id
stringlengths 2
8
| revid
stringlengths 1
10
| url
stringlengths 38
44
| title
stringlengths 1
184
| text
stringlengths 101
448k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
3679
|
46613301
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3679
|
Politics of Burkina Faso
|
According to the 1991 Constitution of Burkina Faso, the politics of Burkina Faso take place in the form of a semi-presidential republic, with powers separated between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The President of Burkina Faso, who has historically established the majority of Burkinabé policy, is the head of state. Also under the executive branch is a prime minister and a cabinet, the Council of Ministers. The president-appointed Prime Minister of Burkina Faso is the head of government under a multi-party system.
The legislative branch includes a unicameral parliament, the National Assembly, which passes laws and monitors government actions. The judicial branch includes at its base Tribunals of First Instance, then Courts of Appeal, and at the top the Supreme Court with four chambers—constitutional, administrative, judicial, and financial. This branch is the weakest and least-independent in Burkina Faso because of inadequate human, budgetary, and logistical resources in addition to the president, as the President of the High Council of the Magistracy, having power over key appointments.
Throughout Burkina Faso's history, the military has played an integral role in politics, and the country is currently under Ibrahim Traoré, a military captain. The Burkinabé government has experienced 11 successful military coups d'état because of weak civilian institutions, insecurity, and widespread frustration with ineffective governance. After coups and during transition periods, the Constitution is largely ignored, giving unchecked authority to the head of state. After an internal coup ousted Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, the previous military head of state, a new transitional charter was adopted that named Traoré the transitional president. The coup was primarily orchestrated because Damiba ineffectively handled rising jihadist influence and attacks, which have killed thousands and displaced more than two million.
Burkina Faso under Ibrahim Traoré.
As the leader of the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration (MPSR), Ibrahim Traoré has proven himself to be a controversial yet serious leader. He has been the interim president of Burkina Faso since September 2022. Similar to previous military leaders, Traoré has maintained popular support by utilizing nationalist rhetoric and by growing Burkina Faso's economy; the country's GDP has grown from $18.8 billion to $22.1 billion under him. Traoré has made steps toward curbing jihadist intrusion by significantly increasing the membership of the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP) by nearly 100,000 members.
Traoré is a strong verbal opponent of neocolonialism and Western domination and has sought economic self-sufficiency in Burkina Faso, prioritizing agricultural and industrial reforms. He has shifted Burkinabé foreign policy. The country no longer receives economic and military support from former colonizer France, who previously sent large amounts of foreign aid and maintained a large military presence in Burkina Faso. Instead, Traoré has furthered an alliance with Russia.
Ibrahim Traoré has received much criticism internationally and from some Burkinabé, largely because of his disregard for the democratic principles outlined in Burkina Faso's Constitution. When Traoré became the interim president in September 2022 following the coup of Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, a transition phase was in effect. In July 2024, elections were supposed to be held to form a civilian government, but Traoré announced that his government would extend the transition by 60 months.
Traoré has suppressed speech by media organizations, trade unions, and civil society groups. This has primary been done to individuals and groups critical of his military rule and coups in the Sahel as well as those critical of the Burkinabé army and its abuses against civilians. Burkinabé media organizations—like Radio Oméga, Burkina Faso's most important independent radio station—that have platformed these individuals and groups have faced temporary suspensions. Individuals strongly opposed to Traoré have been abducted and conscripted to the state security forces and the VDP. Despite Traoré not upholding Burkina Faso's Constitution, he is popular among Burkinabé, especially from youth and nationalists.
Post-colonial political history.
Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta) became formally independent from French rule in 1960. Maurice Yaméogo, who was elected president in December 1959, presided over Burkina Faso's newly independent government. The country was under a unitary constitution, with power centralized in the national government. Despite Yaméogo being an anti-colonial leader, he did not make significant strides towards alleviating the political, social, and economic legacies of colonialism.
Minimal modifications were made to the state structures that remained from the colonial state. Yaméogo attempted to make Burkina Faso a one-party state under the Voltatic Democratic Union-African Democratic Rally (UDV-RDA), which is what caused his eventual fall from power. After years of austerity and nepotistic political appointments, civilians wanted Yaméogo to be replaced.
While strength in opposition to Yaméogo grew, so did the Burkinabé military: the end to French occupation brought increasing national autonomy, which included military autonomy. The military positioned itself as a neutral force in the midst of political unrest. The army grew as an autonomous unit after Yaméogo rejected French support for it, in turn causing the army to develop as a nationally oriented institution.
Many members of the army were veterans of colonial wars who experienced repression under French rule. By 1966, when protests erupted over austerity and repression, the army, and especially Lieutenant-Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana, refused to suppress demonstrations and supported civilian opposition to Yaméogo. Lamizana arrested Yaméogo in a coup d'état, declaring himself the head of state in 1966 with widespread support from Burkinabé.
Sangoulé Lamizana was the first of many coup leaders in Burkina Faso to successfully gain power. Because Yaméogo was despised throughout Burkina Faso, Lamizana made the military popular. He played an integral role in establishing military culture in Burkina Faso by promoting it as a stabilizing and unifying force. Lamizana suspended the constitution and dissolved the National Assembly, eventually replacing the constitution and attempting to shift to civilian rule in 1970.
A civilian government was elected, but after a power struggle ensued between Speaker of the Parliament Joseph Ouédraogo and Prime Minister Gérard Kango Ouédraogo, Lamizana re-established military rule. Throughout Lamizana's rule, he would temporarily allow limited political activity but eventually suppress this activity when he deemed it to be getting out of hand. His most prominent opponents were French-educated left-wing intellectuals and trade union organizers, but his eventual demise came as a result of another military coup.
As a response to the Lamizana government's continued failure to deal with strikes and food shortages, Saye Zerbo, who was a trained military leader, mounted a coup in 1980 that overthrew Lamizana. Zerbo eradicated the constitution enacted by Lamizana and instead ruled through a thirty-one-member Military Committee for Recovering National Progress (CMRPN). The military committee included future presidents Thomas Sankara and Blaise Compaoré, showing how the political leadership of Burkina Faso has historically been influenced by military connections. Similar to previous Burkinabé heads of state, Zerbo's administration was corrupt and did not provide social improvements for the people of Burkina Faso. Zerbo was accused of embezzling £28 million (well over US$100 million in current inflation-adjusted value) from government funds.
A coup orchestrated by the Conseil de Salut du People (CSP), led by Colonel Gabriel Yoryan Somé, overthrew the Saye Zerbo regime and appointed Surgeon Major Jean Baptiste Ouédraogo the head of state. Ouédraogo later appointed Thomas Sankara prime minister in January 1983. Mere months later, in May 1983, President Ouédraogo removed pro-Libyan and anti-French elements from the Burkinabé government and disbanded the CSP. This greatly upset radicals in Burkina Faso, leading to his regime to be overthrown in August by the National Council for the Revolution (CNR). He was replaced by his former prime minister, Thomas Sankara.
Thomas Sankara's revolutionary ideas were widely popular in the years leading up to his rule, especially among students and the military. It was under Sankara that the country's name changed from "Upper Volta" to "Burkina Faso," meaning "land of the proud and honest people." Largely beginning in 1975, Sankara and other officers, including future president and then close ally of Sankara's Blaise Compaoré, stayed in close contact with leftist civilians. Sankara, Compaoré, and other important revolutionary figures in Burkinabé politics secretly attended meetings of leftist coalitions, notably including the African Independence Party (PAI), Union of Communist Struggles (ULC), and Voltaic Revolutionary Communist Party.
They appealed to the public, attending these meetings in civilian clothes. A network of revolutionary organizing laid the foundation for the 1983 coup of Ouédraogo. Sankara emphasized breaking from neo-colonial dependencies, especially from France, and rooting out corruption that had plagued the Burkinabé government since its independence. He and the CNR created and orchestrated Revolutionary Popular Tribunals (TPRs), which were broadcast and convicted over 100 members of previous regimes of corruption. In addition, the Sankara government implemented environmental restoration initiatives and catalyzed popular support from Burkina Faso's 95% rural population by investing in widespread small development initiatives.
Even though there was much initial enthusiasm surrounding Thomas Sankara's presidency, positive sentiments eventually faded after his government participated in political repression. This repression largely came from members of the CNR and not Sankara himself. While many of the CNR's initiatives found support from the Burkinabé people, some resentment and outright resistance was expressed. CNR officials responded to this with coercion and excessive repression.
Political repression under his government was also exhibited through the way his Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) operated. While they initially played a large role in mobilizing revolutionary sentiment before and after Sankara was elected, the actions of many CDRs were corrupt and spread violence. Many repeated abuses were carried out by CDR militants, who were often armed. While unmasking corrupt state functionaries, they participated in corruption themselves by embezzling funds and breaking into homes to collect what they called "taxes" and "contributions."
However, Sankara did press CDRs to operate in a just and respectable manner and tried leveling out corruption within his own government. This created friction within governmental leadership, especially with Blaise Compaoré. Sankara refused to combine existing Marxist groups into a single ruling party out of fear of creating an elitist government, which was viewed as weak by Compaoré and allies. This set the stage for the 1987 coup in which Sankara was assassinated and former ally Compaoré was appointed president.
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, and 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. A few months later, On 30 September 2022, Damiba was himself ousted by Ibrahim Traoré, his military colleague. President Damiba resigned and left the country. On 6 October 2022, Captain Ibrahim Traore was officially appointed as president of Burkina Faso.
Government.
Executive branch.
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 seven to five 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 Kafando 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.
Council of Ministers.
The Burkinabé Council of Ministers nominated on 5 March 2022 included prime minister Albert Ouédraogo and 25 ministers.
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, Burkinabé 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 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:
Provinces:
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.
|
3680
|
49044159
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3680
|
Economy of Burkina Faso
|
The economy of Burkina Faso is based primarily on subsistence farming and livestock raising. Burkina Faso has an average income purchasing-power-parity per capita of $1,900 and nominal per capita of $790 in 2014. More than 80% of the population relies on subsistence agriculture with only a small fraction directly involved in industry and services. Highly variable rainfall, poor soils, lack of adequate communications and other infrastructure, a low literacy rate, and a stagnant economy are all longstanding problems of this landlocked country. The export economy also remained subject to fluctuations in world prices.
The country has a high population density, few natural resources, and a fragile soil. Industry remains dominated by unprofitable government-controlled corporations. Following the African franc currency devaluation in January 1994 the government updated its development program in conjunction with international agencies, and exports and economic growth have increased. Maintenance of its macroeconomic progress depends on continued low inflation, reduction in the trade deficit, and reforms designed to encourage private investment.
Financial System Overview.
The Burkinabé financial system represents 30% of the country's GDP and is dominated by the banking sector, which accounts for 90% of total financial system assets. Eleven banks and five non-bank financial institutions operate in the country.
The banking sector is highly concentrated, with the three largest banks holding nearly 60% of total financial sector assets. Banks are generally adequately capitalized, but remain vulnerable due to their overexposure to the cotton sector, the prices of which are subject to significant oscillations.
A December 2018 report from the World Bank indicates that cotton had become the most important cash crop, while gold exports were increasing in recent years. In 2017, economic growth increased to 6.4% in 2017 (vs. 5.9% in 2016) primarily due to gold production and increased investment in infrastructure. The increase in consumption linked to growth of the wage bill also supported economic growth. Inflation remained low, 0.4% that year but the public deficit grew to 7.7% of GDP (vs. 3.5% in 2016). The government was continuing to get financial aid and loans to finance the debt. To finance the public deficit, the Government combined concessional aid and borrowing on the regional market. The World Bank said that the economic outlook remained favorable in the short and medium term, although that could be negatively impacted. Risks included high oil prices (imports), lower prices of gold and cotton (exports) as well as terrorist threat and labour strikes.
Macro-economic trend.
For purchasing power parity comparisons, the US Dollar is exchanged at 470.70 CFA Francs only. Mean wages were $0.56 per man-hour in 2009.
Current GDP per capita of Burkina Faso grew 13% in the Sixties reaching a peak growth of 237% in the Seventies. But this proved unsustainable and growth consequently scaled back to 23% in the Eighties. Finally, it shrank by 37% in the Nineties. Average wages in 2007 hover around 2 to 3 dollars per day.
Although disadvantaged by an extremely resource-deprived domestic economy, Burkina Faso remains committed to the structural adjustment program it launched in 1991. It has largely recovered from the devaluation of the CFA in January 1994, with a 1996 growth rate of 5.9%.
Many Burkinabé migrate to neighbouring countries for work, and their remittances provide a substantial contribution to the balance of payments. Burkina Faso is attempting to improve the economy by developing its mineral resources, improving its infrastructure, making its agricultural and livestock sectors more productive and competitive, and stabilizing the supplies and prices of cereals.
The agricultural economy remains highly vulnerable to fluctuations in rainfall. The Mossi Plateau in north central Burkina Faso faces encroachment from the Sahara. The resultant southward migration means heightened competition for control of very limited water resources south of the Mossi Plateau. Most of the population ekes out a living as subsistence farmers, living with problems of climate, soil erosion, and rudimentary technology. The staple crops are pearl millet, sorghum, maize, and rice. The cash crops are cotton, groundnuts, karite (shea nuts), and sesame. Livestock, once a major export, has declined.
A 2018 report by the African Development Bank Group discussed a macroeconomic evolution: "higher investment and continued spending on social services and security that will add to the budget deficit". This group's prediction for 2018 indicated that the budget deficit would be reduced to 4.8% of GDP in 2018 and to 2.9% in 2019. Public debt associated with the National Economic and Social Development Plan was estimated at 36.9% of GDP in 2017.
Agriculture.
Burkina Faso produced in 2018:
In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products.
External trade.
Industry, still in an embryonic stage, is located primarily in Bobo-Dioulasso, Ouagadougou, Banfora, and Koudougou. Manufacturing is limited to food processing, textiles, and other import substitution heavily protected by tariffs. Some factories are privately owned, and others are set to be privatized. Burkina Faso's exploitable natural resources are limited, although a manganese ore deposit is located in the remote northeast. Gold mining has increased greatly since the mid-1980s and, along with cotton, is a leading export moneyearner. However, both gold and cotton are listed as goods produced mostly by child labor and forced labor according to a recent U.S. Department of Labor report.
|
3681
|
5229428
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3681
|
Telecommunications in Burkina Faso
|
Telecommunications in Burkina Faso include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.
The telephony market in Burkina Faso is still relatively underdeveloped. Although mobile penetration is just over 100%, it is still below the African average. Fixed-line telephony and internet connections are very low, due in large part to poor network infrastructure. The government has a number of policies intended to improve the levels of investment and usage of networks but the impact of the SARS-Cov2 pandemic has hampered such efforts.
Radio is the country's most popular communications medium. Use of telecommunications in Burkina Faso are extremely low, limited due to the low penetration of electricity, even in major cities. There were just 141,400 fixed line phones in use in 2012, in a country with a population of 17.4 million. Use of mobile phones has skyrocketed from 1.0 million lines in 2006 to 10 million in 2012. Internet use is also low, with only 3.7 users per 100 inhabitants in 2012, just over 643,000 users total. The Internet penetration rate in Africa as a whole was 16 users per 100 inhabitants in 2013.
Regulation and control.
The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice.
All media are under the administrative and technical supervision of the Ministry of Communications, which is responsible for developing and implementing government policy on information and communication. The Superior Council of Communication (SCC), a semiautonomous body under the Office of the President, monitors the content of radio and television programs, newspapers, and Internet Web sites to ensure compliance with professional ethics standards and government policy. The SCC may summon journalists and issue warnings for subsequent violations. Hearings may concern alleged libel, disturbing the peace, inciting violence, or violations of state security.
Journalists occasionally face criminal libel prosecutions and other forms of harassment and intimidation. In addition to the prohibition against insulting the head of state, the law also prohibits the publication of shocking images and lack of respect for the deceased. Although the government does not attempt to impede criticism, some journalists practice self-censorship.
The Burkinabé government, in its telecommunications development strategy, has stated its aim to make telecommunications a universal service accessible to all. A large portion of this strategy is the privatization of the National Telecommunications Office (ONATEL), with an additional focus on a rural telephony promotion project. In 2006 the government sold a 51 percent stake in the national telephone company, ONATEL, and ultimately planned to retain only a 23 percent stake in the company.
Radio and television.
Radio is the country's most popular communications medium. Dozens of private and community radio stations and a handful of private TV channels operate alongside their state-run counterparts. The BBC World Service, Voice of America, and Radio France Internationale are all on the air in the capital, Ouagadougou.
Early Development of the Mobile Market.
The state-run Office National Des Telecommunications (ONATEL) launched the first mobile network based on CDMA2000 technology in 1998.
Competition was introduced to the mobile telephone segment in 2000 with the introduction of new GSM network operators Celtel, Télécel Faso and ONATEL's Telmob. This pushed rates down even as density and coverage area increased.
Use of mobile phones grew quickly in the 2000s, growing from 2,700 subscribers in 1998, to 1.0 million in 2006, to 10.0 million in 2012. and to 21.4 million in 2020.
ARPU remained low, however, as mobile subscribers adopted behaviours such as "flashing" to minimize their costs and Burkina Faso's ancient oral tradition and talking drum culture harmonized with the introduction of mobile phone technologies. Additionally, mobile phone owners acquired status by being able to lend their phones to others in their communities.
International Group Involvement.
In 2006, Maroc Telecom(itself part of Etisalat group) took a majority stake in ONATEL, which it increased to 61% in 2018 and from July 1, 2019, Maroc Telecom consolidated Onatel, Mauritel, Gabon Télécom, Sotelma, Casanet, AT Côte d'Ivoire, Etisalat Benin, AT Togo, AT Niger, AT Centrafrique, and Tigo Tchad in its accounts.
In January 2021, Maroc Telecom rebranded all of its African subsidiaries as Moov Africa.
In 2005, Celtel was acquired by the Kuwaiti Zain Group.
In 2010, Zain Group decided to sell most of the Celtel group to Indian group Bharti Airtel, which rebranded Celtel as Airtel Burkina Faso.
In June 2016, Orange S.A. acquired the network and 4.6M subscribers of Airtel Burkina Faso. Following an ambitious network modernization plan, 9 months later the network rebranded as Orange Burkina Faso boasting a subscriber base of 6.3M.
According to the website of the Communication Regulator of Burkina Faso, at the end of 2020 the Mobile Telecommunications Market (21.4M subscriptions) was shared as follows:
Internet.
Internet use is low, but the sector began to improve following installation of a 22 Mbit/s fiber optic international link, a vast improvement over the previous 128 kbit/s link. Secondary access nodes began to appear in major cities, and cybercafés were providing Internet access to a broader spectrum of end users.
ONATEL's FasoNet is the country's leading wired Internet service provider, dominating the broadband market with its ADSL and EV-DO fixed-wireless offerings.
The mobile operators are offering data services using GPRS and EDGE technology, and third generation (3G) mobile broadband technology was not introduced until 2013 by Bharti Airtel.
A March 2013 ITU "Study on international Internet connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa" reports that the Burkina Faso "Internet market is not sufficiently dynamic and competitive" and that the high costs for Internet capable mobile phones (more than six times the cost of a basic mobile phone) and mobile Internet subscriptions (up to seven times the cost for basic mobile) limit the number of Internet users.
Internet censorship and surveillance.
There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet; however, the Superior Council of Communication (SCC) monitors Internet Web sites and discussion forums to ensure compliance with existing regulations. For example, in May 2012 the SCC issued a warning to a Web site on which a user had allegedly insulted President Compaore in an Internet forum.
The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. The law prohibits persons from insulting the head of state or using derogatory language with respect to the office; however, individuals criticize the government publicly or privately without reprisal.
The constitution and law prohibit arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government generally respects these prohibitions in practice. In cases of national security, however, the law permits surveillance, searches, and monitoring of telephones and private correspondence without a warrant.
|
3682
|
39498662
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3682
|
Transport in Burkina Faso
|
Transport in Burkina Faso consists primarily of road, air and rail transportation. The World Bank classified country's transportation as underdeveloped but noted that Burkina Faso is a natural geographic transportation hub for West Africa.
Highways.
In 2002, there were a total of of highway in Burkina Faso, of which are paved.
In 2000, the Government of Burkina Faso classified 15,000 kilometers of road as part of the national road network managed under the Ministry of Infrastructures Transport and Housing (MITH) through the Directorate of Roads (DGR). This network includes main inter-city roads and access roads for départments' capital cities. Only ten of the network's main roads are even partially paved, and the paved roads are plagued by dangerous potholes, missing signage, missing barriers and guardrails near roadside hazards, and no pavement markings to separate traffic moving in opposite directions
As of May 2011 the country's road infrastructure was rated by the World Bank to be in relatively good condition and noted that country was regional hub with paved roads linking the country to Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and Niger. Nevertheless, "trucking cartels and red tape contribute to high transportation costs and diminished international competitiveness." 58% of firms in Burkina Faso identified roads as major business constraint, maintenance and rehabilitation needs of the main road network are said to be underfunded.
Air transport.
There are international airports at Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso and numerous smaller airfields. In 2004, the number of airports totaled 23, only two of which had paved runways as of 2005. Air Burkina, which began in 1967, is government-run and has a monopoly on domestic service but also flies to neighboring countries.
Ouagadougou airport handles about 98% percent of all scheduled commercial air traffic in Burkina Faso. Air Burkina and Air France handle about 60% of all scheduled passenger traffic. Between 2005 and 2011, air passenger traffic at Ouagadougou airport grew at an average annual rate of 7.0 percent per annum reaching about 404,726 passengers in 2011 and was estimated to reach 850,000 by 2025. In 2007 Ouagadougou airport was the fifteenth busiest airport in West Africa in passenger volume, just ahead of Port Harcourt (Nigeria) and behind Banjul (Gambia). The total air cargo at Ouagadougou airport grew 71% from 4,350 tons in 2005 to about 7,448 tons in 2009.
The government plans to close the Ouagadougou airport upon construction of the new Ouagadougou-Donsin Airport, approximately 35 km northeast of Ouagadougou. The new airport is expected to be completed around 2018 and the government received an $85 million loan from the World Bank to help finance the construction. The government of Burkino Faso believed that the project would cost $618 million.
Railways.
There are 622 kilometres of railway in Burkina Faso, of which 517 km run from Ouagadougou to Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and 105 km from Ouagadougou to Kaya. As of June 2014 "Sitarail" operates a passenger train three times a week along the route from Ouagadougou to Abidjan via Banfora, Bobo-Dioulasso and Koudougou.
All of the railways in the country are of . Only Ivory Coast is connected to Burkina Faso by rail.
Instability in Ivory Coast in 2003 forced a rerouting of rail freight from the Abidjan corridor to ports in Togo, Benin, and Ghana via the road network. A proposed rail link between Ouagadougou and Pô in Burkina Faso and Kumasi and Boankra in Ghana, is progressing in 2025. Burkina Faso and Ghana will both use Standard gauge
In 2006, an Indian proposal surfaced to link the railways in Benin and Togo with landlocked Niger and Burkina Faso. Additionally, a Czech proposal also surfaced to link Ghana railways with Burkina Faso. The manganese deposits near Dori are one source of traffic. Burkina Faso would also be a participant in the AfricaRail project.
In May, 2011 the World Bank reported that "Sitarail" had recovered well from the political crisis in Ivory Coast but was experiencing financial distress, needed to re-balance its financial structure and find alternative funding for rehabilitation backlog.
Stations served.
The following towns of Burkina Faso are served by the country's railways:
|
3683
|
1299694639
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3683
|
Burkina Faso Armed Forces
|
The Burkina Faso Armed Forces () are the military of Burkina Faso. The service branches of the armed forces include its Army, Air Force, National Gendarmerie and People's Militia. Being a landlocked country, Burkina Faso has no navy.
History.
In 1966 a military coup deposed the first president of Upper Volta, Maurice Yaméogo, then proceeded to suspend the constitution, dissolve the National Assembly, and place Lieutenant Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana at the head of a government of senior army officers. The army junta remained in power for 4 years; on June 14, 1970, the Voltans ratified a new constitution that established a 4-year transition period toward complete civilian rule. Lamizana remained in power throughout the 1970s as president of military or mixed civil-military governments. After conflict over the 1970 constitution, a new constitution was written and approved in 1977, and Lamizana was reelected by open elections in 1978.
Lamizana's government faced problems with the country's traditionally powerful trade unions and on November 25, 1980, Colonel Saye Zerbo overthrew President Lamizana in a bloodless coup. Colonel Zerbo established the Military Committee of Recovery for National Progress as the supreme governmental authority, thus eradicating the 1977 constitution.
Colonel Zerbo also encountered resistance from trade unions and was overthrown two years later on November 7, 1982, by Major Dr. Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo and the Council of Popular Salvation (CSP). The CSP continued to ban political parties and organisations, yet promised a transition to civilian rule and a new constitution.
Factional infighting developed between moderates in the CSP and radicals led by Captain Thomas Sankara, who was appointed prime minister in January 1983. The internal political struggle and Sankara's leftist rhetoric led to his arrest and subsequent efforts to bring about his release, directed by Captain Blaise Compaoré. This release effort resulted in yet another military coup d'état on August 4, 1983. Compaoré came to power in a 1987 coup that led to the death of Sankara.
On February 15, 2011, soldiers mutinied in Ouagadougou over unpaid housing allowances. On April 18, 2011, it was reported that the mutiny had spread to Kaya after demonstrations in Pô and Tenkodogo. On April 29, 2011, the army said the mutiny would end after Compaoré promised to improve the military's housing, clothing and food allowances, though there were later protests by soldiers.
After a coup by members of the Regiment of Presidential Security on September 16, 2015, army units marched on Ouagadougou to oppose the coup, resulting in the restoration of Burkina Faso's transitional government (which was appointed after the 2014 Burkinabe uprising) on September 23, 2015.
In a coup attempt on January 24, 2022, mutinying soldiers arrested President Roch Kabore following gunfire.
On April 20, 2023, the 3rd Battalion of the Rapid Intervention Brigade committed the Karma massacre, rounding up and executing between 60 and 156 civilians, including women and children.
Ground forces.
The Army of Burkina Faso ("L'Armée de Terre" or LAT – Ground Forces) is a skeletonised force structure of some 5,800–6,000 officers and men, augmented by a conscript force or "People's Militia" of some 45,000 men and women. Unlike the police and security forces, the Army and the People's Militia are organised along Soviet/Chinese models and precepts. The Army is equipped with light wheeled armoured cars, some mounting cannons.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated in 2011–12 that Burkina Faso had 6,400 personnel in "L'Armée de Terre" in three military regions, one tank battalion (two tank platoons), five infantry regiments that may be under-strength, and an airborne regiment. Artillery and engineer battalions are also listed.
In recent years, the United States has begun providing military assistance and training to Burkina Faso's ground forces. It has trained three 750-man battalions for peace support operations in Darfur. During a recent UN inspection, a U.S. Department of Defense evaluation team found Burkina's "Laafi" battalion fit to deploy to Sudan. Using a small Department of Defense International Military Education and Training (IMET) budget, the U.S. Embassy has established English-language courses at an LAT military base, and has brought LAT officers to attend officer basic training courses in the U.S. The government of Burkina Faso has also accepted additional U.S. training assistance in counter-terrorism tactics and humanitarian assistance. Burkina Faso has recently become a member of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP).
Three years of increasingly frequent and deadly attacks, by various jihadist groups, prompted the replacement of the Army Chief of Staff, Sadou Oumarou, appointed three years ago with the same mandate, with General Moise Minoungou on 6 January 2019.
There is a multi-national training camp in Loumbila Department, staffed by Czech and Polish instructors.
Air Force.
The Air Force was founded in 1964 as the "Escadrille de la République de Haute-Volta" (EHV) or the Republic of Upper Volta Air Squadron, a subordinate unit of the Army. That year, a transient air support base was created with the assistance of the French Air Force. After acquiring an initial fleet of utility and transport aircraft, the squadron was attached to an inter-army support regiment. In 1970, the "Escadrille" was renamed the "Force Aérienne de Haute-Volta", or FAHV, and in 1977 became an autonomous force. In October 1985, the "Force Aérienne du Burkina Faso", or FABF, was officially inaugurated.
The EHV was initially formed with two Douglas C-47 Skytrain and three MH.1521M Broussard aircraft. These were later followed by two Alouette III SA.316 B helicopters, used mostly for liaison purposes, one twin-engined Aero Commander 500 light utility aircraft, two Hawker-Siddeley HS.748-2A twin turboprop transport aircraft, and two Nord 262 twin turboprop transport aircraft. Two "escadrilles" (squadrons) or sub-formations were created: the "Escadrille de Transport" (Transport Unit), and the "Escadrille d'Hélicoptères" (Helicopter Unit). Later, the "Escadrille d'Entraînement" (Training Unit) was added. All squadrons were initially based at Ouagadougou.
In mid-1984, Libyan military aid brought eight Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 jet fighters, along with two MiG-21U combat trainer versions. These ex-Libyan Air Force MiG-21 "Fishbed" fighters were based in Ouagadougou, although they were actually operated by the Libyan Air Force on loan by Libya, and were removed in 1985 without seeing combat. A single MiG-17F Fresco that was also operated by the FABF did see combat service in the Agacher Strip War in 1985–86.
In 1985, the FABF also acquired two ex-Soviet Mi-4 transport helicopters from an unknown supplier, followed by an additional two Mi-4s. The Mi-4s were operated by the FABF until the late 1980s, when they were taken out of service. Five Mi-8/17 transport helicopters were later added to the "Escadrille d'Hélicoptères". While supervising the ceasefire after the Agacher Strip War, an FABF SA.316B Alouette III crashed at Kouni on 14 January 1986, leaving only one SA.316B still in service with the "Escadrille d'Hélicoptères".
In 1986, the FABF formed a new unit, the "Escadrille de Chasse" (EdC) (Attack Unit). In mid-1986 six ex-Philippine Air Force SF.260WP Warrior armed trainers/light strike aircraft were acquired from a dealer in Belgium, which offered the FABF a much simpler and less expensive alternative in tactical air support to the expensive MiGs. The Warriors were not only used for pilot training, but also as light strike aircraft, and a number of them were employed by the FABF's "Escadrille de Chasse" (EdC). Four additional SF.260WPs were subsequently bought directly from Italy. The six ex-Philippine SF.260WP aircraft were taken out of service in 1993 and returned to their previous owner, although the four newly built SF.260WP aircraft were retained in service, and stationed at Bobo Dioulasso air base.
Most of the other light aircraft acquired by the FABF in the 1970s and 1980s have also now been retired along with the Mi-4 helicopters, but some recent acquisitions have been made, including a Beechcraft King Air, a Piper PA-34 Seneca, a CEAPR Robin light training aircraft, and a single Air Tractor AT-802 aerial sprayer aircraft for spraying insecticides, purchased after the northern part of the country suffered heavy crop damage from a 2004 invasion of swarming locusts. In 2009, two Xenon Gyroplane autogyros were purchased for use by police and security forces.
In late 2005, the FABF acquired two Mil Mi-35 "Hind" attack helicopters from Russia in an apparent response to moves by neighbouring Ivory Coast to bolster its own air attack capabilities during the Ivorian Civil War.
|
3684
|
42975076
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3684
|
Foreign relations of Burkina Faso
|
Burkina Faso has good relations with the European Union, African and certain Asian countries.
According to the U.S. State Department, "U.S. relations with Burkina Faso are good but subject to strains in the past because of the Compaoré government's past involvement in arms trading and other sanctions-breaking activity." Burkina Faso cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in May 2018 (being the most populous state to do so in the 21st century) and the foreign ministry of China stated it approved of its decision.
Burkina Faso's relations with its West African neighbors have improved in recent years. Relations with Ghana, in particular, have warmed. President Compaoré had mediated a political crisis in Togo and helped to resolve the Tuareg conflict in Niger. Burkina maintains cordial relations with Libya, but recalled its in ambassador in 2017 over issues of treatment of migrants trying to reach Europe, and the reemergence of the slave trade there. A territorial dispute with Mali was mediated by Ghana and Nigeria, which has led to lessening of tensions between the two nations.
Nineteen provinces of Burkina Faso are joined with contiguous areas of Mali and Niger under the Liptako–Gourma Authority, a regional economic organization. As of 7/6/24, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have turned away from the West African bloc ECOWAS to pursue their own confederation of junta states, which they claim is to create a "community of sovereign peoples far from the control of foreign powers. A community of peace, solidarity, prosperity based on our African values."
Burkina Faso is also a member of the International Criminal Court with a bilateral immunity agreement of protection for the United States-military (as covered under Article 98).
Diplomatic relations.
List of countries which Burkina Faso maintains diplomatic relations with:
|
3695
|
14691013
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3695
|
Geography of Burundi
|
Burundi is located in East Africa, to the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at the coordinates .
Physical geography.
Burundi occupies an area equal to in size, of which is land. The country has of land border: of which is shared with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with Rwanda and with Tanzania. As a landlocked country, Burundi possesses no coastline. It straddles the crest of the Congo–Nile Divide which separates the basins of the Congo and Nile rivers. The farthest headwaters of the Nile, the Ruvyironza River, has its source in Burundi.
Terrain.
The terrain of Burundi is hilly and mountainous, dropping to a plateau in the east. The southern and eastern plains have been categorised by the World Wide Fund for Nature as part of the Central Zambezian miombo woodlands ecoregion.
The lowest point in the country is at Lake Tanganyika, at , with the highest point being on Mount Heha, at . Natural hazards are posed in Burundi by flooding and lands.
Forests.
In Burundi forest cover is around 11% of the total land area, equivalent to 279,640 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, up from 276,480 hectares (ha) in 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forest covered 166,670 hectares (ha) and planted forest covered 112,970 hectares (ha). Of the naturally regenerating forest 23% was reported to be primary forest (consisting of native tree species with no clearly visible indications of human activity) and around 41% of the forest area was found within protected areas. For the year 2015, 100% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership.
Natural resources.
Burundi possesses reserves of: nickel, uranium, rare earth oxides, peat, cobalt, copper, platinum (not yet exploited), vanadium, niobium, tantalum, gold, tin, tungsten, kaolin, and limestone. There is also arable land and the potential for hydropower. Burundi has of land that is irrigated. The table below describes land use in Burundi.
Climate.
The climate of Burundi is equatorial in nature and is marked by high mean annual temperatures, small temperature ranges, and rainfall throughout the year. The temperature and amount of rainfall varies dependent upon altitude. Burundi experiences its dry season between May and August, and its rainy season between February and May. Due to climate change, Burundi is becoming more susceptible to both excess and deficit rainfall, leading alternately to floods and droughts.
Environment.
Current issues.
In Burundi, soil erosion poses a significant challenge, exacerbated by overgrazing and the expansion of agriculture into marginal lands. This problem is compounded by other environmental issues such as deforestation, driven by the uncontrolled cutting of trees for fuel, and habitat loss, which severely threatens wildlife populations. The cumulative effect of these issues not only degrades the environment but also undermines the agricultural productivity that is crucial for the country's economy and food security. The "Adapting to Climate Change in the Lake Victoria Basin" project, initiated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and funded by the Adaptation Fund, addresses these interconnected concerns. By promoting nature-based solutions like reforestation and the construction of terraces, the project helps stabilize the soil and improve water retention, which mitigates the impact of soil erosion. Additionally, the introduction of sustainable practices such as the eco-friendly fish-drying kiln helps reduce the dependence on wood for fuel, thereby curbing deforestation. This comprehensive approach not only aims to enhance environmental resilience but also supports sustainable development by preserving natural habitats and promoting the sustainable use of resources, thereby securing the livelihoods of local communities against the backdrop of climate change.
International agreements.
Burundi is a party to the following international agreements that relate to the environment: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes and Ozone Layer Protection. The following have been signed but not yet ratified by Burundi: Law of the Sea and Nuclear Test Ban.
Extreme points.
This is a list of the extreme points of Burundi, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.
|
3696
|
11334803
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3696
|
Demographics of Burundi
|
Demographic features of the population of Burundi include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects.
At 206.1 persons per km2, Burundi has the second-largest population density in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most people live on farms near areas of fertile volcanic soil. The population is made up of three major ethnic groups – Hutu ("Bahutu"), Tutsi ("Batutsi" or "Watusi"), and Twa ("Batwa"). Kirundi is the common language. Intermarriage takes place frequently between the Hutus and Tutsis. The terms "pastoralist" and "agriculturist", often used as ethnic designations for Watusi and Bahutu, respectively, are only occupational titles which vary among individuals and groups. Although Hutus encompass the majority of the population, historically Tutsis have been politically and economically dominant.
Population.
According to , the total population was 11,891,000 in 2020, compared to only 2 309 000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2020 was 45.3%, 52.4% were between 15 and 65 years of age, while 2.4% of the population was 65 years or older.
Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2015) (Unrevised data.):
Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2020):
UN population projections.
Numbers are in thousands. UN medium variant projections
Vital statistics.
Registration of vital events is in Burundi not complete. The Population Departement of the United Nations prepared the following estimates.
Source: UN DESA, World Population Prospects, 2022
Demographic and Health Surveys.
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):
Fertility data as of 2010 (DHS Program): The fertility rate in the Bujumbura Mairie Province fell to 3.7 by 2016–2017; the other regions were not aggregated in the report, for easy reference and comparison to the below chart. Per the 2016-2017 report, the average number of desired children in Burundi, nationwide, by both men and women of 15 to 49 years of age who are either paired up or married, is 4 children or less, and slightly less for men than for women. Per the report, this suggests an excess fecundity (more children than desired) of 1.8 children per couple nationwide; 1.1 in urban areas (where 3.0 children are desired, and the fertility rate is 4.1) and 2.0 in rural areas (where 3.7 children are desired and the fertility rate is 5.7). However, the number of desired children appears to be based on the lowest-desired rate - that of paired but unmarried men (3.7 children) rather than the highest (4.0, desired by married women) or even an overall average.
Hutu (Bantu) 85%, Tutsi 14%, Twa (Pygmy) 1% Europeans 3,000, South Asians 2,000
Kirundi (official) only: 29.7%, French (official) only: 0.3%, Kirundi and French: 8.4%, Kurundi, French and English: 2.4%, Swahili only: 0.2%, other language combinations: 2%, unspecified: 56.9% (2008 est.)
NOTE: Data represents only languages read and written by people 10 years of age or older; spoken Kirundi is nearly universal.
Roman Catholic 62.1%, Protestant 23.9% (includes Adventist 2.3% and other Protestant 21.6%), Islam 2.5%, Other 3.6%, Unspecified 7.9% (2008 est.)
References.
Attribution:
|
3697
|
27823944
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3697
|
Politics of Burundi
|
The Politics of Burundi takes place in a framework of a transitional presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Burundi is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the Senate and the National Assembly.
Political landscape after the civil war.
The political landscape of Burundi has been dominated in recent years by the civil war and a long peace process and move to democracy. Pierre Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader of the Hutu National Council for the Defense of Democracy – Forces for the Defense of Democracy, was elected to become president in a vote by parliament on 19 August 2005. Nkurunziza, who was the sole candidate, was the first president chosen through democratic means since the start of the civil war in 1993 and was sworn in on 26 August, replacing transitional president Domitien Ndayizeye.
Incumbent president Évariste Ndayishimiye took office on 18 June 2020, ten days after the death of Nkurunziza.
In November 1995, the presidents of Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zaire (currently Democratic Republic of Congo) announced a regional initiative for a negotiated peace in Burundi facilitated by former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere. In July 1996, former Burundian President Buyoya returned to power in a bloodless coup. He declared himself president of a transitional republic, even as he suspended the National Assembly, banned opposition groups, and imposed a nationwide curfew. Widespread condemnation of the coup ensued, and regional countries imposed economic sanctions pending a return to a constitutional government. Buyoya agreed in 1996 to liberalize political parties. Nonetheless, fighting between the army and Hutu militias continued. In June 1998, Buyoya promulgated a transitional constitution and announced a partnership between the government and the opposition-led National Assembly. After facilitator Julius Nyerere's death in October 1999, the regional leaders appointed Nelson Mandela as Facilitator of the Arusha peace process. Under Mandela the peace process has revived and important progress has taken place.
In April 2015 the 2015 Burundian unrest broke out after the ruling party announced President Pierre Nkurunziza would seek a third term in office. Protests in the capital lasted over a week, and while President Nkurunziza was in Tanzania for talks at resolving the situation, Major General Godefroid Niyombare declared a coup, leading to gun battles in the capital for control of key locations.
Elections took place in 2020; despite concerns that these elections would be severely compromised, following the announcement that the President would not seek reelection, the opposition announced that they would be taking part in the election. Evariste Ndayishimiye, a candidate who was hand-picked as Nkurunziza's successor by the CNDD-FDD, won the election with 71.45% of the vote. Shortly after, on 9 June 2020, Nkurunziza died of a cardiac arrest, at the age of 55. As per the constitution, Pascal Nyabenda, the president of the national assembly, led the government until Ndayishimiye's inauguration on 18 June 2020.
Executive branch.
The president is popularly elected by a two-round system. They nominate a vice-president and a prime minister, who form together with the Council of Ministers the executive branch.
Legislative branch.
The National Assembly ("Assemblée nationale") has 118 members, elected for a five-year term by proportional representation with a 2% barrier. The Senate ("Sénat") has 49 members, elected for a five-year term by electoral colleges of communal councilors. Extra seats in both chambers can be added to ensure that ethnic and gender quotas are met. Burundi has a multi-party system, with two or three strong parties and a third party that is electorally successful. Parties are usually based on ethnic background.
Administrative divisions.
Burundi has 18 provinces: Bubanza, Bujumbura Mairie, Bujumbura Rural, Bururi, Cankuzo, Cibitoke, Gitega, Karuzi, Kayanza, Kirundo, Makamba, Muramvya, Muyinga, Mwaro, Ngozi, Rutana, Rumonge and Ruyigi.
International relations.
Burundi is member of the AfDB, CEEAC, CEPGL, ECA, FAO, G-77, IBRD, ICAO, ICRM, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, Intelsat (nonsignatory user), Interpol, IOC, ITU, NAM, OAU, OPCW, PMAESA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, and WTrO.
|
3698
|
199747
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3698
|
Economy of Burundi
|
The economy of Burundi is $6.75 billion by gross domestic product as of 2025, being heavily dependent on agriculture, which accounts for 32.9% of gross domestic product as of 2008. Burundi itself is a landlocked country lacking resources, and with almost nonexistent industrialization. Agriculture supports more than 70% of the labor force, the majority of whom are subsistence farmers.
Although Burundi is potentially self-sufficient in food production, issues such as civil unrest, overpopulation, and soil erosion have contributed to the contraction of the subsistence economy by 25% in recent years. Large numbers of internally displaced persons have been unable to produce their own food and are largely dependent on international humanitarian assistance. Burundi is a net food importer, with food accounting for 17% of imports in 1997. Burundi is a least developed country according to the United Nations.
Agriculture.
Burundi produced in 2022:
In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products, like sorghum (25 thousand tons) and coffee (17 thousand tons).
Industry.
Little industry exists except for the processing of agricultural exports. Although potential wealth in petroleum, nickel, copper, and other natural resources is being explored, the uncertain security situation has prevented meaningful investor interest. Industrial development also is hampered by Burundi's distance from the sea and high transport costs. Lake Tanganyika remains an important trading point. The trade embargo, lifted in 1999, negatively impacted trade and industry. Since October 1993 the nation has suffered from massive ethnic-based violence which has resulted in the death of perhaps 250,000 people and the displacement of about 800,000 others. Foods, medicines, and electricity remain in short supply.
Burundi is heavily dependent on bilateral and multilateral aid, with external debt totaling $1.247 billion (1.247 G$) in 1997. A series of largely unsuccessful 5-year plans initiated in July 1986 in partnership with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund attempted to reform the foreign exchange system, liberalize imports, reduce restrictions on international transactions, diversify exports, and reform the coffee industry.
IMF structural adjustment programs in Burundi were suspended following the outbreak of the crisis in 1993. The World Bank has identified key areas for potential growth, including the productivity of traditional crops and the introduction of new exports, light manufactures, industrial mining, and services. Other serious problems include the state's role in the economy, the question of governmental transparency, and debt reduction.
To protest the 1996 coup by President Pierre Buyoya, neighboring countries imposed an economic embargo on Burundi. Although the embargo was never officially ratified by the United Nations Security Council, most countries refrained from official trade with Burundi. Following the coup, the United States also suspended all but humanitarian aid to Burundi. The regional embargo was lifted on January 23, 1999, based on progress by the government in advancing national reconciliation through the Burundi peace process.
In an article titled "The Blood Cries Out," "Foreign Policy (FP)" reported that the Burundian population growth rate is 2.5 percent per year, more than double the average global pace, and that a Burundian woman has on average 6.3 children, nearly triple the international fertility rate. "FP" further reported that "The vast majority of Burundians rely on subsistence farming, but under the weight of a booming population and in the long-standing absence of coherent policies governing land ownership, many people barely have enough earth to sustain themselves." In 2014, the average size for a farm was about one acre. "FP" added that "The consequence is remarkable scarcity: In the 2013 Global Hunger Index, Burundi had the severest hunger and malnourishment rates of all 120 countries ranked."
Energy.
Burundi is one of the least electrified countries in the world, only about 10% of the country's population has access to electricity. In 2022, the country produced a total of 565 GWh of electricity, 50% of which was generated via fossil fuels while the other 50% was generated via renewables. Oil is the main fossil fuel in use, while the renewable energy is sourced primarily from hydropower and to a much lesser degree from solar energy as well as bioenergy. This domestic production however does not fulfil Burundi's demand and it imports sizeable amount of energy from neighbouring countries.
The opening of the Rusumo Hydroelectric Power Station in 2023 was a boon to the country as Burundi receives 27 MW of electricity generated in it. The power station combined with improved transmission cables allowed Burundi to provide the capital city of Gitega with a more reliable and consistent power supply. At the same time it allowed the government to decommission the old oil-fired power station that supplied the city before and save over two million USD in costs. This project was a part of a wider international aid-assisted initiative in Burundi to pursue low-carbon electrification and improving access to electricity across the country. The government also pursues a much greater domestic hydropower project, a power station located in Rubrizi with the help of extensive funding by the African Development Bank and the European Union. The power station, scheduled to be completed in December 2024, is designed to generate 160 MW of electricity, making it the largest power station in Burundi. Together with associated improvements to transmission in infrastructure, it's predicted to provide electricity access to 7% of the country's population.
Macro-economic trend.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2024.
|
3699
|
10951369
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3699
|
Communications in Burundi
|
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.
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.
Internet.
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 Service.
"Régie 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.
|
3700
|
26830857
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3700
|
Transport in Burundi
|
There are a number of systems of transport in Burundi, including road and water-based infrastructure, the latter of which makes use of Lake Tanganyika. Furthermore, there are also some airports in Burundi.
Burundi has limited ferry services on Lake Tanganyika, few road connections to neighboring countries, no rail connections, and only one airport with a paved runway. Public transport is extremely limited and private bus companies operate buses on the route to Kigali, Uganda, Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo.
Roads.
Roads total as of 2004. On paper, there are 90 public buses in the country but few of these are operational. Transport is extremely limited, and private bus companies operate buses on the route to Kigali, Uganda, Tanzania or the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Waterways.
Lake Tanganyika is used for transport, with the major port on the lake being the Port of Bujumbura. Most freight is transported down waterways.
As of May 2015, MV Mwongozo, a passenger and cargo ferry, connects Bujumbura with Kigoma in Tanzania.
Airports and air services.
Burundi possesses eight airports, of which one has paved runways, whose length exceeds 3,047m. Bujumbura International Airport is the country's primary airport and the country's only airport with a paved runway. There are also a number of helicopter landing strips.
As of May 2015, the airlines serving Burundi are: Brussels Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, flydubai, Kenya Airways, and RwandAir. Kigali is the city with the most daily departures.
Railways.
Burundi does not possess any railway infrastructure, although there are proposals to connect Burundi to its neighbours via railway.
At a meeting in August 2006 with members of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, Wu Guanzheng, of the Chinese Communist Party, confirmed the intention of China to fund a study into the feasibility of constructing a railway connecting at Isaka with the existing Tanzanian railway network, and running via Kigali in Rwanda through to Burundi. Tanzanian railways use , although TAZARA and other neighbouring countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) use the gauge, leading to some potential difficulties.
Another project was launched in the same year, which aims to link Burundi and Rwanda (which also has no railways) to the DRC and Zambia, and therefore to the rest of Southern Africa. At a meeting to inaugurate the Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA), the governments of Uganda and Burundi backed the proposed new railway from the Ugandan western railhead at Kasese into the DRC.
Additionally, Burundi has been added to a planned railway project to connect Tanzania and Rwanda. In January 2022, the governments of Burundi and Tanzania announced the planned construction of an electrified standard gauge railway, which will link the two countries. The line is known as the Tanzania–Burundi Standard Gauge Railway.
2013.
A project started in November 2013 to build a Standard Gauge line from Mombassa, Kenya, to Burundi, via Rwanda and Uganda. The main line from Mombasa will also feature branches in other directions, including Ethiopia and DR Congo.
|
3701
|
38418393
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3701
|
Burundi National Defence Force
|
The Burundi National Defence Force (; FDNB) is the military of Burundi. A general staff commands the armed forces, consisting of a joint staff; a training staff, and a logistics staff. Naval and aviation commands exist, as well as specialised units.
History.
Independence and early history (1962–1993).
Under Belgian colonial rule, the mandatory status of Ruanda-Urundi established limits on the recruitment of Barundi for military service. Instead, Ruanda-Urundi was garrisoned by a small unit of the Force Publique recruited in the Belgian Congo which combined its military role with the role of gendarmerie. Its members were popularly known as "Bamina" in Burundi, after the large military base at Kamina in the Congo. Amid the Congo's independence, the Belgian colonial administration formed the Burundian National Guard ("Garde Nationale Burundaise") in 1960. It consisted of 650 men, recruited equally from the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups (though the Tutsi mostly consisted of those from the Hima subgroup). When Burundi became independent in 1962 the force was renamed the Burundian National Army ("Armée Nationale Burundaise") and assumed a purely military function. The gendarmarie function was allocated to a civilian authority called the National Gendarmerie ("Gendarmerie nationale") after independence in 1962, though this became part of the army on 7 March 1967.
Burundi became independent on 1 July 1962 with the army organised into eight platoons. A coup attempt in October 1965 led by the Hutu-dominated police was carried out but failed. The Tutsi dominated army, then led by Tutsi officer Captain Michel Micombero purged Hutu from their ranks and carried out reprisal attacks which ultimately claimed the lives of up to 5,000 people in a predecessor to Burundian genocides. Micombero then became prime minister.
King Mwambutsa IV, who had fled the country during the October 1965 coup attempt, was deposed by a coup in July 1966 and his teenage son, Crown Prince Charles Ndizeye, claimed the throne as King Ntare V. Later that same year, Prime Minister, then-Colonel, Michel Micombero, carried out another coup in November 1966, this time deposing Ntare, abolishing the monarchy and declaring the nation a republic. His one-party government was effectively a military dictatorship. As president, Micombero became an advocate of African socialism and received support from China. He imposed a staunch regime of law and order and sharply repressed Hutu militarism. After Micombero's coup d’etat which deposed the monarchy, he became the first general in Burundian history. He was also commissioned by the National Council of the Revolution (French: Conseil National de la Révolution (CNR)), and made a Lieutenant Général. In his turn, Micombero raised Thomas Ndabemeye to the grade of Major General. They were the sole generals of the First Republic.
In 1972 the Tutsi-dominated Burundi Army and government carried out a series of mass killings, the Ikiza, often characterised as a genocide, primarily against educated and elite Hutus who lived in the country. Conservative estimates place the death toll of the event between 100,000 and 150,000 killed, while some estimates of the death toll go as high as 300,000. This included a purge of all Hutus and some politically unfavorable Tutsis from the military, shrinking it to about 2,300 members. On 30 December 1974 a naval division was created.
In 1981–82 the IISS estimated that the Burundian armed forces were 6,000 strong, with 2 infantry battalions, 1 airborne battalion, 1 commando battalion, and an armoured car company. The same estimate was repeated in the 1988–89 edition except that the strength figure had been dropped to 5,500.
The Civil War and aftermath.
In 1993, Hutu President Melchior Ndadaye was elected in the 1 June presidential election and was sworn in on 10 July.
On 21 October, a coup was attempted by a Tutsi–dominated National Defence Force faction, led by Chief of Staff Lt. Col. Jean Bikomagu, ex-President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, and former interior minister François Ngeze. The coup attempt resulted in the assassination of Ndadaye and numerous other casualties.
Following the coup, the Committee of Public Salvation (CSP) was created as the ruling junta, and François Ngeze (a prominent Hutu member of UPRONA) was installed as the new president. Ngeze himself condemned the assassination of Ndadaye. Faced with widespread condemnation, the Army leaders urged civilian politicians to resume control. Consequently, Prime Minister Sylvie Kinigi (who took refuge in the French embassy with other senior government figures) was installed as Acting President on 27 October.
The 1996 UN inquiry names three units - para 122-3 indicates that at the time of the October coup, the 2e Commando were the presidential guard and the 1er Parachutiste and 11e Blinde were the units involved in the coup. (Para 115 notes that some officers of the 2e Commando were previously involved in an attempted coup in July, before Ndadaye was sworn in, but presumably by October the unit was thought to be loyal). In addition, U.S. Ambassador Bob Krueger mentions members of the 1st Parachute Battalion being active during the coup in his book.
The coup attempted sparked the Burundian Civil War, which lasted from 1993 to 2005, killing an estimated 300,000 people. The Arusha Accords ended 12 years of war and stopped decades of ethnic killings. The 2005 constitution provided guaranteed representation for both Hutu and Tutsi, and 2005 parliamentary elections that led to Pierre Nkurunziza, from the Hutu FDD, becoming president.
According to a 2004 report by Child Soldiers International, Burundi's military used conscripted child soldiers. Children in military service were subject to military courts which fell short of international law standards.
The armed forces have deployed significant numbers of troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia since c. 2007. On February 1, 2007 Burundi committed to the mission, pledging up to 1,000 troops. By March 27, it was confirmed that 1700 Burundian troops would be sent to Somalia. In 2011 the IISS estimated that three Burundian battalions were deployed there.
The army's forces in 2011 included, according to IISS estimates, 2 light armoured battalions (squadrons), seven infantry battalions and independent companies; and artillery, engineer, and air defence battalions (SA-7 'Grail' man-portable SAMs and 14.5mm, 23mm and 37mm guns were reported). Separately reported were the 22nd commando battalion (Gitega) and 124th commando battalion (Bujumbura). Despite the elapse of another six years, the 2017 listing from the "Military Balance" was essentially unchanged except for an increase in size to some 30,000 and the addition of ten reserve infantry battalions.
In the wake of the Burundian unrest, personnel faced a choice between supporting President Pierre Nkurunziza, with whom some fought when he was a military commander, or opposing him. Interviewed by Reuters on May 14, 2015, an Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft said a coup then reported in progress by Major General Godefroid Niyombare, former director of the intelligence service, "starkly highlight[ed] Nkurunziza’s lack of unified support among his military chiefs." "Even if Niyombare’s attempt fails, Nkurunziza’s political credibility may be damaged irreparably."
The "121e Régiment de Parachutistes" were mentioned in French news articles as one of the units that supported the attempted coup in 2015.
In the aftermath of the coup and the later disputed election, armed forces chief of staff Major General Prime Niyongabo survived an assassination attempt on September 11, 2015.
In 2015/16, Laurent Touchard wrote that the BNDF included ten two-battalion infantry brigades. (Touchard 2016)
Structure.
In 2011 the IISS estimated that three Burundian battalions were deployed in Somalia. The army's forces in 2011 included, according to IISS estimates, 2 light armoured battalions (squadrons), seven infantry battalions and independent companies; and artillery, engineer, and air defence battalions (SA-7 'Grail' man-portable SAMs and 14.5mm, 23mm and 37mm guns were reported).
Separately reported were the 22nd commando battalion (Gitega) and 124th commando battalion (Bujumbura).
Despite the elapse of another six years, the 2017 listing from the Military Balance was essentially unchanged except for an increase in size to some 30,000 and the addition of ten reserve infantry battalions.
As of 2024 the Burundian ground forces consist of two armored battalions, seven infantry battalions, one artillery battalion, one air defense battalion, and one engineer battalion. The navy included several patrol boats.
Equipment.
Aircraft inventory.
The Burundi Army's air unit operates 12 helicopters.
|
3702
|
7447121
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3702
|
Foreign relations of Burundi
|
Burundi's relations with its neighbours have often been affected by security concerns. During the Burundian Civil War, hundreds of thousands of Burundian refugees have at various times crossed to neighboring Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Some Burundian rebel groups have used neighboring countries as bases for insurgent activities. The 1993 embargo placed on Burundi by regional states hurt diplomatic relations with its neighbors; relations have improved since the 1999 suspension of these sanctions.
Burundi is a member of various international and regional organizations, including the United Nations, the African Union, the African Development Bank and the Francophonie. The Swedish Minister for Integration and Gender Equality, Nyamko Sabuni, was born in Burundi.
Diplomatic relations.
List of countries which Burundi maintains diplomatic relations with:
|
3705
|
740374
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3705
|
Bosporus
|
The Bosporus or Bosphorus Strait ( ; , colloquially ) is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Turkey which is straddled by the city of Istanbul. The Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and forms one of the continental boundaries between Asia and Europe. It also divides Turkey by separating Asia Minor from Thrace. It is the world's narrowest strait used for international navigation.
Most of the shores of the Bosporus Strait, except for the area to the north, are heavily settled, with the city of Istanbul's metropolitan population of 17 million inhabitants extending inland from both banks.
The Bosporus Strait and the Dardanelles Strait at the opposite end of the Sea of Marmara are together known as the Turkish Straits.
Sections of the shore of the Bosporus in Istanbul have been reinforced with concrete or rubble and those sections of the strait prone to deposition are periodically dredged.
Name.
The name of the strait comes from the Ancient Greek (), which was folk-etymologised as , i.e. "cattle strait" (like "Ox-ford"), from the genitive of 'ox, cattle' + 'passage', thus meaning 'cattle-passage', or 'cow passage'. This is a reference to the Greek mythological story of Io, who was transformed into a cow and condemned to wander the Earth until she crossed the Bosporus, where she met the Titan Prometheus, who comforted her by telling her that she would be restored to human form by Zeus and become the ancestor of the greatest of all heroes, Heracles (Hercules).
Io supposedly went ashore near Chrysopolis (present-day Üsküdar), which was named 'the Cow'. The same site was also known as Damalis (), as it was where the Athenian general Chares had erected a monument to his wife Damalis, which included a colossal statue of a cow (the name translating to 'heifer').
The English spelling with "-ph-" ("Bosphor") is not justified by the ancient Greek name, and dictionaries prefer the spelling with "-p-". However "-ph-" occurs as a variant in medieval Latin (as "Bosphor", and occasionally "Bosphorus" or "Bospherus"), and in medieval Greek sometimes as , giving rise to the French , the Spanish , the Italian and the Russian . The 12th-century Greek scholar John Tzetzes calls it (after "Damalis"), but he also reports that in popular usage the strait was known as during his day, the name of the most ancient northern harbour of Constantinople. In English, the preferred spelling tends to be Bosphorus.
Historically, the Bosporus was also known as the "Strait of Constantinople", or the Thracian Bosporus to distinguish it from the Cimmerian Bosporus in Crimea. These are expressed in Herodotus's "Histories", 4.83; as , , and (), respectively. Other names used by Herodotus to refer to the strait include Chalcedonian Bosporus (, [], Herodotus 4.87), or Mysian Bosporus ().
The term eventually came to be used as the common noun , meaning "a strait", and was also formerly applied to the Hellespont in Classical Greek by Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Boğaziçi.
Boğaziçi consists of those parts of Istanbul and overlapping administrative districts with a view of the Bosphorus. It is considered more particularly to consist of those parts of Istanbul that are situated north of the Golden Horn (Haliç), starting with the district of Beşiktaş on the European side of the Bosphorus. Thus it includes, from south to north, along the European shore, Beşiktaş, Ortaköy, Arnavutköy, Bebek, Rumelihisarı, Baltalimanı, Emirgan, İstinye, Yeniköy, Tarabya, Kireçburnu, Büyükdere and Sarıyer; and, along the Asian shore, Beylerbeyi, Çengelköy, Vaniköy, Kandilli, Anadolu Hisarı, Kanlıca and Beykoz.
Geography.
As a maritime waterway, the Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and thence to the Aegean and Mediterranean seas via the Dardanelles. It also connects various seas along the Eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Near East, and Western Eurasia. Thus, the Bosporus allows maritime connections from the Black Sea all the way to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean via Gibraltar, and to the Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal, making it a crucial international waterway, in particular for the passage of goods coming from Russia.
There is one very small island in the Bosporus just off Kuruçeşme. Now generally known as Galatasaray Island ("Galatasaray Adası)," this was given to the Armenian architect Sarkis Balyan by Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1880. The house he built on it was later demolished. The island became a walled garden and then a water sports centre, before it was given to the Galatasaray Sports Club, hence its name. However, in the 2010s it was completely overbuilt with nightclubs and the government had these torn down in 2017. It reopened exclusively to the Galatasaray club members in the summer of 2022.
Formation.
The exact cause and date of the formation of the Bosporus remain a subject of debate among geologists. One recent hypothesis, dubbed the Black Sea deluge hypothesis, which was launched by a study of the same name in 1997 by two scientists from Columbia University, postulates that the Bosporus was flooded around 5600 BC (revised to 6800 BC in 2003) when the rising waters of the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Marmara broke through to the Black Sea, which at the time, according to the hypothesis, was a low-lying body of fresh water.
Many geologists, however, claim that the strait is much older, even if relatively young on a geologic timescale.
Present morphology.
The limits of the Bosporus are defined as the line connecting the lighthouses of Rumeli Feneri and Anadolu Feneri in the north, and between the Ahırkapı Feneri and the Kadıköy İnciburnu Feneri in the south ("Fener" is Turkish for lighthouse). Between these limits, the strait is long, with a width of at the northern entrance and at the southern entrance. Its maximum width is between Umuryeri and Büyükdere Limanı, and minimum width is between Kandilli Point and Aşiyan.
The depth of the Bosporus varies from in midstream with an average of . The deepest point is between Kandilli and Bebek, at . The shallowest locations are off Kadıköy İnciburnu at and off Aşiyan Point at .
The southbound flow of water is 16 000 m3/s (fresh water at the surface) and the northbound flow is 11 000 m3/s (salt water near the bottom). Dan Parsons and researchers at the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment describe a Black Sea undersea river.
The Golden Horn is an estuary off the main strait that historically acted as a moat to protect Constantinople from attack, as well as providing sheltered anchorage for the imperial navies of various empires until the 19th century, after which it became a historic neighbourhood at the heart of Istanbul.
Newer explorations.
Before the 20th century it was already known that the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara flow into each other in a geographic example of "density flow". Then in August 2010, a continuous 'underwater channel' of suspension composition was discovered flowing along the floor of the Bosporus, which would be the sixth largest river on Earth if it were on land. The 2010 team of scientists, led by the University of Leeds, used a robotic "yellow submarine" to observe detailed flows within this "undersea river", scientifically referred to as a submarine channel, for the first time. Submarine channels are similar to land rivers, but they are formed by density currents—underwater flow mixtures of sand, mud and water that are denser than sea water and so sink and flow along the bottom. These channels are the main transport pathway for sediments to the deep sea where they form sedimentary deposits.
The team studied the detailed flow within these channels and its findings included that:
The central tenet of the Black Sea deluge hypothesis is that as the ocean rose at the end of the last Ice Age when the massive ice sheets melted, the sealed Bosporus was overwhelmed by a spectacular flood that increased the then fresh water Black Sea Lake by 50%, and drove people back from the shores for many months. This hypothesis was supported by the findings of undersea explorer Robert Ballard, who discovered settlements along the old shoreline; scientists dated the flood to 7500 BP or 5500 BC from fresh-salt water microflora. Driven out by the rapidly rising water, which must have been terrifying and inexplicable, people spread to all corners of the Western world carrying the story of a major flood. As the waters surged, they scoured a network of sea-floor channels less resistant to denser suspended solids in liquid, which remains a very active layer today.
The first images of these submarine channels showing them to be of great size, were obtained in 1999 during a NATO SACLANT Undersea Research project using jointly the NATO RV "Alliance", and the Turkish Navy survey ship "Çubuklu". In 2002, a survey carried out on board the Ifremer RV "Le Suroit" for BlaSON project (Lericolais, et al., 2003) completed the multibeam mapping of this underwater channel fan-delta. A complete map was published in 2009 using these previous results together with high quality mapping obtained in 2006 (by researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland who were project partners in the study).
The project was led by Jeff Peakall and Daniel Parsons at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with the University of Southampton, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the Institute of Marine Sciences. The survey was run and coordinated from the Institute of Marine Sciences research ship, the R/V "Koca Piri Reis".
Villages.
The shores of the Bosporus were once lined with small fishing villages that had grown up since Byzantine times but really came into their own in the 19th century. Until the early 20th century most were only accessible by boat (known as caiques) along the Bosporus since there were no coast roads. Today the villages are no more than suburbs of Greater Istanbul but many retain the memory of their original village status in the suffix "-köy" ('village') to their names. e.g. Ortaköy, Yeniköy, Arnavutköy, Çengelköy and Vaniköy. These villages often had distinct identities associated with agriculture: Arnavutköy, for example, was associated with strawberry-growing while Çengelköy was famous for its sweet cucumbers.
Human history.
As part of the only passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the Bosporus has always been of great importance from a commercial and military point of view, and it remains strategically important today. It is a major sea access route for numerous countries, including Russia and Ukraine. Control over it has been an objective of a number of conflicts in modern history, notably the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), as well as of the attack of the Allied Powers on the Dardanelles during the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli in the course of World War I. In 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine the Bosporus' importance as a route by which grain reached the world was thrown into sharp profile.
Ancient Greek, Persian, Roman and Byzantine eras (pre-1453).
The strategic importance of the Bosporus dates back millennia. In the 5th century BC the Greek city-state of Athens, which depended on grain imports from the Black Sea ports of Scythia, maintained critical alliances with cities which controlled the straits, such as the Megarian colony of Byzantium.
In an attempt to subdue the Scythian horsemen who roamed across the north of the Black Sea, the Persian King Darius I the Great () crossed the Bosporus, then marched towards the River Danube. His army crossed the Bosporus using an enormous bridge made by connecting boats. This bridge essentially connected the farthest geographic tip of Asia to Europe, encompassing at least some 1,000 metres of open. Years later, Xerxes I would construct a similar boat bridge across the Dardanelles (Hellespont) strait (480 BC), during his invasion of Greece.
The Byzantines called the Bosporus "Stenon" and used the following major toponyms in the area:
The strategic significance of the strait was one of the factors in the decision of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great to found his new capital, Constantinople, there in AD 330. This then became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Ottoman era (1453–1922).
On 29 May 1453, the then-emergent Ottoman Empire conquered the city of Constantinople following a lengthy campaign during which the Ottomans constructed fortifications on each side of the strait, the Anadoluhisarı (Anatolian Castle, 1393) and the Rumelihisarı (European Castle, 1451), in preparation for not only the primary battle but to assert long-term control over the Bosporus and surrounding waterways. The final 53-day campaign, which resulted in Ottoman victory, constituted an important turn in world history. Together with Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, the 1453 conquest of Constantinople is commonly noted as among the events that brought an end to the Middle Ages and marked the transition to the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery.
The event also marked the end of the Byzantines—the final remnants of the Roman Empire—and the transfer of the control of the Bosporus into Ottoman hands. The Ottomans then made Constantinople their new capital, and the base from which they expanded their empire in the centuries that followed.
At its peak between the 16th and 18th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was able to use the strategic importance of the Bosporus to wrest control of the entire Black Sea area, which they regarded as an "Ottoman lake", from which Russian warships were prohibited.
Subsequently, several international treaties have governed access to the strait. Under the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi of 8 July 1833, the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits were to be closed to the naval vessels of other powers on Russian demand. By the terms of the London Straits Convention, concluded on 13 July 1841 between the Great Powers of Europe (Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria and Prussia), the "ancient rule" of the Ottoman Empire was re-established by closing the Turkish Straits to all warships, barring those of the Sultan's allies during wartime. This benefited British naval power at the expense of the Russians, as the latter then lacked direct access to the Mediterranean.
Summer Embassies.
During the 19th century many of the foreign powers represented in Constantinople maintained second embassies up the Bosporus and would relocate their staff there during the hot, humid summer months. Most of these summer embassies were on the European shore at Yeniköy (Austrian), Tarabya (German, English, French, Italian) and Büyükdere (Spanish, Russian). Some of the buildings still survive today although the British Summer Embassy burnt down in 1911 and the Italian Summer Embassy, a fine building by Raimondo d'Aronco, survives in very dilapidated condition.
Turkish republican era (1923–present).
Following the First World War, the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres demilitarised the strait and made it an international territory under the control of the League of Nations. This was amended by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which restored the straits to Turkey but allowed all foreign warships and commercial shipping to traverse the straits freely. Turkey eventually rejected the terms of that treaty, and remilitarised the straits area. The reversion was formalised under the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits of 20 July 1936. That convention - which is still in force - treats the straits as an international shipping lane except that Turkey retains the right to restrict the naval traffic of non–Black Sea states.
Turkey was neutral in the Second World War until February 1945, and the straits were closed to the warships of belligerent nations during this time, although some German auxiliary vessels were permitted to transit. In diplomatic conferences, Soviet representatives had expressed an interest in obtaining naval bases on the straits. This, together with Stalin's demands for the restitution of the Turkish provinces of Kars, Artvin and Ardahan to the Soviet Union (which were lost by Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, but were regained with the Treaty of Kars in 1921), was a consideration in Turkey's decision to abandon neutrality in foreign affairs. Turkey declared war against Germany in February 1945, but did not engage in offensive actions.
Turkey joined NATO in 1952, thus affording the straits even more strategic importance as a commercial and military waterway.
During the early 21st century, the Turkish Straits have become particularly important for the oil industry. Russian oil, from ports such as Novorossiysk, was exported by tankers primarily to the U.S. via the Bosporus and the Dardanelles straits.
Istanbul Canal.
In 2011, Turkey proposed to build a canal west of the Bosporus, suggesting that it would reduce the risk presented to the Bosporus by oil tankers and other cargo ships. The project proved highly controversial and, , work had not been started on building the canal even though a route for it had been established.
In mythology.
The Bosphorus takes its name from the Greek mythological story of Io, who was transformed into a cow and, pursued by a gadfly, was condemned to wander the Earth until she reached the strait. There she met the Titan Prometheus, who comforted her by telling her that she would be restored to human form by Zeus and become the ancestor of the greatest of all heroes, Heracles (Hercules).
According to ancient Greek mythology, it was said that colossal floating rocks known as the Symplegades, or Clashing Rocks, once guarded both sides of the Bosporus and destroyed any ship that attempted to pass through the strait by crushing them. Their destructive power was finally overcome by the Argonaut hero Jason who managed to pass between them unscathed, whereupon the rocks became fixed, opening Greek access to the Black Sea.
Crossings.
Maritime.
The Bosporus is traversed by numerous passenger and vehicular ferries daily, as well as by recreational and fishing boats ranging from dinghies to yachts owned by both public and private entities.
The strait also serves a significant amount of international commercial shipping traffic in the form of freighters and tankers. Between its northern limits at Rumeli Feneri and Anadolu Feneri and its southern ones at Ahırkapı Feneri and Kadıköy İnciburnu Feneri, there are numerous dangerous points for large-scale maritime traffic that require sharp turns and management of visual obstructions. Famously, the stretch between Kandilli Point and Aşiyan requires a 45-degree course alteration in a location where the currents can reach . To the south, at Yeniköy, the necessary course alteration is 80 degrees. Compounding these difficult changes in trajectory, the rear and forward sight lines at Kandilli and Yeniköy are also completely blocked prior to and during the course alteration, making it impossible for ships approaching from the opposite direction to see around the bends. The risks posed by this geography are further multiplied by the heavy ferry traffic across the strait, linking the European and Asian sides of the city. As such, all the dangers and obstacles characteristic of narrow waterways are present and acute in this vital sea lane.
In 2011, the Turkish Government started to discuss creating a man-made canal roughly long that would run north–south through the western edges of Istanbul Province as a second route from the Black Sea to the Marmara. It was suggested that this would reduce the risk from shipping to the Bosporus. The controverislal Kanal İstanbul project continues to be debated.
In 2022 the dues levied by Turkey for freight ships increased 500% to US$4 per ton, the first change since 1983.
The Bosporus is fairly deep and there is no definite limit on the depth and length of a ship, but ships over 150 metres long or 10 metres deep must pre-book their passage. Those over 300 metres long must follow a special clearance procedure. There is an air draft limit of 57 metres.
Land bridges.
Two suspension bridges and a cable-stayed bridge cross the Bosporus. The first of these, the long 15th July Martyrs Bridge was completed in 1973 when it was called the Bosporus Bridge. The second, named Fatih Sultan Mehmet (Bosporus II) Bridge, is long, and was completed in 1988 about north of the first bridge. The first Bosporus Bridge forms part of the O1 Motorway, while the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge forms part of the Trans-European Motorway. The third and most recent bridge, the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, is long and was completed in 2016. It is located near the northern end of the Bosporus, between the villages of Garipçe on the European side and Poyrazköy on the Asian side, as part of the "Northern Marmara Motorway", integrated into the existing Black Sea Coastal Highway, and allowing transit traffic to bypass city traffic.
Submarine.
The Marmaray project, featuring a long undersea railway tunnel, opened on 29 October 2013. Approximately of the tunnel runs under the strait, at a depth of about .
An undersea water supply tunnel with a length of , named the Bosporus Water Tunnel, was constructed in 2012 to transfer water from the Melen Creek in Düzce Province (to the east of the Bosporus strait, in northwestern Anatolia) to the European side of Istanbul, a distance of .
The Eurasia Tunnel is a undersea highway tunnel designed for vehicular traffic between Kazlıçeşme on the European side of Istanbul and Göztepe on the Asian side. Construction began in February 2011, and the tunnel opened on 20 December 2016.
Up to four submarine fibre optics lines (MedNautilus and possibly others) approach Istanbul, coming from the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles.
Strategic importance.
The Bosporus is the only way for Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia (south-western part) and Ukraine to reach the Mediterranean Sea and other seas. Thus sovereignty over the straits is an important issue for these countries, as well as Turkey, the state the Bosporus actually flows through.
Turkey does not receive tolls from ships passing through the strait. Turkey's military has broad powers in accordance with the terms of the Montreux Convention. As of 2021, the Bosporus Command is located on the shores of the Bosporus and the military ships connected to the Command are anchored in the Bosporus waters.
Located on a peninsula at the intersection of the Black Sea, the Bosporus and the Marmara Sea, Istanbul has historically been one of the most protected and hardest-to-conquer cities from Roman times to the Ottoman Empire. Divided by the Bosporus, it is one of very few intercontinental cities in the world.
Sightseeing.
The Bosporus has 620 waterfront houses ("yalı") built during the Ottoman period along the strait's European and Asian shorelines. Ottoman palaces such as the Topkapı Palace, Dolmabahçe Palace, Yıldız Palace, Çırağan Palace, Feriye Palaces, Beylerbeyi Palace, Küçüksu Palace, Ihlamur Palace, Hatice Sultan Palace and Adile Sultan Palace also stand on or near its shores. Other buildings and landmarks on the Bosporus include the Kılıç Egyptian Consulate at Bebek, Bebek Mosque, Boğaziçi University, Robert College, Rumeli Castle (RumelihisarI), Borusan Museum of Contemporary Art, Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Sadberk Hanım Museum, Üsküdar Mihrimah Sultan Mosque, Şemsipaşa Mosque, Maiden's Tower (Kızkulesi), Beylerbeyi Mosque, Anadolu Castle (Anadoluhisarı), Kuleli Military High School, Adile Sultan Palace, Küçüksu Pavilion, Khedive's Villa, Beykoz Mecidiye Pavilion and Yoros Castle (Anadaolu Kavağı).
Most of the public ferries that traverse the strait leave from Eminönü on the historic peninsula of Istanbul and travel as far as Anadolu Kavağı near the Black Sea. On the way they call briefly at points on both the European and Asian shores. Private ferries, also leaving from Eminönü, travel only as far as one of the first two Bosporus bridges. Ferries from Eminönü also travel as far as Rumeli Kavaği, stopping only at points on the European shore, while other ferries from Üsküdar travel as far as Anadolu Kavağı, stopping only at points on the Asian shore. Frequent public ferries from Eminõnü, Karaköy, Beşiktaş, Kadıköy and Usküdar offer short hops from one side of the Bosporus to the other throughout the day.
Catamaran sea buses offer high-speed commuter services between the European and Asian shores of the Bosporus, but they stop at fewer ports and piers in comparison to the public ferries. Both the public ferries and the sea buses also provide commuter services between the Bosporus and the Prince Islands in the Sea of Marmara.
Tourist cruises are available from various points along the Bosporus, including Ortaköy. The prices vary considerably, and some feature music and dining.
Architecture.
The many "yalı" (waterside mansions) which were constructed along the shores of the Bosporus during the Ottoman period have long been synonymous with the strait. Those that still preserve their original form are among the most expensive real estate in Turkey although many have been lost to time, weather and 'accidental' fires. The oldest "yalı" on the European shore is the Şerifler Yalı at Emirgan which was built in the 18th century and belonged for a while to the Şerifs, the hereditary rulers of Mecca. It is still in good condition unlike the oldest "yalı" on the Asian side which is the Köprülü Amcazade Hüseyin Paşa Yalı at Anadolu Hisarı, built in 1698. Only the central section of this "yalı" survives and it has been behind hoardings promising restoration since 2009.
Most of the "yalıs" originally sat right on the water's edge and came with private docks and ports where boats (caiques) could be stored. On the Anatolian shore some yalıs are still right beside the water but on the European shore most now stand back behind a coast road built on reclaimed land.
The original "yalıs" usually had two main sections: the "selamlık" which was the public area and the part of the house used by the men, and the "haremlik" which was the private part of the house reserved for women and the family. These were the luxurious dwellings of the wealthy and some came with their own private hamams (Turkish baths).
Egyptian legacy.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Egyptian royal family took a great liking to the Bosporus and often spent their summers on its shores. They left behind a legacy of fine buildings on or overlooking its shores, including the building at Bebek that now houses the Egyptian Consulate and the Khedive's Villa ("Hıdiv Kasrı") high on the hill above Çubuklu.
|
3708
|
32182696
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3708
|
Brussels
|
Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels, which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is located in the central portion of the country. It is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, and is separate from the Flemish Region (Flanders), within which it forms an enclave, and the Walloon Region (Wallonia), located less than to the south.
Brussels grew from a small rural settlement on the river Senne to become an important city-region in Europe. Since the end of the Second World War, it has been a major centre for international politics and home to numerous international organisations, politicians, diplomats and civil servants. Brussels is the "de facto" capital of the European Union, as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions, including its administrative-legislative, executive-political, and legislative branches (though the judicial branch is located in Luxembourg, and the European Parliament meets for a minority of the year in Strasbourg).<ref name="12010E/PRO/06"></ref> Because of this, its name is sometimes used metonymically to describe the EU and its institutions. The secretariat of the Benelux and the headquarters of NATO are also located in Brussels.
Brussels is the most densely populated region in Belgium, and although it has the highest GDP per capita, it has the lowest available income per household. The Brussels Region covers and has a population of over 1.2 million. Its five times larger metropolitan area comprises over 2.5 million people, which makes it the largest in Belgium. It is also part of a large conurbation extending towards the cities of Ghent, Antwerp, and Leuven, known as the Flemish Diamond, as well as the province of Walloon Brabant, in total home to over 5 million people. As Belgium's economic capital and a top financial centre in Western Europe with Euronext Brussels, Brussels is classified as an "Alpha" global city. It is also a national and international hub for rail, road and air traffic, and is sometimes considered, together with Belgium, as Europe's geographic, economic and cultural crossroads. The Brussels Metro is the only rapid transit system in Belgium. In addition, both its airport and railway stations are the largest and busiest in the country.
Historically Dutch-speaking, Brussels saw a language shift to French from the late 19th century. Since its creation in 1989, the Brussels-Capital Region has been officially bilingual in French and Dutch, although French is the majority language and "lingua franca". Brussels is also increasingly becoming multilingual. English is spoken widely and many migrants and expatriates speak other languages as well.
Brussels is known for its cuisine and gastronomic offer (including its local waffle, its chocolate, its French fries and its numerous types of beers), as well as its historical and architectural landmarks; some of them are registered as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Principal attractions include its historic Grand-Place/Grote Markt (main square), "Manneken Pis", the Atomium, and cultural institutions such as La Monnaie/De Munt and the Museums of Art and History. Due to its long tradition of Belgian comics, Brussels is also hailed as a capital of the comic strip.
Toponymy.
Etymology.
The most common theory of the origin of the name "Brussels" is that it derives from the Old Dutch , or , meaning ( / ) and ( / / ) or . Saint Vindicianus, the Bishop of Cambrai, made the first recorded reference to the place in 695, when it was still a hamlet. The names of all the municipalities in the Brussels-Capital Region are also of Dutch origin, except for Evere, which is possibly Celtic or Old Frankish.
Pronunciation.
In French, is pronounced (the "x" is pronounced , as in English, and the final "s" is silent) and in Dutch, is pronounced . Inhabitants of Brussels are known in French as (pronounced ) and in Dutch as (pronounced ). In the Brabantian dialect of Brussels (known as Brusselian, and also sometimes referred to as Marols or Marollien), they are called "Brusseleers" or "Brusseleirs".
Originally, the written "x" noted the group . In the Belgian French pronunciation as well as in Dutch, the "k" eventually disappeared and "z" became "s", as reflected in the current Dutch spelling, whereas in the more conservative French form, the spelling remained. The pronunciation in French only dates from the 18th century, but this modification did not affect the traditional Brussels usage. In France, the pronunciations and (for ) are often heard, but are rather rare in Belgium.
History.
Early history.
The history of Brussels is closely linked to that of Western Europe. Traces of human settlement go back to the Stone Age, with vestiges and place-names related to the civilisation of megaliths, dolmens and standing stones (Plattesteen near the Grand-Place/Grote Markt and Tomberg in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, for example). During late antiquity, the region was home to Roman occupation, as attested by archaeological evidence discovered on the current site of Tour & Taxis, north-west of the Pentagon (Brussels' city centre). Following the decline of the Western Roman Empire, it was incorporated into the Frankish Empire.
According to local legend, the origin of the settlement which was to become Brussels lies in Saint Gaugericus' construction of a chapel on an island in the river Senne around 580. The official founding of Brussels is usually said to be around 979, when Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, transferred the relics of the martyr Saint Gudula from Moorsel (located in today's province of East Flanders) to Saint Gaugericus' chapel. When Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor, appointed the same Charles to become Duke of Lower Lotharingia in 977, Charles ordered the construction of the city's first permanent fortification, doing so on that same island.
Middle Ages.
Lambert I, Count of Louvain, gained the County of Brussels around 1000 by marrying Charles' daughter. Because of its location on the banks of the Senne, on an important trade route between the Flemish cities of Bruges and Ghent, and Cologne in the Kingdom of Germany, Brussels became a commercial centre specialised in the textile trade. The town grew quite rapidly and extended towards the upper town (Treurenberg, Coudenberg and Sablon/Zavel areas), where there was a reduced risk of floods. As the town grew to a population of around 30,000, the surrounding marshes were drained to allow for further expansion. In 1183, the Counts of Leuven became Dukes of Brabant. Brabant, unlike the county of Flanders, was not fief of the king of France but was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire.
In the early 13th century, the first walls of Brussels were built and after this, the city grew significantly. Around this time, work began on what is now the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula (1225), replacing an older Romanesque church. To let the city expand, a second set of walls was erected between 1356 and 1383. Traces of these walls can still be seen; the Small Ring, a series of boulevards bounding the historical city centre, follows their former course.
Early modern.
In the 14th century, the marriage between heiress Margaret III, Countess of Flanders, and Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, produced a new Duke of Brabant of the House of Valois, namely Anthony, their son. In 1477, the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold perished in the Battle of Nancy. Through the marriage of his daughter Mary of Burgundy (who was born in Brussels) to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, the Low Countries fell under Habsburg sovereignty. Brabant was integrated into this composite state, and Brussels flourished as the Princely Capital of the prosperous Burgundian Netherlands, also known as the Seventeen Provinces. After the death of Mary in 1482, her son Philip the Handsome succeeded as Duke of Burgundy and Brabant.
Philip died in 1506, and he was succeeded by his son Charles V who then also became King of Spain (crowned in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula) and even Holy Roman Emperor at the death of his grandfather Maximilian I in 1519. Charles was now the ruler of a Habsburg Empire "on which the sun never sets" with Brussels serving as one of his main capitals. It was in the Coudenberg Palace that Charles V was declared of age in 1515, and it was there in 1555 that he abdicated all of his possessions and passed the Habsburg Netherlands to King Philip II of Spain. This palace, famous all over Europe, had greatly expanded since it had first become the seat of the Dukes of Brabant, but it was destroyed by fire in 1731.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Brussels was a centre for the lace industry. In addition, Brussels tapestry hung on the walls of castles throughout Europe. In 1695, during the Nine Years' War, King Louis XIV of France sent troops to bombard Brussels with artillery. Together with the resulting fire, it was the most destructive event in the entire history of Brussels. The Grand-Place was destroyed, along with 4,000 buildings—a third of all the buildings in the city. The reconstruction of the city centre, effected during subsequent years, profoundly changed its appearance and left numerous traces still visible today.
During the War of the Spanish Succession in 1708, Brussels again sustained a French attack, which it repelled. Following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Spanish sovereignty over the Southern Netherlands was transferred to the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg. This event started the era of the Austrian Netherlands. Brussels was captured by France in 1746, during the War of the Austrian Succession, but was handed back to Austria three years later. It remained with Austria until 1795, when the Southern Netherlands were captured and annexed by France, and the city became the chef-lieu of the department of the Dyle. The French rule ended in 1815, with the defeat of Napoleon on the battlefield of Waterloo, located south of today's Brussels-Capital Region. With the Congress of Vienna, the Southern Netherlands joined the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, under King William I of Orange. The former Dyle department became the province of South Brabant, with Brussels as its capital.
Late modern.
In 1830, the Belgian Revolution began in Brussels, after a performance of Auber's opera "La Muette de Portici" at the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie. The city became the capital and seat of government of the new nation. South Brabant was renamed simply Brabant, with Brussels as its administrative centre. On 21 July 1831, Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians, ascended the throne, undertaking the destruction of the city walls and the construction of many buildings.
Following independence, Brussels underwent many more changes. It became a financial centre, thanks to the dozens of companies launched by the "Société Générale de Belgique". The Industrial Revolution and the opening of the Brussels–Charleroi Canal in 1832 brought prosperity to the city through commerce and manufacturing. The Free University of Brussels was established in 1834 and Saint-Louis University in 1858. In 1835, the first passenger railway built outside England linked the municipality of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean with Mechelen.
During the 19th century, the population of Brussels grew considerably; from about 80,000 to more than 625,000 people for the city and its surroundings. The Senne had become a serious health hazard, and from 1867 to 1871, under the tenure of the city's then-mayor, Jules Anspach, its entire course through the urban area was completely covered over. This allowed urban renewal and the construction of modern buildings of "Haussmann-esque" style along grand central boulevards, characteristic of downtown Brussels today. Buildings such as the Brussels Stock Exchange (1873), the Palace of Justice (1883) and Saint Mary's Royal Church (1885) date from this period. This development continued throughout the reign of King Leopold II. The International Exposition of 1897 contributed to the promotion of the infrastructure. Among other things, the Palace of the Colonies, today's Royal Museum for Central Africa, in the suburb of Tervuren, was connected to the capital by the construction of an grand alley.
Brussels became one of the major European cities for the development of the Art Nouveau style in the 1890s and early 1900s. The architects Victor Horta, Paul Hankar, and Henry van de Velde, among others, were known for their designs, many of which survive today.
20th century.
During the 20th century, the city hosted various fairs and conferences, including the Solvay Conference on Physics and on Chemistry, and three world's fairs: the Brussels International Exposition of 1910, the Brussels International Exposition of 1935 and the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58). During World War I, Brussels was an occupied city, but German troops did not cause much damage. During World War II, it was again occupied by German forces, and spared major damage, before it was liberated by the British Guards Armoured Division on 3 September 1944. Brussels Airport, in the suburb of Zaventem, dates from the occupation.
After World War II, Brussels underwent extensive modernisation. The construction of the North–South connection, linking the main railway stations in the city, was completed in 1952, while the first "premetro" (underground tram) service was launched in 1969, and the first Metro line was opened in 1976. Starting from the early 1960s, Brussels became the "de facto" capital of what would become the European Union (EU), and many modern offices were built. Development was allowed to proceed with little regard to the aesthetics of newer buildings, and numerous architectural landmarks were demolished to make way for newer buildings that often clashed with their surroundings, giving name to the process of Brusselisation.
Contemporary.
The Brussels-Capital Region was formed on 18 June 1989, after a constitutional reform in 1988. It is one of the three federal regions of Belgium, along with Flanders and Wallonia, and has bilingual status. The yellow iris is the emblem of the region (referring to the presence of these flowers on the city's original site) and a stylised version is featured on its official flag.
In recent years, Brussels has become an important venue for international events. In 2000, it was named European Capital of Culture alongside eight other European cities. In 2013, the city was the site of the Brussels Agreement. In 2014, it hosted the 40th G7 summit, and in 2017, 2018 and 2021 respectively the 28th, 29th and 31st NATO Summits.
On 22 March 2016, three coordinated nail bombings were detonated by ISIL in Brussels—two at Brussels Airport in Zaventem and one at Maalbeek/Maelbeek metro station—resulting in 32 victims and three suicide bombers killed, and 330 people were injured. It was the deadliest act of terrorism in Belgium.
Geography.
Location and topography.
Brussels lies in the north-central part of Belgium, about from the Belgian coast and about from Belgium's southern tip. It is located in the heartland of the Brabantian Plateau, about south of Antwerp (Flanders), and north of Charleroi (Wallonia). Its average elevation is above sea level, varying from a low point in the valley of the almost completely covered Senne, which cuts the Brussels-Capital Region from east to west, up to high points in the Sonian Forest, on its southeastern side. In addition to the Senne, tributary streams such as the Maelbeek and the Woluwe, to the east of the region, account for significant elevation differences. Brussels' central boulevards are above sea level. Contrary to popular belief, the highest point (at ) is not near the / in Forest, but at the / in the Sonian Forest.
Climate.
Brussels experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen: "Cfb") with warm summers and cool winters. Proximity to coastal areas influences the area's climate by sending marine air masses from the Atlantic Ocean. Nearby wetlands also ensure a maritime temperate climate. On average (based on measurements in the period 1981–2010), there are approximately 135 days of rain per year in the Brussels-Capital Region. Snowfall is infrequent, averaging 24 days per year. The city also often experiences violent thunderstorms in summer months.
Brussels as a capital.
Despite its name, the Brussels-Capital Region is not the capital of Belgium. Article 194 of the Belgian Constitution establishes that the capital of Belgium is the City of Brussels, the municipality in the region that is the city's core.
The City of Brussels is the location of many national institutions. The Royal Palace of Brussels, where the King of the Belgians exercises his prerogatives as head of state, is situated alongside Brussels Park (not to be confused with the Royal Palace of Laeken, the official home of the Belgian royal family). The Palace of the Nation is located on the opposite side of this park, and is the seat of the Belgian Federal Parliament. The office of the Prime Minister of Belgium, colloquially called "Law Street 16" (, ), is located adjacent to this building. It is also where the Council of Ministers holds its meetings. The Court of Cassation, Belgium's main court, has its seat in the Palace of Justice. Other important institutions in the City of Brussels are the Constitutional Court, the Council of State, the Court of Audit, the Royal Belgian Mint and the National Bank of Belgium.
The City of Brussels is also the capital of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community. The Flemish Parliament and Flemish Government have their seats in Brussels, and so do the Parliament of the French Community and the Government of the French Community.
Municipalities.
The 19 municipalities (, ) of the Brussels-Capital Region are political subdivisions with individual responsibilities for the handling of local level duties, such as law enforcement and the upkeep of schools and roads within its borders. Municipal administration is also conducted by a mayor, a council, and an executive.
In 1831, Belgium was divided into 2,739 municipalities, including the 19 currently located in the Brussels-Capital Region. Unlike most of the municipalities in Belgium, the ones now located in the Brussels-Capital Region were not merged with others during mergers occurring in 1964, 1970, and 1975. However, a few neighbouring municipalities have been merged into the City of Brussels, including Laeken, Haren and Neder-Over-Heembeek in 1921. These comprise the northern bulge in the municipality. To the south-east is a strip of land along the Avenue Louise/Louizalaan that, in addition to the Bois de la Cambre/Ter Kamerenbos, was annexed from Ixelles in 1864. Part of the (ULB)'s Solbosch/Solbos campus is also part of the City of Brussels, partially accounting for the bulge in the south-eastern end.
The largest municipality in area and population is the City of Brussels, covering and with 145,917 inhabitants; the least populous is Koekelberg with 18,541 inhabitants. The smallest in area is Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, which is only , but still has the highest population density in the region, with . Watermael-Boitsfort has the lowest population density in the region, with .
There is much controversy on the division of 19 municipalities for a highly urbanised region, which is considered as (half of) one city by most people. Some politicians mock the "19 baronies" and want to merge the municipalities under one city council and one mayor. That would lower the number of politicians needed to govern Brussels, and centralise the power over the city to make decisions easier, thus reduce the overall running costs. The current municipalities could be transformed into districts with limited responsibilities, similar to the current structure of Antwerp or to structures of other capitals like the boroughs in London or "arrondissements" in Paris, to keep politics close enough to the citizen.
In the 2010s, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean gained international attention as the base for Islamist terrorists who carried out attacks in both Paris and Brussels.
Brussels-Capital Region.
Political status and administration.
The Brussels-Capital Region is one of the three federated regions of Belgium, alongside the Walloon Region and the Flemish Region. Geographically and linguistically, it is a bilingual enclave in the monolingual Flemish Region. Regions are one component of Belgium's institutions; the three communities being the other component. Brussels' inhabitants deal with either the French Community or the Flemish Community for matters such as culture and education, as well as a Common Community for competencies which do not belong exclusively to either Community, such as healthcare and social welfare.
Upon the reorganisation and split of the Province of Brabant in 1995, the Brussels Region ceased to belong to any of the provinces of Belgium, nor was it subdivided into provinces itself. However, the Arrondissement of Brussels-Capital, whose borders coincide with the Brussels Region, continued to exist, and the areas of provincial jurisdiction were assumed by the newly created Governor of the Arrondissement of Brussels-Capital and the Brussels regional institutions and community commissions. In 2014, the office of the Governor was formally abolished and replaced in September 2015 by the office of the "High official of the Arrondissement of Brussels-Capital", who retained responsibility for crisis management and emergency planning, while responsibility for crime prevention was transferred to the Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital Region.
Institutions.
The Brussels-Capital Region is governed by a parliament of 89 members (72 French-speaking, 17 Dutch-speaking—parties are organised on a linguistic basis) and an eight-member regional cabinet consisting of a minister-president, four ministers and three state secretaries. By law, the cabinet must comprise two French-speaking and two Dutch-speaking ministers, one Dutch-speaking secretary of state and two French-speaking secretaries of state. The minister-president does not count against the language quota, but in practice every minister-president has been a bilingual francophone. The regional parliament can enact ordinances (, ), which have equal status as a national legislative act.
Nineteen of the 72 French-speaking members of the Brussels Parliament are also members of the Parliament of the French Community of Belgium, and, until 2004, this was also the case for six Dutch-speaking members, who were at the same time members of the Flemish Parliament. Now, people voting for a Flemish party have to vote separately for 6 directly elected members of the Flemish Parliament.
Agglomeration of Brussels.
Before the creation of the Brussels-Capital Region, regional competences in the 19 municipalities were performed by the Brussels Agglomeration. The Brussels Agglomeration was an administrative division established in 1971. This decentralised administrative public body also assumed jurisdiction over areas which, elsewhere in Belgium, were exercised by municipalities or provinces.
The Brussels Agglomeration had a separate legislative council, but the by-laws enacted by it did not have the status of a legislative act. The only election of the council took place on 21 November 1971. The working of the council was subject to many difficulties caused by the linguistic and socio-economic tensions between the two communities.
After the creation of the Brussels-Capital Region, the Brussels Agglomeration was never formally abolished, although it no longer has a purpose.
French and Flemish communities.
The French Community and the Flemish Community exercise their powers in Brussels through two community-specific public authorities: the French Community Commission ( or COCOF) and the Flemish Community Commission ( or VGC). These two bodies each have an assembly composed of the members of each linguistic group of the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region. They also have a board composed of the ministers and secretaries of state of each linguistic group in the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region.
The French Community Commission also has another capacity: some legislative powers of the French Community have been devolved to the Walloon Region (for the French language area of Belgium) and to the French Community Commission (for the bilingual language area). The Flemish Community, however, did the opposite; it merged the Flemish Region into the Flemish Community. This is related to different conceptions in the two communities, one focusing more on the Communities and the other more on the Regions, causing an asymmetrical federalism. Because of this devolution, the French Community Commission can enact decrees, which are legislative acts.
Common Community Commission.
A bi-communitarian public authority, the Common Community Commission (, COCOM, , GGC) also exists. Its assembly is composed of the members of the regional parliament, and its board are the ministers—not the secretaries of state—of the region, with the minister-president not having the right to vote. This commission has two capacities: it is a decentralised administrative public body, responsible for implementing cultural policies of common interest. It can give subsidies and enact by-laws. In another capacity, it can also enact ordinances, which have equal status as a national legislative act, in the field of the welfare powers of the communities: in the Brussels-Capital Region, both the French Community and the Flemish Community can exercise powers in the field of welfare, but only in regard to institutions that are unilingual (for example, a private French-speaking retirement home or the Dutch-speaking hospital of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel). The Common Community Commission is responsible for policies aiming directly at private persons or at bilingual institutions (for example, the centres for social welfare of the 19 municipalities). Its ordinances have to be enacted with a majority in both linguistic groups. Failing such a majority, a new vote can be held, where a majority of at least one third in each linguistic group is sufficient.
Brussels and the European Union.
Brussels serves as "de facto" capital of the European Union (EU), hosting the major political institutions of the Union. The EU has not declared a capital formally, though the Treaty of Amsterdam formally gives Brussels the seat of the European Commission (the executive branch of government) and the Council of the European Union (a legislative institution made up from executives of member states). It locates the formal seat of European Parliament in Strasbourg, where votes take place, with the council, on the proposals made by the commission. However, meetings of political groups and committee groups are formally given to Brussels, along with a set number of plenary sessions. Three quarters of Parliament sessions now take place at its Brussels hemicycle. Between 2002 and 2004, the European Council also fixed its seat in the city. In 2014, the Union hosted a G7 summit in the city.
Brussels, along with Luxembourg and Strasbourg, began to host European institutions in 1957, soon becoming the centre of activities, as the Commission and Council based their activities in what has become the European Quarter, in the east of the city. Early building in Brussels was sporadic and uncontrolled, with little planning. The current major buildings are the Berlaymont building of the commission, symbolic of the quarter as a whole, the Europa building of the Council and the Espace Léopold of the Parliament. In recent years, the presence has increased considerably, with the Commission alone occupying within the European Quarter (a quarter of the total office space in Brussels). The concentration and density has caused concern that the presence of the institutions has created a "ghetto effect" in that part of the city. However, the European presence has contributed significantly to the importance of Brussels as an international centre.
International institutions.
Brussels has, since World War II, become the administrative centre of many international organisations. The city is the political and administrative centre of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO's Brussels headquarters houses 29 embassies and brings together over 4,500 staff from allied nations, their militaries, and civil service personnel. Many other international organisations such as the World Customs Organization and Eurocontrol, as well as international corporations, have their main institutions in the city. In addition, the main international trade union confederations have their headquarters there: the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL).
Brussels is third in the number of international conferences it hosts, also becoming one of the largest convention centres in the world. The presence of the EU and the other international bodies has, for example, led to there being more ambassadors and journalists in Brussels than in Washington, D.C. The city hosts 120 international institutions, 181 embassies () and more than 2,500 diplomats, making it the second centre of diplomatic relations in the world (after New York City). International schools have also been established to serve this presence. The "international community" in Brussels numbers at least 70,000 people. In 2009, there were an estimated 286 lobbying consultancies known to work in Brussels. Finally, Brussels has more than 1,400 NGOs.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The Treaty of Brussels, which was signed on 17 March 1948 between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, was a prelude to the establishment of the intergovernmental military alliance which later became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). , the alliance consists of 32 independent member countries across North America and Europe. Several countries also have diplomatic missions to NATO through embassies in Belgium. Since 1949, a number of NATO Summits have been held in Brussels, the most recent taking place in June 2021. The organisation's political and administrative headquarters are located on the / in Haren, on the north-eastern perimeter of the City of Brussels. A new €750 million headquarters building begun in 2010 and was completed in 2017.
Eurocontrol.
The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, commonly known as Eurocontrol, is an international organisation which coordinates and plans air traffic control across European airspace. The corporation was founded in 1960 and has 41 member states. Its headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels.
Demographics.
Population.
Brussels is located in one of the most urbanised regions of Europe, between Paris, London, the Rhine-Ruhr (Germany), and the Randstad (Netherlands). The Brussels-Capital Region has a population of around 1.2 million and has witnessed, in recent years, a remarkable increase in its population. In general, the population of Brussels is younger than the national average, and the gap between rich and poor is wider.
Brussels is the core of a built-up area that extends well beyond the region's limits. Sometimes referred to as the urban area of Brussels (, ) or Greater Brussels (, ), this area extends over a large part of the two Brabant provinces, including much of the surrounding arrondissement of Halle-Vilvoorde and some small parts of the arrondissement of Leuven in Flemish Brabant, as well as the northern part of Walloon Brabant.
The metropolitan area of Brussels is divided into three levels. Firstly, the central agglomeration (within the regional borders), with a population of 1,218,255 inhabitants. Adding the closest suburbs (, ) gives a total population of 1,831,496. Including the outer commuter zone (Brussels Regional Express Network (RER/GEN) area), the population is 2,676,701. Brussels is also part of a wider diamond-shaped conurbation, with Ghent, Antwerp and Leuven, which has about 4.4 million inhabitants (a little more than 40% of the Belgium's total population).
Nationalities.
There have been numerous migrations towards Brussels since the end of the 18th century, when the city acted as a common destination for political refugees from neighbouring or more distant countries, particularly France. From 1871, many of the Paris Communards fled to Brussels, where they received political asylum. Other notable international exiles living in Brussels at the time included Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Georges Boulanger, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Léon Daudet, to name a few. Attracted by the industrial opportunities, many workers moved in, first from the other Belgian provinces (mainly rural residents from Flanders) and France, then from Southern European, and more recently from Eastern European and African countries.
Since the second half of the 20th century, Brussels has been home to a large number of immigrants and émigré communities, as well as labour migrants, former foreign students or expatriates, and many Belgian families in Brussels can claim at least one foreign grandparent. At the last Belgian census in 1991, 63.7% of inhabitants in Brussels-Capital Region answered that they were Belgian citizens, born as such in Belgium, indicating that more than a third of residents had not been born in the country. According to Statbel (the Belgian Statistical Office), in 2020, taking into account the nationality of birth of the parents, 74.3% of the population of the Brussels-Capital Region was of foreign origin and 41.8% was of non-European origin (including 28.7% of African origin). Among those aged under 18, 88% were of foreign origin and 57% of non-European origin (including 42.4% of African origin).
This large concentration of immigrants and their descendants includes many of Moroccan (mainly Riffian and other Berbers) and Turkish ancestry, together with French-speaking black Africans from former Belgian colonies, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Many immigrants were naturalised following the great 1991 reform of the naturalisation process. In 2012, about 32% of city residents were of non-Belgian European origin (mainly expatriates from France, Romania, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Portugal) and 36% were of another background, mostly from Morocco, Turkey and Sub-Saharan Africa. Among all major migrant groups from outside the EU, a majority of the permanent residents have acquired Belgian nationality.
Languages.
Brussels was historically Dutch-speaking, using the Brabantian dialect, but since the 19th century French has become the predominant language of the city. The main cause of this transition was the rapid assimilation of the local Flemish population, amplified by immigration from France and Wallonia. The rise of French in public life gradually began by the end of the 18th century, quickly accelerating after Belgian independence. Dutch — of which standardisation in Belgium was still very weak — could not compete with French, which was the exclusive language of the judiciary, the administration, the army, education, cultural life and the media, and thus necessary for social mobility. The value and prestige of the French language was universally acknowledged to such an extent that after 1880, and more particularly after the turn of the 20th century, proficiency in French among Dutch-speakers in Brussels increased spectacularly.
Although a majority of the population remained bilingual until the second half of the 20th century, family transmission of the historic Brabantian dialect declined, leading to an increase of monolingual French-speakers from 1910 onwards. From the mid-20th century, the number of monolingual French-speakers surpassed the number of mostly bilingual Flemish inhabitants. This process of assimilation weakened after the 1960s, as the language border was fixed, the status of Dutch as an official language of Belgium was reinforced, and the economic centre of gravity shifted northward to Flanders. However, with the continuing arrival of immigrants and the post-war emergence of Brussels as a centre of international politics, the relative position of Dutch continued to decline. Furthermore, as Brussels' urban area expanded, a further number of Dutch-speaking municipalities in the Brussels periphery also became predominantly French-speaking. This phenomenon of expanding Francisation — dubbed "oil slick" by its opponents — is, together with the future of Brussels, one of the most controversial topics in Belgian politics.
Since its creation in 1989, the Brussels-Capital Region has been legally bilingual, with both French and Dutch having official status, as is the administration of the 19 municipalities. The creation of this bilingual, full-fledged region, with its own competencies and jurisdiction, had long been hampered by different visions of Belgian federalism. Nevertheless, some communitarian issues remain. Flemish political parties demanded, for decades, that the Flemish part of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV) "arrondissement" be separated from the Brussels Region (which made Halle-Vilvoorde a monolingual Flemish electoral and judicial district). BHV was divided mid-2012. The French-speaking population regards the language border as artificial and demands the extension of the bilingual region to at least all six municipalities with language facilities in the surroundings of Brussels. Flemish politicians have strongly rejected these proposals.
Owing to migration and to its international role, Brussels is home to a large number of native speakers of languages other than French or Dutch. Currently, about half of the population speaks a home language other than these two. In 2013, academic research showed that approximately 17% of families spoke none of the official languages in the home, while in a further 23% a foreign language was used alongside French. The share of unilingual French-speaking families had fallen to 38% and that of Dutch-speaking families to 5%, while the percentage of bilingual Dutch-French families reached 17%. At the same time, French remains widely spoken: in 2013, French was spoken "well to perfectly" by 88% of the population, while for Dutch this percentage was only 23% (down from 33% in 2000); the other most commonly known languages were English (30%), Arabic (18%), Spanish (9%), German (7%) and Italian and Turkish (5% each). Meanwhile, surveys from 2023 to 2024 suggest that 29% of the population speaks only languages other than French and Dutch in the home, while residents speak a total of 104 languages, up from 72 in 2001. Despite the rise of English as a second language in Brussels, including as an unofficial compromise language between French and Dutch, as well as the working language for some of its international businesses and institutions, French remains the "lingua franca" and all public services are conducted exclusively in French or Dutch.
The original dialect of Brussels (known as Brusselian, and also sometimes referred to as Marols or Marollien), a form of Brabantic (the variant of Dutch spoken in the ancient Duchy of Brabant) with a significant number of loanwords from French, still survives among a small minority of inhabitants called "Brusseleers" (or "Brusseleirs"), many of them quite bi- and multilingual, or educated in French and not writing in Dutch. The ethnic and national self-identification of Brussels' inhabitants is nonetheless sometimes quite distinct from the French and Dutch-speaking communities. For the French-speakers, it can vary from Francophone Belgian, (French demonym for an inhabitant of Brussels), Walloon (for people who migrated from the Walloon Region at an adult age); for Flemings living in Brussels, it is mainly either Dutch-speaking Belgian, Flemish or (Dutch demonym for an inhabitant), and often both. For the "Brusseleers", many simply consider themselves as belonging to Brussels.
Religions.
Historically, Brussels has been predominantly Catholic, especially since the expulsion of Protestants in the 16th century. This is clear from the large number of historical churches in the region, particularly in the City of Brussels. The pre-eminent Catholic cathedral in Brussels is the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, serving as the co-cathedral of the Archdiocese of Mechelen–Brussels. On the north-western side of the region, the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart is a Minor Basilica and parish church, as well as one of the largest churches by area in the world. The Church of Our Lady of Laeken holds the tombs of many members of the Belgian royal family, including all the former Belgian monarchs, within the Royal Crypt.
In reflection of its multicultural makeup, Brussels hosts a variety of religious communities, as well as large numbers of atheists and agnostics. Minority faiths include Islam, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Buddhism. According to a 2016 survey, approximately 40% of residents of Brussels declared themselves Catholics (12% were practising Catholics and 28% were non-practising Catholics), 30% were non-religious, 23% were Muslim (19% practising, 4% non-practising), 3% were Protestants and 4% were of another religion.
As guaranteed by Belgian law, recognised religions and non-religious philosophical organisations (, ) enjoy public funding and school courses. It was once the case that every pupil in an official school from 6 to 18 years old had to choose two hours per week of compulsory religious—or non-religious-inspired morals—courses. However, in 2015, the Belgian Constitutional Court ruled religious studies could no longer be required in the primary and secondary educational systems.
Brussels has a large concentration of Muslims, mostly of Moroccan, Turkish, Syrian and Guinean ancestry. The Great Mosque of Brussels, located in the Parc du Cinquantenaire/Jubelpark, is the oldest mosque in Brussels and the former seat of the Islamic and Cultural Centre of Belgium. Belgium does not collect statistics by ethnic background or religious beliefs, so exact figures are unknown. It was estimated that, in 2005, people of Muslim background living in the Brussels Region numbered 256,220 and accounted for 25.5% of the city's population, a much higher concentration than those of the other regions of Belgium.
Architecture.
The architecture in Brussels is diverse, and spans from the clashing combination of Gothic, Baroque, and Louis XIV styles on the Grand-Place to the postmodern buildings of the EU institutions.
Very little medieval architecture is preserved in Brussels. Buildings from that period are mostly found in the historical centre (called the ), Saint Géry/Sint-Goriks and / neighbourhoods. The Brabantine Gothic Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula remains a prominent feature in the skyline of downtown Brussels. Isolated portions of the first city walls were saved from destruction and can be seen to this day. One of the only remains of the second walls is the Halle Gate. The Grand-Place is the main attraction in the city centre and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998. The square is dominated by the 15th century Flamboyant Town Hall, the neo-Gothic "Breadhouse" and the Baroque guildhalls of the former Guilds of Brussels. "Manneken Pis", a fountain containing a small bronze sculpture of a urinating youth, is a tourist attraction and symbol of the city.
The neoclassical style of the 18th and 19th centuries is represented in the Royal Quarter/Coudenberg area, around Brussels Park and the Place Royale/Koningsplein. Examples include the Royal Palace, the Church of St. James on Coudenberg, the Palace of the Nation (Parliament building), the Academy Palace, the Palace of Charles of Lorraine, the Palace of the Count of Flanders and the Egmont Palace. Other uniform neoclassical ensembles can be found around the Place des Martyrs/Martelaarsplein and the /. Some additional landmarks in the centre are the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries (1847), one of the oldest covered shopping arcades in Europe, the Congress Column (1859), the former Brussels Stock Exchange building (1873) and the Palace of Justice (1883). The latter, designed by Joseph Poelaert, in eclectic style, is reputed to be the largest building constructed in the 19th century.
Located outside the historical centre, in a greener environment bordering the European Quarter, are the Parc du Cinquantenaire/Jubelpark with its memorial arcade and nearby museums, and in Laeken, the Royal Palace of Laeken and the Royal Domain with its large greenhouses, as well as the Museums of the Far East.
Also particularly striking are the buildings in the Art Nouveau style, most famously by the Belgian architects Victor Horta, Paul Hankar and Henry Van de Velde. Some of Brussels' municipalities, such as Schaerbeek, Etterbeek, Ixelles, and Saint-Gilles, were developed during the heyday of Art Nouveau and have many buildings in that style. The Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta—Hôtel Tassel (1893), Hôtel van Eetvelde (1898), Hôtel Solvay (1900) and the Horta Museum (1901)—have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. Another example of Brussels' Art Nouveau is the Stoclet Palace (1911), by the Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann, designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in June 2009.
Art Deco structures in Brussels include the Résidence Palace (1927) (now part of the Europa building), the Centre for Fine Arts (1928), the Villa Empain (1934), the Town Hall of Forest (1938), and the Flagey Building (also known as the "Radio House") on the Place Eugène Flagey/Eugène Flageyplein (1938) in Ixelles. Some religious buildings from the interwar era were also constructed in that style, such as the Church of St. John the Baptist (1932) in Molenbeek and the Church of St. Augustine (1935) in Forest. Completed only in 1969, and combining Art Deco with neo-Byzantine elements, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Koekelberg is one of the largest churches by area in the world, and its cupola provides a panoramic view of Brussels and its outskirts. Another example are the exhibition halls of the Centenary Palace, built for the 1935 World's Fair on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in northern Brussels, home to the Brussels Exhibition Centre (Brussels Expo).
The Atomium is a symbolic modernist structure, located on the Heysel Plateau, which was originally built for the 1958 World's Fair (Expo 58). It consists of nine steel spheres connected by tubes, and forms a model of an iron crystal (specifically, a unit cell), magnified 165 billion times. The architect André Waterkeyn devoted the building to science. It is now considered a landmark of Brussels. Next to the Atomium, is Mini-Europe miniature park, with 1:25 scale maquettes of famous buildings from across Europe.
Since the second half of the 20th century, modern office towers have been built in Brussels (Madou Tower, Rogier Tower, Proximus Towers, Finance Tower, the World Trade Center, among others). There are some thirty towers, mostly concentrated in the city's main business district: the Northern Quarter (also called "Little Manhattan"), near Brussels-North railway station. The South Tower, standing adjacent to Brussels-South railway station, is the tallest building in Belgium, at . Along the North–South connection, is the State Administrative Centre, an administrative complex in the International Style. The postmodern buildings of the Espace Léopold complete the picture.
The city's embrace of modern architecture translated into an ambivalent approach towards historic preservation, leading to the destruction of notable architectural landmarks, most famously the Maison du Peuple/Volkshuis by Victor Horta, a process known as Brusselisation.
Culture.
Visual arts and museums.
Brussels contains over 80 museums. The Royal Museums of Fine Arts has an extensive collection of various painters, such as Flemish old masters like Bruegel, Rogier van der Weyden, Robert Campin, Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, and Peter Paul Rubens. The Magritte Museum houses the world's largest collection of works by the surrealist artist René Magritte. Museums dedicated to the national history of Belgium include the BELvue Museum, the Royal Museums of Art and History, and the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History. The Musical Instruments Museum (MIM), housed in the Old England building, is part of the Royal Museums of Art and History, and is internationally renowned for its collection of over 8,000 instruments.
The Brussels Museums Council is an independent body for all the museums in the Brussels-Capital Region, covering around 100 federal, private, municipal, and community museums. It promotes member museums through the Brussels Card (giving access to public transport and 30 of the 100 museums), the Brussels Museums Nocturnes (every Thursday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. from mid-September to mid-December) and the Museum Night Fever (an event for and by young people on a Saturday night in late February or early March).
Brussels has had a distinguished artist scene for many years. The famous Belgian surrealists René Magritte and Paul Delvaux, for instance, studied and lived there, as did the avant-garde dramatist Michel de Ghelderode. The city was also home of the impressionist painter Anna Boch from the artists' group "Les XX", and includes other famous Belgian painters such as Léon Spilliaert. Brussels is also a capital of the comic strip; some treasured Belgian characters are Tintin, Lucky Luke, The Smurfs, Spirou, Gaston, Marsupilami, Blake and Mortimer, Boule et Bill and Cubitus (see Belgian comics). Throughout the city, walls are painted with large motifs of comic book characters; these murals taken together are known as Brussels' Comic Book Route. Also, the interiors of some Metro stations are designed by artists. The Belgian Comic Strip Center combines two artistic leitmotifs of Brussels, being a museum devoted to Belgian comic strips, housed in the former "Magasins Waucquez" textile department store, designed by Victor Horta in the Art Nouveau style. In addition, street art is changing the landscape of this multicultural city.
Performing arts venues and festivals.
Brussels is well known for its performing arts scene, with the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie, the Royal Park Theatre, the Théâtre Royal des Galeries, and the among the most notable institutions.
The Kunstenfestivaldesarts, an international performing arts festival, is organised every year in May. Its main hub is the Kaaitheater, but performances and artworks are also hosted in around 30 venues throughout the city.
The King Baudouin Stadium is a concert and competition facility with a 50,000 seat capacity, the largest in Belgium. The site was formerly occupied by the Heysel Stadium. The Centre for Fine Arts (often referred to as BOZAR in French or PSK in Dutch), a multi-purpose centre for theatre, cinema, music, literature, and art exhibitions, is home to the National Orchestra of Belgium and to the annual Queen Elisabeth Competition for classical singers and instrumentalists, one of the most challenging and prestigious competitions of the kind. Studio 4 in Le Flagey cultural centre hosts the Brussels Philharmonic.
Other concert venues include Forest National/Vorst Nationaal, the Ancienne Belgique, the Cirque Royal/Koninklijk Circus, the Botanique and Palais 12/Paleis 12. Furthermore, the Jazz Station in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode is a museum and archive on jazz, and a venue for jazz concerts.
Other cultural events and festivals.
Many events are organised or hosted in Brussels throughout the year. In addition, many festivals animate the Brussels scene.
The Iris Festival is the official festival of the Brussels-Capital Region and is held annually in spring. The International Fantastic Film Festival of Brussels (BIFFF) is organised during the Easter holidays and the Magritte Awards in February. The Festival of Europe, an open day and activities in and around the institutions of the European Union, is held on 9 May. On Belgian National Day, on 21 July, a military parade and celebrations take place on the / and in Brussels Park, ending with a fireworks display in the evening.
Some summer festivities include Couleur Café Festival, a festival of world and urban music, around the end of June or early July, the (BSF), a music festival in August, the Midi Fair, the most important yearly fair in Brussels, lasting more than a month, in July and August, and Brussels Beach, when the banks of the canal are turned into a temporary urban beach. Other biennial events are the Zinneke Parade, a colourful, multicultural parade through the city, which has been held since 2000 in May, as well as the popular Flower Carpet at the Grand-Place in August. Heritage Days are organised on the third weekend of September (sometimes coinciding with the car-free day) and are a good opportunity to discover the wealth of buildings, institutions and real estate in Brussels. The "Winter Wonders" animate the heart of Brussels in December; these winter activities were launched in Brussels in 2001.
Folklore.
Brussels' identity owes much to its rich folklore and traditions, among the liveliest in the country.
The Ommegang, a folkloric costumed procession, commemorating the Joyous Entry of Emperor Charles V and his son Philip II in the city in 1549, takes place every year in July. The colourful parade includes floats, traditional processional giants, such as Saint Michael and Saint Gudula, and scores of folkloric groups, either on foot or on horseback, dressed in medieval garb. The parade ends in a pageant on the Grand-Place. Since 2019, it has been recognised as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.
The Meyboom, an even-older folk tradition of Brussels (1308), celebrating the "May tree"—in fact, a corruption of the Dutch word, meaning "tree of joy"—takes place paradoxically on 9 August. After parading a young beech in the city, it is planted in a joyful spirit with lots of music, "Brusseleir" songs, and processional giants. It has also been recognised as an expression of intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO, as part of the bi-national inscription "Processional giants and dragons in Belgium and France". The celebration is reminiscent of the town's long-standing (folkloric) feud with Leuven, which dates back to the Middle Ages.
Saint Verhaegen (often shortened to "St V"), a folkloric student procession, celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the (ULB) and the (VUB), is held on 20 November. Since 2019, it has also been listed as intangible cultural heritage of the Brussels-Capital Region.
Another good introduction to the "Brusseleir" local dialect and way of life can be obtained at the Royal Theatre Toone, a folkloric theatre of marionettes, located a stone's throw away from the Grand-Place. Finally, two famous folkloric plays, "Le Mariage de Mademoiselle Beulemans" by Frantz Fonson and Fernand Wicheler, and "Bossemans et Coppenolle" by Joris d'Hanswyck and Paul Van Stalle, are still the subject of regular revivals.
Cuisine.
Brussels is well known for its local waffle, its chocolate, its French fries and its numerous types of beers. The Brussels sprout, which has long been popular in Brussels, and may have originated there, is also named after the city.
Owing to Brussels' cosmopolitan population, almost every national cuisine in the world can be found there. The gastronomic offer includes approximately 1,800 restaurants (including three 2-starred and ten 1-starred Michelin restaurants), and a number of bars. In addition to the traditional restaurants, there are many cafés, bistros and the usual range of international fast food chains. The cafés are similar to bars, and offer beer and light dishes; coffee houses are called (literally "tea salons"). Also widespread are brasseries, which usually offer a variety of beers and typical national dishes.
Belgian cuisine is known among connoisseurs as one of the best in Europe. It is characterised by the combination of French cuisine with the more hearty Flemish fare. Notable specialities include Brussels waffles (gaufres) and mussels (usually as "moules-frites", served with fries). The city is a stronghold of chocolate and praline manufacturers with renowned companies like Côte d'Or, Neuhaus, Leonidas and Godiva. Pralines were first introduced in 1912 by Jean Neuhaus II, a Belgian chocolatier of Swiss origin, in the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries. Numerous friteries are spread throughout the city, and in tourist areas, fresh hot waffles are also sold on the street.
As well as other Belgian beers, the spontaneously fermented lambic style, brewed in and around Brussels, is widely available there and in the nearby Senne valley where the wild yeasts that ferment it have their origin. Kriek, a cherry lambic, is available in almost every bar or restaurant in Brussels.
Brussels is known as the birthplace of the Belgian endive. The technique for growing blanched endives was accidentally discovered in the 1850s at the Botanical Garden of Brussels in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode.
Shopping.
Famous shopping areas in Brussels include the pedestrian-only Rue Neuve/Nieuwstraat, the second busiest shopping street in Belgium (after the Meir, in Antwerp) with a weekly average of 230,000 visitors, home to popular international chains (H&M, C&A, Zara, Primark), as well as the City 2 and Anspach galleries. The Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries hold a variety of luxury shops and some six million people stroll through them each year. The neighbourhood around the / has become, in recent years, a focal point for fashion and design; this main street and its side streets also feature Belgium's young and most happening artistic talent.
In Ixelles, the / and the Namur Gate area offer a blend of luxury shops, fast food restaurants and entertainment venues, and the /, in the mainly-Congolese "Matongé" district, offers a taste of African fashion and lifestyle. The nearby Avenue Louise/Louizalaan is lined with high-end fashion stores and boutiques, making it one of the most expensive streets in Belgium.
There are shopping centres outside the inner ring: Basilix, Woluwe Shopping Center, Westland Shopping Center, and Docks Bruxsel, which opened in October 2017. In addition, Brussels ranks as one of Europe's best capital cities for flea market shopping. The "Old Market", on the Place du Jeu de Balle/Vossenplein, in the Marolles/Marollen neighbourhood, is particularly renowned. The nearby Sablon/Zavel area is home to many of Brussels' antique dealers. The "Midi Market" around Brussels-South station and the / is reputed to be one of the largest markets in Europe.
Sports.
Sport in Brussels is under the responsibility of the Communities. The (ADEPS) is responsible for recognising the various French-speaking sports federations and also runs three sports centres in the Brussels-Capital Region. Its Dutch-speaking counterpart is (formerly called BLOSO).
The King Baudouin Stadium (formerly the Heysel Stadium) is the largest in the country and home to the national teams in football and rugby union. It hosted the final of the 1972 UEFA European Football Championship, and the opening game of the 2000 edition. Several European club finals have been held at the ground, including the 1985 European Cup Final which saw 39 deaths due to hooliganism and structural collapse. The King Baudouin Stadium is also home of the annual Memorial Van Damme athletics event, Belgium's foremost track and field competition, which is part of the Diamond League. Other important athletics events are the Brussels Marathon and the 20 km of Brussels, an annual run with 30,000 participants.
Football.
R.S.C. Anderlecht, based in the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium in Anderlecht, is the most successful Belgian football club in the Belgian Pro League, with 34 titles. It has also won the most major European tournaments for a Belgian side, with 6 European titles. Brussels is also home to Union Saint-Gilloise, the most successful Belgian club before World War II, with 11 titles. The club was founded in Saint-Gilles but is based in nearby Forest, and plays in the Belgian Pro League. Racing White Daring Molenbeek, based in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, and often referred to as RWDM, is a very popular football club that, since 2023, is back playing in the Belgian Pro League.
Other Brussels clubs that played in the national series over the years were Royal White Star Bruxelles, Ixelles SC, Crossing Club de Schaerbeek (born from a merger between RCS de Schaerbeek and Crossing Club Molenbeek), Scup Jette, RUS de Laeken, Racing Jet de Bruxelles, AS Auderghem, KV Wosjot Woluwe and FC Ganshoren.
Cycling.
Brussels is home to notable cycling races. The city is the arrival location of the Brussels Cycling Classic, formerly known as Paris–Brussels, which is one of the oldest semi classic bicycle races on the international calendar. From World War I until the early 1970s, the Six Days of Brussels was organised regularly. In the last decades of the 20th century, the Grand Prix Eddy Merckx was also held in Brussels.
Economy.
Serving as the centre of administration for Belgium and Europe, Brussels' economy is largely service-oriented. It is dominated by regional and world headquarters of multinationals, by European institutions, by various local and federal administrations, and by related services companies, though it does have a number of notable craft industries, such as the Cantillon Brewery, a lambic brewery founded in 1900.
Brussels has a robust economy. The region contributes to one fifth of Belgium's GDP, and its 550,000 jobs account for 17.7% of Belgium's employment. Its GDP per capita is nearly double that of Belgium as a whole, and it has the highest GDP per capita of any NUTS 1 region in the EU, at ~$80,000 in 2016. That being said, the GDP is boosted by a massive inflow of commuters from neighbouring regions; over half of those who work in Brussels live in Flanders or Wallonia, with 230,000 and 130,000 commuters per day respectively. Conversely, only 16.0% of people from Brussels work outside Brussels (68,827 (68.5%) of them in Flanders and 21,035 (31.5%) in Wallonia). Not all of the wealth generated in Brussels remains in Brussels itself, and , the unemployment among residents of Brussels is 20.4%.
There are approximately 50,000 businesses in Brussels, of which around 2,200 are foreign. This number is constantly increasing and can well explain the role of Brussels in Europe. The city's infrastructure is very favourable in terms of starting up a new business. House prices have also increased in recent years, especially with the increase of young professionals settling down in Brussels, making it the most expensive city to live in Belgium. In addition, Brussels holds more than 1,000 business conferences annually, making it the ninth most popular conference city in Europe.
Brussels is rated as the 34th most important financial centre in the world as of 2020, according to the Global Financial Centres Index. The Brussels Stock Exchange, abbreviated to BSE, now called Euronext Brussels, is part of the European stock exchange Euronext, along with Paris Bourse, Lisbon Stock Exchange and Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Its benchmark stock market index is the BEL20.
Media.
Brussels is a centre of both media and communications in Belgium, with many Belgian television stations, radio stations, newspapers and telephone companies having their headquarters in the region. The French-language public broadcaster RTBF, the Dutch-language public broadcaster VRT, the two regional channels BX1 (formerly Télé Bruxelles) and Bruzz (formerly TV Brussel), the encrypted BeTV channel and private channels RTL-TVI and VTM are headquartered in Brussels. Some national newspapers such as Le Soir, La Libre, De Morgen and the news agency Belga are based in or around Brussels. The Belgian postal company bpost, as well as the telecommunication companies and mobile operators Proximus, Orange Belgium and Telenet are all located there.
As English is spoken widely, several English media organisations operate in Brussels. The most popular of these are the English-language daily news media platform and bi-monthly magazine "The Brussels Times" and the website "The Bulletin". Dutch-language public broadcaster VRT has also English version of its online news. The multilingual pan-European news channel Euronews also maintains an office in Brussels.
Education.
Tertiary education.
There are several universities in Brussels. Except for the Royal Military Academy, a federal military college established in 1834, all universities in Brussels are private and autonomous. The Royal Military Academy also the only Belgian university organised on the boarding school model.
The Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a French-speaking university, with about 20,000 students, has three campuses in the city, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), its Dutch-speaking sister university, has about 10,000 students. Both universities originate from a single ancestor university, founded in 1834, namely the Free University of Brussels, which was split in 1970, at about the same time the Flemish and French Communities gained legislative power over the organisation of higher education.
Saint-Louis University, Brussels (also known as UCLouvain Saint-Louis – Bruxelles) was founded in 1858 and is specialised in social and human sciences, with 4,000 students, and located on two campuses in the City of Brussels and Ixelles. From September 2018 on, the university uses the name "UCLouvain", together with the Catholic University of Louvain, in the context of a merger between both universities.
Still other universities have campuses in Brussels, such as the French-speaking Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain), which has 10,000 students in the city with its medical faculties at UCLouvain Bruxelles Woluwe since 1973, in addition to its Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Urban Planning and UCLouvain's Dutch-speaking sister Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) (offering bachelor's and master's degrees in economics & business, law, arts, and architecture; 4,400 students). In addition, the University of Kent's Brussels School of International Studies is a specialised postgraduate school offering advanced international studies.
Also a dozen of university colleges are located in Brussels, including two drama schools, founded in 1832: the French-speaking Conservatoire Royal and its Dutch-speaking equivalent, the Koninklijk Conservatorium.
Primary and secondary education.
Most of Brussels pupils between the ages of 3 and 18 go to schools organised by the French-speaking Community or the Flemish Community, with close to 80% going to French-speaking schools, and roughly 20% to Dutch-speaking schools. Due to the post-war international presence in the city, there are also a number of international schools, including the International School of Brussels, with 1,450 pupils, between the ages of and 18, the British School of Brussels, and the four European Schools, which provide free education for the children of those working in the EU institutions. The combined student population of the four European Schools in Brussels is around 10,000.
Libraries.
Brussels has a number of public or private-owned libraries on its territory. Most public libraries in Brussels fall under the competence of the Communities and are usually separated between French-speaking and Dutch-speaking institutions, although some are mixed.
The Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) is the national library of Belgium and one of the most prestigious libraries in the world. It owns several collections of historical importance, like the famous Fétis archives, and is the depository for all books ever published in Belgium or abroad by Belgian authors. It is located on the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg in central Brussels, near the Central Station.
There are several academic libraries and archives in Brussels. The libraries of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) constitute the largest ensemble of university libraries in the city. In addition to the Solbosch location, there are branches in La Plaine/Het Plein and Erasme/Erasmus. Other academic libraries include those of Saint-Louis University, Brussels and the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain).
Science and technology.
Science and technology in Brussels is well-developed with the presence of several universities and research institutes. The Brussels-Capital Region is home to several national science and technology institutes including the National Fund for Scientific Research (NFSR), the Institute for the Encouragement of Scientific Research and Innovation of Brussels (ISRIB), the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium (RASAB) and the Belgian Academy Council of Applied Sciences (BACAS). Several science parks associated with the universities are also spread over the region.
The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, located in Leopold Park, houses the world's largest hall completely dedicated to dinosaurs, with its collection of 30 fossilised "Iguanodon" skeletons. In addition, the Planetarium of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (part of the institutions of the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office), on the Heysel Plateau in Laeken, is one of the largest in Europe.
Healthcare.
Brussels is home to a thriving pharmaceutical and health care industry which includes pioneering biotechnology research. The health sector employs 70,000 employees in 30,000 companies. There are 3,000 life sciences researchers in the city and two large science parks: Da Vinci Research Park and Erasmus Research Park. There are five university hospitals, a military hospital and more than 40 general hospitals and specialist clinics.
Due to its bilingual nature, hospitals in the Brussels-Capital Region can be either monolingual French, monolingual Dutch, or bilingual, depending on their nature. University hospitals belong to one of the two linguistic communities and are thus monolingual French or Dutch by law. Other hospitals managed by a public authority must be legally bilingual. Private hospitals are legally not bound to either language, but most cater to both. However, all hospital emergency services in the Capital Region (whether part of a public or private hospital) are required to be bilingual, since patients transported by emergency ambulance cannot choose the hospital they will be brought to.
Transport.
Brussels has an extensive network of both private or public transportation means. Public transportation includes Brussels buses, trams, and metro (all three operated by the Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company (STIB/MIVB)), as well as a set of railway lines (operated by Infrabel) and railway stations served by public trains (operated by the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB)). Air transport is available via one of the city's two airports (Brussels Airport and Brussels South Charleroi Airport), and boat transport is available via the Port of Brussels. Bicycle-sharing and car-sharing public systems are also available.
The complexity of the Belgian political landscape makes some transportation issues difficult to solve. The Brussels-Capital Region is surrounded by the Flemish and Walloon regions, which means that the airports, as well as many roads serving Brussels (most notably the Brussels Ring) are located in the other two Belgian regions. The city is relatively car-dependent by northern European standards and is considered to be the most congested city in the world according to the INRIX traffic survey.
Air.
The Brussels-Capital Region is served by two airports, both located outside of the administrative territory of the region. The most notable is Brussels Airport, located in the nearby Flemish municipality of Zaventem, east of the capital, which can be accessed by highway (A201), train, taxi and bus. Brussels National Airport has its own railway station. This station is located in the underground (level -1) of the airport terminal building itself. The secondary airport is Brussels South Charleroi Airport, located in Gosselies, a part of the city of Charleroi (Wallonia), some south-west of Brussels, which can be accessed by highway (E19 then E420) or a private bus. There is also Melsbroek Air Base, located in Steenokkerzeel, a military airport which shares its infrastructure with Brussels Airport. The aforementioned airports are also the main airports of Belgium.
Water.
Since the 16th century, Brussels has had its own harbour, the Port of Brussels. It has been enlarged throughout the centuries to become the second Belgian inland port. Historically situated near the Place Sainte-Catherine/Sint-Katelijneplein, it lies today to the north-west of the region, on the Brussels–Scheldt Maritime Canal (commonly called Willebroek Canal), which connects Brussels to Antwerp via the Scheldt. Ships and large barges up to can penetrate deep into the country, avoiding break-ups and load transfers between Antwerp and the centre of Brussels, hence reducing the cost for companies using the canal, and thus offering a competitive advantage.
Moreover, the connection of the Willebroek Canal with the Brussels–Charleroi Canal, in the very heart of the capital, creates a north–south link, by means of waterways, between the Netherlands, Flanders and the industrial zone of Hainaut (Wallonia). There, navigation can access the network of French canals, thanks to the important inclined plane of Ronquières and the lifts of Strépy-Bracquegnies.
The importance of river traffic in Brussels makes it possible to avoid the road equivalent of 740,000 trucks per year—almost 2,000 per day—which, in addition to easing traffic problems, represents an estimated carbon dioxide saving of per year.
Train.
The Brussels-Capital Region has three main train stations: Brussels-South, Brussels-Central and Brussels-North, which are also the busiest of the country. Brussels-South is also served by direct high-speed rail links: to London by Eurostar trains via the Channel Tunnel; to Amsterdam by Thalys and "InterCity" connections; to Amsterdam, Paris, and Cologne by Thalys; and to Cologne and Frankfurt by the German ICE.
The train rails in Brussels go underground, near the centre, through the North–South connection, with Brussels Central Station also being largely underground. The tunnel itself is only six tracks wide at its narrowest point, which often causes congestion and delays due to heavy use of the route.
The City of Brussels has minor railway stations at Bockstael, Brussels-Chapel, Brussels-Congress, Brussels-Luxembourg, Brussels-Schuman, Brussels-West, Haren, Haren-South and Simonis. In the Brussels Region, there are also railways stations at Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Boitsfort, Boondael, Bordet (Evere), Etterbeek, Evere, Forest-East, Forest-South, Jette, Meiser (Schaerbeek), Moensberg (Uccle), Saint-Job (Uccle), Schaarbeek, Uccle-Calevoet, Uccle-Stalle, Vivier d'Oie-Diesdelle (Uccle), Merode and Watermael.
Public transport.
The Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company (STIB/MIVB) is the local public transport operator in Brussels. It covers the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region and some surface routes extend to the near suburbs in the other two regions, linking with the De Lijn network in Flanders and the TEC network in Wallonia.
Metro, trams and buses.
The Brussels Metro dates back to 1976, but underground lines known as the "premetro" have been serviced by tramways since 1968. It is the only rapid transit system in Belgium (Antwerp and Charleroi both having light rail systems). The network consists of four conventional metro lines and three "premetro" lines. The metro-grade lines are M1, M2, M5, and M6, with some shared sections, covering a total of . , the Metro network within the region has a total of 69 metro and "premetro" stations. The Metro is an important means of transport, connecting with six railway stations of the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB), and many tram and bus stops operated by STIB/MIVB, as well as with Flemish De Lijn and Walloon TEC bus stops.
A comprehensive bus and tram network covers the region. , the Brussels tram system consists of 17 tram lines (three of which – lines T4, T7 and T10 – qualify as "premetro" lines that partly travel over underground sections that were intended to be eventually converted into metro lines). The total route length is , making it one of the largest tram networks in Europe. The Brussels bus network is complementary to the rail network. It consists of 50 bus routes and 11 night routes, spanning .
Since April 2007, STIB/MIVB has also been operating a night bus network called Noctis on Friday and Saturday nights from midnight until 3 a.m. The service consists of 11 routes (N04, N05, N06, N08, N09, N10, N11, N12, N13, N16 and N18). The fare on these night buses is the same as during the day. All the lines leave from the Place de la Bourse/Beursplein in the city centre at 30 minutes intervals and cover all the main streets in the capital, as they radiate outwards to the suburbs. Noctis services returned from 2 July 2021 after over a year of disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium.
Ticketing.
MoBIB is the STIB/MIVB electronic smart card, introduced in 2007, replacing the discontinued paper tickets. The hourly travel fare includes all means of transport (metro, tram and bus) operated by STIB/MIVB. Each trip has a different cost depending on the type of support purchased. Passengers can purchase monthly passes, yearly passes, 1 and 10-trip tickets and daily and 3-day passes. These can be bought over the Internet, but require customers to have a smart card reader. GO vending machines accept coins, local and international chip and PIN credit and debit cards.
Moreover, a complimentary interticketing system means that a combined STIB/MIVB ticket holder can, depending on the option, also use the train network operated by NMBS/SNCB and/or long-distance buses and commuter services operated by De Lijn or TEC. With this ticket, a single journey can include multiple stages across the different modes of transport and networks.
Other public transport.
Since 2003, Brussels has had a car-sharing service operated by the Bremen company Cambio, in partnership with STIB/MIVB and the local ridesharing company Taxi Stop. In 2006, a public bicycle-sharing programme was introduced. The scheme was subsequently taken over by Villo!. Since 2008, this night-time public transport service has been supplemented by Collecto, a shared taxi system, which operates on weekdays between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. In 2012, the Zen Car electric car-sharing scheme was launched in the university and European areas, though it ceased operating in the city in 2020.
Road network.
In medieval times, Brussels stood at the intersection of routes running north–south (the modern /) and east–west (/–/–/). The ancient pattern of streets, radiating from the Grand-Place, in large part remains, but has been overlaid by boulevards built over the river Senne, over the city walls and over the railway connection between the North and South Stations. In 2012, Brussels had the most congested traffic in Europe and North America, according to US traffic information platform INRIX.
Brussels is the hub of a range of national roads, the main ones being clockwise: the N1 (N to Breda), N2 (E to Maastricht), N3 (E to Aachen), N4 (SE to Luxembourg), N5 (S to Reims), N6 (S to Maubeuge), N7 (SW to Lille), N8 (W to Koksijde) and N9 (NW to Ostend). Usually named /, these highways normally run in a straight line, but sometimes lose themselves in a maze of narrow shopping streets. The region is skirted by the European route E19 (N-S) and the E40 (E-W), while the E411 leads away to the SE. Brussels has an orbital motorway, numbered R0 (R-zero) and commonly referred to as the Ring. It is pear-shaped, as the southern side was never built as originally conceived, owing to residents' objections.
The city centre, sometimes known as the Pentagon, is surrounded by an inner ring road, the Small Ring (, ), a sequence of boulevards formally numbered R20 or N0. These were built upon the site of the second set of city walls following their demolition. The Metro line 2 runs under much of these. Since June 2015, a number of central boulevards inside the Pentagon have become car-free, limiting transit traffic through the old city.
On the eastern side of the region, the R21 or Greater Ring (, ) is formed by a string of boulevards that curves round from Laeken to Uccle. Some "premetro" stations (see Brussels Metro) were built on that route. A little further out, a stretch numbered R22 leads from Zaventem to Saint-Job.
Security and emergency services.
Police.
The Brussels local police, supported by the federal police, is responsible for law enforcement in Brussels. The 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region are divided into six police zones, all bilingual (French and Dutch):
Fire department.
The Brussels Fire and Emergency Medical Care Service, commonly known by its acronym SIAMU (DBDMH), operates in the 19 municipalities of Brussels. It is a class X fire department and the largest fire service in Belgium in terms of annual operations, equipment, and personnel. It has 9 fire stations, spread over the entire Brussels-Capital Region, and employs about 1,000 professional firefighters. As well as preventing and fighting fires, SIAMU also provides emergency medical care services in Brussels via its centralised 100 number (and the single 112 emergency number for the 27 countries of the European Union). It is bilingual (French–Dutch).
Parks and green spaces.
Brussels is one of the greenest capitals in Europe, with over 8,000 hectares of green spaces. Vegetation cover and natural areas are higher in the outskirts, where they have limited the peri-urbanisation of the capital, but they decrease sharply towards the centre of Brussels; 10% in the central Pentagon, 30% of the municipalities in the first ring, and 71% of the municipalities in the second ring are occupied by green spaces.
Many parks and gardens, both public and privately owned, are scattered throughout the city. In addition to this, the Sonian Forest is located in its southern part and stretches out over the three Belgian regions. , it has been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the only Belgian component to the multinational inscription 'Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe'.
Twin towns – sister cities.
Brussels is twinned with the following cities:
|
3712
|
7903804
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3712
|
Bell Labs
|
Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as Bell Labs, is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several laboratories in the United States and around the world.
As a former subsidiary of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), Bell Labs and its researchers have been credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and others, throughout the 20th century. Eleven Nobel Prizes and five Turing Awards have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
Bell Labs had its origin in the complex corporate organization of the Bell System telephone conglomerate. The laboratory began operating in the late 19th century as the Western Electric Engineering Department, located at 463 West Street in New York City. After years of advancing telecommunication innovations, the department was reformed into Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1925 and placed under the shared ownership of Western Electric and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. In the 1960s, laboratory and company headquarters were moved to Murray Hill, New Jersey. Its alumni during this time include a plethora of world-renowned scientists and engineers.
With the breakup of the Bell System, Bell Labs became a subsidiary of AT&T Technologies in 1984, which resulted in a drastic decline in its funding. In 1996, AT&T spun off AT&T Technologies, which was renamed to Lucent Technologies, using the Murray Hill site for headquarters. Bell Laboratories was split with AT&T retaining parts as AT&T Laboratories. In 2006, Lucent merged with French telecommunication company Alcatel to form Alcatel-Lucent, which was acquired by Nokia in 2016.
Origin and historical locations.
Bell's personal research after the telephone.
In 1880, when the French government awarded Alexander Graham Bell the Volta Prize of 50,000francs for the invention of the telephone (equivalent to about US$10,000 at the time, or about $ now), he used the award to fund the Volta Laboratory (also known as the "Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory") in Washington, D.C. in collaboration with Sumner Tainter and Bell's cousin Chichester Bell. The laboratory was variously known as the "Volta Bureau", the "Bell Carriage House", the "Bell Laboratory" and the "Volta Laboratory".
It focused on the analysis, recording, and transmission of sound. Bell used his considerable profits from the laboratory for further research and education advancing the diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf. This resulted in the founding of the Volta Bureau () at the Washington, D.C. home of his father, linguist Alexander Melville Bell. The carriage house there, at 1527 35th Street N.W., became their headquarters in 1889.
In 1893, Bell constructed a new building close by at 1537 35th Street N.W., specifically to house the lab. This building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972.
After the invention of the telephone, Bell maintained a relatively distant role with the Bell System as a whole, but continued to pursue his own personal research interests.
Early antecedent.
The Bell Patent Association was formed by Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Sanders, and Gardiner Hubbard when filing the first patents for the telephone in 1876.
Bell Telephone Company, the first telephone company, was formed a year later. It later became a part of the American Bell Telephone Company.
In 1884, the American Bell Telephone Company created the Mechanical Department from the Electrical and Patent Department formed a year earlier.
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company and its own subsidiary company took control of American Bell and the Bell System by 1899.
American Bell held a controlling interest in Western Electric (which was the manufacturing arm of the business) whereas AT&T was doing research into the service providers.
Formal organization and location changes.
In 1896, Western Electric bought property at 463 West Street to centralize the manufacturers and engineers which had been supplying AT&T with such technology as telephones, telephone exchange switches and transmission equipment.
During the early 20th century, several historically significant laboratories were established. In 1915, the first radio transmissions were made from a shack in Montauk, Long Island. That same year, tests were performed on the first transoceanic radio telephone at a house in Arlington County, Virginia. A radio reception laboratory was established in 1919 in the Cliffwood section of Aberdeen Township, New Jersey. Additionally for 1919, a transmission studies site was established in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania that built, in 1929, the coaxial conductor line for first tests of long-distance transmission in various frequencies.
On January 1, 1925, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. was organized to consolidate the development and research activities in the communication field and allied sciences for the Bell System. Ownership was evenly shared between Western Electric and AT&T. The new company had 3600 engineers, scientists, and support staff. Its space was expanded with a new building occupying about one quarter of a city block.
The first chairman of the board of directors was John J. Carty, AT&T's vice president, and the first president was Frank B. Jewett, also a board member, who stayed there until 1940. The operations were directed by E. B. Craft, executive vice-president, and formerly chief engineer at Western Electric.
In the early 1920s, a few outdoor facilities and radio communications development facilities were developed. In 1925, the test plot studies were established at Gulfport, Mississippi, where there were numerous telephone pole samples established for wood preservation. At the Deal, New Jersey location, work was done on ship-to-shore radio telephony. In 1926, in the Whippany section of Hanover Township, New Jersey, land was acquired and established for the development of a 50-kilowatt broadcast transmitter. In 1931, Whippany increased with added from a nearby property. In 1928, a site in Chester Township, New Jersey, was leased for outdoor tests, though the facility became inadequate for such purposes. In 1930, the Chester location required the purchase of an additional of land to be used for a new outdoor plant development laboratory. Prior to Chester being established, a test plot was installed in Limon, Colorado in 1929, similar to the one in Gulfport. The three test plots at Gulfport, Limon, and Chester were outdoor facilities for preservatives and prolonging the use of telephone poles. Additionally, in 1929, a land expansion was done at the Deal Labs to . This added land increased the facility for radio transmission studies.
The beginning of 1930s, established three facilities with radio communications experiments and chemical aspects testing. By 1939, the Summit, New Jersey, chemical laboratory was nearly 10 years established in a three-story building conducted experiments in corrosion, using various fungicides tests on cables, metallic components, or wood. For 1929, land was purchased in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, for a radio reception laboratory to replace the Cliffwood location that had been in operation since 1919. In 1930, the Cliffwood location was ending its operations as Holmdel was established. Whereas, in 1930, a location in Mendham Township, New Jersey, was established to continue radio receiver developments farther from the Whippany location and eliminate transmitter interference at that facility with developments. The Mendham location worked on communication equipment and broadcast receivers. These devices were used for marine, aircraft, and police services as well as the location performed precision frequency-measuring apparatus, field strength measurements, and conducted radio interference.
By the early 1940s, Bell Labs engineers and scientists had begun to move to other locations away from the congestion and environmental distractions of New York City, and in 1967 Bell Laboratories headquarters was officially relocated to Murray Hill, New Jersey.
Among the later Bell Laboratories locations in New Jersey were Holmdel Township, Crawford Hill, the Deal Test Site, Freehold, Lincroft, Long Branch, Middletown, Neptune Township, Princeton, Piscataway, Red Bank, Chester Township, and Whippany. Of these, Murray Hill and Crawford Hill remain in existence (the Piscataway and Red Bank locations were transferred to and are now operated by Telcordia Technologies and the Whippany site was purchased by Bayer).
The largest grouping of people in the company was in Illinois, at Naperville-Lisle, in the Chicago area, which had the largest concentration of employees (about 11,000) prior to 2001. There also were groups of employees in Indianapolis, Indiana; Columbus, Ohio; North Andover, Massachusetts; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Reading, Pennsylvania; and Breinigsville, Pennsylvania; Burlington, North Carolina (1950s–1970s, moved to Greensboro 1980s) and Westminster, Colorado. Since 2001, many of the former locations have been scaled down or closed.
Bell's Holmdel research and development lab, a structure set on , was closed in 2007. The mirrored-glass building was designed by Eero Saarinen. In August 2013, Somerset Development bought the building, intending to redevelop it into a mixed commercial and residential project. A 2012 article expressed doubt on the success of the newly named Bell Works site, but several large tenants had announced plans to move in through 2016 and 2017.
List of Bell Labs (1974).
Bell Lab's 1974 corporate directory listed 22 labs in the United States, located in:
List of Bell Labs (2024).
Nokia Bell Lab's 2024 website pictured 10 labs, located in:
Also listed as research locations without additional information was Sunnyvale, California, US and Tampere, Finland.
The Naperville, Illinois Bell Labs location near Chicago was considered the Chicago Innovation Center and hosted Nokia's second annual Algorithm World event in 2022.
Discoveries and developments.
Bell Laboratories was, and is, regarded by many as the premier research facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the operating system Unix, the programming languages C and C++, solar cells, the charge-coupled device (CCD), and many other optical, wireless, and wired communications technologies and systems.
1920s.
In 1924, Bell Labs physicist Walter A. Shewhart proposed the control chart as a method to determine when a process was in a state of statistical control. Shewhart's methods were the basis for statistical process control (SPC): the use of statistically based tools and techniques to manage and improve processes. This was the origin of the modern quality control movement, including Six Sigma.
In 1926, the laboratories invented an early synchronous-sound motion picture system, in competition with Fox Movietone and DeForest Phonofilm.
In 1927, a Bell team headed by Herbert E. Ives successfully transmitted long-distance 128-line television images of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover from Washington to New York. In 1928 the thermal noise in a resistor was first measured by John B. Johnson, for which Harry Nyquist provided the theoretical analysis; this is now termed "Johnson-Nyquist noise". During the 1920s, the one-time pad cipher was invented by Gilbert Vernam and Joseph Mauborgne at the laboratories. Bell Labs' Claude Shannon later proved that it is unbreakable.
In 1928, Harold Black invented the negative feedback system commonly used in amplifiers. Later, Harry Nyquist analyzed Black's design rule for negative feedback. This work was published in 1932 and became known as the Nyquist criterion.
1930s.
In 1931, a foundation for radio astronomy was laid by Karl Jansky during his work investigating the origins of static on long-distance shortwave communications. He discovered that radio waves were being emitted from the center of the galaxy.
In 1931 and 1932, the labs made experimental high fidelity, long playing, and even stereophonic recordings of the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
In 1933, stereo signals were transmitted live from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
In 1937, the vocoder, an electronic speech compression device, or codec, and the Voder, the first electronic speech synthesizer, were developed and demonstrated by Homer Dudley, the Voder being demonstrated at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Bell researcher Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with George Paget Thomson for the discovery of electron diffraction, which helped lay the foundation for solid-state electronics.
1940s.
In the early 1940s, the photovoltaic cell was developed by Russell Ohl. In 1943, Bell developed SIGSALY, the first digital scrambled speech transmission system, used by the Allies in World War II. The British wartime codebreaker Alan Turing visited the labs at this time, working on speech encryption and meeting Claude Shannon.
Bell Labs Quality Assurance Department gave the world and the United States such statisticians as Walter A. Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming, Harold F. Dodge, George D. Edwards, Harry Romig, R. L. Jones, Paul Olmstead, E.G.D. Paterson, and Mary N. Torrey. During World War II, Emergency Technical Committee – Quality Control, drawn mainly from Bell Labs' statisticians, was instrumental in advancing Army and Navy ammunition acceptance and material sampling procedures.
In 1947, the transistor, arguably the most important invention developed by Bell Laboratories, was invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Bradford Shockley (who subsequently shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956). In 1947, Richard Hamming invented Hamming codes for error detection and correction. For patent reasons, the result was not published until 1950.
In 1948, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", one of the founding works in information theory, was published by Claude Shannon in the "Bell System Technical Journal". It built in part on earlier work in the field by Bell researchers Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, but went much further. Bell Labs also introduced a series of increasingly complex calculators through the decade. Shannon was also the founder of modern cryptography with his 1949 paper "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems".
1950s.
The 1950s also saw developments based upon information theory. The central development was binary code systems. Efforts concentrated on the prime mission of supporting the Bell System with engineering advances, including the N-carrier system, TD microwave radio relay, direct distance dialing, E-repeater, wire spring relay, and the Number Five Crossbar Switching System.
In 1952, William Gardner Pfann revealed the method of zone melting, which enabled semiconductor purification and level doping.
In 1953, Maurice Karnaugh developed the Karnaugh map, used for managing of Boolean algebraic expressions.
In January 1954, Bell Labs built one of the first completely transistorized computer machines, TRADIC or Flyable TRADIC, for the United States Air Force with 10,358 germanium point-contact diodes and 684 Bell Labs Type 1734 Type A cartridge transistors. The design team was led by electrical engineer Jean Howard Felker with James R. Harris and Louis C. Brown ("Charlie Brown") as the lead engineers on the project, which started in 1951. The device took only 3 cubic-feet and consumed 100 watt power for its small and low powered design in comparison to the vacuum tube designs of the times. The device could be installed in a B-52 Stratofortress Bomber and had a performance up to one million logical operations a second. The flyable program used a Mylar sheet with punched holes, instead of the removable plugboard.
In 1954, the first modern solar cell was invented at Bell Laboratories.
In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick discovered semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide.
In 1956 TAT-1, the first transatlantic communications cable to carry telephone conversations, was laid between Scotland and Newfoundland in a joint effort by AT&T, Bell Laboratories, and British and Canadian telephone companies.
In 1957, Max Mathews created MUSIC, one of the first computer programs to play electronic music. Robert C. Prim and Joseph Kruskal developed new greedy algorithms that revolutionized computer network design.
In 1957 Frosch and Derick, using masking and predeposition, were able to manufacture silicon dioxide field effect transistors; the first planar transistors, in which drain and source were adjacent at the same surface. They showed that silicon dioxide insulated, protected silicon wafers and prevented dopants from diffusing into the wafer.
In 1958, a technical paper by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes first described the laser.
Following Frosch and Derick research, Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng proposed a silicon MOS transistor in 1959 and successfully demonstrated a working MOS device with their Bell Labs team in 1960. Their team included E. E. LaBate and E. I. Povilonis who fabricated the device; M. O. Thurston, L. A. D’Asaro, and J. R. Ligenza who developed the diffusion processes, and H. K. Gummel and R. Lindner who characterized the device.
K. E. Daburlos and H. J. Patterson of Bell Laboratories continued on the work of C. Frosch and L. Derick, and developed a process similar to Hoerni's planar process about the same time.
J.R. Ligenza and W.G. Spitzer studied the mechanism of thermally grown oxides, fabricated a high quality Si/SiO2 stack and published their results in 1960.
1960s.
On October 1, 1960, the Kwajalein Field Station was announced as a location for the Nike Zeus test program. Mr. R. W. Benfer was the first director to arrive shortly on October 5 for the program. Bell Labs designed many of the major system elements and conducted fundamental investigations of phase-controlled scanning antenna arrays.
In December 1960, Ali Javan, PhD physicist from the University of Tehran, Iran with help by Rolf Seebach and his associates William Bennett and Donald Heriot, successfully operated the first gas laser, the first continuous-light laser, operating at an unprecedented accuracy and color purity.
In 1962, the electret microphone was invented by Gerhard M. Sessler and James E. West. Also in 1962, John R. Pierce's vision of communications satellites was realized by the launch of Telstar.
On July 10, 1962, the Telstar spacecraft was launched into orbit by NASA and it was designed and built by Bell Laboratories. The first worldwide television broadcast was July 23, 1962 with a press conference by President Kennedy.
In Spring 1964, the building of an electronic switching systems center was planned at Bell Laboratories near Naperville, Illinois. The building in 1966 would be called Indian Hill, and development work from former electronic switching organization at Holmdel and Systems Equipment Engineering organization would occupy the laboratory with engineers from Western Electric Hawthorne Works. Scheduled for work were about 1,200 people when completed in 1966, and peaked at 11,000 before October 2001 Lucent Technologies downsizing occurred.
In 1964, the carbon dioxide laser was invented by Kumar Patel and the discovery/operation of the was demonstrated by Joseph E. Geusic "et al." Experiments by Myriam Sarachik provided the first data that confirmed the Kondo effect. The research of Philip W. Anderson into electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems led to improved understanding of metals and insulators for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1977.
In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.
Frank W. Sinden, Edward E. Zajac, Ken Knowlton, and A. Michael Noll made computer-animated movies during the early to mid-1960s. Ken Knowlton invented the computer animation language BEFLIX. The first digital computer art was created in 1962 by Noll.
In 1966, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a key technology in wireless services, was developed and patented by R. W. Chang.
In December 1966, the New York City site was sold and became the Westbeth Artists Community complex.
In 1968, molecular beam epitaxy was developed by J.R. Arthur and A.Y. Cho; molecular beam epitaxy allows semiconductor chips and laser matrices to be manufactured one atomic layer at a time.
In 1969, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson created the computer operating system UNIX for the support of telecommunication switching systems as well as general-purpose computing. Also, in 1969, the charge-coupled device (CCD) was invented by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009.
From 1969 to 1971, Aaron Marcus, the first graphic designer involved with computer graphics, researched, designed, and programmed a prototype interactive page-layout system for the Picturephone.
1970s.
The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer-related inventions at the Bell Laboratories as part of the personal computing revolution.
In the 1970s, major central office technology evolved from crossbar electromechanical relay-based technology and discrete transistor logic to Bell Labs-developed thick film hybrid and transistor–transistor logic (TTL), stored program-controlled switching systems; 1A/#4 TOLL Electronic Switching Systems (ESS) and 2A Local Central Offices produced at the Bell Labs Naperville and Western Electric Lisle, Illinois facilities. This technology evolution dramatically reduced floor space needs. The new ESS also came with its own diagnostic software that needed only a switchman and several frame technicians to maintain.
About 1970, the coax-22 cable was developed by Bell Labs. This coax cable with 22 strands had a total capacity of 132,000 telephone calls. Previously, a 12-strand coax cable was used for L-carrier systems. Both of these types of cables were manufactured at Western Electrics' Baltimore Works facility on machines designed by a Western Electric Senior development engineer.
In 1970, A. Michael Noll invented a tactile, force-feedback system, coupled with interactive stereoscopic computer display.
In 1971, an improved task priority system for computerized telephone exchange switching systems for telephone traffic was invented by Erna Schneider Hoover, who received one of the first software patents for it.
In 1972, Dennis Ritchie developed the compiled programming language C as a replacement for the interpreted language B, which was then used in a worse is better rewrite of UNIX. Also, the language AWK was designed and implemented by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan of Bell Laboratories. Also in 1972, Marc Rochkind invented the Source Code Control System.
In 1976, optical fiber systems were first tested in Georgia.
Production of their first internally designed microprocessor, the BELLMAC-8, began in 1977. In 1980 they demonstrated the first single-chip 32-bit microprocessor, the Bellmac 32A, which went into production in 1982.
In 1978, the proprietary operating system Oryx/Pecos was developed from scratch by Bell Labs in order to run AT&T's large-scale PBX switching equipment. It was first used with AT&T's flagship System 75, and until very recently was used in all variations up through and including Definity G3 (Generic 3) switches, now manufactured by Avaya.
1980s.
During the 1980s, the operating system Plan 9 from Bell Labs was developed extending the UNIX model. Also, the Radiodrum, an electronic music instrument played in three space dimensions, was invented.
In 1980, the TDMA digital cellular telephone technology was patented.
In late 1981, the Bell Labs Research organization internal use of a terminal called Jerq led to the Blit terminal being renamed by designers Rob Pike and Bart Locanthi, Jr for the UNIX operating system. It was a programmable bitmap graphics terminal using multi-layers of opened windows operated by a keyboard and a distinguished red-colored three-button digitized mouse. It was later known as the AT&T 5620 DMD terminal for commercial sales. The Blit used the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, whereas the Teletype/AT&T 5620 Dot Mapped Display terminal used the Western Electric WE32000 microprocessor.
The launching of the Bell Labs Fellows Award started in 1982 to recognize and honor scientists and engineers who have made outstanding and sustained R&D contributions at AT&T with a level of distinction. As of the 2021 inductees, 336 people have received the honor.
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were also Bell Labs Fellows for 1982. Ritchie started in 1967 at Bell Labs in the Bell Labs Computer Systems Research department. Thompson started in 1966. Both co-inventors of the UNIX operating system and C language were also awarded decades later the 2011 Japan Prize for Information and Communications.
In 1982, fractional quantum Hall effect was discovered by Horst Störmer and former Bell Laboratories researchers Robert B. Laughlin and Daniel C. Tsui; they consequently won a Nobel Prize in 1998 for the discovery.
In 1984, the first photoconductive antennas for picosecond electromagnetic radiation were demonstrated by Auston and others. This type of antenna became an important component in terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. In 1984, Karmarkar's algorithm for linear programming was developed by mathematician Narendra Karmarkar. Also in 1984, a divestiture agreement signed in 1982 with the American Federal government forced the breakup of AT&T, and Bellcore (now iconectiv) was split off from Bell Laboratories to provide the same R&D functions for the newly created local exchange carriers. AT&T also was limited to using the Bell trademark only in association with Bell Laboratories. "Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc." became a wholly owned company of the new AT&T Technologies unit, the former Western Electric. The 5ESS Switch was developed during this transition.
The National Medal of Technology was awarded to Bell Labs, the first corporation to achieve this honor in February 1985.
In 1985, laser cooling was used to slow and manipulate atoms by Steven Chu and team. In 1985, the modeling language "A Mathematical Programming Language", AMPL, was developed by Robert Fourer, David M. Gay and Brian Kernighan at Bell Laboratories. Also in 1985, Bell Laboratories was awarded the National Medal of Technology "For contribution over decades to modern communication systems".
In 1985, the programming language C++ had its first commercial release. Bjarne Stroustrup started developing C++ at Bell Laboratories in 1979 as an extension to the original C language.
Arthur Ashkin invented optical tweezers that grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers. A major breakthrough came in 1987, when Ashkin used the tweezers to capture living bacteria without harming them. He immediately began studying biological systems using the optical tweezers, which are now widely used to investigate the machinery of life. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2018) for his work involving optical tweezers and their application to biological systems.
In the mid-1980s, the Transmission System departments of Bell Labs developed highly reliable long-haul fiber-optic communications systems based on SONET, and network operations techniques that made very high-volume, near-instantaneous communications across the North American continent possible. Fail-safe and disaster-related traffic management operations systems enhanced the usefulness of the fiber optics. There was a synergy in the land-based and sea-based fiber optic systems even though they were developed by different divisions within the company. These systems are still in use throughout the U.S. today.
Charles A. Burrus became a Bell Labs Fellow in 1988 for his work done as a Technical Staff member. Prior to this accomplishment, was awarded in 1982 the AT&T Bell Laboratories Distinguished Technical Staff Award. Charles started in 1955 at the Holmdel Bell Labs location and retired in 1996 with consultations to Lucent Technologies up to 2002.
In 1988, TAT-8 became the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable. Bell Labs in Freehold, NJ developed the 1.3-micron fiber, cable, splicing, laser detector, and 280 Mbit/s repeater for 40,000 telephone-call capacity.
In the late 1980s, realizing that voiceband modems were approaching the Shannon limit on bit rate, Richard D. Gitlin, Jean-Jacques Werner and their colleagues pioneered a major breakthrough. They invented DSL (digital subscriber line), the technology that achieved megabit transmission on installed copper telephone lines, and this facilitated the broadband era.
1990s.
Bell Labs' John Mayo received the National Medal of Technology in 1990.
In May 1990, Ronald Snare was named AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow, for "Singular contributions to the development of the common-channel signaling network and the signal transfer points globally." This system began service in the United States in 1978.
In the early 1990s, approaches to increase modem speeds to 56K were explored at Bell Labs, and early patents were filed in 1992 by Ender Ayanoglu, Nuri R. Dagdeviren and their colleagues.
The scientist, W. Lincoln Hawkins in 1992 received the National Medal of Technology for work done at Bell Labs.
In 1992, Jack Salz, Jack Winters and Richard D. Gitlin provided the foundational technology to demonstrate that adaptive antenna arrays at the transmitter and receiver can substantially increase both the reliability (via diversity) and capacity (via spatial multiplexing) of wireless systems without expanding the bandwidth. Subsequently, the BLAST system proposed by Gerard Foschini and colleagues dramatically expanded the capacity of wireless systems. This technology, known today as MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), was a significant factor in the standardization, commercialization, performance improvement, and growth of cellular and wireless LAN systems.
Amos Joel in 1993 received the National Medal of Technology.
Two AT&T Bell Labs scientists, Joel Engel and Richard Frenkiel, were honored with the National Medal of Technology, in 1994.
In 1994, the quantum cascade laser was invented by Federico Capasso, Alfred Cho, Jerome Faist and their collaborators. Also in 1994, Peter Shor devised his quantum factorization algorithm.
In 1996, SCALPEL electron lithography, which prints features atoms wide on microchips, was invented by Lloyd Harriott and his team. The operating system Inferno, an update of Plan 9, was created by Dennis Ritchie with others, using the then-new concurrent programming language Limbo. A high performance database engine (Dali) was developed which became DataBlitz in its product form.
In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment manufacturing business, into a new company named Lucent Technologies. AT&T retained a small number of researchers who made up the staff of the newly created AT&T Labs.
Lucy Sanders was the third woman to receive the Bell Labs Fellow award in 1996, for her work in creating a RISC chip that made more phone calls possible using software and hardware on a single server. She started in 1977 and was one of the few woman engineers at Bell Labs.
In November 1997, Lucent planned a Bell Laboratories location at Yokosuka Research Park in Yokosuka, Japan for developing a third generation Wideband Code Division Multiple Access cellular system (W-CDMA.)
In 1997, the smallest then-practical transistor (60 nanometers, 182 atoms wide) was built. In 1998, the first optical router was invented.
Rudolph Kazarinov and Federico Capasso received the optoelectronics Rank Prize on December 8, 1998.
In December 1998, Ritchie and Thompson also were honorees of the National Medal of Technology for their work done for pre-Lucent Technologies Bell Labs. The award was presented by U.S. President William Clinton in 1999 in a White House ceremony.
21st century.
2000 was an active year for the Laboratories, in which DNA machine prototypes were developed; progressive geometry compression algorithm made widespread 3-D communication practical; the first electrically powered organic laser was invented; a large-scale map of cosmic dark matter was compiled; and the F-15 (material), an organic material that makes plastic transistors possible, was invented.
In 2002, physicist Jan Hendrik Schön was fired after his work was found to contain fraudulent data. It was the first known case of fraud at Bell Labs.
In 2003, the New Jersey Institute of Technology Biomedical Engineering Laboratory was created at Murray Hill, New Jersey.
In 2004, Lucent Technologies awarded two women the prestigious Bell Labs Fellow Award. Magaly Spector, a director in INS/Network Systems Group, was awarded for "sustained and exceptional scientific and technological contributions in solid-state physics, III-V material for semiconductor lasers, Gallium Arsenide integrated circuits, and the quality and reliability of products used in high speed optical transport systems for next generation high bandwidth communication." Eve Varma, a technical manager in MNS/Network Systems Group, was awarded for her citation in "sustained contributions to digital and optical networking, including architecture, synchronization, restoration, standards, operations and control."
In 2005, Jeong H. Kim, former President of Lucent's Optical Network Group, returned from academia to become the President of Bell Laboratories.
In April 2006, Bell Laboratories' parent company, Lucent Technologies, signed a merger agreement with Alcatel. On December 1, 2006, the merged company, Alcatel-Lucent, began operations. This deal raised concerns in the United States, where Bell Laboratories works on defense contracts. A separate company, LGS Innovations, with an American board was set up to manage Bell Laboratories' and Lucent's sensitive U.S. government contracts. In March 2019, LGS Innovations was purchased by CACI.
In December 2007, it was announced that the former Lucent Bell Laboratories and the former Alcatel Research and Innovation would be merged into one organization under the name of Bell Laboratories. This is the first period of growth following many years during which Bell Laboratories progressively lost manpower due to layoffs and spin-offs making the company shut down briefly.
In February 2008, Alcatel-Lucent continued the Bell Laboratories tradition of awarding the prestigious award for outstanding technical contributors. Martin J. Glapa, a former chief Technical Officer of Lucent's Cable Communications Business Unit and Director of Advanced Technologies, was presented by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs President Jeong H. Kim with the 2006 Bell Labs Fellow Award in Network Architecture, Network Planning, and Professional Services with particular focus in Cable TV Systems and Broadband Services having "significant resulting Alcatel-Lucent commercial successes." Glapa is a patent holder and has co-written the 2004 technical paper called "Optimal Availability & Security For Voice Over Cable Networks" and co-authored the 2008 "Impact of bandwidth demand growth on HFC networks" published by IEEE.
As of July 2008, however, only four scientists remained in physics research, according to a report by the scientific journal "Nature".
On August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas, including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software.
In 2009, Willard Boyle and George Smith were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention and development of the charge-coupled device (CCD).
Rob Soni was an Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Fellow in 2009 as cited for work in winning North American customers wireless business and for helping to define 4G wireless networks with transformative system architectures.
2010s.
Gee Rittenhouse, former Head of Research, returned from his position as chief operating officer of Alcatel-Lucent's Software, Services, and Solutions business in February 2013, to become the 12th President of Bell Labs.
On November 4, 2013, Alcatel-Lucent announced the appointment of Marcus Weldon as President of Bell Labs. His stated charter was to return Bell Labs to the forefront of innovation in Information and communications technology by focusing on solving the key industry challenges, as was the case in the great Bell Labs innovation eras in the past.
On May 20, 2014, Michel Combes, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, announced the opening of a Bell Labs location in Tel Aviv, Israel by summer time. The Bell Labs research team would be directed by an Israeli computer scientist and alum of Bell Labs, Danny Raz. The Bell Labs research would be in 'cloud networking' technologies for communications. The location would have approximately twenty academic scientific background employees.
In July 2014, Bell Labs announced it had broken "the broadband Internet speed record" with a new technology dubbed XG-FAST that promises 10 gigabits per second transmission speeds.
In 2014, Eric Betzig shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in super-resolved fluorescence microscopy which he began pursuing while at Bell Labs in the Semiconductor Physics Research Department.
On April 15, 2015, Nokia agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs' parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion. Their first day of combined operations was January 14, 2016.
In September 2016, Nokia Bell Labs, along with Technische Universität Berlin, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and the Technical University of Munich achieved a data rate of one terabit per second by improving transmission capacity and spectral efficiency in an optical communications field trial with a new modulation technique.
Antero Taivalsaari became a Bell Labs Fellow in 2016 for his specific work.
In 2017, Dragan Samardzija was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow.
In 2018, Arthur Ashkin shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on "the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" which was developed at Bell Labs in the 1980s.
2020s.
In 2020, Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman shared the Turing Award for their work on compilers, starting with their tenure at Bell Labs during 1967–69.
On, November 16, 2021, Nokia presented the 2021 Bell Labs Fellows Award Ceremony, six new members (Igor Curcio, Matthew Andrews, Bjorn Jelonnek, Ed Harstead, Gino Dion, Esa Tiirola) held at Nokia Batvik Mansion, Finland.
In December 2021, Nokia's Chief Strategy and Technology Officer decided to reorganize Bell Labs in two separate functional organizations: Bell Labs Core Research and Bell Labs Solutions research. Bell Labs Core Research is in charge of creating disruptive technologies with 10-year horizon. Bell Labs Solutions Research, looks for shorter term solutions that can provide growth opportunities for Nokia.
The Nokia 2022 Bell Labs Fellows were recognized on November 29, 2022, in a New Jersey ceremony. Five researchers were inducted to the total of 341 recipients since its inception by AT&T Bell Labs in 1982. One member was from New Jersey, two were from Cambridge, UK, and two were from Finland representing Espoo and Tampere locations.
On December 11, 2023, Nokia announced a state of the art research facility in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The planned relocation of the 80 year old, Murray Hill New Jersey Bell Labs facility would take place before 2028. The new building would be LEED Gold certified. The Murray Hill location has had iconic research of various historical innovations for AT&T Corp., Lucent Technologies, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia.
Accolades.
Nobel Prize.
Eleven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
Turing Award.
The Turing Award has been won five times by Bell Labs researchers.
IEEE Medal of Honor.
First awarded in 1917, the IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest form of recognition by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE Medal of Honor has been won 22 times by Bell Labs researchers.
Emmy Awards, Grammy Award, and Academy Award.
The Emmy Award has been won five times by Bell Labs: one under Lucent Technologies, one under Alcatel-Lucent, and three under Nokia.
The inventions of fiber-optics and research done in digital television and media File Format were under former AT&T Bell Labs ownership.
The Grammy Award has been won once by Bell Labs under Alcatel-Lucent.
The Academy Award has been won once by E. C. Wente and Bell Labs.
Publications.
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Western Electric, and other Bell System companies issued numerous publications, such as local house organs, for corporate distribution, for the scientific and industry communities, and for the general public, including telephone subscribers.
The Bell Laboratories Record was a principal house organ, featuring general interest content such as corporate news, support staff profiles and events, reports of facilities upgrades, but also articles of research and development results written for technical or non-technical audiences. The publication commenced in 1925 with the founding of the laboratories.
A prominent journal for the focussed dissemination of original or reprinted scientific research by Bell Labs engineers and scientists was the "Bell System Technical Journal", started in 1922 by the AT&T Information Department. Bell researchers also published widely in industry journals.
Some of these articles were reprinted by the Bell System as Monographs, consecutively issued starting in 1920. These reprints, numbering over 5000, comprise a catalog of Bell research over the decades. Research in the Monographs is aided by access to associated indexes, for monographs 1–1199, 1200–2850 (1958), 2851–4050 (1962), and 4051–4650 (1964).
Essentially all of the landmark work done by Bell Labs is memorialized in one or more corresponding monographs. Examples include:
|
3713
|
49547028
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3713
|
Bjarne Stroustrup
|
Bjarne Stroustrup (; ; born 30 December 1950) is a Danish computer scientist, known for the development of the C++ programming language. He led the Large-scale Programming Research department at Bell Labs, served as a professor of computer science at Texas A&M University, and spent over a decade at Morgan Stanley while also being a visiting professor at Columbia University. Since 2022 he has been a full professor at Columbia.
Early life and education.
Stroustrup was born in Aarhus, Denmark. His family was working class, and he attended local schools.
He attended Aarhus University from 1969 to 1975 and graduated with a Candidatus Scientiarum in mathematics with computer science. His interests focused on microprogramming and machine architecture. He learned the fundamentals of object-oriented programming from its inventor, Kristen Nygaard, who frequently visited Aarhus.
In 1979, he received his PhD in computer science from the University of Cambridge, where his research on distributed computing was supervised by David Wheeler.
Career and research.
In 1979, Stroustrup began his career as a member of technical staff in the Computer Science Research Center of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. There, he began his work on C++ and programming techniques. Stroustrup was the head of AT&T Bell Labs' Large-scale Programming Research department, from its creation until late 2002. In 1993, he was made a Bell Labs fellow and in 1996, an AT&T Fellow.
From 2002 to 2014, Stroustrup was the College of Engineering Chair Professor in Computer Science at Texas A&M University. From 2011, he was made a University Distinguished Professor.
From January 2014 to April 2022, Stroustrup was a technical fellow and managing director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City and a visiting professor in computer science at Columbia University.
As of July 2022, Stroustrup is a full professor of computer science at Columbia University.
C++.
Stroustrup is best known for his work on C++. In 1979, he began developing C++ (initially called "C with Classes"). In his own words, he "invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation [...] chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee." C++ was made generally available in 1985. For non-commercial use, the source code of the compiler and the foundation libraries was the cost of shipping (US$75); this was before Internet access was common. Stroustrup also published a textbook for the language in 1985, "The C++ Programming Language".
The key language-technical areas of contribution of C++ are:
Stroustrup documented his principles guiding the design of C++ and the evolution of the language in his 1994 book, "The Design and Evolution of C++", and three papers for ACM's History of Programming Languages conferences.
Stroustrup was a founding member of the C++ standards committee (from 1989, it was an ANSI committee and from 1991 an ISO committee) and has remained an active member ever since. For 24 years he chaired the subgroup chartered to handle proposals for language extensions (Evolution Working Group).
Awards and honors.
Selected honors
Fellowships
Honorary doctorates and professorships
Publications.
Stroustrup has written or co-written a number of publications, including the books:
In all, these books have been translated into 21 languages.
More than 100 academic articles, including:
More than a hundred technical reports for the C++ standards committee (WG21)
|
3717
|
7903804
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3717
|
Brain
|
The brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for special senses such as vision, hearing, and olfaction. Being the most specialized organ, it is responsible for receiving information from the sensory nervous system, processing that information (thought, cognition, and intelligence) and the coordination of motor control (muscle activity and endocrine system).
While invertebrate brains arise from paired segmental ganglia (each of which is only responsible for the respective body segment) of the ventral nerve cord, vertebrate brains develop axially from the midline dorsal nerve cord as a vesicular enlargement at the rostral end of the neural tube, with centralized control over all body segments. All vertebrate brains can be embryonically divided into three parts: the forebrain (prosencephalon, subdivided into telencephalon and diencephalon), midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain (rhombencephalon, subdivided into metencephalon and myelencephalon). The spinal cord, which directly interacts with somatic functions below the head, can be considered a caudal extension of the myelencephalon enclosed inside the vertebral column. Together, the brain and spinal cord constitute the central nervous system in all vertebrates.
In humans, 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, typically communicating with one another via cytoplasmic processes known as dendrites and axons. Axons are usually myelinated and carry trains of rapid micro-electric signal pulses called action potentials to target specific recipient cells in other areas of the brain or distant parts of the body. The prefrontal cortex, which controls executive functions, is particularly well developed in humans.
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 a digital 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 that are covered in the human brain article are brain disease and the effects of brain damage.
Structure.
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 brain 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. In humans, 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. The property that makes neurons unique is their ability to send signals to specific target cells, sometimes 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 diffuse nervous system consisting of a nerve net), all living multicellular animals are bilaterians, meaning animals with a bilaterally symmetric body plan (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, such as vertebrates, it is a large and very complex organ. 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:
Vertebrates.
The first vertebrates appeared over 500 million years ago (Mya) during the Cambrian period, and may have resembled the modern jawless fish (hagfish and lamprey) in form. Jawed vertebrates appeared by 445 Mya, tetrapods by 350 Mya, amniotes by 310 Mya and mammaliaforms by 200 Mya (approximately). Each vertebrate clade has an equally long evolutionary history, but the brains of modern fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds 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 structures, but many are rudimentary in the hagfish, whereas in mammals the foremost part (forebrain, especially the telencephalon) is greatly developed and expanded.
Brains are most commonly compared in terms of their mass. The relationship between brain size, body size and other variables has been studied across a wide range of vertebrate species. As a rule of thumb, brain size increases with body size, but not in a simple linear proportion. In general, smaller animals tend to have proportionally 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, who have to implement various hunting strategies against the ever changing anti-predator adaptations, tend to have larger brains relative to body size than their prey.
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 vesicular swellings at the front end of the neural tube; these swellings eventually become the forebrain (prosencephalon), midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain (rhombencephalon), respectively. At the earliest stages of brain development, the three areas are roughly equal in size. In many aquatic/semiaquatic vertebrates such as fish and amphibians, the three parts remain similar in size in adults, but in terrestrial tetrapods such as mammals, the forebrain becomes much larger than the other parts, the hindbrain develops a bulky dorsal extension known as the cerebellum, and the midbrain becomes very small as a result.
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, which separate the skull from the brain. Cerebral arteries pierce the outer two layers of the meninges, the dura and arachnoid mater, into the subarachnoid space and perfuse the brain parenchyma via arterioles perforating into the innermost layer of the meninges, the pia mater. The endothelial cells in the cerebral 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). As a result of the osmotic restriction by the blood-brain barrier, the metabolites within the brain are cleared mostly by bulk flow of the cerebrospinal fluid within the glymphatic system instead of via venules like other parts of the body.
Neuroanatomists usually divide the vertebrate brain into six main subregions: the telencephalon (the cerebral hemispheres), diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), mesencephalon (midbrain), cerebellum, pons and medulla oblongata, with the midbrain, pons and medulla often collectively called the brainstem. Each of these areas has a complex internal structure. Some parts, such as the cerebral cortex and the cerebellar cortex, are folded into convoluted gyri and sulci in order to maximize surface area within the available intracranial space. Other parts, such as the thalamus and hypothalamus, consist of many small clusters of nuclei known as "ganglia". 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:
Reptiles.
Modern reptiles and mammals diverged from a common ancestor around 320 million years ago. The number of extant reptiles far exceeds the number of mammalian species, with 11,733 recognized species of reptiles compared to 5,884 extant mammals. Along with the species diversity, reptiles have diverged in terms of external morphology, from limbless to tetrapod gliders to armored chelonians, reflecting adaptive radiation to a diverse array of environments.
Morphological differences are reflected in the nervous system phenotype, such as: absence of lateral motor column neurons in snakes, which innervate limb muscles controlling limb movements; absence of motor neurons that innervate trunk muscles in tortoises; presence of innervation from the trigeminal nerve to pit organs responsible to infrared detection in snakes. Variation in size, weight, and shape of the brain can be found within reptiles. For instance, crocodilians have the largest brain volume to body weight proportion, followed by turtles, lizards, and snakes. Reptiles vary in the investment in different brain sections. Crocodilians have the largest telencephalon, while snakes have the smallest. Turtles have the largest diencephalon per body weight whereas crocodilians have the smallest. On the other hand, lizards have the largest mesencephalon.
Yet their brains share several characteristics revealed by recent anatomical, molecular, and ontogenetic studies. Vertebrates share the highest levels of similarities during embryological development, controlled by conserved transcription factors and signaling centers, including gene expression, morphological and cell type differentiation. In fact, high levels of transcriptional factors can be found in all areas of the brain in reptiles and mammals, with shared neuronal clusters enlightening brain evolution. Conserved transcription factors elucidate that evolution acted in different areas of the brain by either retaining similar morphology and function, or diversifying it.
Anatomically, the reptilian brain has less subdivisions than the mammalian brain, however it has numerous conserved aspects including the organization of the spinal cord and cranial nerve, as well as elaborated brain pattern of organization. Elaborated brains are characterized by migrated neuronal cell bodies away from the periventricular matrix, region of neuronal development, forming organized nuclear groups. Aside from reptiles and mammals, other vertebrates with elaborated brains include hagfish, galeomorph sharks, skates, rays, teleosts, and birds. Overall elaborated brains are subdivided in forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain.
The hindbrain coordinates and integrates sensory and motor inputs and outputs responsible for, but not limited to, walking, swimming, or flying. It contains input and output axons interconnecting the spinal cord, midbrain and forebrain transmitting information from the external and internal environments. The midbrain links sensory, motor, and integrative components received from the hindbrain, connecting it to the forebrain. The tectum, which includes the optic tectum and torus semicircularis, receives auditory, visual, and somatosensory inputs, forming integrated maps of the sensory and visual space around the animal. The tegmentum receives incoming sensory information and forwards motor responses to and from the forebrain. The isthmus connects the hindbrain with midbrain. The forebrain region is particularly well developed, is further divided into diencephalon and telencephalon. Diencephalon is related to regulation of eye and body movement in response to visual stimuli, sensory information, circadian rhythms, olfactory input, and autonomic nervous system.Telencephalon is related to control of movements, neurotransmitters and neuromodulators responsible for integrating inputs and transmitting outputs are present, sensory systems, and cognitive functions.
Mammals.
The most obvious difference between the brains of mammals and other vertebrates is their 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.
In placentals, there is a wide nerve tract connecting the cerebral hemispheres called the corpus callosum.
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. Although many details remain to be settled, neuroscience shows that both factors are important. Genes determine both the general form of the brain and how it reacts to experience, but experience is required to refine the matrix of synaptic connections, resulting in greatly increased complexity. The presence or absence of experience is critical at key periods of development. Additionally, the quantity and quality of experience are important. For example, animals raised in enriched environments demonstrate thick cerebral cortices, indicating a high density of synaptic connections, compared to animals with restricted levels of stimulation.
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. The neurovascular unit regulates cerebral blood flow so that activated neurons can be supplied with energy. 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, hence 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 use 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:
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 with 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.
Recent years have also seen rapid advances in single-cell sequencing technologies, and these have been used to leverage the cellular heterogeneity of the brain as a means of better understanding the roles of distinct cell types in disease and biology (as well as how genomic variants influence individual cell types). In 2024, investigators studied a large integrated dataset of almost 3 million nuclei from the human prefrontal cortext from 388 individuals. In doing so, they annotated 28 cell types to evaluate expression and chromatin variation across gene families and drug targets. They identified about half a million cell type–specific regulatory elements and about 1.5 million single-cell expression quantitative trait loci (i.e., genomic variants with strong statistical associations with changes in gene expression within specific cell types), which were then used to build cell-type regulatory networks (the study also describes cell-to-cell communication networks). These networks were found to manifest cellular changes in aging and neuropsychiatric disorders. As part of the same investigation, a machine learning model was designed to accurately impute single-cell expression (this model prioritized ~250 disease-risk genes and drug targets with associated cell types).
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 do not 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.
|
3719
|
40998819
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3719
|
Byzantium
|
Byzantium () or Byzantion () was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name "Byzantion" and its Latinization "Byzantium" continued to be used as a name of Constantinople sporadically and to varying degrees during the thousand-year existence of the Eastern Roman Empire, which also became known by the former name of the city as the Byzantine Empire. Byzantium was colonized by Greeks from Megara in the 7th century BCE and remained primarily Greek-speaking until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 CE.
Etymology.
The etymology of "Byzantium" is unknown. It has been suggested that the name is of Thracian origin. It may be derived from the Thracian personal name Byzas which means "he-goat". Ancient Greek legend refers to the Greek king Byzas, the leader of the Megarian colonists and founder (Oikistes) of the city. The name "Lygos" for the city, which likely corresponds to an earlier Thracian settlement, is mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his "Natural History".
"Byzántios," plural "Byzántioi" (, ; adjective the same) referred to Byzantion's inhabitants, also used as an ethnonym for the people of the city and as a family name. In the Middle Ages, "Byzántion" was also a synecdoche for the eastern Roman Empire. (An ellipsis of ). "Byzantinós" (, ) denoted an inhabitant of the empire. The Anglicization of Latin "Byzantinus" yielded "Byzantine", with 15th and 16th century forms including "Byzantin", "Bizantin(e)", "Bezantin(e)", and "Bysantin" as well as "Byzantian" and "Bizantian".
The name "Byzantius" and "Byzantinus" were applied from the 9th century to gold Byzantine coinage, reflected in the French "besant" ("d'or"), Italian "bisante", and English "besant", "byzant", or "bezant". The English usage, derived from Old French "besan" (pl. "besanz"), and relating to the coin, dates from the 12th century.
Later, the name "Byzantium" became common in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital was Constantinople. As a term for the east Roman state as a whole, "Byzantium" was introduced by the historian Hieronymus Wolf only in 1555, a century after the last remnants of the empire, whose inhabitants continued to refer to their polity as the Roman Empire (), had ceased to exist.
Other places were historically known as "Byzántion" (Βυζάντιον) – a city in Libya mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium and another on the western coast of India referred to by the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea; in both cases the names were probably adaptations of names in local languages. Faustus of Byzantium was from a city of that name in Cilicia.
History.
The origins of Byzantium are shrouded in legend. Tradition says that Byzas of Megara (a city-state near Athens) founded the city when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea. The date is usually given as 667 BCE on the authority of Herodotus, who states the city was founded 17 years after Chalcedon. Eusebius, who wrote almost 800 years later, dates the founding of Chalcedon to 685/4 BCE, but he also dates the founding of Byzantium to 656 BCE (or a few years earlier depending on the edition). Herodotus' dating was later favored by Constantine the Great, who celebrated Byzantium's 1,000th anniversary between the years 333 and 334.
Byzantium was mainly a trading city due to its location at the Black Sea's only entrance. Byzantium later conquered Chalcedon, across the Bosphorus on the Asiatic side.
The city was taken by the Persian Empire at the time of the Scythian campaign (513 BCE) of Emperor Darius I (r. 522–486 BCE), and was added to the administrative province of Skudra. Though Achaemenid control of the city was never as stable as compared to other cities in Thrace, it was considered, alongside Sestos, to be one of the foremost Achaemenid ports on the European coast of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont.
Byzantium was besieged by Greek forces during the Peloponnesian War. As part of Sparta's strategy for cutting off grain supplies to Athens during their siege of Athens, Sparta took control of the city in 411 BCE, to bring the Athenians into submission. The Athenian military later retook the city in 408 BCE, when the Spartans had withdrawn following their settlement.
After siding with Pescennius Niger against the victorious Septimius Severus, the city was besieged by Roman forces and suffered extensive damage in AD 196. Byzantium was rebuilt by Septimius Severus, now emperor, and quickly regained its previous prosperity. It was bound to Perinthus during the period of Septimius Severus. After the war, Byzantium lost its city status and free city privileges, but Caracalla persuaded Severus to restore these rights. In appreciation, the Byzantines named Caracalla an archon of their city. The strategic and highly defensible (due to being surrounded by water on almost all sides) location of Byzantium attracted Roman Emperor Constantine I who, in AD 330, refounded it as an imperial residence inspired by Rome itself, known as Nova Roma. Later the city was called Constantinople (Greek Κωνσταντινούπολις, "Konstantinoupolis", "city of Constantine").
This combination of imperialism and location would affect Constantinople's role as the nexus between the continents of Europe and Asia. It was a commercial, cultural, and diplomatic centre and for centuries formed the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which decorated the city with numerous monuments, some still standing today. With its strategic position, Constantinople controlled the major trade routes between Asia and Europe, as well as the passage from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea. On May 29, 1453, the city was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, and again became the capital of a powerful state, the Ottoman Empire. The Turks called the city "Istanbul" (although it was not officially renamed until 1930); the name derives from the Greek phrase "στην πόλη", which means "to the city". To this day it remains the largest and most populous city in Turkey, although Ankara is now the national capital.
Emblem.
By the late Hellenistic or early Roman period (1st century BCE), the star and crescent motif was associated to some degree with Byzantium; even though it became more widely used as the royal emblem of Mithradates VI Eupator (who for a time incorporated the city into his empire).
Some Byzantine coins of the 1st century BCE and later show the head of Artemis with bow and quiver, and feature a crescent with what appears to be an eight-rayed star on the reverse.
According to accounts which vary in some of the details, in 340 BCE the Byzantines and their allies the Athenians were under siege by the troops of Philip of Macedon. On a particularly dark and wet night Philip attempted a surprise attack but was thwarted by the appearance of a bright light in the sky. This light is occasionally described by subsequent interpreters as a meteor, sometimes as the moon, and some accounts also mention the barking of dogs. However, the original accounts mention only a bright light in the sky, without specifying the moon. To commemorate the event the Byzantines erected a statue of Hecate "lampadephoros" (light-bearer or bringer). This story survived in the works of Hesychius of Miletus, who in all probability lived in the time of Justinian I. His works survive only in fragments preserved in Photius and the tenth century lexicographer Suidas. The tale is also related by Stephanus of Byzantium, and Eustathius.
Devotion to Hecate was especially favored by the Byzantines for her aid in having protected them from the incursions of Philip of Macedon. Her symbols were the crescent and star, and the walls of her city were her provenance. This contradicts claims that only the symbol of the crescent was meant to symbolize Hecate, whereas the star was only added later in order to symbolize the Virgin Mary, as Constantine I is said to have rededicated the city to her in the year 330.
It is unclear precisely how the symbol Hecate/Artemis, one of many goddesses would have been transferred to the city itself, but it seems likely to have been an effect of being credited with the intervention against Philip and the subsequent honors. This was a common process in ancient Greece, as in "Athens" where the city was named after "Athena" in honor of such an intervention in time of war.
Cities in the Roman Empire often continued to issue their own coinage. "Of the many themes that were used on local coinage, celestial and astral symbols often appeared, mostly stars or crescent moons." The wide variety of these issues, and the varying explanations for the significance of the star and crescent on Roman coinage precludes their discussion here. It is, however, apparent that by the time of the Romans, coins featuring a star or crescent in some combination were not at all rare.
|
3721
|
44062
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3721
|
Biotic
|
Biotics describe living or once living components of a community; for example organisms, such as animals and plants.
Biotic may refer to:
|
3722
|
7903804
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3722
|
Berlin Wall
|
The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government of the GDR on 13 August 1961. It included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses. The primary intention for the Wall's construction was to prevent East German citizens from fleeing to the West.
The Soviet Bloc propaganda portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from "fascist elements conspiring to prevent the will of the people" from building a communist state in the GDR. The authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart" (, ). Conversely, West Berlin's city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame", a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt in reference to the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer inner German border, which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to symbolize physically the Iron Curtain that separated the Western Bloc and Soviet satellite states of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.
Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans (20% of the population) circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin; from there they could then travel to West Germany and to other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the deadly force associated with the Wall prevented almost all such emigration. During this period, over 100,000 people attempted to escape, and over 5,000 people succeeded in escaping over the Wall, with an estimated death toll of those killed by East German authorities ranging from 136 to more than 200 in and around Berlin.
In 1989, a series of revolutions in nearby Eastern Bloc countries (Poland and Hungary in particular) and the events of the "Pan-European Picnic" set in motion a peaceful development during which the Iron Curtain largely broke, rulers in the East came under public pressure to cease their repressive policies. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit the FRG and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side, and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall over the next few weeks. The Brandenburg Gate, a few meters from the Berlin Wall, reopened on 22 December 1989, with demolition of the Wall beginning on 13 June 1990 and concluding in 1994. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990.
Background.
Post-war Germany.
After the end of World War II in Europe, what remained of pre-war Germany west of the Oder-Neisse line was divided into four occupation zones (as per the Potsdam Agreement), each one controlled by one of the four occupying Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. The capital, Berlin, as the seat of the Allied Control Council, was similarly subdivided into four sectors despite the city's location, which was fully within the Soviet zone.
Within two years, political divisions increased between the Soviets and the other occupying powers. These included the Soviets' refusal to agree to reconstruction plans making post-war Germany self-sufficient, and to a detailed accounting of industrial plants, goods and infrastructure—some of which had already been removed by the Soviets. France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Benelux countries later met to combine the non-Soviet zones of Germany into one zone for reconstruction, and to approve the extension of the Marshall Plan.
Eastern Bloc and the Berlin airlift.
Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the Soviet Union engineered the installation of communist regimes in most of the countries occupied by Soviet military forces at the end of the war, including Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the GDR, which together with Albania formed the Comecon in 1949 and later a military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. The beginning of the Cold War saw the Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union confront the Western Bloc of the United States, with the latter grouping becoming largely united in 1949 under NATO and the former grouping becoming largely united in 1955 under the Warsaw Pact. As the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states by 1955, the pact has been long considered "superfluous", and because of the rushed way in which it was conceived, NATO officials labeled it a "cardboard castle". There was no direct military confrontation between the two organizations; instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs. The Warsaw Pact's largest military engagement was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, its own member state, in August 1968.
Since the end of the war, the USSR installed a Soviet-style regime in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany and later founded the GDR, with the country's political system based on a centrally planned socialist economic model with nationalized means of production, and with repressive secret police institutions, under party dictatorship of the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; Socialist Unity Party of Germany) similar to the party dictatorship of the Soviet Communist Party in the USSR.
At the same time, a parallel country was established under the control of the Western powers in the zones of post-war Germany occupied by them, culminating in the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, which initially claimed to be the sole legitimate power in all of Germany, East and West. The material standard of living in the Western zones of Berlin began to improve quickly, and residents of the Soviet zone soon began leaving for the West, fleeing hunger, poverty and repression in the Soviet Zone for a better life in the West. Soon residents of other parts of the Soviet zone began to escape to the West through Berlin, and this migration, called in Germany "Republikflucht", deprived the Soviet zone not only of workers needed for post-war reconstruction, but disproportionately of highly educated people, which came to be known as the "Brain Drain".
In 1948, in response to moves by the Western powers to establish a separate, federal system of government in the Western zones, and to extend the US Marshall Plan of economic assistance to Germany, the Soviets instituted the Berlin Blockade, preventing people, food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin by land routes through the Soviet zone. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began a massive "airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the Western policy change. Communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948, preceding large losses therein, while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated for the international airlift to continue. In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin.
The German Democratic Republic (the "GDR"; East Germany) was declared on 7 October 1949. On that day, the USSR ended the Soviet military government which had governed the Soviet Occupation Zone (Sowetische Besatzungszone) since the end of the war and handed over legal power to the Provisorische Volkskammer under the new Constitution of the GDR which came into force that day. However, until 1955, the Soviets maintained considerable legal control over the GDR state, including the regional governments, through the Sowetische Kontrollkommission and maintained a presence in various East German administrative, military, and secret police structures. Even after legal sovereignty of the GDR was restored in 1955, the Soviet Union continued to maintain considerable influence over administration and lawmaking in the GDR through the Soviet embassy and through the implicit threat of force which could be exercised through the continuing large Soviet military presence in the GDR, which was used to repress protests in East Germany bloodily in June 1953.
East Germany differed from West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany), which developed into a Western capitalist country with a social market economy and a democratic parliamentary government. Continual economic growth starting in the 1950s fueled a 20-year "economic miracle" (). As West Germany's economy grew, and its standard of living steadily improved, many East Germans wanted to move to West Germany.
Emigration westward in the early 1950s.
After the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, the majority of those living in the newly acquired areas of the Eastern Bloc aspired to independence and wanted the Soviets to leave. Taking advantage of the zonal border between occupied zones in Germany, the number of GDR citizens moving to West Germany totaled 187,000 in 1950; 165,000 in 1951; 182,000 in 1952; and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization, given the increasingly paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. In the first six months of 1953, 226,000 had fled.
Erection of the inner German border.
By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling national movement, restricting emigration, was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc, including East Germany. The restrictions presented a quandary for some Eastern Bloc states, which had been more economically advanced and open than the Soviet Union, such that crossing borders seemed more natural—especially where no prior border existed between East and West Germany.
Up until 1952, the demarcation lines between East Germany and the western occupied zones could be easily crossed in most places. On 1 April 1952, East German leaders met the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Moscow; during the discussions, Stalin's foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov proposed that the East Germans should "introduce a system of passes for visits of West Berlin residents to the territory of East Berlin [so as to stop] free movement of Western agents" in the GDR. Stalin agreed, calling the situation "intolerable". He advised the East Germans to build up their border defenses, telling them that "The demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border—and not just any border, but a dangerous one ... The Germans will guard the line of defence with their lives."
Consequently, the inner German border between the two German states was closed, and a barbed-wire fence erected. The border between the Western and Eastern sectors of Berlin, however, remained open, although traffic between the Soviet and the Western sectors was somewhat restricted. This resulted in Berlin becoming a magnet for East Germans desperate to escape life in the GDR, and also a flashpoint for tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.
In 1955, the Soviets gave East Germany authority over civilian movement in Berlin, passing control to a regime not recognized in the West. Initially, East Germany granted "visits" to allow its residents access to West Germany. However, following the defection of large numbers of East Germans (known as "Republikflucht") under this regime, the new East German state legally restricted virtually all travel to the West in 1956. Soviet East German ambassador Mikhail Pervukhin observed that "the presence in Berlin of an open and essentially uncontrolled border between the socialist and capitalist worlds unwittingly prompts the population to make a comparison between both parts of the city, which unfortunately does not always turn out in favour of Democratic [East] Berlin."
Berlin emigration loophole.
With the closing of the inner German border officially in 1952, the border in Berlin remained considerably more accessible because it was administered by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West. On 11 December 1957, East Germany introduced a new passport law that reduced the overall number of refugees leaving Eastern Germany.
It had the unintended result of drastically increasing the percentage of those leaving through West Berlin from 60% to well over 90% by the end of 1958. Those caught trying to leave East Berlin were subjected to heavy penalties, but with no physical barrier and subway train access still available to West Berlin, such measures were ineffective. The Berlin sector border was essentially a "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still escape. The 3.5 million East Germans who had left by 1961 totalled approximately 20% of the entire East German population.
An important reason that passage between East Germany and West Berlin was not stopped earlier was that doing so would cut off much of the railway traffic in East Germany. Construction of a new railway bypassing West Berlin, the Berlin outer ring, commenced in 1951. Following the completion of the railway in 1961, closing the border became a more practical proposition.
Brain drain.
The emigrants tended to be young and well-educated, leading to the "brain drain" feared by officials in East Germany. Yuri Andropov, then the CPSU Director on Relations with Communist and Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries, wrote an urgent letter on 28 August 1958 to the Central Committee about the significant 50% increase in the number of East German intelligentsia among the refugees. Andropov reported that, while the East German leadership stated that they were leaving for economic reasons, testimony from refugees indicated that the reasons were more political than material. He stated "the flight of the intelligentsia has reached a particularly critical phase."
By 1960, the combination of World War II and the massive emigration westward left East Germany with only 61% of its population of working age, compared to 70.5% before the war. The loss was disproportionately heavy among professionals: engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers, and skilled workers. The direct cost of manpower losses to East Germany (and corresponding gain to the West) has been estimated at $7 billion to $9 billion, with East German party leader Walter Ulbricht later claiming that West Germany owed him $17 billion in compensation, including reparations as well as manpower losses. In addition, the drain of East Germany's young population potentially cost it over 22.5 billion marks in lost educational investment. The brain drain of professionals had become so damaging to the political credibility and economic viability of East Germany that the re-securing of the German communist frontier was imperative.
The exodus of emigrants from East Germany presented two minor potential benefits: an easy way to smuggle East German secret agents to West Germany, and a reduction in the number of citizens hostile to the communist regime. Neither of these advantages, however, proved particularly useful.
Start of the construction (1961).
On 15 June 1961, First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party and GDR State Council chairman Walter Ulbricht stated in an international press conference, (No one has the intention of erecting a wall!). It was the first time the colloquial term (wall) had been used in this context.
The transcript of a telephone call between Nikita Khrushchev and Ulbricht, on 1 August in the same year, suggests that the initiative for the construction of the Wall came from Khrushchev. However, other sources suggest that Khrushchev had initially been wary about building a wall, fearing negative Western reaction. Nevertheless, Ulbricht had pushed for a border closure for some time, arguing that East Germany's existence was at stake.
Khrushchev had become emboldened upon seeing US president John F. Kennedy's youth and inexperience, which he considered a weakness. In the 1961 Vienna summit, Kennedy made the error of admitting that the US would not actively oppose the building of a barrier. A feeling of miscalculation and failure immediately afterwards was admitted by Kennedy in a candid interview with "New York Times" columnist James "Scotty" Reston. On Saturday, 12 August 1961, the leaders of the GDR attended a garden party at a government guesthouse in , in a wooded area to the north of East Berlin. There, Ulbricht signed the order to close the border and erect a wall.
At midnight, the police and units of the East German army began to close the border and, by Sunday morning, 13 August, the border with West Berlin was closed. East German troops and workers had begun to tear up streets running alongside the border to make them impassable to most vehicles and to install barbed wire entanglements and fences along the around the three western sectors, and the that divided West and East Berlin. The date of 13 August became commonly referred to as Barbed Wire Sunday in Germany.
The barrier was built inside East Berlin on East German territory to ensure that it did not encroach on West Berlin at any point. Generally, the Wall was only slightly inside East Berlin, but in a few places it was some distance from the legal border, most notably at Potsdamer Bahnhof and the Lenné Triangle that is now much of the Potsdamer Platz development.
Later, the initial barrier was built up into the Wall proper, the first concrete elements and large blocks being put in place on 17 August. During the construction of the Wall, National People's Army (NVA) and Combat Groups of the Working Class (KdA) soldiers stood in front of it with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to defect. Additionally, chain fences, walls, minefields and other obstacles were installed along the length of East Germany's western border with West Germany proper. A wide no man's land was cleared as well to provide a better overview and a clear line of fire at fleeing refugees.
Immediate effects.
With the closing of the east–west sector boundary in Berlin, the vast majority of East Germans could no longer travel or emigrate to West Germany. Berlin soon went from being the easiest place to make an unauthorized crossing between East and West Germany to being the most difficult. Many families were split, while East Berliners employed in the West were cut off from their jobs. West Berlin became an isolated exclave in a hostile land. West Berliners demonstrated against the Wall, led by their Mayor () Willy Brandt, who criticized the United States for failing to respond and went so far as to suggest to Washington what to do next. Kennedy was furious. Allied intelligence agencies had hypothesized about a wall to stop the flood of refugees, but the main candidate for its location was around the perimeter of the city. In 1961, Secretary of State Dean Rusk proclaimed, "The Wall certainly ought not to be a permanent feature of the European landscape. I see no reason why the Soviet Union should think it is to their advantage in any way to leave there that monument to communist failure."
United States and UK sources had expected the Soviet sector to be sealed off from West Berlin but were surprised by how long the East Germans took for such a move. They considered the Wall as an end to concerns about a GDR/Soviet retaking or capture of the whole of Berlin; the Wall would presumably have been an unnecessary project if such plans were afloat. Thus, they concluded that the possibility of a Soviet military conflict over Berlin had decreased.
The East German government claimed that the Wall was an "anti-fascist protective rampart" () intended to dissuade aggression from the West. Another official justification was the activities of Western agents in Eastern Europe. The Eastern German government also claimed that West Berliners were buying out state-subsidized goods in East Berlin. East Germans and others greeted such statements with skepticism, as most of the time, the border was only closed for citizens of East Germany traveling to the West, but not for residents of West Berlin travelling to the East. The construction of the Wall had caused considerable hardship to families divided by it. Most people believed that the Wall was mainly a means of preventing the citizens of East Germany from entering or fleeing to West Berlin.
Secondary response.
The National Security Agency was the only American intelligence agency that was aware that East Germany was to take action to deal with the brain drain problem. On 9 August 1961, the NSA intercepted an advance warning information of the Socialist Unity Party's plan to close the intra-Berlin border between East and West Berlin completely for foot traffic. The interagency intelligence Berlin Watch Committee assessed that this intercept "might be the first step in a plan to close the border." This warning did not reach John F. Kennedy until noon on 13 August 1961, while he was vacationing in his yacht off the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. While Kennedy was angry that he had no advance warning, he was relieved that the East Germans and the Soviets had only divided Berlin without taking any action against West Berlin's access to the West. However, he denounced the Berlin Wall, whose erection worsened the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
In response to the erection of the Berlin Wall, a retired general, Lucius D. Clay, was appointed by Kennedy as his special advisor with ambassadorial rank. Clay had been the Military Governor of the US Zone of Occupation in Germany during the period of the Berlin Blockade and had ordered the first measures in what became the Berlin Airlift. He was immensely popular with the residents of West Berlin, and his appointment was an unambiguous sign that Kennedy would not compromise on the status of West Berlin. As a symbolic gesture, Kennedy sent Clay and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to West Berlin. They landed at Tempelhof Airport on the afternoon of Saturday, 19 August 1961 and were greeted enthusiastically by the local population.
They arrived in a city defended by three Allied brigades—one each from the UK (Berlin Infantry Brigade), the US (Berlin Brigade), and France (Forces Françaises à Berlin). On 16 August, Kennedy had given the order for them to be reinforced. Early on 19 August, the 1st Battle Group, 18th Infantry Regiment (commanded by Colonel Glover S. Johns Jr.) was alerted.
On Sunday morning, U.S. troops marched from West Germany through East Germany, bound for West Berlin. Lead elements—arranged in a column of 491 vehicles and trailers carrying 1,500 men, divided into five march units—left the Helmstedt-Marienborn checkpoint at 06:34. At Marienborn, the Soviet checkpoint next to Helmstedt on the West German-East German border, US personnel were counted by guards. The column was long, and covered from Marienborn to Berlin in full battle gear. East German police watched from beside trees next to the autobahn all the way along.
The front of the convoy arrived at the outskirts of Berlin just before noon, to be met by Clay and Johnson, before parading through the streets of Berlin in front of a large crowd. At 04:00 on 21 August, Lyndon Johnson left West Berlin in the hands of General Frederick O. Hartel and his brigade of 4,224 officers and men. "For the next three and a half years, American battalions would rotate into West Berlin, by autobahn, at three-month intervals to demonstrate Allied rights to the city".
The creation of the Wall had important implications for both German states. By stemming the exodus of people from East Germany, the East German government was able to reassert its control over the country: despite discontent with the Wall, economic problems caused by dual currency and the black market were largely eliminated. The economy in the GDR began to grow. However, the Wall proved a public relations disaster for the communist bloc as a whole. Western powers portrayed it as a symbol of communist tyranny, particularly after East German border guards shot and killed would-be defectors. Such fatalities were later treated as acts of murder by the reunified Germany.
Structure and adjacent areas.
Layout and modifications.
The Berlin Wall was more than long. In June 1962, a second, parallel fence, also known as a "hinterland" wall (inner wall), was built some farther into East German territory. The houses contained between the wall and fences were razed and the inhabitants relocated, thus establishing what later became known as the "death strip". The death strip was covered with raked sand or gravel, rendering footprints easy to notice, easing the detection of trespassers and also enabling officers to see which guards had neglected their task; it offered no cover; and, most importantly, it offered clear fields of fire for the Wall guards.
Through the years, the Berlin Wall evolved through four versions:
The "fourth-generation Wall", known officially as "" (retaining wall element UL 12.11), was the final and most sophisticated version of the Wall. Begun in 1975 and completed about 1980, it was constructed from 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete, each high and wide, and cost DDM16,155,000 or about US$3,638,000. The concrete provisions added to this version of the Wall were done to prevent escapees from driving their cars through the barricades. At strategic points, the Wall was constructed to a somewhat weaker standard, so that East German and Soviet armored vehicles could easily break through in the event of war.
The top of the wall was lined with a smooth pipe, intended to make it more difficult to scale. The Wall was reinforced by mesh fencing, signal fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, barbed wire, dogs on long lines, "beds of nails" (also known as "Stalin's Carpet") under balconies hanging over the "death strip", over 116 watchtowers, and 20 bunkers with hundreds of guards. This version of the Wall is the one most commonly seen in photographs, and surviving fragments of the Wall in Berlin and elsewhere around the world are generally pieces of the fourth-generation Wall. The layout came to resemble the inner German border in most technical aspects, except that the Berlin Wall had no landmines nor spring-guns. Maintenance was performed on the outside of the wall by personnel who accessed the area outside it either via ladders or via hidden doors within the wall. These doors could not be opened by a single person, needing two separate keys in two separate keyholes to unlock.
As was the case with the inner German border, an unfortified strip of Eastern territory was left outside the wall. This outer strip was used by workers to paint over graffiti and perform other maintenance on the outside of the wall Unlike the inner German border, however, the outer strip was usually no more than four meters wide, and, in photos from the era, the exact location of the actual border in many places appears not even to have been marked. Also in contrast with the inner German border, little interest was shown by East German law enforcement in keeping outsiders off the outer strip; sidewalks of West Berlin streets even ran inside it.
Despite the East German government's general policy of benign neglect, vandals were known to have been pursued in the outer strip, and even arrested. In 1986, defector and political activist Wolfram Hasch and four other defectors were standing inside the outer strip defacing the wall when East German personnel emerged from one of the hidden doors to apprehend them. All but Hasch escaped back into the western sector. Hasch himself was arrested, dragged through the door into the death strip, and later convicted of illegally crossing the "de jure" border outside the wall. Graffiti artist Thierry Noir has reported having often been pursued there by East German soldiers. While some graffiti artists were chased off the outer strip, others, such as Keith Haring, were seemingly tolerated.
Surrounding municipalities.
Besides the sector-sector boundary within Berlin itself, the Wall also separated West Berlin from the present-day state of Brandenburg. The following present-day municipalities, listed in counter-clockwise direction, share a border with the former West Berlin:
Official crossings and usage.
There were nine border crossings between East and West Berlin. These allowed visits by West Berliners, other West Germans, Western foreigners and Allied personnel into East Berlin, as well as visits by GDR citizens and citizens of other socialist countries into West Berlin, provided that they held the necessary permits. These crossings were restricted according to which nationality was allowed to use it (East Germans, West Germans, West Berliners, other countries). The best known was the vehicle and pedestrian checkpoint at the corner of Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße (Checkpoint Charlie), which was restricted to Allied personnel and foreigners.
Several other border crossings existed between West Berlin and surrounding East Germany. These could be used for transit between West Germany and West Berlin, for visits by West Berliners into East Germany, for transit into countries neighbouring East Germany (Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Denmark), and for visits by East Germans into West Berlin carrying a permit. After the 1972 agreements, new crossings were opened to allow West Berlin waste to be transported into East German dumps, as well as some crossings for access to West Berlin's exclaves (see "Steinstücken").
Four autobahns connected West Berlin to West Germany, including Berlin-Helmstedt autobahn, which entered East German territory between the towns of Helmstedt and Marienborn (Checkpoint Alpha), and which entered West Berlin at Dreilinden (Checkpoint Bravo for the Allied forces) in southwestern Berlin. Access to West Berlin was also possible by railway (four routes) and by boat for commercial shipping via canals and rivers.
Non-German Westerners could cross the border at Friedrichstraße station in East Berlin and at Checkpoint Charlie. When the Wall was erected, Berlin's complex public transit networks, the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, were divided with it. Some lines were cut in half; many stations were shut down. Three western lines traveled through brief sections of East Berlin territory, passing through eastern stations (called "", or ghost stations) without stopping. Both the eastern and western networks converged at , which became a major crossing point for those (mostly Westerners) with permission to cross.
Crossing.
West Germans and citizens of other Western countries could generally visit East Germany, often after applying for a visa at an East German embassy several weeks in advance. Visas for day trips restricted to East Berlin were issued without previous application in a simplified procedure at the border crossing. However, East German authorities could refuse entry permits without stating a reason. In the 1980s, visitors from the western part of the city who wanted to visit the eastern part had to exchange at least DM 25 into East German currency at the poor exchange rate of 1:1. It was forbidden to export East German currency from the East, but money not spent could be left at the border for possible future visits. Tourists crossing from the west had to also pay for a visa, which cost DM 5; West Berliners did not have to pay this fee.
West Berliners initially could not visit East Berlin or East Germany at all—all crossing points were closed to them between 26 August 1961 and 17 December 1963. In 1963, negotiations between East and West resulted in a limited possibility for visits during the Christmas season that year (). Similar, very limited arrangements were made in 1964, 1965 and 1966.
In 1971, with the Four Power Agreement on Berlin, agreements were reached that allowed West Berliners to apply for visas to enter East Berlin and East Germany regularly, comparable to the regulations already in force for West Germans. However, East German authorities could still refuse entry permits.
East Berliners and East Germans could not, at first, travel to West Berlin or West Germany at all. This regulation remained in force essentially until the fall of the Wall, but over the years several exceptions to these rules were introduced, the most significant being:
For each of these exceptions, GDR citizens had to apply for individual approval, which was never guaranteed. In addition, even if travel was approved, GDR travellers could exchange only a very small number of East German Marks into Deutsche Marks (DM), thus limiting the financial resources available for them to travel to the West. This led to the West German practice of granting a small amount of DM annually ("Begrüßungsgeld", or welcome money) to GDR citizens visiting West Germany and West Berlin to help alleviate this situation.
Citizens of other East European countries were in general subject to the same prohibition of visiting Western countries as East Germans, though the applicable exception (if any) varied from country to country.
Allied Military Personal Crossing.
Allied military personnel and civilian officials of the Allied forces could enter and exit East Berlin without submitting to East German passport controls, purchasing a visa or being required to exchange money. Likewise, Soviet military patrols could enter and exit West Berlin. This was a requirement of the post-war Four Powers Agreements. A particular area of concern for the Western Allies involved official dealings with East German authorities when crossing the border, since Allied policy did not recognize the authority of the GDR to regulate Allied military traffic to and from West Berlin, as well as the Allied presence within Greater Berlin, including entry into, exit from, and presence within East Berlin.
The Allies held that only the Soviet Union, and not the GDR, had the authority to regulate Allied personnel in such cases. For this reason, elaborate procedures were established to prevent inadvertent recognition of East German authority when engaged in travel through the GDR and when in East Berlin. Special rules applied to travel by Western Allied military personnel assigned to the military liaison missions accredited to the commander of Soviet forces in East Germany, located in Potsdam.
Allied personnel were restricted by policy when travelling by land to the following routes:
As with military personnel, special procedures applied to travel by diplomatic personnel of the Western Allies accredited to their respective embassies in the GDR. This was intended to prevent inadvertent recognition of East German authority when crossing between East and West Berlin, which could jeopardize the overall Allied position governing the freedom of movement by Allied forces personnel within all Berlin.
Ordinary citizens of the Western Allied powers, not formally affiliated with the Allied forces, were authorized to use all designated transit routes through East Germany to and from West Berlin. Regarding travel to East Berlin, such persons could also use the Friedrichstraße train station to enter and exit the city, in addition to Checkpoint Charlie. In these instances, such travelers, unlike Allied personnel, had to submit to East German border controls.
Defection attempts.
During the years of the Wall, around 5,000 people successfully defected to West Berlin. The number of people who died trying to cross the Wall, or as a result of the Wall's existence, has been disputed. The most vocal claims by Alexandra Hildebrandt, director of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and widow of the museum's founder, estimated the death toll to be well above 200. A historic research group at the Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam has confirmed at least 140 deaths. Prior official figures listed 98 as being killed.
The East German government issued shooting orders ("Schießbefehl") to border guards dealing with defectors, though such orders are not the same as "shoot to kill" orders. GDR officials denied issuing the latter. In an October 1973 order later discovered by researchers, guards were instructed that people attempting to cross the Wall were criminals and needed to be shot:
Early successful escapes involved people jumping the initial barbed wire or leaping out of apartment windows along the line, but these ended as the Wall was fortified. East German authorities no longer permitted apartments near the Wall to be occupied, and any building near the Wall had its windows boarded and later bricked up. On 15 August 1961, Conrad Schumann was the first East German border guard to escape by jumping the barbed wire to West Berlin.
On 22 August 1961, Ida Siekmann was the first casualty at the Berlin Wall: she died after she jumped out of her third floor apartment at 48 Bernauer Strasse. The first person to be shot and killed while trying to cross to West Berlin was Günter Litfin, a twenty-four-year-old tailor. He attempted to swim across the Spree to West Berlin on 24 August 1961, the same day that East German police had received shoot-to-kill orders to prevent anyone from escaping.
Another dramatic escape was carried out in April 1963 by Wolfgang Engels, a 19-year-old civilian employee of the "Nationale Volksarmee" (NVA). Engels stole a Soviet armored personnel carrier from a base where he was deployed and drove it right into the Wall. He was fired at and seriously wounded by border guards. But a West German policeman intervened, firing his weapon at the East German border guards. The policeman removed Engels from the vehicle, which had become entangled in the barbed wire.
East Germans successfully defected by a variety of methods: digging long tunnels under the Wall, waiting for favorable winds and taking a hot air balloon, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultralights and, in one instance, simply driving a sports car at full speed through the basic, initial fortifications. When a metal beam was placed at checkpoints to prevent this kind of defection, up to four people (two in the front seats and possibly two in the boot) drove under the bar in a sports car that had been modified to allow the roof and windscreen to come away when it made contact with the beam. They lay flat and kept driving forward. The East Germans then built zig-zagging roads at checkpoints. The sewer system predated the Wall, and some people escaped through the sewers, in a number of cases with assistance from the Unternehmen Reisebüro. In September 1962, 29 people escaped through a tunnel to the west. At least 70 tunnels were dug under the wall; only 19 were successful in allowing fugitives—about 400 persons—to escape. The East German authorities eventually used seismographic and acoustic equipment to detect the practice. In 1962, they planned an attempt to use explosives to destroy one tunnel, but this was not carried out as it was apparently sabotaged by a member of the Stasi.
An airborne escape was made by Thomas Krüger, who landed a Zlin Z 42M light aircraft of the "Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik", an East German youth military training organization, at RAF Gatow. His aircraft, registration DDR-WOH, was dismantled and returned to the East Germans by road, complete with humorous slogans painted on it by airmen of the Royal Air Force, such as "Wish you were here" and "Come back soon".
If an escapee was wounded in a crossing attempt and lay on the death strip, no matter how close they were to the Western wall, Westerners could not intervene for fear of triggering engaging fire from the 'Grepos', the East Berlin border guards. The guards often let fugitives bleed to death in the middle of this ground, as in the most notorious failed attempt, that of Peter Fechter (aged 18) at a point near Zimmerstrasse in East Berlin. He was shot and bled to death, in full view of the Western media, on 17 August 1962. Fechter's death created negative publicity worldwide that led the leaders of East Berlin to place more restrictions on shooting in public places and provide medical care for possible "would-be escapers". The last person to be shot and killed while trying to cross the border was Chris Gueffroy on 6 February 1989, while the final person to die in an escape attempt was Winfried Freudenberg who was killed when his homemade natural gas-filled balloon crashed on 8 March 1989.
The Wall gave rise to a widespread sense of desperation and oppression in East Berlin, as expressed in the private thoughts of one resident, who confided to her diary "Our lives have lost their spirit... we can do nothing to stop them."
Concerts by Western artists and growing anti-Wall sentiment.
David Bowie, 1987.
On 6 June 1987, David Bowie, who earlier for several years lived and recorded in West Berlin, played a concert close to the Wall. This was attended by thousands of Eastern concertgoers across the Wall, followed by violent rioting in East Berlin. According to Tobias Ruther, these protests in East Berlin were the first in the sequence of riots that led to those of November 1989. Although other factors were probably more influential in the fall of the Wall, upon his death in 2016, the German Foreign Office tweeted "Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall."
Bruce Springsteen, 1988.
On 19 July 1988, 16 months before the Wall came down, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, played Rocking the Wall, a live concert in East Berlin, which was attended by 300,000 in person and broadcast on television. Springsteen spoke to the crowd in German, saying: "I'm not here for or against any government. I've come to play rock 'n' roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down". East Germany and its FDJ youth organization were worried they were losing an entire generation. They hoped that by letting Springsteen in, they could improve their sentiment among East Germans. However, this strategy of "one step backwards, two steps forwards" backfired, and the concert only made East Germans hungrier for more of the freedoms that Springsteen epitomized.
David Hasselhoff, 1989.
On 31 December 1989, American TV actor and pop-music singer David Hasselhoff was the headlining performer for the Freedom Tour Live concert, which was attended by over 500,000 people on both sides of the Wall. The live concert footage was directed by music-video director Thomas Mignone and aired on broadcast television station Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen ZDF throughout Europe. During shooting, film crew personnel pulled people up from both sides to stand and celebrate on top of the wall. Hasselhoff sang his number-one-hit song "Looking for Freedom" on a platform at the end of a twenty-meter steel crane that swung above and over the Wall adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate. A small museum was created in 2008 to celebrate Hasselhoff in the basement of the Circus Hostel.
Comments by politicians.
On 26 June 1963, 22 months after the erection of the Berlin Wall, U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin. Speaking from a platform erected on the steps of Rathaus Schöneberg for an audience of 450,000 and straying from the prepared script, he declared in his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech the support of the United States for West Germany and the people of West Berlin in particular:
The message was aimed as much at the Soviets as it was at Berliners and was a clear statement of U.S. policy in the wake of the construction of the Berlin Wall. The speech is considered one of Kennedy's best, both a significant moment in the Cold War and a high point of the New Frontier. It was a great morale boost for West Berliners, who lived in an exclave deep inside East Germany and feared a possible East German occupation.
British prime minister Margaret Thatcher commented in 1982:
In a speech at the Brandenburg Gate commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin on 12 June 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev, then the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to tear down the Wall as a symbol of increasing freedom in the Eastern Bloc:
In January 1989, GDR leader Erich Honecker predicted that the Wall would stand for 50 or 100 more years if the conditions that had caused its construction did not change.
Fall.
Due to the increasing economic problems in the Eastern Bloc and the failure of the USSR to intervene in relation to the individual communist states, the brackets of the Eastern Bloc slowly began to loosen from the end of the 1980s. One example is the fall of the communist government in neighboring Poland's 1989 Polish parliamentary election. Also in June 1989, the Hungarian government began dismantling the electrified fence along its border with Austria (with Western TV crews present) although the border was still very closely guarded and escape was almost impossible.
The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989, which was based on an idea by Otto von Habsburg to test the reaction of Mikhail Gorbachev, then triggered a peaceful chain reaction, the end of which saw the end of the GDR and the Eastern Bloc. Because of the non-reaction of the USSR and the GDR to the mass exodus, the media-informed Eastern Europeans perceived the decreasing power of their governments, and more and more East Germans were now trying to flee via Hungary. In a comment to the "Daily Mirror" regarding the Pan-European Picnic, Erich Honecker showed his people his own inaction: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." Then, in September, more than 13,000 East German tourists escaped through Hungary to Austria. This set up a chain of events. The Hungarians prevented many more East Germans from crossing the border and returned them to Budapest. These East Germans flooded the West German embassy and refused to return to East Germany.
The East German government responded by disallowing further travel to Hungary but allowed those already there to return to East Germany. This triggered similar events in neighboring Czechoslovakia. This time, however, the East German authorities allowed people to leave, provided that they did so by train through East Germany. This was followed by mass demonstrations within East Germany itself. Protests spread throughout East Germany in September 1989. Initially, protesters were mostly people wanting to leave to the West, chanting ("We want out!"). Then protestors began to chant ("We are staying here!"). This was the start of what East Germans generally call the "Peaceful Revolution" of late 1989. The protest demonstrations grew considerably by early November. The movement neared its height on 4 November, when half a million people gathered to demand political change at the Alexanderplatz demonstration, in East Berlin's large public square and transportation hub. On 9 October 1989, the police and army units were given permission to use force against those assembled, but this did not deter the church service and march from taking place, which gathered 70,000 people.
The longtime leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, resigned on 18 October 1989 and was replaced by Egon Krenz that day.
The wave of refugees leaving East Germany for the West kept increasing. By early November refugees were finding their way to Hungary via Czechoslovakia, or via the West German embassy in Prague. This was tolerated by the new Krenz government, because of long-standing agreements with the communist Czechoslovak government, allowing free travel across their common border. However, this movement of people grew so large it caused difficulties for both countries. To ease the difficulties, the politburo led by Krenz decided on 9 November to allow refugees to exit directly through crossing points between East Germany and West Germany, including between East and West Berlin. Later the same day, the ministerial administration modified the proposal to include private, round-trip, and travel. The new regulations were to take effect the next day.
Günter Schabowski, the party boss in East Berlin and the spokesman for the SED Politburo, had the task of announcing the new regulations. However, he had not been involved in the discussions about the new regulations and had not been fully updated. Shortly before a press conference on 9 November, he was handed a note announcing the changes, but given no further instructions on how to handle the information. These regulations had only been completed a few hours earlier and were to take effect the following day, so as to allow time to inform the border guards. But this starting time delay was not communicated to Schabowski. At the end of the press conference, Schabowski read out loud the note he had been given. A reporter, ANSA's Riccardo Ehrman, asked when the regulations would take effect. After a few seconds' hesitation, Schabowski replied, "As far as I know, it takes effect immediately, without delay". After further questions from journalists, he confirmed that the regulations included the border crossings through the Wall into West Berlin, which he had not mentioned until then. He repeated that it was immediate in an interview with American journalist Tom Brokaw.
Excerpts from Schabowski's press conference were the lead story on West Germany's two main news programs that night—at 7:17 p.m. on ZDF's "heute" and at 8 p.m. on ARD's "Tagesschau". As ARD and ZDF had broadcast to nearly all of East Germany since the late 1950s and had become accepted by the East German authorities, the news was broadcast there as well simultaneously. Later that night, on ARD's "Tagesthemen", anchorman Hanns Joachim Friedrichs proclaimed, "This 9 November is a historic day. The GDR has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The gates in the Wall stand open wide."
After hearing the broadcast, East Germans began gathering at the Wall, at the six checkpoints between East and West Berlin, demanding that border guards immediately open the gates. The surprised and overwhelmed guards made many hectic telephone calls to their superiors about the problem. At first, they were ordered to find the "more aggressive" people gathered at the gates and stamp their passports with a special stamp that barred them from returning to East Germany—in effect, revoking their citizenship. However, this still left thousands of people demanding to be let through "as Schabowski said we can". It soon became clear that no one among the East German authorities would take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so the vastly outnumbered soldiers had no way to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens. Finally, at 10:45 p.m. on 9 November, Harald Jäger, the commander of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing yielded, allowing the guards to open the checkpoints and allowing people through with little or no identity checking. As the "Ossis" swarmed through, they were greeted by "Wessis" waiting with flowers and champagne amid wild rejoicing. Soon afterward, a crowd of West Berliners jumped on top of the Wall, and were soon joined by East German youngsters. The evening of 9 November 1989 is known as the night the Wall came down.
Another border crossing to the south may have been opened earlier. An account by Heinz Schäfer indicates that he also acted independently and ordered the opening of the gate at Waltersdorf-Rudow a couple of hours earlier. This may explain reports of East Berliners appearing in West Berlin earlier than the opening of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing.
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, "The Guardian" collected short stories from 9 November 1989 by five German writers who reflect on the day. In this, Kathrin Schmidt remembers comically: "I downed almost an entire bottle of schnapps".
Legacy.
Little is left of the Wall at its original site, which was destroyed almost in its entirety. Three long sections are still standing: an piece of the first (westernmost) wall at the Topography of Terror, site of the former Gestapo headquarters, halfway between Checkpoint Charlie and Potsdamer Platz; a longer section of the second (easternmost) wall along the Spree River near the , nicknamed East Side Gallery; and a third section that is partly reconstructed, in the north at Bernauer Straße, which was turned into a memorial in 1998. Other isolated fragments, lampposts, other elements, and a few watchtowers also remain in various parts of the city.
Nothing still accurately represents the Wall's original appearance better than a very short stretch at Bernauer Straße associated with the Berlin Wall Documentation Center. Other remnants are badly damaged by souvenir seekers. Fragments of the Wall were taken, and some were sold around the world. Appearing both with and without certificates of authenticity, these fragments are now a staple on the online auction service eBay as well as German souvenir shops. Today, the eastern side is covered in graffiti that did not exist while the Wall was guarded by the armed soldiers of East Germany. Previously, graffiti appeared only on the western side. Along some tourist areas of the city centre, the city government has marked the location of the former Wall by a row of cobblestones in the street. In most places only the "first" wall is marked, except near Potsdamer Platz where the stretch of both walls is marked, giving visitors an impression of the dimension of the barrier system.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were initiatives that they want to preserve the death strip walkways and redevelop them into a hiking and cycling area, known as . It is part of the initiative by the Berlin Senate since 11 October 2001.
Cultural differences.
For many years after reunification, people in Germany talked about cultural differences between East and West Germans (colloquially "Ossis" and "Wessis"), sometimes described as "Mauer im Kopf" (The wall in the head). A September 2004 poll found that 25 percent of West Germans and 12 percent of East Germans wished that East and West should be separated again by a "Wall". A poll taken in October 2009 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall indicated, however, that only about a tenth of the population was still unhappy with the unification (8 percent in the East; 12 percent in the West). Although differences are still perceived between East and West, Germans make similar distinctions between North and South.
A 2009 poll conducted by Russia's VTsIOM, found that more than half of all Russians do not know who built the Berlin Wall. Ten percent of people surveyed thought Berlin residents built it themselves. Six percent said Western powers built it and four percent thought it was a "bilateral initiative" of the Soviet Union and the West. Fifty-eight percent said they did not know who built it, with just 24 percent correctly naming the Soviet Union and its then-communist ally East Germany.
Wall segments around the world.
Not all segments of the Wall were ground up as the Wall was being torn down. Many segments have been given to various institutions around the world. They can be found, for instance, in presidential and historical museums, lobbies of hotels and corporations, at universities and government buildings, and in public spaces in different countries of the world.
50th anniversary commemoration.
On 13 August 2011, Germany marked the 50th anniversary of East Germany beginning the erection of the Berlin Wall. Chancellor Angela Merkel joined with President Christian Wulff and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit at the Bernauer Straße memorial park to remember lives and liberty. Speeches extolled freedom and a minute of silence at noon honored those who died trying to flee to the West. "It is our shared responsibility to keep the memory alive and to pass it on to the coming generations as a reminder to stand up for freedom and democracy to ensure that such injustice may never happen again." entreated Mayor Wowereit. "It has been shown once again: Freedom is invincible at the end. No wall can permanently withstand the desire for freedom", proclaimed President Wulff.
Polling.
A small minority still support the wall or even support rebuilding the wall back up. In 2008 a poll found that 11% of participants from the former West Berlin and 12% from the former East Berlin said it would be better if the wall was still in place.
A November 2009 poll found that 12% of Germans said the wall should be rebuilt. The poll also found that in the former West German states support was at 12% and in the former East German states it was 13%. A September 2009 poll found 15% of Germans supported a wall, while in the west it was 16% and in the east it was at 10%.
A 2010 poll from Emnid for "Bild", found that 24% of West Germans and 23% of East Germans wished for the wall still being in place.
A 2019 poll from "Berliner Zeitung" on the 30th anniversary, found that 8% of Berliners supported the idea if the wall was still standing, The overwhelming majority of Berliners at 87% however supported the fall of the wall. The poll also found that 28% of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and 16% of Free Democratic Party (FDP) supporters supported bringing back the wall. A 2019 Yougov poll found that 13% of Germans wanted the wall back, in the West support was at 14% and in the East it was 13%.
A 2019 poll from Forsa found 35% of Berliners thought the construction of the Wall was not so wrong with supporters of the Left Party at 74%.
Related media.
Documentaries.
Documentary films specifically about the Berlin Wall include:
Feature films.
Fictional films featuring the Berlin Wall have included:
Literature.
Some novels specifically about the Berlin Wall include:
Music.
Music related to the Berlin Wall includes:
Visual art.
Artworks related to the Berlin Wall include:
Games.
Video games related to the Berlin Wall include:
|
3727
|
1298893241
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3727
|
Bass (sound)
|
Bass ( ) (also called bottom end) describes tones of low (also called "deep") frequency, pitch and range from 16 to 250 Hz (C0 to middle C4) and bass instruments that produce tones in the low-pitched range C2-C4. They belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles. Since producing low pitches usually requires a long air column or string, and for stringed instruments, a large hollow body, the string and wind bass instruments are usually the largest instruments in their families or instrument classes.
Musical role.
When bass notes are played in a musical ensemble such an orchestra, they are frequently used to provide a counterpoint or counter-melody, in a harmonic context either to outline or juxtapose the progression of the chords, or with percussion to underline the rhythm.
Rhythm section.
In popular music, the bass part, which is called the "bassline", typically provides harmonic and rhythmic support to the band. The bass player is a member of the rhythm section in a band, along with the drummer, rhythm guitarist, and, in some cases, a keyboard instrument player (e.g., piano or Hammond organ). The bass player emphasizes the root or fifth of the chord in their basslines (and to a lesser degree, the third of the chord) and accents the strong beats.
Kinds of bass harmony.
In classical music, different forms of bass are: "basso concertante", or "basso recitante"; the bass voice of the chorus; the bass which accompanies the softer passages of a composition, as well as those passages which employ the whole power of the ensemble, generally played by the violoncellos in orchestral music; "contrabass" (“under bass”), is described as that part which is performed by the double basses; violoncellos often play the same line an octave higher, or a different melodic or rhythmic part which is not a bassline when double basses are used; "basso ripieno"; that bass which joins in the full passages of a composition, and, by its depth of tone and energy of stroke, affords a powerful contrast to the lighter and softer passages or movements.
Basso continuo was an approach to writing music during the Baroque music era (1600–1750). With basso continuo, a written-out bassline served to set out the chord progression for an entire piece (symphony, concerto, Mass, or other work), with the bassline being played by pipe organ or harpsichord and the chords being improvised by players of chordal instruments (theorbo, lute, harpsichord, etc.).
"The bass differs from other voices because of the particular role it plays in supporting and defining harmonic motion. It does so at levels ranging from immediate, chord-by-chord events to the larger harmonic organization of an entire work."
Instruments.
A bass instrument is a musical instrument that produces tones in the low-pitched range C2–C4. Basses belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles. Since producing low pitches usually requires a long air column or string, the string and wind bass instruments are usually the largest instruments in their families or instrument classes. A musician playing one of these instruments is often known as a bassist.
The electric bass guitar is usually the instrument referred to as a "bass" in pop and rock music. Invented in the 1930s by Paul Tutmarc, it was first mass-produced by Leo Fender in 1951 and quickly replaced the more unwieldy double bass among non-classical musicians. The double bass is usually the instrument referred to as a "bass" in European classical music and jazz. Mozart called the cello the most common bass instrument in his time. A bass singer has the lowest vocal range of all voice types, typically a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C (i.e., E2–E4). Wind family basses include the bass horn, such as a tuba, serpent, and sousaphone, as well as low-tuned versions such as bassoon, bass clarinet, bass trombone, and bass saxophone.
Music shows and dances.
With recorded music playback, for owners of 33 rpm LPs and 45 singles, the availability of loud "and" deep bass was limited by the ability of the phonograph record stylus to track the groove. While some hi-fi aficionados had solved the problem by using other playback sources, such as reel-to-reel tape players which were capable of delivering accurate, naturally deep bass from acoustic sources, or synthetic bass not found in nature, with the popular introduction of the compact cassette in the late 1960s it became possible to add more low-frequency content to recordings. By the mid-1970s, 12" vinyl singles, which allowed for "more bass volume", were used to record disco, reggae, dub and hip-hop tracks; dance club DJs played these records in clubs with subwoofers to achieve "physical and emotional" reactions from dancers.
In the early 1970s, early disco DJs sought out deeper bass sounds for their dance events. David Mancuso hired sound engineer Alex Rosner to design additional subwoofers for his disco dance events, along with "tweeter arrays" to "boost the treble and bass at opportune moments" at his private, underground parties at The Loft. The demand for sub-bass sound reinforcement in the 1970s was driven by the important role of "powerful bass drum" in disco, as compared with rock and pop; to provide this deeper range, a third crossover point from 40 Hz to 120 Hz (centering on 80 Hz) was added. The Paradise Garage discotheque in New York City, which operated from 1977 to 1987, had "custom designed 'sub-bass' speakers" developed by Alex Rosner's disciple, sound engineer Richard ("Dick") Long that were called "Levan Horns" (in honor of resident DJ Larry Levan).
By the end of the 1970s, subwoofers were used in dance venue sound systems to enable the playing of "[b]ass-heavy dance music" that we "do not 'hear' with our ears but with our entire body". At the club, Long used four Levan bass horns, one in each corner of the dancefloor, to create a "haptic and tactile quality" in the sub-bass that you could feel in your body. To overcome the lack of sub-bass frequencies on 1970s disco records (sub-bass frequencies below 60 Hz were removed during mastering), Long added a DBX 100 "Boom Box" subharmonic pitch generator into his system to synthesize 25 Hz to 50 Hz sub-bass from the 50 to 100 Hz bass on the records. In the early 1980s, Long designed a sound system for the Warehouse dance club, with "huge stacks of subwoofers" which created "deep and intense" bass frequencies that "pound[ed] through your system" and "entire body", enabling clubgoers to "viscerally experience" the DJs' house music mixes.
Deep, heavy bass is central to Jamaican musical styles such as dub and reggae. In Jamaica in the 1970s and 1980s, sound engineers for reggae sound systems began creating "heavily customized" subwoofer enclosures by adding foam and tuning the cabinets to achieve "rich and articulate speaker output below 100 Hz". The sound engineers who developed the "bass-heavy signature sound" of sound reinforcement systems have been called "deserving as much credit for the sound of Jamaican music as their better-known music producer cousins". The sound engineers for Stone Love Movement (a sound system crew), for example, modified folded horn subwoofers they imported from the US to get more of a bass reflex sound that suited local tone preferences for dancehall audiences, as the unmodified folded horn was found to be "too aggressive" sounding and "not deep enough for Jamaican listeners".
In Jamaican sound system culture, there are both "low and high bass bins" in "towering piles" that are "delivered in large trucks" and set up by a crew of "box boys", and then positioned and adjusted by the sound engineer in a process known as "stringing up", all to create the "sound of reggae music you can literally feel as it comes off these big speakers". Sound system crews hold 'sound clash' competitions, where each sound system is set up and then the two crews try to outdo each other.
Movies.
The use of subwoofers to provide deep bass in film presentations received a great deal of publicity in 1974 with the movie "Earthquake" which was released in Sensurround. Initially installed in 17 U.S. theaters, the Cerwin Vega "Sensurround" system used large subwoofers which were driven by racks of 500 watt amplifiers which were triggered by control tones printed on one of the audio tracks on the film. Four of the subwoofers were positioned in front of the audience under (or behind) the film screen and two more were placed together at the rear of the audience on a platform. Powerful noise energy and loud rumbling in the range of 17 Hz to 120 Hz was generated at the level of 110–120 decibels of sound pressure level, abbreviated dB(SPL). The new low frequency entertainment method helped the film become a box office success. More Sensurround systems were assembled and installed. By 1976 there were almost 300 Sensurround systems in theaters. Other films to use the effect include "Midway" in 1976 and "Rollercoaster" in 1977.
|
3728
|
33973617
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3728
|
UK bass
|
UK bass, also called bass music, is club music that emerged in the United Kingdom during the mid-2000s under the influence of diverse genres such as house, grime, dubstep, Future garage, R&B, and UK funky. The term "UK bass" came into use as artists began ambiguously blending the sounds of these defined genres while maintaining an emphasis on percussive, bass-led rhythm.
UK bass is sometimes conflated with bassline or post-dubstep. It is not to be confused with the hip hop and electro-based genre Miami bass, which is sometimes called "bass music" as well.
Origins.
The breadth of styles that have come to be associated with the term preclude it from being a specific musical genre. "Pitchfork" writer Martin Clark has suggested that "well-meaning attempts to loosely define the ground we're covering here are somewhat futile and almost certainly flawed. This is not one genre. However, given the links, interaction, and free-flowing ideas… you can't dismiss all these acts as unrelated." Dubstep producer Skream is quoted in an interview with "The Independent" in September 2011 as saying: The word dubstep is being used by a lot of people and there were a lot of people being tagged with the dubstep brush. They don't want to be tagged with it and shouldn't be tagged with it – that's not what they're pushing... When I say 'UK bass', it's what everyone UK is associated with so it would be a lot easier if it was called that."
In the United Kingdom, bass music has had major mainstream success since the late 2000s and early 2010s, with artists such as James Blake, Benga, Burial, SBTRKT, Sophie, Rustie, Zomby, and Skream. The term "post-dubstep" has been used synonymously to refer to artists, such as Blake and Mount Kimbie whose work draws on UK garage, 2-step, and other forms of underground dance music, as well as ambient music and early R&B. Outside of nightclubs, UK bass has mainly been promoted and played on Internet radio stations such as Sub.FM and Rinse FM.
|
3729
|
332841
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3729
|
Burning glass
|
A burning glass or burning lens is a large convex lens that can concentrate the Sun's rays onto a small area, heating up the area and thus resulting in ignition of the exposed surface. Burning mirrors achieve a similar effect by using reflecting surfaces to focus the light. They were used in 18th-century chemical studies for burning materials in closed glass vessels where the products of combustion could be trapped for analysis. The burning glass was a useful contrivance in the days before electrical ignition was easily achieved.
History.
Burning glass technology has been known since antiquity, as described by Greek and Roman writers who recorded the use of lenses to start fires for various purposes. Pliny the Elder noted the use of glass vases filled with water to concentrate sunlight heat intensely enough to ignite clothing, as well as convex lenses that were used to cauterize wounds. Plutarch refers to a burning mirror made of joined triangular metal mirrors installed at the temple of the Vestal Virgins. Aristophanes mentions the burning lens in his play "The Clouds" (424 BC).
The Hellenistic Greek mathematician Archimedes was said to have used a burning glass as a weapon in 212 BC, when Syracuse was besieged by Marcus Claudius Marcellus of the Roman Republic. The Roman fleet was supposedly incinerated, though eventually the city was taken and Archimedes was slain.
The legend of Archimedes gave rise to a considerable amount of research on burning glasses and lenses until the late 17th century. Various researchers from medieval Christendom to the Islamic world worked with burning glasses, including Anthemius of Tralles (6th century AD), Proclus (6th century; who by this means purportedly destroyed the fleet of Vitalian besieging Constantinople), Ibn Sahl in his "On Burning Mirrors and Lenses" (10th century), Alhazen in his "Book of Optics" (1021), Roger Bacon (13th century), Giambattista della Porta and his friends (16th century), Athanasius Kircher and Gaspar Schott (17th century), and the Comte de Buffon in 1740 in Paris.
While the effects of camera obscura were mentioned by Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 4th century BC, contemporary Chinese Mohists of China's Warring States Period who compiled the "Mozi" described their experiments with burning mirrors and the pinhole camera. A few decades after Alhazen described camera obscura in Iraq, the Song dynasty Chinese statesman Shen Kuo was nevertheless the first to clearly describe the relationship of the focal point of a concave mirror, the burning point and the pinhole camera as separate radiation phenomena in his "Dream Pool Essays" (1088). By the late 15th century Leonardo da Vinci would be the first in Europe to make similar observations about the focal point and pinhole.
Burning lenses were used in the 18th century by both Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier in their experiments to obtain oxides contained in closed vessels under high temperatures. These included carbon dioxide by burning diamond, and mercuric oxide by heating mercury. This type of experiment contributed to the discovery of "dephlogisticated air" by Priestley, which became better known as oxygen, following Lavoisier's investigations.
Chapter 17 of William Bates' 1920 book "Perfect Sight Without Glasses", in which the author argues that observation of the sun is beneficial to those with poor vision, includes a figure of somebody "Focussing the Rays of the Sun Upon the Eye of a Patient by Means of a Burning Glass."
The burning lens of the Grand Duke of Tuscany was used by Sir Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday to burn a diamond in oxygen on 27 March 1814.
Use.
War: since the legend of Archimedes.
The first story akin to that of burning glass is by Archimedes, for the purpose of war, in 212 BC. When Syracuse was besieged by Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the Roman fleet was supposedly incinerated by the use of not glass per se, but a concave mirror made of brass focusing sunlight. Whether or not that actually happened, eventually the city was taken and Archimedes was slain.
In 1796, during the French Revolution and three years after the declaration of war between France and Great Britain, physicist Étienne-Gaspard Robert met with the French government and proposed the use of mirrors to burn the invading ships of the British Royal Navy. They decided not to take up his proposal.
Domestic use: primitive fire making.
Burning glasses (often called fire lenses) are still used to light fires in outdoor and primitive settings. Large burning lenses sometimes take the form of Fresnel lenses, similar to lighthouse lenses, including those for use in solar furnaces. Solar furnaces are used in industry to produce extremely high temperatures without the need for fuel or large supplies of electricity. They sometimes employ a large parabolic array of mirrors (some facilities are several stories high) to focus light to a high intensity.
Religion: sacred fire.
In various religions settings, a burning glass is used to set off some sort of sacred fire.
From the 7th to the 16th centuries, a burning glass was used by Christians to set off the Easter Fire during the Easter vigil. Thus, Saint Boniface explained to Pope Zachary that he produced the new fire of Holy Saturday by means of a crystal lens concentrating the rays of the sun. This process was also mentioned in liturgical books until the Roman Pontifical of 1561.
In Cambodia, a burning glass has also been used since ancient times for the cremation of kings and most recently for the funeral of King Sihanouk. The crematorium of the king is traditionally prepared by the Bakus brahmin from the Royal Palace on the last day of the week-long funeral. Small pieces of fragrant agarwood are placed beneath the magnifying glass until it ignites. The incandescent wood is used to light candles and pass on the fire to the attendees, who usually take their lit candles home.
Sports: lighting the Olympic torch.
The Olympic torch that is carried around the host country of the Olympic Games is lit by a burning glass, at the site of ancient Olympia in Greece.
Popular culture: verification attempts.
There have been several real-world tests to evaluate the validity of the legend of Archimedes described above over the centuries, including a test by Comte de Buffon (circa 1747), documented in the paper titled "Invention De Miroirs Ardens, Pour Brusler a Une Grande Distance", and an experiment by John Scott, which was documented in an 1867 paper.
In 1973, Greek scientist Dr. Ioannis Sakkas, curious about whether Archimedes could really have used a "burning glass" to destroy the Roman fleet in 212 BC, lined up nearly 60 Greek sailors, each holding an oblong mirror tipped to catch the sun's rays and direct them at a wooden ship 160 feet away. The ship caught fire at once. Sakkas said after the experiment there was no doubt in his mind the great inventor could have used bronze mirrors to scuttle the Romans.
However, accounting for battle conditions makes such a weapon impractical, with modern tests refuting such claims. An experiment was carried out by a group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005. It concluded that although the theory was sound for stationary objects, the mirrors would not likely have been able to concentrate sufficient solar energy to set a ship on fire under battle conditions. Similar experiments were conducted on the popular science-based TV show "MythBusters" in 2004, 2006, and 2010, arriving at similar results based on the premise of the controversial myth.
However, an episode of "Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections" relating to the Keck Observatory (whose reflector glass is based on the Archimedes' Mirror) did successfully use a much smaller curved mirror to burn a wooden model, although the scaled-down model was not made of the same quality of materials as in the "MythBusters" effort.
|
3730
|
1283272843
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3730
|
Battle of Adrianople (disambiguation)
|
The Battle of Adrianople (378 CE), in which Gothic rebels defeated the Eastern Roman Empire, was the main battle of the Gothic War (376–382).
Battle of Adrianople may also refer to:
|
3731
|
39405117
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3731
|
Beacon
|
A beacon is an intentionally conspicuous device designed to attract attention to a specific location. A common example is the lighthouse, which draws attention to a fixed point that can be used to navigate around obstacles or into port. More modern examples include a variety of radio beacons that can be read on radio direction finders in all weather, and radar transponders that appear on radar displays.
Beacons can also be combined with semaphoric or other indicators to provide important information, such as the status of an airport, by the colour and rotational pattern of its airport beacon, or of pending weather as indicated on a weather beacon mounted at the top of a tall building or similar site. When used in such fashion, beacons can be considered a form of optical telegraphy.
For navigation.
Beacons help guide navigators to their destinations. Types of navigational beacons include radar reflectors, radio beacons, sonic and visual signals. Visual beacons range from small, single-pile structures to large lighthouses or light stations and can be located on land or on water. Lighted beacons are called "lights"; unlighted beacons are called "daybeacons". Aerodrome beacons are used to indicate locations of airports and helipads.
In the United States, a series of beacons were constructed across the country in the 1920s and 1930s to help guide pilots delivering air mail. They were placed about 25 miles apart from each other, and included large concrete arrows with accompanying lights to illuminate them.
Handheld beacons are also employed in aircraft marshalling, and are used by the marshal to deliver instructions to the crew of aircraft as they move around an active airport, heliport or aircraft carrier.
For defensive communications (historical).
Historically, beacons were fires lit at well-known locations on hills or high places, used either as lighthouses for navigation at sea, or for signalling over land that enemy troops were approaching, in order to alert defenses. As signals, beacons are an ancient form of optical telegraph and were part of a relay league.
Systems of this kind have existed for centuries over much of the world. The ancient Greeks called them "phryctoriae", while beacons figure on several occasions on the column of Trajan.
In imperial China, sentinels on and near the Great Wall of China used a sophisticated system of daytime smoke and nighttime flame to send signals along long chains of beacon towers.
Legend has it that King You of Zhou played a trick multiple times in order to amuse his often melancholy concubine, ordering beacon towers lit to fool his vassals and soldiers. But when enemies, led by the Marquess of Shen really arrived at the wall, although the towers were lit, no defenders came, leading to King Yōu's death and the collapse of the Western Zhou dynasty. However, in reality the Great Wall did not exist until long after King You's death.
Thucydides wrote that during the Peloponnesian War, the Peloponnesians who were in Corcyra were informed by night-time beacon signals of the approach of sixty Athenian vessels from Lefkada.
In the 10th century, during the Arab–Byzantine wars, the Byzantine Empire used a beacon system to transmit messages from the border with the Abbasid Caliphate, across Anatolia to the imperial palace in the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. It was devised by Leo the Mathematician for Emperor Theophilos, but either abolished or radically curtailed by Theophilos' son and successor, Michael III. Beacons were later used in Greece as well, while the surviving parts of the beacon system in Anatolia seem to have been reactivated in the 12th century by Emperor Manuel I Komnenos.
In the Nordic countries, hill forts and beacon networks were important for warning against invasions. In Sweden and Finland, these beacons, known as "vårdkasar" or "böte", formed an extensive coastal warning system from the Late Iron Age and through the Middle Ages. Beacons were strategically placed on high ground for visibility, constructed from tar-rich wood to ensure bright flames. They were mentioned in medieval laws like "Upplandslagen" and described by Swedish writer Olaus Magnus in 1555 as tools for mobilising armed defenders during crises. In Finland, similar beacons called "vainovalkeat" ("persecution fires") or "vartiotulet" ("guard fires") warned settlements of raids.
In Wales, the Brecon Beacons were named for beacons used to warn of approaching English raiders. In England, the most famous examples are the beacons used in Elizabethan England to warn of the approaching Spanish Armada. Many hills in England were named Beacon Hill after such beacons. In England the authority to erect beacons originally lay with the King and later was delegated to the Lord High Admiral. The money due for the maintenance of beacons was called "Beaconagium" and was levied by the sheriff of each county. In the Scottish borders country, a system of beacon fires was at one time established to warn of incursions by the English. Hume and Eggerstone castles and Soltra Edge were part of this network.
In Spain, the border of Granada in the territory of the Crown of Castile had a complex beacon network to warn against Moorish raiders and military campaigns. Due to the progressive advance of the borders throughout the process of the Reconquista, the entire Spanish geography is full of defensive lines of castles, towers and fortifications, visually connected to each other, which served as fortified beacons. Some examples are the Route of the Vinalopó castles or the distribution of the castles in Jaén.
Ceremonial Use.
In later centuries, advancements in technology, such as the telegraph, rendered beacon systems obsolete for rapid communication. The use of such beacons transitioned from practical communication to symbolic and ceremonial roles, where the lighting of beacons was repurposed to mark significant national events.
Beacons were lit across the United Kingdom to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in 2022, and to commemorate events such as the 70th anniversary of VE Day, and the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in 2024.
South Korea maintains a daily ceremonial beacon lighting at Namsan Beacon Mound in Seoul, where visitors witness a reenactment of the traditional "bongsu" ceremony, which historically signaled emergencies.
Military use (20th–21st century).
Infrared marker.
Infrared strobes and other infrared beacons have increasingly been used in modern combat when operating at night as they can only be seen through night vision goggles. As a result, they are often used to mark friendly positions as a form of IFF to prevent friendly fire and improve coordination. Soldiers will typically affix them to their helmets or other gear so they are easily visible to others using night vision including other infantry, ground vehicles, and aerial platforms (drones, helicopters, planes, etc.).
Passive markers include IR patches, which reflect infrared light, and chemlights. The earliest such beacons were often IR chemlights taped to helmets.
As time went on, more sophisticated options began to emerge with electronically powered infrared strobes with specific mounting solutions for attaching to helmets or load bearing equipment. These strobes may have settings which allow constant on or strobes of IR light, hence the name.
Advancements in near-peer technology, however, present risk since if friendly units can see the strobe with night vision so could enemies with night vision capabilities. As a result, some in the American military have stressed that efforts should be made to improve training regarding light discipline (IR and visible) and other means of reducing a unit's visible signature.
On vehicles.
Vehicular beacons are rotating or flashing lights affixed to the top of a vehicle to attract the attention of surrounding vehicles and pedestrians. Emergency vehicles such as fire engines, ambulances, police cars, tow trucks, construction vehicles, and snow-removal vehicles carry beacon lights.
The color of the lamps varies by jurisdiction; typical colors are blue and/or red for police, fire, and medical-emergency vehicles; amber for hazards (slow-moving vehicles, wide loads, tow trucks, security personnel, construction vehicles, etc.); green for volunteer firefighters or for medical personnel, and violet for funerary vehicles. Beacons may be constructed with halogen bulbs similar to those used in vehicle headlamps, xenon flashtubes, or LEDs. Incandescent and xenon light sources require the vehicle's engine to continue running to ensure that the battery is not depleted when the lights are used for a prolonged period. The low power consumption of LEDs allows the vehicle's engine to remain turned off while the lights operate.
Other uses.
Beacons have also allegedly been abused by shipwreckers. An illicit fire at a wrong position would be used to direct a ship against shoals or beaches, so that its cargo could be looted after the ship sank or ran aground. There are, however, no historically substantiated occurrences of such intentional shipwrecking.
In wireless networks, a beacon is a type of frame which is sent by the access point (or WiFi router) to indicate that it is on.
Bluetooth based beacons periodically send out a data packet and this could be used by software to identify the beacon location. This is typically used by indoor navigation and positioning applications.
"Beaconing" is the process that allows a network to self-repair network problems. The stations on the network notify the other stations on the ring when they are not receiving the transmissions. Beaconing is used in Token ring and FDDI networks.
In fiction.
In Aeschylus' tragedy "Agamemnon", a chain of eight beacons staffed by so-called "lampadóphoroi" inform Clytemnestra in Argos, within a single night's time, that Troy has just fallen under her husband king Agamemnon's control, after a famous ten years siege.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy novel, "The Lord of the Rings", a series of beacons alerts the entire realm of Gondor when the kingdom is under attack. These beacon posts were staffed by messengers who would carry word of their lighting to either Rohan or Belfalas. In Peter Jackson's , the beacons serve as a connection between the two realms of Rohan and Gondor, alerting one another directly when they require military aid, as opposed to relying on messengers as in the novel.
In publishing.
"The Beacon" was an influential Caribbean magazine published in Trinidad in the 1930s. New Beacon Books was the first Caribbean publishing house in England, founded in London in 1966, was named after the "Beacon" journal.
In retail.
Beacons are sometimes used in retail to send digital coupons or invitations to customers passing by.
Types.
Infrared beacon.
An infrared beacon (IR beacon) transmits a modulated light beam in the infrared spectrum, which can be identified easily and positively. A line of sight clear of obstacles between the transmitter and the receiver is essential. IR beacons have a number of applications in robotics and in Combat Identification (CID).
Infrared beacons are the key infrastructure for the Universal Traffic Management System (UTMS) in Japan. They perform two-way communication with travelling vehicles based on highly directional infrared communication technology and have a vehicle detecting capability to provide more accurate traffic information.
Sonar beacon.
A sonar beacon is an underwater device which transmits sonic or ultrasonic signals for the purpose of providing bearing information. The most common type is that of a rugged watertight sonar transmitter attached to a submarine and capable of operating independently of the electrical system of the boat. It can be used in cases of emergencies to guide salvage vessels to the location of a disabled submarine.
|
3733
|
40195938
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3733
|
Bhangra (music)
|
Bhangra () is a type of non-traditional music of Punjab originating from the Punjab region.
Over the years, bhangra has evolved and gained popularity not only in South Asia but also around the world. It has become a significant part of the cultural identity of the Punjabi diaspora in countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Prior to this musical fusion, bhangra existed only as a dance form in the native Punjab. This Punjabi music was unique in that it was not traditional nor did it seek any authenticity. While the traditional folk music of Punjab has a set of melodies that are used by various singers, bhangra was a form of strict "band culture" in that new melodies were composed for each song. Therefore, the musicians were as important as the singers.
Origins.
The roots of modern bhangra music date back to the Sikh Punjabi community in Punjab during the 1960s. An early pop music and modern recording group of this type of music in the United Kingdom was Bhujhangy Group, founded by Tarlochan Singh Bilga, Balbir Singh Khanpur, Gurpal, Rajinder Dhona and Dalvir Kahanpuri in Birmingham in 1971. Bhujhangy Group's first major hit was "Bhabiye Akh Larr Gayee". It was written by Tarlochan Singh Bilga in the early 1970s and was released on Birmingham's Oriental Star Agencies label. This was the first bhangra song to combine traditional Asian music with modern Western instruments.
Differences from folk music.
Although bhangra music used many of the elements of Punjabi folk music (e.g., "Bakkrey Bulaaney" – the goat herding vocalizations), it was also radically different in its embrace of modernity. The song structure of a typical bhangra song featured four verses, a chorus, along with two alternating instrumental bridge sections. (e.g., CVB1CVB2CVB1CVB2C.) Hence it featured more musicianship than its folk predecessor.
United Kingdom.
1970s.
A modern and commercial form of bhangra music was said to rise in Britain in the 1970s by Punjabi immigrants who took their native folk music and began experimenting by altering it using instruments from their host country. The new genre quickly became popular in Britain replacing Punjabi folk singers due to it being heavily influenced in Britain by the infusion of rock music and a need to move away from the simple and repetitive Punjabi folk music. It indicated the development of a self-conscious and distinctively rebellious British Asian youth culture centred on an experiential sense of self, e.g., language, gesture, bodily signification, desires, etc., in a situation in which tensions with British culture and racist elements in British society had resulted in alienation in many minority ethnic groups, fostered a sense of need for an affirmation of a positive identity and culture, and provided a platform for British Punjabi males to assert their masculinity.
In the 1980s, distributed by record labels such as Multitone Records, bhangra artists were selling over 30,000 cassettes a week in the UK, but no artists reached the Top 40 UK chart despite these artists outselling popular British ones; most of the bhangra cassette sales were not through the large UK record stores, whose sales were those recorded by the Official UK Charts Company for creating their rankings.
The group Alaap was formed in 1977, co-founded by Channi Singh and Harjeet Gandhi who both hailed from Southall, a Punjabi area in London. Their album "Teri Chunni De Sitaray" was released in 1982 by Multitone. Alaap was considered the first and original superstar bhangra band formed in the United Kingdom. Channi Singh has been awarded the OBE by the Queen for his services to bhangra music and services/charity for the British Asian community. Co-founder Harjeet Gandhi died in 2003.
The 1980s is commonly known as the golden age, or the age of bhangra music, which lasted roughly from 1985 to 1993. The primary emphasis during these times was on the melody/riff, played out usually on a synthesizer, harmonium, accordion or guitar. Folk instruments were rarely used.
One of the biggest bhangra stars of the last several decades is Malkit Singh and his band Golden Star. Singh was born in June 1963 in the village of Hussainpur in Punjab. He attended the Lyallpur Khalsa College, Jalandhar, in Punjab in 1980 to study for a bachelor of arts degree. There he met his mentor, Professor Inderjit Singh, who taught him Punjabi folk singing and bhangra dancing. Due to Singh's tutelage, Malkit entered and won song contests during this time. In 1983, he won a gold medal at the Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, Punjab, for performing his song "Gurh Nalon Ishq Mitha", which later featured on his first album, "Nach Gidhe Wich". The lyrics were by Tarlochan Singh Bilga and it was released in 1985. This album was created with Manager, Tarlochan Singh Bilga(TSB). The band has toured 27 countries. Malkit has been awarded the MBE by the Queen for his services to bhangra music.
Bhangra boy band, the Sahotas, were composed of five brothers from Wolverhampton. Their music is a fusion of bhangra, rock and dance.
Heera, formed by Bhupinder Bhindi and fronted by Kumar and Dhami, was one of the most popular bands of the 1980s.
Bands like Alaap and Heera incorporated rock-influenced beats into bhangra, because it enabled "Asian youth to affirm their identities positively" within the broader environment of alternative rock as an alternative way of expression. However, some believe that the progression of bhangra music created an "intermezzo culture" post-India's partition, within the unitary definitions of Southeast Asians within the diaspora, thus "establishing a brand new community in their home away from home".
Several other influential groups appeared around the same time, including The Saathies, Premi Group, Bhujungy Group, and Apna Sangeet. Apna Sangeet, best known for their hit "Mera Yaar Vajavey Dhol", re-formed for charity in May 2009 after a break-up.
When bhangra and General Indian sounds and lyrics were combined, British-Asian artists began incorporating them in their music. Some Asian artists such as Bally Sagoo and Talvin Singh are creating their own form of British hip-hop.
This era also brought about bhangra art, which like the bhangra music it represented was rebellious. Unlike folk music art, which consisted of a picture of the folk singer, bhangra recordings had details such as distinctive artwork, logos, clever album names and band/musician listings (who played what).
Folk backlash.
Unlike bhangra, folk music depends on a set number of traditional melodies that may be hundreds of years old. Each new singer simply writes new lyrics using one of those melodies.
In the mid-1990s, many artists, attracted to the economics of a bandless singer only act that technology such as karaoke machines now enabled, returned to the original, traditional folk beats away from bhangra music, often incorporating more dhol drum beats and tumbi. This time also saw the rise of several young Punjabi folk singers as a backlash to bhangra music. They were aided by DJs who mixed hip-hop samples with folk singing.
Beginning around 1994, there was a trend towards the use of samples (often sampled from mainstream hip hop) mixed with traditional folk rhythm instruments, such as the tumbi and dhol. Using folk instruments and hip-hop samples, along with relatively inexpensive folk vocals imported from Punjab, Punjabi folk music was able to cause the decline of bhangra music.
Pioneering DJs instrumental in the decline of bhangra were Bally Sagoo and Panjabi MC. As DJs who were initially hired by bhangra labels to remix the original recordings on the label's roster (OSA and Nachural respectively), they along with the record labels quickly found that remixing folk singers from India was much cheaper than working with outsourced bhangra bands.
A pioneering folk singer that was instrumental in bhangra's demise was Jazzy B, who debuted in 1992. Having sold over 55,000 copies of his third album, "Folk and Funky", he is now one of the best-selling Punjabi folk artists in the world, with a vocal style likened to that of Kuldip Manak.
Other influential folk artists include Surinder Shinda – famous for his "Putt Jattan De" – Harbhajan Mann, Manmohan Waris, Sarbjit Cheema, Hans Raj Hans, Sardool Sikander, B21, Paaras and Bombay Talkie.
By the end of the 1990s, bhangra music had largely declined and been replaced with Punjabi folk singers. The same folk singers which bhangra bands had replaced a decade earlier were being utilized by DJs to make relatively inexpensive live music on laptops. This "folkhop" genre was short lived as records could not be officially released due to nonclearance copyrights on samples used to create the "beat". This continued until the end of the century. Folk-hop record labels such as Hi-Tech were investigated by BPI (British Phonographic Industry) for copyright infringement by way of uncleared samples on releases by folk DJs such as DJ Sanj.
Toward the end of the decade, bhangra continued to decline, with folk-hop artists such as Bally Sagoo and Apache Indian signing with international recording labels Sony and Island. Moreover, Multitone Records, one of the major recording labels associated with bhangra in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, was bought by BMG. A recent Pepsi commercial launched in Britain featured South Asian actors and Punjabi folk music.
2000s remixes.
Punjabi folk remixed with hip-hop, known as folkhop, is most often produced when folk vocals are purchased online to be remixed in a studio. Folk vocals are usually sung to traditional melodies, that are often repeated with new lyrics.
Some South Asian DJs, especially in America, have mixed Punjabi folk music with house, reggae, and hip-hop to add a different flavour to Punjabi folk. These remixes continued to gain popularity as the 1990s came to an end.
A notable remix artist is Bally Sagoo, a Punjabi-Sikh, Anglo-Indian raised in Birmingham, England. Sagoo described his music as "a bit of tablas, a bit of the Indian sound. But bring on the bass lines, bring on the funky-drummer beat, bring on the James Brown samples", to "Time" magazine in 1997. He was recently signed by Sony. Daler Mehndi, a Punjabi singer from India has a type of music known as "folk pop". Mehndi has released tracks such as "Bolo Ta Ra Ra" and "Ho Jayegee Balle Balle". His song "Tunak Tunak Tun" was released in 1998.
Canada and the United States.
Punjabi immigrants have encouraged the growth of Punjabi folk music in the Western hemisphere rather than bhangra music. The bhangra industry has grown in North America much less than in the United Kingdom.
North American (non bhangra) folk artists such as Manmohan Waris, Jazzy Bains, Kamal Heer, Harbhajan Mann, Sarabjit Cheema, and Debi Makhsoospuri have emerged and the remix market has grown.
In 2001, Punjabi folk, and its hip-hop form, folkhop, began to exert an influence over US R&B music, when Missy Elliott released the folkhop-influenced song "Get Ur Freak On". In 2003, a version of Panjabi MC's "Mundian To Bach Ke" ("Beware of the Boys") featured U.S. rapper Jay-Z. Additionally, American rapper Pras of The Fugees recorded tracks with British alternative bhangra band Swami. American singer and actress Selena Gomez released her bhangra-influenced single "Come & Get It" from her first solo album "Stars Dance" in 2013.
Lyrics.
Bhangra lyrics, which generally cover social issues or love, are sung in Punjabi. Bhangra lyrics were generally kept deliberately simple by the creators of the genre because the youth did not understand complex lyrics. Traditional Punjabi folk lyrics are generally more complex and often tell the tales of Punjabi history. There are many bhangra songs devoted to Punjabi pride themes and Punjabi heroes. The lyrics are tributes to the cultural traditions of Punjab. In particular, many bhangra tracks have been written about Udham Singh and Bhagat Singh. Less serious topics include beautiful women with their colourful duppattas. Lyrics can also be about crops and the coming of a new season. Bhangra is sung fiercely with strong lyrics often yelling: "balle balle" or "chakde phate", which refer to celebration and/or pride.
Notable bhangra or Punjabi lyricists include Harbans Jandu who wrote "Giddhian Di Rani".
Instruments.
Punjabi instruments contribute to bhangra. Originally this was primarily the dhol. The 20th century has brought changes to the instruments that define bhangra, to include the tumbi, sarangi, dholak (smaller than the dhol), flute, zither, fiddle, harmonium, tabla, guitar, mandolin, saxophone, synthesizer, drum set, and other Western instruments. Perhaps the most famous bhangra instrument is the dhol. It is a double-sided barrel drum that creates the beat to which bhangra is danced. The person who plays the instrument, the dholi, plays various beats to create the different bhangra segments, such as Dhamaal, Jhummar, One side of the dhol has thicker skin, which creates a deeper sound, and the other side has a thinner skin, resulting in a higher-pitched sound. Two sticks are used to play the dhol instrument. The thicker stick, called the dagga, is used to play the bass side. The thinner tilli is used to play the treble side. Both sticks are usually made of wood or bamboo.
The string instruments include the guitar (both electrical), bass, sitar, tumbi, veena, violin and sarangi. The snare, toms, dhadd, dafli, dholki, and damru are the other drums. The tumbi, originally played by folk artists such as Lalchand Yamla Jatt and Kuldip Manak in true folk recordings and then notably used by Chamkila, a Punjabi folk (not bhangra) singer, is a high-tone, single-string instrument and Chimta by (Late) Alam Lohar.
Cultural impact and resurgence of Punjabi folk music in the West.
The third and fourth generation are generally unable to speak Punjabi if their parents could hardly speak it. There is a move towards Punjabi folk music which is the purest form of Punjabi music. Much of the youth struggle to understand the lyrics, although, there are some children and young adults who have maintained their folk roots. Another reason why some fans express an anti-folk sentiment is that many folk songs were written for the dominant Jatts clan whereas Sikhs do not believe in castes, so they disapproved of Punjabi folk music. However, today with artists like Jazzy B, PMC, Sukhshinder Shinda and Diljit Dosanjh, Punjabi folk has increased in popularity although it is fused in some cases. iTunes has catalogs of many Punjabi folk singers available.
Another cause of the resurgence of Punjabi folk music is due to the increased popularity of bhangra in areas like the UK, Canada and U.S. Bhangra has become more accessible through social media platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, for the younger generation. In addition, multiple universities, across the UK, US and Canada have teams as well as academies being set up by senior dancers separate from universities. This resurgence has led to a desire for more traditional folk songs and beats, but also a learning opportunity for children of their cultures.
Derivatives.
Bhangragga.
Bhangragga or bhangramuffin is a term for the style of music incorporating elements of bhangra and dancehall (or ragga, short for the word Raggamuffin) created by British Asian producers Simon and Diamond on the debut album by Apache Indian "No Reservations" (1993).
The sound is very percussion-heavy – a distinct holdover from bhangra – with a propulsive beat clearly designed for dancing. The dancehall influence can be felt through the use of pre-programmed music, similar to Dancehall "riddims".
Lyrically, the style features a combination of Sub-Continental-accented (usually Indian) vocals delivered in the clipped style associated with dancehall – and sometimes including the Patois of the latter style.
This style is almost exclusively a British phenomenon, as the two cultures involved in its genesis mix reasonably freely there. The most successful exponent, however, is Apache Indian, who had a worldwide hit with "Boom Shack-A-Lak", which was included on the soundtrack to the film "Dumb and Dumber", among others.
|
3735
|
1301022584
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3735
|
Beastie Boys
|
The Beastie Boys were an American hip hop and rap rock group formed in New York City in 1981. They were composed of Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar), Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums). The Beastie Boys were formed out of members of experimental hardcore punk band the Young Aborigines, which was formed in 1979, with Diamond on drums, Jeremy Shatan on bass guitar, John Berry on guitar, and Kate Schellenbach later joining on percussion. When Shatan left New York City in mid-1981, Yauch replaced him on bass and the resulting band was named the Beastie Boys. Berry left shortly thereafter and was replaced by Horovitz.
After achieving local success with the 1983 comedy hip hop single "Cooky Puss", the 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 album to top the "Billboard" 200 chart. Their second album, "Paul's Boutique" (1989), composed almost entirely of samples, was a commercial failure that 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).
The 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 the Beastie Boys disbanded. The remaining members have released several retrospective works, including a book, a documentary, and a career-spanning compilation album.
History.
1981–1983: Formation and early years.
Prior to forming the Beastie Boys, Michael Diamond was part of a number of bands such as the Walden Jazz Band, and BAN. The Young Aborigines formed in 1979. In 1981, when Young Aborigines bassist Jeremy Shatan left New York City for the summer, the remaining members Diamond, John Berry and Kate Schellenbach began to perform as the Beastie Boys with Adam Yauch.
In a 2007 interview with Charlie Rose, Yauch recalled that it was Berry who suggested the name the 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, Trude Heller's and Max's Kansas City, playing at the latter venue on its closing night. In November 1982, the 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, the 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 the 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 the 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 the 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 the 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. After "Beastie Revolution" was later sampled in a British Airways commercial, the Beastie Boys threatened to sue them over the use of the song, and the airline 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 humor. It wasn't that they were assholes, and even if it was, they were funny with it." Rubin formed Def Jam Recordings with 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). During 1985, the group was the supporting act of the Virgin Tour, Madonna's first concert series. On July 22, 1986, the Beastie Boys opened for John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols band Public Image Ltd., They headlined 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 "Billboard"s 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, the 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 had already done and were owed money for, the 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," reaching number 14 on the US album charts,"" but later attracted acclaim; "Rolling Stone" ranked it number 156 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It also made it onto the Apple Music 100 Best Albums list at number 48.
1990–1997: "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.
The 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.
The Beastie Boys also published "Grand Royal Magazine", which ran for six issues between 1993 and 1997, the first issue 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 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".
"Ill Communication", released in 1994, saw the 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. 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.
The 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 "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 the 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. The Beastie Boys toured South America and Southeast Asia for the first time. The band also released "Aglio e Olio" (Italian for "Garlic and Oil"), 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, the 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, the 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 the 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.
1998–2001: "Hello Nasty".
The 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.
The 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 time that a band had won awards in both rap and alternative categories.
At the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards, the Beastie Boys won the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award for their contributions 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". The 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.
The 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. The Beastie Boys was one of the first bands to make 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.
The Beastie Boys released "", 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, the 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 sustained 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, the 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, the Beastie Boys' first Taiwan appearance. The Beastie Boys also headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Their single, "Ch-Check It Out", debuted on "The O.C." in the season 1 episode "The Vegas", 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). The 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, and headlined the Langerado Music Festival in South Florida on Friday, March 7, 2008. The band 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 was the last live performance by the 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", the 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 another headlining spot for the first night of the All Points West Festival in Jersey City, New Jersey.
In late October 2010, the 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, the 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 letter 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 the Beastie Boys had recorded new music in late 2011, but did not say if these recordings would be released. He also said that the 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.
The 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 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, the 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, Mike D and Ad-Rock released a memoir, "Beastie Boys Book", recounting events throughout the group's history. The book was adapted into a documentary in April 2020, "Beastie Boys Story", directed by Spike Jonze and premiered on Apple TV+. The book and documentary were also complemented by the compilation album "Beastie Boys Music", released in October 2020.
Activism.
In 1994, Yauch and activist Erin Potts organized the Tibetan Freedom Concert to raise awareness of China's human rights violations in Tibet; Yauch became aware of this after speaking with Tibetan refugees while hiking in Nepal. 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 and influences.
Originally a hardcore punk band, the 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 punk rap.
Legacy, influence and cultural impact.
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.
The Beastie Boys are influential in the hip hop and rock music scenes, with artists such as Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, Hed PE, , Sublime, and Blur citing them as an influence. In the 2022 book "What's That Sound?: An Introduction to Rock Music and Its History", music journalists Andrew Flory and John Covach surmised "perhaps the Beastie Boys will prove to be the Elvises of rap—the inevitable white catalysts necessary for exploding black music innovations into Anglo ears."
The 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 the 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.
The Beastie Boys have many high-profile longtime fans, including Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White, who has a bass guitar signed by all three members and a copy of "Beastie Boys Book" in his office. 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" ranked the Beastie Boys as the 12th-most influential artist of the previous 35 years.
Tributes.
In 2022, the New York City Council voted to rename the intersection of Ludlow and Rivington streets in Manhattan's Lower East Side—the location of the "Paul's Boutique" album cover—"Beastie Boys Square". The vote was the result of a grassroots campaign started in 2013 by historian LeRoy McCarthy. The renaming was voted down when first proposed in 2014, but it passed on July 14, 2022. The square was renamed on September 9, 2023, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of hip hop.
Legal issues.
In 2003, the 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, the 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:
Members.
Members
Touring musicians
Discography.
Studio albums
|
3736
|
43069263
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3736
|
British Isles
|
The British Isles are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland), and over six thousand smaller islands. They have a total area of and a combined population of almost 72 million, and include two sovereign states, the Republic of Ireland (which covers roughly five-sixths of Ireland), and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Channel Islands, off the north coast of France, are normally taken to be part of the British Isles, even though geographically they do not form part of the archipelago. Under the UK Interpretation Act 1978, the Channel Islands are clarified as forming part of the British Islands, not to be confused with the British Isles.
The oldest rocks are 2.7 billion years old and are found in Ireland, Wales and the north-west of Scotland. During the Silurian period, the north-western regions collided with the south-east, which had been part of a separate continental landmass. The topography of the islands is modest in scale by global standards. Ben Nevis, the highest mountain, rises to only , and Lough Neagh, which is notably larger than other lakes in the island group, covers . The climate is temperate marine, with cool winters and warm summers. The North Atlantic drift brings significant moisture and raises temperatures above the global average for the latitude. This led to a landscape that was long dominated by temperate rainforest, although human activity has since cleared the vast majority of forest cover. The region was re-inhabited after the last glacial period of Quaternary glaciation, by 12,000 BC, when Great Britain was still part of a peninsula of the European continent. Ireland was connected to Great Britain by the British-Irish Ice Sheet before 14,000 BC, and was not inhabited until after 8000 BC. Great Britain became an island by 7000 BC with the flooding of Doggerland.
The Gaels (Ireland), Picts (northern Great Britain) and Britons (southern Great Britain), all speaking Insular Celtic languages, inhabited the islands at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Much of Brittonic-occupied Britain was conquered by the Roman Empire from AD 43. The first Anglo-Saxons arrived as Roman power waned in the 5th century, and eventually they dominated the bulk of what is now England. Viking invasions began in the 9th century, followed by more permanent settlements and political change, particularly in England. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 and the later Angevin partial conquest of Ireland from 1169 led to the imposition of a new Norman ruling elite across much of Britain and parts of Ireland. By the Late Middle Ages, Great Britain was separated into the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland, while control in Ireland fluxed between Gaelic kingdoms, Hiberno-Norman lords and the English-dominated Lordship of Ireland, soon restricted only to the Pale. The 1603 Union of the Crowns, Acts of Union 1707 and Acts of Union 1800 aimed to consolidate Great Britain and Ireland into a single political unit, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands remaining as Crown Dependencies. The expansion of the British Empire and migrations following the Irish Famine and Highland Clearances resulted in the dispersal of some of the islands' population and culture throughout the world, and rapid depopulation of Ireland in the second half of the 19th century. Most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom after the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Anglo-Irish Treaty (1919–1922), with six counties remaining in the UK as Northern Ireland.
As a term, "British Isles" is a geographical name and not a political unit. In Ireland, the term is controversial, and there are objections to its usage. The Government of Ireland does not officially recognise the term, and its embassy in London discourages its use. "Britain and Ireland" is used as an alternative description, and "Atlantic Archipelago" has also seen limited use in academia. In official documents created jointly by Ireland and the United Kingdom, such as the Good Friday Agreement, the term "these islands" is used.
Etymology.
The earliest known references to the islands as a group appeared in the writings of seafarers from the ancient Greek colony of Massalia. The original records have been lost; however, later writings, e.g. Avienius's "Ora maritima", that quoted from the Massaliote Periplus (6th century BC) and from Pytheas's "On the Ocean" (around 325–320 BC) have survived.
In the 1st century BC, Diodorus Siculus has "Prettanikē nēsos", "the British Island", and "Prettanoi", "the Britons", describes Julius Caesar as having "advanced the Roman Empire as far as the British Isles" (), and remarks on the region "about the British Isles" (). According to Philip Freeman in 2001, "it seems reasonable, especially at this early point in classical knowledge of the Irish, for Diodorus or his sources to think of all inhabitants of the Brettanic Isles as "Brettanoi"".
Strabo used Βρεττανική ("Brettanike"), and Marcian of Heraclea, in his "Periplus maris exteri", used αἱ Πρεττανικαί νῆσοι ("the Prettanic Isles") to refer to the islands.
According to A. L. F. Rivet and Colin Smith in 1979 "the earliest instance of the name which is textually known to us" is in "The Histories" of Polybius, who referred to them . According to Rivet and Smith, this name encompassed "Britain with Ireland". According to Thomas O'Loughlin in 2018, the British Isles was "a concept already present in the minds of those living in continental Europe since at least the 2nd–cent. CE".
Historians today, though not in absolute agreement, largely agree that these Greek and Latin names were probably drawn from native Celtic-language names for the archipelago. Along these lines, the inhabitants of the islands were called the Πρεττανοί ("Priteni" or "Pretani"). The shift from the "P" of "Pretannia" to the "B" of "Britannia" by the Romans occurred during the time of Julius Caesar.
Greco-Egyptian Claudius Ptolemy referred to the larger island as "great Britain" (μεγάλη Βρεττανία "megale Brettania") and to Ireland as "little Britain" (μικρὰ Βρεττανία "mikra Brettania") in his work "Almagest" (147–148 AD). According to Philip Freeman in 2001, Ptolemy "is the only ancient writer to use the name "Little Britain" for Ireland, though in doing so he is well within the tradition of earlier authors who pair a smaller Ireland with a larger Britain as the two Brettanic Isles". In the second book of Ptolemy's "Geography" (), the second and third chapters are respectively titled in and .
In Arabic geography and cartography in the medieval Islamic world, the British Isles are known as or . Arabic geographies, including the "" of al-Battānī, mention the British Isles as twelve islands.
John Skelton's English translation of Diodorus Siculus's , written in the middle 1480s, mentions the British Isles as . Thomas Twyne's English translation of Dionysius Periegetes's , published in 1572, mentions the British Isles as . The earliest citation of the phrase in the "Oxford English Dictionary" is in a work by John Dee dated 1577.
Other names used to describe the islands include the "Anglo-Celtic Isles", "Atlantic archipelago" (a term coined by the historian J. G. A. Pocock in 1975), "British-Irish Isles", "Britain and Ireland", "UK and Ireland", and "British Isles and Ireland".
Owing to political and national associations with the word "British", the Government of Ireland does not use the term "British Isles" and in documents drawn up jointly between the British and Irish governments, the archipelago is referred to simply as "these islands". British Isles is the most widely accepted term for the archipelago.
Geography.
The British Isles lie at the juncture of several regions with past episodes of tectonic mountain building. These orogenic belts form a complex geology that records a huge and varied span of Earth's history. Of particular note was the Caledonian orogeny during the Ordovician and early Silurian periods, when the craton Baltica collided with the terrane Avalonia to form the mountains and hills in northern Britain and Ireland. Baltica formed roughly the north-western half of Ireland and Scotland. Further collisions caused the Variscan orogeny in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, forming the hills of Munster, south-west England, and southern Wales. Over the last 500 million years the land that forms the islands has drifted north-west from around 30°S, crossing the equator around 370 million years ago to reach its present northern latitude.
The islands have been shaped by numerous glaciations during the Quaternary Period, the most recent being the Devensian. As this ended, the central Irish Sea was deglaciated and the English Channel flooded, with sea levels rising to current levels some 8,000 years ago, leaving the British Isles in their current form.
There are about 136 permanently inhabited islands in the group, the largest two being Great Britain and Ireland. Great Britain is to the east and covers . Ireland is to the west and covers . The largest of the other islands are to be found in the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland to the north, Anglesey and the Isle of Man between Great Britain and Ireland, and the Channel Islands near the coast of France. The most densely populated island is Portsea Island, which has an area of but has the third highest population behind Great Britain and Ireland.
The islands are at relatively low altitudes, with central Ireland and southern Great Britain particularly low-lying: the lowest point in the islands is the North Slob in County Wexford, Ireland, with an elevation of . The Scottish Highlands in the northern part of Great Britain are mountainous, with Ben Nevis being the highest point on the islands at . Other mountainous areas include Wales and parts of Ireland, although only seven peaks in these areas reach above . Lakes on the islands are generally not large, although Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is an exception, covering . The largest freshwater body in Great Britain (by area) is Loch Lomond at , and Loch Ness (by volume) whilst Loch Morar is the deepest freshwater body in the British Isles, with a maximum depth of . There are a number of major rivers within the British Isles. The longest is the Shannon in Ireland at . The river Severn at is the longest in Great Britain.
Climate.
The climate of the British Isles is mild, moist and changeable with abundant rainfall and a lack of temperature extremes. It is defined as a temperate oceanic climate, or "Cfb" on the Köppen climate classification system, a classification it shares with most of north-west Europe. The North Atlantic Drift ("Gulf Stream"), which flows from the Gulf of Mexico, brings with it significant moisture and raises temperatures above the global average for the islands' latitudes. Most Atlantic depressions pass to the north of the islands; combined with the general westerly circulation and interactions with the landmass, this imposes a general east–west variation in climate. There are four distinct climate patterns: south-east, with cold winters, warm and dry summers; south-west, having mild and very wet winters, warm and wet summers; north-west, generally wet with mild winters and cool summers; and north-east with cold winters, cool summers.
Flora and fauna.
The islands have a mild climate and varied soils, giving rise to a diverse pattern of vegetation. Animal and plant life is similar to that of the north-western European mainland. There are however, fewer numbers of species, with Ireland having even less. All native flora and fauna in Ireland is made up of species that migrated primarily from Great Britain. The only window when this could have occurred was prior to the melting of the ice bridge between the two islands 14,000 years ago approaching the end of the last ice age.
As with most of Europe, prehistoric Britain and Ireland were covered with forest and swamp. Clearing began around 6000 BC and accelerated in medieval times. Despite this, Britain retained its primeval forests longer than most of Europe due to a small population and later development of trade and industry, and wood shortages were not a problem until the 17th century. By the 18th century, most of Britain's forests were consumed for shipbuilding or manufacturing charcoal and the nation was forced to import lumber from Scandinavia, North America, and the Baltic. Most forest land in Ireland is maintained by state forestation programmes. Almost all land outside urban areas is farmland. However, relatively large areas of forest remain in east and north Scotland and in southeast England. Oak, elm, ash and beech are amongst the most common trees in England. In Scotland, pine and birch are most common. Natural forests in Ireland are mainly oak, ash, wych elm, birch and pine. Beech and lime, though not native to Ireland, are also common there. Farmland hosts a variety of semi-natural vegetation of grasses and flowering plants. Woods, hedgerows, mountain slopes and marshes host heather, wild grasses, gorse and bracken.
Many larger animals, such as wolves, bears and European elk are today extinct. However, some species such as red deer are protected. Other small mammals, such as rabbits, foxes, badgers, hares, hedgehogs, and stoats, are very common and the European beaver has been reintroduced in parts of Scotland. Wild boar have also been reintroduced to parts of southern England, following escapes from boar farms and illegal releases. Many rivers contain otters and grey and common seals are numerous on coasts. There are about 250 bird species regularly recorded in Great Britain, and another 350 that occur with varying degrees of rarity. The most numerous species are wren, robin, house sparrow, woodpigeon, chaffinch and blackbird. Farmland birds are declining in number, except for those kept for game such as pheasant, red-legged partridge, and red grouse. Fish are abundant in the rivers and lakes, in particular salmon, trout, perch and pike. Sea fish include dogfish, cod, sole, pollock and bass, as well as mussels, crab and oysters along the coast. There are more than 21,000 species of insects.
Few species of reptiles or amphibians are found in Great Britain or Ireland. Only three snakes are native to Great Britain: the adder, the barred grass snake and the smooth snake; none are native to Ireland. In general, Great Britain has slightly more variation and native wildlife, with weasels, polecats, wildcats, most shrews, moles, water voles, roe deer and common toads also being absent from Ireland. This pattern is also true for birds and insects. Notable exceptions include the Kerry slug and certain species of woodlouse native to Ireland but not Great Britain.
Domestic animals include the Connemara pony, Shetland pony, English Mastiff, Irish Wolfhound and many varieties of cattle and sheep.
Demographics.
England has a generally high population density, with almost 80% of the total population of the islands. Elsewhere in Great Britain and Ireland, high density of population is limited to areas around a few large cities. The largest urban area by far is the Greater London Built-up Area with 9 million inhabitants. Other major population centres include the Greater Manchester Built-up Area (2.4 million), West Midlands conurbation (2.4 million) and West Yorkshire Urban Area (1.6 million) in England, Greater Glasgow (1.2 million) in Scotland and Greater Dublin Area (1.9 million) in Ireland.
The population of England rose rapidly during the 19th and 20th centuries, whereas the populations of Scotland and Wales showed little increase during the 20th century; the population of Scotland has remained unchanged since 1951. Ireland for most of its history had much the same population density as Great Britain (about one-third of the total population). However, since the Great Irish Famine, the population of Ireland has fallen to less than one-tenth of the population of the British Isles. The famine caused a century-long population decline, drastically reduced the Irish population and permanently altered the demographic make-up of the British Isles. On a global scale, this disaster led to the creation of an Irish diaspora that numbers fifteen times the current population of the island.
The linguistic heritage of the British Isles is rich, with twelve languages from six groups across four branches of the Indo-European family. The Insular Celtic languages of the Goidelic sub-group (Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic) and the Brittonic sub-group (Cornish, Welsh and Breton, spoken in north-western France) are the only remaining Celtic languages—the last of their continental relations were extinct before the 7th century. The Norman languages of Guernésiais, Jèrriais and Sercquiais spoken in the Channel Islands are similar to French, a language also spoken there. A cant, called Shelta, is spoken by Irish Travellers, often to conceal meaning from those outside the group. However, English, including Scots, is the dominant language, with few monoglots remaining in the other languages of the region. The Norn language of Orkney and Shetland became extinct around 1880.
History.
2.5 million years ago the British Isles were repeatedly submerged beneath an ice sheet which extended into the middle of the North Sea, with a larger ice sheet that covered a significant proportion of Scandinavia on the opposite side. Around 1.9 million years ago these two ice sheets frequently merged, essentially creating a land bridge between Scandinavia and northern Great Britain. Further south, there was a direct land bridge, now known as Doggerland, which was gradually submerged as sea levels rose. However, the Irish Sea was formed before Doggerland was completely covered in water, with Ireland becoming an island roughly 6,000 years before Great Britain did.
The first evidence of human activity on the islands dates from 840,000 or 950,000 years ago, based in flint tools found near Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast of Great Britain. In contrast, the earliest evidence of human activity on the island of Ireland dates from 12,500 years ago.
At the time of the Roman Empire, about two thousand years ago, various tribes, which spoke Celtic dialects of the Insular Celtic group, were inhabiting the islands. The Romans expanded their civilisation to control southern Great Britain but were impeded in advancing any further, building Hadrian's Wall to mark the northern frontier of their empire in 122 AD. At that time, Ireland was populated by a people known as Hiberni, the northern third or so of Great Britain by a people known as Picts and the southern two thirds by Britons.
Anglo-Saxons arrived as Roman power waned in the 5th century AD. Initially, their arrival seems to have been at the invitation of the Britons as mercenaries to repulse incursions by the Hiberni and Picts. In time, Anglo-Saxon demands on the British became so great that they came to culturally dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain, though recent genetic evidence suggests Britons still formed the bulk of the population. This dominance created what is now England and left culturally British enclaves only in the north of what is now England, in Cornwall and what is now known as Wales. Ireland had been unaffected by the Romans except, significantly, for being Christianised—traditionally by the Romano-Briton, Saint Patrick. As Europe, including Britain, descended into turmoil following the collapse of Roman civilisation, an era known as the Dark Ages, Ireland entered a golden age and responded with missions (first to Great Britain and then to the continent), the founding of monasteries and universities. These were later joined by Anglo-Saxon missions of a similar nature.
Viking invasions began in the 9th century, followed by more permanent settlements, particularly along the east coast of Ireland, the west coast of modern-day Scotland and the Isle of Man. Though the Vikings were eventually neutralised in Ireland, their influence remained in the cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Wexford. England, however, was slowly conquered around the turn of the first millennium AD, and eventually became a feudal possession of Denmark. The relations between the descendants of Vikings in England and counterparts in Normandy, in northern France, lay at the heart of a series of events that led to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, which conquered England, remain associated to the English Crown as the Channel Islands to this day. A century later, the marriage of the future Henry II of England to Eleanor of Aquitaine created the Angevin Empire, partially under the French Crown. At the invitation of Diarmait Mac Murchada, a provincial king, and under the authority of Pope Adrian IV (the only Englishman to be elected pope), the Angevins invaded Ireland in 1169. Though initially intended to be kept as an independent kingdom, the failure of the Irish High King to ensure the terms of the Treaty of Windsor led Henry II, as King of England, to rule as effective monarch under the title of Lord of Ireland. This title was granted to his younger son, but when Henry's heir unexpectedly died, the title of King of England and Lord of Ireland became entwined in one person.
By the Late Middle Ages, Great Britain was separated into the Kingdoms of England and Scotland. Power in Ireland fluxed between Gaelic kingdoms, Hiberno-Norman lords and the English-dominated Lordship of Ireland. A similar situation existed in the Principality of Wales, which was slowly being annexed into the Kingdom of England by a series of laws. During the course of the 15th century, the Crown of England would assert a claim to the Crown of France, thereby also releasing the King of England from being vassal of the King of France. In 1534, King Henry VIII, at first having been a strong defender of Roman Catholicism in the face of the Reformation, separated from the Roman Church after failing to secure a divorce from the Pope. His response was to place the King of England as "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England", thereby removing the authority of the Pope from the affairs of the English Church. Ireland, which had been held by the King of England as Lord of Ireland, but which strictly speaking had been a feudal possession of the Pope since the Norman invasion was declared a separate kingdom in personal union with England.
Scotland meanwhile had remained an independent Kingdom. In 1603, that changed when the King of Scotland inherited the Crown of England, and consequently the Crown of Ireland also. The subsequent 17th century was one of political upheaval, religious division and war. English colonialism in Ireland of the 16th century was extended by large-scale Scottish and English colonies in Ulster. Religious division heightened, and the king of England came into conflict with parliament over his tolerance towards Catholicism. The resulting English Civil War or War of the Three Kingdoms led to a revolutionary republic in England. Ireland, largely Catholic, was mainly loyal to the king, but by military conquest was subsumed into the new republic. Following defeat to the parliament's army, large scale land distributions from loyalist Irish nobility to English commoners in the service of the parliamentary army created a new Ascendancy class which obliterated the remnants of Old English (Hiberno-Norman) and Gaelic Irish nobility in Ireland. The new ruling class was Protestant and English, whilst the populace was largely Catholic and Irish. This theme would influence Irish politics for centuries to come. When the monarchy was restored in England, the king found it politically impossible to restore the lands of former landowners in Ireland. The "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 repeated similar themes: a Catholic king pushing for religious tolerance in opposition to a Protestant parliament in England. The king's army was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne and at the militarily crucial Battle of Aughrim in Ireland. Resistance held out, eventually forcing the guarantee of religious tolerance in the Treaty of Limerick. However, the terms were never honoured and a new monarchy was installed.
The Kingdoms of England and Scotland were unified in 1707 creating the Kingdom of Great Britain. Following an attempted republican revolution in Ireland in 1798, the Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain were unified in 1801, creating the United Kingdom. The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands remaining outside of the United Kingdom, but with their ultimate good governance being the responsibility of the British Crown (effectively the British government). Although the colonies of North America that would become the United States of America were lost by the start of the 19th century, the British Empire expanded rapidly elsewhere. A century later, it would cover one-third of the globe. Poverty in the United Kingdom remained desperate, however, and industrialisation in England led to terrible conditions for the working classes. Mass migrations following the Irish Famine and Highland Clearances resulted in the distribution of the islands' population and culture throughout the world and a rapid de-population of Ireland in the second half of the 19th century. Most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom after the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Anglo-Irish Treaty (1919–1922), with the six counties that formed Northern Ireland remaining as an autonomous region of the UK.
Politics.
There are two sovereign states in the British Isles: Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Ireland, sometimes called the Republic of Ireland, governs five-sixths of the island of Ireland, with the remainder of the island forming Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually shortened to simply "the United Kingdom", which governs the remainder of the archipelago with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The Isle of Man and the two Bailiwicks of the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, are known as the Crown Dependencies. They exercise constitutional rights of self-government and judicial independence; responsibility for international representation rests largely with the UK (in consultation with the respective governments); and responsibility for defence is reserved by the UK. The United Kingdom is made up of four constituent parts: England, Scotland and Wales, forming Great Britain, and Northern Ireland in the northeast of the island of Ireland. Of these, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved governments, meaning that each has its own parliament or assembly and is self-governing with respect to certain matters set down by law. For judicial purposes, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales (the latter being one entity) form separate legal jurisdictions, with there being no single law for the UK as a whole.
Ireland, the United Kingdom and the three Crown dependencies are all parliamentary democracies, with their own separate parliaments. All parts of the United Kingdom return Members of Parliament (MPs) to parliament in London. In addition to this, voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland return members to a devolved parliament in Edinburgh and in Cardiff and an assembly in Belfast. Governance in the norm is by majority rule; however, Northern Ireland uses a system of power sharing whereby unionists and nationalists share executive posts proportionately and where the assent of both groups is required for the Northern Ireland Assembly to make certain decisions. (In the context of Northern Ireland, unionists are those who want Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom and nationalists are those who want Northern Ireland to join with the rest of Ireland.) The British monarch is the head of state of the United Kingdom, while in the Republic of Ireland the head of state is the President of Ireland.
Ireland is the only part of the isles that is a member state of the European Union (EU). The UK was a member between 1 January 1973 and 31 January 2020, but the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands were not. Since the partition of Ireland, an informal free-travel area has existed across the island of Ireland. This area required formal recognition in 1997 during the course of negotiations for the Amsterdam Treaty of the European Union, and (together with the Crown dependencies) is now known as the Common Travel Area. As such, Ireland is not part of the Schengen Area, which allows passport-free travel between most EU member states, and is the only member state with an opt-out from the obligation to join the Schengen Zone.
Reciprocal arrangements allow British and Irish citizens specific voting rights in the two states. In Ireland, British citizens can vote in General and local elections, but not in European Parliament elections, constitutional referendums or presidential elections (for which there is no comparable franchise in the United Kingdom). In the United Kingdom, Irish and Commonwealth citizens can vote in every election for which British citizens are eligible. In the Crown dependencies, any resident can vote in general elections, but in Jersey and the Isle of Man only British citizens can run for office. These pre-date European Union law, and in both jurisdictions go further than what was required by European Union law (EU citizens may only vote in local elections in both states and European elections in Ireland). In 2008, a UK Ministry of Justice report investigating how to strengthen the British sense of citizenship proposed to end this arrangement, arguing that "the right to vote is one of the hallmarks of the political status of citizens; it is not a means of expressing closeness between countries".
In addition, some civil bodies are organised throughout the islands as a whole. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), a charity that operates a lifeboat service, is organised throughout the islands as a whole, covering the waters of the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands.
The Northern Ireland peace process has led to a number of unusual arrangements between the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. For example, citizens of Northern Ireland are entitled to the choice of Irish or British citizenship or both, and the Governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom consult on matters not devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive. The Northern Ireland Executive and the Government of Ireland also meet as the North/South Ministerial Council to develop policies common across the island of Ireland. These arrangements were made following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
British–Irish Council.
Another body established under the Good Friday Agreement, the British–Irish Council, is made up of all of the states and territories of the British Isles. The British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly () predates the British–Irish Council and was established in 1990. Originally it comprised 25 members of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament, and 25 members of the parliament of the United Kingdom, with the purpose of building mutual understanding between members of both legislatures. Since then the role and scope of the body has been expanded to include representatives from the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd (Welsh Parliament), the Northern Ireland Assembly, the States of Jersey, the States of Guernsey and the High Court of Tynwald (Isle of Man).
The Council does not have executive powers but meets biannually to discuss issues of mutual importance. Similarly, the Parliamentary Assembly has no legislative powers but investigates and collects witness evidence from the public on matters of mutual concern to its members. Reports on its findings are presented to the Governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom. During the February 2008 meeting of the British–Irish Council, it was agreed to set up a standing secretariat that would serve as a permanent 'civil service' for the Council. Leading on from developments in the British–Irish Council, the chair of the British–Irish Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, Niall Blaney, has suggested that the body should shadow the British–Irish Council's work.
Culture.
The United Kingdom and Ireland have separate media, although British television, newspapers and magazines are widely available in Ireland, giving people in Ireland a high level of familiarity with the culture of the United Kingdom. Irish newspapers are also available in the UK, and Irish state and private television are widely available in Northern Ireland. Certain reality TV shows have embraced the whole of the islands, for example "The X Factor", seasons 3, 4 and 7 of which featured auditions in Dublin and were open to Irish voters, whilst the show previously known as "Britain's Next Top Model" became "Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model" in 2011. A few cultural events are organised for the island group as a whole. For example, the Costa Book Awards are awarded to authors resident in the UK or Ireland. The Mercury Music Prize is handed out every year to the best album from a British or Irish musician or group.
Many globally popular sports had their modern rules codified in the British Isles, including golf, association football, cricket, rugby, snooker and darts, as well as many minor sports such as croquet, bowls, pitch and putt, water polo and handball. A number of sports are popular throughout the British Isles, the most prominent of which is association football. While this is organised separately in different national associations, leagues and national teams, even within the UK, it is a common passion in all parts of the islands. Rugby union is also widely enjoyed across the islands with four national teams from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The British and Irish Lions is a team chosen from each national team and undertakes tours of the Southern Hemisphere rugby-playing nations every four years. Ireland plays as a united team, represented by players from both Northern Ireland and the Republic. These national rugby teams play each other each year for the Triple Crown as part of the Six Nations Championship. Also, since 2001, the professional club teams of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy and South Africa compete against each other in the United Rugby Championship. Gaelic Football and Hurling are the two most common sports in the Republic of Ireland and among the top sports in Northern Ireland and have their roots in ancient Gaelic culture
The Ryder Cup in golf was originally played between a United States team and a team representing Great Britain and Ireland. From 1979 onwards, this was expanded to include the whole of Europe.
Transport.
London Heathrow Airport is Europe's busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic, and the Dublin-London route is the busiest air route in Europe collectively, the busiest route out of Heathrow, and among the top-20 busiest international air routes in the world. The English Channel and the southern North Sea are the busiest seaways in the world. The Channel Tunnel, opened in 1994, links Great Britain to France and is the second-longest rail tunnel in the world.
The idea of building a tunnel under the Irish Sea has been raised since 1895, when it was first investigated. Several potential Irish Sea tunnel projects have been proposed, most recently the Tusker Tunnel between the ports of Rosslare and Fishguard proposed by The Institute of Engineers of Ireland in 2004. A rail tunnel was proposed in 1997 on a different route, between Dublin and Holyhead, by British engineering firm Symonds. Either tunnel, at , would be by far the longest in the world, and would cost an estimated £15 billion (€20 billion). A proposal in 2007, estimated the cost of building a bridge from County Antrim in Northern Ireland to Galloway in Scotland at £3.5bn (€5bn).
|
3738
|
7903804
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3738
|
Basque language
|
Basque ( ; ) is a language spoken by Basques and other residents of the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of northern Spain and southwestern France. Basque is classified as a language isolate (unrelated to any other known languages), the only one in Europe. The Basques are indigenous to and primarily inhabit the Basque Country. The Basque language is spoken by 806,000 Basques in all territories. Of them, 93.7% (756,000) are in the Spanish area of the Basque Country and the remaining 6.3% (50,000) are in the French portion.
Native speakers live in a contiguous area that includes parts of four Spanish provinces and the three "ancient provinces" in France. Gipuzkoa, most of Biscay, a few municipalities on the northern border of Álava and the northern area of Navarre formed the core of the remaining Basque-speaking area before measures were introduced in the 1980s to strengthen Basque fluency. By contrast, most of Álava, the westernmost part of Biscay, and central and southern Navarre are predominantly populated by native speakers of Spanish, either because Basque was replaced by either Navarro-Aragonese or Spanish over the centuries (as in most of Álava and central Navarre), or because it may never have been spoken there (as in parts of Enkarterri and south-eastern Navarre).
In Francoist Spain, Basque language use was discouraged by the government's repressive policies. In the Basque Country, "Francoist repression was not only political, but also linguistic and cultural." Franco's regime suppressed Basque from official discourse, education, and publishing, making it illegal to register newborn babies under Basque names, and even requiring tombstone engravings in Basque to be removed. In some provinces the public use of Basque was suppressed, with people fined for speaking it. Public use of Basque was frowned upon by supporters of the regime, often regarded as a sign of anti-Francoism or separatism. Overall, in the 1960s and later, the trend reversed and education and publishing in Basque began to flourish. As a part of this process, a standardised form of the Basque language, called Euskara Batua, was developed by the Euskaltzaindia in the late 1960s.
Besides its standardised version, the five historic Basque dialects are Biscayan, Gipuzkoan, and Upper Navarrese in Spain and Navarrese–Lapurdian and Souletin in France. They take their names from the historic Basque provinces, but the dialect boundaries are not congruent with province boundaries. Euskara Batua was created so that the Basque language could be used—and easily understood by all Basque speakers—in formal situations (education, mass media, literature), and this is its main use today. In both Spain and France, the use of Basque for education varies from region to region and from school to school.
Basque is the only surviving Paleo-European language in Europe. The current mainstream scientific view on the origin of the Basques and of their language is that early forms of Basque developed before the arrival of Indo-European languages in the area, i.e. before the arrival of Celtic and Romance languages in particular, as the latter today geographically surround the Basque-speaking region. Typologically, with its agglutinative morphology and ergative–absolutive alignment, Basque grammar remains markedly different from that of Standard Average European languages. Nevertheless, Basque has borrowed up to 40 percent of its vocabulary from Romance languages, and the Latin script is used for the Basque alphabet.
Names of the language.
In Basque, the name of the language is officially (alongside various dialect forms).
In French, the language is normally called though has become common in recent times. Spanish has a greater variety of names for the language. Today, it is most commonly referred to as , , or . Both terms, and , are inherited from the Latin ethnonym , which in turn goes back to the Greek term (), an ethnonym used by Strabo in his (23 CE, Book III).
The Spanish term , derived from Latin , has acquired negative connotations over the centuries and is not well-liked amongst Basque speakers generally. Its use is documented at least as far back as the 14th century when a law passed in Huesca in 1349 stated that —essentially penalising the use of Arabic, Hebrew, or Basque in marketplaces with a fine of 30 sols (the equivalent of 30 sheep).
History and classification.
Although the Basque language is geographically surrounded by Romance languages, it is a language isolate that is unrelated to them or to any other living language. Most scholars believe Basque to be the last remaining descendant of one of the pre-Indo-European languages of prehistoric Europe. Consequently, it may be impossible to reconstruct the prehistory of the Basque language by the traditional comparative method except by applying it to differences between Basque dialects. Little is known of its origins, but it is likely that an early form of the Basque language was present in and around the area of modern Basque Country before the arrival of the Indo-European languages in western Europe during the 3rd millennium BC.
Authors such as Miguel de Unamuno and Louis Lucien Bonaparte have noted that the words for "knife" (), "axe" (), and "hoe" () appear to derive from the word for "stone" (), and have therefore concluded that the language dates to prehistoric Europe when those tools were made of stone. Others find this theory unlikely.
Latin inscriptions in preserve a number of words with cognates in the reconstructed proto-Basque language, for instance, the personal names and ( and mean 'young girl' and 'man', respectively in modern Basque). This language is generally referred to as Aquitanian and is assumed to have been spoken in the area before the Roman Republic's conquests in the western Pyrenees. Some authors even argue for late Basquisation, that the language moved westward during Late Antiquity after the fall of the Western Roman Empire into the northern part of Hispania into what is now the Basque Country.
Roman neglect of this area allowed Aquitanian to survive while the Iberian and Tartessian languages became extinct. Through the long contact with Romance languages, Basque adopted a sizeable number of Romance words. Initially the source was Latin, later Gascon (a branch of Occitan) in the north-east, Navarro-Aragonese in the south-east and Spanish in the south-west.
Since 1968, Basque has been immersed in a revitalisation process, facing formidable obstacles. However, significant progress has been made in numerous areas. Six main factors have been identified to explain its relative success:
While those six factors influenced the revitalisation process, the extensive development and use of language technologies is also considered a significant additional factor.
Hypotheses concerning Basque's connections to other languages.
Many linguists have tried to link Basque with other languages, but no hypothesis has gained mainstream acceptance. Apart from pseudoscientific comparisons, the appearance of long-range linguistics gave rise to several attempts to connect Basque with geographically very distant language families such as Georgian. Historical work on Basque is challenging since written material and documentation has been available only for some few hundred years. Almost all hypotheses concerning the origin of Basque are controversial, and the suggested evidence is not generally accepted by mainstream linguists. Some of these hypothetical connections are:
Geographic distribution.
The region where Basque is spoken has become smaller over centuries, especially at the northern, southern, and eastern borders. Nothing is known about the limits of the region in ancient times but on the basis of toponyms and epigraphs, it seems that in the beginning of the Common Era it stretched to the river Garonne in the north (including the south-western part of present-day France); at least to the Val d'Aran in the east (now a Gascon-speaking part of Catalonia), including lands on both sides of the Pyrenees; the southern and western boundaries are not clear at all.
The Reconquista temporarily counteracted that contracting tendency when the Christian lords called on northern Iberian peoples (Basques, Asturians, and "Franks") to colonise the new conquests. The Basque language became the main everyday language, while other languages like Spanish, Gascon, French, or Latin were preferred for the administration and high education.
By the 16th century, the Basque-speaking area was reduced basically to the present-day seven provinces of the Basque Country, excluding the southern part of Navarre, the south-western part of Álava, and the western part of Biscay, and including some parts of Béarn.
In 1807, Basque was still spoken in the northern half of Álava—including its capital city Vitoria-Gasteiz—and a vast area in central Navarre, but in those two provinces, Basque experienced a rapid decline that pushed its border northwards. In the French Basque Country, Basque was still spoken in all the territory except in Bayonne and some villages around, and including some bordering towns in Béarn.
In the 20th century, however, the rise of Basque nationalism spurred increased interest in the language as a sign of ethnic identity, and with the establishment of autonomous governments in the Southern Basque Country, it has recently made a modest comeback. In the Spanish part, Basque-language schools for children and Basque-teaching centres for adults have brought the language to areas such as western Enkarterri and the Ribera del Ebro in southern Navarre, where it is not known to ever have been widely spoken; and in the French Basque Country, those schools and centres have almost stopped the decline of the language.
Official status.
Historically, Latin or Romance languages have been the official languages in the region. However, Basque was explicitly recognised in some areas. For instance, the "fuero" or charter of the Basque-colonised Ojacastro (now in La Rioja) allowed the inhabitants to use Basque in legal processes in the 13th and 14th centuries. Basque was allowed in telegraph messages in Spain thanks to the royal decree of 1904.
The Spanish Constitution of 1978 states in Article 3 that the Spanish language is the official language of the nation, but allows autonomous communities to provide a co-official language status for the other languages of Spain. Consequently, the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Autonomous Community establishes Basque as the co-official language of the autonomous community. The Statute of Navarre establishes Spanish as the official language of Navarre, but grants co-official status to the Basque language in the Basque-speaking areas of northern Navarre. Basque has no official status in the French Basque Country and French citizens are barred from officially using Basque in a French court of law. However, the use of Basque by Spanish nationals in French courts is permitted (with translation), as Basque is officially recognised on the other side of the border.
The positions of the various existing governments differ with regard to the promotion of Basque in areas where Basque is commonly spoken. The language has official status in those territories that are within the Basque Autonomous Community, where it is spoken and promoted heavily but only partially in Navarre. The (), seen as contentious by many Basques, but considered fitting Navarra's linguistic and cultural diversity by some of the main political parties of Navarre, divides Navarre into three language areas: Basque-speaking, non-Basque-speaking, and mixed. Support for the language and the linguistic rights of citizens vary, depending on the area. Others consider it unfair, since the rights of Basque speakers differ greatly depending on the place they live.
Demographics.
The 2021 sociolinguistic survey of all Basque-speaking territories showed that, of all people aged 16 and above:
In 2021, out of a population of 2,634,800 over 16 years of age (1,838,800 in the Autonomous community, 546,000 in Navarre and 250,000 in the Northern Basque Country), 806,000 spoke Basque, which amounted to 30.6% of the population. Compared to the 1991 figures, that represents an overall increase of 266,000, from 539,110 speakers 30 years previously (430,000 in the BAC, 40,110 in FCN, and 69,000 in the Northern provinces). The number has tended to increase, as in all regions the age group most likely to speak Basque was those between 16 and 24 years old. In the BAC, the proportion in that age group that spoke the language (74.5%) was nearly triple the comparable figure from 1991, when barely a quarter of the population spoke Basque.
While there is a general increase in the number of Basque speakers during the period, that is mainly because of bilingualism. Basque transmission as a sole mother tongue has decreased from 19% in 1991 to 15.1% in 2016, and Basque and another language being used as mother language increased from 3% to 5.4% in the same time period. General public attitude towards efforts to promote the Basque language have also been more positive, with the share of people against those efforts falling from 20.9% in 1991 to 16% in 2016.
In 2021, the study found that in the BAC, when both parents were Basque speakers, 98% of children were communicated to only in Basque, and 2% were communicated to in both Basque and Spanish. When only one parent was a Basque-speaker and had Basque as a first language, 84% used Basque and Spanish and 16% only Spanish. In Navarre, the family language of 94.3% of the youngest respondents with both Basque parents was Basque. In the Northern Basque Country, however, when both parents were Basque-speaking, just two thirds transmitted only Basque to their offspring, and as age decreased, the transmission rate also decreased.
Basque is used as a language of commerce both in the Basque Country and in locations around the world where Basques immigrated throughout history.
Dialects.
The modern Basque dialects show a high degree of dialectal divergence, sometimes making cross-dialect communication difficult. That is especially true in the case of Biscayan and Souletin, which are regarded as the most divergent Basque dialects.
Modern Basque dialectology distinguishes five dialects:
Those dialects are divided in 11 subdialects, and 24 minor varieties among them.
According to Koldo Zuazo, the Biscayan dialect or "Western" is the most widespread dialect, with around 300,000 speakers out of a total of around 660,000 speakers. The dialect is divided in two minor subdialects (Western Biscayan and Eastern Biscayan), as well as transitional dialects.
Influence on other languages.
Although the influence of the neighbouring Romance languages on the Basque language (especially the lexicon, but also to some degree Basque phonology and grammar) has been much more extensive, it is usually assumed that there has been some influence from Basque into those languages as well. Gascon and Aragonese particularly and Spanish to a lesser degree are thought to have received Basque influence in the past. In the cases of Aragonese and Gascon, that would have been through substrate interference following language shift from Aquitanian or Basque to a Romance language that has affected all levels of the language, including place names around the Pyrenees.
Although a number of words of alleged Basque origin in Spanish are circulated (e.g. 'anchovies', 'dashing, gallant, spirited', 'puppy', etc.), most of them have more easily-explained Romance etymologies or not particularly-convincing derivations from Basque. Ignoring cultural terms, there is one strong loanword candidate, , long considered the source of the Pyrenean and Iberian Romance words for "left (side)" (, , ). The lack of initial in Gascon could arguably be from Basque influence, but that issue is under-researched.
There are other most commonly-claimed substrate influences:
The first two features are common, widespread developments in many Romance (and non-Romance) languages. The change of to occurred historically only in limited areas (Gascony and northern Old Castile), which correspond almost exactly to the places where heavy Basque bilingualism in the past is assumed and, as a result, has been widely postulated and equally strongly disputed. Substrate theories are often difficult to prove (especially in the case of phonetically-plausible changes like to ). As a result, many arguments have been made on both sides, but the debate largely comes down to the a priori tendency on the part of particular linguists to accept or reject substrate arguments.
Examples of arguments against the substrate theory and possible responses:
Beyond those arguments, a number of nomadic groups of Castile are also said to use or have used Basque words in their jargon, such as the gacería in Segovia, the mingaña, the Galician fala dos arxinas and the Asturian Xíriga.
Part of the Romani community in the Basque Country speaks Erromintxela, which is a rare mixed language, with a Kalderash Romani vocabulary and Basque grammar.
Basque pidgins.
A number of Basque-based or Basque-influenced pidgins have existed. In the 16th century, Basque sailors used a Basque–Icelandic pidgin in their contacts with Iceland. The Algonquian–Basque pidgin arose from contact between Basque whalers and the Algonquian peoples in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and Strait of Belle Isle.
Phonology.
Vowels.
The Basque language features five vowels: , , , and (the same that are found in Spanish, Asturian and Aragonese). In the Zuberoan dialect, extra phonemes are featured:
There is no distinctive vowel length in Basque although vowels may be lengthened for emphasis. The mid vowels and are raised before nasal consonants.
Basque has an elision rule according to which the vowel is elided before any following vowel. That does not prevent the existence of diphthongs with present.
There are six diphthongs in Basque, all falling and with or as the second element.
Consonants.
In syllable-final position, all plosives are devoiced and are spelled accordingly in Standard Basque. When between vowels, and often when after or , the voiced plosives , , and , are pronounced as the corresponding fricatives , , and .
Basque has a distinction between laminal and apical articulation for the alveolar fricatives and affricates. With the laminal alveolar fricative , the friction occurs across the blade of the tongue, the tongue tip pointing toward the lower teeth. That is the usual in most European languages and is written with an orthographic . In contrast, the voiceless apicoalveolar fricative is written ; the tip of the tongue points toward the upper teeth and friction occurs at the tip (apex). For example, (singular, respectful) is distinguished from . The affricate counterparts are written and . So, is distinguished from ; is distinguished from .
In the westernmost parts of the Basque country, only the apical and the alveolar affricate are used.
Basque also features postalveolar sibilants (, written , and , written ).
The letter has a variety of realisations according to the regional dialect: , as pronounced from west to east in south Bizkaia and coastal Lapurdi, central Bizkaia, east Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, south Navarre, inland Lapurdi and Low Navarre, and Zuberoa, respectively.
The letter is pronounced in the northern dialects but not in the southern ones. Unified Basque spells it except when it is predictable, after a consonant.
Unless they are recent loanwords (e.g. , , ... ), words may not have initial . In older loans, initial "r-" took a prosthetic vowel, resulting in "err-" ( , ), more rarely "irr-" (for example , ) and "arr-" (for example ).
Basque does not have in syllable final position, and syllable-final assimilates to the place of articulation of following plosives. As a result, is pronounced like , and is realized as .
Palatalization.
Basque has two types of palatalization, automatic palatalization and expressive palatalization. Automatic palatalization occurs in western Labourd, much of Navarre, all of Gipuzkoa, and nearly all of Biscay. As a result of automatic palatalization, and become the palatal nasal and the palatal lateral respectively after the vowel and before another vowel. An exception is the loanword 'lily'. The same palatalization occurs after the semivowel of the diphthongs "ai, ei, oi, ui". The palatalization occurs in a wider area, including Soule, all of Gipuzkoa and Biscay, and almost all of Navarre. In a few regions, and can be palatalized even in the absence of a following vowel. After palatalization, the semivowel is usually absorbed by the palatal consonant. That can be seen in older spellings, such as instead of modern 'degree'. However, the modern orthography for Standard Basque ignores automatic palatalization.
In certain regions of Gipuzkoa and Biscay, intervocalic is often palatalized after and especially . It may become indistinguishable from the affricate , spelled , so 'father' may sound like it were spelled or . That type of palatalization is far from general, and is often viewed as substandard.
In Goizueta Basque, there are a few examples of being palatalized after , and optional palatalization of . For example, 'seedbed' becomes , and 'lamb' can be .
Basque nouns, adjectives, and adverbs can be expressively palatalized and express 'smallness', rarely literal; they often show affection in nouns and mitigation in adjectives and adverbs. That is often used in the formation of pet names and nicknames. In words containing one or more sibilant, those sibilants are palatalized to form the palatalized form. That is, "s" and "z" become "x", and "ts" and "tz" become "tx". As a result, 'man' becomes 'little fellow', 'crazy, insane' becomes 'silly, foolish', and 'lamb' becomes 'lambkin, young lamb'.
In words without sibilants, , , , and can become palatalized, which is indicated in writing with a double consonant except in the case of palatalized , which is written . Thus, 'drop' becomes 'droplet', and 'grey' becomes 'grey and pretty, greyish'.
The pronunciation of "tt" and "dd", and the existence of "dd", differ by dialect. In the Gipuzkoan and Biscayan dialects "tt" is often pronounced the same as "tx", that is, as , and "dd" does not exist. Likewise, in Goizueta Basque, "tt" is a voiceless palatal stop and the corresponding voiced palatal stop, , is absent except as an allophone of . In Goizueta Basque, is sometimes the result of an affectionate palatalization of .
Palatalization of the rhotics is rare and occurs only in the eastern dialects. When palatalized, the rhotics become the palatal lateral . Likewise, palatalization of velars, resulting in "tt" or "tx", is quite rare.
A few common words, such as 'dog', pronounced , use palatal sounds even though in current usage, they have lost the diminutive sense, the corresponding non-palatal forms now acquiring an augmentative or pejorative sense: 'big dog'.
Sandhi.
There are some rules governing the behaviour of consonants in contact with each other and apply both within and between words. When two plosives meet, the first one is dropped, and the second becomes voiceless. If a sibilant follows a plosive, the plosive is dropped, and the sibilant becomes the corresponding affricate. When a plosive follows an affricate, the affricate becomes a sibilant, and a voiced plosive is devoiced. When a voiced plosive follows a sibilant, it is devoiced except in very slow and careful speech. In the central dialects of Basque, a sibilant turns into an affricate if it follows a liquid or a nasal. When a plosive follows a nasal, there is a strong tendency for it to become voiced.
Stress and pitch.
Basque features great dialectal variation in accentuation, from a weak pitch accent in the western dialects to a marked stress in central and eastern dialects, with varying patterns of stress placement.
Stress is in general not distinctive (and for historical comparisons not very useful); there are, however, a few instances in which stress is phonemic, serving to distinguish between a few pairs of stress-marked words and between some grammatical forms (mainly plurals from other forms), e.g. (, absolutive case) vs. (, absolutive case; an adoption from Spanish ); (, ergative case) vs. (, ergative case) vs. ( or , absolutive case).
Given its great deal of variation among dialects, stress is not marked in the standard orthography and Euskaltzaindia (the Academy of the Basque Language) provides only general recommendations for a standard placement of stress, basically to place a high-pitched weak stress (weaker than that of Spanish, let alone that of English) on the second syllable of a syntagma, and a low-pitched even-weaker stress on its last syllable, except in plural forms in which stress is moved to the first syllable.
That scheme provides Basque with a distinct musicality that differentiates its sound from the prosodical patterns of Spanish (which tends to stress the second-last syllable). Some (, i.e. second-language Basque-speakers) with Spanish as their first language tend to carry the prosodical patterns of Spanish into their pronunciation of Basque, e.g. pronouncing () as (– – ´ –), instead of as (– ´ – `).
Morphophonology.
The combining forms of nominals in final vary across the regions of the Basque Country. The can stay unchanged, be lowered to an , or it can be lost. Loss is most common in the east, while lowering is most common in the west. For instance, , , has the combining forms and , as in , , and , , whereas , , has the combining form , as in , . Michelena suggests that the lowering to is generalised from cases of Romance borrowings in Basque that retained Romance stem alternations, such as , with combining form , borrowed from Romance "canto", "canta-".
Grammar.
Basque is an ergative–absolutive language. The subject of an intransitive verb is in the absolutive case (which is unmarked), and the same case is used for the direct object of a transitive verb. The subject of the transitive verb is marked differently, with the ergative case (shown by the suffix "-k"). That also triggers main and auxiliary verbal agreement.
The auxiliary verb, which accompanies most main verbs, agrees not only with the subject but also with any direct or indirect object present. Among European languages, the polypersonal agreement is found only in Basque, some languages of the Caucasus (especially the Kartvelian languages), Mordvinic languages, Hungarian, and Maltese (all non-Indo-European). The ergative–absolutive alignment is also rare among European languages and occurs only in some languages of the Caucasus but is frequent worldwide.
Consider the phrase:
is the agent (transitive subject), so it is marked with the ergative case ending "-k" (with an epenthetic "-e-"). has an "-ak" ending, which marks plural object (plural absolutive, direct object case). The verb is , in which is a kind of gerund ("buying") and the auxiliary means "he/she (does) them for me". The can be divided like this:
The auxiliary verb is composed as "di-zki-da-zue' and means 'you pl. (do) them for me'.
The pronoun 'you (plural)' has the same form both in the nominative or absolutive case (the subject of an intransitive sentence or direct object of a transitive sentence) and in the ergative case (the subject of a transitive sentence). In spoken Basque, the auxiliary verb is never dropped even if it is redundant: in 'you (pl.) are buying the newspapers for me'. However, the pronouns are almost always dropped: in 'you (pl.) are buying the newspapers for me'. The pronouns are used only to show emphasis: 'it is you (pl.) who buys the newspapers for me', or 'it is me for whom you buy the newspapers'.
Modern Basque dialects allow for the conjugation of about fifteen verbs, called synthetic verbs, some occurring only in literary contexts. They can exist in the present and the past tenses in the indicative and the subjunctive moods, in three tenses in the conditional and the potential moods, and in one tense in the imperative. Each verb that can be taken intransitively has a (absolutive) paradigm and possibly a (absolutive–dative) paradigm, as in the sentence (). Each verb that can be taken transitively uses those two paradigms for antipassive-voice contexts in which no agent is mentioned (Basque lacks a passive voice, and displays instead an antipassive voice paradigm), and also has a (absolutive–ergative) paradigm and possibly a (absolutive–dative–ergative) paradigm. The last is exemplified by above. In each paradigm, each constituent noun can take on any of eight persons, five singular and three plural, with the exception of in which the absolutive can be only third-person singular or plural. The most ubiquitous auxiliary, , can be used in any of those paradigms, depending on the nature of the main verb.
There are more persons in the singular (5) than in the plural (3) for synthetic (or filamentous) verbs because of the two familiar persons—informal masculine and feminine second-person singular. The pronoun "hi" is used for both of them, but though the masculine form of the verb uses a "-k", the feminine uses an "-n". That is a property rarely found in Indo-European languages. The entire paradigm of the verb is further augmented by inflecting for "listener" (the allocutive) even if the verb contains no second person constituent. If the situation calls for the familiar masculine, the form is augmented and modified accordingly and likewise for the familiar feminine.
(, ; , , , , , ) That multiplies the number of possible forms by nearly three. Still, the restriction on contexts in which those forms may be used is strong since all participants in the conversation must be friends of the same sex and not too far apart in age. Some dialects dispense with the familiar forms entirely, but the formal second-person singular conjugates in parallel to the other plural forms, which perhaps indicates that it was originally the second-person plural and later came to be used as a formal singular, and the modern second-person plural was formulated only later as an innovation.
All other verbs in Basque are called periphrastic and behave much as participles would in English. They have only three forms in total, called aspects: perfect (various suffixes), habitual (suffix "-t[z]en"), and future/potential (suffix. "-ko/-go"). Verbs of Latinate origin in Basque, as well as many other verbs, have a suffix "-tu" in the perfect, adapted from the Latin perfect passive "-tus" suffix. The synthetic verbs also have periphrastic forms, for use in perfects and in simple tenses in which they are deponent.
Within a verb phrase, the periphrastic verb comes first, followed by the auxiliary.
A Basque noun phrase is inflected in 17 different ways for case, multiplied by four ways for its definiteness and number (indefinite, definite singular, definite plural, and definite close plural: [Basque-speaker], [the Basque speaker, a Basque-speaker], [Basque-speakers, the Basque-speakers], and [we Basque speakers, those Basque-speakers]). The first 68 forms are further modified based on other parts of the sentence, which in turn are inflected for the noun again. It has been estimated that with two levels of recursion, a Basque noun may have 458,683 inflected forms.
The common noun is declined as follows:
The proper name (Michael) is declined as follows:
Within a noun phrase, modifying adjectives follow the noun. As an example of a Basque noun phrase, is morphologically analysed as follows by Agirre et al.
Basic word order in syntactic construction is subject–object–verb. The order of the phrases within a sentence can be changed for thematic purposes, whereas the order of the words within a phrase is usually rigid. As a matter of fact, Basque phrase order is topic–focus, meaning that in neutral sentences (such as sentences to inform someone of a fact or event) the topic is stated first, then the focus. In such sentences, the verb phrase comes at the end. In brief, the focus directly precedes the verb phrase. This rule is also applied in questions, for instance, "What is this?" can be translated as or , but in both cases the question tag immediately precedes the verb . This rule is so important in Basque that, even in grammatical descriptions of Basque in other languages, the Basque word is used.
In negative sentences, the order changes. Since the negative particle must always directly precede the auxiliary, the topic most often comes beforehand, and the rest of the sentence follows. This includes the periphrastic, if there is one: , , in the negative becomes , in which () is separated from its auxiliary and placed at the end.
Vocabulary.
Through contact with neighbouring peoples, Basque has adopted many words from Latin, Spanish, French and Gascon, among other languages. There are a considerable number of Latin loans (sometimes obscured by being subject to Basque phonology and grammar for centuries), for example: (, from ), (, from , ), (, from ), (, from ).
Writing system.
Basque is written using the Latin script including and sometimes and . Basque does not use for native words, but the Basque alphabet (established by Euskaltzaindia) does include them for loanwords:
⟨Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Ññ, Oo, Pp, Qq, Rr, Ss, Tt, Uu, Vv, Ww, Xx, Yy, Zz⟩
The phonetically meaningful digraphs are treated as pairs of letters.
All letters and digraphs represent unique phonemes. The main exception is if it precedes and , which, in most dialects, palatalises their sounds into and , even if they are not written. Hence, can also be written without changing the sound, and the proper name requires the mute to break the palatalisation of the .
is mute in most regions but is pronounced in many places in the north-east, the main reason for its existence in the Basque alphabet. Its acceptance was a matter of contention during the standardisation process because the speakers of the most extended dialects had to learn where to place , which silent for them.
In Sabino Arana's (1865–1903) alphabet, digraphs and were replaced with and , respectively.
A typically Basque style of lettering is sometimes used for inscriptions.
It derives from the work of stone and wood carvers and is characterised by thick serifs.
Number system used by millers.
Basque millers traditionally employed a separate number system of unknown origin. In this system the symbols are arranged either along a vertical line or horizontally. On the vertical line the single digits and fractions are usually off to one side, usually at the top. When used horizontally, the smallest units are usually on the right and the largest on the left. As with the Basque system of counting in general, it is vigesimal (base 20). Although it is in theory capable of indicating numbers above 100, most recorded examples do not go above 100. Fractions are relatively common, especially .
The exact systems used vary from area to area but generally follow the same principle with 5 usually being a diagonal line or a curve off the vertical line (a V shape is used when writing a 5 horizontally). Units of ten are usually a horizontal line through the vertical. The twenties are based on a circle with intersecting lines. This system is no longer in general use but is occasionally employed for decorative purposes.
|
3740
|
45799485
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3740
|
Björn Ulvaeus
|
Björn Kristian Ulvaeus (; born 25 April 1945) is a Swedish musician, singer, songwriter, and producer best known as a member of the musical group ABBA. He is also the co-composer of the musicals "Chess", "Kristina från Duvemåla", and "Mamma Mia!" He co-produced the films "Mamma Mia!" and "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" with fellow ABBA member and close friend Benny Andersson. He is the oldest member of the group.
Early life.
Björn Kristian Ulvaeus was born in Gothenburg on 25 April 1945. At age 6, he moved with his family to Västervik, Kalmar County. His parents were Aina Eliza Viktoria (née Bengtsson; 1909–2005) and Erik Gunnar Ulvaeus (1912–1999). Ulvaeus has one sister, Eva Margareta (born 1948). Ulvaeus did military service.
Career.
Pre-ABBA.
Before gaining international recognition with ABBA, Ulvaeus was a member of the Swedish folk-schlager band Hootenanny Singers, known earlier as the "West Bay Singers", who had an enormous following in Scandinavia. While on the road in southern Sweden in 1966, they encountered the Hep Stars, and Ulvaeus quickly became friends with the group's keyboard player, Benny Andersson. The two musicians shared a passion for songwriting, and each found a composing partner in the other. On meeting again that summer, they composed their first song together: "Isn't It Easy To Say", a song soon to be recorded by Andersson's group. The two continued teaming up for music, helping out each other's bands in the recording studio, and adding guitar or keyboards respectively to the recordings. In 1968, they composed two songs together: "A Flower in My Garden", recorded by Hep Stars, and their first real hit "Ljuva Sextiotal", performed by popular Swedish artist Brita Borg, for which Stig Anderson wrote lyrics. The latter, a cabarét-style ironic song about the 1960s, was submitted for the 1969 Swedish heats for the Eurovision Song Contest, but was rejected. Another hit came in 1969 with "Speleman", also recorded by Hep Stars.
While filming a nostalgic schlager special for television in May 1969, Björn met eighteen-year-old future wife and singer-songwriter Agnetha Fältskog.
Björn Ulvaeus continued recording and touring with Hootenanny Singers to great acclaim while working as in-house producer at Polar Record Company (headed by future manager Stig Anderson), with Benny as his new partner. The twosome produced records by other artists and continued writing songs together. Polar artist Arne Lamberts Swedish version of "A Flower in My Garden" ("Fröken Blåklint") was one of Björn & Benny's first in-house productions. In December 1969, they recorded the new song "She's My Kind of Girl", which became their first single as a duo. It was released in March 1970, giving them a minor hit in Sweden and a top-ten hit in Japan two years later.
The Hootenanny Singers entered Svensktoppen, the Swedish radio charts, in 1970 with "Omkring Tiggarn Från Luossa", a cover of an old folk-schlager song. It remained on the charts for 52 consecutive weeks, a record which endured until 1990; the song was produced by Björn and Benny, and had Ulvaeus's solo vocal and Benny's piano.
ABBA years.
Björn Ulvaeus's girlfriend Agnetha Fältskog eventually joined Björn&Benny becoming Björn, Benny & Agnetha, Frida eventually shortening it to ABBA. Björn was the guitar player in the band, but he also sang lead vocals in the following songs: "People Need Love", "Merry Go Round", "Santa Rosa", "Another Town Another Train", "I Saw It in the Mirror", "Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough)", "He Is Your Brother", "Rock'n Roll Band", "She's My Kind of Girl", "Honey Honey", "Sitting in the Palmtree", "King King Song", "Watch Out, Man in the Middle, Rock Me, Crazy World", "Why Did It Have To Be Me?", "Summer Night City", "Does Your Mother Know", "Two for the Price Of One".
On 6 July 1971, Björn and Agnetha married.
In July 1980, Björn and Agnetha Fältskog divorced, and the band broke up shortly after the divorce.
Post-ABBA.
After ABBA went on hiatus in 1982, Ulvaeus and Andersson created the musicals "Chess", a collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice, "Kristina från Duvemåla" (based on "The Emigrants" novels by Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg), and "Mamma Mia!" (based on ABBA songs).
Together with Andersson, Ulvaeus was nominated for the Drama Desk Award in the category "Outstanding Music" (for the musical "Chess"), and for a Tony Award in a category "Best Orchestrations" (for the musical "Mamma Mia!"). The original cast recordings for both musicals were nominated for a Grammy Award.
For the 2004 semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Istanbul, thirty years after ABBA had won the 1974 contest in Brighton, UK, Ulvaeus appeared briefly in a special comedy video made for the interval act, entitled "Our Last Video". Each of the four members of the group appeared briefly in cameo roles, as did others such as Cher and Rik Mayall. The video was not included in the official DVD release of the Eurovision Contest, but was issued as a separate DVD release. It was billed as the first time the four had worked together since the group split. In fact, they each filmed their appearances separately.
Ulvaeus also shared with Andersson "The Special International Ivor Novello Award" from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, "The Music Export Prize" from the Swedish Ministry of Industry and Trade (2008), and "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Swedish Music Publishers Association (SMFF).
On 15 April 2013, it was officially announced by the EBU and the SVT that Ulvaeus and Andersson, with the late Swedish DJ and record producer Avicii, had composed the anthem for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. The song was performed for the first time in the Final on 18 May.
In 2016 American media reported that British entrepreneur Simon Fuller had approached Ulvaeus and other members of ABBA with his idea to create a virtual reality ABBA using new technology. In November that year Fuller was photographed in London meeting with Ulvaeus. In September 2017, Benny Andersson told Swedish newspaper "Expressen" that there were plans for ABBA to tour "virtually", using digital avatars of the group and Ulvaeus told the BBC that the idea had been proposed to the band by Simon Fuller. In April 2018, the four members issued a statement saying that during preparations for the tour, they had regrouped with Fuller in the studio and recorded two new songs, titled "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down".
In 2019, Ulvaeus worked with Swedish songwriter Andreas Carlsson to arrange an English dub of Tomas Ledin's jukebox musical film "En del av mitt hjärta" (English: "A Piece of My Heart") directed by Edward af Sillén. Ulvaeus was asked to write English lyrics for Ledin's songs as they are long-term friends.
In 2020, Björn Ulvaeus has been appointed President of CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers.
On 2 September 2021, via YouTube livestream, ABBA announced their virtual concert residency "ABBA Voyage", as well as the release of a studio album, recorded between 2017 and 2021. The new record, their first in 40 years, features ten tracks, including "I Still Have Faith In You" and "Don't Shut Me Down", which were first shown in the aforementioned livestream event and released as a double A-side single. On 5 November 2021, the "Voyage" album was released worldwide, and on 27 May 2022, ABBA Voyage opened in a purpose-built venue named the ABBA Arena at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.
Since November 2021, Ulvaeus and British actor Ian McKellen have posted Instagram videos featuring the pair knitting Christmas jumpers and other festive attire. In 2023, it was revealed that Ulvaeus and McKellen would be knitting stagewear for Kylie Minogue as part of her "More Than Just a Residency" concert residency at Voltaire at The Venetian Las Vegas.
In October 2023, it was confirmed that Ulvaeus would be the keynote speaker for The Business Day at Bridlington Spa in the United Kingdom on Friday 7 June 2024. Ulvaeus would discuss the creation of ABBA Voyage, leadership, entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence (AI), Technology, Innovation, Meta Data and the complexity of business in the music industry.
On 21 March 2024, shortly before the 50th anniversary of their win at the Eurovision Song Contest, all four members of ABBA were appointed "Commander, First Class, of the Royal Order of Vasa" by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. This was the first time in almost 50 years that the Swedish Royal Orders of Knighthood was bestowed on Swedes. ABBA shared the honour with nine other people.
Personal life.
On 6 July 1971, Ulvaeus married Agnetha Fältskog. They had two children: Linda Elin Ulvaeus (born 23 February 1973), and Peter Christian Ulvaeus (born 4 December 1977). The couple separated in early 1979, and their divorce was finalised in July 1980.
Ulvaeus married music journalist Lena Källersjö on 6 January 1981. They have two daughters. Ulvaeus and Källersjö lived on a private island in Djursholm, an upscale area in Danderyd Municipality north of Stockholm. From 1984 to 1990, they lived in the United Kingdom, where Ulvaeus founded an IT business with his brother. In February 2022, Ulvaeus and Källersjö announced their separation.
In 2021, while producing "Voyage", Ulvaeus met Christina Sas, a product manager at Universal Music Group, and they began dating the following year. Ulvaeus and Sas were married on 21 September 2024 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The ceremony was conducted by Sandi Toksvig.
Ulvaeus is one of the four owners (along with Per Gessle) of NoteHeads, a Swedish company which publishes the music notation program Igor Engraver.
Ulvaeus is a member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union's Swedish member organisation Humanisterna, and was awarded their annual prize, "Hedenius-priset", in 2006. Ulvaeus describes himself as an atheist. He has appeared on several shows discussing his views about religion.
Ulvaeus suffered from severe long-term memory loss. However, in a 2009 interview, he stated that reports of his memory loss were "hugely exaggerated". In a TV interview with Fredrik Skavlan, Ulvaeus said the memory loss pertained to episodic memory. He said that, for instance, he was not nostalgic for his days with ABBA: "It was good while it lasted."
"The Guardian" called him Sweden's "highest-profile cash-free campaigner", explaining that "after his son was robbed several years ago, Ulvaeus became an evangelist for the electronic payment movement, claiming that cash was the primary cause of crime and that 'all activity in the black economy requires cash'". He has reportedly been living cash-free for more than a decade, and ABBA The Museum has operated cash-free since it opened in May 2013.
Tax vindication.
The Swedish Tax Agency accused Björn Ulvaeus of failing to pay 90 million kronor (US$12.8 million) in back taxes for eight years ending in 2005. The agency claimed that he "laundered" his music royalty income through institutions in several foreign countries. Ulvaeus paid the taxes as a precautionary measure during the 2½-year dispute. In October 2008, the county administrative court decided the case in Ulvaeus' favour, ruling that he never owed any of the 90 million kronor.
|
3741
|
1295386056
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3741
|
Benny Andersson
|
Göran Bror Benny Andersson (; born 16 December 1946) is a Swedish musician, composer and producer best known as a member of the pop group ABBA and co-composer of the musicals "Chess", "Kristina från Duvemåla", and "Mamma Mia!" For the 2008 film version of "Mamma Mia!" and its 2018 sequel, "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again", he worked also as an executive producer. Since 2001, he has been active with his own band Benny Anderssons orkester.
Early life.
Göran Bror Benny Andersson was born 16 December 1946 in the Vasastan district of Stockholm to civil engineer Gösta Andersson (1912–1973) and his wife Laila (1920–1971). His sister Eva-Lis Andersson followed in 1948. Andersson's musical interest was spurred by his father and grandfather (Efraim), who played the accordion. At the age of six, they bought him one, too, and introduced him to Swedish folk music, traditional music, and schlager. The first records he owned were "Du Bist Musik" by Italian schlager singer Caterina Valente and Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock". He was especially impressed by the flip side, "Treat Me Nice", as this featured a piano. This variety of different kinds of music influenced him through the years.
At ten, Andersson got his own piano and taught himself to play. He was influenced by Brian Jones, left school at 15 and began to perform at youth clubs. This is when he met his first girlfriend Christina Grönvall, with whom he had two children: Peter (born 1963) and Heléne (born 1965). In early 1964, Benny and Christina joined "Elverkets Spelmanslag" ("The Electricity Board Folk Music Group"); the name was a punning reference to their electric instruments. Their repertoire consisted mainly of instrumentals, including "Baby Elephant Walk"; he also wrote his first songs.
Career.
Hep Stars (1964–1969).
In October 1964 he joined the Hep Stars as keyboardist and they made a breakthrough in March 1965 with their hit "Cadillac", eventually becoming the most celebrated of the Swedish 1960s pop bands. Andersson secured his place as the band's keyboardist and musical driving force as well as a teen idol. The band performed mostly covers of international hits, but Andersson soon started writing his own material, and gave the band the classic hits "No Response", "Sunny Girl", "Wedding", "Consolation", "It's Nice To Be Back" and "She Will Love You", among others.
Before ABBA (1969–1972).
Andersson met Björn Ulvaeus in June 1966, and the two men started writing songs together, their first being "Isn't It Easy To Say", eventually recorded by the Hep Stars. He also had a fruitful songwriting collaboration with Lasse Berghagen, with whom he wrote several songs and submitted "Hej, Clown" for the 1969 Melodifestivalen – the Swedish Eurovision Song Festival finals. The song finished in second place. During this contest, he met vocalist Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and they soon became a couple. Around the same time, his songwriting companion Ulvaeus met vocalist Agnetha Fältskog.
The personal relationships and Andersson and Ulvaeus' songwriting collaboration led quite naturally to the very close cooperation which the four friends had during the following years. Benny and Björn scored their first hits as songwriters in the spring of 1969: "Ljuva sextital" (a hit with Brita Borg) and "Speleman" (a hit for the Hep Stars). As the two couples began supporting each other during recording sessions, the sound of the women's voices convinced the songwriters to model their 'group' on various MOR acts such as Blue Mink, Middle of the Road and Sweet.
ABBA (1972–1982).
The group's breakthrough came with winning the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden with "Waterloo" on 6 April 1974. During the next eight years, Andersson (together with Ulvaeus) wrote music for and produced eight studio albums with ABBA. The group achieved great success globally and scored a chain of No. 1 hits.
With ABBA, Benny sang lead vocal on only one song – "Suzy-Hang-Around", from the "Waterloo" album.
After ABBA: "Chess", "Kristina" and "Mamma Mia!" (1983–present).
After ABBA, Andersson continued writing music with Ulvaeus. Their first project was the stage musical "Chess", written with Tim Rice. The "Chess" concept album – with vocals by Elaine Paige, Barbara Dickson, Murray Head and Swedes Tommy Körberg and Björn Skifs – was released in October 1984, selling two million copies worldwide. The Paige/Dickson duet "I Know Him So Well" became a major UK No. 1 hit, and Murray Head's "One Night in Bangkok" gave Andersson/Ulvaeus a US No. 3 hit.
"Chess" was staged in London's West End Prince Edward Theatre in May 1986 and received mixed to positive reviews, running for about three years. A revised staging on Broadway in April 1988 received poor reviews, running for two months.
In 1985, Andersson produced and released an album with brother and sister Anders and Karin Glenmark, featuring new songs by Andersson/Ulvaeus. The duo named themselves Gemini, and a second album with more music by Björn and Benny was released in April 1987, containing the big hit "Mio My Mio"; also to be found on the soundtrack to the film "Mio in the Land of Faraway", for which Andersson co-produced the music.
In 1987, Andersson released his first solo album "Klinga Mina Klockor" ("Chime, My Bells"). All the music was written by and performed by himself on accordion, backed by the "Orsa Spelmän" (Orsa Folk Musicians) on fiddles. A second solo album followed: "November 1989".
In 1990, Andersson scored a Swedish No. 1 hit with "Lassie", sung by female cabaret group Ainbusk, for whom he also wrote the Svensktoppen hits "Älska Mig" and "Drömmarnas Golv". He decided to produce an album with Josefin Nilsson from this quartet, resulting in the 1993 English-language album "Shapes", featuring ten new Andersson/Ulvaeus compositions.
In 1992, he wrote the introduction melody for the European football championship, which was organised by Sweden that year.
From the late 1980s, Andersson had worked on an idea for an epic Swedish language musical based on his affection for traditional folk music, and in October 1995, "Kristina från Duvemåla" premiered in Sweden. The musical was based on "The Emigrants" novels by Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg. The musical ran successfully for almost five years, before closing in June 1999. An English-language version, simply titled "Kristina", was staged in concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City for two nights in September 2009, yielding a live recording, and at the Royal Albert Hall for one night in April 2010.
Andersson's next project was "Mamma Mia!", a musical built around 24 of ABBA's songs, which has become a worldwide box-office blockbuster, with versions in several languages being played in many countries, including the UK (West End premiere in April 1999), Canada (Toronto premiere in 2000), the USA (Broadway premiere in 2001), and Sweden (Swedish language premiere in 2005).
For the 2004 semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest, staged in Istanbul thirty years after ABBA had won the contest in Brighton, Benny appeared briefly in a special comedy video made for the interval act, entitled "Our Last Video". Each of the four members of the group appeared briefly in cameo roles, as did others such as Cher and Rik Mayall. The video was not included in the official DVD release of the Eurovision Contest, but was issued as a separate DVD release. It was billed as the first time the four had worked together since the group split; however, Frida's appearance was filmed separately.
A film version of "Mamma Mia!" premiered on 18 July 2008. In April/May 2007, Andersson worked on the film soundtrack, re-recording the ABBA songs with musicians from the original ABBA recording sessions. "Mamma Mia! The Movie" has become the most successful film musical of all time, and the biggest-selling DVD ever in the UK.
Benny Anderssons Orkester (2001–present).
Andersson currently performs with his own band of 16 musicians, Benny Anderssons Orkester ("Benny Andersson's orchestra", BAO), with fellow Swedes Helen Sjöholm (of "Kristina from Duvemåla") and Tommy Körberg (of "Chess"), with lyrics to new material sometimes written by Björn Ulvaeus. BAO has released five albums to huge success in Sweden, all containing hit singles.
In 2009 BAO achieved a new record in Sweden on the Svensktoppen chart by staying there for 243 weeks with the song "Du är min man" ("You Are My Man"), sung by Sjöholm.
New compositions (1984–present).
Andersson composes primarily for his band BAO, with vocalists Sjöholm and Körberg, but he keeps his older material alive by re-visiting it, as in "Mamma Mia!" and the Swedish version of "Chess".
For a compilation album of the Glenmark duo Gemini, Andersson had Björn Ulvaeus write new Swedish lyrics for the re-recording of two songs from 1984 and 1987.
Andersson and Ulvaeus have continuously been writing new material; most recently the two wrote seven songs for Andersson's BAO 2011 album O klang och jubeltid, performed as usual by vocalists Sjöholm, Körberg and Kalle Moraeus. In July 2009, BAO, now named "The Benny Andersson Band", released their first international record, the album "The Story of a Heart". It was a compilation of 14 tracks from Andersson's five Swedish-language releases between 1987 and 2007, including five songs now recorded with lyrics by Ulvaeus in English, and the new title song premiered on BBC2's "Ken Bruce Show". A Swedish-language version of the title track, "Sommaren Du Fick" ("The Summer You Got"), was released as a single in Sweden prior to the English version, with vocals by Helen Sjöholm.
In the spring of 2009, Andersson also released a single recorded by the staff at his privately owned Stockholm hotel Hotel Rival, titled "2nd Best to None", accompanied by a video showing the staff at work. In 2008, Andersson and Ulvaeus wrote a song for Swedish singer Sissela Kyle, titled "Jag vill bli gammal" ("I Wanna Grow Old"), for her Stockholm stage show "Your Days Are Numbered", which was never recorded and released but did get a TV performance. Ulvaeus also contributed lyrics to ABBA's 1976 instrumental track "Arrival" for Sarah Brightman's cover version recorded for her 2008 album "A Winter Symphony". New English lyrics have also been written for Andersson's 1999 song "Innan Gryningen" (then also named "Millennium Hymn"), with the new title "The Silence of the Dawn" for Barbara Dickson was performed live, but not yet recorded and released. In 2007, they wrote the new song "Han som har vunnit allt" ("He Who's Won It All") for actor and singer Anders Ekborg.
Ulvaeus wrote English lyrics for two older songs from Andersson's solo albums "I Walk with You Mama" ("Stockholm by Night", 1989) and "After the Rain" ("Efter regnet", 1987) for opera singer Anne Sofie Von Otter, for her Andersson tribute album "I Let the Music Speak". Barbara Dickson recorded an Ulvaeus and Andersson song called "The Day The Wall Came Tumbling Down"; the song eventually was released by Australian "Mamma Mia!" musical star Anne Wood's album of ABBA covers, "Divine Discontent". As of October 2012, Ulvaeus had mentioned writing new material with Andersson for a BAO Christmas release (also mentioned as a BAO box), and Andersson is busy writing music for a Swedish language obscure musical, "Hjälp Sökes" ("Help is Wanted") together with Kristina Lugn and Lars Rudolfsson, premiering 8 February 2013.
Andersson has also written music for a documentary film about Olof Palme, re-recording the track "Sorgmarch" from his last album as a theme throughout the film.
The song ""Saknadens rum and Kärlekens Tid", recorded 2004 by Helen Sjöholm with BAO, has also been performed in concert in English (lyrics by Ylva Eggehorn) by opera baritone Bryn Terfel.
On 15 April 2013, it was officially announced by the EBU and the SVT that Andersson, along with Ulvaeus and the late Stockholm based DJ and record producer Avicii, had composed the anthem for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. The song was performed for the first time in the Final on 18 May.
A new album of Andersson compositions presented in a choral style was released on 18 September 2015. "Kärlekens Tid"" was produced in Andersson's Mono Music studio, under the direction of choirmaster Gustaf Sjökvist, who died before the album's release. Gustaf Sjökvists Choir, conducted by Cecilia Rydinger Alin, performed two concerts at Skeppsholmen on 20 September, featuring Benny Andersson on piano. The album includes songs in Swedish and English from a range of Andersson's projects, such as "Chess", "Kristina" and BAO.
In November 2018, Deutsche Grammophon released "Piano", a collection of ABBA tunes, tunes from Chess and original compositions all played by Andersson on solo piano.
Andersson reunited with ABBA in 2018. On 2 September 2021, via YouTube livestream, ABBA announced their upcoming virtual concert residency "ABBA Voyage", as well as the imminent release of an eponymous album, recorded between 2017 and 2021. The new record, their first studio album in 40 years, features ten tracks, including "I Still Have Faith In You" and "Don't Shut Me Down", which also were first shown in the aforementioned livestream event and released as a double A-side single. On 5 November 2021, the "Voyage" album was released worldwide. On 27 May 2022, ABBA Voyage opened in a purpose-built venue named the ABBA Arena at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.
Film music.
Andersson has written music to several films for screen and television; the first attempt in the early 1970s for the Swedish erotica movie "The Seduction of Inga"; the film was not a success, but the 'Björn & Benny' single "She's My Kind of Girl" surprised the composers by being released in Japan and becoming a Top 10 hit (the song renamed in Japan as "The Little Girl of the Cold Wind").
In 1987, Andersson wrote music and co-produced the soundtrack with Anders Eljas for the film "Mio in the Land of Faraway", based on Swedish author Astrid Lindgrens "Mio, My Son". The title song became a huge hit in Sweden for Gemini.
In 2000, he wrote the music for fellow Swede (no relation) Roy Andersson's film "Songs from the Second Floor" (the music later re-recorded, featuring new lyrics, with BAO! with vocals by Helen Sjöholm). He also wrote the theme for Roy Andersson's next film, "You, the Living", from 2007.
Andersson worked on the film adaptation of "Mamma Mia!". He also wrote the film score for the 2012 documentary "Palme" about Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. He later won a Guldbagge Award for Best Original Score, for that film at the 48th Guldbagge Awards.
Awards.
Together with Ulvaeus, Andersson was nominated for a Drama Desk Award in a category "Outstanding Music" (for the musical "Chess"), and for a Tony Award in a category "Best Orchestrations" (for musical "Mamma Mia!"). Original cast recordings of both musicals were nominated for a Grammy Award. Andersson/Ulvaeus also won a Touring Broadway Award for the musical "Mamma Mia" (best score).
During his post-ABBA career Andersson won four Swedish Grammis awards, and together with Ulvaeus received the "Special International" Ivor Novello award from 'The British Academy of Composers and Songwriters', twice "The Music Export Prize" from the Swedish Ministry of Industry and Trade (2008), as well as the "Lifetime Achievement" award from the Swedish Music Publishers Association (SMFF). In 2002, Andersson was given an honorary professorship by the Swedish Government for his "ability to create high-class music reaching people around the world".
In 2007, he was elected a member of Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and in 2008 received an Honorary Doctorate from the Stockholm University Faculty of Humanities for contributing importantly both to the preservation and the growth of the Swedish folk music tradition.
On 15 March 2010, Andersson appeared on stage in New York with former wife Anni-Frid Lyngstad to accept ABBA's award of induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During his acceptance speech he reflected on the important influence of traditional European music and the melancholy of the Swedish soul on ABBA's brand of pop music. "If you live in a country like Sweden, with five, six months of snow, and the sun disappears totally for like two months, that would be reflected in the work of artists," he said. "It's definitely in the Swedish folk music, you can hear it in the Russian folk songs, you can hear in the music from Jean Sibelius or Edvard Grieg from Norway, you can see it in the eyes of Greta Garbo and you can hear it in the voice of Jussi Björling. And you can hear in the sound of Frida and Agnetha on some of our songs too."
In 2012, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from the Luleå Tekniska Universitet Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Andersson won the Swedish "Guldbaggen" award in 2012 as composer of the music for the film "Palme".
For his album "Piano" he received the Opus Klassik award in 2018.
On 21 March 2024, shortly before the 50th anniversary of their win at the Eurovision Song Contest, all four members of ABBA were appointed "Commander, First Class, of the Royal Order of Vasa" by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. This was the first time in almost 50 years that the Swedish Royal Orders of Knighthood was bestowed on Swedes. ABBA shared the honour with nine other persons.
Personal life.
Andersson was engaged to Christina Grönvall. They have two children. The couple split in 1966 and Christina kept custody of the children as Andersson was then at the peak of his Hep Stars' success. In the 1990s, their son Peter Grönvall formed One More Time, a group that enjoyed European success with the ABBA-like "Highland" and, later, as Sweden's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest 1996.
Andersson was in a relationship with Anni-Frid Lyngstad of ABBA for about 11 years, from 1969 till 1980. They married on 6 October 1978, but separated on 26 November 1980 and divorced in 1981.
He married Swedish TV presenter Mona Nörklit in 1981 and had a son, Ludvig. Ludvig is also one of the producers of the concert residency ABBA Voyage.
Andersson was an alcoholic through much of his adult life. He has remained a teetotaler since 2001. Andersson did not disclose the extent of his substance abuse problems until a 2011 interview, at which point he had maintained nearly a decade of sobriety.
|
3742
|
88116
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3742
|
Bluetooth
|
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limited to 2.5 milliwatts, giving it a very short range of up to . It employs UHF radio waves in the ISM bands, from 2.402GHz to 2.48GHz. It is mainly used as an alternative to wired connections to exchange files between nearby portable devices and connect cell phones and music players with wireless headphones, wireless speakers, HIFI systems, car audio and wireless transmission between TVs and soundbars.
Bluetooth is managed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), which has more than 35,000 member companies in the areas of telecommunication, computing, networking, and consumer electronics. The IEEE standardized Bluetooth as IEEE 802.15.1 but no longer maintains the standard. The Bluetooth SIG oversees the development of the specification, manages the qualification program, and protects the trademarks. A manufacturer must meet Bluetooth SIG standards to market it as a Bluetooth device. A network of patents applies to the technology, which is licensed to individual qualifying devices. , 4.7 billion Bluetooth integrated circuit chips are shipped annually. Bluetooth was first demonstrated in space in 2024, an early test envisioned to enhance IoT capabilities.
Etymology.
The name "Bluetooth" was proposed in 1997 by Jim Kardach of Intel, one of the founders of the Bluetooth SIG. The name was inspired by a conversation with Sven Mattisson who related Scandinavian history through tales from Frans G. Bengtsson's "The Long Ships", a historical novel about Vikings and the 10th-century Danish king Harald Bluetooth. Upon discovering a picture of the runestone of Harald Bluetooth in the book "A History of the Vikings" by Gwyn Jones, Kardach proposed Bluetooth as the codename for the short-range wireless program which is now called Bluetooth.
According to Bluetooth's official website,
Bluetooth is the Anglicised version of the Scandinavian "Blåtand"/"Blåtann" (or in Old Norse "blátǫnn"). It was the epithet of King Harald Bluetooth, who united the disparate
Danish tribes into a single kingdom; Kardach chose the name to imply that Bluetooth similarly unites communication protocols.
The Bluetooth logo is a bind rune merging the Younger Futhark runes (ᚼ, Hagall) and (ᛒ, Bjarkan), Harald's initials.
History.
The development of the "short-link" radio technology, later named Bluetooth, was initiated in 1989 by Nils Rydbeck, CTO at Ericsson Mobile in Lund, Sweden. The purpose was to develop wireless headsets, according to two inventions by Johan Ullman, and . Nils Rydbeck tasked Tord Wingren with specifying and Dutchman Jaap Haartsen and Sven Mattisson with developing. Both were working for Ericsson in Lund. Principal design and development began in 1994 and by 1997 the team had a workable solution. From 1997 Örjan Johansson became the project leader and propelled the technology and standardization.
In 1997, Adalio Sanchez, then head of IBM ThinkPad product R&D, approached Nils Rydbeck about collaborating on integrating a mobile phone into a ThinkPad notebook. The two assigned engineers from Ericsson and IBM studied the idea. The conclusion was that power consumption on cellphone technology at that time was too high to allow viable integration into a notebook and still achieve adequate battery life. Instead, the two companies agreed to integrate Ericsson's short-link technology on both a ThinkPad notebook and an Ericsson phone to accomplish the goal.
Since neither IBM ThinkPad notebooks nor Ericsson phones were the market share leaders in their respective markets at that time, Adalio Sanchez and Nils Rydbeck agreed to make the short-link technology an open industry standard to permit each player maximum market access. Ericsson contributed the short-link radio technology, and IBM contributed patents around the logical layer. Adalio Sanchez of IBM then recruited Stephen Nachtsheim of Intel to join and then Intel also recruited Toshiba and Nokia. In May 1998, the Bluetooth SIG was launched with IBM and Ericsson as the founding signatories and a total of five members: Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Toshiba, and IBM.
The first Bluetooth device was revealed in 1999. It was a hands-free mobile headset that earned the "Best of show Technology Award" at COMDEX. The first Bluetooth mobile phone was the unreleased prototype Ericsson T36, though it was the revised Ericsson model T39 that actually made it to store shelves in June 2001. However Ericsson released the R520m in Quarter 1 of 2001, making the R520m the first ever commercially available Bluetooth phone. In parallel, IBM introduced the IBM ThinkPad A30 in October 2001 which was the first notebook with integrated Bluetooth.
Bluetooth's early incorporation into consumer electronics products continued at Vosi Technologies in Costa Mesa, California, initially overseen by founding members Bejan Amini and Tom Davidson. Vosi Technologies had been created by real estate developer Ivano Stegmenga, with United States Patent 608507, for communication between a cellular phone and a vehicle's audio system. At the time, Sony/Ericsson had only a minor market share in the cellular phone market, which was dominated in the US by Nokia and Motorola. Due to ongoing negotiations for an intended licensing agreement with Motorola beginning in the late 1990s, Vosi could not publicly disclose the intention, integration, and initial development of other enabled devices which were to be the first "Smart Home" internet connected devices.
Vosi needed a means for the system to communicate without a wired connection from the vehicle to the other devices in the network. Bluetooth was chosen, since Wi-Fi was not yet readily available or supported in the public market. Vosi had begun to develop the Vosi Cello integrated vehicular system and some other internet connected devices, one of which was intended to be a table-top device named the Vosi Symphony, networked with Bluetooth. Through the negotiations with Motorola, Vosi introduced and disclosed its intent to integrate Bluetooth in its devices. In the early 2000s a legal battle ensued between Vosi and Motorola, which indefinitely suspended release of the devices. Later, Motorola implemented it in their devices, which initiated the significant propagation of Bluetooth in the public market due to its large market share at the time.
In 2012, Jaap Haartsen was nominated by the European Patent Office for the European Inventor Award.
Implementation.
Bluetooth operates at frequencies between 2.402 and 2.480GHz, or 2.400 and 2.4835GHz, including guard bands 2MHz wide at the bottom end and 3.5MHz wide at the top. This is in the globally unlicensed (but not unregulated) industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) 2.4GHz short-range radio frequency band. Bluetooth uses a radio technology called frequency-hopping spread spectrum. Bluetooth divides transmitted data into packets, and transmits each packet on one of 79 designated Bluetooth channels. Each channel has a bandwidth of 1MHz. It usually performs 1600hops per second, with adaptive frequency-hopping (AFH) enabled. Bluetooth Low Energy uses 2MHz spacing, which accommodates 40 channels.
Originally, Gaussian frequency-shift keying (GFSK) modulation was the only modulation scheme available. Since the introduction of Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, π/4-DQPSK (differential quadrature phase-shift keying) and 8-DPSK modulation may also be used between compatible devices. Devices functioning with GFSK are said to be operating in basic rate (BR) mode, where an instantaneous bit rate of 1Mbit/s is possible. The term "Enhanced Data Rate" ("EDR") is used to describe π/4-DPSK (EDR2) and 8-DPSK (EDR3) schemes, transferring 2 and 3Mbit/s respectively.
In 2019, Apple published an extension called HDR which supports data rates of 4 (HDR4) and 8 (HDR8) Mbit/s using π/4-DQPSK modulation on 4 MHz channels with forward error correction (FEC).
Bluetooth is a packet-based protocol with a master/slave architecture. One master may communicate with up to seven slaves in a piconet. All devices within a given piconet use the clock provided by the master as the base for packet exchange. The master clock ticks with a period of 312.5μs, two clock ticks then make up a slot of 625μs, and two slots make up a slot pair of 1250μs. In the simple case of single-slot packets, the master transmits in even slots and receives in odd slots. The slave, conversely, receives in even slots and transmits in odd slots. Packets may be 1, 3, or 5 slots long, but in all cases, the master's transmission begins in even slots and the slave's in odd slots.
The above excludes Bluetooth Low Energy, introduced in the 4.0 specification, which uses the same spectrum but somewhat differently.
Communication and connection.
A master BR/EDR Bluetooth device can communicate with a maximum of seven devices in a piconet (an ad hoc computer network using Bluetooth technology), though not all devices reach this maximum. The devices can switch roles, by agreement, and the slave can become the master (for example, a headset initiating a connection to a phone necessarily begins as master—as an initiator of the connection—but may subsequently operate as the slave).
The Bluetooth Core Specification provides for the connection of two or more piconets to form a scatternet, in which certain devices simultaneously play the master/leader role in one piconet and the slave role in another.
At any given time, data can be transferred between the master and one other device (except for the little-used broadcast mode). The master chooses which slave device to address; typically, it switches rapidly from one device to another in a round-robin fashion. Since it is the master that chooses which slave to address, whereas a slave is (in theory) supposed to listen in each receive slot, being a master is a lighter burden than being a slave. Being a master of seven slaves is possible; being a slave of more than one master is possible. The specification is vague as to required behavior in scatternets.
Uses.
Bluetooth is a standard wire-replacement communications protocol primarily designed for low power consumption, with a short range based on low-cost transceiver microchips in each device. Because the devices use a radio (broadcast) communications system, they do not have to be in visual line of sight of each other; however, a "quasi optical" wireless path must be viable.
Bluetooth classes and power use.
Historically, the Bluetooth range was defined by the radio class, with a lower class (and higher output power) having larger range. The actual range of a given link depends on several qualities of both communicating devices and the air and obstacles in between. The primary attributes affecting range are the data rate, protocol (Bluetooth Classic or Bluetooth Low Energy), transmission power, and receiver sensitivity, and the relative orientations and gains of both antennas.
The effective range varies depending on propagation conditions, material coverage, production sample variations, antenna configurations and battery conditions. Most Bluetooth applications are for indoor conditions, where attenuation of walls and signal fading due to signal reflections make the range far lower than specified line-of-sight ranges of the Bluetooth products.
Most Bluetooth applications are battery-powered Class 2 devices, with little difference in range whether the other end of the link is a Class 1 or Class 2 device as the lower-powered device tends to set the range limit. In some cases the effective range of the data link can be extended when a Class 2 device is connecting to a Class 1 transceiver with both higher sensitivity and transmission power than a typical Class 2 device. In general, however, Class 1 devices have sensitivities similar to those of Class 2 devices. Connecting two Class 1 devices with both high sensitivity and high power can allow ranges far in excess of the typical 100 m, depending on the throughput required by the application. Some such devices allow open field ranges of up to 1 km and beyond between two similar devices without exceeding legal emission limits.
Bluetooth profile.
To use Bluetooth wireless technology, a device must be able to interpret certain Bluetooth profiles.
For example,
Profiles are definitions of possible applications and specify general behaviors that Bluetooth-enabled devices use to communicate with other Bluetooth devices. These profiles include settings to parameterize and to control the communication from the start. Adherence to profiles saves the time for transmitting the parameters anew before the bi-directional link becomes effective. There are a wide range of Bluetooth profiles that describe many different types of applications or use cases for devices.
Devices.
Bluetooth exists in numerous products such as telephones, speakers, tablets, media players, robotics systems, laptops, and game console equipment as well as some high definition headsets, modems, hearing aids and even watches. Bluetooth is useful when transferring information between two or more devices that are near each other in low-bandwidth situations. Bluetooth is commonly used to transfer sound data with telephones (i.e., with a Bluetooth headset) or byte data with hand-held computers (transferring files).
Bluetooth protocols simplify the discovery and setup of services between devices. Bluetooth devices can advertise all of the services they provide. This makes using services easier, because more of the security, network address and permission configuration can be automated than with many other network types.
Computer requirements.
A personal computer that does not have embedded Bluetooth can use a Bluetooth adapter that enables the PC to communicate with Bluetooth devices. While some desktop computers and most recent laptops come with a built-in Bluetooth radio, others require an external adapter, typically in the form of a small USB "dongle".
Unlike its predecessor, IrDA, which requires a separate adapter for each device, Bluetooth lets multiple devices communicate with a computer over a single adapter.
Operating system implementation.
For Microsoft platforms, Windows XP Service Pack 2 and SP3 releases work natively with Bluetooth v1.1, v2.0 and v2.0+EDR. Previous versions required users to install their Bluetooth adapter's own drivers, which were not directly supported by Microsoft. Microsoft's own Bluetooth dongles (packaged with their Bluetooth computer devices) have no external drivers and thus require at least Windows XP Service Pack 2. Windows Vista RTM/SP1 with the Feature Pack for Wireless or Windows Vista SP2 work with Bluetooth v2.1+EDR. Windows 7 works with Bluetooth v2.1+EDR and Extended Inquiry Response (EIR).
The Windows XP and Windows Vista/Windows 7 Bluetooth stacks support the following Bluetooth profiles natively: PAN, SPP, DUN, HID, HCRP. The Windows XP stack can be replaced by a third party stack that supports more profiles or newer Bluetooth versions. The Windows Vista/Windows 7 Bluetooth stack supports vendor-supplied additional profiles without requiring that the Microsoft stack be replaced. Windows 8 and later support Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). It is generally recommended to install the latest vendor driver and its associated stack to be able to use the Bluetooth device at its fullest extent.
Apple products have worked with Bluetooth since Mac OSX v10.2, which was released in 2002.
Linux has two popular Bluetooth stacks, BlueZ and Fluoride. The BlueZ stack is included with most Linux kernels and was originally developed by Qualcomm. Fluoride, earlier known as Bluedroid is included in Android OS and was originally developed by Broadcom.
There is also Affix stack, developed by Nokia. It was once popular, but has not been updated since 2005.
FreeBSD has included Bluetooth since its v5.0 release, implemented through netgraph.
NetBSD has included Bluetooth since its v4.0 release. Its Bluetooth stack was ported to OpenBSD as well, however OpenBSD later removed it as unmaintained.
DragonFly BSD has had NetBSD's Bluetooth implementation since 1.11 (2008). A netgraph-based implementation from FreeBSD has also been available in the tree, possibly disabled until 2014-11-15, and may require more work.
Specifications and features.
The specifications were formalized by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and formally announced on 20 May 1998. In 2014 it had a membership of over 30,000 companies worldwide. It was established by Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba, and later joined by many other companies.
All versions of the Bluetooth standards are backward-compatible with all earlier versions.
The Bluetooth Core Specification Working Group (CSWG) produces mainly four kinds of specifications:
Bluetooth 1.2.
Major enhancements include:
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR.
This version of the Bluetooth Core Specification was released before 2005. The main difference is the introduction of an Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) for faster data transfer. The data rate of EDR is 3Mbit/s, although the maximum data transfer rate (allowing for inter-packet time and acknowledgements) is 2.1Mbit/s. EDR uses a combination of GFSK and phase-shift keying modulation (PSK) with two variants, π/4-DQPSK and 8-DPSK. EDR can provide a lower power consumption through a reduced duty cycle.
The specification is published as "Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR", which implies that EDR is an optional feature. Aside from EDR, the v2.0 specification contains other minor improvements, and products may claim compliance to "Bluetooth v2.0" without supporting the higher data rate. At least one commercial device states "Bluetooth v2.0 without EDR" on its data sheet.
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.
Bluetooth Core Specification version 2.1 + EDR was adopted by the Bluetooth SIG on 26 July 2007.
The headline feature of v2.1 is secure simple pairing (SSP): this improves the pairing experience for Bluetooth devices, while increasing the use and strength of security.
Version 2.1 allows various other improvements, including "extended inquiry response" (EIR), which provides more information during the inquiry procedure to allow better filtering of devices before connection; and sniff subrating, which reduces the power consumption in low-power mode.
Bluetooth 3.0 + HS.
Version 3.0 + HS of the Bluetooth Core Specification was adopted by the Bluetooth SIG on 21 April 2009. Bluetooth v3.0 + HS provides theoretical data transfer speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s, though not over the Bluetooth link itself. Instead, the Bluetooth link is used for negotiation and establishment, and the high data rate traffic is carried over a colocated 802.11 link.
The main new feature is (Alternative MAC/PHY), the addition of 802.11 as a high-speed transport. The high-speed part of the specification is not mandatory, and hence only devices that display the "+HS" logo actually support Bluetooth over 802.11 high-speed data transfer. A Bluetooth v3.0 device without the "+HS" suffix is only required to support features introduced in Core Specification version 3.0 or earlier Core Specification Addendum 1.
Ultra-wideband.
The high-speed (AMP) feature of Bluetooth v3.0 was originally intended for UWB, but the WiMedia Alliance, the body responsible for the flavor of UWB intended for Bluetooth, announced in March 2009 that it was disbanding, and ultimately UWB was omitted from the Core v3.0 specification.
On 16 March 2009, the WiMedia Alliance announced it was entering into technology transfer agreements for the WiMedia Ultra-wideband (UWB) specifications. WiMedia has transferred all current and future specifications, including work on future high-speed and power-optimized implementations, to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), Wireless USB Promoter Group and the USB Implementers Forum. After successful completion of the technology transfer, marketing, and related administrative items, the WiMedia Alliance ceased operations.
In October 2009, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group suspended development of UWB as part of the alternative MAC/PHY, Bluetooth v3.0 + HS solution. A small, but significant, number of former WiMedia members had not and would not sign up to the necessary agreements for the IP transfer. As of 2009, the Bluetooth SIG was in the process of evaluating other options for its longer-term roadmap.
Bluetooth 4.0.
The Bluetooth SIG completed the Bluetooth Core Specification version 4.0 (called Bluetooth Smart) and has been adopted . It includes "Classic Bluetooth", "Bluetooth high speed" and "Bluetooth Low Energy" (BLE) protocols. Bluetooth high speed is based on Wi-Fi, and Classic Bluetooth consists of legacy Bluetooth protocols.
Bluetooth Low Energy, previously known as Wibree, is a subset of Bluetooth v4.0 with an entirely new protocol stack for rapid build-up of simple links. As an alternative to the Bluetooth standard protocols that were introduced in Bluetooth v1.0 to v3.0, it is aimed at very low power applications powered by a coin cell. Chip designs allow for two types of implementation, dual-mode, single-mode and enhanced past versions. The provisional names "Wibree" and "Bluetooth ULP" (Ultra Low Power) were abandoned and the BLE name was used for a while. In late 2011, new logos "Bluetooth Smart Ready" for hosts and "Bluetooth Smart" for sensors were introduced as the general-public face of BLE.
Compared to "Classic Bluetooth", Bluetooth Low Energy is intended to provide considerably reduced power consumption and cost while maintaining a similar communication range. In terms of lengthening the battery life of Bluetooth devices, represents a significant progression.
Cost-reduced single-mode chips, which enable highly integrated and compact devices, feature a lightweight Link Layer providing ultra-low power idle mode operation, simple device discovery, and reliable point-to-multipoint data transfer with advanced power-save and secure encrypted connections at the lowest possible cost.
General improvements in version 4.0 include the changes necessary to facilitate BLE modes, as well the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) and Security Manager (SM) services with AES Encryption.
Core Specification Addendum 2 was unveiled in December 2011; it contains improvements to the audio Host Controller Interface and to the High Speed (802.11) Protocol Adaptation Layer.
Core Specification Addendum 3 revision 2 has an adoption date of 24 July 2012.
Core Specification Addendum 4 has an adoption date of 12 February 2013.
Bluetooth 4.1.
The Bluetooth SIG announced formal adoption of the Bluetooth v4.1 specification on 4 December 2013. This specification is an incremental software update to Bluetooth Specification v4.0, and not a hardware update. The update incorporates Bluetooth Core Specification Addenda (CSA 1, 2, 3 & 4) and adds new features that improve consumer usability. These include increased co-existence support for LTE, bulk data exchange rates—and aid developer innovation by allowing devices to support multiple roles simultaneously.
New features of this specification include:
Some features were already available in a Core Specification Addendum (CSA) before the release of v4.1.
Bluetooth 4.2.
Released on 2 December 2014, it introduces features for the Internet of things.
The major areas of improvement are:
Older Bluetooth hardware may receive 4.2 features such as Data Packet Length Extension and improved privacy via firmware updates.
Bluetooth 5.
The Bluetooth SIG released Bluetooth 5 on 6 December 2016. Its new features are mainly focused on new Internet of Things technology. Sony was the first to announce Bluetooth 5.0 support with its Xperia XZ Premium in Feb 2017 during the Mobile World Congress 2017. The Samsung Galaxy S8 launched with Bluetooth 5 support in April 2017. In September 2017, the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X launched with Bluetooth 5 support as well. Apple also integrated Bluetooth 5 in its new HomePod offering released on 9 February 2018. Marketing drops the point number; so that it is just "Bluetooth 5" (unlike Bluetooth 4.0); the change is for the sake of "Simplifying our marketing, communicating user benefits more effectively and making it easier to signal significant technology updates to the market."
Bluetooth 5 provides, for BLE, options that can double the data rate (2Mbit/s burst) at the expense of range, or provide up to four times the range at the expense of data rate. The increase in transmissions could be important for Internet of Things devices, where many nodes connect throughout a whole house. Bluetooth 5 increases capacity of connectionless services such as location-relevant navigation of low-energy Bluetooth connections.
The major areas of improvement are:
Features added in CSA5 – integrated in v5.0:
The following features were removed in this version of the specification:
Bluetooth 5.1.
The Bluetooth SIG presented Bluetooth 5.1 on 21 January 2019.
The major areas of improvement are:
Features added in Core Specification Addendum (CSA) 6 – integrated in v5.1:
The following features were removed in this version of the specification:
Bluetooth 5.2.
On 31 December 2019, the Bluetooth SIG published the Bluetooth Core Specification version 5.2. The new specification adds new features:
Bluetooth 5.3.
The Bluetooth SIG published the Bluetooth Core Specification version 5.3 on 13 July 2021. The feature enhancements of Bluetooth 5.3 are:
The following features were removed in this version of the specification:
Bluetooth 5.4.
The Bluetooth SIG released the Bluetooth Core Specification version 5.4 on 7 February 2023. This new version adds the following features:
Bluetooth 6.0.
The Bluetooth SIG released the Bluetooth Core Specification version 6.0 on 27 August 2024. This version adds the following features:
Bluetooth 6.1.
The Bluetooth SIG released the Bluetooth Core Specification version 6.1 on 7 May 2025.
Technical information.
Architecture.
Software.
Seeking to extend the compatibility of Bluetooth devices, the devices that adhere to the standard use an interface called HCI (Host Controller Interface) between the host and the controller.
High-level protocols such as the SDP (Protocol used to find other Bluetooth devices within the communication range, also responsible for detecting the function of devices in range), RFCOMM (Protocol used to emulate serial port connections) and TCS (Telephony control protocol) interact with the baseband controller through the L2CAP (Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol). The L2CAP protocol is responsible for the segmentation and reassembly of the packets.
Hardware.
The hardware that makes up the Bluetooth device is made up of, logically, two parts; which may or may not be physically separate. A radio device, responsible for modulating and transmitting the signal; and a digital controller. The digital controller is likely a CPU, one of whose functions is to run a Link Controller; and interfaces with the host device; but some functions may be delegated to hardware. The Link Controller is responsible for the processing of the baseband and the management of ARQ and physical layer FEC protocols. In addition, it handles the transfer functions (both asynchronous and synchronous), audio coding (e.g. SBC (codec)) and data encryption. The CPU of the device is responsible for attending the instructions related to Bluetooth of the host device, in order to simplify its operation. To do this, the CPU runs software called Link Manager that has the function of communicating with other devices through the LMP protocol.
A Bluetooth device is a short-range wireless device. Bluetooth devices are fabricated on RF CMOS integrated circuit (RF circuit) chips.
Bluetooth protocol stack.
Bluetooth is defined as a layer protocol architecture consisting of core protocols, cable replacement protocols, telephony control protocols, and adopted protocols. Mandatory protocols for all Bluetooth stacks are LMP, L2CAP and SDP. In addition, devices that communicate with Bluetooth almost universally can use these protocols: HCI and RFCOMM.
Link Manager.
The Link Manager (LM) is the system that manages establishing the connection between devices. It is responsible for the establishment, authentication and configuration of the link. The Link Manager locates other managers and communicates with them via the management protocol of the LMP link. To perform its function as a service provider, the LM uses the services included in the Link Controller (LC).
The Link Manager Protocol basically consists of several PDUs (Protocol Data Units) that are sent from one device to another. The following is a list of supported services:
Host Controller Interface.
The Host Controller Interface provides a command interface between the controller and the host.
Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol.
The "Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol" (L2CAP) is used to multiplex multiple logical connections between two devices using different higher level protocols.
Provides segmentation and reassembly of on-air packets.
In "Basic" mode, L2CAP provides packets with a payload configurable up to 64 kB, with 672 bytes as the default MTU, and 48 bytes as the minimum mandatory supported MTU.
In "Retransmission and Flow Control" modes, L2CAP can be configured either for isochronous data or reliable data per channel by performing retransmissions and CRC checks.
Bluetooth Core Specification Addendum 1 adds two additional L2CAP modes to the core specification. These modes effectively deprecate original Retransmission and Flow Control modes:
Reliability in any of these modes is optionally and/or additionally guaranteed by the lower layer Bluetooth BDR/EDR air interface by configuring the number of retransmissions and flush timeout (time after which the radio flushes packets). In-order sequencing is guaranteed by the lower layer.
Only L2CAP channels configured in ERTM or SM may be operated over AMP logical links.
Service Discovery Protocol.
The "Service Discovery Protocol" (SDP) allows a device to discover services offered by other devices, and their associated parameters. For example, when you use a mobile phone with a Bluetooth headset, the phone uses SDP to determine which Bluetooth profiles the headset can use (Headset Profile, Hands Free Profile (HFP), Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) etc.) and the protocol multiplexer settings needed for the phone to connect to the headset using each of them. Each service is identified by a Universally unique identifier (UUID), with official services (Bluetooth profiles) assigned a short form UUID (16 bits rather than the full 128).
Radio Frequency Communications.
"Radio Frequency Communications" (RFCOMM) is a cable replacement protocol used for generating a virtual serial data stream. RFCOMM provides for binary data transport and emulates EIA-232 (formerly RS-232) control signals over the Bluetooth baseband layer, i.e., it is a serial port emulation.
RFCOMM provides a simple, reliable, data stream to the user, similar to TCP. It is used directly by many telephony related profiles as a carrier for AT commands, as well as being a transport layer for OBEX over Bluetooth.
Many Bluetooth applications use RFCOMM because of its widespread support and publicly available API on most operating systems. Additionally, applications that used a serial port to communicate can be quickly ported to use RFCOMM.
Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol.
The "Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol" (BNEP) is used for transferring another protocol stack's data via an L2CAP channel.
Its main purpose is the transmission of IP packets in the Personal Area Networking Profile.
BNEP performs a similar function to SNAP in Wireless LAN.
Audio/Video Control Transport Protocol.
The "Audio/Video Control Transport Protocol" (AVCTP) is used by the remote control profile to transfer AV/C commands over an L2CAP channel. The music control buttons on a stereo headset use this protocol to control the music player.
Audio/Video Distribution Transport Protocol.
The "Audio/Video Distribution Transport Protocol" (AVDTP) is used by the advanced audio distribution (A2DP) profile to stream music to stereo headsets over an L2CAP channel intended for video distribution profile in the Bluetooth transmission.
Telephony Control Protocol.
The "Telephony Control Protocol– Binary" (TCS BIN) is the bit-oriented protocol that defines the call control signaling for the establishment of voice and data calls between Bluetooth devices. Additionally, "TCS BIN defines mobility management procedures for handling groups of Bluetooth TCS devices."
TCS-BIN is only used by the cordless telephony profile, which failed to attract implementers. As such it is only of historical interest.
Adopted protocols.
Adopted protocols are defined by other standards-making organizations and incorporated into Bluetooth's protocol stack, allowing Bluetooth to code protocols only when necessary. The adopted protocols include:
Baseband error correction.
Depending on packet type, individual packets may be protected by error correction, either 1/3 rate forward error correction (FEC) or 2/3 rate. In addition, packets with CRC will be retransmitted until acknowledged by automatic repeat request (ARQ).
Setting up connections.
Any Bluetooth device in "discoverable mode" transmits the following information on demand:
Any device may perform an inquiry to find other devices to connect to, and any device can be configured to respond to such inquiries. However, if the device trying to connect knows the address of the device, it always responds to direct connection requests and transmits the information shown in the list above if requested. Use of a device's services may require pairing or acceptance by its owner, but the connection itself can be initiated by any device and held until it goes out of range. Some devices can be connected to only one device at a time, and connecting to them prevents them from connecting to other devices and appearing in inquiries until they disconnect from the other device.
Every device has a unique 48-bit address. However, these addresses are generally not shown in inquiries. Instead, friendly Bluetooth names are used, which can be set by the user. This name appears when another user scans for devices and in lists of paired devices.
Most cellular phones have the Bluetooth name set to the manufacturer and model of the phone by default. Most cellular phones and laptops show only the Bluetooth names and special programs are required to get additional information about remote devices. This can be confusing as, for example, there could be several cellular phones in range named T610 (see Bluejacking).
Pairing and bonding.
Motivation.
Many services offered over Bluetooth can expose private data or let a connecting party control the Bluetooth device. Security reasons make it necessary to recognize specific devices, and thus enable control over which devices can connect to a given Bluetooth device. At the same time, it is useful for Bluetooth devices to be able to establish a connection without user intervention (for example, as soon as in range).
To resolve this conflict, Bluetooth uses a process called "bonding", and a bond is generated through a process called "pairing". The pairing process is triggered either by a specific request from a user to generate a bond (for example, the user explicitly requests to "Add a Bluetooth device"), or it is triggered automatically when connecting to a service where (for the first time) the identity of a device is required for security purposes. These two cases are referred to as dedicated bonding and general bonding respectively.
Pairing often involves some level of user interaction. This user interaction confirms the identity of the devices. When pairing completes, a bond forms between the two devices, enabling those two devices to connect in the future without repeating the pairing process to confirm device identities. When desired, the user can remove the bonding relationship.
Implementation.
During pairing, the two devices establish a relationship by creating a shared secret known as a "link key". If both devices store the same link key, they are said to be "paired" or "bonded". A device that wants to communicate only with a bonded device can cryptographically authenticate the identity of the other device, ensuring it is the same device it previously paired with. Once a link key is generated, an authenticated ACL link between the devices may be encrypted to protect exchanged data against eavesdropping. Users can delete link keys from either device, which removes the bond between the devices—so it is possible for one device to have a stored link key for a device it is no longer paired with.
Bluetooth services generally require either encryption or authentication and as such require pairing before they let a remote device connect. Some services, such as the Object Push Profile, elect not to explicitly require authentication or encryption so that pairing does not interfere with the user experience associated with the service use-cases.
Pairing mechanisms.
Pairing mechanisms changed significantly with the introduction of Secure Simple Pairing in Bluetooth v2.1. The following summarizes the pairing mechanisms:
SSP is considered simple for the following reasons:
Security concerns.
Prior to Bluetooth v2.1, encryption is not required and can be turned off at any time. Moreover, the encryption key is only good for approximately 23.5 hours; using a single encryption key longer than this time allows simple XOR attacks to retrieve the encryption key.
Bluetooth v2.1 addresses this in the following ways:
Link keys may be stored on the device file system, not on the Bluetooth chip itself. Many Bluetooth chip manufacturers let link keys be stored on the device—however, if the device is removable, this means that the link key moves with the device.
Security.
Overview.
Bluetooth implements confidentiality, authentication and key derivation with custom algorithms based on the SAFER+ block cipher. Bluetooth key generation is generally based on a Bluetooth PIN, which must be entered into both devices. This procedure might be modified if one of the devices has a fixed PIN (e.g., for headsets or similar devices with a restricted user interface). During pairing, an initialization key or master key is generated, using the E22 algorithm.
The E0 stream cipher is used for encrypting packets, granting confidentiality, and is based on a shared cryptographic secret, namely a previously generated link key or master key. Those keys, used for subsequent encryption of data sent via the air interface, rely on the Bluetooth PIN, which has been entered into one or both devices.
An overview of Bluetooth vulnerabilities exploits was published in 2007 by Andreas Becker.
In September 2008, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a Guide to Bluetooth Security as a reference for organizations. It describes Bluetooth security capabilities and how to secure Bluetooth technologies effectively. While Bluetooth has its benefits, it is susceptible to denial-of-service attacks, eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks, message modification, and resource misappropriation. Users and organizations must evaluate their acceptable level of risk and incorporate security into the lifecycle of Bluetooth devices. To help mitigate risks, included in the NIST document are security checklists with guidelines and recommendations for creating and maintaining secure Bluetooth piconets, headsets, and smart card readers.
Bluetooth v2.1 – finalized in 2007 with consumer devices first appearing in 2009 – makes significant changes to Bluetooth's security, including pairing. See the pairing mechanisms section for more about these changes.
Bluejacking.
Bluejacking is the sending of either a picture or a message from one user to an unsuspecting user through Bluetooth wireless technology. Common applications include short messages, e.g., "You've just been bluejacked!" Bluejacking does not involve the removal or alteration of any data from the device.
Some form of DoS is also possible, even in modern devices, by sending unsolicited pairing requests in rapid succession; this becomes disruptive because most systems display a full screen notification for every connection request, interrupting every other activity, especially on less powerful devices.
History of security concerns.
2001–2004.
In 2001, Jakobsson and Wetzel from Bell Laboratories discovered flaws in the Bluetooth pairing protocol and also pointed to vulnerabilities in the encryption scheme. In 2003, Ben and Adam Laurie from A.L. Digital Ltd. discovered that serious flaws in some poor implementations of Bluetooth security may lead to disclosure of personal data. In a subsequent experiment, Martin Herfurt from the trifinite.group was able to do a field-trial at the CeBIT fairgrounds, showing the importance of the problem to the world. A new attack called BlueBug was used for this experiment. In 2004 the first purported virus using Bluetooth to spread itself among mobile phones appeared on the Symbian OS.
The virus was first described by Kaspersky Lab and requires users to confirm the installation of unknown software before it can propagate. The virus was written as a proof-of-concept by a group of virus writers known as "29A" and sent to anti-virus groups. Thus, it should be regarded as a potential (but not real) security threat to Bluetooth technology or Symbian OS since the virus has never spread outside of this system. In August 2004, a world-record-setting experiment (see also Bluetooth sniping) showed that the range of Class 2 Bluetooth radios could be extended to with directional antennas and signal amplifiers.
This poses a potential security threat because it enables attackers to access vulnerable Bluetooth devices from a distance beyond expectation. The attacker must also be able to receive information from the victim to set up a connection. No attack can be made against a Bluetooth device unless the attacker knows its Bluetooth address and which channels to transmit on, although these can be deduced within a few minutes if the device is in use.
2005.
In January 2005, a mobile malware worm known as Lasco surfaced. The worm began targeting mobile phones using Symbian OS (Series 60 platform) using Bluetooth enabled devices to replicate itself and spread to other devices. The worm is self-installing and begins once the mobile user approves the transfer of the file (Velasco.sis) from another device. Once installed, the worm begins looking for other Bluetooth enabled devices to infect. Additionally, the worm infects other .SIS files on the device, allowing replication to another device through the use of removable media (Secure Digital, CompactFlash, etc.). The worm can render the mobile device unstable.
In April 2005, University of Cambridge security researchers published results of their actual implementation of passive attacks against the PIN-based pairing between commercial Bluetooth devices. They confirmed that attacks are practicably fast, and the Bluetooth symmetric key establishment method is vulnerable. To rectify this vulnerability, they designed an implementation that showed that stronger, asymmetric key establishment is feasible for certain classes of devices, such as mobile phones.
In June 2005, Yaniv Shaked and Avishai Wool published a paper describing both passive and active methods for obtaining the PIN for a Bluetooth link. The passive attack allows a suitably equipped attacker to eavesdrop on communications and spoof if the attacker was present at the time of initial pairing. The active method makes use of a specially constructed message that must be inserted at a specific point in the protocol, to make the master and slave repeat the pairing process. After that, the first method can be used to crack the PIN. This attack's major weakness is that it requires the user of the devices under attack to re-enter the PIN during the attack when the device prompts them to. Also, this active attack probably requires custom hardware, since most commercially available Bluetooth devices are not capable of the timing necessary.
In August 2005, police in Cambridgeshire, England, issued warnings about thieves using Bluetooth enabled phones to track other devices left in cars. Police are advising users to ensure that any mobile networking connections are de-activated if laptops and other devices are left in this way.
2006.
In April 2006, researchers from Secure Network and F-Secure published a report that warns of the large number of devices left in a visible state, and issued statistics on the spread of various Bluetooth services and the ease of spread of an eventual Bluetooth worm.
In October 2006, at the Luxembourgish Hack.lu Security Conference, Kevin Finistere and Thierry Zoller demonstrated and released a remote root shell via Bluetooth on Mac OS X v10.3.9 and v10.4. They also demonstrated the first Bluetooth PIN and Linkkeys cracker, which is based on the research of Wool and Shaked.
2017.
In April 2017, security researchers at Armis discovered multiple exploits in the Bluetooth software in various platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple iOS, and Google Android. These vulnerabilities are collectively called "BlueBorne". The exploits allow an attacker to connect to devices or systems without authentication and can give them "virtually full control over the device". Armis contacted Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung and Linux developers allowing them to patch their software before the coordinated announcement of the vulnerabilities on 12 September 2017.
2018.
In July 2018, Lior Neumann and Eli Biham, researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology identified a security vulnerability in the latest Bluetooth pairing procedures: Secure Simple Pairing and LE Secure Connections.
Also, in October 2018, Karim Lounis, a network security researcher at Queen's University, identified a security vulnerability, called CDV (Connection Dumping Vulnerability), on various Bluetooth devices that allows an attacker to tear down an existing Bluetooth connection and cause the deauthentication and disconnection of the involved devices. The researcher demonstrated the attack on various devices of different categories and from different manufacturers.
2019.
In August 2019, security researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, Helmholtz Center for Information Security, and University of Oxford discovered a vulnerability, called KNOB (Key Negotiation of Bluetooth) in the key negotiation that would "brute force the negotiated encryption keys, decrypt the eavesdropped ciphertext, and inject valid encrypted messages (in real-time)".
Google released an Android security patch on 5 August 2019, which removed this vulnerability.
2023.
In November 2023, researchers from Eurecom revealed a new class of attacks known as BLUFFS (Bluetooth Low Energy Forward and Future Secrecy Attacks). These 6 new attacks expand on and work in conjunction with the previously known KNOB and BIAS (Bluetooth Impersonation AttackS) attacks. While the previous KNOB and BIAS attacks allowed an attacker to decrypt and spoof Bluetooth packets within a session, BLUFFS extends this capability to all sessions generated by a device (including past, present, and future). All devices running Bluetooth versions 4.2 up to and including 5.4 are affected.
Health concerns.
Bluetooth uses the radio frequency spectrum in the 2.402GHz to 2.480GHz range, which is non-ionizing radiation, of similar bandwidth to that used by wireless and mobile phones. No specific harm has been demonstrated, even though wireless transmission has been included by IARC in the possible carcinogen list. Maximum power output from a Bluetooth radio is 100mW for Class1, 2.5mW for Class2, and 1mW for Class3 devices. Even the maximum power output of Class1 is a lower level than the lowest-powered mobile phones. UMTS and W-CDMA output 250mW, GSM1800/1900 outputs 1000mW, and GSM850/900 outputs 2000mW.
Award programs.
The Bluetooth Innovation World Cup, a marketing initiative of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), was an international competition that encouraged the development of innovations for applications leveraging Bluetooth technology in sports, fitness and health care products. The competition aimed to stimulate new markets.
The Bluetooth Innovation World Cup morphed into the Bluetooth Breakthrough Awards in 2013. Bluetooth SIG subsequently launched the Imagine Blue Award in 2016 at Bluetooth World. The Bluetooth Breakthrough Awards program highlights the most innovative products and applications available today, prototypes coming soon, and student-led projects in the making.
|
3743
|
43007828
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3743
|
Bluetooth Special Interest Group
|
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) is the standards organization that oversees the development of Bluetooth standards and the licensing of the Bluetooth technologies and trademarks to manufacturers. The SIG is a not-for-profit, non-stock corporation founded in September 1998. The SIG is headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, US.
The SIG does not make, manufacture or sell Bluetooth-enabled products.
Introduction.
"Bluetooth" technology provides a way to exchange information between wireless devices such as PDAs, laptops, computers, printers and digital cameras via a secure, low-cost, globally available short-range radio frequency band. Originally developed by Ericsson, "Bluetooth" technology is now used in many different products by many different manufacturers. These manufacturers must be either Associate or Promoter members of (see below) the Bluetooth SIG before they are granted early access to the "Bluetooth" specifications, but published "Bluetooth" specifications are available online via the Bluetooth SIG Website bluetooth.com.
The SIG owns the "Bluetooth" word mark, figure mark and combination mark. These trademarks are licensed out for use to companies that are incorporating "Bluetooth" wireless technology into their products. To become a licensee, a company must become a member of the Bluetooth SIG. The SIG also manages the Bluetooth SIG Qualification program, a certification process required for any product using "Bluetooth" wireless technology and a pre-condition of the intellectual property license for "Bluetooth" technology. The main tasks for the SIG are to publish the "Bluetooth" specifications, protect the "Bluetooth" trademarks and evangelize "Bluetooth" wireless technology. In 2016, the SIG introduced a new visual and creative identity to support Bluetooth technology as the catalyst for the Internet of Things (IoT). This change included an updated logo, a new tagline and deprecation of the Bluetooth Smart and Bluetooth Smart Ready logos.
At its inception in 1998, the Bluetooth SIG was primarily run by a staff effectively seconded from its member companies. In 2001 Tom Siep served as the group's managing director, and from 2002 to 2004 Mike McCamon led the group as its executive director. In 2004 he was replaced by Michael W. Foley (Mike). From 2012-mid-2024, Mark Powell acted as the Bluetooth SIG's CEO/Executive Director. Effective 29 May 2024, Neville Meijers became the SIG's CEO. Beginning in 2002 a professional staff was hired, composed of operations, engineering and marketing specialists. From 2002 to 2004 the Bluetooth SIG was based in Overland Park, Kansas, US, and is now based in Kirkland, Washington. In addition to its professional staff, the SIG is supported by its more than 40,000 member companies who participate in the various working groups that produce the standardization documents and oversee the qualification process for new products and help to evangelize the technology.
Structure.
The SIG members participate in study groups, expert groups, working groups along with committees.
Study groups.
The study groups carry out research into their various areas which informs the development of the Bluetooth specifications. They may eventually become working groups in their own right.
Expert groups.
The expert groups deal with issues of technical importance to all aspects of "Bluetooth" development. As with the Study Groups their work informs the working groups as well as the corporate groups.
Participation in the Expert Groups is restricted to Promoter members and Associate members.
Working groups.
The working groups develop new Bluetooth specifications and enhance adopted specifications. They are responsible for the vast majority of published standards and specifications. Participation in the working groups is restricted to Promoter members and Associate members.
Committees.
The committees of the SIG deal with the other aspects of licensing, marketing and review including developing and maintaining the Qualification Process, oversight of the "Bluetooth" specifications, and developing, improving and maintaining the test methodology and concepts as well as other strategic functions.
Membership.
Any company incorporating "Bluetooth" wireless technology into products, using the technology to offer goods and services or simply re-branding a product with "Bluetooth" technology may become a member of the Bluetooth SIG. There are three levels of corporate membership totaling more than 20,000 members, and individuals from member companies may also participate.
Promoter members.
These members are the most active in the SIG and have considerable influence over both the strategic and technological directions of Bluetooth as a whole.
Each Promoter member has one seat (and one vote) on the board of directors and the Qualification Review Board (the body responsible for developing and maintaining the qualification process). They each may have multiple staff in the various working groups and committees that comprise the work of the SIG.
The SIG's website carries a full list of members.
Associate members.
The Bluetooth SIG Associate membership fees have stayed the same since 2006. Associate membership is renewed annually and the yearly fee depends on the individual company's revenue. Companies with annual revenue in excess of $100M US are considered Large Associates and pay annual membership fees of $42,000 US. Small Associates are categorized as those organizations with revenue less than $100M US and join the SIG with an annual membership fee of $9,000 US. Associate members of the SIG get early access to draft specifications at versions 0.5 and 0.7 and are eligible to participate and gain a voting seat in working groups and committees—a key opportunity to work with other Associate and Promoter members on enhancing existing specifications. They are also eligible for enhanced marketing support, receive discounts on product qualification listings and SIG events including Bluetooth World and UnPlugFest (UPF) testing events.
Adopter members.
Adopter membership in the SIG is free and entitles members to use published "Bluetooth " wireless specifications and "Bluetooth" trademarks. Adopter members do not have early access to unpublished specifications and may not participate in working groups or committees to influence the development of the technology.
Individuals.
Membership is not currently open to individuals.
Universities.
Universities or other educational facilities are not accepted for membership.
Qualification.
Next to the development of the technology itself, the qualification process is one of the most important aspects of "Bluetooth" technology, supporting interoperability, conformance to the Bluetooth specifications, and to strengthening the Bluetooth brand.
Members of the Bluetooth SIG must complete the qualification and declaration process for their Bluetooth enabled product(s) to demonstrate and declare compliance to the .
The primary objective of the qualification process is for members to demonstrate their product(s) compliance to the adopted specifications through testing and documentation. After qualification is completed, members need to complete the declaration process. Members declare their compliance to both the Bluetooth Patent/Copyright License Agreement and Bluetooth Trademark License Agreement ("BTLA").
An overview of both processes including steps of the processes, types and fees is available on the Bluetooth SIG public portal.
Bluetooth Qualification Experts (BQEs) and Bluetooth Qualification Test Facilities (BQTFs) are available to support members through the processes. Members uncertain or unfamiliar with the qualification process are encouraged to consider using one or both of these service types.
|
3744
|
7237466
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3744
|
Boney M.
|
Boney M. is a German reggae, funk and disco music group founded in 1974. It achieved popularity during the disco era in the second half of the 1970s. The band was created by German record producer Frank Farian, who was the group's primary songwriter and singer. Originally based in West Germany, the four original members of the band's official line-up were Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett from Jamaica, Maizie Williams from Montserrat, and Bobby Farrell from Aruba. Since the 1980s, various line-ups of the band have performed with different members.
The band sold over 100 million records during their commercial heyday, and are known for hits including "Daddy Cool", "Ma Baker", "Belfast", "Sunny", "Rasputin", "Rivers of Babylon", "Brown Girl in the Ring", "Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday", "Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord" and "Gotta Go Home". They achieved eight number one singles in their native Germany, and two in the United Kingdom, both of which are among that country's all-time bestsellers.
History.
1974–1976: Formation and early career.
German singer-songwriter Frank Farian recorded the dance track "Baby Do You Wanna Bump" in December 1974. Farian sang the repeated line "Do you do you wanna bump?" in a deep voice, as well as performing the high falsetto chorus. When the record was released as a single in early 1975, it was credited to "Boney M.". Farian had created this pseudonym for himself after watching the Australian television detective series "Boney", whose main character was named Napoleon Bonaparte. Farian said:
After a slow start, the song became a hit in the Netherlands and Belgium. It was then that Farian decided to hire performers to create a troupe for TV appearances. Farian found model-turned-singer Maizie Williams, originally from Montserrat, Bobby Farrell, a dancer from Aruba, and singer Marcia Barrett from Jamaica, who brought in singer Liz Mitchell, also from Jamaica, and a former member of the Les Humphries Singers.
1976–1979: "Take the Heat off Me" and international success.
Boney M.'s first album, "Take the Heat off Me", was released in 1976. It featured tracks that Marcia Barrett had already recorded with Farian, including the title track and "Lovin' or Leavin, both of which were previously recorded in German by another Farian act, Gilla. As Maizie Williams' voice was not considered suitable for recording purposes by Farian, and a try-out with Bobby Farrell performing "No Woman No Cry" did not work, Farian decided to use only Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett, along with his own studio-enhanced voice, to create the Boney M. sound.
The album's commercial performance was initially lukewarm. However, the group rigorously toured discos, clubs, and even country fairs to earn a reputation for themselves. The group's big break came at the end of the summer of 1976 when West German television producer Michael "Mike" Leckebusch of Radio Bremen requested them for his show "Musikladen". Boney M. appeared on the live music show on 18 September 1976, after 10:00 p.m. and in their daring stage costumes, where they performed the song "Daddy Cool". The song quickly went to no.1 in West Germany, with the album following the success of the single. Another single, "Sunny", a cover of the 1966 Bobby Hebb song, gave the group their second no.1 hit. The group's popularity had also grown throughout Europe, with "Daddy Cool" reaching no.1 in Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Spain, France, and Austria. Both singles were also Top 10 hits in the UK, which would become one of their biggest markets.
In 1977, Boney M. released their second album, "Love for Sale", which contained the hits "Ma Baker" and "Belfast". The group embarked on their first major concert tours with a live band of musicians called The Black Beauty Circus, given their name after Maizie Williams' first band, Black Beautiful People. "Love for Sale" was certified Gold a year after its release in the UK. Both singles from the album reached no.1 in West Germany and the UK Top 10.
1978 was the group's biggest year. They released a new double A-sided single, "Rivers of Babylon" / "Brown Girl in the Ring", which was a hit all over Europe, reaching no.1 in several countries as well as becoming one of the biggest selling singles of all time in the UK. It also became their most successful single in the United States, peaking at no.30 on the U.S. pop singles chart. Following this came their biggest-selling album, "Nightflight to Venus", which spawned further hit singles with "Rasputin" and "Painter Man". Continuing with their success, they released "Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord", which was the 1978 Christmas number one single in the United Kingdom and became another of the biggest selling singles of all time there. The same year, Boney M. made a much-publicised promotional visit to the Soviet Union, one of the very few Western acts along with Elton John to do so, although tracks like "Rasputin" were not released in the Soviet Union due to their subject matter.
While it had never been a secret that Bobby Farrell never sang on the group's records (Farian did the male vocals in the studio), in 1978 it became public knowledge that Maizie Williams did not sing on the studio recordings either, since "her voice wasn't suited for this kind of music" as Farian stated in an interview with German teen magazine "Bravo". Because this had become common practice within the disco genre of the late 1970s, few people caredunlike when Farian repeated the practice to much more severe backlash with Milli Vanilli in the late 1980s. While only two of Boney M.'s official members actually contributed to the sound of the band's records, all four members of the group, including Williams and Farrell, performed the vocals live at Boney M. concerts. The band's live sound was also augmented by several backing vocalists, which served to mitigate any vocal deficiencies the group may have had compared with the studio productions.
1979 saw Boney M. release a brand new single, "Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday", which became another Top 10 hit across Europe. Later in the year they released their fourth album, "Oceans of Fantasy", featuring two hit singles – "Gotta Go Home" / "El Lute" and "I'm Born Again" / "Bahama Mama". The album also included lead and backing vocals credits for the first time. "Oceans of Fantasy" reached no.1 in the UK and was certified Platinum, though their run of Top 10 singles had now ended, with "Gotta Go Home" peaking at no.12 and "I'm Born Again" peaking at no.35.
1980–1986: "The Magic of Boney M."; departure of Farrell and split.
In 1980, Boney M. released a greatest hits album, "The Magic of Boney M. – 20 Golden Hits", which also featured two new songs, "My Friend Jack" and "I See a Boat on the River". It made the no.1 spot in the UK, reaching Gold status within six weeks of release, though it was their last big-selling album in the UK.
Boney M.'s fifth album had been scheduled for release in November 1980, but the recording sessions dragged on through 1981. When "Boonoonoonoos" was finally released by the end of that year, Bobby Farrell departed from the group due to issues with Frank Farian. While still a healthy seller in continental Europe, "Boonoonoonoos" failed to crack the UK Top 100 after three consecutive no.1 albums, due to the group being unable to promote it without Farrell. Following this, the group released "Christmas Album".
In 1982, "Rasputin" was played by local broadcasters in Vietnam during the waiting periods before live games of the España 82 – the 1982 FIFA World Cup. This led to the popularity of the band in Vietnam for decades following.
Reggie Tsiboe was hired to replace Farrell as the new male member of Boney M. in 1982, but the singles "The Carnival is Over" and "Jambo" fared poorly, and the group's seventh album "Ten Thousand Lightyears", issued in 1984, marked another commercial low point, peaking at number 23 in the German album charts. However, they returned to the German Top 20 in the autumn of 1984 with "Kalimba de Luna" (a Top 10 hit in France) and "Happy Song", the latter seeing Farrell return to the group. Both songs were carbon-copies of the original Italian hits by Tony Esposito and Baby's Gang respectively.
By 1985, Farian clearly began losing interest in the group, and their eighth and final studio album "Eye Dance" was widely regarded as uninspired and disappointing. After celebrating Boney M.'s 10th anniversary in early 1986, the group officially disbanded after the release of the commercially unsuccessful single "Young, Free and Single", which peaked at no.48 in West Germany.
1990 and on: failed reunions and public interest.
From this point, different versions of the group were formed by members, some with the cooperation of Farian, others without, for example by independently obtaining the rights to use the Boney M. name in a different country. One version began touring in the first half of 1987 with Marilyn Scharbaai (Carrilho) taking Liz Mitchell's place. Mitchell returned for a second leg of the tour late 1987, and Marcia Barrett soon left the band. At the same time, Bobby Farrell had set up a deal for a new Boney M. album to be recorded without Farian in Belgium. When Farrell failed to show up for either recording or tour, and as Maizie Williams had never sung on record, the album ended up being released as Liz Mitchell's first solo album, "No One Will Force You". Mitchell and Williams completed a tour during 1987–88, adding singer Celena Duncan and Ron Gale as replacements for Barrett and Farrell. Carol Grey later replaced Celena Duncan and Curt De Daran later replaced Ron Gale.
In October 1988, the classic Boney M. line-up reunited without producer Frank Farian for the album "Greatest Hits of All Times – Remix '88", but tensions ran high between the members, and Mitchell left in the spring of 1989, to be replaced by Madeleine Davis. While Mitchell promoted her solo album, the group recorded the single "Everybody Wants to Dance Like Josephine Baker", without Farian's knowledge or approval. Threatened with legal action by the producer over the use of the Boney M. name, the single was subsequently withdrawn and Farian issued "Stories" with his own new Boney M. line-up featuring Mitchell, Reggie Tsiboe and two new members, Sharon Stevens and Patty Onoyewenjo. "Stories" peaked at number 11 in the Swiss charts, and a second remix album, "Greatest Hits of All Times – Remix '89 – Volume II", was released, but fared poorly.
1992 saw a renewed interest in Boney M.'s music with the "Boney M. Megamix" single returning the group to the UK Top 10 for the first time since 1980, and a subsequent greatest hits album, "Gold – 20 Super Hits", reaching the UK Top 20 in 1993. While Marcia Barrett, by then living in Florida, had cancer and was unable to perform, Boney M. toured the world with a line-up of Liz Mitchell, Carol Grey, Patricia Lorna Foster and Curt Dee Daran (replaced by Tony Ashcroft in 1994). They released the single "Papa Chico", but it failed to chart. Maizie Williams assembled her own Boney M., with an ever-changing line-up. Bobby Farrell also toured with varying trios of female performers.
Mitchell was touring the world with her line-up of Boney M., which was the only line-up officially supported by Farian; a court ruling in 1990 stated that all four members are entitled to perform their own Boney M. shows. Farrell and Mitchell have released solo albums featuring their own re-recordings of Boney M.'s classic hits. Williams released her first solo album in 2006, and her own single version of "Sunny". In 2007, her rendition of "Daddy Cool" with Melo-M hit the number one spot in the Latvian (LMK) Charts. Marcia Barrett has released two solo albums, with a third scheduled for release in 2010.
A musical based on the music of Boney M., "Daddy Cool", opened in London in August 2006 to mixed reviews and sluggish ticket sales, causing it to close in February 2007. From April to July 2007, the show played in a mobile theatre in Berlin, which was specially designed for it.
In April 2007, Australian pop singer Peter Wilson released a song co-written by Frank Farian entitled "Doin' Fine". It was described as "paying tribute to the sound of Boney M." and features the famous string arrangement from their first number 1 hit, "Daddy Cool". Boney M. (featuring Marcia Barrett) made a live appearance at the 37th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), which took place on 23 November 2006 in Panaji, the state capital of Goa, India.
In the UK, a new album of their greatest hits, entitled "The Magic of Boney M." was released via BMG on 27 November 2006. Special additions to this release were a Mousse T. remix of "Sunny" and a brand new song from 2006, featuring Liz Mitchell, entitled "A Moment of Love". On 10 April 2007, Boney M.'s first four albums were reissued on compact disc with bonus tracks, this time also in the United States (the first time these were available to the U.S. music market since their original releases in the 1970s).
In September 2007, Boney M.'s last four original albums, "Boonoonoonoos", "Ten Thousand Lightyears, Kalimba de Luna - 16 Happy Songs" and "Eye Dance" were reissued on compact disc in Europe and the United States, all including bonus tracks. In November 2007, a new Christmas compilation was scheduled for release, as well as the DVD "Fantastic Boney M. – On Stage and on the Road", featuring a live performance recorded in Vienna on 1 November 1977 (the DVD cover erroneously states it to be a live show from Hamburg), and a film from the band's 1981 visit to Jamaica (made to promote the "Boonoonoonoos" album that year).
Bobby Farrell's Boney M. performed a concert at the Amphi in Ra'anana, Israel, in May 2007. On 28 June 2007 Boney M. featuring Matthew Felsenfeld and Liz Mitchell performed at the Oktiabrsky concert hall in St. Petersburg, Russia. In September 2007, Maizie Williams' Boney M. line-up performed live at the Royal Albert Hall in London to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in Africa, performing her own renditions of "Brown Girl in the Ring" and "Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday".
The legal rights to the name "Boney M." have been a matter of controversy, and even court cases, between the former members of the band and producer Frank Farian ever since the late 1980s. Farian, the man who in effect created the group, continued to work with Liz Mitchell and her line-up all through the 1990s and 2000s. In January 2007, Bobby Farrell's daughter Zanillya Farrell and his ex-wife Yasmina Ayad-Saban renewed the trademark to the name Boney M. in Germany for a 10-year period.
In January 2009, Farian released the single "Felicidad America (Obama Obama)", a version of the 1980 Boney M. song "Felicidad (Margherita)" with new lyrics about newly elected U.S. president Barack Obama. The song was recorded with two new vocalists, and credited to "Boney M. feat. Sherita O. & Yulee B."
In July 2010, Maizie Williams headlined a Boney M. performance at Ramallah's Cultural Palace, in the West Bank, as part of the Palestine International Festival. The band played "Daddy Cool", "Ma Baker" and "Brown Girl in the Ring", but refrained from playing "Rivers of Babylon", rumoured to be at the event organisers' request because of its description of the Jewish yearning for Zion.
Bobby Farrell died at the age of 61 from heart failure on 30 December 2010. His agent said Farrell was complaining of breathing problems after performing with his band the evening before. Farrell lived in Amsterdam until his death. His final performance was in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the city where Rasputin first became famous and was later killed. Farrell died in a hotel room there, 94 years to the day after Rasputin.
Maizie Williams' line-up of Boney M. toured Australia in June 2014. They sang at Guilfest, Guildford, UK, on 20 July 2014, and Watchet Live music festival UK, on 24 August 2014.
In March 2015, Farian released "Diamonds", a three-CD box celebrating the 40th anniversary of Boney M. It featured re-mastered versions of the original hit singles or of previously unreleased versions, a remix disc and the new digital single "Song of Joy", featuring Liz Mitchell. A major DVD set was also released.
In February 2017, the group performed at the closing ceremony of Patras Carnival in Patras, Greece. At the end of 2017, the album "World Music for Christmas" was released under the name Boney M. and Friends, with Mitchell singing on three songs, along with the single and video "Like Diamonds in the Sky" featuring Mitchell, based on the song "El Cóndor Pasa".
In 2021, a remix of "Rasputin" by house music producer and Kiss FM DJ Kevin Christie was released by Sony Music's Ministry of Sound label. Credited to Majestic & Boney M (with the former being the DJ alias of Christie), the record reached number 11 on the UK singles chart and was released with a video featuring Bimini Bon-Boulash from "RuPaul's Drag Race UK". In December 2021, Mitchell was one of the contributors to the Channel 5 music programme "Britain's Biggest 70s Hits", alongside other musicians from the era such as Dean Friedman and Barry Blue, and radio presenters like David Hamilton.
In August 2023, Boney M., headed by Mitchell, embarked on a multi-city US tour, along with Samantha Fox and Bad Boys Blue, which included stops in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City and San Jose. The shows were put together by Los Angeles-based promoters LA Concert Group.
In January 2024, the group's producer and main founder Frank Farian died, aged 82.
The group were scheduled for a farewell tour in Australia in June and July, 2024.
UK record sales achievements.
In 1978, "Rivers of Babylon", a cover of a track by The Melodians with lyrics partly based on Psalm 137 and partly on Psalm 19, became (at the time) the second highest-selling single of all time in the UK. After remaining at no.1 for five weeks, "Rivers of Babylon" began dropping down the chart, at which point the B-side "Brown Girl in the Ring" was given extensive radio airplay, and the single ascended to no.2. The single spent six months in the UK Top 40, including 19 weeks in the Top 10. It eventually sold more than two million copies, the second single to do so, and is still one of only seven to achieve this feat.
The group achieved a second UK million-seller with their version of the calypso song "Mary's Boy Child", released as a medley, "Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord", the first title having previously been a million-seller for Harry Belafonte. The single sold more than 1.8 million copies, 1.6 million of which were in the four weeks the song was at No. 1 in December 1978.
Boney M. is the only artist to appear twice in the top 12 best selling singles of all time in the UK, with "Rivers of Babylon" in seventh place and "Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord" at number 11. They are also one of six artists to sell a million copies with two singles in the same year.
Back catalogue.
Compared to other best-selling artists of the 1970s, like ABBA, Donna Summer, and the Bee Gees, the Boney M. discography is quite unusual, in that while the greater part of the band's back catalogue has been remixed, remade, remodeled and reissued all through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s by producer Frank Farian and record company BMG-Ariola (now Sony Music), most of the original 7" and 12" versions issued on vinyl in the 1970s and early 1980s remained unavailable on CD until 2007, when they were released on various compilations, most notably "The Collection" (2008), the "Ultimate Boney M." series (2008), "Let It All Be Music: The Party Album" (2009), "Hit Story" (2010) and "Diamonds" (2015). Some of these CDs were compiled by Frank Eberlein, who had also been interviewed on a fansite called "Fantastic Boney M." about the compiling process.
"Greatest hits" collections containing edited and/or overdubbed versions of the original recordings are still being released, such as "Boney M. & Friends (Their Ultimate Top 40 Collection)" (2017), "Rasputin – Big And Strong: The Greatest Hits of Boney M." (2021) and the 2022 re-issue of the 2006 compilation "The Magic of Boney M."
Popularity outside the West.
Boney M. was hugely popular in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, although the song "Rasputin" was banned by the Soviet authorities from being played at the group's concert in Moscow in December 1978. The song has been used in several films and television shows, including "Johnny English Strikes Again", "The King's Man", "Black Mirror" and in the "Doctor Who" special "The Power of the Doctor", in which The Master dances to the song while disguised as Rasputin himself.
In the Soviet film "Repentance" (1984, released 1987), "Sunny" is played at a party attended by high-ranked communist officials. The song is also played during a few parts of the successful Korean film of the same name, "Sunny".
During the 2002 presidential election campaign of South Korea, then-candidate Roh Moo-hyun, who eventually won the presidency at that event, used "Bahama Mama" to promote his aim of positive political reform.
The 2005 Chinese film "Shanghai Dreams" features a scene depicting a rural Chinese disco in 1983, with teenagers dancing to "Rivers of Babylon" and "Gotta Go Home".
In the 2008 Kazakh film "Tulpan", the tractor driver Boni continually plays a cassette of "Rivers of Babylon", an example of his fascination for all things Western.
In the 2008 Chinese film "Cheung Gong 7 hou" (English title: "CJ7"), "Sunny" is a vital part of the soundtrack. "Sunny" is the theme song of the 2011 Taiwanese drama, "Sunny Girl". The song has also appeared in "The Umbrella Academy" and "Boogie Nights".
Boney M. was immensely popular in India throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Liz Mitchell recalled her visits to India in the 1980s in a 2015 interview with "Hindustan Times": "It was amazing. We've had the most-wonderful tours here. We even went out shopping to so many places. We met several Bollywood stars and had dinners with them."
Live performances.
Uncredited backing vocalists (Sopot Festival 1979).
During Boney M.’s televised performance at the Sopot International Song Festival in Poland on 24 August 1979, three uncredited backing vocalists appeared alongside the main lineup. Based on visual analysis of the performance footage and corroborated by fan sources, the trio is believed to have included:
These vocalists, though uncredited in official releases, provided live harmonies and visual presence that contributed significantly to Boney M.’s sound during their 1979 tour. Their contributions have been acknowledged in fan communities and archival research efforts.
Discography.
Albums
|
3746
|
73920
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3746
|
Blade Runner
|
Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The film is set in a dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019, in which synthetic humans known as "replicants" are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on space colonies. When a fugitive group of advanced replicants led by Roy Batty (Hauer) escapes back to Earth, burnt-out cop Rick Deckard (Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down.
"Blade Runner" initially underperformed in North American theaters and polarized critics; some praised its thematic complexity and visuals, while others critiqued its slow pacing and lack of action. The film's soundtrack, composed by Vangelis, was nominated in 1982 for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe as best original score. "Blade Runner" later became a cult film, and has since come to be regarded as one of the greatest science fiction films. Hailed for its production design depicting a high-tech but decaying future, the film is often regarded as both a leading example of neo-noir cinema and a foundational work of the cyberpunk genre. It has influenced many science fiction films, video games, anime, and television series. It also brought the work of Dick to Hollywood's attention and led to several film adaptations of his works. In 1993, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Seven different versions of "Blade Runner" exist as a result of controversial changes requested by studio executives. A director's cut was released in 1992 after a strong response to test screenings of a workprint. This, in conjunction with the film's popularity as a video rental, made it one of the earliest films to be released on DVD. In 2007, Warner Bros. released "The Final Cut", a 25th-anniversary digitally remastered version; this is the only version over which Scott retained artistic control.
The film is the first of the franchise of the same name. A sequel, titled "Blade Runner 2049", was released in 2017 alongside a trilogy of short films covering the thirty-year span between the two films' settings. The anime series "" was released in 2021.
Plot.
In 2019 Los Angeles, former police officer Rick Deckard is detained by Officer Gaff, who likes to make origami figures, and is brought to his former supervisor, Bryant. Deckard, whose job as a "blade runner" was to track down bioengineered humanoids known as replicants and terminally "retire" them, is informed that four replicants are on Earth illegally. Deckard begins to leave, but Bryant makes veiled threats and Deckard stays. The two watch a video of a blade runner named Holden administering the Voight-Kampff test, which is designed to distinguish replicants from humans based on their emotional responses to questions. The test subject, Leon, shoots Holden on the second question. Bryant wants Deckard to retire Leon and three other Nexus-6 replicants: Roy Batty, Zhora, and Pris.
Bryant has Deckard meet with the CEO of the company that creates the replicants, Eldon Tyrell, so he can administer the V-K test on a Nexus-6 to see if it works. Tyrell expresses his interest in seeing the test fail first and asks him to administer it on his assistant Rachael. After a much longer than standard test, Deckard concludes privately to Tyrell that Rachael is a replicant who believes she is human. Tyrell explains that she is an experiment who has been given false memories to provide an "emotional cushion", and that she has no knowledge of her true nature.
In searching Leon's hotel room, Deckard finds photos and a scale from the skin of an animal, which is later identified as a synthetic snake scale. Deckard returns to his apartment, where Rachael is waiting. She tries to prove her humanity by showing him a family photo, but Deckard reveals that her memories are implants from Tyrell's niece, and she leaves in tears.
Replicants Roy and Leon meanwhile investigate a replicant eye-manufacturing laboratory and learn of J. F. Sebastian, a gifted genetic designer who works closely with Tyrell. Pris locates Sebastian and manipulates him to gain his trust.
A photograph from Leon's apartment and the snake scale lead Deckard to a strip club, where Zhora works. After a confrontation and chase, Deckard kills Zhora. Bryant also orders him to retire Rachael, who has disappeared from the Tyrell Corporation. Deckard spots Rachael in a crowd, but he is ambushed by Leon, who knocks the gun out of Deckard's hand and beats him. As Leon is about to kill Deckard, Rachael saves him by using Deckard's gun to kill Leon. They return to Deckard's apartment and, during a discussion, he promises not to track her down. As Rachael abruptly tries to leave, Deckard restrains her and forces her to kiss him, and she ultimately relents. Deckard leaves Rachael at his apartment and departs to search for the remaining replicants.
Roy arrives at Sebastian's apartment and tells Pris that the other replicants are dead. Sebastian reveals that because of a genetic premature aging disorder, his life will be cut short, like the replicants that were built with a four-year lifespan. Roy uses Sebastian to gain entrance to Tyrell's penthouse. He demands more life from his maker, which Tyrell says is impossible. Roy confesses that he has done "questionable things" but Tyrell dismisses this, praising Roy's advanced design and accomplishments in his short life. Roy kisses Tyrell and then kills him by crushing his skull. Sebastian tries to flee and is later reported dead.
At Sebastian's apartment, Deckard is ambushed by Pris, but he kills her as Roy returns. Roy's body begins to fail as the end of his lifespan nears. He chases Deckard through the building and onto the roof. Deckard tries to jump onto another roof but is left hanging from the edge. Roy makes the jump with ease and, as Deckard's grip loosens, Roy hoists him onto the roof to save him. Before Roy dies, he laments that his memories "will be lost in time, like tears in rain". Gaff arrives to congratulate Deckard, also reminding him that Rachael will not live, but "then again, who does?" Deckard returns to his apartment to retrieve Rachael. While escorting her to the elevator, he notices a small origami unicorn on the floor. He recalls Gaff's words and departs with Rachael.
Production.
Development.
Interest in adapting Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" developed shortly after its 1968 publication. Director Martin Scorsese was interested in filming the novel, but never optioned it. Producer Herb Jaffe optioned it in the early 1970s, but Dick was unimpressed with the screenplay written by Herb's son Robert, saying, "Jaffe's screenplay was so terribly done ... Robert flew down to Santa Ana to speak with me about the project. And the first thing I said to him when he got off the plane was, 'Shall I beat you up here at the airport, or shall I beat you up back at my apartment?
The screenplay by Hampton Fancher was optioned in 1977. Producer Michael Deeley became interested in Fancher's draft and convinced director Ridley Scott to film it. Scott had previously declined the project but, after leaving the slow production of "Dune", wanted a faster-paced project to take his mind off his older brother's recent death. He joined the project on February 21, 1980, and managed to push up the promised Filmways financing from US$13 million to $15 million. Fancher's script focused more on environmental issues and less on issues of humanity and religion, which are prominent in the novel, and Scott wanted changes. Fancher found a cinema treatment by William S. Burroughs for Alan E. Nourse's novel "The Bladerunner" (1974), titled "Blade Runner (a movie)". Scott liked the name, so Deeley obtained the rights to the titles. Eventually, he hired David Peoples to rewrite the script and Fancher left the job over the issue on December 21, 1980, although he later returned to contribute additional rewrites.
Having invested more than $2.5 million in pre-production, as the date of commencement of principal photography neared, Filmways withdrew financial backing. In ten days Deeley had secured $21.5 million in financing through a three-way deal between the Ladd Company (through Warner Bros.), the Hong Kong-based producer Sir Run Run Shaw and Tandem Productions.
Dick became concerned that no one had informed him about the film's production, which added to his distrust of Hollywood. After Dick criticized an early version of Fancher's script in an article written for the Los Angeles "Select TV Guide", the studio sent Dick the Peoples rewrite. Although Dick died shortly before the film's release, he was pleased with the rewritten script and with a 20-minute special effects test reel that was screened for him when he was invited to the studio. Despite his well-known skepticism of Hollywood in principle, Dick enthused to Scott that the world created for the film looked exactly as he had imagined it. He said, "I saw a segment of Douglas Trumbull's special effects for "Blade Runner" on the KNBC news. I recognized it immediately. It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly." He also approved of the film's script, saying: "After I finished reading the screenplay, I got the novel out and looked through it. The two reinforce each other so that someone who started with the novel would enjoy the movie and someone who started with the movie would enjoy the novel." The motion picture was dedicated to Dick. Principal photography of "Blade Runner" began on March 9, 1981, and ended four months later.
In 1992, Ford revealed, ""Blade Runner" is not one of my favorite films. I tangled with Ridley." Apart from friction with the director, Ford also disliked the voiceovers: "When we started shooting it had been tacitly agreed that the version of the film that we had agreed upon was the version without voiceover narration. It was a nightmare. I thought that the film had worked without the narration. But now I was stuck re-creating that narration. And I was obliged to do the voiceovers for people that did not represent the director's interests." "I went kicking and screaming to the studio to record it." The narration monologs were written by an uncredited Roland Kibbee.
In 2006, Scott was asked "Who's the biggest pain in the arse you've ever worked with?" He replied: "It's got to be Harrison ... he'll forgive me because now I get on with him. Now he's become charming. But he knows a lot, that's the problem. When we worked together it was my first film up and I was the new kid on the block. But we made a good movie." Ford said of Scott in 2000: "I admire his work. We had a bad patch there, and I'm over it." In 2006 Ford reflected on the production of the film saying: "What I remember more than anything else when I see "Blade Runner" is not the 50 nights of shooting in the rain, but the voiceover ... I was still obliged to work for these clowns that came in writing one bad voiceover after another." Ridley Scott confirmed in the summer 2007 issue of "Total Film" that Harrison Ford contributed to the "Blade Runner" Special Edition DVD, and had already recorded his interviews. "Harrison's fully on board", said Scott.
The Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles served as a filming location, and a Warner Bros. backlot housed the 2019 Los Angeles street sets. Other locations included the Ennis-Brown House and the 2nd Street Tunnel. Test screenings resulted in several changes, including adding a voice-over, a happy ending, and the removal of a Holden hospital scene. The relationship between the filmmakers and the investors was difficult, which culminated in Deeley and Scott being fired but still working on the film. Crew members created T-shirts during filming saying, "Yes Guv'nor, My Ass" that mocked Scott's unfavorable comparison of U.S. and British crews; Scott responded with a T-shirt of his own, "Xenophobia Sucks", making the incident known as the T-shirt war.
Casting.
Casting the film proved troublesome, particularly for the lead role of Deckard. Screenwriter Hampton Fancher envisioned Robert Mitchum as Deckard and wrote the character's dialogue with Mitchum in mind. According to production documents, several actors were considered for the role, including Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Falk, Nick Nolte, Al Pacino and Burt Reynolds. Director Ridley Scott and the film's producers spent months meeting and discussing the role with Dustin Hoffman, who eventually departed over differences in vision. Harrison Ford was ultimately chosen for several reasons, including his performance in the "Star Wars" films, Ford's interest in the "Blade Runner" story, and discussions with Steven Spielberg, who was finishing "Raiders of the Lost Ark" at the time and strongly praised Ford's work in the film. Following his success in those two films, Ford was looking for a role with dramatic depth.
Rutger Hauer was cast as Roy Batty, the violent yet thoughtful leader of the replicants. Scott cast Hauer without having met him, based on his performances in Paul Verhoeven's movies that Scott had seen ("Katie Tippel", "Soldier of Orange", and "Turkish Delight"). Hauer's portrayal of Batty was regarded by Philip K. Dick as "the perfect Batty – cold, Aryan, flawless". Of the many films Hauer made, "Blade Runner" was his favorite. In a live chat in 2001, he said ""Blade Runner" needs no explanation. It just . All of the best. There is nothing like it. To be part of a real which changed the world's thinking. It's awesome." Hauer rewrote his character's "tears in rain" speech himself and presented the words to Scott on set prior to filming.
"Blade Runner" used a number of then-lesser-known actors: Sean Young portrays Rachael, an experimental replicant implanted with the memories of Tyrell's niece, causing her to believe she is human; Nina Axelrod auditioned for the role. Fancher originally wrote the role for his then girlfriend Barbara Hershey. Daryl Hannah portrays Pris, a "basic pleasure model" replicant; Stacey Nelkin auditioned for the role, but was given another part in the film, which was ultimately cut before filming. Debbie Harry turned down the role of Pris. Casting Pris and Rachael was challenging, requiring several screen tests with Morgan Paull playing the role of Deckard. Paull was cast as Deckard's fellow bounty hunter Holden based on his performances in the tests. Brion James portrays Leon Kowalski, a combat and laborer replicant, and Joanna Cassidy portrays Zhora, an assassin replicant.
Edward James Olmos portrays Gaff. Olmos drew on diverse ethnic sources to help create the fictional "Cityspeak" language his character uses in the film. His initial address to Deckard at the noodle bar is partly in Hungarian and means, "Horse dick [bullshit]! No way. You are the Blade ... Blade Runner." M. Emmet Walsh portrays Captain Bryant, a rumpled, hard-drinking and underhanded police veteran typical of the film noir genre. Joe Turkel portrays Dr. Eldon Tyrell, a corporate mogul who built an empire on genetically manipulated humanoid slaves. William Sanderson was cast as J. F. Sebastian, a quiet and lonely genius who provides a compassionate yet compliant portrait of humanity. J. F. sympathizes with the replicants, whom he sees as companions, and he shares their shorter lifespan due to his rapid aging disease. Joe Pantoliano had earlier been considered for the role. James Hong portrays Hannibal Chew, an elderly geneticist specializing in synthetic eyes, and Hy Pyke portrayed the sleazy bar owner Taffey Lewis – in a single take, something almost unheard-of with Scott, whose drive for perfection resulted at times in double-digit takes.
Design.
Scott credits Edward Hopper's painting "Nighthawks" and the French science fiction comics magazine "Métal Hurlant", to which the artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud contributed, as stylistic mood sources. He also drew on the landscape of "Hong Kong on a very bad day" and the industrial landscape of his one-time home in northeast England. The visual style of the movie is influenced by the work of futurist Italian architect Antonio Sant'Elia. Scott hired Syd Mead as his concept artist; like Scott, he was influenced by "Métal Hurlant". Moebius was offered the opportunity to assist in the pre-production of "Blade Runner", but he declined so that he could work on René Laloux's animated film "Les Maîtres du temps" – a decision that he later regretted. Production designer Lawrence G. Paull and art director David Snyder realized Scott's and Mead's sketches. Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich supervised the special effects for the film, and Mark Stetson served as chief model maker.
"Blade Runner" has numerous similarities to Fritz Lang's "Metropolis", including a built-up urban environment, in which the wealthy literally live above the workers, dominated by a huge building – the Stadtkrone Tower in "Metropolis" and the Tyrell Building in "Blade Runner". Special effects supervisor David Dryer used stills from "Metropolis" when lining up "Blade Runner"s miniature building shots.
The extended end scene in the original theatrical release shows Rachael and Deckard traveling into daylight with pastoral aerial shots filmed by director Stanley Kubrick. Ridley Scott contacted Kubrick about using some of his surplus helicopter aerial photography from "The Shining".
Spinner.
"Spinner" is the generic term for the fictional flying cars used in the film. A spinner can be driven as a ground-based vehicle, and take off vertically, hover, and cruise much like vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. They are used extensively by the police as patrol cars, and wealthy people can also acquire spinner licenses. The vehicle was conceived and designed by Syd Mead who described the spinner as an aerodyne – a vehicle which directs air downward to create lift, though press kits for the film stated that the spinner was propelled by three engines: "conventional internal combustion, jet, and anti-gravity". A spinner is on permanent exhibit at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in Seattle, Washington. Mead's conceptual drawings were transformed into 25 vehicles by automobile customizer Gene Winfield; at least two were working ground vehicles, while others were light-weight mockups for crane shots and set decoration for street shots. Two of them ended up at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, but were later destroyed, and a few others remain in private collections.
Voight-Kampff machine.
The Voight-Kampff machine is a fictional interrogation tool, originating from the novel (where it is spelled "Voigt-Kampff"). The Voight-Kampff is a polygraph-like machine used by blade runners to determine whether an individual is a replicant. It measures bodily functions such as respiration, blush response, heart rate and eye movement in response to questions dealing with empathy. In real life an approximation of the test using questions was created and used in jest by a newspaper in 2003 on the Mayoral candidates for the city of San Francisco, United States, apparently proving that at least half of them would be classified as replicants.
Music.
The "Blade Runner" soundtrack by Vangelis is a dark melodic combination of classic composition and futuristic synthesizers which mirrors the film noir retro-future envisioned by Scott. Vangelis, fresh from his Academy Award-winning score for "Chariots of Fire", composed and performed the music on his synthesizers. He also made use of various chimes and the vocals of collaborator Demis Roussos. Another memorable sound is the tenor sax solo "Love Theme" by British saxophonist Dick Morrissey, who performed on many of Vangelis's albums. Ridley Scott also used "Memories of Green" from the Vangelis album "See You Later, "an orchestral version of which Scott would later use in his film "Someone to Watch Over Me".
Along with Vangelis's compositions and ambient textures, the film's soundscape also features a track by the Japanese ensemble Nipponia – "Ogi no Mato" or "The Folding Fan as a Target" from the Nonesuch Records release "Traditional Vocal and Instrumental Music" – and a track by harpist Gail Laughton from "Harps of the Ancient Temples" on Laurel Records.
Despite being well received by fans and critically acclaimed and nominated in 1982 for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe as best original score, and the promise of a soundtrack album from Polydor Records in the end titles of the film, the release of the official soundtrack recording was delayed for over a decade. There are two official releases of the music from "Blade Runner". In light of the lack of a release of an album, the New American Orchestra recorded an orchestral adaptation in 1982 which bore little resemblance to the original. Some of the film tracks would, in 1989, surface on the compilation "Vangelis: Themes", but not until the 1992 release of the "Director's Cut" version would a substantial amount of the film's score see commercial release.
These delays and poor reproductions led to the production of many bootleg recordings over the years. A bootleg tape surfaced in 1982 at science fiction conventions and became popular given the delay of an official release of the original recordings, and in 1993 "Off World Music, Ltd" created a bootleg CD that would prove more comprehensive than Vangelis' official CD in 1994. A set with three CDs of "Blade Runner"-related Vangelis music was released in 2007. Titled "Blade Runner Trilogy", the first disc contains the same tracks as the 1994 official soundtrack release, the second features previously unreleased music from the film, and the third disc is all newly composed music from Vangelis, inspired by, and in the spirit of the film.
Special effects.
The film's special effects are generally recognized to be among the best in the genre, using the available (non-digital) technology to the fullest. Special effects engineers who worked on the film are often praised for the innovative technology they used to produce and design certain aspects of those visuals. In addition to matte paintings and models, the techniques employed included multipass exposures. In some scenes, the set was lit, shot, the film rewound, and then rerecorded over with different lighting. In some cases this was done 16 times in all. The cameras were frequently motion controlled using computers. Many effects used techniques which had been developed during the production of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
Release.
Theatrical run.
"Blade Runner" was released in 1,290 theaters on June 25, 1982. That date was chosen by producer Alan Ladd Jr. because his previous highest-grossing films ("Star Wars" and "Alien") had a similar opening date (May 25) in 1977 and 1979, making the 25th of the month his "lucky day". "Blade Runner" grossed reasonably good ticket sales in its opening weekend; earning $6.1 million during its first weekend in theaters. The film was released close to other major science-fiction and fantasy releases such as "The Thing", "", "Conan the Barbarian" and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", which affected its commercial success.
Alternative versions and home media.
Several versions of "Blade Runner" have been shown. The original workprint version (1982, 113 minutes) was shown for audience test previews in Denver and Dallas in March 1982. Negative responses to the previews led to the modifications resulting in the U.S. theatrical version. The workprint was shown as a director's cut without Scott's approval at the Los Angeles Fairfax Theater in May 1990, at an AMPAS showing in April 1991, and in September and October 1991 at the Los Angeles NuArt Theater and the San Francisco Castro Theatre. Positive responses pushed the studio to approve work on an official director's cut. A San Diego Sneak Preview was shown only once, in May 1982, and was almost identical to the U.S. theatrical version but contained three extra scenes not shown in any other version, including the 2007 Final Cut.
Two versions were shown in the film's 1982 theatrical release: the U.S. theatrical version (117 minutes), known as the original version or "Domestic Cut" (released on Betamax, CED Videodisc and VHS in 1983, and on LaserDisc in 1987), and the "International Cut" (117 minutes), also known as the "Criterion Edition" or "uncut version", which included more violent action scenes than the U.S. version. Although initially unavailable in the U.S. and distributed in Europe and Asia via theatrical and local Warner Home Video releases, the "International Cut" was later released on VHS and The Criterion Collection Laserdisc in North America, and re-released in 1992 as a "10th Anniversary Edition".
Ridley Scott's "Director's Cut" (1992, 116 minutes) had significant changes from the theatrical version including the removal of Deckard's voice-over, the re-insertion of a sequence in which Deckard dreams of a unicorn, and the removal of the studio-imposed happy ending. Scott provided extensive notes and consultation to Warner Bros. through film preservationist Michael Arick, who was put in charge of creating the "Director's Cut".
It is often falsely claimed that the unicorn sequence was an outtake from Ridley Scott's follow-up film "Legend" which also features unicorns, but it was in fact shot for Blade Runner as "additional photography" by second unit cinematographer Brian Tufano.
Scott's definitive "The Final Cut" (2007, 117 minutes) was released by Warner Bros. theatrically on October 5, 2007, and subsequently released on DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray Disc in December 2007. This is the only version over which Scott had complete artistic and editorial control. It was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on September 5, 2017.
Reception.
Critical response.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 89% approval rating based on 132 reviews, with an average rating of 8.50/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Misunderstood when it first hit theaters, the influence of Ridley Scott's mysterious, neo-noir "Blade Runner" has deepened with time. A visually remarkable, achingly human sci-fi masterpiece." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Initial reactions among film critics were mixed. Some wrote that the plot took a back seat to the film's special effects and did not fit the studio's marketing as an action and adventure film. Others acclaimed its complexity and predicted it would stand the test of time. Negative criticism in the United States cited its slow pace. Sheila Benson from the "Los Angeles Times" called it "Blade Crawler", and Pat Berman in "The State" and "Columbia Record" described it as "science fiction pornography". Pauline Kael praised "Blade Runner" as worthy of a place in film history for its distinctive sci-fi vision, yet criticized the film's lack of development in "human terms". "Ares" magazine said, "Misunderstood by audiences and critics alike, it is by far the best "science fiction" film of the year."
Cultural analysis.
Academics began analyzing the film almost as soon as it was released. One of the first books on the film was Paul M. Sammon's "Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner" (1996), which dissects all the details concerning the film's production. He was followed by Scott Bukatman's "Blade Runner" and other books and academic articles. In "Postmodern Metanarratives: Blade Runner and Literature in the Age of Image", Décio Torres Cruz analyzes the philosophical and psychological issues and the literary influences in "Blade Runner". He examines the film's cyberpunk and dystopic elements by establishing a link between the Biblical, classical and modern traditions and the postmodern aspects in the film's collage of several literary texts.
The boom in home video formats helped establish a growing cult around the film, which scholars have dissected for its dystopic aspects, questions regarding "authentic" humanity, ecofeminist aspects and use of conventions from multiple genres. Popular culture began to reassess its impact as a classic several years after it was released. Roger Ebert praised the visuals of both the original and the "Director's Cut" and recommended it for that reason; however, he found the human story clichéd and a little thin. He later added "The Final Cut" to his "Great Movies" list. Critic Chris Rodley and Janet Maslin theorized that "Blade Runner" changed cinematic and cultural discourse through its image repertoire and subsequent influence on films. In 2012, "Time" film critic Richard Corliss surgically analyzed the durability, complexity, screenplay, sets and production dynamics from a personal, three-decade perspective. Denis Villeneuve, who directed the sequel, "Blade Runner 2049", cites the film as a huge influence for him and many others.
It has also been noted for its postmodernist approach and that it contributes to the historical development of modern dystopia in film. Furthermore, the futuristic version of Los Angeles has been widely discussed by academics, with some comparing it to Milton's descriptions of hell in "Paradise Lost". In a 2019 retrospective, the BBC argued that elements of the film's socio-political themes remained prescient in the real year of the film's setting, such as its depiction of climate change. From a more philosophical perspective, Alison Landsberg described Scott's direction of the film as a "prosthetic memory"—an action that has never happened and appears to be divorced from lived experience, yet it defines personhood and identity within the wider "Blade Runner" universe.
Awards and nominations.
"Blade Runner" won or received nominations for the following awards:
Themes.
The film operates on multiple dramatic and narrative levels. It employs some of the conventions of film noir, among them the character of a "femme fatale"; narration by the protagonist (in the original release); chiaroscuro cinematography; and giving the hero a questionable moral outlook – extending to include reflections upon the nature of his own humanity. It is a literate science fiction film, thematically enfolding the philosophy of religion and moral implications of human mastery of genetic engineering in the context of classical Greek drama and hubris. It also draws on Biblical images, such as Noah's flood, and literary sources, such as "Frankenstein" and William Blake. Although Scott said any similarity was merely coincidental, fans claimed that the chess game between Sebastian and Tyrell was based on the famous Immortal Game of 1851.
"Blade Runner" delves into the effects of technology on the environment and society by reaching to the past, using literature, religious symbolism, classical dramatic themes, and "film noir" techniques. This tension between past, present, and future is represented in the "retrofitted" future depicted in the film, one which is high-tech and gleaming in places but decayed and outdated elsewhere. In an interview with "The Observer" in 2002, director Ridley Scott described the film as "extremely dark, both literally and metaphorically, with an oddly masochistic feel". He also said that he "liked the idea of exploring pain" in the wake of his brother's death: "When he was ill, I used to go and visit him in London, and that was really traumatic for me."
A sense of foreboding and paranoia pervades the world of the film: corporate power looms large; the police seem omnipresent; vehicle and warning lights probe into buildings; and the consequences of huge biomedical power over the individual are explored –
especially regarding replicants' implanted memories. The film depicts a world post ecocide, where warfare and capitalism have led to destruction of 'normal' ecological systems. Control over the environment is exercised on a vast scale, and goes hand in hand with the absence of any natural life; for example, artificial animals stand in for their extinct predecessors. This oppressive backdrop explains the frequently referenced migration of humans to "off-world" (extraterrestrial) colonies. Eyes are a recurring motif, as are manipulated images, calling into question the nature of reality and our ability to accurately perceive and remember it. The film also consists of themes of Japan as a power, coming amid a time of anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States.
These thematic elements provide an atmosphere of uncertainty for "Blade Runner"s central theme of examining humanity. In order to discover replicants, an empathy test is used, with a number of its questions focused on the treatment of animals – seemingly an essential indicator of one's "humanity". Replicants will not respond the same way humans would, showing a lack of concern. The film goes so far as to question if Deckard might be a replicant, in the process asking the audience to re-evaluate what it means to be human.
The question of whether Deckard is intended to be a human or a replicant has been an ongoing controversy since the film's release. Both Michael Deeley and Harrison Ford wanted Deckard to be human, while Hampton Fancher preferred ambiguity. Ridley Scott has stated that he envisaged Deckard as a replicant. Deckard's unicorn-dream sequence, inserted into Scott's "Director's Cut" and concomitant with Gaff's parting gift of an origami unicorn, is seen by many as showing that Deckard is a replicant – because Gaff could have retrieved Deckard's implanted memories. The interpretation that Deckard is a replicant is challenged by others who believe the unicorn imagery shows that the characters, whether human or replicant, share the same dreams and recognize their affinity, or that the absence of a decisive answer is crucial to the film's main theme. The film's inherent ambiguity and uncertainty, as well as its textual richness, have permitted multiple interpretations.
Legacy.
Cultural impact.
While not initially a success with North American audiences, "Blade Runner" was popular internationally and garnered a cult following. The film's dark style and futuristic designs have served as a benchmark and its influence can be seen in many subsequent science fiction films, video games, anime, and television programs.
Its influence has also extended beyond the science fiction genre, especially in the creation of cinematic worlds. For example, Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo del Toro, and Gareth Edwards Rian Johnson, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick have all cited it as an influence. Nolan notes that he has seen "Blade Runner" "literally hundreds of times", while del Toro describes it as "one of those cinematic drugs, that when I first saw it, I never saw the world the same way again". Scott Derrickson has called it "maybe the best American film ever made". Oren Soffer, who worked with Edwards as co-cinematographer on "The Creator", cited the film as "the most visually stunning of all time" and as an influence on his work.
The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1993 and is frequently taught in university courses. In 2007, it was named the second-most visually influential film of all time by the Visual Effects Society. The film has also been the subject of parody, such as the comics "Blade Bummer" by "Crazy" comics, "Bad Rubber" by Steve Gallacci, and the "Red Dwarf" 2009 three-part miniseries "". The anime series "Psycho-Pass" by Production I.G was also highly influenced by the film.
"Blade Runner" continues to reflect modern trends and concerns, and an increasing number of critics consider it one of the greatest science fiction films of all time. It was voted the best science fiction film ever made in a 2004 poll of 60 eminent world scientists. "Blade Runner" is also cited as an important influence to both the style and story of the "Ghost in the Shell" franchise, which itself has been highly influential to the future-noir genre. "Blade Runner" has been very influential to the cyberpunk movement. It also influenced the cyberpunk derivative biopunk, which revolves around biotechnology and genetic engineering. The film is also considered to be one of the early examples of the tech noir subgenre.
The dialogue and music in "Blade Runner" has been sampled in music more than any other film of the 20th century. The 2009 album "I, Human" by Singaporean band Deus Ex Machina makes numerous references to the genetic engineering and cloning themes from the film, and even features a track titled "Replicant".
"Blade Runner" is cited as a major influence on Warren Spector, designer of the video game "Deus Ex", which displays evidence of the film's influence in both its visual rendering and plot. Indeed, the film's look – and in particular its overall darkness, preponderance of neon lights and opaque visuals – are easier to render than complicated backdrops, making it a popular reference point for video game designers. It has influenced adventure games such as the 2012 graphical text adventure "Cypher", "Rise of the Dragon", "Snatcher", the "Tex Murphy" series, "Beneath a Steel Sky", "", "Bubblegum Crisis" video games (and their original anime), the role-playing game "Shadowrun", the first-person shooter "Perfect Dark", the shooter game "Skyhammer", and the "Syndicate" series of video games.
The logos of Atari, Bell, Coca-Cola, Cuisinart, Pan Am, and RCA, all market leaders at the time, were prominently displayed as product placement in the film, and all experienced setbacks after the film's release, leading to suggestions of a "Blade Runner" curse. Coca-Cola and Cuisinart recovered, and Tsingtao beer was also featured in the film and was more successful after the film than before.
The design of Tesla's Cybertruck was inspired by the film. Prior to its release Elon Musk promised that it would "look like something out of Blade Runner". Besides referring to the truck as the "Blade Runner Truck", Musk chose to debut the truck in order to coincide with the film's setting of November 2019. The film's art designer Syd Mead praised the truck and said he was "flattered" by the homage to "Blade Runner".
In other media.
Before filming began, "Cinefantastique" magazine commissioned Paul M. Sammon to write a special issue about "Blade Runner"s production which became the book "Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner". The book chronicles "Blade Runner"s evolution, focusing on film-set politics, especially the British director's experiences with his first American film crew; of which producer Alan Ladd, Jr. has said, "Harrison wouldn't speak to Ridley and Ridley wouldn't speak to Harrison. By the end of the shoot Ford was 'ready to kill Ridley', said one colleague. He really would have taken him on if he hadn't been talked out of it." "Future Noir" has short cast biographies and quotations about their experiences as well as photographs of the film's production and preliminary sketches. A second edition of "Future Noir" was published in 2007, and additional materials not in either print edition have been published online.
Philip K. Dick refused a $400,000 offer to write a "Blade Runner" novelization, saying: "[I was] told the cheapo novelization would have to appeal to the twelve-year-old audience" and it "would have probably been disastrous to me artistically". He added, "That insistence on my part of bringing out the original novel and not doing the novelization – they were just furious. They finally recognized that there was a legitimate reason for reissuing the novel, even though it cost them money. It was a victory not just of contractual obligations but of theoretical principles." "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was eventually reprinted as a tie-in, with the film poster as a cover and the original title in parentheses below the "Blade Runner" title. Additionally, a novelization of the movie entitled "Blade Runner: A Story of the Future" by Les Martin was released in 1982. Archie Goodwin scripted the comic book adaptation, "", published in September 1982, which was illustrated by Al Williamson, Carlos Garzon, Dan Green, and Ralph Reese, and lettered by Ed King.
Blue Dolphin Enterprises published the film's screenplay combined with selected production storyboards as "The Illustrated Blade Runner" (June 1982); a book of original production artwork by Syd Mead, Mentor Huebner, Charles Knode, Michael Kaplan, and Ridley Scott as "Blade Runner Sketchbook" (1982); and "The Blade Runner Portfolio" (1982), a collection of twelve photographic prints, similar to the artist portfolios released by their Schanes & Schanes imprint.
There are two video games based on the film, both titled "Blade Runner": one from 1985, a side-scrolling video game for Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC by CRL Group PLC, which is marked as "a video game interpretation of the film score by Vangelis" rather than of the film itself (due to licensing issues); and another from 1997, a point-and-click adventure for PC by Westwood Studios. The 1997 game has a non-linear plot based in the "Blade Runner" world, non-player characters that each ran in their own independent AI, and an unusual pseudo-3D engine (which eschewed polygonal solids in favor of voxel elements) that did not require the use of a 3D accelerator card to play the game. Eldon Tyrell, Gaff, Leon, Rachael, Chew, J. F. Sebastian and Howie Lee appear, and their voice files are recorded by the original actors, with the exception of Gaff, who is replaced by Javier Grajeda (as Victor Gardell) and Howie Lee, who is replaced by Toru Nagai. The player assumes the role of McCoy, another replicant-hunter working at the same time as Deckard.
The television film (and later series) "Total Recall 2070" was initially planned as a spin-off of the film "Total Recall" (based on Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale"), but was produced as a hybrid of "Total Recall" and "Blade Runner". Many similarities between "Total Recall 2070" and "Blade Runner" were noted, as well as apparent influences on the show from Isaac Asimov's "The Caves of Steel" and the TV series "Holmes & Yoyo".
Documentaries.
The film has been the subject of several documentaries.
Co-directed by Muffet Kaufman and Jeffrey B. Walker, shot and screened in 16 mm, featured no narrator, was filmed in 1981 while "Blade Runner" was still in production and featured short "behind-the-scenes" segments showing sets being built and sequences being shot, as well as interviews with Ridley Scott, Syd Mead and Douglas Trumbull. Appears on the "Blade Runner" Ultimate Collector's Edition.
Directed by Andrew Abbott and hosted/written by Mark Kermode. Interviews with production staff, including Scott, give details of the creative process and the turmoil during pre-production. Insights into Philip K. Dick and the origins of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" are provided by Paul M. Sammon and Hampton Fancher.
Directed by TVOntario. It includes interviews with executive producer Bud Yorkin, Syd Mead, and the cast, and commentary by science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer and from film critics.
Directed and produced by Charles de Lauzirika for "The Final Cut" version of the film. Its source material comprises more than 80 interviews, including extensive conversations with Ford, Young, and Scott. The documentary is presented in eight chapters, with each of the first seven covering a portion of the filmmaking process. The final chapter examines "Blade Runner"'s controversial legacy.
Produced by Paul Prischman, appears on the "Blade Runner" Ultimate Collector's Edition and provides an overview of the film's multiple versions and their origins, as well as detailing the seven-year-long restoration, enhancement and remastering process behind "The Final Cut".
Directed by Boris Hars-Tschachotin and made by the France and Germany European public service channel ARTE, this documentary informs viewers using behind-the-scenes material from various sets, photos, original locations in Los Angeles, and interviews with those involved in the production.
Sequel and related media.
A sequel was released in 2017, titled "Blade Runner 2049", with Ryan Gosling alongside Ford in the starring roles. It entered production in mid-2016 and is set decades after the first film. Harrison Ford reprised his role as Rick Deckard. The film won two Academy Awards, for cinematography and visual effects.
The world of "Blade Runner" has also come to be explored in animation. "Blade Runner 2049" was preceded by the release of three short films that served as prequels, where the chronological first, "Blade Runner Black Out 2022", was anime (the other two, ' and ', were live action, not animated).
In November 2021, a Japanese-American anime television series called "" was released. The series tells the story of a female replicant protagonist, rather than that of a male Blade Runner one.
Dick's friend K. W. Jeter wrote three authorized "Blade Runner" novels that continue Rick Deckard's story, attempting to resolve the differences between the film and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" These are ' (1995), ' (1996), and "" (2000).
"Blade Runner" co-writer David Peoples wrote the 1998 action film "Soldier", which he referred to as a "sidequel" or spiritual successor to the original film; the two are set in a shared universe. A bonus feature on the Blu-ray for "Prometheus", the 2012 film by Scott set in the "Alien" universe, states that Eldon Tyrell, CEO of the "Blade Runner" Tyrell Corporation, was the mentor of Guy Pearce's character Peter Weyland.
In late 2022, Amazon announced a "Blade Runner 2049" sequel series would be produced. On October 12, 2022, an apparent official approval to actually make a "Blade Runner 2099" TV series was reported.
|
3747
|
653982
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3747
|
Bill Gates
|
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Following the company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), Gates became a billionaire in 1987—then the youngest ever, at age 31. "Forbes" magazine ranked him as the world's wealthiest person for 18 out of 24 years between 1995 and 2017, including 13 years consecutively from 1995 to 2007. He became the first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly surpassed $100 billion. According to "Forbes", as of May 2025, his net worth stood at US$115.1 billion, making him the thirteenth-richest individual in the world.
Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Gates was privately educated at Lakeside School, where he befriended Allen and developed his computing interests. In 1973, he enrolled at Harvard University, where he took classes including Math 55 and graduate level computer science courses, but he dropped out in 1975 to co-found and lead Microsoft. He served as its CEO for the next 25 years and also became president and chairman of the board when the company incorporated in 1981. Succeeded as CEO by Steve Ballmer in 2000, he transitioned to chief software architect, a position he held until 2008. He stepped down as chairman of the board in 2014 and became technology adviser to CEO Satya Nadella and other Microsoft leaders, a position he still holds. He resigned from the board in 2020.
Over time, Gates reduced his role at Microsoft to focus on his philanthropic work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable organization, which he and his then-wife Melinda French Gates co-chaired from 2000 until 2024. Focusing on areas including health, education, and poverty alleviation, Gates became known for his efforts to eradicate transmissible diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and polio. After French Gates resigned as co-chair following the couple's divorce, the foundation was renamed the Gates Foundation, with Gates as its sole chair.
Gates is founder and chairman of several other companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, Gates Ventures, and Breakthrough Energy. In 2010, he and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half their wealth to philanthropy. Named as one of the by "Time" magazine in 1999, he has received numerous other honors and accolades, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded jointly to him and French Gates in 2016 for their philanthropic work. The subject of several documentary films, he published the first of three planned memoirs, "Source Code: My Beginnings", in 2025.
Early life and education.
William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, as the only son of William H. Gates Sr. (1925–2020) and his first wife, 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 of First Interstate BancSystem and United Way of America. Gates's maternal grandfather J. W. Maxwell was a national bank president. Gates also 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 7.
When Gates was young his parents wanted him to pursue a career in law. During his childhood, 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 age 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside Prep School. 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 described as one of the saddest days of his life. He then turned to Allen who helped him finish the system for Lakeside.
At age 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 University in the autumn of 1973.
He did not stay at Harvard long enough to choose a concentration, but took mathematics (including Math 55) and graduate level computer science courses. While at Harvard, he met fellow student and future Microsoft CEO 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 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.
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 Gates's mother mentioned Microsoft to John Opel, IBM's then 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 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 captivated consumers with its simplicity and ease of use. In August 1986, 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 Windows 95, which hid the DOS prompt by default. Windows XP was released one year after Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO. 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.
Management style.
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." During the late 1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which were considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings.
In June 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.
Post-Microsoft.
Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates has continued his philanthropy and works on other projects. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 to become technology advisor at the firm to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.
Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues in an interview that was published in the March 2014 issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine. In the interview, he 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 often 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 co-founder and CEO, Robin Li, Gates said he would "highly recommend" Nick Bostrom's recent work, "". 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 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.
In March 2020, Microsoft announced Gates would be leaving his board positions at Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft to dedicate himself to philanthropic endeavors such as climate change, global health and development, and education. "The Wall Street Journal" reported in May 2021 that Gates stepped down before Microsoft's board finished its investigation into Gates's alleged inappropriate sexual relationship with a Microsoft employee, which an external law firm had begun probing in late 2019.
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 stakes in companies in multiple sectors and has participated in several entrepreneurial ventures beyond Microsoft, including:
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 criticized 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 Gates's approach as technological solutionism. In 2022, educational streamer Wondrium produced the series "Solving for Zero: The Search for Climate Innovation" inspired by the book.
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.
Gates supported the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. He tried to convince Joe Manchin to support a climate bill starting in 2019, and especially in the months leading up to the adoption of the bill. The bill aimed to cut the global greenhouse gas emissions in a level similar to "eliminating the annual planet-warming pollution of France and Germany combined" and may help to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees – the target of the Paris Agreement. He thanked both Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer for their efforts in a guest essay in "The New York Times", where he said "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 may be the single most important piece of climate legislation in American history" given its potential to spur development of new technologies. Gates gave further insights on climate change in his commencement address at Northern Arizona University on May 6, 2023, where he was bestowed an honorary doctorate.
Political positions.
In October 2024, "The New York Times" reported Gates had recently donated $50 million to Future Forward USA Action, a 501(c)(4) organization supporting Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign. In response to the report, he did not explicitly address the donation or endorse Harris, but said "this election is different".
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 then Commissioner Dennis Yao for "float[ing] a line of hypothetical questions suggesting possible curbs on Microsoft's growing monopoly power". According to one source:
Donald Trump Facebook ban.
After Facebook and Twitter had banned Donald Trump from their platforms on February 18, 2021, as a result of the 2020 United States presidential election which led to the January 6 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."
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.
Cryptocurrencies.
Gates has been critical of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. According to him, cryptocurrencies provide no "valuable output", contribute nothing to society, and pose a danger especially for smaller investors who could not survive the potentially high losses. Gates also does not own any cryptocurrencies himself.
Philanthropy.
In an interview with the BBC in 2025, Gates stated that his charitable donations have totalled $100 billion, of which $60 billion have gone to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Bill & 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 donated stock valued at $5 billion to create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013, as the world's largest 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 the 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. He 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.
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 foundation aims to provide women and girls in the developing world with information and support regarding contraception and, ultimately, universal access to consensual 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 favors 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. The Foundation has received criticism, particularly over its role in Common Core, with critics stating the support is "cronyist" in that it profits from the "federal, state, and local contracts".
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.
In June 2018, Gates offered free ebooks, to all new graduates of U.S. colleges and universities, and in 2021, offered free ebooks, to all college and university students around the world. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partially funds OpenStax, which creates and provides free digital textbooks. In July 2022 he reiterated the commitment he had made by starting the Giving Pledge campaign by announcing on his Twitter channel he planned to give 'virtually all' his wealth to charity and eventually 'move off of the list of the world's richest people'.
Charity sports events.
In April 2017, Gates partnered with Swiss tennis player 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.
In 1989, Gates wrote the foreword to the Microsoft Press book "Learn BASIC Now", by Michael Halvorson and David Rygmyr, reflecting on the growth of the BASIC language and its use in most of the era's personal computers. He also sketched out plans for BASIC's use as a universal language to embellish or alter the performance of a range of software applications.
Gates has authored several books. "The Road Ahead", co-authored 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. His second book, "Business @ the Speed of Thought", co-authored with Collins Hemingway, 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. In 2021 he published "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster", which presents what Gates learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address climate problems. Following the COVID-19 pandemic Gates published "How to Prevent the Next Pandemic" in 2022 which proposes a "Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization" (GERM) team with annual funding of $1 billion, under the auspices of the WHO.
The first of Gates's planned three memoirs, "Source Code" was published in February 2025.
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, golf, and tennis. 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.
In the 1990s, Gates built an earth-sheltered mansion, designed by James Cutler and Peter Bohlin, in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. The estate has been nicknamed "Xanadu 2.0" by Gates's biographers. 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.
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. On May 10, 2022, Gates said that he tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing mild symptoms. Gates has received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. In 2025, in "Source Code", Gates wrote that he believed he was autistic.
Marriage, family and divorce.
In 1987, at a trade fair in New York, Gates met Melinda French, then a recent graduate of Duke University who had begun working at Microsoft around four months earlier. Gates and French became engaged in 1993 after dating for six years. They married on January 1, 1994, at the 12th hole of the Jack Nicklaus–designed Manele Golf Course on the Hawaiian Island of Lānaʻi. They have three children, two daughters and a son. On May 3, 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates announced their decision to divorce after more than 27 years of marriage. "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Melinda had begun meeting with divorce attorneys in 2019, citing interviews that suggested Gates's ties with Jeffrey Epstein were among her concerns. However, the couple delayed their divorce until their youngest child Phoebe Gates graduated from high school. The divorce was finalized on August 2, 2021, and the financial details have remained confidential.
In October 2021, Gates's eldest daughter Jennifer, a pediatrician and professional show-jumper, married Olympic equestrian Nayel Nassar, with whom she has two daughters, born in March 2023 and October 2024. His son Rory is pursuing a PhD at the Institute of World Politics. His youngest daughter Phoebe co-founded the digital fashion platform Phia and is an advocate for women's health and reproductive rights.
In February 2023, Gates confirmed that he was dating Paula Hurd (née Kalupa), widow of former Oracle Corporation and Hewlett-Packard chief executive Mark Hurd. Appearing on the "Today" show in February 2025, he described Hurd as a "serious girlfriend", stating he had "moved past the divorce".
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 & 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" to 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 sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This information and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in some deterioration of his public image, going from "a lovable nerd who was out to save the world" to "a tech supervillain who wants to protect profits over public health".
Investigative journalist Tim Schwab has accused Gates of using his contributions to the media to shape their coverage of him in order to protect his public image. In September 2022, "Politico" published an exposé critical of NGO leadership at the helm of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic response, written in cooperation with the German newspaper "Die Welt". Criticisms included the interconnectivity of the non-profits with Gates, as well as his personal lack of formal credentials in medicine.
Gates and the projects of his foundation have been the subject of many conspiracy theories that proliferate on Facebook and elsewhere. He has been implausibly accused of attempting to depopulate the world, distributing harmful or unethical vaccines, and implanting people with privacy-violating microchips. These unfounded theories reached a new level of influence during the COVID-19 pandemic when, according to "New York Times" journalist Rory Smith, the uncertainties of pandemic life drove people to seek explanations from the Internet. When asked about the theories, Gates has remarked that some people are tempted by the "simple explanation" that an evil person rather than biological factors are to blame, and that he does not know for what purpose anyone believes he would want to track them with microchips.
Religious views.
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.
When Microsoft went public in 1986, Gates retained 44.9% ownership of the company. In 1987, he was listed as a billionaire in "Forbes" magazine's first America's richest issue; Gates was the world's youngest-ever self-made billionaire, with a net worth of $1.25 billion. Since then, he has been featured on The World's Billionaires list and was ranked as the richest person in 1995, 1996, 1998–2007, and 2009, maintaining the position until 2018, when Jeff Bezos surpassed his wealth. Gates was ranked first on the "Forbes" 400 list of wealthiest Americans from 1993 to 2007, in 2009, and from 2014 to 2017. According to "Forbes", as of February 17, 2025, Gates' estimated net worth stood at US$108.8 billion, making him the 16th richest individual in the world.
Gates's wealth briefly surpassed US$100 billion in 1999, making him the first person to reach this net worth. After 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings declined, partly because of the decline in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst, and partly because of the multi-billion dollar donations he had made to his charitable foundations. In May 2006, Gates remarked that he wished that he was not the richest man in the world, because he disliked the attention that 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 Index. Slim regained 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 US$82 billion. In October 2017, Gates was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world. In the "Forbes" 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2023, he was ranked sixth with a wealth of $115.0 billion. He once again became the richest person in the world in November 2019 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.
Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of US$616,667 and a bonus of US$350,000, for a total of US$966,667. In 1989, he founded Corbis, a digital imaging company. In 2004, he became a board member of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.
Controversies.
Antitrust litigation.
During his tenure as CEO of Microsoft, 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.
Treatment of colleagues and employees.
Gates had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy from the company's founding in 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.
By 1987 "Computerworld" quoted an industry observer who said "Bill personifies Microsoft, and hotshots want to work for him". Gates has often been accused of bullying Microsoft employees.<ref name="bbc5/8/2021">"Epstein meetings a huge mistake, says Bill Gates" . BBC.</ref> He met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers, and the managers described him as being verbally combative, berating them for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk. Gates saw competition in personal terms; when Borland's Turbo Pascal performed better than Microsoft's own tools, he yelled at programming director Greg Whitten "for half an hour" because, Gates believed, Borland's Philippe Kahn had surpassed Gates. Gates 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. Not all harsh language was criticism; a manager recalled that "You're full of shit. That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard" meant that Gates was amazed. "In the lore of Microsoft, if Bill says that to you, you're made". When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend".
Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
A 2019 "New York Times" article reported that Gates's relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein started in 2011, just a few years after Epstein was convicted for procuring a child for prostitution, and continued for some years, including a visit to Epstein's house with his wife 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 though Gates generally commented 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". It was reported that Epstein and Gates "discussed the Gates Foundation and philanthropy". Gates stated "Every meeting where I was with him were meetings with men. I was never at any parties or anything like that. He never donated any money to anything that I know about." 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." Gates came under further scrutiny after it was revealed that he had travelled on Epstein's private jet, though further claims about Gates travelling to Little St James proved unsubstantiated.
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. In 2023, it was reported that Epstein threatened to expose an alleged affair Gates had with a Russian bridge player.
Depiction in media.
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 starred as himself in a brief appearance on the "Frasier" episode "The Two Hundredth Episode". He also made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show "The Big Bang Theory", in an episode titled "The Gates Excitation". He also appeared in a cameo role in 2019 on the series finale of "Silicon Valley". Gates was parodied in "The Simpsons" episode "Das Bus". In 2023, Gates was the interviewee in an episode of the "Amol Rajan Interviews" series on BBC Two, and was the subject of an episode of the UK Channel 4 series "The Billionaires Who Made Our World".
|
3751
|
1298325677
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3751
|
Belgian Blue
|
The Belgian Blue (, , both literally meaning "Belgian White-Blue") is a breed of beef cattle from Belgium. It may also be known as the , or (literally "fat buttocks" in Dutch). Alternative names for this breed include Belgian Blue-White; Belgian White and Blue Pied; Belgian White Blue; Blue; and Blue Belgian. The Belgian Blue's extremely lean, hyper-sculpted, ultra-muscular physique is termed "double-muscling". The double-muscling phenotype is a heritable condition caused by a deletion in the myostatin gene, resulting in an increased number of muscle fibres (hyperplasia), instead of the (normal) enlargement of "individual" muscle fibres (hypertrophy).
This particular trait is shared with another breed of cattle known as Piedmontese. Both of these breeds have an increased ability to convert feed into lean muscle, which causes these particular breeds' meat to have a reduced fat content and reduced tenderness. The Belgian Blue is named after its typically blue-grey mottled hair colour; however, its actual colour can vary from white to black.
History.
The breed originated in central and upper Belgium in the 19th century, from crossing local breeds with a Shorthorn breed of cattle from the United Kingdom. Charolais cattle possibly were cross-bred, as well. Belgian Blue cattle were first used as a dairy and beef breed. The modern beef breed was developed in the 1950s by Professor Hanset, working at an artificial insemination centre in Liège Province. The breed's characteristic gene mutation was maintained through linebreeding to the point where the condition was a fixed property in the Belgian Blue breed. In 1978, Belgian Blue cattle were introduced to the United States by Nick Tutt, a farmer from central Canada who emigrated to West Texas and showed the cattle to universities in the region.
The Belgian Blue has been exported to many parts of the world; it is reported to DAD-IS by twenty-four countries, in Africa, the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Of these, ten report population data; in 2022 the worldwide population was estimated to be .
Characteristics.
The Belgian Blue has a natural mutation in the myostatin gene which codes for the protein, myostatin ("myo" meaning muscle and "statin" meaning stop). Myostatin is a protein that inhibits muscle development. This mutation also interferes with fat deposition, resulting in very lean meat. The truncated myostatin gene is unable to function in its normal capacity, resulting in accelerated lean muscle growth. Muscle growth is due primarily to physiological changes in the animal's muscle cells (fibres) from hypertrophy to a hyperplasia mode of growth. This particular type of growth is seen early in the fetus of a pregnant dam, which results in a calf that is born with two times the number of muscle fibres at birth than a calf with no myostatin gene mutation. In addition, a newborn double-muscled calf's birth weight is significantly greater than that of a normal calf.
Belgian Blue cattle have improved feed conversion ratio (FCR) due to lower feed intake compared to weight gain due to an altered composition of body weight gain which includes increased protein and decreased fat deposition. The Belgian Blue's bone structure is the same as normal cattle, albeit holding a greater amount of muscle, which causes them to have a greater meat to bone ratio. These cattle have a muscle yield around 20% more on average than cattle without the genetic myostatin mutation. Because of this breed's increased muscle yield, a diet containing higher protein is required to compensate for the altered mode of weight gain. During finishing, this breed requires high-energy (concentrated) feeds, and will not yield the same results if put on a high-fibre diet.
Breed problems.
Double-muscled cows routinely experience dystocia – difficulty in parturition – even when bred to normal beef bulls or dairy bulls, because of a narrower birth canal; the birth weight and width of the calf also may be higher than in animals without the double-muscling gene. Calves are commonly born by Caesarean section; cows may be able to survive five or six deliveries of this type.
In bulls, testicular weight and semen quantity and quality are lower than in other cattle, perhaps because of the greater amount of connective tissue in the testicles. However, this is less of an issue when compared to the dam's difficulties in calving.
Economic efficiency.
The economics of breeding and raising Belgian Blue cattle are inconclusive because of complications experienced during parturition and metabolic demand for more concentrated feeds. The breed's increased need to have Caesarean sections when calving means increased cost and added work, and can become a welfare issue. However, the carcass value of double-muscled animals may be enhanced due to increased dressing yield, lean carcass content, and upgrading of some cuts leading to a higher proportion of higher valued cuts. The slower rate of fat deposition causes slaughtering to be delayed in most cases, which means an increase in maintenance costs in those animals. Belgian Blue cattle require more skilled management and do not thrive in harsh environments. For these reasons and others, the breed's overall production efficiency in an economic sense is still unclear.
|
3755
|
7903804
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3755
|
Boron
|
Boron is a chemical element; it has symbol B and atomic number 5. In its crystalline form it is a brittle, dark, lustrous metalloid; in its amorphous form it is a brown powder. As the lightest element of the boron group it has three valence electrons for forming covalent bonds, resulting in many compounds such as boric acid, the mineral sodium borate, and the ultra-hard crystals of boron carbide and boron nitride.
Boron is synthesized entirely by cosmic ray spallation and supernovas and not by stellar nucleosynthesis, so it is a low-abundance element in the Solar System and in the Earth's crust. It constitutes about 0.001 percent by weight of Earth's crust. It is concentrated on Earth by the water-solubility of its more common naturally occurring compounds, the borate minerals. These are mined industrially as evaporites, such as borax and kernite. The largest known deposits are in Turkey, the largest producer of boron minerals.
Elemental boron is found in small amounts in meteoroids, but chemically uncombined boron is not otherwise found naturally on Earth.
Several allotropes exist: amorphous boron is a brown powder; crystalline boron is silvery to black, extremely hard (9.3 on the Mohs scale), and a poor electrical conductor at room temperature (1.5 × 10−6 Ω−1 cm−1 room temperature electrical conductivity). The primary use of the element itself is as boron filaments with applications similar to carbon fibers in some high-strength materials.
Boron is primarily used in chemical compounds. About half of all production consumed globally is an additive in fiberglass for insulation and structural materials. The next leading use is in polymers and ceramics in high-strength, lightweight structural and heat-resistant materials. Borosilicate glass is desired for its greater strength and thermal shock resistance than ordinary soda lime glass. As sodium perborate, it is used as a bleach. A small amount is used as a dopant in semiconductors, and reagent intermediates in the synthesis of organic fine chemicals. A few boron-containing organic pharmaceuticals are used or are in study. Natural boron is composed of two stable isotopes, one of which (boron-10) has a number of uses as a neutron-capturing agent.
Borates have low toxicity in mammals (similar to table salt) but are more toxic to arthropods and are occasionally used as insecticides. Boron-containing organic antibiotics are known. Although only traces are required, it is an essential plant nutrient.
History.
The word "boron" was coined from "borax", the mineral from which it was isolated, by analogy with "carbon", which boron resembles chemically.
Borax in its mineral form (then known as tincal) first saw use as a glaze, beginning in China circa 300 AD. Some crude borax traveled westward, and was apparently mentioned by the alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan around 700 AD. Marco Polo brought some glazes back to Italy in the 13th century. Georgius Agricola, in around 1600, reported the use of borax as a flux in metallurgy. In 1777, boric acid was recognized in the hot springs (soffioni) near Florence, Italy, at which point it became known as "sal sedativum", with ostensible medical benefits. The mineral was named sassolite, after Sasso Pisano in Italy. Sasso was the main source of European borax from 1827 to 1872, when American sources replaced it. Boron compounds were rarely used until the late 1800s when Francis Marion Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company first popularized and produced them in volume at low cost.
Boron was not recognized as an element until it was isolated by Sir Humphry Davy and by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis Jacques Thénard. In 1808 Davy observed that electric current sent through a solution of borates produced a brown precipitate on one of the electrodes. In his subsequent experiments, he used potassium to reduce boric acid instead of electrolysis. He produced enough boron to confirm a new element and named it "boracium". Gay-Lussac and Thénard used iron to reduce boric acid at high temperatures. By oxidizing boron with air, they showed that boric acid is its oxidation product. Jöns Jacob Berzelius identified it as an element in 1824. Pure boron was arguably first produced by the American chemist Ezekiel Weintraub in 1909.
Characteristics of the element.
Isotopes.
Boron has two naturally occurring and stable isotopes, 11B (80.1%) and 10B (19.9%). The mass difference results in a wide range of δ11B values, which are defined as a fractional difference between the 11B and 10B and traditionally expressed in parts per thousand, in natural waters ranging from −16 to +59. There are 13 known isotopes of boron; the shortest-lived isotope is 7B which decays through proton emission and alpha decay with a half-life of 3.5×10−22 s. Isotopic fractionation of boron is controlled by the exchange reactions of the boron species B(OH)3 and [B(OH)4]−. Boron isotopes are also fractionated during mineral crystallization, during H2O phase changes in hydrothermal systems, and during hydrothermal alteration of rock. The latter effect results in preferential removal of the [10B(OH)4]− ion onto clays. It results in solutions enriched in 11B(OH)3 and therefore may be responsible for the large 11B enrichment in seawater relative to both oceanic crust and continental crust; this difference may act as an isotopic signature.
The exotic 17B exhibits a nuclear halo, i.e. its radius is appreciably larger than that predicted by the liquid drop model.
NMR spectroscopy.
Both 10B and 11B possess nuclear spin. The nuclear spin of 10B is 3 and that of 11B is . These isotopes are, therefore, of use in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy; and spectrometers specially adapted to detecting the boron-11 nuclei are available commercially. The 10B and 11B nuclei also cause splitting in the resonances of attached nuclei.
Allotropes.
Boron forms four major allotropes: α-rhombohedral and β-rhombohedral (α-R and β-R), γ-orthorhombic (γ) and β-tetragonal (β-T). All four phases are stable at ambient conditions, and β-rhombohedral is the most common and stable. An α-tetragonal phase also exists (α-T), but is very difficult to produce without significant contamination. Most of the phases are based on B12 icosahedra, but the γ phase can be described as a rocksalt-type arrangement of the icosahedra and B2 atomic pairs. It can be produced by compressing other boron phases to 12–20 GPa and heating to 1500–1800 °C; it remains stable after releasing the temperature and pressure. The β-T phase is produced at similar pressures, but higher temperatures of 1800–2200 °C. The α-T and β-T phases might coexist at ambient conditions, with the β-T phase being the more stable. Compressing boron above 160 GPa produces a boron phase with an as yet unknown structure, and this phase is a superconductor at temperatures below 6–12 K.
Atomic structure.
Atomic boron is the lightest element having an electron in a p-orbital in its ground state. Its first three ionization energies are higher than those for heavier group III elements, reflecting its electropositive character.
Chemistry of the element.
Preparation.
Elemental boron is rare and poorly studied because the pure material is extremely difficult to prepare. Most studies of "boron" involve samples that contain small amounts of carbon. Very pure boron is produced with difficulty because of contamination by carbon or other elements that resist removal.
Some early routes to elemental boron involved the reduction of boric oxide with metals such as magnesium or aluminium. However, the product was often contaminated with borides of those metals. Pure boron can be prepared by reducing volatile boron halides with hydrogen at high temperatures. Ultrapure boron for use in the semiconductor industry is produced by the decomposition of diborane at high temperatures and then further purified by the zone melting or Czochralski processes.
Reactions of the element.
Crystalline boron is a hard, black material with a melting point of above 2000 °C. Crystalline boron is chemically inert and resistant to attack by boiling hydrofluoric or hydrochloric acid. When finely divided, it is attacked slowly by hot concentrated hydrogen peroxide, hot concentrated nitric acid, hot sulfuric acid or hot mixture of sulfuric and chromic acids.
Since elemental boron is very rare, its chemical reactions are of little significance practically speaking. The elemental form is not typically used as a precursor to compounds. Instead, the extensive inventory of boron compounds are produced from borates.
When exposed to air, under normal conditions, a protective oxide or hydroxide layer forms on the surface of boron, which prevents further corrosion. The rate of oxidation of boron depends on the crystallinity, particle size, purity and temperature. At higher temperatures boron burns to form boron trioxide:
4 B + 3 O2 → 2 B2O3
Chemical compounds.
General trends.
In some ways, boron is comparable to carbon in its capability to form stable covalently bonded molecular networks (even nominally disordered (amorphous) boron contains boron icosahedra, which are bonded randomly to each other without long-range order.). In terms of chemical behavior, boron compounds resembles silicon. Aluminium, the heavier congener of boron, does not behave analogously to boron: it is far more electropositive, it is larger, and it tends not to form homoatomic Al-Al bonds. In the most familiar compounds, boron has the formal oxidation state III. These include the common oxides, sulfides, nitrides, and halides, as well as organic derivatives
Boron compounds often violate the octet rule.
Halides.
Boron forms the complete series of trihalides, i.e. BX3 (X = F, Cl, Br, I). The trifluoride is produced by treating borate salts with hydrogen fluoride, while the trichloride is produced by carbothermic reduction of boron oxides in the presence of chlorine gas:
The trihalides adopt a planar trigonal structures, in contrast to the behavior of aluminium trihalides. All charge-neutral boron halides violate the octet rule, hence they typically are Lewis acidic. For example, boron trifluoride (BF3) combines eagerly with fluoride sources to give the tetrafluoroborate anion, BF4−. Boron trifluoride is used in the petrochemical industry as a catalyst. The halides react with water to form boric acid. Other boron halides include those with B-B bonding, such as B2F4 and B4Cl4.
Oxide derivatives.
Boron-containing minerals exclusively exist as oxides of B(III), often associated with other elements. More than one hundred borate minerals are known. These minerals resemble silicates in some respect, although it is often found not only in a tetrahedral coordination with oxygen, but also in a trigonal planar configuration. The borates can be subdivided into two classes, anhydrous and the far more common hydrates. The hydrates contain B-OH groups and sometimes water of crystallization. A typical motif is exemplified by the tetraborate anions of the common mineral borax. The formal negative charge of the tetrahedral borate center is balanced by sodium (Na+). Some idea of the complexity of these materials is provided by the inventory of zinc borates, which are common wood preservatives and fire retardants: 4ZnO·B2O3·H2O, ZnO·B2O3·1.12H2O, ZnO·B2O3·2H2O, 6ZnO·5B2O3·3H2O, 2ZnO·3B2O3·7H2O, 2ZnO·3B2O3·3H2O, 3ZnO·5B2O3·14H2O, and ZnO·5B2O3·4.5H2O.
As illustrated by the preceding examples, borate anions tend to condense by formation of B-O-B bonds. Borosilicates, with B-O-Si, and borophosphates, with B-O-P linkages, are also well represented in both minerals and synthetic compounds.
Related to the oxides are the alkoxides and boronic acids with the formula B(OR)3 and R2BOH, respectively. Boron forms a wide variety of such metal-organic compounds, some of which are used in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals. These developments, especially the Suzuki reaction, was recognized with the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Akira Suzuki.
Hydrides.
Boranes and borohydrides are neutral and anionic compounds of boron and hydrogen, respectively. Sodium borohydride is the progenitor of the boranes. Sodium borohydride is obtained by hydrogenation of trimethylborate:
Sodium borohydride is a white, fairly air-stable salt.
Sodium borohydride converts to diborane by treatment with boron trifluoride:
Diborane is the dimer of the elusive parent called borane, BH3. Having a formula akin to ethane's (C2H6), diborane adopts a very different structure, featuring a pair of bridging H atoms. This unusual structure, which was deduced only in the 1940s, was an early indication of the many surprises provided by boron chemistry.
Pyrolysis of diborane gives boron hydride clusters, such as pentaborane(9) and decaborane . A large number of anionic boron hydrides are also known, e.g. [B12H12]2−. In these cluster compounds, boron has a coordination number greater than four. The analysis of the bonding in these polyhedra clusters earned William N. Lipscomb the 1976 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "studies on the structure of boranes illuminating problems of chemical bonding". Not only are their structures unusual, many of the boranes are extremely reactive. For example, a widely used procedure for pentaborane states that it will "spontaneously inflame or explode in air".
Organoboron compounds.
A large number of organoboron compounds, species with B-C bonds, are known. Many organoboron compounds are produced from hydroboration, the addition of B-H bonds to bonds. Diborane is traditionally used for such reactions, as illustrated by the preparation of trioctylborane:
This regiochemistry, i.e. the tendency of B to attach to the terminal carbon - is explained by the polarization of the bonds in boranes, which is indicated as Bδ+-Hδ-.
Hydroboration opened the doors for many subsequent reactions, several of which are useful in the synthesis of complex organic compounds. The significance of these methods was recognized by the award of Nobel Prize in Chemistry to H. C. Brown in 1979. Even complicated boron hydrides, such as decaborane undergo hydroboration. Like the volatile boranes, the alkyl boranes ignite spontaneously in air.
In the 1950s, several studies examined the use of boranes as energy-increasing "Zip fuel" additives for jet fuel.
Triorganoboron(III) compounds are trigonal planar and exhibit weak Lewis acidity. The resulting adducts are tetrahedral. This behavior contrasts with that of triorganoaluminium compounds (see trimethylaluminium), which are tetrahedral with bridging alkyl groups.
A compound with the B≡C triple bond was synthesized for the first time in 2025.
Nitrides.
The boron-nitrides follow the pattern of avoiding B-B and N-N bonds: only B-N bonding is observed generally. The boron nitrides exhibit structures analogous to various allotropes of carbon, including graphite, diamond, and nanotubes. This similarity reflects the fact that B and N have eight valence electrons as does a pair of carbon atoms. In cubic boron nitride (tradename Borazon), boron and nitrogen atoms are tetrahedral, just like carbon in diamond. Cubic boron nitride, among other applications, is used as an abrasive, as its hardness is comparable with that of diamond. Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is the BN analogue of graphite, consisting of sheets of alternating B and N atoms. These sheets stack with boron and nitrogen in registry between the sheets. Graphite and h-BN have very different properties, although both are lubricants, as these planes slip past each other easily. However, h-BN is a relatively poor electrical and thermal conductor in the planar directions. Molecular analogues of boron nitrides are represented by borazine, (BH)3(NH)3.
Carbides.
Boron carbide is a ceramic material. It is obtained by carbothermal reduction of B2O3in an electric furnace:
2 B2O3 + 7 C → B4C + 6 CO
Boron carbide's structure is only approximately reflected in its formula of B4C, and it shows a clear depletion of carbon from this suggested stoichiometric ratio. This is due to its very complex structure. The substance can be seen with empirical formula B12C3 (i.e., with B12 dodecahedra being a motif), but with less carbon, as the suggested C3 units are replaced with C-B-C chains, and some smaller (B6) octahedra are present as well (see the boron carbide article for structural analysis). The repeating polymer plus semi-crystalline structure of boron carbide gives it great structural strength per weight.
Borides.
Binary metal-boron compounds, the metal borides, contain only boron and a metal. They are metallic, very hard, with high melting points. TiB2, ZrB2, and HfB2 have melting points above 3000 °C. Some metal borides find specialized applications as hard materials for cutting tools.
Occurrence.
Boron is rare in the universe and solar system. The amount of boron formed in the Big Bang is negligible. Boron is not generated in the normal course of stellar nucleosynthesis and is destroyed in stellar interiors.
In the high oxygen environment of the Earth's surface, boron is always found fully oxidized to borate. Boron does not appear on Earth in elemental form. Extremely small traces of elemental boron were detected in Lunar regolith.
Although boron is a relatively rare element in the Earth's crust, representing only 0.001% of the crust mass, it can be highly concentrated by the action of water, in which many borates are soluble. It is found naturally combined in compounds such as borax and boric acid (sometimes found in volcanic spring waters). About a hundred borate minerals are known.
Production.
Economically important sources of boron are the minerals colemanite, rasorite (kernite), ulexite and tincal. Together these constitute 90% of mined boron-containing ore. The largest global borax deposits known, many still untapped, are in Central and Western Turkey, including the provinces of Eskişehir, Kütahya and Balıkesir. Global proven boron mineral mining reserves exceed one billion metric tonnes, against a yearly production of about four million tonnes.
Turkey and the United States are the largest producers of boron products. Turkey produces about half of the global yearly demand, through Eti Mine Works () a Turkish state-owned mining and chemicals company focusing on boron products. It holds a government monopoly on the mining of borate minerals in Turkey, which possesses 72% of the world's known deposits. In 2012, it held a 47% share of production of global borate minerals, ahead of its main competitor, Rio Tinto Group.
Almost a quarter (23%) of global boron production comes from the Rio Tinto Borax Mine (also known as the U.S. Borax Boron Mine) near Boron, California.
Market trend.
The average cost of crystalline elemental boron is US$5/g. Elemental boron is chiefly used in making boron fibers, where it is deposited by chemical vapor deposition on a tungsten core (see below). Boron fibers are used in lightweight composite applications, such as high strength tapes. This use is a very small fraction of total boron use. Boron is introduced into semiconductors as boron compounds, by ion implantation.
Estimated global consumption of boron (almost entirely as boron compounds) was about 4 million tonnes of B2O3 in 2012. As compounds such as borax and kernite its cost was US$377/tonne in 2019.
Increasing demand for boric acid has led a number of producers to invest in additional capacity. Turkey's state-owned Eti Mine Works opened a new boric acid plant with the production capacity of 100,000 tonnes per year at Emet in 2003. Rio Tinto Group increased the capacity of its boron plant from 260,000 tonnes per year in 2003 to 310,000 tonnes per year by May 2005, with plans to grow this to 366,000 tonnes per year in 2006. Chinese boron producers have been unable to meet rapidly growing demand for high quality borates. This has led to imports of sodium tetraborate (borax) growing by a hundredfold between 2000 and 2005 and boric acid imports increasing by 28% per year over the same period.
The rise in global demand has been driven by high growth rates in glass fiber, fiberglass and borosilicate glassware production. A rapid increase in the manufacture of reinforcement-grade boron-containing fiberglass in Asia, has offset the development of boron-free reinforcement-grade fiberglass in Europe and the US. The recent rises in energy prices may lead to greater use of insulation-grade fiberglass, with consequent growth in the boron consumption. Roskill Consulting Group forecasts that world demand for boron will grow by 3.4% per year to reach 21 million tonnes by 2010. The highest growth in demand is expected to be in Asia where demand could rise by an average 5.7% per year.
Applications.
Nearly all boron ore extracted from the Earth is refined as boric acid and sodium tetraborate pentahydrate. In the United States, 70% of the boron is used for the production of glass and ceramics.
The major global industrial-scale use of boron compounds (about 46% of end-use) is in production of glass fiber for boron-containing insulating and structural fiberglasses, especially in Asia. Boron is added to the glass as borax pentahydrate or boron oxide, to influence the strength or fluxing qualities of the glass fibers. Another 10% of global boron production is for borosilicate glass as used in high strength glassware. About 15% of global boron is used in boron ceramics, including super-hard materials discussed below. Agriculture consumes 11% of global boron production, and bleaches and detergents about 6%.
Boronated fiberglass.
Fiberglasses, a fiber reinforced polymer sometimes contain borosilicate, borax, or boron oxide, and is added to increase the strength of the glass. The highly boronated glasses, E-glass (named for "Electrical" use) are alumino-borosilicate glass. Another common high-boron glasses, C-glass, also has a high boron oxide content, used for glass staple fibers and insulation. D-glass, a borosilicate glass, named for its low dielectric constant.
Because of the ubiquitous use of fiberglass in construction and insulation, boron-containing fiberglasses consume over half the global production of boron, and are the single largest commercial boron market.
Borosilicate glass.
Borosilicate glass, which is typically 12–15% B2O3, 80% SiO2, and 2% Al2O3, has a low coefficient of thermal expansion, giving it a good resistance to thermal shock. Schott AG's "Duran" and Owens-Corning's trademarked Pyrex are two major brand names for this glass, used both in laboratory glassware and in consumer cookware and bakeware, chiefly for this resistance.
Elemental boron fiber.
Boron fibers (boron filaments) are high-strength, lightweight materials that are used chiefly for advanced aerospace structures as a component of composite materials, as well as limited production consumer and sporting goods such as golf clubs and fishing rods. The fibers can be produced by chemical vapor deposition of boron on a tungsten filament.
Boron fibers and sub-millimeter sized crystalline boron springs are produced by laser-assisted chemical vapor deposition. Translation of the focused laser beam allows production of even complex helical structures. Such structures show good mechanical properties (elastic modulus 450 GPa, fracture strain 3.7%, fracture stress 17 GPa) and can be applied as reinforcement of ceramics or in micromechanical systems.
Boron carbide ceramic.
Boron carbide's ability to absorb neutrons without forming long-lived radionuclides (especially when doped with extra boron-10) makes the material attractive as an absorbent for neutron radiation arising in nuclear power plants. Nuclear applications of boron carbide include shielding, control rods and shut-down pellets. Within control rods, boron carbide is often powdered, to increase its surface area.
High-hardness and abrasive compounds.
Boron carbide and cubic boron nitride powders are widely used as abrasives. Boron nitride is a material isoelectronic to carbon. Similar to carbon, it has both hexagonal (soft graphite-like h-BN) and cubic (hard, diamond-like c-BN) forms. h-BN is used as a high temperature component and lubricant. c-BN, also known under commercial name borazon, is a superior abrasive. Its hardness is only slightly smaller than, but its chemical stability is superior, to that of diamond. Heterodiamond (also called BCN) is another diamond-like boron compound.
Metallurgy.
Boron is added to boron steels at the level of a few parts per million to increase hardenability. Higher percentages are added to steels used in the nuclear industry due to boron's neutron absorption ability.
Boron can also increase the surface hardness of steels and alloys through boriding. Additionally metal borides are used for coating tools through chemical vapor deposition or physical vapor deposition. Implantation of boron ions into metals and alloys, through ion implantation or ion beam deposition, results in a spectacular increase in surface resistance and microhardness. Laser alloying has also been successfully used for the same purpose. These borides are an alternative to diamond coated tools, and their (treated) surfaces have similar properties to those of the bulk boride.
For example, rhenium diboride can be produced at ambient pressures, but is rather expensive because of rhenium. The hardness of ReB2 exhibits considerable anisotropy because of its hexagonal layered structure. Its value is comparable to that of tungsten carbide, silicon carbide, titanium diboride or zirconium diboride. Similarly, AlMgB14 + TiB2 composites possess high hardness and wear resistance and are used in either bulk form or as coatings for components exposed to high temperatures and wear loads.
Detergent formulations and bleaching agents.
Borax is used in various household laundry and cleaning products. It is also present in some tooth bleaching formulas.
Sodium perborate serves as a source of active oxygen in many detergents, laundry detergents, cleaning products, and laundry bleaches. However, despite its name, "Borateem" laundry bleach no longer contains any boron compounds, using sodium percarbonate instead as a bleaching agent.
Insecticides and antifungals.
Zinc borates and boric acid, popularized as fire retardants, are widely used as wood preservatives and insecticides. Boric acid is also used as a domestic insecticide.
Semiconductors.
Boron is a useful dopant for such semiconductors as silicon, germanium, and silicon carbide. Having one fewer valence electron than the host atom, it donates a hole resulting in p-type conductivity. Traditional method of introducing boron into semiconductors is via its atomic diffusion at high temperatures. This process uses either solid (B2O3), liquid (BBr3), or gaseous boron sources (B2H6 or BF3). However, after the 1970s, it was mostly replaced by ion implantation, which relies mostly on BF3 as a boron source. Boron trichloride gas is also an important chemical in semiconductor industry, however, not for doping but rather for plasma etching of metals and their oxides. Triethylborane is also injected into vapor deposition reactors as a boron source. Examples are the plasma deposition of boron-containing hard carbon films, silicon nitride–boron nitride films, and for doping of diamond film with boron.
Magnets.
Boron is a component of neodymium magnets (Nd2Fe14B), which are among the strongest type of permanent magnet. These magnets are found in a variety of electromechanical and electronic devices, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) medical imaging systems, in compact and relatively small motors and actuators. As examples, computer HDDs (hard disk drives), CD (compact disk) and DVD (digital versatile disk) players rely on neodymium magnet motors to deliver intense rotary power in a remarkably compact package. In mobile phones 'Neo' magnets provide the magnetic field which allows tiny speakers to deliver appreciable audio power.
Shielding and neutron absorber in nuclear reactors.
Boron shielding is used as a control for nuclear reactors, taking advantage of its high cross-section for neutron capture.
In pressurized water reactors a variable concentration of boronic acid in the cooling water is used as a neutron poison to compensate the variable reactivity of the fuel. When new rods are inserted the concentration of boronic acid is maximal, and is reduced during the lifetime.
Pharmaceutical and biological applications.
Boron plays a role in pharmaceutical and biological applications as it is found in various antibiotics produced by bacteria, such as boromycins, aplasmomycins, borophycins, and tartrolons. These antibiotics have shown inhibitory effects on the growth of certain bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. Boron is also being studied for its potential medicinal applications, including its incorporation into biologically active molecules for therapies like boron neutron capture therapy for brain tumors. Some boron-containing biomolecules may act as signaling molecules interacting with cell surfaces, suggesting a role in cellular communication.
Boric acid has antiseptic, antifungal, and antiviral properties and, for these reasons, is applied as a water clarifier in swimming pool water treatment. Mild solutions of boric acid have been used as eye antiseptics.
Bortezomib (marketed as Velcade and Cytomib). Boron appears as an active element in the organic pharmaceutical bortezomib, a new class of drug called the proteasome inhibitor, for treating myeloma and one form of lymphoma (it is currently in experimental trials against other types of lymphoma). The boron atom in bortezomib binds the catalytic site of the 26S proteasome with high affinity and specificity.
Tavaborole (marketed as Kerydin) is an Aminoacyl tRNA synthetase inhibitor which is used to treat toenail fungus. It gained FDA approval in July 2014.
Dioxaborolane chemistry enables radioactive fluoride (18F) labeling of antibodies or red blood cells, which allows for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of cancer and hemorrhages, respectively. A Human-Derived, Genetic, Positron-emitting and Fluorescent (HD-GPF) reporter system uses a human protein, PSMA and non-immunogenic, and a small molecule that is positron-emitting (boron bound 18F) and fluorescence for dual modality PET and fluorescent imaging of genome modified cells, e.g. cancer, CRISPR/Cas9, or CAR T-cells, in an entire mouse. The dual-modality small molecule targeting PSMA was tested in humans and found the location of primary and metastatic prostate cancer, fluorescence-guided removal of cancer, and detects single cancer cells in tissue margins.
Research.
MgB2.
Magnesium diboride (MgB2) is a superconductor with the transition temperature of 39 K. MgB2 wires are produced with the powder-in-tube process and applied in superconducting magnets. A project at CERN to make MgB2 cables has resulted in superconducting test cables able to carry 20,000 amperes for extremely high current distribution applications, such as the contemplated high luminosity version of the Large Hadron Collider.
Commercial isotope enrichment.
Because of its high neutron cross-section, boron-10 is often used to control fission in nuclear reactors as a neutron-capturing substance. Several industrial-scale enrichment processes have been developed; however, only the fractionated vacuum distillation of the dimethyl ether adduct of boron trifluoride (DME-BF3) and column chromatography of borates are being used.
Radiation-hardened semiconductors.
Cosmic radiation will produce secondary neutrons if it hits spacecraft structures. Those neutrons will be captured in 10B, if it is present in the spacecraft's semiconductors, producing a gamma ray, an alpha particle, and a lithium ion. Those resultant decay products may then irradiate nearby semiconductor "chip" structures, causing data loss (bit flipping, or single event upset). In radiation-hardened semiconductor designs, one countermeasure is to use "depleted boron", which is greatly enriched in 11B and contains almost no 10B. This is useful because 11B is largely immune to radiation damage. Depleted boron is a byproduct of the nuclear industry (see above).
Proton-boron fusion.
11B is also a candidate as a fuel for aneutronic fusion. When struck by a proton with energy of about 500 keV, it produces three alpha particles and 8.7 MeV of energy. Most other fusion reactions involving hydrogen and helium produce penetrating neutron radiation, which weakens reactor structures and induces long-term radioactivity, thereby endangering operating personnel. The alpha particles from 11B fusion can be turned directly into electric power, and all radiation stops as soon as the reactor is turned off.
Enriched boron (boron-10).
The 10B isotope is useful for capturing thermal neutrons (see neutron cross section#Typical cross sections). The nuclear industry enriches natural boron to nearly pure 10B. The less-valuable by-product, depleted boron, is nearly pure 11B.
Enriched boron or 10B is used in both radiation shielding and is the primary nuclide used in neutron capture therapy of cancer. In the latter ("boron neutron capture therapy" or BNCT), a compound containing 10B is incorporated into a pharmaceutical which is selectively taken up by a malignant tumor and tissues near it. The patient is then treated with a beam of low energy neutrons at a relatively low neutron radiation dose. The neutrons, however, trigger energetic and short-range secondary alpha particle and lithium-7 heavy ion radiation that are products of the boron-neutron nuclear reaction, and this ion radiation additionally bombards the tumor, especially from inside the tumor cells.
In nuclear reactors, 10B is used for reactivity control and in emergency shutdown systems. It can serve either function in the form of borosilicate control rods or as boric acid. In pressurized water reactors, 10B boric acid is added to the reactor coolant after the plant is shut down for refueling. When the plant is started up again, the boric acid is slowly filtered out over many months as fissile material is used up and the fuel becomes less reactive.
Nuclear fusion.
Boron has been investigated for possible applications in nuclear fusion research. It is commonly used for conditioning the walls in fusion reactors by depositing boron coatings on plasma-facing components and walls to reduce the release of hydrogen and impurities from the surfaces. It is also being used for the dissipation of energy in the fusion plasma boundary to suppress excessive energy bursts and heat fluxes to the walls.
Neutron capture therapy.
In neutron capture therapy (BNCT) for malignant brain tumors, boron is researched to be used for selectively targeting and destroying tumor cells. The goal is to deliver higher concentrations of the non-radioactive boron isotope (10B) to the tumor cells than to the surrounding normal tissues. When these 10B-containing cells are irradiated with low-energy thermal neutrons, they undergo nuclear capture reactions, releasing high linear energy transfer (LET) particles such as α-particles and lithium-7 nuclei within a limited path length. These high-LET particles can destroy the adjacent tumor cells without causing significant harm to nearby normal cells. Boron acts as a selective agent due to its ability to absorb thermal neutrons and produce short-range physical effects primarily affecting the targeted tissue region. This binary approach allows for precise tumor cell killing while sparing healthy tissues. The effective delivery of boron involves administering boron compounds or carriers capable of accumulating selectively in tumor cells compared to surrounding tissue. BSH and BPA have been used clinically, but research continues to identify more optimal carriers. Accelerator-based neutron sources have also been developed recently as an alternative to reactor-based sources, leading to improved efficiency and enhanced clinical outcomes in BNCT. By employing the properties of boron isotopes and targeted irradiation techniques, BNCT offers a potential approach to treating malignant brain tumors by selectively killing cancer cells while minimizing the damage caused by traditional radiation therapies.
BNCT has shown promising results in clinical trials for various other malignancies, including glioblastoma, head and neck cancer, cutaneous melanoma, hepatocellular carcinoma, lung cancer, and extramammary Paget's disease. The treatment involves a nuclear reaction between nonradioactive boron-10 isotope and low-energy thermal or high-energy epithermal neutrons to generate α particles and lithium nuclei that selectively destroy DNA in tumor cells. The primary challenge lies in developing efficient boron agents with higher content and specific targeting properties tailored for BNCT. Integration of tumor-targeting strategies with BNCT could potentially establish it as a practical personalized treatment option for different types of cancers. Ongoing research explores new boron compounds, optimization strategies, theranostic agents, and radiobiological advances to overcome limitations and cost-effectively improve patient outcomes.
Biological role.
Boron is an essential plant nutrient, required primarily for maintaining the integrity of cell walls. However, high soil concentrations of greater than 1.0 ppm lead to marginal and tip necrosis in leaves as well as poor overall growth performance. Levels as low as 0.8 ppm produce these same symptoms in plants that are particularly sensitive to boron in the soil. Nearly all plants, even those somewhat tolerant of soil boron, will show at least some symptoms of boron toxicity when soil boron content is greater than 1.8 ppm. When this content exceeds 2.0 ppm, few plants will perform well and some may not survive.
Some boron-containing antibiotics exist in nature. The first one found was boromycin, isolated from streptomyces in the 1960s. Others are tartrolons, a group of antibiotics discovered in the 1990s from culture broth of the myxobacterium "Sorangium cellulosum".
In 2013, chemist and synthetic biologist Steve Benner suggested that the conditions on Mars three billion years ago were much more favorable to the stability of RNA and formation of oxygen-containing boron and molybdenum catalysts found in life. According to Benner's theory, primitive life, which is widely believed to have originated from RNA, first formed on Mars before migrating to Earth.
In human health.
It is thought that boron plays several essential roles in animals, including humans, but the exact physiological role is poorly understood. Boron deficiency has only been clearly established in livestock; in humans, boron deficiency may affect bone mineral density, though it has been noted that additional research on the effects of bone health is necessary.
Boron is not classified as an essential human nutrient because research has not established a clear biological function for it. The U.S. Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) found the existing data insufficient to derive a Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), Adequate Intake (AI), or Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) for boron and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not established a daily value for boron for food and dietary supplement labeling purposes. While low boron status can be detrimental to health, probably increasing the risk of osteoporosis, poor immune function, and cognitive decline, high boron levels are associated with cell damage and toxicity.
Still, studies suggest that boron may exert beneficial effects on reproduction and development, calcium metabolism, bone formation, brain function, insulin and energy substrate metabolism, immunity, and steroid hormone (including estrogen) and vitamin D function, among other functions. A small human trial published in 1987 reported on postmenopausal women first made boron deficient and then repleted with 3 mg/day. Boron supplementation markedly reduced urinary calcium excretion and elevated the serum concentrations of 17 beta-estradiol and testosterone. Environmental boron appears to be inversely correlated with arthritis.
The exact mechanism by which boron exerts its physiological effects is not fully understood, but may involve interactions with adenosine monophosphate (ADP) and "S"-adenosyl methionine (SAM-e), two compounds involved in important cellular functions. Furthermore, boron appears to inhibit cyclic ADP-ribose, thereby affecting the release of calcium ions from the endoplasmic reticulum and affecting various biological processes. Some studies suggest that boron may reduce levels of inflammatory biomarkers. Congenital endothelial dystrophy type 2, a rare form of corneal dystrophy, is linked to mutations in SLC4A11 gene that encodes a transporter reportedly regulating the intracellular concentration of boron.
In humans, boron is usually consumed with food that contains boron, such as fruits, leafy vegetables, and nuts. Foods that are particularly rich in boron include avocados, dried fruits such as raisins, peanuts, pecans, prune juice, grape juice, wine and chocolate powder. According to 2-day food records from the respondents to the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), adult dietary intake was recorded at 0.9 to 1.4 mg/day.
Health issues and toxicity.
Elemental boron, boron oxide, boric acid, borates, and many organoboron compounds are relatively nontoxic to humans and animals (with toxicity similar to that of table salt). The LD50 (dose at which there is 50% mortality) for animals is about 6 g per kg of body weight. Substances with an LD50 above 2 g/kg are considered nontoxic. An intake of 4 g/day of boric acid was reported without incident, but more than this is considered toxic in more than a few doses. Intakes of more than 0.5 grams per day for 50 days cause minor digestive and other problems suggestive of toxicity.
Boric acid is more toxic to insects than to mammals, and is routinely used as an insecticide. However, it has been used in neutron capture therapy alongside other boron compounds such as sodium borocaptate and boronophenylalanine with reported low toxicity levels.
The boranes (boron hydrogen compounds) and similar gaseous compounds are quite poisonous. As usual, boron is not an element that is intrinsically poisonous, but the toxicity of these compounds depends on structure (for another example of this phenomenon, see phosphine). The boranes are also highly flammable and require special care when handling, some combinations of boranes and other compounds are highly explosive. Sodium borohydride presents a fire hazard owing to its reducing nature and the liberation of hydrogen on contact with acid. Boron halides are corrosive.
Boron is necessary for plant growth, but an excess of boron is toxic to plants, and occurs particularly in acidic soil. It presents as a yellowing from the tip inwards of the oldest leaves and black spots in barley leaves, but it can be confused with other stresses such as magnesium deficiency in other plants.
|
3756
|
383280
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3756
|
Bromine
|
Bromine is a chemical element; it has symbol Br and atomic number 35. It is a volatile red-brown liquid at room temperature that evaporates readily to form a similarly coloured vapour. Its properties are intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine. Isolated independently by two chemists, Carl Jacob Löwig (in 1825) and Antoine Jérôme Balard (in 1826), its name was derived , referring to its sharp and pungent smell.
Elemental bromine is very reactive and thus does not occur as a free element in nature. Instead, it can be isolated from colourless soluble crystalline mineral halide salts analogous to table salt, a property it shares with the other halogens. While it is rather rare in the Earth's crust, the high solubility of the bromide ion (Br) has caused its accumulation in the oceans. Commercially the element is easily extracted from brine evaporation ponds, mostly in the United States and Israel. The mass of bromine in the oceans is about one three-hundredth that of chlorine.
At standard conditions for temperature and pressure it is a liquid; the only other element that is liquid under these conditions is mercury. At high temperatures, organobromine compounds readily dissociate to yield free bromine atoms, a process that stops free radical chemical chain reactions. This effect makes organobromine compounds useful as fire retardants, and more than half the bromine produced worldwide each year is put to this purpose. The same property causes ultraviolet sunlight to dissociate volatile organobromine compounds in the atmosphere to yield free bromine atoms, causing ozone depletion. As a result, many organobromine compounds—such as the pesticide methyl bromide—are no longer used. Bromine compounds are still used in well drilling fluids, in photographic film, and as an intermediate in the manufacture of organic chemicals.
Large amounts of bromide salts are toxic from the action of soluble bromide ions, causing bromism. However, bromine is beneficial for human eosinophils, and is an essential trace element for collagen development in all animals. Hundreds of known organobromine compounds are generated by terrestrial and marine plants and animals, and some serve important biological roles. As a pharmaceutical, the simple bromide ion (Br) has inhibitory effects on the central nervous system, and bromide salts were once a major medical sedative, before replacement by shorter-acting drugs. They retain niche uses as antiepileptics.
History.
Bromine was discovered independently by two chemists, Carl Jacob Löwig and Antoine Balard, in 1825 and 1826, respectively.
Löwig isolated bromine from a mineral water spring from his hometown Bad Kreuznach in 1825. Löwig used a solution of the mineral salt saturated with chlorine and extracted the bromine with diethyl ether. After evaporation of the ether, a brown liquid remained. With this liquid as a sample of his work he applied for a position in the laboratory of Leopold Gmelin in Heidelberg. The publication of the results was delayed and Balard published his results first.
Balard found bromine chemicals in the ash of seaweed from the salt marshes of Montpellier. The seaweed was used to produce iodine, but also contained bromine. Balard distilled the bromine from a solution of seaweed ash saturated with chlorine. The properties of the resulting substance were intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine; thus he tried to prove that the substance was iodine monochloride (ICl), but after failing to do so he was sure that he had found a new element and named it muride, derived from the Latin word ("brine").
After the French chemists Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, Louis Jacques Thénard, and Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac approved the experiments of the young pharmacist Balard, the results were presented at a lecture of the Académie des Sciences and published in "Annales de Chimie et Physique". In his publication, Balard stated that he changed the name from "muride" to "brôme" on the proposal of . The name "brôme" (bromine) derives from the Greek (, "stench"). Other sources claim that the French chemist and physicist Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac suggested the name "brôme" for the characteristic smell of the vapors. Bromine was not produced in large quantities until 1858, when the discovery of salt deposits in Stassfurt enabled its production as a by-product of potash.
Apart from some minor medical applications, the first commercial use was the daguerreotype. In 1840, bromine was discovered to have some advantages over the previously used iodine vapor to create the light sensitive silver halide layer in daguerreotypy.
By 1864, a 25% solution of liquid bromine in .75 molar aqueous potassium bromide was widely used to treat gangrene during the American Civil War, before the publications of Joseph Lister and Pasteur.
Potassium bromide and sodium bromide were used as anticonvulsants and sedatives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were gradually superseded by chloral hydrate and then by the barbiturates. In the early years of the First World War, bromine compounds such as xylyl bromide were used as poison gas.
Properties.
Bromine is the third halogen, being a nonmetal in group 17 of the periodic table. Its properties are thus similar to those of fluorine, chlorine, and iodine, and tend to be intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine, the two neighbouring halogens. Bromine has the electron configuration [Ar]4s3d4p, with the seven electrons in the fourth and outermost shell acting as its valence electrons. Like all halogens, it is thus one electron short of a full octet, and is hence a strong oxidising agent, reacting with many elements in order to complete its outer shell. Corresponding to periodic trends, it is intermediate in electronegativity between chlorine and iodine (F: 3.98, Cl: 3.16, Br: 2.96, I: 2.66), and is less reactive than chlorine and more reactive than iodine. It is also a weaker oxidising agent than chlorine, but a stronger one than iodine. Conversely, the bromide ion is a weaker reducing agent than iodide, but a stronger one than chloride. These similarities led to chlorine, bromine, and iodine together being classified as one of the original triads of Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, whose work foreshadowed the periodic law for chemical elements. It is intermediate in atomic radius between chlorine and iodine, and this leads to many of its atomic properties being similarly intermediate in value between chlorine and iodine, such as first ionisation energy, electron affinity, enthalpy of dissociation of the X molecule (X = Cl, Br, I), ionic radius, and X–X bond length. The volatility of bromine accentuates its very penetrating, choking, and unpleasant odour.
All four stable halogens experience intermolecular van der Waals forces of attraction, and their strength increases together with the number of electrons among all homonuclear diatomic halogen molecules. Thus, the melting and boiling points of bromine are intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine. As a result of the increasing molecular weight of the halogens down the group, the density and heats of fusion and vaporisation of bromine are again intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine, although all their heats of vaporisation are fairly low (leading to high volatility) thanks to their diatomic molecular structure. The halogens darken in colour as the group is descended: fluorine is a very pale yellow gas, chlorine is greenish-yellow, and bromine is a reddish-brown volatile liquid that freezes at −7.2 °C and boils at 58.8 °C. (Iodine is a shiny black solid.) This trend occurs because the wavelengths of visible light absorbed by the halogens increase down the group. Specifically, the colour of a halogen, such as bromine, results from the electron transition between the highest occupied antibonding "π" molecular orbital and the lowest vacant antibonding "σ" molecular orbital. The colour fades at low temperatures so that solid bromine at −195 °C is pale yellow.
Liquid bromine is infrared-transparent.
Like solid chlorine and iodine, solid bromine crystallises in the orthorhombic crystal system, in a layered arrangement of Br molecules. The Br–Br distance is 227 pm (close to the gaseous Br–Br distance of 228 pm) and the Br···Br distance between molecules is 331 pm within a layer and 399 pm between layers (compare the van der Waals radius of bromine, 195 pm). This structure means that bromine is a very poor conductor of electricity, with a conductivity of around 5 × 10 Ω cm just below the melting point, although this is higher than the essentially undetectable conductivity of chlorine.
At a pressure of 55 GPa (roughly 540,000 times atmospheric pressure) bromine undergoes an insulator-to-metal transition. At 75 GPa it changes to a face-centered orthorhombic structure. At 100 GPa it changes to a body centered orthorhombic monatomic form.
Isotopes.
Bromine has two stable isotopes, Br and Br. These are its only two natural isotopes, with Br making up 51% of natural bromine and Br making up the remaining 49%. Both have nuclear spin 3/2− and thus may be used for nuclear magnetic resonance, although Br is more favourable. The relatively 1:1 distribution of the two isotopes in nature is helpful in identification of bromine containing compounds using mass spectroscopy. Other bromine isotopes are all radioactive, with half-lives too short to occur in nature. Of these, the most important are Br ("t" = 17.7 min), Br ("t" = 4.421 h), and Br ("t" = 35.28 h), which may be produced from the neutron activation of natural bromine. The most stable bromine radioisotope is Br ("t" = 57.04 h). The primary decay mode of isotopes lighter than Br is electron capture to isotopes of selenium; that of isotopes heavier than Br is beta decay to isotopes of krypton; and Br may decay by either mode to stable Se or Kr. Br isotopes from 87Br and heavier undergo beta decay with neutron emission and are of practical importance because they are fission products.
Chemistry and compounds.
Bromine is intermediate in reactivity between chlorine and iodine, and is one of the most reactive elements. Bond energies to bromine tend to be lower than those to chlorine but higher than those to iodine, and bromine is a weaker oxidising agent than chlorine but a stronger one than iodine. This can be seen from the standard electrode potentials of the X/X couples (F, +2.866 V; Cl, +1.395 V; Br, +1.087 V; I, +0.615 V; At, approximately +0.3 V). Bromination often leads to higher oxidation states than iodination but lower or equal oxidation states to chlorination. Bromine tends to react with compounds including M–M, M–H, or M–C bonds to form M–Br bonds.
Hydrogen bromide.
The simplest compound of bromine is hydrogen bromide, HBr. It is mainly used in the production of inorganic bromides and alkyl bromides, and as a catalyst for many reactions in organic chemistry. Industrially, it is mainly produced by the reaction of hydrogen gas with bromine gas at 200–400 °C with a platinum catalyst. However, reduction of bromine with red phosphorus is a more practical way to produce hydrogen bromide in the laboratory:
2 P + 6 HO + 3 Br → 6 HBr + 2 HPO
HPO + HO + Br → 2 HBr + HPO
At room temperature, hydrogen bromide is a colourless gas, like all the hydrogen halides apart from hydrogen fluoride, since hydrogen cannot form strong hydrogen bonds to the large and only mildly electronegative bromine atom; however, weak hydrogen bonding is present in solid crystalline hydrogen bromide at low temperatures, similar to the hydrogen fluoride structure, before disorder begins to prevail as the temperature is raised. Aqueous hydrogen bromide is known as hydrobromic acid, which is a strong acid (p"K" = −9) because the hydrogen bonds to bromine are too weak to inhibit dissociation. The HBr/HO system also involves many hydrates HBr·"n"HO for "n" = 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, which are essentially salts of bromine anions and hydronium cations. Hydrobromic acid forms an azeotrope with boiling point 124.3 °C at 47.63 g HBr per 100 g solution; thus hydrobromic acid cannot be concentrated beyond this point by distillation.
Unlike hydrogen fluoride, anhydrous liquid hydrogen bromide is difficult to work with as a solvent, because its boiling point is low, it has a small liquid range, its dielectric constant is low and it does not dissociate appreciably into HBr and ions – the latter, in any case, are much less stable than the bifluoride ions () due to the very weak hydrogen bonding between hydrogen and bromine, though its salts with very large and weakly polarising cations such as Cs and (R = Me, Et, Bu) may still be isolated. Anhydrous hydrogen bromide is a poor solvent, only able to dissolve small molecular compounds such as nitrosyl chloride and phenol, or salts with very low lattice energies such as tetraalkylammonium halides.
Other binary bromides.
Nearly all elements in the periodic table form binary bromides. The exceptions are decidedly in the minority and stem in each case from one of three causes: extreme inertness and reluctance to participate in chemical reactions (the noble gases, with the exception of xenon in the very unstable XeBr); extreme nuclear instability hampering chemical investigation before decay and transmutation (many of the heaviest elements beyond bismuth); and having an electronegativity higher than bromine's (oxygen, nitrogen, fluorine, and chlorine), so that the resultant binary compounds are formally not bromides but rather oxides, nitrides, fluorides, or chlorides of bromine. (Nonetheless, nitrogen tribromide is named as a bromide as it is analogous to the other nitrogen trihalides.)
Bromination of metals with Br tends to yield lower oxidation states than chlorination with Cl when a variety of oxidation states is available. Bromides can be made by reaction of an element or its oxide, hydroxide, or carbonate with hydrobromic acid, and then dehydrated by mildly high temperatures combined with either low pressure or anhydrous hydrogen bromide gas. These methods work best when the bromide product is stable to hydrolysis; otherwise, the possibilities include high-temperature oxidative bromination of the element with bromine or hydrogen bromide, high-temperature bromination of a metal oxide or other halide by bromine, a volatile metal bromide, carbon tetrabromide, or an organic bromide. For example, niobium(V) oxide reacts with carbon tetrabromide at 370 °C to form niobium(V) bromide. Another method is halogen exchange in the presence of excess "halogenating reagent", for example:
FeCl + BBr (excess) → FeBr + BCl
When a lower bromide is wanted, either a higher halide may be reduced using hydrogen or a metal as a reducing agent, or thermal decomposition or disproportionation may be used, as follows:
3 WBr + Al 3 WBr + AlBr
EuBr + H → EuBr + HBr
2 TaBr TaBr + TaBr
Most metal bromides with the metal in low oxidation states (+1 to +3) are ionic. Nonmetals tend to form covalent molecular bromides, as do metals in high oxidation states from +3 and above. Both ionic and covalent bromides are known for metals in oxidation state +3 (e.g. scandium bromide is mostly ionic, but aluminium bromide is not). Silver bromide is very insoluble in water and is thus often used as a qualitative test for bromine.
Bromine halides.
The halogens form many binary, diamagnetic interhalogen compounds with stoichiometries XY, XY, XY, and XY (where X is heavier than Y), and bromine is no exception. Bromine forms a monofluoride and monochloride, as well as a trifluoride and pentafluoride. Some cationic and anionic derivatives are also characterised, such as , , , , and . Apart from these, some pseudohalides are also known, such as cyanogen bromide (BrCN), bromine thiocyanate (BrSCN), and bromine azide (BrN).
The pale-brown bromine monofluoride (BrF) is unstable at room temperature, disproportionating quickly and irreversibly into bromine, bromine trifluoride, and bromine pentafluoride. It thus cannot be obtained pure. It may be synthesised by the direct reaction of the elements, or by the comproportionation of bromine and bromine trifluoride at high temperatures. Bromine monochloride (BrCl), a red-brown gas, quite readily dissociates reversibly into bromine and chlorine at room temperature and thus also cannot be obtained pure, though it can be made by the reversible direct reaction of its elements in the gas phase or in carbon tetrachloride. Bromine monofluoride in ethanol readily leads to the monobromination of the aromatic compounds PhX ("para"-bromination occurs for X = Me, Bu, OMe, Br; "meta"-bromination occurs for the deactivating X = –COEt, –CHO, –NO); this is due to heterolytic fission of the Br–F bond, leading to rapid electrophilic bromination by Br.
At room temperature, bromine trifluoride (BrF) is a straw-coloured liquid. It may be formed by directly fluorinating bromine at room temperature and is purified through distillation. It reacts violently with water and explodes on contact with flammable materials, but is a less powerful fluorinating reagent than chlorine trifluoride. It reacts vigorously with boron, carbon, silicon, arsenic, antimony, iodine, and sulfur to give fluorides, and will also convert most metals and many metal compounds to fluorides; as such, it is used to oxidise uranium to uranium hexafluoride in the nuclear power industry. Refractory oxides tend to be only partially fluorinated, but here the derivatives KBrF and BrFSbF remain reactive. Bromine trifluoride is a useful nonaqueous ionising solvent, since it readily dissociates to form and and thus conducts electricity.
Bromine pentafluoride (BrF) was first synthesised in 1930. It is produced on a large scale by direct reaction of bromine with excess fluorine at temperatures higher than 150 °C, and on a small scale by the fluorination of potassium bromide at 25 °C. It also reacts violently with water and is a very strong fluorinating agent, although chlorine trifluoride is still stronger.
Polybromine compounds.
Although dibromine is a strong oxidising agent with a high first ionisation energy, very strong oxidisers such as peroxydisulfuryl fluoride (SOF) can oxidise it to form the cherry-red cation. A few other bromine cations are known, namely the brown and dark brown . The tribromide anion, , has also been characterised; it is analogous to triiodide.
Bromine oxides and oxoacids.
Bromine oxides are not as well-characterised as chlorine oxides or iodine oxides, as they are all fairly unstable: it was once thought that they could not exist at all. Dibromine monoxide is a dark-brown solid which, while reasonably stable at −60 °C, decomposes at its melting point of −17.5 °C; it is useful in bromination reactions and may be made from the low-temperature decomposition of bromine dioxide in a vacuum. It oxidises iodine to iodine pentoxide and benzene to 1,4-benzoquinone; in alkaline solutions, it gives the hypobromite anion.
So-called "bromine dioxide", a pale yellow crystalline solid, may be better formulated as bromine perbromate, BrOBrO. It is thermally unstable above −40 °C, violently decomposing to its elements at 0 °C. Dibromine trioxide, "syn"-BrOBrO, is also known; it is the anhydride of hypobromous acid and bromic acid. It is an orange crystalline solid which decomposes above −40 °C; if heated too rapidly, it explodes around 0 °C. A few other unstable radical oxides are also known, as are some poorly characterised oxides, such as dibromine pentoxide, tribromine octoxide, and bromine trioxide.
The four oxoacids, hypobromous acid (HOBr), bromous acid (HOBrO), bromic acid (HOBrO), and perbromic acid (HOBrO), are better studied due to their greater stability, though they are only so in aqueous solution. When bromine dissolves in aqueous solution, the following reactions occur:
Hypobromous acid is unstable to disproportionation. The hypobromite ions thus formed disproportionate readily to give bromide and bromate:
Bromous acids and bromites are very unstable, although the strontium and barium bromites are known. More important are the bromates, which are prepared on a small scale by oxidation of bromide by aqueous hypochlorite, and are strong oxidising agents. Unlike chlorates, which very slowly disproportionate to chloride and perchlorate, the bromate anion is stable to disproportionation in both acidic and aqueous solutions. Bromic acid is a strong acid. Bromides and bromates may comproportionate to bromine as follows:
+ 5 Br + 6 H → 3 Br + 3 HO
There were many failed attempts to obtain perbromates and perbromic acid, leading to some rationalisations as to why they should not exist, until 1968 when the anion was first synthesised from the radioactive beta decay of unstable . Today, perbromates are produced by the oxidation of alkaline bromate solutions by fluorine gas. Excess bromate and fluoride are precipitated as silver bromate and calcium fluoride, and the perbromic acid solution may be purified. The perbromate ion is fairly inert at room temperature but is thermodynamically extremely oxidising, with extremely strong oxidising agents needed to produce it, such as fluorine or xenon difluoride. The Br–O bond in is fairly weak, which corresponds to the general reluctance of the 4p elements arsenic, selenium, and bromine to attain their group oxidation state, as they come after the scandide contraction characterised by the poor shielding afforded by the radial-nodeless 3d orbitals.
Organobromine compounds.
Like the other carbon–halogen bonds, the C–Br bond is a common functional group that forms part of core organic chemistry. Formally, compounds with this functional group may be considered organic derivatives of the bromide anion. Due to the difference of electronegativity between bromine (2.96) and carbon (2.55), the carbon atom in a C–Br bond is electron-deficient and thus electrophilic. The reactivity of organobromine compounds resembles but is intermediate between the reactivity of organochlorine and organoiodine compounds. For many applications, organobromides represent a compromise of reactivity and cost.
Organobromides are typically produced by additive or substitutive bromination of other organic precursors. Bromine itself can be used, but due to its toxicity and volatility, safer brominating reagents are normally used, such as "N"-bromosuccinimide. The principal reactions for organobromides include dehydrobromination, Grignard reactions, reductive coupling, and nucleophilic substitution.
Organobromides are the most common organohalides in nature, even though the concentration of bromide is only 0.3% of that for chloride in sea water, because of the easy oxidation of bromide to the equivalent of Br, a potent electrophile. The enzyme bromoperoxidase catalyzes this reaction. The oceans are estimated to release 1–2 million tons of bromoform and 56,000 tons of bromomethane annually.
An old qualitative test for the presence of the alkene functional group is that alkenes turn brown aqueous bromine solutions colourless, forming a bromohydrin with some of the dibromoalkane also produced. The reaction passes through a short-lived strongly electrophilic bromonium intermediate. This is an example of a halogen addition reaction.
Occurrence and production.
Bromine is significantly less abundant in the crust than fluorine or chlorine, comprising only 2.5 parts per million of the Earth's crustal rocks, and then only as bromide salts. It is significantly more abundant in the oceans, resulting from long-term leaching. There, it makes up 65 parts per million, corresponding to a ratio of about one bromine atom for every 660 chlorine atoms. Salt lakes and brine wells may have higher bromine concentrations: for example, the Dead Sea contains 0.4% bromide ions. It is from these sources that bromine extraction is mostly economically feasible. Bromine is the tenth most abundant element in seawater.
The main sources of bromine production are Israel and Jordan. The element is liberated by halogen exchange, using chlorine gas to oxidise Br to Br. This is then removed with a blast of steam or air, and is then condensed and purified. Today, bromine is transported in large-capacity metal drums or lead-lined tanks that can hold hundreds of kilograms or even tonnes of bromine. The bromine industry is about one-hundredth the size of the chlorine industry. Laboratory production is unnecessary because bromine is commercially available and has a long shelf life.
Applications.
A wide variety of organobromine compounds are used in industry. Some are prepared from bromine and others are prepared from hydrogen bromide, which is obtained by burning hydrogen in bromine.
Flame retardants.
Brominated flame retardants represent a commodity of growing importance, and make up the largest commercial use of bromine. When the brominated material burns, the flame retardant produces hydrobromic acid which interferes in the radical chain reaction of the oxidation reaction of the fire. The mechanism is that the highly reactive hydrogen radicals, oxygen radicals, and hydroxyl radicals react with hydrobromic acid to form less reactive bromine radicals (i.e., free bromine atoms). Bromine atoms may also react directly with other radicals to help terminate the free radical chain-reactions that characterise combustion.
To make brominated polymers and plastics, bromine-containing compounds can be incorporated into the polymer during polymerisation. One method is to include a relatively small amount of brominated monomer during the polymerisation process. For example, vinyl bromide can be used in the production of polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride or polypropylene. Specific highly brominated molecules can also be added that participate in the polymerisation process. For example, tetrabromobisphenol A can be added to polyesters or epoxy resins, where it becomes part of the polymer. Epoxies used in printed circuit boards are normally made from such flame retardant resins, indicated by the FR in the abbreviation of the products (FR-4 and FR-2). In some cases, the bromine-containing compound may be added after polymerisation. For example, decabromodiphenyl ether can be added to the final polymers.
A number of gaseous or highly volatile brominated halomethane compounds are non-toxic and make superior fire suppressant agents by this same mechanism, and are particularly effective in enclosed spaces such as submarines, airplanes, and spacecraft. However, they are expensive and their production and use has been greatly curtailed due to their effect as ozone-depleting agents. They are no longer used in routine fire extinguishers, but retain niche uses in aerospace and military automatic fire suppression applications. They include bromochloromethane (Halon 1011, CHBrCl), bromochlorodifluoromethane (Halon 1211, CBrClF), and bromotrifluoromethane (Halon 1301, CBrF).
Other uses.
Silver bromide is used, either alone or in combination with silver chloride and silver iodide, as the light sensitive constituent of photographic emulsions.
Ethylene bromide was an additive in gasolines containing lead anti-engine knocking agents. It scavenges lead by forming volatile lead bromide, which is exhausted from the engine. This application accounted for 77% of the bromine use in 1966 in the US. This application has declined since the 1970s due to environmental regulations (see below).
Brominated vegetable oil (BVO), a complex mixture of plant-derived triglycerides that have been reacted to contain atoms of the element bromine bonded to the molecules, is used primarily to help emulsify citrus-flavored soft drinks, preventing them from separating during distribution.
Poisonous bromomethane was widely used as pesticide to fumigate soil and to fumigate housing, by the tenting method. Ethylene bromide was similarly used. These volatile organobromine compounds are all now regulated as ozone depletion agents. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer scheduled the phase out for the ozone depleting chemical by 2005, and organobromide pesticides are no longer used (in housing fumigation they have been replaced by such compounds as sulfuryl fluoride, which contain neither the chlorine or bromine organics which harm ozone). Before the Montreal protocol in 1991 (for example) an estimated 35,000 tonnes of the chemical were used to control nematodes, fungi, weeds and other soil-borne diseases.
In pharmacology, inorganic bromide compounds, especially potassium bromide, were frequently used as general sedatives in the 19th and early 20th century. Bromides in the form of simple salts are still used as anticonvulsants in both veterinary and human medicine, although the latter use varies from country to country. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not approve bromide for the treatment of any disease, and sodium bromide was removed from over-the-counter sedative products like Bromo-Seltzer, in 1975. Commercially available organobromine pharmaceuticals include the vasodilator nicergoline, the sedative brotizolam, the anticancer agent pipobroman, and the antiseptic merbromin. Otherwise, organobromine compounds are rarely pharmaceutically useful, in contrast to the situation for organofluorine compounds. Several drugs are produced as the bromide (or equivalents, hydrobromide) salts, but in such cases bromide serves as an innocuous counterion of no biological significance.
Other uses of organobromine compounds include high-density drilling fluids, dyes (such as Tyrian purple and the indicator bromothymol blue), and pharmaceuticals. Bromine itself, as well as some of its compounds, are used in water treatment, and is the precursor of a variety of inorganic compounds with an enormous number of applications (e.g. silver bromide for photography). Zinc–bromine batteries are hybrid flow batteries used for stationary electrical power backup and storage; from household scale to industrial scale.
Bromine is used in cooling towers (in place of chlorine) for controlling bacteria, algae, fungi, and zebra mussels.
Because it has similar antiseptic qualities to chlorine, bromine can be used in the same manner as chlorine as a disinfectant or antimicrobial in applications such as swimming pools. Bromine came into this use in the United States during World War II due to a predicted shortage of chlorine. However, bromine is usually not used outside for these applications due to it being relatively more expensive than chlorine and the absence of a stabilizer to protect it from the sun. For indoor pools, it can be a good option as it is effective at a wider pH range. It is also more stable in a heated pool or hot tub.
Biological role and toxicity.
A 2014 study suggests that bromine (in the form of bromide ion) is a necessary cofactor in the biosynthesis of collagen IV, making the element essential to basement membrane architecture and tissue development in animals. Nevertheless, no clear deprivation symptoms or syndromes have been documented in mammals. In other biological functions, bromine may be non-essential but still beneficial when it takes the place of chlorine. For example, in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, HO, formed by the eosinophil, and either chloride, iodide, thiocyanate, or bromide ions, eosinophil peroxidase provides a potent mechanism by which eosinophils kill multicellular parasites (such as the nematode worms involved in filariasis) and some bacteria (such as tuberculosis bacteria). Eosinophil peroxidase is a haloperoxidase that preferentially uses bromide over chloride for this purpose, generating hypobromite (hypobromous acid), although the use of chloride is possible.
α-Haloesters are generally thought of as highly reactive and consequently toxic intermediates in organic synthesis. Nevertheless, mammals, including humans, cats, and rats, appear to biosynthesize traces of an α-bromoester, 2-octyl 4-bromo-3-oxobutanoate, which is found in their cerebrospinal fluid and appears to play a yet unclarified role in inducing REM sleep. Neutrophil myeloperoxidase can use HO and Br to brominate deoxycytidine, which could result in DNA mutations. Marine organisms are the main source of organobromine compounds, and it is in these organisms that bromine is more firmly shown to be essential. More than 1600 such organobromine compounds were identified by 1999. The most abundant is methyl bromide (CHBr), of which an estimated 56,000 tonnes is produced by marine algae each year. The essential oil of the Hawaiian alga "Asparagopsis taxiformis" consists of 80% bromoform. Most of such organobromine compounds in the sea are made by the action of a unique algal enzyme, vanadium bromoperoxidase.
The bromide anion is not very toxic: a normal daily intake is 2 to 8 milligrams. However, high levels of bromide chronically impair the membrane of neurons, which progressively impairs neuronal transmission, leading to toxicity, known as bromism. Bromide has an elimination half-life of 9 to 12 days, which can lead to excessive accumulation. Doses of 0.5 to 1 gram per day of bromide can lead to bromism. Historically, the therapeutic dose of bromide is about 3 to 5 grams of bromide, thus explaining why chronic toxicity (bromism) was once so common. While significant and sometimes serious disturbances occur to neurologic, psychiatric, dermatological, and gastrointestinal functions, death from bromism is rare. Bromism is caused by a neurotoxic effect on the brain which results in somnolence, psychosis, seizures and delirium.
Elemental bromine (Br) is toxic and causes chemical burns on human flesh. Inhaling bromine gas results in similar irritation of the respiratory tract, causing coughing, choking, shortness of breath, and death if inhaled in large enough amounts. Chronic exposure may lead to frequent bronchial infections and a general deterioration of health. As a strong oxidising agent, bromine is incompatible with most organic and inorganic compounds. Caution is required when transporting bromine; it is commonly carried in steel tanks lined with lead, supported by strong metal frames. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the United States has set a permissible exposure limit (PEL) for bromine at a time-weighted average (TWA) of 0.1 ppm. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of TWA 0.1 ppm and a short-term limit of 0.3 ppm. The exposure to bromine immediately dangerous to life and health (IDLH) is 3 ppm. Bromine is classified as an extremely hazardous substance in the United States as defined in Section 302 of the U.S. Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (42 U.S.C. 11002), and is subject to strict reporting requirements by facilities which produce, store, or use it in significant quantities.
|
3757
|
49441461
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3757
|
Barium
|
Barium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is the fifth element in group 2; and is a soft, silvery alkaline earth metal. Because of its high chemical reactivity, barium is never found in nature as a free element.
The most common minerals of barium are barite (barium sulfate, BaSO4) and witherite (barium carbonate, BaCO3). The name "barium" originates from the alchemical derivative "baryta" from Greek (), meaning 'heavy'. "Baric" is the adjectival form of barium. Barium was identified as a new element in 1772, but not reduced to a metal until 1808 with the advent of electrolysis.
Barium has few industrial applications. Historically, it was used as a getter for vacuum tubes and in oxide form as the emissive coating on indirectly heated cathodes. It is a component of YBCO (high-temperature superconductors) and electroceramics, and is added to steel and cast iron to reduce the size of carbon grains within the microstructure. Barium compounds are added to fireworks to impart a green color. Barium sulfate is used as an insoluble additive to oil well drilling fluid. In a purer form it is used as X-ray radiocontrast agents for imaging the human gastrointestinal tract. Water-soluble barium compounds are poisonous and have been used as rodenticides.
Characteristics.
Physical properties.
Barium is a soft, silvery-white metal, with a slight golden shade when ultrapure. The silvery-white color of barium metal rapidly vanishes upon oxidation in air yielding a dark gray layer containing the oxide. Barium has a medium specific weight and high electrical conductivity. Because barium is difficult to purify, many of its properties have not been accurately determined.
At room temperature and pressure, barium metal adopts a body-centered cubic structure, with a barium–barium distance of 503 picometers, expanding with heating at a rate of approximately 1.8/°C. It is a soft metal with a Mohs hardness of 1.25. Its melting temperature of is intermediate between those of the lighter strontium () and heavier radium (); however, its boiling point of exceeds that of strontium (). The density (3.62 g/cm3) is again intermediate between those of strontium (2.36 g/cm3) and radium (≈5 g/cm3).
Chemical reactivity.
Barium is chemically similar to magnesium, calcium, and strontium, but more reactive. Its compounds are almost invariably found in the +2 oxidation state. As expected for a highly electropositive metal, barium's reaction with chalcogens is highly exothermic (release energy). Barium reacts with atmospheric oxygen in air at room temperature. For this reason, metallic barium is often stored under oil or in an inert atmosphere. Reactions with other nonmetals, such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon, and hydrogen, proceed upon heating. Reactions with water and alcohols are also exothermic and release hydrogen gas:
↑ (R is an alkyl group or a hydrogen atom)
Barium reacts with ammonia to form the electride , which near room temperature gives the amide .
The metal is readily attacked by acids. Sulfuric acid is a notable exception because passivation stops the reaction by forming the insoluble barium sulfate on the surface. Barium combines with several other metals, including aluminium, zinc, lead, and tin, forming intermetallic phases and alloys.
Compounds.
Barium salts are typically white when solid and colorless when dissolved. They are denser than the strontium or calcium analogs, except for the halides (see table; zinc is given for comparison).
Barium hydroxide ("baryta") was known to alchemists, who produced it by heating barium carbonate. Unlike calcium hydroxide, it absorbs very little CO2 in aqueous solutions and is therefore insensitive to atmospheric fluctuations. This property is used in calibrating pH equipment.
Barium compounds burn with a green to pale green flame, which is an efficient test to detect a barium compound. The color results from spectral lines at 455.4, 493.4, 553.6, and 611.1 nm.
Organobarium compounds are a growing field of knowledge: recently discovered are dialkylbariums and alkylhalobariums.
Isotopes.
Barium found in the Earth's crust is a mixture of seven primordial nuclides, barium-130, 132, and 134 through 138. Barium-130 undergoes very slow radioactive decay to xenon-130 by double beta plus decay, with a half-life of (0.5–2.7)×1021 years (about 1011 times the age of the universe). Its abundance is ≈0.1% that of natural barium. Theoretically, barium-132 can similarly undergo double beta decay to xenon-132; this decay has not been detected. The radioactivity of these isotopes is so weak that they pose no danger to life.
Of the stable isotopes, barium-138 composes 71.7% of all barium; other isotopes have decreasing abundance with decreasing mass number.
In total, barium has 40 known isotopes, ranging in mass between 114 and 153. The most stable artificial radioisotope is barium-133 with a half-life of approximately 10.51 years. Five other isotopes have half-lives longer than a day. Barium also has 10 meta states, of which barium-133m1 is the most stable with a half-life of about 39 hours.
History.
Alchemists in the early Middle Ages knew about some barium minerals. Smooth pebble-like stones of mineral baryte were found in volcanic rock near Bologna, Italy, and so were called "Bologna stones". Alchemists were attracted to them because after exposure to light they would glow for years. The phosphorescent properties of baryte heated with organics were described by V. Casciorolus in 1602.
Carl Scheele determined that baryte contained a new element in 1772, but could not isolate barium, only barium oxide. Johan Gottlieb Gahn also isolated barium oxide two years later in similar studies. Oxidized barium was at first called "barote" by Guyton de Morveau, a name that was changed by Antoine Lavoisier to "baryte" (in French) or "baryta" (in Latin). Also in the 18th century, English mineralogist William Withering noted a heavy mineral in the lead mines of Cumberland, now known to be witherite. Barium was first isolated by electrolysis of molten barium salts in 1808 by Sir Humphry Davy in England. Davy, by analogy with calcium, named "barium" after baryta, with the "-ium" ending signifying a metallic element. Robert Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen obtained pure barium by electrolysis of a molten mixture of barium chloride and ammonium chloride.
The production of pure oxygen in the Brin process was a large-scale application of barium peroxide in the 1880s, before it was replaced by electrolysis and fractional distillation of liquefied air in the early 1900s. In this process barium oxide reacts at with air to form barium peroxide, which decomposes above by releasing oxygen:
Barium sulfate was first applied as a radiocontrast agent in X-ray imaging of the digestive system in 1908.
Occurrence and production.
The abundance of barium is 0.0425% in the Earth's crust and 13 μg/L in sea water. The primary commercial source of barium is baryte (also called barytes or heavy spar), a barium sulfate mineral. with deposits in many parts of the world. Another commercial source, far less important than baryte, is witherite, barium carbonate. The main deposits are located in Britain, Romania, and the former USSR.
The baryte reserves are estimated between 0.7 and 2 billion tonnes. The highest production, 8.3 million tonnes, was achieved in 1981, but only 7–8% was used for barium metal or compounds. Baryte production has risen since the second half of the 1990s from 5.6 million tonnes in 1996 to 7.6 in 2005 and 7.8 in 2011. China accounts for more than 50% of this output, followed by India (14% in 2011), Morocco (8.3%), US (8.2%), Iran and Kazakhstan (2.6% each) and Turkey (2.5%).
The mined ore is washed, crushed, classified, and separated from quartz. If the quartz penetrates too deeply into the ore, or the iron, zinc, or lead content is abnormally high, then froth flotation is used. The product is a 98% pure baryte (by mass); the purity should be no less than 95%, with a minimal content of iron and silicon dioxide. It is then reduced by carbon to barium sulfide:
The water-soluble barium sulfide is the starting point for other compounds: treating BaS with oxygen produces the sulfate, with nitric acid the nitrate, with aqueous carbon dioxide the carbonate, and so on. The nitrate can be thermally decomposed to yield the oxide. Barium metal is produced by reduction with aluminium at . The intermetallic compound BaAl4 is produced first:
is an intermediate reacted with barium oxide to produce the metal. Note that not all barium is reduced.
The remaining barium oxide reacts with the formed aluminium oxide:
and the overall reaction is
Barium vapor is condensed and packed into molds in an atmosphere of argon. This method is used commercially, yielding ultrapure barium. Commonly sold barium is about 99% pure, with main impurities being strontium and calcium (up to 0.8% and 0.25%) and other contaminants contributing less than 0.1%.
A similar reaction with silicon at yields barium and barium metasilicate. Electrolysis is not used because barium readily dissolves in molten halides and the product is rather impure.
Gemstone.
The barium mineral, benitoite (barium titanium silicate), occurs as a very rare blue fluorescent gemstone, and is the official state gem of California.
Barium in seawater.
Barium exists in seawater as the Ba2+ ion with an average oceanic concentration of 109 nmol/kg. Barium also exists in the ocean as BaSO4, or barite. Barium has a nutrient-like profile with a residence time of 10,000 years.
Barium shows a relatively consistent concentration in upper ocean seawater, excepting regions of high river inputs and regions with strong upwelling. There is little depletion of barium concentrations in the upper ocean for an ion with a nutrient-like profile, thus lateral mixing is important. Barium isotopic values show basin-scale balances instead of local or short-term processes.
Applications.
Metal and alloys.
Barium, as a metal or when alloyed with aluminium, is used to remove unwanted gases (gettering) from vacuum tubes, such as TV picture tubes. Barium is suitable for this purpose because of its low vapor pressure and reactivity towards oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water; it can even partly remove noble gases by dissolving them in the crystal lattice. This application is gradually disappearing due to the rising popularity of the tubeless LCD, LED, and plasma sets.
Other uses of elemental barium are minor and include an additive to silumin (aluminium–silicon alloys) that refines their structure, as well as
Barium sulfate and baryte.
Barium sulfate (the mineral baryte, BaSO4) is important to the petroleum industry as a drilling fluid in oil and gas wells. The precipitate of the compound (called "blanc fixe", from the French for "permanent white") is used in paints and varnishes; as a filler in ringing ink, plastics, and rubbers; as a paper coating pigment; and in nanoparticles, to improve physical properties of some polymers, such as epoxies.
Barium sulfate has a low toxicity and relatively high density of ca. 4.5 g/cm3 (and thus opacity to X-rays). For this reason it is used as a radiocontrast agent in X-ray imaging of the digestive system ("barium meals" and "barium enemas"). Lithopone, a pigment that contains barium sulfate and zinc sulfide, is a permanent white with good covering power that does not darken when exposed to sulfides.
Other barium compounds.
Other compounds of barium find only niche applications, limited by the toxicity of ions (see ), which is not a problem for the insoluble .
Palaeoceanography.
The lateral mixing of barium is caused by water mass mixing and ocean circulation. Global ocean circulation reveals a strong correlation between dissolved barium and silicic acid. The large-scale ocean circulation combined with remineralization of barium show a similar correlation between dissolved barium and ocean alkalinity.
Dissolved barium's correlation with silicic acid can be seen both vertically and spatially. Particulate barium shows a strong correlation with particulate organic carbon or POC. Barium is becoming more popular as a base for palaeoceanographic proxies. With both dissolved and particulate barium's links with silicic acid and POC, it can be used to determine historical variations in the biological pump, carbon cycle, and global climate.
The barium particulate barite (), as one of many proxies, can be used to provide a host of historical information on processes in different oceanic settings (water column, sediments, and hydrothermal sites). In each setting there are differences in isotopic and elemental composition of the barite particulate. Barite in the water column, known as marine or pelagic barite, reveals information on seawater chemistry variation over time. Barite in sediments, known as diagenetic or cold seeps barite, gives information about sedimentary redox processes. Barite formed via hydrothermal activity at hydrothermal vents, known as hydrothermal barite, reveals alterations in the condition of the earth's crust around those vents.
Toxicity.
Soluble barium compounds have LD50 near 10 mg/kg (oral rats). Symptoms include "convulsions... paralysis of the peripheral nerve system ... severe inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract". The insoluble sulfate is nontoxic and is not classified as a dangerous goods in transport regulations.
Little is known about the long term effects of barium exposure. The US EPA considers it unlikely that barium is carcinogenic when consumed orally. Inhaled dust containing insoluble barium compounds can accumulate in the lungs, causing a benign condition called baritosis.
Barium carbonate has been used as a rodenticide.
Though considered obsolete, it may still be in use in some countries.
|
3758
|
1300229945
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3758
|
Berkelium
|
Berkelium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Bk and atomic number 97. It is a member of the actinide and transuranium element series. It is named after the city of Berkeley, California, the location of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (then the University of California Radiation Laboratory) where it was discovered in December 1949. Berkelium was the fifth transuranium element discovered after neptunium, plutonium, curium and americium.
The major isotope of berkelium, 249Bk, is synthesized in minute quantities in dedicated high-flux nuclear reactors, mainly at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, United States, and at the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad, Russia. The longest-lived and second-most important isotope, 247Bk, can be synthesized via irradiation of 244Cm with high-energy alpha particles.
Just over one gram of berkelium has been produced in the United States since 1967. There is no practical application of berkelium outside scientific research which is mostly directed at the synthesis of heavier transuranium elements and superheavy elements. A 22-milligram batch of berkelium-249 was prepared during a 250-day irradiation period and then purified for a further 90 days at Oak Ridge in 2009. This sample was used to synthesize the new element tennessine for the first time in 2009 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Russia, after it was bombarded with calcium-48 ions for 150 days. This was the culmination of the Russia–US collaboration on the synthesis of the heaviest elements on the periodic table.
Berkelium is a soft, silvery-white, radioactive metal. The berkelium-249 isotope emits low-energy beta particles and thus is relatively safe to handle. It decays with a half-life of 330 days to californium-249, which is a strong emitter of ionizing alpha particles. This gradual transmutation is an important consideration when studying the properties of elemental berkelium and its chemical compounds, since the formation of californium brings not only chemical contamination, but also free-radical effects and self-heating from the emitted alpha particles.
Characteristics.
Physical.
Berkelium is a soft, silvery-white, radioactive actinide metal. In the periodic table, it is located to the right of the actinide curium, to the left of the actinide californium and below the lanthanide terbium with which it shares many similarities in physical and chemical properties. Its density of 14.78 g/cm3 lies between those of curium (13.52 g/cm3) and californium (15.1 g/cm3), as does its melting point of 986 °C, below that of curium (1340 °C) but higher than that of californium (900 °C). Berkelium is relatively soft and has one of the lowest bulk moduli among the actinides, at about 20 GPa (2 Pa).
ions shows two sharp fluorescence peaks at 652 nanometers (red light) and 742 nanometers (deep red – near-infrared) due to internal transitions at the f-electron shell. The relative intensity of these peaks depends on the excitation power and temperature of the sample. This emission can be observed, for example, after dispersing berkelium ions in a silicate glass, by melting the glass in presence of berkelium oxide or halide.
Between 70 K and room temperature, berkelium behaves as a Curie–Weiss paramagnetic material with an effective magnetic moment of 9.69 Bohr magnetons (μB) and a Curie temperature of 101 K. This magnetic moment is almost equal to the theoretical value of 9.72 μB calculated within the simple atomic L-S coupling model. Upon cooling to about 34 K, berkelium undergoes a transition to an antiferromagnetic state. The enthalpy of dissolution in hydrochloric acid at standard conditions is −600 kJ/mol, from which the standard enthalpy of formation (Δf"H"°) of aqueous ions is obtained as −601 kJ/mol. The standard electrode potential /Bk is −2.01 V. The ionization potential of a neutral berkelium atom is 6.23 eV.
Allotropes.
At ambient conditions, berkelium assumes its most stable α form which has a hexagonal symmetry, space group "P63/mmc", lattice parameters of 341 pm and 1107 pm. The crystal has a double-hexagonal close packing structure with the layer sequence ABAC and so is isotypic (having a similar structure) with α-lanthanum and α-forms of actinides beyond curium. This crystal structure changes with pressure and temperature. When compressed at room temperature to 7 GPa, α-berkelium transforms to the β modification, which has a face-centered cubic ("fcc") symmetry and space group "Fmm". This transition occurs without change in volume, but the enthalpy increases by 3.66 kJ/mol. Upon further compression to 25 GPa, berkelium transforms to an orthorhombic γ-berkelium structure similar to that of α-uranium. This transition is accompanied by a 12% volume decrease and delocalization of the electrons at the 5f electron shell. No further phase transitions are observed up to 57 GPa.
Upon heating, α-berkelium transforms into another phase with an "fcc" lattice (but slightly different from β-berkelium), space group "Fmm" and the lattice constant of 500 pm; this "fcc" structure is equivalent to the closest packing with the sequence ABC. This phase is metastable and will gradually revert to the original α-berkelium phase at room temperature. The temperature of the phase transition is believed to be quite close to the melting point.
Chemical.
Like all actinides, berkelium dissolves in various aqueous inorganic acids, liberating gaseous hydrogen and converting into the state. This trivalent oxidation state (+3) is the most stable, especially in aqueous solutions, but tetravalent (+4), pentavalent (+5), and possibly divalent (+2) berkelium compounds are also known. The existence of divalent berkelium salts is uncertain and has only been reported in mixed lanthanum(III) chloride-strontium chloride melts. A similar behavior is observed for the lanthanide analogue of berkelium, terbium. Aqueous solutions of ions are green in most acids. The color of ions is yellow in hydrochloric acid and orange-yellow in sulfuric acid. Berkelium does not react rapidly with oxygen at room temperature, possibly due to the formation of a protective oxide layer surface. However, it reacts with molten metals, hydrogen, halogens, chalcogens and pnictogens to form various binary compounds.
In 2025 an organometallic compound containing berkelium was synthesized from 0.3 mg of berkelium and named berkelocene.
Isotopes.
Nineteen isotopes and six nuclear isomers (excited states of an isotope) of berkelium have been characterized, with mass numbers ranging from 233 to 253 (except 235 and 237). All of them are radioactive. The longest half-lives are observed for 247Bk (1,380 years), 248Bk (over 300 years), and 249Bk (330 days); the half-lives of the other isotopes range from microseconds to several days. The isotope which is the easiest to synthesize is berkelium-249. This emits mostly soft β-particles which are inconvenient for detection. Its alpha radiation is rather weak (1.45%) with respect to the β-radiation, but is sometimes used to detect this isotope. The second important berkelium isotope, berkelium-247, is an alpha-emitter, as are most actinide isotopes.
Occurrence.
All berkelium isotopes have a half-life far too short to be primordial. Therefore, any primordial berkelium − that is, berkelium present on the Earth during its formation − has decayed by now.
On Earth, berkelium is mostly concentrated in certain areas, which were used for the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and 1980, as well as at the sites of nuclear incidents, such as the Chernobyl disaster, Three Mile Island accident and 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash. Analysis of the debris at the testing site of the first United States' first thermonuclear weapon, Ivy Mike, (1 November 1952, Enewetak Atoll), revealed high concentrations of various actinides, including berkelium. For reasons of military secrecy, this result was not published until 1956.
Nuclear reactors produce mostly, among the berkelium isotopes, berkelium-249. During the storage and before the fuel disposal, most of it beta decays to californium-249. The latter has a half-life of 351 years, which is relatively long compared to the half-lives of other isotopes produced in the reactor, and is therefore undesirable in the disposal products.
The transuranic elements up to fermium, including berkelium, should have been present in the natural nuclear fission reactor at Oklo, but any quantities produced then would have long since decayed away.
History.
Although very small amounts of berkelium were possibly produced in previous nuclear experiments, it was first intentionally synthesized, isolated and identified in December 1949 by Glenn T. Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, Stanley Gerald Thompson, and Kenneth Street Jr. They used the 60-inch cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. Similar to the nearly simultaneous discovery of americium (element 95) and curium (element 96) in 1944, the new elements berkelium and californium (element 98) were both produced in 1949–1950.
The name choice for element 97 followed the previous tradition of the Californian group to draw an analogy between the newly discovered actinide and the lanthanide element positioned above it in the periodic table. Previously, americium was named after a continent as its analogue europium, and curium honored scientists Marie and Pierre Curie as the lanthanide above it, gadolinium, was named after the explorer of the rare-earth elements Johan Gadolin. Thus, the discovery report by the Berkeley group reads: "It is suggested that element 97 be given the name berkelium (symbol Bk) after the city of Berkeley in a manner similar to that used in naming its chemical homologue terbium (atomic number 65) whose name was derived from the town of Ytterby, Sweden, where the rare earth minerals were first found." This tradition ended with berkelium, though, as the naming of the next discovered actinide, californium, was not related to its lanthanide analogue dysprosium, but after the discovery place.
The most difficult steps in synthesising berkelium were its separation from the final products and the production of sufficient quantities of americium for the target material. First, americium (241Am) nitrate solution was coated on a platinum foil, the solution was evaporated and the residue converted by annealing to americium dioxide (). This target was irradiated with 35 MeV alpha particles for 6 hours in the 60-inch cyclotron at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley. The (α,2n) reaction induced by the irradiation yielded the 243Bk isotope and two free neutrons:
+ → + 2
After the irradiation, the coating was dissolved with nitric acid and then precipitated as the hydroxide using concentrated aqueous ammonia solution. The product was centrifugated and re-dissolved in nitric acid. To separate berkelium from the unreacted americium, this solution was added to a mixture of aqueous ammonia and ammonium sulfate and heated in the presence of atmospheric oxygen to convert all the dissolved americium into the oxidation state +6. Unoxidized residual americium was precipitated by the addition of hydrofluoric acid as americium(III) fluoride (). This step yielded a mixture of the accompanying product curium and the expected element 97 in form of trifluorides. The mixture was converted to the corresponding hydroxides by treating it with potassium hydroxide, and after centrifugation, was dissolved in perchloric acid.
Further separation was carried out in the presence of a citric acid/ammonium buffer solution in a weakly acidic medium , using ion exchange at elevated temperature. The chromatographic separation behavior was unknown for element 97 at the time but was anticipated by analogy with terbium. The first results were disappointing because no alpha-particle emission signature could be detected from the elution product. With further analysis, searching for characteristic X-rays and conversion electron signals, a berkelium isotope was eventually detected. Its mass number was uncertain between 243 and 244 in the initial report, but was later established as 243.
Synthesis and extraction.
Preparation of isotopes.
Berkelium is produced by bombarding lighter actinides uranium (238U) or plutonium (239Pu) with neutrons in a nuclear reactor. In a more common case of uranium fuel, plutonium is produced first by neutron capture (the so-called (n,γ) reaction or neutron fusion) followed by beta-decay:
<chem>^{238}_{92}U ->[\ce{(n,\gamma)}] ^{239}_{92}U ->[\beta^-][23.5 \ \ce{min}] ^{239}_{93}Np ->[\beta^-][2.3565 \ \ce{d}] ^{239}_{94}Pu</chem> (The times are half-lives.)
Plutonium-239 is further irradiated by a source that has a high neutron flux, several times higher than a conventional nuclear reactor, such as the 85-megawatt High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, US. The higher flux promotes fusion reactions involving not one but several neutrons, converting 239Pu to 244Cm and then to 249Cm:
formula_1
Curium-249 has a short half-life of 64 minutes, and thus its further conversion to 250Cm has a low probability. Instead, it transforms by beta-decay into 249Bk:
<chem>^{249}_{96}Cm ->[{\beta^-}][64.15 \ \ce{min}] ^{249}_{97}Bk ->[\beta^-][330 \ \ce{d}] ^{249}_{98}Cf</chem>
The thus-produced 249Bk has a long half-life of 330 days and thus can capture another neutron. However, the product, 250Bk, again has a relatively short half-life of 3.212 hours and thus does not yield any heavier berkelium isotopes. It instead decays to the californium isotope 250Cf:
<chem>^{249}_{97}Bk ->[\ce{(n,\gamma)}] ^{250}_{97}Bk ->[\beta^-][3.212 \ \ce{h}] ^{250}_{98}Cf</chem>
Although 247Bk is the most stable isotope of berkelium, its production in nuclear reactors is very difficult because its potential progenitor 247Cm has never been observed to undergo beta decay. Thus, 249Bk is the most accessible isotope of berkelium, which still is available only in small quantities (only 0.66 grams have been produced in the US over the period 1967–1983) at a high price of the order 185 USD per microgram. It is the only berkelium isotope available in bulk quantities, and thus the only berkelium isotope whose properties can be extensively studied.
The isotope 248Bk was first obtained in 1956 by bombarding a mixture of curium isotopes with 25 MeV α-particles. Although its direct detection was hindered by strong signal interference with 245Bk, the existence of a new isotope was proven by the growth of the decay product 248Cf which had been previously characterized. The half-life of 248Bk was estimated as hours, though later 1965 work gave a half-life in excess of 300 years (which may be due to an isomeric state). Berkelium-247 was produced during the same year by irradiating 244Cm with alpha-particles:
formula_2
Berkelium-242 was synthesized in 1979 by bombarding 235U with 11B, 238U with 10B, 232Th with 14N or 232Th with 15N. It converts by electron capture to 242Cm with a half-life of minutes. A search for an initially suspected isotope 241Bk was then unsuccessful; 241Bk has since been synthesized.
formula_3
Separation.
The fact that berkelium readily assumes oxidation state +4 in solids, and is relatively stable in this state in liquids, greatly assists separation of berkelium from many other actinides. These are produced in relatively large amounts during the nuclear synthesis and often favor the +3 state. This fact was not yet known in the initial experiments, which used a more complex separation procedure. Various inorganic oxidation agents can be applied to the solution to convert it to the +4 state, such as bromates (), bismuthates (), chromates ( and ), silver(I) thiolate (), lead(IV) oxide (), ozone (), or photochemical oxidation procedures. More recently, it has been discovered that some organic and bio-inspired molecules, such as the chelator 3,4,3-LI(1,2-HOPO), can also oxidize Bk(III) and stabilize Bk(IV) under mild conditions. is then extracted with ion exchange, extraction chromatography or liquid-liquid extraction using HDEHP (bis-(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid), amines, tributyl phosphate or various other reagents. These procedures separate berkelium from most trivalent actinides and lanthanides, except for the lanthanide cerium (lanthanides are absent in the irradiation target but are created in various nuclear fission decay chains).
A more detailed procedure adopted at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was as follows: the initial mixture of actinides is processed with ion exchange using lithium chloride reagent, then precipitated as hydroxides, filtered and dissolved in nitric acid. It is then treated with high-pressure elution from cation exchange resins, and the berkelium phase is oxidized and extracted using one of the procedures described above. Reduction of the thus-obtained to the +3 oxidation state yields a solution, which is nearly free from other actinides (but contains cerium). Berkelium and cerium are then separated with another round of ion-exchange treatment.
Bulk metal preparation.
In order to characterize chemical and physical properties of solid berkelium and its compounds, a program was initiated in 1952 at the Material Testing Reactor, Arco, Idaho, US. It resulted in preparation of an eight-gram plutonium-239 target and in the first production of macroscopic quantities (0.6 micrograms) of berkelium by Burris B. Cunningham and Stanley Gerald Thompson in 1958, after a continuous reactor irradiation of this target for six years. This irradiation method was and still is the only way of producing weighable amounts of the element, and most solid-state studies of berkelium have been conducted on microgram or submicrogram-sized samples.
The world's major irradiation sources are the 85-megawatt High Flux Isotope Reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA, and the SM-2 loop reactor at the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (NIIAR) in Dimitrovgrad, Russia, which are both dedicated to the production of transcurium elements (atomic number greater than 96). These facilities have similar power and flux levels, and are expected to have comparable production capacities for transcurium elements, although the quantities produced at NIIAR are not publicly reported. In a "typical processing campaign" at Oak Ridge, tens of grams of curium are irradiated to produce decigram quantities of californium, milligram quantities of berkelium-249 and einsteinium, and picogram quantities of fermium. In total, just over one gram of berkelium-249 has been produced at Oak Ridge since 1967.
The first berkelium metal sample weighing 1.7 micrograms was prepared in 1971 by the reduction of fluoride with lithium vapor at 1000 °C; the fluoride was suspended on a tungsten wire above a tantalum crucible containing molten lithium. Later, metal samples weighing up to 0.5 milligrams were obtained with this method.
Similar results are obtained with fluoride. Berkelium metal can also be produced by the reduction of oxide with thorium or lanthanum.
Compounds.
Oxides.
Two oxides of berkelium are known, with the berkelium oxidation state of +3 () and +4 (). oxide is a brown solid, while oxide is a yellow-green solid with a melting point of 1920 °C and is formed from BkO2 by reduction with molecular hydrogen:
Upon heating to 1200 °C, the oxide undergoes a phase change; it undergoes another phase change at 1750 °C. Such three-phase behavior is typical for the actinide sesquioxides. oxide, BkO, has been reported as a brittle gray solid but its exact chemical composition remains uncertain.
Halides.
In halides, berkelium assumes the oxidation states +3 and +4. The +3 state is the most stable, especially in solutions, while the tetravalent halides and are only known in the solid phase. The coordination of berkelium atom in its trivalent fluoride and chloride is tricapped trigonal prismatic, with the coordination number of 9. In trivalent bromide, it is bicapped trigonal prismatic (coordination 8) or octahedral (coordination 6), and in the iodide it is octahedral.
fluoride () is a yellow-green ionic solid and is isotypic with uranium tetrafluoride or zirconium tetrafluoride. fluoride () is also a yellow-green solid, but it has two crystalline structures. The most stable phase at low temperatures is isotypic with yttrium(III) fluoride, while upon heating to between 350 and 600 °C, it transforms to the structure found in lanthanum trifluoride.
Visible amounts of chloride () were first isolated and characterized in 1962, and weighed only 3 billionths of a gram. It can be prepared by introducing hydrogen chloride vapors into an evacuated quartz tube containing berkelium oxide at a temperature about 500 °C. This green solid has a melting point of 600 °C, and is isotypic with uranium(III) chloride. Upon heating to nearly melting point, converts into an orthorhombic phase.
Two forms of bromide are known: one with berkelium having coordination 6, and one with coordination 8. The latter is less stable and transforms to the former phase upon heating to about 350 °C. An important property of radioactive solids has been studied on these two crystal forms: the structure of fresh and aged 249BkBr3 samples was probed by X-ray diffraction over a period longer than 3 years, so that various fractions of berkelium-249 had beta decayed to californium-249. No change in structure was observed upon the 249BkBr3—249CfBr3 transformation. However, other differences were noted for 249BkBr3 and 249CfBr3. For example, the latter could be reduced with hydrogen to 249CfBr2, but the former could not – this result was reproduced on individual 249BkBr3 and 249CfBr3 samples, as well on the samples containing both bromides. The intergrowth of californium in berkelium occurs at a rate of 0.22% per day and is an obstacle to studying berkelium properties. Beside a chemical contamination, 249Cf, being an alpha emitter, brings undesirable self-damage of the crystal lattice and the resulting self-heating. The chemical effect however can be avoided by performing measurements as a function of time and extrapolating the obtained results.
Other inorganic compounds.
The pnictides of berkelium-249 of the type BkX are known for the elements nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic and antimony. They crystallize in the rock-salt structure and are prepared by the reaction of either hydride () or metallic berkelium with these elements at elevated temperature (about 600 °C) under high vacuum.
sulfide, , is prepared by either treating berkelium oxide with a mixture of hydrogen sulfide and carbon disulfide vapors at 1130 °C, or by directly reacting metallic berkelium with elemental sulfur. These procedures yield brownish-black crystals.
and hydroxides are both stable in 1 molar solutions of sodium hydroxide. phosphate () has been prepared as a solid, which shows strong fluorescence under excitation with a green light. Berkelium hydrides are produced by reacting metal with hydrogen gas at temperatures about 250 °C. They are non-stoichiometric with the nominal formula (0 < "x" < 1). Several other salts of berkelium are known, including an oxysulfide (), and hydrated nitrate (), chloride (), sulfate () and oxalate (). Thermal decomposition at about 600 °C in an argon atmosphere (to avoid oxidation to ) of yields the crystals of oxysulfate (). This compound is thermally stable to at least 1000 °C in inert atmosphere.
Organoberkelium compounds.
Berkelium forms a trigonal (η5–C5H5)3Bk metallocene complex with three cyclopentadienyl rings, which can be synthesized by reacting chloride with the molten beryllocene () at about 70 °C. It has an amber color and a density of 2.47 g/cm3. The complex is stable to heating to at least 250 °C, and sublimates without melting at about 350 °C. The high radioactivity of berkelium gradually destroys the compound (within a period of weeks). One cyclopentadienyl ring in (η5–C5H5)3Bk can be substituted by chlorine to yield . The optical absorption spectra of this compound are very similar to those of (η5–C5H5)3Bk.
Berkelium also forms berkelocene, an actinocene complex, with substituted cyclooctatetraenides.
Applications.
There is currently no use for any isotope of berkelium outside basic scientific research. Berkelium-249 is a common target nuclide to prepare still heavier transuranium elements and superheavy elements, such as lawrencium, rutherfordium and bohrium. It is also useful as a source of the isotope californium-249, which is used for studies on the chemistry of californium in preference to the more radioactive californium-252 that is produced in neutron bombardment facilities such as the HFIR.
A 22 milligram batch of berkelium-249 was prepared in a 250-day irradiation and then purified for 90 days at Oak Ridge in 2009. This target yielded the first 6 atoms of tennessine at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna, Russia, after bombarding it with calcium ions in the U400 cyclotron for 150 days. This synthesis was a culmination of the Russia-US collaboration between JINR and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the synthesis of elements 113 to 118 which was initiated in 1989.
Nuclear fuel cycle.
The nuclear fission properties of berkelium are different from those of the neighboring actinides curium and californium, and they suggest berkelium to perform poorly as a fuel in a nuclear reactor. Specifically, berkelium-249 has a moderately large neutron capture cross section of 710 barns for thermal neutrons, 1200 barns resonance integral, but very low fission cross section for thermal neutrons. In a thermal reactor, much of it will therefore be converted to berkelium-250 which quickly decays to californium-250. In principle, berkelium-249 can sustain a nuclear chain reaction in a fast breeder reactor. Its critical mass is relatively high at 192 kg, which can be reduced with a water or steel reflector but would still exceed the world production of this isotope.
Berkelium-247 can maintain a chain reaction both in a thermal-neutron and in a fast-neutron reactor, however, its production is rather complex and thus the availability is much lower than its critical mass, which is about 75.7 kg for a bare sphere, 41.2 kg with a water reflector and 35.2 kg with a steel reflector (30 cm thickness).
Health issues.
Little is known about the effects of berkelium on human body, and analogies with other elements may not be drawn because of different radiation products (electrons for berkelium and alpha particles, neutrons, or both for most other actinides). The low energy of electrons emitted from berkelium-249 (less than 126 keV) hinders its detection, due to signal interference with other decay processes, but also makes this isotope relatively harmless to humans as compared to other actinides. However, berkelium-249 transforms with a half-life of only 330 days to the strong alpha-emitter californium-249, which is rather dangerous and has to be handled in a glovebox in a dedicated laboratory.
Most available berkelium toxicity data originate from research on animals. Upon ingestion by rats, only about 0.01% of berkelium ends in the blood stream. From there, about 65% goes to the bones, where it remains for about 50 years, 25% to the lungs (biological half-life about 20 years), 0.035% to the testicles or 0.01% to the ovaries where berkelium stays indefinitely. The balance of about 10% is excreted. In all these organs berkelium might promote cancer, and in the skeleton, its radiation can damage red blood cells. The maximum permissible amount of berkelium-249 in the human skeleton is 0.4 nanograms.
|
3760
|
6200168
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3760
|
Bauxite
|
Bauxite () is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)), and diaspore (α-AlO(OH)), mixed with the two iron oxides goethite (FeO(OH)) and haematite (), the aluminium clay mineral kaolinite () and small amounts of anatase () and ilmenite ( or ).
Bauxite appears dull in luster and is reddish-brown, white, or tan.
In 1821, the French geologist Pierre Berthier discovered bauxite near the village of Les Baux in Provence, southern France.
Formation.
Numerous classification schemes have been proposed for bauxite but, , there was no consensus.
Vadász (1951) distinguished lateritic bauxites (silicate bauxites) from karst bauxite ores (carbonate bauxites):
In the case of Jamaica, recent analysis of the soils showed elevated levels of cadmium, suggesting that the bauxite originates from Miocene volcanic ash deposits from episodes of significant volcanism in Central America.
Production and reserves.
Guinea is the largest producer of bauxite, followed by Australia and China. Bauxite is usually strip mined because it is almost always found near the surface of the terrain, with little or no overburden. Increased aluminium recycling, which requires less electric power than producing aluminium from ores, may considerably extend the world's bauxite reserves.
Aluminium production.
, approximately 70% to 80% of the world's dry bauxite production is processed first into alumina and then into aluminium by electrolysis. Bauxite rocks are typically classified according to their intended commercial application: metallurgical, abrasive, cement, chemical, and refractory.
Bauxite ore is usually heated in a pressure vessel along with a sodium hydroxide solution at a temperature of . At these temperatures, the aluminium is dissolved as sodium aluminate (the Bayer process). The aluminium compounds in the bauxite may be present as gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (AlOOH) or diaspore (AlOOH); the different forms of the aluminium component will dictate the extraction conditions. The undissolved waste, bauxite tailings, after the aluminium compounds are extracted contains iron oxides, silica, calcia, titania and some un-reacted alumina. After separation of the residue by filtering, pure gibbsite is precipitated when the liquid is cooled, and then seeded with fine-grained aluminium hydroxide. The gibbsite is usually converted into aluminium oxide, Al2O3, by heating in rotary kilns or fluid flash calciners to a temperature in excess of . This aluminium oxide is dissolved at a temperature of about in molten cryolite. Next, this molten substance can yield metallic aluminium by passing an electric current through it in the process of electrolysis, which is called the Hall–Héroult process, named after its American and French discoverers.
Prior to the invention of this process, and prior to the Deville process, aluminium ore was refined by heating ore along with elemental sodium or potassium in a vacuum. The method was complicated and consumed materials that were themselves expensive at that time. This made early elemental aluminium more expensive than gold.
Maritime safety.
As a bulk cargo, bauxite is a Group A cargo that may liquefy if excessively moist. Liquefaction and the free surface effect can cause the cargo to shift rapidly inside the hold and make the ship unstable, potentially sinking the ship. One vessel suspected to have been sunk in this way was the MS "Bulk Jupiter" in 2015. One method which can demonstrate this effect is the "can test", in which a sample of the material is placed in a cylindrical can and struck against a surface many times. If a moist slurry forms in the can, then there is a likelihood for the cargo to liquefy; although conversely, even if the sample remains dry it does not conclusively prove that it will remain that way, or that it is safe for loading.
Source of gallium.
Bauxite is the main source of the rare metal gallium.
During the processing of bauxite to alumina in the Bayer process, gallium accumulates in the sodium hydroxide liquor. From this it can be extracted by a variety of methods. The most recent is the use of ion-exchange resin. Achievable extraction efficiencies critically depend on the original concentration in the feed bauxite. At a typical feed concentration of 50 ppm, about 15 percent of the contained gallium is extractable. The remainder reports to the red mud and aluminium hydroxide streams.
Bauxite is also a potential source for vanadium.
Socio-ecological impacts.
The social and environmental impacts of bauxite extraction are well documented. Most of the world's bauxite deposits can be found within of the earths surface. Strip mining is the most common technique used for extracting shallow bauxite. This process involves removing the vegetation, top soil, and overburden to expose the bauxite ore. The overlying soil is typically stockpiled in order to rehabilitate the mine once operations have finished. During the strip mining process, the biodiversity and habitat once present in the area is completely lost and the hydrological and soil characteristics in the region are permanently altered. Other environmental impacts of bauxite mining include soil degradation, air pollution, and water pollution.
Red mud.
Red mud is a highly alkaline sludge, with a high pH around 13, that is a byproduct of the Bayer process. It contains several compounds such as sodium aluminoscilicate, calcium titanate, monohydrate aluminium, and trihydrate aluminium that do not break down in nature. When improperly stored, red mud can contaminate soil and water, which can result in local extinction of all life. Red mud was responsible for killing all life in the Marcal River in Hungary after a spill occurred in 2010. When red mud dries, it turns into dust that can cause lung disease, cancer and birth defects.
Conflicts.
In the tropical regions of Asia, central Africa, South America and northern Australia, there has been an increase of bauxite mines on traditional and indigenous lands. This has resulted in a number of negative social impacts on local and indigenous peoples. In the Boké Region of Guinea, there has been a significant increase in bauxite mining pressure on the local population. This has resulted in potable water issues, air pollution, food contamination, and land expropriation disputes due to improper compensation.
Bauxite mining has led to protests, civil unrest, and violent conflicts in Guinea, Ghana, Vietnam, and India.
Guinea.
Guinea has a long history of mining related conflicts between communities and mining companies. Between 2015 and 2018, new bauxite mining operations in the Boké Region of Guinea have caused in 35 conflicts which include movements of revolts and road blockades. These conflicts have resulted in the loss of human life, the destruction of heavy machinery, and damage to government buildings.
Ghana.
The Atewa range in Ghana, classified as an ecologically important forest reserve with an area of , has been is a recent site of conflict and controversy surrounding bauxite mining. The forest reserve is one of the only two upland evergreen forests in Ghana, and makes up a significant portion of the remaining 20% of forested habitat left in Ghana. The Atewa range falls under the jurisdiction of Akyem Abuakwa Traditional Area and is overseen by the king known as Okyenhene. In 2013, an NGO called A Rocha Ghana held a summit with the forestry and water resource commission, the minister of lands, the minister of the environment, and other important stakeholders. They came to the conclusion that no future government should mine bauxite in the region because the reserve is environmentally and culturally significant. In 2016, the government along with NGO's began the process of upgrading the reserved to a national park. However, that year an election took place, and before it became official, the newly elected National Patriotic Party (NPP) rejected the plan. In 2017, the government of Ghana signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China to develop new bauxite mining infrastructure in Ghana. Although there was no official plan to mine the Atewa Forest Reserve, tensions between local communities, NGO and the government began to rise. In 2019, tensions began to reach a peak when the government presented the "Ghana Integrated Bauxite and Aluminium Development Authority Act" that would create the legal framework required to develop and establish an integrated bauxite industry. In may of that year, the government began drilling deep holes in the reserve. These actions sparked several protests, including a march from the reserve to the presidential palace, an informational billboard campaign led by A Rocha Ghana, and a youth march. In 2020, A Rocha Ghana also sued the government over the drilling in the reserve after they failed to provide a statement explaining their actions.
Vietnam.
In early 2009, the Vietnamese Government proposed a plan to mine remote regions of the central highlands. This proposal was highly controversial and sparked a nationwide debate and the most significant domestic conflict since the Vietnam War. Government scientists, journalists, religious leaders, retired high level state officials, and General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the military leader of anti-colonial revolution, were among the many people across Vietnamese society who opposed the governments plans. In an attempt to stop the spread of information across the globe, the government banned domestic reporters from reporting on bauxite mining. However, reporters turned to Vietnamese language websites and blogs where the reporting and discussion continued. On April 12, 2009, several well-respected Vietnamese scholars started a petition against the mining of bauxite that was signed by 135 accomplished and well known "Intellectuals". This petition helped unite the scattered anti-bauxite movement into a unified opposition against the state. These acts of governmental defiance were met with repressive state actions. Many domestic online reporters were arrested, and legislative action was taken to repress scientific research.
India.
Most of India's bauxite ore reserves, which are among the top ten largest in the world, are located on tribal land. These tribal lands are densely populated and home to over 100 million Indigenous Indian peoples. The mountain summits located on these lands act as a source of water and greatly contribute to the regions fertility. The Indian bauxite industry is interested in developing this land for aluminium production, which poses great risk to the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Historically, the Indigenous peoples living on these lands have shown resistance to development, and oppose any new bauxite mining projects in the area. This has led to violent conflicts between Indigenous communities and police. On December 16, 2000, police killed three Indigenous protestors and wounded over a dozen more during a protest over a bauxite project in the Rayagada district of Odisha.
|
3764
|
1300535023
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3764
|
Bavaria
|
Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total land area of Germany, and with over 13.08 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous German state, behind only North Rhine-Westphalia; however, due to its large land area, its population density is below the German average. Major cities include Munich (its capital and largest city, which is also the third largest city in Germany), Nuremberg, and Augsburg.
The history of Bavaria includes its earliest settlement by Iron Age Celtic tribes, followed by the conquests of the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC, when the territory was incorporated into the provinces of Raetia and Noricum. It became the Duchy of Bavaria (a stem duchy) in the 6th century AD following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It was later incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, became the independent Kingdom of Bavaria after 1806, joined the Prussian-led German Empire in 1871 while retaining its title of kingdom, and finally became a state of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.
Bavaria has a distinct culture, largely because of its Catholic heritage and conservative traditions, which includes a language, cuisine, architecture, festivals and elements of Alpine symbolism. It also has the second-largest economy among the German states by GDP figures, giving it the status of a wealthy German region.
Contemporary Bavaria also includes parts of the historical regions of Franconia and Swabia, in addition to Altbayern.
History.
Antiquity.
Though Bavaria has been occupied by humans since the Paleolithic era, Celtic tribes of the Bronze Age, such as the Boii were the first documented inhabitants of the Bavarian Alps. In June 2023, Archeologists discovered a bronze sword, dated to the 14th century BC, in a former Celtic village; its workmanship so well-preserved "it almost shines." During the early modern era, these peoples were retrospectively romanticized as the most ancient culture of Bavaria, even though the Indo-European languages were relative newcomers to the region. Evidence of the ancient Straubing culture, Únětice culture and La Tène culture may be found in what is Bavaria today.
Archeologists know of a large Celtic Iron Age settlement which was founded in Feldmoching-Hasenbergl, in the North of suburban Munich. Evidence suggests up to 500 people lived in the village from 450 BC. Local life appears to have centred around what could be a town hall or temple, and continued in different forms up to 1000 AD. In Manching, Upper Bavaria, an unfortified and semi-urban society appears to have prospered between the 3rd century BC until the early 1st century AD. The settlement featured food ovens, pottery kilns and metallurgical furnaces. By 200 BC the community there was active in trade—finds of coins, along with an icon-like golden tree suggest it was trading with distant Italo-Greek communities.
In the 1st century BC, Bavaria was conquered by the Roman Empire. An imperial military camp was built 60 km north-west of where Munich sits today, under orders of Augustus Caesar, between 8 and 5 BC. The camp later became the town of Augusta Vindelicorum, which would become the capital of the Roman province of Raetia. Another fort was founded in 60 AD, west of modern-day Manching, as evidenced by a legionnaire's sandal found near remains of an ancient fort. By the late 2nd century AD, Germanic tribes, including Marcomanni people, were pushing back on Roman forces of Marcus Aurelius and later, Commodus in the Marcomannic Wars. By 180 AD, Commodus had decided to abandon the annexed positions in Bavaria, leaving its control to Celtic and Germanic tribes.
Middle Ages.
Around the year 500 AD, some elements of that victorious Marcomanni people helped form the Bavarii confederation, which incorporated Bohemia and Bavaria. In the 530s, the Merovingian dynasty incorporated the kingdom of Thuringia after their defeat by the Franks. The Baiuvarii were Frankicised a century later. The Lex Thuringorum documents an upper class nobility of "adalingi". From about 554 to 788, the house of Agilolfing ruled the Duchy of Bavaria, ending with Tassilo III who was deposed by Charlemagne.
Tassilo I of Bavaria tried unsuccessfully to hold the eastern frontier against the expansion of Slavic peoples and the Pannonian Avars around 600. Garibald II seems to have achieved a balance of power between 610 and 616.
At Hugbert's death in 735, the duchy passed to Odilo of Bavaria from the neighboring Alemannia. Odilo issued a Lex Baiuvariorum for Bavaria, completed the process of church organization in partnership with Saint Boniface in 739, and tried to intervene in Frankish succession disputes by fighting for the claims of the Carolingian dynasty. He was defeated near Augsburg in 743 but continued to rule until his death in 748.
Saint Boniface completed the people's conversion to Christianity in the early 8th century. Tassilo III of Bavaria succeeded to rule Bavaria. He initially ruled under Frankish oversight but began to function independently from 763 onward. He was particularly noted for founding new monasteries and for expanding eastwards, oppressing Slavs in the eastern Alps and along the Danube and colonizing these lands. After 781, however, Charlemagne began to exert pressure and Tassilo III was deposed in 788. Dissenters attempted a coup against Charlemagne at Regensburg in 792, led by Pepin the Hunchback.
With the revolt of Henry II, Duke of Bavaria in 976, Bavaria lost large territories in the south and southeast.
One of the most important dukes of Bavaria was Henry the Lion of the house of Welf, founder of Munich, and "de facto" the second most powerful man in the empire as the ruler of two duchies. When in 1180, Henry the Lion was deposed as Duke of Saxony and Bavaria by his cousin, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor (a.k.a. "Barbarossa" for his red beard), Bavaria was awarded as fief to the Wittelsbach family, counts palatinate of Schyren ("Scheyern" in modern German). They ruled for 738 years, from 1180 to 1918. In 1180, however, Styria was also separated from Bavaria. The Electorate of the Palatinate by Rhine ("Kurpfalz" in German) was also acquired by the House of Wittelsbach in 1214, which they would subsequently hold for six centuries.
The first of several divisions of the duchy of Bavaria occurred in 1255. With the extinction of the Hohenstaufen in 1268, Swabian territories were acquired by the Wittelsbach dukes. Emperor Louis the Bavarian acquired Brandenburg, Tyrol, Holland and Hainaut for his House but released the Upper Palatinate for the Palatinate branch of the Wittelsbach in 1329. That time also Salzburg finally became independent from the Duchy of Bavaria.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, upper and lower Bavaria were repeatedly subdivided. Four Duchies existed after the division of 1392: Bavaria-Straubing, Bavaria-Landshut, Bavaria-Ingolstadt and Bavaria-Munich. In 1506 with the Landshut War of Succession, the other parts of Bavaria were reunited, and Munich became the sole capital. The country became a center of the Jesuit-inspired Counter-Reformation.
Electorate of Bavaria.
In 1623, the Bavarian duke replaced his relative of the Palatinate branch, the Electorate of the Palatinate in the early days of the Thirty Years' War and acquired the powerful prince-elector dignity in the Holy Roman Empire, determining its Emperor thence forward, as well as special legal status under the empire's laws. During the early and mid-18th century the ambitions of the Bavarian prince electors led to several wars with Austria as well as occupations by Austria (War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession with the election of a Wittelsbach emperor instead of a Habsburg).
To mark the unification of Bavaria and the Electoral Palatinate, both being principal Wittelsbach territories, Elector Maximilian IV Joseph was crowned king of Bavaria. King Maximilian Joseph was quick to change the coat of arms. The various heraldic symbols were replaced and a classical Wittelsbach pattern introduced. The white and blue lozenges symbolized the unity of the territories within the Bavarian kingdom.
The new state also comprised the Duchy of Jülich and Berg as these on their part were in personal union with the Palatinate.
Kingdom of Bavaria.
When the Holy Roman Empire dissolved under Napoleon's onslaught, Bavaria became a kingdom in 1806 and joined the Confederation of the Rhine.
The Duchy of Jülich was ceded to France and the Electoral Palatinate was divided between France and the Grand Duchy of Baden. The Duchy of Berg was given to Joachim Murat. The County of Tyrol and the federal state of Salzburg were temporarily annexed with Bavaria but eventually ceded to Austria at the Congress of Vienna. In return, Bavaria was allowed to annex the modern-day region of Palatinate to the west of the Rhine and Franconia in 1815.
Between 1799 and 1817, the leading minister, Count Montgelas, followed a strict policy of modernization copying Napoleonic France; he laid the foundations of centralized administrative structures that survived the monarchy and, in part, have retained core validity through to the 21st century. In May 1808, a first constitution was passed by Maximilian I, being modernized in 1818. This second version established a bicameral Parliament with a House of Lords ("Kammer der Reichsräte") and a House of Commons ("Kammer der Abgeordneten"). That constitution was followed until the collapse of the monarchy at the end of World War I.
After the rise of Prussia in the early 18th century, Bavaria preserved its independence by playing off the rivalry of Prussia and Austria. Allied to Austria, it was defeated along with Austria in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War and was not incorporated into the North German Confederation of 1867, but the question of German unity was still alive. When France declared war on Prussia in 1870, all the south German states (Baden, Württemberg, Hessen-Darmstadt and Bavaria) aside from Austria, joined the Prussian forces and ultimately joined the Federation, which was renamed (German Empire) in 1871.
Bavaria continued as a monarchy, and retained some special rights within the federation (such as railways and postal services and control of its army in peace times).
Part of the German Empire.
When Bavaria became part of the newly formed German Empire, this action was considered controversial by Bavarian nationalists who had wanted to retain independence from the rest of Germany, as had Austria.
As Bavaria had a heavily Catholic majority population, many people resented being ruled by the mostly Protestant northerners in Prussia. As a direct result of the Bavarian-Prussian feud, political parties formed to encourage Bavaria to break away and regain its independence.
In the early 20th century, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Henrik Ibsen, and other artists were drawn to Bavaria, especially to the Schwabing district in Munich, a center of international artistic activity at the time.
Free State of Bavaria.
World War I led to the abolition of monarchy all over Germany in 1918. The Bavarian monarchy was the first to fall when on 8 November 1918 Socialist politician Kurt Eisner proclaimed the People's State of Bavaria. Eisner headed a new, republican government as minister-president. On 12 November, King Ludwig III signed the Anif declaration, releasing both civil and military officers from their oaths, which the Eisner government interpreted as an abdication.
After losing the January 1919 elections, Eisner was assassinated in February 1919, ultimately leading to a Communist revolt and the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic being proclaimed 6 April 1919. After violent suppression by elements of the German Army and notably the Freikorps, the Bavarian Soviet Republic fell in May 1919. The Bamberg Constitution ("") was enacted on 12 or 14 August 1919 and came into force on 15 September 1919, placing the Free State of Bavaria inside the Weimar Republic.
Extremist activity further increased, notably the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch led by the Nazis, and Munich and Nuremberg became seen as strongholds of Nazism during the Weimar Republic and Nazi dictatorship. However, in the crucial German federal election, March 1933, the Nazis received less than 50% of the votes cast in Bavaria.
As a manufacturing centre, Munich was heavily bombed during World War II and was occupied by United States Armed Forces, becoming a major part of the American Zone of Allied-occupied Germany, which lasted from 1945 to 1947, and then of Bizone.
The Rhenish Palatinate was detached from Bavaria in 1946 and made part of the new state Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1949, Bavaria became part of the Federal Republic of Germany, despite the Bavarian Parliament voting against adopting the Basic Law of Germany, mainly because it was seen as not granting sufficient powers to the individual states ("Länder"), but at the same time declared that it would accept it if two-thirds of the other "Länder" ratified it. All of the other states ratified it, so it became law. Thus, during the Cold War, Bavaria was part of West Germany.
Bavarian identity.
Bavarians have often emphasized a separate national identity and considered themselves as "Bavarians" first, "Germans" second. In the 19th-century sense, an independent Kingdom of Bavaria existed from only 1806 to 1871. A separate Bavarian identity was emphasized more strongly when Bavaria joined the Prussia-dominated German Empire in 1871, while the Bavarian nationalists wanted to keep Bavaria as Catholic and an independent state. Aside from the minority Bavaria Party, most Bavarians now accept Bavaria as part of Germany.
Another consideration is that Bavaria is not culturally uniform. While inhabitants of Altbayern ("Old Bavaria"), the regions forming the historic Bavaria before further acquisitions in 1806–1815, speak a Bavarian dialect of German, Franconia in the north and Bavarian Swabia in the southwest, have a distinct culture, including different dialects of German, East Franconian and Swabian, respectively.
In 2025, four palaces of King Ludwig II of Bavaria were designated as world heritage sites by UNESCO, for their cultural significance of outstanding residential architecture.
Flags and coat of arms.
Flags.
Uniquely among German states, Bavaria has two official flags of equal status, one with a white and blue stripe, the other with white and blue diamond-shaped lozenges. Either may be used by civilians and government offices, who are free to choose between them. Unofficial versions of the flag, especially a lozenge style with coat of arms, are sometimes used by civilians.
Coat of arms.
The modern coat of arms of Bavaria was designed by Eduard Ege in 1946, following heraldic traditions.
Geography.
Bavaria shares international borders with Austria (Salzburg, Tyrol, Upper Austria and Vorarlberg) and the Czech Republic (Karlovy Vary, Plzeň and South Bohemian Regions), as well as with Switzerland (across Lake Constance to the Canton of St. Gallen).
Neighboring states within Germany are Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Thuringia, and Saxony. Two major rivers flow through the state: the Danube ("Donau") and the Main. The Bavarian Forest and the Bohemian Forest form the vast majority of the frontier with the Czech Republic and Bohemia.
The geographic center of the European Union is located in the northwestern corner of Bavaria.
Climate.
At lower elevations the climate is classified according to Köppen's guide as "Cfb" or "Dfb". At higher altitudes the climate becomes "Dfc" and "ET".
The summer months have been getting hotter in recent years. For example, June 2019 was the warmest June in Bavaria since weather observations have been recorded and the winter 2019/2020 was 3 degrees Celsius warmer than the average temperature for many years all over Bavaria. On 20 December 2019 a record temperature of was recorded in Piding. In general winter months are seeing more precipitation which is taking the form of rain more often than that of snow compared to the past. Extreme weather like the 2013 European floods or the 2019 European heavy snowfalls is occurring more and more often. One effect of the continuing warming is the melting of almost all Bavarian Alpine glaciers: Of the five glaciers of Bavaria only the Höllentalferner is predicted to exist over a longer time perspective. The Südliche Schneeferner has almost vanished since the 1980s.
Administrative divisions.
Administrative regions.
Bavaria is divided into seven administrative regions called ' (singular '). Each of these regions has a state agency called the " (district government).
Bezirke.
' (regional districts) are the third communal layer in Bavaria; the others are the ' and the ' or '. The ' in Bavaria are territorially identical with the ', but they are self-governing regional corporation, having their own parliaments. In the other larger states of Germany, there are only ' as administrative divisions and no self-governing entities at the level of the ' as the " in Bavaria.
Districts.
The second communal layer is made up of 71 rural districts (called ', singular ') that are comparable to counties, as well as the 25 independent cities (', singular '), both of which share the same administrative responsibilities.
Rural districts:
Independent cities:
Municipalities.
The 71 rural districts are on the lowest level divided into 2,031 regular municipalities (called ', singular '). Together with the 25 independent cities (', which are in effect municipalities independent of ' administrations), there are a total of 2,056 municipalities in Bavaria.
In 44 of the 71 rural districts, there are a total of 215 unincorporated areas (as of 1 January 2005, called ', singular '), not belonging to any municipality, all uninhabited, mostly forested areas, but also four lakes (-without islands, -without island , , which are the three largest lakes of Bavaria, and ).
Politics.
Bavaria has a multiparty system dominated by the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), which has won every election since 1945 with the exception of the 1950 ballot. Other important parties are the Free Voters, which became the second largest party in the 2023 Bavarian state election, The Greens, which became the second biggest political party in the 2018 Bavarian state elections, and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who had dominated the city of Munich until 2020. Hitherto, Wilhelm Hoegner has been the only SPD candidate to ever become Minister-President; notable successors in office include multi-term Federal Minister Franz Josef Strauss, a key figure among West German conservatives during the Cold War years, and Edmund Stoiber, who both failed with their bids for Chancellorship.
The German Greens and the center-right Free Voters have been represented in the state parliament since 1986 and 2008 respectively.
In the 2003 elections the CSU won a two-thirds supermajority – something no party had ever achieved in postwar Germany. However, in the subsequent 2008 elections the CSU lost the absolute majority for the first time in 46 years.
The losses were partly attributed by some to the CSU's stance for an anti-smoking bill. (A first anti-smoking law had been proposed by the CSU and passed but was watered down after the election, after which a referendum enforced a strict antismoking bill with a large majority).
Current Landtag.
The last state elections were held on 8 October 2023. The CSU could almost maintain the results from the last elections with 37%. The Greens lost 3% compared to the last election with a result of 14.4%. The SPD lost again compared to the last election and was now at 8.4%. The liberals of the FDP were not able to reach the five-percent-threshold thus they are not part of the "Landtag" anymore, the second time after the 2013 elections. The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained another 4% with 14.6% of the vote.
The center-right Free Voters party gained 15.8% of the votes and for the second time formed a government coalition with the CSU which led to the subsequent reelection of Markus Söder as Minister-President of Bavaria.
Government.
The Constitution of Bavaria of the Free State of Bavaria was enacted on 8 December 1946. The new Bavarian Constitution became the basis for the Bavarian State after the Second World War.
Bavaria has a unicameral ' (English: State Parliament), elected by universal suffrage. Until December 1999, there was also a ', or Senate, whose members were chosen by social and economic groups in Bavaria, but following a referendum in 1998, this institution was abolished.
The Bavarian State Government consists of the Minister-President of Bavaria, eleven Ministers and six Secretaries of State. The Minister-President is elected for a period of five years by the State Parliament and is head of state. With the approval of the State Parliament he appoints the members of the State Government. The State Government is composed of the:
Political processes also take place in the seven regions (' or ') in Bavaria, in the 71 rural districts (') and the 25 towns and cities forming their own districts ('), and in the 2,031 local authorities (").
In 1995 Bavaria introduced direct democracy on the local level in a referendum. This was initiated bottom-up by an association called "Mehr Demokratie" (English: More Democracy). This is a grass-roots organization which campaigns for the right to citizen-initiated referendums. In 1997 the Bavarian Supreme Court tightened the regulations considerably (including by introducing a turn-out quorum). Nevertheless, Bavaria has the most advanced regulations on local direct democracy in Germany. This has led to a spirited citizens' participation in communal and municipal affairs—835 referendums took place from 1995 through 2005.
Designation as a "free state".
Unlike most German states ("Länder"), which simply designate themselves as "State of" ("Land [...]"), Bavaria uses the style of "Free State of Bavaria" ("Freistaat Bayern"). The difference from other states is purely terminological, as German constitutional law does not draw a distinction between "States" and "Free States". The situation is thus analogous to the United States, where some states use the style "Commonwealth" rather than "State". The term "Free State", a creation of the 19th century and intended to be a German alternative to (or translation of) the Latin-derived "republic," was common among the states of the Weimar Republic, after German monarchies had been abolished. Unlike most other states – many of which were new creations – Bavaria has resumed this terminology after World War II. Two other states, Saxony and Thuringia, also call themselves "Free States".
Arbitrary arrest and human rights.
In July 2017, Bavaria's parliament enacted a new revision of the "Gefährdergesetz", allowing the authorities to imprison a person for a three months term, renewable indefinitely, when they have not committed a crime but it is assumed that they might commit a crime "in the near future". Critics like the prominent journalist Heribert Prantl have called the law "shameful" and compared it to Guantanamo Bay detention camp, assessed it to be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and also compared it to the legal situation in Russia, where a similar law allows for imprisonment for a maximum term of two years (i.e., not indefinitely).
Economy.
Bavaria has one of the largest economies in Germany and Europe as a whole, having a GDP of €768.469 billion ($790.813 billion) in 2023, the second highest of the 16 German states, only behind North Rhine-Westphalia which had a GDP of €839.074 billion ($863.6 billion) in 2023. Bavaria had a GDP per capita of €53,768 ($56,456) in 2022, giving it the third highest GDP per capita behind Bremen in second and Hamburg in first. One of Bavaria's largest industries is the automotive industry, with Bavaria having four BMW and two Audi manufacturing plants and the headquarters of both companies. Bavaria has the second-most employees (207,829) in the automotive industry of all German states after Baden-Württemberg as of 2018. Other countries such as Czechia, Austria, Switzerland and Italy have strong economic ties with Bavaria.
Bavaria also is home to the headquarters of commercial vehicle manufacturer MAN and aircraft engine manufacturer MTU Aero Engines. Many other global companies such as Adidas, Siemens, and Allianz also have headquarters in Bavarian cities and towns. Several American companies have set up research and development facilities in Bavaria such as Apple, Google, IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments and Coherent. Despite being hundreds of miles from the sea, companies such as Bavaria Yachtbau produce sailing yachts and motorboats.
Bavaria is the most visited state in Germany, as over 38.86 million tourists visited Bavaria in 2023 alone, significantly higher than North Rhine-Westphalia's 23.58 million tourists. In 2019, tourism brought in a gross value of €28.1 billion ($28.918 billion), making up 4.9% of Bavaria's economy. Some significant tourist destinations include the Bavarian National Museum, Margravial Opera House, Deutsches Museum, Christmas markets in Nuremberg and Munich and the annually held Oktoberfest event, which made €1.2 billion ($1.236 billion) in 2018 alone.
The unemployment rate stood at 2.9% in October 2018, the lowest in Germany and one of the lowest in the European Union.
Demographics.
Bavaria has a population of approximately 13.1 million inhabitants (2020). Eight of the 80 largest cities in Germany are located within Bavaria with Munich being the largest (1,484,226 inhabitants, approximately 6.1 million when including the broader metropolitan area), followed by Nuremberg (518,370 inhabitants, approximately 3.6 million when including the broader metropolitan area), Augsburg (296,582 inhabitants) and Regensburg (153,094 inhabitants). All other cities in Bavaria had less than 150,000 inhabitants each in 2020. Population density in Bavaria was , below the national average of . Foreign nationals resident in Bavaria (both immigrants and refugees/asylum seekers) were principally from other EU countries and Turkey.
Culture.
Some features of the Bavarian culture and mentality are remarkably distinct from the rest of Germany. Noteworthy differences (especially in rural areas, less significant in the major cities) can be found with respect to religion, traditions, and language.
Religion.
Bavarian culture ("Altbayern") has a long and predominant tradition of Roman Catholic faith. Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Alois Ratzinger) was born in Marktl am Inn in Upper Bavaria and was Cardinal-Archbishop of Munich and Freising. Otherwise, the culturally Franconian and Swabian regions of the modern State of Bavaria are historically more diverse in religiosity, with both Catholic and Protestant traditions. In 1925, 70.0% of the Bavarian population was Catholic, 28.8% was Protestant, 0.7% was Jewish, and 0.5% was placed in other religious categories.
46.9% of Bavarians adhered to Catholicism (a decline from 70.4% in 1970). 17.2 percent of the population adheres to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, which has also declined since 1970. Three percent was Orthodox and Muslims make up 4.0% of the population of Bavaria. 28.9 percent of Bavarians are irreligious or adhere to other religions.
Traditions.
Bavarians commonly emphasize pride in their traditions. Traditional costumes collectively known as Tracht are worn on special occasions and include in Altbayern Lederhosen for males and Dirndl for females. Centuries-old folk music is performed. The Maibaum, or Maypole (which in the Middle Ages served as the community's business directory, as figures on the pole represented the trades of the village), and the bagpipes of the Upper Palatinate region bear witness to the ancient Celtic and Germanic remnants of cultural heritage of the region. There are many traditional Bavarian sports disciplines, e.g. the Aperschnalzen, competitive whipcracking.
Whether in Bavaria, overseas or with citizens from other nations Bavarians continue to cultivate their traditions. They hold festivals and dances to keep their heritage alive.
Food and drink.
Bavarians tend to place a great value on food and drink. In addition to their renowned dishes, Bavarians also consume many items of food and drink which are unusual elsewhere in Germany; for example ("white sausage") or in some instances a variety of entrails.
More than 285 typical Bavarian products have been recorded in the Bavarian specialities database 'GenussBayern' since the 1990s. Recipes and museums can also be found there. With a total of 54 specialities protected under European law, Bavaria is the No. 1 speciality region in Germany.
Bavarian products such as ‘Bavarian beer’, ‘Nuremberg bratwurst’, ‘Allgäu mountain cheese’ and ‘Schrobenhausen asparagus’ are just as much a part of the official EU list 'eAmbrosia' of prestigious regional culinary specialities as the protected names “Champagne” and ‘Prosciutto di Parma’. Bavarian specialities, which are protected as geographical indications, are deeply rooted in their region of origin, important anchors of local identity and also tourist flagships - they are therefore at the heart of Bavarian cuisine.
Restaurants that carry the 'Ausgezeichnete GenussKüche' award (recognizable by a sign near the door) are known by locals for their certified, authentic Bavarian cuisine.
At folk festivals and in many beer gardens, beer is traditionally served by the litre (in a ). Bavarians are particularly proud of the traditional , or beer purity law, initially established by the Duke of Bavaria for the City of Munich (i.e. the court) in 1487 and the duchy in 1516. According to this law, only three ingredients were allowed in beer: water, barley, and hops. In 1906 the made its way to all-German law, and remained a law in Germany until the EU partly struck it down in 1987 as incompatible with the European common market. German breweries, however, cling to the principle, and Bavarian breweries still comply with it in order to distinguish their beer brands. Bavarians are also known as some of the world's most prolific beer drinkers, with an average annual consumption of 130–135 liters per capita, as of 2018.
Bavaria is also home to the Franconia wine region, which is situated along the river Main in Franconia. The region has produced wine ("Frankenwein") for over 1,000 years and is famous for its use of the Bocksbeutel wine bottle. The production of wine forms an integral part of the regional culture, and many of its villages and cities hold their own wine festivals (Weinfeste) throughout the year.
Language and dialects.
Three German dialects are most commonly spoken in Bavaria: Austro-Bavarian in Old Bavaria (Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria, and the Upper Palatinate), Swabian German (an Alemannic German dialect) in the Bavarian part of Swabia (southwest) and East Franconian German in Franconia (north). In the small town Ludwigsstadt in the north, district Kronach in Upper Franconia, Thuringian dialect is spoken. During the 20th century an increasing part of the population began to speak Standard German (Hochdeutsch), mainly in the cities.
Ethnography.
Bavarians consider themselves to be egalitarian and informal. Their sociability can be experienced at the annual Oktoberfest, the world's largest beer festival, which welcomes around six million visitors every year, or in the famous beer gardens. In traditional Bavarian beer gardens, patrons may bring their own food but buy beer only from the brewery that runs the beer garden.
Museums.
There are around 1,300 museums in Bavaria, including museums of art and cultural history, castles and palaces, archaeological and natural history collections, museums of technological and industrial history, and farm and open-air museums. The history of Bavarian museums dates back to manorial cabinets of curiosities and treasuries. The art holdings of the House of Wittelsbach thus formed the first and essential foundation of later state museums. As early as the mid-16th century, Duke Albrecht V (r. 1550–1579) had collected paintings as well as Greek and Roman sculptures (or copies made of them). He had the Antiquarium in the Munich Residence built specifically for his collection of antique sculptures. The electors Maximilian I (r. 1594–1651) and Max II. Emanuel (r. 1679–1726) expanded the art collections considerably. In the Age of Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century, there was a demand to open up art collections to the general public in the spirit of "popular education". But Museums were not founded by the state until the time of the art-loving King Ludwig I (r. 1825–1848). In Munich, he built Glyptothek (opened 1830), Alte Pinakothek (opened 1836), and Neue Pinakothek (opened 1853). Also, the foundation of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (1852), the establishment of the Neue Pinakothek, which opened in 1853, and the Bavarian National Museum (1867) in Munich were of central importance for the development of museums in Bavaria in the 19th century. With the end of the monarchy in 1918, many castles and formerly Wittelsbach property passed to the young Free State. In particular, the castles of king Ludwig II (r. 1864–1886) Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee, quickly became magnets for the public. Since then, the number of Bavarian Museums has grown considerably, from 125 in 1907 to around 1,300 today.
Sports.
Football.
Bavaria is home to several football clubs including FC Bayern Munich, 1. FC Nürnberg, FC Augsburg, TSV 1860 Munich, SSV Jahn Regensburg, FC Ingolstadt 04 and SpVgg Greuther Fürth. Bayern Munich is the most successful football team in Germany having won a record 33 German titles and 6 UEFA Champions League titles. They are followed by 1. FC Nürnberg who have won 9 titles. SpVgg Greuther Fürth have won 3 championships while TSV 1860 Munich have been champions once.
Basketball.
Bavaria is also home to four professional basketball teams, including FC Bayern Munich, Brose Baskets Bamberg, s.Oliver Würzburg, Nürnberg Falcons BC, and TSV Oberhaching Tropics.
Ice hockey.
There are five Bavarian ice hockey teams playing in the German top-tier league DEL: EHC Red Bull München, Nürnberg Ice Tigers, Augsburger Panther, ERC Ingolstadt, and Straubing Tigers.
Notable people.
Notable people who have lived, or live currently, in Bavaria include:
|
3765
|
20611691
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3765
|
Brandenburg
|
Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the fifth-largest German state by area and the tenth-most populous, with 2.5 million residents. Potsdam is the state capital and largest city. Other major towns are Cottbus, Brandenburg an der Havel and Frankfurt (Oder).
Brandenburg surrounds the national capital and city-state of Berlin. Together they form the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, the third-largest metropolitan area in Germany. There was an unsuccessful attempt to unify both states in 1996, however the states still cooperate on many matters.
Brandenburg originated in the Northern March in the 900s AD, from areas conquered from the Wends. It later became the Margraviate of Brandenburg, a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire. In the 15th century, it came under the rule of the House of Hohenzollern, which later established Brandenburg-Prussia, the core of the later Kingdom of Prussia. From 1815 to 1947, Brandenburg was a province of Prussia.
Following the abolition of Prussia after World War II, Brandenburg was established as a state by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. In 1952, the German Democratic Republic dissolved the state and broke it up into multiple regional districts. After German reunification, Brandenburg was re-established in 1990 as one of the five new states of the Federal Republic.
Southeastern Brandenburg contains part of the historical Lower Lusatia, and most of these localities have two official languages, German and Lower Sorbian (of the Sorbs/Wends).
Names.
Brandenburg takes its name from Brandenburg an der Havel. The name's origin is unclear but it is thought to derive from the Slavic ('marshy/boggy') or Germanic ('fire'). Other theories have included West Slavic ('defensive forest') and ('pine forest'). in German means 'castle'. In the extinct local language Polabian, Brandenburg was .
In the modern local languages, "Brandenburg" and the "State of Brandenburg" are named:
History.
In late medieval and early modern times, Brandenburg was, with varying borders, one of seven electoral states of the Holy Roman Empire, and, along with Prussia, formed the original core of the German Empire, the first unified German state. Governed by the Hohenzollern dynasty from 1415, it contained the future German capital Berlin. After 1618 the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia were combined to form Brandenburg-Prussia, which was ruled by the same branch of the House of Hohenzollern. In 1701 the state was elevated as the Kingdom of Prussia. Franconian Nuremberg and Ansbach, Swabian Hohenzollern, the eastern European connections of Berlin, and the status of Brandenburg's ruler as prince-elector together were instrumental in the rise of that state.
Early Middle Ages.
Brandenburg is situated in territory known in antiquity as Magna Germania, which reached to the Vistula river. By the 7th century, Slavic people are believed to have settled in the Brandenburg area. The Slavs expanded from the east, possibly driven from their homelands in present-day Ukraine and perhaps Belarus by the invasions of the Huns and Avars. They relied heavily on river transport. The two principal Slavic groups in the present-day area of Brandenburg were the Hevelli in the west and the Sprevane in the east.
Beginning in the early 10th century, Henry the Fowler and his successors conquered territory up to the Oder River. Slavic settlements such as Brenna (Brandenburg an der Havel), Budusin (Bautzen), and Chośebuz (Cottbus) came under imperial control through the installation of margraves. Their main function was to defend and protect the eastern marches. In 948 Emperor Otto I established margraves to exert imperial control over the pagan Slavs west of the Oder River. Otto founded the Bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelberg. The Northern March was founded as a northeastern border territory of the Holy Roman Empire. However, a great uprising of Wends drove imperial forces from the territory of present-day Brandenburg in 983. The region returned to the control of Slavic leaders. The eastern parts of current Brandenburg, i.e. the Lubusz Land and Lower Lusatia, became part of Poland in the 10th-11th centuries.
Late Middle Ages.
In the early 12th century, the Slavic Duchy of Kopanica was established in the central part of present-day Brandenburg, whereas the Lubusz Land in the east remained part of medieval Poland. During the 12th century, the German kings and emperors re-established control over the Slav-inhabited lands of present-day Brandenburg, excluding Polish-controlled Lubusz Land, although some Slavs like the Sorbs in Lusatia adapted to Germanization while retaining their distinctiveness. The Roman Catholic Church brought bishoprics which, with their walled towns, afforded protection from attacks for the townspeople. With the monks and bishops, the history of the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, which was the first center of the state of Brandenburg, began.
In 1134, in the wake of a German crusade against the Wends, the German magnate, Albert the Bear, was granted the Northern March by the Emperor Lothar III. He formally inherited the town of Brandenburg and the lands of the Hevelli from their last Wendish ruler, Pribislav, in 1150. After crushing a force of Sprevane who occupied the town of Brandenburg in the 1150s, Albert proclaimed himself ruler of the new Margraviate of Brandenburg. Albert, and his descendants the Ascanians, then made considerable progress in conquering, colonizing, Christianizing, and cultivating lands as far east as the Oder. Within this region, Slavic and German residents intermarried. During the 13th century, the Ascanians began acquiring and seizing territory around and east of the Oder from Poland (Lubusz Land and north-western Greater Poland), later known as the Neumark, in contrast to the Altmark, the cradle of the March of Brandenburg.
In 1320, the Brandenburg Ascanian line came to an end, and from 1323 up until 1415 Brandenburg was under the control of the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, followed by the Luxembourg Dynasties. Under the Luxembourgs, the Margrave of Brandenburg gained the status of a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire. In the period 1373–1415, Brandenburg was a part of the Bohemian Crown. In 1415, the Electorate of Brandenburg was granted by Emperor Sigismund to the House of Hohenzollern, which would rule until the end of World War I. The Hohenzollerns established their capital in Berlin, by then the economic center of Brandenburg.
16th and 17th centuries.
Brandenburg converted to Protestantism in 1539 in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, and generally did quite well in the 16th century, with the expansion of trade along the Elbe, Havel, and Spree rivers. The Hohenzollerns expanded their territory by co-rulership since 1577 and acquiring the Duchy of Prussia in 1618, the Duchy of Cleves (1614) in the Rhineland, and territories in Westphalia. The result was a sprawling, disconnected country known as Brandenburg-Prussia that was in poor shape to defend itself during the Thirty Years' War.
Beginning near the end of that devastating conflict, however, Brandenburg enjoyed a string of talented rulers who expanded their territory and power in Europe. The first of these was Frederick William, the so-called "Great Elector", who worked tirelessly to rebuild and consolidate the nation. He moved the royal residence to Potsdam. At the Peace of Westphalia, his envoy Joachim Friedrich von Blumenthal negotiated the acquisition of several important territories such as Halberstadt. Under the Treaty of Oliva Christoph Caspar von Blumenthal (son of the above) negotiated the incorporation of the Duchy of Prussia into the Hohenzollern inheritance.
Kingdom of Prussia and German Empire.
When Frederick William died in 1688, he was followed by his son Frederick, third of that name in Brandenburg. As the lands that had been acquired in Prussia were outside the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick assumed (as Frederick I) the title of "King in Prussia" (1701). Although his self-promotion from margrave to king relied on his title to the Duchy of Prussia, Brandenburg was still the most important portion of the kingdom. However, this combined state is known as the Kingdom of Prussia.
Brandenburg remained the core of the Kingdom of Prussia, and it was the site of the kingdom's capitals, Berlin and Potsdam. When Prussia was subdivided into provinces in 1815, the territory of the Margraviate of Brandenburg became the Province of Brandenburg, again subdivided into the government region of Frankfurt and Potsdam. It also included Lower Lusatia, previously ruled at various times by Poland, Bohemia, Hungary and Saxony. In 1881, the City of Berlin was separated from the province of Brandenburg. However, industrial towns ringing Berlin lay within Brandenburg, and the growth of the region's industrial economy brought an increase in the population of the province. The Province of Brandenburg had an area of and a population of 2.6 million (1925).
Under the Nazi government and during World War II, repressions of Poles, especially autochthones in the eastern part of the province, intensified with expulsions of Poles, censorship of Polish newspapers, invigilation, arrests and assassinations of Polish leaders, activists, teachers, entrepreneurs, editors, etc., deportations to concentration camps and closure of Polish organizations, enterprises, schools and libraries. The Sachsenhausen concentration camp with a network of subcamps was located in Brandenburg, and several prisoner-of-war camps, including Stalag III-A, Stalag III-B, Stalag III-C, Stalag III-D, Oflag II-A, Oflag III-A, Oflag III-B, Oflag III-C, Oflag 8 and Oflag 80 for Polish, Belgian, British, Dutch, French, Serbian, Italian, American, Czechoslovak, Soviet, Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian and other Allied POWs with numerous forced labour subcamps. In early 1945, the death marches of prisoners of various nationalities from various dissolved camps passed through the region. In the final stages of the war, it was the place of heavy fights, including the Battle of the Seelow Heights and Battle of Berlin, won by the Allied Soviet and Polish armies. After Germany's defeat, the part of Brandenburg east of the Oder–Neisse line, which formed part of Poland in the Middle Ages and partly also in the early modern period, became again part of Poland. The entire population of former East Brandenburg was expelled en masse in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. The remainder of the province became a state in the Soviet Zone of occupation in Germany when Prussia was dissolved in 1947.
East Germany.
After the foundation of East Germany in 1949, Brandenburg formed one of its component states. The State of Brandenburg was completely dissolved in 1952 by the Socialist government of East Germany, doing away with all component states. The East German government then divided Brandenburg among several "Bezirke" or districts. (See Administrative division of the German Democratic Republic). Most of Brandenburg lay within the Bezirke of Cottbus, Frankfurt, or Potsdam, but parts of the former province passed to the Schwerin, Neubrandenburg and Magdeburg districts (town Havelberg). East Germany relied heavily on lignite (the lowest grade of coal) as an energy source, and lignite strip mines marred areas of south-eastern Brandenburg. The industrial towns surrounding Berlin were important to the East German economy, while rural Brandenburg remained mainly agricultural.
Federal Republic of Germany.
The present State of Brandenburg was re-established on 3 October 1990 upon German reunification. The newly elected Landtag of Brandenburg first met on 26 October 1990. As in other former parts of East Germany, the lack of modern infrastructure and exposure to West Germany's competitive market economy brought widespread unemployment and economic difficulty. In the recent years, however, Brandenburg's infrastructure has been modernized and unemployment has slowly declined.
Berlin-Brandenburg fusion attempt.
The legal basis for a combined state of Berlin and Brandenburg is different from other state fusion proposals. Normally, Article 29 of the Basic Law stipulates that states may only merge after a specific federal Act of Parliament is enacted. However, a clause added to the Basic Law in 1994, Article 118a, allows Berlin and Brandenburg to unify without federal approval, requiring a referendum and a ratification by both state parliaments.
In 1996, an attempt of unifying the states of Berlin and Brandenburg was rejected at referendum. Both share a common history, dialect and culture and in 2020, over 225,000 residents of Brandenburg commute to Berlin. The fusion had the near-unanimous support by a broad coalition of both state governments, political parties, media, business associations, trade unions and churches. Though Berlin voted in favor by a small margin, largely based on support in former West Berlin, Brandenburg voters disapproved of the fusion by a large margin. It failed largely due to Brandenburg voters not wanting to take on Berlin's large and growing public debt and fearing losing identity and influence to the capital.
Geography.
Brandenburg is bordered by Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the north, Poland in the east, the Freistaat Sachsen in the south, Saxony-Anhalt in the west, and Lower Saxony in the northwest.
The Oder river forms a part of the eastern border, the Elbe river a portion of the western border. The main rivers in the state itself are the Spree and the Havel. In the southeast, there is a wetlands region called the Spreewald; it is the northernmost part of Lusatia.
Protected areas.
Brandenburg is known for its well-preserved natural environment and its ambitious natural protection policies which began in the 1990s. 15 large protected areas were designated following Germany's reunification. Each of them is provided with state-financed administration and a park ranger staff, who guide visitors and work to ensure nature conservation. Most protected areas have visitor centers.
National parks
Biosphere reserves
Nature parks
Demographics.
Brandenburg has the second lowest population density among the German states, after Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Religion.
17.1% of the Brandenburgers are registered members of the local, regional Protestant church (mostly the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia), while 3.1% are registered with the Roman Catholic Church (mostly the Archdiocese of Berlin, and a minority in the Diocese of Görlitz). The majority (79.8%) of Brandenburgers, whether of Christian or other beliefs, choose not to register with the government as members of these churches, and therefore do not pay the church tax.
Politics.
Politically, Brandenburg is a stronghold of the Social Democratic Party, which won the largest share of the vote and seats in every state election. All three Minister-Presidents of Brandenburg have come from the Social Democratic Party (unlike any other state except Bremen) and they even won an absolute majority of seats and every single-member constituency in the 1994 state election.
On a federal level, the Social Democratic Party has also been the strongest party in most federal elections, their strongholds being the northwestern part of the state and Potsdam and its surrounding areas. However, the Christian Democratic Union won the most votes in 1990, their 2013 landslide and in 2017. In 2009, The Left won the most votes in a year where, like in 2017, the social democrats collapsed. Prominent politicians from Brandenburg include Social Democrats Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who served in the Bundestag for Brandenburg before being elected President of Germany, and Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz, who sits in the Bundestag for Potsdam.
Like in all other New states of Germany, the leftist party of The Left and, more recently, the far-right Alternative for Germany are especially strong in Brandenburg.
Brandenburg has 4 out of 69 votes in the Bundesrat and, as of 2021, 25 seats out of 736 in the Bundestag.
Subdivisions.
Brandenburg is divided into 14 rural districts ("Landkreise") and four urban districts ("kreisfreie Städte"), shown with their population in 2011:
Government.
Election of 2024.
The 2024 Brandenburg state election took place on 22 September. One important outcome of the election was that the number of parties with representation in the state parliament went from six to four. The Greens, the Left, and the Brandenburg United Civic Movements/Free Voters all lost their representation while a new party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), gained 14 votes. The BSW was formed on 8 January 2024, mostly by members who had broken away from the Left. While it shares the Left's economic outlook, it is more closely aligned with stances traditionally held by the right on certain issues. For example, the BSW is broadly anti-immigration and anti-Nato, and has been accused of having Russophile tendencies, partially based on their desire for the war in Ukraine to be ended by diplomacy.
Other German parties have generally been unwilling to work with the AfD and that trend continued with the formation of the new government based on this election. Assuming that the AfD would be in the opposition, the only two options that the SPD, with the plurality of seats, had to obtain a majority were to work with the BSW as well as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) or to just work with the BSW. Ultimately, the latter option was chosen and a majority of 46 out of 88 seats was obtained.
While this should have been enough votes to reelect Woidke as the Minister-President, he lost the first vote, having only 43 supporters in the secret ballot. While there were only 40 votes against him (there were two abstentions and two votes that were invalid), an absolute majority, 45 votes, was required to win the first round. On 11 December, in the second round of voting, all that was needed was for Woidke to receive more votes in his favor than there were in opposition, and he won in this round with 50 votes. This meant that at least 4 members of the opposition, whether from the AfD, the CDU, or a combination of the two, had voted with the coalition government to reelect Woidke. The CDU accused the SPD of receiving help from the AfD, but it is impossible to know because the ballot was secret. The government in Brandenburg has been led by the SPD since 1990.
Election of 2019.
The 2019 elections took place on 1 September. A coalition government was formed by the Social Democrats, The Greens, and the Christian Democratic Union led by incumbent Minister-President Dietmar Woidke (SPD), replacing the previous coalition between the Social Democrats and The Left.
Economy.
The gross domestic product (GDP) of the state was 72.9 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 2.2% of German economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 26,700 euros or 88% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 91% of the EU average. The GDP per capita was the third lowest of all states in Germany.
The unemployment rate stood at 6.1% in 2024 and was higher than the German average but lower than the average of Eastern Germany.
Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg is located in Brandenburg.
Transport.
Berlin Schönefeld Airport (IATA code: SXF) was the largest airport in Brandenburg. It was the second largest international airport of the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region and was located southeast of central Berlin in Schönefeld. The airport was a base for Condor, easyJet and Ryanair. In 2016, Schönefeld handled 11,652,922 passengers (an increase of 36.7%).
Schönefeld's existing infrastructure and terminals were incorporated into the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER), which opened in 2020. Berlin Brandenburg Airport had an initial capacity of 35–40 million passengers a year. Due to increasing air traffic in Berlin and Brandenburg, plans for airport expansions were in the making.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport receives over sixty combined passenger, charter and cargo airlines.
Education and research.
Higher education.
In 2016, around 49,000 students were enrolled in Brandenburg universities and higher education facilities. The largest institution is the University of Potsdam, located southwest of Berlin. In 2019 the state of Brandenburg adopted an Open Access strategy calling on universities to develop transformation strategies to make knowledge from Brandenburg freely accessible to all.
Universities in Brandenburg:
Culture.
Music.
The "Brandenburg Concertos" by Johann Sebastian Bach (original title: "Six Concerts à plusieurs instruments") are a collection of six instrumental works presented by Bach to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, in 1721 (though probably composed earlier). They are widely regarded as among the finest musical compositions of the Baroque era and are among the composer's best known works.
Cuisine.
A famous speciality food from Brandenburg are the Spreewald gherkins. The wet soil of the Spreewald makes the region ideal for growing cucumbers. Spreewald gherkins are protected by the EU as a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). They are one of the biggest exports of Brandenburg.
|
3768
|
27881142
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3768
|
Bundestag
|
The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the lower house of the German federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. 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, the other being the Bundesrat.
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 conscience. Since the current 21st legislative period, the Bundestag has a fixed number of 630 members. The Bundestag is elected every four years by German citizens aged 18 and older. Elections use a mixed-member proportional representation system which combines First-past-the-post voting for constituency-seats with proportional representation to ensure its composition mirrors the national popular vote. The German Bundestag cannot dissolve itself; only the president of Germany can do so under certain conditions.
Together with the Bundesrat, the Bundestag forms the legislative branch of government on federal level. The Bundestag is considerably more powerful than the Bundesrat, which represents the state governments. All bills must first be passed in the Bundestag before they are discussed in the Bundesrat. The Bundesrat can only accept laws passed by the Bundestag without amendment. Only in some areas, where laws directly affect the states, can the Bundesrat reject laws; otherwise, it can only lodge an objection to them, which the Bundestag can overrule. Above all, however, the chancellor and the federal government are solely responsible to the Bundestag. The Bundestag also has sole budgetary authority.
Since 1999, the Bundestag has met in the Reichstag building in Berlin. The Bundestag also operates in multiple new government buildings in Berlin around the neo-renaissance house and has its own police force (the "Bundestagspolizei"), directly subordinated to the Bundestag Presidency. The Bundestag's presiding officer is the president of the Bundestag; he or she is deputized by the Vice Presidents of the Bundestag. Since 2025, Julia Klöckner of the CDU/CSU is the president of the Bundestag. In the protocol order of the federation, the President of the Bundestag ranks second after the President and before the Chancellor.
History.
The first body to be called Bundestag was the legislative body of the German Confederation, which convened in Frankfurt am Main from 1816 to 1866. This Bundestag was a convention of state envoys. During the revolution of 1848/49, the National Assembly, which met in Frankfurt am Main, was the first elected German parliament and served as a constituent assembly for a German state, which ultimately did not come to pass.
The North German Confederation, founded in 1866/67, was the first German nation state with an established elected parliament, however this ended up being called the Reichstag. In 1870/71, the federation was expanded to include the southern German territories and was henceforth called the German Empire. The Reichstag building, where the current Bundestag meets since 1999 (see below), was built in 1888. The German Empire was not yet a parliamentary democracy in the modern sense, but a constitutional monarchy with democratic elements. The Reichstag had to approve all bills, had the right to initiate legislation and, in particular, had budgetary sovereignty. However, the Chancellor and the imperial government were not responsible to parliament, but to the emperor alone. It was not until 1918, a few weeks before the end of the First World War, that the Reichstag was given the right, as part of a constitutional reform, to withdraw its confidence in the Chancellor and thus force him to resign. There was also no universal suffrage for the Reichstag; only men over the age of 25 were entitled to vote in Reichstag elections.
After its defeat in the First World War, Germany became a republic and a parliamentary democracy with the Weimar Constitution of 1919. The voting age was lowered to 21 years and women were given the right to vote for (and serve in) the Reichstag. However, the first German democracy failed for various reasons, some of which were directly related to the Reichstag. The pure proportional representation system in elections did not produce clear majorities and the various parties were not sufficiently willing to compromise to form stable governments. This led to numerous changes of government and snap elections. In the last years of the Weimar Republic, the extreme right and extreme left parties had a destructive majority in the Reichstag, which forced the governments to rule largely by emergency decrees to bypass parliament. 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, in which only the Nazi Party was represented from November 1933 on, met only rarely, above all to extend the emergency laws on which the Nazi dictatorship was formally based. It last convened on 26 April 1942.
With the Basic Law of 1949, Germany's second democratic constitution, the Bundestag was established as the new parliament. Due to the division of Germany, the Bundestag was de facto a West German parliament until 1990. The socialist GDR in East Germany had its own parliament, the Volkskammer, which, however, did not emerge from democratic elections except for its last electoral term in 1990. Because West Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the Basic Law during the division, the Bundestag met in Bonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former waterworks facility and finally in the Bundeshaus. 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.
Since German reunification in 1990, the Bundestag has once again been an all-German parliament. In 1999, the German parliament moved from Bonn to Berlin and sits once again in the Reichstag building.
Tasks.
Legislative process.
Together with the Bundesrat, the Bundestag forms the legislative branch of the German political system.
The Bundestag is one of three constitutional bodies (along with the Bundesrat and the federal government) that have the right of initiative for the legislative process. In order to introduce a bill in the Bundestag, the support of a faction or of a number of MPs corresponding to at least 5% of all MPs is required. All bills (including those introduced by the Bundesrat and the government) are first voted on in the Bundestag (for bills from the Bundesrat and the government, however, an opinion must first be obtained from the other body). A bill is first discussed at first reading, then referred to one or more committees, where it can be amended; the resulting committee version then goes back to the plenary, where it is passed at second and third reading. Amendments can also be tabled at this stage. A simple majority (more yes votes than no votes and abstentions combined) is required for normal legislative proposals. In some very rare cases, the Basic Law requires the so-called chancellor majority (majority of all members of parliament) for simple laws, for example to establish new intermediate and subordinate federal authorities. Laws amending the Basic Law require a two-thirds majority of all members of the Bundestag.
A law passed by the Bundestag is passed on to the Bundesrat. Laws that directly affect the states must be passed by the Bundesrat by majority vote (amendments to the Basic Law, again, by a two-thirds majority); all other laws are considered passed if the Bundesrat does not object to them within 14 days. An objection by the Bundesrat can be overruled by the Bundestag with a chancellor majority if the Bundesrat has not raised the objection with a two-thirds majority (in the latter case, in order to override an objection, a two-thirds majority of members present corresponding at least to the chancellor majority is necessary). In no case can the Bundesrat make amendments to a bill. If the Bundesrat rejects a bill, the matter is often referred to the so-called mediation committee, a body made up of an equal number of members of the Bundestag and Bundesrat, which attempts to negotiate whether the bill can find the approval of both chambers with certain amendments. A version amended in this way must then be passed again by a majority in both chambers in order to become law (in this case the rules of procedure of both chambers provide for an abbreviated legislative procedure).
In the final step, a law must be signed by the President of Germany (they have a right of veto in theory, but this has been used very rarely in the history of the Federal Republic).
Elections.
The Bundestag has an elective function for a number of offices.
Chancellor.
The chancellor is elected by the Bundestag and formally appointed by the president of Germany. A chancellor's election is necessary whenever the office of chancellor has fallen vacant. This is the case if a newly elected Bundestag meets for the first time, or during legislative periods, if the former chancellor died or resigned.
The chancellor's election is one of the few cases in which a vote in the Bundestag requires a majority of all elected members, not just a majority of those assembled at the time, the so-called "Kanzlermehrheit" ("chancellor majority"). As with other elections performed by the Bundestag, the chancellor is elected via secret ballot. The election procedure laid down in the Basic Law can be divided into three phases: The process begins with the President of Germany proposing a candidate to the Bundestag (usually a candidate on which the majority party or the coalition parties have agreed to beforehand), who is then voted upon without debate ("1st voting phase"). If the nominee reaches the necessary "chancellor majority", the president appoints him or her and, after that, the president of the Bundestag will administer the oath of office before the assembled house. If this nominee is not elected, the right of nomination is transferred onto the Bundestag: Candidates can now be nominated for election, whereby a nomination must be supported by at least a quarter of all MPs. The Bundestag can hold any number of ballots in this manner for two weeks. To be elected, a candidate still needs a "chancellor majority" of yes-votes ("Second voting phase"). If the Bundestag is unable to elect a chancellor in these fourteen days, a final ballot is held on the very next day. Once again, candidates can be nominated by at least a quarter of all MPs. Candidates receiving a "chancellor majority" in this ballot are elected. Otherwise, it is up to the President of Germany either to appoint the candidate with the plurality of votes as Chancellor or to dissolve the Bundestag and call new elections ("Third voting phase").
Another possibility to vote a new chancellor into office is the constructive vote of no confidence, which allows the Bundestag to replace a sitting chancellor, if it elects a new chancellor with the "chancellor-majority".
As of 2025, all chancellors of the federal republic have been (re-)elected on proposal of the President and on the first ballot with the exceptions of Helmut Kohl, who was elected to his first term via a constructive vote of no confidence against Helmut Schmidt in 1982, and Friedrich Merz, who was elected chancellor during the second voting phase (on the second ballot), after not having received the necessary majority on the first ballot in 2025.
Judges of the federal constitutional court.
The Bundestag shares responsibility with the Bundesrat for electing the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court. Both chambers elect four judges to each of the court's two senates. They also elect the president and vice-president of the Federal Constitutional Court in alternating order. In the Bundestag, this requires a two-thirds majority of members present, which has equal at least a majority of all members.
Further elective functions.
In addition to these central elections, the Bundestag elects the President and Vice President of the Federal Audit Office, the Commissioner for the Armed Forces, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, the Federal Commissioner for the Victims of the SED Dictatorship, two-thirds of the members of the Joint Committee and half of the members of the Mediation Committee.
The Bundestag also has significant influence on the election of the President of Germany: All members of the Bundestag are ex officio members of the Federal Convention, a non-permanent constitutional body whose sole task is to elect the president; however, the convention also includes state electors, elected by the sixteen german state parliaments. The majority ratios in the Bundestag therefore do not necessarily have to correspond to those in the Federal Assembly.
Electoral term and principle of discontinuation.
The Bundestag is elected for four years, and new elections must be held no earlier than 46 and no later than 48 months after the beginning of a given legislative session.
By way of exception, there may be an early election if the President of Germany dissolves the Bundestag. However, the President only has the right to do so in the event of a failed chancellor election or if an incumbent chancellor requests dissolution after losing a vote of confidence. The possibility of an early election is therefore in theory much more limited than is the case in some other parliamentary democracies. This restriction is intended to encourage the parliamentary groups to cooperate in difficult situations, and is a lesson learned from the experience of the Weimar Republic, in which snap elections were very frequent because the parties were unable to compromise and form stable governments. In constitutional reality however, the deliberately lost vote of confidence (also known as a false vote of confidence) has established itself as a way for the chancellor to bring about new elections, de facto at his or her discretion (this has happened four times so far: 1972, 1982/83, 2005 and 2024/25).
A legislative session ends at the moment when a newly-elected Bundestag convenes for the first time, which must occur within 30 days after an election. The principle applies that there can be no "period without parliament". An elected Bundestag is fully competent to act until a newly-elected Bundestag convenes for its first session. Prorogations and dissolutions (in the strict sense), as known in the Westminster system, do not exist in Germany. Even an early dissolution of the Bundestag, as described above, in practice only leads to an early election, but does not end the legislative period itself. Before a constitutional amendment in 1976, the "Standing Committee" took the place of the Bundestag with all its rights after dissolution by the President or 48 months after its constitution until a new Bundestag was constituted. Since then, a legislative session generally only ends when the new Bundestag convenes, meaning that lame duck sessions can occur in the four weeks following an election. This has happened four times so far:
Following the tradition of German parliamentarism, the Bundestag is subject to the "principle of discontinuation", meaning that a newly-elected Bundestag is legally regarded as 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. If the succeeding Bundestag convenes with same or similar majorities like its predecessor, the parliament can decide to take over earlier initiatives of legislation in the same fashion to abbreviate the process, thus effectively breaking the principle of discontinuation by a pull.
Election and membership.
Election system (since 2023).
After the imperial Reichstag was elected according to a pure first-past-the-post electoral system (with run-off elections) and the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic according to a pure proportional representation system, mixed-member proportional representation, a system combining proportional representation with elements of first-past-the-post voting, has been used for the Bundestag since the founding of the Federal Republic. Before an electoral reform in 2023, the Bundestag nominally had 598 members, with the mixture of majority and proportional representation regularly leading to a large number of additional overhang and compensation mandates. In 2023, this was remedied with a series of modifications that led to a fixed number of seats of 630 and significantly increased the proportional aspect; after this revised electoral law was confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court with some modifications following constitutional complaints, it was applied for the first time in 2025.
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 proportionality with respect to the total number of 639 seats; first at the federal level and then at state level (using the Sainte-Laguë method). In most cases, the number of constituencies won by a party in a given state does not exactly correspond to the number of seats to which the party is entitled in that state via second votes. This is balanced in two different ways:
To qualify for any seats, however, a party must either win three single-member constituencies via first votes () or exceed a threshold of 5% of the second votes nationwide. This does not apply to independent constituency candidates: these always enter the Bundestag if they win their constituency. (However, no independent constituency candidate has won a constituency since 1949). Seats allocated in this way are subtracted from the base number of 630 when the mandates are distributed among the parties. In addition, the second votes of voters who have elected a successful independent candidate in a constituency are not taken into account when calculating the number of mandates (although they are for the 5% threshold).
Parties representing recognized national minorities (currently Danes, Frisians, Sorbs, and Romani people) are exempt from both the 5% national threshold and the basic mandate clause. The only party that has been able to benefit from this provision so far at the federal level is the South Schleswig Voters' Association, which represents the minorities of Danes and Frisians in Schleswig-Holstein, and succeeded in winning a seat in 1949, 2021, and 2025.
Succession in case of early retirement.
If a member of parliament leaves the Bundestag during the current legislative session, either through resignation or death, another candidate from that party from the corresponding state takes their place. Successful constituency candidates who did not receive a seat in the previous election due to the principle of second vote coverage are considered first, followed by the candidates on the respective state list. However, if the list is exhausted, the seat in question remains vacant for the remainder of the session. If the departing member was an independent constituency candidate, the seat also remains empty.
Latest election result.
Regular election of 2025.
The latest federal election was held on Sunday, 23 February 2025, to elect the members of the 21st Bundestag.
Organization.
Presidium and Council of Elders.
The executive bodies of the Bundestag are the Presidium and the Council of Elders. The Presidium consists of the President, the presiding officer, and several Vice Presidents. The President and Vice Presidents are elected by the plenary of the Bundestag, whereby traditionally the largest fraction nominates the President and each fraction may nominate a vice president. In addition to the members of the Presidium, the Council of Elders includes 23 other deputies who are delegated proportionally by the factions. 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.
Legislative calender.
The Bundestag cannot be adjourned or prorogued during the current legislative session, but is always fully capable of acting and sets its own legislative calendar. Normally, the Bundestag sits for at least twenty weeks per year, interrupted by non-sessional weeks, especially a long parliamentary summer recess, during which the MPs are present in their constituencies. The course of a session week is traditionally always the same: meetings of the parliamentary faction's internal committees take place on Monday and Tuesday mornings, and meetings in the faction-plenary on Tuesday afternoon. From Wednesday to Friday, plenary sessions and committee meetings take place in parallel (this is the reason why often very few members are present at plenary debates). Committee meetings are interrupted on very important items on the agenda so that all MPs have the opportunity to be present in the plenary hall. The highlights of the procedures include government statements by the Chancellor and the general debate at the beginning of the annual budget deliberations, during which there is a direct clash between the Chancellor and the opposition leader.
Independently of the usual procedure, the Bundestag can also convene for extraordinary sessions at any time. This must happen if one third of the MPs, the President of Germany or the Chancellor request it (Basic Law, Article 39.3).
Factions and groups.
The most important organisational structures within the Bundestag are 'factions' ("Fraktionen"; sing. "Fraktion"). A parliamentary faction must consist of at least 5% of all members of parliament. Members of parliament from different parties may only join in a faction 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 faction of their own. The CDU and CSU however, have always formed a joint faction, called CDU/CSU or Union. This 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 faction 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 factions, not the members, receive the bulk of government funding for legislative and administrative activities.
The leadership of each fraction 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 "group" in the Bundestag; this is decided case by case, as the rules of procedure do not state a fixed number of seats for this. This status entails some privileges which are in general less than those of a faction.
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 of the Bundestag was by tradition chaired by the biggest opposition party, until the 21st Bundestag, when Alternative for Germany was denied this post). 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 employs around 3,000 employees.
Location.
Also following the tradition of German diets, the German Bundestag can legally convene on any location, domestic and foreign. The Reichstag plenary chamber is not determined by law as the location of the assembly, making it a facility of convenience. Bundestag's predecessor, the German Reichstag, convened in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin, after the Reichstag with its then wooden interior and walls burned down in the Reichstag fire.
After World War II, the Bundestag did not have own facilities to call home and had to convene in the Bundeshaus in Bonn together with the Bundesrat. 1953, the plenary chambers in the Bundeshaus had to be expanded and the Bundestag assembled in a radio building in Cologne. Until 1965, the Bundestag assembled in West Berlin for nine sessions. Seven sessions have been held in the Technische Universität Berlin and two sessions in Berlin's Congress Hall in Tiergarten. The assemblies met severe protest from the communist side, the last session even interrupted by Soviet aircraft in supersonic low-altitude flight. 1971, the four occupying powers agree to not accept Bundestag assemblies in West Berlin anymore. The Bundestag assembled in the Old Waterworks Building in Bonn when the old plenary chamber had to get broken down, and in the new plenary chamber for only a few years after Germany's reunification.
The most distinctive assembly of the Bundestag outsite its regular chambers was on 4 October 1990, the day after German reunification. The Bundestag assembled inside the Reichstag building in Berlin for the first time after 57 years, and remote from its then-regular home in Bonn. Soon after this most memorable assembly, the Bundestag decided to move from Bonn back to Berlin by a law which sets only the city of Berlin to be the home of the Bundestag, not the building.
References.
Informational notes
Citations
|
3772
|
1299854653
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3772
|
BMW
|
Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft, trading as BMW Group (commonly abbreviated to BMW (), sometimes anglicised as Bavarian Motor Works), is a German multinational manufacturer of luxury vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The company was founded in 1916 as a manufacturer of aircraft engines, which it produced from 1917 to 1918 and again from 1933 to 1945, creating engines for aircraft that were used in the Second World War.
The company's automobiles are marketed under the BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce brands, and motorcycles are marketed under the BMW Motorrad brand. In 2023, BMW was the world's ninth-largest producer of motor vehicles, and the 6th largest by revenue, with 2,555,341 vehicles produced in that year alone. In 2023, the company was ranked 46th in the "Forbes" Global 2000. The company has significant motor-sport history, especially in touring cars, sports cars, and the Isle of Man TT.
BMW is headquartered in Munich and produces motor vehicles in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, India, China, and previously also in the Netherlands (ceased in 2023). The is a long-term shareholder of the company, following investments by the brothers Herbert and Harald Quandt in 1959, saved BMW from bankruptcy, with remaining shares owned by the public.
History.
The "Otto Flugmaschinenfabrik" was founded in 1910 by Gustav Otto in the Kingdom of Bavaria, which was a state of the German Empire. The firm was reorganized on 7 March 1916 into . This company was then renamed to (BMW) in 1922. However, the name BMW dates back to 1913, when a company using that name was founded by Karl Rapp initially as . The name and 's engine-production assets were transferred to in 1922, who adopted the name the same year. BMW's first product was an engine for fighter aircraft of the . It was a straight-six called the BMW IIIa, designed in the spring of 1917 by engineer Max Friz. Following the end of World War I, BMW remained in business by producing motorcycle engines, agricultural equipment, household items, and railway brakes. The company produced its first motorcycle, the "BMW R 32", in 1923.
BMW became an automobile manufacturer in 1928 when it purchased Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach, which, at the time, built the Austin 7 under licence from Automobilwerk Eisenach, badged as the Dixi. The first car sold as a BMW was a rebadged Dixi called the BMW 3/15, following BMW's acquisition of the car manufacturer Automobilwerk Eisenach. Throughout the 1930s, BMW expanded its range into sports cars and larger luxury cars.
Aircraft engines, motorcycles, and automobiles would be BMW's main products until World War II. During the war, BMW concentrated on building the BMW 801 aircraft engine using as many as 40,000 slave laborers. These consisted primarily of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps, most prominently Dachau. Motorcycles remained as a side-line and automobile manufacture ceased altogether.
BMW's factories were heavily bombed during the war and its remaining West German facilities were banned from producing motor vehicles or aircraft after the war. The company survived by making pots, pans, and bicycles. In 1948, BMW restarted motorcycle production. BMW resumed car production in Bavaria in 1952 with the BMW 501 luxury saloon. The range of cars was expanded in 1955, through the production of the cheaper Isetta microcar under licence. Slow sales of luxury cars and small profit margins from microcars, meant BMW was in serious financial trouble and in 1959 the company was nearly taken over by rival Daimler-Benz.
A large investment in BMW by Herbert Quandt and Harald Quandt resulted in the company surviving as a separate entity. Günther Quandt was a well-known German industrialist and joined the Nazi party in 1933; he made a fortune arming the German Wehrmacht, manufacturing weapons and batteries. Many of his enterprises were appropriated from Jewish owners under duress with minimal compensation. At least three of his enterprises made extensive use of slave laborers, as many as 50,000 in all. One of his battery factories had its own on-site concentration camp, complete with gallows. Life expectancy for laborers was six months. While Quandt and BMW were not directly connected during the war, funds amassed in the Nazi era by his father allowed Herbert Quandt to buy BMW.
The relative success of the small BMW 700 assisted in the company's recovery, allowing them to develop the New Class sedans.
The 1962 introduction of the BMW New Class compact sedans was the beginning of BMW's reputation as a leading manufacturer of sport-oriented cars. Throughout the 1960s, BMW expanded its range by adding coupé and luxury sedan models. The BMW 5 Series mid-size sedan range was introduced in 1972, followed by the BMW 3 Series compact sedans in 1975, the BMW 6 Series luxury coupés in 1976 and the BMW 7 Series large luxury sedans in 1978.
The BMW M division released its first road car, the M1, a mid-engine supercar, in 1978. This was followed by the BMW M5 in 1984 and the BMW M3 in 1986. Also in 1986, BMW introduced its first V12 engine in the 750i luxury sedan. The 1989 BMW Z1 marked BMW's return to making a two-seat roadster, the 1995 BMW Z3 was their first mass-production two-seat roadster, and the 1999 BMW X5 was the company's first entry into the SUV market.
The company purchased the Rover Group in 1994, but the takeover was not successful and caused BMW large financial losses. In 2000, BMW sold off most of the Rover brands, retaining only the Mini brand. In 1998, BMW also acquired the rights to the Rolls-Royce brand from Vickers.
The first modern mass-produced turbocharged petrol engine was introduced in 2006 (from 1973 to 1975, BMW built 1,672 units of a turbocharged BMW M10 engine for the BMW 02 Series), with most engines switching over to turbocharging over the 2010s. The first hybrid BMW was the 2010 BMW ActiveHybrid 7, and BMW's first mass-production electric car was the BMW i3 city car, which was released in 2013, (from 1968 to 1972, BMW built two battery-electric BMW 1602 Elektro saloons for the 1972 Olympic Games). After many years of establishing a reputation for sporting rear-wheel drive cars, BMW's first front-wheel drive car was the 2014 BMW 2 Series Active Tourer multi-purpose vehicle (MPV).
In March 2018, Daimler and BMW merged their mobility services.
In August 2019, Oliver Zipse replaced Harald Krüger as the head of the BMW Group.
21st century.
In January 2021, BMW announced that its sales in 2020 fell by 8.4 percent due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. However, in the fourth quarter of 2020, BMW witnessed a rise of 3.2% in its customers' demands. This recovery was supported by the company's adoption of widely accepted technologies and integration of third-party services such as Apple Pay and on-demand music as well as key partnerships such as its collaboration with Daimler on autonomous driving. Additionally, BMW's strategic investment decisions which include localizing production of its SUVs to the Spartanburg plant in the U.S., placed the group in a position to easily navigate trade challenges and shifting consumer patterns.
On 18 January 2022 BMW announced a BMW 7 Series (G11) special edition simply called "The Final V12", the last BMW series production vehicle to be fitted with a V-12 engine.
On 5 October 2023 it was announced that BMW UK CEO Chris Brownridge would succeed Torsten Müller-Ötvös as the CEO of Rolls-Royce starting 1 December 2023, as a result of Müller-Ötvös retiring.
Branding.
Company name.
BMW is an abbreviation for "Bayerische Motoren Werke". This name is grammatically incorrect (in German, compound words must not contain spaces), which is why the grammatically correct form of the name, "Bayerische Motorenwerke" () has been used in several publications and advertisements in the past. "Bayerische Motorenwerke" translates into English as "Bavarian Motor Works". The suffix AG, short for "Aktiengesellschaft", signifies an incorporated entity owned by shareholders, thus akin to "Inc." (US) or PLC, "Public Limited Company" (UK).
The terms Beemer, Bimmer and Bee-em are sometimes used as slang for BMW in the English language and are sometimes used interchangeably for cars and motorcycles.
Logo.
The circular blue and white BMW logo or roundel evolved from the circular "Rapp Motorenwerke" company logo, which featured a black ring bearing the company name surrounding the company logo, an image of a horse head on a plinth. BMW retained Rapp's black ring inscribed with the company name, but the interior of the ring is quartered blue and white, reminiscent of the coat of arms and flag of Bavaria (which in turn are based on the arms of the historic House of Wittelsbach, which ruled Bavaria for many centuries). The logo does not bear the distinctive lozenge shape found on the coat of arms, however, as local laws at the time it was introduced forbade the use of state coats of arms on commercial logos.
A persistent myth claims that the logo is based on the image of an airplane propeller spinning in a blue sky. This myth likely stems from a 1929 BMW advertisement that depicted the logo superimposed on a rotating propeller. However, the logo predates that advertisement by 12 years.
The current iteration of the logo was introduced in 2020, removing 3D effects that had been used in previous renderings of the logo while removing the black outline encircling the rondel. The logo is used for BMW's branding communications but it is not used on vehicles.
Slogan.
The slogan 'The Ultimate Driving Machine' was first used in North America in 1974. In 2010, this long-lived campaign was mostly supplanted by a campaign intended to make the brand more approachable and to better appeal to women, 'Joy'. By 2012 BMW had returned to 'The Ultimate Driving Machine'.
Marks.
In 2023, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s Madrid Yearly Review ranked BMW's number of marks applications filled under the Madrid System as 2nd in the world, with 124 trademarks applications submitted during 2023.
Corporate affairs.
The key trends of the BMW Group are (as at the financial year ending December 31):
Motorcycles.
BMW began production of motorcycle engines and then motorcycles after World War I. Its motorcycle brand is now known as BMW Motorrad. Their first successful motorcycle after the failed Helios and Flink, was the "R32" in 1923, though production originally began in 1921. This had a "boxer" twin engine, in which a cylinder projects into the air-flow from each side of the machine. Apart from their single-cylinder models (basically to the same pattern), all their motorcycles used this distinctive layout until the early 1980s. Many BMW's are still produced in this layout, which is designated the R Series.
The entire BMW Motorcycle production has, since 1969, been located at the company's Berlin-Spandau factory.
During the Second World War, BMW produced the BMW R75 motorcycle with a motor-driven sidecar attached, combined with a lockable differential, this made the vehicle very capable off-road.
In 1982, came the K Series, shaft drive but water-cooled and with either three or four cylinders mounted in a straight line from front to back. Shortly after, BMW also started making the chain-driven F and G series with single and parallel twin Rotax engines.
In the early 1990s, BMW updated the airhead Boxer engine which became known as the oilhead. In 2002, the oilhead engine had two spark plugs per cylinder. In 2004 it added a built-in balance shaft, an increased capacity to and enhanced performance to for the R1200GS, compared to of the previous R1150GS. More powerful variants of the oilhead engines are available in the R1100S and R1200S, producing , respectively.
In 2004, BMW introduced the new K1200S Sports Bike which marked a departure for BMW. It had an engine producing , derived from the company's work with the Williams F1 team, and is lighter than previous K models. Innovations include electronically adjustable front and rear suspension, and a Hossack-type front fork that BMW calls Duolever.
BMW introduced anti-lock brakes on production motorcycles starting in the late 1980s. The generation of anti-lock brakes available on the 2006 and later BMW motorcycles paved the way for the introduction of electronic stability control, or anti-skid technology later in the 2007 model year.
BMW has been an innovator in motorcycle suspension design, taking up telescopic front suspension long before most other manufacturers. Then they switched to an Earles fork, front suspension by swinging fork (1955 to 1969). Most modern BMWs are truly rear swingarm, single sided at the back (compare with the regular swinging fork usually, and wrongly, called swinging arm). Some BMWs started using yet another trademark front suspension design, the Telelever, in the early 1990s. Like the Earles fork, the Telelever significantly reduces dive under braking.
BMW Group, on 31 January 2013, announced that Pierer Industrie AG has bought Husqvarna Motorcycles for an undisclosed amount, which will not be revealed by either party in the future. The company is headed by Stephan Pierer (CEO of KTM). Pierer Industrie AG is 51% owner of KTM and 100% owner of Husqvarna.
In September 2018, BMW unveiled a new self-driving motorcycle with BMW Motorrad with a goal of using the technology to help improve road safety. The design of the bike was inspired by the company's BMW R1200 GS model.
Automobiles.
Current models.
The current model lines of BMW cars are:
The current model lines of the X Series SUVs and crossovers are:
The current model line of the Z Series two-door roadsters is the Z4 (model code G29).
i models.
All-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles are sold under the "BMW i" sub-brand. The current model range consists of:
In addition, several plug-in hybrid models built on existing platforms have been marketed as "iPerformance" models. Examples include the 225xe using a 1.5 L three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine with an electric motor, the 330e/530e using a 2.0 L four-cylinder engine with an electric motor, and the 550e/750e using a 3.0 L six-cylinder engine with an electric motor. Also, crossover and SUV plug-in hybrid models have been released using i technology: X1 xDrive25e, X2 xDrive25e, X3 xDrive30e, and X5 xDrive40e.
M models.
The "BMW M GmbH" subsidiary (called BMW Motorsport GmbH until 1993) started making high-performance versions of various BMW models in 1978.
, the M lineup is:
The letter "M" is also often used in the marketing of BMW's regular models, for example the F20 M140i model, the G11 M760Li model and various optional extras called "M Sport", "M Performance" or similar.
Motorsport.
BMW has a long history of motorsport activities, including:
Involvement in the arts.
Architecture.
The global BMW Headquarters in Munich represents the cylinder head of a four-cylinder engine. It was designed by Karl Schwanzer and was completed in 1972. The building has become a European icon and was declared a protected historic building in 1999. The main tower consists of four vertical cylinders standing next to and across from each other. Each cylinder is divided horizontally in its center by a mold in the facade. Notably, these cylinders do not stand on the ground; they are suspended on a central support tower.
BMW Museum is a futuristic cauldron-shaped building, which was also designed by Karl Schwanzer and opened in 1972. The interior has a spiral theme and the roof is a 40-metre diameter BMW logo.
BMW Welt, the company's exhibition space in Munich, was designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au and opened in 2007. It includes a showroom and lifting platforms where a customer's new car is theatrically unveiled to the customer.
Art Cars.
In 1975, sculptor Alexander Calder was commissioned to paint the BMW 3.0 CSL racing car driven by Hervé Poulain at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which became the first in the series of BMW Art Cars. Since Calder's work of art, many other renowned artists throughout the world have created BMW Art Cars, including David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. To date, a total of 19 BMW Art Cars, based on both racing and regular production vehicles, have been created.
Visual arts.
BMW sponsors a number of awards in the visual arts. These include the BMW Art Journey award, which honors a young or mid-career artist in collaboration with Art Basel, and the BMW Painting Award, which was created to promote painting in Spain by finding new talent and showcasing their work.
BMW was the principal sponsor of the 1998 "The Art of the Motorcycle" exhibition at various Guggenheim museums, though the financial relationship between BMW and the Guggenheim Foundation was criticised in many quarters.
In 2012, BMW began sponsoring Independent Collectors production of the "BMW Art Guide", which is the first global guide to private and publicly accessible collections of contemporary art worldwide. The fourth edition, released in 2016, features 256 collections from 43 countries.
Production and sales.
BMW produces complete automobiles in the following countries:
BMW also has local assembly operation using complete knock-down (CKD) components in Brazil, Thailand, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and India.
In the UK, BMW has a Mini factory near Oxford, plants in Swindon and Hams Hall, and Rolls-Royce vehicle assembly at Goodwood. In 2020, these facilities were shut down for the period from 23 March to 17 April due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The BMW group (including Mini and Rolls-Royce) produced 1,366,838 automobiles in 2006 and then 1,481,253 automobiles in 2010. BMW Motorcycles are being produced at the company's Berlin factory, which earlier had produced aircraft engines for Siemens.
By 2011, about 56% of BMW-brand vehicles produced are powered by petrol engines and the remaining 44% are powered by diesel engines. Of those petrol vehicles, about 27% are four-cylinder models and about nine percent are eight-cylinder models. On average, 9,000 vehicles per day exit BMW plants, and 63% are transported by rail.
Annual production since 2005, according to BMW's annual reports:
Annual sales and deliveries since 1972, according to BMW's annual reports:
Recalls.
In November 2016, BMW recalled 136,000 2007–2012 model year U.S. cars for fuel pump wiring problems possibly resulting in fuel leak and engine stalling or restarting issues.
In 2018, BMW recalled 106,000 diesel vehicles in South Korea with a defective exhaust gas recirculation module, which caused 39 engine fires. The recall was then expanded to 324,000 more cars in Europe. Following the recall in South Korea, the government banned cars which had not yet been inspected from driving on public roads. This affected up to 25% of the recalled cars, where the owners had been notified but the cars had not yet been inspected. BMW is reported to have been aware since 2016 that more than 4% of the affected cars in South Korea had experienced failures in the EGR coolers, leading to approximately 20 owners suing the company.
Industry collaboration.
BMW has collaborated with other car manufacturers on the following occasions:
Sponsorships.
BMW made a six-year sponsorship deal with the United States Olympic Committee in July 2010.
In golf, BMW has sponsored various events, including the PGA Championship since 2007, the Italian Open from 2009 to 2012, the BMW Masters in China from 2012 to 2015 and the BMW International Open in Munich since 1989.
In rugby, BMW sponsored the South Africa national rugby union team from 2011 to 2015.
Car-sharing services.
DriveNow was a joint-venture between BMW and Sixt that operated in Europe from 2011 until 2019. By December 2012, DriveNow operated over 1,000 vehicles, in five cities and with approximately 60,000 customers.
In 2012, the BMW-owned subsidiary Alphabet began a corporate car-sharing service in Europe called AlphaCity.
The ReachNow car-sharing service was launched in Seattle in April 2016. ReachNow currently operates in Seattle, Portland and Brooklyn.
In 2018, BMW announced the launching of a pilot car subscription service for the United States called Access by BMW (its first one for the country), in Nashville, Tennessee. In January 2021, the company said that Access by BMW was "suspended".
Overseas subsidiaries.
Production facilities.
China.
The first BMW production facility in China was opened in 2004, as a result of a joint venture between BMW and Brilliance Auto. The plant was opened in the Shenyang industrial area and produces 3 Series and 5 Series models for the Chinese market. In 2012, a second factory was opened in Shenyang.
Between January and November 2014, BMW sold 415,200 vehicles in China, through a network of over 440 BMW stores and 100 Mini stores.
On 7 October 2021, BMW announced it would begin additional production of the X5 in China.
In February 2022, BMW invested an additional $4.2 billion into the Chinese joint venture, increasing its stake from 50% to 75%, becoming one of the first foreign automakers holding majority stake in China.
In June 2022, BMW announced a new plant project in Lydia, Shenyang designed for electric vehicles. It will become BMW Group's largest single project in China, costing 15 billion yuan (2.13 billion euros). The investment amount was raised by a further 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) in November 2022, following German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit to China.
Hungary.
On 31 July 2018, BMW announced to build a 1 billion euro car factory in Hungary. The plant, to be built near Debrecen, will have a production capacity of 150,000 cars a year.
Mexico.
In July 2014, BMW announced it was establishing a plant in Mexico, in the city and state of San Luis Potosí involving an investment of $1 billion. The plant will employ 1,500 people, and produce 150,000 cars annually.
Netherlands.
The Mini Convertible, Mini Countryman and BMW X1 are currently produced in the Netherlands at the VDL Nedcar factory in Born. Long-term orders for the Mini Countryman ended in 2020.
South Africa.
BMWs have been assembled in South Africa since 1968, when Praetor Monteerders' plant was opened in Rosslyn, near Pretoria. BMW initially bought shares in the company, before fully acquiring it in 1975; in so doing, the company became "BMW South Africa", the first wholly owned subsidiary of BMW to be established outside Germany. Unlike United States manufacturers, such as Ford and GM, which divested from the country in the 1980s, BMW retained full ownership of its operations in South Africa.
Following the end of apartheid in 1994, and the lowering of import tariffs, BMW South Africa ended local production of the 5 Series and 7 Series, in order to concentrate on production of the 3 Series for the export market. South African–built BMWs are now exported to right hand drive markets including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1997, BMW South Africa has produced vehicles in left-hand drive for export to Taiwan, the United States and Iran, as well as South America.
Three unique models that BMW Motorsport created for the South African market were the E23 M745i (1983), which used the M88 engine from the BMW M1, the BMW 333i (1986), which added a six-cylinder 3.2-litre M30 engine to the E30, and the E30 BMW 325is (1989) which was powered by an Alpina-derived 2.7-litre engine.
The plant code (position 11 in the VIN) for South African built models is "N".
United States.
BMW cars have been officially sold in the United States since 1956 and manufactured in the United States since 1994. The first BMW dealership in the United States opened in 1975. In 2016, BMW was the twelfth highest selling brand in the United States.
The manufacturing plant in Greer, South Carolina has the highest production of the BMW plants worldwide, currently producing approximately 1,500 vehicles per day. The models produced at the Spartanburg plant are the X3, X4, X5, X6, X7 and XM SUV models.
In addition to the South Carolina manufacturing facility, BMW's North American companies include sales, marketing, design, and financial services operations in the United States, Mexico, Canada and Latin America.
Complete knock-down assembly facilities.
Brazil.
On 9 October 2014, BMW's new complete knock-down (CKD) assembly plant in Araquari, assembled its first car— an F30 3 Series.
The cars assembled at Araquari are the F20 1 Series, F30 3 Series, F48 X1, F25 X3 and Mini Countryman.
Egypt.
Bavarian Auto Group became the importer of the BMW and Mini brands in 2003.
Since 2005, the 3 Series, 5 Series, 7 Series, X1 and X3 models sold in Egypt are assembled from complete knock-down components at the BMW plant in Cairo.
India.
BMW India was established in 2006 as a sales subsidiary with a head office located in Gurugram.
A BMW complete knock-down assembly plant was opened in Chennai in 2007, assembling Indian-market 3 Series, 5 Series, 7 Series, X1, X3, X5, Mini Countryman and motorcycle models. The 20 Million Euro plant aims to produce 1,700 cars per year.
Indonesia.
PT. BMW Indonesia was established in 2001 as a subsidiary with a head office located in Central Jakarta. It was managed by PT. Astra International.
10 years later in 2011, BMW Group invested more than 100 Billion Indonesian rupiah to expand its production, by establish the complete knock-down (CKD) assembly plant in Gaya Motor's production facility in Sunter, Jakarta. the plant is currently assembling Indonesian-market 2 Series (gran coupé), 3 Series (sedan), 5 Series (sedan), 7 Series, X1, X3, X5, X7, and Mini Countryman.
Malaysia.
BMW's complete knock-down (CKD) assembly plant in Kedah. Assembled Malaysia-market 1 Series, 3 Series, 5 Series, 7 Series, X1, X3, X4, X5, X6 and Mini Countryman since 2008.
Russia.
Russian-market 3 Series and 5 Series cars are assembled from complete knock-down components in Kaliningrad beginning in 1999. In March 2022, BMW withdrew from the Russian market and ceased production within Russia in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Uruguay.
In Uruguay, Spanish-born businessman José Arijón founded Convex (later Camur), which assembled BMW cars from 1965 to 1992. Four models were produced: the 1600, 2002, 3 Series and 5 Series, totalling 12,000 units.
Vehicle importers.
Canada.
BMW's first dealership in Canada, located in Ottawa, was opened in 1969. In 1986, BMW established a head office in Canada.
BMW sold 28,149 vehicles in Canada in 2008.
Japan.
BMW Japan Corp, a wholly owned subsidiary, imports and distributes BMW vehicles in Japan.
Philippines.
BMW Philippines, an owned subsidiary of San Miguel Corporation, is the official importer and distributor of BMW in the Philippines.
BMW sold 920 vehicles in the Philippines in 2019.
Korea.
BMW Korea imports BMW vehicles in South Korea with more than fifty service centers to fully cater to South Korean customers. Also, BMW Korea has its own driving center in near Incheon International Airport.
Criticism.
BMW has received criticism for attempting to lock vehicle hardware features behind subscription fees. In 2018, BMW stated at the Detroit Auto Show that they will start charging users a subscription fee for Apple Car Play. After receiving widespread criticism, BMW removed the subscription. In 2022, BMW announced that they will start charging owners $18 a month to use heated seats. They removed the feature in 2023 after it was criticised.
|
3774
|
36729223
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3774
|
Bisexual (disambiguation)
|
Bisexuality better known as bisexual, in human sexuality, describes a person that is sexually attracted to persons of both the same sex and persons of the opposite sex.
Bisexual may also refer to:
|
3776
|
7903804
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3776
|
Bornholm
|
Bornholm () is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of Denmark, south of Sweden, northeast of Germany and north of Poland.
Strategically located, Bornholm has been fought over for centuries. It has usually been ruled by Denmark, but also by Sweden and by Lübeck. The ruin of Hammershus, at the northwestern tip of the island, is the largest medieval fortress in northern Europe, testament to the importance of its location. Bornholm and Ertholmene comprise the last remaining Danish territory in Skåneland east of Øresund, having been surrendered to Sweden in 1658, but regained by Denmark in 1660 after a local revolt.
The island is known as ("sunshine island") because of its weather and ("rock island") because of its geology, which consists of granite, except along the southern coast. The heat from the summer is stored in the rock formations and the weather is quite warm until October. As a result of the climate, a local variety of the common fig, known as Bornholm's Diamond ("Bornholms Diamant") ("Ficus carica 'Bornholm' "), can grow locally on the island. The island's topography consists of dramatic rock formations in the north (unlike the rest of Denmark, which is mostly gentle rolling hills) sloping down towards pine and deciduous forests (greatly affected by storms in the 1950s), farmland in the middle and sandy beaches in the south.
The island is home to many of Denmark's round churches. Occupying an area of , the island had a total population of 38,966 .
History.
Medieval.
In Old Norse the island was known as "Burgundaholmr", and in ancient Danish especially the island's name was "Borghand" or "Borghund"; these names were related to Old Norse "borg" 'height' and "bjarg/berg" 'mountain, rock' because it is an island that rises high from the sea. Other names known for the island include "Burgendaland" (9th century), "Hulmo" / "Holmus" ("Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum"), "Burgundehulm" (1145), and "Borghandæholm" (14th century). The Old English translation of Orosius uses the form "Burgenda land". There are scholars who believe that the Burgundians are named after Bornholm. The Burgundians were a Germanic people who were settled in the Rhone region by the Romans, and who the region of Burgundy in France is named after.
Modern.
Bornholm was pawned to Lübeck by Frederick I of Denmark for 50 years starting in 1525, in payment for its support in his acquisition of the Danish throne. Its first militia, Bornholms Milits, was formed in 1624. Swedish forces conquered the island during the Torstenson War in 1645, but returned the island to Denmark in the following peace settlement. After the war in 1658, Denmark ceded the island to Sweden under the Treaty of Roskilde along with the rest of the Skåneland, Bohuslän and Trøndelag, and it was occupied by Swedish forces.
A revolt broke out the same year, culminating in Villum Clausen's shooting of the Swedish commander Johan Printzensköld on 8 December 1658. After the revolt, the inhabitants handed back their island to the Danish kings.
Bornholm attracted many famous artists at the beginning of the 20th century, forming a group now known as the Bornholm school of painters. In addition to Oluf Høst, they include Karl Isaksson (1878–1922) from Sweden, and the Danes Edvard Weie (1879–1943), Olaf Rude (1886–1957), Niels Lergaard (1893–1982), and Kræsten Iversen (1886–1955).
World War II.
In the early morning of 9 April 1940, German forces occupied Denmark and began the invasion of Norway (Operation Weserübung).
On 22 August 1942 a V-1 flying bomb crashed on Bornholm during a test – the warhead was a dummy made of concrete. The wreckage was photographed and sketched by the Danish Naval Officer-in-Charge on Bornholm, Lieutenant Commander Hasager Christiansen. When reported to British Intelligence, it was one of the first signs of Germany's aspirations to develop flying bombs and rockets, which were to become known as V-1. The Bornholm rocket turned out to be from Peenemünde.
The Soviet bombing of the two main towns on 7-8 May 1945 prepared the landing of Soviet troops at Bornholm.
Danish radio was not allowed to broadcast the news because it was thought it would spoil the liberation festivities in Denmark.
8 May 1945 was the Victory in Europe Day.
On 9 May, Soviet troops landed at Bornholm, and after a short fight, the German garrison (about 12,000 strong) surrendered. Soviet forces would leave the island on 5 April 1946.
Later research found that the Soviet bombing of Bornholm resulted in approximately three thousand Danish civilians in Rønne becoming homeless, while damaging a majority of the houses in Nexø, fully destroying roughly one-tenth. Ten Danes were killed and thirty-five wounded, considered a low number, because many civilians were evacuated to shelters on the outskirts of the respective towns before the worst raids hit.
Cold War.
After the evacuation of their forces from Bornholm, the Soviets took the position that the stationing of foreign troops on Bornholm would be considered a declaration of war against the Soviet Union, and that Denmark should keep troops on it at all times to protect it from such foreign aggression. This policy remained in force after NATO was formed, with Denmark as a founding member. The Soviets accepted the stationing there of Danish troops, which were part of NATO but viewed as militarily inferior elements of the alliance, but they strongly objected to the presence of other NATO troops on Bornholm, US troops in particular.
On 5 March 1953, the day of Stalin's death, Polish pilot Franciszek Jarecki defected from the Eastern Bloc and landed a MiG-15 fighter on the island. He was later granted asylum and rewarded for providing Western intelligence with the then-newest Soviet jet fighter.
In 2017, Denmark's Defence Intelligence Service decided to build a listening tower near Østermarie, almost 90 meters high, to intercept radio communications across the Baltic Sea and in parts of Russia.
Municipality.
Bornholm Regional Municipality is the local authority (Danish, "kommune") covering the entire island. Its formal name is Bornholm Municipality. It is given the right in the law establishing it to be called Bornholm Regional Municipality. (For explanation read on). It is the of the five former (1 April 1970 until 2002) municipalities on the island (Allinge-Gudhjem, Hasle, Nexø, Rønne and Aakirkeby) and the former Bornholm County. Bornholm Regional Municipality was also a county in its own right during its first four years from 1 January 2003 until 31 December 2006. From 1 January 2007 all counties were abolished, and Bornholm became part of the Capital Region of Denmark whose main responsibility is the health service. In the bill (Danish "forslag") ("Bill of Law on merger of the municipalities of Bornholm") presented 30 January 2002 by the Minister of Interior and Health to Folketinget, it says in §1 that (1st sentence) "The 1st of January 2003 Bornholm Municipality is established by a merger of (names of municipalities mentioned, and county's name mentioned), and (2nd sentence) Bornholm Municipality is called Bornholm Regional Municipality".
The island had 21 municipalities until March 1970, of which 6 were market towns and 15 parishes. In addition to supervising parish municipalities, which was the responsibility of the counties in "all" of Denmark, the market town municipalities of Bornholm were supervised by Bornholm County as well and not by the Interior Ministry as was the case in the rest of Denmark. The seat of the municipal council is the island's main town, Rønne. The voters decided to merge the county with the municipalities in a referendum 29 May 2001, effective from 1 January 2003. The question on the ballot was, "Do you want the six municipal entities of Bornholm to be joined to form one municipal entity as of 1 January 2003?" 73.9% voted in favour. The lowest percentage for the merger was in Nexø municipality (966 more people voting "Yes" than "No"), whose mayor, Annelise Molin, a Social Democrat, spoke out against the merger. It was required that each municipality had more "Yes" votes than "No" votes. Otherwise the merger would have to be abandoned altogether. The six municipal entities had up to 122 councillors (of which county clls were 18, from 1998 15), reduced to 89 in the municipalities from the 1990s, in the 1970s and the new regional municipality would have 27 councillors from the start 1 January 2003. They were reduced to 23 from 1 January 2018 (election November 2017). From 1 January 2003 until 31 December 2006 the 27 cllrs were called Regional Council (Danish "Regionsråd"), from 1 January 2007 changed to Municipal Board (Danish "Kommunalbestyrelse") as is the usual term in almost all Danish municipalities. This was to avoid confusion with the Regional Council in Region Hovedstaden, and in the other regions
The merger was approved in a law by the Folketing 19 (and signature by the head of state 25) March 2002, transferring the tasks of the abolished county and old municipalities to the new Bornholm Regional Municipality. The first regional mayor in the first three years from 2003 until 2005 was Thomas Thors (born 28 July 1949), a physician and member of the Social Democrats and previously the last mayor of Rønne Municipality for five years from 1998 until 2002. He became a mayor again in 2021. Bjarne Kristiansen, who was the last mayor of Hasle years from the summer of 2000 until 2002, representing the local Borgerlisten political party, served as mayor for four years from 1 January 2006 until 2009. From 1 January 2007, Bornholm became a part of the Capital Region of Denmark. From 1 January 2010 until 31 December 2020 the mayor was Winni Grosbøll, a high school teacher and a member of the Social Democrats ("Socialdemokratiet") political party. The deputy mayor Morten Riis was mayor for a short interlude from 1 January until 4 January 2021. He is from the Red-Green Alliance. Thomas Thors, who was elected again in 2017, became mayor again from 4 January 2021. After the 2021 Danish local elections Jacob Trøst became mayor from January 2022. He is from the Conservative party. This was after an agreement ("aftale om konstituering") between the Red-Green Alliance, amongst whom Morten Riis will be deputy mayor, and the Danish People's Party with the Conservatives.
Municipal council.
Bornholm's municipal council today consists of 23 members, elected every four years. In the first four local elections in the newly created municipality there were 27 members elected to the municipal council. The 2002 local election only took place on Bornholm. From the election in 2017 the number of councillors elected was reduced to 23 members, serving their term of office from 1 January 2018 until 31 December 2021.
Below are the election results to the new merged municipal council beginning with the first election 29 May 2002.
Transport.
Ferry services connect Rønne to Świnoujście (Poland), Sassnitz (Germany), Køge, by road ( as the crow flies) south of Copenhagen, Denmark; the destination to Køge replaced the nighttime route directly to and from Copenhagen (for both cargo and passengers) from 1 October 2004; and catamaran services to Ystad (Sweden). Simrishamn (Sweden) has a ferry connection during the summer. There are also regular catamaran services between Nexø and the Polish ports of Kołobrzeg, Łeba and Ustka. There are direct bus connections Ystad-Copenhagen, coordinated with the catamaran. There are also flights from Bornholm Airport to Copenhagen and other locations.
Because of its remote location Bornholm Regional Municipality has its own traffic company, BAT, and is its own employment region, and also performs other tasks normally carried out by the regions in the rest of Denmark. In some respects the municipality forms a region of its own.
Bornholm Regional Municipality was not merged with other municipalities on 1 January 2007 in the nationwide Municipal Reform of 2007.
Towns and villages.
The larger towns on the island are located on the coast and have harbours. There is however one exception, centrally placed Aakirkeby, which was also the name of the municipality from 1970 until 2002, but it included the harbour of Boderne, to the south. The largest town is Rønne; it is the seat, in the southwest on the westernmost point of the island. The other main towns (clockwise around the island) are Hasle, Sandvig, Allinge, Gudhjem, Svaneke and Nexø. Monday morning 22 September 2014 it was documented by "Folkeregistret" in the municipality that the number of people living in the municipality that day were 39,922, the lowest number in over 100 years.
, Statistics Denmark gave the populations as follows:
The town of Rønne after the merger of the island's administrative entities 1 January 2003 reached a low point of 13,568 inhabitants 1 January 2014. 15,957 people in 1965 (date unknown;number not registerbased) lived in the two parishes that would become Rønne municipality from 1 April 1970. In the table, numbers for Rønne are for the parish of Rønne, Rønne Sogn, alone. The year is unknown but sometime between 2000 and 2005. It does not include Knudsker Sogn, which was also part of Rønne Municipality. Other localities (with approximate populations, not updated) include Aarsballe (86), Arnager (151), Olsker (67), Rutsker (64), Rø (181), Stenseby (?) and Vang (92). In 2010 and 2018 10,297 and 9,111 respectively lived in rural districts, and 88 and 71 had no fixed address. A rural district is defined by Statistics Denmark as a settlement with less than 200 inhabitants.
Population.
On 22 September 2014 population numbers showed fewer than 40,000 inhabitants on the island for the first time in over 100 years. The "Folkeregister" in the municipality could document 39,922 inhabitants in the municipality on that date.
Language.
Many inhabitants speak the Bornholmsk dialect, which is a dialect of Danish.
Religion.
Most inhabitants are members of the Lutheran Church of Denmark ("Folkekirken"). Various Christian denominations have become established on the island, most during the 19th century.
Sights and landmarks.
Geological formations are immediately visible in Bornholm in a way not common elsewhere in Denmark. The still-operated "Stubbeløkken" and "Klippeløkken" granite quarries in Knudsker parish just east of central Rønne are among the few remaining of many formerly active quarries on the island. The island's varied geography and seascapes attract visitors to its many beauty spots from the Hammeren promontory in the northwest to the Almindingen forest in the centre and the Dueodde beaches in the southeast. Of special interest are the rocky sea cliffs at Jons Kapel and Helligdomsklipperne, the varied topography of Paradisbakkerne and rift valleys such as Ekkodalen and Døndalen. Furongian (late Cambrian period) sediments of the Alum Shale Formation of Bornholm presented by all six superzones; three agnostoid and fourteen trilobite zones are defined by fossils. 8502 specimens, most of which are disarticulated sclerites, have been collected from these strata. Described gerena include "Ctenopyge", "Eurycare", "Leptoplastus", "Olenus", "Parabolina", "Peltura", "Protopeltura", "Sphaerophthalmus", "Lotagnostus" and "Triangulopyge".
Bornholm's numerous windmills include the post mill of Egeby and the well-kept Dutch mill at Aarsdale. The lighthouse at Dueodde is Denmark's tallest, while Hammeren Lighthouse stands at a height of above sea level and Rønne Lighthouse rises over the waterfront.
Examples of roads that have (very) steep climbs and descents are: (inland) Simblegårdsvej in Klemensker, which begins by the village inn Klemens Kro, and Slamrebjergvej just outside Nexø extending northward from the main road from Rønne. Along the coast there are several steep roads, which is also the case in some parts of Denmark as a whole, for instance in and around Vejle.
The island hosts examples of 19th- and early-20th-century architecture, and about 300 wooden houses in Rønne and Nexø, donated by Sweden after World War II, when the island was repairing damage caused by the war.
The island is home to 15 medieval churches, four of which are round churches with unique artwork and architecture. The ancient site of Rispebjerg has remains of sun temples from the Neolithic and earthworks from the Iron Age.
There are 14 European bison near Åkirkeby, attracting 100,000 visitors a year.
Education.
Because of the dilapidated state of their buildings, all secondary educational facilities in Rønne, including adult evening classes, are being transferred to new facilities at Campus Bornholm in 2018. Campus Bornholm is a merger formed in June 2010 consisting of Bornholms Erhvervsskole (youth and adults), Bornholm High School (youth) and VUC Bornholm (adults), then occupying separate addresses. Learning institutions not part of this formalised collaboration will also be housed at Minervavej in Rønne. The building costs were over 300 million DKK (US$46.9 million (29 June 2018)). The A.P. Møller Foundation contributed a sum of 56 million DKK (US$8.76 million (29 June 2018)) to the project.
Economy.
Among Bornholm's chief industrial activities are dairy farming and arts and crafts industries such as glass production and pottery using locally worked clay.
Jensen-Group, an industrial washing and folding machine company, was founded on the island and has a factory in Rønne. It is headquartered in Belgium.
Tourism is also important during the summer months.
Electricity supply.
Bornholm is also home to a large internationally funded demonstration project to test the viability of novel energy market mechanisms to regulate energy networks with a high prevalence of renewables (such as wind turbines and photovoltaics). 50% of the EcoGrid project is EU-funded, with the remainder coming mainly from large corporations.
Military.
Almegårds Kaserne on Bornholm is home to the III Reconnaissance Battalion (III/GHR) from the Guard Hussar Regiment.
Climate.
Bornholm has an oceanic climate relatively similar to southern Sweden and mainland Denmark, whose summer highs and winter lows are heavily moderated by its maritime and isolated position. Though intense heat is rare, the climate is sunny during summer and rainfall is generally sparse for a climate of this type. The winter of 2010 – 2011 was exceptionally extreme with snow depth reaching at least 146 cm (58 inches) and snowdrifts of six meters (20 feet), the highest in Northern Europe. Military assistance was needed to clear roadways. The DMI estimated the weight of snow to be 100 million tons.
Sports.
Bornholm's geography as an island and moderate climate makes Bornholm an ideal location for sailing and other water-based sports. Bornholm has also become an internationally recognised venue for 'match racing', a sailing sport where two identical yachts are raced in one-on-one events on the water. The Danish Open event was held in Bornholm in September 2010 at the port town of Rønne on the western coast of Bornholm. The five-day Danish Open is a key event in the World Match Racing Tour calendar which is one of only 3 events awarded 'special event' status by the International Sailing Federation. The Tour is the world's leading professional 'match racing' series and features a nine-event calendar which crosses three continents during the series. Points accrued during the Danish Open contribute directly to the World Match Racing Tour championship with the winner of the season finale at the Monsoon Cup in Malaysia claiming the ultimate match racing title ISAF World Match Racing Champion.
There are two small stadiums: Nexø Stadion, in Nexø, where NB Bornholm association football club play; and the slightly larger multi-use stadium Rønne Stadion Nord in Rønne, which serves the Bornholm national football team, multi-section club most well known for athletics IK Viking, and several local football clubs. The DBU Bornholm is the local branch governing football on the island.
|
3777
|
49597959
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3777
|
Bay (disambiguation)
|
A bay is an area of water bordered by land on three sides.
Bay, Bays, baying, or The Bay may also refer to:
|
3778
|
7903804
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3778
|
Book
|
A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, mostly of writing and images. Modern books are typically composed of many pages bound together and protected by a cover, what is known as the "codex" format; older formats include the scroll and the tablet.
As a conceptual object, a "book" often refers to a written work of substantial length by one or more authors, which may also be distributed digitally as an electronic book (ebook). These kinds of works can be broadly classified into fiction (containing invented content, often narratives) and non-fiction (containing content intended as factual truth). But a physical book may not contain a written work: for example, it may contain "only" drawings, engravings, photographs, sheet music, puzzles, or removable content like paper dolls.
The modern book industry has seen several major changes due to new technologies, including ebooks and audiobooks (recordings of books being read aloud). Awareness of the needs of print-disabled people has led to a rise in formats designed for greater accessibility such as braille printing and large-print editions.
Google Books estimated in 2010 that approximately 130 million total unique books had been published. The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in book creation and dissemination. Books are sold at both regular stores and specialized bookstores, as well as online (for delivery), and can be borrowed from libraries or public bookcases. The reception of books has led to a number of social consequences, including censorship.
Books are sometimes contrasted with periodical literature, such as newspapers or magazines, where new editions are published according to a regular schedule. Related items, also broadly categorized as "books", are left empty for personal use: as in the case of account books, appointment books, autograph books, notebooks, diaries and sketchbooks.
Etymology.
The word "book" comes from the Old English , which in turn likely comes from the Germanic root , cognate to "beech". In Slavic languages like Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian —"letter" is cognate with "beech". In Russian, Serbian and Macedonian, the word () or () refers to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood. The Latin word , meaning a book in the modern sense (bound and with separate leaves), originally meant "block of wood".
An avid reader or collector of books is a bibliophile, or colloquially a "bookworm".
Definitions.
In its modern incarnation, a book is typically composed of many pages (commonly of paper, parchment, or vellum) that are bound together along one edge and protected by a cover. By extension, "book" refers to a physical book's written, printed, or graphic contents. A single part or division of a longer written work may also be called a "book", especially for some works composed in antiquity: each part of Aristotle's "Physics", for example, is a book.
It is difficult to create a precise definition of the book that clearly delineates it from other kinds of written material across time and culture. The meaning of the term has changed substantially over time with the evolution of communication media. Historian of books James Raven has suggested that when studying how books have been used to communicate, they should be defined in a broadly inclusive way as "portable, durable, replicable and legible" means of recording and disseminating information, rather than relying on physical or contextual features. This would include, for example, ebooks, newspapers, and quipus (a form of knot-based recording historically used by cultures in Andean South America), but not objects fixed in place such as inscribed monuments.
A stricter definition is given by UNESCO: for the purpose of recording national statistics on book production, it recommended that a book be defined as "a non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages, exclusive of the cover pages, published in the country and made available to the public", distinguishing them from other written material such as pamphlets. Kovač "et al." have critiqued this definition for failing to account for new digital formats. They propose four criteria (a minimum length; textual content; a form with defined boundaries; and "information architecture" like linear structure and certain textual elements) that form a "hierarchy of the book", in which formats that fulfill more criteria are considered more similar to the traditional printed book.
Although in academic language a monograph is a specialist work on a single subject, in library and information science the term is used more broadly to mean any non-serial publication complete in one volume (a physical book) or a definite number of volumes (such as a multi-volume novel), in contrast to serial or periodical publications.
History.
The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributions to the field have come from textual scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social history and cultural history. It aims to demonstrate that the book as an object, not just the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between readers and words. Analysis of each component part of the book can reveal its purpose, where and how it was kept, who read it, ideological and religious beliefs of the period, and whether readers interacted with the text within. Even a lack of such evidence can leave valuable clues about the nature of a particular book.
The earliest forms of writing were etched on tablets, transitioning to palm leaves and papyrus in ancient times. Parchment and paper later emerged as important substrates for bookmaking, introducing greater durability and accessibility. Across regions like China, the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia, diverse methods of book production evolved. The Middle Ages saw the rise of illuminated manuscripts, intricately blending text and imagery, particularly during the Mughal era in South Asia under the patronage of rulers like Akbar and Shah Jahan.
Prior to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, made famous by the Gutenberg Bible, each text was a unique handcrafted valuable article, personalized through the design features incorporated by the scribe, owner, bookbinder, and illustrator. Its creation marked a pivotal moment for book production. Innovations like movable type and steam-powered presses accelerated manufacturing processes and contributed to increased literacy rates. Copyright protection also emerged, securing authors' rights and shaping the publishing landscape. The Late Modern Period introduced chapbooks, catering to a wider range of readers, and mechanization of the printing process further enhanced efficiency.
The 20th century witnessed the advent of typewriters, computers, and desktop publishing, transforming document creation and printing. Digital advancements in the 21st century led to the rise of ebooks, propelled by the popularity of ereaders and accessibility features. While discussions about the potential decline of physical books have surfaced, print media has proven remarkably resilient, continuing to thrive as a multi-billion dollar industry. Additionally, efforts to make literature more inclusive emerged, with the development of Braille for the visually impaired and the creation of spoken books, providing alternative ways for individuals to access and enjoy literature.
Tablet.
Some of the earliest written records were made on tablets. Clay tablets (flattened pieces of clay impressed with a stylus) were used in the Ancient Near East throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age, especially for writing in cuneiform. Wax tablets (pieces of wood covered in a layer of wax) were used in classical antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages.
The custom of binding several wax tablets together (Roman "pugillares") is a possible precursor of modern bound books. The etymology of the word "codex" (block of wood) suggests that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets.
Scroll.
Scrolls made from papyrus were first used for writing in Ancient Egypt, perhaps as early as the First Dynasty, although the earliest evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC). According to Herodotus (History 5:58), the Phoenicians brought writing and papyrus to Greece around the 10th or 9th century BC. Whether made from papyrus, parchment, or paper, scrolls were the dominant writing medium in the Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese, Hebrew, and Macedonian cultures. The codex dominated in the Roman world by late antiquity, but scrolls persisted much longer in Asia.
Codex.
The codex is the ancestor of the modern book, consisting of sheets of uniform size bound along one edge and typically held between two covers made of some more robust material. Isidore of Seville (died 636) explained the then-current relation between a codex, book, and scroll in his "Etymologiae" (VI.13): "A codex is composed of many books; a book is of one scroll. It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks ("codex") of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches".
The first written mention of the codex as a form of book is from Martial, in his "Apophoreta" at the end of the first century, where he praises its compactness. However, the codex never gained much popularity in the pagan Hellenistic world, and only within the Christian community did it gain widespread use. This change happened gradually during the 3rd and 4th centuries, and the reasons for adopting the codex form of the book were several: the format was more economical than the scroll, as both sides of the writing material can be used; and it was portable, searchable, and easier to conceal. The Christian authors may also have wanted to distinguish their writings from the pagan and Judaic texts written on scrolls.
The codices of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica had the same form as the European codex, but were instead made with long folded strips of either fig bark (amatl) or plant fibers, often with a layer of whitewash applied before writing. New World codices were written as late as the 16th century (see Maya codices and Aztec codices). Those written before the Spanish conquests seem all to have been single long sheets folded concertina-style, sometimes written on both sides of the local "amatl" paper.
Manuscript.
Manuscripts, handwritten and hand-copied documents, were the only form of writing before the invention and widespread adoption of print. Advances were made in the techniques used to create them.
In the early Western Roman Empire, monasteries continued Latin writing traditions related to Christianity, and the clergy were the predominant readers and copyists. The bookmaking process was long and laborious. They were usually written on parchment or vellum, writing surfaces made from processed animal skin. The parchment had to be prepared, then the unbound pages were planned and ruled with a blunt tool or lead, after which the text was written by a scribe, who usually left blank areas for illustration and rubrication. Finally, it was bound by a bookbinder.
Because of the difficulties involved in making and copying books, they were expensive and rare. Smaller monasteries usually had only a few dozen books. By the 9th century, larger collections held around 500 volumes and even at the end of the Middle Ages, the papal library in Avignon and Paris library of the Sorbonne held only around 2,000 volumes.
The rise of universities in the 13th century led to an increased demand for books, and a new system for copying appeared. The books were divided into unbound leaves ("pecia"), which were lent out to different copyists, so the speed of book production was considerably increased. The system was maintained by secular stationers guilds, which produced both religious and non-religious material.In India, bound manuscripts made of birch bark or palm leaf had existed since antiquity. The text in palm leaf manuscripts was inscribed with a knife pen on rectangular cut and cured palm leaf sheets; coloring was then applied to the surface and wiped off, leaving the ink in the incised grooves. Each sheet typically had a hole through which a string could pass, and with these the sheets were tied together with a string to bind like a book.
Woodblock printing.
In woodblock printing, a relief image of an entire page is carved into blocks of wood, inked, and used to print copies of that page. It originated in the Han dynasty before 220 AD, used to print textiles and later paper, and was widely used throughout East Asia. The oldest dated book printed by this method is "The Diamond Sutra" (868 AD). The method (called woodcut when used in art) arrived in Europe in the early 14th century. Books (known as block-books), as well as playing-cards and religious pictures, began to be produced by this method. Creating an entire book was a painstaking process, requiring a hand-carved block for each page, and the wooden blocks could crack if stored for too long.
Movable type and incunabula.
The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type of earthenware , but there are no known surviving examples of his printing. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg independently invented movable type in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce and more widely available. Early printed books, single sheets and images which were created before 1501 in Europe are known as incunables or "incunabula".
19th century to present.
Steam-powered printing presses became popular in the early 19th century. These machines could print 1,100 sheets per hour, but workers could only set 2,000 letters per hour. Monotype and linotype typesetting machines were introduced in the late 19th century. They could set more than 6,000 letters per hour and an entire line of type at once. There have been numerous improvements in the printing press. In mid-20th century, European book production had risen to over 200,000 titles per year.
During the 20th century, libraries faced an ever-increasing rate of publishing, sometimes called an information explosion. The advent of electronic publishing and the internet means that new information is often published online rather than in printed books, for example through a digital library. "Print on demand" technologies, which make it possible to print as few as one book at a time, have made self-publishing (and vanity publishing) much easier and more affordable, and has allowed publishers to keep low-selling books in print rather than declaring them out of print.
Contemporary publishing.
Presently, books are typically produced by a publishing company in order to be put on the market by distributors and bookstores. The publisher negotiates a formal legal agreement with authors in order to obtain the copyright to works, then arranges for them to be produced and sold. The major steps of the publishing process are: editing and proofreading the work to be published; designing the printed book; manufacturing the books; and selling the books, including marketing and promotion. Each of these steps is usually taken on by third-party companies paid by the publisher. This is in contrast to self-publishing, where an author pays for the production and distribution of their own work and manages some or all steps of the publishing process.
English-language publishing is currently dominated by the so-called "Big Five" publishers: Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan Publishers. They were estimated to make up almost 60 percent of the market for general-readership books in 2021.
Design.
Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various elements of a book into a coherent unit.
Layout.
Modern books are organized according to a particular format called the book's "layout". Although there is great variation in layout, modern books tend to adhere to a set of rules with regard to what the parts of the layout are and what their content usually includes. A basic layout will include a "front cover", a "back cover" and the book's content which is called its "body copy" or "content pages". The front cover often bears the book's title (and subtitle, if any) and the name of its author or editor(s). The "inside front cover" page is usually left blank in both hardcover and paperback books. The next section, if present, is the book's "front matter", which includes all textual material after the front cover but not part of the book's content such as a foreword, a dedication, a table of contents and publisher data such as the book's edition or printing number and place of publication. Between the body copy and the back cover goes the "end matter" which would include any indices, sets of tables, diagrams, glossaries or lists of cited works (though an edited book with several authors usually places cited works at the end of each authored chapter). The "inside back cover" page, like that inside the front cover, is usually blank. The "back cover" is the usual place for the book's ISBN and maybe a photograph of the author(s)/ editor(s), perhaps with a short introduction to them. Also here often appear plot summaries, barcodes and excerpted reviews of the book.
The body of the books is usually divided into parts, chapters, sections and sometimes subsections that are composed of at least a paragraph or more.
Size.
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms commonly used by contemporary libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books ranges from "folio" (the largest), to "quarto" (smaller) and "octavo" (still smaller). Historically, these terms referred to the format of the book, a technical term used by printers and bibliographers to indicate the size of a leaf in terms of the size of the original sheet. For example, a quarto was a book printed on sheets of paper folded in half twice, with the first fold at right angles to the second, to produce 4 leaves (or 8 pages), each leaf one fourth the size of the original sheet printed – note that a "leaf" refers to the single piece of paper, whereas a "page" is one side of a leaf. Because the actual format of many modern books cannot be determined from examination of the books, bibliographers may not use these terms in scholarly descriptions.
Illustration.
While some form of book illustration has existed since the invention of writing, the modern Western tradition of illustration began with 15th-century block books, in which the book's text and images were cut into the same block. Techniques such as engraving, etching, and lithography have also been influential.
Manufacturing.
The methods used for the printing and binding of books continued fundamentally unchanged from the 15th century into the early 20th century. While there was more mechanization, a book printer in 1900 still used movable metal type assembled into words, lines, and pages to create copies. Modern paper books are printed on paper designed specifically for printing. Traditionally, book papers are off-white or low-white papers (easier to read), are opaque to minimize the show-through of text from one side of the page to the other and are (usually) made to tighter caliper or thickness specifications, particularly for case-bound books. Different paper qualities are used depending on the type of book: Machine finished coated papers, woodfree uncoated papers, coated fine papers and special fine papers are common paper grades.
Today, the majority of books are printed by offset lithography. When a book is printed, the pages are laid out on the plate so that after the printed sheet is folded the pages will be in the correct sequence. Books tend to be manufactured nowadays in a few standard sizes. The sizes of books are usually specified as "trim size": the size of the page after the sheet has been folded and trimmed. The standard sizes result from sheet sizes (therefore machine sizes) which became popular 200 or 300 years ago, and have come to dominate the industry. British conventions in this regard prevail throughout the English-speaking world, except for the US. The European book manufacturing industry works to a completely different set of standards.
Hardcover books have a stiff binding, while paperback books have cheaper, flexible covers which tend to be less durable. Publishers may produce low-cost pre-publication copies known as galleys or "bound proofs" for promotional purposes, such as generating reviews in advance of publication. Galleys are usually made as cheaply as possible, since they are not intended for sale.
Printing.
Some books, particularly those with shorter runs (i.e. with fewer copies) will be printed on sheet-fed offset presses, but most books are now printed on web presses, which are fed by a continuous roll of paper, and can consequently print more copies in a shorter time. As the production line circulates, a complete "book" is collected together in one stack of pages, and another machine carries out the folding, pleating, and stitching of the pages into bundles of signatures (sections of pages) ready to go into the gathering line. The pages of a book are printed two at a time, not as one complete book. Excess numbers are printed to make up for any spoilage due to make-readies or test pages to assure final print quality.
A "make-ready" is the preparatory work carried out by the pressmen to get the printing press up to the required quality of impression. Included in make-ready is the time taken to mount the plate onto the machine, clean up any mess from the previous job, and get the press up to speed. As soon as the pressman decides that the printing is correct, all the make-ready sheets will be discarded, and the press will start making books. Similar make readies take place in the folding and binding areas, each involving spoilage of paper.
Recent developments in book manufacturing include the development of digital printing. Book pages are printed, in much the same way as an office copier works, using toner rather than ink. Each book is printed in one pass, not as separate signatures. Digital printing has permitted the manufacture of much smaller quantities than offset, in part because of the absence of make readies and of spoilage. Digital printing has opened up the possibility of print-on-demand, where no books are printed until after an order is received from a customer.
Binding.
After the signatures are folded and gathered, they move into the bindery. In the middle of last century there were still many trade binders—stand-alone binding companies which did no printing, specializing in binding alone. At that time, because of the dominance of letterpress printing, typesetting and printing took place in one location, and binding in a different factory. When type was all metal, a typical book's worth of type would be bulky, fragile and heavy. The less it was moved in this condition the better: so printing would be carried out in the same location as the typesetting. Printed sheets on the other hand could easily be moved. Now, because of increasing computerization of preparing a book for the printer, the typesetting part of the job has flowed upstream, where it is done either by separately contracting companies working for the publisher, by the publishers themselves, or even by the authors. Mergers in the book manufacturing industry mean that it is now unusual to find a bindery which is not also involved in book printing (and vice versa).
If the book is a hardback its path through the bindery will involve more points of activity than if it is a paperback. Unsewn binding is now increasingly common. The signatures of a book can also be held together by "Smyth sewing" using needles, "McCain sewing", using drilled holes often used in schoolbook binding, or "notch binding", where gashes about an inch long are made at intervals through the fold in the spine of each signature. The rest of the binding process is similar in all instances. Sewn and notch bound books can be bound as either hardbacks or paperbacks.
Finishing.
"Making cases" happens off-line and prior to the book's arrival at the binding line. In the most basic case-making, two pieces of cardboard are placed onto a glued piece of cloth with a space between them into which is glued a thinner board cut to the width of the spine of the book. The overlapping edges of the cloth (about 5/8" all round) are folded over the boards, and pressed down to adhere. After case-making the stack of cases will go to the foil stamping area for adding decorations and type.
Retail and distribution.
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books that forms the retail and distribution end of the publishing process.
Accessible publishing.
Accessible publishing is an approach to publishing and book design whereby books and other texts are made available in alternative formats designed to aid or replace the reading process. It is particularly relevant for people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print-disabled.
Alternative formats that have been developed to aid different people to read include varieties of larger fonts, specialized fonts for certain kinds of reading disabilities, braille, ebooks, and automated audiobooks and DAISY digital talking books.
Accessible publishing has been made easier through developments in technology such as print on demand, ebook readers, the XML structured data format, the EPUB3 format and the Internet.
Audiobooks.
An audiobook or talking book is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Spoken audio has been available in schools and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops since the 1930s. Many spoken word albums were made prior to the age of cassettes, compact discs, and downloadable audio, often of poetry and plays rather than books. It was not until the 1980s that the medium began to attract book retailers, and then book retailers started displaying audiobooks on bookshelves rather than in separate displays.
Ebooks.
An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Although sometimes defined as "an electronic version of a printed book", some ebooks exist without a printed equivalent. Ebooks can be read on dedicated e-reader devices and on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
In some markets, the sale of printed books has decreased due to the increased use of ebooks. However, printed books still largely outsell ebooks, and many people have a preference for print.
Dummy books.
Dummy books (or faux books) are books that are designed to imitate a real book by appearance to deceive people, some books may be whole with empty pages, others may be hollow or in other cases, there may be a whole panel carved with spines which are then painted to look like books, titles of some books may also be fictitious.
There are many reasons to have dummy books on display such as; to allude visitors of the vast wealth of information in their possession and to inflate the owner's appearance of wealth, to conceal something, for shop displays or for decorative purposes.
In early 19th century at Gwrych Castle, North Wales, Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh was known for his vast collection of books at his library, however, at the later part of that same century, the public became aware that parts of his library was a fabrication, dummy books were built and then locked behind glass doors to stop people from trying to access them, from this a proverb was born, "Like Hesky's library, all outside".
Content.
Libraries, bookstores, and collections commonly divide books into fiction and non-fiction, though other types exist beyond this. Other books, which remain unpublished or are primarily published as part of different business functions (such as phone directories) may not be sold by bookstores or collected by libraries. Manuscripts, logbooks and other records may be classified and stored differently by special collections or archives.
Fiction.
Fiction books contain invented material, typically narratives. Other literary forms such as poetry are included in the broad category. Most fiction is additionally categorized by literary form and genre.
The novel is the most common form of fiction book. Novels are extended works of narrative fiction, typically featuring a plot, setting, themes and characters. The novel has had a tremendous impact on entertainment and publishing markets. A novella is a term sometimes used for fiction prose typically between 17,500 and 40,000 words, and a novelette between 7,500 and 17,500. A short story may be any length up to 10,000 words, but these word lengths vary.
Comic books or graphic novels are books in which the story is illustrated. The characters and narrators use speech or thought bubbles to express verbal language.
Non-fiction.
Non-fiction books are in principle based on fact, encompassing subjects such as history, politics, social and cultural issues, as well as autobiographies and memoirs. Nearly all academic literature is non-fiction.
References.
Reference books are non-fiction books intended to be quickly referred to for information, rather than read beginning to end. The writing style used in these works is informative; the authors avoid opinions and the use of the first person, and emphasize facts.
An almanac is a very general reference book, usually one-volume, with lists of data and information on many topics. An encyclopedia is a book or set of books designed to have more in-depth articles on many topics. A book listing words, their etymology, meanings, and other information is called a dictionary. An atlas is a book containing a collection of maps. A specialized reference work giving information about a particular field or technique, often intended for professional use, is often called a handbook. Books which try to list references and abstracts in a certain broad area may be called an index, such as "Engineering Index", or abstracts such as chemical abstracts and biological abstracts.
Technical.
Books with technical information on how to do something or how to use some equipment are called instruction manuals. Other popular how-to books include cookbooks and home improvement books.
Educational.
Students often carry textbooks and schoolbooks for study purposes. Lap books are a learning tool created by students. Elementary school pupils often use workbooks, which are published with spaces or blanks to be filled by them for study or homework. In US higher education, it is common for a student to take an exam using a blue book.
Religious.
Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They often feature a compilation or discussion of beliefs, ritual practices, moral commandments and laws, ethical conduct, spiritual aspirations, and admonitions for fostering a religious community.
Hymnals are books with collections of musical hymns that can typically be found in churches. Prayerbooks or missals are books that contain written prayers and are commonly carried by monks, nuns, and other devoted followers or clergy.
Unpublished.
Many books are only used to record personal ideas, notes, and accounts, such as notebooks, logbooks, commonplace books, and diaries. These books are rarely published and are typically destroyed or remain private.
Address books, phone books, and calendar/appointment books are commonly used for recording appointments, meetings and personal contact information. Businesses historically used accounting books such as journals and ledgers to record financial data in a practice called bookkeeping (now usually held on computers rather than in hand-written form).
Collection and classification.
Personal and public libraries, archives and other forms of book collection have led to the creation of many different organization and classification strategies. In the 19th and 20th century, libraries and library professionals systematized book collecting and classification systems to respond to the growing industry. The most widely used system is ISBN, which has provided unique identifiers for books since 1970.
Libraries.
A library is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or digital (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location, a virtual space, or both. A library's collection normally includes printed materials which may be borrowed, and usually also includes a reference section of publications which may only be utilized inside the premises. Resources such as commercial releases of films, television programs, other video recordings, radio, music and audio recordings may be available in many formats. These include DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, cassettes, or other applicable formats such as microform. They may also provide access to information, music or other content held on bibliographic databases.
Libraries can vary widely in size and may be organized and maintained by a public body such as a government, an institution (such as a school or museum), a corporation, or a private individual. In addition to providing materials, libraries also provide the services of librarians who are trained experts in finding, selecting, circulating and organising information while interpreting information needs and navigating and analyzing large amounts of information with a variety of resources.
Library buildings often provide quiet areas for studying, as well as common areas for group study and collaboration, and may provide public facilities for access to their electronic resources, such as computers and access to the Internet.
The library's clientele and general services offered vary depending on its type: users of a public library have different needs from those of a special library or academic library, for example. Libraries may also be community hubs, where programs are made available and people engage in lifelong learning. Modern libraries extend their services beyond the physical walls of the building by providing material accessible by electronic means, including from home via the Internet.
Identification and classification.
In 2011, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) created the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) in order to standardize descriptions in bibliographies and library catalogs. Each book is specified by an International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, which is meant to be unique to every edition of every book produced by participating publishers, worldwide. It is managed by the ISBN Society. An ISBN has four parts: the first part is the country code, the second the publisher code, and the third the title code. The last part is a check digit, and can take values from 0–9 and X (10). The EAN Barcodes numbers for books are derived from the ISBN by prefixing 978, for Bookland, and calculating a new check digit.
Commercial publishers in industrialized countries generally assign ISBNs to their books, so buyers may presume that the ISBN is part of a total international system, with no exceptions. However, many government publishers, in industrial as well as developing countries, do not participate fully in the ISBN system, and publish books which do not have ISBNs. A large or public collection requires a catalogue. Codes called "call numbers" relate the books to the catalogue, and determine their locations on the shelves. Call numbers are based on a Library classification system. The call number is placed on the spine of the book, normally a short distance before the bottom, and inside. Institutional or national standards, such as ANSI/NISO Z39.41 – 1997, establish the correct way to place information (such as the title, or the name of the author) on book spines, and on "shelvable" book-like objects, such as containers for DVDs, video tapes and software.
One of the earliest and most widely known systems of cataloguing books is the Dewey Decimal System. Another widely known system is the Library of Congress Classification system. Both systems are biased towards subjects which were well represented in US libraries when they were developed, and hence have problems handling new subjects, such as computing, or subjects relating to other cultures. Information about books and authors can be stored in databases like online general-interest book databases. Metadata, which means "data about data" is information about a book. Metadata about a book may include its title, ISBN or other classification number (see above), the names of contributors (author, editor, illustrator) and publisher, its date and size, the language of the text, its subject matter, etc.
Conservation.
The conservation and restoration of books, manuscripts, documents, and ephemera is dedicated to extending the life of items of historical and personal value made primarily from paper, parchment, and leather. When applied to cultural heritage, conservation activities are generally undertaken by a conservator. The primary goal of conservation is to extend the lifespan of the object as well as maintaining its integrity by keeping all additions reversible. Conservation of books and paper involves techniques of bookbinding, restoration, paper chemistry, and other material technologies including preservation and archival techniques.
Book and paper conservation seeks to prevent and, in some cases, reverse damage due to handling, inherent vice, and the environment. Conservators determine proper methods of storage for books and documents, including boxes and shelving to prevent further damage and promote long-term storage. Carefully chosen methods and techniques of active conservation can both reverse damage and prevent further damage in batches or single-item treatments based on the value of the book or document.
Historically, book restoration techniques were less formalized and carried out by various roles and training backgrounds. Nowadays, the conservation of paper documents and books is often performed by a professional conservator. Many paper or book conservators are members of a professional body, such as the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) or the Guild of Bookworkers (both in the United States), the Archives and Records Association (in the United Kingdom and Ireland), or the Institute of Conservation (ICON) (in the United Kingdom).
Social and cultural issues.
Reception.
The impact of books can be various, and record of that reception comes in several formats: starting with initial public reception in contemporary newspapers, pop culture and correspondence, and then developing with different forms of literary criticism by professional and academic critics. For the publishing industry the "book review" is an important part of increasing awareness and reception of a book: able to make or break the public opinion about a new book.
Book censorship and bans.
Book censorship is the act of some authority taking measures to suppress ideas and information within a book. Censorship is "the regulation of free speech and other forms of entrenched authority". Censors typically identify as either a concerned parent, community members who react to a text without reading, or local or national organizations. Books have been censored by authoritarian dictatorships to silence dissent, such as the People's Republic of China, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Books are most often censored for age appropriateness, offensive language, sexual content, amongst other reasons. Similarly, religions may issue lists of banned books, such as the historical example of the Catholic Church's "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" and bans of such books as Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" by Ayatollah Khomeini, which do not always carry legal force. Censorship can be enacted at the national or subnational level as well, and can carry legal penalties. In many cases, the authors of these books could face harsh sentences, exile from the country, or even execution.
|
3780
|
48227547
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3780
|
Bal Thackeray
|
Bal Thackeray (; 23 January 1926 – 17 November 2012), also known as Balasaheb Thackeray, was an Indian cartoonist and politician who founded the original Shiv Sena, a far-right, a pro-Marathi and a Hindu nationalist party, active mainly in the state of Maharashtra. He had a large political influence in the state, especially in Mumbai throughout 80s to 2000s.
Thackeray began his professional career as a cartoonist with the English-language daily, "The Free Press Journal" in Bombay, but he left the paper in 1960 to form his own political weekly, "Marmik". His political philosophy was largely shaped by his father Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, a leading figure in the Samyukta Maharashtra (United Maharashtra) movement, which advocated for the creation of a separate linguistic state for Marathi speakers. Through "Marmik", Bal Thackeray campaigned against the growing influence of non-Marathis in Mumbai.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Thackeray built the Shiv Sena with help of Madhav Mehere, the Chief Attorney for Trade Union of India, Babasaheb Purandare, a historian for Govt of Maharashtra and Madhav Deshpande, the Head Accountant for Shiv Sena. These three individuals, to a large extent, were responsible for the success of Shiv Sena and stability of politics in Mumbai till 2000 to ensure its growth into an economic power center. Thackeray was also the founder of the Marathi-language newspaper "Saamana". After the riots of 1992–93, he and his party took a Hindutva ideological stance. The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won the 1995 Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election and were in power from 1995 to 1999. Thackeray was considered to be the "remote control" of the chief minister. In 1999, Thackeray was banned from voting and contesting in any election for six years on the recommendations of the Election Commission for his controversies. He was arrested many times but never faced any major legal repercussions. Upon his death, he was accorded a state funeral, at which thousands of mourners were present. Thackeray did not hold any official positions, and he was never formally elected as the leader of his party but still controlled the party and state. Thackeray left a nationwide impact on the right wing surge that is still seen today in current state of Maharashtra and in the country.
Early life.
Thackeray was born on 23 January 1926 in Pune, the son of Prabodhankar Thackeray and his wife Ramabai Thackeray. The family belongs to the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu caste of Marathi Hindus. His father Keshav was an admirer of India-born British writer William Makepeace Thackeray, and changed his own surname from Panvelkar to "Thackeray" an Anglicised version of their ancestral surname "Thakre".
Bal's father was a journalist and cartoonist by profession; he was also a social activist and a writer who was involved in a Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti, which advocated the creation of a separate linguistic state for Marathi speakers. He also started a magazine named Prabodhan, where he promoted Hindu philosophies and nationalistic ideals to revive Hindutva in society. This proved to be highly influential in shaping Bal Thackeray's political views.
Bal was the eldest of eight siblings, with brothers Shrikant Thackeray (father of Raj Thackeray) and Ramesh Thackeray, and five sisters (Sanjeevani Karandikar, Prabhavati (Pama) Tipnis, Malati (Sudha) Sule, Sarla Gadkari and Susheela Gupte).
Raj in 2006 broke away from Shiv Sena to form his own political party called the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. Despite Raj's breakaway from the main party, he continues to maintain that Thackeray was his ideologue and relations between them improved during Thackeray's final years.
Cartoonist career.
Thackeray began his career as a cartoonist in the Free Press Journal in Mumbai. His cartoons were also published in the Sunday edition of The Times of India. After Thackeray's differences with the Free Press Journal, he and four or five people, including politician George Fernandes, left the paper and started their own daily, News Day. The paper survived for one or two months. In 1960, he launched the cartoon weekly "Marmik" with his brother Srikant. It focused on issues of common "Marathi Manoos" (Marathi, or Marathi-speaking, people) including unemployment, immigration and the retrenchment of Marathi workers. Its office in Ranade Road became the rallying point for Marathi youth. Bal Thackeray later stated that it was "not just a cartoon weekly but also the prime reason for the birth and growth of the Sena". It was the issue of "Marmik" on 5 June 1966 which first announced the launch of membership for the Shiv Sena.
Thackeray drew cartoons for the "Free Press Journal", the "Times of India" and "Marmik" besides contributing to "Saamna" till 2012. He cited the New Zealander cartoonist David Low as his inspiration.
Politics.
1966–1998.
The success of "Marmik" prompted Thackeray to form the Shiv Sena on 19 June 1966. The name "Shiv Sena" (Shivaji's Army) is a reference to the 17th century Maratha Emperor Shivaji. Initially, Thackeray said it was not a political party but an army of Shivaji Maharaj, inclined to fight for the Marathi "maanus" (person). It demanded that native speakers of the state's local language Marathi (the "sons of the soil" movement) be given preferential treatment in private and public sector jobs. The early objective of the Shiv Sena was to ensure their job security competing against South Indians and Gujaratis. In its 1966 party manifesto, Thackeray primarily blamed south Indians. In "Marmik", Thackeray published a list of corporate officials from a local directory, many being south Indians, citing it as proof that Maharashtrians were being discriminated against.
His party grew in the next ten years. Senior leaders such as Babasaheb Purandare, chief attorney for Trade Union of Maharashtra Madhav Mehere joined the party and chartered accountant Madhav Gajanan Deshpande backed various aspects of the party operations. In 1969, Thackeray and Manohar Joshi were jailed after participating in a protest demanding the merger of Karwar, Belgaum and Nipani regions in Maharashtra. During the 1970s, it did not succeed in the local elections and it was active mainly in Mumbai, compared to the rest of the state. The party set up local branch offices and settled disputes, complaints against the government. It later started violent tactics with attacks against rival parties, migrants and the media; the party agitated by destroying public and private property. Thackeray publicly supported Indira Gandhi during the 1975 Emergency; Thackeray supported the Congress party numerous times.
Dr. Hemchandra Gupte, Mayor of Mumbai and the former family physician and confidant of Thackeray, left Shiv Sena in 1976 citing the emphasis given to money, violence committed by the Shiv Sena members, and Thackeray's support for Indira Gandhi and the 1975 emergency.
Politically, the Shiv Sena was anti-communist, and wrested control of trade unions in Mumbai from the Communist Party of India (CPI). Local unemployed youth from the declining textile industry joined the party and it further expanded because of Maharashtrians from the Konkan region. By the 1980s, it became a threat to the ruling Congress party which had initially encouraged it because of it rivalling the CPI. In 1989, the Sena's newspaper "Saamna" was launched by Thackeray. Because of Thackeray being against the Mandal Commission report, his close aide Chhagan Bhujbal left the party in 1991. Following the 1992 Bombay riots, Thackeray took stances viewed as anti-Muslim and based on Hindutva. Shiv Sena later allied itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won the 1995 Maharashtra State Assembly elections and were in power from 1995 to 1999. Thackeray declared himself to be the "remote control" chief minister.
Thackeray and the Chief Minister Manohar Joshi were explicitly named for inciting the Shivsainiks for violence against Muslims during the 1992–1993 riots in an inquiry ordered by the government of India, the Srikrishna Commission Report.
Thackeray had influence in the film industry. His party workers agitated against films he found controversial and would disrupt film screenings, causing losses. "Bombay", a 1995 film on the riots, was opposed by them.
1999–2012.
On 28 July 1999, Thackeray was banned from voting and contesting in any election for six years from 11 December 1999 till 10 December 2005 on the recommendations of the Election Commission for indulging in corrupt practice by seeking votes in the name of religion. In 2000, he was arrested for his role in the riots but was released because the statute of limitations expired. In 2002, Thackeray issued a call to form Hindu suicide bomber squads to take on the menace of terrorism. In response, the Maharashtra government registered a case against him for inciting enmity between different groups. At least two organisations founded and managed by retired Indian Army officers, Lt Col Jayant Rao Chitale and Lt Gen. P.N. Hoon (former commander-in-chief of the Western Command), responded to the call with such statements as not allowing Pakistanis to work in India due to accusations against Pakistan for supporting attacks in India by militants. After the six-year voting ban on Thackeray was lifted in 2005, he voted for the first time in the 2007 BMC elections. Eight or nine cases against Thackeray and "Saamna" for inflammatory writings were not investigated by the government.
Thackeray said that the Shiv Sena had helped the Marathi people in Mumbai, especially in the public sector.<ref name="Public sector, Threats against other communities, businesses owned especially by Guj and Marwaris/"></ref> Thackeray believed that Hindus must be organised to struggle against those who oppose their identity and religion. Opposition leftist parties alleged that the Shiv Sena has done little to solve the problem of unemployment facing a large proportion of Maharashtrian youth during its tenure, in contradiction to its ideological foundation of 'sons of the soil.'
In 2006, Thackeray's nephew Raj Thackeray broke away from Shiv Sena to form the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) during Thackeray's retirement and appointment of his son, Uddhav rather than Raj as the leader of Shiv Sena. Narayan Rane also quit around that time.
The Sena acted as a "moral police" and opposed Valentine's Day celebrations. On 14 February 2006, Thackeray condemned and apologised for the violent attacks by its Shiv Sainiks on a private celebration in Mumbai. "It is said that women were beaten up in the Nallasopara incident. If that really happened, then it is a symbol of cowardice. I have always instructed Shiv Sainiks that in any situation women should not be humiliated and harassed." Thackeray and the Shiv Sena remained opposed to it, although they indicated support for an Indian alternative.
In 2007, he was briefly arrested and let out on bail after referring to Muslims as 'Green Poison' during a Shiv Sena rally.
On 27 March 2008, in protest to Thackeray's editorial, leaders of Shiv Sena in Delhi resigned, citing its outrageous conduct towards non-Marathis in Maharashtra and announced that they would form a separate party. Addressing a press conference, Shiv Sena's North India chief Jai Bhagwan Goyal said the decision to leave the party was taken because of the partial attitude of the party high command towards Maharashtrians. Goyal further said that Shiv Sena is no different from Khalistan and Jammu and Kashmir militant groups which are trying to create a rift between people along regional lines. The main aim of these forces is to split our country. Like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the Shiv Sena too has demeaned North Indians and treated them inhumanely.
Views.
Thackeray declared that he was not against every Muslim, but only those who reside in this country but do not obey the laws of the land, considering such people to be traitors. The Shiv Sena is viewed by the media as being Islamophobic, though Shiv Sena members officially reject this accusation. When explaining his views on Hindutva, he equated Islam with violence and called on Hindus to fight terrorism and fight Islam. In an interview with Suketu Mehta, he called for the mass expulsion of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants from India and for a visa system to enter Mumbai, the Indian National Congress state government had earlier during the Indira Gandhi declared national emergency considered a similar measure.
He told "India Today" "[Muslims] are spreading like a cancer and should be operated on like a cancer. The country...should be saved from the Muslims and the police should support them [Hindu Maha Sangh] in their struggle just like the police in Punjab were sympathetic to the Khalistanis." However, in an interview in 1998, he said that his stance had changed on many issues that the Shiv Sena had with Muslims, particularly regarding the Babri Mosque or Ram Janmabhoomi issue: "We must look after the Muslims and treat them as part of us." He also expressed admiration for Muslims in Mumbai in the wake of the 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists. In response to threats made by Abu Azmi, a leader of the Samajwadi Party, that accusations of terrorism directed at Indian Muslims would bring about communal strife, Thackeray said that the unity of Mumbaikars (residents of Mumbai) in the wake of the attacks was a slap to fanatics of Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi and that Thackeray salute[s] those Muslims who participated in the two minutes' silence on 18 July to mourn the blast victims. Again in 2008 he wrote: "Islamic terrorism is growing and Hindu terrorism is the only way to counter it. We need suicide bomb squads to protect India and Hindus." He also reiterated a desire for Hindus to unite across linguistic barriers to see a Hindustan for Hindus and to bring Islam in this country down to its knees.
Thackeray was criticised for his praise of Adolf Hitler. He was quoted by "Asiaweek" as saying: "I am a great admirer of Hitler, and I am not ashamed to say so! I do not say that I agree with all the methods he employed, but he was a wonderful organiser and orator, and I feel that he and I have several things in common...What India really needs is a dictator who will rule benevolently, but with an iron hand." In a 1993 interview, Thackeray stated, "There is nothing wrong if Muslims are treated as Jews were in Nazi Germany." In another 1992 interview, Thackeray stated, "If you take "Mein Kampf" and if you remove the word 'Jew' and put in the word 'Muslim', that is what I believe in". "Indian Express" published an interview on 29 January 2007: "Hitler did very cruel and ugly things. But he was an artist, I love him [for that]. He had the power to carry the whole nation, the mob with him. You have to think what magic he had. He was a miracle...The killing of Jews was wrong. But the good part about Hitler was that he was an artist. He was a daredevil. He had good qualities and bad. I may also have good qualities and bad ones." Thackeray also praised Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi.
In 2008, following agitation against Biharis and other north Indians travelling to Maharashtra to take civil service examinations for the Indian Railways due to an overlimit of the quota in their home provinces, Thackeray also said of Bihari MPs that they were spitting in the same plate from which they ate when they criticised Mumbaikars and Maharashtrians. He wrote: "They are trying to add fuel to the fire that has been extinguished, by saying that Mumbaikars have rotten brains." He also criticised Chhath Puja, a holiday celebrated by Biharis and those from eastern Uttar Pradesh, which occurs on six days of the Hindu month of Kartik. He said that it was not a real holiday. This was reportedly a response to MPs from Bihar who had disrupted the proceedings of the Lok Sabha in protest to the attacks on North Indians. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, upset with the remarks, called on the prime minister and the central government to intervene in the matter. A "Saamna" editorial prompted at least 16 MPs from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, belonging to the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United), Samajwadi Party and the Indian National Congress, to give notice for breach of privilege proceedings against Thackeray. After the matter was raised in the Lok Sabha, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said: "If anybody has made any comment on our members' functioning in the conduct of business in the House, not only do we treat that with the contempt that it deserves, but also any action that may be necessary will be taken according to procedure and well established norms. Nobody will be spared.'"
In 2009, he criticised Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, a "Marathi icon", for saying he was an Indian before he was a Maharashtrian.
Reservations.
Thackeray firmly opposed caste based reservation and said, "There are only two castes in the world, the rich are rich and the poor is poor, make the poor rich but don't make the rich poor. Besides these two castes I don't believe in any other casteism."
The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) supported caste-based reservations based on the Mandal commission. Thackarey, despite being warned that opposition to the reservations would be politically suicidal for the Shiv Sena party, opposed the BJP over this issue and said he would initiate proceedings against the BJP if the BJP supported caste-based reservations. This also led to his conflict with Chhagan Bhujbal, an OBC, who later left the Shiv Sena.
Savarkar.
Thackeray defended Vinayak Damodar Savarkar against criticism and praised him as a great leader. In 2002, when President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam unveiled a portrait of Savarkar in the presence of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Indian National Congress opposed the unveiling of the portrait and boycotted the function. Thackeray criticised the opposition and said, "Who is [Congress president and Leader of the Opposition] Sonia Gandhi to object to the portrait? What relation does she have with the country? How much does she know about the history and culture of India?". Years later, when Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh made a statement that Savarkar was allegedly the first one to suggest the two-nation theory that led to the partition, Thackeray rejected the statement of Singh.
Kashmiri Pandits.
In 1990, Bal Thackeray got seats reserved in engineering colleges for the children of Kashmiri Pandits in Maharashtra. At a meeting with them he supported the idea that Kashmiri Pandits could be armed for their self-defence against Jihadis.
Personal life.
Thackeray was married to Meena Thackeray (née Sarla Vaidya) on 13 June 1948 and had three sons, oldest son Bindumadhav, middle son Jaidev, and youngest son Uddhav. Meena died in 1995 and Bindumadhav died the following year in a car accident.
Death.
Thackeray died on 17 November 2012, of cardiac arrest. Mumbai came to a virtual halt immediately as news about his death broke out, with shops and commercial establishments shutting down. The entire state of Maharashtra was put on high alert. The police appealed for calm and 20,000 Mumbai police officers, 15 units of the State Reserve Police Force and three contingents of the Rapid Action Force were deployed. It was reported that Shiv Sena workers forced shops to close down in some areas. Then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for calm in the city and praised Thackeray's "strong leadership", while there were also statements of praise and condolences from other senior politicians such as the then-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP leader and MP (Former Deputy Prime Minister of India), L. K. Advani.
He was accorded a state funeral at Shivaji Park, which generated some controversy and resulted from demands made by Shiv Sena. It was the first public funeral in the city since that of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1920. Thackeray's body was moved to the park on 18 November. Many mourners attended his funeral, although there were no official figures. The range reported in media sources varied from around 1 million, to 1.5 million and as many as nearly 2 million. His cremation took place the next day, where his son Uddhav lit the pyre. Among those present at his cremation were senior representatives of the Maharashtra government and the event was broadcast live on national television channels. The Parliament of India opened for its winter session on 21 November 2012. Thackeray was the only non-member to be noted in its traditional list of obituaries. He is one of few people to have been recorded thus without being a member of either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha. Despite having not held any official position, he was given the 21-gun salute, which was again a rare honour. Both houses of Bihar Assembly also paid tribute. The funeral expenses created further controversies when media reports claimed that the BMC had used taxpayers' money. In response to these reports, the party later sent a cheque of Rs. 500,000 to the corporation.
"The Hindu," in an editorial, said regarding the shutdown that "Thackeray’s legion of followers raised him to the status of a demigod who could force an entire State to shut down with the mere threat of violence". Following his death, police arrested a 21-year-old woman who posted a Facebook comment against him, as well as her friend who "liked" the comment. Shiv Sena members also vandalised the clinic owned by the woman's relative.
Legacy.
Thackeray was called "Hindū Hṛdaya Samrāṭa" () by his supporters. His yearly address at Shivaji Park was popular among his followers. In 2012, he instead gave a video-taped speech and urged his followers "to give the same love and affection to his son and political heir Uddhav as they had given him". Thackeray was known to convert popular sentiment into votes, getting into controversies and making no apologies for it though his son has tried to tone down the party's stance after his death. He was known for his inflammatory writings, was seen as a good orator who used cruel humour to engage his audience. He had a large political influence throughout the state, especially in Mumbai. His party never had any formal internal elections nor was he ever formally elected as its chief at any point. Gyan Prakash said, "Of course, the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement had mobilized Marathi speakers as a political entity, but it was Thackeray who successfully deployed it as an anti-immigrant, populist force."
He inspired Baliram Kashyap the leader of Bastar who often regarded as the Thackeray of Bastar.
A memorial for him was proposed at Shivaji Park but legal issues and opposition from local residents continue to delay it.
Thackeray is satirised in Salman Rushdie's 1995 novel "The Moor's Last Sigh" as 'Raman Fielding'. The book was banned by the Maharashtra state government. Suketu Mehta interviewed Thackeray in his critically acclaimed, Pulitzer-nominated, non-fiction 2004 book "Maximum City".
In popular culture.
In 2005, Ram Gopal Varma directed the Godfatheresque-"Sarkar", a super-hit thriller was inspired by the life of Bal Thackeray and North Indian politics. In this film, Amitabh Bachchan's character was inspired by Thackeray.
The 2011 documentary "Jai Bhim Comrade" depicted a speech by Thackeray at a public rally, in which he articulated "genocidal sentiments" about Muslims, stating that they were the "species to be exterminated." The documentary followed this by showing several Dalit leaders criticising Thackeray for his beliefs.
"Balkadu", a 2015 Marathi film is loosely based on the ideologies of Bal Thackeray and contains voice clippings of Thackeray's political career.
A Bollywood biopic titled "Thackeray", starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and written by Shiv Sena politician Sanjay Raut, was released on 25 January 2019.
Makarand Padhye played Balasaheb Thakeray in the 2022 Marathi film "Dharmaveer" and its sequel based on the life of Shiv Sena politician Anand Dighe.
Dushyant Wagh played Thackeray in the 2023 Marathi film "Maharashtra Shahir" based on the life of Krishnarao Sable.
|
3785
|
1299807735
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3785
|
Bille August
|
Bille August (; born 9 November 1948) is a Danish director, screenwriter, and cinematographer of film and television.
August's 1987 film "Pelle the Conqueror" won the , Academy Award and Golden Globe Award. He is one of only ten directors to win the 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 of the Order of the Dannebrog.
Life and career.
August was born on 9 November 1948, in Brede, Denmark. After attending local schools, he graduated from the Foto- och Dokumentärskolan 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.
He collaborated twice with then wife Pernilla August under George Lucas on "The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones" in The Perils of Cupid and Tales of Innocence. Pernilla would later star in the first two films of the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy and appeared in an episode of "" television series to reprise her role from the films.
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 of Karen Blixen's novel "Ehrengard", which is being produced by Netflix and SF Studios.
Personal life.
August has been married twice and has a total of eight children with five different women.
His first born daughter is Melina Wo.
He was in a relationship Annie Munksgård Lauritzen, they had a son Anders Frithiof August.
His second relationship was Masja Dessau with whom he had a son Adam August, both sons have become screenwriters.
His first marriage was to Swedish actress Pernilla August was from 1991 to 1997. Together they had two daughters, Asta Kamma August & Alba Adèle August whom are both actresses.
In 2012, he married his second wife, actress Sara-Marie Maltha after 10 years. In the duration of their 22 year relationship and marriage. They had three children together. Amaryllis (actress), Amadeus & Aya, they have since divorced.
Filmography.
Film.
Director
Director of photography
Television.
Miniseries
TV movies
TV series
|
3789
|
48943615
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3789
|
Bitola
|
Bitola (; ) is a city in the southwestern part of North Macedonia. It is located in the southern part of the Pelagonia valley, surrounded by the Baba, Nidže, and Kajmakčalan mountain ranges, north of the Medžitlija-Níki border crossing with Greece. The city stands at an important junction connecting the south of the Adriatic Sea region with the Aegean Sea and Central Europe, and it is an administrative, cultural, industrial, commercial, and educational centre. It has been known since the Ottoman period as the "City of Consuls", since many European countries had consulates in Bitola.
Bitola, known during the Ottoman Empire as Manastır or Monastir, is one of the oldest cities in North Macedonia. It was founded as Heraclea Lyncestis in the middle of the 4th century BC by Philip II of Macedon. The city was the last capital of the First Bulgarian Empire (1015–1018) and the last capital of Ottoman Rumelia, from 1836 to 1867. According to the 2002 census, Bitola is the third largest city in the country, after the capital Skopje and Kumanovo. Bitola is also the seat of the Bitola Municipality.
Etymology.
The name "Bitola" is derived from the Old Church Slavonic word ѡ҆би́тѣл҄ь ("obitěĺь", meaning "monastery" or "cloister"), literally "abode," as the city was formerly noted for its monastery. When the meaning of the name was no longer understood, it lost its prefix "o-". The name "Bitola" is mentioned in the Bitola inscription, related to the old city fortress built in 1015 during the ruling of Gavril Radomir of Bulgaria (1014–1015) when Bitola served as capital of the First Bulgarian Empire. Modern Slavic variants include the Macedonian (), the Serbian () and Bulgarian (). In Byzantine times, the name was Hellenized to () or (), hence the names "Butella" used by William of Tyre and "Butili" by the Arab geographer al-Idrisi.
The Modern Greek name for the city (, ), also meaning "monastery", is a calque of the Slavic name. The Turkish name () is derived from the Greek name, as is the Albanian name (), and the Ladino name ( ). The Aromanian name, or alternatively, , is derived from the same root as the Macedonian name. Bitola is known as in Romanian.
Geography.
Bitola is located in the southwestern part of North Macedonia. The Dragor River flows through the city. Bitola lies at an elevation of 615 metres above sea level, at the foot of Baba Mountain. Its magnificent Pelister mountain (2,601 m) is a national park with exquisite flora and fauna, among which is the rarest species of pine, known as Macedonian pine or pinus peuce. It is also the location of a well-known ski resort.
Covering an area of and with a population of 122,173 (1991), Bitola is an important industrial, agricultural, commercial, educational and cultural centre. It represents an important junction that connects the Adriatic Sea to the south with the Aegean Sea and Central Europe.
Climate.
Bitola has a mildly continental climate typical of the Pelagonija region, experiencing very warm and dry summers, and cold and snowy winters. The Köppen climate classification for this climate is "Cfb", which would be an oceanic climate, going by the original threshold.
History.
Prehistory.
There are a number of prehistoric archaeological sites around Bitola. The earliest evidence of organized human settlements are the archaeological sites from the early Neolithic period, among which the most important are the tells of Veluška Tumba and Bara Tumba near the village of Porodin, first inhabited around 6000 BC.
Ancient and early Byzantine periods.
The region of Bitola was known as Lynkestis in antiquity, a region that became part of Upper Macedonia, and was ruled by semi-independent chieftains until the later Argead rulers of Macedon. The tribes of Lynkestis were known as "Lynkestai". According to Nicholas Hammond, they were a Greek tribe belonging to the Molossian group of the Epirotes. There are important metal artifacts from the ancient period at the necropolis of Crkvište near the village of Beranci. A golden earring dating from the 4th century BC is depicted on the obverse of the Macedonian 10-denar banknote, issued in 1996.
Heraclea Lyncestis ( - "City of Hercules upon the Land of the Lynx") was an important settlement from the Hellenistic period till the early Middle Ages. It was founded by Philip II of Macedon by the middle of the 4th century BC, and named after the Greek hero Heracles. With its strategic location, it became a prosperous city. The Romans conquered this part of Macedon in 148 BC and destroyed the political power of the city. However, its prosperity continued mainly due to the Roman Via Egnatia road which passed near the city. A number of archaeological monuments from the Roman period can be seen today in Heraclea, including a portico, thermae (baths), a theater. The theatre was once capable of housing an audience of around 2,500 people.
In the early Byzantine period (4th to 6th centuries AD) Heraclea became an important episcopal centre. Some of its bishops were mentioned in the acts of the first Church Councils, including Bishop Evagrius of Heraclea in the Acts of the Sardica Council of 343. The city walls, a number of Early Christian basilicas, the bishop's residence, and a lavish city fountain are some of the remains of this period. The floors in the three naves of the Great Basilica are covered with mosaics with a very rich floral and figurative iconography; these well preserved mosaics are often regarded as one of the finest examples of the early Christian art in the region. During the 4th and 6th centuries, the names of other bishops from Heraclea were recorded. The city was sacked by Ostrogothic forces, commanded by Theodoric the Great in 472 AD and, despite a large gift to him from the city's bishop, it was sacked again in 479. It was restored in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. However, in the late 6th century the city suffered successive attacks by various tribes, and eventually the region was settled by the early Slavic peoples. Its imperial buildings fell into disrepair and the city gradually declined to a small settlement, and survived as such until around the 11th century AD.
Middle Ages.
In the 6th and 7th centuries, the region around Bitola experienced a demographic shift as more and more Slavic tribes settled in the area. In place of the deserted theater, several houses were built during that time. The Slavs also built a fortress around their settlement. Bitola was a part of the First Bulgarian Empire from the middle of the 8th to the early 11th centuries, after which it again became part of the Byzantine Empire, and in turn was briefly part of the Serbian Empire during the 14th century. Arguably, a number of monasteries and churches were built in and around the city during the Medieval period (hence its other name "Manastir").
In the 10th century, Bitola came under the rule of tsar Samuel of Bulgaria. He built a castle in the town, later used by his successor Gavril Radomir of Bulgaria. The town is mentioned in several medieval sources. John Skylitzes's 11th-century chronicle mentions that Emperor Basil II burned Gavril's castle in Bitola, when passing through and ravaging Pelagonia. The second chrysobull (1019) of Basil II mentioned that the Bishop of Bitola depended on the Archbishopric of Ohrid. During the reign of Samuil, the city was the seat of the Bitola Bishopric. In many medieval sources, especially Western, the name "Pelagonia" was synonymous with the Bitola Bishopric. According to some sources, Bitola was known as Heraclea since what once was the Heraclea Bishopric later became the Pelagonian Metropolitan's Diocese. In 1015, Tsar Gavril Radomir was killed by his cousin Ivan Vladislav, who then declared himself tsar and rebuilt the city's fortress. To commemorate the occasion, a stone inscription written in the Cyrillic alphabet was set in the fortress; in it the Slavic name of the city is mentioned: Bitol.
During the battle of Bitola in 1015 between a Bulgarian army under the command of the voivode Ivats and a Byzantine army led by the "strategos" George Gonitsiates, the Bulgarians were victorious and the Byzantine Emperor Basil II had to retreat from the Bulgarian capital Ohrid, whose outer walls were by that time already breached by the Bulgarians. Afterwards Ivan Vladislav moved the capital from Ohrid to Bitola, where he re-erected the fortress. However, the Bulgarian victory only postponed the fall of Bulgaria to Byzantine rule in 1018.
As a military, political and religious center, Bitola played a very important role in the life of the medieval society in the region, prior to the Ottoman conquest in the mid-14th century. On the eve of the Ottoman conquest, Bitola (Monastir in Ottoman Turkish) experienced great growth with its well-established trading links all over the Balkan Peninsula, especially with big economic centers like Constantinople, Thessalonica, Ragusa and Tarnovo. Caravans carrying various goods came and went from Bitola.
Ottoman rule.
From 1382 to 1912, Bitola was part of the Ottoman Empire, and was known as Monastir. Fierce battles took place near the city during the Ottoman conquest. Ottoman rule was completely established after the death of Prince Marko in 1395 when the Ottoman Empire established the Sanjak of Ohrid as a part of the Rumelia Eyalet and one of the earliest established sanjaks in Europe. Before it became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1395, Bitola was part of the realm of Prince Marko. Initially, its county town was Bitola and later it was Ohrid, so it was sometimes referred to as the Sanjak of Monastir and sometimes as the Sanjak of Bitola.
After the Austro-Ottoman wars, the trade development and the overall prosperity of the city declined. But in the late 19th century, it again became the second-largest city in the wider southern Balkan region after Thessaloniki.
Between 1815 and 1822, the town was ruled by the Albanian Ali Pasha as part of the Pashalik of Yanina.
Starting from the second half of the 19th century, Bitola was the most important cultural center of the Aromanians. Throughout the 19th century, Bitola hosted the largest urban population of Aromanians in their native Balkans, with an estimated 10,000 to 18,000 Aromanians out of a total population of 40,000–50,000. Bitola thus gained the title of "New Moscopole", according to Macedonian Aromanian historian Nikola Minov. The Romanian High School of Bitola, a Romanian boarding high school for Aromanians, operated in Bitola until the early 20th century, and there was also an Aromanian library in the town. The Aromanian Sts. Constantine and Helen Church and a cemetery where important Aromanian figures such as Constantin Belimace or Apostol Mărgărit are buried still function in Bitola today.
During the Great Eastern Crisis, the local Bulgarian movement of the day was defeated when armed Bulgarian groups were repelled by the League of Prizren, an Albanian organisation opposing Bulgarian geopolitical aims in areas like Bitola that contained an Albanian population. Nevertheless, in April 1881, an Ottoman army captured Prizren and suppressed the League's rebellion.
In 1874, Manastır became the center of Monastir Vilayet which included the sanjaks of Debra, Serfidze, Elbasan, Manastır (Bitola), Görice and the towns of Kırcaova, Pirlepe, Florina, Kesriye and Grevena.
Traditionally a strong trading center, Bitola was also known as "the city of the consuls". In the final period of Ottoman rule (1878–1912), Bitola had consulates from twelve countries. During the same period, there were a number of prestigious schools in the city, including a military academy that, among others, was attended by the Turkish reformer Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In 1883, there were 19 schools in Monastir, of which 11 were Greek, 5 were Bulgarian and 3 were Romanian. In Bitola, besides the schools where Ottomanism and Turkism flourished in the 19th century, schools of various nations were also opened. These institutions, which were very effective in increasing the education level and the rate of literacy, caused the formation of a circle of intellectuals in Bitola. Bitola was also the headquarters of many cultural organizations at that time.
In 1894, Manastır was connected with Thessaloniki by train. The first motion picture made in the Balkans was produced by the Aromanian Manakis brothers in Manastır in 1903. In their honour, the annual Manaki Brothers International Cinematographers Film Festival is held in Bitola since 1979.
In November 1905, the Secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania, a secret organization formed to fight for the liberation of Albania from the Ottoman Empire, was founded by Bajo Topulli and other Albanian nationalists and intellectuals. Three years later, the Congress of Manastir of 1908, which standardized the modern Albanian alphabet, was held in the city. The congress was held at the house of Fehim Zavalani. Mit'hat Frashëri was chairman of the congress. The participants in the Congress were prominent figures from the cultural and political life of Albanian-inhabited territories in the Balkans, and the Albanian diaspora.
Ilinden Uprising.
The Bitola region was a stronghold of the Ilinden Uprising. The uprising was conceived in 1903 in Thessaloniki by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). The uprising in the Bitola region was planned in Smilevo village in May 1903. Battles were fought in the villages of Bistrica, Rakovo, Buf, Skocivir, Paralovo, Brod, Novaci, Smilevo, Gjavato, Capari and others. Smilevo was defended by 600 rebels led by Dame Gruev and Georgi Sugarev. They were defeated and the villages were burned.
Balkan Wars.
In 1912, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece fought the Ottomans in the First Balkan War. After a victory at Sarantaporo, Greek troops advanced towards Monastir but were defeated by the Ottomans at Sorovich. The Battle of Monastir (16–19 November 1912) led to Serbian occupation of the city. According to the Treaty of Bucharest, 1913, the region of Macedonia was divided into three parts among Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Monastir was ceded to Serbia and its official name became the Slavic toponym "Bitola".
World War I.
During World War I Bitola was on the Salonica front. Bulgaria, a Central Power, took the city on 21 November 1915, while the Allied forces recaptured it in 1916. Bitola was divided into French, Russian, Italian and Serbian sections, under the command of French general Maurice Sarrail. Until Bulgaria's surrender in late autumn 1918, Bitola remained a front line city and was bombarded almost daily by air bombardment and artillery fire and was nearly destroyed.
Inter-war period.
At the end of World War I Bitola was restored to the Kingdom of Serbia, and, consequently, in 1918 became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. Bitola became one of the major cities of the Vardarska banovina.
World War II.
During World War II (1939–45), the Germans (on 9 April 1941) and Bulgarians (on 18 April 1941) took control of the city. But in September 1944, Bulgaria switched sides in the war and withdrew from Yugoslavia. On 4 November, the 7th Macedonian Liberation Brigade entered Bitola after the German withdrawal. The historical Jewish community, of Sephardic origin, lived in the city until World War II, when some were able to immigrate to the United States and Chile. On 11 March 1943 the Bulgarians deported the vast majority of the Jewish population (3,276 Jews) to Treblinka extermination camp. After the end of the war, PR Macedonia was established within FPR Yugoslavia.
Socialist Yugoslavia.
In 1945, the first Gymnasium (named "Josip Broz Tito") to use the Macedonian language, was opened in Bitola. In 1951–52, as part of an education campaign total of 40 Turkish language schools were opened in Debar, Kičevo, Kumanovo, Struga, Resen, Bitola, Kruševo and Prilep.
Main sights.
The city has many historical building dating from many historical periods. The most notable ones are from the Ottoman age, but there are some from the more recent past.
Širok Sokak.
Širok Sokak (, meaning "Wide Alley") is a long pedestrian street that runs from Magnolia Square to the City Park.
Clock Tower.
It is unknown when Bitola's clock tower was built. Written sources from the 16th century mention a clock tower, but it is unclear if it is the same. Some believe it was built at the same time as St. Dimitrija Church in 1830. Legend says that the Ottoman authorities collected around 60,000 eggs from nearby villages and mixed them in the mortar to make the walls stronger.
The tower has a rectangular base and is about 30 meters high. Near the top is a rectangular terrace with an iron fence. On each side of the fence is an iron console construction which holds the lamps for lighting the clock. The clock is on the highest of three levels. The original clock was replaced during World War II with a working one, given by the Nazis because the city had maintained German graves from World War I. The massive tower is composed of walls, massive spiral stairs, wooden mezzanine constructions, pendentives and the dome. During the construction of the tower, the façade was simultaneously decorated with simple stone plastic.
Church of Saint Demetrius.
The Church of Saint Demetrius was built in 1830 with the voluntary contributions of local merchants and craftsmen. It is plain on the outside, as all churches in the Ottoman Empire had to be, but lavishly decorated with chandeliers, a carved bishop throne and an engraved iconostasis on the inside. According to some theories, iconostasis is a work of the Mijak engravers. Its most impressive feature is the arc above the imperial quarters with modelled figures of Jesus and the apostles.
Other engraved wood items include the bishop's throne made in the spirit of Mijak engravers, several icon frames and five more-recent pillars shaped like thrones. The frescoes originate from two periods: the end of the 19th century and the end of World War I to the present. The icons and frescoes were created thanks to voluntary contributions of local businessmen and citizens. The authors of many of the icons had a vast knowledge of iconography schemes of the New Testament. The icons show a great sense of color, dominated by red, green and ochra shades. The abundance of golden ornaments is noticeable and points to the presence of late-Byzantine artwork and baroque style. The icon of Saint Demetrius is signed with the initials "D. A. Z.", showing that it was made by iconographer Dimitar Andonov the zograph in 1889. There are many other items, including the chalices made by local masters, a darohranilka of Russian origin, and several paintings of scenes from the New Testament, brought from Jerusalem by pilgrims.
The opening scenes of the film "The Peacemaker" were shot in the "Saint Dimitrija" church in Bitola, as well as some "Welcome to Sarajevo" scenes.
Heraclea Lyncestis.
Heraclea Lyncestis () was an important ancient settlement from the Hellenistic period till the early Middle Ages. It was founded by Philip II of Macedon by the middle of the 4th century BC. Today, its ruins are in the southern part of Bitola, from the city center.
The covered bazaar.
Situated near the city centre, the covered bedesten () is one of the most impressive and oldest buildings in Bitola from the Ottoman period. With its numerous cupolas that look like a fortress, with its tree-branch-like inner streets and four large metal doors it is one of the biggest covered markets in the region.
It was built in the 15th century by Kara Daut Pasha Uzuncarsili, then Rumelia's Beylerbey. Although the bazaar appears secure, it has been robbed and set on fire, but has managed to survive. The bedisten, from the 15th to the 19th centuries, was rebuilt, and many stores, often changing over time, were located there. Most of them were selling textile and other luxurious fabrics. At the same time the Bedisten was a treasury, where in specially made small rooms the money from the whole Rumelian Vilaet was kept, before it was transferred into the royal treasury. In the 19th century the Bedisten contained 84 shops. Today most of them are contemporary and they sell different types of products, but despite the internal renovations, the outwards appearance of the structure has remained unchanged.
Gazi Hajdar Kadi Mosque.
The Gazi Hajdar Kadi Mosque is one of the most attractive monuments of Islamic architecture in Bitola. It was built in the early 1560s, as the project of the architect Mimar Sinan, ordered by the Bitola kadija Ajdar-kadi. Over time, it was abandoned and heavily damaged, and at one point used as a stare, but recent restoration and conservation has restored to some extent its original appearance.
New Mosque, Bitola.
The New Mosque is located in the center of the city. It has a square base, topped with a dome. Near the mosque is a minaret, 40 m high. Today, the mosque's rooms house permanent and temporary art exhibitions. Recent archaeological excavations have revealed that it has been built upon an old church.
Ishak Çelebi Mosque.
The Ishak Çelebi Mosque is the inheritance of the kadi Ishak Çelebi. In its spacious yard are several tombs, attractive because of the soft, molded shapes of the sarcophagi.
The old bazaar.
The old bazaar (Macedonian: "Стара Чаршија") is mentioned in a description of the city from the 16th and the 17th centuries. The present bedisten does not differ much in appearance from the original one. The bedisten had eighty-six shops and four large iron gates. The shops used to sell textiles, and today sell food products.
Deboj Bath.
The Deboj Bath is an Ottoman Empire-era hamam. It is not known when exactly it was constructed. At one point, it was heavily damaged, but after repairs it regained its original appearance: a façade with two large domes and several minor ones.
Bitola today.
Bitola is the economic and industrial center of southwestern North Macedonia. Many of the largest companies in the country are based in the city. The Pelagonia agricultural combine is the largest producer of food in the country. The Streževo water system is the largest in North Macedonia and has the best technological facilities. The three thermoelectric power stations of REK Bitola produce nearly 80% of electricity in the state. The Frinko refrigerate factory was a leading electrical and metal company. Bitola also has significant capacity in the textile and food industries.
Bitola is also home to thirteen consulates, which gives the city the nickname "the city of consuls."
Italy has also expressed interest in opening a consulate in Bitola.
Media.
There is only one television station in Bitola: Tera, few regional radio stations: the private Radio 105 (Bombarder), Radio 106,6, UKLO FM, Radio Delfin as well as a local weekly newspaper — Bitolski Vesnik.
City Council.
The Bitola Municipality Council () is the governing body of the city and municipality of Bitola. The city council approves and rejects projects that would have place inside the municipality given by its members and the Mayor of Bitola. The Council consists of elected representatives. The number of members of the council is determined according to the number of residents in the community and can not be fewer than nine nor more than 33. Currently the council is composed of 31 councillors. Council members are elected for a term of four years.
Following the 2021 local elections, the City Council is constituted as follows:
Examining matters within its competence, the Council set up committees. Council committees are either permanent or temporary.
Permanent committees of the council:
Sports.
The most popular sports in Bitola are football and handball.
The main football team is FK Pelister and they play at the Petar Miloševski Stadium which has a capacity of 6,100. Georgi Hristov, Dragan Kanatlarovski, Toni Micevski, Nikolče Noveski, Toni Savevski and Mitko Stojkovski are some of the Bitola natives to start their careers with the club.
Bitola's main handball club and most famous sports team is RK Eurofarm Pelister. RK Eurofarm Pelister 2 is the second club from the city, and both teams play their games at the Sports Hall Boro Čurlevski.
The main basketball club is KK Pelister, and they also compete at the Sports Hall Boro Čurlevski.
All the sports teams under the name "Pelister" are supported by the fans known as Čkembari.
Transport.
The city is served by Bitola railway station, with service as far north as Belgrade.
Demographics.
Bitola's population was historically diverse. It numbered some 37,500 at the end of the 19th century. There were around 7,000 Aromanians, most of whom fully embraced the Hellenic culture, although some preferred the Romanian culture. Bitola also had a significant Muslim population - 11,000 (Turks, Roma, and Albanians) as well as a Jewish community of 5,200. The Slavic-speakers were divided between the Bulgarian Exarchate - 8,000, and the Greek Patriarchate - 6,300. A significant part of the Muslim Albanian population of Bitola was Turkified during Ottoman rule.
In statistics gathered by Vasil Kanchov in 1900, the city of Bitola was inhabited by 37,000 people, of whom 10,500 were Turks, 10,000 Christian Bulgarians, 7,000 Vlachs, 2,000 Romani, 5,500 Jews, 1,500 Muslim Albanians, 500 inhabitants of various other origins. The Bulgarian researcher Vasil Kanchov wrote in 1900 that many Albanians declared themselves as Turks. In Bitola, the population that declared itself Turkish "was of Albanian blood", but it "had been Turkified after the Ottoman invasion, including Skanderbeg", referring to Islamization.
During Ottoman times, Bitola had a significant Aromanian population, which according to some sources was larger than the Bulgarian and Jewish ones. In 1901, the Italian consul to the Ottoman Empire in Bitola said that "Undoubtedly, Koutzo-Vlach [Aromanian] population in Bitola is most significant in this town in terms of number of inhabitants, social status and importance in trade".
According to the statistics of the secretary of the Bulgarian Exarchate, Dimitar Mishev (" La Macédoine et sa Population Chrétienne "), in 1905 the Christian population of Bitola consisted of 8,844 Bulgarian Exarchists, 6,300 Greek Patriarchal Bulgarians, 72 Serboman Patriarchal Bulgarians, 36 Protestant Bulgarians, 100 Greeks, 7,200 Vlachs, 120 Albanians and 120 Gypsies. In the city there are 10 primary and 3 secondary Bulgarian schools, 7 primary and 2 secondary Greek, 2 primary and 2 secondary Romanian and 1 primary and 2 secondary Serbian schools.
According to a 1911 Ottoman census, there were 350,000 Greeks, 246,000 Bulgarians and 456,000 Muslims in the vilayet of Manastır, however the basis of the Ottoman censuses was the millet system where people were assigned an ethnicity according to their religion. Therefore, all Sunni Muslims were categorised as "Turks" even though many of them were Albanians, while all members of the Greek Orthodox church were listed as "Greeks" although this group was composed of Aromanians, Slavs, and Tosk Albanians, in addition to the Greeks which were numbered at ~100,000. The Slavic-speakers were divided between the Bulgarian majority and a small Serbian minority.
Bulgarian ethnographer Jordan Ivanov, professor at the University of Sofia, wrote in 1915 that Albanians, since they did not have their own alphabet, lacked a consolidated national consciousness and were influenced by foreign propaganda, declared themselves as Turks, Greeks and Bulgarians, depending on which religion they belonged to. Ivan further stated that Albanians were losing their mother tongue in Bitola. German linguist Gustav Weigand describes the process of Turkification of the Albanian urban population in his 1923 work "Ethnographie Makedoniens" (Ethnography of Macedonia). He writes that in the cities, especially noting Bitola, many of the Turkish inhabitants are in fact Albanians, being distinguished by the difference in articulation of certain Turkish words, as well as their clothing and tool use. They speak Albanian at home, however use Turkish when in public. They refer to themselves as "Turks", the term at the time also being a synonym for "Muslim", with ethnic Turks referring to them as "Turkoshak", a derogatory term for someone portraying themselves as Turkish.
According to the 1948 census Bitola had 30,761 inhabitants. 77.2% (or 23,734 inhabitants) were Macedonians, 11.5% (or 3,543 inhabitants) were Turks, 4.3% (or 1,327 inhabitants) were Albanians, 3% (or 912 inhabitants) were Serbs and 1.3% (or 402 inhabitants) were Aromanians. As of 2021, the city of Bitola has 69,287 inhabitants and the ethnic composition is the following:
In the 1953 census, large portions of Albanians declared themselves as ethnic Turks. In the municipality of Bitola, 13,166 Albanians were registered in 1948 and 4,014 in 1953, with the Turkish community going from 14,050 members in 1948, to numbering 29,151 in 1953.
According to the 2002 census the most common languages in the city are the following:
Bitola is a bishopric city and the seat of the Diocese of Prespa- Pelagonia. In World War II the diocese was named Ohrid - Bitola. With the restoration of the autocephaly of the Macedonian Orthodox Church in 1967, it got its present name Prespa- Pelagonia diocese which covers the following regions and cities: Bitola, Resen, Prilep, Krusevo and Demir Hisar.
The diocese's first bishop (1958 - 1979) was Mr. Kliment. The second and current bishop and administrator of the diocese, who has been bishop since 1981 is Mr. Petar. The Prespa- Pelagonia diocese has about 500 churches and monasteries. In the last ten years in the diocese have been built or are being built about 40 churches and 140 church buildings. The diocese has two church museums- the cathedral "St. Martyr Demetrius" in Bitola and at the Church "St. John" in Krusevo and permanent exhibition of icons and libraries in the building of the seat of the diocese. The seat building was built between 1901 and 1902 and is an example of baroque architecture. Besides the dominant Macedonian Orthodox Church in Bitola there are other major religious groups such as the Islamic community, the Roman Catholic Church and others.
According to the 2002 census the religious composition of the city is the following:
Culture.
Bitola has been part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network since December 2015.
Held in memory of the first cameramen on the Balkans, Milton Manaki, every September the Film and Photo festival "Brothers Manaki" takes place. It is a combination of documentary and full-length films that are shown. The festival is a world class event with high recognition from press. A number of high-profile actors such as Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Victoria Abril, Predrag Manojlovic, Michael York, Juliette Binoche, and Rade Sherbedgia have attended.
Every year, the traditional folk festival "Ilinden Days" takes place in Bitola. It is a 4-5 day festival of music, songs, and dances that is dedicated to the Ilinden Uprising against the Turks, where the main concentration is placed on the folk culture of North Macedonia. Folk dances and songs are presented with many folklore groups and organizations taking part.
In the last few years, the art exhibition "Small Montmartre of Bitola" that is organized by the art studio "Kiril and Metodij" has turned into a successful children's art festival. Children from all over the world come to create art, making a number of highly valued art pieces that are presented in the country and around the world. "Small Montmartre of Bitola" has won numerous awards and nominations.
Bitolino is an annual children's theater festival held in August with the Babec Theater. Every year professional children's theaters from all over the world participate in the festival. The main prize is the grand prix for best performance.
Every May, Bitola hosts the international children's song festival Si-Do, which in recent years has increased in attendance. Children from all over Europe participate in this event which usually consists of about 20 songs. This festival is supported by ProMedia which organizes the event with a new topic each year. Many Macedonian musicians have participated in the festival including: Next Time and Karolina Goceva who also represented North Macedonia at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Interfest is an international festival dedicated mainly to classical music where musicians from around the world play their classical pieces. In addition to the classical music concerts, there are also few nights for pop-modern music, theater plays, art exhibitions, and a day for literature presentation during the event. In the last few years there have been artists from Russia, Slovakia, Poland, and many other countries.
As Bitola has been called the city with most pianos, one night of the festival is dedicated to piano competitions. One award is given for the best young piano player, and another for competitors over 30.
The Akto Festival for Contemporary Arts is a regional festival. The festival includes visual arts, performing arts, music and theory of culture. The first Akto festival was held in 2006. The aim of the festival is to open the cultural frameworks of a modern society through "recomposing" and redefining them in a new context. In the past, the festival featured artists from regional countries like Slovenia, Greece or Bulgaria, but also from Germany, Italy, France and Austria.
Is annual festival of monodrama held in April in organization of Centre of Culture of Bitola every year many actors from all over the world come in Bitola to play monodramas.
Is a cultural and tourist event which has existed since 2007. The founder and organizer of the festival is the Association of Citizens Center for Cultural Decontamination Bitola. The festival is held every year in mid-July in the heart of the old Turkish bazaar in Bitola, as part of Bitola Cultural Summer Bit Fest.
Education.
St. Clement of Ohrid University of Bitola (. Климент Охридски — Битола) was founded in 1979, as a result of an increasing demand for highly skilled professionals outside the country's capital. Since 1994, it has carried the name of the Slavic educator St. Clement of Ohrid. The university has institutes in Bitola, Ohrid, and Prilep, and its headquarters is in Bitola. It has become a well established university, and cooperates with University of St. Cyril and Methodius from Skopje and other universities in the Balkans and Europe. The following institutes and scientific organizations are part of the university:
There are seven high schools in Bitola:
Ten Primary Schools in Bitola are:
Twin towns — sister cities.
Bitola is twinned with:
|
3793
|
2731577
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3793
|
Battle of Bosworth Field
|
The Battle of Bosworth or Bosworth Field ( ) was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the houses of Lancaster and York that extended across England in the latter half of the 15th century. Fought on 22 August 1485, the battle was won by an alliance of Lancastrians and disaffected Yorkists. Their leader Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, became the first English monarch of the Tudor dynasty by his victory and subsequent marriage to a Yorkist princess. His opponent Richard III, the last king of the House of York, was killed during the battle, the last English monarch to fall in battle. Historians consider Bosworth Field to mark the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, making it one of the defining moments of English history.
Richard's reign began in 1483 when he ascended the throne after his twelve-year-old nephew, Edward V, was declared illegitimate. The boy and his younger brother Richard soon disappeared, and their fate remains a mystery. Across the English Channel Henry Tudor, a descendant of the greatly diminished House of Lancaster, seized on Richard's difficulties and laid claim to the throne. Henry's first attempt to invade England in 1483 foundered in a storm, but his second arrived unopposed on 7 August 1485 on the south-west coast of Wales. Marching inland, Henry gathered support as he made for London. Richard hurriedly mustered his troops and intercepted Henry's army near Ambion Hill, south of the town of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. Lord Stanley and Sir William Stanley also brought a force to the battlefield, but held back while they decided which side it would be most advantageous to support, initially lending only four knights to Henry's cause; these were: Sir Robert Tunstall, Sir John Savage (nephew of Lord Stanley), Sir Hugh Persall and Sir Humphrey Stanley. Sir John Savage was placed in command of the left flank of Henry's army.
Richard divided his army, which outnumbered Henry's, into three groups (or "battles"). One was assigned to the Duke of Norfolk and another to the Earl of Northumberland. Henry kept most of his force together and placed it under the command of the experienced Earl of Oxford. Richard's vanguard, commanded by Norfolk, attacked but struggled against Oxford's men, and some of Norfolk's troops fled the field. Northumberland took no action when signalled to assist his king, so Richard gambled everything on a charge across the battlefield to kill Henry and end the fight. Seeing the king's knights separated from his army, the Stanleys intervened; Sir William led his men to Henry's aid, surrounding and killing Richard. After the battle, Henry was crowned king.
Henry hired chroniclers to portray his reign favourably; the Battle of Bosworth Field was popularised to represent his Tudor dynasty as the start of a new age, marking the end of the Middle Ages for England. From the 15th to the 18th centuries the battle was glamourised as a victory of good over evil, and features as the climax of William Shakespeare's play "Richard III". The exact site of the battle is disputed because of the lack of conclusive data, and memorials have been erected at different locations. The Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre was built in 1974, on a site that has since been challenged by several scholars and historians. In October 2009, a team of researchers who had performed geological surveys and archaeological digs in the area since 2003 suggested a location south-west of Ambion Hill.
Background.
During the 15th century civil war raged across England as the Houses of York and Lancaster fought each other for the English throne. In 1471 the Yorkists defeated their rivals in the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury. The Lancastrian King Henry VI and his only son, Edward of Westminster, died in the aftermath of the Battle of Tewkesbury. Their deaths left the House of Lancaster with no direct claimants to the throne. The Yorkist king, Edward IV, was in complete control of England. He attainted those who refused to submit to his rule, such as Jasper Tudor and his nephew Henry, naming them traitors and confiscating their lands. The Tudors tried to flee to France but strong winds forced them to land in Brittany, which was a semi-independent duchy, where they were taken into the custody of Duke Francis II. Henry's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, uncle of King Richard II and father of King Henry IV. The Beauforts were originally bastards, but Richard II legitimised them through an Act of Parliament, a decision quickly modified by a royal decree of Henry IV ordering that their descendants were not eligible to inherit the throne. Henry Tudor, the only remaining Lancastrian noble with a trace of the royal bloodline, had a weak claim to the throne, and Edward regarded him as "a nobody". The Duke of Brittany, however, viewed Henry as a valuable tool to bargain for England's aid in conflicts with France, and kept the Tudors under his protection.
Edward IV died 12 years after Tewkesbury in April 1483. His 12-year-old elder son succeeded him as King Edward V; the younger son, nine-year-old Richard of Shrewsbury, was next in line to the throne. Edward V was too young to rule and a Royal Council was established to rule the country until the king's coming of age. Some among the council were worried when it became apparent that the relatives of Edward V's mother, Elizabeth Woodville, were plotting to use their control of the young king to dominate the council. Having offended many in their quest for wealth and power, the Woodville family was not popular. To frustrate the Woodvilles' ambitions, Lord Hastings and other members of the council turned to the new king's uncle—Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Edward IV. The courtiers urged Gloucester to assume the role of Protector quickly, as had been previously requested by his now dead brother. On 29 April Gloucester, accompanied by a contingent of guards and Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, took Edward V into custody and arrested several prominent members of the Woodville family. After bringing the young king to London, Gloucester had the Queen's brother Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, and her son by her first marriage Richard Grey executed, without trial, on charges of treason.
On 13 June, Gloucester accused Hastings of plotting with the Woodvilles and had him beheaded. Nine days later the Three Estates of the Realm, an informal Parliament declared the marriage between Edward IV and Elizabeth illegal, rendering their children illegitimate and disqualifying them from the throne. With his brother's children out of the way, he was next in the line of succession and was proclaimed King Richard III on 26 June. The timing and extrajudicial nature of the deeds done to obtain the throne for Richard won him no popularity, and rumours that spoke ill of the new king spread throughout England. After they were declared bastards, the two princes were confined in the Tower of London and never seen in public again.
In October 1483, a conspiracy emerged to displace him from the throne. The rebels were mostly loyalists to Edward IV, who saw Richard as a usurper. Their plans were coordinated by a Lancastrian, Henry's mother Lady Margaret, who was promoting her son as a candidate for the throne. The highest-ranking conspirator was Buckingham. No chronicles tell of the duke's motive in joining the plot, although historian Charles Ross proposes that Buckingham was trying to distance himself from a king who was becoming increasingly unpopular with the people. Michael Jones and Malcolm Underwood suggest that Margaret deceived Buckingham into thinking the rebels supported him to be king.
The plan was to stage uprisings within a short time in southern and western England, overwhelming Richard's forces. Buckingham would support the rebels by invading from Wales, while Henry came in by sea. Bad timing and weather wrecked the plot. An uprising in Kent started 10 days prematurely, alerting Richard to muster the royal army and take steps to put down the insurrections. Richard's spies informed him of Buckingham's activities, and the king's men captured and destroyed the bridges across the River Severn. When Buckingham and his army reached the river, they found it swollen and impossible to cross because of a violent storm that broke on 15 October. Buckingham was trapped and had no safe place to retreat; his Welsh enemies seized his home castle after he had set forth with his army. The duke abandoned his plans and fled to Wem, where he was betrayed by his servant and arrested by Richard's men. On 2 November he was executed. Henry had attempted a landing on 10 October (or 19 October), but his fleet was scattered by a storm. He reached the coast of England (at either Plymouth or Poole) and a group of soldiers hailed him to come ashore. They were, in fact, Richard's men, prepared to capture Henry once he set foot on English soil. Henry was not deceived and returned to Brittany, abandoning the invasion. Without Buckingham or Henry, the rebellion was easily crushed by Richard.
The survivors of the failed uprisings fled to Brittany, where they openly supported Henry's claim to the throne. At Christmas, Henry Tudor swore an oath in Rennes Cathedral to marry Edward IV's daughter, Elizabeth of York, to unite the warring houses of York and Lancaster. Henry's rising prominence made him a great threat to Richard, and the Yorkist king made several overtures to the Duke of Brittany to surrender the young Lancastrian. Francis refused, holding out for the possibility of better terms from Richard. In mid-1484 Francis was incapacitated by illness and while recuperating, his treasurer Pierre Landais took over the reins of government. Landais reached an agreement with Richard to send back Henry and his uncle in exchange for military and financial aid. John Morton, a bishop of Flanders, learned of the scheme and warned the Tudors, who fled to France. The French court allowed them to stay; the Tudors were useful pawns to ensure that Richard's England did not interfere with French plans to annex Brittany. On 16 March 1485 Richard's queen, Anne Neville, died, and rumours spread across the country that she was murdered to pave the way for Richard to marry his niece, Elizabeth. Later findings though, showed that Richard had entered into negotiations to marry Joanna of Portugal and to marry off Elizabeth to Manuel, Duke of Beja. The gossip must have upset Henry across the English Channel. The loss of Elizabeth's hand in marriage could unravel the alliance between Henry's supporters who were Lancastrians and those who were loyalists to Edward IV. Anxious to secure his bride, Henry recruited mercenaries formerly in French service to supplement his following of exiles and set sail from France on 1 August.
Factions.
By the 15th century, English chivalric ideas of selfless service to the king had been corrupted. Armed forces were raised mostly through musters in individual estates; every able-bodied man had to respond to his lord's call to arms, and each noble had authority over his militia. Although a king could raise personal militia from his lands, he could muster a large army only through the support of his nobles. Richard, like his predecessors, had to win over these men by granting gifts and maintaining cordial relationships. Powerful nobles could demand greater incentives to remain on the liege's side or else they might turn against him. Three groups, each with its own agenda, stood on Bosworth Field: Richard III and his Yorkist army; his challenger, Henry Tudor, who championed the Lancastrian cause; and the fence-sitting Stanleys.
Yorkist.
Small and slender, Richard III did not have the robust physique associated with many of his Plantagenet predecessors. However, he enjoyed very rough sports and activities that were considered manly. His performances on the battlefield impressed his brother greatly, and he became Edward's right-hand man. During the 1480s Richard defended the northern borders of England. In 1482, Edward charged him to lead an army into Scotland with the aim of replacing King James III with the Duke of Albany. Richard's army broke through the Scottish defences and occupied the capital, Edinburgh, but Albany decided to give up his claim to the throne in return for the post of Lieutenant General of Scotland. As well as obtaining a guarantee that the Scottish government would concede territories and diplomatic benefits to the English crown, Richard's campaign retook the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which the Scots had conquered in 1460. Edward was not satisfied by these gains, which, according to Ross, could have been greater if Richard had been resolute enough to capitalise on the situation while in control of Edinburgh. In her analysis of Richard's character, Christine Carpenter sees him as a soldier who was more used to taking orders than giving them. However, he was not averse to displaying his militaristic streak; on ascending the throne he made known his desire to lead a crusade against "not only the Turks, but all [his] foes".
Richard's most loyal subject was John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk. The duke had served Richard's brother for many years and had been one of Edward IV's closer confidants. He was a military veteran, having fought in the Battle of Towton in 1461 and served as Hastings' deputy at Calais in 1471. Ross speculates that he bore a grudge against Edward for depriving him of a fortune. Norfolk was due to inherit a share of the wealthy Mowbray estate on the death of eight-year-old Anne de Mowbray, the last of her family. However, Edward convinced Parliament to circumvent the law of inheritance and transfer the estate to his younger son, who was married to Anne. Consequently, Howard supported Richard III in deposing Edward's sons, for which he received the dukedom of Norfolk and his original share of the Mowbray estate.
Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, also supported Richard's ascension to the throne of England. The Percys were loyal Lancastrians, but Edward IV eventually won the earl's allegiance. Northumberland had been captured and imprisoned by the Yorkists in 1461, losing his titles and estates; however, Edward released him eight years later and restored his earldom. From that time Northumberland served the Yorkist crown, helping to defend northern England and maintain its peace. Initially the earl had issues with Richard III as Edward groomed his brother to be the leading power of the north. Northumberland was mollified when he was promised he would be the Warden of the East March, a position that was formerly hereditary for the Percys. He served under Richard during the 1482 invasion of Scotland, and the allure of being in a position to dominate the north of England if Richard went south to assume the crown was his likely motivation for supporting Richard's bid for kingship. However, after becoming king, Richard began moulding his nephew, John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln, to manage the north, passing over Northumberland for the position. According to Carpenter, although the earl was amply compensated, he despaired of any possibility of advancement under Richard.
Lancastrians.
Henry Tudor was unfamiliar with the arts of war and was a stranger to the land he was trying to conquer. He spent the first fourteen years of his life in Wales and the next fourteen in Brittany and France. Slender but strong and decisive, Henry lacked a penchant for battle and was not much of a warrior; chroniclers such as Polydore Vergil and ambassadors like Pedro de Ayala found him more interested in commerce and finance. Having not fought in any battles, Henry recruited several experienced veterans to command his armies.
John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, was Henry's principal military commander. He was adept in the arts of war. At the Battle of Barnet, he commanded the Lancastrian right wing and routed the division opposing him. However, as a result of confusion over identities, Oxford's group came under friendly fire from the Lancastrian main force and retreated from the field. The earl fled abroad and continued his fight against the Yorkists, raiding shipping and eventually capturing the island fort of St Michael's Mount in 1473. He surrendered after receiving no aid or reinforcement, but in 1484 escaped from prison and joined Henry's court in France, bringing along his erstwhile gaoler Sir James Blount. Oxford's presence raised morale in Henry's camp and troubled Richard III.
Stanleys.
In the early stages of the Wars of the Roses, the Stanleys of Cheshire had been predominantly Lancastrians. Sir William Stanley, however, was a staunch Yorkist supporter, fighting in the Battle of Blore Heath in 1459 and helping Hastings to put down uprisings against Edward IV in 1471. When Richard took the crown, Sir William showed no inclination to turn against the new king, refraining from joining Buckingham's rebellion, for which he was amply rewarded. Sir William's elder brother, Thomas Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley, was not as steadfast. By 1485, he had served three kings, namely Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III. Lord Stanley's skilled political manoeuvrings—vacillating between opposing sides until it was clear who would be the winner—gained him high positions; he was Henry's chamberlain and Edward's steward. His non-committal stance, until the crucial point of a battle, earned him the loyalty of his men, who felt he would not needlessly send them to their deaths.
Lord Stanley's relations with the king's brother, the eventual Richard III, were not cordial. The two had conflicts that erupted into violence around March 1470. Furthermore, having taken Lady Margaret as his second wife in June 1472, Stanley was Henry Tudor's stepfather, a relationship which did nothing to win him Richard's favour. Despite these differences, Stanley did not join Buckingham's revolt in 1483. When Richard executed those conspirators who had been unable to flee England, he spared Lady Margaret. However, he declared her titles forfeit and transferred her estates to Stanley's name, to be held in trust for the Yorkist crown. Richard's act of mercy was calculated to reconcile him with Stanley, but it may have been to no avail—Carpenter has identified a further cause of friction in Richard's intention to reopen an old land dispute that involved Thomas Stanley and the Harrington family. Edward IV had ruled the case in favour of Stanley in 1473, but Richard planned to overturn his brother's ruling and give the wealthy estate to the Harringtons. Immediately before the Battle of Bosworth, being wary of Stanley, Richard took his son, Lord Strange, as hostage to discourage him from joining Henry.
Crossing the English Channel and through Wales.
Henry's initial force consisted of the English and Welsh exiles who had gathered around Henry, combined with a contingent of mercenaries put at his disposal by Charles VIII of France. The history of Scottish author John Major (published in 1521) claims that Charles had granted Henry 5,000 men, of whom 1,000 were Scots, headed by Sir Alexander Bruce. No mention of Scottish soldiers was made by subsequent English historians.
Henry's crossing of the English Channel in 1485 was without incident. Thirty ships sailed from Harfleur on 1 August and, with fair winds behind them, landed in his native Wales, at Mill Bay (near Dale) on the north side of Milford Haven on 7 August, easily capturing nearby Dale Castle. Henry received a muted response from the local population. No joyous welcome awaited him on shore, and at first few individual Welshmen joined his army as it marched inland. Historian Geoffrey Elton suggests only Henry's ardent supporters felt pride over his Welsh blood. His arrival had been hailed by contemporary Welsh bards such as Dafydd Ddu and Gruffydd ap Dafydd as the true prince and "the youth of Brittany defeating the Saxons" in order to bring their country back to glory. When Henry moved to Haverfordwest, the county town of Pembrokeshire, Richard's lieutenant in South Wales, Sir Walter Herbert, failed to move against Henry, and two of his officers, Richard Griffith and Evan Morgan, deserted to Henry with their men.
The most important defector to Henry in this early stage of the campaign was probably Rhys ap Thomas, who was the leading figure in West Wales. Richard had appointed Rhys Lieutenant in West Wales for his refusal to join Buckingham's rebellion, asking that he surrender his son Gruffydd ap Rhys ap Thomas as surety, although by some accounts Rhys had managed to evade this condition. However, Henry successfully courted Rhys, offering the lieutenancy of all Wales in exchange for his fealty. Henry marched via Aberystwyth while Rhys followed a more southerly route, recruiting a force of Welshmen en route, variously estimated at 500 or 2,000 men, to swell Henry's army when they reunited at Cefn Digoll, Welshpool. By 15 or 16 August, Henry and his men had crossed the English border, making for the town of Shrewsbury.
Shrewsbury: the gateway to England.
Since 22 June Richard had been aware of Henry's impending invasion, and had ordered his lords to maintain a high level of readiness. News of Henry's landing reached Richard on 11 August, but it took three to four days for his messengers to notify his lords of their king's mobilisation. On 16 August, the Yorkist army started to gather; Norfolk set off for Leicester, the assembly point, that night. The city of York, a historical stronghold of Richard's family, asked the king for instructions, and receiving a reply three days later sent 80 men to join the king. Simultaneously Northumberland, whose northern territory was the most distant from the capital, had gathered his men and ridden to Leicester.
Although London was his goal, Henry did not move directly towards the city. After resting in Shrewsbury, his forces went eastwards and picked up Sir Gilbert Talbot and other English allies, including deserters from Richard's forces. Although its size had increased substantially since the landing, Henry's army was still considerably outnumbered by Richard's forces. Henry's pace through Staffordshire was slow, delaying the confrontation with Richard so that he could gather more recruits to his cause. Henry had been communicating on friendly terms with the Stanleys for some time before setting foot in England, and the Stanleys had mobilised their forces on hearing of Henry's landing. They ranged themselves ahead of Henry's march through the English countryside, meeting twice in secret with Henry as he moved through Staffordshire. At the second of these, at Atherstone in Warwickshire, they conferred "in what sort to arraign battle with King Richard, whom they heard to be not far off". On 21 August, the Stanleys were making camp on the slopes of a hill north of Dadlington, while Henry encamped his army at White Moors to the north-west of their camp.
On 20 August, Richard rode from Nottingham to Leicester, joining Norfolk. He spent the night at the Blue Boar inn (demolished 1836). Northumberland arrived the following day. The royal army proceeded westwards to intercept Henry's march on London. Passing Sutton Cheney, Richard moved his army towards Ambion Hill—which he thought would be of tactical value—and made camp on it. Richard's sleep was not peaceful and, according to the "Croyland Chronicle", in the morning his face was "more livid and ghastly than usual".
Engagement.
The Yorkist army, variously estimated at between 7,500 and 12,000 men, deployed on the hilltop along the ridgeline from west to east. Norfolk's force (or "battle" in the parlance of the time) of spearmen stood on the right flank, protecting the cannon and about 1,200 archers. Richard's group, comprising 3,000 infantry, formed the centre. Northumberland's men guarded the left flank; he had approximately 4,000 men, many of them mounted. Standing on the hilltop, Richard had a wide, unobstructed view of the area. He could see the Stanleys and their 4,000–6,000 men holding positions on and around Dadlington Hill, while to the south-west was Henry's army.
Henry's force has been variously estimated at between 5,000 and 8,000 men, his original landing force of exiles and mercenaries having been augmented by the recruits gathered in Wales and the English border counties (in the latter area probably mustered chiefly by the Talbot interest), and by deserters from Richard's army. Historian John Mackie believes that 1,800 French mercenaries, led by Philibert de Chandée, formed the core of Henry's army. John Mair, writing thirty-five years after the battle, claimed that this force contained a significant Scottish component, and this claim is accepted by some modern writers, but Mackie argues that the French would not have released their elite Scottish knights and archers, and concludes that there were probably few Scottish troops in the army, although he accepts the presence of captains like Bernard Stewart, Lord of Aubigny.
In their interpretations of the vague mentions of the battle in the old text, historians placed areas near the foot of Ambion Hill as likely regions where the two armies clashed, and thought up possible scenarios of the engagement. In their recreations of the battle, Henry started by moving his army towards Ambion Hill where Richard and his men stood. As Henry's army advanced past the marsh at the south-western foot of the hill, Richard sent a message to Stanley, threatening to execute his son, Lord Strange, if Stanley did not join the attack on Henry immediately. Stanley replied that he had other sons. Incensed, Richard gave the order to behead Strange but his officers temporised, saying that battle was imminent, and it would be more convenient to carry out the execution afterwards. Henry had also sent messengers to Stanley asking him to declare his allegiance. The reply was evasive—the Stanleys would "naturally" come, after Henry had given orders to his army and arranged them for battle. Henry had no choice but to confront Richard's forces alone.
Well aware of his own military inexperience, Henry handed command of his army to Oxford and retired to the rear with his bodyguards. Oxford, seeing the vast line of Richard's army strung along the ridgeline, decided to keep his men together instead of splitting them into the traditional three battles: vanguard, centre, and rearguard. He ordered the troops to stray no further than from their banners, fearing that they would become enveloped. Individual groups clumped together, forming a single large mass flanked by horsemen on the wings.
The Lancastrians were harassed by Richard's cannon as they manoeuvred around the marsh, seeking firmer ground. Once Oxford and his men were clear of the marsh, Norfolk's battle and several contingents of Richard's group, under the command of Sir Robert Brackenbury, started to advance. Hails of arrows showered both sides as they closed. Oxford's men proved the steadier in the ensuing hand-to-hand combat; they held their ground and several of Norfolk's men fled the field. Norfolk lost one of his senior officers, Walter Devereux, in this early clash.
Recognising that his force was at a disadvantage, Richard signalled for Northumberland to assist but Northumberland's group showed no signs of movement. Historians, such as Horrox and Pugh, believe Northumberland chose not to aid his king for personal reasons. Ross doubts the aspersions cast on Northumberland's loyalty, suggesting instead that Ambion Hill's narrow ridge hindered him from joining the battle. The earl would have had to either go through his allies or execute a wide flanking move—near impossible to perform given the standard of drill at the time—to engage Oxford's men.
At this juncture Richard saw Henry at some distance behind his main force. Seeing this, Richard decided to end the fight quickly by killing the enemy commander. He led a charge of mounted men around the melee and tore into Henry's group; several accounts state that Richard's force numbered 800–1000 knights, but Ross says it was more likely that Richard was accompanied only by his household men and closest friends. Richard killed Henry's standard-bearer Sir William Brandon in the initial charge and unhorsed burly John Cheyne, Edward IV's former standard-bearer, with a blow to the head from his broken lance. French mercenaries in Henry's retinue related how the attack had caught them off guard and that Henry sought protection by dismounting and concealing himself among them to present less of a target. Henry made no attempt to engage in combat himself.
Oxford had left a small reserve of pike-equipped men with Henry. They slowed the pace of Richard's mounted charge, and bought Tudor some critical time. The remainder of Henry's bodyguards surrounded their master, and succeeded in keeping him away from the Yorkist king. Meanwhile, seeing Richard embroiled with Henry's men and separated from his main force, William Stanley made his move and rode to the aid of Henry. Now outnumbered, Richard's group was surrounded and gradually pressed back. Richard's force was driven several hundred yards away from Tudor, near to the edge of a marsh, into which the king's horse toppled. Richard, now unhorsed, gathered himself and rallied his dwindling followers, supposedly refusing to retreat: "God forbid that I retreat one step. I will either win the battle as a king, or die as one." In the fighting Richard's banner man—Sir Percival Thirlwall—lost his legs, but held the Yorkist banner aloft until he was killed. It is likely that James Harrington also died in the charge. The king's trusted advisor Richard Ratcliffe was also slain.
Polydore Vergil, Henry Tudor's official historian, recorded that "King Richard, alone, was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies". Richard had come within a sword's length of Henry Tudor before being surrounded by William Stanley's men and killed. The Burgundian chronicler Jean Molinet says that a Welshman struck the death-blow with a halberd while Richard's horse was stuck in the marshy ground. It was said that the blows were so violent that the king's helmet was driven into his skull. The contemporary Welsh poet Guto'r Glyn implies the leading Welsh Lancastrian Rhys ap Thomas, or one of his men, killed the king, writing that he ("Killed the boar, shaved his head"). Analysis of King Richard's skeletal remains found 11 wounds, nine of them to the head; a blade consistent with a halberd had sliced off part of the rear of Richard's skull, suggesting he had lost his helmet.
Richard's forces disintegrated as news of his death spread. Northumberland and his men fled north on seeing the king's fate, and Norfolk was killed by the knight Sir John Savage in single combat according to the Ballad of Lady Bessy.
After the battle.
Although he claimed fourth-generation maternal Lancastrian descendancy, Henry seized the crown by right of conquest. After the battle, Richard's circlet is said to have been found and brought to Henry, who was proclaimed king at the top of Crown Hill, near the village of Stoke Golding. According to Vergil, Henry's official historian, Lord Stanley found the circlet. Historians Stanley Chrimes and Sydney Anglo dismiss the legend of the circlet's finding in a hawthorn bush; none of the contemporary sources reported such an event. Ross, however, does not ignore the legend. He argues that the hawthorn bush would not be part of Henry's coat of arms if it did not have a strong relationship to his ascendance. Baldwin points out that a hawthorn bush motif was already used by the House of Lancaster, and Henry merely added the crown.
In Vergil's chronicle, 100 of Henry's men, compared to 1,000 of Richard's, died in this battle—a ratio Chrimes believes to be an exaggeration. The bodies of the fallen were brought to St James Church at Dadlington for burial. However, Henry denied any immediate rest for Richard; instead the last Yorkist king's corpse was stripped naked and strapped across a horse. His body was brought to Leicester and openly exhibited to prove that he was dead. Early accounts suggest that this was in the major Lancastrian collegiate foundation, the Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke. After two days, the corpse was interred in a plain tomb, within the church of the Greyfriars. The church was demolished following the friary's dissolution in 1538, and the location of Richard's tomb was long uncertain.
On 12 September 2012, archaeologists announced the discovery of a buried skeleton with spinal abnormalities and head injuries under a car park in Leicester, and their suspicions that it was Richard III. On 4 February 2013, it was announced that DNA testing had convinced Leicester University scientists and researchers "beyond reasonable doubt" that the remains were those of King Richard. On 26 March 2015, these remains were ceremonially buried in Leicester Cathedral. Richard's tomb was unveiled on the following day.
Henry dismissed the mercenaries in his force, retaining only a small core of local soldiers to form a "Yeomen of his Garde", and proceeded to establish his rule of England. Parliament reversed his attainder and recorded Richard's kingship as illegal, although the Yorkist king's reign remained officially in the annals of England history. The proclamation of Edward IV's children as illegitimate was also reversed, restoring Elizabeth's status to a royal princess. The marriage of Elizabeth, the heiress to the House of York, to Henry, the master of the House of Lancaster, marked the end of the feud between the two houses and the start of the Tudor dynasty. The royal matrimony, however, was delayed until Henry was crowned king and had established his claim on the throne firmly enough to preclude that of Elizabeth and her kin. Henry further convinced Parliament to backdate his reign to the day before the battle, enabling him retrospectively to declare as traitors those who had fought against him at Bosworth Field. Northumberland, who had remained inactive during the battle, was imprisoned but later released and reinstated to pacify the north in Henry's name. Henry proved prepared to accept those who submitted to him regardless of their former allegiances.
Of his supporters, Henry rewarded the Stanleys the most generously. Aside from making William his chamberlain, he bestowed the earldom of Derby upon Lord Stanley along with grants and offices in other estates. Henry rewarded Oxford by restoring to him the lands and titles confiscated by the Yorkists and appointing him as Constable of the Tower and admiral of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine. For his kin, Henry created Jasper Tudor the Duke of Bedford. He returned to his mother the lands and grants stripped from her by Richard, and proved to be a filial son, granting her a place of honour in the palace and faithfully attending to her throughout his reign. Parliament's declaration of Margaret as "femme sole" effectively empowered her; she no longer needed to manage her estates through Stanley. Elton points out that despite his initial largesse, Henry's supporters at Bosworth would enjoy his special favour for only the short term; in later years, he would instead promote those who best served his interests.
Like the kings before him, Henry faced dissenters. The first open revolt occurred two years after Bosworth Field; Lambert Simnel claimed to be Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, who was Edward IV's nephew. The Earl of Lincoln backed him for the throne and led rebel forces in the name of the House of York. The rebel army fended off several attacks by Northumberland's forces, before engaging Henry's army at the Battle of Stoke Field on 16 June 1487. Oxford and Bedford led Henry's men, including several former supporters of Richard III. Henry won this battle easily, but other malcontents and conspiracies would follow. A rebellion in 1489 started with Northumberland's murder; military historian Michael C. C. Adams says that the author of a note, which was left next to Northumberland's body, blamed the earl for Richard's death.
Legacy and historical significance.
Contemporary accounts of the Battle of Bosworth can be found in four main sources, one of which is the English "Croyland Chronicle", written by a senior Yorkist chronicler who relied on second-hand information from nobles and soldiers. The other accounts were written by foreigners—Vergil, Jean Molinet, and Diego de Valera. Whereas Molinet was sympathetic to Richard, Vergil was in Henry's service and drew information from the king and his subjects to portray them in a good light. Diego de Valera, whose information Ross regards as unreliable, compiled his work from letters of Spanish merchants. However, other historians have used Valera's work to deduce possibly valuable insights not readily evident in other sources. Ross finds the poem, "The Ballad of Bosworth Field", a useful source to ascertain certain details of the battle. The multitude of different accounts, mostly based on second- or third-hand information, has proved an obstacle to historians as they try to reconstruct the battle. Their common complaint is that, except for its outcome, very few details of the battle are found in the chronicles. According to historian Michael Hicks, the Battle of Bosworth is one of the worst-recorded clashes of the Wars of the Roses.
Historical depictions and interpretations.
Henry tried to present his victory as a new beginning for the country; he hired chroniclers to portray his reign as a "modern age" with its dawn in 1485. Hicks states that the works of Vergil and the blind historian Bernard André, promoted by subsequent Tudor administrations, became the authoritative sources for writers for the next four hundred years. As such, Tudor literature paints a flattering picture of Henry's reign, depicting the Battle of Bosworth as the final clash of the civil war and downplaying the subsequent uprisings. For England the Middle Ages ended in 1485, and English Heritage claims that other than William the Conqueror's successful invasion of 1066, no other year holds more significance in English history. By portraying Richard as a hunchbacked tyrant who usurped the throne by killing his nephews, the Tudor historians attached a sense of myth to the battle: it became an epic clash between good and evil with a satisfying moral outcome. According to Reader Colin Burrow, André was so overwhelmed by the historic significance of the battle that he represented it with a blank page in his "Henry VII" (1502). For Professor Peter Saccio, the battle was indeed a unique clash in the annals of English history, because "the victory was determined, not by those who fought, but by those who delayed fighting until they were sure of being on the winning side."
Historians such as Adams and Horrox believe that Richard lost the battle not for any mythic reasons, but because of morale and loyalty problems in his army. Most of the common soldiers found it difficult to fight for a liege whom they distrusted, and some lords believed that their situation might improve if Richard were dethroned. According to Adams, against such duplicities Richard's desperate charge was the only knightly behaviour on the field. As fellow historian Michael Bennet puts it, the attack was "the swan-song of [mediaeval] English chivalry". Adams believes this view was shared at the time by the printer William Caxton, who enjoyed sponsorship from Edward IV and Richard III. Nine days after the battle, Caxton published Thomas Malory's story about chivalry and death by betrayal—"Le Morte d'Arthur"—seemingly as a response to the circumstances of Richard's death.
Elton does not believe Bosworth Field has any true significance, pointing out that the 20th-century English public largely ignored the battle until its quincentennial celebration. In his view, the dearth of specific information about the battle—no-one even knows exactly where it took place—demonstrates its insignificance to English society. Elton considers the battle as just one part of Henry's struggles to establish his reign, underscoring his point by noting that the young king had to spend ten more years pacifying factions and rebellions to secure his throne.
Mackie asserts that, in hindsight, Bosworth Field is notable as the decisive battle that established a dynasty which would rule unchallenged over England for more than a hundred years. Mackie notes that contemporary historians of that time, wary of the three royal successions during the long Wars of the Roses, considered Bosworth Field just another in a lengthy series of such battles. It was through the works and efforts of Francis Bacon and his successors that the public started to believe the battle had decided their futures by bringing about "the fall of a tyrant".
Shakespearean dramatisation.
William Shakespeare gives prominence to the Battle of Bosworth in his play, "Richard III". It is the "one big battle"; no other fighting scene distracts the audience from this action, represented by a one-on-one sword fight between Henry Tudor and Richard III. Shakespeare uses their duel to bring a climactic end to the play and the Wars of the Roses; he also uses it to champion morality, portraying the "unequivocal triumph of good over evil". Richard, the villainous lead character, has been built up in the battles of Shakespeare's earlier play, "Henry VI, Part 3", as a "formidable swordsman and a courageous military leader"—in contrast to the dastardly means by which he becomes king in "Richard III". Although the Battle of Bosworth has only five sentences to direct it, three scenes and more than four hundred lines precede the action, developing the background and motivations for the characters in anticipation of the battle.
Shakespeare's account of the battle was mostly based on chroniclers Edward Hall's and Raphael Holinshed's dramatic versions of history, which were sourced from Vergil's chronicle. However, Shakespeare's attitude towards Richard was shaped by scholar Thomas More, whose writings displayed extreme bias against the Yorkist king. The result of these influences is a script that vilifies the king, and Shakespeare had few qualms about departing from history to incite drama. Margaret of Anjou died in 1482, but Shakespeare had her speak to Richard's mother before the battle to foreshadow Richard's fate and fulfill the prophecy she had given in "Henry VI". Shakespeare exaggerated the cause of Richard's restless night before the battle, imagining it as a haunting by the ghosts of those whom the king had murdered, including Buckingham. Richard is portrayed as suffering a pang of conscience, but as he speaks he regains his confidence and asserts that he will be evil, if such needed to retain his crown.
The fight between the two armies is simulated by rowdy noises made off-stage ("alarums" or alarms) while actors walk on-stage, deliver their lines, and exit. To build anticipation for the duel, Shakespeare requests more "alarums" after Richard's councillor, William Catesby, announces that the king is "[enacting] more wonders than a man". Richard punctuates his entrance with the classic line, "A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!" He refuses to withdraw, continuing to seek to slay Henry's doubles until he has killed his nemesis. There is no documentary evidence that Henry had five decoys at Bosworth Field; the idea was Shakespeare's invention. He drew inspiration from Henry IV's use of them at the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403) to amplify the perception of Richard's courage on the battlefield. Similarly, the single combat between Henry and Richard is Shakespeare's creation. "The True Tragedy of Richard III", by an unknown playwright, earlier than Shakespeare's, has no signs of staging such an encounter: its stage directions give no hint of visible combat.
Despite the dramatic licences taken, Shakespeare's version of the Battle of Bosworth was the model of the event for English textbooks for many years during the 18th and 19th centuries. This glamorised version of history, promulgated in books and paintings and played out on stages across the country, perturbed humorist Gilbert Abbott à Beckett. He voiced his criticism in the form of a poem, equating the romantic view of the battle to watching a "fifth-rate production of "Richard III"": shabbily costumed actors fight the Battle of Bosworth on-stage while those with lesser roles lounge at the back, showing no interest in the proceedings.
In Laurence Olivier's 1955 film adaptation of "Richard III", the Battle of Bosworth is represented not by a single duel but a general melee that became the film's most recognised scene and a regular screening at Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre. The film depicts the clash between the Yorkist and Lancastrian armies on an open field, focusing on individual characters amidst the savagery of hand-to-hand fighting, and received accolades for the realism portrayed. One reviewer for "The Manchester Guardian" newspaper, however, was not impressed, finding the number of combatants too sparse for the wide plains and a lack of subtlety in Richard's death scene. The means by which Richard is shown to prepare his army for the battle also earned acclaim. As Richard speaks to his men and draws his plans in the sand using his sword, his units appear on-screen, arraying themselves according to the lines that Richard had drawn. Intimately woven together, the combination of pictorial and narrative elements effectively turns Richard into a storyteller, who acts out the plot he has constructed. Shakespearian critic Herbert Coursen extends that imagery: Richard sets himself up as a creator of men, but dies amongst the savagery of his creations. Coursen finds the depiction a contrast to that of Henry V and his "band of brothers".
The adaptation of the setting for "Richard III" to a 1930s fascist England in Ian McKellen's 1995 film, however, did not sit well with historians. Adams posits that the original Shakespearian setting for Richard's fate at Bosworth teaches the moral of facing one's fate, no matter how unjust it is, "nobly and with dignity". By overshadowing the dramatic teaching with special effects, McKellen's film reduces its version of the battle to a pyrotechnic spectacle about the death of a one-dimensional villain. Coursen agrees that, in this version, the battle and Richard's end are trite and underwhelming.
Battlefield location.
The site of the battle is deemed by Leicestershire County Council to be in the vicinity of the town of Market Bosworth. The council engaged historian Daniel Williams to research the battle, and in 1974 his findings were used to build the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and the presentation it houses. Williams's interpretation, however, has since been questioned. Sparked by the battle's quincentenary celebration in 1985, a dispute among historians has led many to doubt the accuracy of Williams's theory. In particular, geological surveys conducted from 2003 to 2009 by the Battlefields Trust, a charitable organisation that protects and studies old English battlefields, show that the southern and eastern flanks of Ambion Hill were solid ground in the 15th century, contrary to Williams's claim that it was a large area of marshland. Landscape archaeologist Glenn Foard, leader of the survey, said the collected soil samples and finds of medieval military equipment suggest that the battle took place south-west of Ambion Hill (52°34′41″N 1°26′02″W), contrary to the popular belief that it was fought near the foot of the hill.
Historians' theories.
English Heritage argues that the battle was named after Market Bosworth because the town was then the nearest significant settlement to the battlefield. As explored by Professor Philip Morgan, a battle might initially not be named specifically at all. As time passes, writers of administrative and historical records find it necessary to identify a notable battle, ascribing it a name that is usually toponymical in nature and sourced from combatants or observers. This name then becomes accepted by society and without question. Early records associated the Battle of Bosworth with "Brownehethe", "bellum Miravallenses", "Sandeford" and "Dadlyngton field". The earliest record, a municipal memorandum of 23 August 1485 from York, locates the battle "on the field of Redemore". This is corroborated by a 1485–86 letter that mentions "Redesmore" as its site. According to the historian, Peter Foss, records did not associate the battle with "Bosworth" until 1510.
Foss is named by English Heritage as the principal advocate for "Redemore" as the battle site. He suggests the name is derived from "Hreod Mor", an Anglo-Saxon phrase that means "reedy marshland". Basing his opinion on 13th- and 16th-century church records, he believes "Redemore" was an area of wetland that lay between Ambion Hill and the village of Dadlington, and was close to the Fenn Lanes, a Roman road running east to west across the region. Foard believes this road to be the most probable route that both armies took to reach the battlefield. Williams dismisses the notion of "Redmore" as a specific location, saying that the term refers to a large area of reddish soil; Foss argues that Williams's sources are local stories and flawed interpretations of records. Moreover, he proposes that Williams was influenced by William Hutton's 1788 "The Battle of Bosworth-Field", which Foss blames for introducing the notion that the battle was fought west of Ambion Hill on the north side of the River Sence. Hutton, as Foss suggests, misinterpreted a passage from his source, Raphael Holinshed's 1577 "Chronicle". Holinshed wrote, "King Richard pitched his field on a hill called Anne Beame, refreshed his soldiers and took his rest." Foss believes that Hutton mistook "field" to mean "field of battle", thus creating the idea that the fight took place on Anne Beame (Ambion) Hill. To "[pitch] his field", as Foss clarifies, was a period expression for setting up a camp.
Foss brings further evidence for his "Redemore" theory by quoting Edward Hall's 1550 "Chronicle". Hall stated that Richard's army stepped onto a plain after breaking camp the next day. Furthermore, historian William Burton, author of "Description of Leicestershire" (1622), wrote that the battle was "fought in a large, flat, plaine, and spacious ground, distant from [Bosworth], between the Towne of Shenton, Sutton [Cheney], Dadlington and Stoke [Golding]". In Foss's opinion both sources are describing an area of flat ground north of Dadlington.
Physical site.
English Heritage, responsible for managing England's historic sites, used both theories to designate the site for Bosworth Field. Without preference for either theory, they constructed a single continuous battlefield boundary that encompasses the locations proposed by both Williams and Foss. The region has experienced extensive changes over the years, starting after the battle. Holinshed stated in his chronicle that he found firm ground where he expected the marsh to be, and Burton confirmed that by the end of the 16th century, areas of the battlefield were enclosed and had been improved to make them agriculturally productive. Trees were planted on the south side of Ambion Hill, forming Ambion Wood. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ashby Canal carved through the land west and south-west of Ambion Hill. Winding alongside the canal at a distance, the Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway crossed the area on an embankment. The changes to the landscape were so extensive that when Hutton revisited the region in 1807 after an earlier 1788 visit, he could not readily find his way around.
Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre was built on Ambion Hill, near Richard's Well. According to legend, Richard III drank from one of the several springs in the region on the day of the battle. In 1788, a local pointed out one of the springs to Hutton as the one mentioned in the legend. A stone structure was later built over the location. The inscription on the well reads:
North-west of Ambion Hill, just across the northern tributary of the , a flag and memorial stone mark Richard's Field. Erected in 1973, the site was selected on the basis of Williams's theory. St James's Church at Dadlington is the only structure in the area that is reliably associated with the Battle of Bosworth; the bodies of those killed in the battle were buried there.
Rediscovered battlefield and possible battle scenario.
The very extensive survey carried out (2005–2009) by the Battlefields Trust headed by Glenn Foard led eventually to the discovery of the real location of the core battlefield. This lies about a kilometre further west of the location suggested by Peter Foss. It is in what was at the time of the battle an area of marginal land at the meeting of several township boundaries. There was a cluster of field names suggesting the presence of marshland and heath. Thirty four lead round shot were discovered as a result of systematic metal detecting (more than the total found previously on all other C15th European battlefields), as well as other significant finds, including a small silver gilt badge depicting a boar. Experts believe that the boar badge could indicate the actual site of Richard III's death, since this high-status badge depicting his personal emblem was probably worn by a member of his close retinue.
A new interpretation of the battle now integrates the historic accounts with the battlefield finds and landscape history. The new site lies either side of the Fenn Lanes Roman road, close to Fenn Lane Farm and is some three kilometres to the south-west of Ambion Hill.
Based on the round shot scatter, the likely size of Richard III's army, and the topography, Glenn Foard and Anne Curry think that Richard may have lined up his forces on a slight ridge which lies just east of Fox Covert Lane and behind a postulated medieval marsh. Richard's vanguard commanded by the Duke of Norfolk was on the right (north) side of Richard's battle line, with the Earl of Northumberland on Richard's left (south) side.
Tudor's forces approached along the line of the Roman road and lined up to the west of the present day Fenn Lane Farm, having marched from the vicinity of Merevale in Warwickshire.
Historic England have re-defined the boundaries of the registered Bosworth Battlefield to incorporate the newly identified site. There are hopes that public access to the site will be possible in the future.
|
3794
|
43744280
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3794
|
Brassicaceae
|
Brassicaceae () or (the older but equally valid) Cruciferae () is a medium-sized and economically important family of flowering plants commonly known as the mustards, the crucifers, or the cabbage family. Most are herbaceous plants, while some are shrubs. The leaves are simple (although are sometimes deeply incised), lack stipules, and appear alternately on stems or in rosettes. The inflorescences are terminal and lack bracts. The flowers have four free sepals, four free alternating petals, two shorter free stamens and four longer free stamens. The fruit has seeds in rows, divided by a thin wall (or septum).
The family contains 372 genera and 4,060 accepted species. The largest genera are "Draba" (440 species), "Erysimum" (261 species), "Lepidium" (234 species), "Cardamine" (233 species), and "Alyssum" (207 species). , it was divided into two subfamilies, Brassicoideae and Aethionemoideae.
The family contains the cruciferous vegetables, including species such as "Brassica oleracea" (cultivated as cabbage, kale, cauliflower, broccoli and collards), "Brassica rapa" (turnip, Chinese cabbage, etc.), "Brassica napus" (rapeseed, etc.), "Raphanus sativus" (common radish), "Armoracia rusticana" (horseradish), but also a cut-flower "Matthiola" (stock) and the model organism "Arabidopsis thaliana" (thale cress).
"Pieris rapae" and other butterflies of the family Pieridae are some of the best-known pests of Brassicaceae species planted as commercial crops. "Trichoplusia ni" (cabbage looper) moth is also becoming increasingly problematic for crucifers due to its resistance to commonly used pest control methods. Some rarer "Pieris" butterflies, such as "P. virginiensis", depend upon native mustards for their survival in their native habitats. Some non-native mustards such as "Alliaria petiolata" (garlic mustard), an extremely invasive species in the United States, can be toxic to their larvae.
Description.
Species belonging to the Brassicaceae are mostly annual, biennial, or perennial herbaceous plants, some are dwarf shrubs or shrubs, and very few vines. Although generally terrestrial, a few species such as water awlwort live submerged in fresh water. They may have a taproot or a sometimes woody caudex that may have few or many branches, some have thin or tuberous rhizomes, or rarely develop runners. Few species have multi-cellular glands. Hairs consist of one cell and occur in many forms: from simple to forked, star-, tree- or T-shaped, rarely taking the form of a shield or scale. They are never topped by a gland. The stems may be upright, rise up towards the tip, or lie flat, are mostly herbaceous but sometimes woody. Stems carry leaves or the stems may be leafless (in "Caulanthus"), and some species lack stems altogether. The leaves do not have stipules, but there may be a pair of glands at base of leaf stalks and flower stalks. The leaf may be seated or have a leafstalk. The leaf blade is usually simple, entire or dissected, rarely trifoliolate or pinnately compound. A leaf rosette at the base may be present or absent. The leaves along the stem are almost always alternately arranged, rarely apparently opposite. The stomata are of the anisocytic type. The genome size of Brassicaceae compared to that of other Angiosperm families is very small to small (less than 3.425 million base pairs per cell), varying from 150 Mbp in "Arabidopsis thaliana" and "Sphaerocardamum" spp., to 2375 Mbp "Bunias orientalis". The number of homologous chromosome sets varies from four (n=4) in some "Physaria" and "Stenopetalum" species, five (n=5) in other "Physaria" and "Stenopetalum" species, "Arabidopsis thaliana" and a "Mathiola" species, to seventeen (n=17). About 35% of the species in which chromosomes have been counted have eight sets (n=8). Due to polyploidy, some species may have up to 256 individual chromosomes, with some very high counts in the North American species of "Cardamine", such as "C. diphylla". Hybridisation is not unusual in Brassicaceae, especially in "Arabis", "Rorippa", "Cardamine" and "Boechera". Hybridisation between species originating in Africa and California, and subsequent polyploidisation is surmised for "Lepidium" species native to Australia and New Zealand.
Inflorescence and flower.
Flowers may be arranged in racemes, panicles, or corymbs, with pedicels sometimes in the axil of a bract, and few species have flowers that sit individually on flower stems that spring from the axils of rosette leaves. The orientation of the pedicels when fruits are ripe varies dependent on the species. The flowers are bisexual, star symmetrical (zygomorphic in "Iberis" and "Teesdalia") and the ovary positioned above the other floral parts. Each flower has four free or seldom merged sepals, the lateral two sometimes with a shallow spur, which are mostly shed after flowering, rarely persistent, may be reflexed, spreading, ascending, or erect, together forming a tube-, bell- or urn-shaped calyx. Each flower has four petals, set alternating with the sepals, although in some species these are rudimentary or absent. They may be differentiated into a blade and a claw or not, and consistently lack basal appendages. The blade is entire or has an indent at the tip, and may sometimes be much smaller than the claws. The mostly six stamens are set in two whorls: usually the two lateral, outer ones are shorter than the four inner stamens, but very rarely the stamens can all have the same length, and very rarely species have different numbers of stamens such as sixteen to twenty four in "Megacarpaea", four in "Cardamine hirsuta", and two in "Coronopus". The filaments are slender and not fused, while the anthers consist of two pollen producing cavities, and open with longitudinal slits. The pollen grains are tricolpate. The receptacle carries a variable number of nectaries, but these are always present opposite the base of the lateral stamens.
Ovary, fruit and seed.
There is one superior pistil that consists of two carpels that may either sit directly above the base of the stamens or on a stalk. It initially consists of only one cavity but during its further development a thin wall grows that divides the cavity, both placentas and separates the two valves (a so-called false septum). Rarely, there is only one cavity without a septum. The 2–600 ovules are usually along the side margin of the carpels, or rarely at the top. Fruits are capsules that open with two valves, usually towards the top. These are called silique if at least three times longer than wide, or silicle if the length is less than three times the width. The fruit is very variable in its other traits. There may be one persistent style that connects the ovary to the globular or conical stigma, which is undivided or has two spreading or connivent lobes. The variously shaped seeds are usually yellow or brown in color, and arranged in one or two rows in each cavity. The seed leaves are entire or have a notch at the tip. The seed does not contain endosperm.
Differences with similar families.
Brassicaceae have a bisymmetrical corolla (left is mirrored by right, stem-side by out-side, but each quarter is not symmetrical), a septum dividing the fruit, lack stipules and have simple (although sometimes deeply incised) leaves. The sister family Cleomaceae has bilateral symmetrical corollas (left is mirrored by right, but stem-side is different from out-side), stipules and mostly palmately divided leaves, and mostly no septum. Capparaceae generally have a gynophore, sometimes an androgynophore, and a variable number of stamens.
Phytochemistry.
Almost all Brassicaceae have C3 carbon fixation. The only exceptions are a few "Moricandia" species, which have a hybrid system between C3 and C4 carbon fixation, C4 fixation being more efficient in drought, high temperature and low nitrate availability. Brassicaceae contain different cocktails of dozens of glucosinolates. They also contain enzymes called myrosinases, that convert the glucosinolates into isothiocyanates, thiocyanates and nitriles, which are toxic to many organisms, and so help guard against herbivory.
Taxonomy.
Carl Linnaeus in 1753 regarded the Brassicaceae as a natural group, naming them "Klass" Tetradynamia. Alfred Barton Rendle placed the family in the order Rhoeadales, while George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker in their system published from 1862 to 1883, assigned it to their cohort Parietales (now the class Violales). Following Bentham and Hooker, John Hutchinson in 1948 and again in 1964 thought the Brassicaceae to stem from near the Papaveraceae. In 1994, a group of scientists including Walter Stephen Judd suggested to include the Capparaceae in the Brassicaceae. Early DNA-analysis showed that the Capparaceae—as defined at that moment—were paraphyletic, and it was suggested to assign the genera closest to the Brassicaceae to the Cleomaceae. The Cleomaceae and Brassicaceae diverged approximately 41 million years ago. All three families have consistently been placed in one order (variably called Capparales or Brassicales). The APG II system merged Cleomaceae and Brassicaceae. Other classifications have continued to recognize the Capparaceae, but with a more restricted circumscription, either including "Cleome" and its relatives in the Brassicaceae or recognizing them in the segregate family Cleomaceae. The APG III system has recently adopted this last solution, but this may change as a consensus arises on this point. Current insights in the relationships of the Brassicaceae, based on a 2012 DNA-analysis, are summarized in the following tree.
Relationships within the family.
Early classifications depended on morphological comparison only, but because of extensive convergent evolution, these do not provide a reliable phylogeny. Although a substantial effort was made through molecular phylogenetic studies, the relationships within the Brassicaceae have not always been well resolved yet. It has long been clear that the "Aethionema" are sister of the remainder of the family. One analysis from 2014 represented the relation between 39 tribes with the following tree.
As of 2023 the Brassicaceae have been divided into two subfamilies -- the Brassicoideae and the Aethionemoideae (containing only Aethionema) -- the former of which contains five supertribes, Arabodae, Brassicodae, Camelinodae, Heliophilodae, and Hesperodae.
Genera.
As of October 2023 Plants of the World Online accepts 346 genera.
Etymology.
The name "Brassicaceae" comes to international scientific vocabulary from Neo-Latin, from "Brassica", the type genus, + "-aceae", a standardized suffix for plant family names in modern taxonomy. The genus name comes from the Classical Latin word "brassica", referring to cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables. The alternative older name, Cruciferae, meaning "cross-bearing", describes the four petals of mustard flowers, which resemble a cross. Cruciferae is one of eight plant family names, not derived from a genus name and without the suffix "-aceae" that are authorized alternative names.
Distribution.
Brassicaceae can be found almost on the entire land surface of the planet, but the family is absent from Antarctica, and also absent from some areas in the tropics i.e. northeastern Brazil, the Congo basin, Maritime Southeast Asia and tropical Australasia. The area of origin of the family is possibly the Irano-Turanian region, where approximately 900 species occur in 150 different genera. About 530 of those 900 species are endemics. Next in abundance comes the Mediterranean region, with around 630 species (290 of which are endemic) in 113 genera. The family is less prominent in the Saharo-Arabian region—65 genera, 180 species of which 62 are endemic—and North America (comprising the North American Atlantic region and the Rocky Mountain floristic region)—99 genera, 780 species of which 600 are endemic. South America has 40 genera containing 340 native species, Southern Africa 15 genera with over 100 species, and Australia and New-Zealand have 19 genera with 114 species between them.
Ecology.
Brassicaceae are almost exclusively pollinated by insects. A chemical mechanism in the pollen is active in many species to avoid selfing. Two notable exceptions are exclusive self-pollination in closed flowers in "Cardamine chenopodifolia", and wind pollination in "Pringlea antiscorbutica". Although it can be cross-pollinated, "Alliaria petiolata" (garlic mustard) is self-fertile. Most species reproduce sexually through seed, but "Cardamine bulbifera" produces gemmae and in others, such as "Cardamine pentaphyllos", the coral-like roots easily break into segments, that will grow into separate plants. In some species, such as in the genus "Cardamine", seed pods open with force and so catapult the seeds quite far. Many of these have sticky seed coats, assisting long-distance dispersal by animals, and this may also explain several intercontinental dispersal events in the genus, and its near global distribution. Brassicaceae are common on serpentine and dolomite rich in magnesium. Over a hundred species in the family accumulate heavy metals, particularly zinc and nickel, which is a record percentage. Several "Alyssum" species can accumulate nickel up to 0.3% of their dry weight, and may be useful in soil remediation or even bio-mining.
Brassicaceae contain glucosinolates as well as myrosinases inside their cells. When the cell is damaged, the myrosinases hydrolise the glucosinolates, leading to the synthesis of isothiocyanates, which are compounds toxic to most animals, fungi and bacteria. Some insect herbivores have developed counter adaptations such as rapid absorption of the glucosinates, quick alternative breakdown into non-toxic compounds and avoiding cell damage. In the whites family (Pieridae), one counter mechanism involves glucosinolate sulphatase, which changes the glucosinolate, so that it cannot be converted to isothiocyanate. A second is that the glucosinates are quickly broken down, forming nitriles. Differences between the mixtures of glucosinolates between species and even within species is large, and individual plants may produce in excess of fifty individual substances. The energy penalty for synthesising all these glucosinolates may be as high as 15% of the total needed to produce a leaf. "Barbarea vulgaris" (bittercress) also produces triterpenoid saponins. These adaptations and counter adaptations probably have led to extensive diversification in both the Brassicaceae and one of its major pests, the butterfly family Pieridae. A particular cocktail of volatile glucosinates triggers egg-laying in many species. Thus a particular crop can sometimes be protected by planting bittercress as a deadly bait, for the saponins kill the caterpillars, but the butterfly is still lured by the bittercress to lay its egg on the leaves.
A moth that feeds on a range of Brassicaceae is the diamondback moth ("Plutella xylostella"). Like the Pieridae, it is capable of converting isothiocyanates into less problematic nitriles. Managing this pest in crops became more complicated after resistance developed against a toxin produced by "Bacillus thuringiensis", which is used as a wide spectrum biological plant protection against caterpillars. Parasitoid wasps that feed on such insect herbivores are attracted to the chemical compounds released by the plants, and thus are able to locate their prey. The cabbage aphid ("Brevicoryne brassicae") stores glucosinolates and synthesises its own myrosinases, which may deter its potential predators.
Since its introduction in the 19th century, "Alliaria petiolata" has been shown to be extremely successful as an invasive species in temperate North America due, in part, to its secretion of allelopathic chemicals. These inhibit the germination of most competing plants and kill beneficial soil fungi needed by many plants, such as many tree species, to successfully see their seedlings grow to maturity. The monoculture formation of an herb layer carpet by this plant has been shown to dramatically alter forests, making them wetter, having fewer and fewer trees, and having more vines such as poison ivy ("Toxicodendron radicans"). The overall herb layer biodiversity is also drastically reduced, particularly in terms of sedges and forbs. Research has found that removing 80% of the garlic mustard infestation plants did not lead to a particularly significant recovery of that diversity. Instead, it required around 100% removal. Given that not one of an estimated 76 species that prey on the plant has been approved for biological control in North America and the variety of mechanisms the plant has to ensure its dominance without them (e.g. high seed production, self-fertility, allelopathy, spring growth that occurs before nearly all native plants, roots that break easily when pulling attempts are made, a complete lack of palatability for herbivores at all life stages, etc.) it is unlikely that such a high level of control can be established and maintained on the whole. It is estimated that adequate control can be achieved with the introduction of two European weevils, including one that is monophagous. The USDA's TAG group has blocked these introductions since 2004. In addition to being invasive, garlic mustard also is a threat to native North American "Pieris" butterflies such as "P. oleracea", as they preferentially oviposit on it, although it is toxic to their larvae.
Invasive aggressive mustard species are known for being self-fertile, seeding very heavily with small seeds that have a lengthy lifespan coupled with a very high rate of viability and germination, and for being completely unpalatable to both herbivores and insects in areas to which they are not native. Garlic mustard is toxic to several rarer North American "Pieris" species.
Uses.
This family includes important agricultural crops, among which many vegetables such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy, kohlrabi, and gai lan ("Brassica oleracea"), turnip, napa cabbage, mizuna, bok choy and rapini ("Brassica rapa"), rocket salad/arugula ("Eruca sativa"), garden cress ("Lepidium sativum"), watercress ("Nasturtium officinale") and radish ("Raphanus") and a few spices like horseradish ("Armoracia rusticana"), wasabi ("Eutrema japonicum"), white, brown and black mustard ("Sinapis alba", "Brassica juncea" and "B. nigra" respectively). Vegetable oil is produced from the seeds of several species such as "Brassica napus" (rapeseed oil), perhaps providing the largest volume of vegetable oils of any species. Woad ("Isatis tinctoria") was used in the past to produce a blue textile dye (indigo), but has largely been replaced by the same substance from unrelated tropical species like "Indigofera tinctoria".
"Pringlea antiscorbutica", commonly known as Kerguelen cabbage, is edible, containing high levels of potassium. Its leaves contain a vitamin C-rich oil, a fact which, in the days of sailing ships, made it very attractive to sailors suffering from scurvy, hence the species name's epithet "antiscorbutica", which means "against scurvy" in Low Latin. It was essential to the diets of the whalers on Kerguelen when pork, beef, or seal meat was used up.
The Brassicaceae also includes ornamentals, such as species of "Aethionema", "Alyssum", "Arabis", "Aubrieta", "Aurinia", "Cheiranthus", "Erysimum", "Hesperis", "Iberis", "Lobularia", "Lunaria", "Malcolmia", and "Matthiola". Honesty ("Lunaria annua") is cultivated for the decorative value of the translucent remains of the fruits after drying. It can be a pest species in areas where it is not native.
The small Eurasian weed "Arabidopsis thaliana" is widely used as model organism in the study of the molecular biology of flowering plants (Angiospermae).
Some species are useful as food plants for Lepidoptera, such as certain wild mustard and cress species, such as "Turritis glabra" and "Boechera laevigata" that are utilized by several North American butterflies.
|
3797
|
31831
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3797
|
Baseball statistics
|
Baseball statistics collect a variety of metrics used to evaluate player and team performance in the sport of baseball.
Because the flow of a baseball game has natural breaks, and player performance is individually measurable, the sport lends itself to easy record-keeping and compiling statistics. Baseball "stats" have been recorded since the game's beginnings as a sport in the middle of the nineteenth century, and are widely available through the historical records of leagues such as the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players and the Negro leagues, although the consistency, standards, and calculations are often incomplete or questionable.
Since the National League (NL) was founded in 1876, statistics in the most elite levels of professional baseball have been kept, with efforts to standardize the stats and their compilation improving during the early 20th century. Such efforts have evolved together with advances in technology ever since. The NL was joined by the American League (AL) in 1903; together the two constitute modern Major League Baseball. A number of statistics are defined in the "Official Baseball Rules", which task the official scorer with providing a report after each game.
Advances in both statistical analysis and technology made possible by the "PC revolution" of the 1980s and 1990s have driven teams and fans to evaluate players by an ever more elaborate set of statistics, which hold them to ever-evolving standards. With the advent of these methods, players can be compared across different eras and run scoring environments.
Development.
The practice of keeping records of player achievements was started in the 19th century by English-American sportswriter Henry Chadwick. Based on his experience with the sport of cricket, Chadwick devised the predecessors to modern-day statistics including batting average, runs scored, and runs allowed.
Traditionally, statistics such as batting average (the number of hits divided by the number of at bats) and earned run average (the average number of runs allowed by a pitcher per nine innings, less errors and other events out of the pitcher's control) have dominated attention in the statistical world of baseball. However, the recent advent of sabermetrics has created statistics drawing from a greater breadth of player performance measures and playing field variables. Sabermetrics and comparative statistics attempt to provide an improved measure of a player's performance and contributions to his team from year to year, frequently against a statistical performance average.
Comprehensive, historical baseball statistics were difficult for the average fan to access until 1951, when researcher Hy Turkin published "The Complete Encyclopedia of Baseball". In 1969, Macmillan Publishing printed its first "Baseball Encyclopedia", using a computer to compile statistics for the first time. Known as "Big Mac", the encyclopedia became the standard baseball reference until 1988, when "Total Baseball" was released by Warner Books using more sophisticated technology. The publication of "Total Baseball" led to the discovery of several "phantom ballplayers", such as Lou Proctor, who did not belong in official record books and were removed.
Use.
Throughout modern baseball, a few core statistics have been traditionally referenced – batting average, RBI, and home runs. To this day, a player who leads the league in all of these three statistics earns the "Triple Crown". For pitchers, wins, ERA, and strikeouts are the most often-cited statistics, and a pitcher leading his league in these statistics may also be referred to as a "triple crown" winner. General managers and baseball scouts have long used the major statistics, among other factors and opinions, to understand player value. Managers, catchers and pitchers use the statistics of batters of opposing teams to develop pitching strategies and set defensive positioning on the field. Managers and batters study opposing pitcher performance and motions in attempting to improve hitting. Scouts use stats when they are looking at a player who they may end up drafting or signing to a contract.
Some sabermetric statistics have entered the mainstream baseball world that measure a batter's overall performance including on-base plus slugging, commonly referred to as OPS. OPS adds the hitter's on-base percentage (number of times reached base by any means divided by total plate appearances) to their slugging percentage (total bases divided by at-bats). Some argue that the OPS formula is flawed and that more weight should be shifted towards OBP (on-base percentage). The statistic wOBA (weighted on-base average) attempts to correct for this.
OPS is also useful when determining a pitcher's level of success. "Opponent on-base plus slugging" (OOPS) is becoming a popular tool to evaluate a pitcher's actual performance. When analyzing a pitcher's statistics, some useful categories include K/9IP (strikeouts per nine innings), K/BB (strikeouts per walk), HR/9 (home runs per nine innings), WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched), and OOPS (opponent on-base plus slugging).
However, since 2001, more emphasis has been placed on defense-independent pitching statistics, including defense-independent ERA (dERA), in an attempt to evaluate a pitcher's performance regardless of the strength of the defensive players behind them.
All of the above statistics may be used in certain game situations. For example, a certain hitter's ability to hit left-handed pitchers might incline a manager to increase their opportunities to face left-handed pitchers. Other hitters may have a history of success against a given pitcher (or vice versa), and the manager may use this information to create a favorable
match-up. This is often referred to as "playing the percentages".
Contemporary statistics.
The following listings include abbreviations and/or acronyms for both historic baseball statistics and those based on modern mathematical formulas known popularly as "metrics".
The explanations below are for quick reference and do not fully or completely define the statistic; for the strict definition, see the linked article for each statistic.
|
3800
|
6082273
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3800
|
At bat
|
In baseball, an at bat (AB) or time at bat is a batter's turn batting against a pitcher. An at bat is different from a plate appearance. A batter is credited with a plate appearance regardless of what happens upon completion of his turn at bat, but a batter is charged with an at bat only if that plate appearance does not have one of the results enumerated below. While at bats are used to calculate certain statistics, including batting average and slugging percentage, players can qualify for the season-ending rankings in these categories only if they accumulate 502 plate appearances during the season.
Batters will not be charged an at bat if their plate appearances end under the following circumstances:
In addition, if the inning ends during an at bat (due to the third out being made by a runner caught stealing, for example), no at bat or plate appearance will result because neither were completed.
An at bat is a specific type of plate appearance in which the batter stands at the plate intending to put the ball in play and get on base. This is why at bats, and not plate appearances, are used to calculate batting average, as plate appearances in general can result in many outcomes that do not necessarily involve putting the ball in play, and batting average specifically measures a batter's contact hitting.
Rule 9.02(a)(1) of the official rules of Major League Baseball defines an at bat as: "Number of times batted, except that no time at bat shall be charged when a player: (A) hits a sacrifice bunt or sacrifice fly; (B) is awarded first base on four called balls; (C) is hit by a pitched ball; or (D) is awarded first base because of interference or obstruction[.]"
Examples.
An at bat is counted when:
Records.
Pete Rose had 14,053 career at bats, the all-time major league and National League record. The American League record is held by Carl Yastrzemski, whose 11,988 career at bats were all in the AL.
The single season record is held by Jimmy Rollins, who had 716 at bats in 2007. Willie Wilson, Ichiro Suzuki and Juan Samuel also had more than 700 at bats in a season. 14 players share the single game record of 11 at bats in a single game, all of which were extra inning games. In games of 9 innings or fewer, the record is 7 at bats and has occurred more than 200 times.
The team record for most at bats in a single season is 5,781 by the 1997 Boston Red Sox.
At bat as a phrase.
"At bat", "up", "up at bat", and "at the plate" are all phrases describing a batter who is facing the pitcher. Just because a player is described as being "at bat" in this sense, he will not necessarily be given an at bat in his statistics; the phrase actually signifies a plate appearance (assuming it is eventually completed). This ambiguous terminology is usually clarified by context. To refer explicitly to a statistical "at bat", the term "official at bat" is sometimes used.
"Time at bat" in the rulebook.
Official Baseball Rule 5.06(c) provides that "[a] batter has legally completed his "time at bat" when he is put out or becomes a runner" (emphasis added). The "time at bat" defined in this rule is more commonly referred to as a plate appearance, and the playing rules (Rules 1 through 8) uses the phrase "time at bat" in this sense. In contrast, the scoring rules use the phrase "time at bat" to refer to the statistic at bat, defined in Rule 9.02(a)(1), but sometimes uses the phrase "official time at bat" or refers back to Rule 9.02(a)(1) when mentioning the statistic. The phrase "plate appearance" is used in Rules 9.22 and 9.23 dealing with batting titles and hitting streaks, and in Rule 5.10(g) comment regarding the Three-Batter Minimum: "[t]o qualify as one of three consecutive batters, the batter must complete his plate appearance, which ends only when the batter is put out or becomes a runner." The term is not elsewhere defined in the rulebook.
|
3801
|
24841344
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3801
|
Earned run
|
In baseball, an earned run is any run that was fully enabled by the offensive team's production in the face of competent play from the defensive team. Conversely, an unearned run is a run that would not have been scored without the aid of an error or a passed ball committed by the defense; it is "unearned" in that it was, in a sense, "given away" by the defensive team.
Earned and unearned runs count equally toward the game score; the difference is purely statistical. Both total runs and earned runs are tabulated as part of a pitcher's statistics, but earned runs are specially denoted because of their use in calculating a pitcher's earned run average (ERA), the number of earned runs allowed by the pitcher per nine innings pitched (i.e., averaged over a regulation game). Thus, in effect, the pitcher is held personally accountable for earned runs, while the responsibility for unearned runs is shared with the rest of the team.
To determine whether a run is earned, the official scorer must reconstruct the inning as it would have occurred without errors or passed balls.
Details.
If no errors and no passed balls occur during the inning, all runs scored are automatically earned (assigned responsible to the pitcher(s) who allowed each runner to reach base). Also, in some cases, an error can be rendered harmless as the inning progresses. For example, a runner on first base advances to second on a passed ball and the next batter walks. Since the runner would now have been at second anyway, the passed ball no longer has any effect on the earned/unearned calculation. On the other hand, a batter/runner may make his entire circuit around the bases without the aid of an error, yet the run would be counted as unearned if an error prevented the third out from being made before he crossed the plate to score.
An error made by the pitcher in fielding at his position is counted the same as an error by any other player.
A run is counted as unearned when:
While the inning is still being played, the second and the second-last scenario can cause a temporary situation where a run has already scored, but its earned/unearned status is not yet certain. Under the last circumstance, for example, with two outs, a runner on third base scores on a passed ball. For the time being, the run is unearned since the runner "should" still be at third. If the batter strikes out to end the inning, it will stay that way. If the batter gets a base hit, which would have scored the runner anyway, the run now becomes earned.
Under the second circumstance, if there are runners on base and a batter hits a foul fly ball that is dropped, and then bats in the runners on base through a base hit (including a home run), the runs are unearned for the time being, as the runners should not have advanced. If the results of the remaining at-bats in the inning would not have scored the runners, the runs remain unearned. However, if results of subsequent at-bats would have scored the runs anyway, the runs would count as earned, unless they only would have scored as a result of a subsequent error or passed ball.
A baserunner who reaches on catcher's interference and subsequently scores with two outs scores an unearned run, but baserunners who subsequently score after the runner who has reached on catcher's interference exclusively on clean plays score earned runs; the baserunner cannot be assumed to have been put out except for the error. (2019 MLB Rule 9.16(a)(4)).
If a run is scored by a pinch-runner who replaces a baserunner who represents an unearned run, or by a pinch-hitter who continues the turn at bat of a batter who would be out except for an error, the run remains unearned, regardless of the substitution.
Pitching changes.
When pitchers are changed in the middle of an inning, and one or more errors have already occurred, it is possible to have a run charged as earned against a specific pitcher, but unearned to the team. The simplest example is when the defensive team records two outs and makes an error on a play that would have been the third out. A new pitcher comes into the game, and the next batter hits a home run. The runner who reached on the error comes around to score, and his run is unearned to both the prior pitcher and the team. However, the run scored by the batter is counted as earned against the relief pitcher, but unearned to the team (since there should have already been three outs). Had the team not switched pitchers, neither run would be counted as an earned run because that pitcher should have already been out of that inning.
A pitcher who is relieved mid-inning may be charged with earned runs equal to the number of batters who reached base while he was pitching, even if the specific batters he faced do not score. The batters he put on base may be erased by fielder's choice plays after he has been relieved by another pitcher, but if earned runs are scored in the inning the original pitcher is liable for as many earned runs as the number of batters he put on base.
Example:
On April 15, 2017, Detroit's Justin Verlander allowed the first two Cleveland batters in the 5th inning to reach base on base hits; Verlander was then relieved by Shane Greene. Greene walked the next batter to load the bases. The next batter hit a grounder and Miguel Cabrera threw home to force out the runner on third in a fielder's choice, so the bases remained loaded with one out. Greene struck out the next batter for the second out. Carlos Santana then hit a single that scored the runners from second and third (only one of whom was put on base by Verlander), and the runner from first was thrown out at the plate to end the inning. Since Verlander allowed two batters to reach base, he was charged with two earned runs, even though only one of the two specific batters he faced actually scored.
When a pitching change occurs, the new pitcher is said to "inherit" any runners that are on base at the time, and if they later score, those runs are charged (earned or unearned) to the prior pitcher. Most box scores now list inherited runners, and the number that scored, as a statistic for the relief pitcher.
|
3802
|
25954311
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3802
|
Base on balls
|
A base on balls (BB), better known as a walk,
occurs in baseball when a batter receives four pitches during a plate appearance that the umpire calls "balls", and is in turn awarded first base without the possibility of being called out. The base on balls is defined in Section 2.00 of baseball's Official Rules, and further detail is given in 6.08(a). Despite being known as a "walk", it is considered a faux pas for a professional player to actually walk to first base; the batter-runner and any advancing runners normally jog on such a play.
The term "base on balls" distinguishes a walk from the other manners in which a batter can be awarded first base without liability to be put out (e.g., hit by pitch (HBP), catcher's interference). Though a base on balls, catcher's interference, or a batter hit by a pitched ball all result in the batter (and possibly runners on base) being awarded a base, the term "walk" usually refers only to a base on balls, and not the other methods of reaching base without the bat touching the ball. An important difference is that for a hit batter or catcher's interference, the ball is dead and no one may advance unless forced; the ball is live after a walk (see below for details).
A batter who draws a base on balls is commonly said to have been "walked" by the pitcher. When the batter is walked, runners advance one base without liability to be put out only if forced to vacate their base to allow the batter to take first base. If a batter draws a walk with the bases loaded, all preceding runners are forced to advance, including the runner on third base who is forced to home plate to score a run; when a run is forced on a walk, the batter is credited with a run batted in per rule 9.04.
Receiving a base on balls does not count as a hit or an at bat for a batter but does count as a time on base and a plate appearance. Therefore, a base on balls does not affect a player's batting average, but it can increase his on-base percentage.
A hit by pitch is not counted statistically as a walk, though the effect is mostly the same, with the batter receiving a free pass to first base. One exception is that on hit-by-pitch, the ball is dead, and any runners attempting to steal on the play must return to their original base unless forced to the next base anyway. When a walk occurs, the ball is still live: any runner not forced to advance may nevertheless attempt to advance at his own risk, which might occur on a steal play, passed ball, or wild pitch. Also, because a ball is live when a base on balls occurs, runners on base forced to advance one base may attempt to advance beyond one base, at their own risk. The batter-runner himself may attempt to advance beyond first base, at his own risk. Rule 6.08 addresses this matter as well. An attempt to advance an additional base beyond the base awarded might occur when ball four is a passed ball or a wild pitch.
History.
In early baseball, there was no concept of a "ball". It was created by the NABBP in 1863, originally as a sort of unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty: "Should the pitcher repeatedly fail to deliver to the striker fair balls, for the apparent purpose of delaying the game, or for any other cause, the umpire, after warning him, shall call one ball, and if the pitcher persists in such action, two and three balls; when three balls shall have been called, the striker shall be entitled to the first base; and should any base be occupied at that time, each player occupying them shall be entitled to one base without being put out." Note that this rule in effect gave the pitcher 9 balls, since each penalty ball could only be called on a third offense. In 1869 the rule was modified so that only those baserunners forced to advance could advance. From 1871 through 1886, the batter was entitled to call "high" or "low", i.e. above or below the waist; a pitch which failed to conform was "unfair". Certain pitches were defined as automatic balls in 1872: any ball delivered over the batter's head, that hit the ground in front of home plate, was delivered to the opposite side from the batter, or came within one foot of him. In 1880, the National League changed the rules so that eight "unfair balls" instead of nine were required for a walk. In 1884, the National League changed the rules so that six balls were required for a walk. In 1886, the American Association changed the rules so that six balls instead of seven were required for a walk; however, the National League changed the rules so that seven balls were required for a walk instead of six. In 1887, the National League and American Association agreed to abide by some uniform rule changes, including, for the first time, a strike zone which defined balls and strikes by rule rather than the umpire's discretion, and decreased the number of balls required for a walk to five. In 1889, the National League and the American Association decreased the number of balls required for a walk to four.
In 2017, Major League Baseball approved a rule change allowing for a batter to be walked intentionally by having the defending bench signal to the umpire. The move was met with some controversy.
Intentional base on balls.
A subset of the base on balls, an intentional base on balls (IBB), or intentional walk, is when the defensive team intentionally issues a walk to the batter. In Major League Baseball and many amateur leagues, an intentional base on balls is signaled to the home plate umpire by the defensive team's manager holding up four fingers, at which point the batter is awarded first base without any further pitches being thrown. In some leagues and in Major League Baseball prior to 2017, an intentional base on balls is issued when the pitcher deliberately pitches the ball away from the batter four times (or as many times as needed to get to ball four if the decision to issue the intentional walk is made with one or more balls already on the count). As with any other walk, an intentional walk entitles the batter to first base without liability to be put out, and entitles any runners to advance if forced.
Intentional walks are a strategic defensive maneuver, commonly done to bypass one hitter for one the defensive team believes is less likely to initiate a run-scoring play (e.g., a home run, sacrifice fly, or RBI base hit). Teams also commonly use intentional walks to set up a double play or force out situation for the next batter.
Major League Baseball leaders.
Game.
Jimmie Foxx, Andre Thornton, Jeff Bagwell and Bryce Harper have each been walked six times during a major league regular season game. Among pitchers, Tommy Byrne and Bruno Haas both gave up 16 bases on balls in a game. On September 17, 1920, the Boston Red Sox drew 20 walks in a 12-inning game against the Detroit Tigers. , this is the most walks drawn or allowed by a team in a single game in Major League history according to available data.
|
3805
|
32012021
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3805
|
List of Major League Baseball career total bases leaders
|
In baseball statistics, total bases (TB) is the number of bases a player has gained with hits. It is a weighted sum for which the weight value is 1 for a single, 2 for a double, 3 for a triple, and 4 for a home run. Only bases attained from hits count toward this total. Reaching base by other means (such as a base on balls) or advancing further after the hit (such as on a stolen base) does not increase the player's total bases.
The total bases divided by the number of at bats is the player's slugging average.
Hank Aaron is the career leader in total bases with 6,856. Albert Pujols (6,211), Stan Musial (6,134), and Willie Mays (6,080) are the only other players with at least 6,000 career total bases.
As of July 18, 2025, there is only one active player in the top 100 for career total bases. Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman is the active leader in career total bases and 89th overall with 4,019.
|
3806
|
46354005
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3806
|
Hit by pitch
|
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 1887; 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):
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. Another notable example was the first game of the 2022 World Series. In the bottom of the 10th inning, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher David Robertson was pitching to Houston Astros pinch hitter Aledmys Diaz. With 2 balls and no strikes, two out, and two runners in scoring position, Robertson threw a pitch inside that struck Diaz's left arm. Home plate umpire James Hoye ruled that Diaz did not attempt to avoid the pitch and called the pitch a ball. Diaz, who had begun to take first base before Hoye called time, disputed the call, and would go on to ground out to end the game.
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 who is 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 August 15, 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 emptying.
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.
Korea Baseball Organization third baseman Choi Jeong holds the Korean Baseball Organization hit by pitch record with 348. It is also the world record. The all-time record for a player being hit by a pitch in MLB 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. 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.
A total of ten MLB players have been hit twice in a single inning; three in American League games, six in National League games, and one in an interleague game:
Three times has a perfect game been broken up by the 27th batter being hit by pitch. Hooks Wiltse, Max Scherzer, and Joe Musgrove hold this rare feat. All three finished with no-hitters after the hit by pitch. Scherzer's team was leading 6–0 and Musgrove's 3–0 when they pitched their no-hitters, 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, Boston 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. At the time, batting helmets 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; he had it made after he was struck by a pitch from Jack Fisher of the New York Mets on June 26, 1966, which briefly knocked Santo unconscious and left him with a fractured cheekbone.
Other notable injuries include:
Other comparably 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."
|
3807
|
1535071
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3807
|
Hit (baseball)
|
In baseball statistics, a hit (denoted by H), also called a base hit, is credited to a batter when the batter safely reaches or passes first base after hitting the ball into fair territory with neither the benefit of an error nor a fielder's choice.
Scoring a hit.
To achieve a hit, the batter must reach first base before any fielder can either tag him with the ball, throw to another player protecting the base before the batter reaches it, or tag first base while carrying the ball. The hit is scored the moment the batter reaches first base safely; if he is put out while attempting to stretch his hit to a double or triple or home run on the same play, he still gets credit for a hit (according to the last base he reached safely on the play).
If a batter reaches first base because of offensive interference by a preceding runner (including if a preceding runner is hit by a batted ball), he is also credited with a hit.
Types of hits.
A hit for one base is called a single, for two bases a double, and for three bases a triple. A home run is also scored as a hit. Doubles, triples, and home runs are also called extra base hits.
An "infield hit" is a hit where the ball does not leave the infield. Infield hits are uncommon by nature, and most often earned by speedy runners.
Pitching a no-hitter.
A no-hitter is a game in which one of the teams prevented the other from getting a hit. Throwing a no-hitter is rare and considered an extraordinary accomplishment for a pitcher or pitching staff. In most cases in the professional game, no-hitters are accomplished by a single pitcher who throws a complete game. A pitcher who throws a no-hitter could still allow runners to reach base safely, by way of walks, errors, hit batsmen, or batter reaching base due to interference or obstruction. If the pitcher allows no runners to reach base in any manner whatsoever (hit, walk, hit batsman, error, etc.), the no-hitter is a perfect game.
1887 discrepancy.
In 1887, Major League Baseball counted bases on balls (walks) as hits. The result was skyrocketing batting averages, including some near .500; Tip O'Neill of the St. Louis Browns batted .485 that season, which would still be a major league record if recognized. The experiment was abandoned the following season.
There is controversy regarding how the records of 1887 should be interpreted. The number of legitimate walks and at-bats are known for all players that year, so computing averages using the same method as in other years is straightforward. In 1968, Major League Baseball formed a Special Baseball Records Committee to resolve this (and other) issues. The Committee ruled that walks in 1887 should not be counted as hits. In 2000, Major League Baseball reversed its decision, ruling that the statistics which were recognized in each year's official records should stand, even in cases where they were later proven incorrect. Most current sources list O'Neill's 1887 average as .435, as calculated by omitting his walks. He would retain his American Association batting championship. However, the variance between methods results in differing recognition for the 1887 National League batting champion. Cap Anson would be recognized, with his .421 average, if walks are included, but Sam Thompson would be the champion at .372 if they are not.
Major League Baseball rules.
The official rulebook of Major League Baseball states in Rule 10.05:
(a) The official scorer shall credit a batter with a base hit when:
(1) the batter reaches first base (or any succeeding base) safely on a fair ball that settles on the ground, that touches a fence before being touched by a fielder or that clears a fence;
(2) the batter reaches first base safely on a fair ball hit with such force, or so slowly, that any fielder attempting to make a play with the ball has no opportunity to do so;
Rule 10.05(a)(2) Comment: The official scorer shall credit a hit if the fielder attempting to handle the ball cannot make a play, even if such fielder deflects the ball from or cuts off another fielder who could have put out a runner.
(3) the batter reaches first base safely on a fair ball that takes an unnatural bounce so that a fielder cannot handle it with ordinary effort, or that touches the pitcher's plate or any base (including home plate) before being touched by a fielder and bounces so that a fielder cannot handle the ball with ordinary effort;
(4) the batter reaches first base safely on a fair ball that has not been touched by a fielder and that is in fair territory when the ball reaches the outfield, unless in the scorer's judgment the ball could have been handled with ordinary effort;
(5) a fair ball that has not been touched by a fielder touches a runner or an umpire, unless a runner is called out for having been touched by an Infield Fly, in which case the official scorer shall not score a hit; or
(6) a fielder unsuccessfully attempts to put out a preceding runner and, in the official scorer's judgment, the batter-runner would not have been put out at first base by ordinary effort.
Rule 10.05(a) Comment: In applying Rule 10.05(a), the official scorer shall always give the batter the benefit of the doubt. A safe course for the official scorer to follow is to score a hit when exceptionally good fielding of a ball fails to result in a putout.
(b) The official scorer shall not credit a base hit when a:
(1) runner is forced out by a batted ball, or would have been forced out except for a fielding error;
(2) batter apparently hits safely and a runner who is forced to advance by reason of the batter becoming a runner fails to touch the first base to which such runner is advancing and is called out on appeal. The official scorer shall charge the batter with an at-bat but not a hit;
(3) pitcher, the catcher or any infielder handles a batted ball and puts out a preceding runner who is attempting to advance one base or to return to his original base, or would have put out such runner with ordinary effort except for a fielding error. The official scorer shall charge the batter with an at-bat but not a hit;
(4) fielder fails in an attempt to put out a preceding runner and, in the scorer's judgment, the batter-runner could have been put out at first base; or
Rule 10.05(b) Comment: Rule 10.05(b) shall not apply if the fielder merely looks toward or feints toward another base before attempting to make the putout at first base.
(5) runner is called out for interference with a fielder attempting to field a batted ball, unless in the scorer's judgment the batter-runner would have been safe had the interference not occurred.
|
3808
|
27823944
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3808
|
On-base percentage
|
In baseball statistics, on-base percentage (OBP) measures how frequently a batter reaches base. An official Major League Baseball (MLB) statistic since 1984, it is sometimes referred to as on-base average (OBA), as it is rarely presented as a true percentage.
Generally defined as "how frequently a batter reaches base per plate appearance", OBP is specifically calculated as the ratio of a batter's times on base (the sum of hits, bases on balls, and times hit by pitch) to the sum of at bats, bases on balls, hit by pitch, and sacrifice flies. OBP does not credit the batter for reaching base on fielding errors, fielder's choice, uncaught third strikes, fielder's obstruction, or catcher's interference, and deducts from plate appearances a batter intentionally giving himself up in a sacrifice bunt.
OBP is added to slugging average (SLG) to determine on-base plus slugging (OPS).
The OBP of all batters faced by one pitcher or team is referred to as "on-base against".
On-base percentage is calculable for professional teams dating back to the first year of National Association of Professional Base Ball Players competition in 1871, because the component values of its formula have been recorded in box scores ever since.
History.
The statistic was invented in the late 1940s by Brooklyn Dodgers statistician Allan Roth with then-Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey. In 1954, Rickey, who was then the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, was featured in a Life Magazine graphic in which the formula for on-base percentage was shown as the first component of an all-encompassing "offense" equation. However, it was not named as on-base percentage, and there is little evidence that Roth's statistic was taken seriously at the time by the baseball community at large.
On-base percentage became an official MLB statistic in 1984. Its perceived importance jumped after the influential 2003 book "" highlighted Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane's focus on the statistic. Many baseball observers, particularly those influenced by the field of sabermetrics, now consider on-base percentage superior to the statistic traditionally used to measure offensive skill, batting average, which accounts for hits but ignores other ways a batter can reach base.
Overview.
Traditionally, players with the best on-base percentages bat as leadoff hitter, unless they are power hitters, who traditionally bat slightly lower in the batting order. The league average for on-base percentage in Major League Baseball has varied considerably over time; at its peak in the late 1990s, it was around .340, whereas it was typically .300 during the dead-ball era. On-base percentage can also vary quite considerably from player to player. The highest career OBP of a batter with more than 3,000 plate appearances is .482 by Ted Williams. The lowest is by Bill Bergen, who had an OBP of .194.
On-base percentage is calculated using this formula:
formula_1
where
In certain unofficial calculations, the denominator is simplified and replaced by Plate Appearance (PA); however, the calculation PAs includes certain infrequent events that will slightly lower the calculated OBP (i.e. catcher's interference, and sacrifice bunts). Sacrifice bunts are excluded from consideration on the basis that they are usually imposed by the manager with the expectation that the batter will not reach base, and thus do not accurately reflect the batter's ability to reach base when attempting to do so. This is in contrast with the sacrifice fly, which is generally unintentional; the batter was trying for a hit.
|
3809
|
4071608
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3809
|
Sacrifice fly
|
In baseball, a sacrifice fly (sometimes abbreviated to sac fly) is defined by Rule 9.08(d):
"Score a sacrifice fly when, before two are out, the batter hits a ball in flight handled by an outfielder or an infielder running in the outfield in fair or foul territory that
They are so named because the batter allows a teammate to score a run, while "sacrificing" their ability to do so. They are traditionally recorded in box scores with the designation "SF".
Rules.
As addressed within Rule 9.02(a)(1) of the Official Baseball Rules a sacrifice fly is not counted as a time at bat for the batter, though the batter is credited with a run batted in. The same is true with a bases-loaded walk or hit by pitch.
The purpose of not counting a sacrifice fly as an at-bat is to avoid penalizing hitters for a successful action. The sacrifice fly is one of two instances in baseball where a batter is not charged with a time at bat after putting a ball in play; the other is the sacrifice hit (also known as a sacrifice bunt). But, while a sacrifice fly does not affect a player's batting average, it counts as a plate appearance and lowers the on-base percentage. A player on a hitting streak will have it end with no official at-bats but a sacrifice fly.
Unlike a sacrifice bunt, which may be scored if a runner advances from any base to any base, a sacrifice fly is credited only if a runner scores on the play. Therefore, when a runner on first or second base tags on a fly ball and advances no further than third base, no sacrifice is given, and the batter is charged with an at-bat. Also, if a runner tags and advances from second base (or, theoretically, from first base) all the way to home and scores (without an intervening error), the batter is credited with a sacrifice fly, as well as with a second RBI if a runner on third also scores. At the professional level this will typically occur only in unusual circumstances that prevent the defense from making an immediate throw back to the infield, such as an outfielder colliding with the wall while making a catch on the warning track or a fly ball caught at the deepest part of the yard. It can also happen if two very fast baserunners occupy 2nd and 3rd base, such as when Willie McGee and Ozzie Smith scored on Tom Herr's sacrifice fly in the 1982 World Series.
The sacrifice fly is credited even if another runner is put out, so long as the run scores. The sacrifice fly is credited on a dropped ball even if another runner is forced out by reason of the batter becoming a runner.
Records.
The most sacrifice flies by a team in one game in Major League Baseball (MLB) is five; the record was established by the Seattle Mariners in 1988, tied by the Colorado Rockies in 2006, and tied again by the Mariners in 2008.
Five MLB teams have collected three sacrifice flies in an inning: the Chicago White Sox (fifth inning, July 1, 1962, against the Cleveland Indians); the New York Yankees twice (fourth inning, June 29, 2000, against the Detroit Tigers and third inning, August 19, 2000, against the Anaheim Angels); the New York Mets (second inning, June 24, 2005, against the Yankees); and the Houston Astros (seventh inning, June 26, 2005, against the Texas Rangers). In these cases one or more of the flies did not result in a putout due to an error.
Since the rule was reinstated in its present form in MLB in 1954, Gil Hodges of the Dodgers holds the record for most sacrifice flies in one season with 19, in 1954; Eddie Murray holds the MLB record for most sacrifice flies in a career with 128.
MLB season, the ten players with the most career sacrifice flies are:
Only once has the World Series been won on a sac fly. In 1912, Larry Gardner of the Boston Red Sox hit a fly ball off New York Giants' pitcher Christy Mathewson. Steve Yerkes tagged up and scored from third base to win game 8 in the 10th inning and take the series for the Red Sox.
History.
Batters have not been charged with a time at-bat for a sacrifice hit since 1893, but baseball has changed the sacrifice fly rule multiple times. The sacrifice fly as a statistical category was instituted in 1908, only to be discontinued in 1931. The rule was again adopted in 1939, only to be eliminated again in 1940, before being adopted for the last time in 1954. For some baseball fans, it is significant that the sacrifice-fly rule was eliminated in 1940 because, in 1941, Ted Williams was hitting .39955 on the last day of the season and needed one hit in a doubleheader against the Philadelphia A's to become the first hitter since Bill Terry in 1930 to hit .400. He got six hits, finishing with an official .406 average, the last player in over 80 years to bat .400 or more in the American or National League. In his book "Baseball and Other Matters in 1941" author Robert Creamer, citing estimates, points out that if Williams' 14 at-bats on sacrifice flies that year were deducted from the 456 official at-bats he was charged with, his final average in 1941 would have been .419.
|
3810
|
206485
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3810
|
On-base plus slugging
|
On-base plus slugging (OPS) is a sabermetric baseball statistic calculated as the sum of a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage. The ability of a player both to get on base and to hit for power, two important offensive skills, are represented. An OPS of .800 or higher in Major League Baseball puts the player in the upper echelon of hitters. Typically, the league leader in OPS will score near, and sometimes above, the 1.000 mark.
Equation.
The basic equation is
formula_1
where OBP is on-base percentage and SLG is slugging average. These averages are defined below as:
formula_2
- the numerator "H + BB + HBP" effectively means "number of trips to first base at least"
- the denominator "AB + BB + SF + HBP" effectively means "total plate appearances", but does not include sacrifice bunts
This is because though a batter makes a trip to the plate he is not given an "AB" when he walks (BB or HBP) or when he hits the ball into play and is called out, but the action allows a run to score (SF). As a result, the 4 counts (AB + BB + SF +HBP) are needed to calculate a batter's total trips to the plate.
and
formula_3
where:
In one equation, OPS can be represented as:
formula_4
History.
On-base plus slugging was first popularized in 1984 by John Thorn and Pete Palmer's book, "The Hidden Game of Baseball". "The New York Times" then began carrying the leaders in this statistic in its weekly "By the Numbers" box, a feature that continued for four years. Baseball journalist Peter Gammons used and evangelized the statistic, and other writers and broadcasters picked it up. The popularity of OPS gradually spread, and by 2004 it began appearing on Topps baseball cards.
OPS was formerly sometimes known as "production". For instance, "production" was included in early versions of Thorn's "Total Baseball" encyclopedia, and in the "Strat-O-Matic Computer Baseball" game. This term has fallen out of use.
OPS gained popularity because of the availability of its components, OBP and SLG, and that team OPS correlates well with team runs scored.
An OPS scale.
Bill James, in his essay titled "The 96 Families of Hitters" uses seven different categories for classification by OPS:
This effectively transforms OPS into a seven-point ordinal scale. Substituting quality labels such as "excellent" (A), "very good" (B), "good" (C), "average" (D), "fair" (E), "poor" (F) and "very poor" (G) for the A–G categories creates a subjective reference for OPS values.
Leaders.
The top ten Major League Baseball players in lifetime OPS, with at least 3,000 plate appearances , were:
The top five were all left-handed batters. Jimmie Foxx has the highest career OPS for a right-handed batter.
The top ten single-season performances in MLB are:
Gibson holds the highest single-season OPS for a right-hander, while Barry Bonds holds the record for a left-hander. Since 1944, the highest single-season OPS for a right-hander is 1.2224 by Mark McGwire in , which was 28th all-time.
Adjusted OPS (OPS+).
OPS+, adjusted OPS, is a closely related statistic. OPS+ is OPS adjusted for the park and the league in which the player played. An OPS+ of 100 is defined to be the league average. An OPS+ of 150 or more is excellent and 125 very good, while an OPS+ of 75 or below is poor.
The basic equation for OPS+ is
formula_5
where *lgOBP is the park-adjusted OBP of the league and *lgSLG is the park-adjusted SLG of the league.
A common misconception is that OPS+ closely matches the ratio of a player's OPS to that of their league. In fact, due to the additive nature of the two components in OPS+, a player with an OBP and SLG both 50% better than the league average in those metrics will have an OPS+ of 200 (twice the league average OPS+) while still having an OPS that is only 50% better than the average OPS of the league. It would be a better (although not exact) approximation to say that a player with an OPS+ of 150 produces 50% more "runs", in a given set of plate appearances than a player with an OPS+ of 100 (though see clarification above, under "History").
Leaders in OPS+.
Through the end of the 2024 season, the career top twenty leaders in OPS+ (minimum 3,000 plate appearances) were:
The only purely right-handed batters to appear on this list are Hornsby, Judge, Trout, Suttles, Browning, Foxx, McGwire, Orr, and Greenberg. Mantle is the only switch-hitter in the group.
The top ten single-season performances were:
Criticism.
Despite its simple calculation, OPS is a controversial measurement. OPS weighs on-base percentage and slugging percentage equally. However, on-base percentage correlates better with scoring runs. Statistics such as wOBA build on this distinction using linear weights. Additionally, the components of OPS are not typically equal (league-average slugging percentages are usually 75–100 points higher than league-average on-base percentages). As a point of reference, the OPS for all of Major League Baseball in 2024 was .711.
|
3811
|
11024205
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3811
|
Stolen base
|
In baseball, a stolen base occurs when a runner advances to a base unaided by other actions and the official scorer rules that the advance should be credited to the action of the runner. The umpires determine whether the runner is safe or out at the next base, but the official scorer rules on the question of credit or blame for the advance under Rule 10 (Rules of Scoring) of the MLB's Official Rules.
A stolen base most often occurs when a base runner advances to the next base while the pitcher is pitching the ball to home plate.
Successful base stealers must be fast and have good timing.
Background.
Ned Cuthbert, playing for the Philadelphia Keystones in either 1863 or 1865, was the first player to steal a base in a baseball game, although the term "stolen base" was not used until 1870. For a time in the 19th century, stolen bases were credited when a baserunner reached an extra base on a base hit from another player. For example, if a runner on first base reached third base on a single, it counted as a steal. In 1887, Hugh Nicol set a still-standing Major League record with 138 stolen bases, many of which would not have counted under modern rules. Modern steal rules were fully implemented in 1898.
Base stealing was popular in the game's early decades, with speedsters such as Ty Cobb and Clyde Milan stealing nearly 100 bases in a season. But the tactic fell into relative disuse after Babe Ruth introduced the era of the home run – in 1955, for example, no one in baseball stole more than 25 bases, and Dom DiMaggio won the AL stolen base title in 1950 with just 15. However, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, base-stealing was brought back to prominence primarily by Luis Aparicio and Maury Wills, who broke Cobb's modern single-season record by stealing 104 bases in 1962. Wills’ record was broken in turn by Lou Brock in 1974 and Rickey Henderson in 1982. The stolen base remained a popular tactic through the 1980s, perhaps best exemplified by Vince Coleman and the St. Louis Cardinals, but began to decline again in the 1990s as the frequency of home runs reached record heights and the steal-friendly artificial turf ballparks began to disappear.
Base stealing is an important characteristic of the "small ball" managing style (or "manufacturing runs"). Such managers emphasize "doing the little things" (including risky running plays like base-stealing) to advance runners and score runs, often relying on pitching and defense to keep games close. The Los Angeles Dodgers of the 1960s, led by pitcher Sandy Koufax and speedy shortstop Maury Wills, were a successful example of this style. The antithesis of this is reliance on power hitting, exemplified by the Baltimore Orioles of the 1970s, which aspired to score most of its runs via home runs. Often the "small ball" model is associated with the National League, while power hitting is associated with the American League. However, some successful recent American League teams, including the 2001 Seattle Mariners, 2002 Anaheim Angels, the 2005 Chicago White Sox, and the 2015 Kansas City Royals, have excelled at "small ball." The Royals in particular embodied this style within the last decade, leading the league in stolen bases but finishing last in home runs in 2013 and 2014, leading to a berth in two consecutive World Series, one of which they won. Successful teams often combine both styles, with speedy runners complementing power hitters—such as the 2005 White Sox, who hit 200 home runs, which was fifth most in the majors, and had 137 stolen bases, which was fourth.
Base-stealing technique.
Baseball's Rule 8 (The Pitcher) specifies the pitching procedure in detail. For example, in the Set Position, the pitcher must "com[e] to a complete stop"; thereafter, "any natural motion associated with his delivery of the ball to the batter commits him to the pitch without alteration or interruption." A runner intending to "steal on the pitcher" breaks for the next base the moment the pitcher commits to pitch to home plate. The pitcher cannot abort the pitch and try to put the runner out; this is a balk under Rule 8.
If the runner breaks too soon (before the pitcher is obliged to complete a pitch), the pitcher may throw to a base rather than pitch, and the runner may be tagged out between the bases. Past this moment, any delay in the runner's break makes it more likely that the catcher, after receiving the pitch, will be able to throw the runner out at the destination base.
Before the pitch, the runner takes a "lead", walking several steps away from the base as a head start toward the next base. Even a runner who does not intend to steal takes a "secondary lead" of a few more steps, once the pitcher has legally committed to complete the pitch.
The pitcher may throw to the runner's base. The runner must return to that base or risk being tagged out. As well as putting the runner out, an underlying goal is to dissuade the runner from too big a lead; that is, to "hold the runner on" the original base. (Historically, this gambit could be used without limit. An MLB rules change in 2023 limited the pitcher to two throws; the pitcher must then pitch to the batter.)
The more adept base stealers are proficient at "reading the pickoff", meaning that they can detect certain "tells" (tell-tale signs) in a pitcher's pre-pitch movements or mannerisms that indicate the pickoff attempt is or is not imminent. For example, one experienced base stealer noted that careless pitchers dig the toes of their back foot into the ground when they are about to pitch in order to get a better push off, but when they intend to turn and throw a pickoff, they do not.
If a batted ball is caught on the fly, the runner must return to his original base. In this case, a runner trying to steal is more likely to be caught off his original base, resulting in a double play. This is a minor risk of a steal attempt. It is offset by the fact that a ground ball double play is less likely.
Plays involving baserunning.
In the "hit-and-run play", coaches coordinate the actions of runner and batter. The runner tries to steal and the batter swings at almost any pitch, if only to distract the catcher. If the batter makes contact, the runner has a greater chance of reaching the next base; if the batter gets a base hit, the runner will likely be able to take an extra base. If the batter fails to hit the ball, the hit-and-run becomes a pure steal attempt.
The less common cousin to the hit and run is the "run and hit" play. In the run and hit, the base runner attempts to advance when the pitcher commits the pitch to home plate, but the batter is instead directed to exercise his judgement as to whether or not to swing at the pitch. If the batter feels it is not advantageous to swing, AND he believes the base runner is very likely to succeed in the steal attempt, he does not swing. This play is typically utilized with elite base stealers and skilled batters only, wherein a highly experienced batsman is trusted to decide whether or not to "protect" the base runner. If the batter chooses not to swing, it becomes a pure steal attempt.
In the "delayed steal", the runner does not take advantage of the pitcher's duty to complete a pitch, but relies on surprise and takes advantage of any complacency by the fielders. The runner gives the impression he is not trying to steal, and does not break for the next base until the ball crosses the plate. It is rare for Major League defenses to be fooled, but the play is used effectively at the college level. The first delayed steal on record was performed by Miller Huggins in 1903. The delayed steal was famously practiced by Eddie Stanky of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Second base is the base most often stolen, because once a runner is on second base he is considered to be in "scoring position", meaning that he is expected to be able to run home and score on most routine singles hit into the outfield. Second base is also the easiest to steal, as it is farthest from home plate and thus a longer throw from the catcher is required to prevent it. Third base is a shorter throw for the catcher, but the runner is able to take a longer lead off second base and can leave for third base earlier against a left-handed pitcher. A steal of home plate is the riskiest, as the catcher only needs to tag out the runner after receiving the ball from the pitcher. It is difficult for the runner to cover the distance between the bases before the ball arrives home. Ty Cobb holds the records for most steals of home in a single season (8) as well as for a career (54). Steals of home are not officially recorded statistics, and must be researched through individual game accounts. Thus Cobb's totals may be even greater than is recorded. Jackie Robinson famously stole home in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series. Thirty-five games have ended with a runner stealing home, but only two have occurred since 1980. In a variation on the steal of home, the batter is signaled to simultaneously execute a sacrifice bunt, which results in the "squeeze play." The "suicide squeeze" is a squeeze in which the runner on third begins to steal home without seeing the outcome of the bunt; it is so named because if the batter fails to bunt, the runner will surely be out. In contrast, when the runner on third does not commit until seeing that the ball is bunted advantageously, it is called a "safety squeeze."
In more recent years, most steals of home involve a "delayed double steal", in which a runner on first attempts to steal second, while the runner on third breaks for home as soon as the catcher throws to second base. If it is important to prevent the run from scoring, the catcher may hold on to the ball (conceding the steal of second) or may throw to the pitcher; this may deceive the runner at third and the pitcher may throw back to the catcher for the out.
Statistics.
In baseball statistics, stolen bases are denoted by "SB". Attempts to steal that result in the baserunner being out are "caught stealing" ("CS"). The sum of these statistics is "steal attempts." Successful steals as a percentage of total steal attempts is called the "success rate".
The rule on stolen bases states that:
Relative skill at stealing bases can be judged by evaluating either a player's total number of steals or the success rate. Noted statistician Bill James has argued that unless a player has a high success rate (67–70% or better), attempting to steal a base is detrimental to a team.
Comparing skill against players from other eras is problematic, because the definition has not been constant. Caught stealing was not recorded regularly until the middle of the 20th century. Ty Cobb, for example, was known as a great base-stealer, with 892 steals and a success rate of over 83%. However, the data on Cobb's caught stealing is missing from 12 seasons, strongly suggesting he was unsuccessful many more times than his stats indicate. Carlos Beltrán, with 286 steals, has the highest career success rate of all players with over 300 stolen base attempts, at 88.3%.
Evolution of rules and scoring.
The first mention of the stolen base as a statistic was in the 1877 scoring rules adopted by the National League, which noted credit toward a player's total bases when a base is stolen. It was not until 1886 that the stolen base appeared as something to be tracked, but was only to "appear in the summary of the game".
In 1887, the stolen base was given its own individual statistical column in the box score, and was defined for purposes of scoring: "... every base made after first base has been reached by a base runner, except for those made by reason of or with the aid of a battery error (wild pitch or passed ball), or by batting, balks or by being forced off. In short, shall include all bases made by a clean steal, or through a wild throw or muff of the ball by a fielder who is directly trying to put the base runner out while attempting to steal." The next year, it was clarified that any attempt to steal must be credited to the runner, and that fielders committing errors during this play must also be charged with an error. This rule also clarified that advancement of another base(s) beyond the one being stolen is not credited as a stolen base on the same play, and that an error is charged to the fielder who permitted the extra advancement. There was clarification that a runner is credited with a steal if the attempt began before a battery error. Finally, batters were credited with a stolen base if they were tagged out after over running the base.
In 1892, a rule credited runners with stolen bases if a base runner advanced on a fly out, or if they advanced more than one base on any safe hit or attempted out, providing an attempt was made by the defense to put the runner out. The rule was rescinded in 1897.
In 1898, stolen base scoring was narrowed to no longer include advancement in the event of a fielding error, or advancement caused by a hit batsman.
1904 saw an attempt to reduce the already wordy slew of rules governing stolen bases, with the stolen base now credited when "the advances a base unaided by a base hit, a put out, (or) a fielding or batter error."
1910 saw the first addressing of the double and triple steal attempts. Under the new rule, when any runner is thrown out, and the other(s) are successful, the successful runners will not be credited with a stolen base.
Without using the term, 1920 saw the first rule that would be referred to today as defensive indifference, as stolen bases would not be credited, unless an effort was made to stop the runner by the defense. This is usually called if such is attempted in the ninth inning while that player's team is trailing, unless the runner represents the potential tying run.
1931 saw a further narrowing of the criteria for awarding a stolen base. Power was given to the official scorer, in the event of a muff by the catcher in throwing, that in the judgment of the scorer the runner would have been out, to credit the catcher with an error, and not credit the runner with a stolen base. Further, any successful steal on a play resulting in a wild pitch, passed ball, or balk would no longer be credited as a steal, even if the runner had started to steal before the play.
One of the largest rewrites to the rules in history came in 1950. The stolen base was specifically to be credited "to a runner whenever he advances one base unaided by a base hit, a putout, a forceout, a fielder's choice, a passed ball, a wild pitch, or a balk."
There were noted exceptions, such as denying a stolen base to an otherwise successful steal as a part of a double or triple steal, if one other runner was thrown out in the process. A stolen base would be awarded to runners who successfully stole second base as a part of a double steal with a man on third, if the other runner failed to steal home, but instead was able to return safely to third base. Runners who are tagged out oversliding the base after an otherwise successful steal would not be credited with a stolen base. Indifference was also credited as an exception. Runners would now be credited with stolen bases if they had begun the act of stealing, and the resulting pitch was wild, or a passed ball. Finally, for 1950 only, runners would be credited with a stolen base if they were "well advanced" toward the base they were attempting to steal, and the pitcher is charged with a balk, with the further exception of a player attempting to steal, who would otherwise have been forced to advance on the balk by a runner behind them. This rule was removed in 1951.
A clarification came in 1955 that awarded a stolen base to a runner even if he became involved in a rundown, provided he evaded the rundown and advanced to the base he intended to steal.
The criteria for "caught stealing" were fine-tuned in 1979, with a runner being charged with being caught if he is put out while trying to steal, overslides a base (otherwise successfully stolen), or is picked off a base and tries to advance to the next base. It is explicitly not caught stealing to be put out after a wild pitch or passed ball.
In 2023, base stealing increased due to new rules affecting pitchers: A pitch clock limited the amount of time a pitcher had to pitch and pickoff attempts were limited to two per at-bat. In addition, the bases were enlarged from to , making stealing slightly easier.
"Stealing first".
While not recorded as a stolen base, the same dynamic between batter/runner and defense is on display in the case of an uncaught third strike. The batter/runner can avoid an out and become a baserunner by reaching first base ahead of the throw. This case is a strikeout that is not an out; the batter/runner's acquisition of first base is scored as a passed ball, a wild pitch, or an error.
In baseball's earlier decades, a runner on second base could "steal" first base, perhaps with the intention of drawing a throw that might allow a runner on third to score (a tactic famously employed by Germany Schaefer). However, such a tactic was not recorded as a stolen base. MLB rules now forbid running clockwise on the basepaths to "confuse the defense or make a travesty of the game". Further, after the pitcher assumes the pitching position, runners cannot return to any previous base.
In a game on August 16, 1987, Toronto Blue Jays center fielder Lloyd Moseby successfully stole second base on a throwing error by Chicago White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk that went well into center field. However, shortstop Ozzie Guillen faked as if the batter had hit a popfly, which would have required Moseby to return to first base to avoid getting doubled off. Moseby made it back to first base, but another throwing error sent the ball to the infield wall, giving Moseby another chance to steal second, which he did. This chaos led the announcer to say, "He doesn't know where the throw is; he's going back to first base! Is he going to steal first? He steals first! Now he's going to steal second again! I've never seen it before!" This bizarre play was officially scored as a baserunner advancing on a throwing error by the center fielder, ironically resulting in neither a stolen base awarded nor an error charged to the catcher.
In a game on April 19, 2013, Milwaukee Brewers shortstop Jean Segura stole second base in the bottom of the eighth inning. After the batter up, Ryan Braun, walked, Segura broke early for third base and the pitcher, Shawn Camp of the Chicago Cubs, threw ahead of him. As Segura was chased back to second base, Braun advanced to second as well and was tagged out. Segura, thinking "he" was out, began to return to the home dugout behind first base, but first base coach Garth Iorg directed him to stand at first. Segura had not intentionally run the bases backwards as a deception or mockery, but no fielder tried to tag him out. Later in the inning, he attempted to steal second for the second time, but was thrown out by catcher Welington Castillo.
The expression "You can't steal first base" is sometimes used in reference to a player who is fast but not very good at getting on base in the first place.
Former Pittsburgh Pirates and Seattle Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon is jokingly referred to as having "stolen first" in a June 26, 2001, game as the manager of the Pirates: after being ejected for disputing a call at first base, he yanked the base out of the ground and left the field with it, delaying the game. Of the incident, McClendon said "I told him he wasn't using it, so I thought I'd take it." When a groundskeeper came out to replace the bag, the crowd booed him.
The independent Atlantic League instituted a new rule for the second half of the 2019 season, allowing batters to become runners on any pitch not "caught in flight" by the catcher, as they can throughout baseball after most uncaught third strikes. On July 13, 2019, outfielder Tony Thomas of the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs became the first player to reach first base under this rule. The press described this as "stealing first base", though it is scored as described above.
|
3812
|
160367
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3812
|
Plate appearance
|
In baseball, a player is credited with a plate appearance (denoted by PA) each time he completes a turn batting. Under Rule 5.04(c) of the Official Baseball Rules, a player completes a turn batting when he is put out or becomes a runner. This happens when he strikes out or is declared out before reaching first base; or when he reaches first base safely or is awarded first base (by a base on balls, hit by pitch, catcher's interference, or obstruction); or when he hits a fair ball which causes a preceding runner to be put out for the third out before he himself is put out or reaches first base safely ("see also" left on base, fielder's choice, force play). A very similar baseball statistic, at bats, counts a subset of plate appearances that end under certain circumstances.
Use as batting record qualifier.
At bats - rather than plate appearances - are used to calculate batting averages, slugging percentages. However, starting in 1957, at season's end a player must have accumulated a minimum number of plate appearances during a season to be ranked as a league-leader in certain statistical categories. For batting championships in MLB, this number is 3.1 plate appearances multiplied by the number of scheduled games in a season, rounded up or down to the nearest whole number. As of 2024, with a 162-game regular season, this means 502 plate appearances are required to qualify. A lesser criterion applies in the minor leagues, with 2.7 plate appearances per game required to qualify.
For example, Player A gets 100 hits in 400 at bats over 510 plate appearances, which works out to a .250 batting average (equivalent to one hit in every four at-bats). Alternatively, Player B gets 110 hits in 400 at bats over 490 plate appearances during the same season, finishing with a .275 batting average. Player B, even though he had the same amount of at bats as Player A and even though his batting average is higher, will not be eligible for certain percentage-based season-ending rankings because he did not accumulate the required 502 plate appearances, while Player A did and therefore will be eligible. There is, however, an exception:
Exception for batting titles.
Rule 9.22(a) of the Official Baseball Rules make a single allowance to the minimum requirement of 502 plate appearances for the purposes of determining the batting, slugging or on-base percentage title. If a player:
he will win that title, but with his original statistic (before the extra at bats were added).
In the example above, Player B is 12 plate appearances short of the required 502, but were he be charged with 12 additional unproductive at bats, he would go 110-for-412 for a batting average of .267. If no one else has a batting average (similarly modified if appropriate) higher than .267, player B will be awarded the batting title (with his original batting average of .275) despite the lack of 502 plate appearances.
In a real-life example, in 2012, Melky Cabrera, then of the San Francisco Giants, finished the season with a league-high .346 batting average, but he had only 501 plate appearances, one short of the required 502. Per the rule, he would have won the batting title because after an extra at bat is added and his batting average recalculated, he still would have led the league in batting average. Cabrera's case, however, turned out differently. The reason Cabrera finished the season with only 501 plate appearances was because he was suspended in mid-August when he tested positive for illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Cabrera was still eligible for that extra at bat, but he requested that the extra at bat not be added to his total, and that he not be considered for the batting crown, because he admitted that his use of performance-enhancing drugs had given him an unfair advantage over other players. As a result, Cabrera's name is nowhere to be found on the list of 2012 National League batting leaders.
Scoring.
A batter is not credited with a plate appearance if, while batting, a preceding runner is put out on the basepaths for the third out in a way other than by the batter putting the ball into play (i.e., picked off, caught stealing). In this case, the same batter continues his turn batting in the next inning with no balls or strikes against him.
A batter is not credited with a plate appearance if, while batting, the game ends as the winning run scores from third base on a balk, stolen base, wild pitch or passed ball.
A batter may or may not be credited with a plate appearance (and possibly at bat) in the rare instance when he is replaced by a pinch hitter after having already started his turn at bat. Under Rule 9.15(b), the pinch hitter would receive the plate appearance (and potential of an at-bat) unless the original batter is replaced when having 2 strikes against him and the pinch hitter subsequently completes the strikeout, in which case the plate appearance and at-bat are charged to the first batter.
Relation to at bat.
Under Official Baseball Rule 9.02(a)(1), an at bat results from a completed plate appearance, unless the batter:
In common parlance, the term "at bat" is sometimes used to mean "plate appearance" (for example, "he fouled off the ball to keep the "at bat" alive"). The intent is usually clear from the context, although the term "official at bat" is sometimes used to explicitly refer to an "at bat" as distinguished from a "plate appearance". However, terms such as "turn at bat" or "time at bat" are synonymous with "plate appearance".
"Time at bat" in the rulebook.
Official Baseball Rule 5.06(c) provides that "[a] batter has legally completed his "time at bat" when he is put out or becomes a runner" (emphasis added). The "time at bat" defined in this rule is more commonly referred to as a plate appearance, and the playing rules (Rules 1 through 8) uses the phrase "time at bat" in this sense (e.g. Rule 5.04(a)(3), which states that "[t]he first batter in each inning after the first inning shall be the player whose name follows that of the last player who legally completed his "time at bat" in the preceding inning" (emphasis added)). In contrast, the scoring rules uses the phrase "time at bat" to refer to the statistic at bat, defined in Rule 9.02(a)(1), but sometimes uses the phrase "official time at bat" or refers back to Rule 9.02(a)(1) when mentioning the statistic. The phrase "plate appearance" is used in Rules 9.22 and 9.23 dealing with batting titles and hitting streaks, and in Rule 5.10(g) Comment in relation to the Three-Batter Minimum: "[t]o qualify as one of three consecutive batters, the batter must complete his "plate appearance", which ends only when the batter is put out or becomes a runner." (emphasis added) The term is not elsewhere defined in the rulebook.
In on-base percentage.
Plate appearances are a primary component in calculating on-base percentage (OBP), an alternative measurement of a player's offensive performance, but are not the only one in determining its denominator.
By rule, certain plate appearances, such as times reached base via either catcher's interference or fielder's obstruction or sacrifice bunts, are excluded from it, leaving the denominator determined instead as the sum of at-bats, walks, hit-by-pitches, and sacrifice flies. And the numerator represented by a batter's times on base (composed of the sum of hits, base on balls, and times hit by pitch).
Other uses.
Plate appearances are used by scorers for "proving" a box score. Under Rule 9.03(c), the following two items should be equal for each team, because each is equal to the team's total number of plate appearances:
|
3814
|
29278485
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3814
|
Games played
|
Games played (GP) is a statistic used in team sports to indicate the total number of games in which a player has participated (in any capacity); the statistic is generally applied irrespective of whatever portion of the game is contested.
Association football.
In association football, a game played is counted if a player is in the starting 11, or if a reserve player enters the game before full-time.
Baseball.
In baseball, the statistic applies to players, who prior to a game, are included on a starting lineup card or are announced as an "ex ante" substitute, whether or not they play. For pitchers only, the statistic games pitched is used.
A notable example of the application of the above rule is pitcher Larry Yount, who suffered an injury while throwing warmup pitches after being summoned as a reliever in a Major League Baseball (MLB) game on September 15, 1971. He did not face a batter, but was credited with an appearance because he had been announced as a substitute. Yount never appeared in (or actually played in) any other MLB game.
Basketball.
Robert Parish has the NBA record for most regular season games played, with 1,611. A. C. Green has the NBA record for most consecutive games played, with 1,192.
|
3817
|
851588
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3817
|
Boogie Down Productions
|
Boogie Down Productions (BDP) was an American hip-hop group formed in the Bronx, New York City, in 1986. It originally consisted of KRS-One, D-Nice, and DJ Scott La Rock. DJ Scott La Rock was murdered on August 27, 1987, five months after the release of BDP's debut album, "Criminal Minded". The name of the group, Boogie Down, derives from a nickname for the South Bronx.
The group pioneered the fusion of dancehall reggae and hip-hop music, and their debut LP "Criminal Minded" contains frank descriptions of life in the South Bronx during the late 1980s.
Members.
BDP's membership changed throughout its existence, the only constant being KRS-One. The group was founded by KRS-One and DJ Scott La Rock, with producer Lee Smith, who was essential in the production of the songs on "Criminal Minded", being added as a member shortly after.
From those beginnings, BDP members and collaborators included Ced Gee of Ultramagnetic MC's, Lee Smith, Scott La Rock, D-Nice, Henry Wilkerson PoppyDa, Kenny Parker (KRS-One's younger brother), Just-Ice, ICU, McBoo, Ms. Melodie, Heather B., Scottie Morris, Tony Rahsan, Willie D., RoboCop, Harmony, DJ Red Alert, Jay Kramer, D-Square, Rebekah Foster, Scott Whitehill, Scott King, Chris Tait and Sidney Mills.
BDP as a group essentially ended because KRS-One began recording and performing under his own name rather than the group name. Lee Smith, who has co-producer credit on the original 12" "South Bronx" single, was the first to be jettisoned by KRS-One and the future new label after Scott's death.
In the liner notes on BDP's 1992 album "Sex and Violence", KRS-One writes: "BDP in 1992 is KRS-One, Willie D, and Kenny Parker! BDP is not D-Nice, Jamal-Ski, Harmony, Ms. Melodie, and Scottie Morris. They are not down with BDP so stop frontin'." Steve "Flash" Juon of RapReviews.com claimed that this initiated the ultimate breakup of the group.
Cultural influences and impact.
"The Bridge Wars".
A conflict arose in the late 1980s concerning the origins of hip-hop, and BDP made conscious efforts in its early work to establish its interpretation of the issue. The origins of hip-hop to many, including BDP, are believed to be from the Bronx. A rival hip-hop collective, known as the Juice Crew's lyrics, were misunderstood to contain a claim in the song "The Bridge" that hip hop was directly a result of artists originating from Queensbridge. Boogie Down and KRS retorted angrily with songs such as "The Bridge is Over" and "South Bronx," which started one of the first notable hip hop wars as MC Shan, Marley Marl, Roxanne Shanté and Blaq Poet all released songs featuring verses personally attacking KRS and Scott La Rock. But the Bridge Wars were short-lived, and after Scott La Rock's death, KRS began to concentrate on socially conscious music.
While "Criminal Minded" contained vivid descriptions of South Bronx street life, BDP changed after Scott's death. Lee Smith was dropped and KRS-One adopted the Teacha moniker and made a deliberate attempt at creating politically and socially conscious hip-hop. BDP was influential in provoking political and social consciousness in hip-hop, for example in "Stop The Violence" on 1988's "By All Means Necessary".
Jamaican inspirations.
The Jamaican influence in "Criminal Minded" is well illustrated by the use of the "Mad Mad" or "Diseases" riddim started in 1981 with reggae star Yellowman's song "Zunguzunguzeng." BDP used this riff in the song "Remix for P is Free," and it was later resampled by artists such as Black Star and dead prez. As an album regarded by many as the start of the gangsta rap movement, "Criminal Minded" played an important role in reaffirming the social acceptance of having Jamaican roots. BDP referenced reggae in a way that helped to solidify Jamaica's place in modern hip-hop culture.
Political and social activism.
From its start, BDP affected the development of hip-hop and gave a sincere voice to the reality of life in the South Bronx, a section of New York City clouded with poverty and crime. With "Criminal Minded", the group combined the sounds of LaRock's harsh, spare, reggae-influenced beats and KRS-One's long-winded rhyme style on underground classics such as "9mm Goes Bang" and "South Bronx," the album's gritty portrait of life on the streets (as well as the firearms that adorned its cover) influenced the gangsta rap movement that began in earnest two years later.
BDP's influence in the creation and development of gangsta rap highlights the cultural significance and impact of the type of music BDP and other early hip-hop artists like it created. This subgenre of hip-hop is most closely associated with hard-core hip-hop and is widely misinterpreted as promoting violence and gang activity. This misinterpretation or stigma is closely related to Boogie Down Productions and the general purpose behind their underlying themes of violence. For instance, the cover art of "Criminal Minded" displays the two artists in the group brandishing drawn guns and displaying other firearms. This is not an encouragement of the violence described in BDP's music, but a portrayal of the violence in the South Bronx as a means of expression, escape, and even condemnation. This album art is not meant to advocate violence but to challenge the conception of a criminal, to assert that those who are really criminally minded are those who hold power.
BDP's music became significantly more politically astute after Scott La Rock's death. KRS-One published four more albums under the title Boogie Down Productions, and each was increasingly innovative and expanded from the thuggish imagery of "Criminal Minded," exploring themes like black-on-black crime and black radicalism, using a riff on the words of Malcolm X, "by any means necessary", which became the title of the second BDP album, and remains one of the most political hip-hop albums to date. It was in this album that KRS defined himself as the "teacha" or "teacher", symbolizing his emphasis on educating his audience members and fans about relevant social issues surrounding the African-American experience.
During his time in association with Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One joined other rappers to create the Stop the Violence Movement, which addressed many of the issues brought up in BDP's music and is the most conscious effort displayed by KRS-One and BDP of political activism and engagement. The movement created the single "Self-Destruction" in 1989 through the collaboration of BDP (KRS-One, D-Nice & Ms. Melodie), Stetsasonic (Delite, Daddy-O, Wise, and Frukwan), Kool Moe Dee, MC Lyte, Doug E. Fresh, Just-Ice, Heavy D, Biz Markie, and Public Enemy (Chuck D & Flavor Flav), with the aim of spreading awareness about violence in African-American and hip-hop communities. All proceeds from this effort went to the National Urban League.
|
3821
|
1297129633
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3821
|
Binary-coded decimal
|
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 four-bit encoding, however, may vary for technical reasons (e.g. Excess-3).
The ten states representing a BCD digit are sometimes called "tetrades" (the nibble typically needed to hold them is also known as a tetrade) while the unused, don't care-states are named "pseudo-tetrad(e)s", "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 decimal 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 binary floating point formats cannot be tolerated.
Background.
BCD takes advantage of the fact that any one decimal numeral can be represented by a four-bit pattern. An 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 (formula_1).
The following table represents decimal digits from 0 to 9 in various BCD encoding systems. In the headers, the "codice_1" 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:
As an example, encoding the decimal number codice_2 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 codice_3 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 codice_4 (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.
Some computers whose words are multiples of an octet (8-bit byte), for example contemporary IBM mainframe systems, support packed BCD (or packed decimal) numeric representations, in which each nibble represents either a decimal digit or a sign. 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 (2"n")−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 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 fourth and fifth 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 8-bit 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, or to values representing plus or minus. EBCDIC systems use a zone value of (), yielding -, the codes for "0" through "9", a zone value of () for positive, yielding -, the codes for "{" through "I" and a zone value of () for negative, yielding -, the codes for the characters "}" through "R". 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
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.
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 databases such as IBM Db2 and processors such as z/Architecture and POWER6 and later Power ISA processors. 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.
Other computers.
The Digital Equipment Corporation VAX 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.
Many processors have hardware support for BCD-encoded integer arithmetic. For example, the 6502, the Motorola 68000 series, and the x86 series. 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.
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 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.
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 symbols, similar to those in telephone keypad 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 2"n"
bits 4321 of octet "n" encoding digit 2("n" – 1) + 1
Meaning number codice_5, would become codice_6 in TBCD.
This format is used in modern mobile telephony to send dialed numbers, as well as operator ID (the MCC/MNC tuple), IMEI, IMSI (SUPI), et.c.
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 computers use a BCD format for floating point numbers. The MOS Technology 6502 processor has a BCD mode for the addition and subtraction instructions. The Psion Organiser 1 handheld computer's manufacturer-supplied software also uses BCD to implement floating point; later Psion models use 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 determined the patentability of software and algorithms.
|
3826
|
29495465
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3826
|
Bumin Qaghan
|
Bumin Qaghan (, also known as Illig Qaghan (Chinese: 伊利可汗, Pinyin: Yīlì Kèhán, Wade–Giles: i-li k'o-han) or Yamï Qaghan (, died 552 AD) was the founder of the First Turkic Khaganate. He was the eldest son of Ashina Tuwu (吐務 / 吐务). He was the chieftain of the Turks under the sovereignty of Rouran Khaganate. He is also mentioned as Tumen (, , commander of ten thousand) of the Rouran Khaganate.
Early life and reign.
According to "History of Northern Dynasties" and "Zizhi Tongjian", in 545 Tumen's tribe started to rise and frequently invaded the western frontier of Wei. The chancellor of Western Wei, Yuwen Tai, sent An Nuopanto (安諾盤陀, Nanai-Banda, a Sogdian from Bukhara,) as an emissary to the Göktürk chieftain Tumen, in an attempt to establish a commercial relationship. In 546, Tumen paid tribute to the Western Wei state. In that same year, Tumen put down a revolt of the Tiele tribes against the Rouran Khaganate, their overlords. Following this, Tumen felt entitled to request of the Rouran a princess as his wife. The Rouran khagan, Anagui, sent a message refusing this request and adding: "You are my blacksmith slave. How dare you utter these words?" Bumin got angry, killed Anagui's emissary, and severed relations with the Rouran Khaganate. Anagui's "blacksmith" (鍛奴 / 锻奴, Pinyin: duàn nú, Wade–Giles: tuan-nu) insult was recorded in Chinese chronicles. Some sources state that members of the Turks (referred as "Tujue" in Chinese sources) did serve as blacksmiths for the Rouran elite, and that "blacksmith slavery" may refer to a kind of vassalage that prevailed in Rouran society. Nevertheless, after this incident Bumin emerged as the leader of the revolt against Rouran.
In 551, Bumin requested a Western Wei princess in marriage. Yuwen Tai permitted it and sent of Western Wei to Bumin. In the same year when Emperor Wen of Western Wei died, Bumin sent mission and gave two hundred horses.
The beginning of formal diplomatic relations with China propped up Bumin's authority among the Turks. He eventually united the local Turkic tribes and threw off the yoke of the Rouran domination. In 552 Bumin's army defeated Anagui's forces at the north of Huaihuang and then Anagui committed suicide. With their defeat Bumin proclaimed himself "Illig Qaghan" and made his wife qaghatun. "Illig" means Ilkhan (i.e. ruler of people) in Old Turkic. According to the Bilge Qaghan's memorial complex and the Kul Tigin's memorial complex, Bumin and Istemi ruled people by Turkic laws and they developed them.
Death and family.
Bumin died within several months after proclaiming himself Illig Qaghan. He was married to Princess Changle of Western Wei.
Issue:
Genetics.
A complete genetic analysis of Empress Ashina (551–582), Bumin Qaghan' granddaughter through his son Muqan Qaghan, by Xiaoming Yang et al. in 2023 , found nearly exclusively Ancient Northeast Asian ancestry (97,7%) next to minor West-Eurasian components (2,7%), and no Chinese ("Yellow River") admixture. This supports the Northeast Asian origin of the Ashina tribe and the Göktürk Khanate. According to the authors, these findings "once again validates a cultural diffusion model over a demic diffusion model for the spread of Turkic languages" and refutes "the western Eurasian origin and multiple origin hypotheses" in favor of an East Asian origin for the Türks.
Legacy.
He was succeeded by his younger brother Istemi in the western part and by his son Issik Qaghan in the eastern part. In less than one century, his khaganate expanded to comprise most of Central Asia.
References.
|
3827
|
114797
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3827
|
Bilge Qaghan
|
Bilge Qaghan (; ; 683 – 25 November 734) was the fourth Qaghan of the Second Turkic Khaganate. His accomplishments were described in the Orkhon inscriptions.
Names.
As was the custom, his personal name and the name after assuming the title Qaghan were different. His personal name was recorded in Chinese characters as (). His name after assuming the title was "Bilgä Qaγan". ).
Early years.
He was born in 683, in the early years of the khaganate. He campaigned alongside his father from early childhood. He was created as Tardush shad and given command over the western wing of the empire in 697 by Qapaghan. He managed to annihilate Wei Yuanzhong's army in 701 with his brother. He also reconquered Basmyl tribes in 703. He also subdued Yenisei Kyrgyz forces in 709, after their disobedience had to reconquer and kill their Qaghan in 710. He killed Türgesh khagan Suoge at Battle of Bolchu.
In later years of Qapaghan, he had to fight four battles in a year starting from 714, resubduing tribes and nearly was killed in an ambush from Uyghur forces in 716.
Reign.
In 716, Qapaghan Qaghan, the second Qaghan, was killed in his campaign against the Toquz Oghuz alliance and his severed head was sent to Chang'an. Although his son Inel Khagan succeeded him, Bilgä's brother Kul Tigin and Tonyukuk carried out a coup d'état against Inel Qaghan. They killed him and made him "Bilgä" "Qaghan". His name literally means "wise king".
He appointed his brother Kul Tigin to be Left Wise Prince, which made second most powerful person in realm. He re-subdued Huige in 716. He also appointed his father-in-law Tonyukuk to be Master Strategist.
New reforms and stabilization of the regime, caused tribes that fled Tujue to come back. Tang chancellor Wang Jun, believing that the Göktürks who surrendered would try to flee back to the Göktürk state, suggested that they be forcibly moved into the heart of the empire to prevent them from doing so. Before Wang's suggestion could be acted upon, however, there was an uprising by the Göktürks who surrendered, under the leadership of Xiedie Sitai (𨁂跌思泰) and Axilan (阿悉爛). Xue and Wang tried to intercept them and dealt them defeats, but they were able to flee back to the Göktürk state anyway. This defeat led to Xue Ne's retirement.
Religious policy.
At some point in his life, he thought about converting to Buddhism and settling in cities. However, Tonyukuk discouraged him from this, citing the Turks' few numbers and vulnerability to Chinese attacks. While the Turks' power rested on their mobility, conversion to Buddhism would bring pacifism among the population. Therefore, sticking to Tengrism was necessary for survival.
Later reign.
In 720, Wang believed that the Pugu (僕固) and Xiedie tribes of the region were planning to defect to Eastern Tujue and attack with Eastern Tujue troops. He thus held a feast and invited the chieftains, and, at the feast, massacred them. He then attacked the Pugu and Xiedie tribes in the area, nearly wiping them out. He then proposed a plan to attack Qaghan along with the Baximi, Xi, and Khitan. Emperor Xuanzong also recruited Qapaghan Khagan's sons Bilgä Tigin and Mo Tigin, Yenisei Kyrgyz Qaghan Kutluk Bilgä Qaghan and Huoba Guiren to fight against Tujue. Tonyukuk cunningly launched first attack on Baximi in 721 autumn, completely crushing them. Meanwhile, Bilgä raided Gansu, taking much of the livestock. Later that year Khitans, next year Xi were also crushed.
In 726, his father-in-law and chancellor Tonyukuk died.
In 727, he sent Buyruk Chor () as an emissary to Xuanzong with 30 horses as a gift. He also warned him of Me Agtsom's proposal of an anti-Tang alliance. This alarm proved to be true when Tibetan general We Tadra Khonglo invaded Tang China in 727, sacked Guazhou (瓜州, in modern Gansu), Changle (常樂, in south of modern Guazhou County), Changmenjun (長門軍, in north of modern Yumen) and Anxi (安西, modern Lintan).
On 27 February 731, Kul Tigin died, for which Qaghan mourned and ordered a great funeral ceremony.
In 733, he defeated rebellious Khitan tribes.
Death.
Just after sending an emissary to Xuanzong to gain heqin alliance, he was poisoned by Buyruk Chor. He did not die immediately and he had time to punish the family of Buyruk Chor with death. He died on 25 November 734, his burial ceremony took place on 22 June 735.
Family.
He was married to El Etmish Bilge Khatun, Tonyukuk's daughter. He had several children:
Legacy.
After his death from poisoning, several steles were erected in the capital area by the Orkhon River. These Orkhon inscriptions are the first known texts in the Old Turkic language.
External links.
|
3832
|
10689882
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3832
|
Bauhaus
|
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function.
The Bauhaus was founded by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar. It was grounded in the idea of creating a "Gesamtkunstwerk" ("comprehensive artwork") in which all the arts would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style later became one of the most influential currents in modern design, modernist architecture, and architectural education. The Bauhaus movement had a profound influence on subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. Staff at the Bauhaus included prominent artists such as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Gunta Stölzl, and László Moholy-Nagy at various points.
The school existed in three German cities—Weimar, from 1919 to 1925; Dessau, from 1925 to 1932; and Berlin, from 1932 to 1933—under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928; Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930; and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime, having been painted as a centre of communist intellectualism. Internationally, former key figures of Bauhaus were successful in the United States and became known as the "avant-garde" for the International Style. The White city of Tel Aviv to which numerous Jewish Bauhaus architects emigrated, has the highest concentration of the Bauhaus' international architecture in the world.
The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics. For example, the pottery shop was discontinued when the school moved from Weimar to Dessau, even though it had been an important revenue source; when Mies van der Rohe took over the school in 1930, he transformed it into a private school and would not allow any supporters of Hannes Meyer to attend it.
Terms and concepts.
Several specific features are identified in the Bauhaus forms and shapes: simple geometric shapes like rectangles and spheres, without elaborate decorations. Buildings, furniture, and fonts often feature rounded corners, sometimes rounded walls, or curved chrome pipes. Some buildings are characterized by rectangular features, for example protruding balconies with flat, chunky railings facing the street, and long banks of windows. Some outlines can be defined as a tool for creating an ideal form, which is the basis of the architectural concept.
Bauhaus and German modernism.
After Germany's defeat in World War I and the establishment of the Weimar Republic, a renewed liberal spirit allowed an upsurge of radical experimentation in all the arts, which had been suppressed by the old regime. Many Germans of left-wing views were influenced by the cultural experimentation that followed the Russian Revolution, such as constructivism. Such influences can be overstated: Gropius did not share these radical views, and said that Bauhaus was entirely apolitical. Just as important was the influence of the 19th-century English designer William Morris (1834–1896), who had argued that art should meet the needs of society and that there should be no distinction between form and function. Thus, the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, was marked by the absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object or a building and its design.
However, the most important influence on Bauhaus was modernism, a cultural movement whose origins lay as early as the 1880s, and which had already made its presence felt in Germany before the World War, despite the prevailing conservatism. The design innovations commonly associated with Gropius and the Bauhaus—the radically simplified forms, the rationality and functionality, and the idea that mass production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit—were already partly developed in Germany before the Bauhaus was founded. The German national designers' organization Deutscher Werkbund was formed in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius to harness the new potentials of mass production, with a mind towards preserving Germany's economic competitiveness with England. In its first seven years, the Werkbund came to be regarded as the authoritative body on questions of design in Germany, and was copied in other countries. Many fundamental questions of craftsmanship versus mass production, the relationship of usefulness and beauty, the practical purpose of formal beauty in a commonplace object, and whether or not a single proper form could exist, were argued out among its 1,870 members (by 1914).
German architectural modernism was known as Neues Bauen. Beginning in June 1907, Peter Behrens' pioneering industrial design work for the German electrical company AEG successfully integrated art and mass production on a large scale. He designed consumer products, standardized parts, created clean-lined designs for the company's graphics, developed a consistent corporate identity, built the modernist landmark AEG Turbine Factory, and made full use of newly developed materials such as poured concrete and exposed steel. Behrens was a founding member of the Werkbund, and both Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer worked for him in this period.
The Bauhaus was founded at a time when the German zeitgeist had turned from emotional Expressionism to the matter-of-fact New Objectivity. An entire group of working architects, including Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut and Hans Poelzig, turned away from fanciful experimentation and towards rational, functional, sometimes standardized building. Beyond the Bauhaus, many other significant German-speaking architects in the 1920s responded to the same aesthetic issues and material possibilities as the school. They also responded to the promise "to promote the object of assuring to every German a healthful habitation" written into the new Weimar Constitution (Article 155). Ernst May, Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner, among others, built large housing blocks in Frankfurt and Berlin. The acceptance of modernist design into everyday life was the subject of publicity campaigns, well-attended public exhibitions like the Weissenhof Estate, films, and sometimes fierce public debate.
Bauhaus and Vkhutemas.
The Vkhutemas, the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, has been compared to Bauhaus. Founded a year after the Bauhaus school, Vkhutemas has close parallels to the German Bauhaus in its intent, organization and scope. The two schools were the first to train artist-designers in a modern manner. Both schools were state-sponsored initiatives to merge traditional craft with modern technology, with a basic course in aesthetic principles, courses in color theory, industrial design, and architecture. Vkhutemas was a larger school than the Bauhaus, but it was less publicised outside the Soviet Union and consequently, is less familiar in the West.
With the internationalism of modern architecture and design, there were many exchanges between the Vkhutemas and the Bauhaus. The second Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer attempted to organise an exchange between the two schools, while Hinnerk Scheper of the Bauhaus collaborated with various Vkhutein members on the use of colour in architecture. In addition, El Lissitzky's book "Russia: an Architecture for World Revolution" published in German in 1930 featured several illustrations of Vkhutemas/Vkhutein projects there.
History of the Bauhaus.
Weimar.
The school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar on 1 April 1919, as a merger of the Grand Ducal Saxon Academy of Fine Art and the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts for a newly affiliated architecture department. Its roots lay in the arts and crafts school founded by the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1906, and directed by Belgian Art Nouveau architect Henry van de Velde. When van de Velde was forced to resign in 1915 because he was Belgian, he suggested Gropius, Hermann Obrist, and August Endell as possible successors. In 1919, after delays caused by World War I and a lengthy debate over who should head the institution and the socio-economic meanings of a reconciliation of the fine arts and the applied arts (an issue which remained a defining one throughout the school's existence), Gropius was made the director of a new institution integrating the two called the Bauhaus. In the pamphlet for an April 1919 exhibition entitled "Exhibition of Unknown Architects", Gropius, still very much under the influence of William Morris and the British Arts and Crafts Movement, proclaimed his goal as being "to create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist." Gropius's neologism "Bauhaus" references both building and the Bauhütte, a premodern guild of stonemasons. The early intention was for the Bauhaus to be a combined architecture school, crafts school, and academy of the arts. Swiss painter Johannes Itten, German-American painter Lyonel Feininger, and German sculptor Gerhard Marcks, along with Gropius, comprised the faculty of the Bauhaus in 1919. By the following year their ranks had grown to include German painter, sculptor, and designer Oskar Schlemmer who headed the theatre workshop, and Swiss painter Paul Klee, joined in 1922 by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. The first major joint project completed by the Bauhaus was the Sommerfeld House, which was built between 1920 and 1921. A tumultuous year at the Bauhaus, 1922 also saw the move of Dutch painter Theo van Doesburg to Weimar to promote "De Stijl" ("The Style"), and a visit to the Bauhaus by Russian Constructivist artist and architect El Lissitzky.
From 1919 to 1922 the school was shaped by the pedagogical and aesthetic ideas of Johannes Itten, who taught the "Vorkurs" or "preliminary course" that was the introduction to the ideas of the Bauhaus. Itten was heavily influenced in his teaching by the ideas of Franz Cižek and Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel. He was also influenced in respect to aesthetics by the work of the Der Blaue Reiter group in Munich, as well as the work of Austrian Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka. The influence of German Expressionism favoured by Itten was analogous in some ways to the fine arts side of the ongoing debate. This influence culminated with the addition of Der Blaue Reiter founding member Wassily Kandinsky to the faculty and ended when Itten resigned in late 1923. Itten was replaced by the Hungarian designer László Moholy-Nagy, who rewrote the "Vorkurs" with a leaning towards the New Objectivity favoured by Gropius, which was analogous in some ways to the applied arts side of the debate. Although this shift was an important one, it did not represent a radical break from the past so much as a small step in a broader, more gradual socio-economic movement that had been going on at least since 1907, when van de Velde had argued for a craft basis for design while Hermann Muthesius had begun implementing industrial prototypes.
Gropius was not necessarily against Expressionism, and in the same 1919 pamphlet proclaiming this "new guild of craftsmen, without the class snobbery", described "painting and sculpture rising to heaven out of the hands of a million craftsmen, the crystal symbol of the new faith of the future." By 1923, however, Gropius was no longer evoking images of soaring Romanesque cathedrals and the craft-driven aesthetic of the "Völkisch movement", instead declaring "we want an architecture adapted to our world of machines, radios and fast cars." Gropius argued that a new period of history had begun with the end of the war. He wanted to create a new architectural style to reflect this new era. His style in architecture and consumer goods was to be functional, cheap and consistent with mass production. To these ends, Gropius wanted to reunite art and craft to arrive at high-end functional products with artistic merit. The Bauhaus issued a magazine called "Bauhaus" and a series of books called "Bauhausbücher". Since the Weimar Republic lacked the number of raw materials available to the United States and Great Britain, it had to rely on the proficiency of a skilled labour force and an ability to export innovative and high-quality goods. Therefore, designers were needed and so was a new type of art education. The school's philosophy stated that the artist should be trained to work with the industry.
Weimar was in the German state of Thuringia, and the Bauhaus school received state support from the Social Democrat-controlled Thuringian state government. The school in Weimar experienced political pressure from conservative circles in Thuringian politics, increasingly so after 1923 as political tension rose. One condition placed on the Bauhaus in this new political environment was the exhibition of work undertaken at the school. This condition was met in 1923 with the Bauhaus' exhibition of the experimental Haus am Horn. The Ministry of Education placed the staff on six-month contracts and cut the school's funding in half. The Bauhaus issued a press release on 26 December 1924, setting the closure of the school for the end of March 1925. At this point it had already been looking for alternative sources of funding. After the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, a school of industrial design with teachers and staff less antagonistic to the conservative political regime remained in Weimar. This school was eventually known as the Technical University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, and in 1996 changed its name to Bauhaus-University Weimar.
Dessau.
The Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925 and new facilities there were inaugurated in late 1926. Gropius's design for the Dessau facilities was a return to the futuristic Gropius of 1914 that had more in common with the International style lines of the Fagus Factory than the stripped down Neo-classical of the Werkbund pavilion or the "Völkisch" Sommerfeld House. During the Dessau years, there was a remarkable change in direction for the school. According to Elaine Hoffman, Gropius had approached the Dutch architect Mart Stam to run the newly founded architecture program, and when Stam declined the position, Gropius turned to Stam's friend and colleague in the ABC group, Hannes Meyer.
Meyer became director when Gropius resigned in February 1928, and brought the Bauhaus its two most significant building commissions, both of which still exist: five apartment buildings in the city of Dessau, and the Bundesschule des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (ADGB Trade Union School) in Bernau bei Berlin. Meyer favoured measurements and calculations in his presentations to clients, along with the use of off-the-shelf architectural components to reduce costs. This approach proved attractive to potential clients. The school turned its first profit under his leadership in 1929.
But Meyer also generated a great deal of conflict. As a radical functionalist, he had no patience with the aesthetic program and forced the resignations of Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, and other long-time instructors. Even though Meyer shifted the orientation of the school further to the left than it had been under Gropius, he didn't want the school to become a tool of left-wing party politics. He prevented the formation of a student communist cell, and in the increasingly dangerous political atmosphere, this became a threat to the existence of the Dessau school. Dessau mayor Fritz Hesse fired him in the summer of 1930. The Dessau city council attempted to convince Gropius to return as head of the school, but Gropius instead suggested Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Mies was appointed in 1930 and immediately interviewed each student, dismissing those that he deemed uncommitted. He halted the school's manufacture of goods so that the school could focus on teaching, and appointed no new faculty other than his close confidant Lilly Reich. By 1931, the Nazi Party was becoming more influential in German politics. When it gained control of the Dessau city council, it moved to close the school.
Berlin.
In late 1932, Mies rented a derelict factory in Berlin (Birkbusch Street 49) to use as the new Bauhaus with his own money. The students and faculty rehabilitated the building, painting the interior white. The school operated for ten months without further interference from the Nazi Party. In 1933, the Gestapo closed down the Berlin school. Mies protested the decision, eventually speaking to the head of the Gestapo, who agreed to allow the school to re-open. However, shortly after receiving a letter permitting the opening of the Bauhaus, Mies and the other faculty agreed to voluntarily shut down the school.
Although neither the Nazi Party nor Adolf Hitler had a cohesive architectural policy before they came to power in 1933, Nazi writers like Wilhelm Frick and Alfred Rosenberg had already labelled the Bauhaus "un-German" and criticized its modernist styles, deliberately generating public controversy over issues like flat roofs. Increasingly through the early 1930s, they characterized the Bauhaus as a front for communists and social liberals. Indeed, when Meyer was fired in 1930, a number of communist students loyal to him moved to the Soviet Union.
Even before the Nazis came to power, political pressure on Bauhaus had increased. The Nazi movement, from nearly the start, denounced the Bauhaus for its "degenerate art", and the Nazi regime was determined to crack down on what it saw as the foreign, probably Jewish, influences of "cosmopolitan modernism". Despite Gropius's protestations that as a war veteran and a patriot his work had no subversive political intent, the Berlin Bauhaus was pressured to close in April 1933.
Under the Nazi regime, about twenty Bauhauslers are known to have been killed in prison or concentration camps. Some emigrated, while others adapted and participated in propaganda exhibitions and design fairs, produced photographic and graphic works such as magazine covers, movie posters, and designed furniture, carpets, household objects and even busts of Hitler. Of 119 teaching staff emigrated between 1933 and 1938. Of the students who were enrolled when Hitler came to power in 1933, approximately 900 are thought to have remained in Germany. Of those, 188 joined the National Socialist Party (170 men and 18 women), 14 were part of the brown shirts, 12 joined the SS, and one was involved in the design of the crematoria at Auschwitz.
Mies emigrated to the United States to assume the directorship of the School of Architecture at the Armour Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago, and to seek building commissions. The simple engineering-oriented functionalism of stripped-down modernism, however, did lead to some Bauhaus influences living on in Nazi Germany. When Hitler's chief engineer, Fritz Todt, began opening the new autobahns (highways) in 1935, many of the bridges and service stations were "bold examples of modernism", and among those submitting designs was Mies van der Rohe. Emigrants did succeed, however, in spreading the concepts of the Bauhaus to other countries, including the "New Bauhaus" of Chicago:
Architectural output.
The paradox of the early Bauhaus was that, although its manifesto proclaimed that the aim of all creative activity was building, the school did not offer classes in architecture until 1927. During the years under Gropius (1919–1927), he and his partner Adolf Meyer observed no real distinction between the output of his architectural office and the school. The built output of Bauhaus architecture in these years is the output of Gropius: the Sommerfeld house in Berlin, the Otte house in Berlin, the Auerbach house in Jena, and the competition design for the Chicago Tribune Tower, which brought the school much attention. The definitive 1926 Bauhaus building in Dessau is also attributed to Gropius. Apart from contributions to the 1923 Haus am Horn, student architectural work amounted to un-built projects, interior finishes, and craft work like cabinets, chairs and pottery.
In the next two years under Meyer, the architectural focus shifted away from aesthetics and towards functionality. There were major commissions: one from the city of Dessau for five tightly designed "Laubenganghäuser" (apartment buildings with balcony access), which are still in use today, and another for the Bundesschule des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (ADGB Trade Union School) in Bernau bei Berlin. Meyer's approach was to research users' needs and scientifically develop the design solution. He intended to place emphasis on Gropius' objective analysis of the properties determining an object's use value, known as "Wesensforschung". Gropius believed that it was possible to design exemplary products of universal validity that should be standardized.
Mies van der Rohe repudiated Meyer's politics, his supporters, and his architectural approach. As opposed to Gropius's "study of essentials", and Meyer's research into user requirements, Mies advocated a "spatial implementation of intellectual decisions", which effectively meant an adoption of his own aesthetics. Neither Mies van der Rohe nor his Bauhaus students saw any projects built during the 1930s.
The Bauhaus movement was not focused on developing worker housing. Only two projects, the apartment building project in Dessau and the Törten row housing fall into the worker housing category. It was the Bauhaus contemporaries Bruno Taut, Hans Poelzig and particularly Ernst May, as the city architects of Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt respectively, who are rightfully credited with the thousands of socially progressive housing units built in Weimar Germany. The housing Taut built in south-west Berlin during the 1920s, close to the U-Bahn stop Onkel Toms Hütte, is still occupied.
Impact.
The Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture trends in Western Europe, Canada, the United States and Israel in the decades following its demise, as many of the artists involved fled, or were exiled by the Nazi regime. In 1996, four of the major sites associated with Bauhaus in Germany were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List (with two more added in 2017).
In 1928, the Hungarian painter Alexander Bortnyik founded a school of design in Budapest called Műhely, which means "the studio". Located on the seventh floor of a house on Nagymezo Street, it was meant to be the Hungarian equivalent to the Bauhaus. The literature sometimes refers to it—in an oversimplified manner—as "the Budapest Bauhaus". Bortnyik was a great admirer of László Moholy-Nagy and had met Walter Gropius in Weimar between 1923 and 1925. Moholy-Nagy himself taught at the Műhely. Victor Vasarely, a pioneer of op art, studied at this school before establishing in Paris in 1930.
Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Moholy-Nagy re-assembled in Britain during the mid-1930s and lived and worked in the Isokon housing development in Lawn Road in London before the war caught up with them. Gropius and Breuer went on to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked together before their professional split. Their collaboration produced, among other projects, the Aluminum City Terrace in New Kensington, Pennsylvania and the Alan I W Frank House in Pittsburgh. The Harvard School was enormously influential in America in the late 1920s and early 1930s, producing such students as Philip Johnson, I. M. Pei, Lawrence Halprin and Paul Rudolph, among many others.
In the late 1930s, Mies van der Rohe re-settled in Chicago, enjoyed the sponsorship of the influential Philip Johnson, and became one of the world's pre-eminent architects. Moholy-Nagy also went to Chicago and founded the New Bauhaus school under the sponsorship of industrialist and philanthropist Walter Paepcke. This school became the Institute of Design, part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Printmaker and painter Werner Drewes was also largely responsible for bringing the Bauhaus aesthetic to America and taught at both Columbia University and Washington University in St. Louis. Herbert Bayer, sponsored by Paepcke, moved to Aspen, Colorado in support of Paepcke's Aspen projects at the Aspen Institute. In 1953, Max Bill, together with Inge Aicher-Scholl and Otl Aicher, founded the Ulm School of Design (German: Hochschule für Gestaltung – HfG Ulm) in Ulm, Germany, a design school in the tradition of the Bauhaus. The school is notable for its inclusion of semiotics as a field of study. The school closed in 1968, but the "Ulm Model" concept continues to influence international design education. Another series of projects at the school were the Bauhaus typefaces, mostly realized in the decades afterward.
The influence of the Bauhaus on design education was significant. One of the main objectives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft, and technology, and this approach was incorporated into the curriculum of the Bauhaus. The structure of the Bauhaus "Vorkurs" (preliminary course) reflected a pragmatic approach to integrating theory and application. In their first year, students learnt the basic elements and principles of design and colour theory, and experimented with a range of materials and processes. This approach to design education became a common feature of architectural and design school in many countries. For example, the Shillito Design School in Sydney stands as a unique link between Australia and the Bauhaus. The colour and design syllabus of the Shillito Design School was firmly underpinned by the theories and ideologies of the Bauhaus. Its first year foundational course mimicked the "Vorkurs" and focused on the elements and principles of design plus colour theory and application. The founder of the school, Phyllis Shillito, which opened in 1962 and closed in 1980, firmly believed that "A student who has mastered the basic principles of design, can design anything from a dress to a kitchen stove". In Britain, largely under the influence of painter and teacher William Johnstone, Basic Design, a Bauhaus-influenced art foundation course, was introduced at Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design, whence it spread to all art schools in the country, becoming universal by the early 1960s.
One of the most important contributions of the Bauhaus is in the field of modern furniture design. The characteristic Cantilever chair and Wassily Chair designed by Marcel Breuer are two examples. (Breuer eventually lost a legal battle in Germany with Dutch architect/designer Mart Stam over patent rights to the cantilever chair design. Although Stam had worked on the design of the Bauhaus's 1923 exhibit in Weimar, and guest-lectured at the Bauhaus later in the 1920s, he was not formally associated with the school, and he and Breuer had worked independently on the cantilever concept, leading to the patent dispute.) The most profitable product of the Bauhaus was its wallpaper.
The physical plant at Dessau survived World War II and was operated as a design school with some architectural facilities by the German Democratic Republic. This included live stage productions in the Bauhaus theater under the name of "Bauhausbühne" ("Bauhaus Stage"). After German reunification, a reorganized school continued in the same building, with no essential continuity with the Bauhaus under Gropius in the early 1920s. In 1979 Bauhaus-Dessau College started to organize postgraduate programs with participants from all over the world. This effort has been supported by the Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation which was founded in 1974 as a public institution.
Later evaluation of the Bauhaus design credo was critical of its flawed recognition of the human element, an acknowledgment of "the dated, unattractive aspects of the Bauhaus as a projection of utopia marked by mechanistic views of human nature…Home hygiene without home atmosphere."
Subsequent examples which have continued the philosophy of the Bauhaus include Black Mountain College, Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm and Domaine de Boisbuchet.
The White City.
The White City (Hebrew: העיר הלבנה), refers to a collection of over 4,000 buildings built in the Bauhaus or International Style in Tel Aviv from the 1930s by German Jewish architects who emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine after the rise of the Nazis. Tel Aviv has the largest number of buildings in the Bauhaus/International Style of any city in the world. Preservation, documentation, and exhibitions have brought attention to Tel Aviv's collection of 1930s architecture. In 2003, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed Tel Aviv's "White City" a World Cultural Heritage site, as "an outstanding example of new town planning and architecture in the early 20th century." The citation recognized the unique adaptation of modern international architectural trends to the cultural, climatic, and local traditions of the city. Bauhaus Center Tel Aviv organizes regular architectural tours of the city, and the Bauhaus Foundation offers Bauhaus exhibits.
Sotsmisto in Zaporizhzhia.
Sotsmisto, a residential neighborhood built in 1930s in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, was strongly influenced by Bauhaus. This neighborhood was among the first Soviet projects of a functional part of a modernized industrial city, and demonstrates the impact of Bauhaus on the development of early Soviet architecture as a whole.
Centenary.
As the centenary of the founding of Bauhaus, several events, festivals, and exhibitions were held around the world in 2019. The international opening festival at the Berlin Academy of the Arts from 16 to 24 January concentrated on "the presentation and production of pieces by contemporary artists, in which the aesthetic issues and experimental configurations of the Bauhaus artists continue to be inspiringly contagious". "Original Bauhaus, The Centenary Exhibition" at the Berlinische Galerie (6 September 2019 to 27 January 2020) presented 1,000 original artefacts from the Bauhaus-Archive's collection and recounted the history behind the objects. The Bauhaus Museum Dessau also opened in September 2019, operated by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and funded by the State of Saxony-Anhalt and the German Federal government. It is set to be the permanent home of the second-largest Bauhaus collection at 49,000 objects, while paying homage to its strong influence in the city when the Bauhaus arrived in 1925.
In 2024, the German far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) sought to attack celebrations of the Bauhaus because of their view that the Bauhaus did not follow tradition. The Bauhaus was also crushed by the Nazis before World War II, and according to political scientist Jan-Werner Mueller, AfD's condemnation seeks to use it in a culture war of far right-wing provocation.
The New European Bauhaus.
In September 2020, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen introduced the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative during her State of the Union address. The NEB is a creative and interdisciplinary movement that connects the European Green Deal to everyday life. It is a platform for experimentation aiming to unite citizens, experts, businesses and institutions in imagining and designing a sustainable, aesthetic and inclusive future.
Sport and physical activity were an essential part of the original Bauhaus approach. Hannes Meyer, the second director of Bauhaus Dessau, ensured that one day a week was solely devoted to sport and gymnastics. 1 In 1930, Meyer employed two physical education teachers. The Bauhaus school even applied for public funds to enhance its playing field. The inclusion of sport and physical activity in the Bauhaus curriculum had various purposes. First, as Meyer put it, sport combatted a “one-sided emphasis on brainwork.” In addition, Bauhaus instructors believed that students could better express themselves if they actively experienced the space, rhythms and movements of the body. The Bauhaus approach also considered physical activity an important contributor to wellbeing and community spirit. Sport and physical activity were essential to the interdisciplinary Bauhaus movement that developed revolutionary ideas and continues to shape our environments today.
Bauhaus staff and students.
People who were educated, or who taught or worked in other capacities, at the Bauhaus.
|
3833
|
28481209
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3833
|
Beowulf
|
Beowulf (; ) is an Old English poem, an epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines, contained in the Nowell Codex. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025 AD. Scholars call the anonymous author the ""Beowulf" poet".
The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 5th and 6th centuries. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for twelve years. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother takes revenge and is in turn defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.
Scholars have debated whether "Beowulf" was transmitted orally, affecting its interpretation: if it was composed early, in pagan times, then the paganism is central and the Christian elements were added later, whereas if it was composed later, in writing, by a Christian, then the pagan elements could be decorative archaising; some scholars also hold an intermediate position.
"Beowulf" is written mostly in the Late West Saxon dialect of Old English, but many other dialectal forms are present, suggesting that the poem may have had a long and complex transmission throughout the dialect areas of England.
There has long been research into similarities with other traditions and accounts, including the Icelandic "Grettis saga", the Norse story of Hrolf Kraki and his bear-shapeshifting servant Bodvar Bjarki, the international folktale the Bear's Son Tale, and the Irish folktale of the Hand and the Child. Persistent attempts have been made to link "Beowulf" to tales from Homer's "Odyssey" or Virgil's "Aeneid". More definite are biblical parallels, with clear allusions to the books of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel.
The poem survives in a single copy in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. It has no title in the original manuscript, but has become known by the name of the story's protagonist. In 1731, the manuscript was damaged by a fire that swept through Ashburnham House in London, which was housing Sir Robert Cotton's collection of medieval manuscripts. It survived, but the margins were charred, and some readings were lost. The Nowell Codex is housed in the British Library.
The poem was first transcribed in 1786; some verses were first translated into modern English in 1805, and nine complete translations were made in the 19th century, including those by John Mitchell Kemble and William Morris.
After 1900, hundreds of translations, whether into prose, rhyming verse, or alliterative verse were made, some relatively faithful, some archaising, some attempting to domesticate the work. Among the best-known modern translations are those of Edwin Morgan, Burton Raffel, Michael J. Alexander, Roy Liuzza, and Seamus Heaney. The difficulty of translating "Beowulf" has been explored by scholars including J. R. R. Tolkien (in his essay "On Translating "Beowulf"), who worked on a verse and of his own.
Historical background.
The events in the poem take place over the 5th and 6th centuries, and feature predominantly non-English characters. Some suggest that "Beowulf" was first composed in the 7th century at Rendlesham in East Anglia, as the Sutton Hoo ship-burial shows close connections with Scandinavia, and the East Anglian royal dynasty, the Wuffingas, may have been descendants of the Geatish Wulfings. Others have associated this poem with the court of King Alfred the Great or with the court of King Cnut the Great.
The poem blends fictional, legendary, mythic and historical elements. Although Beowulf himself is not mentioned in any other Old English manuscript, many of the other figures named in "Beowulf" appear in Scandinavian sources. This concerns not only individuals (e.g., Healfdene, Hroðgar, Halga, Hroðulf, Eadgils and Ohthere), but also clans (e.g., Scyldings, Scylfings and Wulfings) and certain events (e.g., the battle between Eadgils and Onela). The raid by King Hygelac into Frisia is mentioned by Gregory of Tours in his "History of the Franks" and can be dated to around 521.
The majority view appears to be that figures such as King Hrothgar and the Scyldings in "Beowulf" are based on historical people from 6th-century Scandinavia. Like the "Finnesburg Fragment" and several shorter surviving poems, "Beowulf" has consequently been used as a source of information about Scandinavian figures such as Eadgils and Hygelac, and about continental Germanic figures such as Offa, king of the continental Angles. However, one scholar, Roy Liuzza, feels that the poem is "frustratingly ambivalent", neither myth nor folktale, but is set "against a complex background of legendary history ... on a roughly recognizable map of Scandinavia", and comments that the Geats of the poem may correspond with the Gautar (of modern Götaland).
Nineteenth-century archaeological evidence may confirm elements of the "Beowulf" story. Eadgils was buried at Uppsala (Gamla Uppsala, Sweden) according to Snorri Sturluson. When the western mound (to the left in the photo) was excavated in 1874, the finds showed that a powerful man was buried in a large barrow, , on a bear skin with two dogs and rich grave offerings. The eastern mound was excavated in 1854, and contained the remains of a woman, or a woman and a young man. The middle barrow has not been excavated.
In Denmark, recent (1986–88, 2004–05) archaeological excavations at Lejre, where Scandinavian tradition located the seat of the Scyldings, Heorot, have revealed that a hall was built in the mid-6th century, matching the period described in "Beowulf", some centuries before the poem was composed. Three halls, each about long, were found during the excavation.
Summary.
The protagonist Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands, then kills Grendel's mother with a giant's sword that he found in her lair.
Later in his life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorised by a dragon, some of whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound. He attacks the dragon with the help of his "thegns" or servants, but they do not succeed. Beowulf decides to follow the dragon to its lair at Earnanæs, but only his young Swedish relative Wiglaf, whose name means "remnant of valour", dares to join him. Beowulf finally slays the dragon, but is mortally wounded in the struggle. He is cremated and a burial mound by the sea is erected in his honour.
"Beowulf" is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a hero who travels great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts. The poem begins "in medias res" or simply, "in the middle of things", a characteristic of the epics of antiquity. Although the poem begins with Beowulf's arrival, Grendel's attacks have been ongoing. An elaborate history of characters and their lineages is spoken of, as well as their interactions with each other, debts owed and repaid, and deeds of valour. The warriors form a brotherhood linked by loyalty to their lord. The poem begins and ends with funerals: at the beginning of the poem for Scyld Scefing and at the end for Beowulf.
The poem is tightly structured. E. Carrigan shows the symmetry of its design in a model of its major components, with for instance the account of the killing of Grendel matching that of the killing of the dragon, the glory of the Danes matching the accounts of the Danish and Geatish courts. Other analyses are possible as well; Gale Owen-Crocker, for instance, sees the poem as structured by the four funerals it describes. For J. R. R. Tolkien, the primary division in the poem was between young and old Beowulf.
First battle: Grendel.
"Beowulf" begins with the story of Hrothgar, who constructed the great hall, Heorot, for himself and his warriors. In it, he, his wife Wealhtheow, and his warriors spend their time singing and celebrating. Grendel, a troll-like monster said to be descended from the biblical Cain, is pained by the sounds of joy. Grendel attacks the hall and devours many of Hrothgar's warriors while they sleep. Hrothgar and his people, helpless against Grendel, abandon Heorot.
Beowulf, a young warrior from Geatland, hears of Hrothgar's troubles and with his king's permission leaves his homeland to assist Hrothgar.
Beowulf and his men spend the night in Heorot. Beowulf refuses to use any weapon because he holds himself to be Grendel's equal. When Grendel enters the hall and kills one of Beowulf's men, Beowulf, who has been feigning sleep, leaps up to clench Grendel's hand. Grendel and Beowulf battle each other violently. Beowulf's retainers draw their swords and rush to his aid, but their blades cannot pierce Grendel's skin. Finally, Beowulf tears Grendel's arm from his body at the shoulder. Fatally hurt, Grendel flees to his home in the marshes, where he dies. Beowulf displays "the whole of Grendel's shoulder and arm, his awesome grasp" for all to see at Heorot. This display fuelled Grendel's mother's anger in revenge.
Second battle: Grendel's mother.
The next night, after celebrating Grendel's defeat, Hrothgar and his men sleep in Heorot. Grendel's mother, angry that her son has been killed, sets out to get revenge. "Beowulf was elsewhere. Earlier, after the award of treasure, The Geat had been given another lodging"; his assistance would be absent in this attack. Grendel's mother violently kills Æschere, who is Hrothgar's most loyal advisor, and escapes, later putting his head outside her lair.
Hrothgar, Beowulf, and their men track Grendel's mother to her lair under a lake. Unferth, a warrior who had earlier challenged him, presents Beowulf with his sword Hrunting. After stipulating a number of conditions to Hrothgar in case of his death (including the taking in of his kinsmen and the inheritance by Unferth of Beowulf's estate), Beowulf jumps into the lake and, while harassed by water monsters, gets to the bottom, where he finds a cavern. Grendel's mother pulls him in, and she and Beowulf engage in fierce combat.
At first, Grendel's mother prevails, and Hrunting proves incapable of hurting her; she throws Beowulf to the ground and, sitting astride him, tries to kill him with a short sword, but Beowulf is saved by his armour. Beowulf spots another sword, hanging on the wall and apparently made for giants, and cuts her head off with it. Travelling further into Grendel's mother's lair, Beowulf discovers Grendel's corpse and severs his head with the sword. Its blade melts because of the monster's "hot blood", leaving only the hilt. Beowulf swims back up to the edge of the lake where his men wait. Carrying the hilt of the sword and Grendel's head, he presents them to Hrothgar upon his return to Heorot. Hrothgar gives Beowulf many gifts, including the sword Nægling, his family's heirloom. The events prompt a long reflection by the king, sometimes referred to as "Hrothgar's sermon", in which he urges Beowulf to be wary of pride and to reward his thegns.
Final battle: The dragon.
Beowulf returns home and eventually becomes king of his own people. One day, fifty years after Beowulf's battle with Grendel's mother, a slave steals a golden cup from the lair of a dragon at Earnanæs. When the dragon sees that the cup has been stolen, it leaves its cave in a rage, burning everything in sight. Beowulf and his warriors come to fight the dragon, but Beowulf tells his men that he will fight the dragon alone and that they should wait on the barrow. Beowulf descends to do battle with the dragon, but finds himself outmatched. His men, upon seeing this and fearing for their lives, retreat into the woods. However, one of his men, Wiglaf, in great distress at Beowulf's plight, comes to his aid. The two slay the dragon, but Beowulf is mortally wounded. After Beowulf dies, Wiglaf remains by his side, grief-stricken. When the rest of the men finally return, Wiglaf bitterly admonishes them, blaming their cowardice for Beowulf's death. Beowulf is ritually burned on a great pyre in Geatland while his people wail and mourn him, fearing that without him, the Geats are defenceless against attacks from surrounding tribes. Afterwards, a barrow, visible from the sea, is built in his memory.
Digressions.
The poem contains many apparent digressions from the main story. These were found troublesome by early "Beowulf" scholars such as Frederick Klaeber, who wrote that they "interrupt the story", W. W. Lawrence, who stated that they "clog the action and distract attention from it", and W. P. Ker who found some "irrelevant ... possibly ... interpolations". More recent scholars from Adrien Bonjour onwards note that the digressions can all be explained as introductions or comparisons with elements of the main story; for instance, Beowulf's swimming home across the sea from Frisia carrying thirty sets of armour emphasises his heroic strength. The digressions can be divided into four groups, namely the Scyld narrative at the start; many descriptions of the Geats, including the Swedish–Geatish wars, the "Lay of the Last Survivor" in the style of another Old English poem, "The Wanderer", and Beowulf's dealings with the Geats such as his verbal contest with Unferth and his swimming duel with Breca, and the tale of Sigemund and the dragon; history and legend, including the fight at Finnsburg and the tale of Freawaru and Ingeld; and biblical tales such as the creation myth and Cain as ancestor of all monsters. The digressions provide a powerful impression of historical depth, imitated by Tolkien in "The Lord of the Rings", a work that embodies many other elements from the poem.
Authorship and date.
The dating of "Beowulf" has attracted considerable scholarly attention; opinion differs as to whether it was first written in the 8th century, whether it was nearly contemporary with its 11th-century manuscript, and whether a proto-version (possibly a version of the "Bear's Son Tale") was orally transmitted before being transcribed in its present form. Albert Lord felt strongly that the manuscript represents the transcription of a performance, though likely taken at more than one sitting. J. R. R. Tolkien believed that the poem retains too genuine a memory of Anglo-Saxon paganism to have been composed more than a few generations after the completion of the Christianisation of England around AD 700, and Tolkien's conviction that the poem dates to the 8th century has been defended by scholars including Tom Shippey, Leonard Neidorf, Rafael J. Pascual, and Robert D. Fulk. An analysis of several Old English poems by a team including Neidorf suggests that "Beowulf" is the work of a single author, though other scholars disagree.
The claim to an early 11th-century date depends in part on scholars who argue that, rather than the transcription of a tale from the oral tradition by an earlier literate monk, "Beowulf" reflects an original interpretation of an earlier version of the story by the manuscript's two scribes. On the other hand, some scholars argue that linguistic, palaeographical (handwriting), metrical (poetic structure), and onomastic (naming) considerations align to support a date of composition in the first half of the 8th century; in particular, the poem's apparent observation of etymological vowel-length distinctions in unstressed syllables (described by Kaluza's law) has been thought to demonstrate a date of composition prior to the earlier ninth century. However, scholars disagree about whether the metrical phenomena described by Kaluza's law prove an early date of composition or are evidence of a longer prehistory of the "Beowulf" metre; B. R. Hutcheson, for instance, does not believe Kaluza's law can be used to date the poem, while claiming that "the weight of all the evidence Fulk presents in his book tells strongly in favour of an eighth-century date."
From an analysis of creative genealogy and ethnicity, Craig R. Davis suggests a composition date in the AD 890s, when King Alfred of England had secured the submission of Guthrum, leader of a division of the Great Heathen Army of the Danes, and of Aethelred, ealdorman of Mercia. In this thesis, the trend of appropriating Gothic royal ancestry, established in Francia during Charlemagne's reign, influenced the Anglian kingdoms of Britain to attribute to themselves a Geatish descent. The composition of "Beowulf" was the fruit of the later adaptation of this trend in Alfred's policy of asserting authority over the "Angelcynn", in which Scyldic descent was attributed to the West-Saxon royal pedigree. This date of composition largely agrees with Lapidge's positing of a West-Saxon exemplar .
The location of the poem's composition is intensely disputed. In 1914, F.W. Moorman, the first professor of English Language at University of Leeds, claimed that "Beowulf" was composed in Yorkshire, but E. Talbot Donaldson claims that it was probably composed during the first half of the eighth century, and that the writer was a native of what was then called West Mercia, located in the Western Midlands of England. However, the late tenth-century manuscript, "which alone preserves the poem", originated in the kingdom of the West Saxons — as it is more commonly known.
Manuscript.
"Beowulf" survived to modern times in a single manuscript, written in ink on parchment, later damaged by fire. The manuscript measures .
Provenance.
The poem is known only from a single manuscript, estimated to date from around 975–1025, in which it appears with other works. The manuscript therefore dates either to the reign of Æthelred the Unready, characterised by strife with the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard, or to the beginning of the reign of Sweyn's son Cnut the Great from 1016. The "Beowulf" manuscript is known as the Nowell Codex, gaining its name from 16th-century scholar Laurence Nowell. The official designation is "British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.XV" because it was one of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton's holdings in the Cotton library in the middle of the 17th century. Many private antiquarians and book collectors, such as Sir Robert Cotton, used their own library classification systems. "Cotton Vitellius A.XV" translates as: the 15th book from the left on shelf A (the top shelf) of the bookcase with the bust of Roman Emperor Vitellius standing on top of it, in Cotton's collection. Kevin Kiernan argues that Nowell most likely acquired it through William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, in 1563, when Nowell entered Cecil's household as a tutor to his ward, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
The earliest extant reference to the first foliation of the Nowell Codex was made sometime between 1628 and 1650 by Franciscus Junius (the younger). The ownership of the codex before Nowell remains a mystery.
The Reverend Thomas Smith (1638–1710) and Humfrey Wanley (1672–1726) both catalogued the Cotton library (in which the Nowell Codex was held). Smith's catalogue appeared in 1696, and Wanley's in 1705. The "Beowulf" manuscript itself is identified by name for the first time in an exchange of letters in 1700 between George Hickes, Wanley's assistant, and Wanley. In the letter to Wanley, Hickes responds to an apparent charge against Smith, made by Wanley, that Smith had failed to mention the "Beowulf" script when cataloguing Cotton MS. Vitellius A. XV. Hickes replies to Wanley "I can find nothing yet of Beowulph." Kiernan theorised that Smith failed to mention the "Beowulf" manuscript because of his reliance on previous catalogues or because either he had no idea how to describe it or because it was temporarily out of the codex.
The manuscript passed to Crown ownership in 1702, on the death of its then owner, Sir John Cotton, who had inherited it from his grandfather, Robert Cotton. It suffered damage in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, in which around a quarter of the manuscripts bequeathed by Cotton were destroyed. Since then, parts of the manuscript have crumbled along with many of the letters. Rebinding efforts, though saving the manuscript from much degeneration, have nonetheless covered up other letters of the poem, causing further loss. Kiernan, in preparing his electronic edition of the manuscript, used fibre-optic backlighting and ultraviolet lighting to reveal letters in the manuscript lost from binding, erasure, or ink blotting.
Writing.
The "Beowulf" manuscript was transcribed from an original by two scribes, one of whom wrote the prose at the beginning of the manuscript and the first 1939 lines, before breaking off in mid-sentence. The first scribe made a point of carefully regularizing the spelling of the original document into the common West Saxon, removing any archaic or dialectical features. The second scribe, who wrote the remainder, with a difference in handwriting noticeable after line 1939, seems to have written more vigorously and with less interest. As a result, the second scribe's script retains more archaic dialectic features, which allow modern scholars to ascribe the poem a cultural context. While both scribes appear to have proofread their work, there are nevertheless many errors. The second scribe was ultimately the more conservative copyist as he did not modify the spelling of the text as he wrote, but copied what he saw in front of him. In the way that it is currently bound, the "Beowulf" manuscript is followed by the Old English poem "Judith". "Judith" was written by the same scribe that completed "Beowulf", as evidenced by similar writing style. Wormholes found in the last leaves of the "Beowulf" manuscript that are absent in the "Judith" manuscript suggest that at one point "Beowulf" ended the volume. The rubbed appearance of some leaves suggests that the manuscript stood on a shelf unbound, as was the case with other Old English manuscripts. Knowledge of books held in the library at Malmesbury Abbey and available as source works, as well as the identification of certain words particular to the local dialect found in the text, suggest that the transcription may have taken place there.
Performance.
The scholar Roy Liuzza notes that the practice of oral poetry is by its nature invisible to history as evidence is in writing. Comparison with other bodies of verse such as Homer's, coupled with ethnographic observation of early 20th century performers, has provided a vision of how an Anglo-Saxon singer-poet or scop may have practised. The resulting model is that performance was based on traditional stories and a repertoire of word formulae that fitted the traditional metre. The scop moved through the scenes, such as putting on armour or crossing the sea, each one improvised at each telling with differing combinations of the stock phrases, while the basic story and style remained the same. Liuzza notes that "Beowulf" itself describes the technique of a court poet in assembling materials, in lines 867–874 in his translation, "full of grand stories, mindful of songs ... found other words truly bound together; ... to recite with skill the adventure of Beowulf, adeptly tell a tall tale, and ("wordum wrixlan") weave his words." The poem further mentions (lines 1065–1068) that "the harp was touched, tales often told, when Hrothgar's scop was set to recite among the mead tables his hall-entertainment".
Debate over oral tradition.
The question of whether "Beowulf" was passed down through oral tradition prior to its present manuscript form has been the subject of much debate, and involves more than simply the issue of its composition. Rather, given the implications of the theory of oral-formulaic composition and oral tradition, the question concerns how the poem is to be understood, and what sorts of interpretations are legitimate. In his landmark 1960 work, "The Singer of Tales", Albert Lord, citing the work of Francis Peabody Magoun and others, considered it proven that "Beowulf" was composed orally. Later scholars have not all been convinced; they agree that "themes" like "arming the hero" or the "hero on the beach" do exist across Germanic works. Some scholars conclude that Anglo-Saxon poetry is a mix of oral-formulaic and literate patterns. Larry Benson proposed that Germanic literature contains "kernels of tradition" which "Beowulf" expands upon. Ann Watts argued against the imperfect application of one theory to two different traditions: traditional, Homeric, oral-formulaic poetry and Anglo-Saxon poetry. Thomas Gardner agreed with Watts, arguing that the "Beowulf" text is too varied to be completely constructed from set formulae and themes. John Miles Foley wrote that comparative work must observe the particularities of a given tradition; in his view, there was a fluid continuum from traditionality to textuality.
Editions, translations, and adaptations.
Editions.
Many editions of the Old English text of "Beowulf" have been published; this section lists the most influential.
The Icelandic scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin made the first transcriptions of the "Beowulf"-manuscript in 1786, working as part of a Danish government historical research commission. He had a copy made by a professional copyist who knew no Old English (and was therefore in some ways more likely to make transcription errors, but in other ways more likely to copy exactly what he saw), and then made a copy himself. Since that time, the manuscript has crumbled further, making these transcripts prized witnesses to the text. While the recovery of at least 2000 letters can be attributed to them, their accuracy has been called into question, and the extent to which the manuscript was actually more readable in Thorkelin's time is uncertain. Thorkelin used these transcriptions as the basis for the first complete edition of "Beowulf", in Latin.
In 1922, Frederick Klaeber, a German philologist who worked at the University of Minnesota, published his edition of the poem, "Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg"; it became the "central source used by graduate students for the study of the poem and by scholars and teachers as the basis of their translations." The edition included an extensive glossary of Old English terms. His third edition was published in 1936, with the last version in his lifetime being a revised reprint in 1950. Klaeber's text was re-presented with new introductory material, notes, and glosses, in a fourth edition in 2008.
Another widely used edition is Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie's, published in 1953 in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records series. The British Library, meanwhile, took a prominent role in supporting Kevin Kiernan's "Electronic Beowulf"; the first edition appeared in 1999, and the fourth in 2014.
Translations and adaptations.
The tightly interwoven structure of Old English poetry makes translating "Beowulf" a severe technical challenge. Despite this, a great number of translations and adaptations are available, in poetry and prose. Andy Orchard, in "A Critical Companion to Beowulf", lists 33 "representative" translations in his bibliography, while the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies published Marijane Osborn's annotated list of over 300 translations and adaptations in 2003. "Beowulf" has been translated many times in verse and in prose, and adapted for stage and screen. By 2020, the Beowulf's Afterlives Bibliographic Database listed some 688 translations and other versions of the poem. "Beowulf" has been translated into at least 38 other languages.
In 1805, the historian Sharon Turner translated selected verses into modern English. This was followed in 1814 by John Josias Conybeare who published an edition "in English paraphrase and Latin verse translation." N. F. S. Grundtvig reviewed Thorkelin's edition in 1815 and created the first complete verse translation in Danish in 1820. In 1837, John Mitchell Kemble created an important literal translation in English. In 1895, William Morris and A. J. Wyatt published the ninth English translation.
In 1909, Francis Barton Gummere's full translation in "English imitative metre" was published, and was used as the text of Gareth Hinds's 2007 graphic novel based on "Beowulf". In 1975, John Porter published the first complete verse translation of the poem entirely accompanied by facing-page Old English. Seamus Heaney's 1999 translation of the poem ("", called "Heaneywulf" by the "Beowulf" translator Howell Chickering and many others) was both praised and criticised. The US publication was commissioned by W. W. Norton & Company, and was included in the "Norton Anthology of English Literature". Many retellings of "Beowulf" for children appeared in the 20th century.
In 2000 (2nd edition 2013), Liuzza published his own version of "Beowulf" in a parallel text with the Old English, with his analysis of the poem's historical, oral, religious and linguistic contexts. R. D. Fulk, of Indiana University, published a facing-page edition and translation of the entire Nowell Codex manuscript in 2010. Hugh Magennis's 2011 "Translating Beowulf: Modern Versions in English Verse" discusses the challenges and history of translating the poem, as well as the question of how to approach its poetry, and discusses several post-1950 verse translations, paying special attention to those of Edwin Morgan, Burton Raffel, Michael J. Alexander, and Seamus Heaney. Translating "Beowulf" is one of the subjects of the 2012 publication "Beowulf at Kalamazoo", containing a section with 10 essays on translation, and a section with 22 reviews of Heaney's translation, some of which compare Heaney's work with Liuzza's. Tolkien's long-awaited prose translation (edited by his son Christopher) was published in 2014 as "". The book includes Tolkien's own retelling of the story of Beowulf in his tale "Sellic Spell", but not his incomplete and unpublished verse translation. "The Mere Wife", by Maria Dahvana Headley, was published in 2018. It relocates the action to a wealthy community in 20th-century America and is told primarily from the point of view of Grendel's mother. In 2020, Headley published a translation in which the opening "Hwæt!" is rendered "Bro!"; this translation subsequently won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.
Sources and analogues.
Neither identified sources nor analogues for "Beowulf" can be definitively proven, but many conjectures have been made. These are important in helping historians understand the "Beowulf" manuscript, as possible source-texts or influences would suggest time-frames of composition, geographic boundaries within which it could be composed, or range (both spatial and temporal) of influence (i.e. when it was "popular" and where its "popularity" took it). The poem has been related to Scandinavian, Celtic, and international folkloric sources.
Scandinavian parallels and sources.
19th-century studies proposed that "Beowulf" was translated from a lost original Scandinavian work; surviving Scandinavian works have continued to be studied as possible sources. In 1886 Gregor Sarrazin suggested that an Old Norse original version of "Beowulf" must have existed, but in 1914 Carl Wilhelm von Sydow claimed that "Beowulf" is fundamentally Christian and was written at a time when any Norse tale would have most likely been pagan. Another proposal was a parallel with the "Grettis Saga", but in 1998, Magnús Fjalldal challenged that, stating that tangential similarities were being overemphasised as analogies. The story of Hrolf Kraki and his servant, the legendary bear-shapeshifter Bodvar Bjarki, has also been suggested as a possible parallel; he survives in "Hrólfs saga kraka" and Saxo's "Gesta Danorum", while Hrolf Kraki, one of the Scyldings, appears as "Hrothulf" in "Beowulf". New Scandinavian analogues to "Beowulf" continue to be proposed regularly, with Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar being the most recently adduced text.
International folktale sources.
(1910) wrote a thesis that the first part of "Beowulf" (the Grendel Story) incorporated preexisting folktale material, and that the folktale in question was of the Bear's Son Tale ("Bärensohnmärchen") type, which has surviving examples all over the world. This tale type was later catalogued as international folktale type 301 in the ATU Index, now formally entitled "The Three Stolen Princesses" type in Hans Uther's catalogue, although the "Bear's Son" is still used in Beowulf criticism, if not so much in folkloristic circles. However, although this folkloristic approach was seen as a step in the right direction, "The Bear's Son" tale has later been regarded by many as not a close enough parallel to be a viable choice. Later, Peter A. Jorgensen, looking for a more concise frame of reference, coined a "two-troll tradition" that covers both "Beowulf" and "Grettis saga": "a Norse 'ecotype' in which a hero enters a cave and kills two giants, usually of different sexes"; this has emerged as a more attractive folk tale parallel, according to a 1998 assessment by Andersson.
The epic's similarity to the Irish folktale "The Hand and the Child" was noted in 1899 by Albert S. Cook, and others even earlier. In 1914, the Swedish folklorist Carl Wilhelm von Sydow made a strong argument for parallelism with "The Hand and the Child", because the folktale type demonstrated a "monstrous arm" motif that corresponded with Beowulf's wrenching off Grendel's arm. No such correspondence could be perceived in the Bear's Son Tale or in the "Grettis saga".
James Carney and Martin Puhvel agree with this "Hand and the Child" contextualisation. Puhvel supported the "Hand and the Child" theory through such motifs as (in Andersson's words) "the more powerful giant mother, the mysterious light in the cave, the melting of the sword in blood, the phenomenon of battle rage, swimming prowess, combat with water monsters, underwater adventures, and the bear-hug style of wrestling."
In the Mabinogion, Teyrnon discovers the otherworldly boy child Pryderi, the principal character of the cycle, after cutting off the arm of a monstrous beast which is stealing foals from his stables. The medievalist R. Mark Scowcroft notes that the tearing off of the monster's arm without a weapon is found only in "Beowulf" and fifteen of the Irish variants of the tale; he identifies twelve parallels between the tale and "Beowulf".
Classical sources.
Attempts to find classical or Late Latin influence or analogue in "Beowulf" are almost exclusively linked with Homer's "Odyssey" or Virgil's "Aeneid". In 1926, Albert S. Cook suggested a Homeric connection due to equivalent formulas, metonymies, and analogous voyages. In 1930, James A. Work supported the Homeric influence, stating that the encounter between Beowulf and Unferth was parallel to the encounter between Odysseus and Euryalus in Books 7–8 of the "Odyssey," even to the point of both characters giving the hero the same gift of a sword upon being proven wrong in their initial assessment of the hero's prowess. This theory of Homer's influence on "Beowulf" remained very prevalent in the 1920s, but started to die out in the following decade when a handful of critics stated that the two works were merely "comparative literature", although Greek was known in late 7th century England: Bede states that Theodore of Tarsus, a Greek, was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 668, and he taught Greek. Several English scholars and churchmen are described by Bede as being fluent in Greek due to being taught by him; Bede claims to be fluent in Greek himself.
Frederick Klaeber, among others, argued for a connection between "Beowulf" and Virgil near the start of the 20th century, claiming that the very act of writing a secular epic in a Germanic world represents Virgilian influence. Virgil was seen as the pinnacle of Latin literature, and Latin was the dominant literary language of England at the time, therefore making Virgilian influence highly likely. Similarly, in 1971, Alistair Campbell stated that the apologue technique used in "Beowulf" is so rare in epic poetry aside from Virgil that the poet who composed "Beowulf" could not have written the poem in such a manner without first coming across Virgil's writings.
Biblical influences.
It cannot be denied that Biblical parallels occur in the text, whether seen as a pagan work with "Christian colouring" added by scribes or as a "Christian historical novel, with selected bits of paganism deliberately laid on as 'local colour'", as Margaret E. Goldsmith did in "The Christian Theme of "Beowulf"". "Beowulf" echoes the Book of Genesis, the Book of Exodus, and the Book of Daniel in its references to the Genesis creation narrative, the story of Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, the Devil, Hell, and the Last Judgment.
Dialect.
"Beowulf" predominantly uses the West Saxon dialect of Old English, like other Old English poems copied at the time. However, it also uses many other linguistic forms; this leads some scholars to believe that it has endured a long and complicated transmission through all the main dialect areas. It retains a complicated mix of Mercian, Northumbrian, Early West Saxon, Anglian, Kentish and Late West Saxon dialectical forms.
Form and metre.
Old English poets typically used alliterative verse, a form of verse in which the first half of the line (the a-verse) is linked to the second half (the b-verse) through similarity in initial sound. That the line consists of two halves is clearly indicated by the caesura: (l. 4). This verse form maps stressed and unstressed syllables onto abstract entities known as metrical positions. There is no fixed number of beats per line: the first one cited has three () whereas the second has two ().
The poet had a choice of formulae to assist in fulfilling the alliteration scheme. These were memorised phrases that conveyed a general and commonly-occurring meaning that fitted neatly into a half-line of the chanted poem. Examples are line 8's ("waxed under welkin", i.e. "he grew up under the heavens"), line 11's ("pay tribute"), line 13's ("young in the yards", i.e. "young in the courts"), and line 14's ("as a comfort to his people").
Kennings are a significant technique in "Beowulf". They are evocative poetic descriptions of everyday things, often created to fill the alliterative requirements of the metre. For example, a poet might call the sea the "swan's riding"; a king might be called a "ring-giver". The poem contains many kennings, and the device is typical of much of classic poetry in Old English, which is heavily formulaic.
Interpretation and criticism.
The history of modern "Beowulf" criticism is often said to begin with Tolkien, author and Merton Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, who in his 1936 lecture to the British Academy criticised his contemporaries' excessive interest in its historical implications. He noted in "" that as a result the poem's literary value had been largely overlooked, and argued that the poem "is in fact so interesting as poetry, in places poetry so powerful, that this quite overshadows the historical content..." Tolkien argued that the poem is not an epic; that, while no conventional term exactly fits, the nearest would be elegy; and that its focus is the concluding dirge.
Paganism and Christianity.
In historical terms, the poem's characters were Germanic pagans, yet the poem was recorded by Christian Anglo-Saxons who had mostly converted from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism around the 7th century. "Beowulf" thus depicts a Germanic warrior society, in which the relationship between the lord of the region and those who served under him was of paramount importance.
In terms of the relationship between characters in "Beowulf" and God, one might recall the substantial amount of paganism that is present throughout the work. Literary critics such as Fred C. Robinson argue that the "Beowulf" poet tries to send a message to readers during the Anglo-Saxon time period regarding the state of Christianity in their own time. Robinson argues that the intensified religious aspects of the Anglo-Saxon period inherently shape the way in which the poet alludes to paganism as presented in "Beowulf". The poet calls on Anglo-Saxon readers to recognize the imperfect aspects of their supposed Christian lifestyles. In other words, the poet is referencing their "Anglo-Saxon Heathenism". In terms of the characters of the epic itself, Robinson argues that readers are "impressed" by the courageous acts of Beowulf and the speeches of Hrothgar. But one is ultimately left to feel sorry for both men as they are fully detached from supposed "Christian truth". The relationship between the characters of "Beowulf", and the overall message of the poet, regarding their relationship with God is debated among readers and literary critics alike.
Richard North argues that the "Beowulf" poet interpreted "Danish myths in Christian form" (as the poem would have served as a form of entertainment for a Christian audience), and states: "As yet we are no closer to finding out why the first audience of "Beowulf" liked to hear stories about people routinely classified as damned. This question is pressing, given... that Anglo-Saxons saw the Danes as 's' rather than as foreigners." Donaldson wrote that "the poet who put the materials into their present form was a Christian and ... poem reflects a Christian tradition".
Other scholars disagree as to whether "Beowulf" is a Christian work set in a Germanic pagan context. The question suggests that the conversion from the Germanic pagan beliefs to Christian ones was a prolonged and gradual process over several centuries, and the poem's message in respect to religious belief at the time it was written remains unclear. Robert F. Yeager describes the basis for these questions:
Ursula Schaefer's view is that the poem was created, and is interpretable, within both pagan and Christian horizons. Schaefer's concept of "vocality" offers neither a compromise nor a synthesis of views that see the poem as on the one hand Germanic, pagan, and oral and on the other Latin-derived, Christian, and literate, but, as stated by Monika Otter: "a 'tertium quid', a modality that participates in both oral and literate culture yet also has a logic and aesthetic of its own."
Politics and warfare.
Stanley B. Greenfield has suggested that references to the human body throughout "Beowulf" emphasise the relative position of thanes to their lord. He argues that the term "shoulder-companion" could refer to both a physical arm as well as a thane (Aeschere) who was very valuable to his lord (Hrothgar). With Aeschere's death, Hrothgar turns to Beowulf as his new "arm". Greenfield argues the foot is used for the opposite effect, only appearing four times in the poem. It is used in conjunction with Unferð (a man described by Beowulf as weak, traitorous, and cowardly). Greenfield notes that Unferð is described as "at the king's feet" (line 499). Unferð is a member of the foot troops, who, throughout the story, do nothing and "generally serve as backdrops for more heroic action."
Daniel Podgorski has argued that the work is best understood as an examination of inter-generational vengeance-based conflict, or feuding. In this context, the poem operates as an indictment of feuding conflicts as a function of its conspicuous, circuitous, and lengthy depiction of the Swedish–Geatish wars—coming into contrast with the poem's depiction of the protagonist Beowulf as being disassociated from the ongoing feuds in every way. Francis Leneghan argues that the poem can be understood as a "dynastic drama" in which the hero's fights with the monsters unfold against a backdrop of the rise and fall of royal houses, while the monsters themselves serve as portents of disasters affecting dynasties.
Further reading.
The secondary literature on "Beowulf" is immense. The following is a selection.
|
3836
|
3742946
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3836
|
Barb Wire (character)
|
Barb Wire is a fictional character appearing in Comics Greatest World, an imprint of Dark Horse Comics. Created by Chris Warner and Team CGW, the character first appeared in "Comics' Greatest World: Steel Harbor" in 1993. The original "Barb Wire" series published nine issues between 1994 and 1995 and was followed by a four-issue miniseries in 1996. A reboot was published in 2015 and lasted eight issues. In 1996, the character was adapted into a film starring Pamela Anderson. Unlike the comics, the film takes place in a possible future rather than an alternate version of present-day Earth.
Creators.
1–4: Chris Warner, script and pencils/Tim Bradstreet, inks
Fictional character biography.
Barb Wire's stories take place on an alternate version of present-day Earth with superhumans and more advanced technology. In this Earth's history, an alien entity called the Vortex arrived in 1931 and began conducting secret experiments. In 1947, an atom bomb test detonated in a desert nearby the alien's experiments. The result was the creation of a trans-dimensional wormhole referred to as "the Vortex" or "the Maelstrom", which released energy that gave different people across Earth superpowers for years to come.
Decades later, Barbara Kopetski grows up in Steel Harbor when it is still a thriving steel industry city. Barbara and her brother Charlie live with their grandmother and parents, their mother being a police officer while their father is a former marine who became a steelworker. Officer Kopetski later dies, after which her husband becomes so ill he is confined to a bed for years, developing Alzheimer's disease as well before passing away. Following the death of her father, Barbara leaves Steel Harbour for a time as the city's economy starts to spiral and crime begins rising. Soon, much of the city is controlled by warring gangs rather than local government. Years later, Barbara returns to Steel Harbor, now an experienced bounty hunter operating under the name Barb Wire. Reuniting with Charlie, she decides to stay in her hometown, becoming the owner of the Hammerhead bar. To help bring in money, she continues moonlighting as a bounty hunter, working with the police directly or bail bondsman Thomas Crashell.
As time goes on, Steel Harbor becomes more dangerous, described as "a city under siege from drugs, crime, pollution and gang warfare". In 1993, a second American Civil War begins when Golden City announces its secession from the Union. The announcement leads to protests and riots in several cities. The Steel Harbor Riots leave some neighborhoods in literal ruin, with hundreds of buildings destroyed or abandoned in the area known as "Metal City". Many are forced to leave the city or take to the streets, and the gangs (all of whom have superhuman members) start moving to take more control. To help contain the chaos and keep her home from descending further, Barb Wire now acts at times as a vigilante, intervening when the police can't or won't. Fighting alongside the Wolf Gang, she defies criminal Mace Blitzkrieg's attempts to bring all gangs under his leadership and control the city.
Growing up with a police officer mother and marine father, as well as her life experiences traveling outside of the city, Barb Wire is an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, skilled in various firearms, and an expert driver and motorcycle rider. Her bar has been considered neutral meeting ground by the Steel Harbor gangs. Aiding her bounty hunter activities is her brother Charlie, acting as her mechanic and engineer, and others such as Avram Roman Jr., a cyborg sometimes known simply as "the Machine". Though she has loyal allies, including Charlie, Barb Wire is a harsh, guarded person who looks at the world with suspicion and cynicism, considering herself a loner at heart.
Film adaptation.
A film adaptation was released in 1996 starring Pamela Anderson as Barb Wire. The story's premise was that Barb Wire lives in the near future rather than an alternate version of the present day, a world where superhumans and Dark Horse superheroes do not exist. In this version of the story, Steel Harbor is the last neutral "free city" during the Second American Civil War, and Barbara Kopetski is a resistance fighter who leaves behind the war after her heart is broken and she loses faith in the cause. Like the comic, she returns home to become a bounty hunter and owner of the Hammerhead.
|
3837
|
7903804
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3837
|
Blazing Saddles
|
Blazing Saddles is a 1974 American satirical postmodernist Western black comedy film directed by Mel Brooks, who co-wrote the screenplay with Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg and Alan Uger, based on a story treatment by Bergman. The film stars Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder. Brooks appears in two supporting roles: Governor William J. Le Petomane, and a Yiddish-speaking Native American chief; he also dubs lines for one of Lili Von Shtupp's backing troupe and a cranky moviegoer. The supporting cast includes Slim Pickens, Alex Karras and David Huddleston, as well as Brooks regulars Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn and Harvey Korman. Bandleader Count Basie has a cameo as himself, appearing with his orchestra.
The film is full of deliberate anachronisms, from the Count Basie Orchestra playing "April in Paris" in the Wild West, to Pickens' character mentioning the "Wide World of Sports".
The film received generally positive reviews from critics and audiences, was nominated for three Academy Awards and is today regarded as a comedy classic. It is ranked number six on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Laughs" list, and was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2006.
Plot.
On the American frontier of 1874, a new railroad under construction will have to be rerouted through the town of Rock Ridge to avoid quicksand. Realizing this will make Rock Ridge worth millions, territorial attorney general Hedley Lamarr plans to force Rock Ridge's residents out of the town and sends a gang of thugs, led by his flunky Taggart, to shoot the sheriff and trash the town.
Not wanting to go with Reverend Johnson's suggestion to leave, the other prominent citizens (all of whom are named Johnson) lead the other townspeople in demanding that Governor William J. Le Petomane appoints a new sheriff to protect them. Lamarr persuades dim-witted Le Petomane to appoint Bart, a black railroad worker about to be executed for assaulting Taggart. A black sheriff, Lamarr reasons, will offend the townspeople, create chaos and leave Rock Ridge at his mercy.
After an initial hostile reception in which he takes himself "hostage" to escape, Bart relies on his quick wits and the assistance of Jim, an alcoholic gunslinger known as the "Waco Kid", to overcome the townspeople's hostility. Bart subdues Mongo, an immensely strong and dim-witted, yet philosophical henchman sent to kill him, then outwits German seductress-for-hire Lili Von Shtupp at her own game, with Lili falling in love with him.
Upon release, Mongo vaguely informs Bart of Lamarr's connection to the railroad, so Bart and Jim visit the railroad worksite and discover from Bart's best friend Charlie that the railway is planned to go through Rock Ridge. Taggart and his men arrive to kill Bart, but Jim outshoots them and forces their retreat. Furious that his schemes have backfired, Lamarr recruits an army of thugs, including common criminals, motorcycle gangsters, Ku Klux Klansmen, and Nazi soldiers.
East of Rock Ridge, Bart introduces the White townspeople to the black, Chinese, and Irish railroad workers who have all agreed to help them in exchange for acceptance by the community, and explains his plan to defeat Lamarr's army. They labor all night to build a perfect copy of the town as a diversion. When Bart realizes it will not be enough to fool the villains, the townsfolk construct copies of themselves.
Bart, Jim, and Mongo buy time by constructing the "Gov. William J. Le Petomane Thruway", forcing the raiding party to send for change to pay the toll. Once through the tollbooth, the raiders attack the fake town and its population of dummies, which have been booby trapped with dynamite. After Jim detonates the explosives with his sharpshooting, launching bad guys and horses skyward, the Rock Ridgers attack the villains with Lili singing with the Nazi soldiers.
The resulting brawl between townsfolk, railroad workers, and Lamarr's thugs literally breaks the fourth wall and bursts onto a neighboring movie set where director Buddy Bizarre is filming a Busby Berkeley-style top-hat-and-tails musical number. Then the brawl spreads into the studio commissary for a food fight and spills out of the Warner Bros. film lot onto the streets of Burbank.
Lamarr escapes the brawl and takes a taxi to hide at Mann's Chinese Theatre which is showing the premiere of "Blazing Saddles". As he settles into his seat, he sees onscreen Bart arriving on horseback outside the theatre. Bart blocks Lamarr's escape and shoots him in the groin. Bart and Jim then enter the theater to watch the end of the film.
Back in the film, Bart announces to the townspeople that he is moving on because his work is done (and because he is bored). Riding out of town, he finds Jim, still eating his popcorn, and invites him along to "nowhere special". The two friends briefly ride into the desert before dismounting and boarding a limousine which drives off into the sunset.
Cast.
Cast notes:
Production.
Development.
The idea came from a story outline written by Andrew Bergman that he originally intended to develop and produce himself. "I wrote a first draft called "Tex-X"" (a play on Malcolm X's name), he said. "Alan Arkin was hired to direct and James Earl Jones was going to play the sheriff. That fell apart, as things often do." Brooks was taken with the story, which he described as "hip talk1974 talk and expressionshappening in 1874 in the Old West", and purchased the film rights from Bergman. Though he had not worked with a writing team since "Your Show of Shows", he hired a group of writers (including Bergman) to expand the outline, and posted a large sign: "Please do not write a polite script."
Brooks described the writing process as chaotic: Bergman remembers the room being just as chaotic, telling "Creative Screenwriting",
Title.
The original title, "Tex X", was rejected to avoid it being mistaken for an X-rated film, as were "Black Bart" – a reference to Black Bart, a white highwayman of the 19th century – and "Purple Sage". Brooks said he finally conceived "Blazing Saddles" one morning while taking a shower.
Casting.
Richard Pryor was Brooks' original choice to play Sheriff Bart, but the studio, claiming his history of drug arrests made him uninsurable, refused to approve financing with Pryor as the star. The role of Sheriff Bart went to Cleavon Little, and Pryor remained as a screenwriter instead. Brooks offered the other leading role, the Waco Kid, to John Wayne. He declined it, deeming the film "too blue" for his family-oriented image, but assured Brooks that "he would be the first one in line to see it." After that, Dan Dailey was Brooks' first choice for the role. Gig Young was cast, but he collapsed during his first scene from what was later determined to be alcohol withdrawal syndrome, and Gene Wilder was flown in to replace him.
Johnny Carson and Wilder both turned down the Hedley Lamarr role before Harvey Korman was cast. Madeline Kahn objected when Brooks asked to see her legs during her audition. "She said, 'So it's THAT kind of an audition? Brooks recalled. "I explained that I was a happily married man and that I needed someone who could straddle a chair with her legs like Marlene Dietrich in "Destry Rides Again." So she lifted her skirt and said, 'No touching.
Filming.
Principal photography began on March 6, 1973, and wrapped in early May 1973. Brooks had numerous conflicts over content with Warner Bros. executives, including frequent use of the word "nigger", Lili Von Shtupp's seduction scene, the cacophony of flatulence around the campfire and Mongo punching out a horse. Brooks, whose contract gave him final cut, declined to make any substantive changes, with the exception of cutting Bart's final line during Lili's seduction: "I hate to disappoint you, ma'am, but you're sucking my arm." When asked later about the many "nigger" references, Brooks said he received consistent support from Pryor and Little. He added: "If they did a remake of "Blazing Saddles" today [2012], they would leave out the N-word. And then, you've got no movie." Brooks said the use of the slur was to show how despised, hated, and loathed the black sheriff was. Brooks said he received many letters of complaint after the film's release.
Music.
Brooks wrote the music and lyrics for three of "Blazing Saddles" songs: "The Ballad of Rock Ridge", "I'm Tired", and "The French Mistake". He also wrote the lyrics to the title song, with music by composer John Morris. To sing the title song, Brooks advertised in the trade papers for a "Frankie Laine–type" singer; to his surprise, Laine himself offered his services. "Frankie sang his heart out ... and we didn't have the heart to tell him it was a spoof. He never heard the whip cracks; we put those in later. We got so lucky with his serious interpretation of the song." In an interview with Terry Gross, Laine said that he did not know at the time that "Blazing Saddles" was a comedy.
The choreographer for "I'm Tired" and "The French Mistake" was Alan Johnson. "I'm Tired" is a homage to and parody of Marlene Dietrich's performance of Cole Porter's song "I'm the Laziest Gal in Town" in Alfred Hitchcock's 1950 film "Stage Fright", as well as "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)" from "The Blue Angel".
The orchestrations were by Morris and Jonathan Tunick.
Lawsuit.
During production, retired longtime film star Hedy Lamarr sued Warner Bros. for $100,000, charging that the film's running parody of her name infringed on her right to privacy. Brooks said that he was flattered and chose to not fight it in court; the studio settled out of court for a small sum and an apology for "almost using her name". Brooks said that Lamarr "never got the joke". This lawsuit would be referenced by an in-film joke where Brooks' character, the Governor, tells Lamarr: "This is 1874; you'll be able to sue HER."
Release.
The film was almost unreleased. "When we screened it for executives, there were few laughs," said Brooks. "The head of distribution said, 'Let's dump it and take a loss.' But [studio president John] Calley insisted they open it in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago as a test. It became the studio's top moneymaker that summer."
The world premiere took place on February 7, 1974, at the Pickwick Drive-In Theater in Burbank; 250 invited guestsincluding Little and Wilderwatched the film on horseback.
Critical response.
While "Blazing Saddles" is now considered a classic, critical reaction was mixed upon initial release. Vincent Canby wrote:
Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four, calling it a "crazed grab bag of a movie that does everything to keep us laughing except hit us over the head with a rubber chicken. Mostly, it succeeds. It's an audience picture; it doesn't have a lot of classy polish and its structure is a total mess. But of course! What does that matter while Alex Karras is knocking a horse cold with a right cross to the jaw?" Gene Siskel awarded three stars out of four and called it "bound to rank with the funniest of the year," adding, "Whenever the laughs begin to run dry, Brooks and his quartet of gag writers splash about in a pool of obscenities that score belly laughs if your ears aren't sensitive and if you're hip to western movie conventions being parodied."
Critics often perceived "Blazing Saddles" as inherently "un-cinematic", defying some expectations for Hollywood filmmaking in the era, often displaying production style associated with Broadway theater and US television variety shows. This was in part due to its "simplistic framing" and the casting of Harvey Korman, known for "The Carol Burnett Show" (CBS, 1967–1978), which was similarly "low on characterization and story, instead opting for a high volume of one-liners and visual gags." Typical to this perception, "Variety" wrote: "If comedies are measured solely by the number of yocks they generate from audiences, then "Blazing Saddles" must be counted a success ... Few viewers will have time between laughs to complain that pic is essentially a raunchy, protracted version of a television comedy skit."
Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" called the film "irreverent, outrageous, improbable, often as blithely tasteless as a stag night at the Friar's Club and almost continuously funny." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" was negative, writing: "Mel Brooks squanders a snappy title on a stockpile of stale jokes. To say that this slapdash Western spoof lacks freshness and spontaneity and originality is putting it mildly. "Blazing Saddles" is at once a messy and antiquated gag machine." Jan Dawson of "The Monthly Film Bulletin" wrote: "Perhaps it is pedantic to complain that the whole is not up to the sum of its parts when, for the curate's egg that it is, "Blazing Saddles" contains so many good parts and memorable performances." John Simon wrote a negative review of "Blazing Saddles", saying: "All kinds of gagschiefly anachronisms, irrelevancies, reverse ethnic jokes, and out and out vulgaritiesare thrown together pell-mell, batted about insanely in all directions, and usually beaten into the ground."
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 88% based on 69 reviews, with an average rating of 8.10/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Daring, provocative, and laugh-out-loud funny, "Blazing Saddles" is a gleefully vulgar spoof of Westerns that marks a high point in Mel Brooks' storied career." On Metacritic it has a score of 73 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Ishmael Reed's 1969 novel "Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down", a satirical take on the traditional Western, has been cited as an important precursor or influence for "Blazing Saddles", a connection that Reed himself has made.
Box office.
The film earned theatrical rentals of $26.7 million in its initial release in the United States and Canada. In its 1976 reissue, it earned a further $10.5 million and another $8 million in 1979. Its total rentals in the United States and Canada totalled $47.8 million from a gross of $119.5 million, becoming only the tenth film up to that time to pass the $100 million mark.
Accolades.
While addressing his group of bad guys, Harvey Korman's character reminds them that although they are risking their lives, he is "risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor!" Korman did not receive an Oscar bid, but the film did get three nominations at the 47th Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress for Madeline Kahn.
In 2006, "Blazing Saddles" was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Upon the release of the 30th-anniversary special edition in 2004, "Today" said that the movie "skewer[ed] just about every aspect of racial prejudice while keeping the laughs coming" and that it was "at the top of a very short list" of comedies still funny after 30 years. In 2014, NPR wrote that, four decades after the movie was made, it was "still as biting a satire" on racism as ever, although its treatment of gays and women was "not self-aware at all".
The film is recognized by the American Film Institute in these lists:
Adaptations.
TV series.
A television pilot titled "Black Bart" was produced for CBS based on Bergman's original story. It featured Louis Gossett Jr. as Bart and Steve Landesberg as his drunkard sidekick, a former Confederate officer named "Reb Jordan". Other cast members included Millie Slavin and Noble Willingham. Bergman is listed as the sole creator. CBS aired the pilot once on April 4, 1975. The pilot episode of "Black Bart" was later included as a bonus feature on the "Blazing Saddles" 30th Anniversary DVD and the Blu-ray disc.
Possible stage production.
In September 2017, Brooks indicated his desire to do a stage version of "Blazing Saddles" in the future.
In popular culture.
The Rock Ridge standard for CD and DVD media is named after the town in "Blazing Saddles".
The 1988 animated television film "The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound" is a Western parody. Starring anthropomorphic cartoon dog Huckleberry Hound, the film is set in the California Gold Rush era and has similar spoofs and gags to "Blazing Saddles", as well as depiction of Native American stereotypes. Here, much like Bart, Huck is unexpectedly appointed as a sheriff to defend townspeople.
In 2011, the fifteenth episode of "Supernatural" season 6 was entitled "The French Mistake", as a reference to the genre defining Fourth Wall breaking scene.
The 2022 animated film "" starring Michael Cera, Samuel L. Jackson, Michelle Yeoh and Ricky Gervais, is a loose remake of "Blazing Saddles" and was originally titled "Blazing Samurai". Its creators described the film as "equally inspired by and an homage to "Blazing Saddles"." Brooks returned to serve as an executive producer for the production, voiced one of the characters, and received screenplay credit.
Home media.
The film was released on VHS several times and was first released on DVD in 1997, followed by a 30th Anniversary Special Edition DVD in 2004 and a Blu-ray version in 2006. A 40th anniversary Blu-ray set was released in 2014.
|
3838
|
3091149
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3838
|
Bruce Sterling
|
Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the "Mirrorshades" anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre.
Sterling's first science-fiction story, "Man-Made Self", was sold in 1976. He is the author of science-fiction novels, including "Schismatrix" (1985), "Islands in the Net" (1988), and "Heavy Weather" (1994). In 1992, he published his first non-fiction book, "The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier".
He has been interviewed for documentaries such as "Freedom Downtime", "TechnoCalyps" and "Traceroute".
Writing.
Sterling is one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction, along with William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner, and Pat Cadigan. In addition, he is one of the subgenre's chief ideological promulgators. This has earned him the nickname "Chairman Bruce". He was also one of the first organizers of the Turkey City Writer's Workshop, and is a frequent attendee at the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop. He won Hugo Awards for his novelettes "Bicycle Repairman" (1996) and "Taklamakan" (1998). His first novel, "Involution Ocean" (1977), features the world Nullaqua where all the atmosphere is contained in a single, miles-deep crater. The story concerns a ship sailing on the ocean of dust at the bottom and hunting creatures called dustwhales. It is partially a science-fictional pastiche of "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville.
In the early 1980s, Sterling wrote a series of stories set in the Shaper/Mechanist universe: the Solar System is colonized, with two major warring factions. The Mechanists use a great deal of computer-based mechanical technologies; the Shapers do genetic engineering on a massive scale. The situation is complicated by the eventual contact with alien civilizations; humanity eventually splits into many subspecies, with the implication that some of these vanish from the galaxy, reminiscent of the singularity in the works of Vernor Vinge. The Shaper/Mechanist stories can be found in the collections "Crystal Express" and "Schismatrix Plus", which contains the novel "Schismatrix" and all of the stories set in the Shaper/Mechanist universe. Alastair Reynolds identified "Schismatrix" and the other Shaper/Mechanist stories as one of the greatest influences on his own work.
In the 1980s, Sterling edited the science fiction critical fanzine "Cheap Truth" under the alias of Vincent Omniaveritas. He wrote a column called "Catscan" for the now-defunct science fiction critical magazine "SF Eye". He contributed a chapter to "Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture" (MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky. From April 2009 through May 2009, he was an editor at "Cool Tools".
From October 2003 to May 2020 Sterling blogged at "Beyond the Beyond", which was hosted by "Wired" until the COVID-19 pandemic led Condé Nast to cut back because of an advertising slump. He also contributed to other print and online platforms, including "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction".
Writing projects.
He has been the instigator of three projects which can be found on the Web:
Neologisms.
Sterling has coined various neologisms to describe things that he believes will be common in the future, especially items which already exist in limited numbers.
Bibliography.
Sterling's novels include:
Personal life.
In the beginning of his childhood he lived in Galveston, Texas until his family moved to India. Sterling spent several years in India and has a fondness for Bollywood films. In 1976, he graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in journalism. In 1978, he was the Dungeon Master for a "Dungeons & Dragons" game whose players included Warren Spector, who cited Sterling's game as a major inspiration for the game design of "Deus Ex".
In 2003, he was appointed professor at the European Graduate School where he is teaching summer intensive courses on media and design. In 2005, he became "visionary in residence" at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. He lived in Belgrade with Serbian author and film-maker Jasmina Tešanović for several years, and married her in 2005. In September 2007 he moved to Turin, Italy.
|
3840
|
27823944
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3840
|
Brain abscess
|
Brain abscess (or cerebral abscess) is an abscess within the brain tissue 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. 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 predominant 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:
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 is 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.
|
3845
|
14327502
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3845
|
Brigitte Bardot
|
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot ( ; ; born 28 September 1934), often referred to by her initials B.B., is a French former actress, singer, and model as well as an animal rights activist. Famous for portraying characters with hedonistic lifestyles, she is one of the best known symbols of the sexual revolution. Although she withdrew from the entertainment industry in 1973, she remains a major pop culture icon. She has acted in 47 films, performed in several musicals, and recorded more than 60 songs. She was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1985.
Born and raised in Paris, Bardot was an aspiring ballerina during her childhood. She started her acting career in 1952 and achieved international recognition in 1957 for her role in "And God Created Woman" (1956), catching the attention of many French intellectuals and earning her the nickname "sex kitten". She was the subject of philosopher Simone de Beauvoir's 1959 essay "The Lolita Syndrome", which described her as a "locomotive of women's history" and built upon existentialist themes to declare her the most liberated woman of France. She won a 1961 David di Donatello Best Foreign Actress Award for her work in "The Truth" (1960)"." Bardot later starred in Jean-Luc Godard's film "Le Mépris" (1963). For her role in Louis Malle's film "Viva Maria!" (1965), she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress. French President Charles de Gaulle called Bardot "the French export as important as Renault cars".
After retiring from acting in 1973, Bardot became an animal rights activist and created the Brigitte Bardot Foundation. She is known for her strong personality, outspokenness, and speeches on animal defense; she has been fined twice for public insults. She has also been a controversial political figure, as of November 2021 having been fined six times for inciting racial hatred when she criticised immigration and Islam in France and called residents of Réunion "savages". She is married to Bernard d'Ormale, a former adviser to Jean-Marie Le Pen, a far-right French politician. Bardot is a member of the Global 500 Roll of Honour of the United Nations Environment Programme and has received several awards and accolades from UNESCO and PETA. In 2011, "Los Angeles Times Magazine" ranked her second on the "50 Most Beautiful Women In Film".
Early life.
Bardot was born in the 15th arrondissement of Paris in the French Third Republic to Louis Bardot and Anne-Marie Mucel. Bardot's father, who originated from Ligny-en-Barrois, was an engineer and the proprietor of several industrial factories in Paris. Her mother was the daughter of an insurance company director. She grew up in a conservative Catholic family, as had her father. She suffered from amblyopia as a child, which resulted in decreased vision of her left eye. She has one younger sister, Mijanou Bardot.
Bardot's childhood was prosperous; she lived in her family's seven-bedroom apartment in the luxurious 16th arrondissement. However, she recalled feeling resentful in her early years. Her father demanded that she follow strict behavioural standards, including good table manners, and wear appropriate clothes. Her mother was highly selective in choosing companions for her, so Bardot had very few childhood friends. Bardot cited a personal traumatic incident when she and her sister broke her parents' favourite vase while they were playing in the house; her father whipped the sisters 20 times and subsequently treated them like "strangers", demanding that they address their parents by the formal pronoun "vous", used in French when speaking to unfamiliar or higher-status persons outside the immediate family. The incident led to Bardot decisively resenting her parents and to her future rebellious lifestyle.
During World War II, when Paris was occupied by Nazi Germany, Bardot spent more time at home due to increasingly strict civilian surveillance. She became engrossed in dancing to records, which her mother saw as a potential for a ballet career. Bardot was admitted at the age of seven to the private school Cours Hattemer. She went to school three days a week, which gave her ample time to take dance lessons at a local studio under her mother's arrangements. In 1949, Bardot was accepted at the Conservatoire de Paris. She attended ballet classes held by Russian choreographer Boris Knyazev for three years. She also studied at the Institut de la Tour, a private Catholic high school near her home.
Hélène Gordon-Lazareff, the director of the magazines "Elle" and "Le Jardin des Modes", hired Bardot in 1949 as a "junior" fashion model. On 8 March 1950, 15-year-old Bardot appeared on the cover of "Elle", which brought her an acting offer for the film "Les Lauriers sont coupés" from director Marc Allégret. Her parents opposed her becoming an actress, but her grandfather was supportive, saying that "If this little girl is to become a whore, cinema will not be the cause." At the audition, Bardot met Roger Vadim, who later notified her that she did not get the role. They subsequently fell in love. Her parents fiercely opposed their relationship; her father announced to her one evening that she would continue her education in England and that he had bought her a train ticket for the following day. Bardot reacted by putting her head into an oven with open fire; her parents stopped her and ultimately accepted the relationship, on condition that she marry Vadim at the age of 18.
Career.
Beginnings: 1952–1955.
Bardot appeared on the cover of "Elle" again in 1952, which landed her an offer for a small part in the comedy film "Crazy for Love" the same year, directed by Jean Boyer and starring Bourvil. She was paid 200,000 francs (about 575 1952 US dollars) for the small role portraying a cousin of the main character. Bardot had her second film role in "Manina, the Girl in the Bikini" (1952), directed by Willy Rozier. She also had roles in the 1953 films, "The Long Teeth" and "His Father's Portrait".
Bardot had a small role in a Hollywood-financed film being shot in Paris in 1953, "Act of Love", starring Kirk Douglas. She received media attention when she attended the Cannes Film Festival in April 1953.
Bardot had a leading role in 1954 in an Italian melodrama, "Concert of Intrigue", and in a French adventure film, "Caroline and the Rebels". She had a good part as a flirtatious student in 1955's "School for Love", opposite Jean Marais, for director Marc Allégret.
Bardot played her first sizeable English-language role in 1955 in "Doctor at Sea" as the love interest for Dirk Bogarde. The film was the third most popular movie in Britain that year.
Bardot had a small role in "The Grand Maneuver" (1955) for director René Clair, supporting Gérard Philipe and Michelle Morgan. Her part was bigger in "The Light Across the Street" (1956) for director Georges Lacombe. She had another in the Hollywood film "Helen of Troy", playing Helen's handmaiden.
For the Italian movie "Mio figlio Nerone" (1956) brunette Bardot was asked by the director to appear as a blonde. She dyed her hair rather than wear a wig; she was so pleased with the results that she decided to retain the color.
Rise to stardom: 1956–1962.
Bardot then appeared in four movies that made her a star. First up was a musical, "Naughty Girl" (1956), where Bardot played a troublesome school girl. Directed by Michel Boisrond, it was co-written by Roger Vadim and was a great success, going on to become the 12th most popular film of the year in France. It was followed by a comedy, "Plucking the Daisy" (1956), also written by Vadim. This was succeeded by "The Bride Is Much Too Beautiful" (1956) with Louis Jourdan.
Finally, there was the melodrama "And God Created Woman" (1956). The movie was Vadim's debut as director, with Bardot starring opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant and Curt Jurgens. The film, about an immoral teenager in an otherwise respectable small-town setting, was an even larger success, not just in France but also around the world, listed among the ten most popular films in Great Britain in 1957. In the United States the film was the highest-grossing foreign film ever released, earning $4 million, which author Peter Lev describes as "an astonishing amount for a foreign film at that time." It turned Bardot into an international star. From at least 1956, she was hailed as the "sex kitten". The film scandalized the United States and some theater managers were even arrested just for screening it.
Paul O'Neil of "Life" (June 1958) in describing Bardot's international popularity, writes:
In gaining her present eminence, Brigitte Bardot has had certain advantages beyond those she was born with. Like the European sports car, she has arrived on the American scene at a time when the American public is ready, even hungry, for something racier and more realistic than the familiar domestic product.<br>
During her early career, professional photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed to the image of Bardot's sensuality. British photographer Cornel Lucas made images of Bardot in the 1950s and 1960s that have become representative of her public persona.
Bardot followed "And God Created Woman" up with "La Parisienne" (1957), a comedy co-starring Charles Boyer for director Boisrond. She was reunited with Vadim in another melodrama "The Night Heaven Fell" (1958), and played a criminal who seduced Jean Gabin in "In Case of Adversity" (1958). The latter was the 13th most seen movie of the year in France. In 1958, Bardot became the highest-paid actress in the country of France.
"The Female" (1959) for director Julien Duvivier was popular, but "Babette Goes to War" (1959), a comedy set in World War II, was a huge hit, the fourth biggest movie of the year in France. Also widely seen was "Come Dance with Me" (1959) from Boisrond.
Bardot's next film was courtroom drama "The Truth" (1960), from Henri-Georges Clouzot. It was a highly publicised production, which resulted in Bardot having an affair and attempting suicide. The film was Bardot's biggest commercial success in France, the third biggest hit of the year, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Bardot was awarded a David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actress for her role in the film.
She made a comedy with Vadim, "Please, Not Now!" (1961), and had a role in the all-star anthology, "Famous Love Affairs" (1962).
Bardot starred alongside Marcello Mastroianni in a film inspired by her life in "A Very Private Affair" ("Vie privée", 1962), directed by Louis Malle. More popular than that was her role in "Love on a Pillow" (1962).
International films and singing career: 1962–1968.
In the mid-1960s, Bardot made films that seemed to be more aimed at the international market. She starred in Jean-Luc Godard's film "Le Mépris" (1963), produced by Joseph E. Levine and starring Jack Palance. The following year she co-starred with Anthony Perkins in the comedy "Une ravissante idiote" (1964).
"Dear Brigitte" (1965), Bardot's first Hollywood film, was a comedy starring James Stewart as an academic whose son develops a crush on Bardot. Bardot's appearance was relatively brief in the film, and the movie was not a big success.
More successful was the Western buddy comedy "Viva Maria!" (1965) for director Louis Malle, appearing opposite Jeanne Moreau. It was a big hit in France and worldwide, although it did not break through in the United States as much as had been hoped.
After a cameo in Godard's "Masculin Féminin" (1966), she had her first outright flop for some years, "Two Weeks in September" (1968), a French–English co-production. She had a small role in the all-star "Spirits of the Dead" (1968), acting opposite Alain Delon, then tried a Hollywood film again: "Shalako" (1968), a Western starring Sean Connery, which was another box-office disappointment.
She participated in several musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including "Harley Davidson"; "Je Me Donne À Qui Me Plaît"; "Bubble gum"; "Contact"; "Je Reviendrai Toujours Vers Toi"; "L'Appareil À Sous"; "La Madrague"; "On Déménage"; "Sidonie"; "Tu Veux, Ou Tu Veux Pas?"; "Le Soleil De Ma Vie" (a cover of Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life"); and "Je t'aime... moi non-plus". Bardot pleaded with Gainsbourg not to release this duet and he complied with her wish; the following year, he rerecorded a version with British-born model and actress Jane Birkin that became a massive hit all over Europe. The version with Bardot was issued in 1986 and became a download hit in 2006 when Universal Music made its back catalogue available to purchase online, with this version of the song ranking as the third most popular download.
Final films: 1969–1973.
From 1969 to 1972, Bardot was the official face of Marianne, who had previously up until then been anonymous, to represent the liberty of France.
Her next film, "Les Femmes" (1969), was a flop, although the screwball comedy "The Bear and the Doll" (1970) performed better. Her last few films were mostly comedies: "Les Novices" (1970), "Boulevard du Rhum" (1971) (with Lino Ventura). "The Legend of Frenchie King" (1971) was more popular, helped by Bardot co-starring with Claudia Cardinale.
She made one more movie working with Vadim, "Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman" (1973), playing the title role. Vadim said the film marked "Underneath what people call 'the Bardot myth' was something interesting, even though she was never considered the most professional actress in the world. For years, since she has been growing older, and the Bardot myth has become just a souvenir... I was curious in her as a woman and I had to get to the end of something with her, to get out of her and express many things I felt were in her. Brigitte always gave the impression of sexual freedom – she is a completely open and free person, without any aggression. So I gave her the part of a man – that amused me".
"If "Don Juan" is not my last movie it will be my next to last", said Bardot during filming. She kept her word and made only one more film, "The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot" (1973).
In 1973, Bardot announced she was retiring from acting as "a way to get out elegantly".
Animal rights activism.
Bardot met Paul Watson in 1977, the same year he founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, during an operation to condemn the massacre of seal pups and seal hunting on the Canadian ice floe. In support of animal protection, Bardot went to the ice floe after being invited by Watson. Bardot posed lying down next to the seal pups; the photos were seen worldwide. Bardot and Watson remained friends.
After appearing in more than 40 motion pictures and recording several music albums, Bardot used her fame to promote animal rights. In 1986, she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million francs (about 430,000 1986 US dollars) to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewellery and personal belongings.
Bardot has been a strong animal rights activist and a major opponent of the consumption of horse meat.
In 1989, while looking after her neighbour, Jean-Pierre Manivet's donkey, the mare displayed excessive interest in Bardot's older donkey and she subsequently had the neighbour's donkey castrated due to concerns the mating would prove fatal for her mare. The neighbour then sued Bardot, and Bardot later won, with the court ordering Manivet to pay 20,000 francs for creating a "false scandal".
Bardot urged French television viewers to boycott horse meat and was soon the target of death threats in January 1994. Not backing off from the threats, she sent a letter to the French Minister of Agriculture, Jean Puech, calling on him to ban the sale of horse meat.
Bardot wrote a 1999 letter to Chinese President Jiang Zemin, published in French magazine "VSD", in which she accused the Chinese of "torturing bears and killing the world's last tigers and rhinos to make aphrodisiacs".
She donated more than US$140,000 over two years in 2001 for a mass sterilization and adoption program for Bucharest's stray dogs, estimated to number 300,000.
In August 2010, Bardot addressed a letter to Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, appealing for the sovereign to halt the killing of dolphins in the Faroe Islands. In the letter, Bardot describes the activity as a "macabre spectacle" that "is a shame for Denmark and the Faroe Islands ... This is not a hunt but a mass slaughter ... an outmoded tradition that has no acceptable justification in today's world".
On 22 April 2011, French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand officially included bullfighting in the country's cultural heritage. Bardot wrote him a highly critical letter of protest. On 25 May 2011, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society renamed its fast interceptor vessel, MV "Gojira", as MV "Brigitte Bardot" in appreciation of her support.
From 2013, the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, in collaboration with Kagyupa International Monlam Trust of India, operated an annual veterinary care camp. Bardot committed to the cause of animal welfare in Bodhgaya over several years.
On 23 July 2015, Bardot condemned Australian politician Greg Hunt's plan to eradicate 2 million cats to save endangered species such as the Warru and night parrot.
At the age of 90, Bardot appealed to free Watson, who had been detained in Greenland since 21 July 2024, when Japan requested his extradition. Through a request expressed in mid-October 2024 by her lawyers and Sea Shepherd France, Bardot asked French President Emmanuel Macron to grant Watson political asylum. Bardot asked Macron to show "a little bit of courage". During that month, she initiated a demonstration in support of Watson in front of the Hôtel de Ville, Paris. Bardot also wrote a letter to Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, asking her to "not choose the camp of the oceans gravediggers".
Personal life.
Marriages and relationships.
Bardot has been married four times, with her current marriage lasting far longer than the previous three combined. By her own count, she has had a total of 17 romantic relationships. Bardot would characteristically leave for another relationship when "the present was getting lukewarm"; she said, "I have always looked for passion. That's why I was often unfaithful. And when the passion was coming to an end, I was packing my suitcase".
On 20 December 1952, aged 18, Bardot married director Roger Vadim. They separated in 1956 after she became involved with "And God Created Woman" co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, divorcing the next year. Trintignant at the time was married to actress Stéphane Audran. Bardot and Vadim had no children together, but remained in touch for the rest of his life and even collaborated on later projects. Bardot and Trintignant lived together for about two years, spanning the period before and after Bardot's divorce from Vadim, but they never married. Their relationship was complicated by Trintignant's frequent absence due to military service and Bardot's affair with musician Gilbert Bécaud.
After her separation from Vadim, Bardot acquired a historic property dating from the 16th century, called Le Castelet, in Cannes. The fourteen-bedroom villa, surrounded by lush gardens, olive trees, and vineyards, consisted of several buildings.
In 1958, she bought a second property called La Madrague, located in Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer. In early 1958, her breakup with Trintignant was followed in quick order by a reported nervous breakdown in Italy, according to newspaper reports. A suicide attempt with sleeping pills two days earlier was also noted but was denied by her public relations manager. She recovered within weeks, began a relationship with actor Jacques Charrier, and became pregnant well before they married on 18 June 1959. Bardot's only child, son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier, was born on 11 January 1960. Bardot had an affair with Glenn Ford in the early 1960s. After she and Charrier divorced in 1962, Nicolas was raised in the Charrier family and had little contact with his biological mother until his adulthood. Sami Frey was mentioned as the reason for her divorce from Charrier. Bardot was enamoured of Frey, but he quickly left her.
From 1963 to 1965, she lived with musician Bob Zagury.
Bardot's third marriage was to German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs, lasting from 14 July 1966 to 7 October 1969, though they had separated the previous year. While filming "Shalako", she rejected Sean Connery's advances; she said, "It didn't last long because I wasn't a James Bond girl! I have never succumbed to his charm!" In 1968, she began dating Patrick Gilles, who co-starred with her in "The Bear and the Doll" (1970); but she ended their relationship in spring 1971.
Over the next few years, Bardot dated bartender/ski instructor Christian Kalt, nightclub owner Luigi "Gigi" Rizzi, singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, writer John Gilmore, actor Warren Beatty, and Laurent Vergez, her co-star in "Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman".
In 1974, Bardot appeared in a nude photo shoot in "Playboy" magazine, which celebrated her 40th birthday. In 1975, she entered a relationship with artist Miroslav Brozek and posed for some of his sculptures. Brozek was also an occasional actor; his stage name is . The couple lived together for four years, separating in December 1979.
From 1980 to 1985, Bardot had a live-in relationship with French TV producer . On 27 September 1983, the eve of her 49th birthday, Bardot took an overdose of sleeping pills or tranquilizers with red wine, then wandered out to the beach, where she was later pulled from the surf. She had to be rushed to the hospital, where her life was saved after a stomach pump was used to evacuate the pills from her body. Bardot was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1984. She refused to undergo chemotherapy treatment and decided only to do radiation therapy. She recovered in 1986.
Bardot's fourth and current husband is Bernard d'Ormale; they have been married since 16 August 1992. In 2018, in an interview accorded to "Le Journal du Dimanche", she denied rumors of relationships with Johnny Hallyday, Jimi Hendrix, and Mick Jagger.
Politics and legal issues.
Bardot expressed support for President Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s.
In 1997, Bardot and her publisher, Éditions Grasset, were ordered to pay 28,000 pounds because of "hurtful remarks" about her son and former husband Jacques Charrier contained in her autobiography. Her son and ex–husband had originally sued for more than 1 million pounds in damages.
In her 1999 book "Le Carré de Pluton" ("Pluto's Square"), Bardot criticizes the procedure used in the ritual slaughter of sheep during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Additionally, in a section in the book entitled "Open Letter to My Lost France," she writes that "my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims." For this comment, a French court fined her 30,000 francs (about 4,200 US dollars in 2000) in June 2000. She had been fined in 1997 for the original publication of this open letter in "Le Figaro" and again in 1998 for making similar remarks.
In her 2003 book, "Un cri dans le silence" ("A Scream in the Silence"), she contrasted her close gay friends with homosexuals who "jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through," and said some contemporary homosexuals behave like "fairground freaks." In her own defence, Bardot wrote in a letter to a French gay magazine: "Apart from my husband—who maybe will cross over one day as well—I am entirely surrounded by homos. For years, they have been my support, my friends, my adopted children, my confidants."
In her book, she criticised racial mixing, immigration, the role of women in politics and Islam. The book also contained a section attacking what she called the mixing of genes, and praised previous generations which, she said, had given their lives to push out invaders. On 10 June 2004, Bardot was convicted for a fourth time by a French court for inciting racial hatred and fined €5,000. Bardot denied the racial hatred charge and apologized in court, saying: "I never knowingly wanted to hurt anybody. It is not in my character." In 2008, Bardot was convicted of inciting racial/religious hatred in regard to a letter she wrote, a copy of which she sent to Nicolas Sarkozy when he was Interior Minister of France. The letter stated her objections to Muslims in France ritually slaughtering sheep by slitting their throats without anesthetizing them first. She also said, in reference to Muslims, that she was "fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its habits." The trial concluded on 3 June 2008, with a conviction and fine of €15,000. The prosecutor stated she was weary of charging Bardot with offences related to racial hatred.
During the 2008 United States presidential election, Bardot branded Republican Party vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as "stupid" and a "disgrace to women." She criticized the former Alaskan governor for her stance on global warming and gun control. She was further offended by Palin's support for Arctic oil exploration and by her lack of consideration in protecting polar bears.
On 13 August 2010, Bardot criticised American filmmaker Kyle Newman for his plan to produce a biographical film about her. She told him, "Wait until I'm dead before you make a movie about my life!" otherwise "sparks will fly."
In 2014, Bardot wrote an open letter demanding the ban in France of Jewish ritual slaughter shechita. In response, the European Jewish Congress released a statement saying "Bardot has once again shown her clear insensitivity for minority groups with the substance and style of her letter...She may well be concerned for the welfare of animals but her longstanding support for the far-right and for discrimination against minorities in France shows a constant disdain for human rights instead."
In 2015, Bardot threatened to sue a Saint-Tropez boutique for selling items featuring her face. In 2018, she expressed support for the Yellow vests protests.
In January 2018, Bardot called all the actresses claiming to have been victims of sexual harassments "hypocrites" and "ridiculous" in an interview with Paris Match : “Many actresses flirt with producers to get a role. Then when they tell the story afterwards, they say they have been harassed … in actual fact, rather than benefit them, it only harms them.”
On 19 March 2019, Bardot issued an open letter to Réunion prefect in which she accused inhabitants of the Indian Ocean island of animal cruelty and referred to them as "autochthones who have kept the genes of savages". In her letter relating to animal abuse and sent through her foundation, she mentioned the "beheadings of goats and billy goats" during festivals, and associated these practices with "reminiscences of cannibalism from past centuries". The public prosecutor filed a lawsuit the following day.
In June 2021, 86-year-old Bardot was fined €5,000 by the Arras court for public insults against hunters and their national president . She had published a post at the end of 2019 on her foundation's website, calling hunters "sub-men" and "drunkards" and carriers of "genes of cruel barbarism inherited from our primitive ancestors", and insulting Schraen. At the time of the hearing, she had not removed the comments from the website. Following her letter sent to the prefect of Réunion in 2019, she was convicted on 4 November 2021 by a French court for public insults and fined €20,000, the largest of her fines to date.
Bardot's husband Bernard d'Ormale is a former adviser to Jean-Marie Le Pen, former leader of the far-right party National Front (which became National Rally), the main far-right party in France. Bardot expressed support for Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front (National Rally), calling her "the Joan of Arc of the 21st century". She endorsed Le Pen in the 2012 and 2017 French presidential elections.
Bardot has been convicted of inciting racial hatred multiple times, having received six separate fines for the offense as of November 2021.
Legacy.
"The Guardian" named Bardot "one of the most iconic faces, models, and actors of the 1950s and 1960s". She has been called a "style icon" and a "muse for Dior, Balmain, and Pierre Cardin".
In fashion, the Bardot neckline (a wide-open neck that exposes both shoulders) is named after her. Bardot popularized this style, which is especially used for knitted sweaters or jumpers, although it is also used for other tops and dresses. Bardot popularized the bikini in her early films such as "Manina" (1952) (released in France as "Manina, la fille sans voiles"). The following year she was also photographed in a bikini on every beach in southern France during the Cannes Film Festival. She gained additional attention when she filmed "...And God Created Woman" (1956) with Jean-Louis Trintignant (released in France as "Et Dieu Créa La Femme"). In it Bardot portrays an immoral teenager cavorting in a bikini who seduces men in a respectable small-town setting. The film was an international success. Bardot's image was linked to the shoemaker Repetto, who created a pair of ballerinas for her in 1956. The bikini was in the 1950s relatively well accepted in France but was still considered risqué in the United States. As late as 1959, Anne Cole, one of the United States' largest swimsuit designers, said, "It's nothing more than a G-string. It's at the razor's edge of decency."
She also brought into fashion the () hairstyle (similar to the beehive hair style) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir described Bardot as "a locomotive of women's history".
Isabella Biedenharn of "Elle" wrote that Bardot "has inspired thousands (millions?) of women to tease their hair or try out winged eyeliner over the past few decades". A well-known evocative pose describes an iconic modelling portrait shot around 1960 where Bardot is dressed only in a pair of black pantyhose, cross-legged over her front and cross-armed over her breasts; known as the "Bardot Pose". This pose has been emulated numerous times by models and celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, Elle Macpherson, Gisele Bündchen, and Rihanna. In the late 1960s, Bardot's silhouette was used as a model for designing and modelling the statue's bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic.
In addition to popularizing the bikini swimming suit, Bardot has been credited with popularizing the city of St. Tropez and the town of Armação dos Búzios in Brazil, which she visited in 1964 with her boyfriend at the time, Brazilian musician Bob Zagury. The place where she stayed in Búzios is today a small hotel, Pousada do Sol, and also a French restaurant, Cigalon. The town hosts a Bardot statue by Christina Motta.
Bardot was idolized by the young John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They made plans to shoot a film featuring The Beatles and Bardot, similar to "A Hard Day's Night", but the plans were never fulfilled. Lennon's first wife Cynthia Powell lightened her hair colour to more closely resemble Bardot, while George Harrison made comparisons between Bardot and his first wife Pattie Boyd, as Cynthia wrote later in "A Twist of Lennon". Lennon and Bardot met in person once, in 1968 at the May Fair Hotel, introduced by Beatles press agent Derek Taylor; a nervous Lennon took LSD before arriving, and neither star impressed the other. Lennon recalled in a memoir: "I was on acid, and she was on her way out." According to the liner notes of his first (self-titled) album, musician Bob Dylan dedicated the first song he ever wrote to Bardot. He also mentioned her by name in "I Shall Be Free", which appeared on his second album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan". The first-ever official exhibition spotlighting Bardot's influence and legacy opened in Boulogne-Billancourt on 29 September 2009 – a day after her 75th birthday.
Bardot was the subject of eight Andy Warhol paintings in 1974.
The Australian pop group Bardot was named after her.
Kylie Minogue adopted the Bardot "sex kitten look" on the cover of her album "Body Language", released in 2003.
Women who emulated and were inspired by Bardot include Claudia Schiffer, Emmanuelle Béart, Elke Sommer, Kate Moss, Faith Hill, Isabelle Adjani, Diane Kruger, Lara Stone, Minogue, Amy Winehouse, Georgia May Jagger, Zahia Dehar, Scarlett Johansson, Louise Bourgoin, and Paris Hilton. Bardot said: "None have my personality." Laetitia Casta embodied Bardot in the 2010 French drama film "" by Joann Sfar.
In 2011, "Los Angeles Times Magazine"s list of "50 Most Beautiful Women in Film" ranked her number two.
A portrait of Bardot by Warhol, commissioned by Sachs in 1974, was sold at Sotheby's in London on 22 and 23 May 2012. The painting, estimated at million, was part of Sachs' art collection put on sale a year after his death.
She inspired Nicole Kidman, who had "Bardot-esque" hair in the 2013 British brand Jimmy Choo campaign.
In 2015, Bardot was ranked number six in "The Top Ten Most Beautiful Women of All Time", according to a survey carried out by Amway's beauty company in the UK involving 2,000 women.
American alternative rock band Brigitte Calls Me Baby was named after her, inspired by pen-pal correspondence between frontman Wes Leavins and Bardot.
In 2020, "Vogue" named Bardot number one of "The most beautiful French actresses of all time". In a retrospective retracing women throughout the history of cinema, she was listed among "the most accomplished, talented and beautiful actresses of all time" by "Glamour".
The French drama television series "Bardot" was broadcast on France 2 in 2023. It stars Julia de Nunez and is about Bardot's career from her first casting at age 15 and until the filming of "La Vérité" ten years later. In 2023, she was mentioned in Olivia Rodrigo's song "Lacy" from her album "Guts", and Chappell Roan's "Red Wine Supernova" from her album "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess".
On May 12, 2025, the 90–year–old Bardot was interviewed at her house in Saint-Tropez for 47 minutes. The interview was broadcast on the French network BFMTV and was her first television appearance in eleven years. During the interview she discussed her acting career, songs, love of nature, life memories, and her good health, again expressing her commitment to animal rights. She also said, "Feminism isn't my thing. I like guys", regarding her criticism of feminism and feminist organizations that she has called "excessive or ideological", and expressed her views on the legal problems of Nicolas Bedos and Gérard Depardieu saying, "Those who have talent and put their hands on a girl's buttocks are relegated to the bottomless pit. We could at least let them continue to live. They can no longer live." She also revealed that she doesn't use a mobile phone or computer.
Books.
Bardot has also written five books:
References.
Other sources
|
3846
|
1300006568
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3846
|
Banjo
|
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin.
Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents. In the 19th century, interest in the instrument was spread across the United States and United Kingdom by traveling shows of the 19th-century minstrel show fad, followed by mass production and mail-order sales, including instructional books. The inexpensive or home-made banjo remained part of rural folk culture, but five-string and four-string banjos also became popular for home parlor music entertainment, college music clubs, and early 20th century jazz bands. By the early 20th century, the banjo was most frequently associated with folk, cowboy music, and country music. By mid-century it had come to be strongly associated with bluegrass. Eventually it began to be employed occasionally and sporadically in various kinds or other kinds of popular music. Some famous players of the banjo are Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs.
Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and rural folk culture before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as bluegrass and old-time music. It is also very frequently used in Dixieland jazz, as well as in Caribbean genres like biguine, calypso, mento and twoubadou.
History.
Early origins.
The modern banjo derives from instruments that have been recorded to be in use in North America and the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West and Central Africa, such as the kora. Their African-style instruments were crafted from split gourds with animal skins stretched across them. Strings, from gut or vegetable fibers, were attached to a wooden neck. Written references to the banjo in North America and the Caribbean appear in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The earliest written indication of an instrument akin to the banjo is in the 17th century: Richard Jobson (1621) in describing The Gambia, wrote about an instrument which some consider to be similar to the banjo.
They have little varietie of instruments, that which is most common in use, is made of a great gourd, and a necke thereunto fastned, resembling, in some sort, our Bandora; but they have no manner of fret, and the strings they are either such as the place yeeldes or their invention can attaine to make, being very unapt to yeeld a sweete and musicall sound, notwithstanding with pinnes they winde and bring to agree in tunable notes, having not above sixe strings upon their greatest instrument.
The term "banjo" has several etymological origins. One theory links it to the Mandinka language which gives the name of Banjul, capital of The Gambia. Another claim is a connection to the West African "akonting": it is made with a long bamboo neck called a "bangoe". The material for the neck, called "ban julo" in the Mandinka language, again gives "banjul". In this interpretation, "banjul" became a sort of eponym for the akonting as it crossed the Atlantic. The instrument's name might also derive from the Kimbundu word "mbanza", which is a loan word to the Portuguese language resulting in the term "banza", which was used by early French travelers in the Americas. Its earliest recorded use was in 1678 by the Sovereign Council of Martinique which reinstated a 1654 decree that placed prohibitions and restrictions on "dances and assemblies of negroes" deemed to be "kalenda", which was defined as the gathering of enslaved Africans who danced to the sound of a drum and an instrument called the banza.
The OED claims that the term "banjo" comes from a dialectal pronunciation of Portuguese "bandore" or from an early anglicisation of Spanish "bandurria". Contrary evidence shows that the terms "bandore" and "bandurria" were used when Europeans encountered the instrument or its kin varieties in use by people of African descent, who used names for the instrument such as "banza", as it was called in places such as Haiti, varieties that were built around a gourd body with a wooden plank for the neck. François Richard de Tussac, a former planter from Saint-Domingue, details its construction in the book "Le Cri des Colons", published in 1810, stating:
As for the guitars, which the negroes call "banzas", this is what they consist of: they cut lengthwise, through the middle, a fresh calabash [the fruit of a tree called the callebassier]. This fruit is sometimes eight inches or more in diameter. The stretch across it the skin of a goat, which they attach on the edges with little nails; they put two or three little holes on this surface, and then a kind of plank or piece of wood that is rudely flattened makes the neck of the instrument; they stretch three strings made of pitre [a kind of string taken from the agave plant, commonly known as pitre] across it; and so the instrument is built. On this instrument they play airs composed of three or four notes, which they repeat constantly.
Michel Étienne Descourtilz, a naturalist who visited Haiti in the early 1800s, described it as "banzas", a Negro instrument, that the natives prepare by sawing one of the calabashes or a large gourd lengthwise, to which they attach a neck and sonorous strings made from the filament" of aloe plants. It was played during any occasion, from boredom to joyous parties and calendas to funeral ceremonies. It was the custom to also combine this sound with the more noisy "bamboula", a type of drum made from a stick of bamboo covered on both sides with a skin that was played with fingers and knuckles while sitting astride.
Various instruments in Africa, chief among them the "kora", feature a skin drumhead and gourd (or similar shell) body. These instruments differ from early African-American banjos in that the necks do not possess a Western-style fingerboard and tuning pegs; instead they have stick necks, with strings attached to the neck with loops for tuning.
Another likely relative of the banjo is the aforementioned "akonting", a spike folk lute which is constructed using a gourd body, a long wooden neck, and three strings played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the "ubaw-akwala" of the Igbo. Similar instruments include the "xalam" of Senegal and the "ngoni" of the Wassoulou region that includes parts of Mali, Guinea, and Ivory Coast, as well as a larger variation of the "ngoni", known as the "gimbri", developed in Morocco by sub-Saharan Africans (Gnawa or Haratin).
Banjo-like instruments seem to have been independently invented in several different places, in addition to the many African instruments mentioned above, since instruments similar to the banjo are known from a diverse array of distant countries. For example, the Chinese "sanxian", the Japanese "shamisen", the Persian "tar", and the Moroccan "sintir".
Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century. Some 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as "bangie", "banza", "bonjaw", "banjer" and "banjar". A British tourist's 1812 description of a gambling hall in Wheeling, Virginia mentions "bangies": "Would that Hogarth had lived to see that room! One corner was occupied by a portion of the assembly, engaged in the fascinating games of all-fours, three-up and cribbage; in another stood a table of refreshments, whiskey and biscuit, surrounded by a crowd of drinkers and smokers; a group of noisy politicians held possession in the third; and in the fourth was stationed the music which consisted of two bangies played by negroes nearly in a state of nudity, and a lute through which a Chickasaw breathed delightful harmony."
The instrument became increasingly available commercially from around the second quarter of the 19th century due to minstrel show performances.
Minstrel era, 1830s–1870s.
In the antebellum South, many enslaved Africans played the banjo, spreading it to the rest of the population. In his memoir "With Sabre and Scalpel: The Autobiography of a Soldier and Surgeon", the Confederate veteran and surgeon John Allan Wyeth recalls learning to play the banjo as a child from an enslaved person on his family plantation. Another man who learned to play from African-Americans, probably in the 1820s, was Joel Walker Sweeney, a minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Sweeney has been credited with adding a string to the four-string African-American banjo, and popularizing the five-string banjo. Although Robert McAlpin Williamson is the first documented white banjoist, in the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage. Sweeney's musical performances occurred at the beginning of the minstrel era, as banjos shifted away from being exclusively homemade folk instruments to instruments of a more modern style. Sweeney participated in this transition by encouraging drum maker William Boucher of Baltimore to make banjos commercially for him to sell.
In 1949, Arthur Woodward credited Sweeney with replacing the gourd with a wooden sound box covered in skin, and adding a short fifth string around 1831. However, modern scholar Gene Bluestein pointed out in 1964 that Sweeney may not have originated either the 5th string or sound box. This new banjo was at first tuned d'Gdf♯a, though by the 1890s, this had been transposed up to g'cgbd'. Banjos were introduced in Britain by Sweeney's group, the American Virginia Minstrels, in the 1840s, and became very popular in music halls.
The instrument grew in popularity during the 1840s after Sweeney began his traveling minstrel show. By the end of the 1840s the instrument had expanded from Caribbean possession to take root in places across America and across the Atlantic in England. It was estimated in 1866 that there were probably 10,000 banjos in New York City, up from only a handful in 1844. People were exposed to banjos not only at minstrel shows, but also medicine shows, Wild-West shows, variety shows, and traveling vaudeville shows. The banjo's popularity also was given a boost by the Civil War, as servicemen on both sides in the Army or Navy were exposed to the banjo played in minstrel shows and by other servicemen. A popular movement of aspiring banjoists began as early as 1861. The enthusiasm for the instrument was labeled a "banjo craze" or "banjo mania."
By the 1850s, aspiring banjo players had options to help them learn their instrument. There were more teachers teaching banjo basics in the 1850s than there had been in the 1840s. There were also instruction manuals and, for those who could read it, printed music in the manuals. The first book of notated music was "The Complete Preceptor" by Elias Howe, published under the pseudonym "Gumbo Chaff", consisting mainly of Christy's Minstrels tunes. The first banjo method was the "Briggs' Banjo instructor" (1855) by Tom Briggs. Other methods included "Howe's New American Banjo School" (1857), and "Phil Rice's Method for the Banjo, With or Without a Master" (1858). These books taught the "stroke style" or "banjo style", similar to modern "frailing" or "clawhammer" styles.
By 1868, music for the banjo was available printed in a magazine, when J. K. Buckley wrote and arranged popular music for "Buckley's Monthly Banjoist". Frank B. Converse also published his entire collection of compositions in "The Complete Banjoist" in 1868, which included "polkas, waltzes, marches, and clog hornpipes."
In the 1840s, opportunities for work were found not only in minstrel companies and circuses, but also in floating theaters and variety theaters, which served as precursors to the variety show and vaudeville.
Classic era, 1880s–1910s.
The term "classic banjo" is used today to talk about a bare-finger "guitar style" that was widely in use among banjo players of the late 19th to early 20th century. It is still used by banjoists today. The term also differentiates that style of playing from the fingerpicking bluegrass banjo styles, such as the Scruggs style and Keith style.
The "Briggs Banjo Method", considered to be the first banjo method and which taught the "stroke style" of playing, also mentioned the existence of another way of playing, the "guitar style." Alternatively known as "finger style", the new way of playing the banjo displaced the stroke method, until by 1870 it was the dominant style. Although mentioned by Briggs, it wasn't taught. The first banjo method to teach the technique was "Frank B. Converse's New and Complete Method for the Banjo with or without a Master", published in 1865.
To play in guitar style, players use the thumb and two or three fingers on their right hand to pick the notes. Samuel Swaim Stewart summarized the style in 1888, saying,
The banjo, although popular, carried low-class associations from its role in blackface minstrel shows, medicine shows, tent shows, and variety shows or vaudeville. There was a push in the 19th century to bring the instrument into "respectability." Musicians such as William A. Huntley made an effort to "elevate" the instrument or make it more "artistic," by "bringing it to a more sophisticated level of technique and repertoire based on European standards." Huntley may have been the first white performer to successfully make the transition from performing in blackface to being himself on stage, noted by the Boston Herald in November 1884. He was supported by another former blackface performer, Samuel Swaim Stewart, in his corporate magazine that popularized highly talented professionals.
As the "raucous" imitations of plantation life decreased in minstrelsy, the banjo became more acceptable as an instrument of fashionable society, even to be accepted into women's parlors. Part of that change was a switch from the stroke style to the guitar playing style. An 1888 newspaper said, "All the maidens and a good many of the women also strum the instrument, banjo classes abound on every side and banjo recitals are among the newest diversions of fashion...Youths and elderly men too have caught the fever...the star strummers among men are in demand at the smartest parties and have the choosing of the society of the most charming girls."
Some of those entertainers, such as Alfred A. Farland, specialized in classical music. However, musicians who wanted to entertain their audiences, and make a living, mixed it in with the popular music that audiences wanted. Farland's pupil Frederick J. Bacon was one of these. A former medicine show entertainer, Bacon performed classical music along with popular songs such as "Massa's in de cold, cold ground", a "Medley of Scotch Airs", a "Medley of Southern Airs", and Thomas Glynn’s "West Lawn Polka".
Banjo innovation which began in the minstrel age continued, with increased use of metal parts, exotic wood, raised metal frets and a tone-ring that improved the sound. Instruments were designed in a variety of sizes and pitch ranges, to play different parts in banjo orchestras. Examples on display in the museum include banjorines and piccolo banjos.
New styles of playing, a new look, instruments in a variety of pitch ranges to take the place of different sections in an orchestra – all helped to separate the instrument from the rough minstrel image of the previous 50–60 years. The instrument was modern now, a bright new thing, with polished metal sides.
Ragtime era (1895–1919) and Jazz Age era (1910s–1930s).
In the early 1900s, new banjos began to spread, four-string models, played with a plectrum rather than with the minstrel-banjo clawhammer stroke or the classic-banjo fingerpicking style. The new banjos were a result of changing musical tastes. New music spurred the creation of "evolutionary variations" of the banjo, from the five-string model current since the 1830s to newer four-string plectrum and tenor banjos.
The instruments became ornately decorated in the 1920s to be visually dynamic to a theater audience. The instruments were increasingly modified or made in a new style – necks that were shortened to handle the four steel (not fiber as before) strings, strings that were sounded with a pick instead of fingers, four strings instead of five and tuned differently. The changes reflected the nature of post-World-War-I music. The country was turning away from European classics, preferring the "upbeat and carefree feel" of jazz, and American soldiers returning from the war helped to drive this change.
The change in tastes toward dance music and the need for louder instruments began a few years before the war, however, with ragtime. That music encouraged musicians to alter their 5-string banjos to four, add the louder steel strings and use a pick or plectrum, all in an effort to be heard over the brass and reed instruments that were current in dance-halls. The four string plectrum and tenor banjos did not eliminate the five-string variety. They were products of their times and musical purposes—ragtime and jazz dance music and theater music.
The Great Depression is a visible line to mark the end of the Jazz Age. The economic downturn cut into the sales of both four- and five-stringed banjos, and by World War 2, banjos were in sharp decline, the market for them dead.
Modern era.
In the years after World War II, the banjo experienced a resurgence, played by music stars such as Earl Scruggs (bluegrass), Bela Fleck (jazz, rock, world music), Gerry O'Connor (Celtic and Irish music), Perry Bechtel (jazz, big band), Pete Seeger (folk), and Otis Taylor (African-American roots, blues, jazz).
Pete Seeger "was a major force behind a new national interest in folk music." Learning to play a fingerstyle in the Appalachians from musicians who never stopped playing the banjo, he wrote the book, "How to Play the Five-String Banjo", which was the only banjo method on the market for years. He was followed by a movement of folk musicians, such as Dave Guard of The Kingston Trio and Erik Darling of the Weavers and Tarriers.
Earl Scruggs was seen both as a legend and a "contemporary musical innovator" who gave his name to his style of playing, the "Scruggs Style". Scruggs played the banjo "with heretofore unheard of speed and dexterity," using a picking technique for the 5-string banjo that he perfected from 2-finger and 3-finger picking techniques in rural North Carolina. His playing reached Americans through the Grand Ole Opry and into the living rooms of Americans who didn't listen to country or bluegrass music, through the theme music of "The Beverly Hillbillies" TV sitcom.
For the last one hundred years, the tenor banjo has become an intrinsic part of the world of Irish traditional music. It is a relative newcomer to the genre.
The banjo has also been used more recently in the hardcore punk scene, most notably by Show Me the Body on their debut album, "Body War".
Technique.
Two techniques closely associated with the five-string banjo are rolls and drones. Rolls are right hand accompanimental fingering patterns that consist of eight (eighth) notes that subdivide each measure. Drone notes are quick little notes (typically eighth notes), usually played on the 5th (short) string to fill in around the melody notes (typically eighth notes). Both rolls and drones are idiomatic to the banjo in all styles, and their sound is characteristic of bluegrass.
Historically, the banjo was played in the claw-hammer style by the Africans who brought their version of the banjo with them. Several other styles of play were developed from this. Clawhammer consists of downward striking of one or more of the four main strings with the index, middle or both fingers while the drone or fifth string is played with a 'lifting' (as opposed to downward pluck) motion of the thumb. The notes typically sounded by the thumb in this fashion are, usually, on the off beat. Melodies can be quite intricate adding techniques such as double thumbing and drop thumb. In old time Appalachian Mountain music, a style called two-finger up-pick is also used, and a three-finger version that Earl Scruggs developed into the "Scruggs" style picking was nationally aired in 1945 on the Grand Ole Opry. In this style the instrument is played by plucking individual notes. Modern fingerstyle is usually played using fingerpicks, though early players and some modern players play either with nails or with a technique known as on the flesh. In this style the strings are played directly with the fingers, rather than any pick or intermediary.
While five-string banjos are traditionally played with either fingerpicks or the fingers themselves, tenor banjos and plectrum banjos are played with a pick, either to strum full chords, or most commonly in Irish traditional music, play single-note melodies.
Modern forms.
The modern banjo comes in a variety of forms, including four- and five-string versions. A six-string version, tuned and played similarly to a guitar, has gained popularity. In almost all of its forms, banjo playing is characterized by a fast arpeggiated plucking, though many different playing styles exist.
The body, or "pot", of a modern banjo typically consists of a circular rim (generally made of wood, though metal was also common on older banjos) and a tensioned head, similar to a drum head. Traditionally, the head was made from animal skin, but today is often made of various synthetic materials. Most modern banjos also have a metal "tone ring" assembly that helps further clarify and project the sound, but many older banjos do not include a tone ring.
The banjo is usually tuned with friction tuning pegs or planetary gear tuners, rather than the worm gear machine head used on guitars. Frets have become standard since the late 19th century, though fretless banjos are still manufactured and played by those wishing to execute glissando, play quarter tones, or otherwise achieve the sound and feeling of early playing styles.
Modern banjos are typically strung with metal strings. Usually, the fourth string is wound with either steel or bronze-phosphor alloy. Some players may string their banjos with nylon or gut strings to achieve a more mellow, old-time tone.
Some banjos have a separate resonator plate on the back of the pot to project the sound forward and give the instrument more volume. This type of banjo is usually used in bluegrass music, though resonator banjos are played by players of all styles, and are also used in old-time, sometimes as a substitute for electric amplification when playing in large venues.
Open-back banjos generally have a mellower tone and weigh less than resonator banjos. They usually have a different setup than a resonator banjo, often with a higher distance between strings and fret, also known as string action.
Five-string banjo.
The modern five-string banjo is a variation on Sweeney's original design. The fifth string is usually the same gauge as the first, but starts from the fifth fret, three-quarters the length of the other strings. This lets the string be tuned to a higher open pitch than possible for the full-length strings. Because of the short fifth string, the five-string banjo uses a reentrant tuning – the string pitches do not proceed lowest to highest across the fingerboard. Instead, the fourth string is lowest, then third, second, first, and the fifth string is highest.
The short fifth string presents special problems for a capo. For small changes (going up or down one or two semitones, for example), simply retuning the fifth string is possible. Otherwise, various devices called "fifth-string capos" effectively shorten the vibrating part of the string. Many banjo players use model-railroad spikes or titanium spikes (usually installed at the seventh fret and sometimes at others), under which they hook the string to press it down on the fret.
Five-string banjo players use many tunings. (Tunings are given in left-to-right order, as viewed from the front of the instrument with the neck pointing up for a right-handed instrument. Left handed instruments reverse the order of the strings.) Probably the most common, particularly in bluegrass, is the Open-G tuning G4 D3 G3 B3 D4. In earlier times, the tuning G4 C3 G3 B3 D4 was commonly used instead, and this is still the preferred tuning for some types of folk music and for classic banjo. Other tunings found in old-time music include double C (G4 C3 G3 C4 D4), "sawmill" (G4 D3 G3 C4 D4) also called "mountain modal" and open D (F#4 D3 F#3 A3 D4). These tunings are often taken up a tone, either by tuning up or using a capo. For example, "double-D" tuning (A4 D3 A3 D4 E4) – commonly reached by tuning up from double C – is often played to accompany fiddle tunes in the key of D, and Open-A (A4 E3 A3 C#4 E4) is usually used for playing tunes in the key of A. Dozens of other banjo tunings are used, mostly in old-time music. These tunings are used to make playing specific tunes easier, usually fiddle tunes or groups of fiddle tunes.
The size of the five-string banjo is largely standardized, with a scale length of , but smaller and larger sizes exist, including the long-neck or "Seeger neck" variation designed by Pete Seeger. Petite variations on the five-string banjo have been available since the 1890s. S.S. Stewart introduced the banjeaurine, tuned one fourth above a standard five-string. Piccolo banjos are smaller, and tuned one octave above a standard banjo. Between these sizes and standard lies the A-scale banjo, which is two frets shorter and usually tuned one full step above standard tunings. Many makers have produced banjos of other scale lengths, and with various innovations.
American old-time music typically uses the five-string, open-back banjo. It is played in a number of different styles, the most common being clawhammer or frailing, characterized by the use of a downward rather than upward stroke when striking the strings with a fingernail. Frailing techniques use the thumb to catch the fifth string for a drone after most strums or after each stroke ("double thumbing"), or to pick out additional melody notes in what is known as drop-thumb. Pete Seeger popularized a folk style by combining clawhammer with up picking, usually without the use of fingerpicks. Another common style of old-time banjo playing is fingerpicking banjo or classic banjo. This style is based upon parlor-style guitar.
Bluegrass music, which uses the five-string resonator banjo almost exclusively, is played in several common styles. These include Scruggs style, named after Earl Scruggs; melodic, or Keith style, named for Bill Keith; and three-finger style with single-string work, also called Reno style after Don Reno. In these styles, the emphasis is on arpeggiated figures played in a continuous eighth-note rhythm, known as rolls. All of these styles are typically played with fingerpicks.
The first five-string, electric, solid-body banjo was developed by Charles Wilburn (Buck) Trent, Harold "Shot" Jackson, and David Jackson in 1960.
The five-string banjo has been used in classical music since before the turn of the 20th century. Contemporary and modern works have been written or arranged for the instrument by Don Vappie, Jerry Garcia, Buck Trent, Béla Fleck, Tony Trischka, Ralph Stanley, George Gibson, Steve Martin, Clifton Hicks, George Crumb, Tim Lake, Modest Mouse, Jo Kondo, Paul Elwood, Hans Werner Henze (notably in his "Sixth Symphony"), Daniel Mason, Beck, the Water Tower Bucket Boys, Todd Taylor, J.P. Pickens, Peggy Honeywell, Norfolk & Western, Putnam Smith, Iron & Wine, The Avett Brothers, The Well Pennies, Punch Brothers, Julian Koster, Sufjan Stevens, and Sarah Jarosz.
George Gershwin includes a banjo in his opera "Porgy and Bess"
Frederick Delius wrote for a banjo in his opera "Koanga".
Ernst Krenek includes two banjos in his "Kleine Symphonie" ("Little Symphony").
Kurt Weill has a banjo in his opera "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny".
Viktor Ullmann included a tenor banjo part in his "Piano Concerto" (op. 25).
Virgil Thomson includes a banjo in his orchestral music to accompany the film "The Plow That Broke the Plains" (1936).
Four-string banjos.
The four-string plectrum banjo is a standard banjo without the short drone string. It usually has 22 frets on the neck and a scale length of 26 to 28 inches, and was originally tuned C3 G3 B3 D4. It can also be tuned like the top four strings of a guitar, which is known as "Chicago tuning". As the name suggests, it is usually played with a guitar-style pick (that is, a single one held between thumb and forefinger), unlike the five-string banjo, which is either played with a thumbpick and two fingerpicks, or with bare fingers. The plectrum banjo evolved out of the five-string banjo, to cater to styles of music involving strummed chords. The plectrum is also featured in many early jazz recordings and arrangements.
Four-string banjos can be used for chordal accompaniment (as in early jazz), for single-string melody playing (as in Irish traditional music), in "chord melody" style (a succession of chords in which the highest notes carry the melody), in tremolo style (both on chords and single strings), and a mixed technique called duo style that combines single-string tremolo and rhythm chords.
Four-string banjos are used from time to time in musical theater. Examples include: "Hello, Dolly!", "Mame", "Chicago", "Cabaret", "Oklahoma!", "Half a Sixpence", "Annie", "Barnum", "The Threepenny Opera", "Monty Python's Spamalot", and countless others. Joe Raposo had used it variably in the imaginative seven-piece orchestration for the long-running TV show "Sesame Street", and has sometimes had it overdubbed with itself or an electric guitar. The banjo is still (albeit rarely) in use in the show's arrangement currently.
Tenor banjo.
The shorter-necked, tenor banjo, with 17 ("short scale") or 19 frets, is also typically played with a plectrum. It became a popular instrument after about 1910. Early models used for melodic picking typically had 17 frets on the neck and a scale length of 19 to 21 inches. By the mid-1920s, when the instrument was used primarily for strummed chordal accompaniment, 19-fret necks with a scale length of 21 to 23 inches became standard. The usual tuning is the all-fifths tuning C3 G3 D4 A4, in which exactly seven semitones (a perfect fifth) occur between the open notes of consecutive strings; this is identical to the tuning of a viola. Other players (particularly in Irish traditional music) tune the banjo G2 D3 A3 E4 like an octave mandolin, which lets the banjoist duplicate fiddle and mandolin fingering. The popularization of this tuning is usually attributed to the late Barney McKenna, banjoist with The Dubliners.
The tenor banjo was a common rhythm instrument in early 20th-century dance bands. Its volume and timbre suited early jazz (and jazz-influenced popular music styles) and could both compete with other instruments (such as brass instruments and saxophones) and be heard clearly on acoustic recordings. George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", in Ferde Grofe's original jazz-orchestra arrangement, includes tenor banjo, with widely spaced chords not easily playable on plectrum banjo in its conventional tunings. With development of the archtop and electric guitar, the tenor banjo largely disappeared from jazz and popular music, though keeping its place in traditional "Dixieland" jazz.
Some 1920s Irish banjo players picked out the melodies of jigs, reels, and hornpipes on tenor banjos, decorating the tunes with snappy triplet ornaments. The most important Irish banjo player of this era was Mike Flanagan of the New York-based Flanagan Brothers, one of the most popular Irish-American groups of the day. Other pre-WWII Irish banjo players included Neil Nolan, who recorded with Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band in Boston, and Jimmy McDade, who recorded with the Four Provinces Orchestra in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, in Ireland, the rise of "ceili" bands provided a new market for a loud instrument like the tenor banjo. Use of the tenor banjo in Irish music has increased greatly since the folk revival of the 1960s.
Six-string banjos.
The six-string banjo began as a British innovation by William Temlett, one of England's earliest banjo makers. He opened a shop in London in 1846, and sold seven-string banjos which he marketed as "zither" banjos from his 1869 patent. A zither banjo usually has a closed back and sides with the drum body and skin tensioning system suspended inside the wooden rim, the neck and string tailpiece mounted on the outside of the rim, and the drone string led through a tube in the neck so that the tuning peg can be mounted on the head. They were often made by builders who used guitar tuners that came in banks of three, so five-stringed instruments had a redundant tuner; these banjos could be somewhat easily converted over to a six-string banjo.
American Alfred Davis Cammeyer (1862–1949), a young violinist turned concert banjo player, devised the six-string zither banjo around 1880. British opera diva Adelina Patti advised Cammeyer that the zither banjo might be popular with English audiences as it had been invented there, and Cammeyer went to London in 1888. With his virtuoso playing, he helped show that banjos could make more sophisticated music than normally played by blackface minstrels. He was soon performing for London society, where he met Sir Arthur Sullivan, who recommended that Cammeyer progress from arranging the music of others for banjo to composing his own music.
Modern six-string bluegrass banjos have been made. These add a bass string between the lowest string and the drone string on a five-string banjo, and are usually tuned G4 G2 D3 G3 B3 D4. Sonny Osborne played one of these instruments for several years. It was modified by luthier Rual Yarbrough from a Vega five-string model. A picture of Sonny with this banjo appears in Pete Wernick's "Bluegrass Banjo" method book.
Six-string banjos known as banjo guitars basically consist of a six-string guitar neck attached to a bluegrass or plectrum banjo body, which allows players who have learned the guitar to play a banjo sound without having to relearn fingerings. This was the instrument of the early jazz great Johnny St. Cyr, jazzmen Django Reinhardt, Danny Barker, Papa Charlie Jackson and Clancy Hayes, as well as the blues and gospel singer Reverend Gary Davis. Today, musicians as diverse as Keith Urban, Rod Stewart, Taj Mahal, Joe Satriani, David Hidalgo, Larry Lalonde and Doc Watson play the six-string guitar banjo. They have become increasingly popular since the mid-1990s.
Other banjos.
Low banjos.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in vogue in plucked-string instrument ensembles – guitar orchestras, mandolin orchestras, banjo orchestras – was when the instrumentation was made to parallel that of the string section in symphony orchestras. Thus, "violin, viola, 'cello, bass" became "mandolin, mandola, mandocello, mandobass", or in the case of banjos, "banjolin, banjola, banjo cello, bass banjo". Because the range of pluck-stringed instrument generally is not as great as that of comparably sized bowed-string instruments, other instruments were often added to these plucked orchestras to extend the range of the ensemble upwards and downwards.
The banjo cello was normally tuned C2-G2-D3-A3, one octave below the tenor banjo like the cello and mandocello. A five-string cello banjo, set up like a bluegrass banjo (with the short fifth string), but tuned one octave lower, has been produced by the Goldtone company.
Bass banjos have been produced in both upright bass formats and with standard, horizontally carried banjo bodies. Contrabass banjos with either three or four strings have also been made; some of these had headstocks similar to those of bass violins. Tuning varies on these large instruments, with four-string models sometimes being tuned in 4ths like a bass violin (E1-A1-D2-G2) and sometimes in 5ths, like a four-string cello banjo, one octave lower (C1-G1-D2-A2).
Long neck banjos.
Also called Seeger banjos for having been invented by Pete Seeger, these banjos feature three extra frets, giving the instrument a longer neck and greater playing versatility. With three extra frets, these banjos can be played one-and-a-half steps lower than a regular banjo, which some players find advantageous for singing or playing along. They are almost always open-backed. Notably, the drone strings on Seeger banjos are not pushed three frets back, so the tuning peg for the 5th string is in line with the 8th fret instead of the 5th fret.
Banjo hybrids and variants.
A number of hybrid instruments exist, crossing the banjo with other stringed instruments. Most of these use the body of a banjo, often with a resonator, and the neck of the other instrument. Examples include the banjo mandolin (first patented in 1882) and the banjo ukulele, most famously played by the English comedian George Formby. These were especially popular in the early decades of the 20th century, and were probably a result of a desire either to allow players of other instruments to jump on the banjo bandwagon at the height of its popularity, or to get the natural amplification benefits of the banjo resonator in an age before electric amplification.
Conversely, the tenor and plectrum guitars use the respective banjo necks on guitar bodies. They arose in the early 20th century as a way for banjo players to double on guitar without having to relearn the instrument entirely.
Instruments that have a five-string banjo neck on a wooden body (for example, a guitar, bouzouki, or dobro body) have also been made, such as the banjola. A 20th-century Turkish instrument similar to the banjo is called the "cümbüş", which combines a banjo-like resonator with a neck derived from an oud. At the end of the 20th century, a development of the five-string banjo was the BanSitar. This features a bone bridge, giving the instrument a sitar-like resonance.
The Brazilian samba banjo is basically a cavaquinho neck on a banjo body, thereby producing a louder sound than the cavaquinho. It is tuned the same as the top 4 strings of a 5-string banjo up an octave (or any cavaquinho tuning).
|
3850
|
26852908
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3850
|
Baseball
|
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play beginning when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball that a player on the batting team, called the batter, tries to hit with a bat. The objective of the offensive team (batting team) is to hit the ball into the field of play, away from the other team's players, allowing its players to run the bases, having them advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "runs". The objective of the defensive team (referred to as the fielding team) is to prevent batters from becoming runners, and to prevent runners advancing around the bases. A run is scored when a runner legally advances around the bases in order and touches home plate (the place where the player started as a batter).
The initial objective of the batting team is to have a player reach first base safely; this occurs either when the batter hits the ball and reaches first base before an opponent retrieves the ball and touches the base, or when the pitcher persists in throwing the ball out of the batter's reach. Players on the batting team who reach first base without being called "out" can attempt to advance to subsequent bases as a runner, either immediately or during teammates' turns batting. The fielding team tries to prevent runs by using the ball to get batters or runners "out", which forces them out of the field of play. The pitcher can get the batter out by throwing three pitches which result in strikes, while fielders can get the batter out by catching a batted ball before it touches the ground, and can get a runner out by tagging them with the ball while the runner is not touching a base.
The opposing teams switch back and forth between batting and fielding; the batting team's turn to bat is over once the fielding team records three outs. One turn batting for each team constitutes an inning. A game is usually composed of nine innings, and the team with the greater number of runs at the end of the game wins. Most games end after the ninth inning, but if scores are tied at that point, extra innings are usually played. Baseball has no game clock, though some competitions feature pace-of-play regulations such as a pitch clock to shorten game time.
Baseball evolved from older bat-and-ball games already being played in England by the mid-18th century. This game was brought by immigrants to North America, where the modern version developed. Baseball's American origins, as well as its reputation as a source of escapism during troubled points in American history such as the American Civil War and the Great Depression, have led the sport to receive the moniker of "America's Pastime"; since the late 19th century, it has been unofficially recognized as the national sport of the United States, though in modern times is considered less popular than other sports, such as American football. In addition to North America, baseball spread throughout the rest of the Americas and the Asia–Pacific in the 19th and 20th centuries, and is now considered the most popular sport in parts of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and East Asia, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
In Major League Baseball (MLB), the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, teams are divided into the National League (NL) and American League (AL), each with three divisions: East, West, and Central. The MLB champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series. The top level of play is similarly split in Japan between the Central and Pacific Leagues and in Cuba between the West League and East League. The World Baseball Classic, organized by the World Baseball Softball Confederation, is the major international competition of the sport and attracts the top national teams from around the world. Baseball was played at the Olympic Games from 1992 to 2008, and was reinstated on a one-off basis in 2020.
Rules and gameplay.
Overview.
A baseball game is played between two teams, each composed of nine players, that take turns playing offense (batting and baserunning) and defense (pitching and fielding). A pair of turns, one at bat and one in the field, by each team constitutes an inning. A game consists of nine innings (seven innings at the high school level and in doubleheaders in college, Minor League Baseball and, since the 2020 season, Major League Baseball; and six innings at the Little League level). One team—customarily the visiting team—bats in the top, or first half, of every inning. The other team—customarily the home team—bats in the bottom, or second half, of every inning.
The goal of the game is to score more points (runs) than the other team. The players on the team at bat attempt to score runs by touching all four bases, in order, set at the corners of the square-shaped baseball diamond. A player bats at home plate and must attempt to safely reach a base before proceeding, counterclockwise, from first base, to second base, third base, and back home to score a run. The team in the field attempts to prevent runs from scoring by recording outs, which remove opposing players from offensive action until their next turn at bat comes up again. When three outs are recorded, the teams switch roles for the next half-inning. If the score of the game is tied after nine innings, extra innings are played to resolve the contest. Many amateur games, particularly unorganized ones, involve different numbers of players and innings.
The game is played on a field whose primary boundaries, the foul lines, extend forward from home plate at 45-degree angles. The 90-degree area within the foul lines is referred to as fair territory; the 270-degree area outside them is foul territory. The part of the field enclosed by the bases and several yards beyond them is the infield; the area farther beyond the infield is the outfield. In the middle of the infield is a raised pitcher's mound, with a rectangular rubber plate (the rubber) at its center. The outer boundary of the outfield is typically demarcated by a raised fence, which may be of any material and height. The fair territory between home plate and the outfield boundary is baseball's field of play, though significant events can take place in foul territory, as well.
There are three basic tools of baseball: the ball, the bat, and the glove or mitt:
Protective helmets are also standard equipment for all batters.
Fielding positions.
At the beginning of each half-inning, the nine players of the fielding team arrange themselves around the field. One of them, the pitcher, stands on the pitcher's mound. The pitcher begins the pitching delivery with one foot on the rubber, pushing off it to gain velocity when throwing toward home plate. Another fielding team player, the catcher, squats on the far side of home plate, facing the pitcher. The rest of the fielding team faces home plate, typically arranged as four infielders—who set up along or within a few yards outside the imaginary lines (basepaths) between first, second, and third base—and three outfielders. In the standard arrangement, there is a first baseman positioned several steps to the left of first base, a second baseman to the right of second base, a shortstop to the left of second base, and a third baseman to the right of third base. The basic outfield positions are left fielder, center fielder, and right fielder. With the exception of the catcher, all fielders are required to be in fair territory when the pitch is delivered. A neutral umpire sets up behind the catcher. Other umpires will be distributed around the field as well.
Offense.
Play starts with a member of the batting team, the batter, standing in either of the two batter's boxes next to home plate, holding a bat. The batter waits for the pitcher to throw a pitch (the ball) toward home plate, and attempts to hit the ball with the bat. The catcher catches pitches that the batter does not hit—as a result of either electing not to swing or failing to connect—and returns them to the pitcher. A batter who hits the ball into the field of play must drop the bat and begin running toward first base, at which point the player is referred to as a "runner" (or, until the play is over, a "batter-runner").
A batter-runner who reaches first base without being put out is said to be "safe" and is on base. A batter-runner may choose to remain at first base or attempt to advance to second base or even beyond—however far the player believes can be reached safely. A player who reaches base despite proper play by the fielders has recorded a hit. A player who reaches first base safely on a hit is credited with a single. If a player makes it to second base safely as a direct result of a hit, it is a double; third base, a triple. If the ball is hit in the air within the foul lines over the entire outfield (and outfield fence, if there is one), or if the batter-runner otherwise safely circles all the bases, it is a home run: the batter and any runners on base may all freely circle the bases, each scoring a run. This is the most desirable result for the batter. The ultimate and most desirable result possible for a batter would be to hit a home run while all three bases are occupied or "loaded", thus scoring four runs on a single hit. This is called a grand slam. A player who reaches base due to a fielding mistake is not credited with a hit—instead, the responsible fielder is charged with an error.
Any runners already on base may attempt to advance on batted balls that land, or contact the ground, in fair territory, before or after the ball lands. A runner on first base "must" attempt to advance if a ball lands in play, as only one runner may occupy a base at any given time; the same applies for other runners if they are on a base that a teammate is forced to advance to. If a ball hit into play rolls foul before passing through the infield, it becomes dead and any runners must return to the base they occupied when the play began. If the ball is hit in the air and caught before it lands, the batter has flied out and any runners on base may attempt to advance only if they tag up (contact the base they occupied when the play began, as or after the ball is caught). Runners may also attempt to advance to the next base while the pitcher is in the process of delivering the ball to home plate; a successful effort is a stolen base.
Defense.
A pitch that is not hit into the field of play is called either a strike or a ball. A batter against whom three strikes are recorded strikes out. A batter against whom four balls are recorded is awarded a base on balls or walk, a free advance to first base. (A batter may also freely advance to first base if the batter's body or uniform is struck by a pitch outside the strike zone, provided the batter does not swing and attempts to avoid being hit.) Crucial to determining balls and strikes is the umpire's judgment as to whether a pitch has passed through the strike zone, a conceptual area above home plate extending from the midpoint between the batter's shoulders and belt down to the hollow of the knee. Any pitch which does not pass through the strike zone is called a ball, unless the batter either swings and misses at the pitch, or hits the pitch into foul territory; an exception generally occurs if the ball is hit into foul territory when the batter already has two strikes, in which case neither a ball nor a strike is called.
While the team at bat is trying to score runs, the team in the field is attempting to record outs. In addition to the strikeout and flyout, common ways a member of the batting team may be put out include the ground out, force out, and tag out. These occur either when a runner is forced to advance to a base, and a fielder with possession of the ball reaches that base before the runner does, or the runner is touched by the ball, held in a fielder's hand, while not on a base. (The batter-runner is always forced to advance to first base, and any other runners must advance to the next base if a teammate is forced to advance to their base.) It is possible to record two outs in the course of the same play. This is called a double play. Three outs in one play, a triple play, is possible, though rare. Players put out or retired must leave the field, returning to their team's dugout or bench. A runner may be stranded on base when a third out is recorded against another player on the team. Stranded runners do not benefit the team in its next turn at bat as every half-inning begins with the bases empty.
Batting order and substitution.
An individual player's turn batting or plate appearance is complete when the player reaches base, hits a home run, makes an out, or hits a ball that results in the team's third out, even if it is recorded against a teammate. On rare occasions, a batter may be at the plate when, without the batter's hitting the ball, a third out is recorded against a teammate—for instance, a runner getting caught stealing (tagged out attempting to steal a base). A batter with this sort of incomplete plate appearance starts off the team's next turn batting; any balls or strikes recorded against the batter the previous inning are erased.
A runner may circle the bases only once per plate appearance and thus can score at most a single run per batting turn. Once a player has completed a plate appearance, that player may not bat again until the eight other members of the player's team have all taken their turn at bat in the batting order. The batting order is set before the game begins, and may not be altered except for substitutions. Once a player has been removed for a substitute, that player may not reenter the game. Children's games often have more lenient rules, such as Little League rules, which allow players to be substituted back into the same game.
If the designated hitter (DH) rule is in effect, each team has a tenth player whose sole responsibility is to bat (and run). The DH takes the place of another player—almost invariably the pitcher—in the batting order, but does not field. Thus, even with the DH, each team still has a batting order of nine players and a fielding arrangement of nine players.
Personnel.
Players.
The number of players on a baseball roster, or "squad", varies by league and by the level of organized play. A Major League Baseball (MLB) team has a roster of 26 players with specific roles. A typical roster features the following players:
Most baseball leagues worldwide have the DH rule, including MLB, Japan's Pacific League, and Caribbean professional leagues, along with major American amateur organizations. The Central League in Japan does not have the rule and high-level minor league clubs connected to National League teams are not required to field a DH. In leagues that apply the designated hitter rule, a typical team has nine offensive regulars (including the DH), five starting pitchers, seven or eight relievers, a backup catcher, and two or three other reserve players.
Managers and coaches.
The manager, or head coach, oversees the team's major strategic decisions, such as establishing the starting rotation, setting the lineup, or batting order, before each game, and making substitutions during games—in particular, bringing in relief pitchers. Managers are typically assisted by two or more coaches; they may have specialized responsibilities, such as working with players on hitting, fielding, pitching, or strength and conditioning. At most levels of organized play, two coaches are stationed on the field when the team is at bat: the first base coach and third base coach, who occupy designated coaches' boxes, just outside the foul lines. These coaches assist in the direction of baserunners, when the ball is in play, and relay tactical signals from the manager to batters and runners, during pauses in play. In contrast to many other team sports, baseball managers and coaches generally wear their team's uniforms; coaches must be in uniform to be allowed on the field to confer with players during a game.
Umpires.
Any baseball game involves one or more umpires, who make rulings on the outcome of each play. At a minimum, one umpire will stand behind the catcher, to have a good view of the strike zone, and call balls and strikes. Additional umpires may be stationed near the other bases, thus making it easier to judge plays such as attempted force outs and tag outs. In MLB, four umpires are used for each game, one near each base. In the playoffs, six umpires are used: one at each base and two in the outfield along the foul lines.
Strategy.
Many of the pre-game and in-game strategic decisions in baseball revolve around a fundamental fact: in general, right-handed batters tend to be more successful against left-handed pitchers and, to an even greater degree, left-handed batters tend to be more successful against right-handed pitchers. A manager with several left-handed batters in the regular lineup, who knows the team will be facing a left-handed starting pitcher, may respond by starting one or more of the right-handed backups on the team's roster. During the late innings of a game, as relief pitchers and pinch hitters are brought in, the opposing managers will often go back and forth trying to create favorable matchups with their substitutions. The manager of the fielding team trying to arrange same-handed pitcher-batter matchups and the manager of the batting team trying to arrange opposite-handed matchups. With a team that has the lead in the late innings, a manager may remove a starting position player—especially one whose turn at bat is not likely to come up again—for a more skillful fielder (known as a defensive substitution).
Tactics.
Pitching and fielding.
The tactical decision that precedes almost every play in a baseball game involves pitch selection. By gripping and then releasing the baseball in a certain manner, and by throwing it at a certain speed, pitchers can cause the baseball to break to either side, or downward, as it approaches the batter, thus creating differing pitches that can be selected. Among the resulting wide variety of pitches that may be thrown, the four basic types are the fastball, the changeup (or off-speed pitch), and two breaking balls—the curveball and the slider. Pitchers have different repertoires of pitches they are skillful at throwing. Conventionally, before each pitch, the catcher signals the pitcher what type of pitch to throw, as well as its general vertical or horizontal location. If there is disagreement on the selection, the pitcher may shake off the sign and the catcher will call for a different pitch.
With a runner on base and taking a lead, the pitcher may attempt a pickoff, a quick throw to a fielder covering the base to keep the runner's lead in check or, optimally, effect a tag out. Pickoff attempts, however, are subject to rules that severely restrict the pitcher's movements before and during the pickoff attempt. Violation of any one of these rules could result in the umpire calling a balk against the pitcher, which permits any runners on base to advance one base with impunity. If an attempted stolen base is anticipated, the catcher may call for a pitchout, a ball thrown deliberately off the plate, allowing the catcher to catch it while standing and throw quickly to a base. Facing a batter with a strong tendency to hit to one side of the field, the fielding team may employ a shift, with most or all of the fielders moving to the left or right of their usual positions. With a runner on third base, the infielders may play in, moving closer to home plate to improve the odds of throwing out the runner on a ground ball, though a sharply hit grounder is more likely to carry through a drawn-in infield.
Batting and baserunning.
Several basic offensive tactics come into play with a runner on first base, including the fundamental choice of whether to attempt a steal of second base. The hit and run is sometimes employed, with a skillful contact hitter, the runner takes off with the pitch, drawing the shortstop or second baseman over to second base, creating a gap in the infield for the batter to poke the ball through. The sacrifice bunt, calls for the batter to focus on making soft contact with the ball, so that it rolls a short distance into the infield, allowing the runner to advance into scoring position as the batter is thrown out at first. A batter, particularly one who is a fast runner, may also attempt to bunt for a hit. A sacrifice bunt employed with a runner on third base, aimed at bringing that runner home, is known as a squeeze play. With a runner on third and fewer than two outs, a batter may instead concentrate on hitting a fly ball that, even if it is caught, will be deep enough to allow the runner to tag up and score—a successful batter, in this case, gets credit for a sacrifice fly. In order to increase the chance of advancing a batter to first base via a walk, the manager will sometimes signal a batter who is ahead in the count (i.e., has more balls than strikes) to take, or not swing at, the next pitch. The batter's potential reward of reaching base (via a walk) exceeds the disadvantage if the next pitch is a strike.
History.
Consensus once held that today's baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, popular among children in Great Britain and Ireland. American baseball historian David Block suggests that the game originated in England; recently uncovered historical evidence supports this position. According to Block and John Thorn, official MLB historian, this earlier version of baseball may have involved hitting the ball with a hand, making it akin to today's punchball. Block argues that rounders and early baseball were actually regional variants of each other, and that the game's most direct antecedents are the English games of stoolball and "tut-ball". The earliest known reference to baseball is in a 1744 British publication, "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book", by John Newbery. Block discovered that the first recorded game of "Base Ball" took place in 1749 in Surrey, and featured the Prince of Wales as a player. This early form of the game was apparently brought to Canada by English immigrants.
By the early 1830s, there were reports of a variety of uncodified bat-and-ball games recognizable as early forms of baseball being played around North America. The first officially recorded baseball game in North America was played in Beachville, Ontario, Canada, on June 4, 1838. In 1845, Alexander Cartwright, a member of New York City's Knickerbocker Club, led the codification of the so-called Knickerbocker Rules, which in turn were based on rules developed in 1837 by William R. Wheaton of the Gotham Club. While there are reports that the New York Knickerbockers played games in 1845, the contest long recognized as the first officially recorded baseball game in U.S. history took place on June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New Jersey: the "New York Nine" defeated the Knickerbockers, 23–1, in four innings. With the Knickerbocker code as the basis, the rules of modern baseball continued to evolve over the next half-century. The game then went on to spread throughout the Pacific Rim and the Americas, with Americans backing the sport as a way to spread American values.
In the United States.
Establishment of professional leagues.
In the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan area, and by 1856, local journals were referring to baseball as the "national pastime" or "national game". A year later, the sport's first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players, was formed. In 1867, it barred participation by African Americans. The more formally structured National League was founded in 1876. Professional Negro leagues formed, but quickly folded. In 1887, softball, under the name of indoor baseball or indoor-outdoor, was invented as a winter version of the parent game. The National League's first successful counterpart, the American League, which evolved from the minor Western League, was established in 1893, and virtually all of the modern baseball rules were in place by then.
The National Agreement of 1903 formalized relations both between the two major leagues and between them and the National Association of Professional Base Ball Leagues, representing most of the country's minor professional leagues. The World Series, pitting the two major league champions against each other, was inaugurated that fall. The Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 World Series led to the formation of the office of the Commissioner of Baseball. The first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was elected in 1920. That year also saw the founding of the Negro National League; the first significant Negro league, it would operate until 1931. For part of the 1920s, it was joined by the Eastern Colored League.
Rise of Ruth and racial integration.
Compared with the present, professional baseball in the early 20th century was lower-scoring, and pitchers were more dominant. This so-called "dead-ball era" ended in the early 1920s with several changes in rule and circumstance that were advantageous to hitters. Strict new regulations governed the ball's size, shape and composition, along with a new rule officially banning the spitball and other pitches that depended on the ball being treated or roughed-up with foreign substances, resulted in a ball that traveled farther when hit. The rise of the legendary player Babe Ruth, the first great power hitter of the new era, helped permanently alter the nature of the game. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey invested in several minor league clubs and developed the first modern farm system. A new Negro National League was organized in 1933; four years later, it was joined by the Negro American League. The first elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame took place in 1936. In 1939, Little League Baseball was founded in Pennsylvania.
Many minor league teams disbanded when World War II led to a player shortage. Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley led the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to help keep the game in the public eye. The first crack in the unwritten agreement barring blacks from white-controlled professional ball occurred in 1945: Jackie Robinson was signed by the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers and began playing for their minor league team in Montreal. In 1947, Robinson broke the major leagues' color barrier when he debuted with the Dodgers. Latin-American players, largely overlooked before, also started entering the majors in greater numbers. In 1951, two Chicago White Sox, Venezuelan-born Chico Carrasquel and black Cuban-born Minnie Miñoso, became the first Hispanic All-Stars. Integration proceeded slowly: by 1953, only six of the 16 major league teams had a black player on the roster.
Attendance records and the age of steroids.
In 1975, the union's power—and players' salaries—began to increase greatly when the reserve clause was effectively struck down, leading to the free agency system. Significant work stoppages occurred in 1981 and 1994, the latter forcing the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years. Attendance had been growing steadily since the mid-1970s and in 1994, before the stoppage, the majors were setting their all-time record for per-game attendance. After play resumed in 1995, non-division-winning wild card teams became a permanent fixture of the post-season. Regular-season interleague play was introduced in 1997 and the second-highest attendance mark for a full season was set. In 2000, the National and American Leagues were dissolved as legal entities. While their identities were maintained for scheduling purposes (and the designated hitter distinction), the regulations and other functions—such as player discipline and umpire supervision—they had administered separately were consolidated under the rubric of MLB.
In 2001, Barry Bonds established the current record of 73 home runs in a single season. There had long been suspicions that the dramatic increase in power hitting was fueled in large part by the abuse of illegal steroids (as well as by the dilution of pitching talent due to expansion), but the issue only began attracting significant media attention in 2002 and there was no penalty for the use of performance-enhancing drugs before 2004. In 2007, Bonds became MLB's all-time home run leader, surpassing Hank Aaron, as total major league and minor league attendance both reached all-time highs.
Around the world.
Despite having been called "America's national pastime", baseball is well-established in several other countries. As early as 1877, a professional league, the International Association, featured teams from both Canada and the United States. While baseball is widely played in Canada and many minor league teams have been based in the country, the American major leagues did not include a Canadian club until 1969, when the Montreal Expos joined the National League as an expansion team. In 1977, the expansion Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League.
In 1847, American soldiers played what may have been the first baseball game in Mexico at Parque Los Berros in Xalapa, Veracruz. The first formal baseball league outside of the United States and Canada was founded in 1878 in Cuba, which maintains a rich baseball tradition. The Dominican Republic held its first islandwide championship tournament in 1912. Professional baseball tournaments and leagues began to form in other countries between the world wars, including the Netherlands (formed in 1922), Australia (1934), Japan (1936), Mexico (1937), and Puerto Rico (1938). The Japanese major leagues have long been considered the highest quality professional circuits outside of the United States.
After World War II, professional leagues were founded in many Latin American countries, most prominently Venezuela (1946) and the Dominican Republic (1955). Since the early 1970s, the annual Caribbean Series has matched the championship clubs from the four leading Latin American winter leagues: the Dominican Professional Baseball League, Mexican Pacific League, Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League, and Venezuelan Professional Baseball League. In Asia, South Korea (1982), Taiwan (1990) and China (2003) all have professional leagues.
The English football club, Aston Villa, were the first British baseball champions winning the 1890 National League of Baseball of Great Britain. The 2020 National Champions were the London Mets. Other European countries have seen professional leagues; the most successful, other than the Dutch league, is the Italian league, founded in 1948. In 2004, Australia won a surprise silver medal at the Olympic Games. The Confédération Européene de Baseball (European Baseball Confederation), founded in 1953, organizes a number of competitions between clubs from different countries. Other competitions between national teams, such as the Baseball World Cup and the Olympic baseball tournament, were administered by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) from its formation in 1938 until its 2013 merger with the International Softball Federation to create the current joint governing body for both sports, the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). Women's baseball is played on an organized amateur basis in numerous countries.
After being admitted to the Olympics as a medal sport beginning with the 1992 Games, baseball was dropped from the 2012 Summer Olympic Games at the 2005 International Olympic Committee meeting. It remained part of the 2008 Games. While the sport's lack of a following in much of the world was a factor, more important was MLB's reluctance to allow its players to participate during the major league season. MLB initiated the World Baseball Classic, scheduled to precede its season, partly as a replacement, high-profile international tournament. The inaugural Classic, held in March 2006, was the first tournament involving national teams to feature a significant number of MLB participants. The Baseball World Cup was discontinued after its 2011 edition in favor of an expanded World Baseball Classic.
Distinctive elements.
Baseball has certain attributes that set it apart from the other popular team sports in the countries where it has a following. All of these sports use a clock, play is less individual, and the variation between playing fields is not as substantial or important. The comparison between cricket and baseball demonstrates that many of baseball's distinctive elements are shared in various ways with similar sports.
No clock to kill.
In clock-limited sports, games often end with a team that holds the lead killing the clock rather than competing aggressively against the opposing team. In contrast, baseball has no clock, thus a team cannot win without getting the last batter out and rallies are not constrained by time. At almost any turn in any baseball game, the most advantageous strategy is some form of aggressive strategy. Whereas, in the case of multi-day Test and first-class cricket, the possibility of a draw (which occurs because of the restrictions on time, which like in baseball, originally did not exist) often encourages a team that is batting last and well behind, to bat defensively and run out the clock, giving up any faint chance at a win, to avoid an overall loss.
While nine innings has been the standard since the beginning of professional baseball, the duration of the average major league game has increased steadily through the years. At the turn of the 20th century, games typically took an hour and a half to play. In the 1920s, they averaged just less than two hours, which eventually ballooned to 2:38 in 1960. By 1997, the average American League game lasted 2:57 (National League games were about 10 minutes shorter—pitchers at the plate making for quicker outs than designated hitters). In 2004, Major League Baseball declared that its goal was an average game of 2:45. By 2014, though, the average MLB game took over three hours to complete. The lengthening of games is attributed to longer breaks between half-innings for television commercials, increased offense, more pitching changes, and a slower pace of play, with pitchers taking more time between each delivery, and batters stepping out of the box more frequently. Other leagues have experienced similar issues. In 2008, Nippon Professional Baseball took steps aimed at shortening games by 12 minutes from the preceding decade's average of 3:18.
In 2016, the average nine-inning playoff game in Major League baseball was 3 hours and 35 minutes. This was up 10 minutes from 2015 and 21 minutes from 2014. In response to the lengthening of the game, MLB decided from the 2023 season onward to institute a pitch clock rule to penalize batters and pitchers who take too much time between pitches; this had the effect of shortening 2023 regular season games by 24 minutes on average.
Individual focus.
Although baseball is a team sport, individual players are often placed under scrutiny and pressure. While rewarding, it has sometimes been described as "ruthless" due to the pressure on the individual player. In 1915, a baseball instructional manual pointed out that every single pitch, of which there are often more than two hundred in a game, involves an individual, one-on-one contest: "the pitcher and the batter in a battle of wits". Pitcher, batter, and fielder all act essentially independent of each other. While coaching staffs can signal pitcher or batter to pursue certain tactics, the execution of the play itself is a series of solitary acts. If the batter hits a line drive, the outfielder is solely responsible for deciding to try to catch it or play it on the bounce and for succeeding or failing. The statistical precision of baseball is both facilitated by this isolation and reinforces it.
Cricket is more similar to baseball than many other team sports in this regard: while the individual focus in cricket is mitigated by the importance of the batting partnership and the practicalities of tandem running, it is enhanced by the fact that a batsman may occupy the wicket for an hour or much more. There is no statistical equivalent in cricket for the fielding error and thus less emphasis on personal responsibility in this area of play.
Uniqueness of parks.
Unlike those of most sports, baseball playing fields can vary significantly in size and shape. While the dimensions of the infield are specifically regulated, the only constraint on outfield size and shape for professional teams, following the rules of MLB and Minor League Baseball, is that fields built or remodeled since June 1, 1958, must have a minimum distance of from home plate to the fences in left and right field and to center. Major league teams often skirt even this rule. For example, at Daikin Park, which became the home of the Houston Astros in 2000, the Crawford Boxes in left field are only from home plate. There are no rules at all that address the height of fences or other structures at the edge of the outfield. The most famously idiosyncratic outfield boundary is the left-field wall at Boston's Fenway Park, in use since 1912: the Green Monster is from home plate down the line and tall.
Similarly, there are no regulations at all concerning the dimensions of foul territory. Thus a foul fly ball may be entirely out of play in a park with little space between the foul lines and the stands, but a foulout in a park with more expansive foul ground. A fence in foul territory that is close to the outfield line will tend to direct balls that strike it back toward the fielders, while one that is farther away may actually prompt more collisions, as outfielders run full speed to field balls deep in the corner. These variations can make the difference between a double and a triple or inside-the-park home run. The surface of the field is also unregulated. While the adjacent image shows a traditional field surfacing arrangement (and the one used by virtually all MLB teams with naturally surfaced fields), teams are free to decide what areas will be grassed or bare. Some fields—including several in MLB—use artificial turf. Surface variations can have a significant effect on how ground balls behave and are fielded as well as on baserunning. Similarly, the presence of a roof (seven major league teams play in stadiums with permanent or retractable roofs) can greatly affect how fly balls are played. While football and soccer players deal with similar variations of field surface and stadium covering, the size and shape of their fields are much more standardized. The area out-of-bounds on a football or soccer field does not affect play the way foul territory in baseball does, so variations in that regard are largely insignificant.
These physical variations create a distinctive set of playing conditions at each ballpark. Other local factors, such as altitude and climate, can also significantly affect play. A given stadium may acquire a reputation as a pitcher's park or a hitter's park, if one or the other discipline notably benefits from its unique mix of elements. The most exceptional park in this regard is Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies. Its high altitude— above sea level—is partly responsible for giving it the strongest hitter's park effect in the major leagues due to the low air pressure. Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, is known for its fickle disposition: a pitcher's park when the strong winds off Lake Michigan are blowing in, it becomes more of a hitter's park when they are blowing out. The absence of a standardized field affects not only how particular games play out, but the nature of team rosters and players' statistical records. For example, hitting a fly ball into right field might result in an easy catch on the warning track at one park, and a home run at another. A team that plays in a park with a relatively short right field, such as the New York Yankees, will tend to stock its roster with left-handed pull hitters, who can best exploit it. On the individual level, a player who spends most of his career with a team that plays in a hitter's park will gain an advantage in batting statistics over time—even more so if his talents are especially suited to the park.
Statistics.
Organized baseball lends itself to statistics to a greater degree than many other sports. Each play is discrete and has a relatively small number of possible outcomes. In the late 19th century, a former cricket player, English-born Henry Chadwick of Brooklyn, was responsible for the "development of the box score, tabular standings, the annual baseball guide, the batting average, and most of the common statistics and tables used to describe baseball." The statistical record is so central to the game's "historical essence" that Chadwick came to be known as Father Baseball. In the 1920s, American newspapers began devoting more and more attention to baseball statistics, initiating what journalist and historian Alan Schwarz describes as a "tectonic shift in sports, as intrigue that once focused mostly on teams began to go to individual players and their statistics lines."
The Official Baseball Rules administered by MLB require the official scorer to categorize each baseball play unambiguously. The rules provide detailed criteria to promote consistency. The score report is the official basis for both the box score of the game and the relevant statistical records. General managers, managers, and baseball scouts use statistics to evaluate players and make strategic decisions.
Certain traditional statistics are familiar to most baseball fans. The basic batting statistics include:
The basic baserunning statistics include:
The basic pitching statistics include:
The basic fielding statistics include:
Among the many other statistics that are kept are those collectively known as "situational statistics". For example, statistics can indicate which specific pitchers a certain batter performs best against. If a given situation statistically favors a certain batter, the manager of the fielding team may be more likely to change pitchers or have the pitcher intentionally walk the batter in order to face one who is less likely to succeed.
Sabermetrics.
Sabermetrics is the field of baseball statistical study and the development of new statistics and analytical tools. Such new statistics are also called sabermetrics. The term was coined around 1980 by one of the field's leading proponents, Bill James, and derives from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
The growing popularity of sabermetrics since the early 1980s has brought more attention to two batting statistics that sabermetricians argue are much better gauges of a batter's skill than batting average:
Some of the new statistics devised by sabermetricians have gained wide use:
Popularity and cultural impact.
Writing in 1919, philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen described baseball as the national religion of the US. In the words of sports columnist Jayson Stark, baseball has long been "a unique paragon of American culture"—a status he sees as devastated by the steroid abuse scandal. Baseball has an important place in other national cultures as well: Scholar Peter Bjarkman describes "how deeply the sport is ingrained in the history and culture of a nation such as Cuba, [and] how thoroughly it was radically reshaped and nativized in Japan."
Western Hemisphere.
American influence in the Western Hemisphere has meant that baseball grew significantly in the region.
In the United States.
The major league game in the United States was originally targeted toward a middle-class, white-collar audience: relative to other spectator pastimes, the National League's set ticket price of 50 cents in 1876 was high, while the location of playing fields outside the inner city and the workweek daytime scheduling of games were also obstacles to a blue-collar audience. A century later, the situation was very different. With the rise in popularity of other team sports with much higher average ticket prices—football, basketball, and hockey—professional baseball had become among the most popular blue-collar-oriented American spectator sports.
Overall, baseball has a large following in the United States; a 2006 poll found that nearly half of Americans are fans. This led to baseball being granted the title of "America's favorite pastime" by many American baseball fans. The game was historically seen as contributing to the melting pot society of the nation, encouraging immigrants to integrate. In the late 1900s and early 2000s, baseball's position compared to football in the United States moved in contradictory directions. In 2008, MLB set a revenue record of $6.5 billion, matching the NFL's revenue for the first time in decades. A new MLB revenue record of more than $10 billion was set in 2017. On the other hand, the percentage of American sports fans polled who named baseball as their favorite sport was 9%, compared to pro football at 37%. In 1985, the respective figures were pro football 24%, baseball 23%. Because there are so many more major league games played, there is no comparison in overall attendance. In 2008, total attendance at major league games was the second-highest in history: 78.6 million, 0.7% off the record set the previous year. The following year, amid the U.S. recession, attendance fell by 6.6% to 73.4 million. Eight years later, it dropped under 73 million. Attendance at games held under the Minor League Baseball umbrella set a record in 2008, with 43.3 million. While MLB games have not drawn the same national TV viewership as football games, MLB games are dominant in teams' local markets and regularly lead all programs in primetime in their markets during the summer. After multiple years of declines since 2017, baseball attendance has grown slightly in recent years. In 2024, attendance was 71.3 million, the highest since 2017.
Latin America.
Baseball is very popular in Venezuela; in 2011, 95% of people surveyed claimed it to be the national sport. In Nicaragua and Panama, baseball is also considered the national sport. While soccer is still more popular, baseball is a fast-growing sport in Mexico. In 2024, top Mexican League baseball teams outdraw some Liga MX teams in attendance. Baseball also is somewhat popular in Colombia, though secondary to soccer, especially in coastal areas such as Barranquilla and Cartagena which are near the Caribbean. In recent years, baseball has grown in popularity in Colombia, especially in the capital of Bogotá, due an increase of Venezuelan immigrants. In Brazil, baseball fan popularity has grown in the last few years, thanks to MLB broadcasts in Brazilian ESPN and the historic silver medal in 2023 Pan-American games. However, it still lags behind Basketball and American Football in the list of most played sports in Brazil. Baseball has also grown in popularity in Argentina and Peru in recent years due to Venezuelan immigrants. Costa Rica has also seen a growth in the popularity of baseball. Since 1987, baseballs have exclusively been made in the Costa Rican town of Turrialba.
The sport's overall popularity in Latin America has assisted in integrating Latin American migrants to the United States.
Caribbean.
Since the early 1980s, the Dominican Republic, in particular the city of San Pedro de Macorís, has been the major leagues' primary source of foreign talent. In 2017, 83 of the 868 players on MLB Opening Day rosters (and disabled lists) were from the country. Among other Caribbean countries and territories, a combined 97 MLB players were born in Venezuela, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Hall-of-Famer Roberto Clemente remains one of the greatest national heroes in Puerto Rico's history. While baseball has long been the island's primary athletic pastime, its once well-attended professional winter league has declined in popularity since 1990, when young Puerto Rican players began to be included in the major leagues' annual first-year player draft. In Cuba, where baseball is by every reckoning the national sport, the national team overshadows the city and provincial teams that play in the top-level domestic leagues. Baseball is also one of the most popular sports of Aruba and Curaçao, and a growing sport in The Bahamas.
Asia.
In East Asia, baseball is among the most popular sports in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. In Japan, where baseball is inarguably the leading spectator team sport, combined revenue for the twelve teams in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the body that oversees both the Central and Pacific Leagues, was estimated at $1 billion in 2007. Total NPB attendance for the year was approximately 20 million. While in the preceding two decades, MLB attendance grew by 50 percent and revenue nearly tripled, the comparable NPB figures were stagnant. There are concerns that MLB's growing interest in acquiring star Japanese players will hurt the game in their home country. Revenue figures are not released for the country's amateur system. Similarly, according to one official pronouncement, the sport's governing authority "has never taken into account attendance ... because its greatest interest has always been the development of athletes". In Taiwan, baseball is one of the most widely spectated sports, in TV and person.
Baseball has grown significantly in China in recent years, with MLB estimating in 2019 that there are 21 million active fans in the country.
Europe.
Baseball is generally a niche sport in Europe. However, baseball is somewhat popular in the Netherlands, where it is known as "honkbal", thanks to influence from the United States after World War II and the Kingdoms control over Aruba and Curaçao where it is the most popular sport. Baseball is also somewhat popular in portions of Italy, especially in the town of Nettuno, due to influence from American soldiers after World War II. Baseball has grown in recent years in the Czech Republic, due in part to the Czech teams' success in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.
Oceania.
Baseball is one of the most popular sports in Palau. In Australia, Baseball is a niche sport but the country does have a professional league. Because the league is played in winter for the western hemisphere, it attracts American and Korean professional players looking to play winter league baseball.
Among children.
, Little League Baseball oversees leagues with 2 million participants in more than 80 countries. The number of players has fallen since the 1990s, when 3 million children took part in Little League Baseball annually. Babe Ruth League teams have over 1 million participants. According to the president of the International Baseball Federation in 2009, between 300,000 and 500,000 women and girls play baseball around the world, including Little League and the introductory game of Tee Ball.
A varsity baseball team is an established part of physical education departments at most high schools and colleges in the United States. In 2015, nearly half a million high schoolers and over 34,000 collegians played on their schools' baseball teams. By early in the 20th century, intercollegiate baseball was Japan's leading sport. Today, high school baseball in particular is immensely popular there. The final rounds of the two annual tournaments—the National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament in the spring, and the even more important National High School Baseball Championship in the summer—are broadcast around the country. The tournaments are known, respectively, as Spring Koshien and Summer Koshien after the 55,000-capacity stadium where they are played. In Cuba, baseball is a mandatory part of the state system of physical education, which begins at age six. Talented children as young as seven are sent to special district schools for more intensive training—the first step on a ladder whose acme is the national baseball team.
In popular culture.
Baseball has had a broad impact on popular culture, both in the United States and elsewhere. Dozens of English-language idioms have been derived from baseball; in particular, the game is the source of a number of widely used sexual euphemisms. The first networked radio broadcasts in North America were of the 1922 World Series: famed sportswriter Grantland Rice announced play-by-play from New York City's Polo Grounds on WJZ–Newark, New Jersey, which was connected by wire to WGY–Schenectady, New York, and WBZ–Springfield, Massachusetts. The baseball cap has become a ubiquitous fashion item not only in the United States and Japan, but also in countries where the sport itself is not particularly popular, such as the United Kingdom.
Baseball has inspired many works of art and entertainment. One of the first major examples, Ernest Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat", appeared in 1888. A wry description of the failure of a star player in what would now be called a "clutch situation", the poem became the source of vaudeville and other staged performances, audio recordings, film adaptations, and an opera, as well as a host of sequels and parodies in various media. There have been many baseball movies, including the Academy Award–winning "The Pride of the Yankees" (1942) and the Oscar nominees "The Natural" (1984) and "Field of Dreams" (1989). The American Film Institute's selection of the ten best sports movies includes "The Pride of the Yankees" at number 3 and "Bull Durham" (1988) at number 5. Baseball has provided thematic material for hits on both stage—the Adler–Ross musical "Damn Yankees"—and record—George J. Gaskin's "Slide, Kelly, Slide", Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson", and John Fogerty's "Centerfield". The baseball-inspired comedic sketch "Who's on First?", popularized by Abbott and Costello in 1938, quickly became famous. Six decades later, "Time" named it the best comedy routine of the 20th century.
Literary works connected to the game include the short fiction of Ring Lardner and novels such as Bernard Malamud's "The Natural" (the source for the movie), Robert Coover's "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.", John Grisham's Calico Joe and W. P. Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe" (the source for "Field of Dreams"). Baseball's literary canon also includes the beat reportage of Damon Runyon; the columns of Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Dick Young, and Peter Gammons; and the essays of Roger Angell. Among the celebrated nonfiction books in the field are Lawrence S. Ritter's "The Glory of Their Times", Roger Kahn's "The Boys of Summer", and Michael Lewis's "". The 1970 publication of major league pitcher Jim Bouton's tell-all chronicle "Ball Four" is considered a turning point in the reporting of professional sports.
Baseball has also inspired the creation of new cultural forms. Baseball cards were introduced in the late 19th century as trade cards. A typical example featured an image of a baseball player on one side and advertising for a business on the other. In the early 1900s they were produced widely as promotional items by tobacco and confectionery companies. The 1930s saw the popularization of the modern style of baseball card, with a player photograph accompanied on the rear by statistics and biographical data. Baseball cards—many of which are now prized collectibles—are the source of the much broader trading card industry, involving similar products for different sports and non-sports-related fields.
Modern fantasy sports began in 1980 with the invention of Rotisserie League Baseball by New York writer Daniel Okrent and several friends. Participants in a Rotisserie league draft notional teams from the list of active MLB players and play out an entire imaginary season with game outcomes based on the players' latest real-world statistics. Rotisserie-style play quickly became a phenomenon. Now known more generically as fantasy baseball, it has inspired similar games based on an array of different sports. The field boomed with increasing Internet access and new fantasy sports-related websites. By 2008, 29.9 million people in the United States and Canada were playing fantasy sports, spending $800 million on the hobby. The burgeoning popularity of fantasy baseball is also credited with the increasing attention paid to sabermetrics—first among fans, only later among baseball professionals.
Derivative games.
Informal variations of baseball have popped up over time, with games like corkball reflecting local traditions and allowing the game to be played in diverse environments. Two variations of baseball, softball and Baseball5, are internationally governed alongside baseball by the World Baseball Softball Confederation.
British baseball.
American professional baseball teams toured Britain in 1874 and 1889, and had a great effect on similar sports in Britain. In Wales and Merseyside, a strong community game had already developed with skills and plays more in keeping with the American game and the Welsh began to informally adopt the name "baseball" (Pêl Fas), to reflect the American style. By the 1890s, calls were made to follow the success of other working class sports (like Rugby in Wales and Soccer in Merseyside) and adopt a distinct set of rules and bureaucracy. During the 1892 season rules for the game of "baseball" were agreed and the game was officially codified.
Finnish baseball.
Finnish baseball, also known as pesäpallo, is a combination of traditional ball-batting team games and North American baseball, invented by Lauri "Tahko" Pihkala in the 1920s. The basic idea of pesäpallo is similar to that of baseball: the offense tries to score by hitting the ball successfully and running through the bases, while the defense tries to put the batter and runners out. One of the most important differences between pesäpallo and baseball is that the ball is pitched vertically, which makes hitting the ball, as well as controlling the power and direction of the hit, much easier. This gives the offensive game more variety, speed, and tactical aspects compared to baseball.
|
3851
|
43252809
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3851
|
Baseball positions
|
In the sport of baseball, each of the nine players on a team is assigned a particular fielding position when it is their turn to play defense. Each position conventionally has an associated number, for use in scorekeeping by the official scorer: 1 (pitcher), 2 (catcher), 3 (first baseman), 4 (second baseman), 5 (third baseman), 6 (shortstop), 7 (left fielder), 8 (center fielder), and 9 (right fielder). Collectively, these positions are usually grouped into three groups: the outfield (left field, center field, and right field), the infield (first base, second base, third base, and shortstop), and the battery (pitcher and catcher). Traditionally, players within each group will often be more able to exchange positions easily (that is, a second baseman can usually play shortstop well, and a center fielder can also be expected to play right field); however, the pitcher and catcher are highly specialized positions and rarely will play at other positions.
Fielding.
Fielders must be able to catch the ball well, as catching batted balls before they bounce is one way they can put the batter out, as well as create opportunities to prevent the advance of, and put out other runners. Additionally, they must be able to throw the ball well, with many plays in the game depending on one fielder collecting the hit ball and then throwing it to another fielder who, while holding the ball in their hand/glove, touches either a runner or the base the runner is forced to run to in order to record an out. Fielders often have to run, dive, and slide a great deal in the act of reaching, stopping, and retrieving a hit ball, and then setting themselves up to transfer the ball, all with the end goal of getting the ball as quickly as possible to another fielder. They also run the risk of colliding with incoming runners during a tag attempt at a base.
Fielders may have different responsibilities depending on the game situation. For example, when an outfielder is attempting to throw the ball from near the fence to one of the bases, an infielder may need to "cut off" the throw and then act as a relay thrower to help the ball cover its remaining distance to the target destination.
As a group, the outfielders are responsible for preventing home runs by reaching over the fence (and potentially doing a wall climb) for fly balls that are catchable. The infielders are the ones who generally handle plays that involve tagging a base or runner, and also need quick reflexes in order to catch a batted ball before it leaves the infield. The pitcher and catcher have special responsibilities to prevent base stealing, as they are the ones who handle the ball whenever it has not been hit. The catcher will also sometimes attempt to block the plate in order to prevent a run being scored.
|
3856
|
24382878
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3856
|
History of baseball in the United States
|
The history of baseball in the United States dates to the 19th century, when boys and amateur enthusiasts played a baseball-like game by their own informal rules using homemade equipment. The popularity of the sport grew and amateur men's ball clubs were formed in the 1830–1850s. Semi-professional baseball clubs followed in the 1860s, and the first professional leagues arrived in the post-American Civil War 1870s.
Early history.
The earliest known mention of baseball in the United States is either a 1786 diary entry by a Princeton University student who describes playing "baste ball," or a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ordinance that barred the playing of baseball within of the town meeting house and its glass windows. Another early reference reports that "base ball" was regularly played on Saturdays in 1823 on the outskirts of New York City in an area that today is Greenwich Village. The Olympic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia was organized in 1833.
In 1903, the British-born sportswriter Henry Chadwick published an article speculating that baseball was derived from an English game called rounders, which Chadwick had played as a boy in England. Baseball executive Albert Spalding disagreed, asserting that the game was fundamentally American and had hatched on American soil. To settle the matter, the two men appointed a commission, headed by Abraham Mills, the fourth president of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs. The commission, which also included six other sports executives, labored for three years, finally declaring that Abner Doubleday had invented the national pastime. Doubleday "...never knew that he had invented baseball. But 15 years after his death, he was anointed as the father of the game," writes baseball historian John Thorn. The myth about Doubleday inventing the game of baseball actually came from a Colorado mining engineer who claimed to have been present at the moment of creation. The miner's tale was never corroborated, nonetheless the myth was born and persists to this day. Which does not mean that the Doubleday myth does not continue to be disputed; in fact, it is likely that the parentage of the modern game of baseball will be in some dispute until long after such future time when the game is no longer played.
The first team to play baseball under modern rules is believed to be the New York Knickerbockers. The club was founded on September 23, 1845, as a breakaway from the earlier Gotham Club. The new club's by-laws committee, William R. Wheaton and William H. Tucker, formulated the "Knickerbocker Rules", which, in large part, dealt with organizational matters but which also laid out some new rules of play. One of these prohibited "soaking" or "plugging" the runner; under older rules, a fielder could put a runner out by hitting the runner with the thrown ball, as in the common schoolyard game of kickball. The Knickerbocker Rules required fielders to tag or force the runner. The new rules also introduced base paths, foul lines and foul balls; in "town ball" every batted ball was fair, as in cricket, and the lack of runner's lanes led to wild chases around the infield. In the long run, these changes resulted in the focus of baseball being more about the duel between batting and pitching rather than baserunning and fielding.
Initially, Wheaton and Tucker's innovations did not serve the Knickerbockers well. In the first known competitive game between two clubs under the new rules, played at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, on June 19, 1846, the "New York nine" (almost certainly the Gotham Club) humbled the Knickerbockers by a score of 23 to 1. Nevertheless, the Knickerbocker Rules were rapidly adopted by teams in the New York area and their version of baseball became known as the "New York Game" (as opposed to the less rule-bound "Massachusetts Game," played by clubs in New England, and "Philadelphia Town-ball").
In spite of its rapid growth in popularity, baseball had yet to overtake the British import, cricket. As late as 1855, the New York press was still devoting more space to coverage of cricket than to baseball.
At a 1857 convention of sixteen New York area clubs, including the Knickerbockers, the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) was formed. It was the first official organization to govern the sport and the first to establish a championship. The convention also formalized three key features of the game: 90 feet distance between the bases, 9-man teams, and 9-inning games (under the Knickerbocker Rules, games were played to 21 runs). During the Civil War, soldiers from different parts of the United States played baseball together, leading to a more unified national version of the sport. Membership in the NABBP grew to almost 100 clubs by 1865 and to over 400 by 1867, including clubs from as far away as California. Beginning in 1869, the league permitted professional play, addressing a growing practice that had not been previously permitted under its rules. The first and most prominent professional club of the NABBP era was the Cincinnati Red Stockings in Ohio, which went undefeated in 1869 and half of 1870. After the Cincy club broke up at the end of that season, four key members including player/manager Harry Wright moved to Boston under owner and businessman Ivers Whitney Adams and became the "Boston Red Stockings" and the Boston Base Ball Club.
In 1858, at the Fashion Race Course in the Corona neighborhood of Queens (now part of New York City), the first games of baseball to charge admission were played. The All Stars of Brooklyn, including players from the Atlantic, Excelsior, Putnam and Eckford clubs, took on the All Stars of New York (Manhattan), including players from the Knickerbocker, Gotham, Eagle and Empire clubs. These are commonly believed to the first all-star baseball games.
Growth.
Before the Civil War, baseball competed for public interest with cricket and regional variants of baseball, notably town ball played in Philadelphia and the Massachusetts Game played in New England. In the 1860s, aided by the Civil War, "New York" style baseball expanded into a national game. Baseball began to overtake cricket in popularity, impelled by its much shorter duration relative to the contemporary form of cricket. Several other factors reduced North Americans' cultural loyalty to cricket, as Puritan anti-recreational attitudes, the increasing desire of non-WASP immigrants to have a chance to assimilate, and centuries of separation had eroded ties to English sporting culture. William Humber argues there was also less of a social taboo around baseball in the New World than in England, where it was strongly perceived as a children's game, and that Americans preferred a sport where the teams alternated offense and defense more frequently.
As its first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players was formed. The NABBP soon expanded into a truly national organization, although most of the strongest clubs remained those based in the country's northeastern part. In its 12-year history as an amateur league, the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn won seven championships, establishing themselves as the first true dynasty in the sport. However, Mutual of New York was widely considered one of the best teams of the era. By the end of 1865, almost 100 clubs were members of the NABBP. By 1867, it ballooned to over 400 members, including some clubs from as far away as California. One of these western clubs, Chicago (dubbed the "White Stockings" by the press for their uniform hosiery), won the championship in 1870. Because of this growth, regional and state organizations began to assume a more prominent role in the governance of the amateur sport at the expense of the NABBP. At the same time, the professionals soon sought a new governing body.
Professionalism.
The NABBP of America was initially established upon principles of amateurism. However, even early in the Association's history, some star players such as James Creighton of Excelsior received compensation covertly or indirectly. In 1866, the NABBP investigated Athletic of Philadelphia for paying three players including Lip Pike, but ultimately took no action against either the club or the players. In many cases players, quite openly, received a cut of the gate receipts. Clubs playing challenge series were even accused of agreeing beforehand to split the earlier games to guarantee a decisive (and thus more certain to draw a crowd) "rubber match". To address this growing practice, and to restore integrity to the game, at its December 1868 meeting the NABBP established a professional category for the 1869 season. Clubs desiring to pay players were now free to declare themselves professional.
The Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first to declare themselves openly professional, and were aggressive in recruiting the best available players. Twelve clubs, including most of the strongest clubs in the NABBP, ultimately declared themselves professional for the 1869 season.
The first attempt at forming a major league produced the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, which lasted from 1871 to 1875. The now all-professional Chicago "White Stockings" (today the Chicago Cubs), financed by businessman William Hulbert, became a charter member of the league along with a new Red Stockings club (now the Atlanta Braves), formed in Boston with four former Cincinnati players. The Chicagos were close contenders all season, despite the fact that the Great Chicago Fire had destroyed the team's home field and most of their equipment. Chicago finished the season in second place, but were ultimately forced to drop out of the league during the city's recovery period, finally returning to National Association play in 1874. Over the next couple of seasons, the Boston club dominated the league and hoarded many of the game's best players, even those who were under contract with other teams. After Davy Force signed with Chicago, and then breached his contract to play in Boston, Hulbert became discouraged by the "contract jumping" as well as the overall disorganization of the N.A. (for example, weaker teams with losing records or inadequate gate receipts would simply decline to play out the season), and thus spearheaded the movement to form a stronger organization. The result of his efforts was the formation of a much more "ethical" league, which was named the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (NL). After a series of rival leagues were organized but failed (most notably the American Base Ball Association (1882–1891), which spawned the clubs which would ultimately become the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers), the current American League (AL), evolving from the minor Western League of 1893, was established in 1901.
Rise of the major leagues.
In 1870, a schism developed between professional and amateur ballplayers. The NABBP split into two groups. The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players operated from 1871 through 1875 and is considered by some to have been the first major league. Its amateur counterpart disappeared after only a few years.
William Hulbert's National League, which was formed after the National Association proved ineffective, put its emphasis on "clubs" rather than "players". Clubs now had the ability to enforce player contracts and prevent players from jumping to higher-paying clubs. Clubs in turn were required to play their full schedule of games, rather than forfeiting scheduled games once out of the running for the league championship, a practice that had been common under the National Association. A concerted effort was also made to reduce the amount of gambling on games which was leaving the validity of results in doubt.
Around this time, a gentlemen's agreement was struck between the clubs to exclude non-white players from professional baseball, a "de facto" ban that remained in effect until 1947. It is a common misconception that Jackie Robinson was the first African-American major-league ballplayer; he was actually only the first after a long gap (and the first in the modern era). Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy Walker were unceremoniously dropped from major and minor-league rosters in the 1880s, as were other African-Americans in baseball. An unknown number of African-Americans played in the major leagues by representing themselves as Indians, or South or Central Americans, and a still larger number played in the minor leagues and on amateur teams. In the majors, however, it was not until the signing of Robinson (in the National League) and Larry Doby (in the American League) that baseball began to relax its ban on African-Americans.
The early years of the National League were tumultuous, with threats from rival leagues and a rebellion by players against the hated "reserve clause", which restricted the free movement of players between clubs. Competitive leagues formed regularly, and disbanded just as regularly. The most successful of these was the American Association of 1882–1891, sometimes called the "beer and whiskey league" for its tolerance of the sale of alcoholic beverages to spectators. For several years, the National League and American Association champions met in a postseason World's Championship Series—the first attempt at a World Series.
The Union Association survived for only one season (1884), as did the Players' League (1890), which was an attempt to return to the National Association structure of a league controlled by the players themselves. Both leagues are considered major leagues by many baseball researchers because of the perceived high caliber of play and the number of star players featured. However, some researchers have disputed the major league status of the Union Association, pointing out that franchises came and went and contending that the St. Louis club, which was deliberately "stacked" by the league's president (who owned that club), was the only club that was anywhere close to major-league caliber.
In fact, there were dozens of leagues, large and small, in the late 19th century. What made the National League "major" was its dominant position in the major cities, particularly the edgy, emotional nerve center of baseball that was New York City. Large, concentrated populations offered baseball teams national media distribution systems and fan bases that could generate sufficient revenues to afford the best players in the country.
A number of the other leagues, including the venerable Eastern League, threatened the dominance of the National League. The Western League, founded in 1893, became particularly aggressive. Its fiery leader Ban Johnson railed against the National League and promised to grab the best players and field the best teams. The Western League began play in April 1894 with teams in Detroit (now the American League Detroit Tigers, the only league team that has not moved since), Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Sioux City and Toledo. Prior to the 1900 season, the league changed its name to the American League and moved several franchises to larger, strategic locations. In 1901 the American League declared its intent to operate as a major league.
Major League Baseball (MLB) defines the "modern era" of baseball as beginning in 1900.
The resulting bidding war for players led to widespread contract-breaking and legal disputes. One of the most famous involved star second baseman Napoleon Lajoie, who in 1901 went across town in Philadelphia from the National League Phillies to the American League Athletics. Barred by a court injunction from playing baseball in the state of Pennsylvania the next year, Lajoie was traded to the Cleveland team, where he played and managed for many years.
The war between the American and National leagues caused shock waves across the baseball world. At a meeting in 1901, the other baseball leagues negotiated a plan to maintain their independence. On September 5, 1901, Eastern League president Patrick T. Powers announced the formation of the second National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the NABPL (NA).
These leagues did not consider themselves "minor"—a term that did not come into vogue until St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey pioneered the farm system in the 1930s. Nevertheless, these financially troubled leagues, by beginning the practice of selling players to the more affluent National and American leagues, embarked on a path that eventually led to the loss of their independent status.
Ban Johnson had other designs for the NA. While the NA continues to this day, he saw it as a tool to end threats from smaller rivals who might some day want to expand in other territories and threaten his league's dominance.
After 1902 both leagues and the NABPL signed a new National Agreement which achieved three things:
The new agreement tied independent contracts to the reserve-clause national league contracts. Baseball players were a commodity, like cars. A player's skill set had a price of $5,000. It set up a rough classification system for independent leagues that regulated the dollar value of contracts, the forerunner of the system refined by Rickey and used today.
It also gave the NA great power. Many independents walked away from the 1901 meeting. The deal with the NA punished those other indies who had not joined the NA and submitted to the will of the majors. The NA also agreed to the deal so as to prevent more pilfering of players with little or no compensation for the players' development. Several leagues, seeing the writing on the wall, eventually joined the NA, which grew in size over the next several years.
In the very early part of the 20th century, known as the "dead-ball era", baseball rules and equipment favored the "inside game" and the game was played more violently and aggressively than it is today. This period ended in the 1920s with several changes that gave advantages to hitters. In the largest parks, the outfield fences were brought closer to the infield. In addition, the strict enforcement of new rules governing the construction and regular replacement of the ball caused it to be easier to hit, and be hit harder.
The first professional black baseball club, the Cuban Giants, was organized in 1885. Subsequent professional black baseball clubs played each other independently, without an official league to organize the sport. Rube Foster, a former ballplayer, founded the Negro National League in 1920. A second league, the Eastern Colored League, was established in 1923. These became known as the Negro leagues, though these leagues never had any formal overall structure comparable to the Major Leagues. The Negro National League did well until 1930, but folded during the Great Depression.
From 1942 to 1948, the Negro World Series was revived. This was the golden era of Negro league baseball, a time when it produced some of its greatest stars. In 1947, Jackie Robinson signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the color barrier that had prevented talented African-American players from entering the white-only major leagues. Although the transformation was not instantaneous, baseball has since become fully integrated. While the Dodgers' signing of Robinson was a key moment in baseball and civil rights history, it prompted the decline of the Negro leagues. The best black players were now recruited for the Major Leagues, and black fans followed. The last Negro league teams folded in the 1960s.
Pitchers dominated the game in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973, the designated hitter (DH) rule was adopted by the American League, while in the National League, the DH rule was not adopted until March 2022. The rule had been applied in a variety of ways during the World Series; until the adoption of the DH by the National League, the DH rule applied when Series games were played in an American League stadium, and pitchers would bat during Series games played in National League stadiums. There had been continued disagreement about the future of the DH rule in the World Series until league-wide adoption of the DH rule.
During the late 1960s, the Baseball Players Union became much stronger and conflicts between owners and the players' union led to major work stoppages in 1972, 1981, and 1994. The 1994 baseball strike led to the cancellation of the World Series, and was not settled until the spring of 1995. In the late 1990s, functions that had been administered separately by the two major leagues' administrations were united under the rubric of MLB.
The dead-ball era: 1901 to 1919.
The period 1901–1919 is commonly called the "Dead-ball era", with low-scoring games dominated by pitchers such as Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander. The term also accurately describes the condition of the baseball itself. Baseballs cost three dollars each in 1901, a unit price which would be equal to $ today. In contrast, modern baseballs purchased in bulk as is the case with professional teams cost about seven dollars each as of 2021 and thus make up a negligible portion of a modern MLB team's operating budget. Due to the much larger relative cost, club owners in the early 20th century were reluctant to spend much money on new balls if not necessary. It was not unusual for a single baseball to last an entire game, nor for a baseball to be reused for the next game especially if it was still in relatively good condition as would likely be the case for a ball introduced late in the game. By the end of the game, the ball would usually be dark with grass, mud, and tobacco juice, and it would be misshapen and lumpy from contact with the bat. Balls were replaced only if they were hit into the crowd and lost, and many clubs employed security guards expressly for the purpose of retrieving balls hit into the stands — a practice unthinkable today.
As a consequence, home runs were rare, and the "inside game" dominated—singles, bunts, stolen bases, the hit-and-run play, and other tactics dominated the strategies of the time.
Despite this, there were also several superstar hitters, the most famous being Honus Wagner, held to be one of the greatest shortstops to ever play the game, and Detroit's Ty Cobb, the "Georgia Peach." His career batting average of .366 has yet to be bested.
The Merkle incident.
The 1908 pennant races in both the AL and NL were among the most exciting ever witnessed. The conclusion of the National League season, in particular, involved a bizarre chain of events. On September 23, 1908, the New York Giants and Chicago Cubs played a game in the Polo Grounds. Nineteen-year-old rookie first baseman Fred Merkle, later to become one of the best players at his position in the league, was on first base, with teammate Moose McCormick on third with two outs and the game tied. Giants shortstop Al Bridwell socked a single, scoring McCormick and apparently winning the game. However, Merkle, instead of advancing to second base, ran toward the clubhouse to avoid the spectators mobbing the field, which at that time was a common, acceptable practice. The Cubs' second baseman, Johnny Evers, noticed this. In the confusion that followed, Evers claimed to have retrieved the ball and touched second base, forcing Merkle out and nullifying the run scored. Evers brought this to the attention of the umpire that day, Hank O'Day, who after some deliberation called the runner out. Because of the state of the field O'Day thereby called the game. Despite the arguments by the Giants, the league upheld O'Day's decision and ordered the game replayed at the end of the season, if necessary. It turned out that the Cubs and Giants ended the season tied for first place, so the game was indeed replayed, and the Cubs won the game, the pennant, and subsequently the World Series (the last Cubs Series victory until 2016).
For his part, Merkle was doomed to endless ridicule throughout his career (and to a lesser extent for the rest of his life) for this lapse, which went down in history as "Merkle's Boner". In his defense, some baseball historians have suggested that it was not customary for game-ending hits to be fully "run out", it was only Evers's insistence on following the rules strictly that resulted in this unusual play. In fact, earlier in the 1908 season, the identical situation had been brought to the umpires' attention by Evers; the umpire that day was the same Hank O'Day. While the winning run was allowed to stand on that occasion, the dispute raised O'Day's awareness of the rule, and directly set up the Merkle controversy.
New places to play.
Turn-of-the-century baseball attendances were modest by later standards. The average for the 1,110 games in the 1901 season was 3,247. However, the first 20 years of the 20th century saw an unprecedented rise in the popularity of baseball. Large stadiums dedicated to the game were built for many of the larger clubs or existing grounds enlarged, including Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, Boston's Fenway Park along with Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park in Chicago. Likewise from the Eastern League to the small developing leagues in the West, and the rising Negro leagues professional baseball was being played all across the country. Average major league attendances reached a pre-World War I peak of 5,836 in 1909. Where there weren't professional teams, there were semi-professional teams, traveling teams barnstorming, company clubs and amateur men's leagues that drew small but fervent crowds.
The "Black Sox".
The fix of baseball games by gamblers and players working together had been suspected as early as the 1850s. Hal Chase was particularly notorious for throwing games, but played for a decade after gaining this reputation; he even managed to parlay these accusations into a promotion to manager. Even baseball stars such as Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker have been credibly alleged to have fixed game outcomes. When MLB's complacency during this "Golden Age" was eventually exposed after the 1919 World Series, it became known as the Black Sox scandal.
After an excellent regular season (88–52, .629 W%), the Chicago White Sox were heavy favorites to win the 1919 World Series. Arguably the best team in baseball, the White Sox had a deep lineup, a strong pitching staff, and a good defense. Even though the National League champion Cincinnati Reds had a superior regular season record (96–44, .689 W%,) no one, including gamblers and bookmakers, anticipated the Reds having a chance. When the Reds triumphed 5–3, many pundits cried foul.
At the time of the scandal, the White Sox were arguably the most successful franchise in baseball, with excellent gate receipts and record attendance. At the time, most baseball players were not paid especially well and had to work other jobs during the winter to survive. Some elite players on the big-city clubs made very good salaries, but Chicago was a notable exception.
For many years, the White Sox were owned and operated by Charles Comiskey, who paid the lowest player salaries, on average, in the American League. The White Sox players all intensely disliked Comiskey and his penurious ways, but were powerless to do anything, thanks to baseball's so-called "reserve clause" that prevented players from switching teams without their team owner's consent.
By late 1919, Comiskey's tyrannical reign over the Sox had sown deep bitterness among the players, and White Sox first baseman Arnold "Chick" Gandil decided to conspire to throw the 1919 World Series. He persuaded gambler Joseph "Sport" Sullivan, with whom he had had previous dealings, that the fix could be pulled off for $100,000 total (which would be equal to $ today), paid to the players involved. New York gangster Arnold Rothstein supplied the $100,000 that Gandil had requested through his lieutenant Abe Attell, a former featherweight boxing champion.
After the 1919 series, and through the beginning of the 1920 baseball season, rumors swirled that some of the players had conspired to purposefully lose. At last, in 1920, a grand jury was convened to investigate these and other allegations of fixed baseball games. Eight players (Charles "Swede" Risberg, Arnold "Chick" Gandil, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Oscar "Happy" Felsch, Eddie Cicotte, George "Buck" Weaver, Fred McMullin, and Claude "Lefty" Williams) were indicted and tried for conspiracy. The players were ultimately acquitted.
However, the damage to the reputation of the sport of baseball led the team owners to appoint Federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis to be the first commissioner of baseball. His first act as commissioner was to ban the "Black Sox" from professional baseball for life. The White Sox, meanwhile,
would not return to the World Series until 1959, and it was not until their next appearance in 2005 they won the World Series.
The Negro leagues.
Until July 5, 1947, baseball had two histories. One fills libraries, while baseball historians are only just beginning to chronicle the other fully: African Americans have played baseball as long as white Americans. Players of color, both African-American and Hispanic, played for white baseball clubs throughout the very early days of the growing amateur sport. Moses Fleetwood Walker is considered the first African American to play at the major league level, in 1884. But soon, and dating through the first half of the 20th century, an unwritten but iron-clad color line fenced African-Americans and other players of color out of the "majors".
The Negro leagues were American professional baseball leagues comprising predominantly African-American teams. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro major leagues".
The first professional team, established in 1885, achieved great and lasting success as the Cuban Giants, while the first league, the National Colored Base Ball League, failed in 1887 after only two weeks due to low attendance. The Negro American League of 1951 is considered the last major league season and the last professional club, the Indianapolis Clowns, operated amusingly rather than competitively from the mid-1960s to 1980s.
The first international leagues.
While many of the players that made up the black baseball teams were African Americans, many more were Latin Americans (mostly, but not exclusively, black), from nations that deliver some of the greatest talents that make up the Major League rosters of today. Black players moved freely through the rest of baseball, playing in Canadian Baseball, Mexican Baseball, Caribbean Baseball, and Central America and South America, where more than a few achieved a level of fame that was unavailable in the country of their birth.
Babe Ruth and the end of the dead-ball era.
It was not the Black Sox scandal which put an end to the dead-ball era, but a rule change and a single player.
Some of the increased offensive output can be explained by the 1920 rule change that outlawed tampering with the ball. Pitchers had developed a number of techniques for producing "spitballs", "shine balls" and other trick pitches which had "unnatural" flight through the air. Umpires were now required to put new balls into play whenever the current ball became scuffed or discolored. This rule change was enforced all the more stringently following the death of Ray Chapman, who was struck in the temple by a pitched ball from Carl Mays in a game on August 16, 1920; he died the next day. Discolored balls, harder for batters to see and therefore harder for batters to dodge, have been rigorously removed from play ever since. This meant that batters could now see and hit the ball with less difficulty. With the added prohibition on the ball being purposely wetted or scuffed in any way, pitchers had to rely on pure athletic skill—changes in grip, wrist angle, arm angle and throwing dynamics, plus a new and growing appreciation of the aerodynamic effect of the spinning ball's seams—to pitch with altered trajectories and hopefully confuse or distract batters.
At the end of the 1919 season Harry Frazee, then owner of the Boston Red Sox, sold a group of his star players to the New York Yankees. Among them was George Herman Ruth, known affectionately as "Babe". Ruth's career mirrors the shift in dominance from pitching to hitting at this time. He started his career as a pitcher in 1914, and by 1916 was considered one of the dominant left-handed pitchers in the game. When Edward Barrow, managing the Red Sox, converted him to an outfielder, ballplayers and sportswriters were shocked. It was apparent, however, that Ruth's bat in the lineup every day was far more valuable than Ruth's arm on the mound every fourth day. Ruth swatted 29 home runs in his last season in Boston. The next year, as a Yankee, he would hit 54 and in 1921 he hit 59. His 1927 mark of 60 home runs would last until 1961.
Ruth's power hitting ability demonstrated a dramatic new way to play the game, one that was extremely popular with fans. Accordingly, ballparks were expanded, sometimes by building outfield "bleacher" seating which shrunk the size of the outfield and made home runs more frequent. In addition to Ruth, hitters such as Rogers Hornsby also took advantage, with Hornsby compiling extraordinary figures for both power and average in the early 1920s. By the late 1920s and 1930s all the good teams had their home-run hitting "sluggers": the Yankees' Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx in Philadelphia, Hank Greenberg in Detroit and in Chicago Hack Wilson were the most storied. While the American League championship, and to a lesser extent the World Series, would be dominated by the Yankees, there were many other excellent teams in the inter-war years. The National League's St. Louis Cardinals, for example, would win three titles in nine years, the last with a group of players known as the "Gashouse Gang".
The first radio broadcast of a baseball game was on August 5, 1921, over Westinghouse station KDKA from Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Harold Arlin announced the Pirates–Phillies game. Attendances in the 1920s were consistently better than they had been before WWI. The interwar peak average attendance was 8,211 in 1930, but baseball was hit hard by the Great Depression and in 1933 the average fell below five thousand for the only time between the wars. At first wary of radio's potential to impact ticket sales at the park, owners began to make broadcast deals and by the late 1930s, all teams' games went out over the air.
1933 also saw the introduction of the yearly All-Star game, a mid-season break in which the greatest players in each league play against one another in a hard-fought but officially meaningless demonstration game. In 1936 the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, was instituted and five players elected: Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner. The Hall formally opened in 1939 and, of course, remains open to this day.
The war years.
In 1941, a year which saw the premature death of Lou Gehrig, Boston's great left fielder Ted Williams had a batting average over .400—the last time anyone has achieved that feat. During the same season Joe DiMaggio hit successfully in 56 consecutive games, an accomplishment both unprecedented and unequaled.
After the United States entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Landis asked Franklin D. Roosevelt whether professional baseball should continue during the war. In the "Green Light Letter", the US president replied that baseball was important to national morale, and asked for more night games so day workers could attend. Thirty-five Hall of Fame members and more than 500 Major League Baseball players served in the war, but with the exception of D-Day, games continued. Both Williams and DiMaggio would miss playing time in the services, with Williams also flying later in the Korean War. During this period Stan Musial led the St. Louis Cardinals to the 1942, 1944 and 1946 World Series titles. The war years also saw the founding of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
Baseball boomed after World War II. 1945 saw a new attendance record and the following year average crowds leapt nearly 70% to 14,914. Further records followed in 1948 and 1949, when the average reached 16,913. While average attendances slipped to somewhat lower levels through the 1950s, 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, they remained well above pre-war levels, and total seasonal attendance regularly hit new highs from 1962 onward as the number of major league teams—and games—increased.
Racial integration in baseball.
The post-War years in baseball also witnessed the racial integration of the sport. Participation by African Americans in organized baseball had been precluded since the 1890s by formal and informal agreements, with only a few players being surreptitiously included in lineups on a sporadic basis.
American society as a whole moved toward integration in the post-War years, partially as a result of the distinguished service by African American military units such as the Tuskegee Airmen, 366th Infantry Regiment, and others. During the baseball winter meetings in 1943, noted African-American athlete and actor Paul Robeson campaigned for integration of the sport. After World War II ended, several team managers considered recruiting members of the Negro leagues for entry into organized baseball. In the early 1920s, New York Giants' manager John McGraw tried to slip a black player, Charlie Grant, into his lineup (reportedly by passing him off to the front office as an Indian), and McGraw's wife reported finding names of dozens of black players that McGraw fantasized about signing, after his death. Pittsburgh Pirates owner Bill Bensawanger reportedly signed Josh Gibson to a contract in 1943, and the Washington Senators were also said to be interested in his services. But those efforts (and others) were opposed by Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball's powerful commissioner and a staunch segregationist. Bill Veeck claimed that Landis blocked his purchase of the Philadelphia Phillies because he planned to integrate the team. While this account is disputed, Landis was in fact opposed to integration, and his death in 1944 (and subsequent replacement as Commissioner by Happy Chandler) removed a major obstacle for black players in the Major Leagues.
The general manager who would be eventually successful in breaking the color barrier was Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Rickey himself had experienced the issue of segregation. While playing and coaching for his college team at Ohio Wesleyan University, Rickey had a black teammate named Charles Thomas. On a road trip through southern Ohio, his fellow player was refused a room in a hotel. Although Rickey was able to get the player into his room for that night, he was taken aback when he reached his room to find Thomas upset and crying about this injustice. Rickey related this incident as an example of why he wanted a full desegregation of not only baseball, but the entire nation.
In the mid-1940s, Rickey had compiled a list of Negro league ballplayers for possible Major League contracts. Realizing that the first African-American signee would be a magnet for prejudiced sentiment, however, Rickey was intent on finding a player with the distinguished personality and character that would allow him to tolerate the inevitable abuse. Rickey's sights eventually settled on Jackie Robinson, a shortstop with the Kansas City Monarchs. Although probably not the best player in the Negro leagues at the time, Robinson was an exceptional talent, was college-educated, and had the marketable distinction of having served as an officer during World War II. Even more importantly, Rickey judged Robinson to possess the inner strength to withstand the inevitable harsh animosity to come. To prepare him for the task, Rickey played Robinson in 1946 for the Dodgers' minor league team, the Montreal Royals, which proved an arduous emotional challenge, though Robinson enjoyed fervently enthusiastic support from the Montreal fans. On April 15, 1947, Robinson broke the color barrier, which had been tacitly recognized for almost 75 years, with his appearance for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.
Eleven weeks later, on July 5, 1947, the American League was integrated by the signing of Larry Doby to the Cleveland Indians. Over the next few years, a handful of black baseball players made appearances in the majors, including Roy Campanella (teammate to Robinson in Brooklyn) and Satchel Paige (teammate to Doby in Cleveland). Paige, who had pitched more than 2,400 innings in the Negro leagues, sometimes two and three games a day, was still effective at 42, and still playing at 59. His ERA in the Major Leagues was 3.29.
However, the initial pace of integration was slow. By 1953, only six of the sixteen major league teams had a black player on the roster. The Boston Red Sox became the last major league team to integrate its roster with the addition of Pumpsie Green on July 21, 1959. While limited in numbers, the on-field performance of early black Major League players was outstanding. In the fourteen years from 1947 to 1960, black players won one or more of the Rookie of the Year awards nine times.
While never prohibited in the same fashion as African Americans, Latin American players also benefitted greatly from the integration era. In 1951, two Chicago White Sox, Venezuelan-born Chico Carrasquel and Cuban-born (and black) Minnie Miñoso, became the first Hispanic All-Stars.
According to some baseball historians, Jackie Robinson and the other African-American players helped reestablish the importance of baserunning and similar elements of play that were previously de-emphasized by the predominance of power hitting.
From 1947 to the 1970s, African-American participation in baseball rose steadily. By 1974, 27% of baseball players were African American. As a result of this on-field experience, minorities began to experience long-delayed gains in managerial positions within baseball. In 1975, Frank Robinson (who had been the 1956 Rookie of the Year with the Cincinnati Reds) was named player-manager of the Cleveland Indians, making him the first African-American manager in the major leagues.
Although these front-office gains continued, Major League Baseball saw a lengthy slow decline in the percentage of black players after the mid-1970s. By 2007, African Americans made up less than 9% of Major League players. While this trend is largely attributed to an increased emphasis on recruitment of players from Latin America (with the number of Hispanic players in the major leagues rising to 29% by 2007), other factors have been cited as well. Hall of Fame player Dave Winfield, for instance, has pointed out that urban America provides fewer resources for youth baseball than in the past. Despite this continued prevalence of Hispanic players, the percentage of black players rose again in 2008 to 10.2%.
Arturo Moreno became the first Hispanic owner of an MLB franchise when he purchased the Anaheim Angels in 2004.
In 2005, a Racial and Gender Report Card on Major League Baseball was issued, which generally found positive results on the inclusion of African Americans and Latinos in baseball, and gave Major League Baseball a grade of "A" or better for opportunities for players, managers and coaches as well as for MLB's central office. At that time, 37% of major league players were people of color: Latino (26 percent), African American (9 percent) or Asian (2 percent). Also by 2004, 29% of the professional staff in MLB's central office were people of color, 11% of team vice presidents were people of color, and seven of the league's managers were of color (four African Americans and three Latinos).
Expansion era.
Baseball had been in the West for almost as long as the National League and the American League had been around. It evolved into the Pacific Coast League (PCL), which included the Hollywood Stars, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Oaks, Portland Beavers, Sacramento Solons, San Francisco Seals, San Diego Padres, Seattle Rainiers.
The PCL was huge in the West. A member of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, it kept losing great players to the National and the American leagues for less than $8,000 a player.
The PCL was far more independent than the other "minor" leagues, and rebelled continuously against their Eastern masters. Clarence Pants Rowland, the President of the PCL, took on baseball commissioners Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Happy Chandler at first to get better equity from the major leagues, then to form a third major league. His efforts were rebuffed by both commissioners. Chandler and several of the owners, who saw the value of the markets in the West, started to plot the extermination of the PCL. They had one thing that Rowland did not: The financial power of the Eastern major league baseball establishment.
No one was going to back a PCL club building a major-league size stadium if the National or the American League was going to build one too, which discouraged investment in PCL ballparks. PCL games and rivalries still drew fans, but the leagues' days of dominance in the West were numbered.
1953–1955.
Until the 1950s, major league baseball franchises had been largely confined to the northeastern United States, with the teams and their locations remaining unchanged from 1903 to 1952. The first team to relocate in fifty years was the Boston Braves, who moved in 1953 to Milwaukee, where the club set attendance records. In 1954, the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore and were renamed the Baltimore Orioles. These relocations can be seen as a full-circle ending to the classic era, which began with the moves of teams "from" Milwaukee and Baltimore. In 1955, the Philadelphia Athletics moved to Kansas City.
National League Baseball leaves New York.
In 1958 the New York market ripped apart. The Yankees were becoming the dominant draw, and the cities of the West offered generations of new fans in much more sheltered markets for the other venerable New York clubs, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Placing these storied, powerhouse clubs in the two biggest cities in the West had the specific design of crushing any attempt by the PCL to form a third major league. Eager to bring these big names to the West, Los Angeles gave Walter O'Malley, owner of the Dodgers, a helicopter tour of the city and asked him to pick his spot. The Giants were given the lease of the PCL San Francisco Seals while Candlestick Park was built for them.
California.
The logical first candidates for major league "expansion" were the same metropolitan areas that had just attracted the Dodgers and Giants. It is said that the Dodgers and Giants—National League rivals in New York City—chose their new cities because Los Angeles (in southern California) and San Francisco (in northern California) already had a fierce rivalry (geographical, economic, cultural and political), dating back to the state's founding. The only California expansion team—and also the first in Major League Baseball in over 70 years—was the Los Angeles Angels (later the California Angels, the Anaheim Angels, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, before reverting to Los Angeles Angels in 2016), who brought the American League to southern California in 1961. Northern California, however, would later gain its own American League team, in 1968, when the Athletics would move again, settling in Oakland, across San Francisco Bay from the Giants.
1961–1962.
Along with the Angels, the other 1961 expansion team was the Washington Senators, who joined the American League and took over the nation's capital when the moved to Minnesota and became the Twins. 1961 is also noted as being the year in which Roger Maris surpassed Babe Ruth's single season home run record, hitting 61 for the New York Yankees, albeit in a slightly longer season than Ruth's. To keep pace with the American League—which now had ten teams—the National League likewise expanded to ten teams, in 1962, with the addition of the Houston Colt .45s and New York Mets.
1969.
In 1969, the American League expanded when the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots, the latter in a longtime PCL stronghold, were admitted to the league. The Pilots stayed just one season in Seattle before moving to Milwaukee and becoming today's Milwaukee Brewers. The National League also added two teams that year, the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres. Given the size of the expanded leagues, 12 teams apiece, each split into East and West divisions, with a playoff series to determine the pennant winner and World Series contender—the first post-season baseball instituted since the advent of the World Series itself.
The Padres were the last of the core PCL teams to be absorbed. The Coast League did not die, though. After reforming and moving into new markets, it successfully transformed into a Class AAA league.
1972–2013.
In 1972, the second Washington Senators moved to the Dallas–Fort Worth area and became the Texas Rangers.
In 1977, the American League expanded to fourteen teams, with the newly formed Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays. Sixteen years later, in 1993, the National League likewise expanded to fourteen teams, with the newly formed Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins (now Miami Marlins).
Beginning with the 1994 season, both the AL and the NL were divided into three divisions (East, West, and Central), with the addition of a wild card team (the team with the best record among those finishing in second place) to enable four teams in each league to advance to the preliminary division series. However, due to the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike (which canceled the 1994 World Series), the new rules did not go into effect until the 1995 World Series.
In 1998, the AL and the NL each added a fifteenth team, for a total of thirty teams in Major League Baseball. The Arizona Diamondbacks joined the National League, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays—now called simply the Rays—joined the American League. In order to keep the number of teams in each league at an even number—with 14 in the AL and 16 in the NL—Milwaukee changed leagues and became a member of the National League. Two years later, the NL and AL ended their independent corporate existences and merged into a new legal entity named Major League Baseball; the two leagues remained as playing divisions. In 2001, MLB took over the struggling Montreal Expos franchise and, after the 2004 season, moved it to Washington, DC, which had been clamoring for a team ever since the second Senators' departure in 1972; the club was renamed the Nationals.
In 2013, in keeping with Commissioner Bud Selig's desire for expanded interleague play, the Houston Astros were shifted from the National to the American League; with an odd number (15) in each league, an interleague contest was played somewhere almost every day during the season. At this time the divisions within each league were shuffled to create six equal divisions of five teams.
Pitching dominance and rules changes.
By the late 1960s, the balance between pitching and hitting had swung back to favor of the pitchers once more. In 1968 Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title with an average of just .301, the lowest in history. That same year, Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain won 31 games—making him the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season. St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Bob Gibson achieved an equally remarkable feat by allowing an ERA of just 1.12.
In response to these events, major league baseball implemented certain rule changes in 1969 to benefit the batters. The pitcher's mound was lowered, and the strike zone was reduced.
In 1973 the American League, which had been suffering from much lower attendance than the National League, made a move to increase scoring even further by initiating the designated hitter rule.
Players assert themselves.
From the time of the formation of the Major Leagues to the 1960s, the team owners controlled the game. After the so-called "Brotherhood Strike" of 1890 and the failure of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players and its Players National League, the owners' control of the game seemed absolute. It lasted over 70 years despite a number of short-lived players organizations. In 1966, however, the players enlisted the help of labor union activist Marvin Miller to form the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). The same year, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale—both Cy Young Award winners for the Los Angeles Dodgers—refused to re-sign their contracts, jointly holding out for better contracts. The era of the reserve clause, which held players to one team, was drawing to an end.
The first legal challenge came in 1970. Backed by the MLBPA, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood took the leagues to court to negate a player trade, citing the 13th Amendment and antitrust legislation. In 1972, he finally lost his case before the United States Supreme Court by a vote of 5 to 3, but gained large-scale public sympathy, and the damage had been done. The reserve clause survived, but it had been irrevocably weakened. In 1975, Andy Messersmith of the Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos played without contracts, and then declared themselves free agents in response to an arbitrator's ruling. Handcuffed by concessions made in the Flood case, the owners had no choice but to accept the collective bargaining package offered by the MLBPA, and the reserve clause was effectively ended, to be replaced by the current system of free-agency and arbitration.
While the legal challenges were going on, the game continued. In 1969, the "Miracle Mets", just seven years after their formation, recorded their first winning season, won the National League East and finally the World Series.
On the field, the 1970s saw some of the longest-standing records fall, along with the rise of two powerhouse dynasties. In Oakland, the Swinging A's were overpowering, winning the Series in 1972, 1973 and 1974, and five straight division titles. The strained relationships between teammates, who included Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue and Reggie Jackson, gave the lie to the need for "chemistry" between players. The National League, on the other hand, belonged to the Big Red Machine in Cincinnati, where Sparky Anderson's team, which included Pete Rose as well as Hall of Famers Tony Pérez, Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan, succeeded the A's run in 1975.
The decade also contained great individual achievements. On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run, surpassing Babe Ruth's all-time record. He would retire in 1976 with 755, and that was just one of numerous records he achieved, many of which, including total bases, still stand today. There was great pitching too: between 1973 and 1975, Nolan Ryan threw four "no-hit" games. He would add a record-breaking fifth in 1981 and two more before his retirement in 1993, by which time he had also accumulated 5,714 strikeouts, another record, in a 27-year career.
The marketing and hype era.
From the 1980s onward, the major league game changed dramatically, due to the combined effects of free agency, improvements in the science of sports conditioning, changes in the marketing and television broadcasting of sporting events, and the push by brand-name products for greater visibility. These events lead to greater labor difficulties, fan disaffection, rapidly rising prices, changes in game-play, and problems with the use of performance-enhancing substances like steroids tainting the race for records. In spite of all this, stadium crowds generally grew. Average attendances first broke 20,000 in 1979 and 30,000 in 1993. That year total attendance hit 70 million, but baseball was hit hard by a strike in 1994, and as of 2005 it had marginally improved on those 1993 records. (Update: Between 2009 and 2017, average attendance hovered just over the 30,000 mark, with numbers falling into the 28,000s in '18 and '19. The 2019 season saw a million fewer tickets sold than the banner year of 2007, however revenues to major league baseball from media rights fees increased total revenue to $10 billion in 2018, a 70% rise from a decade before.)
The science of the sport changes the game.
During the 1980s, significant advances were made in the science of physical conditioning. Weight rooms and training equipment were improved. Trainers and doctors developed better diets and regimens to make athletes bigger, healthier, and stronger than they had ever been.
Another major change that had been occurring during this time was the adoption of the pitch count. Starting pitchers who played complete games had not been an unusual thing in baseball's history. Now, pitchers were throwing harder than ever and pitching coaches watched to see how many pitches a player had thrown over the game. At anywhere from 100 to 125, pitchers increasingly would be pulled out to preserve their arms. Bullpens began to specialize more, with more pitchers being trained as middle relievers, and a few hurlers, usually possessing high velocity but not much durability, as closers. The science of maximizing effectiveness and career duration, while attempting to minimize injury and downtime, is an ongoing pursuit by coaches and kinesiologists.
Along with the expansion of teams, the addition of more pitchers needed to play a complete game stressed the total number of quality players available in a system that restricted its talent searches at that time to America, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Television.
The arrival of live televised sports in the 1950s increased attention and revenue for all major league clubs at first. The television programming was extremely regional, hurting the non-televised minor and independent leagues most. People stayed home to watch Maury Wills rather than watch unknowns at their local baseball park. Major League Baseball, as it always did, made sure that it controlled rights and fees charged for the broadcasts of all games, just as it had on radio.
The national networks began televising national games of the week, opening the door for a national audience to see particular clubs. While most teams were broadcast in the course of a season, emphasis tended toward the league leaders with famous players and the major market franchises that could draw the largest audience.
The rise of cable.
In the 1970s the cable revolution began. The Atlanta Braves became a power contender with greater revenues generated by WTBS, Ted Turner's Atlanta-based Super-Station, broadcast as "America's Team" to cable households nationwide. The roll-out of ESPN, then regional sports networks (now mostly under the umbrella of Fox Sports Net) changed sports news in general and particularly baseball with its relatively huge number of games-per-season. Now under the microscope of news organizations that needed to fill 24 programming hours per day, the amount of attention—and salary—paid to major league players grew exponentially. Players who would have sought off-season jobs to make ends meet just 20 years earlier were now well-paid professionals at least, and multi-millionaires in many cases. This super-star status often rested on careers that were not as compelling as those of the baseball heroes of a less media-intense time.
As player contract values soared, and the number of broadcasters, commentators, columnists, and sports writers also multiplied. The competition for a fresh angle on any story became fierce. Media pundits began questioning the high salaries paid to players when on-field performance was deemed less than deserving. Critical commentary was more of a draw than praise, and coverage began to become intensely negative. Players' personal lives, which had always been off-limits except under extreme circumstances, became the fodder of editorials, insider stories on TV, and features in magazines. When the use of performance-enhancing drugs became an issue, drawing scornful criticism from fans and pundits, the gap between the sports media and the players whom they covered widened further.
With the development of satellite television and digital cable, Major League Baseball launched channels with season-subscription fees, making it possible for fans to watch virtually every game played, in both major leagues, everywhere, in real time.
Team networks.
The next refinement of baseball on cable was the creation of single-team cable networks. YES Network & NESN, the New York Yankees & Boston Red Sox cable television networks, respectively, took in millions to broadcast games not only in New York and Boston but around the country. These networks generated as much revenue as, or more than, revenue annually for large-market teams' baseball operations. By fencing these channels off in separate corporate entities, owners were able to exclude the income from consideration during contract negotiations.
Merchandise, endorsements and sponsorships.
The first merchandise produced in response to the growing popularity of the game was the baseball trading card. The earliest known player cards were produced in 1868 by a pair of New York baseball-equipment purveyors. Since that time, many enterprises, notably tobacco and candy companies, have used trading cards to promote and sell their products. These cards rarely, if ever, provided any benefit directly to the players, but a growing mania for collecting and trading cards helped personalize baseball, giving some fans a more personal connection to their favorite players and introducing them to new ones. Eventually, older cards became “vintage” and rare cards gained in value until the secondary market for trading cards became a billion-dollar industry in itself, with the rarest individuals bringing mid-six-figures to millions of dollars at auction. The advent of the Internet and websites such as eBay provided huge new venues for buyers, sellers and traders, some of whom have made baseball cards their living.
In recent years baseball cards have disassociated from unrelated products like tobacco and bubble-gum, to become products in their own right. Following the exit of competitor Donruss from the baseball-card industry, former bubble-gum giants Topps and Fleer came to dominate that market through exclusive contracts with players and Major League Baseball. Fleer, in turn, exited the market in 2007, leaving Topps as the only card manufacturer with an MLB contract.
Other genuine baseball memorabilia also trades and sells, often at high prices. Much of what is for sale as "memorabilia" is manufactured strictly for sale and rarely has a direct connection to teams or players beyond the labeling, unless signed in person by a player. Souvenir balls caught by fans during important games, especially significant home run balls, have great rarity value, and balls signed by players have always been treasured, traded and sold. The high value of autographs has created new businessmen whose sole means of making a living was acquiring autographs and memorabilia from the athletes. Memorabilia hounds fought with fans to get signatures worth $20, $60, or even $100 or more in their inventory.
Of great value to individual top players are endorsement contracts wherein the player's fame is used to sell anything from sports equipment to automobiles, soda and underwear. Top players can receive as much as a million dollars a year or more directly from the companies.
In deals with players, teams and Major League Baseball, large corporations like NIKE and Champion pay big money to make sure that their logos are seen on the clothing and shoes worn by athletes on the field. This "association branding" has become a significant revenue stream. In the late 1990s and into the 21st century, the dugout, the backstops behind home plate, and anywhere else that might be seen by a camera, became fair game for the insertion of advertising.
Player wealth.
Beginning with the 1972 "Flood v. Kuhn" Supreme Court case, management's grip on players, as embodied in the reserve clause, began to slip. In 1976, the Messersmith/McNally Arbitration, also known as the Seitz Decision effectively destroyed the reserve clause. Players who had been dramatically underpaid for generations came to be replaced by players who were paid extremely well for their services.
Sports agents.
A new generation of sports agents arose, hawking the talents of free-agent players who knew baseball but didn't know the business end of the game. The agents broke down what the teams were generating in revenue off of the players' performances. They calculated what their player might be worth to energize a television contract, or provide more merchandise revenue, or put more fans into stadium seats. Management pushed back; the dynamic produced a variety of compromises which ideally left all parties unsatisfied.
Business.
Under the Major League Baseball contract, players must play for minimum salary for six years, at which time they become free agents. With players seeking greener pastures when their six years had passed, fewer players remained career members of one ball club. Large-market clubs like the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and the Los Angeles Dodgers, given big revenues from their cable television operations, signed more and more of the best—and best-known—players away from mid-sized and smaller-market clubs that could not afford to compete on salaries. Major League Baseball, unlike many other sports, does not impose a salary cap on teams. The League does attempt to level the field, as it were, by imposing a luxury tax on teams with very high payrolls, but management is still free to pay players whatever they can afford to attract talent. Some television reporters, commentators, and print sports writers question the kind of money being paid to these players, but just as many on the other side of the debate feel players should bargain for whatever they can get. Still others complain that minor-league players are not fairly compensated by MLB. The tug-of-war between players and management is complex, ongoing, and of great interest to serious students of the professional game.
Owners and players feud in the 1980s.
All was not well with major league baseball. The many contractual disputes between players and owners came to a head in 1981. Previous players' strikes (in 1972, 1973 and 1980) had been held in preseason, with only the 1972 stoppage—over benefits—causing disruption to the regular season from April 1 to April 13. Also, in 1976 the owners had locked the players out of Spring training in a dispute over free agency.
The crux of the 1981 dispute was compensation for the loss of players to free agency. After seeing a top-rank player sign with another team, the aggrieved owner wanted a mid-rank player in return, the so-called "sixteenth player" (each club was allowed to protect 15 players from this rule). Under this arrangement, losing lower-rated free agents would produce correspondingly smaller compensation. While this seemed reasonable and fair to owners, players only recently freed from the bondage of the reserve clause found it unacceptable, and withdrew their labor, striking on June 12. Immediately, the U.S. Government's National Labor Relations Board ruled that the owners had not been negotiating in good faith, and installed a federal mediator to reach a solution. Seven weeks and 713 games were lost in the middle of the season, before the owners backed down on July 31, settling for proportionally lower-ranked players as compensation. The damaged season was continued as distinct halves starting August 9, with the playoffs reorganized to reflect this.
Throughout the 1980s then, baseball seemed to prosper. The competitive balance between franchises saw fifteen different teams make the World Series, and produced nine different champions during the decade. Also, every season from 1978 through 1987 saw a different World Series winner, a streak unprecedented in baseball history. Turmoil was, however, just around the corner. In 1986, Pete Rose retired from playing for the Cincinnati Reds, having broken Ty Cobb's record by accumulating 4,256 hits during his career. He continued as Reds manager until, in 1989 it was revealed that he was being investigated for sports gambling, including the possibility that he had bet on teams with which he was involved. While Rose admitted a gambling problem, he denied having bet on baseball. Federal prosecutor John Dowd investigated and, on his recommendation, Rose was banned from organised baseball, a move which precluded his possible inclusion in the Hall of Fame. In a meeting with Commissioner Giamatti, and having failed in a legal action to prevent it, Rose accepted his punishment. It was, essentially, the same fate that had befallen the Black Sox seventy years previously. (Rose, however, would continue to deny that he bet on baseball until he finally confessed to it in his 2004 autobiography.)
1994–95 Major League Baseball strike.
Labor relations were still strained. There had been a two-day strike in 1985 (over the division of television revenue money), and a 32-day spring training lockout in 1990 (again over salary structure and benefits). By far the worst action would come in 1994. The seeds were sown earlier: in 1992 the owners sought to renegotiate salary and free-agency terms, but little progress was made. The standoff continued until early 1994 when the existing agreement expired, with no agreement on what was to replace it. Adding to the conflict was the perception that "small market" teams, such as the struggling Seattle Mariners could not compete with high-spending teams such as those in New York or Los Angeles. Their plan was to institute TV revenue sharing to increase equity among the teams and impose a salary cap to keep expenditures down. Players felt that such a cap would reduce their potential earnings. It wasn't until later, in 2003, that MLB instituted a luxury tax on high-spending teams in an attempt to encourage more equitable player outlays.
Meanwhile, back in 1994, players officially went on strike on August 12. In September 1994, Major League Baseball announced the cancellation of the World Series for the first time since 1904.
Home run mania and the second coming of baseball.
The cancellation of the 1994 World Series was a severe embarrassment for Major League Baseball. Fans were outraged and frustrated, their love of the game shaken to its core. The strike was declared an act of war, and fought back: attendance figures and broadcast ratings were lower in 1995 than before the strike. It would be a decade before baseball recovered from the disruption.
On September 6, 1995, Baltimore Orioles shortstop, Cal Ripken Jr., played his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking Lou Gehrig's 56-year-old record. This was the first celebratory moment in baseball after the strike. Ripken continued his streak for another three years, voluntarily ending it at 2,632 consecutive games played on September 20, 1998.
In 1997, the expansion Florida Marlins won the World Series in just their fifth season. This made them the third-youngest team to win the Fall Classic (behind the 1903 Boston Red Sox and later the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks, who won in their fourth season). Virtually all the key players on the 1997 Marlins team were soon traded or let go to save payroll costs (although the 2003 Marlins did win a second world championship).
In 1998, St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire and Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa engaged in a home run race for the ages. With both rapidly approaching Roger Maris's record of 61 home runs (set in 1961), the entire nation watched as the two power hitters raced to be the first to break into uncharted territory. McGwire reached 62 first on September 8, 1998, with Sosa right behind. Sosa finished the season with 66 home runs, well behind McGwire's unheard-of 70. However, recent steroid allegations have marred the season in the minds of many fans.
That same year, the New York Yankees won a record 125 games, including going 11–2 in the postseason, to win the World Series as what many consider to be one of the greatest teams of all time.
McGwire's record of 70 would last a mere three years following the meteoric rise of veteran San Francisco Giants left fielder Barry Bonds in 2001. In 2001 Bonds knocked out 73 home runs, breaking the record set by McGwire by hitting his 71st on October 5, 2001. In addition to the home run record, Bonds also set single-season marks for base on balls with 177 (breaking the previous record of 170, set by Babe Ruth in 1923) and slugging percentage with .863 (breaking the mark of .847 set by Ruth in 1920). Bonds continued his torrid home run hitting in the next few seasons, hitting his 660th career home run on April 12, 2004, tying him with his godfather Willie Mays for third place on the all-time career home runs list. He hit his 661st home run the next day, April 13, to take sole possession of third place. Only three years later Bonds surpassed the great Hank Aaron to become baseball's most prolific home run hitter.
However, none of Bonds's accomplishments in the 2000s have been without controversy. During his run, journalists questioned McGwire about his use of the steroid-precursor androstenedione, and in March 2005 he was unforthcoming when questioned as part of a Congressional inquiry into steroids. Bonds has also been dogged by allegations of steroid use and his involvement in the BALCO drugs scandal, as his personal trainer Greg Anderson pleaded guilty to supplying steroids (without naming Bonds as a recipient). Neither Bonds nor McGwire has failed a drug test at any time since there was no steroid-testing until 2003 after the new August 7, 2002, agreement between owners and players was reached. McGwire retired after the 2001 season; in 2010, he admitted to having used steroids throughout his MLB career.
The 1990s also saw Major League Baseball expand into new markets as four new teams joined the league. In 1993, the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins began play, and in just their fifth year of existence, the Marlins became the first wild card team to win the championship.
The year 1998 brought two more teams into the mix, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks, the latter of which become the youngest expansion franchise to win the championship.
The late 1990s were dominated by the New York Yankees, who won four out of five World Series championships from 1996 to 2000.
The steroid era.
Drugs, baseball, and records.
The lure of big money pushed players harder and harder to achieve peak performance, while avoiding injury from over-training. The wearying travel schedule and 162-game season meant that amphetamines, usually in the form of pep pills known as "greenies", had been widespread in baseball since at least the 1960s. Baseball's drug scene was no particular secret, having been discussed in "Sports Illustrated" and in Jim Bouton's groundbreaking book "Ball Four", but there was virtually no public backlash. Two decades later, however, some Major League players turned to newer performance-enhancing drugs, including ephedra and improved steroids. The eventual consequences for the game, the players and the fans were substantial.
A memo circulated in 1991 by baseball commissioner Fay Vincent stated that "The possession, sale or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance by Major League players and personnel is strictly prohibited ... [and those players involved] are subject to discipline by the commissioner and risk permanent expulsion from the game... This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids…" Some general managers of the time do not remember this memo; it was not emphasized or enforced and, confusingly, Vincent himself has disclaimed any direct responsibility for a ban on steroids, saying, "I didn't ban steroids...They were banned by Congress".
Ephedra, an herb used to cure cold symptoms, and also used in some allergy medications, sped up the heart and was considered by some to be a weight-loss short-cut. In 2003, Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler had come to training camp 10 pounds overweight. During a workout on February 16, Bechler complained of dizziness and fatigue. His condition worsened while resting in the clubhouse and he was transported to an ambulance on a stretcher. Bechler spent the night in intensive care and died the following morning at the age of 23. The official cause of death was listed as "multi-organ failure due to heat exhaustion". The coroner's report stated it was likely that Bechler had taken three ephedra capsules on an empty stomach prior to working out. Many in the media linked Bechler's death to ephedra, raising concerns over the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Ephedra was banned, and soon the furor died down.
The 1998 home run race had generated nearly unbroken positive publicity, but Barry Bonds' run for the all-time home run record provoked a backlash over steroids, which increase a person's testosterone level and subsequently enable that person to bodybuild with much more ease. Some athletes have said that the main advantage to steroids is not so much the additional power or endurance that they can provide, but that they can drastically shorten rehab time from injury.
Commissioner Bud Selig was criticized, mostly after-the-fact, for a slow response to the rising tide of steroid use in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, as a safe and effective test for anabolic steroids came online and sanctions for their use began to be strictly enforced, some players adopted the use of harder-to-detect human growth hormone (HGH) to increase stamina and strength. Selig, still acting with some caution, imposed a strict anti-drug policy upon its minor league players, who are not part of the Major League Baseball Players Association (the PA). Random drug testing, education and treatment, and strict penalties for those caught became the rule of law. Anyone on a Major League team's forty man roster, including 15 minor leaguers that are on that list, were exempt from that program. Eventually, Selig and MLB had strict rules in place that carried meaningful sanctions against players who "juiced."
In a "Sports Illustrated" cover story in 2002, a year after his retirement, Ken Caminiti admitted that he had used steroids during his National League MVP-winning 1996 season, and for several seasons afterwards. Caminiti died unexpectedly of an apparent heart attack in The Bronx at the age of 41; he was pronounced dead on October 10, 2004, at New York's Lincoln Memorial Hospital. On November 1, the New York City Medical Examiners Office announced that Caminiti died from "acute intoxication due to the combined effects of cocaine and opiates", but possibly-steroid-induced coronary artery disease and cardiac hypertrophy (an enlarged heart) were also contributing factors.
In 2005, Jose Canseco published "", admitting steroid usage and claiming that it was prevalent throughout major league baseball. When the United States Congress decided to investigate the use of steroids in the sport, some of the game's most prominent players came under scrutiny for possibly using steroids. These include Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, and Mark McGwire. Other players, such as Canseco and Gary Sheffield, have admitted to have either knowingly (in Canseco's case) or not (Sheffield's) using steroids. In confidential testimony to the BALCO Grand Jury (that was later leaked to the "San Francisco Chronicle"), Giambi also admitted steroid use. He later held a press conference in which he appeared to affirm this admission, without actually saying the words. And after an appearance before Congress where he (unlike McGwire) emphatically denied using steroids, "period", slugger Rafael Palmeiro became the first major star to be suspended (10 days) on August 1, 2005, for violating Major League Baseball's newly strengthened ban on controlled substances, including steroids, adopted on August 7, 2002, starting in the 2003 season. Many lesser players (mostly from the minor leagues) have tested positive for use, as well.
In 2006, Commissioner Selig tasked former United States Senator George J. Mitchell to lead an investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball (MLB) and on December 13, 2007, the 409-page Mitchell Report was released ('Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball'). The report described the use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) in MLB and assessed the effectiveness of the MLB Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Mitchell also advanced certain recommendations regarding the handling of past illegal drug use and future prevention practices. The report names 89 MLB players who are alleged to have used steroids or drugs.
Baseball has been taken to task for turning a blind eye to its drug problems. It benefited from these drugs in the ever-increasingly competitive fight for airtime and media attention. For example, Commissioner Selig sent a personal representative to the 2007 game where Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's career home run record, even though Bonds was widely believed at the time to be a steroid user and had been named in connection with the then-ongoing BALCO scandal; many viewed this as Selig giving wink-and-a-nod tacit approval to the use of PEDs. MLB and its Players Association finally announced tougher measures, but many felt that they did not go far enough.
In December 2009, Sports Illustrated named Baseball's Steroid Scandal as the number one sports story of the decade of the 2000s. In 2013, no player from the first "steroid class" of players eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame was elected. Bonds and Clemens received less than half the number of votes needed, and some voters stated that they would not vote for any first-time candidate who played during the steroid era—whether accused of using banned substances or not—because of the effect the substances had on baseball.
The BALCO steroids scandal.
In 2002, a major scandal arose when it was discovered that the company Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), owned by Victor Conte, had been producing so-called "designer steroids", (specifically "the clear" and "the cream") which are steroids that could not be detected through drug tests at that time. In addition, the company had connections to several San Francisco Bay Area sports trainers and athletes, including the trainers of Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds. This revelation led to a vast criminal investigation into BALCO's connections with athletes from baseball and many other sports. Among the many athletes who have been linked to BALCO are Olympic sprinters Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, Olympic shot-putter C. J. Hunter, as well as Giambi and Bonds.
Grand jury testimony in December 2003—which was illegally leaked to the "San Francisco Chronicle" and published in December 2004 under the bylines of Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams—revealed that the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative did not merely manufacture nutritional supplements, but also distributed exotic steroids. Williams and Fairanu-Wada also provided compelling evidence that Barry Bonds, arguably the greatest player of his generation, was one of BALCO's steroid clients. The paper reported that these substances were probably designer steroids. Bonds said that Greg Anderson gave him a rubbing balm and a liquid substance that at the time he did not believe them to be steroids and thought they were flaxseed oil and other health supplements. Based on the testimony from many of the athletes, Conte and Anderson accepted plea agreements from the government in 2005, on charges they distributed steroids and laundered money, in order to avoid significant time in jail. Conte received a sentence of four months, Anderson received a sentence of three months. Also that year, James Valente, the vice-president of BALCO, and Remi Korchemny, a track coach affiliated with BALCO, pled guilty to distributing banned substances and received probation.
Various baseball pundits, fans, and even players have taken this as confirmation that Bonds used illegal steroids. Bonds never tested positive in tests performed in 2003, 2004, and 2005, which may be attributable to successful obfuscation of continued use as documented in the 2006 book "Game of Shadows". Before-and-after photos of Bonds, early in his career and late in his career, have led most fans to conclude that he must have used steroids to achieve such startling changes in his physique.
The Power Age.
While the introduction of steroids certainly increased the power production of greats, there were other factors that drastically increased the power surge after 1994. The factors cited are: smaller sized ballparks than in the past, the "juiced balls" theory claiming that the balls are wound tighter thus travel further following contact with the bat, and "watered down pitching" implying that lesser quality pitchers are up in the Major Leagues due to too many teams. Albeit these factors did play a large role in increasing home run thus scoring totals during this time, others that directly impact ballplayers have an equally important role. As noted earlier, one of those factors is the use of anabolic steroids for increasing muscle mass, which enables hitters to not only hit "mistake" pitches farther, but it also confers faster bat speed, giving hitters a fraction of a second more to adjust to "good" pitches such as a well-placed fastball, slider, changeup, or curveball. A more innocent, but also meaningful factor is better nutrition, as well as scientific training methods and advanced training facilities/equipment which can work without steroids to produce a more potent ballplayer.
In today's baseball age, players routinely reach 40 and 50 home runs in a season, a feat that was rare as recently as the 1980s. On the other hand, since the end of the steroid era, the emphasis on swinging for home runs has been accompanied by hitting in general falling off, with batting averages trending downwards towards 1960s levels and strikeouts reaching all-time highs: "each" of the eleven seasons from 2006 through 2016 broke the preceding MLB-total record for strikeouts.
Many modern baseball theorists believe that a new pitch will swing the balance of power back to the pitcher. A pitching revolution would not be unprecedented—several pitches have changed the game of baseball in the past, including the slider in the 1950s and 1960s and the split-fingered fastball in the 1970s to 1990s. Since the 1990s, the changeup has made a resurgence, being thrown masterfully by pitchers such as Tim Lincecum, Pedro Martínez, Trevor Hoffman, Greg Maddux, Matt Cain, Tom Glavine, Johan Santana, Marco Estrada, Justin Verlander, and Cole Hamels. Every so often, the time-honored knuckleball puts in another appearance to bedevil batters; pitchers like Phil Niekro, Jesse Haines, and Hoyt Wilhelm have made the Hall of Fame throwing knuckleballs.
Popularity in recent decades.
Baseball declined in popularity throughout the turn of the 21st century as other sports grew with the help of television broadcasting. Another factor in baseball's decline is that MLB games ended up being about 30 minutes longer on average since the 1960s. To combat this problem, MLB instituted the pitch clock, which forces pitchers to throw within a given time limit, in 2023 to make games end quicker. 62% of fans expressed support for the change during that year's season.
Banana Ball, an exhibition-style professional baseball league, has also made modifications to baseball to speed up the game, and has seen rising popularity as well.
Summary of modern-era major league teams.
Note: The team names listed below are those currently in use. Some of the franchises have changed their names in the past, in some cases more than once. In the early years of the 20th century, many teams did not have official names, and were referred to by their league and city, or by nicknames created by sportswriters.
|
3858
|
38418393
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3858
|
Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award
|
The Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) is an annual Major League Baseball (MLB) award given to one outstanding player in the American League and one in the National League. The award has been presented by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) since 1931.
History.
Since 1931, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) has bestowed a most valuable player award to a player in the National League and a player in the American League. Before 1931, two similar awards were issued: the League Award was issued during 1922–1928 in the American League and during 1924–1929 in the National League. During 1911–1914, the Chalmers Award was issued to a player in each league. Criteria and a list of winners for these two earlier awards are detailed in below sections.
MVP voting takes place before the postseason, but the results are not announced until after the World Series. The BBWAA began by polling three writers in each league city in 1938, reducing that number to two per league city in 1961. The BBWAA does not offer a clear-cut definition of what "most valuable" means, instead leaving the judgment to the individual voters.
In 1944, the award was named after Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first Commissioner of Baseball, who served from 1920 until his death on November 25, 1944. Formally named the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award, that naming appeared on a plaque given to winning players. Starting in 2020, Landis' name no longer appears on the MVP plaque, after the BBWAA received complaints from several former MVP winners about Landis' role against the integration of MLB.
First basemen, with 35 winners, have won the most MVPs among infielders, followed by second basemen (16), third basemen (15), and shortstops (15). Of the 25 pitchers who have won the award, 15 are right-handed while 10 are left-handed. Walter Johnson, Carl Hubbell, and Hal Newhouser are the only pitchers who have won multiple times, with Newhouser winning consecutively in 1944 and 1945.
Hank Greenberg, Stan Musial, Alex Rodriguez, Robin Yount, and Shohei Ohtani have won at different positions, while Rodriguez is the only player who has won the award with two different teams at two different positions, and Ohtani the only one to do it at two positions in the same season (twice). Rodriguez and Andre Dawson are the only players to win the award while on a last-place team, the 2003 Texas Rangers and 1987 Chicago Cubs, respectively. Barry Bonds has won the most often (seven times) and the most consecutively (four from 2001 to 2004). Jimmie Foxx was the first player to win multiple times. Ten players have won three times, and 19 have won twice. Frank Robinson and Shohei Ohtani are the only players to win the award in both the American and National Leagues, with Ohtani being the first to win in both leagues in consecutive seasons.
The award's only tie occurred in the National League in 1979, when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell received an equal number of points. There have been 23 unanimous winners, who received all the first-place votes. The New York Yankees have the most winning players with 24, followed by the St. Louis Cardinals with 21 winners. The award has never been presented to a member of the following three teams: Arizona Diamondbacks, New York Mets, and Tampa Bay Rays.
In recent decades, pitchers have rarely won the award. When Ohtani won the AL award in 2021, he became the first pitcher in either league to be named the MVP since Clayton Kershaw in 2014, and the first in the American League since Justin Verlander in 2011. Ohtani also became the first two-way player to win the award and in 2023, he became the first player in MLB history to win MVP by unanimous vote twice. Since the creation of the Cy Young Award in 1956, he is the only pitcher to win an MVP award without winning a Cy Young in the same year (Don Newcombe, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, Willie Hernández, Roger Clemens, Dennis Eckersley, Verlander, and Kershaw all won a Cy Young award in their MVP seasons). Ohtani is also the only MVP winner to have played most of his games as a designated hitter (DH), a position that normally does not contribute on defense. In 2024, after winning his third career unanimous MVP award, Ohtani became the first MVP winner to have played exclusively as a DH in a season. To date, Ohtani is the only player to win both the MVP and the Edgar Martínez Award, an award given to the most outstanding DH in a season.
There was no award given by either league in 1930, which meant that one of the single greatest performances ever went unheralded when Hack Wilson of the Chicago Cubs set the current MLB record for RBI with 191. He also batted .356 and set the NL record with 56 HRs, a record which stood for 68 years until Mark McGwire (70) and Sammy Sosa (66) both eclipsed him.
Chalmers Award (1911–1914).
Before the 1910 season, Hugh Chalmers of Chalmers Automobile announced he would present a Chalmers Model 30 automobile to the player with the highest batting average in Major League Baseball at the end of the season. The 1910 race for best average in the American League was between the Detroit Tigers' widely disliked Ty Cobb and Nap Lajoie of the Cleveland Indians. On the last day of the season, Lajoie overtook Cobb's batting average with seven bunt hits against the St. Louis Browns. American League President Ban Johnson said a recalculation showed that Cobb had won the race anyway, and Chalmers ended up awarding cars to both players.
In the following season, Chalmers created the Chalmers Award. A committee of baseball writers was to convene after the season to determine the "most important and useful player to the club and the league." Since the award was not as effective at advertising as Chalmers had hoped, it was discontinued after 1914.
League Awards (1922–1929).
In 1922, the American League created a new award to honor "the baseball player who is of the greatest all-around service to his club." Winners, voted on by a committee of eight baseball writers chaired by James Crusinberry, received a bronze medal and a cash prize. Voters were required to select one player from each team, and player-coaches and prior award winners were ineligible. Famously, these criteria resulted in Babe Ruth winning only a single MVP award before it was dropped after 1928. The National League award, without these restrictions, lasted from 1924 to 1929. In 1929, "The Sporting News" began awarding the The Sporting News Most Valuable Player Award, albeit with the first year being for the American League only. The voting system from before also did their own balloting on an unofficial level. Lew Fonseca was voted unofficial AL MVP while Al Simmons won The Sporting News MVP. The 1930 season saw unofficial votes for both leagues alongside the Sporting News doing their own awards. Joe Cronin and Bill Terry were voted the Sporting News MVP while Cronin and Hack Wilson won the unofficial BBWAA vote. Famously, the Hall of Fame plaques for both Cronin and Terry mention them as the Most Valuable Player in 1930.
BBWAA Most Valuable Player (1931–present).
The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) was first awarded the modern MVP after the 1931 season, adopting the format the National League used to distribute its league award. One writer in each city with a team filled out a ten-place ballot, with ten points for the recipient of a first-place vote, nine for a second-place vote, and so on. In 1938, the BBWAA raised the number of voters to three per city and gave 14 points for a first-place vote. The only significant change since then occurred in 1961 when the number of voters was reduced to two per league city.
|
3859
|
23483242
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3859
|
Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award
|
In Major League Baseball, the Rookie of the Year Award is given annually to two outstanding rookie players, one each for the American League (AL) and National League (NL), as voted on by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). The award was established in 1940 by the Chicago chapter of the BBWAA, which selected an annual winner from 1940 through 1946. The award became national in 1947; Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers' second baseman, won the inaugural award. One award was presented for all of MLB in 1947 and 1948; since 1949, the honor has been given to one player each in the NL and AL. Originally, the award was known as the J. Louis Comiskey Memorial Award, named after the Chicago White Sox owner of the 1930s. The award was renamed the Jackie Robinson Award in July 1987, 40 years after Robinson broke the baseball color line.
Nineteen players have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame—Robinson, seven AL players, and eleven others from the NL. The award has been shared twice: once by Butch Metzger and Pat Zachry of the NL in 1976; and once by John Castino and Alfredo Griffin of the AL in 1979. Members of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers have won the most awards of any franchise (with 18). Fred Lynn and Ichiro Suzuki are the only two players who have been named Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same year, and Fernando Valenzuela is the only player to have won Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award in the same year. Sam Jethroe is the oldest player to have won the award, at age 32, 33 days older than 2000 winner Kazuhiro Sasaki (also 32). Luis Gil of the New York Yankees and Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates are the most recent winners.
Qualifications and voting.
From 1947 through 1956, each BBWAA voter used discretion as to who qualified as a rookie. In 1957, the term was first defined as someone with fewer than 75 at-bats or 45 innings pitched in any previous Major League season. This guideline was later amended to 90 at-bats, 45 innings pitched, or 45 days on a Major League roster before September 1 of the previous year. The current standard of 130 at-bats, 50 innings pitched, or 45 days on the active roster of a Major League club (excluding time in military service or on the injury list) before September 1 was adopted in 1971.
Since 1980, each voter names three rookies: a first-place choice is given five points, a second-place choice three points, and a third-place choice one point. The award goes to the player who receives the most overall points. Edinson Vólquez received three second-place votes in 2008 balloting despite no longer being a rookie under the award's definition.
The award has drawn criticism in recent years because several players with experience in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) have won the award, such as Hideo Nomo in 1995, Kazuhiro Sasaki in 2000, Ichiro Suzuki in 2001, and Shohei Ohtani in 2018. The current definition of rookie status for the award is based only on Major League experience, but some feel that past NPB players are not true rookies because of their past professional experience. Others, however, believe it should make no difference since the first recipient and the award's namesake played for the Negro leagues before his MLB career and thus could also not be considered a "true rookie". This issue arose in 2003 when Hideki Matsui narrowly lost the AL award to Ángel Berroa. Jim Souhan of the "Minneapolis Star Tribune" said he did not see Matsui as a rookie in 2003 because "it would be an insult to the Japanese league to pretend that experience didn't count." "The Japan Times" ran a story in 2007 on the labeling of Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kei Igawa, and Hideki Okajima as rookies, saying "[t]hese guys aren't rookies." Past winners such as Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe, and Sam Jethroe had professional experience in the Negro leagues.
Winners.
Wins by team.
Following Corbin Carroll winning the award as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks, every MLB franchise has had at least one Rookie of the Year winner. The Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers have won more than any other team with 18.
|
3860
|
5308300
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3860
|
National League Championship Series
|
The National League Championship Series (NLCS) is a best-of-seven playoff and one of two League Championship Series comprising the penultimate round of Major League Baseball's (MLB) postseason. It is contested by the winners of the two National League (NL) Division Series. The winner of the NLCS wins the NL pennant and advances to the World Series, MLB's championship series, to play the winner of the American League's (AL) Championship Series. The NLCS began in 1969 as a best-of-five playoff and used this format until 1985, when it changed to a best-of-seven format.
History.
Before 1969, the National League champion (the "pennant winner") was determined by the best win–loss record at the end of the regular season. There were four "ad hoc" three-game playoff series due to ties under this formulation (in 1946, 1951, 1959, and 1962).
A structured postseason series began in 1969, when both the National and American Leagues were reorganized into two divisions each, East and West. The two division winners within each league played each other in a best-of-five series to determine who would advance to the World Series. In 1985, the format changed to best-of-seven.
The NLCS and ALCS, since the expansion to seven games, are always played in a 2–3–2 format: games 1, 2, 6, and 7 are played in the stadium of the team that has home field advantage, and games 3, 4, and 5 are played in the stadium of the team that does not. Home field advantage is given to the team that has the better record, except a division champion would always get home advantage over a Wild Card team. From 1969 to 1993, home field advantage was alternated between divisions each year regardless of regular season record and from 1995 to 1997 home field advantage was predetermined before the season.
In 1981, a one-off division series was held due to a split season caused by a players' strike.
In 1994, the league was restructured into three divisions, with the three division winners and a wild card team advancing to a best-of-five postseason round, the now-permanent National League Division Series (NLDS). The winners of that round advance to the best-of-seven NLCS; however, due to the player's strike later that season, no postseason was played and the new format did not formally begin until 1995. The playoffs were expanded in 2012 to include a second Wild Card team and in 2022 to include a third Wild Card team.
Seven managers have led a team to the NLCS in three consecutive seasons; however, the most consecutive NLCS appearances by one manager is held by Bobby Cox, who led the Atlanta Braves to eight straight from 1991 to 1999. The Braves (1991–1999) are also the only team in the National League to have made more than three consecutive National League Championship Series appearances. Tony La Russa and Jim Leyland are the only managers to lead their teams to three consecutive League Championship Series appearances in both leagues.
The Milwaukee Brewers, an American League team between 1969 and 1997, and the Houston Astros, a National League team between 1962 and 2012, are the only franchises to play in both the ALCS and NLCS. The Astros are the only team to have won both an NLCS (2005) and an ALCS (2017, 2019, 2021, and 2022). The Astros made four NLCS appearances before moving to the AL in 2013. Every current National League franchise has appeared in the NLCS and all teams except the Brewers have won an NL pennant via the NLCS.
For the first time in history, two wild card teams played in the 2022 National League Championship Series.
Championship Trophy.
The Warren C. Giles Trophy is awarded to the NLCS winner. Warren Giles served as president of the National League from 1951 to 1969.
"See: League Championship Series Most Valuable Player Award#National League winners"
Most Valuable Player Award.
A Most Valuable Player (MVP) award is given to the outstanding player in the NLCS. No MVP award is given for Division Series play.
The MVP award has been given to a player on the losing team twice, in 1986 to Mike Scott of the Houston Astros and in 1987 to Jeffrey Leonard of the San Francisco Giants.
Although the National League began its LCS MVP award in 1977, the American League did not begin its LCS MVP award until 1980. The winners are listed in several locations:
Results.
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.
|
3861
|
589223
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3861
|
American League Championship Series
|
The American League Championship Series (ALCS) is a best-of-seven playoff and one of two League Championship Series comprising the penultimate round of Major League Baseball's (MLB) postseason. The winner of the ALCS wins the AL pennant and advances to the World Series, MLB's championship series, to play the winner of the National League's (NL) Championship Series. The ALCS began in 1969 as a best-of-five playoff and used this format until 1985, when it changed to its current best-of-seven format.
History.
Prior to 1969, the American League champion (the "pennant winner") was determined by the best win–loss record at the end of the regular season. There was one "ad hoc" single-game playoff held, in 1948, due to a tie under this formulation.
The ALCS started in 1969, when the AL reorganized into two divisions, East and West. The winners of each division played each other in a best-of-five series to determine who would advance to the World Series. In 1985, the format changed to best-of-seven.
In 1981, a division series was held due to a split season caused by a players' strike.
In 1994, the league was restructured into three divisions, with the three division winners and a Wild Card team advancing to a best-of-five postseason round, known as the American League Division Series (ALDS). The winners of that round then advanced to the best-of-seven ALCS; however, due to the player's strike later that season, no postseason was played and the new format did not formally begin until 1995. The playoffs were expanded in 2012 to include a second Wild Card team and in 2022 to include a third Wild Card team.
The ALCS and NLCS, since the expansion to best-of-seven, are always played in a 2–3–2 format: Games 1, 2, 6, and 7 are played in the stadium of the team that has home field advantage, and Games 3, 4, and 5 are played in the stadium of the team that does not. The series concludes when one team records its fourth win. Since 1998, home field advantage has been given to the team that has the better regular season record, except a division champion would always get home advantage over a Wild Card team. If both teams have identical records in the regular season, then home field advantage goes to the team that has the winning head-to-head record. From 1969 to 1993, home-field advantage alternated between the two divisions, and from 1995 to 1997 home-field advantage was determined before the season.
Nine managers have led a team to the ALCS in three consecutive seasons; the record for most consecutive ALCS appearances by a manager is jointly held by Joe Torre, who led the New York Yankees to four in a row (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001), and Dusty Baker, who led the Houston Astros to four in a row (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023). The Astros (2017–2023) are also the only team in the American League to have made seven consecutive American League Championship Series appearances. Tony La Russa and Jim Leyland are the only managers to lead their teams to three consecutive League Championship Series appearances in both leagues.
The Milwaukee Brewers, an American League team between 1969 and 1997, and the Houston Astros, a National League team between 1962 and 2012, are the only franchises to play in both the ALCS and NLCS. The Astros are the only team to have won both an NLCS (2005) and an ALCS (2017, 2019, 2021, and 2022). Every current American League franchise has appeared in the ALCS.
Championship Trophy.
The William Harridge Trophy is awarded to the ALCS champion. Will Harridge served as American League president from 1931 to 1959.
"See: League Championship Series Most Valuable Player Award#American League winners"
Most Valuable Player Award.
The Lee MacPhail Most Valuable Player (MVP) award is given to the outstanding player in the ALCS. No MVP award is given for Division Series play.
Although the National League began its LCS MVP award in 1977, the American League did not begin its LCS MVP award till 1980. The winners are listed in several locations:
Results.
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.
|
3862
|
24382878
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3862
|
American League Division Series
|
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 each of the two division winners with the best records and the winners 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 postseason 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 to 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 2022, 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. The Astros are the only team to win the ALDS in six consecutive seasons. The Yankees record of four consecutive victories was broken by the Astros with their victory in the 2021 ALDS against the Chicago White Sox.
Determining the matchups.
The ALDS is a best-of-five series where the divisional winner with the best winning percentage in the regular season hosts the winner of the Wild Card Series between the top two wild card teams in one matchup, and the divisional winner with the second best winning percentage hosts the winner of the series between the lowest-seeded divisional winner and the lowest-seeded wild card team. (From 2012 to 2021, the wild card team was 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. 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.
From 2012 to 2021, 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. Beginning with the 2022 season, the winner between the lowest-ranked division winner and lowest-ranked wild card team faces the number 2 seed division winner in the Division Series, while the 4 v. 5 wild card winner still faces the number 1 seed, as there is no reseeding even if the 6-seeded wild card advances. 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. However, it reverted to the 2–2–1 format starting the next season, 2013.
Results.
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.
|
3863
|
24382878
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3863
|
National League Division Series
|
In Major League Baseball, the National League Division Series (NLDS) determines which two teams from the National League will advance to the National League Championship Series. The Division Series consists of two best-of-five series, featuring each of the two division winners with the best records and the winners of the wild-card playoffs.
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 Montreal Expos won the Eastern Division series over the Philadelphia Phillies in five games while in the Western Division, the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Houston Astros, also in five games (the Astros were members of the National League until 2012).
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 Eastern Division champion Atlanta Braves defeated the wild card Colorado Rockies three games to one, while the Central Division champion Cincinnati Reds defeated the Western Division champion Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-game sweep.
From 1994 to 2011, the wild card was given to the team in the National 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 NLDS. 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 National 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 NLDS. The regular format returned for the 2021 season.
As of 2021, the Atlanta Braves have currently played in the most NL division series with seventeen appearances. The St. Louis Cardinals have currently won the most NL division series, winning eleven of the fourteen series in which they have played. The Pittsburgh Pirates (who finished with a losing record from 1993 to 2012) were the last team to make their first appearance in the NL division series, making their debut in 2013 after winning the 2013 National League Wild Card Game. In 2008, the Milwaukee Brewers became the first team to play in division series in both leagues when they won the National League wild card, their first postseason berth since winning the American League East Division title in 1982 before switching leagues in 1998. Milwaukee had competed in an American League Division Series in the strike-shortened 1981 season.
Format.
The NLDS is a best-of-five series where the divisional winner with the best winning percentage in the regular season hosts the winner of the Wild Card Series between the top two wild card teams in one matchup, and the divisional winner with the second best winning percentage hosts the winner of the other Wild Card Series between the lowest-seeded divisional winner and the lowest-seeded wild card team. (From 2012 to 2021, the wild card team was 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. 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 NLCS. 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.
From 2012 to 2021, 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 NLCS. Beginning with the 2022 season, the winner between the lowest-ranked division winner and lowest-ranked wild card team faces the #2 seed division winner in the Division Series, while the 4 v. 5 wild card winner faces the #1 seed, as there is no reseeding even if the 6 seed wild card advances. 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 with the best regular season record from the league that wins the All-Star Game a slightly greater advantage. In order to spread out the Division Series games for broadcast purposes, the two NLDS 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. However, it reverted to the 2–2–1 format starting the next season, 2013.
Results.
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.
NOTE: With the Houston Astros move to the American League at the conclusion of the 2012 season, the Braves vs. Astros series is not currently possible.
|
3864
|
1300845875
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3864
|
2001 World Series
|
The 2001 World Series was the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 2001 season. The 97th edition of the World Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff between the National League (NL) champion Arizona Diamondbacks and the three-time defending World Series champions and American League (AL) champion New York Yankees. The Diamondbacks defeated the Yankees, four games to three to win the series. Considered one of the greatest World Series of all time,
its memorable aspects included two extra-inning games and three late-inning comebacks. Diamondbacks pitchers Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling were both named World Series Most Valuable Players.
The Yankees advanced to the World Series by defeating the Oakland Athletics, three games to two, in the AL Division Series, and then the Seattle Mariners in the AL Championship Series, four games to one. It was the Yankees' fourth consecutive World Series appearance, after winning championships in , , and . The Diamondbacks advanced to the World Series by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals, three games to two, in the NL Division Series, and then the Atlanta Braves in the NL Championship Series, four games to one. It was the franchise's first appearance in a World Series.
The Series began later than usual as a result of a delay in the regular season after the September 11 attacks and was the first to extend into November. The Diamondbacks won the first two games at home, limiting the Yankees to just one run. The Yankees responded with a close win in Game 3, at which U.S. President George W. Bush threw out the ceremonial first pitch. In Games 4 and 5, the Yankees won in comeback fashion, hitting game-tying home runs off Diamondbacks closer Byung-hyun Kim with one out remaining in consecutive games, before winning in extra innings. The Diamondbacks won Game 6 in a blowout, forcing a decisive Game 7. In the final game, the Yankees led in the ninth inning before the Diamondbacks staged a comeback against closer Mariano Rivera, capped off by a walk-off, bases-loaded bloop single by Luis Gonzalez to clinch Arizona's championship victory. This was the third World Series to end in a bases-loaded, walk-off hit, following and , and to this date, the last Series to end on a walk-off of any kind. This series held the record for the latest date that a Series ended (November 4), until that record was tied during the 2009 World Series and broken during the 2022 World Series.
Among several firsts, the 2001 World Series was the first World Series championship for the Diamondbacks; the first World Series played in the state of Arizona or the Mountain Time Zone; the first championship for a Far West state other than California; the first major professional sports team from the state of Arizona to win a championship; and the earliest an MLB franchise had won a World Series (the Diamondbacks had only existed for four years). The home team won every game in the Series, which had only happened twice before, in 1987 and 1991, both won by the Minnesota Twins. The Diamondbacks outscored the Yankees, 37–14, as a result of large margins of victory achieved by Arizona at Bank One Ballpark (now known as Chase Field) relative to the one-run margins the Yankees achieved at Yankee Stadium. Arizona's pitching held powerhouse New York to a .183 batting average, the lowest in a seven-game World Series ever, surpassing the St. Louis Cardinals, who hit .185 in the 1985 World Series. This and the 2002 World Series were the last two consecutive World Series to have game sevens until the World Series of 2016 and 2017. The 2001 World Series was the subject of an HBO documentary, "Nine Innings from Ground Zero", in 2004. It is often referred to as the greatest World Series of all time.
Background.
Arizona Diamondbacks.
The Arizona Diamondbacks began play in 1998, along with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, as the youngest expansion team in Major League Baseball (MLB). After a mediocre debut season, the Diamondbacks finished the following year first in the National League (NL) West with a record, but lost to the New York Mets in the National League Division series. With several All-Star players like Randy Johnson and Matt Williams, the Diamondbacks had high expectations for the 2000 season, but finished third in the NL West with an record. During the offseason, team manager Buck Showalter was fired, and replaced by sportscaster Bob Brenly. The Diamondbacks acquired several notable free agent players during the offseason, including Miguel Batista, Mark Grace, and Reggie Sanders. Most of the Diamondbacks players were above the age of 30, and had already played on a number of teams prior to the 2001 season. In fact, the Diamondbacks starting lineup for the World Series did not include a player under the age of 31, making them the oldest team by player age in World Series history. With several players nearing the age of retirement, Luis Gonzalez noted that the overall team mentality was "there's too many good guys in here to let this opportunity slip away".
Although the Diamondbacks were only one game above .500 by the end of April, Gonzalez had a particularly memorable start to the season, in which he tied the MLB record with 13 home runs during the month of April. The Diamondbacks found greater success in May and June, and at one point had a six-game lead in the NL West. During this span, the team won nine consecutive games, and Johnson tied the MLB record with 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game. The six game lead did not last long however, and by the end of July, the Diamondbacks were a half game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the West. A resurgent August pushed the team back into first place, a spot they maintained for the rest of the season. By the end of the season, several Diamondbacks players had put up exceptional statistics: Curt Schilling had the most wins of any pitcher in MLB that year with 22, while Johnson nearly broke the single season strikeout record with 372. Johnson and Schilling also had the two lowest earned run averages (ERA) in the NL, with 2.49 and 2.98 respectively. Gonzalez ended the season with a .325 batting average and 57 home runs, and finished third in voting for the NL Most Valuable Player Award. The Diamondbacks were also one of the best defensive teams in MLB that year, second in fewest errors committed, and tied with the Seattle Mariners for the best fielding percentage.
The Diamondbacks entered the postseason as the #2 seed in the National League, and played the #4 seed St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Division Series. Schilling threw a shutout in Game 1 to give the Diamondbacks an early series lead, but the Cardinals won Game 2 thanks to a two-run home run from Albert Pujols. Craig Counsell hit a three-run home run late in Game 3 to give the Diamondbacks a 2–1 series lead, but the Cardinals won Game 4 with strong pitching performances from Bud Smith and their relief pitchers. The Diamondbacks clinched the series in Game 5, when Tony Womack hit a game winning single that scored Danny Bautista. They then faced the third seeded Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series. Johnson also threw a shutout in Game 1, while the Braves hit three home runs in Game 2 to tie the series at one game apiece. Schilling threw a complete game in Game 3, and the Diamondbacks scored 11 runs in a Game 4 victory to take a 3–1 series lead. The Diamondbacks clinched the series in Game 5 with another strong performance from Johnson. With the win, they became the fastest expansion team to reach the World Series, in just their fourth year of play.
New York Yankees.
In contrast to the Diamondbacks, the New York Yankees were one of the oldest and most recognized teams in all of North American sports. The Yankees had built a dynasty in the late 1990s that extended into 2000, which included winning three consecutive World Series' and four of the last five. These teams were led by a group of talented young players that became known as the Core Four: Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera. Following the Yankees win over the Braves in the 1999 World Series, sportscaster Bob Costas called the Yankees "the team of the decade, [and] most successful franchise of the century."
The Yankees finished the 2001 season in first place in the AL East with a win–loss record of (a winning percentage of ), games ahead of the Boston Red Sox, good enough to secure the #2 seed in the American League playoff bracket. The Yankees then defeated the fourth seeded Oakland Athletics 3 games to 2 in the AL Division Series, after losing 2 games at home, and the top seeded Seattle Mariners 4 games to 1 in the AL Championship Series to advance to their fourth consecutive World Series, and fifth in six years.
Derek Jeter and Tino Martinez led the Yankees offensively during the 2001 season. Jeter batted .311 with 21 home runs and 74 RBI in 150 games, while Martinez batted .280 with 34 home runs and 113 RBI in 154 games. Roger Clemens and Mike Mussina were the leaders of the Yankees' pitching staff. Clemens who won the Cy Young Award, his sixth of a career total and major league record 7, finished with a win–loss record of 20–3, an earned-run average (ERA) of 3.51, and struck out 213 batters in 220.1 innings pitched and was by far the Yankee's best starter in the World Series. Mussina finished with a win–loss record of 17–11, an ERA of 3.15, and struck out 214 batters in 228.2 innings pitched.
September 11 and the month of November.
After MLB games were postponed as a result of the September 11 attacks, the World Series began on October 27, 2001, the latest start date for a World Series until the 2009 World Series, which started on October 28. The last three games were the first major-league games (other than exhibitions) played in the month of November. This was just the fourth time that no World Series champion was decided within the traditional month of October. The previous three occurrences were in (no series), (series held in September because of World War I), and (series cancelled by the players' strike). Game 7 was played on November 4; at the time this was the latest date a World Series game was played, and still tied with Game 6 of the 2009 Series for the second-latest date of a World Series game (only behind 's Game 6, played on November 5).
Additionally, the Series took place in New York City only seven weeks after the attacks, representing a remarkable boost in morale for the fatigued city. A tattered and torn American flag recovered from the wreckage at Ground Zero, which had been used at funerals of fallen Port Authority police officers after the attacks, was flown over Yankee Stadium during the series. According to Port Authority sergeant Antonio Scannella, "We wanted a place America could see this flag so they could see the rips in it, but it still flies."
President George W. Bush threw out the ceremonial first pitch before Game 3 at Yankee Stadium. Bush had been counseled by security officials to appear before Game 1 in Phoenix because they believed it would be more secure there, but Bush thought it would be better for the country to do it in New York. Security was extremely tight at Yankee Stadium before the game, with bomb sniffing dogs sweeping the property, snipers positioned around the stadium, and vendors screened by federal agents. A Secret Service agent dressed as an umpire and stood on the field with the other umpires before the game, briefly appearing on the TV broadcast. Bush wore a bulletproof vest underneath an FDNY sweater. Having been counseled by Derek Jeter to throw from the rubber on top of the pitcher's mound rather than the base of the mound, Bush strode to the rubber, gave a thumbs up to the crowd, and fired a strike over home plate as the crowd chanted "U-S-A". Bush later reflected, "I had never had such an adrenaline rush as when I finally made it to the mound. I was saying to the crowd, 'I'm with you, the country's with you' ... And I wound up and fired the pitch. I've been to conventions and rallies and speeches: I've never felt anything so powerful and emotions so strong, and the collective will of the crowd so evident."
Matchups.
Game 1.
The Series commenced on October 27, which was the latest a World Series had started, beating the previous record by four days (1999 World Series, October 23). The Yankees struck first in Game 1 when Derek Jeter was hit by a pitch with one out in the first and scored on Bernie Williams's double two batters later. However, Arizona's Curt Schilling and two relievers, Mike Morgan and Greg Swindell held the Yankees scoreless afterward. They managed to get only two walks and two hits for the rest of the game, Scott Brosius's double in the second and Jorge Posada's single in the fourth, both with two outs.
Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks tied the game on Craig Counsell's one-out home run in the first off of Mike Mussina. After a scoreless second, Mussina led off the third by hitting Tony Womack with a pitch. He moved to second on Counsell's sacrifice bunt before Luis Gonzalez's home run put the Diamondbacks up 3–1. A single and right fielder David Justice's error put runners on second and third before Matt Williams's sacrifice fly put Arizona up 4–1. After Mark Grace was intentionally walked, Damian Miller's RBI double gave Arizona a 5–1 lead.
Next inning, Gonzalez hit a two-out double off of Randy Choate. Reggie Sanders was intentionally walked before Gonzalez scored on Steve Finley's single. An error by third baseman Brosius scored Sanders, put Finley at third, and Williams at second. Both men scored on Mark Grace's double, putting Arizona up 9–1. Though the Diamondbacks got just one more hit for the rest of the game off of Sterling Hitchcock and Mike Stanton (Williams' leadoff single in the seventh), they went up 1–0 in the series.
The Diamondbacks' win in Game 1 was the first World Series game won by a non-New York City team since 1997. In every World Series between 1997 and 2001, either both teams were from New York City or a New York City team won in a sweep (1998 and 1999).
Game 2.
Arizona continued to take control of the Series with the strong pitching performance of Randy Johnson. The Big Unit pitched a complete-game shutout, allowing only four baserunners and three hits while striking out 11 Yankees. Andy Pettitte meanwhile nearly matched him, retiring Arizona in order in five of the seven innings he pitched. In the second, he allowed a leadoff single to Reggie Sanders, who scored on Danny Bautista's double. Bautista was the only Arizona runner stranded for the entire game. In the seventh, Pettitte hit Luis Gonzalez with a pitch before Sanders grounded into a forceout. After Bautista singled, Matt Williams's three-run home run put Arizona up 4–0. They won the game with that score and led the series two games to none as it moved to New York City. This was the 1,000th game played in the history of the MLB postseason.
Game 3.
The game was opened in New York City by President George W. Bush, who threw the ceremonial first pitch, a strike to Yankees backup catcher Todd Greene. Bush became the first incumbent U.S. president to throw a World Series first pitch since Jimmy Carter in . He also threw the baseball from the mound where the pitcher would be set (unlike most ceremonial first pitches which are from in front of the mound) and threw it for a strike. Chants of "U-S-A, U-S-A" rang throughout Yankee Stadium. Yankees starter Roger Clemens was outstanding allowing only three hits and struck out nine in seven innings of work. Yankees closer Mariano Rivera pitched two innings for the save.
Jorge Posada's leadoff home run off of Brian Anderson in the second put the Yankees up 1–0. The Diamondbacks loaded the bases in the fourth on two walks and one hit before Matt Williams's sacrifice fly tied the game. Bernie Williams hit a leadoff single in the sixth and moved to second on a wild pitch one out later before Posada walked. Mike Morgan relieved Anderson and struck out David Justice before Scott Brosius broke the tie with an RBI single. That would be all the scoring as Morgan and Greg Swindell pitched the rest of the game for the Diamondbacks. The Yankees cut Arizona's series lead to 2–1 with the win.
Game 4.
Game 4 saw the Yankees send Orlando Hernández to the mound while the Diamondbacks elected to bring back Curt Schilling on three days' rest. Both pitchers gave up home runs, with Schilling doing so to Shane Spencer in the third inning and Hernandez doing so to Mark Grace in the fourth. Hernandez pitched solid innings, giving up four hits while Schilling went seven innings and gave up one.
With the game still tied entering the eighth, Arizona struck. After Mike Stanton recorded the first out of the inning, Luis Gonzalez singled and Erubiel Durazo hit a double to bring him in. Matt Williams followed by grounding into a fielder's choice off of Ramiro Mendoza, which scored pinch runner Midre Cummings and gave the team a 3–1 lead.
With his team on the verge of taking a commanding 3–1 series lead, Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenly elected to bring in closer Byung-hyun Kim in the bottom of the eighth for a two-inning save. Kim, at 22, became the first Korean-born player to play in the MLB World Series. Kim struck out the side in the eighth, but ran into trouble in the ninth.
Derek Jeter led off by trying to bunt for a hit but was thrown out by Williams. Paul O'Neill then lined a single in front of Gonzalez. After Bernie Williams struck out, Kim seemed to be out of trouble with Tino Martinez coming to the plate. However, Martinez drove the first pitch he saw from Kim into the right-center field bleachers, tying the score at 3–3. The Yankees were not done, as Jorge Posada walked and David Justice moved him into scoring position with a single. Kim struck Spencer out to end the threat.
When the scoreboard clock in Yankee Stadium passed midnight, World Series play in November began, with the message on the scoreboard "Welcome to November Baseball".
Mariano Rivera took the hill for the Yankees in the tenth and retired the Diamondbacks in order. Kim went out for a third inning of work and retired Scott Brosius and Alfonso Soriano, but Jeter hit an opposite field home run on a 3–2 pitch count from Kim. This home run gave the Yankees a 4–3 victory and tied the Series at two games apiece which guaranteed a return trip to Arizona and made Jeter the first player to hit a November home run and earning him the tongue-in-cheek nickname of "Mr. November".
Game 5.
Game 5 saw the Yankees return to Mike Mussina for the start while the Diamondbacks sent Miguel Batista, who had not pitched in twelve days, to the mound. Batista pitched a strong scoreless innings, striking out six, and reliever Greg Swindell got the last out of the eighth inning. Mussina bounced back from his poor Game 1 start, recording ten strikeouts, but allowed solo home runs in the fifth inning to Steve Finley and Rod Barajas.
In the top of the ninth, the soon to be retired Paul O'Neill was honored by Yankee fans who chanted his name to which O'Neill, who was visibly in tears, tipped his hat. With the Diamondbacks leading 2–0 in the ninth, Byung-hyun Kim was called upon for the save despite having thrown three innings the night before. Jorge Posada doubled to open the inning, but Kim got Shane Spencer to ground out and then struck out Chuck Knoblauch. As had happened the previous night, Kim could not hold the lead as Scott Brosius hit a 1–0 pitch over the left field wall, the second straight game tying home run in the bottom of the ninth for the Yankees. Kim was pulled from the game in favor of Mike Morgan who recorded the final out.
Morgan retired the Yankees in order in the 10th and 11th innings, while the Diamondbacks got to Mariano Rivera in the 11th. Danny Bautista and Erubiel Durazo opened the inning with hits and Matt Williams advanced them into scoring position with a sacrifice bunt. Rivera then intentionally walked Steve Finley to load the bases, then got Reggie Sanders to line out and Mark Grace grounded out to end the inning.
Arizona went to midseason trade acquisition Albie Lopez in the 12th, and in his first at bat he gave up a single to Knoblauch (who had entered the game as a pinch runner). Brosius moved him over with a bunt, and then Alfonso Soriano ended the game with an RBI single to give the Yankees a 3–2 victory and a 3–2 series lead as the series went back to Phoenix. Lopez would not pitch again in the series. Sterling Hitchcock got the win for the Yankees after he relieved Rivera for the twelfth.
Game 6.
With Arizona in a must-win situation, Randy Johnson pitched seven innings and struck out seven, giving up just two runs, and Bobby Witt and Troy Brohawn finished the blowout. The Diamondbacks struck first when Tony Womack hit a leadoff double off of Andy Pettitte and scored on Danny Bautista's single in the first. Next inning, Womack's bases-loaded single scored two and Bautista's single scored another. The Yankees loaded the bases in the third on a single and two walks, but Johnson struck out Jorge Posada to end the inning. The Diamondbacks broke the game open with eight runs in the bottom half. Pettitte allowed a leadoff walk to Greg Colbrunn and subsequent double to Matt Williams before being relieved by Jay Witasick, who allowed four straight singles to Reggie Sanders, Jay Bell, Damian Miller, and Johnson that scored three runs. After Womack struck out, Bautista's single scored two more runs and Luis Gonzalez's double scored another, with Bautista being thrown out at home. Colbrunn's single and Williams's double scored a run each before Sanders struck out to end the inning. In the fourth, Bell reached first on a strike-three wild pitch before scoring on Miller's double. Johnson struck out before Womack singled to knock Witasick out of the game. With Randy Choate pitching, Yankees second baseman Alfonso Soriano's error on Bautista's ground ball allowed Miller to score and put runners on first and second before Gonzalez's single scored the Diamondbacks' final run. Choate and Mike Stanton kept them scoreless for the rest of the game. Pettitte was charged with six runs in two innings while Witasick was charged with nine runs in innings, the most runs allowed by any pitcher in a World Series game since Hall of Famer Walter Johnson also allowed nine runs in Game 7 of the 1925 World Series. The Yankees scored their only runs in the sixth on back-to-back one-out singles by Shane Spencer and Luis Sojo with runners on second and third, but by then the score had become so far out of reach that it didn't do the Yankees much good. The Diamondbacks hit six doubles and Danny Bautista batted 3-for-4 with five RBIs. The team set a World Series record with 22 hits and defeated the New York Yankees in its most lopsided postseason loss in 293 postseason games, since surpassed by a 16–1 loss to the Boston Red Sox in Game 3 of the 2018 American League Division Series. The 15–2 win evened the series at three games apiece and set up a Game 7 for the ages between Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling.
Game 7.
It was a matchup of two 20-game winners in the Series finale. Roger Clemens, at 39 years old, became the oldest Game 7 starter. Curt Schilling had already started two games of the Series and pitched his 300th inning of the season on just three days' rest. The two aces matched each other inning by inning and after seven full innings, the game was tied at 1–1. The Diamondbacks scored first in the sixth inning with a Steve Finley single and a Danny Bautista double (Bautista, trying to stretch it into a triple, was called out at third base). The Yankees responded with an RBI single from Tino Martinez, which drove in Derek Jeter who had singled earlier. Brenly stayed with Schilling into the eighth, and the move backfired as Alfonso Soriano hit a home run on an 0–2 pitch. After Schilling struck out Scott Brosius (who, like O'Neill, would also retire following the series), he gave up a single to David Justice, and he left the game trailing 2–1. When Brenly came to the mound to remove Schilling, he was heard on the Sounds of the Game microphone telling his clearly upset pitcher, "love you brother, you're my hero" and assuring him that "that ain't gonna beat us, we're gonna get that back and then some." He then brought in Game 5 starter Miguel Batista to get Jeter out and then in an unconventional move, brought in the previous night's starter and winner Randy Johnson, who had thrown 104 pitches, in relief to keep it a one-run game. It proved to be a smart move, as Johnson retired pinch hitter Chuck Knoblauch (who batted for the left handed Paul O'Neill) on a fly out to Bautista in right field, then returned to the mound for the top of the ninth where he got Bernie Williams to fly out to Steve Finley in center field and Martinez to ground out to Tony Womack at shortstop, and then struck out catcher Jorge Posada to send the game to the bottom of the ninth inning.
With the Yankees ahead 2–1 in the bottom of the eighth, manager Joe Torre decided to relieve setup man Mike Stanton, who had got the last two outs, to his ace closer Mariano Rivera for a two-inning save. Rivera struck out the side in the eighth, including Arizona's Luis Gonzalez, Matt Williams, and Bautista. Although he was effective in the eighth, this game would end in the third ninth-inning comeback of the Series.
Mark Grace led off the inning with a single to center on a 1–0 pitch. Rivera's errant throw to second base on a bunt attempt by catcher Damian Miller on an 0–1 pitch put runners on first and second. Jeter tried to reach for the ball, but got tangled in the legs of pinch-runner David Dellucci, who was sliding in an attempt to break up the double play. During the next at bat, Rivera appeared to regain control when he fielded pinch hitter Jay Bell's (who was hitting for Johnson) bunt and threw out Dellucci at third base, but third baseman Brosius decided to hold onto the baseball instead of throwing to first to complete the double play. Midre Cummings was sent in to pinch-run for Damian Miller, who had reached second base safely. With Cummings at second and Bell at first, the next batter, Womack, hit a double down the right-field line on a 2–2 pitch that tied the game and earned Rivera a blown save, his first in a postseason since 1997. Bell advanced to third and the Yankees pulled the infield and outfield in as the potential winning run (Bell) stood at third with fewer than two outs. After Rivera hit Craig Counsell unintentionally with an 0–1 pitch, the bases were loaded. On an 0–1 pitch, with Williams in the on-deck circle, Gonzalez lofted a soft floater single over the drawn-in Jeter that barely reached the outfield grass, plating Jay Bell with the winning run.
Gonzalez's single ended New York's bid for a fourth consecutive title (and fifth in six seasons) and brought Arizona its first championship in its fourth year of existence, making the Diamondbacks the fastest expansion team to win a World Series (beating out the 1997 Florida Marlins, who had done it in their fifth season at that time). It was also the first, and remains the only, major professional sports championship for the state of Arizona. Randy Johnson picked up his third win of the Series, becoming the first pitcher since Mickey Lolich of the 1968 Tigers to win three games in a World Series. Rivera took the loss, his only postseason loss in his career. Coincidentally, this was also the second World Series in a 5-year span (1997 to 2001) to end with a game-winning RBI single. Edgar Renteria hit the game-winner in the 1997 series, while Gonzalez hit it here, with Craig Counsell being on the basepaths for each. No other World Series has ended with a game-winning hit since 2001.
In 2009, Game 7 of the 2001 World Series was chosen by "Sports Illustrated" as the Best Postseason Game of the Decade (2000–2009).
In the years that have followed, many fans regardless of team allegiance consider Game 7 of the 2001 World Series to be one of the greatest games ever played in the history of professional baseball.
Composite box.
2001 World Series (4–3): Arizona Diamondbacks (N.L.) over New York Yankees (A.L.)
Media coverage.
For the second consecutive year, Fox carried the World Series with its top broadcast team, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver (himself a Yankees broadcaster). This was the first year of Fox's exclusive rights to the World Series (in the previous contract, Fox only broadcast the World Series in even numbered years while NBC broadcast it in odd numbered years), which it has held since. This particular contract also had given Fox exclusive rights to the entire baseball postseason, which aired over its family of networks, but shortly after the World Series, Fox sold its cable outlet Fox Family Channel, on which it aired Division Series games, shortly after the World Series ended, to Disney, which renamed the channel to ABC Family; since this made the channel a corporate sibling of ESPN, Disney would move those games to ESPN in 2003 after airing them for one more season on ABC Family.
ESPN Radio provided national radio coverage for the fourth consecutive year, with Jon Miller and Joe Morgan calling the action.
Locally, the Series was broadcast by KTAR-AM in Phoenix with Thom Brennaman, Greg Schulte, Rod Allen and Jim Traber, and by WABC-AM in New York City with John Sterling and Michael Kay. This was WABC's last broadcast of Yankees baseball after twenty-one seasons as the team's flagship, and also the last time Sterling and Kay broadcast together after ten seasons. Sterling and the Yankees joined WCBS-AM the next season on the radio side, while Kay was promoted to television as the YES Network launched for 2002.
Books and films.
Buster Olney, who covered the Yankees for "The New York Times" before joining ESPN, would write a book titled "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty", published in 2004. The book is a play by play account of Game 7 in addition to stories about key players, executives, and moments from the 1996–2001 dynasty. In a 2005 reprinting, Olney included a new epilogue covering the aftermath of the 2001 World Series up to the Boston Red Sox epic comeback from down 3–0 in the 2004 ALCS.
The official MLB Productions documentary film of the series was released in 2001.
In 2004, HBO released "Nine Innings from Ground Zero", a documentary focusing on the special role that baseball, and particularly the Yankees, played in helping to heal New York after 9/11. The film features interviews with players, fans who lost family members, firefighters, sportswriters, and then United States President George W. Bush.
In 2005, A&E Home Video released the "New York Yankees Fall Classic Collectors Edition (1996–2001)" DVD set. Game 4 of the 2001 World Series is included in the set. In 2008, "The Arizona Diamondbacks 2001 World Series" DVD set was released. All seven games are included on this set.
Aftermath.
The duo of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson were awarded the World Series Most Valuable Player, the first players to split the award since Steve Yeager, Ron Cey, and Pedro Guerrero did so for the Dodgers in the 1981 World Series, and last to do so, to date. This would not be the only award they split as both were named Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year for 2001.
Rivera's blown save and the Yankees' loss proved to be life-saving for Yankees utility player Enrique Wilson. Had the Yankees won, Wilson was planning to fly home to the Dominican Republic for the winter on American Airlines Flight 587 on November 12 after what would have been a Yankees victory parade down the Canyon of Heroes. But after the Yankees lost (and thus no parade occurred), Wilson decided to fly home earlier. Flight 587 would crash in Belle Harbor, Queens, killing everyone on board. Rivera later said, "I am glad we lost the World Series because it means that I still have a friend."
During the offseason, several Yankees moved on to other teams or retired, the most notable changes being the free agent departures of Martinez and Knoblauch to the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals, and Brosius and O'Neill retiring. Martinez would later return to the Yankees to finish his career in 2005.
After winning the NL West again in 2002 the Diamondbacks were swept 3–0 by St. Louis in the NLDS. From here they declined, losing 111 games in 2004 as Bob Brenly was fired during that season. Arizona would not win another NL West title until 2007. Schilling was traded to the Boston Red Sox after the 2003 season and in 2004 helped lead them to their first World Series championship since 1918. He helped them win another championship in 2007 and retired after four years with Boston, missing the entire 2008 season with a shoulder injury. Johnson was traded to the Yankees after the 2004 season, a season that saw him throw a perfect game against the Atlanta Braves, though he would be traded back to the Diamondbacks two years later and finish his career with the San Francisco Giants in 2009. The last player from the 2001 Diamondbacks roster, Lyle Overbay, retired following the 2014 season with the Milwaukee Brewers while the last player from the 2001 Yankees, Randy Choate, retired following the 2016 season.
From 2002 through 2007, the Yankees' misfortune in the postseason continued, with the team losing the ALDS to the Anaheim Angels in 2002, the World Series to the Florida Marlins in 2003, the ALCS to the Boston Red Sox (in the process becoming the first team in postseason history to blow a 3–0 series lead) in 2004, the ALDS again to the Angels in 2005, and then losing the ALDS to the Detroit Tigers and the Cleveland Indians in 2006 and 2007, respectively. In addition, including the World Series loss in 2001, every World Series champion from 2001 to 2004 won the title at the Yankees' expense in postseason play, which is an AL record and as of 2023 tied for the MLB record with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2016 to 2019. Joe Torre's contract was allowed to expire and he was replaced by Joe Girardi in 2008, a season in which the Yankees would miss the playoffs for the first time since 1993. The Yankees won their 27th World Series championship in 2009, defeating the defending 2008 champion Philadelphia Phillies in six games, but could not pull off another dynasty like they did during the late 1990s and early 2000s; in fact, they failed to reach the World Series during the entirety of the 2010s. The Yankees would finally return to the World Series in 2024 only to fall in five games to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Since 2001, the Yankees have played in four World Series and lost three of them ('01, ´03, '24)
This is the state of Arizona's only championship among the four major North American men's professional sports. However, the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury have won three championships since then (2007, 2009, and 2014).
The Diamondbacks and the Baltimore Ravens, who won the Super Bowl earlier in 2001, created the first instance of two major sports teams winning a championship game or series on their first attempts. This would not occur again until 2019, when the Toronto Raptors and Washington Nationals accomplished this feat.
The Diamondbacks would not return to the World Series again until 2023; this time, they would go on to lose to the Texas Rangers in five games.
|
3865
|
3006008
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3865
|
1903 World Series
|
The 1903 World Series was the first modern World Series to be played in Major League Baseball. It matched the American League (AL) champion Boston Americans against the National League (NL) champion Pittsburgh Pirates in a best-of-nine series, with Boston prevailing five games to three, winning the last four. The first three games were played in Boston, the next four in Allegheny (home of the Pirates), and the eighth (last) game in Boston.
Pittsburgh pitcher Sam Leever injured his shoulder while trap shooting, so his teammate Deacon Phillippe pitched five complete games. Phillippe won three of his games, but it was not enough to overcome the club from the new American League. Boston pitchers Bill Dinneen and Cy Young led Boston to victory. In Game 1, Phillippe struck out ten Boston batters. The next day, Dinneen bettered that mark, striking out 11 Pittsburgh batters in Game 2.
Honus Wagner, bothered by injuries, batted only 6-for-27 (.222) in the Series and committed six errors. The shortstop was deeply distraught by his performance. The following spring, Wagner (who in 1903 led the National League in batting average) refused to send his portrait to a "Hall of Fame" for batting champions. "I was too bum last year", he wrote. "I was a joke in that Boston-Pittsburgh Series. What does it profit a man to hammer along and make a few hits when they are not needed only to fall down when it comes to a pinch? I would be ashamed to have my picture up now."
Due to overflow crowds at the Exposition Park games in Allegheny City, if a batted ball rolled under a rope in the outfield that held spectators back, a "ground-rule triple" would be scored. 17 ground-rule triples were hit in the four games played at the stadium.
In the series, Boston came back from a three games to one deficit, winning the final four games to capture the title. Such a large comeback would not happen again until the Pirates came back to defeat the Washington Senators in the 1925 World Series, and has happened only 11 times in baseball history. (The Pirates themselves repeated this feat in against the Baltimore Orioles.) Much was made of the influence of Boston's "Royal Rooters", who traveled to Exposition Park and sang their theme song "Tessie" to distract the opposing players (especially Wagner). Boston wound up winning three out of four games in Allegheny City.
Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss added his share of the gate receipts to the players' share, so the losing team's players actually finished with a larger individual share than the winning team's.
The Series brought the new American League prestige and proved its best could beat the best of the National League, thus strengthening the demand for future World Series competitions.
Background.
A new league.
In 1901, Ban Johnson, president of the Western League, a minor league organization, formed the American League to take advantage of the National League's 1900 contraction from twelve teams to eight. Johnson and fellow owners raided the National League and signed away many star players, including Cy Young and Jimmy Collins. Johnson had a list of 46 National Leaguers he targeted for the American League; by 1902, all but one had made the jump. The constant raiding, however, nixed the idea of a championship between the two leagues. Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss, whose team ran away with the 1902 National League pennant, was open to a postseason contest and even said he would allow the American League champion to stock its roster with all-stars. However, Johnson had spoken of putting a team in Pittsburgh and even attempted to raid the Pirates' roster in August 1902, which soured Dreyfuss. At the end of the season, however, the Pirates played a group of American League All-Stars in a four-game exhibition series, winning two games to one, with one tie.
The leagues finally called a truce in the winter of 1902–03 and formed the National Commission to preside over organized baseball. The following season, the Boston Americans and Pittsburgh Pirates had secured their respective championship pennants by September. That August, Dreyfuss challenged the American League to an 11-game championship series. Encouraged by Johnson and National League President Harry Pulliam, Americans owner Henry J. Killilea met with Dreyfuss in Pittsburgh in September and instead agreed to a best-of-nine championship, with the first three games played in Boston, the next four in Allegheny City, and the remaining two (if necessary) in Boston.
One significant point about this agreement was that it was an arrangement primarily between the two clubs rather than a formal arrangement between the leagues. In short, it was a voluntary event, a fact which would result in no Series at all for . The formal establishment of the Series as a compulsory event started in .
The teams.
The Pirates won their third straight pennant in 1903 thanks to a powerful lineup that included legendary shortstop Honus Wagner, who hit .355 and drove in 101 runs, player-manager Fred Clarke, who hit .351, and Ginger Beaumont, who hit .341 and led the league in hits and runs. The Pirates' pitching was weaker than it had been in previous years but boasted 24-game winner Deacon Phillippe and 25-game winner Sam Leever.
The Americans had a strong pitching staff, led by Cy Young, who went 28–9 in 1903 and became the all-time wins leader that year. Bill Dinneen and Long Tom Hughes, right-handers like Young, had won 21 games and 20 games each. The Boston outfield, featuring Chick Stahl (.274), Buck Freeman (.287, 104 RBI) and Patsy Dougherty (.331, 101 runs scored) was considered excellent.
Although the Pirates had dominated their league for the previous three years, they went into the series riddled with injuries and plagued by bizarre misfortunes. Otto Krueger, the team's only utility player, was beaned on September 19 and never fully played in the series. 16-game winner Ed Doheny left the team three days later, exhibiting signs of paranoia; he was committed to an insane asylum the following month. Leever had been battling an injury to his pitching arm (which he made worse by entering a trapshooting competition). Worst of all, Wagner, who had a sore thumb throughout the season, injured his right leg in September and was never 100 percent for the postseason.
Some sources say Boston were heavy underdogs. Boston bookies actually gave even odds to the teams (and only because Dreyfuss and other "sports" were alleged to have bet on Pittsburgh to bring down the odds). The teams were generally thought to be evenly matched, with the Americans credited with stronger pitching and the Pirates with superior offense and fielding. The outcome, many believed, hinged on Wagner's health. "If Wagner does not play, bet your money at two to one on Boston", said the "Sporting News", "but if he does play, place your money at two to one on Pittsburg."
Matchups.
Game 1.
The Pirates started Game 1 strong, scoring six runs in the first four innings, and held on to win the first World Series game in modern baseball history. They extended their lead to 7–0 on an inside-the-park home run by Jimmy Sebring in the seventh, the first home run in World Series history. Boston scored a few runs in the last three innings, but it was too little, too late; they ended up losing 7–3 in the first ever World Series game. Both Phillippe and Young threw complete games, with Phillippe striking out ten and Young fanning five, but Young also gave up twice as many hits and allowed three earned runs to Phillippe's two.
Game 2.
After starting out strong in Game 1, the Pirates simply shut down offensively, eking out a mere three hits, all singles. Pittsburgh starter Sam Leever went 1 inning and gave up three hits and two runs, before his ailing arm forced him to leave in favor of Bucky Veil, who finished the game. Bill Dinneen struck out 11 and pitched a complete game for the Americans, while Patsy Dougherty hit home runs in the first and sixth innings for two of the Boston's three runs. The Americans' Patsy Dougherty led off the Boston scoring with an inside-the-park home run, the first time a lead-off batter did just that until Alcides Escobar of the Kansas City Royals duplicated the feat in the 2015 World Series, 112 years later. Dougherty's second home run was the first in World Series history to actually sail over the fence, an incredibly rare feat at the time.
Game 3.
Phillippe, pitching after only a single day of rest, started Game 3 for the Pirates and didn't let them down, hurling his second complete-game victory of the Series to put Pittsburgh up two games to one.
Game 4.
After two days of rest, Phillippe was ready to pitch a second straight game. He threw his third complete-game victory of the series against Bill Dinneen, who was making his second start of the series. But Phillippe's second straight win was almost not to be, as the Americans, down 5–1 in the top of the ninth, rallied to narrow the deficit to one run. The comeback attempt failed, as Phillippe managed to put an end to it and give the Pirates a commanding 3–1 series lead.
Game 5.
Game 5 was a pitcher's duel for the first five innings, with Boston's Cy Young and Pittsburgh's Brickyard Kennedy giving up no runs. That changed in the top of the sixth, however, when the Americans scored a then-record six runs before being retired. Young, on the other hand, managed to keep his shutout intact before finally giving up a pair of runs in the bottom of the eighth. He went the distance and struck out four for his first World Series win.
Game 6.
Game 6 was a rematch between the starters of Game 2, Boston's Dinneen and Pittsburgh's Leever. Leever pitched a complete game this time but so did Dinneen, who outmatched him to earn his second complete-game victory of the series. After losing three of the first four games of the World Series, the underdog Americans had tied the series at three games apiece.
Game 7.
The fourth and final game in Allegheny saw Phillippe start his fourth game of the Series for the Pirates. This time, however, he did not fare as well as he did in his first three starts. Cy Young, in his third start of the Series, held the Pirates to three runs and put the Americans ahead for the first time as the Series moved back to Boston.
Game 8.
The final game of this inaugural World Series started out as an intense pitcher's duel, scoreless until the bottom of the fourth when Hobe Ferris hit a two-run single. Phillippe started his fifth and final game of the series and Dinneen his fourth. As he did in Game 2, Dinneen threw a complete-game shutout, striking out seven and leading his Americans to victory, while Phillippe pitched respectably but could not match Dinneen because his arm had been worn out with five starts in the eight games, giving up three runs to give the first 20th-century World Championship to the Boston Americans, Honus Wagner striking out to end the Series.
Composite line score.
1903 World Series (5–3): Boston Americans (A.L.) over Pittsburgh Pirates (N.L.)
Series Statistics.
Boston Americans.
Batting.
"Note: GP=Games Played; AB=At Bats; R=Runs; H=Hits; 2B=Doubles; 3B=Triples; HR=Home Runs; RBI=Runs Batted In; BB=Walks; AVG=Batting Average; OBP=On Base Percentage; SLG=Slugging Percentage"
Pitching.
"Note: G=Games Played; GS=Games Started; ERA=Earned Run Average; W=Wins; L=Losses; SV=Saves; IP=Innings Pitched; H=Hits; R=Runs; ER= Earned Runs; BB=Walks; SO= Strikeouts"
Pittsburgh Pirates.
Batting.
"Note: GP=Games Played; AB=At Bats; R=Runs; H=Hits; 2B=Doubles; 3B=Triples; HR=Home Runs; RBI=Runs Batted In; BB=Walks; AVG=Batting Average; OBP=On Base Percentage; SLG=Slugging Percentage"
Pitching.
"Note: G=Games Played; GS=Games Started; ERA=Earned Run Average; W=Wins; L=Losses; SV=Saves; IP=Innings Pitched; H=Hits; R=Runs; ER= Earned Runs; BB=Walks; SO= Strikeouts"
|
3866
|
28481209
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3866
|
Bluetongue disease
|
Bluetongue (BT) disease is a noncontagious, arthropod-borne viral disease affecting ruminants, primarily sheep and other domestic or wild ruminants, including cattle, yaks, goats, buffalo, deer, dromedaries, and antelope. It is caused by Bluetongue virus (BTV), a non-enveloped, double-stranded RNA virus belongs to the genus "Orbivirus" within the family "Sedoreoviridae". The virus is mainly transmitted by biting midges, specifically "Culicoides" species (e.g. "Culicoides imicola", "Culicoides oxystoma," and "Culicoides variipennis"). BTV has a widespread geographical distribution, encompassing numerous continents and regions, including Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and various tropical and subtropical regions. At present, there are more than 28 recognized serotypes of BTV. Bluetongue outbreaks have had a significant economic impact, with estimated global losses reaching approximately US$3 billion.
Clinical signs.
In sheep, BTV causes an acute disease with high morbidity and mortality. BTV also infects goats, cattle, and other domestic animals, as well as wild ruminants (for example, blesbuck, white-tailed deer, elk, and pronghorn antelope). The clinical signs are summarized under the term FFF (fever, face, feet).
Major signs are high fever, excessive salivation, swelling of the face and tongue, and cyanosis (in severe conditions) of the tongue. Swelling of the lips and tongue gives the tongue its typical blue appearance, though this sign is confined to a minority of the animals. Nasal signs may be prominent, with nasal discharge and stertorous respiration.
Some animals also develop foot lesions, beginning with coronitis, with consequent lameness. In sheep, this can lead to knee-walking. In cattle, constant changing of position of the feet gives bluetongue the nickname the dancing disease. Torsion of the neck (opisthotonos or torticollis) is observed in severely affected animals.
Not all animals develop signs, but all those that do lose condition rapidly, and the sickest die within a week. For affected animals that do not die, recovery is very slow, lasting several months.
The incubation period is 5–20 days, and all signs usually develop within a month. The mortality rate is normally low, but it is high in susceptible breeds of sheep. In Africa, local breeds of sheep may have no mortality, but in imported breeds, it may be up to 90%.
The manifestation of clinical signs in cattle is contingent upon the strain of virus. BTV-8 has been documented to cause a severe disease state and mortality in cattle. The current circulation of BTV-3 in Northern Europe is epidemiologically noteworthy due to the presentation of clinical signs in cattle and a higher sheep mortality rate than that observed with BTV-8. Other ruminants, such as goats, typically exhibit minimal or no clinical signs despite high virus levels in blood. Therefore, they could serve as potential virus reservoirs of BTV. Red deer are an exception, and in them the disease may be as acute as in sheep.
Lamb infected in utero can develop congenital hydranencephaly. This abnormality is a condition in which the brain's cerebral hemispheres are like Swiss cheese, or absent, and replaced by sacs filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Ewes infected with bluetongue virus while pregnant can have lambs with this defect, as well as giving birth to lambs who are small, weak, deformed or blind. These affected lambs die within a few days of birth, or are born dead.
Microbiology.
Bluetongue is caused by the pathogenic vector-borne RNA virus, Bluetongue virus (BTV), of the genus "Orbivirus" within the "Sedoreoviridae" family. The virus particle consists of 10 strands of double-stranded RNA surrounded by two protein shells. Unlike other arboviruses, BTV lacks a lipid envelope. The virus exhibits icosahedral symmetry, with a diameter of approximately 80–90 nm. The structure of the 70 nm core was determined in 1998 and was at the time the largest atomic structure to be solved.
The 10 viral genome segments have been found to encode 7 structural (VP1–VP7) and 5 non-structural (NS1, NS2, NS3/NS3A, NS4 and NS5) proteins. There are currently more than 28 known serotypes of BTV. The sequence of genome Seg-2 and its translated protein VP2, as well as that of Seg-6 and its translated protein VP5, exhibit variations that determine the serotypes.
The two outer capsid proteins, VP2 and VP5, mediate attachment and penetration of BTV into the target cell. VP2 and VP5 are the primary antigenic targets for antibody targeting by the host immune system. The virus makes initial contact with the cell with VP2, triggering receptor-mediated endocytosis of the virus. The low pH within the endosome then triggers BTV's membrane penetration protein VP5 to undergo a conformational change that disrupts the endosomal membrane. Uncoating yields a transcriptionally active 470S core particle which is composed of two major proteins VP7 and VP3, and the three minor proteins VP1, VP4 and VP6 in addition to the dsRNA genome. There is no evidence that any trace of the outer capsid remains associated with these cores, as has been described for reovirus. The cores may be further uncoated to form 390S subcore particles that lack VP7, also in contrast to reovirus. Subviral particles are probably akin to cores derived "in vitro" from virions by physical or proteolytic treatments that remove the outer capsid and causes activation of the BTV transcriptase. In addition to the seven structural proteins, three non-structural (NS) proteins, NS1, NS2, NS3 (and a related NS3A) are synthesised in BTV-infected cells. Of these, NS3/NS3A is involved in the egress of the progeny virus. The two remaining non-structural proteins, NS1 and NS2, are produced at high levels in the cytoplasm and are believed to be involved in virus replication, assembly and morphogenesis.
Evolution.
The viral genome is replicated via structural protein VP1, an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. The lack of proof-reading abilities results in high levels of transcription errors, resulting in single nucleotide mutations. Despite this, the BTV genome is quite stable, exhibiting a low rate of variants arising in populations. Evidence suggests this is due to purifying selection across the genome as the virus is transmitted alternately through its insect and animal hosts. However, individual gene segments undergo different selective pressures and some, particularly segments 4 and 5, are subject to positive selection.
The BTV genome exhibits rapid evolution through genetic drift, reassortment of genome segments (genetic shift), and intragenic recombination. This evolutionary process, in conjunction with the random fixation of quasispecies variants during transmission between susceptible animals and vectors, is postulated to be the primary driver of the genetic diversity observed in BTV field strains. Reassortment can lead to a rapid shift in phenotypes independent of the slow rate of mutation. During this process, gene segments are not randomly reassorted. Rather, there appears to be a mechanism for selecting for or against certain segments from the parental serotypes present. However, this selective mechanism is still poorly understood.
To date, BTV serotypes 25 and above have been identified as the causative agents of infection in small ruminants. The infection is subclinical, which likely explains why these serotypes, which are less or non-virulent, have not been identified earlier through laboratory diagnosis studies. It is noteworthy that BTV serotypes 25 and higher are transmitted without midges, indicating that direct contact between sheep or goats may be a potential vector.
Epidemiology.
The presence of the insect vectors determines the bluetongue disease's global distribution, with regions in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and other tropical/subtropical area being most affected.
The virus persists in areas where climatic conditions support the survival of "Culicoides" midges during winter. This adaptability allows the disease to establish itself in new regions when conditions become favorable.
An outline of the transmission cycle of BTV is illustrated in article Parasitic flies of domestic animals.
Its occurrence is seasonal in the affected Mediterranean countries, subsiding when temperatures drop and hard frosts kill the adult midge vectors.
Viral survival and vector longevity is seen during milder winters.
A significant contribution to the northward spread of bluetongue disease has been the ability of "C. obsoletus" and "C.pulicaris" to acquire and transmit the pathogen, both of which are spread widely throughout Europe. This is in contrast to the original "C.imicola" vector, which is limited to North Africa and the Mediterranean. The relatively recent novel vector has facilitated a far more rapid spread than the simple expansion of habitats north through global warming.
In August 2006, cases of bluetongue were found in the Netherlands, then Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg.
In 2007, the first case of bluetongue in the Czech Republic was detected in one bull near Cheb at the Czech-German border.
In September 2007, the UK reported its first ever suspected case of the disease, in a Highland cow on a rare-breeds farm near Ipswich, Suffolk.
Since then, the virus has spread from cattle to sheep in Britain.
By October 2007, bluetongue had become a serious threat in Scandinavia and Switzerland
and the first outbreak in Denmark was reported. In autumn 2008, several cases were reported in the southern Swedish provinces of Småland, Halland, and Skåne,
as well as in areas of the Netherlands bordering Germany, prompting veterinary authorities in Germany to intensify controls.
Norway had its first finding in February 2009, when cows at two farms in Vest-Agder in the south of Norway showed an immune response to bluetongue. A number of countries, including Norway and Finland, were certified as free of the disease in 2011 and 2021, respectively.
In 2023, Europe witnessed a series of notable epizootic occurrences at higher latitudes, partially attributable to the emergence of a novel serotype, BTV-3. The serotype was first identified in the Netherlands in September 2023 and has since been documented in numerous European countries, including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, the UK, Norway, and Sweden.
Although the disease is not a threat to humans, the most vulnerable common domestic ruminants are cattle, goats, and especially, sheep.
Overwintering.
A puzzling aspect of BTV is its survival between midge seasons in temperate regions. Adults of "Culicoides" are killed by cold winter temperatures, and BTV infections typically do not last for more than 60 days, which is not long enough for BTV to survive until the next spring. It is believed that the virus somehow survives in overwintering midges or animals. Multiple mechanisms have been proposed. A few adult "Culicoides" midges infected with BTV may survive the mild winters of the temperate zone. Some midges may even move indoors to avoid the cold temperature of the winter. Additionally, BTV could cause a chronic or latent infection in some animals, providing another means for BTV to survive the winter. BTV can also be transmitted from mother to fetus. The outcome is abortion or stillbirth if fetal infection occurs early in gestation and survival if infection occurs late. However infection at an intermediate stage, before the fetal immune system is fully developed, may result in a chronic infection that lingers until the first months after birth of the lamb. Midges then spread the pathogen from the calves to other animals, starting a new season of infection.
Climate change.
The spread of bluetongue to Southern, Central, and Northern Europe provides an illustrative example of the complex interactions between climate change, vector habitat suitability, animal population density, distribution, and movement, which collectively influence the patterns of disease emergence and transmission.
Treatment and prevention.
There are currently no antiviral medications that have been approved for the treatment of bluetongue disease. The standard of care involves the administration of anti-inflammatory drugs and supportive nursing care to alleviate the clinical signs and symptoms. Prevention is effected via quarantine, vaccination, and control of the midges vector, including inspection of aircraft. The recurrent emergence of novel strains and the occurrence of new outbreaks with significant socio-economic impacts highlight the urgent need for effective antiviral strategies. The current vaccines for bluetongue virus (BTV) are serotype-specific, which limits their utility and has led to interest in host-targeted antiviral strategies that offer broader activity against multiple serotypes and a reduced risk of resistance development.
Livestock management and insect control.
Some available key measures include vector control, such as the use of insecticides, insect-proof nets, and improved housing to reduce exposure to biting midges. Additionally, the removal of infected animals helps prevent further transmission by reducing the number of viremic hosts, while movement restrictions—including quarantines and health certifications—prevent the introduction of the virus to uninfected regions.
Vaccines.
Vaccination still represents an effective strategy for protecting ruminants against bluetongue. However, this is only possible with a vaccine that is effective against the relevant serotype. The most prevalent vaccines are live attenuated vaccines and killed or inactivated vaccines. Other potential vaccines include subunit vaccines, virus-like particles, DNA vaccines, disabled unfectious single animal vaccines (DISA), and disabled infectious single-cycle vaccines (DISC).
Protection by live attenuated vaccines (LAVs) are serotype specific. Multiserotype LAV cocktails can induce neutralizing antibodies against unincluded serotypes, and subsequent vaccinations with three different pentavalent LAV cocktails induce broad protection. These pentavalent cocktails contain 15 different serotypes in total: serotypes 1 through 14, as well as 19.
Immunization with any of the available vaccines, though, precludes later serological monitoring of affected cattle populations, a problem that could be resolved using next-generation subunit vaccines.
In January 2015, the vaccine Raksha Blu was launched in India. It is designed to protect livestock against five strains of the bluetongue virus.
The vaccine Syvazul BTV was authorized for veterinary use in the European Union in January 2019.
In January 2025, the Committee for Veterinary Medicinal Products (CVMP) of the European Medicines Agency adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of a marketing authorization for the veterinary medicinal product Bluevac-3, suspension for injection, intended for cattle and sheep. The applicant for this veterinary medicinal product is CZ Vaccines S.A.U. Bluevac-3 is a vaccine containing inactivated bluetongue virus, serotype 3, BTV-3/NET2023 as active substance. The vaccine is intended to stimulate the active immunity of sheep and cattle against bluetongue virus serotype 3. The CVMP also adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of a marketing authorization for the veterinary medicinal product Syvazul BTV 3, suspension for injection, intended for sheep. The applicant for this veterinary medicinal product is Laboratorios Syva S.A. Syvazul BTV 3 is a vaccine containing Bluetongue virus, serotype 3, BTV-3/NET2023, inactivated as active substance. It is intended for the active immunization of sheep against bluetongue virus serotype 3.
History.
In the early stages of its identification, BT was referred to by a number of different names, including "epizootic catarrh," "fever," "malarial catarrhal fever of sheep," and "epizootic malignant catarrhal fever of sheep." This was due to the prevailing belief at the time that BT was caused by an intraerythrocytic parasite. The English translation "Bluetongue" was initially proposed by Spreull and derived from the Afrikaans term "bloutong," which refers to the condition of cyanosis of the tongue in clinically affected sheep. Although bluetongue disease was already recognized in South Africa in the early 19th century, a comprehensive description of the disease was not published until the first decade of the 20th century. In 1906, Arnold Theiler showed that bluetongue was caused by a filterable agent. He also created the first bluetongue vaccine, which was developed from an attenuated BT V strain. For many decades, bluetongue was thought to be confined to Africa. The first confirmed outbreak outside of Africa occurred in Cyprus in 1943.
In 2021, a vessel owned by Khalifeh Livestock Trading and managed by Talia Shipping Line, both based in Lebanon, has been denied right to dock in Spain, as it has about 895 male calves suspected to be infected by bluetongue disease.
Related diseases.
African horse sickness is related to bluetongue and is spread by the same midges ("Culicoides" species). It can kill the horses it infects and mortality may go as high as 90% of the infected horses during an epidemic.
Epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus is closely related and crossreacts with Bluetongue virus on many blood tests.
|
3869
|
125972
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3869
|
Bruce Perens
|
Bruce Perens (born around 1958) is an American computer programmer and advocate in the free software movement. He created "The Open Source Definition" and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI) with Eric S. Raymond.
In 2005, Perens represented Open Source at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society, at the invitation of the United Nations Development Programme. He has appeared before national legislatures and is often quoted in the press, advocating for open source and the reform of national and international technology policy.
Perens is also an amateur radio operator, with call sign K6BP. He promotes open radio communications standards and open-source hardware.
In 2016 Perens, along with Boalt Hall (Berkeley Law) professor Lothar Determann, co-authored "Open Cars" which appeared in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal.
In 2018 Perens founded the Open Research Institute (ORI), a non-profit research and development organization to address technologies involving Open Source, Open Hardware, Open Standards, Open Content, and Open Access to Research. In April 2022 he divorced himself from the organization and reported he was starting a new charity, HamOpen.org, to redirect his focus, and align with the ARRL organization for their liability insurance benefit. HamOpen has been most visible supporting the convention exhibitions of projects Perens supports, including M17 and FreeDV.
Companies.
Perens operates two companies: Algoram is a start-up which is creating a web-based control system for radio transmitters and other devices. Legal Engineering is a legal-technical consultancy which specializes in resolving copyright infringement in relation to open source software.
Early life.
Perens grew up in Long Island, New York. He was born with cerebral palsy, which caused him to have slurred speech as a child, a condition that led to a misdiagnosis of him as developmentally disabled in school and led the school to fail to teach him to read. He developed an interest in technology at an early age: besides his interest in amateur radio, he ran a pirate radio station in the town of Lido Beach and briefly engaged in phone phreaking.
Career.
Computer graphics.
Perens worked for seven years at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab. After that, he worked at Pixar for 12 years, from 1987 to 1999. He is credited as a studio tools engineer on the Pixar films "A Bug's Life" (1998) and "Toy Story 2" (1999).
No-Code International.
Perens founded No-Code International in 1998 with the goal of ending the Morse Code test then required for an amateur radio license. His rationale was that amateur radio should be a tool for young people to learn advanced technology and networking, rather than something that preserved antiquity and required new hams to master outmoded technology before they were allowed on the air.
Perens lobbied intensively on the Internet, at amateur radio events in the United States, and during visits to other nations. One of his visits was to Iceland, where he had half of that nation's radio amateurs in the room, and their vote in the International Amateur Radio Union was equivalent to that of the entire United States.
Debian Social Contract.
In 1997, Perens was carbon-copied on an email conversation between Donnie Barnes of Red Hat and Ean Schuessler, who was then working on Debian. Schuessler bemoaned that Red Hat had never stated its social contract with the developer community. Perens took this as inspiration to create a formal social contract for Debian. In a blog posting, Perens claims not to have made use of the Three Freedoms (later the Four Freedoms) published by the Free Software Foundation in composing his document. Perens proposed a draft of the Debian Social Contract to the Debian developers on the debian-private mailing list early in June 1997. Debian developers contributed discussion and changes for the rest of the month while Perens edited, and the completed document was then announced as Debian project policy. Part of the Debian Social Contract was the Debian Free Software Guidelines, a set of 10 guidelines for determining whether a set of software can be described as "free software", and thus whether it could be included in Debian.
Open Source Definition and The Open Source Initiative.
On February 3, 1998, a group of people (not including Perens) met at VA Linux Systems to discuss the promotion of Free Software to business in pragmatic terms, rather than the moral terms preferred by Richard Stallman. Christine Petersen of the nanotechnology organization Foresight Institute, who was present because Foresight took an early interest in Free Software, suggested the term "Open Source". The next day, Eric S. Raymond recruited Perens to work with him on the formation of Open Source. Perens modified the Debian Free Software Guidelines into the Open Source Definition by removing Debian references and replacing them with "Open Source".
The original announcement of The Open Source Definition was made on February 9, 1998, on Slashdot and elsewhere; the definition was given in Linux Gazette on February 10, 1998.
Concurrently, Perens and Raymond established the Open Source Initiative, an organization intended to promote open source software.
Perens left OSI in 1999, a year after co-founding it. In February 1999 in an email to the Debian developers mailing list he explained his decision and stated that, though "most hackers know that Free Software and Open Source are just two words for the same thing", the success of "open source" as a marketing term had "de-emphasized the importance of the freedoms involved in Free Software"; he added, "It's time for us to fix that." He stated his regret that OSI co-founder Eric Raymond "seems to be losing his free software focus." But in the following 2000s he spoke about Open source again. Perens presently volunteers as the Open Source Initiative's representative to the European Technical Standards Institute ("ETSI"), and is a frequent participant in review of license texts submitted to OSI for certification as Open Source licenses.
Linux Capital Group.
In 1999, Perens left Pixar and became the president of Linux Capital Group, a business incubator and venture capital firm focusing on Linux-based businesses. Their major investment was in Progeny Linux Systems, a company headed by Debian founder Ian Murdock. In 2000, as a result of the economic downturn, Perens shut down Linux Capital Group. (Progeny Linux Systems would end operations in 2007.)
Hewlett-Packard.
From December 2000 to September 2002, Perens served as "Senior Global Strategist for Linux and Open Source" at Hewlett-Packard, internally evangelizing for the use of Linux and other open-source software. He was fired as a result of his anti-Microsoft statements, which especially became an issue after HP acquired Compaq, a major manufacturer of Microsoft Windows-based PCs, in 2002.
UserLinux.
In 2003 Perens created UserLinux, a Debian-based distribution whose stated goal was, "Provide businesses with freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options designed to encourage productivity and security while reducing overall costs." UserLinux was eventually overtaken in popularity by Ubuntu, another Debian-based distribution, which was started in 2004, and UserLinux became unmaintained in 2006.
SourceLabs.
Perens was an employee of SourceLabs, a Seattle-based open source software and services company, from June 2005 until December 2007. He produced a video commercial, "Impending Security Breach", for SourceLabs in 2007. (SourceLabs was acquired by EMC in 2009.)
University faculty.
Between 1981 and 1986, Perens was on the staff of the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab as a Unix kernel programmer.
In 2002, Perens was a remote Senior Scientist for Open Source with the Cyber Security Policy Laboratory of George Washington University under the direction of Tony Stanco. Stanco was director of the laboratory for a year, while its regular director was on sabbatical.
Between 2006 and 2007, Perens was a visiting lecturer and researcher for the University of Agder under a three-year grant from the Competence Fund of Southern Norway. During this time he consulted the Norwegian Government and other entities on government policy issues related to computers and software. After this time Perens worked remotely on Agder programs, mainly concerning the European Internet Accessibility Observatory.
Other activities.
In 2007, some of Perens's government advisory roles included a meeting with the President of the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of parliament) in Italy and testimony to the Culture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies; a keynote speech at the foundation of Norway's Open Source Center, following Norway's Minister of Governmental Reform (Perens is on the advisory board of the center); he provided input on the revision of the European Interoperability Framework; and he was keynote speaker at a European Commission conference on "Digital Business Ecosystems at the Centre Borschette, Brussels, on November 7".
In 2009, Perens acted as an expert witness on open source in the Jacobsen v. Katzer U.S. Federal lawsuit. His report, which was made publicly available by Jacobsen, presented the culture and impact of open-source software development to the federal courts.
Perens delivered one of the keynote addresses at the 2012 linux.conf.au conference in Ballarat, Australia. He discussed the need for open source software to market itself better to non-technical users. He also discussed some of the latest developments in open-source hardware, such as Papilio and Bus Pirate.
In 2013, Perens spoke in South America, as the closing keynote at Latinoware 2013. He was the keynote of CISL – Conferencia Internacional de Software Libre, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and keynoted a special event along with the Minister of software and innovation of Chubut Province, in Puerto Madrin, Patagonia, Argentina. He keynoted the Festival de Software Libre 2013, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
In 2014–2015, Perens took a break from Open Source conferences, having spoken at them often since 1996. In 2016, he returned to the conference circuit, keynoting the Open Source Insight conference in Seoul, sponsored by the Copyright Commission of South Korea. Perens web site presently advertises his availability to keynote conferences as long as travel and lodging expenses are compensated.
In 2020, Perens delivered the talk, "What Comes After Open Source?" for DebConf 2020. He discussed the future of open source licensing and the need to develop alternative licensing structures so that open source developers could get paid for their work.
Views.
Perens poses "Open Source" as a means of marketing the free and open-source software idea to business people and mainstream who might be more interested in the practical benefits of an open source development model and ecosystem than abstract ethics. He states that open source and free software are only two ways of talking about the same phenomenon, a point of view not shared by Stallman and his free software movement. Perens postulated in 2004 an economic theory for business use of Open Source in his paper "The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source" and his speech "Innovation Goes Public". This differs from Raymond's theory in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", which having been written before there was much business involvement in open source, explains open source as a consequence of programmer motivation and leisure.
In February 2008, for the 10th anniversary of the phrase "open source", Perens published a message to the community called "State of Open Source Message: A New Decade For Open Source". Around the same time the ezine RegDeveloper published an interview with Perens where he spoke of the successes of open source, but also warned of dangers, including a proliferation of OSI-approved licenses which had not undergone legal scrutiny. He advocated the use of the GPLv3 license, especially noting Linus Torvalds' refusal to switch away from GPLv2 for the Linux kernel.
Bruce Perens supported Bernie Sanders for President and he claims that his experience with the open source movement influenced that decision. On July 13, 2016, following Sanders's endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, Perens endorsed Clinton.
In January 2013, Perens advocated for abolishment of the Second Amendment to the U.S. constitution, stating that he does "not believe in private ownership of firearms" and that he would "take away guns currently held by individuals, without compensation for their value." He reiterated this view in a June 2014 interview in Slashdot, and in November 2017 on his Twitter account.
Amateur radio and other activities.
Perens is an avid amateur radio enthusiast (call sign K6BP) and maintained technocrat.net, which he closed in late 2008, because its revenues did not cover its costs.
Media appearances.
Perens is featured in the 2001 documentary film "Revolution OS" and the 2006 BBC television documentary "The Code-Breakers".
From 2002 to 2006, Prentice Hall PTR published the Bruce Perens' Open Source Series, a set of 24 books covering various open source software tools, for which Perens served as the series editor. It was the first book series to be published under an open license.
Personal life.
Perens lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, Valerie, and son, Stanley, born in 2000.
|
3870
|
194203
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3870
|
Bundle theory
|
Bundle theory, originated by the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, is the ontological theory about objecthood in which an object consists only of a collection ("bundle") of properties, relations or tropes.
According to bundle theory, an object consists of its properties and nothing more; thus, there cannot be an object without properties and one cannot "conceive" of such an object. For example, when we think of an apple, we think of its properties: redness, roundness, being a type of fruit, "etc". There is nothing above and beyond these properties; the apple is nothing more than the collection of its properties. In particular, there is no "substance" in which the properties are "inherent".
Bundle theory has been contrasted with the "ego theory" of the self, which views the egoic self as a soul-like substance existing in the same manner as the corporeal self.
Arguments in favor.
The difficulty in conceiving and or describing an object without also conceiving and or describing its properties is a common justification for bundle theory, especially among current philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition.
The inability to comprehend any aspect of the thing other than its properties implies, this argument maintains, that one cannot conceive of a "bare particular" (a "substance" without properties), an implication that directly opposes substance theory. The conceptual difficulty of "bare particulars" was illustrated by John Locke when he described a "substance" by itself, apart from its properties as "something, I know not what. [...] The idea then we have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist sine re substante, without something to support them, we call that support substantia; which, according to the true import of the word, is, in plain English, standing under or upholding."
Whether a "relation" of an object is one of its properties may complicate such an argument. However, the argument concludes that the conceptual challenge of "bare particulars" leaves a bundle of properties and nothing more as the only possible conception of an object, thus justifying bundle theory.
Objections.
Bundle theory maintains that properties are "bundled" together in a collection without describing how they are tied together. For example, bundle theory regards an apple as red, wide, and juicy but lacking an underlying "substance". The apple is said to be a "bundle of properties" including redness, being wide, and juiciness.
Hume used the term "bundle" in this sense, also referring to the personal identity, in his main work: "I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement".
Critics question how bundle theory accounts for the properties' "compresence" (the "togetherness" relation between those properties) without an underlying "substance". Critics also question how any two given properties are determined to be properties of the same object if there is no "substance" in which they both "inhere". This argument is done away with if one considers spatio-temporal location to be a property as well.
Traditional bundle theory explains the "compresence" of properties by defining an object as a collection of properties "bound" together. Thus, different combinations of properties and relations produce different objects. Redness and juiciness, for example, may be found together on top of the table because they are part of a bundle of properties located on the table, one of which is the "looks like an apple" property.
By contrast, substance theory explains the "compresence" of properties by asserting that the properties are found together because it is the "substance" that has those properties. In substance theory, a "substance" is the thing in which properties "inhere". For example, redness and juiciness are found on top of the table because redness and juiciness "inhere" in an apple, making the apple red and juicy.
The "bundle theory of substance" explains "compresence". Specifically, it maintains that properties' compresence itself engenders a "substance". Thus, it determines "substancehood" empirically by the "togetherness" of properties rather than by a "bare particular" or by any other non-empirical underlying strata. The "bundle theory of substance" thus rejects the substance theories of Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, and more recently, J. P. Moreland, Jia Hou, Joseph Bridgman, Quentin Smith, and others.
Buddhism.
The Indian Madhyamaka philosopher, Chandrakirti, used the aggregate nature of objects to demonstrate the lack of essence in what is known as the sevenfold reasoning. In his work, "Guide to the Middle Way" (Sanskrit: "Madhyamakāvatāra"), he says:
He goes on to explain what is meant by each of these seven assertions, but briefly in a subsequent commentary he explains that the conventions of the world do not exist essentially when closely analyzed, but exist only through being taken for granted, without being subject to scrutiny that searches for an essence within them.
Another view of the Buddhist theory of the self, especially in early Buddhism, is that the Buddhist theory is essentially an eliminativist theory. According to this understanding, the self can not be reduced to a bundle because there is nothing that answers to the concept of a self. Consequently, the idea of a self must be eliminated.
|
3873
|
1300527947
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3873
|
Bernard Montgomery
|
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (; 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and the Second World War.
Montgomery first saw action in the First World War as a junior officer of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper, during the First Battle of Ypres. On returning to the Western Front as a general staff officer, he took part in the Battle of Arras in AprilMay 1917. He also took part in the Battle of Passchendaele in late 1917 before finishing the war as chief of staff of the 47th (2nd London) Division. In the inter-war years he commanded the 17th (Service) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers and, later, the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment before becoming commander of the 9th Infantry Brigade and then general officer commanding (GOC), 8th Infantry Division.
During the Western Desert campaign of the Second World War, Montgomery commanded the Eighth Army from August 1942. He subsequently commanded the Eighth Army during the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Allied invasion of Italy and was in command of all Allied ground forces during the Battle of Normandy (Operation Overlord), from D-Day on 6 June 1944 until 1 September 1944. He then continued in command of the 21st Army Group for the rest of the , including the failed attempt to cross the Rhine during Operation Market Garden.
When German armoured forces broke through the US lines in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, Montgomery received command of the northern shoulder of the Bulge. Montgomery's 21st Army Group, including the US Ninth Army and the First Allied Airborne Army, crossed the Rhine in Operation Plunder in March 1945. By the end of the war, troops under Montgomery's command had taken part in the encirclement of the Ruhr Pocket, liberated the Netherlands, and captured much of north-west Germany. On 4 May 1945, Montgomery accepted the surrender of the German forces in north-western Europe at Lüneburg Heath, south of Hamburg, after the surrender of Berlin to the USSR on 2 May.
After the war he became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in Germany and then Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1946–1948). From 1948 to 1951, he served as Chairman of the Commanders-in-Chief Committee of the Western Union. He then served as NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe until his retirement in 1958.
Early life.
Montgomery was born in Kennington, Surrey, in 1887, the fourth child of nine, to a Church of Ireland minister, Henry Montgomery, and his wife Maud ("née" Farrar). The Montgomerys, an Ulster Scots 'Ascendancy' gentry family, were the County Donegal branch of the Clan Montgomery. Henry Montgomery, at that time Vicar of St Mark's Church, Kennington, was the second son of Sir Robert Montgomery, a native of Inishowen in County Donegal in the north-west of Ulster, and a noted colonial administrator in British India. Sir Robert died a month after his grandson's birth. He was probably a descendant of Colonel Alexander Montgomery. Bernard's mother, Maud, was the daughter of Frederic William Farrar, the famous preacher, and was 18 years younger than her husband.
After the death of Sir Robert Montgomery, Henry inherited the Montgomery ancestral estate of New Park in Moville, a small town in Inishowen in the north of County Donegal in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland. There was still £13,000 to pay on a mortgage, a large debt in the 1880s (equivalent to £ in ) and Henry was at the time still only an Anglican vicar. Despite selling off all the farms that were in the townland of Ballynally, on the north-western shores of Lough Foyle, "there was barely enough to keep up New Park and pay for the blasted summer holiday" (i.e., at New Park).
It was a financial relief of some magnitude when, in 1889, Henry was made Bishop of Tasmania, then still a British colony, and Bernard spent his formative years there. Bishop Montgomery considered it his duty to spend as much time as possible in the rural areas of Tasmania and was away for up to six months at a time. While he was away, his wife, still in her mid-20s, gave her children "constant" beatings, then ignored them most of the time. Of Bernard's siblings, Sibyl died prematurely in Tasmania, and Harold, Donald and Una all emigrated. Maud Montgomery took little active interest in the education of her young children other than to have them taught by tutors brought from Britain, although Bernard briefly attended the then coeducational St Michael's Collegiate School. The loveless environment made Bernard something of a bully, as he himself recalled: "I was a dreadful little boy. I don't suppose anybody would put up with my sort of behaviour these days." Later in life Montgomery refused to allow his son David to have anything to do with his grandmother, and refused to attend her funeral in 1949.
The family returned to England once for a Lambeth Conference in 1897, and Bernard and his brother Harold were educated at The King's School, Canterbury. In 1901, Bishop Montgomery became secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the family returned to London. Montgomery attended St Paul's School and then the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from which he was almost expelled for rowdiness and violence. On graduation in September 1908 he was commissioned into the 1st Battalion the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a second lieutenant, and first saw overseas service later that year in India. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1910, and in 1912 became adjutant of the 1st Battalion of his regiment at Shorncliffe Army Camp.
First World War.
The Great War began in August 1914 and Montgomery moved to France with his battalion that month, which was at the time part of the 10th Infantry Brigade of the 4th Division of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). He was promoted to temporary captain on 14 September. He saw action at the Battle of Le Cateau that month and during the retreat from Mons. At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul on 13 October 1914, during an Allied counter-offensive, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper. Lying in the open, he remained still and pretended to be dead, in the hope that he would not receive any more enemy attention. One of his men did attempt to rescue him but was shot dead by a hidden enemy sniper and collapsed over Montgomery. The sniper continued to fire and Montgomery was hit once more, in the knee, but the dead soldier, in Montgomery's words, "received many bullets meant for me." Assuming them to both be dead, the officers and men of Montgomery's battalion chose to leave them where they were until darkness arrived and stretcher bearers managed to recover the two bodies, with Montgomery by this time barely clinging on to life. The doctors at the advanced dressing station (ADS), too, had no hope for him and ordered a grave to be dug. Miraculously, however, Montgomery was still alive and, after being placed in an ambulance and then being sent to a hospital, was treated and eventually evacuated to England, where he would remain for well over a year. He was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), for his gallant leadership during this period: the citation for this award, published in "The London Gazette" in December 1914 reads:
After recovering in early 1915, he was appointed brigade major, first of the 112th Infantry Brigade, and then with 104th Infantry Brigade, then training in Lancashire. He returned to the Western Front in early 1916 with his brigade, seeing service with it during the Battle of the Somme later in the year. In January 1917 he was assigned as a general staff officer, grade 2 (GSO2) with the 33rd Division and took part in the Battle of Arras in AprilMay. In July he transferred over as a GSO2 to IX Corps, part of General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army.
It was in this role that Montgomery served at the Battle of Passchendaele which began in late July 1917. He was promoted to the temporary rank of major in February 1918, and brevet major in June. He finished the war in November 1918 as GSO1 (effectively chief of staff) of the 47th (2nd London) Division, with the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel, to which appointment and rank he had been assigned to on 16 July. A photograph from October 1918, reproduced in many biographies, shows the then unknown Lieutenant-Colonel Montgomery standing in front of Winston Churchill (then the Minister of Munitions) at the parade following the liberation of Lille.
Montgomery was profoundly influenced by his experiences during the war, in particular by the leadership, or rather the lack of it, being displayed by the senior commanders. He later wrote:
Between the world wars.
1920s and Ireland.
After the First World War, Montgomery commanded the 17th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, a battalion in the British Army of the Rhine, before reverting to his substantive rank of captain (brevet major) in November 1919. He had not at first been selected for the Staff College, Camberley, Surrey (his only hope of ever achieving high command). But at a tennis party in Cologne, he was able to persuade the Commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the British Army of Occupation, Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, to add his name to the list.
After graduating from the Staff College, he was appointed brigade major in the 17th Infantry Brigade in January 1921. The brigade was stationed in County Cork, Ireland, carrying out counter-guerilla operations during the final stages of the Irish War of Independence.
Montgomery came to the conclusion that the conflict could not be won without harsh measures, and that self-government for Ireland was the only feasible solution; in 1923, after the establishment of the Irish Free State and during the Irish Civil War, Montgomery wrote to Colonel Arthur Percival of the Essex Regiment:
In one noteworthy incident on 2 May 1922, Montgomery led a force of 60 soldiers and four armoured cars to the town of Macroom to search for four British officers who were missing in the area. While he had hoped the show of force would assist in finding the men, he was under strict orders not to attack the IRA. On arriving in the town square in front of Macroom Castle, he summoned the IRA commander, Charlie Browne, to parley. At the castle gates Montgomery spoke to Browne, explaining what would happen should the officers not be released. Once finished, Browne responded with his own ultimatum to Montgomery to "leave town within 10 minutes". Browne then turned heels and returned to the Castle. At this point another IRA officer, Pat O'Sullivan, whistled to Montgomery drawing his attention to scores of IRA volunteers who had quietly taken up firing positions all around the square—surrounding Montgomery's forces. Realising his precarious position, Montgomery led his troops out of the town, a decision which raised hostile questions in the House of Commons but was later approved by Montgomery's own superiors. Unknown to Montgomery at this time, the four missing officers had already been executed.
In May 1923, Montgomery was posted to the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division, a Territorial Army (TA) formation. He returned to the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1925 as a company commander and was promoted to major in July 1925. From January 1926 to January 1929 he served as Deputy Assistant Adjutant General at the Staff College, Camberley, in the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel.
Marriage and family.
In 1925, in his first known courtship of a woman, Montgomery, then in his late thirties, proposed to a 17-year-old girl, Betty Anderson. His approach included drawing diagrams in the sand of how he would deploy his tanks and infantry in a future war, a contingency which seemed very remote at that time. She respected his ambition and single-mindedness but declined his proposal.
In 1927, he met and married Elizabeth (Betty) Carver, "née" Hobart. She was the sister of the future Second World War commander Sir Percy Hobart. Betty Carver had two sons in their early teens, John and Dick, from her first marriage to Oswald Carver. Dick Carver later wrote that it had been "a very brave thing" for Montgomery to take on a widow with two children. Montgomery's son, David, was born in August 1928.
While on holiday in Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset in 1937, Betty suffered an insect bite which became infected, and she died in her husband's arms from septicaemia following amputation of her leg. The loss devastated Montgomery, who was then serving as a brigadier, but he insisted on throwing himself back into his work immediately after the funeral. Montgomery's marriage had been extremely happy. Much of his correspondence with his wife was destroyed when his quarters at Portsmouth were bombed during the Second World War. After Montgomery's death, John Carver wrote that his mother had arguably done the country a favour by keeping his personal oddities—his extreme single-mindedness, and his intolerance of and suspicion of the motives of others—within reasonable bounds long enough for him to have a chance of attaining high command.
Both of Montgomery's stepsons became army officers in the 1930s (both were serving in India at the time of their mother's death), and both served in the Second World War, each eventually attaining the rank of colonel. While serving as a GSO2 with Eighth Army, Dick Carver was sent forward during the pursuit after El Alamein to help identify a new site for Eighth Army HQ. He was taken prisoner at Mersa Matruh on 7 November 1942. Montgomery wrote to his contacts in England asking that inquiries be made via the Red Cross as to where his stepson was being held, and that parcels be sent to him. Like many British POWs, the most famous being General Richard O'Connor, Dick Carver escaped in September 1943 during the brief hiatus between Italy's departure from the war and the German seizure of the country. He eventually reached British lines on 5 December 1943, to the delight of his stepfather, who sent him home to Britain to recuperate.
1930s.
In January 1929 Montgomery was promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel. That month he returned to the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment again, as Commander of Headquarters Company; he went to the War Office to help write the Infantry Training Manual in mid-1929. In 1931 Montgomery was promoted to substantive lieutenant-colonel and became the Commanding officer (CO) of the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment and saw service in Palestine and British India. He was promoted to colonel in June 1934 (seniority from January 1932). He attended and was then recommended to become an instructor at the Indian Army Staff College (now the Pakistan Command and Staff College) in Quetta, British India.
On completion of his tour of duty in India, Montgomery returned to Britain in June 1937 where he took command of the 9th Infantry Brigade with the temporary rank of brigadier. His wife died that year.
In 1938, he organised an amphibious combined operations landing exercise that impressed the new C-in-C of Southern Command, General Sir Archibald Wavell. He was promoted to major-general on 14 October 1938 and took command of the 8th Infantry Division in the British mandate of Palestine. In Palestine, Montgomery was involved in suppressing an Arab revolt which had broken out over opposition to Jewish emigration. He returned in July 1939 to Britain, suffering a serious illness on the way, to command the 3rd Infantry Division. Reporting the suppression of the revolt in April 1939, Montgomery wrote, "I shall be sorry to leave Palestine in many ways, as I have enjoyed the war out here".
Second World War.
British Expeditionary Force.
Phoney war.
Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 and the 3rd Division, together with its new General Officer Commanding (GOC), was deployed to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by General Lord Gort. Shortly after the division's arrival overseas, Montgomery faced serious trouble from his military superiors and the clergy for his frank attitude regarding the sexual health of his soldiers, but was defended from dismissal by his superior Alan Brooke, commander of II Corps, of which Montgomery's division formed a part. Montgomery had issued a circular on the prevention of venereal disease, worded in such "obscene language" that both the Church of England and Roman Catholic senior chaplains objected; Brooke told Monty that he did not want any further errors of this kind, though deciding not to get him to formally withdraw it as it would remove any "vestige of respect" left for him.
Although Montgomery's new command was a Regular Army formation, comprising the 7th (Guards), and the 8th and 9th Infantry Brigades along with supporting units, he was not impressed with its readiness for battle. As a result, while most of the rest of the BEF set about preparing defences for an expected German attack sometime in the future, Montgomery began training his 3rd Division in offensive tactics, organising several exercises, each of which lasted for several days at a time. Mostly they revolved around the division advancing towards an objective, often a river line, only to come under attack and forced to withdraw to another position, usually behind another river. These exercises usually occurred at night with only very minimal lighting being allowed. By the spring of 1940 Montgomery's division had gained a reputation of being a very agile and flexible formation. By then the Allies had agreed to Plan D, where they would advance deep into Belgium and take up positions on the River Dyle by the time the German forces attacked. Brooke, Montgomery's corps commander, was pessimistic about the plan but Montgomery, in contrast, was not concerned, believing that he and his division would perform well regardless of the circumstances, particularly in a war of movement.
Battle of France.
Montgomery's training paid off when the Germans began their invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May 1940 and the 3rd Division advanced to its planned position, near the Belgian city of Louvain. Soon after arrival, the division was fired on by members of the Belgian 10th Infantry Division who mistook them for German paratroopers; Montgomery resolved the incident by approaching them and offering to place himself under Belgian command, although Montgomery himself took control when the Germans arrived. During this time he began to develop a particular habit, which he would keep throughout the war, of going to bed at 21:30 every night without fail and giving only a single order—that he was not to be disturbed—which was only very rarely disobeyed.
The 3rd Division saw comparatively little action but, owing to the strict training methods of Montgomery, the division always managed to be in the right place at the right time, especially so during the retreat into France. By 27 May, when the Belgian Army on the left flank of the BEF began to disintegrate, the 3rd Division achieved something very difficult, the movement at night from the right to the left of another division and only 2,000 yards behind it. This was performed with great professionalism and occurred without any incidents and thereby filled a very vulnerable gap in the BEF's defensive line. On 29/30 May, Montgomery temporarily took over from Brooke, who received orders to return to the United Kingdom, as GOC of II Corps for the final stages of the Dunkirk evacuation.
The 3rd Division, temporarily commanded by Kenneth Anderson in Montgomery's absence, returned to Britain intact with minimal casualties. Operation Dynamo—codename for the Dunkirk evacuation—saw 330,000 Allied military personnel, including most of the BEF, to Britain, although the BEF was forced to leave behind a significant amount of equipment.
Service in the United Kingdom 1940−1942.
On his return Montgomery antagonised the War Office with trenchant criticisms of the command of the BEF and was briefly relegated to divisional command of 3rd Division, which was the only fully equipped division in Britain. He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath.
Montgomery was ordered to make ready the 3rd Division to invade the neutral Portuguese Azores. Models of the islands were prepared and detailed plans worked out for the invasion. The invasion plans did not go ahead and plans switched to invading the Cape Verde islands also belonging to neutral Portugal. These invasion plans also did not go ahead. Montgomery was then ordered to prepare plans for the invasion of neutral Ireland and to seize Cork, Cobh and Cork harbour. These invasion plans, like those of the Portuguese islands, also did not go ahead and in July 1940, Montgomery was appointed acting lieutenant-general and after handing over command of his division to James Gammell, he was placed in command of V Corps, responsible for the defence of Hampshire and Dorset and started a long-running feud with the new Commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of Southern Command, Lieutenant-General Claude Auchinleck.
In April 1941, he became commander of XII Corps responsible for the defence of Kent. During this period he instituted a regime of continuous training and insisted on high levels of physical fitness for both officers and other ranks. He was ruthless in sacking officers he considered unfit for command in action. He was promoted to temporary lieutenant-general in July, overseeing the defence of Kent, Sussex and Surrey. In December Montgomery was given command of South-Eastern Command. He renamed his command the South-Eastern Army to promote offensive spirit. During this time he further developed and rehearsed his ideas and trained his soldiers, culminating in Exercise Tiger in May 1942, a combined forces exercise involving 100,000 troops.
North Africa and Italy.
Montgomery's early command.
In 1942, a new field commander was required in the Middle East, where Auchinleck was fulfilling both the role of C-in-C of Middle East Command and commander Eighth Army. He had stabilised the Allied position at the First Battle of El Alamein, but after a visit in August 1942, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, replaced him as C-in-C with General Sir Harold Alexander and William Gott as commander of the Eighth Army in the Western Desert. However, after Gott was killed flying back to Cairo, Churchill was persuaded by Brooke, who by this time was Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), to appoint Montgomery, who had only just been nominated to replace Alexander, as commander of the British First Army for Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa.
A story, probably apocryphal but popular at the time, is that the appointment caused Montgomery to remark that "After having an easy war, things have now got much more difficult." A colleague is supposed to have told him to cheer up—at which point Montgomery said "I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about Rommel!"
Montgomery's assumption of command transformed the fighting spirit and abilities of the Eighth Army. Taking command on 13 August 1942, he immediately became a whirlwind of activity. He ordered the creation of the X Corps, which contained all armoured divisions, to fight alongside his XXX Corps, which was all infantry divisions. This arrangement differed from the German Panzer Corps: one of Rommel's Panzer Corps combined infantry, armour and artillery units under one corps commander. The only common commander for Montgomery's all-infantry and all-armour corps was the Eighth Army Commander himself. Writing post-war the English historian Correlli Barnett commented that Montgomery's solution "was in every way opposite to Auchinleck's and in every way wrong, for it carried the existing dangerous separatism still further." Montgomery reinforced the long front line at El Alamein, something that would take two months to accomplish. He asked Alexander to send him two new British divisions (51st Highland and 44th Home Counties) that were then arriving in Egypt and were scheduled to be deployed in defence of the Nile Delta. He moved his field HQ to Burg al Arab, close to the Air Force command post in order to better coordinate combined operations.
Montgomery was determined that the army, navy and air forces should fight their battles in a unified, focused manner according to a detailed plan. He ordered immediate reinforcement of the vital heights of Alam Halfa, just behind his own lines, expecting the German commander, Erwin Rommel, to attack with the heights as his objective, something that Rommel soon did. Montgomery ordered all contingency plans for retreat to be destroyed. "I have cancelled the plan for withdrawal. If we are attacked, then there will be no retreat. If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead", he told his officers at the first meeting he held with them in the desert, though, in fact, Auchinleck had no plans to withdraw from the strong defensive position he had chosen and established at El Alamein.
Montgomery made a great effort to appear before troops as often as possible, frequently visiting various units and making himself known to the men, often arranging for cigarettes to be distributed. Although he still wore a standard British officer's cap on arrival in the desert, he briefly wore an Australian broad-brimmed hat before switching to wearing the black beret (with the badge of the Royal Tank Regiment and the British General Officer's cap badge) for which he became notable. The black beret was offered to him by Jim Fraser while the latter was driving him on an inspection tour. Both Brooke and Alexander were astonished by the transformation in atmosphere when they visited on 19 August, less than a week after Montgomery had taken command.
Alan Brooke said that Churchill was always impatient for his generals to attack at once, and he wrote that Montgomery was always "my Monty" when Montgomery was out of favour with Churchill. Anthony Eden had some late night drinks with Churchill, and Eden said at a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff the next day (29 October 1942) that the Middle East offensive was "petering out". Alanbrooke had told Churchill "fairly plainly" what he thought of Eden's ability to judge the tactical situation from a distance, and was supported at the Chiefs of Staff meeting by Jan Smuts.
First battles with Rommel.
Rommel attempted to turn the left flank of the Eighth Army at the Battle of Alam el Halfa from 31 August 1942. The German/Italian armoured corps infantry attack was stopped in very heavy fighting. Rommel's forces had to withdraw urgently lest their retreat through the British minefields be cut off. Montgomery was criticised for not counter-attacking the retreating forces immediately, but he felt strongly that his methodical build-up of British forces was not yet ready. A hasty counter-attack risked ruining his strategy for an offensive on his own terms in late October, planning for which had begun soon after he took command. He was confirmed in the permanent rank of lieutenant-general in mid-October.
The conquest of Libya was essential for airfields to support Malta and to threaten the rear of Axis forces opposing Operation Torch. Montgomery prepared meticulously for the new offensive after convincing Churchill that the time was not being wasted. (Churchill sent a telegram to Alexander on 23 September 1942 which began, "We are in your hands and of course a victorious battle makes amends for much delay.") He was determined not to fight until he thought there had been sufficient preparation for a decisive victory, and put into action his beliefs with the gathering of resources, detailed planning, the training of troops—especially in clearing minefields and fighting at night—and in the use of 252 of the latest American-built Sherman tanks, 90 M7 Priest self-propelled howitzers, and making a personal visit to every unit involved in the offensive. By the time the offensive was ready in late October, Eighth Army had 231,000 men on its ration strength.
El Alamein.
The Second Battle of El Alamein began on 23 October 1942, and ended 12 days later with one of the first large-scale, decisive Allied land victories of the war. Montgomery correctly predicted both the length of the battle and the number of casualties (13,500).
Historian Correlli Barnett has pointed out that the rain also fell on the Germans, and that the weather is therefore an inadequate explanation for the failure to exploit the breakthrough, but nevertheless the Battle of El Alamein had been a great success. Over 30,000 prisoners of war were taken, including the German second-in-command, General Ritter von Thoma, as well as eight other general officers.
Tunisia.
Montgomery was advanced to KCB and promoted to full general. He kept the initiative, applying superior strength when it suited him, forcing Rommel out of each successive defensive position. On 6 March 1943, Rommel's attack on the over-extended Eighth Army at Medenine (Operation Capri) with the largest concentration of German armour in North Africa was successfully repulsed. At the Mareth Line, 20 to 27 March, when Montgomery encountered fiercer frontal opposition than he had anticipated, he switched his major effort into an outflanking inland pincer, backed by low-flying RAF fighter-bomber support. For his role in North Africa he was awarded the Legion of Merit by the United States government in the rank of Chief Commander.
Sicily.
The next major Allied attack was the Allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky). Montgomery considered the initial plans for the Allied invasion, which had been agreed in principle by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander Allied Forces Headquarters, and General Alexander, the 15th Army Group commander, to be unworkable because of the dispersion of effort. He managed to have the plans recast to concentrate the Allied forces, having Lieutenant General George Patton's US Seventh Army land in the Gulf of Gela (on the Eighth Army's left flank, which landed around Syracuse in the south-east of Sicily) rather than near Palermo in the west and north of Sicily. Inter-Allied tensions grew as the American commanders, Patton and Omar Bradley (then commanding US II Corps under Patton), took umbrage at what they saw as Montgomery's attitudes and boastfulness. However, while they were considered three of the greatest soldiers of their time, due to their competitiveness they were renowned for "squabbling like three schoolgirls" thanks to their "bitchiness", "whining to their superiors" and "showing off".
Italy.
Montgomery's Eighth Army was then fully involved in the Allied invasion of Italy in early September 1943, becoming the first of the Allied forces to land in Western Europe. Led by Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey's XIII Corps, the Eighth Army landed on the toe of Italy in Operation Baytown on 3 September, four years to the day after Britain declared war on Germany. They encountered little enemy resistance. The Germans had made the decision to fall back and did what they could to stall the Eighth Army's advance, including blowing up bridges, laying mines, and setting up booby-traps. All of these slowed the Army's advance north on the awful Italian roads, although it was Montgomery who was later much criticised for the lack of progress. On 9 September the British 1st Airborne Division landed at the key port of Taranto in the heel of Italy as part of Operation Slapstick, capturing the port unopposed. On the same day the U.S. Fifth Army under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark (which actually contained a large number of British troops) landed at Salerno, near Naples, as part of Operation Avalanche but soon found itself fighting for its very existence with the Germans launching several determined counterattacks to try and push the Allies back into the sea, with Montgomery's men being too far away to provide any real assistance. The situation was tense over the next few days but the two armies (both of which formed the 15th Army Group under General Alexander) finally began to meet on 16 September, by which time the crisis at Salerno was virtually over.
Clark's Fifth Army then began to advance to the west of the Apennine Mountains while Montgomery, with Lieutenant General Charles Allfrey's V Corps having arrived to reinforce Dempsey's XIII Corps, advanced to the east. The Foggia airfields soon fell to Allfrey's V Corps, but the Germans fought hard in the defence of Termoli and Biferno. Movement soon came to an almost complete halt in the early part of November when the Eighth Army came up against a new defensive line established by the Germans on the River Sangro, which was to be the scene of much bitter and heavy fighting for the next month. While some ground was gained, it was often at the expense of heavy casualties and the Germans always managed to retreat to new defensive positions.
Montgomery abhorred what he considered to be a lack of coordination, a dispersion of effort, a strategic muddle and a lack of opportunism in the Allied campaign in Italy, describing the whole affair as a "dog's breakfast".
Return to France.
Normandy.
As a result of his dissatisfaction with Italy, he was delighted to receive the news that he was to return to Britain in January 1944. He was assigned to command the 21st Army Group consisting of all Allied ground forces participating in Operation Overlord, codename for the Allied invasion of Normandy. Overall direction was assigned to the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Both Churchill and Eisenhower had found Montgomery difficult to work with in the past and wanted the position to go to the more affable General Sir Harold Alexander. However Montgomery's patron, General Sir Alan Brooke, firmly argued that Montgomery was a much superior general to Alexander and ensured his appointment. Without Brooke's support, Montgomery would have remained in Italy. At his headquarters St Paul's School on 7 April and 15 May Montgomery presented his strategy for the invasion. He envisaged a ninety-day battle, with all forces reaching the Seine. The campaign would pivot on an Allied-held Caen in the east of the Normandy bridgehead, with relatively static British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder to attract and defeat German counter-attacks, relieving the US armies who would move and seize the Cotentin Peninsula and Brittany, wheeling south and then east on the right forming a pincer.
During the ten weeks of the Battle of Normandy, unfavourable autumnal weather conditions disrupted the Normandy landing areas. Montgomery's initial plan was for the Anglo-Canadian troops under his command to break out immediately from their beachheads on the Calvados coast towards Caen with the aim of taking the city on either D Day or two days later. Montgomery attempted to take Caen with the 3rd Infantry Division, the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division and the 3rd Canadian Division, but was stopped from 6–8 June by the 21st Panzer Division and 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend", who hit the advancing Anglo-Canadian troops very hard. The 12th Waffen SS Division "Hitlerjugend", as its name implies, was drawn entirely from the more fanatical elements of the Hitler Youth, and commanded by the ruthless SS-"Brigadeführer" Kurt Meyer, aka "Panzer Meyer". Rommel followed up this success by ordering the 2nd Panzer Division to Caen while Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt received permission from Hitler to have the elite 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" and 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" sent to Caen as well. Montgomery thus had to face what Stephen Badsey called the "most formidable" of all the German divisions in France.
The failure to take Caen immediately has been the source of an immense historiographical dispute with bitter nationalist overtones. Broadly, there has been a "British school" which accepts Montgomery's post-war claim that he never intended to take Caen at once, and instead the Anglo-Canadian operations around Caen were a "holding operation" intended to attract the bulk of the German forces towards the Caen sector to allow the Americans to stage the "break out operation" on the left flank of the German positions, which was all part of Montgomery's "Master Plan" that he had conceived long before the Normandy campaign. By contrast, the "American school" argued that Montgomery's initial "master plan" was for the 21st Army Group to take Caen at once and move his tank divisions into the plains south of Caen, to then stage a breakout that would lead the 21st Army Group into the plains of northern France and hence into Antwerp and finally the Ruhr. Letters written by Eisenhower at the time of the battle make it clear that Eisenhower was expecting from Montgomery "the early capture of the important focal point of Caen". Later, when this plan had clearly failed, Eisenhower wrote that Montgomery had "evolved" the plan to have the US forces achieve the break-out instead.
As the campaign progressed, Montgomery altered his initial plan for the invasion and continued the strategy of attracting and holding German counter-attacks in the area north of Caen rather than to the south, to allow the U.S. First Army in the west to take Cherbourg. A memo summarising Montgomery's operations written by Eisenhower's chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, who met with Montgomery in late June 1944 says nothing about Montgomery conducting a "holding operation" in the Caen sector, and instead speaks of him seeking a "breakout" into the plains south of the Seine. On 12 June, Montgomery ordered the 7th Armoured Division into an attack against the Panzer Lehr Division that made good progress at first, but ended when the Panzer Lehr was joined by the 2nd Panzer Division. At the Battle of Villers-Bocage on 13 June, the British lost twenty Cromwell tanks to five Tiger tanks led by SS "Obersturmführer" Michael Wittmann, in about five minutes. Despite the setback at Villers Bocage, Montgomery was still optimistic as the Allies were landing more troops and supplies than they were losing in battle, and though the German lines were holding, the "Wehrmacht" and "Waffen SS" were suffering considerable attrition. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder complained that it was impossible to move fighter squadrons to France until Montgomery had captured some airfields, something he asserted that Montgomery appeared incapable of doing. The first V-1 flying bomb attacks on London, which started on 13 June, further increased the pressure on Montgomery from Whitehall to speed up his advance.
On 18 June, Montgomery ordered Bradley to take Cherbourg while the British were to take Caen by 23 June. In Operation Epsom, the British VII Corps commanded by Sir Richard O'Connor attempted to outflank Caen from the west by breaking through the dividing line between the Panzer Lehr and the 12th SS to take the strategic Hill 112. Epsom began well with O'Connor's assault force (the British 15th Scottish Division) breaking through and with the 11th Armoured Division stopping the counter-attacks of the 12th SS Division. General Friedrich Dollmann of Seventh Army had to commit the newly arrived II SS Panzer Corps to stop the British offensive. Dollmann, fearing that Epsom would be a success, committed suicide and was replaced by SS "Oberstegruppenführer" Paul Hausser. O'Connor, at the cost of about 4,000 men, had won a salient only deep and wide, but placed the Germans in an unviable long-term position. There was a strong sense of crisis in the Allied command, as the Allies had advanced only about inland, at a time when their plans called for them to have already taken Rennes, Alençon and St. Malo. After Epsom, Montgomery had to tell General Harry Crerar that the activation of the First Canadian Army would have to wait as there was only room at present, in the Caen sector, for the newly arrived XII Corps under Lieutenant-General Neil Ritchie, which caused some tension with Crerar, who was anxious to get into the field. Epsom had forced further German forces into Caen but all through June and the first half of July Rommel, Rundstedt, and Hitler were engaged in planning for a great offensive to drive the British into the sea; it was never launched and would have required the commitment of a large number of German forces to the Caen sector.
It was only after several failed attempts to break out in the Caen sector that Montgomery devised what he later called his "master plan" of having the 21st Army Group hold the bulk of the German forces, thus allowing the Americans to break out. The Canadian historians Terry Copp and Robert Vogel wrote about the dispute between the "American school" and "British school" after having suffered several setbacks in June 1944:
Hampered by stormy weather and the bocage terrain, Montgomery had to ensure that Rommel focused on the British in the east rather than the Americans in the west, who had to take the Cotentin Peninsula and Brittany before the Germans could be trapped by a general swing east. Montgomery told General Sir Miles Dempsey, the commander of Second British Army: "Go on hitting, drawing the German strength, especially some of the armour, onto yourself—so as to ease the way for Brad [Bradley]." The Germans had deployed twelve divisions, of which six were Panzer divisions, against the British while deploying eight divisions, of which three were Panzer divisions, against the Americans. By the middle of July Caen had not been taken, as Rommel continued to prioritise prevention of the break-out by British forces rather than the western territories being taken by the Americans. This was broadly as Montgomery had planned, albeit not with the same speed as he outlined at St Paul's, although as the American historian Carlo D'Este pointed out the actual situation in Normandy was "vastly different" from what was envisioned at the St. Paul's conference, as only one of four goals outlined in May had been achieved by 10 July.
On 7 July, Montgomery began Operation Charnwood with a carpet bombing offensive that turned much of the French countryside and the city of Caen into a wasteland. The British and Canadians succeeded in advancing into northern Caen before the Germans, who used the ruins to their advantage and stopped the offensive. On 10 July, Montgomery ordered Bradley to take Avranches, after which U.S. Third Army would be activated to drive towards Le Mans and Alençon. On 14 July 1944, Montgomery wrote to his patron Brooke, saying he had chosen on a "real show down on the eastern flanks, and to loose a Corps of three armoured divisions in the open country about the Caen-Falaise road ... The possibilities are immense; with seven hundred tanks loosed to the South-east of Caen, and the armoured cars operating far ahead, anything can happen." The French Resistance had launched Plan Violet in June 1944 to systematically destroy the telephone system of France, which forced the Germans to use their radios more and more to communicate, and as the code-breakers of Bletchley Park had broken many of the German codes, Montgomery had, thanks to "Ultra" intelligence, a good idea of the German situation. Montgomery thus knew German Army Group B had lost 96,400 men while receiving 5,200 replacements and the Panzer Lehr Division now based at Saint-Lô was down to only 40 tanks. Montgomery later wrote that he knew he had the Normandy campaign won at this point as the Germans had almost no reserves while he had three armoured divisions in reserve.
An American break-out was achieved with Operation Cobra and the encirclement of German forces in the Falaise pocket at the cost of British losses with the diversionary Operation Goodwood. On the early morning of 18 July 1944, Operation Goodwood began with British heavy bombers beginning carpet bombing attacks that further devastated what was left of Caen and the surrounding countryside. A British tank crewman from the Guards Armoured Division later recalled: "At 0500 hours a distant thunder in the air brought all the sleepy-eyed tank crews out of their blankets. 1,000 Lancasters were flying from the sea in groups of three or four at . Ahead of them the pathfinders were scattering their flares and before long the first bombs were dropping." A German tankman from the 21st Panzer Division at the receiving end of this bombardment remembered: "We saw little dots detach themselves from the planes, so many of them that the crazy thought occurred to us: are those leaflets? ... Among the thunder of the explosions, we could hear the wounded scream and the insane howling of men who had [been] driven mad." The British bombing had badly smashed the German front-line units. Initially, the three British armoured divisions assigned to lead the offensive, the 7th, 11th and the Guards, made rapid progress and were soon approaching the Borguebus ridge, which dominated the landscape south of Caen, by noon.
If the British could take the Borguebus Ridge, the way to the plains of northern France would be wide open, and potentially Paris could be taken, which explains the ferocity with which the Germans defended the ridge. One German officer, Lieutenant Baron von Rosen, recalled that to motivate a Luftwaffe officer commanding a battery of four 88 mm guns to fight against the British tanks, he had to hold his handgun to the officer's head "and asked him whether he would like to be killed immediately or get a high decoration. He decided for the latter." The well dug-in 88 mm guns around the Borguebus Ridge began taking a toll on the British Sherman tanks, and the countryside was soon dotted with dozens of burning Shermans. One British officer reported with worry: "I see palls of smoke and tanks brewing up with flames belching forth from their turrets. I see men climbing out, on fire like torches, rolling on the ground to try and douse the flames." Despite Montgomery's orders to try to press on, fierce German counter-attacks stopped the British offensive.
The objectives of Operation Goodwood were all achieved except the complete capture of the Bourgebus Ridge, which was only partially taken. The operation was a strategic Allied success in drawing in the last German reserves in Normandy towards the Caen sector away from the American sector, greatly assisting the American breakout in Operation Cobra. By the end of Goodwood on 25 July 1944, the Canadians had finally taken Caen while the British tanks had reached the plains south of Caen, giving Montgomery the "hinge" he had been seeking, while forcing the Germans to commit the last of their reserves to stop the Anglo-Canadian offensive. "Ultra" decrypts indicated that the Germans now facing Bradley were seriously understrength, with Operation Cobra about to commence. During Operation Goodwood, the British had 400 tanks knocked out, with many recovered returning to service. The casualties were 5,500 with of ground gained. Bradley recognised Montgomery's plan to pin down German armour and allow U.S. forces to break out:
The long-running dispute over what Montgomery's "master plan" in Normandy led historians to differ greatly about the purpose of Goodwood. The British journalist Mark Urban wrote that the purpose of Goodwood was to draw German troops to their left flank to allow the American forces to break out on the right flank, arguing that Montgomery had to lie to his soldiers about the purpose of Goodwood, as the average British soldier would not have understood why they were being asked to create a diversion to allow the Americans to have the glory of staging the breakout with Operation Cobra. By contrast, the American historian Stephen Power argued that Goodwood was intended to be the "breakout" offensive and not a "holding operation", writing: "It is unrealistic to assert that an operation which called for the use of 4,500 Allied aircraft, 700 artillery pieces and over 8,000 armored vehicles and trucks and that cost the British over 5,500 casualties was conceived and executed for so limited an objective." Power noted that Goodwood and Cobra were supposed to take effect on the same day, 18 July 1944, but Cobra was cancelled owing to heavy rain in the American sector, and argued that both operations were meant to be breakout operations to trap the German armies in Normandy. American military writer Drew Middleton wrote that there is no doubt that Montgomery wanted Goodwood to provide a "shield" for Bradley, but at the same time Montgomery was clearly hoping for more than merely diverting German attention away from the American sector. British historian John Keegan pointed out that Montgomery made differing statements before Goodwood about the purpose of the operation. Keegan wrote that Montgomery engaged in what he called a "hedging of his bets" when drafting his plans for Goodwood, with a plan for a "break out if the front collapsed, if not, sound documentary evidence that all he had intended in the first place was a battle of attrition". Again Bradley confirmed Montgomery's plan and that the capture of Caen was only incidental to his mission, not critical. The American magazine "LIFE" quoted Bradley in 1951:
With Goodwood drawing the Wehrmacht towards the British sector, U.S. First Army enjoyed a two-to-one numerical superiority. Bradley accepted Montgomery's advice to begin the offensive by concentrating at one point instead of a "broad front" as Eisenhower would have preferred.
Operation Goodwood almost cost Montgomery his job, as Eisenhower seriously considered sacking him and only chose not to do so because to sack the popular "Monty" would have caused such a political backlash in Britain against the Americans at a critical moment in the war that the resulting strains in the Atlantic alliance were not considered worth it. Montgomery expressed his satisfaction at the results of Goodwood when calling the operation off. Eisenhower was under the impression that Goodwood was to be a break-out operation. Either there was a miscommunication between the two men or Eisenhower did not understand the strategy. Bradley fully understood Montgomery's intentions. Both men would not give away to the press the true intentions of their strategy.
Many American officers had found Montgomery a difficult man to work with, and after Goodwood, pressured Eisenhower to fire Montgomery. Although the Eisenhower–Montgomery dispute is sometimes depicted in nationalist terms as being an Anglo-American struggle, it was the British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder who was pressing Eisenhower most strongly after Goodwood to fire Montgomery. An American officer wrote in his diary that Tedder had come to see Eisenhower to "pursue his current favourite subject, the sacking of Monty". With Tedder leading the "sack Monty" campaign, it encouraged Montgomery's American enemies to press Eisenhower to fire Montgomery. Brooke was sufficiently worried about the "sack Monty" campaign to visit Montgomery at his Tactical Headquarters (TAC) in France and as he wrote in his diary; "warned [Montgomery] of a tendency in the PM [Churchill] to listen to suggestions that Monty played for safety and was not prepared to take risks". Brooke advised Montgomery to invite Churchill to Normandy, arguing that if the "sack Monty" campaign had won the Prime Minister over, then his career would be over, as having Churchill's backing would give Eisenhower the political "cover" to fire Montgomery. On 20 July, Montgomery met Eisenhower and on 21 July, Churchill, at the TAC in France. One of Montgomery's staff officers wrote afterwards that it was "common knowledge at Tac that Churchill had come to sack Monty". No notes were taken at the Eisenhower–Montgomery and Churchill–Montgomery meetings, but Montgomery was able to persuade both men not to sack him.
With the success of Cobra, which was soon followed by unleashing Patton's Third Army, Eisenhower wrote to Montgomery: "Am delighted that your basic plan has begun brilliantly to unfold with Bradley's initial success." The success of Cobra was aided by Operation Spring, when the II Canadian Corps under General Guy Simonds (the only Canadian general whose skill Montgomery respected) began an offensive south of Caen that made little headway, but which the Germans regarded as the main offensive. Once Third Army arrived, Bradley was promoted to take command of the newly created 12th Army Group, consisting of U.S. First and Third Armies. Following the American breakout, there followed the Battle of Falaise Gap. British, Canadian, and Polish soldiers of 21st Army Group commanded by Montgomery advanced south, while the American and French soldiers of Bradley's 12th Army Group advanced north to encircle the German Army Group B at Falaise, as Montgomery waged what Urban called "a huge battle of annihilation" in August 1944. Montgomery began his offensive into the "Suisse Normande" region with Operation Bluecoat, with Sir Richard O'Connor's VIII Corps and Gerard Bucknall's XXX Corps heading south. A dissatisfied Montgomery sacked Bucknall for being insufficiently aggressive and replaced him with General Brian Horrocks. At the same time, Montgomery ordered Patton—whose Third Army was supposed to advance into Brittany—to instead capture Nantes, which was soon taken.
Hitler waited too long to order his soldiers to retreat from Normandy, leading Montgomery to write: "He [Hitler] refused to face the only sound military course. As a result the Allies caused the enemy staggering losses in men and materials." Knowing via "Ultra" that Hitler was not planning to retreat from Normandy, Montgomery, on 6 August 1944, ordered an envelopment operation against Army Group B—with the First Canadian Army under Harry Crerar to advance towards Falaise, British Second Army under Miles Dempsey to advance towards Argentan, and Patton's Third Army to advance to Alençon. On 11 August, Montgomery changed his plan, with the Canadians to take Falaise and to meet the Americans at Argentan. The First Canadian Army launched two operations, Operation Totalize on 7 August, which advanced only in four days in the face of fierce German resistance, and Operation Tractable on 14 August, which finally took Falaise on 17 August. In view of the slow Canadian advance, Patton requested permission to take Falaise, but was refused by Bradley on 13 August. This prompted much controversy, many historians arguing that Bradley lacked aggression and that Montgomery should have overruled Bradley.
The so-called Falaise Gap was closed on 22 August 1944, but several American generals, most notably Patton, accused Montgomery of being insufficiently aggressive in closing it. About 60,000 German soldiers were trapped in Normandy, but before 22 August, about 20,000 Germans had escaped through the Falaise Gap. About 10,000 Germans had been killed in the Battle of the Falaise Gap, which led a stunned Eisenhower, who viewed the battlefield on 24 August, to comment with horror that it was impossible to walk without stepping on corpses. The successful conclusion of the Normandy campaign saw the beginning of the debate between the "American school" and "British school" as both American and British generals started to advance claims about who was most responsible for this victory. Brooke wrote in defence of his protégé Montgomery: "Ike knows nothing about strategy and is 'quite' unsuited to the post of Supreme Commander. It is no wonder that Monty's real high ability is not always realised. Especially so when 'national' spectacles pervert the perspective of the strategic landscape." About Montgomery's conduct of the Normandy campaign, Badsey wrote:
Replaced as Ground Forces Commander.
Eisenhower took over Ground Forces Command on 1 September, while continuing as Supreme Commander, with Montgomery continuing to command the 21st Army Group, now consisting mainly of British and Canadian units. Montgomery vehemently opposed this change, although it had been agreed before the D-Day invasion, instead proposing that either he or Bradley should remain in the job of Ground Forces command. He argued that the two roles were fundamentally different and that Eisenhower possessed the skillset for the former but not the latter; as such, he was liable to neglect the duties of one or the other, rendering the force off-balance. Instead, there was a need for a single decisive master plan under a leader free from the more administrative and political duties of the Supreme Commander - Montgomery felt he was the best equipped to deliver this, but was clear that he would also have been willing to work under Bradley.
Eisenhower and many others failed to grasp this however, and would misinterpret this as Montgomery's pride being wounded at having command removed. As such, they would attempt to placate him by reassuring him of the areas remaining under his command, and Winston Churchill had Montgomery promoted to Field Marshal by way of compensation. In addition, the British journalist Mark Urban points out that Montgomery seemed unable to grasp however that as the majority of the 2.2 million Allied soldiers fighting against Germany on the Western Front were now American (the ratio was 3:1) that it was politically unacceptable to American public opinion to have Montgomery remain as Land Forces Commander as: "Politics would not allow him to carry on giving orders to great armies of Americans simply because, in his view, [he was the best man for the job]".
Advance to the Rhine.
By September, ports like Cherbourg were too far away from the front line, causing the Allies great logistical problems. Antwerp was the third largest port in Europe. It was a deep water inland port connected to the North Sea via the river Scheldt. The Scheldt was wide enough and dredged deep enough to allow the passage of ocean-going ships.
On 3 September 1944 Hitler ordered Fifteenth Army, which had been stationed in the Pas de Calais region and was withdrawing north into the Low Countries, to hold the mouth of the river Scheldt to deprive the Allies of the use of Antwerp. Von Rundstedt, the German commander of the Western Front, ordered General Gustav-Adolf von Zangen, the commander of 15th Army, that: "The attempt of the enemy to occupy the West Scheldt in order to obtain the free use of the harbor of Antwerp must be "resisted to the utmost"" (emphasis in the original). Rundstedt argued with Hitler that as long as the Allies could not use the port of Antwerp, the Allies would lack the logistical capacity for an invasion of Germany.
The "Witte Brigade" (White Brigade) of the Belgian resistance had captured the Port of Antwerp before the Germans could destroy key port facilities, and on 4 September, Antwerp was captured by Horrocks with its harbour mostly intact. The British declined to immediately advance over the Albert Canal, and an opportunity to destroy the German Fifteenth Army was lost. The Germans had mined the river Scheldt, the mouth of the Scheldt was still in German hands making it impossible for the Royal Navy to clear the mines in the river, and therefore the port of Antwerp was still useless to the Allies.
On 5 September, SHAEF's naval commander, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, had urged Montgomery to make clearing the mouth of the Scheldt his number-one priority. Alone among the senior commanders, only Ramsay saw opening Antwerp as crucial. Thanks to "Ultra," Montgomery was aware of Hitler's order by 5 September.
On 9 September, Montgomery wrote to Brooke that "one good Pas de Calais port" would be sufficient to meet all the logistical needs of the 21st Army Group, but only the supply needs of the same formation. At the same time, Montgomery noted that "one good Pas de Calais port" would be insufficient for the American armies in France, which would thus force Eisenhower, if for no other reasons than logistics, to favour Montgomery's plans for an invasion of northern Germany by the 21st Army Group, whereas if Antwerp were opened up, then all of the Allied armies could be supplied.
The importance of ports closer to Germany was highlighted with the liberation of the city of Le Havre, which was assigned to John Crocker's I Corps. To take Le Havre, two infantry divisions, two tank brigades, most of the artillery of the British Second Army, the specialised armoured "gadgets" of Percy Hobart's 79th Armoured Division, the battleship and the monitor were all committed. On 10 September 1944, RAF Bomber Command dropped 4,719 tons of bombs on Le Havre, which was the prelude to Operation Astonia, the assault on Le Havre by Crocker's men, which was taken two days later. The Canadian historian Terry Copp wrote that the commitment of this much firepower and men to take only one French city might "seem excessive", but by this point, the Allies desperately needed ports closer to the front line to sustain their advance.
In September 1944, Montgomery ordered Crerar and his First Canadian Army to take the French ports on the English Channel, namely Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk, and to clear the Scheldt, a task that Crerar stated was impossible as he lacked enough troops to perform both operations at once. Montgomery refused Crerar's request to have British XII Corps under Neil Ritchie assigned to help clear the Scheldt as Montgomery stated he needed XII Corps for Operation Market Garden. On 6 September 1944, Montgomery told Crerar that "I want Boulogne badly" and that city should be taken no matter what the cost. On 22 September 1944, Simonds's II Canadian Corps took Boulogne, followed up by taking Calais on 1 October 1944. Montgomery was highly impatient with Simonds, complaining that it had taken Crocker's I Corps only two days to take Le Havre while it took Simonds two weeks to take Boulogne and Calais, but Simonds noted that at Le Havre, three divisions and two brigades had been employed, whereas at both Boulogne and Calais, only two brigades were sent in to take both cities. After an attempt to storm the Leopold Canal by the 4th Canadian Division had been badly smashed by the German defenders, Simonds ordered a stop to further attempts to clear the river Scheldt until his mission of capturing the French ports on the English Channel had been accomplished; this allowed the German Fifteenth Army ample time to dig into its new home on the Scheldt. The only port that was not captured by the Canadians was Dunkirk, as Montgomery ordered the 2nd Canadian Division on 15 September to hold his flank at Antwerp as a prelude for an advance up the Scheldt.
Montgomery pulled away from the First Canadian Army (temporarily commanded now by Simonds as Crerar was ill), the British 51st Highland Division, 1st Polish Division, British 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division and 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade, and sent all of these formations to help the Second British Army to expand the Market Garden salient with Operations Constellation, Aintree, and towards the end of October Pheasant. However, Simonds seems to have regarded the Scheldt campaign as a test of his ability, and he felt he could clear the Scheldt with only three Canadian divisions, despite having to take on the entire Fifteenth Army, which held strongly fortified positions in a landscape that favoured the defence. Simonds never complained about the lack of air support (made worse by the cloudy October weather), shortages of ammunition or having insufficient troops, regarding these problems as challenges for him to overcome, rather than a cause for complaint. As it was, Simonds made only slow progress in October 1944 during the fighting in the Battle of the Scheldt, although he was praised by Copp for imaginative and aggressive leadership who managed to achieve much, despite all of the odds against him. Montgomery had little respect for the Canadian generals, whom he dismissed as mediocre, with the exception of Simonds, whom he consistently praised as Canada's only "first-rate" general in the entire war.
Admiral Ramsay, who proved to be a far more articulate and forceful champion of the Canadians than their own generals, starting on 9 October demanded of Eisenhower in a meeting that he either order Montgomery to make supporting the First Canadian Army in the Scheldt fighting his number one priority or sack him. Ramsay in very strong language argued to Eisenhower that the Allies could only invade Germany if Antwerp was opened, and that as long as the three Canadian divisions fighting in the Scheldt had shortages of ammunition and artillery shells because Montgomery made the Arnhem salient his first priority, then Antwerp would not be opened anytime soon. Even Brooke wrote in his diary: "I feel that Monty's strategy for once is at fault. Instead of carrying out the advance to Arnhem he ought to have made certain of Antwerp". On 9 October 1944, at Ramsay's urging, Eisenhower sent Montgomery a cable that emphasised the "supreme importance of Antwerp", that "the Canadian Army will not, repeat not, be able to attack until November unless immediately supplied with adequate ammunition", and warned that the Allied advance into Germany would totally stop by mid-November unless Antwerp was opened by October. Montgomery replied by accusing Ramsay of making "wild statements" unsupported by the facts, denying the Canadians were having to ration ammunition, and claimed that he would soon take the Ruhr thereby making the Scheldt campaign a sideshow. Montgomery further issued a memo entitled "Notes on Command in Western Europe" demanding that he once again be made Land Forces Commander. This led to an exasperated Eisenhower telling Montgomery that the question was not the command arrangement but rather his (Montgomery's) ability and willingness to obey orders. Eisenhower further told Montgomery to either obey orders to immediately clear the mouth of the Scheldt or be sacked.
A chastised Montgomery told Eisenhower on 15 October 1944 that he was now making clearing the Scheldt his "top priority", and the ammunition shortages in the First Canadian Army, a problem which he denied even existed five days earlier, were now over as supplying the Canadians was henceforth his first concern. Simonds, now reinforced with British troops and Royal Marines, cleared the Scheldt by taking Walcheren island, the last of the German "fortresses" on the Scheldt, on 8 November 1944. With the Scheldt in Allied hands, Royal Navy minesweepers removed the German mines in the river, and Antwerp was finally opened to shipping on 28 November 1944. Reflecting Antwerp's importance, the Germans spent the winter of 1944–45 firing V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets at it in an attempt to shut down the port, and the German offensive in December 1944 in the Ardennes had as its ultimate objective the capture of Antwerp. Urban wrote that Montgomery's most "serious failure" in the entire war was not the well publicised Battle of Arnhem, but rather his lack of interest in opening up Antwerp, as without it the entire Allied advance from the North Sea to the Swiss Alps stalled in the autumn of 1944 for logistical reasons.
Operation Market Garden.
Montgomery was able to persuade Eisenhower to allow him to test his strategy of a single thrust to the Ruhr with Operation Market Garden in September 1944. The offensive was strategically bold, although Lieutenant General Humfrey Gale, the "senior administrative and logistics officer" for SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) considered Montgomery's narrow-thrust strategy to be "logistically unrealistic", and in his opinion "a ruse merely to demonstrate later that he had been prevented from winning the war quickly by Eisenhower's caution." At a strategy meeting on 10 September 1944, Montgomery became so belligerent that Eisenhower was prompted into saying "Steady, Monty! You can't speak to me like that. I'm your boss." Following the Allied breakout from Normandy, Eisenhower favored pursuing the German armies northwards and eastwards to the Rhine on a broad front. Eisenhower relied on speed, which in turn depended on logistics, which were "stretched to the limit". SHAEF did provide Montgomery with additional resources, principally additional locomotives and rolling stock, and priority for air supply. Eisenhower's decision to launch Market Garden was influenced by his desire to keep the retreating Germans under pressure, and by the pressure from the United States to use the First Allied Airborne Army as soon as possible.
Montgomery's plan for Operation Market Garden (17–25 September 1944) was to outflank the Siegfried Line and cross the Rhine, setting the stage for later offensives into the Ruhr region. The 21st Army Group would attack north from Belgium, through the Netherlands, across the Rhine and consolidate north of Arnhem on the far side of the Rhine. The risky plan required three Airborne Divisions to capture numerous intact bridges along a single-lane road, on which an entire Corps had to attack and use as its main supply route. The offensive failed to achieve its objectives.
Both Churchill and Montgomery claimed that the operation was nearly or 90% successful, "since they had got nine-tenths of the way to Arnhem", prompting Air Chief Marshal Tedder to derisively comment that "one jumps off a cliff with an even higher success rate, until the last few inches." However, in Montgomery's equivocal acceptance of responsibility he blames lack of support, and also refers to the Battle of the Scheldt, which was undertaken by Canadian troops not involved in Market Garden. Montgomery later said:
In the aftermath of Market Garden, Montgomery made holding the Arnhem salient his first priority, arguing that the British Second Army might still be able to break through and reach the wide open plains of northern Germany, and that he might be able to take the Ruhr by the end of October. The Germans under "Generalfeldmarschall" Walther Model attempted to retake the Nijmegen salient in early October, but were beaten back. In the meantime, the First Canadian Army finally achieved the task of clearing the mouth of the river Scheldt, despite the fact that, in the words of Copp and Vogel, "Montgomery's Directive required the Canadians to continue to fight alone for almost two weeks in a battle which everyone agreed could only be won with the aid of additional divisions".
Battle of the Bulge.
On 16 December 1944, at the start of the Battle of the Bulge, Montgomery's 21st Army Group was on the northern flank of the allied lines. Bradley's US 12th Army Group was to Montgomery's south, with William Simpson's U.S. Ninth Army adjacent to 21st Army Group, Courtney Hodges' U.S. First Army holding the Ardennes and Patton's U.S. Third Army further south.
SHAEF believed the Wehrmacht was no longer capable of launching a major offensive, and that no offensive could be launched through such rugged terrain as the Ardennes Forest. Because of this, the area was held by refitting and newly arrived American formations. The Wehrmacht planned to exploit this by making a surprise attack through the Ardennes Forest whilst bad weather grounded Allied air power, splitting the Allied Armies in two. They would then turn north to recapture the port of Antwerp. If the attack were to succeed in capturing Antwerp, the whole of 21st Army Group, along with U.S. Ninth Army and most of U.S. First Army would be trapped without supplies behind German lines.
The attack initially advanced rapidly, splitting U.S. 12th Army Group in two, with all of U.S. Ninth Army and the bulk of U.S. First Army on the northern shoulder of the German 'bulge'. The 12th Army Group commander, Bradley, was located in Luxembourg, making command of the U.S. forces north of the bulge problematic. As Montgomery was the nearest army group commander on the ground, on 20 December, Eisenhower temporarily transferred command of U.S. Ninth Army and U.S. First Army to Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Bradley was "concerned because it might discredit the American command" but that it might mean Montgomery would commit more of his reserves to the battle. In practice the change led to "great resentment on the part of many Americans, particularly at Headquarters, 12th Army Group, and Third Army".
With the British and American forces under Montgomery's command holding the northern flank of the German assault, General Patton's Third Army, which was to the south, turned north and fought its way through the severe weather and German opposition to relieve the besieged American forces in Bastogne. Four days after Montgomery took command of the northern flank, the bad weather cleared and the USAAF and RAF resumed operations, inflicting heavy casualties on German troops and vehicles. Six days after Montgomery took command of the northern flank, Patton's Third Army relieved the besieged American forces in Bastogne. Unable to advance further, and running out of fuel, the Wehrmacht abandoned the offensive.
Morelock states that Montgomery was preoccupied with leading a "single thrust offensive" to Berlin as the overall commander of Allied ground forces, and that he accordingly treated the Ardennes counteroffensive "as a sideshow, to be finished with the least possible effort and expenditure of resources."
Montgomery subsequently wrote of his actions:
After the war Hasso von Manteuffel, who commanded the 5th Panzer Army in the Ardennes, was imprisoned awaiting trial for war crimes. During this period he was interviewed by B. H. Liddell Hart, a British author who has since been accused of putting words in the mouths of German generals, and attempting to "rewrite the historical record". After conducting several interviews via an interpreter, Liddell Hart in a subsequent book attributed to Manteuffel the following statement about Montgomery's contribution to the battle in the Ardennes:
However, American historian Stephen Ambrose, writing in 1997, maintained that "Putting Monty in command of the northern flank had no effect on the battle". Ambrose wrote that: "Far from directing the victory, Montgomery had gotten in everyone's way, and had botched the counter-attack." General Omar Bradley blamed Montgomery's "stagnating conservatism" for his failure to counter-attack when ordered to do so by Eisenhower.
Command of U.S. First Army reverted to 12th Army Group on 17 January 1945, whilst command of U.S. Ninth Army remained with 21st Army Group for the coming operations to cross the Rhine.
Crossing the Rhine.
In February 1945, Montgomery's 21st Army Group advanced to the Rhine in Operation Veritable and Operation Grenade. It crossed the Rhine on 24 March 1945, in Operation Plunder, which took place two weeks after U.S. First Army had crossed the Rhine after capturing the Ludendorff Bridge during the Battle of Remagen.
21st Army Group's river crossing was followed by the encirclement of the Ruhr Pocket. During this battle, U.S. Ninth Army, which had remained part of 21st Army Group after the Battle of the Bulge, formed the northern arm of the envelopment of German Army Group B, with U.S. First Army forming the southern arm. The two armies linked up on 1 April 1945, encircling 370,000 German troops, and on 4 April 1945, Ninth Army reverted to Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group.
By the war's end, the remaining formations of 21st Army group, First Canadian Army and British Second Army, had liberated the northern part of the Netherlands and captured much of north-west Germany, occupied Hamburg and Rostock and sealed off the Jutland peninsula.
On 4 May 1945, on Lüneburg Heath, Montgomery accepted the surrender of German forces in north-west Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Later life.
Post-war military career.
After the war, Montgomery became the C-in-C of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), the name given to the British Occupation Forces, and was the British member of the Allied Control Council.
Chief of the Imperial General Staff.
Montgomery was Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) from 1946 to 1948, succeeding Alan Brooke.
As CIGS, Montgomery toured Africa in 1947 and in a secret 1948 report to Prime Minister Clement Attlee's government proposed a "master plan" to amalgamate British Africa territories and to exploit the raw materials of Africa, thereby counteracting the loss of British influence in Asia. Montgomery sought to strengthen white rule to serve as a bulwark against communism. He described Africans as uncivilized, stating "he is a complete savage and is quite incapable of developing the country himself." His statements were publicized in 1999. After learning of Montgomery's remarks, one of his biographers, Lord Chalfont, said his reputation had been "irredeemably damaged... I find it very disappointing and depressing."
However, Montgomery was barely on speaking terms with his fellow service chiefs, sending his deputy Kenneth Crawford to attend their meetings and he clashed particularly with Sir Arthur Tedder, who was by now Chief of the Air Staff (CAS).
When Montgomery's term of office expired, Prime Minister Attlee appointed Sir William Slim from retirement with the rank of field marshal as his successor. When Montgomery protested that he had told his protégé, General Sir John Crocker, former commander of I Corps in the 1944–45 North-West Europe Campaign, that the job was to be his, Attlee is said to have retorted "Untell him."
Western Union Defence Organization.
Montgomery was then appointed Chairman of the Western Union Defence Organization's C-in-C committee. Volume 3 of Nigel Hamilton's "Life of Montgomery of Alamein" gives an account of the bickering between Montgomery and his land forces chief, French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, which created splits through the Union headquarters.
NATO.
On the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in 1951, Montgomery became Eisenhower's deputy. He would continue to serve under Eisenhower's successors, Generals Matthew Ridgway and Alfred Gruenther, until his retirement, aged nearly 71, in 1958.
Personal.
Montgomery was created 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in the 1946 New Year Honours.
Montgomery's mother, Maude Montgomery, died in 1949. Montgomery did not attend the funeral, claiming he was "too busy".
Montgomery was an Honorary Member of the Winkle Club, a charity in Hastings, East Sussex, and introduced Winston Churchill to the club in 1955.
He was chairman of the governing body of St. John's School, Leatherhead, Surrey, from 1951 to 1966, and a generous supporter.
He was also President of Portsmouth Football Club between 1944 and 1961.
In the mid-1950s, the "Illustrated London News" published sets of photographs taken by Montgomery while flying over the Swiss Alps. In February 1957, views of Mount Tödi taken with a Rolleiflex camera were reproduced.
On Saturday 20 December 1969, Montgomery was Roy Plomley's thousandth 'castaway' on the BBC Radio Show "Desert Island Discs". The seven discs Montgomery chose to accompany him on the imaginary deserted island were: "Battle Hymn of the Republic" (sung by The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square), "My Love is Like A Red, Red Rose" (sung by Kenneth McKellar), "You are my heart's delight" (from Franz Lehár's "The Land of Smiles"), "Invitation to the Dance" (by Carl Maria von Weber), "Sei nicht Bös" (from Carl Zeller's "Der Obersteiger)", "All Through the Night" (sung by Treorchy Male Choir), "Cockles and Mussels" (sung by William Clauson) and Felix Mendelssohn's "O, for the wings of a dove". He chose a piano (with playing instructions) as his luxury item and for his book he chose his own book "The History of Warfare" (1968). His favourite disc was "Sei nict Bös" (Don't Be Cross) sung by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.
Opinions.
Memoirs.
Montgomery's memoirs (1958) criticised many of his wartime comrades in harsh terms, including Eisenhower. Montgomery was stripped of his honorary citizenship of Montgomery, Alabama, and was challenged to a duel by an Italian lawyer.
He was threatened with legal action by Field Marshal Auchinleck for suggesting that Auchinleck had intended to retreat from the Alamein position if attacked again, and had to give a radio broadcast (20 November 1958) expressing his gratitude to Auchinleck for having stabilised the front at the First Battle of Alamein. The 1960 paperback edition of Montgomery's memoirs contains a publisher's note drawing attention to that broadcast, and stating that although the reader might assume from Montgomery's text that Auchinleck had been planning to retreat "into the Nile Delta or beyond" in the publisher's view it had been Auchinleck's intention to launch an offensive as soon as the Eighth Army was "rested and regrouped".
Montgomery mentioned to the American journalist John Gunther in April 1944 that (like Alanbrooke) he kept a secret diary. Gunther remarked that it would surely be an essential source for historians. When Montgomery asked whether it would be worth money one day, Gunther suggested "at least $100,000." This was converted into pounds sterling, and he is supposed to have grinned and said "Well, I guess I won't die in the poor house after all."
Military opinions.
Montgomery twice met Israeli general Moshe Dayan. After an initial meeting in the early 1950s, Montgomery met Dayan again in the 1960s to discuss the Vietnam War, which Dayan was studying. Montgomery was harshly critical of US strategy in Vietnam, which involved deploying large numbers of combat troops, aggressive bombing attacks, and uprooting entire village populations and forcing them into strategic hamlets. Montgomery said that the Americans' most important problem was that they had no clear objective, and allowed local commanders to set military policy. At the end of their meeting, Montgomery asked Dayan to tell the Americans, in his name, that they were "insane".
During a visit to the Alamein battlefields in May 1967, he bluntly told high-ranking Egyptian Army officers that they would lose any war with Israel, a warning that was shown to be justified only a few weeks later in the Six-Day War.
Social opinions.
In retirement, Montgomery publicly supported apartheid after a visit to South Africa in 1962, and after a visit to China declared himself impressed by the Chinese leadership led by Chairman Mao Tse-tung. He spoke out against the legalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, arguing that the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was a "charter for buggery" and that "this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British—thank God".
Montgomery was a non-smoking teetotaller, a vegetarian, and a Christian.
Death.
Montgomery died in 1976 at his home Isington Mill in Isington, Hampshire, aged 88. After a funeral at St George's Chapel, Windsor, his body was buried in Holy Cross churchyard, in Binsted, Hampshire.
Casualty conservation policy.
The British high command were not only concerned with winning the war and defeating Germany, but also with ensuring that it retained sufficient influence in the post-war world to govern global policy. Suffering heavy losses in Normandy would diminish British leadership and prestige within its empire and in post-war Europe in particular. Many of Montgomery's clashes with Eisenhower were based on his determination to pursue the war "on lines most suitable to Britain".
The smaller the number of combat-experienced divisions the British had left at the end of the war, the smaller Britain's influence in Europe was likely to be, compared to the emerging superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union. Montgomery was thus caught in a dilemma—the British Army needed to be seen to be pulling at least half the weight in the liberation of Europe, but without incurring the heavy casualties that such a role would inevitably produce. 21st Army Group scarcely possessed sufficient forces to achieve such a military prominence, and the remaining divisions had to be expended sparingly.
In 1944, Britain did not possess the manpower to rebuild shattered divisions and it was imperative for Montgomery to protect the viability of the British Army. It was reported to the War Office that "Montgomery has to be very careful of what he does on his eastern flank because on that flank is the only British Army there is left in this part of the world". The context of British casualties and the shortage of reinforcements, prompted Montgomery to "excessive caution". Dempsey wrote on 13 June, that Caen could only be taken by a "set piece assault and we did not have the men or the ammunition for that at the time".
Montgomery's solution to the dilemma was to attempt to remain Commander of All Land Forces until the end of the war, so that any victory attained on the Western front—although achieved primarily by American formations—would accrue in part to him and thus to Britain. He would also be able to ensure that British units were spared some of the high-attrition actions, but would be most prominent when the final blows were struck. When that strategy failed, he persuaded Eisenhower to occasionally put some American formations under the control of the 21st Army Group, so as to bolster his resources while still maintaining the outward appearance of successful British effort.
Montgomery initially remained prepared to push Second (British) Army hard to capture the vital strategic town of Caen, and consequently incur heavy losses. In the original Overlord plan, Montgomery was determined to push past Caen to Falaise as quickly as possible. However, after the heavy casualties incurred in capturing Caen, he changed his mind.
Personality.
Throughout the war, Montgomery was notorious for his lack of tact and diplomacy. Even his "patron", the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke, frequently mentions it in his war diaries: "he is liable to commit untold errors in lack of tact" and "I had to haul him over the coals for his usual lack of tact and egotistical outlook which prevented him from appreciating other people's feelings". Montgomery suffered from "an overbearing conceit and an uncontrollable urge for self-promotion." General Hastings Ismay, who was at the time Winston Churchill's chief staff officer and trusted military adviser, once said of him: "I have come to the conclusion that his love of publicity is a disease, like alcoholism or taking drugs, and that it sends him equally mad." The psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald has argued that Montgomery was likely autistic, and it has been speculated that this was the cause of many of apparent behaviours and eccentricities.
A notorious instance of Montgomery's behaviour occurred during the North African campaign when he bet Walter Bedell Smith that he could capture Sfax by the middle of April 1943. Smith jokingly replied that if Montgomery could do it he would give him a Flying Fortress complete with crew. Smith promptly forgot all about it, but Montgomery did not, and when Sfax was taken on 10 April, he sent a message to Smith "claiming his winnings". Smith tried to laugh it off, but Montgomery insisted on his aircraft. The incident was finally resolved by Eisenhower who, with his renowned skill in diplomacy, ensured Montgomery did get his Flying Fortress, though at a great cost in ill feeling.
Antony Beevor, in discussing Montgomery's counterproductive lack of tact in the final months of the war, described him as "insufferable". Beevor says that in January 1945 Montgomery had tried to claim far too much credit for the British (and for himself) in defeating the German counter-attack in the Ardennes in December 1944. This "crass and unpleasant blunder" helped make it impossible for Churchill and Alan Brooke to persuade Eisenhower of the need for an immediate thrust—to be led by Montgomery—through Germany to Berlin. Eisenhower did not accept the viability of the "dagger thrust" approach, it had already been agreed that Berlin would fall into the future Soviet occupation zone, and he was not willing to accept heavy casualties for no gain, so Eisenhower disregarded the British suggestions and continued with his conservative broad front strategy, and the Red Army reached Berlin well ahead of the Western Allies.
In August 1945, while Brooke, Sir Andrew Cunningham and Sir Charles Portal were discussing their possible successors as "Chiefs of Staff", they concluded that Montgomery would be very efficient as CIGS from the Army's point of view but that he was also very unpopular with a large proportion of the Army. Despite this, Cunningham and Portal were strongly in favour of Montgomery succeeding Brooke after his retirement. Churchill, by all accounts a faithful friend, is quoted as saying of Montgomery, "In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
|
3874
|
7903804
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3874
|
Herman Boerhaave
|
Herman Boerhaave (, 31 December 1668 – 23 September 1738) was a Dutch chemist, botanist, Christian humanist, and physician. He is sometimes regarded as the founder of clinical teaching and of the modern academic hospital along with Venetian physician Santorio Santorio (1561–1636). Boerhaave introduced the quantitative approach into medicine, along with his pupil Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777). He was the first to isolate the chemical urea from urine. He was the first physician to put thermometer measurements to clinical practice. His motto was "Simplex veri sigillum": 'Simplicity is the sign of the truth'. He is often hailed as the "Dutch Hippocrates".
Biography.
Boerhaave was born at Voorhout near Leiden. The son of a Protestant pastor, in his youth Boerhaave studied for a divinity degree and wanted to become a preacher. After the death of his father, however, he was offered a scholarship and he entered the University of Leiden, where he took his master's degree in philosophy in 1690, with a dissertation titled "De distinctione mentis a corpore" ("On the Difference of the Mind from the Body"). There he attacked the doctrines of Epicurus, Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza. He then turned to the study of medicine. He earned his medical doctorate from the University of Harderwijk (present-day Gelderland) in 1693, with a dissertation titled "De utilitate explorandorum in aegris excrementorum ut signorum" ("The Utility of Examining Signs of Disease in the Excrement of the Sick").
In 1701 he was appointed lecturer on the institutes of medicine at Leiden; in his inaugural discourse, "De commendando Hippocratis studio", he recommended to his pupils that great physician as their model. In 1709 he became professor of botany and medicine, and in that capacity he did good service, not only to his own university, but also to botanical science, by his improvements and additions to the botanic garden of Leiden, and by the publication of numerous works descriptive of new species of plants.
On 14 September 1710, Boerhaave married Maria Drolenvaux (1686–1746), the daughter of the rich merchant, Alderman Abraham Drolenvaux. They had four children, of whom one daughter, Maria Johanna (1712–1791) – wife of German art collector with various influential political ties Frederic Count de Thoms (1696–1746), lived to adulthood. In 1722, he began to suffer from an extreme case of gout, recovering the next year.
In 1714, when he was appointed rector of the university, he succeeded Govert Bidloo in the chair of practical medicine, and in this capacity he introduced the modern system of clinical instruction. Whether he was the first to do so is contested; in the words of one medical historian, Boerhaave "was neither an innovator of this practice, nor an especially energetic practitioner of it", though he did help to popularize the method. Four years later he was appointed to the chair of chemistry as well. In 1728 he was elected into the French Academy of Sciences, and two years later into the Royal Society of London. In 1729 declining health obliged him to resign the chairs of chemistry and botany; and he died, after a lingering and painful illness, at Leiden.
Legacy.
His reputation so increased the fame of the University of Leiden, especially as a school of medicine, that it became popular with visitors from every part of Europe. All the princes of Europe sent him pupils, who found in this skilful professor not only an indefatigable teacher, but an affectionate guardian. When Peter the Great went to Holland in 1716 (he had been in Holland before in 1697 to instruct himself in maritime affairs), he also took lessons from Boerhaave. Voltaire travelled to see him, as did Carl Linnaeus, who became a close friend and named the genus "Boerhavia" for him. In one probably apocryphal story to show the reach of Boerhaave's fame, a man from China sent him a letter addressed only "to Mr. Boerhaave, physician in Europe," and it reached him in due course.
The operating theatre of the University of Leiden in which he once worked as an anatomist is now at the centre of a museum named after him; the Boerhaave Museum. Asteroid 8175 Boerhaave is named after Boerhaave. From 1955 to 1961 Boerhaave's image was printed on Dutch 20-guilder banknotes. The Leiden University Medical Centre organises medical trainings called "Boerhaave-courses".
He had a prodigious influence on the development of medicine and chemistry in Scotland. British medical schools credit Boerhaave for developing the system of medical education upon which their current institutions are based. Every founding member of the Edinburgh Medical School had studied at Leyden and attended Boerhaave's lectures on chemistry including John Rutherford and Francis Home. Boerhaave's "Elementa Chemiae (1732)" is recognised as the first text on chemistry.
Boerhaave first described Boerhaave syndrome, which involves tearing of the oesophagus, usually a consequence of vigorous vomiting. Notoriously, in 1724 he described the case of Baron Jan van Wassenaer, a Dutch admiral who died of this condition following a gluttonous feast and subsequent regurgitation. The condition was uniformly fatal prior to modern surgical techniques allowing repair of the oesophagus.
Boerhaave was critical of his Dutch contemporary Baruch Spinoza, attacking him in his 1688 dissertation. At the same time, he admired Isaac Newton and was a devout Christian who often wrote about God in his works. A collection of his religious thoughts on medicine, translated from Latin to English, has been compiled by the "Sir Thomas Browne Instituut Leiden" under the name "Boerhaave's Orations" (meaning "Boerhaave's Prayers"). Among other things, he considered nature as God's Creation, and he used to say that the poor were his best patients because God was their paymaster.
Medical contributions.
Boerhaave devoted himself intensively to the study of the human body. He was strongly influenced by the mechanistic theories of René Descartes, and those of the 17th-century astronomer and mathematician Giovanni Borelli, who described animal movements in terms of mechanical motion. On such premises Boerhaave proposed a hydraulic model of human physiology. His writings refer to simple machines such as levers and pulleys and similar mechanisms, and he saw the bodily organs and members as being assembled from pipe-like structures. The physiology of veins, for example, he compared to the operation of pipes. He asserted the importance of a proper balance of fluid pressure, noting that fluids should be able to move around the body freely, without obstacles. For its well-being the body needed to be self-regulating, so as to maintain a healthy state of equilibrium. Boerhaave's concept of the body as apparatus centred his medical attention on material problems rather than upon ontological or esoteric explanations of illness.
Boerhaave's teaching of his knowledge and philosophy drew many students to the University of Leiden. He emphasised the importance of anatomical research based on practical observation and scientific experiment. His concept of the bodily system took hold throughout Europe, and helped to transform medical education in the European schools. His insights aroused great interest among other critical medical thinkers, not least in Friedrich Hoffmann, who strongly advocated the importance of physico-mechanical principles for the preservation or indeed the restoration of health. As a professor at Leiden, Boerhaave influenced many students. Some in their experiments upheld and furthered his philosophy, while others rejected it and proposed alternative theories of human physiology. He produced a great many textbooks and writings through which the digested brilliance of his lectures at Leiden was circulated widely in Europe. In 1708 his publication of the "Institutiones Medicae" was issued in over five languages, and went into approximately ten editions. His "Elementa Chemia", a world-renowned chemistry textbook, was published in 1732.
The mechanistic concept of the human body departed from the age-old precepts laid down by Galen and Aristotle. In place of a servile dependence upon teachings handed down from antiquity, Boerhaave understood the importance of establishing definitive findings through his own investigation, and by the direct application of his own methods of testing. This new reasoning expanded the field of Renaissance anatomy: it opened the way to reforms of medical practice and understanding in the field of iatrochemistry.
|
3875
|
24198
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3875
|
Benjamin Disraeli
|
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British prime minister to have been born Jewish.
Disraeli was born in Bloomsbury, at that time a part of Middlesex. His father left Judaism after a dispute at his synagogue; Benjamin became an Anglican at the age of 12. After several unsuccessful attempts, Disraeli entered the House of Commons in 1837. In 1846, Prime Minister Robert Peel split the party over his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, which involved ending the tariff on imported grain. Disraeli clashed with Peel in the House of Commons, becoming a major figure in the party. When Lord Derby, the party leader, thrice formed governments in the 1850s and 1860s, Disraeli served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.
Upon Derby's retirement in 1868, Disraeli became prime minister briefly before losing that year's general election. He returned to the Opposition before leading the party to a majority in the 1874 general election. He maintained a close friendship with Queen Victoria who, in 1876, elevated him to the peerage as Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraeli's second term was dominated by the Eastern question—the slow decay of the Ottoman Empire and the desire of other European powers, such as Russia, to gain at its expense. Disraeli arranged for the British to purchase a major interest in the Suez Canal Company in Egypt. In 1878, faced with Russian victories against the Ottomans, he worked at the Congress of Berlin to obtain peace in the Balkans at terms favourable to Britain and unfavourable to Russia, its longstanding enemy. This diplomatic victory established Disraeli as one of Europe's leading statesmen.
World events thereafter moved against the Conservatives. Controversial wars in Afghanistan and South Africa undermined his public support. He angered farmers by refusing to reinstitute the Corn Laws in response to poor harvests and cheap imported grain. With Gladstone conducting a massive speaking campaign, the Liberals defeated Disraeli's Conservatives at the 1880 general election. In his final months, Disraeli led the Conservatives in Opposition. Disraeli wrote novels throughout his career, beginning in 1826, and published his last completed novel, "Endymion", shortly before he died at the age of 76.
Early life.
Childhood.
Disraeli was born on 21 December 1804 at 6 King's Road, Bedford Row, Bloomsbury, London, the second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria (Miriam), "née" Basevi. The family was mostly from Italy, of Sephardic Jewish mercantile background. He also had some Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors. He later romanticised his origins, claiming his father's family was of grand Portuguese and Venetian descent; in fact, Isaac's family was of no great distinction, but on Disraeli's mother's side, in which he took no interest, there were some distinguished forebears, including Isaac Cardoso, as well as members of the Goldsmids, the Mocattas and the Montefiores. Historians differ on Disraeli's motives for rewriting his family history: Bernard Glassman argues that it was intended to give him status comparable to that of England's ruling elite; Sarah Bradford believes "his dislike of the commonplace would not allow him to accept the facts of his birth as being as middle-class and undramatic as they really were".
Disraeli's siblings were Sarah, Naphtali (born and died 1807), Ralph and James ("Jem"). He was close to his sister and on affectionate but more distant terms with his surviving brothers. Details of his schooling are sketchy. From the age of about six he was a day boy at a dame school in Islington, which one of his biographers described as "for those days a very high-class establishment". Two years later or so—the exact date has not been ascertained—he was sent as a boarder to Rev John Potticary's school at Blackheath.
Following a quarrel in 1813 with the Bevis Marks Synagogue, his father renounced Judaism and had the four children baptised into the Church of England in July and August 1817. Isaac D'Israeli had never taken religion very seriously but had remained a conforming member of the synagogue. Isaac's father, Benjamin, was a prominent and devout member; it was probably out of respect for him that Isaac did not leave when he fell out with the synagogue authorities in 1813. After Benjamin senior died in 1816, Isaac felt free to leave the congregation following a second dispute. Isaac's friend Sharon Turner, a solicitor, convinced him that although he could comfortably remain unattached to any formal religion it would be disadvantageous to the children if they did so. Turner stood as godfather when Benjamin was baptised, aged twelve, on 31 July 1817.
Conversion enabled Disraeli to contemplate a career in politics. There had been Members of Parliament (MPs) from Jewish families since Sampson Gideon in 1770. However, until the Jews Relief Act 1858, MPs were required to take the oath of allegiance "on the true faith of a Christian", necessitating at least nominal conversion. It is not known whether Disraeli formed any ambition for a parliamentary career at the time of his baptism, but there is no doubt that he bitterly regretted his parents' decision not to send him to Winchester College, one of the great public schools which consistently provided recruits to the political elite. His two younger brothers were sent there, and it is not clear why Isaac chose to send his eldest son to a much less prestigious school. The boy evidently held his mother responsible for the decision; Bradford speculates that "Benjamin's delicate health and his obviously Jewish appearance may have had something to do with it." The school chosen for him was run by Eliezer Cogan at Higham Hill in Walthamstow. He began there in the autumn term of 1817; he later recalled his education:
1820s.
In November 1821, shortly before his seventeenth birthday, Disraeli was articled as a clerk to a firm of solicitors—Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse and Hunt—in the City of London. T. F. Maples was not only the young Disraeli's employer and a friend of his father, but also his prospective father-in-law: Isaac and Maples considered that the latter's only daughter might be a suitable match for Benjamin. A friendship developed, but there was no romance. The firm had a large and profitable business, and as the biographer R. W. Davis observes, the clerkship was "the kind of secure, respectable position that many fathers dream of for their children". Although biographers including Robert Blake and Bradford comment that such a post was incompatible with Disraeli's romantic and ambitious nature, he reportedly gave his employers satisfactory service, and later professed to have learned much there. He recalled: I had some scruples, for even then I dreamed of Parliament. My father's refrain always was 'Philip Carteret Webb', who was the most eminent solicitor of his boyhood and who was an MP. It would be a mistake to suppose that the two years and more that I was in the office of our friend were wasted. I have often thought, though I have often regretted the University, that it was much the reverse.
The year after joining Maples' firm, Benjamin changed his surname from D'Israeli to Disraeli. His reasons are unknown, but the biographer Bernard Glassman surmises that it was to avoid being confused with his father. Disraeli's sister and brothers adopted the new version of the name; Isaac and his wife retained the older form.
Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father in the summer of 1824. He later wrote that while travelling on the Rhine he decided to abandon his position: "I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer." On their return to England he left the solicitors, at the suggestion of Maples, with the aim of qualifying as a barrister. He enrolled as a student at Lincoln's Inn and joined the chambers of his uncle, Nathaniel Basevy, and then those of Benjamin Austen, who persuaded Isaac that Disraeli would never make a barrister and should be allowed to pursue a literary career. He had made a tentative start: in May 1824 he submitted a manuscript to his father's friend, the publisher John Murray, but withdrew it before Murray could decide whether to publish it.
Released from the law, Disraeli did some work for Murray, but turned most of his attention to speculative dealing on the stock exchange. There was at the time a boom in shares in South American mining companies. Spain was losing its South American colonies in the face of rebellions. At the urging of George Canning the British government recognised the new independent governments of Argentina (1824), Colombia and Mexico (both 1825). With no money of his own, Disraeli borrowed money to invest. He became involved with the financier J. D. Powles, who was prominent among those encouraging the mining boom. In 1825, Disraeli wrote three anonymous pamphlets for Powles, promoting the companies. The pamphlets were published by John Murray, who invested heavily in the boom.
Murray had ambitions to establish a new morning paper to compete with "The Times". In 1825 Disraeli convinced him that he should proceed. The new paper, "The Representative", promoted the mines and those politicians who supported them, particularly Canning. Disraeli impressed Murray with his energy and commitment to the project, but he failed in his key task of persuading the eminent writer John Gibson Lockhart to edit the paper. After that, Disraeli's influence on Murray waned, and to his resentment he was sidelined in the affairs of "The Representative". The paper survived only six months, partly because the mining bubble burst in late 1825, and partly because, according to Blake, the paper was "atrociously edited".
The bursting of the mining bubble was ruinous for Disraeli. By June 1825 he and his business partners had lost £7,000. Disraeli could not pay off the last of his debts from this debacle until 1849. He turned to writing, motivated partly by his desperate need for money, and partly by a wish for revenge on Murray and others by whom he felt slighted. There was a vogue for what was called "silver-fork fiction"—novels depicting aristocratic life, usually by anonymous authors, read by the aspirational middle classes. Disraeli's first novel, "Vivian Grey", published anonymously in four volumes in 1826–27, was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of "The Representative". It sold well, but caused much offence in influential circles when the authorship was discovered. Disraeli, then just 23, did not move in high society, as the numerous solecisms in his book made obvious. Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. Murray and Lockhart, men of great influence in literary circles, believed that Disraeli had caricatured them and abused their confidence—an accusation denied by the author but repeated by many of his biographers. In later editions Disraeli made many changes, softening his satire, but the damage to his reputation proved long-lasting.
Disraeli's biographer Jonathan Parry writes that the financial failure and personal criticism that Disraeli suffered in 1825 and 1826 were probably the trigger for a serious nervous crisis affecting him over the next four years: "He had always been moody, sensitive, and solitary by nature, but now became seriously depressed and lethargic." He was still living with his parents in London, but in search of the "change of air" recommended by the family's doctors, Isaac took a succession of houses in the country and on the coast, before Disraeli sought wider horizons.
1830–1837.
Together with his sister's fiancé, William Meredith, Disraeli travelled widely in southern Europe and beyond in 1830–31. The trip was financed partly by another high society novel, "The Young Duke", written in 1829–30. The tour was cut short suddenly by Meredith's death from smallpox in Cairo in July 1831. Despite this tragedy, and the need for treatment for a sexually transmitted disease on his return, Disraeli felt enriched by his experiences. He became, in Parry's words, "aware of values that seemed denied to his insular countrymen. The journey encouraged his self-consciousness, his moral relativism, and his interest in Eastern racial and religious attitudes." Blake regards the tour as one of the formative experiences of Disraeli's career: "[T]he impressions that it made on him were life-lasting. They conditioned his attitude toward some of the most important political problems which faced him in his later years—especially the Eastern Question; they also coloured many of his novels."
Disraeli wrote two novels in the aftermath of the tour. "Contarini Fleming" (1832) was avowedly a self-portrait. It is subtitled "a psychological autobiography" and depicts the conflicting elements of its hero's character: the duality of northern and Mediterranean ancestry, the dreaming artist and the bold man of action. As Parry observes, the book ends on a political note, setting out Europe's progress "from feudal to federal principles". "The Wondrous Tale of Alroy" the following year portrayed the problems of a medieval Jew in deciding between a small, exclusively Jewish state and a large empire embracing all.
After these novels were published, Disraeli declared that he would "write no more about myself". He had already turned his attention to politics in 1832, during the great crisis over the Reform Bill. He contributed to an anti-Whig pamphlet edited by John Wilson Croker and published by Murray entitled "England and France: or a cure for Ministerial Gallomania". The choice of a Tory publication was regarded as strange by Disraeli's friends and relatives, who thought him more of a Radical. Indeed, he had objected to Murray about Croker's inserting "high Tory" sentiment: Disraeli remarked, "it is quite impossible that anything adverse to the general measure of Reform can issue from my pen." Moreover, at the time "Gallomania" was published, Disraeli was electioneering in High Wycombe in the Radical interest.
Disraeli's politics at the time were influenced both by his rebellious streak and his desire to make his mark. At that time, British politics were dominated by the aristocracy, with a few powerful commoners. The Whigs derived from the coalition of Lords who had forced through the Bill of Rights 1689 and in some cases were their descendants. The Tories tended to support King and Church and sought to thwart political change. A small number of Radicals, generally from northern constituencies, were the strongest advocates of continuing reform. In the early 1830s the Tories and the interests they represented appeared to be a lost cause. The other great party, the Whigs, were anathema to Disraeli: "Toryism is worn out & I cannot condescend to be a Whig." There was a by-election and a general election in 1832; Disraeli unsuccessfully stood as a Radical at High Wycombe in each.
Disraeli's political views embraced certain Radical policies, particularly electoral reform, and also some Tory ones, including protectionism. He began to move in Tory circles. In 1834 he was introduced to the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, by Henrietta Sykes, wife of Sir Francis Sykes. She was having an affair with Lyndhurst and began another with Disraeli. Disraeli and Lyndhurst took an immediate liking to each other. Lyndhurst was an indiscreet gossip with a fondness for intrigue; this appealed greatly to Disraeli, who became his secretary and go-between. In 1835 Disraeli stood for the last time as a Radical, again unsuccessfully contesting High Wycombe.
In April 1835, Disraeli fought a by-election at Taunton as a Tory candidate. The Irish MP Daniel O'Connell, misled by inaccurate press reports, thought Disraeli had slandered him while electioneering at Taunton; he launched an outspoken attack, referring to Disraeli as:
Disraeli's public exchanges with O'Connell, extensively reproduced in "The Times", included a demand for a duel with the 60-year-old O'Connell's son (which resulted in Disraeli's temporary detention by the authorities), a reference to "the inextinguishable hatred with which [he] shall pursue [O'Connell's] existence", and the accusation that O'Connell's supporters had a "princely revenue wrung from a starving race of fanatical slaves". Disraeli was highly gratified by the dispute, which propelled him to general public notice for the first time. He did not defeat the incumbent Whig member, Henry Labouchere, but the Taunton constituency was regarded as unwinnable by the Tories. Disraeli kept Labouchere's majority down to 170, a good showing that put him in line for a winnable seat in the near future.
With Lyndhurst's encouragement Disraeli turned to writing propaganda for his newly adopted party. His "Vindication of the English Constitution", was published in December 1835. It was couched in the form of an open letter to Lyndhurst, and in Bradford's view encapsulates a political philosophy that Disraeli adhered to for the rest of his life: the value of benevolent aristocratic government, a loathing of political dogma, and the modernisation of Tory policies. The following year he wrote a series of satires on politicians of the day, which he published in "The Times" under the pen-name "Runnymede". His targets included the Whigs, collectively and individually, Irish nationalists, and political corruption. One essay ended:
Disraeli was elected to the exclusively Tory Carlton Club in 1836, and was also taken up by the party's leading hostess, Lady Londonderry. In June 1837 William IV died, the young Queen Victoria succeeded him, and parliament was dissolved. On the recommendation of the Carlton Club, Disraeli was adopted as a Tory parliamentary candidate at the ensuing general election.
Parliament.
Back-bencher.
In the election in July 1837, Disraeli won a seat in the House of Commons as one of two members, both Tory, for the constituency of Maidstone. The other was Wyndham Lewis, who helped finance Disraeli's election campaign, and who died the following year. In the same year Disraeli published a novel, "Henrietta Temple", which was a love story and social comedy, drawing on his affair with Henrietta Sykes. He had broken off the relationship in late 1836, distraught that she had taken yet another lover. His other novel of this period is "Venetia", a romance based on the characters of Shelley and Byron, written quickly to raise much-needed money.
Disraeli made his maiden speech in Parliament on 7 December 1837. He followed O'Connell, whom he sharply criticised for the latter's "long, rambling, jumbling, speech". He was shouted down by O'Connell's supporters. After this unpromising start Disraeli kept a low profile for the rest of the parliamentary session. He was a loyal supporter of the party leader Sir Robert Peel and his policies, with the exception of a personal sympathy for the Chartist movement that most Tories did not share.
In 1839 Disraeli married Mary Anne Lewis, the widow of Wyndham Lewis. Twelve years Disraeli's senior, Mary Lewis had a substantial income of £5,000 a year. His motives were generally assumed to be mercenary, but the couple came to cherish one another, remaining close until she died more than three decades later. "Dizzy married me for my money", his wife said later, "But, if he had the chance again, he would marry me for love."
Finding the financial demands of his Maidstone seat too much, Disraeli secured a Tory nomination for Shrewsbury, winning one of the constituency's two seats at the 1841 general election, despite serious opposition, and heavy debts which opponents seized on. The election was a massive defeat for the Whigs across the country, and Peel became prime minister. Disraeli hoped, unrealistically, for ministerial office. Though disappointed at being left on the back benches, he continued his support for Peel in 1842 and 1843, seeking to establish himself as an expert on foreign affairs and international trade.
Although a Tory (or Conservative, as some in the party now called themselves) Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the aims of Chartism, and argued for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new industrialists in the middle class. After Disraeli won widespread acclaim in March 1842 for worsting Lord Palmerston in debate, he was taken up by a small group of idealistic new Tory MPs, with whom he formed the Young England group. They held that the landed interests should use their power to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen.
Disraeli hoped to forge a paternalistic Tory-Radical alliance, but he was unsuccessful. Before the Reform Act 1867, the working class did not possess the vote and therefore had little political power. Although Disraeli forged a personal friendship with John Bright, a leading Radical, Disraeli was unable to persuade Bright to sacrifice his distinct position for parliamentary advancement. When Disraeli attempted to secure a Tory-Radical cabinet in 1852, Bright refused.
Disraeli gradually became a sharp critic of Peel's government, often deliberately taking contrary positions. The young MP attacked his leader as early as 1843. However, the best known of these stances were over the Maynooth Grant in 1845 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The President of the Board of Trade, William Gladstone, resigned from the cabinet over the Maynooth Grant. The Corn Laws imposed a tariff on imported wheat, protecting British farmers from foreign competition, but making the cost of bread artificially high. Peel hoped that the repeal of the Corn Laws and the resultant influx of cheaper wheat into Britain would relieve the condition of the poor, and in particular the Great Famine caused by successive failure of potato crops in Ireland.
The first months of 1846 were dominated by a battle in Parliament between the free traders and the protectionists over the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the latter rallying around Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. An alliance of free-trade Conservatives (the "Peelites"), Radicals, and Whigs carried repeal, and the Conservative Party split: the Peelites moved towards the Whigs, while a "new" Conservative Party formed around the protectionists, led by Disraeli, Bentinck, and Lord Stanley (later Lord Derby).
The split in the Tory party over the repeal of the Corn Laws had profound implications for Disraeli's political career: almost every Tory politician with experience of office followed Peel, leaving the rump bereft of leadership. In Blake's words, "[Disraeli] found himself almost the only figure on his side capable of putting up the oratorical display essential for a parliamentary leader." The Duke of Argyll wrote that Disraeli "was like a subaltern in a great battle where every superior officer was killed or wounded". If the Tory Party could muster the electoral support necessary to form a government, then Disraeli now seemed to be guaranteed high office, but with a group of men who possessed little or no official experience and who, as a group, remained personally hostile to Disraeli. In the event the Tory split soon had the party out of office, not regaining power until 1852. The Conservatives would not again have a majority in the House of Commons until 1874.
Bentinck and the leadership.
Peel successfully steered the repeal of the Corn Laws through Parliament and was then defeated by an alliance of his enemies on the issue of Irish law and order; he resigned in June 1846. The Tories remained split, and the Queen sent for Lord John Russell, the Whig leader. In the 1847 general election, Disraeli stood, successfully, for the Buckinghamshire constituency. The new House of Commons had more Conservative than Whig members, but the depth of the Tory schism enabled Russell to continue to govern. The Conservatives were led by Bentinck in the Commons and Stanley in the Lords.
In 1847 a small political crisis removed Bentinck from the leadership and highlighted Disraeli's differences with his own party. In that year's general election, Lionel de Rothschild had been returned for the City of London. As a practising Jew he could not take the oath of allegiance in the prescribed Christian form, and therefore could not take his seat. Lord John Russell, the Whig leader who had succeeded Peel as prime minister, proposed in the Commons that the oath should be amended to permit Jews to enter Parliament.
Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity was "completed Judaism", and asking the House of Commons "Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?" Russell and Disraeli's future rival Gladstone thought this brave; the speech was badly received by his own party. The Tories and the Anglican establishment were hostile to the bill. With the exception of Disraeli, every member of the future protectionist cabinet then in Parliament voted against the measure. The measure was voted down. In the aftermath of the debate Bentinck resigned the leadership and was succeeded by Lord Granby; Disraeli's speech, thought by many of his own party to be blasphemous, ruled him out for the time being.
While these intrigues played out, Disraeli was working with the Bentinck family to secure the necessary financing to purchase Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. The possession of a country house and incumbency of a county constituency were regarded as essential for a Tory with leadership ambitions. Disraeli and his wife alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London for the rest of their marriage. The negotiations were complicated by Bentinck's sudden death on 21 September 1848, but Disraeli obtained a loan of £25,000 from Bentinck's brothers Lord Henry Bentinck and Lord Titchfield.
Within a month of his appointment Granby resigned the leadership in the Commons and the party functioned without a leader in the Commons for the rest of the session. At the start of the next session, affairs were handled by a triumvirate of Granby, Disraeli, and John Charles Herries—indicative of the tension between Disraeli and the rest of the party, who needed his talents but mistrusted him. This confused arrangement ended with Granby's resignation in 1851; Disraeli effectively ignored the two men regardless.
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
First Derby government.
In March 1851, Lord John Russell's government was defeated over a bill to equalise the county and borough franchises, mostly because of divisions among his supporters. He resigned, and the Queen sent for Stanley, who felt that a minority government could do little and would not last long, so Russell remained in office. Disraeli regretted this, hoping for an opportunity, however brief, to show himself capable in office. Stanley, in contrast, deprecated his inexperienced followers as a reason for not assuming office: "These are not names I can put before the Queen."
At the end of June 1851, Stanley succeeded to the title of Earl of Derby. The Whigs were wracked by internal dissensions during the second half of 1851, much of which Parliament spent in recess. Russell dismissed Lord Palmerston from the cabinet, leaving the latter determined to deprive the Prime Minister of office. Palmerston did so within weeks of Parliament's reassembly on 4 February 1852, his followers combining with Disraeli's Tories to defeat the government on a Militia Bill, and Russell resigned. Derby had either to take office or risk damage to his reputation, and he accepted the Queen's commission as prime minister. Palmerston declined any office; Derby had hoped to have him as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli, his closest ally, was his second choice and accepted, though disclaiming any great knowledge in the financial field. Gladstone refused to join the government. Disraeli may have been attracted to the office by the £5,000 annual salary, which would help pay his debts. Few of the new cabinet had held office before; when Derby tried to inform the Duke of Wellington of the names of the ministers, the old Duke, who was somewhat deaf, inadvertently branded the new government by incredulously repeating "Who? Who?"
In the following weeks, Disraeli served as Leader of the House (with Derby as prime minister in the Lords) and as Chancellor. He wrote regular reports on proceedings in the Commons to Victoria, who described them as "very curious" and "much in the style of his books". Parliament was prorogued on 1 July 1852 as the Tories could not govern for long as a minority; Disraeli hoped that they would gain a majority of about 40. Instead, the election later that month had no clear winner, and the Derby government held to power pending the meeting of Parliament.
Budget.
Disraeli's task as Chancellor was to devise a budget which would satisfy the protectionist elements who supported the Tories, without uniting the free-traders against it. His proposed budget, which he presented to the Commons on 3 December, lowered the taxes on malt and tea, provisions designed to appeal to the working class. To make his budget revenue-neutral, as funds were needed to provide defences against the French, he doubled the house tax and continued the income tax. Disraeli's overall purpose was to enact policies which would benefit the working classes, making his party more attractive to them. Although the budget did not contain protectionist features, the Opposition was prepared to destroy it—and Disraeli's career as Chancellor—in part out of revenge for his actions against Peel in 1846. MP Sidney Herbert predicted that the budget would fail because "Jews make no converts".
Disraeli delivered the budget on 3 December 1852, and prepared to wind up the debate for the government on 16 December—it was customary for the Chancellor to have the last word. A massive defeat for the government was predicted. Disraeli attacked his opponents individually, and then as a force: "I face a Coalition ... This, too, I know, that England does not love coalitions." His speech of three hours was quickly seen as a parliamentary masterpiece. As MPs prepared to divide, Gladstone rose to his feet and began an angry speech, despite the efforts of Tory MPs to shout him down. The interruptions were fewer, as Gladstone gained control of the House, and in the next two hours painted a picture of Disraeli as frivolous and his budget as subversive. The government was defeated by 19 votes, and Derby resigned four days later. He was replaced by the Peelite Earl of Aberdeen, with Gladstone as his Chancellor. Because of Disraeli's unpopularity among the Peelites, no party reconciliation was possible while he remained Tory leader in the Commons.
Opposition.
With the fall of the government, Disraeli and the Conservatives returned to the Opposition benches. Disraeli would spend three-quarters of his 44-year parliamentary career in Opposition. Derby was reluctant to seek to unseat the government, fearing a repetition of the Who? Who? Ministry and knowing that shared dislike of Disraeli was part of what had formed the governing coalition. Disraeli, on the other hand, was anxious to return to office. In the interim, Disraeli, as Conservative leader in the Commons, opposed the government on all major measures.
In June 1853 Disraeli was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Oxford. He had been recommended for it by Lord Derby, the university's Chancellor. The start of the Crimean War in 1854 caused a lull in party politics; Disraeli spoke patriotically in support. The British military efforts were marked by bungling, and in 1855 a restive Parliament considered a resolution to establish a committee on the conduct of the war. The Aberdeen government made this a motion of confidence; Disraeli led the Opposition to defeat the government, 305 to 148. Aberdeen resigned, and the Queen sent for Derby, who to Disraeli's frustration refused to take office. Palmerston was deemed essential to any Whig ministry, and he would not join any he did not head. The Queen reluctantly asked Palmerston to form a government. Under Palmerston, the war went better, and was ended by the Treaty of Paris in early 1856. Disraeli was early to call for peace but had little influence on events.
When a rebellion broke out in India in 1857, Disraeli took a keen interest, having been a member of a select committee in 1852 which considered how best to rule the subcontinent, and had proposed eliminating the governing role of the British East India Company. After peace was restored, and Palmerston in early 1858 brought in legislation for direct rule of India by the Crown, Disraeli opposed it. Many Conservative MPs refused to follow him, and the bill passed the Commons easily.
Palmerston's grip on the premiership was weakened by his response to the Orsini affair, in which an attempt was made to assassinate the French Emperor Napoleon III by an Italian revolutionary with a bomb made in Birmingham. At the request of the French ambassador, Palmerston proposed amending the conspiracy to murder statute to make creating an infernal device a felony. He was defeated by 19 votes on the second reading, with many Liberals crossing the aisle against him. He immediately resigned, and Lord Derby returned to office.
Second Derby government.
Derby took office at the head of a purely "Conservative" administration, not in coalition. He again offered a place to Gladstone, who declined. Disraeli was once more leader of the House of Commons and returned to the Exchequer. As in 1852, Derby led a minority government, dependent on the division of its opponents for survival. As Leader of the House, Disraeli resumed his regular reports to Queen Victoria, who had requested that he include what she "could not meet in newspapers".
During its brief life of just over a year, the Derby government proved moderately progressive. The Government of India Act 1858 ended the role of the East India Company in governing the subcontinent. The Thames Purification Bill funded the construction of much larger sewers for London. Disraeli had supported efforts to allow Jews to sit in Parliament with a bill passed through the Commons allowing each house of Parliament to determine what oaths its members should take. This was grudgingly agreed to by the House of Lords, with a minority of Conservatives joining with the Opposition to pass it. In 1858, Baron Lionel de Rothschild became the first MP to profess the Jewish faith.
Faced with a vacancy, Disraeli and Derby tried yet again to bring Gladstone, still nominally a Conservative MP, into the government, hoping to strengthen it. Disraeli wrote a personal letter to Gladstone, asking him to place the good of the party above personal animosity: "Every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this." In response, Gladstone denied that personal feelings played any role in his decisions then and previously whether to accept office, while acknowledging that there were differences between him and Derby "broader than you may have supposed".
The Tories pursued a Reform Bill in 1859, which would have resulted in a modest increase to the franchise. The Liberals were healing the breaches between those who favoured Russell and the Palmerston loyalists, and in late March 1859, the government was defeated on a Russell-sponsored amendment. Derby dissolved Parliament, and the ensuing general election resulted in modest Tory gains, but not enough to control the Commons. When Parliament assembled, Derby's government was defeated by 13 votes on an amendment to the Address from the Throne. He resigned, and the Queen reluctantly sent for Palmerston again.
Opposition and third term as Chancellor.
After Derby's second ejection from office, Disraeli faced dissension within Conservative ranks from those who blamed him for the defeat, or who felt he was disloyal to Derby—the former prime minister warned Disraeli of some MPs seeking his removal from the front bench. Among the conspirators were Lord Robert Cecil, a Conservative MP who would a quarter century later become prime minister as Lord Salisbury; he wrote that having Disraeli as leader in the Commons decreased the Conservatives' chance of holding office. When Cecil's father objected, Lord Robert stated, "I have merely put into print what all the country gentlemen were saying in private."
Disraeli led a toothless Opposition in the Commons—seeing no way of unseating Palmerston, Derby privately agreed not to seek the government's defeat. Disraeli kept himself informed on foreign affairs, and on what was going on in cabinet, thanks to a source within it. When the American Civil War began in 1861, Disraeli said little publicly, but like most Englishmen expected the South to win. Less reticent were Palmerston, Gladstone, and Russell, whose statements in support of the South contributed to years of hard feelings in the United States. In 1862, Disraeli met Prussian Count Otto von Bismarck and said of him, "be careful about that man, he means what he says".
The party truce ended in 1864, with Tories outraged over Palmerston's handling of the territorial dispute between the German Confederation and Denmark known as the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Disraeli had little help from Derby, who was ill, but he united the party enough on a no-confidence vote to limit the government to a majority of 18—Tory defections and absentees kept Palmerston in office. Despite rumours about Palmerston's health as he turned 80, he remained personally popular, and the Liberals increased their margin in the July 1865 general election. In the wake of the poor election results, Derby predicted to Disraeli that neither of them would ever hold office again.
Political plans were thrown into disarray by Palmerston's death on 18 October 1865. Russell became prime minister again, with Gladstone clearly the Liberal Party's leader-in-waiting, and as Leader of the House Disraeli's direct opponent. One of Russell's early priorities was a Reform Bill, but the proposed legislation that Gladstone announced on 12 March 1866 divided his party. The Conservatives and the dissident Liberals repeatedly attacked Gladstone's bill, and in June finally defeated the government; Russell resigned on 26 June. The dissidents were unwilling to serve under Disraeli in the House of Commons, and Derby formed a third Conservative minority government, with Disraeli again as Chancellor.
Tory Democrat: the 1867 Reform Act.
It was Disraeli's belief that if given the vote British people would use it instinctively to put their natural and traditional rulers, the gentlemen of the Conservative Party, into power. Responding to renewed agitation for popular suffrage, Disraeli persuaded a majority of the cabinet to agree to a Reform bill. With what Derby cautioned was "a leap in the dark", Disraeli had outflanked the Liberals who, as the supposed champions of Reform, dared not oppose him. In the absence of a credible party rival and for fear of having an election called on the issue, Conservatives felt obliged to support Disraeli despite their misgivings.
There were Tory dissenters, most notably Lord Cranborne (as Robert Cecil was by then known) who resigned from the government and spoke against the bill, accusing Disraeli of "a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals". Even as Disraeli accepted Liberal amendments (although pointedly refusing those moved by Gladstone) that further lowered the property qualification, Cranborne was unable to lead an effective rebellion. Disraeli gained wide acclaim and became a hero to his party for the "marvellous parliamentary skill" with which he secured the passage of Reform in the Commons.
From the Liberal benches too there was admiration. MP for Nottingham Bernal Ostborne declared:
The Reform Act 1867 passed that August. It extended the franchise by 938,427 men—an increase of 88%—by giving the vote to male householders and male lodgers paying at least £10 for rooms. It eliminated rotten boroughs with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, and granted constituencies to 15 unrepresented towns, with extra representation to large municipalities such as Liverpool and Manchester.
Prime Minister (1868).
First term.
Derby had long had attacks of gout which left him bedbound, unable to deal with politics. As the new session of Parliament approached in February 1868, he was unable to leave his home but was reluctant to resign, as at 68 he was much younger than either Palmerston or Russell at the end of their premierships. Derby knew that his "attacks of illness would, at no distant period, incapacitate me from the discharge of my public duties"; doctors had warned him that his health required his resignation. In late February, with Parliament in session and Derby absent, he wrote to Disraeli asking for confirmation that "you will not shrink from the additional heavy responsibility". Reassured, he wrote to the Queen, resigning and recommending Disraeli as "only he could command the cordial support, en masse, of his present colleagues". Disraeli went to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, where the Queen asked him to form a government. The monarch wrote to her daughter, Prussian Crown Princess Victoria, "Mr. Disraeli is Prime Minister! A proud thing for a man 'risen from the people' to have obtained!" The new prime minister told those who came to congratulate him, "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole."
First government, February–December 1868.
The Conservatives remained a minority in the House of Commons and the passage of the Reform Bill required the calling of a new election once the new voting register had been compiled. Disraeli's term as prime minister, which began in February 1868, would therefore be short unless the Conservatives won the general election. He made only two major changes in the cabinet: he replaced Lord Chelmsford as Lord Chancellor with Lord Cairns and brought in George Ward Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Derby had intended to replace Chelmsford once a vacancy in a suitable sinecure developed. Disraeli was unwilling to wait, and Cairns, in his view, was a far stronger minister.
Disraeli's first premiership was dominated by the heated debate over the Church of Ireland. Although Ireland was largely Roman Catholic, the Church of England represented most landowners. It remained the established church and was funded by direct taxation, which was greatly resented by the Catholics and Presbyterians. An initial attempt by Disraeli to negotiate with Archbishop Manning the establishment of a Catholic university in Dublin foundered in March when Gladstone moved resolutions to disestablish the Irish Church altogether. The proposal united the Liberals under Gladstone's leadership, while causing divisions among the Conservatives.
The Conservatives remained in office because the new electoral register was not yet ready; neither party wished a poll under the old roll. Gladstone began using the Liberal majority in the Commons to push through resolutions and legislation. Disraeli's government survived until the December general election, at which the Liberals were returned to power with a majority.
In its short life, the first Disraeli government passed noncontroversial laws. It ended public executions, and the Corrupt Practices Act did much to end electoral bribery. It authorised an early version of nationalisation, having the Post Office buy up the telegraph companies. Amendments to the school law, the Scottish legal system, and the railway laws were passed. In addition, the Public Health (Scotland) Act instituted sanitary inspectors and medical officers. According to one study, "better sanitation was enforced throughout Scotland." Disraeli sent the successful expedition against Tewodros II of Ethiopia under Sir Robert Napier.
Opposition leader; 1874 election.
Given Gladstone's majority in the Commons, Disraeli could do little but protest as the government advanced legislation; he chose to await Liberal mistakes. He used this leisure time to write a new novel, "Lothair" (1870). A work of fiction by a former prime minister was a novelty for Britain, and the book became a bestseller.
By 1872 there was dissent in the Conservative ranks over the failure to challenge Gladstone. This was quieted as Disraeli took steps to assert his leadership, and as divisions among the Liberals became clear. Public support for Disraeli was shown by cheering at a thanksgiving service in 1872 on the recovery of the Prince of Wales from illness, while Gladstone was met with silence. Disraeli had supported the efforts of party manager John Eldon Gorst to put the administration of the Conservative Party on a modern basis. On Gorst's advice, Disraeli gave a speech to a mass meeting in Manchester that year. To roaring approval, he compared the Liberal front bench to "a range of exhausted volcanoes... But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes and ever and again the dark rumbling of the sea." Gladstone, Disraeli stated, dominated the scene and "alternated between a menace and a sigh".
At his first departure from 10 Downing Street in 1868, Disraeli had Victoria make his wife Mary Anne Viscountess Beaconsfield in her own right in lieu of a peerage for himself. Through 1872 the eighty-year-old peeress had stomach cancer. She died on 15 December. Urged by a clergyman to turn her thoughts to Jesus Christ in her final days, she said she could not: "You know Dizzy is my J.C."
In 1873, Gladstone brought forward legislation to establish a Catholic university in Dublin. This divided the Liberals, and on 12 March an alliance of Conservatives and Irish Catholics defeated the government by three votes. Gladstone resigned, and the Queen sent for Disraeli, who refused to take office. Without a general election, a Conservative government would be another minority; Disraeli wanted the power a majority would bring and felt he could gain it later by leaving the Liberals in office now. Gladstone's government struggled on, beset by scandal and unimproved by a reshuffle. As part of that change, Gladstone took on the office of Chancellor, leading to questions as to whether he had to stand for re-election on taking on a second ministry—until the 1920s, MPs becoming ministers had to seek re-election.
In January 1874, Gladstone called a general election, convinced that if he waited longer, he would do worse at the polls. Balloting was spread over two weeks, beginning on 1 February. As the constituencies voted, it became clear that the result would be a Conservative majority, the first since 1841. In Scotland, where the Conservatives were perennially weak, they increased from seven seats to nineteen. Overall, they won 350 seats to 245 for the Liberals and 57 for the Irish Home Rule League. Disraeli became prime minister for the second time.
Prime Minister (1874–1880).
Second term.
Disraeli's cabinet of twelve, with six peers and six commoners, was the smallest since Reform. Of the peers, five of them had been in Disraeli's 1868 cabinet; the sixth, Lord Salisbury, was reconciled to Disraeli after negotiation and became Secretary of State for India. Lord Stanley (who had succeeded his father, the former prime minister, as Earl of Derby) became Foreign Secretary and Sir Stafford Northcote the Chancellor.
In August 1876, Disraeli was elevated to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield and Viscount Hughenden. The Queen had offered to ennoble him as early as 1868; he had then declined. She did so again in 1874, when he fell ill at Balmoral, but he was reluctant to leave the Commons for a house in which he had no experience. Continued ill health during his second premiership caused him to contemplate resignation, but his lieutenant, Derby, was unwilling, feeling that he could not manage the Queen. For Disraeli, the Lords, where the debate was less intense, was the alternative to resignation. Five days before the end of the 1876 session of Parliament, on 11 August, Disraeli was seen to linger and look around the chamber before departing. Newspapers reported his ennoblement the following morning.
In addition to the viscounty bestowed on Mary Anne Disraeli, the earldom of Beaconsfield was to have been bestowed on Edmund Burke in 1797, but he had died before receiving it. The name Beaconsfield, a town near Hughenden, was given to a minor character in "Vivian Grey". Disraeli made various statements about his elevation, writing to Selina, Lady Bradford on 8 August 1876, "I am quite tired of that place [the Commons]" but when asked by a friend how he liked the Lords, replied, "I am dead; dead but in the Elysian fields."
Domestic policy.
Legislation.
Under the stewardship of Richard Assheton Cross, the Home Secretary, Disraeli's new government enacted many reforms, including the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 36), which made inexpensive loans available to towns and cities to construct working-class housing. Also enacted were the Public Health Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 55), modernising sanitary codes, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 63), and the Elementary Education Act 1876 (39 & 40 Vict. c. 70). Disraeli's government introduced a new Factory Act meant to protect workers, the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 86), which allowed peaceful picketing, and the Employers and Workmen Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 90) to enable workers to sue employers in the civil courts if they broke legal contracts.
The Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875 prohibited the mixing of injurious ingredients with articles of food or with drugs, and provision was made for the appointment of analysts; all tea "had to be examined by a customs official on importation, and when in the opinion of the analyst it was unfit for food, the tea had to be destroyed". The Employers and Workmen Act 1875, according to one study, "finally placed employers and employed on an equal footing before the law". The Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875 established the right to strike by providing that "an agreement or combination by one or more persons to do, or procure to be done, any act in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute between employers and workmen, shall not be indictable as a conspiracy if such act committed by one person would not be punishable as a crime".
As a result of these social reforms the Liberal-Labour MP Alexander Macdonald told his constituents in 1879, "The Conservative party have done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in fifty."
Civil Service.
Gladstone in 1870 had sponsored an Order in Council, introducing competitive examination into the Civil Service, diminishing the political aspects of government hiring. Disraeli did not agree, and while he did not seek to reverse the order, his actions often frustrated its intent. For example, Disraeli made political appointments to positions previously given to career civil servants. He was backed by his party, hungry for office and its emoluments after almost thirty years with only brief spells in government. Disraeli gave positions to hard-up Conservative leaders, even—to Gladstone's outrage—creating one office at £2,000 per year. Nevertheless, Disraeli made fewer peers (only 22, including one of Victoria's sons) than had Gladstone (37 during his just over five years in office).
As he had in government posts, Disraeli rewarded old friends with clerical positions, making Sydney Turner, son of a good friend of Isaac D'Israeli, Dean of Ripon. He favoured Low church clergymen in promotion, disliking other movements in Anglicanism for political reasons. In this, he came into disagreement with the Queen, who out of loyalty to her late husband Albert preferred Broad church teachings. One controversial appointment had occurred shortly before the 1868 election. When the position of Archbishop of Canterbury fell vacant, Disraeli reluctantly agreed to the Queen's preferred candidate, Archibald Tait, the Bishop of London. To fill Tait's vacant see, Disraeli was urged by many people to appoint Samuel Wilberforce, the former Bishop of Winchester. Disraeli disliked Wilberforce and instead appointed John Jackson, the Bishop of Lincoln. Blake suggested that, on balance, these appointments cost Disraeli more votes than they gained him.
Foreign policy.
Disraeli always considered foreign affairs to be the most critical and interesting part of statesmanship. Nevertheless, his biographer Robert Blake doubts that his subject had specific ideas about foreign policy when he took office in 1874. He had rarely travelled abroad; since his youthful tour of the Middle East in 1830–1831, he had left Britain only for his honeymoon and three visits to Paris, the last of which was in 1856. As he had criticised Gladstone for a do-nothing foreign policy, he most probably contemplated what actions would reassert Britain's place in Europe. His brief first premiership, and the first year of his second, gave him little opportunity to make his mark in foreign affairs.
Suez.
The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, cut weeks and thousands of miles off the sea journey between Britain and India; in 1875, approximately 80% of the ships using the canal were British. In the event of another rebellion in India or a Russian invasion, the time saved at Suez might be crucial. Built by French interests, 56% of the stocks in the canal remained in their hands, while 44% of the stock belonged to Isma'il Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt. He was notorious for his profligate spending. The canal was losing money, and an attempt by Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the canal, to raise the tolls had fallen through when the Khedive had threatened military force to prevent it, and had also attracted Disraeli's attention. The Khedive governed Egypt under the Ottoman Empire; as in the Crimea, the issue of the Canal raised the Eastern Question of what to do about the decaying empire governed from Constantinople. With much of the pre-canal trade and communications between Britain and India passing through the Ottoman Empire, Britain had done its best to prop up the Ottomans against the threat that Russia would take Constantinople, cutting those communications, and giving Russian ships unfettered access to the Mediterranean. The French might also threaten those lines. Britain had had the opportunity to purchase shares in the canal but had declined to do so.
Disraeli sent the Liberal MP Nathan Rothschild to Paris to enquire about buying de Lesseps's shares. On 14 November 1875, the editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette", Frederick Greenwood, learned from London banker Henry Oppenheim that the Khedive was seeking to sell his shares in the Suez Canal Company to a French firm. Greenwood quickly told Lord Derby, the Foreign Secretary, who notified Disraeli. The Prime Minister moved immediately to secure the shares. On 23 November, the Khedive offered to sell the shares for 100,000,000 francs. Rather than seek the aid of the Bank of England, Disraeli borrowed funds from Lionel de Rothschild, who took a commission on the deal. The banker's capital was at risk as Parliament could have refused to ratify the transaction. The contract for purchase was signed at Cairo on 25 November and the shares deposited at the British consulate the following day.
Disraeli told the Queen, "it is settled; you have it, madam!" The public saw the venture as a daring statement of British dominance of the seas. Sir Ian Malcolm described the Suez Canal share purchase as "the greatest romance of Mr. Disraeli's romantic career". In the following decades, the security of the Suez Canal became a major concern of British foreign policy. Under Gladstone, Britain took control of Egypt in 1882. A later Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, described the canal in 1909 as "the determining influence of every considerable movement of British power to the east and south of the Mediterranean".
Royal Titles Act.
Although initially curious about Disraeli when he entered Parliament in 1837, Victoria came to detest him over his treatment of Peel. Over time, her dislike softened, especially as Disraeli took pains to cultivate her. He told Matthew Arnold, "Everybody likes flattery; and, when you come to royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel". Disraeli's biographer, Adam Kirsch, suggests that Disraeli's obsequious treatment of his queen was part flattery, part belief that this was how a queen should be addressed by a loyal subject, and part awe that a middle-class man of Jewish birth should be the companion of a monarch. By the time of his second premiership, Disraeli had built a strong relationship with Victoria, probably closer to her than any of her prime ministers except her first, Lord Melbourne. When Disraeli returned as prime minister in 1874 and went to kiss hands, he did so literally, on one knee; according to Richard Aldous in his book on the rivalry between Disraeli and Gladstone, "Victoria and Disraeli would exploit their closeness for mutual advantage."
Victoria had long wished to have an imperial title, reflecting Britain's expanding domain. She was irked when Tsar Alexander II held a higher rank than her as an emperor, and was appalled that her daughter, the Prussian Crown Princess, would outrank her when her husband came to the throne. She also saw an imperial title as proclaiming Britain's increased stature in the world. The title "Empress of India" had been used informally for some time and she wished to have that title formally bestowed on her. The Queen prevailed upon Disraeli to introduce a Royal Titles Bill, and also told of her intent to open Parliament in person, which during this time she did only when she wanted something from legislators. Disraeli was cautious in response, as careful soundings of MPs brought a negative reaction, and he declined to place such a proposal in the Queen's Speech.
Once the desired bill was finally prepared, Disraeli's handling of it was not adept. He neglected to notify either the Prince of Wales or the Opposition and was met by irritation from the prince and a full-scale attack from the Liberals. An old enemy of Disraeli, former Liberal Chancellor Robert Lowe, alleged during the debate in the Commons that two previous prime ministers had refused to introduce such legislation for the Queen. Gladstone immediately stated that he was not one of them, and the Queen gave Disraeli leave to quote her saying she had never approached a prime minister with such a proposal. According to Blake, Disraeli "in a brilliant oration of withering invective proceeded to destroy Lowe", who apologised and never held office again. Disraeli said of Lowe that he was the only person in London with whom he would not shake hands: "he is in the mud and there I leave him."
Fearful of losing, Disraeli was reluctant to bring the bill to a vote in the Commons, but when he did it passed with a majority of 75. Once the bill was formally enacted, Victoria began signing her letters "Victoria R & I" (, Queen and Empress). According to Aldous, the bill "shattered Disraeli's authority in the House of Commons".
Balkans and Bulgaria.
In July 1875 Serb populations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then provinces of the Ottoman Empire, revolted against the Turks, alleging religious persecution and poor administration. The following January, Sultan Abdülaziz agreed to reforms proposed by Hungarian statesman Julius Andrássy, but the rebels, suspecting they might win their freedom, continued their uprising, joined by militants in Serbia and Bulgaria. The Turks suppressed the Bulgarian uprising harshly, and when reports of these actions escaped, Disraeli and Derby stated in Parliament that they did not believe them. Disraeli called them "coffee-house babble" and dismissed allegations of torture by the Ottomans since "Oriental people usually terminate their connections with culprits in a more expeditious fashion".
Gladstone, who had left the Liberal leadership and retired from public life, was appalled by reports of atrocities in Bulgaria, and in August 1876, penned a hastily written pamphlet arguing that the Turks should be deprived of Bulgaria because of what they had done there. He sent a copy to Disraeli, who called it "vindictive and ill-written ... of all the Bulgarian horrors perhaps the greatest". Gladstone's pamphlet became an immense best-seller and rallied the Liberals to urge that the Ottoman Empire should no longer be a British ally. Disraeli wrote to Lord Salisbury on 3 September, "Had it not been for these unhappy 'atrocities', we should have settled a peace very honourable to England and satisfactory to Europe. Now we are obliged to work from a new point of departure, and dictate to Turkey, who has forfeited all sympathy." In spite of this, Disraeli's policy favoured Constantinople and Ottoman territorial integrity.
Disraeli and the cabinet sent Salisbury as lead British representative to the Constantinople Conference, which met in December 1876 and January 1877. In advance of the conference, Disraeli sent Salisbury private word to seek British military occupation of Bulgaria and Bosnia, and British control of the Ottoman Army. Salisbury ignored these instructions, which his biographer, Andrew Roberts deemed "ludicrous". The conference failed to reach agreement with the Turks.
Parliament opened in February 1877, with Disraeli now in the Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield. He spoke only once there in the 1877 session on the Eastern Question, stating on 20 February that there was a need for stability in the Balkans, and that forcing Turkey into territorial concessions would not secure it. The Prime Minister wanted a deal with the Ottomans whereby Britain would temporarily occupy strategic areas to deter the Russians from war, to be returned on the signing of a peace treaty, but found little support in his cabinet, which favoured partition of the Ottoman Empire. As Disraeli, by then in poor health, continued to battle within the cabinet, Russia invaded Turkey on 21 April, beginning the Russo-Turkish War.
Congress of Berlin.
The Russians pushed through Ottoman territory and by December 1877 had captured the strategic Bulgarian town of Plevna. The war divided the British, but the Russian success caused some to forget the atrocities and call for intervention on the Turkish side. Others hoped for further Russian successes. The fall of Plevna was a major story for weeks, and Disraeli's warnings that Russia was a threat to British interests in the eastern Mediterranean were deemed prophetic. The jingoistic attitude of many Britons increased Disraeli's political support, and the Queen showed her favour by visiting him at Hughenden—the first time she had visited the country home of her prime minister since the Melbourne ministry. At the end of January 1878, the Ottoman Sultan appealed to Britain to save Constantinople. Amid war fever in Britain, the government asked Parliament to vote £6,000,000 to prepare the Army and Navy for war. Gladstone opposed the measure, but less than half his party voted with him. Popular opinion was with Disraeli, though some thought him too soft for not immediately declaring war on Russia.
With the Russians close to Constantinople, the Turks yielded and in March 1878, signed the Treaty of San Stefano, conceding a Bulgarian state covering a large part of the Balkans. It would be initially Russian-occupied and many feared that it would give them a client state close to Constantinople. Other Ottoman possessions in Europe would become independent; additional territory was to be ceded directly to Russia. This was unacceptable to the British, who protested, hoping to get the Russians to agree to attend an international conference which German Chancellor Bismarck proposed to hold at Berlin. The cabinet discussed Disraeli's proposal to position Indian troops at Malta for possible transit to the Balkans and call out reserves. Derby resigned in protest, and Disraeli appointed Salisbury as Foreign Secretary. Amid British preparations for war, the Russians and Turks agreed to discussions at Berlin.
In advance of the meeting, confidential negotiations took place between Britain and Russia in April and May 1878. The Russians were willing to make changes to the big Bulgaria, but were determined to retain their new possessions, Bessarabia in Europe and Batum and Kars on the east coast of the Black Sea. To counterbalance this, Britain required a possession in the Eastern Mediterranean where it might base ships and troops and negotiated with the Ottomans for the cession of Cyprus. Once this was secretly agreed, Disraeli was prepared to allow Russia's territorial gains.
The Congress of Berlin was held in June and July 1878, the central relationship in it that between Disraeli and Bismarck. In later years, the German chancellor would show visitors to his office three pictures on the wall: "the portrait of my Sovereign, there on the right that of my wife, and on the left, there, that of Lord Beaconsfield". Disraeli caused an uproar in the congress by making his opening address in English, rather than in French, hitherto accepted as the international language of diplomacy. By one account, the British ambassador in Berlin, Lord Odo Russell, hoping to spare the delegates Disraeli's very poor French accent, told Disraeli that the congress was hoping to hear a speech in English by one of its masters.
Disraeli left much of the detailed work to Salisbury, concentrating his efforts on making it as difficult as possible for the broken-up big Bulgaria to reunite. Disraeli intended that Batum be demilitarised, but the Russians obtained their preferred language, and in 1886, fortified the town. Nevertheless, the Cyprus Convention ceding the island to Britain was announced during the congress, and again made Disraeli a sensation.
Disraeli gained agreement that Turkey should retain enough of its European possessions to safeguard the Dardanelles. By one account, when met with Russian intransigence, Disraeli told his secretary to order a special train to return them home to begin the war. Czar Alexander II later described the congress as "a European coalition against Russia, under Bismarck".
The Treaty of Berlin was signed on 13 July 1878 at the Radziwill Palace in Berlin. Disraeli and Salisbury returned home to heroes' receptions. At the door of 10 Downing Street, Disraeli received flowers sent by the Queen. There, he told the gathered crowd, "Lord Salisbury and I have brought you back peace—but a peace I hope with honour." The Queen offered him a dukedom, which he declined, though accepting the Garter, as long as Salisbury also received it. In Berlin, word spread of Bismarck's admiring description of Disraeli, ""Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann!" "
In the weeks after Berlin, Disraeli and the cabinet considered calling a general election to capitalise on the public applause he and Salisbury had received. Parliaments were then for a seven-year term, and it was the custom not to go to the country until the sixth year unless forced to by events. Only four and a half years had passed and they did not see any clouds on the horizon that might forecast Conservative defeat if they waited. This decision not to seek re-election has often been cited as a great mistake by Disraeli. Blake, however, pointed out that results in local elections had been moving against the Conservatives, and doubted if Disraeli missed any great opportunity by waiting.
Afghanistan to Zululand.
As successful invasions of India generally came through Afghanistan, the British had observed and sometimes intervened there since the 1830s, hoping to keep the Russians out. In 1878 the Russians sent a mission to Kabul; it was not rejected by the Afghans, as the British had hoped. The British proposed to send their own mission, insisting that the Russians be sent away. The Viceroy of India Lord Lytton concealed his plans to issue this ultimatum from Disraeli, and when the Prime Minister insisted he take no action, went ahead anyway. When the Afghans made no answer, Lord Cranbrook as Secretary of State for War, ordered the advance against them in the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Under Lord Roberts, the British easily defeated them and installed a new ruler, leaving a mission and garrison in Kabul.
British policy in South Africa was to encourage federation between the British-run Cape Colony and Natal, and the Boer republics, the Transvaal (annexed by Britain in 1877) and the Orange Free State. The governor of Cape Colony, Sir Bartle Frere, believing that the federation could not be accomplished until the native tribes acknowledged British rule, made demands on the Zulu and their king, Cetewayo, which they were certain to reject. As Zulu troops could not marry until they had washed their spears in blood, they were eager for combat. Frere did not send word to the cabinet of what he had done until the ultimatum was about to expire. Disraeli and the cabinet reluctantly backed him, and in early January 1879 resolved to send reinforcements. Before they could arrive, on 22 January, a Zulu "impi" (army), moving with great speed and endurance, destroyed a British encampment in South Africa in the Battle of Isandlwana. Over a thousand British and colonial troops were killed. Word of the defeat did not reach London until 12 February. Disraeli wrote the next day, "the terrible disaster has shaken me to the centre". He reprimanded Frere, but left him in charge, attracting fire from all sides. Disraeli sent General Sir Garnet Wolseley as High Commissioner and Commander in Chief, and Cetewayo and the Zulus were crushed at the Battle of Ulundi on 4 July 1879.
On 8 September 1879 Sir Louis Cavagnari, in charge of the mission in Kabul, was killed with his entire staff by rebelling Afghan soldiers. Roberts undertook a successful punitive expedition against the Afghans over the next six weeks.
1880 election.
In December 1878, Gladstone was offered the Liberal nomination for Edinburghshire, a constituency popularly known as Midlothian. The small Scottish electorate was dominated by two noblemen, the Conservative Duke of Buccleuch and the Liberal Earl of Rosebery. The Earl, a friend of both Disraeli and Gladstone who would succeed the latter after his final term as prime minister, had journeyed to the United States to view politics there, and was convinced that aspects of American electioneering techniques could be translated to Britain. On his advice, Gladstone accepted the offer in January 1879, and later that year began his Midlothian campaign, speaking not only in Edinburgh, but across Britain, attacking Disraeli, to huge crowds.
Conservative chances of re-election were damaged by the poor weather, and consequent effects on agriculture. Four consecutive wet summers through 1879 had led to poor harvests. In the past, the farmer had the consolation of higher prices at such times, but with bumper crops cheaply transported from the United States, grain prices remained low. Other European nations, faced with similar circumstances, opted for protection, and Disraeli was urged to reinstitute the Corn Laws. He declined, stating that he regarded the matter as settled. Protection would have been highly unpopular among the newly enfranchised urban working classes, as it would raise their cost of living. Amid an economic slump generally, the Conservatives lost support among farmers.
Disraeli's health continued to fail through 1879. Owing to his infirmities, Disraeli was 45 minutes late for the Lord Mayor's Dinner at the Guildhall in November, at which it is customary that the Prime Minister speaks. Though many commented on how healthy he looked, it took him great effort to appear so, and when he told the audience he expected to speak to the dinner again the following year, attendees chuckled. Gladstone was then in the midst of his campaign. Despite his public confidence, Disraeli recognised that the Conservatives would probably lose the next election and was already contemplating his Resignation Honours.
Despite this pessimism, Conservatives' hopes were buoyed in early 1880 with successes in by-elections the Liberals had expected to win, concluding with victory in Southwark, normally a Liberal stronghold. The cabinet had resolved to wait before dissolving Parliament; in early March they reconsidered, agreeing to go to the country as soon as possible. Parliament was dissolved on 24 March; the first borough constituencies began voting a week later.
Disraeli took no public part in the electioneering, it being deemed improper for peers to make speeches to influence Commons elections. This meant that the chief Conservatives—Disraeli, Salisbury, and India Secretary Lord Cranbrook—would not be heard from. The election was thought likely to be close. Once returns began to be announced, it became clear that the Conservatives were decisively beaten. The final result gave the Liberals an absolute majority of about 50.
Final months, death, and memorials.
Disraeli refused to cast blame for the defeat, which he understood was likely to be final for him. He wrote to Lady Bradford that it was just as much work to end a government as to form one, without any of the fun. Queen Victoria was bitter at his departure. Among the honours he arranged before resigning as Prime Minister on 21 April 1880 was one for his private secretary, Montagu Corry, who became Baron Rowton.
Returning to Hughenden, Disraeli brooded over his electoral dismissal, but also resumed work on "Endymion", which he had begun in 1872 and laid aside before the 1874 election. The work was rapidly completed and published by November 1880. He carried on a correspondence with Victoria, with letters passed through intermediaries. When Parliament met in January 1881, he served as Conservative leader in the Lords, attempting to serve as a moderating influence on Gladstone's legislation.
Because of his asthma and gout, Disraeli went out as little as possible, fearing more serious episodes of illness. In March, he fell ill with bronchitis, and emerged from bed only for a meeting with Salisbury and other Conservative leaders on the 26th. As it became clear that this might be his final sickness, friends and opponents alike came to call. Disraeli declined a visit from the Queen, saying, "She would only ask me to take a message to Albert." Almost blind, when he received the last letter from Victoria of which he was aware on 5 April, he held it momentarily, then had it read to him by Lord Barrington, a Privy Councillor. One card, signed "A Workman", delighted its recipient: "Don't die yet, we can't do without you."
Despite the gravity of Disraeli's condition, the doctors concocted optimistic bulletins for public consumption. Prime Minister Gladstone called several times to enquire about his rival's condition, and wrote in his diary, "May the Almighty be near his pillow." There was intense public interest in Disraeli's struggles for life. Disraeli had customarily taken the sacrament at Easter; when this day was observed on 17 April, there was discussion among his friends and family if he should be given the opportunity, but those against, fearing that he would lose hope, prevailed. On the morning of the following day, Easter Monday, he became incoherent, then comatose. Disraeli's last confirmed words before dying at his home at 19 Curzon Street in the early morning of 19 April were "I had rather live but I am not afraid to die". The anniversary of Disraeli's death was for some years commemorated in the United Kingdom as Primrose Day.
Despite having been offered a state funeral by Queen Victoria, Disraeli's executors decided against a public procession and funeral, fearing that too large crowds would gather to do him honour. The chief mourners at the service at Hughenden on 26 April were his brother Ralph and nephew Coningsby, to whom Hughenden would eventually pass; Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, Viscount Cranbrook, despite most of Disraeli's former cabinet being present, was notably absent in Italy. Queen Victoria was prostrated with grief, and considered ennobling Ralph or Coningsby as a memorial to Disraeli (without children, his titles became extinct with his death), but decided against it on the ground that their means were too small for a peerage. Protocol forbade her attending Disraeli's funeral (this would not be changed until 1965, when Elizabeth II attended the rites for the former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill) but she sent primroses ("his favourite flowers") to the funeral and visited the burial vault to place a wreath four days later.
Disraeli is buried with his wife in a vault beneath the Church of St Michael and All Angels which stands in the grounds of his home, Hughenden Manor. There is also a memorial to him in the chancel in the church, erected in his honour by Queen Victoria. His literary executor was his private secretary, Lord Rowton. The Disraeli vault also contains the body of Sarah Brydges Willyams, the wife of James Brydges Willyams of St Mawgan. Disraeli carried on a long correspondence with Mrs. Willyams, writing frankly about political affairs. At her death in 1865, she left him a large legacy, which helped clear his debts. His will was proved in April 1882 at £84,019 18 s. 7 d. (roughly equivalent to £ in ).
Disraeli has a memorial in Westminster Abbey, erected by the nation on the motion of Gladstone in his memorial speech on Disraeli in the House of Commons. Gladstone had absented himself from the funeral, with his plea of the press of public business met with public mockery. His speech was widely anticipated, if only because his dislike for Disraeli was well known. In the event, the speech was a model of its kind, in which he avoided comment on Disraeli's politics while praising his personal qualities.
Legacy.
Disraeli's literary and political career interacted over his lifetime and fascinated Victorian Britain, making him "one of the most eminent figures in Victorian public life", and occasioned a large output of commentary. Critic Shane Leslie noted three decades after his death that "Disraeli's career was a romance such as no Eastern vizier or Western plutocrat could tell. He began as a pioneer in dress and an aesthete of words ... Disraeli actually made his novels come true."
Literary.
Disraeli's novels are his main literary achievement. They have from the outset divided critical opinion. The writer R. W. Stewart observed that there have always been two criteria for judging Disraeli's novels—political and artistic. The critic Robert O'Kell, concurring, writes, "It is after all, even if you are a Tory of the staunchest blue, impossible to make Disraeli into a first-rate novelist. And it is equally impossible, no matter how much you deplore the extravagances and improprieties of his works, to make him into an insignificant one."
Disraeli's early "silver fork" novels "Vivian Grey" (1826) and "The Young Duke" (1831) featured romanticised depictions of aristocratic life (despite his ignorance of it) with character sketches of well-known public figures lightly disguised. In some of his early fiction Disraeli also portrayed himself and what he felt to be his Byronic dual nature: the poet and the man of action. His most autobiographical novel was "Contarini Fleming" (1832), an avowedly serious work that did not sell well. The critic William Kuhn suggests that Disraeli's fiction can be read as "the memoirs he never wrote", revealing the inner life of a politician for whom the norms of Victorian public life appeared to represent a social straitjacket—particularly with regard to what Kuhn sees as the author's "ambiguous sexuality".
Of the other novels of the early 1830s, "Alroy" is described by Blake as "profitable but unreadable", and "The Rise of Iskander" (1833) and "The Infernal Marriage" and "Ixion in Heaven" (1834) made little impact. "Henrietta Temple" (1837) was Disraeli's next major success. It draws on the events of his affair with Henrietta Sykes to tell the story of a debt-ridden young man torn between a mercenary loveless marriage and a passionate love at first sight for the eponymous heroine. "Venetia" (1837) was a minor work, written to raise much-needed cash.
In the 1840s Disraeli wrote a trilogy of novels with political themes. "Coningsby" attacks the evils of the Whig Reform Bill of 1832 and castigates the leaderless conservatives for not responding. "Sybil; or, The Two Nations" (1845) reveals Peel's betrayal over the Corn Laws. These themes are expanded in "Tancred" (1847). With "Coningsby; or, The New Generation" (1844), Disraeli, in Blake's view, "infused the novel genre with political sensibility, espousing the belief that England's future as a world power depended not on the complacent old guard, but on youthful, idealistic politicians." "Sybil; or, The Two Nations" was less idealistic than "Coningsby"; the "two nations" of its sub-title referred to the huge economic and social gap between the privileged few and the deprived working classes. The last was "Tancred; or, The New Crusade" (1847), promoting the Church of England's role in reviving Britain's flagging spirituality. Disraeli often wrote about religion, for he was a strong promoter of the Church of England. He was troubled by the growth of elaborate rituals in the late 19th century, such as the use of incense and vestments, and heard warnings to the effect that the ritualists were going to turn control of the Church of England over to the Pope. He consequently was a strong supporter of the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874 which allowed the archbishops to go to court to stop the ritualists.
"Lothair" was "Disraeli's ideological "Pilgrim's Progress""; it tells a story of political life with particular regard to the roles of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. It reflected anti-Catholicism of the sort that was popular in Britain, and which fueled support for Italian unification ("Risorgimento"). "Endymion", despite having a Whig as hero, is a last exposition of the author's economic policies and political beliefs. Disraeli continued to the last to pillory his enemies in barely disguised caricatures: the character St Barbe in "Endymion" is widely seen as a parody of Thackeray, who had offended Disraeli more than thirty years earlier by lampooning him in "Punch" as "Codlingsby". Disraeli left an unfinished novel in which the priggish central character, Falconet, is unmistakably a caricature of Gladstone.
Blake commented that Disraeli "produced an epic poem, unbelievably bad, and a five-act blank verse tragedy, if possible worse. Further he wrote a discourse on political theory and a political biography, the "Life of Lord George Bentinck", which is excellent ... remarkably fair and accurate."
Political.
In the years after Disraeli's death, as Salisbury began his reign of more than twenty years over the Conservatives, the party emphasised the late leader's "One Nation" views, that the Conservatives at root shared the beliefs of the working classes, with the Liberals the party of the urban élite. The memory of Disraeli was used by the Conservatives to appeal to the working classes, with whom he was said to have had a rapport. This aspect of his policies has been re-evaluated by historians in the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1972 B. H. Abbott stressed that it was not Disraeli but Lord Randolph Churchill who invented the term "Tory democracy", though it was Disraeli who made it an essential part of Conservative policy and philosophy. In 2007 Parry wrote, "The tory democrat myth did not survive detailed scrutiny by professional historical writing of the 1960s [which] demonstrated that Disraeli had very little interest in a programme of social legislation and was very flexible in handling parliamentary reform in 1867." Despite this, Parry sees Disraeli, rather than Peel, as the founder of the modern Conservative party. The Conservative politician and writer Douglas Hurd wrote in 2013, "[Disraeli] was not a one-nation Conservative—and this was not simply because he never used the phrase. He rejected the concept in its entirety."
Disraeli's enthusiastic propagation of the British Empire has also been seen as appealing to working-class voters. Before his leadership of the Conservative Party, imperialism was the province of the Liberals, most notably Palmerston. Disraeli made the Conservatives the party that most loudly supported both the Empire and military action to assert its primacy. This came about in part because Disraeli's own views stemmed that way, in part because he saw advantage for the Conservatives, and partially in reaction against Gladstone, who disliked the expense of empire. Blake argued that Disraeli's imperialism "decisively orientated the Conservative party for many years to come, and the tradition which he started was probably a bigger electoral asset in winning working-class support during the last quarter of the century than anything else". Some historians have commented on a romantic impulse behind Disraeli's approach to Empire and foreign affairs: Abbott writes, "To the mystical Tory concepts of Throne, Church, Aristocracy and People, Disraeli added Empire." Others have identified a strongly pragmatic aspect to his policies. Gladstone's biographer Philip Magnus contrasted Disraeli's grasp of foreign affairs with that of Gladstone, who "never understood that high moral principles, in their application to foreign policy, are more often destructive of political stability than motives of national self-interest." In Parry's view, Disraeli's foreign policy "can be seen as a gigantic castle in the air (as it was by Gladstone), or as an overdue attempt to force the British commercial classes to awaken to the realities of European politics."
During his lifetime, Disraeli's opponents, and sometimes even his friends and allies, questioned whether he sincerely held the views he propounded, or whether they were adopted by him as politically essential and lacked conviction. Lord John Manners, in 1843 at the time of Young England, wrote, "could I only satisfy myself that D'Israeli believed all that he said, I should be more happy: his historical views are quite mine, but does he believe them?" Paul Smith, in his journal article on Disraeli's politics, argues that Disraeli's ideas were coherently argued over a political career of nearly half a century, and "it is impossible to sweep them aside as a mere bag of burglar's tools for effecting felonious entry to the British political pantheon."
Stanley Weintraub, in his biography of Disraeli, points out that his subject did much to advance Britain towards the 20th century, carrying one of the two great Reform Acts of the 19th despite the opposition of his Liberal rival, Gladstone. He helped preserve constitutional monarchy by drawing the Queen out of mourning into a new symbolic national role and created the climate for what became 'Tory democracy'. He articulated an imperial role for Britain that would last into World War II and brought an intermittently self-isolated Britain into the concert of Europe.
Frances Walsh comments on Disraeli's multifaceted public life:
Historian Llewellyn Woodward has evaluated Disraeli:
Historical writers have often played Disraeli and Gladstone against each other as great rivals. Roland Quinault, however, cautions not to exaggerate the confrontation:
Role of his Jewishness.
By 1882, 46,000 Jews lived in England, and by 1890, Jewish emancipation was complete. Since 1858, Parliament has never been without practicing Jewish members. The first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, Sir David Salomons, was elected in 1855, followed by the 1858 emancipation of the Jews. On 26 July 1858, Lionel de Rothschild was allowed to sit in the House of Commons when the hitherto specifically Christian oath of office was changed. Disraeli, a baptised Christian of Jewish parentage, was already an MP, as the mandated oath of office presented no barrier to him. In 1884 Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, became the first Jewish member of the British House of Lords; Disraeli was already a member.
As a leader of the Conservative Party, which had ties to the landed aristocracy, Disraeli used his Jewish ancestry to claim an aristocratic heritage of his own. His biographer Jonathan Parry argues:
Todd Endelman points out that "The link between Jews and old clothes was so fixed in the popular imagination that Victorian political cartoonists regularly drew Benjamin Disraeli as an old clothes man in order to stress his Jewishness." He adds, "Before the 1990s...few biographers of Disraeli or historians of Victorian politics acknowledged the prominence of the antisemitism that accompanied his climb up the greasy pole or its role in shaping his own singular sense of Jewishness."
According to Michael Ragussis:
Popular culture.
Historian Michael Diamond asserts that for British music hall patrons in the 1880s and 1890s, "xenophobia and pride in empire" were reflected in the halls' most popular political heroes: all were Conservatives and Disraeli stood out above all, even decades after his death, while Gladstone was used as a villain. Film historian Roy Armes has argued that historical films helped maintain the political status quo in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s by imposing an establishment viewpoint that emphasized the greatness of monarchy, empire, and tradition. The films created "a facsimile world where existing values were invariably validated by events in the film and where all discord could be turned into harmony by an acceptance of the status quo".
Steven Fielding has argued that Disraeli was an especially popular film hero: "historical dramas favoured Disraeli over Gladstone and, more substantively, promulgated an essentially deferential view of democratic leadership." Stage and screen actor George Arliss was known for his portrayals of Disraeli, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for 1929's "Disraeli". Fielding says Arliss "personified the kind of paternalistic, kindly, homely statesmanship that appealed to a significant proportion of the cinema audience ... Even workers attending Labour party meetings deferred to leaders with an elevated social background who showed they cared."
John Gielgud portrayed Disraeli in 1941, in Thorold Dickinson's morale-boosting film "The Prime Minister", which followed the politician from the age of 30 to that of 70.
Alec Guinness portrayed him in "The Mudlark" (1950).
Ian McShane starred in the four-part 1978 ATV miniseries "", written by David Butler. Presented in the U.S. on PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre" in 1980, it was nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series.
Richard Pasco played Disraeli in the ITV series "Number 10" in 1983.
In the 1997 film "Mrs Brown", Disraeli was played by Antony Sher.
Notes and references.
Notes
References
|
3876
|
28481209
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3876
|
Binomial distribution
|
</math>
| kurtosis = formula_1
| entropy = formula_2 in shannons. For nats, use the natural log in the log.
| mgf = formula_3
| char = formula_4
| pgf = formula_5
| fisher = formula_6(for fixed formula_7)
In probability theory and statistics, the binomial distribution with parameters and is the discrete probability distribution of the number of successes in a sequence of independent experiments, each asking a yes–no question, and each with its own Boolean-valued outcome: "success" (with probability ) or "failure" (with probability ). 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., , the binomial distribution is a Bernoulli distribution. The binomial distribution is the basis for the binomial test of statistical significance.
The binomial distribution is frequently used to model the number of successes in a sample of size drawn with replacement from a population of size . 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 much larger than , the binomial distribution remains a good approximation, and is widely used.
Definitions.
Probability mass function.
If the random variable follows the binomial distribution with parameters and , we write . The probability of getting exactly successes in independent Bernoulli trials (with the same rate ) is given by the probability mass function:
formula_8
for , where
formula_9
is the binomial coefficient. The formula can be understood as follows: is the probability of obtaining the sequence of independent Bernoulli trials in which trials are "successes" and the remaining trials result in "failure". Since the trials are independent with probabilities remaining constant between them, any sequence of trials with successes (and failures) has the same probability of being achieved (regardless of positions of successes within the sequence). There are formula_10 such sequences, since the binomial coefficient formula_10 counts the number of ways to choose the positions of the successes among the trials. The binomial distribution is concerned with the probability of obtaining "any" of these sequences, meaning the probability of obtaining one of them () must be added formula_10 times, hence formula_13.
In creating reference tables for binomial distribution probability, usually, the table is filled in up to values. This is because for , the probability can be calculated by its complement as
formula_14
Looking at the expression as a function of , there is a value that maximizes it. This value can be found by calculating
formula_15
and comparing it to 1. There is always an integer that satisfies
formula_16
is monotone increasing for and monotone decreasing for , with the exception of the case where is an integer. In this case, there are two values for which is maximal: and . 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.
Equivalently, . Taking the floor function, we obtain .
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
formula_17
Cumulative distribution function.
The cumulative distribution function can be expressed as:
formula_18
where formula_19 is the "floor" under , i.e. the greatest integer less than or equal to .
It can also be represented in terms of the regularized incomplete beta function, as follows:
formula_20
which is equivalent to the cumulative distribution functions of the beta distribution and of the -distribution:
formula_21
formula_22
Some closed-form bounds for the cumulative distribution function are given below.
Properties.
Expected value and variance.
If , that is, is a binomially distributed random variable, being the total number of experiments and "p" the probability of each experiment yielding a successful result, then the expected value of is:
formula_23
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 formula_24 are identical (and independent) Bernoulli random variables with parameter , then and
formula_25
The variance is:
formula_26
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 formula_27, are given by
formula_28
The non-central moments satisfy
formula_29
and in general
formula_30
where formula_31 is the formula_32th falling power of formula_7.
A simple bound
follows by bounding the Binomial moments via the higher Poisson moments:
formula_34
This shows that if formula_35, then formula_36 is at most a constant factor away from formula_37
Mode.
Usually the mode of a binomial distribution is equal to formula_38, where formula_39 is the floor function. However, when is an integer and is neither 0 nor 1, then the distribution has two modes: and . When is equal to 0 or 1, the mode will be 0 and correspondingly. These cases can be summarized as follows:
formula_40
Proof: Let
formula_41
For formula_42 only formula_43 has a nonzero value with formula_44. For formula_45 we find formula_46 and formula_47 for formula_48. This proves that the mode is 0 for formula_42 and formula_7 for formula_45.
Let formula_52. We find
formula_53.
From this follows
formula_54
So when formula_55 is an integer, then formula_55 and formula_57 is a mode. In the case that formula_58, then only formula_59 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:
which implies the simpler but looser bound
formula_62
For and for even , it is possible to make the denominator constant:
formula_63
Statistical inference.
Estimation of parameters.
When is known, the parameter can be estimated using the proportion of successes:
formula_64
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.: ). It is also consistent both in probability and in MSE. This statistic is asymptotically normal thanks to the central limit theorem, because it is the same as taking the mean over Bernoulli samples. It has a variance of formula_65, a property which is used in various ways, such as in Wald's confidence intervals.
A closed form Bayes estimator for also exists when using the Beta distribution as a conjugate prior distribution. When using a general formula_66 as a prior, the posterior mean estimator is:
formula_67
The Bayes estimator is asymptotically efficient and as the sample size approaches infinity (), it approaches the MLE solution. The Bayes estimator is biased (how much depends on the priors), admissible and consistent in probability. Using the Bayesian estimator with the Beta distribution can be used with Thompson sampling.
For the special case of using the standard uniform distribution as a non-informative prior, formula_68, the posterior mean estimator becomes:
formula_69
(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 relying on Jeffreys prior, the prior is formula_70, which leads to the estimator:
formula_71
When estimating with very rare events and a small (e.g.: if ), then using the standard estimator leads to formula_72 which sometimes is unrealistic and undesirable. In such cases there are various alternative estimators. One way is to use the Bayes estimator formula_73, leading to:
formula_74
Another method is to use the upper bound of the confidence interval obtained using the rule of three:
formula_75
Confidence intervals for the parameter p.
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:
formula_83
Wald method.
A continuity correction of may be added.
formula_84
Agresti–Coull method.
Here the estimate of is modified to
formula_85
This method works well for and . See here for formula_86. For use the Wilson (score) method below.
formula_87
Wilson (score) method.
The notation in the formula below differs from the previous formulas in two respects:
formula_93
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 and are independent binomial variables with the same probability , then is again a binomial variable; its distribution is :
formula_94
A Binomial distributed random variable can be considered as the sum of Bernoulli distributed random variables. So the sum of two Binomial distributed random variables and is equivalent to the sum of Bernoulli distributed random variables, which means . This can also be proven directly using the addition rule.
However, if and do not have the same probability , 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 independent non-identical Bernoulli trials .
Ratio of two binomial distributions.
This result was first derived by Katz and coauthors in 1978.
Let and be independent. Let .
Then log("T") is approximately normally distributed with mean log("p"1/"p"2) and variance .
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 formula_95 and formula_96, by the law of total probability,
formula_97
Since formula_98 the equation above can be expressed as
formula_99
Factoring formula_100 and pulling all the terms that don't depend on formula_101 out of the sum now yields
formula_102
After substituting formula_103 in the expression above, we get
formula_104
Notice that the sum (in the parentheses) above equals formula_105 by the binomial theorem. Substituting this in finally yields
formula_106
and thus formula_107 as desired.
Bernoulli distribution.
The Bernoulli distribution is a special case of the binomial distribution, where . Symbolically, has the same meaning as . Conversely, any binomial distribution, , is the distribution of the sum of independent Bernoulli trials, , each with the same probability .
Normal approximation.
If is large enough, then the skew of the distribution is not too great. In this case a reasonable approximation to is given by the normal distribution
formula_108
and this basic approximation can be improved in a simple way by using a suitable continuity correction.
The basic approximation generally improves as increases (at least 20) and is better when is not near to 0 or 1. Various rules of thumb may be used to decide whether is large enough, and is far enough from the extremes of zero or one:
This can be made precise using the Berry–Esseen theorem.
This 3-standard-deviation rule is equivalent to the following conditions, which also imply the first rule above.
formula_111
The rule formula_112 is totally equivalent to request that
formula_113
Moving terms around yields:
formula_114
Since formula_115 and formula_116, to obtain the desired conditions:
formula_117
Notice that these conditions automatically imply that formula_118. On the other hand, apply again the square root and divide by 3,
formula_119
Subtracting the second set of inequalities from the first one yields:
formula_120
and so, the desired first rule is satisfied,
formula_121
Assume that both values formula_122 and formula_123 are greater than 9. Since formula_124, we easily have that
formula_125
We only have to divide now by the respective factors formula_126 and formula_127, to deduce the alternative form of the 3-standard-deviation rule:
formula_117
The following is an example of applying a continuity correction. Suppose one wishes to calculate for a binomial random variable . If has a distribution given by the normal approximation, then is approximated by . 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 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 is a sum of independent, identically distributed Bernoulli variables with parameter . This fact is the basis of a hypothesis test, a "proportion z-test", for the value of using , the sample proportion and estimator of , in a common test statistic.
For example, suppose one randomly samples 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
formula_129
Poisson approximation.
The binomial distribution converges towards the Poisson distribution as the number of trials goes to infinity while the product converges to a finite limit. Therefore, the Poisson distribution with parameter can be used as an approximation to of the binomial distribution if is sufficiently large and is sufficiently small. According to rules of thumb, this approximation is good if and such that , or if and such that , or if and .
Concerning the accuracy of Poisson approximation, see Novak, ch. 4, and references therein.
approaches the normal distribution with expected value 0 and variance 1. This result is sometimes loosely stated by saying that the distribution of 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 :
formula_131
Beta distributions also provide a family of prior probability distributions for binomial distributions in Bayesian inference:
formula_132
Given a uniform prior, the posterior distribution for the probability of success given independent events with observed successes is a beta distribution.
Computational methods.
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 where is the probability of success and and are positive integers. Blaise Pascal had earlier considered the case where , tabulating the corresponding binomial coefficients in what is now recognized as Pascal's triangle.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.