became known by the name Abduhl Latif, the great Arab physician. He is said to have acted as a control of mediums until the mid 1960s (Joosse, Geest, 221–9). The Bodleian Library (MS Pococke 230) and the interpretation of the Videans (Zand-Videan, 8–9) may also have prompted the whimsical short-story ‘Ghost Writer’, as told to Tim Mackintosh-Smith, in which ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī speaks in the first person. References Bibliography Allemann, Franz, ʿAbdallaṭīf al-Baġdādī: Risālah fī Mudjādalat al-ḥakīmain al-kīmiyāʾī wan-naẓarī (“Das Streitgespräch zwischen dem Alchemisten und dem theoretischen Philosophen” or The Argument Between the Alchemist and the Theoretical Philosopher). Eine textkritische Bearbeitung der Handschrift: Bursa, Hüseyin Çelebi 823, fol. 100-123 mit Übersetzung und Kommentar, PhD dissertation Bern 1988. Degen, Rainer, Zum Diabetestraktat des ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī, Annali Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 37 (N.S. 27) (1977), 455–62. Dietrich, Albert, Ein Arzneimittelverzeichnis des Abdallaṭīf Ibn Yūsuf al-Baġdādī, in: Wilhelm Hoenerbach, Der Orient in der Forschung. Festschrift für Otto Spies zum 5. April 1966 (Wiesbaden 1967), 42–60. Gannagé, Emma, “Médecine et philosophie à Damas à l’aube du XIIIème siècle: un tournant post-avicennien?”, Oriens, 39 (2011), 227–256. Gutas, Dimitri, 'Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: One View from Bagdad, or the Reputation of al-Ghazālī, in: Peter Adamson, In the Age of Averroes: Arabic Philosophy in the Sixth/Twelfth Century, London/Torino: Nino Aragno Editore, 2011, 9-26. Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-atibbāʾ, ed. Imruʾulqais ibn aṭ-Ṭaḥḥān (August Müller), 2 vols. (Cairo-Königsberg 1299/1882), 2: 201-13 [Reprint by Fuat Sezgin et al.: Islamic Medicine 1–2, 2 vols., Frankfurt am Main 1995]. The entry on ALB has been translated, annotated, and edited by N. Peter Joosse and Geert Jan van Gelder, in: A Literary History of medicine: The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah, HdO 134, volume 3-1 [ed.]: 1295–1323; 3-2 [trl.]: 1470-1506 (Brill: Leiden/Boston, 2019). Joosse, N. Peter, art. "ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī" in: Encyclopaedia of Islam Three. Joosse, N. Peter, The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. The Book of the Two Pieces of Advice or Kitāb al-Naṣīḥatayn by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (1162-1231): Introduction, Edition and Translation of the Medical Section (Frankfurt am Main and Bern: Peter Lang Edition 2014). [Beihefte zur Mediaevistik, Band 18]. Joosse, N. Peter, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī as a philosopher and a physician. Myth or reality, topos or truth?, in Peter Adamson, In the age of Averroes. Arabic philosophy in the sixth/twelfth century (Nino Aragno Editore: London/Torino 2011), 27-43. Joosse, N. Peter, ‘Pride and prejudice, praise and blame’. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī’s views on good and bad medical practitioners, in Arnoud Vrolijk and Jan P. Hogendijk, O ye gentlemen. Arabic studies on science and literary culture in honour of Remke Kruk (Brill: Leiden/Boston 2007), 129–41. Joosse, N. Peter, 'ʿUnmasking the Craftʾ. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī's Views on Alchemy and Alchemists: in: Anna A. Akasoy and Wim Raven, Islamic Thought in the Middle Ages. Studies in Text, Transmission and Translation in Honour of Hans Daiber (Brill: Leiden/Boston, 2008), 301–17. Joosse, N. Peter, ‘De geest is uit de fles’. De middeleeuwse Arabische arts ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf al-Baghdādī: zijn medische werk en zijn bizarre affiliatie met het twintigste-eeuwse spiritisme, Gewina 30/4 (2007), 211–29. Joosse, N. Peter and Peter E. Pormann, 'Decline and Decadence in Iraq and Syria after the Age of Avicenna?: ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (1162-1231) between Myth and History, in: Bulletin of the History of Medicine 84 (2010), 1-29. Joosse, N. Peter and Peter E. Pormann, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī's commentary on Hippocrates’ ‘Prognostic’. A preliminary exploration, in Peter E. Pormann (ed.), >Epidemics< in context. Greek commentaries on Hippocrates in the Arabic tradition (De Gruyter: Berlin and Boston 2012), 251–83. Joosse, N. Peter and Peter E. Pormann, Archery, mathematics, and conceptualising inaccuracies in medicine in 13th century Iraq and Syria, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 101 (2008), 425–7. Karimullah, Kamran I., « Assessing Avicenna's (d. 428/1037) Medical Influence in Prolegomena to Post-Classical (1100‒1900 CE) Medical Commentaries », MIDÉO, 32 ( 2017), 93-134 (especially section I on ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī). Kruk, Remke, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī's Kitāb al-Ḥayawān: A chimaera?, in: Anna A. Akasoy and Wim Raven, Islamic thought in the middle ages. Studies in text, transmission and translation, in honour of Hans Daiber (Leiden and Boston 2008), 345–62. Mackintosh-Smith, Tim, ‘Ghost Writer’, as told to Tim Mackintosh-Smith, (Slightly foxed Ltd: London, 2005). Martini Bonadeo, Cecilia, art. "‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/al-baghdadi/>. Pormann, Peter E. and N. Peter Joosse, Commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms in the Arabic tradition: The example of melancholy, in Peter E. Pormann (ed.), >Epidemics< in context. Greek commentaries on Hippocrates in the Arabic tradition (De Gruyter: Berlin and Boston 2012), 211–49. Pormann, Peter E. and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic medicine (Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh 2007), 60, 73–4. Stern, Samuel Miklos, A collection of treatises by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī, Islamic Studies 1 (1962), 53–70. [Reprint, in Fritz W. Zimmermann (ed.), S.M. Stern, Medieval Arabic and Hebrew thought (London 1983), No. XVIII]. Thies, Hans-Jürgen, Der Diabetestraktat ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī's. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Krankheitbildes in der arabischen Medizin, Diss. Bonn, Selbstverlag Uni Bonn, 1971. Toorawa, Shawkat M., A portrait of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī's education and instruction, in Joseph E. Lowry, Devin J. Stewart and Shawkat M. Toorawa, Law and education in medieval Islam. Studies in memory of professor George Makdisi (Oxford 2004), 91-109. Ullmann, Manfred, Die Medizin im Islam (Brill: Leiden/Köln 1970), 170–2. Ullmann, Manfred, review of Hans-Jürgen Thies, Der Diabetestraktat ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī's. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Krankheitsbildes in der arabischen Medizin, (Selbstverlag Uni Bonn: Bonn 1971), Der Islam 48 (1972), 339–40. Zand, K.H. and J.A. and I.E. Videan, Kitāb al-Ifāda wa l-iʿtibār fī l-umūr al-mushāhada wa l-ḥawādith al-muʿāyana bi-arḍ miṣr''. Facsimile edition of the autograph manuscript at the Bodleian Library, Oxford and English translation by Kamal Hafuth Zand and John A. and Ivy E. Videan under the name The Eastern Key (London and Cairo 1204/1964). 1162 births 1231 deaths Writers from Baghdad 12th-century people of the Abbasid Caliphate Medieval Iraqi physicians Egyptologists Medieval Arab physicians Physicians of medieval Islam 13th-century physicians Medieval travel writers 13th-century people of the Abbasid Caliphate 12th-century jurists 13th-century jurists 12th-century Arabs 13th-century Arabs

The Community acquis or acquis communautaire (; ), sometimes called the EU acquis and often shortened to acquis, is the accumulated legislation, legal acts and court decisions that constitute the body of European Union law. The term is French: acquis meaning "that which has been acquired or obtained", and communautaire meaning "of the community". Chapters During the process of the enlargement of the European Union, the acquis was divided into 31 chapters for the purpose of negotiation between the EU and the candidate member states for the fifth enlargement (the ten that joined in 2004 plus Romania and Bulgaria which joined in 2007). These chapters were: Free movement of goods Free movement of persons Freedom to provide services Free movement of capital Company law Competition policy Agriculture Fisheries Transport policy Taxation Economic and Monetary Union Statistics Social policy and employment Energy Industrial policy Small and medium-sized enterprises Science and research Education and training Telecommunication and information technologies Culture and audio-visual policy Regional policy and co-ordination of structural instruments Environment Consumers and health protection Cooperation in the field of Justice and Home Affairs Customs union External relations Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) Financial control Financial and budgetary provisions Institutions Others For the negotiations with Croatia (which joined in 2013), Iceland, Turkey, Montenegro, Serbia and in the future, with North Macedonia, Albania (candidate countries), the acquis is split up into 35 chapters instead, with the purpose of better balancing between the chapters: dividing the most difficult ones into separate chapters for easier negotiation, uniting some easier chapters, moving some policies between chapters, as well as renaming a few of them in the process: Free movement of goods Freedom of movement for workers Right of establishment and freedom to provide services Free movement of capital Public procurement Company law Intellectual property law Competition policy Financial services Information society and media Agriculture and rural development Food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary policy Fisheries Transport policy Energy Taxation Economic and monetary policy Statistics Social policy and employment (including anti-discrimination and equal opportunities for women and men) Enterprise and industrial policy Trans-European networks Regional policy and co-ordination of structural instruments Judiciary and fundamental rights Justice, freedom and security Science and research Education and culture Environment Consumer and health protection Customs union External relations Foreign, security and defence policy Financial control Financial and budgetary provisions Institutions Other issues Correspondence between chapters of the 5th and the 6th Enlargement: Such negotiations usually involved agreeing transitional periods before new member states needed to implement the laws of the European Union fully and before they and their citizens acquired full rights under the acquis. Terminology The term acquis is also used to describe laws adopted under the Schengen Agreement, prior to its integration into the European Union legal order by the Treaty of Amsterdam, in which case one speaks of the Schengen acquis. The term acquis has been borrowed by the World Trade Organization Appellate Body, in the case Japan – Taxes on Alcoholic Beverages, to refer to the accumulation of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and WTO law ("acquis gattien"), though this usage is not well established. It has been used to describe the achievements of the Council of Europe (an international organisation unconnected with the European Union): It has also been applied to the body of "principles, norms and commitments" of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE): The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) introduced the concept of the OECD Acquis in its "Strategy for enlargement and outreach", May 2004. See also Official Journal of the European Union Primacy of European Union law References External links EUR-Lex: European Union Law. JRC-Acquis, Aligned multilingual parallel corpus: 23,000 Acquis-related texts per language, available in 22 languages. Total size: 1 Billion words. Translation Memory of the EU-Acquis: Up to 1 Million translation units each, for 231 language pairs. European Union constitutional law

An aberration is something that deviates from the normal way. Aberration may also refer to: Optics and physics Optical aberration, an imperfection in image formation by an optical system Chromatic aberration, caused by differences in refractive index for different wavelengths of light, in contrast with monochromatic aberration, which occurs for all frequencies of light Spherical aberration, which occurs when light rays pass through a spherical lens near the edge Defocus aberration, which occurs when a system is out of focus Astronomical aberration, which produces an apparent motion of celestial objects Relativistic aberration, the distortion of light at high velocities Biology and medicine aberratio or aberration, a rare (mutant) butterfly or moth wing pattern. Chromosome abnormality, or aberration, a disruption in the normal chromosomal content of a cell Cardiac aberrancy, aberration of the conduction of action potentials in the electrical conduction system of the heart Entertainment Aberration, a DLC for the video game ARK: Survival Evolved Aberration (film), a horror movie Aberration (EP) Aberrations, or abbies, are human-like creatures in the American TV series Wayward Pines See also Aberrant, a superhero roleplaying game by White Wolf Game Studio Aberrancy (geometry), the non-circularity of a curve

Abersychan is a town and community north of Pontypool in Torfaen, Wales, and lies within the boundaries of the historic county of Monmouthshire and the preserved county of Gwent. Abersychan lies in the narrow northern section of the Afon Lwyd valley. The town includes two schools; Abersychan Comprehensive School and Victoria Primary School; together with various shops and other amenities including Abersychan Rugby Club. Abersychan was the birthplace of the politicians Roy Jenkins, Don Touhig and Paul Murphy (MP for Torfaen); and of the rugby footballers Wilfred Hodder, Candy Evans and Bryn Meredith. History Like many of the 17th century isolated agricultural hamlets in the forested South Wales Valleys, Abersychan became a thriving industrial centre in the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly for iron production. After the discovery of iron stone locally, the principal ironworks were built by the British Iron Company in 1825, served mainly by the LNWR's Brynmawr and Blaenavon Railway. The ironwork's main office building and quadrangle were designed by architect Decimus Burton, best known for his design of London Zoo. The works passed to the New British Iron Company in 1843 and to the Ebbw Vale Company in 1852, before closing in 1889. On 6 February 1890, an underground explosion at Llanerch Colliery killed 176. The site of the former ironworks today is a core site of , and a total land area of , includes a number of listed buildings: Abersychan Limestone Railway: built c 1830 to carry limestone from Cwm Lascarn quarry to the British Ironworks. Air Furnace at British Ironworks British Colliery Pumping Engine House: a Cornish beam pumping engine house built by the British Iron Company. Built of sandstone with a slate roof, and retains several fixtures Cwmbyrgwm Colliery: Site of former colliery including remains of a water-balance headgear, chimney, oval shafts, water power dams, tramroad routes, and waste tips. Various proposals have been made over the years to redevelop the site, currently under the ownership of HSBC, but none have so far passed the requirements of Torfaen county council. Local government Abersychan constitutes a community and electoral ward of the county borough of Torfaen. The area was part of the ancient parish of Trevethin, in Monmouthshire. On 3 June 1864 Abersychan was constituted a local government district, governed by a local board. In 1894 Abersychan became an urban district and civil parish. The urban district was abolished in 1935, with most of its area passing to Pontypool urban district, and a small area going to Abercarn UD. In 1974 the area became part of the borough of Torfaen, in the new local government county of Gwent. The community of Abersychan was formed in 1985, but no community council has yet been formed. Abersychan and Cwmavon is now a ward for the Pontypool Community Council. In 1996 Torfaen became a unitary authority. The Abersychan community includes Abersychan, Cwmavon, Garndiffaith, Pentwyn, Talywain, Varteg, and Victoria Village. Local Transport The nearest railway stations to Abersychan are Pontypool & New Inn (3 miles), Llanhilleth (3.5 miles) and Abergavenny (7 miles). Abersychan was served by the following (disused) stations: Abersychan and Talywain railway station Abersychan Low Level railway station Places nearby Pentwyn Pentwyn, Torfaen is a small village located in the district of Abersychan. It contains a post office, several houses and a small play park. The village has a cricket team (Pontnewynydd CC) and is located right next to the old railway line. The cricket club celebrated its 100-year anniversary in 2006 with a successful tour to Cork, Ireland. The village has superb views over the River Severn and Newport to the south. Victoria Village Victoria Village is a small hamlet located in the district of Abersychan. It comprises a small village school and a number of houses. A small group of houses on Incline Road mark the beginning of the village and the village boundary is near Cwmavon. Victoria Primary School is also in this area, housed in large grounds. Many homes are built around the school's boundaries. Victoria Village primary school was opened in 1903 and closed by the council in 2018. The last head of the school was Miss Joy Dando. And caretaker Miss Debbie Williams. References Towns in Torfaen Local Government Districts created by the Local Government Act 1858 Communities in Torfaen Electoral wards of Torfaen

Events Pre-1600 404 BC – Admiral Lysander and King Pausanias of Sparta blockade Athens and bring the Peloponnesian War to a successful conclusion. 775 – The Battle of Bagrevand puts an end to an Armenian rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate. Muslim control over the South Caucasus is solidified and its Islamization begins, while several major Armenian nakharar families lose power and their remnants flee to the Byzantine Empire. 799 – After mistreatment and disfigurement by the citizens of Rome, pope Leo III flees to the Frankish court of king Charlemagne at Paderborn for protection. 1134 – The name Zagreb was mentioned for the first time in the Felician Charter relating to the establishment of the Zagreb Bishopric around 1094. 1601–1900 1607 – Eighty Years' War: The Dutch fleet destroys the anchored Spanish fleet at Gibraltar. 1644 – Transition from Ming to Qing: The Chongzhen Emperor, the last Emperor of Ming China, commits suicide during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng. 1707 – A coalition of Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal is defeated by a Franco-Spanish army at Almansa (Spain) in the War of the Spanish Succession. 1792 – Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier becomes the first person executed by guillotine. 1792 – "La Marseillaise" (the French national anthem) is composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. 1829 – Charles Fremantle arrives in HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for the British Empire. 1846 – Thornton Affair: Open conflict begins over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican–American War. 1849 – The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, signs the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal's English population and triggering the Montreal Riots. 1859 – British and French engineers break ground for the Suez Canal. 1862 – American Civil War: Forces under U.S. Admiral David Farragut demand the surrender of the Confederate city of New Orleans, Louisiana. 1864 – American Civil War: In the Battle of Marks' Mills, a force of 8,000 Confederate soldiers attacks 1,800 Union soldiers and a large number of wagon teamsters, killing or wounding 1,500 Union combatants. 1882 – French and Vietnamese troops clashed in Tonkin, when Commandant Henri Rivière seized the citadel of Hanoi with a small force of marine infantry. 1898 – Spanish–American War: The United States Congress declares that a state of war between the U.S. and Spain has existed since April 21, when an American naval blockade of the Spanish colony of Cuba began. 1901–present 1901 – New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates. 1915 – World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli begins: The invasion of the Turkish Gallipoli Peninsula by British, French, Indian, Newfoundland, Australian and New Zealand troops, begins with landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles. 1916 – Anzac Day is commemorated for the first time on the first anniversary of the landing at ANZAC Cove. 1920 – At the San Remo conference, the principal Allied Powers of World War I adopt a resolution to determine the allocation of Class "A" League of Nations mandates for administration of the former Ottoman-ruled lands of the Middle East. 1938 – U.S. Supreme Court delivers its opinion in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins and overturns a century of federal common law. 1944 – The United Negro College Fund is incorporated. 1945 – Elbe Day: United States and Soviet reconnaissance troops meet in Torgau and Strehla along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two. 1945 – Liberation Day (Italy): The National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy calls for a general uprising against the German occupation and the Italian Social Republic. 1945 – United Nations Conference on International Organization: Founding negotiations for the United Nations begin in San Francisco. 1945 – The last German troops retreat from Finland's soil in Lapland, ending the Lapland War. Military acts of Second World War end in Finland. 1951 – Korean War: Assaulting Chinese forces are forced to withdraw after heavy fighting with UN forces, primarily made up of Australian and Canadian troops, at the Battle of Kapyong. 1953 – Francis Crick and James Watson publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" describing the double helix structure of DNA. 1954 – The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories. 1959 – The Saint Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping. 1960 – The United States Navy submarine completes the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe. 1961 – Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit. 1972 – Vietnam War: Nguyen Hue Offensive: The North Vietnamese 320th Division forces 5,000 South Vietnamese troops to retreat and traps about 2,500 others northwest of Kontum. 1974 – Carnation Revolution: A leftist military coup in Portugal overthrows the authoritarian-conservative Estado Novo regime and establishes a democratic government. 1981 – More than 100 workers are exposed to radiation during repairs of at the Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. 1982 – Israel completes its withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula per the Camp David Accords. 1983 – Cold War: American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war. 1983 – Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit. 1988 – In Israel, John Demjanjuk is sentenced to death for war crimes committed in World War II. 1990 – Violeta Chamorro takes office as the President of Nicaragua, the first woman to hold the position. 2001 – President George W. Bush pledges U.S. military support in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. 2004 – The March for Women's Lives brings between 500,000 and 800,000 protesters, mostly pro-choice, to Washington D.C. to protest the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, and other restrictions on abortion. 2005 – The final piece of the Obelisk of Axum is returned to Ethiopia after being stolen by the invading Italian army in 1937. 2005 – Bulgaria and Romania sign the Treaty of Accession 2005 to join the European Union. 2007 – Boris Yeltsin's funeral: The first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894. 2015 – Nearly 9,100 are killed after a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes Nepal. Births Pre-1600 1214 – Louis IX of France (d. 1270) 1228 – Conrad IV of Germany (d. 1254) 1284 – Edward II of England (d. 1327) 1287 – Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, English politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (d. 1330) 1502 – Georg Major, German theologian and academic (d. 1574) 1529 – Francesco Patrizi, Italian philosopher and scientist (d. 1597) 1599 – Oliver Cromwell, English general and politician, Lord Protector of Great Britain (d. 1658) 1601–1900 1621 – Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, English soldier and politician (d. 1679) 1666 – Johann Heinrich Buttstett, German organist and composer (d. 1727) 1694 – Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, English architect and politician, Lord High Treasurer of Ireland (d. 1753) 1710 – James Ferguson, Scottish astronomer and author (d. 1776) 1723 – Giovanni Marco Rutini, Italian composer (d. 1797) 1725 – Augustus Keppel, 1st Viscount Keppel, English admiral and politician (d. 1786) 1767 – Nicolas Oudinot, French general (d. 1847) 1770 – Georg Sverdrup, Norwegian philologist and academic (d. 1850) 1776 – Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh (d. 1857) 1843 – Princess Alice of the United Kingdom (d. 1878) 1849 – Felix Klein, German mathematician and academic (d. 1925) 1850 – Luise Adolpha Le Beau, German composer and educator (d. 1927) 1851 – Leopoldo Alas, Spanish author, critic, and academic (d. 1901) 1854 – Charles Sumner Tainter, American engineer and inventor (d. 1940) 1862 – Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, English ornithologist and politician, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (d. 1933) 1868 – John Moisant, American pilot and engineer (d. 1910) 1871 – Lorne Currie, French-English sailor (d. 1926) 1872 – C. B. Fry, English cricketer, footballer, educator, and politician (d. 1956) 1873 – Walter de la Mare, English poet, short story writer, and novelist (d. 1956) 1873 – Howard Garis, American author, creator of the Uncle Wiggily series of children's stories (d. 1962) 1874 – Guglielmo Marconi, Italian businessman and inventor, developed Marconi's law, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1937) 1874 – Ernest Webb, English-Canadian race walker (d. 1937) 1876 – Jacob Nicol, Canadian publisher, lawyer, and politician (d. 1958) 1878 – William Merz, American gymnast and triathlete (d. 1946) 1882 – Fred McLeod, Scottish golfer (d. 1976) 1887 – Kojo Tovalou Houénou, Beninese lawyer and critic (d. 1936) 1892 – Maud Hart Lovelace, American author (d. 1980) 1896 – Fred Haney, American baseball player, coach, and manager (d. 1977) 1897 – Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (d. 1965) 1900 – Gladwyn Jebb, English politician and diplomat, Secretary-General of the United Nations (d. 1996) 1900 – Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian-Swiss-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958) 1901–present 1902 – Werner Heyde, German psychiatrist and academic (d. 1964) 1902 – Mary Miles Minter, American actress (d. 1984) 1903 – Andrey Kolmogorov, Russian mathematician and academic (d. 1987) 1905 – George Nēpia, New Zealand rugby player and referee (d. 1986) 1906 – William J. Brennan Jr., American colonel and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (d. 1997) 1908 – Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (d. 1965) 1909 – William Pereira, American architect, designed the Transamerica Pyramid (d. 1985) 1910 – Arapeta Awatere, New Zealand interpreter, military leader, politician, and murderer (d. 1976) 1911 – Connie Marrero, Cuban baseball player and coach (d. 2014) 1912 – Earl Bostic, African-American saxophonist (d. 1965) 1913 – Nikolaos Roussen, Greek captain (d. 1944) 1914 – Ross Lockridge Jr., American author and academic (d. 1948) 1915 – Mort Weisinger, American journalist and author (d. 1978) 1916 – Jerry Barber, American golfer (d. 1994) 1917 – Ella Fitzgerald, American singer (d. 1996) 1917 – Jean Lucas, French racing driver (d. 2003) 1918 – Graham Payn, South African-born English actor and singer (d. 2005) 1918 – Gérard de Vaucouleurs, French-American astronomer and academic (d. 1995) 1918 – Astrid Varnay, Swedish-American soprano and actress (d. 2006) 1919 – Finn Helgesen, Norwegian speed skater (d. 2011) 1921 – Karel Appel, Dutch painter and sculptor (d. 2006) 1923 – Francis Graham-Smith, English astronomer and academic 1923 – Melissa Hayden, Canadian ballerina (d. 2006) 1923 – Albert King, African-American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 1992) 1924 – Ingemar Johansson, Swedish race walker (d. 2009) 1924 – Franco Mannino, Italian pianist, composer, director, and playwright (d. 2005) 1924 – Paulo Vanzolini, Brazilian singer-songwriter and zoologist (d. 2013) 1925 – Tony Christopher, Baron Christopher, English trade union leader and businessman 1925 – Sammy Drechsel, German comedian and journalist (d. 1986) 1925 – Louis O'Neil, Canadian academic and politician (d. 2018) 1926 – Johnny Craig, American author and illustrator (d. 2001) 1926 – Gertrude Fröhlich-Sandner, Austrian politician (d. 2008) 1926 – Patricia Castell, Argentine actress (d. 2013) 1927 – Corín Tellado, Spanish author (d. 2009) 1927 – Albert Uderzo, French author and illustrator (d. 2020) 1928 – Cy Twombly, American-Italian painter and sculptor (d. 2011) 1929 – Yvette Williams, New Zealand long jumper, shot putter, and discus thrower (d. 2019) 1930 – Paul Mazursky, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2014) 1930 – Godfrey Milton-Thompson, English admiral and surgeon (d. 2012) 1930 – Peter Schulz, German lawyer and politician, Mayor of Hamburg (d. 2013) 1931 – Felix Berezin, Russian mathematician and physicist (d. 1980) 1931 – David Shepherd, English painter and author (d. 2017) 1932 – Nikolai Kardashev, Russian astrophysicist (d. 2019) 1932 – Meadowlark Lemon, African-American basketball player and minister (d. 2015) 1932 – Lia Manoliu, Romanian discus thrower and politician (d. 1998) 1933 – Jerry Leiber, American songwriter and producer (d. 2011) 1933 – Joyce Ricketts, American baseball player (d. 1992) 1934 – Peter McParland, Northern Irish footballer and manager 1935 – Bob Gutowski, American pole vaulter (d. 1960) 1935 – Reinier Kreijermaat, Dutch footballer (d. 2018) 1936 – Henck Arron, Surinamese banker and politician, 1st Prime Minister of the Republic of Suriname (d. 2000) 1938 – Roger Boisjoly, American aerodynamicist and engineer (d. 2012) 1938 – Ton Schulten, Dutch painter and graphic designer 1939 – Tarcisio Burgnich, Italian footballer and manager (d. 2021) 1939 – Michael Llewellyn-Smith, English academic and diplomat 1939 – Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky, English historian and academic 1939 – Veronica Sutherland, English academic and British diplomat 1940 – Al Pacino, American actor and director 1941 – Bertrand Tavernier, French actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2021) 1942 – Jon Kyl, American lawyer and politician 1943 – Tony Christie, English singer-songwriter and actor 1944 – Len Goodman, English dancer 1944 – Mike Kogel, German singer-songwriter 1944 – Stephen Nickell, English economist and academic 1944 – Bruce Ponder, English geneticist and cancer researcher 1945 – Stu Cook, American bass player, songwriter, and producer 1945 – Richard C. Hoagland, American theorist and author 1945 – Björn Ulvaeus, Swedish singer-songwriter and producer 1946 – Talia Shire, American actress 1946 – Peter Sutherland, Irish lawyer and politician, Attorney General of Ireland (d. 2018) 1946 – Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Russian colonel, lawyer, and politician 1947 – Johan Cruyff, Dutch footballer and manager (d. 2016) 1947 – Jeffrey DeMunn, American actor 1947 – Cathy Smith, Canadian singer and drug dealer (d. 2020) 1948 – Mike Selvey, English cricketer and sportscaster 1948 – Yu Shyi-kun, Taiwanese politician, 39th Premier of the Republic of China 1949 – Vicente Pernía, Argentinian footballer and race car driver 1949 – Dominique Strauss-Kahn, French economist, lawyer, and politician, French Minister of Finance 1949 – James Fenton, English poet, journalist and literary critic 1950 – Donnell Deeny, Northern Irish lawyer and judge 1950 – Steve Ferrone, English drummer 1950 – Peter Hintze, German politician (d. 2016) 1950 – Valentyna Kozyr, Ukrainian high jumper 1951 – Ian McCartney, Scottish politician, Minister of State for Trade 1952 – Ketil Bjørnstad, Norwegian pianist and composer 1952 – Vladislav Tretiak, Russian ice hockey player and coach 1952 – Jacques Santini, French footballer and coach 1953 – Ron Clements, American animator, producer, and screenwriter 1953 – Gary Cosier, Australian cricketer 1953 – Anthony Venables, English economist, author, and academic 1954 – Melvin Burgess, English author 1954 – Randy Cross, American football player and sportscaster 1954 – Róisín Shortall, Irish educator and politician 1955 – Américo Gallego, Argentinian footballer and coach 1955 – Parviz Parastui, Iranian actor and singer 1955 – Zev Siegl, American businessman, co-founded Starbucks 1956 – Dominique Blanc, French actress, director, and screenwriter 1956 – Abdalla Uba Adamu, Nigerian professor, media scholar 1957 – Theo de Rooij, Dutch cyclist and manager 1958 – Fish, Scottish singer-songwriter 1958 – Misha Glenny, British journalist 1959 – Paul Madden, English diplomat, British High Commissioner to Australia 1959 – Daniel Kash, Canadian actor and director 1959 – Tony Phillips, American baseball player (d. 2016) 1960 – Paul Baloff, American singer (d. 2002) 1960 – Robert Peston, English journalist 1961 – Dinesh D'Souza, Indian-American journalist and author 1961 – Miran Tepeš, Slovenian ski jumper 1962 – Foeke Booy, Dutch footballer and manager 1963 – Joy Covey, American businesswoman (d. 2013) 1963 – Dave Martin, English footballer 1963 – David Moyes, Scottish footballer and manager 1963 – Bernd Müller, German footballer and manager 1963 – Paul Wassif, English singer-songwriter and guitarist 1964 – Hank Azaria, American actor, voice artist, comedian and producer 1964 – Andy Bell, English singer-songwriter 1965 – Eric Avery, American bass player and songwriter 1965 – Mark Bryant, American basketball player and coach 1965 – John Henson, American puppeteer and voice actor (d. 2014) 1966 – Diego Domínguez, Argentinian-Italian rugby player 1966 – Femke Halsema, Dutch sociologist, academic, and politician 1966 – Darren Holmes, American baseball player and coach 1966 – Erik Pappas, American baseball player and coach 1967 – Angel Martino, American swimmer 1968 – Vitaliy Kyrylenko, Ukrainian long jumper 1968 – Thomas Strunz, German footballer 1969 – Joe Buck, American sportscaster 1969 – Martin Koolhoven, Dutch director and screenwriter 1969 – Jon Olsen, American swimmer 1969 – Darren Woodson, American football player and sportscaster 1969 – Renée Zellweger, American actress and producer 1970 – Jason Lee, American skateboarder, actor, comedian and producer 1971 – Sara Baras, Spanish dancer 1971 – Brad Clontz, American baseball player 1973 – Carlota Castrejana, Spanish triple jumper 1973 – Fredrik Larzon, Swedish drummer 1973 – Barbara Rittner, German tennis player 1975 – Jacque Jones, American baseball player and coach 1976 – Gilberto da Silva Melo, Brazilian footballer 1976 – Tim Duncan, American basketball player 1976 – Breyton Paulse, South African rugby player 1976 – Rainer Schüttler, German tennis player and coach 1977 – Constantinos Christoforou, Cypriot singer-songwriter 1977 – Ilias Kotsios, Greek footballer 1977 – Marguerite Moreau, American actress and producer 1977 – Matthew West, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor 1978 – Matt Walker, English swimmer 1980 – Ben Johnston, Scottish drummer and songwriter 1980 – James Johnston, Scottish bass player and songwriter 1980 – Daniel MacPherson, Australian actor and television host 1980 – Bruce Martin, New Zealand cricketer 1980 – Kazuhito Tadano, Japanese baseball player 1980 – Alejandro Valverde, Spanish cyclist 1981 – Dwone Hicks, American football player 1981 – Felipe Massa, Brazilian racing driver 1981 – John McFall, English sprinter 1981 – Anja Pärson, Swedish skier 1982 – Brian Barton, American baseball player 1982 – Monty Panesar, English cricketer 1982 – Marco Russo, Italian footballer 1983 – Johnathan Thurston, Australian rugby league player 1983 – DeAngelo Williams, American football player 1984 – Robert Andino, American baseball player 1984 – Isaac Kiprono Songok, Kenyan runner 1985 – Giedo van der Garde, Dutch racing driver 1986 – Alexei Emelin, Russian ice hockey player 1986 – Thin Seng Hon, Cambodian Paralympic athlete 1986 – Gwen Jorgensen, American triathlete 1986 – Claudia Rath, German heptathlete 1987 – Razak Boukari, Togolese footballer 1987 – Jay Park, American-South Korean singer-songwriter and dancer 1987 – Johann Smith, American soccer player 1988 – James Sheppard, Canadian ice hockey player 1989 – Marie-Michèle Gagnon, Canadian skier 1989 – Michael van Gerwen, Dutch darts player 1989 – Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama, one of the highest-ranking spiritual leaders in Tibet 1990 – Jean-Éric Vergne, French racing driver 1990 – Taylor Walker, Australian footballer 1991 – Alex Shibutani, American ice dancer 1993 – Alex Bowman, American race car driver 1993 – Daniel Norris, American baseball player 1994 – Omar McLeod, Jamaican hurdler 1995 – Lewis Baker, English footballer 1996 – Mack Horton, Australian swimmer 1997 – Julius Ertlthaler, Austrian footballer Deaths Pre-1600 501 – Rusticus, saint and archbishop of Lyon (b. 455) 775 – Smbat VII Bagratuni, Armenian prince 775 – Mushegh VI Mamikonian, Armenian prince 908 – Zhang Wenwei, Chinese chancellor 1074 – Herman I, Margrave of Baden 1077 – Géza I of Hungary (b. 1040) 1185 – Emperor Antoku of Japan (b. 1178) 1217 – Hermann I, Landgrave of Thuringia 1228 – Queen Isabella II of Jerusalem (b. 1212) 1243 – Boniface of Valperga, Bishop of Aosta 1264 – Roger de Quincy, 2nd Earl of Winchester, medieval English nobleman; Earl of Winchester (b. 1195) 1295 – Sancho IV of Castile (b. 1258) 1342 – Pope Benedict XII (b. 1285) 1397 – Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent, English nobleman 1472 – Leon Battista Alberti, Italian author, poet, and philosopher (b. 1404) 1516 – John Yonge, English diplomat (b. 1467) 1566 – Louise Labé, French poet and author (b. 1520) 1566 – Diane de Poitiers, mistress of King Henry II of France (b. 1499) 1595 – Torquato Tasso, Italian poet and songwriter (b. 1544) 1601–1900 1605 – Naresuan, Siamese King of Ayutthaya Kingdom (b. c. 1555) 1644 – Chongzhen Emperor of China (b. 1611) 1660 – Henry Hammond, English cleric and theologian (b. 1605) 1690 – David Teniers the Younger, Flemish painter and educator (b. 1610) 1744 – Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer, physicist, and mathematician (b. 1701) 1770 – Jean-Antoine Nollet, French minister, physicist, and academic (b. 1700) 1800 – William Cowper, English poet (b. 1731) 1840 – Siméon Denis Poisson, French mathematician and physicist (b. 1781) 1873 – Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy, Russian painter and sculptor (b. 1783) 1875 – 12th Dalai Lama (b. 1857) 1878 – Anna Sewell, English author (b. 1820) 1890 – Crowfoot, Canadian tribal chief (b. 1830) 1891 – Nathaniel Woodard, English priest and educator (b. 1811) 1892 – Henri Duveyrier, French explorer (b. 1840) 1892 – Karl von Ditmar, Estonian-German geologist and explorer (b. 1822) 1901–present 1906 – John Knowles Paine, American composer and educator (b. 1839) 1911 – Emilio Salgari, Italian journalist and author (b. 1862) 1913 – Joseph-Alfred Archambeault, Canadian bishop (b. 1859) 1915 – Frederick W. Seward, American journalist, lawyer, and politician, 6th United States Assistant Secretary of State (b. 1830) 1919 – Augustus D. Juilliard, American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1836) 1921 – Emmeline B. Wells, American journalist and women's rights advocate (b. 1828) 1923 – Louis-Olivier Taillon, Canadian lawyer and politician, 8th Premier of Quebec (b. 1840) 1928 – Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel, Russian general (b. 1878) 1941 – Salih Bozok, Turkish commander and politician (b. 1881) 1943 – Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Russian director, producer, and playwright (b. 1858) 1944 – George Herriman, American cartoonist (b. 1880) 1944 – Tony Mullane, Irish-American baseball player (b. 1859) 1944 – William Stephens, American engineer and politician, 24th Governor of California (b. 1859) 1945 – Huldreich Georg Früh, Swiss composer (b. 1903) 1961 – Robert Garrett, American discus thrower and shot putter (b. 1875) 1970 – Anita Louise, American actress (b. 1915) 1972 – George Sanders, English actor (b. 1906) 1973 – Olga Grey, Hungarian-American actress (b. 1896) 1974 – Gustavo R. Vincenti, Maltese architect and developer (b. 1888) 1975 – Mike Brant, Israeli singer and songwriter (b.1947) 1976 – Carol Reed, English director and producer (b. 1906) 1976 – Markus Reiner, Israeli engineer and educator (b. 1886) 1982 – John Cody, American cardinal (b. 1907) 1983 – William S. Bowdern, American priest and author (b. 1897) 1988 – Carolyn Franklin, American singer-songwriter (b. 1944) 1988 – Clifford D. Simak, American journalist and author (b. 1904) 1990 – Dexter Gordon, American saxophonist, composer, and actor (b. 1923) 1992 – Yutaka Ozaki, Japanese singer-songwriter (b. 1965) 1995 – Art Fleming, American game show host (b. 1925) 1995 – Ginger Rogers, American actress, singer, and dancer (b. 1911) 1995 – Lev Shankovsky, Ukrainian military historian (b. 1903) 1996 – Saul Bass, American graphic designer and director (b. 1920) 1998 – Wright Morris, American author and photographer (b. 1910) 1999 – Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, Irish journalist and author (b. 1914) 1999 – Roger Troutman, American singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1951) 2000 – Lucien Le Cam, French mathematician and statistician (b. 1924) 2000 – David Merrick, American director and producer (b. 1911) 2001 – Michele Alboreto, Italian racing driver (b. 1956) 2002 – Lisa Lopes, American rapper and dancer (b. 1971) 2003 – Samson Kitur, Kenyan runner (b. 1966) 2004 – Thom Gunn, English-American poet and academic (b. 1929) 2005 – Jim Barker, American politician (b. 1935) 2005 – Swami Ranganathananda, Indian monk and educator (b. 1908) 2006 – Jane Jacobs, American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist (b. 1916) 2006 – Peter Law, Welsh politician and independent member of parliament (b. 1948) 2007 – Alan Ball Jr., English footballer and manager (b. 1945) 2007 – Arthur Milton, English footballer and cricketer (b. 1928) 2007 – Bobby Pickett, American singer-songwriter (b. 1938) 2008 – Humphrey Lyttelton, English trumpet player, composer, and radio host (b. 1921) 2009 – Bea Arthur, American actress and singer (b. 1922) 2010 – Dorothy Provine, American actress and singer (b. 1935) 2010 – Alan Sillitoe, English novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet (b. 1928) 2011 – Poly Styrene, British musician (b. 1957) 2012 – Gerry Bahen, Australian footballer (b. 1929) 2012 – Denny Jones, American rancher and politician (b. 1910) 2012 – Moscelyne Larkin, American ballerina and educator (b. 1925) 2012 – Louis le Brocquy, Irish painter and illustrator (b. 1916) 2013 – Brian Adam, Scottish biochemist and politician (b. 1948) 2013 – Jacob Avshalomov, American composer and conductor (b. 1919) 2013 – György Berencsi, Hungarian virologist and academic (b. 1941) 2013 – Rick Camp, American baseball player (b. 1953) 2014 – Dan Heap, Canadian priest and politician (b. 1925) 2014 – William Judson Holloway Jr., American soldier, lawyer, and judge (b. 1923) 2014 – Earl Morrall, American football player and coach (b. 1934) 2014 – Tito Vilanova, Spanish footballer and manager (b. 1968) 2014 – Stefanie Zweig, German journalist and author (b. 1932) 2015 – Jim Fanning, American-Canadian baseball player and manager (b. 1927) 2015 – Matthias Kuhle, German geographer and academic (b. 1948) 2015 – Don Mankiewicz, American screenwriter and novelist (b. 1922) 2015 – Mike Phillips, American basketball player (b. 1956) 2016 – Tom Lewis, Australian politician, 33rd Premier of New South Wales (b. 1922) 2018 – Madeeha Gauhar, Pakistani actress, playwright and director of social theater, and women's rights activist (b. 1956) 2019 – John Havlicek, American basketball player (b. 1940) Holidays and observances Anniversary of the First Cabinet of Kurdish Government (Iraqi Kurdistan) Anzac Day (Australia, New Zealand) Arbor Day (Germany) Christian feast day: Giovanni Battista Piamarta Major Rogation (Western Christianity) Mark the Evangelist Maughold Peter of Saint Joseph de Betancur Philo and Agathopodes Anianus of Alexandria April 25 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Last day on which Easter Sunday can fall (last in 1943, will not happen again until 2038), while March 22 is the earliest. Flag Day (Faroe Islands) Freedom Day (Portugal) Liberation Day (Italy) Liberation Day (South Georgia) Military Foundation Day (North Korea) Parental Alienation Awareness Day Sinai Liberation Day (Egypt) World Malaria Day References External links BBC: On This Day Historical Events on April 25 Today in Canadian History Days of the year April

Aspartame is an artificial non-saccharide sweetener 200 times sweeter than sucrose, and is commonly used as a sugar substitute in foods and beverages. It is a methyl ester of the aspartic acid/phenylalanine dipeptide with the trade names NutraSweet, Equal, and Canderel. Aspartame was first made in 1965 and approved for use in food products by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1981. Aspartame is one of the most rigorously tested food ingredients. Reviews by over 100 governmental regulatory bodies found the ingredient safe for consumption at current levels. As of 2018, several reviews of clinical trials showed that using aspartame in place of sugar reduces calorie intake and body weight in adults and children. Uses Aspartame is around 180 to 200 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). Due to this property, even though aspartame produces of energy per gram when metabolized, the quantity of aspartame needed to produce a sweet taste is so small that its caloric contribution is negligible. The taste of aspartame and other artificial sweeteners differs from that of table sugar in the times of onset and how long the sweetness lasts, though aspartame comes closest to sugar's taste profile among approved artificial sweeteners. The sweetness of aspartame lasts longer than that of sucrose, so it is often blended with other artificial sweeteners such as acesulfame potassium to produce an overall taste more like that of sugar. Like many other peptides, aspartame may hydrolyze (break down) into its constituent amino acids under conditions of elevated temperature or high pH. This makes aspartame undesirable as a baking sweetener, and prone to degradation in products hosting a high pH, as required for a long shelf life. The stability of aspartame under heating can be improved to some extent by encasing it in fats or in maltodextrin. The stability when dissolved in water depends markedly on pH. At room temperature, it is most stable at pH 4.3, where its half-life is nearly 300 days. At pH 7, however, its half-life is only a few days. Most soft-drinks have a pH between 3 and 5, where aspartame is reasonably stable. In products that may require a longer shelf life, such as syrups for fountain beverages, aspartame is sometimes blended with a more stable sweetener, such as saccharin. Descriptive analyses of solutions containing aspartame report a sweet aftertaste as well as bitter and off-flavor aftertastes. In products such as powdered beverages, the amine in aspartame can undergo a Maillard reaction with the aldehyde groups present in certain aroma compounds. The ensuing loss of both flavor and sweetness can be prevented by protecting the aldehyde as an acetal. Safety and health effects The safety of aspartame has been studied since its discovery and it is one of the most rigorously tested food ingredients. Aspartame has been deemed safe for human consumption by over 100 regulatory agencies in their respective countries, including the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), UK Food Standards Agency, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Health Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. reviews of clinical trials showed that using aspartame (or other non-nutritive sweeteners) in place of sugar reduces calorie intake and body weight in adults and children. A 2017 review of metabolic effects by consuming aspartame found that it did not affect blood glucose, insulin, total cholesterol, triglycerides, calorie intake, or body weight. While high-density lipoprotein levels were higher compared to control, they were lower compared to sucrose. Phenylalanine High levels of the naturally occurring essential amino acid phenylalanine are a health hazard to those born with phenylketonuria (PKU), a rare inherited disease that prevents phenylalanine from being properly metabolized. Because aspartame contains a small amount of phenylalanine, foods containing aspartame sold in the United States must state: "Phenylketonurics: Contains Phenylalanine" on product labels. In the UK, foods that contain aspartame are required by the Food Standards Agency to list the substance as an ingredient, with the warning, "Contains a source of phenylalanine". Manufacturers are also required to print "with sweetener(s)" on the label close to the main product name on foods that contain "sweeteners such as aspartame" or "with sugar and sweetener(s)" on "foods that contain both sugar and sweetener". In Canada, foods that contain aspartame are required to list aspartame among the ingredients, include the amount of aspartame per serving, and state that the product contains phenylalanine. Phenylalanine is one of the essential amino acids and is required for normal growth and maintenance of life. Concerns about the safety of phenylalanine from aspartame for those without phenylketonuria center largely on hypothetical changes in neurotransmitter levels as well as ratios of neurotransmitters to each other in the blood and brain that could lead to neurological symptoms. Reviews of the literature have found no consistent findings to support such concerns, and while high doses of aspartame consumption may have some biochemical effects, these effects are not seen in toxicity studies to suggest aspartame can adversely affect neuronal function. As with methanol and aspartic acid, common foods in the typical diet such as milk, meat, and fruits, will lead to ingestion of significantly higher amounts of phenylalanine than would be expected from aspartame consumption. Cancer Reviews have found no association between aspartame and cancer. This position is supported by multiple regulatory agencies like the FDA and EFSA as well as scientific bodies such as the National Cancer Institute. The EFSA, FDA, and the US National Cancer Institute state that aspartame is safe for human consumption. Neurotoxicity symptoms Reviews found no evidence that low doses of aspartame would plausibly lead to neurotoxic effects. A review of studies on children did not show any significant findings for safety concerns with regard to neuropsychiatric conditions such as panic attacks, mood changes, hallucinations, ADHD, or seizures by consuming aspartame. Headaches Headaches are the most common symptom reported by consumers. While one small review noted aspartame is likely one of many dietary triggers of migraines, in a list that includes "cheese, chocolate, citrus fruits, hot dogs, monosodium glutamate, aspartame, fatty foods, ice cream, caffeine withdrawal, and alcoholic drinks, especially red wine and beer," other reviews have noted conflicting studies about headaches and other studies lack any evidence and references to support this claim. Mechanism of action The perceived sweetness of aspartame (and other sweet substances like acesulfame K) in humans is due to its binding of the heterodimer G protein-coupled receptor formed by the proteins TAS1R2 and TAS1R3. Aspartame is not recognized by rodents due to differences in the taste receptors. Metabolites Aspartame is rapidly hydrolyzed in the small intestines. Even with ingestion of very high doses of aspartame (over 200 mg/kg), no aspartame is found in the blood due to the rapid breakdown. Upon ingestion, aspartame breaks down into residual components, including aspartic acid, phenylalanine, methanol, and further breakdown products including formaldehyde and formic acid. Human studies show that formic acid is excreted faster than it is formed after ingestion of aspartame. In some fruit juices, higher concentrations of methanol can be found than the amount produced from aspartame in beverages. Aspartame's major decomposition products are its cyclic dipeptide (in a 2,5-Diketopiperazine, or DKP, form), the non-esterified dipeptide (aspartylphenylalanine), and its constituent components, phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and methanol. At 180 °C, aspartame undergoes decomposition to form a diketopiperazine derivative. Aspartate Aspartic acid (aspartate) is one of the most common amino acids in the typical diet. As with methanol and phenylalanine, intake of aspartic acid from aspartame is less than would be expected from other dietary sources. At the 90th percentile of intake, aspartame provides only between 1% and 2% of the daily intake of aspartic acid. There has been some speculation that aspartame, in conjunction with other amino acids like glutamate, may lead to excitotoxicity, inflicting damage on brain and nerve cells. However, clinical studies have shown no signs of neurotoxic effects, and studies of metabolism suggest it is not possible to ingest enough aspartic acid and glutamate through food and drink to levels that would be expected to be toxic. Methanol The methanol produced by the metabolism of aspartame is absorbed and quickly converted into formaldehyde and then completely oxidized to formic acid. The methanol from aspartame is unlikely to be a safety concern for several reasons. Fruit juices and citrus fruits contain methanol, and there are other dietary sources for methanol such as fermented beverages and the amount of methanol produced from aspartame-sweetened foods and beverages is likely to be less than that from these and other sources that are already in people's diets. With regard to formaldehyde, it is rapidly converted in the body, and the amounts of formaldehyde from the metabolism of aspartame are trivial when compared to the amounts produced routinely by the human body and from other foods and drugs. At the highest expected human doses of consumption of aspartame, there are no increased blood levels of methanol or formic acid, and ingesting aspartame at the 90th percentile of intake would produce 25 times less methanol than what would be considered toxic. Complete Biochemistry Pathway Chemistry Aspartame is a methyl ester of the dipeptide of the natural amino acids L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine. Under strongly acidic or alkaline conditions, aspartame may generate methanol by hydrolysis. Under more severe conditions, the peptide bonds are also hydrolyzed, resulting in free amino acids. While known aspects of synthesis are covered by patents, many details are proprietary. Two approaches to synthesis are used commercially. In the chemical synthesis, the two carboxyl groups of aspartic acid are joined into an anhydride, and the amino group is protected with a formyl group as the formamide, by treatment of aspartic acid with a mixture of formic acid and acetic anhydride. Phenylalanine is converted to its methyl ester and combined with the N-formyl aspartic anhydride; then the protecting group is removed from aspartic nitrogen by acid hydrolysis. The drawback of this technique is that a byproduct, the bitter-tasting β-form, is produced when the wrong carboxyl group from aspartic acid anhydride links to phenylalanine, with desired and undesired isomer forming in a 4:1 ratio. A process using an enzyme from Bacillus thermoproteolyticus to catalyze the condensation of the chemically altered amino acids will produce high yields without the β-form byproduct. A variant of this method, which has not been used commercially, uses unmodified aspartic acid, but produces low yields. Methods for directly producing aspartyl-phenylalanine by enzymatic means, followed by chemical methylation, have also been tried, but not scaled for industrial production. Intake The acceptable daily intake (ADI) value for aspartame, as well as other food additives studied, is defined as the "amount of a food additive, expressed on a body weight basis, that can be ingested daily over a lifetime without appreciable health risk." The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Food has determined this value is 40 mg/kg of body weight for aspartame, while FDA has set its ADI for aspartame at 50 mg/kg. The primary source for exposure to aspartame in the United States is diet soft drinks, though it can be consumed in other products, such as pharmaceutical preparations, fruit drinks, and chewing gum among others in smaller quantities. A 12 US fluid ounce (355 ml) can of diet soda contains of aspartame, and for a adult, it takes approximately 21 cans of diet soda daily to consume the of aspartame that would surpass the FDA's 50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight ADI of aspartame from diet soda alone. Reviews have analyzed studies which have looked at the consumption of aspartame in countries worldwide, including the United States, countries in Europe, and Australia, among others. These reviews have found that even the high levels of intake of aspartame, studied across multiple countries and different methods of measuring aspartame consumption, are well below the ADI for safe consumption of aspartame. Reviews have also found that populations that are believed to be especially high consumers of aspartame such as children and diabetics are below the ADI for safe consumption, even considering extreme worst-case scenario calculations of consumption. In a report released on 10 December 2013, the EFSA said that, after an extensive examination of evidence, it ruled out the "potential risk of aspartame causing damage to genes and inducing cancer," and deemed the amount found in diet sodas safe to consume. History Aspartame was discovered in 1965 by James M. Schlatter, a chemist working for G.D. Searle & Company. Schlatter had synthesized aspartame as an intermediate step in generating a tetrapeptide of the hormone gastrin, for use in assessing an anti-ulcer drug candidate. He discovered its sweet taste when he licked his finger, which had become contaminated with aspartame, to lift up a piece of paper. Torunn Atteraas Garin participated in the development of aspartame as an artificial sweetener. In 1975, prompted by issues regarding Flagyl and Aldactone, a US FDA task force team reviewed 25 studies submitted by the manufacturer, including 11 on aspartame. The team reported "serious deficiencies in Searle's operations and practices". The FDA sought to authenticate 15 of the submitted studies against the supporting data. In 1979, the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) concluded, since many problems with the aspartame studies were minor and did not affect the conclusions, the studies could be used to assess aspartame's safety. In 1980, the FDA convened a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) consisting of independent advisors charged with examining the purported relationship between aspartame and brain cancer. The PBOI concluded aspartame does not cause brain damage, but it recommended against approving aspartame at that time, citing unanswered questions about cancer in laboratory rats. In 1983, the FDA approved aspartame for use in carbonated beverages, and for use in other beverages, baked goods, and confections in 1993. In 1996, the FDA removed all restrictions from aspartame, allowing it to be used in all foods. Several European Union countries approved aspartame in the 1980s, with EU-wide approval in 1994. The European Commission Scientific Committee on Food reviewed subsequent safety studies and reaffirmed the approval in 2002. The European Food Safety Authority reported in 2006 that the previously established Acceptable daily intake was appropriate, after reviewing yet another set of studies. Compendial status British Pharmacopoeia United States Pharmacopeia Commercial uses Under the trade names Equal, NutraSweet, and Canderel, aspartame is an ingredient in approximately 6,000 consumer foods and beverages sold worldwide, including (but not limited to) diet sodas and other soft drinks, instant breakfasts, breath mints, cereals, sugar-free chewing gum, cocoa mixes, frozen desserts, gelatin desserts, juices, laxatives, chewable vitamin supplements, milk drinks, pharmaceutical drugs and supplements, shake mixes, tabletop sweeteners, teas, instant coffees, topping mixes, wine coolers and yogurt. It is provided as a table condiment in some countries. Aspartame is less suitable for baking than other sweeteners, because it breaks down when heated and loses much of its sweetness. NutraSweet Company In 1985, Monsanto Company bought G.D.Searle, and the aspartame business became a separate Monsanto subsidiary, the NutraSweet Company. In March 2000, Monsanto sold it to J.W. Childs Equity Partners II L.P. European use patents on aspartame expired starting in 1987, and the US patent expired in 1992. Since then, the company has competed for market share with other manufacturers, including Ajinomoto, Merisant and the Holland Sweetener Company. Ajinomoto Many aspects of industrial synthesis of aspartame were established by Ajinomoto. In 2004, the market for aspartame, in which Ajinomoto, the world's largest aspartame manufacturer, had a 40 percent share, was 14,000 metric tons a year, and consumption of the product was rising by 2 percent a year. Ajinomoto acquired its aspartame business in 2000 from Monsanto for $67M. In 2008, Ajinomoto sued British supermarket chain Asda, part of Walmart, for a malicious falsehood action concerning its aspartame product when the substance was listed as excluded from the chain's product line, along with other "nasties". In July 2009, a British court found in favour of Asda. In June 2010, an appeals court reversed the decision, allowing Ajinomoto to pursue a case against Asda to protect aspartame's reputation. Asda said that it would continue to use the term "no nasties" on its own-label products, but the suit was settled in 2011 with Asda choosing to remove references to aspartame from its packaging. In November 2009, Ajinomoto announced a new brand name for its aspartame sweetener – AminoSweet. Holland Sweetener Company A joint venture of DSM and Tosoh, the Holland Sweetener Company manufactured aspartame using the enzymatic process developed by Toyo Soda (Tosoh) and sold as the brand Sanecta. Additionally, they developed a combination aspartame-acesulfame salt under the brand name Twinsweet. They left the sweetener industry in late 2006, because "global aspartame markets are facing structural oversupply, which has caused worldwide strong price erosion over the last five years", making the business "persistently unprofitable". Competing products Because sucralose, unlike aspartame, retains its sweetness after being heated, and has at least twice the shelf life of aspartame, it has become more popular as an ingredient. This, along with differences in marketing and changing consumer preferences, caused aspartame to lose market share to sucralose. In 2004, aspartame traded at about $30/kg and sucralose, which is roughly three times sweeter by weight, at around $300/kg. See also Aspartame controversy Phenylalanine ammonia lyase Stevia References External links Amino acid derivatives Aromatic compounds Butyramides Dipeptides Carboxylate esters Sugar substitutes Methyl esters E-number additives

Angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors (ACE inhibitors) are a class of medication used primarily for the treatment of high blood pressure and heart failure. They work by causing relaxation of blood vessels as well as a decrease in blood volume, which leads to lower blood pressure and decreased oxygen demand from the heart. ACE inhibitors inhibit the activity of angiotensin-converting enzyme, an important component of the renin–angiotensin system which converts angiotensin I to angiotensin II, and hydrolyses bradykinin. Therefore, ACE inhibitors decrease the formation of angiotensin II, a vasoconstrictor, and increase the level of bradykinin, a peptide vasodilator. This combination is synergistic in lowering blood pressure. As a result of inhibiting the ACE enzyme in the bradykinin system, the ACE inhibitor drugs allow for increased levels of bradykinin which would normally be degraded. This mechanism can explain the two most common side effects seen with ACE Inhibitors: angioedema and cough. Bradykinin produces prostaglandin. Frequently prescribed ACE inhibitors include benazepril, zofenopril, perindopril, trandolapril, captopril, enalapril, lisinopril, and ramipril. Medical use ACE inhibitors were initially approved for the treatment of hypertension and can be used alone or in combination with other anti-hypertensive medications. Later, they were found useful for other cardiovascular and kidney diseases including: Acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) Heart failure (left ventricular systolic dysfunction) Kidney complications of diabetes mellitus (diabetic nephropathy) by means of decreasing the blood pressure and increasing perfusion in glomerular arterioles. In treating high blood pressure, ACE inhibitors are often the first drug choice, particularly when diabetes is present, but age can lead to different choices and it is common to need more than one drug to obtain the desired improvement. There are fixed-dose combination drugs, such as ACE inhibitor and thiazide combinations. ACE inhibitors have also been used in chronic kidney failure and kidney involvement in systemic sclerosis (hardening of tissues, as scleroderma renal crisis). In those with stable coronary artery disease, but no heart failure, benefits are similar to other usual treatments. In 2012, there was a meta-analysis published in the BMJ that described the protective role of ACE inhibitors in reducing the risk of pneumonia when compared to ARBs (Angiotensin II Receptor Blockers). The authors found a decreased risk in patients with previous stroke (54% risk reduction), with heart failure (37% risk reduction), and of Asian descent (43% risk reduction vs 54% risk reduction in non-Asian population). However, no reduced pneumonia related mortality was observed. Other ACE inhibitors may also be used to help decrease excessive water consumption in people with schizophrenia resulting in psychogenic polydipsia. A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial showed that when used for this purpose, enalapril led to decreased consumption (determined by urine output and osmolality) in 60% of people; the same effect has been demonstrated in other ACE inhibitors. Additionally ACEi are commonly used after renal transplant to manage post-transplant erythrocytosis, a condition characterised by a persistently high hematocrit greater than 51% which often develops 8-24 months after successful transplantation, as ACEi have been shown to decrease erythropoietin production. Adverse effects Common side effects include: low blood pressure, cough, hyperkalemia, headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and kidney impairment. The main adverse effects of ACE inhibition can be understood from their pharmacological action. The other reported adverse effects are liver problems and effects on the fetus. Kidney problems may occur with all ACE inhibitors that directly follows from their mechanism of action. Patients starting on an ACE inhibitor usually have a modest reduction in glomerular filtration rate (GFR). However, the decrease may be significant in conditions of pre-existing decreased renal perfusions, such as renal artery stenosis, heart failure, polycystic kidney disease, or volume depletion. In these patients, the maintenance of GFR depends on angiotensin-II-dependent efferent vasomotor tone. Therefore, renal function should be closely monitored over the first few days after initiation of treatment with ACE inhibitor in patients with decreased renal perfusion. A moderate reduction in renal function, no greater than 30% rise in serum creatinine, that is stabilized after a week of treatment is deemed acceptable as part of the therapeutic effect, providing the residual renal function is sufficient. Reduced GFR is especially a problem if the patient is concomitantly taking an NSAID and a diuretic. When the three drugs are taken together, the risk of developing renal failure is significantly increased. High blood potassium is another possible complication of treatment with an ACE inhibitor due to its effect on aldosterone. Suppression of angiotensin II leads to a decrease in aldosterone levels. Since aldosterone is responsible for increasing the excretion of potassium, ACE inhibitors can cause retention of potassium. Some people, however, can continue to lose potassium while on an ACE inhibitor. Hyperkalemia may decrease the velocity of impulse conduction in the nerves and muscles, including cardiac tissues. This leads to cardiac dysfunction and neuromuscular consequences, such as muscle weakness, paresthesia, nausea, diarrhea, and others. Close monitoring of potassium levels is required in patients receiving treatment with ACE inhibitors who are at risk of hyperkalemia. Another possible adverse effect specific for ACE inhibitors, but not for other RAAS blockers, is an increase in bradykinin level. A persistent dry cough is a relatively common adverse effect believed to be associated with the increases in bradykinin levels produced by ACE inhibitors, although the role of bradykinin in producing these symptoms has been disputed. Many cases of cough in people on ACE inhibitors may not be from the medication itself, however. People who experience this cough are often switched to angiotensin II receptor antagonists. Some (0.7%) develop angioedema due to increased bradykinin levels. A genetic predisposition may exist. A severe rare allergic reaction can affect the bowel wall and secondarily cause abdominal pain. Blood Hematologic effects, such as neutropenia, agranulocytosis and other blood dyscrasias, have occurred during therapy with ACE inhibitors, especially in people with additional risk factors. Pregnancy In pregnant women, ACE inhibitors taken during all the trimesters have been reported to cause congenital malformations, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths. Commonly reported fetal abnormalities include hypotension, renal dysplasia, anuria/oliguria, oligohydramnios, intrauterine growth retardation, pulmonary hypoplasia, patent ductus arteriosus, and incomplete ossification of the skull. Overall, about half of newborns exposed to ACE inhibitors are adversely affected, leading to birth defects. ACE inhibitors are ADEC pregnancy category D and should be avoided in women who are likely to become pregnant. In the U.S., ACE inhibitors must be labeled with a boxed warning concerning the risk of birth defects when taken during the second and third trimester. Their use in the first trimester is also associated with a risk of major congenital malformations, particularly affecting the cardiovascular and central nervous systems. Overdose Symptoms and Treatment: There are few reports of ACE inhibitor overdose in the literature. The most likely manifestations are hypotension, which may be severe, hyperkalemia, hyponatremia and renal impairment with metabolic acidosis. Treatment should be mainly symptomatic and supportive, with volume expansion using normal saline to correct hypotension and improve renal function, and gastric lavage followed by activated charcoal and a cathartic to prevent further absorption of the drug. Captopril, enalapril, lisinopril and perindopril are known to be removable by hemodialysis. Contraindications and precautions The ACE inhibitors are contraindicated in people with: Pregnancy or breastfeeding Previous angioedema associated with ACE inhibitor therapy Bilateral renal artery stenosis Hypersensitivity to ACE inhibitors ACE inhibitors should be used with caution in people with: Impaired renal function Aortic valve stenosis or cardiac outflow obstruction Hypovolemia or dehydration Hemodialysis with high-flux polyacrylonitrile membranes A combination of ACE inhibitor with other drugs may increase effects of these drugs, but also the risk of adverse effects. The commonly reported adverse effects of drug combination with ACE are acute renal failure, hypotension, and hyperkalemia. The drugs interacting with ACE inhibitor should be prescribed with caution. Special attention should be given to combinations of ACE inhibitor with other RAAS blockers, diuretics (especially potassium-sparing diuretics), NSAIDs, anticoagulants, cyclosporine, DPP-4 inhibitors, and potassium supplements. Potassium supplementation should be used with caution and under medical supervision owing to the hyperkalemic effect of ACE inhibitors. Concomitant use with cyclooxygenase inhibitors tends to decrease ACE inhibitor's hypotensive effect. Mechanism of action ACE inhibitors reduce the activity of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS) as the primary etiologic (causal) event in the development of hypertension in people with diabetes mellitus, as part of the insulin-resistance syndrome or as a manifestation of renal disease. Renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system The renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system is a major blood pressure regulating mechanism. Markers of electrolyte and water imbalance in the body such as hypotension, low distal tubule sodium concentration, decreased blood volume and high sympathetic tone trigger the release of the enzyme renin from the cells of juxtaglomerular apparatus in the kidney. Renin activates a circulating liver derived prohormone angiotensinogen by proteolytic cleavage of all but its first ten amino acid residues known as angiotensin I. ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) then removes a further two residues, converting angiotensin I into angiotensin II. ACE is found in the pulmonary circulation and in the endothelium of many blood vessels. The system increases blood pressure by increasing the amount of salt and water the body retains, although angiotensin is also very good at causing the blood vessels to tighten (a potent vasoconstrictor). Effects ACE inhibitors block the conversion of angiotensin I (ATI) to angiotensin II (ATII). They thereby lower arteriolar resistance and increase venous capacity; decrease cardiac output, cardiac index, stroke work, and volume; lower resistance in blood vessels in the kidneys; and lead to increased natriuresis (excretion of sodium in the urine). Renin increases in concentration in the blood as a result of negative feedback of conversion of ATI to ATII. ATI increases for the same reason; ATII and aldosterone decrease. Bradykinin increases because of less inactivation by ACE. Under normal conditions, angiotensin II has these effects: Vasoconstriction (narrowing of blood vessels) and vascular smooth muscle hypertrophy (enlargement) induced by ATII may lead to increased blood pressure and hypertension. Further, constriction of the efferent arterioles of the kidney leads to increased perfusion pressure in the glomeruli. It contributes to ventricular remodeling and ventricular hypertrophy of the heart through stimulation of the proto-oncogenes c-fos, c-jun, c-myc, transforming growth factor beta (TGF-B), through fibrogenesis and apoptosis (programmed cell death). Stimulation by ATII of the adrenal cortex to release aldosterone, a hormone that acts on kidney tubules, causes sodium and chloride ions retention and potassium excretion. Sodium is a "water-holding" ion, so water is also retained, which leads to increased blood volume, hence an increase in blood pressure. Stimulation of the posterior pituitary to release vasopressin (antidiuretic hormone, ADH) also acts on the kidneys to increase water retention. If ADH production is excessive in heart failure, Na+ level in the plasma may fall (hyponatremia), and this is a sign of increased risk of death in heart failure patients. A decrease renal protein kinase C During the course of ACE inhibitor use, the production of ATII is decreased, which prevents aldosterone release from the adrenal cortex. This allows the kidney to excrete sodium ions along with obligate water, and retain potassium ions. This decreases blood volume, leading to decreased blood pressure. Epidemiological and clinical studies have shown ACE inhibitors reduce the progress of diabetic nephropathy independently from their blood pressure-lowering effect. This action of ACE inhibitors is used in the prevention of diabetic renal failure. ACE inhibitors have been shown to be effective for indications other than hypertension even in patients with normal blood pressure. The use of a maximum dose of ACE inhibitors in such patients (including for prevention of diabetic nephropathy, congestive heart failure, and prophylaxis of cardiovascular events) is justified, because it improves clinical outcomes independently of the blood pressure-lowering effect of ACE inhibitors. Such therapy, of course, requires careful and gradual titration of the dose to prevent the effects of rapidly decreasing blood pressure (dizziness, fainting, etc.). ACE inhibitors have also been shown to cause a central enhancement of parasympathetic nervous system activity in healthy volunteers and patients with heart failure. This action may reduce the prevalence of malignant cardiac arrhythmias, and the reduction in sudden death reported in large clinical trials. ACE Inhibitors also reduce plasma norepinephrine levels, and its resulting vasoconstriction effects, in heart failure patients, thus breaking the vicious circles of sympathetic and renin angiotensin system activation, which sustains the downward spiral in cardiac function in congestive heart failure The ACE inhibitor enalapril has also been shown to reduce cardiac cachexia in patients with chronic heart failure. Cachexia is a poor prognostic sign in patients with chronic heart failure. ACE inhibitors are under early investigation for the treatment of frailty and muscle wasting (sarcopenia) in elderly patients without heart failure. Examples ACE inhibitors are easily identifiable by their common suffix, '-pril'. ACE inhibitors can be divided into three groups based on their molecular structure of the enzyme binding sites (sulfhydryl, phosphinyl, carboxyl) to the active center of ACE: Sulfhydryl-containing agents Alacepril Captopril (trade name Capoten), the first ACE inhibitor. Zofenopril These agents appear to show antioxidative properties but may be involved in adverse events such as skin eruptions. Dicarboxylate-containing agents This is the largest group, including: Enalapril (Vasotec/Renitec/Berlipril/Enap/Enalapril Profarma) Ramipril (Altace/Prilace/Ramace/Ramiwin/Triatec/Tritace/Ramitac) Quinapril (Accupril) Perindopril (Coversyl/Aceon/Perindo) Lisinopril (Listril/Lopril/Novatec/Prinivil/Zestril, Lisidigal) Benazepril (Lotensin) Imidapril (Tanatril) Trandolapril (Mavik/Odrik/Gopten) Cilazapril (Inhibace) Phosphonate-containing agents Fosinopril (Fositen/Monopril) is the only member of this group Naturally occurring A comprehensive resource on anti-hypertensive peptides is available in form of a database. It contains around 1700 unique antihypertensive peptides Arfalasin (HOE 409) is angiotensin antagonist. Dairy products Casokinins and lactokinins, breakdown products of casein and whey, occur naturally after ingestion of milk products, especially cultured milk. Their role in blood pressure control is uncertain. The lactotripeptides Val-Pro-Pro and Ile-Pro-Pro produced by the probiotic Lactobacillus helveticus or derived from casein have been shown to have ACE-inhibiting and antihypertensive functions. In one study, L. helveticus PR4 was isolated from Italian cheeses. Comparative information All ACE inhibitors have similar antihypertensive efficacy when equivalent doses are administered. The main differences lie with captopril, the first ACE inhibitor. Captopril has a shorter duration of action and an increased incidence of adverse effects. It is also the only ACE inhibitor capable of passing through the blood–brain barrier, although the significance of this characteristic has not been shown to have any positive clinical effects. In a large clinical study, one of the agents in the ACE inhibitor class, ramipril (Altace), demonstrated an ability to reduce the mortality rates of patients suffering from a myocardial infarction and to slow the subsequent development of heart failure. This finding was made after it was discovered that regular use of ramipril reduced mortality rates even in test subjects not having suffered from hypertension. Some believe ramipril's additional benefits may be shared by some or all drugs in the ACE-inhibitor class. However, ramipril currently remains the only ACE inhibitor for which such effects are actually evidence-based. A meta-analysis confirmed that ACE inhibitors are effective and certainly the first-line choice in hypertension treatment. This meta-analysis was based on 20 trials and a cohort of 158,998 patients, of whom 91% were hypertensive. ACE inhibitors were used as the active treatment in seven trials (n=76,615) and angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) in 13 trials (n=82,383). ACE inhibitors were associated with a statistically significant 10% mortality reduction: (HR 0.90; 95% CI, 0.84–0.97; P=0.004). In contrast, no significant mortality reduction was observed with ARB treatment (HR 0.99; 95% CI, 0.94–1.04; P=0.683). Analysis of mortality reduction by different ACE inhibitors showed that perindopril-based regimens are associated with a statistically significant 13% all-cause mortality reduction. Taking into account the broad spectrum of the hypertensive population, one might expect that an effective treatment with ACE inhibitors, in particular with perindopril, would result in an important gain of lives saved. Equivalent doses in hypertension The ACE inhibitors have different strengths with different starting dosages. Dosage should be adjusted according to the clinical response. Angiotensin II receptor antagonists ACE inhibitors possess many common characteristics with another class of cardiovascular drugs, angiotensin II receptor antagonists, which are often used when patients are intolerant of the adverse effects produced by ACE inhibitors. ACE inhibitors do not completely prevent the formation of angiotensin II, as blockage is dose-dependent, so angiotensin II receptor antagonists may be useful because they act to prevent the action of angiotensin II at the AT1 receptor, leaving AT2 receptor unblocked; the latter may have consequences needing further study. Use in combination The combination therapy of angiotensin II receptor antagonists with ACE inhibitors may be superior to either agent alone. This combination may increase levels of bradykinin while blocking the generation of angiotensin II and its activity at the AT1 receptor. This 'dual blockade' may be more effective than using an ACE inhibitor alone, because angiotensin II can be generated via non-ACE-dependent pathways. Preliminary studies suggest this combination of pharmacologic agents may be advantageous in the treatment of essential hypertension, chronic heart failure, and nephropathy. However, the more recent ONTARGET study showed no benefit of combining the agents and more adverse events. While statistically significant results have been obtained for its role in treating hypertension, clinical significance may be lacking. There are warnings about the combination of ACE inhibitors with ARBs. Patients with heart failure may benefit from the combination in terms of reducing morbidity and ventricular remodeling. The most compelling evidence for the treatment of nephropathy has been found: This combination therapy partially reversed the proteinuria and also exhibited a renoprotective effect in patients afflicted with diabetic nephropathy, and pediatric IgA nephropathy. History Leonard T. Skeggs and his colleagues (including Norman Shumway) discovered ACE in plasma in 1956. It was also noted that those who worked in banana plantations in South-western Brazil collapsed after being bitten by a pit viper, leading to a search for a blood pressure lowering component in its venom. Brazilian scientist Sérgio Henrique Ferreira reported a bradykinin-potentiating factor (BPF) present in the venom of Bothrops jararaca, a South American pit viper, in 1965. Ferreira then went to John Vane's laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow with his already-isolated BPF. The conversion of the inactive angiotensin I to the potent angiotensin II was thought to take place in the plasma. However, in 1967, Kevin K. F. Ng and John R. Vane showed plasma ACE is too slow to account for the conversion of angiotensin I to angiotensin II in vivo. Subsequent investigation showed rapid conversion occurs during its passage through the pulmonary circulation. Bradykinin is rapidly inactivated in the circulating blood, and it disappears completely in a single pass through the pulmonary circulation. Angiotensin I also disappears in the pulmonary circulation because of its conversion to angiotensin II. Furthermore, angiotensin II passes through the lungs without any loss. The inactivation of bradykinin and the conversion of angiotensin I to angiotensin II in the lungs was thought to be caused by the same enzyme. In 1970, Ng and Vane, using BPF provided by Ferreira, showed the conversion is inhibited during its passage through the pulmonary circulation. BPFs are members of a family of peptides whose potentiating action is linked to inhibition of bradykinin by ACE. Molecular analysis of BPF yielded a nonapeptide BPF teprotide (SQ 20,881), which showed the greatest ACE inhibition potency and hypotensive effect in vivo. Teprotide had limited clinical value as a result of its peptide nature and lack of activity when given orally. In the early 1970s, knowledge of the structure-activity relationship required for inhibition of ACE was growing. David Cushman, Miguel Ondetti and colleagues used peptide analogues to study the structure of ACE, using carboxypeptidase A as a model. Their discoveries led to the development of captopril, the first orally-active ACE inhibitor, in 1975. Captopril was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 1981. The first nonsulfhydryl-containing ACE inhibitor, enalapril, was marketed two years later. At least 12 other ACE inhibitors have since been marketed. In 1991, Japanese scientists created the first milk-based ACE inhibitor, in the form of a fermented milk drink, using specific cultures to liberate the tripeptide isoleucine-proline-proline (IPP) from the dairy protein. Valine-proline-proline (VPP) is also liberated in this process—another milk tripeptide with a very similar chemical structure to IPP. Together, these peptides are now often referred to as lactotripeptides. In 1996, the first human study confirmed the blood pressure-lowering effect of IPP in fermented milk. Although twice the amount of VPP is needed to achieve the same ACE-inhibiting activity as the originally discovered IPP, VPP also is assumed to add to the total blood pressure lowering effect. Since the first lactotripeptides discovery, more than 20 human clinical trials have been conducted in many different countries. Note See also Angiotensin II receptor blocker Discovery and development of angiotensin receptor blockers Loop diuretic, also used to treat CHF Renin inhibitor References External links ACE Inhibitors: Summary of Recommendations – Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs – free public education project ACE inhibitors

The Annals of Mathematics is a mathematical journal published every two months by Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. History The journal was established as The Analyst in 1874 and with Joel E. Hendricks as the founding editor-in-chief. It was "intended to afford a medium for the presentation and analysis of any and all questions of interest or importance in pure and applied Mathematics, embracing especially all new and interesting discoveries in theoretical and practical astronomy, mechanical philosophy, and engineering". It was published in Des Moines, Iowa, and was the earliest American mathematics journal to be published continuously for more than a year or two. This incarnation of the journal ceased publication after its tenth year, in 1883, giving as an explanation Hendricks' declining health, but Hendricks made arrangements to have it taken over by new management, and it was continued from March 1884 as the Annals of Mathematics. The new incarnation of the journal was edited by Ormond Stone (University of Virginia). It moved to Harvard in 1899 before reaching its current home in Princeton in 1911. An important period for the journal was 1928–1958 with Solomon Lefschetz as editor. During this time, it became an increasingly well-known and respected journal. Its rise, in turn, stimulated American mathematics. Norman Steenrod characterized Lefschetz' impact as editor as follows: "The importance to American mathematicians of a first-class journal is that it sets high standards for them to aim at. In this somewhat indirect manner, Lefschetz profoundly affected the development of mathematics in the United States." Princeton University continued to publish the Annals on its own until 1933, when the Institute for Advanced Study took joint editorial control. Since 1998 it has been available in an electronic edition, alongside its regular print edition. The electronic edition was available without charge, as an open access journal, but since 2008 this is no longer the case. Issues from before 2003 were transferred to the non-free JSTOR archive, and articles are not freely available until 5 years after publication. Editors The current editors of the Annals of Mathematics are Nick Katz, Sergiu Klainerman, Fernando Codá Marques, Assaf Naor, Peter Sarnak and Zoltán Szabó (all from Princeton University, with Peter Sarnak being also a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study). Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in the Science Citation Index, Current Contents/Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences, and Scopus. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2020 impact factor of 5.246, ranking it third out of 330 journals in the category "Mathematics". References External links Mathematics journals Publications established in 1874 English-language journals Bimonthly journals Princeton University publications Academic journals published by universities and colleges of the United States 1874 establishments in Iowa

Arianism is a nontrinitarian Christological doctrine. Arian may also refer to: Pertaining to Arius A follower of Arius, a Christian presbyter in the 3rd and 4th century Arian controversy, several controversies which divided the early Christian church Arian fragment, Arian palimpsest People Groups of people Arians or Areians, ancient people living in Ariana (origin of the modern name Iran) Aryan, a term associated with the Proto-Indo-Iranians Aryan race, the racial concept An inhabitant of Aria (today's Herat, Afghanistan), used by the ancient and medieval Greeks (as Ἄρ(ε)ιοι/Ar(e)ioi) and Romans (as Arii) Given name Arian Asllani (born 1983), American rapper known as Action Bronson Arian Bimo (born 1959), Albanian footballer Arian Çuliqi, Albanian television director and screenwriter Arian Foster (born 1986), American football player Arian Hametaj (born 1957), Albanian footballer Arián Iznaga, Cuban Paralympian sprinter Arian Kabashi (born 1996), Kosovan footballer Arian Kabashi (born 1997), Swedish footballer Arlan Lerio (born 1976), Filipino boxer Arian Leviste (born 1970), American electronic music artist, producer, and DJ Arian Moayed (born 1980), Iranian-born American actor and theater producer Arian Moreno (born 2003), Venezuelan footballer Surname Arman Arian (born 1981), Iranian author, novelist and researcher Asher Arian (1938–2010), American political scientist Laila Al-Arian (born 1980s), American broadcast journalist Sami Al-Arian (born 1958), Palestinian-American civil rights activist Praskovia Arian (1864–1949) Russian and Soviet writer and feminist Bruce Arians (born 1952), American football coach and former player Jake Arians (born 1978), American football player Other Arian (band), a pop band in Iran Arian (newspaper), an Iranian newspaper since 1914 Arian, an outsider's name for a member of the Polish Brethren Arian, a person born under the constellation Aries (astrology) See also Arian Kartli, ancient Georgian country Al-Arian, an Arab village in northern Israel Aaryan, a given name and surname Ariane (disambiguation), the French spelling of Ariadne, a character in Greek mythology Ariann Black, Canadian-American female magician Ariano (disambiguation) Arien (disambiguation) Arius (disambiguation) Ariyan A. Johnson Arrian, Greek historian Aryan (name) Ghamar Ariyan

The Antigonid dynasty (; ) was a Hellenistic dynasty of Dorian Greek provenance, descended from Alexander the Great's general Antigonus I Monophthalmus ("the One-Eyed") that ruled mainly in Macedonia. History Succeeding the Antipatrid dynasty in much of Macedonia, Antigonus ruled mostly over Asia Minor and northern Syria. His attempts to take control of the whole of Alexander's empire led to his defeat and death at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC. Antigonus's son Demetrius I Poliorcetes survived the battle, and managed to seize control of Macedon itself a few years later, but eventually lost his throne, dying as a prisoner of Seleucus I Nicator. After a period of confusion, Demetrius's son Antigonus II Gonatas was able to establish the family's control over the old Kingdom of Macedon, as well as over most of the Greek city-states, by 276 BC. Legacy It was one of four dynasties established by Alexander's successors, the others being the Seleucid dynasty, Ptolemaic dynasty and Attalid dynasty. The last scion of the dynasty, Perseus of Macedon, who reigned between 179 and 168 BC, proved unable to stop the advancing Roman legions and Macedon's defeat at the Battle of Pydna signaled the end of the dynasty. Dynasty The ruling members of the Antigonid dynasty were: The Greek rebel against Rome and last King of Macedonia, Andriscus, claimed to be the son of Perseus. Family tree of Antigonids Coin gallery See also List of kings of Macedon References Further reading Adams, Winthrop Lindsay. 2010. "Alexander's Successors to 221 BC." In A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. Edited by Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington, 208–224. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Anson, Edward M. 2014. Alexander's Heirs: The Age of the Successors. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Edson, Charles F. 1934. "The Antigonids, Heracles, and Beroia." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 45:213–246. O'Neil, James L. 2003. "The Ethnic Origins of the Friends of the Antigonid Kings of Macedon." The Classical Quarterly 53, no. 2: 510–22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3556219. Ancient Macedonian dynasties 3rd century BC in Macedonia (ancient kingdom) 2nd century BC in Macedonia (ancient kingdom) 300s BC establishments 306 BC 4th-century BC establishments 2nd-century BC disestablishments 168 BC

Atomic theory is the scientific theory that matter is composed of particles called atoms. Atomic theory traces its origins to an ancient philosophical tradition known as atomism. According to this idea, if one were to take a lump of matter and cut it into ever smaller pieces, one would eventually reach a point where the pieces could not be further cut into anything smaller. Ancient Greek philosophers called these hypothetical ultimate particles of matter atomos, a word which meant "uncut". In the early 1800s, the scientist John Dalton noticed that chemical substances seemed to combine and break down into other substances by weight in proportions that suggested that each chemical element is ultimately made up of tiny indivisible particles of consistent weight. Shortly after 1850, certain physicists developed the kinetic theory of gases and of heat, which mathematically modelled the behavior of gases by assuming that they were made of particles. In the early 20th century, Albert Einstein and Jean Perrin proved that Brownian motion (the erratic motion of pollen grains in water) is caused by the action of water molecules; this third line of evidence silenced remaining doubts among scientists as to whether atoms and molecules were real. Throughout the nineteenth century, some scientists had cautioned that the evidence for atoms was indirect, and therefore atoms might not actually be real, but only seem to be real. By the early 20th century, scientists had developed fairly detailed and precise models for the structure of matter, which led to more rigorously-defined classifications for the tiny invisible particles that make up ordinary matter. An atom is now defined as the basic particle that composes a chemical element. Around the turn of the 20th century, physicists discovered that the particles that chemists called "atoms" are in fact agglomerations of even smaller particles (subatomic particles), but scientists kept the name out of convention. The term elementary particle is now used to refer to particles that are actually indivisible. History Philosophical atomism The idea that matter is made up of discrete units is a very old idea, appearing in many ancient cultures such as Greece and India. The word "atom" (; ), meaning "uncuttable", was coined by the Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers Leucippus and his pupil Democritus (460–370 BC). Democritus taught that atoms were infinite in number, uncreated, and eternal, and that the qualities of an object result from the kind of atoms that compose it. Democritus's atomism was refined and elaborated by the later Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC), and by the Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius (99–55 BC). During the Early Middle Ages, atomism was mostly forgotten in western Europe. During the 12th century, it became known again in western Europe through references to it in the newly-rediscovered writings of Aristotle. The opposing view of matter upheld by Aristotle was that matter was continuous and infinite and could be subdivided without limit. In the 14th century, the rediscovery of major works describing atomist teachings, including Lucretius's De rerum natura and Diogenes Laërtius's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, led to increased scholarly attention on the subject. Nonetheless, because atomism was associated with the philosophy of Epicureanism, which contradicted orthodox Christian teachings, belief in atoms was not considered acceptable by most European philosophers. The French Catholic priest Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) revived Epicurean atomism with modifications, arguing that atoms were created by God and, though extremely numerous, are not infinite. He was the first person who used the term "molecule" to describe aggregation of atoms. Gassendi's modified theory of atoms was popularized in France by the physician François Bernier (1620–1688) and in England by the natural philosopher Walter Charleton (1619–1707). The chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) and the physicist Isaac Newton (1642–1727) both defended atomism and, by the end of the 17th century, it had become accepted by portions of the scientific community. John Dalton Near the end of the 18th century, two laws about chemical reactions emerged without referring to the notion of an atomic theory. The first was the law of conservation of mass, closely associated with the work of Antoine Lavoisier, which states that the total mass in a chemical reaction remains constant (that is, the reactants have the same mass as the products). The second was the law of definite proportions. First established by the French chemist Joseph Proust in 1797 this law states that if a compound is broken down into its constituent chemical elements, then the masses of the constituents will always have the same proportions by weight, regardless of the quantity or source of the original substance. John Dalton studied and expanded upon this previous work and defended a new idea, later known as the law of multiple proportions: if the same two elements can be combined to form a number of different compounds, then the ratios of the masses of the two elements in their various compounds will be represented by small whole numbers. This is a common pattern in chemical reactions that was observed by Dalton and other chemists at the time. Example 1 — tin oxides: Dalton identified two oxides of tin. One is a grey powder in which for every 100 parts of tin there is 13.5 parts of oxygen. The other oxide is a white powder in which for every 100 parts of tin there is 27 parts of oxygen. 13.5 and 27 form a ratio of 1:2. These oxides are today known as tin(II) oxide (SnO) and tin(IV) oxide (SnO2) respectively. Example 2 — iron oxides: Dalton identified two oxides of iron. One is a black powder in which for every 100 parts of iron there is about 28 parts of oxygen. The other is a red powder in which for every 100 parts of iron there is 42 parts of oxygen. 28 and 42 form a ratio of 2:3. These oxides are today known as iron(II) oxide (better known as wüstite) and iron(III) oxide (the major constituent of rust). Their formulas are FeO and Fe2O3 respectively. Example 3 — nitrogen oxides: There are three oxides of nitrogen in which for every 140 g of nitrogen, there is 80 g, 160 g, and 320 g of oxygen respectively, which gives a ratio of 1:2:4. These are nitrous oxide (N2O), nitric oxide (NO), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) respectively. This recurring pattern suggested that chemicals do not react in any arbitrary quantity, but in multiples of some basic indivisible unit of mass. In his writings, Dalton used the term "atom" to refer to the basic particle of any chemical substance, not strictly for elements as is the practice today. Dalton did not use the word "molecule"; instead, he used the terms "compound atom" and "elementary atom". Dalton proposed that each chemical element is composed of atoms of a single, unique type, and though they cannot be altered or destroyed by chemical means, they can combine to form more complex structures (chemical compounds). This marked the first truly scientific theory of the atom, since Dalton reached his conclusions by experimentation and examination of the results in an empirical fashion. In 1803 Dalton referred to a list of relative atomic weights for a number of substances in a talk before the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on the solubility of various gases, such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen, in water. Dalton did not indicate how he obtained the relative weights, but he initially hypothesized that variation in solubility was due to differences in mass and complexity of the gas particles – an idea that he abandoned by the time the paper was finally published in 1805. Over the years, several historians have attributed the development of Dalton’s atomic theory to his study of gaseous solubility, but a recent study of his laboratory notebook entries concludes he developed the chemical atomic theory in 1803 to reconcile Cavendish’s and Lavoisier’s analytical data on the composition of nitric acid, not to explain the solubility of gases in water. Thomas Thomson published the first brief account of Dalton’s atomic theory in the third edition of his book, A System of Chemistry. In 1808 Dalton published a fuller account in the first part of A New System of Chemical Philosophy. However, it was not until 1811 that Dalton provided his rationale for his theory of multiple proportions.   Dalton estimated the atomic weights according to the mass ratios in which they combined, with the hydrogen atom taken as unity. However, Dalton did not conceive that with some elements atoms exist in molecules—e.g. pure oxygen exists as O2. He also mistakenly believed that the simplest compound between any two elements is always one atom of each (so he thought water was HO, not H2O). This, in addition to the crudity of his equipment, flawed his results. For instance, in 1803 he believed that oxygen atoms were 5.5 times heavier than hydrogen atoms, because in water he measured 5.5 grams of oxygen for every 1 gram of hydrogen and believed the formula for water was HO. Adopting better data, in 1806 he concluded that the atomic weight of oxygen must actually be 7 rather than 5.5, and he retained this weight for the rest of his life. Others at this time had already concluded that the oxygen atom must weigh 8 relative to hydrogen equals 1, if one assumes Dalton's formula for the water molecule (HO), or 16 if one assumes the modern water formula (H2O). Avogadro The flaw in Dalton's theory was corrected in principle in 1811 by Amedeo Avogadro. Avogadro had proposed that equal volumes of any two gases, at equal temperature and pressure, contain equal numbers of molecules (in other words, the mass of a gas's particles does not affect the volume that it occupies). Avogadro's law allowed him to deduce the diatomic nature of numerous gases by studying the volumes at which they reacted. For instance: since two liters of hydrogen will react with just one liter of oxygen to produce two liters of water vapor (at constant pressure and temperature), it meant a single oxygen molecule splits in two in order to form two particles of water. Thus, Avogadro was able to offer more accurate estimates of the atomic mass of oxygen and various other elements, and made a clear distinction between molecules and atoms. Brownian Motion In 1827, the British botanist Robert Brown observed that dust particles inside pollen grains floating in water constantly jiggled about for no apparent reason. In 1905, Albert Einstein theorized that this Brownian motion was caused by the water molecules continuously knocking the grains about, and developed a hypothetical mathematical model to describe it. This model was validated experimentally in 1908 by French physicist Jean Perrin, thus providing additional validation for particle theory (and by extension atomic theory). Statistical Mechanics In order to introduce the Ideal gas law and statistical forms of physics, it was necessary to postulate the existence of atoms. In 1738, Swiss physicist and mathematician Daniel Bernoulli postulated that the pressure of gases and heat were both caused by the underlying motion of molecules. In 1860, James Clerk Maxwell, who was a vocal proponent of atomism, was the first to use statistical mechanics in physics. Ludwig Boltzmann and Rudolf Clausius expanded his work on gases and the laws of Thermodynamics especially the second law relating to entropy. In the 1870s, Josiah Willard Gibbs, sometimes referred to as America’s greatest physicist, extended the laws of entropy and thermodynamics and coined the term “statistical mechanics.” Einstein later independently reinvented Gibb’s laws, because they had only been printed in an obscure American journal. Einstein later commented, had he known of Gibb’s work he would “not have published those papers at all, but confined myself to the treatment of some few points [that were distinct].” All of statistical mechanics and the laws of heat, gas, and entropy were necessarily postulated upon the existence of atoms. Discovery of subatomic particles Atoms were thought to be the smallest possible division of matter until 1897 when J. J. Thomson discovered the electron through his work on cathode rays. A Crookes tube is a sealed glass container in which two electrodes are separated by a vacuum. When a voltage is applied across the electrodes, cathode rays are generated, creating a glowing patch where they strike the glass at the opposite end of the tube. Through experimentation, Thomson discovered that the rays could be deflected by an electric field (in addition to magnetic fields, which was already known). He concluded that these rays, rather than being a form of light, were composed of very light negatively charged particles he called "corpuscles" (they would later be renamed electrons by other scientists). He measured the mass-to-charge ratio and discovered it was 1800 times smaller than that of hydrogen, the smallest atom. These corpuscles were a particle unlike any other previously known. Thomson suggested that atoms were divisible, and that the corpuscles were their building blocks. To explain the overall neutral charge of the atom, he proposed that the corpuscles were distributed in a uniform sea of positive charge; this was the plum pudding model as the electrons were embedded in the positive charge like raisins in a plum pudding (although in Thomson's model they were not stationary). The reason J.J. Thompson’s spherical positive charge model interspersed with negative electrons was most widely accepted over several different versions of nuclear planetary models was that the Thompson model could best align with classical physics. Solar system models proposed before Thompson always resulted in atoms spiraling into the nucleus. Discovery of the nucleus Thomson's plum pudding model was disproved in 1909 by one of his former students, Ernest Rutherford, who discovered that most of the mass and positive charge of an atom is concentrated in a very small fraction of its volume, which he assumed to be at the very center. Ernest Rutherford and his colleagues Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden came to have doubts about the Thomson model after they encountered difficulties when they tried to build an instrument to measure the charge-to-mass ratio of alpha particles (these are positively-charged particles emitted by certain radioactive substances such as radium). The alpha particles were being scattered by the air in the detection chamber, which made the measurements unreliable. Thomson had encountered a similar problem in his work on cathode rays, which he solved by creating a near-perfect vacuum in his instruments. Rutherford didn't think he'd run into this same problem because alpha particles are much heavier than electrons. According to Thomson's model of the atom, the positive charge in the atom is not concentrated enough to produce an electric field strong enough to deflect an alpha particle, and the electrons are so lightweight they should be pushed aside effortlessly by the much heavier alpha particles. Yet there was scattering, so Rutherford and his colleagues decided to investigate this scattering carefully. Between 1908 and 1913, Rutherford and his colleagues performed a series of experiments in which they bombarded thin foils of metal with alpha particles. They spotted alpha particles being deflected by angles greater than 90°. To explain this, Rutherford proposed that the positive charge of the atom is not distributed throughout the atom's volume as Thomson believed, but is concentrated in a tiny nucleus at the center. Only such an intense concentration of charge could produce an electric field strong enough to deflect the alpha particles as observed. Rutherford's model is sometimes called the "planetary model". However, Hantaro Nagaoka was quoted by Rutherford as the first to suggest a planetary atom in 1904. And planetary models had been suggested as early as 1897 such as the one by Joseph Larmor. Probably the earliest solar system model was found in an unpublished note by Ludwig August Colding in 1854 whose idea was that atoms were analogous to planetary systems that rotate and cause magnetic polarity. First steps toward a quantum physical model of the atom The planetary model of the atom had two significant shortcomings. The first is that, unlike planets orbiting a sun, electrons are charged particles. An accelerating electric charge is known to emit electromagnetic waves according to the Larmor formula in classical electromagnetism. An orbiting charge should steadily lose energy and spiral toward the nucleus, colliding with it in a small fraction of a second. The second problem was that the planetary model could not explain the highly peaked emission and absorption spectra of atoms that were observed. Quantum theory revolutionized physics at the beginning of the 20th century, when Max Planck and Albert Einstein postulated that light energy is emitted or absorbed in discrete amounts known as quanta (singular, quantum). This led to a series of quantum atomic models such as the quantum model of Arthur Erich Haas in 1910 and the 1912 John William Nicholson quantum atomic model that quantized angular momentum as h/2. In 1913, Niels Bohr incorporated this idea into his Bohr model of the atom, in which an electron could only orbit the nucleus in particular circular orbits with fixed angular momentum and energy, its distance from the nucleus (i.e., their radii) being proportional to its energy. Under this model an electron could not spiral into the nucleus because it could not lose energy in a continuous manner; instead, it could only make instantaneous "quantum leaps" between the fixed energy levels. When this occurred, light was emitted or absorbed at a frequency proportional to the change in energy (hence the absorption and emission of light in discrete spectra). Bohr's model was not perfect. It could only predict the spectral lines of hydrogen; it couldn't predict those of multielectron atoms. Worse still, as spectrographic technology improved, additional spectral lines in hydrogen were observed which Bohr's model couldn't explain. In 1916, Arnold Sommerfeld added elliptical orbits to the Bohr model to explain the extra emission lines, but this made the model very difficult to use, and it still couldn't explain more complex atoms. Discovery of isotopes While experimenting with the products of radioactive decay, in 1913 radiochemist Frederick Soddy discovered that there appeared to be more than one element at each position on the periodic table. The term isotope was coined by Margaret Todd as a suitable name for these elements. That same year, J. J. Thomson conducted an experiment in which he channeled a stream of neon ions through magnetic and electric fields, striking a photographic plate at the other end. He observed two glowing patches on the plate, which suggested two different deflection trajectories. Thomson concluded this was because some of the neon ions had a different mass. The nature of this differing mass would later be explained by the discovery of neutrons in 1932. Discovery of nuclear particles In 1917 Rutherford bombarded nitrogen gas with alpha particles and observed hydrogen nuclei being emitted from the gas (Rutherford recognized these, because he had previously obtained them bombarding hydrogen with alpha particles, and observing hydrogen nuclei in the products). Rutherford concluded that the hydrogen nuclei emerged from the nuclei of the nitrogen atoms themselves (in effect, he had split a nitrogen). From his own work and the work of his students Bohr and Henry Moseley, Rutherford knew that the positive charge of any atom could always be equated to that of an integer number of hydrogen nuclei. This, coupled with the atomic mass of many elements being roughly equivalent to an integer number of hydrogen atoms - then assumed to be the lightest particles - led him to conclude that hydrogen nuclei were singular particles and a basic constituent of all atomic nuclei. He named such particles protons. Further experimentation by Rutherford found that the nuclear mass of most atoms exceeded that of the protons it possessed; he speculated that this surplus mass was composed of previously-unknown neutrally charged particles, which were tentatively dubbed "neutrons". In 1928, Walter Bothe observed that beryllium emitted a highly penetrating, electrically neutral radiation when bombarded with alpha particles. It was later discovered that this radiation could knock hydrogen atoms out of paraffin wax. Initially it was thought to be high-energy gamma radiation, since gamma radiation had a similar effect on electrons in metals, but James Chadwick found that the ionization effect was too strong for it to be due to electromagnetic radiation, so long as energy and momentum were conserved in the interaction. In 1932, Chadwick exposed various elements, such as hydrogen and nitrogen, to the mysterious "beryllium radiation", and by measuring the energies of the recoiling charged particles, he deduced that the radiation was actually composed of electrically neutral particles which could not be massless like the gamma ray, but instead were required to have a mass similar to that of a proton. Chadwick now claimed these particles as Rutherford's neutrons. For his discovery of the neutron, Chadwick received the Nobel Prize in 1935. Quantum physical models of the atom In 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that all moving particles—particularly subatomic particles such as electrons—exhibit a degree of wave-like behavior. Erwin Schrödinger, fascinated by this idea, explored whether or not the movement of an electron in an atom could be better explained as a wave rather than as a particle. Schrödinger's equation, published in 1926, describes an electron as a wave function instead of as a point particle. This approach elegantly predicted many of the spectral phenomena that Bohr's model failed to explain. Although this concept was mathematically convenient, it was difficult to visualize, and faced opposition. One of its critics, Max Born, proposed instead that Schrödinger's wave function did not describe the physical extent of an electron (like a charge distribution in classical electromagnetism), but rather gave the probability that an electron would, when measured, be found at a particular point. This reconciled the ideas of wave-like and particle-like electrons: the behavior of an electron, or of any other subatomic entity, has both wave-like and particle-like aspects, and whether one aspect or the other is more apparent depends upon the situation. A consequence of describing electrons as waveforms is that it is mathematically impossible to simultaneously derive the position and momentum of an electron. This became known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle after the theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg, who first published a version of it in 1927. (Heisenberg analyzed a thought experiment where one attempts to measure an electron's position and momentum simultaneously. However, Heisenberg did not give precise mathematical definitions of what the "uncertainty" in these measurements meant. The precise mathematical statement of the position-momentum uncertainty principle is due to Earle Hesse Kennard, Wolfgang Pauli, and Hermann Weyl.) This invalidated Bohr's model, with its neat, clearly defined circular orbits. The modern model of the atom describes the positions of electrons in an atom in terms of probabilities. An electron can potentially be found at any distance from the nucleus, but, depending on its energy level and angular momentum, exists more frequently in certain regions around the nucleus than others; this pattern is referred to as its atomic orbital. The orbitals come in a variety of shapes—sphere, dumbbell, torus, etc.—with the nucleus in the middle. The shapes of atomic orbitals are found by solving the Schrödinger equation; however, analytic solutions of the Schrödinger equation are known for very few relatively simple model Hamiltonians including the hydrogen atom and the dihydrogen cation. Even the helium atom—which contains just two electrons—has defied all attempts at a fully analytic treatment. See also Spectroscopy History of molecular theory Timeline of chemical element discoveries Introduction to quantum mechanics Kinetic theory of gases Atomism The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory Footnotes Bibliography Further reading Bernard Pullman (1998) The Atom in the History of Human Thought, trans. by Axel Reisinger. Oxford Univ. Press. Eric Scerri (2007) The Periodic Table, Its Story and Its Significance, Oxford University Press, New York. Charles Adolphe Wurtz (1881) The Atomic Theory, D. Appleton and Company, New York. Alan J. Rocke (1984) Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century: From Dalton to Cannizzaro, Ohio State University Press, Columbus (open access full text at http://digital.case.edu/islandora/object/ksl%3Ax633gj985). External links Atomism by S. Mark Cohen. Atomic Theory - detailed information on atomic theory with respect to electrons and electricity. Statistical mechanics Chemistry theories Foundational quantum physics Amount of substance

Andrzej Sapkowski (; born 21 June 1948) is a Polish fantasy writer. He is best known for his book series The Witcher, which has been translated into 37 languages making him the second most-translated Polish science fiction and fantasy writer after Stanisław Lem. His books sold over 15 million copies. He is the recipient of the David Gemmell Award and the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award. Biography He was born on 21 June 1948 in Łódź and attended the Bolesław Prus High School No. 21. He also studied economics at the University of Łódź, and before turning to writing, he had worked as a senior sales representative for a foreign trade company. He started his literary career as a translator, in particular, of science fiction. Among the first works translated by him was The Words of Guru by Cyril M. Kornbluth. He says he wrote his first short story, The Witcher ("Wiedźmin", also translated "The Hexer" or "Spellmaker"), on a whim, in order to enter a contest by Polish science fiction and fantasy magazine Fantastyka. In an interview, he said that being a businessman at the time and thus familiar with marketing, he knew how to sell, and indeed, he won third prize. The story was published in Fantastyka in 1986 and was enormously successful both with readers and critics. Sapkowski has created a cycle of tales based on the world of "The Witcher", comprising three collections of short stories and six novels. This cycle and his other works have made him one of the best-known fantasy authors in Poland in the 1990s. The main character of "The Witcher" is Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter trained for this since childhood. Geralt exists in a morally ambiguous universe, yet manages to maintain his own coherent code of ethics. At the same time cynical and noble, Geralt has been compared to Raymond Chandler's signature character Philip Marlowe. The world in which these adventures take place is heavily influenced by Slavic mythology. Sapkowski next series was The Hussite Trilogy set in the 15th century at the time of the Hussite Wars with Reinmar of Bielawa as the main protagonist. Mariusz Czubaj writes: Translations of his books and other derivative works Sapkowski's books have been translated into Czech, Georgian, Hungarian, Russian, Lithuanian, German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Finnish, Slovak, Bulgarian, Serbian, English, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Estonian, Romanian, Korean, Swedish, Norwegian and Croatian. An English translation of The Last Wish short story collection was published by Gollancz in 2007. From 2008, the Witcher saga is published by Gollancz. The English translation of Sapkowski's novel Blood of Elves won the David Gemmell Legend Award in 2009. In 2001, a television series based on the Witcher cycle was released in Poland and internationally, entitled Wiedźmin (The Hexer). A film by the same title was compiled from excerpts of the television series but both have been critical and box office failures. The Polish game developer, CD Projekt Red, created a role-playing game series based on The Witcher universe. The first game, titled simply The Witcher, was first released in October 2007. The sequel, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was released in 2011. The third game in the trilogy, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, was released in May 2015. In May 2017, Netflix commissioned The Witcher, an English-language adaptation of the book series. The Witcher television series premiered on Netflix on 20 December 2019. Sapkowski served for a while as a creative consultant on the project. Personal life Sapkowski admitted that The Witcher series was created at the request of his son, who was an avid reader of the Polish Fantastyka magazine. In an interview, Sapkowski mentioned that his favorite writers included Ernest Hemingway, Mikhail Bulgakov, Raymond Chandler and Umberto Eco, and stated "I love their style, but I know I can never match them". When also asked about feminism, Sapkowski said "I believe that the feminine element dominates in nature. Women are generally stronger than men. All power of this world should be in the hands of women. Life, the world are too serious to leave it in our hands". Sapkowski is a member of the Polish Writers' Association, and resides in his hometown of Łódź in central Poland. He is an atheist. He had a son named Krzysztof (1972–2019) for whom he wrote the first Witcher story. Awards and recognition Sapkowski is a recipient of numerous awards from Polish fandom. Sapkowski has won five Zajdel Awards, including three for short stories "Mniejsze zło" ("Lesser Evil", 1990), "Miecz przeznaczenia" ("Sword of Destiny", 1992) and "W leju po bombie" ("In a Bomb Crater", 1993), and two for the novels, Krew elfów (Blood of Elves, 1994) and Narrenturm (2002). He also won the Spanish Ignotus Award, best anthology, for The Last Wish in 2003, and for Muzykanci (The Musicians), best foreign short story, same year. In 2003 he was nominated for one of Poland's most prestigious literary prizes Nike Award for his novel Narrenturm. He also received several Russian fandom awards and was awarded Sfinks Award, the readers' award of the SFinks magazine, in 1995, 1997, 1998 (two awards), 2000, 2005, 2007. Since 2008, he has been an honorary citizen of the city of Łódź. 2016: World Fantasy Award—Life Achievement for The Witcher saga 2014: Silver medal Gloria Artis, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland 2012: Silver medal Gloria Artis, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland 2010: European Science Fiction Society "European Grand Master" honorary award 2009: David Gemmell Legend Award 1997: Polityka's Passport award, which is awarded annually to artists who have strong prospects for international success 1996: European Science Fiction Society Hall of Fame: author In 2005, Stanisław Bereś conducted a lengthy interview with Sapkowski that was eventually published in a book form as Historia i fantastyka. Bibliography The Witcher Saga Short story collections The Witcher (pl:Wiedźmin, 1990), 5 stories. Currently out of print, although 4 of its stories were reprinted in The Last Wish along with new material, while the fifth story was reprinted in Something ends, Something begins and The Malady and Other Stories. Sword of Destiny (Miecz przeznaczenia, 1992), 6 stories. English edition: 2015 The Last Wish (Ostatnie życzenie, 1993), 7 stories. English edition: 2007 (in US: 2008). Its stories (including both its original stories and the stories which it republishes from The Witcher) take place before Sword of Destiny even though it was published later. The short story "The Hexer" in the English anthology Chosen by Fate: Zajdel Award Winner Anthology (by SuperNOVA in cooperation with the Silesian Club of Fantasy Literature, 2000) is an English translation by Agnieszka Fulińska of the short story "The Witcher" which had previously been published in Polish in The Witcher and The Last Wish. The Last Wish was later translated into English in full. The short story "Spellmaker" in the English anthology A Polish Book of Monsters (edited and translated by Michael Kandel, 2010) is another translation of the short story "The Witcher" which had previously been published in The Witcher, The Last Wish, and Chosen by Fate: Zajdel Award Winner Anthology. Something Ends, Something Begins (pl:Coś się kończy, coś się zaczyna, 2000), 8 stories. Only two of its stories are related to The Witcher saga ("The Road with No Return" and the titular "Something Ends, Something Begins"). The Malady and Other Stories (:pl:Maladie i inne opowiadania, 2012), 10 stories. It includes the 8 stories from Something ends, Something begins plus two new stories that aren't related to The Witcher saga. The only one of its stories that was translated into English is the titular "The Malady" which was published in 2014 under the title The Malady and Other Stories, although that English publication didn't include the other 9 stories from the Polish collection of the same name. Pentalogy Blood of Elves (Krew elfów, 1994). English edition: 2009 Time of Contempt (Czas pogardy, 1995). English edition: 27 June 2013 Baptism of Fire (Chrzest ognia, 1996). English edition: 6 March 2014 The Tower of Swallows (Wieża Jaskółki, 1997). English edition: May 2016 Lady of the Lake (Pani Jeziora, 1999). English edition: 14 March 2017 Standalone Prequel novel Season of Storms (Sezon burz, 2013). English edition: 22 May 2018 – set between the short stories in The Last Wish Hussite Trilogy The Tower of Fools (Narrenturm, 2002). English edition: 2020 Warriors of God (Boży bojownicy, 2004) Light Perpetual (Lux perpetua, 2006) Other novels Viper (Żmija, 2009), a stand-alone novel set during the Soviet–Afghan War Other works The Eye of Yrrhedes (Oko Yrrhedesa, 1995), roleplaying game The World of King Arthur. Maladie (Świat króla Artura. Maladie, 1995), essay and an illustrated short story set in Arthurian mythology Manuscript Discovered in a Dragon's Cave (Rękopis znaleziony w Smoczej Jaskini, 2001), fantasy encyclopedic compendium See also Science fiction and fantasy in Poland Stanisław Lem Jacek Dukaj Janusz A. Zajdel Award References External links Andrzej Sapkowski's official site Andrzej Sapkowski at Culture.pl Canon of fantasy literature, by Andrzej Sapkowski 1948 births Living people Polish fantasy writers 20th-century Polish novelists 21st-century Polish novelists Polish male novelists Polish male short story writers Polish short story writers Recipients of the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis World Fantasy Award-winning writers 20th-century short story writers 21st-century short story writers University of Łódź alumni 20th-century Polish male writers 21st-century Polish male writers Constructed language creators

Amoxicillin is an antibiotic used to treat a number of bacterial infections. These include middle ear infection, strep throat, pneumonia, skin infections, and urinary tract infections among others. It is taken by mouth, or less commonly by injection. Common adverse effects include nausea and rash. It may also increase the risk of yeast infections and, when used in combination with clavulanic acid, diarrhea. It should not be used in those who are allergic to penicillin. While usable in those with kidney problems, the dose may need to be decreased. Its use in pregnancy and breastfeeding does not appear to be harmful. Amoxicillin is in the beta-lactam family of antibiotics. Amoxicillin was discovered in 1958 and came into medical use in 1972. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. It is one of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics in children. Amoxicillin is available as a generic medication. In 2019, it was the 23rd most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 25million prescriptions. Medical uses Amoxicillin is used in the treatment of a number of infections, including acute otitis media, streptococcal pharyngitis, pneumonia, skin infections, urinary tract infections, Salmonella infections, Lyme disease, and chlamydia infections. Acute otitis media Children with acute otitis media who are younger than 6 months of age are generally treated with amoxicillin or other antibiotics. Although most children with acute otitis media who are older than two years old do not benefit from treatment with amoxicillin or other antibiotics, such treatment may be helpful in children younger than two years old with acute otitis media that is bilateral or accompanied by ear drainage. In the past, amoxicillin was dosed three times daily when used to treat acute otitis media, which resulted in missed doses in routine ambulatory practice. There is now evidence that two times daily dosing or once daily dosing has similar effectiveness. Respiratory infections Amoxicillin and amoxicillin-clavulanate have been recommended by guidelines as the drug of choice for bacterial sinusitis and other respiratory infections. Most sinusitis infections are caused by viruses, for which amoxicillin and amoxicillin-clavulanate are ineffective, and the small benefit gained by amoxicillin may be overridden by the adverse effects. Amoxicillin is recommended as the preferred first-line treatment for community-acquired pneumonia in adults by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, either alone (mild to moderate severity disease) or in combination with a macrolide. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends amoxicillin as first-line treatment for pneumonia that is not "severe". Amoxicillin is used in post-exposure inhalation of anthrax to prevent disease progression and for prophylaxis. H. pylori It is effective as one part of a multi-drug regimen for treatment of stomach infections of Helicobacter pylori. It is typically combined with a proton-pump inhibitor (such as omeprazole) and a macrolide antibiotic (such as clarithromycin); other drug combinations are also effective. Lyme borreliosis Amoxicillin is effective for treatment of early cutaneous Lyme borreliosis; the effectiveness and safety of oral amoxicillin is neither better nor worse than common alternatively-used antibiotics. Skin infections Amoxicillin is occasionally used for the treatment of skin infections, such as acne vulgaris. It is often an effective treatment for cases of acne vulgaris that have responded poorly to other antibiotics, such as doxycycline and minocycline. Infections in infants in resource-limited settings Amoxicillin is recommended by the World Health Organization for the treatment of infants with signs and symptoms of pneumonia in resource-limited situations when the parents are unable or unwilling to accept hospitalization of the child. Amoxicillin in combination with gentamicin is recommended for the treatment of infants with signs of other severe infections when hospitalization is not an option. Prevention of bacterial endocarditis It is also used to prevent bacterial endocarditis and as a pain-reliever in high-risk people having dental work done, to prevent Streptococcus pneumoniae and other encapsulated bacterial infections in those without spleens, such as people with sickle-cell disease, and for both the prevention and the treatment of anthrax. The United Kingdom recommends against its use for infectious endocarditis prophylaxis. These recommendations do not appear to have changed the rates of infection for infectious endocarditis. Combination treatment Amoxicillin is susceptible to degradation by β-lactamase-producing bacteria, which are resistant to most β-lactam antibiotics, such as penicillin. For this reason, it may be combined with clavulanic acid, a β-lactamase inhibitor. This drug combination is commonly called co-amoxiclav. Spectrum of activity It is a moderate-spectrum, bacteriolytic, β-lactam antibiotic in the aminopenicillin family used to treat susceptible Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. It is usually the drug of choice within the class because it is better-absorbed, following oral administration, than other β-lactam antibiotics. In general, Streptococcus, Bacillus subtilis, Enterococcus, Haemophilus, Helicobacter, and Moraxella are susceptible to amoxicillin, whereas Citrobacter, Klebsiella and Pseudomonas aeruginosa are resistant to it. Some E. coli and most clinical strains of Staphylococcus aureus have developed resistance to amoxicillin to varying degrees. Adverse effects Adverse effects are similar to those for other β-lactam antibiotics, including nausea, vomiting, rashes, and antibiotic-associated colitis. Loose bowel movements (diarrhea) may also occur. Rarer adverse effects include mental changes, lightheadedness, insomnia, confusion, anxiety, sensitivity to lights and sounds, and unclear thinking. Immediate medical care is required upon the first signs of these adverse effects. The onset of an allergic reaction to amoxicillin can be very sudden and intense; emergency medical attention must be sought as quickly as possible. The initial phase of such a reaction often starts with a change in mental state, skin rash with intense itching (often beginning in fingertips and around groin area and rapidly spreading), and sensations of fever, nausea, and vomiting. Any other symptoms that seem even remotely suspicious must be taken very seriously. However, more mild allergy symptoms, such as a rash, can occur at any time during treatment, even up to a week after treatment has ceased. For some people allergic to amoxicillin, the adverse effects can be fatal due to anaphylaxis. Use of the amoxicillin/clavulanic acid combination for more than one week has caused a drug-induced immunoallergic-type hepatitis in some patients. Young children having ingested acute overdoses of amoxicillin manifested lethargy, vomiting, and renal dysfunction. There is poor reporting of adverse effects of amoxicillin from clinical trials. For this reason, the severity and frequency of adverse effects from amoxicillin is probably higher than reported from clinical trials. Nonallergic rash Between 3 and 10% of children taking amoxicillin (or ampicillin) show a late-developing (>72 hours after beginning medication and having never taken penicillin-like medication previously) rash, which is sometimes referred to as the "amoxicillin rash". The rash can also occur in adults and may rarely be a component of the DRESS syndrome. The rash is described as maculopapular or morbilliform (measles-like; therefore, in medical literature, it is called "amoxicillin-induced morbilliform rash".). It starts on the trunk and can spread from there. This rash is unlikely to be a true allergic reaction and is not a contraindication for future amoxicillin usage, nor should the current regimen necessarily be stopped. However, this common amoxicillin rash and a dangerous allergic reaction cannot easily be distinguished by inexperienced persons, so a healthcare professional is often required to distinguish between the two. A nonallergic amoxicillin rash may also be an indicator of infectious mononucleosis. Some studies indicate about 80-90% of patients with acute Epstein Barr virus infection treated with amoxicillin or ampicillin develop such a rash. Interactions Amoxicillin may interact with these drugs: Anticoagulants (dabigatran, warfarin). Cancer treatment (methotrexate). Uricosuric drugs. Typhoid vaccine Probenecid reduces renal excretion and increases the blood levels of amoxicillin. Oral contraceptives may become less effective. Allopurinol (gout treatment). Pharmacology Amoxicillin (α-amino-p-hydroxybenzyl penicillin) is a semisynthetic derivative of penicillin with a structure similar to ampicillin but with better absorption when taken by mouth, thus yielding higher concentrations in blood and in urine. Amoxicillin diffuses easily into tissues and body fluids. It will cross the placenta and is excreted into breastmilk in small quantities. It is metabolized by the liver and excreted into the urine. It has an onset of 30 minutes and a half-life of 3.7 hours in newborns and 1.4 hours in adults. Amoxicillin attaches to the cell wall of susceptible bacteria and results in their death. It also is a bactericidal compound. It is effective against streptococci, pneumococci, enterococci, Haemophilus influenzae, Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis, Neisseria meningitidis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Shigella, Chlamydia trachomatis, Salmonella, Borrelia burgdorferi, and Helicobacter pylori. As a derivative of ampicillin, amoxicillin is a member of the penicillin family and, like penicillins, is a β-lactam antibiotic. It inhibits cross-linkage between the linear peptidoglycan polymer chains that make up a major component of the bacterial cell wall. It has two ionizable groups in the physiological range (the amino group in alpha-position to the amide carbonyl group and the carboxyl group). History Amoxicillin was one of several semisynthetic derivatives of 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6-APA) developed by the Beecham Group in the 1960s. It became available in 1972 and was the second aminopenicillin to reach the market (after ampicillin in 1961). Co-amoxiclav became available in 1981. Society and culture Cost Amoxicillin is relatively inexpensive. Modes of delivery Pharmaceutical manufacturers make amoxicillin in trihydrate form, for oral use available as capsules, regular, chewable and dispersible tablets, syrup and pediatric suspension for oral use, and as the sodium salt for intravenous administration. Amoxicillin is most commonly taken orally. The liquid forms are helpful where the patient might find it difficult to take tablets or capsules. An extended-release is available. The intravenous form of amoxicillin is not sold in the United States. When an intravenous aminopenicillin is required in the United States, ampicillin is typically used. When there is an adequate response to ampicillin, the course of antibiotic therapy may often be completed with oral amoxicillin. Research with mice indicated successful delivery using intraperitoneally injected amoxicillin-bearing microparticles. Names "Amoxicillin" is the International Nonproprietary Name (INN), British Approved Name (BAN), and United States Adopted Name (USAN), while "amoxycillin" is the Australian Approved Name (AAN). Amoxicillin is one of the semisynthetic penicillins discovered by Beecham scientists. The patent for amoxicillin has expired, thus amoxicillin and co-amoxiclav preparations are marketed under various trade names across the world. Other animals Amoxicillin is also sometimes used as an antibiotic for animals. The use of amoxicillin for animals intended for human consumption (chickens, cattle, and swine for example) has been approved. References Further reading British National Formulary 45, March 2003 External links Carboxylic acids Enantiopure drugs GlaxoSmithKline brands Lyme disease Penicillins Phenethylamines Phenols Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate World Health Organization essential medicines

Ahuitzotl (, ) was the eighth Aztec ruler, the Huey Tlatoani of the city of Tenochtitlan, son of princess Atotoztli II. His name literally means "Water Thorny" and was also applied to the otter. He was responsible for much of the expansion of the Mexica domain, and consolidated the empire's power after emulating his predecessor. He took power as Emperor in the year 7 Rabbit (1486), after the death of his predecessor and brother, Tizoc. He had two sons, the kings Chimalpilli II and Cuauhtémoc, and one daughter. Biography Perhaps the greatest known military leader of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Ahuizotl began his reign by suppressing a Huastec rebellion, and then swiftly more than doubled the size of lands under Aztec dominance. He conquered the Mixtec, Zapotec, and other peoples from Pacific Coast of Mexico down to the western part of Guatemala. Ahuizotl also supervised a major rebuilding of Tenochtitlan on a grander scale including the expansion of the Great Pyramid or Templo Mayor in the year 8 Reed (1487). He presided over the introduction of the great-tailed grackle into the Valley of Mexico, the earliest documented case of human-mediated bird introduction in the Western Hemisphere. Ahuizotl died in the year 10 Rabbit (1502) and was succeeded by his nephew, Moctezuma II. Ahuizotl took his name from the animal ahuizotl, which the Aztecs considered to be a legendary creature in its own right rather than a mere mythical representation of the king. In January 2021 the INAH proposed moving the statues of Ahuizotl and Itzcóatl, known as the Indios Verdes, from the Parque del Mestizaje in Gustavo A. Madero, Mexico City to the Paseo de la Reforma. “The transfer means a reading of the urban space, recovering the historical discourse that gave rise to the formation of a set of monuments and roundabouts on Paseo de la Reforma, conceived at the end of the 19th century, with the idea of honoring the Reformation, a great transformation that it meant for Mexico, but to recover a historical reading that began precisely by underlining the Mexican splendor and the importance of the pre-Hispanic or Mesoamerican antecedents of our country ”, Diego Prieto, director of INAH said. In popular culture Under the name Teomitl, Ahuitzotl is a primary character in the Obsidian and Blood series by Aliette de Bodard, which are set in the last year of the reign of Axayacatl and the first years of the reign of Tizoc. In the historical fiction novel, "Aztec" by Gary Jennings, Ahuitzotl is a prominent character. Set in the time just before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors, it accounts his construction of the many expansions of Tenochtitlan, and wars of conquest, trade, and proclivities. References Bibliography Townsend, Richard F. (2000) The Aztecs. revised ed. Thames and Hudson, New York. Hassig, Ross (1988) Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Aztec nobility Tenochca tlatoque Year of birth unknown 15th-century births 1502 deaths 15th-century monarchs in North America 15th-century indigenous people of the Americas 15th century in the Aztec civilization 1500s in the Aztec civilization

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membership group, claiming nearly 100,000 student and professional members . Its headquarters are in New York City. The ACM is an umbrella organization for academic and scholarly interests in computer science (informatics). Its motto is "Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession". History The ACM was founded in 1947 under the name Eastern Association for Computing Machinery, which was changed the following year to the Association for Computing Machinery. Activities ACM is organized into over 171 local chapters and 37 Special Interest Groups (SIGs), through which it conducts most of its activities. Additionally, there are over 500 college and university chapters. The first student chapter was founded in 1961 at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Many of the SIGs, such as SIGGRAPH, SIGDA, SIGPLAN, SIGCSE and SIGCOMM, sponsor regular conferences, which have become famous as the dominant venue for presenting innovations in certain fields. The groups also publish a large number of specialized journals, magazines, and newsletters. ACM also sponsors other computer science related events such as the worldwide ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), and has sponsored some other events such as the chess match between Garry Kasparov and the IBM Deep Blue computer. Services Publications ACM publishes over 50 journals including the prestigious Journal of the ACM, and two general magazines for computer professionals, Communications of the ACM (also known as Communications or CACM) and Queue. Other publications of the ACM include: ACM XRDS, formerly "Crossroads", was redesigned in 2010 and is the most popular student computing magazine in the US. ACM Interactions, an interdisciplinary HCI publication focused on the connections between experiences, people and technology, and the third largest ACM publication. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) Computers in Entertainment (CIE) ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems (JETC) ACM Special Interest Group: Computers and Society (SIGCAS) A number of journals, specific to subfields of computer science, titled ACM Transactions. Some of the more notable transactions include: ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS) IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB) ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL) ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS) ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMM) IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON) ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) Although Communications no longer publishes primary research, and is not considered a prestigious venue, many of the great debates and results in computing history have been published in its pages. ACM has made almost all of its publications available to paid subscribers online at its Digital Library and also has a Guide to Computing Literature. Individual members additionally have access to Safari Books Online and Books24x7. ACM also offers insurance, online courses, and other services to its members. In 1997, ACM Press published Wizards and Their Wonders: Portraits in Computing (), written by Christopher Morgan, with new photographs by Louis Fabian Bachrach. The book is a collection of historic and current portrait photographs of figures from the computer industry. Portal and Digital Library The ACM Portal is an online service of the ACM. Its core are two main sections: ACM Digital Library and the ACM Guide to Computing Literature. The ACM Digital Library is the full-text collection of all articles published by the ACM in its articles, magazines and conference proceedings. The Guide is a bibliography in computing with over one million entries. The ACM Digital Library contains a comprehensive archive starting in the 1950s of the organization's journals, magazines, newsletters and conference proceedings. Online services include a forum called Ubiquity and Tech News digest. There is an extensive underlying bibliographic database containing key works of all genres from all major publishers of computing literature. This secondary database is a rich discovery service known as The ACM Guide to Computing Literature. ACM adopted a hybrid Open Access (OA) publishing model in 2013. Authors who do not choose to pay the OA fee must grant ACM publishing rights by either a copyright transfer agreement or a publishing license agreement. ACM was a "green" publisher before the term was invented. Authors may post documents on their own websites and in their institutional repositories with a link back to the ACM Digital Library's permanently maintained Version of Record. All metadata in the Digital Library is open to the world, including abstracts, linked references and citing works, citation and usage statistics, as well as all functionality and services. Other than the free articles, the full-texts are accessed by subscription. There is also a mounting challenge to the ACM's publication practices coming from the open access movement. Some authors see a subscription business model as less relevant and publish on their home pages or on unreviewed sites like arXiv. Other organizations have sprung up which do their peer review entirely free and online, such as Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Journal of Machine Learning Research and the Journal of Research and Practice in Information Technology. Membership grades In addition to student and regular members, ACM has several advanced membership grades to recognize those with multiple years of membership and "demonstrated performance that sets them apart from their peers". The number of Fellows, Distinguished Members, and Senior Members cannot exceed 1%, 10%, and 25% of the total number of professional members, respectively. Fellows The ACM Fellows Program was established by Council of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1993 "to recognize and honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology and for their significant contributions to the mission of the ACM." There are 1310 Fellows out of about 100,000 members. Distinguished Members In 2006, ACM began recognizing two additional membership grades, one which was called Distinguished Members. Distinguished Members (Distinguished Engineers, Distinguished Scientists, and Distinguished Educators) have at least 15 years of professional experience and 5 years of continuous ACM membership and "have made a significant impact on the computing field". Note that in 2006 when the Distinguished Members first came out, one of the three levels was called "Distinguished Member" and was changed about two years later to "Distinguished Educator". Those who already had the Distinguished Member title had their titles changed to one of the other three titles. List of Distinguished Members of the Association for Computing Machinery Senior Members Also in 2006, ACM began recognizing Senior Members. According to the ACM, "The Senior Members Grade recognizes those ACM members with at least 10 years of professional experience and 5 years of continuous Professional Membership who have demonstrated performance through technical leadership, and technical or professional contributions". Senior membership also requires 3 letters of reference Distinguished Speakers While not technically a membership grade, the ACM recognizes distinguished speakers on topics in computer science. A distinguished speaker is appointed for a three-year period. There are usually about 125 current distinguished speakers. The ACM website describes these people as 'Renowned International Thought Leaders'. The distinguished speakers program (DSP) has been in existence for over 20 years and serves as an outreach program that brings renowned experts from Academia, Industry and Government to present on the topic of their expertise. The DSP is overseen by a committee Chapters ACM has three kinds of chapters: Special Interest Groups, Professional Chapters, and Student Chapters. , ACM has professional & SIG Chapters in 56 countries. , there exist ACM student chapters in 41 different countries. Special Interest Groups SIGACCESS: Accessible Computing SIGACT: Algorithms and Computation Theory SIGAda: Ada Programming Language SIGAI: Artificial Intelligence SIGAPP: Applied Computing SIGARCH: Computer Architecture SIGBED: Embedded Systems SIGBio: Bioinformatics SIGCAS: Computers and Society SIGCHI: Computer–Human Interaction SIGCOMM: Data Communication SIGCSE: Computer Science Education SIGDA: Design Automation SIGDOC: Design of Communication SIGecom: Electronic Commerce SIGEVO: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation SIGGRAPH: Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques SIGHPC: High Performance Computing SIGIR: Information Retrieval SIGITE: Information Technology Education SIGKDD: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining SIGLOG: Logic and Computation SIGMETRICS: Measurement and Evaluation SIGMICRO: Microarchitecture SIGMIS: Management Information Systems SIGMM: Multimedia SIGMOBILE: Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing SIGMOD: Management of Data SIGOPS: Operating Systems SIGPLAN: Programming Languages SIGSAC: Security, Audit, and Control SIGSAM: Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation SIGSIM: Simulation and Modeling SIGSOFT: Software Engineering SIGSPATIAL: Spatial Information SIGUCCS: University and College Computing Services SIGWEB: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web Conferences ACM and its Special Interest Groups (SIGs) sponsors numerous conferences with 170 hosted worldwide in 2017. ACM Conferences page has an up-to-date complete list while a partial list is shown below. Most of the SIGs also have an annual conference. ACM conferences are often very popular publishing venues and are therefore very competitive. For example, the 2007 SIGGRAPH conference attracted about 30000 visitors, and CIKM only accepted 15% of the long papers that were submitted in 2005. COMPASS: International Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies ASPLOS: International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems CHI: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems SIGCSE: SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education CIKM: Conference on Information and Knowledge Management DAC: Design Automation Conference DEBS: Distributed Event Based Systems FCRC: Federated Computing Research Conference GECCO: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference SC: Supercomputing Conference SIGGRAPH: International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Hypertext: Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia JCDL: Joint Conference on Digital Libraries TAPIA: Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference SIGCOMM: ACM SIGCOMM Conference MobiHoc: International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing The ACM is a co–presenter and founding partner of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. Some conferences are hosted by ACM student branches; this includes Reflections Projections, which is hosted by UIUC ACM.. In addition, ACM sponsors regional conferences. Regional conferences facilitate increased opportunities for collaboration between nearby institutions and they are well attended. For additional non-ACM conferences, see this list of computer science conferences. Awards The ACM presents or co–presents a number of awards for outstanding technical and professional achievements and contributions in computer science and information technology. ACM A. M. Turing Award ACM – AAAI Allen Newell Award ACM Athena Lecturer Award ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing ACM Distinguished Service Award ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award ACM Fellowship, awarded annually since 1993 ACM Gordon Bell Prize ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award ACM – IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships ACM – IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award ACM – IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Award ACM India Doctoral Dissertation Award ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award ACM Policy Award ACM Presidential Award ACM Prize in Computing (formerly: ACM – Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences) ACM Programming Systems and Languages Paper Award ACM Student Research Competition ACM Software System Award International Science and Engineering Fair Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering Over 30 of ACM's Special Interest Groups also award individuals for their contributions with a few listed below. ACM Alan D. Berenbaum Distinguished Service Award ACM Maurice Wilkes Award ISCA Influential Paper Award Leadership The President of ACM for 2020–2022 is Gabriele Kotsis, Professor at the Johannes Kepler University Linz. She is successor of Cherri M. Pancake (2018–2020), Professor Emeritus at Oregon State University and Director of the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering (NACSE); Vicki L. Hanson (2016–2018), Distinguished Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Visiting Professor at the University of Dundee; Alexander L. Wolf (2014–2016), Dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz; Vint Cerf (2012–2014), an American computer scientist who is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet"; Alain Chesnais (2010–2012), a French citizen living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he runs his company named Visual Transitions; and Dame Wendy Hall of the University of Southampton, UK (2008–2010). ACM is led by a Council consisting of the President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Past President, SIG Governing Board Chair, Publications Board Chair, three representatives of the SIG Governing Board, and seven Members–At–Large. This institution is often referred to simply as "Council" in Communications of the ACM. Infrastructure ACM has five "Boards" that make up various committees and subgroups, to help Headquarters staff maintain quality services and products. These boards are as follows: Publications Board SIG Governing Board Education Board Membership Services Board Practitioners Board ACM Council on Women in Computing ACM-W, the ACM council on women in computing, supports, celebrates, and advocates internationally for the full engagement of women in computing. ACM–W's main programs are regional celebrations of women in computing, ACM-W chapters, and scholarships for women CS students to attend research conferences. 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Ariel Sharon (; ; ; also known by his diminutive Arik, , born Ariel Scheinermann, ; 26 February 1928 – 11 January 2014) was an Israeli general and politician who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006. Sharon was a commander in the Israeli Army from its creation in 1948. As a soldier and then an officer, he participated prominently in the 1948 Palestine war, becoming a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade and taking part in many battles, including Operation Bin Nun Alef. He was an instrumental figure in the creation of Unit 101 and the reprisal operations, as well as in the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition, and the Yom-Kippur War of 1973. Yitzhak Rabin called Sharon "the greatest field commander in our history". Upon retirement from the military, Sharon entered politics, joining the Likud party, and served in a number of ministerial posts in Likud-led governments in 1977–92 and 1996–99. As Minister of Defense, he directed the 1982 Lebanon War. An official enquiry found that he bore "personal responsibility" for the Sabra and Shatila massacre and recommended that he be removed as Defense Minister. His perceived complicity in the massacre led to him being known as the "Butcher of Beirut" among Arabs. From the 1970s through to the 1990s, Sharon championed construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He became the leader of the Likud in 2000, and was elected Prime Minister of Israel after defeating Ehud Barak in the 2001 prime ministerial election. He served as Israel's prime minister from 2001 to 2006, during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. As Prime Minister, Sharon orchestrated Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2004–05. Facing stiff opposition to this policy within the Likud, in November 2005 he left Likud to form a new party, Kadima. He had been expected to win the next election and was widely interpreted as planning on "clearing Israel out of most of the West Bank", in a series of unilateral withdrawals. After suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006, Sharon remained in a permanent vegetative state until his death in January 2014. Sharon remains a highly polarizing figure in Middle East history. Israelis almost universally revere Sharon as a war hero and statesman who played a vital role in defining the country's borders, while Palestinians revile Sharon as an impenitent war criminal who vigorously suppressed their aspirations for nationhood. Early life and education Sharon was born on 26 February 1928 in Kfar Malal, an agricultural moshav, then in Mandatory Palestine, to Shmuel Scheinerman (1896–1956) of Brest-Litovsk and Vera (née Schneirov) Scheinerman (1900–1988) of Mogilev. His parents met while at university in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia), where Sharon's father was studying agronomy and his mother was studying medicine. They immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1922 in the wake of the Russian Communist government's growing persecution of Jews in the region. In Palestine, Vera Scheinerman went by the name Dvora. The family arrived with the Third Aliyah and settled in Kfar Malal, a socialist, secular community. (Ariel Sharon himself would remain proudly secular throughout his life.) Although his parents were Mapai supporters, they did not always accept communal consensus: "The Scheinermans' eventual ostracism ... followed the 1933 Arlozorov murder when Dvora and Shmuel refused to endorse the Labor movement's anti-Revisionist calumny and participate in Bolshevik-style public revilement rallies, then the order of the day. Retribution was quick to come. They were expelled from the local health-fund clinic and village synagogue. The cooperative's truck wouldn't make deliveries to their farm nor collect produce." Sharon spoke both Hebrew and Russian. Four years after their arrival at Kfar Malal, the Sheinermans had a daughter, Yehudit (Dita). Ariel was born two years later. At age 10, he joined the youth movement HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed. As a teenager, he began to take part in the armed night-patrols of his moshav. In 1942 at the age of 14, Sharon joined the Gadna, a paramilitary youth battalion, and later the Haganah, the underground paramilitary force and the Jewish military precursor to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Military career Battle for Jerusalem and 1948 War Sharon's unit of the Haganah became engaged in serious and continuous combat from the autumn of 1947, with the onset of the Battle for Jerusalem. Without the manpower to hold the roads, his unit took to making offensive hit-and-run raids on Arab forces in the vicinity of Kfar Malal. In units of thirty men, they would hit constantly at Arab villages, bridges and bases, as well as ambush the traffic between Arab villages and bases. Sharon wrote in his autobiography: "We had become skilled at finding our way in the darkest nights and gradually we built up the strength and endurance these kind of operations required. Under the stress of constant combat we drew closer to one another and began to operate not just as a military unit but almost as a family. ... [W]e were in combat almost every day. Ambushes and battles followed each other until they all seemed to run together." For his role in a night-raid on Iraqi forces at Bir Adas, Sharon was made a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the onset of the War of Independence, his platoon fended off the Iraqi advance at Kalkiya. Sharon was regarded as a hardened and aggressive soldier, swiftly moving up the ranks during the war. He was shot in the groin, stomach and foot by the Jordanian Arab Legion in the First Battle of Latrun, an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the besieged Jewish community of Jerusalem. Sharon wrote of the casualties in the "horrible battle," and his brigade suffered 139 deaths. Jordanian field marshal Habis Al-Majali claimed that Sharon was among 6 Israeli soldiers captured by the Jordanian 4th battalion during the battle, and that Habis took them to a camp in Mafraq and the 6 were later traded back. Sharon denied the claims, but Habes was adamant. "Sharon is like a grizzly bear," he grumbled. "I captured him, I healed his wounds." In 1994 and during the peace treaty signing ceremony with Jordan, Sharon wanted to get in touch with his former captor, but the latter determinedly refused to discuss the incident publicly. After recovering from the wounds received at Latrun, he resumed command of his patrol unit. On 28 December 1948, his platoon attempted to break through an Egyptian stronghold in Iraq-El-Manshia. At about this time, Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion gave him the Hebraized name "Sharon". In September 1949, Sharon was promoted to company commander (of the Golani Brigade's reconnaissance unit) and in 1950 to intelligence officer for Central Command. He then took leave to begin studies in history and Middle Eastern culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sharon's subsequent military career would be characterized by insubordination, aggression and disobedience, but also brilliance as a commander. Unit 101 A year and a half later, on the direct orders of the Prime Minister, Sharon returned to active service in the rank of major, as the founder and commander of the new Unit 101, a special forces unit tasked with reprisal operations in response to Palestinian fedayeen attacks. The first Israeli commando unit, Unit 101 specialized in offensive guerrilla warfare in enemy countries. The unit consisted of 50 men, mostly former paratroopers and Unit 30 personnel. They were armed with non-standard weapons and tasked with carrying out special reprisals across the state's borders— mainly establishing small unit maneuvers, activation and insertion tactics. Training included engaging enemy forces across Israel's borders. Israeli historian Benny Morris describes Unit 101: Unit 101 undertook a series of raids against Jordan, which then held the West Bank. The raids also helped bolster Israeli morale and convince Arab states that the fledgling nation was capable of long-range military action. Known for raids against Arab civilians and military targets, the unit is held responsible for the widely condemned Qibya massacre in the fall of 1953. After a group of Palestinians used Qibya as a staging point for a fedayeen attack in Yehud that killed a Jewish woman and her two children in Israel, Unit 101 retaliated on the village. By various accounts of the ensuing attack, 65 to 70 Palestinian civilians, half of them women and children, were killed when Sharon's troops dynamited 45 houses and a school. Facing international condemnation for the attack, Ben-Gurion denied that the Israeli military was involved. In his memoir, Sharon wrote that the unit had checked all the houses before detonating the explosives and that he thought the houses were empty. Although he admitted the results were tragic, Sharon defended the attack, however: "Now people could feel that the terrorist gangs would think twice before striking, now that they knew for sure they would be hit back. Kibbya also put the Jordanian and Egyptian governments on notice that if Israel was vulnerable, so were they." A few months after its founding, Unit 101 was merged with the 890 Paratroopers Battalion to create the Paratroopers Brigade, of which Sharon would also later become commander. Like Unit 101, it continued raids into Arab territory, culminating with the attack on the Qalqilyah police station in the autumn of 1956. Leading up to the Suez War, the missions Sharon took part in included: Operation Shoshana (now known as the Qibya massacre) Operation Black Arrow Operation Elkayam Operation Egged Operation Olive Leaves Operation Volcano Operation Gulliver (מבצע גוליבר) Operation Lulav (מבצע לולב) During a payback operation in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Sharon was again wounded by gunfire, this time in the leg. Incidents such as those involving Meir Har-Zion, along with many others, contributed to the tension between Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, who often opposed Sharon's raids, and Moshe Dayan, who had become increasingly ambivalent in his feelings towards Sharon. Later in the year, Sharon was investigated and tried by the Military Police for disciplining one of his subordinates. However, the charges were dismissed before the onset of the Suez War. 1956 Suez War Sharon commanded Unit 202 (the Paratroopers Brigade) during the 1956 Suez War (the British "Operation Musketeer"), leading the troop to take the ground east of the Sinai's Mitla Pass and eventually the pass itself against the advice of superiors, suffering heavy Israeli casualties in the process. Having successfully carried out the first part of his mission (joining a battalion parachuted near Mitla with the rest of the brigade moving on ground), Sharon's unit was deployed near the pass. Neither reconnaissance aircraft nor scouts reported enemy forces inside the Mitla Pass. Sharon, whose forces were initially heading east, away from the pass, reported to his superiors that he was increasingly concerned with the possibility of an enemy thrust through the pass, which could attack his brigade from the flank or the rear. Sharon asked for permission to attack the pass several times, but his requests were denied, though he was allowed to check its status so that if the pass was empty, he could receive permission to take it later. Sharon sent a small scout force, which was met with heavy fire and became bogged down due to vehicle malfunction in the middle of the pass. Sharon ordered the rest of his troops to attack in order to aid their comrades. Sharon was criticized by his superiors and was damaged by allegations several years later made by several former subordinates, who claimed that Sharon tried to provoke the Egyptians and sent out the scouts in bad faith, ensuring that a battle would ensue. Sharon had assaulted Themed in a dawn attack, and had stormed the town with his armor through the Themed Gap. Sharon routed the Sudanese police company, and captured the settlement. On his way to the Nakla, Sharon's men came under attack from Egyptian MIG-15s. On the 30th, Sharon linked up with Eytan near Nakla. Dayan had no more plans for further advances beyond the passes, but Sharon nonetheless decided to attack the Egyptian positions at Jebel Heitan. Sharon sent his lightly armed paratroopers against dug-in Egyptians supported by aircraft, tanks and heavy artillery. Sharon's actions were in response to reports of the arrival of the 1st and 2nd Brigades of the 4th Egyptian Armored Division in the area, which Sharon believed would annihilate his forces if he did not seize the high ground. Sharon sent two infantry companies, a mortar battery and some AMX-13 tanks under the command of Mordechai Gur into the Heitan Defile on the afternoon of 31 October 1956. The Egyptian forces occupied strong defensive positions and brought down heavy anti-tank, mortar and machine gun fire on the IDF force. Gur's men were forced to retreat into the "Saucer", where they were surrounded and came under heavy fire. Hearing of this, Sharon sent in another task force while Gur's men used the cover of night to scale the walls of the Heitan Defile. During the ensuing action, the Egyptians were defeated and forced to retreat. A total of 260 Egyptian and 38 Israeli soldiers were killed during the battle at Mitla. Due to these deaths, Sharon's actions at Mitla were surrounded in controversy, with many within the IDF viewing the deaths as the result of unnecessary and unauthorized aggression. Six-Day War, War of Attrition and Yom Kippur War The Mitla incident hindered Sharon's military career for several years. In the meantime, he occupied the position of an infantry brigade commander and received a law degree from Tel Aviv University. However, when Yitzhak Rabin became Chief of Staff in 1964, Sharon again began to rise rapidly in the ranks, occupying the positions of Infantry School Commander and Head of Army Training Branch, eventually achieving the rank of Aluf (Major General). In the Six-Day War, Sharon, in command of an armored division on the Sinai front, drew up his own complex offensive strategy that combined infantry troops, tanks and paratroopers from planes and helicopters to destroy the Egyptian forces Sharon's 38th Division faced when it broke through to the Kusseima-Abu-Ageila fortified area. Sharon's victories and offensive strategy in the Battle of Abu-Ageila led to international commendation by military strategists; he was judged to have inaugurated a new paradigm in operational command. Researchers at the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command studied Sharon's operational planning, concluding that it involved a number of unique innovations. It was a simultaneous attack by a multiplicity of small forces, each with a specific aim, attacking a particular unit in a synergistic Egyptian defense network. As a result, instead of supporting and covering each other as they were designed to do, each Egyptian unit was left fighting for its own life. According to Sapir Handelman, after Sharon's assault of the Sinai in the Six-Day War and his encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army in the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli public nicknamed him "The King of Israel". Sharon played a key role in the War of Attrition. In 1969, he was appointed the Head of IDF's Southern Command. As leader of the southern command, on 29 July Israeli frogmen stormed and destroyed Green Island, a fortress at the northern end of the Gulf of Suez whose radar and antiaircraft installations controlled that sector's airspace. On 9 September Sharon's forces carried out Operation Raviv, a large-scale raid along the western shore of the Gulf of Suez. Landing craft ferried across Russian-made tanks and armored personnel carriers that Israel had captured in 1967, and the small column harried the Egyptians for ten hours. Following his appointment to the southern command, Sharon had no further promotions, and considered retiring. Sharon discussed the issue with Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, who strongly advised him to remain at his post. Sharon remained in the military for another three years, before retiring in August 1973. Soon after, he helped found the Likud ("Unity") political party. At the start of the Yom Kippur War on 6 October 1973, Sharon was called back to active duty along with his assigned reserve armored division. On his farm, before he left for the front line, the Reserve Commander, Zeev Amit, said to him, "How are we going to get out of this?" Sharon replied, "You don't know? We will cross the Suez Canal and the war will end over there." Sharon arrived at the front, to participate in his fourth war, in a civilian car. His forces did not engage the Egyptian Army immediately, despite his requests. Under cover of darkness, Sharon's forces moved to a point on the Suez Canal that had been prepared before the war. In a move that again thwarted the commands of his superiors, Sharon's division crossed the Suez, effectively winning the war for Israel. He then headed north towards Ismailia, intent on cutting the Egyptian second army's supply lines, but his division was halted south of the Fresh Water Canal. Abraham Adan's division passed over the bridgehead into Africa, advancing to within 101 kilometers of Cairo. His division managed to encircle Suez, cutting off and encircling the Third Army. Tensions between the two generals followed Sharon's decision, but a military tribunal later found his action was militarily effective. Sharon's complex ground maneuver is regarded as a decisive move in the Yom Kippur War, undermining the Egyptian Second Army and encircling the Egyptian Third Army. This move was regarded by many Israelis as the turning point of the war in the Sinai front. Thus, Sharon is widely viewed as the hero of the Yom Kippur War, responsible for Israel's ground victory in the Sinai in 1973. A photo of Sharon wearing a head bandage on the Suez Canal became a famous symbol of Israeli military prowess. Sharon's political positions were controversial, and he was relieved of duty in February 1974. Bar Lev Line Following Israel's victory in the six-day war, the war of attrition at the Suez Canal began. The Egyptians began firing in provocation against the Israeli forces posted on the eastern part of the canal. Haim Bar Lev, Israel's chief of staff, suggested that Israel construct a border line to protect its southern border. A wall of sand and earth raised along almost the entire length of the Suez Canal would both allow observation of Egyptian forces and conceal the movements of Israeli troops on the eastern side. This line, named after the chief of staff Haim Bar Lev, became known as the Bar Lev Line. It included at least thirty strong points stretching over almost 200 kilometers. Bar Lev suggested that such a line would defend against any major Egyptian assault across the canal, and was expected to function as a "graveyard for Egyptian troops". Moshe Dayan described it as "one of the best anti-tank ditches in the world." Sharon, and Israel Tal on the other hand, vigorously opposed the line. Sharon said that it would pin down large military formations that would be sitting ducks for deadly artillery attacks, and cited the opinion of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, who explained him "the great military disaster such a line could bring." Notwithstanding, it was completed in spring 1970. During the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian forces successfully breached the Bar Lev Line in less than two hours at a cost of more than a thousand dead and some 5,000 wounded. Sharon would later recall that what Schneerson had told him was a tragedy, "but unfortunately, that happened." Early political career, 1974–2001 Beginnings of political career In the 1940s and 1950s, Sharon seemed to be personally devoted to the ideals of Mapai, the predecessor of the modern Labor Party. However, after retiring from military service, he joined the Liberal Party and was instrumental in establishing Likud in July 1973 by a merger of Herut, the Liberal Party and independent elements. Sharon became chairman of the campaign staff for that year's elections, which were scheduled for November. Two and a half weeks after the start of the election campaign, the Yom Kippur War erupted and Sharon was called back to reserve service. On the heels of being hailed as a war hero for crossing the Suez in the 1973 war, Sharon won a seat to the Knesset in the elections that year, but resigned a year later. From June 1975 to March 1976, Sharon was a special aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He planned his return to politics for the 1977 elections; first, he tried to return to the Likud and replace Menachem Begin at the head of the party. He suggested to Simha Erlich, who headed the Liberal Party bloc in the Likud, that he was more able than Begin to win an election victory; he was rejected, however. He then tried to join the Labor Party and the centrist Democratic Movement for Change, but was rejected by those parties too. Only then did he form his own list, Shlomtzion, which won two Knesset seats in the subsequent elections. Immediately after the elections, he merged Shlomtzion with the Likud and became Minister of Agriculture. When Sharon joined Begin's government, he had relatively little political experience. During this period, Sharon supported the Gush Emunim settlements movement and was viewed as the patron of the settlers' movement. He used his position to encourage the establishment of a network of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories to prevent the possibility of Palestinian Arabs' return to these territories. Sharon doubled the number of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip during his tenure. After the 1981 elections, Begin rewarded Sharon for his important contribution to Likud's narrow win, by appointing him Minister of Defense. Under Sharon, Israel continued to build upon the unprecedented coordination between the Israel Defense Forces and the South African Defence Force, with Israeli and South African generals giving each other unfettered access to each other's battlefields and military tactics, and Israel sharing with South Africa highly classified information about its missions, such as Operation Opera, which had previously only been reserved for the United States. In 1981, after visiting South African forces fighting in Namibia for 10 days, Sharon argued that South Africa needed more weapons to fight Soviet infiltration in the region. Sharon promised that the relationship between Israel and South Africa would continue to deepen as they work to "ensure the National Defense of both our countries". The collaboration in carrying out joint-nuclear tests, in planning counter-insurgency strategies in Namibia and in designing security fences helped to make Israel, South Africa's closest ally in this period. 1982 Lebanon War and Sabra and Shatila massacre As Defense Minister, Sharon launched an invasion of Lebanon called Operation Peace for Galilee, later known as the 1982 Lebanon War, following the shooting of Israel's ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov. Although this attempted assassination was in fact perpetrated by the Abu Nidal Organization, possibly with Syrian or Iraqi involvement, the Israeli government justified the invasion by citing 270 terrorist attacks by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Israel, the occupied territories, and the Jordanian and Lebanese border (in addition to 20 attacks on Israeli interests abroad). Sharon intended the operation to eradicate the PLO from its state within a state inside Lebanon, but the war is primarily remembered for the Sabra and Shatila massacre. In a three-day massacre between 16 and 18 September, between 460 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, in the Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp were killed by the Phalanges— Lebanese Maronite Christian militias. Shatila had previously been one of the PLO's three main training camps for foreign terrorists and the main training camp for European terrorists; the Israelis maintained that 2,000 to 3,000 terrorists remained in the camps, but were unwilling to risk the lives of more of their soldiers after the Lebanese army repeatedly refused to "clear them out." The killings followed years of sectarian civil war in Lebanon that left 95,000 dead. The Lebanese army's chief prosecutor investigated the killings and counted 460 dead, Israeli intelligence estimated 700–800 dead, and the Palestinian Red Crescent claimed 2,000 dead. 1,200 death certificates were issued to anyone who produced three witnesses claiming a family member disappeared during the time of the massacre. Nearly all of the victims were men. The Phalange militia went into the camps to clear out PLO fighters while Israeli forces surrounded the camps, blocking camp exits and providing logistical support. The killings led some to label Sharon "the Butcher of Beirut". An Associated Press report on 15 September 1982 stated, "Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, in a statement, tied the killing of the Phalangist leader Bachir Gemayel to the PLO, saying 'it symbolises the terrorist murderousness of the PLO terrorist organisations and their supporters'." Habib Chartouni, a Lebanese Christian from the Syrian Socialist National Party confessed to the murder of Gemayel, and no Palestinians were involved. Robert Maroun Hatem, Hobeika's bodyguard, stated in his book From Israel to Damascus that Phalangist commander Elie Hobeika ordered the massacre of civilians in defiance of Israeli instructions to behave like a "dignified" army. Hatem claimed "Sharon had given strict orders to Hobeika....to guard against any desperate move" and that Hobeika perpetrated the massacre "to tarnish Israel's reputation worldwide" for the benefit of Syria. Hobeika subsequently joined the Syrian occupation government and lived as a prosperous businessman under Syrian protection; further massacres in Sabra and Shatilla occurred with Syrian support in 1985. The massacre followed intense Israeli bombings of Beirut that had seen heavy civilian casualties, testing Israel's relationship with the United States in the process. America sent troops to help negotiate the PLO's exit from Lebanon, withdrawing them after negotiating a ceasefire that ostensibly protected Palestinian civilians. Legal findings After 400,000 Peace Now protesters rallied in Tel Aviv to demand an official government inquiry into the massacres, the official Israeli government investigation into the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, the Kahan Commission (1982), was conducted. The inquiry found that the Israeli Defense Forces were indirectly responsible for the massacre since IDF troops held the area. The commission determined that the killings were carried out by a Phalangist unit acting on its own, but its entry was known to Israel and approved by Sharon. Prime Minister Begin was also found responsible for not exercising greater involvement and awareness in the matter of introducing the Phalangists into the camps. The commission also concluded that Sharon bore personal responsibility "for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge [and] not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed". It said Sharon's negligence in protecting the civilian population of Beirut, which had come under Israeli control, amounted to a dereliction of duty of the minister. In early 1983, the commission recommended the removal of Sharon from his post as defense minister and stated: We have found ... that the Minister of Defense [Ariel Sharon] bears personal responsibility. In our opinion, it is fitting that the Minister of Defense draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office— and if necessary, that the Prime Minister consider whether he should exercise his authority ... to ... remove [him] from office." Sharon initially refused to resign as defense minister, and Begin refused to fire him. After a grenade was thrown into a dispersing crowd at an Israeli Peace Now march, killing Emil Grunzweig and injuring 10 others, a compromise was reached: Sharon agreed to forfeit the post of defense minister but stayed in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio. Sharon's resignation as defense minister is listed as one of the important events of the Tenth Knesset. In its 21 February 1983 issue, Time published an article implying that Sharon was directly responsible for the massacres. Sharon sued Time for libel in American and Israeli courts. Although the jury concluded that the Time article included false allegations, they found that the magazine had not acted with actual malice and so was not guilty of libel. On 18 June 2001, relatives of the victims of the Sabra massacre began proceedings in Belgium to have Sharon indicted on alleged war crimes charges. Elie Hobeika, the leader of the Phalange militia who carried out the massacres, was assassinated in January 2002, several months before he was scheduled to testify trial. Prior to his assassination, he had "specifically stated that he did not plan to identify Sharon as being responsible for Sabra and Shatila." Political downturn and recovery After his dismissal from the Defense Ministry post, Sharon remained in successive governments as a minister without portfolio (1983–1984), Minister for Trade and Industry (1984–1990), and Minister of Housing Construction (1990–1992). In the Knesset, he was member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense committee (1990–1992) and Chairman of the committee overseeing Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union. During this period he was a rival to then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, but failed in various bids to replace him as chairman of Likud. Their rivalry reached a head in February 1990, when Sharon grabbed the microphone from Shamir, who was addressing the Likud central committee, and famously exclaimed: "Who's for wiping out terrorism?" The incident was widely viewed as an apparent coup attempt against Shamir's leadership of the party. Sharon unsuccessfully challenged Shamir in the 1984 Herut leadership election and the 1992 Likud leadership election. In Benjamin Netanyahu's 1996–1999 government, Sharon was Minister of National Infrastructure (1996–98), and Foreign Minister (1998–99). Upon the election of the Barak Labor government, Sharon became leader of the Likud party. Opposition to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia Ariel Sharon criticised the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 as an act of "brutal interventionism". Sharon said both Serbia and Kosovo have been victims of violence. He said prior to the current Yugoslav campaign against Kosovo Albanians, Serbians were the targets of attacks in the Kosovo province. "Israel has a clear policy. We are against aggressive actions. We are against hurting innocent people. I hope that the sides will return to the negotiating table as soon as possible." During the crisis, Elyakim Haetzni said the Serbs should be the first to receive Israeli aid. "There are our traditional friends," he told Israel Radio." It was suggested that Sharon may have supported the Yugoslav position because of the Serbian population's history of saving Jews during the holocaust. On Sharon's death, Serbian minister Aleksandar Vulin stated: The Serbian people will remember Sharon for opposing the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against the former Yugoslavia and advocating respect for sovereignty of other nations and a policy of not interfering with their internal affairs. Campaign for Prime Minister, 2000–2001 On 28 September 2000, Sharon and an escort of over 1,000 Israeli police officers visited the Temple Mount complex, site of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, the holiest place in the world to Jews and the third holiest site in Islam. Sharon declared that the complex would remain under perpetual Israeli control. Palestinian commentators accused Sharon of purposely inflaming emotions with the event to provoke a violent response and obstruct success of delicate ongoing peace talks. On the following day, a large number of Palestinian demonstrators and an Israeli police contingent confronted each other at the site. According to the U.S. State Department, "Palestinians held large demonstrations and threw stones at police in the vicinity of the Western Wall. Police used rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition to disperse the demonstrators, killing 4 persons and injuring about 200." According to the government of Israel, 14 policemen were injured. Sharon's visit, a few months before his election as Prime Minister, came after archeologists claimed that extensive building operations at the site were destroying priceless antiquities. Sharon's supporters claim that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority planned the Second Intifada months prior to Sharon's visit. They state that Palestinian security chief Jabril Rajoub provided assurances that if Sharon did not enter the mosques, no problems would arise. They also often quote statements by Palestinian Authority officials, particularly Imad Falouji, the P.A. Communications Minister, who admitted months after Sharon's visit that the violence had been planned in July, far in advance of Sharon's visit, stating the intifada "was carefully planned since the return of (Palestinian President) Yasser Arafat from Camp David negotiations rejecting the U.S. conditions". According to the Mitchell Report, the government of Israel asserted that the immediate catalyst for the violence was the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations on 25 July 2000 and the "widespread appreciation in the international community of Palestinian responsibility for the impasse." In this view, Palestinian violence was planned by the PA leadership, and was aimed at "provoking and incurring Palestinian casualties as a means of regaining the diplomatic initiative." The Mitchell Report found that the Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada. But it was poorly timed and the provocative effect should have been foreseen; indeed, it was foreseen by those who urged that the visit be prohibited. More significant were the events that followed: The decision of the Israeli police on 29 September to use lethal means against the Palestinian demonstrators. In addition, the report stated, Accordingly, we have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA [Palestinian Authority] to initiate a campaign of violence at the first opportunity; or to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the GOI [Government of Israel] to respond with lethal force. The Or Commission, an Israeli panel of inquiry appointed to investigate the October 2000 events, criticised the Israeli police for being unprepared for the riots and possibly using excessive force to disperse the mobs, resulting in the deaths of 12 Arab Israeli, one Jewish and one Palestinian citizens. Prime Minister (2001–2006) After the collapse of Barak's government, Sharon was elected Prime Minister on 6 February 2001, defeating Barak 62 percent to 38 percent. Sharon's senior adviser was Raanan Gissin. In his first act as prime minister, Sharon invited the Labor Party to join in a coalition with Likud. After Israel was struck by a wave of suicide bombings in 2002, Sharon decided to launch Operation Defensive Shield and began the construction of a barrier around the West Bank. A survey conducted by Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Center in May 2004 found that 80% of Jewish Israelis believed that the Israel Defense Forces had succeeded in militarily countering the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The election of the more pro-Russian Sharon, as well as the more pro-Israel Vladimir Putin, led to an improvement in Israel–Russia relations. In September 2003, Sharon became the first prime minister of Israel to visit India, saying that Israel regarded India as one of the most important countries in the world. Some analysts speculated on the development of a three-way military axis of New Delhi, Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem. On 20 July 2004, Sharon called on French Jews to emigrate from France to Israel immediately, in light of an increase in antisemitism in France (94 antisemitic assaults were reported in the first six months of 2004, compared to 47 in 2003). France has the third-largest Jewish population in the world (about 600,000 people). Sharon observed that an "unfettered anti-Semitism" reigned in France. The French government responded by describing his comments as "unacceptable", as did the French representative Jewish organization CRIF, which denied Sharon's claim of intense anti-Semitism in French society. An Israeli spokesperson later claimed that Sharon had been misunderstood. France then postponed a visit by Sharon. Upon his visit, both Sharon and French President Jacques Chirac were described as showing a willingness to put the issue behind them. Unilateral disengagement In September 2001, Sharon stated for the first time that Palestinians should have the right to establish their own land west of the Jordan River. In May 2003, Sharon endorsed the Road Map for Peace put forth by the United States, the European Union and Russia, which opened a dialogue with Mahmud Abbas, and stated his commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state in the future. He embarked on a course of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, while maintaining control of its coastline and airspace. Sharon's plan was welcomed by both the Palestinian Authority and Israel's left wing as a step towards a final peace settlement. However, it was greeted with opposition from within his own Likud party and from other right wing Israelis, on national security, military, and religious grounds. Disengagement from Gaza On 1 December 2004, Sharon dismissed five ministers from the Shinui party for voting against the government's 2005 budget. In January 2005, Sharon formed a national unity government that included representatives of Likud, Labor, and Meimad and Degel HaTorah as "out-of-government" supporters without any seats in the government (United Torah Judaism parties usually reject having ministerial offices as a policy). Between 16 and 30 August 2005, Sharon controversially expelled 9,480 Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank. Once it became clear that the evictions were definitely going ahead, a group of conservative Rabbis, led by Yosef Dayan, placed an ancient curse on Sharon known as the Pulsa diNura, calling on the Angel of Death to intervene and kill him. After Israeli soldiers bulldozed every settlement structure except for several former synagogues, Israeli soldiers formally left Gaza on 11 September 2005 and closed the border fence at Kissufim. While his decision to withdraw from Gaza sparked bitter protests from members of the Likud party and the settler movement, opinion polls showed that it was a popular move among most of the Israeli electorate, with more than 80 percent of Israelis backing the plans. On 27 September 2005, Sharon narrowly defeated a leadership challenge by a 52–48 percent vote. The move was initiated within the central committee of the governing Likud party by Sharon's main rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, who had left the cabinet to protest Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza. The measure was an attempt by Netanyahu to call an early primary in November 2005 to choose the party's leader. Founding of Kadima On 21 November 2005, Sharon resigned as head of Likud, and dissolved parliament to form a new centrist party called Kadima ("Forward"). November polls indicated that Sharon was likely to be returned to the prime ministership. On 20 December 2005, Sharon's longtime rival Netanyahu was elected his successor as leader of Likud. Following Sharon's incapacitation, Ehud Olmert replaced Sharon as Kadima's leader, for the nearing general elections. Likud, along with the Labor Party, were Kadimas chief rivals in the March 2006 elections. Sharon's stroke occurred a few months before he had been expected to win a new election and was widely interpreted as planning on "clearing Israel out of most of the West Bank", in a series of unilateral withdrawals. In the elections, which saw Israel's lowest-ever voter turnout of 64 percent (the number usually averages on the high 70%), Kadima, headed by Olmert, received the most Knesset seats, followed by Labor. The new governing coalition installed in May 2006 included Kadima, with Olmert as Prime Minister, Labor (including Amir Peretz as Defense Minister), the Pensioners' Party (Gil), the Shas religious party, and Israel Beytenu. Alleged fundraising irregularities and Greek island affair During the latter part of his career, Sharon was investigated for alleged involvement in a number of financial scandals, in particular, the Greek island affair and irregularities of fundraising during the 1999 election campaign. In the Greek island affair, Sharon was accused of promising (during his term as Foreign Minister) to help Israeli businessman David Appel in his development project on a Greek island in exchange for large consultancy payments to Sharon's son Gilad. The charges were later dropped due to lack of evidence. In the 1999 election fundraising scandal, Sharon was not charged with any wrongdoing, but his son Omri, a Knesset member at the time, was charged and sentenced in 2006 to nine months in prison. To avoid a potential conflict of interest in relation to these investigations, Sharon was not involved in the confirmation of the appointment of a new attorney general, Menahem Mazuz, in 2005. On 10 December 2005, Israeli police raided Martin Schlaff's apartment in Jerusalem. Another suspect in the case was Robert Nowikovsky, an Austrian involved in Russian state-owned company Gazprom's business activities in Europe. According to Haaretz, "The $3 million that parachuted into Gilad and Omri Sharon's bank account toward the end of 2002 was transferred there in the context of a consultancy contract for development of kolkhozes (collective farms) in Russia. Gilad Sharon was brought into the campaign to make the wilderness bloom in Russia by Getex, a large Russian-based exporter of seeds (peas, millet, wheat) from Eastern Europe. Getex also has ties with Israeli firms involved in exporting wheat from Ukraine, for example. The company owns farms in Eastern Europe and is considered large and prominent in its field. It has its Vienna offices in the same building as Jurimex, which was behind the $1-million guarantee to the Yisrael Beiteinu party." On 17 December, police found evidence of a $3 million bribe paid to Sharon's sons. Shortly afterwards, Sharon suffered a stroke. Illness, incapacitation and death (2006–14) Sharon had been obese since the 1980s, and also had suspected chronic high blood pressure and high cholesterol – at tall, he was reputed to weigh . Stories of Sharon's appetite and obesity were legendary in Israel. He would often joke about his love of food and expansive girth. His staff car would reportedly be stocked with snacks, vodka, and caviar. In October 2004 when asked why he did not wear a bulletproof vest despite frequent death threats, Sharon smiled and replied, "There is none that fits my size". He was a daily consumer of cigars and luxury foods. Numerous attempts by doctors, friends, and staff to impose a balanced diet on Sharon were unsuccessful. Sharon was hospitalized on 18 December 2005, after suffering a minor ischemic stroke. During his hospital stay, doctors discovered a heart defect requiring surgery and ordered bed rest pending a cardiac catheterization scheduled for 5 January 2006. Instead, Sharon immediately returned to work and suffered a hemorrhagic stroke on 4 January. He was rushed to Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. After two surgeries lasting 7 and 14 hours, doctors stopped the bleeding in Sharon's brain, but were unable to prevent him from entering into a coma. Subsequent media reports indicated that Sharon had been diagnosed with cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) during his December hospitalisation. Hadassah Hospital Director Shlomo Mor-Yosef declined to respond to comments that the combination of CAA and blood thinners after Sharon's December stroke might have caused his more serious subsequent stroke. Ehud Olmert became Acting Prime Minister the night of Sharon's second stroke, while Sharon officially remained in office. Knesset elections followed in March, with Olmert and Sharon's Kadima party winning a plurality. The next month, the Israeli Cabinet declared Sharon permanently incapacitated and Olmert became Interim Prime Minister on 14 April 2006 and Prime Minister in his own right on 4 May. Sharon underwent a series of subsequent surgeries related to his state. In May 2006, he was transferred to a long-term care facility in Sheba Medical Center. In July of that year, he was briefly taken to the hospital's intensive care unit to be treated for bacteria in his blood, before returning to the long-term care facility on 6 November 2006. Sharon would remain at Sheba Medical Center until his death. Medical experts indicated that his cognitive abilities had likely been destroyed by the stroke. His condition worsened from late 2013, and Sharon suffered from renal failure on 1 January 2014. After spending eight years in a coma, Sharon died at 14:00 local time (12:00 UTC) on 11 January 2014. Sharon's state funeral was held on 13 January in accordance with Jewish burial customs, which require that interment take place as soon after death as possible. His body lay in state in the Knesset Plaza from 12 January until the official ceremony, followed by a funeral held at the family's ranch in the Negev Desert. Sharon was buried beside his wife, Lily. Personal life Sharon was married twice, to two sisters, Margalit and Lily Zimmerman, who were from Romania. Sharon met Margalit in 1947 when she was 16, while she was tending a vegetable field, and married her in 1953, shortly after becoming a military instructor. Margalit was a supervisory psychiatric nurse. They had one son, Gur. Margalit died in a car accident in May 1962 and Gur died in October 1967, aged 11, after a friend accidentally shot him while the two children were playing with a rifle at the Sharon family home. After Margalit's death, Sharon married her younger sister, Lily. They had two sons, Omri and Gilad, and six grandchildren. Lily Sharon died of lung cancer in 2000. Sharon's sister, Yehudit (Dita) married Dr. Shmuel Mandel. In the 1950s, the couple permanently left Israel and emigrated to the United States. This caused a permanent rift in the family. Shmuel and Vera Scheinerman were greatly hurt by their daughter's choice to leave Israel. As a result, Vera Scheinerman willed only a small part of her estate to Dita, an act which enraged her. At one point, Dita decided to return to Israel, but after Vera was informed by the Israel Lands Administration that it would not be legally possible to split the family property between Ariel and Dita, and informed her that she would not be able to build a home there, Dita, believing she was being lied to, permanently cut her family in Israel off, and refused to attend the funerals of her mother and sister-in-law. She reestablished contact after Sharon's stroke. Sharon's sister has rarely been mentioned in biographies of him: he himself rarely acknowledged her and only mentioned her twice in his autobiography. Recognition The Ariel Sharon Park, an environmental park near Tel Aviv, is named for him. In the Negev desert, the IDF is currently building its city of training bases, Camp Ariel Sharon. In total, a NIS 50 billion project, the city of bases is named after Ariel Sharon, the largest active construction project in Israel, it is to become the largest IDF base in Israel. Overview of offices held Sharon served as prime minister (Israel's head of government) from 7 March 2001 through 14 April 2006 (with Ehud Barak serving as acting prime minister beginning 4 January 2006, after Sharon slipped into a coma). As prime minister he led the 12th government during the 15th Knesset and the 13th government during the 16th Knesset. Sharon served in the Knesset, first for several months in 1973, and later from 1977 through 2006. Sharon. From July 1999 through July 2000, Sharon served as the unofficial/honorary Knesset's opposition leader. Thereafter, from July 2000 through March 2001, he served as the first official designated Knesset opposition leader. Sharon served as leader of the Likud party from 1999 through 2005, leaving to create Kadima which he led from 2006 through early 2006 (when he fell into a coma). In addition to these positions and ministerial roles, Sharon also served as a special aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from June 1975 through March 1976. Ministerial posts Electoral history 2001 direct election for Prime Minister Party leadership elections References Further reading Ben Shaul, Moshe (editor); Generals of Israel, Tel-Aviv: Hadar Publishing House, Ltd., 1968. Uri Dan; Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait, Palgrave Macmillan, October 2006, 320 pages. . Ariel Sharon, with David Chanoff; Warrior: The Autobiography of Ariel Sharon, Simon & Schuster, 2001, . Gilad Sharon, (translated by Mitch Ginsburg); Sharon: The Life of a Leader, HarperCollins Publishers, 2011, . Nir Hefez, Gadi Bloom, (translated by Mitch Ginsburg); Ariel Sharon: A Life, Random House, October 2006, 512 pages, . Freddy Eytan, (translated by Robert Davies); Ariel Sharon: A Life in Times of Turmoil, translation of Sharon: le bras de fer, Studio 8 Books and Music, 2006, . Abraham Rabinovich; The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, 2005, . Ariel Sharon, official biography, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Tzvi T. Avisar; Sharon: Five years forward, Publisher House, March 2011, 259 pages, Official website, . External links Three recordings from Sharon's Military Career, published by Israel State Archives: 1928 births 2014 deaths Deaths from kidney failure Haganah members Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Israeli generals Israeli Ashkenazi Jews Leaders of political parties in Israel Israeli people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent Israeli people of the Yom Kippur War Jewish agnostics Jewish military personnel Kadima politicians Likud politicians Members of the 8th Knesset (1974–1977) Members of the 9th Knesset (1977–1981) Members of the 10th Knesset (1981–1984) Members of the 11th Knesset (1984–1988) Members of the 12th Knesset (1988–1992) Members of the 13th Knesset (1992–1996) Members of the 14th Knesset (1996–1999) Members of the 15th Knesset (1999–2003) Members of the 16th Knesset (2003–2006) Ministers of Agriculture of Israel Ministers of Defense of Israel Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Israel Ministers of Health of Israel Ministers of Internal Affairs of Israel Moshavniks Prime Ministers of Israel Shlomtzion (political party) politicians Tel Aviv University alumni People with disorders of consciousness People with severe brain damage Israeli people of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Likud leaders Israeli autobiographers

In geometry, a convex uniform honeycomb is a uniform tessellation which fills three-dimensional Euclidean space with non-overlapping convex uniform polyhedral cells. Twenty-eight such honeycombs are known: the familiar cubic honeycomb and 7 truncations thereof; the alternated cubic honeycomb and 4 truncations thereof; 10 prismatic forms based on the uniform plane tilings (11 if including the cubic honeycomb); 5 modifications of some of the above by elongation and/or gyration. They can be considered the three-dimensional analogue to the uniform tilings of the plane. The Voronoi diagram of any lattice forms a convex uniform honeycomb in which the cells are zonohedra. History 1900: Thorold Gosset enumerated the list of semiregular convex polytopes with regular cells (Platonic solids) in his publication On the Regular and Semi-Regular Figures in Space of n Dimensions, including one regular cubic honeycomb, and two semiregular forms with tetrahedra and octahedra. 1905: Alfredo Andreini enumerated 25 of these tessellations. 1991: Norman Johnson's manuscript Uniform Polytopes identified the list of 28. 1994: Branko Grünbaum, in his paper Uniform tilings of 3-space, also independently enumerated all 28, after discovering errors in Andreini's publication. He found the 1905 paper, which listed 25, had 1 wrong, and 4 being missing. Grünbaum states in this paper that Norman Johnson deserves priority for achieving the same enumeration in 1991. He also mentions that I. Alexeyev of Russia had contacted him regarding a putative enumeration of these forms, but that Grünbaum was unable to verify this at the time. 2006: George Olshevsky, in his manuscript Uniform Panoploid Tetracombs, along with repeating the derived list of 11 convex uniform tilings, and 28 convex uniform honeycombs, expands a further derived list of 143 convex uniform tetracombs (Honeycombs of uniform 4-polytopes in 4-space). Only 14 of the convex uniform polyhedra appear in these patterns: three of the five Platonic solids, six of the thirteen Archimedean solids, and five of the infinite family of prisms. Names This set can be called the regular and semiregular honeycombs. It has been called the Archimedean honeycombs by analogy with the convex uniform (non-regular) polyhedra, commonly called Archimedean solids. Recently Conway has suggested naming the set as the Architectonic tessellations and the dual honeycombs as the Catoptric tessellations. The individual honeycombs are listed with names given to them by Norman Johnson. (Some of the terms used below are defined in Uniform 4-polytope#Geometric derivations for 46 nonprismatic Wythoffian uniform 4-polytopes) For cross-referencing, they are given with list indices from Andreini (1-22), Williams(1-2,9-19), Johnson (11-19, 21–25, 31–34, 41–49, 51–52, 61–65), and Grünbaum(1-28). Coxeter uses δ4 for a cubic honeycomb, hδ4 for an alternated cubic honeycomb, qδ4 for a quarter cubic honeycomb, with subscripts for other forms based on the ring patterns of the Coxeter diagram. Compact Euclidean uniform tessellations (by their infinite Coxeter group families) The fundamental infinite Coxeter groups for 3-space are: The , [4,3,4], cubic, (8 unique forms plus one alternation) The , [4,31,1], alternated cubic, (11 forms, 3 new) The cyclic group, [(3,3,3,3)] or [3[4]], (5 forms, one new) There is a correspondence between all three families. Removing one mirror from produces , and removing one mirror from produces . This allows multiple constructions of the same honeycombs. If cells are colored based on unique positions within each Wythoff construction, these different symmetries can be shown. In addition there are 5 special honeycombs which don't have pure reflectional symmetry and are constructed from reflectional forms with elongation and gyration operations. The total unique honeycombs above are 18. The prismatic stacks from infinite Coxeter groups for 3-space are: The ×, [4,4,2,∞] prismatic group, (2 new forms) The ×, [6,3,2,∞] prismatic group, (7 unique forms) The ×, [(3,3,3),2,∞] prismatic group, (No new forms) The ××, [∞,2,∞,2,∞] prismatic group, (These all become a cubic honeycomb) In addition there is one special elongated form of the triangular prismatic honeycomb. The total unique prismatic honeycombs above (excluding the cubic counted previously) are 10. Combining these counts, 18 and 10 gives us the total 28 uniform honeycombs. The C̃3, [4,3,4] group (cubic) The regular cubic honeycomb, represented by Schläfli symbol {4,3,4}, offers seven unique derived uniform honeycombs via truncation operations. (One redundant form, the runcinated cubic honeycomb, is included for completeness though identical to the cubic honeycomb.) The reflectional symmetry is the affine Coxeter group [4,3,4]. There are four index 2 subgroups that generate alternations: [1+,4,3,4], [(4,3,4,2+)], [4,3+,4], and [4,3,4]+, with the first two generated repeated forms, and the last two are nonuniform. B̃3, [4,31,1] group The , [4,3] group offers 11 derived forms via truncation operations, four being unique uniform honeycombs. There are 3 index 2 subgroups that generate alternations: [1+,4,31,1], [4,(31,1)+], and [4,31,1]+. The first generates repeated honeycomb, and the last two are nonuniform but included for completeness. The honeycombs from this group are called alternated cubic because the first form can be seen as a cubic honeycomb with alternate vertices removed, reducing cubic cells to tetrahedra and creating octahedron cells in the gaps. Nodes are indexed left to right as 0,1,0',3 with 0' being below and interchangeable with 0. The alternate cubic names given are based on this ordering. Ã3, [3[4]] group There are 5 forms constructed from the , [3[4]] Coxeter group, of which only the quarter cubic honeycomb is unique. There is one index 2 subgroup [3[4]]+ which generates the snub form, which is not uniform, but included for completeness. Nonwythoffian forms (gyrated and elongated) Three more uniform honeycombs are generated by breaking one or another of the above honeycombs where its faces form a continuous plane, then rotating alternate layers by 60 or 90 degrees (gyration) and/or inserting a layer of prisms (elongation). The elongated and gyroelongated alternated cubic tilings have the same vertex figure, but are not alike. In the elongated form, each prism meets a tetrahedron at one triangular end and an octahedron at the other. In the gyroelongated form, prisms that meet tetrahedra at both ends alternate with prisms that meet octahedra at both ends. The gyroelongated triangular prismatic tiling has the same vertex figure as one of the plain prismatic tilings; the two may be derived from the gyrated and plain triangular prismatic tilings, respectively, by inserting layers of cubes. Prismatic stacks Eleven prismatic tilings are obtained by stacking the eleven uniform plane tilings, shown below, in parallel layers. (One of these honeycombs is the cubic, shown above.) The vertex figure of each is an irregular bipyramid whose faces are isosceles triangles. The C̃2×Ĩ1(∞), [4,4,2,∞], prismatic group There are only 3 unique honeycombs from the square tiling, but all 6 tiling truncations are listed below for completeness, and tiling images are shown by colors corresponding to each form. The G̃2xĨ1(∞), [6,3,2,∞] prismatic group Enumeration of Wythoff forms All nonprismatic Wythoff constructions by Coxeter groups are given below, along with their alternations. Uniform solutions are indexed with Branko Grünbaum's listing. Green backgrounds are shown on repeated honeycombs, with the relations are expressed in the extended symmetry diagrams. Examples All 28 of these tessellations are found in crystal arrangements. The alternated cubic honeycomb is of special importance since its vertices form a cubic close-packing of spheres. The space-filling truss of packed octahedra and tetrahedra was apparently first discovered by Alexander Graham Bell and independently re-discovered by Buckminster Fuller (who called it the octet truss and patented it in the 1940s). . Octet trusses are now among the most common types of truss used in construction. Frieze forms If cells are allowed to be uniform tilings, more uniform honeycombs can be defined: Families: x: [4,4,2] Cubic slab honeycombs (3 forms) x: [6,3,2] Tri-hexagonal slab honeycombs (8 forms) x: [(3,3,3),2] Triangular slab honeycombs (No new forms) xx: [∞,2,2] = Cubic column honeycombs (1 form) x: [p,2,∞] Polygonal column honeycombs xx: [∞,2,∞,2] = [4,4,2] - = (Same as cubic slab honeycomb family) Scaliform honeycomb A scaliform honeycomb is vertex-transitive, like a uniform honeycomb, with regular polygon faces while cells and higher elements are only required to be orbiforms, equilateral, with their vertices lying on hyperspheres. For 3D honeycombs, this allows a subset of Johnson solids along with the uniform polyhedra. Some scaliforms can be generated by an alternation process, leaving, for example, pyramid and cupola gaps. Hyperbolic forms There are 9 Coxeter group families of compact uniform honeycombs in hyperbolic 3-space, generated as Wythoff constructions, and represented by ring permutations of the Coxeter-Dynkin diagrams for each family. From these 9 families, there are a total of 76 unique honeycombs generated: [3,5,3] : - 9 forms [5,3,4] : - 15 forms [5,3,5] : - 9 forms [5,31,1] : - 11 forms (7 overlap with [5,3,4] family, 4 are unique) [(4,3,3,3)] : - 9 forms [(4,3,4,3)] : - 6 forms [(5,3,3,3)] : - 9 forms [(5,3,4,3)] : - 9 forms [(5,3,5,3)] : - 6 forms The full list of hyperbolic uniform honeycombs has not been proven and an unknown number of non-Wythoffian forms exist. One known example is in the {3,5,3} family. Paracompact hyperbolic forms There are also 23 paracompact Coxeter groups of rank 4. These families can produce uniform honeycombs with unbounded facets or vertex figure, including ideal vertices at infinity: References John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel, Chaim Goodman-Strauss, (2008) The Symmetries of Things, (Chapter 21, Naming the Archimedean and Catalan polyhedra and tilings, Architectonic and Catoptric tessellations, p 292–298, includes all the nonprismatic forms) Branko Grünbaum, (1994) Uniform tilings of 3-space. Geombinatorics 4, 49 - 56. Norman Johnson (1991) Uniform Polytopes, Manuscript (Chapter 5: Polyhedra packing and space filling) Kaleidoscopes: Selected Writings of H.S.M. Coxeter, edited by F. Arthur Sherk, Peter McMullen, Anthony C. Thompson, Asia Ivic Weiss, Wiley-Interscience Publication, 1995, (Paper 22) H.S.M. Coxeter, Regular and Semi Regular Polytopes I, [Math. Zeit. 46 (1940) 380–407, MR 2,10] (1.9 Uniform space-fillings) A. Andreini, (1905) Sulle reti di poliedri regolari e semiregolari e sulle corrispondenti reti correlative (On the regular and semiregular nets of polyhedra and on the corresponding correlative nets), Mem. Società Italiana della Scienze, Ser.3, 14 75–129. PDF D. M. Y. Sommerville, (1930) An Introduction to the Geometry of n Dimensions. New York, E. P. Dutton, . 196 pp. (Dover Publications edition, 1958) Chapter X: The Regular Polytopes Chapter 5. Joining polyhedra Crystallography of Quasicrystals: Concepts, Methods and Structures by Walter Steurer, Sofia Deloudi (2009), p. 54-55. 12 packings of 2 or more uniform polyhedra with cubic symmetry External links Uniform Honeycombs in 3-Space VRML models Elementary Honeycombs Vertex transitive space filling honeycombs with non-uniform cells. Uniform partitions of 3-space, their relatives and embedding, 1999 The Uniform Polyhedra Virtual Reality Polyhedra The Encyclopedia of Polyhedra octet truss animation Review: A. F. Wells, Three-dimensional nets and polyhedra, H. S. M. Coxeter (Source: Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. Volume 84, Number 3 (1978), 466-470.) Honeycombs (geometry)

The Admiralty was the British government department responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of its history, from the early 18th century until its abolition, the role of the Lord High Admiral was almost invariably put "in commission" and exercised by the Lords Commissioner of the Admiralty, who sat on the governing Board of Admiralty, rather than by a single person. The Admiralty was replaced by the Admiralty Board in 1964, as part of the reforms that created the Ministry of Defence and its Navy Department (later Navy Command). Before the Acts of Union 1707, the Office of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs administered the Royal Navy of the Kingdom of England, which merged with the Royal Scots Navy and the absorbed the responsibilities of the Lord High Admiral of the Kingdom of Scotland with the unification of the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Admiralty was among the most important departments of the British Government, because of the Royal Navy's role in the expansion and maintenance of the English overseas possessions in the 17th century, the British Empire in the in the 18th century, and subsequently. The modern Admiralty Board, to which the functions of the Admiralty were transferred in 1964, is a committee of the tri-service Defence Council of the United Kingdom. This Admiralty Board meets only twice a year, and the day-to-day running of the Royal Navy is controlled by a Navy Board (not to be confused with the historic Navy Board). It is common for the various authorities now in charge of the Royal Navy to be referred to as simply 'The Admiralty'. The title of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom was vested in the monarch from 1964 to 2011. The title was awarded to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh by Queen Elizabeth II on his 90th birthday and since his 2021 death has reverted to the monarch. There also continues to be a Vice-Admiral of the United Kingdom and a Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom, both of which are honorary offices. History The office of Admiral of England (later Lord Admiral, and later Lord High Admiral) was created around 1400; there had previously been Admirals of the northern and western seas. King Henry VIII established the Council of the Marine—later to become the Navy Board—in 1546, to oversee administrative affairs of the naval service. Operational control of the Royal Navy remained the responsibility of the Lord High Admiral, who was one of the nine Great Officers of State. This management approach would continue in force in the Royal Navy until 1832. King Charles I put the office of Lord High Admiral into commission in 1628, and control of the Royal Navy passed to a committee in the form of the Board of Admiralty. The office of Lord High Admiral passed a number of times in and out of commission until 1709, after which the office was almost permanently in commission (the last Lord High Admiral being the future King William IV in the early 19th century). In this organization a dual system operated the Lord High Admiral (from 1546) then Commissioners of the Admiralty (from 1628) exercised the function of general control (military administration) of the Navy and they were usually responsible for the conduct of any war, while the actual supply lines, support and services were managed by four principal officers, namely, the Treasurer, Comptroller, Surveyor and Clerk of the Acts, responsible individually for finance, supervision of accounts, Shipbuilding and maintenance of ships, and record of business. These principal officers came to be known as the Navy Board responsible for 'civil administration' of the navy, from 1546 to 1832. This structure of administering the navy lasted for 285 years, however, the supply system was often inefficient and corrupt its deficiencies were due as much to its limitations of the times they operated in. The various functions within the Admiralty were not coordinated effectively and lacked inter-dependency with each other, with the result that in 1832, Sir James Graham abolished the Navy Board and merged its functions within those of the Board of Admiralty. At the time this had distinct advantages; however, it failed to retain the principle of distinctions between the Admiralty and supply, and a lot of bureaucracy followed with the merger. In 1860 saw big growth in the development of technical crafts, the expansion of more admiralty branches that really began with age of steam that would have an enormous influence on the navy and naval thought. Between 1860 and 1908, there was no real study of strategy and of staff work conducted within the naval service; it was practically ignored. All the Navy's talent flowed to the great technical universities. This school of thought for the next 50 years was exclusively technically based. The first serious attempt to introduce a sole management body to administer the naval service manifested itself in the creation of the Admiralty Navy War Council in 1909. It was believed by officials within the Admiralty at this time that the running of war was quite a simple matter for any flag officer who required no formal training. However, this mentality would be severely questioned with the advent of the Agadir crisis, when the Admiralty's war plans were heavily criticized. Following this, a new advisory body called the Admiralty War Staff was then instituted in 1912, headed by the Chief of the War Staff who was responsible for administering three new sub-divisions responsible for operations, intelligence and mobilisation. The new War Staff had hardly found its feet and it continually struggled with the opposition to its existence by senior officers they were categorically opposed to a staff. The deficiencies of the system within this department of state could be seen in the conduct of the Dardanelles campaign. There were no mechanisms in place to answer the big strategic questions. A Trade Division was created in 1914. Sir John Jellicoe came to the Admiralty in 1916. He re-organized the war staff as following: Chief of War Staff, Operations, Intelligence, Signal Section, Mobilisation, Trade. It was not until 1917 that the admiralty department was again properly reorganized and began to function as a professional military staff. In May 1917, the term "Admiralty War Staff" was renamed and that department and its functional role were superseded by a new "Admiralty Naval Staff"; in addition, the newly created office of Chief of the Naval Staff was merged in the office of the First Sea Lord. Also appointed was a new post, that of Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, and an Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff; all were given seats on the Board of Admiralty. This for the first time gave the naval staff direct representation on the board; the presence of three senior naval senior members on the board ensured the necessary authority to carry through any operation of war. The Deputy Chief of Naval Staff would direct all operations and movements of the fleet, while the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff would be responsible for mercantile movements and anti-submarine operations. The office of Controller would be re-established to deal with all questions relating to supply; on 6 September 1917, a Deputy First Sea Lord, was added to the Board who would administer operations abroad and deal with questions of foreign policy. In October 1917, the development of the staff was carried one step further by the creation of two sub-committees of the Board—the Operations Committee and the Maintenance Committee. The First Lord of the Admiralty was chairman of both committees, and the Operations Committee consisted of the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, the Deputy First Sea Lord, Assistant Chief of Naval Staff, and Fifth Sea Lord. The Maintenance Committee consisted of the Deputy First Sea Lord (representing the operations committee), Second Sea Lord (personnel), Third Sea Lord (materiel), Fourth Sea Lord (transport and stores), Civil Lord, Controller and Financial Secretary. Full operational control of the Royal Navy was finally handed over to the Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) by an order in Council, effective October 1917, under which he became responsible for the issuing of orders affecting all war operations directly to the fleet. It also empowered the CNS to issue orders in their own name, as opposed to them previously being issued by the Permanent Secretary of the Admiralty in the name of the Board. In 1964, the Admiralty—along with the War Office and the Air Ministry—were abolished as separate departments of state, and placed under one single new Ministry of Defence. Within the expanded Ministry of Defence are the new Admiralty Board which has a separate Navy Board responsible for the day-to-day running of the Royal Navy, the Army Board and the Air Force Board, each headed by the Secretary of State for Defence. This structure remained in place until the department was abolished in 1964; the operational control and this system still remains in place with the Royal Navy today. For the organisational structure of the admiralty department and how it developed through the centuries see the following articles below. Organizational structure In the 20th century the structure of the Admiralty Headquarters was predominantly organized into four parts: The Board of Admiralty, which directs and controls the whole machine chaired by a civilian government minister the First Lord of the Admiralty. His chief military adviser was the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff as the Senior Naval Lord to the board. The Admiralty Naval Staff, advised and assisted the Board in chief strategic and operational planning, in the distributing of fleets and the allocating of assets to major naval commands and stations and in formulating official policy on tactical doctrine and requirements in regard to men and material. In order to deliver this the Naval Staff was organised into specialist Divisions and Sections. When the Admiralty unified with the Ministry of Defence in 1964 they were re designated as Directorates of the Naval Staff. The Admiralty Departments, which provides the men, ships, aircraft and supplies to carry out the approved policy. The departments are superintended by the various offices of the Sea Lords. The Department of the Permanent Secretary which was the general co-ordinating agency, regulating naval finance, providing advice on policy, conducing all correspondence on behalf of the Board and maintaining admiralty records. Its primary component to deliver this is the Admiralty Secretariat, sections of the Secretariat (other than those which provide Common Services) were known as Branches. Board of Admiralty When the office of Lord High Admiral was in commission, as it was for most of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, until it reverted to the Crown, it was exercised by a Board of Admiralty, officially known as the Commissioners for Exercising the Office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, &c. (alternatively of England, Great Britain or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland depending on the period). The Board of Admiralty consisted of a number of Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. The Lords Commissioners were always a mixture of admirals, known as Naval Lords or Sea Lords and Civil Lords, normally politicians. The quorum of the Board was two commissioners and a secretary. The president of the Board was known as the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was a member of the Cabinet. After 1806, the First Lord of the Admiralty was always a civilian, while the professional head of the navy came to be (and is still today) known as the First Sea Lord. Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty (1628–1964) The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty were the members of The Board of Admiralty, which exercised the office of Lord High Admiral when it was not vested in a single person. The commissioners were a mixture of politicians without naval experience and professional naval officers, the proportion of naval officers generally increasing over time. Key Officials First Lord of the Admiralty The First Lord of the Admiralty or formally the Office of the First Lord of the Admiralty was the British government's senior civilian adviser on all naval affairs and the minister responsible for the direction and control of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs Office later the Department of Admiralty.(+) His office was supported by the Naval Secretariat. First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff The First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff was the Chief Naval Adviser on the Board of Admiralty to the First Lord and superintended the offices of the sea lords and the admiralty naval staff. Navy Board The Navy Board was an independent board from 1546 until 1628 when it became subordinate to, yet autonomous of the Board of Admiralty until 1832. Its principal commissioners of the Navy advised the board in relation to civil administration of the naval affairs. The Navy Board was based at the Navy Office. Board of Admiralty civilian members responsible other important civil functions Office of the Civil Lord of the Admiralty. Office of the Additional Civil Lord of the Admiralty. Office of the Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty. Admiralty Naval Staff It evolved from *Admiralty Navy War Council, (1909–1912) which in turn became the Admiralty War Staff, (1912–1917) before finally becoming the Admiralty Naval Staff in 1917. It was the former senior command, operational planning, policy and strategy department within the British Admiralty. It was established in 1917 and existed until 1964 when the department of the Admiralty was abolished, and the staff departments function continued within the Navy Department of the Ministry of Defence until 1971 when its functions became part of the new Naval Staff, Navy Department of the Ministry of Defence. Offices of the Naval Staff Office of Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff. Office of the Vice Chief of the Naval Staff. Offices of the Assistant Chiefs of the Naval Staff. Admiralty Departments The Admiralty Departments were distinct and component parts of the Department of Admiralty that were superintended by the various offices of the Sea Lords responsible for them; they were primarily administrative, research, scientific and logistical support organisations. The departments role was to provide the men, ships, aircraft and supplies to carry out the approved policy of the Board of Admiralty and conveyed to them during 20th century by the Admiralty Naval Staff. Offices of the Sea Lords Office of the Deputy First Sea Lord Office of the Second Sea Lord. Office of the Third Sea Lord. Office of the Fourth Sea Lord. Office of Fifth Sea Lord Department of the Permanent Secretary The Secretary's Department consisted of members of the civil service it was directed and controlled by a senior civil servant Permanent Secretary to the Board of Admiralty he was not a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty, he functioned as a member of the board, and attended all of its meetings. Organizational structure by time period Admiralty Buildings The Admiralty complex lies between Whitehall, Horse Guards Parade and The Mall and includes five inter-connected buildings. Since the Admiralty no longer exists as a department, these buildings are now used by separate government departments: The Admiralty The oldest building was long known simply as The Admiralty; it is now known officially as the Ripley Building, a three-storey U-shaped brick building designed by Thomas Ripley and completed in 1726. Alexander Pope implied that the architecture is rather dull, lacking either the vigour of the Baroque style, fading from fashion at the time, or the austere grandeur of the Palladian style just coming into vogue. It is mainly notable for being perhaps the first purpose-built office building in Great Britain. It contained the Admiralty board room, which is still used by the Admiralty, other state rooms, offices and apartments for the Lords of the Admiralty. Robert Adam designed the screen, which was added to the entrance front in 1788. The Ripley Building is currently occupied by the International Development section of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Admiralty House Admiralty House is a moderately proportioned mansion to the south of the Ripley Building, built in the late 18th century as the residence of the First Lord of the Admiralty from 1788. It served that purpose until 1964. Winston Churchill was one of its occupants in 1911–1915 and 1939–1940. It lacks its own entrance from Whitehall and is entered through the Ripley Courtyard or Ripley Building. It is a three-storey building in yellow brick with neoclassical interiors. Its rear facade faces directly onto Horse Guards Parade. The architect was Samuel Pepys Cockerell. The ground floor comprises meeting rooms for the Cabinet Office and the upper floors are three ministerial residences. There was formerly also an Admiralty House located at, or near to, the main base and dockyard in each station of the Royal Navy for use of the Commander-in-Chief. Each property was designated as the Admiralty House named for its location, but often possessed a property name (similarly to stone frigates being commissioned with a name distinct from their functional designations, such as HMS Malabar, functionally Her Majesty's Naval Base, Bermuda, which closed in 1995). The Commander-in-Chief of the station used the Admiralty House when based ashore, but was otherwise based afloat aboard the flagship of the squadron. There may have been more than one Admiralty House per station, as with the North America Station (later the North America and West Indies Station, and finally the America and West Indies Station), the squadron of which was for a time based in Bermuda during the winter months and Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the summers, before Bermuda became the year-round headquarters. As separate stations were merged, such as the Jamaica Station being merged with the North America Station to create the North America and West Indies Station, former Admiralty Houses would cease to have that function, either being disposed of (if having been on Admiralty property) or re-purposed. Other Admiralty Houses or former Admiralty Houses include: Admiralty House, Bermuda (successively Rose Hill, Mount Wyndham, and St. John's Hill, which was re-named Clarence Hill) Admiralty House, English Harbour, Antigua, Leeward Islands (now housing Nelson's Dockyard Museum). Admiralty House, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (now the Naval Museum of Halifax) Admiralty House, Hong Kong (Marble Hall) Admiralty House, Malta Admiralty House, Mount Wise, Devonport, Plymouth, England (Hamoaze House) Admiralty House, Mount Wise, Devonport, Plymouth, England (formerly Government House) Admiralty House, Port Royal, Jamaica Admiralty House, Singapore Admiralty House, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Admiralty House, Trincomalee, Ceylon There are two former naval properties today known as Admiralty House, though it is unclear whether they were ever so designated by the Admiralty, or ever served that function: Admiralty House, Mount Pearl, Newfoundland (a former wireless station.) Admiralty House, Gibraltar (Built in 1741. A hospital from 1746 to 1922. Accommodation for naval and military medical staff and families, and an occasional prison for prisoners-of-war). Admiralty Extension This is the largest of the Admiralty Buildings. It was begun in the late 19th century and redesigned while the construction was in progress to accommodate the extra offices needed by the naval arms race with the German Empire. It is a red brick building with white stone, detailing in the Queen Anne style with French influences. It has been used by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from the 1960s to 2016. The Department for Education planned to move into the building in September 2017 following the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's decision to leave the building and consolidate its London staff into one building on King Charles Street. A change of contractor (BAM was replaced by Willmott Dixon) then delayed consolidation of the Department for Education to autumn 2018. In 2021, the building became the home of the Department for International Trade. Admiralty Arch Admiralty Arch is linked to the Old Admiralty Building by a bridge and is part of the ceremonial route from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace. In 2012, HM Government sold the building on a 125-year lease for £60m for a proposed redevelopment into a Waldorf Astoria luxury hotel and four apartments. The Admiralty Citadel This is a squat, windowless World War II fortress north west of Horse Guards Parade, now covered in ivy. See Military citadels under London for further details. "Admiralty" as a metonym for "sea power" In some cases, the term admiralty is used in a wider sense, as meaning sea power or rule over the seas, rather than in strict reference to the institution exercising such power. For example, the well-known lines from Kipling's Song of the Dead: See also Admiralty administration Admiralty chart Admiralty Peak Navy Department (Ministry of Defence) List of Lords High Admiral List of the First Lords of the Admiralty List of Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty Lord High Admiral of Scotland St Boniface's Catholic College References Further reading The Building Bradley, Simon, and Nikolaus Pevsner. London 6: Westminster (from the Buildings of England series). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003. . C. Hussey, "Admiralty Building, Whitehall", Country Life, 17 and 24 November 1923, pp. 684–692, 718–726. The Office Daniel A. Baugh, Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole (Princeton, 1965). Sir John Barrow, An Autobiographical Memoir of Sir John Barrow, Bart., Late of the Admiralty (London, 1847). John Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III: Its State and Direction (Cambridge, 1953). C. I. Hamilton, The Making of the Modern Admiralty: British Naval Policy-Making 1805–1927 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). C. I. Hamilton, "Selections from the Phinn Committee of Inquiry of October–November 1853 into the State of the Office of Secretary to the Admiralty, in The Naval Miscellany, volume V, edited by N. A. M. Rodger, (London: Navy Records Society, London, 1984). C. S. Knighton, Pepys and the Navy (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2003). Christopher Lloyd, Mr Barrow of the Admiralty (London, 1970). Malcolm H. Murfett, The First Sea Lords: From Fisher to Mountbatten (Westport: Praeger, 1995). Lady Murray, The Making of a Civil Servant: Sir Oswyn Murray, Secretary of the Admiralty 1917–1936 (London, 1940). N.A.M. Rodger, The Admiralty (Lavenham, 1979) J.C. Sainty, Admiralty Officials, 1660–1870 (London, 1975) Sir Charles Walker, Thirty-Six Years at the Admiralty (London, 1933) External links The Admiralty at the Survey of London online Defunct departments of the Government of the United Kingdom Royal Navy History of the Royal Navy 1964 disestablishments in the United Kingdom United Kingdom in World War II Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II

Ann Druyan ( ; born June 13, 1949) is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning American documentary producer and director specializing in the communication of science. She co-wrote the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981. She is the creator, producer, and writer of the 2014 sequel, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and its sequel series, Cosmos: Possible Worlds, as well as the book of the same name. She is credited with directing episodes of both series as well. In the late 1970s, Druyan became the Creative Director of NASA's Voyager Interstellar Message Project, which produced the golden discs affixed to both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. She also published a novel, A Famous Broken Heart, in 1977, and later co-wrote several best selling non-fiction books with Carl Sagan. Early life Druyan was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of Pearl A. () and Harry Druyan, who co-owned a knitwear firm. Druyan's early interest in math and science was, in her word, "derailed" when a junior high-school teacher ridiculed a question she asked about the universality of . "I raised my hand and said, 'You mean this applies to every circle in the universe?', and the teacher told me not to ask stupid questions. And there I was having this religious experience, and she made me feel like such a fool. I was completely flummoxed from then on until after college." Druyan characterized her three years at New York University as "disastrous", and it was only after she left school without graduating that she discovered the pre-Socratic philosophers and began educating herself, thus leading to a renewed interest in science. Career In the late 1970s, Druyan became the Creative Director of NASA's Voyager Interstellar Message Project. As creative director, Druyan worked with a team to design a complex message, including music and images, for possible alien civilizations. These golden phonograph records affixed to the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft are now beyond the outermost planets of the solar system, and Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space. Both records have a projected shelf life of one billion years. Druyan's role on the project was discussed on the July 8, 2018, 60 Minutes segment "The Little Spacecraft That Could". In the segment, Druyan explained her insistence that Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" be included on the Golden Record, saying: "...Johnny B. Goode, rock and roll, was the music of motion, of moving, getting to someplace you've never been before, and the odds are against you, but you want to go. That was Voyager." The segment also discussed Sagan's suggestion, in 1990, that Voyager 1 turn its cameras back towards Earth to take a series of photographs showing the planets of our solar system. The shots, showing Earth from a distance of 3.7 billion miles as a small point of bluish light, became the basis for Sagan's famous "Pale Blue Dot" passage, first published in Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994). During that time, Druyan also co-wrote (with Carl Sagan and Steven Soter) the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan. The thirteen-part series covered a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. It was highly acclaimed, and became the most widely watched series in the history of American public television at that time. The series won two Emmys and a Peabody Award, and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people. A book was also published to accompany the series. , it is still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. Druyan wrote and produced the 1987 PBS NOVA episode "Confessions of a Weaponeer" on the life of President Eisenhower's Science Advisor George Kistiakowsky. In 2000, Druyan, together with Steve Soter, co-wrote Passport to the Universe, the inaugural planetarium show for the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Natural History Museum's Hayden Planetarium. The attraction is narrated by Tom Hanks. Druyan and Soter also co-wrote The Search for Life: Are We Alone, narrated by Harrison Ford, which also debuted at the Hayden's Rose Center. In 2000, Druyan co-founded Cosmos Studios, Inc, with Joseph Firmage. As CEO of Cosmos Studios, Druyan produces science-based entertainment for all media. In addition to Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, Cosmos Studios has produced Cosmic Africa, Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, and the Emmy-nominated documentary Cosmic Journey: The Voyager Interstellar Mission and Message. In 2009, she distributed a series of podcasts called At Home in the Cosmos with Annie Druyan, in which she described her works, the life of her husband, Carl Sagan, and their marriage. Druyan was one of the three writers of the TV series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, along with Carl Sagan and Steven Soter. Druyan is credited, with Carl Sagan, as the co-creator and co-producer of the 1997 feature film Contact. In 2011, it was announced that Druyan would executive produce, co-write, and be one of the episodic directors for a sequel to Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, to be called Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which began airing in March 2014. Episodes premiered on Fox and also aired on National Geographic Channel on the following night. At the time of its release, Fox gave the series the largest global rollout of a television series ever, debuting it in 180 countries. The premiere episode was shown across nine of Fox's cable properties in addition to the broadcast network in a "roadblock" style premiere. The series went on to become the most-watched series ever for National Geographic Channel International, with at least some part of the 13-episode series watched by 135 million people, including 45 million in the U.S. In March 2020, a third season of Cosmos, named Cosmos: Possible Worlds, for which Druyan was executive producer, writer, and director, premiered on National Geographic. Druyan also said: "I very much have season four in mind, and I know what it's going to be. And I even know some of the stories that I want to tell in it." Writing Druyan's first novel, A Famous Broken Heart, was published in 1977. Druyan co-wrote six New York Times best-sellers with Carl Sagan, including: Comet, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and The Demon-Haunted World. She is co-author, along with Carl Sagan, F. D. Drake, Timothy Ferris, Jon Lomberg and Linda Salzman Sagan, of Murmurs Of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record. She also wrote the updated introduction to Sagan's book The Cosmic Connection and the epilogue of Billions and Billions. She wrote the introduction to, and edited The Varieties of Scientific Experience, published from Sagan's 1985 Gifford lectures. In February 2020, Druyan published Cosmos: Possible Worlds, a companion volume to the television series of the same name, which premiered in March 2020. Work in science Druyan is a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims for the Paranormal (CSICOP). Druyan served as program director of the first solar-sail deep-space mission, Cosmos 1, launched on a Russian ICBM in 2005. Druyan is involved in multiple Breakthrough Initiatives. With Frank Drake, Druyan is the co-chair of Breakthrough Message and also a member of Breakthrough Starshot. She is a member of the advisory board of The Carl Sagan Institute. Activism Druyan has for many years been a vocal advocate for nuclear disarmament. She was arrested three times at the Mercury, Nevada nuclear test site during Mikhail Gorbachev's unilateral moratorium on underground nuclear testing, with which President Ronald Reagan did not cooperate. This included an arrest in June 1986, when Druyan crossed a white painted line indicating the test site's boundary; Sagan, who attended the same protest with Druyan, was not arrested. In the early 1990s, Druyan worked with Sagan and then-Senator Al Gore, Jr. and a host of religious and scientific leaders to bring the scientific and religious worlds together in a unified effort to preserve the environment, resulting in the Declaration of the 'Mission to Washington. Druyan served as a founding director of the Children's Health Fund until the spring of 2004, a project that provides mobile pediatric care to homeless and disadvantaged children in more than half a dozen cities. She currently serves a member of their Advisory Board. Druyan has served on the Board of Directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) for over 10 years and was president from 2006 to 2010. Honors An asteroid discovered in 1998 was named in Druyan's honor by its discoverer Eleanor F. Helin. In a 2020 interview with Skeptical Inquirer, Druyan discussed 4970 Druyan and the asteroid named after her late husband, saying that 4970 Druyan is in a "wedding ring orbit" around the Sun with 2709 Sagan. Druyan was presented with a plaque on Sagan's sixtieth birthday, which is inscribed: "Asteroid 2709 Sagan in eternal companion orbit with asteroid 4970 Druyan, symbolic of their love and admiration for each other." In November 2006, Druyan was a speaker at "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival". In January 2007, she was a juror at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, responsible for selecting the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for films about science and technology. In November 2007, Druyan was awarded the title of "Humanist Laureate" by the International Academy of Humanism. In October 2019, the Center for Inquiry West opened the Carl Sagan–Ann Druyan Theater in Los Angeles. Religious and philosophical views In an interview with Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post, Druyan stated that her early interest in science stemmed from a fascination with Karl Marx. Achenbach commented that "She had, at the time, rather vaporous standards of evidence", a reference to her belief in the ancient astronauts of Erich von Däniken and the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky pertaining to the solar system. Concerning the death of her husband she stated: When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me—it still sometimes happens—and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. Personal life Druyan and Sagan's working and resulting romantic relationship has been the subject of numerous treatments in popular culture, including the Radiolab episode "Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's Ultimate Mix Tape" and a segment of the Comedy Central program Drunk Historys episode "Space". The asteroid 4970 Druyan, which is in a companion orbit with asteroid 2709 Sagan named after Druyan's late husband, is named after Druyan. In 2015, it was announced that Warner Brothers was in development on a drama about Sagan and Druyan's relationship, to be produced by producer Lynda Obst and Druyan. In 2020, Sagan and Druyan's daughter Sasha Sagan released a book For Small Creatures Such As We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in our Unlikely World, which discusses life with her parents and her father's death when she was fourteen years old. Druyan also gave Sasha a recurring role in Cosmos: Possible Worlds, where she played her own grandmother, including in the episode Man of a Trillion Worlds, which featured the life of Carl Sagan. Awards 2004 Richard Dawkins Award 2014 Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming Primetime Emmy Award 2015 The Award for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television from Producers Guild of America 2015 Writers Guild Award for "Documentary Script - Other than Current Events" 2017 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award 2020 National Geographic Further Award See also Women in science References External links Ann Druyan: The Observatory 1949 births Living people American science writers Interstellar messages Psychedelic drug advocates People from Queens, New York American agnostics American cannabis activists People associated with the American Museum of Natural History American skeptics Sagan family Activists from New York (state) Carl Sagan Scientists from New York (state) 20th-century American novelists American women novelists

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971, constituting at the time the largest land claims settlement in United States history. ANCSA was intended to resolve long-standing issues surrounding aboriginal land claims in Alaska, as well as to stimulate economic development throughout Alaska. The settlement established Alaska Native claims to the land by transferring titles to twelve Alaska Native regional corporations and over 200 local village corporations. A thirteenth regional corporation was later created for Alaska Natives who no longer resided in Alaska. The act is codified as 43 U.S.C. 1601 et seq. Background When Alaska became a state in 1959, section 4 of the Alaska Statehood Act provided that any existing Alaska Native land claims would be unaffected by statehood and held in status quo. Yet while section 4 of the act preserved Native land claims until later settlement, section 6 allowed for the state government to claim lands deemed vacant. Section 6 granted the state of Alaska the right to select lands then in the hands of the federal government, with the exception of Native territory. As a result, nearly from the public domain would eventually be transferred to the state. The state government also attempted to acquire lands under section 6 of the Statehood Act that were subject to Native claims under section 4, and that were currently occupied and used by Alaska Natives. The federal Bureau of Land Management began to process the Alaska government's selections without taking into account the Native claims and without informing the affected Native groups. It was against this backdrop that the original language for a land claims settlement was developed. A 9.2-magnitude earthquake struck the state in 1964. Recovery efforts drew the attention of the federal government The Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska decided that Natives should receive $100 million and 10% of revenue as a royalty. Nothing was done with this proposal, however, and a freeze on land transfers remained in effect. In 1966, Emil Notti called for a statewide meeting inviting numerous leaders around Alaska to gather and create the first meeting of a committee. The historic meeting was held October 18, 1966 - on the 99th anniversary of the transfer of Alaska from Russia. Notti presided over the three-day conference as it discussed matters of land recommendations, claims committee's, and political challenges the act would have getting through congress. Many respected politicians and businessmen attended the meeting and delegates were astonished at the attention which they received from well-known political figures of the state. The growing presence and political importance of Natives was evidenced when association leaders were elected to the legislature. Members of the associated gathered and were able to gain seven of the sixty seats in the legislature. When the group met a second time early in 1967, it emerged with a new name, The Alaska Federation of Natives, and a new full-time President, Emil Notti. AFN changed the human rights and economic stability of the Alaska Native population forever. In 1968, Governor Walter Hickel summoned a group of Native leaders to work out a settlement that would be satisfactory to Natives. The group met for ten days and asked for $20 million in exchange for requested lands. They also asked for 10% of federal mineral lease revenue. In 1969, President Nixon appointed Hickel as Secretary of the Interior. The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) protested against Hickel's nomination, but he was eventually confirmed. Hickel worked with the AFN, negotiating with Native leaders and state government over the disputed lands. Offers went back and forth, with each rejecting the other's proposals. The AFN wanted rights to land, while then-Governor Keith Miller believed Natives did not have legitimate claims to state land in light of the provisions of the Alaska Statehood Act. But a succeeding Alaska state administration under Governor William A. Egan would stake out positions upon which the AFN and other stakeholders could largely agree. Native leaders, in addition to Alaska's congressional delegation and the state's newly elected Governor William A. Egan, eventually reached the basis for presenting an agreement to Congress. The proposed settlement terms faced challenges in both houses but found a strong ally in Senator Henry M. Jackson from Washington state. The most controversial issues that continued to hold up approval were methods for determining land selection by Alaska Natives and financial distribution. In 1968, the Atlantic-Richfield Company discovered oil at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast, catapulting the issue of land ownership into headlines. In order to lessen the difficulty of drilling at such a remote location and transporting the oil to the lower 48 states, the oil companies proposed building a pipeline to carry the oil across Alaska to the port of Valdez At Valdez, the oil would be loaded onto tankers and shipped to the contiguous states. The plan had been approved, but a permit to construct the pipeline, which would cross lands involved in the land claims dispute, could not be granted until the Native claims were settled. With major petroleum dollars on the line, pressure mounted to achieve a definitive legislative resolution at the federal level. In 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was signed into law by President Nixon. It abrogated Native claims to aboriginal lands except those that are the subject of the law. In return, Natives retained up to of land and were paid $963 million. The land and money were to be divided among regional, urban, and village tribal corporations established under the law, often recognizing existing leadership. Effect of land conveyances In 1971, barely one million acres of land in Alaska were in private hands. ANCSA, together with section 6 of Alaska Statehood Act, which the new act allowed to come to fruition, affected ownership to about of land in Alaska once wholly controlled by the federal government. That is larger by than the combined areas of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. When the bill passed in 1971, it included provisions that had never before been attempted in previous United States settlements with Native Americans. The newly passed Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act created twelve Native regional economic development corporations. Each corporation was associated with a specific region of Alaska and the Natives who had traditionally lived there. This innovative approach to native settlements engaged the tribes in corporate capitalism. The idea originated with the AFN, who believed that the Natives would have to become a part of the capitalist system in order to survive. As stockholders in these corporations, the Natives could earn some income and stay in their traditional villages. If the corporations were managed properly, they could make profits that would enable individuals to stay, rather than having to leave Native villages to find better work. This was intended to help preserve Native culture. Native and state land selection Alaska Natives had three years from passage of ANCSA to make land selections of the granted under the act. In some cases Native corporations received outside aid in surveying the land. For instance, Doyon, Limited (one of the 13 regional corporations) was helped by the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska. The Institute determined which land contained resources such as minerals and coal. NASA similarly provided satellite imagery to aid in Native corporations finding areas most suited for vegetation and their traditional subsistence culture. The imagery showed locations of caribou and moose, as well as forests with marketable timber. In total about were analyzed for Doyon. Natives were able to choose tens of thousands of acres of land rich with timber while Doyon used mineral analysis to attract businesses. The state of Alaska to date has been granted approximately 85% or of the land claims it has made under ANCSA. The state is entitled to a total of under the terms of the Statehood Act. Originally the state had 25 years after passage of the Alaska Statehood Act to file claims under section 6 of the act with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Amendments to ANCSA extended that deadline until 1994, with the expectation that BLM would complete processing of land transfers subject to overlapping Native claims by 2009. Nonetheless, some Native and state selections under ANCSA remained unresolved as late as December 2014. Criticism of ANCSA There was largely positive reaction to ANCSA, although not entirely. The act was supported by Natives as well as non-Natives, and likewise enjoyed bipartisan support. Natives were heavily involved in the legislative process, and the final draft of the act used many AFN ideas. Some Natives have argued that ANCSA has hastened cultural genocide of Alaska Natives. Some Natives critiqued ANCSA as an illegitimate treaty since only tribal leaders were involved and the provisions of the act were not voted on by indigenous populations. One native described it as a social and political experiment. Critics have also argued that Natives so feared massacre or incarceration that they offered no resistance to the act. Others have argued that the settlement was arguably the most generous afforded by the United States to a Native group. They note that some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the state are the twelve created by ANCSA. Other critics attacked the act as "Native welfare" and such complaints continue to be expressed. The corporation system has been critiqued, as in some cases stockholders have sold land to outside corporations that have leveled forests and extracted minerals. But supporters of the system argue that it has provided economic benefits for indigenous peoples that outweigh these problems. Selected provisions of ANCSA Native claims in Alaska were extinguished by means of section 4 of ANCSA. In exchange for abrogating Native claims, approximately one-ninth of the state's land plus $962.5 million were distributed to more than 200 local Alaska Native "village corporations" established under section 8, in addition to 12 land-owning for-profit Alaska Native "regional corporations" and a non-land-owning thirteenth corporation for Alaska Natives who had left the state established under section 6. Of the compensation monies, $462.5 million was to come from the federal treasury and the rest from oil revenue-sharing. Settlement benefits would accrue to those with at least one-fourth Native ancestry under sections 3(b) and 5(a). Of the approximately 80,000 Natives enrolled under ANCSA, those living in villages (approximately two-thirds of the total) would receive 100 shares in both a village and a regional corporation. The remaining one-third would be "at large" shareholders with 100 shares in a regional corporation with additional rights to revenue from regional mineral and timber resources. The Alaska Native Allotment Act was revoked but with the proviso that pending claims under that act would continue to be processed under section 18. Successful applicants would be excluded under ANCSA by section 14(h)(5) from land to be used for a primary residence. The twelve regional corporations within the state would administer the settlement. A thirteenth corporation composed of Natives who had left the state would receive compensation but not land. Surface rights to were patented to the Native village and regional corporations under sections 12(c), as well as 14(h)(1) and (8). The surface rights to the patented land were granted to the village corporations and the subsurface right to the land were granted to the regional corporation, creating a split estate pursuant to section 14(f). Alaska Native regional corporations The following thirteen regional corporations were created under ANCSA: Ahtna, Incorporated The Aleut Corporation Arctic Slope Regional Corporation Bering Straits Native Corporation Bristol Bay Native Corporation Calista Corporation Chugach Alaska Corporation Cook Inlet Region, Inc. Doyon, Limited Koniag, Incorporated NANA Regional Corporation Sealaska Corporation The 13th Regional Corporation Additionally, most regions and some villages have created their own nonprofits providing social services and health care through grant funding and federal compacts. The objectives of these nonprofits are varied, but focus generally on cultural and educational activities. These include scholarships for Native students, sponsorship of cultural and artistic events, preservation efforts for Native languages, and protection of sites with historic or religious importance. Alaska Native village and urban corporations ANCSA created about 224 village and urban corporations. Below is a representative list of village and urban corporations created under ANCSA: Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation, village corporation for Utqiaġvik Bethel Native Corporation, village corporation for Bethel Cape Fox Corporation, village corporation for Saxman Deloycheet, Inc., village corporation for Holy Cross Huna Totem Corporation, village corporation for Hoonah Haida Corporation, village corporation for Hydaburg Goldbelt, Inc., urban corporation for Juneau Paug-Vik, Inc. Ltd., village corporation for Naknek Chenega Corporation, village corporation for Chenega Afognak Native Corporation, village corporation for Afognak and Port Lions Kavilco Incorporated, village corporation for Kasaan Klukwan, Inc., village corporation for Klukwan The Kuskokwim Corporation , village corporation for Aniak, Crooked Creek, Georgetown, Kalskag, Lower Kalskag, Napaimute, Red Devil, Russian Mission, Sleetmute and Stony River Natives of Kodiak, Inc., urban corporation for Kodiak Ounalashka Corporation, village corporation for Unalaska Ouzinkie Native Corporation, village corporation for Ouzinkie Shee Atika, Incorporated, urban corporation for Sitka See also Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act Alaska Statehood Act Alaska Native Allotment Act Alaska Land Transfer Acceleration Act Emil Notti References Bibliography Borneman, Walter R. Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land. Harper Perennial. (2004) Dombrowski, Kirk. Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska U of Nebraska Press. (2001) Haycox, Stephen. Alaska: An American Colony. University of Washington Press. (2006) Haycox, Stephen. Frigid Embrace: Politics, Economics, and Environment in Alaska Oregon University Press. (2002) Haynes, James B. "Land Selection and Development under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act," Arctic Institute of North America, Vol. 28–3, pp. 201–208 (September 1975) Linxwiler, James D. "The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: The First Twenty Years," Proceedings from the 38th Annual Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute. (1992) Roderick, Libby. Alaska Native Cultures and Issues: Responses to Frequently Asked Questions. University of Alaska Press. (2010) Williams, Maria Sháa Tláa. The Alaska Native Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press. (2009). Worl, Rosita. "Reconstructing Sovereignty in Alaska," Cultural Survival Quarterly. (Fall 2001) Further reading Arnold, Robert D. Alaska Native Land Claims, (Alaska Native Foundation 1978). Berry, Mary Clay. The Alaska Pipeline: The Politics of Oil and Native Land Claims, (Indiana University Press 1975). Berger, Thomas R. Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1985). Case, David S. Alaska Natives and American Laws, (University of Alaska Press 3d ed. 2012) GAO Report: Increased Use of Alaska Native Corporations’ Special 8(a) Provisions Calls for Tailored Oversight (April 2006) Kentch, Gavin. "A Corporate Culture? The Environmental Justice Challenges of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act". 81 Miss. L.J. 813 (2012) Lazarus, Arthur Jr. "The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: A Flawed Victory," Law and Contemporary Problems. (Winter 1976) London, J. Tate. "The "1991 Amendments" to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: Protection for Native Lands?", 8 Stan. Envtl. L.J. 200. (1989) Mitchell, Donald Craig. Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land, 1867-1959, (University of Alaska Press 2003). Mitchell, Donald Craig. Take My Land Take My Life: The Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971, (University of Alaska Press 2001). Morgan, Lael. Art and Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock, (Epicenter Press 1988). Senungetuk, Joseph E. Give or Take a Century: An Eskimo Chronicle, (The Indian Historian Press 1971). "Settling the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act", 38 Stan. L. Rev. 227 (1985). External links The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Resource Center Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act of 1971 Revisiting the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) Alaska Native Corporation Links United States federal legislation articles without infoboxes 1971 in Alaska 1971 in American law 91st United States Congress

Alameda ( ; ; Spanish for "tree-lined path") is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It spans Alameda Island, Bay Farm Island, and a few minor islands. It is adjacent to and south of Oakland and east of San Francisco across the San Francisco Bay. Bay Farm Island, a portion of which is also known as "Harbor Bay Isle", is part of the mainland adjacent to Oakland International Airport. The city's estimated 2019 population was 77,624. Alameda is a charter city, rather than a general law city, and adopted a council–manager government in 1916. History Early history and settlement Alameda occupies what was originally a peninsula connected to Oakland. Much of it was low-lying and marshy. The higher ground nearby and adjacent parts of what is now downtown Oakland were the site of one of the largest coastal oak forests in the world. Spanish colonists called the area Encinal, meaning "forest of evergreen oak". Alameda is Spanish for "grove of poplar trees" or "tree-lined avenue." It was chosen as the name of the city in 1853 by popular vote. The inhabitants at the time of the arrival of the Spanish in the late 18th century were a local band of the Ohlone tribe. The peninsula was included in the vast Rancho San Antonio granted in 1820 to Luis Peralta by the Spanish king who claimed California. The grant was later confirmed by the Republic of Mexico upon its independence in 1821 from Spain. Over time, the place became known as Bolsa de Encinal or Encinal de San Antonio. City development The city was founded on June 6, 1853, after the United States acquired California following the Mexican-American War of 1848. The town originally contained three small settlements. "Alameda" referred to the village at Encinal and High streets, Hibbardsville was located at the North Shore ferry and shipping terminal, and Woodstock was on the west near the ferry piers of the South Pacific Coast Railroad and the Central Pacific. Eventually, the Central Pacific's ferry pier became the Alameda Mole, featuring transit connections among the San Francisco ferries, local trollies, and Southern Pacific (formerly Central Pacific) commuter lines. The first post office opened in 1854. The first school, Schermerhorn School, was opened in 1855 (and eventually renamed as Lincoln School); Encinal School was opened in 1860 (and closed in 1980). The San Francisco and Alameda Railroad opened the Encinal station in 1864. The Encinal area was also known as Fasskings Station in honor of Frederick Louis Fassking. Encinal's own post office opened in 1876, was renamed West End in 1877, and closed in 1891. The West End area was originally called Bowman's Point in honor of Charles G. Bowman, an early United States settler. On September 6, 1869, the Alameda Terminal made history; it was the site of the arrival of the first train via the First Transcontinental Railroad to reach the shores of San Francisco Bay, thus achieving the first coast to coast transcontinental railroad in North America. The transcontinental terminus was switched to the Oakland Pier two months later, on November 8, 1869. The borders of Alameda were made coextensive with the island in 1872, incorporating Woodstock into Alameda. In his autobiography, writer Mark Twain described Alameda as "The Garden of California." Neptune Beach In 1917, a private entertainment park called Neptune Beach was built in the area now known as Crab Cove. Often compared to Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, the park was a major recreation destination in the 1920s and 1930s. The original owners, the Strehlow family, partnered with a local confectioner to create treats unique to Neptune Beach. Both the American snow cone and the popsicle were first sold at Neptune Beach. The Kewpie doll, hand-painted and dressed in unique hand-sewn dresses, became the original prize for winning games of chance at the beach – another Neptune Beach innovation. The Strehlows owned and operated the beach on their own. They filled in a section of the bay to add an additional Olympic-size swimming pool and a roller coaster, which must have given riders a tremendous view of the bay. The Cottage Baths were available for rent. Neptune Beach's two large outdoor pools hosted swimming races and exhibitions by such notable swimmers such as Olympian Johnny Weissmuller and Jack LaLanne. Weissmuller later starred in films as the original Tarzan character. LaLanne started a longlasting chain of health clubs and appeared on television. The park closed down in 1939 because the Great Depression left many people without much money, the completion of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge changed traffic patterns, people avoided paying the admission price, and the rise of car culture gave people many more choices for recreation destinations. Once the Bay Bridge was complete, the rail lines, which ran past the entrance to Neptune Beach on the way to the Alameda Mole and the Ferry, lost passengers in great number as people shifted to automobiles. People began using their cars to escape the city and the close suburbs like Alameda and traveled further afield in California. More distant locations appealed to cash-rich San Francisco tourists in the postwar years. Youngsters in town became aware of ways to avoid paying the dime for admission to the park. Strong swimmers or waders could sneak in on the bayside just by swimming around the fence. Some resort homes and buildings from the Neptune Beach era still exist in present-day Alameda. The Croll Building, on the corner of Webster Street and Central Avenue, was the site of Croll's Gardens and Hotel, used as training quarters for some of the greatest fighters in boxing history from 1883 to 1914. James J. Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jim Jeffries, Jack Johnson, and several other champions all stayed and trained here. Today, this preserved building has been adapted for retail and restaurants. Neptune Court, a block away on the corner of Central and McKay avenues, is also a surviving building from the resort era. The vast majority of the Neptune Beach structures – the hand-carved carousel from the world-famed Dentzel Company, the Ferris wheel, the roller coaster, and other rides – were auctioned off in 1940, yielding pennies on the dollar of their original cost. The city did not construct any swimming facilities or develop a local beach to replace that of Neptune Beach. Transportation When the railroad came to town in 1860s, Park Street developed as the major thoroughfare of the city. After the main Alameda train station was located here, residents of Old Alameda pulled up stakes and moved across town to the new downtown. The street's location was chosen by two landowners who wished to attract tenants and development to their land. They designated their mutual property line as Park Street. The need for expanded shipping facilities and increased flow of current through the estuary led to the dredging of a tidal canal through the marshland between Oakland and Alameda. Construction started in 1874, but it was not completed until 1902, resulting in Alameda becoming an island. Most of the soil from the canal dredging was used to fill in the nearby marshland. The area of Alameda called Bay Farm Island is no longer an island but is attached by fill to Oakland. In his youth, author Jack London was known to take part in oyster pirating in the highly productive oyster beds near Bay Farm Island, today long gone. The Alameda Works Shipyard was one of the largest and best-equipped shipyards in the country. Together with other industrial facilities, it became part of the defense industry buildup before and during World War II, which attracted many African-American and European-American migrants from other parts of the United States for the high-paying jobs. In the 1950s, Alameda's industrial and shipbuilding industries thrived along the Alameda Estuary. This was the site of operation of the world's first-ever, land-based, containerized shipping crane. In the early 21st century, the Port of Oakland, across the estuary, has become one of the largest ports on the West Coast. Its operators use shipping technologies originally experimented within Alameda. As of March 21, 2006, Alameda is a "Coast Guard City", one of seven then designated in the country. As of 2018, it is one of twenty-one within the country. In addition to the regular trains running to the Alameda Mole, Alameda was also served by local steam commuter lines of the Southern Pacific (initially, the Central Pacific). Alameda was the site of the Southern Pacific's West Alameda Shops, where all the electric trains were maintained and repaired. These were later adapted as the East Bay Electric Lines. Southern Pacific's electrified trains were not streetcars, but full-sized railroad cars that connected to the mainland via bridges at Webster Street and Fruitvale (only the latter bridge survives today). The trains ran to both the Oakland Mole and the Alameda Mole. A line that ran between the two moles was dubbed the "Horseshoe Line" for the shape of the route on a map. Soon after completion of the Bay Bridge, Alameda trains connected directly to San Francisco by the lower deck of the bridge. The ferries became unnecessary. In the 1930s Pan American Airways established a seaplane port along with the fill that led to the Alameda Mole. This was the original home base for the China Clipper flying boat. In 1929, the University of California established the San Francisco Airdrome located near the current Webster Street tube as a public airport. The Bay Airdrome had its gala christening party in 1930. The airfield was a busy place, as an early home base for Coastal Air Freight, Varney Air Lines, West Coast Air Transport, Western Air Express, the Transbay Air Ferries, and Boeing's Pacific Air Transport. The Airdrome was closed in 1941 when its air traffic interfered with the newly built Naval Air Station Alameda (NAS Alameda). With the advent of World War II, a vast stretch of the marshy area southwest of the Alameda Mole was filled and the NAS Alameda established. This major Naval facility included a large airfield, as well as docks for several aircraft carriers. It closed in 1997. Starting in the 1940s and continuing into the 1970s, multiple proposals were considered to build a highway bridge from Alameda to the San Francisco Peninsula, known as the Southern Crossing. The Bay Area Rapid Transit is currently studying the creation of a second Transbay Tube; some potential alignments would bring BART service to Alameda Island. 1950–present In the late 1950s, the Utah Construction Company began a landfill beyond the Old Sea Wall and created South Shore. On February 7, 1973, a USN Vought A-7E Corsair II fighter jet on a routine training mission from Lemoore Naval Air Station suddenly caught fire above the San Francisco Bay, crashing into the Tahoe Apartments in Alameda. Eleven people, including pilot Lieutenant Robert Lee Ward, died in the crash and fire. Geography Alameda's nickname is "The Island City" (or simply "the island"). The current city occupies three islands as well as a small section of the mainland. Today, the city consists of the main original section, with the former Naval Air Station Alameda (NAS Alameda) at the west end of Alameda Island, Southshore along the southern side of Alameda Island, and Bay Farm Island, which is part of the mainland proper. The area of the former NAS is now known as "Alameda Point." The Southshore area is separated from the main part of Alameda Island by a lagoon; the north shore of the lagoon is located approximately where the original south shore of the island was. Alameda Point and Southshore are built on bay fill. Not all of Alameda Island is part of the City of Alameda; a small portion of a dump site west of the former runway at Alameda Naval Air Station extends far enough into San Francisco Bay that it is over the county line and therefore part of the City and County of San Francisco. Coast Guard Island, a small island between Alameda Island and Oakland, is also part of Alameda and is the home of Integrated Support Command Alameda. Ballena Isle, an even smaller island, is also part of Alameda. Climate This region experiences warm (but not hot), dry summers, and cool (but not cold), wet winters. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Alameda has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated "Csb" on climate maps. Annual precipitation is about , all rain (snow is extremely rare at sea level in the San Francisco Bay Area). Demographics 2010 The 2010 United States Census reported that Alameda had a population of 73,812. (2015 census estimates place the population at 78,630) The population density was 3,214.9 people per square mile (1,241.3/km). The racial makeup of Alameda was 37,460 (50.8%) White, 23,058 (31.2%) Asian, 4,759 (6.4%) African American, 426 (0.6%) Native American, 381 (0.5%) Pacific Islander, 2,463 (3.3%) from other races, and 5,265 (7.1%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8,092 persons (11.0%). The Census reported that 72,316 people (98.0% of the population) lived in households, 857 (1.2%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 639 (0.9%) were institutionalized. There were 30,123 households, out of which 9,144 (30.4%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 13,440 (44.6%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 3,623 (12.0%) had a female householder with no husband present, 1,228 (4.1%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 1,681 (5.6%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 459 (1.5%) same-sex married couples or same-sex partnerships. 9,347 households (31.0%) were made up of individuals, and 2,874 (9.5%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40. There were 18,291 families (60.7% of all households); the average family size was 3.06. The age distribution of the population shows 15,304 people (20.7%) under the age of 18, 5,489 people (7.4%) aged 18 to 24, 21,000 people (28.5%) aged 25 to 44, 22,044 people (29.9%) aged 45 to 64, and 9,975 people (13.5%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40.7 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.5 males. Per capita annual income (in 2013 dollars) in 2009–2013 was $41,340 per the US Census. Median household income in 2009–2013 was $74,606 per the US Census. There were 32,351 housing units at an average density of 1,409.0 per square mile (544.0/km), of which 30,123 were occupied, of which 14,488 (48.1%) were owner-occupied, and 15,635 (51.9%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.1%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.7%. 37,042 people (50.2% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 35,274 people (47.8%) lived in rental housing units. 2000 As of the census of 2000, there were 72,259 people, 30,226 households, and 17,863 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,583.3/km (6,693.4/mi2). There were 31,644 housing units at an average density of 1,131.3/km (2,931.2/mi2). The racial makeup of the city was 56.95% White, 6.21% Black or African American, 0.67% Native American, 26.15% Asian, 0.60% Pacific Islander, 3.29% from other races, and 6.13% from two or more races. 9.31% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 30,226 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.7% were married couples living together, 11.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.9% were non-families. Of all households, 32.2% were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.35 and the average family size was 3.04. In the city, the age distribution of the population shows 21.5% under the age of 18, 7.0% from 18 to 24, 33.6% from 25 to 44, 24.6% from 45 to 64, and 13.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.5 males. The median income for a household in the city was $56,285, and the median income for a family was $68,625. Males had a median income of $49,174 versus $40,165 for females. The per capita income for the city was $30,982. About 6.0% of families and 8.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 11.4% of those under age 18 and 6.1% of those age 65 or over. There is a large Filipino community; and also a major Portuguese community, from which Tom Hanks' mother came and where Lyndsy Fonseca was raised for some time. Alameda also has a historic Japanese American community and had a small Japanese business district on a portion of Park Street before World War II, when the city's Japanese population was interned. A Japanese Buddhist church is one of the few remaining buildings left of Alameda's pre-war Japanese American community. Politics According to the California Secretary of State, as of February 10, 2019, Alameda has 48,609 registered voters. Of those, 27,323 (56.2%) are registered Democrats, 5,240 (10.8%) are registered Republicans, and 13,950 (28.7%) have declined to state a political party. Transportation Vehicle access to Alameda Island is via three bridges from Oakland (Park Street, Fruitvale Avenue, and High Street Bridges), as well as the two one-way Posey and Webster Street Tubes leading into Oakland's Chinatown. Connections from Alameda to Bay Farm Island are provided via the Bay Farm Island Bridge for vehicular traffic as well as the Bay Farm Island Bicycle Bridge (the only pedestrian/bicycle-only drawbridge in the United States). California State Route 61 runs down city streets from the Posey and Webster Street Tubes, across the Bay Farm Island Bridge, and south to the Oakland Airport. The island is just minutes off Interstate 880 in Oakland. The speed limit for the city is 25 mph (40 km/h) on almost every road. Public transportation options include: AC Transit buses, which range from local connections to Oakland and Berkeley to express service to San Francisco Ferry services – In addition to the Alameda/Oakland Ferry and the Alameda Harbor Bay Ferry routes, San Francisco Bay Ferry also provides service between Alameda Main Street Station and South San Francisco. All ferry services are operated by the Water Transit Authority. The closest BART stations are Lake Merritt and 12th Street, near the exit to the Posey Tube, and Fruitvale, near the Fruitvale Bridge. BART's long-term plans for a second tunnel include Alameda as a candidate for the first stop on a new East Bay line. Attractions Victorian houses comprise 9% of all single-family houses (1,500) in Alameda and many more have been divided into two- to four-unit dwellings. With its proximity to the Bay, wind surfers and kite surfers can often be seen at Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach. From the beach, there are also views of the San Francisco skyline and the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. The aircraft carrier , a museum ship, has been moored at the former Naval Air Station as the USS Hornet Museum since 1998. This ship was originally named the USS Kearsarge, but was renamed in honor of the previous Hornet (CV-8) (famous for the Doolittle raid), which was lost in October 1942. Alameda was twice home to the official offices and training facility of the National Football League Oakland Raiders. First from 1966 until 1983 when the team moved to Los Angeles and the offices and training facility moved to El Segundo, California, and again from 1996 until 2020 when the team moved to Las Vegas and the offices and training facility moved to Henderson, Nevada. The Oakland Roots of the USL Championship have a license agreement for the former Raiders performance center with the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda. At the turn of the 19th century, the city of Alameda took a large chunk of Charles Froling's land away to build a street. Froling had planned to build his dream house on the plot of land he received through inheritance. To spite the city and an unsympathetic neighbor, Froling built a house wide, long and high on the tiny strip of land left to him. The Froling spite house is still standing and occupied. The Fourth of July parade is advertised as the second oldest and second-longest Fourth of July parade in the United States. It features homemade floats, classic cars, motorized living room furniture, fire-breathing dragons, and marching bands. The Historic Park Street Business District has many buildings that date back to the 1800s and is a designated Historic Commercial District on the National Register. This main thoroughfare of downtown Alameda Is filled with local shops, restaurants, drinking establishments, and services. The renovated 1932 Alameda Theatre & Cineplex is the cultural centerpiece of the commercial district. Economy Top employers According to the city's 2020 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are: Alameda Point Naval Air Station Alameda (NAS) which was decommissioned in 1997, has been turned over to the City of Alameda for civilian development. America's Cup The 33rd America's Cup Race was won by Golden Gate Yacht Club racing team BMW Oracle, founded by Larry Ellison. Possible use of the air station that was considered was to partner with San Francisco for 34th America's Cup. Within two weeks of the Golden Gate Yacht Club winning the America's Cup, Alameda city council with local support sent a unanimous letter of support to hold AC 34 in San Francisco Bay Area. In early 2011, the City Council created an ad hoc America's Cup Citizens Advisory Committee to look for ways that Alameda could draw interest from teams and potential spectators. Through these efforts, the Swedish Artemis Racing team created their team based in one of the former air station hangars on Alameda Point, with a dock at Seaplane Lagoon. Beer, wine and spirits production A cluster of artisan distilleries, wineries, breweries and tasting rooms along Monarch Street at Alameda Point is now referred to by the City of Alameda as "Spirits Alley". These business include Rock Wall Winery, Building 43 Winery, Hangar 1, St. George Spirits and Faction Brewing. In 2017, Admiral Maltings opened at Alameda Point. Designed to supply craft brewers and whisky producers, it is the first craft malting house in California. The modern era of winemaking in Alameda begins in 1978 when Alameda veterinarian Kent Rosenblum and his wife Kathy founded Rosenblum Cellars. In 2008, the company was purchased by Diageo Estates for $105 million. In 2014, the Rosenblum tasting room at Alameda Point closed and moved to Jack London Square in Oakland. Shauna Rosenblum, daughter of Kent and Kathy, is the winemaker for Rock Wall Winery. In December 2007, St. George Absinthe Verte, produced by St. George Spirits became the first brand of American-made absinthe to be legally produced in the United States since a ban was enacted in 1912. Alameda Island Brewing is located on Park Street. Media Alameda's first newspaper, the Encinal, appeared in the early 1850s and the paper's editor was instrumental in the movement to incorporate the city. Following the Encinal, several other papers appeared along geographic lines, and the Daily Argus eventually rose to prominence. A young Alameda native, Joseph R. Knowland, wrote political and historical articles for the Alameda papers. Later, Knowland owned the powerful Oakland Tribune. Around 1900, the Daily Argus began to fade in importance and east and west papers The Times and The Star combined to take the leading role as the Alameda Times-Star in the 1930s. The Times-Star was sold to the Alameda Newspaper Group in the 1970s. In 1997, the Hills Newspaper chain was bought by Knight Ridder, at the time, the second-largest newspaper chain in the U.S. Following the buyout, former Hills Newspapers employees recognized the lack of a local community voice in Alameda, and again formed a new locally based newspaper, the Alameda Sun, in 2001. In 2006, Knight Ridder announced its impending sale to McClatchy Corp., a Sacramento-based publishing firm. McClatchy Corp. has put the Contra Costa Times, which under the Knight-Ridder reorganization included all five of the original Hills Newspapers, up for sale. The current owners of the Alameda Times-Star, Digital First Media, based in Colorado, have announced a strong interest in buying both the Contra Costa Times chain and the San Jose Mercury News, consolidating the daily newspaper market of the East Bay, effectively under one owner. MediaNews closed the Times-Star in 2011. The Alameda community is currently served by two weekly newspapers, the Alameda Journal, owned by the Digital First Media, and the Alameda Sun. Services Alameda Free Library After two previous failures, voters in the city passed a ballot measure in 2000 authorizing a bond measure for construction of a new main library to replace the city's Carnegie Library, damaged during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The city also received state funds for the new main library and opened the doors to the new facility in November 2006. There are three library locations: the Main Library in downtown Alameda and two library branches; the Bay Farm Island Library serving the Bay Farm and Harbor Bay communities and the West End Library serving the West End of Alameda. Alameda Hospital Founded in 1894, Alameda Hospital is located at Clinton Avenue and Willow Street. Alameda Municipal Power Unlike surrounding communities, Alameda has a municipal power service, Alameda Municipal Power (AMP), that delivers services directly to consumers. AMP sold the majority of its telecommunications business to Comcast in 2008 but continues to provide telecommunication service at Alameda Point. During the California electricity crisis of 2000 and 2001, Alameda Municipal Power did not raise electricity rates, while residents in most of the state endured significant price increases. Arts and culture The Alameda Arts Council (AAC) serves as the local Alameda City arts council. The Alameda Civic Ballet is the ballet troupe of the city. The Alameda Museum features displays on the history of Alameda. The Alameda Art Association has about 80 members as of January 2011, and has a gallery space at South Shore Center mall. The Association began in 1944. An annual benefit, Circus for Arts in the Schools, was started by clown artist Jeff Raz in 2004. Photo-realist Robert Bechtle has painted numerous Alameda subjects, including Alameda Gran Torino, which was acquired by SFMOMA in 1974 and remains one of Bechtle's most famous works. Filming location Alameda has been home to many movie sets. Some of the movies filmed on the island have included Bicentennial Man, The Net, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Bee Season, the original 1968 Your, Mine and Ours and the movie musical Rent. Parts of Alameda High School were animated for the Animatrix episode "Kid's Story". A massive hangar at the former Naval Air Station Alameda was used to film special scenes requiring computer-generated imagery for movies such as Bicentennial Man, Flubber, What Dreams May Come, Mission: Impossible 2 and many scenes from the Matrix trilogy, including the signature bullet time scene. The open space of the decommissioned naval base often hosts MythBusters''' more dangerous experiments. The movie "Spirit Of '76" was filmed all throughout Alameda. The documentary Shallow Waters: The Public Death of Raymond Zack was filmed at Alameda locations, and chronicled the 2011 death of Raymond Zack on Crown Beach in Alameda. The film was screened in 2016 at the Michaan Auction House Theater in Alameda. The USS Hornet Museum, permanently moored at Alameda Point, has been the site for scenes used in major theatrical releases: Pearl Harbor (2001), XXX: State of the Union, Rescue Dawn, and The Master. In addition, the aircraft carrier has been used for television shows such as JAG, Carrier, Looking, The Great Escape, and the special military episode of Fear Factor; plus a number of television commercials. Theaters The city restored the historic Art Deco city landmark Alameda Theatre, expanding it to include a theater multiplex. The public opening was May 21, 2008. The Altarena Playhouse, which performs comedies, dramas, and musicals, was founded in 1938 and is the longest continuously operating community theater in the San Francisco Bay Area. Festivals on Webster Street Webster Street in Alameda has long been the host of many arts, crafts and holiday festivals. During some of these festivals, the Chamber of Commerce along with the West Alameda Business Association (WABA) will block off a portion of Webster St. for the entertainment of festival-goers. Festivals such as The Island JAM bring a lot of local and outside visitors. Other events on the "West End" include Trick-or-Treat on Webster Street where merchants supply goodies for local children and culminate with a parade and costume contest; in December "Santa Claus Meet-n-Greet on Webster Street" happens with elves, and a photo with Santa Claus. Festivals on Park Street There are three major events when the street in Alameda's historic downtown district is closed to vehicular traffic. The Park Street Spring Festival takes place every May during the weekend of Mother's Day and attracts over 50,000 visitors. The Park Street Art & Wine Faire takes place the last weekend of every July and attracts over 100,000 visitors. Both street fairs feature over 150 arts & crafts vendors, food vendors, beer and wine pouring, a children's area, and two stages with regional entertainment. The Park Street Classic Car Show is held on the second Saturday every October and displays over 400 vintage vehicles. Sand Castle and Sculpture Contest The annual Sand Castle and Sculpture Contest takes place in June at the Robert Crown Memorial State Beach. The first contest was held in 1967. Participants compete in three different categories: Ages 12 and Under, Ages 13 and Over, and Family. Notable people Albert Arents, a mining engineer who helped develop mineral resources of the Rocky Mountains. John Baker, MLB catcher for San Diego Padres and Chicago Cubs, was born in Alameda. Shirley Temple Black, actress and former U.S. ambassador Mike Brisiel, an offensive guard for Oakland Raiders. Virginia Lee Burton, Caldecott-winning children's author and illustrator. Harold Camping, television and radio personality, president and general manager of Family Stations, Inc. Phyllis Diller, television comedian, attended Sunday school at First Presbyterian, married and lived in Alameda at the start of her comedy act in San Francisco in the 1950s. General James Doolittle, who received the Medal of Honor for his bombing of Japan during World War II; Doolittle was born in Alameda in 1896. Garrett Eckbo, landscape architect who lived in Alameda as a child, later forming the Bay Area firm of Eckbo, Royston, Williams with Robert Royston and Edward Williams. Leif Erickson, actor, born in Alameda in 1911. Larry Eustachy, college basketball coach, born in Alameda. Debbi Fields, founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies, attended Alameda High School, where she was a cheerleader. Albert Ghiorso, nuclear scientist, co-discoverer of 12 chemical elements on the periodic table; in Guinness Book of World Records for Most Elements Discovered. Brad Gillis, guitarist with Night Ranger, a San Francisco rock band formed in the 1980s. Katharine Graham, the late publisher of The Washington Post, lived in Alameda as a child, according to Personal History, her autobiography. Tim Hardaway Jr., a professional basketball player, was born in Alameda. Horace Heidt, bandleader and radio personality, born in Alameda on May 21, 1901. Emily Heller, comedian Marielle Heller, actress Bruce Henderson, author, grew up in Alameda, according to his book Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War. Benjamin Jealous, former President of the NAACP, lived in Alameda. Mikael Johnston, a founding member of Warner Bros. Records house music act Mephisto Odyssey. Joseph R. Knowland, congressman and Alameda native, was editor and publisher of the Oakland Tribune''. William Fife Knowland, U.S. Senator, was student body president at Alameda High School. Robert L. Lippert, theater chain owner and film producer, was an Alameda native. Paul Mantz, air racer and Hollywood stunt pilot, was born in Alameda in 1903. Louis A. McCall Sr., drummer and musician known as the co-founder of Con Funk Shun. Margaret McNamara, founder of Reading is Fundamental, and wife of Robert McNamara, grew up in Alameda. George P. Miller, a congressman from 1945 to 1973. Jack Mingo, author Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl, designer of the Seal of California. Don Perata, former President Pro Tempore of California State Senate, lives in Alameda; once taught at Saint Joseph Notre Dame High, Encinal High, and Alameda High, among other Alameda schools. Carl Ravazza, bandleader, born in Alameda, 1910. Bill Rigney, Major League Baseball player and manager, was born in Alameda. Dutch Ruether, pitcher for 1927 New York Yankees, was born in Alameda. Jane Sibbett, actress and comedian, grew up in Alameda. Operatic mezzo-soprano Frederica Von Stade has lived in Alameda since 1992. Sharon Tate, actress, resident in early to late-1960s. Charles Lee Tilden, for whom Tilden Regional Park is named, was a longtime resident of Alameda; Tilden Way at the southeast end of the city is named for him. Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Stargell, MLB player Tommy Harper, MLB player Curtell Howard Motton, 2003 National League Rookie of the Year Dontrelle Willis, 2007 National League Most Valuable Player Jimmy Rollins, NBA player J.R. Rider, and NFL players Melvin Carver and Junior Tautalatasi all attended Encinal High School. Jason Kidd (NBA player and coach) and Joe Nelson (MLB pitcher) attended St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda. MLB players Ray French, Johnny Vergez, Andy Carey, Bill Serena, Erik Schullstrom, Dick Bartell, Duffy Lewis and Chris Speier all attended Alameda High School. Many people from naval families, including celebrities such as Ann Curry, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Tom Hanks, and Jim Morrison of The Doors, have lived in Alameda. Education Public primary and secondary education in Alameda is the responsibility of the Alameda Unified School District, which is legally separate from the City of Alameda government (as is common throughout California). The College of Alameda, a two-year community college in the West End is part of the Peralta Community College District. The city has numerous private primary schools, and one private high school, St. Joseph Notre Dame High School, a Catholic school. Sister cities Alameda's relationships with Wuxi and Jiangyin were initiated in 2005, in part, by Stewart Chen, who then served on the City of Alameda Social Service and Human Relations board, and who went on to be elected to Alameda City Council in November 2012. Wuxi, China, is a so-called friendship city, because the diplomacy organization Sister Cities International does not recognize the relationship. Jiangyin, China Arita, Japan Yeongdong-gun, South Korea Lidingö, Sweden. Initiated in 1959 as part of President Eisenhower's people-to-people-movement, whose purpose was to develop better understanding among people from different countries after World War II. Both Alameda and Lidingö are islands with a bridge connecting them to a big city. Dumaguete City of Negros Oriental, Philippines Friendship city Wuxi, China (Friendship city since 2004) Controversy In September 2013, a Tibetan rights group initiated a social media and e-mail campaign targeting the Mayor of Alameda, complaining that City of Alameda's participation in, and association with, a flag-raising ceremony to recognize National Day of the People's Republic of China on October 1 was tantamount to endorsing the communist regime in China, its human rights abuses, and the occupation of Tibet. The City of Alameda responded that the ceremony was a function of the Alameda Sister City Association and the Alameda Wuxi Friendship Committee, not a function of the City of Alameda. The Tibetan rights group responded that on September 26, the City of Alameda Social Service and Human Relations board appointed a member, Michael Robles-Wong, as a representative to the Sister City Association. On October 1, 2013, the Tibetan rights groupsTibetTruth and Bay Area Friends of Tibet sent roughly 75 protesters to Alameda City Hall to protest the ceremony, which organizers ultimately canceled before it began. Former City of Alameda Councilmember Frank Matarrese announced the cancellation. Then-city councilmember Stewart Chen subsequently defended the ceremony, as a diplomatic, not political, exercise. See also Earl King, Ernest Ramsay, and Frank Conner, convicted of murdering a ship's officer in Alameda, 1936 Coast Guard Island List of islands of California List of ships built in Alameda, California References External links 1854 establishments in California Cities in Alameda County, California Incorporated cities and towns in California Populated places established in 1854 Populated coastal places in California

The Aimaq () or Chahar Aimaq (), also transliterated as Aimagh, Aimak and Aymaq, are a collection of Sunni and mostly Persian-speaking nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes. They live mostly in the central and western highlands of Afghanistan, especially in Ghor, Badghis. Aimaqs were originally known as chahar ("four") Aymaqs: the Taymani (the main element in the population of Ghor), the Firozkohi (mostly in Badghis), the Jamshidi and the Timuri. Other sources state that the Aimaq Hazara are one of the Chahar, with the Timuri instead being of the "lesser Aimaqs" or Aimaq-e digar ("other Aimaqs"). The Aimaq speak several subdialects of the Aimaq dialect of Persian language, but some southern groups of Taymani, Firozkohi, and northeastern Timuri Aimaqs have adopted the Pashto language. Origin and culture The Aimaqs claim different origins based on their tribal background. Some claim to be descended from the troops of Genghis Khan. Other tribes such as the Taymani (Aimaq tribe) and Firozkohi claim descent from other Pashtun tribes. Aimaq is a Mongolic word that means "tribe" or "grazing territory". Of all Aimaqs, Aimaq Hazara and Timuri are closest to the Turco-Mongol tradition since they are semi-nomadic tribes and some of them live in yurts, whereas other Aimaqs live in traditional Afghan black tents. The Aimaq are largely nomadic to semi-nomadic goat and sheep herders. They also trade with villages and farmers during migrations for pastures for their livestock. The material culture and foodstuffs of the Aimaq include skins, carpets, milk, dairy products and more. They trade these products to settled peoples in return for vegetables, grains, fruits, nuts, and other types of foods and goods. Classification of tribes Aimaq tribes Demographics Estimates of the Aimaq population vary between 250,000 and 500,000. They are largely Sunni Muslims—except for the Jamshidi who are mainly Ismaili Shia in the main—and in contrast to the Hazara, who are mostly Shia Muslims. See also Aimaq Hazara Farsiwan Qara'unas Notes References Further reading Macgregor, Central Asia, (Calcutta, 1871) External links Aimaq Man with Children, Pal-Kotal-I-Guk, Ghor Province Aimaq Nomad Camp Pal-Kotal-I-Guk Between Chakhcharan and Jam Afghanistan Aymaq Ethnic groups in Afghanistan Modern nomads

Alexandria is the ninth-largest city in the state of Louisiana and is the parish seat of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, United States. It lies on the south bank of the Red River in almost the exact geographic center of the state. It is the principal city of the Alexandria metropolitan area (population 153,922) which encompasses all of Rapides and Grant parishes. Its neighboring city is Pineville. In 2010, the population was 47,723, an increase of 3 percent from the 2000 census. History Located along the Red River, the city of Alexandria was originally home to a community which supported activities of the adjacent French trader outpost of Post du Rapides. The area developed as an assemblage of traders, Caddo people, and merchants in the agricultural lands bordering the mostly unsettled areas to the north and providing a link from the south to the El Camino Real and then larger settlement of Natchitoches, the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase. Alexander Fulton, a businessman from Washington County, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received a land grant from Spain in 1762, and the first organized settlement was made at some point in the 1780s. In 1805, Fulton and business partner Thomas Harris Maddox laid out the town plan and named the town in Fulton's honor. The earliest deed that survives for an Alexandria resident is from June 24, 1801, when a William Cochren, who identifies himself as "Slave master of the Southern Americas", sold a tract of land across the Red River to a William Murrey. That same year, Fulton was appointed coroner in Rapides Parish by territorial Governor William C.C. Claiborne. Alexandria was incorporated as a town in 1818 and received a city charter in 1832. World War II In 1942, Alexandria was the site of the Lee Street Riot, one of the bloodiest domestic military incidents in American history, when a White military police officer engaged a Black soldier from Camp Claiborne and caused a race riot (arguably a White massacre), resulting in the deaths of 20 to 300 Black soldiers and civilians. An official count was never formulated, and there was debate as recently as 2020 concerning whether a mass grave was utilized. Geography and climate Alexandria is located at and has an elevation of . According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which 26.4 square miles (68.4 km2) is land and 0.6 square mile (1.5 km2) (2.15%) is water. Alexandria is on a level plain in the center of the Louisiana Longleaf Pine forests, in which pine is interspersed with various hardwoods. A number of small bayous, such as Bayou Rapides, Bayou Robert, and Hynson Bayou, meander throughout the city. In the immediate vicinity of the city, cotton, sugar, alfalfa, and garden vegetables are cultivated. The climate is humid subtropical with some continental influence in the winter. Summers are consistently hot and humid, whereas winters are mild, with occasional cold snaps. On average, the first freeze occurs in early to mid November and the last freeze occurs in early to mid March. The area receives plentiful rainfall year-round, with thunderstorms possible throughout the year. Some storms can be severe, especially during the spring months. According to 'Cities Ranked and Rated' (Bert Sperling and Peter Sander), Alexandria reports an average of 69 days per year with thunder reported, which is nearly double the national average. Snowfall is rare, with measurable snow having occurred 27 times since 1895. The heaviest snowfall event took place February 12–13, 1960, when 9.1" of snow fell. Tropical storms and hurricanes affect Alexandria from time to time, but rarely cause severe damage, unlike areas closer to the coast. In September 2005, Hurricane Rita moved inland and affected Alexandria and surrounding areas, causing widespread power outages and damaging the roofs of some structures. The most recent hurricane, Gustav in 2008, caused widespread flooding, knocked over trees and power lines leading to power outages, and damaged structures. Some low-lying Alexandria neighborhoods had substantial flooding from Gustav, leaving several feet of water in houses. Demographics 2020 census As of the 2020 United States census, there were 45,275 people, 17,920 households, and 10,933 families residing in the city. 2010 census As of the census of 2010, there were 47,723 people, 17,816 households, and 11,722 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,754.6/sq mi (677.5/km2). There were 19,806 housing units at an average density of 749.9 per square mile (289.6/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 38.32% White, 57.25% Black, 1.25% Native American, 1.85% Asian, 0.14% Pacific Islander, 1.03% from other races, and 1.09% from two or more races. 6.98% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 17,816 households, out of which 31.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 38.5% were married couples living together, 23.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.2% were non-families. 30.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.13. In the city, the population was spread out, with 28.1% under the age of 18, 9.2% from 18 to 24, 26.2% from 25 to 44, 21.4% from 45 to 64, and 15.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 83.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 77.7 males. The median income for a household in the city was $26,097, and the median income for a family was $31,978. Males had a median income of $29,456 versus $20,154 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,242. About 23.2% of families and 27.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 37.7% of those under age 18 and 18.5% of those age 65 or over. Religion Like many other southern cities, the largest single church denomination in the Alexandria area is Southern Baptist. Large congregations include the Emmanuel Baptist Church and Calvary Baptist Church. Alexandria is the headquarters of the Louisiana Baptist Convention. Alexandria also has a significant number of Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Pentecostals. A significant Catholic population is also present, a result of the large Catholic Acadian French population which resides in and around Alexandria, many from neighboring Avoyelles Parish. Alexandria is the headquarters for the Diocese of Alexandria. Alexandria has a small, though active Jewish community which dates back to the mid-19th century. Jews have held positions in local government, civic organizations, education, and medicine. At one time, many large businesses in the downtown were Jewish-owned. The Jewish community in Alexandria maintains two synagogues, which are approximately two blocks apart: Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim (Reform) and B'nai Israel Traditional Synagogue (Conservative). Annual cultural events and festivals Mardi Gras Though Alexandria is north of the Cajun cultural area, the city recognizes Mardi Gras as an official holiday. The annual Mardi Gras Krewes Parade – occurring on the Sunday before Mardi Gras – on Texas Avenue is a major cultural festivity in the area. It is featured as a family-oriented event, and parade goers can enjoy over 20 New Orleans style floats, high school and college marching bands, as well as appearances by local celebrities. In addition to the main Sunday parade, the College Cheerleaders & Classic Cars Parade, which was established in 2008, takes place downtown on the Friday before Mardi Gras, the Children's Parade takes place downtown on the Saturday before Mardi Gras, and the Krewe of Provine Parade is held on Fat Tuesday, processing along Coliseum Boulevard. All the events are organized by the Alexandria Mardi Gras Association (AMGA). The Krewe Parade can attract from 120,000 to 150,000; the Children's parade, up to 40,000 to 50,000, and the College Cheerleaders & Classic Cars, about 5,000 to 15,000 people. Alex River Fête An annual three-day festival is held in downtown Alexandria around late April and early May. The festival, established in 2013, was created around a former successful stand-alone event, the Louisiana Dragon Boat Races. It features the race and other former stand-alone events such as Dinner on the Bricks and the ArtWalk (now Art Fête) along with various booth venues, food, and live music, as well as the Kids Fête and Classic Car Fête. Alex Winter Fête An annual three day festival held in downtown Alexandria around early December. Launched in 2015, the festival first year drew about double the anticipated crowd of 15,000. The festival, like the Alex River Fête, feature booth venues, food, and live music but also features an ice rink. In January 2017, the Alex Winter Fête was voted Festival of the Year by the Louisiana Travel Promotion Association. Former events Cenlabration Begun in the late 1980s, Cenlabration was one of the largest festivals in Central Louisiana (Cenla). The name comes from Central Louisiana ("LA") Celebration, and reflects local culture and heritage, as well as serving as a means of celebrating Labor Day as the end of summer. As many as three stages support a particular type of music, including Cajun and zydeco, blues and jazz, and Country music. In addition there are arts and crafts booths for local artists to sell their wares. In the Children's Village, children can participate in arts and crafts, listen to storytellers, play games with clowns, or watch a play. The festival has plenty of carnival rides available as well. Cenlabration ends with a large fireworks display. The festival ran for 20 years until cancellation due to finances. The city ended its annual support of $40,000 because of budget constraints. RiverFest In 2002, representatives of local government, businesses, organizations, and community formed the nonprofit organization River Cities Cultural Alliance, Inc. to promote tourism and the arts through a celebration of Central Louisiana's diverse cultural heritage. The nonprofit served to organize and put on RiverFest: Heritage and Arts on the Red. More than ten thousand festival-goers attending the event. RiverFest was held in downtown Alexandria and on the Alexandria and Pineville levees. The festival features the work of visual artists from across the South, food booths exemplifying southern cuisine, a variety of children's activities, three outdoor stages with a wide range of music, dance, and theatrical performances, and a literary component with readings and panel discussions by Louisiana authors and scholars. RiverFest was canceled in 2007. Que'in on the Red An annual barbecue festival launched in 2006, the festival was held on the levee near downtown Alexandria and was well known for its big-name entertainment. The event was cancelled in 2012 due to its high cost and the city deciding against continued support of $100,000 annually. Museums The Alexandria Museum of Art was founded in 1977 and occupies an historic Rapides Bank Building on the banks of the Red River. The building was built c. 1898 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The museum opened to the public in March 1998. In 1998, the Alexandria Museum of Art expanded and constructed its grand foyer and offices as an annex to the Rapides Bank Building. In 1999, the Alexandria Museum of Art was honored as an Outstanding Arts Organization in the Louisiana Governor's Arts Awards. In 2007, the Alexandria Museum of Art entered into a collaborative endeavor agreement with Louisiana State University of Alexandria (LSUA). The Alexandria Museum of Art now also serves as a downtown campus for LSUA classes, and is host to multidisciplinary community events, including concerts and recitals, lectures, yoga classes, Second Saturday Markets, and Museum Afterhours. The Louisiana History Museum is located downtown on the bottom floor of the former library. A small facility, it showcases the history of all Louisiana, with emphasis on the central portion of the state, Rapides Parish, and Alexandria. Major exhibit areas concern Native Americans, Louisiana geography, politics, health care, farming, and the impact of war. The T.R.E.E. House Children's Museum and Arna Bontemps African American Museum are located within the Cultural Arts District. The Kent Plantation House in Alexandria, completed by 1800, was located on a Spanish land grant. It is the oldest standing structure in Central Louisiana, one of only two buildings in the city to survive the burning of 1864 by Union troops fleeing after having been defeated at the Battle of Mansfield in DeSoto Parish. The house has been moved from its original location but is still located on part of the first land grant. It is open for tours daily except Sundays at 9, 10, and 11 a.m. and 1, 2, and 3 p.m. The tour is led by costumed docents and includes the house furnished in period pieces, some belonging to the original family, and all nine outbuildings, including an 1840-50s sugar mill, blacksmith shop, barn, two slave cabins, open-hearth kitchen, and milk house. Performing arts The performing arts are centered in the Alexandria Cultural Arts District in the downtown. Located within a few blocks of each other are three performance venues: Coughlin-Saunders Performing Arts Center, the Hearn Stage, and the Riverfront Amphitheater. The Coughlin-Saunders Performing Arts Center is the home of the Rapides Symphony Orchestra, which has performed in Alexandria since 1968. The center hosts the Performing Arts Series of the Arts Council of Central Louisiana, the Red River Chorale (an auditioned community chorus), and presentations of numerous local theater groups. The land for the center was donated by The Alexandria Town Talk newspaper, owned by the Gannett Company of McLean, Virginia. Businesswoman Jacqueline Seagall Caplan (1935–2016) was the president of the Arts Council of Central Louisiana and the chairman of the group's executive committee when the Coughlin-Saunders Performing Arts Center opened in 2004. She predicted that Coughlin-Saunders would in time "provide a place people can point to and say it's theirs. ... [Until now], we've never had a performing arts center where every type of performing art can come." The Hearn Stage is a black box theater for smaller productions. The Arts Council provides day-to-day management of both the Coughlin-Saunders Center and the Hearn Stage. The Riverfront Amphitheater hosts each April a "Jazz on the River" music festival, sponsored by the Arna Bontemps African American Museum. The Rapides Symphony holds an annual fall Pops concert in the amphitheater. In recent years, the amphitheater has welcomed musical guests in conjunction with the springtime Dragonboat Races sponsored by the Alexandria Museum of Art. The spring and fall seasons also feature Downtown Rocks, a free outdoor concert series in nearby Fulton Park. Sports Alexandria was home to the Alexandria Aces, a summer college league baseball team. The Aces were champions in various leagues in 1997, 1998, 2006, and 2007. They played their home games at Bringhurst Field. Unfortunately, due to lack of repairs on the stadium, combined with the aging of it caused interest in the team to unfortunately drop, with much of the wooden stands being barricaded. The remaining games of the 2013 season were canceled in mid-July because of low attendance, which averaged fewer than two hundred per game. The stadium's office and clubhouse were destroyed by a fire in 2014 and were subsequently torn down. In 2017, it was decided that the stadium would become a green space, open to the public and welcome news to those concerned about the building's future. The scoreboard and outfield walls have been removed, but most of the stadium is still intact. In 1974, a Little League team from Alexandria won the Louisiana state championship. Alexandria had a minor league ice hockey team, the Alexandria Warthogs. They played their home games at the Rapides Parish Coliseum. A professional indoor football team, the Louisiana Rangers, played their home games at the Rapides Parish Coliseum. They played in the Central District of the Southern American Football League, and the Southern Conference of the National Indoor Football League (NIFL). The team was owned by a Lafayette business group before moving in 2003 to Beaumont, Texas. Alexandria is also home to the U-14 Crossroads Pride soccer team. They won the 2012 Louisiana Soccer Association State Cup. The Pool Boys FC soccer team, a member of the Gulf Coast Premier League, plays at Johnny Downs Sports Complex. Nearby is Bringhurst Golf Course, popularly known as "the nation's oldest par-three course." A full-scale renovation was completed in mid-2010. In addition to Bringhurst, named for the late industrialist R.W. Bringhurst, Alexandria is home to four other golf courses: Oak Wing, The Links on the Bayou, at LSUA, and Alexandria Golf and Country Club. Alexandria was also home to the Cenla Derby Dames, a roller derby team that operates under the Women's Flat Track Derby Association. The Dames played their home games at the Rapides Parish Coliseum. Notable people Anna Margaret – singer, actress Emmanuel Arceneaux – Canadian football player Jay Aldrich – Major League Baseball player John Ardoin – music critic for The Dallas Morning News Louis Berry – first African-American to practice law in Alexandria; civil rights advocate James W. Bolton – banker and politician; namesake of Bolton High School James Calderwood Bolton – banker; library at Louisiana State University in Alexandria bears his name Arna Bontemps – African American poet and member of Harlem Renaissance Thomas "Bud" Brady – state representative (1976-1988) from La Salle Parish; thereafter a real estate appraiser in Alexandria Bubby Brister – Quarterback Pittsburgh Steelers, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Jets, Denver Broncos, and Minnesota Vikings Markel Brown – guard in the Israeli Basketball Premier League Arthur H. Butler – Marine Corps Major General and Navy Cross recipient Carl B. Close – state representative (1944-1947) and mayor of Alexandria (1947-1953) Luther F. Cole – associate justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1986 to 1992, former state representative from East Baton Rouge Parish; born in Alexandria Clifford Ann Creed – golfer; winner of eleven LPGA Tour events William A. Culpepper – Judge for one term on the 9th Judicial District Court and twenty-two years on the Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit, Alexandria native who spent later years in Little Rock, Arkansas Israel "Bo" Curtis – African-American Democrat member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from District 26 from 1992 to 2008 Cleveland Dear – U.S. representative from 1933 to 1937, district attorney, and state district court judge Herbert B. Dixon – member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from District 26 (2008-2014) and member of the Rapides Parish School Board from District D (1992-2008) C. H. "Sammy" Downs – attorney and politician Mike Edmonson – superintendent of the Louisiana State Police since 2008 James R. Eubank – Alexandria lawyer; member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for Rapides Parish in 1952; died in office at the age of thirty-seven Steve Gainer – Cinematographer and Director H. N. Goff – state representative from Rapides Parish, 1952–1956; insurance agent in Alexandria Layon Gray – Playwright and director of the Off-Broadway hit play Black Angels Over Tuskegee. The story of the Tuskegee Airmen. Lawrence Preston Joseph Graves – Roman Catholic bishop of Alexandria from 1973 to 1982 Charles Pasquale Greco – Roman Catholic bishop of Alexandria from 1946 to 1973 Jeff Hall – incoming first African-American mayor of Alexandria; state representative for District 26 in Rapides Parish, 2015-2018 Lance Harris – District 25 state representative Gary Lee Jones – Rapides Parish school superintendent, 2003–2012; member of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education since 2016; Alexandria resident Catherine D. Kimball – former Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court Maxie Lambright – football coach for Louisiana Tech University, 1967–1978; coached at Bolton High School in Alexandria, 1955 to 1958 D.L. Lang - Poet Laureate of Vallejo, California F.A. Little, Jr. – retired judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana George S. Long – former U.S. representative Gillis William Long – former U.S. representative Jay Luneau – lawyer and state senator, effective January 2016 Gerald Archie Mangun – late pastor of the Pentecostal Church, the largest congregation in Alexandria Rod Masterson – actor Terry Alan "Tet" Mathews – former Major League Pitcher, Born 1964 died 2012. Pitched for Texas Rangers, Florida Marlins, Baltimore Orioles, and Kansas City Royals Mildred Methvin – former United States Magistrate Judge of the Western District of Louisiana, based in Lafayette; native of Alexandria Warren Morris – Major League Baseball player Craig Nall – National Football League player J. Tinsley Oden – mathematician Jewel Prestage – first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science, former Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Southern University. Juan Pierre – Major League Baseball player Ed Rand – state representative from 1960 to 1964 Joseph E. Ransdell – U.S. Senator from Louisiana, 1913-1931 Slater Rhea – Singer and TV personality on national TV in China. Sterling Ridge – Arizona legislator Alvin Benjamin Rubin – federal judge, 1966-1991 Bill Schroll – National Football League player Gustav Anton von Seckendorff – author, actor and declaimer William Tecumseh Sherman – first superintendent; Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy (later to become LSU) Russ Springer – Major League Baseball player for 18 years David Theophilus Stafford – Rapides Parish sheriff from 1888 to 1904 Grove Stafford, Sr. – Alexandria lawyer and state senator from 1940 to 1948 Leroy Augustus Stafford – planter and Confederate brigadier general mortally wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864 Lloyd George Teekell – state representative from 1953 to 1960 and 9th Judicial District Court judge from 1979 to 1990 Jeff R. Thompson – former state representative for Bossier Parish; judge of the 26th Judicial District Court since 2015; born in Alexandria in 1965 Cullen Washington Jr. – contemporary abstract painter. Muse Watson – actor James Madison Wells – 19th century governor of Louisiana Rebecca Wells – author, actor, and playwright, best known for Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood Joanne Lyles White – humanitarian, philanthropist; founder and first president of the Louisiana Speech League J. Robert Wooley – Louisiana insurance commissioner from 2000 to 2006, was reared in Alexandria, where his father was a principal at the Louisiana Special Education Center there. Media Newspapers Established March 17, 1883, The Alexandria Town Talk is a daily newspaper for Alexandria-Pineville and the thirteen parishes which comprise central Louisiana. The newspaper was owned by the family of the late Jane Wilson Smith and Joe D. Smith, Jr., until March 1996, when it was sold to Central Newspapers. In August 2000, the Gannett Company acquired the Central Newspapers properties, including The Town Talk. The name of the paper on its inaugural issue was the Alexandria Daily Town Talk. Although it has since been shorted to the current The Town Talk, it is still frequently referred to by long-time residents as the Daily Town Talk. Television Alexandria is served by local television stations KALB-TV (NBC / CBS), WNTZ (Fox), KLAX-TV (ABC), KLPA (PBS/LPB), and KBCA (The CW). KALB is the oldest television station in central Louisiana. Alexandria is the location of the pawn shop in the show Cajun Pawn Stars on the History Channel. Radio Local radio stations AM broadcasting KJMJ 580 – Religious KSYL 970 – News / Talk / Sports KDBS 1410 – ESPN Radio FM broadcasting KAYT 88.1 – Urban adult contemporary KLXA 89.9 – Christian contemporary / K-LOVE KLSA 90.7 – Public radio / Red River Radio KAPM 91.7 – American Family Radio KQID-FM 93.1 – Top 40/CHR KMXH 93.9 – Urban adult contemporary KZMZ 96.9 – Classic rock KKST 98.7 – Urban contemporary KRRV-FM 100.3 – Mainstream country KBCE 102.3 – Adult hits KLAA-FM 103.5 – Mainstream country KEZP 104.3 – Christian adult contemporary KBKK 105.5 – Classic country KEDG 106.9 – Adult contemporary Translate broadcasting K234CY 94.7 – Sports talk (translators to KDBS) K265FB 100.9 – Soft adult contemporary (translators to KQID-FM) K285HF 104.9 – News / Talk / Sports (translators to KSYL) Low-power broadcasting KZLC-LP 95.5 – Alternative Christian Digital broadcasting KLSA-HD1 KLSA-HD2 KLSA-HD3 KQID-HD1 KQID-HD2 KQID-HD3 KRRV-HD1 KRRV-HD2 KRRV-HD3 Parks and outdoor attractions Alexandria Zoological Park The Alexandria Zoological Park is a zoo first opened to the public in 1926. Owned by the City of Alexandria and operated by the Division of Public Works, it is home to about 500 animals and includes an award-winning Louisiana Habitat exhibit. The zoo is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and takes part in about 20 Species Survival Plans (SSP) as part of its conservation efforts. Cotile Lake Recreation Area Cotile Lake is a man-made impoundment located in the uplands approximately west-northwest of Alexandria, Louisiana. The lake is approximately in size and was completed in October 1965. The Louisiana Wild Life and Fisheries Commission stocked this impoundment with the proper species and number of game fish in 1965–66 shortly after its completion date. The recreational facilities include a large area cleared and zoned for swimming with complete bath house facilities nearby. There is a water skiing area that is cleared and snagged for safety of the skiers. The picnic and camping areas are modern and complete. There is also space available for campers. Indian Creek Lake and Recreation Area Encompasses a lake, of developed recreation facilities and a primitive camping area all within the Alexander State Forest. The lake, located in central Louisiana, was constructed as a joint venture of the Louisiana Forestry Commission, the Rapides Parish Police Jury, and the Lower West Red River Soil and Water Conservation District as a reservoir for agricultural irrigation in times of need and for recreation purposes. The recreation area camping area contains 109 campsites with conventional full utility hookups, 3 beaches for swimming, bath houses, a boat launch, and 75 picnic sites. A covered pavilion within the developed area provides for groups up to 100 people. The recreation area is open year-round and operates on user fees. Kisatchie National Forest Alexandria sits in the middle of the Kisatchie National Forest. Ranger districts are north, northwest, west and southwest of the city. An abundance of large timberlands and forest nurseries, as well as lake and recreation areas, are within a short driving distance. Other points of interest Alexandria Memorial Gardens – large cemetery on U.S. Highway 165 south. Other cemeteries are also available in Pineville. Alexandria Levee Park – a park located downtown, adjacent to the Red River, that serves as the grounds for some local festivals. It contains an amphitheatre that is used for concerts. Alexandria Mall – the local shopping mall located on Masonic Drive, established 1973 Alexandria Riverfront Center – convention center located downtown Bringhurst Field – home of the Alexandria Aces Bringhurst Park – contains the Alexandria Zoo, Bringhurst Field, a playground, a golf course and tennis courts Hotel Bentley – historic hotel built in 1908 Inglewood Plantation – plantation located south of Alexandria Kent Plantation House – French colonial plantation house Masonic Home – a now defunct orphanage in south Alexandria completed in 1924. Rapides Parish Coliseum – a multi-purpose arena used for sporting events, conventions and other events Military Louisiana National Guard Alexandria is home to both Headquarters and Company B of the 199th Brigade Support Battalion (BSB). The 199th BSB is the logistical component of the 256th Infantry Brigade that served in Operation Iraqi Freedom from October 2004 until September 2005. The 199th BSB provides supply and transportation (Company A), medical (Company C) and maintenance (Company B) support and services that keep the 256th Brigade operational. The battalion also has units located in Jonesboro, Winnfield, Colfax, and St. Martinville, Louisiana. England Air Force Base Alexandria served as the home of England Air Force Base from its origins as an emergency airstrip for Esler Regional Airport until its closure. England AFB was officially closed on December 15, 1992, pursuant to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act (Public Law 101–510) and recommendations of the Defense Secretary's Commission on Base Realignment and Closure. The base now serves as Alexandria International Airport (see below). Economy According to Census ACS 1-year survey for 2016, the per capita income of Alexandria was $23,962. This is $1,702 lower than the Louisiana average for per capita income in the same period. That figure is at $31,128 nationally. The Alexandria workforce consists of about 55,000 residents. Union Tank Car Company has recently located a plant northwest of Alexandria near the airport creating hundreds of jobs. Expansions at the Procter & Gamble plant and the construction of a PlastiPak plant in nearby Pineville have also created a number of new jobs for the area. Sundrop Fuels Inc., a Colorado-based biofuels start-up, plans to construct an over 1,200 acre plant just southwest of Alexandria in Rapides Station area. The facility will serve as the headquarters for the company because aside from the plant itself, Sundrop has also bought Cowboy Town, an abandon entertainment venue that sits inside the surrounding land that was purchased, to house their offices and their maintenance and fabrication operations. In 2007, Inc. Magazine rated Alexandria as the 77th best place in which to conduct business out of the 393 U.S. cities ranked, a significant increase from its ranking as No. 276 in 2006. Among other Louisiana cities, Alexandria ranked second, following only Baton Rouge, which ranked 59th nationally. Healthcare Alexandria is home to two major hospitals: Rapides Regional Medical Center, a former Baptist hospital is located downtown. Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital was opened in 1950 and is located at the corner of Masonic Drive and Texas Avenue. Both hospitals have undergone expansion. Additionally, located just across the Red River in Pineville, the Veteran's Affairs Medical Center at Alexandria serves central Louisiana and surrounding areas. Meanwhile, in 2013, the state allocated $15 million to move the medical services long provided at no or minimal charge at the Huey P. Long Medical Center in Pineville to the former hospital at England Park at the site of the closed England Air Force Base. Port of Alexandria In the early 19th century, the Port of Alexandria brought goods to the area and shipped cotton and other local products to the rest of the country. A ferry connected the cities of Alexandria and Pineville until a bridge was built across the Red in 1900. Today, Port facilities include: a 40-ton crane for off-loading, a warehouse, 13,600-ton bulk fertilizer warehouse, a 3,400-ton bulk fertilizer dome structure and a 5,000-ton dome which was added in January 2005. The petroleum off-loading facility includes two tanks, one tank capable of handling two barges and five truck off-loading simultaneously. There is also a general cargo dock with access to rail and a hopper barge unloading dock with conveyor system. Today's modern facilities and the Port's central location with its connection to the Mississippi River provide excellent opportunities for importers and exporters. Alexandria International Airport Alexandria International Airport (AEX) is a regional airport, providing flights to Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Houston. In 2006 a new-state-of-the-art passenger terminal was dedicated. Alexandria is served by American, United, and Delta. Current military use Formerly known as England AFB until 1992, Alexandria International Airport additionally has numerous international charter airlines using the airport in the transport of military personnel attached to the United States Army base at Fort Polk. A new military personnel terminal opened in 2007. Government and politics Local government History Following the Civil War, all public records in Alexandria had been destroyed. On September 29, 1868, the city was granted a new charter with a government consisting of a Mayor, Treasurer, and Justice of the Peace. Nine aldermen represented the four wards of the city – two from each ward and one elected at-large. In 1912, the Lawrason Act established Alexandria municipal government in a strong mayor format, where the mayor was also the Commissioner of Public Health and Safety (Police, Fire, Sanitation). There were separate Commissioners of Streets and Parks and Finance and Utilities, elected citywide. Those positions were discontinued in 1977. Today Alexandria has a mayoral-council system of government. The Mayor serves as the executive branch of the local government. The current Mayor – Jacques Roy – was elected to office in November 2006, succeeding long-time mayor Edward Gordon "Ned" Randolph, Jr. Randolph had succeeded John K. Snyder. The City Council serves as the legislative branch. The five districts of the city are represented on the council; in addition there are two council members elected to serve as at-large representatives of the city. The Alexandria Court has a limited jurisdiction, consisting of the citizens of Wards 1, 2 and 8 in Rapides Parish. Within those boundaries the court has the power to hear and decide both criminal and civil cases, rule in civil cases and hand down judgment for punishment in criminal cases. Area politics Overall, the people of the Alexandria area tend to be conservative. Even though the majority typically elects Republicans in national elections, they vote for Democrats in local elections, many of which are not contested by the GOP. United States Congressional district From 1913 to 1993, Alexandria served as the seat of Louisiana's Eighth Congressional district. A Democratic seat, it was held by the Long family for nearly half of its existence, from 1953 to 1987, broken only by the two terms of Harold B. McSween and three terms of Republican Clyde Holloway of Forest Hill. The seat was removed after the 1990 census indicated Louisiana no longer had the population to support it. The district was split among the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Congressional districts. Alexandria is now in the Fifth district and was represented from 2003 to 2013 by Rodney Alexander, a Democrat-turned-Republican. From November 2013 to January 2015 the representative is Vance McAllister of Ouachita Parish. Education Colleges and universities Situated south of the city, Louisiana State University at Alexandria (or LSUA) is a regional campus of the state's flagship university system, Louisiana State University. From its establishment in 1959, the campus offered only two-year degrees; students seeking baccalaureate degrees had to commute or move to the main campus in Baton Rouge in order to gain a four-year degree. After 1976, students could either commute or telecommute in order to attend upper-level courses, including graduate classes. In 2002, following approval by the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors and the Louisiana Board of Regents the Louisiana Legislature passed legislation allowing LSUA to offer baccalaureate degrees. A four-year degree is also attainable through Southern Baptist-affiliated Louisiana Christian University in Pineville, founded in 1906. Alexandria also has one of the Region 6 Louisiana Technical College campuses. Primary and secondary schools Rapides Parish School Board operates public schools. Alexandria has three public high schools: Bolton High School, Alexandria Senior High School, and Peabody Magnet High School. In addition, there are two private high schools: the Roman Catholic Holy Savior Menard Central High School, and Grace Christian. Transportation Roads Alexandria serves as the crossroads of Louisiana. To reach either Shreveport or Monroe from the southern portion of the state, the easiest method of travel takes the driver through Alexandria. Likewise, if a visitor is to head from the northern portion of the state to the Cajun portions of the state (Lake Charles and Lafayette), or the greater metropolitan areas of either Baton Rouge or New Orleans, the easiest method of travel involves driving down Interstate 49 through Alexandria. In addition to I-49, travelers can follow Louisiana 1 up to Alexandria from Baton Rouge and points south. Also, Highway 167 could be taken from Opelousas north to Ruston, crossing through Alexandria at one of the few bridges over the Red River in central Louisiana. Highways 165 and 71 also link Alexandria and points south with the northern and southern portions of the state via the Curtis-Coleman bridge. There are possible plans for a 50-mile, 4 lane beltway to encircle Alexandria and Pineville. As of now, it is only in the planning stages of development. Bridges Three road bridges cross the Red River in the Alexandria area. They are: The Purple Heart Memorial Bridge. Part of the Alexandria-Pineville Expressway (also referred to as the Cottingham Expressway), it connects Interstate 49 to Highway 167 by crossing the Red River from downtown Alexandria to Pineville. It replaced the Fulton Street Bridge and has six lanes of traffic. Designed by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LADOTD), the bridge cost $15.9 million in federal and state funds. The northbound portion was completed in 1995, the southbound in 1998. The U.S. 165 Business Bridge (alternatively, the Gillis Long Bridge, the Red River Bridge or the Jackson Street Bridge) connecting downtown Pineville with the business district in Alexandria. It is a two-lane vertical-lift bridge with a sidewalk/bikepath on either side. The bridge is named after U.S. Representative Gillis Long, who represented Louisiana's Eighth Congressional District. It was built in 1985 to replace the Murray Street Bridge. The Oscar K. Allen Bridge connecting Highway 165/71 on both sides of the Red River. It is a two-lane K-truss type bridge, named after Governor Oscar K. Allen. It was built in 1936 to connect Alexandria to the (former) Fort Buhlow. A new four-lane (two lanes in each direction) bridge is being built beside the aging OK Allen Bridge (appropriately named the Fort Buhlow Bridge) and should be open in mid-2013. At that time US 165 will be completely four-laned for most of its traverse of Louisiana. Former bridges include: The Murray Street Bridge. One of the first bridges in Alexandria. A two-lane steel truss swing bridge, it decayed over time, finally being demolished in 1983. The approach on the Alexandria side was turned into a river overlook as part of the Alexandria Levee Park. The Fulton Street Bridge. Named after Fulton Street which it connected with Highway 167. Technically part of the Alexandria-Pineville Expressway, it was a four-lane steel vertical-lift bridge. It was demolished in 1994 to make way for the Purple Heart Memorial Bridge. There are two railroad bridges over the Red River in Alexandria. One is located near the Buhlow area north of the OK Allen bridge. The other is south of the Purple Heart Memorial Bridge. Mass transit Regional mass transit is handled by ATRANS (Alexandria Transportation Authority). For those leaving or arriving at the city by bus, Greyhound Lines has a terminal downtown. Airports Alexandria is served by the Alexandria International Airport and the Esler Regional Airport in Pineville. Rail Alexandria does not have Amtrak service, nor a commuter rail system. The Kansas City Southern (Southern Belle) and the Missouri Pacific (since absorbed by Union Pacific) (Louisiana Eagle and Louisiana Daylight) operated train stations in the area in the early part of the 20th century but passenger services ended in the 1960s and the stations have closed. Surrounding cities and towns Rapides Parish Ball Boyce Cheneyville Deville Forest Hill Lecompte Pineville Tioga Woodworth Grant Parish Colfax Creola Dry Prong Pollock Prospect Gallery References External links City of Alexandria : Government and community services. The Town Talk : Alexandria's Local Daily Newspaper. KALB-TV : Alexandria's local NBC and CBS station. KLAX-TV : Alexandria's local ABC station. Visit Alexandria : Business Directory. Cities in Louisiana Cities in Rapides Parish, Louisiana Parish seats in Louisiana Populated places established in 1785 Cities in Alexandria metropolitan area, Louisiana Cities in the Central Louisiana 1785 establishments in New Spain

The Commodore Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000 and originally marketed as the Amiga, is the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It combines the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU which was powerful by 1985 standards with one of the most advanced graphics and sound systems in its class, and runs a preemptive multitasking operating system that fits into of read-only memory and shipped with 256 KB of RAM. The primary memory can be expanded internally with a manufacturer-supplied 256 KB module for a total of 512 KB of RAM. Using the external slot the primary memory can be expanded up to Design The A1000 has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from later Amiga models: It is the only model to feature the short-lived Amiga check-mark logo on its case, the majority of the case is elevated slightly to give a storage area for the keyboard when not in use (a "keyboard garage"), and the inside of the case is engraved with the signatures of the Amiga designers (similar to the Macintosh); including Jay Miner and the paw print of his dog Mitchy. The A1000's case was designed by Howard Stolz. As Senior Industrial Designer at Commodore, Stolz was the mechanical lead and primary interface with Sanyo in Japan, the contract manufacturer for the A1000 casing. The Amiga 1000 was manufactured in two variations: One uses the NTSC television standard and the other uses the PAL television standard. The NTSC variant was the initial model manufactured and sold in North America. The later PAL model was manufactured in Germany and sold in countries using the PAL television standard. The first NTSC systems lack the EHB video mode which is present in all later Amiga models. Because AmigaOS was rather buggy at the time of the A1000's release, the OS was not placed in ROM then. Instead, the A1000 includes a daughterboard with 256 KB of RAM, dubbed the "writable control store" (WCS), into which the core of the operating system is loaded from floppy disk (this portion of the operating system is known as the "Kickstart"). The WCS is write-protected after loading, and system resets do not require a reload of the WCS. In Europe, the WCS was often referred to as WOM (Write Once Memory), a play on the more conventional term "ROM" (read-only memory). Technical information The preproduction Amiga (which was codenamed "Velvet") released to developers in early 1985 contained of RAM with an option to expand it to Commodore later increased the system memory to due to objections by the Amiga development team. The names of the custom chips were different; Denise and Paula were called Daphne and Portia respectively. The casing of the preproduction Amiga was almost identical to the production version: the main difference being an embossed Commodore logo in the top left corner. It did not have the developer signatures. The Amiga 1000 has a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 7.15909 MHz (on NTSC systems) or 7.09379 MHz (PAL systems), precisely double the video color carrier frequency for NTSC or 1.6 times the color carrier frequency for PAL. The system clock timings are derived from the video frequency, which simplifies glue logic and allows the Amiga 1000 to make do with a single crystal. In keeping with its video game heritage, the chipset was designed to synchronize CPU memory access and chipset DMA so the hardware runs in real time without wait-state delays. Though most units were sold with an analog RGB monitor, the A1000 also has a built-in composite video output which allows the computer to be connected directly to some monitors other than their standard RGB monitor. The A1000 also has a "TV MOD" output, into which an RF Modulator can be plugged, allowing connection to a TV that was old enough not to even have a composite video input. The original 68000 CPU can be directly replaced with a Motorola 68010, which can execute instructions slightly faster than the 68000 but also introduces a small degree of software incompatibility. Third-party CPU upgrades, which mostly fit in the CPU socket, use faster successors 68020/68881 or 68030/68882 microprocessors and integrated memory. Such upgrades often have the option to revert to 68000 mode for full compatibility. Some boards have a socket to seat the original 68000, whereas the 68030 cards typically come with an on-board 68000. The original Amiga 1000 is the only model to have 256 KB of Amiga Chip RAM, which can be expanded to 512 KB with the addition of a daughterboard under a cover in the center front of the machine. RAM may also be upgraded via official and third-party upgrades, with a practical upper limit of about 9 MB of "fast RAM" due to the 68000's 24-bit address bus. This memory is accessible only by the CPU permitting faster code execution as DMA cycles are not shared with the chipset. The Amiga 1000 features an 86-pin expansion port (electrically identical to the later Amiga 500 expansion port, though the A500's connector is inverted). This port is used by third-party expansions such as memory upgrades and SCSI adapters. These resources are handled by the Amiga Autoconfig standard. Other expansion options are available including a bus expander which provides two Zorro-II slots. Specifications Retail Introduced on July 23, 1985, during a star-studded gala featuring Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry held at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City, machines began shipping in September with a base configuration of 256 KB of RAM at the retail price of . A analog RGB monitor was available for around , bringing the price of a complete Amiga system to US$1,595 (). Before the release of the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 models in 1987, the A1000 was marketed as simply the Amiga, although the model number was there from the beginning, as the original box indicates. In the US, the A1000 was marketed as The Amiga from Commodore, with the Commodore logo omitted from the case. The Commodore branding was retained for the international versions. Additionally, the Amiga 1000 was sold exclusively in computer stores in the US rather than the various non computer-dedicated department and toy stores through which the VIC-20 and Commodore 64 were retailed. These measures were an effort to avoid Commodore's "toy-store" computer image created during the Tramiel era. Along with the operating system, the machine came bundled with a version of AmigaBASIC developed by Microsoft and a speech synthesis library developed by Softvoice, Inc. Aftermarket upgrades Many A1000 owners remained attached to their machines long after newer models rendered the units technically obsolete, and it attracted numerous aftermarket upgrades. Many CPU upgrades that plugged into the Motorola 68000 socket functioned in the A1000. Additionally, a line of products called the Rejuvenator series allowed the use of newer chipsets in the A1000, and an Australian-designed replacement A1000 motherboard called The Phoenix utilized the same chipset as the A3000 and added an A2000-compatible video slot and on-board SCSI controller. Impact In 1994, as Commodore filed for bankruptcy, Byte magazine called the Amiga 1000 "the first multimedia computer... so far ahead of its time that almost nobody—including Commodore's marketing department—could fully articulate what it was all about". In 2006, PC World rated the Amiga 1000 as the 7th greatest PC of all time. In 2007, it was rated by the same magazine as the 37th best tech product of all time. Joe Pillow "Joe Pillow" was the name given on the ticket for the extra airline seat purchased to hold the first Amiga prototype while on the way to the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show. The airlines required a name for the airline ticket and Joe Pillow was born. The engineers (RJ Mical and Dale Luck) who flew with the Amiga prototype (codenamed Lorraine) drew a happy face on the front of the pillowcase and even added a tie. Joe Pillow extended his fifteen minutes of fame when the Amiga went to production. All fifty-three Amiga team members who worked on the project signed the Amiga case. This included Joe Pillow and Jay Miner's dog Michy who each got to "sign" the case in their own unique way. See also Amiga models and variants Amiga Sidecarfor using MS-DOS with Intel 8088 @ 4.77 MHz with 256 KB RAM References External links The Commodore Amiga A1000 at OLD-COMPUTERS.COM Who was Joe Pillow? Amiga computers Computer-related introductions in 1985

The Agra Canal is an important Indian irrigation work which starts from Okhla in Delhi. The Agra canal originates from Okhla barrage, downstream of Nizamuddin bridge. The Canal receives its water from the Yamuna River at Okhla, about 10 km to the south of New Delhi. The weir across the Yamuna was constructed of locally quarried stone. It was about 800-yards long, and rises seven-feet above the summer level of the river. From Okhla the canal follows a route south then southeast for in the high land between the Khari-Nadi and the Yamuna and finally joins the Utanga River about below Agra. Navigable branches connect the canal with Mathura and Agra. The canal irrigates about 1.5 lakh MOS:DIGITS hectares in Agra, and Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, Faridabad in Haryana, Bharatpur in Rajasthan and also some parts of Delhi. History The canal opened in the year 1874. In the beginning, it was available for navigation, in Delhi, erstwhile Gurgaon, Mathura and Agra Districts, and Bharatpur State. Later, navigation was stopped in 1904 and the canal has, since then, been exclusively used for irrigation purposes only. At present, the canal does not flow in Gurgaon district, but only in Faridabad, which was earlier a part of Gurgaon. In recent times, Agra canal is an important landmark which separates Greater Faridabad from Faridabad. References The Agra Canal also has many places to visit along its coast. Canals in Uttar Pradesh Agra district Yamuna River Buildings and structures in Delhi Canals in Rajasthan Canals opened in 1874 Canals in Haryana

Axiology (from Greek , axia: "value, worth"; and , -logia: "study of") is the philosophical study of value. It includes questions about the nature and classification of values and about what kinds of things have value. It is intimately connected with various other philosophical fields that crucially depend on the notion of value, like ethics, aesthetics or philosophy of religion. It is also closely related to value theory and meta-ethics. The term was first used by Paul Lapie, in 1902, and Eduard von Hartmann, in 1908. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value is central to axiology. One conceptualization holds that something is intrinsically valuable if it is good in itself or good for its own sake. It is usually held that intrinsic value depends on certain features of the valuable entity. For example, an experience may be said to be intrinsically valuable in virtue of being pleasurable. Extrinsic value, by contrast, is ascribed to things that are valuable only as a means to something else. Substantive theories of value try to determine which entities have intrinsic value. Monist theories hold that there is only one type of intrinsic value. The paradigm example of monist theories is hedonism, the thesis that only pleasure has intrinsic value. Pluralist theories, on the other hand, contend that there are various different types of intrinsic value, for example, virtue, knowledge, friendship, etc. Value pluralists face the problem of explaining whether or how the different types of value can be compared when making rational decisions. Some philosophers state that values do not exist on the most fundamental level of reality. One such view holds that a value statement about something just expresses the speaker's approval or disapproval of this thing. This position is opposed by realists about value. History Between the 5th and 6th centuries BC, it was important in Greece to be knowledgeable if you were to be successful. Philosophers began to recognize that differences existed between the laws and morality of society. Socrates believed that knowledge had a vital connection to virtue, making morality and democracy closely intertwined. Socrates' student, Plato furthered the belief by establishing virtues which should be followed by all. E. J. Dijksterhuis found that axiological antithesis characterized the philosophy of ancient Greece: With the fall of the government, values became individual, causing skeptic schools of thought to flourish, ultimately shaping an ontologically objective philosophy that is thought to have contributed to Christian Philosophy. During the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas made the distinction between natural and supernatural (theological) virtues. This concept led philosophers to distinguish between judgments based on fact and judgments based on values, creating the division between science and philosophy. Intrinsic value Traditionally, philosophers held that an entity has intrinsic value if it is good in itself or good for its own sake. Intrinsic value is contrasted with extrinsic or instrumental value, which is ascribed to things that are valuable only as a means to something else. For example, tools like cars or microwaves are said to be extrinsically valuable by virtue of the function they perform, while the well-being they cause is intrinsically valuable, according to hedonism. The same entity can be valuable in different ways: some entities have both intrinsic and extrinsic values at the same time. Extrinsic values can form chains, in which one entity is extrinsically valuable because it is a means to another entity that is itself extrinsically valuable. It is commonly held that these chains must terminate somewhere and that the endpoint can only be intrinsically valuable. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic values is important for understanding various disagreements within axiology. Different substantive theories of value often agree on whether something, for example knowledge, is valuable while disagreeing on whether the value in question is intrinsic or extrinsic. The traditional conception of intrinsic value presented above has been criticized in contemporary philosophy on the grounds that it combines various distinct notions that are better discussed separately. One such contrast is between intrinsic and final values. On a more narrow conception, an intrinsic value is a value an entity has in virtue of its intrinsic properties. For example, assuming that the phenomenal aspect of a pleasant experience is an intrinsic property, we might say that the experience is intrinsically valuable because of this intrinsic property. An entity with final value, by contrast, is valuable for its own sake. It is usually accepted that there is a conceptual difference between intrinsic and final values. For example, the pleasure experience may be said to be intrinsically valuable on the one hand, and finally valuable on the other hand. But it has been disputed whether there are actual things where these value types can come apart. Proposed candidates for bearers of final non-intrinsic value include unique or rare items (e.g. a stamp) or historically significant items (e.g. the pen that Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation). Being-rare and having-been-used-by-someone are extrinsic properties that may be responsible for their bearers having final value, i.e. being valuable for their own sake. Some philosophers have questioned whether extrinsic values should be regarded as values at all rather than as mere indications of values. One reason for considering this idea is that adding or removing extrinsically valuable things does not affect the value of the whole if all intrinsically valuable things are kept constant. For example, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake had a negative extrinsic value because of all the damage it caused. But arguably, the world would not have been a better place if exactly the same damage had been caused without the earthquake. Ontological status of values In axiology, it is often important to distinguish between the entity that is valuable and the features in virtue of which it is valuable. For example, an experience may be said to be valuable in virtue of being pleasurable. This distinction is particularly relevant for intrinsic values since it is commonly held that the intrinsic value of an entity supervenes on its intrinsic features. This means that the entity could not have a different intrinsic value unless it had different intrinsic features. Substantive theories of value focus on the features in virtue of which something has intrinsic value. Popular candidates for these features include pleasure, virtue and knowledge. Another question concerns the nature of the entities that are the bearers of value. The main approaches to this question can be divided into the Kantian tradition, which considers concrete things like persons to be the bearers of value, and the Moorean tradition, which holds that only states of affairs bear value. This difference is important when determining whether a value is extrinsic or intrinsic to an entity. Some philosophers hold that objects like Napoleon's hat are valuable because of their relation to extraordinary persons. From a Kantian perspective, this value must be extrinsic since it is based on the extrinsic property of having been worn by an extraordinary person. But from a Moorean perspective, it can be intrinsic since it is born not by the hat but by a state of affairs involving both the hat and Napoleon. The preceding discussion about the ontological categories of values and value-bearers assumes some form of realism: that there actually are valuable things. But the difficulties in reaching expert consensus in value-related fields like ethics, aesthetics or politics and considerations from naturalism have led various philosophers to doubt this assumption. The ensuing dispute between cognitivists and non-cognitivists is usually held on the level of value-statements or value-attitudes, either concerning all values or specifically concerning ethical values. Cognitivists assert that value-statements are truth-apt, i.e. are either true or false, which is denied by non-cognitivists. Most cognitivists are realists about values: they believe that values are part of reality. Error theory, as originally articulated by J. L. Mackie, is an exception. Error theorists hold that all value-statements are false, and thereby truth-apt, because the world lacks value-features that would be needed to make them true. Non-cognitivists, on the other hand, go one step further by denying that value-statements are truth-apt. This position involves the difficulty of explaining how value-statements can be meaningful despite lacking a truth value. This challenge can be met in different ways. Emotivists, following A. J. Ayer, state that value-statements only express the emotions of the speaker and are intended to influence the actions of the listener. Prescriptivism, as developed by R. M. Hare, interprets value-statements as imperatives or commands. Simon Blackburn's quasi-realism states that value statements project emotional attitudes as though they were real properties. Monism and pluralism Substantive theories of value try to determine which entities have intrinsic value. A traditional dispute in this field is between monist and pluralist theories. According to Chris Heathwood, monism and pluralism can be distinguished according to an evaluation of what is good in people and the concept of "value simpliciter" in terms of intrinsic value. Monist theories hold that there is only one type of intrinsic value. The paradigm example of monist theories is hedonism, the thesis that only pleasure has intrinsic value. Pluralist theories, on the other hand, contend that there are various different types of intrinsic value. They maintain that these types of intrinsic values cannot be reduced to a single feature of an act or entity. W. D. Ross, for example, holds that pleasure is only one type of intrinsic value besides other types, like knowledge. It is important to keep in mind that this disagreement only concerns intrinsic value, not value at large. So hedonists may be happy to concede that knowledge is valuable, but only extrinsically so, given that knowledge can be helpful in causing pleasure and avoiding pain. Various arguments have been suggested in the monism-pluralism-dispute. Common-sense seems to favor value pluralism: values are ascribed to a wide range of different things like happiness, liberty, friendship, etc. without any obvious common feature underlying these values. One way to defend value monism is to cast doubt on the reliability of common-sense for technical matters like the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value. This strategy is pursued by J. J. C. Smart, who holds that there is a psychological bias to mistake stable extrinsic values for intrinsic values. Value pluralists have often attempted to provide exhaustive lists of all value types, but different theorists have suggested very different lists. These lists seem to constitute arbitrary selections unless a clear criterion could be provided why all and only these items are included. But if a criterion was to be found then such a theory would no longer be pluralistic. This dilemma suggests that pluralism is inadequate as an explanation. One issue closely related to the monism-pluralism-debate is the problem of incommensurability: the question of whether there are incommensurable values. Two values are incommensurable if there is no fact as to whether one is better than or as good as the other: there is no common value scale according to which they could be compared. According to Joseph Raz, career choices between very different paths, for example, whether to become a lawyer or a clarinetist, are cases where incommensurable values are involved. Value pluralists often assert that values belonging to different types are incommensurable with each other. Value monists, by contrast, usually deny that there are incommensurable values. This question is particularly relevant for ethics. If different options available to the agent embody incommensurable values then there seems to be no rational way to determine what ought to be done since there is no matter of fact as to which option is better. Widespread incommensurability would threaten to undermine the practical relevance of ethics and rational choice. Other concepts and distinctions Many evaluative terms are found in everyday language, often with various different meanings. It is important for philosophers to distinguish these different meanings in order to avoid misunderstandings. One such distinction is between a predicative and an attributive sense of good and bad. In the attributive sense, an entity is good in relation to a certain kind. For example, a person with a clear voice may be a good singer or a knife with a blunt edge may be a bad knife. But this still leaves it open whether the entity in question is good or bad in an unqualified or predicative sense. For example, a person may be a bad assassin but being bad as an assassin is not bad in a predicative sense. Axiology is usually interested in the predicative sense of goodness. But some philosophers deny that such a sense exists and therefore hold that all value is relative to a kind. A second important distinction is that between being good for a person and being good for the world. Being good for a person or prudential value has to do with this person's welfare or well-being. But what is good for one person may be bad for another person. For example, having a dry summer may be good for the hiker in virtue of the pleasant hiking conditions, but bad for the farmer, whose crop is dying because of a lack of water. In such cases, the question arises as to what is good for the world or good simpliciter. Utilitarians can solve this problem by defining the good for the world as the sum of the good for each persons. Philosophers often distinguish between evaluative concepts (like good or bad) and deontic concepts (like right, fitting or ought). The former belong to axiology proper and express what has worth or value while the latter belong to ethics (and related fields) and express what one ought to do. Philosophers have tried to provide a unified account of these two fields since they seem to be intimately related. Consequentialists see evaluative concepts as fundamental and define deontic concepts in terms of evaluative concepts. Fitting-attitude theories, on the other hand, try to reduce evaluative concepts to deontic concepts. Consequentialism is an ethical theory that holds that, given a certain set of possible actions, we ought to perform the action that has the best overall consequences. So what we ought to do is defined in evaluative terms: whatever leads to the consequences with the highest value. Fitting-attitude theories are axiological theories that define the value of something in terms of the attitude that would be fitting to have towards this thing, for example, that it would be good to find a cure for cancer because this would be a fitting object of desire. These accounts build on the deontic notion that some of our attitudes towards the world are fitting or right to define what is good. See also References Further reading 384 pages. 100 pages. 140 pages. Marías, Julián (1967). History of Philosophy. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. External links Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Axiology.org.uk Axiology at PhilPapers Branches of philosophy Concepts in aesthetics Concepts in ethics Concepts in metaphysics Critical thinking Ethics Meta-ethics Metaphilosophy

In economics and finance, arbitrage (, ) is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets; striking a combination of matching deals to capitalize on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit after transaction costs. For example, an arbitrage opportunity is present when there is the possibility to instantaneously buy something for a low price and sell it for a higher price. In principle and in academic use, an arbitrage is risk-free; in common use, as in statistical arbitrage, it may refer to expected profit, though losses may occur, and in practice, there are always risks in arbitrage, some minor (such as fluctuation of prices decreasing profit margins), some major (such as devaluation of a currency or derivative). In academic use, an arbitrage involves taking advantage of differences in price of a single asset or identical cash-flows; in common use, it is also used to refer to differences between similar assets (relative value or convergence trades), as in merger arbitrage. The term is mainly applied to trading in financial instruments, such as bonds, stocks, derivatives, commodities, and currencies. People who engage in arbitrage are called arbitrageurs (). Arbitrage has the effect of causing prices of the same or very similar assets in different markets to converge. Etymology "Arbitrage" is a French word and denotes a decision by an arbitrator or arbitration tribunal (in modern French, "" usually means referee or umpire). In the sense used here, it was first defined in 1704 by Mathieu de la Porte in his treatise "" as a consideration of different exchange rates to recognise the most profitable places of issuance and settlement for a bill of exchange (" [, in modern spelling] ".) Arbitrage-free If the market prices do not allow for profitable arbitrage, the prices are said to constitute an arbitrage equilibrium, or an arbitrage-free market. An arbitrage equilibrium is a precondition for a general economic equilibrium. The "no arbitrage" assumption is used in quantitative finance to calculate a unique risk neutral price for derivatives. Arbitrage-free pricing approach for bonds Arbitrage-free pricing for bonds is the method of valuing a coupon-bearing financial instrument by discounting its future cash flows by multiple discount rates. By doing so, a more accurate price can be obtained than if the price is calculated with a present-value pricing approach. Arbitrage-free pricing is used for bond valuation and to detect arbitrage opportunities for investors. For the purpose of valuing the price of a bond, its cash flows can each be thought of as packets of incremental cash flows with a large packet upon maturity, being the principal. Since the cash flows are dispersed throughout future periods, they must be discounted back to the present. In the present-value approach, the cash flows are discounted with one discount rate to find the price of the bond. In arbitrage-free pricing, multiple discount rates are used. The present-value approach assumes that the yield of the bond will stay the same until maturity. This is a simplified model because interest rates may fluctuate in the future, which in turn affects the yield on the bond. For this reason, the discount rate may be different for each of the cash flows. Each cash flow can be considered a zero-coupon instrument that pays one payment upon maturity. The discount rates used should be the rates of multiple zero-coupon bonds with maturity dates the same as each cash flow and similar risk as the instrument being valued. By using multiple discount rates, the arbitrage-free price is the sum of the discounted cash flows. Arbitrage-free price refers to the price at which no price arbitrage is possible. The idea of using multiple discount rates obtained from zero-coupon bonds and discounting a similar bond's cash flow to find its price is derived from the yield curve, which is a curve of the yields of the same bond with different maturities. This curve can be used to view trends in market expectations of how interest rates will move in the future. In arbitrage-free pricing of a bond, a yield curve of similar zero-coupon bonds with different maturities is created. If the curve were to be created with Treasury securities of different maturities, they would be stripped of their coupon payments through bootstrapping. This is to transform the bonds into zero-coupon bonds. The yield of these zero-coupon bonds would then be plotted on a diagram with time on the x-axis and yield on the y-axis. Since the yield curve displays market expectations on how yields and interest rates may move, the arbitrage-free pricing approach is more realistic than using only one discount rate. Investors can use this approach to value bonds and find mismatches in prices, resulting in an arbitrage opportunity. If a bond valued with the arbitrage-free pricing approach turns out to be priced higher in the market, an investor could have such an opportunity: Investor shorts the bond at price at time t1. Investor longs the zero-coupon bonds making up the related yield curve and strips and sells any coupon payments at t1. As t>t1, the price spread between the prices will decrease. At maturity, the prices will converge and be equal. Investor exits both the long and short positions, realizing a profit. If the outcome from the valuation were the reverse case, the opposite positions would be taken in the bonds. This arbitrage opportunity comes from the assumption that the prices of bonds with the same properties will converge upon maturity. This can be explained through market efficiency, which states that arbitrage opportunities will eventually be discovered and corrected. The prices of the bonds in t1 move closer together to finally become the same at tT. Conditions for arbitrage Arbitrage may take place when: the same asset does not trade at the same price on all markets ("the law of one price"). two assets with identical cash flows do not trade at the same price. an asset with a known price in the future does not today trade at its future price discounted at the risk-free interest rate (or the asset has significant costs of storage; so this condition holds true for something like grain but not for securities). Arbitrage is not simply the act of buying a product in one market and selling it in another for a higher price at some later time. The transactions must occur simultaneously to avoid exposure to market risk, or the risk that prices may change in one market before both transactions are complete. In practical terms, this is generally possible only with securities and financial products that can be traded electronically, and even then, when each leg of the trade is executed, the prices in the market may have moved. Missing one of the legs of the trade (and subsequently having to trade it soon after at a worse price) is called 'execution risk' or more specifically 'leg risk'. In the simplest example, any good sold in one market should sell for the same price in another. Traders may, for example, find that the price of wheat is lower in agricultural regions than in cities, purchase the good, and transport it to another region to sell at a higher price. This type of price arbitrage is the most common, but this simple example ignores the cost of transport, storage, risk, and other factors. "True" arbitrage requires that there is no market risk involved. Where securities are traded on more than one exchange, arbitrage occurs by simultaneously buying in one and selling on the other. See rational pricing, particularly § arbitrage mechanics, for further discussion. Mathematically it is defined as follows: where and denotes the portfolio value at time t. Price convergence Arbitrage has the effect of causing prices in different markets to converge. As a result of arbitrage, the currency exchange rates, the price of commodities, and the price of securities in different markets tend to converge. The speed at which they do so is a measure of market efficiency. Arbitrage tends to reduce price discrimination by encouraging people to buy an item where the price is low and resell it where the price is high (as long as the buyers are not prohibited from reselling and the transaction costs of buying, holding, and reselling are small, relative to the difference in prices in the different markets). Arbitrage moves different currencies toward purchasing power parity. Assume that a car purchased in the United States is cheaper than the same car in Canada. Canadians would buy their cars across the border to exploit the arbitrage condition. At the same time, Americans would buy US cars, transport them across the border, then sell them in Canada. Canadians would have to buy American dollars to buy the cars and Americans would have to sell the Canadian dollars they received in exchange. Both actions would increase demand for US dollars and supply of Canadian dollars. As a result, there would be an appreciation of the US currency. This would make US cars more expensive and Canadian cars less so until their prices were similar. On a larger scale, international arbitrage opportunities in commodities, goods, securities, and currencies tend to change exchange rates until the purchasing power is equal. In reality, most assets exhibit some difference between countries. These, transaction costs, taxes, and other costs provide an impediment to this kind of arbitrage. Similarly, arbitrage affects the difference in interest rates paid on government bonds issued by the various countries, given the expected depreciation in the currencies relative to each other (see interest rate parity). Risks Arbitrage transactions in modern securities markets involve fairly low day-to-day risks, but can face extremely high risk in rare situations, particularly financial crises, and can lead to bankruptcy. Formally, arbitrage transactions have negative skew – prices can get a small amount closer (but often no closer than 0), while they can get very far apart. The day-to-day risks are generally small because the transactions involve small differences in price, so an execution failure will generally cause a small loss (unless the trade is very big or the price moves rapidly). The rare case risks are extremely high because these small price differences are converted to large profits via leverage (borrowed money), and in the rare event of a large price move, this may yield a large loss. The main day-to-day risk is that part of the transaction fails; this is called execution risk. The main, rare risks are counterparty risk, and liquidity risk: that a counterparty to a large transaction or many transactions fails to pay, or that one is required to post margin and does not have the money to do so. In the academic literature, the idea that seemingly very low-risk arbitrage trades might not be fully exploited because of these risk factors and other considerations is often referred to as limits to arbitrage. Execution risk Generally, it is impossible to close two or three transactions at the same instant; therefore, there is the possibility that when one part of the deal is closed, a quick shift in prices makes it impossible to close the other at a profitable price. However, this is not necessarily the case. Many exchanges and inter-dealer brokers allow multi legged trades (e.g. basis block trades on LIFFE). Competition in the marketplace can also create risks during arbitrage transactions. As an example, if one was trying to profit from a price discrepancy between IBM on the NYSE and IBM on the London Stock Exchange, they may purchase a large number of shares on the NYSE and find that they cannot simultaneously sell on the LSE. This leaves the arbitrageur in an unhedged risk position. In the 1980s, risk arbitrage was common. In this form of speculation, one trades a security that is clearly undervalued or overvalued, when it is seen that the wrong valuation is about to be corrected. The standard example is the stock of a company, undervalued in the stock market, which is about to be the object of a takeover bid; the price of the takeover will more truly reflect the value of the company, giving a large profit to those who bought at the current price, if the merger goes through as predicted. Traditionally, arbitrage transactions in the securities markets involve high speed, high volume, and low risk. At some moment a price difference exists, and the problem is to execute two or three balancing transactions while the difference persists (that is, before the other arbitrageurs act). When the transaction involves a delay of weeks or months, as above, it may entail considerable risk if borrowed money is used to magnify the reward through leverage. One way of reducing this risk is through the illegal use of inside information, and risk arbitrage in leveraged buyouts was associated with some of the famous financial scandals of the 1980s, such as those involving Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky. Mismatch Another risk occurs if the items being bought and sold are not identical and the arbitrage is conducted under the assumption that the prices of the items are correlated or predictable; this is more narrowly referred to as a convergence trade. In the extreme case this is merger arbitrage, described below. In comparison to the classical quick arbitrage transaction, such an operation can produce disastrous losses. Counterparty risk As arbitrages generally involve future movements of cash, they are subject to counterparty risk: the risk that a counterparty fails to fulfill their side of a transaction. This is a serious problem if one has either a single trade or many related trades with a single counterparty, whose failure thus poses a threat, or in the event of a financial crisis when many counterparties fail. This hazard is serious because of the large quantities one must trade in order to make a profit on small price differences. For example, if one purchases many risky bonds, then hedges them with CDSes, profiting from the difference between the bond spread and the CDS premium, in a financial crisis, the bonds may default and the CDS writer/seller may fail, due to the stress of the crisis, causing the arbitrageur to face steep losses. Liquidity risk Arbitrage trades are necessarily synthetic, leveraged trades, as they involve a short position. If the assets used are not identical (so a price divergence makes the trade temporarily lose money), or the margin treatment is not identical, and the trader is accordingly required to post margin (faces a margin call), the trader may run out of capital (if they run out of cash and cannot borrow more) and be forced to sell these assets at a loss even though the trades may be expected to ultimately make money. In effect, arbitrage traders synthesize a put option on their ability to finance themselves. Prices may diverge during a financial crisis, often termed a "flight to quality"; these are precisely the times when it is hardest for leveraged investors to raise capital (due to overall capital constraints), and thus they will lack capital precisely when they need it most. Types Spatial arbitrage Also known as geographical arbitrage, this is the simplest form of arbitrage. In spatial arbitrage, an arbitrageur looks for price differences between geographically separate markets. For example, there may be a bond dealer in Virginia offering a bond at 100-12/23 and a dealer in Washington bidding 100-15/23 for the same bond. For whatever reason, the two dealers have not spotted the difference in the prices, but the arbitrageur does. The arbitrageur immediately buys the bond from the Virginia dealer and sells it to the Washington dealer. Merger arbitrage Also called risk arbitrage, merger arbitrage generally consists of buying/holding the stock of a company that is the target of a takeover while shorting the stock of the acquiring company. Usually, the market price of the target company is less than the price offered by the acquiring company. The spread between these two prices depends mainly on the probability and the timing of the takeover being completed as well as the prevailing level of interest rates. The bet in a merger arbitrage is that such a spread will eventually be zero, if and when the takeover is completed. The risk is that the deal "breaks" and the spread massively widens. Municipal bond arbitrage Also called municipal bond relative value arbitrage, municipal arbitrage, or just muni arb, this hedge fund strategy involves one of two approaches. The term "arbitrage" is also used in the context of the Income Tax Regulations governing the investment of proceeds of municipal bonds; these regulations, aimed at the issuers or beneficiaries of tax-exempt municipal bonds, are different and, instead, attempt to remove the issuer's ability to arbitrage between the low tax-exempt rate and a taxable investment rate. Generally, managers seek relative value opportunities by being both long and short municipal bonds with a duration-neutral book. The relative value trades may be between different issuers, different bonds issued by the same entity, or capital structure trades referencing the same asset (in the case of revenue bonds). Managers aim to capture the inefficiencies arising from the heavy participation of non-economic investors (i.e., high income "buy and hold" investors seeking tax-exempt income) as well as the "crossover buying" arising from corporations' or individuals' changing income tax situations (i.e., insurers switching their munis for corporates after a large loss as they can capture a higher after-tax yield by offsetting the taxable corporate income with underwriting losses). There are additional inefficiencies arising from the highly fragmented nature of the municipal bond market which has two million outstanding issues and 50,000 issuers, in contrast to the Treasury market which has 400 issues and a single issuer. Second, managers construct leveraged portfolios of AAA- or AA-rated tax-exempt municipal bonds with the duration risk hedged by shorting the appropriate ratio of taxable corporate bonds. These corporate equivalents are typically interest rate swaps referencing Libor or SIFMA. The arbitrage manifests itself in the form of a relatively cheap longer maturity municipal bond, which is a municipal bond that yields significantly more than 65% of a corresponding taxable corporate bond. The steeper slope of the municipal yield curve allows participants to collect more after-tax income from the municipal bond portfolio than is spent on the interest rate swap; the carry is greater than the hedge expense. Positive, tax-free carry from muni arb can reach into the double digits. The bet in this municipal bond arbitrage is that, over a longer period of time, two similar instruments—municipal bonds and interest rate swaps—will correlate with each other; they are both very high quality credits, have the same maturity and are denominated in the same currency. Credit risk and duration risk are largely eliminated in this strategy. However, basis risk arises from use of an imperfect hedge, which results in significant, but range-bound principal volatility. The end goal is to limit this principal volatility, eliminating its relevance over time as the high, consistent, tax-free cash flow accumulates. Since the inefficiency is related to government tax policy, and hence is structural in nature, it has not been arbitraged away. However, many municipal bonds are callable, and this adds substantial risks to the strategy. Convertible bond arbitrage A convertible bond is a bond that an investor can return to the issuing company in exchange for a predetermined number of shares in the company. A convertible bond can be thought of as a corporate bond with a stock call option attached to it. The price of a convertible bond is sensitive to three major factors: interest rate. When rates move higher, the bond part of a convertible bond tends to move lower, but the call option part of a convertible bond moves higher (and the aggregate tends to move lower). stock price. When the price of the stock the bond is convertible into moves higher, the price of the bond tends to rise. credit spread. If the creditworthiness of the issuer deteriorates (e.g. rating downgrade) and its credit spread widens, the bond price tends to move lower, but, in many cases, the call option part of the convertible bond moves higher (since credit spread correlates with volatility). Given the complexity of the calculations involved and the convoluted structure that a convertible bond can have, an arbitrageur often relies on sophisticated quantitative models in order to identify bonds that are trading cheap versus their theoretical value. Convertible arbitrage consists of buying a convertible bond and hedging two of the three factors in order to gain exposure to the third factor at a very attractive price. For instance an arbitrageur would first buy a convertible bond, then sell fixed income securities or interest rate futures (to hedge the interest rate exposure) and buy some credit protection (to hedge the risk of credit deterioration). Eventually what he or she would be left with is something similar to a call option on the underlying stock, acquired at a very low price. He or she could then make money either selling some of the more expensive options that are openly traded in the market or delta hedging his or her exposure to the underlying shares. Depository receipts A depositary receipt is a security that is offered as a "tracking stock" on another foreign market. For instance, a Chinese company wishing to raise more money may issue a depository receipt on the New York Stock Exchange, as the amount of capital on the local exchanges is limited. These securities, known as ADRs (American depositary receipt) or GDRs (global depository receipt) depending on where they are issued, are typically considered "foreign" and therefore trade at a lower value when first released. Many ADR's are exchangeable into the original security (known as fungibility) and actually have the same value. In this case, there is a spread between the perceived value and real value, which can be extracted. Other ADR's that are not exchangeable often have much larger spreads. Since the ADR is trading at a value lower than what it is worth, one can purchase the ADR and expect to make money as its value converges on the original. However, there is a chance that the original stock will fall in value too, so by shorting it one can hedge that risk. Cross-border arbitrage Cross-border arbitrage exploits different prices of the same stock in different countries: Example: Apple is trading on NASDAQ at US$108.84. The stock is also traded on the German electronic exchange, XETRA. If 1 euro costs US$1.11, a cross-border trader could enter a buy order on the XETRA at €98.03 per Apple share and a sell order at €98.07 per share. Some brokers in Germany do not offer access to the U.S. exchanges. Hence if a German retail investor wants to buy Apple stock, he needs to buy it on the XETRA. The cross-border trader would sell the Apple shares on XETRA to the investor and buy the shares in the same second on NASDAQ. Afterwards, the cross-border trader would need to transfer the shares bought on NASDAQ to the German XETRA exchange, where he is obliged to deliver the stock. In most cases, the quotation on the local exchanges is done electronically by high-frequency traders, taking into consideration the home price of the stock and the exchange rate. This kind of high-frequency trading benefits the public, as it reduces the cost to the German investor and enables them to buy U.S. shares. Dual-listed companies A dual-listed company (DLC) structure involves two companies incorporated in different countries contractually agreeing to operate their businesses as if they were a single enterprise, while retaining their separate legal identity and existing stock exchange listings. In integrated and efficient financial markets, stock prices of the twin pair should move in lockstep. In practice, DLC share prices exhibit large deviations from theoretical parity. Arbitrage positions in DLCs can be set up by obtaining a long position in the relatively underpriced part of the DLC and a short position in the relatively overpriced part. Such arbitrage strategies start paying off as soon as the relative prices of the two DLC stocks converge toward theoretical parity. However, since there is no identifiable date at which DLC prices will converge, arbitrage positions sometimes have to be kept open for considerable periods of time. In the meantime, the price gap might widen. In these situations, arbitrageurs may receive margin calls, after which they would most likely be forced to liquidate part of the position at a highly unfavorable moment and suffer a loss. Arbitrage in DLCs may be profitable, but is also very risky. A good illustration of the risk of DLC arbitrage is the position in Royal Dutch Shell—which had a DLC structure until 2005—by the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM, see also the discussion below). Lowenstein (2000) describes that LTCM established an arbitrage position in Royal Dutch Shell in the summer of 1997, when Royal Dutch traded at an 8 to 10 percent premium. In total, $2.3 billion was invested, half of which was long in Shell and the other half was short in Royal Dutch (Lowenstein, p. 99). In the autumn of 1998, large defaults on Russian debt created significant losses for the hedge fund and LTCM had to unwind several positions. Lowenstein reports that the premium of Royal Dutch had increased to about 22 percent and LTCM had to close the position and incur a loss. According to Lowenstein (p. 234), LTCM lost $286 million in equity pairs trading and more than half of this loss is accounted for by the Royal Dutch Shell trade. (See further under Limits to arbitrage.) Private to public equities The market prices for privately held companies are typically viewed from a return on investment perspective (such as 25%), whilst publicly held and or exchange listed companies trade on a Price to earnings ratio (P/E) (such as a P/E of 10, which equates to a 10% ROI). Thus, if a publicly traded company specialises in the acquisition of privately held companies, from a per-share perspective there is a gain with every acquisition that falls within these guidelines. E.g., Berkshire Hathaway. Private to public equities arbitrage is a term that can arguably be applied to investment banking in general. Private markets to public markets differences may also help explain the overnight windfall gains enjoyed by principals of companies that just did an initial public offering (IPO). Regulatory arbitrage Regulatory arbitrage "is an avoidance strategy of regulation that is exercised as a result of a regulatory inconsistency". In other words, where a regulated institution takes advantage of the difference between its real (or economic) risk and the regulatory position. For example, if a bank, operating under the Basel I accord, has to hold 8% capital against default risk, but the real risk of default is lower, it is profitable to securitise the loan, removing the low-risk loan from its portfolio. On the other hand, if the real risk is higher than the regulatory risk then it is profitable to make that loan and hold on to it, provided it is priced appropriately. Regulatory arbitrage can result in parts of entire businesses being unregulated as a result of the arbitrage. This process can increase the overall riskiness of institutions under a risk insensitive regulatory regime, as described by Alan Greenspan in his October 1998 speech on The Role of Capital in Optimal Banking Supervision and Regulation. The term "Regulatory Arbitrage" was used for the first time in 2005 when it was applied by Scott V. Simpson, a partner at law firm Skadden, Arps, to refer to a new defence tactic in hostile mergers and acquisitions where differing takeover regimes in deals involving multi-jurisdictions are exploited to the advantage of a target company under threat. In economics, regulatory arbitrage (sometimes, tax arbitrage) may refer to situations when a company can choose a nominal place of business with a regulatory, legal or tax regime with lower costs. This can occur particularly where the business transaction has no obvious physical location. In the case of many financial products, it may be unclear "where" the transaction occurs. Regulatory arbitrage can include restructuring a bank by outsourcing services such as IT. The outsourcing company takes over the installations, buying out the bank's assets and charges a periodic service fee back to the bank. This frees up cashflow usable for new lending by the bank. The bank will have higher IT costs, but counts on the multiplier effect of money creation and the interest rate spread to make it a profitable exercise. Example: Suppose the bank sells its IT installations for US$40 million. With a reserve ratio of 10%, the bank can create US$400 million in additional loans (there is a time lag, and the bank has to expect to recover the loaned money back into its books). The bank can often lend (and securitize the loan) to the IT services company to cover the acquisition cost of the IT installations. This can be at preferential rates, as the sole client using the IT installation is the bank. If the bank can generate 5% interest margin on the 400 million of new loans, the bank will increase interest revenues by 20 million. The IT services company is free to leverage their balance sheet as aggressively as they and their banker agree to. This is the reason behind the trend towards outsourcing in the financial sector. Without this money creation benefit, it is actually more expensive to outsource the IT operations as the outsourcing adds a layer of management and increases overhead. According to PBS Frontline's 2012 four-part documentary, "Money, Power, and Wall Street," regulatory arbitrage, along with asymmetric bank lobbying in Washington and abroad, allowed investment banks in the pre- and post-2008 period to continue to skirt laws and engage in the risky proprietary trading of opaque derivatives, swaps, and other credit-based instruments invented to circumvent legal restrictions at the expense of clients, government, and publics. Due to the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid coverage, one form of Regulatory Arbitrage can now be found when businesses engage in “Medicaid Migration”, a maneuver by which qualifying employees who would typically be enrolled in company health plans elect to enroll in Medicaid instead. These programs that have similar characteristics as insurance products to the employee, but have radically different cost structures, resulting in significant expense reductions for employers. Telecom arbitrage Telecom arbitrage companies allow phone users to make international calls for free through certain access numbers. Such services are offered in the United Kingdom; the telecommunication arbitrage companies get paid an interconnect charge by the UK mobile networks and then buy international routes at a lower cost. The calls are seen as free by the UK contract mobile phone customers since they are using up their allocated monthly minutes rather than paying for additional calls. Such services were previously offered in the United States by companies such as FuturePhone.com. These services would operate in rural telephone exchanges, primarily in small towns in the state of Iowa. In these areas, the local telephone carriers are allowed to charge a high "termination fee" to the caller's carrier in order to fund the cost of providing service to the small and sparsely populated areas that they serve. However, FuturePhone (as well as other similar services) ceased operations upon legal challenges from AT&T and other service providers. Statistical arbitrage Statistical arbitrage is an imbalance in expected nominal values. A casino has a statistical arbitrage in every game of chance that it offers, referred to as the house advantage, house edge, vigorish, or house vigorish. The fall of Long-Term Capital Management Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) lost 4.6 billion U.S. dollars in fixed income arbitrage in September 1998. LTCM had attempted to make money on the price difference between different bonds. For example, it would sell U.S. Treasury securities and buy Italian bond futures. The concept was that because Italian bond futures had a less liquid market, in the short term Italian bond futures would have a higher return than U.S. bonds, but in the long term, the prices would converge. Because the difference was small, a large amount of money had to be borrowed to make the buying and selling profitable. The downfall in this system began on August 17, 1998, when Russia defaulted on its ruble debt and domestic dollar debt. Because global markets were already nervous due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, investors began selling non-U.S. treasury debt and buying U.S. treasuries, which were considered a safe investment. As a result, the price on US treasuries began to increase and the return began decreasing because there were many buyers, and the return (yield) on other bonds began to increase because there were many sellers (i.e. the price of those bonds fell). This caused the difference between the prices of U.S. treasuries and other bonds to increase, rather than to decrease as LTCM was expecting. Eventually this caused LTCM to fold, and their creditors had to arrange a bail-out. More controversially, officials of the Federal Reserve assisted in the negotiations that led to this bail-out, on the grounds that so many companies and deals were intertwined with LTCM that if LTCM actually failed, they would as well, causing a collapse in confidence in the economic system. Thus LTCM failed as a fixed income arbitrage fund, although it is unclear what sort of profit was realized by the banks that bailed LTCM out. See also Types of financial arbitrage Arbitrage betting Covered interest arbitrage Fixed income arbitrage Political arbitrage Risk arbitrage Statistical arbitrage Triangular arbitrage Uncovered interest arbitrage Volatility arbitrage Related concepts Airline booking ploys Algorithmic trading Arbitrage pricing theory Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy), analogous concept in Bayesian probability Cointelation Drop shipping Efficient-market hypothesis Immunization (finance) Interest rate parity Intermediation No free lunch with vanishing risk TANSTAAFL Value investing Notes References Greider, William (1997). One World, Ready or Not. Penguin Press. . Special Situation Investing: Hedging, Arbitrage, and Liquidation, Brian J. Stark, Dow-Jones Publishers. New York, NY 1983. ; External links What is Regulatory Arbitrage. Regulatory Arbitrage after the Basel ii framework and the 8th Company Law Directive of the European Union. What is Online Arbitrage? Financial markets Thought experiments

Attribution of recent climate change is the effort to scientifically ascertain mechanisms responsible for recent global warming and related climate changes on Earth. The effort has focused on changes observed during the period of instrumental temperature record, particularly in the last 50 years. This is the period when human activity has grown fastest and observations of the atmosphere above the surface have become available. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is "extremely likely" that human influence was the dominant cause of global warming between 1951 and 2010. Likely human contribution is 93%–123% of the observed 1951–2010 temperature change. Some of the main human activities that contribute to global warming are: increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, for a warming effect global changes to land surface, such as deforestation, for a warming effect increasing atmospheric concentrations of aerosols, mainly for a cooling effect In addition to human activities, some natural mechanisms can also cause climate change, including for example, climate oscillations, changes in solar activity, and volcanic activity. Multiple lines of evidence support attribution of recent climate change to human activities: A physical understanding of the climate system: greenhouse gas concentrations have increased and their warming properties are well-established. Historical estimates of past climate changes suggest that the recent changes in global surface temperature are unusual. Computer-based climate models are unable to replicate the observed warming unless human greenhouse gas emissions are included. Natural forces alone (such as solar and volcanic activity) cannot explain the observed warming. The IPCC's attribution of recent global warming to human activities reflects the view of the scientific community, and is also supported by 196 other scientific organizations worldwide. () Background Factors affecting Earth's climate can be broken down into forcings, feedbacks and internal variations. A forcing is something that is imposed externally on the climate system. External forcings include natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and variations in the sun's output. Human activities can also impose forcings, for example, through changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Radiative forcing is a measure of how various factors alter the energy balance of planet Earth. A positive radiative forcing will lead towards a warming of the surface and, over time, the climate system. Between the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750, and the year 2005, the increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (chemical formula: ) led to a positive radiative forcing, averaged over the Earth's surface area, of about 1.66 watts per square metre (abbreviated W m−2). Climate feedbacks can either amplify or dampen the response of the climate to a given forcing. There are many feedback mechanisms in the climate system that can either amplify (a positive feedback) or diminish (a negative feedback) the effects of a change in climate forcing. The climate system will vary in response to changes in forcings. The climate system will show internal variability both in the presence and absence of forcings imposed on it, (see images opposite). This internal variability is a result of complex interactions between components of the climate system, such as the coupling between the atmosphere and ocean (see also the later section on Internal climate variability and global warming). An example of internal variability is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. Detection vs. attribution Detection and attribution of climate signals, as well as its common-sense meaning, has a more precise definition within the climate change literature, as expressed by the IPCC. Detection of a climate signal does not always imply significant attribution. The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report says "it is extremely likely that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750," where "extremely likely" indicates a probability greater than 95%. Detection of a signal requires demonstrating that an observed change is statistically significantly different from that which can be explained by natural internal variability. Attribution requires demonstrating that a signal is: unlikely to be due entirely to internal variability; consistent with the estimated responses to the given combination of anthropogenic and natural forcing not consistent with alternative, physically plausible explanations of recent climate change that exclude important elements of the given combination of forcings. Key attributions Greenhouse gases is absorbed and emitted naturally as part of the carbon cycle, through animal and plant respiration, volcanic eruptions, and ocean-atmosphere exchange. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use (see below), release large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere, causing concentrations in the atmosphere to rise. The high-accuracy measurements of atmospheric concentration, initiated by Charles David Keeling in 1958, constitute the master time series documenting the changing composition of the atmosphere. These data have iconic status in climate change science as evidence of the effect of human activities on the chemical composition of the global atmosphere. In May 2019, the concentration of in the atmosphere reached 415 ppm. The last time when it reached this level was 2.6–5.3 million years ago. Without human intervention, it would be 280 ppm. Along with , methane and to a lesser extent nitrous oxide are also major forcing contributors to the greenhouse effect. The Kyoto Protocol lists these together with hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), which are entirely artificial gases, as contributors to radiative forcing. The chart at right attributes anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to eight main economic sectors, of which the largest contributors are power stations (many of which burn coal or other fossil fuels), industrial processes, transportation fuels (generally fossil fuels), and agricultural by-products (mainly methane from enteric fermentation and nitrous oxide from fertilizer use). Water vapor Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas and is the largest contributor to the natural greenhouse effect, despite having a short atmospheric lifetime (about 10 days). Some human activities can influence local water vapor levels. However, on a global scale, the concentration of water vapor is controlled by temperature, which influences overall rates of evaporation and precipitation. Therefore, the global concentration of water vapor is not substantially affected by direct human emissions. Land use Climate change is attributed to land use for two main reasons. Between 1750 and 2007, about two-thirds of anthropogenic emissions were produced from burning fossil fuels, and about one-third of emissions from changes in land use, primarily deforestation. Deforestation both reduces the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by deforested regions and releases greenhouse gases directly, together with aerosols, through biomass burning that frequently accompanies it. Some of the causes of climate change are, generally, not connected with it directly in the media coverage. For example, the harm done by humans to the populations of Elephants and Monkeys contributes to deforestation therefore to climate change. A second reason that climate change has been attributed to land use is that the terrestrial albedo is often altered by use, which leads to radiative forcing. This effect is more significant locally than globally. Livestock and land use Worldwide, livestock production occupies 70% of all land used for agriculture, or 30% of the ice-free land surface of the Earth. More than 18% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to livestock and livestock-related activities such as deforestation and increasingly fuel-intensive farming practices. Specific attributions to the livestock sector include: 9% of global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions 35–40% of global anthropogenic methane emissions (chiefly due to enteric fermentation and manure) 64% of global anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions, chiefly due to fertilizer use. Aerosols With virtual certainty, scientific consensus has attributed various forms of climate change, chiefly cooling effects, to aerosols, which are small particles or droplets suspended in the atmosphere. Key sources to which anthropogenic aerosols are attributed include: biomass burning such as slash-and-burn deforestation. Aerosols produced are primarily black carbon. industrial air pollution, which produces soot and airborne sulfates, nitrates, and ammonium dust produced by land use effects such as desertification Attribution of 20th-century climate change Over the past 150 years human activities have released increasing quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This has led to increases in mean global temperature, or global warming. Other human effects are relevant—for example, sulphate aerosols are believed to have a cooling effect. Natural factors also contribute. According to the historical temperature record of the last century, the Earth's near-surface air temperature has risen around 0.74 ± 0.18 °Celsius (1.3 ± 0.32 °Fahrenheit). A historically important question in climate change research has regarded the relative importance of human activity and non-anthropogenic causes during the period of instrumental record. In the 1995 Second Assessment Report (SAR), the IPCC made the widely quoted statement that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate". The phrase "balance of evidence" suggested the (English) common-law standard of proof required in civil as opposed to criminal courts: not as high as "beyond reasonable doubt". In 2001 the Third Assessment Report (TAR) refined this, saying "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities". The 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) strengthened this finding: "Anthropogenic warming of the climate system is widespread and can be detected in temperature observations taken at the surface, in the free atmosphere and in the oceans. Evidence of the effect of external influences, both anthropogenic and natural, on the climate system has continued to accumulate since the TAR." Other findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report include: "It is extremely unlikely (<5%) that the global pattern of warming during the past half century can be explained without external forcing (i.e., it is inconsistent with being the result of internal variability), and very unlikely that it is due to known natural external causes alone. The warming occurred in both the ocean and the atmosphere and took place at a time when natural external forcing factors would likely have produced cooling." "From new estimates of the combined anthropogenic forcing due to greenhouse gases, aerosols, and land surface changes, it is extremely likely (>95%) that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750." "It is virtually certain that anthropogenic aerosols produce a net negative radiative forcing (cooling influence) with a greater magnitude in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere." Over the past five decades there has been a global warming of approximately 0.65 °C (1.17 °F) at the Earth's surface (see historical temperature record). Among the possible factors that could produce changes in global mean temperature are internal variability of the climate system, external forcing, an increase in concentration of greenhouse gases, or any combination of these. Current studies indicate that the increase in greenhouse gases, most notably , is mostly responsible for the observed warming. Evidence for this conclusion includes: Estimates of internal variability from climate models, and reconstructions of past temperatures, indicate that the warming is unlikely to be entirely natural. Climate models forced by natural factors and increased greenhouse gases and aerosols reproduce the observed global temperature changes; those forced by natural factors alone do not. "Fingerprint" methods (see below) indicate that the pattern of change is closer to that expected from greenhouse gas-forced change than from natural change. The plateau in warming from the 1940s to 1960s can be attributed largely to sulphate aerosol cooling. Details on attribution Recent scientific assessments find that most of the warming of the Earth's surface over the past 50 years has been caused by human activities (see also the section on scientific literature and opinion). This conclusion rests on multiple lines of evidence. Like the warming "signal" that has gradually emerged from the "noise" of natural climate variability, the scientific evidence for a human influence on global climate has accumulated over the past several decades, from many hundreds of studies. No single study is a "smoking gun." Nor has any single study or combination of studies undermined the large body of evidence supporting the conclusion that human activity is the primary driver of recent warming. The first line of evidence is based on a physical understanding of how greenhouse gases trap heat, how the climate system responds to increases in greenhouse gases, and how other human and natural factors influence climate. The second line of evidence is from indirect estimates of climate changes over the last 1,000 to 2,000 years. These records are obtained from living things and their remains (like tree rings and corals) and from physical quantities (like the ratio between lighter and heavier isotopes of oxygen in ice cores), which change in measurable ways as climate changes. The lesson from these data is that global surface temperatures over the last several decades are clearly unusual, in that they were higher than at any time during at least the past 400 years. For the Northern Hemisphere, the recent temperature rise is clearly unusual in at least the last 1,000 years (see graph opposite). The third line of evidence is based on the broad, qualitative consistency between observed changes in climate and the computer model simulations of how climate would be expected to change in response to human activities. For example, when climate models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases, they show gradual warming of the Earth and ocean surface, increases in ocean heat content and the temperature of the lower atmosphere, a rise in global sea level, retreat of sea ice and snow cover, cooling of the stratosphere, an increase in the amount of atmospheric water vapor, and changes in large-scale precipitation and pressure patterns. These and other aspects of modelled climate change are in agreement with observations. "Fingerprint" studies Finally, there is extensive statistical evidence from so-called "fingerprint" studies. Each factor that affects climate produces a unique pattern of climate response, much as each person has a unique fingerprint. Fingerprint studies exploit these unique signatures, and allow detailed comparisons of modelled and observed climate change patterns. Scientists rely on such studies to attribute observed changes in climate to a particular cause or set of causes. In the real world, the climate changes that have occurred since the start of the Industrial Revolution are due to a complex mixture of human and natural causes. The importance of each individual influence in this mixture changes over time. Of course, there are not multiple Earths, which would allow an experimenter to change one factor at a time on each Earth, thus helping to isolate different fingerprints. Therefore, climate models are used to study how individual factors affect climate. For example, a single factor (like greenhouse gases) or a set of factors can be varied, and the response of the modelled climate system to these individual or combined changes can thus be studied. These projections have been confirmed by observations (shown above). For example, when climate model simulations of the last century include all of the major influences on climate, both human-induced and natural, they can reproduce many important features of observed climate change patterns. When human influences are removed from the model experiments, results suggest that the surface of the Earth would actually have cooled slightly over the last 50 years. The clear message from fingerprint studies is that the observed warming over the last half-century cannot be explained by natural factors, and is instead caused primarily by human factors. Another fingerprint of human effects on climate has been identified by looking at a slice through the layers of the atmosphere, and studying the pattern of temperature changes from the surface up through the stratosphere (see the section on solar activity). The earliest fingerprint work focused on changes in surface and atmospheric temperature. Scientists then applied fingerprint methods to a whole range of climate variables, identifying human-caused climate signals in the heat content of the oceans, the height of the tropopause (the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere, which has shifted upward by hundreds of feet in recent decades), the geographical patterns of precipitation, drought, surface pressure, and the runoff from major river basins. Studies published after the appearance of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 have also found human fingerprints in the increased levels of atmospheric moisture (both close to the surface and over the full extent of the atmosphere), in the decline of Arctic sea ice extent, and in the patterns of changes in Arctic and Antarctic surface temperatures. The message from this entire body of work is that the climate system is telling a consistent story of increasingly dominant human influence – the changes in temperature, ice extent, moisture, and circulation patterns fit together in a physically consistent way, like pieces in a complex puzzle. Increasingly, this type of fingerprint work is shifting its emphasis. As noted, clear and compelling scientific evidence supports the case for a pronounced human influence on global climate. Much of the recent attention is now on climate changes at continental and regional scales, and on variables that can have large impacts on societies. For example, scientists have established causal links between human activities and the changes in snowpack, maximum and minimum (diurnal) temperature, and the seasonal timing of runoff over mountainous regions of the western United States. Human activity is likely to have made a substantial contribution to ocean surface temperature changes in hurricane formation regions. Researchers are also looking beyond the physical climate system, and are beginning to tie changes in the distribution and seasonal behaviour of plant and animal species to human-caused changes in temperature and precipitation. For over a decade, one aspect of the climate change story seemed to show a significant difference between models and observations. In the tropics, all models predicted that with a rise in greenhouse gases, the troposphere would be expected to warm more rapidly than the surface. Observations from weather balloons, satellites, and surface thermometers seemed to show the opposite behaviour (more rapid warming of the surface than the troposphere). This issue was a stumbling block in understanding the causes of climate change. It is now largely resolved. Research showed that there were large uncertainties in the satellite and weather balloon data. When uncertainties in models and observations are properly accounted for, newer observational data sets (with better treatment of known problems) are in agreement with climate model results. This does not mean, however, that all remaining differences between models and observations have been resolved. The observed changes in some climate variables, such as Arctic sea ice, some aspects of precipitation, and patterns of surface pressure, appear to be proceeding much more rapidly than models have projected. The reasons for these differences are not well understood. Nevertheless, the bottom-line conclusion from climate fingerprinting is that most of the observed changes studied to date are consistent with each other, and are also consistent with our scientific understanding of how the climate system would be expected to respond to the increase in heat-trapping gases resulting from human activities. Extreme weather events Scientific literature and opinion There are a number of examples of published and informal support for the consensus view. As mentioned earlier, the IPCC has concluded that most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is "very likely" due to human activities. The IPCC's conclusions are consistent with those of several reports produced by the US National Research Council. A report published in 2009 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program concluded that "[global] warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced." A number of scientific organizations have issued statements that support the consensus view: A 2004 essay in Science surveyed 928 abstracts related to climate change, and concluded that most journal reports accepted the consensus. a joint statement made in 2005 by the national science academies of the G8, and Brazil, China and India; a joint statement made in 2008 by the Network of African Science Academies. A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that among a pool of roughly 1,000 researchers who work directly on climate issues and publish the most frequently on the subject, 97% agree that anthropogenic climate change is happening. A 2011 paper from George Mason University published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, "The Structure of Scientific Opinion on Climate Change," collected the opinions of scientists in the earth, space, atmospheric, oceanic or hydrological sciences. The 489 survey respondents—representing nearly half of all those eligible according to the survey's specific standards – work in academia, government, and industry, and are members of prominent professional organizations. The study found that 97% of the 489 scientists surveyed agreed that global temperatures have risen over the past century. Moreover, 84% agreed that "human-induced greenhouse warming" is now occurring." Only 5% disagreed with the idea that human activity is a significant cause of global warming. Detection and attribution studies The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007), concluded that attribution was possible for a number of observed changes in the climate (see effects of global warming). However, attribution was found to be more difficult when assessing changes over smaller regions (less than continental scale) and over short time periods (less than 50 years). Over larger regions, averaging reduces natural variability of the climate, making detection and attribution easier. In 1996, in a paper in Nature titled "A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere", Benjamin D. Santer et al. wrote: "The observed spatial patterns of temperature change in the free atmosphere from 1963 to 1987 are similar to those predicted by state-of-the-art climate models incorporating various combinations of changes in carbon dioxide, anthropogenic sulphate aerosol and stratospheric ozone concentrations. The degree of pattern similarity between models and observations increases through this period. It is likely that this trend is partially due to human activities, although many uncertainties remain, particularly relating to estimates of natural variability." A 2002 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research says "Our analysis suggests that the early twentieth century warming can best be explained by a combination of warming due to increases in greenhouse gases and natural forcing, some cooling due to other anthropogenic forcings, and a substantial, but not implausible, contribution from internal variability. In the second half of the century we find that the warming is largely caused by changes in greenhouse gases, with changes in sulphates and, perhaps, volcanic aerosol offsetting approximately one third of the warming." A 2005 review of detection and attribution studies by the International Ad hoc Detection and Attribution Group found that "natural drivers such as solar variability and volcanic activity are at most partially responsible for the large-scale temperature changes observed over the past century, and that a large fraction of the warming over the last 50 yr can be attributed to greenhouse gas increases. Thus, the recent research supports and strengthens the IPCC Third Assessment Report conclusion that 'most of the global warming over the past 50 years is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases.'" Barnett and colleagues (2005) say that the observed warming of the oceans "cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically forced climate models," concluding that "it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model differences". Two papers in the journal Science in August 2005 resolve the problem, evident at the time of the TAR, of tropospheric temperature trends (see also the section on "fingerprint" studies) . The UAH version of the record contained errors, and there is evidence of spurious cooling trends in the radiosonde record, particularly in the tropics. See satellite temperature measurements for details; and the 2006 US CCSP report. Multiple independent reconstructions of the temperature record of the past 1000 years confirm that the late 20th century is probably the warmest period in that time (see the preceding section -details on attribution). Solar activity Solar sunspot maximum occurs when the magnetic field of the Sun collapses and reverse as part of its average 11-year solar cycle (22 years for complete North to North restoration). The role of the Sun in recent climate change has been looked at by climate scientists. Since 1978, output from the Sun has been measured by satellites significantly more accurately than was previously possible from the surface. These measurements indicate that the Sun's total solar irradiance has not increased since 1978, so the warming during the past 30 years cannot be directly attributed to an increase in total solar energy reaching the Earth (see graph above, left). In the three decades since 1978, the combination of solar and volcanic activity probably had a slight cooling influence on the climate. Climate models have been used to examine the role of the Sun in recent climate change. Models are unable to reproduce the rapid warming observed in recent decades when they only take into account variations in total solar irradiance and volcanic activity. Models are, however, able to simulate the observed 20th century changes in temperature when they include all of the most important external forcings, including human influences and natural forcings. As has already been stated, Hegerl et al. (2007) concluded that greenhouse gas forcing had "very likely" caused most of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century. In making this conclusion, Hegerl et al. (2007) allowed for the possibility that climate models had been underestimated the effect of solar forcing. The role of solar activity in climate change has also been calculated over longer time periods using "proxy" datasets, such as tree rings. Models indicate that solar and volcanic forcings can explain periods of relative warmth and cold between AD 1000 and 1900, but human-induced forcings are needed to reproduce the late-20th century warming. Another line of evidence against the sun having caused recent climate change comes from looking at how temperatures at different levels in the Earth's atmosphere have changed. Models and observations (see figure above, middle) show that greenhouse gas results in warming of the lower atmosphere at the surface (called the troposphere) but cooling of the upper atmosphere (called the stratosphere). Depletion of the ozone layer by chemical refrigerants has also resulted in a cooling effect in the stratosphere. If the Sun was responsible for observed warming, warming of the troposphere at the surface and warming at the top of the stratosphere would be expected as increase solar activity would replenish ozone and oxides of nitrogen. The stratosphere has a reverse temperature gradient than the troposphere so as the temperature of the troposphere cools with altitude, the stratosphere rises with altitude. Hadley cells are the mechanism by which equatorial generated ozone in the tropics (highest area of UV irradiance in the stratosphere) is moved poleward. Global climate models suggest that climate change may widen the Hadley cells and push the jetstream northward thereby expanding the tropics region and resulting in warmer, dryer conditions in those areas overall. Non-consensus views Habibullo Abdussamatov (2004), head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, has argued that the Sun is responsible for recently observed climate change. Journalists for news sources canada.com (Solomon, 2007b), National Geographic News (Ravilious, 2007), and LiveScience (Than, 2007) reported on the story of warming on Mars. In these articles, Abdussamatov was quoted. He stated that warming on Mars was evidence that global warming on Earth was being caused by changes in the Sun. Ravilious (2007) quoted two scientists who disagreed with Abdussamatov: Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in the US, and Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at Oxford University in the UK. According to Wilson, "Wobbles in the orbit of Mars are the main cause of its climate change in the current era" (see also orbital forcing). Than (2007) quoted Charles Long, a climate physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in the US, who disagreed with Abdussamatov. Than (2007) pointed to the view of Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. In his newsletter, Peiser had cited a blog that had commented on warming observed on several planetary bodies in the Solar System. These included Neptune's moon Triton, Jupiter, Pluto and Mars. In an e-mail interview with Than (2007), Peiser stated that:"I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system, (...) Perhaps this is just a fluke."Than (2007) provided alternative explanations of why warming had occurred on Triton, Pluto, Jupiter and Mars. The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA, 2009) responded to public comments on climate change attribution. A number of commenters had argued that recent climate change could be attributed to changes in solar irradiance. According to the US EPA (2009), this attribution was not supported by the bulk of the scientific literature. Citing the work of the IPCC (2007), the US EPA pointed to the low contribution of solar irradiance to radiative forcing since the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750. Over this time period (1750 to 2005), the estimated contribution of solar irradiance to radiative forcing was 5% the value of the combined radiative forcing due to increases in the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (see graph opposite). Effect of cosmic rays Henrik Svensmark has suggested that the magnetic activity of the sun deflects cosmic rays, and that this may influence the generation of cloud condensation nuclei, and thereby have an effect on the climate. The website ScienceDaily reported on a 2009 study that looked at how past changes in climate have been affected by the Earth's magnetic field. Geophysicist Mads Faurschou Knudsen, who co-authored the study, stated that the study's results supported Svensmark's theory. The authors of the study also acknowledged that plays an important role in climate change. Consensus view on cosmic rays The view that cosmic rays could provide the mechanism by which changes in solar activity affect climate is not supported by the literature. Solomon et al. (2007) state:[..] the cosmic ray time series does not appear to correspond to global total cloud cover after 1991 or to global low-level cloud cover after 1994. Together with the lack of a proven physical mechanism and the plausibility of other causal factors affecting changes in cloud cover, this makes the association between galactic cosmic ray-induced changes in aerosol and cloud formation controversial Studies by Lockwood and Fröhlich (2007) and Sloan and Wolfendale (2008) found no relation between warming in recent decades and cosmic rays. Pierce and Adams (2009) used a model to simulate the effect of cosmic rays on cloud properties. They concluded that the hypothesized effect of cosmic rays was too small to explain recent climate change. Pierce and Adams (2009) noted that their findings did not rule out a possible connection between cosmic rays and climate change, and recommended further research. Erlykin et al. (2009) found that the evidence showed that connections between solar variation and climate were more likely to be mediated by direct variation of insolation rather than cosmic rays, and concluded: "Hence within our assumptions, the effect of varying solar activity, either by direct solar irradiance or by varying cosmic ray rates, must be less than 0.07 °C since 1956, i.e. less than 14% of the observed global warming." Carslaw (2009) and Pittock (2009) review the recent and historical literature in this field and continue to find that the link between cosmic rays and climate is tenuous, though they encourage continued research. US EPA (2009) commented on research by Duplissy et al. (2009):The CLOUD experiments at CERN are interesting research but do not provide conclusive evidence that cosmic rays can serve as a major source of cloud seeding. Preliminary results from the experiment (Duplissy et al., 2009) suggest that though there was some evidence of ion mediated nucleation, for most of the nucleation events observed the contribution of ion processes appeared to be minor. These experiments also showed the difficulty in maintaining sufficiently clean conditions and stable temperatures to prevent spurious aerosol bursts. There is no indication that the earlier Svensmark experiments could even have matched the controlled conditions of the CERN experiment. We find that the Svensmark results on cloud seeding have not yet been shown to be robust or sufficient to materially alter the conclusions of the assessment literature, especially given the abundance of recent literature that is skeptical of the cosmic ray-climate linkage See also Climate change adaptation Climate change denial Climate change mitigation Climate resilience Environmental effects of aviation Notes References , pp. 332–333. Referred to by : . Open-access article. , pp. 18235–18270. Referred to by : , pp. 955–958. Referred to by : (pb: ). (pb: ). . Summary for Policymakers available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish. . Climate Change 2013 Working Group 1 website. . Archived page: The source appears to incorrectly list the Society of Biology (UK) twice. . L09820. , pp. 483–487. Referred to by : Public-domain sources }} External links How much of the recent increase is due to human activities? (RealClimate, 2005) Climate change and global warming (U.S. EPA) Climate change assessment and attribution Environmental impact of the energy industry Climatology

Ahmed bin Abdullah al-Nami (Arabic: أحمد بن عبد الله النعمي, ; also transliterated as Alnami; August 17, 1977 – September 11, 2001) was one of four terrorist hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 as part of the September 11 attacks. Born in Saudi Arabia, al-Nami had served as a muezzin and was a college student. He left his family in 2000 to complete the Hajj, but later went to Afghanistan bound for an al-Qaeda training camp where he befriended other future hijackers and would soon be chosen to participate in the attacks. He arrived in the United States in May 2001, on a tourist visa, where he would settle in Florida up until the attacks. On September 11, 2001, al-Nami boarded United 93 and assisted in the hijacking of the plane so that it could be flown into either the U.S. Capitol or the White House. The plane instead crashed into a field in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania during a passenger uprising, due to the passengers receiving information from their families of the three other hijacked planes that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Early life and activities Al-Nami, much like Wail al-Shehri, Waleed al-Shehri and Mohand al-Shehri, was born in the 'Asir Province in Saudi Arabia. Born to the Quraish tribe of Saudi Arabia, Al-Nami served as a muezzin at the Seqeley mosque after having reportedly become very religious sometime in early 1999. That autumn he left his family home in Abha in the summer of 2000 to complete the Hajj, but never returned – instead travelling to the Al Farouq training camp in Afghanistan where he met and befriended Waleed and Wail al-Shehri, two brothers from Khamis Mushayt in the same province, and Saeed al-Ghamdi. The four reportedly pledged themselves to Jihad in the Spring of 2000, in a ceremony presided over by Wail al-Shehri – who had dubbed himself Abu Mossaeb al-Janubi after one of Muhammad's companions. Dubbed "Abu Hashim", al-Nami was considered "gentle in manner" by his colleagues, and reported that he had a dream in which he rode a mare along with Muhammad, and that the prophet told him to dismount and fight his enemies to liberate his land. During his time at al-Farooq, there is a curious mention under Mushabib al-Hamlan's details that al-Nami had recently had laser eye surgery, an uncited fact that does not reappear. By October he had taken a prospective hijacker Mushabib al-Hamlan from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia where they both procured B-1/B-2 tourist/business visas on October 28 – but al-Hamlan then decided not to proceed and is thought to have returned to his family. Al-Nami's visa application has since been reviewed, and while he mentioned that al-Hamlan will be travelling with him, he listed his occupation as student but failed to provide an address for his school, and listed his intended address in the United States merely as Los Angeles – in the end he never used this visa to enter the United States, and reported his passport (C115007, which showed evidence of travel to Afghanistan) as "lost", and procured a new one from Jeddah (C505363). He used the new passport to acquire a new B-1/B-2 visa in Jeddah on April 23, again recopying his answers from previously although crossing out the lines regarding al-Hamlan and previous attempts to acquire a visa. He was interviewed by a consular officer, who again approved his application. Records at the time only recorded past failures to procure a visa, so the officer had no way of realising that Nami had successfully received an earlier visa. In mid-November 2000, the 9/11 Commission believes that al-Nami, Wail and Waleed al-Shehri, all of whom had obtained their U.S. visas in late October, traveled in a group from Saudi Arabia to Beirut and then onward to Iran where they could travel through to Afghanistan without getting their passports stamped. This probably followed their return to Saudi Arabia to get "clean" passports. An associate of a senior Hezbollah operative is thought to have been on the same flight, although this may have been a coincidence. While in the United Arab Emirates, al-Nami purchased traveler's cheques presumed to have been paid for by Mustafa al-Hawsawi. Five other hijackers also passed through the UAE and purchased travellers cheques, including Majed Moqed, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Hamza al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Haznawi and Wail al-Shehri. 2001 In March 2001, Ahmed al-Nami appeared in an al-Qaeda farewell video showing 13 of the "muscle hijackers" before they left their training centre in Kandahar; while he does not speak, he is seen studying maps and flight manuals. On April 23, al-Nami was recorded obtaining a new US visa. On May 28, al-Nami arrived in the United States from Dubai with fellow-hijackers Mohand al-Shehri and Hamza al-Ghamdi. By early June, al-Nami was living in apartment 1504 at the Delray Racquet Club condominiums with Saeed al-Ghamdi in Delray Beach, Florida. He telephoned his family in 'Asir shortly after arriving in the country. In June, he phoned his family for the last time. He was one of 9 hijackers to open a SunTrust bank account with a cash deposit around June 2001, and on June 29 received either a Florida State Identification Card or Drivers License. He may have been one of three hijackers that listed the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida as their permanent address on drivers' licenses, though other sources claim he listed the Delray condominium. On August 28, al-Nami and Ahmed al-Haznawi reportedly bothered a Delray Beach resident, Maria Siscar Simpson, to let them through her apartment to retrieve a towel that had fallen off their balcony onto hers. On September 5, al-Nami and Saeed al-Ghamdi purchased tickets for a September 7 flight to Newark at Mile High Travel on Commercial Boulevard—paying cash for their tickets. Ziad Jarrah and Ahmed al-Haznawi also purchased tickets for the same flight from Passage Tours. On September 7, all four Flight 93 hijackers flew from Fort Lauderdale to Newark International Airport aboard Spirit Airlines. Attacks On September 11, 2001, Nami arrived in Newark to board United Airlines Flight 93 along with Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Haznawi and Ziad Jarrah. Some reports suggest Haznawi was pulled aside for screening while others claim there is no record of whether any of the four were screened; the lack of CCTV cameras at the time has compounded the problem. Nami boarded the plane between 7:39 am and 7:48 am; seated in First Class 3C, next to Saeed al-Ghamdi. Due to the flight's routine delay, the pilot and crew were notified of the previous hijackings and were told to be on the alert, though within two minutes Jarrah had stormed the cockpit leaving the pilots dead or injured. At least two of the cellphone calls made by passengers indicate that all the hijackers they saw were wearing red bandanas, which some have questioned may have signified an allegiance to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The calls also indicated that one of the men had tied a box around his torso, and claimed there was a bomb inside; it is not known which hijacker this was. Passengers on the plane heard through phone calls the fates of the other hijacked planes, and organized a brief assault to retake the cockpit. Three times in a period of five seconds there were shouts of pain or distress from a hijacker outside the cockpit, suggesting that Nami was being attacked by the passengers. The hijackers crashed the plane into the Pennsylvanian countryside rather than cede control of the plane. All aboard died. Aftermath He has been portrayed by British actor Jamie Harding in the 2006 film United 93 and Asim Wali in the film Flight 93. See also PENTTBOM Hijackers in the September 11 attacks References External links The Final 9/11 Commission Report 1977 births 2001 deaths Participants in the September 11 attacks Saudi Arabian al-Qaeda members United Airlines Flight 93 Saudi Arabian mass murderers People from 'Asir Province Deaths in Somerset County, Pennsylvania

National Alliance (, AN) was a conservative political party in Italy. It was the successor of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), which had moderated its policies over its last decades and finally distanced itself from its former ideology during a convention in Fiuggi by dissolving into the new party in 1995. Gianfranco Fini was the leader of AN from its foundation through 2008, after being elected President of the Chamber of Deputies. Fini was succeeded by Ignazio La Russa, who managed the merger of the party with Forza Italia (FI) into The People of Freedom (PdL) in 2009. A group of former AN members, led by La Russa, left FI in 2012 in order to launch the Brothers of Italy (FdI), while others remained in the PdL and were among the founding members of the new Forza Italia (FI) in 2013. History Foundation National Alliance, launched in 1994, was officially founded in January 1995, when the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the former neo-fascist party, merged with conservative elements of the former Christian Democracy, which had disbanded in 1994 after two years of scandals and various splits due to corruption at its highest levels, exposed by the Mani pulite investigation, and the Italian Liberal Party, disbanded in the same year. Former MSI members were however still the bulk of the new party and former MSI leader Gianfranco Fini was elected leader of the new party. The AN logo followed a template very similar to that of the Democratic Party of the Left, with the logo of the direct predecessor party in a small circle, as a means of legally preventing others from using it. The name was suggested by an article on the Italian newspaper Il Tempo written in 1992 by Domenico Fisichella, a prominent conservative academic. Starting in the 1990s, the MSI gradually transformed into a mainstream right-wing party, culminating in its 1995 dissolution into AN. Government participation The party was part of all three House of Freedoms coalition governments led by Silvio Berlusconi. Gianfranco Fini was nominated Deputy Prime Minister after the 2001 general election and was Foreign Minister from November 2004 to May 2006. When Gianfranco Fini visited Israel in late November 2003 in the function of Italian Deputy Prime Minister, he labeled the racial laws issued by the fascist regime in 1938 as "infamous", as also Giorgio Almirante, historic leader of MSI, had done before. He also referred to the Italian Social Republic as belonging to the most shameful pages of the past, and considered fascism part of an era of "absolute evil", something which was hardly acceptable to the few remaining hardliners of the party. As a result, Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who had been at odds with the party on a number of issues for a long time, and some hardliners left the party and formed Social Action. In occasion of the 2006 general election, AN ran within the House of Freedoms, with new allies. The centre-right lost by 24,000 votes in favour of the centre-left coalition The Union. Individually AN received nearly 5 million votes, amounting to 12.3%. In July 2007 a group of splinters led by Francesco Storace formed The Right, which was officially founded on 10 November. Seven MPs of AN, including Teodoro Buontempo and Daniela Santanchè, joined the new party. The People of Freedom In November 2007 Silvio Berlusconi announced that Forza Italia would have soon merged or transformed into The People of Freedom (PdL) party. After the sudden fall of the second Prodi government in January 2008, the breakup of The Union and the subsequent political crisis which led to a fresh general election, Berlusconi hinted that Forza Italia would have probably contested its last election and the new party would have been officially founded only after that election. In an atmosphere of reconciliation with Gianfranco Fini, Berlusconi also stated that the new party could see the participation of other parties. Finally, on 8 February, Berlusconi and Fini agreed to form a joint list under the banner of the "People of Freedom", allied with the Northern League (LN). After the victory of the PdL in the 2008 general election, AN was merged into the PdL in early 2009. Ideology National Alliance's political programme emphasized: traditional values, being often close to the position of the Catholic Church, despite some social liberal and secular attitudes; law and order, especially laws aimed at controlling immigration and implementing punishment; support for Israel, the United States and European integration; prohibition of all drugs, including marijuana. Distinguishing itself from the MSI, the party distanced itself from Benito Mussolini and Fascism and made efforts to improve relations with Jewish groups. For example, after far-right skinheads celebrated the then-AN politician Gianni Alemanno's election as Mayor of Rome in 2008 by making the Roman salute outside the Palazzo Senatorio, Alemanno visited Rome Synagogue, where he gave a speech praising the "universal" values of the fight against Nazism. The shift was also present in the rhetoric of the party's leader Fini, who went from declaring himself as "fascist for the 2000s" in 1987 when at the head of the MSI, to describing himself as a "conservative" at the time of the AN's launch in 1994. With most hardliners leaving the party, it sought to present itself as a respectable conservative party and to join forces with Forza Italia in the European People's Party and, eventually, in a united party of the centre-right. Historian David Broder has compared the AN to Spain's post-Franco People's Party. Although the party approved the market economy and held favourable views on liberalization and the privatization of state industries, AN was to the left of Forza Italia on economic issues and sometimes supported statist policies. That is why the party was strong in Rome and Lazio, where most civil servants live. The implosion of the Christian Democrats created space for a more economically interventionist party of the conservative right, and the AN sought closer ties to the former DC factions which joined the Berlusconi-led alliances of the right. As part of this it also moderated its stances on the European Union and immigration, both of which were conditionally accepted by the party's leadership. Moreover, AN presented itself as a party promoting national cohesion, national identity and patriotism. Regarding institutional reforms, the party was a long-time supporter of presidentialism and a plurality voting system, and came to support also federalism and to fully accept the alliance with the Northern League, although the relations with that party were tense at times, especially about issues regarding national unity. Gianfranco Fini, a moderniser who saw Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron as role-models, impressed an ambitious political line to the party, combining the pillars of conservative ideology like security, family values and patriotism with a progressive approach in other areas such as stem cell research and supporting voting rights for legal aliens. Some of these positions were not shared by many members of the party, most of whom staunchly opposed stem cell research and artificial insemination. Factions National Alliance was a heterogeneous political party and within it members were divided in different factions, some of them very organized: Protagonist Right (Destra Protagonista), headed by Maurizio Gasparri and Ignazio La Russa, was the bigger faction and the closest to Forza Italia, due to its liberal-conservative stances. New Alliance (Nuova Alleanza), formerly called Right and Freedom (Destra e Libertà), headed by Altero Matteoli and Adolfo Urso, was formed by the staunchest supporters of Gianfranco Fini within the party and supported a liberal political agenda. Social Right (Destra Sociale), led by Gianni Alemanno, advocated a more "social" approach to economic policy and was considered at the right of the party. It had close ties with the General Labour Union. D-Destra, led by Francesco Storace, was the most conservative component of the party, proud of the MSI's tradition and in open opposition to Fini. Formed as a split from the Social Right, in July 2007 the group finally left AN and launched The Right. Christian Reformists (Cristiano Riformisti) was a minor Christian democratic faction. In the party there was also a group named Ethic-Religious Council, whose board members included Gaetano Rebecchini (founder, ex-DC), Riccardo Pedrizzi (president), Franco Tofoni (vice president), Luigi Gagliardi (secretary-general), Alfredo Mantovano, Antonio Mazzocchi and Riccardo Migliori. This was not a faction but an official organism within the party and expressed the official position of the party on ethical and religious matters. Sometimes the group criticized Gianfranco Fini for his liberal views on abortion, artificial insemination and stem-cell research, which led some notable ex-DC members as Publio Fiori to leave the party. Some members of the council, such as Pedrizzi and Mantovano were described as members of an unofficial Catholic Right faction. Popular support The party had roughly 10–15% support across Italy, having its strongholds in Central and Southern Italy (Lazio 18.6%, Umbria 15.2%, Marche 14.3%, Abruzzo 14.3%, Apulia 13.2%, Sardinia 12.9%, Tuscany 12.6% and Campania 12.6% in the last general election), scoring badly in Lombardy (10.2%) and Sicily (10.9%), while competing in the North-East (Friuli-Venezia Giulia 15.5% and Veneto 11.3%). The party had a good showing in the first general election to which it took part (13.5% in 1994) and reached 15.7% in 1996, when Fini tried for the first time to replace Silvio Berlusconi as leader of the centre-right. From that moment the party suffered an electoral decline, but remained the third force of Italian politics. In the 2006 general election, the final election to which the party participated with its own list, AN won 12.3% of the vote, securing 71 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 41 in the Senate. In the 2008 general election the party had 90 deputies and 48 senators elected. The electoral results of National Alliance in general (Chamber of Deputies) and European Parliament elections since 1994 are shown in the chart below. The electoral results of National Alliance in the 10 most populated regions of Italy are shown in the table below. Election results Italian Parliament European Parliament Leadership President: Gianfranco Fini (1995–2008), Ignazio La Russa (acting, 2008–2009) Coordinator: Maurizio Gasparri (1995–1998), Ignazio La Russa (2003–2005) Spokesman: Francesco Storace (1995–1997), Adolfo Urso (1997–2001), Antonio Landolfi (2001–2005), Andrea Ronchi (2005–2009) Head of Political Secretariat: Donato Lamorte (1995–2002), Andrea Ronchi (2002–2004), Carmelo Briguglio (2002–2004), Donato Lamorte (2004–2009) President of National Assembly: Domenico Fisichella (1995–2005), Marcello Perina (2005–2006), Francesco Servello (2006–2009) Organizational Coordinator: Giuseppe Tatarella (1995–1998), Altero Matteoli (1998–2002), Donato Lamorte (2002–2004), Italo Bocchino (2004–2005), Marco Martinelli (2005–2009) Administrative Secretary: Francesco Pontone (1995–2009) Party Leader at the Chamber of Deputies: Raffaele Valensise (1994–1995), Giuseppe Tatarella (1995–1998), Gustavo Selva (1998–2001), Ignazio La Russa (2001–2003), Gian Franco Anedda (2003–2004), Ignazio La Russa (2004–2008), Italo Bocchino (deputy-leader of PdL's group, 2008–2009) Party Leader at the Senate: Giulio Maceratini (1994–2001), Domenico Nania (2001–2006), Altero Matteoli (2006–2008), Maurizio Gasparri (leader of PdL's group, 2008–2009) Party Leader at the European Parliament: Cristiana Muscardini (1994–2004), Roberta Angelilli (2004–2009) Symbols External links Official website Azione Giovani Factions Protagonist Right New Alliance Social Right Christian Reformists Stephen Roth Institute Continuity or change in the ideology of the Alleanza Nazionale The annual report of Anti-semitism worldwide, 2006 References 1995 establishments in Italy 2009 disestablishments in Italy Conservative parties in Italy Defunct political parties in Italy Political parties established in 1995 Political parties disestablished in 2009 Right-wing parties in Europe Right-wing politics in Italy National conservative parties

Agar ( or ), or agar-agar, is a jelly-like substance consisting of polysaccharides obtained from the cell walls of some species of red algae, primarily from ogonori (Gracilaria) and "tengusa" (Gelidiaceae). Agar is a mixture of two components, the linear polysaccharide agarose and a heterogeneous mixture of smaller molecules called agaropectin. It forms the supporting structure in the cell walls of certain species of algae and is released on boiling. These algae are known as agarophytes, belonging to the Rhodophyta (red algae) phylum. Agar has been used as an ingredient in desserts throughout Asia and also as a solid substrate to contain culture media for microbiological work. Agar can be used as a laxative; an appetite suppressant; a vegetarian substitute for gelatin; a thickener for soups; in fruit preserves, ice cream, and other desserts; as a clarifying agent in brewing; and for sizing paper and fabrics. Etymology The word "agar" comes from agar-agar, the Malay name for red algae (Gigartina, Gracilaria) from which the jelly is produced. It is also known as Kanten () (from the phrase kan-zarashi tokoroten () or “cold-exposed agar”), Japanese isinglass, China grass, Ceylon moss or Jaffna moss. Gracilaria lichenoides is specifically referred to as agal-agal or Ceylon agar. History Agar may have been discovered in Japan in 1658 by Mino Tarōzaemon (), an innkeeper in current Fushimi-ku, Kyoto who, according to legend, was said to have discarded surplus seaweed soup (Tokoroten) and noticed that it gelled later after a winter night's freezing. Over the following centuries, agar became a common gelling agent in several Southeast Asian cuisines. Agar was first subjected to chemical analysis in 1859 by the French chemist Anselme Payen, who had obtained agar from the marine algae Gelidium corneum. Beginning in the late 19th century, agar began to be used as a solid medium for growing various microbes. Agar was first described for use in microbiology in 1882 by the German microbiologist Walther Hesse, an assistant working in Robert Koch's laboratory, on the suggestion of his wife Fanny Hesse. Agar quickly supplanted gelatin as the base of microbiological media, due to its higher melting temperature, allowing microbes to be grown at higher temperatures without the media liquefying. With its newfound use in microbiology, agar production quickly increased. This production centered on Japan, which produced most of the world's agar until World War II. However, with the outbreak of World War II, many nations were forced to establish domestic agar industries in order to continue microbiological research. Around the time of World War II, approximately 2,500 tons of agar were produced annually. By the mid-1970s, production worldwide had increased dramatically to approximately 10,000 tons each year. Since then, production of agar has fluctuated due to unstable and sometimes over-utilized seaweed populations. Composition Agar consists of a mixture of two polysaccharides: agarose and agaropectin, with agarose making up about 70% of the mixture. Agarose is a linear polymer, made up of repeating units of agarobiose, a disaccharide made up of D-galactose and 3,6-anhydro-L-galactopyranose. Agaropectin is a heterogeneous mixture of smaller molecules that occur in lesser amounts, and is made up of alternating units of D-galactose and L-galactose heavily modified with acidic side-groups, such as sulfate and pyruvate. Agar exhibits hysteresis, solidifying at about 32–40 °C (305–313 K, 90–104 °F) but melting at 85 °C (358  K, 185 °F). This property lends a suitable balance between easy melting and good gel stability at relatively high temperatures. Since many scientific applications require incubation at temperatures close to human body temperature (37 °C), agar is more appropriate than other solidifying agents that melt at this temperature, such as gelatin. Uses Culinary Agar-agar is a natural vegetable gelatin counterpart. It is white and semi-translucent when sold in packages as washed and dried strips or in powdered form. It can be used to make jellies, puddings, and custards. When making jelly, it is boiled in water until the solids dissolve. Sweetener, flavoring, coloring, fruits and or vegetables are then added, and the liquid is poured into molds to be served as desserts and vegetable aspics or incorporated with other desserts such as a layer of jelly in a cake. Agar-agar is approximately 80% dietary fiber, so it can serve as an intestinal regulator. Its bulking quality has been behind fad diets in Asia, for example the kanten (the Japanese word for agar-agar) diet. Once ingested, kanten triples in size and absorbs water. This results in the consumers feeling fuller. This diet has recently received some press coverage in the United States as well. The diet has shown promise in obesity studies. Asian culinary One use of agar in Japanese cuisine (Wagashi) is anmitsu, a dessert made of small cubes of agar jelly and served in a bowl with various fruits or other ingredients. It is also the main ingredient in mizu yōkan, another popular Japanese food. In Philippine cuisine, it is used to make the jelly bars in the various gulaman refreshments like Sago't Gulaman, Samalamig, or desserts such as buko pandan, agar flan, halo-halo, fruit cocktail jelly, and the black and red gulaman used in various fruit salads. In Vietnamese cuisine, jellies made of flavored layers of agar agar, called thạch, are a popular dessert, and are often made in ornate molds for special occasions. In Indian cuisine, agar agar is used for making desserts. In Burmese cuisine, a sweet jelly known as kyauk kyaw is made from agar. Agar jelly is widely used in Taiwanese bubble tea. Other culinary It can be used as addition to or as a replacement for pectin in jams and marmalades, as a substitute to gelatin for its superior gelling properties, and as a strengthening ingredient in souffles and custards. Another use of agar-agar is in a Russian dish ptich'ye moloko (bird's milk), a rich jellified custard (or soft meringue) used as a cake filling or chocolate-glazed as individual sweets. Agar-agar may also be used as the gelling agent in gel clarification, a culinary technique used to clarify stocks, sauces, and other liquids. Mexico has traditional candies made out of Agar gelatin, most of them in colorful, half-circle shapes that resemble a melon or watermelon fruit slice, and commonly covered with sugar. They are known in Spanish as Dulce de Agar (Agar sweets) Agar-agar is an allowed nonorganic/nonsynthetic additive used as a thickener, gelling agent, texturizer, moisturizer, emulsifier, flavor enhancer, and absorbent in certified organic foods. Microbiology Agar plate An agar plate or Petri dish is used to provide a growth medium using a mix of agar and other nutrients in which microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi, can be cultured and observed under the microscope. Agar is indigestible for many organisms so that microbial growth does not affect the gel used and it remains stable. Agar is typically sold commercially as a powder that can be mixed with water and prepared similarly to gelatin before use as a growth medium. Other ingredients are added to the agar to meet the nutritional needs of the microbes. Many microbe-specific formulations are available because some microbes prefer certain environmental conditions over others. Agar is often dispensed using a sterile media dispenser. Motility assays As a gel, an agar or agarose medium is porous and therefore can be used to measure microorganism motility and mobility. The gel's porosity is directly related to the concentration of agarose in the medium, so various levels of effective viscosity (from the cell's "point of view") can be selected, depending on the experimental objectives. A common identification assay involves culturing a sample of the organism deep within a block of nutrient agar. Cells will attempt to grow within the gel structure. Motile species will be able to migrate, albeit slowly, throughout the gel, and infiltration rates can then be visualized, whereas non-motile species will show growth only along the now-empty path introduced by the invasive initial sample deposition. Another setup commonly used for measuring chemotaxis and chemokinesis utilizes the under-agarose cell migration assay, whereby a layer of agarose gel is placed between a cell population and a chemoattractant. As a concentration gradient develops from the diffusion of the chemoattractant into the gel, various cell populations requiring different stimulation levels to migrate can then be visualized over time using microphotography as they tunnel upward through the gel against gravity along the gradient. Plant biology Research grade agar is used extensively in plant biology as it is optionally supplemented with a nutrient and/or vitamin mixture that allows for seedling germination in Petri dishes under sterile conditions (given that the seeds are sterilized as well). Nutrient and/or vitamin supplementation for Arabidopsis thaliana is standard across most experimental conditions. Murashige & Skoog (MS) nutrient mix and Gamborg's B5 vitamin mix in general are used. A 1.0% agar/0.44% MS+vitamin dH2O solution is suitable for growth media between normal growth temps. When using agar, within any growth medium, it is important to know that the solidification of the agar is pH-dependent. The optimal range for solidification is between 5.4 and 5.7. Usually, the application of potassium hydroxide is needed to increase the pH to this range. A general guideline is about 600 µl 0.1M KOH per 250 ml GM. This entire mixture can be sterilized using the liquid cycle of an autoclave. This medium nicely lends itself to the application of specific concentrations of phytohormones etc. to induce specific growth patterns in that one can easily prepare a solution containing the desired amount of hormone, add it to the known volume of GM, and autoclave to both sterilize and evaporate off any solvent that may have been used to dissolve the often-polar hormones. This hormone/GM solution can be spread across the surface of Petri dishes sown with germinated and/or etiolated seedlings. Experiments with the moss Physcomitrella patens, however, have shown that choice of the gelling agent – agar or Gelrite – does influence phytohormone sensitivity of the plant cell culture. Other uses Agar is used: As an impression material in dentistry. As a medium to precisely orient the tissue specimen and secure it by agar pre-embedding (especially useful for small endoscopy biopsy specimens) for histopathology processing To make salt bridges and gel plugs for use in electrochemistry. In formicariums as a transparent substitute for sand and a source of nutrition. As a natural ingredient in forming modeling clay for young children to play with. As an allowed biofertilizer component in organic farming. As a substrate for precipitin reactions in immunology. At different times as a substitute for gelatin in photographic emulsions, arrowroot in preparing silver paper and as a substitute for fish glue in resist etching. As an MRI elastic gel phantom to mimic tissue mechanical properties in Magnetic Resonance Elastography Gelidium agar is used primarily for bacteriological plates. Gracilaria agar is used mainly in food applications. In 2016, AMAM, a Japanese company, developed a prototype for Agar-based commercial packaging system called Agar Plasticity, intended as a replacement for oil-based plastic packaging. See also Agarose gel electrophoresis Algaculture Alginic acid Asepsis Carrageenan Gellan gum Immunodiffusion Immunoelectrophoresis Lima bean agar Ouchterlony double immunodiffusion R2a agar Radial immunodiffusion SEAgel Tokoroten References External links Edible thickening agents Microbiological gelling agent Dental materials Algal food ingredients Red algae Gels Polysaccharides Japanese inventions Food stabilizers Jams and jellies E-number additives Impression material

Ballroom dance is a set of partner dances, which are enjoyed both socially and competitively around the world, mostly because of its performance and entertainment aspects. Ballroom dancing is also widely enjoyed on stage, film, and television. Ballroom dance may refer, at its widest definition, to almost any recreational dance with a partner. However, with the emergence of dance competition (now known as Dancesport), two principal schools have emerged and the term is used more narrowly to refer to the dances recognized by those schools. The International School, originally developed in England and now regulated by the World Dance Council (WDC) and the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), is most prevalent in Europe. It encompasses two categories, Standard and Latin, each of which consist of five dances—International Waltz, International Tango, International Viennese Waltz, International Slow Foxtrot, and International Quickstep in the Standard category and International Samba, International Cha Cha, International Rumba, International Paso Doble, and International Jive in the Latin category. A "Standard" or "Latin" competition encompasses all five dances in the respective category, and a "Ten Dance" competition encompasses all ten dances. The two styles, while differing in technique, rhythm, and costumes, exemplify core elements of ballroom dancing such as control and cohesiveness. The American School, also called North American School, is most prevalent in the United States and Canada, where it's regulated by USA Dance and Canada Dancesport (CDS) -- the respective national member bodies of the WDSF. It also consists of two categories analogous to the Standard and Latin categories of the International School, respectively called Smooth and Rhythm. The Smooth category consists of only four dances—American Waltz, American Tango, American Foxtrot, and American Viennese Waltz, omitting American Peabody (the American School equivalent to Quickstep) -- while the dances selected for competition in the Rhythm category are American Cha Cha, American Rumba, American East Coast Swing (the American School equivalent to International Jive), American Bolero, and American Mambo. A "Smooth" or "Rhythm" competition encompasses the dances in the respective category, and a "Nine Dance" competition encompassing all nine of these dances is analogous to the "Ten Dance" competition of the International School. USA Dance additionally recognizes American Peabody, American Merengue, American Paso Doble, American Samba, American West Coast Swing, American Polka, and American Hustle as ballroom dances in which sanctioned competition may take place. Note that dances of the two schools that bear the same name may differ considerably in permitted patterns (figures), technique, and styling. Exhibitions and social situations that feature ballroom dancing also may include additional partner dances such as Lindy Hop, Night Club Two Step, Night Club Swing, Bachata, Country Two Step, and regional (local or national) favorites that normally are not regarded as part of the ballroom family, and a number of historical dances also may be danced in ballrooms or salons. Additionally, some sources regard Sequence Dancing, in pairs or other formations, to be a style of ballroom dance. Definitions and history The term 'ballroom dancing' is derived from the word ball which in turn originates from the Latin word ballare which means 'to dance' (a ball-room being a large room specially designed for such dances). In times past, ballroom dancing was social dancing for the privileged, leaving folk dancing for the lower classes. These boundaries have since become blurred. The definition of ballroom dance also depends on the era: balls have featured popular dances of the day such as the Minuet, Quadrille, Polonaise, Polka, Mazurka, and others, which are now considered to be historical dances. Early modern period The first authoritative knowledge of the earliest ballroom dances was recorded toward the end of the 16th century, when Jehan Tabourot, under the pen name "Thoinot-Arbeau", published in 1588 his Orchésographie, a study of late 16th-century French renaissance social dance. Among the dances described were the solemn basse danse, the livelier branle, pavane, and the galliarde which Shakespeare called the "cinq pace" as it was made of five steps. In 1650, the Minuet, originally a peasant dance of Poitou, was introduced into Paris and set to music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and danced by the King Louis XIV in public. The Minuet dominated the ballroom from that time until the close of the 18th century. Toward the later half of the 17th century, Louis XIV founded his 'Académie Royale de Musique et de Danse', where specific rules for the execution of every dance and the "five positions" of the feet were formulated for the first time by members of the Académie. Eventually, the first definite cleavage between ballet and ballroom came when professional dancers appeared in the ballets, and the ballets left the Court and went to the stage. Ballet technique such as the turned out positions of the feet, however, lingered for over two centuries and past the end of the Victoria era. 19th century The waltz with its modern hold took root in England in about 1812; in 1819 Carl Maria von Weber wrote Invitation to the Dance, which marked the adoption of the waltz form into the sphere of absolute music. The dance was initially met with tremendous opposition due to the semblance of impropriety associated with the closed hold, though the stance gradually softened. In the 1840s several new dances made their appearance in the ballroom, including the polka, mazurka, and the Schottische. In the meantime a strong tendency emerged to drop all 'decorative' steps such as entrechats and ronds de jambes that had found a place in the Quadrilles and other dances. Early 20th century Modern ballroom dance has its roots early in the 20th century, when several different things happened more or less at the same time. The first was a movement away from the sequence dances towards dances where the couples moved independently. This had been pre-figured by the waltz, which had already made this transition. The second was a wave of popular music, such as jazz. Since dance is to a large extent tied to music, this led to a burst of newly invented dances. There were many dance crazes in the period 1910–1930. The third event was a concerted effort to transform some of the dance crazes into dances which could be taught to a wider dance public in the U.S. and Europe. Here Vernon and Irene Castle were important, and so was a generation of English dancers in the 1920s, including Josephine Bradley and Victor Silvester. These professionals analysed, codified, published, and taught a number of standard dances. It was essential, if popular dance was to flourish, for dancers to have some basic movements they could confidently perform with any partner they might meet. Here the huge Arthur Murray organisation in America, and the dance societies in England, such as the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, were highly influential. Finally, much of this happened during and after a period of World War, and the effect of such a conflict in dissolving older social customs was considerable. Later, in the 1930s, the on-screen dance pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers influenced all forms of dance in the U.S. and elsewhere. Although both actors had separate careers, their filmed dance sequences together, which included portrayals of the Castles, have reached iconic status. Much of Astaire and Rogers' work portrayed social dancing, although the performances were highly choreographed (often by Astaire or Hermes Pan) and meticulously staged and rehearsed. Competitive dancing Competitions, sometimes referred to as dancesport, range from world championships, regulated by the World Dance Council (WDC), to less advanced dancers at various proficiency levels. Most competitions are divided into professional and amateur, though in the USA pro-am competitions typically accompany professional competitions. The International Olympic Committee now recognizes competitive ballroom dance. It has recognized another body, the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), as the sole representative body for dancesport in the Olympic Games. However, it seems doubtful that dance will be included in the Olympic Games, especially in light of efforts to reduce the number of participating sports. Ballroom dance competitions are regulated by each country in its own way. There are about 30 countries which compete regularly in international competitions. There are another 20 or so countries which have membership of the WDC and/or the WDSF, but whose dancers rarely appear in international competitions. In Britain there is the British Dance Council, which grants national and regional championship titles, such as the British Ballroom Championships, the British Sequence Championships and the United Kingdom Championships. In the United States, the member branches of the WDC (National Dance Council of America) and the WDSF (USA Dance) both grant national and regional championship titles. Ballroom dancing competitions in the former USSR also included the Soviet Ballroom dances, or Soviet Programme. Australian New Vogue is danced both competitively and socially. In competition, there are 15 recognized New Vogue dances, which are performed by the competitors in sequence. These dance forms are not recognized internationally, neither are the US variations such as American Smooth, and Rhythm. Such variations in dance and competition methods are attempts to meets perceived needs in the local market-place. Internationally, the Blackpool Dance Festival, hosted annually at Blackpool, England is considered the most prestigious event a dancesport competitor can attend. Formation dance is another style of competitive dance recognized by the WDSF. In this style, multiple dancers (usually in couples and typically up to 16 dancers at one time) compete on the same team, moving in and out of various formations while dancing. The Blackpool Dance Festival also holds an annual event for competitive formation dancing. Elements of competition In competitive ballroom, dancers are judged by diverse criteria such as poise, the hold or frame, posture, musicality and expression, timing, body alignment and shape, floor craft, foot and leg action, and presentation. Judging in a performance-oriented sport is inevitably subjective in nature, and controversy and complaints by competitors over judging placements are not uncommon. The scorekeepers—called scrutineers—will tally the total number recalls accumulated by each couple through each round until the finals when the Skating system is used to place each couple by ordinals, typically 1–6, though the number of couples in the final may vary. Sometimes, up to 8 couples may be present on the floor during the finals. Competitors dance at different levels based on their ability and experience. The levels are split into two categories, syllabus and open. The syllabus levels are newcomer/pre-bronze, bronze, silver, and gold—with gold the highest syllabus level and newcomer the lowest. In these levels, moves are restricted to those written in a syllabus, and illegal moves can lead to disqualification. Each level, bronze, silver, and gold, has different moves on their syllabus, increasing in difficulty. There are three levels in the open category; novice, pre-champ, and champ in increasing order of skill. At those levels, dancers no longer have restrictions on their moves, so complex routines are more common. Medal evaluations Medal evaluations for amateurs enable dancers' individual abilities to be recognized according to conventional standards. In medal evaluations, which are run by bodies such as the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) and the United Kingdom Alliance (UKA), each dancer performs two or more dances in a certain genre in front of a judge. Genres such as Modern Ballroom or Latin are the most popular. Societies such as the ISTD and UKA also offer medal tests on other dance styles (such as Country & Western, Rock 'n Roll or Tap). In some North American examinations, levels include Newcomer, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Novice, Pre-championship, and Championship; each level may be further subdivided into either two or four separate sections. Collegiate ballroom There is a part of the ballroom world dedicated to college students. These chapters are typically clubs or teams that have an interest in ballroom dancing. Teams hold fundraisers, social events, and ballroom dance lessons. Ballroom dance teams' goals are to have fun and learn to dance well. There is a strong focus on finding a compatible dance partner and bonding with teammates. There is also a competitive side to collegiate ballroom - collegiate teams often hold competitions and invite other teams to participate. These competitions are often run with many of the same rules are regular amateur competitions as outlined above, but are usually organized entirely by collegiate teams. Examples include the MIT Open Ballroom Dance Competition, Big Apple Dancesport Challenge, Purdue Ballroom Classic, Cardinal Classic, Berkeley Classic, and Harvard Invitational. Dances "Ballroom dance" refers most often to the ten dances of Standard and Latin, though the term is also often used interchangeably with the five International Ballroom dances. Sequence dancing, which is danced predominantly in the United Kingdom, and its development New Vogue in Australia and New Zealand, are also sometimes included as a type of Ballroom dancing. In the United States and Canada, the American Style (American Smooth and American Rhythm) also exists. The dance technique used for both International and American styles is similar, but International Ballroom allows only closed dance positions, whereas American Smooth allows closed, open and separated dance movements. In addition, different sets of dance figures are usually taught for the two styles. International Latin and American Rhythm have different styling, and have different dance figures in their respective syllabi. Other dances sometimes placed under the umbrella "ballroom dance" include nightclub dances such as Lindy Hop, West Coast swing, nightclub two step, hustle, salsa, and merengue. The categorization of dances as "ballroom dances" has always been fluid, with new dances or folk dances being added to or removed from the ballroom repertoire from time to time, so no list of subcategories or dances is any more than a description of current practices. There are other dances historically accepted as ballroom dances, and are revived via the vintage dance movement. In Europe, Latin Swing dances include Argentine tango, mambo, Lindy Hop, swing boogie (sometimes also known as nostalgic boogie), and discofox. One example of this is the subcategory of cajun dances that originated in Acadiana, with branches reaching both coasts of the United States. Standard/Smooth dances are normally danced to Western music (often from the mid-twentieth century), and couples dance counter-clockwise around a rectangular floor following the line of dance. In competitions, competitors are costumed as would be appropriate for a white tie affair, with full gowns for the ladies and bow tie and tail coats for the men; though in American Smooth it is now conventional for the men to abandon the tailsuit in favor of shorter tuxedos, vests, and other creative outfits. Latin/Rhythm dances are commonly danced to contemporary Latin American music and (in case of jive) Western music. With the exception of a few traveling dances like samba and pasodoble, couples do not follow the line of dance but perform their routines more or less in one spot. In competitions, the women are often dressed in short-skirted Latin outfits while the men are outfitted in tight-fitting shirts and pants, the goal being to emphasize the dancers' leg action and body movements. Competitive dances Standard/Smooth Waltz Waltz began as a country folk dance in Austria and Bavaria in the 17th century. In the early 19th century it was introduced in England. It was the first dance where a man held a woman close to his body. When performing the dance, the upper body is kept to the left throughout all figures, follow's body leaves the right side of the lead while the head is extended to follow the elbow. Figures with rotation have little rise. The start of the rise begins slowly from the first count, peaks on the 2nd count and lowers slowly on the 3rd. Sway is also used on the second step to make the step longer and also to slow down the momentum by bringing the feet together. Waltz is performed for both International Standard and American Smooth. Viennese Waltz Viennese waltz originated in Provence area in France in 1559 and is recognized as the oldest of all ballroom dances. It was introduced in England as German waltz in 1812 and became popular throughout the 19th century by the music of Josef and Johann Strauss. It is often referred to as the classic “old-school” ballroom. Viennese Waltz music is quite fast. Slight shaping of the body moves towards the inside of the turn and shaping forward and up to lengthen the opposite side from direction. Reverse turn is used to travel down long side and is overturned. While natural turn is used to travel short side and is underturned to go around the corners. Viennese waltz is performed for both International Standard and American Smooth. Tango Tango originated in Buenos Aires in the late 19th century. Modern Argentine tango is danced in both open and closed embraces which focuses on the lead and follow moving in harmony of the tango's passionate charging music. The tango's technique is like walking to the music while keeping feet grounded and allowing ankles and knees to brush against one another during each step taken. Tango is a flat-footed dance and unlike the other dances, has no rise and fall. Body weight is kept over the toes and the connection is held between the dancers in the hips. Ballroom tango, however, is a dance with a far more open frame, often utilising strong and staccato movements. Ballroom tango, rather than Argentine tango, is performed in international competition. Foxtrot The foxtrot is an American dance, believed to be of African-American origin. It was named by a vaudeville performer Harry Fox in 1914. Fox was rapidly trotting step to ragtime music. The dance therefore was originally named as the “Fox’s trot”. The foxtrot can be danced at slow, medium, or fast tempos depending on the speed of the jazz or big band music. The partners are facing one another and frame rotates from one side to another, changing direction after a measure. The dance is flat, with no rise and fall. The walking steps are taken as slow for the two beats per steps and quick for one beat per step. Foxtrot is performed for both International Standard and American Smooth. Quickstep The quickstep is an English dance and was invented in the 1920s as a combination of faster tempo of foxtrot and the Charleston. It is a fast moving dance, so men are allowed to close their feet and the couples move in short syncopated steps. Quickstep includes the walks, runs, chasses, and turns of the original foxtrot dance, with some other fast figures such as locks, hops, run, quick step, jump and skips. Quick step is performed as an International Standard dance. Latin/Rhythm Pasodoble The pasodoble originated from Spain and its dramatic bullfights. The dance is mostly performed only in competitions and rarely socially because of its many choreographic rules. The lead plays the role of the matador while the follow takes the role of the matador's cape, the bull, or even the matador. The chasse cape refers to the lead using the follow to turn them as if they are the cape, and the appel is when the lead stomps their foot to get the bull's attention. Pasodoble is performed as an International Latin dance. Spanish bolero The Spanish bolero was developed in the late 18th century out of the seguidilla, and its popularization is attributed to court dancers such as Sebastián Cerezo. It became one of the most popular ballroom dances of the 19th century and saw many classical adaptations. However, by the 20th century it had become old-fashioned. A Cuban music genre of the same name, bolero, which became popular in the early 20th century, is unrelated to the Spanish dance. Cuban bolero Although Cuban bolero was born as a form of trova, traditional singer/songwriter tradition from eastern Cuba, with no associated dance, it soon became a ballroom favorite in Cuba and all of Latin America. The dance most commonly represents the couple falling in love. Modern bolero is seen as a combination of many dances: like a slow salsa with contra-body movement of tango, patterns of rhumba, and rise and fall technique and personality of waltz and foxtrot. Bolero can be danced in a closed hold or singly and then coming back together. It is performed as an American Rhythm dance. Samba Samba is the national dance of Brazil. The rhythm of samba and its name originated from the language and culture of West African slaves. In 1905, samba became known to other countries during an exhibition in Paris. In the 1940s, samba was introduced in America through Carmen Miranda. The international version of Ballroom Samba has been based on an early version of Brazilian Samba called Maxixe, but has since developed away and differs strongly from Brazilian Ballroom Samba, which is called Samba de Gafieira. International Ballroom Samba is danced with a slight bounce which is created through the bending and straightening the knee. It is performed as an International Latin dance, although most of its modern development has occurred outside Latin America. Rumba Rumba came to the United States from Cuba in the 1920s and became a popular cabaret dance during prohibition. Rumba is a ballroom adaptation of son cubano and bolero (the Cuban genre) and, despite its name, it rarely included elements of Cuban rumba. It includes Cuban motions through knee-strengthening, figure-eight hip rotation, and swiveling foot action. An important characteristic of rumba is the powerful and direct lead achieved through the ball of the foot. Rumba is performed for both International Latin and American Rhythm. Mambo Mambo was developed as an offshoot of danzón, the national dance of Cuba, in the late 1930s by Orestes López and his brother Cachao, of Arcaño y sus Maravillas. They conceived a new form of danzón influenced by son cubano, with a faster, improvised final section, which allowed dancers to more freely express themselves, given that danzón had traditionally a very rigid structure. In the 1940s, Dámaso Pérez Prado transformed the mambo from the charanga into the big band format, and took it to Mexico and the United States, where it became a "dance craze". Cha Cha Cha Cha (sometimes wrongly called Cha Cha Cha based on a "street version" of the dance with shifted timing) was developed by Enrique Jorrín in the early 1950s, as a slower alternative to Mambo—and, in fact, was originally called Triple Mambo. The Cha Cha is a flirtatious dance with many hip rotations and partners synchronising their movements. The dance includes bending and straightening of the knee giving it a touch of Cuban motion. Cha-cha is performed for both International Latin and American Rhythm. East Coast Swing Swing in 1927 was originally named the Lindy Hop named by Shorty George Snowden. There have been 40 different versions documented over the years; most common is the East Coast swing which is performed in the American Smooth (or American Rhythm) only in the U.S. or Canada. The East Coast swing was established by Arthur Murray and others only shortly after World War II. Swing music is very lively and upbeat and can be danced to jazz or big band music. The swing dancing style has much bounce and energy. Swing also includes many spins and underarm turns. East Coast swing is performed as an American Rhythm dance. Jive The jive is part of the swing dance group and is a very lively variation of the jitterbug. Jive originated from African American clubs in the early 1940s. During World War II, American soldiers introduced the jive in England where it was adapted to today's competitive jive. In jive, the man leads the dance while the woman encourages the man to ask them to dance. It is danced to big band music, and some technique is taken from salsa, swing and tango. Jive is performed as an International Latin dance. Dance style classification International Style competition dances According to World Dance Council. Standard Waltz: 28 bars per minute, time, also known as Slow Waltz or English Waltz depending on locality Tango: 31 bars per minute, time Viennese Waltz: 58 bars per minute, time. On the European continent, the Viennese waltz is known simply as waltz, while the waltz is recognized as English waltz or Slow Waltz. Foxtrot: 28 bars per minute, time Quickstep: 50 bars per minute, time Latin Cha-cha-cha: 29 bars per minute, time Samba: 49 bars per minute, time Rumba: 24 bars per minute, time Paso Doble: 60 bars per minute, time Jive: 41 bars per minute, time American Style competition dances Smooth Waltz: 29–30 bars per minute. 30–32 bars per minute for Bronze Tango: 60 bars per minute 30–32 bars per minute for Bronze Foxtrot: 30 bars per minute 32–34 bars per minute for Bronze Viennese Waltz: 53–54 bars per minute 54 bars per minute for Bronze Rhythm Cha Cha: 30 bars per minute Rumba: 30–32 bars per minute 32–36 bars per minute for Bronze East Coast Swing: 36 bars per minute 34–36 bars per minute for Bronze Bolero: 24 bars per minute 24–26 bars per minute for Bronze Mambo: 47 bars per minute 48–51 bars per minute for Bronze Others Historical/Vintage Ballroom dance: Waltz – Polka – Schottische – Tango – One-Step – Foxtrot – Peabody Other dances occasionally categorized as ballroom: Nightclub Nightclub Two-step – Hustle – Modern Jive / LeRoc / Ceroc – and the whole swing variety: West Coast Swing / East Coast Swing/ Lindy Hop (always included in the "Rhythm-Swing" category) / Carolina Shag / Collegiate Shag / Balboa / Blues – Fusion Latin nightclub Salsa – Cumbia – Mambo – Merengue – Porro – Cha cha – Bachata African nightclub Kizomba – Semba – Zouk Brazilian Dances Forró – Pagode – Samba de Gafieira – Lambada - Zouk-Lambada Country/Western C/W Polka – C/W Cha-cha – C/W Two-step – C/W Waltz Cajun dances Cajun One Step or Cajun Jig – Cajun Two Step – Zydeco – Cajun Waltz – Cajun Jitterbug Musette dances Java – musette-waltz – musette-tango – musette-paso-doble Other Argentine tango – New Vogue See also Dance in Canada Dance sport in Austria Australian Dance Dancesport at the Asian Games References Further reading Arthur Murray,(1938) How To Become A Good Dancer , Abra, Allison. "Review of James Nott, Going to the palais: a social and cultural history of dancing and dance halls in Britain, 1918–1960." Contemporary British History (Sep 2016) 30#3 pp 432–433. It's a Fabulous world,(2020) Documentary about ballroom dance industry https://imdb.com/title/tt6727522/ External links Digitized material from the American Ballroom Companion Collection: Dance Instruction Manuals (ca. 1490–1920) in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress Partner dance Social dance Dancesport Competitive dance

Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constituent states, Berlin is surrounded by the State of Brandenburg and contiguous with Potsdam, Brandenburg's capital. Berlin's urban area, which has a population of around 4.5 million, is the second most populous urban area in Germany after the Ruhr. The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has over six million inhabitants and is Germany's third-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main regions. Berlin straddles the banks of the Spree, which flows into the Havel (a tributary of the Elbe) in the western borough of Spandau. Among the city's main topographical features are the many lakes in the western and southeastern boroughs formed by the Spree, Havel and Dahme, the largest of which is Lake Müggelsee. Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. About one-third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers, canals and lakes. The city lies in the Central German dialect area, the Berlin dialect being a variant of the Lusatian-New Marchian dialects. First documented in the 13th century and at the crossing of two important historic trade routes, Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (14171701), the Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945). Berlin in the 1920s was the third-largest municipality in the world. After World War II and its subsequent occupation by the victorious countries, the city was divided; West Berlin became a de facto exclave of West Germany, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (from August 1961 to November 1989) and East German territory. East Berlin was declared capital of East Germany, while Bonn became the West German capital. Following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all of Germany. Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media and science. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination. Significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Berlin is home to world-renowned universities such as the Humboldt University, the Technical University, the Free University, the University of the Arts, ESMT Berlin, the Hertie School, and Bard College Berlin. Its Zoological Garden is the most visited zoo in Europe and one of the most popular worldwide. With Babelsberg being the world's first large-scale movie studio complex, Berlin is an increasingly popular location for international film productions. The city is well known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts and a very high quality of living. Since the 2000s Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene. Berlin contains three World Heritage Sites: Museum Island; the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin; and the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates. Other landmarks include the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag building, Potsdamer Platz, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Berlin Wall Memorial, the East Side Gallery, the Berlin Victory Column, Berlin Cathedral and the Berlin Television Tower, the tallest structure in Germany. Berlin has numerous museums, galleries, libraries, orchestras, and sporting events. These include the Old National Gallery, the Bode Museum, the Pergamon Museum, the German Historical Museum, the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Natural History Museum, the Humboldt Forum, the Berlin State Library, the Berlin State Opera, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin Marathon. History Etymology Berlin lies in northeastern Germany, east of the River Elbe, that once constituted, together with the River (Saxon or Thuringian) Saale (from their confluence at Barby onwards), the eastern border of the Frankish Realm. While the Frankish Realm was primarily inhabited by Germanic tribes like the Franks and the Saxons, the regions east of the border rivers were inhabited by Slavic tribes. This is why most of the cities and villages in northeastern Germany bear Slavic-derived names (Germania Slavica). Typical Germanized place name suffixes of Slavic origin are -ow, -itz, -vitz, -witz, -itzsch and -in, prefixes are Windisch and Wendisch. The name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of today's Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- ("swamp"). Since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär (bear), a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore an example of canting arms. Of Berlin's twelve boroughs, five bear a (partly) Slavic-derived name: Pankow (the most populous), Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Marzahn-Hellersdorf, Treptow-Köpenick and Spandau (named Spandow until 1878). Of its ninety-six neighborhoods, twenty-two bear a (partly) Slavic-derived name: Altglienicke, Alt-Treptow, Britz, Buch, Buckow, Gatow, Karow, Kladow, Köpenick, Lankwitz, Lübars, Malchow, Marzahn, Pankow, Prenzlauer Berg, Rudow, Schmöckwitz, Spandau, Stadtrandsiedlung Malchow, Steglitz, Tegel and Zehlendorf. The neighborhood of Moabit bears a French-derived name, and Französisch Buchholz is named after the Huguenots. 12th to 16th centuries The earliest evidence of settlements in the area of today's Berlin are remnants of a house foundation dated to 1174, found in excavations in Berlin Mitte, and a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. 1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the staple right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, their internal administrations still being separated. In 1415, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. During the 15th century, his successors established Berlin-Cölln as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled in Berlin until 1918, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and eventually as German emperors. In 1443, Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new royal palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln. The protests of the town citizens against the building culminated in 1448, in the "Berlin Indignation" ("Berliner Unwille"). This protest was not successful and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. After the royal palace was finished in 1451, it gradually came into use. From 1470, with the new elector Albrecht III Achilles, Berlin-Cölln became the new royal residence. Officially, the Berlin-Cölln palace became permanent residence of the Brandenburg electors of the Hohenzollerns from 1486, when John Cicero came to power. Berlin-Cölln, however, had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran. 17th to 19th centuries The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 devastated Berlin. One third of its houses were damaged or destroyed, and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the "Great Elector", who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. By 1700, approximately 30 percent of Berlin's residents were French, because of the Huguenot immigration. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg. Since 1618, the Margraviate of Brandenburg had been in personal union with the Duchy of Prussia. In 1701, the dual state formed the Kingdom of Prussia, as Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg, crowned himself as king Frederick I in Prussia. Berlin became the capital of the new Kingdom, replacing Königsberg. This was a successful attempt to centralise the capital in the very far-flung state, and it was the first time the city began to grow. In 1709, Berlin merged with the four cities of Cölln, Friedrichswerder, Friedrichstadt and Dorotheenstadt under the name Berlin, "Haupt- und Residenzstadt Berlin". In 1740, Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740–1786), came to power. Under the rule of Frederick II, Berlin became a center of the Enlightenment, but also, was briefly occupied during the Seven Years' War by the Russian army. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815, the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg. The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main railway hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, neighboring suburbs including Wedding, Moabit and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. In 1881, it became a city district separate from Brandenburg. 20th to 21st centuries In the early 20th century, Berlin had become a fertile ground for the German Expressionist movement. In fields such as architecture, painting and cinema new forms of artistic styles were invented. At the end of the First World War in 1918, a republic was proclaimed by Philipp Scheidemann at the Reichstag building. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act incorporated dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into an expanded city. The act increased the area of Berlin from . The population almost doubled, and Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin underwent political unrest due to economic uncertainties but also became a renowned center of the Roaring Twenties. The metropolis experienced its heyday as a major world capital and was known for its leadership roles in science, technology, arts, the humanities, city planning, film, higher education, government, and industries. Albert Einstein rose to public prominence during his years in Berlin, being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. NSDAP rule diminished Berlin's Jewish community from 160,000 (one-third of all Jews in the country) to about 80,000 due to emigration between 1933 and 1939. After Kristallnacht in 1938, thousands of the city's Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Starting in early 1943, many were shipped to concentration camps, such as Auschwitz. Berlin is the most heavily bombed city in history. During World War II, large parts of Berlin were destroyed during Allied air raids and the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Allies dropped 67,607 tons of bombs on the city, destroying 6,427 acres of the built-up area. Around 125,000 civilians were killed. After the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin. All four Allies shared administrative responsibilities for Berlin. However, in 1948, when the Western Allies extended the currency reform in the Western zones of Germany to the three western sectors of Berlin, the Soviet Union imposed a blockade on the access routes to and from West Berlin, which lay entirely inside Soviet-controlled territory. The Berlin airlift, conducted by the three western Allies, overcame this blockade by supplying food and other supplies to the city from June 1948 to May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany and eventually included all of the American, British and French zones, excluding those three countries' zones in Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin officially remained an occupied city, but it politically was aligned with the Federal Republic of Germany despite West Berlin's geographic isolation. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British and French airlines. The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory, and East Germany proclaimed the Eastern part as its capital, a move the western powers did not recognize. East Berlin included most of the city's historic center. The West German government established itself in Bonn. In 1961, East Germany began to build the Berlin Wall around West Berlin, and events escalated to a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie. West Berlin was now de facto a part of West Germany with a unique legal status, while East Berlin was de facto a part of East Germany. John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech on June 26, 1963, in front of the Schöneberg city hall, located in the city's western part, underlining the US support for West Berlin. Berlin was completely divided. Although it was possible for Westerners to pass to the other side through strictly controlled checkpoints, for most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was prohibited by the government of East Germany. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access to and from West Berlin by car or train through East Germany. In 1989, with the end of the Cold War and pressure from the East German population, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November and was subsequently mostly demolished. Today, the East Side Gallery preserves a large portion of the wall. On 3 October 1990, the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin again became a reunified city. Walter Momper, the mayor of West Berlin, became the first mayor of the reunified city in the interim. City-wide elections in December 1990 resulted in the first "all Berlin" mayor being elected to take office in January 1991, with the separate offices of mayors in East and West Berlin expiring by that time, and Eberhard Diepgen (a former mayor of West Berlin) became the first elected mayor of a reunited Berlin. On 18 June 1994, soldiers from the United States, France and Britain marched in a parade which was part of the ceremonies to mark the withdrawal of allied occupation troops allowing a reunified Berlin (the last Russian troops departed on 31 August, while the final departure of Western Allies forces was on 8 September 1994). On 20 June 1991, the Bundestag (German Parliament) voted to move the seat of the German capital from Bonn to Berlin, which was completed in 1999. Berlin's 2001 administrative reform merged several boroughs, reducing their number from 23 to 12. In 2006, the FIFA World Cup Final was held in Berlin. In a 2016 terrorist attack linked to ISIL, a truck was deliberately driven into a Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, leaving 13 people dead and 55 others injured. Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) opened in 2020, nine years later than planned, with Terminal 1 coming into service at the end of October, and flights to and from Tegel Airport ending in November. Due to the fall in passenger numbers resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, plans were announced to temporarily close BER's Terminal 5, the former Schönefeld Airport, beginning in March 2021 for up to one year. The connecting link of U-Bahn line U5 from Alexanderplatz to Hauptbahnhof, along with the new stations Rotes Rathaus and Unter den Linden, opened on 4 December 2020, with the Museumsinsel U-Bahn station expected to open around March 2021, which would complete all new works on the U5. A partial opening by the end of 2020 of the Humboldt Forum museum, housed in the reconstructed Berlin Palace, which had been announced in June, was postponed until March 2021. Geography Topography Berlin is in northeastern Germany, in an area of low-lying marshy woodlands with a mainly flat topography, part of the vast Northern European Plain which stretches all the way from northern France to western Russia. The Berliner Urstromtal (an ice age glacial valley), between the low Barnim Plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by meltwater flowing from ice sheets at the end of the last Weichselian glaciation. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, a borough in the west of Berlin, the Spree empties into the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and the Großer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the Großer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin. Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim Plateau, while most of the boroughs of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow Plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Glacial Valley and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. Since 2015, the Arkenberge hills in Pankow at elevation, have been the highest point in Berlin. Through the disposal of construction debris they surpassed Teufelsberg (), which itself was made up of rubble from the ruins of the Second World War. The Müggelberge at elevation is the highest natural point and the lowest is the Spektesee in Spandau, at elevation. Climate Berlin has an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb); the eastern part of the city has a slight continental influence (Dfb), one of the changes being the annual rainfall according to the air masses and the greater abundance during a period of the year. This type of climate features moderate summer temperatures but sometimes hot (for being semicontinental) and cold winters but not rigorous most of the time. Due to its transitional climate zones, frosts are common in winter, and there are larger temperature differences between seasons than typical for many oceanic climates. Furthermore, Berlin is classified as a temperate continental climate (Dc) under the Trewartha climate scheme, as well as the suburbs of New York, although the Köppen system puts them in different types. Summers are warm and sometimes humid with average high temperatures of and lows of . Winters are cool with average high temperatures of and lows of . Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings and pavement. Temperatures can be higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg are the warmest and driest regions in Germany. Snowfall mainly occurs from December through March. The hottest month in Berlin was July 1834, with a mean temperature of and the coldest was January 1709, with a mean temperature of . The wettest month on record was July 1907, with of rainfall, whereas the driest were October 1866, November 1902, October 1908 and September 1928, all with of rainfall. Cityscape Berlin's history has left the city with a polycentric organization and a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings. The city's appearance today has been predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history during the 20th century. All of the national governments based in Berlin the Kingdom of Prussia, the 2nd German Empire of 1871, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, as well as the reunified Germany initiated ambitious reconstruction programs, with each adding its own distinctive style to the city's architecture. Berlin was devastated by air raids, fires, and street battles during the Second World War, and many of the buildings that had survived in both East and West were demolished during the postwar period. Much of this demolition was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new business or residential districts and the main arteries. Much ornamentation on prewar buildings was destroyed following modernist dogmas, and in both postwar systems, as well as in the reunified Berlin, many important heritage structures have been reconstructed, including the Forum Fridericianum along with, the State Opera (1955), Charlottenburg Palace (1957), the monumental buildings on Gendarmenmarkt (1980s), Kommandantur (2003) and also the project to reconstruct the baroque façades of the City Palace. Many new buildings have been inspired by their historical predecessors or the general classical style of Berlin, such as Hotel Adlon. Clusters of towers rise at various locations: Potsdamer Platz, the City West, and Alexanderplatz, the latter two delineating the former centers of East and West Berlin, with the first representing a new Berlin of the 21st century, risen from the wastes of no-man's land of the Berlin Wall. Berlin has five of the top 50 tallest buildings in Germany. Over one-third of the city area consists of green space, woodlands, and water. Berlin's second-largest and most popular park, the Großer Tiergarten, is located right in the center of the city. It covers an area of 210 hectares and stretches from Bahnhof Zoo in the City West to the Brandenburg Gate in the east. Among famous streets, Unter den Linden and Friedrichstraße are found in the city's old city centre (and were included in the former East Berlin). Some of the major streets in City West are Kurfürstendamm (or just Ku´damm) and Kantstraße. Architecture The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is among the tallest structures in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its observation floor. Starting here, the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism style. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. In front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological group of Tritons, personifications of the four main Prussian rivers, and Neptune on top of it. The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany; it stands as a symbol of eventful European history and of unity and peace. The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament. It was remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city. The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. The Gendarmenmarkt is a neoclassical square in Berlin, the name of which derives from the headquarters of the famous Gens d'armes regiment located here in the 18th century. Two similarly designed cathedrals border it, the Französischer Dom with its observation platform and the Deutscher Dom. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals. The Museum Island in the River Spree houses five museums built from 1830 to 1930 and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Restoration and construction of a main entrance to all museums, as well as reconstruction of the Stadtschloss continues. Also on the island and next to the Lustgarten and palace is Berlin Cathedral, emperor William II's ambitious attempt to create a Protestant counterpart to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. St. Hedwig's Cathedral is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral. Unter den Linden is a tree-lined east–west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street, and part of Humboldt University is there. Friedrichstraße was Berlin's legendary street during the Golden Twenties. It combines 20th-century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin. Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Berliner Philharmonie. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is to the north. The area around Hackescher Markt is home to fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. The nearby New Synagogue is the center of Jewish culture. The Straße des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as the central east–west axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately halfway from the Brandenburg Gate is the Großer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated in 1938–39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag. The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Nearby on Tauentzienstraße is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is in Tempelhof-Schöneberg. West of the center, Bellevue Palace is the residence of the German President. Charlottenburg Palace, which was burnt out in the Second World War, is the largest historical palace in Berlin. The Funkturm Berlin is a lattice radio tower in the fairground area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator. The Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree river is Berlin's most iconic bridge, connecting the now-combined boroughs of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. It carries vehicles, pedestrians, and the U1 Berlin U-Bahn line. The bridge was completed in a brick gothic style in 1896, replacing the former wooden bridge with an upper deck for the U-Bahn. The center portion was demolished in 1945 to stop the Red Army from crossing. After the war, the repaired bridge served as a checkpoint and border crossing between the Soviet and American sectors, and later between East and West Berlin. In the mid-1950s, it was closed to vehicles, and after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, pedestrian traffic was heavily restricted. Following German reunification, the center portion was reconstructed with a steel frame, and U-Bahn service resumed in 1995. Demographics At the end of 2018, the city-state of Berlin had 3.75 million registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 4,206 inhabitants per km2. Berlin is the most populous city proper in the European Union. In 2019, the urban area of Berlin had about 4.5 million inhabitants. the functional urban area was home to about 5.2 million people. The entire Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has a population of more than 6 million in an area of . In 2014, the city-state Berlin had 37,368 live births (+6.6%), a record number since 1991. The number of deaths was 32,314. Almost 2.0 million households were counted in the city. 54 percent of them were single-person households. More than 337,000 families with children under the age of 18 lived in Berlin. In 2014 the German capital registered a migration surplus of approximately 40,000 people. Nationalities National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin and increased the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin triggered waves of immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. Berlin is home to at least 180,000 Turkish and Turkish German residents, making it the largest Turkish community outside of Turkey. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze enabled immigration to Germany of some residents from the former Soviet Union. Today ethnic Germans from countries of the former Soviet Union make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking community. The last decade experienced an influx from various Western countries and some African regions. A portion of the African immigrants have settled in the Afrikanisches Viertel. Young Germans, EU-Europeans and Israelis have also settled in the city. In December 2019, there were 777,345 registered residents of foreign nationality and another 542,975 German citizens with a "migration background" (Migrationshintergrund, MH), meaning they or one of their parents immigrated to Germany after 1955. Foreign residents of Berlin originate from about 190 different countries. 48 percent of the residents under the age of 15 have migration background. Berlin in 2009 was estimated to have 100,000 to 250,000 unregistered inhabitants. Boroughs of Berlin with a significant number of migrants or foreign born population are Mitte, Neukölln and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. There are more than 20 non-indigenous communities with a population of at least 10,000 people, including Turkish, Polish, Russian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Serbian, Italian, Bosnian, Vietnamese, American, Romanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Chinese, Austrian, Ukrainian, French, British, Spanish, Israeli, Thai, Iranian, Egyptian and Syrian communities. Languages German is the official and predominant spoken language in Berlin. It is a West Germanic language that derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. German is one of 24 languages of the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission. Berlinerisch or Berlinisch is not a dialect linguistically. It is spoken in Berlin and the surrounding metropolitan area. It originates from a Brandenburgish variant. The dialect is now seen more like a sociolect, largely through increased immigration and trends among the educated population to speak standard German in everyday life. The most commonly spoken foreign languages in Berlin are Turkish, Polish, English, Persian, Arabic, Italian, Bulgarian, Russian, Romanian, Kurdish, Serbo-Croatian, French, Spanish and Vietnamese. Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, and Serbo-Croatian are heard more often in the western part due to the large Middle Eastern and former-Yugoslavian communities. Polish, English, Russian, and Vietnamese have more native speakers in East Berlin. Religion According to the 2011 census, approximately 37 percent of the population reported being members of a legally-recognized church or religious organization. The rest either did not belong to such an organization, or there was no information available about them. The largest religious denomination recorded in 2010 was the Protestant regional church body—the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (EKBO)—a united church. EKBO is a member of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and Union Evangelischer Kirchen (UEK). According to the EKBO, their membership accounted for 18.7 percent of the local population, while the Roman Catholic Church had 9.1 percent of residents registered as its members. About 2.7% of the population identify with other Christian denominations (mostly Eastern Orthodox, but also various Protestants). According to the Berlin residents register, in 2018 14.9 percent were members of the Evangelical Church, and 8.5 percent were members of the Catholic Church. The government keeps a register of members of these churches for tax purposes, because it collects church tax on behalf of the churches. It does not keep records of members of other religious organizations which may collect their own church tax, in this way. In 2009, approximately 249,000 Muslims were reported by the Office of Statistics to be members of Mosques and Islamic religious organizations in Berlin, while in 2016, the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel estimated that about 350,000 Muslims observed Ramadan in Berlin. In 2019, about 437,000 registered residents, 11.6% of the total, reported having a migration background from one of the Member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Between 1992 and 2011 the Muslim population almost doubled. About 0.9% of Berliners belong to other religions. Of the estimated population of 30,000–45,000 Jewish residents, approximately 12,000 are registered members of religious organizations. Berlin is the seat of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Berlin and EKBO's elected chairperson is titled the bishop of EKBO. Furthermore, Berlin is the seat of many Orthodox cathedrals, such as the Cathedral of St. Boris the Baptist, one of the two seats of the Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese of Western and Central Europe, and the Resurrection of Christ Cathedral of the Diocese of Berlin (Patriarchate of Moscow). The faithful of the different religions and denominations maintain many places of worship in Berlin. The Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin. There are 36 Baptist congregations (within Union of Evangelical Free Church Congregations in Germany), 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, four Churches of Christ, Scientist (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 11th), six congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. Berlin has more than 80 mosques, ten synagogues, and two Buddhist temples. Government City state Since reunification on 3 October 1990, Berlin has been one of the three city states in Germany among the present 16 states of Germany. The House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus) functions as the city and state parliament, which has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister), and up to ten senators holding ministerial positions, two of them holding the title of "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2015 exceeded €24.5 ($30.0) billion including a budget surplus of €205 ($240) million. The state owns extensive assets, including administrative and government buildings, real estate companies, as well as stakes in the Olympic Stadium, swimming pools, housing companies, and numerous public enterprises and subsidiary companies. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election. Since the 2016 state election, there has been a coalition between the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Left Party. The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the City of Berlin (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Minister President of the State of Berlin (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of the Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2014 this office has been held by Michael Müller of the Social Democrats. Boroughs Berlin is subdivided into 12 boroughs or districts (Bezirke). Each borough has several subdistricts or neighborhoods (Ortsteile), which have roots in much older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. These subdistricts became urbanized and incorporated into the city later on. Many residents strongly identify with their neighborhoods, colloquially called Kiez. At present, Berlin consists of 96 subdistricts, which are commonly made up of several smaller residential areas or quarters. Each borough is governed by a borough council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five councilors (Bezirksstadträte) including the borough's mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The council is elected by the borough assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). However, the individual boroughs are not independent municipalities, but subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough's mayors make up the council of mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), which is led by the city's Governing Mayor and advises the Senate. The neighborhoods have no local government bodies. Twin towns – sister cities Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with its sister city Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification but later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the Western World and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies. There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Beirut, Belgrade, São Paulo, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Oslo, Hanoi, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, New York City and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, and Conference of the World's Capital Cities. Berlin is twinned with: Los Angeles, United States (1967) Madrid, Spain (1988) Istanbul, Turkey (1989) Warsaw, Poland (1991) Moscow, Russia (1991) Brussels, Belgium (1992) Budapest, Hungary (1992) Tashkent, Uzbekistan (1993) Mexico City, Mexico (1993) Jakarta, Indonesia (1993) Beijing, China (1994) Tokyo, Japan (1994) Buenos Aires, Argentina (1994) Prague, Czech Republic (1995) Windhoek, Namibia (2000) London, United Kingdom (2000) Since 1987, Berlin also has an official partnership with Paris, France. Every Berlin borough also established its own twin towns. For example, the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg has a partnership with the Israeli city of Kiryat Yam. Capital city Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany. The President of Germany, whose functions are mainly ceremonial under the German constitution, has their official residence in Bellevue Palace. Berlin is the seat of the German Chancellor (Prime Minister), housed in the Chancellery building, the Bundeskanzleramt. Facing the Chancellery is the Bundestag, the German Parliament, housed in the renovated Reichstag building since the government's relocation to Berlin in 1998. The Bundesrat ("federal council", performing the function of an upper house) is the representation of the 16 constituent states (Länder) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian House of Lords. The total annual federal budget managed by the German government exceeded €310 ($375) billion in 2013. The relocation of the federal government and Bundestag to Berlin was mostly completed in 1999. However, some ministries, as well as some minor departments, stayed in the federal city Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. Discussions about moving the remaining ministries and departments to Berlin continue. The Federal Foreign Office and the ministries and departments of Defense, Justice and Consumer Protection, Finance, Interior, Economic Affairs and Energy, Labor and Social Affairs, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Food and Agriculture, Economic Cooperation and Development, Health, Transport and Digital Infrastructure and Education and Research are based in the capital. Berlin hosts in total 158 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many think tanks, trade unions, nonprofit organizations, lobbying groups, and professional associations. Due to the influence and international partnerships of the Federal Republic of Germany, the capital city has become a significant center of German and European affairs. Frequent official visits and diplomatic consultations among governmental representatives and national leaders are common in contemporary Berlin. Economy In 2018, the GDP of Berlin totaled €147 billion, an increase of 3.1% over the previous year. Berlin's economy is dominated by the service sector, with around 84% of all companies doing business in services. In 2015, the total labor force in Berlin was 1.85 million. The unemployment rate reached a 24-year low in November 2015 and stood at 10.0% . From 2012 to 2015 Berlin, as a German state, had the highest annual employment growth rate. Around 130,000 jobs were added in this period. Important economic sectors in Berlin include life sciences, transportation, information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology, environmental services, construction, e-commerce, retail, hotel business, and medical engineering. Research and development have economic significance for the city. Several major corporations like Volkswagen, Pfizer, and SAP operate innovation laboratories in the city. The Science and Business Park in Adlershof is the largest technology park in Germany measured by revenue. Within the Eurozone, Berlin has become a center for business relocation and international investments. Companies Many German and international companies have business or service centers in the city. For several years Berlin has been recognized as a major center of business founders. In 2015, Berlin generated the most venture capital for young startup companies in Europe. Among the 10 largest employers in Berlin are the City-State of Berlin, Deutsche Bahn, the hospital providers Charité and Vivantes, the Federal Government of Germany, the local public transport provider BVG, Siemens and Deutsche Telekom. Siemens, a Global 500 and DAX-listed company is partly headquartered in Berlin. Other DAX-listed companies headquartered in Berlin are the property company Deutsche Wohnen and the online food delivery service Delivery Hero. The national railway operator Deutsche Bahn, Europe's largest digital publisher Axel Springer as well as the MDAX-listed firms Zalando and HelloFresh and also have their main headquarters in the city. Among the largest international corporations who have their German or European headquarters in Berlin are Bombardier Transportation, Gazprom Germania, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Sony and Total. As of 2018, the three largest banks headquartered in the capital were Deutsche Kreditbank, Landesbank Berlin and Berlin Hyp. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. American electric car manufacturer Tesla is building its first European Gigafactory just outside of the city in Grünheide (Mark). The Pharmaceuticals division of Bayer and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies in the city. Tourism and conventions Berlin had 788 hotels with 134,399 beds in 2014. The city recorded 28.7 million overnight hotel stays and 11.9 million hotel guests in 2014. Tourism figures have more than doubled within the last ten years and Berlin has become the third-most-visited city destination in Europe. Some of the most visited places in Berlin include: Potsdamer Platz, Brandenburger Tor, the Berlin wall, Alexanderplatz, Museumsinsel, Fernsehturm, the East-Side Gallery, Schloss-Charlottenburg, Zoologischer Garten, Siegessäule, Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, Mauerpark, Botanical Garden, Französischer Dom, Deutscher Dom and Holocaust-Mahnmal. The largest visitor groups are from Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and the United States. According to figures from the International Congress and Convention Association in 2015, Berlin became the leading organizer of conferences globally, hosting 195 international meetings. Some of these congress events take place on venues such as CityCube Berlin or the Berlin Congress Center (bcc). The Messe Berlin (also known as Berlin ExpoCenter City) is the main convention organizing company in the city. Its main exhibition area covers more than . Several large-scale trade fairs like the consumer electronics trade fair IFA, the ILA Berlin Air Show, the Berlin Fashion Week (including the Premium Berlin and the Panorama Berlin), the Green Week, the Fruit Logistica, the transport fair InnoTrans, the tourism fair ITB and the adult entertainment and erotic fair Venus are held annually in the city, attracting a significant number of business visitors. Creative industries The creative arts and entertainment business is an important part of Berlin's economy. The sector comprises music, film, advertising, architecture, art, design, fashion, performing arts, publishing, R&D, software, TV, radio, and video games. In 2014, around 30,500 creative companies operated in the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region, predominantly SMEs. Generating a revenue of 15.6 billion Euro and 6% of all private economic sales, the culture industry grew from 2009 to 2014 at an average rate of 5.5% per year. Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. It is home to more than 1,000 film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The historic Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are adjacent to Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the German Film Academy (Deutsche Filmakademie), founded in 2003, and the European Film Academy, founded in 1988. Media Berlin is home to many magazine, newspaper, book, and scientific/academic publishers and their associated service industries. In addition, around 20 news agencies, more than 90 regional daily newspapers and their websites, as well as the Berlin offices of more than 22 national publications such as Der Spiegel, and Die Zeit reinforce the capital's position as Germany's epicenter for influential debate. Therefore, many international journalists, bloggers, and writers live and work in the city. Berlin is the central location to several international and regional television and radio stations. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters in Berlin as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe and Welt. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin, and most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city including ZDF and RTL. Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical and La Gazette de Berlin a French-language newspaper. Berlin is also the headquarter of major German-language publishing houses like Walter de Gruyter, Springer, the Ullstein Verlagsgruppe (publishing group), Suhrkamp and Cornelsen are all based in Berlin. Each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products. Quality of life According to Mercer, Berlin ranked number 13 in the Quality of living city ranking in 2019. According to Monocle, Berlin occupies the position of the 6th-most-livable city in the world. Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Berlin number 21 of all global cities. Berlin is number 8 at the Global Power City Index. In 2019, Berlin has the best future prospects of all cities in Germany, according to HWWI and Berenberg Bank. According to the 2019 study by Forschungsinstitut Prognos, Berlin was ranked number 92 of all 401 regions in Germany. It is also the 4th ranked region in former East Germany after Jena, Dresden and Potsdam. Infrastructure Transport Roads Berlin's transport infrastructure is highly complex, providing a diverse range of urban mobility. A total of 979 bridges cross of inner-city waterways. of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways (). In 2013, 1.344 million motor vehicles were registered in the city. With 377 cars per 1000 residents in 2013 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a Western global city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita. In 2012, around 7,600 mostly beige colored taxicabs were in service. Since 2011, a number of app based e-car and e-scooter sharing services have evolved. Rail Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines of the provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The is the largest grade-separated railway station in Europe. runs high speed Intercity-Express trains to domestic destinations like , Munich, Cologne, , and others. It also runs an airport express rail service, as well as trains to several international destinations like Vienna, Prague, , Warsaw, Wrocław, Budapest and Amsterdam. Water transport Berlin is connected to the Elbe and Oder rivers via the Spree and the Havel rivers. There are no frequent passenger connections to and from Berlin by water, but some of the freight is transported via waterways. Berlin's largest harbour, the Westhafen, is located in the district of Moabit. It is a transhipment and storage site for inland shipping with a growing importance. Intercity buses Similarly to other German cities, there is an increasing quantity of intercity bus services. The city has more than 10 stations that run buses to destinations throughout Germany and Europe, being the biggest station. Public transport The (BVG) and the (DB) manage several extensive urban public transport systems. Travelers can access all modes of transport with a single ticket. Public transportation in Berlin has a long and complicated history because of the 20th-century division of the city, where movement between the two halves was not served. Since 1989, the transport network has been developed extensively; however, it still contains early 20th century traits, such as the U1. Airports Berlin is served by one commercial international airport: Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER), located just outside Berlin's south-eastern border, in the state of Brandenburg. It began construction in 2006, with the intention of replacing Airport (TXL) and Airport (SXF) as the single commercial airport of Berlin. Previously set to open in 2012, after extensive delays and cost overruns, it opened for commercial operations in October 2020. The planned initial capacity of around 27 million passengers per year is to be further developed to bring the terminal capacity to approximately 55 million per year by 2040. Before the opening of the BER in Brandenburg, Berlin was served by Tegel Airport and Schönefeld Airport. Tegel Airport was within the city limits, and Schönefeld Airport was located at the same site as the BER. Both airports together handled 29.5 million passengers in 2015. In 2014, 67 airlines served 163 destinations in 50 countries from Berlin. Airport was a focus city for Lufthansa and Eurowings while Schönefeld served as an important destination for airlines like , easyJet and Ryanair. Until 2008, Berlin was also served by the smaller Tempelhof Airport, which functioned as a city airport, with a convenient location near the city center, allowing for quick transit times between the central business district and the airport. The airport grounds have since been turned into a city park. Cycling Berlin is well known for its highly developed bicycle lane system. It is estimated Berlin has 710 bicycles per 1000 residents. Around 500,000 daily bike riders accounted for 13% of total traffic in 2010. Cyclists have access to of bicycle paths including approximately of mandatory bicycle paths, of off-road bicycle routes, of bicycle lanes on roads, of shared bus lanes which are also open to cyclists, of combined pedestrian/bike paths and of marked bicycle lanes on roadside pavements (or sidewalks). Riders are allowed to carry their bicycles on , S-Bahn and U-Bahn trains, on trams, and on night buses if a bike ticket is purchased. Rohrpost (pneumatic postal network) From 1865 until 1976, Berlin had an extensive pneumatic postal network, which at its peak in 1940, totaled 400 kilometers in length. After 1949 the system was split into two separated networks. The West Berlin system in operation and open for public use until 1963, and for government use until 1972. The East Berlin system which inherited the Hauptelegraphenamt, the central hub of the system, was in operation until 1976 Energy Berlin's two largest energy provider for private households are the Swedish firm Vattenfall and the Berlin-based company GASAG. Both offer electric power and natural gas supply. Some of the city's electric energy is imported from nearby power plants in southern Brandenburg. the five largest power plants measured by capacity are the Heizkraftwerk Reuter West, the Heizkraftwerk Lichterfelde, the Heizkraftwerk Mitte, the Heizkraftwerk Wilmersdorf, and the Heizkraftwerk Charlottenburg. All of these power stations generate electricity and useful heat at the same time to facilitate buffering during load peaks. In 1993 the power grid connections in the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region were renewed. In most of the inner districts of Berlin power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line is the backbone of the city's energy grid. Health Berlin has a long history of discoveries in medicine and innovations in medical technology. The modern history of medicine has been significantly influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch developed vaccines for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis. The Charité complex (Universitätsklinik Charité) is the largest university hospital in Europe, tracing back its origins to the year 1710. More than half of all German Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine, including Emil von Behring, Robert Koch and Paul Ehrlich, have worked at the Charité. The Charité is spread over four campuses and comprises around 3,000 beds, 15,500 staff, 8,000 students, and more than 60 operating theaters, and it has a turnover of two billion euros annually. The Charité is a joint institution of the Freie Universität Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and specialized medical centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine, and the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics. The scientific research at these institutions is complemented by many research departments of companies such as Siemens and Bayer. The World Health Summit and several international health-related conventions are held annually in Berlin. Telecommunication Since 2017, the digital television standard in Berlin and Germany is DVB-T2. This system transmits compressed digital audio, digital video and other data in an MPEG transport stream. Berlin has installed several hundred free public Wireless LAN sites across the capital since 2016. The wireless networks are concentrated mostly in central districts; 650 hotspots (325 indoor and 325 outdoor access points) are installed. Deutsche Bahn is planning to introduce Wi-Fi services in long-distance and regional trains in 2017. The UMTS (3G) and LTE (4G) networks of the three major cellular operators Vodafone, T-Mobile and O2 enable the use of mobile broadband applications citywide. The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute develops mobile and stationary broadband communication networks and multimedia systems. Focal points are photonic components and systems, fiber optic sensor systems, and image signal processing and transmission. Future applications for broadband networks are developed as well. Education , Berlin had 878 schools, teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a 6-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students continue to the (a comprehensive school) or (college preparatory school). Berlin has a special bilingual school program in the , in which children are taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and continuing in high school. The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin, which was founded in 1689 to teach the children of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual German–American public school in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of diplomats and the English-speaking expatriate community. 82 teach Latin and 8 teach Classical Greek. Higher education The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in Germany and Europe. Historically, 67 Nobel Prize winners are affiliated with the Berlin-based universities. The city has four public research universities and more than 30 private, professional, and technical colleges (Hochschulen), offering a wide range of disciplines. A record number of 175,651 students were enrolled in the winter term of 2015/16. Among them around 18% have an international background. The three largest universities combined have approximately 103,000 enrolled students. There are the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin, FU Berlin) with about 33,000 students, the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin) with 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) with 35,000 students. The Charité Medical School has around 8,000 students. The FU, the HU, the TU, and the Charité make up the Berlin University Alliance, which has received funding from the Excellence Strategy program of the German government. The Universität der Künste (UdK) has about 4,000 students and ESMT Berlin is only one of four business schools in Germany with triple accreditation. The Berlin School of Economics and Law has an enrollment of about 11,000 students, the Berlin University of Applied Sciences and Technology of about 12,000 students, and the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft (University of Applied Sciences for Engineering and Economics) of about 14,000 students. Research The city has a high density of internationally renowned research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, the Leibniz Association, the Helmholtz Association, and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. In 2012, around 65,000 professional scientists were working in research and development in the city. Berlin is one of the knowledge and innovation communities (KIC) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The KIC is based at the Center for Entrepreneurship at TU Berlin and has a focus in the development of IT industries. It partners with major multinational companies such as Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, and SAP. One of Europe's successful research, business and technology clusters is based at WISTA in Berlin-Adlershof, with more than 1,000 affiliated firms, university departments and scientific institutions. In addition to the university-affiliated libraries, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. Its two main locations are on Potsdamer Straße and on Unter den Linden. There are also 86 public libraries in the city. ResearchGate, a global social networking site for scientists, is based in Berlin. Culture Berlin is known for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the metropolis led to a trendsetting atmosphere. An innovative music, dance and art scene has developed in the 21st century. Young people, international artists and entrepreneurs continued to settle in the city and made Berlin a popular entertainment center in the world. The expanding cultural performance of the city was underscored by the relocation of the Universal Music Group who decided to move their headquarters to the banks of the River Spree. In 2005, Berlin was named "City of Design" by UNESCO and has been part of the Creative Cities Network ever since. Many German and International films were shot in Berlin, including M, One, Two, Three, Cabaret, Christiane F., Possession, Octopussy, Wings of Desire, Run Lola Run, The Bourne Trilogy, Good Bye, Lenin!, The Lives of Others, Inglourious Basterds, Hanna, Unknown and Bridge of Spies. Galleries and museums Berlin is home to 138 museums and more than 400 art galleries. The ensemble on the Museum Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is in the northern part of the Spree Island between the Spree and the Kupfergraben. As early as 1841 it was designated a "district dedicated to art and antiquities" by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum was built in the Lustgarten. The Neues Museum, which displays the bust of Queen Nefertiti, Alte Nationalgalerie, Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. Apart from the Museum Island, there are many additional museums in the city. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the 13th to the 18th centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in 20th-century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. The expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum reopened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history spanning more than a millennium. The Bauhaus Archive is a museum of 20th-century design from the famous Bauhaus school. Museum Berggruen houses the collection of noted 20th century collector Heinz Berggruen, and features an extensive assortment of works by Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, and Giacometti, among others. The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin's natural history museum) exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a Giraffatitan skeleton). A well-preserved specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex and the early bird Archaeopteryx are at display as well. In Dahlem, there are several museums of world art and culture, such as the Museum of Asian Art, the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of European Cultures, as well as the Allied Museum. The Brücke Museum features one of the largest collection of works by artist of the early 20th-century expressionist movement. In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security, is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the most renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved. A private museum venture exhibits a comprehensive documentation of detailed plans and strategies devised by people who tried to flee from the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. The cityscape of Berlin displays large quantities of urban street art. It has become a significant part of the city's cultural heritage and has its roots in the graffiti scene of Kreuzberg of the 1980s. The Berlin Wall itself has become one of the largest open-air canvasses in the world. The leftover stretch along the Spree river in Friedrichshain remains as the East Side Gallery. Berlin today is consistently rated as an important world city for street art culture. Berlin has galleries which are quite rich in contemporary art. Located in Mitte, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, KOW, Sprüth Magers; Kreuzberg there are a few galleries as well such as Blain Southern, Esther Schipper, Future Gallery, König Gallerie. Nightlife and festivals Berlin's nightlife has been celebrated as one of the most diverse and vibrant of its kind. In the 1970s and 80s the SO36 in Kreuzberg was a center for punk music and culture. The SOUND and the Dschungel gained notoriety. Throughout the 1990s, people in their 20s from all over the world, particularly those in Western and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene a premier nightlife venue. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many historic buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were illegally occupied and re-built by young squatters and became a fertile ground for underground and counterculture gatherings. The central boroughs are home to many nightclubs, including the Watergate, Tresor and Berghain. The KitKatClub and several other locations are known for their sexually uninhibited parties. Clubs are not required to close at a fixed time during the weekends, and many parties last well into the morning or even all weekend. The Weekend Club near Alexanderplatz features a roof terrace that allows partying at night. Several venues have become a popular stage for the Neo-Burlesque scene. Berlin has a long history of gay culture, and is an important birthplace of the LGBT rights movement. Same-sex bars and dance halls operated freely as early as the 1880s, and the first gay magazine, Der Eigene, started in 1896. By the 1920s, gays and lesbians had an unprecedented visibility. Today, in addition to a positive atmosphere in the wider club scene, the city again has a huge number of queer clubs and festivals. The most famous and largest are Berlin Pride, the Christopher Street Day, the Lesbian and Gay City Festival in Berlin-Schöneberg, the Kreuzberg Pride and Hustlaball. The annual Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) with around 500,000 admissions is considered to be the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. The Karneval der Kulturen (Carnival of Cultures), a multi-ethnic street parade, is celebrated every Pentecost weekend. Berlin is also well known for the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which includes the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin, and Young Euro Classic, the largest international festival of youth orchestras in the world. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress. The annual Berlin Festival focuses on indie rock, electronic music and synthpop and is part of the International Berlin Music Week. Every year Berlin hosts one of the largest New Year's Eve celebrations in the world, attended by well over a million people. The focal point is the Brandenburg Gate, where midnight fireworks are centered, but various private fireworks displays take place throughout the entire city. Partygoers in Germany often toast the New Year with a glass of sparkling wine. Performing arts Berlin is home to 44 theaters and stages. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849–50 and has operated almost continuously since then. The Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz was built in 1913–14, though the company had been founded in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 and moved to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm in 1981. With a seating capacity of 1,895 and a stage floor of , the Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin Mitte is the largest show palace in Europe. Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden opened in 1742 and is the oldest of the three. Its musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is also at Unter den Linden. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. The city's main venue for musical theater performances are the Theater am Potsdamer Platz and Theater des Westens (built in 1895). Contemporary dance can be seen at the Radialsystem V. The Tempodrom is host to concerts and circus-inspired entertainment. It also houses a multi-sensory spa experience. The Admiralspalast in Mitte has a vibrant program of variety and music events. There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Simon Rattle is its principal conductor. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin. Ivan Fischer is its principal conductor. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. The Kookaburra and the Quatsch Comedy Club are known for satire and stand-up comedy shows. In 2018, the New York Times described Berlin as "arguably the world capital of underground electronic music". Cuisine The cuisine and culinary offerings of Berlin vary greatly. 23 restaurants in Berlin have been awarded one or more Michelin stars in the Michelin Guide of 2021, which ranks the city at the top for the number of restaurants having this distinction in Germany. Berlin is well known for its offerings of vegetarian and vegan cuisine and is home to an innovative entrepreneurial food scene promoting cosmopolitan flavors, local and sustainable ingredients, pop-up street food markets, supper clubs, as well as food festivals, such as Berlin Food Week. Many local foods originated from north German culinary traditions and include rustic and hearty dishes with pork, goose, fish, peas, beans, cucumbers, or potatoes. Typical Berliner fare include popular street food like the Currywurst (which gained popularity with postwar construction workers rebuilding the city), Buletten and the Berliner donut, known in Berlin as . German bakeries offering a variety of breads and pastries are widespread. One of Europe's largest delicatessen markets is found at the KaDeWe, and among the world's largest chocolate stores is Fassbender & Rausch. Berlin is also home to a diverse gastronomy scene reflecting the immigrant history of the city. Turkish and Arab immigrants brought their culinary traditions to the city, such as the lahmajoun and falafel, which have become common fast food staples. The modern fast-food version of the doner kebab sandwich which evolved in Berlin in the 1970s, has since become a favorite dish in Germany and elsewhere in the world. Asian cuisine like Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Korean, and Japanese restaurants, as well as Spanish tapas bars, Italian, and Greek cuisine, can be found in many parts of the city. Recreation Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844. It is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It was the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut. The city's other zoo, Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, was founded in 1955. Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species, it is one of the largest and most diverse collections of botanical life in the world. Other gardens in the city include the Britzer Garten, and the Gärten der Welt (Gardens of the World) in Marzahn. The Tiergarten park in Mitte, with landscape design by Peter Joseph Lenné, is one of Berlin's largest and most popular parks. In Kreuzberg, the Viktoriapark provides a viewing point over the southern part of inner-city Berlin. Treptower Park, beside the Spree in Treptow, features a large Soviet War Memorial. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city, with monuments, a summer outdoor cinema and several sports areas. Tempelhofer Feld, the site of the former city airport, is the world's largest inner-city open space. Potsdam is on the southwestern periphery of Berlin. The city was a residence of the Prussian kings and the German Kaiser, until 1918. The area around Potsdam in particular Sanssouci is known for a series of interconnected lakes and cultural landmarks. The Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin are the largest World Heritage Site in Germany. Berlin is also well known for its numerous cafés, street musicians, beach bars along the Spree River, flea markets, boutique shops and pop up stores, which are a source for recreation and leisure. Sports Berlin has established a high-profile as a host city of major international sporting events. The city hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup final. The IAAF World Championships in Athletics was held in the Olympiastadion in 2009. The city hosted the Basketball Euroleague Final Four in 2009 and 2016. and was one of the hosts of the FIBA EuroBasket 2015. In 2015 Berlin became the venue for the UEFA Champions League Final. Berlin will host the 2023 Special Olympics World Summer Games. This will be the first time Germany has ever hosted the Special Olympics World Games. The annual Berlin Marathon a course that holds the most top-10 world record runs and the ISTAF are well-established athletic events in the city. The Mellowpark in Köpenick is one of the biggest skate and BMX parks in Europe. A Fan Fest at Brandenburg Gate, which attracts several hundred-thousand spectators, has become popular during international football competitions, like the UEFA European Championship. In 2013 around 600,000 Berliners were registered in one of the more than 2,300 sport and fitness clubs. The city of Berlin operates more than 60 public indoor and outdoor swimming pools. Berlin is the largest Olympic training center in Germany. About 500 top athletes (15% of all German top athletes) are based there. Forty-seven elite athletes participated in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Berliners would achieve seven gold, twelve silver and three bronze medals. Several professional clubs representing the most important spectator team sports in Germany have their base in Berlin. The oldest and most popular first division team based in Berlin is the football club Hertha BSC. The team represented Berlin as a founding member of the Bundesliga in 1963. Other professional team sport clubs include: See also List of fiction set in Berlin List of honorary citizens of Berlin List of people from Berlin List of songs about Berlin :Category:Video games set in Berlin Notes References Citations Sources Daum, Andreas. Kennedy in Berlin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, . External links berlin.de – Official website German state capitals Capitals in Europe City-states Members of the Hanseatic League Populated places established in the 13th century Turkish communities outside Turkey 1230s establishments in the Holy Roman Empire 1237 establishments in Europe States of Germany

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was a German composer of the Baroque period. Bach may also refer to: People Bach (surname) Bach family, a noted family in music Bach (actor), stage name of French actor, singer and music hall performer Charles-Joseph Pasquier (1882–1953) Sebastian Bach (born 1968), stage name of Canadian heavy metal singer Sebastian Bierk King Bach, American actor, comedian, and Internet personality Bill Bachrach (1879–1959), American swim coach known as "Bach" Joel Sirkis (1561–1640), Polish posek and halakhist, known as "the Bach" P. D. Q. Bach (1807–1742), a fictitious composer invented by musical satirist Peter Schickele Places Bach, Austria, a municipality in Reutte Bach, Lot, a commune in France Bach an der Donau, a town in Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany Bäch, a settlement of the Freienbach municipality in Schwyz, Switzerland Bäch railway station, in Freienbach, Switzerland Bach, Michigan, US, an unincorporated community Bach Ice Shelf, on Alexander Island, Antarctica Bach quadrangle, on the planet Mercury Bach (crater), on the planet Mercury 1814 Bach, an asteroid Radio stations WBQK, a radio station licensed to West Point, Virginia, US, known as Bach FM WLTT, a radio station licensed to Carolina Beach, North Carolina, US, known as Bach FM from 2011 to 2013 Other uses Bach Gesellschaft, an 1850 society for publishing J.S. Bach's complete works Bach (journal), an academic journal of Baroque music BACH motif, a sequence of notes Bach (New Zealand), a modest holiday home or beach house Brown Association for Cooperative Housing, in Providence, Rhode Island, United States Bach Aircraft, an aircraft manufacturer from 1927 to 1931 Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (abbreviated BWV), a catalogue of compositions by J.S. Bach Quarry Bach, a slate quarry near Cilgerran, Wales See also Bache (disambiguation) Bach House (disambiguation) Batch (disambiguation) Bạch, a Vietnamese surname Bachs, a municipality in the canton of Zürich, Switzerland

British Columbia (abbreviated as BC; ) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the continental divide of the Rocky Mountains. With an estimated population of 5.2million as of 2021, it is Canada's third-most populous province. The capital of British Columbia is Victoria and its largest city is Vancouver. Vancouver is the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada; the 2021 census recorded 2,642,825 people in Metro Vancouver. Since 2017, the province has been governed by the New Democratic Party, led by John Horgan, first with a minority government elected in 2017 and subsequently with a majority government elected in 2020. First Nations, the first inhabitants of the land, have a history of at least 10,000 years in the area. The first British settlement in the area was Fort Victoria, established in 1843, which gave rise to the city of Victoria, at first the capital of the separate Colony of Vancouver Island. The Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866) was subsequently founded on the mainland by Richard Clement Moody and the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment in response to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Moody selected the site for and founded the original capital of British Columbia, New Westminster, and established the Cariboo Road and Stanley Park. In 1866, Vancouver Island became part of the colony of British Columbia, and Victoria became the united colony's capital. In 1871, British Columbia became the sixth province of Canada. Today the question of aboriginal title, long ignored, has become a frequently debated legal and political question as a result of recent court actions. British Columbia's economy is primarily based on forestry, mining, cinematography and tourism. British Columbia also benefits from high property values and being a centre for maritime trade. Although less than 5% of its territory is arable land, significant agriculture exists in the Fraser Valley and Okanagan thanks to the warmer climate. British Columbia is the fourth-largest province or territory by GDP. Etymology The province's name was chosen by Queen Victoria, when the Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866), i.e., "the Mainland", became a British colony in 1858. It refers to the Columbia District, the British name for the territory drained by the Columbia River, in southeastern British Columbia, which was the namesake of the pre-Oregon Treaty Columbia Department of the Hudson's Bay Company. Queen Victoria chose British Columbia to distinguish what was the British sector of the Columbia District from the United States ("American Columbia" or "Southern Columbia"), which became the Oregon Territory on August 8, 1848, as a result of the treaty. Ultimately, the Columbia in the name British Columbia is derived from the name of the Columbia Rediviva, an American ship which lent its name to the Columbia River and later the wider region; the Columbia in the name Columbia Rediviva came from the name Columbia for the New World or parts thereof, a reference to Christopher Columbus. Geography British Columbia is bordered to the west by the Pacific Ocean and the American state of Alaska, to the north by Yukon and the Northwest Territories, to the east by the province of Alberta, and to the south by the American states of Washington, Idaho, and Montana. The southern border of British Columbia was established by the 1846 Oregon Treaty, although its history is tied with lands as far south as California. British Columbia's land area is . British Columbia's rugged coastline stretches for more than , and includes deep, mountainous fjords and about 6,000 islands, most of which are uninhabited. It is the only province in Canada that borders the Pacific Ocean. British Columbia's capital is Victoria, located at the southeastern tip of Vancouver Island. Only a narrow strip of Vancouver Island, from Campbell River to Victoria, is significantly populated. Much of the western part of Vancouver Island and the rest of the coast is covered by temperate rainforest. The province's most populous city is Vancouver, which is at the confluence of the Fraser River and Georgia Strait, in the mainland's southwest corner (an area often called the Lower Mainland). By land area, Abbotsford is the largest city. Vanderhoof is near the geographic centre of the province. The Coast Mountains and the Inside Passage's many inlets provide some of British Columbia's renowned and spectacular scenery, which forms the backdrop and context for a growing outdoor adventure and ecotourism industry. 75% of the province is mountainous (more than above sea level); 60% is forested; and only about 5% is arable. The province's mainland away from the coastal regions is somewhat moderated by the Pacific Ocean. Terrain ranges from dry inland forests and semi-arid valleys, to the range and canyon districts of the Central and Southern Interior, to boreal forest and subarctic prairie in the Northern Interior. High mountain regions both north and south have subalpine flora and subalpine climate. The Okanagan wine area, extending from Vernon to Osoyoos at the United States border, is one of several wine and cider-producing regions in Canada. Other wine regions in British Columbia include the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island and the Fraser Valley. The Southern Interior cities of Kamloops and Penticton have some of the warmest and longest summer climates in Canada (while higher elevations are cold and snowy), although their temperatures are often exceeded north of the Fraser Canyon, close to the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson rivers, where the terrain is rugged and covered with desert-type flora. Semi-desert grassland is found in large areas of the Interior Plateau, with land uses ranging from ranching at lower altitudes to forestry at higher ones. The northern, mostly mountainous, two-thirds of the province is largely unpopulated and undeveloped, except for the area east of the Rockies, where the Peace River Country contains BC's portion of the Canadian Prairies, centred at the city of Dawson Creek. British Columbia is considered part of the Pacific Northwest and the Cascadia bioregion, along with the American states of Alaska, Idaho, (western) Montana, Oregon, Washington, and (northern) California. Climate Because of the many mountain ranges and rugged coastline, British Columbia's climate varies dramatically across the province. Coastal southern British Columbia has a mild, rainy oceanic climate, influenced by the North Pacific Current, which has its origins in the Kuroshio Current. Hucuktlis Lake on Vancouver Island receives an average of of rain annually, and some parts of the area are even classified as warm-summer Mediterranean, the northernmost occurrence in the world. In Victoria, the annual average temperature is , the warmest in Canada. Due to the blocking presence of successive mountain ranges, the climate of some of the interior valleys of the province is semi-arid with certain locations receiving less than in annual precipitation. The annual mean temperature in the most populated areas of the province is up to , the mildest anywhere in Canada. The valleys of the Southern Interior have short winters with only brief bouts of cold or infrequent heavy snow, while those in the Cariboo, in the Central Interior, are colder because of increased altitude and latitude, but without the intensity or duration experienced at similar latitudes elsewhere in Canada. For example, the average daily low in Prince George (roughly in the middle of the province) in January is . Small towns in the southern interior with high elevation such as Princeton are typically colder and snowier than cities in the valleys. Heavy snowfall occurs in all elevated mountainous terrain providing bases for skiers in both south and central British Columbia. Annual snowfall on highway mountain passes in the southern interior rival some of the snowiest cities in Canada, and freezing rain and fog are sometimes present on such roads as well. This can result in hazardous driving conditions, as people are usually travelling between warmer areas such as Vancouver or Kamloops, and may be unaware that the conditions may be slippery and cold. Winters are generally severe in the Northern Interior, but even there, milder air can penetrate far inland. The coldest temperature in British Columbia was recorded in Smith River, where it dropped to on January 31, 1947, one of the coldest readings recorded anywhere in North America. Atlin in the province's far northwest, along with the adjoining Southern Lakes region of Yukon, get midwinter thaws caused by the Chinook effect, which is also common (and much warmer) in more southerly parts of the Interior. During winter on the coast, rainfall, sometimes relentless heavy rain, dominates because of consistent barrages of cyclonic low-pressure systems from the North Pacific. Average snowfall on the coast during a normal winter is between , but on occasion (and not every winter) heavy snowfalls with more than and well below freezing temperatures arrive when modified arctic air reaches coastal areas, typically for short periods, and can take temperatures below , even at sea level. Arctic outflow winds can occasionally result in wind chill temperatures at or even below .. While winters are very wet, coastal areas are generally milder and dry during summer under the influence of stable anti-cyclonic high pressure. Southern Interior valleys are hot in summer; for example, in Osoyoos, the July maximum temperature averages , making it the hottest month of any location in Canada; this hot weather sometimes spreads towards the coast or to the far north of the province. Temperatures often exceed in the lower elevations of valleys in the Interior during mid-summer, with the record high of being held in Lytton on June 30, 2021. The extended summer dryness often creates conditions that spark forest fires, from dry-lightning or man-made causes. Many areas of the province are often covered by a blanket of heavy cloud and low fog during the winter months, in contrast to abundant summer sunshine. Annual sunshine hours vary from 2200 near Cranbrook and Victoria to less than 1300 in Prince Rupert, on the North Coast just south of Southeast Alaska. The exception to British Columbia's wet and cloudy winters is during the El Niño phase. During El Niño events, the jet stream is much farther south across North America, making the province's winters milder and drier than normal. Winters are much wetter and cooler during the opposite phase, La Niña. Parks and protected areas There are 14 designations of parks and protected areas in the province that reflect the different administration and creation of these areas in a modern context. There are 141 ecological reserves, 35 provincial marine parks, 7 provincial heritage sites, 6 National Historic Sites of Canada, 4 national parks and 3 national park reserves. 12.5% of the province's area () is considered protected under one of the 14 different designations that includes over 800 distinct areas. British Columbia contains seven of Canada's national parks and National Park Reserves: Glacier National Park Gulf Islands National Park Reserve Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site Kootenay National Park Mount Revelstoke National Park Pacific Rim National Park Reserve Yoho National Park British Columbia contains a large number of provincial parks, run by BC Parks under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment. British Columbia's provincial parks system is the second largest parks system in Canada, the largest being Canada's National Parks system. Another tier of parks in British Columbia are regional parks, which are maintained and run by the province's regional districts. The Ministry of Forests operates forest recreation sites. In addition to these areas, over of arable land are protected by the Agricultural Land Reserve. Fauna Much of the province is undeveloped, so populations of many mammalian species that have become rare in much of the United States still flourish in British Columbia. Watching animals of various sorts, including a very wide range of birds, has long been popular. Bears (grizzly, black—including the Kermode bear or spirit bear) live here, as do deer, elk, moose, caribou, big-horn sheep, mountain goats, marmots, beavers, muskrats, coyotes, wolves, mustelids (such as wolverines, badgers and fishers), cougars, eagles, ospreys, herons, Canada geese, swans, loons, hawks, owls, ravens, harlequin ducks, and many other sorts of ducks. Smaller birds (robins, jays, grosbeaks, chickadees, and so on) also abound. Murrelets are known from Frederick Island, a small island off the coast of Haida Gwaii. Many healthy populations of fish are present, including salmonids such as several species of salmon, trout, char. Besides salmon and trout, sport-fishers in BC also catch halibut, steelhead, bass, and sturgeon. On the coast, harbour seals and river otters are common. Cetacean species native to the coast include the orca, humpback whale, grey whale, harbour porpoise, Dall's porpoise, Pacific white-sided dolphin and minke whale. Some endangered species in British Columbia are: Vancouver Island marmot, spotted owl, American white pelican, and badgers. Forests White spruce or Engelmann spruce and their hybrids occur in 12 of the 14 biogeoclimatic zones of British Columbia (Coates et al. 1994). Common types of trees present in BC's forests include Western Redcedar, Yellow-cedar, Rocky Mountain juniper, Lodgepole pine, Ponderosa or yellow pine, Whitebark pine, Limber pine, Western white pine, Western larch, Tamarack, Alpine larch, White spruce, Engelmann spruce, Sitka spruce, Black spruce, Grand fir, Amabilis fir, Subalpine fir, Western hemlock, Mountain hemlock, Douglas-fir, Western yew, Pacific dogwood, Bigleaf maple, Douglas maple, Vine maple, Arbutus, Black hawthorn, Cascara, Garry oak, Pacific crab apple, Choke cherry, Pin cherry, Bitter cherry, Red alder, Mountain alder, Paper birch, Water birch, Black cottonwood, Balsam poplar, Trembling aspen. Traditional plant foods Plant foods traditionally contributed only a part of the total food intake of coastal First Nations peoples of British Columbia, though they contributed to most of the material good produced. Among the plant foods used, berries, some roots (for example the Camas Lily – part of the Camassia family), cambium noodles (inner bark of hemlock), and seaweeds were (and to an extent still are) important. Animal products were traditionally far more important than plant foods in terms of quantity consumed, but the huge nutritional diversity provided by native plants largely contributes to the health of First Nations peoples of British Columbia. (Before colonization, British Columbia had the densest aboriginal population of any region in what is now called Canada.) Ecozones Environment Canada subdivides British Columbia into six ecozones: Pacific Marine Pacific Maritime Boreal Cordillera Montane Cordillera Taiga Plains Boreal Plains Ecozones. History Indigenous societies The area now known as British Columbia is home to First Nations groups that have a deep history with a significant number of indigenous languages. There are more than 200 First Nations in BC. Prior to contact (with non-Aboriginal people), human history is known from oral histories of First Nations groups, archaeological investigations, and from early records from explorers encountering societies early in the period. The arrival of Paleoindians from Beringia took place between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherer families were the main social structure from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago. The nomadic population lived in non-permanent structures foraging for nuts, berries and edible roots while hunting and trapping larger and small game for food and furs. Around 5,000 years ago individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally. Coast Salish peoples' had complex land management practices linked to ecosystem health and resilience. Forest gardens on Canada's northwest coast included crabapple, hazelnut, cranberry, wild plum, and wild cherry species. Thus with the passage of time there is a pattern of increasing regional generalization with a more sedentary lifestyle. These indigenous populations evolved over the next 5,000 years across a large area into many groups with shared traditions and customs. To the northwest of the province are the peoples of the Na-Dene languages, which include the Athapaskan-speaking peoples and the Tlingit, who lived on the islands of southern Alaska and northern British Columbia. The Na-Dene language group is believed to be linked to the Yeniseian languages of Siberia. The Dene of the western Arctic may represent a distinct wave of migration from Asia to North America. The Interior of British Columbia was home to the Salishan language groups such as the Shuswap (Secwepemc), Okanagan and Athabaskan language groups, primarily the Dakelh (Carrier) and the Tsilhqot'in. The inlets and valleys of the British Columbia coast sheltered large, distinctive populations, such as the Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth, sustained by the region's abundant salmon and shellfish. These peoples developed complex cultures dependent on the western red cedar that included wooden houses, seagoing whaling and war canoes and elaborately carved potlatch items and totem poles. Contact with Europeans brought a series of devastating epidemics of diseases from Europe the people had no immunity to. The result was a dramatic population collapse, culminating in the 1862 Smallpox outbreak in Victoria that spread throughout the coast. European settlement did not bode well for the remaining native population of British Columbia. Colonial officials deemed colonists could make better use of the land than the First Nations people, and thus the land territory be owned by the colonists. To ensure colonists would be able to settle properly and make use of the land, First Nations were forcibly relocated onto reserves, which were often too small to support their way of life. By the 1930s, British Columbia had over 1500 reserves. Fur trade and colonial era The British, during the colonial period, spread across the world claiming territories and building the British Empire. Lands now known as British Columbia were added to the empire during the 19th century. Originally established under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company, colonies were established (Vancouver Island, the mainland) that were amalgamated, then entered Confederation as British Columbia in 1871 as part of the Dominion of Canada. During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% of the Pacific Northwest First Nations. This devastating epidemic was the first in a series; the 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic killed about half to two-thirds of the native population of what became British Columbia. The arrival of Europeans began around the mid-18th century, as fur traders entered the area to harvest sea otters. While it is thought Sir Francis Drake may have explored the British Columbian coast in 1579, it was Juan Pérez who completed the first documented voyage, which took place in 1774. Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra explored the coast in 1775. In doing so, Pérez and Quadra reasserted the Spanish claim for the Pacific coast, first made by Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513. The explorations of James Cook in 1778 and George Vancouver in 1792 and 1793 established British jurisdiction over the coastal area north and west of the Columbia River. In 1793, Sir Alexander Mackenzie was the first European to journey across North America overland to the Pacific Ocean, inscribing a stone marking his accomplishment on the shoreline of Dean Channel near Bella Coola. His expedition theoretically established British sovereignty inland, and a succession of other fur company explorers charted the maze of rivers and mountain ranges between the Canadian Prairies and the Pacific. Mackenzie and other explorers—notably John Finlay, Simon Fraser, Samuel Black, and David Thompson—were primarily concerned with extending the fur trade, rather than political considerations. In 1794, by the third of a series of agreements known as the Nootka Conventions, Spain conceded its claims of exclusivity in the Pacific. This opened the way for formal claims and colonization by other powers, including Britain, but because of the Napoleonic Wars, there was little British action on its claims in the region until later. The establishment of trading posts under the auspices of the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), effectively established a permanent British presence in the region. The Columbia District was broadly defined as being south of 54°40 north latitude, (the southern limit of Russian America), north of Mexican-controlled California, and west of the Rocky Mountains. It was, by the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, under the "joint occupancy and use" of citizens of the United States and subjects of Britain (which is to say, the fur companies). This co-occupancy was ended with the Oregon Treaty of 1846. The major supply route was the York Factory Express between Hudson Bay and Fort Vancouver. Some of the early outposts grew into settlements, communities, and cities. Among the places in British Columbia that began as fur trading posts are Fort St. John (established 1794); Hudson's Hope (1805); Fort Nelson (1805); Fort St. James (1806); Prince George (1807); Kamloops (1812); Fort Langley (1827); Fort Victoria (1843); Yale (1848); and Nanaimo (1853). Fur company posts that became cities in what is now the United States include Vancouver, Washington (Fort Vancouver), formerly the "capital" of Hudson's Bay operations in the Columbia District, Colville, Washington and Walla Walla, Washington (old Fort Nez Percés). With the amalgamation of the two fur trading companies in 1821, modern-day British Columbia existed in three fur trading departments. The bulk of the central and northern interior was organized into the New Caledonia district, administered from Fort St. James. The interior south of the Thompson River watershed and north of the Columbia was organized into the Columbia District, administered from Fort Vancouver on the lower Columbia River. The northeast corner of the province east of the Rockies, known as the Peace River Block, was attached to the much larger Athabasca District, headquartered in Fort Chipewyan, in present-day Alberta. Until 1849, these districts were a wholly unorganized area of British North America under the de facto jurisdiction of HBC administrators; however, unlike Rupert's Land to the north and east, the territory was not a concession to the company. Rather, it was simply granted a monopoly to trade with the First Nations inhabitants. All that was changed with the westward extension of American exploration and the concomitant overlapping claims of territorial sovereignty, especially in the southern Columbia Basin (within present day Washington and Oregon). In 1846, the Oregon Treaty divided the territory along the 49th parallel to the Strait of Georgia, with the area south of this boundary (excluding Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands) transferred to sole American sovereignty. The Colony of Vancouver Island was created in 1849, with Victoria designated as the capital. New Caledonia, as the whole of the mainland rather than just its north-central Interior came to be called, continued to be an unorganized territory of British North America, "administered" by individual HBC trading post managers. Colony of British Columbia (1858–66) With the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in 1858, an influx of Americans into New Caledonia prompted the colonial office to designate the mainland as the Colony of British Columbia. When news of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush reached London, Richard Clement Moody was hand-picked by the Colonial Office, under Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, to establish British order and to transform the newly established Colony of British Columbia into the British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west" and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific". Lytton desired to send to the colony "representatives of the best of British culture, not just a police force": he sought men who possessed "courtesy, high breeding and urbane knowledge of the world" and he decided to send Moody, whom the Government considered to be the "English gentleman and British Officer" at the head of the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment. Moody and his family arrived in British Columbia in December 1858, commanding the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment. He was sworn in as the first lieutenant governor of British Columbia and appointed Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia. On the advice of Lytton, Moody hired Robert Burnaby as his personal secretary. In British Columbia, Moody "wanted to build a city of beauty in the wilderness" and planned his city as an iconic visual metaphor for British dominance, "styled and located with the objective of reinforcing the authority of the crown and of the robe". Subsequent to the enactment of the Pre-emption Act of 1860, Moody settled the Lower Mainland. He selected the site and founded the new capital, New Westminster. He selected the site due to the strategic excellence of its position and the quality of its port. He was also struck by the majestic beauty of the site, writing in his letter to Blackwood, Lord Lytton "forgot the practicalities of paying for clearing and developing the site and the town" and the efforts of Moody's engineers were continuously hampered by insufficient funds, which, together with the continuous opposition of Governor James Douglas, "made it impossible for Moody's design to be fulfilled". Moody and the Royal Engineers also built an extensive road network, including what would become Kingsway, connecting New Westminster to False Creek, the North Road between Port Moody and New Westminster, and the Cariboo Road and Stanley Park. He named Burnaby Lake after his private secretary Robert Burnaby and named Port Coquitlam's 400-foot "Mary Hill" after his wife. As part of the surveying effort, several tracts were designated "government reserves", which included Stanley Park as a military reserve (a strategic location in case of an American invasion). The Pre-emption Act did not specify conditions for distributing the land, so large parcels were snapped up by speculators, including 3,750 acres (1,517 hectares) by Moody himself. For this he was criticized by local newspapermen for land grabbing. Moody designed the first coat of arms of British Columbia. Port Moody is named after him. It was established at the end of a trail that connected New Westminster with Burrard Inlet to defend New Westminster from potential attack from the US. By 1862, the Cariboo Gold Rush, attracting an additional 5000 miners, was underway, and Douglas hastened construction of the Great North Road (commonly known now as the Cariboo Wagon Road) up the Fraser Canyon to the prospecting region around Barkerville. By the time of this gold rush, the character of the colony was changing, as a more stable population of British colonists settled in the region, establishing businesses, opening sawmills, and engaging in fishing and agriculture. With this increased stability, objections to the colony's absentee governor and the lack of responsible government began to be vocalized, led by the influential editor of the New Westminster British Columbian and future premier, John Robson. A series of petitions requesting an assembly were ignored by Douglas and the colonial office until Douglas was eased out of office in 1864. Finally, the colony would have both an assembly and a resident governor. Later gold rushes A series of gold rushes in various parts of the province followed, the largest being the Cariboo Gold Rush in 1862, forcing the colonial administration into deeper debt as it struggled to meet the extensive infrastructure needs of far-flung boom communities like Barkerville and Lillooet, which sprang up overnight. The Vancouver Island colony was facing financial crises of its own, and pressure to merge the two eventually succeeded in 1866, when the colony of British Columbia was amalgamated with the Colony of Vancouver Island to form the Colony of British Columbia (1866–1871), which was, in turn, succeeded by the present day province of British Columbia following the Canadian Confederation of 1871. Rapid growth and development The Confederation League, including such figures as Amor De Cosmos, John Robson, and Robert Beaven, led the chorus pressing for the colony to join Canada, which had been created out of three British North American colonies in 1867 (the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick). Several factors motivated this agitation, including the fear of annexation to the United States, the overwhelming debt created by rapid population growth, the need for government-funded services to support this population, and the economic depression caused by the end of the gold rush. With the agreement by the Canadian government to extend the Canadian Pacific Railway to British Columbia and to assume the colony's debt, British Columbia became the sixth province to join Confederation on July 20, 1871. The borders of the province were not completely settled. The Treaty of Washington sent the Pig War San Juan Islands Border dispute to arbitration in 1871 and in 1903, the province's territory shrank again after the Alaska boundary dispute settled the vague boundary of the Alaska Panhandle. Population in British Columbia continued to expand as the province's mining, forestry, agriculture, and fishing sectors were developed. Mining activity was particularly notable throughout the Mainland, particularly in the Boundary Country, in the Slocan, in the West Kootenay around Trail, the East Kootenay (the southeast corner of the province), the Fraser Canyon, the Cariboo, the Omineca and the Cassiar, so much so a common epithet for the Mainland, even after provincehood, was "the Gold Colony". Agriculture attracted settlers to the fertile Fraser Valley, and cattle ranchers and later fruit growers came to the drier grasslands of the Thompson River area, the Cariboo, the Chilcotin, and the Okanagan. Forestry drew workers to the lush temperate rainforests of the coast, which was also the locus of a growing fishery. The completion of the railway in 1885 was a huge boost to the province's economy, facilitating the transportation of the region's considerable resources to the east. The milltown of Granville, known as Gastown, near the mouth of the Burrard Inlet was selected as the terminus of the railway, prompting the incorporation of the city as Vancouver in 1886. The completion of the Port of Vancouver spurred rapid growth, and in less than fifty years the city surpassed Winnipeg, Manitoba, as the largest in Western Canada. The early decades of the province were ones in which issues of land use—specifically, its settlement and development—were paramount. This included expropriation from First Nations people of their land, control over its resources, as well as the ability to trade in some resources (such as fishing). Establishing a labour force to develop the province was problematic from the start, and British Columbia was the locus of immigration from Europe, China, Japan and India. The influx of a non-European population stimulated resentment from the dominant ethnic groups, resulting in agitation (much of it successful) to restrict the ability of Asian people to immigrate to British Columbia through the imposition of a head tax. This resentment culminated in mob attacks against Chinese and Japanese immigrants in Vancouver in 1887 and 1907. The subsequent Komagata Maru incident in 1914, where hundreds of Indians were denied entry into Vancouver, was also a direct result of the anti-Asian resentment at the time. By 1923, almost all Chinese immigration had been blocked except for merchants, professionals, students and investors. Meanwhile, the province continued to grow. In 1914, the last spike of a second transcontinental rail line, the Grand Trunk Pacific, linking north-central British Columbia from the Yellowhead Pass through Prince George to Prince Rupert was driven at Fort Fraser. This opened up the North Coast and the Bulkley Valley region to new economic opportunities. What had previously been an almost exclusively fur trade and subsistence economy soon became a locus for forestry, farming, and mining. In World War I, the province responded strongly to the call to assist the British Empire against its German foes in French and Belgian battlefields. About 55,570 of the 400,000 British Columbian residents, the highest per-capita rate in Canada, responded to the military needs. Horseriders from the province's Interior region and First Nations soldiers made contributions to Vimy Ridge and other battles. About 6,225 men from the province died in combat. 1920s to 1940s When the men returned from the First World War, they discovered the recently enfranchised women of the province had helped vote in the prohibition of liquor in an effort to end the social problems associated with the hard-core drinking Vancouver and the rest of the province was famous for until the war. Because of pressure from veterans, prohibition was quickly relaxed so the "soldier and the working man" could enjoy a drink, but widespread unemployment among veterans was hardened by many of the available jobs being taken by European immigrants and disgruntled veterans organized a range of "soldier parties" to represent their interests, variously named Soldier-Farmer, Soldier-Labour, and Farmer-Labour Parties. These formed the basis of the fractured labour-political spectrum that would generate a host of fringe leftist and rightist parties, including those who would eventually form the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the early Social Credit splinter groups. The advent of prohibition in the United States created new opportunities, and many found employment or at least profit in cross-border liquor smuggling. Much of Vancouver's prosperity and opulence in the 1920s results from this "pirate economy", although growth in forestry, fishing and mining continued. By the end of the 1920s, the end of prohibition in the U.S., combined with the onset of the Great Depression, plunged the province into economic destitution during the 1930s. Compounding the already dire local economic situation, tens of thousands of men from colder parts of Canada swarmed into Vancouver, creating huge hobo jungles around False Creek and the Burrard Inlet rail yards, including the old Canadian Pacific Railway mainline right-of-way through the heart of the city's downtown (at Hastings and Carrall). Increasingly desperate times led to intense political organizing efforts, an occupation of the main Post Office at Granville and Hastings which was violently put down by the police and an effective imposition of martial law on the docks for almost three years. A Vancouver contingent for the On-to-Ottawa Trek was organized and seized a train, which was loaded with thousands of men bound for the capital but was met by a Gatling gun straddling the tracks at Mission; the men were arrested and sent to work camps for the duration of the Depression. There were some signs of economic life beginning to return to normal towards the end of the 1930s, but it was the onset of World War II which transformed the national economy and ended the hard times of the Depression. Because of the war effort, women entered the workforce as never before. British Columbia has long taken advantage of its location on the Pacific Ocean to have close relations with East Asia and South Asia. This closeness has often caused friction between cultures which has sometimes escalated into racist animosity towards those of Asian descent. This was most manifest during the Second World War when many people of Japanese descent were relocated or interned in the Interior region of the province. Coalition and the post-war boom During the Second World War the mainstream BC Liberal and BC Conservative parties united in a formal coalition government under new Liberal leader John Hart, who replaced Duff Pattullo when the latter failed to win a majority in the 1941 election. While the Liberals won the most seats, they actually received fewer votes than the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Pattullo was unwilling to form a coalition with the rival Conservatives led by Royal Maitland and was replaced by Hart, who formed a coalition cabinet made up of five Liberal and three Conservative ministers. The CCF was invited to join the coalition but refused. The pretext for continuing the coalition after the end of the Second World War was to prevent the CCF, which had won a surprise victory in Saskatchewan in 1944, from ever coming to power in British Columbia. The CCF's popular vote was high enough in the 1945 election that they were likely to have won three-way contests and could have formed government; however, the coalition prevented that by uniting the anti-socialist vote. In the post-war environment the government initiated a series of infrastructure projects, notably the completion of Highway 97 north of Prince George to the Peace River Block, a section called the John Hart Highway and also public hospital insurance. In 1947 the reins of the Coalition were taken by Byron Ingemar Johnson. The Conservatives had wanted their new leader Herbert Anscomb to be premier, but the Liberals in the Coalition refused. Johnson led the coalition to the highest percentage of the popular vote in British Columbia history (61%) in the 1949 election. This victory was attributable to the popularity of his government's spending programmes, despite rising criticism of corruption and abuse of power. During his tenure, major infrastructures continued to expand, such as the agreement with Alcan Aluminum to build the town of Kitimat with an aluminum smelter and the large Kemano Hydro Project. Johnson achieved popularity for flood relief efforts during the 1948 flooding of the Fraser Valley, which was a major blow to that region and to the province's economy. On February 13, 1950, a Convair B-36B crashed in northern British Columbia after jettisoning a Mark IV atomic bomb. This was the first such nuclear weapon loss in history. Increasing tension between the Liberal and Conservative coalition partners led the Liberal Party executive to vote to instruct Johnson to terminate the arrangement. Johnson ended the coalition and dropped his Conservative cabinet ministers, including Deputy Premier and Finance minister Herbert Anscomb, precipitating the general election of 1952. A referendum on electoral reform prior to this election had instigated an elimination ballot (similar to a preferential ballot), where voters could select second and third choices. The intent of the ballot, as campaigned for by Liberals and Conservatives, was that their supporters would list the rival party in lieu of the CCF, but this plan backfired when a large group of voters from all major parties, including the CCF, voted for the fringe Social Credit Party, who wound up with the largest number of seats in the House (19), only one seat ahead of the CCF, despite the CCF having 34.3% of the vote to Social Credit's 30.18%. The Social Credit Party, led by rebel former Conservative MLA W. A. C. Bennett, formed a minority government backed by the Liberals and Conservatives (with 6 and 4 seats respectively). Bennett began a series of fiscal reforms, preaching a new variety of populism as well as waxing eloquent on progress and development, laying the ground for a second election in 1953 in which the new Bennett regime secured a majority of seats, with 38% of the vote. Secure with that majority, Bennett returned the province to the first-past-the-post system thereafter, which is still in use. 1952–1960s With the election of the Social Credit Party, British Columbia embarked on a phase of rapid economic development. Bennett and his party governed the province for the next twenty years, during which time the government initiated an ambitious programme of infrastructure development, fuelled by a sustained economic boom in the forestry, mining, and energy sectors. During these two decades, the government nationalized British Columbia Electric and the British Columbia Power Company, as well as smaller electric companies, renaming the entity BC Hydro. West Kootenay Power and Light remained independent of BC Hydro, being owned and operated by Cominco, though tied into the regional power grid. By the end of the 1960s, several major dams had been begun or completed in—among others—the Peace, Columbia, and Nechako River watersheds (the Nechako Diversion to Kemano, was to supply power to the Alcan Inc. aluminum smelter at Kitimat, and was not part of the provincial power grid but privately owned). Major transmission deals were concluded, most notably the Columbia River Treaty between Canada and the United States. The province's economy was also boosted by unprecedented growth in the forest sector, as well as oil and gas development in the province's northeast. The 1950s and 1960s were also marked by development in the province's transportation infrastructure. In 1960, the government established BC Ferries as a crown corporation, to provide a marine extension of the provincial highway system, also supported by federal grants as being part of the Trans-Canada Highway system. That system was improved and expanded through the construction of new highways and bridges, and paving of existing highways and provincial roads. Vancouver and Victoria became cultural centres as poets, authors, artists, musicians, as well as dancers, actors, and haute cuisine chefs flocked to its scenery and warmer temperatures, with the cultural and entrepreneurial community bolstered by many Draft dodgers from the United States. Tourism also played a role in the economy. The rise of Japan and other Pacific economies was a boost to British Columbia's economy, primarily because of exports of lumber products and unprocessed coal and trees. Politically and socially, the 1960s brought a period of significant social ferment. The divide between the political left and right, which had prevailed in the province since the Depression and the rise of the labour movement, sharpened as so-called free enterprise parties coalesced into the de facto coalition represented by Social Credit—in opposition to the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP), the successor to the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. As the province's economy blossomed, so did labour-management tensions. Tensions emerged, also, from the counterculture movement of the late 1960s, of which Vancouver and Nanaimo were centres. The conflict between hippies and Vancouver mayor Tom Campbell was particularly legendary, culminating in the Gastown riots of 1971. By the end of the decade, with social tensions and dissatisfaction with the status quo rising, the Bennett government's achievements could not stave off its growing unpopularity. 1970s and 1980s On August 27, 1969, the Social Credit Party was re-elected in a general election for what would be Bennett's final term in power. At the start of the 1970s, the economy was quite strong because of rising coal prices and an increase in annual allowable cuts in the forestry sector, but BC Hydro reported its first loss, which was the beginning of the end for Bennett and the Social Credit Party. The Socreds were forced from power in the August 1972 election, paving the way for a provincial NDP government under Dave Barrett. Under Barrett, the large provincial surplus soon became a deficit, although changes to the accounting system makes it likely some of the deficit was carried over from the previous Social Credit regime and its "two sets of books", as W. A. C. Bennett had once referred to his system of fiscal management. The brief three-year ("Thousand Days") period of NDP governance brought several lasting changes to the province, most notably the creation of the Agricultural Land Reserve, intended to protect farmland from redevelopment, and the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, a crown corporation charged with a monopoly on providing single-payer basic automobile insurance. Perceptions the government had instituted reforms either too swiftly or that were too far-reaching, coupled with growing labour disruptions led to the ouster of the NDP in the 1975 general election. Social Credit, under W.A.C. Bennett's son, Bill Bennett, was returned to office. Under the younger Bennett's government, 85% of the province's land base was transferred from Government Reserve to management by the Ministry of Forests, reporting of deputy ministers was centralized to the Premier's Office, and NDP-instigated social programs were rolled back, with then-human resources minister infamously demonstrating a golden shovel to highlight his welfare policy, although the new-era Social Credit Party also reinforced and backed certain others instigated by the NDP—notably the creation of the Resort Municipality of Whistler, whose special status including Sunday drinking, then an anomaly in BC. Also during the "MiniWac" regime (a reference to his father's acronym, W. A. C.) certain money-losing Crown-owned assets were "privatized" in a mass giveaway of shares in the British Columbia Resources Investment Corporation, "BCRIC", with the "Brick shares" soon becoming near-worthless. Towards the end of his tenure in power, Bennett oversaw the completion of several megaprojects meant to stimulate the economy and win votes – unlike most right-wing parties, British Columbia's Social Credit actively practised government stimulation of the economy. Most notable of these was the winning of a world's fair for Vancouver, which came in the form of Expo 86, to which was tied the construction of the Coquihalla Highway and Vancouver's SkyTrain system. The Coquihalla Highway project became the subject of a scandal after revelations the premier's brother bought large tracts of land needed for the project before it was announced to the public, and also because of graft investigations of the huge cost overruns on the project. Both investigations were derailed in the media by a still further scandal, the Doman Scandal, in which the premier and millionaire backer Herb Doman were investigated for insider-trading and securities fraud. Nonetheless, the Socreds were re-elected in 1979 under Bennett, who led the party until 1986. As the province entered a sustained recession, Bennett's popularity and media image were in decline. On April 1, 1983, Premier Bennett overstayed his constitutional limits of power by exceeding the legal tenure of a government, and the lieutenant governor, Henry Pybus Bell-Irving, was forced to call Bennett to Government House to resolve the impasse, and an election was called for April 30, while in the meantime government cheques were covered by special emergency warrants as the Executive Council no longer had signing authority because of the constitutional crisis. Campaigning on a platform of moderation, Bennett won an unexpected majority. After several weeks of silence in the aftermath, a sitting of the House was finally called and in the speech from the throne, Social Credit instituted a programme of fiscal cutbacks dubbed "restraint", which had been a buzzword for moderation during the campaign. The programme included cuts to "motherhood" issues of the left, including the human rights branch, the offices of the Ombudsman and Rentalsman, women's programs, environmental and cultural programs, while still supplying mass capital infusions to corporate British Columbia. This sparked a backlash, with tens of thousands of people in the streets the next day after the budget speech, and through the course of a summer repeated large demonstrations of up to 100,000 people. This became known as the 1983 Solidarity Crisis, from the name of the Solidarity Coalition, a huge grassroots opposition movement mobilized, consisting of organized labour and community groups, with the British Columbia Federation of Labour forming a separate organization of unions, Operation Solidarity, under the direction of Jack Munro, then-president of the International Woodworkers of America (IWA), the most powerful of the province's resource unions. Tens of thousands participated in protests and many felt a general strike would be the inevitable result unless the government backed down from its policies they had claimed were only about restraint and not about recrimination against the NDP and the left. Just as a strike at Pacific Press ended, which had crippled the political management of the public agenda by the publishers of the province's major papers, the movement collapsed after an apparent deal was struck by union leader and IWA president, Jack Munro and Premier Bennett. A tense winter of blockades at various job sites around the province ensued, as among the new laws were those enabling non-union labour to work on large projects and other sensitive labour issues, with companies from Alberta and other provinces brought in to compete with union-scale British Columbia companies. Despite the tension, Bennett's last few years in power were relatively peaceful as economic and political momentum grew on the megaprojects associated with Expo, and Bennett was to end his career by hosting Prince Charles and Lady Diana on their visit to open Expo 86. His retirement being announced, a Social Credit convention was scheduled for the Whistler Resort, which came down to a three-way shooting match between Bud Smith, the Premier's right-hand man but an unelected official, Social Credit party grande dame Grace McCarthy, and the charismatic but eccentric Bill Vander Zalm. Bill Vander Zalm became the new Social Credit leader when Smith threw his support to him rather than see McCarthy win, and led the party to victory in the election later that year. Vander Zalm was later involved in a conflict of interest scandal following the sale of Fantasy Gardens, a Christian and Dutch culture theme park built by the Premier, to Tan Yu, a Filipino Chinese gambling kingpin. There were also concerns over Yu's application to the government for a bank licence, and lurid stories from flamboyant realtor Faye Leung of a party in the "Howard Hughes Suite" on the top two floors of the Bayshore Inn, where Tan Yu had been staying, with reports of a bag of money in a brown paper bag passed from Yu to Vander Zalm during the goings-on. These scandals forced Vander Zalm's resignation, and Rita Johnston became premier of the province. Johnston presided over the end of Social Credit power, calling an election which reduced the party's caucus to only two seats, and the revival of the long-defunct British Columbia Liberal Party as Opposition to the victorious NDP under former Vancouver mayor Mike Harcourt. In 1988, David Lam was appointed as British Columbia's twenty-fifth lieutenant governor, and was the province's first lieutenant governor of Chinese origin. 1990s to present Johnston lost the 1991 general election to the NDP, under the leadership of Mike Harcourt, a former mayor of Vancouver. The NDP's unprecedented creation of new parkland and protected areas was popular and helped boost the province's growing tourism sector, although the economy continued to struggle against the backdrop of a weak resource economy. Housing starts and an expanded service sector saw growth overall through the decade, despite political turmoil. Harcourt ended up resigning over "Bingogate"—a political scandal involving the funnelling of charity bingo receipts into party coffers in certain ridings. Harcourt was not implicated, but he resigned nonetheless in respect of constitutional conventions calling for leaders under suspicion to step aside. Glen Clark, a former president of the BC Federation of Labour, was chosen the new leader of the NDP, which won a second term in 1996. More scandals dogged the party, most notably the fast ferry scandal involving the province trying to develop the shipbuilding industry in British Columbia. An allegation (never substantiated) that the premier had received a favour in return for granting a gaming licence led to Clark's resignation as premier. He was succeeded on an interim basis by Dan Miller who was in turn followed by Ujjal Dosanjh following a leadership convention. In the 2001 provincial election, Gordon Campbell's Liberals defeated the NDP, gaining 77 out of 79 total seats in the provincial legislature. Campbell instituted various reforms and removed some of the NDP's policies including scrapping the "fast ferries" project, lowering income taxes, and the controversial sale of BC Rail to Canadian National Railway. Campbell was also the subject of criticism after he was arrested for driving under the influence during a vacation in Hawaii, but he still managed to lead his party to victory in the 2005 provincial election against a substantially strengthened NDP opposition. Campbell won a third term in the 2009 provincial election, marking the first time in 23 years a premier has been elected to a third term. The province won a bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler. As promised in his 2002 re-election campaign, Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell staged a non-binding civic referendum regarding the hosting of the Olympics. In February 2003, Vancouver's residents voted in a referendum accepting the responsibilities of the host city should it win its bid. Sixty-four percent of residents voted in favour of hosting the games. After the Olympic joy had faded, Campbell's popularity started to fall. His management style, the implementation of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) against election promises and the cancelling of the BC Rail corruption trial led to low approval ratings and loss of caucus support. He resigned in November 2010 and called on the party to elect a new leader. In early 2011, former deputy premier Christy Clark became leader of the Liberal Party. Though she was not a sitting MLA, she went on to win the seat left vacant by Campbell. For the next two years, she attempted to distance herself from the unpopularity of Campbell and forge an image for the upcoming 2013 election. Among her early accomplishments were raising the minimum wage, creating a new statutory holiday in February called "Family Day", and pushing the development of BC's liquefied natural gas industry. In the lead-up to the 2013 election, the Liberals lagged behind the NDP by a double-digit gap in the polls, but were able to achieve a surprise victory on election night, winning a majority and making Clark the first woman to lead a party to victory in a general election in BC. While Clark lost her seat to NDP candidate David Eby, she later won a by-election in the riding of Westside-Kelowna. Her government went on to balance the budget, implement changes to liquor laws and continue with the question of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines. In the 2017 election, the NDP formed a minority government with the support of the Green Party through a confidence and supply agreement. The NDP and Green caucuses together controlled 44 seats, compared to the Liberals' 43. On July 18, 2017, NDP leader John Horgan was sworn in as the premier of British Columbia. He was the province's first NDP premier in 16 years. Clark resigned shortly thereafter, and Andrew Wilkinson was voted to become leader of the BC Liberals. In late 2020, Horgan called an early election. In the 2020 British Columbia general election, the NDP won 57 seats and formed a majority government, making Horgan the first NDP premier to be re-elected in the province. Wilkinson resigned as the leader of the BC Liberals two days later. British Columbia was significantly affected by demographic changes within Canada and around the world. Vancouver (and to a lesser extent some other parts of British Columbia) was a major destination for many of the immigrants from Hong Kong who left the former UK colony (either temporarily or permanently) in the years immediately prior to its handover to China. British Columbia has also been a significant destination for internal Canadian migrants. This has been the case throughout recent decades, because of its natural environment, mild climate and relaxed lifestyle, but has been particularly true during periods of economic growth. British Columbia has moved from approximately 10% of Canada's population in 1971 to approximately 13% in 2006. Trends of urbanization mean the Greater Vancouver area now includes 51% of the province's population, followed by Greater Victoria with 8%. These two metropolitan regions have traditionally dominated the demographics of BC. By 2018, housing prices in Vancouver were the second-least affordable in the world, behind only Hong Kong. Many experts point to evidence of money-laundering from mainland China as a contributing factor. The high price of residential real estate has led to the implementation of an empty homes tax, a housing speculation and vacancy tax, and a foreign buyers' tax on housing. The net number of people coming to BC from other provinces in 2016 was almost four times larger than in 2012. BC was the largest net recipient of interprovincial migrants in Canada in the first quarter of 2016 with half of the 5,000 people coming from Alberta. By 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic had had a major effect on the province, with over 2,000 deaths and 250,000 confirmed cases. However, the COVID-19 vaccine reduced the spread of the virus, with 78% of people in BC over the age of five having been fully vaccinated. In 2021, the unmarked gravesites of hundreds of Indigenous children were discovered at three former Indian residential schools (Kamloops, St. Eugene's Mission, Kuper Island). Demographics Population Statistics Canada's 2021 Canadian census recorded a population of 5,000,879 — making British Columbia Canada's third-most populous province after Ontario and Quebec. Cities Half of all British Columbians live in the Metro Vancouver Regional District, which includes Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam, Langley (district municipality), Delta, North Vancouver (district municipality), Maple Ridge, New Westminster, Port Coquitlam, North Vancouver (city), West Vancouver, Port Moody, Langley (city), White Rock, Pitt Meadows, Bowen Island, Anmore, Lions Bay, and Belcarra, with adjacent unincorporated areas (including the University Endowment Lands) represented in the regional district as the electoral area known as Greater Vancouver Electoral Area A. The metropolitan area has seventeen Indian reserves, but they are outside of the regional district's jurisdiction and are not represented in its government. The second largest concentration of British Columbia population is at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, which is made up of the 13 municipalities of Greater Victoria, Victoria, Saanich, Esquimalt, Oak Bay, View Royal, Highlands, Colwood, Langford, Central Saanich/Saanichton, North Saanich, Sidney, Metchosin, Sooke, which are part of the Capital Regional District. The metropolitan area also includes several Indian reserves (the governments of which are not part of the regional district). Almost half of the Vancouver Island population is in Greater Victoria. Cultural origins British Columbia is the most diverse province in Canada; as of 2016, the province had the highest proportion of visible minorities in the country. The five largest pan-ethnic groups in the province are Europeans (64%), East Asians (15%), South Asians (8%), Aboriginals (6%) and Southeast Asians (4%). Note: Statistics represent both single (for example, "German") and multiple (for example, "Chinese-English") responses to the 2016 Census, and thus do not add up to 100%. All items are self-identified. Religion The largest denominations by number of adherents according to the 2011 census were Christianity with 1,930,415 (44.6%); irreligion (atheist, agnostic, and so on.) with 1,908,285 (44.1%); Sikhism with 201,110 (4.7%); Buddhism with 90,620 (2.1%); Islam with 79,310 (1.8%); and Hinduism with 45,795 (1.1%). Language Of the 4,648,055 population counted by the 2016 census, 4,598,415 people completed the section about language. Of these, 4,494,995 gave singular responses to the question regarding their first language. The languages most commonly reported were the following: While these languages all reflect the last centuries of colonialism and recent immigration, British Columbia is home to 34 Indigenous languages. They are spoken by about 6000 people in total, with 4000 people fluent in their Indigenous languages. They are members of the province's First Nations. One of the main Indigenous languages in BC is Kwakʼwala, the language of the Kwakwakaʼwakw First Nations. Economy BC's economy is diverse, with service-producing industries accounting for the largest portion of the province's GDP. It is the terminus of two transcontinental railways, and the site of 27 major marine cargo and passenger terminals. Though less than 5% of its vast land is arable, the province is agriculturally rich (particularly in the Fraser and Okanagan valleys), because of milder weather near the coast and in certain sheltered southern valleys. Its climate encourages outdoor recreation and tourism, though its economic mainstay has long been resource extraction, principally logging, farming, and mining. Vancouver, the province's largest city, serves as the headquarters of many western-based natural resource companies. It also benefits from a strong housing market and a per capita income well above the national average. While the coast of British Columbia and some valleys in the south-central part of the province have mild weather, the majority of its land mass experiences a cold-winter-temperate climate similar to the rest of Canada. The Northern Interior region has a subarctic climate with very cold winters. The climate of Vancouver is by far the mildest winter climate of the major Canadian cities, with nighttime January temperatures averaging above the freezing point. British Columbia has a history of being a resource dominated economy, centred on the forestry industry but also with fluctuating importance in mining. Employment in the resource sector has fallen steadily as a percentage of employment, and new jobs are mostly in the construction and retail/service sectors. It now has the highest percentage of service industry jobs in the west, comprising 72% of industry (compared to 60% Western Canadian average). The largest section of this employment is in finance, insurance, real estate and corporate management; however, many areas outside of metropolitan areas are still heavily reliant on resource extraction. With its film industry known as Hollywood North, the Vancouver region is the third-largest feature film production location in North America, after Los Angeles and New York City. The economic history of British Columbia is replete with tales of dramatic upswings and downswings, and this boom and bust pattern has influenced the politics, culture and business climate of the province. Economic activity related to mining in particular has widely fluctuated with changes in commodity prices over time, with documented costs to community health. In 2017, British Columbia had the fourth-largest GDP in Canada, with a GDP of and a GDP per capita of $57,335. British Columbia's debt-to-GDP ratio is edging up to 15.0% in fiscal year 2019–20, and it is expected to reach 16.1% by 2021–22. British Columbia's economy experienced strong growth in 2017, with its annual performance outpacing the Canadian average for a fourth consecutive year. In 2017, British Columbia's real GDP growth of 3.9% ranked second among Canadian provinces. Government and politics The lieutenant governor, Janet Austin, is the Crown's representative in the province. During the absence of the lieutenant governor, the Governor in Council (federal Cabinet) may appoint an administrator to execute the duties of the office. This is usually the chief justice of British Columbia. British Columbia is divided into regional districts as a means to better enable municipalities and rural areas to work together at a regional level. British Columbia has an 87-member elected Legislative Assembly, elected by the plurality voting system, though from 2003 to 2009 there was significant debate about switching to a single transferable vote system called BC-STV. The government of the day appoints ministers for various portfolios, what are officially part of the Executive Council, of whom the premier is chair. The province is currently governed by the British Columbia New Democratic Party (BC NDP) under Premier John Horgan. The 2017 provincial election saw the Liberal Party take 43 seats, the NDP take 41, and the British Columbia Green Party take 3. No party met the minimum of 44 seats for a majority, therefore leading to the first minority government since 1953. Following the election, the Greens entered into negotiations with both the Liberals and NDP, eventually announcing they would support the current NDP minority. Previously, the right-of-centre British Columbia Liberal Party governed the province for 16 years between 2001 and 2017, and won the largest landslide election in British Columbia history in 2001, with 77 of 79 seats. The legislature became more evenly divided between the Liberals and NDP following the 2005 (46 Liberal seats of 79) and 2009 (49 Liberal seats of 85) provincial elections. The NDP and its predecessor the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) have been the main opposition force to right-wing parties since the 1930s and have ruled with majority governments in 1972–1975 and 1991–2001. The Green Party plays a larger role in the politics of British Columbia than Green parties do in most other jurisdictions in Canada. After a breakthrough election in 2001 (12.39%), the party's vote share declined (2005 – 9.17%, 2009 – 8.09%, 2013 – 8.13%) before increasing again to a record high of 16.84% at the 2017 election. The British Columbia Liberal Party is not related to the federal Liberal Party and does not share the same ideology. Instead, the BC Liberal party is a rather diverse coalition, made up of the remnants of the Social Credit Party, many federal Liberals, federal Conservatives, and those who would otherwise support right-of-centre or free enterprise parties. Historically, there have commonly been third parties present in the legislature (including the Liberals themselves from 1952 to 1975); the BC Green Party are the current third party in British Columbia, with three seats in the legislature. Prior to the rise of the Liberal Party, British Columbia's main political party was the British Columbia Social Credit Party which ruled British Columbia for 20 continuous years. While sharing some ideology with the current Liberal government, they were more right-wing although undertook nationalization of various important monopolies, notably BC Hydro and BC Ferries. British Columbia is known for having politically active labour unions who have traditionally supported the NDP or its predecessor, the CCF. British Columbia's political history is typified by scandal and a cast of colourful characters, beginning with various colonial-era land scandals and abuses of power by early officials (such as those that led to McGowan's War in 1858–59). Notable scandals in Social Credit years included the Robert Bonner Affair and the Fantasy Gardens scandal which forced Premier Bill Vander Zalm to resign and ended the Social Credit era. NDP scandals included Bingogate, which brought down NDP Premier Mike Harcourt, and the alleged scandal named Casinogate which drove NDP Premier Glen Clark to resign. A variety of scandals plagued the 2001–2017 Liberal government, including Premier Gordon Campbell's arrest for drunk driving in Maui and the resignation of various cabinet ministers because of conflict-of-interest allegations. A raid on the Parliament Buildings on December 28, 2003, in Victoria, including the Premier's Office, resulted in charges only for ministerial aides, although key cabinet members from the time have since resigned. The case, currently in preliminary hearings in the courts and relating to the sale of BC Rail to CN Rail, may not reach trial because of the mass of evidence and various procedural problems. Campbell eventually resigned in late 2010 due to opposition to his government's plan to introduce a Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) and was replaced by Christy Clark as premier in a 2011 BC Liberal leadership election. British Columbia is underrepresented in the Senate of Canada, leading Premier Christy Clark to refuse to cooperate with the federal government's reforms for senate appointments to be made based on the recommendations of a new advisory board that would use non-partisan criteria. Hours after that plan was unveiled in Ottawa on December 3, 2015, Clark issued a statement that it did "not address what's been wrong with the Senate since the beginning". The imbalance in representation in that House is apparent when considering population size. The six senators from BC constitute only one for every 775,000 people vs. one for every 75,000 in P.E.I. which has four senators. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have much smaller populations than BC, yet each has ten senators according to a Global News summary. Correcting this imbalance would require a constitutional amendment, but that is unlikely to be supported by the Atlantic provinces. Official symbols The government of British Columbia has designated several official symbols: Flag: Flag of British Columbia Coat of arms: Coat of arms of British Columbia Floral emblem: Pacific dogwood Mineral emblem: Jade Tree emblem: Western red cedar Bird emblem: Steller's jay Mammal emblem: "Spirit" or Kermode bear Fish emblem: Pacific salmon Tartan emblem: British Columbia Tartan Transportation Transportation played a huge role in British Columbia's history. The Rocky Mountains and the ranges west of them constituted a significant obstacle to overland travel until the completion of the transcontinental railway in 1885. The Peace River Canyon through the Rocky Mountains was the route the earliest explorers and fur traders used. Fur trade routes were only marginally used for access to British Columbia through the mountains. Travel from the rest of Canada before 1885 meant the difficulty of overland travel via the United States, around Cape Horn or overseas from Asia. Nearly all travel and freight to and from the region occurred via the Pacific Ocean, primarily through the ports of Victoria and New Westminster. Until the 1930s, rail was the only means of overland travel to and from the rest of Canada; travellers using motor vehicles needed to journey through the United States. With the construction of the Inter-Provincial Highway in 1932 (now known as the Crowsnest Pass Highway), and later the Trans-Canada Highway, road transportation evolved into the preferred mode of overland travel to and from the rest of the country. Roads and highways Because of its size and rugged, varying topography, British Columbia requires thousands of kilometres of provincial highways to connect its communities. British Columbia's roads systems were notoriously poorly maintained and dangerous until a concentrated programme of improvement was initiated in the 1950s and 1960s. There are now freeways in Greater Victoria, the Lower Mainland, and Central Interior of the province. Much of the rest of the province, where traffic volumes are generally low, is accessible by well-maintained generally high-mobility two-lane arterial highways with additional passing lanes in mountainous areas and usually only a few stop-controlled intersections outside the main urban areas. A couple of busy intercity corridors outside Greater Vancouver feature more heavily signalized limited-mobility arterial highways that are mostly four-lane and often divided by portable median traffic barriers. Highway 1 on Vancouver Island and Highway 97 through the Okanagan Valley are medium- to high-volume roadways with variable posted speeds that range from to maximums just slightly lower than the principal grade-separated highways. Numerous traffic lights operate in place of interchanges on both arterials as long-term cost-cutting measures. Signalization along both these highways is heaviest through urban areas and along inter-urban sections where traffic volumes are similar to and sometimes higher than the freeways, but where funding is not available for upgrades to interchanges or construction of high-mobility alternative routes or bypasses. The building and maintenance of provincial highways is the responsibility of the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. There are only five major routes to the rest of Canada. From south to north they are: BC Highway 3 through the Crowsnest Pass, the Vermilion Pass (Highway 93 in both British Columbia and Alberta), the Kicking Horse Pass, the latter being used by the Trans-Canada Highway entering Alberta through Banff National Park, the Yellowhead Highway (16) through Jasper National Park, and Highway 2 through Dawson Creek. There are also several highway crossings to the adjoining American states of Washington, Idaho, and Montana. The longest highway is Highway 97, running from the British Columbia-Washington border at Osoyoos north to Watson Lake, Yukon and which includes the British Columbia portion of the Alaska Highway. Public transit Prior to 1979, surface public transit in the Vancouver and Victoria metropolitan areas was administered by BC Hydro, the provincially owned electricity utility. Subsequently, the province established BC Transit to oversee and operate all municipal transportation systems. In 1998, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority, now TransLink, a separate authority for routes within the Greater Vancouver Regional District, was established. Some smaller island communities, such as Gabriola Island and, formerly, Pender Island operate routes independent of BC Transit or TransLink. BC Transit has recently expanded to provide intercity routes, particularly in the Northern region of British Columbia. Other intercity routes were introduced connecting southern communities in preparation of the cancellation of Greyhound Canada's pullout from Western Canada, though options for intercity bus travel are still extremely limited. Public transit in British Columbia consists mainly of diesel buses, although Vancouver is also serviced by a fleet of trolleybuses. Several experimental buses are being tested such as hybrid buses that have both gasoline and electric engines. Additionally, there are CNG-fuelled buses being tested and used in Nanaimo and Kamloops systems. British Columbia also tested a fleet of Hydrogen-fuelled buses for the Vancouver-Whistler Winter Olympics in 2010. TransLink operates SkyTrain, an automated metro system serving the cities of Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey, Richmond, Coquitlam, and Port Moody. In 2009, the Canada Line SkyTrain was completed, linking Vancouver International Airport and the city of Richmond to downtown Vancouver bringing the total to three operating metro lines. A new extension to Coquitlam and Port Moody (the Evergreen Extension of the Millennium Line) was completed in December 2016. There is planning for an extension of the Millennium Line through Vancouver City to the University of British Columbia. Turnstiles have been added to all existing stations in the system. In the past, SkyTrain used a proof of payment honour system. In the capital city of Victoria BC Transit and the provincial government's infrastructure ministry are working together to create a bus rapid transit from the Westshore communities to downtown Victoria. In Kamloops, there is a bus rapid transit GPS trial underway to see how bus rapid transit affects smaller cities, rather than larger ones, like Victoria and Vancouver. Rail Rail development expanded greatly in the decades after the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, in 1885, and was the chief mode of long-distance surface transportation until the expansion and improvement of the provincial highways system began in the 1950s. Two major routes through the Yellowhead Pass competed with the Canadian Pacific Railway – the Grand Trunk Pacific, terminating at Prince Rupert, and the Canadian Northern Railway, terminating at Vancouver. The British Columbia Electric Railway provided rail services in Victoria and Vancouver between the nineteenth century and mid twentieth century. The Pacific Great Eastern line supplemented this service, providing a north–south route between interior resource communities and the coast. The Pacific Great Eastern (later known as British Columbia Railway and now owned by Canadian National Railway) connects Fort St James, Fort Nelson, and Tumbler Ridge with North Vancouver. The E&N Railway, rebranded as Southern Railway of Vancouver Island, formerly served the commercial and passenger train markets of Vancouver Island. Service along the route is now minimal. Vancouver Island was also host to the last logging railway in North America until its closure in 2017. Current passenger services in British Columbia are limited. Via Rail Canada operates six long-distance trains on two lines. Local services are limited to two regions, with TransLink providing rapid transit and commuter services in the Lower Mainland and by the Seton Lake Indian Band South of Lillooet with the Kaoham Shuttle. Amtrak runs international passenger service between Vancouver, Seattle, and intermediate points. Several heritage railways operate within the province, including the White Pass & Yukon Route that runs between Alaska and the Yukon via British Columbia. Water BC Ferries was established as a provincial crown corporation in 1960 to provide passenger and vehicle ferry service between Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland as a cheaper and more reliable alternative to the service operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway and other private operators. It now operates 25 routes among the islands of British Columbia, as well as between the islands and the mainland. Ferry service to Washington is offered by the Washington State Ferries (between Sidney and Anacortes) and Black Ball Transport (between Victoria and Port Angeles, Washington). Ferry service over inland lakes and rivers is provided by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. Various other coastal ferries are operated privately. Commercial ocean transport is of vital importance. Major ports are at Vancouver, Roberts Bank (near Tsawwassen), Prince Rupert, and Victoria. Of these, the Port of Vancouver is the most important, being the largest in Canada and the most diversified in North America. Vancouver, Victoria, and Prince Rupert are also major ports of call for cruise ships. In 2007, a large maritime container port was opened in Prince Rupert with an inland sorting port in Prince George. Air There are over 200 airports throughout British Columbia, the major ones being the Vancouver International Airport, the Victoria International Airport, the Kelowna International Airport, and the Abbotsford International Airport, the first three of which each served over 1,000,000 passengers in 2005. , Vancouver International Airport is the 2nd busiest airport in the country and the second biggest International Gateway on the west coast (after Los Angeles) with an estimated 26.4 million travellers passing through in 2019. Outdoor life Given its varied mountainous terrain and its coasts, lakes, rivers, and forests, British Columbia has long been enjoyed for pursuits like hiking and camping, rock climbing and mountaineering, hunting and fishing. Water sports, both motorized and non-motorized, are enjoyed in many places. Sea kayaking opportunities abound on the British Columbia coast with its fjords. Whitewater rafting and kayaking are popular on many inland rivers. Sailing and sailboarding are widely enjoyed. In winter, cross-country and telemark skiing are much enjoyed, and in recent decades high-quality downhill skiing has been developed in the Coast Mountain range and the Rockies, as well as in the southern areas of the Shuswap Highlands and the Columbia Mountains. Snowboarding has mushroomed in popularity since the early 1990s. The 2010 Winter Olympics downhill events were held in Whistler Blackcomb area of the province, while the indoor events were conducted in the Vancouver area. In Vancouver and Victoria (as well as some other cities), opportunities for joggers and bicyclists have been developed. Cross-country bike touring has been popular since the ten-speed bike became available many years ago. Since the advent of the more robust mountain bike, trails in more rugged and wild places have been developed for them. A 2016 poll on global biking website Pinkbike rated BC as the top destination mountain bikers would like to ride. Some of the province's retired rail beds have been converted and maintained for hiking, biking, and cross-country skiing. Longboarding is also a popular activity because of the hilly geography of the region. Horseback riding is enjoyed by many British Columbians. Opportunities for trail riding, often into especially scenic areas, have been established for tourists in numerous areas of the province. British Columbia also has strong participation levels in many other sports, including golf, tennis, soccer, hockey, Canadian football, rugby union, lacrosse, baseball, softball, basketball, curling, disc golf, Ultimate and figure skating. British Columbia has produced many outstanding athletes, especially in aquatic and winter sports. Consistent with both increased tourism and increased participation in diverse recreations by British Columbians has been the proliferation of lodges, chalets, bed and breakfasts, motels, hotels, fishing camps, and park-camping facilities in recent decades. In certain areas, there are businesses, non-profit societies, or municipal governments dedicated to promoting ecotourism in their region. A number of British Columbia farmers offer visitors to combine tourism with farm work, for example, through the WWOOF Canada program. Education K-12 education British Columbia is home to a comprehensive public education system. Instruction is offered in both of Canada's official languages. As of 2006 there were 59 anglophone school districts throughout the province. As of the same year, 44 of them offered French immersion programs. Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique, established in 1995, operates French-language public schools throughout the entire province. International students In September 2014 there were 11,000 international students in BC public K-12 schools and about 3,000 international students in other BC K-12 schools. Higher education Public universities and colleges include: University of British Columbia Simon Fraser University University of Victoria University of Northern British Columbia Vancouver Island University British Columbia Institute of Technology Kwantlen Polytechnic University Thompson Rivers University Emily Carr University of Art and Design Royal Roads University Capilano University University of the Fraser Valley Douglas College Camosun College Langara College Selkirk College College of New Caledonia College of the Rockies Okanagan College Coast Mountain College Justice Institute of BC British Columbia is also home to 11 private colleges and universities located throughout the province, including: Quest University Trinity Western University Alexander College University Canada West Columbia College Coquitlam College Tamwood International College Ashton College Blanche Macdonald Vanwest College Two American universities (Fairleigh Dickinson University and Northeastern University) also have degree-granting campuses located in Vancouver. See also Index of British Columbia–related articles Outline of British Columbia Symbols of British Columbia Notes References Citations Sources Further reading External links Government of British Columbia website Tourism British Columbia official website Newsroom BCStats & Infoline Weekly Digest BC Government online map archive 1871 establishments in Canada Provinces of Canada States and territories established in 1871 Geography of the Pacific Northwest Western Canada

Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves , characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which evolved from forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. Birds are feathered theropod dinosaurs and constitute the only known living dinosaurs. Likewise, birds are considered reptiles in the modern cladistic sense of the term, and their closest living relatives are the crocodilians. Birds are descendants of the primitive avialans (whose members include Archaeopteryx) which first appeared about 160 million years ago (mya) in China. According to DNA evidence, modern birds (Neornithes) evolved in the Middle to Late Cretaceous, and diversified dramatically around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 mya, which killed off the pterosaurs and all non-avian dinosaurs. Many social species pass on knowledge across generations, which is considered a form of culture. Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and songs, and participating in such behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of bird species are socially (but not necessarily sexually) monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, but rarely for life. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous (one male with many females) or, rarely, polyandrous (one female with many males). Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised through sexual reproduction. They are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching. Many species of birds are economically important as food for human consumption and raw material in manufacturing, with domesticated and undomesticated birds being important sources of eggs, meat, and feathers. Songbirds, parrots, and other species are popular as pets. Guano (bird excrement) is harvested for use as a fertiliser. Birds figure throughout human culture. About 120 to 130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, and hundreds more before then. Human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them. Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry. Evolution and classification The first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system currently in use. Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the clade Theropoda. Definition Aves and a sister group, the order Crocodilia, contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria. During the late 1990s, Aves was most commonly defined phylogenetically as all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and Archaeopteryx lithographica. However, an earlier definition proposed by Jacques Gauthier gained wide currency in the 21st century, and is used by many scientists including adherents of the Phylocode system. Gauthier defined Aves to include only the crown group of the set of modern birds. This was done by excluding most groups known only from fossils, and assigning them, instead, to the broader group Avialae, in part to avoid the uncertainties about the placement of Archaeopteryx in relation to animals traditionally thought of as theropod dinosaurs. Gauthier and de Queiroz identified four different definitions for the same biological name "Aves", which is a problem. The authors proposed to reserve the term Aves only for the crown group consisting of the last common ancestor of all living birds and all of its descendants, which corresponds to meaning number 4 below. He assigned other names to the other groups. Aves can mean all archosaurs closer to birds than to crocodiles (alternately Avemetatarsalia) Aves can mean those advanced archosaurs with feathers (alternately Avifilopluma) Aves can mean those feathered dinosaurs that fly (alternately Avialae) Aves can mean the last common ancestor of all the currently living birds and all of its descendants (a "crown group", in this sense synonymous with Neornithes) Under the fourth definition Archaeopteryx, traditionally considered one of the earliest members of Aves, is removed from this group, becoming a non-avian dinosaur instead. These proposals have been adopted by many researchers in the field of palaeontology and bird evolution, though the exact definitions applied have been inconsistent. Avialae, initially proposed to replace the traditional fossil content of Aves, is often used synonymously with the vernacular term "bird" by these researchers. Most researchers define Avialae as branch-based clade, though definitions vary. Many authors have used a definition similar to "all theropods closer to birds than to Deinonychus", with Troodon being sometimes added as a second external specifier in case it is closer to birds than to Deinonychus. Avialae is also occasionally defined as an apomorphy-based clade (that is, one based on physical characteristics). Jacques Gauthier, who named Avialae in 1986, re-defined it in 2001 as all dinosaurs that possessed feathered wings used in flapping flight, and the birds that descended from them. Despite being currently one of the most widely used, the crown-group definition of Aves has been criticised by some researchers. Lee and Spencer (1997) argued that, contrary to what Gauthier defended, this definition would not increase the stability of the clade and the exact content of Aves will always be uncertain because any defined clade (either crown or not) will have few synapomorphies distinguishing it from its closest relatives. Their alternative definition is synonymous to Avifilopluma. Dinosaurs and the origin of birds Based on fossil and biological evidence, most scientists accept that birds are a specialised subgroup of theropod dinosaurs and, more specifically, members of Maniraptora, a group of theropods which includes dromaeosaurids and oviraptorosaurs, among others. As scientists have discovered more theropods closely related to birds, the previously clear distinction between non-birds and birds has become blurred. Recent discoveries in the Liaoning Province of northeast China, which demonstrate many small theropod feathered dinosaurs, contribute to this ambiguity. The consensus view in contemporary palaeontology is that the flying theropods, or avialans, are the closest relatives of the deinonychosaurs, which include dromaeosaurids and troodontids. Together, these form a group called Paraves. Some basal members of Deinonychosauria, such as Microraptor, have features which may have enabled them to glide or fly. The most basal deinonychosaurs were very small. This evidence raises the possibility that the ancestor of all paravians may have been arboreal, have been able to glide, or both. Unlike Archaeopteryx and the non-avialan feathered dinosaurs, who primarily ate meat, recent studies suggest that the first avialans were omnivores. The Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx is well known as one of the first transitional fossils to be found, and it provided support for the theory of evolution in the late 19th century. Archaeopteryx was the first fossil to display both clearly traditional reptilian characteristics—teeth, clawed fingers, and a long, lizard-like tail—as well as wings with flight feathers similar to those of modern birds. It is not considered a direct ancestor of birds, though it is possibly closely related to the true ancestor. Early evolution Over 40% of key traits found in modern birds evolved during the 60 million year transition from the earliest bird-line archosaurs to the first maniraptoromorphs, i.e. the first dinosaurs closer to living birds than to Tyrannosaurus rex. The loss of osteoderms otherwise common in archosaurs and acquisition of primitive feathers might have occurred early during this phase. After the appearance of Maniraptoromorpha, the next 40 million years marked a continuous reduction of body size and the accumulation of neotenic (juvenile-like) characteristics. Hypercarnivory became increasingly less common while braincases enlarged and forelimbs became longer. The integument evolved into complex, pennaceous feathers. The oldest known paravian (and probably the earliest avialan) fossils come from the Tiaojishan Formation of China, which has been dated to the late Jurassic period (Oxfordian stage), about 160 million years ago. The avialan species from this time period include Anchiornis huxleyi, Xiaotingia zhengi, and Aurornis xui. The well-known probable early avialan, Archaeopteryx, dates from slightly later Jurassic rocks (about 155 million years old) from Germany. Many of these early avialans shared unusual anatomical features that may be ancestral to modern birds, but were later lost during bird evolution. These features include enlarged claws on the second toe which may have been held clear of the ground in life, and long feathers or "hind wings" covering the hind limbs and feet, which may have been used in aerial manoeuvreing. Avialans diversified into a wide variety of forms during the Cretaceous period. Many groups retained primitive characteristics, such as clawed wings and teeth, though the latter were lost independently in a number of avialan groups, including modern birds (Aves). Increasingly stiff tails (especially the outermost half) can be seen in the evolution of maniraptoromorphs, and this process culminated in the appearance of the pygostyle, an ossification of fused tail vertebrae. In the late Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago, the ancestors of all modern birds evolved a more open pelvis, allowing them to lay larger eggs compared to body size. Around 95 million years ago, they evolved a better sense of smell. A third stage of bird evolution starting with Ornithothoraces (the "bird-chested" avialans) can be associated with the refining of aerodynamics and flight capabilities, and the loss or co-ossification of several skeletal features. Particularly significant are the development of an enlarged, keeled sternum and the alula, and the loss of grasping hands. Early diversity of bird ancestors The first large, diverse lineage of short-tailed avialans to evolve were the Enantiornithes, or "opposite birds", so named because the construction of their shoulder bones was in reverse to that of modern birds. Enantiornithes occupied a wide array of ecological niches, from sand-probing shorebirds and fish-eaters to tree-dwelling forms and seed-eaters. While they were the dominant group of avialans during the Cretaceous period, enantiornithes became extinct along with many other dinosaur groups at the end of the Mesozoic era. Many species of the second major avialan lineage to diversify, the Euornithes (meaning "true birds", because they include the ancestors of modern birds), were semi-aquatic and specialised in eating fish and other small aquatic organisms. Unlike the Enantiornithes, which dominated land-based and arboreal habitats, most early euornithes lacked perching adaptations and seem to have included shorebird-like species, waders, and swimming and diving species. The latter included the superficially gull-like Ichthyornis and the Hesperornithiformes, which became so well adapted to hunting fish in marine environments that they lost the ability to fly and became primarily aquatic. The early euornithes also saw the development of many traits associated with modern birds, like strongly keeled breastbones, toothless, beaked portions of their jaws (though most non-avian euornithes retained teeth in other parts of the jaws). Euornithes also included the first avialans to develop true pygostyle and a fully mobile fan of tail feathers, which may have replaced the "hind wing" as the primary mode of aerial maneuverability and braking in flight. A study on mosaic evolution in the avian skull found that the last common ancestor of all Neornithes might have had a beak similar to that of the modern hook-billed vanga and a skull similar to that of the Eurasian golden oriole. As both species are small aerial and canopy foraging omnivores, a similar ecological niche was inferred for this hypothetical ancestor. Diversification of modern birds All modern birds lie within the crown group Aves (alternately Neornithes), which has two subdivisions: the Palaeognathae, which includes the flightless ratites (such as the ostriches) and the weak-flying tinamous, and the extremely diverse Neognathae, containing all other birds. These two subdivisions have variously been given the rank of superorder, cohort, or infraclass. Depending on the taxonomic viewpoint, the number of known living bird species varies anywhere from 9,800 to 10,758. The discovery of Vegavis from the Maastrichtian, the last stage of the Late Cretaceous proved that the diversification of modern birds started before the Cenozoic era. The affinities of an earlier fossil, the possible galliform Austinornis lentus, dated to about 85 million years ago, are still too controversial to provide a fossil evidence of modern bird diversification. In 2020, Asteriornis from the Maastrichtian was described, it appears to be a close relative of Galloanserae, the earliest diverging lineage within Neognathae. Most studies agree on a Cretaceous age for the most recent common ancestor of modern birds but estimates range from the Early Cretaceous to the latest Late Cretaceous. Similarly, there is no agreement on whether most of the early diversification of modern birds occurred before or after the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event. This disagreement is in part caused by a divergence in the evidence; most molecular dating studies suggests a Cretaceous evolutionary radiation, while fossil evidence points to a Cenozoic radiation (the so-called 'rocks' versus 'clocks' controversy). Previous attempts to reconcile molecular and fossil evidence have proved controversial, but more recent estimates, using a more comprehensive sample of fossils and a new way of calibrating molecular clocks, showed that while according to some studies, modern birds originated early in the Late Cretaceous in Western Gondwana, a pulse of diversification in all major groups occurred around the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event. Modern birds expanded from West Gondwana to the Laurasia through two routes. One route was an Antarctic interchange in the Paleogene. This can be confirmed with the presence of multiple avian groups in Australia and New Zealand. The other route was probably through North America, via land bridges, during the Paleocene. This allowed the expansion and diversification of Neornithes into the Holarctic and Paleotropics. On the other hand, the occurrence of Asteriornis in the Northern Hemisphere challenges biogeographical hypotheses of a Gondwanan origin of crown birds. Classification of bird orders Cladogram of modern bird relationships based on Braun & Kimball (2021) The classification of birds is a contentious issue. Sibley and Ahlquist's Phylogeny and Classification of Birds (1990) is a landmark work on the classification of birds, although it is frequently debated and constantly revised. Most evidence seems to suggest the assignment of orders is accurate, but scientists disagree about the relationships between the orders themselves; evidence from modern bird anatomy, fossils and DNA have all been brought to bear on the problem, but no strong consensus has emerged. More recently, new fossil and molecular evidence is providing an increasingly clear picture of the evolution of modern bird orders. Genomics , the genome had been sequenced for only two birds, the chicken and the zebra finch. the genomes of 542 species of birds had been completed. At least one genome has been sequenced from every order. These include at least one species in about 90% of extant avian families (218 out of 236 families recognised by the Howard and Moore Checklist). Being able to sequence and compare whole genomes gives researchers many types of information, about genes, the DNA that regulates the genes, and their evolutionary history. This has led to reconsideration of some of the classifications that were based solely on the identification of protein-coding genes. Waterbirds such as pelicans and flamingos, for example, may have in common specific adaptations suited to their environment that were developed independently. Distribution Birds live and breed in most terrestrial habitats and on all seven continents, reaching their southern extreme in the snow petrel's breeding colonies up to inland in Antarctica. The highest bird diversity occurs in tropical regions. It was earlier thought that this high diversity was the result of higher speciation rates in the tropics; however recent studies found higher speciation rates in the high latitudes that were offset by greater extinction rates than in the tropics. Many species migrate annually over great distances and across oceans; several families of birds have adapted to life both on the world's oceans and in them, and some seabird species come ashore only to breed, while some penguins have been recorded diving up to deep. Many bird species have established breeding populations in areas to which they have been introduced by humans. Some of these introductions have been deliberate; the ring-necked pheasant, for example, has been introduced around the world as a game bird. Others have been accidental, such as the establishment of wild monk parakeets in several North American cities after their escape from captivity. Some species, including cattle egret, yellow-headed caracara and galah, have spread naturally far beyond their original ranges as agricultural practices created suitable new habitat. Anatomy and physiology Compared with other vertebrates, birds have a body plan that shows many unusual adaptations, mostly to facilitate flight. Skeletal system The skeleton consists of very lightweight bones. They have large air-filled cavities (called pneumatic cavities) which connect with the respiratory system. The skull bones in adults are fused and do not show cranial sutures. The orbital cavities that house the eyeballs are large and separated from each other by a bony septum (partition). The spine has cervical, thoracic, lumbar and caudal regions with the number of cervical (neck) vertebrae highly variable and especially flexible, but movement is reduced in the anterior thoracic vertebrae and absent in the later vertebrae. The last few are fused with the pelvis to form the synsacrum. The ribs are flattened and the sternum is keeled for the attachment of flight muscles except in the flightless bird orders. The forelimbs are modified into wings. The wings are more or less developed depending on the species; the only known groups that lost their wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Excretory system Like the reptiles, birds are primarily uricotelic, that is, their kidneys extract nitrogenous waste from their bloodstream and excrete it as uric acid, instead of urea or ammonia, through the ureters into the intestine. Birds do not have a urinary bladder or external urethral opening and (with exception of the ostrich) uric acid is excreted along with faeces as a semisolid waste. However, birds such as hummingbirds can be facultatively ammonotelic, excreting most of the nitrogenous wastes as ammonia. They also excrete creatine, rather than creatinine like mammals. This material, as well as the output of the intestines, emerges from the bird's cloaca. The cloaca is a multi-purpose opening: waste is expelled through it, most birds mate by joining cloaca, and females lay eggs from it. In addition, many species of birds regurgitate pellets. It is a common but not universal feature of altricial passerine nestlings (born helpless, under constant parental care) that instead of excreting directly into the nest, they produce a fecal sac. This is a mucus-covered pouch that allows parents to either dispose of the waste outside the nest or to recycle the waste through their own digestive system. Reproductive system Males within Palaeognathae (with the exception of the kiwis), the Anseriformes (with the exception of screamers), and in rudimentary forms in Galliformes (but fully developed in Cracidae) possess a penis, which is never present in Neoaves. The length is thought to be related to sperm competition. When not copulating, it is hidden within the proctodeum compartment within the cloaca, just inside the vent. Female birds have sperm storage tubules that allow sperm to remain viable long after copulation, a hundred days in some species. Sperm from multiple males may compete through this mechanism. Most female birds have a single ovary and a single oviduct, both on the left side, but there are exceptions: species in at least 16 different orders of birds have two ovaries. Even these species, however, tend to have a single oviduct. It has been speculated that this might be an adaptation to flight, but males have two testes, and it is also observed that the gonads in both sexes decrease dramatically in size outside the breeding season. Also terrestrial birds generally have a single ovary, as does the platypus, an egg-laying mammal. A more likely explanation is that the egg develops a shell while passing through the oviduct over a period of about a day, so that if two eggs were to develop at the same time, there would be a risk to survival. While rare, mostly abortive, parthenogenesis is not unknown in birds and eggs can be diploid, automictic and results in male offspring. Birds are solely gonochoric. Meaning they have two sexes: either female or male. The sex of birds is determined by the Z and W sex chromosomes, rather than by the X and Y chromosomes present in mammals. Male birds have two Z chromosomes (ZZ), and female birds have a W chromosome and a Z chromosome (WZ). In nearly all species of birds, an individual's sex is determined at fertilisation. However, one 2007 study claimed to demonstrate temperature-dependent sex determination among the Australian brushturkey, for which higher temperatures during incubation resulted in a higher female-to-male sex ratio. This, however, was later proven to not be the case. These birds do not exhibit temperature-dependent sex determination, but temperature-dependent sex mortality. Respiratory and circulatory systems Birds have one of the most complex respiratory systems of all animal groups. Upon inhalation, 75% of the fresh air bypasses the lungs and flows directly into a posterior air sac which extends from the lungs and connects with air spaces in the bones and fills them with air. The other 25% of the air goes directly into the lungs. When the bird exhales, the used air flows out of the lungs and the stored fresh air from the posterior air sac is simultaneously forced into the lungs. Thus, a bird's lungs receive a constant supply of fresh air during both inhalation and exhalation. Sound production is achieved using the syrinx, a muscular chamber incorporating multiple tympanic membranes which diverges from the lower end of the trachea; the trachea being elongated in some species, increasing the volume of vocalisations and the perception of the bird's size. In birds, the main arteries taking blood away from the heart originate from the right aortic arch (or pharyngeal arch), unlike in the mammals where the left aortic arch forms this part of the aorta. The postcava receives blood from the limbs via the renal portal system. Unlike in mammals, the circulating red blood cells in birds retain their nucleus. Heart type and features The avian circulatory system is driven by a four-chambered, myogenic heart contained in a fibrous pericardial sac. This pericardial sac is filled with a serous fluid for lubrication. The heart itself is divided into a right and left half, each with an atrium and ventricle. The atrium and ventricles of each side are separated by atrioventricular valves which prevent back flow from one chamber to the next during contraction. Being myogenic, the heart's pace is maintained by pacemaker cells found in the sinoatrial node, located on the right atrium. The sinoatrial node uses calcium to cause a depolarising signal transduction pathway from the atrium through right and left atrioventricular bundle which communicates contraction to the ventricles. The avian heart also consists of muscular arches that are made up of thick bundles of muscular layers. Much like a mammalian heart, the avian heart is composed of endocardial, myocardial and epicardial layers. The atrium walls tend to be thinner than the ventricle walls, due to the intense ventricular contraction used to pump oxygenated blood throughout the body. Avian hearts are generally larger than mammalian hearts when compared to body mass. This adaptation allows more blood to be pumped to meet the high metabolic need associated with flight. Organisation Birds have a very efficient system for diffusing oxygen into the blood; birds have a ten times greater surface area to gas exchange volume than mammals. As a result, birds have more blood in their capillaries per unit of volume of lung than a mammal. The arteries are composed of thick elastic muscles to withstand the pressure of the ventricular contractions, and become more rigid as they move away from the heart. Blood moves through the arteries, which undergo vasoconstriction, and into arterioles which act as a transportation system to distribute primarily oxygen as well as nutrients to all tissues of the body. As the arterioles move away from the heart and into individual organs and tissues they are further divided to increase surface area and slow blood flow. Blood travels through the arterioles and moves into the capillaries where gas exchange can occur. Capillaries are organised into capillary beds in tissues; it is here that blood exchanges oxygen for carbon dioxide waste. In the capillary beds, blood flow is slowed to allow maximum diffusion of oxygen into the tissues. Once the blood has become deoxygenated, it travels through venules then veins and back to the heart. Veins, unlike arteries, are thin and rigid as they do not need to withstand extreme pressure. As blood travels through the venules to the veins a funneling occurs called vasodilation bringing blood back to the heart. Once the blood reaches the heart, it moves first into the right atrium, then the right ventricle to be pumped through the lungs for further gas exchange of carbon dioxide waste for oxygen. Oxygenated blood then flows from the lungs through the left atrium to the left ventricle where it is pumped out to the body. Nervous system The nervous system is large relative to the bird's size. The most developed part of the brain is the one that controls the flight-related functions, while the cerebellum coordinates movement and the cerebrum controls behaviour patterns, navigation, mating and nest building. Most birds have a poor sense of smell with notable exceptions including kiwis, New World vultures and tubenoses. The avian visual system is usually highly developed. Water birds have special flexible lenses, allowing accommodation for vision in air and water. Some species also have dual fovea. Birds are tetrachromatic, possessing ultraviolet (UV) sensitive cone cells in the eye as well as green, red and blue ones. They also have double cones, likely to mediate achromatic vision. Many birds show plumage patterns in ultraviolet that are invisible to the human eye; some birds whose sexes appear similar to the naked eye are distinguished by the presence of ultraviolet reflective patches on their feathers. Male blue tits have an ultraviolet reflective crown patch which is displayed in courtship by posturing and raising of their nape feathers. Ultraviolet light is also used in foraging—kestrels have been shown to search for prey by detecting the UV reflective urine trail marks left on the ground by rodents. With the exception of pigeons and a few other species, the eyelids of birds are not used in blinking. Instead the eye is lubricated by the nictitating membrane, a third eyelid that moves horizontally. The nictitating membrane also covers the eye and acts as a contact lens in many aquatic birds. The bird retina has a fan shaped blood supply system called the pecten. Eyes of most birds are large, not very round and capable of only limited movement in the orbits, typically 10–20°. Birds with eyes on the sides of their heads have a wide visual field, while birds with eyes on the front of their heads, such as owls, have binocular vision and can estimate the depth of field. The avian ear lacks external pinnae but is covered by feathers, although in some birds, such as the Asio, Bubo and Otus owls, these feathers form tufts which resemble ears. The inner ear has a cochlea, but it is not spiral as in mammals. Defence and intraspecific combat A few species are able to use chemical defences against predators; some Procellariiformes can eject an unpleasant stomach oil against an aggressor, and some species of pitohuis from New Guinea have a powerful neurotoxin in their skin and feathers. A lack of field observations limit our knowledge, but intraspecific conflicts are known to sometimes result in injury or death. The screamers (Anhimidae), some jacanas (Jacana, Hydrophasianus), the spur-winged goose (Plectropterus), the torrent duck (Merganetta) and nine species of lapwing (Vanellus) use a sharp spur on the wing as a weapon. The steamer ducks (Tachyeres), geese and swans (Anserinae), the solitaire (Pezophaps), sheathbills (Chionis), some guans (Crax) and stone curlews (Burhinus) use a bony knob on the alular metacarpal to punch and hammer opponents. The jacanas Actophilornis and Irediparra have an expanded, blade-like radius. The extinct Xenicibis was unique in having an elongate forelimb and massive hand which likely functioned in combat or defence as a jointed club or flail. Swans, for instance, may strike with the bony spurs and bite when defending eggs or young. Feathers, plumage, and scales Feathers are a feature characteristic of birds (though also present in some dinosaurs not currently considered to be true birds). They facilitate flight, provide insulation that aids in thermoregulation, and are used in display, camouflage, and signalling. There are several types of feathers, each serving its own set of purposes. Feathers are epidermal growths attached to the skin and arise only in specific tracts of skin called pterylae. The distribution pattern of these feather tracts (pterylosis) is used in taxonomy and systematics. The arrangement and appearance of feathers on the body, called plumage, may vary within species by age, social status, and sex. Plumage is regularly moulted; the standard plumage of a bird that has moulted after breeding is known as the "" plumage, or—in the Humphrey–Parkes terminology—"basic" plumage; breeding plumages or variations of the basic plumage are known under the Humphrey–Parkes system as "" plumages. Moulting is annual in most species, although some may have two moults a year, and large birds of prey may moult only once every few years. Moulting patterns vary across species. In passerines, flight feathers are replaced one at a time with the innermost being the first. When the fifth of sixth primary is replaced, the outermost begin to drop. After the innermost tertiaries are moulted, the starting from the innermost begin to drop and this proceeds to the outer feathers (centrifugal moult). The greater primary are moulted in synchrony with the primary that they overlap. A small number of species, such as ducks and geese, lose all of their flight feathers at once, temporarily becoming flightless. As a general rule, the tail feathers are moulted and replaced starting with the innermost pair. Centripetal moults of tail feathers are however seen in the Phasianidae. The centrifugal moult is modified in the tail feathers of woodpeckers and treecreepers, in that it begins with the second innermost pair of feathers and finishes with the central pair of feathers so that the bird maintains a functional climbing tail. The general pattern seen in passerines is that the primaries are replaced outward, secondaries inward, and the tail from centre outward. Before nesting, the females of most bird species gain a bare brood patch by losing feathers close to the belly. The skin there is well supplied with blood vessels and helps the bird in incubation. Feathers require maintenance and birds preen or groom them daily, spending an average of around 9% of their daily time on this. The bill is used to brush away foreign particles and to apply waxy secretions from the uropygial gland; these secretions protect the feathers' flexibility and act as an antimicrobial agent, inhibiting the growth of feather-degrading bacteria. This may be supplemented with the secretions of formic acid from ants, which birds receive through a behaviour known as anting, to remove feather parasites. The scales of birds are composed of the same keratin as beaks, claws, and spurs. They are found mainly on the toes and metatarsus, but may be found further up on the ankle in some birds. Most bird scales do not overlap significantly, except in the cases of kingfishers and woodpeckers. The scales of birds are thought to be homologous to those of reptiles and mammals. Flight Most birds can fly, which distinguishes them from almost all other vertebrate classes. Flight is the primary means of locomotion for most bird species and is used for searching for food and for escaping from predators. Birds have various adaptations for flight, including a lightweight skeleton, two large flight muscles, the pectoralis (which accounts for 15% of the total mass of the bird) and the supracoracoideus, as well as a modified forelimb (wing) that serves as an aerofoil. Wing shape and size generally determine a bird's flight style and performance; many birds combine powered, flapping flight with less energy-intensive soaring flight. About 60 extant bird species are flightless, as were many extinct birds. Flightlessness often arises in birds on isolated islands, most likely due to limited resources and the absence of mammalian land predators. Flightlessnes is almost exclusively correlated with gigantism due to an island's inheren condition of isolation. Although flightless, penguins use similar musculature and movements to "fly" through the water, as do some flight-capable birds such as auks, shearwaters and dippers. Behaviour Most birds are diurnal, but some birds, such as many species of owls and nightjars, are nocturnal or crepuscular (active during twilight hours), and many coastal waders feed when the tides are appropriate, by day or night. Diet and feeding are varied and often include nectar, fruit, plants, seeds, carrion, and various small animals, including other birds. The digestive system of birds is unique, with a crop for storage and a gizzard that contains swallowed stones for grinding food to compensate for the lack of teeth. Some species such as pigeons and some psittacine species do not have a gallbladder. Most birds are highly adapted for rapid digestion to aid with flight. Some migratory birds have adapted to use protein stored in many parts of their bodies, including protein from the intestines, as additional energy during migration. Birds that employ many strategies to obtain food or feed on a variety of food items are called generalists, while others that concentrate time and effort on specific food items or have a single strategy to obtain food are considered specialists. Avian foraging strategies can vary widely by species. Many birds glean for insects, invertebrates, fruit, or seeds. Some hunt insects by suddenly attacking from a branch. Those species that seek pest insects are considered beneficial 'biological control agents' and their presence encouraged in biological pest control programmes. Combined, insectivorous birds eat 400–500 million metric tons of arthropods annually. Nectar feeders such as hummingbirds, sunbirds, lories, and lorikeets amongst others have specially adapted brushy tongues and in many cases bills designed to fit co-adapted flowers. Kiwis and shorebirds with long bills probe for invertebrates; shorebirds' varied bill lengths and feeding methods result in the separation of ecological niches. Loons, diving ducks, penguins and auks pursue their prey underwater, using their wings or feet for propulsion, while aerial predators such as sulids, kingfishers and terns plunge dive after their prey. Flamingos, three species of prion, and some ducks are filter feeders. Geese and dabbling ducks are primarily grazers. Some species, including frigatebirds, gulls, and skuas, engage in kleptoparasitism, stealing food items from other birds. Kleptoparasitism is thought to be a supplement to food obtained by hunting, rather than a significant part of any species' diet; a study of great frigatebirds stealing from masked boobies estimated that the frigatebirds stole at most 40% of their food and on average stole only 5%. Other birds are scavengers; some of these, like vultures, are specialised carrion eaters, while others, like gulls, corvids, or other birds of prey, are opportunists. Water and drinking Water is needed by many birds although their mode of excretion and lack of sweat glands reduces the physiological demands. Some desert birds can obtain their water needs entirely from moisture in their food. They may also have other adaptations such as allowing their body temperature to rise, saving on moisture loss from evaporative cooling or panting. Seabirds can drink seawater and have salt glands inside the head that eliminate excess salt out of the nostrils. Most birds scoop water in their beaks and raise their head to let water run down the throat. Some species, especially of arid zones, belonging to the pigeon, finch, mousebird, button-quail and bustard families are capable of sucking up water without the need to tilt back their heads. Some desert birds depend on water sources and sandgrouse are particularly well known for their daily congregations at waterholes. Nesting sandgrouse and many plovers carry water to their young by wetting their belly feathers. Some birds carry water for chicks at the nest in their crop or regurgitate it along with food. The pigeon family, flamingos and penguins have adaptations to produce a nutritive fluid called crop milk that they provide to their chicks. Feather care Feathers, being critical to the survival of a bird, require maintenance. Apart from physical wear and tear, feathers face the onslaught of fungi, ectoparasitic feather mites and bird lice. The physical condition of feathers are maintained by often with the application of secretions from the . Birds also bathe in water or dust themselves. While some birds dip into shallow water, more aerial species may make aerial dips into water and arboreal species often make use of dew or rain that collect on leaves. Birds of arid regions make use of loose soil to dust-bathe. A behaviour termed as anting in which the bird encourages ants to run through their plumage is also thought to help them reduce the ectoparasite load in feathers. Many species will spread out their wings and expose them to direct sunlight and this too is thought to help in reducing fungal and ectoparasitic activity that may lead to feather damage. Migration Many bird species migrate to take advantage of global differences of seasonal temperatures, therefore optimising availability of food sources and breeding habitat. These migrations vary among the different groups. Many landbirds, shorebirds, and waterbirds undertake annual long-distance migrations, usually triggered by the length of daylight as well as weather conditions. These birds are characterised by a breeding season spent in the temperate or polar regions and a non-breeding season in the tropical regions or opposite hemisphere. Before migration, birds substantially increase body fats and reserves and reduce the size of some of their organs. Migration is highly demanding energetically, particularly as birds need to cross deserts and oceans without refuelling. Landbirds have a flight range of around and shorebirds can fly up to , although the bar-tailed godwit is capable of non-stop flights of up to . Seabirds also undertake long migrations, the longest annual migration being those of sooty shearwaters, which nest in New Zealand and Chile and spend the northern summer feeding in the North Pacific off Japan, Alaska and California, an annual round trip of . Other seabirds disperse after breeding, travelling widely but having no set migration route. Albatrosses nesting in the Southern Ocean often undertake circumpolar trips between breeding seasons. Some bird species undertake shorter migrations, travelling only as far as is required to avoid bad weather or obtain food. Irruptive species such as the boreal finches are one such group and can commonly be found at a location in one year and absent the next. This type of migration is normally associated with food availability. Species may also travel shorter distances over part of their range, with individuals from higher latitudes travelling into the existing range of conspecifics; others undertake partial migrations, where only a fraction of the population, usually females and subdominant males, migrates. Partial migration can form a large percentage of the migration behaviour of birds in some regions; in Australia, surveys found that 44% of non-passerine birds and 32% of passerines were partially migratory. Altitudinal migration is a form of short-distance migration in which birds spend the breeding season at higher altitudes and move to lower ones during suboptimal conditions. It is most often triggered by temperature changes and usually occurs when the normal territories also become inhospitable due to lack of food. Some species may also be nomadic, holding no fixed territory and moving according to weather and food availability. Parrots as a family are overwhelmingly neither migratory nor sedentary but considered to either be dispersive, irruptive, nomadic or undertake small and irregular migrations. The ability of birds to return to precise locations across vast distances has been known for some time; in an experiment conducted in the 1950s, a Manx shearwater released in Boston in the United States returned to its colony in Skomer, in Wales within 13 days, a distance of . Birds navigate during migration using a variety of methods. For diurnal migrants, the sun is used to navigate by day, and a stellar compass is used at night. Birds that use the sun compensate for the changing position of the sun during the day by the use of an internal clock. Orientation with the stellar compass depends on the position of the constellations surrounding Polaris. These are backed up in some species by their ability to sense the Earth's geomagnetism through specialised photoreceptors. Communication Birds communicate using primarily visual and auditory signals. Signals can be interspecific (between species) and intraspecific (within species). Birds sometimes use plumage to assess and assert social dominance, to display breeding condition in sexually selected species, or to make threatening displays, as in the sunbittern's mimicry of a large predator to ward off hawks and protect young chicks. Variation in plumage also allows for the identification of birds, particularly between species. Visual communication among birds may also involve ritualised displays, which have developed from non-signalling actions such as preening, the adjustments of feather position, pecking, or other behaviour. These displays may signal aggression or submission or may contribute to the formation of pair-bonds. The most elaborate displays occur during courtship, where "dances" are often formed from complex combinations of many possible component movements; males' breeding success may depend on the quality of such displays. Bird calls and songs, which are produced in the syrinx, are the major means by which birds communicate with sound. This communication can be very complex; some species can operate the two sides of the syrinx independently, allowing the simultaneous production of two different songs. Calls are used for a variety of purposes, including mate attraction, evaluation of potential mates, bond formation, the claiming and maintenance of territories, the identification of other individuals (such as when parents look for chicks in colonies or when mates reunite at the start of breeding season), and the warning of other birds of potential predators, sometimes with specific information about the nature of the threat. Some birds also use mechanical sounds for auditory communication. The Coenocorypha snipes of New Zealand drive air through their feathers, woodpeckers drum for long-distance communication, and palm cockatoos use tools to drum. Flocking and other associations While some birds are essentially territorial or live in small family groups, other birds may form large flocks. The principal benefits of flocking are safety in numbers and increased foraging efficiency. Defence against predators is particularly important in closed habitats like forests, where ambush predation is common and multiple eyes can provide a valuable early warning system. This has led to the development of many mixed-species feeding flocks, which are usually composed of small numbers of many species; these flocks provide safety in numbers but increase potential competition for resources. Costs of flocking include bullying of socially subordinate birds by more dominant birds and the reduction of feeding efficiency in certain cases. Birds sometimes also form associations with non-avian species. Plunge-diving seabirds associate with dolphins and tuna, which push shoaling fish towards the surface. Hornbills have a mutualistic relationship with dwarf mongooses, in which they forage together and warn each other of nearby birds of prey and other predators. Resting and roosting The high metabolic rates of birds during the active part of the day is supplemented by rest at other times. Sleeping birds often use a type of sleep known as vigilant sleep, where periods of rest are interspersed with quick eye-opening "peeks", allowing them to be sensitive to disturbances and enable rapid escape from threats. Swifts are believed to be able to sleep in flight and radar observations suggest that they orient themselves to face the wind in their roosting flight. It has been suggested that there may be certain kinds of sleep which are possible even when in flight. Some birds have also demonstrated the capacity to fall into slow-wave sleep one hemisphere of the brain at a time. The birds tend to exercise this ability depending upon its position relative to the outside of the flock. This may allow the eye opposite the sleeping hemisphere to remain vigilant for predators by viewing the outer margins of the flock. This adaptation is also known from marine mammals. Communal roosting is common because it lowers the loss of body heat and decreases the risks associated with predators. Roosting sites are often chosen with regard to thermoregulation and safety. Unusual mobile roost sites include large herbivores on the African savanna that are used by oxpeckers. Many sleeping birds bend their heads over their backs and tuck their bills in their back feathers, although others place their beaks among their breast feathers. Many birds rest on one leg, while some may pull up their legs into their feathers, especially in cold weather. Perching birds have a tendon-locking mechanism that helps them hold on to the perch when they are asleep. Many ground birds, such as quails and pheasants, roost in trees. A few parrots of the genus Loriculus roost hanging upside down. Some hummingbirds go into a nightly state of torpor accompanied with a reduction of their metabolic rates. This physiological adaptation shows in nearly a hundred other species, including owlet-nightjars, nightjars, and woodswallows. One species, the common poorwill, even enters a state of hibernation. Birds do not have sweat glands, but they may cool themselves by moving to shade, standing in water, panting, increasing their surface area, fluttering their throat or by using special behaviours like urohidrosis to cool themselves. Breeding Social systems Ninety-five per cent of bird species are socially monogamous. These species pair for at least the length of the breeding season or—in some cases—for several years or until the death of one mate. Monogamy allows for both paternal care and biparental care, which is especially important for species in which females require males' assistance for successful brood-rearing. Among many socially monogamous species, extra-pair copulation (infidelity) is common. Such behaviour typically occurs between dominant males and females paired with subordinate males, but may also be the result of forced copulation in ducks and other anatids. For females, possible benefits of extra-pair copulation include getting better genes for her offspring and insuring against the possibility of infertility in her mate. Males of species that engage in extra-pair copulations will closely guard their mates to ensure the parentage of the offspring that they raise. Other mating systems, including polygyny, polyandry, polygamy, polygynandry, and promiscuity, also occur. Polygamous breeding systems arise when females are able to raise broods without the help of males. Some species may use more than one system depending on the circumstances. Breeding usually involves some form of courtship display, typically performed by the male. Most displays are rather simple and involve some type of song. Some displays, however, are quite elaborate. Depending on the species, these may include wing or tail drumming, dancing, aerial flights, or communal lekking. Females are generally the ones that drive partner selection, although in the polyandrous phalaropes, this is reversed: plainer males choose brightly coloured females. Courtship feeding, billing and are commonly performed between partners, generally after the birds have paired and mated. Homosexual behaviour has been observed in males or females in numerous species of birds, including copulation, pair-bonding, and joint parenting of chicks. Over 130 avian species around the world engage in sexual interactions between the same sex or homosexual behaviours. "Same-sex courtship activities may involve elaborate displays, synchronized dances, gift-giving ceremonies, or behaviors at specific display areas including bowers, arenas, or leks." Territories, nesting and incubation Many birds actively defend a territory from others of the same species during the breeding season; maintenance of territories protects the food source for their chicks. Species that are unable to defend feeding territories, such as seabirds and swifts, often breed in colonies instead; this is thought to offer protection from predators. Colonial breeders defend small nesting sites, and competition between and within species for nesting sites can be intense. All birds lay amniotic eggs with hard shells made mostly of calcium carbonate. Hole and burrow nesting species tend to lay white or pale eggs, while open nesters lay camouflaged eggs. There are many exceptions to this pattern, however; the ground-nesting nightjars have pale eggs, and camouflage is instead provided by their plumage. Species that are victims of brood parasites have varying egg colours to improve the chances of spotting a parasite's egg, which forces female parasites to match their eggs to those of their hosts. Bird eggs are usually laid in a nest. Most species create somewhat elaborate nests, which can be cups, domes, plates, beds scrapes, mounds, or burrows. Some bird nests, however, are extremely primitive; albatross nests are no more than a scrape on the ground. Most birds build nests in sheltered, hidden areas to avoid predation, but large or colonial birds—which are more capable of defence—may build more open nests. During nest construction, some species seek out plant matter from plants with parasite-reducing toxins to improve chick survival, and feathers are often used for nest insulation. Some bird species have no nests; the cliff-nesting common guillemot lays its eggs on bare rock, and male emperor penguins keep eggs between their body and feet. The absence of nests is especially prevalent in ground-nesting species where the newly hatched young are precocial. Incubation, which optimises temperature for chick development, usually begins after the last egg has been laid. In monogamous species incubation duties are often shared, whereas in polygamous species one parent is wholly responsible for incubation. Warmth from parents passes to the eggs through brood patches, areas of bare skin on the abdomen or breast of the incubating birds. Incubation can be an energetically demanding process; adult albatrosses, for instance, lose as much as of body weight per day of incubation. The warmth for the incubation of the eggs of megapodes comes from the sun, decaying vegetation or volcanic sources. Incubation periods range from 10 days (in woodpeckers, cuckoos and passerine birds) to over 80 days (in albatrosses and kiwis). The diversity of characteristics of birds is great, sometimes even in closely related species. Several avian characteristics are compared in the table below. Parental care and fledging At the time of their hatching, chicks range in development from helpless to independent, depending on their species. Helpless chicks are termed altricial, and tend to be born small, blind, immobile and naked; chicks that are mobile and feathered upon hatching are termed precocial. Altricial chicks need help thermoregulating and must be brooded for longer than precocial chicks. The young of many bird species do not precisely fit into either the precocial or altricial category, having some aspects of each and thus fall somewhere on an "altricial-precocial spectrum". Chicks at neither extreme but favouring one or the other may be termed or . The length and nature of parental care varies widely amongst different orders and species. At one extreme, parental care in megapodes ends at hatching; the newly hatched chick digs itself out of the nest mound without parental assistance and can fend for itself immediately. At the other extreme, many seabirds have extended periods of parental care, the longest being that of the great frigatebird, whose chicks take up to six months to fledge and are fed by the parents for up to an additional 14 months. The chick guard stage describes the period of breeding during which one of the adult birds is permanently present at the nest after chicks have hatched. The main purpose of the guard stage is to aid offspring to thermoregulate and protect them from predation. In some species, both parents care for nestlings and fledglings; in others, such care is the responsibility of only one sex. In some species, other members of the same species—usually close relatives of the breeding pair, such as offspring from previous broods—will help with the raising of the young. Such alloparenting is particularly common among the Corvida, which includes such birds as the true crows, Australian magpie and fairy-wrens, but has been observed in species as different as the rifleman and red kite. Among most groups of animals, male parental care is rare. In birds, however, it is quite common—more so than in any other vertebrate class. Although territory and nest site defence, incubation, and chick feeding are often shared tasks, there is sometimes a division of labour in which one mate undertakes all or most of a particular duty. The point at which chicks fledge varies dramatically. The chicks of the Synthliboramphus murrelets, like the ancient murrelet, leave the nest the night after they hatch, following their parents out to sea, where they are raised away from terrestrial predators. Some other species, such as ducks, move their chicks away from the nest at an early age. In most species, chicks leave the nest just before, or soon after, they are able to fly. The amount of parental care after fledging varies; albatross chicks leave the nest on their own and receive no further help, while other species continue some supplementary feeding after fledging. Chicks may also follow their parents during their first migration. Brood parasites Brood parasitism, in which an egg-layer leaves her eggs with another individual's brood, is more common among birds than any other type of organism. After a parasitic bird lays her eggs in another bird's nest, they are often accepted and raised by the host at the expense of the host's own brood. Brood parasites may be either obligate brood parasites, which must lay their eggs in the nests of other species because they are incapable of raising their own young, or non-obligate brood parasites, which sometimes lay eggs in the nests of conspecifics to increase their reproductive output even though they could have raised their own young. One hundred bird species, including honeyguides, icterids, and ducks, are obligate parasites, though the most famous are the cuckoos. Some brood parasites are adapted to hatch before their host's young, which allows them to destroy the host's eggs by pushing them out of the nest or to kill the host's chicks; this ensures that all food brought to the nest will be fed to the parasitic chicks. Sexual selection Birds have evolved a variety of mating behaviours, with the peacock tail being perhaps the most famous example of sexual selection and the Fisherian runaway. Commonly occurring sexual dimorphisms such as size and colour differences are energetically costly attributes that signal competitive breeding situations. Many types of avian sexual selection have been identified; intersexual selection, also known as female choice; and intrasexual competition, where individuals of the more abundant sex compete with each other for the privilege to mate. Sexually selected traits often evolve to become more pronounced in competitive breeding situations until the trait begins to limit the individual's fitness. Conflicts between an individual fitness and signalling adaptations ensure that sexually selected ornaments such as plumage colouration and courtship behaviour are "honest" traits. Signals must be costly to ensure that only good-quality individuals can present these exaggerated sexual ornaments and behaviours. Inbreeding depression Inbreeding causes early death (inbreeding depression) in the zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata. Embryo survival (that is, hatching success of fertile eggs) was significantly lower for sib-sib mating pairs than for unrelated pairs. Darwin's finch Geospiza scandens experiences inbreeding depression (reduced survival of offspring) and the magnitude of this effect is influenced by environmental conditions such as low food availability. Inbreeding avoidance Incestuous matings by the purple-crowned fairy wren Malurus coronatus result in severe fitness costs due to inbreeding depression (greater than 30% reduction in hatchability of eggs). Females paired with related males may undertake extra pair matings (see Promiscuity#Other animals for 90% frequency in avian species) that can reduce the negative effects of inbreeding. However, there are ecological and demographic constraints on extra pair matings. Nevertheless, 43% of broods produced by incestuously paired females contained extra pair young. Inbreeding depression occurs in the great tit (Parus major) when the offspring produced as a result of a mating between close relatives show reduced fitness. In natural populations of Parus major, inbreeding is avoided by dispersal of individuals from their birthplace, which reduces the chance of mating with a close relative. Southern pied babblers Turdoides bicolor appear to avoid inbreeding in two ways. The first is through dispersal, and the second is by avoiding familiar group members as mates. Cooperative breeding in birds typically occurs when offspring, usually males, delay dispersal from their natal group in order to remain with the family to help rear younger kin. Female offspring rarely stay at home, dispersing over distances that allow them to breed independently, or to join unrelated groups. In general, inbreeding is avoided because it leads to a reduction in progeny fitness (inbreeding depression) due largely to the homozygous expression of deleterious recessive alleles. Cross-fertilisation between unrelated individuals ordinarily leads to the masking of deleterious recessive alleles in progeny. Ecology Birds occupy a wide range of ecological positions. While some birds are generalists, others are highly specialised in their habitat or food requirements. Even within a single habitat, such as a forest, the niches occupied by different species of birds vary, with some species feeding in the forest canopy, others beneath the canopy, and still others on the forest floor. Forest birds may be insectivores, frugivores, and nectarivores. Aquatic birds generally feed by fishing, plant eating, and piracy or kleptoparasitism. Birds of prey specialise in hunting mammals or other birds, while vultures are specialised scavengers. Avivores are animals that are specialised at preying on birds. Some nectar-feeding birds are important pollinators, and many frugivores play a key role in seed dispersal. Plants and pollinating birds often coevolve, and in some cases a flower's primary pollinator is the only species capable of reaching its nectar. Birds are often important to island ecology. Birds have frequently reached islands that mammals have not; on those islands, birds may fulfil ecological roles typically played by larger animals. For example, in New Zealand nine species of moa were important browsers, as are the kererū and kokako today. Today the plants of New Zealand retain the defensive adaptations evolved to protect them from the extinct moa. Many birds act as ecosystem engineers through the construciton of nests, which provide important microhabitats and food for hundreds of species of invertebrates. Nesting seabirds may affect the ecology of islands and surrounding seas, principally through the concentration of large quantities of guano, which may enrich the local soil and the surrounding seas. A wide variety of avian ecology field methods, including counts, nest monitoring, and capturing and marking, are used for researching avian ecology. Relationship with humans Since birds are highly visible and common animals, humans have had a relationship with them since the dawn of man. Sometimes, these relationships are mutualistic, like the cooperative honey-gathering among honeyguides and African peoples such as the Borana. Other times, they may be commensal, as when species such as the house sparrow have benefited from human activities. Several bird species have become commercially significant agricultural pests, and some pose an aviation hazard. Human activities can also be detrimental, and have threatened numerous bird species with extinction (hunting, avian lead poisoning, pesticides, roadkill, wind turbine kills and predation by pet cats and dogs are common causes of death for birds). Birds can act as vectors for spreading diseases such as psittacosis, salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, mycobacteriosis (avian tuberculosis), avian influenza (bird flu), giardiasis, and cryptosporidiosis over long distances. Some of these are zoonotic diseases that can also be transmitted to humans. Economic importance Domesticated birds raised for meat and eggs, called poultry, are the largest source of animal protein eaten by humans; in 2003, tons of poultry and tons of eggs were produced worldwide. Chickens account for much of human poultry consumption, though domesticated turkeys, ducks, and geese are also relatively common. Many species of birds are also hunted for meat. Bird hunting is primarily a recreational activity except in extremely undeveloped areas. The most important birds hunted in North and South America are waterfowl; other widely hunted birds include pheasants, wild turkeys, quail, doves, partridge, grouse, snipe, and woodcock. Muttonbirding is also popular in Australia and New Zealand. Although some hunting, such as that of muttonbirds, may be sustainable, hunting has led to the extinction or endangerment of dozens of species. Other commercially valuable products from birds include feathers (especially the down of geese and ducks), which are used as insulation in clothing and bedding, and seabird faeces (guano), which is a valuable source of phosphorus and nitrogen. The War of the Pacific, sometimes called the Guano War, was fought in part over the control of guano deposits. Birds have been domesticated by humans both as pets and for practical purposes. Colourful birds, such as parrots and mynas, are bred in captivity or kept as pets, a practice that has led to the illegal trafficking of some endangered species. Falcons and cormorants have long been used for hunting and fishing, respectively. Messenger pigeons, used since at least 1 AD, remained important as recently as World War II. Today, such activities are more common either as hobbies, for entertainment and tourism, or for sports such as pigeon racing. Amateur bird enthusiasts (called birdwatchers, twitchers or, more commonly, birders) number in the millions. Many homeowners erect bird feeders near their homes to attract various species. Bird feeding has grown into a multimillion-dollar industry; for example, an estimated 75% of households in Britain provide food for birds at some point during the winter. In religion and mythology Birds play prominent and diverse roles in religion and mythology. In religion, birds may serve as either messengers or priests and leaders for a deity, such as in the Cult of Makemake, in which the Tangata manu of Easter Island served as chiefs or as attendants, as in the case of Hugin and Munin, the two common ravens who whispered news into the ears of the Norse god Odin. In several civilisations of ancient Italy, particularly Etruscan and Roman religion, priests were involved in augury, or interpreting the words of birds while the "auspex" (from which the word "auspicious" is derived) watched their activities to foretell events. They may also serve as religious symbols, as when Jonah (, dove) embodied the fright, passivity, mourning, and beauty traditionally associated with doves. Birds have themselves been deified, as in the case of the common peacock, which is perceived as Mother Earth by the people of southern India. In the ancient world, doves were used as symbols of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna (later known as Ishtar), the Canaanite mother goddess Asherah, and the Greek goddess Aphrodite. In ancient Greece, Athena, the goddess of wisdom and patron deity of the city of Athens, had a little owl as her symbol. In religious images preserved from the Inca and Tiwanaku empires, birds are depicted in the process of transgressing boundaries between earthly and underground spiritual realms. Indigenous peoples of the central Andes maintain legends of birds passing to and from metaphysical worlds. In culture and folklore Birds have featured in culture and art since prehistoric times, when they were represented in early cave paintings. Some birds have been perceived as monsters, including the mythological Roc and the Māori's legendary , a giant bird capable of snatching humans. Birds were later used as symbols of power, as in the magnificent Peacock Throne of the Mughal and Persian emperors. With the advent of scientific interest in birds, many paintings of birds were commissioned for books. Among the most famous of these bird artists was John James Audubon, whose paintings of North American birds were a great commercial success in Europe and who later lent his name to the National Audubon Society. Birds are also important figures in poetry; for example, Homer incorporated nightingales into his Odyssey, and Catullus used a sparrow as an erotic symbol in his Catullus 2. The relationship between an albatross and a sailor is the central theme of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which led to the use of the term as a metaphor for a 'burden'. Other English metaphors derive from birds; vulture funds and vulture investors, for instance, take their name from the scavenging vulture. Perceptions of bird species vary across cultures. Owls are associated with bad luck, witchcraft, and death in parts of Africa, but are regarded as wise across much of Europe. Hoopoes were considered sacred in Ancient Egypt and symbols of virtue in Persia, but were thought of as thieves across much of Europe and harbingers of war in Scandinavia. In heraldry, birds, especially eagles, often appear in coats of arms. In music In music, birdsong has influenced composers and musicians in several ways: they can be inspired by birdsong; they can intentionally imitate bird song in a composition, as Vivaldi, Messiaen, and Beethoven did, along with many later composers; they can incorporate recordings of birds into their works, as Ottorino Respighi first did; or like Beatrice Harrison and David Rothenberg, they can duet with birds. Conservation Although human activities have allowed the expansion of a few species, such as the barn swallow and European starling, they have caused population decreases or extinction in many other species. Over a hundred bird species have gone extinct in historical times, although the most dramatic human-caused avian extinctions, eradicating an estimated 750–1800 species, occurred during the human colonisation of Melanesian, Polynesian, and Micronesian islands. Many bird populations are declining worldwide, with 1,227 species listed as threatened by BirdLife International and the IUCN in 2009. The most commonly cited human threat to birds is habitat loss. Other threats include overhunting, accidental mortality due to collisions with buildings or vehicles, long-line fishing bycatch, pollution (including oil spills and pesticide use), competition and predation from nonnative invasive species, and climate change. Governments and conservation groups work to protect birds, either by passing laws that preserve and restore bird habitat or by establishing captive populations for reintroductions. Such projects have produced some successes; one study estimated that conservation efforts saved 16 species of bird that would otherwise have gone extinct between 1994 and 2004, including the California condor and Norfolk parakeet. See also Animal track Avian sleep Bat Glossary of bird terms Ornithology Paleocene dinosaurs References Further reading Roger Lederer und Carol Burr: Latein für Vogelbeobachter: über 3000 ornithologische Begriffe erklärt und erforscht, aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Susanne Kuhlmannn-Krieg, Verlag DuMont, Köln 2014, . del Hoyo, Josep; Elliott, Andrew; Sargatal, Jordi (eds.): Handbook of the Birds of the World (17-volume encyclopaedia), Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, 1992–2010. (Vol. 1: Ostrich to Ducks: , etc.). All the Birds of the World, Lynx Edicions, 2020. National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America, National Geographic, 7th edition, 2017. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Eastern Region, National Audubon Society, Knopf. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Western Region, National Audubon Society, Knopf. Svensson, Lars: Birds of Europe, Princeton University Press, second edition, 2010. Svensson, Lars: Collins Bird Guide: The Most Complete Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe, Collins, 2nd edition, 2010. External links Birdlife International – Dedicated to bird conservation worldwide; has a database with about 250,000 records on endangered bird species. Bird biogeography Birds and Science from the National Audubon Society Cornell Lab of Ornithology Essays on bird biology North American Birds for Kids Ornithology Sora – Searchable online research archive; Archives of the following ornithological journals The Auk, Condor, Journal of Field Ornithology''', North American Bird Bander, Studies in Avian Biology, Pacific Coast Avifauna, and the Wilson Bulletin''. The Internet Bird Collection – A free library of videos of the world's birds The Institute for Bird Populations, California List of field guides to birds, from the International Field Guides database RSPB bird identifier – Interactive identification of all UK birds Are Birds Really Dinosaurs? — University of California Museum of Paleontology. Animal classes Dinosaurs Extant Late Cretaceous first appearances Feathered dinosaurs Santonian first appearances Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus

Bromeliales is an order of flowering plants. Such an order has been recognized by a few systems of plant taxonomy, with a various placement. It appears that it always has had the same circumscription: consisting only of the family Bromeliaceae, the bromeliad or pineapple family. The order is not recognized in the APG II system, of 2003, which places the plants involved in the order Poales. Some examples are: The Cronquist system of 1981 placed this order in subclass Zingiberidae, of class Liliopsida [=monocotyledons]. The Thorne system (1992) placed the order in superorder Commelinanae in subclass Liliidae [=monocotyledons]. The Dahlgren system placed the order in superorder Bromeliiflorae (also known as Bromelianae) in subclass Liliidae [=monocotyledons] together with five other orders. The Engler system, in its update of 1964, placed the order in class Monocotyledoneae. References ITIS 42329 Historically recognized angiosperm orders

A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an aircraft occurred in the Italo-Turkish War, with the first major deployments coming in the First World War and Second World War by all major airforces causing devastating damage to cities, towns, and rural areas. The first purpose built bombers were the Italian Caproni Ca 30 and British Bristol T.B.8, both of 1913. Some bombers were decorated with nose art or victory markings. There are two major classifications of bomber: strategic and tactical. Strategic bombing is done by heavy bombers primarily designed for long-range bombing missions against strategic targets to diminish the enemy's ability to wage war by limiting access to resources through crippling infrastructure or reducing industrial output. Tactical bombing is aimed at countering enemy military activity and in supporting offensive operations, and is typically assigned to smaller aircraft operating at shorter ranges, typically near the troops on the ground or against enemy shipping. During WWII with engine power as a major limitation, combined with the desire for accuracy and other operational factors, bomber designs tended to be tailored to specific roles. Early in the Cold War however, bombers were the only means of carrying nuclear weapons to enemy targets, and held the role of deterrence. With the advent of guided air-to-air missiles, bombers needed to avoid interception. High-speed and high-altitude flying became a means of evading detection and attack. With the advent of ICBMs the role of the bomber was brought to a more tactical focus in close air support roles, and a focus on stealth technology for strategic bombers. Classification Strategic Strategic bombing is done by heavy bombers primarily designed for long-range bombing missions against strategic targets such as supply bases, bridges, factories, shipyards, and cities themselves, to diminish the enemy's ability to wage war by limiting access to resources through crippling infrastructure or reducing industrial output. Current examples include the strategic nuclear-armed bombers: B-2 Spirit, B-52 Stratofortress, Tupolev Tu-95 'Bear', Tupolev Tu-22M 'Backfire' and Tupolev Tu-160 "Blackjack"; historically notable examples are the: Gotha G.IV, Avro Lancaster, Heinkel He 111, Junkers Ju 88, Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, Consolidated B-24 Liberator, Boeing B-29 Superfortress, and Tupolev Tu-16 'Badger'. Tactical Tactical bombing, aimed at countering enemy military activity and in supporting offensive operations, is typically assigned to smaller aircraft operating at shorter ranges, typically near the troops on the ground or against enemy shipping. This role is filled by tactical bomber class, which crosses and blurs with various other aircraft categories: light bombers, medium bombers, dive bombers, interdictors, fighter-bombers, attack aircraft, multirole combat aircraft, and others. Current examples: Xian JH-7, Dassault-Breguet Mirage 2000D, and the Panavia Tornado IDS Historical examples: Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik, Junkers Ju 87 Stuka, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, Hawker Typhoon and Mikoyan MiG-27. History The first use of an air-dropped bomb (actually four hand grenades specially manufactured by the Italian naval arsenal) was carried out by Italian Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti on 1 November 1911 during the Italo-Turkish war in Libya – although his plane was not designed for the task of bombing, and his improvised attacks on Ottoman positions had little impact. These picric acid-filled steel spheres were nicknamed "ballerinas" from the fluttering fabric ribbons attached. Early bombers On 16 October 1912, observer Prodan Tarakchiev dropped two of those bombs on the Turkish railway station of Karağaç (near the besieged Edirne) from an Albatros F.2 aircraft piloted by Radul Milkov, for the first time in this campaign. This is deemed to be the first use of an aircraft as a bomber. The first heavier-than-air aircraft purposely designed for bombing were the Italian Caproni Ca 30 and British Bristol T.B.8, both of 1913. The Bristol T.B.8 was an early British single engined biplane built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company. They were fitted with a prismatic Bombsight in the front cockpit and a cylindrical bomb carrier in the lower forward fuselage capable of carrying twelve 10 lb (4.5 kg) bombs, which could be dropped singly or as a salvo as required. The aircraft was purchased for use both by the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), and three T.B.8s, that were being displayed in Paris during December 1913 fitted with bombing equipment, were sent to France following the outbreak of war. Under the command of Charles Rumney Samson, a bombing attack on German gun batteries at Middelkerke, Belgium was executed on 25 November 1914. The dirigible, or airship, was developed in the early 20th century. Early airships were prone to disaster, but slowly the airship became more dependable, with a more rigid structure and stronger skin. Prior to the outbreak of war, Zeppelins, a larger and more streamlined form of airship designed by German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, were outfitted to carry bombs to attack targets at long range. These were the first long range, strategic bombers. Although the German air arm was strong, with a total of 123 airships by the end of the war, they were vulnerable to attack and engine failure, as well as navigational issues. German airships inflicted little damage on all 51 raids, with 557 Britons killed and 1,358 injured. The German Navy lost 53 of its 73 airships, and the German Army lost 26 of its 50 ships. The Caproni Ca 30 was built by Gianni Caproni in Italy. It was a twin-boom biplane with three 67 kW (80 hp) Gnome rotary engines and first flew in October 1914. Test flights revealed power to be insufficient and the engine layout unworkable, and Caproni soon adopted a more conventional approach installing three 81 kW (110 hp) Fiat A.10s. The improved design was bought by the Italian Army and it was delivered in quantity from August 1915. While mainly used as a trainer, Avro 504s were also briefly used as bombers at the start of the First World War by the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) when they were used for raids on the German airship sheds. Strategic bombing Bombing raids and interdiction operations were mainly carried out by French and British forces during the War as the German air arm was forced to concentrate its resources on a defensive strategy. Notably, bombing campaigns formed a part of the British offensive at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915, with Royal Flying Corps squadrons attacking German railway stations in an attempt to hinder the logistical supply of the German army. The early, improvised attempts at bombing that characterized the early part of the war slowly gave way to a more organized and systematic approach to strategic and tactical bombing, pioneered by various air power strategists of the Entente, especially Major Hugh Trenchard; he was the first to advocate that there should be "... sustained [strategic bombing] attacks with a view to interrupting the enemy's railway communications ... in conjunction with the main operations of the Allied Armies." When the war started, bombing was very crude (hand-held bombs were thrown over the side) yet by the end of the war long-range bombers equipped with complex mechanical bombing computers were being built, designed to carry large loads to destroy enemy industrial targets. The most important bombers used in World War I were the French Breguet 14, British de Havilland DH-4, German Albatros C.III and Russian Sikorsky Ilya Muromets. The Russian Sikorsky Ilya Muromets, was the first four-engine bomber to equip a dedicated strategic bombing unit during World War I. This heavy bomber was unrivaled in the early stages of the war, as the Central Powers had no comparable aircraft until much later. Long range bombing raids were carried out at night by multi-engine biplanes such as the Gotha G.IV (whose name was synonymous with all multi-engine German bombers) and later the Handley Page Type O; the majority of bombing was done by single-engined biplanes with one or two crew members flying short distances to attack enemy lines and immediate hinterland. As the effectiveness of a bomber was dependent on the weight and accuracy of its bomb load, ever larger bombers were developed starting in World War I, while considerable money was spent developing suitable bombsights. World War II With engine power as a major limitation, combined with the desire for accuracy and other operational factors, bomber designs tended to be tailored to specific roles. By the start of the war this included: dive bomber – specially strengthened for vertical diving attacks for greater accuracy light bomber, medium bomber and heavy bomber – subjective definitions based on size torpedo bomber – specialized aircraft armed with torpedoes ground attack aircraft – aircraft used against targets on a battlefield such as troop or tank concentrations night bomber – specially equipped to operate at night when opposing defences are limited maritime patrol – long range bombers that were used against enemy shipping, particularly submarines fighter-bomber – a modified fighter aircraft used as a light bomber Bombers are not intended to attack other aircraft although most were fitted with defensive weapons. World War II saw the beginning of the widespread use of high speed bombers which dispensed with defensive weapons to be able to attain higher speed, such as with the de Havilland Mosquito, a philosophy that continued with many Cold War bombers. Some smaller designs have been used as the basis for night fighters, and a number of fighters, such as the Hawker Hurricane were used as ground attack aircraft, replacing earlier conventional light bombers that proved unable to defend themselves while carrying a useful bomb load. Cold War left|thumb|An RAF Avro Vulcan At the start of the Cold War, bombers were the only means of carrying nuclear weapons to enemy targets, and had the role of deterrence. With the advent of guided air-to-air missiles, bombers needed to avoid interception. High-speed and high-altitude flying became a means of evading detection and attack. Designs such as the English Electric Canberra could fly faster or higher than contemporary fighters. When surface-to-air missiles became capable of hitting high-flying bombers, bombers were flown at low altitudes to evade radar detection and interception. Once "stand off" nuclear weapon designs were developed, bombers did not need to pass over the target to make an attack; they could fire and turn away to escape the blast. Nuclear strike aircraft were generally finished in bare metal or anti-flash white to minimize absorption of thermal radiation from the flash of a nuclear explosion. The need to drop conventional bombs remained in conflicts with non-nuclear powers, such as the Vietnam War or Malayan Emergency. The development of large strategic bombers stagnated in the later part of the Cold War because of spiraling costs and the development of the Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) – which was felt to have similar deterrent value while being impossible to intercept. Because of this, the United States Air Force XB-70 Valkyrie program was cancelled in the early 1960s; the later B-1B Lancer and B-2 Spirit aircraft entered service only after protracted political and development problems. Their high cost meant that few were built and the 1950s-designed B-52s are projected to remain in use until the 2040s. Similarly, the Soviet Union used the intermediate-range Tu-22M 'Backfire' in the 1970s, but their Mach 3 bomber project stalled. The Mach 2 Tu-160 'Blackjack' was built only in tiny numbers, leaving the 1950s Tupolev Tu-16 and Tu-95 'Bear' heavy bombers to continue being used into the 21st century. The British strategic bombing force largely came to an end when the V bomber force was phased out; the last of which left service in 1983. The French Mirage IV bomber version was retired in 1996, although the Mirage 2000N and the Rafale have taken on this role. The only other nation that fields strategic bombing forces is China, which has a number of Xian H-6s. Modern era Currently, only the United States Air Force, the Russian Aerospace Forces' Long-Range Aviation command, and China's People's Liberation Army Air Force operate strategic heavy bombers. Other air forces have transitioned away from dedicated bombers in favor of multirole combat aircraft. At present, these air forces are each developing stealth replacements for their legacy bomber fleets, the USAF with the Northrop Grumman B-21, the Russian Aerospace Forces with the PAK DA, and the PLAAF with the Xian H-20. , the B-21 is expected to enter service by 2026–2027. The B-21 would be capable of loitering near target areas for extended periods of time. Other uses Occasionally, military aircraft have been used to bomb ice jams with limited success as part of an effort to clear them. In 2018, the Swedish Air Force dropped bombs on a forest fire, snuffing out flames with the aid of the blast waves. The fires had been raging in an area contaminated with unexploded ordnance, rendering them difficult to extinguish for firefighters. See also Aerial bombing of cities Air interdiction Assembly ship Carpet bombing Fighter aircraft List of bomber aircraft Offensive counter air Strategic bomber References External links

Belize () is a Caribbean country on the northeastern coast of Central America. It borders Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It has an area of and a population of 419,199 (2020). Its mainland is about long and wide. It has the lowest population and population density in Central America. Its population growth rate of 1.87% per year (2018 estimate) is the second-highest in the region and one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Its capital is Belmopan, and its largest city is Belize City. The Maya civilization spread into the area of Belize between 1500 BC and AD 300 and flourished until about 1200. European contact began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus sailed along the Gulf of Honduras. European exploration was begun by English settlers in 1638. Spain and Britain both laid claim to the land until Britain defeated the Spanish in the Battle of St. George's Caye (1798). In 1840 it became a British colony known as British Honduras, and a Crown colony in 1862. It achieved its idependence from the United Kingdom on 21 September 1981. Belize has a diverse society that is composed of many cultures and languages that reflect its rich history. It is the only Central American country where English is the official language, while Belizean Creole is the most widely spoken dialect. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language, followed by Mayan languages, German dialects, and Garifuna. Over half the population is multilingual, due to the diverse linguistic backgrounds of the population. It is known for its September Celebrations, its extensive barrier reef coral reefs, and punta music. Belize's abundance of terrestrial and marine species and its diversity of ecosystems give it a key place in the globally significant Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. It is considered a Central American and Caribbean nation with strong ties to both the American and Caribbean regions. It is a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), and the Central American Integration System (SICA), the only country to hold full membership in all three regional organizations. It is the only mainland Central American country which is a Commonwealth realm, with Queen Elizabeth II as its monarch and head of state, represented by a Governor General (currently, Froyla Tzalam). It is considered a tax haven. Etymology The earliest known record of the name "Belize" appears in the journal of the Dominican priest Fray José Delgado, dating to 1677. Delgado recorded the names of three major rivers that he crossed while travelling north along the Caribbean coast: Rio Soyte, Rio Kibum, and Rio Balis. The names of these waterways, which correspond to the Sittee River, Sibun River, and Belize River, were provided to Delgado by his translator. It has been proposed that Delgado's "Balis" was actually the Mayan word belix (or belize), meaning "muddy-watered". More recently, it has been proposed that the name comes from the Mayan phrase "bel Itza", meaning "the road to Itza". In the 1820s, the Creole elite of Belize invented the legend that the toponym Belize derived from the Spanish pronunciation of the name of a Scottish buccaneer, Peter Wallace, who established a settlement at the mouth of the Belize River in 1638. There is no proof that buccaneers settled in this area and the very existence of Wallace is considered a myth. Writers and historians have suggested several other possible etymologies, including postulated French and African origins. History Early history The Maya Civilization emerged at least three millennia ago in the lowland area of the Yucatán Peninsula and the highlands to the south, in the area of present-day southeastern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and western Honduras. Many aspects of this culture persist in the area, despite nearly 500 years of European domination. Prior to about 2500 BC, some hunting and foraging bands settled in small farming villages; they domesticated crops such as corn, beans, squash, and chili peppers. A profusion of languages and subcultures developed within the Maya core culture. Between about 2500 BC and 250 AD, the basic institutions of Maya civilization emerged. Maya civilization The Maya civilization spread across the territory of present-day Belize around 1500BC and flourished there until about AD900. The recorded history of the middle and southern regions focuses on Caracol, an urban political centre that may have supported over 140,000 people. North of the Maya Mountains, the most important political centre was Lamanai. In the late Classic Era of Maya civilization (600–1000AD), an estimated 400,000 to 1,000,000 people inhabited the area of present-day Belize. When Spanish explorers arrived in the 16th century, the area of present-day Belize included three distinct Maya territories: Chetumal province, which encompassed the area around Corozal Bay Dzuluinicob province, which encompassed the area between the New River and the Sibun River, west to Tipu a southern territory controlled by the Manche Ch'ol Maya, encompassing the area between the Monkey River and the Sarstoon River. Early colonial period (1506–1862) Spanish conquistadors explored the land and declared it part of the Spanish Empire, but they failed to settle the territory because of its lack of resources and the hostile tribes of the Yucatán. English pirates sporadically visited the coast of what is now Belize, seeking a sheltered region from which they could attack Spanish ships (see English settlement in Belize) and cut logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum) trees. The first British permanent settlement was founded around 1716 in what became the Belize District, and during the 18th century, established a system using enslaved Africans to cut logwood trees. This yielded a valuable fixing agent for clothing dyes, and was one of the first ways to achieve a fast black before the advent of artificial dyes. The Spanish granted the British settlers the right to occupy the area and cut logwood in exchange for their help suppressing piracy. The British first appointed a superintendent over the Belize area in 1786. Before then the British government had not recognized the settlement as a colony for fear of provoking a Spanish attack. The delay in government oversight allowed the settlers to establish their own laws and forms of government. During this period, a few successful settlers gained control of the local legislature, known as the Public Meeting, as well as of most of the settlement's land and timber. Throughout the 18th century, the Spanish attacked Belize every time war broke out with Britain. The Battle of St. George's Caye was the last of such military engagements, in 1798, between a Spanish fleet and a small force of Baymen and their slaves. From 3 to 5 September, the Spaniards tried to force their way through Montego Caye shoal, but were blocked by defenders. Spain's last attempt occurred on 10 September, when the Baymen repelled the Spanish fleet in a short engagement with no known casualties on either side. The anniversary of the battle has been declared a national holiday in Belize and is celebrated to commemorate the "first Belizeans" and the defence of their territory. As part of the British Empire (1862–1981) In the early 19th century, the British sought to reform the settlers, threatening to suspend the Public Meeting unless it observed the government's instructions to eliminate slavery outright. After a generation of wrangling, slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833. As a result of their enslaved Africans' abilities in the work of mahogany extraction, owners in British Honduras were compensated at £53.69 per enslaved African on average, the highest amount paid in any British territory. (This was a form of reparation that was not given to the enslaved Africans at the time, nor since.) However, the end of slavery did little to change the formerly enslaved Africans' working conditions if they stayed at their trade. A series of institutions restricted the ability of emancipated African individuals to buy land, in a debt-peonage system. Former "extra special" mahogany or logwood cutters undergirded the early ascription of the capacities (and consequently the limitations) of people of African descent in the colony. Because a small elite controlled the settlement's land and commerce, formerly enslaved Africans had little choice but to continue to work in timber cutting. In 1836, after the emancipation of Central America from Spanish rule, the British claimed the right to administer the region. In 1862, the United Kingdom formally declared it a British Crown Colony, subordinate to Jamaica, and named it British Honduras. Since 1854, the richest inhabitants elected an assembly of notables by censal vote, which was replaced by a legislative council appointed by the British monarchy. As a colony, Belize began to attract British investors. Among the British firms that dominated the colony in the late 19th century was the Belize Estate and Produce Company, which eventually acquired half of all privately held land and eventually eliminated peonage. Belize Estate's influence accounts in part for the colony's reliance on the mahogany trade throughout the rest of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The Great Depression of the 1930s caused a near-collapse of the colony's economy as British demand for timber plummeted. The effects of widespread unemployment were worsened by a devastating hurricane that struck the colony in 1931. Perceptions of the government's relief effort as inadequate were aggravated by its refusal to legalize labour unions or introduce a minimum wage. Economic conditions improved during World War II, as many Belizean men entered the armed forces or otherwise contributed to the war effort. Following the war, the colony's economy stagnated. Britain's decision to devalue the British Honduras dollar in 1949 worsened economic conditions and led to the creation of the People's Committee, which demanded independence. The People's Committee's successor, the People's United Party (PUP), sought constitutional reforms that expanded voting rights to all adults. The first election under universal suffrage was held in 1954 and was decisively won by the PUP, beginning a three-decade period in which the PUP dominated the country's politics. Pro-independence activist George Cadle Price became PUP's leader in 1956 and the effective head of government in 1961, a post he would hold under various titles until 1984. Under a new constitution, Britain granted British Honduras self-government in 1964. On 1 June 1973, British Honduras was officially renamed Belize. Progress toward independence, however, was hampered by a Guatemalan claim to sovereignty over Belizean territory. Independent Belize (since 1981) Belize was granted independence on 21 September 1981. Guatemala refused to recognize the new nation because of its longstanding territorial dispute with the British colony, claiming that Belize belonged to Guatemala. About 1,500 British troops remained in Belize to deter any possible incursions. With Price at the helm, the PUP won all national elections until 1984. In that election, the first national election after independence, the PUP was defeated by the United Democratic Party (UDP). UDP leader Manuel Esquivel replaced Price as prime minister, with Price himself unexpectedly losing his own House seat to a UDP challenger. The PUP under Price returned to power after elections in 1989. The following year the United Kingdom announced that it would end its military involvement in Belize, and the RAF Harrier detachment was withdrawn the same year, having remained stationed in the country continuously since its deployment had become permanent there in 1980. British soldiers were withdrawn in 1994, but the United Kingdom left behind a military training unit to assist with the newly created Belize Defence Force. The UDP regained power in the 1993 national election, and Esquivel became prime minister for a second time. Soon afterwards, Esquivel announced the suspension of a pact reached with Guatemala during Price's tenure, claiming Price had made too many concessions to gain Guatemalan recognition. The pact may have curtailed the 130-year-old border dispute between the two countries. Border tensions continued into the early 2000s, although the two countries cooperated in other areas. In 1996, the Belize Barrier Reef, one of the Western Hemipsphere's most pristine ecosystems, was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The PUP won a landslide victory in the 1998 national elections, and PUP leader Said Musa was sworn in as prime minister. In the 2003 elections the PUP maintained its majority, and Musa continued as prime minister. He pledged to improve conditions in the underdeveloped and largely inaccessible southern part of Belize. In 2005, Belize was the site of unrest caused by discontent with the PUP government, including tax increases in the national budget. On 8 February 2008, Dean Barrow was sworn in as prime minister after his UDP won a landslide victory in general elections. Barrow and the UDP were re-elected in 2012 with a considerably smaller majority. Barrow led the UDP to a third consecutive general election victory in November 2015, increasing the party's number of seats from 17 to 19. However, he stated the election would be his last as party leader and preparations are under way for the party to elect his successor. On 11 November 2020, the People's United Party (PUP), led by Johnny Briceño, defeated the United Democratic Party (UDP) for the first time since 2003, having won 26 seats out of 31 to form the new government of Belize. Briceño took office as Prime Minister on 12 November. Government and politics Belize is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. The structure of government is based on the British parliamentary system, and the legal system is modelled on the common law of England. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title Queen of Belize. The Queen lives in the United Kingdom, and is represented in Belize by the governor-general. Executive authority is exercised by the cabinet, which advises the governor-general and is led by the Prime Minister of Belize, who is head of government. Cabinet ministers are members of the majority political party in parliament and usually hold elected seats within it concurrent with their cabinet positions. The bicameral National Assembly of Belize comprises a House of Representatives and a Senate. The 31 members of the House are popularly elected to a maximum five-year term and introduce legislation affecting the development of Belize. The governor-general appoints the 12 members of the Senate, with a Senate president selected by the members. The Senate is responsible for debating and approving bills passed by the House. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Parliament of Belize. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, press, worship, movement, and association. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Members of the independent judiciary are appointed. The judicial system includes local magistrates grouped under the Magistrates' Court, which hears less serious cases. The Supreme Court (chief justice) hears murder and similarly serious cases, and the Court of Appeal hears appeals from convicted individuals seeking to have their sentences overturned. Defendants may, under certain circumstances, appeal their cases to the Caribbean Court of Justice. Political culture In 1935, elections were reinstated, but only 1.8 percent of the population was eligible to vote. In 1954, women were granted the right to vote. Since 1974, the party system in Belize has been dominated by the centre-left People's United Party and the centre-right United Democratic Party, although other small parties took part in all levels of elections in the past. Though none of these small political parties has ever won any significant number of seats or offices, their challenge has been growing over the years. Foreign relations Belize is a full participating member of the United Nations; the Commonwealth of Nations; the Organization of American States (OAS); the Central American Integration System (SICA); the Caribbean Community (CARICOM); the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME); the Association of Caribbean States (ACS); and the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), which currently serves as a final court of appeal for only Barbados, Belize, and Guyana. In 2001 the Caribbean Community heads of government voted on a measure declaring that the region should work towards replacing the UK's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as final court of appeal with the Caribbean Court of Justice. It is still in the process of acceding to CARICOM treaties including the trade and single market treaties. Belize is an original member (1995) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and participates actively in its work. The pact involves the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM) subgroup of the Group of African, Caribbean, and Pacific states (ACP). CARIFORUM presently the only part of the wider ACP-bloc that has concluded the full regional trade-pact with the European Union. The British Army Garrison in Belize is used primarily for jungle warfare training, with access to over of jungle terrain. Belize is a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Armed forces The Belize Defence Force (BDF) serves as the country's military and is responsible for protecting the sovereignty of Belize. The BDF, with the Belize National Coast Guard and the Immigration Department, is a department of the Ministry of Defence and Immigration. In 1997 the regular army numbered over 900, the reserve army 381, the air wing 45 and the maritime wing 36, amounting to an overall strength of approximately 1,400. In 2005, the maritime wing became part of the Belizean Coast Guard. In 2012, the Belizean government spent about $17 million on the military, constituting 1.08% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). After Belize achieved independence in 1981 the United Kingdom maintained a deterrent force (British Forces Belize) in the country to protect it from invasion by Guatemala (see Guatemalan claim to Belizean territory). During the 1980s this included a battalion and No. 1417 Flight RAF of Harriers. The main British force left in 1994, three years after Guatemala recognized Belizean independence, but the United Kingdom maintained a training presence via the British Army Training and Support Unit Belize (BATSUB) and 25 Flight AAC until 2011 when the last British Forces left Ladyville Barracks, with the exception of seconded advisers. Administrative divisions Belize is divided into six districts. These districts are further divided into 31 constituencies. Local government in Belize comprises four types of local authorities: city councils, town councils, village councils and community councils. The two city councils (Belize City and Belmopan) and seven town councils cover the urban population of the country, while village and community councils cover the rural population. Guatemalan territorial dispute Throughout Belize's history, Guatemala has claimed sovereignty over all or part of Belizean territory. This claim is occasionally reflected in maps drawn by Guatemala's government, showing Belize as Guatemala's twenty-third department. The Guatemalan territorial claim involves approximately 53% of Belize's mainland, which includes significant portions of four districts: Belize, Cayo, Stann Creek, and Toledo. Roughly 43% of the country's population (≈154,949 Belizeans) reside in this region. , the border dispute with Guatemala remains unresolved and contentious. Guatemala's claim to Belizean territory rests, in part, on Clause VII of the Anglo-Guatemalan Treaty of 1859, which obligated the British to build a road between Belize City and Guatemala. At various times, the issue has required mediation by the United Kingdom, Caribbean Community heads of government, the Organization of American States (OAS), Mexico, and the United States. However, on 15 April 2018, Guatemala's government held a referendum to determine if the country should take its territorial claim on Belize to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to settle the long-standing issue. Guatemalans voted 95% yes on the matter. A similar referendum was to be held in Belize on 10 April 2019, but a court ruling led to its postponement. The referendum was held on 8 May 2019, and 55.4% of voters opted to send the matter to the ICJ. Both countries submitted requests to the ICJ (in 2018 and 2019, respectively) and the ICJ ordered Guatemala's initial brief be submitted by December 2020 and Belize's response by 2022. Indigenous land claims Belize backed the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, which established legal land rights to indigenous groups. Other court cases have affirmed these rights like the Supreme Court of Belize's 2013 decision to uphold its ruling in 2010 that acknowledges customary land titles as communal land for indigenous peoples. Another such case is the Caribbean Court of Justice's (CCJ) 2015 order on the Belizean government, which stipulated that the country develop a land registry to classify and exercise traditional governance over Mayan lands. Despite these rulings, Belize has made little progress to support the land rights of indigenous communities; for instance, in the two years since the CCJ's decision, Belize's government has failed to launch the Mayan land registry, prompting the group to take action into its own hands. The exact ramifications of these cases need to be examined. , Belize still struggles to recognize indigenous populations and their respective rights. According to the 50-page voluntary national report Belize created on its progress toward the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, indigenous groups are not factored into the country's indicators whatsoever. In fact, the groups 'Creole' and 'Garinagu' are not included in the document, and 'Maya' and 'Mestizo' only occur once throughout the entirety of the report. it is yet to be seen if the Belizean government will highlight the consequences of the territorial claim on indigenous land rights prior to the referendum vote in 2019. Geography Belize is on the Caribbean coast of northern Central America. It shares a border on the north with the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, on the west with the Guatemalan department of Petén, and on the south with the Guatemalan department of Izabal. To the east in the Caribbean Sea, the second-longest barrier reef in the world flanks much of the of predominantly marshy coastline. The area of the country totals , an area slightly larger than El Salvador, Israel, New Jersey, or Wales. The many lagoons along the coasts and in the northern interior reduces the actual land area to . It is the only Central American country with no Pacific coastline. Belize is shaped like a rectangle that extends about north-south and about east-west, with a total land boundary length of . The undulating courses of two rivers, the Hondo and the Sarstoon River, define much of the course of the country's northern and southern boundaries. The western border follows no natural features and runs north–south through lowland forest and highland plateau. The north of Belize consists mostly of flat, swampy coastal plains, in places heavily forested. The flora is highly diverse considering the small geographical area. The south contains the low mountain range of the Maya Mountains. The highest point in Belize is Doyle's Delight at . Belize's rugged geography has also made the country's coastline and jungle attractive to drug smugglers, who use the country as a gateway into Mexico. In 2011, the United States added Belize to the list of nations considered major drug producers or transit countries for narcotics. Environment preservation and biodiversity Belize has a rich variety of wildlife because of its unique position between North and South America and a wide range of climates and habitats for plant and animal life. Belize's low human population and approximately of undistributed land make for an ideal home for the more than 5,000 species of plants and hundreds of species of animals, including armadillos, snakes, and monkeys. The Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary is a nature reserve in south-central Belize established to protect the forests, fauna, and watersheds of an approximately area of the eastern slopes of the Maya Mountains. The reserve was founded in 1990 as the first wilderness sanctuary for the jaguar and is regarded by one author as the premier site for jaguar preservation in the world. Vegetation and flora While over 60% of Belize's land surface is covered by forest, some 20% of the country's land is covered by cultivated land (agriculture) and human settlements. Belize had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.15/10, ranking it 85th globally out of 172 countries. F Savanna, scrubland and wetland constitute the remainder of Belize's land cover. Important mangrove ecosystems are also represented across Belize's landscape. Four terrestrial ecoregions lie within the country's borders – the Petén–Veracruz moist forests, Belizian pine forests, Belizean Coast mangroves, and Belizean Reef mangroves. As a part of the globally significant Mesoamerican Biological Corridor that stretches from southern Mexico to Panama, Belize's biodiversity – both marine and terrestrial – is rich, with abundant flora and fauna. Belize is also a leader in protecting biodiversity and natural resources. According to the World Database on Protected Areas, 37% of Belize's land territory falls under some form of official protection, giving Belize one of the most extensive systems of terrestrial protected areas in the Americas. By contrast, Costa Rica only has 27% of its land territory protected. Around 13.6% of Belize's territorial waters, which contain the Belize Barrier Reef, are also protected. The Belize Barrier Reef is a UNESCO-recognized World Heritage Site and is the second-largest barrier reef in the world, behind Australia's Great Barrier Reef. A remote sensing study conducted by the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC) and NASA, in collaboration with the Forest Department and the Land Information Centre (LIC) of the government of Belize's Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MNRE), and published in August 2010 revealed that Belize's forest cover in early 2010 was approximately 62.7%, down from 75.9% in late 1980. A similar study by Belize Tropical Forest Studies and Conservation International revealed similar trends in terms of Belize's forest cover. Both studies indicate that each year, 0.6% of Belize's forest cover is lost, translating to the clearing of an average of each year. The USAID-supported SERVIR study by CATHALAC, NASA, and the MNRE also showed that Belize's protected areas have been extremely effective in protecting the country's forests. While only some 6.4% of forests inside of legally declared protected areas were cleared between 1980 and 2010, over a quarter of forests outside of protected areas were lost between 1980 and 2010. As a country with a relatively high forest cover and a low deforestation rate, Belize has significant potential for participation in initiatives such as REDD. Significantly, the SERVIR study on Belize's deforestation was also recognized by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), of which Belize is a member nation. Natural resources and energy Belize is known to have a number of economically important minerals, but none in quantities large enough to warrant mining. These minerals include dolomite, barite (source of barium), bauxite (source of aluminium), cassiterite (source of tin), and gold. In 1990 limestone, used in road construction, was the only mineral resource exploited for domestic or export use. In 2006, the cultivation of newly discovered crude oil in the town of Spanish Lookout has presented new prospects and problems for this developing nation. Access to biocapacity in Belize is much higher than world average. In 2016, Belize had 3.8 global hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, much more than the world average of 1.6 global hectares per person. In 2016 Belize used 5.4 global hectares of biocapacity per person – their ecological footprint of consumption. This means they use more biocapacity than Belize contains. As a result, Belize is running a biocapacity deficit. Belize Barrier Reef The Belize Barrier Reef is a series of coral reefs straddling the coast of Belize, roughly offshore in the north and in the south within the country limits. The Belize Barrier Reef is a section of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, which is continuous from Cancún on the northeast tip of the Yucatán Peninsula through the Riviera Maya up to Honduras making it one of the largest coral reef systems in the world. It is the top tourist destination in Belize, popular for scuba diving and snorkelling, and attracting almost half of its 260,000 visitors. It is also vital to its fishing industry. In 1842 Charles Darwin described it as "the most remarkable reef in the West Indies". The Belize Barrier Reef was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996 due to its vulnerability and the fact that it contains important natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biodiversity. Species The Belize Barrier Reef is home to a large diversity of plants and animals, and is one of the most diverse ecosystems of the world: 70 hard coral species 36 soft coral species 500 species of fish hundreds of invertebrate species With 90% of the reef still to be researched, some estimate that only 10% of all species have been discovered. Conservation Belize became the first country in the world to completely ban bottom trawling in December 2010. In December 2015, Belize banned offshore oil drilling within of the Barrier Reef and all of its seven World Heritage Sites. Despite these protective measures, the reef remains under threat from oceanic pollution as well as uncontrolled tourism, shipping, and fishing. Other threats include hurricanes, along with global warming and the resulting increase in ocean temperatures, which causes coral bleaching. It is claimed by scientists that over 40% of Belize's coral reef has been damaged since 1998. Climate Belize has a tropical climate with pronounced wet and dry seasons, although there are significant variations in weather patterns by region. Temperatures vary according to elevation, proximity to the coast, and the moderating effects of the northeast trade winds off the Caribbean. Average temperatures in the coastal regions range from in January to in July. Temperatures are slightly higher inland, except for the southern highland plateaus, such as the Mountain Pine Ridge, where it is noticeably cooler year round. Overall, the seasons are marked more by differences in humidity and rainfall than in temperature. Average rainfall varies considerably, from in the north and west to over in the extreme south. Seasonal differences in rainfall are greatest in the northern and central regions of the country where, between January and April or May, less than of rainfall per month. The dry season is shorter in the south, normally only lasting from February to April. A shorter, less rainy period, known locally as the "little dry", usually occurs in late July or August, after the onset of the rainy season. Hurricanes have played key—and devastating—roles in Belizean history. In 1931, an unnamed hurricane destroyed over two-thirds of the buildings in Belize City and killed more than 1,000 people. In 1955, Hurricane Janet levelled the northern town of Corozal. Only six years later, Hurricane Hattie struck the central coastal area of the country, with winds in excess of and storm tides. The devastation of Belize City for the second time in thirty years prompted the relocation of the capital some inland to the planned city of Belmopan. In 1978, Hurricane Greta caused more than US$25 million in damages along the southern coast. In 2000, Hurricane Keith, the wettest tropical cyclone in the nation's record, stalled, and hit the nation as a Category 4 storm on 1 October, causing 19 deaths and at least $280 million in damage. Soon after, on 9 October 2001, Hurricane Iris made landfall at Monkey River Town as a Category 4 storm. The storm demolished most of the homes in the village, and destroyed the banana crop. In 2007, Hurricane Dean made landfall as a Category 5 storm only north of the Belize–Mexico border. Dean caused extensive damage in northern Belize. In 2010, Belize was directly affected by the Category 2 Hurricane Richard, which made landfall approximately south-southeast of Belize City at around 00:45 UTC on 25 October 2010. The storm moved inland towards Belmopan, causing estimated damage of BZ$33.8 million ($17.4 million 2010 USD), primarily from damage to crops and housing. The most recent hurricane to affect the nation was Hurricane Nana in 2020. Economy Belize has a small, mostly private enterprise economy that is based primarily on agriculture, agro-based industry, and merchandising, with tourism and construction recently assuming greater importance. The country is also a producer of industrial minerals, crude oil, and petroleum. , oil production was . In agriculture, sugar, like in colonial times, remains the chief crop, accounting for nearly half of exports, while the banana industry is the largest employer. In 2007 Belize became the world's third largest exporter of papaya. The government of Belize faces important challenges to economic stability. Rapid action to improve tax collection has been promised, but a lack of progress in reining in spending could bring the exchange rate under pressure. The tourist and construction sectors strengthened in early 1999, leading to a preliminary estimate of revived growth at four percent. Infrastructure remains a major economic development challenge; Belize has the region's most expensive electricity. Trade is important and the major trading partners are the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and CARICOM. Belize has four commercial bank groups, of which the largest and oldest is Belize Bank. The other three banks are Heritage Bank, Atlantic Bank, and Scotiabank (Belize). A robust complex of credit unions began in the 1940s under the leadership of Marion M. Ganey, S.J. Belize is located on the coast of Central America. Based on its location, it is a popular destination for vacations. However, also due to its location, it is currently becoming known in the global arena for attracting many drug trafficking entities in North America. The Belize currency is pegged to the U.S. dollar. This entices drug traffickers and money launderers who want to utilize the banking system. In addition, banks in Belize offer non-residents the ability to establish accounts. Because of this, many drug traffickers and money launderers utilize banks in Belize. As a result, the United States Department of State has recently named Belize one of the world's "major money laundering countries". Industrial infrastructure The largest integrated electric utility and the principal distributor in Belize is Belize Electricity Limited. BEL was approximately 70% owned by Fortis Inc., a Canadian investor-owned distribution utility. Fortis took over the management of BEL in 1999, at the invitation of the government of Belize in an attempt to mitigate prior financial problems with the locally managed utility. In addition to its regulated investment in BEL, Fortis owns Belize Electric Company Limited (BECOL), a non-regulated hydroelectric generation business that operates three hydroelectric generating facilities on the Macal River. On 14 June 2011, the government of Belize nationalized the ownership interest of Fortis Inc. in Belize Electricity Ltd. The utility encountered serious financial problems after the country's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in 2008 "disallowed the recovery of previously incurred fuel and purchased power costs in customer rates and set customer rates at a level that does not allow BEL to earn a fair and reasonable return", Fortis said in a June 2011 statement. BEL appealed this judgement to the Court of Appeal; however, a hearing was not expected until 2012. In May 2011, the Supreme Court of Belize granted BEL's application to prevent the PUC from taking any enforcement actions pending the appeal. The Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry issued a statement saying the government had acted in haste and expressed concern over the message it sent to investors. In August 2009, the government of Belize nationalized Belize Telemedia Limited (BTL), which now competes directly with Speednet. As a result of the nationalization process, the interconnection agreements are again subject to negotiations. Both BTL and Speednet boast a full range of products and services including basic telephone services, national and international calls, prepaid services, cellular services via GSM 1900 megahertz (MHz) and 4G LTE respectively, international cellular roaming, fixed wireless, fibre-to-the-home internet service, and national and international data networks. Tourism A combination of natural factors – climate, the Belize Barrier Reef, over 450 offshore Cays (islands), excellent fishing, safe waters for boating, scuba diving, snorkelling and freediving, numerous rivers for rafting, and kayaking, various jungle and wildlife reserves of fauna and flora, for hiking, bird watching, and helicopter touring, as well as many Maya sites – support the thriving tourism and ecotourism industry. It also has the largest cave system in Central America. Development costs are high, but the government of Belize has made tourism its second development priority after agriculture. In 2012, tourist arrivals totalled 917,869 (with about 584,683 from the United States) and tourist receipts amounted to over $1.3 billion. After COVID-19 struck tourism, Belize became the first country in the Caribbean to allow vaccinated travelers to visit without a COVID-19 test. Transport Demographics Belize's population is estimated to be 419,199 in 2020. Belize's total fertility rate in 2009 was 3.6 children per woman. Its birth rate was 22.9 births/1,000 population (2018 estimate), and the death rate was 4.2 deaths/1,000 population (2018 estimate). A substantial ethnic-demographic shift has been occurring since 1980 when the Creole/Mestizo ratio shifted from 58/38 to currently 26/53, due to many Creoles moving to the US and a rising Mestizo birth rate and migration from El Salvador. Ethnic groups The Maya The Maya are thought to have been in Belize and the Yucatán region since the second millennium BC; however, much of Belize's original Maya population was wiped out by conflicts between constantly warring tribes. There were many who died of disease after contact and invasion by Europeans. Three Maya groups now inhabit the country: The Yucatec (who came from Yucatán, Mexico, to escape the savage Caste War of the 1840s), the Mopan (indigenous to Belize but were forced out to Guatemala by the British for raiding settlements; they returned to Belize to evade enslavement by the Guatemalans in the 19th century), and Q'eqchi' (also fled from slavery in Guatemala in the 19th century). The latter groups are chiefly found in the Toledo District. The Maya speak their native languages and Spanish, and are also fluent in English and Belize Kriol. Creoles Creoles, also known as Kriols, make up roughly 21% of the Belizean population and about 75% of the diaspora. They are descendants of the Baymen slave owners (European/white enslavers), and enslaved Africans brought to Belize for the purpose of the logging industry. These victims of transatlantic human trafficking were ultimately of West and Central African descent (many also of Miskito ancestry from Nicaragua) and born Africans who had spent very brief periods in Jamaica and Bermuda. Bay Islanders and ethnic Jamaicans came in the late 19th century, further adding to these already varied peoples, creating this ethnic group. For all intents and purposes, Creole is an ethnic and linguistic denomination. Some natives, even with blonde hair and blue eyes, may call themselves Creoles. Belize Creole English or Kriol developed during the time of slavery, and historically was only spoken by former enslaved Africans. However, this ethnicity has become an integral part of the Belizean identity, and as a result it is now spoken by about 45% of Belizeans. Belizean Creole is derived mainly from English. Its substrate languages are the Native American language Miskito, and the various West African and Bantu languages, native languages of the enslaved Africans. Creoles are found all over Belize, but predominantly in urban areas such as Belize City, coastal towns and villages, and in the Belize River Valley. Garinagu The Garinagu (singular Garifuna), at around 4.5% of the population, are a mix of West/Central African, Arawak, and Island Carib ancestry. Though they were captives removed from their homelands, these people were never documented as slaves. The two prevailing theories are that, in 1635, they were either the survivors of two recorded shipwrecks or somehow took over the ship they came on. Throughout history they have been incorrectly labelled as Black Caribs. When the British took over Saint Vincent and the Grenadines after the Treaty of Paris in 1763, they were opposed by French settlers and their Garinagu allies. The Garinagu eventually surrendered to the British in 1796. The British separated the more African-looking Garifunas from the more indigenous-looking ones. 5,000 Garinagu were exiled from the Grenadine island of Baliceaux. However, only about 2,500 of them survived the voyage to Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras. The Garifuna language belongs to the Arawakan language family, but has a large number of loanwords from Carib languages and from English. Because Roatán was too small and infertile to support their population, the Garinagu petitioned the Spanish authorities of Honduras to be allowed to settle on the mainland coast. The Spanish employed them as soldiers, and they spread along the Caribbean coast of Central America. The Garinagu settled in Seine Bight, Punta Gorda and Punta Negra, Belize, by way of Honduras as early as 1802. However, in Belize, 19 November 1832 is the date officially recognized as "Garifuna Settlement Day" in Dangriga. According to one genetic study, their ancestry is on average 76% Sub Saharan African, 20% Arawak/Island Carib and 4% European. Mestizos The Mestizo culture are people of mixed Spanish and Maya descent. They originally came to Belize in 1847, to escape the Caste War, which occurred when thousands of Mayas rose against the state in Yucatán and massacred over one-third of the population. The surviving others fled across the borders into British territory. The Mestizos are found everywhere in Belize but most make their homes in the northern districts of Corozal and Orange Walk. Some other mestizos came from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, & Nicaragua. The Mestizos are the largest ethnic group in Belize and make up approximately half of the population. The Mestizo towns centre on a main square, and social life focuses on the Catholic Church built on one side of it. Spanish is the main language of most Mestizos and Spanish descendants, but many speak English and Belize Kriol fluently. Due to the influences of Kriol and English, many Mestizos speak what is known as "Kitchen Spanish". The mixture of Latin and Maya foods like tamales, escabeche, chirmole, relleno, and empanadas came from their Mexican side and corn tortillas were handed down by their Mayan side. Music comes mainly from the marimba, but they also play and sing with the guitar. Dances performed at village fiestas include the Hog-Head, Zapateados, the Mestizada, Paso Doble and many more. German-speaking Mennonites The majority of the Mennonite population comprises so-called Russian Mennonites of German descent who settled in the Russian Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries. Most Russian Mennonites live in Mennonite settlements like Spanish Lookout, Shipyard, Little Belize, and Blue Creek. These Mennonites speak Plautdietsch (a Low German dialect) in everyday life, but use mostly Standard German for reading (the Bible) and writing. The Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites came mostly from Mexico in the years after 1958 and they are trilingual with proficiency in Spanish. There are also some mainly Pennsylvania German-speaking Old Order Mennonites who came from the United States and Canada in the late 1960s. They live primarily in Upper Barton Creek and associated settlements. These Mennonites attracted people from different Anabaptist backgrounds who formed a new community. They look quite similar to Old Order Amish, but are different from them. Other groups The remaining 5% or so of the population consist of a mix of Indians, Chinese, Whites from the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, and many other foreign groups brought to assist the country's development. During the 1860s, a large influx of East Indians who spent brief periods in Jamaica and American Civil War veterans from Louisiana and other Southern states established Confederate settlements in British Honduras and introduced commercial sugar cane production to the colony, establishing 11 settlements in the interior. The 20th century saw the arrival of more Asian settlers from Mainland China, South Korea, India, Syria, and Lebanon. Said Musa, the son of an immigrant from Palestine, was the Prime Minister of Belize from 1998 to 2008. Central American immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua and expatriate Americans and Africans also began to settle in the country. Emigration, immigration, and demographic shifts Creoles and other ethnic groups are emigrating mostly to the United States, but also to the United Kingdom and other developed nations for better opportunities. Based on the latest US Census, the number of Belizeans in the United States is approximately 160,000 (including 70,000 legal residents and naturalized citizens), consisting mainly of Creoles and Garinagu. Because of conflicts in neighbouring Central American nations, Mestizo refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have fled to Belize in significant numbers during the 1980s, and have been significantly adding to this group. These two events have been changing the demographics of the nation for the last 30 years. Languages English is the official language of Belize. This stems from the country being a former British colony. Belize is the only country in Central America with English as the official language. Also, English and Spanish are the primary languages of public education, government and most media outlets. About half of Belizeans regardless of ethnicity speak a mostly English-based creole called Belize Creole (or Kriol in Belize Creole). Although English is widely used, Kriol is spoken in all situations whether informal, formal, social or interethnic dialogue, even in meetings of the House of Representatives. When a Creole language exists alongside its lexifier language, as is the case in Belize, a continuum forms between the Creole and the lexifier language. It is therefore difficult to substantiate or differentiate the number of Belize Creole speakers compared to English speakers. Kriol might best be described as the lingua franca of the nation. Approximately 50% of Belizeans self-identify as Mestizo, Latino, or Hispanic and 50–70% speak Caribbean Spanish as a native language. When Belize was a British colony, Spanish was banned in schools but today it is widely spoken. "Kitchen Spanish" is an intermediate form of Spanish mixed with Belize Creole, spoken in the northern towns such as Corozal and San Pedro. Over half the population is multilingual. Being a small, multiethnic state, surrounded by Spanish-speaking nations, multilingualism is strongly encouraged. Belize is also home to three Maya languages: Q'eqchi', Mopan (an endangered language), and Yucatec Maya. Approximately 16,100 people speak the Arawakan-based Garifuna language, and 6,900 Mennonites in Belize speak mainly Plautdietsch while a minority of Mennonites speak Pennsylvania German. Largest cities Religion According to the 2010 census, 40.1% of Belizeans are Roman Catholics, 31.8% are Protestants (8.4% Pentecostal; 5.4% Adventist; 4.7% Anglican; 3.7% Mennonite; 3.6% Baptist; 2.9% Methodist; 2.8% Nazarene), 1.7% are Jehovah's Witnesses, 10.3% adhere to other religions (Maya religion, Garifuna religion, Obeah and Myalism, and minorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Baháʼís, Rastafarians and other) and 15.5% profess to be irreligious. According to PROLADES, Belize was 64.6% Roman Catholic, 27.8% Protestant, 7.6% Other in 1971. Until the late 1990s, Belize was a Roman Catholic majority country. Catholics formed 57% of the population in 1991, and dropped to 49% in 2000. The percentage of Roman Catholics in the population has been decreasing in the past few decades due to the growth of Protestant churches, other religions and non-religious people. In addition to Catholics, there has always been a large accompanying Protestant minority. It was brought by British, German, and other settlers to the British colony of British Honduras. From the beginning, it was largely Anglican and Mennonite in nature. The Protestant community in Belize experienced a large Pentecostal and Seventh-Day Adventist influx tied to the recent spread of various Evangelical Protestant denominations throughout Latin America. Geographically speaking, German Mennonites live mostly in the rural districts of Cayo and Orange Walk. The Greek Orthodox Church has a presence in Santa Elena. The Association of Religion Data Archives estimates there were 7,776 Baháʼís in Belize in 2005, or 2.5% of the national population. Their estimates suggest this is the highest proportion of Baháʼís in any country. Their data also states that the Baháʼí Faith is the second most common non-Christian religion in Belize, followed by Judaism. Hinduism is followed by most Indian immigrants, however, Sikhs were the first Indian immigrants to Belize (not counting indentured workers), and the former Chief Justice of Belize George Singh was the son of a Sikh immigrant, there was also a Sikh cabinet minister. Muslims claim that there have been Muslims in Belize since the 16th century having been brought over from Africa as slaves, but there are no sources for that claim. The Muslim population of today started in the 1980s. Muslims numbered 243 in 2000 and 577 in 2010 according to the official statistics. and comprise 0.16 percent of the population. A mosque is at the Islamic Mission of Belize (IMB), also known as the Muslim Community of Belize. Another mosque, Masjid Al-Falah, officially opened in 2008 in Belize City. Health Belize has a high prevalence of communicable diseases such as respiratory diseases and intestinal illnesses. Education A number of kindergartens, secondary, and tertiary schools in Belize provide quality education for students—mostly funded by the government. Belize has about a dozen tertiary level institutions, the most prominent of which is the University of Belize, which evolved out of the University College of Belize founded in 1986. Before that St. John's College, founded in 1877, dominated the tertiary education field. The Open Campus of the University of the West Indies has a site in Belize. It also has campuses in Barbados, Trinidad, and Jamaica. The government of Belize contributes financially to the UWI. Education in Belize is compulsory between the ages of 6 and 14 years. , the literacy rate in Belize was estimated at 79.7%, one of the lowest in the Western Hemisphere. The educational policy is currently following the "Education Sector Strategy 2011–2016", which sets three objectives for the years to come: Improving access, quality, and governance of the education system by providing technical and vocational education and training. Crime Belize has relatively high rates of violent crime. The majority of violence in Belize stems from gang activity, which includes trafficking of drugs and persons, protecting drug smuggling routes, and securing territory for drug dealing. In 2019, 102 murders were recorded in Belize, giving the country a homicide rate of 24 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, lower than the neighbouring countries of Mexico and Honduras, but higher than Guatemala and El Salvador. Belize District (containing Belize City) had the most murders by far compared to all the other districts. In 2019, 58% of the murders occurred in the Belize District. The violence in Belize City (especially the southern part of the city) is largely due to gang warfare. In 2015, there were 40 reported cases of rape, 214 robberies, 742 burglaries, and 1027 cases of theft. The Belize Police Department has implemented many protective measures in hopes of decreasing the high number of crimes. These measures include adding more patrols to "hot spots" in the city, obtaining more resources to deal with the predicament, creating the "Do the Right Thing for Youths at Risk" program, creating the Crime Information Hotline, creating the Yabra Citizen Development Committee, an organization that helps youth, and many other initiatives. In 2011, the government established a truce among many major gangs, lowering the murder rate. Social structure Belize's social structure is marked by enduring differences in the distribution of wealth, power, and prestige. Because of the small size of Belize's population and the intimate scale of social relations, the social distance between the rich and the poor, while significant, is nowhere as vast as in other Caribbean and Central American societies, such as Jamaica and El Salvador. Belize lacks the violent class and racial conflict that has figured so prominently in the social life of its Central American neighbours. Political and economic power remain vested in the hands of the local elite. The sizeable middle group is composed of peoples of different ethnic backgrounds. This middle group does not constitute a unified social class, but rather a number of middle-class and working-class groups, loosely oriented around shared dispositions toward education, cultural respectability, and possibilities for upward social mobility. These beliefs, and the social practices they engender, help distinguish the middle group from the grass roots majority of the Belizean people. Women In 2021, the World Economic Forum ranked Belize 90th out of 156 countries in its Global Gender Gap Report. Of all the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Belize ranked fourth from last. Belize ranked high in the categories of "economic participation and opportunity" and "health and survival", but very low in "political empowerment". In 2019, the UN gave Belize a Gender Inequality Index score of 0.415, ranking it 97th out of 162 countries. , 49.9% of women in Belize participate in the workforce, compared to 80.6% of men. 11.1% of the seats in Belize's National Assembly are filled by women. Culture In Belizean folklore, there are the legends of Lang Bobi Suzi, La Llorona, La Sucia, Tata Duende, Anansi, Xtabay, Sisimite and the cadejo. Most of the public holidays in Belize are traditional Commonwealth and Christian holidays, although some are specific to Belizean culture such as Garifuna Settlement Day and Heroes and Benefactors' Day, formerly Baron Bliss Day. In addition, the month of September is considered a special time of national celebration called September Celebrations with a whole month of activities on a special events calendar. Besides Independence Day and St. George's Caye Day, Belizeans also celebrate Carnival during September, which typically includes several events spread across multiple days, with the main event being the Carnival Road March, usually held the Saturday before 10 September. In some areas of Belize, however, Carnival is celebrated at the traditional time before Lent (in February). Cuisine Belizean cuisine is an amalgamation of all ethnicities in the nation, and their respectively wide variety of foods. It might best be described as both similar to Mexican/Central American cuisine and Jamaican/Anglo-Caribbean cuisine but very different from these areas as well, with Belizean touches and innovation which have been handed down by generations. All immigrant communities add to the diversity of Belizean food, including the Indian and Chinese communities. The Belizean diet can be both very modern and traditional. There are no rules. Breakfast typically consists of bread, flour tortillas, or fry jacks (deep fried dough pieces) that are often homemade. Fry jacks are eaten with various cheeses, "fry" beans, various forms of eggs or cereal, along with powdered milk, coffee, or tea. Tacos made from corn or flour tortillas and meat pies can also be consumed for a hearty breakfast from a street vendor. Midday meals are the main meals for Belizeans, usually called "dinner". They vary, from foods such as rice and beans with or without coconut milk, tamales, "panades" (fried maize shells with beans or fish), meat pies, escabeche (onion soup), chimole (soup), caldo, stewed chicken, and garnaches (fried tortillas with beans, cheese, and sauce) to various constituted dinners featuring some type of rice and beans, meat and salad, or coleslaw. Fried "fry" chicken is another common course. In rural areas, meals are typically simpler than in cities. The Maya use maize, beans, or squash for most meals, and the Garifuna are fond of seafood, cassava (particularly made into cassava bread or ereba), and vegetables. The nation abounds with restaurants and fast food establishments that are fairly affordable. Local fruits are quite common, but raw vegetables from the markets less so. Mealtime is a communion for families and schools and some businesses close at midday for lunch, reopening later in the afternoon. Music Bachata is the most popular genre of music along with Punta and has become one of the most popular kinds of music in Belize. It is distinctly Caribbean, and is sometimes said to be ready for international popularization like similarly descended styles (reggae, calypso, merengue). Brukdown is a modern style of Belizean music related to calypso. It evolved out of the music and dance of loggers, especially a form called buru. Reggae, dance hall, and soca imported from Jamaica and the rest of the West Indies, rap, hip-hop, heavy metal and rock music from the United States, are also popular among the youth of Belize. Sports The major sports in Belize are football, basketball, volleyball and cycling, with smaller followings of boat racing, athletics, softball, cricket, rugby and netball. Fishing is also popular in coastal areas of Belize. The Cross Country Cycling Classic, also known as the "cross country" race or the Holy Saturday Cross Country Cycling Classic, is considered one of the most important Belize sports events. This one-day sports event is meant for amateur cyclists but has also gained worldwide popularity. The history of Cross Country Cycling Classic in Belize dates back to the period when Monrad Metzgen picked up the idea from a small village on the Northern Highway (now Phillip Goldson Highway). The people from this village used to cover long distances on their bicycles to attend the weekly game of cricket. He improvised on this observation by creating a sporting event on the difficult terrain of the Western Highway, which was then poorly built. Another major annual sporting event in Belize is the La Ruta Maya Belize River Challenge, a 4-day canoe marathon held each year in March. The race runs from San Ignacio to Belize City, a distance of . On Easter day, citizens of Dangriga participate in a yearly fishing tournament. First, second, and third prize are awarded based on a scoring combination of size, species, and number. The tournament is broadcast over local radio stations, and prize money is awarded to the winners. The Belize national basketball team is the only national team that has achieved major victories internationally. The team won the 1998 CARICOM Men's Basketball Championship, held at the Civic Centre in Belize City, and subsequently participated in the 1999 Centrobasquet Tournament in Havana. The national team finished seventh of eight teams after winning only 1 game despite playing close all the way. In a return engagement at the 2000 CARICOM championship in Barbados, Belize placed fourth. Shortly thereafter, Belize moved to the Central American region and won the Central American Games championship in 2001. The team has failed to duplicate this success, most recently finishing with a 2–4 record in the 2006 COCABA championship. The team finished second in the 2009 COCABA tournament in Cancun, Mexico where it went 3–0 in group play. Belize won its opening match in the Centrobasquet Tournament, 2010, defeating Trinidad and Tobago, but lost badly to Mexico in a rematch of the COCABA final. A tough win over Cuba set Belize in position to advance, but they fell to Puerto Rico in their final match and failed to qualify. Simone Biles, the winner of four gold medals in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics is a dual citizen of the United States and of Belize, which she considers her second home. Biles is of Belizean-American descent. National symbols The national flower of Belize is the black orchid (Prosthechea cochleata, also known as Encyclia cochleata). The national tree is the mahogany tree (Swietenia macrophylla), which inspired the national motto Sub Umbra Floreo, which means "Under the shade I flourish". The national animal is the Baird's tapir and the national bird is the keel-billed toucan (Ramphastos sulphuratus). See also Index of Belize-related articles Outline of Belize Notes References External links Government of Belize – Official governmental site Official webpage of Queen Elizabeth II as Queen of Belize Profile at U.S. Department of State Belize National Emergency Management Organization – Official governmental site Belize Wildlife Conservation Network – Belize Wildlife Conservation Network CATHALAC – Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean LANIC Belize page Belize. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Belize at UCB Libraries GovPubs Belize from the BBC News Key Development Forecasts for Belize from International Futures Hydromet.gov.bz – Official website of the Belize National Meteorological Service Bileez Kriol Wiki - A wiki in Belizean Creole about Belize Countries in Central America English-speaking countries and territories Former Spanish colonies Member states of the Caribbean Community Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations Current member states of the United Nations Small Island Developing States Spanish-speaking countries and territories States and territories established in 1981 Yucatán Peninsula 1981 establishments in Belize Countries in North America Countries in the Caribbean

The Government of Barbados (GoB), is a unitary parliamentary constitutional republic, where the President of Barbados represents as the head of state and the Prime Minister of Barbados represents as the head of government. The country has a bicameral legislature and a political party system, based on universal adult suffrage and fair elections. The Senate has 21 members, appointed by the Governor-General on behalf of the monarch, 12 on the advice of the Prime Minister, two on the advice of the Leader of the Opposition, and seven at the Governor-General's sole discretion. The House of Assembly has 30 members, all elected. Both houses debate all legislation. However, the House of Assembly may override Senate's rejection of money bills and other bills except bills amending the Constitution. Officers of each house (President and Deputy President of the Senate; Speaker, Deputy Speaker, and Chairman of Committees of the Assembly) are elected from the members of the respective houses. In keeping with the Westminster system of governance, Barbados has evolved into an independent parliamentary democracy, meaning that all political power rests with the Parliament under a non-political President as head of state. Executive authority is vested in the President, who normally acts only on the advice of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, who are collectively responsible to Parliament. Barbadian law is rooted in English common law, and the Constitution of Barbados implemented in 1966, is the supreme law of the land. Fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual are set out in the Constitution and are protected by a strict legal code. The Cabinet is headed by the Prime Minister, who must be an elected member of Parliament, and other ministers are appointed from either chamber by the Governor-General, as advised by the Prime Minister. The President appoints as Leader of the Opposition the member of House of Assembly who commands the support of the largest number of members of that House in opposition to the ruling party's government. The maximum duration of a Parliament is five years from the first sitting. There is a simultaneous dissolution of both Houses of Parliament by the President, acting on the advice of the Prime Minister. There is an established non-political civil service. Also, there are separate constitutional commissions for the Judicial and Legal Service, the Public Service, and the Police Service. History The government has been chosen by elections since 1961 elections, when Barbados achieved full self-governance. Before then, the government was a Crown colony consisting of either colonial administration solely (such as the Executive Council), or a mixture of colonial rule and a partially elected assembly, such as the Legislative Council. Since independence the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) held office 1966 to 1976, from 1986 to 1994, and from January 2008 to 2018. The Barbados Labour Party (BLP) governed from 1976 to 1986, from September 1994–2008 and has formed the government from 2018–Present. Executive branch The Executive Branch of government conducts the ordinary business of government. These functions are called out by the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers. The prime minister chooses the ministers of government they wish to have in the cabinet but they are actually appointed by the President. Heads of State President Head of Government Prime Ministers Premier (Abolished) Attorney General's Ministers List of Government Ministries, Ministers and Permanent Secretaries Legislative Branch Under Barbados' version of the Westminster system of government, the executive and legislative branches are partly intertwined. The only official Cabinet office (other than Prime Minister) expressly mentioned in the Constitution of Barbados is Office of the Attorney-General. President Chief Secretaries (Abolished) Auditors-General Senators Presidents of the Senate Members of the House ( a/k/a Members of Parliament) Speakers of the House of Assembly Clerks of Parliament Law The Constitution of Barbados is the supreme law of the nation. The Attorney General heads the independent judiciary. Historically, Barbadian law was based entirely on English common law with a few local adaptations. At the time of independence, the Parliament of the United Kingdom lost its ability to legislate for Barbados, but the existing English and British common law and statutes in force at that time, together with other measures already adopted by the Barbadian Parliament, became the basis of the new country's legal system. Legislation may be shaped or influenced by such organisations as the United Nations, the Organization of American States, or other international bodies to which Barbados has obligatory commitments by treaty. Additionally, through international co-operation, other institutions may supply the Barbados Parliament with key sample legislation to be adapted to meet local circumstances before enacting it as local law. New acts are passed by the Barbadian Parliament and require approval by the President to become law. The President, has the power to "withhold assent" from laws by vetoing the proposed law without parliamentary override. Judicial branch The judiciary is the legal system through which punishments are handed out to individuals who break the law. The functions of the judiciary are to enforce laws; to interpret laws; to conduct court hearings; to hear court appeals. The local court system of Barbados is made up of: Magistrates' Courts: Covering Criminal, Civil, Domestic, Domestic Violence, and Juvenile matters. But can also take up matters dealing with Coroner's Inquests, Liquor Licences, and civil marriages. Further, the Magistrates' Courts deal with Contract and Tort law where claims do not exceed $10,000.00. The Supreme Court: is made up of High Court and Court of Appeals. High Court: Consisting of Civil, Criminal, and Family law divisions. Court of Appeal: Handles appeals from the High Court and Magistrates' Court. It hears appeals in both the civil, and criminal law jurisdictions. It may consist of a single Justice of Appeal sitting in Chambers; or may sit as a Full Court of three Justices of Appeals. The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), (based in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago), is the court of last resort (final jurisdiction) over Barbadian law. It replaced the London-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC). The CCJ may resolve other disputed matters dealing with the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). Chief Justices Justices of Appeals Magistrates Perception Transparency International ranked Barbados as 17th place (of 179) in the world on its Corruption Perceptions Index in 2010, with only one nation scoring better in the Americas. () See also Politics of Barbados Monarchy of Barbados Parliament of Barbados Prime Minister of Barbados Cabinet of Barbados List of government budgets by country List of countries by tax revenue as percentage of GDP References Further reading Gallery External links Barbadian Government Website The Barbados Governmental System, Photius Coutsoukis Barbados Government statement on the proper titles for members of Government Social Security provided by the Government of Barbados Laws of Barbados, The World Law Guide Laws of Barbados, The World Intellectual Property Organization Barbados Barbados-related lists

The Lhop or Doya people are a little-known tribe of southwest Bhutan. The Bhutanese believe them to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. The Lhop are found in the low valleys of Dorokha Gewog and near Phuntsholing in the Duars. The dress of the Lhop resembles the Lepcha, but they bear little similarity with the Bhutia in the North and the Toto in the west. The Doya trace their descent matrilineally, marry their cross cousins, and embalm the deceased who are then placed in a foetal position in a circular sarcophagus above the ground. They follow a blend of Tibetan Buddhism mixed with animism. See also Ethnic groups in Bhutan Sharchop References External links RAOnline Bhutan: The Lhop Ethnic groups in Bhutan

This article is about the demographic features of the population of Botswana, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. Botswana, like many nations in southern Africa, suffers from a high HIV infection rate, estimated among adults ages 15 to 49 to be 20.7%. Population Census results Bechuanaland Protectorate The seven censuses of Botswana before its independence happened irregularly. Due to the Anglo-Boer War, the first census of Bechuanaland Protectorate, originally set to occur in 1901, took place on 17 April 1904. The 1931 census was postponed to 1936 because of the Great Depression. The early censuses were unreliable and took several years to tabulate; the results were outdated by the time they were calculated. Post-independence There have been five censuses after the independence of Botswana, each occurring every ten years in the year ending in 1 (i.e. 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001, and 2011). The 1971 census was the first census in Botswana to use de facto enumeration; this method counts people based on how many people spent census night at a specific location. Previously, the citizens were counted based on their usual place of residence. The 2001 census was the first census in Botswana to comply with the SADC 2000 Census Project, the guidelines of which unify the demographic statistics in southern Africa. The most recent census was the 2011 Botswana Population and Housing Census, which occurred in August 2011. UN estimates According to the total population was in , compared to only 413,000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2020 was about 33.4%, 62.1% were between 15 and 65 years of age, while 4.5% of the population were 65 years or older. Vital statistics Registration of vital events is in Botswana not complete. The Population Departement of the United Nations prepared the following estimates. Births and deaths Source: Vital Statistics Report 2012. Life expectancy at birth Life expectancy from 1950 to 2020 (UN World Population Prospects): Ethnic groups Tswana or Setswana 79%, Kalanga 11%, Basarwa 3%, Other 7% (including Kgalagadi, Indians and Whites) Languages Setswana 77.3%, Sekalanga 7.4%, Shekgalagari 3.4%, English (official) 2.8%, Zezuru/Shona 2%, Sesarwa 1.7%, sotho1% Sembukushu 1.6%j, Ndebele 1%, other 2.8% (2011 est.) Religions Christian 79.1%, Badimo 4.1%, Other 1.4% (includes the Baháʼí Faith, Hindu, Islam, Rastafari), None 15.2%, Unspecified 0.3% (2011 est.) Other demographic statistics Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019. One birth every 10 minutes One death every 36 minutes One net migrant every 180 minutes Net gain of one person every 13 minutes The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook. Population 2,350,667 (July 2021 est.) 2,214,858 (July 2017 est.) Age structure 0-14 years: 30.54% (male 357,065/female 350,550) 15-24 years: 18.31% (male 208,824/female 215,462) 25-54 years: 39.67% (male 434,258/female 484,922) 55-64 years: 5.92% (male 59,399/female 77,886) 65 years and over: 5.56% (male 53,708/female 75,159) (2020 est.) Total fertility rate The total fertility rate is 2.42 children born/woman (2021 est.) Country comparison to the world: 74th Population growth rate 1.43% (2021 est.) Country comparison to the world: 67th 1.55% (2017 est.) Birth rate 20.6 births/1,000 population (2021 est.) Country comparison to the world: 71st 22.1 births/1,000 population (2017 est.) Death rate 9.12 deaths/1,000 population (2021 est.) Country comparison to the world: 61st 9.6 deaths/1,000 population (2017 est.) Median age Total: 25.7 years. Country comparison to the world: 157th Male: 24.5 years Female: 26.7 years (2020 est.) Total: 24.5 years Male: 23.5 years Female: 25.6 years (2017 est.) Net migration rate 2.85 migrants/1,000 population (2021 est.) Country comparison to the world: 38th note: there is an increasing flow of Zimbabweans into Botswana and South Africa in search of better economic opportunities. Refer to below section on Migration. Urbanization Urban population: 70.9% of total population (2020) Rate of urbanization: 2.87% annual rate of change (2015–20 est.) Sex ratio At birth: 1.03 male(s)/female 0-14 years: 1.02 male(s)/female 15-24 years: 0.97 male(s)/female 25-54 years: 0.9 male(s)/female 55-64 years: 0.76 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.71 male(s)/female Total population: 0.93 male(s)/female (2020 est.) Life expectancy at birth Total population: 65.2 years Male: 63.2 years Female: 67.3 years (2021 est.) Maternal mortality rate 144 deaths/100,000 live births (2017 est.) Country comparison to the world: 59th HIV/AIDS Adult prevalence rate: 22.2% (2019 est.) People living with HIV/AIDS: 380,000 (2019 est.) Deaths due to AIDS: 5,000 (2019 est.) Country comparison to the world: 25th Physicians density 0.53 physicians/1,000 population (2016) Hospital bed density 1.8 beds/1,000 population (2010) Obesity - adult prevalence rate 18.9% (2016) Major infectious diseases Degree of risk: high (2020) Food or waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever Vectorborne disease: malaria Nationality Noun: Motswana (singular), Batswana (plural) Adjective: Motswana (singular), Batswana (plural) Literacy Definition: age 15 and over can read and write Total population: 88.5% Male: 88% Female: 88.9% (2015 est.) Education expenditure 8.7% of total GDP (2007) Sanitation facility access Improved: Urban: 92.9% of population Rural: 60.8% of population Total: 82.8% of population Unimproved: Urban: 7.1% of population Rural: 39.2% of population Total: 17.2% of population (2017 est.) Migrants According to the United Nations, there were 110,596 international migrants in Botswana in 2019. Their most common countries of origin were as follows: References Botswana Demographics 2001 Central Statistics Office (Botswana), Census and Demographic Statistics for the year 2001.

Transport infrastructure in Brazil is characterized by strong regional differences and lack of development of the national rail network. Brazil's fast-growing economy, and especially the growth in exports, will place increasing demands on the transport networks. However, sizeable new investments that are expected to address some of the issues are either planned or in progress. It is common to travel domestically by air because the price is low. Brazil has the second highest number of airports in the world, after the USA. Railways The Brazilian railway network has an extension of about . It is basically used for transporting ores. Usually, the railway sector was treated in a secondary way in Brazil, due to logistical, economic or political difficulties to install more railways. The Brazilian railroad system had a great expansion between 1875 and 1920. The heyday of the railway modal was interrupted during the Getúlio Vargas government, which prioritized the road modal. In the 1940s, the railway network was already facing several problems, from low-powered locomotives to uneconomical layouts. In 1957, a state-owned company was created, the National Railroad Network (RFFSA), which started to manage 18 railroads in the Union. Several deficit railways were closed under the promise of state investment in new projects, which did not happen. The actions were centralized in the government until the opening of the market in 1990. So, the National Privatization Plan was instituted, with dozens of concessions being made. However, they ended up concentrating the railways, mainly, in three large business groups, América Latina Logística (ALL), Vale S.A. and MRS Logística. The refurbishment generated an increase in productivity (cargoes transported increased by 30% with the same railway line). However, the main problem was that the reform not only gave away the railway line, but also geographical exclusivity. This resulted in the non-creation of competitive incentives for the expansion and renewal of the existing network. With the State maintaining the opening of new railways a difficult, slow and bureaucratic process, as it maintains the total monopoly of power over this sector, the railways did not expand any further in the country, and the sector was very outdated. In 2021, a New Framework for Railways was created, allowing the construction of railways by authorization, as occurs in the exploration of infrastructure in sectors such as telecommunications, electricity and ports. It's also possible to authorize the exploration of stretches not implemented, idle, or in the process of being returned or deactivated. With the change of rules in the sector, in December 2021, there were already requests to open of new tracks, in 64 requests for implementation of new railways. Nine new railroads had already been authorized by the Federal Government, in of new tracks. Total actual network: 29,888 km of railroad and 1,411 km of subway and light rail Broad gauge: 4,932 km gauge (939 km electrified) Narrow gauge: 23,341 km gauge (24 km electrified) Dual gauge: 396 km 1000 mm and 1600 mm gauges (three rails) Standard gauge: 194 km gauge (2014) Estrada de Ferro do Amapá in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest also used standard gauge. A 12 km section of the former gauge Estrada de Ferro Oeste de Minas is retained as a heritage railway. Cities with metros and light rail transit (combined) Railway links with adjacent countries International rail links exist between Brazil and Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay. Tramways Brazil had a hundred tramway systems. Currently, there are vintage tramways operating in Belém, Campinas, Campos do Jordão, Itatinga, Rio de Janeiro and Santos. Highways Brazil has more than of roads, of which are paved (12,4%), and about are divided highways. The total of paved roads increased from 35,496 km (22,056 mi) in 1967 to 215,000 km (133,595 mi) in 2018. The two most important highways in the country are BR-101 and BR-116. Although Brazil has the largest duplicated road network in Latin America, it's considered insufficient for the country's needs: in 2021, it was calculated that the ideal amount of duplicated roads would be something around from to . The main road axes also have problems because they often have inadequate geometry and constructive characteristics that don't allow quality long-distance flow (non-interference from local traffic and high speed). The Brazilian Federal Government has never implemented a National Highway Plan at the same level as developed countries such as the USA, Japan or European countries, which specifically aimed at inter-regional travel, and which should preferably be served by highways (which would differ from the common duplicated highways by geometric pattern, access control without access to neighboring lots, zero level crossings and returns, prohibition of circulation of non-motorized vehicles such as cyclists, animal traction or human propulsion, as per the Vienna Convention). The Brazilian State, despite some planning efforts, has been guided by a reactive action to the increase in demand (only duplicating some roads with old and inadequate layout) and not by a purposeful vision, directing occupation and economic density in the territory. Another problem is the lack of directing the Union Budget towards infrastructure works: in Brazil there is no law that guarantees funds from the Federal Budget for works on highways and other modes of transport (unlike what happens in sectors such as Education and Health), depending exclusively on the goodwill of the rulers. In the US, for example, the gasoline tax can only be used for transport infrastructure works. Brazil even invested 1.5% of the country's budget in infrastructure in the 1970s, being the time when the most investment was made in highways; but in the 1990s, only 0.1% of the budget was invested in this sector, maintaining an average of 0.5% in the 2000s and 2010, insufficient amounts for the construction of an adequate road network. For comparative purposes, the average investment of the USA and the European Union was 1% between 1995 and 2013, even though they already have a much more advanced road infrastructure than Brazil. The country has a medium rate of car ownership of 471 per 1000 people, however in comparison to the other developing economies of the BRIC group Brazil exceeds India and China. The country still has several states where paved access to 100% of the state's municipalities has not yet been reached. Some states have 100% of cities with asphalt access, such as Santa Catarina, which reached this goal in 2014; Paraíba, which reached this goal in 2017, and Alagoas, which reached this goal in 2021 In states like Rio Grande do Sul, in 2020, there were still 54 cities without asphalt access. In Paraná, in 2021, there were still 4 cities without asphalt access. In Minas Gerais, in 2016, there were still 5 cities without asphalt access. Waterways 50,000 km navigable (most in areas remote from industry or population) (2012) Among the main Brazilian waterways, two stand out: Hidrovia Tietê-Paraná (which has a length of 2,400 km, 1,600 on the Paraná River and 800 km on the Tietê River, draining agricultural production from the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás and part of Rondônia, Tocantins and Minas Gerais) and Hidrovia do Solimões-Amazonas (it has two sections: Solimões, which extends from Tabatinga to Manaus, with approximately 1600 km, and Amazonas, which extends from Manaus to Belém, with 1650 km. Almost entirely passenger transport from the Amazon plain is done by this waterway, in addition to practically all cargo transportation that is directed to the major regional centers of Belém and Manaus). In Brazil, this transport is still underutilized: the most important waterway stretches, from an economic point of view, are found in the Southeast and South of the country. Its full use still depends on the construction of locks, major dredging works and, mainly, of ports that allow intermodal integration. Pipelines condensate/gas 62 km natural gas 11,696 km (1,165 km distribution, 4,794 km transport) liquid petroleum gas 353 km (37 km distribution, 40 km transport) crude oil 4,517 km (1,985 km distribution) refined products 5,959 km (1,165 km distribution, 4,794 km transport) Seaports and harbors The busiest port in the country, and the 2nd busiest in all of Latin America, losing only to the Port of Colón, is the Port of Santos. Other high-movement ports are the Port of Rio de Janeiro, Port of Paranaguá, Port of Itajaí, Port of Rio Grande, Port of São Francisco do Sul and Suape Port. Atlantic Ocean Amazon river Belém Manaus Santarém Paraguay River (international water way) Corumbá Merchant marine 770 ships ( (or over) totaling / ships by type: (1999, 2019 and 2021 est.) Airports The country has the second largest number of airports in the world, behind only the United States. São Paulo/Guarulhos, is the largest and busiest in the country. Brazil has 37 international airports, such as those in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Florianópolis, Cuiabá, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Belém and Manaus, among others. Most international flights must go to São Paulo–Guarulhos International Airport or Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport. Belo Horizonte is the main international airport outside Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. A few go to Brasília, Recife, Natal, and just recently Fortaleza has accepted international flights. As of 2020, Brazil had the eighth largest passenger air market in the world. Airports - with paved runways total: 698 over 3,047 m: 7 2,438 to 3,047 m: 27 1,524 to 2,437 m: 179 914 to 1,523 m: 436 (2017) under 914 m: 39 (2017) Airports - with unpaved runways total: 3,395 1,524 to 2,437 m: 92 914 to 1,523 m: 1,619 under 914 m: 1,684 (2013) Main airlines Azul Brazilian Airlines Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes LATAM Brasil Voepass Linhas Aéreas Heliports 16 (2007) 13 (2010) 13 (2013) See also Rail transport by country References CIA - The World Factbook - Brazil - Transportation External links

Telecommunications Telephone Telephone service throughout the country is excellent; international service is good to Southeast Asia, Middle East, Western Europe, and the US Main lines in use: 82,588 (2020) Mobile phones: 565,949 (2020) Landing points for the SEA-ME-WE-3, SJC, AAG, Lubuan-Brunei Submarine Cable via optical telecommunications submarine cables that provides links to Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, Australia, and the US; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (1 Indian Ocean and 1 Pacific Ocean) (2019) IDD Country Code: +673 Mobile Telephone Brunei has 3 major telco namely DST, Imagine (TelBru) and Progresif which offers prepaid and postpaid plan. UNN is the Single Wholesale Network with holds all the telecommunication infrastructures in Brunei. Internet Internet service providers: 3 (2020), Telbru, Progresif Cellular and DSTCom Country code: .bn Internet fixed subscriptions: 49,452 (2020) Internet users: 410,800 (2019) Broadband Brunei's Internet service was monopolized by Telekom Brunei. ADSL speeds were ranging from 512 kbit/s to the maximum speed of 1 Mbit/s through ADSL2+ broadband. 1 Mbit/s was introduced in 2006 and was priced at BND$128 per month (Equivalent to Singapore currency). It was well known that the Brunei's broadband ranging from 512 kbit/s to 1 Mbit/s is one of the most expensive in the world. The limited market in Brunei means that new developments in the telecommunications sector is stagnant. In 2002, Telekom Brunei was incorporated become Telekom Brunei Berhad (TelBru). In 2008, the internet were improved with dramatically with speeds ranging from 1Mbit/s to maximum speed of 5Mbit/s. Price starting from B$65 to B$105 per month respectively. In 2012, Telekom Brunei started deploying its FTTH network capable of 100Mbit/s through a contract awarded to Huawei. They aimed to provide FTTH coverage to around 85% of the population by 2017. In 2016 Telbru drastically reduced the price and increased the speeds of its broadband plans. Due to the fact that a significant number of people were now connected via FTTH and not via the old copper cables. On 1 March 2018 Telbru rolled out their new 'high speed' broadband plans They also split the plans which have unlimited quota into 'unlimited plans' In 2017 Forbes reported that Brunei had the 4th most expensive broadband service in the world On 4 September 2019, The UNN took over all of the telecommunications infrastructure in Brunei. By doing so they aimed to provide equal infrastructure to all the isps in the country. This brought an end to a long held monopoly by Imagine Sdn Bhd (Formerly Known as Telbru) over the home broadband market with the introduction of Datastream Digital's 'Infinity' home broadband plans on 24 January 2020. Television Terrestrial TV Stations (Free to air) In some areas residents may enjoy some of the Malaysian TV channels RTB Perdana (Formerly known as RTB 1 and RTB 5) - An 17-hour national flagship channel of Radio Television Brunei aired news and information programs, with local and sinetron Indonesia series in 1080p HDTV. RTB Aneka (Formerly known as RTB 2 and RTB 3 HD) - A 13-hour second channel of Radio Television Brunei airs entertainment programmes in 1080p HDTV. RTB Sukmaindera (Formerly known as RTB 4) - A 24-hour international satellite television channel airing all of RTB programs both locally and internationally in 1080p HDTV. Pay TV (Satellite TV) 1 - Kristal Astro Radio All radio stations in the country use FM. 5 radio stations are broadcast by the state controlled Radio Television Brunei. The British Forces Broadcast Service (BFBS) broadcasts 2 other stations in the country. Reception from some Malaysia stations can be received. References Brunei Brunei

The Politics of Burkina Faso takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic, whereby the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. The President of Burkina Faso is the head of state. Executive power is exercised by both the President and the Government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. The party system was dominated by the Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP) until the 2014 Burkinabé uprising. Since then, the CDP has lost influence. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. In a coup on January 24, 2022, mutinying soldiers arrested President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré following gunfire. The military and its "Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration" (MPSR) declared itself to be in power. Political history In 1990, the Popular Front held its first National Congress, which formed a committee to draft a national constitution. The constitution was approved by referendum in 1991. In 1992, Blaise Compaoré was elected president, running unopposed after the opposition boycotted the election because of Compaoré's refusal to accede to demands of the opposition such as a Sovereign National Conference to set modalities. The opposition did participate in the following year's legislative elections, in which the ODP/MT won a majority of the seats contested for. The government of the Fourth Republic includes a strong presidency, a prime minister, a Council of Ministers presided over by the president, a National Assembly, and the judiciary. The legislature and judiciary are independent but remain susceptible to outside influence. In 1995, Burkina held its first multiparty municipal elections since it gained independence. The president's ODP/MT won over 1,100 of some 1,700 councilor seats being contested. In February 1996, the ruling ODP/MT merged with several small opposition parties to form the Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP). This effectively co-opted much of what little viable opposition to Compaoré existed. The remaining opposition parties regrouped in preparation for 1997 legislative elections and the 1998 presidential election. The 1997 legislative elections, which international observers pronounced to be substantially free, fair, and transparent, resulted in a large CDP majority—101 to 111 seats. In January 2022 a coup d'état took place, the military announced on television that Kaboré had been deposed from his position as President. After the announcement, the military declared that the parliament, government and constitution had been dissolved. On 31 January, the military junta restored the constitution and appointed Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba as interim president. Government Executive branch |President |Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba |Military |31 January 2022 |- |Prime Minister |Vacant |None |24 December 2022 |} The president is elected by popular vote for a five-year term and may serve up to two terms. The prime minister is appointed by the president with the consent of the legislature. The constitution of 2 June 1991, established a semi-presidential government with a parliament () which can be dissolved by the President of the Republic, who is elected for a term of 5 years. The year 2000 saw a constitutional amendment reducing the presidential term from 7 to 5 years, which was enforced during the 2005 elections. Another change according to the amendment would have prevented sitting president Blaise Compaoré from being re-elected. However, notwithstanding a challenge by other presidential candidates, in October 2005, the constitutional council ruled that because Compaoré was already a sitting president in 2000, the amendment would not apply to him until the end of his second term in office, thereby clearing the way for his candidacy in the 2005 election. On 13 November Compaoré was reelected in a landslide due to a divided political opposition. In 2010, Compaoré was once again re-elected, and the term limit requirement was held to not apply to him. A proposed constitutional amendment in 2014 would have permitted him to run again, but public resistance led to the 2014 Burkinabé uprising, and Compaoré resigned on 31 October 2014. A transitional government headed by President Michel Kafondo and Prime Minister Isaac Zida took power for a one-year mandate. Elections were to have been held in October 2015, but members of the Regiment of Presidential Security launched a coup on 16 September 2015, detaining President Kafando and Prime Minister Zida. RSP commander Gilbert Diendéré named himself the head of the new military junta, but popular resistance, backed by army and gendarmerie forces not aligned with the RSP, forced his resignation and the restoration of the transitional government a week later. Legislative branch According to the constitution, the Parliament votes on the law, consents to taxation, and controls the actions of the government under provisions of the constitution. The Parliament, which is made up of the National Assembly and Senate, meets each year in two ordinary sessions, each of which may not exceed ninety days. The first session opens on the first Wednesday of March and the second the last Wednesday of September. If either of these days lands on a holiday, the session opens the next first working day. Each chamber of Parliament meets in extraordinary session on request of the President, demand of the Prime Minister, or of an absolute majority of half of the Deputies or Senators on a specific agenda and closes at the completion of said agenda. The National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale) has 111 members, named Deputies, and are elected for a five-year term by proportional representation. The Senate, as described in the Constitution of Burkina Faso, would consist of representatives from local government divisions, customary and religious authorities, workers, employers, Burkinabes abroad and people appointed by the President of Burkina Faso and serve a term of six years. The constitution requires that anyone elected or appointed must be 45 years old by the day of the ballot. In May 2013, then-President Compaoré announced the establishment of a new Senate with 89 members, 29 of which would be selected by the president themselves, and the rest appointed by local officials. With Senate elections being held in July 2013, government opposition groups warned against a legislative body with a majority of handpicked sympathizers by the president. Compaoré was successful in appointing 1/3rd of the Senate, prompting protesters rallying in the streets of Bobo-Dioulasso and the capital Ouagadougou to protest the establishment of the Senate, which has since been postponed. The Presidents of both the Senate and National Assembly are elected for the duration of the legislator by an absolute majority of half the chamber in the first round of voting, or a simple majority in the second round. Their functions can be terminated during the course of a legislature at the demand of two-fifths and a vote of the absolute majority of the members of the Assembly. In the case of vacancy of the presidency of either chamber of Parliament by death, resignation, or other reason, said chamber elects a new president by the same method. Each chamber has financial autonomy, with the President of the said chamber managing the credits allocated to them for the functioning of the chamber, but with a vote of the absolute majority, the chamber can dismiss the President for incompetence in managing finances. Unless discovered in flagrante delicto, any member of Parliament can only be prosecuted or arrested in a penal or criminal matter with the authorization of at least one-third members of the chamber which they reside. Political parties and elections 2020 Burkinabé general election Political pressure groups Burkinabé General Confederation of Labor (CGTB); Burkinabé Movement for Human Rights (HBDHP); Group of 14 February; National Confederation of Burkinabé Workers (CNTB); National Organization of Free Unions (ONSL); watchdog/political action groups throughout the country in both organizations and communities Administrative divisions Burkina Faso is divided into 13 regions and 45 provinces: Regions: Boucle du Mouhoun, Cascades, Centre, Centre-Est, Centre-Nord, Centre-Ouest, Centre-Sud, Est, Hauts-Bassins, Nord, Plateau-Central, Sahel, Sud-Ouest Provinces: Balé, Bam, Banwa, Bazega, Bougouriba, Boulgou, Boulkiemde, Comoé, Ganzourgou, Gnagna, Gourma, Houet, Ioba, Kadiogo, Kenedougou, Komondjari, Kompienga, Kossi, Koulpelogo, Kouritenga, Kourweogo, Leraba, Loroum, Mouhoun, Namentenga, Nahouri, Nayala, Noumbiel, Oubritenga, Oudalan, Passore, Poni, Sanguie, Sanmatenga, Séno, Sissili, Soum, Sourou, Tapoa, Tuy, Yagha, Yatenga, Ziro, Zondoma, Zoundweogo International organization participation ACCT, ACP, AfDB, AU, ECA, ECOWAS, Entente, FAO, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ITUC, ICRM, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, ITU, NAM, OAU, OIC, OPCW, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WADB, WADB (regional), WAEMU, WCO, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTOO, WTrO. International relationships The ambassador of Burkina Faso to Canada is Juliette Bonkoungou. The ambassador of Burkina Faso to Mexico is Jonathan Hodgson. The former ambassador of Burkina Faso to the United States was Tertius Zongo, he left his post when appointed Prime Minister in July 2007; the US Ambassador to Burkina Faso is Andrew Robert Young. See also 2019 Burkina Faso government resignation Notes References

Communications in Burundi include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, the Internet, and the postal service in Burundi. Radio and television Radio is the main source of information for many Burundians. Radio stations: La Radiodiffusion et Television Nationale de Burundi (RTNB), the state-controlled broadcaster operates the only national radio network, broadcasting in Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English; roughly 10 privately owned radio stations are operating; transmissions of several international broadcasters are available in the largest city, Bujumbura (2007). No AM radio stations, four FM stations, and one shortwave station (2001). Two AM stations, two FM stations, and no shortwave stations (1998). Radios: 440,000 radios in use (1997). Television stations: La Radiodiffusion et Television Nationale de Burundi (RTNB), the state-controlled national network, broadcasting in Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English (2013); and Tele Renaissance, a private station launched in 2008 (2013). BeTV, a private television channel launched in 2017. Television sets: 25,000 sets in use (1997). The BBC World Service broadcasts on 90.2 FM in the largest city and former capital, Bujumbura, and on 105.6 in Mount Manga; Radio France Internationale and the Voice of America are also available in the capital. Telephones Calling code: +257 International call prefix: 00<ref>[http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/opb/sp/T-SP-E.164C-2011-PDF-E.pdf Dialing Procedures (International Prefix, National (Trunk) Prefix and National (Significant) Number) (in Accordance with ITY-T Recommendation E.164 (11/2010))], Annex to ITU Operational Bulletin No. 994-15.XII.2011, International Telecommunication Union (ITU, Geneva), 15 December 2011. Retrieved 2 January 2014.</ref> Telephone system: In 2011, system described as sparse open-wire, radiotelephone communications, and low-capacity microwave radio relays; telephone density one of the lowest in the world; fixed-line connections stand at well less than 1 per 100 persons; mobile-cellular usage is increasing but remains at roughly 20 per 100 persons; In 2010, system described as “primitive” with “one of the lowest” telephone densities in the world and “increasing … but meager” use of cell phones; the number of fixed-line telephone connections was far fewer than one per every 100 persons; roughly five cell phones in use per 100 persons; the domestic telephone system consists of open-wire, radiotelephone communications, along with low capacity microwave radio relay. Main lines: 17,400 lines in use, 193rd in the world (2012); 30,400 lines in use, 178th in the world (2008), a decrease from 2006; 35,000 lines in use (2006); 27,000 lines in use (2005); 17,000 lines in use (1995). Mobile cellular lines: 2.2 million lines, 140th in the world (2012); 480,600 lines, 156th in the world (2008), a large increase, almost doubling the figure from 2006; 250,000 lines (2006); 153,000 lines (2005);        343 lines (1995). Satellite earth stations: one station, operated by Intelsat in the Indian Ocean region (2008). Internet Internet top-level domain: .bi Internet users: 128,799 users, 167th in the world; 1.2% of the population, 208th in the world (2012);"Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000-2012", International Telecommunications Union (Geneva), June 2013, retrieved 22 June 2013   65,000 users, 167th in the world (2008);   60,000 users (2006). Fixed broadband: 422 subscriptions, 189th in the world; less than 0.05% of THE population, 191st in the world (2012)."Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012", Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE, International Telecommunication Union. Retrieved on 29 June 2013. Wireless broadband: Unknown (2012). Internet hosts: 229 hosts. 198th in the world (2012); 191 hosts, 189th in the world (2009); 162 hosts (2008). IPv4: 5,376 addresses allocated, less than 0.05% of the world total, 0.5 addresses per 1000 people (2012).Population, The World Factbook, United States Central Intelligence Agency. Accessed on 2 April 2012. Note: Data are mostly for 1 July 2012. Internet censorship and surveillance There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms. Operating in a turbulent political climate, Burundi's media are subject to occasional government censorship and may practice self-censorship. The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respects these rights. The law prohibits the media from spreading "hate" messages or from using abusive or defamatory language against public servants acting in their official role that could damage the dignity of or respect for the public office. Libel laws prohibit the public distribution of information that exposes a person to "public contempt" and carry penalties of prison terms and fines. The crime of treason, which includes knowingly demoralizing the military or the nation in a manner that endangers national defense during a time of war, carries a criminal penalty of life imprisonment. It is a crime for anyone knowingly to disseminate or publicize false rumors likely to alarm or excite the public against the government or to promote civil war. It is illegal for anyone to display drawings, posters, photographs, or other items that may disturb the public peace. Penalties range from two months' to three years' imprisonment and fines. Some journalists, lawyers, and political party, civil society, and NGO leaders allege the government uses these laws to intimidate and harass them. The constitution and law provide for the right to privacy, but the government does not always respect this right in practice. Authorities do not always respect the law requiring search warrants. Postal ServiceRégie Nationale des Postes'' (RNP, National Postal Administration) is responsible for postal service in Burundi. Operating as an independent state-owned company since 1992, the RNP has reported to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, Posts and Tourism since 2010. See also Burundi National Radio and Television (RTNB), the national broadcaster of Burundi. Media of Burundi Economy of Burundi References External links NIC.bi, registry for the .bi domain. Radio Télévision Nationale du Burundi (RTNB), the national broadcaster of Burundi. Burundi

A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a vertebrate's body. In a human, the cerebral cortex contains approximately 14–16 billion neurons, and the estimated number of neurons in the cerebellum is 55–70 billion. Each neuron is connected by synapses to several thousand other neurons. These neurons typically communicate with one another by means of long fibers called axons, which carry trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body targeting specific recipient cells. Physiologically, brains exert centralized control over a body's other organs. They act on the rest of the body both by generating patterns of muscle activity and by driving the secretion of chemicals called hormones. This centralized control allows rapid and coordinated responses to changes in the environment. Some basic types of responsiveness such as reflexes can be mediated by the spinal cord or peripheral ganglia, but sophisticated purposeful control of behavior based on complex sensory input requires the information integrating capabilities of a centralized brain. The operations of individual brain cells are now understood in considerable detail but the way they cooperate in ensembles of millions is yet to be solved. Recent models in modern neuroscience treat the brain as a biological computer, very different in mechanism from an electronic computer, but similar in the sense that it acquires information from the surrounding world, stores it, and processes it in a variety of ways. This article compares the properties of brains across the entire range of animal species, with the greatest attention to vertebrates. It deals with the human brain insofar as it shares the properties of other brains. The ways in which the human brain differs from other brains are covered in the human brain article. Several topics that might be covered here are instead covered there because much more can be said about them in a human context. The most important is brain disease and the effects of brain damage, that are covered in the human brain article. Anatomy The shape and size of the brain varies greatly between species, and identifying common features is often difficult. Nevertheless, there are a number of principles of brain architecture that apply across a wide range of species. Some aspects of brain structure are common to almost the entire range of animal species; others distinguish "advanced" brains from more primitive ones, or distinguish vertebrates from invertebrates. The simplest way to gain information about brain anatomy is by visual inspection, but many more sophisticated techniques have been developed. Brain tissue in its natural state is too soft to work with, but it can be hardened by immersion in alcohol or other fixatives, and then sliced apart for examination of the interior. Visually, the interior of the brain consists of areas of so-called grey matter, with a dark color, separated by areas of white matter, with a lighter color. Further information can be gained by staining slices of brain tissue with a variety of chemicals that bring out areas where specific types of molecules are present in high concentrations. It is also possible to examine the microstructure of brain tissue using a microscope, and to trace the pattern of connections from one brain area to another. Cellular structure The brains of all species are composed primarily of two broad classes of cells: neurons and glial cells. Glial cells (also known as glia or neuroglia) come in several types, and perform a number of critical functions, including structural support, metabolic support, insulation, and guidance of development. Neurons, however, are usually considered the most important cells in the brain. The property that makes neurons unique is their ability to send signals to specific target cells over long distances. They send these signals by means of an axon, which is a thin protoplasmic fiber that extends from the cell body and projects, usually with numerous branches, to other areas, sometimes nearby, sometimes in distant parts of the brain or body. The length of an axon can be extraordinary: for example, if a pyramidal cell (an excitatory neuron) of the cerebral cortex were magnified so that its cell body became the size of a human body, its axon, equally magnified, would become a cable a few centimeters in diameter, extending more than a kilometer. These axons transmit signals in the form of electrochemical pulses called action potentials, which last less than a thousandth of a second and travel along the axon at speeds of 1–100 meters per second. Some neurons emit action potentials constantly, at rates of 10–100 per second, usually in irregular patterns; other neurons are quiet most of the time, but occasionally emit a burst of action potentials. Axons transmit signals to other neurons by means of specialized junctions called synapses. A single axon may make as many as several thousand synaptic connections with other cells. When an action potential, traveling along an axon, arrives at a synapse, it causes a chemical called a neurotransmitter to be released. The neurotransmitter binds to receptor molecules in the membrane of the target cell. Synapses are the key functional elements of the brain. The essential function of the brain is cell-to-cell communication, and synapses are the points at which communication occurs. The human brain has been estimated to contain approximately 100 trillion synapses; even the brain of a fruit fly contains several million. The functions of these synapses are very diverse: some are excitatory (exciting the target cell); others are inhibitory; others work by activating second messenger systems that change the internal chemistry of their target cells in complex ways. A large number of synapses are dynamically modifiable; that is, they are capable of changing strength in a way that is controlled by the patterns of signals that pass through them. It is widely believed that activity-dependent modification of synapses is the brain's primary mechanism for learning and memory. Most of the space in the brain is taken up by axons, which are often bundled together in what are called nerve fiber tracts. A myelinated axon is wrapped in a fatty insulating sheath of myelin, which serves to greatly increase the speed of signal propagation. (There are also unmyelinated axons). Myelin is white, making parts of the brain filled exclusively with nerve fibers appear as light-colored white matter, in contrast to the darker-colored grey matter that marks areas with high densities of neuron cell bodies. Evolution Generic bilaterian nervous system Except for a few primitive organisms such as sponges (which have no nervous system) and cnidarians (which have a nervous system consisting of a diffuse nerve net), all living multicellular animals are bilaterians, meaning animals with a bilaterally symmetric body shape (that is, left and right sides that are approximate mirror images of each other). All bilaterians are thought to have descended from a common ancestor that appeared late in the Cryogenian period, 700–650 million years ago, and it has been hypothesized that this common ancestor had the shape of a simple tubeworm with a segmented body. At a schematic level, that basic worm-shape continues to be reflected in the body and nervous system architecture of all modern bilaterians, including vertebrates. The fundamental bilateral body form is a tube with a hollow gut cavity running from the mouth to the anus, and a nerve cord with an enlargement (a ganglion) for each body segment, with an especially large ganglion at the front, called the brain. The brain is small and simple in some species, such as nematode worms; in other species, including vertebrates, it is the most complex organ in the body. Some types of worms, such as leeches, also have an enlarged ganglion at the back end of the nerve cord, known as a "tail brain". There are a few types of existing bilaterians that lack a recognizable brain, including echinoderms and tunicates. It has not been definitively established whether the existence of these brainless species indicates that the earliest bilaterians lacked a brain, or whether their ancestors evolved in a way that led to the disappearance of a previously existing brain structure. Invertebrates This category includes tardigrades, arthropods, molluscs, and numerous types of worms. The diversity of invertebrate body plans is matched by an equal diversity in brain structures. Two groups of invertebrates have notably complex brains: arthropods (insects, crustaceans, arachnids, and others), and cephalopods (octopuses, squids, and similar molluscs). The brains of arthropods and cephalopods arise from twin parallel nerve cords that extend through the body of the animal. Arthropods have a central brain, the supraesophageal ganglion, with three divisions and large optical lobes behind each eye for visual processing. Cephalopods such as the octopus and squid have the largest brains of any invertebrates. There are several invertebrate species whose brains have been studied intensively because they have properties that make them convenient for experimental work: Fruit flies (Drosophila), because of the large array of techniques available for studying their genetics, have been a natural subject for studying the role of genes in brain development. In spite of the large evolutionary distance between insects and mammals, many aspects of Drosophila neurogenetics have been shown to be relevant to humans. The first biological clock genes, for example, were identified by examining Drosophila mutants that showed disrupted daily activity cycles. A search in the genomes of vertebrates revealed a set of analogous genes, which were found to play similar roles in the mouse biological clock—and therefore almost certainly in the human biological clock as well. Studies done on Drosophila, also show that most neuropil regions of the brain are continuously reorganized throughout life in response to specific living conditions. The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, like Drosophila, has been studied largely because of its importance in genetics. In the early 1970s, Sydney Brenner chose it as a model organism for studying the way that genes control development. One of the advantages of working with this worm is that the body plan is very stereotyped: the nervous system of the hermaphrodite contains exactly 302 neurons, always in the same places, making identical synaptic connections in every worm. Brenner's team sliced worms into thousands of ultrathin sections and photographed each one under an electron microscope, then visually matched fibers from section to section, to map out every neuron and synapse in the entire body. The complete neuronal wiring diagram of C.elegans – its connectome was achieved. Nothing approaching this level of detail is available for any other organism, and the information gained has enabled a multitude of studies that would otherwise have not been possible. The sea slug Aplysia californica was chosen by Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist Eric Kandel as a model for studying the cellular basis of learning and memory, because of the simplicity and accessibility of its nervous system, and it has been examined in hundreds of experiments. Vertebrates The first vertebrates appeared over 500 million years ago (Mya), during the Cambrian period, and may have resembled the modern hagfish in form. Jawed fish appeared by 445 Mya, amphibians by 350 Mya, reptiles by 310 Mya and mammals by 200 Mya (approximately). Each species has an equally long evolutionary history, but the brains of modern hagfishes, lampreys, sharks, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals show a gradient of size and complexity that roughly follows the evolutionary sequence. All of these brains contain the same set of basic anatomical components, but many are rudimentary in the hagfish, whereas in mammals the foremost part (the telencephalon) is greatly elaborated and expanded. Brains are most simply compared in terms of their size. The relationship between brain size, body size and other variables has been studied across a wide range of vertebrate species. As a rule, brain size increases with body size, but not in a simple linear proportion. In general, smaller animals tend to have larger brains, measured as a fraction of body size. For mammals, the relationship between brain volume and body mass essentially follows a power law with an exponent of about 0.75. This formula describes the central tendency, but every family of mammals departs from it to some degree, in a way that reflects in part the complexity of their behavior. For example, primates have brains 5 to 10 times larger than the formula predicts. Predators tend to have larger brains than their prey, relative to body size. All vertebrate brains share a common underlying form, which appears most clearly during early stages of embryonic development. In its earliest form, the brain appears as three swellings at the front end of the neural tube; these swellings eventually become the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain (the prosencephalon, mesencephalon, and rhombencephalon, respectively). At the earliest stages of brain development, the three areas are roughly equal in size. In many classes of vertebrates, such as fish and amphibians, the three parts remain similar in size in the adult, but in mammals the forebrain becomes much larger than the other parts, and the midbrain becomes very small. The brains of vertebrates are made of very soft tissue. Living brain tissue is pinkish on the outside and mostly white on the inside, with subtle variations in color. Vertebrate brains are surrounded by a system of connective tissue membranes called meninges that separate the skull from the brain. Blood vessels enter the central nervous system through holes in the meningeal layers. The cells in the blood vessel walls are joined tightly to one another, forming the blood–brain barrier, which blocks the passage of many toxins and pathogens (though at the same time blocking antibodies and some drugs, thereby presenting special challenges in treatment of diseases of the brain). Neuroanatomists usually divide the vertebrate brain into six main regions: the telencephalon (cerebral hemispheres), diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), mesencephalon (midbrain), cerebellum, pons, and medulla oblongata. Each of these areas has a complex internal structure. Some parts, such as the cerebral cortex and the cerebellar cortex, consist of layers that are folded or convoluted to fit within the available space. Other parts, such as the thalamus and hypothalamus, consist of clusters of many small nuclei. Thousands of distinguishable areas can be identified within the vertebrate brain based on fine distinctions of neural structure, chemistry, and connectivity. Although the same basic components are present in all vertebrate brains, some branches of vertebrate evolution have led to substantial distortions of brain geometry, especially in the forebrain area. The brain of a shark shows the basic components in a straightforward way, but in teleost fishes (the great majority of existing fish species), the forebrain has become "everted", like a sock turned inside out. In birds, there are also major changes in forebrain structure. These distortions can make it difficult to match brain components from one species with those of another species. Here is a list of some of the most important vertebrate brain components, along with a brief description of their functions as currently understood: The medulla, along with the spinal cord, contains many small nuclei involved in a wide variety of sensory and involuntary motor functions such as vomiting, heart rate and digestive processes. The pons lies in the brainstem directly above the medulla. Among other things, it contains nuclei that control often voluntary but simple acts such as sleep, respiration, swallowing, bladder function, equilibrium, eye movement, facial expressions, and posture. The hypothalamus is a small region at the base of the forebrain, whose complexity and importance belies its size. It is composed of numerous small nuclei, each with distinct connections and neurochemistry. The hypothalamus is engaged in additional involuntary or partially voluntary acts such as sleep and wake cycles, eating and drinking, and the release of some hormones. The thalamus is a collection of nuclei with diverse functions: some are involved in relaying information to and from the cerebral hemispheres, while others are involved in motivation. The subthalamic area (zona incerta) seems to contain action-generating systems for several types of "consummatory" behaviors such as eating, drinking, defecation, and copulation. The cerebellum modulates the outputs of other brain systems, whether motor-related or thought related, to make them certain and precise. Removal of the cerebellum does not prevent an animal from doing anything in particular, but it makes actions hesitant and clumsy. This precision is not built-in but learned by trial and error. The muscle coordination learned while riding a bicycle is an example of a type of neural plasticity that may take place largely within the cerebellum. 10% of the brain's total volume consists of the cerebellum and 50% of all neurons are held within its structure. The optic tectum allows actions to be directed toward points in space, most commonly in response to visual input. In mammals, it is usually referred to as the superior colliculus, and its best-studied function is to direct eye movements. It also directs reaching movements and other object-directed actions. It receives strong visual inputs, but also inputs from other senses that are useful in directing actions, such as auditory input in owls and input from the thermosensitive pit organs in snakes. In some primitive fishes, such as lampreys, this region is the largest part of the brain. The superior colliculus is part of the midbrain. The pallium is a layer of grey matter that lies on the surface of the forebrain and is the most complex and most recent evolutionary development of the brain as an organ. In reptiles and mammals, it is called the cerebral cortex. Multiple functions involve the pallium, including smell and spatial memory. In mammals, where it becomes so large as to dominate the brain, it takes over functions from many other brain areas. In many mammals, the cerebral cortex consists of folded bulges called gyri that create deep furrows or fissures called sulci. The folds increase the surface area of the cortex and therefore increase the amount of gray matter and the amount of information that can be stored and processed. The hippocampus, strictly speaking, is found only in mammals. However, the area it derives from, the medial pallium, has counterparts in all vertebrates. There is evidence that this part of the brain is involved in complex events such as spatial memory and navigation in fishes, birds, reptiles, and mammals. The basal ganglia are a group of interconnected structures in the forebrain. The primary function of the basal ganglia appears to be action selection: they send inhibitory signals to all parts of the brain that can generate motor behaviors, and in the right circumstances can release the inhibition, so that the action-generating systems are able to execute their actions. Reward and punishment exert their most important neural effects by altering connections within the basal ganglia. The olfactory bulb is a special structure that processes olfactory sensory signals and sends its output to the olfactory part of the pallium. It is a major brain component in many vertebrates, but is greatly reduced in humans and other primates (whose senses are dominated by information acquired by sight rather than smell). Reptiles Birds Mammals The most obvious difference between the brains of mammals and other vertebrates is in terms of size. On average, a mammal has a brain roughly twice as large as that of a bird of the same body size, and ten times as large as that of a reptile of the same body size. Size, however, is not the only difference: there are also substantial differences in shape. The hindbrain and midbrain of mammals are generally similar to those of other vertebrates, but dramatic differences appear in the forebrain, which is greatly enlarged and also altered in structure. The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that most strongly distinguishes mammals. In non-mammalian vertebrates, the surface of the cerebrum is lined with a comparatively simple three-layered structure called the pallium. In mammals, the pallium evolves into a complex six-layered structure called neocortex or isocortex. Several areas at the edge of the neocortex, including the hippocampus and amygdala, are also much more extensively developed in mammals than in other vertebrates. The elaboration of the cerebral cortex carries with it changes to other brain areas. The superior colliculus, which plays a major role in visual control of behavior in most vertebrates, shrinks to a small size in mammals, and many of its functions are taken over by visual areas of the cerebral cortex. The cerebellum of mammals contains a large portion (the neocerebellum) dedicated to supporting the cerebral cortex, which has no counterpart in other vertebrates. Primates The brains of humans and other primates contain the same structures as the brains of other mammals, but are generally larger in proportion to body size. The encephalization quotient (EQ) is used to compare brain sizes across species. It takes into account the nonlinearity of the brain-to-body relationship. Humans have an average EQ in the 7-to-8 range, while most other primates have an EQ in the 2-to-3 range. Dolphins have values higher than those of primates other than humans, but nearly all other mammals have EQ values that are substantially lower. Most of the enlargement of the primate brain comes from a massive expansion of the cerebral cortex, especially the prefrontal cortex and the parts of the cortex involved in vision. The visual processing network of primates includes at least 30 distinguishable brain areas, with a complex web of interconnections. It has been estimated that visual processing areas occupy more than half of the total surface of the primate neocortex. The prefrontal cortex carries out functions that include planning, working memory, motivation, attention, and executive control. It takes up a much larger proportion of the brain for primates than for other species, and an especially large fraction of the human brain. Development The brain develops in an intricately orchestrated sequence of stages. It changes in shape from a simple swelling at the front of the nerve cord in the earliest embryonic stages, to a complex array of areas and connections. Neurons are created in special zones that contain stem cells, and then migrate through the tissue to reach their ultimate locations. Once neurons have positioned themselves, their axons sprout and navigate through the brain, branching and extending as they go, until the tips reach their targets and form synaptic connections. In a number of parts of the nervous system, neurons and synapses are produced in excessive numbers during the early stages, and then the unneeded ones are pruned away. For vertebrates, the early stages of neural development are similar across all species. As the embryo transforms from a round blob of cells into a wormlike structure, a narrow strip of ectoderm running along the midline of the back is induced to become the neural plate, the precursor of the nervous system. The neural plate folds inward to form the neural groove, and then the lips that line the groove merge to enclose the neural tube, a hollow cord of cells with a fluid-filled ventricle at the center. At the front end, the ventricles and cord swell to form three vesicles that are the precursors of the prosencephalon (forebrain), mesencephalon (midbrain), and rhombencephalon (hindbrain). At the next stage, the forebrain splits into two vesicles called the telencephalon (which will contain the cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, and related structures) and the diencephalon (which will contain the thalamus and hypothalamus). At about the same time, the hindbrain splits into the metencephalon (which will contain the cerebellum and pons) and the myelencephalon (which will contain the medulla oblongata). Each of these areas contains proliferative zones where neurons and glial cells are generated; the resulting cells then migrate, sometimes for long distances, to their final positions. Once a neuron is in place, it extends dendrites and an axon into the area around it. Axons, because they commonly extend a great distance from the cell body and need to reach specific targets, grow in a particularly complex way. The tip of a growing axon consists of a blob of protoplasm called a growth cone, studded with chemical receptors. These receptors sense the local environment, causing the growth cone to be attracted or repelled by various cellular elements, and thus to be pulled in a particular direction at each point along its path. The result of this pathfinding process is that the growth cone navigates through the brain until it reaches its destination area, where other chemical cues cause it to begin generating synapses. Considering the entire brain, thousands of genes create products that influence axonal pathfinding. The synaptic network that finally emerges is only partly determined by genes, though. In many parts of the brain, axons initially "overgrow", and then are "pruned" by mechanisms that depend on neural activity. In the projection from the eye to the midbrain, for example, the structure in the adult contains a very precise mapping, connecting each point on the surface of the retina to a corresponding point in a midbrain layer. In the first stages of development, each axon from the retina is guided to the right general vicinity in the midbrain by chemical cues, but then branches very profusely and makes initial contact with a wide swath of midbrain neurons. The retina, before birth, contains special mechanisms that cause it to generate waves of activity that originate spontaneously at a random point and then propagate slowly across the retinal layer. These waves are useful because they cause neighboring neurons to be active at the same time; that is, they produce a neural activity pattern that contains information about the spatial arrangement of the neurons. This information is exploited in the midbrain by a mechanism that causes synapses to weaken, and eventually vanish, if activity in an axon is not followed by activity of the target cell. The result of this sophisticated process is a gradual tuning and tightening of the map, leaving it finally in its precise adult form. Similar things happen in other brain areas: an initial synaptic matrix is generated as a result of genetically determined chemical guidance, but then gradually refined by activity-dependent mechanisms, partly driven by internal dynamics, partly by external sensory inputs. In some cases, as with the retina-midbrain system, activity patterns depend on mechanisms that operate only in the developing brain, and apparently exist solely to guide development. In humans and many other mammals, new neurons are created mainly before birth, and the infant brain contains substantially more neurons than the adult brain. There are, however, a few areas where new neurons continue to be generated throughout life. The two areas for which adult neurogenesis is well established are the olfactory bulb, which is involved in the sense of smell, and the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, where there is evidence that the new neurons play a role in storing newly acquired memories. With these exceptions, however, the set of neurons that is present in early childhood is the set that is present for life. Glial cells are different: as with most types of cells in the body, they are generated throughout the lifespan. There has long been debate about whether the qualities of mind, personality, and intelligence can be attributed to heredity or to upbringing—this is the nature and nurture controversy. Although many details remain to be settled, neuroscience research has clearly shown that both factors are important. Genes determine the general form of the brain, and genes determine how the brain reacts to experience. Experience, however, is required to refine the matrix of synaptic connections, which in its developed form contains far more information than the genome does. In some respects, all that matters is the presence or absence of experience during critical periods of development. In other respects, the quantity and quality of experience are important; for example, there is substantial evidence that animals raised in enriched environments have thicker cerebral cortices, indicating a higher density of synaptic connections, than animals whose levels of stimulation are restricted. Physiology The functions of the brain depend on the ability of neurons to transmit electrochemical signals to other cells, and their ability to respond appropriately to electrochemical signals received from other cells. The electrical properties of neurons are controlled by a wide variety of biochemical and metabolic processes, most notably the interactions between neurotransmitters and receptors that take place at synapses. Neurotransmitters and receptors Neurotransmitters are chemicals that are released at synapses when the local membrane is depolarised and Ca2+ enters into the cell, typically when an action potential arrives at the synapse – neurotransmitters attach themselves to receptor molecules on the membrane of the synapse's target cell (or cells), and thereby alter the electrical or chemical properties of the receptor molecules. With few exceptions, each neuron in the brain releases the same chemical neurotransmitter, or combination of neurotransmitters, at all the synaptic connections it makes with other neurons; this rule is known as Dale's principle. Thus, a neuron can be characterized by the neurotransmitters that it releases. The great majority of psychoactive drugs exert their effects by altering specific neurotransmitter systems. This applies to drugs such as cannabinoids, nicotine, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, fluoxetine, chlorpromazine, and many others. The two neurotransmitters that are most widely found in the vertebrate brain are glutamate, which almost always exerts excitatory effects on target neurons, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which is almost always inhibitory. Neurons using these transmitters can be found in nearly every part of the brain. Because of their ubiquity, drugs that act on glutamate or GABA tend to have broad and powerful effects. Some general anesthetics act by reducing the effects of glutamate; most tranquilizers exert their sedative effects by enhancing the effects of GABA. There are dozens of other chemical neurotransmitters that are used in more limited areas of the brain, often areas dedicated to a particular function. Serotonin, for example—the primary target of many antidepressant drugs and many dietary aids—comes exclusively from a small brainstem area called the raphe nuclei. Norepinephrine, which is involved in arousal, comes exclusively from a nearby small area called the locus coeruleus. Other neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine and dopamine have multiple sources in the brain but are not as ubiquitously distributed as glutamate and GABA. Electrical activity As a side effect of the electrochemical processes used by neurons for signaling, brain tissue generates electric fields when it is active. When large numbers of neurons show synchronized activity, the electric fields that they generate can be large enough to detect outside the skull, using electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG). EEG recordings, along with recordings made from electrodes implanted inside the brains of animals such as rats, show that the brain of a living animal is constantly active, even during sleep. Each part of the brain shows a mixture of rhythmic and nonrhythmic activity, which may vary according to behavioral state. In mammals, the cerebral cortex tends to show large slow delta waves during sleep, faster alpha waves when the animal is awake but inattentive, and chaotic-looking irregular activity when the animal is actively engaged in a task, called beta and gamma waves. During an epileptic seizure, the brain's inhibitory control mechanisms fail to function and electrical activity rises to pathological levels, producing EEG traces that show large wave and spike patterns not seen in a healthy brain. Relating these population-level patterns to the computational functions of individual neurons is a major focus of current research in neurophysiology. Metabolism All vertebrates have a blood–brain barrier that allows metabolism inside the brain to operate differently from metabolism in other parts of the body. Glial cells play a major role in brain metabolism by controlling the chemical composition of the fluid that surrounds neurons, including levels of ions and nutrients. Brain tissue consumes a large amount of energy in proportion to its volume, so large brains place severe metabolic demands on animals. The need to limit body weight in order, for example, to fly, has apparently led to selection for a reduction of brain size in some species, such as bats. Most of the brain's energy consumption goes into sustaining the electric charge (membrane potential) of neurons. Most vertebrate species devote between 2% and 8% of basal metabolism to the brain. In primates, however, the percentage is much higher—in humans it rises to 20–25%. The energy consumption of the brain does not vary greatly over time, but active regions of the cerebral cortex consume somewhat more energy than inactive regions; this forms the basis for the functional brain imaging methods of PET, fMRI, and NIRS. The brain typically gets most of its energy from oxygen-dependent metabolism of glucose (i.e., blood sugar), but ketones provide a major alternative source, together with contributions from medium chain fatty acids (caprylic and heptanoic acids), lactate, acetate, and possibly amino acids. Function Information from the sense organs is collected in the brain. There it is used to determine what actions the organism is to take. The brain processes the raw data to extract information about the structure of the environment. Next it combines the processed information with information about the current needs of the animal and with memory of past circumstances. Finally, on the basis of the results, it generates motor response patterns. These signal-processing tasks require intricate interplay between a variety of functional subsystems. The function of the brain is to provide coherent control over the actions of an animal. A centralized brain allows groups of muscles to be co-activated in complex patterns; it also allows stimuli impinging on one part of the body to evoke responses in other parts, and it can prevent different parts of the body from acting at cross-purposes to each other. Perception The human brain is provided with information about light, sound, the chemical composition of the atmosphere, temperature, the position of the body in space (proprioception), the chemical composition of the bloodstream, and more. In other animals additional senses are present, such as the infrared heat-sense of snakes, the magnetic field sense of some birds, or the electric field sense mainly seen in aquatic animals. Each sensory system begins with specialized receptor cells, such as photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye, or vibration-sensitive hair cells in the cochlea of the ear. The axons of sensory receptor cells travel into the spinal cord or brain, where they transmit their signals to a first-order sensory nucleus dedicated to one specific sensory modality. This primary sensory nucleus sends information to higher-order sensory areas that are dedicated to the same modality. Eventually, via a way-station in the thalamus, the signals are sent to the cerebral cortex, where they are processed to extract the relevant features, and integrated with signals coming from other sensory systems. Motor control Motor systems are areas of the brain that are involved in initiating body movements, that is, in activating muscles. Except for the muscles that control the eye, which are driven by nuclei in the midbrain, all the voluntary muscles in the body are directly innervated by motor neurons in the spinal cord and hindbrain. Spinal motor neurons are controlled both by neural circuits intrinsic to the spinal cord, and by inputs that descend from the brain. The intrinsic spinal circuits implement many reflex responses, and contain pattern generators for rhythmic movements such as walking or swimming. The descending connections from the brain allow for more sophisticated control. The brain contains several motor areas that project directly to the spinal cord. At the lowest level are motor areas in the medulla and pons, which control stereotyped movements such as walking, breathing, or swallowing. At a higher level are areas in the midbrain, such as the red nucleus, which is responsible for coordinating movements of the arms and legs. At a higher level yet is the primary motor cortex, a strip of tissue located at the posterior edge of the frontal lobe. The primary motor cortex sends projections to the subcortical motor areas, but also sends a massive projection directly to the spinal cord, through the pyramidal tract. This direct corticospinal projection allows for precise voluntary control of the fine details of movements. Other motor-related brain areas exert secondary effects by projecting to the primary motor areas. Among the most important secondary areas are the premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. In addition to all of the above, the brain and spinal cord contain extensive circuitry to control the autonomic nervous system which controls the movement of the smooth muscle of the body. Sleep Many animals alternate between sleeping and waking in a daily cycle. Arousal and alertness are also modulated on a finer time scale by a network of brain areas. A key component of the sleep system is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a tiny part of the hypothalamus located directly above the point at which the optic nerves from the two eyes cross. The SCN contains the body's central biological clock. Neurons there show activity levels that rise and fall with a period of about 24 hours, circadian rhythms: these activity fluctuations are driven by rhythmic changes in expression of a set of "clock genes". The SCN continues to keep time even if it is excised from the brain and placed in a dish of warm nutrient solution, but it ordinarily receives input from the optic nerves, through the retinohypothalamic tract (RHT), that allows daily light-dark cycles to calibrate the clock. The SCN projects to a set of areas in the hypothalamus, brainstem, and midbrain that are involved in implementing sleep-wake cycles. An important component of the system is the reticular formation, a group of neuron-clusters scattered diffusely through the core of the lower brain. Reticular neurons send signals to the thalamus, which in turn sends activity-level-controlling signals to every part of the cortex. Damage to the reticular formation can produce a permanent state of coma. Sleep involves great changes in brain activity. Until the 1950s it was generally believed that the brain essentially shuts off during sleep, but this is now known to be far from true; activity continues, but patterns become very different. There are two types of sleep: REM sleep (with dreaming) and NREM (non-REM, usually without dreaming) sleep, which repeat in slightly varying patterns throughout a sleep episode. Three broad types of distinct brain activity patterns can be measured: REM, light NREM and deep NREM. During deep NREM sleep, also called slow wave sleep, activity in the cortex takes the form of large synchronized waves, whereas in the waking state it is noisy and desynchronized. Levels of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and serotonin drop during slow wave sleep, and fall almost to zero during REM sleep; levels of acetylcholine show the reverse pattern. Homeostasis For any animal, survival requires maintaining a variety of parameters of bodily state within a limited range of variation: these include temperature, water content, salt concentration in the bloodstream, blood glucose levels, blood oxygen level, and others. The ability of an animal to regulate the internal environment of its body—the milieu intérieur, as the pioneering physiologist Claude Bernard called it—is known as homeostasis (Greek for "standing still"). Maintaining homeostasis is a crucial function of the brain. The basic principle that underlies homeostasis is negative feedback: any time a parameter diverges from its set-point, sensors generate an error signal that evokes a response that causes the parameter to shift back toward its optimum value. (This principle is widely used in engineering, for example in the control of temperature using a thermostat.) In vertebrates, the part of the brain that plays the greatest role is the hypothalamus, a small region at the base of the forebrain whose size does not reflect its complexity or the importance of its function. The hypothalamus is a collection of small nuclei, most of which are involved in basic biological functions. Some of these functions relate to arousal or to social interactions such as sexuality, aggression, or maternal behaviors; but many of them relate to homeostasis. Several hypothalamic nuclei receive input from sensors located in the lining of blood vessels, conveying information about temperature, sodium level, glucose level, blood oxygen level, and other parameters. These hypothalamic nuclei send output signals to motor areas that can generate actions to rectify deficiencies. Some of the outputs also go to the pituitary gland, a tiny gland attached to the brain directly underneath the hypothalamus. The pituitary gland secretes hormones into the bloodstream, where they circulate throughout the body and induce changes in cellular activity. Motivation The individual animals need to express survival-promoting behaviors, such as seeking food, water, shelter, and a mate. The motivational system in the brain monitors the current state of satisfaction of these goals, and activates behaviors to meet any needs that arise. The motivational system works largely by a reward–punishment mechanism. When a particular behavior is followed by favorable consequences, the reward mechanism in the brain is activated, which induces structural changes inside the brain that cause the same behavior to be repeated later, whenever a similar situation arises. Conversely, when a behavior is followed by unfavorable consequences, the brain's punishment mechanism is activated, inducing structural changes that cause the behavior to be suppressed when similar situations arise in the future. Most organisms studied to date utilize a reward–punishment mechanism: for instance, worms and insects can alter their behavior to seek food sources or to avoid dangers. In vertebrates, the reward-punishment system is implemented by a specific set of brain structures, at the heart of which lie the basal ganglia, a set of interconnected areas at the base of the forebrain. The basal ganglia are the central site at which decisions are made: the basal ganglia exert a sustained inhibitory control over most of the motor systems in the brain; when this inhibition is released, a motor system is permitted to execute the action it is programmed to carry out. Rewards and punishments function by altering the relationship between the inputs that the basal ganglia receive and the decision-signals that are emitted. The reward mechanism is better understood than the punishment mechanism, because its role in drug abuse has caused it to be studied very intensively. Research has shown that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a central role: addictive drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, and nicotine either cause dopamine levels to rise or cause the effects of dopamine inside the brain to be enhanced. Learning and memory Almost all animals are capable of modifying their behavior as a result of experience—even the most primitive types of worms. Because behavior is driven by brain activity, changes in behavior must somehow correspond to changes inside the brain. Already in the late 19th century theorists like Santiago Ramón y Cajal argued that the most plausible explanation is that learning and memory are expressed as changes in the synaptic connections between neurons. Until 1970, however, experimental evidence to support the synaptic plasticity hypothesis was lacking. In 1971 Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo published a paper on a phenomenon now called long-term potentiation: the paper showed clear evidence of activity-induced synaptic changes that lasted for at least several days. Since then technical advances have made these sorts of experiments much easier to carry out, and thousands of studies have been made that have clarified the mechanism of synaptic change, and uncovered other types of activity-driven synaptic change in a variety of brain areas, including the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and physical activity appear to play a beneficial role in the process. Neuroscientists currently distinguish several types of learning and memory that are implemented by the brain in distinct ways: Working memory is the ability of the brain to maintain a temporary representation of information about the task that an animal is currently engaged in. This sort of dynamic memory is thought to be mediated by the formation of cell assemblies—groups of activated neurons that maintain their activity by constantly stimulating one another. Episodic memory is the ability to remember the details of specific events. This sort of memory can last for a lifetime. Much evidence implicates the hippocampus in playing a crucial role: people with severe damage to the hippocampus sometimes show amnesia, that is, inability to form new long-lasting episodic memories. Semantic memory is the ability to learn facts and relationships. This sort of memory is probably stored largely in the cerebral cortex, mediated by changes in connections between cells that represent specific types of information. Instrumental learning is the ability for rewards and punishments to modify behavior. It is implemented by a network of brain areas centered on the basal ganglia. Motor learning is the ability to refine patterns of body movement by practicing, or more generally by repetition. A number of brain areas are involved, including the premotor cortex, basal ganglia, and especially the cerebellum, which functions as a large memory bank for microadjustments of the parameters of movement. Research The field of neuroscience encompasses all approaches that seek to understand the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Psychology seeks to understand mind and behavior, and neurology is the medical discipline that diagnoses and treats diseases of the nervous system. The brain is also the most important organ studied in psychiatry, the branch of medicine that works to study, prevent, and treat mental disorders. Cognitive science seeks to unify neuroscience and psychology with other fields that concern themselves with the brain, such as computer science (artificial intelligence and similar fields) and philosophy. The oldest method of studying the brain is anatomical, and until the middle of the 20th century, much of the progress in neuroscience came from the development of better cell stains and better microscopes. Neuroanatomists study the large-scale structure of the brain as well as the microscopic structure of neurons and their components, especially synapses. Among other tools, they employ a plethora of stains that reveal neural structure, chemistry, and connectivity. In recent years, the development of immunostaining techniques has allowed investigation of neurons that express specific sets of genes. Also, functional neuroanatomy uses medical imaging techniques to correlate variations in human brain structure with differences in cognition or behavior. Neurophysiologists study the chemical, pharmacological, and electrical properties of the brain: their primary tools are drugs and recording devices. Thousands of experimentally developed drugs affect the nervous system, some in highly specific ways. Recordings of brain activity can be made using electrodes, either glued to the scalp as in EEG studies, or implanted inside the brains of animals for extracellular recordings, which can detect action potentials generated by individual neurons. Because the brain does not contain pain receptors, it is possible using these techniques to record brain activity from animals that are awake and behaving without causing distress. The same techniques have occasionally been used to study brain activity in human patients suffering from intractable epilepsy, in cases where there was a medical necessity to implant electrodes to localize the brain area responsible for epileptic seizures. Functional imaging techniques such as fMRI are also used to study brain activity; these techniques have mainly been used with human subjects, because they require a conscious subject to remain motionless for long periods of time, but they have the great advantage of being noninvasive. Another approach to brain function is to examine the consequences of damage to specific brain areas. Even though it is protected by the skull and meninges, surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid, and isolated from the bloodstream by the blood–brain barrier, the delicate nature of the brain makes it vulnerable to numerous diseases and several types of damage. In humans, the effects of strokes and other types of brain damage have been a key source of information about brain function. Because there is no ability to experimentally control the nature of the damage, however, this information is often difficult to interpret. In animal studies, most commonly involving rats, it is possible to use electrodes or locally injected chemicals to produce precise patterns of damage and then examine the consequences for behavior. Computational neuroscience encompasses two approaches: first, the use of computers to study the brain; second, the study of how brains perform computation. On one hand, it is possible to write a computer program to simulate the operation of a group of neurons by making use of systems of equations that describe their electrochemical activity; such simulations are known as biologically realistic neural networks. On the other hand, it is possible to study algorithms for neural computation by simulating, or mathematically analyzing, the operations of simplified "units" that have some of the properties of neurons but abstract out much of their biological complexity. The computational functions of the brain are studied both by computer scientists and neuroscientists. Computational neurogenetic modeling is concerned with the study and development of dynamic neuronal models for modeling brain functions with respect to genes and dynamic interactions between genes. Recent years have seen increasing applications of genetic and genomic techniques to the study of the brain and a focus on the roles of neurotrophic factors and physical activity in neuroplasticity. The most common subjects are mice, because of the availability of technical tools. It is now possible with relative ease to "knock out" or mutate a wide variety of genes, and then examine the effects on brain function. More sophisticated approaches are also being used: for example, using Cre-Lox recombination it is possible to activate or deactivate genes in specific parts of the brain, at specific times. History The oldest brain to have been discovered was in Armenia in the Areni-1 cave complex. The brain, estimated to be over 5,000 years old, was found in the skull of a 12 to 14-year-old girl. Although the brains were shriveled, they were well preserved due to the climate found inside the cave. Early philosophers were divided as to whether the seat of the soul lies in the brain or heart. Aristotle favored the heart, and thought that the function of the brain was merely to cool the blood. Democritus, the inventor of the atomic theory of matter, argued for a three-part soul, with intellect in the head, emotion in the heart, and lust near the liver. The unknown author of On the Sacred Disease, a medical treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus, came down unequivocally in favor of the brain, writing: The Roman physician Galen also argued for the importance of the brain, and theorized in some depth about how it might work. Galen traced out the anatomical relationships among brain, nerves, and muscles, demonstrating that all muscles in the body are connected to the brain through a branching network of nerves. He postulated that nerves activate muscles mechanically by carrying a mysterious substance he called pneumata psychikon, usually translated as "animal spirits". Galen's ideas were widely known during the Middle Ages, but not much further progress came until the Renaissance, when detailed anatomical study resumed, combined with the theoretical speculations of René Descartes and those who followed him. Descartes, like Galen, thought of the nervous system in hydraulic terms. He believed that the highest cognitive functions are carried out by a non-physical res cogitans, but that the majority of behaviors of humans, and all behaviors of animals, could be explained mechanistically. The first real progress toward a modern understanding of nervous function, though, came from the investigations of Luigi Galvani (1737–1798), who discovered that a shock of static electricity applied to an exposed nerve of a dead frog could cause its leg to contract. Since that time, each major advance in understanding has followed more or less directly from the development of a new technique of investigation. Until the early years of the 20th century, the most important advances were derived from new methods for staining cells. Particularly critical was the invention of the Golgi stain, which (when correctly used) stains only a small fraction of neurons, but stains them in their entirety, including cell body, dendrites, and axon. Without such a stain, brain tissue under a microscope appears as an impenetrable tangle of protoplasmic fibers, in which it is impossible to determine any structure. In the hands of Camillo Golgi, and especially of the Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the new stain revealed hundreds of distinct types of neurons, each with its own unique dendritic structure and pattern of connectivity. In the first half of the 20th century, advances in electronics enabled investigation of the electrical properties of nerve cells, culminating in work by Alan Hodgkin, Andrew Huxley, and others on the biophysics of the action potential, and the work of Bernard Katz and others on the electrochemistry of the synapse. These studies complemented the anatomical picture with a conception of the brain as a dynamic entity. Reflecting the new understanding, in 1942 Charles Sherrington visualized the workings of the brain waking from sleep: The invention of electronic computers in the 1940s, along with the development of mathematical information theory, led to a realization that brains can potentially be understood as information processing systems. This concept formed the basis of the field of cybernetics, and eventually gave rise to the field now known as computational neuroscience. The earliest attempts at cybernetics were somewhat crude in that they treated the brain as essentially a digital computer in disguise, as for example in John von Neumann's 1958 book, The Computer and the Brain. Over the years, though, accumulating information about the electrical responses of brain cells recorded from behaving animals has steadily moved theoretical concepts in the direction of increasing realism. One of the most influential early contributions was a 1959 paper titled What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain: the paper examined the visual responses of neurons in the retina and optic tectum of frogs, and came to the conclusion that some neurons in the tectum of the frog are wired to combine elementary responses in a way that makes them function as "bug perceivers". A few years later David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel discovered cells in the primary visual cortex of monkeys that become active when sharp edges move across specific points in the field of view—a discovery for which they won a Nobel Prize. Follow-up studies in higher-order visual areas found cells that detect binocular disparity, color, movement, and aspects of shape, with areas located at increasing distances from the primary visual cortex showing increasingly complex responses. Other investigations of brain areas unrelated to vision have revealed cells with a wide variety of response correlates, some related to memory, some to abstract types of cognition such as space. Theorists have worked to understand these response patterns by constructing mathematical models of neurons and neural networks, which can be simulated using computers. Some useful models are abstract, focusing on the conceptual structure of neural algorithms rather than the details of how they are implemented in the brain; other models attempt to incorporate data about the biophysical properties of real neurons. No model on any level is yet considered to be a fully valid description of brain function, though. The essential difficulty is that sophisticated computation by neural networks requires distributed processing in which hundreds or thousands of neurons work cooperatively—current methods of brain activity recording are only capable of isolating action potentials from a few dozen neurons at a time. Furthermore, even single neurons appear to be complex and capable of performing computations. So, brain models that don't reflect this are too abstract to be representative of brain operation; models that do try to capture this are very computationally expensive and arguably intractable with present computational resources. However, the Human Brain Project is trying to build a realistic, detailed computational model of the entire human brain. The wisdom of this approach has been publicly contested, with high-profile scientists on both sides of the argument. In the second half of the 20th century, developments in chemistry, electron microscopy, genetics, computer science, functional brain imaging, and other fields progressively opened new windows into brain structure and function. In the United States, the 1990s were officially designated as the "Decade of the Brain" to commemorate advances made in brain research, and to promote funding for such research. In the 21st century, these trends have continued, and several new approaches have come into prominence, including multielectrode recording, which allows the activity of many brain cells to be recorded all at the same time; genetic engineering, which allows molecular components of the brain to be altered experimentally; genomics, which allows variations in brain structure to be correlated with variations in DNA properties and neuroimaging. Society and culture As food Animal brains are used as food in numerous cuisines. In rituals Some archaeological evidence suggests that the mourning rituals of European Neanderthals also involved the consumption of the brain. The Fore people of Papua New Guinea are known to eat human brains. In funerary rituals, those close to the dead would eat the brain of the deceased to create a sense of immortality. A prion disease called kuru has been traced to this. See also Brain–computer interface Central nervous system disease List of neuroscience databases Neurological disorder Optogenetics Outline of neuroscience References External links The Brain from Top to Bottom, at McGill University The Brain, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Vivian Nutton, Jonathan Sawday & Marina Wallace (In Our Time, May 8, 2008) Our Quest to Understand the Brain – with Matthew Cobb Royal Institution lecture. Archived at Ghostarchive. Organs (anatomy) Human anatomy by organ Animal anatomy

Beastie Boys were an American hip hop group from New York City, formed in 1981. The group was composed of Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums), Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar, programming). Beastie Boys were formed out of members of experimental hardcore punk band The Young Aborigines in 1978, with Diamond as vocalist, Jeremy Shatan on bass guitar, John Berry on guitar, and Kate Schellenbach on drums. When Shatan left in 1981, Yauch replaced him on bass and the band changed their name to Beastie Boys. Berry left shortly thereafter and was replaced by Horovitz. After achieving local success with the 1983 comedy hip hop single "Cooky Puss", Beastie Boys made a full transition to hip hop, and Schellenbach left. They toured with Madonna in 1985 and a year later released their debut album, Licensed to Ill (1986), the first rap record to top the Billboard 200 chart. Their second album, Paul's Boutique (1989), composed almost entirely of samples, was a commercial failure, but later received critical acclaim. Check Your Head (1992) and Ill Communication (1994) found mainstream success, followed by Hello Nasty (1998), To the 5 Boroughs (2004), The Mix-Up (2007), and Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011). Beastie Boys have sold 20 million records in the United States and had seven platinum-selling albums from 1986 to 2004. They are the biggest-selling rap group since Billboard began recording sales in 1991. In 2012, they became the third rap group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the same year, Yauch died of cancer and Beastie Boys disbanded. Since then, the remaining two members have released several retrospective works, including a book and documentary film detailing the history of the group as well as a career-spanning compilation album. Diamond has produced acts including Portugal. The Man, while Horovitz has taken small acting roles and continues to play music. History 1981–1983: Formation and early years Prior to forming Beastie Boys, Michael Diamond was part of a number of bands such as the Walden Jazz Band, BAN, and the Young Aborigines. Beastie Boys formed in July 1981 when the Young Aborigines bassist Jeremy Shatan left New York City for the summer and the remaining members Michael Diamond, John Berry and Kate Schellenbach formed a new hardcore punk band with Adam Yauch. In a 2007 interview with Charlie Rose, Yauch recalled that it was Berry who suggested the name Beastie Boys. Although the band stated that "Beastie" is an acronym standing for "Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence", in the Charlie Rose interview, both Yauch and Diamond acknowledged that the acronym was an "afterthought" conceived after the name was chosen. The band supported Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys, the Misfits and Reagan Youth at venues such as CBGB, A7, Trudy Hellers Place and Max's Kansas City, playing at the latter venue on its closing night. In November 1982, Beastie Boys recorded the 7-inch EP Polly Wog Stew at 171A studios, an early recorded example of New York hardcore. On November 13, 1982, Beastie Boys played Philip Pucci's birthday for the purposes of his short concert film, Beastie. Pucci held the concert in Bard College's Preston Drama Dance Department Theatre. This performance marked Beastie Boys' first on screen appearance in a published motion picture. Pucci's concept for Beastie was to distribute a mixture of both a half dozen 16 mm Bell & Howell Filmo cameras, and 16 mm Bolex cameras to audience members and ask that they capture Beastie Boys performance from the audience's own point of view while a master sync sound camera filmed from the balcony of the abandoned theater where the performance was held. The opening band for that performance was The Young and the Useless, which featured Adam Horovitz as the lead singer. A one-minute clip of Beastie was subsequently excerpted and licensed by Beastie Boys for use in the "Egg Raid on Mojo" segment of the "Skills to Pay the Bills" long-form home video released by Capitol Records. "Skills to Pay the Bills" later went on to be certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Berry left the group in 1982 (later forming Thwig, Big Fat Love and Bourbon Deluxe) and was replaced by Horovitz, who had become close friends with Beastie Boys. The band also recorded and then performed its first hip hop track, "Cooky Puss", based on a prank call by the group to a Carvel Ice Cream franchise in 1983. It was a part of the new lineup's first EP, also called Cooky Puss, which was the first piece of work that showed their incorporation of the underground rap phenomenon and the use of samples. It quickly became a hit in New York underground dance clubs and night clubs. "Beastie Revolution" was later sampled for a British Airways commercial. Beastie Boys threatened to sue them over the use of the song. British Airways immediately paid them $40,000 in royalties. 1984–1987: Def Jam years and Licensed to Ill Following the success of "Cooky Puss", the band began to incorporate rap into their sets. They hired a DJ for their live shows, New York University student Rick Rubin, who began producing records soon thereafter. "I met Mike first," Rubin recalled. "I thought he was an arrogant asshole. Through spending time with the Beasties I grew to see that they had this great sense of humour. It wasn't that they were assholes, and even if it was, they were funny with it." Rubin formed Def Jam Recordings with fellow NYU student Russell Simmons, and approached the band about producing them for his new label. As the band was transitioning to hip hop, Schellenbach was fired in 1984, with Diamond taking over on drums. In their 2018 memoir, Ad-Rock expressed regret for firing Schellenbach, which he attributed to her not fitting with the "new tough-rapper-guy identity". The band's 12-inch single "Rock Hard" (1984) was the second Def Jam record crediting Rubin as producer (the first was "It's Yours" by T La Rock and Jazzy Jay). On July 22, 1986, Beastie Boys opened for John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols band Public Image Ltd., and supported Madonna on her North American The Virgin Tour. Then headlining with Fishbone and Murphy's Law with DJ Hurricane and later in the year, the group was on the Raising Hell tour with Run-DMC, Whodini, LL Cool J, and the Timex Social Club. Thanks to this exposure, "Hold It Now, Hit It" charted on Billboards US R&B and dance charts. "She's on It" from the Krush Groove soundtrack continued in a rap/metal vein while a double A-side 12", "Paul Revere/The New Style", was released at the end of the year. The band recorded Licensed to Ill in 1986 and released it on November 15, 1986. The album was favorably reviewed by Rolling Stone magazine. Licensed to Ill became one of the best-selling rap albums of the 1980s and the first rap album to go number 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, where it stayed for five weeks. It also reached number 2 on the Top R&B album chart. It was Def Jam's fastest selling debut record to date and sold over nine million copies. The fourth single, "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)", reached number 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Although the group has sold over 26 million records in the US, this is their only single to peak in the US top ten or top twenty. The accompanying video (directed by Ric Menello and Adam Dubin) became an MTV staple. Another song from the album, "No Sleep till Brooklyn", peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart. The band took the Licensed to Ill tour around the world the following year. The tour was troubled by lawsuits and arrests, with the band accused of provoking the crowd. This culminated in a notorious gig at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, England, on May 30, 1987, that erupted into a riot approximately 10 minutes after the group hit the stage and the arrest of Adam Horovitz by Merseyside Police. He was charged with assault causing grievous bodily harm. 1988–1989: Move to Capitol Records and Paul's Boutique In 1988, Beastie Boys appeared in Tougher Than Leather, a film directed by Rubin as a star vehicle for Run-D.M.C. and Def Jam Recordings. After Def Jam stopped paying them for work they'd already done and were owed money for, Beastie Boys left Def Jam and signed with Capitol Records. The second Beastie Boys album, Paul's Boutique, was released on July 25, 1989. Produced by the Dust Brothers, it blends eclectic samples and has been described as an early work of experimental hip hop. It failed to match the sales of Licensed to Ill, peaking at number 14 on the US album charts, but later attracted wide acclaim; Rolling Stone ranked it number 156 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 1990–1996: Check Your Head and Ill Communication Check Your Head was recorded in the band's G-Son studio in Atwater Village, California, and released on its Grand Royal record label. The band was influenced to play instruments on this album by Dutch group Urban Dance Squad; with Mike D on drums, Yauch on bass, Horovitz on guitar and Mark Ramos Nishita ("Keyboard Money Mark") on keyboards. Mario Caldato, Jr., who had helped in the production of Paul's Boutique, engineered the record and became a longtime collaborator. Check Your Head was released in 1992 and was certified double Platinum in the US and peaked at number 10 on the Billboard 200. The single "So What'cha Want" reached number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100 and charted on both the Rap and Modern Rock Chart, while the album's first single, "Pass the Mic", peaked at number 38 on the Hot Dance Music chart. The album also introduced a more experimental direction, with funk and jazz inspired songs including "Lighten Up" and "Something's Got to Give". The band returned to their hardcore punk roots for the song "Time for Livin'", a cover of a 1974 Sly and the Family Stone song. The addition of instruments and the harder rock sound of the album could be considered a precursor to the nu metal genre of music to come out in the later half of the 1990s. Beastie Boys signed an eclectic roster of artists to their Grand Royal label, including Luscious Jackson, Sean Lennon, and Australian artist Ben Lee. The group owned Grand Royal Records until 2001. Grand Royal's first independent release was Luscious Jackson's album In Search of Manny in 1993. Also in 1993, the band contributed the track "It's the New Style" (with DJ Hurricane) to the AIDS benefit album No Alternative, produced by the Red Hot Organization. Beastie Boys also published Grand Royal Magazine, with the first edition in 1993 featuring a cover story on Bruce Lee, artwork by George Clinton, and interviews with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and A Tribe Called Quest's MC Q-Tip. The 1995 issue of the magazine contained a memorable piece on the mullet. The Oxford English Dictionary cites this as the first published use of the term, along with the lyrics from the band's 1994 song, "Mullet Head". That term was not heard in the 1980s, even though that decade has retroactively been hailed as the mullet's peak in popularity. The OED says that the term was "apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by US hip-hop group Beastie Boys". Grand Royal Magazine is also responsible for giving British band Sneaker Pimps their name. Ill Communication, released in 1994, saw Beastie Boys' return to the top of the charts when the album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and peaked at number 2 on the R&B/hip hop album chart. The single "Sabotage" became a hit on the modern rock charts and the music video, directed by Spike Jonze, received extensive play on MTV. "Get It Together" reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Also in 1994, the band released Some Old Bullshit, featuring the band's early independent material, which made it to number 46 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart. Beastie Boys headlined at Lollapalooza—an American travelling music festival—in 1994, together with The Smashing Pumpkins. In addition, the band performed three concerts (in Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C.) to raise money for the Milarepa Fund and dedicated the royalties from "Shambala" and "Bodhisattva Vow" from the Ill Communication to the cause. The Milarepa Fund aims to raise awareness of Tibetan human rights issues and the exile of the Dalai Lama. In 1996, Yauch organized the largest rock benefit show since 1985's Live Aid – the Tibetan Freedom Concert, a two-day festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco that attracted over 100,000 attendees. In 1995, the popularity of Beastie Boys was underlined when tickets for an arena tour went on sale in the US and Madison Square Garden and Chicago's Rosemont Horizon sold out within 30 minutes. One dollar from each ticket sold went through Milarepa to local charities in each city on the tour. Beastie Boys toured South America and Southeast Asia for the first time. The band also released Aglio e Olio, a collection of eight songs lasting just 11 minutes harking back to their punk roots, in 1995. The In Sound from Way Out!, a collection of previously released jazz/funk instrumentals, was released on Grand Royal in 1996 with the title and artwork a homage to an album by electronic pop music pioneers Perrey and Kingsley. In 1992, Beastie Boys decided to sample portions of the sound recording of "Choir" by James Newton in various renditions of their song "Pass the Mic". The band did not obtain a license from Newton to use the composition. Pursuant to their license from ECM Records, Beastie Boys digitally sampled the opening six seconds of Newton's sound recording of "Choir", and repeated this six-second sample as a background element throughout their song. Newton brought suit, claiming that the band infringed his copyright in the underlying composition of "Choir". The district court granted Beastie Boys summary judgment. The district court said that no license was required because the three-note segment of "Choir" lacked the requisite originality and was therefore not copyrightable. The decision was affirmed on appeal. 1997–2001: Hello Nasty Beastie Boys began work on the album Hello Nasty at the G-Son studios, Los Angeles in 1995, but continued to produce and record it in New York City after Yauch moved to Manhattan in 1996. The album displayed a substantial shift in musical feel, with the addition of Mix Master Mike. The album featured bombastic beats, rap samples, and experimental sounds. Released on July 14, 1998, Hello Nasty earned first week sales of 681,000 in the US and went straight to number 1 in the US, the UK, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden. The album achieved number 2 rank on the charts in Canada and Japan, and reached top-ten chart positions in Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, France and Israel. Beastie Boys won two Grammy Awards in 1999, receiving the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album for Hello Nasty as well as the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "Intergalactic". This was the first and, as of 2008, only time that a band had won awards in both rap and alternative categories. Also at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards they won the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award for their contribution to music videos. The following year at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards they also won the award for Best Hip Hop Video for their hit song "Intergalactic". Beastie Boys used both appearances at the Video Music Awards to make politically charged speeches of considerable length to the sizable MTV audiences. At the 1998 ceremony, Yauch addressed the issue of Muslim people being stereotyped as terrorists and that most people of the Muslim faith are not terrorists. These comments were made in the wake of the US Embassy bombings that had occurred in both Kenya and Tanzania only a month earlier. At the 1999 ceremony in the wake of the horror stories that were coming out of Woodstock 99, Adam Horovitz addressed the fact that there had been many cases of sexual assaults and rapes at the festival, suggesting the need for bands and festivals to pay much more attention to the security details at their concerts. Beastie Boys started an arena tour in 1998. Through Ian C. Rogers, the band made live downloads of their performances available for their fans, but were temporarily thwarted when Capitol Records removed them from its website. Beastie Boys was one of the first bands who made MP3 downloads available on their website. The group got a high level of response and public awareness as a result including a published article in The Wall Street Journal on the band's efforts. On September 28, 1999, Beastie Boys joined Elvis Costello to play "Radio Radio" on the 25th anniversary season of Saturday Night Live. Beastie Boys released The Sounds of Science, a two-CD anthology of their works in 1999. This album reached number  19 on the Billboard 200, number 18 in Canada, and number 14 on the R&B/Hip Hop chart. The one new song, the single "Alive", reached number 11 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart. In 2000, Beastie Boys had planned to co-headline the "Rhyme and Reason Tour" with Rage Against the Machine and Busta Rhymes, but the tour was canceled when drummer Mike D suffered a serious injury due to a bicycle accident. The official diagnosis was fifth-degree acromioclavicular joint dislocation; he needed surgery and extensive rehabilitation. By the time he recovered, Rage Against the Machine had disbanded, although they would reunite seven years later. Under the name Country Mike, Mike D recorded an album, Country Mike's Greatest Hits, and gave it to friends and family for Christmas in 2000. Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz's side project BS 2000 released Simply Mortified in 2001. In October 2001, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Beastie Boys organized and headlined the New Yorkers Against Violence Concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom. 2002–2008: To the 5 Boroughs and The Mix-Up In 2002, Adam Yauch started building a new studio facility, Oscilloscope Laboratories, in downtown Manhattan, New York and the band started work on a new album there. The band released a protest song, "In a World Gone Mad", against the 2003 Iraq war as a free download on several websites, including the Milarepa website, the MTV website, MoveOn.org, and Win Without War. The 19th and 20th Tibetan Freedom Concerts were held in Tokyo and Taipei, Beastie Boys' first Taiwan appearance. Beastie Boys also headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Their single, "Ch-Check It Out", debuted on The O.C. in "The Vegas" episode from Season 1, which aired April 28, 2004. To the 5 Boroughs was released worldwide on June 15, 2004. It was the first album the band produced themselves and reached number 1 on the Billboard albums chart, number 2 in the UK and Australia, and number 3 in Germany. The first single from the album, "Ch-Check It Out", reached number 1 in Canada and on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart. The album was the cause of some controversy with allegations that it installed spyware when inserted into the CD drive of a computer. The band denied this allegation, defending that there is no copy protection software on the albums sold in the US and UK. While there is Macrovision CDS-200 copy protection software installed on European copies of the album, this is standard practice for all European releases on EMI/Capitol Records released in Europe, and it does not install spyware or any form of permanent software. The band stated in mid-2006 that they were writing material for their next album and would be producing it themselves. Speaking to British music weekly NME (April 26, 2007), Diamond revealed that a new album was to be called The Mix-Up. Despite initial confusion regarding whether the album would have lyrics as opposed to being purely instrumental, the Mic-To-Mic blog reported that Capitol Records had confirmed it would be strictly instrumental and erroneously reported a release date scheduled for July 10, 2007. (The album was eventually released June 26, as originally reported.) On May 1, 2007, this was further cemented by an e-mail sent to those on the band's mailing list – explicitly stating that the album would be all instrumental: The band subsequently confirmed the new album and announced a short tour that focused on festivals as opposed to a traditional tour, including the likes of Sónar (Spain), Roskilde (Denmark), Hurricane/Southside (Germany), Bestival (Isle of Wight), Electric Picnic (Ireland) and Open'er Festival (Poland). Beastie Boys performed at the UK leg of Live Earth July 7, 2007 at Wembley Stadium, London with "Sabotage", "So What'cha Want", "Intergalactic", and "Sure Shot". They worked with Reverb, a non-profit environmental organization, on their 2007 summer tour. They headlined the Langerado Music Festival in South Florida on Friday, March 7, 2008. They won a Grammy for The Mix-Up in the "Best Pop Instrumental Album" category at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in 2008. 2009–2012: Hot Sauce Committee In February 2009, Yauch revealed their forthcoming new album had taken the band's sound in a "bizarre" new direction, saying "It's a combination of playing and sampling stuff as we're playing, and also sampling pretty obscure records." The tentative title for the record was Tadlock's Glasses, of which Yauch explained the inspiration behind the title: On May 25, 2009, it was announced during an interview on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon that the name of their new album would be Hot Sauce Committee and was set for release on September 15 (with the track listing of the album announced through their mailing list on June 23). The album included a collaboration with Santigold who co-wrote and sang with the band on the track "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win". In June, the group appeared at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and performed the new single from the album titled "Too Many Rappers" alongside rapper Nas who appears on the track. It would be the last live performance by Beastie Boys as a trio. The group would have toured the UK later in the year in support of the new record. Speaking to Drowned in Sound, Beastie Boys revealed that Part 2 was done. Mike D also hinted it may be released via unusual means: On July 20, Yauch announced on the band's official YouTube channel and through the fan mailing list, the cancellation of several tour dates and the postponement of the new album due to the discovery of a cancerous tumor in his parotid gland and a lymph node. The group also had to cancel their co-headlining gig at the Osheaga Festival in Montreal and also another headlining spot for the first night of the All Points West Festival in Jersey City, New Jersey. In late October 2010, Beastie Boys sent out two emails regarding the status of Hot Sauce Committee Pts. 1 and 2 to their online mailing list. An email dated October 18 read: "Although we regret to inform you that Hot Sauce Committee Part 1 will continue to be delayed indefinitely, Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 will be released on time as originally planned in spring of 2011." One week later, a second email was sent out, reading as follows: The official release dates were April 27, 2011, for Japan; April 29 in the UK and Europe, and May 3, 2011, in the US. The third single for the album "Make Some Noise" was made available for download on April 11, 2011, as well as a limited edition 7-inch vinyl single for Record Store Day five days later with a Passion Pit remix of the track as a b-side. The track was leaked online on April 6 and subsequently made available via their blog. On April 22, Beastie Boys emailed out the cryptic message "This Sat, 10:35 am EST – Just listen, listen, listen to the beat box". A day later, they live streamed their album online via beatbox inside Madison Square Garden. The band was announced as an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in December 2011. They were inducted by Chuck D and LL Cool J on April 14, 2012. Yauch was too sick to attend the ceremony, having been admitted to NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital the same day, therefore the group didn't perform; instead Black Thought, Travie from Gym Class Heroes and Kid Rock performed a medley of their songs. Diamond and Horovitz accepted and read a speech that Yauch had written. 2012–present: Deaths of Yauch and Berry and disbandment On May 4, 2012, Yauch died from cancer at the age of 47. Mike D told Rolling Stone that Beastie Boys had recorded new music in late 2011, but did not say if these recordings would be released. He also said that Beastie Boys would likely disband due to the death of MCA, though he was open to making new music with Ad-Rock and that "Yauch would genuinely want us to try whatever crazy thing we wanted but never got around to". In June 2014, Mike D confirmed that he and Ad-Rock would not make music under the Beastie Boys name again. Founding Beastie Boys guitarist John Berry died on May 19, 2016, aged 52, as a result of frontotemporal dementia, following several years of ill health. He was credited with naming the band Beastie Boys and played guitar on the first EP. The first Beastie Boys show took place at Berry's loft. Yauch's will forbids the use of Beastie Boys music in advertisements. In June 2014, Beastie Boys won a lawsuit against Monster Energy for using their music in a commercial without permission. They were awarded $1.7 million in damages and $668,000 for legal fees. In October 2018, Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz released a memoir, Beastie Boys Book. In 2020, they released a documentary, Beastie Boys Story, directed by Spike Jonze. The career-spanning book and documentary were complemented by the compilation album Beastie Boys Music in October 2020. Tibetan Freedom Concert In 1994, Yauch and activist Erin Potts organized the Tibetan Freedom Concert in order to raise awareness of humans rights abuses by the Chinese government on the Tibetan people. Yauch became aware of this after hiking in Nepal and speaking with Tibetan refugees. The events became annual, and shortly after went international with acts such as Live, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Rage Against the Machine, The Smashing Pumpkins, and U2. Musical style, influences, and legacy Originally a hardcore punk band, Beastie Boys had largely abandoned the genre in favor of hip hop and rap rock by the time work began on their debut studio album Licensed to Ill. The group mixed elements of hip hop, punk, funk, electro, jazz and Latin music into their music. They have also been described as alternative hip hop and . Around the time of the release of their debut album, Licensed to Ill, Mike D started to appear on stage and in publicity photographs wearing a large Volkswagen emblem attached to a chain-link necklace. This started a rash of thefts of the emblem from vehicles around the world as fans tried to emulate him. A controversial concert in Columbus, Georgia in 1987 led to the passage of a lewdness ordinance in that city. Beastie Boys are considered very influential in both the hip hop and rock music scenes, with artists such as Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, Hed PE, , Sublime, Mac Miller , Korn , Slipknot, and Blur citing them as an influence. Beastie Boys have had four albums reach the top of the Billboard album charts (Licensed to Ill, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty and To the 5 Boroughs) since 1986. In the November 2004 issue, Rolling Stone named "Sabotage" the 475th song on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. In their April 2005 issue, Rolling Stone ranked them number 77 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. VH1 ranked them number 89 on their list of their 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. On September 27, 2007, it was announced that Beastie Boys were one of the nine nominees for the 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions. In December 2011, they were announced to be official 2012 inductees. Beastie Boys have many high-profile longtime fans, including UFC president Dana White, who has a hand-signed bass guitar signed by all three members in his office and a copy of the Beastie Boys book. Speaking on the death of Adam Yauch, White said, "I seriously haven't been impacted by a death in a long time like I was with the Beastie Boys". Actor Seth Rogen, who appeared in the video for "Make Some Noise", also said, "I'm a huge Beastie Boys fan and they just called and asked if I wanted to be a part of it, and I said yes without hesitation. I didn't need to hear anything. I didn't need to see anything, any concepts. I was just like, 'I will literally do anything you ask me to do". Ben Stiller was seen in the crowd for the DVD release Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! and featured Horovitz in his movie While We're Young, where he said, "I'm a huge Beastie Boys fan, so doing that, for me, was beyond anything". Eminem was highly influenced by the Beastie Boys and cited them alongside LL Cool J as being the reason he got into rap. During an interview with MTV after the death of Yauch, he said, "Adam Yauch brought a lot of positivity into the world and I think it's obvious to anyone how big of an influence the Beastie Boys were on me and so many others. They are trailblazers and pioneers and Adam will be sorely missed. My thoughts and prayers are with his family, Mike D., and Ad-Rock." His album cover for Kamikaze paid homage to Licensed to Ill and he also paid homage in his "Berzerk" video. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge acknowledged he was a fan of the band, citing his favorite song as "Fight for Your Right", as the Beastie Boys appeared on Beavis and Butt-Head on numerous occasions. Kid Rock wrote an in-depth tribute to Yauch after being influenced by the band, which said, "I thought I was the 4th member of Beastie Boys in 7th grade. You couldn't tell me I wasn't. The first time I ever saw them on stage was a very early show of theirs before Licensed to Ill came out, opening for Run DMC at Joe Louis Arena. My jaw dropped to the floor!". In 2020, Spin Magazine ranked Beastie Boys as the 12th most influential artist of the previous 35 years. Sampling lawsuit In 2003, Beastie Boys were involved in the landmark sampling decision, Newton v. Diamond. In that case, a federal judge ruled that the band was not liable for sampling James Newton's "Choir" in their track, "Pass the Mic". The sample used is the six-second flute stab. In short, Beastie Boys cleared the sample but obtained only the rights to use the sound recording and not the composition rights to the song "Choir". In the decision, the judge found that: Band members Members John Berry – guitars (1981–1982; died 2016) Mike D – vocals, drums (1981–2012) Kate Schellenbach – drums, percussion (1981–1984) MCA – vocals, bass (1981–2012; died 2012) Ad-Rock – vocals, guitars (1982–2012) Touring musicians DJ Double R – disc jockey (1984–1985) Doctor Dré – disc jockey (1986) DJ Hurricane – disc jockey (1986–1997) Eric Bobo – percussion, drums (1992–1996) Money Mark (Mark Ramos-Nishita) – keyboards, vocals (1992–2012) Amery "AWOL" Smith – drums, backing vocals, percussion (1992–?) Alfredo Ortiz – drums, percussion (1996–2012) Mix Master Mike – disc jockey, backing vocals (1998–2012) Timeline Touring Members Timeline Discography Studio albums Licensed to Ill (1986) Paul's Boutique (1989) Check Your Head (1992) Ill Communication (1994) Hello Nasty (1998) To the 5 Boroughs (2004) The Mix-Up (2007) Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011) Tours The Virgin Tour (1985) (supporting Madonna) Raising Hell Tour (1986) (supporting Run-D.M.C.) Licensed to Ill Tour (1987) (with Public Enemy) Together Forever Tour (1987) (with Run-D.M.C.) Check Your Head Tour (1992) (with Cypress Hill, Rollins Band, Firehose, and Basehead) Ill Communication Tour (1994–1995) In the Round Tour (1998–1999) (with A Tribe Called Quest and Money Mark) To the 5 Boroughs Tour (2004) The Mix-Up Tour (2007–2008) Awards and nominations Grammy Awards |- |1992 |Check Your Head |Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group | |- |1995 |"Sabotage" |Best Hard Rock Performance | |- |Rowspan="2"|1999 |"Intergalactic" |Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group | |- |Hello Nasty |Best Alternative Music Album | |- |2001 |"Alive" |Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group | |- |rowspan="2"|2005 |"Ch-Check It Out" |Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group | |- |To The 5 Boroughs |Best Rap Album | |- |rowspan="2"|2008 |"Off the Grid" |Best Pop Instrumental Performance | |- |The Mix-Up |Best Contemporary Instrumental Album | |- |2010 |"Too Many Rappers" (featuring Nas) |Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group | |} MTV Video Music Awards |- |rowspan="5"|1994 |rowspan="5"|"Sabotage" |Video of the Year | |- |Best Group Video | |- |Breakthrough Video | |- |Best Direction (Director: Spike Jonze) | |- |Viewer's Choice | |- |1998 |Beastie Boys |Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award | |- |1999 |"Intergalactic" |Best Hip-Hop Video | |- |2009 |"Sabotage" |Best Video (That Should Have Won a Moonman) | |- |rowspan="2"|2011 |rowspan="2"|"Make Some Noise" |Video of the Year | |- |Best Direction (Director: Adam Yauch) | |} MTV Europe Music Awards |- |1994 |Beastie Boys |Best Group | |- |rowspan="4"|1998 |"Intergalactic" |Best Video | |- |Hello Nasty |Best Album | |- |rowspan="2"|Beastie Boys |Best Group | |- |Best Hip-Hop | |- |1999 |Beastie Boys |Best Hip-Hop | |- |rowspan="2"|2004 |rowspan="2"|Beastie Boys |Best Group | |- |Best Hip-Hop | |- |2011 |"Make Some Noise" |Best Video | |} MTV Video Music Awards Japan |- |2005 |"Ch-Check It Out" |Best Hip-Hop Video | |- |2009 |Beastie Boys |MTV Street Icon Award | |} Filmography Krush Groove (1985) Tougher Than Leather (1988) Futurama episode "Hell Is Other Robots" (1999) Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! (2006) Fight for Your Right Revisited (2011) Beastie Boys Story (2020) Notes References External links Beastie Boys Lyrics Annotated – Beastie Boys lyrics laid out with annotated comments explaining popular culture and historical references as well as known samples. Beastie Boys 1981 establishments in New York City Alternative hip hop groups Capitol Records artists Def Jam Recordings artists Grammy Award winners for rap music Hardcore punk groups from New York (state) Hip hop groups from New York City Jewish hip hop groups Jewish musical groups Alternative rock groups from New York (state) Musical groups established in 1981 Musical groups from New York City Rap rock groups Rapcore groups ROIR artists Musical groups disestablished in 2012 Jews in punk rock Grand Royal artists MTV Europe Music Award winners Feminist musicians Hardcore hip hop groups

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, software developer, investor, author, and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a major entrepreneur of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Gates was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1975, he and Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It became the world's largest personal computer software company. Gates led the company as chairman and CEO until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, succeeded by Steve Ballmer, but he remained chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect. During the late 1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings. In June 2008, Gates transitioned to a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he and his then-wife, Melinda Gates, established in 2000. He stepped down as chairman of the board of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic efforts including climate change, global health and development, and education. Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people. From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world every year except from 2010 to 2013. In October 2017, he was surpassed by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of US$90.6 billion compared to Gates's net worth of US$89.9 billion at the time. As of February 2022, Gates had an estimated net worth of US$130 billion, making him the fourth-richest person in the world. Later in his career and since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, Gates has pursued many business and philanthropic endeavors. He is the founder and chairman of several companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, bgC3, and TerraPower. He has given sizable amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reported to be the world's largest private charity. Through the foundation, he led an early 21st century vaccination campaign that significantly contributed to the eradication of the wild poliovirus in Africa. In 2010, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy. Early life Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955. He is the son of William H. Gates Sr. (1925–2020) and Mary Maxwell Gates (1929–1994). His ancestry includes English, German, and Irish/Scots-Irish. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way of America. Gates's maternal grandfather was J. W. Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has an older sister Kristi (Kristianne) and a younger sister Libby. He is the fourth of his name in his family but is known as William Gates III or "Trey" (i.e., three) because his father had the "II" suffix. The family lived in the Sand Point area of Seattle in a home that was damaged by a rare tornado when Gates was seven years old. Early in his life, Gates observed that his parents wanted him to pursue a law career. When he was young, his family regularly attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches, a Protestant Reformed denomination. Gates was small for his age and was bullied as a child. The family encouraged competition; one visitor reported that "it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock; there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing". At 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school, where he wrote his first software program. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers' Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine, an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, Gates and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC) which banned Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Gates's best friend and first business partner Kent Evans, for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time. The four students formed the Lakeside Programmers Club to make money. At the end of the ban, they offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for extra computer time. Rather than using the system remotely via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including Fortran, Lisp, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970 when the company went out of business. The following year, a Lakeside teacher enlisted Gates and Evans to automate the school's class-scheduling system, providing them computer time and royalties in return. The duo worked diligently in order to have the program ready for their senior year. Towards the end of their junior year, Evans was killed in a mountain climbing accident, which Gates has described as one of the saddest days of his life. Gates then turned to Allen who helped him finish the system for Lakeside. At 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen called Traf-O-Data to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. In 1972, he served as a congressional page in the House of Representatives. He was a National Merit Scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. He chose a pre-law major but took mathematics and graduate level computer science courses. While at Harvard, he met fellow student Steve Ballmer. Gates left Harvard after two years while Ballmer stayed and graduated magna cum laude. Years later, Ballmer succeeded Gates as Microsoft's CEO and maintained that position from 2000 until his resignation in 2014. Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by professor Harry Lewis. His solution held the record as the fastest version for over 30 years, and its successor is faster by only 2%. His solution was formalized and published in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen and joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. In 1975, the MITS Altair 8800 was released based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard that same year. His parents were supportive of him after seeing how much he wanted to start his own company. He explained his decision to leave Harvard: "if things hadn't worked out, I could always go back to school. I was officially on leave." Microsoft BASIC Gates read the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics which demonstrated the Altair 8800, and he contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demonstration, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration was held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico; it was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. MITS hired Allen, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him at MITS in November 1975. Allen named their partnership "Micro-Soft", a combination of "microcomputer" and "software", and their first office was in Albuquerque. The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Ric Weiland. They dropped the hyphen within a year and officially registered the trade name "Microsoft" with the Secretary of the State of New Mexico on November 26, 1976. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies. Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked out and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, he wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90% of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for any professional developers to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software. This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems. The company moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979. Gates said he personally reviewed and often rewrote every line of code that the company produced in its first five years. As the company grew, he transitioned into a manager role, then an executive. DONKEY.BAS, is a computer game written in 1981 and included with early versions of the PC DOS operating system distributed with the original IBM PC. It is a driving game in which the player must avoid hitting donkeys. The game was written by Gates and Neil Konzen. IBM partnership IBM, the leading supplier of computer equipment to commercial enterprises at the time, approached Microsoft in July 1980 concerning software for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC, after Bill Gates's mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, mentioned Microsoft to John Opel, IBM's CEO. IBM first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC interpreter. IBM's representatives also mentioned that they needed an operating system, and Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system. IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, however, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and asked if Microsoft could provide an operating system. A few weeks later, Gates and Allen proposed using 86-DOS, an operating system similar to CP/M, that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to be the exclusive licensing agent of 86-DOS, and later the full owner. Microsoft employed Paterson to adapt the operating system for the PC and delivered it to IBM as PC DOS for a one-time fee of $50,000. The contract itself only earned Microsoft a relatively small fee. It was the prestige brought to Microsoft by IBM's adoption of their operating system that would be the origin of Microsoft's transformation from a small business to the leading software company in the world. Gates had not offered to transfer the copyright on the operating system to IBM because he believed that other personal computer makers would clone IBM's PC hardware. They did, making the IBM-compatible PC, running DOS, a de facto standard. The sales of MS-DOS (the version of DOS sold to customers other than IBM) made Microsoft a major player in the industry. The press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the IBM PC. PC Magazine asked if Gates was "the man behind the machine?". Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates the president and chairman of the board, with Paul Allen as vice president and vice chairman. In early 1983, Allen left the company after receiving a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, effectively ending the formal business partnership between Gates and Allen, which had been strained months prior due to a contentious dispute over Microsoft equity. Later in the decade, Gates repaired his relationship with Allen and together the two donated millions to their childhood school Lakeside. They remained friends until Allen's death in October 2018. Windows Microsoft and Gates launched their first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, in an attempt to fend off competition from Apple's Macintosh GUI, which had bewitched consumers with its simplicity and ease of use. In August of the following year, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, the partnership deteriorated due to mounting creative differences. The operating system grew out of DOS in an organic fashion over a decade, until with Windows 95 the DOS text screen was relegated to the closet. Windows XP, released one year after Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO, reportedly was the first to not be based on DOS. Windows 8.1 was the last version of the OS released before Gates left the chair of the firm to John W. Thompson on February 5, 2014. As of 2021, the latest release of the OS is known as Windows 11. Management style Gates had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy from the company's founding from 1975 until 2006. He gained a reputation for being distant from others; an industry executive complained in 1981 that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls." An Atari executive recalled that he showed Gates a game and defeated him 35 of 37 times. When they met again a month later, Gates "won or tied every game. He had studied the game until he solved it. That is a competitor". In the early 1980s, while business partner Paul Allen was undergoing treatments for cancer, Gates — according to Allen — conspired to reduce Allen's share in Microsoft by issuing himself stock options. In his autobiography, Allen would later recall that Gates was "scheming to rip me off. It was mercenary opportunism plain and simple". Gates says he remembers the episode differently. Allen would also recall that Gates was prone to shouting episodes. Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers, and the managers described him as being verbally combative. He also berated them for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk. He interrupted presentations with such comments as "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard" and "why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?" The target of his outburst would then have to defend the proposal in detail until Gates was fully convinced. When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend." Gates has been accused of bullying Microsoft employees. During Microsoft's early years, Gates was an active software developer, particularly in the company's programming language products, but his primary role in most of the company's history was as a manager and executive. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but he wrote code that shipped with the company's products as late as 1989. Jerry Pournelle wrote in 1985 when Gates announced Microsoft Excel: "Bill Gates likes the program, not because it's going to make him a lot of money (although I'm sure it will do that), but because it's a neat hack." On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his role at Microsoft to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He gradually divided his responsibilities between two successors when he placed Ray Ozzie in charge of management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy. The process took two years to fully transfer his duties to Ozzie and Mundie, and was completed on June 27, 2008. Antitrust litigation Gates approved of many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words such as "compete", "concerned", and "we". Later in the year, when portions of the videotaped deposition were played back in court, the judge was seen laughing and shaking his head. BusinessWeek reported: Gates later said that he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. "Did I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty ... rudeness to Boies in the first degree." Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization, tying and blocking competition, each in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Post-Microsoft Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates has continued his philanthropy and works on other projects. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gates was the world's highest-earning billionaire in 2013, as his net worth increased by US$15.8 billion to US$78.5 billion. , most of Gates's assets are held in Cascade Investment LLC, an entity through which he owns stakes in numerous businesses, including Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and Corbis Corp. On February 4, 2014, Gates stepped down as chairman of Microsoft to become "technology advisor" at the firm, alongside CEO Satya Nadella. Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues in a substantial interview that was published in the March 27, 2014, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. In the interview, Gates provided his perspective on climate change, his charitable activities, various tech companies and people involved in them, and the state of America. In response to a question about his greatest fear when he looks 50 years into the future, Gates stated: "there'll be some really bad things that'll happen in the next 50 or 100 years, but hopefully none of them on the scale of, say, a million people that you didn't expect to die from a pandemic, or nuclear or bioterrorism." Gates also identified innovation as the "real driver of progress" and pronounced that "America's way better today than it's ever been." Gates has expressed concern about the potential harms of superintelligence; in a Reddit "ask me anything", he stated that: In an interview that was held at the TED conference in March 2015, with Baidu's CEO, Robin Li, Gates said he would "highly recommend" Nick Bostrom's recent work, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. During the conference, Gates warned that the world was not prepared for the next pandemic, a situation that would come to pass in late 2019 when the COVID-19 pandemic began. In March 2018, Gates met at his home in Seattle with Mohammed bin Salman, the reformist crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030. In June 2019, Gates admitted that losing the mobile operating system race to Android was his biggest mistake. He stated that it was within their skill set of being the dominant player, but partially blames the antitrust litigation during the time. That same year, Gates became an advisory board member of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. On March 13, 2020, Microsoft announced Gates would be leaving his board positions at Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft to dedicate his efforts in philanthropic endeavors such as climate change, global health and development, and education. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates has widely been looked at by media outlets as an expert on the issue, despite him not being a public official or having any prior medical training. His foundation did, however, establish the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator in 2020 to hasten the development and evaluation of new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients for COVID-19, and, as of February 2021, Gates expressed that he and Anthony Fauci frequently talk and collaborate on matters including vaccines and other medical innovations to fight the pandemic. Business ventures and investments (partial list) Gates has a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio with stake in various sectors and has participated in several entrepreneurial ventures beyond Microsoft, including: AutoNation, automotive retailer that Gates has a 16% stake in trading on the NYSE. bgC3 LLC, a think-tank and research company founded by Gates. Canadian National Railway (CN), a Canadian Class I freight railway. As of 2019, Gates is the largest single shareholder of CN stock. Cascade Investment LLC, a private investment and holding company incorporated in the United States, founded and controlled by Gates and headquartered in Kirkland, Washington. Gates is the top private owner of farmland in the United States with landholdings owned via Cascade Investment totalling 242,000 acres across 19 states. He is the 49th largest private owner of land in the US. Carbon Engineering, a for-profit venture founded by David Keith, which Gates helped fund. It's is also supported by Chevron Corporation and Occidental Petroleum. SCoPEx, Keith's academic venture in "sun-dimming" geoengineering, which Gates provided most of the $12 million for. Corbis (originally named Interactive Home Systems and now known as Branded Entertainment Network), a digital image licensing and rights services company founded and chaired by Gates. EarthNow, Seattle-based startup company aiming to blanket the Earth with live satellite video coverage. Gates is a large financial backer. Eclipse Aviation, a defunct manufacturer of very light jets. Gates was a major stake-holder early on in the project. Impossible Foods, a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products. Some of the $396 million Patrick O. Brown collected for his business came from Gates around 2014 to 2017. Ecolab, global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services to the food, energy, healthcare, industrial and hospitality markets. Combined with the shares owned by the Foundation, Gates owns 11.6% of the company. A shareholder agreement in 2012 allowed him to own up to 25% of the company, but this agreement was removed. ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists. Gates participated in a $35 million round of financing along with other investors. TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company co-founded and chaired by Gates, which is developing next generation traveling-wave reactor nuclear power plants in an effort to tackle climate change. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a closed fund for wealthy individuals who seek ROI on a 20-year horizon (see next section), which "is funding green start-ups and a host of other low-carbon entrepreneurial projects, including everything from advanced nuclear technology to synthetic breast milk." It was founded by Gates in 2015. Ginkgo Bioworks, a biotech startup that received $350 million in venture funding in 2019, in part from Gates's investment firm Cascade Investment. Luminous Computing, a company that develops neuromorphic photonic integrated circuits for AI acceleration. Mologic, British diagnostic technology company that Gates purchased, along with the Soros Economic Development Fund, "which has developed 10-minute Covid lateral flow tests that it aims to make for as little as $1." Climate change and energy Gates considers climate change and global access to energy to be critical, interrelated issues. He has urged governments and the private sector to invest in research and development to make clean, reliable energy cheaper. Gates envisions that a breakthrough innovation in sustainable energy technology could drive down both greenhouse gas emissions and poverty, and bring economic benefits by stabilizing energy prices. In 2011, he said: "If you gave me the choice between picking the next 10 presidents or ensuring that energy is environmentally friendly and a quarter as costly, I'd pick the energy thing." In 2015, he wrote about the challenge of transitioning the world's energy system from one based primarily on fossil fuels to one based on sustainable energy sources. Global energy transitions have historically taken decades. He wrote, "I believe we can make this transition faster, both because the pace of innovation is accelerating, and because we have never had such an urgent reason to move from one source of energy to another." This rapid transition, according to Gates, would depend on increased government funding for basic research and financially risky private-sector investment, to enable innovation in diverse areas such as nuclear energy, grid energy storage to facilitate greater use of solar and wind energy, and solar fuels. Gates spearheaded two initiatives that he announced at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. One was Mission Innovation, in which 20 national governments pledged to double their spending on research and development for carbon-free energy in over five years' time. Another initiative was Breakthrough Energy, a group of investors who agreed to fund high-risk startups in clean energy technologies. Gates, who had already invested $1 billion of his own money in innovative energy startups, committed a further $1 billion to Breakthrough Energy. In December 2020, he called for the U.S. federal government to create institutes for clean energy research, analogous to the National Institutes of Health. Gates has also urged rich nations to shift to 100% synthetic beef industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food production. Gates has been criticised for holding a large stake in Signature Aviation, a company that services emissions-intensive private jets. In 2019, he began to divest from fossil fuels. He does not expect divestment itself to have much practical impact, but says that if his efforts to provide alternatives were to fail, he would not want to personally benefit from an increase in fossil fuel stock prices. After he published his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, parts of the climate activist community criticized Gate's approach as technological solutionism. In June 2021, Gates's company TerraPower and Warren Buffett's PacifiCorp announced the first Sodium nuclear reactor in Wyoming. Wyoming Governor Mike Gordon hailed the project as a step toward carbon-negative nuclear power. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso also said that it could boost the state's once active uranium mining industry. Political positions Regulation of the software industry In 1998, Gates rejected the need for regulation of the software industry in testimony before the United States Senate. During the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) investigation of Microsoft in the 1990s, Gates was reportedly upset at Commissioner Dennis Yao for "float[ing] a line of hypothetical questions suggesting possible curbs on Microsoft's growing monopoly power". According to one source:Gates was vexed. "He started by calling Yao's ideas socialistic," recalls a source familiar with the July 15 meeting, "and as he got angrier and angrier and louder and louder, he got into calling them Communistic. Donald Trump Facebook ban On February 18, 2021, after Facebook and Twitter had banned Donald Trump from their platforms as a result of the 2020 United States presidential election which led to the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Gates said a permanent ban of Trump "would be a shame" and would be an "extreme measure". He warned that it would cause "polarization" if users with different political views divide up among various social networks, and said: "I don't think banning somebody who actually did get a fair number of votes (in the presidential election) – well less than a majority – forever would be that good." Patents for COVID-19 vaccines In April 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates was criticized for suggesting that pharmaceutical companies should hold onto patents for COVID-19 vaccines. The criticism came due to the possibility of this preventing poorer nations from obtaining adequate vaccines. Tara Van Ho of the University of Essex stated, "Gates speaks as if all the lives being lost in India are inevitable but eventually the West will help when in reality the US & UK are holding their feet on the neck of developing states by refusing to break [intellectual property rights] protections. It's disgusting." Bill Gates is opposed to the TRIPS waiver. Bloomberg News reported him as saying he argued that Oxford University should not give away the rights to its COVID-19 information, as it had announced, but instead sell it to a single industry partner, as it did. His views on the value of legal monopolies in medicine have been linked to his views on legal monopolies in software. Philanthropy Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and donated some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the "William H. Gates Foundation". In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and Gates donated stock valued at $5 billion to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013, as the world's wealthiest charitable foundation, with assets reportedly valued at more than $34.6 billion. The foundation allows benefactors to access information that shows how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. Gates, through his foundation, also donated $20 million to Carnegie Mellon University for a new building to be named Gates Center for Computer Science which opened in 2009. Gates has credited the generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and their charity work is partly modeled on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, whereby they are interested in tackling the global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations. , Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity; the couple plan to eventually donate 95% of their wealth to charity. The foundation is organized into five program areas: Global Development Division, Global Health Division, United States Division, and Global Policy & Advocacy Division. Among others, it supports a wide range of public health projects, granting aid to fight transmissible diseases such AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as well as widespread vaccine programs to eradicate polio. It grants funds to learning institutes and libraries and supports scholarships at universities. The foundation established a water, sanitation and hygiene program to provide sustainable sanitation services in poor countries. Its agriculture division supports the International Rice Research Institute in developing Golden Rice, a genetically modified rice variant used to combat vitamin A deficiency. The goal of the foundation is to provide 120 million women and girls, in the poorest countries, with high-quality contraceptive information and services, with the longer-term goal of universal access to voluntary family planning. In 2007, the Los Angeles Times criticized the foundation for investing its assets in companies that have been accused of worsening poverty, pollution and pharmaceutical firms that do not sell to developing countries. Although the foundation announced a review of its investments to assess social responsibility, it was subsequently canceled and upheld its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices. Gates delivered his thoughts in a fireside chat moderated by journalist and news anchor Shereen Bhan virtually at the Singapore FinTech Festival on December 8, 2020, on the topic, "Building Infrastructure for Resilience: What the COVID-19 Response Can Teach Us About How to Scale Financial Inclusion". Gates favours the normalization of COVID-19 masks. In a November 2020 interview, he said: "What are these, like, nudists? I mean, you know, we ask you to wear pants, and no American says, or very few Americans say, that that's, like, some terrible thing." Personal donations Melinda Gates suggested that people should emulate the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, who sold their home and gave away half of its value, as detailed in their book, The Power of Half. Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and investor Warren Buffett each signed a commitment they called the "Giving Pledge", which is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth, over the course of time, to charity. Gates has also provided personal donations to educational institutions. In 1999, Gates donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the construction of a computer laboratory named the "William H. Gates Building" that was designed by architect Frank Gehry. While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates. The Maxwell Dworkin Laboratory of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named after the mothers of both Gates and Microsoft President Steven A. Ballmer, both of whom were students (Ballmer was a member of the school's graduating class of 1977, while Gates left his studies for Microsoft), and donated funds for the laboratory's construction. Gates also donated $6 million to the construction of the Gates Computer Science Building, completed in January 1996, on the campus of Stanford University. The building contains the Computer Science Department and the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) of Stanford's Engineering department. Since 2005, Gates and his foundation have taken an interest in solving global sanitation problems. For example, they announced the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge", which has received considerable media interest. To raise awareness for the topic of sanitation and possible solutions, Gates drank water that was "produced from human feces" in 2014 – it was produced from a sewage sludge treatment process called the Omni Processor. In early 2015, he also appeared with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show and challenged him to see if he could taste the difference between this reclaimed water or bottled water. In November 2017, Gates said he would give $50 million to the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that seeks treatment for Alzheimer's disease. He also pledged an additional $50 million to start-up ventures working in Alzheimer's research. Bill and Melinda Gates have said that they intend to leave their three children $10 million each as their inheritance. With only $30 million kept in the family, they are expected to give away about 99.96% of their wealth. On August 25, 2018, Gates distributed $600,000 through his foundation via UNICEF which is helping flood affected victims in Kerala, India. Charity sports events On April 29, 2017, Gates partnered with Swiss tennis legend Roger Federer in playing in the Match for Africa 4, a noncompetitive tennis match at a sold-out Key Arena in Seattle. The event was in support of the Roger Federer Foundation's charity efforts in Africa. Federer and Gates played against John Isner, the top-ranked American player for much of this decade, and Mike McCready, the lead guitarist for Pearl Jam. The pair won the match 6 games to 4. Overall, they raised $2 million for children in Africa. The following year, Gates and Federer returned to play in the Match for Africa 5 on March 5, 2018, at San Jose's SAP Center. Their opponents were Jack Sock, one of the top American players and a grand slam winner in doubles, and Savannah Guthrie, a co-anchor for NBC's Today show. Gates and Federer recorded their second match victory together by a score of 6–3 and the event raised over $2.5 million. Books Gates has written three books: The Road Ahead, written with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson, was published in November 1995. It summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway. Business @ the Speed of Thought was published in 1999, and discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help to get an edge on the competition. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (February 2021) presents what Gates learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address climate problems. Personal life Gates is an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby. He also enjoys bridge, tennis and golf. His days are planned for him on a minute-by-minute basis, similarly to the U.S. president's schedule. Despite his wealth and extensive business travel, Gates flew coach (economy class) in commercial aircraft until 1997, when he bought a private jet. Gates purchased the Codex Leicester, a collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci, for US$30.8 million at an auction in 1994. In 1998, he reportedly paid $30 million for the original 1885 maritime painting Lost on the Grand Banks, at the time a record price for an American painting. In 2016, he revealed that he was color-blind. Marriage and divorce Gates married Melinda French on the Hawaiian Island of Lanai on January 1, 1994. They met in 1987 after Melinda began working at Microsoft. At the time of their marriage, Gates was given permission by Melinda to spend limited time with his ex-girlfriend, businesswoman Ann Winblad. Bill and Melinda have three children: Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe. The family's residence is an earth-sheltered mansion in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. In 2009, property taxes on the mansion were reported to be US$1.063 million, on a total assessed value of US$147.5 million. The estate has a swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a gym and a dining room. On May 3, 2021, the Gateses announced they had decided to divorce after 27 years of marriage and 34 years as a couple. They said they would keep working together on charitable efforts. The Wall Street Journal reported that Melinda had been meeting with divorce attorneys since 2019, citing interviews that suggested Bill's ties with Jeffrey Epstein was at least one of her concerns. The divorce was finalized on August 2, 2021. Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein A New York Times article reported that Gates's relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein started in 2011, just a few years after Epstein's conviction, and continued for some years, including a visit to Epstein's house with Melinda in the fall of 2013, despite her declared discomfort. Gates said in 2011 about Epstein: "His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me". The depth of the friendship between Gates and Epstein is unclear. Gates generally commented about his relationship with Epstein that "I met him. I didn't have any business relationship or friendship with him". However, Gates visited Epstein "many times, despite [Epstein's] past". Gates took at least one flight in 2013 in Epstein's infamous Lolita Express aircraft. It was reported that Epstein and Gates "discussed the Gates Foundation and philanthropy". However, in an interview in 2019 Gates completely denied any connection between Epstein and the Gates Foundation or his philanthropy generally. In August 2021, Gates said the reason he had meetings with Epstein was because Gates hoped Epstein could provide money for philanthropic work, though nothing came of the idea. Gates added, "It was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there." It has also been reported that Epstein and Gates met with Nobel Committee chair Thorbjørn Jagland at his residence in Strasbourg, France in March 2013 to discuss the Nobel Prize. Also in attendance were representatives of the International Peace Institute which has received millions in grants from the Gates Foundation, including a $2.5 million "community engagement" grant in October 2013. Public image Gates's public image has changed over the years. At first he was perceived as a brilliant but ruthless "robber baron", a "nerd-turned-tycoon". Starting in 2000 with the foundation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and particularly after he stepped down as head of Microsoft, he turned his attention to philanthropy, spending more than $50 billion on causes like health, poverty, and education. His image morphed "from tyrannical technocrat to saintly savior", a "huggable billionaire techno-philanthropist", celebrated on magazine covers and sought after for his opinions on major issues like global health and climate change. Still another shift in public opinion came in 2021 with the announcement that he and Melinda were divorcing. Coverage of that proceeding brought out information about romantic pursuits of women who worked for him, a long-term extra-marital affair, and a friendship with convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. This resulted in some deterioration of his public image. Religion In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gates said in regard to his faith: "The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief." In the same 2014 interview he also said: "I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill. But the mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing, and there's no scientific explanation of how it came about. To say that it was generated by random numbers, that does seem, you know, sort of an uncharitable view [laughs]. I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know." Wealth tallies In 1999, his wealth briefly surpassed US$101 billion. Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In May 2006, Gates remarked that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought. In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person after Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires List. Slim retook the position again in June 2014 (but then lost the top position back to Gates). Between 2009 and 2014, his wealth doubled from US$40 billion to more than US$82 billion. In October 2017, Gates was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world. On November 15, 2019, he once again became the richest person in the world after a 48% increase in Microsoft shares, surpassing Bezos. Gates told the BBC, "I've paid more tax than any individual ever, and gladly so ... I've paid over $6 billion in taxes." He is a proponent of higher taxes, particularly for the rich. By 2017, Gates had held the top spot on the list of The World's Billionaires for 18 out of the previous 23 years. Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of US$616,667 and US$350,000 bonus totalling US$966,667. In 1989, he founded Corbis, a digital imaging company. In 2004, he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett. In 1987, Gates was listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine's 400 Richest People in America issue, worth $1.25 billion at the time, and was the world's youngest self-made billionaire. Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes The World's Billionaires list and was the wealthiest person from 1995 to 1996, 1998 to 2007, 2009, and held the spot until 2018 before being overtaken by Jeff Bezos. Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007, 2009, and 2014 through 2017. Recognition Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time". Gates was listed in the London Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999, and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001. Gates was elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 1996 "for contributions to the founding and development of personal computing". He was named Honorary Member of the American Library Association in 1998. He was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2017. According to Forbes, Gates was ranked as the fourth most powerful person in the world in 2012, up from fifth in 2011. In 1994, he was honored as the 20th Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (DFBCS). In 1999, Gates received New York Institute of Technology's President's Medal. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit (1996), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2002), Waseda University (2005), Tsinghua University (2007), Harvard University (2007), the Karolinska Institute (2007), and Cambridge University (2009). He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007. Gates was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005. In January 2006, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry by the President of Portugal Jorge Sampaio In November 2006, he was awarded the Placard of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, together with his wife Melinda who was awarded the Insignia of the same order, both for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "". Gates received the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership from The Franklin Institute for his achievements at Microsoft and his philanthropic work. Also in 2010, he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth. In 2002, Bill and Melinda Gates received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged. He was given the 2006 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award from the Tech Awards. In 2015, Gates and his wife Melinda received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award for their social work in the country. In 2016, Barack Obama honored Bill and Melinda Gates with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their philanthropic efforts. In 2017, François Hollande awarded Bill and Melinda Gates with France's highest national order, the Commander of the Legion of Honour, for their charity efforts. Entomologists named Bill Gates' flower fly, , in his honor in 1997. In 2021 Bill Gates was nominated at the 11th annual Streamy Awards for the crossover for his personal YouTube channel. In 2022 Bill Gates received the Hilal-e-Pakistan Second-highest civilian award for their social work in the country. Depiction in media Documentary films about Gates The Machine That Changed the World (1990) Triumph of the Nerds (1996) Nerds 2.0.1 (1998) Waiting for "Superman" (2010) The Virtual Revolution (2010) Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (2019) Feature films 1999: Pirates of Silicon Valley, a film that chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. Gates is portrayed by Anthony Michael Hall. 2002: Nothing So Strange, a mockumentary featuring Gates as the subject of a modern assassination. Gates briefly appears at the start, played by Steve Sires. 2010: The Social Network, a film that chronicles the development of Facebook. Gates is portrayed by Steve Sires. 2015: Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates: The Competition to Control the Personal Computer, 1974–1999: Original film from the National Geographic Channel for the American Genius series. Video and film clips 1983: Steve Jobs hosts Gates and others in the "Macintosh dating game" at the Macintosh pre-launch event (a parody of the television game show The Dating Game) 2007: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together at the D5 Conference, All Things Digital 2009− : Gates has given numerous TED talks on current concerns such as innovation, education and fighting global diseases 2017: Half Girlfriend, a digitally superimposed likeness of Gates appears in the movie in scenes where he comes to visit Madhav's village in Bihar. Radio Gates was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on January 31, 2016, in which he talked about his relationships with his father and Steve Jobs, meeting Melinda Ann French, the start of Microsoft and some of his habits (for example reading The Economist "from cover to cover every week"). His choice of things to take on a desert island were, for music: "Blue Skies" by Willie Nelson; a book: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker; and luxury item: a DVD Collection of Lectures from The Teaching Company. Television Gates made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show The Big Bang Theory. The episode on which he appeared was appropriately entitled "The Gates Excitation". He also appeared in a cameo role in 2019 on the series finale of Silicon Valley. Gates guest starred as himself in The Simpsons episode "Das Bus". See also Big History Project List of richest Americans in history List of wealthiest historical figures Notes References Bibliography Primary sources Gates, Bill. "An exclusive interview with Bill Gates". Financial Times 1 (2013). online Gates, Bill. "Remarks of Bill Gates, Harvard Commencement 2007". The Harvard Gazette 7 (2007). Online Kinsley, Michael, and Conor Clarke, Eds. Creative Capitalism: A Conversation With Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders (Simon and Schuster, 2009). Further reading Leibovich, Mark. The New Imperialists (Prentice Hall, 2002) pp 139–182. online "The Meaning of Bill Gates: As his reign at Microsoft comes to an end, so does the era he dominated", The Economist, June 28, 2008. Wallace, James. Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997). External links Forbes profile 1955 births Living people 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American engineers 21st-century philanthropists American billionaires American chairpersons of corporations American computer businesspeople American computer programmers American corporate directors American financiers American humanitarians American inventors American investors American nonprofit chief executives American people of English descent American people of German descent American people of Scotch-Irish descent American people of Scottish descent American philanthropists American software engineers American technology chief executives American technology company founders American technology writers American venture capitalists Big History Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation people Businesspeople from Seattle Businesspeople in software Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Cornell family Directors of Berkshire Hathaway Directors of Microsoft Engineers from Washington (state) Fellows of the British Computer Society Foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Gates family Giving Pledgers Grand Cordons of the Order of the Rising Sun Harvard College alumni History of computing History of Microsoft Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire HuffPost bloggers Lakeside School alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Microsoft employees Microsoft Windows people National Medal of Technology recipients Nerd culture People from Medina, Washington People from Seattle Personal computing Philanthropists from Washington (state) Phillips family (New England) Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Recipients of the Cross of Recognition Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in social work Spokespersons Wired (magazine) people Writers from Seattle

The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (, ) in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany and thus it is the historical successor to the earlier Reichstag. The members of the Bundestag are representatives of the German people as a whole, are not bound by any orders or instructions and are only accountable to their electorate. The minimum legal number of members of the Bundestag () is 598; however, due to the system of overhang and leveling seats the current 20th Bundestag has a total of 736 members, making it the largest Bundestag to date. The Bundestag is elected every four years by German citizens aged 18 or over. Elections use a mixed-member proportional representation system which combines first-past-the-post elected seats with a proportional party list to ensure its composition mirrors the national popular vote. An early election is only possible in the cases outlined in Articles 63 and 68 of the Grundgesetz. The Bundestag has several functions. It is the chief legislative body on the federal level. The individual states (Bundesländer) of Germany participate in legislative process through the Bundesrat, a separate assembly. The Bundestag also elects and oversees the chancellor, Germany's head of government, and sets the government budget. Since 1999, it has met in the Reichstag building in Berlin. The Bundestag also operates in multiple new government buildings in Berlin and has its own police force (the Bundestagspolizei). The current president of the Bundestag since 2021 is Bärbel Bas of the SPD. The 20th Bundestag has five vice presidents. History Bundestag translates as "Federal Diet", with "Bund" (cognate to English "bundle") in this context meaning federation, and "Tag" (day) came to mean "meeting in conference" — another example being Reichstag (similar to "diet", which is from Latin "dies", day). With the dissolution of the German Confederation in 1866 and the founding of the German Empire (Deutsches Reich) in 1871, the Reichstag was established as the German parliament in Berlin, which was the capital of the then Kingdom of Prussia (the largest and most influential state in both the Confederation and the empire). Two decades later, the current parliament building was erected. The Reichstag delegates were elected by direct and equal male suffrage (and not the three-class electoral system prevailing in Prussia until 1918). The Reichstag did not participate in the appointment of the Chancellor until the parliamentary reforms of October 1918. After the Revolution of November 1918 and the establishment of the Weimar Constitution, women were given the right to vote for (and serve in) the Reichstag, and the parliament could use the no-confidence vote to force the chancellor or any cabinet member to resign. In 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor and through the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Enabling Act of 1933 and the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in 1934 gained unlimited power. After this, the Reichstag met only rarely, usually at the Krolloper (Kroll Opera House) to unanimously rubber-stamp the decisions of the government. It last convened on 26 April 1942. With the new Constitution of 1949, the Bundestag was established as the new West German parliament. Because West Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the Constitution, a legacy of the Cold War, the Bundestag met in Bonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former waterworks facility. In addition, owing to the city's legal status, citizens of West Berlin were unable to vote in elections to the Bundestag, and were instead represented by 22 non-voting delegates chosen by the House of Representatives, the city's legislature. The Bundeshaus in Bonn is the former parliament building of Germany. The sessions of the German Bundestag were held there from 1949 until its move to Berlin in 1999. Today it houses the International Congress Centre Bundeshaus Bonn and in the northern areas the branch office of the Bundesrat ("Federal Council"), which represents the Länder – the federated states. The southern areas became part of German offices for the United Nations in 2008. The former Reichstag building housed a history exhibition (Fragen an die deutsche Geschichte) and served occasionally as a conference center. The Reichstag building was also occasionally used as a venue for sittings of the Bundestag and its committees and the Bundesversammlung (Federal Convention), the body which elects the German Federal President. However, the Soviets harshly protested against the use of the Reichstag building by institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany and tried to disturb the sittings by flying supersonic jets close to the building. Since 19 April 1999, the German parliament has again assembled in Berlin in its original Reichstag building, which was built in 1888 based on the plans of German architect Paul Wallot and underwent a significant renovation under the lead of British architect Lord Norman Foster. Parliamentary committees and subcommittees, public hearings and parliamentary group meetings take place in three auxiliary buildings, which surround the Reichstag building: the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus, Paul-Löbe-Haus and Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus. In 2005, a small aircraft crashed close to the German Parliament. It was then decided to ban private air traffic over Central Berlin. Tasks Together with the Bundesrat, the Bundestag is the legislative branch of the German political system. Although most legislation is initiated by the executive branch, the Bundestag considers the legislative function its most important responsibility, concentrating much of its energy on assessing and amending the government's legislative program. The committees (see below) play a prominent role in this process. Plenary sessions provide a forum for members to engage in public debate on legislative issues before them, but they tend to be well attended only when significant legislation is being considered. The Bundestag members are the only federal officials directly elected by the public; the Bundestag in turn elects the Chancellor and, in addition, exercises oversight of the executive branch on issues of both substantive policy and routine administration. This check on executive power can be employed through binding legislation, public debates on government policy, investigations, and direct questioning of the chancellor or cabinet officials. For example, the Bundestag can conduct a question hour (Fragestunde), in which a government representative responds to a written question previously submitted by a member. Members can ask related questions during the question hour. The questions can concern anything from a major policy issue to a specific constituent's problem. Use of the question hour has increased markedly over the past forty years, with more than 20,000 questions being posed during the 1987–90 term. Understandably, the opposition parties actively exercise their parliamentary right to scrutinize government actions. Constituent services also take place via the Petition Committee. In 2004, the Petition Committee received over 18,000 complaints from citizens and was able to negotiate a mutually satisfactory solution to more than half of them. In 2005, as a pilot of the potential of internet petitions, a version of e-Petitioner was produced for the Bundestag. This was a collaborative project involving The Scottish Parliament, International Teledemocracy Centre and the Bundestag 'Online Services Department'. The system was formally launched on 1 September 2005, and in 2008 the Bundestag moved to a new system based on its evaluation.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tab.fzk.de/de/brief/brief32.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090316102923/http://www.tab.fzk.de/de/brief/brief32.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=16 March 2009 |title=Öffentliche Petitionen beim deutschen Bundestag - erste Ergebnisse der Evaluation des Modellversuchs = An Evaluation Study of Public Petitions at the German Parliament |access-date=16 June 2009 |last=Trenel |first=M. |work=TAB Brief Nr 32 |publisher=Deutscher Bundestag |year=2007 }}</ref> Electoral term The Bundestag is elected for four years, and new elections must be held between 46 and 48 months after the beginning of its electoral term, unless the Bundestag is dissolved prematurely. Its term ends when the next Bundestag convenes, which must occur within 30 days of the election. Prior to 1976, there could be a period where one Bundestag had been dissolved and the next Bundestag could not be convened; during this period, the rights of the Bundestag were exercised by a so-called "Permanent Committee". Election Germany uses the mixed-member proportional representation system, a system of proportional representation combined with elements of first-past-the-post voting. The Bundestag has 598 nominal members, elected for a four-year term; these seats are distributed between the sixteen German states in proportion to the states' population eligible to vote. Every elector has two votes: a constituency vote (first vote) and a party list vote (second vote). Based solely on the first votes, 299 members are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The second votes are used to produce a proportional number of seats for parties, first in the states, and then on the federal level. Seats are allocated using the Sainte-Laguë method. If a party wins fewer constituency seats in a state than its second votes would entitle it to, it receives additional seats from the relevant state list. Parties can file lists in every single state under certain conditions – for example, a fixed number of supporting signatures. Parties can receive second votes only in those states in which they have filed a state list. If a party, by winning single-member constituencies in one state, receives more seats than it would be entitled to according to its second vote share in that state (so-called overhang seats), the other parties receive compensation seats. Owing to this provision, the Bundestag usually has more than 598 members. The 20th and current Bundestag, for example, has 736 seats: 598 regular seats and 138 overhang and compensation seats. Overhang seats are calculated at the state level, so many more seats are added to balance this out among the different states, adding more seats than would be needed to compensate for overhang at the national level in order to avoid negative vote weight. To qualify for seats based on the party-list vote share, a party must either win three single-member constituencies via first votes (basic mandate clause) or exceed a threshold of 5% of the second votes nationwide. If a party only wins one or two single-member constituencies and fails to get at least 5% of the second votes, it keeps the single-member seat(s), but other parties that accomplish at least one of the two threshold conditions receive compensation seats. In the most recent example of this, during the 2002 election, the PDS won only 4.0% of the second votes nationwide, but won two constituencies in the state of Berlin. The same applies if an independent candidate wins a single-member constituency, which has not happened since the 1949 election. If a voter cast a first vote for a successful independent candidate or a successful candidate whose party failed to qualify for proportional representation, his or her second vote does not count toward proportional representation. However, it does count toward whether the elected party exceeds the 5% threshold. Parties representing recognized national minorities (currently Danes, Frisians, Sorbs, and Romani people) are exempt from both the 5% threshold and the basic mandate clause, but normally only run in state elections. The only party that has been able to benefit from this provision so far on the federal level is the South Schleswig Voters' Association, which represents the minorities of Danes and Frisians in Schleswig-Holstein and managed to win a seat in 1949 and 2021. Latest election result The latest federal election was held on Sunday, 26 September 2021, to elect the members of the 20th Bundestag. List of Bundestag by session Presidents since 1949 Membership Organization Parliamentary groups The most important organisational structures within the Bundestag are parliamentary groups (Fraktionen; sing. Fraktion). A parliamentary group must consist of at least 5% of all members of parliament. Members of parliament from different parties may only join in a group if those parties did not run against each other in any German state during the election. Normally, all parties that surpassed the 5%-threshold build a parliamentary group. The CDU and CSU have always formed a single united Fraktion (CDU/CSU), which is possible, as the CSU only runs in the state of Bavaria and the CDU only runs in the other 15 states. The size of a party's Fraktion determines the extent of its representation on committees, the time slots allotted for speaking, the number of committee chairs it can hold, and its representation in executive bodies of the Bundestag. The Fraktionen, not the members, receive the bulk of government funding for legislative and administrative activities. The leadership of each Fraktion consists of a parliamentary party leader, several deputy leaders, and an executive committee. The leadership's major responsibilities are to represent the Fraktion, enforce party discipline and orchestrate the party's parliamentary activities. The members of each Fraktion are distributed among working groups focused on specific policy-related topics such as social policy, economics, and foreign policy. The Fraktion meets every Tuesday afternoon in the weeks in which the Bundestag is in session to consider legislation before the Bundestag and formulate the party's position on it. Parties that do not hold 5% of the Bundestag-seats may be granted the status of a Gruppe (literally "group", but a different status from Fraktion) in the Bundestag; this is decided case by case, as the rules of procedure do not state a fixed number of seats for this. Most recently, this applied to the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) from 1990 to 1998. This status entails some privileges which are in general less than those of a Fraktion. Executive bodies The Bundestag's executive bodies include the Council of Elders and the Presidium. The council consists of the Bundestag leadership, together with the most senior representatives of each Fraktion, with the number of these representatives tied to the strength of the Parliamentary groups in the chamber. The council is the coordination hub, determining the daily legislative agenda and assigning committee chairpersons based on Parliamentary group representation. The council also serves as an important forum for interparty negotiations on specific legislation and procedural issues. The Presidium is responsible for the routine administration of the Bundestag, including its clerical and research activities. It consists of the chamber's president (usually elected from the largest Fraktion) and vice presidents (one from each Fraktion). Committees Most of the legislative work in the Bundestag is the product of standing committees, which exist largely unchanged throughout one legislative period. The number of committees approximates the number of federal ministries, and the titles of each are roughly similar (e.g., defense, agriculture, and labor). There are, as of the current nineteenth Bundestag, 24 standing committees. The distribution of committee chairs and the membership of each committee reflect the relative strength of the various Parliamentary groups in the chamber. In the current nineteenth Bundestag, the CDU/CSU chaired ten committees, the SPD five, the AfD and the FDP three each, The Left and the Greens two each. Members of the opposition party can chair a significant number of standing committees (e.g. the budget committee is by tradition chaired by the biggest opposition party). These committees have either a small staff or no staff at all. Administration The members of Bundestag and the presidium are supported by the Bundestag Administration. It is headed by the Director, that reports to the President of the Bundestag. The Bundestag Administrations four departments are Parliament Service, Research, Information / Documentation and Central Affairs. The Bundestag Administration employes around 3,000 employees. Principle of discontinuation As is the case with some other parliaments, the Bundestag is subject to the principle of discontinuation, meaning that a newly elected Bundestag is legally regarded to be a body and entity completely different from the previous Bundestag. This leads to the result that any motion, application or action submitted to the previous Bundestag, e.g. a bill referred to the Bundestag by the Federal Government, is regarded as void by non-decision (German terminology: "Die Sache fällt der Diskontinuität anheim"). Thus any bill that has not been decided upon by the beginning of the new electoral period must be brought up by the government again if it aims to uphold the motion, this procedure in effect delaying the passage of the bill. Furthermore, any newly elected Bundestag will have to freshly decide on the rules of procedure (Geschäftsordnung''), which is done by a formal decision of taking over such rules from the preceding Bundestag by reference. Any Bundestag (even after a snap election) is considered dissolved only once a newly elected Bundestag has actually gathered in order to constitute itself (Article 39 sec. 1 sentence 2 of the Basic Law), which has to happen within 30 days of its election (Article 39 sec. 2 of the Basic Law). Thus, it may happen (and has happened) that the old Bundestag gathers and makes decisions even after the election of a new Bundestag that has not gathered in order to constitute itself. For example, elections to the 16th Bundestag took place on 18 September 2005, but the 15th Bundestag still convened after election day to make some decisions on German military engagement abroad, and was entitled to do so, as the newly elected 16th Bundestag did not convene for the first time until 18 October 2005. See also German governing coalition Parliamentwatch Notes References External links German election database Map of constituencies Distribution of power Plenary speech search engine Germany Germany

Bille August (born 9 November 1948) is a Danish director, screenwriter, and cinematographer of film and television. In a career spanning over four decades, he has been the recipient of numerous accolades, making him one of the most acclaimed contemporary Danish filmmakers. August's 1987 film Pelle the Conqueror won the Palme d'Or, Academy Award and Golden Globe Award. He is one of only eight directors to win the Palme d'Or twice, winning the award again in 1992 for The Best Intentions, based on the autobiographical script by Ingmar Bergman. His filmography includes The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende; Smilla's Sense of Snow; Les Misérables; Night Train to Lisbon, Silent Heart, The Chinese Widow and A Fortunate Man. He has received five Robert Awards (including Best Film and Best Director) and three Bodil Awards for Best Danish Film. He is also a Knight (Ridder) of the Order of the Dannebrog. Life and career August was born on November 9, 1948, in Brede, Denmark. After attending local schools, he graduated from the Foto- og Dokumentarskolan in Stockholm, Sweden, and later from the National Film School of Denmark. He began his career as a cinematographer. He made his feature directorial debut in 1978 with In My Life, which won the Bodil Award for Best Danish Film. After decades of writing, directing and producing notable films in Denmark, on 23 September 2011, Bille August announced that he had opened a studio in Hangzhou, China and taken a position as Tianpeng Media's Art Director, in order to produce Chinese films for Tianpeng Media over the next few years. Tianpeng Media is a new media company established in 2010. The company produced two films, The Women Knight of Mirror (竞雄女侠秋瑾) and The Years of Qi Xiao Fu (七小福之燃情岁月), to be released later in 2011. He is the first foreign director to be hired by the Chinese film company. In 2011 August also accepted the invitation from the Hangzhou government to serve as a "culture consultant" for the city. His film Night Train to Lisbon (2013) premiered out of competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. He had planned to direct a Gianni Versace biopic with Antonio Banderas as Versace, but this project was cancelled. In August 2021, it was announced that August would direct a feature film adaptation of Karen Blixen's novel Ehrengard, which is being produced by Netflix and SF Studios. Personal life August has been married four times, and had four children by two of his wives. He was first married to Annie Munksgård Lauritzen. His second wife was Masja Dessau. Together they had two children, Anders Frithiof August (born June 15, 1978) and Adam August (born in 1983). They have both become screenwriters. His third marriage was to Swedish Star Wars prequel actress Pernilla August from 1991 to 1997. Together they had daughters Asta Kamma August (born November 5, 1991) and Alba Adèle August (born June 6, 1993); he also became the stepfather of her daughter Agnes from her first marriage to Swedish novelist and screenwriter Klas Östergren. In 2012, he married his fourth and current wife, Sara-Marie Maltha. In addition, August fathered four other children by two women outside marriage. Filmography Film As cinematographer Television References External links 1997 interview with Bille August about Smilla's Sense of Snow 1948 births Living people People from Lyngby-Taarbæk Municipality Danish film directors Danish screenwriters Danish cinematographers Directors of Palme d'Or winners Directors of Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winners

In baseball, hit by pitch (HBP) is an event in which a batter or his clothing or equipment (other than his bat) is struck directly by a pitch from the pitcher; the batter is called a hit batsman (HB). A hit batsman is awarded first base, provided that (in the plate umpire's judgment) he made an honest effort to avoid the pitch, although failure to do so is rarely called by an umpire. Being hit by a pitch is often caused by a batter standing too close to, or "crowding", home plate. The rule dates from 1884; before that, a pitch that struck the batter was merely a ball. Official rule Per baseball official rule 5.05(b), a batter becomes a baserunner and is awarded first base when he or his equipment (except for his bat): is touched by a pitched ball outside the strike zone, and he attempts to avoid it (or had no opportunity to avoid it), and he did not swing at the pitch. If all these conditions are met, the ball is dead, and other baserunners advance if they are forced to vacate their base by the batter taking first. Rule 5.09(a) further clarifies that a hit by pitch is also called when a pitch touches a batter's clothing. In the case where a batter swings and the pitch hits him anyway, the ball is dead and a strike is called. If the batter does not attempt to avoid the pitch, he is not awarded first base, and the pitch is ruled either a strike if in the strike zone or a ball if out of the strike zone. Umpires rarely make this call. A famous instance of a non-hit by pitch was on May 31, 1968, when Don Drysdale hit Dick Dietz with a pitch that would have forced in a run and ended Drysdale's scoreless innings streak at 44. Umpire Harry Wendelstedt ruled that Dietz made no effort to avoid the pitch; Dietz proceeded to fly out, and Drysdale's scoreless streak continued to a then-record 58 innings. A hit-by-pitch can also be called on a pitch that has first touched the ground before hitting the batter. Such a bouncing pitch is like any other, and if a batter is hit by such a pitch, he will be awarded first unless he made no attempt to avoid it (and he had an opportunity to avoid it). A batter hit by a pitch is not credited with a hit or at bat, but is credited with a time on base and a plate appearance; therefore, being hit by a pitch does not increase or decrease a player's batting average but does increase his on-base percentage. A batter hit by a pitch with the bases loaded is also credited with an RBI per MLB rule 10.04(a)(2). A pitch ruled a hit by pitch is recorded as a ball in the pitcher's pitch count, since by definition the ball must be outside the strike zone and not have been swung at. The rule awarding first base to a batter hit by a pitch was instituted in 1887. Tactical use Inside pitching is a common and legal tactic in baseball, and many players make use of brushback pitches, or pitches aimed underneath the chin, commonly referred to as "chin music", to keep players away from the plate. "Headhunter" is a common term for pitchers who have a reputation for throwing these kinds of pitches. However, throwing at a batter intentionally is illegal, and can be very dangerous. When an umpire suspects that a pitcher has thrown at a batter intentionally, but is not certain, a warning is issued to the pitcher and the managers of both teams. From that point on, any pitch thrown at a batter can cause the pitcher and the manager of the offending team to be ejected immediately from the game. Serious offenses such as a ball thrown at the head (called a beanball) can result in the immediate ejection of the pitcher, and the manager if he ordered the beanball, even without a warning. If the umpire is certain that the pitcher intentionally hit the batter with the pitch, the pitcher is ejected from the game with no warning. This infamously happened on 15 August 2018, when José Ureña was ejected from a game against the Atlanta Braves after hitting Ronald Acuña Jr. on the elbow with the first pitch of the game, which led to the Braves' and Marlins' benches clearing. Occasionally, if a player is acting rude or unsportsmanlike, or having an extraordinarily good day, the pitcher may intentionally hit the batter, disguising it as a pitch that accidentally slipped his control. Managers may also order a pitcher to throw such a pitch (sometimes called a "plunking"). These pitches are typically aimed at the lower back and slower than normal, designed to send a message more than anything else. The opposing team usually hits a batter in retaliation for this act. The plunkings generally end there because of umpire warnings, but in some cases things can get out of hand, and sometimes they lead to the batter charging the mound, bench-clearing brawls, and several ejections. Records The all-time record for a player being hit by a pitch is held by Hughie Jennings, who was hit by 287 pitches between 1891 and 1903. The modern-era record is held by Craig Biggio of the Houston Astros, who had 285 as of the end of the 2007 season when he retired. Prior to Biggio, the modern-era record belonged to Don Baylor, who was hit 267 times. The all-time single-season record also belongs to Jennings, who was hit 51 times during the 1896 season. Ron Hunt of the 1971 Montreal Expos was hit 50 times during that year, the modern-era record. The single-game record is three, held by numerous players. The all-time record for pitchers is held by Gus Weyhing with 277 (1887–1901). The modern-era career pitching record for most hit batsmen is 205 by Hall-of-Famer Walter Johnson. The season record is 54 by Phil Knell in 1891, and the game record is six, held by Ed Knouff and John Grimes. Brady Anderson was the first player to be hit by a pitch two times in the same inning in an American League game. On April 25, 2014, Brandon Moss became the second when he was hit twice in the top of the 9th inning by Houston Astros pitchers. Five players have been hit by a pitch twice in the same inning in the National League. On September 1, 2021, Austin Adams became the first pitcher hitting batters 20 or more times with 120 or less IPs in a season. Ed Doheny hit batters 22 times in 133.2 IP in 1900. Twice has a perfect game been broken up by the 27th batter being hit by pitch. Hooks Wiltse and Max Scherzer hold this rare feat. Both finished with no-hitters after the hit by pitch. Scherzer's team was leading 6-0 when he pitched his no-hitter, but Wiltse's team was scoreless through 9; he pitched a 10-inning 1–0 no-hitter. The record for most hit batters in a no-hitter is three, held by Chris Heston of the San Francisco Giants for his 2015 effort against the New York Mets. Postseason career records are held by Greg Maddux and Tim Wakefield—each of whom hit 9 batters—and Shane Victorino, who was hit by pitch 11 times. Dangers One major league player died as a result of being struck by a pitch: Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians was hit in the head by Carl Mays on August 16, 1920, and died the next morning. Serious injuries may result from being hit by a pitch, even when wearing a batting helmet. On August 18, 1967, Red Sox batter Tony Conigliaro was hit almost directly in the left eye by a fastball thrown by Jack Hamilton of the California Angels. His cheekbone was shattered; he nearly lost the sight of the eye, was unable to play for over a year, and never regained his earlier batting ability. Batting helmets at the time were not required to have an "ear flap"; it was not until 2002 that all Major League batters were required to wear helmets with side-protection. Ron Santo was the first player to wear a helmet with an improvised ear-flap, in 1966. He had it made after he was struck by a pitch from Jack Fisher that briefly knocked him unconscious and put him on the Disabled List for two weeks with a fractured cheekbone. On September 28, 1995, Kirby Puckett, of the Minnesota Twins, was struck in the cheek by a Dennis Martínez fastball, breaking his jaw and loosening two teeth. It would be his last regular-season game; during spring training the following year he developed glaucoma, which ended his career. Most recently, Mike Piazza, then of the New York Mets, was hit in the head by a pitch from Julián Tavárez of the St. Louis Cardinals on September 10, 2005. His helmet shattered, and he suffered a concussion. Other relatively minor injuries that are possible include broken fingers or hands, broken feet, broken ribs, injuries to the knee, or groin injuries. Legal interpretation Since inside pitching is a legitimate tactic in baseball, courts have recognized that being hit by a pitch is an inherent risk of the game, so that players cannot sue for any resulting injuries. On April 6, 2006, in a case arising from a game involving community college baseball teams, the Supreme Court of California ruled that baseball players in California assume the risk of being hit by baseballs even if the balls were intentionally thrown so as to cause injury. In the court's words: "For better or worse, being intentionally thrown at is a fundamental part and inherent risk of the sport of baseball. It is not the function of tort law to police such conduct." References External links List of all-time HBP leaders Article on changing HBP rates in The Hardball Times Baseball rules Baseball pitching Baseball terminology Batting statistics Pitching statistics

In computing and electronic systems, binary-coded decimal (BCD) is a class of binary encodings of decimal numbers where each digit is represented by a fixed number of bits, usually four or eight. Sometimes, special bit patterns are used for a sign or other indications (e.g. error or overflow). In byte-oriented systems (i.e. most modern computers), the term unpacked BCD usually implies a full byte for each digit (often including a sign), whereas packed BCD typically encodes two digits within a single byte by taking advantage of the fact that four bits are enough to represent the range 0 to 9. The precise 4-bit encoding, however, may vary for technical reasons (e.g. Excess-3). The ten states representing a BCD digit are sometimes called tetrades (for the nibble typically needed to hold them is also known as a tetrade) while the unused, don't care-states are named , pseudo-decimals or pseudo-decimal digits. BCD's main virtue, in comparison to binary positional systems, is its more accurate representation and rounding of decimal quantities, as well as its ease of conversion into conventional human-readable representations. Its principal drawbacks are a slight increase in the complexity of the circuits needed to implement basic arithmetic as well as slightly less dense storage. BCD was used in many early decimal computers, and is implemented in the instruction set of machines such as the IBM System/360 series and its descendants, Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX, the Burroughs B1700, and the Motorola 68000-series processors. BCD per se is not as widely used as in the past, and is unavailable or limited in newer instruction sets (e.g., ARM; x86 in long mode). However, decimal fixed-point and floating-point formats are still important and continue to be used in financial, commercial, and industrial computing, where the subtle conversion and fractional rounding errors that are inherent in floating point binary representations cannot be tolerated. Background BCD takes advantage of the fact that any one decimal numeral can be represented by a four-bit pattern. The most obvious way of encoding digits is Natural BCD (NBCD), where each decimal digit is represented by its corresponding four-bit binary value, as shown in the following table. This is also called "8421" encoding. This scheme can also be referred to as Simple Binary-Coded Decimal (SBCD) or BCD 8421, and is the most common encoding. Others include the so-called "4221" and "7421" encoding – named after the weighting used for the bits – and "Excess-3". For example, the BCD digit 6, in 8421 notation, is in 4221 (two encodings are possible), in 7421, while in Excess-3 it is (). The following table represents decimal digits from 0 to 9 in various BCD encoding systems. In the headers, the "8421" indicates the weight of each bit. In the fifth column ("BCD 84−2−1"), two of the weights are negative. Both ASCII and EBCDIC character codes for the digits, which are examples of zoned BCD, are also shown. As most computers deal with data in 8-bit bytes, it is possible to use one of the following methods to encode a BCD number: Unpacked: Each decimal digit is encoded into one byte, with four bits representing the number and the remaining bits having no significance. Packed: Two decimal digits are encoded into a single byte, with one digit in the least significant nibble (bits 0 through 3) and the other numeral in the most significant nibble (bits 4 through 7). As an example, encoding the decimal number 91 using unpacked BCD results in the following binary pattern of two bytes: Decimal: 9 1 Binary : 0000 1001 0000 0001 In packed BCD, the same number would fit into a single byte: Decimal: 9 1 Binary: 1001 0001 Hence the numerical range for one unpacked BCD byte is zero through nine inclusive, whereas the range for one packed BCD byte is zero through ninety-nine inclusive. To represent numbers larger than the range of a single byte any number of contiguous bytes may be used. For example, to represent the decimal number 12345 in packed BCD, using big-endian format, a program would encode as follows: Decimal: 0 1 2 3 4 5 Binary : 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 Here, the most significant nibble of the most significant byte has been encoded as zero, so the number is stored as 012345 (but formatting routines might replace or remove leading zeros). Packed BCD is more efficient in storage usage than unpacked BCD; encoding the same number (with the leading zero) in unpacked format would consume twice the storage. Shifting and masking operations are used to pack or unpack a packed BCD digit. Other bitwise operations are used to convert a numeral to its equivalent bit pattern or reverse the process. Packed BCD In packed BCD (or simply packed decimal), each of the two nibbles of each byte represent a decimal digit. Packed BCD has been in use since at least the 1960s and is implemented in all IBM mainframe hardware since then. Most implementations are big endian, i.e. with the more significant digit in the upper half of each byte, and with the leftmost byte (residing at the lowest memory address) containing the most significant digits of the packed decimal value. The lower nibble of the rightmost byte is usually used as the sign flag, although some unsigned representations lack a sign flag. As an example, a 4-byte value consists of 8 nibbles, wherein the upper 7 nibbles store the digits of a 7-digit decimal value, and the lowest nibble indicates the sign of the decimal integer value. Standard sign values are 1100 (hex C) for positive (+) and 1101 (D) for negative (−). This convention comes from the zone field for EBCDIC characters and the signed overpunch representation. Other allowed signs are 1010 (A) and 1110 (E) for positive and 1011 (B) for negative. IBM System/360 processors will use the 1010 (A) and 1011 (B) signs if the A bit is set in the PSW, for the ASCII-8 standard that never passed. Most implementations also provide unsigned BCD values with a sign nibble of 1111 (F). ILE RPG uses 1111 (F) for positive and 1101 (D) for negative. These match the EBCDIC zone for digits without a sign overpunch. In packed BCD, the number 127 is represented by 0001 0010 0111 1100 (127C) and −127 is represented by 0001 0010 0111 1101 (127D). Burroughs systems used 1101 (D) for negative, and any other value is considered a positive sign value (the processors will normalize a positive sign to 1100 (C)). No matter how many bytes wide a word is, there is always an even number of nibbles because each byte has two of them. Therefore, a word of n bytes can contain up to (2n)−1 decimal digits, which is always an odd number of digits. A decimal number with d digits requires (d+1) bytes of storage space. For example, a 4-byte (32-bit) word can hold seven decimal digits plus a sign and can represent values ranging from ±9,999,999. Thus the number −1,234,567 is 7 digits wide and is encoded as: 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1101 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 − Like character strings, the first byte of the packed decimal that with the most significant two digits is usually stored in the lowest address in memory, independent of the endianness of the machine. In contrast, a 4-byte binary two's complement integer can represent values from −2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647. While packed BCD does not make optimal use of storage (using about 20% more memory than binary notation to store the same numbers), conversion to ASCII, EBCDIC, or the various encodings of Unicode is made trivial, as no arithmetic operations are required. The extra storage requirements are usually offset by the need for the accuracy and compatibility with calculator or hand calculation that fixed-point decimal arithmetic provides. Denser packings of BCD exist which avoid the storage penalty and also need no arithmetic operations for common conversions. Packed BCD is supported in the COBOL programming language as the "COMPUTATIONAL-3" (an IBM extension adopted by many other compiler vendors) or "PACKED-DECIMAL" (part of the 1985 COBOL standard) data type. It is supported in PL/I as "FIXED DECIMAL". Beside the IBM System/360 and later compatible mainframes, packed BCD is implemented in the native instruction set of the original VAX processors from Digital Equipment Corporation and some models of the SDS Sigma series mainframes, and is the native format for the Burroughs Corporation Medium Systems line of mainframes (descended from the 1950s Electrodata 200 series). Ten's complement representations for negative numbers offer an alternative approach to encoding the sign of packed (and other) BCD numbers. In this case, positive numbers always have a most significant digit between 0 and 4 (inclusive), while negative numbers are represented by the 10's complement of the corresponding positive number. As a result, this system allows for 32-bit packed BCD numbers to range from −50,000,000 to +49,999,999, and −1 is represented as 99999999. (As with two's complement binary numbers, the range is not symmetric about zero.) Fixed-point packed decimal Fixed-point decimal numbers are supported by some programming languages (such as COBOL and PL/I). These languages allow the programmer to specify an implicit decimal point in front of one of the digits. For example, a packed decimal value encoded with the bytes 12 34 56 7C represents the fixed-point value +1,234.567 when the implied decimal point is located between the 4th and 5th digits: 12 34 56 7C 12 34.56 7+ The decimal point is not actually stored in memory, as the packed BCD storage format does not provide for it. Its location is simply known to the compiler, and the generated code acts accordingly for the various arithmetic operations. Higher-density encodings If a decimal digit requires four bits, then three decimal digits require 12 bits. However, since 210 (1,024) is greater than 103 (1,000), if three decimal digits are encoded together, only 10 bits are needed. Two such encodings are Chen–Ho encoding and densely packed decimal (DPD). The latter has the advantage that subsets of the encoding encode two digits in the optimal seven bits and one digit in four bits, as in regular BCD. Zoned decimal Some implementations, for example IBM mainframe systems, support zoned decimal numeric representations. Each decimal digit is stored in one byte, with the lower four bits encoding the digit in BCD form. The upper four bits, called the "zone" bits, are usually set to a fixed value so that the byte holds a character value corresponding to the digit. EBCDIC systems use a zone value of 1111 (hex F); this yields bytes in the range F0 to F9 (hex), which are the EBCDIC codes for the characters "0" through "9". Similarly, ASCII systems use a zone value of 0011 (hex 3), giving character codes 30 to 39 (hex). For signed zoned decimal values, the rightmost (least significant) zone nibble holds the sign digit, which is the same set of values that are used for signed packed decimal numbers (see above). Thus a zoned decimal value encoded as the hex bytes F1 F2 D3 represents the signed decimal value −123: F1 F2 D3 1 2 −3 EBCDIC zoned decimal conversion table (*) Note: These characters vary depending on the local character code page setting. Fixed-point zoned decimal Some languages (such as COBOL and PL/I) directly support fixed-point zoned decimal values, assigning an implicit decimal point at some location between the decimal digits of a number. For example, given a six-byte signed zoned decimal value with an implied decimal point to the right of the fourth digit, the hex bytes F1 F2 F7 F9 F5 C0 represent the value +1,279.50: F1 F2 F7 F9 F5 C0 1 2 7 9. 5 +0 BCD in computers IBM IBM used the terms Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange Code (BCDIC, sometimes just called BCD), for 6-bit alphanumeric codes that represented numbers, upper-case letters and special characters. Some variation of BCDIC alphamerics is used in most early IBM computers, including the IBM 1620 (introduced in 1959), IBM 1400 series, and non-Decimal Architecture members of the IBM 700/7000 series. The IBM 1400 series are character-addressable machines, each location being six bits labeled B, A, 8, 4, 2 and 1, plus an odd parity check bit (C) and a word mark bit (M). For encoding digits 1 through 9, B and A are zero and the digit value represented by standard 4-bit BCD in bits 8 through 1. For most other characters bits B and A are derived simply from the "12", "11", and "0" "zone punches" in the punched card character code, and bits 8 through 1 from the 1 through 9 punches. A "12 zone" punch set both B and A, an "11 zone" set B, and a "0 zone" (a 0 punch combined with any others) set A. Thus the letter A, which is (12,1) in the punched card format, is encoded (B,A,1). The currency symbol $, (11,8,3) in the punched card, was encoded in memory as (B,8,2,1). This allows the circuitry to convert between the punched card format and the internal storage format to be very simple with only a few special cases. One important special case is digit 0, represented by a lone 0 punch in the card, and (8,2) in core memory. The memory of the IBM 1620 is organized into 6-bit addressable digits, the usual 8, 4, 2, 1 plus F, used as a flag bit and C, an odd parity check bit. BCD alphamerics are encoded using digit pairs, with the "zone" in the even-addressed digit and the "digit" in the odd-addressed digit, the "zone" being related to the 12, 11, and 0 "zone punches" as in the 1400 series. Input/Output translation hardware converted between the internal digit pairs and the external standard 6-bit BCD codes. In the Decimal Architecture IBM 7070, IBM 7072, and IBM 7074 alphamerics are encoded using digit pairs (using two-out-of-five code in the digits, not BCD) of the 10-digit word, with the "zone" in the left digit and the "digit" in the right digit. Input/Output translation hardware converted between the internal digit pairs and the external standard 6-bit BCD codes. With the introduction of System/360, IBM expanded 6-bit BCD alphamerics to 8-bit EBCDIC, allowing the addition of many more characters (e.g., lowercase letters). A variable length Packed BCD numeric data type is also implemented, providing machine instructions that perform arithmetic directly on packed decimal data. On the IBM 1130 and 1800, packed BCD is supported in software by IBM's Commercial Subroutine Package. Today, BCD data is still heavily used in IBM processors and databases, such as IBM DB2, mainframes, and Power6. In these products, the BCD is usually zoned BCD (as in EBCDIC or ASCII), Packed BCD (two decimal digits per byte), or "pure" BCD encoding (one decimal digit stored as BCD in the low four bits of each byte). All of these are used within hardware registers and processing units, and in software. To convert packed decimals in EBCDIC table unloads to readable numbers, you can use the OUTREC FIELDS mask of the JCL utility DFSORT. Other computers The Digital Equipment Corporation VAX-11 series includes instructions that can perform arithmetic directly on packed BCD data and convert between packed BCD data and other integer representations. The VAX's packed BCD format is compatible with that on IBM System/360 and IBM's later compatible processors. The MicroVAX and later VAX implementations dropped this ability from the CPU but retained code compatibility with earlier machines by implementing the missing instructions in an operating system-supplied software library. This is invoked automatically via exception handling when the defunct instructions are encountered, so that programs using them can execute without modification on the newer machines. The Intel x86 architecture supports a unique 18-digit (ten-byte) BCD format that can be loaded into and stored from the floating point registers, from where computations can be performed. The Motorola 68000 series had BCD instructions. In more recent computers such capabilities are almost always implemented in software rather than the CPU's instruction set, but BCD numeric data are still extremely common in commercial and financial applications. There are tricks for implementing packed BCD and zoned decimal add–or–subtract operations using short but difficult to understand sequences of word-parallel logic and binary arithmetic operations. For example, the following code (written in C) computes an unsigned 8-digit packed BCD addition using 32-bit binary operations: uint32_t BCDadd(uint32_t a, uint32_t b) { uint32_t t1, t2; // unsigned 32-bit intermediate values t1 = a + 0x06666666; t2 = t1 ^ b; // sum without carry propagation t1 = t1 + b; // provisional sum t2 = t1 ^ t2; // all the binary carry bits t2 = ~t2 & 0x11111110; // just the BCD carry bits t2 = (t2 >> 2) | (t2 >> 3); // correction return t1 - t2; // corrected BCD sum } BCD in electronics BCD is very common in electronic systems where a numeric value is to be displayed, especially in systems consisting solely of digital logic, and not containing a microprocessor. By employing BCD, the manipulation of numerical data for display can be greatly simplified by treating each digit as a separate single sub-circuit. This matches much more closely the physical reality of display hardware—a designer might choose to use a series of separate identical seven-segment displays to build a metering circuit, for example. If the numeric quantity were stored and manipulated as pure binary, interfacing with such a display would require complex circuitry. Therefore, in cases where the calculations are relatively simple, working throughout with BCD can lead to an overall simpler system than converting to and from binary. Most pocket calculators do all their calculations in BCD. The same argument applies when hardware of this type uses an embedded microcontroller or other small processor. Often, representing numbers internally in BCD format results in smaller code, since a conversion from or to binary representation can be expensive on such limited processors. For these applications, some small processors feature dedicated arithmetic modes, which assist when writing routines that manipulate BCD quantities. Operations with BCD Addition It is possible to perform addition by first adding in binary, and then converting to BCD afterwards. Conversion of the simple sum of two digits can be done by adding 6 (that is, 16 − 10) when the five-bit result of adding a pair of digits has a value greater than 9. The reason for adding 6 is that there are 16 possible 4-bit BCD values (since 24 = 16), but only 10 values are valid (0000 through 1001). For example: 1001 + 1000 = 10001 9 + 8 = 17 10001 is the binary, not decimal, representation of the desired result, but the most significant 1 (the "carry") cannot fit in a 4-bit binary number. In BCD as in decimal, there cannot exist a value greater than 9 (1001) per digit. To correct this, 6 (0110) is added to the total, and then the result is treated as two nibbles: 10001 + 0110 = 00010111 => 0001 0111 17 + 6 = 23 1 7 The two nibbles of the result, 0001 and 0111, correspond to the digits "1" and "7". This yields "17" in BCD, which is the correct result. This technique can be extended to adding multiple digits by adding in groups from right to left, propagating the second digit as a carry, always comparing the 5-bit result of each digit-pair sum to 9. Some CPUs provide a half-carry flag to facilitate BCD arithmetic adjustments following binary addition and subtraction operations. The Intel 8080, the Zilog Z80 and the CPUs of the x86 family provide the opcode DAA (Decimal Adjust Accumulator). Subtraction Subtraction is done by adding the ten's complement of the subtrahend to the minuend. To represent the sign of a number in BCD, the number 0000 is used to represent a positive number, and 1001 is used to represent a negative number. The remaining 14 combinations are invalid signs. To illustrate signed BCD subtraction, consider the following problem: 357 − 432. In signed BCD, 357 is 0000 0011 0101 0111. The ten's complement of 432 can be obtained by taking the nine's complement of 432, and then adding one. So, 999 − 432 = 567, and 567 + 1 = 568. By preceding 568 in BCD by the negative sign code, the number −432 can be represented. So, −432 in signed BCD is 1001 0101 0110 1000. Now that both numbers are represented in signed BCD, they can be added together: 0000 0011 0101 0111 0 3 5 7 + 1001 0101 0110 1000 9 5 6 8 = 1001 1000 1011 1111 9 8 11 15 Since BCD is a form of decimal representation, several of the digit sums above are invalid. In the event that an invalid entry (any BCD digit greater than 1001) exists, 6 is added to generate a carry bit and cause the sum to become a valid entry. So, adding 6 to the invalid entries results in the following: 1001 1000 1011 1111 9 8 11 15 + 0000 0000 0110 0110 0 0 6 6 = 1001 1001 0010 0101 9 9 2 5 Thus the result of the subtraction is 1001 1001 0010 0101 (−925). To confirm the result, note that the first digit is 9, which means negative. This seems to be correct since 357 − 432 should result in a negative number. The remaining nibbles are BCD, so 1001 0010 0101 is 925. The ten's complement of 925 is 1000 − 925 = 75, so the calculated answer is −75. If there are a different number of nibbles being added together (such as 1053 − 2), the number with the fewer digits must first be prefixed with zeros before taking the ten's complement or subtracting. So, with 1053 − 2, 2 would have to first be represented as 0002 in BCD, and the ten's complement of 0002 would have to be calculated. Comparison with pure binary Advantages Many non-integral values, such as decimal 0.2, have an infinite place-value representation in binary (.001100110011...) but have a finite place-value in binary-coded decimal (0.0010). Consequently, a system based on binary-coded decimal representations of decimal fractions avoids errors representing and calculating such values. This is useful in financial calculations. Scaling by a power of 10 is simple. Rounding at a decimal digit boundary is simpler. Addition and subtraction in decimal do not require rounding. The alignment of two decimal numbers (for example 1.3 + 27.08) is a simple, exact shift. Conversion to a character form or for display (e.g., to a text-based format such as XML, or to drive signals for a seven-segment display) is a simple per-digit mapping, and can be done in linear (O(n)) time. Conversion from pure binary involves relatively complex logic that spans digits, and for large numbers, no linear-time conversion algorithm is known (see ). Disadvantages Some operations are more complex to implement. Adders require extra logic to cause them to wrap and generate a carry early. 15 to 20 per cent more circuitry is needed for BCD add compared to pure binary. Multiplication requires the use of algorithms that are somewhat more complex than shift-mask-add (a binary multiplication, requiring binary shifts and adds or the equivalent, per-digit or group of digits is required). Standard BCD requires four bits per digit, roughly 20 per cent more space than a binary encoding (the ratio of 4 bits to log210 bits is 1.204). When packed so that three digits are encoded in ten bits, the storage overhead is greatly reduced, at the expense of an encoding that is unaligned with the 8-bit byte boundaries common on existing hardware, resulting in slower implementations on these systems. Practical existing implementations of BCD are typically slower than operations on binary representations, especially on embedded systems, due to limited processor support for native BCD operations. Representational variations Various BCD implementations exist that employ other representations for numbers. Programmable calculators manufactured by Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, and others typically employ a floating-point BCD format, typically with two or three digits for the (decimal) exponent. The extra bits of the sign digit may be used to indicate special numeric values, such as infinity, underflow/overflow, and error (a blinking display). Signed variations Signed decimal values may be represented in several ways. The COBOL programming language, for example, supports five zoned decimal formats, with each one encoding the numeric sign in a different way: Telephony binary-coded decimal (TBCD) 3GPP developed TBCD, an expansion to BCD where the remaining (unused) bit combinations are used to add specific telephony characters, with digits similar to those found in telephone keypads original design. The mentioned 3GPP document defines TBCD-STRING with swapped nibbles in each byte. Bits, octets and digits indexed from 1, bits from the right, digits and octets from the left. bits 8765 of octet n encoding digit 2n bits 4321 of octet n encoding digit 2(n – 1) + 1 Meaning number 1234, would become 21 43 in TBCD. Alternative encodings If errors in representation and computation are more important than the speed of conversion to and from display, a scaled binary representation may be used, which stores a decimal number as a binary-encoded integer and a binary-encoded signed decimal exponent. For example, 0.2 can be represented as 2. This representation allows rapid multiplication and division, but may require shifting by a power of 10 during addition and subtraction to align the decimal points. It is appropriate for applications with a fixed number of decimal places that do not then require this adjustment—particularly financial applications where 2 or 4 digits after the decimal point are usually enough. Indeed, this is almost a form of fixed point arithmetic since the position of the radix point is implied. The Hertz and Chen–Ho encodings provide Boolean transformations for converting groups of three BCD-encoded digits to and from 10-bit values that can be efficiently encoded in hardware with only 2 or 3 gate delays. Densely packed decimal (DPD) is a similar scheme that is used for most of the significand, except the lead digit, for one of the two alternative decimal encodings specified in the IEEE 754-2008 floating-point standard. Application The BIOS in many personal computers stores the date and time in BCD because the MC6818 real-time clock chip used in the original IBM PC AT motherboard provided the time encoded in BCD. This form is easily converted into ASCII for display. The Atari 8-bit family of computers used BCD to implement floating-point algorithms. The MOS 6502 processor has a BCD mode that affects the addition and subtraction instructions. The Psion Organiser 1 handheld computer's manufacturer-supplied software also entirely used BCD to implement floating point; later Psion models used binary exclusively. Early models of the PlayStation 3 store the date and time in BCD. This led to a worldwide outage of the console on 1 March 2010. The last two digits of the year stored as BCD were misinterpreted as 16 causing an error in the unit's date, rendering most functions inoperable. This has been referred to as the Year 2010 problem. Legal history In the 1972 case Gottschalk v. Benson, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court's decision that had allowed a patent for converting BCD-encoded numbers to binary on a computer. The decision noted that a patent "would wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself". This was a landmark judgement that determining the patentability of software and algorithms. See also Bi-quinary coded decimal Binary-coded ternary (BCT) Binary integer decimal (BID) Bitmask Chen–Ho encoding Decimal computer Densely packed decimal (DPD) Double dabble, an algorithm for converting binary numbers to BCD Year 2000 problem Notes References Further reading and (NB. At least some batches of the Krieger reprint edition were misprints with defective pages 115–146.) (Also: ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 22 #10, IEEE Computer Society Press #87CH2440-6, October 1987) External links Convert BCD to decimal, binary and hexadecimal and vice versa BCD for Java Computer arithmetic Numeral systems Non-standard positional numeral systems Binary arithmetic Articles with example C code

Brain abscess (or cerebral abscess) is an abscess caused by inflammation and collection of infected material, coming from local (ear infection, dental abscess, infection of paranasal sinuses, infection of the mastoid air cells of the temporal bone, epidural abscess) or remote (lung, heart, kidney etc.) infectious sources, within the brain tissue. The infection may also be introduced through a skull fracture following a head trauma or surgical procedures. Brain abscess is usually associated with congenital heart disease in young children. It may occur at any age but is most frequent in the third decade of life. Signs and symptoms Fever, headache, and neurological problems, while classic, only occur in 20% of people with brain abscess. The famous triad of fever, headache and focal neurologic findings are highly suggestive of brain abscess. These symptoms are caused by a combination of increased intracranial pressure due to a space-occupying lesion (headache, vomiting, confusion, coma), infection (fever, fatigue etc.) and focal neurologic brain tissue damage (hemiparesis, aphasia etc.). The most frequent presenting symptoms are headache, drowsiness, confusion, seizures, hemiparesis or speech difficulties together with fever with a rapidly progressive course. Headache is characteristically worse at night and in the morning, as the intracranial pressure naturally increases when in the supine position. This elevation similarly stimulates the medullary vomiting center and area postrema, leading to morning vomiting. Other symptoms and findings depend largely on the specific location of the abscess in the brain. An abscess in the cerebellum, for instance, may cause additional complaints as a result of brain stem compression and hydrocephalus. Neurological examination may reveal a stiff neck in occasional cases (erroneously suggesting meningitis). Pathophysiology Bacterial Anaerobic and microaerophilic cocci and gram-negative and gram-positive anaerobic bacilli are the predominate bacterial isolates. Many brain abscesses are polymicrobial. The predominant organisms include: Staphylococcus aureus, aerobic and anaerobic streptococci (especially Streptococcus intermedius), Bacteroides, Prevotella, and Fusobacterium species, Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas species, and other anaerobes. Less common organisms include: Haemophillus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis. Bacterial abscesses rarely (if ever) arise de novo within the brain, although establishing a cause can be difficult in many cases. There is almost always a primary lesion elsewhere in the body that must be sought assiduously, because failure to treat the primary lesion will result in relapse. In cases of trauma, for example in compound skull fractures where fragments of bone are pushed into the substance of the brain, the cause of the abscess is obvious. Similarly, bullets and other foreign bodies may become sources of infection if left in place. The location of the primary lesion may be suggested by the location of the abscess: infections of the middle ear result in lesions in the middle and posterior cranial fossae; congenital heart disease with right-to-left shunts often result in abscesses in the distribution of the middle cerebral artery; and infection of the frontal and ethmoid sinuses usually results in collection in the subdural sinuses. Other organisms Fungi and parasites may also cause the disease. Fungi and parasites are especially associated with immunocompromised patients. Other causes include: Nocardia asteroides, Mycobacterium, Fungi (e.g. Aspergillus, Candida, Cryptococcus, Mucorales, Coccidioides, Histoplasma capsulatum, Blastomyces dermatitidis, Bipolaris, Exophiala dermatitidis, Curvularia pallescens, Ochroconis gallopava, Ramichloridium mackenziei, Pseudallescheria boydii), Protozoa (e.g. Toxoplasma gondii, Entamoeba histolytica, Trypanosoma cruzi, Schistosoma, Paragonimus), and Helminths (e.g. Taenia solium). Organisms that are most frequently associated with brain abscess in patients with AIDS are poliovirus, Toxoplasma gondii, and Cryptococcus neoformans, though in infection with the latter organism, symptoms of meningitis generally predominate. These organisms are associated with certain predisposing conditions: Sinus and dental infections—Aerobic and anaerobic streptococci, anaerobic gram-negative bacilli (e.g. Prevotella, Porphyromonas, Bacteroides), Fusobacterium, S. aureus, and Enterobacteriaceae Penetrating trauma—S. aureus, aerobic streptococci, Enterobacteriaceae, and Clostridium spp. Pulmonary infections—Aerobic and anaerobic streptococci, anaerobic gram-negative bacilli (e.g. Prevotella, Porphyromonas, Bacteroides), Fusobacterium, Actinomyces, and Nocardia Congenital heart disease—Aerobic and microaerophilic streptococci, and S. aureus HIV infection—T. gondii, Mycobacterium, Nocardia, Cryptococcus, and Listeria monocytogenes Transplantation—Aspergillus, Candida, Cryptococcus, Mucorales, Nocardia, and T. gondii Neutropenia—Aerobic gram-negative bacilli, Aspergillus, Candida, and Mucorales Diagnosis The diagnosis is established by a computed tomography (CT) (with contrast) examination. At the initial phase of the inflammation (which is referred to as cerebritis), the immature lesion does not have a capsule and it may be difficult to distinguish it from other space-occupying lesions or infarcts of the brain. Within 4–5 days the inflammation and the concomitant dead brain tissue are surrounded with a capsule, which gives the lesion the famous ring-enhancing lesion appearance on CT examination with contrast (since intravenously applied contrast material can not pass through the capsule, it is collected around the lesion and looks as a ring surrounding the relatively dark lesion). Lumbar puncture procedure, which is performed in many infectious disorders of the central nervous system is contraindicated in this condition (as it is in all space-occupying lesions of the brain) because removing a certain portion of the cerebrospinal fluid may alter the concrete intracranial pressure balances and causes the brain tissue to move across structures within the skull (brain herniation). Ring enhancement may also be observed in cerebral hemorrhages (bleeding) and some brain tumors. However, in the presence of the rapidly progressive course with fever, focal neurologic findings (hemiparesis, aphasia etc.) and signs of increased intracranial pressure, the most likely diagnosis should be the brain abscess. Treatment The treatment includes lowering the increased intracranial pressure and starting intravenous antibiotics (and meanwhile identifying the causative organism mainly by blood culture studies). Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO2 or HBOT) is indicated as a primary and adjunct treatment which provides four primary functions. Firstly, HBOT reduces intracranial pressure. Secondly, high partial pressures of oxygen act as a bactericide and thus inhibits the anaerobic and functionally anaerobic flora common in brain abscess. Third, HBOT optimizes the immune function thus enhancing the host defense mechanisms and fourth, HBOT has been found to be of benefit when brain abscess is concomitant with cranial osteomyelitis. Secondary functions of HBOT include increased stem cell production and up-regulation of VEGF which aid in the healing and recovery process. Surgical drainage of the abscess remains part of the standard management of bacterial brain abscesses. The location and treatment of the primary lesion also crucial, as is the removal of any foreign material (bone, dirt, bullets, and so forth). There are few exceptions to this rule: Haemophilus influenzae meningitis is often associated with subdural effusions that are mistaken for subdural empyemas. These effusions resolve with antibiotics and require no surgical treatment. Tuberculosis can produce brain abscesses that look identical to conventional bacterial abscesses on CT imaging. Surgical drainage or aspiration is often necessary to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but once the diagnosis is made no further surgical intervention is necessary. CT guided stereotactic aspiration is also indicated in the treatment of brain abscess. The use of pre-operative imaging, intervention with post-operative clinical and biochemical monitoring used to manage brain abscesses today dates back to the Pennybacker system pioneered by Somerset, Kentucky-born neurosurgeon Joseph Buford Pennybacker, director of the neurosurgery department of the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford from 1952 to 1971. Prognosis While death occurs in about 10% of cases, people do well about 70% of the time. This is a large improvement from the 1960s due to improved ability to image the head, more effective neurosurgery and more effective antibiotics. References External links MR Diagnosis MedPix Imaging Brain Abscess Brain disorders Disorders causing seizures Infectious diseases

In Major League Baseball, the American League Division Series (ALDS) determines which two teams from the American League will advance to the American League Championship Series. The Division Series consists of two best-of-five series, featuring the three division winners and the winner of the wild-card play-off. History The Division Series was implemented in 1981 as a one-off tournament because of a midseason strike, with the first place teams before the strike taking on the teams in first place after the strike. In 1981, a split-season format forced the first ever divisional playoff series, in which the New York Yankees won the Eastern Division series over the Milwaukee Brewers (who were in the American League until 1998) in five games while in the Western Division, the Oakland Athletics swept the Kansas City Royals (the only team with an overall losing record to ever make the postseason). In 1994, it was returned permanently when Major League Baseball (MLB) restructured each league into three divisions, but with a different format than in 1981. Each of the division winners, along with one wild card team, qualify for the Division Series. Despite being planned for the 1994 season, the post-season was cancelled that year due to the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike. In 1995, the first season to feature a division series, the Western Division champion Seattle Mariners defeated the wild card New York Yankees three games to two, while the Central Division champion Cleveland Indians defeated the Eastern Division champion Boston Red Sox in a three game sweep. From 1994–2011, the wild card was given to the team in the American League with the best overall record that was not a division champion. Beginning with the 2012 season, a second wild card team was added, and the two wild card teams play a single-game playoff to determine which team would play in the ALDS. For the 2020 Major League Baseball season only, there was an expanded playoff format, owing to an abbreviated 60-game regular season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight teams qualified from the American League: the top two teams in each division plus the next two best records among the remaining teams. These eight teams played a best-of-three game series to determine placement in the ALDS. The regular format returned for the 2021 season. As of 2021, the Yankees have played in and won the most division series, with thirteen wins in twenty-two appearances. In 2015, the Toronto Blue Jays and Houston Astros were the final American League teams to make their first appearances in the ALDS. The Astros had been in the National League through 2012, and had played in the National League Division Series (NLDS) seven times. Determining the matchups The ALDS is a best-of-five series where the wild card team is assigned to play the divisional winner with the best winning percentage in the regular season in one series, and the other two division winners met in the other series with the team with the second best winning percentage, getting home-field. (From 1998 to 2011, if the wild-card team and the division winner with the best record were from the same division, the wild-card team played the division winner with the second-best record, and the remaining two division leaders played each other.) The two series winners move on to the best-of-seven ALCS. According to Nate Silver, the advent of this playoff series, and especially of the wild card, has caused teams to focus more on "getting to the playoffs" rather than "winning the pennant" as the primary goal of the regular season. Beginning with the 2012 season, the wild card team that advances to the Division Series was to face the number 1 seed, regardless whether or not they are in the same division. The two series winners move on to the best-of-seven ALCS. Home-field advantage goes to the team with the better regular season record (or head-to-head record if there is a tie between two or more teams), except for the wild card team, which never receives the home field advantage. Beginning in 2003, MLB has implemented a new rule to give the team from the league that wins the All-Star Game with the best regular season record a slightly greater advantage. In order to spread out the Division Series games for broadcast purposes, the two ALDS series follow one of two off-day schedules. Starting in 2007, after consulting the MLBPA, MLB has decided to allow the team with the best record in the league that wins the All-Star Game to choose whether to use the seven-day schedule (1-2-off-3-4-off-5) or the eight-day schedule (1-off-2-off-3-4-off-5). The team only gets to choose the schedule; the opponent is still determined by win-loss records. Initially, the best-of-5 series played in a 2–3 format, with the first two games set at home for the lower seed team and the last three for the higher seed. Since 1998, the series has followed a 2–2–1 format, where the higher seed team plays at home in Games 1 and 2, the lower seed plays at home in Game 3 and Game 4 (if necessary), and if a Game 5 is needed, the teams return to the higher seed's field. When MLB added a second wild card team in 2012, the Division Series re-adopted the 2–3 format due to scheduling conflicts. It reverted to the 2–2–1 format starting in 2013. Results Appearances by team Years of appearance In the sortable table below, teams are ordered first by number of wins, then by number of appearances, and finally by year of first appearance. In the "Season(s)" column, bold years indicate winning appearances. Frequent matchups See also National League Division Series (NLDS) List of American League pennant winners List of National League pennant winners List of World Series champions MLB division winners MLB postseason Notes References External links Baseball-Reference.com - annual playoffs MLB.com - MLB's Division Series historical reference - box scores, highlights, etc. Recurring sporting events established in 1981 Annual events in Major League Baseball

In probability theory and statistics, the binomial distribution with parameters n and p is the discrete probability distribution of the number of successes in a sequence of n independent experiments, each asking a yes–no question, and each with its own Boolean-valued outcome: success (with probability p) or failure (with probability q = 1 − p). A single success/failure experiment is also called a Bernoulli trial or Bernoulli experiment, and a sequence of outcomes is called a Bernoulli process; for a single trial, i.e., n = 1, the binomial distribution is a Bernoulli distribution. The binomial distribution is the basis for the popular binomial test of statistical significance. The binomial distribution is frequently used to model the number of successes in a sample of size n drawn with replacement from a population of size N. If the sampling is carried out without replacement, the draws are not independent and so the resulting distribution is a hypergeometric distribution, not a binomial one. However, for N much larger than n, the binomial distribution remains a good approximation, and is widely used. Definitions Probability mass function In general, if the random variable X follows the binomial distribution with parameters n ∈ and p ∈ [0,1], we write X ~ B(n, p). The probability of getting exactly k successes in n independent Bernoulli trials is given by the probability mass function: for k = 0, 1, 2, ..., n, where is the binomial coefficient, hence the name of the distribution. The formula can be understood as follows: k successes occur with probability pk and n − k failures occur with probability (1 − p)n − k. However, the k successes can occur anywhere among the n trials, and there are different ways of distributing k successes in a sequence of n trials. In creating reference tables for binomial distribution probability, usually the table is filled in up to n/2 values. This is because for k > n/2, the probability can be calculated by its complement as Looking at the expression f(k, n, p) as a function of k, there is a k value that maximizes it. This k value can be found by calculating and comparing it to 1. There is always an integer M that satisfies f(k, n, p) is monotone increasing for k < M and monotone decreasing for k > M, with the exception of the case where (n + 1)p is an integer. In this case, there are two values for which f is maximal: (n + 1)p and (n + 1)p − 1. M is the most probable outcome (that is, the most likely, although this can still be unlikely overall) of the Bernoulli trials and is called the mode. Example Suppose a biased coin comes up heads with probability 0.3 when tossed. The probability of seeing exactly 4 heads in 6 tosses is Cumulative distribution function The cumulative distribution function can be expressed as: where is the "floor" under k, i.e. the greatest integer less than or equal to k. It can also be represented in terms of the regularized incomplete beta function, as follows: which is equivalent to the cumulative distribution function of the -distribution: Some closed-form bounds for the cumulative distribution function are given below. Properties Expected value and variance If X ~ B(n, p), that is, X is a binomially distributed random variable, n being the total number of experiments and p the probability of each experiment yielding a successful result, then the expected value of X is: This follows from the linearity of the expected value along with the fact that is the sum of identical Bernoulli random variables, each with expected value . In other words, if are identical (and independent) Bernoulli random variables with parameter , then and The variance is: This similarly follows from the fact that the variance of a sum of independent random variables is the sum of the variances. Higher moments The first 6 central moments, defined as , are given by The non-central moments satisfy and in general where are the Stirling numbers of the second kind, and is the th falling power of . A simple bound follows by bounding the Binomial moments via the higher Poisson moments: This shows that if , then is at most a constant factor away from Mode Usually the mode of a binomial B(n, p) distribution is equal to , where is the floor function. However, when (n + 1)p is an integer and p is neither 0 nor 1, then the distribution has two modes: (n + 1)p and (n + 1)p − 1. When p is equal to 0 or 1, the mode will be 0 and n correspondingly. These cases can be summarized as follows: Proof: Let For only has a nonzero value with . For we find and for . This proves that the mode is 0 for and for . Let . We find . From this follows So when is an integer, then and is a mode. In the case that , then only is a mode. Median In general, there is no single formula to find the median for a binomial distribution, and it may even be non-unique. However, several special results have been established: If np is an integer, then the mean, median, and mode coincide and equal np. Any median m must lie within the interval ⌊np⌋ ≤ m ≤ ⌈np⌉. A median m cannot lie too far away from the mean: }. The median is unique and equal to m = round(np) when |m − np| ≤ min{p, 1 − p} (except for the case when p =  and n is odd). When p is a rational number (with the exception of p = 1/2 and n odd) the median is unique. When p = 1/2 and n is odd, any number m in the interval (n − 1) ≤ m ≤ (n + 1) is a median of the binomial distribution. If p = 1/2 and n is even, then m = n/2 is the unique median. Tail bounds For k ≤ np, upper bounds can be derived for the lower tail of the cumulative distribution function , the probability that there are at most k successes. Since , these bounds can also be seen as bounds for the upper tail of the cumulative distribution function for k ≥ np. Hoeffding's inequality yields the simple bound which is however not very tight. In particular, for p = 1, we have that F(k;n,p) = 0 (for fixed k, n with k < n), but Hoeffding's bound evaluates to a positive constant. A sharper bound can be obtained from the Chernoff bound: where D(a || p) is the relative entropy (or Kullback-Leibler divergence) between an a-coin and a p-coin (i.e. between the Bernoulli(a) and Bernoulli(p) distribution): Asymptotically, this bound is reasonably tight; see for details. One can also obtain lower bounds on the tail , known as anti-concentration bounds. By approximating the binomial coefficient with Stirling's formula it can be shown that which implies the simpler but looser bound For p = 1/2 and k ≥ 3n/8 for even n, it is possible to make the denominator constant: Statistical inference Estimation of parameters When n is known, the parameter p can be estimated using the proportion of successes: This estimator is found using maximum likelihood estimator and also the method of moments. This estimator is unbiased and uniformly with minimum variance, proven using Lehmann–Scheffé theorem, since it is based on a minimal sufficient and complete statistic (i.e.: x). It is also consistent both in probability and in MSE. A closed form Bayes estimator for p also exists when using the Beta distribution as a conjugate prior distribution. When using a general as a prior, the posterior mean estimator is: The Bayes estimator is asymptotically efficient and as the sample size approaches infinity (n → ∞), it approaches the MLE solution. The Bayes estimator is biased (how much depends on the priors), admissible and consistent in probability. For the special case of using the standard uniform distribution as a non-informative prior, , the posterior mean estimator becomes: (A posterior mode should just lead to the standard estimator.) This method is called the rule of succession, which was introduced in the 18th century by Pierre-Simon Laplace. When estimating p with very rare events and a small n (e.g.: if x=0), then using the standard estimator leads to which sometimes is unrealistic and undesirable. In such cases there are various alternative estimators. One way is to use the Bayes estimator, leading to: Another method is to use the upper bound of the confidence interval obtained using the rule of three: Confidence intervals Even for quite large values of n, the actual distribution of the mean is significantly nonnormal. Because of this problem several methods to estimate confidence intervals have been proposed. In the equations for confidence intervals below, the variables have the following meaning: n1 is the number of successes out of n, the total number of trials is the proportion of successes is the quantile of a standard normal distribution (i.e., probit) corresponding to the target error rate . For example, for a 95% confidence level the error  = 0.05, so  = 0.975 and  = 1.96. Wald method A continuity correction of 0.5/n may be added. Agresti–Coull method Here the estimate of p is modified to This method works well for and . See here for . For use the Wilson (score) method below. Arcsine method Wilson (score) method The notation in the formula below differs from the previous formulas in two respects: Firstly, zx has a slightly different interpretation in the formula below: it has its ordinary meaning of 'the xth quantile of the standard normal distribution', rather than being a shorthand for 'the (1 − x)-th quantile'. Secondly, this formula does not use a plus-minus to define the two bounds. Instead, one may use to get the lower bound, or use to get the upper bound. For example: for a 95% confidence level the error  = 0.05, so one gets the lower bound by using , and one gets the upper bound by using . Comparison The so-called "exact" (Clopper–Pearson) method is the most conservative. (Exact does not mean perfectly accurate; rather, it indicates that the estimates will not be less conservative than the true value.) The Wald method, although commonly recommended in textbooks, is the most biased. Related distributions Sums of binomials If X ~ B(n, p) and Y ~ B(m, p) are independent binomial variables with the same probability p, then X + Y is again a binomial variable; its distribution is Z=X+Y ~ B(n+m, p): A Binomial distributed random variable X ~ B(n, p) can be considered as the sum of n Bernouli distributed random variables. So the sum of two Binomial distributed random variable X ~ B(n, p) and Y ~ B(m, p) is equivalent to the sum of n + m Bernouli distributed random variables, which means Z=X+Y ~ B(n+m, p). This can also be proven directly using the addition rule. However, if X and Y do not have the same probability p, then the variance of the sum will be smaller than the variance of a binomial variable distributed as Poisson binomial distribution The binomial distribution is a special case of the Poisson binomial distribution, which is the distribution of a sum of n independent non-identical Bernoulli trials B(pi). Ratio of two binomial distributions This result was first derived by Katz and coauthors in 1978. Let X ~ B(n,p1) and Y ~ B(m,p2) be independent. Let T = (X/n)/(Y/m). Then log(T) is approximately normally distributed with mean log(p1/p2) and variance ((1/p1) − 1)/n + ((1/p2) − 1)/m. Conditional binomials If X ~ B(n, p) and Y | X ~ B(X, q) (the conditional distribution of Y, given X), then Y is a simple binomial random variable with distribution Y ~ B(n, pq). For example, imagine throwing n balls to a basket UX and taking the balls that hit and throwing them to another basket UY. If p is the probability to hit UX then X ~ B(n, p) is the number of balls that hit UX. If q is the probability to hit UY then the number of balls that hit UY is Y ~ B(X, q) and therefore Y ~ B(n, pq). Since and , by the law of total probability, Since the equation above can be expressed as Factoring and pulling all the terms that don't depend on out of the sum now yields After substituting in the expression above, we get Notice that the sum (in the parentheses) above equals by the binomial theorem. Substituting this in finally yields and thus as desired. Bernoulli distribution The Bernoulli distribution is a special case of the binomial distribution, where n = 1. Symbolically, X ~ B(1, p) has the same meaning as X ~ Bernoulli(p). Conversely, any binomial distribution, B(n, p), is the distribution of the sum of n independent Bernoulli trials, Bernoulli(p), each with the same probability p. Normal approximation If n is large enough, then the skew of the distribution is not too great. In this case a reasonable approximation to B(n, p) is given by the normal distribution and this basic approximation can be improved in a simple way by using a suitable continuity correction. The basic approximation generally improves as n increases (at least 20) and is better when p is not near to 0 or 1. Various rules of thumb may be used to decide whether n is large enough, and p is far enough from the extremes of zero or one: One rule is that for the normal approximation is adequate if the absolute value of the skewness is strictly less than 1/3; that is, if This can be made precise using the Berry–Esseen theorem. A stronger rule states that the normal approximation is appropriate only if everything within 3 standard deviations of its mean is within the range of possible values; that is, only if This 3-standard-deviation rule is equivalent to the following conditions, which also imply the first rule above. The rule is totally equivalent to request that Moving terms around yields: Since , we can apply the square power and divide by the respective factors and , to obtain the desired conditions: Notice that these conditions automatically imply that . On the other hand, apply again the square root and divide by 3, Subtracting the second set of inequalities from the first one yields: and so, the desired first rule is satisfied, Another commonly used rule is that both values and must be greater than or equal to 5. However, the specific number varies from source to source, and depends on how good an approximation one wants. In particular, if one uses 9 instead of 5, the rule implies the results stated in the previous paragraphs. Assume that both values and are greater than 9. Since , we easily have that We only have to divide now by the respective factors and , to deduce the alternative form of the 3-standard-deviation rule: The following is an example of applying a continuity correction. Suppose one wishes to calculate Pr(X ≤ 8) for a binomial random variable X. If Y has a distribution given by the normal approximation, then Pr(X ≤ 8) is approximated by Pr(Y ≤ 8.5). The addition of 0.5 is the continuity correction; the uncorrected normal approximation gives considerably less accurate results. This approximation, known as de Moivre–Laplace theorem, is a huge time-saver when undertaking calculations by hand (exact calculations with large n are very onerous); historically, it was the first use of the normal distribution, introduced in Abraham de Moivre's book The Doctrine of Chances in 1738. Nowadays, it can be seen as a consequence of the central limit theorem since B(n, p) is a sum of n independent, identically distributed Bernoulli variables with parameter p. This fact is the basis of a hypothesis test, a "proportion z-test", for the value of p using x/n, the sample proportion and estimator of p, in a common test statistic. For example, suppose one randomly samples n people out of a large population and ask them whether they agree with a certain statement. The proportion of people who agree will of course depend on the sample. If groups of n people were sampled repeatedly and truly randomly, the proportions would follow an approximate normal distribution with mean equal to the true proportion p of agreement in the population and with standard deviation Poisson approximation The binomial distribution converges towards the Poisson distribution as the number of trials goes to infinity while the product np remains fixed or at least p tends to zero. Therefore, the Poisson distribution with parameter λ = np can be used as an approximation to B(n, p) of the binomial distribution if n is sufficiently large and p is sufficiently small. According to two rules of thumb, this approximation is good if n ≥ 20 and p ≤ 0.05, or if n ≥ 100 and np ≤ 10. Concerning the accuracy of Poisson approximation, see Novak, ch. 4, and references therein. Limiting distributions Poisson limit theorem: As n approaches ∞ and p approaches 0 with the product np held fixed, the Binomial(n, p) distribution approaches the Poisson distribution with expected value λ = np. de Moivre–Laplace theorem: As n approaches ∞ while p remains fixed, the distribution of approaches the normal distribution with expected value 0 and variance 1. This result is sometimes loosely stated by saying that the distribution of X is asymptotically normal with expected value 0 and variance 1. This result is a specific case of the central limit theorem. Beta distribution The binomial distribution and beta distribution are different views of the same model of repeated Bernoulli trials. The binomial distribution is the PMF of successes given independent events each with a probability of success. Mathematically, when and , the beta distribution and the binomial distribution are related by a factor of : Beta distributions also provide a family of prior probability distributions for binomial distributions in Bayesian inference: Given a uniform prior, the posterior distribution for the probability of success given independent events with observed successes is a beta distribution. Random number generation Methods for random number generation where the marginal distribution is a binomial distribution are well-established. One way to generate random variates samples from a binomial distribution is to use an inversion algorithm. To do so, one must calculate the probability that for all values from through . (These probabilities should sum to a value close to one, in order to encompass the entire sample space.) Then by using a pseudorandom number generator to generate samples uniformly between 0 and 1, one can transform the calculated samples into discrete numbers by using the probabilities calculated in the first step. History This distribution was derived by Jacob Bernoulli. He considered the case where p = r/(r + s) where p is the probability of success and r and s are positive integers. Blaise Pascal had earlier considered the case where p = 1/2. See also Logistic regression Multinomial distribution Negative binomial distribution Beta-binomial distribution Binomial measure, an example of a multifractal measure. Statistical mechanics Piling-up lemma, the resulting probability when XOR-ing independent Boolean variables References Further reading External links Interactive graphic: Univariate Distribution Relationships Binomial distribution formula calculator Difference of two binomial variables: X-Y or |X-Y| Querying the binomial probability distribution in WolframAlpha Discrete distributions Factorial and binomial topics Conjugate prior distributions Exponential family distributions

Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries to the national day of France, which is celebrated on 14 July each year. In French, it is formally called (; "French National Celebration"), and legally (; "the 14th of July"). The French National Day is the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, a major event of the French Revolution, as well as the Fête de la Fédération that celebrated the unity of the French people on 14 July 1790. Celebrations are held throughout France. One that has been reported as "the oldest and largest military parade in Europe" is held on 14 July on the Champs-Élysées in Paris in front of the President of the Republic, along with other French officials and foreign guests. History In 1789, tensions rose in France between reformist and conservative factions as the country struggled to resolve an economic crisis. In May, the Estates General legislative assembly was revived, but members of the Third Estate broke ranks, declaring themselves to be the National Assembly of the country, and on 20 June, vowed to write a constitution for the kingdom. On 11 July Jacques Necker, the Finance Minister of Louis XVI, who was sympathetic to the Third Estate, was dismissed by the king, provoking an angry reaction among Parisians. Crowds formed, fearful of an attack by the royal army or by foreign regiments of mercenaries in the king's service, and seeking to arm the general populace. Early on 14 July one crowd besieged the Hôtel des Invalides for firearms, muskets, and cannons, stored in its cellars. That same day, another crowd stormed the Bastille, a fortress-prison in Paris that had historically held people jailed on the basis of lettres de cachet (literally "signet letters"), arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed and did not indicate the reason for the imprisonment, and was believed to hold a cache of ammunition and gunpowder. As it happened, at the time of the attack, the Bastille held only seven inmates, none of great political significance. The crowd was eventually reinforced by mutinous Régiment des Gardes Françaises ("French Guards"), whose usual role was to protect public buildings. They proved a fair match for the fort's defenders, and Governor de Launay, the commander of the Bastille, capitulated and opened the gates to avoid a mutual massacre. According to the official documents, about 200 attackers and just one defender died before the capitulation. However, possibly because of a misunderstanding, fighting resumed. In this second round of fighting, de Launay and seven other defenders were killed, as was Jacques de Flesselles, the prévôt des marchands ("provost of the merchants"), the elected head of the city's guilds, who under the feudal monarchy also had the competences of a present-day mayor. Shortly after the storming of the Bastille, late in the evening of 4 August, after a very stormy session of the Assemblée constituante, feudalism was abolished. On 26 August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen) was proclaimed. Fête de la Fédération As early as 1789, the year of the storming of the Bastille, preliminary designs for a national festival were underway. These designs were intended to strengthen the country's national identity through the celebration of the events of 14 July 1789. One of the first designs was proposed by Clément Gonchon, a French textile worker, who presented his design for a festival celebrating the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille to the French city administration and the public on 9 December 1789. There were other proposals and unofficial celebrations of 14 July 1789, but the official festival sponsored by the National Assembly was called the Fête de la Fédération. The Fête de la Fédération on 14 July 1790 was a celebration of the unity of the French nation during the French Revolution. The aim of this celebration, one year after the Storming of the Bastille, was to symbolize peace. The event took place on the Champ de Mars, which was located far outside of Paris at the time. The work needed to transform the Champ de Mars into a suitable location for the celebration was not on schedule to be completed in time. On the day recalled as the Journée des brouettes ("The Day of the Wheelbarrow"), thousands of Parisian citizens gathered together to finish the construction needed for the celebration. The day of the festival, the National Guard assembled and proceeded along the boulevard du Temple in the pouring rain, and were met by an estimated 260,000 Parisian citizens at the Champ de Mars. A mass was celebrated by Talleyrand, bishop of Autun. The popular General Lafayette, as captain of the National Guard of Paris and a confidant of the king, took his oath to the constitution, followed by King Louis XVI. After the end of the official celebration, the day ended in a huge four-day popular feast, and people celebrated with fireworks, as well as fine wine and running nude through the streets in order to display their great freedom. Origin of the current celebration On 30 June 1878, a feast was officially arranged in Paris to honour the French Republic (the event was commemorated in a painting by Claude Monet). On 14 July 1879, there was another feast, with a semi-official aspect. The day's events included a reception in the Chamber of Deputies, organised and presided over by Léon Gambetta, a military review at Longchamp, and a Republican Feast in the Pré Catelan. All through France, Le Figaro wrote, "people feasted much to honour the storming of the Bastille". In 1880, the government of the Third Republic wanted to revive the 14 July festival. The campaign for the reinstatement of the festival had been underway for nearly a decade, sponsored by the notable politician Léon Gambetta and scholar Henri Baudrillant. On 21 May 1880, Benjamin Raspail proposed a law, signed by sixty-four members of government, to have "the Republic adopt 14 July as the day of an annual national festival". There were many disputes over which date to be remembered as the national holiday, including 4 August (the commemoration of the end of the feudal system), 5 May (when the Estates-General first assembled), 27 July (the fall of Robespierre), and 21 January (the date of Louis XVI's execution). The government decided that the date of the holiday would be 14 July, but it was still somewhat problematic. The events of 14 July 1789 were illegal under the previous government, which contradicted the Third Republic's need to establish legal legitimacy. French politicians also did not want the sole foundation of their national holiday to be rooted in a day of bloodshed and class-hatred as the day of storming the Bastille was. Instead, they based the establishment of the holiday as a dual celebration of the Fête de la Fédération, a festival celebrating the first anniversary of 14 July 1789, and the storming of the Bastille. The Assembly voted in favor of the proposal on 21 May and 8 June, and the law was approved on 27 and 29 June. The law was made official on 6 July 1880. In the debate leading up to the adoption of the holiday, Senator Henri Martin, who wrote the National Day law, addressed the chamber on 29 June 1880: Bastille Day military parade The Bastille Day military parade is the French military parade that has been held in the morning, each year in Paris since 1880. While previously held elsewhere within or near the capital city, since 1918 it has been held on the Champs-Élysées, with the participation of the Allies as represented in the Versailles Peace Conference, and with the exception of the period of German occupation from 1940 to 1944 (when the ceremony took place in London under the command of General Charles de Gaulle); and 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced its cancellation. The parade passes down the Champs-Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde, where the President of the French Republic, his government and foreign ambassadors to France stand. This is a popular event in France, broadcast on French TV, and is the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe. In some years, invited detachments of foreign troops take part in the parade and foreign statesmen attend as guests Smaller military parades are held in French garrison towns, including Toulon and Belfort, with local troops. Bastille Day celebrations in other countries Belgium Liège celebrates the Bastille Day each year since the end of the First World War, as Liège was decorated by the Légion d'Honneur for its unexpected resistance during the Battle of Liège. The city also hosts a fireworks show outside of Congress Hall. Specifically in Liège, celebrations of Bastille Day have been known to be bigger than the celebrations of the Belgian National holiday. Around 35,000 people gather to celebrate Bastille Day. There is a traditional festival dance of the French consul that draws large crowds, and many unofficial events over the city celebrate the relationship between France and the city of Liège. Canada Vancouver, British Columbia holds a celebration featuring exhibits, food and entertainment. The Toronto Bastille Day festival is also celebrated in Toronto, Ontario. The festival is organized by the French community in Toronto and sponsored by the Consulate General of France. The celebration includes music, performances, sport competitions, and a French Market. At the end of the festival, there is also a traditional French bal populaire. Czech Republic Since 2008, Prague has hosted a French market "" ("Fourteenth of July Market") offering traditional French food and wine as well as music. The market takes place on Kampa Island, it is usually between 11 and 14 July. It acts as an event that marks the relinquish of the EU presidency from France to the Czech Republic. Traditional selections of French produce, including cheese, wine, meat, bread and pastries, are provided by the market. Throughout the event, live music is played in the evenings, with lanterns lighting up the square at night. Denmark The amusement park Tivoli celebrates the Bastille Day. Hungary Budapest's two-day celebration is sponsored by the Institut de France. The festival is hosted along the Danube River, with streets filled with music and dancing. There are also local markets dedicated to French foods and wine, mixed with some traditional Hungarian specialties. At the end of the celebration, a fireworks show is held on the river banks. India Bastille Day is celebrated with great festivity in Pondicherry, a former French colony, every year. On the eve of the Bastille Day, retired soldiers parade and celebrate the day with Indian and French National Anthems, honoring the French soldiers who were killed in the battles. Throughout the celebration, French and Indian flags fly alongside each other, projecting the mingling of cultures and heritages. Ireland The Embassy of France in Ireland organizes several events around Dublin, Cork and Limerick for Bastille Day; including evenings of French music and tasting of French food. Many members of the French community in Ireland take part in the festivities. Events in Dublin include live entertainment, speciality menus on French cuisine, and screenings of popular French films. New Zealand The Auckland suburb of Remuera hosts an annual French-themed Bastille Day street festival. Visitors enjoy mimes, dancers, music, as well as French foods and drinks. The budding relationship between the two countries, with the establishment of a Maori garden in France and exchange of their analyses of cave art, resulted in the creation of an official reception at the Residence of France. There is also an event in Wellington for the French community held at the Residence of France. South Africa Franschhoek's weekend festival has been celebrated since 1993. (Franschhoek, or 'French Corner,' is situated in the Western Cape.) As South Africa's gourmet capital, French food, wine and other entertainment is provided throughout the festival. The French Consulate in South Africa also celebrates their national holiday with a party for the French community. Activities also include dressing up in different items of French clothing. French Polynesia Following colonial rule, France annexed a large portion of what is now French Polynesia. Under French rule, Tahitians were permitted to participate in sport, singing, and dancing competitions one day a year: Bastille Day. The single day of celebration evolved into the major Heiva i Tahiti festival in Papeete Tahiti, where traditional events such as canoe races, tattooing, and fire walks are held. The singing and dancing competitions continued, with music composed with traditional instruments such as a nasal flute and ukulele. United Kingdom Within the UK, London has a large French contingent, and celebrates Bastille Day at various locations across the city including Battersea Park, Camden Town and Kentish Town. Live entertainment is performed at Canary Wharf, with weeklong performances of French theatre at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in Kentish Town. Restaurants feature cabarets and special menus across the city, and other celebrations include garden parties and sports tournaments. There is also a large event at the Bankside and Borough Market, where there is live music, street performers, and traditional French games are played. United States The United States has over 20 cities that conduct annual celebrations of Bastille Day. The different cities celebrate with many French staples such as food, music, games, and sometimes the recreation of famous French landmarks. Northeastern States Baltimore, Maryland, has a large Bastille Day celebration each year at Petit Louis in the Roland Park area of Baltimore City. Boston has a celebration annually, hosted by the French Cultural Center for 40 years. The street festival occurs in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, near the Cultural Center's headquarters. The celebration includes francophone musical performers, dancing, and French cuisine. New York City has numerous Bastille Day celebrations each July, including Bastille Day on 60th Street hosted by the French Institute Alliance Française between Fifth and Lexington Avenues on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Bastille Day on Smith Street in Brooklyn, and Bastille Day in Tribeca. There is also the annual Bastille Day Ball, taking place since 1924. Philadelphia's Bastille Day, held at Eastern State Penitentiary, involves Marie Antoinette throwing locally manufactured Tastykakes at the Parisian militia, as well as a re-enactment of the storming of the Bastille. (This Philadelphia tradition ended in 2018.) In Newport, Rhode Island, the annual Bastille Day celebration is organized by the local chapter of the Alliance Française. It takes place at King Park in Newport at the monument memorializing the accomplishments of the General Comte de Rochambeau whose 6,000 to 7,000 French forces landed in Newport on 11 July 1780. Their assistance in the defeat of the English in the War of Independence is well documented and is demonstrable proof of the special relationship between France and the United States. In Washington D.C., food, music, and auction events are sponsored by the Embassy of France. There is also a French Festival within the city, where families can meet period entertainment groups set during the time of the French Revolution. Restaurants host parties serving traditional French food. Southern States In Dallas, Texas, the Bastille Day celebration, "Bastille On Bishop", began in 2010 and is held annually in the Bishop Arts District of the North Oak Cliff neighborhood, southwest of downtown just across the Trinity River. Dallas' French roots are tied to the short lived socialist Utopian community La Réunion, formed in 1855 and incorporated into the City of Dallas in 1860. Miami's celebration is organized by "French & Famous" in partnership with the French American Chamber of Commerce, the Union des Français de l'Etranger and many French brands. The event gathers over 1,000 attendees to celebrate "La Fête Nationale". The location and theme change every year. In 2017, the theme was "Guinguette Party" and attracted 1,200 francophiles at The River Yacht Club. New Orleans, Louisiana, has multiple celebrations, the largest in the historic French Quarter. In Austin, Texas, the Alliance Française d’Austin usually conducts a family-friendly Bastille Day party at the French Legation, the home of the French representative to the Republic of Texas from 1841 to 1845. Midwestern States Chicago, Illinois, has hosted a variety of Bastille Day celebrations in a number of locations in the city, including Navy Pier and Oz Park. The recent incarnations have been sponsored in part by the Chicago branch of the French-American Chamber of Commerce and by the French Consulate-General in Chicago. Milwaukee's four-day street festival begins with a "Storming of the Bastille" with a 43-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower. Minneapolis, Minnesota, has a celebration with wine, French food, pastries, a flea market, circus performers and bands. Also in the Twin Cities area, the local chapter of the Alliance Française has hosted an annual event for years at varying locations with a competition for the "Best Baguette of the Twin Cities." Montgomery, Ohio, has a celebration with wine, beer, local restaurants' fare, pastries, games and bands. St. Louis, Missouri, has annual festivals in the Soulard neighborhood, the former French village of Carondelet, Missouri, and in the Benton Park neighborhood. The Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion in the Benton Park neighborhood, holds an annual Bastille Day festival with reenactments of the beheading of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, traditional dancing, and artillery demonstrations. Carondelet also began hosting an annual saloon crawl to celebrate Bastille Day in 2017. The Soulard neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri celebrates its unique French heritage with special events including a parade, which honors the peasants who rejected to monarchy. The parade includes a 'gathering of the mob,' a walking and golf cart parade, and a mock beheading of the King and Queen. Western States Portland, Oregon, has celebrated Bastille Day with crowds up to 8,000, in public festivals at various public parks, since 2001. The event is coordinated by the Alliance Française of Portland. Seattle's Bastille Day celebration, held at the Seattle Center, involves performances, picnics, wine and shopping. Sacramento, California, conducts annual "waiter races" in the midtown restaurant and shopping district, with a street festival. One-time celebrations 1979: A concert with Jean-Michel Jarre on the Place de la Concorde in Paris was the first concert to have one million attendees. 1989: France celebrated the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, notably with a monumental show on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, directed by French designer Jean-Paul Goude. President François Mitterrand acted as a host for invited world leaders. 1990: A concert with Jarre was held at La Défense near Paris. 1994: The military parade was opened by Eurocorps, a newly created European army unit including German soldiers. This was the first time German troops paraded in France since 1944, as a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation. 1995: A concert with Jarre was held at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. 1998: Two days after the French football team became World Cup champions, huge celebrations took place nationwide. 2004: To commemorate the centenary of the Entente Cordiale, the British led the military parade with the Red Arrows flying overhead. 2007: To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the military parade was led by troops from the 26 other EU member states, all marching at the French time. 2014: To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, representatives of 80 countries who fought during this conflict were invited to the ceremony. The military parade was opened by 76 flags representing each of these countries. 2017: To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the United States of America's entry into the First World War, president of France Emmanuel Macron invited then-U.S. president Donald Trump to celebrate a centuries-long transatlantic tie between the two countries. Trump was reported to have admired the display, and pushed for the United States to "top it" with a proposed military parade on 10 November 2018 (the eve of the Armistice Day centenary). Incidents during Bastille Day In 2002, Maxime Brunerie attempted to shoot French President Jacques Chirac during the Champs-Élysées parade. In 2009, Paris youths set fire to more than 300 cars on Bastille Day. In 2016, Tunisian terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a truck into crowds during celebrations in the city of Nice. 86 people were killed and 434 injured along the Promenade des Anglais, before the attacker was killed in a shootout with police. See also "Bastille Day", a song by Canadian progressive rock band Rush Bastille Day (1933 film), a French romantic comedy by René Clair Bastille Day (2016 film), a film starring Idris Elba Triplets of Bellville (2003 film), an animated film written and directed by Sylvain Chomet Bastille, a British alternative rock band named after the birthday of their frontman Bastille Day event Opération 14 juillet Place de la Bastille Public holidays in France Other national holidays in July: Canada Day in Canada Independence Day/Fourth of July in the United States of America Battle of the Boyne in Northern Ireland Belgian National Day References External links 14 July – Official French website (in English) Culture of the French Revolution July observances Parades in France Day National days French culture Recurring events established in 1880 1880 establishments in France Annual events in France Summer events in France

The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1740s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including the Iberian Peninsula it continued, together with new styles, until the first decade of the 19th century. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (in the past often referred to as "late Baroque") and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art, and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well. The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep colour, grandeur, and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to France, northern Italy, Spain, and Portugal, then to Austria, southern Germany, and Russia. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an even more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and Central Europe until the mid to late 18th century. In the decorative arts, the style employs plentiful and intricate ornamentation. The departure from Renaissance classicism has its own ways in each country. But a general feature is that everywhere the starting point is the ornamental elements introduced by the Renaissance. The classical repertoire is crowded, dense, overlapping, loaded, in order to provoke shock effects. New motifs introduced by Baroque are: the cartouche, trophies and weapons, baskets of fruit or flowers, and others, made in marquetry, stucco, or carved. Origin of the word The English word baroque comes directly from the French (as the modern standard English-language spelling might suggest). Some scholars state that the French word originated from the Portuguese term barroco ("a flawed pearl"), pointing to the Latin verruca, ("wart"), or to a word with the suffix -ǒccu (common in pre-Roman Iberia). Other sources suggest a Medieval Latin term used in logic, , as the most likely source. In the 16th century, the Medieval Latin word baroco moved beyond scholastic logic and came into use to characterise anything that seemed absurdly complex. The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) associated the term baroco with "Bizarre and uselessly complicated." Other early sources associate baroco with magic, complexity, confusion, and excess. The word baroque was also associated with irregular pearls before the 18th century. The French baroque and Portuguese barroco were terms often associated with jewelry. An example from 1531 uses the term to describe pearls in an inventory of Charles V of France's treasures. Later, the word appears in a 1694 edition of Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, which describes baroque as "only used for pearls that are imperfectly round." A 1728 Portuguese dictionary similarly describes barroco as relating to a "coarse and uneven pearl". An alternative derivation of the word baroque points to the name of the Italian painter Federico Barocci (1528–1612). In the 18th century the term began to be used to describe music, and not in a flattering way. In an anonymous satirical review of the première of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie in October 1733, which was printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734, the critic wrote that the novelty in this opera was "du barocque", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was unsparing with dissonances, constantly changed key and meter, and speedily ran through every compositional device. In 1762 Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française recorded that the term could figuratively describe something "irregular, bizarre or unequal". Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was a musician and composer as well as a philosopher, wrote in 1768 in the Encyclopédie: "Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, and loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, and the movement limited. It appears that term comes from the word 'baroco' used by logicians." In 1788 Quatremère de Quincy defined the term in the Encyclopédie Méthodique as "an architectural style that is highly adorned and tormented". The French terms style baroque and musique baroque appeared in Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française in 1835. By the mid-19th century, art critics and historians had adopted the term "baroque" as a way to ridicule post-Renaissance art. This was the sense of the word as used in 1855 by the leading art historian Jacob Burckhardt, who wrote that baroque artists "despised and abused detail" because they lacked "respect for tradition". In 1888 the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin published the first serious academic work on the style, Renaissance und Barock, which described the differences between the painting, sculpture, and architecture of the Renaissance and the Baroque. Architecture: origins and characteristics The Baroque style of architecture was a result of doctrines adopted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1545–63, in response to the Protestant Reformation. The first phase of the Counter-Reformation had imposed a severe, academic style on religious architecture, which had appealed to intellectuals but not the mass of churchgoers. The Council of Trent decided instead to appeal to a more popular audience, and declared that the arts should communicate religious themes with direct and emotional involvement. Similarly, Lutheran Baroque art developed as a confessional marker of identity, in response to the Great Iconoclasm of Calvinists. Baroque churches were designed with a large central space, where the worshippers could be close to the altar, with a dome or cupola high overhead, allowing light to illuminate the church below. The dome was one of the central symbolic features of Baroque architecture illustrating the union between the heavens and the earth, The inside of the cupola was lavishly decorated with paintings of angels and saints, and with stucco statuettes of angels, giving the impression to those below of looking up at heaven. Another feature of Baroque churches are the quadratura; trompe-l'œil paintings on the ceiling in stucco frames, either real or painted, crowded with paintings of saints and angels and connected by architectural details with the balustrades and consoles. Quadratura paintings of Atlantes below the cornices appear to be supporting the ceiling of the church. Unlike the painted ceilings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, which combined different scenes, each with its own perspective, to be looked at one at a time, the Baroque ceiling paintings were carefully created so the viewer on the floor of the church would see the entire ceiling in correct perspective, as if the figures were real. The interiors of Baroque churches became more and more ornate in the High Baroque, and focused around the altar, usually placed under the dome. The most celebrated baroque decorative works of the High Baroque are the Chair of Saint Peter (1647–53) and the Baldachino of St. Peter (1623–34), both by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Baldequin of St. Peter is an example of the balance of opposites in Baroque art; the gigantic proportions of the piece, with the apparent lightness of the canopy; and the contrast between the solid twisted columns, bronze, gold and marble of the piece with the flowing draperies of the angels on the canopy. The Dresden Frauenkirche serves as a prominent example of Lutheran Baroque art, which was completed in 1743 after being commissioned by the Lutheran city council of Dresden and was "compared by eighteenth-century observers to St Peter's in Rome". The twisted column in the interior of churches is one of the signature features of the Baroque. It gives both a sense of motion and also a dramatic new way of reflecting light. The cartouche was another characteristic feature of Baroque decoration. These were large plaques carved of marble or stone, usually oval and with a rounded surface, which carried images or text in gilded letters, and were placed as interior decoration or above the doorways of buildings, delivering messages to those below. They showed a wide variety of invention, and were found in all types of buildings, from cathedrals and palaces to small chapels. Baroque architects sometimes used forced perspective to create illusions. For the Palazzo Spada in Rome, Borromini used columns of diminishing size, a narrowing floor and a miniature statue in the garden beyond to create the illusion that a passageway was thirty meters long, when it was actually only seven meters long. A statue at the end of the passage appears to be life-size, though it is only sixty centimeters high. Borromini designed the illusion with the assistance of a mathematician. Italian Baroque The first building in Rome to have a Baroque facade was the Church of the Gesù in 1584; it was plain by later Baroque standards, but marked a break with the traditional Renaissance facades that preceded it. The interior of this church remained very austere until the high Baroque, when it was lavishly ornamented. In Rome in 1605, Paul V became the first of series of popes who commissioned basilicas and church buildings designed to inspire emotion and awe through a proliferation of forms, and a richness of colours and dramatic effects. Among the most influential monuments of the Early Baroque were the facade of St. Peter's Basilica (1606–1619), and the new nave and loggia which connected the facade to Michelangelo's dome in the earlier church. The new design created a dramatic contrast between the soaring dome and the disproportionately wide facade, and the contrast on the facade itself between the Doric columns and the great mass of the portico. In the mid to late 17th century the style reached its peak, later termed the High Baroque. Many monumental works were commissioned by Popes Urban VIII and Alexander VII. The sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed a new quadruple colonnade around St. Peter's Square (1656 to 1667). The three galleries of columns in a giant ellipse balance the oversize dome and give the Church and square a unity and the feeling of a giant theatre. Another major innovator of the Italian High Baroque was Francesco Borromini, whose major work was the Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane or Saint Charles of the Four Fountains (1634–46). The sense of movement is given not by the decoration, but by the walls themselves, which undulate and by concave and convex elements, including an oval tower and balcony inserted into a concave traverse. The interior was equally revolutionary; the main space of the church was oval, beneath an oval dome. Painted ceilings, crowded with angels and saints and trompe-l'œil architectural effects, were an important feature of the Italian High Baroque. Major works included The Entry of Saint Ignatius into Paradise by Andrea Pozzo (1685–1695) in the Church of Saint Ignatius in Rome, and The triumph of the name of Jesus by Giovanni Battista Gaulli in the Church of the Gesù in Rome (1669–1683), which featured figures spilling out of the picture frame and dramatic oblique lighting and light-dark contrasts. The style spread quickly from Rome to other regions of Italy: It appeared in Venice in the church of Santa Maria della Salute (1631–1687) by Baldassare Longhena, a highly original octagonal form crowned with an enormous cupola. It appeared also in Turin, notably in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud (1668–1694) by Guarino Guarini. The style also began to be used in palaces; Guarini designed the Palazzo Carignano in Turin, while Longhena designed the Ca' Rezzonico on the Grand Canal, (1657), finished by Giorgio Massari with decorated with paintings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. A series of massive earthquakes in Sicily required the rebuilding of most of them and several were built in the exuberant late Baroque or Rococo style. Spanish Baroque The Catholic Church in Spain, and particularly the Jesuits, were the driving force of Spanish Baroque architecture. The first major work in this style was the San Isidro Chapel in Madrid, begun in 1643 by Pedro de la Torre. It contrasted an extreme richness of ornament on the exterior with simplicity in the interior, divided into multiple spaces and using effects of light to create a sense of mystery. The Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela was modernized with a series of Baroque additions beginning at the end of the 17th century, starting with a highly ornate bell tower (1680), then flanked by two even taller and more ornate towers, called the Obradorio, added between 1738 and 1750 by Fernando de Casas Novoa. Another landmark of the Spanish Baroque is the chapel tower of the Palace of San Telmo in Seville by Leonardo de Figueroa. Granada had only been conquered from the Moors in the 15th century, and had its own distinct variety of Baroque. The painter, sculptor and architect Alonso Cano designed the Baroque interior of Granada Cathedral between 1652 and his death in 1657. It features dramatic contrasts of the massive white columns and gold decor. The most ornamental and lavishly decorated architecture of the Spanish Baroque is called Churrigueresque style, named after the brothers Churriguera, who worked primarily in Salamanca and Madrid. Their works include the buildings on the city's main square, the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca (1729). This highly ornamental Baroque style was very influential in many churches and cathedrals built by the Spanish in the Americas. Other notable Spanish baroque architects of the late Baroque include Pedro de Ribera, a pupil of Churriguera, who designed the Royal Hospice of San Fernando in Madrid, and Narciso Tomé, who designed the celebrated El Transparente altarpiece at Toledo Cathedral (1729–32) which gives the illusion, in certain light, of floating upwards. The architects of the Spanish Baroque had an effect far beyond Spain; their work was highly influential in the churches built in the Spanish colonies in Latin America and the Philippines. The Church built by the Jesuits for a college in Tepotzotlán, with its ornate Baroque facade and tower, is a good example. Central Europe and Rococo (1740s–1770s) From 1680 to 1750, many highly ornate cathedrals, abbeys, and pilgrimage churches were built in Central Europe, in Bavaria, Austria, Bohemia and southwestern Poland. Some were in Rococo style, a distinct, more flamboyant and asymmetric style which emerged from the Baroque, then replaced it in Central Europe in the first half of the 18th century, until it was replaced in turn by classicism. The princes of the multitude of states in that region also chose Baroque or Rococo for their palaces and residences, and often used Italian-trained architects to construct them. Notable architects included Johann Fischer von Erlach, Lukas von Hildebrandt and Dominikus Zimmermann in Bavaria, Balthasar Neumann in Bruhl, and Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann in Dresden. In Prussia, Frederick II of Prussia was inspired by the Grand Trianon of the Palace of Versailles, and used it as the model for his summer residence, Sanssouci, in Potsdam, designed for him by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff (1745–1747). Another work of Baroque palace architecture is the Zwinger in Dresden, the former orangerie of the palace of the Dukes of Saxony in the 18th century. One of the best examples of a rococo church is the Basilika Vierzehnheiligen, or Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, a pilgrimage church located near the town of Bad Staffelstein near Bamberg, in Bavaria, southern Germany. The Basilica was designed by Balthasar Neumann and was constructed between 1743 and 1772, its plan a series of interlocking circles around a central oval with the altar placed in the exact centre of the church. The interior of this church illustrates the summit of Rococo decoration. Another notable example of the style is the Pilgrimage Church of Wies (). It was designed by the brothers J. B. and Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps, in the municipality of Steingaden in the Weilheim-Schongau district, Bavaria, Germany. Construction took place between 1745 and 1754, and the interior was decorated with frescoes and with stuccowork in the tradition of the Wessobrunner School. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Another notable example is the St. Nicholas Church (Malá Strana) in Prague (1704–55), built by Christoph Dientzenhofer and his son Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer. Decoration covers all of walls of interior of the church. The altar is placed in the nave beneath the central dome, and surrounded by chapels, light comes down from the dome above and from the surrounding chapels. The altar is entirely surrounded by arches, columns, curved balustrades and pilasters of coloured stone, which are richly decorated with statuary, creating a deliberate confusion between the real architecture and the decoration. The architecture is transformed into a theatre of light, colour and movement. In Poland, the Italian-inspired Polish Baroque lasted from the early 17th to the mid-18th century and emphasised richness of detail and colour. The first Baroque building in present-day Poland and probably one of the most recognizable is the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Kraków, designed by Giovanni Battista Trevano. Sigismund's Column in Warsaw, erected in 1644, was the world's first secular Baroque monument built in the form of a column. The palatial residence style was exemplified by the Wilanów Palace, constructed between 1677 and 1696. The most renowned Baroque architect active in Poland was Dutchman Tylman van Gameren and his notable works include Warsaw's St. Kazimierz Church and Krasiński Palace, St. Anne's in Kraków and Branicki Palace in Bialystok. However, the most celebrated work of Polish Baroque is the Fara Church in Poznań, with details by Pompeo Ferrari. French Baroque or Classicism France largely resisted the ornate Baroque style of Italy, Spain, Vienna and the rest of Europe. The French Baroque style (often termed Grand Classicism or simply Classicism in France) is closely associated with the works built for Louis XIV and Louis XV; it features more geometric order and measure than Baroque, and less elaborate decoration on the facades and in the interiors. Louis XIV invited the master of Baroque, Bernini, to submit a design for the new wing of the Louvre, but rejected it in favor of a more classical design by Claude Perrault and Louis Le Vau. The principal architects of the style included François Mansart (Chateau de Balleroy, 1626–1636), Pierre Le Muet (Church of Val-de-Grace, 1645–1665), Louis Le Vau (Vaux-le-Vicomte, 1657–1661) and especially Jules Hardouin Mansart and Robert de Cotte, whose work included the Galerie des Glaces and the Grand Trianon at Versailles (1687–1688). Mansart was also responsible for the Baroque classicism of the Place Vendôme (1686–1699). The major royal project of the period was the expansion of Palace of Versailles, begun in 1661 by Le Vau with decoration by the painter Charles Le Brun. The gardens were designed by André Le Nôtre specifically to complement and amplify the architecture. The Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors), the centerpiece of the château, with paintings by Le Brun, was constructed between 1678 and 1686. Mansart completed the Grand Trianon in 1687. The chapel, designed by de Cotte, was finished in 1710. Following the death of Louis XIV, Louis XV added the more intimate Petit Trianon and the highly ornate theatre. The fountains in the gardens were designed to be seen from the interior, and to add to the dramatic effect. The palace was admired and copied by other monarchs of Europe, particularly Peter the Great of Russia, who visited Versailles early in the reign of Louis XV, and built his own version at Peterhof Palace near Saint Petersburg, between 1705 and 1725. Portuguese Baroque Baroque architecture in Portugal lasted about two centuries (the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century). The reigns of John V and Joseph I had increased imports of gold and diamonds, in a period called Royal Absolutism, which allowed the Portuguese Baroque to flourish. Baroque architecture in Portugal enjoys a special situation and different timeline from the rest of Europe. It is conditioned by several political, artistic, and economic factors, that originate several phases, and different kinds of outside influences, resulting in a unique blend, often misunderstood by those looking for Italian art, find instead specific forms and character which give it a uniquely Portuguese variety. Another key factor is the existence of the Jesuitical architecture, also called "plain style" (Estilo Chão or Estilo Plano) which like the name evokes, is plainer and appears somewhat austere. The buildings are single-room basilicas, deep main chapel, lateral chapels (with small doors for communication), without interior and exterior decoration, very simple portal and windows. It is a very practical building, allowing it to be built throughout the empire with minor adjustments, and prepared to be decorated later or when economic resources are available. In fact, the first Portuguese Baroque does not lack in building because "plain style" is easy to be transformed, by means of decoration (painting, tiling, etc.), turning empty areas into pompous, elaborate baroque scenarios. The same could be applied to the exterior. Subsequently, it is easy to adapt the building to the taste of the time and place and add on new features and details. Practical and economical. With more inhabitants and better economic resources, the north, particularly the areas of Porto and Braga, witnessed an architectural renewal, visible in the large list of churches, convents and palaces built by the aristocracy. Porto is the city of Baroque in Portugal. Its historical centre is part of UNESCO World Heritage List. Many of the Baroque works in the historical area of the city and beyond, belong to Nicolau Nasoni an Italian architect living in Portugal, drawing original buildings with scenographic emplacement such as the church and tower of Clérigos, the logia of the Porto Cathedral, the church of Misericórdia, the Palace of São João Novo, the Palace of Freixo, the Episcopal Palace (Portuguese: Paço Episcopal do Porto) along with many others. Russian Baroque The debut of Russian Baroque, or Petrine Baroque, followed a long visit of Peter the Great to western Europe in 1697–98, where he visited the Chateaux of Fontainebleau and the Versailles as well as other architectural monuments. He decided, on his return to Russia, to construct similar monuments in St. Petersburg, which became the new capital of Russia in 1712. Early major monuments in the Petrine Baroque include the Peter and Paul Cathedral and Menshikov Palace. During the reign of Empress Anna and Elizaveta Petrovna, Russian architecture was dominated by the luxurious Baroque style of Italian-born Bartolomeo Rastrelli, which developed into Elizabethan Baroque. Rastrelli's signature buildings include the Winter Palace, the Catherine Palace and the Smolny Cathedral. Other distinctive monuments of the Elizabethan Baroque are the bell tower of the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra and the Red Gate. In Moscow, Naryshkin Baroque became widespread, especially in the architecture of Eastern Orthodox churches in the late 17th century. It was a combination of western European Baroque with traditional Russian folk styles. Baroque in the Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Americas Due to the colonization of the Americas by European countries, the Baroque naturally moved to the New World, finding especially favorable ground in the regions dominated by Spain and Portugal, both countries being centralized and irreducibly Catholic monarchies, by extension subject to Rome and adherents of the Baroque Counter-reformist most typical. European artists migrated to America and made school, and along with the widespread penetration of Catholic missionaries, many of whom were skilled artists, created a multiform Baroque often influenced by popular taste. The Criollo and Indidenous craftsmen did much to give this Baroque unique features. The main centres of American Baroque cultivation, that are still standing, are (in this order) Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Cuba, Colombia, Bolivia, Guatemala, Panama and Puerto Rico. Of particular note is the so-called "Missionary Baroque", developed in the framework of the Spanish reductions in areas extending from Mexico and southwestern portions of current-day United States to as far south as Argentina and Chile, indigenous settlements organized by Spanish Catholic missionaries in order to convert them to the Christian faith and acculturate them in the Western life, forming a hybrid Baroque influenced by Native culture, where flourished Criollos and many Indian artisans and musicians, even literate, some of great ability and talent of their own. Missionaries' accounts often repeat that Western art, especially music, had a hypnotic impact on foresters, and the images of saints were viewed as having great powers. Many Indians were converted, and a new form of devotion was created, of passionate intensity, laden with mysticism, superstition, and theatricality, which delighted in festive masses, sacred concerts, and mysteries. The Colonial Baroque architecture in the Spanish America is characterized by a profuse decoration (portal of La Profesa Church, Mexico City; facades covered with Puebla-style azulejos, as in the Church of San Francisco Acatepec in San Andrés Cholula and Convent Church of San Francisco of Puebla), which will be exacerbated in the so-called Churrigueresque style (Facade of the Tabernacle of the Mexico City Cathedral, by Lorenzo Rodríguez; Church of San Francisco Javier, Tepotzotlán; Church of Santa Prisca of Taxco). In Peru, the constructions mostly developed in the cities of Lima, Cusco, Arequipa and Trujillo, since 1650 show original characteristics that are advanced even to the European Baroque, as in the use of cushioned walls and solomonic columns (Church of la Compañía de Jesús, Cusco; Basilica and Convent of San Francisco, Lima). Other countries include: the Metropolitan Cathedral of Sucre in Bolivia; Cathedral Basilica of Esquipulas in Guatemala; Tegucigalpa Cathedral in Honduras; León Cathedral in Nicaragua; the Church of la Compañía de Jesús in Quito, Ecuador; the Church of San Ignacio in Bogotá, Colombia; the Caracas Cathedral in Venezuela; the Cabildo of Buenos Aires in Argentina; the Church of Santo Domingo in Santiago, Chile; and Havana Cathedral in Cuba. It is also worth remembering the quality of the churches of the Spanish Jesuit Missions in Bolivia, Spanish Jesuit missions in Paraguay, the Spanish missions in Mexico and the Spanish Franciscan missions in California. In Brazil, as in the metropolis, Portugal, the architecture has a certain Italian influence, usually of a Borrominesque type, as can be seen in the Co-Cathedral of Recife (1784) and Church of Nossa Senhora da Glória do Outeiro in Rio de Janeiro (1739). In the region of Minas Gerais, highlighted the work of Aleijadinho, author of a group of churches that stand out for their curved planimetry, facades with concave-convex dynamic effects and a plastic treatment of all architectural elements (Church of São Francisco de Assis in Ouro Preto, 1765–1788). Baroque in the Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Asia In the Portuguese colonies of India (Goa, Daman and Diu) an architectural style of Baroque forms mixed with Hindu elements flourished, such as the Goa Cathedral and the Basilica of Bom Jesus of Goa, which houses the tomb of St. Francis Xavier. The set of churches and convents of Goa was declared a World Heritage Site in 1986. In the Philippines, that was part of the Spanish Empire for a long time, a large number of Baroque constructions are preserved, including the Baroque Churches of the Philippines that four of these, and the Baroque and Neoclassical city of Vigan, are both UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It was also very remarkable the Walled City of Manila (Intramuros). Other city with notable preserved Spanish-era Baroque is Tayabas. Painting Baroque painters worked deliberately to set themselves apart from the painters of the Renaissance and the Mannerism period after it. In their palette, they used intense and warm colours, and particularly made use of the primary colours red, blue and yellow, frequently putting all three in close proximity. They avoided the even lighting of Renaissance painting and used strong contrasts of light and darkness on certain parts of the picture to direct attention to the central actions or figures. In their composition, they avoided the tranquil scenes of Renaissance paintings, and chose the moments of the greatest movement and drama. Unlike the tranquil faces of Renaissance paintings, the faces in Baroque paintings clearly expressed their emotions. They often used asymmetry, with action occurring away from the centre of the picture, and created axes that were neither vertical nor horizontal, but slanting to the left or right, giving a sense of instability and movement. They enhanced this impression of movement by having the costumes of the personages blown by the wind, or moved by their own gestures. The overall impressions were movement, emotion and drama. Another essential element of baroque painting was allegory; every painting told a story and had a message, often encrypted in symbols and allegorical characters, which an educated viewer was expected to know and read. Early evidence of Italian Baroque ideas in painting occurred in Bologna, where Annibale Carracci, Agostino Carracci and Ludovico Carracci sought to return the visual arts to the ordered Classicism of the Renaissance. Their art, however, also incorporated ideas central the Counter-Reformation; these included intense emotion and religious imagery that appealed more to the heart than to the intellect. Another influential painter of the Baroque era was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. His realistic approach to the human figure, painted directly from life and dramatically spotlit against a dark background, shocked his contemporaries and opened a new chapter in the history of painting. Other major painters associated closely with the Baroque style include Artemisia Gentileschi, Elisabetta Sirani, Giovanna Garzoni, Guido Reni, Domenichino, Andrea Pozzo, and Paolo de Matteis in Italy; Francisco de Zurbarán and Diego Velázquez in Spain; Adam Elsheimer in Germany; and Nicolas Poussin and Georges de La Tour in France (though Poussin spent most of his working life in Italy). Poussin and La Tour adopted a "classical" Baroque style with less focus on emotion and greater attention to the line of the figures in the painting than to colour. Peter Paul Rubens was the most important painter of the Flemish Baroque style. Rubens' highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens specialized in making altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. One important domain of Baroque painting was Quadratura, or paintings in trompe-l'œil, which literally "fooled the eye". These were usually painted on the stucco of ceilings or upper walls and balustrades, and gave the impression to those on the ground looking up were that they were seeing the heavens populated with crowds of angels, saints and other heavenly figures, set against painted skies and imaginary architecture. In Italy, artists often collaborated with architects on interior decoration; Pietro da Cortona was one of the painters of the 17th century who employed this illusionist way of painting. Among his most important commissions were the frescoes he painted for the Palace of the Barberini family (1633–39), to glorify the reign of Pope Urban VIII. Pietro da Cortona's compositions were the largest decorative frescoes executed in Rome since the work of Michelangelo at the Sistine Chapel. François Boucher was an important figure in the more delicate French Rococo style, which appeared during the late Baroque period. He designed tapestries, carpets and theatre decoration as well as painting. His work was extremely popular with Madame Pompadour, the Mistress of King Louis XV. His paintings featured mythological romantic, and mildly erotic themes. Spanish Americas In the Spanish Americas, the first influences were from Sevillan Tenebrism, mainly from Zurbarán —some of whose works are still preserved in Mexico and Peru— as can be seen in the work of the Mexicans José Juárez and Sebastián López de Arteaga, and the Bolivian Melchor Pérez de Holguín. The Cusco School of painting arose after the arrival of the Italian painter Bernardo Bitti in 1583, who introduced Mannerism in the Americas. It highlighted the work of Luis de Riaño, disciple of the Italian Angelino Medoro, author of the murals of the Church of San Pedro of Andahuaylillas. It also highlighted the Indian (Quechua) painters Diego Quispe Tito and Basilio Santa Cruz Pumacallao, as well as Marcos Zapata, author of the fifty large canvases that cover the high arches of the Cathedral of Cusco. In Ecuador, the Quito School was formed, mainly represented by the mestizo Miguel de Santiago and the criollo Nicolás Javier de Goríbar. In the 18th century sculptural altarpieces began to be replaced by paintings, developing notably the Baroque painting in the Americas. Similarly, the demand for civil works, mainly portraits of the aristocratic classes and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, grew. The main influence was the Murillesque, and in some cases – as in the criollo Cristóbal de Villalpando – that of Valdés Leal. The painting of this era has a more sentimental tone, with sweet and softer shapes. It highlight Gregorio Vásquez de Arce in Colombia, and Juan Rodríguez Juárez and Miguel Cabrera in Mexico. Sculpture The dominant figure in baroque sculpture was Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Under the patronage of Pope Urban VIII, he made a remarkable series of monumental statues of saints and figures whose faces and gestures vividly expressed their emotions, as well as portrait busts of exceptional realism, and highly decorative works for the Vatican such as the imposing Chair of St. Peter beneath the dome in St. Peter's Basilica. In addition, he designed fountains with monumental groups of sculpture to decorate the major squares of Rome. Baroque sculpture was inspired by ancient Roman statuary, particularly by the famous first century CE statue of Laocoön, which was unearthed in 1506 and put on display in the gallery of the Vatican. When he visited Paris in 1665, Bernini addressed the students at the academy of painting and sculpture. He advised the students to work from classical models, rather than from nature. He told the students, "When I had trouble with my first statue, I consulted the Antinous like an oracle." That Antinous statue is known today as the Hermes of the Museo Pio-Clementino. Notable late French baroque sculptors included Étienne Maurice Falconet and Jean Baptiste Pigalle. Pigalle was commissioned by Frederick the Great to make statues for Frederick's own version of Versailles at Sanssouci in Potsdam, Germany. Falconet also received an important foreign commission, creating the famous statue of Peter the Great on horseback found in St. Petersburg. In Spain, the sculptor Francisco Salzillo worked exclusively on religious themes, using polychromed wood. Some of the finest baroque sculptural craftsmanship was found in the gilded stucco altars of churches of the Spanish colonies of the New World, made by local craftsmen; examples include the Rosary Chapel of the Church of Santo Domingo in Oaxaca (Mexico), 1724–1731. Furniture The main motifs used are: horns of plenty, festoons, baby angels, lion heads holding a metal ring in their mouths, female faces surrounded by garlands, oval cartouches, acanthus leaves, classical columns, caryatids, pediments, and other elements of Classical architecture sculpted on some parts of pieces of furniture, baskets with fruits or flowers, shells, armour and trophies, heads of Apollo or Bacchus, and C-shaped volutes. During the first period of the reign of Louis XIV, furniture followed the previous style of Louis XIII, and was massive, and profusely decorated with sculpture and gilding. After 1680, thanks in large part to the furniture designer André Charles Boulle, a more original and delicate style appeared, sometimes known as Boulle work. It was based on the inlay of ebony and other rare woods, a technique first used in Florence in the 15th century, which was refined and developed by Boulle and others working for Louis XIV. Furniture was inlaid with plaques of ebony, copper, and exotic woods of different colors. New and often enduring types of furniture appeared; the commode, with two to four drawers, replaced the old coffre, or chest. The canapé, or sofa, appeared, in the form of a combination of two or three armchairs. New kinds of armchairs appeared, including the fauteuil en confessionale or "Confessional armchair", which had padded cushions ions on either side of the back of the chair. The console table also made its first appearance; it was designed to be placed against a wall. Another new type of furniture was the table à gibier, a marble-topped table for holding dishes. Early varieties of the desk appeared; the Mazarin desk had a central section set back, placed between two columns of drawers, with four feet on each column. Music The term Baroque is also used to designate the style of music composed during a period that overlaps with that of Baroque art. The first uses of the term 'baroque' for music were criticisms. In an anonymous, satirical review of the première in October 1733 of Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734, the critic implied that the novelty of this opera was "du barocque," complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was filled with unremitting dissonances, constantly changed key and meter, and speedily ran through every compositional device. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was a musician and noted composer as well as philosopher, made a very similar observation in 1768 in the famous Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot: "Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, and loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, and the movement limited. It appears that term comes from the word 'baroco' used by logicians." Common use of the term for the music of the period began only in 1919, by Curt Sachs, and it was not until 1940 that it was first used in English in an article published by Manfred Bukofzer. The baroque was a period of musical experimentation and innovation. New forms were invented, including the concerto and sinfonia. Opera was born in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's mostly lost Dafne, produced in Florence in 1598) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Louis XIV created the first Royal Academy of Music, In 1669, the poet Pierre Perrin opened an academy of opera in Paris, the first opera theatre in France open to the public, and premiered Pomone, the first grand opera in French, with music by Robert Cambert, with five acts, elaborate stage machinery, and a ballet. Heinrich Schütz in Germany, Jean-Baptiste Lully in France, and Henry Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. Several new instruments, including the piano, were introduced during this period. The invention of the piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, as the Keeper of the Instruments. Cristofori named the instrument un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte ("a keyboard of cypress with soft and loud"), abbreviated over time as pianoforte, fortepiano, and later, simply, piano. Composers and examples Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/1557–1612) Sonata pian' e forte (1597), In Ecclesiis (from Symphoniae sacrae book 2, 1615) Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger (c. 1580–1651) Libro primo di villanelle, 20 (1610) Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), L'Orfeo, favola in musica (1610) Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), Musikalische Exequien (1629, 1647, 1650) Francesco Cavalli (1602–1676), L'Egisto (1643), Ercole amante (1662), Scipione affricano (1664) Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687), Armide (1686) Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704), Te Deum (1688–1698) Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644–1704), Mystery Sonatas (1681) John Blow (1649–1708), Venus and Adonis (1680–1687) Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), Canon in D (1680) Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713), 12 concerti grossi, Op. 6 (1714) Marin Marais (1656–1728), Sonnerie de Ste-Geneviève du Mont-de-Paris (1723) Henry Purcell (1659–1695), Dido and Aeneas (1688) Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725), L'honestà negli amori (1680), Il Pompeo (1683), Mitridate Eupatore (1707) François Couperin (1668–1733), Les barricades mystérieuses (1717) Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1751), Didone abbandonata (1724) Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), The Four Seasons (1725) Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745), Il Serpente di Bronzo (1730), Missa Sanctissimae Trinitatis (1736) Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), Der Tag des Gerichts (1762) Johann David Heinichen (1683–1729) Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764), Dardanus (1739) George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), Water Music (1717), Messiah (1741) Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), Sonatas for harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Toccata and Fugue in D minor (1703–1707), Brandenburg Concertos (1721), St Matthew Passion (1727) Nicola Porpora (1686–1768), Semiramide riconosciuta (1729) Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), Stabat Mater (1736) Dance The classical ballet also originated in the Baroque era. The style of court dance was brought to France by Marie de Medici, and in the beginning the members of the court themselves were the dancers. Louis XIV himself performed in public in several ballets. In March 1662, the Académie Royale de Danse, was founded by the King. It was the first professional dance school and company, and set the standards and vocabulary for ballet throughout Europe during the period. Theatre The Baroque period was a golden age for theatre in France and Spain; playwrights included Corneille, Racine and Molière in France; and Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca in Spain. During the Baroque period, the art and style of the theatre evolved rapidly, alongside the development of opera and of ballet. The design of newer and larger theatres, the invention the use of more elaborate machinery, the wider use of the proscenium arch, which framed the stage and hid the machinery from the audience, encouraged more scenic effects and spectacle. The Baroque had a Catholic and conservative character in Spain, following an Italian literary model during the Renaissance. The Hispanic Baroque theatre aimed for a public content with an ideal reality that manifested fundamental three sentiments: Catholic religion, monarchist and national pride and honour originating from the chivalric, knightly world. Two periods are known in the Baroque Spanish theatre, with the division occurring in 1630. The first period is represented chiefly by Lope de Vega, but also by Tirso de Molina, Gaspar Aguilar, Guillén de Castro, Antonio Mira de Amescua, Luis Vélez de Guevara, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Diego Jiménez de Enciso, Luis Belmonte Bermúdez, Felipe Godínez, Luis Quiñones de Benavente or Juan Pérez de Montalbán. The second period is represented by Pedro Calderón de la Barca and fellow dramatists Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza, Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón, Jerónimo de Cáncer, Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, Juan de Matos Fragoso, Antonio Coello y Ochoa, Agustín Moreto, and Francisco Bances Candamo. These classifications are loose because each author had his own way and could occasionally adhere himself to the formula established by Lope. It may even be that Lope's "manner" was more liberal and structured than Calderón's. Lope de Vega introduced through his Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (1609) the new comedy. He established a new dramatic formula that broke the three Aristotle unities of the Italian school of poetry (action, time, and place) and a fourth unity of Aristotle which is about style, mixing of tragic and comic elements showing different types of verses and stanzas upon what is represented. Although Lope has a great knowledge of the plastic arts, he did not use it during the major part of his career nor in theatre or scenography. The Lope's comedy granted a second role to the visual aspects of the theatrical representation. Tirso de Molina, Lope de Vega, and Calderón were the most important play writers in Golden Era Spain. Their works, known for their subtle intelligence and profound comprehension of a person's humanity, could be considered a bridge between Lope's primitive comedy and the more elaborate comedy of Calderón. Tirso de Molina is best known for two works, The Convicted Suspicions and The Trickster of Seville, one of the first versions of the Don Juan myth. Upon his arrival to Madrid, Cosimo Lotti brought to the Spanish court the most advanced theatrical techniques of Europe. His techniques and mechanic knowledge were applied in palace exhibitions called "Fiestas" and in lavish exhibitions of rivers or artificial fountains called "Naumaquias". He was in charge of styling the Gardens of Buen Retiro, of Zarzuela, and of Aranjuez and the construction of the theatrical building of Coliseo del Buen Retiro. Lope's formulas begin with a verse that it unbefitting of the palace theatre foundation and the birth of new concepts that begun the careers of some play writers like Calderón de la Barca. Marking the principal innovations of the New Lopesian Comedy, Calderón's style marked many differences, with a great deal of constructive care and attention to his internal structure. Calderón's work is in formal perfection and a very lyric and symbolic language. Liberty, vitality and openness of Lope gave a step to Calderón's intellectual reflection and formal precision. In his comedy it reflected his ideological and doctrine intentions in above the passion and the action, the work of Autos sacramentales achieved high ranks. The genre of Comedia is political, multi-artistic and in a sense hybrid. The poetic text interweaved with Medias and resources originating from architecture, music and painting freeing the deception that is in the Lopesian comedy was made up from the lack of scenery and engaging the dialogue of action. The best known German playwright was Andreas Gryphius, who used the Jesuit model of the Dutch Joost van den Vondel and Pierre Corneille. There was also Johannes Velten who combined the traditions of the English comedians and the commedia dell'arte with the classic theatre of Corneille and Molière. His touring company was perhaps the most significant and important of the 17th century. Spanish colonial Americas Following the evolution marked from Spain, at the end of the 16th century, the companies of comedians, essentially transhumant, began to professionalize. With professionalization came regulation and censorship: as in Europe, the theatre oscillated between tolerance and even government protection and rejection (with exceptions) or persecution by the Church. The theatre was useful to the authorities as an instrument to disseminate the desired behavior and models, respect for the social order and the monarchy, school of religious dogma. The corrales were administered for the benefit of hospitals that shared the benefits of the representations. The itinerant companies (or "of the league"), who carried the theatre in improvised open-air stages by the regions that did not have fixed locals, required a viceregal license to work, whose price or pinción was destined to alms and works pious. For companies that worked stably in the capitals and major cities, one of their main sources of income was participation in the festivities of the Corpus Christi, which provided them with not only economic benefits, but also recognition and social prestige. The representations in the viceregal palace and the mansions of the aristocracy, where they represented both the comedies of their repertoire and special productions with great lighting effects, scenery, and stage, were also an important source of well-paid and prestigious work. Born in the Viceroyalty of New Spain but later settled in Spain, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón is the most prominent figure in the Baroque theatre of New Spain. Despite his accommodation to Lope de Vega's new comedy, his "marked secularism", his discretion and restraint, and a keen capacity for "psychological penetration" as distinctive features of Alarcón against his Spanish contemporaries have been noted. Noteworthy among his works La verdad sospechosa, a comedy of characters that reflected his constant moralizing purpose. The dramatic production of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz places her as the second figure of the Spanish-American Baroque theatre. It is worth mentioning among her works the auto sacramental El divino Narciso and the comedy Los empeños de una casa. Gardens The Baroque garden, also known as the jardin à la française or French formal garden, first appeared in Rome in the 16th century, and then most famously in France in the 17th century in the gardens of Vaux le Vicomte and the Palace of Versailles. Baroque gardens were built by Kings and princes in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Poland, Italy and Russia until the mid-18th century, when they began to be remade into by the more natural English landscape garden. The purpose of the baroque garden was to illustrate the power of man over nature, and the glory of its builder, Baroque gardens were laid out in geometric patterns, like the rooms of a house. They were usually best seen from the outside and looking down, either from a chateau or terrace. The elements of a baroque garden included parterres of flower beds or low hedges trimmed into ornate Baroque designs, and straight lanes and alleys of gravel which divided and crisscrossed the garden. Terraces, ramps, staircases and cascades were placed where there were differences of elevation, and provided viewing points. Circular or rectangular ponds or basins of water were the settings for fountains and statues. Bosquets or carefully trimmed groves or lines of identical trees, gave the appearance of walls of greenery and were backdrops for statues. On the edges, the gardens usually had pavilions, orangeries and other structures where visitors could take shelter from the sun or rain. Baroque gardens required enormous numbers of gardeners, continual trimming, and abundant water. In the later part of the Baroque period, the formal elements began to be replaced with more natural features, including winding paths, groves of varied trees left to grow untrimmed; rustic architecture and picturesque structures, such as Roman temples or Chinese pagodas, as well as "secret gardens" on the edges of the main garden, filled with greenery, where visitors could read or have quiet conversations. By the mid-18th century most of the Baroque gardens were partially or entirely transformed into variations of the English landscape garden. Besides Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte, Celebrated baroque gardens still retaining much of their original appearance include the Royal Palace of Caserta near Naples; Nymphenburg Palace and Augustusburg and Falkenlust Palaces, Brühl in Germany; Het Loo Palace in the Netherlands; the Belvedere Palace in Vienna; the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso in Spain; and Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. Differences between Rococo and Baroque The following are characteristics that Rococo has and Baroque has not: The partial abandonment of symmetry, everything being composed of graceful lines and curves, similar to the Art Nouveau ones The huge quantity of asymmetrical curves and C-shaped volutes The very wide use of flowers in ornamentation, an example being festoons made of flowers Chinese and Japanese motifs Warm pastel colours (whitish-yellow, cream-coloured, pearl greys, very light blues) End of the style, condemnation, and academic rediscovery Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, contributed to the decline of the baroque and rococo style. In 1750 she sent her nephew, Abel-François Poisson de Vandières, on a two-year mission to study artistic and archeological developments in Italy. He was accompanied by several artists, including the engraver Nicolas Cochin and the architect Soufflot. They returned to Paris with a passion for classical art. Vandiéres became the Marquis of Marigny, and was named Royal Director of buildings in 1754. He turned official French architecture toward the neoclassical. Cochin became an important art critic; he denounced the petit style of Boucher, and called for a grand style with a new emphasis on antiquity and nobility in the academies of painting of architecture. The pioneer German art historian and archeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann also condemned the baroque style, and praised the superior values of classical art and architecture. By the 19th century, Baroque was a target for ridicule and criticism. The neoclassical critic Francesco Milizia wrote: "Borrominini in architecture, Bernini in sculpture, Pietro da Cortona in painting...are a plague on good taste, which infected a large number of artists." In the 19th century, criticism went even further; the British critic John Ruskin declared that baroque sculpture was not only bad, but also morally corrupt. The Swiss-born art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) started the rehabilitation of the word Baroque in his Renaissance und Barock (1888); Wölfflin identified the Baroque as "movement imported into mass", an art antithetic to Renaissance art. He did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Baroque art and architecture became fashionable in the interwar period, and has largely remained in critical favor. The term "Baroque" may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, or design that are thought to have excessive ornamentation or complexity of line. Baroque Revival art The end of the 19th century was a golden age for revival styles, including Baroque Revival or Neo-Baroque. In addition to its practical (protective) function, the face also has aesthetic and architectural purposes. It mirrors the predominant styles of a certain era. Ornaments are the most common "ornaments" of buildings. The ornaments used in 17th-18th century architecture are reused at Baroque Revival buildings, including: horns of plenty, festoons, baby angels, female or male mascarons, oval cartouches, acanthus leaves, classical columns, caryatids, pediments and other elements of Greco-Roman architecture. Most Baroque revival buildings have mansard roofs, usually blue or sometimes black, with oval or dormer windows. Some of the houses is this style have cartouche-shaped oculus windows, usually with a mascaron at their top or bottom. In France and Romania, many of the entrances have awnings (; ), made of glass and metal, usually in a seashell-shape. In these two counties, especially in Romania, Neo-Baroque was sometimes combined with Art Nouveau. Beaux-Arts buildings from the late 1890s and early 1900s are very good examples of Baroque Revival architecture. The most famous Neo-Baroque building in Paris are: the Pavillon de Flore (part of the Palais du Louvre), the Palais Garnier, the Petit Palais, and the Grand Palais. Important architects of this style include Charles Garnier (1825–1898), Ferdinand Fellner (1847–1917), Hermann Helmer (1849–1919), and Ion D. Berindey (1871–1928). In decorative arts, Baroque Revival is usually known as the Napoleon III style or Second Empire style. Objects in this style was very appreciated in late 1890s and early 1900s Romania, many of them being brought from France or Austria. One of the main influence was the Louis XVI style, or French neoclassicism, which was preferred by the Empress Eugénie. Her rooms at the Tuileries Palace and other Places were decorated in this style. Other influences include French Renaissance and the Henry II style, which were popular influences on chests and cabinets, buffets and credences, which were massive and built like small cathedrals, decorated with columns, pediments, cartouches, mascarons, and carved angels and chimeras. They were usually constructed of walnut or oak, or sometimes of poirier stained to resemble ebony. See also List of Baroque architecture Baroque in Brazil Czech Baroque architecture Dutch Baroque architecture Earthquake Baroque English Baroque French Baroque architecture Italian Baroque Sicilian Baroque New Spanish Baroque Mexican art#Mexican Baroque Neoclassicism (music) Andean Baroque Baroque in Poland Baroque architecture in Portugal Naryshkin Baroque Siberian Baroque Spanish Baroque literature Ukrainian Baroque Pasquale Bellonio Notes Sources Causa, Raffaello, L'Art au XVIII siècle du rococo à Goya (1963), (in French) Hachcette, Paris Gardner, Helen, Fred S. Kleiner, and Christin J. Mamiya. 2005. Gardner's Art Through the Ages, 12th edition. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth. (hardcover) Prater, Andreas, and Bauer, Hermann, La Peinture du baroque (1997), (in French), Taschen, Paris Tazartes, Maurizia, Fontaines de Rome, (2004), (in French) Citadelles, Paris Further reading Andersen, Liselotte. 1969. Baroque and Rococo Art, New York: H. N. Abrams. Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. 2012. Baroque & Rococo, London: Phaidon Press. Bazin, Germain, 1964. Baroque and Rococo. Praeger World of Art Series. New York: Praeger. (Originally published in French, as Classique, baroque et rococo. Paris: Larousse. English edition reprinted as Baroque and Rococo Art, New York: Praeger, 1974) Buci-Glucksmann, Christine. 1994. Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics of Modernity. Sage. Bailey, Gauvin; Lanthier, Lillian, "Baroque" (2003), Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, Web. Retrieved 30 March 2021. Hills, Helen (ed.). 2011. Rethinking the Baroque. Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. . Hofer, Philip. 1951.Baroque Book Illustration: A Short Survey.Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Hortolà, Policarp, 2013, The Aesthetics of Haemotaphonomy: Stylistic Parallels between a Science and Literature and the Visual Arts. Sant Vicent del Raspeig: ECU. . Kitson, Michael. 1966. The Age of Baroque. Landmarks of the World's Art. London: Hamlyn; New York: McGraw-Hill. Lambert, Gregg, 2004. Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture. Continuum. . Martin, John Rupert. 1977. Baroque. Icon Editions. New York: Harper and Rowe. (cloth); (pbk.) Vuillemin, Jean-Claude, 2013. Episteme baroque: le mot et la chose. Hermann. . Wakefield, Steve. 2004. Carpentier's Baroque Fiction: Returning Medusa's Gaze. Colección Támesis. Serie A, Monografías 208. Rochester, NY: Tamesis. . External links The baroque and rococo culture Webmuseum Paris barocke in Val di Noto – Sizilien Baroque in the "History of Art" The Baroque style and Luis XIV influence Melvyn Bragg's BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time: The Baroque 17th century in art 17th century in the arts 18th century in art 18th century in the arts Art movements Art movements in Europe Catholic art Decorative arts Early Modern period Catholic art by period

A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bicycles were introduced in the 19th century in Europe. By the early 21st century, more than 1 billion were in existence. These numbers far exceed the number of cars, both in total and ranked by the number of individual models produced. They are the principal means of transportation in many regions. They also provide a popular form of recreation, and have been adapted for use as children's toys, general fitness, military and police applications, courier services, bicycle racing, and bicycle stunts. The basic shape and configuration of a typical upright or "safety bicycle", has changed little since the first chain-driven model was developed around 1885. However, many details have been improved, especially since the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design. These have allowed for a proliferation of specialized designs for many types of cycling. The bicycle's invention has had an enormous effect on society, both in terms of culture and of advancing modern industrial methods. Several components that played a key role in the development of the automobile were initially invented for use in the bicycle, including ball bearings, pneumatic tires, chain-driven sprockets and tension-spoked wheels. Although bike and cycle are used interchangeably to refer mostly to two types of two-wheelers the terms still vary across the world. In India for example a cycle refers only to a two-wheeler using pedal power whereas the term bike is used to describe a two-wheeler using internal combustion engine or electric motors as a source of motive power instead of motorcycle/motorbike. Etymology The word bicycle first appeared in English print in The Daily News in 1868, to describe "Bysicles and trysicles" on the "Champs Elysées and Bois de Boulogne". The word was first used in 1847 in a French publication to describe an unidentified two-wheeled vehicle, possibly a carriage. The design of the bicycle was an advance on the velocipede, although the words were used with some degree of overlap for a time. Other words for bicycle include "bike", "pushbike", "pedal cycle", or "cycle". In Unicode, the code point for "bicycle" is 0x1F6B2. The entity &#x1F6B2; in HTML produces 🚲. History The "dandy horse", also called Draisienne or Laufmaschine ("running machine"), was the first human means of transport to use only two wheels in tandem and was invented by the German Baron Karl von Drais. It is regarded as the first bicycle, but it did not have pedals; Drais introduced it to the public in Mannheim in 1817 and in Paris in 1818. Its rider sat astride a wooden frame supported by two in-line wheels and pushed the vehicle along with his or her feet while steering the front wheel. The first mechanically propelled, two-wheeled vehicle may have been built by Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Scottish blacksmith, in 1839, although the claim is often disputed. He is also associated with the first recorded instance of a cycling traffic offense, when a Glasgow newspaper in 1842 reported an accident in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" knocked over a little girl in Glasgow and was fined five shillings (). In the early 1860s, Frenchmen Pierre Michaux and Pierre Lallement took bicycle design in a new direction by adding a mechanical crank drive with pedals on an enlarged front wheel (the velocipede). This was the first in mass production. Another French inventor named Douglas Grasso had a failed prototype of Pierre Lallement's bicycle several years earlier. Several inventions followed using rear-wheel drive, the best known being the rod-driven velocipede by Scotsman Thomas McCall in 1869. In that same year, bicycle wheels with wire spokes were patented by Eugène Meyer of Paris. The French vélocipède, made of iron and wood, developed into the "penny-farthing" (historically known as an "ordinary bicycle", a retronym, since there was then no other kind). It featured a tubular steel frame on which were mounted wire-spoked wheels with solid rubber tires. These bicycles were difficult to ride due to their high seat and poor weight distribution. In 1868 Rowley Turner, a sales agent of the Coventry Sewing Machine Company (which soon became the Coventry Machinists Company), brought a Michaux cycle to Coventry, England. His uncle, Josiah Turner, and business partner James Starley, used this as a basis for the 'Coventry Model' in what became Britain's first cycle factory. The dwarf ordinary addressed some of these faults by reducing the front wheel diameter and setting the seat further back. This, in turn, required gearing—effected in a variety of ways—to efficiently use pedal power. Having to both pedal and steer via the front wheel remained a problem. Englishman J.K. Starley (nephew of James Starley), J.H. Lawson, and Shergold solved this problem by introducing the chain drive (originated by the unsuccessful "bicyclette" of Englishman Henry Lawson), connecting the frame-mounted cranks to the rear wheel. These models were known as safety bicycles, dwarf safeties, or upright bicycles for their lower seat height and better weight distribution, although without pneumatic tires the ride of the smaller-wheeled bicycle would be much rougher than that of the larger-wheeled variety. Starley's 1885 Rover, manufactured in Coventry is usually described as the first recognizably modern bicycle. Soon the seat tube was added, creating the modern bike's double-triangle diamond frame. Further innovations increased comfort and ushered in a second bicycle craze, the 1890s Golden Age of Bicycles. In 1888, Scotsman John Boyd Dunlop introduced the first practical pneumatic tire, which soon became universal. Willie Hume demonstrated the supremacy of Dunlop's tyres in 1889, winning the tyre's first-ever races in Ireland and then England. Soon after, the rear freewheel was developed, enabling the rider to coast. This refinement led to the 1890s invention of coaster brakes. Dérailleur gears and hand-operated Bowden cable-pull brakes were also developed during these years, but were only slowly adopted by casual riders. The Svea Velocipede with vertical pedal arrangement and locking hubs was introduced in 1892 by the Swedish engineers Fredrik Ljungström and Birger Ljungström. It attracted attention at the World Fair and was produced in a few thousand units. In the 1870s many cycling clubs flourished. They were popular in a time when there were not cars on the market and the principal mode of transportation was horse-drawn vehicles, such the horse and buggy or the horsecar. Among the earliest clubs was The Bicycle Touring Club, which has operated since 1878. By the turn of the century, cycling clubs flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, and touring and racing became widely popular. The Raleigh Bicycle Company was founded in Nottingham, England in 1888. It became the biggest bicycle manufacturing company in the world, making over two million bikes per year. Bicycles and horse buggies were the two mainstays of private transportation just prior to the automobile, and the grading of smooth roads in the late 19th century was stimulated by the widespread advertising, production, and use of these devices. More than 1 billion bicycles have been manufactured worldwide as of the early 21st century. Bicycles are the most common vehicle of any kind in the world, and the most numerous model of any kind of vehicle, whether human-powered or motor vehicle, is the Chinese Flying Pigeon, with numbers exceeding 500 million. The next most numerous vehicle, the Honda Super Cub motorcycle, has more than 100 million units made, while most produced car, the Toyota Corolla, has reached 44 million and counting. Uses From the beginning and still today, bicycles have been and are employed for many uses. In a utilitarian way, bicycles are used for transportation, bicycle commuting, and utility cycling. It can be used as a 'work horse', used by mail carriers, paramedics, police, messengers, and general delivery services. Military uses of bicycles include communications, reconnaissance, troop movement, supply of provisions, and patrol. See also: bicycle infantry. The bicycle is also used for recreational purposes, such as bicycle touring, mountain biking, physical fitness, and play. Bicycle competition includes racing, BMX racing, track racing, criterium, roller racing, sportives and time trials. Major multi-stage professional events are the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France, the Vuelta a España, the Tour de Pologne, and the Volta a Portugal. Bikes can be used for entertainment and pleasure, such as in organised mass rides, artistic cycling and freestyle BMX. Technical aspects The bicycle has undergone continual adaptation and improvement since its inception. These innovations have continued with the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design, allowing for a proliferation of specialized bicycle types, improved bicycle safety, and riding comfort. Types Bicycles can be categorized in many different ways: by function, by number of riders, by general construction, by gearing or by means of propulsion. The more common types include utility bicycles, mountain bicycles, racing bicycles, touring bicycles, hybrid bicycles, cruiser bicycles, and BMX bikes. Less common are tandems, low riders, tall bikes, fixed gear, folding models, amphibious bicycles, cargo bikes, recumbents and electric bicycles. Unicycles, tricycles and quadracycles are not strictly bicycles, as they have respectively one, three and four wheels, but are often referred to informally as "bikes" or "cycles". Dynamics A bicycle stays upright while moving forward by being steered so as to keep its center of mass over the wheels. This steering is usually provided by the rider, but under certain conditions may be provided by the bicycle itself. The combined center of mass of a bicycle and its rider must lean into a turn to successfully navigate it. This lean is induced by a method known as countersteering, which can be performed by the rider turning the handlebars directly with the hands or indirectly by leaning the bicycle. Short-wheelbase or tall bicycles, when braking, can generate enough stopping force at the front wheel to flip longitudinally. The act of purposefully using this force to lift the rear wheel and balance on the front without tipping over is a trick known as a stoppie, endo, or front wheelie. Performance The bicycle is extraordinarily efficient in both biological and mechanical terms. The bicycle is the most efficient human-powered means of transportation in terms of energy a person must expend to travel a given distance. From a mechanical viewpoint, up to 99% of the energy delivered by the rider into the pedals is transmitted to the wheels, although the use of gearing mechanisms may reduce this by 10–15%. In terms of the ratio of cargo weight a bicycle can carry to total weight, it is also an efficient means of cargo transportation. A human traveling on a bicycle at low to medium speeds of around uses only the power required to walk. Air drag, which is proportional to the square of speed, requires dramatically higher power outputs as speeds increase. If the rider is sitting upright, the rider's body creates about 75% of the total drag of the bicycle/rider combination. Drag can be reduced by seating the rider in a more aerodynamically streamlined position. Drag can also be reduced by covering the bicycle with an aerodynamic fairing. The fastest recorded unpaced speed on a flat surface is . In addition, the carbon dioxide generated in the production and transportation of the food required by the bicyclist, per mile traveled, is less than that generated by energy efficient motorcars. Parts Frame The great majority of modern bicycles have a frame with upright seating that looks much like the first chain-driven bike. These upright bicycles almost always feature the diamond frame, a truss consisting of two triangles: the front triangle and the rear triangle. The front triangle consists of the head tube, top tube, down tube, and seat tube. The head tube contains the headset, the set of bearings that allows the fork to turn smoothly for steering and balance. The top tube connects the head tube to the seat tube at the top, and the down tube connects the head tube to the bottom bracket. The rear triangle consists of the seat tube and paired chain stays and seat stays. The chain stays run parallel to the chain, connecting the bottom bracket to the rear dropout, where the axle for the rear wheel is held. The seat stays connect the top of the seat tube (at or near the same point as the top tube) to the rear fork ends. Historically, women's bicycle frames had a top tube that connected in the middle of the seat tube instead of the top, resulting in a lower standover height at the expense of compromised structural integrity, since this places a strong bending load in the seat tube, and bicycle frame members are typically weak in bending. This design, referred to as a step-through frame or as an open frame, allows the rider to mount and dismount in a dignified way while wearing a skirt or dress. While some women's bicycles continue to use this frame style, there is also a variation, the mixte, which splits the top tube laterally into two thinner top tubes that bypass the seat tube on each side and connect to the rear fork ends. The ease of stepping through is also appreciated by those with limited flexibility or other joint problems. Because of its persistent image as a "women's" bicycle, step-through frames are not common for larger frames. Step-throughs were popular partly for practical reasons and partly for social mores of the day. For most of the history of bicycles' popularity women have worn long skirts, and the lower frame accommodated these better than the top-tube. Furthermore, it was considered "unladylike" for women to open their legs to mount and dismount—in more conservative times women who rode bicycles at all were vilified as immoral or immodest. These practices were akin to the older practice of riding horse sidesaddle. Another style is the recumbent bicycle. These are inherently more aerodynamic than upright versions, as the rider may lean back onto a support and operate pedals that are on about the same level as the seat. The world's fastest bicycle is a recumbent bicycle but this type was banned from competition in 1934 by the Union Cycliste Internationale. Historically, materials used in bicycles have followed a similar pattern as in aircraft, the goal being high strength and low weight. Since the late 1930s alloy steels have been used for frame and fork tubes in higher quality machines. By the 1980s aluminum welding techniques had improved to the point that aluminum tube could safely be used in place of steel. Since then aluminum alloy frames and other components have become popular due to their light weight, and most mid-range bikes are now principally aluminum alloy of some kind. More expensive bikes use carbon fibre due to its significantly lighter weight and profiling ability, allowing designers to make a bike both stiff and compliant by manipulating the lay-up. Virtually all professional racing bicycles now use carbon fibre frames, as they have the best strength to weight ratio. A typical modern carbon fiber frame can weighs less than . Other exotic frame materials include titanium and advanced alloys. Bamboo, a natural composite material with high strength-to-weight ratio and stiffness has been used for bicycles since 1894. Recent versions use bamboo for the primary frame with glued metal connections and parts, priced as exotic models. Drivetrain and gearing The drivetrain begins with pedals which rotate the cranks, which are held in axis by the bottom bracket. Most bicycles use a chain to transmit power to the rear wheel. A very small number of bicycles use a shaft drive to transmit power, or special belts. Hydraulic bicycle transmissions have been built, but they are currently inefficient and complex. Since cyclists' legs are most efficient over a narrow range of pedaling speeds, or cadence, a variable gear ratio helps a cyclist to maintain an optimum pedalling speed while covering varied terrain. Some, mainly utility, bicycles use hub gears with between 3 and 14 ratios, but most use the generally more efficient dérailleur system, by which the chain is moved between different cogs called chainrings and sprockets to select a ratio. A dérailleur system normally has two dérailleurs, or mechs, one at the front to select the chainring and another at the back to select the sprocket. Most bikes have two or three chainrings, and from 5 to 11 sprockets on the back, with the number of theoretical gears calculated by multiplying front by back. In reality, many gears overlap or require the chain to run diagonally, so the number of usable gears is fewer. An alternative to chaindrive is to use a synchronous belt. These are toothed and work much the same as a chain—popular with commuters and long distance cyclists they require little maintenance. They can't be shifted across a cassette of sprockets, and are used either as single speed or with a hub gear. Different gears and ranges of gears are appropriate for different people and styles of cycling. Multi-speed bicycles allow gear selection to suit the circumstances: a cyclist could use a high gear when cycling downhill, a medium gear when cycling on a flat road, and a low gear when cycling uphill. In a lower gear every turn of the pedals leads to fewer rotations of the rear wheel. This allows the energy required to move the same distance to be distributed over more pedal turns, reducing fatigue when riding uphill, with a heavy load, or against strong winds. A higher gear allows a cyclist to make fewer pedal turns to maintain a given speed, but with more effort per turn of the pedals. With a chain drive transmission, a chainring attached to a crank drives the chain, which in turn rotates the rear wheel via the rear sprocket(s) (cassette or freewheel). There are four gearing options: two-speed hub gear integrated with chain ring, up to 3 chain rings, up to 11 sprockets, hub gear built into rear wheel (3-speed to 14-speed). The most common options are either a rear hub or multiple chain rings combined with multiple sprockets (other combinations of options are possible but less common). Steering The handlebars connect to the stem that connects to the fork that connects to the front wheel, and the whole assembly connects to the bike and rotates about the steering axis via the headset bearings. Three styles of handlebar are common. Upright handlebars, the norm in Europe and elsewhere until the 1970s, curve gently back toward the rider, offering a natural grip and comfortable upright position. Drop handlebars "drop" as they curve forward and down, offering the cyclist best braking power from a more aerodynamic "crouched" position, as well as more upright positions in which the hands grip the brake lever mounts, the forward curves, or the upper flat sections for increasingly upright postures. Mountain bikes generally feature a 'straight handlebar' or 'riser bar' with varying degrees of sweep backwards and centimeters rise upwards, as well as wider widths which can provide better handling due to increased leverage against the wheel. Seating Saddles also vary with rider preference, from the cushioned ones favored by short-distance riders to narrower saddles which allow more room for leg swings. Comfort depends on riding position. With comfort bikes and hybrids, cyclists sit high over the seat, their weight directed down onto the saddle, such that a wider and more cushioned saddle is preferable. For racing bikes where the rider is bent over, weight is more evenly distributed between the handlebars and saddle, the hips are flexed, and a narrower and harder saddle is more efficient. Differing saddle designs exist for male and female cyclists, accommodating the genders' differing anatomies and sit bone width measurements, although bikes typically are sold with saddles most appropriate for men. Suspension seat posts and seat springs provide comfort by absorbing shock but can add to the overall weight of the bicycle. A recumbent bicycle has a reclined chair-like seat that some riders find more comfortable than a saddle, especially riders who suffer from certain types of seat, back, neck, shoulder, or wrist pain. Recumbent bicycles may have either under-seat or over-seat steering. Brakes Bicycle brakes may be rim brakes, in which friction pads are compressed against the wheel rims; hub brakes, where the mechanism is contained within the wheel hub, or disc brakes, where pads act on a rotor attached to the hub. Most road bicycles use rim brakes, but some use disk brakes. Disc brakes are more common for mountain bikes, tandems and recumbent bicycles than on other types of bicycles, due to their increased power, coupled with an increased weight and complexity. With hand-operated brakes, force is applied to brake levers mounted on the handlebars and transmitted via Bowden cables or hydraulic lines to the friction pads, which apply pressure to the braking surface, causing friction which slows the bicycle down. A rear hub brake may be either hand-operated or pedal-actuated, as in the back pedal coaster brakes which were popular in North America until the 1960s. Track bicycles do not have brakes, because all riders ride in the same direction around a track which does not necessitate sharp deceleration. Track riders are still able to slow down because all track bicycles are fixed-gear, meaning that there is no freewheel. Without a freewheel, coasting is impossible, so when the rear wheel is moving, the cranks are moving. To slow down, the rider applies resistance to the pedals, acting as a braking system which can be as effective as a conventional rear wheel brake, but not as effective as a front wheel brake. Suspension Bicycle suspension refers to the system or systems used to suspend the rider and all or part of the bicycle. This serves two purposes: to keep the wheels in continuous contact with the ground, improving control, and to isolate the rider and luggage from jarring due to rough surfaces, improving comfort. Bicycle suspensions are used primarily on mountain bicycles, but are also common on hybrid bicycles, as they can help deal with problematic vibration from poor surfaces. Suspension is especially important on recumbent bicycles, since while an upright bicycle rider can stand on the pedals to achieve some of the benefits of suspension, a recumbent rider cannot. Basic mountain bicycles and hybrids usually have front suspension only, whilst more sophisticated ones also have rear suspension. Road bicycles tend to have no suspension. Wheels and tires The wheel axle fits into fork ends in the frame and fork. A pair of wheels may be called a wheelset, especially in the context of ready-built "off the shelf", performance-oriented wheels. Tires vary enormously depending on their intended purpose. Road bicycles use tires 18 to 25 millimeters wide, most often completely smooth, or slick, and inflated to high pressure to roll fast on smooth surfaces. Off-road tires are usually between wide, and have treads for gripping in muddy conditions or metal studs for ice. Groupset Groupset generally refers to all of the components that make up a bicycle excluding the bicycle frame, fork, stem, wheels, tires, and rider contact points, such as the saddle and handlebars. Accessories Some components, which are often optional accessories on sports bicycles, are standard features on utility bicycles to enhance their usefulness, comfort, safety and visibility. Fenders with spoilers (mudflaps) protect the cyclist and moving parts from spray when riding through wet areas. In some countries (e.g. Germany, UK), fenders are called mudguards. The chainguards protect clothes from oil on the chain while preventing clothing from being caught between the chain and crankset teeth. Kick stands keep bicycles upright when parked, and bike locks deter theft. Front-mounted baskets, front or rear luggage carriers or racks, and panniers mounted above either or both wheels can be used to carry equipment or cargo. Pegs can be fastened to one, or both of the wheel hubs to either help the rider perform certain tricks, or allow a place for extra riders to stand, or rest. Parents sometimes add rear-mounted child seats, an auxiliary saddle fitted to the crossbar, or both to transport children. Bicycles can also be fitted with a hitch to tow a trailer for carrying cargo, a child, or both. Toe-clips and toestraps and clipless pedals help keep the foot locked in the proper pedal position and enable cyclists to pull and push the pedals. Technical accessories include cyclocomputers for measuring speed, distance, heart rate, GPS data etc. Other accessories include lights, reflectors, mirrors, racks, trailers, bags, water bottles and cages, and bell. Bicycle lights, reflectors, and helmets are required by law in some geographic regions depending on the legal code. It is more common to see bicycles with bottle generators, dynamos, lights, fenders, racks and bells in Europe. Bicyclists also have specialized form fitting and high visibility clothing. Children's bicycles may be outfitted with cosmetic enhancements such as bike horns, streamers, and spoke beads. Training wheels are sometimes used when learning to ride. Bicycle helmets can reduce injury in the event of a collision or accident, and a suitable helmet is legally required of riders in many jurisdictions. Helmets may be classified as an accessory or as an item of clothing. Bike trainers are used to enable cyclists to cycle while the bike remains stationary. They are frequently used to warm up before races or indoors when riding conditions are unfavorable. Standards A number of formal and industry standards exist for bicycle components to help make spare parts exchangeable and to maintain a minimum product safety. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has a special technical committee for cycles, TC149, that has the scope of "Standardization in the field of cycles, their components and accessories with particular reference to terminology, testing methods and requirements for performance and safety, and interchangeability". The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) also has a specific Technical Committee, TC333, that defines European standards for cycles. Their mandate states that EN cycle standards shall harmonize with ISO standards. Some CEN cycle standards were developed before ISO published their standards, leading to strong European influences in this area. European cycle standards tend to describe minimum safety requirements, while ISO standards have historically harmonized parts geometry. Maintenance and repair Like all devices with mechanical moving parts, bicycles do require a certain amount of regular maintenance and replacement of worn parts. A bicycle is relatively simple compared with a car, so some cyclists choose to do at least part of the maintenance themselves. Some components are easy to handle using relatively simple tools, while other components may require specialist manufacturer-dependent tools. Many bicycle components are available at several different price/quality points; manufacturers generally try to keep all components on any particular bike at about the same quality level, though at the very cheap end of the market there may be some skimping on less obvious components (e.g. bottom bracket). There exist several hundred assisted-service Community Bicycle Organizations worldwide. At a Community Bicycle Organization, laypeople bring in bicycles needing repair or maintenance; volunteers teach them how to do the required steps. Full service is available from bicycle mechanics at a local bike shop. In areas where it is available, some cyclists purchase roadside assistance from companies such as the Better World Club or the American Automobile Association. Maintenance The most basic maintenance item is keeping the tires correctly inflated; this can make a noticeable difference as to how the bike feels to ride. Bicycle tires usually have a marking on the sidewall indicating the pressure appropriate for that tire. Note that bicycles use much higher pressures than cars: car tires are normally in the range 30 to 40 pounds per square inch while bicycle tires are normally in the range of 60 to 100 pounds per square inch. Another basic maintenance item is regular lubrication of the chain and pivot points for derailleurs and brakes. Most of the bearings on a modern bike are sealed and grease-filled and require little or no attention; such bearings will usually last for 10,000 miles or more. The chain and the brake blocks are the components which wear out most quickly, so these need to be checked from time to time (typically every 500 miles or so). Most local bike shops will do such checks for free. Note that when a chain becomes badly worn it will also wear out the rear cogs/cassette and eventually the chain ring(s), so replacing a chain when only moderately worn will prolong the life of other components. Over the longer term, tires do wear out (2000 to 5000 miles); a rash of punctures is often the most visible sign of a worn tire. Repair Very few bicycle components can actually be repaired; replacement of the failing component is the normal practice. The most common roadside problem is a puncture. After removing the offending nail/tack/thorn/glass shard/etc. there are two approaches: either mend the puncture by the roadside, or replace the inner tube and then mend the puncture in the comfort of home. Some brands of tires are much more puncture resistant than others, often incorporating one or more layers of Kevlar; the downside of such tires is that they may be heavier and/or more difficult to fit and remove. Tools There are specialized bicycle tools for use both in the shop and on the road. Many cyclists carry tool kits. These may include a tire patch kit (which, in turn, may contain any combination of a hand pump or CO2 pump, tire levers, spare tubes, self-adhesive patches, or tube-patching material, an adhesive, a piece of sandpaper or a metal grater (for roughing the tube surface to be patched), Special, thin wrenches are often required for maintaining various screw fastened parts, specifically, the frequently lubricated ball-bearing "cones". and sometimes even a block of French chalk.), wrenches, hex keys, screwdrivers, and a chain tool. There are also cycling specific multi-tools that combine many of these implements into a single compact device. More specialized bicycle components may require more complex tools, including proprietary tools specific for a given manufacturer. Social and historical aspects The bicycle has had a considerable effect on human society, in both the cultural and industrial realms. In daily life Around the turn of the 20th century, bicycles reduced crowding in inner-city tenements by allowing workers to commute from more spacious dwellings in the suburbs. They also reduced dependence on horses. Bicycles allowed people to travel for leisure into the country, since bicycles were three times as energy efficient as walking and three to four times as fast. In built-up cities around the world, urban planning uses cycling infrastructure like bikeways to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. A number of cities around the world have implemented schemes known as bicycle sharing systems or community bicycle programs. The first of these was the White Bicycle plan in Amsterdam in 1965. It was followed by yellow bicycles in La Rochelle and green bicycles in Cambridge. These initiatives complement public transport systems and offer an alternative to motorized traffic to help reduce congestion and pollution. In Europe, especially in the Netherlands and parts of Germany and Denmark, bicycle commuting is common. In Copenhagen, a cyclists' organization runs a Cycling Embassy that promotes biking for commuting and sightseeing. The United Kingdom has a tax break scheme (IR 176) that allows employees to buy a new bicycle tax free to use for commuting. In the Netherlands all train stations offer free bicycle parking, or a more secure parking place for a small fee, with the larger stations also offering bicycle repair shops. Cycling is so popular that the parking capacity may be exceeded, while in some places such as Delft the capacity is usually exceeded. In Trondheim in Norway, the Trampe bicycle lift has been developed to encourage cyclists by giving assistance on a steep hill. Buses in many cities have bicycle carriers mounted on the front. There are towns in some countries where bicycle culture has been an integral part of the landscape for generations, even without much official support. That is the case of Ílhavo, in Portugal. In cities where bicycles are not integrated into the public transportation system, commuters often use bicycles as elements of a mixed-mode commute, where the bike is used to travel to and from train stations or other forms of rapid transit. Some students who commute several miles drive a car from home to a campus parking lot, then ride a bicycle to class. Folding bicycles are useful in these scenarios, as they are less cumbersome when carried aboard. Los Angeles removed a small amount of seating on some trains to make more room for bicycles and wheel chairs. Some US companies, notably in the tech sector, are developing both innovative cycle designs and cycle-friendliness in the workplace. Foursquare, whose CEO Dennis Crowley "pedaled to pitch meetings ... [when he] was raising money from venture capitalists" on a two-wheeler, chose a new location for its New York headquarters "based on where biking would be easy". Parking in the office was also integral to HQ planning. Mitchell Moss, who runs the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management at New York University, said in 2012: "Biking has become the mode of choice for the educated high tech worker". Bicycles offer an important mode of transport in many developing countries. Until recently, bicycles have been a staple of everyday life throughout Asian countries. They are the most frequently used method of transport for commuting to work, school, shopping, and life in general. In Europe, bicycles are commonly used. They also offer a degree of exercise to keep individuals healthy. Bicycles are also celebrated in the visual arts. An example of this is the Bicycle Film Festival, a film festival hosted all around the world. Poverty alleviation Female emancipation The safety bicycle gave women unprecedented mobility, contributing to their emancipation in Western nations. As bicycles became safer and cheaper, more women had access to the personal freedom that bicycles embodied, and so the bicycle came to symbolize the New Woman of the late 19th century, especially in Britain and the United States. The bicycle craze in the 1890s also led to a movement for so-called rational dress, which helped liberate women from corsets and ankle-length skirts and other restrictive garments, substituting the then-shocking bloomers. The bicycle was recognized by 19th-century feminists and suffragists as a "freedom machine" for women. American Susan B. Anthony said in a New York World interview on 2 February 1896: "I think it has done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood." In 1895 Frances Willard, the tightly laced president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, wrote A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, with Some Reflections by the Way, a 75-page illustrated memoir praising "Gladys", her bicycle, for its "gladdening effect" on her health and political optimism. Willard used a cycling metaphor to urge other suffragists to action. In 1985, Georgena Terry started the first women-specific bicycle company. Her designs featured frame geometry and wheel sizes chosen to better fit women, with shorter top tubes and more suitable reach. Economic implications Bicycle manufacturing proved to be a training ground for other industries and led to the development of advanced metalworking techniques, both for the frames themselves and for special components such as ball bearings, washers, and sprockets. These techniques later enabled skilled metalworkers and mechanics to develop the components used in early automobiles and aircraft. Wilbur and Orville Wright, a pair of businessmen, ran the Wright Cycle Company which designed, manufactured and sold their bicycles during the bike boom of the 1890s. They also served to teach the industrial models later adopted, including mechanization and mass production (later copied and adopted by Ford and General Motors), vertical integration (also later copied and adopted by Ford), aggressive advertising (as much as 10% of all advertising in U.S. periodicals in 1898 was by bicycle makers), lobbying for better roads (which had the side benefit of acting as advertising, and of improving sales by providing more places to ride), all first practiced by Pope. In addition, bicycle makers adopted the annual model change (later derided as planned obsolescence, and usually credited to General Motors), which proved very successful. Early bicycles were an example of conspicuous consumption, being adopted by the fashionable elites. In addition, by serving as a platform for accessories, which could ultimately cost more than the bicycle itself, it paved the way for the likes of the Barbie doll. Bicycles helped create, or enhance, new kinds of businesses, such as bicycle messengers, traveling seamstresses, riding academies, and racing rinks. Their board tracks were later adapted to early motorcycle and automobile racing. There were a variety of new inventions, such as spoke tighteners, and specialized lights, socks and shoes, and even cameras, such as the Eastman Company's Poco. Probably the best known and most widely used of these inventions, adopted well beyond cycling, is Charles Bennett's Bike Web, which came to be called the jock strap. They also presaged a move away from public transit that would explode with the introduction of the automobile. J. K. Starley's company became the Rover Cycle Company Ltd. in the late 1890s, and then simply the Rover Company when it started making cars. Morris Motors Limited (in Oxford) and Škoda also began in the bicycle business, as did the Wright brothers. Alistair Craig, whose company eventually emerged to become the engine manufacturers Ailsa Craig, also started from manufacturing bicycles, in Glasgow in March 1885. In general, U.S. and European cycle manufacturers used to assemble cycles from their own frames and components made by other companies, although very large companies (such as Raleigh) used to make almost every part of a bicycle (including bottom brackets, axles, etc.) In recent years, those bicycle makers have greatly changed their methods of production. Now, almost none of them produce their own frames. Many newer or smaller companies only design and market their products; the actual production is done by Asian companies. For example, some 60% of the world's bicycles are now being made in China. Despite this shift in production, as nations such as China and India become more wealthy, their own use of bicycles has declined due to the increasing affordability of cars and motorcycles. One of the major reasons for the proliferation of Chinese-made bicycles in foreign markets is the lower cost of labor in China. In line with the European financial crisis, in Italy in 2011 the number of bicycle sales (1.75 million) just passed the number of new car sales. Environmental impact One of the profound economic implications of bicycle use is that it liberates the user from oil consumption. (Ballantine, 1972) The bicycle is an inexpensive, fast, healthy and environmentally friendly mode of transport. Ivan Illich stated that bicycle use extended the usable physical environment for people, while alternatives such as cars and motorways degraded and confined people's environment and mobility. Currently, two billion bicycles are in use around the world. Children, students, professionals, laborers, civil servants and seniors are pedaling around their communities. They all experience the freedom and the natural opportunity for exercise that the bicycle easily provides. Bicycle also has lowest carbon intensity of travel. Religious implications The proper Islamic bicycle for the Iranian women is a topic of heated discussion in both Sunni and Shia Islam. Manufacturing The global bicycle market is $61 billion in 2011. 130 million bicycles were sold every year globally and 66% of them were made in China. Legal requirements Early in its development, as with automobiles, there were restrictions on the operation of bicycles. Along with advertising, and to gain free publicity, Albert A. Pope litigated on behalf of cyclists. The 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic of the United Nations considers a bicycle to be a vehicle, and a person controlling a bicycle (whether actually riding or not) is considered an operator. The traffic codes of many countries reflect these definitions and demand that a bicycle satisfy certain legal requirements before it can be used on public roads. In many jurisdictions, it is an offense to use a bicycle that is not in a roadworthy condition. In most jurisdictions, bicycles must have functioning front and rear lights when ridden after dark. As some generator or dynamo-driven lamps operate only while moving, rear reflectors are frequently also mandatory. Since a moving bicycle makes little noise, some countries insist that bicycles have a warning bell for use when approaching pedestrians, equestrians, and other cyclists, though sometimes a car horn can be used when a 12 volt battery is available. Some countries require child and/or adult cyclists to wear helmets, as this may protect riders from head trauma. Countries which require adult cyclists to wear helmets include Spain, New Zealand and Australia. Mandatory helmet wearing is one of the most controversial topics in the cycling world, with proponents arguing that it reduces head injuries and thus is an acceptable requirement, while opponents argue that by making cycling seem more dangerous and cumbersome, it reduces cyclist numbers on the streets, creating an overall negative health effect (fewer people cycling for their own health, and the remaining cyclists being more exposed through a reversed safety in numbers effect). Theft Bicycles are popular targets for theft, due to their value and ease of resale. The number of bicycles stolen annually is difficult to quantify as a large number of crimes are not reported. Around 50% of the participants in the Montreal International Journal of Sustainable Transportation survey were subjected to a bicycle theft in their lifetime as active cyclists. Most bicycles have serial numbers that can be recorded to verify identity in case of theft. See also Bicycle and motorcycle geometry Bicycle parking station Bicycle-sharing system Cyclability List of bicycle types Outline of bicycles Outline of cycling World Bicycle Day Notes References Citations Sources General Further reading Illustrated; 139 pp. Bicycle history. External links A range of Traffic Advisory Leaflets produced by the UK Department for Transport covering cycling. A History of Bicycles and Other Cycles at the Canada Science and Technology Museum 19th-century inventions Appropriate technology Articles containing video clips Sustainable technologies Sustainable transport German inventions

In mathematics, more specifically in functional analysis, a Banach space (pronounced ) is a complete normed vector space. Thus, a Banach space is a vector space with a metric that allows the computation of vector length and distance between vectors and is complete in the sense that a Cauchy sequence of vectors always converges to a well defined limit that is within the space. Banach spaces are named after the Polish mathematician Stefan Banach, who introduced this concept and studied it systematically in 1920–1922 along with Hans Hahn and Eduard Helly. Maurice René Fréchet was the first to use the term "Banach space" and Banach in turn then coined the term "Fréchet space." Banach spaces originally grew out of the study of function spaces by Hilbert, Fréchet, and Riesz earlier in the century. Banach spaces play a central role in functional analysis. In other areas of analysis, the spaces under study are often Banach spaces. Definition A Banach space is a complete normed space A normed space is a pair consisting of a vector space over a scalar field (where is commonly or ) together with a distinguished norm Like all norms, this norm induces a translation invariant distance function, called the canonical or (norm) induced metric, defined by for all vectors This makes into a metric space A sequence is called or or if for every real there exists some index such that whenever and are greater than The canonical metric is called a if the pair is a , which by definition means for every in there exists some such that where because this sequence's convergence to can equivalently be expressed as: By definition, the normed space is a if the norm induced metric is a complete metric, or said differently, if is a complete metric space. The norm of a normed space is called a if is a Banach space. L-semi-inner product For any normed space there exists an L-semi-inner product on such that for all ; in general, there may be infinitely many L-semi-inner products that satisfy this condition. L-semi-inner products are a generalization of inner products, which are what fundamentally distinguish Hilbert spaces from all other Banach spaces. This shows that all normed spaces (and hence all Banach spaces) can be considered as being generalizations of (pre-)Hilbert spaces. Characterization in terms of series The vector space structure allows one to relate the behavior of Cauchy sequences to that of converging series of vectors. A normed space is a Banach space if and only if each absolutely convergent series in converges in Topology The canonical metric of a normed space induces the usual metric topology on where this topology, which is referred to as the canonical or norm induced topology. Every normed space is automatically assumed to carry this Hausdorff topology, unless indicated otherwise. With this topology, every Banach space is a Baire space, although there exist normed spaces that are Baire but not Banach. The norm is always a continuous function with respect to the topology that it induces. The open and closed balls of radius centered at a point are, respectively, the sets Any such ball is a convex and bounded subset of but a compact ball/neighborhood exists if and only if is a finite-dimensional vector space. In particular, no infinite–dimensional normed space can be locally compact or have the Heine–Borel property. If is a vector and is a scalar then Using shows that this norm-induced topology is translation invariant, which means that for any and the subset is open (respectively, closed) in if and only if this is true of its translation Consequently, the norm induced topology is completely determined by any neighbourhood basis at the origin. Some common neighborhood bases at the origin include: where is a sequence in of positive real numbers that converges to in (such as or for instance). So for example, every open subset of can be written as a union indexed by some subset where every is of the form for some integer (the closed ball can also be used instead of the open ball, although the indexing set and radii may need to be changed). Additionally, can always be chosen to be countable if is a , which by definition means that contains some countable dense subset. The Anderson–Kadec theorem states that every infinite–dimensional separable Fréchet space is homeomorphic to the product space of countably many copies of (this homeomorphism need not be a linear map). Since every Banach space is a Fréchet space, this is also true of all infinite–dimensional separable Banach spaces, including the separable Hilbert 2 sequence space with its usual norm where (in sharp contrast to finite−dimensional spaces) is also homeomorphic to its unit This norm-induced topology also makes into what is known as a topological vector space (TVS), which by definition is a vector space endowed with a topology making the operations of addition and scalar multiplication continuous. It is emphasized that the TVS is a vector space together with a certain type of topology; that is to say, when considered as a TVS, it is associated with particular norm or metric (both of which are "forgotten"). Comparison of complete metrizable vector topologies The open mapping theorem implies that if are topologies on that make both and into complete metrizable TVS (for example, Banach or Fréchet spaces) and if one topology is finer or coarser than the other then they must be equal (that is, if ). So for example, if are Banach spaces with topologies and if one of these spaces has some open ball that is also an open subset of the other space (or equivalently, if one of or is continuous) then their topologies are identical and their norms are equivalent. Completeness Complete norms and equivalent norms Two norms on a vector space are called if and only if they induce the same topology. If and are two equivalent norms on a vector space then is a Banach space if and only if is a Banach space. See this footnote for an example of a continuous norm on a Banach space that is equivalent to that Banach space's given norm. All norms on a finite-dimensional vector space are equivalent and every finite-dimensional normed space is a Banach space. Complete norms vs complete metrics A metric on a vector space is induced by a norm on if and only if is translation invariant and , which means that for all scalars and all in which case the function defines a norm on and the canonical metric induced by is equal to Suppose that is a normed space and that is the norm topology induced on Suppose that is metric on such that the topology that induces on is equal to If is translation invariant then is a Banach space if and only if is a complete metric space. If is translation invariant, then it may be possible for to be a Banach space but for to be a complete metric space (see this footnote for an example). In contrast, a theorem of Klee, which also applies to all metrizable topological vector spaces, implies that if there exists complete metric on that induces the norm topology on then is a Banach space. A Fréchet space is a locally convex topological vector space whose topology is induced by some translation-invariant complete metric. Every Banach space is a Fréchet space but not conversely; indeed, there even exist Fréchet spaces on which no norm is a continuous function (such as the space of real sequences with the product topology). However, the topology of every Fréchet space is induced by some countable family of real-valued (necessarily continuous) maps called seminorms, which are generalizations of norms. It is even possible for a Fréchet space to have a topology that is induced by a countable family of (such norms would necessarily be continuous) but to not be a Banach/normable space because its topology can not be defined by any norm. An example of such a space is the Fréchet space whose definition can be found in the article on spaces of test functions and distributions. Complete norms vs complete topological vector spaces There is another notion of completeness besides metric completeness and that is the notion of a complete topological vector space (TVS) or TVS-completeness, which uses the theory of uniform spaces. Specifically, the notion of TVS-completeness uses a unique translation-invariant uniformity, called the canonical uniformity, that depends on vector subtraction and the topology that the vector space is endowed with, and so in particular, this notion of TVS completeness is independent of whatever norm induced the topology (and even applies to TVSs that are even metrizable). Every Banach space is a complete TVS. Moreover, a normed space is a Banach space (that is, its norm-induced metric is complete) if and only if it is complete as a topological vector space. If is a metrizable topological vector space (such as any norm induced topology, for example), then is a complete TVS if and only if it is a complete TVS, meaning that it is enough to check that every Cauchy in converges in to some point of (that is, there is no need to consider the more general notion of arbitrary Cauchy nets). If is a topological vector space whose topology is induced by (possibly unknown) norm (such spaces are called and they are characterized by being Hausdorff and having a bounded convex neighborhood of the origin), then is a complete topological vector space if and only if may be assigned a norm that induces on the topology and also makes into a Banach space. A Hausdorff locally convex topological vector space is normable if and only if its strong dual space is normable, in which case is a Banach space ( denotes the strong dual space of whose topology is a generalization of the dual norm-induced topology on the continuous dual space ; see this footnote for more details). If is a metrizable locally convex TVS, then is normable if and only if is a Fréchet–Urysohn space. This shows that in the category of locally convex TVSs, Banach spaces are exactly those complete spaces that are both metrizable and have metrizable strong dual spaces. Completions Every normed space can be isometrically embedded onto a dense vector subspace of Banach space, where this Banach space is called a of the normed space. This Hausdorff completion is unique up to isometric isomorphism. More precisely, for every normed space there exist a Banach space and a mapping such that is an isometric mapping and is dense in If is another Banach space such that there is an isometric isomorphism from onto a dense subset of then is isometrically isomorphic to This Banach space is the Hausdorff of the normed space The underlying metric space for is the same as the metric completion of with the vector space operations extended from to The completion of is sometimes denoted by General theory Linear operators, isomorphisms If and are normed spaces over the same ground field the set of all continuous -linear maps is denoted by In infinite-dimensional spaces, not all linear maps are continuous. A linear mapping from a normed space to another normed space is continuous if and only if it is bounded on the closed unit ball of Thus, the vector space can be given the operator norm For a Banach space, the space is a Banach space with respect to this norm. If is a Banach space, the space forms a unital Banach algebra; the multiplication operation is given by the composition of linear maps. If and are normed spaces, they are isomorphic normed spaces if there exists a linear bijection such that and its inverse are continuous. If one of the two spaces or is complete (or reflexive, separable, etc.) then so is the other space. Two normed spaces and are isometrically isomorphic if in addition, is an isometry, that is, for every in The Banach–Mazur distance between two isomorphic but not isometric spaces and gives a measure of how much the two spaces and differ. Continuous and bounded linear functions and seminorms Every continuous linear operator is a bounded linear operator and if dealing only with normed spaces then the converse is also true. That is, a linear operator between two normed spaces is bounded if and only if it is a continuous function. So in particular, because the scalar field (which is or ) is a normed space, a linear functional on a normed space is a bounded linear functional if and only if it is a continuous linear functional. This allows for continuity-related results (like those below) to be applied to Banach spaces. Although boundedness is the same as continuity for linear maps between normed spaces, the term "bounded" is more commonly used when dealing primarily with Banach spaces. If is a subadditive function (such as a norm, a sublinear function, or real linear functional), then is continuous at the origin if and only if is uniformly continuous on all of ; and if in addition then is continuous if and only if its absolute value is continuous, which happens if and only if is an open subset of And very importantly for applying the Hahn-Banach theorem, a linear functional is continuous if and only if this is true of its real part and moreover, and the real part completely determines which is why the Hahn-Banach theorem is often stated only for real linear functionals. Also, a linear functional on is continuous if and only if the seminorm is continuous, which happens if and only if there exists a continuous seminorm such that ; this last statement involving the linear functional and seminorm is encountered in many versions of the Hahn-Banach theorem. Basic notions The Cartesian product of two normed spaces is not canonically equipped with a norm. However, several equivalent norms are commonly used, such as and give rise to isomorphic normed spaces. In this sense, the product (or the direct sum ) is complete if and only if the two factors are complete. If is a closed linear subspace of a normed space there is a natural norm on the quotient space The quotient is a Banach space when is complete. The quotient map from onto sending to its class is linear, onto and has norm except when in which case the quotient is the null space. The closed linear subspace of is said to be a complemented subspace of if is the range of a surjective bounded linear projection In this case, the space is isomorphic to the direct sum of and the kernel of the projection Suppose that and are Banach spaces and that There exists a canonical factorization of as where the first map is the quotient map, and the second map sends every class in the quotient to the image in This is well defined because all elements in the same class have the same image. The mapping is a linear bijection from onto the range whose inverse need not be bounded. Classical spaces Basic examples of Banach spaces include: the Lp spaces and their special cases, the sequence spaces that consist of scalar sequences indexed by natural numbers ; among them, the space of absolutely summable sequences and the space of square summable sequences; the space of sequences tending to zero and the space of bounded sequences; the space of continuous scalar functions on a compact Hausdorff space equipped with the max norm, According to the Banach–Mazur theorem, every Banach space is isometrically isomorphic to a subspace of some For every separable Banach space there is a closed subspace of such that Any Hilbert space serves as an example of a Banach space. A Hilbert space on is complete for a norm of the form where is the inner product, linear in its first argument that satisfies the following: For example, the space is a Hilbert space. The Hardy spaces, the Sobolev spaces are examples of Banach spaces that are related to spaces and have additional structure. They are important in different branches of analysis, Harmonic analysis and Partial differential equations among others. Banach algebras A Banach algebra is a Banach space over or together with a structure of algebra over , such that the product map is continuous. An equivalent norm on can be found so that for all Examples The Banach space with the pointwise product, is a Banach algebra. The disk algebra consists of functions holomorphic in the open unit disk and continuous on its closure: Equipped with the max norm on the disk algebra is a closed subalgebra of The Wiener algebra is the algebra of functions on the unit circle with absolutely convergent Fourier series. Via the map associating a function on to the sequence of its Fourier coefficients, this algebra is isomorphic to the Banach algebra where the product is the convolution of sequences. For every Banach space the space of bounded linear operators on with the composition of maps as product, is a Banach algebra. A C*-algebra is a complex Banach algebra with an antilinear involution such that The space of bounded linear operators on a Hilbert space is a fundamental example of C*-algebra. The Gelfand–Naimark theorem states that every C*-algebra is isometrically isomorphic to a C*-subalgebra of some The space of complex continuous functions on a compact Hausdorff space is an example of commutative C*-algebra, where the involution associates to every function its complex conjugate Dual space If is a normed space and the underlying field (either the real or the complex numbers), the continuous dual space is the space of continuous linear maps from into or continuous linear functionals. The notation for the continuous dual is in this article. Since is a Banach space (using the absolute value as norm), the dual is a Banach space, for every normed space The main tool for proving the existence of continuous linear functionals is the Hahn–Banach theorem. In particular, every continuous linear functional on a subspace of a normed space can be continuously extended to the whole space, without increasing the norm of the functional. An important special case is the following: for every vector in a normed space there exists a continuous linear functional on such that When is not equal to the vector, the functional must have norm one, and is called a norming functional for The Hahn–Banach separation theorem states that two disjoint non-empty convex sets in a real Banach space, one of them open, can be separated by a closed affine hyperplane. The open convex set lies strictly on one side of the hyperplane, the second convex set lies on the other side but may touch the hyperplane. A subset in a Banach space is total if the linear span of is dense in The subset is total in if and only if the only continuous linear functional that vanishes on is the functional: this equivalence follows from the Hahn–Banach theorem. If is the direct sum of two closed linear subspaces and then the dual of is isomorphic to the direct sum of the duals of and If is a closed linear subspace in one can associate the in the dual, The orthogonal is a closed linear subspace of the dual. The dual of is isometrically isomorphic to The dual of is isometrically isomorphic to The dual of a separable Banach space need not be separable, but: When is separable, the above criterion for totality can be used for proving the existence of a countable total subset in Weak topologies The weak topology on a Banach space is the coarsest topology on for which all elements in the continuous dual space are continuous. The norm topology is therefore finer than the weak topology. It follows from the Hahn–Banach separation theorem that the weak topology is Hausdorff, and that a norm-closed convex subset of a Banach space is also weakly closed. A norm-continuous linear map between two Banach spaces and is also weakly continuous, that is, continuous from the weak topology of to that of If is infinite-dimensional, there exist linear maps which are not continuous. The space of all linear maps from to the underlying field (this space is called the algebraic dual space, to distinguish it from also induces a topology on which is finer than the weak topology, and much less used in functional analysis. On a dual space there is a topology weaker than the weak topology of called weak* topology. It is the coarsest topology on for which all evaluation maps where ranges over are continuous. Its importance comes from the Banach–Alaoglu theorem. The Banach–Alaoglu theorem can be proved using Tychonoff's theorem about infinite products of compact Hausdorff spaces. When is separable, the unit ball of the dual is a metrizable compact in the weak* topology. Examples of dual spaces The dual of is isometrically isomorphic to : for every bounded linear functional on there is a unique element such that The dual of is isometrically isomorphic to . The dual of Lebesgue space is isometrically isomorphic to when and For every vector in a Hilbert space the mapping defines a continuous linear functional on The Riesz representation theorem states that every continuous linear functional on is of the form for a uniquely defined vector in The mapping is an antilinear isometric bijection from onto its dual When the scalars are real, this map is an isometric isomorphism. When is a compact Hausdorff topological space, the dual of is the space of Radon measures in the sense of Bourbaki. The subset of consisting of non-negative measures of mass 1 (probability measures) is a convex w*-closed subset of the unit ball of The extreme points of are the Dirac measures on The set of Dirac measures on equipped with the w*-topology, is homeomorphic to The result has been extended by Amir and Cambern to the case when the multiplicative Banach–Mazur distance between and is The theorem is no longer true when the distance is In the commutative Banach algebra the maximal ideals are precisely kernels of Dirac measures on More generally, by the Gelfand–Mazur theorem, the maximal ideals of a unital commutative Banach algebra can be identified with its characters—not merely as sets but as topological spaces: the former with the hull-kernel topology and the latter with the w*-topology. In this identification, the maximal ideal space can be viewed as a w*-compact subset of the unit ball in the dual Not every unital commutative Banach algebra is of the form for some compact Hausdorff space However, this statement holds if one places in the smaller category of commutative C*-algebras. Gelfand's representation theorem for commutative C*-algebras states that every commutative unital C*-algebra is isometrically isomorphic to a space. The Hausdorff compact space here is again the maximal ideal space, also called the spectrum of in the C*-algebra context. Bidual If is a normed space, the (continuous) dual of the dual is called , or of For every normed space there is a natural map, This defines as a continuous linear functional on that is, an element of The map is a linear map from to As a consequence of the existence of a norming functional for every this map is isometric, thus injective. For example, the dual of is identified with and the dual of is identified with the space of bounded scalar sequences. Under these identifications, is the inclusion map from to It is indeed isometric, but not onto. If is surjective, then the normed space is called reflexive (see below). Being the dual of a normed space, the bidual is complete, therefore, every reflexive normed space is a Banach space. Using the isometric embedding it is customary to consider a normed space as a subset of its bidual. When is a Banach space, it is viewed as a closed linear subspace of If is not reflexive, the unit ball of is a proper subset of the unit ball of The Goldstine theorem states that the unit ball of a normed space is weakly*-dense in the unit ball of the bidual. In other words, for every in the bidual, there exists a net in so that The net may be replaced by a weakly*-convergent sequence when the dual is separable. On the other hand, elements of the bidual of that are not in cannot be weak*-limit of in since is weakly sequentially complete. Banach's theorems Here are the main general results about Banach spaces that go back to the time of Banach's book () and are related to the Baire category theorem. According to this theorem, a complete metric space (such as a Banach space, a Fréchet space or an F-space) cannot be equal to a union of countably many closed subsets with empty interiors. Therefore, a Banach space cannot be the union of countably many closed subspaces, unless it is already equal to one of them; a Banach space with a countable Hamel basis is finite-dimensional. The Banach–Steinhaus theorem is not limited to Banach spaces. It can be extended for example to the case where is a Fréchet space, provided the conclusion is modified as follows: under the same hypothesis, there exists a neighborhood of in such that all in are uniformly bounded on This result is a direct consequence of the preceding Banach isomorphism theorem and of the canonical factorization of bounded linear maps. This is another consequence of Banach's isomorphism theorem, applied to the continuous bijection from onto sending to the sum Reflexivity The normed space is called reflexive when the natural map is surjective. Reflexive normed spaces are Banach spaces. This is a consequence of the Hahn–Banach theorem. Further, by the open mapping theorem, if there is a bounded linear operator from the Banach space onto the Banach space then is reflexive. Indeed, if the dual of a Banach space is separable, then is separable. If is reflexive and separable, then the dual of is separable, so is separable. Hilbert spaces are reflexive. The spaces are reflexive when More generally, uniformly convex spaces are reflexive, by the Milman–Pettis theorem. The spaces are not reflexive. In these examples of non-reflexive spaces the bidual is "much larger" than Namely, under the natural isometric embedding of into given by the Hahn–Banach theorem, the quotient is infinite-dimensional, and even nonseparable. However, Robert C. James has constructed an example of a non-reflexive space, usually called "the James space" and denoted by such that the quotient is one-dimensional. Furthermore, this space is isometrically isomorphic to its bidual. When is reflexive, it follows that all closed and bounded convex subsets of are weakly compact. In a Hilbert space the weak compactness of the unit ball is very often used in the following way: every bounded sequence in has weakly convergent subsequences. Weak compactness of the unit ball provides a tool for finding solutions in reflexive spaces to certain optimization problems. For example, every convex continuous function on the unit ball of a reflexive space attains its minimum at some point in As a special case of the preceding result, when is a reflexive space over every continuous linear functional in attains its maximum on the unit ball of The following theorem of Robert C. James provides a converse statement. The theorem can be extended to give a characterization of weakly compact convex sets. On every non-reflexive Banach space there exist continuous linear functionals that are not norm-attaining. However, the Bishop–Phelps theorem states that norm-attaining functionals are norm dense in the dual of Weak convergences of sequences A sequence in a Banach space is weakly convergent to a vector if converges to for every continuous linear functional in the dual The sequence is a weakly Cauchy sequence if converges to a scalar limit for every in A sequence in the dual is weakly* convergent to a functional if converges to for every in Weakly Cauchy sequences, weakly convergent and weakly* convergent sequences are norm bounded, as a consequence of the Banach–Steinhaus theorem. When the sequence in is a weakly Cauchy sequence, the limit above defines a bounded linear functional on the dual that is, an element of the bidual of and is the limit of in the weak*-topology of the bidual. The Banach space is weakly sequentially complete if every weakly Cauchy sequence is weakly convergent in It follows from the preceding discussion that reflexive spaces are weakly sequentially complete. An orthonormal sequence in a Hilbert space is a simple example of a weakly convergent sequence, with limit equal to the vector. The unit vector basis of for or of is another example of a weakly null sequence, that is, a sequence that converges weakly to For every weakly null sequence in a Banach space, there exists a sequence of convex combinations of vectors from the given sequence that is norm-converging to The unit vector basis of is not weakly Cauchy. Weakly Cauchy sequences in are weakly convergent, since -spaces are weakly sequentially complete. Actually, weakly convergent sequences in are norm convergent. This means that satisfies Schur's property. Results involving the basis Weakly Cauchy sequences and the basis are the opposite cases of the dichotomy established in the following deep result of H. P. Rosenthal. A complement to this result is due to Odell and Rosenthal (1975). By the Goldstine theorem, every element of the unit ball of is weak*-limit of a net in the unit ball of When does not contain every element of is weak*-limit of a in the unit ball of When the Banach space is separable, the unit ball of the dual equipped with the weak*-topology, is a metrizable compact space and every element in the bidual defines a bounded function on : This function is continuous for the compact topology of if and only if is actually in considered as subset of Assume in addition for the rest of the paragraph that does not contain By the preceding result of Odell and Rosenthal, the function is the pointwise limit on of a sequence of continuous functions on it is therefore a first Baire class function on The unit ball of the bidual is a pointwise compact subset of the first Baire class on Sequences, weak and weak* compactness When is separable, the unit ball of the dual is weak*-compact by the Banach–Alaoglu theorem and metrizable for the weak* topology, hence every bounded sequence in the dual has weakly* convergent subsequences. This applies to separable reflexive spaces, but more is true in this case, as stated below. The weak topology of a Banach space is metrizable if and only if is finite-dimensional. If the dual is separable, the weak topology of the unit ball of is metrizable. This applies in particular to separable reflexive Banach spaces. Although the weak topology of the unit ball is not metrizable in general, one can characterize weak compactness using sequences. A Banach space is reflexive if and only if each bounded sequence in has a weakly convergent subsequence. A weakly compact subset in is norm-compact. Indeed, every sequence in has weakly convergent subsequences by Eberlein–Šmulian, that are norm convergent by the Schur property of Schauder bases A Schauder basis in a Banach space is a sequence of vectors in with the property that for every vector there exist defined scalars depending on such that Banach spaces with a Schauder basis are necessarily separable, because the countable set of finite linear combinations with rational coefficients (say) is dense. It follows from the Banach–Steinhaus theorem that the linear mappings are uniformly bounded by some constant Let denote the coordinate functionals which assign to every in the coordinate of in the above expansion. They are called biorthogonal functionals. When the basis vectors have norm the coordinate functionals have norm in the dual of Most classical separable spaces have explicit bases. The Haar system is a basis for The trigonometric system is a basis in when The Schauder system is a basis in the space The question of whether the disk algebra has a basis remained open for more than forty years, until Bočkarev showed in 1974 that admits a basis constructed from the Franklin system. Since every vector in a Banach space with a basis is the limit of with of finite rank and uniformly bounded, the space satisfies the bounded approximation property. The first example by Enflo of a space failing the approximation property was at the same time the first example of a separable Banach space without a Schauder basis. Robert C. James characterized reflexivity in Banach spaces with a basis: the space with a Schauder basis is reflexive if and only if the basis is both shrinking and boundedly complete. In this case, the biorthogonal functionals form a basis of the dual of Tensor product Let and be two -vector spaces. The tensor product of and is a -vector space with a bilinear mapping which has the following universal property: If is any bilinear mapping into a -vector space then there exists a unique linear mapping such that The image under of a couple in is denoted by and called a simple tensor. Every element in is a finite sum of such simple tensors. There are various norms that can be placed on the tensor product of the underlying vector spaces, amongst others the projective cross norm and injective cross norm introduced by A. Grothendieck in 1955. In general, the tensor product of complete spaces is not complete again. When working with Banach spaces, it is customary to say that the projective tensor product of two Banach spaces and is the of the algebraic tensor product equipped with the projective tensor norm, and similarly for the injective tensor product Grothendieck proved in particular that where is a compact Hausdorff space, the Banach space of continuous functions from to and the space of Bochner-measurable and integrable functions from to and where the isomorphisms are isometric. The two isomorphisms above are the respective extensions of the map sending the tensor to the vector-valued function Tensor products and the approximation property Let be a Banach space. The tensor product is identified isometrically with the closure in of the set of finite rank operators. When has the approximation property, this closure coincides with the space of compact operators on For every Banach space there is a natural norm linear map obtained by extending the identity map of the algebraic tensor product. Grothendieck related the approximation problem to the question of whether this map is one-to-one when is the dual of Precisely, for every Banach space the map is one-to-one if and only if has the approximation property. Grothendieck conjectured that and must be different whenever and are infinite-dimensional Banach spaces. This was disproved by Gilles Pisier in 1983. Pisier constructed an infinite-dimensional Banach space such that and are equal. Furthermore, just as Enflo's example, this space is a "hand-made" space that fails to have the approximation property. On the other hand, Szankowski proved that the classical space does not have the approximation property. Some classification results Characterizations of Hilbert space among Banach spaces A necessary and sufficient condition for the norm of a Banach space to be associated to an inner product is the parallelogram identity: It follows, for example, that the Lebesgue space is a Hilbert space only when If this identity is satisfied, the associated inner product is given by the polarization identity. In the case of real scalars, this gives: For complex scalars, defining the inner product so as to be -linear in antilinear in the polarization identity gives: To see that the parallelogram law is sufficient, one observes in the real case that is symmetric, and in the complex case, that it satisfies the Hermitian symmetry property and The parallelogram law implies that is additive in It follows that it is linear over the rationals, thus linear by continuity. Several characterizations of spaces isomorphic (rather than isometric) to Hilbert spaces are available. The parallelogram law can be extended to more than two vectors, and weakened by the introduction of a two-sided inequality with a constant : Kwapień proved that if for every integer and all families of vectors then the Banach space is isomorphic to a Hilbert space. Here, denotes the average over the possible choices of signs In the same article, Kwapień proved that the validity of a Banach-valued Parseval's theorem for the Fourier transform characterizes Banach spaces isomorphic to Hilbert spaces. Lindenstrauss and Tzafriri proved that a Banach space in which every closed linear subspace is complemented (that is, is the range of a bounded linear projection) is isomorphic to a Hilbert space. The proof rests upon Dvoretzky's theorem about Euclidean sections of high-dimensional centrally symmetric convex bodies. In other words, Dvoretzky's theorem states that for every integer any finite-dimensional normed space, with dimension sufficiently large compared to contains subspaces nearly isometric to the -dimensional Euclidean space. The next result gives the solution of the so-called . An infinite-dimensional Banach space is said to be homogeneous if it is isomorphic to all its infinite-dimensional closed subspaces. A Banach space isomorphic to is homogeneous, and Banach asked for the converse. An infinite-dimensional Banach space is hereditarily indecomposable when no subspace of it can be isomorphic to the direct sum of two infinite-dimensional Banach spaces. The Gowers dichotomy theorem asserts that every infinite-dimensional Banach space contains, either a subspace with unconditional basis, or a hereditarily indecomposable subspace and in particular, is not isomorphic to its closed hyperplanes. If is homogeneous, it must therefore have an unconditional basis. It follows then from the partial solution obtained by Komorowski and Tomczak–Jaegermann, for spaces with an unconditional basis, that is isomorphic to Metric classification If is an isometry from the Banach space onto the Banach space (where both and are vector spaces over ), then the Mazur–Ulam theorem states that must be an affine transformation. In particular, if this is maps the zero of to the zero of then must be linear. This result implies that the metric in Banach spaces, and more generally in normed spaces, completely captures their linear structure. Topological classification Finite dimensional Banach spaces are homeomorphic as topological spaces, if and only if they have the same dimension as real vector spaces. Anderson–Kadec theorem (1965–66) proves that any two infinite-dimensional separable Banach spaces are homeomorphic as topological spaces. Kadec's theorem was extended by Torunczyk, who proved that any two Banach spaces are homeomorphic if and only if they have the same density character, the minimum cardinality of a dense subset. Spaces of continuous functions When two compact Hausdorff spaces and are homeomorphic, the Banach spaces and are isometric. Conversely, when is not homeomorphic to the (multiplicative) Banach–Mazur distance between and must be greater than or equal to see above the results by Amir and Cambern. Although uncountable compact metric spaces can have different homeomorphy types, one has the following result due to Milutin: The situation is different for countably infinite compact Hausdorff spaces. Every countably infinite compact is homeomorphic to some closed interval of ordinal numbers equipped with the order topology, where is a countably infinite ordinal. The Banach space is then isometric to . When are two countably infinite ordinals, and assuming the spaces and are isomorphic if and only if . For example, the Banach spaces are mutually non-isomorphic. Examples Derivatives Several concepts of a derivative may be defined on a Banach space. See the articles on the Fréchet derivative and the Gateaux derivative for details. The Fréchet derivative allows for an extension of the concept of a total derivative to Banach spaces. The Gateaux derivative allows for an extension of a directional derivative to locally convex topological vector spaces. Fréchet differentiability is a stronger condition than Gateaux differentiability. The quasi-derivative is another generalization of directional derivative that implies a stronger condition than Gateaux differentiability, but a weaker condition than Fréchet differentiability. Generalizations Several important spaces in functional analysis, for instance the space of all infinitely often differentiable functions or the space of all distributions on are complete but are not normed vector spaces and hence not Banach spaces. In Fréchet spaces one still has a complete metric, while LF-spaces are complete uniform vector spaces arising as limits of Fréchet spaces. See also Notes References Bibliography .* . . . . . . . External links Science and technology in Poland

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1926 to 1977. He made over 70 feature films and recorded more than 1,600 songs. His early career coincided with recording innovations that allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed, such as Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Dick Haymes, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon. Yank magazine said that he was "the person who had done the most for the morale of overseas servicemen" during World War II. In 1948, American polls declared him the "most admired man alive", ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII. In 1948, Music Digest estimated that his recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music. Crosby won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Going My Way (1944) and was nominated for its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), opposite Ingrid Bergman, becoming the first of six actors to be nominated twice for playing the same character. In 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, and audio recording. He was also known for his collaborations with his friend Bob Hope, starring in the Road to... films from 1940 to 1962. Crosby influenced the development of the post World War II recording industry. After seeing a demonstration of a German broadcast quality reel-to-reel tape recorder brought to America by John T. Mullin, he invested $50,000 in California electronics company Ampex to build copies. He then persuaded ABC to allow him to tape his shows. He became the first performer to prerecord his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. Through the medium of recording, he constructed his radio programs with the same directorial tools and craftsmanship (editing, retaking, rehearsal, time shifting) used in motion picture production, a practice that became industry standard. In addition to his work with early audio tape recording, he helped finance the development of videotape, bought television stations, bred racehorses, and co-owned the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, during which time the team won two World Series (1960 and 1971). Early life Crosby was born on May 3, 1903 in Tacoma, Washington, in a house his father built at 1112 North J Street. In 1906, his family moved to Spokane in Eastern Washington state, where he was raised. In 1913, his father built a house at 508 E. Sharp Avenue. The house sits on the campus of his alma mater, Gonzaga University. It functions today as a museum housing over 200 artifacts from his life and career, including his Oscar. He was the fourth of seven children: brothers Laurence Earl "Larry" (1895–1975), Everett Nathaniel (1896–1966), Edward John "Ted" (1900–1973), and George Robert "Bob" (1913–1993); and two sisters, Catherine Cordelia (1904–1974) and Mary Rose (1906–1990). His parents were Harry Lowe Crosby (1870–1950), a bookkeeper, and Catherine Helen "Kate" (née Harrigan; 1873–1964). His mother was a second generation Irish-American. His father was of Scottish and English descent; an ancestor, Simon Crosby, emigrated from England to New England in the 1630s during the Puritan migration to New England. Through another line, also on his father's side, Crosby is descended from Mayflower passenger William Brewster (c. 1567 – April 10, 1644). On November 8, 1937, after Lux Radio Theatre's adaptation of She Loves Me Not, Joan Blondell asked Crosby how he got his nickname: As it happens, that story was pure whimsy for dramatic effect; the Associated Press had reported as early as February 1932—as would later be confirmed by both Bing himself and his biographer Charles Thompson—that it was in fact a neighbor—Valentine Hobart, circa 1910—who had named him "Bingo from Bingville" after a comic feature in the local paper called The Bingville Bugle which the young Harry liked. In time, Bingo got shortened to Bing. In 1917, Crosby took a summer job as property boy at Spokane's Auditorium, where he witnessed some of the acts of the day, including Al Jolson, who held him spellbound with ad-libbing and parodies of Hawaiian songs. He later described Jolson's delivery as "electric". Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School (today's Gonzaga Preparatory School) in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University. He attended Gonzaga for three years but did not earn a degree. As a freshman, he played on the university's baseball team. The university granted him an honorary doctorate in 1937. Today, Gonzaga University houses a large collection of photographs, correspondence, and other material related to Crosby. Performance career Early years In 1923 Crosby was invited to join a new band composed of high-school students a few years younger than himself. Al and Miles Rinker (brothers of singer Mildred Bailey), James Heaton, Claire Pritchard and Robert Pritchard, along with drummer Crosby, formed the Musicaladers, who performed at dances both for high school students and club-goers. The group performed on Spokane radio station KHQ, but disbanded after two years. Crosby and Al Rinker obtained work at the Clemmer Theatre in Spokane (now known as the Bing Crosby Theater). Crosby was initially a member of a vocal trio called The Three Harmony Aces with Al Rinker accompanying on piano from the pit, to entertain between the films. Crosby and Al continued at the Clemmer Theatre for several months often with three other men – Wee Georgie Crittenden, Frank McBride and Lloyd Grinnell – and they were billed The Clemmer Trio or The Clemmer Entertainers depending who performed. In October 1925, Crosby and Rinker decided to seek fame in California. They traveled to Los Angeles, where Bailey introduced them to her show business contacts. The Fanchon and Marco Time Agency hired them for thirteen weeks for the revue The Syncopation Idea starting at the Boulevard Theater in Los Angeles and then on the Loew's circuit. They each earned $75 a week. As minor parts of The Syncopation Idea Crosby and Rinker started to develop as entertainers. They had a lively style that was popular with college students. After The Syncopation Idea closed, they worked in the Will Morrissey Music Hall Revue. They honed their skills with Morrissey. When they got a chance to present an independent act, they were spotted by a member of the Paul Whiteman organization. Whiteman needed something different to break up his musical selections, and Crosby and Rinker filled this requirement. After less than a year in show business, they were attached to one of the biggest names. Hired for $150 a week in 1926, they debuted with Whiteman on December 6 at the Tivoli Theatre in Chicago. Their first recording, in October 1926, was "I've Got the Girl" with Don Clark's Orchestra, but the Columbia-issued record was inadvertently recorded at a slow speed, which increased the singers' pitch when played at 78 rpm. Throughout his career, Crosby often credited Bailey for getting him his first important job in the entertainment business. The Rhythm Boys Success with Whiteman was followed by disaster when they reached New York. Whiteman considered letting them go. However, the addition of pianist and aspiring songwriter Harry Barris made the difference, and The Rhythm Boys were born. The additional voice meant they could be heard more easily in large New York theaters. Crosby gained valuable experience on tour for a year with Whiteman and performing and recording with Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Eddie Lang, and Hoagy Carmichael. He matured as a performer and was in demand as a solo singer. Crosby became the star attraction of the Rhythm Boys. In 1928 he had his first number one hit, a jazz-influenced rendition of "Ol' Man River". In 1929, the Rhythm Boys appeared in the film King of Jazz with Whiteman, but Crosby's growing dissatisfaction with Whiteman led to the Rhythm Boys leaving his organization. They joined the Gus Arnheim Orchestra, performing nightly in the Coconut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel. Singing with the Arnheim Orchestra, Crosby's solos began to steal the show while the Rhythm Boys' act gradually became redundant. Harry Barris wrote several of Crosby's hits, including "At Your Command", "I Surrender Dear", and "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams". When Mack Sennett signed Crosby to a solo recording contract in 1931, a break with the Rhythm Boys became almost inevitable. Crosby married Dixie Lee in September 1930. After a threat of divorce in March 1931, he applied himself to his career. Success as a solo singer 15 Minutes with Bing Crosby, his nationwide solo radio debut, began broadcasting on September 2, 1931. The weekly broadcast made him a hit. Before the end of the year, he with both Brunswick Records and CBS Radio. "Out of Nowhere", "Just One More Chance", "At Your Command" and "I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store)" were among the best selling songs of 1931. Ten of the top 50 songs of 1931 included Crosby with others or as a solo act. A "Battle of the Baritones" with singer Russ Columbo proved short-lived, replaced with the slogan "Bing Was King". Crosby played the lead in a series of musical comedy short films for Mack Sennett, signed with Paramount, and starred in his first full-length film 1932's The Big Broadcast (1932), the first of 55 films in which he received top billing. He would appear in 79 pictures. He signed a contract with Jack Kapp's new record company, Decca, in late 1934. His first commercial sponsor on radio was Cremo Cigars and his fame spread nationwide. After a long run in New York, he went back to Hollywood to film The Big Broadcast. His appearances, records, and radio work substantially increased his impact. The success of his first film brought him a contract with Paramount, and he began a pattern of making three films a year. He led his radio show for Woodbury Soap for two seasons while his live appearances dwindled. His records produced hits during the Depression when sales were down. Audio engineer Steve Hoffman stated, By the way, Bing actually saved the record business in 1934 when he agreed to support Decca founder Jack Kapp's crazy idea of lowering the price of singles from a dollar to 35 cents and getting a royalty for records sold instead of a flat fee. Bing's name and his artistry saved the recording industry. All the other artists signed to Decca after Bing did. Without him, Jack Kapp wouldn't have had a chance in hell of making Decca work and the Great Depression would have wiped out phonograph records for good. His social life was frantic. His first son Gary was born in 1933 with twin boys following in 1934. By 1936, he replaced his former boss, Paul Whiteman, as host of the weekly NBC radio program Kraft Music Hall, where he remained for the next ten years. "Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)", with his trademark whistling, became his theme song and signature tune. Crosby's vocal style helped take popular singing beyond the "belting" associated with Al Jolson and Billy Murray, who had been obligated to reach the back seats in New York theaters without the aid of a microphone. As music critic Henry Pleasants noted in The Great American Popular Singers, something new had entered American music, a style that might be called "singing in American" with conversational ease. This new sound led to the popular epithet crooner. Crosby admired Louis Armstrong for his musical ability, and the trumpet maestro was a formative influence on Crosby's singing style. When the two met, they became friends. In 1936, Crosby exercised an option in his Paramount contract to regularly star in an out-of-house film. Signing an agreement with Columbia for a single motion picture, Crosby wanted Armstrong to appear in a screen adaptation of The Peacock Feather that eventually became Pennies from Heaven. Crosby asked Harry Cohn, but Cohn had no desire to pay for the flight or to meet Armstrong's "crude, mob-linked but devoted manager, Joe Glaser". Crosby threatened to leave the film and refused to discuss the matter. Cohn gave in; Armstrong's musical scenes and comic dialogue extended his influence to the silver screen, creating more opportunities for him and other African Americans to appear in future films. Crosby also ensured behind the scenes that Armstrong received equal billing with his white co-stars. Armstrong appreciated Crosby's progressive attitudes on race, and often expressed gratitude for the role in later years. During World War II, Crosby made live appearances before American troops who had been fighting in the European Theater. He learned how to pronounce German from written scripts and read propaganda broadcasts intended for German forces. The nickname "Der Bingle" was common among Crosby's German listeners and came to be used by his English-speaking fans. In a poll of U.S. troops at the close of World War II, Crosby topped the list as the person who had done the most for G.I. morale, ahead of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, General Dwight Eisenhower, and Bob Hope. The June 18, 1945 issue of Life magazine stated, "America's number one star, Bing Crosby, has won more fans, made more money than any entertainer in history. Today he is a kind of national institution." "In all, 60,000,000 Crosby discs have been marketed since he made his first record in 1931. His biggest best seller is "White Christmas" 2,000,000 impressions of which have been sold in the U.S. and 250,000 in Great Britain." "Nine out of ten singers and bandleaders listen to Crosby's broadcasts each Thursday night and follow his lead. The day after he sings a song over the air – any song – some 50,000 copies of it are sold throughout the U.S. Time and again Crosby has taken some new or unknown ballad, has given it what is known in trade circles as the 'big goose' and made it a hit single-handed and overnight... Precisely what the future holds for Crosby neither his family nor his friends can conjecture. He has achieved greater popularity, made more money, attracted vaster audiences than any other entertainer in history. And his star is still in the ascendant. His contract with Decca runs until 1955. His contract with Paramount runs until 1954. Records which he made ten years ago are selling better than ever before. The nation's appetite for Crosby's voice and personality appears insatiable. To soldiers overseas and to foreigners he has become a kind of symbol of America, of the amiable, humorous citizen of a free land. Crosby, however, seldom bothers to contemplate his future. For one thing, he enjoys hearing himself sing, and if ever a day should dawn when the public wearies of him, he will complacently go right on singing—to himself." White Christmas The biggest hit song of Crosby's career was his recording of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", which he introduced on a Christmas Day radio broadcast in 1941. A copy of the recording from the radio program is owned by the estate of Bing Crosby and was loaned to CBS Sunday Morning for their December 25, 2011 program. The song appeared in his film Holiday Inn (1942). His record hit the charts on October 3, 1942, and rose to number 1 on October 31, where it stayed for 11 weeks. A holiday perennial, the song was repeatedly re-released by Decca, charting another sixteen times. It topped the charts again in 1945 and a third time in January 1947. The song remains the bestselling single of all time. According to Guinness World Records, his recording of "White Christmas", has sold over 50 million copies around the world. His recording was so popular that he was obliged to re-record it in 1947 using the same musicians and backup singers; the original 1942 master had become damaged due to its frequent use in pressing additional singles. In 1977, after Crosby died, the song was re-released and reached No. 5 in the UK Singles Chart. Crosby was dismissive of his role in the song's success, saying "a jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully". Motion pictures In the wake of a solid decade of headlining mainly smash hit musical comedy films in the 1930s, Crosby starred with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour in six of the seven Road to musical comedies between 1940 and 1962 (Lamour was replaced with Joan Collins in The Road to Hong Kong and limited to a lengthy cameo), cementing Crosby and Hope as an on-and-off duo, despite never declaring themselves a "team" in the sense that Laurel and Hardy or Martin and Lewis (Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis) were teams. The series consists of Road to Singapore (1940), Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1946), Road to Rio (1947), Road to Bali (1952), and The Road to Hong Kong (1962). When they appeared solo, Crosby and Hope frequently made note of the other in a comically insulting fashion. They performed together countless times on stage, radio, film, and television, and made numerous brief and not so brief appearances together in movies aside from the "Road" pictures, Variety Girl (1947) being an example of lengthy scenes and songs together along with billing. In the 1949 Disney animated film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Crosby provided the narration and song vocals for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment. In 1960, he starred in High Time, a collegiate comedy with Fabian Forte and Tuesday Weld that predicted the emerging gap between him and the new younger generation of musicians and actors who had begun their careers after World War II. The following year, Crosby and Hope reunited for one more Road movie, The Road to Hong Kong, which teamed them up with the much younger Joan Collins and Peter Sellers. Collins was used in place of their longtime partner Dorothy Lamour, whom Crosby felt was getting too old for the role, though Hope refused to do the film without her, and she instead made a lengthy and elaborate cameo appearance. Shortly before his death in 1977, he had planned another Road film in which he, Hope, and Lamour search for the Fountain of Youth. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for Going My Way in 1944 and was nominated for the 1945 sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's. He received critical acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic entertainer in The Country Girl and received his third Academy Award nomination. Television The Fireside Theater (1950) was his first television production. The series of 26-minute shows was filmed at Hal Roach Studios rather than performed live on the air. The "telefilms" were syndicated to individual television stations. He was a frequent guest on the musical variety shows of the 1950s and 1960s, appearing on various variety shows as well as numerous late-night talk shows and his own highly rated specials. Bob Hope memorably devoted one of his monthly NBC specials to his long intermittent partnership with Crosby titled "On the Road With Bing". Crosby was associated with ABC's The Hollywood Palace as the show's first and most frequent guest host and appeared annually on its Christmas edition with his wife Kathryn and his younger children, and continued after The Hollywood Palace was eventually canceled. In the early 1970s, he made two late appearances on the Flip Wilson Show, singing duets with the comedian. His last TV appearance was a Christmas special, Merrie Olde Christmas, taped in London in September 1977 and aired weeks after his death. It was on this special that he recorded a duet of "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Peace on Earth" with rock musician David Bowie. Their duet was released in 1982 as a single 45-rpm record and reached No. 3 in the UK singles charts. It has since become a staple of holiday radio and the final popular hit of Crosby's career. At the end of the 20th century, TV Guide listed the Crosby-Bowie duet one of the 25 most memorable musical moments of 20th-century television. Bing Crosby Productions, affiliated with Desilu Studios and later CBS Television Studios, produced a number of television series, including Crosby's own unsuccessful ABC sitcom The Bing Crosby Show in the 1964–1965 season (with co-stars Beverly Garland and Frank McHugh). The company produced two ABC medical dramas, Ben Casey (1961–1966) and Breaking Point (1963–1964), the popular Hogan's Heroes (1965–1971) military comedy on CBS, as well as the lesser-known show Slattery's People (1964–1965). Singing style and vocal characteristics Crosby was one of the first singers to exploit the intimacy of the microphone rather than use the deep, loud vaudeville style associated with Al Jolson. He was, by his own definition, a "phraser", a singer who placed equal emphasis on both the lyrics and the music. Paul Whiteman's hiring of Crosby, with phrasing that echoed jazz, particularly his bandmate Bix Beiderbecke's trumpet, helped bring the genre to a wider audience. In the framework of the novelty-singing style of the Rhythm Boys, he bent notes and added off-tune phrasing, an approach that was rooted in jazz. He had already been introduced to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith before his first appearance on record. Crosby and Armstrong remained warm acquaintances for decades, occasionally singing together in later years, e.g. "Now You Has Jazz" in the film High Society (1956). During the early portion of his solo career (about 1931–1934), Crosby's emotional, often pleading style of crooning was popular. But Jack Kapp, manager of Brunswick and later Decca, talked him into dropping many of his jazzier mannerisms in favor of a clear vocal style. Crosby credited Kapp for choosing hit songs, working with many other musicians, and most important, diversifying his repertoire into several styles and genres. Kapp helped Crosby have number one hits in Christmas music, Hawaiian music, and country music, and top-thirty hits in Irish music, French music, rhythm and blues, and ballads. Crosby elaborated on an idea of Al Jolson's: phrasing, or the art of making a song's lyric ring true. "I used to tell Sinatra over and over," said Tommy Dorsey, "there's only one singer you ought to listen to and his name is Crosby. All that matters to him is the words, and that's the only thing that ought to for you, too." Critic Henry Pleasants wrote: Career achievements Crosby's was among the most popular and successful musical acts of the 20th century. Billboard magazine used different methodologies during his career. But his chart success remains impressive: 396 chart singles, including roughly 41 number 1 hits. Crosby had separate charting singles every year between 1931 and 1954; the annual re-release of "White Christmas" extended that streak to 1957. He had 24 separate popular singles in 1939 alone. Statistician Joel Whitburn at Billboard determined that Crosby was America's most successful recording act of the 1930s and again in the 1940s. In 1960 Crosby was honored as "First Citzen of Record Industry" based on having sold 200 million discs. According to different sources he sold 300 million or even 500 million records worldwide. The single "White Christmas" sold over 50 million copies according to Guinness World Records. For fifteen years (1934, 1937, 1940, 1943–1954), Crosby was among the top ten acts in box-office sales, and for five of those years (1944–1948) he topped the world. He sang four Academy Award winning songs – "Sweet Leilani" (1937), "White Christmas" (1942), "Swinging on a Star" (1944), "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" (1951) – and won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Going My Way (1944). A survey in 2000 found that with 1,077,900,000 movie tickets sold, Crosby was the third most popular actor of all time, behind Clark Gable (1,168,300,000) and John Wayne (1,114,000,000). The International Motion Picture Almanac lists him in a tie for second-most years at number one on the All Time Number One Stars List with Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, and Burt Reynolds. His most popular film, White Christmas, grossed $30 million in 1954 ($ million in current value). He received 23 gold and platinum records, according to the book Million Selling Records. The Recording Industry Association of America did not institute its gold record certification program until 1958 when Crosby's record sales were low. Before 1958, gold records were awarded by record companies. Crosby charted 23 Billboard hits from 47 recorded songs with the Andrews Sisters, whose Decca record sales were second only to Crosby's throughout the 1940s. They were his most frequent collaborators on disc from 1939 to 1952, a partnership that produced four million-selling singles: "Pistol Packin' Mama", "Jingle Bells", "Don't Fence Me In", and "South America, Take it Away". They made one film appearance together in Road to Rio singing "You Don't Have to Know the Language", and sang together on the radio throughout the 1940s and 1950s. They appeared as guests on each other's shows and on Armed Forces Radio Service during and after World War II. The quartet's Top-10 Billboard hits from 1943 to 1945 include "The Vict'ry Polka", "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin (When the Yanks Go Marching In)", and "Is You Is or Is You Ain't (Ma' Baby?)" and helped morale of the American public. In 1962, Crosby was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He has been inducted into the halls of fame for both radio and popular music. In 2007, he was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame and in 2008 the Western Music Hall of Fame. Popularity and influence Crosby's popularity around the world was such that in an interview with Dorothy Masuka, the best-selling African recording artist in Africa, she stated "Only Bing Crosby the famous American crooner sold more records than me in Africa." His great popularity throughout Africa led other African singers to emulate him, including Dolly Rathebe, Masuka, and Míriam Makeba, known locally as "The Bing Crosby of Africa" though she is female. Presenter Mike Douglas commented in a 1975 interview, "During my days in the Navy in World War II, I remember walking the streets of Calcutta, India, on the coast; it was a lonely night, so far from my home and from my new wife, Gen. I needed something to lift my spirits. As I passed a Hindu sitting on the corner of a street, I heard something surprisingly familiar. I came back to see the man playing one of those old Vitrolas, like those of RCA with the horn speaker. The man was listening to Bing Crosby sing, "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive". I stopped and smiled in grateful acknowledgment. The Hindu nodded and smiled back. The whole world knew and loved Bing Crosby." His popularity in India led many Hindu singers to imitate and emulate him, notably Kishore Kumar, considered the "Bing Crosby of India". Entrepreneurship According to Shoshana Klebanoff, Crosby became one of the richest men in the history of show business. He had investments in real estate, mines, oil wells, cattle ranches, race horses, music publishing, baseball teams, and television. He made a fortune from the Minute Maid Orange Juice Corporation, in which he was a principal stockholder. Role in early tape recording During the Golden Age of Radio, performers had to create their shows live, sometimes even redoing the program a second time for the West Coast time zone. Crosby had to do two live radio shows on the same day, three hours apart, for the East and West Coasts. Crosby's radio career took a significant turn in 1945, when he clashed with NBC over his insistence that he be allowed to pre-record his radio shows. (The live production of radio shows was also reinforced by the musicians' union and ASCAP, which wanted to ensure continued work for their members.) In On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, John Dunning wrote about German engineers having developed a tape recorder with a near-professional broadcast quality standard: Crosby's insistence eventually factored into the further development of magnetic tape sound recording and the radio industry's widespread adoption of it. He used his clout, both professionally and financially , for innovations in audio. But NBC and CBS refused to broadcast prerecorded radio programs. Crosby left the network and remained off the air for seven months, creating a legal battle with his sponsor Kraft that was settled out of court. He returned to broadcasting for the last 13 weeks of the 1945–1946 season. The Mutual Network, on the other hand, pre-recorded some of its programs as early as 1938 for The Shadow with Orson Welles. ABC was formed from the sale of the NBC Blue Network in 1943 after a federal antitrust suit and was willing to join Mutual in breaking the tradition. ABC offered Crosby $30,000 per week to produce a recorded show every Wednesday that would be sponsored by Philco. He would get an additional $40,000 from 400 independent stations for the rights to broadcast the 30-minute show, which was sent to them every Monday on three 16-inch (40-cm) lacquer discs that played ten minutes per side at 33 rpm. Murdo MacKenzie of Bing Crosby Enterprises had seen a demonstration of the German Magnetophon in June 1947—the same device that Jack Mullin had brought back from Radio Frankfurt with 50 reels of tape, at the end of the war. It was one of the magnetic tape recorders that BASF and AEG had built in Germany starting in 1935. The 6.5mm ferric-oxide-coated tape could record 20 minutes per reel of high-quality sound. Alexander M. Poniatoff ordered Ampex, which he founded in 1944, to manufacture an improved version of the Magnetophone. Crosby hired Mullin to start recording his Philco Radio Time show on his German-made machine in August 1947 using the same 50 reels of I.G. Farben magnetic tape that Mullin had found at a radio station at Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt while working for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The advantage was editing. As Crosby wrote in his autobiography: Mullin's 1976 memoir of these early days of experimental recording agrees with Crosby's account: Crosby invested US $50,000 in Ampex with the intent to produce more machines. In 1948, the second season of Philco shows was recorded with the Ampex Model 200A and Scotch 111 tape from 3M. Mullin explained how one new broadcasting technique was invented on the Crosby show with these machines: Crosby started the tape recorder revolution in America. In his 1950 film Mr. Music, he is seen singing into an Ampex tape recorder that reproduced his voice better than anything else. Also quick to adopt tape recording was his friend Bob Hope. He gave one of the first Ampex Model 300 recorders to his friend, guitarist Les Paul, which led to Paul's invention of multitrack recording. His organization, the Crosby Research Foundation, held tape recording patents and developed equipment and recording techniques such as the laugh track that are still in use today. With Frank Sinatra, Crosby was one of the principal backers for the United Western Recorders studio complex in Los Angeles. Videotape development Mullin continued to work for Crosby to develop a videotape recorder (VTR). Television production was mostly live television in its early years, but Crosby wanted the same ability to record that he had achieved in radio. The Fireside Theater (1950) sponsored by Procter & Gamble, was his first television production. Mullin had not yet succeeded with videotape, so Crosby filmed the series of 26-minute shows at the Hal Roach Studios, and the "telefilms" were syndicated to individual television stations. Crosby continued to finance the development of videotape. Bing Crosby Enterprises gave the world's first demonstration of videotape recording in Los Angeles on November 11, 1951. Developed by John T. Mullin and Wayne R. Johnson since 1950, the device aired what were described as "blurred and indistinct" images, using a modified Ampex 200 tape recorder and standard quarter-inch (6.3 mm) audio tape moving at 360 inches (9.1m) per second. Television station ownership A Crosby-led group purchased station KCOP-TV, in Los Angeles, California, in 1954. NAFI Corporation and Crosby purchased television station KPTV in Portland, Oregon, for $4 million on September 1, 1959. In 1960, NAFI purchased KCOP from Crosby's group. In the early 1950s, Crosby helped establish the CBS television affiliate in his hometown of Spokane, Washington. He partnered with Ed Craney, who owned the CBS radio affiliate KXLY (AM) and built a television studio west of Crosby's alma mater, Gonzaga University. After it began broadcasting, the station was sold within a year to Northern Pacific Radio and Television Corporation. Thoroughbred horse racing Crosby was a fan of thoroughbred horse racing and bought his first racehorse in 1935. In 1937, he became a founding partner of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club and a member of its board of directors. Operating from the Del Mar Racetrack at Del Mar, California, the group included millionaire businessman Charles S. Howard, who owned a successful racing stable that included Seabiscuit. Charles' son, Lindsay C. Howard, became one of Crosby's closest friends; Crosby named his son Lindsay after him, and would purchase his 40-room Hillsborough, California estate from Lindsay in 1965. Crosby and Lindsay Howard formed Binglin Stable to race and breed thoroughbred horses at a ranch in Moorpark in Ventura County, California. They also established the Binglin Stock Farm in Argentina, where they raced horses at Hipódromo de Palermo in Palermo, Buenos Aires. A number of Argentine-bred horses were purchased and shipped to race in the United States. On August 12, 1938, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club hosted a $25,000 winner-take-all match race won by Charles S. Howard's Seabiscuit over Binglin's horse Ligaroti. In 1943, Binglin's horse Don Bingo won the Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York. The Binglin Stable partnership came to an end in 1953 as a result of a liquidation of assets by Crosby, who needed to raise enough funds to pay the hefty federal and state inheritance taxes on his deceased wife's estate. The Bing Crosby Breeders' Cup Handicap at Del Mar Racetrack is named in his honor. Sports Crosby had a keen interest in sports. In the 1930s, his friend and former college classmate, Gonzaga head coach, Mike Pecarovich, appointed Crosby as an assistant football coach. From 1946 until his death, he owned a 25% share of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Although he was passionate about the team, he was too nervous to watch the deciding Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, choosing to go to Paris with Kathryn and listen to its radio broadcast. Crosby had arranged for Ampex, another of his financial investments, to record the NBC telecast on kinescope. The game was one of the most famous in baseball history, capped off by Bill Mazeroski's walk-off home run that won the game for Pittsburgh. He apparently viewed the complete film just once, and then stored it in his wine cellar, where it remained undisturbed until it was discovered in December 2009. The restored broadcast was shown on MLB Network in December 2010. Crosby was also an avid golfer, and in 1978, he and Bob Hope were voted the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship. He is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, having been inducted in 1978. In 1937, Crosby hosted the first 'Crosby Clambake' as it was popularly known, at Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club in Rancho Santa Fe, California, the event's location prior to World War II. Sam Snead won the first tournament, in which the first place check was for $500. After the war, the event resumed play in 1947 on golf courses in Pebble Beach, where it has been played ever since. Now the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, it has been a leading event in the world of professional golf. In 1950, he became the third person to win the William D. Richardson award, which is given to a non-professional golfer "who has consistently made an outstanding contribution to golf". Crosby first took up golf at age 12 as a caddy, dropped it, then started again in 1930 with some fellow cast members in Hollywood during the filming of The King of Jazz. Crosby was accomplished at the sport, with a two handicap. He competed in both the British and U.S. Amateur championships, was a five-time club champion at Lakeside Golf Club in Hollywood, and once made a hole-in-one on the 16th hole at Cypress Point. Crosby also was a keen fisherman especially in his younger days, but it was a pastime that he enjoyed throughout his life. In the summer of 1966, he spent a week as the guest of Lord Egremont, staying in Cockermouth and fishing on the River Derwent. His trip was filmed for The American Sportsman on ABC, although all did not go well at first as the salmon were not running. He did make up for it at the end of the week by catching a number of sea trout. Personal life Crosby was married twice. His first wife was actress and nightclub singer Dixie Lee, to whom he was married from 1930 until her death from ovarian cancer in 1952. They had four sons: Gary, twins Dennis and Phillip, and Lindsay. Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) is based on Lee's life. The Crosby family lived at 10500 Camarillo Street in North Hollywood for more than five years. After his wife died, Crosby had relationships with model Pat Sheehan (who married his son Dennis in 1958) and actresses Inger Stevens and Grace Kelly before marrying actress Kathryn Grant, who converted to Catholicism, in 1957. They had three children: Harry Lillis III (who played Bill in Friday the 13th), Mary (best known for portraying Kristin Shepard on TV's Dallas), and Nathaniel (the 1981 U.S. Amateur champion in golf). Particularly during the late 1930s and through the 1940s Bing Crosby's domestic life was tragically dominated by his wife's excessive drinking. His efforts to cure her with the help of specialists failed. Tired of Dixie's drinking, he even asked her for a divorce in January 1941. During the 1940s, Crosby consistently had difficulties trying to stay away from home while also trying to be there as much as possible for his children. Crosby had one confirmed extramarital affair between 1945 and the late 1940s, while married to his first wife Dixie. Actress Patricia Neal (who herself at the time was having an affair with the married Gary Cooper) wrote in her 1988 autobiography As I Am about a trip on a cruise ship to England with actress Joan Caulfield in 1948: In the most recent Crosby biography, Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star; the War Years, 1940-1946, Gary Giddins published excerpts from an original diary of two sisters, Violet and Mary Barsa, who, as young women, used to stalk Crosby in New York City during December 1945 and January 1946 and who detailed their observations in the diary. The document reveals that during that time Crosby was indeed taking Joan Caulfield out to dinner, visited theaters and opera houses with her and that Caulfield and a person in her company entered the Waldorf Hotel where Crosby was staying. However, the document also clearly indicates that at their meetings a third person, on most instances Caulfield's mother, was present. In 1954, Joan Caulfield admitted to a relationship with a "top film star" who was a married man with children who at the end chose his wife and children over her. Joan's sister Betty Caulfield confirmed the romantic relationship between Joan and Bing Crosby. Despite being a Catholic, Crosby was seriously considering divorce in order to marry Caulfield. Either in December 1945 or January 1946 Crosby approached Cardinal Francis Spellman with his difficulties with dealing with his wife's alcoholism and his love for Caulfield and his plan to file for divorce. According to Betty Caulfield, Spellman told Crosby: "Bing, you are Father O'Malley and under no circumstances can Father O'Malley get a divorce." Around the same time, Crosby talked to his mother about his intentions and she protested. Ultimately, Crosby chose to end the relationship and to stay with his wife. Bing and Dixie reconciled and he continued trying to help her overcome her alcohol issues. Crosby reportedly had an alcohol problem between the late 1920s and early 1930s, but he got a handle on his drinking in 1931. According to biographer Giddins, during an argument about Gary Crosby's drinking, Crosby told his son in anger that smoking marijuana would be better than drinking so much alcohol, adding "It killed your mother". Crosby told Barbara Walters in a 1977 televised interview that he thought marijuana should be legalized. In December 1999 the New York Post published an article by Bill Hoffmann and Murray Weiss called Bing Crosby's Single Life which claimed that "recently published" FBI files on Crosby revealed that he had ties with figures in the Mafia since his youth. This information gets repeatedly reproduced in news articles until today. However, Crosby's FBI files actually got already published in 1992 and looking into these there is no indication that Bing Crosby had ties to the Mafia except for one major but accidental encounter in Chicago in 1929 which is not mentioned in the files but is told by Crosby himself in his as-told-to autobiography Call Me Lucky. In the over 280 pages of Crosby's FBI files all but one reference to organized crime or gambling dens are content of a few of the many threats that Bing Crosby received throughout his life. The comments made by FBI investigators in the memos discredited the claims made in the letters. In all the files there is only one single reference to a person associated with the Mafia. In a memorandum dated January 16, 1959 it is said: "The Salt Lake City Office has developed information indicating that Moe Dalitz received an invitation to join a deer hunting party at Bing Crosby's Elko, Nevada, ranch, together with the crooner, his Las Vegas dentist and several business associates." However, Crosby had already sold his Elko ranch a year earlier, in 1958, and it is doubtful how much he was really involved in that meeting. Crosby and his family lived in the San Francisco area for many years. In 1963, he and his wife Kathryn moved with their 3 young children from Los Angeles to a $175,000 10-bedroom Tudor estate in Hillsborough because they did not want to raise their children in Hollywood, according to son Nathaniel. This house went up for sale by its current owners in 2021 for $13.75 million. In 1965, the Crosbys moved to a larger, 40-room French-chateau style house on nearby Jackling Drive, where Kathryn Crosby continued to reside after Bing's death. This house served as a setting for some of the family's Minute Maid orange juice television commercials. After Crosby's death, his eldest son, Gary, wrote a highly critical memoir, Going My Own Way (1983), depicting his father as cruel, cold, remote, and physically and psychologically abusive. However, Bing Crosby's daughter Mary Crosby said in an interview that Gary Crosby told her the publishers had encouraged him to exaggerate his claims and he had written the book just for money. Crosby's younger son Phillip vociferously disputed his brother Gary's claims about their father. Around the time Gary published his claims, Phillip stated to the press that "Gary is a whining, bitching crybaby, walking around with a two-by-four on his shoulder and just daring people to nudge it off." Nevertheless, Phillip did not deny that Crosby believed in corporal punishment. In an interview with People magazine, Phillip stated that "we never got an extra whack or a cuff we didn't deserve". During an interview in 1999 by the Globe, Phillip said: However, Dennis and Lindsay Crosby confirmed that Bing sometimes subjected his sons to harsh physical discipline and verbal put-downs. Regarding the writing of Gary's memoir, Lindsay said, "I'm glad [Gary] did it. I hope it clears up a lot of the old lies and rumors." Unlike Gary, though, Lindsay stated that he preferred to remember "all the good things I did with my dad and forget the times that were rough". When the book was published, Dennis distanced himself by calling it "Gary's business" but did not publicly deny its claims. Bing's younger brother, singer and jazz bandleader Bob Crosby, recalled at the time of Gary's revelations that Bing was a "disciplinarian", as their mother and father had been. He added, "We were brought up that way." In an interview for the same article, Gary clarified that Bing "was like a lot of fathers of that time. He was not out to be vicious, to beat children for his kicks." Crosby's will established a blind trust in which none of the sons received an inheritance until they reached the age of 65. Lindsay Crosby died in 1989 at age 51, and Dennis Crosby died in 1991 at age 56, both by suicide from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Gary Crosby died of lung cancer in 1995 at age 62, and Phillip Crosby died of a heart attack in 2004 at age 69. Widow Kathryn Crosby dabbled in local theater productions intermittently and appeared in television tributes to her late husband. Nathaniel Crosby, Crosby's younger son from his second marriage, is a former high-level golfer who won the U.S. Amateur in 1981 at age 19, becoming the youngest winner in the history of that event at the time. Harry Crosby is an investment banker who occasionally makes singing appearances. Denise Crosby, Dennis Crosby's daughter, is also an actress and is known for her role as Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation and for the recurring role of the Romulan Sela after her withdrawal from the series as a regular cast member. She also appeared in the film adaptation of Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary. In 2006, Crosby's niece through his sister Mary Rose, Carolyn Schneider, published the laudatory book Me and Uncle Bing. There have been disputes between Crosby's two families beginning in the late 1990s. When Dixie died in 1952, her will provided that her share of the community property be distributed in trust to her sons. After Crosby's death in 1977, he left the residue of his estate to a marital trust for the benefit of his widow, Kathryn, and HLC Properties, Ltd., was formed for the purpose of managing his interests, including his right of publicity. In 1996, Dixie's trust sued HLC and Kathryn for declaratory relief as to the trust's entitlement to interest, dividends, royalties, and other income derived from the community property of Crosby and Dixie. In 1999, the parties settled for approximately $1.5 million. Relying on a retroactive amendment to the California Civil Code, Dixie's trust brought suit again, in 2010, alleging that Crosby's right of publicity was community property, and that Dixie's trust was entitled to a share of the revenue it produced. The trial court granted Dixie's trust's claim. The California Court of Appeal reversed, however, holding that the 1999 settlement barred the claim. In light of the court's ruling, it was unnecessary for the court to decide whether a right of publicity can be characterized as community property under California law. Illness and death Following his recovery from a life-threatening fungal infection of his right lung in January 1974, Crosby emerged from semi-retirement to start a new spate of albums and concerts. In March 1977, after videotaping a concert at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena for CBS to commemorate his 50th anniversary in show business, and with Bob Hope looking on, Crosby fell off the stage into an orchestra pit, rupturing a disc in his back requiring a month in the hospital. His first performance after the accident was his last American concert, on August 16, 1977, the day Elvis Presley died, at the Concord Pavilion in Concord, California. When the electric power failed during his performance, he continued singing without amplification. In September, Crosby, his family and singer Rosemary Clooney began a concert tour of Britain that included two weeks at the London Palladium. While in the UK, Crosby recorded his final album, Seasons, and his final TV Christmas special with guest David Bowie on September 11 (which aired a little over a month after Crosby's death). His last concert was in the Brighton Centre on October 10, four days before his death, with British entertainer Gracie Fields in attendance. The following day he made his final appearance in a recording studio and sang eight songs at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios for a radio program, which also included an interview with Alan Dell. Accompanied by the Gordon Rose Orchestra, Crosby's last recorded performance was of the song "Once in a While". Later that afternoon, he met with Chris Harding to take photographs for the Seasons album jacket. On October 13, 1977, Crosby flew alone to Spain to play golf and hunt partridge. On October 14, at the La Moraleja Golf Course near Madrid, Crosby played 18 holes of golf. His partner was World Cup champion Manuel Piñero; their opponents were club president César de Zulueta and Valentín Barrios. According to Barrios, Crosby was in good spirits throughout the day, and was photographed several times during the round. At the ninth hole, construction workers building a house nearby recognized him, and when asked for a song, Crosby sang "Strangers in the Night". Crosby, who had a 13 handicap, won with his partner by one stroke. At about 6:30 pm, as Crosby and his party headed back to the clubhouse, Crosby said, "That was a great game of golf, fellas. Let's go have a Coca-Cola." These were his last words. About from the clubhouse entrance, Crosby collapsed and died instantly from a massive heart attack. At the clubhouse and later in the ambulance, house physician Dr. Laiseca tried to revive him, but was unsuccessful. At Reina Victoria Hospital he was administered the last rites of the Catholic Church and was pronounced dead. He was 74 years old. On October 18, 1977, following a private funeral Mass at St. Paul's Catholic Church in Westwood, Crosby was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. (His tombstone incorrectly identified his year of birth as 1904 instead of 1903.) A plaque was placed at the golf course in his memory. Legacy He is a member of the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in the radio division. The family created an official website on October 14, 2007, the 30th anniversary of Crosby's death. In his autobiography Don't Shoot, It's Only Me! (1990), Bob Hope wrote, "Dear old Bing, as we called him, the Economy-sized Sinatra. And what a voice. God I miss that voice. I can't even turn on the radio around Christmas time without crying anymore." Calypso musician Roaring Lion wrote a tribute song in 1939 titled "Bing Crosby", in which he wrote: "Bing has a way of singing with his very heart and soul / Which captivates the world / His millions of listeners never fail to rejoice / At his golden voice...." Bing Crosby Stadium in Front Royal, Virginia, was named after Crosby in honor of his fundraising and cash contributions for its construction from 1948 to 1950. In 2006, the former Metropolitan Theater of Performing Arts ('The Met') in Spokane, Washington, was renamed to The Bing Crosby Theater. Compositions Crosby wrote or co-wrote lyrics to 22 songs. His composition "At Your Command" was number 1 for three weeks on the U.S. pop singles chart beginning on August 8, 1931. "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You" was his most successful composition, recorded by Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, and Mildred Bailey, among others. Songs co-written by Crosby include: "That's Grandma" (1927), with Harry Barris and James Cavanaugh "From Monday On" (1928), with Harry Barris and recorded with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke on cornet, number 14 on US pop singles charts "What Price Lyrics?" (1928), with Harry Barris and Matty Malneck "Ev'rything's Agreed Upon" (1930), with Harry Barris "At Your Command" (1931), with Harry Barris and Harry Tobias, US, number 1 (3 weeks) "Believe Me" (1931), with James Cavanaugh and Frank Weldon "Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)" (1931), with Roy Turk and Fred Ahlert, US, no. 4; US, 1940 re-recording, no. 27 "You Taught Me How to Love" (1931), with H. C. LeBlang and Don Herman "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You" (1932), with Victor Young and Ned Washington, US, no. 5 "My Woman" (1932), with Irving Wallman and Max Wartell "Cutesie Pie" (1932), with Red Standex and Chummy MacGregor "I Was So Alone, Suddenly You Were There (1932), with Leigh Harline, Jack Stern and George Hamilton "Love Me Tonight" (1932), with Victor Young and Ned Washington, US, no. 4 "Waltzing in a Dream" (1932), with Victor Young and Ned Washington, US, no.6 "You're Just a Beautiful Melody of Love" (1932), lyrics by Bing Crosby, music by Babe Goldberg "Where Are You, Girl of My Dreams?" (1932), written by Bing Crosby, Irving Bibo, and Paul McVey, featured in the 1932 Universal film The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood "I Would If I Could But I Can't" (1933), with Mitchell Parish and Alan Grey "Where the Turf Meets the Surf" (1941) with Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco. "Tenderfoot" (1953) with Bob Bowen and Perry Botkin, originally issued using the pseudonym of "Bill Brill" for Bing Crosby. "Domenica" (1961) with Pietro Garinei / Gorni Kramer / Sandro Giovannini "That's What Life is All About" (1975), with Ken Barnes, Peter Dacre, and Les Reed, US, AC chart, no. 35; UK, no. 41 "Sail Away from Norway" (1977) – Crosby wrote lyrics to go with a traditional song. Grammy Hall of Fame Four performances by Bing Crosby have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance". Filmography Discography Television appearances Radio 15 Minutes with Bing Crosby (1931, CBS), Unsponsored. 6 nights a week, 15 minutes. The Cremo Singer (1931–1932, CBS), 6 nights a week, 15 minutes. 15 Minutes with Bing Crosby (1932, CBS), initially 3 nights a week, then twice a week, 15 minutes. Chesterfield Cigarettes Presents Music that Satisfies (1933, CBS), broadcast two nights a week, 15 minutes. Bing Crosby Entertains (1933–1935, CBS), weekly, 30 minutes. Kraft Music Hall (1935–1946, NBC), Thursday nights, 60 minutes until January 1943, then 30 minutes. Bing Crosby on Armed Forces Radio in World War II (1941–1945; World War II). Philco Radio Time (1946–1949, ABC), 30 minutes weekly. This Is Bing Crosby (The Minute Maid Show) (1948–1950, CBS), 15 minutes each weekday morning; Bing as disc jockey. The Bing Crosby – Chesterfield Show (1949–1952, CBS), 30 minutes weekly. The Bing Crosby Show for General Electric (1952–1954, CBS), 30 minutes weekly. The Bing Crosby Show (1954–1956) (CBS), 15 minutes, 5 nights a week. A Christmas Sing with Bing (1955–1962), (CBS, VOA and AFRS), 1 hour each year, sponsored by the Insurance Company of North America. The Ford Road Show Featuring Bing Crosby (1957–1958, CBS), 5 minutes, 5 days a week. The Bing Crosby – Rosemary Clooney Show (1960–1962, CBS), 20 minutes, 5 mornings a week, with Rosemary Clooney. RIAA certification Awards and nominations References Citations Sources Fisher, J. (2012). "Bing Crosby: Through the years, volumes one-nine (1954–56)." ARSC Journal, 43(1), 127–130. Crosby interviewed 1971 July 8. Klebanoff, Shoshana. "Crosby, Bing" American National Biography (2000) online Osterholm, J. Roger. Bing Crosby: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press, 1994. Prigozy, R. & Raubicheck, W., ed. Going My Way: Bing Crosby and American Culture. The Boydell Press, 2007. Primary sources Crosby, Bing. Call Me Lucky (1953) Crosby, Bing. Bing: The Authorized Biography (1975), written with Charles Thompson. Further reading Bookbinder, Robert. The Films of Bing Crosby (Lyle Stuart, 1977) Giddins, Gary. Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams-The Early Years 1903-1940 (Back Bay Books, 2009) excerpt. Giddins, Gary. Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star: The War Years, 1940-1946 (Little, Brown, 2018) excerpt. Gilbert, Roger. "Beloved and Notorious: A Theory of American Stardom, with Special Reference to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra." Southwest Review 95.1/2 (2010): 167–184. online Morgereth, Timothy A. Bing Crosby: a discography, radio program list, and filmography (McFarland & Co Inc Pub, 1987). Pitts, Michael, et al. The Rise of the Crooners: Gene Austin, Russ Columbo, Bing Crosby, Nick Lucas, Johnny Marvin and Rudy Vallee (Scarecrow Press, 2001). Prigozy, Ruth, and Walter Raubicheck, eds. Going My Way: Bing Crosby and American Culture (University of Rochester Press, 2007), essays by scholars. Includes a chapter on Crosby's involvement in the making of "White Christmas" and an interview with record producer Ken Barnes. Schofield, Mary Anne. "Marketing Iron Pigs, Patriotism, and Peace: Bing Crosby and World War II—A Discourse." Journal of Popular Culture 40.5 (2007): 867–881. Smith, Anthony B. "Entertaining Catholics: Bing Crosby, Religion and Cultural Pluralism in 1940s America." American Catholic Studies (2003) 11#4: 1-19 online. Teachout, Terry. "The Swinging Star: Why is Bing Crosby forgotten?' Commentary (Nov 2018), Vol. 146 Issue 4, pp 51–54. Includes an interview External links 1903 births 1977 deaths 20th-century American male actors 20th-century American singers American bass-baritones American crooners American jazz singers American male comedy actors American male film actors American male jazz musicians American male radio actors American male singers American people of English descent American people of Irish descent American people of Scottish descent American racehorse owners and breeders American radio personalities Best Actor Academy Award winners Brunswick Records artists Burials at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City California Republicans Capitol Records artists Catholics from Washington (state) Cecil B. 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Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and gray. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have often been used to describe opposites such as good and evil, the Dark Ages versus Age of Enlightenment, and night versus day. Since the Middle Ages, black has been the symbolic color of solemnity and authority, and for this reason is still commonly worn by judges and magistrates. Black was one of the first colors used by artists in neolithic cave paintings. It was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as the color of the underworld. In the Roman Empire, it became the color of mourning, and over the centuries it was frequently associated with death, evil, witches, and magic. In the 14th century, it was worn by royalty, clergy, judges and government officials in much of Europe. It became the color worn by English romantic poets, businessmen and statesmen in the 19th century, and a high fashion color in the 20th century. According to surveys in Europe and North America, it is the color most commonly associated with mourning, the end, secrets, magic, force, violence, evil and elegance. Black ink is the most common color used for printing books, newspapers and documents, as it provides the highest contrast with white paper and thus is the easiest color to read. Similarly, black text on a white screen is the most common format used on computer screens. As of September 2019, the darkest material is made by MIT engineers from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes. Etymology The word black comes from Old English blæc ("black, dark", also, "ink"), from Proto-Germanic *blakkaz ("burned"), from Proto-Indo-European *bhleg- ("to burn, gleam, shine, flash"), from base *bhel- ("to shine"), related to Old Saxon blak ("ink"), Old High German blach ("black"), Old Norse blakkr ("dark"), Dutch blaken ("to burn"), and Swedish bläck ("ink"). More distant cognates include Latin flagrare ("to blaze, glow, burn"), and Ancient Greek phlegein ("to burn, scorch"). The Ancient Greeks sometimes used the same word to name different colors, if they had the same intensity. Kuanos could mean both dark blue and black. The Ancient Romans had two words for black: ater was a flat, dull black, while niger was a brilliant, saturated black. Ater has vanished from the vocabulary, but niger was the source of the country name Nigeria, the English word Negro, and the word for "black" in most modern Romance languages (French: noir; Spanish and Portuguese: negro; Italian: nero; Romanian: negru). Old High German also had two words for black: swartz for dull black and blach for a luminous black. These are parallelled in Middle English by the terms swart for dull black and blaek for luminous black. Swart still survives as the word swarthy, while blaek became the modern English black. The former is cognate with the words used for black in most modern Germanic languages aside from English (German: schwarz, Dutch: zwart, Swedish: svart, Danish: sort, Icelandic: svartr). In heraldry, the word used for the black color is sable, named for the black fur of the sable, an animal. Art Prehistoric Black was one of the first colors used in art. The Lascaux Cave in France contains drawings of bulls and other animals drawn by paleolithic artists between 18,000 and 17,000 years ago. They began by using charcoal, and later achieved darker pigments by burning bones or grinding a powder of manganese oxide. Ancient For the ancient Egyptians, black had positive associations; being the color of fertility and the rich black soil flooded by the Nile. It was the color of Anubis, the god of the underworld, who took the form of a black jackal, and offered protection against evil to the dead. To ancient Greeks, black represented the underworld, separated from the living by the river Acheron, whose water ran black. Those who had committed the worst sins were sent to Tartarus, the deepest and darkest level. In the center was the palace of Hades, the king of the underworld, where he was seated upon a black ebony throne. Black was one of the most important colors used by ancient Greek artists. In the 6th century BC, they began making black-figure pottery and later red figure pottery, using a highly original technique. In black-figure pottery, the artist would paint figures with a glossy clay slip on a red clay pot. When the pot was fired, the figures painted with the slip would turn black, against a red background. Later they reversed the process, painting the spaces between the figures with slip. This created magnificent red figures against a glossy black background. In the social hierarchy of ancient Rome, purple was the color reserved for the Emperor; red was the color worn by soldiers (red cloaks for the officers, red tunics for the soldiers); white the color worn by the priests, and black was worn by craftsmen and artisans. The black they wore was not deep and rich; the vegetable dyes used to make black were not solid or lasting, so the blacks often faded to gray or brown. In Latin, the word for black, ater and to darken, atere, were associated with cruelty, brutality and evil. They were the root of the English words "atrocious" and "atrocity". Black was also the Roman color of death and mourning. In the 2nd century BC Roman magistrates began to wear a dark toga, called a toga pulla, to funeral ceremonies. Later, under the Empire, the family of the deceased also wore dark colors for a long period; then, after a banquet to mark the end of mourning, exchanged the black for a white toga. In Roman poetry, death was called the hora nigra, the black hour. The German and Scandinavian peoples worshipped their own goddess of the night, Nótt, who crossed the sky in a chariot drawn by a black horse. They also feared Hel, the goddess of the kingdom of the dead, whose skin was black on one side and red on the other. They also held sacred the raven. They believed that Odin, the king of the Nordic pantheon, had two black ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who served as his agents, traveling the world for him, watching and listening. Postclassical In the early Middle Ages, black was commonly associated with darkness and evil. In Medieval paintings, the devil was usually depicted as having human form, but with wings and black skin or hair. 12th and 13th centuries In fashion, black did not have the prestige of red, the color of the nobility. It was worn by Benedictine monks as a sign of humility and penitence. In the 12th century a famous theological dispute broke out between the Cistercian monks, who wore white, and the Benedictines, who wore black. A Benedictine abbot, Pierre the Venerable, accused the Cistercians of excessive pride in wearing white instead of black. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the founder of the Cistercians responded that black was the color of the devil, hell, "of death and sin," while white represented "purity, innocence and all the virtues". Black symbolized both power and secrecy in the medieval world. The emblem of the Holy Roman Empire of Germany was a black eagle. The black knight in the poetry of the Middle Ages was an enigmatic figure, hiding his identity, usually wrapped in secrecy. Black ink, invented in China, was traditionally used in the Middle Ages for writing, for the simple reason that black was the darkest color and therefore provided the greatest contrast with white paper or parchment, making it the easiest color to read. It became even more important in the 15th century, with the invention of printing. A new kind of ink, printer's ink, was created out of soot, turpentine and walnut oil. The new ink made it possible to spread ideas to a mass audience through printed books, and to popularize art through black and white engravings and prints. Because of its contrast and clarity, black ink on white paper continued to be the standard for printing books, newspapers and documents; and for the same reason black text on a white background is the most common format used on computer screens. 14th and 15th centuries In the early Middle Ages, princes, nobles and the wealthy usually wore bright colors, particularly scarlet cloaks from Italy. Black was rarely part of the wardrobe of a noble family. The one exception was the fur of the sable. This glossy black fur, from an animal of the marten family, was the finest and most expensive fur in Europe. It was imported from Russia and Poland and used to trim the robes and gowns of royalty. In the 14th century, the status of black began to change. First, high-quality black dyes began to arrive on the market, allowing garments of a deep, rich black. Magistrates and government officials began to wear black robes, as a sign of the importance and seriousness of their positions. A third reason was the passage of sumptuary laws in some parts of Europe which prohibited the wearing of costly clothes and certain colors by anyone except members of the nobility. The famous bright scarlet cloaks from Venice and the peacock blue fabrics from Florence were restricted to the nobility. The wealthy bankers and merchants of northern Italy responded by changing to black robes and gowns, made with the most expensive fabrics. The change to the more austere but elegant black was quickly picked up by the kings and nobility. It began in northern Italy, where the Duke of Milan and the Count of Savoy and the rulers of Mantua, Ferrara, Rimini and Urbino began to dress in black. It then spread to France, led by Louis I, Duke of Orleans, younger brother of King Charles VI of France. It moved to England at the end of the reign of King Richard II (1377–1399), where all the court began to wear black. In 1419–20, black became the color of the powerful Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good. It moved to Spain, where it became the color of the Spanish Habsburgs, of Charles V and of his son, Philip II of Spain (1527–1598). European rulers saw it as the color of power, dignity, humility and temperance. By the end of the 16th century, it was the color worn by almost all the monarchs of Europe and their courts. Modern 16th and 17th centuries While black was the color worn by the Catholic rulers of Europe, it was also the emblematic color of the Protestant Reformation in Europe and the Puritans in England and America. John Calvin, Philip Melanchthon and other Protestant theologians denounced the richly colored and decorated interiors of Roman Catholic churches. They saw the color red, worn by the Pope and his Cardinals, as the color of luxury, sin, and human folly. In some northern European cities, mobs attacked churches and cathedrals, smashed the stained glass windows and defaced the statues and decoration. In Protestant doctrine, clothing was required to be sober, simple and discreet. Bright colors were banished and replaced by blacks, browns and grays; women and children were recommended to wear white. In the Protestant Netherlands, Rembrandt used this sober new palette of blacks and browns to create portraits whose faces emerged from the shadows expressing the deepest human emotions. The Catholic painters of the Counter-Reformation, like Rubens, went in the opposite direction; they filled their paintings with bright and rich colors. The new Baroque churches of the Counter-Reformation were usually shining white inside and filled with statues, frescoes, marble, gold and colorful paintings, to appeal to the public. But European Catholics of all classes, like Protestants, eventually adopted a sober wardrobe that was mostly black, brown and gray. In the second part of the 17th century, Europe and America experienced an epidemic of fear of witchcraft. People widely believed that the devil appeared at midnight in a ceremony called a Black Mass or black sabbath, usually in the form of a black animal, often a goat, a dog, a wolf, a bear, a deer or a rooster, accompanied by their familiar spirits, black cats, serpents and other black creatures. This was the origin of the widespread superstition about black cats and other black animals. In medieval Flanders, in a ceremony called Kattenstoet, black cats were thrown from the belfry of the Cloth Hall of Ypres to ward off witchcraft. Witch trials were common in both Europe and America during this period. During the notorious Salem witch trials in New England in 1692–93, one of those on trial was accused of being able turn into a "black thing with a blue cap," and others of having familiars in the form of a black dog, a black cat and a black bird. Nineteen women and men were hanged as witches. 18th and 19th centuries In the 18th century, during the European Age of Enlightenment, black receded as a fashion color. Paris became the fashion capital, and pastels, blues, greens, yellow and white became the colors of the nobility and upper classes. But after the French Revolution, black again became the dominant color. Black was the color of the industrial revolution, largely fueled by coal, and later by oil. Thanks to coal smoke, the buildings of the large cities of Europe and America gradually turned black. By 1846 the industrial area of the West Midlands of England was "commonly called 'the Black Country'”. Charles Dickens and other writers described the dark streets and smoky skies of London, and they were vividly illustrated in the engravings of French artist Gustave Doré. A different kind of black was an important part of the romantic movement in literature. Black was the color of melancholy, the dominant theme of romanticism. The novels of the period were filled with castles, ruins, dungeons, storms, and meetings at midnight. The leading poets of the movement were usually portrayed dressed in black, usually with a white shirt and open collar, and a scarf carelessly over their shoulder, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron helped create the enduring stereotype of the romantic poet. The invention of inexpensive synthetic black dyes and the industrialization of the textile industry meant that high-quality black clothes were available for the first time to the general population. In the 19th century black gradually became the most popular color of business dress of the upper and middle classes in England, the Continent, and America. Black dominated literature and fashion in the 19th century, and played a large role in painting. James McNeill Whistler made the color the subject of his most famous painting, Arrangement in grey and black number one (1871), better known as Whistler's Mother. Some 19th-century French painters had a low opinion of black: "Reject black," Paul Gauguin said, "and that mix of black and white they call gray. Nothing is black, nothing is gray." But Édouard Manet used blacks for their strength and dramatic effect. Manet's portrait of painter Berthe Morisot was a study in black which perfectly captured her spirit of independence. The black gave the painting power and immediacy; he even changed her eyes, which were green, to black to strengthen the effect. Henri Matisse quoted the French impressionist Pissarro telling him, "Manet is stronger than us all – he made light with black." Pierre-Auguste Renoir used luminous blacks, especially in his portraits. When someone told him that black was not a color, Renoir replied: "What makes you think that? Black is the queen of colors. I always detested Prussian blue. I tried to replace black with a mixture of red and blue, I tried using cobalt blue or ultramarine, but I always came back to ivory black." Vincent van Gogh used black lines to outline many of the objects in his paintings, such as the bed in the famous painting of his bedroom. making them stand apart. His painting of black crows over a cornfield, painted shortly before he died, was particularly agitated and haunting. In the late 19th century, black also became the color of anarchism. (See the section political movements.) 20th and 21st centuries In the 20th century, black was the color of Italian and German fascism. (See the section political movements.) In art, black regained some of the territory that it had lost during the 19th century. The Russian painter Kasimir Malevich, a member of the Suprematist movement, created the Black Square in 1915, is widely considered the first purely abstract painting. He wrote, "The painted work is no longer simply the imitation of reality, but is this very reality ... It is not a demonstration of ability, but the materialization of an idea." Black was also appreciated by Henri Matisse. "When I didn't know what color to put down, I put down black," he said in 1945. "Black is a force: I used black as ballast to simplify the construction ... Since the impressionists it seems to have made continuous progress, taking a more and more important part in color orchestration, comparable to that of the double bass as a solo instrument." In the 1950s, black came to be a symbol of individuality and intellectual and social rebellion, the color of those who didn't accept established norms and values. In Paris, it was worn by Left-Bank intellectuals and performers such as Juliette Gréco, and by some members of the Beat Movement in New York and San Francisco. Black leather jackets were worn by motorcycle gangs such as the Hells Angels and street gangs on the fringes of society in the United States. Black as a color of rebellion was celebrated in such films as The Wild One, with Marlon Brando. By the end of the 20th century, black was the emblematic color of the punk subculture punk fashion, and the goth subculture. Goth fashion, which emerged in England in the 1980s, was inspired by Victorian era mourning dress. In men's fashion, black gradually ceded its dominance to navy blue, particularly in business suits. Black evening dress and formal dress in general were worn less and less. In 1960, John F. Kennedy was the last American President to be inaugurated wearing formal dress; President Lyndon Johnson and all his successors were inaugurated wearing business suits. Women's fashion was revolutionized and simplified in 1926 by the French designer Coco Chanel, who published a drawing of a simple black dress in Vogue magazine. She famously said, "A woman needs just three things; a black dress, a black sweater, and, on her arm, a man she loves." French designer Jean Patou also followed suit by creating a black collection in 1929. Other designers contributed to the trend of the little black dress. The Italian designer Gianni Versace said, "Black is the quintessence of simplicity and elegance," and French designer Yves Saint Laurent said, "black is the liaison which connects art and fashion. One of the most famous black dresses of the century was designed by Hubert de Givenchy and was worn by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's. The American civil rights movement in the 1950s was a struggle for the political equality of African Americans. It developed into the Black Power movement in the late 1960s and 1970s, and popularized the slogan "Black is Beautiful". Science Physics In the visible spectrum, black is the absorption of all colors. Black can be defined as the visual impression experienced when no visible light reaches the eye. Pigments or dyes that absorb light rather than reflect it back to the eye "look black". A black pigment can, however, result from a combination of several pigments that collectively absorb all colors. If appropriate proportions of three primary pigments are mixed, the result reflects so little light as to be called "black". This provides two superficially opposite but actually complementary descriptions of black. Black is the absorption of all colors of light, or an exhaustive combination of multiple colors of pigment. In physics, a black body is a perfect absorber of light, but, by a thermodynamic rule, it is also the best emitter. Thus, the best radiative cooling, out of sunlight, is by using black paint, though it is important that it be black (a nearly perfect absorber) in the infrared as well. In elementary science, far ultraviolet light is called "black light" because, while itself unseen, it causes many minerals and other substances to fluoresce. Absorption of light is contrasted by transmission, reflection and diffusion, where the light is only redirected, causing objects to appear transparent, reflective or white respectively. A material is said to be black if most incoming light is absorbed equally in the material. Light (electromagnetic radiation in the visible spectrum) interacts with the atoms and molecules, which causes the energy of the light to be converted into other forms of energy, usually heat. This means that black surfaces can act as thermal collectors, absorbing light and generating heat (see Solar thermal collector). As of September 2019, the darkest material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes. The material was grown by MIT engineers and was reported to have a 99.995% absorption rate of any incoming light. This surpasses any former darkest materials including Vantablack, which has a peak absorption rate of 99.965% in the visible spectrum. Chemistry Pigments The earliest pigments used by Neolithic man were charcoal, red ocher and yellow ocher. The black lines of cave art were drawn with the tips of burnt torches made of a wood with resin. Different charcoal pigments were made by burning different woods and animal products, each of which produced a different tone. The charcoal would be ground and then mixed with animal fat to make the pigment. Vine black was produced in Roman times by burning the cut branches of grapevines. It could also be produced by burning the remains of the crushed grapes, which were collected and dried in an oven. According to the historian Vitruvius, the deepness and richness of the black produced corresponded to the quality of the wine. The finest wines produced a black with a bluish tinge the color of indigo. The 15th-century painter Cennino Cennini described how this pigment was made during the Renaissance in his famous handbook for artists: "...there is a black which is made from the tendrils of vines. And these tendrils need to be burned. And when they have been burned, throw some water onto them and put them out and then mull them in the same way as the other black. And this is a lean and black pigment and is one of the perfect pigments that we use." Cennini also noted that "There is another black which is made from burnt almond shells or peaches and this is a perfect, fine black." Similar fine blacks were made by burning the pits of the peach, cherry or apricot. The powdered charcoal was then mixed with gum arabic or the yellow of an egg to make a paint. Different civilizations burned different plants to produce their charcoal pigments. The Inuit of Alaska used wood charcoal mixed with the blood of seals to paint masks and wooden objects. The Polynesians burned coconuts to produce their pigment. Lamp black was used as a pigment for painting and frescoes. as a dye for fabrics, and in some societies for making tattoos. The 15th century Florentine painter Cennino Cennini described how it was made during the Renaissance: "... take a lamp full of linseed oil and fill the lamp with the oil and light the lamp. Then place it, lit, under a thoroughly clean pan and make sure that the flame from the lamp is two or three fingers from the bottom of the pan. The smoke that comes off the flame will hit the bottom of the pan and gather, becoming thick. Wait a bit. take the pan and brush this pigment (that is, this smoke) onto paper or into a pot with something. And it is not necessary to mull or grind it because it is a very fine pigment. Re-fill the lamp with the oil and put it under the pan like this several times and, in this way, make as much of it as is necessary." This same pigment was used by Indian artists to paint the Ajanta Caves, and as dye in ancient Japan. Ivory black, also known as bone char, was originally produced by burning ivory and mixing the resulting charcoal powder with oil. The color is still made today, but ordinary animal bones are substituted for ivory. Mars black is a black pigment made of synthetic iron oxides. It is commonly used in water-colors and oil painting. It takes its name from Mars, the god of war and patron of iron. Dyes Good-quality black dyes were not known until the middle of the 14th century. The most common early dyes were made from bark, roots or fruits of different trees; usually walnuts, chestnuts, or certain oak trees. The blacks produced were often more gray, brown or bluish. The cloth had to be dyed several times to darken the color. One solution used by dyers was add to the dye some iron filings, rich in iron oxide, which gave a deeper black. Another was to first dye the fabric dark blue, and then to dye it black. A much richer and deeper black dye was eventually found made from the oak apple or "gall-nut". The gall-nut is a small round tumor which grows on oak and other varieties of trees. They range in size from 2–5 cm, and are caused by chemicals injected by the larva of certain kinds of gall wasp in the family Cynipidae. The dye was very expensive; a great quantity of gall-nuts were needed for a very small amount of dye. The gall-nuts which made the best dye came from Poland, eastern Europe, the near east and North Africa. Beginning in about the 14th century, dye from gall-nuts was used for clothes of the kings and princes of Europe. Another important source of natural black dyes from the 17th century onwards was the logwood tree, or Haematoxylum campechianum, which also produced reddish and bluish dyes. It is a species of flowering tree in the legume family, Fabaceae, that is native to southern Mexico and northern Central America. The modern nation of Belize grew from 17th century English logwood logging camps. Since the mid-19th century, synthetic black dyes have largely replaced natural dyes. One of the important synthetic blacks is Nigrosin, a mixture of synthetic black dyes (CI 50415, Solvent black 5) made by heating a mixture of nitrobenzene, aniline and aniline hydrochloride in the presence of a copper or iron catalyst. Its main industrial uses are as a colorant for lacquers and varnishes and in marker-pen inks. Inks The first known inks were made by the Chinese, and date back to the 23rd century B.C. They used natural plant dyes and minerals such as graphite ground with water and applied with an ink brush. Early Chinese inks similar to the modern inkstick have been found dating to about 256 BC at the end of the Warring States period. They were produced from soot, usually produced by burning pine wood, mixed with animal glue. To make ink from an inkstick, the stick is continuously ground against an inkstone with a small quantity of water to produce a dark liquid which is then applied with an ink brush. Artists and calligraphists could vary the thickness of the resulting ink by reducing or increasing the intensity and time of ink grinding. These inks produced the delicate shading and subtle or dramatic effects of Chinese brush painting. India ink (or "Indian ink" in British English) is a black ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing, especially when inking comic books and comic strips. The technique of making it probably came from China. India ink has been in use in India since at least the 4th century BC, where it was called masi. In India, the black color of the ink came from bone char, tar, pitch and other substances. The ancient Romans had a black writing ink they called atramentum librarium. Its name came from the Latin word atrare, which meant to make something black. (This was the same root as the English word atrocious.) It was usually made, like India ink, from soot, although one variety, called atramentum elephantinum, was made by burning the ivory of elephants. Gall-nuts were also used for making fine black writing ink. Iron gall ink (also known as iron gall nut ink or oak gall ink) was a purple-black or brown-black ink made from iron salts and tannic acids from gall nut. It was the standard writing and drawing ink in Europe, from about the 12th century to the 19th century, and remained in use well into the 20th century. Astronomy A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that marks the point of no return. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits the horizon, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics. Black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings. By absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes, supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses may form. There is general consensus that supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most galaxies. Although a black hole itself is black, infalling material forms an accretion disk, one of the brightest types of object in the universe. Black-body radiation refers to the radiation coming from a body at a given temperature where all incoming energy (light) is converted to heat. Black sky refers to the appearance of space as one emerges from Earth's atmosphere. Why the night sky and space are black – Olbers' paradox The fact that outer space is black is sometimes called Olbers' paradox. In theory, because the universe is full of stars, and is believed to be infinitely large, it would be expected that the light of an infinite number of stars would be enough to brilliantly light the whole universe all the time. However, the background color of outer space is black. This contradiction was first noted in 1823 by German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers, who posed the question of why the night sky was black. The current accepted answer is that, although the universe may be infinitely large, it is not infinitely old. It is thought to be about 13.8 billion years old, so we can only see objects as far away as the distance light can travel in 13.8 billion years. Light from stars farther away has not reached Earth, and cannot contribute to making the sky bright. Furthermore, as the universe is expanding, many stars are moving away from Earth. As they move, the wavelength of their light becomes longer, through the Doppler effect, and shifts toward red, or even becomes invisible. As a result of these two phenomena, there is not enough starlight to make space anything but black. The daytime sky on Earth is blue because light from the Sun strikes molecules in Earth's atmosphere scattering light in all directions. Blue light is scattered more than other colors, and reaches the eye in greater quantities, making the daytime sky appear blue. This is known as Rayleigh scattering. The nighttime sky on Earth is black because the part of Earth experiencing night is facing away from the Sun, the light of the Sun is blocked by Earth itself, and there is no other bright nighttime source of light in the vicinity. Thus, there is not enough light to undergo Rayleigh scattering and make the sky blue. On the Moon, on the other hand, because there is virtually no atmosphere to scatter the light, the sky is black both day and night. This also holds true for other locations without an atmosphere, such as Mercury. Biology Culture In China, the color black is associated with water, one of the five fundamental elements believed to compose all things; and with winter, cold, and the direction north, usually symbolized by a black tortoise. It is also associated with disorder, including the positive disorder which leads to change and new life. When the first Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang seized power from the Zhou Dynasty, he changed the Imperial color from red to black, saying that black extinguished red. Only when the Han Dynasty appeared in 206 BC was red restored as the imperial color. In Japan, black is associated with mystery, the night, the unknown, the supernatural, the invisible and death. Combined with white, it can symbolize intuition. In 10th and 11th century Japan, it was believed that wearing black could bring misfortune. It was worn at court by those who wanted to set themselves apart from the established powers or who had renounced material possessions. In Japan black can also symbolize experience, as opposed to white, which symbolizes naiveté. The black belt in martial arts symbolizes experience, while a white belt is worn by novices. Japanese men traditionally wear a black kimono with some white decoration on their wedding day. In Indonesia black is associated with depth, the subterranean world, demons, disaster, and the left hand. When black is combined with white, however, it symbolizes harmony and equilibrium. Political movementsAnarchism is a political philosophy, most popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which holds that governments and capitalism are harmful and undesirable. The symbols of anarchism was usually either a black flag or a black letter A. More recently it is usually represented with a bisected red and black flag, to emphasise the movement's socialist roots in the First International. Anarchism was most popular in Spain, France, Italy, Ukraine and Argentina. There were also small but influential movements in the United States and Russia. In the latter, the movement initially allied itself with the Bolsheviks. The Black Army was a collection of anarchist military units which fought in the Russian Civil War, sometimes on the side of the Bolshevik Red Army, and sometimes for the opposing White Army. It was officially known as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, and it was under the command of the anarchist Nestor Makhno.Fascism. The Blackshirts () were Fascist paramilitary groups in Italy during the period immediately following World War I and until the end of World War II. The Blackshirts were officially known as the Voluntary Militia for National Security (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, or MVSN). Inspired by the black uniforms of the Arditi, Italy's elite storm troops of World War I, the Fascist Blackshirts were organized by Benito Mussolini as the military tool of his political movement. They used violence and intimidation against Mussolini's opponents. The emblem of the Italian fascists was a black flag with fasces, an axe in a bundle of sticks, an ancient Roman symbol of authority. Mussolini came to power in 1922 through his March on Rome with the blackshirts. Black was also adopted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. Red, white and black were the colors of the flag of the German Empire from 1870 to 1918. In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained that they were "revered colors expressive of our homage to the glorious past." Hitler also wrote that "the new flag ... should prove effective as a large poster" because "in hundreds of thousands of cases a really striking emblem may be the first cause of awakening interest in a movement." The black swastika was meant to symbolize the Aryan race, which, according to the Nazis, "was always anti-Semitic and will always be anti-Semitic." Several designs by a number of different authors were considered, but the one adopted in the end was Hitler's personal design. Black became the color of the uniform of the SS, the Schutzstaffel or "defense corps", the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, and was worn by SS officers from 1932 until the end of World War II. The Nazis used a black triangle to symbolize anti-social elements. The symbol originates from Nazi concentration camps, where every prisoner had to wear one of the Nazi concentration camp badges on their jacket, the color of which categorized them according to "their kind." Many Black Triangle prisoners were either mentally disabled or mentally ill. The homeless were also included, as were alcoholics, the Romani people, the habitually "work-shy," prostitutes, draft dodgers and pacifists. More recently the black triangle has been adopted as a symbol in lesbian culture and by disabled activists. Black shirts were also worn by the British Union of Fascists before World War II, and members of fascist movements in the Netherlands.Patriotic resistance'''. The Lützow Free Corps, composed of volunteer German students and academics fighting against Napoleon in 1813, could not afford to make special uniforms and therefore adopted black, as the only color that could be used to dye their civilian clothing without the original color showing. In 1815 the students began to carry a red, black and gold flag, which they believed (incorrectly) had been the colors of the Holy Roman Empire (the imperial flag had actually been gold and black). In 1848, this banner became the flag of the German confederation. In 1866, Prussia unified Germany under its rule, and imposed the red, white and black of its own flag, which remained the colors of the German flag until the end of the Second World War. In 1949 the Federal Republic of Germany returned to the original flag and colors of the students and professors of 1815, which is the flag of Germany today. Military Black has been a traditional color of cavalry and armoured or mechanized troops. German armoured troops (Panzerwaffe) traditionally wore black uniforms, and even in others, a black beret is common. In Finland, black is the symbolic color for both armoured troops and combat engineers, and military units of these specialities have black flags and unit insignia. The black beret and the color black is also a symbol of special forces in many countries. Soviet and Russian OMON special police and Russian naval infantry wear a black beret. A black beret is also worn by military police in the Canadian, Czech, Croatian, Portuguese, Spanish and Serbian armies. The silver-on-black skull and crossbones symbol or Totenkopf and a black uniform were used by Hussars and Black Brunswickers, the German Panzerwaffe and the Nazi Schutzstaffel, and U.S. 400th Missile Squadron (crossed missiles), and continues in use with the Estonian Kuperjanov Battalion. Religion In Christian theology, black was the color of the universe before God created light. In many religious cultures, from Mesoamerica to Oceania to India and Japan, the world was created out of a primordial darkness. In the Bible the light of faith and Christianity is often contrasted with the darkness of ignorance and paganism. In Christianity, the devil is often called the "prince of darkness." The term was used in John Milton's poem Paradise Lost, published in 1667, referring to Satan, who is viewed as the embodiment of evil. It is an English translation of the Latin phrase princeps tenebrarum, which occurs in the Acts of Pilate, written in the fourth century, in the 11th-century hymn Rhythmus de die mortis by Pietro Damiani, and in a sermon by Bernard of Clairvaux from the 12th century. The phrase also occurs in King Lear by William Shakespeare (c. 1606), Act III, Scene IV, l. 14: 'The prince of darkness is a gentleman." Priests and pastors of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches commonly wear black, as do monks of the Benedictine Order, who consider it the color of humility and penitence. In Islam, black, along with green, plays an important symbolic role. It is the color of the Black Standard, the banner that is said to have been carried by the soldiers of Muhammad. It is also used as a symbol in Shi'a Islam (heralding the advent of the Mahdi), and the flag of followers of Islamism and Jihadism. In Hinduism, the goddess Kali, goddess of time and change, is portrayed with black or dark blue skin. wearing a necklace adorned with severed heads and hands. Her name means "The black one". She destroys anger and passion according to Hindu mythology and her devotees are supposed to abstain from meat or intoxication. Kali does not eat meat, but it is the śāstra's injunction that those who are unable to give up meat-eating, they may sacrifice one goat, not cow, one small animal before the goddess Kali, on amāvāsya (new moon) day, night, not day, and they can eat it. In Paganism, black represents dignity, force, stability, and protection. The color is often used to banish and release negative energies, or binding. An athame is a ceremonial blade often having a black handle, which is used in some forms of witchcraft. Sports The national rugby union team of New Zealand is called the All Blacks, in reference to their black outfits, and the color is also shared by other New Zealand national teams such as the Black Caps (cricket) and the Kiwis (rugby league). Association football (soccer) referees traditionally wear all-black uniforms, however nowadays other uniform colors may also be worn. In auto racing, a black flag signals a driver to go into the pits. In baseball, "the black" refers to the batter's eye, a blacked out area around the center-field bleachers, painted black to give hitters a decent background for pitched balls. A large number of teams have uniforms designed with black colors—many feeling the color sometimes imparts a psychological advantage in its wearers. Black is used by numerous professional and collegiate sports teams Idioms and expressions In general, the Negro race of African origin is called "Black", while the Caucasian race of European origin is called "White". In the United States, "Black Friday" (the day after Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November) is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. Many Americans are on holiday because of Thanksgiving, and many retailers open earlier and close later than normal, and offer special prices. The day's name originated in Philadelphia sometime before 1961, and originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive downtown pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on that day.Martin L. Apfelbaum, Philadelphia's "Black Friday," American Philatelist, vol. 69, no. 4, p. 239 (January 1966). Later an alternative explanation began to be offered: that "Black Friday" indicates the point in the year that retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the black", because of the large volume of sales on that day. "In the black" means profitable. Accountants originally used black ink in ledgers to indicate profit, and red ink to indicate a loss. Black Friday also refers to any particularly disastrous day on financial markets. The first Black Friday (1869), September 24, 1869, was caused by the efforts of two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange. A blacklist is a list of undesirable persons or entities (to be placed on the list is to be "blacklisted"). Black comedy is a form of comedy dealing with morbid and serious topics. The expression is similar to black humor or black humour. A black mark against a person relates to something bad they have done. A black mood is a bad one (cf Winston Churchill's clinical depression, which he called "my black dog"). Black market is used to denote the trade of illegal goods, or alternatively the illegal trade of otherwise legal items at considerably higher prices, e.g. to evade rationing. Black propaganda is the use of known falsehoods, partial truths, or masquerades in propaganda to confuse an opponent. Blackmail is the act of threatening someone to do something that would hurt them in some way, such as by revealing sensitive information about them, in order to force the threatened party to fulfill certain demands. Ordinarily, such a threat is illegal. If the black eight-ball, in billiards, is sunk before all others are out of play, the player loses. The black sheep of the family is the ne'er-do-well. To blackball someone is to block their entry into a club or some such institution. In the traditional English gentlemen's club, members vote on the admission of a candidate by secretly placing a white or black ball in a hat. If upon the completion of voting, there was even one black ball amongst the white, the candidate would be denied membership, and he would never know who had "blackballed" him. Black tea in the Western culture is known as "crimson tea" in Chinese and culturally influenced languages (紅 茶, Mandarin Chinese hóngchá; Japanese kōcha; Korean hongcha). "The black" is a wildfire suppression term referring to a burned area on a wildfire capable of acting as a safety zone. Black coffee refers to coffee without sugar or cream. Associations and symbolism Mourning In Europe and America, black is commonly associated with mourning and bereavement, and usually worn at funerals and memorial services. In some traditional societies, for example in Greece and Italy, some widows wear black for the rest of their lives. In contrast, across much of Africa and parts of Asia like Vietnam, white is a color of mourning. In Victorian England, the colors and fabrics of mourning were specified in an unofficial dress code: "non-reflective black paramatta and crape for the first year of deepest mourning, followed by nine months of dullish black silk, heavily trimmed with crape, and then three months when crape was discarded. Paramatta was a fabric of combined silk and wool or cotton; crape was a harsh black silk fabric with a crimped appearance produced by heat. Widows were allowed to change into the colors of half-mourning, such as gray and lavender, black and white, for the final six months." A "black day" (or week or month) usually refers to tragic date. The Romans marked fasti days with white stones and nefasti days with black. The term is often used to remember massacres. Black months include the Black September in Jordan, when large numbers of Palestinians were killed, and Black July in Sri Lanka, the killing of members of the Tamil population by the Sinhalese government. In the financial world, the term often refers to a dramatic drop in the stock market. For example, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, which marked the start of the Great Depression, is nicknamed Black Tuesday, and was preceded by Black Thursday, a downturn on October 24 the previous week. Darkness and evil In western popular culture, black has long been associated with evil and darkness. It is the traditional color of witchcraft and black magic. In the Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament of the Bible, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are supposed to announce the Apocalypse before the Last Judgment. The horseman representing famine rides a black horse. The vampire of literature and films, such as Count Dracula of the Bram Stoker novel, dressed in black, and could only move at night. The Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz became the archetype of witches for generations of children. Whereas witches and sorcerers inspired real fear in the 17th century, in the 21st century children and adults dressed as witches for Halloween parties and parades. Power, authority and solemnity Black is frequently used as a color of power, law and authority. In many countries judges and magistrates wear black robes. That custom began in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries. Jurists, magistrates and certain other court officials in France began to wear long black robes during the reign of Philip IV of France (1285–1314), and in England from the time of Edward I (1271–1307). The custom spread to the cities of Italy at about the same time, between 1300 and 1320. The robes of judges resembled those worn by the clergy, and represented the law and authority of the King, while those of the clergy represented the law of God and authority of the church. Until the 20th century most police uniforms were black, until they were largely replaced by a less menacing blue in France, the U.S. and other countries. In the United States, police cars are frequently Black and white. The riot control units of the Basque Autonomous Police in Spain are known as beltzak ("blacks") after their uniform. Black today is the most common color for limousines and the official cars of government officials. Black formal attire is still worn at many solemn occasions or ceremonies, from graduations to formal balls. Graduation gowns are copied from the gowns worn by university professors in the Middle Ages, which in turn were copied from the robes worn by judges and priests, who often taught at the early universities. The mortarboard hat worn by graduates is adapted from a square cap called a biretta worn by Medieval professors and clerics. Functionality In the 19th and 20th centuries, many machines and devices, large and small, were painted black, to stress their functionality. These included telephones, sewing machines, steamships, railroad locomotives, and automobiles. The Ford Model T, the first mass-produced car, was available only in black from 1914 to 1926. Of means of transportation, only airplanes were rarely ever painted black. Black house paint is becoming more popular with Sherwin-Williams reporting that the color, Tricorn Black, was the 6th most popular exterior house paint color in Canada and the 12th most popular paint in the United States in 2018. Ethnography The term "black" is often used in the West to describe people whose skin is darker. In the United States, it is particularly used to describe African Americans. The terms for African Americans have changed over the years, as shown by the categories in the United States Census, taken every ten years. In the first U.S. Census, taken in 1790, just four categories were used: Free White males, Free White females, other free persons, and slaves. In the 1820 census the new category "colored" was added. In the 1850 census, slaves were listed by owner, and a B indicated black, while an M indicated "mulatto." In the 1890 census, the categories for race were white, black, mulatto, quadroon (a person one-quarter black); octoroon (a person one-eighth black), Chinese, Japanese, or American Indian. In the 1930 census, anyone with any black blood was supposed to be listed as "Negro." In the 1970 census, the category "Negro or black" was used for the first time. In the 2000 and 2012 census, the category "Black or African-American" was used, defined as "a person having their origin in any of the racial groups in Africa." In the 2012 Census 12.1 percent of Americans identified themselves as Black or African-American. Black is also commonly used as a racial description in the United Kingdom, since ethnicity was first measured in the 2001 census. The 2011 British census asked residents to describe themselves, and categories offered included Black, African, Caribbean, or Black British. Other possible categories were African British, African Scottish, Caribbean British and Caribbean Scottish. Of the total UK population in 2001, 1.0 percent identified themselves as Black Caribbean, 0.8 percent as Black African, and 0.2 percent as Black (others). In Canada, census respondents can identify themselves as Black. In the 2006 census, 2.5 percent of the population identified themselves as black. In Australia, the term black is not used in the census. In the 2006 census, 2.3 percent of Australians identified themselves as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders. In Brazil, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) asks people to identify themselves as branco (white), pardo (brown), preto (black), or amarelo (yellow). In 2008 6.8 percent of the population identified themselves as "preto". Opposite of white Black and white have often been used to describe opposites; particularly light and darkness and good and evil. In Medieval literature, the white knight usually represented virtue, the black knight something mysterious and sinister. In American westerns, the hero often wore a white hat, the villain a black hat. In the original game of chess invented in Persia or India, the colors of the two sides were varied; a 12th-century Iranian chess set in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, has red and green pieces. But when the game was imported into Europe, the colors, corresponding to European culture, usually became black and white. Studies have shown that something printed in black letters on white has more authority with readers than any other color of printing. In philosophy and arguments, the issue is often described as black-and-white, meaning that the issue at hand is dichotomized (having two clear, opposing sides with no middle ground). Conspiracy Black is commonly associated with secrecy. The Black Chamber was a term given to an office which secretly opened and read diplomatic mail and broke codes. Queen Elizabeth I had such an office, headed by her Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, which successfully broke the Spanish codes and broke up several plots against the Queen. In France a cabinet noir was established inside the French post office by Louis XIII to open diplomatic mail. It was closed during the French Revolution but re-opened under Napoleon I. The Habsburg Empire and Dutch Republic had similar black chambers. The United States created a secret peacetime Black Chamber, called the Cipher Bureau, in 1919. It was funded by the State Department and Army and disguised as a commercial company in New York. It successfully broke a number of diplomatic codes, including the code of the Japanese government. It was closed down in 1929 after the State Department withdrew funding, when the new Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, stated that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." The Cipher Bureau was the ancestor of the U.S. National Security Agency. A black project'' is a secret military project, such as Enigma Decryption during World War II, or a secret counter-narcotics or police sting operation. Black ops are covert operations carried out by a government, government agency or military. A black budget is a government budget that is allocated for classified or other secret operations of a nation. The black budget is an account expenses and spending related to military research and covert operations. The black budget is mostly classified due to security reasons. Elegant fashion Black is the color most commonly associated with elegance in Europe and the United States, followed by silver, gold, and white. Black first became a fashionable color for men in Europe in the 17th century, in the courts of Italy and Spain. (See history above.) In the 19th century, it was the fashion for men both in business and for evening wear, in the form of a black coat whose tails came down the knees. In the evening it was the custom of the men to leave the women after dinner to go to a special smoking room to enjoy cigars or cigarettes. This meant that their tailcoats eventually smelled of tobacco. According to the legend, in 1865 Edward VII, then the Prince of Wales, had his tailor make a special short smoking jacket. The smoking jacket then evolved into the dinner jacket. Again according to legend, the first Americans to wear the jacket were members of the Tuxedo Club in New York State. Thereafter the jacket became known as a tuxedo in the U.S. The term "smoking" is still used today in Russia and other countries. The tuxedo was always black until the 1930s, when the Duke of Windsor began to wear a tuxedo that was a very dark midnight blue. He did so because a black tuxedo looked greenish in artificial light, while a dark blue tuxedo looked blacker than black itself. For women's fashion, the defining moment was the invention of the simple black dress by Coco Chanel in 1926. (See history.) Thereafter, a long black gown was used for formal occasions, while the simple black dress could be used for everything else. The designer Karl Lagerfeld, explaining why black was so popular, said: "Black is the color that goes with everything. If you're wearing black, you're on sure ground." Skirts have gone up and down and fashions have changed, but the black dress has not lost its position as the essential element of a woman's wardrobe. The fashion designer Christian Dior said, "elegance is a combination of distinction, naturalness, care and simplicity," and black exemplified elegance. The expression "X is the new black" is a reference to the latest trend or fad that is considered a wardrobe basic for the duration of the trend, on the basis that black is always fashionable. The phrase has taken on a life of its own and has become a cliché. Many performers of both popular and European classical music, including French singers Edith Piaf and Juliette Gréco, and violinist Joshua Bell have traditionally worn black on stage during performances. A black costume was usually chosen as part of their image or stage persona, or because it did not distract from the music, or sometimes for a political reason. Country-western singer Johnny Cash always wore black on stage. In 1971, Cash wrote the song "Man in Black" to explain why he dressed in that color: "We're doing mighty fine I do suppose / In our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes / But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back / Up front there ought to be a man in black." See also Black Rose (disambiguation) Lists of colors Rich black, which is different from using black ink alone, in printing. Shades of black References Notes and citations Bibliography Shades of gray Color Spoken articles Darkness Web colors Cultural aspects of death

In Norse mythology, Bifröst () or Bilröst is a burning rainbow bridge that reaches between Midgard (Earth) and Asgard, the realm of the gods. The bridge is attested as Bilröst in the Poetic Edda; compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and as Bifröst in the Prose Edda; written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, and in the poetry of skalds. Both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda alternately refer to the bridge as Ásbrú (Old Norse "Æsir's bridge"). According to the Prose Edda, the bridge ends in heaven at Himinbjörg, the residence of the god Heimdallr, who guards it from the jötnar. The bridge's destruction during Ragnarök by the forces of Muspell is foretold. Scholars have proposed that the bridge may have originally represented the Milky Way and have noted parallels between the bridge and another bridge in Norse mythology, Gjallarbrú. Etymology Scholar Andy Orchard suggests that Bifröst may mean "shimmering path." He notes that the first element of Bilröst—bil (meaning "a moment")—"suggests the fleeting nature of the rainbow," which he connects to the first element of Bifröst—the Old Norse verb bifa (meaning "to shimmer" or "to shake")—noting that the element evokes notions of the "lustrous sheen" of the bridge. Austrian Germanist Rudolf Simek says that Bifröst either means "the swaying road to heaven" (also citing bifa) or, if Bilröst is the original form of the two (which Simek says is likely), "the fleetingly glimpsed rainbow" (possibly connected to bil, perhaps meaning "moment, weak point"). Attestations Two poems in the Poetic Edda and two books in the Prose Edda provide information about the bridge: Poetic Edda In the Poetic Edda, the bridge is mentioned in the poems Grímnismál and Fáfnismál, where it is referred to as Bilröst. In one of two stanzas in the poem Grímnismál that mentions the bridge, Grímnir (the god Odin in disguise) provides the young Agnarr with cosmological knowledge, including that Bilröst is the best of bridges. Later in Grímnismál, Grímnir notes that Asbrú "burns all with flames" and that, every day, the god Thor wades through the waters of Körmt and Örmt and the two Kerlaugar: In Fáfnismál, the dying wyrm Fafnir tells the hero Sigurd that, during the events of Ragnarök, bearing spears, gods will meet at Óskópnir. From there, the gods will cross Bilröst, which will break apart as they cross over it, causing their horses to dredge through an immense river. Prose Edda The bridge is mentioned in the Prose Edda books Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál, where it is referred to as Bifröst. In chapter 13 of Gylfaginning, Gangleri (King Gylfi in disguise) asks the enthroned figure of High what way exists between heaven and earth. Laughing, High replies that the question isn't an intelligent one, and goes on to explain that the gods built a bridge from heaven and earth. He incredulously asks Gangleri if he has not heard the story before. High says that Gangleri must have seen it, and notes that Gangleri may call it a rainbow. High says that the bridge consists of three colors, has great strength, "and is built with art and skill to a greater extent than other constructions." High notes that, although the bridge is strong, it will break when "Muspell's lads" attempt to cross it, and their horses will have to make do with swimming over "great rivers." Gangleri says that it doesn't seem that the gods "built the bridge in good faith if it is liable to break, considering that they can do as they please." High responds that the gods do not deserve blame for the breaking of the bridge, for "there is nothing in this world that will be secure when Muspell's sons attack." In chapter 15 of Gylfaginning, Just-As-High says that Bifröst is also called Asbrú, and that every day the gods ride their horses across it (with the exception of Thor, who instead wades through the boiling waters of the rivers Körmt and Örmt) to reach Urðarbrunnr, a holy well where the gods have their court. As a reference, Just-As-High quotes the second of the two stanzas in Grímnismál that mention the bridge (see above). Gangleri asks if fire burns over Bifröst. High says that the red in the bridge is burning fire, and, without it, the frost jotnar and mountain jotnar would "go up into heaven" if anyone who wanted could cross Bifröst. High adds that, in heaven, "there are many beautiful places" and that "everywhere there has divine protection around it." In chapter 17, High tells Gangleri that the location of Himinbjörg "stands at the edge of heaven where Bifrost reaches heaven." While describing the god Heimdallr in chapter 27, High says that Heimdallr lives in Himinbjörg by Bifröst, and guards the bridge from mountain jotnar while sitting at the edge of heaven. In chapter 34, High quotes the first of the two Grímnismál stanzas that mention the bridge. In chapter 51, High foretells the events of Ragnarök. High says that, during Ragnarök, the sky will split open, and from the split will ride forth the "sons of Muspell". When the "sons of Muspell" ride over Bifröst it will break, "as was said above." In the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál, the bridge receives a single mention. In chapter 16, a work by the 10th century skald Úlfr Uggason is provided, where Bifröst is referred to as "the powers' way." Theories In his translation of the Prose Edda, Henry Adams Bellows comments that the Grímnismál stanza mentioning Thor and the bridge stanza may mean that "Thor has to go on foot in the last days of the destruction, when the bridge is burning. Another interpretation, however, is that when Thor leaves the heavens (i.e., when a thunder-storm is over) the rainbow-bridge becomes hot in the sun." John Lindow points to a parallel between Bifröst, which he notes is "a bridge between earth and heaven, or earth and the world of the gods", and the bridge Gjallarbrú, "a bridge between earth and the underworld, or earth and the world of the dead." Several scholars have proposed that Bifröst may represent the Milky Way. Adaptations In the final scene of Richard Wagner's 1869 opera Das Rheingold, the god Froh summons a rainbow bridge, over which the gods cross to enter Valhalla[. The Bifröst appears in comic books associated with the Marvel Comics character Thor and in subsequent adaptations of those comic books. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thor, Jane Foster describes the Bifröst as an Einstein–Rosen bridge, which functions as a means of transportation across space in a short period of time. The episode "The Bellero Shield" of the original The Outer Limits TV series features an alien known as the "bifrost alien" because he slides to Earth on a beam of light. In the show dialogue, some characters consider this beam to be similar to the bifrost of Norse mythology. Notes References External links Locations in Norse mythology Mythological bridges Rainbows in culture

The Brittonic, Brythonic, or British Celtic languages (; ; ) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word , meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael. The Brittonic languages derive from the Common Brittonic language, spoken throughout Great Britain during the Iron Age and Roman period. In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in Brittany and Britonia. During the next few centuries the language began to split into several dialects, eventually evolving into Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Cumbric, and probably Pictish. Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while a revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct, having been replaced by Goidelic and English speech. The Isle of Man and Orkney may also have originally spoken a Brittonic language, but this was later supplanted by Goidelic on the Isle of Man and Norse on Orkney. There is also a community of Brittonic language speakers in (the Welsh settlement in Patagonia). Name The names "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" are scholarly conventions referring to the Celtic languages of Britain and to the ancestral language they originated from, designated Common Brittonic, in contrast to the Goidelic languages originating in Ireland. Both were created in the 19th century to avoid the ambiguity of earlier terms such as "British" and "Cymric". "Brythonic" was coined in 1879 by the Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word . "Brittonic", derived from "Briton" and also earlier spelled "Britonic" and "Britonnic", emerged later in the 19th century. It became more prominent through the 20th century, and was used in Kenneth H. Jackson's highly influential 1953 work on the topic, Language and History in Early Britain. Jackson noted that by that time "Brythonic" had become a dated term, and that "of late there has been an increasing tendency to use Brittonic instead." Today, "Brittonic" often replaces "Brythonic" in the literature. Rudolf Thurneysen used "Britannic" in his influential A Grammar of Old Irish, though this never became popular among subsequent scholars. Comparable historical terms include the Medieval Latin and and the Welsh . Some writers use "British" for the language and its descendants, though due to the risk of confusion, others avoid it or use it only in a restricted sense. Jackson, and later John T. Koch, use "British" only for the early phase of the Common Brittonic language. Before Jackson's work, "Brittonic" (and "Brythonic") were often used for all the P-Celtic languages, including not just the varieties in Britain but those Continental Celtic languages that similarly experienced the evolution of the Proto-Celtic language element to . However, subsequent writers have tended to follow Jackson's scheme, rendering this use obsolete. The name "Britain" itself comes from , via Old French and Middle English , possibly influenced by Old English , probably also from Latin Brittania, ultimately an adaptation of the native word for the island, *Pritanī. An early written reference to the British Isles may derive from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia; later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quote Pytheas' use of variants such as (), "The Britannic [land, island]", and νησοι βρεττανιαι (), "Britannic islands", with being a Celtic word that might mean "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk", referring to body decoration (see below). Evidence Knowledge of the Brittonic languages comes from a variety of sources. The early language's information is obtained from coins, inscriptions, and comments by classical writers as well as place names and personal names recorded by them. For later languages, there is information from medieval writers and modern native speakers, together with place names. The names recorded in the Roman period are given in Rivet and Smith. Characteristics The Brittonic branch is also referred to as P-Celtic because linguistic reconstruction of the Brittonic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European phoneme *kʷ is p as opposed to Goidelic c. Such nomenclature usually implies acceptance of the P-Celtic and Q-Celtic hypothesis rather than the Insular Celtic hypothesis because the term includes certain Continental Celtic languages as well. (For a discussion, see Celtic languages.) Other major characteristics include: The retention of the Proto-Celtic sequences am and an, which mostly result from the Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasals. Celtic (written u in Latin texts and ou in Greek) became gw- in initial position, -w- internally, whereas in Gaelic it is f- in initial position and disappears internally: Proto-Celtic *windos "white, fair" became Welsh gwyn (masculine), gwen (feminine), Cornish gwynn, Breton gwenn. Contrast Irish fionn "fair". Proto-Celtic *wassos "servant, young man" became Welsh, Cornish and Breton gwas. Contrast Middle Irish foss. Initial s-: Initial s- followed by a vowel was changed to h-: Welsh hen "old", hir "long", hafal "similar" Breton hen "ancient", hir "long", hañval "similar" Cornish hen "ancient", hir "long", haval "similar" Contrast Irish sean "old", síor "long", samhail "similarity" Initial s- was lost before , and : *slemon became Welsh llyfn, Cornish leven and Breton levn "smooth". Contrast Irish sleamhain "smooth, slimy" *smeru became Welsh mêr, Cornish mer, and Breton mel "marrow". Contrast Irish sméar The initial clusters sp-, sr-, sw- became f-, fr-, chw-: *sɸera became Welsh ffêr "ankle", Cornish fer "shank, lower leg" and Breton fer "ankle". Contrast Old Irish seir "heel, ankle" *srogna "nostril" became Welsh ffroen, Cornish frig and Breton froen. Contrast Irish srón *swīs "you" (plural) became Welsh chwi, Cornish hwy and Breton c'hwi. Contrast Old Irish síi Lenition: Voiceless plosives become voiced plosives in intervocalic position. d , g , b Voiced plosives , (later or , then lost in Welsh and Cornish; remained as in Breton), , and became soft spirants in an intervocalic position and before liquids: Welsh dd , f Cornish dh , v Breton z , c'h , v Voiceless spirants: Geminated voiceless plosives transformed into spirants; (pp), (cc), (tt) became (later ), (ch/c'h), (th/zh) before a vowel or liquid: *cippus > Breton kef, Cornish kyf, Welsh cyff, "tree trunk" *cattos > Breton kazh, Cornish kath, Welsh cath, "cat" vs. Irish cat *bucca > Breton boc'h, Cornish bogh, Welsh boch, "cheek" Voiceless stops become spirants after liquids: *artos "bear" > Welsh/Cornish arth, Breton arzh, compare Old Irish art Nasal assimilation: Voiced stops were assimilated to a preceding nasal: Brittonic retains original nasals before -t and -k, whereas Goidelic alters -nt to -d, and -nk to -g: Breton kant "hundred" vs. Irish céad, Breton Ankou (personification of) Death, Irish éag 'die' Classification The family tree of the Brittonic languages is as follows: Common Brittonic ancestral to: Western Brittonic languages ancestral to: Cumbric Welsh Southwestern Brittonic languages ancestral to: Cornish Breton Brittonic languages in use today are Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Welsh and Breton have been spoken continuously since they formed. For all practical purposes Cornish died out during the 18th or 19th centuries, but a revival movement has more recently created small numbers of new speakers. Also notable are the extinct language Cumbric, and possibly the extinct Pictish. One view, advanced in the 1950s and based on apparently unintelligible ogham inscriptions, was that the Picts may have also used a non-Indo-European language. This view, while attracting broad popular appeal, has virtually no following in contemporary linguistic scholarship. History and origins The modern Brittonic languages are generally considered to all derive from a common ancestral language termed Brittonic, British, Common Brittonic, Old Brittonic or Proto-Brittonic, which is thought to have developed from Proto-Celtic or early Insular Celtic by the 6th century BC. A major archaeogenetics study uncovered a migration into southern Britain in the Bronze Age, during the 500-year period 1,300–800 BC. The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from Gaul. During 1,000–875 BC, their genetic marker swiftly spread through southern Britain, but not northern Britain. The authors describe this as a "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain". There was much less inward migration during the Iron Age, so it is likely that Celtic reached Britain before then. Barry Cunliffe suggests that a branch of Celtic was already being spoken in Britain, and that the Bronze Age migration introduced the Brittonic branch. Brittonic languages were probably spoken before the Roman invasion throughout most of Great Britain, though the Isle of Man later had a Goidelic language, Manx. During the period of the Roman occupation of what is now England and Wales (AD 43 to c. 410), Common Brittonic borrowed a large stock of Latin words, both for concepts unfamiliar in the pre-urban society of Celtic Britain such as urbanization and new tactics of warfare as well as for rather more mundane words which displaced native terms (most notably, the word for "fish" in all the Brittonic languages derives from the Latin piscis rather than the native *ēskos - which may survive, however, in the Welsh name of the River Usk, ). Approximately 800 of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brittonic languages. Pictish may have resisted Latin influence to a greater extent than the other Brittonic languages. It is probable that at the start of the Post-Roman period Common Brittonic was differentiated into at least two major dialect groups – Southwestern and Western (also we may posit additional dialects, such as Eastern Brittonic, spoken in what is now the East of England, which have left little or no evidence). Between the end of the Roman occupation and the mid 6th century the two dialects began to diverge into recognizably separate varieties, the Western into Cumbric and Welsh and the Southwestern into Cornish and its closely related sister language Breton, which was carried to continental Armorica. Jackson showed that a few of the dialect distinctions between West and Southwest Brittonic go back a long way. New divergencies began around AD 500 but other changes that were shared occurred in the 6th century. Other common changes occurred in the 7th century onward and are possibly due to inherent tendencies. Thus the concept of a Common Brittonic language ends by AD 600. Substantial numbers of Britons certainly remained in the expanding area controlled by Anglo-Saxons, but over the fifth and sixth centuries they mostly adopted the English language. Decline The Brittonic languages spoken in what is now Scotland, the Isle of Man and what is now England began to be displaced in the 5th century through the settlement of Irish-speaking Gaels and Germanic peoples. Henry of Huntingdon wrote that Pictish was "no longer spoken" in c.1129. The displacement of the languages of Brittonic descent was probably complete in all of Britain except Cornwall and Wales and the English counties bordering these areas such as Devon by the 11th century. Western Herefordshire continued to speak Welsh until the late nineteenth century, and isolated pockets of Shropshire speak Welsh today. Sound changes The regular consonantal sound changes from Proto-Celtic to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton are summarised in the following table. Where the graphemes have a different value from the corresponding IPA symbols, the IPA equivalent is indicated between slashes. V represents a vowel; C represents a consonant. Remnants in England, Scotland and Ireland Place names and river names The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the Brittonic languages were displaced is that of toponyms (place names) and hydronyms (river names). There are many Brittonic place names in lowland Scotland and in the parts of England where it is agreed that substantial Brittonic speakers remained (Brittonic names, apart from those of the former Romano-British towns, are scarce over most of England). Names derived (sometimes indirectly) from Brittonic include London, Penicuik, Perth, Aberdeen, York, Dorchester, Dover and Colchester. Brittonic elements found in England include bre- and bal- for hills, while some such as combe or coomb(e) for a small deep valley and tor for a hill are examples of Brittonic words that were borrowed into English. Others reflect the presence of Britons such as Dumbarton – from the Scottish Gaelic Dùn Breatainn meaning "Fort of the Britons", or Walton meaning a tun or settlement where the Wealh "Britons" still lived. The number of Celtic river names in England generally increases from east to west, a map showing these being given by Jackson. These names include ones such as Avon, Chew, Frome, Axe, Brue and Exe, but also river names containing the elements "der-/dar-/dur-" and "-went" e.g. "Derwent, Darwen, Deer, Adur, Dour, Darent, Went". These names exhibit multiple different Celtic roots. One is *dubri- "water" [Bret. "dour", C. "dowr", W. "dŵr"], also found in the place-name "Dover" (attested in the Roman period as "Dubrīs"); this is the source of rivers named "Dour". Another is *deru̯o- "oak" or "true" [Bret. "derv", C. "derow", W. "derw"], coupled with 2 agent suffixes, *-ent- and *-iū; this is the origin of "Derwent", " Darent" and "Darwen" (attested in the Roman period as "Deru̯entiō"). The final root to be examined is "went". In Roman Britain, there were three tribal capitals named "U̯entā" (modern Winchester, Caerwent and Caistor St Edmunds), whose meaning was 'place, town'. Brittonicisms in English Some, including J. R. R. Tolkien, have argued that Celtic has acted as a substrate to English for both the lexicon and syntax. It is generally accepted that Brittonic effects on English are lexically few aside from toponyms, consisting of a small number of domestic and geographical words, which may include bin, brock, carr, comb, crag and tor. Another legacy may be the sheep-counting system Yan Tan Tethera in the north, in the traditionally Celtic areas of England such as Cumbria. Several Cornish mining words are still in use in English language mining terminology, such as costean, gunnies, and vug. Those who argue against the theory of a more significant Brittonic influence than is widely accepted point out that many toponyms have no semantic continuation from the Brittonic language. A notable example is Avon which comes from the Celtic term for river abona or the Welsh term for river, afon, but was used by the English as a personal name. Likewise the River Ouse, Yorkshire contains the word usa which merely means 'water' and the name of the river Trent simply comes from the Welsh word for a trespasser (an over-flowing river). It has been argued that the use of periphrastic constructions (using auxiliary verbs such as do and be in the continuous/progressive) in the English verb, which is more widespread than in the other Germanic languages, is traceable to Brittonic influence. Others, however, find this unlikely due to the fact that many of these forms are only attested in the later Middle English period; these scholars claim a native English development rather than Celtic influence. Ian G. Roberts postulates Northern Germanic influence, despite such constructions not existing in Norse. Literary Welsh has the simple present Caraf = I love and the present stative (al. continuous/progressive) Yr wyf yn caru = I am loving, where the Brittonic syntax is partly mirrored in English (Note that I am loving comes from older I am a-loving, from still older ich am on luvende "I am in the process of loving"). In the Germanic sister languages of English there is only one form, for example ich liebe in German, though in colloquial usage in some German dialects, a progressive aspect form has evolved which is formally similar to those found in Celtic languages, and somewhat less similar to the Modern English form, e.g. "I am working" is ich bin am Arbeiten, literally: "I am on the working". The same structure is also found in modern Dutch (ik ben aan het werk), alongside other structures (e.g. ik zit te werken, lit. "I sit to working"). These parallel developments suggest that the English progressive is not necessarily due to Celtic influence; moreover, the native English development of the structure can be traced over 1000 years and more of English literature. Some researchers (Filppula et al., 2001) argue that other elements of English syntax reflect Brittonic influences. For instance, in English tag questions, the form of the tag depends on the verb form in the main statement (aren't I?, isn't he?, won't we? etc.). The German nicht wahr? and the French n'est-ce pas?, by contrast, are fixed forms which can be used with almost any main statement. It has been claimed that the English system has been borrowed from Brittonic, since Welsh tag questions vary in almost exactly the same way. Brittonic effect on the Goidelic languages Far more notable, but less well known, are Brittonic influences on Scottish Gaelic, though Scottish and Irish Gaelic, with their wider range of preposition-based periphastic constructions, suggest that such constructions descend from their common Celtic heritage. Scottish Gaelic contains several P-Celtic loanwords, but as there is a far greater overlap in terms of Celtic vocabulary, than with English, it is not always possible to disentangle P- and Q-Celtic words. However some common words such as monadh = Welsh mynydd, Cumbric *monidh are particularly evident. Often the Brittonic influence on Scots Gaelic is indicated by considering Irish language usage, which is not likely to have been influenced so much by Brittonic. In particular, the word srath (anglicised as "Strath") is a native Goidelic word, but its usage appears to have been modified by the Brittonic cognate ystrad whose meaning is slightly different. The effect on Irish has been the loan from British of many Latin-derived words. This has been associated with the Christianisation of Ireland from Britain. References Notes Sources Aleini M (1996). Origini delle lingue d'Europa. Dillon M and Chadwick N (1967). Celtic Realms. Filppula, M., Klemola, J. and Pitkänen, H. (2001). The Celtic roots of English, Studies in languages, No. 37, University of Joensuu, Faculty of Humanities, . Hawkes, J. (1973). The first great civilizations: life in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and Egypt, The history of human society series, London: Hutchinson, . Jackson, K., (1994). Language and history in early Britain: a chronological survey of the Brittonic languages, 1st to 12th c. A. D, Celtic studies series, Dublin: Four Courts Press, . Jackson, K. (1955), "The Pictish Language", in Wainwright, F.T., The Problem of the Picts, Edinburgh: Nelson, pp. 129–166 Rivet A and Smith C (1979). The Placenames of Roman Britain. Schrijver, P. (1995), Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology. Amsterdam: Rodopi. . Willis, David. 2009. "Old and Middle Welsh". In Ball, Martin J., Müller, Nicole (ed). The Celtic Languages, 117–160, 2nd Edition. Routledge Language Family Series.New York: Routledge. . Driscoll, S T 2011. Pictish archaeology: persistent problems and structural solutions. In Driscoll, S T, Geddes, J and Hall, M A (eds) Pictish Progress: new studies on northern Britain in the early Middle Ages, Leiden and Boston: Bril pp 245–279. External links Coates, Richard (2007) Invisible Britons: the view from linguistics. (archived) Iron Age Britain Ancient Britain

Bartolomeo Ammannati (18 June 151113 April 1592) was an Italian architect and sculptor, born at Settignano, near Florence. He studied under Baccio Bandinelli and Jacopo Sansovino (assisting on the design of the Library of St. Mark's, the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice) and closely imitated the style of Michelangelo. He was more distinguished in architecture than in sculpture. He worked in Rome in collaboration with Vignola and Vasari), including designs for the Villa Giulia, but also for works and at Lucca. He labored during 1558–1570, in the refurbishment and enlargement of Pitti Palace, creating the courtyard consisting of three wings with rusticated facades, and one lower portico leading to the amphitheatre in the Boboli Gardens. His design mirrored the appearance of the main external façade of Pitti. He was also named Consul of Accademia delle Arti del Disegno of Florence, which had been founded by the Duke Cosimo I in 1563. In 1569, Ammanati was commissioned to build the Ponte Santa Trinita, a bridge over the Arno River. The three arches are elliptic, and though very light and elegant, has survived, when floods had damaged other Arno bridges at different times. Santa Trinita was destroyed in 1944, during World War II, and rebuilt in 1957. Ammannati designed what is considered a prototypic mannerist sculptural ensemble in the Fountain of Neptune (Fontana del Nettuno), prominently located in the Piazza della Signoria in the center of Florence. The assignment was originally given to the aged Bartolommeo Bandinelli; however when Bandinelli died, Ammannati's design, bested the submissions of Benvenuto Cellini and Vincenzo Danti, to gain the commission. From 1563 and 1565, Ammannati and his assistants, among them Giambologna, sculpted the block of marble that had been chosen by Bandinelli. He took Grand Duke Cosimo I as model for Neptune's face. The statue was meant to highlight Cosimo's goal of establishing a Florentine Naval force. The ungainly sea god was placed at the corner of the Palazzo Vecchio within sight of Michelangelo's David statue, and the then 87-year-old sculptor is said to have scoffed at Ammannati— saying that he had ruined a beautiful piece of marble— with the ditty: "Ammannati, Ammanato, che bel marmo hai rovinato!" Ammannati continued work on this fountain for a decade, adding around the perimeter a cornucopia of demigod figures: bronze reclining river gods, laughing satyrs and marble sea horses emerging from the water. In 1550 Ammannati married Laura Battiferri, an elegant poet and an accomplished woman. Later in his life he had a religious crisis, influenced by Counter-Reformation piety, which resulted in condemning his own works depicting nudity, and he left all his possessions to the Jesuits. He died in Florence in 1592. Works Victory (1540), marble, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Leda with the Swan, marble, also in Bargello, Florence. Venus (1558–59), marble, Prado Museum, Madrid. Parnassus (1563), marble, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Allegory of Winter (1563–65), stone, Villa Medici, Castello. Goddess Opi (1572–75), bronze, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Gallery References Citations General references Bartolomeo Ammannati in the "History of Art" External links 1511 births 1592 deaths People from the Province of Florence 16th-century Italian architects 16th-century Italian sculptors Italian male sculptors Italian Mannerist sculptors Italian Mannerist architects

Leg theory is a bowling tactic in the sport of cricket. The term leg theory is somewhat archaic and seldom used any longer, but the basic tactic remains a play in modern cricket. Simply put, leg theory involves concentrating the bowling attack at or near the line of leg stump. This may or may not be accompanied by a concentration of fielders on the leg side. The line of attack aims to cramp the batsman, making him play the ball with the bat close to the body. This makes it difficult to hit the ball freely and score runs, especially on the off side. Since a leg theory attack means the batsman is more likely to hit the ball on the leg side, additional fielders on that side of the field can be effective in preventing runs and taking catches. Stifling the batsman in this manner can lead to impatience and frustration, resulting in rash play by the batsman which in turn can lead to a quick dismissal. Leg theory can be a moderately successful tactic when used with both fast bowling and spin bowling, particularly leg spin to right-handed batsmen or off spin to left-handed batsmen. However, because it relies on lack of concentration or discipline by the batsman, it can be risky against patient and skilled players, especially batsmen who are strong on the leg side. The English opening bowlers Sydney Barnes and Frank Foster used leg theory with some success in Australia in 1911–12. In England, at around the same time Fred Root was one of the main proponents of the same tactic. Concentrating attack on the leg stump is considered by many cricket fans and commentators to lead to boring play, as it stifles run scoring and encourages batsmen to play conservatively. Fast leg theory In 1930, England captain Douglas Jardine, together with Nottinghamshire's captain Arthur Carr and his bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, developed a variant of leg theory in which the bowlers bowled fast, short-pitched balls that would rise into the batsman's body, together with a heavily stacked ring of close fielders on the leg side. The idea was that when the batsman defended against the ball, he would be likely to deflect the ball into the air for a catch. Jardine called this modified form of the tactic fast leg theory. On the 1932–33 English tour of Australia, Larwood and Voce bowled fast leg theory at the Australian batsmen. It turned out to be extremely dangerous, and most Australian players sustained injuries from being hit by the ball. Wicket-keeper Bert Oldfield's skull was fractured by a ball hitting his head (although the ball had first glanced off the bat and Larwood had an orthodox field), almost precipitating a riot by the Australian crowd. The Australian press dubbed the tactic Bodyline, and claimed it was a deliberate attempt by the English team to intimidate and injure the Australian players. Reports of the controversy reaching England at the time described the bowling as fast leg theory, which sounded to many people to be a harmless and well-established tactic. This led to a serious misunderstanding amongst the English public and the Marylebone Cricket Club – the administrators of English cricket – of the dangers posed by Bodyline. The English press and cricket authorities declared the Australian protests to be a case of sore losing and "squealing". It was only with the return of the English team and the subsequent use of Bodyline against English players in England by the touring West Indian cricket team in 1933 that demonstrated to the country the dangers it posed. The MCC subsequently revised the Laws of Cricket to prevent the use of "fast leg theory" tactics in future, also limiting the traditional tactic. See also Off theory References Cricket captaincy and tactics Bowling (cricket)

The Branco River (; Engl: White River) is the principal affluent of the Rio Negro from the north. Basin The river drains the Guayanan Highlands moist forests ecoregion. It is enriched by many streams from the Tepui highlands which separate Venezuela and Guyana from Brazil. Its two upper main tributaries are the Uraricoera and the Takutu. The latter almost links its sources with those of the Essequibo; during floods headwaters of the Branco and those of the Essequibo are connected, allowing a level of exchange in the aquatic fauna (such as fish) between the two systems. The Branco flows nearly south, and finds its way into the Negro through several channels and a chain of lagoons similar to those of the latter river. It is long, up to its Uraricoera confluence. It has numerous islands, and, above its mouth, it is broken by a bad series of rapids. Water chemistry As suggested by its name, the Branco (literally "white" in Portuguese) has whitish water that may appear almost milky due to the inorganic sediments it carries. It is traditionally considered a whitewater river, although the major seasonal fluctuations in its physico-chemical characteristics makes a classification difficult and some consider it clearwater. Especially the river's upper parts at the headwaters are clear and flow through rocky country, leading to the suggestion that sediments mainly originate from the lower parts. Furthermore, its chemistry and color may contradict each other compared to the traditional Amazonian river classifications. The Branco River has pH 6–7 and low levels of dissolved organic carbon. Alfred Russel Wallace mentioned the coloration in "On the Rio Negro", a paper read at the 13 June 1853 meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, in which he said: "[The Rio Branco] is white to a remarkable degree, its waters being actually milky in appearance". Alexander von Humboldt attributed the color to the presence of silicates in the water, principally mica and talc. There is a visible contrast with the waters of the Rio Negro at the confluence of the two rivers. The Rio Negro is a blackwater river with dark tea-colored acidic water (pH 3.5–4.5) that contains high levels of dissolved organic carbon. River capture Until approximately 20,000 years ago the headwaters of the Branco River flowed not into the Amazon, but via the Takutu Graben in the Rupununi area of Guyana towards the Caribbean. Currently in the rainy season much of the Rupununi area floods, with water draining both to the Amazon (via the Branco River) and the Essequibo River. Citations Notes References Encyclopædia Britannica Online.com: "Branco River" . retrieved 19 September 2009. Rivers of Roraima Tributaries of the Rio Negro (Amazon) Boa Vista, Roraima Guayana Highlands

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a Welsh polymath. As an academic, he worked in philosophy, mathematics, and logic. His work has had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics. He was a public intellectual, historian, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. He was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom. Russell was one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians, and one of the founders of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against idealism". Together with his former teacher A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic, and a major attempt to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic (see Logicism). Russell's article "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy". Russell was a pacifist who championed anti-imperialism and chaired the India League. He occasionally advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the atomic monopoly had passed and he decided he would "welcome with enthusiasm" world government. He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I. Later, Russell concluded that the war against Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany was a necessary "lesser of two evils" and also criticized Stalinist totalitarianism, condemned the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought". He was also the recipient of the De Morgan Medal (1932), Sylvester Medal (1934), Kalinga Prize (1957), and Jerusalem Prize (1963). Biography Early life and background Bertrand Arthur William Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire, United Kingdom, into an influential and liberal family of the British aristocracy. His parents, Viscount and Viscountess Amberley, were radical for their times. Lord Amberley consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor, the biologist Douglas Spalding. Both were early advocates of birth control at a time when this was considered scandalous. Lord Amberley was an atheist, and his atheism was evident when he asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russell's secular godfather. Mill died the year after Russell's birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russell's life. His paternal grandfather, Earl Russell, had twice been Prime Minister in the 1840s and 1860s. The Russells had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power and the peerage with the rise of the Tudor dynasty (see: Duke of Bedford). They established themselves as one of the leading British Whig families and participated in every great political event from the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536–1540 to the Glorious Revolution in 1688–1689 and the Great Reform Act in 1832. Lady Amberley was the daughter of Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley. Russell often feared the ridicule of his maternal grandmother, one of the campaigners for education of women. Childhood and adolescence Russell had two siblings: brother Frank (nearly seven years older than Bertrand), and sister Rachel (four years older). In June 1874 Russell's mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachel's death. In January 1876, his father died of bronchitis after a long period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of staunchly Victorian paternal grandparents, who lived at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park. His grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother, the Countess Russell (née Lady Frances Elliot), was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russell's childhood and youth. The Countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family and successfully petitioned the Court of Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberley's will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Despite her religious conservatism, she held progressive views in other areas (accepting Darwinism and supporting Irish Home Rule), and her influence on Bertrand Russell's outlook on social justice and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life. Her favourite Bible verse, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil", became his motto. The atmosphere at Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression and formality; Frank reacted to this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings. Russell's adolescence was lonely and he often contemplated suicide. He remarked in his autobiography that his keenest interests in "nature and books and (later) mathematics saved me from complete despondency;" only his wish to know more mathematics kept him from suicide. He was educated at home by a series of tutors. When Russell was eleven years old, his brother Frank introduced him to the work of Euclid, which he described in his autobiography as "one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love." During these formative years he also discovered the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Russell wrote: "I spent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart, knowing no one to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to reflect how wonderful it would have been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether I should meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much sympathy." Russell claimed that beginning at age 15, he spent considerable time thinking about the validity of Christian religious dogma, which he found unconvincing. At this age, he came to the conclusion that there is no free will and, two years later, that there is no life after death. Finally, at the age of 18, after reading Mill's Autobiography, he abandoned the "First Cause" argument and became an atheist. He travelled to the continent in 1890 with an American friend, Edward FitzGerald, and with FitzGerald's family he visited the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and climbed the Eiffel Tower soon after it was completed. University and first marriage Russell won a scholarship to read for the Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, and began his studies there in 1890, taking as coach Robert Rumsey Webb. He became acquainted with the younger George Edward Moore and came under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead, who recommended him to the Cambridge Apostles. He quickly distinguished himself in mathematics and philosophy, graduating as seventh Wrangler in the former in 1893 and becoming a Fellow in the latter in 1895. Russell was 17 years old in the summer of 1889 when he met the family of Alys Pearsall Smith, an American Quaker five years older, who was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. He became a friend of the Pearsall Smith family – they knew him primarily as "Lord John's grandson" and enjoyed showing him off. He soon fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, and contrary to his grandmother's wishes, married her on 13 December 1894. Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while cycling, that he no longer loved her. She asked him if he loved her and he replied that he did not. Russell also disliked Alys's mother, finding her controlling and cruel. It was to be a hollow shell of a marriage. A lengthy period of separation began in 1911 with Russell's affair with Lady Ottoline Morrell, and he and Alys finally divorced in 1921 to enable Russell to remarry. During his years of separation from Alys, Russell had passionate (and often simultaneous) affairs with a number of women, including Morrell and the actress Lady Constance Malleson. Some have suggested that at this point he had an affair with Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the English governess and writer, and first wife of T. S. Eliot. Early career Russell began his published work in 1896 with German Social Democracy, a study in politics that was an early indication of a lifelong interest in political and social theory. In 1896 he taught German social democracy at the London School of Economics. He was a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb. He now started an intensive study of the foundations of mathematics at Trinity. In 1897, he wrote An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (submitted at the Fellowship Examination of Trinity College) which discussed the Cayley–Klein metrics used for non-Euclidean geometry. He attended the First International Congress of Philosophy in Paris in 1900 where he met Giuseppe Peano and Alessandro Padoa. The Italians had responded to Georg Cantor, making a science of set theory; they gave Russell their literature including the Formulario mathematico. Russell was impressed by the precision of Peano's arguments at the Congress, read the literature upon returning to England, and came upon Russell's paradox. In 1903 he published The Principles of Mathematics, a work on foundations of mathematics. It advanced a thesis of logicism, that mathematics and logic are one and the same. At the age of 29, in February 1901, Russell underwent what he called a "sort of mystic illumination", after witnessing Whitehead's wife's acute suffering in an angina attack. "I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings about beauty... and with a desire almost as profound as that of the Buddha to find some philosophy which should make human life endurable", Russell would later recall. "At the end of those five minutes, I had become a completely different person." In 1905, he wrote the essay "On Denoting", which was published in the philosophical journal Mind. Russell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1908. The three-volume Principia Mathematica, written with Whitehead, was published between 1910 and 1913. This, along with the earlier The Principles of Mathematics, soon made Russell world-famous in his field. In 1910, he became a University of Cambridge lecturer at Trinity College, where he had studied. He was considered for a Fellowship, which would give him a vote in the college government and protect him from being fired for his opinions, but was passed over because he was "anti-clerical", essentially because he was agnostic. He was approached by the Austrian engineering student Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became his PhD student. Russell viewed Wittgenstein as a genius and a successor who would continue his work on logic. He spent hours dealing with Wittgenstein's various phobias and his frequent bouts of despair. This was often a drain on Russell's energy, but Russell continued to be fascinated by him and encouraged his academic development, including the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1922. Russell delivered his lectures on logical atomism, his version of these ideas, in 1918, before the end of World War I. Wittgenstein was, at that time, serving in the Austrian Army and subsequently spent nine months in an Italian prisoner of war camp at the end of the conflict. First World War During World War I, Russell was one of the few people to engage in active pacifist activities. In 1916, because of his lack of a Fellowship, he was dismissed from Trinity College following his conviction under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914. He later described this as an illegitimate means the state used to violate freedom of expression, in Free Thought and Official Propaganda. Russell championed the case of Eric Chappelow, a poet jailed and abused as a conscientious objector. Russell played a significant part in the Leeds Convention in June 1917, a historic event which saw well over a thousand "anti-war socialists" gather; many being delegates from the Independent Labour Party and the Socialist Party, united in their pacifist beliefs and advocating a peace settlement. The international press reported that Russell appeared with a number of Labour Members of Parliament (MPs), including Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden, as well as former Liberal MP and anti-conscription campaigner, Professor Arnold Lupton. After the event, Russell told Lady Ottoline Morrell that, "to my surprise, when I got up to speak, I was given the greatest ovation that was possible to give anybody". His conviction in 1916 resulted in Russell being fined £100 (), which he refused to pay in hope that he would be sent to prison, but his books were sold at auction to raise the money. The books were bought by friends; he later treasured his copy of the King James Bible that was stamped "Confiscated by Cambridge Police". A later conviction for publicly lecturing against inviting the United States to enter the war on the United Kingdom's side resulted in six months' imprisonment in Brixton Prison (see Bertrand Russell's political views) in 1918. He later said of his imprisonment: While he was reading Strachey's Eminent Victorians chapter about Gordon he laughed out loud in his cell prompting the warden to intervene and reminding him that "prison was a place of punishment". Russell was reinstated to Trinity in 1919, resigned in 1920, was Tarner Lecturer in 1926 and became a Fellow again in 1944 until 1949. In 1924, Russell again gained press attention when attending a "banquet" in the House of Commons with well-known campaigners, including Arnold Lupton, who had been an MP and had also endured imprisonment for "passive resistance to military or naval service". G. H. Hardy on the Trinity controversy In 1941, G. H. Hardy wrote a 61-page pamphlet titled Bertrand Russell and Trinity – published later as a book by Cambridge University Press with a foreword by C. D. Broad—in which he gave an authoritative account about Russell's 1916 dismissal from Trinity College, explaining that a reconciliation between the college and Russell had later taken place and gave details about Russell's personal life. Hardy writes that Russell's dismissal had created a scandal since the vast majority of the Fellows of the College opposed the decision. The ensuing pressure from the Fellows induced the Council to reinstate Russell. In January 1920, it was announced that Russell had accepted the reinstatement offer from Trinity and would begin lecturing from October. In July 1920, Russell applied for a one year leave of absence; this was approved. He spent the year giving lectures in China and Japan. In January 1921, it was announced by Trinity that Russell had resigned and his resignation had been accepted. This resignation, Hardy explains, was completely voluntary and was not the result of another altercation. The reason for the resignation, according to Hardy, was that Russell was going through a tumultuous time in his personal life with a divorce and subsequent remarriage. Russell contemplated asking Trinity for another one-year leave of absence but decided against it, since this would have been an "unusual application" and the situation had the potential to snowball into another controversy. Although Russell did the right thing, in Hardy's opinion, the reputation of the College suffered with Russell's resignation, since the 'world of learning' knew about Russell's altercation with Trinity but not that the rift had healed. In 1925, Russell was asked by the Council of Trinity College to give the Tarner Lectures on the Philosophy of the Sciences; these would later be the basis for one of Russell's best-received books according to Hardy: The Analysis of Matter, published in 1927. In the preface to the Trinity pamphlet, Hardy wrote: Between the wars In August 1920, Russell travelled to Soviet Russia as part of an official delegation sent by the British government to investigate the effects of the Russian Revolution. He wrote a four-part series of articles, titled "Soviet Russia—1920", for the US magazine The Nation. He met Vladimir Lenin and had an hour-long conversation with him. In his autobiography, he mentions that he found Lenin disappointing, sensing an "impish cruelty" in him and comparing him to "an opinionated professor". He cruised down the Volga on a steamship. His experiences destroyed his previous tentative support for the revolution. He subsequently wrote a book, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, about his experiences on this trip, taken with a group of 24 others from the UK, all of whom came home thinking well of the Soviet regime, despite Russell's attempts to change their minds. For example, he told them that he had heard shots fired in the middle of the night and was sure that these were clandestine executions, but the others maintained that it was only cars backfiring. Russell's lover Dora Black, a British author, feminist and socialist campaigner, visited Soviet Russia independently at the same time; in contrast to his reaction, she was enthusiastic about the Bolshevik revolution. The following autumn, Russell, accompanied by Dora, visited Peking (as it was then known in the West) to lecture on philosophy for a year. He went with optimism and hope, seeing China as then being on a new path. Other scholars present in China at the time included John Dewey and Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian Nobel-laureate poet. Before leaving China, Russell became gravely ill with pneumonia, and incorrect reports of his death were published in the Japanese press. When the couple visited Japan on their return journey, Dora took on the role of spurning the local press by handing out notices reading "Mr. Bertrand Russell, having died according to the Japanese press, is unable to give interviews to Japanese journalists". Apparently they found this harsh and reacted resentfully. Dora was six months pregnant when the couple returned to England on 26 August 1921. Russell arranged a hasty divorce from Alys, marrying Dora six days after the divorce was finalised, on 27 September 1921. Russell's children with Dora were John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell, born on 16 November 1921, and Katharine Jane Russell (now Lady Katharine Tait), born on 29 December 1923. Russell supported his family during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics, and education to the layman. From 1922 to 1927 the Russells divided their time between London and Cornwall, spending summers in Porthcurno. In the 1922 and 1923 general elections Russell stood as a Labour Party candidate in the Chelsea constituency, but only on the basis that he knew he was extremely unlikely to be elected in such a safe Conservative seat, and he was unsuccessful on both occasions. Owing to the birth of his two children, he became interested in education, especially early childhood education. He was not satisfied with the old traditional education and thought that progressive education also had some flaws, as a result, together with Dora, Russell founded the experimental Beacon Hill School in 1927. The school was run from a succession of different locations, including its original premises at the Russells' residence, Telegraph House, near Harting, West Sussex. During this time, he published On Education, Especially in Early Childhood. On 8 July 1930 Dora gave birth to her third child Harriet Ruth. After he left the school in 1932, Dora continued it until 1943. On a tour through the US in 1927, Russell met Barry Fox (later Barry Stevens), who became a well-known Gestalt therapist and writer in later years. Russell and Fox developed an intensive relationship. In Fox's words: "...for three years we were very close." Fox sent her daughter Judith to Beacon Hill School for some time. From 1927 to 1932 Russell wrote 34 letters to Fox. Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, in 1931, Russell became the 3rd Earl Russell. Russell's marriage to Dora grew increasingly tenuous, and it reached a breaking point over her having two children with an American journalist, Griffin Barry. They separated in 1932 and finally divorced. On 18 January 1936, Russell married his third wife, an Oxford undergraduate named Patricia ("Peter") Spence, who had been his children's governess since 1930. Russell and Peter had one son, Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell, who became a prominent historian and one of the leading figures in the Liberal Democrat party. Russell returned to the London School of Economics to lecture on the science of power in 1937. During the 1930s, Russell became a close friend and collaborator of V. K. Krishna Menon, then President of the India League, the foremost lobby in the United Kingdom for Indian self-rule. Russell was chair of the India League from 1932–1939. Second World War Russell's political views changed over time, mostly about war. He opposed rearmament against Nazi Germany. In 1937, he wrote in a personal letter: "If the Germans succeed in sending an invading army to England we should do best to treat them as visitors, give them quarters and invite the commander and chief to dine with the prime minister." In 1940, he changed his appeasement view that avoiding a full-scale world war was more important than defeating Hitler. He concluded that Adolf Hitler taking over all of Europe would be a permanent threat to democracy. In 1943, he adopted a stance toward large-scale warfare called "relative political pacifism": "War was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils." Before World War II, Russell taught at the University of Chicago, later moving on to Los Angeles to lecture at the UCLA Department of Philosophy. He was appointed professor at the City College of New York (CCNY) in 1940, but after a public outcry the appointment was annulled by a court judgment that pronounced him "morally unfit" to teach at the college because of his opinions, especially those relating to sexual morality, detailed in Marriage and Morals (1929). The matter was however taken to the New York Supreme Court by Jean Kay who was afraid that her daughter would be harmed by the appointment, though her daughter was not a student at CCNY. Many intellectuals, led by John Dewey, protested at his treatment. Albert Einstein's oft-quoted aphorism that "great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" originated in his open letter, dated 19 March 1940, to Morris Raphael Cohen, a professor emeritus at CCNY, supporting Russell's appointment. Dewey and Horace M. Kallen edited a collection of articles on the CCNY affair in The Bertrand Russell Case. Russell soon joined the Barnes Foundation, lecturing to a varied audience on the history of philosophy; these lectures formed the basis of A History of Western Philosophy. His relationship with the eccentric Albert C. Barnes soon soured, and he returned to the UK in 1944 to rejoin the faculty of Trinity College. Later life Russell participated in many broadcasts over the BBC, particularly The Brains Trust and the Third Programme, on various topical and philosophical subjects. By this time Russell was world-famous outside academic circles, frequently the subject or author of magazine and newspaper articles, and was called upon to offer opinions on a wide variety of subjects, even mundane ones. En route to one of his lectures in Trondheim, Russell was one of 24 survivors (among a total of 43 passengers) of an aeroplane crash in Hommelvik in October 1948. He said he owed his life to smoking since the people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane. A History of Western Philosophy (1945) became a best-seller and provided Russell with a steady income for the remainder of his life. In 1942, Russell argued in favour of a moderate socialism, capable of overcoming its metaphysical principles, in an inquiry on dialectical materialism, launched by the Austrian artist and philosopher Wolfgang Paalen in his journal DYN, saying "I think the metaphysics of both Hegel and Marx plain nonsense—Marx's claim to be 'science' is no more justified than Mary Baker Eddy's. This does not mean that I am opposed to socialism." In 1943, Russell expressed support for Zionism: "I have come gradually to see that, in a dangerous and largely hostile world, it is essential to Jews to have some country which is theirs, some region where they are not suspected aliens, some state which embodies what is distinctive in their culture". In a speech in 1948, Russell said that if the USSR's aggression continued, it would be morally worse to go to war after the USSR possessed an atomic bomb than before it possessed one, because if the USSR had no bomb the West's victory would come more swiftly and with fewer casualties than if there were atomic bombs on both sides. At that time, only the United States possessed an atomic bomb, and the USSR was pursuing an extremely aggressive policy towards the countries in Eastern Europe which were being absorbed into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Many understood Russell's comments to mean that Russell approved of a first strike in a war with the USSR, including Nigel Lawson, who was present when Russell spoke of such matters. Others, including Griffin, who obtained a transcript of the speech, have argued that he was merely explaining the usefulness of America's atomic arsenal in deterring the USSR from continuing its domination of Eastern Europe. However, just after the atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Russell wrote letters, and published articles in newspapers from 1945 to 1948, stating clearly that it was morally justified and better to go to war against the USSR using atomic bombs while the United States possessed them and before the USSR did. In September 1949, one week after the USSR tested its first A-bomb, but before this became known, Russell wrote that USSR would be unable to develop nuclear weapons because following Stalin's purges only science based on Marxist principles would be practised in the Soviet Union. After it became known that the USSR carried out its nuclear bomb tests, Russell declared his position advocating for the total abolition of atomic weapons. In 1948, Russell was invited by the BBC to deliver the inaugural Reith Lectures—what was to become an annual series of lectures, still broadcast by the BBC. His series of six broadcasts, titled Authority and the Individual, explored themes such as the role of individual initiative in the development of a community and the role of state control in a progressive society. Russell continued to write about philosophy. He wrote a foreword to Words and Things by Ernest Gellner, which was highly critical of the later thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and of ordinary language philosophy. Gilbert Ryle refused to have the book reviewed in the philosophical journal Mind, which caused Russell to respond via The Times. The result was a month-long correspondence in The Times between the supporters and detractors of ordinary language philosophy, which was only ended when the paper published an editorial critical of both sides but agreeing with the opponents of ordinary language philosophy. In the King's Birthday Honours of 9 June 1949, Russell was awarded the Order of Merit, and the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. When he was given the Order of Merit, George VI was affable but slightly embarrassed at decorating a former jailbird, saying, "You have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted". Russell merely smiled, but afterwards claimed that the reply "That's right, just like your brother" immediately came to mind. In 1950, Russell attended the inaugural conference for the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a CIA-funded anti-communist organisation committed to the deployment of culture as a weapon during the Cold War. Russell was one of the best-known patrons of the Congress, until he resigned in 1956. In 1952, Russell was divorced by Spence, with whom he had been very unhappy. Conrad, Russell's son by Spence, did not see his father between the time of the divorce and 1968 (at which time his decision to meet his father caused a permanent breach with his mother). Russell married his fourth wife, Edith Finch, soon after the divorce, on 15 December 1952. They had known each other since 1925, and Edith had taught English at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, sharing a house for 20 years with Russell's old friend Lucy Donnelly. Edith remained with him until his death, and, by all accounts, their marriage was a happy, close, and loving one. Russell's eldest son John suffered from serious mental illness, which was the source of ongoing disputes between Russell and his former wife Dora. In September 1961, at the age of 89, Russell was jailed for seven days in Brixton Prison for "breach of peace" after taking part in an anti-nuclear demonstration in London. The magistrate offered to exempt him from jail if he pledged himself to "good behaviour", to which Russell replied: "No, I won't." In 1962 Russell played a public role in the Cuban Missile Crisis: in an exchange of telegrams with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev assured him that the Soviet government would not be reckless. Russell sent this telegram to President Kennedy: YOUR ACTION DESPERATE. THREAT TO HUMAN SURVIVAL. NO CONCEIVABLE JUSTIFICATION. CIVILIZED MAN CONDEMNS IT. WE WILL NOT HAVE MASS MURDER. ULTIMATUM MEANS WAR... END THIS MADNESS. According to historian Peter Knight, after JFK's assassination, Russell, "prompted by the emerging work of the lawyer Mark Lane in the US ... rallied support from other noteworthy and left-leaning compatriots to form a Who Killed Kennedy Committee in June 1964, members of which included Michael Foot MP, Caroline Benn, the publisher Victor Gollancz, the writers John Arden and J. B. Priestley, and the Oxford history professor Hugh Trevor-Roper." Russell published a highly critical article weeks before the Warren Commission Report was published, setting forth 16 Questions on the Assassination and equating the Oswald case with the Dreyfus affair of late 19th-century France, in which the state wrongly convicted an innocent man. Russell also criticised the American press for failing to heed any voices critical of the official version. Political causes Bertrand Russell was opposed to war from a young age; his opposition to World War I being used as grounds for his dismissal from Trinity College at Cambridge. This incident fused two of his most controversial causes, as he had failed to be granted Fellow status which would have protected him from firing, because he was not willing to either pretend to be a devout Christian, or at least avoid admitting he was agnostic. He later described the resolution of these issues as essential to freedom of thought and expression, citing the incident in Free Thought and Official Propaganda, where he explained that the expression of any idea, even the most obviously "bad", must be protected not only from direct State intervention, but also economic leveraging and other means of being silenced: Russell spent the 1950s and 1960s engaged in political causes primarily related to nuclear disarmament and opposing the Vietnam War. The 1955 Russell–Einstein Manifesto was a document calling for nuclear disarmament and was signed by eleven of the most prominent nuclear physicists and intellectuals of the time. In 1966–1967, Russell worked with Jean-Paul Sartre and many other intellectual figures to form the Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal to investigate the conduct of the United States in Vietnam. He wrote a great many letters to world leaders during this period. Early in his life Russell supported eugenicist policies. He proposed in 1894 that the state issue certificates of health to prospective parents and withhold public benefits from those considered unfit. In 1929 he wrote that people deemed "mentally defective" and "feebleminded" should be sexually sterilized because they "are apt to have enormous numbers of illegitimate children, all, as a rule, wholly useless to the community." Russell was also an advocate of population control:The nations which at present increase rapidly should be encouraged to adopt the methods by which, in the West, the increase of population has been checked. Educational propaganda, with government help, could achieve this result in a generation. There are, however, two powerful forces opposed to such a policy: one is religion, the other is nationalism. I think it is the duty of all to proclaim that opposition to the spread of birth is appalling depth of misery and degradation, and that within another fifty years or so. I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose, opponents of birth control would prefer. War, as I remarked a moment ago, has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could be spread throughout the whole world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.In 1956, immediately before and during the Suez Crisis, Russell expressed his opposition to European imperialism in the Middle East. He viewed the crisis as another reminder of the pressing need for a more effective mechanism for international governance, and to restrict national sovereignty to places such as the Suez Canal area "where general interest is involved". At the same time the Suez Crisis was taking place, the world was also captivated by the Hungarian Revolution and the subsequent crushing of the revolt by intervening Soviet forces. Russell attracted criticism for speaking out fervently against the Suez war while ignoring Soviet repression in Hungary, to which he responded that he did not criticise the Soviets "because there was no need. Most of the so-called Western World was fulminating". Although he later feigned a lack of concern, at the time he was disgusted by the brutal Soviet response, and on 16 November 1956, he expressed approval for a declaration of support for Hungarian scholars which Michael Polanyi had cabled to the Soviet embassy in London twelve days previously, shortly after Soviet troops had already entered Budapest. In November 1957 Russell wrote an article addressing US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, urging a summit to consider "the conditions of co-existence". Khrushchev responded that peace could indeed be served by such a meeting. In January 1958 Russell elaborated his views in The Observer, proposing a cessation of all nuclear-weapons production, with the UK taking the first step by unilaterally suspending its own nuclear-weapons program if necessary, and with Germany "freed from all alien armed forces and pledged to neutrality in any conflict between East and West". US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles replied for Eisenhower. The exchange of letters was published as The Vital Letters of Russell, Khrushchev, and Dulles. Russell was asked by The New Republic, a liberal American magazine, to elaborate his views on world peace. He urged that all nuclear-weapons testing and constant flights by planes armed with nuclear weapons be halted immediately, and negotiations be opened for the destruction of all hydrogen bombs, with the number of conventional nuclear devices limited to ensure a balance of power. He proposed that Germany be reunified and accept the Oder-Neisse line as its border, and that a neutral zone be established in Central Europe, consisting at the minimum of Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, with each of these countries being free of foreign troops and influence, and prohibited from forming alliances with countries outside the zone. In the Middle East, Russell suggested that the West avoid opposing Arab nationalism, and proposed the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force to guard Israel's frontiers to ensure that Israel was prevented from committing aggression and protected from it. He also suggested Western recognition of the People's Republic of China, and that it be admitted to the UN with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. He was in contact with Lionel Rogosin while the latter was filming his anti-war film Good Times, Wonderful Times in the 1960s. He became a hero to many of the youthful members of the New Left. In early 1963, in particular, Russell became increasingly vocal in his disapproval of the Vietnam War, and felt that the US government's policies there were near-genocidal. In 1963 he became the inaugural recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, an award for writers concerned with the freedom of the individual in society. In 1964 he was one of eleven world figures who issued an appeal to Israel and the Arab countries to accept an arms embargo and international supervision of nuclear plants and rocket weaponry. In October 1965 he tore up his Labour Party card because he suspected Harold Wilson's Labour government was going to send troops to support the United States in Vietnam. Final years, death and legacy In June 1955 Russell had leased Plas Penrhyn in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, Wales and on 5 July of the following year it became his and Edith's principal residence. Russell published his three-volume autobiography in 1967, 1968, and 1969. Russell made a cameo appearance playing himself in the anti-war Hindi film Aman, by Mohan Kumar, which was released in India in 1967. This was Russell's only appearance in a feature film. On 23 November 1969 he wrote to The Times newspaper saying that the preparation for show trials in Czechoslovakia was "highly alarming". The same month, he appealed to Secretary General U Thant of the United Nations to support an international war crimes commission to investigate alleged torture and genocide by the United States in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The following month, he protested to Alexei Kosygin over the expulsion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Union of Writers. On 31 January 1970 Russell issued a statement condemning "Israel's aggression in the Middle East", and in particular, Israeli bombing raids being carried out deep in Egyptian territory as part of the War of Attrition. He called for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-Six-Day War borders. This was Russell's final political statement or act. It was read out at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo on 3 February 1970, the day after his death. Russell died of influenza, just after 8 pm on 2 February 1970 at his home in Penrhyndeudraeth. His body was cremated in Colwyn Bay on 5 February 1970 with five people present. In accordance with his will, there was no religious ceremony but one minute's silence; his ashes were scattered over the Welsh mountains later that year. He left an estate valued at £69,423 (equivalent to £ million in ). In 1980, a memorial to Russell was commissioned by a committee including the philosopher A. J. Ayer. It consists of a bust of Russell in Red Lion Square in London sculpted by Marcelle Quinton. Lady Katharine Jane Tait, Russell's daughter, founded the Bertrand Russell Society in 1974 to preserve and understand his work. It publishes the Bertrand Russell Society Bulletin, holds meetings and awards prizes for scholarship. She also authored several essays about her father; as well as a book, My Father, Bertrand Russell, which was published in 1975. All members receive Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies. Marriages and issue Russell first married Alys Whitall Smith (died 1951) in 1894. The marriage was dissolved in 1921 with no issue. His second marriage was to Dora Winifred Black MBE (died 1986), daughter of Sir Frederick Black, in 1921. This was dissolved in 1935, having produced two children: John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell (1921–1987) Lady Katharine Jane Russell (1923-2021), who married Rev. Charles Tait in 1948 and had issue Russell's third marriage was to Patricia Helen Spence (died 2004) in 1936, with the marriage producing one child: Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell (1937–2004) Russell's third marriage ended in divorce in 1952. He married Edith Finch in the same year. Finch survived Russell, dying in 1978. Titles and honours from birth Russell held throughout his life the following styles and honours: from birth until 1908: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell from 1908 until 1931: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell, FRS from 1931 until 1949: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, FRS from 1949 until death: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, OM, FRS Views Philosophy Russell is generally credited with being one of the founders of analytic philosophy. He was deeply impressed by Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), and wrote on every major area of philosophy except aesthetics. He was particularly prolific in the fields of metaphysics, logic and the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, ethics and epistemology. When Brand Blanshard asked Russell why he did not write on aesthetics, Russell replied that he did not know anything about it, though he hastened to add "but that is not a very good excuse, for my friends tell me it has not deterred me from writing on other subjects". On ethics, Russell wrote that he was a utilitarian in his youth, yet he later distanced himself from this view. For the advancement of science and protection of the right to freedom of expression, Russell advocated The Will to Doubt, the recognition that all human knowledge is at most a best guess, that one should always remember: Religion Russell described himself in 1947 as an agnostic, saying: "Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line." For most of his adult life, Russell maintained religion to be little more than superstition and, despite any positive effects, largely harmful to people. He believed that religion and the religious outlook serve to impede knowledge and foster fear and dependency, and to be responsible for much of our world's wars, oppression, and misery. He was a member of the Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association and President of Cardiff Humanists until his death. Society Political and social activism occupied much of Russell's time for most of his life. Russell remained politically active almost to the end of his life, writing to and exhorting world leaders and lending his name to various causes. Russell argued for a "scientific society", where war would be abolished, population growth would be limited, and prosperity would be shared. He suggested the establishment of a "single supreme world government" able to enforce peace, claiming that "the only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation". Russell also expressed support for guild socialism, and commented positively on several socialist thinkers and activists. Russell was an active supporter of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, being one of the signatories of A. E. Dyson's 1958 letter to The Times calling for a change in the law regarding male homosexual practices, which were partly legalised in 1967, when Russell was still alive. Russell advocated – and was one of the first people in the UK to suggest – a universal basic income. In "Reflections on My Eightieth Birthday" ("Postscript" in his Autobiography), Russell wrote: "I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken". Freedom of opinion and expression Russell was a champion of freedom of opinion and an opponent of both censorship and indoctrination. In 1928, he wrote: "The fundamental argument for freedom of opinion is the doubtfulness of all our belief... when the State intervenes to ensure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favour of that doctrine .. It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions make it impossible to make a living. In 1957, he wrote: "'Free thought' means thinking freely ... to be worthy of the name freethinker he must be free of two things: the force of tradition and the tyranny of his own passions." Education Russell is most famously known for the following opinions on education, taken from Page 30 of "The Impact of Science on society". Selected bibliography Below is a selected bibliography of Russell's books in English, sorted by year of first publication: 1896. German Social Democracy. London: Longmans, Green 1897. An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1900. A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1903. The Principles of Mathematics. Cambridge University Press 1903. A Free man's worship, and other essays. 1905. On Denoting, Mind, Vol. 14. . Basil Blackwell 1910. Philosophical Essays. London: Longmans, Green 1910–1913. Principia Mathematica. (with Alfred North Whitehead). 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1912. The Problems of Philosophy. London: Williams and Norgate 1914. Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. Chicago and London: Open Court Publishing. 1916. Principles of Social Reconstruction. London, George Allen and Unwin 1916. Why Men Fight. New York: The Century Co 1916. The Policy of the Entente, 1904–1914 : a reply to Professor Gilbert Murray. Manchester: The National Labour Press 1916. Justice in War-time. Chicago: Open Court 1917. Political Ideals. New York: The Century Co. 1918. Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin 1918. Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism. London: George Allen & Unwin 1919. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin. ( for Routledge paperback) 1920. The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. London: George Allen & Unwin 1921. The Analysis of Mind. London: George Allen & Unwin 1922. The Problem of China. London: George Allen & Unwin 1922. Free Thought and Official Propaganda, delivered at South Place Institute 1923. The Prospects of Industrial Civilization, in collaboration with Dora Russell. London: George Allen & Unwin 1923. The ABC of Atoms, London: Kegan Paul. Trench, Trubner 1924. Icarus; or, The Future of Science. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner 1925. The ABC of Relativity. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner 1925. What I Believe. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner 1926. On Education, Especially in Early Childhood. London: George Allen & Unwin 1927. The Analysis of Matter. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner 1927. An Outline of Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin 1927. Why I Am Not a Christian. London: Watts 1927. Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell. New York: Modern Library 1928. Sceptical Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin 1929. Marriage and Morals. London: George Allen & Unwin 1930. The Conquest of Happiness. London: George Allen & Unwin 1931. The Scientific Outlook, London: George Allen & Unwin 1932. Education and the Social Order, London: George Allen & Unwin 1934. Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914. London: George Allen & Unwin 1935. In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin 1935. Religion and Science. London: Thornton Butterworth 1936. Which Way to Peace?. London: Jonathan Cape 1937. The Amberley Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley, with Patricia Russell, 2 vols., London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press 1938. Power: A New Social Analysis. London: George Allen & Unwin 1940. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 1945. The Bomb and Civilisation. Published in the Glasgow Forward on 18 August 1945 1945. A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day New York: Simon and Schuster 1948. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. London: George Allen & Unwin 1949. Authority and the Individual. London: George Allen & Unwin 1950. . London: George Allen & Unwin 1951. New Hopes for a Changing World. London: George Allen & Unwin 1952. The Impact of Science on Society. London: George Allen & Unwin 1953. Satan in the Suburbs and Other Stories. London: George Allen & Unwin 1954. Human Society in Ethics and Politics. London: George Allen & Unwin 1954. Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories. London: George Allen & Unwin 1956. Portraits from Memory and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin 1956. Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, edited by Robert C. Marsh. London: George Allen & Unwin 1957. Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, edited by Paul Edwards. London: George Allen & Unwin 1958. Understanding History and Other Essays. New York: Philosophical Library 1958. The Will to Doubt. New York: Philosophical Library 1959. Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare. London: George Allen & Unwin 1959. My Philosophical Development. London: George Allen & Unwin 1959. Wisdom of the West: A Historical Survey of Western Philosophy in Its Social and Political Setting, edited by Paul Foulkes. London: Macdonald 1960. Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company 1961. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, edited by R. E. Egner and L. E. Denonn. London: George Allen & Unwin 1961. Fact and Fiction. London: George Allen & Unwin 1961. Has Man a Future? London: George Allen & Unwin 1963. Essays in Skepticism. New York: Philosophical Library 1963. Unarmed Victory. London: George Allen & Unwin 1965. Legitimacy Versus Industrialism, 1814–1848. London: George Allen & Unwin (first published as Parts I and II of Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914, 1934) 1965. On the Philosophy of Science, edited by Charles A. Fritz, Jr. Indianapolis: The Bobbs–Merrill Company 1966. The ABC of Relativity. London: George Allen & Unwin 1967. Russell's Peace Appeals, edited by Tsutomu Makino and Kazuteru Hitaka. Japan: Eichosha's New Current Books 1967. War Crimes in Vietnam. London: George Allen & Unwin 1951–1969. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 vols., London: George Allen & Unwin. Vol. 2, 1956 1969. Dear Bertrand Russell... A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public 1950–1968, edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils. London: George Allen and Unwin Russell was the author of more than sixty books and over two thousand articles. Additionally, he wrote many pamphlets, introductions, and letters to the editor. One pamphlet titled, 'I Appeal unto Caesar': The Case of the Conscientious Objectors, ghostwritten for Margaret Hobhouse, the mother of imprisoned peace activist Stephen Hobhouse, allegedly helped secure the release from prison of hundreds of conscientious objectors. His works can be found in anthologies and collections, including The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, which McMaster University began publishing in 1983. By March 2017 this collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works included 18 volumes, and several more are in progress. A bibliography in three additional volumes catalogues his publications. The Russell Archives held by McMaster's William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections possess over 40,000 of his letters. See also Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club Criticism of Jesus Joseph Conrad (Russell's impression) List of peace activists List of pioneers in computer science Information Research Department Type theory Type system Logicomix, a graphic novel about the foundational quest in mathematics, the narrator of the story being Bertrand Russell and with his life as the main storyline Notes References Citations Sources Primary sources 1900, Sur la logique des relations avec des applications à la théorie des séries, Rivista di matematica 7: 115–148. 1901, On the Notion of Order, Mind (n.s.) 10: 35–51. 1902, (with Alfred North Whitehead), On Cardinal Numbers, American Journal of Mathematics 24: 367–384. 1948, BBC Reith Lectures: Authority and the Individual A series of six radio lectures broadcast on the BBC Home Service in December 1948. Secondary sources John Newsome Crossley. A Note on Cantor's Theorem and Russell's Paradox, Australian Journal of Philosophy 51, 1973, 70–71. Ivor Grattan-Guinness. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Alan Ryan. Bertrand Russell: A Political Life, New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Further reading Books about Russell's philosophy Alfred Julius Ayer. Russell, London: Fontana, 1972. . A lucid summary exposition of Russell's thought. Elizabeth Ramsden Eames. Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969. . A clear description of Russell's philosophical development. Celia Green. The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-Body Problem, Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2003. Contains a sympathetic analysis of Russell's views on causality. A. C. Grayling. Russell: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2002. Nicholas Griffin. Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. A. D. Irvine, ed. Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments, 4 volumes, London: Routledge, 1999. Consists of essays on Russell's work by many distinguished philosophers. Michael K. Potter. Bertrand Russell's Ethics, Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2006. A clear and accessible explanation of Russell's moral philosophy. P. A. Schilpp, ed. The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1944. John Slater. Bertrand Russell, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994. Biographical books A. J. Ayer. Bertrand Russell, New York: Viking Press, 1972, reprint ed. London: University of Chicago Press, 1988, Andrew Brink. Bertrand Russell: A Psychobiography of a Moralist, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1989, Ronald W. Clark. The Life of Bertrand Russell, London: Jonathan Cape, 1975, Ronald W. Clark. Bertrand Russell and His World, London: Thames & Hudson, 1981, Rupert Crawshay-Williams. Russell Remembered, London: Oxford University Press, 1970. Written by a close friend of Russell's John Lewis. Bertrand Russell: Philosopher and Humanist, London: Lawerence & Wishart, 1968 Ray Monk. Bertrand Russell: Mathematics: Dreams and Nightmares, London: Phoenix, 1997, Ray Monk. Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872–1920 Vol. I, New York: Routledge, 1997, Ray Monk. Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921–1970 Vol. II, New York: Routledge, 2001, Caroline Moorehead. Bertrand Russell: A Life, New York: Viking, 1993, George Santayana. "Bertrand Russell", in Selected Writings of George Santayana, Norman Henfrey (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I, 1968, pp. 326–329 Peter Stone et al. Bertrand Russell's Life and Legacy. Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2017. Katharine Tait. My Father Bertrand Russell, New York: Thoemmes Press, 1975 Alan Wood. Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Sceptic, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957. External links Bertrand Russell – media on YouTube The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University The Bertrand Russell Society at Bertrand Russell Society The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation BBC Face to Face interview with Bertrand Russell and John Freeman, broadcast 4 March 1959 including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1950 "What Desires Are Politically Important?" Kutateladze S.S.Bertrand Russel and a Preventive War Against Russia Bertrand Russell 1872 births 1970 deaths 19th-century atheists 19th-century English mathematicians 19th-century English non-fiction writers 19th-century English philosophers 19th-century essayists 20th-century atheists 20th-century English mathematicians 20th-century English non-fiction writers 20th-century English philosophers 20th-century essayists Academics of the London School of Economics Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Analytic philosophers Anti–Vietnam War activists Aristotelian philosophers Atheist philosophers British anti–nuclear weapons activists British anti–World War I activists British atheism activists British cultural critics British ethicists British Nobel laureates Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament activists Consciousness researchers and theorists Consequentialists Critics of Christianity Critics of religions Critics of the Catholic Church Critics of work and the work ethic De Morgan Medallists Deaths from influenza Earls Russell Empiricists English agnostics English anti-fascists English anti–nuclear weapons activists English atheist writers English atheists English essayists English historians of philosophy English humanists English logicians English male non-fiction writers English Nobel laureates English pacifists English people of Scottish descent English people of Welsh descent English political commentators English political philosophers English political writers English prisoners and detainees English republicans English sceptics English social commentators English socialists Epistemologists European democratic socialists Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Founders of philosophical traditions Free love advocates Free speech activists Freethought writers Georgists Honorary Fellows of the British Academy Infectious disease deaths in Wales Intellectual historians Jerusalem Prize recipients Kalinga Prize recipients LGBT rights activists from England Liberal socialism Linguistic turn Logicians Mathematical logicians Members of the Order of Merit Metaphilosophers Metaphysicians Metaphysics writers Moral philosophers Nobel laureates in Literature Nonviolence advocates Ontologists People from Harting People from Monmouthshire Philosophers of culture Philosophers of economics Philosophers of education Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of law Philosophers of literature Philosophers of logic Philosophers of love Philosophers of mathematics Philosophers of mind Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Philosophers of sexuality Philosophers of social science Philosophers of technology Philosophers of war Philosophy academics Philosophy writers Pipe smokers Political philosophers Presidents of the Aristotelian Society Residents of Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park Rhetoric theorists Bertrand Russell Secular humanists Set theorists Social critics The Nation (U.S. magazine) people Theorists on Western civilization Universal basic income writers University of California, Los Angeles faculty University of Chicago faculty Utilitarians Writers about activism and social change Writers about communism Writers about globalization Writers about religion and science Writers about the Soviet Union

British English (BrE) or Anglo-English is the standard dialect of "the English language used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere." Variations exist in formal, written English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, North East England, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire, whereas the adjective little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom and this could be described by the term British English. The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. According to Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English, British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions in the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity". Colloquial portmanteau words for British English include: Bringlish (recorded from 1967), Britglish (1973), Britlish (1976), Brenglish (1993) and Brilish (2011). History English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic—the insular variety of continental Celtic, which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages (Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric) cohabited alongside English into the modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages, influence on English was notably limited. However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. The original Old English language was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication). The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences e.g. swine (like the Germanic schwein) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans. Another example is the Anglo-Saxon ‘cu’ meaning cow, and the French ‘bœuf’ meaning beef. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary. Dialects Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of the United Kingdom, as well as within the countries themselves. The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England, which encompasses Southern English dialects, West Country dialects, East and West Midlands English dialects and Northern English dialects), Ulster English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language), and Scottish English (not to be confused with the Scots language or Scottish Gaelic language). The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages. Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though. Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950), the University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects. The team are sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC, in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout the country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio". When discussing the award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated: Regional Most people in Britain speak with a regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation (also called "the Queen's English", "Oxford English" and "BBC English"), that is essentially region-less. It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period. It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. In the South East there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). The Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand, although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. In London itself, the broad local accent is still changing, partly influenced by Caribbean speech. Immigrants to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 100 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. As a result, Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors. Since the mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian. It is the last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath/grass (i.e. barth/grarss). Conversely crass/plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby, north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by the West Scottish accent. In addition, many British people can to some degree temporarily "swing" their accent towards a more neutral form of English at will, to reduce difficulty where very different accents are involved, or when speaking to foreigners. Ethnicity Features Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect. T-stopping Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, has become commonly realised as a glottal stop when it is in the intervocalic position, in a process called T-glottalisation. National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard a no. It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later, while often has all but regained . Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p, as in paer and k as in baer. R-dropping In most areas of England, outside the West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity. In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R. It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar, where the R is not pronounced. Diphthongisation British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between. North Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in the traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne, 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'. South Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with a greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ]. People in groups Dropping a morphological grammatical number, in collective nouns, is stronger in British English than North American English. This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people. The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment: A football team can be treated likewise: This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen, a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813:All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence. Negatives Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives. Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence. While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows the idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb. Standardisation As with English around the world, the English language as used in the United Kingdom is governed by convention rather than formal code: there is no body equivalent to the Académie française or the Real Academia Española. Dictionaries (for example, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the Chambers Dictionary, and the Collins Dictionary) record usage rather than attempting to prescribe it. In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time: words are freely borrowed from other languages and other strains of English, and neologisms are frequent. For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the 9th century, the form of language spoken in London and the East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of a lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence. Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform, where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling. By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers. Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper, the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press. The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as Hart's Rules, and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style. Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English, the Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house. See also American English Australian English British Sign Language Canadian English Commonwealth English Hiberno-English Newfoundland English New Zealand English American and British English spelling differences References Notes Citations Bibliography McArthur, Tom (2002). Oxford Guide to World English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. hardback, paperback. Bragg, Melvyn (2004). The Adventure of English, London: Sceptre. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Simpson, John (ed.) (1989). Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. External links Sounds Familiar? Examples of regional accents and dialects across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website Accents and dialects from the British Library Sound Archive Accents of English from Around the World Hear and compare how the same 110 words are pronounced in 50 English accents from around the world – instantaneous playback online The Septic's Companion: A British Slang Dictionary an online dictionary of British slang, viewable alphabetically or by category British English Turkey Dialects of English Languages of Gibraltar Languages of the United Kingdom

Bunsen may refer to: Christian Charles Josias Bunsen (1791–1860), Prussian diplomat and scholar Frances Bunsen (1791–1876), or Baroness Bunsen, Welsh painter and author, wife of Christian Charles Josias Bunsen Robert Bunsen (1811–1899), German chemist, after whom is named: Bunsen burner Bunsen cell Bunsen crater on the moon 10361 Bunsen, an asteroid Bunsen Reaction The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award, a German award for spectroscopy Sir Maurice de Bunsen (1852–1932), British diplomat Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, fictional character from the Muppet Show Low German surnames

Bipedalism is a form of terrestrial locomotion where an organism moves by means of its two rear limbs or legs. An animal or machine that usually moves in a bipedal manner is known as a biped , meaning 'two feet' (from Latin bis 'double' and pes 'foot'). Types of bipedal movement include walking, running, and hopping. Few modern species are habitual bipeds whose normal method of locomotion is two-legged. In the Triassic period some groups of archosaurs (a group that includes crocodiles and dinosaurs) developed bipedalism; among the dinosaurs, all the early forms and many later groups were habitual or exclusive bipeds; the birds are members of a clade of exclusively bipedal dinosaurs, the theropods. Within mammals, habitual bipedalism has evolved multiple times, with the macropods, kangaroo rats and mice, springhare, hopping mice, pangolins and hominin apes (australopithecines and humans) as well as various other extinct groups evolving the trait independently. A larger number of modern species intermittently or briefly use a bipedal gait. Several lizard species move bipedally when running, usually to escape from threats. Many primate and bear species will adopt a bipedal gait in order to reach food or explore their environment, though there are a few cases where they walk on their hind limbs only. Several arboreal primate species, such as gibbons and indriids, exclusively walk on two legs during the brief periods they spend on the ground. Many animals rear up on their hind legs while fighting or copulating. Some animals commonly stand on their hind legs to reach food, keep watch, threaten a competitor or predator, or pose in courtship, but do not move bipedally. Etymology The word is derived from the Latin words bi(s) 'two' and ped- 'foot', as contrasted with quadruped 'four feet'. Advantages Limited and exclusive bipedalism can offer a species several advantages. Bipedalism raises the head; this allows a greater field of vision with improved detection of distant dangers or resources, access to deeper water for wading animals and allows the animals to reach higher food sources with their mouths. While upright, non-locomotory limbs become free for other uses, including manipulation (in primates and rodents), flight (in birds), digging (in giant pangolin), combat (in bears, great apes and the large monitor lizard) or camouflage. The maximum bipedal speed appears slower than the maximum speed of quadrupedal movement with a flexible backbone – both the ostrich and the red kangaroo can reach speeds of , while the cheetah can exceed . Even though bipedalism is slower at first, over long distances, it has allowed humans to outrun most other animals according to the endurance running hypothesis. Bipedality in kangaroo rats has been hypothesized to improve locomotor performance, which could aid in escaping from predators. Facultative and obligate bipedalism Zoologists often label behaviors, including bipedalism, as "facultative" (i.e. optional) or "obligate" (the animal has no reasonable alternative). Even this distinction is not completely clear-cut — for example, humans other than infants normally walk and run in biped fashion, but almost all can crawl on hands and knees when necessary. There are even reports of humans who normally walk on all fours with their feet but not their knees on the ground, but these cases are a result of conditions such as Uner Tan syndrome — very rare genetic neurological disorders rather than normal behavior. Even if one ignores exceptions caused by some kind of injury or illness, there are many unclear cases, including the fact that "normal" humans can crawl on hands and knees. This article therefore avoids the terms "facultative" and "obligate", and focuses on the range of styles of locomotion normally used by various groups of animals. Normal humans may be considered "obligate" bipeds because the alternatives are very uncomfortable and usually only resorted to when walking is impossible. Movement There are a number of states of movement commonly associated with bipedalism. Standing. Staying still on both legs. In most bipeds this is an active process, requiring constant adjustment of balance. Walking. One foot in front of another, with at least one foot on the ground at any time. Running. One foot in front of another, with periods where both feet are off the ground. Jumping/hopping. Moving by a series of jumps with both feet moving together. Bipedal animals The great majority of living terrestrial vertebrates are quadrupeds, with bipedalism exhibited by only a handful of living groups. Humans, gibbons and large birds walk by raising one foot at a time. On the other hand, most macropods, smaller birds, lemurs and bipedal rodents move by hopping on both legs simultaneously. Tree kangaroos are able to walk or hop, most commonly alternating feet when moving arboreally and hopping on both feet simultaneously when on the ground. Extant reptiles Many species of lizards become bipedal during high-speed, sprint locomotion, including the world's fastest lizard, the spiny-tailed iguana (genus Ctenosaura). Early reptiles and lizards The first known biped is the bolosaurid Eudibamus whose fossils date from 290 million years ago. Its long hind-legs, short forelegs, and distinctive joints all suggest bipedalism. The species became extinct in the early Permian. Archosaurs (includes crocodiles, dinosaurs and birds) Birds All birds are bipeds when on the ground, a feature inherited from their dinosaur ancestors. However, hoatzin chicks have claws on their wings which they use for climbing. Other archosaurs Bipedalism evolved more than once in archosaurs, the group that includes both dinosaurs and crocodilians. All dinosaurs are thought to be descended from a fully bipedal ancestor, perhaps similar to Eoraptor. Bipedal movement also re-evolved in a number of other dinosaur lineages such as the iguanodons. Some extinct members of the crocodilian line, a sister group to the dinosaurs, also evolved bipedal forms - a crocodile relative from the triassic, Effigia okeeffeae, is thought to have been bipedal. Pterosaurs were previously thought to have been bipedal, but recent trackways have all shown quadrupedal locomotion. Bipedalism also evolved independently among the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs diverged from their archosaur ancestors approximately 230 million years ago during the Middle to Late Triassic period, roughly 20 million years after the Permian-Triassic extinction event wiped out an estimated 95 percent of all life on Earth. Radiometric dating of fossils from the early dinosaur genus Eoraptor establishes its presence in the fossil record at this time. Paleontologists suspect Eoraptor resembles the common ancestor of all dinosaurs; if this is true, its traits suggest that the first dinosaurs were small, bipedal predators. The discovery of primitive, dinosaur-like ornithodirans such as Marasuchus and Lagerpeton in Argentinian Middle Triassic strata supports this view; analysis of recovered fossils suggests that these animals were indeed small, bipedal predators. Mammals A number of groups of extant mammals have independently evolved bipedalism as their main form of locomotion - for example humans, giant pangolins, the extinct giant ground sloths, numerous species of jumping rodents and macropods. Humans, as their bipedalism has been extensively studied, are documented in the next section. Macropods are believed to have evolved bipedal hopping only once in their evolution, at some time no later than 45 million years ago. Bipedal movement is less common among mammals, most of which are quadrupedal. All primates possess some bipedal ability, though most species primarily use quadrupedal locomotion on land. Primates aside, the macropods (kangaroos, wallabies and their relatives), kangaroo rats and mice, hopping mice and springhare move bipedally by hopping. Very few mammals other than primates commonly move bipedally by an alternating gait rather than hopping. Exceptions are the ground pangolin and in some circumstances the tree kangaroo. One black bear, Pedals, became famous locally and on the internet for having a frequent bipedal gait, although this is attributed to injuries on the bear's front paws. Primates Most bipedal animals move with their backs close to horizontal, using a long tail to balance the weight of their bodies. The primate version of bipedalism is unusual because the back is close to upright (completely upright in humans), and the tail may be absent entirely. Many primates can stand upright on their hind legs without any support. Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, gibbons and baboons exhibit forms of bipedalism. On the ground sifakas move like all indrids with bipedal sideways hopping movements of the hind legs, holding their forelimbs up for balance. Geladas, although usually quadrupedal, will sometimes move between adjacent feeding patches with a squatting, shuffling bipedal form of locomotion. However, they can only do so for brief amounts, as their bodies are not adapted for constant bipedal locomotion. Humans are the only primates who are normally biped, due to an extra curve in the spine which stabilizes the upright position, as well as shorter arms relative to the legs than is the case for the nonhuman great apes. The evolution of human bipedalism began in primates about four million years ago, or as early as seven million years ago with Sahelanthropus or about 12 million years ago with Danuvius guggenmosi. One hypothesis for human bipedalism is that it evolved as a result of differentially successful survival from carrying food to share with group members, although there are alternative hypotheses. Injured individuals Injured chimpanzees and bonobos have been capable of sustained bipedalism. Three captive primates, one macaque Natasha and two chimps, Oliver and Poko (chimpanzee), were found to move bipedally . Natasha switched to exclusive bipedalism after an illness, while Poko was discovered in captivity in a tall, narrow cage. Oliver reverted to knuckle-walking after developing arthritis. Non-human primates often use bipedal locomotion when carrying food. Limited bipedalism Limited bipedalism in mammals Other mammals engage in limited, non-locomotory, bipedalism. A number of other animals, such as rats, raccoons, and beavers will squat on their hindlegs to manipulate some objects but revert to four limbs when moving (the beaver will move bipedally if transporting wood for their dams, as will the raccoon when holding food). Bears will fight in a bipedal stance to use their forelegs as weapons. A number of mammals will adopt a bipedal stance in specific situations such as for feeding or fighting. Ground squirrels and meerkats will stand on hind legs to survey their surroundings, but will not walk bipedally. Dogs (e.g. Faith) can stand or move on two legs if trained, or if birth defect or injury precludes quadrupedalism. The gerenuk antelope stands on its hind legs while eating from trees, as did the extinct giant ground sloth and chalicotheres. The spotted skunk will walk on its front legs when threatened, rearing up on its front legs while facing the attacker so that its anal glands, capable of spraying an offensive oil, face its attacker. Limited bipedalism in non-mammals Bipedalism is unknown among the amphibians. Among the non-archosaur reptiles bipedalism is rare, but it is found in the "reared-up" running of lizards such as agamids and monitor lizards. Many reptile species will also temporarily adopt bipedalism while fighting. One genus of basilisk lizard can run bipedally across the surface of water for some distance. Among arthropods, cockroaches are known to move bipedally at high speeds. Bipedalism is rarely found outside terrestrial animals, though at least two types of octopus walk bipedally on the sea floor using two of their arms, allowing the remaining arms to be used to camouflage the octopus as a mat of algae or a floating coconut. Evolution of human bipedalism There are at least twelve distinct hypotheses as to how and why bipedalism evolved in humans, and also some debate as to when. Bipedalism evolved well before the large human brain or the development of stone tools. Bipedal specializations are found in Australopithecus fossils from 4.2 to 3.9 million years ago. Nonetheless, the evolution of bipedalism was accompanied by significant evolutions in the spine including the forward movement in position of the foramen magnum, where the spinal cord leaves the cranium. Recent evidence regarding modern human sexual dimorphism (physical differences between male and female) in the lumbar spine has been seen in pre-modern primates such as Australopithecus africanus. This dimorphism has been seen as an evolutionary adaptation of females to bear lumbar load better during pregnancy, an adaptation that non-bipedal primates would not need to make. Adapting bipedalism would have required less shoulder stability, which allowed the shoulder and other limbs to become more independent of each other and adapt for specific suspensory behaviors. In addition to the change in shoulder stability, changing locomotion would have increased the demand for shoulder mobility, which would have propelled the evolution of bipedalism forward. The different hypotheses are not necessarily mutually exclusive and a number of selective forces may have acted together to lead to human bipedalism. It is important to distinguish between adaptations for bipedalism and adaptations for running, which came later still. The form and function of modern-day humans' upper bodies appear to have evolved from living in a more forested setting. Living in this kind of environment would have made it so that being able to travel arboreally would have been advantageous at the time. It has also been proposed that, like some modern-day apes, early hominins had undergone a knuckle-walking stage prior to adapting the back limbs for bipedality while retaining forearms capable of grasping. Numerous causes for the evolution of human bipedalism involve freeing the hands for carrying and using tools, sexual dimorphism in provisioning, changes in climate and environment (from jungle to savanna) that favored a more elevated eye-position, and to reduce the amount of skin exposed to the tropical sun. It is possible that bipedalism provided a variety of benefits to the hominin species, and scientists have suggested multiple reasons for evolution of human bipedalism. There is also not only the question of why the earliest hominins were partially bipedal but also why hominins became more bipedal over time. For example, the postural feeding hypothesis describes how the earliest hominins became bipedal for the benefit of reaching food in trees while the savanna-based theory describes how the late hominins that started to settle on the ground became increasingly bipedal. Multiple factors Napier (1963) argues that it is unlikely that a single factor drove the evolution of bipedalism. He states "It seems unlikely that any single factor was responsible for such a dramatic change in behaviour. In addition to the advantages of accruing from ability to carry objects – food or otherwise – the improvement of the visual range and the freeing of the hands for purposes of defence and offence may equally have played their part as catalysts." Sigmon (1971) demonstrates that chimpanzees exhibit bipedalism in different contexts, and one single factor should be used to explain bipedalism: preadaptation for human bipedalism. Day (1986) emphasizes three major pressures that drove evolution of bipedalism: food acquisition, predator avoidance, and reproductive success. Ko (2015) states there are two questions main regarding bipedalism 1. Why were the earliest hominins partially bipedal? and 2. Why did hominins become more bipedal over time? He argues that these questions can be answered with combination of prominent theories such as Savanna-based, Postural feeding, and Provisioning. Savannah-based theory According to the Savanna-based theory, hominines came down from the tree’s branches and adapted to life on the savanna by walking erect on two feet. The theory suggests that early hominids were forced to adapt to bipedal locomotion on the open savanna after they left the trees. One of the proposed mechanisms was the knuckle-walking hypothesis, which states that human ancestors used quadrupedal locomotion on the savanna, as evidenced by morphological characteristics found in Australopithecus anamensis and Australopithecus afarensis forelimbs, and that it is less parsimonious to assume that knuckle walking developed twice in genera Pan and Gorilla instead of evolving it once as synapomorphy for Pan and Gorilla before losing it in Australopithecus. The evolution of an orthograde posture would have been very helpful on a savanna as it would allow the ability to look over tall grasses in order to watch out for predators, or terrestrially hunt and sneak up on prey. It was also suggested in P. E. Wheeler's "The evolution of bipedality and loss of functional body hair in hominids", that a possible advantage of bipedalism in the savanna was reducing the amount of surface area of the body exposed to the sun, helping regulate body temperature. In fact, Elizabeth Vrba's turnover pulse hypothesis supports the savanna-based theory by explaining the shrinking of forested areas due to global warming and cooling, which forced animals out into the open grasslands and caused the need for hominids to acquire bipedality. Others state hominines had already achieved the bipedal adaptation that was used in the savanna. The fossil evidence reveals that early bipedal hominins were still adapted to climbing trees at the time they were also walking upright. It is possible that bipedalism evolved in the trees, and was later applied to the savanna as a vestigial trait. Humans and orangutans are both unique to a bipedal reactive adaptation when climbing on thin branches, in which they have increased hip and knee extension in relation to the diameter of the branch, which can increase an arboreal feeding range and can be attributed to a convergent evolution of bipedalism evolving in arboreal environments. Hominine fossils found in dry grassland environments led anthropologists to believe hominines lived, slept, walked upright, and died only in those environments because no hominine fossils were found in forested areas. However, fossilization is a rare occurrence—the conditions must be just right in order for an organism that dies to become fossilized for somebody to find later, which is also a rare occurrence. The fact that no hominine fossils were found in forests does not ultimately lead to the conclusion that no hominines ever died there. The convenience of the savanna-based theory caused this point to be overlooked for over a hundred years.<ref>Shreeve, James, "Sunset on the savanna" , ‘’Discover, 1996.</ref> Some of the fossils found actually showed that there was still an adaptation to arboreal life. For example, Lucy, the famous Australopithecus afarensis, found in Hadar in Ethiopia, which may have been forested at the time of Lucy's death, had curved fingers that would still give her the ability to grasp tree branches, but she walked bipedally. "Little Foot," a nearly-complete specimen of Australopithecus africanus, has a divergent big toe as well as the ankle strength to walk upright. “Little Foot” could grasp things using his feet like an ape, perhaps tree branches, and he was bipedal. Ancient pollen found in the soil in the locations in which these fossils were found suggest that the area used to be much more wet and covered in thick vegetation and has only recently become the arid desert it is now. Traveling efficiency hypothesis An alternative explanation is that the mixture of savanna and scattered forests increased terrestrial travel by proto-humans between clusters of trees, and bipedalism offered greater efficiency for long-distance travel between these clusters than quadrupedalism. In an experiment monitoring chimpanzee metabolic rate via oxygen consumption, it was found that the quadrupedal and bipedal energy costs were very similar, implying that this transition in early ape-like ancestors would not have been very difficult or energetically costing. This increased travel efficiency is likely to have been selected for as it assisted the wide dispersal of early hominids across the savanna to create start populations. Postural feeding hypothesis The postural feeding hypothesis has been recently supported by Dr. Kevin Hunt, a professor at Indiana University. This hypothesis asserts that chimpanzees were only bipedal when they eat. While on the ground, they would reach up for fruit hanging from small trees and while in trees, bipedalism was used to reach up to grab for an overhead branch. These bipedal movements may have evolved into regular habits because they were so convenient in obtaining food. Also, Hunt's hypotheses states that these movements coevolved with chimpanzee arm-hanging, as this movement was very effective and efficient in harvesting food. When analyzing fossil anatomy, Australopithecus afarensis has very similar features of the hand and shoulder to the chimpanzee, which indicates hanging arms. Also, the Australopithecus hip and hind limb very clearly indicate bipedalism, but these fossils also indicate very inefficient locomotive movement when compared to humans. For this reason, Hunt argues that bipedalism evolved more as a terrestrial feeding posture than as a walking posture. A similar study conducted by Thorpe et al. looked at how the most arboreal great ape, the orangutan, held onto supporting branches in order to navigate branches that were too flexible or unstable otherwise. They found that in more than 75 percent of locomotive instances the orangutans used their hands to stabilize themselves while they navigated thinner branches. They hypothesized that increased fragmentation of forests where A. afarensis as well as other ancestors of modern humans and other apes resided could have contributed to this increase of bipedalism in order to navigate the diminishing forests. Their findings also shed light on a couple of discrepancies observed in the anatomy of A. afarensis, such as the ankle joint, which allowed it to “wobble” and long, highly flexible forelimbs. The idea that bipedalism started from walking in trees explains both the increased flexibility in the ankle as well as the long limbs which would be used to grab hold of branches. Provisioning model One theory on the origin of bipedalism is the behavioral model presented by C. Owen Lovejoy, known as "male provisioning". Lovejoy theorizes that the evolution of bipedalism was linked to monogamy. In the face of long inter-birth intervals and low reproductive rates typical of the apes, early hominids engaged in pair-bonding that enabled greater parental effort directed towards rearing offspring. Lovejoy proposes that male provisioning of food would improve the offspring survivorship and increase the pair's reproductive rate. Thus the male would leave his mate and offspring to search for food and return carrying the food in his arms walking on his legs. This model is supported by the reduction ("feminization") of the male canine teeth in early hominids such as Sahelanthropus tchadensis and Ardipithecus ramidus, which along with low body size dimorphism in Ardipithecus and Australopithecus, suggests a reduction in inter-male antagonistic behavior in early hominids. In addition, this model is supported by a number of modern human traits associated with concealed ovulation (permanently enlarged breasts, lack of sexual swelling) and low sperm competition (moderate sized testes, low sperm mid-piece volume) that argues against recent adaptation to a polygynous reproductive system. However, this model has been debated, as others have argued that early bipedal hominids were instead polygynous. Among most monogamous primates, males and females are about the same size. That is sexual dimorphism is minimal, and other studies have suggested that Australopithecus afarensis males were nearly twice the weight of females. However, Lovejoy's model posits that the larger range a provisioning male would have to cover (to avoid competing with the female for resources she could attain herself) would select for increased male body size to limit predation risk. Furthermore, as the species became more bipedal, specialized feet would prevent the infant from conveniently clinging to the mother - hampering the mother's freedom and thus make her and her offspring more dependent on resources collected by others. Modern monogamous primates such as gibbons tend to be also territorial, but fossil evidence indicates that Australopithecus afarensis lived in large groups. However, while both gibbons and hominids have reduced canine sexual dimorphism, female gibbons enlarge ('masculinize') their canines so they can actively share in the defense of their home territory. Instead, the reduction of the male hominid canine is consistent with reduced inter-male aggression in a pair-bonded though group living primate. Early bipedalism in homininae model Recent studies of 4.4 million years old Ardipithecus ramidus suggest bipedalism. It is thus possible that bipedalism evolved very early in homininae and was reduced in chimpanzee and gorilla when they became more specialized. According to Richard Dawkins in his book "The Ancestor's Tale", chimps and bonobos are descended from Australopithecus gracile type species while gorillas are descended from Paranthropus. These apes may have once been bipedal, but then lost this ability when they were forced back into an arboreal habitat, presumably by those australopithecines from whom eventually evolved hominins. Early homininaes such as Ardipithecus ramidus may have possessed an arboreal type of bipedalism that later independently evolved towards knuckle-walking in chimpanzees and gorillas and towards efficient walking and running in modern humans (see figure). It is also proposed that one cause of Neanderthal extinction was a less efficient running. Warning display (aposematic) model Joseph Jordania from the University of Melbourne recently (2011) suggested that bipedalism was one of the central elements of the general defense strategy of early hominids, based on aposematism, or warning display and intimidation of potential predators and competitors with exaggerated visual and audio signals. According to this model, hominids were trying to stay as visible and as loud as possible all the time. Several morphological and behavioral developments were employed to achieve this goal: upright bipedal posture, longer legs, long tightly coiled hair on the top of the head, body painting, threatening synchronous body movements, loud voice and extremely loud rhythmic singing/stomping/drumming on external subjects. Slow locomotion and strong body odor (both characteristic for hominids and humans) are other features often employed by aposematic species to advertise their non-profitability for potential predators. Other behavioural models There are a variety of ideas which promote a specific change in behaviour as the key driver for the evolution of hominid bipedalism. For example, Wescott (1967) and later Jablonski & Chaplin (1993) suggest that bipedal threat displays could have been the transitional behaviour which led to some groups of apes beginning to adopt bipedal postures more often. Others (e.g. Dart 1925) have offered the idea that the need for more vigilance against predators could have provided the initial motivation. Dawkins (e.g. 2004) has argued that it could have begun as a kind of fashion that just caught on and then escalated through sexual selection. And it has even been suggested (e.g. Tanner 1981:165) that male phallic display could have been the initial incentive, as well as increased sexual signaling in upright female posture. Thermoregulatory model The thermoregulatory model explaining the origin of bipedalism is one of the simplest theories so far advanced, but it is a viable explanation. Dr. Peter Wheeler, a professor of evolutionary biology, proposes that bipedalism raises the amount of body surface area higher above the ground which results in a reduction in heat gain and helps heat dissipation. When a hominid is higher above the ground, the organism accesses more favorable wind speeds and temperatures. During heat seasons, greater wind flow results in a higher heat loss, which makes the organism more comfortable. Also, Wheeler explains that a vertical posture minimizes the direct exposure to the sun whereas quadrupedalism exposes more of the body to direct exposure. Analysis and interpretations of Ardipithecus reveal that this hypothesis needs modification to consider that the forest and woodland environmental preadaptation of early-stage hominid bipedalism preceded further refinement of bipedalism by the pressure of natural selection. This then allowed for the more efficient exploitation of the hotter conditions ecological niche, rather than the hotter conditions being hypothetically bipedalism's initial stimulus. A feedback mechanism from the advantages of bipedality in hot and open habitats would then in turn make a forest preadaptation solidify as a permanent state. Carrying models Charles Darwin wrote that "Man could not have attained his present dominant position in the world without the use of his hands, which are so admirably adapted to the act of obedience of his will". Darwin (1871:52) and many models on bipedal origins are based on this line of thought. Gordon Hewes (1961) suggested that the carrying of meat "over considerable distances" (Hewes 1961:689) was the key factor. Isaac (1978) and Sinclair et al. (1986) offered modifications of this idea, as indeed did Lovejoy (1981) with his "provisioning model" described above. Others, such as Nancy Tanner (1981), have suggested that infant carrying was key, while others again have suggested stone tools and weapons drove the change. This stone-tools theory is very unlikely, as though ancient humans were known to hunt, the discovery of tools was not discovered for thousands of years after the origin of bipedalism, chronologically precluding it from being a driving force of evolution. (Wooden tools and spears fossilize poorly and therefore it is difficult to make a judgment about their potential usage.) Wading models The observation that large primates, including especially the great apes, that predominantly move quadrupedally on dry land, tend to switch to bipedal locomotion in waist deep water, has led to the idea that the origin of human bipedalism may have been influenced by waterside environments. This idea, labelled "the wading hypothesis", was originally suggested by the Oxford marine biologist Alister Hardy who said: "It seems to me likely that Man learnt to stand erect first in water and then, as his balance improved, he found he became better equipped for standing up on the shore when he came out, and indeed also for running." It was then promoted by Elaine Morgan, as part of the aquatic ape hypothesis, who cited bipedalism among a cluster of other human traits unique among primates, including voluntary control of breathing, hairlessness and subcutaneous fat. The "aquatic ape hypothesis", as originally formulated, has not been accepted or considered a serious theory within the anthropological scholarly community. Others, however, have sought to promote wading as a factor in the origin of human bipedalism without referring to further ("aquatic ape" related) factors. Since 2000 Carsten Niemitz has published a series of papers and a book on a variant of the wading hypothesis, which he calls the "amphibian generalist theory" (). Other theories have been proposed that suggest wading and the exploitation of aquatic food sources (providing essential nutrients for human brain evolution or critical fallback foods) may have exerted evolutionary pressures on human ancestors promoting adaptations which later assisted full-time bipedalism. It has also been thought that consistent water-based food sources had developed early hominid dependency and facilitated dispersal along seas and rivers. Consequences Prehistoric fossil records show that early hominins first developed bipedalism before being followed by an increase in brain size. The consequences of these two changes in particular resulted in painful and difficult labor due to the increased favor of a narrow pelvis for bipedalism being countered by larger heads passing through the constricted birth canal. This phenomenon is commonly known as the obstetrical dilemma. Non-human primates habitually deliver their young on their own, but the same cannot be said for modern-day humans. Isolated birth appears to be rare and actively avoided cross-culturally, even if birthing methods may differ between said cultures. This is due to the fact that the narrowing of the hips and the change in the pelvic angle caused a discrepancy in the ratio of the size of the head to the birth canal. The result of this is that there is greater difficulty in birthing for hominins in general, let alone to be doing it by oneself. Physiology Bipedal movement occurs in a number of ways and requires many mechanical and neurological adaptations. Some of these are described below. Biomechanics Standing Energy-efficient means of standing bipedally involve constant adjustment of balance, and of course these must avoid overcorrection. The difficulties associated with simple standing in upright humans are highlighted by the greatly increased risk of falling present in the elderly, even with minimal reductions in control system effectiveness. Shoulder stability Shoulder stability would decrease with the evolution of bipedalism. Shoulder mobility would increase because the need for a stable shoulder is only present in arboreal habitats. Shoulder mobility would support suspensory locomotion behaviors which are present in human bipedalism. The forelimbs are freed from weight-bearing requirements, which makes the shoulder a place of evidence for the evolution of bipedalism. Walking Unlike non-human apes that are able to practice bipedality such as Pan and Gorilla, hominins have the ability to move bipedally without the utilization of a bent-hip-bent-knee (BHBK) gait, which requires the engagement of both the hip and the knee joints. This human ability to walk is made possible by the spinal curvature humans have that non-human apes do not. Rather, walking is characterized by an "inverted pendulum" movement in which the center of gravity vaults over a stiff leg with each step. Force plates can be used to quantify the whole-body kinetic & potential energy, with walking displaying an out-of-phase relationship indicating exchange between the two. This model applies to all walking organisms regardless of the number of legs, and thus bipedal locomotion does not differ in terms of whole-body kinetics. In humans, walking is composed of several separate processes: Vaulting over a stiff stance leg Passive ballistic movement of the swing leg A short 'push' from the ankle prior to toe-off, propelling the swing leg Rotation of the hips about the axis of the spine, to increase stride length Rotation of the hips about the horizontal axis to improve balance during stance Running Early hominins underwent post-cranial changes in order to better adapt to bipedality, especially running. One of these changes is having longer hindlimbs proportional to the forelimbs and their effects. As previously mentioned, longer hindlimbs assist in thermoregulation by reducing the total surface area exposed to direct sunlight while simultaneously allowing for more space for cooling winds. Additionally, having longer limbs is more energy-efficient, since longer limbs mean that overall muscle strain is lessened. Better energy efficiency, in turn, means higher endurance, particularly when running long distances. Running is characterized by a spring-mass movement. Kinetic and potential energy are in phase, and the energy is stored & released from a spring-like limb during foot contact, achieved by the plantar arch and the Achilles tendon in the foot and leg, respectively. Again, the whole-body kinetics are similar to animals with more limbs. Musculature Bipedalism requires strong leg muscles, particularly in the thighs. Contrast in domesticated poultry the well muscled legs, against the small and bony wings. Likewise in humans, the quadriceps and hamstring muscles of the thigh are both so crucial to bipedal activities that each alone is much larger than the well-developed biceps of the arms. In addition to the leg muscles, the increased size of the gluteus maximus in humans is an important adaptation as it provides support and stability to the trunk and lessens the amount of stress on the joints when running. Respiration Quadrupeds, unlike bipeds, cannot respire while moving. This is due to the fact that the impact of propelling themselves fall on their forelimbs. The closeness of the chest to the points of impact means that their organs would hit one another, which is not sustainable for running. Thus, they are only able to run in short bursts before having to rest. Humans, on the other, do not have that limitation. Due to the use of bipedality for locomotion, the impact of running or walking does not travel far enough to jar the organs in the chest cavity. A biped has the ability to breathe while running, without strong coupling to stride cycle. Humans usually take a breath every other stride when their aerobic system is functioning. During a sprint the anaerobic system kicks in and breathing slows until the anaerobic system can no longer sustain a sprint. Respiration through bipedality means that there is better breath control in bipeds, which can be associated with brain growth. The modern brain utilizes approximately 20% of energy input gained through breathing and eating, as opposed to species like chimpanzees who use up twice as much energy as humans for the same amount of movement. This excess energy, leading to brain growth, also leads to the development of verbal communication. This is because breath control means that the muscles associated with breathing can be manipulated into creating sounds. This means that the onset of bipedality, leading to more efficient breathing, is the source of verbal language. Bipedal robots For nearly the whole of the 20th century, bipedal robots were very difficult to construct and robot locomotion involved only wheels, treads, or multiple legs. Recent cheap and compact computing power has made two-legged robots more feasible. Some notable biped robots are ASIMO, HUBO, MABEL and QRIO. Recently, spurred by the success of creating a fully passive, un-powered bipedal walking robot, those working on such machines have begun using principles gleaned from the study of human and animal locomotion, which often relies on passive mechanisms to minimize power consumption. See also Allometry Orthograde posture Quadrupedalism Notes References Further reading Darwin, C., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex", Murray (London), (1871). Dart, R. A., "Australopithecus africanus: The Ape Man of South Africa" Nature, 145, 195–199, (1925). Dawkins, R., "The Ancestor's Tale", Weidenfeld and Nicolson (London), (2004). DeSilva, J., “First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human” Harper Collins (New York), (2021) Hewes, G. W., "Food Transport and the Origin of Hominid Bipedalism" American Anthropologist, 63, 687–710, (1961). Hunt, K. D., "The Evolution of Human Bipedality" Journal of Human Evolution, 26, 183–202, (1994). Isaac, G. I., "The Archeological Evidence for the Activities of Early African Hominids" In:Early Hominids of Africa (Jolly, C.J. (Ed.)), Duckworth (London), 219–254, (1978). Tanner, N. M., "On Becoming Human", Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), (1981) Wheeler, P. E. (1984) "The Evolution of Bipedality and Loss of Functional Body Hair in Hominoids." Journal of Human Evolution'', 13, 91–98, External links The Origin of Bipedalism Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016) Terrestrial locomotion Animal anatomy Pedalism

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a 1992 American comedy horror film directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui and starring Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, Rutger Hauer, Luke Perry, and Hilary Swank. It follows a Valley girl cheerleader named Buffy who learns that it is her fate to hunt vampires. It was a moderate success at the box office but received mixed reception from critics. The film took a different direction from that which its writer Joss Whedon intended, and five years later, he created the darker and critically acclaimed television series of the same name. Plot High school senior Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson) attends Hemery High School in Los Angeles; her main concerns are shopping and spending time with her rich, snooty friends and her boyfriend, Jeffrey Kramer (Randall Batinkoff). While at school one day, she is approached by a man who calls himself Merrick (Donald Sutherland). He informs her that she is The Slayer, or Chosen One, destined to kill vampires, and he is a Watcher whose duty it is to guide and train her. She initially rejects his claim but changes her mind when he vividly describes a recurring dream of hers. Additionally, Buffy is exhibiting uncanny abilities not known to her, including heightened agility, senses, and endurance, yet she repeatedly tries Merrick's patience with her frivolous nature, indifference to slaying, and sharp-tongued remarks. After several successful outings, Buffy is drawn into conflict with Lothos (Rutger Hauer), a local vampire king and his acolyte, Amilyn (Paul Reubens). Two young men, Oliver Pike (Luke Perry) and Benny Jacks (David Arquette), who resented Buffy and her friends due to differing social circles, are out drinking when they're attacked by Amilyn. Benny is turned, but Pike is saved by Merrick. As a vampire, Benny visits Pike and tries to get him to join him. Later, when Pike and his boss are discussing Benny, Pike tells him to run if he sees him. Amilyn also abducts Cassandra (Natasha Gregson Wagner), a studious girl from Buffy's class, to sacrifice to Lothos. When her body is found, the news spreads through Los Angeles and Hemery High, but her murder is met with indifference from Buffy's clique. When Pike realizes there's something wrong with Benny and that he's no longer safe, he decides to leave town. His plan is thwarted, however, when he encounters Amilyn and his gang of vampires. Amilyn hitches a ride on the hood of his van, which crashes into a tree just before Amilyn loses an arm. Buffy and Merrick arrive to rescue him and Amilyn leaves the fight to talk to Lothos. After this encounter, Buffy and Pike start a friendship that eventually becomes romantic, and Pike becomes Buffy's partner in fighting the undead. During a basketball game, Buffy discovers that one of the players, and a friend of Jeffrey's Grueller, is a vampire. After a quick chase to a parade float storage yard, Buffy confronts Lothos, shortly after she and Pike take down his gang. Lothos puts Buffy into a trance, but Merrick intervenes, breaking the trance. Lothos stabs Merrick with the stake he attempted to use on him and then leaves, saying Buffy is not ready. As Merrick dies, he tells Buffy to do things her own way rather than live by the rules of others and gives her one final clue: "Remember about the music." Because of her new life, its responsibilities, and the heartbreak of losing her Watcher, Buffy, emotionally shocked, starts neglecting her Slayer duties. When she arrives at school, she attempts to explain things to her friends, but they refuse to understand her, as they are more concerned with an upcoming school dance. Buffy abandons them as she realizes she has outgrown their immature, selfish behavior. At the senior dance, Buffy is dismayed to find Jeffrey has dumped her for one of her friends. She meets up with Pike, reciprocate their feelings as they dance and kiss. However, Lothos sends his army of vampire minions to the school to attack the classmates at the dance. Buffy confronts the vampires outside, while inside the gym Pike fights and kills the vampiric Benny and everybody is able to fight back under his lead. After overpowering the vampire army, Buffy confronts Lothos inside the school and kills Amilyn. Lothos attempts to ensorcel Buffy again, but when the dance music stops, she remembers Merrick's words and defends herself. She first tries to repel Lothos with a cross, but the vampire king is unimpressed. He grabs the cross, setting it afire, but Buffy uses her hair spray as a makeshift flamethrower and burns him before escaping to the gym. Buffy sees her classmates recovering from the vampire attack, but Lothos bursts into the gym, promising to kill everyone. The Slayer and vampire duel, a wooden flag staff versus a katana. Eventually, Buffy stakes Lothos and kills him. As the survivors leave, Buffy and Pike decide to finish their dance. The film ends with the couple leaving the dance on a motorcycle. A skeptical news crew headed up by Liz Smith interviews the students and the principal about the vampire attack during the credits. Cast Kristy Swanson as Buffy Summers Luke Perry as Oliver Pike Rutger Hauer as Lothos Donald Sutherland as Merrick Jamison-Smythe Paul Reubens as Amilyn Hilary Swank as Kimberly Hannah Paris Vaughan as Nicole "Nicki" Michele Abrams as Jennifer Randall Batinkoff as Jeffrey Kramer David Arquette as Benny Jacks Stephen Root as Principal Gary Murray Natasha Gregson Wagner as Cassandra Sasha Jenson as Grueller Tom Jane as Zeph Candy Clark as Buffy's Mom Ben Affleck (uncredited) as Basketball Player #10 Ricki Lake (uncredited) as Charlotte Seth Green (uncredited) as a vampire Alexis Arquette (uncredited) as vampire DJ Production Writer Whedon sold the film to country singer Dolly Parton's production company, Sandollar, in the fall of 1991. Production was limited to five weeks to accommodate Luke Perry's Beverly Hills, 90210 filming schedule. Whedon was involved in an advisory role early in the production but departed after becoming dissatisfied with the direction the film was taking. Executives at 20th Century Fox removed many of Whedon's jokes, believing the humor to be too abstract for audiences. They also disliked the darker elements in Whedon's original script, wanting to make it a lighter comedy. Merrick's suicide was replaced with his being killed by Lothos, and Buffy's burning down her high school gym to kill all the vampires was eliminated altogether. All this led Whedon to finally walk off the set. He has been highly critical of actor Donald Sutherland's behavior on set, describing him as entitled and difficult to work with. Sutherland had a penchant for improvising or altering his lines in the script, which director Rubel Kuzui allowed him to do freely because he was the film's most high-profile star. Whedon felt this made Merrick's dialogue in the film disjointed and unintelligible. Filming in Los Angeles included the ballroom of the Park Plaza Hotel, where Merrick lives and trains Buffy, John Marshall High School in Los Feliz, and the gymnasium of University High School in West Los Angeles, where the high school dance and vampire attack was filmed. Reception Box office The film debuted at #5 at the North American box office and eventually grossed $16,624,456 against a $7 million production budget. Critical reception On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 36%, based on 53 reviews, with an average rating of 4.4/10. The consensus reads, "Buffy the Vampire Slayers supernatural coming of age tale is let down by poor directing and even poorer plotting -- though Kristy Swanson and Paul Reubens' game performances still manage to slay." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 48 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Home media The film was released on VHS and Laserdisc in the U.S. in November 1992 and in the U.K. in April 1993 by Fox Video and re-released in 1995 under the Twentieth Century Fox Selections banner. It was released on DVD in the U.S. in 2001 and on Blu-ray in 2011. Spin offs Television The film was taken in a different direction from what one of its writers Joss Whedon intended, and five years later, he created the darker and acclaimed TV series of the same name. Many of the details given in the film differ from those of the later television series. For example, Buffy's age and history are dissimilar; she's a senior in high school in the film, but the series starts with her as a sophomore. The film does portray who the Buffy of the TV series was before she learned of her destiny as the Slayer: a popular but selfish and superficial cheerleader. In the film, her parents are wealthy but negligent socialites who care little for her and spend their time at parties and golf tournaments; in the TV series, Buffy has a caring, newly divorced mother named Joyce. The supernatural abilities of both vampires and the Slayer are depicted differently. The vampires in the film die like humans; in the TV series, they turn to dust. Unlike the TV series, their faces remain human albeit pale, fanged, and with notched ears, whereas in the TV series, they take on a demonic aspect, especially when newly raised. The TV series suggests that new vampires must consciously learn to maintain a human appearance. In the film, Merrick is hundreds of years old, having lived many lives training many Slayers; in the TV series, Watchers are mortal and specially trained for their role and mission. Merrick's British accent and the manner of his death are different when he appears in flashbacks in the TV series. Joss Whedon has expressed his disapproval with the film's interpretation of the script, stating, "I finally sat down and had written it and somebody had made it into a movie, and I felt like — well, that's not quite her. It's a start, but it's not quite the girl." According to the Official Buffy Watcher's Guide, Whedon wrote the pilot to the TV series as a sequel to his original script, which is why the TV series makes references to events that did not occur in the film. In 1999, Dark Horse Comics released a graphic novel adaptation of Whedon's original script under the title The Origin. Whedon stated: "The Origin comic, though I have issues with it, CAN pretty much be accepted as canonical. They did a cool job of combining the movie script with the series, that was nice, and using the series Merrick and not a certain OTHER thespian who shall remain hated." Soundtrack The soundtrack does not include every song played in the film, which also included "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M., "In the Wind" by War Babies, and "Inner Mind" by Eon. Possible remake On May 25, 2009, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment were working with Fran Rubel Kuzui and Kaz Kuzui on a re-envisioning or relaunch of the Buffy film for the big screen. The film would not be a sequel or prequel to the existing film or television franchise, and Joss Whedon would have no involvement in the project. None of the characters, cast, or crew from the television series would be featured. Television series executive producer Marti Noxon later reflected that this story might have been produced by the studio in order to frighten Whedon into taking the reins of the project. On November 22, 2010, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Warner Bros. had picked up the movie rights to the remake. The film was set for release sometime in 2012. 20th Century Fox, which usually holds the rights to both Buffy and Angel television series, would retain merchandising and some distribution rights. The idea of the remake caused wrath among fans of the TV series, since Whedon was not involved. The project did not have any connection with the show and would not conform to the continuity maintained with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight and Season Nine comic book titles. Not only the fandom, but the main cast members of both the Buffy and Angel series expressed disagreement with the report on Twitter and in recent interviews. Sarah Michelle Gellar said, "I think it's a horrible idea. To try to do a Buffy without Joss Whedon... to be incredibly non-eloquent: that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard." Proposed shooting locations included Black Wood and other areas in rural England, due to budgetary constraints and the potential setting being outside of the city, an unusual change for the franchise. In December 2011, more than a year after the official reboot announcement, the Los Angeles Times site reported that Whit Anderson, the writer picked for the new Buffy movie, had her script rejected by the producers behind the project, and that a new writer was being sought. Sources also stated that "If you're going to bring it back, you have to do it right. [Anderson] came in with some great ideas and she had reinvented some of the lore and it was pretty cool but in the end there just wasn't enough on the page." As of July 2018, Joss Whedon announced at San Diego Comic Con that he was working on a reboot of the series and that it might feature a slayer of color. See also The Origin, a comic book reinterpretation of the movie script Vampire film References External links 1990s comedy horror films 1990s high school films 1990s teen comedy films 1990s teen horror films 1992 films 1992 horror films 20th Century Fox films 20th Century Fox franchises American comedy horror films American dark fantasy films American films American high school films American supernatural horror films American teen comedy films American teen horror films Cheerleading films Supernatural comedy films Supernatural fantasy films English-language films 1990s feminist films Films about proms Films adapted into television shows Films scored by Carter Burwell Films set in Los Angeles Films shot in Los Angeles Films with screenplays by Joss Whedon Vampire comedy films Buffy the Vampire Slayer Film American feminist comedy films American action comedy films American action horror films 1990s action comedy films 1992 comedy films

Barcelonnette (; , also ; obsolete ) is a commune of France and a subprefecture in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. It is located in the southern French Alps, at the crossroads between Provence, Piedmont and the Dauphiné, and is the largest town in the Ubaye Valley. The town's inhabitants are known as Barcelonnettes. Toponymy Barcelonnette was founded and named in 1231, by Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence. While the town's name is generally seen as a diminutive form of Barcelona in Catalonia, Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing point out an earlier attestation of the name Barcilona in Barcelonnette in around 1200, and suggest that it is derived instead from two earlier stems signifying a mountain, *bar and *cin (the latter of which is also seen in the name of Mont Cenis). In the Vivaro-Alpine dialect of Occitan, the town is known as Barcilona de Provença or more rarely Barciloneta according to the classical norm; under the Mistralian norm it is called Barcilouna de Prouvença or Barcilouneto. In Valéian (the dialect of Occitan spoken in the Ubaye Valley), it is called Barcilouna de Prouvença or Barcilounéta. Barcino Nova is the town's Latin name meaning "new Barcelona"; Barcino was the Roman name for Barcelona in Catalonia from its foundation by Emperor Augustus in 10 BC, and it was only changed to Barcelona in the Middle Ages. The inhabitants of the town are called Barcelonnettes, or Vilandroises in Valéian. History Origins The Barcelonnette region was populated by Ligures from the 1st millennium BC onwards, and the arrival of the Celts several centuries later led to the formation of a mixed Celto-Ligurian people, the Vesubians. Polybius described the Vesubians as belligerent but nonetheless civilised and mercantile, and Julius Caesar praised their bravery. The work History of the Gauls also places the Vesubians in the Ubaye Valley. Following the Roman conquest of Provence, Barcelonnette was included in a small province with modern Embrun as its capital and governed by Albanus Bassalus. This was integrated soon afterwards into Gallia Narbonensis. In 36 AD, Emperor Nero transferred Barcelonnette to the province of the Cottian Alps. The town was known as Rigomagensium under the Roman Empire and was the capital of a civitas (a provincial subdivision), though no Roman money has yet been found in the canton of Barcelonnette. Medieval town The town of Barcelonnette was founded in 1231 by Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence. According to Charles Rostaing, this act of formal "foundation", according certain privileges to the town, was a means of regenerating the destroyed town of Barcilona. The town was afforded a consulat (giving it the power to administer and defend itself) in 1240. Control of the area in the Middle Ages swung between the Counts of Savoy and of Provence. In 1388, after Count Louis II of Provence had left to conquer Naples, the Count of Savoy Amadeus VIII took control of Barcelonnette; however, it returned to Provençal control in 1390, with the d'Audiffret family as its lords. On the death of Louis II in 1417 it reverted to Savoy, and, although Count René again retook the area for Provence in 1471, it had returned to Savoyard dominance by the start of the 16th century, by which point the County of Provence had become united with the Kingdom of France due to the death of Count Charles V in 1481. Ancien Régime During Charles V's invasion of Provence in 1536, Francis I of France sent the Count of Fürstenberg's 6000 Landsknechte to ravage the area in a scorched earth policy. Barcelonnette and the Ubaye Valley remained under French sovereignty until the second Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis on 3 April 1559. In 1588 the troops of François, Duke of Lesdiguières entered the town and set fire to the church and convent during their campaign against the Duke of Savoy. In 1600, after the Treaty of Vervins, conflict returned between Henry IV of France and Savoy, and Lesdiguières retook Barcelonnette until the conclusion of the Treaty of Lyon on 17 January the following year. In 1628, during the War of the Mantuan Succession, Barcelonnette and the other towns of the Ubaye Valley were pillaged and burned by Jacques du Blé d'Uxelles and his troops, as they passed through towards Italy to the Duke of Mantua's aid. The town was retaken by the Duke of Savoy in 1630; and in 1691 it was captured by the troops of the Marquis de Vins during the War of the League of Augsburg. Between 1614 and 1713, Barcelonnette was the seat of one of the four prefectures under the jurisdiction of the Senate of Nice. At this time, the community of Barcelonnette successfully purchased the seigneurie of the town as it was put to auction by the Duke of Savoy; it thereby gained its own justicial powers. In 1646, a college was founded in Barcelonnette. A "significant" part of the town's inhabitants had, by the 16th century, converted to Protestantism, and were repressed during the French Wars of Religion. The viguerie of Barcelonnette (also comprising Saint-Martin and Entraunes) was reattached to France in 1713 as part of a territorial exchange with the Duchy of Savoy during the Treaties of Utrecht. The town remained the site of a viguerie until the French Revolution. A decree of the council of state on 25 December 1714 reunited Barcelonnete with the general government of Provence. Revolution Barcelonnette was one of few settlements in Haute-Provence to acquire a Masonic Lodge before the Revolution, in fact having two: the lodge of Saint-Jean-d'Écosse des amis réunis, affiliated with the Saint-Jean-d'Écosse lodge in Marseille; the lodge of Saint-Jean, affiliated with the Saint-Jean-de-Jérusalem d'Avignon lodge founded in 1749. In March 1789, riots took place as a result of a crisis in wheat production. In July, the Great Fear of aristocratic reprisal against the ongoing French Revolution struck France, arriving in the Barcelonnette area on 31 July 1789 (when the news of the storming of the Bastille first reached the town) before spreading towards Digne. This agitation continued in the Ubaye Valley; a new revolt broke out on 14 June, and famine was declared in April 1792. The patriotic society of the commune was one of the first 21 created in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in spring 1792, by the envoys of the departmental administration. Around a third of the male population attended at the club. Another episode of political violence occurred in August 1792. Barcelonnette was the seat of the District of Barcelonnette from 1790 to 1800. Modern history In December 1851, the town was home to a movement of republican resistance towards Napoleon III's coup. Though only a minority of the population, the movement rebelled on Sunday 7 December, the day after the news of the coup arrived. Town officials and gendarmes were disarmed and placed in the maison d'arrêt. A committee of public health was created on 8 December; on 9 December the inhabitants of Jausiers and its surroundings formed a colony under the direction of general councillor Brès, and Mayor Signoret of Saint-Paul-sur-Ubaye. This was stopped, however, on 10 December before it could reach Barcelonnette, as the priest of the subprefecture had intervened. On 11 December, several officials escaped and found refuge in L'Argentière in Piedmont. The arrival of troops on 16 December put a final end to the republican resistance without bloodshed, and 57 insurgents were tried; 38 were condemned to deportation (though several were pardoned in April). Between 1850 and 1950, Barcelonnette was the source of a wave of emigration to Mexico. Among these emigrants was Jean Baptiste Ebrard, founder of the Liverpool department store chain in Mexico; Marcelo Ebrard, the head of government of Mexico City from 2006 to 2012, is one of his descendents. On the edges of Barcelonnette and Jausiers there are several houses and villas of colonial style (known as maisons mexicaines), constructed by emigrants to Mexico who returned to France between 1870 and 1930. A plaque in the town commemorates the deaths of ten Mexican citizens who returned to Barcelonnette to fight in the First World War. During the Second World War, 26 Jews were arrested in Barcelonnette before being deported. The 89th compagnie de travailleurs étrangers (Company of Foreign Workers), consisting of foreigners judged as undesirable by the Third Republic and the Vichy regime and committed to forced labour, was established in Barcelonnette. The 11th Battalion of Chasseurs alpins was garrisoned at Barcelonnette between 1948 and 1990. Geography Barcelonnette is situated in the wide and fertile Ubaye Valley, of which it is the largest town. It lies at an elevation of 1132 m (3717 ft) on the right bank of the Ubaye River, and is surrounded by mountains which reach peaks of over 3000 m; the tallest of these is the Needle of Chambeyron at 3412 m. Barcelonnette is situated 210 km from Turin, 91 km from Nice and 68 km from Gap. Biodiversity As a result of its relief and geographic situation, the Ubaye Valley has an "abundance of plant and animal species". The fauna is largely constituted of golden eagles, marmots, ibex and vultures, and the flora includes a large proportion of larches, génépis and white asphodels. Climate The Ubaye Valley has an alpine climate and winters are harsh as a result of the altitude, but there are only light winds as a result of the relief. There are on average almost 300 days of sun and 700 mm of rain per year. Hazards None of the 200 communes of the department is entirely free of seismic risk; the canton of Barcelonnette is placed in zone 1b (low risk) by the determinist classification of 1991 based on seismic history, and zone 4 (average risk) according to the probabilistic EC8 classification of 2011. The commune is also vulnerable to avalanches, forest fires, floods, and landslides. Barcelonnette is also exposed to the possibility of a technological hazard in that road transport of dangerous materials is allowed to pass through on the RD900. The town has been subject to several orders of natural disaster: floods and mudslides in 1994 and 2008, and landslides in 1996 and 1999. The strongest recorded earthquakes in the region occurred on 5 April 1959, with its epicentre at Saint-Paul-sur-Ubaye and a recorded intensity of 6.5 at Barcelonnette, and on 17 February 1947, with its epicentre at Prazzo over the Italian border. Architecture The town hall was constructed in the 1930s after the destruction of the Saint Maurice chapel in July 1934. Its pediment was originally from the old Dominican convent and was identified in 1988. No houses in the town date from before the 17th century, the town having been rebuilt after the fire of 1628. The old hospital in the town dates from 1717. The old gendarmerie on Place Manuel was originally constructed to house the subprefecture in 1825 in a neoclassical style, and its façade occupies one entire side of the square. Place Manuel was named after the Restoration politician Jacques-Antoine Manuel; the fountain in the centre of the square contains his image sculpted by David d'Angers. The parish church was originally built in the Middle Ages, but was destroyed in the fire of 1628. It was quickly reconstructed between 1634 and 1638, and further between 1643 and 1644. This was later demolished in 1926–27 to allow the construction of the current church, though this still contains the steeple from the 17th-century reconstruction. The Cardinalis tower was constructed in the 14th century as a bell tower for the Dominican convent, which was founded on the bequest of Hugh of Saint-Cher. It was damaged in the wars of the 17th century and was rebuilt, though parts still exist from the original construction. It is classed as a monument historique of France. The subprefecture has been situated since 1978 in a maison mexicaine, the Villa l'Ubayette, constructed between 1901 and 1903. Population In 1471, the community of Barcelonnette (including several surrounding parishes) comprised 421 fires (households). In 1765, it had 6,674 inhabitants, but emigration, particularly to Mexico, slowed the town's growth in the period before the Second World War. According to the census of 2017, Barcelonnette has a population of 2,598 (municipal population) across a total area of 16.42 km2. The town is characterised by low population density. Between 1990 and 1999 the town's annual mean population growth was -0.6%, though between 1999 and 2007 this increased to an average of -0.2%. Economy The city is mainly a tourist and resort centre, serving many ski lodges. The Pra-Loup resort is 7 km from Barcelonnette; Le Sauze is 5 km away. It and the Ubaye Valley are served by the Barcelonnette – Saint-Pons Airfield. Notably, Barcelonnette is the only subprefecture of France not served by rail transport; the Ubaye line which would have linked Chorges to Barcelonnette was never completed as a result of the First World War and the construction of the Serre-Ponçon Dam between 1955 and 1961. Education An école normale (an institute for training primary school teachers) was founded in Barcelonnette in 1833, and remained there until 1888 when it was transferred to Digne. The lycée André-Honnorat de Barcelonnette, originally the collège Saint-Maurice and renamed after the politician André Honnorat in 1919, is located in the town; Pierre-Gilles de Gennes and Carole Merle both studied there. Currently, three schools exist in Barcelonnette: a public nursery school, a public elementary school, and a private school (under a contract by which the teachers are paid by the national education system). In 2010 the lycée André-Honnorat opened a boarding school aimed at gifted students of poorer social backgrounds, in order to give them better conditions in which to study. It is located in the Quartier Craplet, formerly the garrison of the 11th Battalion of Chasseurs Alpins and then the French Army's Centre d'instruction et d'entraînement au combat en montagne (CIECM). International links Barcelonnette is twinned with: Valle de Bravo, Mexico It is also the site of a Mexican honorary consulate. Notable residents Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932–2007), physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1991 Jacques-Antoine Manuel (1775–1827), lawyer, politician and orator Paul Reynaud (1878–1966), liberal politician and lawyer Daniel Spagnou (born 1940), UMP politician Bruno Dary (born 1952), general and military governor of Paris References External links Tourism website Communes of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence Subprefectures in France

The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II by the US military, was fought between the United States and Japan during the Mariana and Palau Campaign of World War II, from September 15 to November 27, 1944, on the island of Peleliu. US Marines of the 1st Marine Division and then soldiers of the US Army's 81st Infantry Division, fought to capture an airstrip on the small coral island of Peleliu. The battle was part of a larger offensive campaign known as Operation Forager, which ran from June to November 1944 in the Pacific Theater. Major General William Rupertus, the commander of the 1st Marine Division, predicted that the island would be secured within four days. However, after repeated Imperial Japanese Army defeats in previous island campaigns, Japan had developed new island-defense tactics and well-crafted fortifications, which allowed stiff resistance and extended the battle to more than two months. The heavily-outnumbered Japanese defenders put up such stiff resistance, often by fighting to the death in the Japanese Emperor's name, that the island became known in Japanese as the "Emperor's Island." In the US, it was a controversial battle because of the island's negligible strategic value and the high casualty rate, which exceeded that of all other amphibious operations during the Pacific War. The National Museum of the Marine Corps called it "the bitterest battle of the war for the Marines". Background By 1944, American victories in the Southwest and Central Pacific had brought the war closer to Japan, with American bombers able to strike at the Japanese main islands from air bases secured during the Mariana Islands campaign (June–August 1944). There was disagreement among the U.S. Joint Chiefs over two proposed strategies to defeat the Japanese Empire. The strategy proposed by General Douglas MacArthur called for the recapture of the Philippines, followed by the capture of Okinawa, then an attack on the Japanese mainland. Admiral Chester Nimitz favored a more direct strategy of bypassing the Philippines, but seizing Okinawa and Taiwan as staging areas to an attack on the Japanese mainland, followed by the future invasion of Japan's southernmost islands. Both strategies included the invasion of Peleliu, but for different reasons. The 1st Marine Division had already been chosen to make the assault. President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled to Pearl Harbor to personally meet both commanders and hear their arguments. MacArthur's strategy was chosen. However, before MacArthur could retake the Philippines, the Palau Islands, specifically Peleliu and Angaur, were to be neutralized and an airfield built to protect MacArthur's left flank. Preparations Japanese By 1944, Peleliu Island was occupied by about 11,000 Japanese of the 14th Infantry Division with Korean and Okinawan labourers. Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, commander of the division's 2nd Regiment, led the preparations for the island's defense. After their losses in the Solomons, Gilberts, Marshalls, and Marianas, the Imperial Army assembled a research team to develop new island-defense tactics. They chose to abandon the old strategy of trying to stop the enemy on the beaches, where they would be exposed to naval gunfire. The new tactics would only disrupt the landings at the water's edge and depend on an in-depth defense further inland. Colonel Nakagawa used the rough terrain to his advantage, by constructing a system of heavily fortified bunkers, caves, and underground positions, all interlocked in a "honeycomb" system. The traditional "banzai charge" attack was also discontinued as being both wasteful of men and ineffective. These changes would force the Americans into a war of attrition, requiring more resources. Nakagawa's defenses were centered on Peleliu's highest point, Umurbrogol Mountain, a collection of hills and steep ridges located at the center of Peleliu overlooking a large portion of the island, including the crucial airfield. The Umurbrogol contained some 500 limestone caves, connected by tunnels. Many of these were former mine shafts that were turned into defensive positions. Engineers added sliding armored steel doors with multiple openings to serve both artillery and machine guns. Cave entrances were opened or altered to be slanted as a defense against grenade and flamethrower attacks. The caves and bunkers were connected to a vast tunnel and trench system throughout central Peleliu, which allowed the Japanese to evacuate or reoccupy positions as needed, and to take advantage of shrinking interior lines. The Japanese were well armed with and mortars and anti-aircraft cannons, backed by a light tank unit and an anti-aircraft detachment. The Japanese also used the beach terrain to their advantage. The northern end of the landing beaches faced a coral promontory that overlooked the beaches from a small peninsula, a spot later known to the Marines who assaulted it simply as "The Point". Holes were blasted into the ridge to accommodate a gun, and six 20 mm cannons. The positions were then sealed shut, leaving just a small slit to fire on the beaches. Similar positions were crafted along the stretch of landing beaches. The beaches were also filled with thousands of obstacles for the landing craft, principally mines and a large number of heavy artillery shells buried with the fuses exposed to explode when they were run over. A battalion was placed along the beach to defend against the landing, but they were meant to merely delay the inevitable American advance inland. American Unlike the Japanese, who drastically altered their tactics for the upcoming battle, the American invasion plan was unchanged from that of previous amphibious landings, even after suffering 3,000 casualties and enduring two months of delaying tactics against the entrenched Japanese defenders at the Battle of Biak. On Peleliu, American planners chose to land on the southwest beaches because of their proximity to the airfield on south Peleliu. The 1st Marine Regiment, commanded by Colonel Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, was to land on the northern end of the beaches. The 5th Marine Regiment, under Colonel Harold Harris, would land in the center, and the 7th Marine Regiment, under Colonel Herman Hanneken, would land at the southern end. The division's artillery regiment, the 11th Marines under Colonel William Harrison, would land after the infantry regiments. The plan was for the 1st and 7th Marines to push inland, guarding the 5th Marines' flanks, and allowing them to capture the airfield located directly to the center of the landing beaches. The 5th Marines were to push to the eastern shore, cutting the island in half. The 1st Marines would push north into the Umurbrogol, while the 7th Marines would clear the southern end of the island. Only one battalion was left behind in reserve, with the U.S. Army's 81st Infantry Division available for support from Angaur, just south of Peleliu. On September 4, the Marines shipped off from their station on Pavuvu, just north of Guadalcanal, a trip across the Pacific to Peleliu. A Navy Underwater Demolition Team went in first to clear the beaches of obstacles, while warships began their pre-invasion bombardment of Peleliu on September 12. The battleships , , , and , heavy cruisers , , and , and light cruisers , and , led by the command ship , subjected the tiny island, only in size, to a massive three-day bombardment, pausing only to permit air strikes from the three aircraft carriers, five light aircraft carriers, and eleven escort carriers with the attack force. A total of 519 rounds of shells, 1,845 rounds of shells and 1,793 bombs pounded the islands during this period. The Americans believed the bombardment to be successful, as Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf claimed that the Navy had run out of targets. In reality, the majority of Japanese positions were completely unharmed. Even the battalion left to defend the beaches was virtually unscathed. During the assault, the island's defenders exercised unusual firing discipline to avoid giving away their positions. The bombardment managed only to destroy Japan's aircraft on the island, as well as the buildings surrounding the airfield. The Japanese remained in their fortified positions, ready to attack the American landing troops. Opposing forces American order of battle United States Pacific Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz US Third Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. Joint Expeditionary Force (Task Force 31) Vice Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson Expeditionary Troops (Task Force 36) III Amphibious Corps Major General Julian C. Smith, USMC Western Landing Force (TG 36.1) Major General Roy S. Geiger, USMC 1st Marine Division Division Commander: Maj. Gen. William H. Rupertus, USMC Asst. Division Commander: Brig. Gen. Oliver P. Smith, USMC Chief of Staff: Col. John T. Selden, USMC Beach assignments Left (White 1 & 2) 1st Marine Regiment (Col. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, USMC) Co. A of the following: 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Pioneer Battalion, 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Tank Battalion Center (Orange 1 & 2) 5th Marine Regiment (Col. Harold D. "Bucky" Harris, USMC) Co. B of the following: 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Pioneer Battalion, 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Tank Battalion (reduced) Right (Orange 3) 7th Marine Regiment (Col. Herman H. "Hard-Headed" Hanneken, USMC) Co. C of the following: 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Pioneer Battalion, 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Tank Battalion (reduced) Other units 11th Marine Regiment, Artillery (Col. William H. Harrison, USMC) 12th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion 3rd Armored Amphibian Tractor Battalion 4th, 5th, 6th Marine War Dog Platoons UDT 6 and UDT 7 Japanese order of battle Palau District Group Lieutenant General Inoue Sadao (HQ on Koror Island) Vice Admiral Yoshioka Ito Maj. Gen. Kenjiro Murai 14th Division (Lt. Gen. Sadao) Peleliu Sector Unit (Lt. Col. Kunio Nakagawa) 2nd Infantry Regiment, Reinforced 2nd Bttn. / 2nd Infantry Regiment 3rd Bttn. / 2nd Infantry Regiment 3rd Bttn. / 15th Infantry Regiment 346th Bttn. / 53rd Independent Mixed Brigade Battle Landing U.S. Marines landed on Peleliu at 08:32, on September 15, the 1st Marines to the north on White Beach 1 and 2 and the 5th and 7th Marines to the center and south on Orange Beach 1, 2, and 3. As the other landing craft approached the beaches, the Marines were caught in a crossfire when the Japanese opened the steel doors guarding their positions and fired artillery. The positions on the coral promontories guarding each flank fired on the Marines with 47 mm guns and 20 mm cannons. By 09:30, the Japanese had destroyed 60 LVTs and DUKWs. The 1st Marines were quickly bogged down by heavy fire from the extreme left flank and a 30-foot-high coral ridge, "The Point". Colonel Chesty Puller narrowly escaped death when a dud high velocity artillery round struck his LVT. His communications section was destroyed on its way to the beach by a hit from a 47 mm round. The 7th Marines faced a cluttered Orange Beach 3, with natural and man-made obstacles, forcing the Amtracs to approach in column. The 5th Marines made the most progress on the first day, aided by cover provided by coconut groves. They pushed toward the airfield, but were met with Nakagawa's first counterattack. His armored tank company raced across the airfield to push the Marines back, but was soon engaged by tanks, howitzers, naval guns, and dive bombers. Nakagawa's tanks and escorting infantrymen were quickly destroyed. At the end of the first day, the Americans held their stretch of landing beaches, but little else. Their biggest push in the south moved inland, but the 1st Marines to the north made very little progress because of the extremely thick resistance. The Marines had suffered 200 dead and 900 wounded. Rupertus, still unaware of his enemy's change of tactics, believed the Japanese would quickly crumble since their perimeter had been broken. Airfield/South Peleliu On the second day, the 5th Marines moved to capture the airfield and push toward the eastern shore. They ran across the airfield, enduring heavy artillery fire from the highlands to the north, suffering heavy casualties in the process. After capturing the airfield, they rapidly advanced to the eastern end of Peleliu, leaving the island's southern defenders to be destroyed by the 7th Marines. This area was hotly contested by the Japanese, who still occupied numerous pillboxes. Heat indices were around , and the Marines soon suffered high casualties from heat exhaustion. Further complicating the situation, the Marines' water was distributed in empty oil drums, contaminating the water with the oil residue. Still, by the eighth day the 5th and 7th Marines had accomplished their objectives, holding the airfield and the southern portion of the island, although the airfield remained under threat of sustained Japanese fire from the heights of Umurbrogol Mountain until the end of the battle. American forces put the airfield to use on the third day. L-2 Grasshoppers from VMO-3 began aerial spotting missions for Marine artillery and naval gunfire support. On September 26 (D+11), Marine F4U Corsairs from VMF-114 landed on the airstrip. The Corsairs began dive-bombing missions across Peleliu, firing rockets into open cave entrances for the infantrymen, and dropping napalm; it was only the second time the latter weapon had been used in the Pacific. Napalm proved effective, burning away the vegetation hiding spider holes and usually killing their occupants. The time from liftoff to the target area for the Corsairs based on Peleliu Airfield was very short, sometimes only 10 to 15 seconds. Consequently, there was almost no time for pilots to raise their aircraft undercarriage; most pilots did not bother and left them down during the air strike. After the air strike was completed and the payload dropped, the Corsair simply turned back into the landing pattern again. The Point The fortress at the end of the southern landing beaches (a.k.a. “The Point”) continued to cause heavy Marine casualties due to enfilading fire from Japanese heavy machine guns and anti-tank artillery across the landing beaches. Puller ordered Captain George P. Hunt, commander of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, to capture the position. Hunt's company approached The Point short on supplies, having lost most of its machine guns while approaching the beaches. Hunt's second platoon was pinned down for nearly a day in an anti-tank trench between fortifications. The rest of his company was endangered when the Japanese cut a hole in their line, surrounding his company and leaving his right flank cut off. However, a rifle platoon began knocking out the Japanese gun positions one by one. Using smoke grenades for concealment, the platoon swept through each hole, destroying the positions with rifle grenades and close-quarters combat. After knocking out the six machine gun positions, the Marines faced the 47 mm gun cave. A lieutenant blinded the 47 mm gunner's visibility with a smoke grenade, allowing Corporal Henry W. Hahn to launch a grenade through the cave's aperture. The grenade detonated the 47 mm's shells, forcing the cave's occupants out with their bodies alight and their ammunition belts exploding around their waists. A Marine fire team was positioned on the flank of the cave where the emerging occupants were shot down. K Company had captured The Point, but Nakagawa counterattacked. The next 30 hours saw four major counterattacks against a sole company, critically low on supplies, out of water, and surrounded. The Marines soon had to resort to hand-to-hand combat to fend off the Japanese attackers. By the time reinforcements arrived, the company had successfully repulsed all of the Japanese attacks, but had been reduced to 18 men, suffering 157 casualties during the battle for The Point. Hunt and Hahn were both awarded the Navy Cross for their actions. Ngesebus Island The 5th Marines—after having secured the airfield—were sent to capture Ngesebus Island, just north of Peleliu. Ngesebus was occupied by many Japanese artillery positions, and was the site of an airfield still under construction. The tiny island was connected to Peleliu by a small causeway, but 5th Marines commander Harris opted instead to make a shore-to-shore amphibious landing, predicting the causeway to be an obvious target for the island's defenders. Harris coordinated a pre-landing bombardment of the island on September 28, carried out by Army guns, naval guns, howitzers from the 11th Marines, strafing runs from VMF-114's Corsairs, and fire from the approaching LVTs. Unlike the Navy's bombardment of Peleliu, Harris' assault on Ngesebus successfully killed most of the Japanese defenders. The Marines still faced opposition in the ridges and caves, but the island fell quickly, with relatively light casualties for the 5th Marines. They had suffered 15 killed and 33 wounded, and inflicted 470 casualties on the Japanese. Bloody Nose Ridge After capturing The Point, the 1st Marines moved north into the Umurbrogol pocket, named "Bloody Nose Ridge" by the Marines. Puller led his men in numerous assaults, but each resulted in severe casualties from Japanese fire. The 1st Marines were trapped in the narrow paths between the ridges, with each ridge fortification supporting the other with deadly crossfire. The Marines took increasingly high casualties as they slowly advanced through the ridges. The Japanese again showed unusual fire discipline, striking only when they could inflict maximum casualties. As casualties mounted, Japanese snipers began to take aim at stretcher bearers, knowing that if stretcher bearers were injured or killed, more would have to return to replace them, and the snipers could steadily pick off more and more Marines. The Japanese also infiltrated the American lines at night to attack the Marines in their fighting holes. The Marines built two-man fighting holes, so one Marine could sleep while the other kept watch for infiltrators. One particularly bloody battle on Bloody Nose came when the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines—under the command of Major Raymond Davis—attacked Hill 100. Over six days of fighting, the battalion suffered 71% casualties. Captain Everett Pope and his company penetrated deep into the ridges, leading his remaining 90 men to seize what he thought was Hill 100. It took a day's fighting to reach what he thought was the crest of the hill, which was in fact another ridge occupied by more Japanese defenders. Trapped at the base of the ridge, Captain Pope set up a small defensive perimeter, which was attacked relentlessly by the Japanese throughout the night. The Marines soon ran out of ammunition, and had to fight the attackers with knives and fists, even resorting to throwing coral rock and empty ammunition boxes at the Japanese. Pope and his men managed to hold out until dawn came, which brought on more deadly fire. When they evacuated the position, only nine men remained. Pope later received the Medal of Honor for the action. (Picture of the Peleliu Memorial dedicated on the 50th anniversary of the landing on Peleliu with Captain Pope's name) The Japanese eventually inflicted 70% casualties on Puller's 1st Marines, or 1,749 men. After six days of fighting in the ridges of Umurbrogol, General Roy Geiger, commander of the III Amphibious Corps, sent elements of the U.S. Army's 81st Infantry Division to Peleliu to relieve the regiment. The 321st Regiment Combat Team landed on the western beaches of Peleliu—at the northern end of Umurbrogol mountain—on September 23. The 321st and the 7th Marines encircled The Pocket by September 24, D+9. By October 15, the 7th Marines had suffered 46% casualties and General Geiger relieved them with the 5th Marines. Col. Harris adopted siege tactics, using bulldozers and flame-thrower tanks, pushing from the north. On October 30, the 81st Infantry Division took over command of Peleliu, taking another six weeks, with the same tactics, to reduce The Pocket. On November 24, Nakagawa proclaimed "Our sword is broken and we have run out of spears". He then burnt his regimental colors and performed ritual suicide. He was posthumously promoted to lieutenant general for his valor displayed on Peleliu. On November 27, the island was declared secure, ending the 73-day-long battle. A Japanese lieutenant with twenty-six 2nd Infantry soldiers and eight 45th Guard Force sailors held out in the caves in Peleliu until April 22, 1947, and surrendered after a Japanese admiral convinced them the war was over. Aftermath The reduction of the Japanese pocket around Umurbrogol mountain has been called the most difficult fight that the U.S. military encountered in the entire war. The 1st Marine Division was mauled and remained out of action until the invasion of Okinawa began on April 1, 1945. In total, the 1st Marine Division suffered over 6,500 casualties during its month on Peleliu, over one third of the entire division. The 81st Infantry Division also suffered heavy losses with 3,300 casualties during its tenure on the island. Postwar statisticians calculated that it took U.S. forces over 1500 rounds of ammunition to kill each Japanese defender and that, during the course of the battle, the Americans expended 13.32 million rounds of .30-calibre, 1.52 million rounds of .45-calibre, 693,657 rounds of .50-calibre bullets, 118,262 hand grenades, and approximately 150,000 mortar rounds. The battle was controversial in the United States due to the island's lack of strategic value and the high casualty rate. The defenders lacked the means to interfere with potential US operations in the Philippines and the airfield captured on Peleliu did not play a key role in subsequent operations. Instead, the Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands was used as a staging base for the invasion of Okinawa. The high casualty rate exceeded all other amphibious operations during the Pacific War. In addition, few news reports were published about the battle because Rupertus' prediction of a "three days" victory motivated only six reporters to report from shore. The battle was also overshadowed by MacArthur's return to the Philippines and the Allies' push towards Germany in Europe. The battles for Angaur and Peleliu showed Americans the pattern of future Japanese island defense but they made few adjustments for the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Naval bombardment prior to amphibious assault at Iwo Jima was only slightly more effective than at Peleliu, but at Okinawa the preliminary shelling was much improved. Frogmen performing underwater demolition at Iwo Jima confused the enemy by sweeping both coasts, but later alerted Japanese defenders to the exact assault beaches at Okinawa. American ground forces at Peleliu gained experience in assaulting heavily fortified positions such as they would find again at Okinawa. On the recommendation of Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., the planned occupation of Yap Island in the Caroline Islands was canceled. Halsey actually recommended that the landings on Peleliu and Angaur be canceled, too, and their Marines and soldiers be thrown into Leyte Island instead, but was overruled by Nimitz. In popular culture In the March of Time's 1951 documentary TV series, Crusade in the Pacific, Episode 17 is "The Fight for Bloody Nose Ridge." In NBC-TV's 1952–53 documentary TV series Victory at Sea, Episode 18, "Two if by Sea" covers the assaults at Peleliu and Angaur. The battle including footage and stills are featured in the fifth episode of Ken Burns's The War. The battle features in episodes 5, 6 and 7 of the TV mini-series The Pacific. In his book With the Old Breed, Eugene Bondurant Sledge described his experiences in the Battle for Peleliu. In 2015, the Japanese magazine Young Animal commenced the serialization of Peleliu: Rakuen no Guernica by Masao Hiratsuka and theartist Kazuyoshi Takeda. It tells the story of the battle in manga form. One of the final scenes in Parer's War, a 2014 Australian television film, shows the Battle of Peleliu recorded by Damien Parer with his camera at the time of his death. The Peleliu Campaign features as one of the campaigns in the 2019 solitaire tactical wargame “Fields of Fire” Volume 2, designed by Ben Hull, published by GMT Games LLC. The Battle of Peleliu is featured in many video games with a World War II theme, including Call of Duty: World at War. The player takes the role of a US Marine tasked with taking Peleliu Airfield, repelling counter-attacks, destroying machine-gun and mortar positions, and eventually securing Japanese artillery emplacements at the point. In flight-simulation game War Thunder, two teams of players clash to hold the southern and northern airfields. In multi-player shooter Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm, a team of American troops attack the defensive Japanese team's control points. Individual honors Japan Posthumous promotions For heroism: Colonel Kunio Nakagawa – lieutenant general Kenjiro Murai – lieutenant general United States Medal of Honor recipients Captain Everett P. Pope – 1st Battalion, 1st Marines First Lieutenant Carlton R. Rouh – 1st Battalion, 5th Marines Corporal Lewis K. Bausell –1st Battalion, 5th Marines (Posthumous) Private First Class Arthur J. Jackson – 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines Private First Class Richard E. Kraus – 8th Amphibian Tractor Battalion, 1st Marine Division (Reinforced) (Posthumous) Private First Class John D. New – 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines (Posthumous) Private First Class Wesley Phelps – 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines (Posthumous) Private First Class Charles H. Roan – 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines (Posthumous) Unit citations Presidential Unit Citation: 1st Marine Division, September 15 to 29, 1944 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion, FMF U. S. Navy Flame Thrower Unit Attached 6th Amphibian Tractor Battalion (Provisional), FMF 3d Armored Amphibian Battalion (Provisional), FMF Detachment Eighth Amphibian Tractor Battalion, FMF 454th Amphibian Truck Company, U. S. Army 456th Amphibian Truck Company, U. S. Army 4th Joint Assault Signal Company, FMF 5th Separate Wire Platoon, FMF 6th Separate Wire Platoon, FMF Detachment 33rd Naval Construction Battalion (202 Personnel) Detachment 73rd Naval Construction Battalion's Shore Party (241 Personnel) USMC Commendatory Letter: 11th Marine Depot Company (segregated) 7th Marine Ammunition Company (segregated) 17th Special Naval Construction Battalion (segregated) See also U.S. National Register of Historic Places (The Peleliu Battlefield, listed 1985) Damien Parer, Australian war photographer killed on September 17 while filming a Marine advance , an amphibious assault ship named in memory of the battle With the Old Breed, a memoir of the battle written by Eugene Sledge Hell in the Pacific: A Marine Rifleman's Journey From Guadalcanal to Peleliu written by Jim McEnery Helmet for My Pillow, a memoir of the battle written by Robert Leckie Islands of the Damned, a memoir including the battle written by Romus Burgin The Pacific (miniseries) The Breaking Jewel, a novel by Makoto Oda, translated by Donald Keene, which looks at the battle from the Japanese perspective Battleground Pacific: A Marine Rifleman Combat Odyssey in K/3/5, a memoir of the battle written by Sterling Mace, Nick Allen Victory At Peleliu, The 81st Infantry Division's Pacific Campaign by Bobby C. Blair and John Peter DeCioccio Call of Duty: World at War Notes References Bibliography Blair, Bobby C., and John Peter DeCioccio. Victory at Peleliu: The 81st Infantry Division's Pacific Campaign (University of Oklahoma Press; 2011) 310 pages Further reading External links Peleliu Palau in World War II Battles of World War II involving Japan Battles of World War II involving the United States History of Palau Wars involving Palau Pacific Ocean theatre of World War II South Seas Mandate in World War II Amphibious operations of World War II World War II operations and battles of the Pacific theatre United States Marine Corps in World War II September 1944 events October 1944 events November 1944 events Seabees

(, or , ), sometimes anglicized as bocce ball, bocci or boccie, is a ball sport belonging to the boules family. Developed into its present form in Italy, it is closely related to British bowls and French , with a common ancestry from ancient games played in the Roman Empire. Bocce is played around western, southern and southeastern Europe, as well as in overseas areas with historical Italian immigrant population, including Australia, North America, and South America, principally Argentina and the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Initially played just by the Italian immigrants, the game has slowly become more popular with their descendants and more broadly. History Having developed from games played in the Roman Empire, Bocce developed into its present form in Italy (where it is called , the plural of the Italian word which means 'to bowl' in the general sporting sense), it spread around Europe and also in regions to which Italians have migrated. In South America it is known as , or ('Criollo balls') in Venezuela, and in south Brazil. The accessibility of bocce to people of all ages and abilities has seen it grow in popularity among Special Olympics programmes globally and it is now the third most played sport among Special Olympics athletes. Geographical spread The sport is also very popular on the eastern side of the Adriatic, especially in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the sport is known in Serbo-Croatian as ('playing ') or (colloquially also ). In Slovenia the sport is known as or colloquially 'playing ', or (from Italian and Venetian , meaning 'balls'). There are numerous bocce leagues in the United States. Most have been founded by Italian Americans but contain members of all groups. Rules and play Bocce is traditionally played on natural soil and asphalt courts up to in length and wide. While the court walls are traditionally made of wood or stone, many social leagues and Special Olympics programs now use inflatable 'Packabocce' PVC courts due to their portability and ease of storage. Bocce balls can be made of wood (traditional), metal, baked clay, or various kinds of plastic. Unlike lawn bowls, bocce balls are spherical and have no inbuilt bias. A game can be conducted between two players, or two teams of two, three, or four. A match is started by a randomly chosen side being given the opportunity to throw a smaller ball, the jack (called a ('little bocce') or ('bullet' or 'little ball') in Italian, depending on local custom), from one end of the court into a zone in length, ending from the far end of the court. If the first team misses twice, the other team is awarded the opportunity to place the jack anywhere they choose within the prescribed zone. Casual play is common in reasonably flat areas of parks and yards lacking a Bocce court, but players should agree to the minimum and maximum distance the jack may be thrown before play begins. The side that first attempted to place the jack is given the opportunity to bowl first. Once the first bowl has taken place, the other side has the opportunity to bowl. From then on, the side which does not have the ball closest to the jack has a chance to bowl, up until one side or the other has used their four balls. At that point, the other side bowls its remaining balls. The object of the game is for a team to get as many of its balls as possible closer to the target ball (jack, boccino, pallino) than the opposing team. The team with the closest ball to the jack is the only team that can score points in any frame. The scoring team receives one point for each of their balls that is closer to the jack than the closest ball of the other team. The length of a game varies by region but is typically from 7 to 13 points. Players are permitted to throw the ball in the air using an underarm action. This is generally used to knock either the jack or another ball away to attain a more favorable position. Tactics can get quite complex when players have sufficient control over the ball to throw or roll it accurately. Variants Bocce volo A variation called uses a metal ball, which is thrown overhand (palm down), after a run-up to the throwing line. In that latter respect, it is similar to the French boules game also known as . A French variant of the game is called , and (lacking the run-up) is more similar in some respects to traditional . Boccia Another development, for persons with disabilities, is called . It is a shorter-range game, played with leather balls on an indoor, smooth surface. Boccia was first introduced to the Paralympics at the 1984 New York/Stoke Mandeville Summer Games, and is one of the only two Paralympic sports that do not have an Olympic counterpart (the other being goalball). See also Fédération Internationale de Boules References External links Confederation Mondiale des Sports de Boules International Bocce Federation (FIB) Boules Lawn games Sports originating in Italy Articles containing video clips

In computer science, a binary tree is a tree data structure in which each node has at most two children, which are referred to as the and the . A recursive definition using just set theory notions is that a (non-empty) binary tree is a tuple (L, S, R), where L and R are binary trees or the empty set and S is a singleton set containing the root. Some authors allow the binary tree to be the empty set as well. From a graph theory perspective, binary (and K-ary) trees as defined here are arborescences. A binary tree may thus be also called a bifurcating arborescence—a term which appears in some very old programming books, before the modern computer science terminology prevailed. It is also possible to interpret a binary tree as an undirected, rather than a directed graph, in which case a binary tree is an ordered, rooted tree. Some authors use rooted binary tree instead of binary tree to emphasize the fact that the tree is rooted, but as defined above, a binary tree is always rooted. A binary tree is a special case of an ordered K-ary tree, where K is 2. In mathematics, what is termed binary tree can vary significantly from author to author. Some use the definition commonly used in computer science, but others define it as every non-leaf having exactly two children and don't necessarily order (as left/right) the children either. In computing, binary trees are used in two very different ways: First, as a means of accessing nodes based on some value or label associated with each node. Binary trees labelled this way are used to implement binary search trees and binary heaps, and are used for efficient searching and sorting. The designation of non-root nodes as left or right child even when there is only one child present matters in some of these applications, in particular, it is significant in binary search trees. However, the arrangement of particular nodes into the tree is not part of the conceptual information. For example, in a normal binary search tree the placement of nodes depends almost entirely on the order in which they were added, and can be re-arranged (for example by balancing) without changing the meaning. Second, as a representation of data with a relevant bifurcating structure. In such cases, the particular arrangement of nodes under and/or to the left or right of other nodes is part of the information (that is, changing it would change the meaning). Common examples occur with Huffman coding and cladograms. The everyday division of documents into chapters, sections, paragraphs, and so on is an analogous example with n-ary rather than binary trees. Definitions Recursive definition To actually define a binary tree in general, we must allow for the possibility that only one of the children may be empty. An artifact, which in some textbooks is called an extended binary tree is needed for that purpose. An extended binary tree is thus recursively defined as: the empty set is an extended binary tree if T1 and T2 are extended binary trees, then denote by T1 • T2 the extended binary tree obtained by by adding edges when these sub-trees are non-empty. Another way of imagining this construction (and understanding the terminology) is to consider instead of the empty set a different type of node—for instance square nodes if the regular ones are circles. Using graph theory concepts A binary tree is a rooted tree that is also an ordered tree (a.k.a. plane tree) in which every node has at most two children. A rooted tree naturally imparts a notion of levels (distance from the root), thus for every node a notion of children may be defined as the nodes connected to it a level below. Ordering of these children (e.g., by drawing them on a plane) makes it possible to distinguish a left child from a right child. But this still doesn't distinguish between a node with left but not a right child from a one with right but no left child. The necessary distinction can be made by first partitioning the edges, i.e., defining the binary tree as triplet (V, E1, E2), where (V, E1 ∪ E2) is a rooted tree (equivalently arborescence) and E1 ∩ E2 is empty, and also requiring that for all j ∈ { 1, 2 } every node has at most one Ej child. A more informal way of making the distinction is to say, quoting the Encyclopedia of Mathematics, that "every node has a left child, a right child, neither, or both" and to specify that these "are all different" binary trees. Types of binary trees Tree terminology is not well-standardized and so varies in the literature. A binary tree has a root node and every node has at most two children. A binary tree (sometimes referred to as a proper or plane binary tree) is a tree in which every node has either 0 or 2 children. Another way of defining a full binary tree is a recursive definition. A full binary tree is either: A single vertex. A tree whose root node has two subtrees, both of which are full binary trees. In a binary tree every level, except possibly the last, is completely filled, and all nodes in the last level are as far left as possible. It can have between 1 and 2h nodes at the last level h. An alternative definition is a perfect tree whose rightmost leaves (perhaps all) have been removed. Some authors use the term complete to refer instead to a perfect binary tree as defined below, in which case they call this type of tree (with a possibly not filled last level) an almost complete binary tree or nearly complete binary tree. A complete binary tree can be efficiently represented using an array. A binary tree is a binary tree in which all interior nodes have two children and all leaves have the same depth or same level. An example of a perfect binary tree is the (non-incestuous) ancestry chart of a person to a given depth, as each person has exactly two biological parents (one mother and one father). Provided the ancestry chart always displays the mother and the father on the same side for a given node, their sex can be seen as an analogy of left and right children, children being understood here as an algorithmic term. A perfect tree is therefore always complete but a complete tree is not necessarily perfect. In the infinite complete binary tree, every node has two children (and so the set of levels is countably infinite). The set of all nodes is countably infinite, but the set of all infinite paths from the root is uncountable, having the cardinality of the continuum. That's because these paths correspond by an order-preserving bijection to the points of the Cantor set, or (using the example of a Stern–Brocot tree) to the set of positive irrational numbers. A balanced binary tree is a binary tree structure in which the left and right subtrees of every node differ in height by no more than 1. One may also consider binary trees where no leaf is much farther away from the root than any other leaf. (Different balancing schemes allow different definitions of "much farther".<ref>Paul E. Black (ed.), entry for data structure in Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures. U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. 15 December 2004. Online version Accessed 2010-12-19.</ref>) A degenerate (or pathological) tree is where each parent node has only one associated child node. This means that the tree will behave like a linked list data structure. Properties of binary trees The number of nodes in a full binary tree is at least and at most , where is the height of the tree. A tree consisting of only a root node has a height of 0. The number of leaf nodes in a perfect binary tree, is because the number of non-leaf (a.k.a. internal) nodes . This means that a full binary tree with leaves has nodes. In a balanced full binary tree, (see ceiling function). In a perfect full binary tree, thus . The number of null links (i.e., absent children of the nodes) in a binary tree of n nodes is (n+1). The number of internal nodes in a complete binary tree of n nodes is . For any non-empty binary tree with n0 leaf nodes and n2 nodes of degree 2, n0 = n2 + 1. Combinatorics In combinatorics one considers the problem of counting the number of full binary trees of a given size. Here the trees have no values attached to their nodes (this would just multiply the number of possible trees by an easily determined factor), and trees are distinguished only by their structure; however, the left and right child of any node are distinguished (if they are different trees, then interchanging them will produce a tree distinct from the original one). The size of the tree is taken to be the number n of internal nodes (those with two children); the other nodes are leaf nodes and there are of them. The number of such binary trees of size n is equal to the number of ways of fully parenthesizing a string of symbols (representing leaves) separated by n binary operators (representing internal nodes), to determine the argument subexpressions of each operator. For instance for one has to parenthesize a string like , which is possible in five ways: The correspondence to binary trees should be obvious, and the addition of redundant parentheses (around an already parenthesized expression or around the full expression) is disallowed (or at least not counted as producing a new possibility). There is a unique binary tree of size 0 (consisting of a single leaf), and any other binary tree is characterized by the pair of its left and right children; if these have sizes i and j respectively, the full tree has size . Therefore, the number of binary trees of size n has the following recursive description , and for any positive integer n. It follows that is the Catalan number of index n. The above parenthesized strings should not be confused with the set of words of length 2n in the Dyck language, which consist only of parentheses in such a way that they are properly balanced. The number of such strings satisfies the same recursive description (each Dyck word of length 2n is determined by the Dyck subword enclosed by the initial '(' and its matching ')' together with the Dyck subword remaining after that closing parenthesis, whose lengths 2i and 2j satisfy ); this number is therefore also the Catalan number . So there are also five Dyck words of length 6: These Dyck words do not correspond to binary trees in the same way. Instead, they are related by the following recursively defined bijection: the Dyck word equal to the empty string corresponds to the binary tree of size 0 with only one leaf. Any other Dyck word can be written as (), where , are themselves (possibly empty) Dyck words and where the two written parentheses are matched. The bijection is then defined by letting the words and correspond to the binary trees that are the left and right children of the root. A bijective correspondence can also be defined as follows: enclose the Dyck word in an extra pair of parentheses, so that the result can be interpreted as a Lisp list expression (with the empty list () as only occurring atom); then the dotted-pair expression for that proper list is a fully parenthesized expression (with NIL as symbol and '.' as operator) describing the corresponding binary tree (which is, in fact, the internal representation of the proper list). The ability to represent binary trees as strings of symbols and parentheses implies that binary trees can represent the elements of a free magma on a singleton set. Methods for storing binary trees Binary trees can be constructed from programming language primitives in several ways. Nodes and references In a language with records and references, binary trees are typically constructed by having a tree node structure which contains some data and references to its left child and its right child. Sometimes it also contains a reference to its unique parent. If a node has fewer than two children, some of the child pointers may be set to a special null value, or to a special sentinel node. This method of storing binary trees wastes a fair bit of memory, as the pointers will be null (or point to the sentinel) more than half the time; a more conservative representation alternative is threaded binary tree. In languages with tagged unions such as ML, a tree node is often a tagged union of two types of nodes, one of which is a 3-tuple of data, left child, and right child, and the other of which is a "leaf" node, which contains no data and functions much like the null value in a language with pointers. For example, the following line of code in OCaml (an ML dialect) defines a binary tree that stores a character in each node. type chr_tree = Empty | Node of char * chr_tree * chr_tree Arrays Binary trees can also be stored in breadth-first order as an implicit data structure in arrays, and if the tree is a complete binary tree, this method wastes no space. In this compact arrangement, if a node has an index i, its children are found at indices (for the left child) and (for the right), while its parent (if any) is found at index (assuming the root has index zero). Alternatively, with a 1-indexed array, the implementation is simplified with children found at and , and parent found at . This method benefits from more compact storage and better locality of reference, particularly during a preorder traversal. However, it is expensive to grow and wastes space proportional to 2h - n for a tree of depth h with n nodes. This method of storage is often used for binary heaps. Encodings Succinct encodings A succinct data structure is one which occupies close to minimum possible space, as established by information theoretical lower bounds. The number of different binary trees on nodes is , the th Catalan number (assuming we view trees with identical structure as identical). For large , this is about ; thus we need at least about bits to encode it. A succinct binary tree therefore would occupy bits. One simple representation which meets this bound is to visit the nodes of the tree in preorder, outputting "1" for an internal node and "0" for a leaf. If the tree contains data, we can simply simultaneously store it in a consecutive array in preorder. This function accomplishes this: function EncodeSuccinct(node n, bitstring structure, array data) { if n = nil then append 0 to structure; else append 1 to structure; append n.data to data; EncodeSuccinct(n.left, structure, data); EncodeSuccinct(n.right, structure, data); } The string structure has only bits in the end, where is the number of (internal) nodes; we don't even have to store its length. To show that no information is lost, we can convert the output back to the original tree like this: function DecodeSuccinct(bitstring structure, array data) { remove first bit of structure and put it in b if b = 1 then create a new node n remove first element of data and put it in n.data n.left = DecodeSuccinct(structure, data) n.right = DecodeSuccinct(structure, data) return n else return nil } More sophisticated succinct representations allow not only compact storage of trees but even useful operations on those trees directly while they're still in their succinct form. Encoding general trees as binary trees There is a one-to-one mapping between general ordered trees and binary trees, which in particular is used by Lisp to represent general ordered trees as binary trees. To convert a general ordered tree to a binary tree, we only need to represent the general tree in left-child right-sibling way. The result of this representation will automatically be a binary tree if viewed from a different perspective. Each node N in the ordered tree corresponds to a node N' in the binary tree; the left child of N' is the node corresponding to the first child of N, and the right child of N' is the node corresponding to N 's next sibling --- that is, the next node in order among the children of the parent of N. This binary tree representation of a general order tree is sometimes also referred to as a left-child right-sibling binary tree (also known as LCRS tree, doubly chained tree, filial-heir chain). One way of thinking about this is that each node's children are in a linked list, chained together with their right fields, and the node only has a pointer to the beginning or head of this list, through its left field. For example, in the tree on the left, A has the 6 children {B,C,D,E,F,G}. It can be converted into the binary tree on the right. The binary tree can be thought of as the original tree tilted sideways, with the black left edges representing first child and the blue right edges representing next sibling. The leaves of the tree on the left would be written in Lisp as: (((N O) I J) C D ((P) (Q)) F (M)) which would be implemented in memory as the binary tree on the right, without any letters on those nodes that have a left child. Common operations There are a variety of different operations that can be performed on binary trees. Some are mutator operations, while others simply return useful information about the tree. Insertion Nodes can be inserted into binary trees in between two other nodes or added after a leaf node. In binary trees, a node that is inserted is specified as to whose child it will be. Leaf nodes To add a new node after leaf node A, A assigns the new node as one of its children and the new node assigns node A as its parent. Internal nodes Insertion on internal nodes is slightly more complex than on leaf nodes. Say that the internal node is node A and that node B is the child of A. (If the insertion is to insert a right child, then B is the right child of A, and similarly with a left child insertion.) A assigns its child to the new node and the new node assigns its parent to A. Then the new node assigns its child to B and B assigns its parent as the new node. Deletion Deletion is the process whereby a node is removed from the tree. Only certain nodes in a binary tree can be removed unambiguously. Node with zero or one children Suppose that the node to delete is node A. If A has no children, deletion is accomplished by setting the child of A's parent to null. If A has one child, set the parent of A's child to A's parent and set the child of A's parent to A's child. Node with two children In a binary tree, a node with two children cannot be deleted unambiguously. However, in certain binary trees (including binary search trees) these nodes can be deleted, though with a rearrangement of the tree structure. Traversal Pre-order, in-order, and post-order traversal visit each node in a tree by recursively visiting each node in the left and right subtrees of the root. Depth-first order In depth-first order, we always attempt to visit the node farthest from the root node that we can, but with the caveat that it must be a child of a node we have already visited. Unlike a depth-first search on graphs, there is no need to remember all the nodes we have visited, because a tree cannot contain cycles. Pre-order is a special case of this. See depth-first search for more information. Breadth-first order Contrasting with depth-first order is breadth-first order, which always attempts to visit the node closest to the root that it has not already visited. See breadth-first search for more information. Also called a level-order traversal. In a complete binary tree, a node's breadth-index (i − (2d − 1)) can be used as traversal instructions from the root. Reading bitwise from left to right, starting at bit d − 1, where d is the node's distance from the root (d = ⌊log(i+1)⌋) and the node in question is not the root itself (d > 0). When the breadth-index is masked at bit d − 1, the bit values and mean to step either left or right, respectively. The process continues by successively checking the next bit to the right until there are no more. The rightmost bit indicates the final traversal from the desired node's parent to the node itself. There is a time-space trade-off between iterating a complete binary tree this way versus each node having pointer/s to its sibling/s. See also References Citations Bibliography Donald Knuth. The Art of Computer Programming vol 1. Fundamental Algorithms'', Third Edition. Addison-Wesley, 1997. . Section 2.3, especially subsections 2.3.1–2.3.2 (pp. 318–348). External links binary trees entry in the FindStat database Binary Tree Proof by Induction Balanced binary search tree on array How to create bottom-up an Ahnentafel list, or a balanced binary search tree on array Binary trees and Implementation of the same with working code examples Binary Tree JavaScript Implementation with source code

The Boston Red Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Boston. The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox' home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox" name was chosen by the team owner, John I. Taylor, circa 1908, following the lead of previous teams that had been known as the "Boston Red Stockings", including the forerunner of the Atlanta Braves. The team has won nine World Series championships, tied for the third-most of any MLB team, and they have played in 13. Their most recent World Series appearance and win was in . In addition, they won the American League pennant, but were not able to defend their 1903 World Series championship when the New York Giants refused to participate in the 1904 World Series. The Red Sox were a dominant team in the new league, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first World Series in 1903 and winning four more championships by 1918. However, they then went into one of the longest championship droughts in baseball history, dubbed the "Curse of the Bambino" after its alleged inception due to the Red Sox' sale of Babe Ruth to the rival New York Yankees two years after their world championship in 1918, an 86-year wait before the team's sixth World Championship in . The team's history during that period was punctuated with some of the most memorable moments in World Series history, including Enos Slaughter's "mad dash" in , the "Impossible Dream" of , Carlton Fisk's home run in , and Bill Buckner's error in . Following their victory in the 2018 World Series, they became the first team to win four World Series trophies in the 21st century, with championships in , , and . The team's history has also been marked by the team's intense rivalry with the New York Yankees, arguably the fiercest and most historic in North American professional sports. The Boston Red Sox are owned by Fenway Sports Group, which also owns Liverpool F.C. of the Premier League in England. They are consistently one of the top MLB teams in average road attendance, while the small capacity of Fenway Park prevents them from leading in overall attendance. From May 15, 2003, to April 10, 2013, the Red Sox sold out every home game—a total of 820 games (794 regular season) for a major professional sports record. Both Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" and The Standells' "Dirty Water" have become anthems for the Red Sox. As of the end of the 2021 season, the franchise's all-time regular-season record is 9,718–9,014 (). Nickname The name Red Sox, chosen by owner John I. Taylor after the 1907 season, refers to the red hose in the team uniform beginning in 1908. Sox had been previously adopted for the Chicago White Sox by newspapers needing a headline-friendly form of Stockings, as "Stockings Win!" in large type did not fit in a column. The team name "Red Sox" had previously been used as early as 1888 by a 'colored' team from Norfolk, Virginia. The Spanish language media sometimes refers to the team as Medias Rojas, a translation of "red socks". The official Spanish site uses the variant "Los Red Sox". The Red Stockings nickname was first used by a baseball team by the Cincinnati Red Stockings, who were members of the pioneering National Association of Base Ball Players. Managed by Harry Wright, Cincinnati adopted a uniform with white knickers and red stockings and earned the famous nickname, a year or two before hiring the first fully professional team in 1869. When the club folded after the 1870 season, Wright was hired by Boston businessman Ivers Whitney Adams to organize a new team in Boston, and he brought three teammates and the "Red Stockings" nickname along. (Most nicknames were then unofficial — neither club names nor registered trademarks — so the migration was informal.) The Boston Red Stockings won four championships in the five seasons of the new National Association, the first professional league. When a new Cincinnati club was formed as a charter member of the National League in 1876, the "Red Stockings" nickname was commonly reserved for them once again, and the Boston team was referred to as the "Red Caps". Other names were sometimes used before Boston officially adopted the nickname "Braves" in 1912; the club eventually left Boston for Milwaukee and is now playing in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1901, the upstart American League established a competing club in Boston. (Originally, a team was supposed to be started in Buffalo, but league ownership at the last minute removed that city from their plans in favor of the expansion Boston franchise.) For seven seasons, the AL team wore dark blue stockings and had no official nickname. They were simply "Boston", "Bostonians" or "the Bostons"; or the "Americans" or "Boston Americans" as in "American Leaguers", Boston being a two-team city. Their 1901–1907 jerseys, both home, and road, just read "Boston", except for 1902 when they sported large letters "B" and "A" denoting "Boston" and "American." Newspaper writers of the time used other nicknames for the club, including "Somersets" (for owner Charles Somers), "Plymouth Rocks", "Beaneaters", the "Collinsites" (for manager Jimmy Collins)", and "Pilgrims." For years many sources have listed "Pilgrims" as the early Boston AL team's official nickname, but researcher Bill Nowlin has demonstrated that the name was barely used, if at all, during the team's early years. The origin of the nickname appears to be a poem entitled "The Pilgrims At Home" written by Edwin Fitzwilliam that was sung at the 1907 home opener ("Rory O'More" melody). This nickname was commonly used during that season, perhaps because the team had a new manager and several rookie players. John I. Taylor had said in December 1907 that the Pilgrims "sounded too much like homeless wanderers." The National League club in Boston, though seldom called the "Red Stockings" anymore, still wore red trim. In 1907, the National League club adopted an all-white uniform, and the American League team saw an opportunity. On December 18, 1907, Taylor announced that the club had officially adopted red as its new team color. The 1908 uniforms featured a large icon of a red stocking angling across the shirt front. For 1908, the National League club returned to wearing red trim, but the American League team finally had an official nickname and remained the "Red Sox" for good. The name is often shortened to "Bosox" or "BoSox", a combination of "Boston" and "Sox" (similar to the "ChiSox" in Chicago or the minor league "PawSox" of Pawtucket). Sportswriters sometimes refer to the Red Sox as the Crimson Hose and the Olde Towne Team. Recently, media have begun to call them the "Sawx" casually, reflecting how the word is pronounced with a New England accent. However, most fans simply refer to the team as the "Sox" when the context is understood to mean Red Sox. The formal name of the entity which owns the team is "Boston Red Sox Baseball Club Limited Partnership". The name shown on a door near the main entrance to Fenway Park, "Boston American League Baseball Company", was used prior to the team's reorganization as a limited partnership on May 26, 1978. The entrance also figures in Robert B. Parker's Spenser-and-baseball novel Mortal Stakes. History 1901–1919: The Golden Era In 1901, the minor Western League, led by Ban Johnson, declared itself to be equal to the National League, then the only major league in baseball. Johnson had changed the name of the league to the American League prior to the 1900 season. In 1901, the league created a franchise in Boston, called the "Boston Americans", to compete with the National League team there. Playing their home games at Huntington Avenue Grounds, the Boston franchise finished second in the league in 1901 and third in 1902. The team was originally owned by C.W. Somers. In January 1902, he sold all but one share of the team to Henry Killilea. The early teams were led by manager and star third baseman Jimmy Collins, outfielders Chick Stahl, Buck Freeman, and Patsy Dougherty, and pitcher Cy Young, who in 1901 won the pitching Triple Crown with 33 wins (41.8% of the team's 79 wins), 1.62 ERA and 158 strikeouts. In 1903, the team won their first American League pennant and, as a result, Boston participated in the first modern World Series, going up against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Aided by the modified chants of "Tessie" by the Royal Rooters fan club and by its stronger pitching staff, the Americans won the best-of-nine series five games to three. In April 1904, the team was purchased by John I. Taylor of Boston. The 1904 team found itself in a pennant race against the New York Highlanders. A predecessor to what became a storied rivalry, this race featured the trade of Patsy Dougherty to the Highlanders for Bob Unglaub. In order to win the pennant, the Highlanders needed to win both games of their final doubleheader with the Americans at the Highlanders' home stadium, Hilltop Park. With Jack Chesbro on the mound, and the score tied 2–2 with a man on third in the top of the ninth, a spitball got away from Chesbro and Lou Criger scored the go-ahead run and the Americans won their second pennant. However, the NL champion New York Giants declined to play any postseason series, but a sharp public reaction led the two leagues to make the World Series a permanent championship, starting in 1905. In 1906, Boston lost 105 games and finished last in the league. In December 1907, Taylor proposed that the Boston Americans name change to the Boston Red Sox. By 1909, center fielder Tris Speaker had become a fixture in the Boston outfield, and the team finished the season in third place. In 1912, the Red Sox won 105 games and the pennant. The 105 wins stood as the club record until the 2018 club won 108. Anchored by an outfield including Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis, and pitcher Smoky Joe Wood, the Red Sox beat the New York Giants 4–3–1 in the 1912 World Series best known for Snodgrass's Muff. From 1913 to 1916 the Red Sox were owned by Joseph Lannin. In 1914, Lannin signed a young up-and-coming pitcher named Babe Ruth from the Baltimore Orioles of the International League. In 1915, the team won 101 games and went on to the 1915 World Series, where they beat the Philadelphia Phillies four games to one. Following the 1915 season, Tris Speaker was traded to the Cleveland Indians. The Red Sox went on to win the 1916 World Series, defeating the Brooklyn Robins. Harry Frazee bought the Red Sox from Joseph Lannin in 1916 for about $675,000. In 1918, Babe Ruth led the team to another World Series championship over the Chicago Cubs. Sale of Babe Ruth and Aftermath (1920–1938) Prior to the sale of Babe Ruth, multiple trades occurred between the Red Sox and the Yankees. On December 18, 1918, outfielder Duffy Lewis, pitcher Dutch Leonard and pitcher Ernie Shore were traded to the Yankees for pitcher Ray Caldwell, Slim Love, Roxy Walters, Frank Gilhooley and $15,000. In July 1919, pitcher Carl Mays quit the team and then was traded to the Yankees for Bob McGraw, Allan Russell and $40,000. After Mays was traded, league president Ban Johnson suspended him due to his breaking of his contract with the Red Sox. The Yankees went to court after Johnson suspended Mays. After the Yankees were able to play Mays, the American League split into two factions: the Yankees, Red Sox and White Sox, known as the "Insurrectos," versus Johnson and the remaining five clubs, a.k.a. the "Loyal Five". On December 26, 1919, the team sold Babe Ruth, who had played the previous six seasons for the Red Sox, to the rival New York Yankees. The sale was announced on January 6, 1920. In 1919, Ruth had broken the single-season home run record, hitting 29 home runs. It was believed that Frazee sold Ruth to finance the Broadway musical No, No, Nanette. While No, No, Nanette did not open on Broadway until 1925, Leigh Montville's book, The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, reports that No, No, Nanette had originated as a non-musical stage play called My Lady Friends, which opened on Broadway in December 1919. According to the book, My Lady Friends had been financed by Ruth's sale to the Yankees. The sale of Babe Ruth came to be viewed as the beginning of the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry, considered the "best rivalry" by American sports journalists. In the December 1920, Wally Schang, Waite Hoyt, Harry Harper and Mike McNally were traded to the Yankees for Del Pratt, Muddy Ruel, Hank Thormahlen, Sammy Vick. The following winter, shortstop Everett Scott, and pitchers Bullet Joe Bush and Sad Sam Jones were traded to the Yankees for Roger Peckinpaugh, who was immediately traded to the Washington Senators, Jack Quinn, Rip Collins, Bill Piercy. On July 23, 1922, Joe Dugan and Elmer Smith were traded to the Yankees for Elmer Miller, Chick Fewster, Johnny Mitchell, and Lefty O'Doul. Acquiring Dugan helped the Yankees edge the St. Louis Browns in a tight pennant race. After late trades in 1922, a June 15 trading deadline went into effect. In 1923, Herb Pennock was traded by the Red Sox to the Yankees for Camp Skinner, Norm McMillan, and George Murray. The loss of several top players sent the Red Sox into free fall. During the 1920s and early 1930s, the Red Sox were fixtures in the second division, never finishing closer than 20 games out of first. The losses increased after Frazee sold the team to Bob Quinn in 1923. The team bottomed out in 1932 with a record of 43–111, still the worst record in franchise history. However, in 1931, Earl Webb set the all-time mark for most doubles in a season with 67. In 1933, Tom Yawkey bought the team. Yawkey acquired pitchers Wes Ferrell and Lefty Grove, Joe Cronin, a shortstop and manager, and first baseman Jimmie Foxx. In 1938, Foxx hit 50 home runs, which stood as a club record for 68 years. That year Foxx also set a club-record of 175 runs. 1939–1960: The Ted Williams Era In 1939, the Red Sox purchased the contract of outfielder Ted Williams from the minor league San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League, ushering in an era of the team sometimes called the "Ted Sox." Williams consistently hit for both high power and high average, and is generally considered one of the greatest hitters of all time. The right-field bullpens in Fenway were built in part for Williams' left-handed swing, and are sometimes called "Williamsburg." Before this addition, it was over to right field. He served two stints in the United States Marine Corps as a pilot and saw active duty in both World War II and the Korean War, missing at least five full seasons of baseball. His book The Science of Hitting is widely read by students of baseball. He is currently the last player to hit over .400 for a full season, batting .406 in 1941. Williams feuded with sports writers his whole career, calling them "The Knights of the Keyboard", and his relationship with the fans was often rocky as he was seen spitting towards the stands on more than one occasion. With Williams, the Red Sox reached the 1946 World Series but lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games in part because of the use of the "Williams Shift", a defensive tactic in which the shortstop moves to the right side of the infield to make it harder for the left-handed-hitting Williams to hit to that side of the field. Some have claimed that he was too proud to hit to the other side of the field, not wanting to let the Cardinals take away his game. His performance may have also been affected by a pitch he took in the elbow in an exhibition game a few days earlier. Either way, in his only World Series, Williams gathered just five singles in 25 at-bats for a .200 average. The Cardinals won the 1946 Series when Enos Slaughter scored the go-ahead run all the way from first base on a base hit to left field. The throw from Leon Culberson was cut off by shortstop Johnny Pesky, who relayed the ball to the plate just a hair too late. Some say Pesky hesitated or "held the ball" before he turned to throw the ball, but this has been disputed. Along with Williams and Pesky, the Red Sox featured several other star players during the 1940s, including second baseman Bobby Doerr and center fielder Dom DiMaggio (the younger brother of Joe DiMaggio). The Red Sox narrowly lost the AL pennant in 1948 and 1949. In 1948, Boston finished in a tie with Cleveland, and their loss to Cleveland in a one-game playoff ended hopes of an all-Boston World Series. Curiously, manager Joseph McCarthy chose journeyman Denny Galehouse to start the playoff game when the young lefty phenom Mel Parnell was available to pitch. In 1949, the Red Sox were one game ahead of the New York Yankees, with the only two games left for both teams being against each other, and they lost both of those games. The 1950s were viewed as a time of tribulation for the Red Sox. After Williams returned from the Korean War in 1953, many of the best players from the late 1940s had retired or been traded. The stark contrast in the team led critics to call the Red Sox' daily lineup "Ted Williams and the Seven Dwarfs." Jackie Robinson was even worked out by the team at Fenway Park, however, owner Tom Yawkey did not want an African American player on his team. Willie Mays also tried out for Boston and was highly praised by team scouts. In 1955, Frank Malzone debuted at third base and Ted Williams hit .388 at the age of 38 in 1957, but there was little else for Boston fans to root for. Williams retired at the end of the 1960 season, famously hitting a home run in his final at-bat as memorialized in the John Updike story "Hub fans bid Kid adieu." The Red Sox finally became the last Major League team to field an African American player when they promoted infielder Pumpsie Green from their AAA farm team in 1959. 1960s: Yaz and the Impossible Dream The 1960s also started poorly for the Red Sox, though 1961 saw the debut of Carl "Yaz" Yastrzemski, Williams' replacement in left field, who developed into one of the better hitters of a pitching-rich decade. Red Sox fans know 1967 as the season of the "Impossible Dream." The slogan refers to the hit song from the popular musical play "Man of La Mancha". 1967 saw one of the great pennant races in baseball history with four teams in the AL pennant race until almost the last game. The BoSox had finished the 1966 season in ninth place, but they found new life with Yastrzemski as the team won the pennant to reach the 1967 World Series. Yastrzemski won the American League Triple Crown (the most recent player to accomplish such a feat until Miguel Cabrera did so in 2012), hitting .326 with 44 home runs and 121 runs batted in. He was named the league's Most Valuable Player, just one vote shy of a unanimous selection as a Minnesota sportswriter placed Twins center fielder César Tovar first on his ballot. But the Red Sox lost the series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson stymied the Red Sox, winning three games. An 18-year-old Bostonian rookie named Tony Conigliaro slugged 24 home runs in 1964. "Tony C" became the youngest player in Major League Baseball to hit his 100th home run, a record that stands today. He was struck just above the left cheek bone by a fastball thrown by Jack Hamilton of the California Angels on Friday, August 18, 1967, and sat out the entire next season with headaches and blurred vision. Although he did have a productive season in 1970, he was never the same. 1970s: The Red Hat Era Although the Red Sox were competitive for much of the late 1960s and early 1970s, they never finished higher than second place in their division. The closest they came to a divisional title was 1972 when they lost by a half-game to the Detroit Tigers. The start of the season was delayed by a players' strike, and the Red Sox had lost one more game to the strike than the Tigers had. Games lost to the strike were not made up. The Red Sox went to Detroit with a half-game lead for the final series of the season, but lost the first two of those three and were eliminated from the pennant race. 1975 The Red Sox won the AL pennant in 1975. The 1975 Red Sox were as colorful as they were talented, with Yastrzemski and rookie outfielders Jim Rice and Fred Lynn, veteran outfielder Dwight Evans, catcher Carlton Fisk, and pitchers Luis Tiant and eccentric junkballer Bill "The Spaceman" Lee. Fred Lynn won both the American League Rookie of the Year award and the Most Valuable Player award, a feat which had never previously been accomplished, and was not duplicated until Ichiro Suzuki did it in 2001. In the 1975 American League Championship Series, the Red Sox swept the Oakland A's. In the 1975 World Series, they faced the heavily favored Cincinnati Reds, also known as The Big Red Machine. Luis Tiant won games 1 and 4 of the World Series but after five games, the Red Sox trailed the series 3 games to 2. Game 6 at Fenway Park is considered among the greatest games in postseason history. Down 6–3 in the bottom of the eighth inning, Red Sox pinch hitter Bernie Carbo hit a three-run homer into the center field bleachers off Reds fireman Rawly Eastwick to tie the game. In the top of the 11th inning, right fielder Dwight Evans made a spectacular catch of a Joe Morgan line drive and doubled off Ken Griffey at first base to preserve the tie. In the bottom of the 12th inning, Carlton Fisk hit a deep fly ball that sliced towards the left-field foul pole above the Green Monster. As the ball sailed into the night, Fisk waved his arms frantically towards fair territory, seemingly pleading with the ball not to go foul. The ball complied, and bedlam ensued at Fenway as Fisk rounded the bases to win the game for the Red Sox 7–6. The Red Sox lost game 7, 4–3 even though they had an early 3–0 lead. Starting pitcher Bill Lee threw a slow looping curve which he called a "Leephus pitch" or "space ball" to Reds first baseman Tony Pérez who hit the ball over the Green Monster and across the street. The Reds scored the winning run in the 9th inning. Carlton Fisk said famously about the 1975 World Series, "We won that thing 3 games to 4." 1978 pennant race In 1978, the Red Sox and the Yankees were involved in a tight pennant race. The Yankees were games behind the Red Sox in July, and on September 10, after completing a 4-game sweep of the Red Sox (known as "The Boston Massacre"), the Yankees tied for the divisional lead. On September 16 the Yankees held a game lead over the Red Sox, but the Sox won 11 of their next 13 games and by the final day of the season, the Yankees' magic number to win the division was one—with a win over Cleveland or a Boston loss to the Toronto Blue Jays clinching the division. However, New York lost 9–2 and Boston won 5–0, forcing a one-game playoff to be held at Fenway Park on Monday, October 2. The most remembered moment from the game was Bucky Dent's 7th inning three-run home run in off Mike Torrez just over the Green Monster, giving the Yankees their first lead. The dejected Boston manager, Don Zimmer, gave Mr. Dent a new middle name which lives on in Boston sports lore to this day, uttering three words as the ball sailed over the left-field wall: "Bucky Fucking Dent!" Reggie Jackson provided a solo home run in the 8th that proved to be the difference in the Yankees' 5–4 win, which ended with Yastrzemski popping out to Graig Nettles in foul territory with Rick Burleson representing the tying run at third. Although Dent became a Red Sox demon, the Red Sox got retribution in 1990 when the Yankees fired Dent as their manager during a series at Fenway Park. 1986 World Series and Game Six Carl Yastrzemski retired after the 1983 season, during which the Red Sox finished sixth in the seven-team AL East, posting their worst record since 1966. However, in 1986, it appeared that the team's fortunes were about to change. The offense had remained strong with Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, Don Baylor and Wade Boggs. Roger Clemens led the pitching staff, going 24–4 with a 2.48 ERA, and had a 20-strikeout game to win both the American League Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards. Clemens became the first starting pitcher to win both awards since Vida Blue in 1971. Despite spending a month and a half on the disabled list in the middle of the season, left-hander Bruce Hurst went 13–8, striking out 167 and pitching four shutout games. Boston sportswriters that season compared Clemens and Hurst to Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax from the 1960s Los Angeles Dodgers. The Red Sox won the AL East for the first time in 11 seasons, and faced the California Angels in the ALCS. The teams split the first two games in Boston, but the Angels won the next two home games, taking a 3–1 lead in the series. With the Angels poised to win the series, the Red Sox trailed 5–2 heading into the ninth inning of Game 5. A two-run homer by Baylor cut the lead to one. With two outs and a runner on, and one strike away from elimination, Dave Henderson homered off Donnie Moore to put Boston up 6–5. Although the Angels tied the game in the bottom of the ninth, the Red Sox won in the 11th on a Henderson sacrifice fly off Moore. The Red Sox then found themselves with six- and seven-run wins at Fenway Park in Games 6 and 7 to win the American League title. The Red Sox faced a heavily favored New York Mets team that had won 108 games in the regular season in the 1986 World Series. Boston won the first two games in Shea Stadium but lost the next two at Fenway, knotting the series at 2 games apiece. After Bruce Hurst recorded his second victory of the series in Game 5, the Red Sox returned to Shea Stadium looking to garner their first championship in 68 years. However, Game 6 became one of the most devastating losses in club history. After pitching seven strong innings, Clemens was lifted from the game with a 3–2 lead. Years later, Manager John McNamara said Clemens was suffering from a blister and asked to be taken out of the game, a claim Clemens denied. The Mets then scored a run off reliever and former Met Calvin Schiraldi to tie the score 3–3. The game went to extra innings, where the Red Sox took a 5–3 lead in the top of the 10th on a solo home run by Henderson, a double by Boggs and an RBI single by second baseman Marty Barrett. After recording two outs in the bottom of the 10th, a graphic appeared on the NBC telecast hailing Barrett as the Player of the Game and Bruce Hurst as Most Valuable Player of the World Series. A message even appeared briefly on the Shea Stadium scoreboard congratulating the Red Sox as world champions. After so many years of abject frustration, Red Sox fans around the world could taste victory. With the count at two balls and one strike, Mets catcher Gary Carter hit a single. It was followed by singles by Kevin Mitchell and Ray Knight. With Mookie Wilson batting, a wild pitch by Bob Stanley tied the game at 5. Wilson then hit a slow ground ball to first; the ball rolled through Bill Buckner's legs, allowing Knight to score the winning run from second. While Buckner was singled out as responsible for the loss, many observers—as well as both Wilson and Buckner—have noted that even if Buckner had fielded the ball cleanly, the speedy Wilson probably would have still been safe, leaving the game-winning run at third with two out. Many observers questioned why Buckner was in the game at that point considering he had bad knees and that Dave Stapleton had come in as a late-inning defensive replacement in prior series games. It appeared as though McNamara was trying to reward Buckner for his long and illustrious career by leaving him in the game. After falling behind 3–0, the Mets then won Game 7, concluding the devastating collapse and feeding the myth that the Red Sox were "cursed." This World Series loss had a strange twist: Red Sox General Manager Lou Gorman was vice-president, player personnel, of the Mets from 1980 to 1983. Working under Mets' GM Frank Cashen, with whom Gorman served with the Orioles, he helped lay the foundation for the Mets' championship. 1988–1991: Morgan Magic The Red Sox returned to the postseason in 1988. With the club in fourth place midway through the 1988 season at the All-Star break, manager John McNamara was fired and replaced by Walpole resident and longtime minor-league manager Joe Morgan on July 15. The club immediately won 12 games in a row, and 19 of 20 overall, to surge to the AL East title in what was called Morgan Magic. But the magic was short-lived, as the team was swept by the Oakland Athletics in the ALCS. The Most Valuable Player of that Series was former Red Sox pitcher and Baseball Hall of Fame player Dennis Eckersley, who saved all four wins for Oakland. Two years later, in 1990, the Red Sox again won the division and face the Athletics in the ALCS. However, the outcome was the same, with the A's sweeping the ALCS in four straight. In 1990, Yankees fans started to chant "1918!" to taunt the Red Sox. The demeaning chant echoed at Yankee Stadium each time the Red Sox were there. Also, Fenway Park became the scene of Bucky Dent's worst moment as a manager, although it was where he had his greatest triumph. In June, when the Red Sox swept the Yankees during a four-game series at Fenway Park, the Yankees fired Dent as their manager. Red Sox fans felt retribution to Dent being fired on their field, but the Yankees used him as a scapegoat. However, Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe severely criticized Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for firing Dent—his 18th managerial change in as many years since becoming owner—in Boston and said he should "have waited until the Yankees got to Baltimore" to fire Dent. He said that "if Dent had been fired in Seattle or Milwaukee, this would have been just another event in an endless line of George's jettisons. But it happened in Boston and the nightly news had its hook." "The firing was only special because ... it's the first time a Yankee manager—who was also a Red Sox demon—was purged on the ancient Indian burial grounds of the Back Bay." However, Bill Pennington called the firing of Dent "merciless." 1992–2001: Mixed results Tom Yawkey died in 1976, and his wife Jean R. Yawkey took control of the team until her death in 1992. Their initials are shown in two stripes on the left field wall in Morse code. Upon Jean's death, control of the team passed to the Yawkey Trust, led by John Harrington. The trust sold the team in 2002, concluding 70 years of Yawkey ownership. In 1994, General Manager Lou Gorman was replaced by Dan Duquette, a Massachusetts native who had worked for the Montreal Expos. Duquette revived the team's farm system, which during his tenure produced players such as Nomar Garciaparra, Carl Pavano and David Eckstein. Duquette also spent money on free agents, notably an 8-year, $160 million deal for Manny Ramírez after the 2000 season. The Red Sox won the newly realigned American League East in 1995, finishing seven games ahead of the Yankees. However, they were swept in three games in the ALDS by the Cleveland Indians. Their postseason losing streak reached 13 straight games, dating back to the 1986 World Series. Roger Clemens tied his major league record by fanning 20 Detroit Tigers on September 18, 1996, in one of his final appearances in a Red Sox uniform. After Clemens had turned 30 and then had four seasons, 1993–96, which were by his standards mediocre at best, Duquette said the pitcher was entering "the twilight of his career". Clemens went on to pitch well for another ten years and win four more Cy Young Awards. Out of contention in 1997, the team traded closer Heathcliff Slocumb to Seattle for catching prospect Jason Varitek and right-handed pitcher Derek Lowe. Prior to the start of the 1998 season, the Red Sox dealt pitchers Tony Armas, Jr. and Carl Pavano to the Montreal Expos for pitcher Pedro Martínez. Martínez became the anchor of the team's pitching staff and turned in several outstanding seasons. In 1998, the team won the American League Wild Card but again lost the American League Division Series to the Indians. In 1999, Duquette called Fenway Park "economically obsolete" and, along with Red Sox ownership, led a push for a new stadium. On the field, the 1999 Red Sox were finally able to overturn their fortunes against the Indians. Cleveland took a 2–0 series lead, but Boston won the next three games behind strong pitching by Derek Lowe, Pedro Martínez and his brother Ramón Martínez. Game 4's 23–7 win by the Red Sox was the highest-scoring playoff game in major league history. Game 5 began with the Indians taking a 5–2 lead after two innings, but Pedro Martínez, nursing a shoulder injury, came on in the fourth inning and pitched six innings without allowing a hit while the team's offense rallied for a 12–8 win behind two home runs and seven runs batted in from outfielder Troy O'Leary. After the ALDS victory, the Red Sox lost the American League Championship Series to the Yankees, four games to one. The one bright spot was a lopsided win for the Red Sox in the much-hyped Martinez-Clemens game. 2002–present: John Henry era 2002–03 In 2002, the Red Sox were sold by Yawkey trustee and president Harrington to New England Sports Ventures, a consortium headed by principal owner John Henry. Tom Werner served as executive chairman, Larry Lucchino served as president and CEO, and serving as vice-chairman was Les Otten. Dan Duquette was fired as GM of the club on February 28, with former Angels GM Mike Port taking the helm for the 2002 season. A week later, manager Joe Kerrigan was fired and was replaced by Grady Little. While nearly all offseason moves were made under Duquette, such as signing outfielder Johnny Damon away from the Oakland Athletics, the new ownership made additions such as outfielder Cliff Floyd and relief pitcher Alan Embree. Nomar Garciaparra, Manny Ramírez, and Floyd all hit well, while Pedro Martínez put up his usual outstanding numbers. Derek Lowe, newly converted into a starter, won 20 games—becoming the first player to save 20 games and win 20 games in back-to-back seasons. After failing to reach the playoffs, Port was replaced by Yale University graduate Theo Epstein. Epstein, raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, and just 28 at the time of his hiring, became the youngest general manager in MLB history. The 2003 team was known as the "Cowboy Up" team, a nickname derived from first baseman Kevin Millar's challenge to his teammates to show more determination. In the 2003 American League Division Series, the Red Sox rallied from a 0–2 series deficit against the Athletics to win the best-of-five series. Derek Lowe returned to his former relief pitching role to save Game 5, a 4–3 victory. The team then faced the Yankees in the 2003 American League Championship Series. In Game 7, Boston led 5–2 in the eighth inning, but Pedro Martínez allowed three runs to tie the game. The Red Sox could not score off Mariano Rivera over the last three innings and eventually lost the game 6–5 when Yankee third baseman Aaron Boone hit a solo home run off Tim Wakefield. Some placed the blame for the loss on manager Grady Little for failing to remove starting pitcher Martínez in the 8th inning after some observers believe he began to show signs of tiring. It was stated by Epstein that the decision on not renew Little's contract was “made on a body of work after careful contemplation of the big picture...did not depend on any one decision in any one postseason game." Boston would hire former Philadelphia Phillies manager Terry Francona to manage the 2004 season. "The Idiots": 2004 World Series Championship During the 2003–04 offseason, the Red Sox acquired another ace pitcher, Curt Schilling, and a closer, Keith Foulke. Due to some midseason struggles with injuries, management shook up the team at the July 31 trading deadline as part of a four-team trade. The Red Sox traded the team's popular, yet oft-injured, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and outfielder Matt Murton to the Chicago Cubs, and received first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz from the Minnesota Twins, and shortstop Orlando Cabrera from the Montreal Expos. In a separate transaction, the Red Sox acquired center fielder Dave Roberts from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Following the trades, the club won 22 out of 25 games and qualified for the playoffs as the AL Wild Card. Players and fans affectionately referred to the players as "the Idiots", a term coined by Damon and Millar during the playoff push to describe the team's eclectic roster and devil-may-care attitude toward their supposed "curse." Boston began the postseason by sweeping the AL West champion Anaheim Angels in the ALDS. In the third game of the series, David Ortiz hit a walk-off two-run homer in the 10th inning to win the game and the series to advance to a rematch of the previous year's ALCS in the ALCS against the Yankees. The ALCS started very poorly for the Red Sox, as they lost the first three games (including a crushing 19–8 home loss in game 3). In Game 4, the Red Sox found themselves facing elimination, trailing 4–3 in the ninth with Mariano Rivera in to close for the Yankees. After Rivera issued a walk to Millar, Roberts came on to pinch run and promptly stole second base. He then scored on an RBI single by Bill Mueller, sending the game into extra innings. The Red Sox went on to win the game 6–4 on a two-run home run by Ortiz in the 12th inning. The odds were still very much against the Sox in the series, but Ortiz also made the walk-off hit in the 14th inning of Game 5. The comeback continued with a victory from an injured Schilling in Game 6. Three sutures being used to stabilize the tendon in Schilling's right ankle bled throughout the game, famously making his sock appear bloody red. With it, Boston became the first team in MLB history to force a series-deciding Game 7 after trailing 3–0 in games. The Red Sox completed their historic comeback in Game 7 with a 10–3 victory over the Yankees. Ortiz began the scoring with a two-run homer. Along with his game-winning runs batted in during games 4 and 5, he was named ALCS Most Valuable Player. The Red Sox joined the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs and the 1975 New York Islanders as the only North American professional sports teams in history at the time to win a best-of-seven games series after being down 3–0. (The 2010 Philadelphia Flyers and the 2014 Los Angeles Kings would later accomplish the feat). The Red Sox swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series. The Red Sox never trailed throughout the series; Mark Bellhorn hit a game-winning home run off Pesky's Pole in game 1, and Schilling pitched another bloodied-sock victory in game 2, followed by similarly masterful pitching performances by Martinez and Derek Lowe. It was the Red Sox' first championship in 86 years. Manny Ramírez was named World Series MVP. To add a final, surreal touch to Boston's championship season, on the night of Game 4 a total lunar eclipse colored the moon red over Busch Stadium. The Red Sox earned many accolades from the sports media and throughout the nation for their season, such as in December, when Sports Illustrated named the Boston Red Sox the 2004 Sportsmen of the Year. 2007: World Series Championship The 2005 AL East was decided on the last weekend of the season, with the Yankees coming to Fenway Park with a one-game lead in the standings. The Red Sox won two of the three games to finish the season with the same record as the Yankees, 95–67. However, a playoff was not needed, as the loser of such a playoff would still make the playoffs as a wild card team. As the Yankees had won the season series, they were awarded the division title, and the Red Sox competed in the playoffs as the wild card team. Boston failed to defend their championship, and was swept in three games by the eventual 2005 World Series champion Chicago White Sox in the first round of the playoffs. In 2006 David Ortiz broke Jimmie Foxx's single-season Red Sox home run record by hitting 54 homers. However, Boston failed to make the playoffs after compiling a 9–21 record in the month of August due to several injuries in the club's roster. Theo Epstein's first step toward restocking the team for 2007 was to pursue one of the most anticipated acquisitions in baseball history. On November 14, MLB announced that Boston had won the bid for the rights to negotiate a contract with Japanese Nippon Professional Baseball superstar pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. Boston placed a bid of $51.1 million to negotiate with Matsuzaka and completed a 6-year, $52 million contract after they were announced as the winning bid. The Red Sox moved into first place in the AL East by mid-April and never relinquished their division lead. Initially, rookie second baseman Dustin Pedroia under-performed, hitting below .200 in April. Manager Terry Francona refused to bench him and his patience paid off as Pedroia eventually won the AL Rookie of the Year Award for his performance that season, which included 165 hits and a .317 batting average. On the mound, Josh Beckett emerged as the ace of the staff with his first 20-win season, as fellow starting pitchers Schilling, Matsuzaka, Wakefield and Julián Tavárez all struggled at times. Relief pitcher Hideki Okajima, another recent arrival from the NPB, posted an ERA of 0.88 through the first half and was selected for the All-Star Game. Okajima finished the season with a 2.22 ERA and 5 saves, emerging as one of baseball's top relievers. Minor league call-up Clay Buchholz provided a spark on September 1 by pitching a no-hitter in his second career start. The Red Sox captured their first AL East title since 1995. The Red Sox swept the Angels in the ALDS. Facing the Cleveland Indians in the ALCS, the Red Sox fell in games 2, 3, and 4 before Beckett picked up his second victory of the series in game 5, starting a comeback. The Red Sox captured their twelfth American League pennant by outscoring the Indians 30–5 over the final three games. The Red Sox faced the Colorado Rockies in the 2007 World Series, and swept the Rockies in four games. In Game 4, Wakefield gave up his spot in the rotation to a recovered Jon Lester, who gave the Red Sox an impressive start, pitching shutout innings. Key home runs late in the game by third baseman Mike Lowell and pinch-hitter Bobby Kielty secured the Red Sox' second title in four years, as Lowell was named Most Valuable Player in the World Series. 2008–2012: Injuries and collapses The Red Sox began their season by participating in the third opening day game in MLB history to be played in Japan, where they defeated the Oakland A's in the Tokyo Dome. On May 19, Jon Lester threw the 18th no-hitter in team history, defeating the Kansas City Royals 7–0. Down the stretch, outfielder Manny Ramirez became embroiled in controversy surrounding public incidents with fellow players and other team employees, as well as criticism of ownership and not playing, which some claimed was due to laziness and nonexistent injuries. The front office decided to move the disgruntled outfielder at the July 31 trade deadline, shipping him to the Dodgers in a three-way deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates that landed them Jason Bay to replace him in left field. With Ramirez gone, and Bay providing a new spark in the lineup, the Red Sox improved vastly and made the playoffs as the AL Wild Card. The Red Sox defeated the Angels in the 2008 ALDS three games to one. The Red Sox then took on their AL East rivals the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALCS. Down three games to one in the 5th game of the ALCS, Boston mounted a comeback from trailing 7–0 in the 7th inning to win 8–7. They tied the series at three games apiece with a Game 6 victory before losing Game 7, 3–1, thus becoming the eighth team in a row since 2000 to fail to repeat as world champions. The Red Sox returned to postseason play in 2009 but were swept in the ALDS by the Los Angeles Angels. In 2010 they placed third in the division and failed to make the playoffs. In 2011 the Red Sox collapsed, becoming the first team in MLB history to blow a 9-game lead in the division heading into September, as they went 7–20 in the final month and failed again to make the playoffs. In December 2011, Bobby Valentine was hired as a new manager. The 2012 season marked the centennial of Fenway Park, and on April 20, past and present Red Sox players and coaches assembled to celebrate the park's anniversary. However, the collapse that they endured in September 2011 carried over into the season. The Red Sox struggled throughout the season due to injuries, inconsistent play, and off-field news. They finished 69–93 for their first losing season since 1997, and their worst season since 1965. Boston Strong: 2013 World Series Champions Boston, which finished last in the American League East with a 69–93 record in 2012–26 games behind the Yankees, became the 11th team in major league history to go from worst in the division to first the next season when it clinched the A.L. East division title on September 20, 2013. Many credit the team's turnaround with the hiring of manager John Farrell, the former Red Sox pitching coach under Terry Francona from 2007 to 2010. As a former member of the staff, he had the respect of influential players such as Lester, Pedroia, and Ortiz. But there were other moves made in the offseason by general manager Ben Cherington who targeted "character" players to fill the team's needs. These acquisitions included veteran catcher David Ross, Jonny Gomes, Mike Napoli, and Shane Victorino. While some questioned these players as "re-treads", it was clear that Cherington was trying to move past 2011–2012 by bringing in "clubhouse players". Essential to the turnaround, however, was the pitching staff. With ace veteran John Lackey coming off Tommy John surgery and both Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz returning to their prior form, this allowed the team to rely less on their bullpen. Everything seemed in danger of collapsing, however, when both closers, Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Bailey, went down early with season-ending injuries. Farrell gave the closing job to Koji Uehara on June 21 who delivered with a 1.09 ERA and an MLB record 0.565 WHIP. On September 11, the 37-year-old right-hander set a new Red Sox record when he retired 33 straight batters. Other reasons include the trade deadline acquisition of pitcher Jake Peavy when the Red Sox were in second place in the AL East, the depth of the bench with players such as Mike Carp and rookies Jackie Bradley, Jr. and Xander Bogaerts, and the re-emergence of players such as Will Middlebrooks and Daniel Nava. On September 28, 2013, the team secured home field advantage throughout the American League playoffs when their closest competition, the Oakland Athletics, lost. The next day, the team finished the season going 97–65, the best record in the American League and tied with the St. Louis Cardinals for the best record in baseball. They proceeded to defeat the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2013 World Series, four games to two. The Red Sox became the first team since the 1991 Minnesota Twins to win the World Series a year after finishing in last place, and the second overall. The 2012 Red Sox's .426 winning percentage was the lowest for a team in a season prior to a World Series championship. Throughout the season, the Red Sox players and organization formed a close association with the city of Boston and its people in relation to the Boston Marathon bombing that occurred on April 15, 2013. On April 20, the day after the alleged bombers were captured, David Ortiz gave a pre-game speech following a ceremony honoring the victims and the local law enforcement, in which he stated, "This is our fucking city! And nobody is going to dictate our freedom! Stay strong!" For the entirety of the season, the team wore an additional arm patch that exhibited the Red Sox "B" logo and the word "Strong" within a blue circle. The team also hung up in the dugout a custom jersey that read "Boston Strong" with the number 617, representing the city of Boston's area code. On many occasions during the season, victims of the attack and law enforcement involved were given the honor of throwing the ceremonial first pitch. Following their victory in the 2013 World Series, the first one clinched at home in Fenway Park since 1918, Red Sox players Jonny Gomes and Jarrod Saltalamacchia performed a ceremony during the team's traditional duck boat victory parade, in which they placed the World Series trophy and the custom 617 jersey on the Boston Marathon finish line on Boylston Street, followed by a moment of silence and the singing of "God Bless America". This ceremony helped the city "reclaim" its spirit that was lost after the bombing. Overall, the Red Sox team and organization played a role in the healing process after the tragedy, owing to the team's unifying effect on the city. 2014–2017 Following the 2013 championship, the team finished last in the AL East during 2014 with a record of 71–91, and again in 2015 with a record of 78–84. On September 12, 2015, David Ortiz hit his 500th career home run off Matt Moore in Tropicana Field becoming the 27th player in MLB history to achieve that prestigious milestone; in November 2015, Ortiz announced that the 2016 season was to be his last. The Red Sox had a record of 93–69 and won their division in 2016, with six American League All-Stars, the AL Cy Young Award winner in Rick Porcello, and the runner-up for the AL Most Valuable Player Award, Mookie Betts. Rookie Andrew Benintendi established himself in the Red Sox outfield, and Steven Wright emerged as one of the year's biggest surprises. The Red Sox grabbed the lead in the AL East early and held on to it throughout the year, which included many teams honoring Ortiz throughout the season. Despite the success, the team lost five of their last six games of the regular season and were swept in the ALDS by the eventual American League Champion Cleveland Indians. The Red Sox once again finished with a record of 93–69 in 2017 and repeated as division champions. The team went 5–5 in their last ten regular-season games and were eliminated by the Houston Astros in the ALDS in four games. The Red Sox subsequently fired their manager, John Farrell, and hired Alex Cora, signing him to a three-year deal. "Damage done": 2018 World Series Championship The Red Sox finished with a record, winning the American League East division title for the third consecutive season, eight games ahead of the second-place New York Yankees, and were the first team to clinch a berth in the 2018 postseason. The Red Sox surpassed the 100-win mark for the first time since 1946, broke the franchise record of 105 wins that had been set in 1912, and won the most games of any MLB team since the 2001 Seattle Mariners won 116. The 2018 Red Sox were highlighted by All-Stars Mookie Betts, J. D. Martinez, Chris Sale, and Craig Kimbrel. Betts led baseball in batting average and slugging percentage, while Martinez led in runs batted in. Sale tossed only 158 innings due to a shoulder injury late in the year, but was otherwise superb, posting a 2.11 earned run average to go along with 237 strikeouts. Kimbrel saved 42 games and struck out 96 batters. The Red Sox entered the postseason as the top seed in the American League, and defeated the New York Yankees (100–62) in four games in the Division Series. Next, they defeated the defending champion Houston Astros (103–59) in five games in the League Championship Series. Boston then defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers (92–71) in five games in the World Series, for the team's fourth championship in 15 years and ninth in franchise history. The team's motto during the season, "do damage", became "damage done" upon their victory. Based on these exploits, the team is considered the best MLB team of the 2010s, one of the best Red Sox teams ever, and one of the best baseball teams since the 1998 New York Yankees. 2019–present Despite retaining most players from the 2018 championship team, the 2019 Red Sox won 24 fewer games, finishing third in the division and missing the playoffs for the first time since 2015. President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski was dismissed following a September loss to the Yankees. On October 28, the Red Sox hired Chaim Bloom as his replacement, with the title of Chief Baseball Officer. On January 7, 2020, it was reported in The Athletic that the Red Sox had used their video replay room to steal signs during their 2018 season. On January 15, the Red Sox and manager Alex Cora agreed to mutually part ways after he was named in MLB's report about the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal, which occurred during his tenure as bench coach with the 2017 Astros. Ron Roenicke was subsequently named Boston's interim manager. On February 10, a trade of Mookie Betts and David Price to the Los Angeles Dodgers was made official, in a move seen as a salary dump by analysts, although denied by Red Sox executives. In March, the start of the MLB season was indefinitely postponed, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In April, MLB's investigation into 2018 sign-stealing resulted in a finding of improper actions by the team's replay operator, who as a result was suspended for the 2020 season, and the team forfeited their second-round selection in the 2020 MLB draft. The "interim" tag was subsequently removed from Roenicke's title. The team struggled throughout their abbreviated 60-game regular season, contested July 24 through September 27, finishing in last place in the AL East division, with a record of 24–36. Prior to the final regular season game, management announced that Roenicke would not return as manager for the 2021 season. Alex Cora returned as manager for the 2021 season, with the team finishing at 92–70 and qualifying for the postseason as the fourth seed in the AL. The Red Sox defeated the Yankees in the AL Wild Card Game, and defeated the Rays in the Division Series, but were eliminated by the Astros in the League Championship Series. Awards For major MLB awards, voted by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA), Red Sox players have won the MVP Award 12 times, most recently by Mookie Betts in 2018; the Cy Young Award seven times, most recently by Rick Porcello in 2016; Rookie of the Year six times, most recently by Dustin Pedroia in 2007; and Manager of the Year twice, most recently by Jimy Williams in 1999. Roster Regular season home attendance Fenway Park Due to the COVID-19 pandemic: 2020 season contested behind closed doors, and some 2021 games contested with limited attendance per local ordinances. Source: Uniforms Spring training The franchise's first spring training was held in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1901, when the team was known as the Boston Americans. Since 1993, the city of Fort Myers, Florida, has hosted Boston's spring training, first at City of Palms Park, and since 2012 at JetBlue Park at Fenway South. JetBlue Park In October 2008, the Lee County, Florida, Board of Commissioners approved an agreement with the Red Sox to build a new spring training facility for the team. In November 2008, the Red Sox signed an agreement with Lee County intended to keep their spring training home in the Fort Myers area for 30 more years. In April 2009, the Red Sox announced that the new stadium would be located on a lot north of Southwest Florida International Airport. In March 2011, the team and JetBlue Airlines officials announced that the new field would be named JetBlue Park at Fenway South. JetBlue Park opened in March 2012. Many characteristics of the stadium have been taken from Fenway Park, including a Green Monster wall in left field. Included in the wall is a restored version of the manual scoreboard that was housed at Fenway for almost 30 years, beginning in the 1970s. The field dimensions are identical to those at Fenway. Truck Day The unofficial beginning of the spring training season for the Red Sox is Truck Day, the day a tractor-trailer filled with equipment leaves Fenway Park bound for the team's spring training facility in Florida. 2021's Truck Day was February 8. Rivalry with the Yankees The Yankees–Red Sox rivalry is one of the oldest, most famous and fiercest rivalries in professional sports. For over 100 years, the Red Sox and New York Yankees have been rivals. The rivalry is often a heated subject of conversation in the Northeastern United States. Since the inception of the wild card team and an added Division Series, every postseason except for 2014 has featured one or both of the American League East rivals. The two teams have squared off in the American League Championship Series (ALCS) three times, with the Yankees winning twice (1999 and 2003) and the Red Sox winning once (2004). The teams have faced off in one American League Division Series (ALDS); 2018, won by the Red Sox in four games. The teams have played one American League Wild Card Game on October 5, 2021, which the Red Sox won 6–2. The teams have twice met in the last regular-season series of a season to decide the league title, in 1904 (which the Red Sox won) and 1949 (which the Yankees won). The teams also finished tied for first in 1978, when the Yankees won a high-profile one-game playoff for the division title. The 1978 division race is memorable for the Red Sox having held a 14-game lead over the Yankees more than halfway through the season. In 2003, The Red Sox lost in Game 7 of the ALCS on Aaron Boone's walk-off home run. Similarly, the 2004 ALCS is notable for the Yankees leading 3 games to 0 and ultimately losing the best-of-seven series. The Red Sox comeback was the first time in major league history that a team came back from an 0–3 deficit to win a series. The rivalry is often termed "the best" and "greatest rivalry in all of sports." Games between the two teams often generate a great deal of interest and get extensive media coverage, including being broadcast on national television. Radio and television The flagship radio station of the Red Sox is WEEI-FM 93.7. Joe Castiglione has broadcast Red Sox games since 1983 (initially assisting Ken Coleman) and has been the lead play-by-play announcer since 1993. Tim Neverett worked with him from 2016 through 2018, but in 2019, WEEI opted for a more conversational format with a variety of commentators (see the above link) alongside Castiglione. Former Red Sox player Lou Merloni has provided color commentary since 2013. Castiglione's predecessors include Curt Gowdy and Ned Martin. He has also worked with play-by-play veterans Bob Starr and Jerry Trupiano. Many stations throughout New England and beyond carry the broadcasts. All Red Sox telecasts not shown nationally on Fox or ESPN are seen on New England Sports Network (NESN), with Dave O'Brien calling play-by-play. Former Red Sox second baseman, Jerry Remy served as color analyst from 1988 up until his death in 2021. Remy suffered from lung cancer, and would at times step away from broadcasting duties to focus on his health. Former Red Sox pitcher Dennis Eckersley has filled in for Remy on a regular basis, and frequently joined the crew as a third commentator when Remy returned. NESN became exclusive in 2006; before then, games were shown on such local stations as the original WHDH-TV, WNAC-TV (now the current WHDH), WBZ-TV, WSBK-TV, WLVI, WABU, and WFXT. Music The integration of music into the culture of the Red Sox dates back to the Americans era, which saw the first use of the popular 1902 showtune Tessie as a rallying cry by fans. The tune saw a resurgence in popularity when a new version by Boston area band The Dropkick Murphys was featured in the 2005 film Fever Pitch, which tells the story of an obsessive Red Sox fan. The song is frequently played after home wins and inspired the name of Red Sox mascot Wally the Green Monster's "sister" Tessie. Their song "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" was used to signify the entrance of Boston's closing pitcher. Another song associated with the team and its fanbase is Neil Diamond's 1969 single "Sweet Caroline". The song was first introduced to Fenway Park in 1997. By 2002, its play had been established as a nightly occurrence. It continues to be played at every home game during the 8th inning, sung along to by those in attendance. In 2007, Diamond revealed that the song was written for Caroline Kennedy, American diplomat and daughter of Boston icon President John F. Kennedy. Caroline Kennedy's great-grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald, threw Fenway Park's first-ever ceremonial opening pitch on April 20, 1912. When Diamond was named a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 2011, Red Sox executive assistant Claire Durant arranged for 80 Red Sox fans to travel to Washington for the ceremony, which culminated in them singing the song behind Smokey Robinson onstage. Retired numbers Previously, the Red Sox published three official requirements for a player to have his number retired on their website and in their annual media guides. The requirements were as follows: Election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame At least 10 years played with the Red Sox Finished his career with the club. These requirements were reconsidered after the election of Carlton Fisk to the Hall of Fame in 2000; who met the first two requirements but played the second half of his career with the White Sox. As a means of meeting the criteria, then-GM Dan Duquette hired Fisk for one day as a special assistant, which allowed Fisk to technically finish his career with the Red Sox. In 2008, the Red Sox made an "exception" by retiring number 6 for Johnny Pesky. Pesky neither spent ten years as a player nor was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame; however, Red Sox ownership cited "... his versatility of his contributions—on the field, off the field, [and] in the dugout ...", including as a manager, scout, and special instructor and decided that the honor had been well-earned. Pesky spent 57 years with the Red Sox organization; as a minor league player (1940–1941), major league player (1942, 1946–1952), minor league manager (1961–1962, 1990), major league manager (1963–1964, 1980), broadcaster (1969–1974), major league coach (1975–1984), and as a special instructor and assistant general manager (1985–2012). In 2015, the Red Sox chose to forgo the official criteria and retire Pedro Martínez's number 45. Martínez only spent 7 of his 18 seasons in Boston. In justifying the number's retirement, Red Sox principal owner John Henry stated, "To be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame upon his first year of eligibility speaks volumes regarding Pedro's outstanding career, and is a testament to the respect and admiration so many in baseball have for him." After announcing Martínez's number retirement, the official criteria no longer appeared on the team website nor future media guides. In 2017, less than eight months after he played the final game of his illustrious career, David Ortiz had his number 34 retired by the Red Sox. Ortiz was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2022. To date, Ortiz is the only Red Sox player to have been on the active playoff roster of three World Series championship teams (2004, 2007, 2013) since the issuance of jersey numbers starting in 1931. The number 42 was officially retired by Major League Baseball in 1997, but Mo Vaughn was one of a handful of players to continue wearing number 42 through a grandfather clause. He last wore it for the team in 1998. In commemoration of Jackie Robinson Day, MLB invited players to wear the number 42 for games played on April 15, Coco Crisp (CF), David Ortiz (DH), and DeMarlo Hale (Coach) did that in 2007 and again in 2008. Starting in 2009, MLB had all uniformed players for all teams wear number 42 for Jackie Robinson Day. While not officially retired, the Red Sox have not issued several numbers since the departure of prominent figures who wore them, specifically: 15 – Dustin Pedroia 2B (MLB 2006–2019; all with Boston) 21 – Roger Clemens RHP (MLB 1984–2007; Boston 1984–1996) 33 – Jason Varitek C (MLB 1997–2011; all with Boston). Varitek reclaimed his #33 when he became a coach in 2021. 49 – Tim Wakefield RHP (MLB 1992–1993, 1995–2011; Boston 1995–2011) There has also been debate in Boston media circles and among fans about the potential retiring of Tony Conigliaro's number 25. Nonetheless, since Conigliaro's last full season in Boston, 1970, the number has never been taken out of circulation and issued to multiple players—notably Troy O'Leary from 1995 to 2001—along with coach Dwight Evans in 2002 and manager Bobby Valentine in 2012. Until the late 1990s, the numbers originally hung on the right-field facade in the order in which they were retired: 9–4–1–8. It was pointed out that the numbers, when read as a date (9/4/18), marked the eve of the first game of the 1918 World Series, the last championship series that the Red Sox won before 2004. After the facade was repainted, the numbers were rearranged in numerical order. In 2012, the numbers were rearranged again in chronological order of retirement (9, 4, 1, 8, 27, 6, 14) followed by Robinson's 42. As additional numbers are retired (e.g.: Martinez's 45, Boggs's 26, Ortiz's 34), Robinson's 42 is moved to the right so it remains the right-most number hanging. Baseball Hall of Famers Ford C. Frick Award recipients BBWAA Career Excellence Award recipients Several baseball writers, professionally based in Boston while writing about the Red Sox, have been recipients of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award (formerly the J. G. Taylor Spink Award), given for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing". Each of these writers spent at least part of their career with The Boston Globe. Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Since 1995, the team has maintained its own hall of fame, recognizing distinguished careers of former uniformed and non-uniformed team personnel. Red Sox personnel inducted to the National Baseball Hall of Fame are automatically inducted to the team's hall of fame. Other honorees are chosen via a 15-member selection committee. Minor league affiliations As of the 2021 season, Boston's farm system consists of six minor league affiliates, fielding seven minor league teams (the Red Sox have two teams in the Dominican Summer League). Other notable seasons and team records Nomar Garciaparra hit .372 in 2000, the club record for a right-handed hitter. David Ortiz set the franchise record for home runs in a season with 54 in 2006, surpassing Jimmie Foxx's record of 50 home runs set in 1938. On April 22, 2007, Manny Ramírez, J. D. Drew, Mike Lowell, and Jason Varitek hit four consecutive home runs in the 3rd inning off 10 pitches from Chase Wright of the New York Yankees in his second Major League start and his fourth above Single-A ball. This was the fifth time in Major League history, and the first time in Red Sox history this feat has occurred. Notable is that J. D. Drew had previously contributed to a four consecutive home run sequence on September 18, 2006 (coincidentally also the second batter in the sequence) while with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Additionally, then-Red Sox manager Terry Francona's father, Tito Francona, also was a part of such a four consecutive home run sequence for the Cleveland Indians in 1963. The overall regular-season winning percentage since club inception in 1901 is .519, a record of 9,605–8,912 for games played through July 30, 2020. On September 1, 2007, Clay Buchholz no-hit the Baltimore Orioles in his second Major League start. He is the first Red Sox rookie and 17th Red Sox pitcher to throw a no-hitter. On September 22, 2007, with a victory over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the Red Sox clinched a spot in the postseason for the fourth time in five years, the first time in club history this has happened. Also, with this postseason berth, manager Terry Francona becomes the first manager in team history to lead the club to three playoff appearances. Between May 15, 2003, and April 10, 2013, the Red Sox sold out every home game. The 820-game streak is a record for all major American sports, narrowly passing the Portland Trail Blazers record of 814 between 1977 and 1995. The previous major league baseball record had been held by the Cleveland Indians, who sold out 455 games between June 12, 1995, and April 2, 2001. (The team's definition of a sellout: "The criteria used for a sellout at Fenway Park have been the same since the early 1990s," Kennedy said in an e-mail. "Our policy is simple and straightforward, and is used by many MLB clubs [and other sports teams around the country]. A sellout occurs when the number of tickets distributed to spectators is equal to or greater than the seating capacity at Fenway Park. [The 2008 seating capacity is 36,984 for day games and 37,400 for night games.]" That is: a sellout only covers ticket sales, not spectators in physical seats.) On May 21, 2011, the Red Sox played against the Chicago Cubs at Fenway Park for the first time since the 1918 World Series (they had faced each other at Chicago's Wrigley Field in 2005). Both teams wore uniforms that matched the style worn in 1918. In 2016, David Ortiz set all-time records for most home runs and runs batted in in a player's final MLB season. Ortiz finished the season with 38 homers, which surpassed Dave Kingman's 35 in 1986, and 127 runs batted in, which surpassed Shoeless Joe Jackson's 123 in 1920. The Red Sox set a team record for wins in a regular season with 108 in 2018, surpassing the 106-year-old record of 105 wins set in 1912. Including playoffs, the Red Sox won a total of 119 games, the third most total wins in an MLB season. On October 8, 2018, Brock Holt became the first player in MLB history to hit for the cycle in the postseason, doing so in a 16–1 win over the New York Yankees in Game 3 of the 2018 American League Division Series. See also General information History of the Boston Red Sox Red Sox Nation Tony Conigliaro Award The Jimmy Fund Lists Boston Red Sox all-time roster List of Boston Red Sox award winners List of Boston Red Sox coaches List of Boston Red Sox managers List of Boston Red Sox seasons List of Boston Red Sox team records List of Major League Baseball franchise postseason streaks Media Game 6 – a film covering the team's ultimately unsuccessful 1986 World Series championship run Red Sox Rule – a 2008 book written by Michael Holley Notes References External links Season-by-Season Records Boston Red Sox Video at ESPN Video Archive 1901 establishments in Massachusetts Baseball teams established in 1901 Red Sox Grapefruit League Laureus World Sports Awards winners Major League Baseball teams Professional baseball teams in Massachusetts

A boomerang () is a thrown tool, typically constructed as a flat airfoil, that is designed to spin about an axis perpendicular to the direction of its flight. A returning boomerang is designed to return to the thrower. It is well-known as a weapon used by some Aboriginal Australian peoples for hunting. Boomerangs have been historically used for hunting, as well as sport and entertainment. They are commonly thought of as an Australian icon, and come in various shapes and sizes. Description A boomerang is a throwing stick with certain aerodynamic properties, traditionally made of wood, but boomerang-like devices have also been made from bones. Modern boomerangs used for sport may be made from plywood or plastics such as ABS, polypropylene, phenolic paper, or carbon fibre-reinforced plastics. Boomerangs come in many shapes and sizes depending on their geographic or tribal origins and intended function. Many people think of a boomerang as the Australian type, although today there are many types of more easily usable boomerangs, such as the cross-stick, the pinwheel, the tumble-stick, the Boomabird, and many other less common types. An important distinction should be made between returning boomerangs and non-returning boomerangs. Returning boomerangs fly and are examples of the earliest heavier-than-air human-made flight. A returning boomerang has two or more airfoil wings arranged so that the spinning creates unbalanced aerodynamic forces that curve its path so that it travels in an ellipse, returning to its point of origin when thrown correctly. While a throwing stick can also be shaped overall like a returning boomerang, it is designed to travel as straight as possible so that it can be aimed and thrown with great force to bring down the game. Its surfaces are therefore symmetrical and not with the aerofoils that give the returning boomerang its characteristic curved flight. The most recognisable type of the boomerang is the L-shaped returning boomerang; while non-returning boomerangs, throwing sticks (or kylies) were used as weapons, returning boomerangs have been used primarily for leisure or recreation. Returning boomerangs were also used to decoy birds of prey, thrown above the long grass to frighten game birds into flight and into waiting nets. Modern returning boomerangs can be of various shapes or sizes. Just like the hunting boomerang of the Aboriginal Australians, the valari also did not return to the thrower but flew straight. Boomerangs used in competitions have specially designed air-foiling mechanism to enable return, but the hunting Boomerangs are meant to float straight and hit the target. Valaris are made in many shapes and sizes. The history of the valari is rooted in ancient times and evidences can be found in Tamil Sangam literature "Purananuru". The usual form consists of two limbs set at an angle; one is thin and tapering while the other is rounded and is used as a handle. Valaris are usually made of iron which is melted and poured into moulds, although some may have wooden limbs tipped with iron. Alternatively, the limbs may have lethally sharpened edges; special daggers are known as kattari, double-edged and razor sharp, may be attached to some valari. Etymology The origin of the term is uncertain. One source asserts that the term entered the language in 1827, adapted from an extinct Aboriginal language of New South Wales, Australia, but mentions a variant, wo-mur-rang, which it dates to 1798. The first recorded encounter with a boomerang by Europeans was at Farm Cove (Port Jackson), in December 1804, when a weapon was witnessed during a tribal skirmish: David Collins listed "Wo-mur-rāng" as one of eight Aboriginal "Names of clubs" in 1798. but was probably referring to the woomera, which is actually a spear-thrower. An anonymous 1790 manuscript on Aboriginal languages of New South Wales reported "Boo-mer-rit" as "the Scimiter". In 1822, it was described in detail and recorded as a "bou-mar-rang" in the language of the Turuwal people (a sub-group of the Darug) of the Georges River near Port Jackson. The Turawal used other words for their hunting sticks but used "boomerang" to refer to a returning throw-stick. History Boomerangs were, historically, used as hunting weapons, percussive musical instruments, battle clubs, fire-starters, decoys for hunting waterfowl, and as recreational play toys. The smallest boomerang may be less than from tip to tip, and the largest over in length. Tribal boomerangs may be inscribed or painted with designs meaningful to their makers. Most boomerangs seen today are of the tourist or competition sort, and are almost invariably of the returning type. Depictions of boomerangs being thrown at animals, such as kangaroos, appear in some of the oldest rock art in the world, the Indigenous Australian rock art of the Kimberly region, which is potentially up to 50,000 years old. Stencils and paintings of boomerangs also appear in the rock art of West Papua, including on Bird's Head Peninsula and Kaimana, likely dating to the Last Glacial Maximum, when lower sea levels led to cultural continuity between Papua and Arnhem Land in Northern Australia. The oldest surviving Australian Aboriginal boomerangs come from a cache found in a peat bog in the Wyrie Swamp of South Australia and date to 10,000 BC. Although traditionally thought of as Australian, boomerangs have been found also in ancient Europe, Egypt, and North America. There is evidence of the use of non-returning boomerangs by the Native Americans of California and Arizona, and inhabitants of southern India for killing birds and rabbits. Some boomerangs were not thrown at all, but were used in hand to hand combat by Indigenous Australians. Ancient Egyptian examples, however, have been recovered, and experiments have shown that they functioned as returning boomerangs.<ref>Rivers, Pitt. "On the Egyptian Boomerang and its Affinities". The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 1883. 12: 454–463.</ref> Hunting sticks discovered in Europe seem to have formed part of the Stone Age arsenal of weapons. One boomerang that was discovered in Obłazowa Cave in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland was made of mammoth's tusk and is believed, based on AMS dating of objects found with it, to be about 30,000 years old.. English translation: "Paleolithic Throwing Object" – Throwing experiments with the Palaeolithic throwing object from the Oblazowa in the Polish Carpathians In the Netherlands, boomerangs have been found in Vlaardingen and Velsen from the first century BC. King Tutankhamun, the famous Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, who died over 3,300 years ago, owned a collection of boomerangs of both the straight flying (hunting) and returning variety. No one knows for sure how the returning boomerang was invented, but some modern boomerang makers speculate that it developed from the flattened throwing stick, still used by the Australian Aborigines and other indigenous peoples around the world, including the Navajo in North America. A hunting boomerang is delicately balanced and much harder to make than a returning one. The curving flight characteristic of returning boomerangs was probably first noticed by early hunters trying to "tune" their throwing sticks to fly straight. It is thought by some that the shape and elliptical flight path of the returning boomerang makes it useful for hunting birds and small animals, or that noise generated by the movement of the boomerang through the air, or, by a skilled thrower, lightly clipping leaves of a tree whose branches house birds, would help scare the birds towards the thrower. It is further supposed by some that this was used to frighten flocks or groups of birds into nets that were usually strung up between trees or thrown by hidden hunters. In southeastern Australia, it is claimed that boomerangs were made to hover over a flock of ducks; mistaking it for a hawk, the ducks would dive away, toward hunters armed with nets or clubs. Traditionally, most boomerangs used by Aboriginal groups in Australia were non-returning. These weapons, sometimes called "throwsticks" or "kylies", were used for hunting a variety of prey, from kangaroos to parrots; at a range of about , a 2-kg (4.4 lb) non-returning boomerang could inflict mortal injury to a large animal. A throwstick thrown nearly horizontally may fly in a nearly straight path and could fell a kangaroo on impact to the legs or knees, while the long-necked emu could be killed by a blow to the neck. Hooked non-returning boomerangs, known as "beaked kylies", used in northern Central Australia, have been claimed to kill multiple birds when thrown into a dense flock. Throwsticks are used as multi-purpose tools by today's Aboriginal peoples, and besides throwing could be wielded as clubs, used for digging, used to start friction fires, and are sonorous when two are struck together. Recent evidence also suggests that boomerangs were used as war weapons. Modern usage Today, boomerangs are mostly used for recreation. There are different types of throwing contests: accuracy of return; Aussie round; trick catch; maximum time aloft; fast catch; and endurance (see below). The modern sport boomerang (often referred to as a 'boom' or 'rang') is made of Finnish birch plywood, hardwood, plastic or composite materials and comes in many different shapes and colours. Most sport boomerangs typically weigh less than , with MTA boomerangs (boomerangs used for the maximum-time-aloft event) often under . Boomerangs have also been suggested as an alternative to clay pigeons in shotgun sports, where the flight of the boomerang better mimics the flight of a bird offering a more challenging target. The modern boomerang is often computer-aided designed with precision airfoils. The number of "wings" is often more than 2 as more lift is provided by 3 or 4 wings than by 2.Saulius Pakalnis, Aerodynamics of Boomerang , 21 April 2006, researchsupporttechnologies.com . Among the latest inventions is a round-shaped Boomerang, which is a different look but using the same returning principle as traditional boomerangs. This allows for safer catch for players. In 1992, German astronaut Ulf Merbold performed an experiment aboard Spacelab that established that boomerangs function in zero gravity as they do on Earth. French Astronaut Jean-François Clervoy aboard Mir repeated this in 1997. In 2008, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi again repeated the experiment on board the International Space Station. Beginning in the later part of the twentieth century, there has been a bloom in the independent creation of unusually designed art boomerangs. These often have little or no resemblance to the traditional historical ones and on first sight some of these objects may not look like boomerangs at all. The use of modern thin plywoods and synthetic plastics have greatly contributed to their success. Designs are very diverse and can range from animal inspired forms, humorous themes, complex calligraphic and symbolic shapes, to the purely abstract. Painted surfaces are similarly richly diverse. Some boomerangs made primarily as art objects do not have the required aerodynamic properties to return. Aerodynamics A returning boomerang is a rotating wing. It consists of two or more arms, or wings, connected at an angle; each wing is shaped as an airfoil section. Although it is not a requirement that a boomerang be in its traditional shape, it is usually flat. Boomerangs can be made for right- or left-handed throwers. The difference between right and left is subtle, the planform is the same but the leading edges of the aerofoil sections are reversed. A right-handed boomerang makes a counter-clockwise, circular flight to the left while a left-handed boomerang flies clockwise to the right. Most sport boomerangs weigh between , have a wingspan and a range. A falling boomerang starts spinning, and most then fall in a spiral. When the boomerang is thrown with high spin, a boomerang flies in a curved rather than a straight line. When thrown correctly, a boomerang returns to its starting point. As the wing rotates and the boomerang moves through the air, the airflow over the wings creates lift on both "wings". However, during one-half of each blade's rotation, it sees a higher airspeed, because the rotation tip speed and the forward speed add, and when it is in the other half of the rotation, the tip speed subtracts from the forward speed. Thus if thrown nearly upright, each blade generates more lift at the top than the bottom. While it might be expected that this would cause the boomerang to tilt around the axis of travel, because the boomerang has significant angular momentum, the gyroscopic precession causes the plane of rotation to tilt about an axis that is 90 degrees to the direction of flight, causing it to turn. When thrown in the horizontal plane, as with a Frisbee, instead of in the vertical, the same gyroscopic precession will cause the boomerang to fly violently, straight up into the air and then crash. Fast Catch boomerangs usually have three or more symmetrical wings (seen from above), whereas a Long Distance boomerang is most often shaped similar to a question mark. Maximum Time Aloft boomerangs mostly have one wing considerably longer than the other. This feature, along with carefully executed bends and twists in the wings help to set up an "auto-rotation" effect to maximise the boomerang's hover time in descending from the highest point in its flight. Some boomerangs have turbulators — bumps or pits on the top surface that act to increase the lift as boundary layer transition activators (to keep attached turbulent flow instead of laminar separation). Throwing technique Boomerangs are generally thrown in unobstructed, open spaces at least twice as large as the range of the boomerang. The flight direction, left or right depends upon the boomerang, not the thrower. A right-handed or left-handed boomerang can be thrown with either hand, but throwing a boomerang with the wrong hand requires a throwing motion that many throwers find awkward. The following technique applies to a right-handed boomerang, the directions are mirrored for a left-handed boomerang. Different boomerang designs have different flight characteristics and are suitable for different conditions. The accuracy of the throw depends on understanding the weight and aerodynamics of that particular boomerang, and the strength, consistency and direction of the wind; from this, the thrower chooses the angle of tilt, the angle against the wind, the elevation of the trajectory, the degree of spin and the strength of the throw. A great deal of trial and error is required to perfect the throw over time. A properly thrown boomerang will travel out parallel to the ground, sometimes climbing gently, perform a graceful, anti-clockwise, circular or tear-drop shaped arc, flatten out and return in a hovering motion, coming in from the left or spiralling in from behind. Ideally, the hover will allow a practiced catcher to clamp their hands shut horizontally on the boomerang from above and below, sandwiching the centre between their hands. The grip used depends on size and shape; smaller boomerangs are held between finger and thumb at one end, while larger, heavier or wider boomerangs with one or two fingers wrapped over the top edge in order to induce a spin. The aerofoil-shaped section must face the inside of the thrower, and the flatter side outwards. It is usually inclined outwards, from a nearly vertical position to 20° or 30°; the stronger the wind, the closer to vertical. The elbow of the boomerang can point forwards or backwards, or it can be gripped for throwing; it just needs to start spinning on the required inclination, in the desired direction, with the right force. The boomerang is aimed to the right of the oncoming wind; the exact angle depends on the strength of the wind and the boomerang itself. Left-handed boomerangs are thrown to the left of the wind and will fly a clockwise flight path. The trajectory is either parallel to the ground or slightly upwards. The boomerang can return without the aid of any wind, but even very slight winds must be taken into account however calm it may seem. Little or no wind is preferable for an accurate throw, light winds up to are manageable with skill. If the wind is strong enough to fly a kite, then it may be too strong without a skilled thrower with a boomerang designed for stability in stronger winds. Gusty days are a great challenge, and the thrower must be keenly aware of the ebb and flow of the wind strength, finding appropriate lulls in the gusts to launch their boomerang. Competitions and records A World Record achievement was made on 3 June 2007 by Tim Lendrum in Aussie Round. Lendrum scored 96 out of 100, giving him a National Record as well as an equal World Record throwing an "AYR" made by expert boomerang maker Adam Carroll. In international competition, a world cup is held every second year. , teams from Germany and the United States dominated international competition. The individual World Champion title was won in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2012, and 2016 by Swiss thrower Manuel Schütz. In 1992, 1998, 2006, and 2008 Fridolin Frost from Germany won the title. The team competitions of 2012 and 2014 were won by Boomergang (an international team). World champions were Germany in 2012 and Japan in 2014 for the first time. Boomergang was formed by individuals from several countries, including the Colombian Alejandro Palacio. In 2016 USA became team world champion. Competition disciplines Modern boomerang tournaments usually involve some or all of the events listed below In all disciplines the boomerang must travel at least from the thrower. Throwing takes place individually. The thrower stands at the centre of concentric rings marked on an open field. Events include: Aussie Round: considered by many to be the ultimate test of boomeranging skills. The boomerang should ideally cross the circle and come right back to the centre. Each thrower has five attempts. Points are awarded for distance, accuracy and the catch. Accuracy: points are awarded according to how close the boomerang lands to the centre of the rings. The thrower must not touch the boomerang after it has been thrown. Each thrower has five attempts. In major competitions there are two accuracy disciplines: Accuracy 100 and Accuracy 50. Endurance: points are awarded for the number of catches achieved in 5 minutes. Fast Catch: the time taken to throw and catch the boomerang five times. The winner has the fastest timed catches. Trick Catch/Doubling: points are awarded for trick catches behind the back, between the feet, and so on. In Doubling, the thrower has to throw two boomerangs at the same time and catch them in sequence in a special way. Consecutive Catch: points are awarded for the number of catches achieved before the boomerang is dropped. The event is not timed. MTA 100 (Maximal Time Aloft, ): points are awarded for the length of time spent by the boomerang in the air. The field is normally a circle measuring 100 m. An alternative to this discipline, without the 100 m restriction is called MTA unlimited. Long Distance: the boomerang is thrown from the middle point of a baseline. The furthest distance travelled by the boomerang away from the baseline is measured. On returning, the boomerang must cross the baseline again but does not have to be caught. A special section is dedicated to LD below. Juggling: as with Consecutive Catch, only with two boomerangs. At any given time one boomerang must be in the air. World records Guinness World Record – Smallest Returning Boomerang Non-discipline record: Smallest Returning Boomerang: Sadir Kattan of Australia in 1997 with long and wide. This tiny boomerang flew the required , before returning to the accuracy circles on 22 March 1997 at the Australian National Championships. Guinness World Record – Longest Throw of Any Object by a Human A boomerang was used to set a Guinness World Record with a throw of by David Schummy on 15 March 2005 at Murarrie Recreation Ground, Australia. This broke the record set by Erin Hemmings who threw an Aerobie on 14 July 2003 at Fort Funston, San Francisco. Long-distance versions Long-distance boomerang throwers aim to have the boomerang go the furthest possible distance while returning close to the throwing point. In competition the boomerang must intersect an imaginary surface defined as an infinite vertical projection of a line centred on the thrower. Outside of competitions, the definition is not so strict, and throwers may be happy simply not to walk too far to recover the boomerang. General properties Long-distance boomerangs are optimised to have minimal drag while still having enough lift to fly and return. For this reason, they have a very narrow throwing window, which discourages many beginners from continuing with this discipline. For the same reason, the quality of manufactured long-distance boomerangs is often difficult to determine. Today's long-distance boomerangs have almost all an S or ? – question mark shape and have a beveled edge on both sides (the bevel on the bottom side is sometimes called an undercut). This is to minimise drag and lower the lift. Lift must be low because the boomerang is thrown with an almost total layover (flat). Long-distance boomerangs are most frequently made of composite material, mainly fibre glass epoxy composites. Flight path The projection of the flight path of long-distance boomerang on the ground resembles a water drop. For older types of long-distance boomerangs (all types of so-called big hooks), the first and last third of the flight path are very low, while the middle third is a fast climb followed by a fast descent. Nowadays, boomerangs are made in a way that their whole flight path is almost planar with a constant climb during the first half of the trajectory and then a rather constant descent during the second half. From theoretical point of view, distance boomerangs are interesting also for the following reason: for achieving a different behaviour during different flight phases, the ratio of the rotation frequency to the forward velocity has a U-shaped function, i.e., its derivative crosses 0. Practically, it means that the boomerang being at the furthest point has a very low forward velocity. The kinetic energy of the forward component is then stored in the potential energy. This is not true for other types of boomerangs, where the loss of kinetic energy is non-reversible (the MTAs also store kinetic energy in potential energy during the first half of the flight, but then the potential energy is lost directly by the drag). Related terms In Noongar language, kylie is a flat curved piece of wood similar in appearance to a boomerang that is thrown when hunting for birds and animals. "Kylie" is one of the Aboriginal words for the hunting stick used in warfare and for hunting animals. Instead of following curved flight paths, kylies fly in straight lines from the throwers. They are typically much larger than boomerangs, and can travel very long distances; due to their size and hook shapes, they can cripple or kill an animal or human opponent. The word is perhaps an English corruption of a word meaning "boomerang" taken from one of the Western Desert languages, for example, the Warlpiri word "karli". Cultural references Trademarks of Australian companies using the boomerang as a symbol, emblem or logo proliferate, usually removed from Aboriginal context and symbolising 'returning' or to distinguish an Australian brand. Early examples included Bain's White Ant Exterminator (1896); Webendorfer Bros. explosives (1898); E. A. Adams Foods (1920); and by the (still current) Boomerang Cigarette Papers Pty. Ltd. "Aboriginalia", including the boomerang, as symbols of Australia dates from the late 1940s and early 1950s and was in widespread use by a largely European arts, crafts and design community. By the 1960s, the Australian tourism industry extended it to the very branding of Australia, particularly to overseas and domestic tourists as souvenirs and gifts and thus Aboriginal culture. At the very time when Aboriginal people and culture were subject to policies that removed them from their traditional lands and sought to assimilate them (physiologically and culturally) into mainstream white Australian culture, causing the Stolen Generations, Aboriginalia found an ironically "nostalgic", entry point into Australian popular culture at important social locations: holiday resorts and in Australian domestic interiors. In the 21st century, souvenir objects depicting Aboriginal peoples, symbolism and motifs including the boomerang, from the 1940s–1970s, regarded as kitsch and sold largely to tourists in the first instance, became highly sought after by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal collectors and has captured the imagination of Aboriginal artists and cultural commentators. See also Australian Aboriginal artefacts Batarang Bat'leth Captain Boomerang Chakram Commonwealth Boomerang, a World War II fighter-plane Frisbee Googie, boomerang-shaped architecture Shuriken Throwing stick Valari References Further reading Boomerang (Encyclopaedia.com) Nishiyama, Yutaka, Why do boomerangs come back?, Int. J. of Pure and Appl. Math. 78(3), 335–347, 2012. Valde-Nowak et al. (1987). "Upper Palaeolithic boomerang made of a mammoth tusk in south Poland". Nature'' 329: 436–438 (1 October 1987); doi:10.1038/329436a0. External links International Federation of Boomerang Associations Boomerang aerodynamics: an online dissertation Explanation of the origin of the word 'Boomerang' How to Throw a Boomerang Australian Aboriginal bushcraft Individual sports Recreational weapons Sports equipment Throwing clubs Australian inventions Sports originating in Australia Physical activity and dexterity toys Australian English Hunting equipment National symbols of Australia Primitive weapons Weapons of Australia

Boiled leather, often referred to by its French translation, cuir bouilli (), was a historical material for various uses common in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. It was leather that had been treated so that it became tough and rigid, as well as able to hold moulded decoration. It was the usual material for the robust carrying-cases that were made for important pieces of metalwork, instruments such as astrolabes, personal sets of cutlery, books, pens and the like. It was used for some armour, being both much cheaper and much lighter than plate armour, but could not withstand a direct blow from a blade, nor a gunshot. Alternative names are "moulded leather" and "hardened leather". In the course of making the material it becomes very soft, and can be impressed into a mould to give it the desired shape and decoration, which most surviving examples have. Pieces such as chests and coffers also usually have a wooden inner core. Various recipes for making cuir bouilli survive, and do not agree with each other; probably there were a range of recipes, partly reflecting different final uses. Vegetable-tanned leather is generally specified. Scholars have debated the subject at length and attempted to recreate the historical material. Many, but not all, sources agree that actual boiling of the leather was not part of the process, but immersion in water, cold or hot, was. Military use Cuir bouilli was used for cheap and light armour, although it was much less effective than plate armour, which was extremely expensive and too heavy for much to be worn by infantry (as opposed to knights fighting on foot). However, cuir bouilli could be reinforced against slashing blows by the addition of metal bands or strips, especially in helmets. Modern experiments on simple cuir bouilli have shown that it can reduce the depth of an arrow wound considerably, especially if coated with a crushed mineral facing mixed with glue, as one medieval Arab author recommended. In addition, "armour based on hide has the unique advantage that it can, in extremis, provide some nutrition" when actually boiled. Josephus records that the Jewish defenders in the Siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 were reduced to eating their shields and other leather kit, as was the Spanish expedition of Tristan de Luna in 1559. Versions of cuir bouilli were used since ancient times, especially for shields, in many parts of the world. Although in general leather does not survive long burial, and excavated archaeological evidence for it is rare, an Irish shield of cuir bouilli with wooden formers, deposited in a peat bog, has survived for some 2,500 years. It was commonly used in the Western world for helmets; the pickelhaube, the standard German helmet, was not replaced by a steel stahlhelm until 1916, in the midst of World War I. As leather does not conduct heat the way metal does, firemen continued to use boiled leather helmets until World War II, and the invention of strong plastics. The word cuirass for a breastplate indicates that these were originally made of leather. In the Late Middle Ages, the heyday of plate armour, cuir bouilli continued to be used even by the rich for horse armour and often for tournament armour, as well as by ordinary infantry soldiers. Tournaments were increasingly regulated in order to reduce the risk to life, and in 1278 Edward I of England organized one in Windsor Great Park at which cuir bouilli armour was worn, and the king provided swords made of whale bone and parchment. The account of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 by Jean de Wavrin, who was present on the French side, describes the crucial force of English longbowmen as having on their heads either cuir bouilli helmets, or wicker with iron strips, or nothing (the last, he says, were also barefoot). A few pieces of Roman horse armour in cuir bouilli have been excavated. Evidence from documents such as inventories show that it was common in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, and used by the highest ranks, but survivals are very few. In 1547 the Master of Armoury in the Tower of London ordered 46 sets of bards and crinets in preparation for the final invasion of Scotland in the war known as the Rough Wooing. In September that year the English cavalry were crucial in the decisive victory at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. The German Count Palatine of the Rhine had six sets of cuir bouilli horse armour for his and his family's use in the 16th century. Often the shaffron for the horse's head would be in steel, though leather ones are also known. Cuir bouilli was also very common for scabbards. However surviving specimens of leather armour are rare, more so than the various types of civilian containers. It is believed that many leather pieces are depicted in sculpted tomb monuments, where they are more highly decorated than metal pieces would have been. Cuir bouilli was also often used for elaborate figurative crests on some helmets. The material is mentioned in Froissart's Chronicles of the Hundred Years' War, and Geoffrey Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, written in the late 1300s, says of the knight Sir Thopas: (Note: jambeaux are greaves – shin armour). The large decorative crests that came to top some helmets in the late Middle Ages were often made of cuir bouilli, as is the famous example belonging to the Black Prince and hung with other "achievements" over his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. His wooden shield also has the heraldic animals appliqued in cuir bouilli. Examples of other uses As well as the crests on helmets described above, cuir bouilli was probably used sculpturally in various contexts, over a wood or plaster framework where necessary. When Henry V of England died in France, his effigy in cuir bouilli was placed on top of his coffin for the journey back to England. A near life-size crucifix in the Vatican Museums is in cuir bouilli over wood. This is of special interest to art historians because it was made in 1540 as a replica of a crucifix in silver presented by Charlemagne some 740 years before; an object of great interest as possibly the first of the long line of monumental crucifixes in Western art. In 1540 the original silver was melted down for church plate to replace that looted in the Sack of Rome in 1527. It seems likely that the leather was moulded directly from the original and it is possible that the wooden core underneath is actually the Carolingian original, with the leather replacing the sheets of silver originally fitted over the wood. Cuir bouilli has also been employed to bind books, mainly between the 9th and 14th centuries. Other uses include high boots for especially tough use, which were called "postillion's boots" in England. Another use was for large bottles or jugs called "blackjacks", "bombards" or "costerns". There is an English reference to these from 1373. Notes References Abse, Bathsheba, in Abse, Bathsheba and Calnan, Christopher, "Leather, 2. iii, Moulding", Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press. Web. 13 Oct. 2017, subscription required Barker, Juliet R.V., The Tournament in England, 1100–1400, 1986, Boydell Press, , 9780851159423, google books Bradbury, Jim, The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare, 2004, Routledge, ISBN 1134598475, 9781134598472, google books Cheshire, Edward, "Cuir bouilli armour", in Why Leather?: The Material and Cultural Dimensions of Leather, ed. Harris, Susanna, 2014, Sidestone Press, , google books Davies, Laura, "Cuir bouilli", Chapter 10 in Conservation of Leather and Related Materials, Eds. Marion Kite, Roy Thomson, 2006, Routledge, , 9781136415234, google books Ffoulkes, Charles John, The Armourer and His Craft, 2008 (reprint), Cosimo, Inc., , 9781605204116, google books Lasko, Peter, Ars Sacra, 800–1200, Penguin History of Art (now Yale), 1972 (nb, 1st edn.) (2nd edition on google books) Loades, Mike, The Longbow, 2013, Bloomsbury Publishing, , 9781782000860, google books "Phyrr et al.", Stuart W. Pyhrr, Donald J. LaRocca, Dirk H. Breiding, The Armored Horse in Europe, 1480–1620, 2005, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), , 9781588391506, fully available online Stone, David, The Kaiser's Army: The German Army in World War One, 2015, Bloomsbury Publishing, , 9781844862917, google books Wijnekus, F.J.M., and Wijnekus, E.F.P.H., Dictionary of the Printing and Allied Industries, 2013 (2nd edn.), Elsevier, , 9781483289847, google books Williams, Alan R, The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period, 2003, BRILL, , 9789004124981, google books Wright, Thomas, The Archaeological Album; Or Museum of National Antiquities, 1845, Chapman & Hall, google books External links Water hardened leather for armour Boiled leather in wax Cuir Bouilli/Hardened Leather FAQ Medieval armour Body armor Leather crafting Leather

The Book of Esther (Hebrew: , Megillat Esther), also known in Hebrew as "the Scroll" (Megillah), is a book in the third section (Ketuvim, "Writings") of the Jewish Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible). It is one of the five Scrolls (Megillot) in the Hebrew Bible and later became part of the Christian Old Testament. The book relates the story of a Hebrew woman in Persia, born as Hadassah but known as Esther, who becomes queen of Persia and thwarts a genocide of her people. The story forms the core of the Jewish festival of Purim, during which it is read aloud twice: once in the evening and again the following morning. The books of Esther and Song of Songs are the only books in the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God. Setting and structure Setting The biblical Book of Esther is set in the Persian capital of Susa (Shushan) in the third year of the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus. The name Ahasuerus is equivalent to Xerxes (both deriving from the Persian Khshayārsha), and Ahasuerus is usually identified in modern sources as Xerxes I, who ruled between 486 and 465 BCE, as it is to this monarch that the events described in Esther are thought to fit the most closely. Assuming that Ahasuerus is indeed Xerxes I, the events described in Esther began around the years 483–82 BCE, and concluded in March 473 BCE. Classical sources such as Josephus, the Jewish commentary Esther Rabbah and the Christian theologian Bar-Hebraeus, as well as the Greek Septuagint translation of Esther, instead identify Ahasuerus as either Artaxerxes I (reigned 465 to 424 BCE) or Artaxerxes II (reigned 404 to 358 BCE). On his accession, however, Artaxerxes II lost Egypt to pharaoh Amyrtaeus, after which it was no longer part of the Persian empire. In his Historia Scholastica Petrus Comestor identified Ahasuerus (Esther 1:1) as Artaxerxes III (358–338 BCE) who reconquered Egypt. Structure The Book of Esther consists of an introduction (or exposition) in chapters 1 and 2; the main action (complication and resolution) in chapters 3 to 9:19; and a conclusion in 9:20–10:3. The plot is structured around banquets (mishteh), a word that occurs twenty times in Esther and only 24 times in the rest of the Hebrew bible. This is appropriate given that Esther describes the origin of a Jewish feast, the feast of Purim, but Purim itself is not the subject and no individual feast in the book is commemorated by Purim. The book's theme, rather, is the reversal of destiny through a sudden and unexpected turn of events: the Jews seem destined to be destroyed, but instead are saved. In literary criticism such a reversal is termed "peripety", and while on one level its use in Esther is simply a literary or aesthetic device, on another it is structural to the author's theme, suggesting that the power of God is at work behind human events. Summary King Ahasuerus, ruler of the Persian Empire, holds a lavish 180-day banquet, initially for his court and dignitaries and afterwards a seven-day banquet for all inhabitants of the capital city, Shushan (Esther 1:1–9). On the seventh day of the latter banquet, Ahasuerus orders the queen, Vashti, to display her beauty before the guests by coming before them wearing her crown (1:10–11). She refuses, infuriating Ahasuerus, who on the advice of his counselors removes her from her position as an example to other women who might be emboldened to disobey their husbands (1:12–19). A decree follows that "every man should bear rule in his own house" (1:20–22). Ahasuerus then makes arrangements to choose a new queen from a selection of beautiful young women from throughout the empire (2:1–4). Among these women is a Jewish orphan named Esther, who was raised by her cousin or uncle, Mordecai (2:5–7). She finds favour in the King's eyes, and is crowned his new queen, but does not reveal her Jewish heritage (2:8–20). Shortly afterwards, Mordecai discovers a plot by two courtiers, Bigthan and Teresh, to assassinate Ahasuerus. The conspirators are apprehended and hanged, and Mordecai's service to the King is recorded (2:21–23). Ahasuerus appoints Haman as his viceroy (3:1). Mordecai, who sits at the palace gates, falls into Haman's disfavour, as he refuses to bow down to him (3:2–5). Haman discovers that Mordecai refuses to bow on account of his Jewishness, and in revenge plots to kill not just Mordecai, but all the Jews in the empire (3:6). He obtains Ahasuerus' permission to execute this plan, against payment of ten thousand talents of silver, and casts lots ("purim") to choose the date on which to do this the thirteenth of the month of Adar (3:7–12). A royal decree is issued throughout the kingdom to slay all Jews on that date. (3:13–15). When Mordecai discovers the plan, he goes into mourning and implores Esther to intercede with the King (4:1–5). But she is afraid to present herself to the King unsummoned, an offense punishable by death (4:6–12). Instead, she directs Mordecai to have all Jews fast for three days for her, and vows to fast as well (4:15–16.). On the third day she goes to Ahasuerus, who stretches out his sceptre to her to indicate that she is not to be punished (5:1–2). She invites him to a feast in the company of Haman (5:3–5). During the feast, she asks them to attend a further feast the next evening (5:6–8). Meanwhile, Haman is again offended by Mordecai and, at his wife's suggestion, has a gallows built to hang him (5:9–14). That night, Ahasuerus cannot sleep, and orders the court records be read to him (6:1). He is reminded that Mordecai interceded in the previous plot against his life, and discovers that Mordecai never received any recognition (6:2–3). Just then, Haman appears to request the King's permission to hang Mordecai, but before he can make this request, Ahasuerus asks Haman what should be done for the man that the King wishes to honour (6:4–6). Assuming that the King is referring to Haman himself, Haman suggests that the man be dressed in the King's royal robes, and crown and led around on the King's royal horse, while a herald calls: "See how the King honours a man he wishes to reward!" (6:7–9). To his surprise and horror, the King instructs Haman to do so to Mordecai (6:10–11). Immediately after, Ahasuerus and Haman attend Esther's second banquet. The King promises to grant her any request, and she reveals that she is Jewish and that Haman is planning to exterminate her people, including herself (7:1–6). Overcome by rage, Ahasuerus leaves the room; meanwhile Haman stays behind and begs Esther for his life, falling upon her in desperation (7:7). The King returns in at this very moment and thinks Haman is assaulting the queen; this makes him angrier and he orders Haman hanged on the very gallows that Haman had prepared for Mordecai (7:8–10). Unable to annul a formal royal decree, the King instead adds to it, permitting the Jews to join together and destroy any and all of those seeking to kill them (8:1–14). On 13 Adar, Haman's ten sons and 500 other men are killed in Shushan (9:1–12). Upon hearing of this Esther requests it be repeated the next day, whereupon 300 more men are killed (9:13–15). Over 75,000 people are slaughtered by the Jews, who are careful to take no plunder (9:16–17). Mordecai and Esther send letters throughout the provinces instituting an annual commemoration of the Jewish people's redemption, in a holiday called Purim (lots) (9:20–28). Ahasuerus remains very powerful and continues his reign, with Mordecai assuming a prominent position in his court (10:1–3). Authorship and date The Megillat Esther (Book of Esther) became the last of the 24 books of the Tanakh to be canonized by the Sages of the Great Assembly. According to the Talmud, it was a redaction by the Great Assembly of an original text by Mordecai. It is usually dated to the 4th century BCE. Shemaryahu Talmon, however, suggests that "the traditional setting of the book in the days of Xerxes I cannot be wide off the mark." The Greek book of Esther, included in the Septuagint, is a retelling of the events of the Hebrew Book of Esther rather than a translation and records additional traditions which do not appear in the traditional Hebrew version, in particular the identification of Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes and details of various letters. It is dated around the late 2nd to early 1st century BCE. The Coptic and Ethiopic versions of Esther are translations of the Greek rather than the Hebrew Esther. A Latin version of Esther was produced by Jerome for the Vulgate. It translates the Hebrew Esther but interpolates translations of the Greek Esther where the latter provides additional material. Predating the Vulgate, however, the Vetus Latina ("Old Latin") was apparently translated from a different Greek version not included in the Septuagint. Several Aramaic targums of Esther were produced in the Middle Ages, of which three survive – the Targum Rishon ("First Targum" or 1TgEsth) and Targum Sheni ("Second Targum" or 2TgEsth) dated c. 500–1000 CE, which include additional legends relating to Purim, and the Targum Shelishi ("Third Targum" or 3TgEsth), which Berliner and Goshen-Gottstein argued was the ur-Targum from which the others had been expanded, but which others consider only a late recension of the same. 3TgEsth is the most manuscript-stable of the three, and by far the most literal. Historicity The apparent historical difficulties, the internal inconsistencies, the pronounced symmetry of themes and events, the plenitude of quoted dialogue, and the gross exaggeration in the reporting of numbers (involving time, money, and people) all point to Esther as a work of fiction, its vivid characters (except for Xerxes) being the product of the author's creative imagination. There is no reference to known historical events in the story; a general consensus, though this consensus has been challenged, has maintained that the narrative of Esther was invented in order to provide an aetiology for Purim, and the name Ahasuerus is usually understood to refer to a fictionalized Xerxes I, who ruled the Achaemenid Empire between 486 and 465 BCE. According to some sources, it is a historical novella, written to explain the origin of the Jewish holiday of Purim. As noted by biblical scholar Michael D. Coogan, the book contains specific details regarding certain subject matter (for example, Persian rule) which are historically inaccurate. For example, Coogan discusses an apparent inaccuracy regarding the age of Esther's cousin (or, according to others, uncle) Mordecai. In Esther 2:5–6, either Mordecai or his great-grandfather Kish is identified as having been exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar II in 597 BCE: "Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, who had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, among those taken captive with Jeconiah king of Judah". If this refers to Mordecai, he would have had to live over a century to have witnessed the events described in the Book of Esther. However, the verse may be read as referring not to Mordecai's exile to Babylon, but to his great-grandfather Kish's exile. In her article "The Book of Esther and Ancient Storytelling", biblical scholar Adele Berlin discusses the reasoning behind scholarly concern about the historicity of Esther. Much of this debate relates to the importance of distinguishing history and fiction within biblical texts, as Berlin argues, in order to gain a more accurate understanding of the history of the Israelite people. Berlin quotes a series of scholars who suggest that the author of Esther did not mean for the book to be considered as a historical writing, but intentionally wrote it to be a historical novella. The genre of novellas under which Esther falls was common during both the Persian and Hellenistic periods to which scholars have dated the book of Esther. There are certain elements of the book of Esther that are historically accurate. The story told in the book of Esther takes place during the rule of Ahasuerus, who amongst others has been identified as the 5th-century Persian king Xerxes I (reigned 486–465 BCE). The author also displays an accurate knowledge of Persian customs and palaces. However, according to Coogan, considerable historical inaccuracies remain throughout the text, supporting the view that the book of Esther is to be read as a historical novella which tells a story describing historical events but is not necessarily historical fact. Edwin M. Yamauchi has questioned the reliability of other historical sources, such as Herodotus, to which Esther has been compared. Yamauchi wrote, "[Herodotus] was, however, the victim of unreliable informants and was not infallible." The reason for questioning the historical accuracy of such ancient writers as Herodotus is that he is one of the primary sources of knowledge for this time period, and it has been frequently assumed that his account may be more accurate than Esther's account. Historical reading Those arguing in favour of a historical reading of Esther most commonly identify Ahasuerus with Xerxes I (ruled 486–465 BCE), although in the past it was often assumed that he was Artaxerxes II (ruled 405–359 BCE). The Hebrew Ahasuerus (ʔaḥašwērōš) is most likely derived from Persian Xšayārša, the origin of the Greek Xerxes. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Xerxes sought his harem after being defeated in the Greco-Persian Wars. He makes no reference to individual members of the harem except for a domineering Queen consort named Amestris, whose father, Otanes, was one of Xerxes's generals. (In contrast, the Greek historian Ctesias refers to a similar father-in-law/general figure named Onaphas.) Amestris has often been identified with Vashti, but this identification is problematic, as Amestris remained a powerful figure well into the reign of her son, Artaxerxes I, whereas Vashti is portrayed as dismissed in the early part of Xerxes's reign. Alternative attempts have been made to identify her with Esther, although Esther is an orphan whose father was a Jew named Abihail. As for the identity of Mordecai, the similar names Marduka and Marduku have been found as the name of officials in the Persian court in over thirty texts from the period of Xerxes I and his father Darius I, and may refer to up to four individuals, one of whom might be the model for the biblical Mordecai. The "Old Greek" Septuagint version of Esther translates the name Ahasuerus as Artaxerxes, a Greek name derived from the Persian Artaxšaθra. Josephus too relates that this was the name by which he was known to the Greeks, and the Midrashic text Esther Rabba also makes the identification. Bar-Hebraeus identified Ahasuerus explicitly as Artaxerxes II; however, the names are not necessarily equivalent: Hebrew has a form of the name Artaxerxes distinct from Ahasuerus, and a direct Greek rendering of Ahasuerus is used by both Josephus and the Septuagint for occurrences of the name outside the Book of Esther. Instead, the Hebrew name Ahasuerus accords with an inscription of the time that notes that Artaxerxes II was named also Aršu, understood as a shortening of Aḫšiyaršu the Babylonian rendering of the Persian Xšayārša (Xerxes), through which the Hebrew ʔaḥašwērōš (Ahasuerus) is derived. Ctesias related that Artaxerxes II was also called Arsicas which is understood as a similar shortening with the Persian suffix -ke that is applied to shortened names. Deinon related that Artaxerxes II was also called Oarses which is also understood to be derived from Xšayārša. Another view attempts to identify him instead with Artaxerxes I (ruled 465–424 BCE), whose Babylonian concubine, Kosmartydene, was the mother of his son Darius II (ruled 424–405 BCE). Jewish tradition relates that Esther was the mother of a King Darius and so some try to identify Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes I and Esther with Kosmartydene. Based on the view that the Ahasuerus of the Book of Tobit is identical with that of the Book of Esther, some have also identified him as Nebuchadnezzar's ally Cyaxares (ruled 625–585 BCE). In certain manuscripts of Tobit, the former is called Achiachar, which, like the Greek Cyaxares, is thought to be derived from Persian Huwaxšaθra. Depending on the interpretation of Esther 2:5–6, Mordecai or his great-grandfather Kish was carried away from Jerusalem with Jeconiah by Nebuchadnezzar, in 597 BCE. The view that it was Mordecai would be consistent with the identification of Ahasuerus with Cyaxares. Identifications with other Persian monarchs have also been suggested. Jacob Hoschander has argued that the name of Haman and that of his father Hamedatha are mentioned by Strabo as Omanus and Anadatus, worshipped with Anahita in the city of Zela. Hoschander suggests that Haman may, if the connection is correct, be a priestly title and not a proper name. Strabo's names are unattested in Persian texts as gods; however the Talmud and Josephus interpret the description of courtiers bowing to Haman in Esther 3:2 as worship. (Other scholars assume "Omanus" refers to Vohu Mana.) In his Historia Scholastica Petrus Comestor identified Ahasuerus (Esther 1:1) as Artaxerxes III who reconquered Egypt. Interpretation In the Book of Esther, the Tetragrammaton does not appear, but some argue it is present, in hidden form, in four complex acrostics in Hebrew: the initial or last letters of four consecutive words, either forwards or backwards comprise YHWH. These letters were distinguished in at least three ancient Hebrew manuscripts in red. Christine Hayes contrasts the Book of Esther with apocalyptic writings, the Book of Daniel in particular: both Esther and Daniel depict an existential threat to the Jewish people, but while Daniel commands the Jews to wait faithfully for God to resolve the crisis, in Esther the crisis is resolved entirely through human action and national solidarity. God, in fact, is not mentioned, Esther is portrayed as assimilated to Persian culture, and Jewish identity in the book is an ethnic category rather than a religious one. This contrasts with traditional Jewish commentaries, such as the commentary of the Vilna Gaon, which states "But in every verse it discusses the great miracle. However, this miracle was in a hidden form, occurring through apparently natural processes, not like the Exodus from Egypt, which openly revealed the might of God." This follows the approach of the Talmud, which states that "(The Book of) Esther is referenced in the Torah in the verse 'And I shall surely hide (in Hebrew, 'haster astir,' related to 'Esther') My Face from them on that day. Although marriages between Jews and Gentiles are not permitted in orthodox Judaism, even in case of Pikuach nefesh, Esther is not regarded as a sinner, because she remained passive, and risked her life to save that of the entire Jewish people. The Vanishing Jew: A Wake-Up Call From the Book of Esther by Michael Eisenberg looks at the Megilla from the perspective of economic philosophy and the struggle for money, power and control. Additions to Esther An additional six chapters appear interspersed in Esther in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible. This was noted by Jerome in compiling the Latin Vulgate. Additionally, the Greek text contains many small changes in the meaning of the main text. Jerome recognized the former as additions not present in the Hebrew Text and placed them at the end of his Latin translation. This placement and numbering system is used in Catholic Bible translations based primarily on the Vulgate, such as the Douay–Rheims Bible and the Knox Bible. In contrast, the 1979 revision of the Vulgate, the Nova Vulgata, incorporates the additions to Esther directly into the narrative itself, as do most modern Catholic English translations based on the original Hebrew and Greek (e.g., Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, New American Bible, New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition). The numbering system for the additions differs with each translation. The Nova Vulgata accounts for the additional verses by numbering them as extensions of the verses immediately following or preceding them (e.g., Esther 11:2–12 in the old Vulgate becomes Esther 1:1a–1k in the Nova Vulgata), while the NAB and its successor, the NABRE, assign letters of the alphabet as chapter headings for the additions (e.g., Esther 11:2–12:6 in the Vulgate becomes Esther A:1–17). The RSVCE and the NRSVCE place the additional material into the narrative, but retain the chapter and verse numbering of the old Vulgate. These additions include: an opening prologue that describes a dream had by Mordecai the contents of the decree against the Jews prayers for God's intervention offered by Mordecai and by Esther an expansion of the scene in which Esther appears before the king, with a mention of God's intervention a copy of the decree in favor of the Jews a passage in which Mordecai interprets his dream (from the prologue) in terms of the events that followed a colophon appended to the end, which reads: "In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said that he was a priest and a Levite, and his son Ptolemy brought to Egypt the preceding Letter about Purim, which they said was authentic and had been translated by Lysimachus son of Ptolemy, one of the residents of Jerusalem" (NRSV). It is unclear to which version of Greek Esther this colophon refers, and who exactly are the figures mentioned in it. By the time the Greek version of Esther was written, the foreign power visible on the horizon as a future threat to Judah was the kingdom of Macedonia under Alexander the Great, who defeated the Persian empire about 150 years after the time of the story of Esther; the Septuagint version noticeably calls Haman a "Bougaion" (), possibly in the Homeric sense of "bully" or "braggart," whereas the Hebrew text describes him as an Agagite. The canonicity of these Greek additions has been a subject of scholarly disagreement practically since their first appearance in the Septuagint Martin Luther, being perhaps the most vocal Reformation-era critic of the work, considered even the original Hebrew version to be of very doubtful value. Luther's complaints against the book carried past the point of scholarly critique and may reflect Luther's antisemitism. The Council of Trent, the summation of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation, reconfirmed the entire book, both Hebrew text and Greek additions, as canonical. The Book of Esther is used twice in commonly used sections of the Catholic Lectionary. In both cases, the text used is not only taken from a Greek addition, the readings also are the prayer of Mordecai, and nothing of Esther's own words is ever used. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint version of Esther, as it does for all of the Old Testament. In contrast, the additions are included in the Biblical apocrypha, usually printed in a separate section (if at all) in Protestant bibles. The additions, called "The rest of the Book of Esther", are specifically listed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, Article VI, of the Church of England as non-canonical. Modern retelling There are several paintings depicting Esther and her story, including The Punishment of Haman by Michelangelo, in a corner of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. In 1660, Rembrandt van Rijn's painting of Esther's Banquet depicts how Esther approached the men at their level to make the request of erasing the decree. The Italian Renaissance poet Lucrezia Tornabuoni chose Esther as one of biblical figures on which she wrote poetry. In 1689, Jean Baptiste Racine wrote Esther, a tragedy, at the request of Louis XIV's wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon. In 1718, Handel wrote the oratorio Esther based on Racine's play. In 1958, a book entitled Behold Your Queen! was written by Gladys Malvern and illustrated by her sister, Corinne Malvern. It was chosen as a selection of the Junior Literary Guild. The play entitled Esther (1960), written by Welsh dramatist Saunders Lewis, is a retelling of the story in Welsh. A 1960 movie about the story, Esther and the King, starring Joan Collins. A 1978 miniseries entitled The Greatest Heroes of the Bible starred Victoria Principal as Esther, Robert Mandan as Xerxes, and Michael Ansara as Haman. Episode 25 of the 1981 anime series Superbook involves this story. The 1983 musical entitled Swan Esther was written by J. Edward Oliver and Nick Munns and released as a concept album with Stephanie Lawrence and Denis Quilley. Swan Esther has been performed by the Young Vic, a national tour produced by Bill Kenwright and some amateur groups. A 1986 Israeli film directed by Amos Gitai entitled Esther. In 1992, a 30-minute, fully animated video, twelfth in Hanna-Barbera's The Greatest Adventure series, titled Queen Esther features the voices of Helen Slater as Queen Esther, Dean Jones as King Ahasuerus, Werner Klemperer as Haman, and Ron Rifkin as Mordecai. A 1999 TV movie from the Bible Collection that follows the biblical account very closely, Esther, starred Louise Lombard in the title role and F. Murray Abraham as Mordecai. In 2000, VeggieTales released "Esther... The Girl Who Became Queen". Chosen: The Lost Diaries of Queen Esther by Ginger Garrett. 2005, NavPress. A 2006 movie about Esther and Ahasuerus, entitled One Night with the King, stars Tiffany Dupont and Luke Goss. It was based on the novel Hadassah: One Night with the King by Tommy Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen. Esther is one of the five heroines of the Order of the Eastern Star. On March 8, 2011, the Maccabeats released a music video called "Purim Song". The Book of Esther is a 2013 movie starring Jen Lilley as Queen Esther and Joel Smallbone as King Xerxes. In 2012, a graphic adaptation of the Book of Esther was illustrated by J. T. Waldman and appeared in volume one of The Graphic Canon, edited by Russ Kick and published by Seven Stories Press. Notes References Citations Sources Beal, Timothy K (Timothy Beal). The Book of Hiding: Gender, Ethnicity, Annihilation, and Esther. NY: Routledge, 1997. Postmodern theoretical apparatus, e.g. Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas Extract from The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther by Adele Berlin: Liberal Jewish view. Grossman, Jonathan, Esther: The Outer Narrative and the Hidden Reading, Winona Lake, IN.: Eisenbrauns, 2011. Sasson, Jack M. "Esther" in Alter and Kermode, pp. 335–341, literary view The Historicity of Megillat Esther: Gil Student's survey of scholarship supporting a historical reading of Esther Esther, Book of: A Christian perspective of the book. Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East by Theodor Gaster. 1950. White, Sidnie Ann. "Esther: A Feminine Model for Jewish Diaspora" in Newsom Esther (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org Cumming, Rev. J. Elder DD The Book of Esther: Its spiritual teaching London: The Religious Tract Society, 1913 Ecker, Ronald L. The Book of Esther, Ecker's Biblical Web Pages, 2007. Fischer, James A. Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther. Collegeville Bible Commentary. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1986. Fox, Michael V. Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001. Hudson, J. Francis Esther: For Such a Time as This. From Character and Charisma series. Kingsway, 2000. Levenson, Jon D. Esther. Old Testament Library Series. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997. McConville, John C. L. Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. Daily Study Bible Series. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985. Moore, Carey A. Esther. Anchor Bible, vol. 7B. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Paton, Lewis B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Esther. International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh, Scotland: T&T Clark, 1908. Hazony, Yoram. God and Politics in Esther. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Shurpin, Yehuda, How Could Esther Marry a Non-Jewish King?, Chabad.org. Further reading External links Text and translations Jewish translations Esther (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org Purim insights to Megillat Esther Mechon Mamre Full text, Aleppo Codex: text of Esther in Hebrew Christian translations Introduction to the Book of Esther Physical relics A Megillah (scroll of the Book of Esther), found in Vilna after World War II Esther scrolls in the Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art, the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Scroll of the Book of Esther, illustrated, Italy, 1747. 4th-century BC books Esther (parts) Esther Esther, Book of Purim Historical books

Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are bacteria, viruses, insects, fungi or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form, in much the same way as in biological warfare. Further, modern agribusiness is vulnerable to anti-agricultural attacks by terrorists, and such attacks can seriously damage economy as well as consumer confidence. The latter destructive activity is called agrobioterrorism and is a subtype of agro-terrorism. Definition Bioterrorism is the deliberate release of viruses, bacteria, toxins or other harmful agents to cause illness or death in people, animals, or plants. These agents are typically found in nature, but could be mutated or altered to increase their ability to cause disease, make them resistant to current medicines, or to increase their ability to be spread into the environment. Biological agents can be spread through the air, water, or in food. Biological agents are attractive to terrorists because they are extremely difficult to detect and do not cause illness for several hours to several days. Some bioterrorism agents, like the smallpox virus, can be spread from person to person and some, like anthrax, cannot. Bioterrorism may be favored because biological agents are relatively easy and inexpensive to obtain, can be easily disseminated, and can cause widespread fear and panic beyond the actual physical damage. Military leaders, however, have learned that, as a military asset, bioterrorism has some important limitations; it is difficult to use a bioweapon in a way that only affects the enemy and not friendly forces. A biological weapon is useful to terrorists mainly as a method of creating mass panic and disruption to a state or a country. However, technologists such as Bill Joy have warned of the potential power which genetic engineering might place in the hands of future bio-terrorists. The use of agents that do not cause harm to humans, but disrupt the economy, have also been discussed. One such pathogen is the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus, which is capable of causing widespread economic damage and public concern (as witnessed in the 2001 and 2007 FMD outbreaks in the UK), while having almost no capacity to infect humans. History By the time World War I began, attempts to use anthrax were directed at animal populations. This generally proved to be ineffective. Shortly after the start of World War I, Germany launched a biological sabotage campaign in the United States, Russia, Romania, and France. At that time, Anton Dilger lived in Germany, but in 1915 he was sent to the United States carrying cultures of glanders, a virulent disease of horses and mules. Dilger set up a laboratory in his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He used stevedores working the docks in Baltimore to infect horses with glanders while they were waiting to be shipped to Britain. Dilger was under suspicion as being a German agent, but was never arrested. Dilger eventually fled to Madrid, Spain, where he died during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. In 1916, the Russians arrested a German agent with similar intentions. Germany and its allies infected French cavalry horses and many of Russia's mules and horses on the Eastern Front. These actions hindered artillery and troop movements, as well as supply convoys. In 1972, police in Chicago arrested two college students, Allen Schwander and Stephen Pera, who had planned to poison the city's water supply with typhoid and other bacteria. Schwander had founded a terrorist group, "R.I.S.E.", while Pera collected and grew cultures from the hospital where he worked. The two men fled to Cuba after being released on bail. Schwander died of natural causes in 1974, while Pera returned to the U.S. in 1975 and was put on probation. In 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the eradication of smallpox, a highly contagious and incurable disease. Although the disease has been eliminated in the wild, frozen stocks of smallpox virus are still maintained by the governments of the United States and Russia. Disastrous consequences are feared if rogue politicians or terrorists were to get hold of the smallpox strains. Since vaccination programs are now terminated, the world population is more susceptible to smallpox than ever before. In Oregon in 1984, followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh attempted to control a local election by incapacitating the local population. They infected salad bars in 11 restaurants, produce in grocery stores, doorknobs, and other public domains with Salmonella typhimurium bacteria in the city of The Dalles, Oregon. The attack infected 751 people with severe food poisoning. There were no fatalities. This incident was the first known bioterrorist attack in the United States in the 20th century. It was also the single largest bioterrorism attack on U.S. soil. In June 1993, the religious group Aum Shinrikyo released anthrax in Tokyo. Eyewitnesses reported a foul odor. The attack was a failure, because it did not infect a single person. The reason for this is due to the fact that the group used the vaccine strain of the bacterium. The spores which were recovered from the site of the attack showed that they were identical to an anthrax vaccine strain that was given to animals at the time. These vaccine strains are missing the genes that cause a symptomatic response. In September and October 2001, several cases of anthrax broke out in the United States, apparently deliberately caused. Letters laced with infectious anthrax were concurrently delivered to news media offices and the U.S Congress, alongside an ambiguously related case in Chile. The letters killed five people. Scenarios There are multiple considerable scenarios, how terrorists might employ biological agents. In 2000, tests conducted by various US agencies showed that indoor attacks in densely populated spaces are much more serious than outdoor attacks. Such enclosed spaces are large buildings, trains, indoor arenas, theaters, malls, tunnels and similar. Contra-measures against such scenarios are building architecture and ventilation systems engineering. In 1993, sewage was spilled out into a river, subsequently drawn into the water system and affected 400,000 people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The disease-causing organism was cryptosporidium parvum. This man-made disaster can be a template for a terrorist scenario. Nevertheless, terrorist scenarios are considered more likely near the points of delivery than at the water sources before the water treatment. Release of biological agents is more likely for a single building or a neighborhood. Counter-measures against this scenario include the further limitation of access to the water supply systems, tunnels, and infrastructure. Agricultural crop-duster flights might be misused as delivery devices for biological agents as well. Counter-measures against this scenario are background checks of employees of crop-dusting companies and surveillance procedures. In the most common hoax scenario, no biological agents are employed. For instance, an envelope with powder in it that says, “You've just been exposed to anthrax.” Such hoaxes have been shown to have a large psychological impact on the population. Anti-agriculture attacks are considered to require relatively little expertise and technology. Biological agents that attack livestock, fish, vegetation, and crops are mostly not contagious to humans and are therefore easier for attackers to handle. Even a few cases of infection can disrupt a country's agricultural production and exports for months, as evidenced by FMD outbreaks. Types of agents Under current United States law, bio-agents which have been declared by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or the U.S. Department of Agriculture to have the "potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety" are officially defined as "select agents." The CDC categorizes these agents (A, B or C) and administers the Select Agent Program, which regulates the laboratories which may possess, use, or transfer select agents within the United States. As with US attempts to categorize harmful recreational drugs, designer viruses are not yet categorized and avian H5N1 has been shown to achieve high mortality and human-communication in a laboratory setting. Category A These high-priority agents pose a risk to national security, can be easily transmitted and disseminated, result in high mortality, have potential major public health impact, may cause public panic, or require special action for public health preparedness. SARS, though not as lethal as other diseases, was concerning to scientists and policymakers for its social and economic disruption potential. After the global containment of the pandemic, the United States President George W. Bush stated "...A global influenza pandemic that infects millions and lasts from one to three years could be far worse." Tularemia or "rabbit fever": Tularemia has a very low fatality rate if treated, but can severely incapacitate. The disease is caused by the Francisella tularensis bacterium, and can be contracted through contact with fur, inhalation, ingestion of contaminated water or insect bites. Francisella tularensis is very infectious. A small number of organisms (10–50 or so) can cause disease. If F. tularensis were used as a weapon, the bacteria would likely be made airborne for exposure by inhalation. People who inhale an infectious aerosol would generally experience severe respiratory illness, including life-threatening pneumonia and systemic infection, if they are not treated. The bacteria that cause tularemia occur widely in nature and could be isolated and grown in quantity in a laboratory, although manufacturing an effective aerosol weapon would require considerable sophistication. Anthrax: Anthrax is a non-contagious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis. The ability of Anthrax to produce within small spores, or bacilli bacterium, makes it readily permeable to porous skin and can cause abrupt symptoms within 24 hours of exposure. The dispersal of this pathogen among densely populated areas is said to carry less than one percent mortality rate, for cutaneous exposure, to a ninety percent or higher mortality for untreated inhalational infections. An anthrax vaccine does exist but requires many injections for stable use. When discovered early, anthrax can be cured by administering antibiotics (such as ciprofloxacin). Its first modern incidence in biological warfare were when Scandinavian "freedom fighters" supplied by the German General Staff used anthrax with unknown results against the Imperial Russian Army in Finland in 1916. In 1993, the Aum Shinrikyo used anthrax in an unsuccessful attempt in Tokyo with zero fatalities. Anthrax was used in a series of attacks by a microbiologist at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infection Disease on the offices of several United States Senators in late 2001. The anthrax was in a powder form and it was delivered by the mail. This bioterrorist attack inevitably prompted seven cases of cutaneous anthrax and eleven cases of inhalation anthrax, with five leading to deaths. Additionally, an estimated 10 to 26 cases had prevented fatality through treatment supplied to over 30,000 individuals. Anthrax is one of the few biological agents that federal employees have been vaccinated for. In the US an anthrax vaccine, Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed (AVA) exists and requires five injections for stable use. Other anthrax vaccines also exist. The strain used in the 2001 anthrax attacks was identical to the strain used by the USAMRIID. Smallpox: Smallpox is a highly contagious virus. It is transmitted easily through the atmosphere and has a high mortality rate (20–40%). Smallpox was eradicated in the world in the 1970s, thanks to a worldwide vaccination program. However, some virus samples are still available in Russian and American laboratories. Some believe that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, cultures of smallpox have become available in other countries. Although people born pre-1970 will have been vaccinated for smallpox under the WHO program, the effectiveness of vaccination is limited since the vaccine provides high level of immunity for only 3 to 5 years. Revaccination's protection lasts longer. As a biological weapon smallpox is dangerous because of the highly contagious nature of both the infected and their pox. Also, the infrequency with which vaccines are administered among the general population since the eradication of the disease would leave most people unprotected in the event of an outbreak. Smallpox occurs only in humans, and has no external hosts or vectors. Botulinum toxin: The neurotoxin Botulinum is the deadliest toxin known to man, and is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Botulism causes death by respiratory failure and paralysis. Furthermore, the toxin is readily available worldwide due to its cosmetic applications in injections. Bubonic plague: Plague is a disease caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Rodents are the normal host of plague, and the disease is transmitted to humans by flea bites and occasionally by aerosol in the form of pneumonic plague. The disease has a history of use in biological warfare dating back many centuries, and is considered a threat due to its ease of culture and ability to remain in circulation among local rodents for a long period of time. The weaponized threat comes mainly in the form of pneumonic plague (infection by inhalation) It was the disease that caused the Black Death in Medieval Europe. Viral hemorrhagic fevers: This includes hemorrhagic fevers caused by members of the family Filoviridae (Marburg virus and Ebola virus), and by the family Arenaviridae (for example Lassa virus and Machupo virus). Ebola virus disease, in particular, has caused high fatality rates ranging from 25 to 90% with a 50% average. No cure currently exists, although vaccines are in development. The Soviet Union investigated the use of filoviruses for biological warfare, and the Aum Shinrikyo group unsuccessfully attempted to obtain cultures of Ebola virus. Death from Ebola virus disease is commonly due to multiple organ failure and hypovolemic shock. Marburg virus was first discovered in Marburg, Germany. No treatments currently exist aside from supportive care. The arenaviruses have a somewhat reduced case-fatality rate compared to disease caused by filoviruses, but are more widely distributed, chiefly in central Africa and South America. Category B Category B agents are moderately easy to disseminate and have low mortality rates. Brucellosis (Brucella species) Epsilon toxin of Clostridium perfringens Food safety threats (for example, Salmonella species, E coli O157:H7, Shigella, Staphylococcus aureus) Glanders (Burkholderia mallei) Melioidosis (Burkholderia pseudomallei) Psittacosis (Chlamydia psittaci) Q fever (Coxiella burnetii) Ricin toxin from Ricinus communis (castor beans) Abrin toxin from Abrus precatorius (Rosary peas) Staphylococcal enterotoxin B Typhus (Rickettsia prowazekii) Viral encephalitis (alphaviruses, for example,: Venezuelan equine encephalitis, eastern equine encephalitis, western equine encephalitis) Water supply threats (for example, Vibrio cholerae, Cryptosporidium parvum) Category C Category C agents are emerging pathogens that might be engineered for mass dissemination because of their availability, ease of production and dissemination, high mortality rate, or ability to cause a major health impact. Nipah virus Hantavirus Planning and response Planning may involve the development of biological identification systems. Until recently in the United States, most biological defense strategies have been geared to protecting soldiers on the battlefield rather than ordinary people in cities. Financial cutbacks have limited the tracking of disease outbreaks. Some outbreaks, such as food poisoning due to E. coli or Salmonella, could be of either natural or deliberate origin. Preparedness Export controls on biological agents are not applied uniformly, providing terrorists a route for acquisition. Laboratories are working on advanced detection systems to provide early warning, identify contaminated areas and populations at risk, and to facilitate prompt treatment. Methods for predicting the use of biological agents in urban areas as well as assessing the area for the hazards associated with a biological attack are being established in major cities. In addition, forensic technologies are working on identifying biological agents, their geographical origins and/or their initial source. Efforts include decontamination technologies to restore facilities without causing additional environmental concerns. Early detection and rapid response to bioterrorism depend on close cooperation between public health authorities and law enforcement; however, such cooperation is lacking. National detection assets and vaccine stockpiles are not useful if local and state officials do not have access to them. Aspects of protection against bioterrorism in the United States include: Detection and resilience strategies in combating bioterrorism. This occurs primarily through the efforts of the Office of Health Affairs (OHA), a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), whose role is to prepare for an emergency situation that impacts the health of the American populace. Detection has two primary technological factors. First there is OHA's BioWatch program in which collection devices are disseminated to thirty high risk areas throughout the country to detect the presence of aerosolized biological agents before symptoms present in patients. This is significant primarily because it allows a more proactive response to a disease outbreak rather than the more passive treatment of the past. Implementation of the Generation-3 automated detection system. This advancement is significant simply because it enables action to be taken in four to six hours due to its automatic response system, whereas the previous system required aerosol detectors to be manually transported to laboratories. Resilience is a multifaceted issue as well, as addressed by OHA. One way in which this is ensured is through exercises that establish preparedness; programs like the Anthrax Response Exercise Series exist to ensure that, regardless of the incident, all emergency personnel will be aware of the role they must fill. Moreover, by providing information and education to public leaders, emergency medical services and all employees of the DHS, OHS suggests it can significantly decrease the impact of bioterrorism. Enhancing the technological capabilities of first responders is accomplished through numerous strategies. The first of these strategies was developed by the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) of DHS to ensure that the danger of suspicious powders could be effectively assessed, (as many dangerous biological agents such as anthrax exist as a white powder). By testing the accuracy and specificity of commercially available systems used by first responders, the hope is that all biologically harmful powders can be rendered ineffective. Enhanced equipment for first responders. One recent advancement is the commercialization of a new form of Tyvex™ armor which protects first responders and patients from chemical and biological contaminants. There has also been a new generation of Self-Contained Breathing Apparatuses (SCBA) which has been recently made more robust against bioterrorism agents. All of these technologies combine to form what seems like a relatively strong deterrent to bioterrorism. However, New York City as an entity has numerous organizations and strategies that effectively serve to deter and respond to bioterrorism as it comes. From here the logical progression is into the realm of New York City's specific strategies to prevent bioterrorism. Excelsior Challenge. In the second week of September 2016, the state of New York held a large emergency response training exercise called the Excelsior Challenge, with over 100 emergency responders participating. According to WKTV, "This is the fourth year of the Excelsior Challenge, a training exercise designed for police and first responders to become familiar with techniques and practices should a real incident occur." The event was held over three days and hosted by the State Preparedness Training Center in Oriskany, New York. Participants included bomb squads, canine handlers, tactical team officers and emergency medical services. In an interview with Homeland Preparedness News, Bob Stallman, assistant director at the New York State Preparedness Training Center, said, "We're constantly seeing what’s happening around the world and we tailor our training courses and events for those types of real-world events." For the first time, the 2016 training program implemented New York's new electronic system. The system, called NY Responds, electronically connects every county in New York to aid in disaster response and recovery. As a result, "counties have access to a new technology known as Mutualink, which improves interoperability by integrating telephone, radio, video, and file-sharing into one application to allow local emergency staff to share real-time information with the state and other counties." The State Preparedness Training Center in Oriskany was designed by the State Division of Homeland Security, and Emergency Services (DHSES) in 2006. It cost $42 million to construct on over 1100 acres and is available for training 360 days a year. Students from SUNY Albany's College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, were able to participate in this year's exercise and learn how "DHSES supports law enforcement specialty teams." Project BioShield. The accrual of vaccines and treatments for potential biological threats, also known as medical countermeasures has been an important aspect in preparing for a potential bioterrorist attack; this took the form of a program beginning in 2004, referred to as Project BioShield. The significance of this program should not be overlooked as “there is currently enough smallpox vaccine to inoculate every United States citizen… and a variety of therapeutic drugs to treat the infected.” The Department of Defense also has a variety of laboratories currently working to increase the quantity and efficacy of countermeasures that comprise the national stockpile. Efforts have also been taken to ensure that these medical countermeasures can be disseminated effectively in the event of a bioterrorist attack. The National Association of Chain Drug Stores championed this cause by encouraging the participation of the private sector in improving the distribution of such countermeasures if required. On a CNN news broadcast in 2011, the CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, weighed in on the American government's recent approach to bioterrorist threats. He explains how, even though the United States would be better fending off bioterrorist attacks now than they would be a decade ago, the amount of money available to fight bioterrorism over the last three years has begun to decrease. Looking at a detailed report that examined the funding decrease for bioterrorism in fifty-one American cities, Dr. Gupta stated that the cities "wouldn’t be able to distribute vaccines as well" and "wouldn't be able to track viruses." He also said that film portrayals of global pandemics, such as Contagion, were actually quite possible and may occur in the United States under the right conditions. A news broadcast by MSNBC in 2010 also stressed the low levels of bioterrorism preparedness in the United States. The broadcast stated that a bipartisan report gave the Obama administration a failing grade for its efforts to respond to a bioterrorist attack. The news broadcast invited the former New York City police commissioner, Howard Safir, to explain how the government would fare in combating such an attack. He said how "biological and chemical weapons are probable and relatively easy to disperse." Furthermore, Safir thought that efficiency in bioterrorism preparedness is not necessarily a question of money, but is instead dependent on putting resources in the right places. The broadcast suggested that the nation was not ready for something more serious. In a September 2016 interview conducted by Homeland Preparedness News, Daniel Gerstein, a senior policy researcher for the RAND Corporation, stresses the importance in preparing for potential bioterrorist attacks on the nation. He implored the U.S. government to take the proper and necessary actions to implement a strategic plan of action to save as many lives as possible and to safeguard against potential chaos and confusion. He believes that because there have been no significant instances of bioterrorism since the anthrax attacks in 2001, the government has allowed itself to become complacent making the country that much more vulnerable to unsuspecting attacks, thereby further endangering the lives of U.S. citizens. Gerstein formerly served in the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security from 2011 to 2014. He claims there has not been a serious plan of action since 2004 during George W. Bush's presidency, in which he issued a Homeland Security directive delegating responsibilities among various federal agencies. He also stated that the blatant mishandling of the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014 attested to the government's lack of preparation. This past May, legislation that would create a national defense strategy was introduced in the Senate, coinciding with the timing of ISIS-affiliated terrorist groups get closer to weaponizing biological agents. In May, 2016, Kenyan officials apprehended two members of an Islamic extremist group in motion to set off a biological bomb containing anthrax. Mohammed Abdi Ali, the believed leader of the group, who was a medical intern, was arrested along with his wife, a medical student. The two were caught just before carrying out their plan. The Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, which comprises a group of experts on national security and government officials, in which Gerstein had previously testified to, submitted its National Blueprint for Biodefense to Congress in October 2015 listing their recommendations for devising an effective plan. Bill Gates said in a February 18, 2017 Business Insider op-ed (published near the time of his Munich Security Conference speech) that it is possible for an airborne pathogen to kill at least 30 million people over the course of a year. In a New York Times report, the Gates Foundation predicted that a modern outbreak similar to the Spanish Influenza pandemic (which killed between 50 million and 100 million people) could end up killing more than 360 million people worldwide, even considering widespread availability of vaccines and other healthcare tools. The report cited increased globalization, rapid international air travel, and urbanization as increased reasons for concern. In a March 9, 2017 interview with CNBC, former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who was co-chair of the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, said a worldwide pandemic could end the lives of more people than a nuclear war. Lieberman also expressed worry that a terrorist group like ISIS could develop a synthetic influenza strain and introduce it to the world to kill civilians. In July 2017, Robert C. Hutchinson, former agent at the Department of Homeland Security, called for a "whole-of-government" response to the next global health threat, which he described as including strict security procedures at our borders and proper execution of government preparedness plans. Also, novel approaches in biotechnology, such as synthetic biology, could be used in the future to design new types of biological warfare agents. Special attention has to be laid on future experiments (of concern) that: Would demonstrate how to render a vaccine ineffective; Would confer resistance to therapeutically useful antibiotics or antiviral agents; Would enhance the virulence of a pathogen or render a nonpathogen virulent; Would increase transmissibility of a pathogen; Would alter the host range of a pathogen; Would enable the evasion of diagnostic/detection tools; Would enable the weaponization of a biological agent or toxin Most of the biosecurity concerns in synthetic biology, however, are focused on the role of DNA synthesis and the risk of producing genetic material of lethal viruses (e.g. 1918 Spanish flu, polio) in the lab. The CRISPR/Cas system has emerged as a promising technique for gene editing. It was hailed by The Washington Post as "the most important innovation in the synthetic biology space in nearly 30 years." While other methods take months or years to edit gene sequences, CRISPR speeds that time up to weeks. However, due to its ease of use and accessibility, it has raised a number of ethical concerns, especially surrounding its use in the biohacking space. Biosurveillance In 1999, the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biomedical Informatics deployed the first automated bioterrorism detection system, called RODS (Real-Time Outbreak Disease Surveillance). RODS is designed to collect data from many data sources and use them to perform signal detection, that is, to detect a possible bioterrorism event at the earliest possible moment. RODS, and other systems like it, collect data from sources including clinic data, laboratory data, and data from over-the-counter drug sales. In 2000, Michael Wagner, the codirector of the RODS laboratory, and Ron Aryel, a subcontractor, conceived the idea of obtaining live data feeds from "non-traditional" (non-health-care) data sources. The RODS laboratory's first efforts eventually led to the establishment of the National Retail Data Monitor, a system which collects data from 20,000 retail locations nationwide. On February 5, 2002, George W. Bush visited the RODS laboratory and used it as a model for a $300 million spending proposal to equip all 50 states with biosurveillance systems. In a speech delivered at the nearby Masonic temple, Bush compared the RODS system to a modern "DEW" line (referring to the Cold War ballistic missile early warning system). The principles and practices of biosurveillance, a new interdisciplinary science, were defined and described in the Handbook of Biosurveillance, edited by Michael Wagner, Andrew Moore and Ron Aryel, and published in 2006. Biosurveillance is the science of real-time disease outbreak detection. Its principles apply to both natural and man-made epidemics (bioterrorism). Data which potentially could assist in early detection of a bioterrorism event include many categories of information. Health-related data such as that from hospital computer systems, clinical laboratories, electronic health record systems, medical examiner record-keeping systems, 911 call center computers, and veterinary medical record systems could be of help; researchers are also considering the utility of data generated by ranching and feedlot operations, food processors, drinking water systems, school attendance recording, and physiologic monitors, among others. In Europe, disease surveillance is beginning to be organized on the continent-wide scale needed to track a biological emergency. The system not only monitors infected persons, but attempts to discern the origin of the outbreak. Researchers have experimented with devices to detect the existence of a threat: Tiny electronic chips that would contain living nerve cells to warn of the presence of bacterial toxins (identification of broad range toxins) Fiber-optic tubes lined with antibodies coupled to light-emitting molecules (identification of specific pathogens, such as anthrax, botulinum, ricin) Some research shows that ultraviolet avalanche photodiodes offer the high gain, reliability and robustness needed to detect anthrax and other bioterrorism agents in the air. The fabrication methods and device characteristics were described at the 50th Electronic Materials Conference in Santa Barbara on June 25, 2008. Details of the photodiodes were also published in the February 14, 2008 issue of the journal Electronics Letters and the November 2007 issue of the journal IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. The United States Department of Defense conducts global biosurveillance through several programs, including the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System. Another powerful tool developed within New York City for use in countering bioterrorism is the development of the New York City Syndromic Surveillance System. This system is essentially a way of tracking disease progression throughout New York City, and was developed by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The system works by tracking the symptoms of those taken into the emergency department—based on the location of the hospital to which they are taken and their home address—and assessing any patterns in symptoms. These established trends can then be observed by medical epidemiologists to determine if there are any disease outbreaks in any particular locales; maps of disease prevalence can then be created rather easily. This is an obviously beneficial tool in fighting bioterrorism as it provides a means through which such attacks could be discovered in their nascence; assuming bioterrorist attacks result in similar symptoms across the board, this strategy allows New York City to respond immediately to any bioterrorist threats that they may face with some level of alacrity. Response to bioterrorism incident or threat Government agencies which would be called on to respond to a bioterrorism incident would include law enforcement, hazardous materials and decontamination units, and emergency medical units, if available. The US military has specialized units, which can respond to a bioterrorism event; among them are the United States Marine Corps' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force and the U.S. Army's 20th Support Command (CBRNE), which can detect, identify, and neutralize threats, and decontaminate victims exposed to bioterror agents. US response would include the Centers for Disease Control. Historically, governments and authorities have relied on quarantines to protect their populations. International bodies such as the World Health Organization already devote some of their resources to monitoring epidemics and have served clearing-house roles in historical epidemics. Media attention toward the seriousness of biological attacks increased in 2013 to 2014. In July 2013, Forbes published an article with the title "Bioterrorism: A Dirty Little Threat With Huge Potential Consequences." In November 2013, Fox News reported on a new strain of botulism, saying that the Centers for Disease and Control lists botulism as one of two agents that have "the highest risks of mortality and morbidity", noting that there is no antidote for botulism. USA Today reported that the U.S. military in November was trying to develop a vaccine for troops from the bacteria that cause the disease Q fever, an agent the military once used as a biological weapon. In February 2014, the former special assistant and senior director for biodefense policy to President George W. Bush called the bioterrorism risk imminent and uncertain and Congressman Bill Pascrell called for increasing federal measures against bioterrorism as a "matter of life or death." The New York Times wrote a story saying the United States would spend $40 million to help certain low and middle-income countries deal with the threats of bioterrorism and infectious diseases. Bill Gates has warned that bioterrorism could kill more people than nuclear war. In February 2018, a CNN employee discovered on an airplane a "sensitive, top-secret document in the seatback pouch explaining how the Department of Homeland Security would respond to a bioterrorism attack at the Super Bowl." 2017 U.S. budget proposal affecting bioterrorism programs President Donald Trump promoted his first budget around keeping America safe. However, one aspect of defense would receive less money: "protecting the nation from deadly pathogens, man-made or natural," according to The New York Times. Agencies tasked with biosecurity get a decrease in funding under the Administration's budget proposal. For example: The Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response would be cut by $136 million, or 9.7 percent. The office tracks outbreaks of disease. The National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases would be cut by $65 million, or 11 percent. The center is a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that fights threats like anthrax and the Ebola virus, and additionally towards research on HIV/AIDS vaccines. Within the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) would lose 18 percent of its budget. NIAID oversees responses to Zika, Ebola and HIV/AIDS vaccine research. "The next weapon of mass destruction may not be a bomb," Lawrence O. Gostin, the director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, told The New York Times''. "It may be a tiny pathogen that you can't see, smell or taste, and by the time we discover it, it'll be too late." Lack of international standards on public health experiments Tom Inglesy, the CEO and director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an internationally recognized expert on public health preparedness, pandemic and emerging infectious disease said in 2017 that the lack of an internationally standardized approval process that could be used to guide countries in conducting public health experiments for resurrecting a disease that has already been eradicated increases the risk that the disease could be used in bioterrorism. This was in reference to the lab synthesis of horsepox in 2017 by researchers at the University of Alberta. The researchers recreated horsepox, an extinct cousin of the smallpox virus, in order to research new ways to treat cancer. In popular culture Incidents See also Biodefence Biological Weapons Convention Biorisk Biosecurity Project Bacchus Select agent References Bibliography Further reading Resolution 1540 "affirms that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The resolution obliges States, inter alia, to refrain from supporting by any means non-State actors from developing, acquiring, manufacturing, possessing, transporting, transferring or using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery". NOVA: Bioterror Carus, W. Seth Working Paper: Bioterrorism and Biocrimes. The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900, Feb 2001 revision. (Final published version: ) United States Recommended Policy Guidance for Departmental Development of Review Mechanisms for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO). Obama Administration. January 9, 2017. Terrorism by method

Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born in Lubbock, Texas, to a musical family during the Great Depression, and learned to play guitar and sing alongside his siblings. His style was influenced by gospel music, country music, and rhythm and blues acts, which he performed in Lubbock with his friends from high school. He made his first appearance on local television in 1952, and the following year he formed the group "Buddy and Bob" with his friend Bob Montgomery. In 1955, after opening for Elvis Presley, he decided to pursue a career in music. He opened for Presley three times that year; his band's style shifted from country and western to entirely rock and roll. In October that year, when he opened for Bill Haley & His Comets, he was spotted by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall, who helped him get a contract with Decca Records. Holly's recording sessions at Decca were produced by Owen Bradley, who had become famous for producing orchestrated country hits for stars like Patsy Cline. Unhappy with Bradley's musical style and control in the studio, Holly went to producer Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico, and recorded a demo of "That'll Be the Day", among other songs. Petty became the band's manager and sent the demo to Brunswick Records, which released it as a single credited to "The Crickets", which became the name of Holly's band. In September 1957, as the band toured, "That'll Be the Day" topped the US and UK singles charts. Its success was followed in October by another major hit, "Peggy Sue". The album The "Chirping" Crickets, released in November 1957, reached number five on the UK Albums Chart. Holly made his second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in January 1958 and soon after toured Australia and then the UK. In early 1959, he assembled a new band, consisting of future country music star Waylon Jennings (bass), famed session musician Tommy Allsup (guitar), and Carl Bunch (drums), and embarked on a tour of the midwestern U.S. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, he chartered an airplane to travel to his next show, in Moorhead, Minnesota. Soon after takeoff, the plane crashed, killing Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and pilot Roger Peterson in a tragedy later referred to by Don McLean as "The Day the Music Died" in his song "American Pie". During his short career, Holly wrote and recorded many songs. He is often regarded as the artist who defined the traditional rock-and-roll lineup of two guitars, bass, and drums. He was a major influence on later popular music artists, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Hollies (who named themselves in his honor), Elvis Costello, Dave Edmunds, Marshall Crenshaw (who later played Holly), and Elton John. He was among the first artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1986. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 13 in its list of "100 Greatest Artists". Life and career Early life and career (1936–1955) Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley (spelled "-ey") on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas, the fourth child of Lawrence Odell "L.O." Holley (1901–1985) and Ella Pauline Drake (1902–1990). His elder siblings were Larry (born in 1925), Travis (1927–2016), and Patricia Lou (1929–2008). Buddy Holly was of mostly English and Welsh descent, and had small amounts of Native American ancestry as well. From early childhood, he was nicknamed "Buddy." During the Great Depression, the Holleys frequently moved residence within Lubbock; L.O. changed jobs several times. Buddy Holly was baptized a Baptist, and the family were members of the Tabernacle Baptist Church. The Holleys had an interest in music; all the family members except L.O. were able to play an instrument or sing. The elder Holley brothers performed in local talent shows; on one occasion, Buddy joined them on violin. Since he could not play it, his brother Larry greased the strings so it would not make any sound. The brothers won the contest. During World War II, Larry and Travis were called to military service. Upon his return, Larry brought with him a guitar he had bought from a shipmate while serving in the Pacific. At age 11, Buddy took piano lessons but abandoned them after nine months. He switched to the guitar after he saw a classmate playing and singing on the school bus. Buddy's parents initially bought him a steel guitar, but he insisted that he wanted a guitar like his brother's. His parents bought the guitar from a pawnshop, and Travis taught him to play it. During his early childhood, Holly was influenced by the music of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow, Bob Wills, and the Carter Family. At Roscoe Wilson Elementary, he became friends with Bob Montgomery, and the two played together, practicing with songs by the Louvin Brothers and Johnnie & Jack. They both listened to the radio programs Grand Ole Opry on WSM, Louisiana Hayride on KWKH, and Big D Jamboree. At the same time, Holly played with other musicians he met in high school, including Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison. In 1952 Holly and Jack Neal participated as a duo billed as "Buddy and Jack" in a talent contest on a local television show. After Neal left, he was replaced by Bob Montgomery and they were billed as "Buddy and Bob." The two soon started performing on the Sunday Party show on KDAV in 1953 and performed live gigs in Lubbock. At that time, Holley was influenced by late-night radio stations that played blues and rhythm and blues (R&B). Holly would sit in his car with Curtis and tune to distant radio stations that could only be received at night, when local transmissions ceased. Holly then modified his music by blending his earlier country and western (C&W) influence with R & B. By 1955, after graduating from Lubbock High School, Holly decided to pursue a full-time career in music. He was further encouraged after seeing Elvis Presley performing live in Lubbock, whose act was booked by Pappy Dave Stone of KDAV. In February, he opened for Presley at the Fair Park Coliseum, in April at the Cotton Club, and again in June at the Coliseum. By that time, he had incorporated into his band Larry Welborn on the stand-up bass and Allison on drums, as his style shifted from C&W to rock and roll due to seeing Presley's performances and hearing his music. In October, Stone booked Bill Haley & His Comets and placed Holley as the opening act to be seen by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall. Impressed, Crandall persuaded Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny to seek a recording contract for Holley. Stone sent a demo tape, which Denny forwarded to Paul Cohen, who signed the band to Decca Records in February 1956. In the contract, Decca misspelled Holly's surname as "Holly," and from then on he was known as "Buddy Holly," instead of the real name "Holley." On January 26, 1956, Holly attended his first formal recording session, which was produced by Owen Bradley. He attended two more sessions in Nashville, but with the producer selecting the session musicians and arrangements, Holly became increasingly frustrated by his lack of creative control. In April 1956, Decca released "Blue Days, Black Nights" as a single, with "Love Me" on the B-side. Denny included Holly on a tour as the opening act for Faron Young. During the tour, they were promoted as "Buddy Holly and the Two Tones," while later Decca called them "Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes." The label later released Holly's second single "Modern Don Juan," backed with "You Are My One Desire." Neither single made an impression. On January 22, 1957, Decca informed Holly his contract would not be renewed, but insisted he could not record the same songs for anyone else for five years. The Crickets (1956–1957) Holly was unhappy with the results of his time with Decca; he was inspired by the success of Buddy Knox's "Party Doll" and Jimmy Bowen's "I'm Stickin' with You", and visited Norman Petty, who had produced and promoted both records. Together with Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan, he went to Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico. The group recorded a demo of "That'll Be the Day", a song they had previously recorded in Nashville. Now playing lead guitar, Holly achieved the sound he desired. Petty became his manager and sent the record to Brunswick Records in New York City. Holly, still under contract with Decca, could not release the record under his name, so a band name was used; Allison proposed the name "Crickets". Brunswick gave Holly a basic agreement to release "That'll Be the Day", leaving him with both artistic control and financial responsibility for future recordings. Impressed with the demo, the label's executives released it without recording a new version. "I'm Looking for Someone to Love" was the B-side; the single was credited to the Crickets. Petty and Holly later learned that Brunswick was a subsidiary of Decca, which legally cleared future recordings under the name Buddy Holly. Recordings credited to the Crickets would be released on Brunswick, while the recordings under Holly's name were released on another subsidiary label, Coral Records. Holly concurrently held a recording contract with both labels. "That'll Be the Day" was released on May 27, 1957. Petty booked Holly and the Crickets for a tour with Irvin Feld, who had noticed the band after "That'll Be the Day" appeared on the R&B chart. He booked them for appearances in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and New York City. The band was booked to play at New York's Apollo Theater on August 16–22. During the opening performances, the group did not impress the audience, but they were accepted after they included "Bo Diddley." By the end of their run at the Apollo, "That'll Be the Day" was climbing the charts. Encouraged by the single's success, Petty started to prepare two album releases; a solo album for Holly and another for the Crickets. Holly appeared on American Bandstand, hosted by Dick Clark on ABC, on August 26. Before leaving New York, the band befriended the Everly Brothers. "That'll Be the Day" topped the US "Best Sellers in Stores" chart on September 23 and was number one on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in November. On September 20, Coral released "Peggy Sue", backed with "Everyday", with Holly credited as the performer. By October, "Peggy Sue" had reached number three on Billboard'''s pop chart and number two on the R&B chart; it peaked at number six on the UK Singles chart. As the success of the song grew, it brought more attention to Holly, with the band at the time being billed as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets" (although never on records during Holly's lifetime; the record labels identified the band as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets" beginning in 1962). In the last week of September, the band members flew to Lubbock to visit their families. Holly's high school girlfriend, Echo McGuire, had left him for a fellow student. Aside from McGuire, Holly had a relationship with Lubbock fan June Clark. After Clark ended their relationship, Holly realized the importance of his relationship with McGuire and considered his relationship with Clark a temporary one. Meanwhile, for their return to recording, Petty arranged a session in Oklahoma City, where he was performing with his own band. While the band drove to the location, the producer set up a makeshift studio. The rest of the songs needed for an album and singles were recorded; Petty later dubbed the material in Clovis. The resulting album, The "Chirping" Crickets, was released on November 27, 1957. It reached number five on the UK Albums Chart. In October, Brunswick released the second single by the Crickets, "Oh, Boy!", with "Not Fade Away" on the B-side. The single reached number 10 on the pop chart and 13 on the R&B chart. Holly and the Crickets performed "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue" on The Ed Sullivan Show on December 1, 1957. Following the appearance, Niki Sullivan left the group because he was tired of the intensive touring, and he wanted to resume his education. On December 29 Holly and the Crickets performed "Peggy Sue" on The Arthur Murray Party. International tours and split (1958) On January 8, 1958, Holly and the Crickets joined America's Greatest Teenage Recording Stars tour. On January 25, Holly recorded "Rave On"; the next day, he made his second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, singing "Oh, Boy!" He departed to perform in Honolulu, Hawaii, on January 27, and then started a week-long tour of Australia billed as the Big Show with Paul Anka, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jodie Sands . In March, the band toured the United Kingdom, playing 50 shows in 25 days. The same month, his debut solo album, Buddy Holly, was released. Upon their return to the United States, Holly and the Crickets joined Alan Freed's Big Beat Show tour for 41 dates. In April, Decca released That'll Be the Day, featuring the songs recorded with Bradley during his early Nashville sessions. A new recording session in Clovis was arranged in May; Holly hired Tommy Allsup to play lead guitar. The session produced the recordings of "It's So Easy" and "Heartbeat". Holly was impressed by Allsup and invited him to join the Crickets. In June, Holly traveled alone to New York for a solo recording session. Without the Crickets, he chose to be backed by a jazz and R&B band, recording "Now We're One" and Bobby Darin's "Early in the Morning". During a visit to the offices of Peer-Southern, Holly met María Elena Santiago. He asked her out on their first meeting and proposed marriage to her on their first date. The wedding took place on August 15. Holly's manager Norman Petty disapproved of the marriage and advised Holly to keep it secret to avoid upsetting Holly's female fans. Petty's suggestion created friction with Holly, who had also started to question Petty's bookkeeping. The Crickets were also frustrated with Petty, who controlled all of the proceeds earned by the band. Holly and Santiago frequented many of New York's music venues, including the Village Gate, Blue Note, Village Vanguard, and Johnny Johnson's. Santiago later said that Holly was keen to learn fingerstyle flamenco guitar and that he would often visit her aunt's home to play the piano there. Holly planned collaborations between soul singers and rock and roll. He wanted to make an album with Ray Charles and Mahalia Jackson. He also had ambitions to work in film and registered for acting classes with Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. Santiago accompanied Holly on tours. To hide her marriage to Holly, she was presented as the Crickets' secretary. She took care of the laundry and equipment set-up and collected the concert revenues. Santiago kept the money for the band instead of their habitual transfer to Petty in New Mexico. She and her aunt Provi Garcia, an executive in the Latin American music department at Peer-Southern, convinced Holly that Petty was paying the band's royalties from Coral-Brunswick into his own company's account. Holly planned to retrieve his royalties from Petty and to later fire him as manager and producer. At the recommendation of the Everly Brothers, Holly hired lawyer Harold Orenstein to negotiate his royalties. The problems with Petty were triggered after he was unable to pay Holly. At the time, New York promoter Manny Greenfield reclaimed a large part of Holly's earnings; Greenfield had booked Holly for shows during previous tours. The two had a verbal agreement; Greenfield would obtain 5% of the booking earnings. Greenfield later felt he was also acting as Holly's manager and deserved a higher payment, which Holly refused. Greenfield then sued Holly. Under New York law, because Holly's royalties originated in New York and were directed out of the state, the payments were frozen until the dispute was settled. Petty then could not complete the transfers to Holly, who considered him responsible for the missing profit. In September, Holly returned to Clovis for a new recording session, which yielded "Reminiscing" and "Come Back Baby". During the session, he ventured into producing by recording Lubbock DJ Waylon Jennings. Holly produced the single "Jole Blon" and "When Sin Stops (Love Begins)" for Jennings. Holly became increasingly interested in the New York music, recording, and publishing scene. Holly and Santiago settled in Apartment 4H of the Brevoort Apartments, at 11 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village, where he recorded a series of acoustic songs, including "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" and "What to Do". The inspiration to record the songs is sometimes attributed to the ending of his relationship with McGuire. On October 21, 1958, Holly's final studio session was recorded at the Pythian Temple on West 70th Street (now a luxury condominium). Known by Holly fans as "the string sessions," Holly recorded four songs for Coral in an innovative collaboration with the Dick Jacobs Orchestra, an 18-piece ensemble composed of former members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra including saxophonist Boomie Richman. The four songs recorded during the 3-1/2-hour session were: "True Love Ways" (written by Buddy Holly), "Moondreams" (written by Norman Petty), "Raining in My Heart" (written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant) and "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" (written by Paul Anka). These four songs were the only ones Holly ever recorded in stereo, but only "Raining in My Heart" was released that way (in 1959, on an obscure promotional LP titled Hitsville). All four records otherwise received releases in mono. The original stereo mixes were consulted many years later for compilation albums. Holly ended his association with Petty in December 1958. His band members kept Petty as their manager and split from Holly. The split was amicable and based on logistics: Holly had decided to settle permanently in New York, where the business and publishing offices were, and the Crickets preferred not to leave their home state. Petty was still holding the money from the royalties, forcing Holly to form a new band and return to touring. Winter Dance Party tour and death (1959) Holly vacationed with his wife in Lubbock and visited Jennings's radio station in December 1958. For the start of the Winter Dance Party tour, he assembled a band consisting of Waylon Jennings (electric bass), Tommy Allsup (guitar), and Carl Bunch (drums). Holly and Jennings left for New York City, arriving on January 15, 1959. Jennings stayed at Holly's apartment by Washington Square Park on the days prior to a meeting scheduled at the headquarters of the General Artists Corporation, which organized the tour. They then traveled by train to Chicago to join the rest of the band. The Winter Dance Party tour began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 23, 1959. The amount of travel involved created logistical problems, as the distance between venues had not been considered when scheduling performances. Adding to the problem, the unheated tour buses twice broke down in freezing weather, with dire consequences. Holly's drummer Carl Bunch was hospitalized for frostbite to his toes (suffered while aboard the bus), so Holly decided to seek other transportation. On February 2, before their appearance in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered a four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza airplane for Jennings, Allsup, and himself, from Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa. Holly's idea was to depart following the show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and fly to their next venue, in Moorhead, Minnesota, via Fargo, North Dakota, allowing them time to rest and launder their clothes and avoid a rigorous bus journey. Immediately after the Clear Lake show (which ended just before midnight), Allsup agreed to flip a coin for the seat with Valens. Valens called heads; when he won, he reportedly said, "That's the first time I've ever won anything in my life." Allsup later opened a restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas, called Heads Up. Waylon Jennings voluntarily gave up his seat to J. P. Richardson (the Big Bopper), who had influenza and complained that the tour bus was too cold and uncomfortable for a man of his size. The pilot, Roger Peterson, took off in inclement weather, even though he was not certified to fly by instruments only. Buddy's brother Larry Holley said, "I got the full report from the Civil Aeronautics -- it took me a year to get it, but I got it -- and they had installed a new Sperry gyroscope in the airplane. The Sperry works different than any other gyro. One of them, the background moves and the plane stays like this [stationary], and in the other one the background stays steady and the plane moves, it works just backwards. He [the pilot] could have been reading this backwards... they were going down, they thought they were still climbing." Shortly after 12:55 am on February 3, 1959, Holly, Valens, Richardson, and Peterson were killed instantly when the aircraft crashed into a frozen cornfield five miles northwest of Mason City, Iowa airport shortly after takeoff. The three musicians, who were ejected from the fuselage upon impact, suffered severe head and chest injuries. Holly was 22 years old. Holly's funeral was held on February 7, 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock. The service was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who had presided at the Hollys' wedding just months earlier. The pallbearers were Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, and Sonny Curtis. Some sources say that Phil Everly, one half of The Everly Brothers, was also pallbearer, but he said at one time that he attended the funeral but was not a pallbearer. Waylon Jennings was unable to attend, because of his commitment to the still-touring Winter Dance Party. Holly's body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, in the eastern part of the city. His headstone carries the correct spelling of his surname (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar. Santiago watched the first reports of Holly's death on television. The following day, she claimed, she suffered a miscarriage. Holly's mother, who heard the news on the radio in Lubbock, Texas, screamed and collapsed. Because of Elena's miscarriage, in the months following the accident, the authorities implemented a policy against announcing victims' names until after families are informed. Santiago did not attend the funeral and has never visited the grave site. She later told the Avalanche-Journal, "In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane." Image and style Holly's singing style was characterized by his vocal hiccups and his alternation between his regular voice and falsetto. His "stuttering vocals" were complemented by his percussive guitar playing, solos, stops, bent notes, and rhythm and blues chord progressions. He often strummed downstrokes that were accompanied by Allison's "driving" percussion. Holly bought his first Fender Stratocaster, which became his signature guitar, at Harrod Music in Lubbock for US$249.50. Fender Stratocasters were popular with country musicians; Holly chose it for its loud sound. His "innovative" playing style was characterized by its blending of "chunky rhythm" and "high string lead work". He played his first Stratocaster, a 1954 model, until it was stolen during a tour stop in Michigan in 1957. To replace it, he purchased a 1957 model before a show in Detroit. Holly owned four or five Stratocasters during his career. At the beginning of their music careers, Holly and his band wore business suits. When they met the Everly Brothers, Don Everly took the band to Phil's men's shop in New York City and introduced them to Ivy League clothes. The brothers advised Holly to replace his old-fashioned glasses with horn-rimmed glasses, which had been popularized by Steve Allen. Holly bought a pair of glasses made in Mexico from Lubbock optometrist Dr. J. Davis Armistead. Teenagers in the United States started to request this style of glasses, which were later popularly known as "Buddy Holly glasses". When the plane crashed, the wreckage was strewn across many yards of snow-covered ground. While his other belongings were recovered immediately, there was no record of his signature glasses being found. They were presumed lost until, in March 1980, they were discovered in a Cerro Gordo County courthouse storage area by Sheriff Gerald Allen. They had been found in the spring of 1959, after the snow had melted, and had been given to the sheriff's office. They were placed in an envelope dated April 7, 1959, along with the Big Bopper's watch, a lighter, two pairs of dice and part of another watch, and misplaced when the county moved courthouses. The glasses, missing their lenses, were returned to Santiago a year later, after a legal contest over them with his parents. They are now on display at the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas. Legacy Buddy Holly left behind dozens of unfinished recordings — solo transcriptions of his new compositions, informal jam sessions with bandmates, or tapes demonstrating songs intended for other artists. The most recent recordings, made in Holly's apartment in late 1958, were his last six original songs. In June 1959, Coral Records overdubbed two of them with backing vocals by the Ray Charles Singers and studio musicians in an attempt to simulate the established Crickets sound. The finished tracks became the first posthumous Holly single, "Peggy Sue Got Married"/"Crying, Waiting, Hoping". The new release was successful enough to warrant an album drawing upon the other Holly demos, using the same studio personnel, in January 1960. All six songs were included in The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2 (1960). The demand for Holly records was so great, and Holly had recorded so prolifically, that his record label was able to release new Holly albums and singles for the next 10 years. Norman Petty produced most of these new editions, drawing upon unreleased studio masters, alternate takes, audition tapes, and even amateur recordings (some dating back to 1954 with low-fidelity vocals). The final "new" Buddy Holly album, Giant, was released in 1969; the single chosen from the album was "Love Is Strange". Encyclopædia Britannica stated that Holly "produced some of the most distinctive and influential work in rock music". AllMusic defined him as "the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll". Rolling Stone ranked him number 13 on its list of "100 Greatest Artists". The Telegraph called him a "pioneer and a revolutionary [...] a multidimensional talent [...] (who) co-wrote and performed (songs that) remain as fresh and potent today". The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included Holly among its first class in 1986. On its entry, the Hall of Fame remarked upon the large quantity of material he produced during his short musical career, and said it "made a major and lasting impact on popular music". It called him an "innovator" for writing his own material, his experimentation with double tracking and the use of orchestration; he is also said to have "pioneered and popularized the now-standard" use of two guitars, bass, and drums by rock bands. The Songwriters Hall of Fame also inducted Holly in 1986, and said his contributions "changed the face of Rock 'n' Roll". Holly developed in collaboration with Petty techniques of overdubbing and reverb, while he used innovative instrumentation later implemented by other artists. Holly became "one of the most influential pioneers of rock and roll" who had a "lasting influence" on genre performers of the 1960s. In 1980, Grant Speed sculpted a statue of Holly playing his Fender guitar. This statue is the centerpiece of Lubbock's Walk of Fame, which honors notable people who contributed to Lubbock's musical history. Other memorials to Buddy Holly include a street named in his honor and the Buddy Holly Center, which contains a museum of Holly memorabilia and fine arts gallery. The Center is located on Crickets Avenue, one street east of Buddy Holly Avenue, in a building that previously housed the Fort Worth and Denver South Plains Railway Depot. In 1997, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences gave Holly the Lifetime Achievement Award. Holly was inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2010, Grant Speed's statue was taken down for refurbishment and construction of a new Walk of Fame began. On May 9, 2011, the City of Lubbock held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Buddy and Maria Elena Holly Plaza, the new home of the statue and the Walk of Fame. The same year, a star bearing Holly's name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, commemorating his 75th birthday. Groundbreaking was held on April 20, 2017, for the construction of a new performing arts center in Lubbock, the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, a downtown $153 million project expected to be completed in 2020. Thus far, the private group, the Lubbock Entertainment and Performing Arts Association, has raised or received pledges in the amount of $93 million to underwrite the project. According to a June 2019 article in The New York Times Magazine, "virtually all of Holly's masters were lost" in the 2008 Universal fire. This is disputed by Chad Kassem of Analogue Productions, who claims to have used the master tapes of Holly's first two albums in Analogue Productions reissues of these albums on LP and SACD in 2017. Influence John Lennon and Paul McCartney saw Holly for the first time when he appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The two had recently met and begun their musical association. They studied Holly's records, learned his performance style and lyricism, and based their act around his persona. Inspired by Holly's insect-themed Crickets, they chose to name their band "The Beatles". Lennon and McCartney later cited Holly as one of their main influences. Lennon's band the Quarrymen covered "That'll Be the Day" in their first recording session, in 1958. During breaks in the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9, 1964, Lennon asked CBS coordinator Vince Calandra about Holly's performances; Calandra said Lennon and McCartney repeatedly expressed their appreciation of Holly. The Beatles recorded a close cover of Holly's version of "Words of Love", which was released on their 1964 album Beatles for Sale (in the U.S., in June 1965 on Beatles VI). During the January 1969 recording sessions for their album Let It Be, the Beatles played a slow, impromptu version of "Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues" – which Holly popularized but did not write – with Lennon mimicking Holly's vocal style. Lennon recorded a cover version of "Peggy Sue" on his 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll. McCartney owns the publishing rights to Holly's song catalogue. On January 31, 1959, two nights before Holly's death, 17-year-old Bob Dylan attended Holly's performance in Duluth. Dylan referred to this in his acceptance speech when he received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for Time Out of Mind in 1998: "... when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory and I was three feet away from him ... and he looked at me. And I just have some sort of feeling that he was ... with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way". Mick Jagger saw Holly performing live in Woolwich, London, during a tour of England; Jagger particularly remembered Holly's performance of "Not Fade Away" – a song that also inspired Keith Richards, who modeled his early guitar playing on the track. The Rolling Stones had a hit version of the song in 1964. Richards later said, "[Holly] passed it on via the Beatles and via [the Rolling Stones] ... He's in everybody". Don McLean's popular 1971 ballad "American Pie" was inspired by Holly's death and the day of the plane crash. The song's lyric, which calls the incident "The Day the Music Died", became popularly associated with the crash. McLean's album American Pie is dedicated to Holly. In 2015, McLean wrote, "Buddy Holly would have the same stature musically whether he would have lived or died, because of his accomplishments ... By the time he was 22 years old, he had recorded some 50 tracks, most of which he had written himself ... in my view and the view of many others, a hit ... Buddy Holly and the Crickets were the template for all the rock bands that followed". Elton John was musically influenced by Holly. At age 13, although he did not require them, John started wearing horn-rimmed glasses to imitate Holly. The Clash were also influenced by Holly, and referenced him in their song "If Music Could Talk" from the Sandinista! album. The Chirping Crickets was the first album Eric Clapton ever bought; he later saw Holly on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. In his autobiography, Clapton recounted the first time he saw Holly and his Fender, saying, "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven ... it was like seeing an instrument from outer space and I said to myself: 'That's the future – that's what I want'". The launch of Bobby Vee's successful musical career resulted from Holly's death; Vee was selected to replace Holly on the tour that continued after the plane crash. Holly's profound influence on Vee's singing style can be heard in the songs "Rubber Ball" – the B-side of which was a cover of Holly's "Everyday" – and "Run to Him." The name of the British rock band the Hollies is often claimed as a tribute to Holly; according to the band, they admired Holly, but their name was mainly inspired by sprigs of holly in evidence around Christmas 1962. In an August 24, 1978, interview with Rolling Stone, Bruce Springsteen told Dave Marsh, "I play Buddy Holly every night before I go on; that keeps me honest". The Grateful Dead performed the song "Not Fade Away" in concerts. In 2016, Richard Barone released his album Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s, paying tribute to the new wave of singer-songwriters in the Village during that pivotal, post-Holly era. The album opens with Barone's version of "Learning the Game", one of the final songs written and recorded by Holly at his home in Greenwich Village, a week before his death. Film and musical depictions Holly's life story inspired a Hollywood biographical film, The Buddy Holly Story (1978); its lead actor Gary Busey received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Holly. The film was widely criticized by the rock press, and by Holly's friends and family, for its inaccuracies. This led Paul McCartney (whose MPL Communications by then controlled the publishing rights to Buddy Holly's song catalog) to produce and host his own documentary about Holly in 1985, titled The Real Buddy Holly Story. This video includes interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, Sonny Curtis, Jerry Allison, Holly's family, and McCartney, among others. In 1987, musician Marshall Crenshaw portrayed Buddy Holly in the movie La Bamba, which depicts him performing at the Surf Ballroom and boarding the fatal airplane with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Crenshaw's version of "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" is featured on the La Bamba original motion picture soundtrack.Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story, a jukebox musical depicting Holly's life, opened in 1989. Holly was depicted in a 1989 episode of the science-fiction television program Quantum Leap titled "How the Tess Was Won"; Holly's identity is only revealed at the end of the episode. Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) influences Buddy Holly to change his lyrics from "piggy, suey" to "Peggy Sue", setting up Holly's future hit song. Holly's follow up to that hit song is featured in the 1986 Francis Ford Coppola film Peggy Sue Got Married, in which a 43-year-old mother and housewife facing divorce played by Kathleen Turner is thrust back in time and given the chance to change the course of her life. Steve Buscemi appeared as Holly in a brief cameo as a 1950s-themed restaurant employee in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction, in which he takes Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega's orders (portrayed respectively by Uma Thurman and John Travolta). In 1961 Mike Berry recorded "Tribute to Buddy Holly". In 1985, the German punk band Die Ärzte composed a song centering on Buddy Holly's glasses, titled "Buddy Holly's Brille". In 1998, the post-apocalyptic film Six String Samurai depicted Buddy Holly as a guitar-playing samurai traveling to Las Vegas to become the new king of Nevada after the death of Elvis Presley. Weezer's first top 40 single in the US was titled "Buddy Holly". In 2006, country band, the Dixie Chicks mention Buddy Holly in their song Lubbock or Leave It. Lead singer, Natalie Maines, and Holly share a hometown, Lubbock, Texas. Musician Richard Barone recorded one of Buddy Holly's Greenwich Village demos, "Learning the Game" on his 2016 album Sorrows & Promises. In concert, Barone speaks of the importance of Holly's presence in the Village at the end of 1950s, speculating that had he lived, Holly would have expedited the folk rock and singer-songwriter movements that emerged in the mid-1960s. Discography The Crickets The "Chirping" Crickets (1957) Solo Buddy Holly (1958) That'll Be the Day (1958) References Sources Further reading Bustard, Anne (2005). Buddy: The Story of Buddy Holly. Simon & Schuster. . Comentale, Edward P. (2013). Chapter Five. Sweet Air: Modernism, Regionalism, and American Popular Song. University of Illinois Press. . Dawson, Jim; Leigh, Spencer (1996). Memories of Buddy Holly. Big Nickel Publications. . Gerron, Peggy Sue (2008). Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue?. Togi Entertainment. . Goldrosen, John; Beecher, John (1996). Remembering Buddy: The Definitive Biography. New York: Da Capo Press. . Goldrosen, John (1975). Buddy Holly: His Life and Music. Popular Press. Laing, Dave (1971–2010). Buddy Holly (Icons of Pop Music). Indiana University Press. . Mann, Alan (1996). The A-Z of Buddy Holly. Aurum Press (2nd edition). or 978–1854104335. McFadden, Hugh (2005). Elegy for Charles Hardin Holley, in Elegies & Epiphanies. Belfast: Lagan Press. Peer, Elizabeth and Ralph II (1972). Buddy Holly: A Biography in Words, Photographs and Music Australia: Peer International. ASIN B000W24DZO. Peters, Richard (1990). The Legend That Is Buddy Holly. Barnes & Noble Books. or 978–0285630055. Rabin, Stanton (2009). OH BOY! The Life and Music of Rock 'n' Roll Pioneer Buddy Holly. Van Winkle Publishing (Kindle). ASIN B0010QBLLG. Tobler, John (1979). The Buddy Holly Story''. Beaufort Books. VH1's Behind the Music "The Day the Music Died" interview with Waylon Jennings External links Buddy Holly news archives at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal Buddy Holly – sessions and cover songs Buddy Holly recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings. 1936 births 1959 deaths 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century American male singers 20th-century American singers Accidental deaths in Iowa American country rock singers American country singer-songwriters American male guitarists American male singer-songwriters American people of English descent American people of Native American descent American people of Welsh descent American rock guitarists American rock singers American rockabilly guitarists American rockabilly musicians Baptists from Texas Brunswick Records artists Coral Records artists Decca Records artists Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Guitarists from Texas Lead guitarists Lubbock High School alumni People from Lubbock, Texas Rock and roll musicians Singer-songwriters from Texas The Crickets members Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1959 Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States Musicians killed in aviation accidents or incidents

Brownian motion, or pedesis (from "leaping"), is the random motion of particles suspended in a medium (a liquid or a gas). This pattern of motion typically consists of random fluctuations in a particle's position inside a fluid sub-domain, followed by a relocation to another sub-domain. Each relocation is followed by more fluctuations within the new closed volume. This pattern describes a fluid at thermal equilibrium, defined by a given temperature. Within such a fluid, there exists no preferential direction of flow (as in transport phenomena). More specifically, the fluid's overall linear and angular momenta remain null over time. The kinetic energies of the molecular Brownian motions, together with those of molecular rotations and vibrations, sum up to the caloric component of a fluid's internal energy (the Equipartition theorem). This motion is named after the botanist Robert Brown, who first described the phenomenon in 1827, while looking through a microscope at pollen of the plant Clarkia pulchella immersed in water. In 1905, almost eighty years later, theoretical physicist Albert Einstein published a paper where he modeled the motion of the pollen particles as being moved by individual water molecules, making one of his first major scientific contributions. The direction of the force of atomic bombardment is constantly changing, and at different times the particle is hit more on one side than another, leading to the seemingly random nature of the motion. This explanation of Brownian motion served as convincing evidence that atoms and molecules exist and was further verified experimentally by Jean Perrin in 1908. Perrin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926 "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter". The many-body interactions that yield the Brownian pattern cannot be solved by a model accounting for every involved molecule. In consequence, only probabilistic models applied to molecular populations can be employed to describe it. Two such models of the statistical mechanics, due to Einstein and Smoluchowski, are presented below. Another, pure probabilistic class of models is the class of the stochastic process models. There exist sequences of both simpler and more complicated stochastic processes which converge (in the limit) to Brownian motion (see random walk and Donsker's theorem). History The Roman philosopher-poet Lucretius' scientific poem "On the Nature of Things" (c. 60 BC) has a remarkable description of the motion of dust particles in verses 113–140 from Book II. He uses this as a proof of the existence of atoms: Although the mingling, tumbling motion of dust particles is caused largely by air currents, the glittering, jiggling motion of small dust particles is caused chiefly by true Brownian dynamics; Lucretius "perfectly describes and explains the Brownian movement by a wrong example". While Jan Ingenhousz described the irregular motion of coal dust particles on the surface of alcohol in 1785, the discovery of this phenomenon is often credited to the botanist Robert Brown in 1827. Brown was studying pollen grains of the plant Clarkia pulchella suspended in water under a microscope when he observed minute particles, ejected by the pollen grains, executing a jittery motion. By repeating the experiment with particles of inorganic matter he was able to rule out that the motion was life-related, although its origin was yet to be explained. The first person to describe the mathematics behind Brownian motion was Thorvald N. Thiele in a paper on the method of least squares published in 1880. This was followed independently by Louis Bachelier in 1900 in his PhD thesis "The theory of speculation", in which he presented a stochastic analysis of the stock and option markets. The Brownian motion model of the stock market is often cited, but Benoit Mandelbrot rejected its applicability to stock price movements in part because these are discontinuous. Albert Einstein (in one of his 1905 papers) and Marian Smoluchowski (1906) brought the solution of the problem to the attention of physicists, and presented it as a way to indirectly confirm the existence of atoms and molecules. Their equations describing Brownian motion were subsequently verified by the experimental work of Jean Baptiste Perrin in 1908. Statistical mechanics theories Einstein's theory There are two parts to Einstein's theory: the first part consists in the formulation of a diffusion equation for Brownian particles, in which the diffusion coefficient is related to the mean squared displacement of a Brownian particle, while the second part consists in relating the diffusion coefficient to measurable physical quantities. In this way Einstein was able to determine the size of atoms, and how many atoms there are in a mole, or the molecular weight in grams, of a gas. In accordance to Avogadro's law, this volume is the same for all ideal gases, which is 22.414 liters at standard temperature and pressure. The number of atoms contained in this volume is referred to as the Avogadro number, and the determination of this number is tantamount to the knowledge of the mass of an atom, since the latter is obtained by dividing the mass of a mole of the gas by the Avogadro constant. The first part of Einstein's argument was to determine how far a Brownian particle travels in a given time interval. Classical mechanics is unable to determine this distance because of the enormous number of bombardments a Brownian particle will undergo, roughly of the order of 1014 collisions per second. He regarded the increment of particle positions in time in a one-dimensional (x) space (with the coordinates chosen so that the origin lies at the initial position of the particle) as a random variable () with some probability density function (i.e., is the probability density for a jump of magnitude , i.e., the probability density of the particle incrementing its position from to in the time interval ). Further, assuming conservation of particle number, he expanded the density (number of particles per unit volume) at time in a Taylor series, where the second equality is by definition of . The integral in the first term is equal to one by the definition of probability, and the second and other even terms (i.e. first and other odd moments) vanish because of space symmetry. What is left gives rise to the following relation: Where the coefficient after the Laplacian, the second moment of probability of displacement , is interpreted as mass diffusivity D: Then the density of Brownian particles ρ at point x at time t satisfies the diffusion equation: Assuming that N particles start from the origin at the initial time t = 0, the diffusion equation has the solution This expression (which is a normal distribution with the mean and variance usually called Brownian motion ) allowed Einstein to calculate the moments directly. The first moment is seen to vanish, meaning that the Brownian particle is equally likely to move to the left as it is to move to the right. The second moment is, however, non-vanishing, being given by This equation expresses the mean squared displacement in terms of the time elapsed and the diffusivity. From this expression Einstein argued that the displacement of a Brownian particle is not proportional to the elapsed time, but rather to its square root. His argument is based on a conceptual switch from the "ensemble" of Brownian particles to the "single" Brownian particle: we can speak of the relative number of particles at a single instant just as well as of the time it takes a Brownian particle to reach a given point. The second part of Einstein's theory relates the diffusion constant to physically measurable quantities, such as the mean squared displacement of a particle in a given time interval. This result enables the experimental determination of Avogadro's number and therefore the size of molecules. Einstein analyzed a dynamic equilibrium being established between opposing forces. The beauty of his argument is that the final result does not depend upon which forces are involved in setting up the dynamic equilibrium. In his original treatment, Einstein considered an osmotic pressure experiment, but the same conclusion can be reached in other ways. Consider, for instance, particles suspended in a viscous fluid in a gravitational field. Gravity tends to make the particles settle, whereas diffusion acts to homogenize them, driving them into regions of smaller concentration. Under the action of gravity, a particle acquires a downward speed of v = μmg, where m is the mass of the particle, g is the acceleration due to gravity, and μ is the particle's mobility in the fluid. George Stokes had shown that the mobility for a spherical particle with radius r is , where η is the dynamic viscosity of the fluid. In a state of dynamic equilibrium, and under the hypothesis of isothermal fluid, the particles are distributed according to the barometric distribution where ρ − ρo is the difference in density of particles separated by a height difference, of , kB is the Boltzmann constant (the ratio of the universal gas constant, R, to the Avogadro constant, N), and T is the absolute temperature. Dynamic equilibrium is established because the more that particles are pulled down by gravity, the greater the tendency for the particles to migrate to regions of lower concentration. The flux is given by Fick's law, where J = ρv. Introducing the formula for ρ, we find that In a state of dynamical equilibrium, this speed must also be equal to v = μmg. Both expressions for v are proportional to mg, reflecting that the derivation is independent of the type of forces considered. Similarly, one can derive an equivalent formula for identical charged particles of charge q in a uniform electric field of magnitude E, where mg is replaced with the electrostatic force qE. Equating these two expressions yields a formula for the diffusivity, independent of mg or qE or other such forces: Here the first equality follows from the first part of Einstein's theory, the third equality follows from the definition of Boltzmann's constant as kB = R / N, and the fourth equality follows from Stokes's formula for the mobility. By measuring the mean squared displacement over a time interval along with the universal gas constant R, the temperature T, the viscosity η, and the particle radius r, the Avogadro constant N can be determined. The type of dynamical equilibrium proposed by Einstein was not new. It had been pointed out previously by J. J. Thomson in his series of lectures at Yale University in May 1903 that the dynamic equilibrium between the velocity generated by a concentration gradient given by Fick's law and the velocity due to the variation of the partial pressure caused when ions are set in motion "gives us a method of determining Avogadro's Constant which is independent of any hypothesis as to the shape or size of molecules, or of the way in which they act upon each other". An identical expression to Einstein's formula for the diffusion coefficient was also found by Walther Nernst in 1888 in which he expressed the diffusion coefficient as the ratio of the osmotic pressure to the ratio of the frictional force and the velocity to which it gives rise. The former was equated to the law of van 't Hoff while the latter was given by Stokes's law. He writes for the diffusion coefficient k, where is the osmotic pressure and k is the ratio of the frictional force to the molecular viscosity which he assumes is given by Stokes's formula for the viscosity. Introducing the ideal gas law per unit volume for the osmotic pressure, the formula becomes identical to that of Einstein's. The use of Stokes's law in Nernst's case, as well as in Einstein and Smoluchowski, is not strictly applicable since it does not apply to the case where the radius of the sphere is small in comparison with the mean free path. At first, the predictions of Einstein's formula were seemingly refuted by a series of experiments by Svedberg in 1906 and 1907, which gave displacements of the particles as 4 to 6 times the predicted value, and by Henri in 1908 who found displacements 3 times greater than Einstein's formula predicted. But Einstein's predictions were finally confirmed in a series of experiments carried out by Chaudesaigues in 1908 and Perrin in 1909. The confirmation of Einstein's theory constituted empirical progress for the kinetic theory of heat. In essence, Einstein showed that the motion can be predicted directly from the kinetic model of thermal equilibrium. The importance of the theory lay in the fact that it confirmed the kinetic theory's account of the second law of thermodynamics as being an essentially statistical law. Smoluchowski model Smoluchowski's theory of Brownian motion starts from the same premise as that of Einstein and derives the same probability distribution ρ(x, t) for the displacement of a Brownian particle along the x in time t. He therefore gets the same expression for the mean squared displacement: . However, when he relates it to a particle of mass m moving at a velocity which is the result of a frictional force governed by Stokes's law, he finds where μ is the viscosity coefficient, and is the radius of the particle. Associating the kinetic energy with the thermal energy RT/N, the expression for the mean squared displacement is 64/27 times that found by Einstein. The fraction 27/64 was commented on by Arnold Sommerfeld in his necrology on Smoluchowski: "The numerical coefficient of Einstein, which differs from Smoluchowski by 27/64 can only be put in doubt." Smoluchowski attempts to answer the question of why a Brownian particle should be displaced by bombardments of smaller particles when the probabilities for striking it in the forward and rear directions are equal. If the probability of m gains and n − m losses follows a binomial distribution, with equal a priori probabilities of 1/2, the mean total gain is If n is large enough so that Stirling's approximation can be used in the form then the expected total gain will be showing that it increases as the square root of the total population. Suppose that a Brownian particle of mass M is surrounded by lighter particles of mass m which are traveling at a speed u. Then, reasons Smoluchowski, in any collision between a surrounding and Brownian particles, the velocity transmitted to the latter will be mu/M. This ratio is of the order of 10−7 cm/s. But we also have to take into consideration that in a gas there will be more than 1016 collisions in a second, and even greater in a liquid where we expect that there will be 1020 collision in one second. Some of these collisions will tend to accelerate the Brownian particle; others will tend to decelerate it. If there is a mean excess of one kind of collision or the other to be of the order of 108 to 1010 collisions in one second, then velocity of the Brownian particle may be anywhere between 10 and 1000 cm/s. Thus, even though there are equal probabilities for forward and backward collisions there will be a net tendency to keep the Brownian particle in motion, just as the ballot theorem predicts. These orders of magnitude are not exact because they don't take into consideration the velocity of the Brownian particle, U, which depends on the collisions that tend to accelerate and decelerate it. The larger U is, the greater will be the collisions that will retard it so that the velocity of a Brownian particle can never increase without limit. Could such a process occur, it would be tantamount to a perpetual motion of the second type. And since equipartition of energy applies, the kinetic energy of the Brownian particle, , will be equal, on the average, to the kinetic energy of the surrounding fluid particle, . In 1906 Smoluchowski published a one-dimensional model to describe a particle undergoing Brownian motion. The model assumes collisions with M ≫ m where M is the test particle's mass and m the mass of one of the individual particles composing the fluid. It is assumed that the particle collisions are confined to one dimension and that it is equally probable for the test particle to be hit from the left as from the right. It is also assumed that every collision always imparts the same magnitude of ΔV. If NR is the number of collisions from the right and NL the number of collisions from the left then after N collisions the particle's velocity will have changed by ΔV(2NR − N). The multiplicity is then simply given by: and the total number of possible states is given by 2N. Therefore, the probability of the particle being hit from the right NR times is: As a result of its simplicity, Smoluchowski's 1D model can only qualitatively describe Brownian motion. For a realistic particle undergoing Brownian motion in a fluid, many of the assumptions don't apply. For example, the assumption that on average occurs an equal number of collisions from the right as from the left falls apart once the particle is in motion. Also, there would be a distribution of different possible ΔVs instead of always just one in a realistic situation. Other physics models using partial differential equations The diffusion equation yields an approximation of the time evolution of the probability density function associated to the position of the particle going under a Brownian movement under the physical definition. The approximation is valid on short timescales. The time evolution of the position of the Brownian particle itself is best described using Langevin equation, an equation which involves a random force field representing the effect of the thermal fluctuations of the solvent on the particle. The displacement of a particle undergoing Brownian motion is obtained by solving the diffusion equation under appropriate boundary conditions and finding the rms of the solution. This shows that the displacement varies as the square root of the time (not linearly), which explains why previous experimental results concerning the velocity of Brownian particles gave nonsensical results. A linear time dependence was incorrectly assumed. At very short time scales, however, the motion of a particle is dominated by its inertia and its displacement will be linearly dependent on time: Δx = vΔt. So the instantaneous velocity of the Brownian motion can be measured as v = Δx/Δt, when Δt << τ, where τ is the momentum relaxation time. In 2010, the instantaneous velocity of a Brownian particle (a glass microsphere trapped in air with optical tweezers) was measured successfully. The velocity data verified the Maxwell–Boltzmann velocity distribution, and the equipartition theorem for a Brownian particle. Astrophysics: star motion within galaxies In stellar dynamics, a massive body (star, black hole, etc.) can experience Brownian motion as it responds to gravitational forces from surrounding stars. The rms velocity V of the massive object, of mass M, is related to the rms velocity of the background stars by where is the mass of the background stars. The gravitational force from the massive object causes nearby stars to move faster than they otherwise would, increasing both and V. The Brownian velocity of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is predicted from this formula to be less than 1 km s−1. Mathematics In mathematics, Brownian motion is described by the Wiener process, a continuous-time stochastic process named in honor of Norbert Wiener. It is one of the best known Lévy processes (càdlàg stochastic processes with stationary independent increments) and occurs frequently in pure and applied mathematics, economics and physics. The Wiener process Wt is characterized by four facts: W0 = 0 Wt is almost surely continuous Wt has independent increments (for ). denotes the normal distribution with expected value μ and variance σ2. The condition that it has independent increments means that if then and are independent random variables. An alternative characterisation of the Wiener process is the so-called Lévy characterisation that says that the Wiener process is an almost surely continuous martingale with W0 = 0 and quadratic variation . A third characterisation is that the Wiener process has a spectral representation as a sine series whose coefficients are independent random variables. This representation can be obtained using the Karhunen–Loève theorem. The Wiener process can be constructed as the scaling limit of a random walk, or other discrete-time stochastic processes with stationary independent increments. This is known as Donsker's theorem. Like the random walk, the Wiener process is recurrent in one or two dimensions (meaning that it returns almost surely to any fixed neighborhood of the origin infinitely often) whereas it is not recurrent in dimensions three and higher. Unlike the random walk, it is scale invariant. The time evolution of the position of the Brownian particle itself can be described approximately by a Langevin equation, an equation which involves a random force field representing the effect of the thermal fluctuations of the solvent on the Brownian particle. On long timescales, the mathematical Brownian motion is well described by a Langevin equation. On small timescales, inertial effects are prevalent in the Langevin equation. However the mathematical Brownian motion is exempt of such inertial effects. Inertial effects have to be considered in the Langevin equation, otherwise the equation becomes singular. so that simply removing the inertia term from this equation would not yield an exact description, but rather a singular behavior in which the particle doesn't move at all. Statistics The Brownian motion can be modeled by a random walk. Random walks in porous media or fractals are anomalous. In the general case, Brownian motion is a non-Markov random process and described by stochastic integral equations. Lévy characterisation The French mathematician Paul Lévy proved the following theorem, which gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a continuous Rn-valued stochastic process X to actually be n-dimensional Brownian motion. Hence, Lévy's condition can actually be used as an alternative definition of Brownian motion. Let X = (X1, ..., Xn) be a continuous stochastic process on a probability space (Ω, Σ, P) taking values in Rn. Then the following are equivalent: X is a Brownian motion with respect to P, i.e., the law of X with respect to P is the same as the law of an n-dimensional Brownian motion, i.e., the push-forward measure X∗(P) is classical Wiener measure on C0([0, +∞); Rn). both X is a martingale with respect to P (and its own natural filtration); and for all 1 ≤ i, j ≤ n, Xi(t)Xj(t) −δijt is a martingale with respect to P (and its own natural filtration), where δij denotes the Kronecker delta. Spectral content The spectral content of a stochastic process can be found from the power spectral density, formally defined as where stands for the expected value. The power spectral density of Brownian motion is found to be where is the diffusion coefficient of . For naturally occurring signals, the spectral content can be found from the power spectral density of a single realization, with finite available time, i.e., which for an individual realization of a Brownian motion trajectory, it is found to have expected value and variance For sufficiently long realization times, the expected value of the power spectrum of a single trajectory converges to the formally defined power spectral density , but its coefficient of variation tends to . This implies the distribution of is broad even in the infinite time limit. Riemannian manifold The infinitesimal generator (and hence characteristic operator) of a Brownian motion on Rn is easily calculated to be ½Δ, where Δ denotes the Laplace operator. In image processing and computer vision, the Laplacian operator has been used for various tasks such as blob and edge detection. This observation is useful in defining Brownian motion on an m-dimensional Riemannian manifold (M, g): a Brownian motion on''' M is defined to be a diffusion on M whose characteristic operator in local coordinates xi, 1 ≤ i ≤ m, is given by ½ΔLB, where ΔLB is the Laplace–Beltrami operator given in local coordinates by where [gij] = [gij]−1 in the sense of the inverse of a square matrix. Narrow escape The narrow escape problem is a ubiquitous problem in biology, biophysics and cellular biology which has the following formulation: a Brownian particle (ion, molecule, or protein) is confined to a bounded domain (a compartment or a cell) by a reflecting boundary, except for a small window through which it can escape. The narrow escape problem is that of calculating the mean escape time. This time diverges as the window shrinks, thus rendering the calculation a singular perturbation problem. See also Brownian bridge: a Brownian motion that is required to "bridge" specified values at specified times Brownian covariance Brownian dynamics Brownian motion of sol particles Brownian motor Brownian noise (Martin Gardner proposed this name for sound generated with random intervals. It is a pun on Brownian motion and white noise.) Brownian ratchet Brownian surface Brownian tree Brownian web Rotational Brownian motion Clinamen Complex system Continuity equation Diffusion equation Geometric Brownian motion Itô diffusion: a generalisation of Brownian motion Langevin equation Lévy arcsine law Local time (mathematics) Many-body problem Marangoni effect Nanoparticle tracking analysis Narrow escape problem Osmosis Random walk Schramm–Loewner evolution Single particle tracking Statistical mechanics Surface diffusion: a type of constrained Brownian motion. Thermal equilibrium Thermodynamic equilibrium Triangulation Sensing Tyndall effect: a phenomenon where particles are involved; used to differentiate between the different types of mixtures. Ultramicroscope References Further reading Also includes a subsequent defense by Brown of his original observations, Additional remarks on active molecules. Lucretius, On The Nature of Things, translated by William Ellery Leonard. (on-line version, from Project Gutenberg. See the heading 'Atomic Motions'; this translation differs slightly from the one quoted). Nelson, Edward, (1967). Dynamical Theories of Brownian Motion. (PDF version of this out-of-print book, from the author's webpage.) This is primarily a mathematical work, but the first four chapters discuss the history of the topic, in the era from Brown to Einstein. See also Perrin's book "Les Atomes" (1914). Theile, T. N. Danish version: "Om Anvendelse af mindste Kvadraters Methode i nogle Tilfælde, hvor en Komplikation af visse Slags uensartede tilfældige Fejlkilder giver Fejlene en 'systematisk' Karakter". French version: "Sur la compensation de quelques erreurs quasi-systématiques par la méthodes de moindre carrés" published simultaneously in Vidensk. Selsk. Skr. 5. Rk., naturvid. og mat. Afd.'', 12:381–408, 1880. External links Einstein on Brownian Motion Discusses history, botany and physics of Brown's original observations, with videos "Einstein's prediction finally witnessed one century later" : a test to observe the velocity of Brownian motion Large-Scale Brownian Motion Demonstration Statistical mechanics Wiener process Fractals Colloidal chemistry Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773) Albert Einstein Articles containing video clips Lévy processes

The Book of Nahum is the seventh book of the 12 minor prophets of the Hebrew Bible. It is attributed to the prophet Nahum, and was probably written in Jerusalem in the 7th century BC. Background Josephus places Nahum during the reign of Jotham, while others place him in the beginning of the reign of Ahaz, Judah's next king, or even the latter half of the reign of Hezekiah, Ahaz's son; all three accounts date the book to the 8th century BC. The book would then have been written in Jerusalem, where Nahum would have witnessed the invasion of Sennacherib and the destruction of his host. The scholarly consensus is that the "book of vision" was written at the time of the fall of Nineveh at the hands of the Medes and Babylonians in 612 BC. This theory is demonstrated by the fact that the oracles must be dated after the Assyrian destruction of Thebes, Egypt in 663 BC, as this event is mentioned in Nahum 3:8. Author Little is known about Nahum's personal history. His name means "comforter", and he was from the town of Elkosh or Alqosh (Nahum 1:1), which scholars have attempted to identify with several cities, including the modern `Alqush of Assyria and Capharnaum of northern Galilee. He was a very nationalistic Hebrew, and lived amongst the Elkoshites in peace. His writings were likely written in about 615 BC, before the downfall of Assyria. Historical context The subject of Nahum's prophecy is the approaching complete and final destruction of Nineveh, the capital of the great and at that time flourishing Assyrian empire. Ashurbanipal was at the height of his glory. Nineveh was a city of vast extent, and was then the center of the civilization and commerce of the world, according to Nahum a "bloody city all full of lies and robbery", a reference to the Neo-Assyrian Empire's military campaigns and demand of tribute and plunder from conquered cities. Jonah had already uttered his message of warning, and Nahum was followed by Zephaniah, who also predicted the destruction of the city. Nineveh was destroyed apparently by fire around 625 BC, and the Assyrian empire came to an end, an event which changed the face of Asia. Archaeological digs have uncovered the splendor of Nineveh in its zenith under Sennacherib (705–681 BC), Esarhaddon (681–669 BC), and Ashurbanipal (669–633 BC). Massive walls were eight miles in circumference. It had a water aqueduct, palaces and a library with 20,000 clay tablets, including accounts of a creation in Enuma Elish and a flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Babylonian chronicle of the fall of Nineveh tells the story of the end of Nineveh. Nabopolassar of Babylon joined forces with Cyaxares, king of the Medes, and laid siege for three months. Assyria lasted a few more years after the loss of its fortress, but attempts by Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II to rally the Assyrians failed due to opposition from king Josiah of Judah, and it seemed to be all over by 609 BC. Overview The Book of Nahum consists of two parts: Chapters two and three describe the fall of Nineveh, which later took place in 612 BC. Nineveh is compared to Thebes, the Egyptian city that Assyria itself had destroyed in 663 BC. Nahum describes the siege and frenzied activity of Nineveh's troops as they try in vain to halt the invaders. Poetically, he becomes a participant in the battle, and with subtle irony, barks battle commands to the defenders. Nahum uses numerous similes and metaphors . Nineveh is ironically compared with a lion, in reference to the lion as an Assyrian symbol of power; Nineveh is the lion of strength that has a den full of dead prey but will become weak like the lion hiding in its den. It comes to conclusion with a taunt song and funeral dirge of the impending destruction of Nineveh and the "sleep" or death of the Assyrian people and demise of the once great Assyrian conqueror-rulers. Themes The fall of Nineveh Nahum's prophecy carries a particular warning to the Ninevites of coming events, although he is partly in favor of the destruction. One might even say that the book of Nahum is "a celebration of the fall of Assyria." And this is not just a warning or speaking positively of the destruction of Nineveh, it is also a positive encouragement and "message of comfort for Israel, Judah, and others who had experienced the "endless cruelty" of the Assyrians." The prophet Jonah shows us where God shows concern for the people of Nineveh, while Nahum's writing testifies to his belief in the righteousness/justice of God and how God dealt with those Assyrians in punishment according to "their cruelty". The Assyrians had been used as God's "rod of […] anger, and the staff in their hand [as] indignation." The nature of God From its opening, Nahum shows God to be slow to anger, but that God will by no means ignore the guilty; God will bring his vengeance and wrath to pass. God is presented as a God who will punish evil, but will protect those who trust in Him. The opening passage states: "God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked". God is strong and will use means, but a mighty God doesn't need anyone else to carry out vengeance and wrath for him. "The LORD is slow to anger and Quick to love; the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunished." "The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him" Importance God's judgement on Nineveh is "all because of the wanton lust of a harlot, alluring, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft." Infidelity, according to the prophets, related to spiritual unfaithfulness. For example: "the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD." John of Patmos used a similar analogy in Revelation chapter 17. The prophecy of Nahum was referenced in the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit. In Tobit 14:4 (NRSV) a dying Tobit says to his son Tobias and Tobias' sons: [My son] hurry off to Media, for I believe the word of God that Nahum spoke about Nineveh, that all these things will take place and overtake Assyria and Nineveh. Indeed, everything that was spoken by the prophets of Israel, whom God sent, will occur. However, some versions, such as the King James Version, refer to the prophet Jonah instead. Discourse The book was introduced in Calvin's Commentary as a complete and finished poem: Nahum, taking words from Moses himself, have shown in a general way what sort of "Being God is". The Reformation theologian Calvin argued, Nahum painted God by which His nature must be seen, and "it is from that most memorable vision, when God appeared to Moses after the breaking of the tables." The book could be seen as an allusion to the history as described by Moses; for the minor Prophets, in promising God's assistance to his people, must often remind how God in a miraculous manner brought up the Jews from Egypt. References External links Unique Pictures Of Nahum Tomb By Kobi Arami Jewish translations: Nachum – Nahum (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org Christian translations: Online Bible at GospelHall.org (ESV, KJV, Darby, American Standard Version, Bible in Basic English) BibleGateway Nahum – King James Version Various versions Commentary This article also contains a section on the Book of Nahum. 7th-century BC books Twelve Minor Prophets

Babrak Karmal (Dari/Pashto , born Sultan Hussein; 6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Afghanistan, serving in the post of General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan for seven years. Born in Kabul Province into a Tajikized family of Kashmiri origin, Karmal attended Kabul University and developed openly leftist views there, having been introduced to Marxism by Mir Akbar Khyber during his imprisonment for activities deemed too radical by the government. He became a founding member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and eventually became the leader of the Parcham faction when the PDPA split in 1967, with their ideological nemesis being the Khalq faction. Karmal was elected to the Lower House after the 1965 parliamentary election, serving in parliament until losing his seat in the 1969 parliamentary election. Under Karmal's leadership, the Parchamite PDPA participated in Mohammad Daoud Khan's rise to power in 1973, and his subsequent regime. While relations were good at the beginning, Daoud began a major purge of leftist influence in the mid-1970s. This in turn led to the reformation of the PDPA in 1977, and Karmal played a role in the 1978 Saur Revolution when the PDPA took power. Karmal was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, synonymous with vice head of state, in the communist government. The Parchamite faction found itself under significant pressure by the Khalqists soon after taking power. In June 1978, a PDPA Central Committee meeting voted in favor of giving the Khalqist faction exclusive control over PDPA policy. This decision was followed by a failed Parchamite coup, after which Hafizullah Amin, a Khalqist, initiated a purge against the Parchamites. Karmal survived this purge but was exiled to Prague and eventually dismissed from his post. Instead of returning to Kabul, he feared for his life and lived with his family in the forests protected by the Czechoslovak secret police StB. The Afghan secret police KHAD had allegedly sent members to Czechoslovakia to assassinate Karmal. In late 1979 he was brought to Moscow by the KGB and eventually, in December 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan (with the consent of Amin's government) to stabilize the country. The Soviet troops staged a coup and assassinated Amin, replacing him with Karmal. Karmal was promoted to Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers on 27 December 1979. He remained in the latter office until 1981, when he was succeeded by Sultan Ali Keshtmand. Throughout his term, Karmal worked to establish a support base for the PDPA by introducing several reforms. Among these were the "Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan", introducing a general amnesty for those people imprisoned during Nur Mohammad Taraki's and Amin's rule. He also replaced the red Khalqist flag with a more traditional one. These policies failed to increase the PDPA's legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people and the Afghan mujahideen rebels - he was widely seen as a Soviet puppet amongst the populace. These policy failures, and the stalemate that ensued after the Soviet intervention, led the Soviet leadership to become highly critical of Karmal's leadership. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union deposed Karmal in 1986 and replaced him with Mohammad Najibullah. Following his loss of power, he was again exiled, this time to Moscow. It was Anahita Ratebzad who persuaded Najibullah to allow Babrak Karmal to return to Afghanistan in 1991, where Karmal became an associate of Abdul Rashid Dostum and possibly helped remove the Najibullah government from power in 1992. He eventually left Afghanistan again for Moscow. Not long after, in 1996, Karmal died from liver cancer. Early life and career Karmal was born Sultan Hussein on 6 January 1929 in Kamari, a village close to Kabul. He was the son of Muhammad Hussein Hashem, a Major General in the Afghan Army and former governor of the province of Paktia, and was the second of five siblings. His family was one of the wealthier families in Kabul. His ethnic background was publicly disputed at the time, with many sources reporting he was a Tajik of Kabul. In 1986, Karmal declared that he and his brother Mahmud Baryalay were Pashtuns as their mother was a linguistically Persianized Pashtun of the Khilji tribe. This declaration was considered to be political as descent comes from the patriarchal line in Afghan society. Karmal's forefathers came to Kabul from Kashmir, and his original name Sultan Hussein (which is associated with Indian Muslims) reinforces his Kashmiri roots. He attended Nejat High School, a German-speaking school, and graduated from it in 1948, and applied to enter the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Kabul University. Karmal's application was initially denied admission to Kabul University because of his student political activist and his openly leftist views. He was always a charismatic speaker and became involved in the student union and the Wikh-i-Zalmayan (Awakened Youth Movement), a progressive and leftist organization. He studied at the College of Law and Political Science at Kabul University from 1951 to 1953. In 1953 Karmal was arrested because of his student union activities, but was released three years later in 1956 in an amnesty by Muhammad Daoud Khan. Shortly after, in 1957, Karmal found work as an English and German translator, before quitting and leaving for military training. Karmal graduated from the College of Law and Political Science in 1960, and in 1961, he found work as an employee in the Compilation and Translation Department of the Ministry of Education. From 1961 to 1963 he worked in the Ministry of Planning. When his mother died, Karmal left with his maternal aunt to live somewhere else. His father disowned him because of his leftist views. Karmal was involved in much debauchery, which was controversial in the mostly conservative Afghan society. Communist politics Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1966 inside parliament, Karmal was physically assaulted by an Islamist MP, Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. The Daoud era Mohammed Daoud Khan, in collaboration with the Parchamite PDPA and radical military officers, overthrew the monarchy and instituted the Republic of Afghanistan in 1973. After Daoud's seizure of power, an American embassy cable stated that the new government had established a Soviet-style Central Committee, in which Karmal and Mir Akbar Khyber were given leading positions. Most ministries were given to Parchamites; Hassan Sharq became Deputy Prime Minister, Major Faiz Mohammad became Minister of Internal Affairs and Niamatullah Pazhwak became Minister of Education. The Parchamites took control over the ministries of finance, agriculture, communications and border affairs. The new government quickly suppressed the opposition, and secured their power base. At first, the National Front government between Daoud and the Parchamites seemed to work. By 1975, Daoud had strengthened his position by enhancing the executive, legislative and judicial powers of the Presidency. To the dismay of the Parchamites, all parties other than the National Revolutionary Party (NRP, established by Daoud) were made illegal. Shortly after the ban on opposition to the NRP, Daoud began a massive purge of Parchamites in government. Mohammad lost his position as interior minister, Abdul Qadir was demoted, and Karmal was put under government surveillance. To mitigate Daoud's suddenly anti-communist directives, the Soviet Union reestablished the PDPA; Taraki was elected its General Secretary and Karmal, Second Secretary. While the Saur Revolution (literally the April Revolution) was planned for August, the assassination of Khyber led to a chain of events which ended with the communists seizing power. Karmal, when taking power in 1979, accused Amin of ordering the assassination of Khyber. Taraki–Amin rule Taraki was appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, retaining his post as PDPA general secretary. Taraki initially formed a government which consisted of both Khalqists and Parchamites; Karmal became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, while Amin became Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.Mohammad Aslam Watanjar became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The two Parchamites Abdul Qadir and Mohammad Rafi, became Minister of Defence and Minister of Public Works, respectively. The appointment of Amin, Karmal and Watanjar led to splits within the Council of Ministers: the Khalqists answered to Amin; Karmal led the civilian Parchamites; and the military officers (who were Parchamites) were answerable to Watanjar (a Khalqist). The first conflict arose when the Khalqists wanted to give PDPA Central Committee membership to military officers who had participated in the Saur Revolution; Karmal opposed such a move but was overruled. A PDPA Politburo meeting voted in favour of giving Central Committee membership to the officers. On 27 June, three months after the Saur Revolution, Amin outmaneuvered the Parchamites at a Central Committee meeting, giving the Khalqists exclusive right over formulating and deciding policy. A purge against the Parchamites was initiated by Amin and supported by Taraki on 1 July 1979. Karmal, fearing for his safety, went into hiding in one of his Soviet friends' homes. Karmal tried to contact Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, to talk about the situation. Puzanov refused, and revealed Karmal's location to Amin. The Soviets probably saved Karmal's life by sending him to the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. In exile, Karmal established a network with the remaining Parchamites in government. A coup to overthrow Amin was planned for 4 September 1979. Its leading members in Afghanistan were Qadir and the Army Chief of Staff General Shahpur Ahmedzai. The coup was planned for the Festival of Eid, in anticipation of relaxed military vigilance. The conspiracy failed when the Afghan ambassador to India told the Afghan leadership about the plan. Another purge was initiated, and Parchamite ambassadors were recalled. Few returned to Afghanistan; Karmal and Mohammad Najibullah stayed in their respective countries. The Soviets decided that Amin should be removed to make way for a Karmal-Taraki coalition government. However Amin managed to order the arrest and later the murder of Taraki. Amin was informed of the Soviet decision to intervene in Afghanistan and was initially supportive, but was assassinated. Under the command of the Soviets, Karmal ascended to power. On 27 December 1979, Karmal's pre-recorded speech to the Afghan people was broadcast via Radio Kabul from Tashkent in the Uzbek SSR (the radio wavelength was changed to that of Kabul), saying: "Today the torture machine of Amin has been smashed, his accomplices – the primitive executioners, usurpers and murderers of tens of thousand of our fellow countrymen – fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, children and old people ..." Karmal was not in Kabul when the speech was broadcast; he was in Bagram, protected by the KGB. That evening Yuri Andropov, the KGB Chairman, congratulated Karmal on his rise to the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council, some time before Karmal received an official appointment. Karmal returned to Kabul on 28 December. He travelled alongside a Soviet military column. For the next few days Karmal lived in a villa on the outskirts of Kabul under the protection of the KGB. On 1 January 1980 Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers, congratulated Karmal on his "election" as leader. Leadership Domestic policies Karmal's ascension was quickly troubled as he was effectively installed by the invading Soviet Union, delegitimizing him. Unrest in the country quickly escalated, and in Kabul two major uprisings, on 3 Hoot (22 February) and the months long students' protests were early signs of trouble. The "Fundamental Principles" and amnesty When he came to power, Karmal promised an end to executions, the establishment of democratic institutions and free elections, the creation of a constitution, and legalization of alternative political parties. Prisoners incarcerated under the two previous governments would be freed in a general amnesty (which occurred on 6 January). He promised the creation of a coalition government which would not espouse socialism. At the same time, he told the Afghan people that he had negotiated with the Soviet Union to give economic, military and political assistance. The mistrust most Afghans felt towards the government was a problem for Karmal. Many still remembered he had said he would protect private capital in 1978—a promise later proven to be a lie. Karmal's three most important promises were the general amnesty of prisoners, the promulgation of the Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the adoption of a new flag containing the traditional black, red and green (the flag of Taraki and Amin was red). His government granted concessions to religious leaders and the restoration of confiscated property. Some property, which was confiscated during earlier land reforms, was also partially restored. All these measures, with the exception of the general amnesty of prisoners, were introduced gradually. Of 2,700 prisoners, 2,600 were released from prison; 600 of these were Parchamites. The general amnesty was greatly publicized by the government. While the event was hailed with enthusiasm by some, many others greeted the event with disdain, since their loved ones or associates had died during earlier purges. Amin had planned to introduce a general amnesty on 1 January 1980, to coincide with the PDPA's sixteenth anniversary. Work on the Fundamental Principles had started under Amin: it guaranteed democratic rights such as freedom of speech, the right to security and life, the right to peaceful association, the right to demonstrate and the right that "no one would be accused of crime but in accord with the provisions of law" and that the accused had the right to a fair trial. The Fundamental Principles envisaged a democratic state led by the PDPA, the only party then permitted by law. The Revolutionary Council, the organ of supreme power, would convene twice every year. The Revolutionary Council in turn elected a Presidium which would take decisions on behalf of the Revolutionary Council when it was not in session. The Presidium consisted mostly of PDPA Politburo members. The state would safeguard three kinds of property: state, cooperative and private property. The Fundamental Principles said that the state had the right to change the Afghan economy from an economy where man was exploited to an economy where man was free. Another clause stated that the state had the right to take "families, both parents and children, under its supervision." While it looked democratic at the outset, the Fundamental Principles was based on contradictions. The Fundamental Principles led to the establishment of two important state organs: the Special Revolutionary Court, a specialized court for crimes against national security and territorial integrity, and the Institute for Legal and Scientific Research and Legislative Affairs, the supreme legislative organ of state, This body could amend and draft laws, and introduce regulations and decrees on behalf of the government. The introduction of more Soviet-style institutions led the Afghan people to distrust the communist government even more. The Fundamental Principles constitution came into power on 22 April 1980. Dividing power: Khalq–Parcham With Karmal's ascension to power, Parchamites began to "settle old scores". Revolutionary Troikas were created to arrest, sentence and execute people. Amin's guard were the first victims of the terror which ensued. Those commanders who had stayed loyal to Amin were arrested, filling the prisons. The Soviets protested, and Karmal replied, "As long as you keep my hands bound and do not let me deal with the Khalq faction there will be no unity in the PDPA and the government cannot become strong ... They tortured and killed us. They still hate us! They are the enemies of the party ..." Amin's daughter, along with her baby, was imprisoned for twelve years, until Mohammad Najibullah, then leader of the PDPA, released her. When Karmal took power, leading posts in the Party and Government bureaucracy were taken over by Parchamites. The Khalq faction was removed from power, and only technocrats, opportunists and individuals which the Soviets trusted would be appointed to the higher echelons of government. Khalqists remained in control of the Ministry of Interior, but Parchamites were given control over KHAD and the secret police. The Parchamites and the Khalqists controlled an equal share of the military. Two out of Karmal's three Council of Ministers deputy chairmen were Khalqists. Khalqists controlled the Ministry of Communications and the interior ministry. Parchamites, on the other hand, controlled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence. In addition to the changes in government, the Parchamites held clear majority in the PDPA Central Committee. Only one Khalqi, Saleh Mohammad Zeary, was a member of the PDPA Secretariat during Karmal's rule. Over 14 and 15 March 1982 the PDPA held a party conference at the Kabul Polytechnic Institute instead of a party congress, since a party congress would have given the Khalq faction a majority and could have led to a Khalqist takeover of the PDPA. The rules of holding a party conference were different, and the Parchamites had a three-fifths majority. This infuriated several Khalqists; the threat of expulsion did not lessen their anger. The conference was not successful, but it was portrayed as such by the official media. The conference broke up after one and a half days of a 3-day long program, because of the inter-party struggle for power between the Khalqists and the Parchamites. A "program of action" was introduced, and party rules were given minor changes. As an explanation of the low party membership, the official media also made it seem hard to become a member of the party. PDPA base When Karmal took power, he began expanding the support base of the PDPA. Karmal tried to persuade certain groups, which had been referred to class enemies of the revolution during Taraki and Amin's rule, to support the PDPA. Karmal appointed several non-communists to top positions. Between March and May 1980, 78 out of the 191 people appointed to government posts were not members of the PDPA. Karmal reintroduced the old Afghan custom of having an Islamic invocation every time the government issued a proclamation. In his first live speech to the Afghan people, Karmal called for the establishment of the National Fatherland Front (NFF); the NFF's founding congress was held in June 1981. Unfortunately for Karmal, his policies did not lead to a notable increase in support for his regime, and it did not help Karmal that most Afghans saw the Soviet intervention as an invasion. By 1981, the government gave up on political solutions to the conflict. At the fifth PDPA Central Committee plenum in June, Karmal resigned from his Council of Ministers chairmanship and was replaced by Sultan Ali Keshtmand, while Nur Ahmad Nur was given a bigger role in the Revolutionary Council. This was seen as "base broadening". The previous weight given to non-PDPA members in top positions ceased to be an important matter in the media by June 1981. This was significant, considering that up to five members of the Revolutionary Council were non-PDPA members. By the end of 1981, the previous contenders, who had been heavily presented in the media, were all gone; two were given ambassadorships, two ceased to be active in politics, and one continued as an advisor to the government. The other three changed sides, and began to work for the opposition. The national policy of reconciliation continued: in January 1984 the land reform introduced by Taraki and Amin was drastically modified, the limits of landholdings were increased to win the support of middle class peasants, the literacy programme was continued, and concessions to women were made. In 1985 the Loya Jirga was reconvened. The 1985 Loya Jirga was followed by a tribal jirga in September. In 1986 Abdul Rahim Hatef, a non-PDPA member, was elected to the NFF chairmanship. During the 1985–86 elections it was said that 60 percent of the elected officials were non-PDPA members. By the end of Karmal's rule, several non-PDPA members had high-level government positions. Civil war and military In March 1979, the military budget was 6.4 million US$, which was 8.3 percent of the government budget, but only 2.2 of gross national product. After the Soviet intervention, the defence budget increased to 208 million US$ in 1980, and 325 million US$ by 1981. In 1982 it was reported that the government spent around 22 percent of total expenditure. When the political solution failed (see "PDPA base" section), the Afghan government and the Soviet military decided to solve the conflict militarily. The change from a political to a military solution did not come suddenly. It began in January 1981, as Karmal doubled wages for military personnel, issued several promotions, and decorated one general and thirteen colonels. The draft age was lowered, the obligatory length of arms duty was extended and the age for reservists was increased to thirty-five years of age. In June 1981, Assadullah Sarwari lost his seat in the PDPA Politburo, replaced by Mohammad Aslam Watanjar, a former tank commander and Minister of Communications, Major General Mohammad Rafi was made Minister of Defence and Mohammad Najibullah appointed KHAD Chairman. These measures were introduced due to the collapse of the army during the Soviet intervention. Before the intervention the army could field 100,000 troops, after the intervention only 25,000. Desertions were pandemic, and the recruitment campaigns for young people often drove them to the opposition. To better organize the military, seven military zones were established, each with its own Defence Council. The Defence Councils were established at the national, provincial and district level to empower the local PDPA. It is estimated that the Afghan government spent as much as 40 percent of government revenue on defense. Karmal refused to recognize the rebels as genuine, saying in an interview: Economy During the civil war and the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, most of the country's infrastructure was destroyed. Normal patterns of economic activity were disrupted. The Gross national product (GNP) fell substantially during Karmal's rule because of the conflict; trade and transport was disrupted with loss of labor and capital. In 1981 the Afghan GDP stood at 154.3 billion Afghan afghanis, a drop from 159.7 billion in 1978. GNP per capita decreased from 7,370 in 1978 to 6,852 in 1981. The dominant form of economic activity was in the agricultural sector. Agriculture accounted for 63 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1981; 56 percent of the labor force was working in agriculture in 1982. Industry accounted for 21 percent of GDP in 1982, and employed 10 percent of the labor force. All industrial enterprises were government-owned. The service sector, the smallest of the three, accounted for 10 percent of GDP in 1981, and employed an estimated one-third of the labour force. The balance of payments, which had grown in the pre-communist administration of Muhammad Daoud Khan, decreased, turning negative by 1982 at 70.3 million $US. The only economic activity which grew substantially during Karmal's rule was export and import. Foreign policy Karmal observed in early 1983 that without Soviet intervention, "It is unknown what the destiny of the Afghan Revolution would be ... We are realists and we clearly realize that in store for us yet lie trials and deprivations, losses and difficulties." Two weeks before this statement Sultan Ali Keshtmand, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, lamented the fact that half the schools and three-quarters of communications had been destroyed since 1979. The Soviet Union rejected several Western-made peace plans, such as the Carrington Plan, since they did not take into consideration the PDPA government. Most Western peace plans had been made in collaboration with the Afghan opposition forces. At the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, stated; The stance of the Pakistani government was clear, demanding complete Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the establishment of a non-PDPA government. Karmal, summarizing his discussions with Iran and Pakistan, said "Iran and Pakistan have so far not opted for concrete and constructive positions." During Karmal's rule Afghan–Pakistani relations remained hostile; the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was the catalyst for the hostile relationship. The increasing numbers of Afghan refugees in Pakistan challenged the PDPA's legitimacy to rule. The Soviet Union threatened in 1985 that it would support the Baloch separatist movement in Pakistan if the Pakistani government continued to aid the Afghan mujahideen. Karmal, problematically for the Soviets, did not want a Soviet withdrawal, and he hampered attempts to improve relations with Pakistan since the Pakistani government had refused to recognise the PDPA government. Public image Because Karmal was put into power without a formal ceremony as in Afghan tradition, he was seen as an illegitimate leader in many eyes of his people. A poor performance in foreign interviews also didn't help his public image where he was noted to speak like an "exhibitionist" rather than a statesman. Karmal was widely viewed as a puppet leader of the Soviet Union by Afghans and the Western press. Despite his position, Karmal was apparently not permitted to make key decisions as he was following advice from Soviet advisers. The Soviet control of the Afghan state was apparently so much that Karmal himself admitted to a friend of his unfree life, telling him: “The Soviet comrades love me boundlessly, and for the sake of my personal safety, they don’t obey even my own orders.” Fall from power and succession Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, said, "The main reason that there has been no national consolidation so far is that Comrade Karmal is hoping to continue sitting in Kabul with our help." Karmal's position became less secure when the Soviet leadership began blaming him for the failures in Afghanistan. Gorbachev, worried over the situation, told the Soviet Politburo "If we don't change approaches [to evacuate Afghanistan], we will be fighting there for another 20 or 30 years." It is not clear when the Soviet leadership began to campaign for Karmal's dismissal, but Andrei Gromyko discussed the possibility of Karmal's resignation with Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1982. While it was Gorbachev who would dismiss Karmal, there may have been a consensus within the Soviet leadership in 1983 that Karmal should resign. Gorbachev's own plan was to replace Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah, who had joined the PDPA at its creation. Najibullah was thought highly of by Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev and Dmitriy Ustinov, and negotiations for his succession may have started in 1983. Najibullah was not the Soviet leadership's only choice for Karmal's succession; a GRU report noted that the majority of the PDPA leadership would support Assadullah Sarwari's ascension to leadership. According to the GRU, Sarwari was a better candidate as he could balance between the Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks; Najibullah was a Pashtun nationalist. Another viable candidate was Abdul Qadir, who had been a participant in the Saur Revolution. Najibullah was appointed to the PDPA Secretariat in November 1985. During Karmal's March 1986 visit to the Soviet Union, the Soviets tried to persuade Karmal that he was too ill to govern, and that he should resign. This backfired, as a Soviet doctor attending to Karmal told him he was in good health. Karmal asked to return home to Kabul, and said that he understood and would listen to the Soviet recommendations. Before leaving, Karmal promised he would step down as PDPA General Secretary. The Soviets did not trust him and sent Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of intelligence (FCD) in the KGB, into Afghanistan. At a meeting in Kabul, Karmal confessed his undying love for the Soviet Union, comparing his ardor to his Muslim faith. Kryuchkov, concluding that he could not persuade Karmal to resign, left the meeting. After Kryuchkov left the room, the Afghan defence minister and the state security minister visited Karmal's office, telling him that he had to resign from one of his posts. Understanding that his Soviet support had been eliminated, Karmal resigned from the office of the General Secretary at the 18th PDPA Central Committee plenum. He was succeeded in his post by Najibullah. Karmal still had support within the party, and used his base to curb Najibullah's powers. He began spreading rumors that he would be reappointed General Secretary. Najibullah's power base was in the KHAD, the Afghan equivalent to the KGB, and not the party. Considering the fact that the Soviet Union had supported Karmal for over six years, the Soviet leadership wanted to ease him out of power gradually. Yuli Vorontsov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, told Najibullah to begin undermining Karmal's power slowly. Najibullah complained to the Soviet leadership that Karmal used most of his spare time looking for errors and "speaking against the National Reconciliation [programme]". At a meeting of the Soviet Politburo on 13 November 1986 it was decided that Najibullah should remove Karmal; this motion was supported by Gromyko, Vorontsov, Eduard Shevardnadze, Anatoly Dobrynin and Viktor Chebrikov. A PDPA meeting in November relieved Karmal of his Revolutionary Council chairmanship, and exiled him to Moscow where he was given a state-owned apartment and a dacha. Karmal was succeeded as Revolutionary Council chairman by Haji Mohammad Chamkani, who was not a member of the PDPA. Later life and death Many years after the end of his leadership, he denounced the Saur Revolution of 1978 in which he took part, taking aim at the Khalq governments of Taraki and Amin. He told a Soviet reporter: It was the greatest crime against the people of Afghanistan. Parcham's leaders were against armed actions because the country was not ready for a revolution... I knew that people would not support us if we decided to keep power without such support. For unknown reasons, Karmal was invited back to Kabul by Najibullah, and "for equally obscure reasons Karmal accepted", returning on 20 June 1991. (this could have been on the recommendation of Anahita Ratebzad who was very close to Karmal and also respected by Najibullah). If Najibullah's plan was to strengthen his position within the Watan Party (the renamed PDPA) by appeasing the pro-Karmal Parchamites, he failed – Karmal's apartment became a center for opposition to Najibullah's government. When Najibullah was toppled in 1992, Karmal became the most powerful politician in Kabul through leadership of the Parcham. However, his negotiations with the rebels collapsed quickly, and on 16 April 1992 the rebels, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, took Kabul. After the fall of Najibullah's government, Karmal was based in Hairatan. There, it is alleged, Karmal used most of his time either trying to establish a new party, or advising people to join the secular National Islamic Movement (Junbish-i-Milli). Abdul Rashid Dostum, the leader of Junbish-i-Milli, was a supporter of Karmal during his rule. It is unknown how much control Karmal had over Dostum, but there is little evidence that Karmal was in any commanding position. Karmal's influence over Dostum appeared indirect – some of his former associates supported Dostum. Those who spoke with Karmal during this period noted his lack of interest in politics. In June 1992 it was reported that he had died in a plane crash along with Dostum, although these reports later proved to be false. In early December 1996, Karmal died in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital from liver cancer. The date of his death was reported by some sources as 1 December and by others as 3 December. The Taliban summed up his rule as follows: [he] committed all kinds of crimes during his illegitimate rule ... God inflicted on him various kinds of hardship and pain. Eventually he died of cancer in a hospital belonging to his paymasters, the Russians. Notes References Bibliography External links Biography of President Babrak Karmal 1929 births 1996 deaths 20th-century heads of state of Afghanistan Communist rulers of Afghanistan Afghan atheists Presidents of Afghanistan Prime Ministers of Afghanistan People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan politicians Afghan prisoners and detainees Prisoners and detainees of Afghanistan Afghan emigrants to the Soviet Union Collaborators with the Soviet Union Afghan emigrants to Russia People granted political asylum in the Soviet Union Deaths from cancer in Russia Deaths from liver cancer Democratic Republic of Afghanistan 1970s in Afghanistan 1980s in Afghanistan Afghan revolutionaries

BC most often refers to: Before Christ, a calendar era based on the traditionally reckoned year of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth British Columbia, the westernmost province of Canada Baja California, a state of Mexico BC may also refer to: Arts and entertainment "B.C.", a song by Sparks from the 1974 album Propaganda B.C. (comic strip) by Johnny Hart, and one of its characters BC (video game) by Lionhead Studios BC The Archaeology of the Bible Lands, a BBC television series Bullet Club, a professional wrestling stable Businesses and organizations Basilian Chouerite Order of Saint John the Baptist, an order of the Greek Catholic Church BC Card, a Korean credit card company Bella Center, a conference center in Copenhagen, Denmark Brasseries du Cameroun, a brewery in Cameroon (also known as SABC) Brunswick Corporation (NYSE ticker symbol BC) Education United States Bakersfield College, a college in Bakersfield, California Bellevue College, a college in Bellevue, Washington Benedictine College, a college in Atchison, Kansas Benedictine Military School, a high school in Savannah, Georgia Bergen Catholic High School, a high school in Oradell, New Jersey Boston College, a university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Boston College Eagles, its athletic teams Brazosport College, a college in Lake Jackson, Texas Broward College, a college in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Worldwide Baccalaureus or bc, a Bachelor's degree in the Netherlands Baghdad College, a high school in Baghdad, Iraq Benedicto College, a college in Mandaue, Philippines British Council Science and technology Backcrossing, a crossing of a hybrid with one of its parents, or a genetically similar individual Backward compatibility, the ability of new software to work similarly to its predecessor Ballistic coefficient, a measure of air drag on a projectile Base curve radius, a parameter of a contact lens Battle command, a military discipline Bayonet cap, a standard light bulb connection bc (programming language), an arbitrary-precision calculator language Black carbon, a carbonaceous component of soot Bliss bibliographic classification, a library cataloguing system Brassocattleya or Bc., an orchid genus Buoyancy compensator (diving), a piece of scuba diving equipment Transportation NZR BC class, a type ofs team locomotive Skymark Airlines (IATA airline code BC) Other uses Bullcrap, a phrase denoting something worthless "B.C.", nickname of Burr Chamberlain (1877–1933), American football player and coach Baguio City, a city in the Philippines, locally abbreviated as "B.C." BC Powder, a brand of pain reliever BookCrossing, a website that encourages leaving books in public places to be found by others See also BC Cygni, a red supergiant star that is one of the largest stars Belaruskaja Čyhunka (BCh), the national railway company of Belarus Blind carbon copy (Bcc:), the practice of sending an e-mail to multiple recipients without disclosing the complete list of recipients

Automobiles Ettore Bugatti was a German then French manufacturer of high-performance automobiles. The company was founded in 1909 in the then-German city of Molsheim, Alsace, by the Italian-born industrial designer Ettore Bugatti. The cars were known for their design beauty and for their many race victories. Famous Bugatti automobiles include the Type 35 Grand Prix cars, the Type 41 "Royale", the Type 57 "Atlantic" and the Type 55 sports car. The death of Ettore Bugatti in 1947 proved to be a severe blow for the marque, and the death of his son Jean Bugatti in 1939 meant that there was no successor to lead the factory. No more than about 8,000 cars were made. The company struggled financially, and it released one last model in the 1950s before eventually being purchased for its airplane parts business in 1963. In 1987, an Italian entrepreneur bought the brand name and revived it as Bugatti Automobili SpA. Under Ettore Bugatti Founder Ettore Bugatti was born in Milan, Italy, and the automobile company that bears his name was founded in 1909 in Molsheim located in the Alsace region which was part of the German Empire from 1871 to 1919. The company was known both for the level of detail of its engineering in its automobiles, and for the artistic manner in which the designs were executed, given the artistic nature of Ettore's family (his father, Carlo Bugatti (1856–1940), was an important Art Nouveau furniture and jewelry designer). World War I and its aftermath During the war Ettore Bugatti was sent away, initially to Milan and later to Paris, but as soon as hostilities had been concluded he returned to his factory at Molsheim. Less than four months after the Versailles Treaty formalised the transfer of Alsace from Germany to France, Bugatti was able to obtain, at the last minute, a stand at the 15th Paris motor show in October 1919. He exhibited three light cars, all of them closely based on their pre-war equivalents, and each fitted with the same overhead camshaft 4-cylinder 1,368cc engine with four valves per cylinder. Smallest of the three was a "Type 13" with a racing body (constructed by Bugatti themselves) and using a chassis with a wheelbase. The others were a "Type 22" and a "Type 23" with wheelbases of respectively. Racing successes The company also enjoyed great success in early Grand Prix motor racing: in 1929 a privately entered Bugatti won the first ever Monaco Grand Prix. Racing success culminated with driver Jean-Pierre Wimille winning the 24 hours of Le Mans twice (in 1937 with Robert Benoist and 1939 with Pierre Veyron). Bugatti cars were extremely successful in racing. The little Bugatti Type 10 swept the top four positions at its first race. The 1924 Bugatti Type 35 is one of the most successful racing cars. The Type 35 was developed by Bugatti with master engineer and racing driver Jean Chassagne who also drove it in the car's first ever Grand Prix in 1924 Lyon. Bugattis swept to victory in the Targa Florio for five years straight from 1925 through 1929. Louis Chiron held the most podiums in Bugatti cars, and the modern marque revival Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. named the 1999 Bugatti 18/3 Chiron concept car in his honour. But it was the final racing success at Le Mans that is most remembered—Jean-Pierre Wimille and Pierre Veyron won the 1939 race with just one car and meagre resources. Aeroplane racing In the 1930s, Ettore Bugatti got involved in the creation of a racer airplane, hoping to beat the Germans in the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize. This would be the Bugatti 100P, which never flew. It was designed by Belgian engineer Louis de Monge who had already applied Bugatti Brescia engines in his "Type 7.5" lifting body. Railcar Ettore Bugatti also designed a successful motorised railcar, the Autorail Bugatti (Autorail Bugatti). Family tragedy The death of Ettore Bugatti's son, Jean Bugatti, on 11 August 1939 marked a turning point in the company's fortunes. Jean died while testing a Type 57 tank-bodied race car near the Molsheim factory. After World War II World War II left the Molsheim factory in ruins and the company lost control of the property. During the war, Bugatti planned a new factory at Levallois, a northwestern suburb of Paris. After the war, Bugatti designed and planned to build a series of new cars, including the Type 73 road car and Type 73C single seat racing car, but in all Bugatti built only five Type 73 cars. Development of a 375 cc supercharged car was stopped when Ettore Bugatti died on 21 August 1947. Following Ettore Bugatti's death, the business declined further and made its last appearance as a business in its own right at a Paris Motor Show in October 1952. After a long decline, the original incarnation of Bugatti ceased operations in 1952. Design Bugattis are noticeably focused on design. Engine blocks were hand scraped to ensure that the surfaces were so flat that gaskets were not required for sealing, many of the exposed surfaces of the engine compartment featured guilloché (engine turned) finishes on them, and safety wires had been threaded through almost every fastener in intricately laced patterns. Rather than bolt the springs to the axles as most manufacturers did, Bugatti's axles were forged such that the spring passed through a carefully sized opening in the axle, a much more elegant solution requiring fewer parts. He famously described his arch competitor Bentley's cars as "the world's fastest lorries" for focusing on durability. According to Bugatti, "weight was the enemy". Important models built Gallery Notable finds in the modern era Relatives of Harold Carr found a rare 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante when cataloguing the doctor's belongings after his death in 2009. Carr's Type 57S is notable because it was originally owned by British race car driver Earl Howe. Because much of the car's original equipment is intact, it can be restored without relying on replacement parts. On 10 July 2009, a 1925 Bugatti Brescia Type 22 which had lain at the bottom of Lake Maggiore on the border of Switzerland and Italy for 75 years was recovered from the lake. The Mullin Museum in Oxnard, California bought it at auction for $351,343 at Bonham's Rétromobile sale in Paris in 2010. Attempts at revival The company attempted a comeback under Roland Bugatti in the mid-1950s with the mid-engined Type 251 race car. Designed with help from Gioacchino Colombo, the car failed to perform to expectations and the company's attempts at automobile production were halted. In the 1960s, Virgil Exner designed a Bugatti as part of his "Revival Cars" project. A show version of this car was actually built by Ghia using the last Bugatti Type 101 chassis, and was shown at the 1965 Turin Motor Show. Finance was not forthcoming, and Exner then turned his attention to a revival of Stutz. Bugatti continued manufacturing airplane parts and was sold to Hispano-Suiza, also a former auto maker turned aircraft supplier, in 1963. Snecma took over Hispano-Suiza in 1968. After acquiring Messier, Snecma merged Messier and Bugatti into Messier-Bugatti in 1977. Modern revivals Bugatti Automobili S.p.A. (1987–1995) Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli acquired the Bugatti brand in 1987, and established Bugatti Automobili S.p.A.. Artioli commissioned architect Giampaolo Benedini to design the factory which was built in Campogalliano, Modena, Italy. Construction of the plant began in 1988, alongside the development of the first model, and it was inaugurated two years later—in 1990. By 1989, the plans for the new Bugatti revival were presented by Paolo Stanzani and Marcello Gandini, designers of the Lamborghini Miura and Lamborghini Countach. The first production vehicle was the Bugatti EB110 GT which featured a 3.5-litre, 5-valve per cylinder, quad-turbocharged 60° V12 engine, a six-speed gearbox, and four-wheel drive. Stanzani proposed an aluminium honeycomb chassis, which was used for all early prototypes. He and president Artioli clashed over engineering decisions so Stanzani left the project and Artioli sought Nicola Materazzi to replace him in June 1990. Materazzi, who had been the chief designer for the Ferrari 288 GTO and Ferrari F40 replaced the aluminium chassis with a carbon fibre one manufactured by Aerospatiale and also altered the torque distribution of the car from 40:60 to 27:73. He remained Director until late 1992. Racing car designer Mauro Forghieri served as Bugatti's technical director from 1993 through 1994. On 27 August 1993, through his holding company, ACBN Holdings S.A. of Luxembourg, Romano Artioli purchased Lotus Cars from General Motors. Plans were made to list Bugatti shares on international stock exchanges. Bugatti presented a prototype large saloon called the EB112 in 1993. Perhaps the most famous Bugatti EB110 owner was seven-time Formula One World Champion racing driver Michael Schumacher who purchased an EB110 in 1994. Schumacher sold his EB110, which had been repaired after a severe 1994 crash, to Modena Motorsport, a Ferrari service and race preparation garage in Germany. By the time the EB110 came to market, the North American and European economies were in recession. Poor economic conditions forced the company to fail and operations ceased in September 1995. A model specific to the US market called the "Bugatti America" was in the preparatory stages when the company ceased operations. Bugatti's liquidators sold Lotus Cars to Proton of Malaysia. German firm Dauer Racing purchased the EB110 licence and remaining parts stock in 1997 in order to produce five more EB110 SS vehicles. These five SS versions of the EB110 were greatly refined by Dauer. The Campogalliano factory was sold to a furniture-making company, which became defunct prior to moving in, leaving the building unoccupied. After Dauer stopped producing cars in 2011, Toscana-Motors GmbH of Germany purchased the remaining parts stock from Dauer. Ex vice-president Jean-Marc Borel and ex-employees Federico Trombi, Gianni Sighinolfi and Nicola Materazzi established the B Engineering company and designed and built the Edonis using the chassis and engine from the Bugatti EB110 SS, but simplifying the turbocharging system and driveline (from 4WD to 2WD). Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. (1998–present) Pre-Veyron Volkswagen Group acquired the Bugatti brand in 1998. Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. commissioned Giorgetto Giugiaro of ItalDesign to produce Bugatti Automobiles's first concept vehicle, the EB118, a coupé that debuted at the 1998 Paris Auto Show. The EB118 concept featured a , W-18 engine. After its Paris debut, the EB118 concept was shown again in 1999 at the Geneva Auto Show and the Tokyo Motor Show. Bugatti introduced its next concepts, the EB 218 at the 1999 Geneva Motor Show and the 18/3 Chiron at the 1999 Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA). Veyron era (2005–2015) Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. began assembling its first regular-production vehicle, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 (the 1001 PS super car with an 8-litre W-16 engine with four turbochargers) in September 2005 at the Bugatti Molsheim, France assembly "studio". On 23 February 2015, Bugatti sold its last Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse, which was named La Finale. Chiron era (2016–present) The Bugatti Chiron is a mid-engined, two-seated sports car, designed by Achim Anscheidt, developed as the successor to the Bugatti Veyron. The Chiron was first revealed at the Geneva Motor Show on March 1, 2016. See also Musée National de l'Automobile de Mulhouse, home of the Schlumpf Collection of Bugatti cars References External links Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. Bugatti bibliography The Bugatti Trust Bugatti at LeMans Car manufacturers of France Companies based in Grand Est Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1909 Vehicle manufacturing companies disestablished in 1963 Defunct aircraft engine manufacturers of France Defunct companies of France Formula One constructors Formula One entrants French auto racing teams French racecar constructors Grand Prix teams Auto racing teams established in 1929 Auto racing teams disestablished in 1956 Luxury motor vehicle manufacturers Sports car manufacturers Volkswagen Group Molsheim Car brands German companies established in 1909 1963 disestablishments in France

Boone is a town in and the county seat of Watauga County, North Carolina, United States. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, Boone is the home of Appalachian State University and the headquarters for the disaster and medical relief organization Samaritan's Purse. The population was 17,122 at the 2010 census. The town is named for famous American pioneer and explorer Daniel Boone, and every summer, other than 2020, from 1952 has hosted an outdoor amphitheatre drama, Horn in the West, portraying the British settlement of the area during the American Revolutionary War and featuring the contributions of its namesake. It is the largest community and the economic hub of the seven-county region of Western North Carolina known as the High Country. History Boone took its name from the famous pioneer and explorer Daniel Boone, who on several occasions camped at a site generally agreed to be within the present city limits. Daniel's nephews, Jesse and Jonathan (sons of brother Israel Boone), were members of the town's first church, Three Forks Baptist, still in existence today. Boone was served by the narrow gauge East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad (nicknamed "Tweetsie") until the flood of 1940. The flood washed away much of the tracks and it was decided not to replace them. Boone is the home of Appalachian State University, a constituent member of the University of North Carolina. Appalachian State is the sixth-largest university in the seventeen-campus system. Caldwell Community College & Technical Institute also operates a satellite campus in Boone. "Horn in the West" is a dramatization of the life and times of the early settlers of the mountain area. It features Daniel Boone as one of its characters, and has been performed in an outdoor amphitheater near the town every summer since 1952, except for when COVID-19 necessitated canceling the 2020 performances. The original actor in the role of "Daniel Boone" was Ned Austin. His "Hollywood Star" stands on a pedestal on King Street in downtown Boone. He was followed in the role by Glenn Causey, who portrayed the rugged frontiersman for 41 years, and whose image is still seen in many of the depictions of Boone featured in the area today. Boone is notable for being home to the Junaluska community. Located in the hills just north of Downtown Boone, a free black community has existed in the area since before the Civil War. Although integration in the mid-20th century led to many of the businesses in the neighborhood closing in favor of their downtown counterparts, descendants of the original inhabitants still live in the neighborhood. Junaluska is also home to one of the few majority-African American Mennonite Brethren congregations. Boone is a center for bluegrass musicians and Appalachian storytellers. Notable artists associated with Boone include the late Grammy Award-winning bluegrass guitar player Doc Watson, and the late guitarist Michael Houser, one of the founding members of and the lead guitarist for the band Widespread Panic, as well as Old Crow Medicine Show, The Blue Rags, and Eric Church, all who are Boone natives. The Blair Farm, Daniel Boone Hotel, Jones House, John Smith Miller House, and US Post Office-Boone are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Geography and climate Boone is located at (36.211364, −81.668657) and has an elevation of 3,333 feet (1015.9 m) above sea level. An earlier survey gave the elevation as 3,332 ft and since then it has been published as having an elevation of 3,333 ft (1,016 m). Boone has the highest elevation of any town of its size (over 10,000 population) east of the Mississippi River. As such, Boone features, depending on the isotherm used, a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb), a rarity for the Southeastern United States, bordering on a subtropical highland climate (Cfb) and straddles the boundary between USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 6B and 7A; the elevation also results in enhanced precipitation, with of average annual precipitation. Compared to the lower elevations of the Carolinas, winters are long and cold, with frequent sleet and snowfall. The daily average temperature in January is , which gives Boone a winter climate more similar to coastal southern New England rather than the Southeast, where a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) predominates. Blizzard-like conditions are not unusual during many winters. Summers are warm, but far cooler and less humid than lower regions to the south and east, with a July daily average temperature of . Boone typically receives on average nearly of snowfall annually, far higher than the lowland areas in the rest of North Carolina. On January 21, 1985, the temperature fell to . Demographics 2020 census As of the 2020 United States census, there were 19,092 people, 5,905 households, and 1,641 families residing in the town. 2000 census As of the census of 2000, there were 13,472 people, 4,374 households, and 1,237 families residing in the town. The population density was 2,307.0 people per square mile (890.7/km). There were 4,748 housing units at an average density of 813.0 per square mile (313.9/km). The racial makeup of the town was 93.98% White, 3.42% Black or African American, 0.30% Native American, 1.19% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 0.46% from other races, and 0.60% from two or more races. 1.64% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 4,374 households, out of which 9.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 21.0% were married couples living together, 5.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 71.7% were non-families. 38.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.97 and the average family size was 2.63. In the town, the population was spread out, with 5.8% under 18, 65.9% from 18 to 24, 12.1% from 25 to 44, 9.1% from 45 to 64, and 7.1% who were 65 or older. The median age was 21 years. For every 100 females, there are 95.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.7 males. The median income for a household in the town was $20,541, and the median income for a family was $49,762. The per capita income was $12,256. Males had a median income of $28,060 versus $20,000 for females. About 9.2% of families and 37.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 6.3% of those under the age of 18 and 9.1% of those 65 and older. Media Newspaper Boone is mainly served by three local newspapers: The Watauga Democrat is published on Wednesdays and Sundays. The Mountain Times (free weekly entertainment publication). The High Country Press (daily online news publication). A smaller newspaper, The Appalachian, is Appalachian State University's campus newspaper; it is published once a week on Thursdays. In addition to the locally printed papers, a monthly entertainment pamphlet named Kraut Creek Revival has limited circulation and is funded by a Denver, NC-based newspaper. Radio WATA-AM 1450 AM is predominantly news talk. WATA-FM 96.5 FM is an alternate frequency of 1450 AM. WZJS-FM 100.7 FM is an oldies radio station. WMMY-FM 106.1 FM is a country music radio station, broadcasting the same as 102.3 ("Highway 106/102-3"). WWMY 102.3 FM is a country music radio station, broadcasting the same as 106.1 ("Highway 106/102-3"). WECR 1130 AM is primarily a Gospel music and local news station. WXIT-AM 1200 AM is predominantly Conservative talk radio. WASU 90.5 FM is a college radio station run from the Appalachian State University campus. WNCW 92.9 FM NPR Affiliate a noncommercial public radio station licensed to Isothermal Community College. WFDD 88.5 FM NPR Affiliate a noncommercial public radio station from Wake Forest University broadcasts an additional signal for the North Carolina High Country at 100.1 FM Law and government Boone operates under a mayor–council government. The city council consists of five members. The mayor presides over the council and casts a vote on issues only in the event of a tie. , the Town Council members were: Mayor Rennie Brantz, and Councilors: Connie Ulmer (Mayor Pro-Tem), Jon Dalton George, Sam Furgiuele, Virginia Roseman and Nancy LaPlaca. Development Industrial, commercial, and residential development in the town of Boone is a controversial issue due to its location in the mountains of Appalachia. On October 16, 2009, the town council accepted the "Boone 2030 Land Use Plan." While the document itself is not in any way actual law, it is used by the town council, board of adjustment, and other committees to guide decision making as to what types of development are appropriate. In 2009, the North Carolina Department of Transportation began widening 1.1 miles of U.S. 421 (King Street) to a 4-to-6-lane divided highway with a raised concrete median from U.S. 321 (Hardin Street) to east of N.C. 194 (Jefferson Road), including a new entrance and exit to the new Watauga High School, at a cost of $16.2 million. The widening has displaced 25 businesses and 63 residences east of historic downtown King Street. The project was slated to be completed by December 31, 2011, but construction continued into the spring of 2012. Sports Boone is home to the Appalachian State Mountaineers as well as Appalachian FC. Points of interest Appalachian State University Blue Ridge Parkway Daniel Boone Native Gardens Horn in the West Howard Knob Tweetsie Railroad Watauga River Elk Knob State Park Grandfather Mountain Kidd-Brewer Stadium Notable residents Sam Adams, professional golfer who played on the PGA Tour Chris Austin, country music singer Eustace Conway, an American naturalist Rufus L. Edmisten, former North Carolina Secretary of State and Attorney General Tommy Gregg, former MLB player Steve Goss, former North Carolina Senator and ordained Southern Baptist minister Doc Hendley, founder of Wine to Water, an American charitable organization John Hollar, former NFL player for the Washington Redskins and Detroit Lions James Holshouser, was the 68th Governor of North Carolina Michael Houser, founding member and lead guitarist of the band Widespread Panic Ken Isaacs, executive with the Christian organization Samaritan's Purse Ryder Jones, MLB player with the Arizona Diamondbacks Bob Matheson, former NFL player and 2x Super Bowl champion with the Miami Dolphins Abraham Morlu, former CFL player and track Olympian, representing his birth country Liberia Stanley South, major proponent of the processual archaeology movement Brenda Taylor, Olympic hurdler who represented the Team USA at the 2004 Athens Olympics Coaker Triplett, former MLB player for the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, and Philadelphia Phillies Doc Watson, bluegrass, gospel, blues, folk, and country singer Sister city Boone has one sister city, as designated by Sister Cities International: Collingwood, Ontario, Canada References External links DigitalNC: Historic Boone Historical Boone Photos, Postcards, and Paper Cy Crumley ET&WNC Photo Collection County seats in North Carolina Towns in Watauga County, North Carolina Western North Carolina Populated places established in 1872 1872 establishments in North Carolina Appalachian culture in North Carolina Towns in North Carolina

William John Clifton Haley (; July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981) was a pioneering American rock and roll musician. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and million-selling hits such as "Rock Around the Clock", "See You Later, Alligator", "Shake, Rattle and Roll", "Rocket 88", "Skinny Minnie", and "Razzle Dazzle". His recordings have sold over 60 million records worldwide. Biography Early life and career Haley was born July 6, 1925 in Highland Park, Michigan. In 1929, the four-year-old Haley underwent an inner-ear mastoid operation which accidentally severed an optic nerve, leaving him blind in his left eye for the rest of his life. It is said that he adopted his trademark kiss curl over his right eye to draw attention from his left, but it also became his "gimmick", and added to his popularity. As a result of the effects of the Great Depression on the Detroit area, his father moved the family to Bethel, Pennsylvania, when Bill was seven years old. Haley's father William Albert Haley (1900–1956) was from Kentucky and played the banjo and mandolin, and his mother, Maude Green (1895–1955), who was originally from Ulverston in Lancashire, England, was a technically accomplished keyboardist with classical training. Haley told the story that when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one. One of his first appearances was in 1938 for a Bethel Junior baseball team entertainment event, performing guitar and songs when he was 13 years old. The anonymous sleeve notes accompanying the 1956 Decca album Rock Around the Clock describe Haley's early life and career: "When Bill Haley was fifteen [c. 1940] he left home with his guitar and very little else and set out on the hard road to fame and fortune. The next few years, continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner, were hard and poverty-stricken, but crammed full of useful experience. Apart from learning how to exist on one meal a day and other artistic exercises, he worked at an open-air park show, sang and yodelled with any band that would have him, and worked with a traveling medicine show. Eventually he got a job with a popular group known as the 'Down Homers' while they were in Hartford, Connecticut. Soon after this he decided, as all successful people must decide at some time or another, to be his own boss again – and he has been that ever since." These notes fail to account for his early band, known as the Four Aces of Western Swing. During the 1940s Haley was considered one of the top cowboy yodelers in America as "Silver Yodeling Bill Haley". One source states that Haley started his career as "The Rambling Yodeler" in a country band, The Saddlemen. The sleeve notes conclude: "For six years Bill Haley was a musical director of Radio Station WPWA in Chester, Pennsylvania, and led his own band all through this period. It was then known as Bill Haley's Saddlemen, indicating their definite leaning toward the tough Western style. They continued playing in clubs as well as over the radio around Philadelphia, and in 1951 made their first recordings on Ed Wilson's Keystone Records in Philadelphia." The group subsequently signed with Dave Miller's Holiday Records and, on June 14, 1951 the Saddlemen recorded a cover of the Delta Cats "Rocket 88". Bill Haley and His Comets During the Labor Day weekend in 1952, the Saddlemen were renamed Bill Haley with Haley's Comets. The name was inspired by the supposedly official pronunciation of Halley's Comet and was suggested by Bob Johnson, program director at radio station WPWA where Bill Haley had a live radio program from noon to 1 pm. In 1953, Haley's recording of "Crazy Man, Crazy" (co-written by Haley and his bass player, Marshall Lytle, although Lytle would not receive credit until 2001) became the first rock and roll song to hit the American charts, peaking at number 15 on Billboard and number 11 on Cash Box. Soon after, the band's name was revised to "Bill Haley & His Comets". In 1954, Haley recorded "Rock Around the Clock". Initially, it was relatively successful, peaking at number 23 on the Billboard pop singles chart and staying on the charts for a few weeks. On re-release, the record reached #1 on July 9, 1955. Haley soon had another worldwide hit with "Shake, Rattle and Roll", another rhythm and blues cover in this case from Big Joe Turner, which went on to sell a million copies and was the first rock 'n' roll song to enter the British singles charts in December 1954, becoming a gold record. He retained elements of the original (which was slow blues), but sped it up with some country music aspects into the song (specifically, Western swing) and changed up the lyrics. Haley and his band were important in launching the music known as "Rock and Roll" to a wider audience after a period of it being considered an underground genre. When "Rock Around the Clock" appeared as the theme song of the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle starring Glenn Ford, it soared to the top of the American Billboard chart for eight weeks. The single is commonly used as a convenient line of demarcation between the "rock era" and the music industry that preceded it. Billboard separated its statistical tabulations into 1890–1954 and 1955–present. After the record rose to number one, Haley became widely popular by those who had come to embrace the new style of music. With the song's success, the age of rock music began overnight and ended the dominance of the jazz and pop standards performed by Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Eddie Fisher, Patti Page and Elvis Presley (whose rendition of the song is now lost). "Rock Around the Clock" was the first record to sell over one million copies in both Britain and Germany. Later on in 1957, Haley became the first major American rock singer to tour Europe. Haley continued to score hits throughout the 1950s such as "See You Later, Alligator" and he starred in the first rock and roll musical films Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock, both in 1956. Haley was already 30 years old, and he was soon eclipsed in the United States by the younger, sexier Elvis Presley, but continued to enjoy great popularity in Latin America, Europe, and Australia during the 1960s. Bill Haley and the Comets performed "Rock Around the Clock" on the Texaco Star Theater hosted by Milton Berle on Tuesday, May 31, 1955, on NBC in an a cappella and lip-synched version. Berle predicted that the song would go number one: "A group of entertainers who are going right to the top." Berle also sang and danced to the song which was performed by the entire cast of the show. This was one of the earliest nationally televised performances by a rock and roll band and provided the new musical genre with a much wider audience. Bill Haley and the Comets were the first rock and roll act to appear on the iconic American musical variety series the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday, August 7, 1955, on CBS in a broadcast that originated from the Shakespeare Festival Theater in Hartford, Connecticut. They performed a live version of "Rock Around the Clock" with Franny Beecher on lead guitar and Dick Richards on drums. The band made their second appearance on the show on Sunday, April 28, 1957, performing the songs "Rudy's Rock" and "Forty Cups of Coffee". Bill Haley and the Comets appeared on American Bandstand hosted by Dick Clark on ABC twice in 1957, on the prime time show October 28, 1957, and on the regular daytime show on November 27, 1957. The band also appeared on Dick Clark's Saturday Night Beechnut Show, also known as The Dick Clark Show, a primetime TV series from New York on March 22, 1958, during the first season and on February 20, 1960, performing "Rock Around the Clock", "Shake, Rattle and Roll", and "Tamiami". In 2017 Haley was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. Personal life Marriages Bill Haley was married three times: Dorothy Crowe (December 11, 1946 – November 14, 1952) (divorced) (two children) Barbara Joan Cupchak (November 18, 1952 – 1960) (divorced) (five children) Martha Valaesco (1963–February 9, 1981; his death) (three children) Children Bill Haley had at least ten children. John W. Haley, his eldest son, wrote Sound and Glory, a biography of Haley. His youngest daughter, Gina Haley, is a professional musician based in Texas. Scott Haley is an athlete. His youngest son Pedro is also a musician. He also had a daughter, Martha Maria, from his last marriage with Martha Velasco. Bill Haley Jr., Haley's second son and first with Joan Barbara "Cuppy" Haley-Hahn, publishes a regional business magazine. In February, 2011, he formed a tribute band, performing his father's music and telling the stories behind the songs. Last years and death An admitted alcoholic, Haley fought a battle with alcohol into the 1970s. Nonetheless, he and his band continued to be a popular touring act, benefiting from a 1950s nostalgia movement that began in the late 1960s and the signing of a lucrative record deal with the European Sonet label. After performing for Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Variety Performance on November 26, 1979, Haley made his final performances in South Africa in May and June 1980. Before the South African tour, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Subsequently, Haley's planned tour of Germany in the autumn of 1980 had to be cancelled. Despite his illness, Haley started compiling notes for possible use as a basis for either a biographical film based on his life, or a published autobiography (accounts differ), and there were plans for him to record an album in Memphis, Tennessee, when the brain tumor began affecting his behavior and he returned to his home in Harlingen, Texas. The October 25, 1980 issue of German tabloid Bild reported that Haley had a brain tumor. Haley's British manager, Patrick Malynn, was quoted as saying..."Haley had taken a fit [and] didn't recognize anyone anymore." Haley was immediately taken to his home in Beverly Hills. In addition, Haley's doctor said that the tumor was inoperable. The Berliner Zeitung reported a few days later that Haley had collapsed after a performance in Texas and was taken to the hospital in his hometown of Harlingen. However, this account is questionable, as Bill Haley did not perform in the United States at all in 1980. Martha, Bill's widow, who was with him in these troubling times, denies he had a brain tumor as does his old, very close friend, Hugh McCallum. Martha and friends related that Bill did not want to go on the road anymore and that ticket sales for that planned tour of Germany in the fall of 1980 were slow. According to McCallum, "It's my unproven gut feeling that that [the brain tumor] was said to curtail talks about the tour and play the sympathy card." At this same time, Haley's drinking problem appeared to be getting worse. According to Martha, she and Bill fought all the time and she told him to stop drinking or move out. Eventually, he moved out into a room in their pool house. Martha still took care of him and sometimes, he would come in the house to eat, but he ate very little. "There were days we never saw him," said his daughter Martha Maria. In addition to Haley's drinking problems, he was also having serious mental health issues. Martha Maria said, "It was like sometimes he was drunk even when he wasn't drinking." After being picked up by the Harlingen Police several times for alleged intoxication, Martha had a judge put Haley in the hospital, where he was seen by a psychiatrist, who said Bill's brain was overproducing a chemical, like adrenaline. The doctor prescribed a medication to stop the overproduction, but said Bill would have to stop drinking. Martha said, "This is pointless." She took him home, however, fed him and gave him his first dose. As soon as he felt better, he went back out to his room in the pool house, and the downward spiral continued until his passing. Media reports immediately following his death indicated that Haley displayed deranged and erratic behavior in his final weeks. According to a biography of Haley by John Swenson, released a year later, Haley made a succession of bizarre, mostly monologue late-night phone calls to friends and relatives toward the end of his life in which he was semi-coherent, his first wife has been quoted as saying, "He would call you and ramble, dwelling on the past ...". The biography also describes Haley painting the windows of his home black, but there is little other information available about his final days. Haley died on February 9, 1981, at the age of 55 at his home in Harlingen. He was discovered lying motionless on his bed by a friend who had stopped by to visit him. The friend immediately called the police and Haley was pronounced dead at the scene. Haley's death certificate gave 'natural causes, most likely a heart attack' as being the cause. Following a small funeral service attended by 75 people, Haley was cremated and the location for his ashes remained unknown until 2003 when it was discovered that they were buried in an unmarked grave at the Harlingen cemetery. Tributes and legacy Haley was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. His son Pedro represented him at the ceremony. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6350 Hollywood Boulevard on February 8, 1960, for his contributions to the music industry. The Comets were separately inducted into the Hall of Fame as a group in 2012, after a rule change allowed the induction of backing groups. Songwriters Tom Russell and Dave Alvin addressed Haley's demise in musical terms with "Haley's Comet" on Alvin's 1991 album Blue Blvd. Dwight Yoakam sang backup on the tribute. Surviving members of the 1954–55 contingent of Haley's Comets reunited in the late 1980s and continued to perform for many years around the world. They released a concert DVD in 2004 on Hydra Records, played the Viper Room in West Hollywood in 2005, and performed at Dick Clark's American Bandstand Theater in Branson, Missouri, beginning in 2006–07. As of 2014, only two members of this particular contingent were still alive (Joey Ambrose and Dick Richards), but they continued to perform in Branson and in Europe. In the Summer of 2019, Dick Richards, the drummer of the Comets, passed away, at the age of 95. At least two other groups also continue to perform in North America under the Comets name as of 2014. In March 2007, the Original Comets opened the Bill Haley Museum in Munich, Germany. On October 27, 2007, ex-Comets guitar player Bill Turner opened the Bill Haley Museum for the public. Asteroid In February 2006, the International Astronomical Union announced the naming of asteroid 79896 Billhaley to mark the 25th anniversary of Bill Haley's death. Published biographies In 1980, Haley began working on an autobiography entitled The Life and Times of Bill Haley, but died after completing only 100 pages. The work is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, but has yet to be released to the public. According to Gina Haley, Bill's youngest daughter, her father managed to complete the book on his career, and the manuscript is in possession of the Bill Haley estate. Bill Haley, Jr. and Peter Benjaminson, Crazy Man, Crazy: The Bill Haley Story ,(2019) John Swenson, Bill Haley: The Daddy of Rock and Roll (),(1982) John W. Haley with John von Hoëlle, Sound and Glory: The Incredible Story of Bill Haley, the Father of Rock 'N' Roll and the Music That Shook the World (), (1992) Jim Dawson, Rock Around the Clock: The Record That Started the Rock Revolution! (), (2005) Otto Fuchs, Bill Haley: The Father of Rock 'n' Roll, (), (2011) Film portrayals Unlike his contemporaries, Bill Haley has rarely been portrayed on screen. Following the success of The Buddy Holly Story in 1978, Haley expressed interest in having his life story committed to film, but this never came to fruition. In the 1980s and early 1990s, numerous media reports emerged stating that plans were underway to do a biopic based upon Haley's life, with Beau Bridges, Jeff Bridges and John Ritter all at one point being mentioned as actors in line to play Haley (according to Goldmine Magazine, Ritter attempted to buy the film rights to Sound and Glory). Bill Haley has also been portrayed – not always in a positive light – in several "period" films: John Paramor in Shout! The Story of Johnny O'Keefe (1985) Michael Daingerfield in Mr. Rock 'n' Roll: The Alan Freed Story (1999) - notable for showing Haley himself playing the guitar solo on "Rock Around the Clock" during a live performance; although technically incorrect, Haley did pretend to play the solo during a 1955 appearance on The Milton Berle Show when his group lip-synched to the original recording during a period when the Comets lacked a full-time lead guitarist. Dicky Barrett (of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones) in Shake, Rattle and Roll: An American Love Story (also 1999) - Barrett performs a version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" in the film that bears little resemblance to Haley's recording; a recording by the real Bill Haley is also heard in the film. Discography Before the formation of Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, which later became the Comets, Haley released several singles with other groups. Dates are approximate due to lack of documentation. As Bill Haley and the Four Aces of Western Swing: 1948 Too Many Parties and Too Many Pals (vocal by Tex King)/Four Leaf Clover Blues (Cowboy CR1201) August 1948 1949 Tennessee Border/Candy Kisses (Cowboy CR1202) March 1949 As Johnny Clifton and His String Band: 1950 Stand Up and Be Counted/Loveless Blues (Center C102) Many Haley discographies list two 1946 recordings by the Down Homers released on the Vogue Records label as featuring Haley. Haley historian Chris Gardner, as well as surviving members of the group, have confirmed that the two singles: "Out Where the West Winds Blow"/"Who's Gonna Kiss You When I'm Gone" (Vogue R736) and "Boogie Woogie Yodel"/"Baby I Found Out All About You" (Vogue R786) do not feature Haley. However, the tracks were nonetheless included in the compilation box set Rock 'n' Roll Arrives released by Bear Family Records in 2006. See the discography of Bill Haley & His Comets for a list of the singles and albums released by Haley with the Saddlemen and the Comets from 1950 onwards. Unreleased recordings Bill Haley recorded prolifically during the 1940s, often at the radio stations where he worked, or in formal studio settings. Virtually none of these recordings were ever released. Liner notes for a 2003 CD release by Hydra Records entitled Bill Haley and Friends Vol. 2: The Legendary Cowboy Recordings reveal that several additional Cowboy label single releases were planned for the Four Aces, but this never occurred. A number of previously unreleased Haley country-western recordings from the 1946–1950 period began to emerge near the end of Haley's life, some of which were released by the Arzee label, with titles such as "Yodel Your Blues Away" and "Rose of My Heart." Still more demos, alternate takes, and wholly unheard-before recordings have been released since Haley's death. Notable examples of such releases include the albums Golden Country Origins by Grassroots Records of Australia and Hillbilly Haley by the British label, Rollercoaster, as well as the aforementioned German release by Hydra Records. In 2006, Bear Family Records of Germany released what is considered to be the most comprehensive (yet still incomplete) collection of Haley's 1946–1950 recordings as part of its Haley box set Rock n' Roll Arrives. Compositions Bill Haley's compositions included "Four Leaf Clover Blues" in 1948, "Rose of My Heart", "Yodel Your Blues Away", "Crazy Man, Crazy", "What'Cha Gonna Do", "Fractured", "Live It Up", "Farewell, So Long, Goodbye", "Real Rock Drive", "Rocking Chair on the Moon", "Sundown Boogie", "Green Tree Boogie", "Tearstains on My Heart", "Down Deep in My Heart", "Straight Jacket", "Birth of the Boogie", "Two Hound Dogs", "Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie", "Hot Dog Buddy Buddy", "R-O-C-K", "Rudy's Rock", "Calling All Comets", "Tonight's the Night", "Hook, Line and Sinker", "Sway with Me", "Paper Boy (On Main Street U.S.A.)", "Skinny Minnie", "B.B. Betty", "Eloise", "Whoa Mabel!", "Vive le Rock and Roll", "I've Got News For You", "So Right Tonight", "Jamaica D.J.", "Ana Maria", "Yucatán Twist", "Football Rock and Roll", "Let the Good Times Roll Again" in 1979, and "Chick Safari" in 1960. He also wrote or co-wrote songs for other artists such as "I've Got News for You" for Penny Smith in 1955 on Kahill, "Calypso Rock" for Dave Day and The Red Coats on Kapp in 1956, "Half Your Heart" with Robert J. Hayes for Kitty Nation in 1956 on Wing, "I Oughta" and "Everything But You" for Dotti Malone in 1956 also on Wing, "A.B.C. Rock" and "Rocky the Rockin' Rabbit" (among others) for Sally Starr for an album she released on Haley's own label, Clymax Records, "A Sweet Bunch of Roses" for Country and Western singer Lou Graham, "Toodle-Oo-Bamboo" for Ray Coleman and His Skyrockets on Skyrocket Records in 1959, "Always Together" for the Cook Brothers on Arcade in 1960, "Crazy Street" for The Matys Brothers on Coral Records, "The Cat" for Cappy Bianco, and "(Ya Gotta) Sing For the Ladies" and "Butterfly Love" for Ginger Shannon and Johnny Montana in 1960 on Arcade as well as "I'm Shook" and "Broke Down Baby", both of which were recorded by The Tyrones in 1958–59. Quotations NME – October 1955 NME – January 1957 Awards In 1982, Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings at least 25 years old and with "qualitative or historical significance". In December 2017, Haley was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Hall Of Fame. References Other sources Jim Dawson, Rock Around the Clock: The Record That Started the Rock Revolution! (San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2005) John W. Haley and John von Hoëlle, Sound and Glory (Wilmington, DE: Dyne-American, 1990) John Swenson, Bill Haley (London: W.H. Allen, 1982) External links Bill Haley's new Comets web site Melody Manor (Bill Haley's house) Google Map Bill Haley Jr. and the Comets site 1925 births 1981 deaths People from Highland Park, Michigan Bill Haley & His Comets members American people of English descent American radio personalities American rock singers American rockabilly guitarists American male guitarists People from Delaware County, Pennsylvania People from Harlingen, Texas Rock and roll musicians American bandleaders Decca Records artists Songwriters from Michigan Yodelers 20th-century American singers American rock guitarists Singers from Pennsylvania Guitarists from Michigan Guitarists from Philadelphia 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century American male singers