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4513	44967271	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4513	Banshee	A banshee ( ; Modern Irish , from , "woman of the fairy mound" or "fairy woman") is a female spirit in Irish folklore who heralds the death of a family member, usually by screaming, wailing, shrieking, or keening. Her name is connected to the mythologically important tumuli or "mounds" that dot the Irish countryside, which are known as (singular ) in Old Irish. Description. Sometimes she has long streaming hair, which she may be seen combing, with some legends specifying she can only keen while combing her hair. She wears a grey cloak over a green dress, and her eyes are red from continual weeping. She may be dressed in white with red hair and a ghastly complexion, according to a firsthand account by Ann, Lady Fanshawe in her "Memoirs". Lady Wilde in her books provides others: In John O'Brien's Irish-English dictionary, the entry for Síth-Bhróg states:"hence "bean-síghe", plural "mná-síghe", she-fairies or women-fairies, credulously supposed by the common people to be so affected to certain families that they are heard to sing mournful lamentations about their houses by night, whenever any of the family labours under a sickness which is to end by death, but no families which are not of an ancient & noble Stock, are believed to be honoured with this fairy privilege". Keening. In Ireland and parts of Scotland, a traditional part of mourning is the keening woman (), who wails a lament —in ('weeping'), pronounced in the Irish dialects of Munster and southern County Galway, in Connacht (except south Galway) and (particularly west) Ulster, and in Ulster, particularly in the traditional dialects of north and east Ulster, including County Louth. This keening woman may in some cases be a professional, and the best keeners would be in high demand. Irish legend speaks of a lament being sung by a fairy woman, or banshee. She would sing it when a family member died or was about to die, even if the person had died far away and news of their death had not yet come. In those cases, her wailing would be the first warning the household had of the death. The banshee is also a predictor of death. If someone is about to enter a situation where it is unlikely they will come out alive she will warn people by screaming or wailing, giving rise to a banshee also being known as a wailing woman. The banshee was also associated with the death coach, being said to either summon it with her keening or to travel in tandem with it. When several banshees appear at once, it indicates the death of someone great or holy. The tales sometimes recounted that the woman, though called a fairy, was a ghost, often of a specific murdered woman, or a mother who died in childbirth. In some parts of Leinster, she is referred to as the ('keening woman') whose wail can be so piercing that it shatters glass. In Scottish folklore, a similar creature is known as the or ('little washerwoman') or ('little washer at the ford') and is seen washing the bloodstained clothes or armour of those who are about to die. In Welsh folklore, a similar creature is known as the cyhyraeth. Accounts reach as far back as 1380 to the publication of the "Cathreim Thoirdhealbhaigh" ("Triumphs of Torlough") by Sean mac Craith. Mentions of banshees can also be found in Norman literature of that time. Associated families. Some sources suggest that the banshee laments only the descendants of the "pure Milesian stock" of Ireland, with the original belief appearing to associate the folklore with a number of ancient Irish families. According to this tradition, a banshee would not lament or visit someone of Saxon or Norman descent or who came to Ireland later. Most, but not all, surnames associated with banshees have the "Ó" or "Mc/Mac" prefix – that is, surnames of Goidelic origin, indicating a family native to the Insular Celtic lands rather than those of the Norse, Anglo-Saxon, or Norman. There are some exceptions to this lore, including that a banshee may lament a person who had been "gifted with music and song". For example, there are accounts of the Geraldines hearing a banshee – as they had reputedly become "more Irish than the Irish themselves" – and that the Bunworth Banshee, associated with the Rev. Charles Bunworth (a name of Anglo-Saxon origin), heralded the death of an Irish person who had been a patron to musicians. According to tradition, some families had their own banshee, with the Ua Briain banshee, named Aibell, being the ruler of 25 other banshees who would always be at her attendance.
4514	27823944	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4514	Genetically modified maize	Genetically modified maize (corn) is a genetically modified crop. Specific maize strains have been genetically engineered to express agriculturally-desirable traits, including resistance to pests and to herbicides. Maize strains with both traits are now in use in multiple countries. GM maize has also caused controversy with respect to possible health effects, impact on other insects and impact on other plants via gene flow. One strain, called Starlink, was approved only for animal feed in the US but was found in food, leading to a series of recalls starting in 2000. Marketed products. Herbicide-resistant maize. Corn varieties resistant to glyphosate herbicides were first commercialized in 1996 by Monsanto, and are known as "Roundup Ready Corn". They tolerate the use of Roundup. Bayer CropScience developed "Liberty Link Corn" that is resistant to glufosinate. Pioneer Hi-Bred has developed and markets corn hybrids with tolerance to imidazoline herbicides under the trademark "Clearfield" – though in these hybrids, the herbicide-tolerance trait was bred using tissue culture selection and the chemical mutagen ethyl methanesulfonate, not genetic engineering. Consequently, the regulatory framework governing the approval of transgenic crops does not apply for Clearfield. As of 2011, herbicide-resistant GM corn was grown in 14 countries. By 2012, 26 varieties of herbicide-resistant GM maize were authorised for import into the European Union, but such imports remain controversial. Cultivation of herbicide-resistant corn in the EU provides substantial farm-level benefits. Insect-resistant corn. Bt maize/corn. / is a variant of maize that has been genetically altered to express one or more proteins from the bacterium "Bacillus thuringiensis" including Delta endotoxins. The protein is poisonous to certain insect pests. Spores of the bacillus are widely used in organic gardening, although GM corn is not considered organic. The European corn borer causes about a billion dollars in damage to corn crops each year. In recent years, traits have been added to ward off corn ear worms and root worms, the latter of which annually causes about a billion dollars in damages. The Bt protein is expressed throughout the plant. When a vulnerable insect eats the Bt-containing plant, the protein is activated in its gut, which is alkaline. In the alkaline environment, the protein partially unfolds and is cut by other proteins, forming a toxin that paralyzes the insect's digestive system and forms holes in the gut wall. The insect stops eating within a few hours and eventually starves. In 1996, the first GM maize producing a Bt Cry protein was approved, which killed the European corn borer and related species; subsequent Bt genes were introduced that killed corn rootworm larvae. The Philippine Government has promoted Bt corn, hoping for insect resistance and higher yields. Approved Bt genes include single and stacked (event names bracketed) configurations of: Cry1A.105 (MON89034), CryIAb (MON810), CryIF (1507), Cry2Ab (MON89034), Cry3Bb1 (MON863 and MON88017), Cry34Ab1 (59122), Cry35Ab1 (59122), mCry3A (MIR604), and Vip3A (MIR162), in both corn and cotton. Corn genetically modified to produce VIP was first approved in the US in 2010. A 2018 study found that Bt-corn protected nearby fields of non-Bt corn and nearby vegetable crops, reducing the use of pesticides on those crops. Data from 1976 to 1996 (before Bt corn was widespread) was compared to data after it was adopted (1996–2016). They examined levels of the European corn borer and corn earworm. Their larvae eat a variety of crops, including peppers and green beans. Between 1992 and 2016, the amount of insecticide applied to New Jersey pepper fields decreased by 85 percent. Another factor was the introduction of more effective pesticides that were applied less often. Sweet Corn. GM sweet corn varieties include "Attribute", the brand name for insect-resistant sweet corn developed by Syngenta and "Performance Series" insect-resistant sweet corn developed by Monsanto. Cuba. While Cuba's agriculture is largely focused on organic production, as of 2010, the country had developed a variety of genetically modified corn that is resistant to the palomilla moth. Drought-resistant maize. In 2013 Monsanto launched the first transgenic drought tolerance trait in a line of corn hybrids called DroughtGard. The MON 87460 trait is provided by the insertion of the cspB gene from the soil microbe "Bacillus subtilis"; it was approved by the USDA in 2011 and by China in 2013. Health Safety. In regular corn crops, insects promote fungal colonization by creating "wounds," or holes, in corn kernels. These wounds are favored by fungal spores for germination, which subsequently leads to mycotoxin accumulation in the crop that can be carcinogenic and toxic to humans and other animals. This can prove to be especially devastating in developing countries with drastic climate patterns such as high temperatures, which favor the development of toxic fungi. In addition, higher mycotoxin levels leads to market rejection or reduced market prices for the grain. GM corn crops encounter fewer insect attacks, and thus, have lower concentrations of mycotoxins. Fewer insect attacks also keep corn ears from being damaged, which increases overall yields. Products in development. In 2007, South African researchers announced the production of transgenic maize resistant to maize streak virus (MSV), although it has not been released as a product. While breeding cultivars for resistance to MSV isn't done in the public, the private sector, international research centers, and national programmes have done all of the breeding. As of 2014, there have been a few MSV-tolerant cultivars released in Africa. A private company "Seedco" has released 5 MSV cultivars. Research has been done on adding a single "E. coli" gene to maize to enable it to be grown with an essential amino acid (methionine). Refuges. US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations require farmers who plant Bt corn to plant non-Bt corn nearby (called a refuge), with the logic that pests will infest the non-Bt corn and thus will not evolve a resistance to the Bt toxin. Typically, 20% of corn in a grower's fields must be refuge; refuge must be at least 0.5 miles from Bt corn for lepidopteran pests, and refuge for corn rootworm must at least be adjacent to a Bt field. EPA regulations also require seed companies to train farmers how to maintain refuges, to collect data on the refuges and to report that data to the EPA. A study of these reports found that from 2003 to 2005 farmer compliance with keeping refuges was above 90%, but that by 2008 approximately 25% of Bt corn farmers did not keep refuges properly, raising concerns that resistance would develop. Unmodified crops received most of the economic benefits of Bt corn in the US in 1996–2007, because of the overall reduction of pest populations. This reduction came because females laid eggs on modified and unmodified strains alike, but pest organisms that develop on the modified strain are eliminated. Seed bags containing both Bt and refuge seed have been approved by the EPA in the United States. These seed mixtures were marketed as "Refuge in a Bag" (RIB) to increase farmer compliance with refuge requirements and reduce additional work needed at planting from having separate Bt and refuge seed bags on hand. The EPA approved a lower percentage of refuge seed in these seed mixtures ranging from 5 to 10%. This strategy is likely to reduce the likelihood of Bt-resistance occurring for corn rootworm, but may increase the risk of resistance for lepidopteran pests, such as European corn borer. Increased concerns for resistance with seed mixtures include partially resistant larvae on a Bt plant being able to move to a susceptible plant to survive or cross pollination of refuge pollen on to Bt plants that can lower the amount of Bt expressed in kernels for ear feeding insects. Resistance. Resistant strains of the European corn borer have developed in areas with defective or absent refuge management. In 2012, a Florida field trial demonstrated that army worms were resistant to Bt maize produced by Dupont-Dow; armyworm resistance was first discovered in Puerto Rico in 2006, prompting Dow and DuPont to voluntarily stop selling the product on the island. Regulation. Regulation of GM crops varies between countries, with some of the most-marked differences occurring between the US and Europe. Regulation varies in a given country depending on intended uses. Controversy. There is a scientific consensus that currently available food derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food, but that each GM food needs to be tested on a case-by-case basis before introduction. Nonetheless, members of the public are much less likely than scientists to perceive GM foods as safe. The legal and regulatory status of GM foods varies by country, with some nations banning or restricting them, and others permitting them with widely differing degrees of regulation. The scientific rigor of the studies regarding human health has been disputed due to alleged lack of independence and due to conflicts of interest involving governing bodies and some of those who perform and evaluate the studies. However, no reports of ill effects from GM food have been documented in the human population. GM crops provide a number of ecological benefits, but there are also concerns for their overuse, stalled research outside of the Bt seed industry, proper management and issues with Bt resistance arising from their misuse. Critics have objected to GM crops on ecological, economic and health grounds. The economic issues derive from those organisms that are subject to intellectual property law, mostly patents. The first generation of GM crops lose patent protection beginning in 2015. Monsanto has claimed it will not pursue farmers who retain seeds of off-patent varieties. These controversies have led to litigation, international trade disputes, protests and to restrictive legislation in most countries. Introduction of Bt maize led to significant reduction of mycotoxin-related poisoning and cancer rates, as they were significantly less prone to contain mycotoxins (29%), fumonisins (31%) and thricotecens (37%), all of which are toxic and carcinogenic. Effects on nontarget insects. Critics claim that Bt proteins could target predatory and other beneficial or harmless insects as well as the targeted pest. These proteins have been used as organic sprays for insect control in France since 1938 and the USA since 1958 with no ill effects on the environment reported. While "cyt" proteins are toxic towards the insect order Diptera (flies), certain "cry" proteins selectively target lepidopterans (moths and butterflies), while other "cyt" selectively target Coleoptera. As a toxic mechanism, "cry" proteins bind to specific receptors on the membranes of mid-gut (epithelial) cells, resulting in rupture of those cells. Any organism that lacks the appropriate gut receptors cannot be affected by the "cry" protein, and therefore Bt. Regulatory agencies assess the potential for the transgenic plant to impact nontarget organisms before approving commercial release. A 1999 study found that in a lab environment, pollen from Bt maize dusted onto milkweed could harm the monarch butterfly. Several groups later studied the phenomenon in both the field and the laboratory, resulting in a risk assessment that concluded that any risk posed by the corn to butterfly populations under real-world conditions was negligible. A 2002 review of the scientific literature concluded that "the commercial large-scale cultivation of current Bt–maize hybrids did not pose a significant risk to the monarch population". A 2007 review found that "nontarget invertebrates are generally more abundant in Bt cotton and Bt maize fields than in nontransgenic fields managed with insecticides. However, in comparison with insecticide-free control fields, certain nontarget taxa are less abundant in Bt fields." Gene flow. Gene flow is the transfer of genes and/or alleles from one species to another. Concerns focus on the interaction between GM and other maize varieties in Mexico, and of gene flow into refuges. In 2009 the government of Mexico created a regulatory pathway for genetically modified maize, but because Mexico is the center of diversity for maize, gene flow could affect a large fraction of the world's maize strains. A 2001 report in "Nature" presented evidence that Bt maize was cross-breeding with unmodified maize in Mexico. The data in this paper was later described as originating from an artifact. "Nature" later stated, "the evidence available is not sufficient to justify the publication of the original paper". A 2005 large-scale study failed to find any evidence of contamination in Oaxaca. However, other authors also found evidence of cross-breeding between natural maize and transgenic maize. A 2004 study found Bt protein in kernels of refuge corn. In 2017, a large-scale study found "pervasive presence of transgenes and glyphosate in maize-derived food in Mexico" Food. The French High Council of Biotechnologies Scientific Committee reviewed the 2009 Vendômois "et al." study and concluded that it "presents no admissible scientific element likely to ascribe any haematological, hepatic or renal toxicity to the three re-analysed GMOs." However, the French government applies the precautionary principle with respect to GMOs. A review by Food Standards Australia New Zealand and others of the same study concluded that the results were due to chance alone. A 2011 Canadian study looked at the presence of CryAb1 protein (BT toxin) in non-pregnant women, pregnant women and fetal blood. All groups had detectable levels of the protein, including 93% of pregnant women and 80% of fetuses at concentrations of 0.19 ± 0.30 and 0.04 ± 0.04 mean ± SD ng/ml, respectively. The paper did not discuss safety implications or find any health problems. FSANZ agency published a comment pointing out a number of inconsistencies in the paper, most notably that it "does not provide any evidence that GM foods are the source of the protein". In January 2013, the European Food Safety Authority released all data submitted by Monsanto in relation to the 2003 authorisation of maize genetically modified for glyphosate tolerance. Starlink corn recalls. StarLink contains Cry9C, which had not previously been used in a GM crop. Starlink's creator, Plant Genetic Systems, had applied to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to market Starlink for use in animal feed and in human food. However, because the Cry9C protein lasts longer in the digestive system than other Bt proteins, the EPA had concerns about its allergenicity, and PGS did not provide sufficient data to prove that Cry9C was not allergenic. As a result, PGS split its application into separate permits for use in food and use in animal feed. Starlink was approved by the EPA for use in animal feed only in May 1998. StarLink corn was subsequently found in food destined for consumption by humans in the US, Japan, and South Korea. This corn became the subject of the widely publicized Starlink corn recall, which started when Taco Bell-branded taco shells sold in supermarkets were found to contain the corn. Sales of StarLink seed were discontinued. The registration for Starlink varieties was voluntarily withdrawn by Aventis in October 2000. Pioneer had been bought by AgrEvo which then became Aventis CropScience at the time of the incident, which was later bought by Bayer. Fifty-one people reported adverse effects to the FDA; US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which determined that 28 of them were possibly related to Starlink. However, the CDC studied the blood of these 28 individuals and concluded there was no evidence of hypersensitivity to the Starlink Bt protein. A subsequent review of these tests by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act Scientific Advisory Panel points out that while "the negative results decrease the probability that the Cry9C protein is the cause of allergic symptoms in the individuals examined ... in the absence of a positive control and questions regarding the sensitivity and specificity of the assay, it is not possible to assign a negative predictive value to this." The US corn supply has been monitored for the presence of the Starlink Bt proteins since 2001. In 2005, aid sent by the UN and the US to Central American nations also contained some StarLink corn. The nations involved, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala refused to accept the aid. Corporate espionage. On 19 December 2013 six Chinese citizens were indicted in Iowa on charges of plotting to steal genetically modified seeds worth tens of millions of dollars from Monsanto and DuPont. Mo Hailong, director of international business at the Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group Co., part of the Beijing-based DBN Group, was accused of stealing trade secrets after he was found digging in an Iowa cornfield.
4516	38205273	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4516	Body substance isolation	Body substance isolation is a practice of isolating all body substances (blood, urine, feces, tears, etc.) of individuals undergoing medical treatment, particularly emergency medical treatment of those who might be infected with illnesses such as HIV, or hepatitis so as to reduce as much as possible the chances of transmitting these illnesses. BSI is similar in nature to universal precautions, but goes further in isolating workers from pathogens, including substances now known to carry HIV. Place of body substance isolation practice in history. Practice of Universal precautions was introduced in 1985–88. In 1987, the practice of Universal precautions was adjusted by a set of rules known as body substance isolation. In 1996, both practices were replaced by the latest approach known as standard precautions (health care). Nowadays and in isolation, practice of body substance isolation has just historical significance. Body substance isolation went further than universal precautions in isolating workers from pathogens, including substances now currently known to carry HIV. These pathogens fall into two broad categories, bloodborne (carried in the body fluids) and airborne. The practice of BSI was common in Pre-Hospital care and emergency medical services due to the often unknown nature of the patient and his/her disease or medical conditions. It was a part of the National Standards Curriculum for Prehospital Providers and Firefighters.Types of body substance isolation included: It was postulated that BSI precautions should be practiced in environment where treaters were exposed to bodily fluids, such as: Such infection control techniques that were recommended following the AIDS outbreak in the 1980s. Every patient was treated as if infected and therefore precautions were taken to minimize risk. Other conditions which called for minimizing risks with BSI: or any combination of the above.
4517	45203278	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4517	Boudica	Boudica or Boudicca (, from Brythonic * 'victory, win' + * 'having' suffix, i.e. 'Victorious Woman', known in Latin chronicles as Boadicea or Boudicea, and in Welsh as , ) was a queen of the ancient British Iceni tribe, who led a failed uprising against the conquering forces of the Roman Empire in AD 60 or 61. She is considered a British national heroine and a symbol of the struggle for justice and independence. Boudica's husband Prasutagus, with whom she had two daughters, ruled as a nominally independent ally of Rome. He left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and to the Roman emperor in his will. When he died, his will was ignored, and the kingdom was annexed and his property taken. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, Boudica was flogged and her daughters raped. The historian Cassius Dio wrote that previous imperial donations to influential Britons were confiscated and the Roman financier and philosopher Seneca called in the loans he had forced on the reluctant Britons. In 60/61, Boudica led the Iceni and other British tribes in revolt. They destroyed Camulodunum (modern Colchester), earlier the capital of the Trinovantes, but at that time a for discharged Roman soldiers. Upon hearing of the revolt, the Roman governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus hurried from the island of Mona (modern Anglesey) to Londinium, the 20-year-old commercial settlement that was the rebels' next target. Unable to defend the settlement, he abandoned it. Boudica's army defeated a detachment of the Legio IX Hispana, and burnt both Londinium and Verulamium. In all, an estimated 70,000–80,000 Romans and Britons were killed by Boudica's followers. Suetonius, meanwhile, regrouped his forces, possibly in the West Midlands, and despite being heavily outnumbered, he decisively defeated the Britons. Boudica died, by suicide or illness, shortly afterwards. The crisis of 60/61 caused Nero to consider withdrawing all his imperial forces from Britain, but Suetonius's victory over Boudica confirmed Roman control of the province. Interest in these events was revived in the English Renaissance and led to Boudica's fame in the Victorian era and as a cultural symbol in Britain. Historical sources. The Boudican revolt against the Roman Empire is referred to in four works from classical antiquity written by three Roman historians: the "Agricola" () and "Annals" () by Tacitus; a mention of the uprising by Suetonius in his "Lives of the Caesars" (121); and the longest account, a detailed description of the revolt contained within Cassius Dio's history of the Empire (). Tacitus wrote some years after the rebellion, but his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola was an eyewitness to the events, having served in Britain as a tribune under Suetonius Paulinus during this period. Cassius Dio began his history of Rome and its empire about 140 years after Boudica's death. Much is lost and his account of Boudica survives only in the epitome of an 11th-century Byzantine monk, John Xiphilinus. He provides greater and more lurid detail than Tacitus, but in general his details are often fictitious. Both Tacitus and Dio give an account of battle-speeches given by Boudica, though it is thought that her words were never recorded during her life. Although imaginary, these speeches, designed to provide a comparison for readers of the antagonists' demands and approaches to war, and to portray the Romans as morally superior to their enemy, helped create an image of patriotism that turned Boudica into a legendary figure. Background. Boudica was the consort of Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, a tribe who inhabited what is now the English county of Norfolk and parts of the neighbouring counties of Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Lincolnshire. The Iceni produced some of the earliest known British coins. They had revolted against the Romans in 47 when the Roman governor Publius Ostorius Scapula planned to disarm all the peoples of Britain under Roman control. The Romans allowed the kingdom to retain its independence once the uprising was suppressed. Events leading to the revolt. On his death in AD 60/61, Prasutagus made his two daughters as well as the Roman Emperor Nero his heirs. The Romans ignored the will, and the kingdom was absorbed into the province of Britannia. Catus Decianus, procurator of Britain, was sent to secure the Iceni kingdom for Rome. The Romans' next actions were described by Tacitus, who detailed pillaging of the countryside, the ransacking of the king's household, and the brutal treatment of Boudica and her daughters. According to Tacitus, Boudica was flogged and her daughters were raped. These abuses are not mentioned in Dio's account, who instead cites three different causes for the rebellion: the recalling of loans that were given to the Britons by Seneca; Decianus Catus's confiscation of money formerly loaned to the Britons by the Emperor Claudius; and Boudica's own entreaties. The loans were thought by the Iceni to have been repaid by gift exchange. Dio gives Boudica a speech to her people and their allies reminding them that life was much better before the Roman occupation, stressing that wealth cannot be enjoyed under slavery and placing the blame upon herself for not expelling the Romans as they had done when Julius Caesar invaded. The willingness of those seen as barbarians to sacrifice a higher quality of living under the Romans in exchange for their freedom and personal liberty was an important part of what Dio considered to be motivation for the rebellions. Uprising. Attacks on Camulodunum, Londinium and Verulamium. The first target of the rebels was Camulodunum (modern Colchester), a Roman for retired soldiers. A Roman temple had been erected there to Claudius, at great expense to the local population. Combined with brutal treatment of the Britons by the veterans, this had caused resentment towards the Romans. The Iceni and the Trinovantes comprised an army of 120,000 men. Dio claimed that Boudica called upon the British goddess of victory Andraste to aid her army. Once the revolt had begun, the only Roman troops available to provide assistance, aside from the few within the colony, were 200 auxiliaries located in London, who were not equipped to fight Boudica's army. Camulodunum was captured by the rebels; those inhabitants who survived the initial attack took refuge in the Temple of Claudius for two days before they were killed. Quintus Petillius Cerialis, then commanding the Legio IX "Hispana", attempted to relieve Camulodunum, but suffered an overwhelming defeat. The infantry with him were all killed and only the commander and some of his cavalry escaped. After this disaster, Catus Decianus, whose behaviour had provoked the rebellion, fled abroad to Gaul. Suetonius was leading a campaign against the island of Mona, off the coast of North Wales. On hearing the news of the Iceni uprising, he left a garrison on Mona and returned to deal with Boudica. He moved quickly with a force of men through hostile territory to Londinium, which he reached before the arrival of Boudica's army but, outnumbered, he decided to abandon the town to the rebels, who burned it down after torturing and killing everyone who had remained. The rebels also sacked the "municipium" of Verulamium (modern St Albans), north-west of London, though the extent of its destruction is unclear. Dio and Tacitus both reported that around 80,000 people were said to have been killed by the rebels. According to Tacitus, the Britons had no interest in taking the Roman population as prisoners, only in slaughter by "gibbet, fire, or cross". Dio adds that the noblest women were impaled on spikes and had their breasts cut off and sewn to their mouths, "to the accompaniment of sacrifices, banquets, and wanton behaviour" in sacred places, particularly the groves of Andraste. Defeat and death. Suetonius regrouped his forces. He amassed an army of almost 10,000 men at an unidentified location, and took a stand in a defile (a narrow pass) with a wood behind. The Romans used the terrain to their advantage, launching javelins at the Britons before advancing in a wedge-shaped formation and deploying cavalry. The Roman army was heavily outnumbered — according to Dio the rebels numbered 230,000 — but Boudica's army was crushed, and according to Tacitus, neither the women nor the animals were spared. Tacitus states that Boudica poisoned herself; Dio says she fell sick and died, after which she was given a lavish burial. It has been argued that these accounts are not mutually exclusive. Name. "Boudica" may have been an honorific title, in which case the name by which she was known during most of her life is unknown. The English linguist and translator Kenneth Jackson concluded that the name "Boudica"—based on later developments in Welsh () and Irish ()—derives from the Proto-Celtic feminine adjective "boudīkā" 'victorious', which in turn is derived from the Celtic word "boudā" 'victory', and that the correct spelling of the name in Common Brittonic (the British Celtic language) is "", pronounced . Variations on the historically correct "Boudica" include "Boudicca", "Bonduca", "Boadicea", and "Buduica". The Gaulish version of her name is attested in inscriptions as "Boudiga" in Bordeaux, "Boudica" in Lusitania, and "Bodicca" in Algeria. Boudica's name was spelt incorrectly by Dio, who used "Buduica". Her name was also misspelled by Tacitus, who added a second 'c.' After the misspelling was copied by a medieval scribe, further variations began to appear. Along with the second 'c' becoming an 'e,' an 'a' appeared in place of the 'u', which produced the medieval (and most common) version of the name, "Boadicea". The true spelling was totally obscured when "Boadicea" first appeared in around the 17th century. William Cowper used this spelling in his poem "Boadicea, an Ode" (1782), which readapted Boudica's story to fit the context of Britain's rising territorial and political ambitions. Early literature. One of the earliest possible mentions of Boudica (excluding Tacitus' and Dio's accounts) was the 6th-century work by the British monk Gildas. In it, he demonstrates his knowledge of a female leader whom he describes as a "treacherous lioness" who "butchered the governors who had been left to give fuller voice and strength to the endeavours of Roman rule." Both Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" (731) and the 9th-century work "Historia Brittonum" by the Welsh monk Nennius include references to the uprising of 60/61, but do not mention Boudica. No contemporary description of Boudica exists. Dio, writing more than a century after her death, provided a detailed description of the Iceni queen (translated in 1925): "In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of divers colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire." Revival and the modern legend. 16th and 17th century literature. During the Renaissance the works of Tacitus and Cassius Dio became available in England, after which her status changed as it was interpreted by historians, poets and dramatists. Boudica appeared as 'Voadicia' in a history, "Anglica Historia", by the Italian scholar Polydore Vergil, and in the Scottish historian Hector Boece's "The History and Chronicles of Scotland" (1526) she is 'Voada'—the first appearance of Boudica in a British publication. Boudica was called 'Voadicia' in the English historian Raphael Holinshed's "Chronicles", published between 1577 and 1587. A narrative by the Florentine scholar Petruccio Ubaldini in "The Lives of the Noble Ladies of the Kingdom of England and Scotland" (1591) includes two female characters, 'Voadicia' and 'Bunduica', both based on Boudica. From the 1570s to the 1590s, when Elizabeth I's England was at war with Spain, Boudica proved to be a valuable asset for the English. The English poet Edmund Spenser used the story of Boudica in his poem "The Ruines of Time", involving a story about a British heroine he called 'Bunduca'. A variation of this name was used in the Jacobean play "Bonduca" (1612), a tragicomedy that most scholars agree was written by John Fletcher, in which one of the characters was Boudica. A version of that play called "Bonduca, or the British Heroine" was set to music by the English composer Henry Purcell in 1695. One of the choruses, "Britons, Strike Home!", became a popular patriotic song in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries. Depiction during the 18th and 19th centuries. During the late 18th century, Boudica was used to develop ideas of English national identity. Illustrations of Boudica during this period—such as in Edward Barnard's "New, Complete and Authentic History of England" (1790) and the drawing by Thomas Stothard of the queen as a classical heroine—lacked historical accuracy. The illustration of Boudica by Robert Havell in Charles Hamilton Smith's "The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands from the Earliest Periods to the Sixth Century" (1815) was an early attempt to depict her in an historically accurate way. Cowper's 1782 poem "Boadicea: An Ode" was the most notable literary work to champion the resistance of the Britons, fostering an "asexual image of British triumph and heroism." It led Boudica to become a cultural icon and national heroine in Britain. Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem , which was written in 1859 and published in 1864, drew on Cowper's poem. Depicting the Iceni queen as a violent and bloodthirsty warrior, the poem also forecasted the rise of the British Empire. Tennyson's image of Boudica was taken from the engraving produced in 1812 by Stothard. Another work, the poem "Boadicea" (1859) by Francis Barker, contained strongly patriotic and Christian themes. A range of Victorian children's books mentioned Boudica; "Beric the Briton" (1893), a novel by G. A. Henty, with illustrations by William Parkinson, had a text based on the accounts of Tacitus and Dio. "Boadicea and Her Daughters", a statue of the queen in her war chariot, complete with anachronistic scythes on the wheel axles, was executed by the sculptor Thomas Thornycroft. He was encouraged by Prince Albert, who lent his horses for use as models. The statue, Thornycroft's most ambitious work, was produced between 1856 and 1871, cast in 1896, and positioned on the Victoria Embankment next to Westminster Bridge in 1902. 20th century – present. Boudica was once thought to have been buried at a place which lies now between platforms 9 and 10 in King's Cross station in London. There is no evidence for this and it is probably a post-World War II invention. At Colchester Town Hall, a life-sized statue of Boudica stands on the south facade, sculpted by L J Watts in 1902; another depiction of her is in a stained glass window by Clayton and Bell in the council chamber. Boudica was adopted by the suffragettes as one of the symbols of the campaign for women's suffrage. In 1908, a "Boadicea Banner" was carried in several National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies marches. She appears as a character in "A Pageant of Great Women" written by Cicely Hamilton, which opened at the Scala Theatre, London, in November 1909 before a national tour, and she was described in a 1909 pamphlet as "the eternal feminine... the guardian of the hearth, the avenger of its wrongs upon the defacer and the despoiler". A "vocal minority" has claimed Boudica as a Celtic Welsh heroine. A statue of Boudica in the Marble Hall at Cardiff City Hall was among those unveiled by David Lloyd George in 1916, though the choice had gained little support in a public vote. It shows her with her daughters and without warrior trappings. Permanent exhibitions describing the Boudican Revolt are at the Museum of London, Colchester Castle Museum and the Verulamium Museum in St Albans. A long distance footpath called Boudica's Way passes through countryside between Norwich and Diss in Norfolk.
4518	27015025	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4518	Borneo	Borneo () is the third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda Islands, located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and east of Sumatra. The island is crossed by the equator, which divides it roughly in half. The island is politically divided among three states. The sovereign state of Brunei in the north makes up 1% of the territory. Approximately 73% of Borneo is Indonesian territory, and in the north, the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak make up about 26% of the island. The Malaysian federal territory of Labuan is situated on a small island just off the coast of Borneo. Etymology. When the sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer Jorge de Menezes made contact with the indigenous people of Borneo, they referred to their island as "Pulu K'lemantang", which became the name for modern-day Indonesian Borneo. The term "kelamantan" is used in Sarawak to refer to a group of people who consume sago in the northern part of the island. According to Crowfurd, the word "kelamantan" is the name of a type of mango ("Mangifera"), though he adds that the word is fanciful and unpopular. The local mango, called "klemantan", is still widely found in rural Ketapang and surrounding areas of West Kalimantan. Internationally it is known as Borneo, a name derived from European contact with the Brunei kingdom in the 16th century, during the Age of Exploration. On a map from around 1601, Brunei city is referred to as Borneo, and the whole island is also labelled Borneo. The name may derive from the Sanskrit word "" (), meaning either "water" or Varuna, the Hindu god of rain. Another source states that it derives from the Sanskrit word "kalamanthana", meaning "burning weather", possibly to describe the island's hot and humid tropical weather. In the Indianized Malay era the name "Kalamanthana" was derived from the Sanskrit terms "kala" (time or season) and "manthana" (churning, kindling, or creating fire by friction), which possibly describes the hot weather. In 977 Chinese records began to use the term "Bo-ni" to refer to Borneo. In 1225 it was also mentioned by the Chinese official Chau Ju-Kua (趙汝适). The Javanese manuscript "Nagarakretagama", written by Majapahit court poet Mpu Prapanca in 1365, mentions the island as "Nusa Tanjungnagara", which means the "island of the Tanjungpura Kingdom". Geography. Geology. Borneo was formed through Mesozoic accretion of microcontinental fragments, ophiolite terranes and island arc crust onto a Paleozoic continental core. At the beginning of the Cenozoic, Borneo formed a promontory of Sundaland which partly separated from Asian mainland by the proto-South China Sea. The oceanic part of the proto-South China Sea was subducted during the Paleogene period and a large accretionary complex formed along the northwestern of the island of Borneo. In the early Miocene uplift of the accretionary complex occurred as a result of underthrusting of thinned continental crust in northwest. The uplift may have also resulted from shortening due to the counter-clockwise rotation of Borneo between 20 and 10 mega-annum (Ma) as a consequence of Australia–Southeast Asia collision. Large volumes of sediment were shed into basins, which scattered offshore to the west, north and east of Borneo as well into a Neogene basin which is currently exposed in large areas of eastern and southern Sabah. In southeast Sabah, the Miocene to recent island arc terranes of the Sulu Archipelago extend onshore into Borneo with the older volcanic arc was the result of southeast dipping subduction while the younger volcanics are likely resulted from northwest dipping subduction the Celebes Sea. Before sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, Borneo was part of the mainland of Asia, forming, with Java and Sumatra, the upland regions of a peninsula that extended east from present day Indochina. The South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand now submerge the former low-lying areas of the peninsula. Deeper waters separating Borneo from neighbouring Sulawesi prevented a land connection to that island, creating the divide known as Wallace's Line between Asian and Australia-New Guinea biological regions. The island today is surrounded by the South China Sea to the north and northwest, the Sulu Sea to the northeast, the Celebes Sea and the Makassar Strait to the east, and the Java Sea and Karimata Strait to the south. To the west of Borneo are the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. To the south and east are islands of Indonesia: Java and Sulawesi, respectively. To the northeast are the Philippine Islands. With an area of , it is the third-largest island in the world, and is the largest island of Asia (the largest continent). Its highest point is Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia, with an elevation of . The largest river system is the Kapuas in West Kalimantan, with a length of . Other major rivers include the Mahakam in East Kalimantan ( long), the Barito, Kahayan, and Mendawai in South Kalimantan (, , and long respectively), Rajang in Sarawak ( long) and Kinabatangan in Sabah ( long). Borneo has significant cave systems. In Sarawak, the Clearwater Cave has one of the world's longest underground rivers while Deer Cave is home to over three million bats, with guano accumulated to over deep. The Gomantong Caves in Sabah has been dubbed as the "Cockroach Cave" due to the presence of millions of cockroaches inside the cave. The Gunung Mulu National Park in Sarawak and Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat Karst in East Kalimantan which particularly a karst areas contains thousands of smaller caves. Ecology. The Borneo rainforest is estimated to be around 140 million years old, making it one of the oldest rainforests in the world. The current dominant tree group, the dipterocarps, has dominated the Borneo lowland rain forests for millions of years. It is the centre of the evolution and distribution of many endemic species of plants and animals, and the rainforest is one of the few remaining natural habitats for the endangered Bornean orangutan. It is an important refuge for many endemic forest species, including the Borneo elephant, the eastern Sumatran rhinoceros, the Bornean clouded leopard, the Bornean rock frog, the hose's palm civet and the dayak fruit bat. Peat swamp forests occupy the entire coastline of Borneo. The soil of the peat swamp is comparatively infertile, while it is known to be the home of various bird species such as the hook-billed bulbul, helmeted hornbill and rhinoceros hornbill. There are about 15,000 species of flowering plants with 3,000 species of trees (267 species are dipterocarps), 221 species of terrestrial mammals and 420 species of resident birds in Borneo. There are about 440 freshwater fish species in Borneo (about the same as Sumatra and Java combined). The Borneo river shark is known only from the Kinabatangan River. In 2010, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) stated that 123 species have been discovered in Borneo since the "Heart of Borneo" agreement was signed in 2007. The WWF has classified the island into seven distinct ecoregions. Most are lowland regions: According to analysis of data from Global Forest Watch, the Indonesian portion of Borneo lost of tree cover between 2002 and 2019, of which was primary forest, compared with Malaysian Borneo's of tree cover loss and of primary forest cover loss. As of 2020, Indonesian Borneo accounts for 72% of the island's tree cover, Malaysian Borneo 27%, and Brunei 1%. Primary forest in Indonesia accounts for 44% of Borneo's overall tree cover. Conservation issues. The island historically had extensive rainforest cover, but the area was reduced due to heavy logging by the Indonesian and Malaysian wood industry, especially with the large demands of raw materials from industrial countries along with the conversion of forest lands for large-scale agricultural purposes. Half of the annual global tropical timber acquisition comes from Borneo. Palm oil plantations have been widely developed and are rapidly encroaching on the last remnants of primary rainforest. Forest fires since 1997, started by the locals to clear the forests for plantations were exacerbated by an exceptionally dry El Niño season, worsening the annual shrinkage of the rainforest. During these fires, hotspots were visible on satellite images and the resulting haze frequently affected Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. The haze could also reach southern Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines as evidenced on the 2015 Southeast Asian haze. A study in 2018 found that Bornean orangutans declined by 148,500 individuals from 1999 to 2015. Topography. List of highest peaks in Borneo by elevation: River systems. List of rivers in Borneo by length: History. Early history. In November 2018, scientists reported the discovery of the oldest known figurative art painting, over 40,000 (perhaps as old as 52,000) years old, of an unknown animal, in the cave of Lubang Jeriji Saléh on the island of Borneo. It has been proposed, based on house construction styles, linguistic and genetic evidence, that Madagascar may have been first populated from southern Borneo. According to ancient Chinese (977), Indian and Japanese manuscripts, western coastal cities of Borneo had become trading ports by the first millennium AD. In Chinese manuscripts, gold, camphor, tortoise shells, hornbill ivory, rhinoceros horn, crane crest, beeswax, lakawood (a scented heartwood and root wood of a thick liana, "Dalbergia parviflora"), dragon's blood, rattan, edible bird's nests and various spices were described as among the most valuable items from Borneo. The Indians named Borneo "Suvarnabhumi" (the land of gold) and also "Karpuradvipa" (Camphor Island). The Javanese named Borneo "Puradvipa", or Diamond Island. Archaeological findings in the Sarawak river delta reveal that the area was a thriving centre of trade between India and China from the 6th century until about 1300. Stone pillars bearing inscriptions in the Pallava script, found in Kutai along the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan and dating to around the second half of the 4th century, constitute some of the oldest evidence of Hindu influence in Southeast Asia. By the 14th century, Borneo became a vassal state of Majapahit (in present-day Indonesia), later changing its allegiance to the Ming dynasty of China. Pre-Islamic Sulu, then known locally as Lupah Sug, stretched from Palawan and the Sulu archipelago at the Philippines; to Sabah, Eastern, and Northern Kalimantan in Borneo. The Sulu empire rose as a rebellion and reaction against former Majapahit Imperialism against Sulu which Majapahit briefly occupied. The religion of Islam entered the island in the 10th century, following the arrival of Muslim traders who later converted many indigenous peoples in the coastal areas. The Sultanate of Brunei declared independence from Majapahit following the death of the Majapahit emperor in the mid-14th century. During its golden age under Bolkiah from the 15th to the 17th century, the Bruneian sultanate ruled almost the entire coastal area of Borneo (lending its name to the island due to its influence in the region) and several islands in the Philippines. During the 1450s, Shari'ful Hashem Syed Abu Bakr, an Arab born in Johor, arrived in Sulu from Malacca. In 1457, he founded the Sultanate of Sulu; he titled himself as "Paduka Maulana Mahasari Sharif Sultan Hashem Abu Bakr". Following its independence in 1578 from Brunei's influence, Sulu began to expand its thalassocracy to parts of the northern Borneo. Both the sultanates who ruled northern Borneo had traditionally engaged in trade with China by means of the frequently-arriving Chinese junks. Despite the thalassocracy of the sultanates, Borneo's interior region remained free from the rule of any kingdoms. British and Dutch control. After the fall of Malacca in 1511, Portuguese merchants traded regularly with Borneo, and especially with Brunei from 1530. Having visited Brunei's capital, the Portuguese described the place as surrounded by a stone wall. While Borneo was seen as rich, the Portuguese did not make any attempts to conquer it. The Spanish had sailed from Spanish America and conquered the Brunei's provinces in the Philippines and incorporated it into the Mexico-Centered Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Spanish visit to Brunei led to the Castilian War in 1578. The British began to trade with Sambas of southern Borneo in 1609, while the Dutch only began their trade in 1644: to Banjar and Martapura, also in the southern Borneo. The Dutch tried to settle the island of Balambangan, north of Borneo, in the second half of the 18th century, but withdrew by 1797. In 1812, the sultan in southern Borneo ceded his forts to the British East India Company. The British, led by Stamford Raffles, then tried to establish an intervention in Sambas but failed. Although they managed to defeat the sultanate the next year and declared a blockade on all ports in Borneo except Brunei, Banjarmasin and Pontianak, the project was cancelled by the British governor-general Lord Minto in India as it was too expensive. At the beginning of British and Dutch exploration on the island, they described the island of Borneo as full of head hunters, with the indigenous in the interior practising cannibalism, and the waters around the island infested with pirates, especially between the north eastern Borneo and the southern Philippines. The Malay and Sea Dayak pirates preyed on maritime shipping in the waters between Singapore and Hong Kong from their haven in Borneo, along with the attacks by Illanuns of the Moro pirates from the southern Philippines, such as in the Battle off Mukah. The Dutch began to intervene in the southern part of the island upon resuming contact in 1815, posting "residents" to Banjarmasin, Pontianak and Sambas and "assistant-residents" to Landak and Mampawa. The Sultanate of Brunei in 1842 granted large parts of land in Sarawak to the British adventurer James Brooke, as a reward for his help in quelling a local rebellion. Brooke established the Raj of Sarawak and was recognised as its rajah after paying a fee to the sultanate. He established a monarchy, and the Brooke dynasty (through his nephew and great-nephew) ruled Sarawak for 100 years; the leaders were known as the White Rajahs. Brooke also acquired the island of Labuan for Great Britain in 1846 through the Treaty of Labuan with the sultan of Brunei, Omar Ali Saifuddin II on 18 December 1846. The region of northern Borneo came under the administration of North Borneo Chartered Company following the acquisition of territory from the Sultanates of Brunei and Sulu by a German businessman and adventurer named Baron von Overbeck, before it was passed to the British Dent brothers (comprising Alfred Dent and Edward Dent). Further expansion by the British continued into the Borneo interior. This led the 26th sultan of Brunei, Hashim Jalilul Alam Aqamaddin to appeal the British to halt such efforts, and as a result a Treaty of Protection was signed in 1888, rendering Brunei a British protectorate. Before the acquisition by the British, the Americans also managed to establish their temporary presence in northwestern Borneo after acquiring a parcel of land from the Sultanate of Brunei. A company known as American Trading Company of Borneo was formed by Joseph William Torrey, Thomas Bradley Harris and several Chinese investors, establishing a colony named "Ellena" in the Kimanis area. The colony failed and was abandoned, due to denials of financial backing, especially by the US government, and to diseases and riots among the workers. Before Torrey left, he managed to sell the land to the German businessman, Overbeck. Meanwhile, the Germans under William Frederick Schuck were awarded a parcel of land in northeastern Borneo of the Sandakan Bay from the Sultanate of Sulu where he conducted business and exported large quantities of arms, opium, textiles and tobacco to Sulu before the land was also passed to Overbeck by the sultanate. Prior to the recognition of Spanish presence in the Philippine archipelago, a protocol known as the Madrid Protocol of 1885 was signed between the governments of the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain in Madrid to cement Spanish influence and recognise their sovereignty over the Sultanate of Sulu—in return for Spain's relinquishing its claim to the former possessions of the sultanate in northern Borneo. The British administration then established the first railway network in northern Borneo, known as the North Borneo Railway. During this time, the British sponsored a large number of Chinese workers to migrate to northern Borneo to work in European plantation and mines, and the Dutch followed suit to increase their economic production. By 1888, North Borneo, Sarawak and Brunei in northern Borneo had become British protectorate. The area in southern Borneo was made Dutch protectorate in 1891. The Dutch who already claimed the whole Borneo were asked by Britain to delimit their boundaries between the two colonial territories to avoid further conflicts. The British and Dutch governments had signed the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 to exchange trading ports in Malay Peninsula and Sumatra that were under their controls and assert spheres of influence. This resulted in indirectly establishing British- and Dutch-controlled areas in the north (Malay Peninsula) and south (Sumatra and Riau Islands) respectively. In 1895, Marcus Samuel received a concession in the Kutei area of east Borneo, and based on oil seepages in the Mahakam River delta, Mark Abrahams struck oil in February 1897. This was the discovery of the Sanga Sanga Oil Field, a refinery was built in Balikpapan, and discovery of the Samboja Oil Field followed in 1909. In 1901, the Pamusian Oil Field was discovered on Tarakan, and the Bunyu Oil Field in 1929. Royal Dutch Shell discovered the Miri Oil Field in 1910, and the Seria oil field in 1929. World War II. During World War II, Japanese forces gained control and occupied most areas of Borneo from 1941 to 1945. In the first stage of the war, the British saw the Japanese advance to Borneo as motivated by political and territorial ambitions rather than economic factors. The occupation drove many people in the coastal towns to the interior, searching for food and escaping the Japanese. The Chinese residents in Borneo, especially with the Sino-Japanese War in Mainland China mostly resisted the Japanese occupation. Following the formation of resistance movements in northern Borneo such as the Jesselton Revolt, many innocent indigenous and Chinese people were executed by the Japanese for their alleged involvement. In Kalimantan, the Japanese also killed many Malay intellectuals, executing all the Malay sultans of West Kalimantan in the Pontianak incidents, together with Chinese people who were already against the Japanese for suspecting them to be threats. Sultan Muhammad Ibrahim Shafi ud-din II of Sambas was executed in 1944. The sultanate was thereafter suspended and replaced by a Japanese council. The Japanese also set-up "Pusat Tenaga Rakjat" (PUTERA) in the Indonesian archipelago in 1943, although it was abolished the following year when it became too nationalistic. Some of the Indonesian nationalist like Sukarno and Hatta who had returned from Dutch exile began to co-operate with the Japanese. Shortly after his release, Sukarno became president of the Central Advisory Council, an advisory council for south Borneo, Celebes, and Lesser Sunda, set up in February 1945. After the fall of Singapore, the Japanese sent several thousand of British and Australian prisoners of war to camps in Borneo such as Batu Lintang camp. From the Sandakan camp site, only six of some 2,500 prisoners survived after they were forced to march in an event known as the Sandakan Death March. In addition, of the total of 17,488 Javanese labourers brought in by the Japanese during the occupation, only 1,500 survived mainly due to starvation, harsh working conditions and maltreatment. The Dayak and other indigenous people played a role in guerrilla warfare against the occupying forces, particularly in the Kapit Division. They temporarily revived headhunting of Japanese toward the end of the war, with Allied Z Special Unit provided assistance to them. Australia contributed significantly to the liberation of Borneo. The Australian Imperial Force was sent to Borneo to fight off the Japanese. Together with other Allies, the island was completely liberated in 1945. Recent history. In May 1945, officials in Tokyo suggested that whether northern Borneo should be included in the proposed new country of Indonesia should be separately determined based on the desires of its indigenous people and following the disposition of Malaya. Sukarno and Mohammad Yamin meanwhile continuously advocated for a Greater Indonesian republic. Towards the end of the war, Japan decided to give an early independence to a new proposed country of Indonesia on 17 July 1945, with an Independence Committee meeting scheduled for 19 August 1945. However, following the surrender of Japan to the Allied forces, the meeting was shelved. Sukarno and Hatta continued the plan by unilaterally declaring independence, although the Dutch tried to retake their colonial possession in Borneo. The southern part of the island achieved its independence through the Proclamation of Indonesian Independence on 17 August 1945. The southern part saw guerrilla conflicts followed by Dutch blockades to cut supplies for nationalist within the region. While nationalist guerrillas supporting the inclusion of southern Borneo in the new Indonesian republic were active in Ketapang, and to lesser extent in Sambas where they rallied with the red-white flag which became the flag of Indonesia, most of the Chinese residents in southern Borneo expected to be liberated by Chinese Nationalist troops from mainland China and to integrate their districts as an overseas province of China. Meanwhile, Sarawak and Sabah in northern Borneo became separate British crown colonies in 1946. In 1961, Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman of the independent Federation of Malaya desired to unite Malaya, the British colonies of Sarawak, North Borneo, Singapore and the protectorate of Brunei under the proposed Federation of Malaysia. The idea was heavily opposed by the governments in both Indonesia and the Philippines as well from communist sympathisers and nationalists in Borneo. Sukarno, as the president of the new republic, perceiving the British trying to maintain their presence in northern Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, decided to launch a military infiltration, later known as the "confrontation", from 1962 to 1969. As a response to the growing opposition, the British deployed their armed forces to guard their colonies against Indonesian and communist revolts. Australia and New Zealand also participated in these measures. The Philippines opposed the newly proposed federation, claiming the eastern part of North Borneo (today the Malaysian state of Sabah) as part of its territory as a former possession of the Sultanate of Sulu. The Philippine government mostly based their claim on the Sultanate of Sulu's cession agreement with the British North Borneo Company, as by now the sultanate had come under the jurisdiction of the Philippine republican administration, which therefore should inherit the Sulu former territories. The Philippine government also claimed that the heirs of the sultanate had ceded all their territorial rights to the republic. The Sultanate of Brunei at first welcomed the proposal of a new larger federation. Meanwhile, the Brunei People's Party led by A.M. Azahari desired to reunify Brunei, Sarawak and North Borneo into one federation known as the North Borneo Federation (), where the sultan of Brunei would be the head of state for the federation—though Azahari had his own intention to abolish the Brunei monarchy, to make Brunei more democratic, and to integrate the territory and other former British colonies in Borneo into Indonesia, with the support from the latter government. This directly led to the Brunei Revolt, which thwarted Azahari's attempt and forced him to escape to Indonesia. Brunei withdrew from being part of the new Federation of Malaysia due to some disagreements on other issues while political leaders in Sarawak and North Borneo continued to favour inclusion in a larger federation. With the continuous opposition from Indonesia and the Philippines, the Cobbold Commission was established to discover the feeling of the native populations in northern Borneo; it found the people greatly in favour of federation, with various stipulations. The federation was successfully achieved with the inclusion of northern Borneo through the Malaysia Agreement on 16 September 1963. To this day, the area in northern Borneo is still subjected to attacks by Moro pirates since the 18th century and militant from groups such as Abu Sayyaf since 2000 in the frequent cross border attacks. During the administration of Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, Marcos made some attempts to destabilise the state of Sabah, although his plan failed and resulted in the Jabidah massacre and later the insurgency in the southern Philippines. In August 2019, Indonesian president Joko Widodo announced a plan to move the capital of Indonesia from Jakarta to a newly established location in the East Kalimantan province in Borneo. Demographics. The demonym for Borneo is Bornean. Borneo had 23,053,723 inhabitants (in 2020 Censuses), a population density of . Most of the population lives in coastal cities, although the hinterland has small towns and villages along the rivers. Territories by population, size, and timezone. <br> Urbanisation by region. Data based on the projection in the former territories in East Kalimantan Province (prior to the separation of North Kalimantan in 2012) Major ethnicities by region. Based on alphabetical order Administration. The island of Borneo is divided administratively by three countries. Economy. Borneo's economy depends mainly on agriculture, logging and mining, oil and gas, and ecotourism. Brunei's economy is highly dependent on the oil and gas production sector, and the country has become one of the largest oil producers in Southeast Asia. The Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak are both top exporters of timber. Sabah is also known as the agricultural producer of rubber, cacao, and vegetables, and for its fisheries, while Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan export liquefied natural gas (LNG) and petroleum. The Indonesian provinces of Kalimantan are mostly dependent on mining sectors despite also being involved in logging and oil and gas explorations. Human Development Index by territory. HDI is a statistic of combined indicators that takes into account life expectancy, health, education and per-capita income.
4519	35832696	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4519	Ballpoint pen	A ballpoint pen, also known as a biro (British English), ball pen (Bangladeshi, Hong Kong, Indian, Indonesian, Pakistani, Japanese and Philippine English), or dot pen (Nepali English and South Asian English), is a pen that dispenses ink (usually in paste form) over a metal ball at its point, i.e., over a "ball point". The metals commonly used are steel, brass, or tungsten carbide. The design was conceived and developed as a cleaner and more reliable alternative to dip pens and fountain pens, and it is now the world's most-used writing instrument; millions are manufactured and sold daily. It has influenced art and graphic design and spawned an artwork genre. History. Origins. The concept of using a "ball point" within a writing instrument to apply ink to paper has existed since the late 19th century. In these inventions, the ink was placed in a thin tube whose end was blocked by a tiny ball, held so that it could not slip into the tube or fall out of the pen. The first patent for a ballpoint pen was issued on 30 October 1888 to John J. Loud, who was attempting to make a writing instrument that would be able to write "on rough surfaces—such as wood, coarse wrapping paper, and other articles" which fountain pens could not. Loud's pen had a small rotating steel ball held in place by a socket. Although it could be used to mark rough surfaces such as leather, as Loud intended, it proved too coarse for letter-writing. With no commercial viability, its potential went unexploited, and the patent eventually lapsed. The manufacture of economical, reliable ballpoint pens as are known today arose from experimentation, modern chemistry, and the precision manufacturing capabilities of the early 20th century. Patents filed worldwide during early development are testaments to failed attempts at making the pens commercially viable and widely available. Early ballpoints did not deliver the ink evenly; overflow and clogging were among the obstacles faced by early inventors. If the ball socket were too tight or the ink too thick, it would not reach the paper. If the socket were too loose or the ink too thin, the pen would leak, or the ink would smear. Ink reservoirs pressurized by a piston, spring, capillary action, and gravity would all serve as solutions to ink-delivery and flow problems. László Bíró, a Hungarian newspaper editor (later a naturalized Argentine) frustrated by the amount of time that he wasted filling up fountain pens and cleaning up smudged pages, noticed that inks used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge-free. He decided to create a pen using the same type of ink. Bíró enlisted the help of his brother György, a dentist with useful knowledge of chemistry, to develop viscous ink formulae for new ballpoint designs. Bíró's innovation successfully coupled viscous ink with a ball-and-socket mechanism that allowed controlled flow while preventing ink from drying inside the reservoir. Bíró filed for a British patent on 15 June 1938. In 1941, the Bíró brothers and a friend, Juan Jorge Meyne, fled Germany and moved to Argentina, where they formed "Bíró Pens of Argentina" and filed a new patent in 1943. Their pen was sold in Argentina as the "Birome", from the names Bíró and Meyne, which is how ballpoint pens are still known in that country. This new design was licensed by the British engineer Frederick George Miles and manufactured by his company Miles Aircraft, to be used by Royal Air Force aircrew as the "Biro". Ballpoint pens were found to be more versatile than fountain pens, especially in airplanes, where fountain pens were prone to leak. Bíró's patent, and other early patents on ballpoint pens, often used the term "ball-point fountain pen". Postwar proliferation. Following World War II, many companies vied to commercially produce their own ballpoint pen design. In pre-war Argentina, success of the Birome ballpoint was limited, but in mid-1945, the Eversharp Co., a maker of mechanical pencils, teamed up with Eberhard Faber Co. to license the rights from Birome for sales in the United States. In 1946, a Spanish firm, Vila Sivill Hermanos, began to make a ballpoint, Regia Continua, and from 1953 to 1957 their factory also made Bic ballpoints, on contract with the French firm Société Bic. During the same period, American entrepreneur Milton Reynolds came across a Birome ballpoint pen during a business trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Recognizing commercial potential, he purchased several ballpoint samples, returned to the United States, and founded the Reynolds International Pen Company. Reynolds bypassed the Birome patent with sufficient design alterations to obtain an American patent, beating Eversharp and other competitors to introduce the pen to the US market. Debuting at Gimbels department store in New York City on 29 October 1945, for US$12.50 each (1945 US dollar value, about $ in dollars), "Reynolds Rocket" became the first commercially successful ballpoint pen. Reynolds went to great extremes to market the pen, with great success; Gimbel's sold many thousands of pens within one week. In Britain, the Miles-(Harry) Martin pen company was producing the first commercially successful ballpoint pens there by the end of 1945. Neither Reynolds' nor Eversharp's ballpoint lived up to consumer expectations in America. Ballpoint pen sales peaked in 1946, and consumer interest subsequently plunged due to market saturation, going from luxury good to fungible consumable. By the early 1950s the ballpoint boom had subsided and Reynolds' company folded. Paper Mate pens, among the emerging ballpoint brands of the 1950s, bought the rights to distribute their own ballpoint pens in Canada. Facing concerns about ink-reliability, Paper Mate pioneered new ink formulas and advertised them as "banker-approved". In 1954, Parker Pens released "The Jotter"—the company's first ballpoint—boasting additional features and technological advances which also included the use of tungsten-carbide textured ball-bearings in their pens. In less than a year, Parker sold several million pens at prices between three and nine dollars. In the 1960s, the failing Eversharp Co. sold its pen division to Parker and ultimately folded. Marcel Bich also introduced a ballpoint pen to the American marketplace in the 1950s, licensed from Bíró and based on the Argentine designs. Bich shortened his name to Bic in 1953, forming the ballpoint brand Bic now recognized globally. Bic pens struggled until the company launched its "Writes First Time, Every Time!" advertising campaign in the 1960s. Competition during this era forced unit prices to drop considerably. In 2002, the Pakistani company Shaheen Group entered the pen market with the subsidiary Shaheen Ballpoints, as in Pakistan the ballpoint pen had a big demand but its quality was low. Shaheen had to compete with foreign companies that were in Pakistan for decades, such as Sayyed Engineers, Dollar Industries, Shahsons and Indus Pencils. The wholesale market bought their stocks in advance, but after six months the company had to pull their stocks due technical and marketing issues. Production in China. Many industrial sites specialized in pen production were created in China. One important production site is the Fenshui Township. Their ballpoint pen production started in 1974, when the Hangzhou Ballpoint Pen Factory initiated its production using bamboo. The Wengang Township has a long tradition of brush pen production, but all kinds of pens are produced, including ballpoint pens. In 2002, China's Pen Capital was constructed in Wenzhou, with an investment of ¥ 600 million. AIHAO was one of the first companies to move to the industrial site. Their most famous product is the ball-point pen. In the 2000s, China ballpoint pen production skyrocketed. In 2017, China produced 38 billion ballpoint pens per year, 80% of the global market. But the country had a problem in precision engineering the ballpoint pen tip, which had to be imported from Germany, Switzerland, and Japan for the cost of ¥ 120 million a year. The subject was criticized by western media. "Forbes" argued that the lack of IP protections were the cause of it, as the country wouldn't attract investments in innovation. "Financial Times" argued that because of Chinese self-sufficiency policy, companies handled the entire supply chain by themselves, thus creating inefficiency. "Hong Kong Economic Journal" declared that "the day China can produce a 100% homemade ball pen will be the day it truly qualifies as a first-class industrial power". Since 2011, the Ministry of Science and Technology invested $8.7 million in the production of the tips. Beifa Group worked with Taiyuan Iron & Steel Group (TISCO) with no success. In 2016, the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang complained on national television about the quality of Chinese pens. In June 2016, TISCO produced the first national ballpoint pen. In November, TISCO's industry standard was approved by the China Metallurgical Standardization Research Institute and on 10 January 2017 the pens were officially announced. The achievement reached the front-page news, was discussed in talk shows and celebrated on social media. Inks. Ballpoint pen ink is normally a paste containing around 25 to 40 percent dye. The dyes are suspended in a mixture of solvents and fatty acids. The most common of the solvents are benzyl alcohol or phenoxyethanol, which mix with the dyes and oils to create a smooth paste that dries quickly. This type of ink is also called "oil-based ink". The fatty acids help to lubricate the ball tip while writing. Hybrid inks also contain added lubricants in the ink to provide a smoother writing experience. The drying time of the ink varies depending upon the viscosity of the ink and the diameter of the ball. In general, the more viscous the ink, the faster it will dry, but more writing pressure needs to be applied to dispense ink. But although they are less viscous, hybrid inks have a faster drying time compared to normal ballpoint inks. Also, a larger ball dispenses more ink and thus increases drying time. The dyes used in blue and black ballpoint pens are basic dyes based on triarylmethane and acid dyes derived from diazo compounds or phthalocyanine. Common dyes in blue (and black) ink are Prussian blue, Victoria blue, methyl violet, crystal violet, and phthalocyanine blue. The dye eosin is commonly used for red ink. The inks are resistant to water after drying but can be defaced by certain solvents which include acetone and various alcohols. Types of ballpoint pens. Ballpoint pens are produced in both disposable and refillable models. Refills allow for the entire internal ink reservoir, including a ballpoint and socket, to be replaced. Such characteristics are usually associated with designer-type pens or those constructed of finer materials. The simplest types of ballpoint pens are disposable and have a cap to cover the tip when the pen is not in use, or a mechanism for retracting the tip, which varies between manufacturers but is usually a spring- or screw-mechanism. Rollerball pens employ the same ballpoint mechanics, but with the use of water-based inks instead of oil-based inks. Compared to oil-based ballpoints, rollerball pens are said to provide more fluid ink-flow, but the water-based inks will blot if held stationary against the writing surface. Water-based inks also remain wet longer when freshly applied and are thus prone to "smearing"—posing problems to left-handed people (or right handed people writing right-to-left script)—and "running", should the writing surface become wet. Some ballpoint pens use a hybrid ink formulation whose viscosity is lower than that of standard ballpoint ink, but greater than rollerball ink. The ink dries faster than a gel pen to prevent smearing when writing. These pens are better suited for left-handed persons. Examples are the Zebra Surari, Uni-ball Jetstream and Pilot Acroball ranges. These pens are also labelled "extra smooth", as they offer a smoother writing experience compared to normal ballpoint pens. Ballpoint pens with erasable ink were pioneered by the Paper Mate pen company. The ink formulas of erasable ballpoints have properties similar to rubber cement, allowing the ink to be literally rubbed clean from the writing surface before drying and eventually becoming permanent. Erasable ink is much thicker than standard ballpoint inks, requiring pressurized cartridges to facilitate inkflow—meaning they can also write upside-down. Though these pens are equipped with erasers, any eraser will suffice. Ballpoint tips are fitted with balls whose diameter can vary from 0.28 mm to 1.6 mm. The ball diameter does not correspond to the width of the line produced by the pen. The line width depends on various factors like the type of ink and pressure applied. Some standard ball diameters are: 0.3 mm, 0.38 mm, 0.4 mm, 0.5 mm, 0.7 mm (fine), 0.8 mm, 1.0 mm (medium), 1.2 mm and 1.4 mm (broad). Pens with ball diameters as small as 0.18 mm have been made by Japanese companies, but are extremely rare. The inexpensive, disposable Bic Cristal (also simply "Bic pen" or "Biro") is reportedly the most widely sold pen in the world. It was the Bic company's first product and is still synonymous with the company name. The Bic Cristal is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, acknowledged for its industrial design. Its hexagonal barrel mimics that of a wooden pencil and is transparent, showing the ink level in the reservoir. Originally a sealed streamlined cap, the modern pen cap has a small hole at the top to meet safety standards, helping to prevent suffocation if children suck it into the throat. Multi-pens are pens that feature multiple varying colored pen refills. Sometimes ballpoint refills are combined with another non-ballpoint refill, usually a mechanical pencil. Sometimes ballpoint pens combine a ballpoint tip on one end and touchscreen stylus on the other. Ballpoint pens are sometimes provided free by businesses, such as hotels and banks, printed with a company's name and logo. Ballpoints have also been produced to commemorate events, such as a pen commemorating the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. These pens, known as "advertising pens," are the same as standard ballpoint pen models, but have become valued among collectors. Sometimes ballpoint pens are also produced as design objects. With cases made of metal or wood, they become individually styled utility objects. Use of ballpoint pens in space. It is generally believed that gravity is needed to coat the ball with ink. In fact most ballpoint pens on the Earth do not work when writing upside-down because the Earth's gravity pulls the ink inside the pen away from the tip of the pen. However, in the microgravity environment of space a regular ballpoint pen can still work, pointed in any direction, because the capillary forces in the ink are stronger than non present gravitational forces. The functionality of a regular ballpoint pen in space was confirmed by ESA astronaut Pedro Duque in 2003. Technology developed by Fisher pens in the United States resulted in the production of what came to be known as the "Fisher Space Pen". Space Pens combine a more viscous ink with a pressurized ink reservoir that forces the ink toward the point. Unlike a standard ballpoint's ink container, the rear end of a Space Pen's pressurized reservoir is sealed, eliminating evaporation and leakage, thus allowing the pen to write upside-down, in zero-gravity environments, and allegedly underwater. Astronauts have made use of these pens in outer space. As an art medium. The ballpoint pen has proven to be a versatile art medium for both professional artists and amateur doodlers. Low cost, availability, and portability are cited by practitioners as qualities which make this common writing tool a convenient art supply. Some artists use them within mixed-media works, while others use them solely as their medium-of-choice. Effects not generally associated with ballpoint pens can be achieved. Traditional pen-and-ink techniques such as stippling and cross-hatching can be used to create half-tones or the illusion of form and volume. For artists whose interests necessitate precision line-work, ballpoints are an obvious attraction; ballpoint pens allow for sharp lines not as effectively executed using a brush. Finely applied, the resulting imagery has been mistaken for airbrushed artwork and photography, causing reactions of disbelief which ballpoint artist Lennie Mace refers to as the "Wow Factor". Famous 20th-century artists including Andy Warhol, have utilized the ballpoint pen during their careers. Ballpoint pen artwork continues to attract interest in the 21st century, with many contemporary artists gaining recognition for their specific use of ballpoint pens as a medium. Korean-American artist Il Lee has been creating large-scale, abstract artwork since the late 1970s solely with ballpoint pens. Since the 1980s, Lennie Mace creates imaginative, ballpoint-only artwork of varying content and complexity, applied to unconventional surfaces including wood and denim. The artist coined terms such as "PENtings" and "Media Graffiti" to describe his varied output. British artist James Mylne has been creating photo-realistic artwork using mostly black ballpoints, sometimes with minimal mixed-media color. The ballpoint pen has several limitations as an art medium. Color availability and sensitivity of ink to light are among concerns of ballpoint pen artists. As a tool that uses ink, marks made with a ballpoint pen can generally not be erased. Additionally, "blobbing" ink on the drawing surface and "skipping" ink-flow require consideration when drawing with a ballpoint pen. Although the mechanics of ballpoint pens remain relatively unchanged, ink composition has evolved to solve certain problems over the years, resulting in unpredictable sensitivity to light and some extent of fading. Manufacturing. The common ballpoint pen is a product of mass production, with components produced separately on assembly lines. Basic steps in the manufacturing process include the production of ink formulas, molding of metal and plastic components, and assembly. Marcel Bich (leading to Société Bic) was involved in developing the production of inexpensive ballpoint pens. Although designs and construction vary between brands, basic components of all ballpoint pens are universal. The making of a ballpoint pen, specially the tip, is considered a work of precision engineering. Standard components of a ballpoint tip include the freely rotating "ball" itself (distributing the ink on the writing surface), a "socket" holding the ball in place, small "ink channels" that provide ink to the ball through the socket, and a self-contained "ink reservoir" supplying ink to the ball. In modern disposable pens, narrow plastic tubes contain the ink, which is compelled downward to the ball by gravity. Brass, steel, or tungsten carbide are used to manufacture the ball bearing-like points, then housed in a brass socket. The function of these components can be observed at a larger scale in the ball-applicator of roll-on antiperspirant. The ballpoint tip delivers the ink to the writing surface while acting as a "buffer" between the ink in the reservoir and the air outside, preventing the quick-drying ink from drying inside the reservoir. Modern ballpoints are said to have a two-year shelf life, on average. A ballpoint tip that can write comfortably for a long period of time is not easy to produce, as it requires high-precision machinery and thin high-grade steel alloy plates. China, which produces about 80 percent of the world's ballpoint pens, relied on imported ballpoint tips and metal alloys before 2017. Standards. The International Organization for Standardization has published standards for ball point and roller ball pens:
4524	1293650551	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4524	Burroughs Corporation	The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company by William Seward Burroughs. The company's history paralleled many of the major developments in computing. At its start, it produced mechanical adding machines, and later moved into programmable ledgers and then computers. It was one of the largest producers of mainframe computers in the world, also producing related equipment including typewriters and printers. In the 1960s, the company introduced a range of mainframe computers that were well regarded for their performance running high level languages. These formed the core of the company's business into the 1970s. At that time the emergence of superminicomputers and the dominance of the IBM System/360 and 370 at the high end led to shrinking markets, and in 1986 the company purchased former competitor Sperry UNIVAC and merged their operations to form Unisys. Early history. In 1886, the American Arithmometer Company was established in St. Louis, Missouri, to produce and sell an adding machine invented by William Seward Burroughs (grandfather of Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs). In 1904, six years after Burroughs' death, the company moved to Detroit and changed its name to the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. It was soon the biggest adding machine company in America. Evolving product lines. The adding machine range began with the basic, hand-cranked Class 1 which was only capable of adding. The design included some revolutionary features, foremost of which was the dashpot which governed the speed at which the operating lever could be pulled so allowing the mechanism to operate consistently correctly. The machine also had a full-keyboard with a separate column of keys 1 to 9 for each decade where the keys latch when pressed, with interlocking which prevented more than one key in any decade from being latched. The latching allowed the operator to quickly check that the correct number had been entered before pulling the operating lever. The numbers entered and the final total were printed on a roll of paper at the rear, so there was no danger of the operator writing down the wrong answer and there was a copy of the calculation which could be checked later if necessary. The Class 2 machine, called the "duplex" and built in the same basic style, provided a means of keeping two separate totals. The Class 6 machine was built for bookkeeping work and provided the ability for direct subtraction. Burroughs released the Class 3 and Class 4 adding machines which were built after the purchase of the Pike Adding Machine Company around 1910. These machines provided a significant improvement over the older models because operators could view the printing on the paper tape. The machines were called "the visible" for this improvement. In 1925 Burroughs released a much smaller machine called "the portable". Two models were released, the Class 8 (without subtraction) and the Class 9 with subtraction capability. Later models continued to be released with the P600 and top-of-the-range P612 offered some limited programmability based upon the position of the movable carriage. The range was further extended by the inclusion of the Series J ten-key machines which provided a single finger calculation facility, and the Class 5 (later called Series C) key-driven calculators in both manual and electrical assisted comptometers. In the late 1960s, the Burroughs sponsored "nixi-tube" provided an electronic display calculator. Burroughs developed a range of adding machines with different capabilities, gradually increasing in their capabilities. A revolutionary adding machine was the "Sensimatic", which was able to perform many business functions semi-automatically. It had a moving programmable carriage to maintain ledgers. It could store 9, 18 or 27 balances during the ledger posting operations and worked with a mechanical adder named a Crossfooter. The Sensimatic developed into the "Sensitronic" which could store balances on a magnetic stripe which was part of the ledger card. This balance was read into the accumulator when the card was inserted into the carriage. The Sensitronic was followed by the E1000, E2000, E3000, E4000, E6000 and the E8000, which were computer systems supporting card reader/punches and a line printer. Later, Burroughs was selling more than adding machines, including typewriters. Move into computers. The biggest shift in company history came in 1953: the Burroughs Adding Machine Company was renamed the Burroughs Corporation and began moving into digital computer products, initially for banking institutions. This move began with Burroughs' purchase in June 1956, of the ElectroData Corporation in Pasadena, California, a spinoff of the Consolidated Engineering Corporation which had designed test instruments and had a cooperative relationship with Caltech in Pasadena. ElectroData had built the Datatron 205 and was working on the Datatron 220. The first major computer product that came from this marriage was the B205 tube computer. In 1968 the L and TC series range was produced (e.g. the TC500—Terminal Computer 500) which had a golf ball printer and in the beginning a 1K (64 bit) disk memory. These were popular as branch terminals to the B5500/6500/6700 systems, and sold well in the banking sector, where they were often connected to non-Burroughs mainframes. In conjunction with these products, Burroughs also manufactured an extensive range of cheque processing equipment, normally attached as terminals to a medium systems such as B200/B300 and larger systems such as a B2700 or B1700. In the 1950s, Burroughs worked with the Federal Reserve Bank on the development and computer processing of magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) especially for the processing of bank cheques. Burroughs made special MICR/OCR sorter/readers which attached to their medium systems line of computers (2700/3700/4700) and B200/B300 systems and this entrenched the company in the computer side of the banking industry. A force in the computing industry. Burroughs was one of the nine major United States computer companies in the 1960s, with IBM the largest, Honeywell, NCR Corporation, Control Data Corporation (CDC), General Electric (GE), Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), RCA and Sperry Rand (UNIVAC line). In terms of sales, Burroughs was always a distant second to IBM. In fact, IBM's market share was so much larger than all of the others that this group was often referred to as "IBM and the Seven Dwarves." By 1972 when GE and RCA were no longer in the mainframe business, the remaining five companies behind IBM became known as the BUNCH, an acronym based on their initials. At the same time, Burroughs was very much a competitor. Like IBM, Burroughs tried to supply a complete line of products for its customers, including Burroughs-designed printers, disk drives, tape drives, computer printing paper and typewriter ribbons. Developments and innovations. The Burroughs Corporation developed three highly innovative architectures, based on the design philosophy of "language-directed design". Their machine instruction sets favored one or many high level programming languages, such as ALGOL, COBOL or FORTRAN. All three architectures were considered mainframe class machines: Many computer scientists consider these series of computers to be technologically groundbreaking. Stack oriented processors, with 48 bit word length where each word was defined as data or program contributed significantly to a secure operating environment, long before spyware and viruses affected computing. The modularity of these large systems was unique: multiple CPUs, multiple memory modules and multiple I/O and Data Comm processors permitted incremental and cost effective growth of system performance and reliability. In industries like banking, where continuous operations was mandatory, Burroughs Large Systems penetrated nearly every large bank, including the Federal Reserve Bank. Burroughs built the backbone switching systems for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) which sent its first message in 1977. Unisys is still the provider to SWIFT today. Merger with Sperry. In September 1986, Burroughs Corporation merged with Sperry Corporation to form Unisys. For a time, the combined company retained the Burroughs processors as the A- and V-systems lines. As the market for large systems shifted from proprietary architectures to common servers, the company eventually dropped the V-Series line, although customers continued to use V-series systems . Unisys continues to develop and market the A-Series, now known as ClearPath. Burroughs Payment Systems. In 2010, Unisys sold off its Payment Systems Division to Marlin Equity Partners, a California-based private investment firm, which incorporated it as Burroughs Payment Systems, Inc. (later just Burroughs, Inc.), based in Plymouth, Michigan. References in popular culture. Burroughs B205 hardware has appeared as props in many Hollywood television and film productions from the late 1950s. For example, a B205 console was often shown in the television series "Batman" as the "Bat Computer"; also as the flight computer in "Lost in Space". B205 tape drives were often seen in series such as "The Time Tunnel" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea". Burroughs equipment was also featured in the movie "The Angry Red Planet".
4526	27015025	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4526	Brick	A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term "brick" denotes a unit primarily composed of clay. But is now also used informally to denote building units made of other materials or other chemically cured construction blocks. Bricks can be joined using mortar, adhesives or by interlocking. Bricks are usually produced at brickworks in numerous classes, types, materials, and sizes which vary with region, and are produced in bulk quantities. "Block" is a similar term referring to a rectangular building unit composed of clay or concrete, but is usually larger than a brick. Lightweight bricks (also called lightweight blocks) are made from expanded clay aggregate. Fired bricks are one of the longest-lasting and strongest building materials, sometimes referred to as artificial stone, and have been used since . Air-dried bricks, also known as mudbricks, have a history older than fired bricks, and have an additional ingredient of a mechanical binder such as straw. Bricks are laid in "courses" and numerous patterns known as "bonds", collectively known as brickwork, and may be laid in various kinds of mortar to hold the bricks together to make a durable structure. History. Middle East and South Asia. The earliest bricks were dried mudbricks, meaning that they were formed from clay-bearing earth or mud and dried (usually in the sun) until they were strong enough for use. The oldest discovered bricks, originally made from shaped mud and dating before 7500 BC, were found at Tell Aswad, in the upper Tigris region and in southeast Anatolia close to Diyarbakir. Mudbrick construction was used at Çatalhöyük, from c. 7,400 BC. Mudbrick structures, dating to c. 7,200 BC have been located in Jericho, Jordan Valley. These structures were made up of the first bricks with dimension 400x150x100 mm. Between 5000 and 4500 BC, Mesopotamia had discovered fired brick. The standard brick sizes in Mesopotamia followed a general rule: the width of the dried or burned brick would be twice its thickness, and its length would be double its width. The South Asian inhabitants of Mehrgarh also constructed air-dried mudbrick structures between 7000 and 3300 BC and later the ancient Indus Valley cities of Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and Mehrgarh. Ceramic, or "fired brick" was used as early as 3000 BC in early Indus Valley cities like Kalibangan. In the middle of the third millennium BC, there was a rise in monumental baked brick architecture in Indus cities. Examples included the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro, the fire altars of Kaalibangan, and the granary of Harappa. There was a uniformity to the brick sizes throughout the Indus Valley region, conforming to the 1:2:4, thickness, width, and length ratio. As the Indus civilization began its decline at the start of the second millennium BC, Harappans migrated east, spreading their knowledge of brickmaking technology. This led to the rise of cities like Pataliputra, Kausambi, and Ujjain, where there was an enormous demand for kiln-made bricks. By 604 BC, bricks were the construction materials for architectural wonders such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, where glazed fired bricks were put into practice. China. The earliest fired bricks appeared in Neolithic China around 4400 BC at Chengtoushan, a walled settlement of the Daxi culture. These bricks were made of red clay, fired on all sides to above 600 °C, and used as flooring for houses. By the Qujialing period (3300 BC), fired bricks were being used to pave roads and as building foundations at Chengtoushan. According to Lukas Nickel, the use of ceramic pieces for protecting and decorating floors and walls dates back at various cultural sites to 3000-2000 BC and perhaps even before, but these elements should be rather qualified as tiles. For the longest time builders relied on wood, mud and rammed earth, while fired brick and mudbrick played no structural role in architecture. Proper brick construction, for erecting walls and vaults, finally emerges in the third century BC, when baked bricks of regular shape began to be employed for vaulting underground tombs. Hollow brick tomb chambers rose in popularity as builders were forced to adapt due to a lack of readily available wood or stone. The oldest extant brick building above ground is possibly Songyue Pagoda, dated to 523 AD. By the end of the third century BC in China, both hollow and small bricks were available for use in building walls and ceilings. Fired bricks were first mass-produced during the construction of the tomb of China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi. The floors of the three pits of the Terracotta Army were paved with an estimated 230,000 bricks, with the majority measuring 28x14x7 cm, following a 4:2:1 ratio. The use of fired bricks in Chinese city walls first appeared in the Eastern Han dynasty (25 AD-220 AD). Up until the Middle Ages, buildings in Central Asia were typically built with unbaked bricks. It was only starting in the ninth century CE when buildings were entirely constructed using fired bricks. The carpenter's manual "Yingzao Fashi", published in 1103 at the time of the Song dynasty described the brick making process and glazing techniques then in use. Using the 17th-century encyclopaedic text "Tiangong Kaiwu", historian Timothy Brook outlined the brick production process of Ming dynasty China: Europe. Early civilisations around the Mediterranean, including the Ancient Greeks and Romans, adopted the use of fired bricks. By the early first century CE, standardised fired bricks were being heavily produced in Rome. The Roman legions operated mobile kilns, and built large brick structures throughout the Roman Empire, stamping the bricks with the seal of the legion. The Romans used brick for walls, arches, forts, aqueducts, etc. Notable mentions of Roman brick structures are the Herculaneum gate of Pompeii and the baths of Caracalla. During the Early Middle Ages the use of bricks in construction became popular in Northern Europe, after being introduced there from Northwestern Italy. An independent style of brick architecture, known as brick Gothic (similar to Gothic architecture) flourished in places that lacked indigenous sources of rocks. Examples of this architectural style can be found in modern-day Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Kaliningrad (former East Prussia). This style evolved into the Brick Renaissance as the stylistic changes associated with the Italian Renaissance spread to northern Europe, leading to the adoption of Renaissance elements into brick building. Identifiable attributes included a low-pitched hipped or flat roof, symmetrical facade, round arch entrances and windows, columns and pilasters, and more. A clear distinction between the two styles only developed at the transition to Baroque architecture. In Lübeck, for example, Brick Renaissance is clearly recognisable in buildings equipped with terracotta reliefs by the artist Statius von Düren, who was also active at Schwerin (Schwerin Castle) and Wismar (Fürstenhof). Long-distance bulk transport of bricks and other construction equipment remained prohibitively expensive until the development of modern transportation infrastructure, with the construction of canal, roads, and railways. Industrial era. Production of bricks increased massively with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the rise in factory building in England. For reasons of speed and economy, bricks were increasingly preferred as building material to stone, even in areas where the stone was readily available. It was at this time in London that bright red brick was chosen for construction to make the buildings more visible in the heavy fog and to help prevent traffic accidents. The transition from the traditional method of production known as hand-moulding to a mechanised form of mass-production slowly took place during the first half of the nineteenth century. The first brick-making machine was patented by Richard A. Ver Valen of Haverstraw, New York, in 1852. The Bradley & Craven Ltd 'Stiff-Plastic Brickmaking Machine' was patented in 1853. Bradley & Craven went on to be a dominant manufacturer of brickmaking machinery. Henry Clayton, employed at the Atlas Works in Middlesex, England, in 1855, patented a brick-making machine that was capable of producing up to 25,000 bricks daily with minimal supervision. His mechanical apparatus soon achieved widespread attention after it was adopted for use by the South Eastern Railway Company for brick-making at their factory near Folkestone. At the end of the 19th century, the Hudson River region of New York State would become the world's largest brick manufacturing region, with 130 brickyards lining the shores of the Hudson River from Mechanicsville to Haverstraw and employing 8,000 people. At its peak, about 1 billion bricks were produced a year, with many being sent to New York City for use in its construction industry. The demand for high office building construction at the turn of the 20th century led to a much greater use of cast and wrought iron, and later, steel and concrete. The use of brick for skyscraper construction severely limited the size of the building – the Monadnock Building, built in 1896 in Chicago, required exceptionally thick walls to maintain the structural integrity of its 17 storeys. Following pioneering work in the 1950s at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Building Research Establishment in Watford, UK, the use of improved masonry for the construction of tall structures up to 18 storeys high was made viable. However, the use of brick has largely remained restricted to small to medium-sized buildings, as steel and concrete remain superior materials for high-rise construction. Methods of manufacture. Four basic types of brick are un-fired, fired, chemically set bricks, and compressed earth blocks. Each type is manufactured differently for various purposes. Mudbrick. Unfired bricks, also known as mudbrick, are made from a mixture of silt, clay, sand and other earth materials like gravel and stone, combined with tempers and binding agents such as chopped straw, grasses, tree bark, or dung. Since these bricks are made up of natural materials and only require heat from the Sun to bake, mudbricks have a relatively low embodied energy and carbon footprint. The ingredients are first harvested and added together, with clay content ranging from 30% to 70%. The mixture is broken up with hoes or adzes, and stirred with water to form a homogenous blend. Next, the tempers and binding agents are added in a ratio, roughly one part straw to five parts earth to reduce weight and reinforce the brick by helping reduce shrinkage. However, additional clay could be added to reduce the need for straw, which would prevent the likelihood of insects deteriorating the organic material of the bricks, subsequently weakening the structure. These ingredients are thoroughly mixed together by hand or by treading and are then left to ferment for about a day. The mix is then kneaded with water and molded into rectangular prisms of a desired size. Bricks are lined up and left to dry in the sun for three days on both sides. After the six days, the bricks continue drying until required for use. Typically, longer drying times are preferred, but the average is eight to nine days spanning from initial stages to its application in structures. Unfired bricks could be made in the spring months and left to dry over the summer for use in the autumn. Mudbricks are commonly employed in arid environments to allow for adequate air drying. Fired brick. Fired bricks are baked in a kiln which makes them durable. Modern, fired, clay bricks are formed in one of three processes – soft mud, dry press, or extruded. Depending on the country, either the extruded or soft mud method is the most common, since they are the most economical. Clay and shale are the raw ingredients in the recipe for a fired brick. They are the product of thousands of years of decomposition and erosion of rocks, such as pegmatite and granite, leading to a material that has properties of being highly chemically stable and inert. Within the clays and shales are the materials of aluminosilicate (pure clay), free silica (quartz), and decomposed rock. One proposed optimal mix is: Shaping methods. Three main methods are used for shaping the raw materials into bricks to be fired: Kilns. In many modern brickworks, bricks are usually fired in a continuously fired tunnel kiln, in which the bricks are fired as they move slowly through the kiln on conveyors, rails, or kiln cars, which achieves a more consistent brick product. The bricks often have lime, ash, and organic matter added, which accelerates the burning process. The other major kiln type is the Bull's Trench Kiln (BTK), based on a design developed by British engineer W. Bull in the late 19th century. An oval or circular trench is dug, wide, deep, and in circumference. A tall exhaust chimney is constructed in the centre. Half or more of the trench is filled with "green" (unfired) bricks which are stacked in an open lattice pattern to allow airflow. The lattice is capped with a roofing layer of finished brick. In operation, new green bricks, along with roofing bricks, are stacked at one end of the brick pile. Historically, a stack of unfired bricks covered for protection from the weather was called a "hack". Cooled finished bricks are removed from the other end for transport to their destinations. In the middle, the brick workers create a firing zone by dropping fuel (coal, wood, oil, debris, etc.) through access holes in the roof above the trench. The constant source of fuel maybe grown on the woodlots. The advantage of the BTK design is a much greater energy efficiency compared with clamp or scove kilns. Sheet metal or boards are used to route the airflow through the brick lattice so that fresh air flows first through the recently burned bricks, heating the air, then through the active burning zone. The air continues through the green brick zone (pre-heating and drying the bricks), and finally out the chimney, where the rising gases create suction that pulls air through the system. The reuse of heated air yields savings in fuel cost. As with the rail process, the BTK process is continuous. A half-dozen labourers working around the clock can fire approximately 15,000–25,000 bricks a day. Unlike the rail process, in the BTK process the bricks do not move. Instead, the locations at which the bricks are loaded, fired, and unloaded gradually rotate through the trench. Influences on colour. The colour of fired clay bricks is influenced by the chemical and mineral content of the raw materials, the firing temperature, and the atmosphere in the kiln. For example, pink bricks are the result of a high iron content, white or yellow bricks have a higher lime content. Most bricks burn to various red hues; as the temperature is increased the colour moves through dark red, purple, and then to brown or grey at around . The names of bricks may reflect their origin and colour, such as London stock brick and Cambridgeshire White. "Brick tinting" may be performed to change the colour of bricks to blend-in areas of brickwork with the surrounding masonry. An impervious and ornamental surface may be laid on brick either by salt glazing, in which salt is added during the burning process, or by the use of a slip, which is a glaze material into which the bricks are dipped. Subsequent reheating in the kiln fuses the slip into a glazed surface integral with the brick base. Chemically set bricks. Chemically set bricks are not fired but may have the curing process accelerated by the application of heat and pressure in an autoclave. Calcium-silicate bricks. Calcium-silicate bricks are also called sandlime or flintlime bricks, depending on their ingredients. Rather than being made with clay they are made with lime binding the silicate material. The raw materials for calcium-silicate bricks include lime mixed in a proportion of about 1 to 10 with sand, quartz, crushed flint, or crushed siliceous rock together with mineral colourants. The materials are mixed and left until the lime is completely hydrated; the mixture is then pressed into moulds and cured in an autoclave for three to fourteen hours to speed the chemical hardening. The finished bricks are very accurate and uniform, although the sharp arrises need careful handling to avoid damage to brick and bricklayer. The bricks can be made in a variety of colours; white, black, buff, and grey-blues are common, and pastel shades can be achieved. This type of brick is common in Sweden as well as Russia and other post-Soviet countries, especially in houses built or renovated in the 1970s. A version known as fly ash bricks, manufactured using fly ash, lime, and gypsum (known as the FaL-G process) are common in South Asia. Calcium-silicate bricks are also manufactured in Canada and the United States, and meet the criteria set forth in ASTM C73 – 10 Standard Specification for Calcium Silicate Brick (Sand-Lime Brick). Concrete bricks. Bricks formed from concrete are usually termed as blocks or concrete masonry unit, and are typically pale grey. They are made from a dry, small aggregate concrete which is formed in steel moulds by vibration and compaction in either an "egglayer" or static machine. The finished blocks are cured, rather than fired, using low-pressure steam. Concrete bricks and blocks are manufactured in a wide range of shapes, sizes and face treatments – a number of which simulate the appearance of clay bricks. Concrete bricks are available in many colours and as an engineering brick made with sulfate-resisting Portland cement or equivalent. When made with adequate amount of cement they are suitable for harsh environments such as wet conditions and retaining walls. They are made to standards BS 6073, EN 771-3 or ASTM C55. Concrete bricks contract or shrink so they need movement joints every 5 to 6 metres, but are similar to other bricks of similar density in thermal and sound resistance and fire resistance. Compressed earth blocks. Compressed earth blocks are made mostly from slightly moistened local soils compressed with a mechanical hydraulic press or manual lever press. A small amount of a cement binder may be added, resulting in a "stabilised compressed earth block". Types. There are thousands of types of bricks that are named for their use, size, forming method, origin, quality, texture, and/or materials. Categorized by manufacture method: Categorized by use: Specialized use bricks: Bricks named for place of origin: Optimal dimensions, characteristics, and strength. For efficient handling and laying, bricks must be small enough and light enough to be picked up by the bricklayer using one hand (leaving the other hand free for the trowel). Bricks are usually laid flat, and as a result, the effective limit on the width of a brick is set by the distance which can conveniently be spanned between the thumb and fingers of one hand, normally about . In most cases, the length of a brick is twice its width plus the width of a mortar joint, about or slightly more. This allows bricks to be laid "bonded" in a structure which increases stability and strength (for an example, see the illustration of bricks laid in "English bond", at the head of this article). The wall is built using alternating courses of "stretchers", bricks laid longways, and "headers", bricks laid crossways. The headers tie the wall together over its width. In fact, this wall is built in a variation of "English bond" called "English cross bond" where the successive layers of stretchers are displaced horizontally from each other by half a brick length. In true "English bond", the perpendicular lines of the stretcher courses are in line with each other. A bigger brick makes for a thicker (and thus more insulating) wall. Historically, this meant that bigger bricks were necessary in colder climates (see for instance the slightly larger size of the Russian brick in table below), while a smaller brick was adequate, and more economical, in warmer regions. A notable illustration of this correlation is the Green Gate in Gdansk; built in 1571 of imported Dutch brick, too small for the colder climate of Gdansk, it was notorious for being a chilly and drafty residence. Nowadays this is no longer an issue, as modern walls typically incorporate specialised insulation materials. The correct brick for a job can be selected from a choice of colour, surface texture, density, weight, absorption, and pore structure, thermal characteristics, thermal and moisture movement, and fire resistance. In England, the length and width of the common brick remained fairly constant from 1625 when the size was regulated by statute at 9 x x 3 inches (but see brick tax), but the depth has varied from about or smaller in earlier times to about more recently. In the United Kingdom, the usual size of a modern brick (from 1965) is , which, with a nominal mortar joint, forms a "unit size" of , for a ratio of 6:3:2. In the United States, modern standard bricks are specified for various uses; The most commonly used is the modular brick has the "actual dimensions" of × × inches (194 × 92 × 57 mm). With the standard inch mortar joint, this gives the "nominal dimensions" of 8 x 4 x inches which eases the calculation of the number of bricks in a given wall. The 2:1 ratio of modular bricks means that when they turn corners, a 1/2 running bond is formed without needing to cut the brick down or fill the gap with a cut brick; and the height of modular bricks means that a soldier course matches the height of three modular running courses, or one standard CMU course. Some brickmakers create innovative sizes and shapes for bricks used for plastering (and therefore not visible on the inside of the building) where their inherent mechanical properties are more important than their visual ones. These bricks are usually slightly larger, but not as large as blocks and offer the following advantages: Blocks have a much greater range of sizes. Standard co-ordinating sizes in length and height (in mm) include 400×200, 450×150, 450×200, 450×225, 450×300, 600×150, 600×200, and 600×225; depths (work size, mm) include 60, 75, 90, 100, 115, 140, 150, 190, 200, 225, and 250. They are usable across this range as they are lighter than clay bricks. The density of solid clay bricks is around 2000 kg/m3: this is reduced by frogging, hollow bricks, and so on, but aerated autoclaved concrete, even as a solid brick, can have densities in the range of 450–850 kg/m3. Bricks may also be classified as "solid" (less than 25% perforations by volume, although the brick may be "frogged," having indentations on one of the longer faces), "perforated" (containing a pattern of small holes through the brick, removing no more than 25% of the volume), "cellular" (containing a pattern of holes removing more than 20% of the volume, but closed on one face), or "hollow" (containing a pattern of large holes removing more than 25% of the brick's volume). Blocks may be solid, cellular or hollow. The term "frog" can refer to the indentation or the implement used to make it. Modern brickmakers usually use plastic frogs but in the past they were made of wood. The compressive strength of bricks produced in the United States ranges from about , varying according to the use to which the brick are to be put. In England clay bricks can have strengths of up to 100 MPa, although a common house brick is likely to show a range of 20–40 MPa. Uses. Bricks are a versatile building material, able to participate in a wide variety of applications, including: In the United States, bricks have been used for both buildings and pavement. Examples of brick use in buildings can be seen in colonial era buildings and other notable structures around the country. Bricks have been used in paving roads and sidewalks especially during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The introduction of asphalt and concrete reduced the use of brick for paving, but they are still sometimes installed as a method of traffic calming or as a decorative surface in pedestrian precincts. For example, in the early 1900s, most of the streets in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, were paved with bricks. Today, there are only about 20 blocks of brick-paved streets remaining (totalling less than 0.5 percent of all the streets in the city limits). Much like in Grand Rapids, municipalities across the United States began replacing brick streets with inexpensive asphalt concrete by the mid-20th century. In Northwest Europe, bricks have been used in construction for centuries. Until recently, almost all houses were built almost entirely from bricks. Although many houses are now built using a mixture of concrete blocks and other materials, many houses are skinned with a layer of bricks on the outside for aesthetic appeal. Bricks in the metallurgy and glass industries are often used for lining furnaces, in particular refractory bricks such as silica, magnesia, chamotte and neutral (chromomagnesite) refractory bricks. This type of brick must have good thermal shock resistance, refractoriness under load, high melting point, and satisfactory porosity. There is a large refractory brick industry, especially in the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, Belgium and the Netherlands. Engineering bricks are used where strength, low water porosity or acid (flue gas) resistance are needed. In the UK a red brick university is one founded in the late 19th or early 20th century. The term is used to refer to such institutions collectively to distinguish them from the older Oxbridge institutions, and refers to the use of bricks, as opposed to stone, in their buildings. Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona was noted for his extensive use of red bricks in his buildings and for using natural shapes like spirals, radial geometry and curves in his designs. Limitations. Starting in the 20th century, the use of brickwork declined in some areas due to concerns about earthquakes. Earthquakes such as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the 1933 Long Beach earthquake revealed the weaknesses of unreinforced brick masonry in earthquake-prone areas. During seismic events, the mortar cracks and crumbles, so that the bricks are no longer held together. Brick masonry with steel reinforcement, which helps hold the masonry together during earthquakes, has been used to replace unreinforced bricks in many buildings. Retrofitting older unreinforced masonry structures has been mandated in many jurisdictions. However, similar to steel corrosion in reinforced concrete, rebar rusting will compromise the structural integrity of reinforced brick and ultimately limit the expected lifetime, so there is a trade-off between earthquake safety and longevity to a certain extent. Accessibility. The United States Access Board does not specify which materials a sidewalk must be made of in order to be ADA compliant, but states that sidewalks must not have surface variances of greater than . Due to the accessibility challenges of bricks, the Federal Highway Administration recommends against the use of bricks as well as cobblestones in its accessibility guide for sidewalks and crosswalks. The Brick Industry Association maintains standards for making brick more accessible for disabled people, with proper and regular maintenance being necessary to keep brick accessible. Some US jurisdictions, such as San Francisco, have taken steps to remove brick sidewalks from certain areas such as Market Street in order to improve accessibility.
4527	10239913	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4527	Béla Bartók	Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hungary's greatest composers. Among his notable works are the opera "Bluebeard's Castle", the ballet "The Miraculous Mandarin", "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta", the Concerto for Orchestra and six string quartets. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became known as ethnomusicology. Per Anthony Tommasini, Bartók "has empowered generations of subsequent composers to incorporate folk music and classical traditions from whatever culture into their works and was "a formidable modernist who in the face of Schoenberg’s breathtaking formulations showed another way, forging a language that was an amalgam of tonality, unorthodox scales and atonal wanderings." Biography. Childhood and early years (1881–1898). Bartók was born in the Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Sânnicolau Mare, Romania) on 25 March 1881. On his father's side, the Bartók family was a Hungarian lower noble family, originating from Borsodszirák, Borsod. His paternal grandmother was a Catholic of Bunjevci origin, but considered herself Hungarian. Bartók's father (1855–1888) was also named . Bartók's mother, (1857–1939), spoke Hungarian fluently. A native of Turócszentmárton (present-day Martin, Slovakia), she had German, Hungarian and Slovak or Polish ancestry. Béla displayed notable musical talent very early in life. According to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano before he learned to speak in complete sentences. By the age of four he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano, and his mother began formally teaching him the next year. In 1888, when he was seven, his father, the director of an agricultural school, died suddenly. His mother then took Béla and his sister, Erzsébet, to live in Nagyszőlős (present-day Vynohradiv, Ukraine) and then in Pressburg (present-day Bratislava, Slovakia). Béla gave his first public recital aged 11 in Nagyszőlős, to positive critical reception. Among the pieces he played was his own first composition, written two years previously: a short piece called "The Course of the Danube". Shortly thereafter, accepted him as a pupil. Early musical career (1899–1908). From 1899 to 1903, Bartók studied piano under István Thomán, a former student of Franz Liszt, and composition under János Koessler at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. There he met Zoltán Kodály, who made a strong impression on him and became a lifelong friend and colleague. In 1903, Bartók wrote his first major orchestral work, "Kossuth", a symphonic poem that honored Lajos Kossuth, hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The music of Richard Strauss, whom he met in 1902 at the Budapest premiere of "Also sprach Zarathustra", strongly influenced his early work. When visiting a holiday resort in the summer of 1904, Bartók overheard a young nanny, Lidi Dósa from Kibéd in Transylvania, sing folk songs to the children in her care. This sparked his lifelong dedication to folk music. Beginning in 1907, he came under the influence of French composer Claude Debussy, whose compositions Kodály had brought back from Paris. Bartók's large-scale orchestral works were still in the style of Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss, but he wrote a number of small piano pieces which showed his growing interest in folk music. The first piece to show clear signs of this new interest is the String Quartet No. 1 in A minor (1908), which contains folk-like elements. He began teaching as a piano professor at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. This position freed him from touring Europe as a pianist. Among his notable students were Fritz Reiner, Sir Georg Solti, György Sándor, Ernő Balogh, Gisela Selden-Goth, and Lili Kraus. After Bartók moved to the United States, he taught Jack Beeson and Violet Archer. In 1908, Bartok and Kodály traveled into the countryside to collect and research old Magyar folk melodies. Their growing interest in folk music coincided with a contemporary social interest in traditional national culture. Magyar folk music had previously been categorised as Gypsy music. The classic example is Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsodies" for piano, which he based on popular art songs performed by Romani bands of the time. In contrast, Bartók and Kodály discovered that the old Magyar folk melodies were based on pentatonic scales, similar to those in Asian folk traditions, such as those of Central Asia, Anatolia and Siberia. Bartók and Kodály set about incorporating elements of such Magyar peasant music into their compositions. They both frequently quoted folk song melodies "verbatim" and wrote pieces derived entirely from authentic songs. An example is Bartok's two volumes entitled "For Children" for solo piano, containing 80 folk tunes to which he wrote accompaniment. Bartók's style in his art music compositions was a synthesis of folk music, classicism, and modernism. His melodic and harmonic sense was influenced by the folk music of Hungary, Romania, and other nations. He was especially fond of the asymmetrical dance rhythms and pungent harmonies found in Bulgarian music. Most of his early compositions offer a blend of nationalist and late Romantic elements. Middle years and career (1909–1939). Personal life. In 1909, at the age of 28, Bartók married Márta Ziegler (1893–1967), aged 16. Their son, , was born the next year. After nearly 15 years together, Bartók divorced Márta in June 1923. Two months after his divorce, he married Ditta Pásztory (1903–1982), a piano student, ten days after proposing to her. She was aged 19, he 42. Their son, , was born in 1924. Raised as a Catholic, by his early adulthood Bartók had become an atheist. He later became attracted to Unitarianism and publicly converted to the Unitarian faith in 1916. Although Bartók was not conventionally religious, according to his son Béla Bartók III, "he was a nature lover: he always mentioned the miraculous order of nature with great reverence". As an adult, Béla III later became lay president of the Hungarian Unitarian Church. Opera. In 1911, Bartók wrote what was to be his only opera, "Bluebeard's Castle", dedicated to Márta. In creating "Bluebeard's Castle", Bartók uses symbolism to show parallels between unconscious motivation and fate. The opera in showing fate has a strong interaction between the characters and gives the idea that people are not able to control what the outcome will be. He entered it for a prize by the Hungarian Fine Arts Commission, but they rejected his work as not fit for the stage. In 1917 Bartók revised the score for the 1918 première and rewrote the ending. Following the 1919 revolution, in which he actively participated, he was pressured by the Horthy regime to remove the name of librettist Béla Balázs from the opera, as Balázs was of Jewish origin, was blacklisted, and had left the country for Vienna. "Bluebeard's Castle" received only one revival, in 1936, before Bartók emigrated. For the remainder of his life, although devoted to Hungary, its people and its culture, he never felt much loyalty to the government or its official establishments. Folk music and composition. After his disappointment over the Fine Arts Commission competition, Bartók wrote little for two or three years, preferring to concentrate on collecting and arranging folk music. He found the phonograph an essential tool for collecting folk music for its accuracy, objectivity, and manipulability. He collected first in the Carpathian Basin (then the Kingdom of Hungary), where he notated Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, and Bulgarian folk music. The developmental breakthrough for Bartok arrived when he collaboratively collected folk music with Zoltán Kodály through the medium of a phonomotor, on which they studied classification possibilities (for individual folk songs) and recorded hundreds of cylinders. Bartok's compositional command of folk elements is expressed in such an authentic and undiluted a manner because of the scales, sounds, and rhythms that were so much a part of his native Hungary that he automatically saw music in these terms. He also collected in Moldavia, Wallachia, and (in 1913) Algeria. The outbreak of World War I forced him to stop the expeditions, but he returned to composing with a ballet called "The Wooden Prince" (1914–1916) and the String Quartet No. 2 in (1915–1917), both influenced by Debussy. Bartók's score for "The Miraculous Mandarin", another ballet, was influenced by Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg and Richard Strauss. Though started in 1918, the story's sexual content kept it from being performed until 1926. He next wrote his two violin sonatas (written in 1921 and 1922, respectively), which are among his most harmonically and structurally complex pieces. In March 1927, he visited Barcelona and performed the "Rhapsody for piano" Sz. 26 with the Orquestra Pau Casals at the Gran Teatre del Liceu. During the same stay, he attended a concert by the at the Palau de la Música Catalana. According to the critic , "he was very interested in the sardanas, above all, the freshness, spontaneity and life of our music [...] he wanted to know the mechanism of the tenoras and the tibles, and requested data on the composition of the cobla and extension and characteristics of each instrument". In 1927–1928, Bartók wrote his Third and Fourth String Quartets, after which his compositions demonstrated his mature style. Notable examples of this period are "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" (1936) and Divertimento for String Orchestra (1939). The Fifth String Quartet was composed in 1934, and the Sixth String Quartet (his last) in 1939. In 1936 he travelled to Turkey to collect and study Turkish folk music. He worked in collaboration with Turkish composer Ahmet Adnan Saygun mostly around Adana. World War II and final years (1940–1945). In 1940, as the European political situation worsened after the outbreak of World War II, Bartók was increasingly tempted to flee Hungary. He strongly opposed the Nazis and Hungary's alliance with Germany and the Axis powers under the Tripartite Pact. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Bartók refused to give concerts in Germany and broke away from his publisher there. His anti-fascist political views caused him a great deal of trouble with the establishment in Hungary. In his will recorded on 4 October 1940, he requested that no square or street be named after him until the Budapest squares Oktogon and Kodály körönd, or in fact any square or street in Hungary, no longer bore the names of Mussolini or Hitler, as they did at the time he wrote his will. Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, Bartók reluctantly emigrated to the US with his wife, Ditta Pásztory, in October 1940. They settled in New York City after arriving on the night of 29–30 October by a steamer from Lisbon. After joining them in 1942, their younger son Péter Bartók enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served in the Pacific during the remainder of the war and later settled in Florida, where he became a recording and sound engineer. His elder son by his first marriage, Béla Bartók III, remained in Hungary and later worked as a railroad official until his retirement in the early 1980s. Although he became an American citizen in 1945 shortly before his death, Bartók never felt fully at home in the United States. He initially found it difficult to compose in his new surroundings. Although he was well known in America as a pianist, ethnomusicologist and teacher, he was not well known as a composer. There was little American interest in his music during his final years. He and his wife Ditta gave some concerts, but demand for them was low. Bartók, who had made some recordings in Hungary, also recorded for Columbia Records after he came to the US; many of these recordings (some with Bartók's own spoken introductions) were later issued on LP and CD. Bartók was supported by a $3000-yearly research fellowship from Columbia University for several years (more than $50,000 in 2024 dollars). He and Ditta worked on a large collection of Serbian and Croatian folk songs in Columbia's libraries. Bartók's economic difficulties during his first years in America were mitigated by publication royalties, teaching and performance tours. While his finances were always precarious, he did not live and die in poverty as was the common myth. He had enough friends and supporters to ensure that there was sufficient money and work available for him to live on. Bartók was a proud man and did not easily accept charity. Despite being short on cash at times, he often refused money that his friends offered him out of their own pockets. Although he was not a member of the ASCAP, the society paid for any medical care he needed during his last two years, to which Bartók reluctantly agreed. According to Edward Jablonski's 1963 article, "At no time during Bartók's American years did his income amount to less than $4,000 a year" (about $70,000 in 2024 dollars). The first symptoms of his health problems began late in 1940, when his right shoulder began to show signs of stiffening. In 1942, symptoms increased and he started having bouts of fever. Bartók's illness was at first thought to be a recurrence of the tuberculosis he had experienced as a young man, and one of his doctors in New York was Edgar Mayer, director of Will Rogers Memorial Hospital in Saranac Lake, but medical examinations found no underlying disease. Finally, in April 1944, leukemia was diagnosed, but by this time, little could be done. As his body slowly failed, Bartók found more creative energy and produced a final set of masterpieces, partly thanks to the violinist Joseph Szigeti and the conductor Fritz Reiner (Reiner had been Bartók's friend and champion since his days as Bartók's student at the Royal Academy). Bartók's last work might well have been the String Quartet No. 6 but for Serge Koussevitzky's commission for the Concerto for Orchestra. Koussevitsky's Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered the work in December 1944 to highly positive reviews. The Concerto for Orchestra quickly became Bartók's most popular work, although he did not live to see its full impact. In 1944, he was also commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin to write a Sonata for Solo Violin. In 1945, Bartók composed his Piano Concerto No. 3, a graceful and almost neo-classical work, as a surprise 42nd birthday present for Ditta, but he died just over a month before her birthday, with the scoring not quite finished. He had also sketched his Viola Concerto, but had barely started the scoring at his death, leaving completed only the viola part and sketches of the orchestral part. Béla Bartók died at age 64 in a hospital in New York City from complications of leukemia (specifically, of secondary polycythemia) on 26 September 1945. His funeral was attended by only ten people. Aside from his widow and their son, other attendees included György Sándor. Bartók's body was initially interred in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. During the final year of communist Hungary in the late 1980s, the Hungarian government, along with his two sons, Béla III and Péter, requested that his remains be exhumed and transferred back to Budapest for burial, where Hungary arranged a state funeral for him on 7 July 1988. He was re-interred at Budapest's Farkasréti Cemetery, next to the remains of Ditta, who died in 1982, one year after what would have been Béla Bartók's 100th birthday. The two unfinished works were later completed by his pupil Tibor Serly. György Sándor was the soloist in the first performance of the Third Piano Concerto on 8 February 1946. Ditta Pásztory-Bartók later played and recorded it. The Viola Concerto was revised and published in the 1990s by Bartók's son; this version may be closer to what Bartók intended. Concurrently, Peter Bartók, in association with Argentine musician Nelson Dellamaggiore, worked to reprint and revise past editions of the Third Piano Concerto. Music. Bartók's music reflects two trends that dramatically changed the sound of music in the 20th century: the breakdown of the diatonic system of harmony that had served composers for the previous two hundred years; and the revival of nationalism as a source for musical inspiration, a trend that began with Mikhail Glinka and Antonín Dvořák in the last half of the 19th century. In his search for new forms of tonality, Bartók turned to Hungarian folk music, as well as to other folk music of the Carpathian Basin and even of Algeria and Turkey; in so doing he became influential in that stream of modernism which used indigenous music and techniques. One characteristic style of music is his Night music, which he used mostly in slow movements of multi-movement ensemble or orchestral compositions in his mature period. It is characterised by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies". An example is the third movement (Adagio) of his "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta". His music can be grouped roughly in accordance with the different periods in his life. Early years (1890–1902). The works of Bartók's youth were written in a classical and early romantic style touched with influences of popular and romani music. Between 1890 and 1894 (9 to 13 years of age) he wrote 31 piano pieces. Although most of these were simple dance pieces, in these early works Bartók began to tackle some more advanced forms, as in his ten-part programmatic "A Duna folyása" ("The Course of the Danube", 1890–1894), which he played in his first public recital in 1892. In Catholic grammar school Bartók took to studying the scores of composers "from Bach to Wagner", his compositions then advancing in style and taking on similarities to Schumann and Brahms. Following his matriculation into the Budapest Academy in 1890 he composed very little, though he began to work on exercises in orchestration and familiarized himself thoroughly with the operas of Wagner. In 1902 his creative energies were revitalized by the discovery of the music of Richard Strauss, whose tone poem "Also sprach Zarathustra", according to Bartók, "stimulated the greatest enthusiasm in me; at last I saw the way that lay before me". Bartók also owned the score to "A Hero's Life", which he transcribed for the piano and committed to memory. New influences (1903–1911). Under the influence of Strauss, Bartók composed in 1903 "Kossuth", a symphonic poem in ten tableaux on the subject of the 1848 Hungarian war of independence, reflecting the composers growing interest in musical nationalism. A year later he renewed his opus numbers with the "Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra" serving as Opus 1. Driven by nationalistic fervor and a desire to transcend the influence of prior composers, Bartók began a lifelong devotion to folk music, which was sparked by his overhearing nanny Lidi Dósa's singing of Transylvanian folk songs at a Hungarian resort in 1904. Bartók began to collect Magyar peasant melodies, later extending to the folk music of other peoples of the Carpathian Basin, Slovaks, Romanians, Rusyns, Serbs and Croatians. He used fewer and fewer romantic elements, in favour of an idiom that embodied folk music as intrinsic and essential to its style. Later in life he commented on the incorporation of folk and art music: The question is, what are the ways in which peasant music is taken over and becomes transmuted into modern music? We may, for instance, take over a peasant melody unchanged or only slightly varied, write an accompaniment to it and possibly some opening and concluding phrases. This kind of work would show a certain analogy with Bach's treatment of chorales. ... Another method ... is the following: the composer does not make use of a real peasant melody but invents his own imitation of such melodies. There is no true difference between this method and the one described above. ... There is yet a third way ... Neither peasant melodies nor imitations of peasant melodies can be found in his music, but it is pervaded by the atmosphere of peasant music. In this case we may say, he has completely absorbed the idiom of peasant music which has become his musical mother tongue. Bartók became first acquainted with Debussy's music in 1907 and regarded his music highly. In an interview in 1939 Bartók said: Debussy's great service to music was to reawaken among all musicians an awareness of harmony and its possibilities. In that, he was just as important as Beethoven, who revealed to us the possibilities of progressive form, or as Bach, who showed us the transcendent significance of counterpoint. Now, what I am always asking myself is this: is it possible to make a synthesis of these three great masters, a living synthesis that will be valid for our time? Debussy's influence is present in the Fourteen Bagatelles (1908). These made Ferruccio Busoni exclaim: "At last something truly new!" Until 1911, Bartók composed widely differing works which ranged from adherence to romantic style, to folk song arrangements and to his modernist opera "Bluebeard's Castle". The negative reception of his work led him to focus on folk music research after 1911 and abandon composition with the exception of folk music arrangements. Inspiration and experimentation (1916–1921). His pessimistic attitude towards composing was lifted by the stormy and inspiring contact with Klára Gombossy in the summer of 1915. This interesting episode in Bartók's life remained hidden until it was researched by Denijs Dille between 1979 and 1989. Bartók started composing again, including the Suite for piano opus 14 (1916), and "The Miraculous Mandarin" (1919) and he completed "The Wooden Prince" (1917). Bartók felt the result of World War I as a personal tragedy. Many regions he loved were severed from Hungary: Transylvania, the Banat (where he was born), and Bratislava (Pozsony, where his mother had lived). Additionally, the political relations between Hungary and other successor states to the Austro-Hungarian empire prohibited his folk music research outside of Hungary. Bartók also wrote the noteworthy "Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs" in 1920 and the sunny "Dance Suite" in 1923, the year of his second marriage. "Synthesis of East and West" (1926–1945). In 1926, Bartók needed a significant piece for piano and orchestra with which he could tour in Europe and America. He was particularly inspired by American composer Henry Cowell's controversial use of intense tone clusters on the piano while touring western Europe. Bartók happened to be present at one of these concerts and (to avoid causing offence) later requested Cowell's permission to use his technique, which Cowell granted. In the preparation for writing his first Piano Concerto, he wrote his Sonata, "Out of Doors", and "Nine Little Pieces", all for solo piano, and all of which prominently utilize clusters. He increasingly found his own voice in his maturity. The style of his last period named "Synthesis of East and West" is hard to define let alone to put under one term. In his mature period, Bartók wrote relatively few works but most of them are large-scale compositions for large settings. Only his voice works have programmatic titles and his late works often adhere to classical forms. Among Bartók's most important works are the six string quartets (1909, 1917, 1927, 1928, 1934, and 1939), the "Cantata Profana" (1930), which Bartók declared was the work he felt and professed to be his most personal "credo", the "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" (1936), the Concerto for Orchestra (1943) and the Third Piano Concerto (1945). He made a lasting contribution to the literature for younger students: for his son Péter's music lessons, he composed "Mikrokosmos", a six-volume collection of graded piano pieces. Musical analysis. Paul Wilson lists as the most prominent characteristics of Bartók's music from late 1920s onwards the influence of the Carpathian basin and European art music, and his changing attitude toward (and use of) tonality, but without the use of the traditional harmonic functions associated with major and minor scales. Although Bartók claimed in his writings that his music was always tonal, he rarely used the chords or scales normally associated with tonality, and so the descriptive resources of tonal theory are of limited use. George and Elliott focus on his alternative methods of signaling tonal centers, via axes of inversional symmetry. Others view Bartók's axes of symmetry in terms of atonal analytic protocols. Richard argues that inversional symmetry is often a byproduct of another atonal procedure, the formation of chords from transpositionally related dyads. Atonal pitch-class theory also furnishes resources for exploring polymodal chromaticism, projected sets, privileged patterns, and large set types used as source sets such as the equal tempered twelve tone aggregate, octatonic scale (and alpha chord), the diatonic and "heptatonia secunda" seven-note scales, and less often the whole tone scale and the primary pentatonic collection. He rarely used the simple aggregate actively to shape musical structure, though there are notable examples such as the second theme from the first movement of his Second Violin Concerto, of which he commented that he "wanted to show Schoenberg that one can use all twelve tones and still remain tonal". More thoroughly, in the first eight measures of the last movement of his Second Quartet, all notes gradually gather with the twelfth (G) sounding for the first time on the last beat of measure 8, marking the end of the first section. The aggregate is partitioned in the opening of the Third String Quartet with C–D–D–E in the accompaniment (strings) while the remaining pitch classes are used in the melody (violin 1) and more often as 7–35 (diatonic or "white-key" collection) and 5–35 (pentatonic or "black-key" collection) such as in no. 6 of the "Eight Improvisations". There, the primary theme is on the black keys in the left hand, while the right accompanies with triads from the white keys. In measures 50–51 in the third movement of the Fourth Quartet, the first violin and cello play black-key chords, while the second violin and viola play stepwise diatonic lines. On the other hand, from as early as the Suite for piano, Op. 14 (1914), he occasionally employed a form of serialism based on compound interval cycles, some of which are maximally distributed, multi-aggregate cycles. Ernő Lendvai analyses Bartók's works as being based on two opposing tonal systems, that of the acoustic scale and the axis system, as well as using the golden section as a structural principle. Milton Babbitt, in his 1949 review of Bartók's string quartets, criticized Bartók for using tonality and non-tonal methods unique to each piece. Babbitt noted that "Bartók's solution was a specific one, it cannot be duplicated". Bartók's use of "two organizational principles"—tonality for large scale relationships and the piece-specific method for moment to moment thematic elements—was a problem for Babbitt, who worried that the "highly attenuated tonality" requires extreme non-harmonic methods to create a feeling of closure. Catalogues. The cataloguing of Bartók's works is somewhat complex. Bartók assigned opus numbers to his works three times, the last of these series ending with the Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, Op. 21 in 1921. He ended this practice because of the difficulty of distinguishing between original works and ethnographic arrangements, and between major and minor works. Since his death, three attempts—two full and one partial—have been made at cataloguing. The first, and still most widely used, is András Szőllősy's chronological Sz. numbers, from 1 to 121. subsequently reorganised the juvenilia (Sz. 1–25) thematically, as DD numbers 1 to 77. The most recent catalogue is that of László Somfai; this is a chronological index with works identified by BB numbers 1 to 129, incorporating corrections based on the Béla Bartók Thematic Catalogue. On 1 January 2016, Bartók's works entered the public domain in the European Union. Discography. Together with his like-minded contemporary Zoltán Kodály, Bartók embarked on an extensive programme of field research to capture the folk and peasant melodies of Magyar, Slovak and Romanian language territories. At first they transcribed the melodies by hand, but later they began to use a phonomotor, a wax cylinder recording machine invented by Thomas Edison. Compilations of Bartók's field recordings, interviews, and original piano playing have been released over the years, largely by the Hungarian record label Hungaroton: A compilation of field recordings and transcriptions for two violas was also recently released by Tantara Records in 2014. On 18 March 2016 Decca Classics released "Béla Bartók: The Complete Works", the first ever complete compilation of all of Bartók's compositions, including new recordings of never-before-recorded early piano and vocal works. However, none of the composer's own performances are included in this 32-disc set.
4528	1300628426	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4528	Bill Haley	William John Clifton Haley (; July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981) was an American rock and roll musician. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and million-selling hits such as "Rock Around the Clock", "See You Later, Alligator", "Shake, Rattle and Roll", "Rocket 88", "Skinny Minnie", and "Razzle Dazzle". Haley has sold over 60 million records worldwide. In 1987, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Early life and career. Haley was born July 6, 1925, in Highland Park, Michigan. In 1929, the four-year-old Haley underwent an inner-ear mastoid operation which accidentally severed an optic nerve, leaving him blind in his left eye for the rest of his life. It is said that Haley adopted his trademark kiss curl over his right eye to draw attention from his left, but it also became his "gimmick" and added to his popularity. As a result of the effects of the Great Depression on the Detroit area, Haley's father moved the family to Bethel Township, Pennsylvania, when Bill was seven years old. Haley's father William Albert Haley (1900–1956) was from Kentucky and played the banjo and mandolin, and his mother, Maude Green (1895–1955), who was originally from Ulverston in Lancashire, England, was a technically accomplished keyboardist with classical training. Haley told the story that when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one. One of Haley's first appearances was in 1938 for a Bethel Junior baseball team entertainment event, performing guitar and songs at age 13. According to the anonymous sleeve notes accompanying the 1956 Decca album "Rock Around the Clock", Haley left home at 15 with his guitar and spent the next few years poverty-stricken until joining a group called the Down Homers while they were in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1947, Haley formed his own group, Four Aces of Western Swing, later renamed to the Saddlemen. The group subsequently signed with Dave Miller's Holiday Records and, on June 14, 1951, the Saddlemen recorded a cover of the Delta Cats "Rocket 88". Bill Haley and His Comets. During the Labor Day weekend in 1952, the Saddlemen were renamed Bill Haley with Haley's Comets. The name was inspired by the supposedly official pronunciation of Halley's Comet and was suggested by Bob Johnson, program director at radio station WPWA where Bill Haley had a live radio program from 12:00noon to 1:00p.m. In 1953, Haley's recording of "Crazy Man, Crazy" (co-written by Haley and his bass player, Marshall Lytle, although Lytle would not receive credit until 2001) hit the American charts, peaking at number 12 on "Billboard" and number 11 on "Cash Box". Some sources indicate that this was the first rock and roll record in history, although rockabilly might be a more appropriate term. By the time this record was released, the group's name had been revised to using the term "Comets" instead of "Saddlemen". In 1954, Haley recorded "Rock Around the Clock". Initially, it was only a moderate success, peaking at number 36 on the "Cash Box" pop singles chart and staying on the charts for just two weeks. On re-release, the record reached number one on July 9, 1955. Haley had already had a worldwide hit with "Shake, Rattle and Roll", another rhythm and blues cover in this case from Big Joe Turner, which went on to sell a million copies and was the first rock 'n' roll song to enter the UK Singles Chart in December 1954, becoming a gold record. He retained elements of the original (which was slow blues), but sped it up with some country music aspects into the song (specifically, Western swing) and changed up the lyrics. Haley and his band were important in launching the music known as "Rock and Roll" to a wider audience after a period of it being considered an underground genre. When "Rock Around the Clock" appeared as the theme song of the 1955 film "Blackboard Jungle" starring Glenn Ford, it soared to the top of the American "Billboard" chart for eight weeks. The single is commonly used as a convenient line of demarcation between the "rock era" and the music industry that preceded it. "Billboard" separated its statistical tabulations into 1890–1954 and 1955–present. After the record rose to number one, Haley became widely popular with those who had come to embrace the new style of music. With the song's success, the age of rock music began overnight and ended the dominance of the jazz and pop standards performed by Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Eddie Fisher, and Patti Page. "Rock Around the Clock" was also the first record to sell over one million copies in both Britain and Germany. Danny Cedrone, not a member of The Comets, played the guitar solo on the record, though did not live long enough to see the song's success as he died shortly after the recording following a fall down stairs at his home, aged 33. Bill Haley and the Comets performed "Rock Around the Clock" on the "Texaco Star Theater" hosted by Milton Berle on May 31, 1955, on NBC in an" a cappella" and lip-synched version. Berle predicted that the song would go number one: "A group of entertainers who are going right to the top." Berle also sang and danced to the song which was performed by the entire cast of the show. This was one of the earliest nationally televised performances by a rock and roll band and provided the new musical genre with a much wider audience. Bill Haley and the Comets were the first rock and roll act to appear on American musical variety series the "Ed Sullivan Show" on August 7, 1955, on CBS in a broadcast that originated from the Shakespeare Festival Theater in Stratford, Connecticut. They performed a live version of "Rock Around the Clock" with Franny Beecher on lead guitar and Dick Richards on drums. The band made their second appearance on the show on Sunday, April 28, 1957, performing the songs "Rudy's Rock" and "Forty Cups of Coffee". Later in 1957, Haley became the first major American rock singer to tour Europe. Haley continued to score hits throughout the 1950s such as "See You Later, Alligator" and he starred in the first rock and roll musical films "Rock Around the Clock" and "Don't Knock the Rock", both in 1956. Haley was already 30 years old, and his popularity was soon eclipsed in the United States by the younger Elvis Presley, but continued to enjoy great popularity in Latin America, Europe, and Australia during the 1960s. Bill Haley and the Comets appeared on "American Bandstand" hosted by Dick Clark on ABC twice in 1957, on the prime time show October 28, 1957, and on the regular daytime show a month later on November 27. The band also appeared on Dick Clark's "Saturday Night Beechnut Show", also known as "The Dick Clark Show", a primetime TV series from New York on March 22, 1958, during the first season and on February 20, 1960, performing "Rock Around the Clock"; "Shake, Rattle and Roll"; and "Tamiami". Personal life. Marriages. Haley was married at least thrice: Children. Haley had at least 10 children. John W. Haley, his eldest son, wrote "Sound and Glory", a biography of Haley. His youngest daughter, Gina Haley, is a professional musician based in Texas. Scott Haley is an athlete. His youngest son, Pedro, is also a musician. Haley also had a daughter, Martha Maria, from his marriage with Martha Velasco. Bill Haley Jr., Haley's second son and first with Joan Barbara "Cuppy" Haley-Hahn, publishes a regional business magazine. In 2011, he formed a tribute band, performing his father's music and telling the stories behind the songs. Later career and death. Haley failed to achieve the level of success enjoyed by contemporaries such as Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. According to one source, "he had conflicted feelings about fame, was extremely private, suffered chronic alcoholism, and troubled relationships". Having admitted to an alcohol problem in a 1974 radio interview for the BBC, Haley continued to battle alcoholism into the 1970s. Nonetheless, he and his band continued to be a popular touring act, benefiting from a 1950s nostalgia movement that began in the late 1960s and the signing of a lucrative record deal with the European Sonet label. Haley performed for Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Variety Performance on November 26, 1979. The October 25, 1980, issue of German tabloid "Bild" reported that Haley had a brain tumor. Haley's British manager, Patrick Malynn, was quoted as saying that "Haley had taken a fit [and] didn't recognize anyone anymore." In addition, a doctor who examined Haley said that the tumor was inoperable. Haley's widow, Martha, who was with him in these troubling times, denied that Haley had a brain tumor, as did his close friend Hugh McCallum. Martha and friends related that Haley did not want to go on the road anymore and that ticket sales for that planned tour of Germany in the fall of 1980 were slow. McCallum said, "It's my unproven gut feeling that that [the brain tumor] was said to curtail talks about the tour and play the sympathy card." At the same time, Haley's alcoholism appeared to be worsening. According to Martha, by this time, she and Haley fought all the time and she told him to stop drinking or move out. Eventually, he moved into a room in their pool house. Martha still took care of him and sometimes, he would come in the house to eat, but he ate very little. "There were days we never saw him", said his daughter Martha Maria. In addition to Haley's drinking problems, it was becoming evident that he was also developing serious mental health issues. Martha Maria said, "It was like sometimes he was drunk even when he wasn't drinking." After being picked up by the police in Harlingen, Texas several times for alleged intoxication, Martha had a judge put Haley in the hospital, where he was seen by a psychiatrist, who said Haley's brain was overproducing a chemical, like adrenaline. The doctor prescribed a medication to stop the overproduction, but said Haley would have to stop drinking. Martha said, "This is pointless." She took him home, however, fed him and gave him his first dose. As soon as he felt better, he went back out to his room in the pool house, and the downward spiral continued until his death. Media reports immediately following his death indicated that Haley displayed deranged and erratic behavior in the final weeks of his life. According to a biography of Haley by John Swenson, released in 1982, Haley made a succession of bizarre, mostly monologue late-night phone calls to friends and relatives toward the end of his life in which he was semi-coherent. His first wife has been quoted as saying, "He would call you and ramble, dwelling on the past..." The biography also describes Haley painting the windows of his home black, but there is little other information available about his final days. Haley died at his home in Harlingen on February9, 1981; he was only 55 years old. Haley was discovered lying motionless on his bed by a friend who had stopped by to visit him. The friend immediately called the police, and Haley was pronounced dead at the scene. Haley's death certificate gave "natural causes, most likely a heart attack" as being the cause. Following a small funeral service attended by 75 people, Haley was cremated in Brownsville, Texas. Tributes and legacy. Haley has sold over 60 million records worldwide. Haley received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6350 Hollywood Boulevard on February8, 1960, for his contributions to the music industry. In 1982, Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings at least 25 years old and with "qualitative or historical significance". In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Haley was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. His son Pedro represented him at the ceremony. The Comets were separately inducted into the Hall of Fame as a group in 2012, after a rule change allowed the induction of backing groups. Surviving members of the 1954–55 contingent of Haley's Comets reunited in the late 1980s and continued to perform for many years around the world. By 2014, only two members of this particular contingent were still alive (saxophonist Joey Ambrose and drummer Dick Richards), but they continued to perform in Branson and Europe. In 2019, Richards died at the age of 95, followed by Ambrose's death in 2021 aged 87. Ambrose was considered to be the last surviving original member of the Comets. In February 2006, the International Astronomical Union announced the naming of asteroid 79896 Billhaley to mark the 25th anniversary of Haley's death. In March 2007, the Original Comets opened the Bill Haley Museum in Munich, Germany. On October 27, 2007, ex-Comets guitar player Bill Turner opened the Bill Haley Museum for the public. In December 2017, Haley was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. Film portrayals. Unlike his contemporaries, Haley has rarely been portrayed on screen. Following the success of "The Buddy Holly Story" in 1978, Haley expressed interest in having his life story committed to film, but this ultimately never came to fruition. Haley has been portrayed by:
4529	28481209	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4529	Northern bobwhite	The northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus), also known as the Virginia quail or (in its home range) bobwhite quail, is a ground-dwelling bird native to Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Cuba, with introduced populations elsewhere in the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. It is a member of the group of species known as New World quail (Odontophoridae). They were initially placed with the Old World quail in the pheasant family (Phasianidae), but are not particularly closely related. The name "bobwhite" is an onomatopoeic derivation from its characteristic whistling call. Despite its secretive nature, the northern bobwhite is one of the most familiar quails in eastern North America, because it is frequently the only quail in its range. Habitat degradation has contributed to the northern bobwhite population in eastern North America declining by roughly 85% from 1966 to 2014. This population decline is apparently range-wide and continuing. There are 20 subspecies of northern bobwhite, many of which are hunted extensively as game birds. One subspecies, the masked bobwhite ("Colinus virginianus ridgwayi"), is listed as endangered with wild populations located in the northern Mexican state of Sonora and a reintroduced population in Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona. Taxonomy. The northern bobwhite was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his "Systema Naturae" under the binomial name "Tetrao virginianus". Linnaeus specified the type location as "America" but this has been restricted to the state of Virginia. Linnaeus based his account on the "American partridge" that had been described and illustrated by the English naturalist Mark Catesby in his book "The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands". The northern bobwhite is now one of four species placed in the genus "Colinus" that was introduced in 1820 by the German naturalist Georg August Goldfuss. Subspecies. There are 20 recognized subspecies in four groups. One subspecies, the Key West bobwhite ("C. v. insulanus"), is extinct. The subspecies are listed in taxonomic order: The holotype specimen of "Ortyx pectoralis" Gould (Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1842 (1843), p.182.) is held in the collections of the National Museums Liverpool at the World Museum, with accession number D3713. The specimen died in the aviary at Knowsley Hall, Lancashire and came to the Liverpool national collection via the 13th Earl of Derby's collection, which was bequeathed to the people of Liverpool in 1851. Description. The northern bobwhite is a moderately-sized quail, and is the only small galliform native to eastern North America. The bobwhite can range from in length with a wingspan. As indicated by body mass, weights increase in birds found further north, as corresponds to Bergmann's rule. In Mexico, northern bobwhites weigh from whereas in the north they average and large males can attain as much as . Among standard measurements, the wing chord is , the tail is the culmen is and the tarsus is . It has the typical chunky, rounded shape of a quail. The bill is short, curved and brown-black in color. This species is sexually dimorphic. Males have a white throat and brow stripe bordered by black. The overall rufous plumage has gray mottling on the wings, white scalloped stripes on the flanks, and black scallops on the whitish underparts. The tail is gray. The clear whistle "bob-WHITE" or "bob-bob-WHITE" call is very recognizable. The syllables are slow and widely spaced, rising in pitch a full octave from beginning to end. Other calls include lisps, peeps, and more rapidly whistled warning calls. Distribution and habitat. The northern bobwhite can be found year-round in agricultural fields, grassland, open woodland areas, roadsides and wood edges. Its range covers the southeastern quadrant of the United States from the Great Lakes and southern Minnesota east to New York State and southern Massachusetts, and extending west to southern Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado front-range foothills to 7,000 feet, and all but westernmost Texas. It is absent from the southern tip of Florida (where the extinct Key West bobwhite subspecies once lived) and the highest elevations of the Appalachian Mountains, but occurs in eastern Mexico and in Cuba, and has been introduced to Hispaniola (both the Dominican Republic and Haiti), the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands (formerly), Puerto Rico, France, China, Portugal, and Italy. Isolated populations also have been introduced in Oregon and Washington. The northern bobwhite has also been introduced to New Zealand. There is no self-sustaining population in Pennsylvania, where the bird is considered extirpated; it is also considered extirpated in the states of New Hampshire and Connecticut. Its distribution in New York has been limited to Suffolk and Nassau Counties on Long Island, as well as potential population pockets in Upstate New York. The bird is considered declining or extirpated throughout much of the Northeastern United States. Similarly, the bird is almost extirpated from Ontario (and Canada as a whole), with the only self-sustaining population confirmed to exist recorded on Walpole Island. Behavior and ecology. Like most game birds, the northern bobwhite is shy and elusive. When threatened, it will crouch and freeze, relying on camouflage to stay undetected, but will flush into low flight if closely disturbed. It is generally solitary or paired early in the year, but family groups are common in the late summer and winter roosts may have two dozen or more birds in a single covey. Breeding. The species was once considered monogamous, but with the advent of radio telemetry, the sexual behavior of bobwhites has better been described as ambisexual polygamy. Either parent may incubate a clutch for 23 days, and the precocial young leave the nest shortly after hatching. The main source of nest failure is predation, with nest success averaging 28% across their range. However, the nest success of stable populations is typically much higher than this average, and the aforementioned estimate includes values for declining populations. Brooding behavior varies in that amalgamation (kidnapping, adopting, creching, gang brooding) may occur. An incubating parent may alternatively stay with its young. A hen may re-nest up to four times until she has a successful nest. However, it is extremely rare for bobwhites to hatch more than two successful nests within one nesting season. Food and feeding. The northern bobwhite's diet consists of plant material and small invertebrates, such as snails, ticks, grasshoppers, beetles, spiders, crickets, and leafhoppers. Plant sources include seeds, wild berries, partridge peas, and cultivated grains. It forages on the ground in open areas with some spots of taller vegetation. Optimal nutrient requirements for bobwhite vary depending on the age of bird and the time of the year. For example, the optimal protein requirement for egg laying hens (23% protein) is much higher than for males (16%). Relationship to humans. Introduced populations. European Union. Northern bobwhite were introduced into Italy in 1927, and are reported in the plains and hills in the northwest of the country. Other reports from the EU are in France, Spain, and the Balkans. As bobwhites are highly productive and popular aviary subjects, it is reasonable to expect other introductions have been made in other parts of the EU, especially in the U.K. and Ireland, where game-bird breeding, liberation, and naturalization are relatively common practices. New Zealand. From 1898 to 1902, some 1,300 birds were imported from America and released in many parts of the North and South Islands, from Northland to Southland. The bird was briefly on the Nelson game shooting licence, but: "It would seem that the committee was a little too eager in placing these Quail on the licence, or the shooters of the day were over-zealous and greedy in their bag limits, for the Virginian Quail, like the Mountain Quail were soon a thing of the past." The Taranaki (Acclimatisation) Society released a few in 1900 and was confidant that in a year or two they might offer good sport; two years later, broods were reported and the species was said to be "steadily increasing"; but after another two years they seemed "to have disappeared" and that was the end of them. The Otago (Acclimatisation) Society imported more in 1948, but these releases did no good. After 1923, no more genuinely wild birds were sighted until 1952, when a small population was found northwest of Wairoa in the Ruapapa Road area. Since then, bobwhite have been found at several localities around Waikaremoana, in farmland, open bush and along roadsides. More birds have been imported into New Zealand by private individuals since the 1990s and a healthy captive population is now held by backyard aviculturists and have been found to be easily cared for and bred and are popular for their song and good looks. A larger proportion of the national captive population belong to a few game preserves and game bird breeders. Though the birds would be self-sustaining in the wild if they were protected; it is tricky to guess what the effect of an annual population subsidy and hunting has on any of the original populations from the Acclimatisation Society releases. An albino hen was present in a covey in Bayview, Hawkes Bay for a couple of seasons sometime around 2000. Captivity. Housing. Bobwhites are generally compatible with most parrots, softbills and doves. This species should, however, be the only ground-dwelling species in the aviary. Most individuals will do little damage to finches, but one should watch that nests are not being crushed when the species perches at night. Single pairs are preferred, unless the birds have been raised together as a group since they were chicks. Some fighting will occur between cocks at breeding time. One cock may be capable of breeding with several hens, but the fertility seems to be highest in the eggs from the "preferred" hen. Aviary style is a compromise between what is tolerated by the bird and what is best for the bird. Open parrot-style type aviaries may be used, but some birds will remain flighty and shy in this situation. In a planted aviary, this species will generally settle down to become quite tame and confiding. Parents with chicks will roost on the ground, forming a circular arrangement, with heads facing outwards. In the early morning and late afternoon, the cock will utter his call, which, although not loud, carries well and may offend noise-sensitive neighbors. Most breeding facilities keep birds in breeding groups on wire up off the ground. Feeding. In the wild the northern bobwhite feeds on a variety of weed and grass seeds, as well as insects. These are generally collected on the ground or from low foliage. Birds in the aviary are easily catered for with a commercial small seed mix (finch, budgerigar, or small parrot mix) when supplemented with greenfeed. Live food is not usually necessary for breeding, but will be ravenously accepted. High protein foods such as chicken grower crumble are more convenient to supply and will be useful for the stimulation of breeding birds. Extra calcium is required, especially by laying hens; it can be supplied in the form of shell grit, or cuttlefish bone. Breeding. If a nesting site and privacy are not provided, hens will lay anywhere within an open aviary. Hens that do this may, in a season, lay upwards of 80 eggs, which can be taken for artificial incubation and the chicks hand-raised. Hens with nesting cover that do make a nest (on the ground) will build up 8–25 eggs in a clutch, with eggs being laid daily. Mutations and hybrids. Some captive bobwhite hybrids recorded are between blue quail (scaled quail), Gambel's quail, California quail, and mountain quail. It has long been suggested that there are Japanese quail hybrids being bred commercially; however, there is a distinct lack of photographic proof to substantiate this. Inter-subspecific hybrids have been common. Several mutations have long been established, including Californian Jumbo, Wisconsin Jumbo, Northern Giant, Albino, Snowflake, Blonde, Fawn, Barred, Silver, and Red. Status. The northern bobwhite is rated as a Near-threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The northern bobwhite is threatened across its range due to habitat loss and habitat degradation. Changing land use patterns and changing fire regimes have caused once prime habitat to become unfavorable for the bobwhite. Masked bobwhite. The masked bobwhite subspecies, "C. v. ridgwayi", is listed as endangered in the U.S. The birds were twice declared extirpated in Arizona in the past century. It was originally endemic to southern Arizona in the U.S., and northern Sonora in Mexico. It is considered a "Critically Imperiled Subspecies" by NatureServe. The masked bobwhite was in decline since its discovery in 1884. By 1900, the subspecies was already extinct in the U.S. Populations remained in Mexico, but their study was curtailed by political events in Mexico, including the Mexican Revolution and the last of the Yaqui Wars. A population of the masked bobwhite was finally discovered and studied in Mexico, in 1931 and 1932. A native population historically existed in Sonora, but by 2017, its population appeared to be declining, or possibly extinct. A 2017 study recorded no wild sightings of the bird in Sonora. Decline of the species has been attributed to intense livestock grazing in an ecosystem that does not rejuvenate quickly. A captive flock was established in Arizona in the 1970s. The George Miksch Sutton Avian Research Center (Sutton Center) became involved with conservation efforts in 2017 to establish a breeding population at the Sutton Center in Oklahoma, in order to reintroduce birds to Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge (BANWR). In 2019, biologists from the Sutton Center transported 1,000 chicks by road vehicle to Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. In 2020, a projected total of 1,200 birds will be transported by airplanes to BANWR. These recent actions are supplemental, and in addition to other conservation efforts in the past, seem to aid the subspecies' future conservation efforts. In popular culture. In "Eek! The Cat" episode "PolitEekly Correct", while Sharky is chasing Eek, they cause a quail named Bob White to lose his signature call. They travel across the United States and eventually recover his distinctive "bobwhite" call. In 2023, the masked bobwhite subspecies will be featured on a United States Postal Service Forever stamp as part of the "Endangered Species" set, based on a photograph from Joel Sartore's "Photo Ark". The stamp will be dedicated at a ceremony at the National Grasslands Visitor Center in Wall, South Dakota.
4531	7903804	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4531	Bipolar disorder	Bipolar disorder (BD), previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that each last from days to weeks, and in some cases months. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with psychosis, it is called "mania"; if it is less severe and does not significantly affect functioning, it is called "hypomania". During mania, an individual behaves or feels abnormally energetic, happy, or irritable, and they often make impulsive decisions with little regard for the consequences. There is usually, but not always, a reduced need for sleep during manic phases. During periods of depression, the individual may experience crying, have a negative outlook on life, and demonstrate poor eye contact with others. The risk of suicide is high. Over a period of 20 years, 6% of those with bipolar disorder died by suicide, with about one-third attempting suicide in their lifetime. Among those with the disorder, 40–50% overall and 78% of adolescents engaged in self-harm. Other mental health issues, such as anxiety disorders and substance use disorders, are commonly associated with bipolar disorder. The global prevalence of bipolar disorder is estimated to be between 1–5% of the world's population. While the causes of this mood disorder are not clearly understood, both genetic and environmental factors are thought to play a role. Genetic factors may account for up to 70–90% of the risk of developing bipolar disorder. Many genes, each with small effects, may contribute to the development of the disorder. Environmental risk factors include a history of childhood abuse and long-term stress. The condition is classified as bipolar I disorder if there has been at least one manic episode, with or without depressive episodes, and as bipolar II disorder if there has been at least one hypomanic episode (but no full manic episodes) and one major depressive episode. It is classified as cyclothymia if there are hypomanic episodes with periods of depression that do not meet the criteria for major depressive episodes. If these symptoms are due to drugs or medical problems, they are not diagnosed as bipolar disorder. Other conditions that have overlapping symptoms with bipolar disorder include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, personality disorders, schizophrenia, and substance use disorder as well as many other medical conditions. Medical testing is not required for a diagnosis, though blood tests or medical imaging can rule out other problems. Mood stabilizers, particularly lithium, and certain anticonvulsants, such as lamotrigine and valproate, as well as atypical antipsychotics, including quetiapine, olanzapine, and aripiprazole are the mainstay of long-term pharmacologic relapse prevention. Antipsychotics are additionally given during acute manic episodes as well as in cases where mood stabilizers are poorly tolerated or ineffective. In patients where compliance is of concern, long-acting injectable formulations are available. There is some evidence that psychotherapy improves the course of this disorder. The use of antidepressants in depressive episodes is controversial: they can be effective but certain classes of antidepressants increase the risk of mania. The treatment of depressive episodes, therefore, is often difficult. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is effective in acute manic and depressive episodes, especially with psychosis or catatonia. Admission to a psychiatric hospital may be required if a person is a risk to themselves or others; involuntary treatment is sometimes necessary if the affected person refuses treatment. Bipolar disorder occurs in approximately 2% of the global population. In the United States, about 3% are estimated to be affected at some point in their life; rates appear to be similar in females and males. Symptoms most commonly begin between the ages of 20 and 25 years old; an earlier onset in life is associated with a worse prognosis. Interest in functioning in the assessment of patients with bipolar disorder is growing, with an emphasis on specific domains such as work, education, social life, family, and cognition. Around one-quarter to one-third of people with bipolar disorder have financial, social or work-related problems due to the illness. Bipolar disorder is among the top 20 causes of disability worldwide and leads to substantial costs for society. Due to lifestyle choices and the side effects of medications, the risk of death from natural causes such as coronary heart disease in people with bipolar disorder is twice that of the general population. Signs and symptoms. Late adolescence and early adulthood are peak years for the onset of bipolar disorder. The condition is characterized by intermittent episodes of mania, commonly (but not in every patient) alternating with bouts of depression, with an absence of symptoms in between. During these episodes, people with bipolar disorder exhibit disruptions in normal mood, psychomotor activity (the level of physical activity that is influenced by mood)—e.g. constant fidgeting during mania or slowed movements during depression—circadian rhythm and cognition. Mania can present with varying levels of mood disturbance, ranging from euphoria, which is associated with "classic mania", to dysphoria and irritability. Psychotic symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations may occur in both manic and depressive episodes; their content and nature are consistent with the person's prevailing mood. In some people with bipolar disorder, depressive symptoms predominate, and the episodes of mania are always the more subdued hypomania type. According to the DSM-5 criteria, mania is distinguished from hypomania by the duration: hypomania is present if elevated mood symptoms persist for at least four consecutive days, while mania is present if such symptoms persist for more than a week. Unlike mania, hypomania is not always associated with impaired functioning. The biological mechanisms responsible for switching from a manic or hypomanic episode to a depressive episode, or vice versa, remain poorly understood. Manic episodes. Also known as a manic episode, mania is a distinct period of at least one week of elevated or irritable mood, which can range from euphoria to delirium. The core symptom of mania involves an increase in energy of psychomotor activity. Mania can also present with increased self-esteem or grandiosity, racing thoughts, pressured speech that is difficult to interrupt, decreased need for sleep, disinhibited social behavior, increased goal-oriented activities and impaired judgement, which can lead to exhibition of behaviors characterized as impulsive or high-risk, such as hypersexuality or excessive spending. To fit the definition of a manic episode, these behaviors must impair the individual's ability to socialize or work. If untreated, a manic episode usually lasts three to six months. In severe manic episodes, a person can experience psychotic symptoms, where thought content is affected along with mood. They may feel unstoppable, persecuted, or as if they have a special relationship with God, a great mission to accomplish, or other grandiose or delusional ideas. This may lead to violent behavior and, sometimes, hospitalization in an inpatient psychiatric hospital. The severity of manic symptoms can be measured by rating scales such as the Young Mania Rating Scale, though questions remain about the reliability of these scales. The onset of a manic or depressive episode is often foreshadowed by sleep disturbance. Manic individuals often have a history of substance use disorder developed over years as a form of "self-medication". Hypomanic episodes. Hypomania is the milder form of mania, defined as at least four days of the same criteria as mania, but which does not cause a significant decrease in the individual's ability to socialize or work, lacks psychotic features such as delusions or hallucinations, and does not require psychiatric hospitalization. Overall functioning may actually increase during episodes of hypomania and is thought to serve as a defense mechanism against depression by some. Hypomanic episodes rarely progress to full-blown manic episodes. Some people who experience hypomania show increased creativity, while others are irritable or demonstrate poor judgment. Hypomania may feel good to some individuals who experience it, though most people who experience hypomania state that the stress of the experience is very painful. People with bipolar disorder who experience hypomania tend to forget the effects of their actions on those around them. Even when family and friends recognize mood swings, the individual will often deny that anything is wrong. If not accompanied by depressive episodes, hypomanic episodes are often not deemed problematic unless the mood changes are uncontrollable or volatile. In individuals with Bipolar II disorder, depressive symptoms typically overlap with hypomania symptoms. These individuals may not be able to identify these specific symptoms as hypomania, rather they view them as typical depression with slight alterations in mood. Most commonly, symptoms continue for time periods from a few weeks to a few months. Depressive episodes. Symptoms of the depressive phase of bipolar disorder include persistent feelings of sadness, irritability or anger, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, excessive or inappropriate guilt, hopelessness, sleeping too much or not enough, changes in appetite or weight, fatigue, problems concentrating, self-loathing or feelings of worthlessness, and thoughts of death or suicide. Although the DSM-5 criteria for diagnosing unipolar and bipolar episodes are the same, some clinical features are more common in the latter, including increased sleep, sudden onset and resolution of symptoms, significant weight gain or loss, and severe episodes after childbirth. The earlier the age of onset, the more likely the first few episodes are to be depressive. For most people with bipolar types 1 and 2, the depressive episodes are much longer than the manic or hypomanic episodes. Since a diagnosis of bipolar disorder requires a manic or hypomanic episode, many affected individuals are initially misdiagnosed as having major depression and treated with prescribed antidepressants. Mixed affective episodes. In bipolar disorder, a mixed state is an episode during which symptoms of both mania and depression occur simultaneously. Individuals experiencing a mixed state may have manic symptoms such as grandiose thoughts while simultaneously experiencing depressive symptoms such as excessive guilt or feeling suicidal. They are considered to have a higher risk for suicidal behavior as depressive emotions such as hopelessness are often paired with mood swings or difficulties with impulse control. Anxiety disorders occur more frequently as a comorbidity in mixed bipolar episodes than in non-mixed bipolar depression or mania. Substance (including alcohol) use also follows this trend, thereby appearing to depict bipolar symptoms as no more than a consequence of substance use. Comorbid conditions. People with bipolar disorder often have other co-existing psychiatric conditions such as anxiety (present in about 71% of people with bipolar disorder), substance abuse (56%), personality disorders (36%) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (10–20%) which can add to the burden of illness and worsen the prognosis. Certain medical conditions are also more common in people with bipolar disorder as compared to the general population. This includes increased rates of metabolic syndrome (present in 37% of people with bipolar disorder), migraine headaches (35%), obesity (21%) and type 2 diabetes (14%). This contributes to a risk of death that is two times higher in those with bipolar disorder as compared to the general population. Hypothyroidism is also common regardless of drug choice. Substance use disorder is a common comorbidity in bipolar disorder; the subject has been widely reviewed. Causes. The causes of bipolar disorder likely vary between individuals and the exact mechanism underlying the disorder remains unclear. Genetic influences are believed to account for 73–93% of the risk of developing the disorder indicating a strong hereditary component. The overall heritability of the bipolar spectrum has been estimated at 0.71. Twin studies have been limited by relatively small sample sizes but have indicated a substantial genetic contribution, as well as environmental influence. For bipolar I disorder, the rate at which identical twins (same genes) will both have bipolar I disorder (concordance) is around 40%, compared to about 5% in fraternal twins. A combination of bipolar I, II, and cyclothymia similarly produced rates of 42% and 11% (identical and fraternal twins, respectively). The rates of bipolar II combinations without bipolar I are lowerbipolar II at 23 and 17%, and bipolar II combining with cyclothymia at 33 and 14%which may reflect relatively higher genetic heterogeneity. The cause of bipolar disorders overlaps with major depressive disorder. When defining concordance as the co-twins having either bipolar disorder or major depression, then the concordance rate rises to 67% in identical twins and 19% in fraternal twins. The relatively low concordance between fraternal twins brought up together suggests that shared family environmental effects are limited, although the ability to detect them has been limited by small sample sizes. Genetic. Behavioral genetic studies have suggested that many chromosomal regions and candidate genes are related to bipolar disorder susceptibility with each gene exerting a mild to moderate effect. The risk of bipolar disorder is nearly ten-fold higher in first-degree relatives of those with bipolar disorder than in the general population; similarly, the risk of major depressive disorder is three times higher in relatives of those with bipolar disorder than in the general population. Although the first genetic linkage finding for mania was in 1969, linkage studies have been inconsistent. Findings point strongly to heterogeneity, with different genes implicated in different families. Robust and replicable genome-wide significant associations showed several common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are associated with bipolar disorder, including variants within the genes "CACNA1C", "ODZ4", and "NCAN". The largest and most recent genome-wide association study failed to find any locus that exerts a large effect, reinforcing the idea that no single gene is responsible for bipolar disorder in most cases. Polymorphisms in "BDNF", "DRD4", "DAO", and "TPH1" have been frequently associated with bipolar disorder and were initially associated in a meta-analysis, but this association disappeared after correction for multiple testing. On the other hand, two polymorphisms in "TPH2" were identified as being associated with bipolar disorder. Due to the inconsistent findings in a genome-wide association study, multiple studies have undertaken the approach of analyzing SNPs in biological pathways. Signaling pathways traditionally associated with bipolar disorder that have been supported by these studies include corticotropin-releasing hormone signaling, cardiac β-adrenergic signaling, phospholipase C signaling, glutamate receptor signaling, cardiac hypertrophy signaling, Wnt signaling, Notch signaling, and endothelin 1 signaling. Of the 16 genes identified in these pathways, three were found to be dysregulated in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex portion of the brain in post-mortem studies: "CACNA1C", "GNG2", and "ITPR2". Bipolar disorder is associated with reduced expression of specific DNA repair enzymes and increased levels of oxidative DNA damages. The AKAP11 gene was recently discovered as the first gene linked to bipolar disorder. The exomes of around 14,000 individuals with bipolar disorder were analysed and compared to those without the condition. The findings were combined with data from another study in the Schizophrenia Exome Sequencing Meta-Analysis (SCHEMA), examining the genome sequences of 24,000 people alongside the original 14,000 bipolar disorder cases. This study identified genetic variants, including the AKAP11 gene, associated with an increased risk of bipolar disorder. The AKAP11 gene's interaction with the GSK3B protein, a molecular target of lithium, points to a possible mechanism behind the medication's therapeutic effects. Environmental. Psychosocial factors play a significant role in the development and course of bipolar disorder, and individual psychosocial variables may interact with genetic dispositions. Recent life events and interpersonal relationships likely contribute to the onset and recurrence of bipolar mood episodes, just as they do for unipolar depression. In surveys, 30–50% of adults diagnosed with bipolar disorder report traumatic/abusive experiences in childhood, which is associated with earlier onset, a higher rate of suicide attempts, and more co-occurring disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Subtypes of abuse, such as sexual and emotional abuse, also contribute to violent behaviors seen in patients with bipolar disorder. The number of reported stressful events in childhood is higher in those with an adult diagnosis of bipolar spectrum disorder than in those without, particularly events stemming from a harsh environment rather than from the child's own behavior. Acutely, mania can be induced by sleep deprivation in around 30% of people with bipolar disorder. Neurological. Less commonly, bipolar disorder or a bipolar-like disorder may occur as a result of or in association with a neurological condition or injury including stroke, traumatic brain injury, HIV infection, multiple sclerosis, porphyria, and rarely temporal lobe epilepsy. Proposed mechanisms. The precise mechanisms that cause bipolar disorder are not well understood. Bipolar disorder is thought to be associated with abnormalities in the structure and function of certain brain areas responsible for cognitive tasks and the processing of emotions. A neurologic model for bipolar disorder proposes that the emotional circuitry of the brain can be divided into two main parts. The ventral system (regulates emotional perception) includes brain structures such as the amygdala, insula, ventral striatum, ventral anterior cingulate cortex, and the prefrontal cortex. The dorsal system (responsible for emotional regulation) includes the hippocampus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and other parts of the prefrontal cortex. The model hypothesizes that bipolar disorder may occur when the ventral system is overactivated and the dorsal system is underactivated. Other models suggest the ability to regulate emotions is disrupted in people with bipolar disorder and that dysfunction of the ventricular prefrontal cortex is crucial to this disruption. Meta-analyses of structural MRI studies have shown that certain brain regions (e.g., the left rostral anterior cingulate cortex, fronto-insular cortex, ventral prefrontal cortex, and claustrum) are smaller in people with bipolar disorder, whereas other regions are larger (lateral ventricles, globus pallidus, subgenual anterior cingulate, and the amygdala). Additionally, these meta-analyses found that people with bipolar disorder have higher rates of deep white matter hyperintensities. Functional MRI findings suggest that the ventricular prefrontal cortex regulates the limbic system, especially the amygdala. In people with bipolar disorder, decreased ventricular prefrontal cortex activity allows for the dysregulated activity of the amygdala, which likely contributes to labile mood and poor emotional regulation. Consistent with this, pharmacological treatment of mania returns ventricular prefrontal cortex activity to the levels in non-manic people, suggesting that ventricular prefrontal cortex activity is an indicator of mood state. However, while pharmacological treatment of mania reduces amygdala hyperactivity, it remains more active than the amygdala of those without bipolar disorder, suggesting amygdala activity may be a marker of the disorder rather than the current mood state. Manic and depressive episodes tend to be characterized by dysfunction in different regions of the ventricular prefrontal cortex. Manic episodes appear to be associated with decreased activation of the right ventricular prefrontal cortex whereas depressive episodes are associated with decreased activation of the left ventricular prefrontal cortex. These disruptions often occur during development linked with synaptic pruning dysfunction. People with bipolar disorder who are in a euthymic mood state show decreased activity in the lingual gyrus compared to people without bipolar disorder. In contrast, they demonstrate decreased activity in the inferior frontal cortex during manic episodes compared to people without the disorder. Similar studies examining the differences in brain activity between people with bipolar disorder and those without did not find a consistent area in the brain that was more or less active when comparing these two groups. People with bipolar have increased activation of left hemisphere ventral limbic areaswhich mediate emotional experiences and generation of emotional responsesand decreased activation of right hemisphere cortical structures related to cognitionstructures associated with the regulation of emotions. However, further research is needed to consolidate neuroimaging findings, which are often heterogeneous and not consistently reported according to a common standard. Neuroscientists have proposed additional models to try to explain the cause of bipolar disorder. One proposed model for bipolar disorder suggests that hypersensitivity of reward circuits consisting of frontostriatal circuits causes mania, and decreased sensitivity of these circuits causes depression. According to the "kindling" hypothesis, when people who are genetically predisposed toward bipolar disorder experience stressful events, the stress threshold at which mood changes occur becomes progressively lower, until the episodes eventually start (and recur) spontaneously. There is evidence supporting an association between early-life stress and dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis leading to its overactivation, which may play a role in the pathogenesis of bipolar disorder. Other brain components that have been proposed to play a role in bipolar disorder are the mitochondria and a sodium ATPase pump. Circadian rhythms and regulation of the hormone melatonin also seem to be altered. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for mood cycling, has increased transmission during the manic phase. The dopamine hypothesis states that the increase in dopamine results in secondary homeostatic downregulation of key system elements and receptors such as lower sensitivity of dopaminergic receptors. This results in decreased dopamine transmission characteristic of the depressive phase. The depressive phase ends with homeostatic upregulation potentially restarting the cycle over again. Glutamate is significantly increased within the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the manic phase of bipolar disorder, and returns to normal levels once the phase is over. Medications used to treat bipolar may exert their effect by modulating intracellular signaling, such as through depleting myo-inositol levels, inhibition of cAMP signaling, and through altering subunits of the dopamine-associated G-protein. Consistent with this, elevated levels of Gαi, Gαs, and Gαq/11 have been reported in brain and blood samples, along with increased protein kinase A (PKA) expression and sensitivity; typically, PKA activates as part of the intracellular signalling cascade downstream from the detachment of Gαs subunit from the G protein complex. Decreased levels of 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid, a byproduct of serotonin, are present in the cerebrospinal fluid of persons with bipolar disorder during both the depressed and manic phases. Increased dopaminergic activity has been hypothesized in manic states due to the ability of dopamine agonists to stimulate mania in people with bipolar disorder. Decreased sensitivity of regulatory α2 adrenergic receptors as well as increased cell counts in the locus coeruleus indicated increased noradrenergic activity in manic people. Low plasma GABA levels on both sides of the mood spectrum have been found. One review found no difference in monoamine levels, but found abnormal norepinephrine turnover in people with bipolar disorder. Tyrosine depletion was found to reduce the effects of methamphetamine in people with bipolar disorder as well as symptoms of mania, implicating dopamine in mania. VMAT2 binding was found to be increased in one study of people with bipolar mania. Diagnosis. Bipolar disorder is commonly diagnosed during adolescence or early adulthood, but onset can occur throughout life. Its diagnosis is based on the self-reported experiences of the individual, abnormal behavior reported by family members, friends or co-workers, observable signs of illness as assessed by a clinician, and ideally a medical work-up to rule out other causes. Caregiver-scored rating scales, specifically from the mother, have shown to be more accurate than teacher and youth-scored reports in identifying youths with bipolar disorder. Assessment is usually done on an outpatient basis; admission to an inpatient facility is considered if there is a risk to oneself or others. The most widely used criteria for diagnosing bipolar disorder are from the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", Fifth Edition (DSM-5) and the World Health Organization's (WHO) "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems", 10th Edition (ICD-10). The ICD-10 criteria are used more often in clinical settings outside of the U.S. while the DSM criteria are used within the U.S. and are the prevailing criteria used internationally in research studies. The DSM-5, published in 2013, includes further and more accurate specifiers compared to its predecessor, the DSM-IV-TR. This work has influenced the eleventh revision of the ICD, which includes the various diagnoses within the bipolar spectrum of the DSM-V. Several rating scales for the screening and evaluation of bipolar disorder exist, including the Bipolar spectrum diagnostic scale, Mood Disorder Questionnaire, the General Behavior Inventory and the Hypomania Checklist. The use of evaluation scales cannot substitute a full clinical interview but they serve to systematize the recollection of symptoms. On the other hand, instruments for screening bipolar disorder tend to have lower sensitivity. Differential diagnosis. Bipolar disorder is classified by the International Classification of Diseases as a mental and behavioural disorder. Mental disorders that can have symptoms similar to those seen in bipolar disorder include schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and certain personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder. A key difference between bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder is the nature of the mood swings; in contrast to the sustained changes to mood over days to weeks or longer, those of the latter condition (more accurately called emotional dysregulation) are sudden and often short-lived, and secondary to social stressors. Although there are no biological tests that are diagnostic of bipolar disorder, blood tests and/or imaging are carried out to investigate whether medical illnesses with clinical presentations similar to that of bipolar disorder are present before making a definitive diagnosis. Neurologic diseases such as multiple sclerosis, complex partial seizures, strokes, brain tumors, Wilson's disease, traumatic brain injury, Huntington's disease, and complex migraines can mimic features of bipolar disorder. An EEG may be used to exclude neurological disorders such as epilepsy, and a CT scan or MRI of the head may be used to exclude brain lesions. Additionally, disorders of the endocrine system such as hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and Cushing's disease are in the differential as is the connective tissue disease systemic lupus erythematosus. Infectious causes of mania that may appear similar to bipolar mania include herpes encephalitis, HIV, influenza, or neurosyphilis. Certain vitamin deficiencies such as pellagra (niacin deficiency), vitamin B12 deficiency, folate deficiency, and Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome (thiamine deficiency) can also lead to mania. Common medications that can cause manic symptoms include antidepressants, prednisone, Parkinson's disease medications, thyroid hormone, stimulants (including cocaine and methamphetamine), and certain antibiotics. Bipolar spectrum. Bipolar spectrum disorders include: bipolar I disorder, bipolar II disorder, cyclothymic disorder and cases where subthreshold symptoms are found to cause clinically significant impairment or distress. These disorders involve major depressive episodes that alternate with manic or hypomanic episodes, or with mixed episodes that feature symptoms of both mood states. The concept of the bipolar spectrum is similar to that of Emil Kraepelin's original concept of manic depressive illness. Bipolar II disorder was established as a diagnosis in 1994 within DSM IV; though debate continues over whether it is a distinct entity, part of a spectrum, or exists at all. Criteria and subtypes. The DSM and the ICD characterize bipolar disorder as a spectrum of disorders occurring on a continuum. The DSM-5 and ICD-11 lists three specific subtypes: When relevant, specifiers for "peripartum onset" and "with rapid cycling" should be used with any subtype. Individuals who have subthreshold symptoms that cause clinically significant distress or impairment, but do not meet full criteria for one of the three subtypes may be diagnosed with other specified or unspecified bipolar disorder. Other specified bipolar disorder is used when a clinician chooses to explain why the full criteria were not met (e.g., hypomania without a prior major depressive episode). If the condition is thought to have a non-psychiatric medical cause, the diagnosis of "bipolar and related disorder due to another medical condition" is made, while "substance/medication-induced bipolar and related disorder" is used if a medication is thought to have triggered the condition. Rapid cycling. Most people who meet criteria for bipolar disorder experience a number of episodes, on average 0.4 to 0.7 per year, lasting three to six months. "Rapid cycling", however, is a course specifier that may be applied to any bipolar subtype. It is defined as having four or more mood disturbance episodes within a one-year span. Rapid cycling is usually temporary but is common amongst people with bipolar disorder and affects 25.8–45.3% of them at some point in their life. These episodes are separated from each other by a remission (partial or full) for at least two months or a switch in mood polarity (i.e., from a depressive episode to a manic episode or vice versa). The definition of rapid cycling most frequently cited in the literature (including the DSM-V and ICD-11) is that of Dunner and Fieve: at least four major depressive, manic, hypomanic or mixed episodes during a 12-month period. The literature examining the pharmacological treatment of rapid cycling is sparse and there is no clear consensus with respect to its optimal pharmacological management. "Ultra rapid" and "ultradian" have been applied to faster-cycling types of bipolar disorder. People with the rapid cycling or faster-cycling subtypes of bipolar disorder tend to be more difficult to treat and less responsive to medications than other people with bipolar disorder. Coexisting psychiatric conditions. The diagnosis of bipolar disorder can be complicated by coexisting (comorbid) psychiatric conditions including obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance-use disorder, eating disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, social phobia, premenstrual syndrome (including premenstrual dysphoric disorder), or panic disorder. A thorough longitudinal analysis of symptoms and episodes, assisted if possible by discussions with friends and family members, is crucial to establishing a treatment plan where these comorbidities exist. Children of parents with bipolar disorder more frequently have other mental health problems. Children. In the 1920s, Kraepelin noted that manic episodes are rare before puberty. In general, bipolar disorder in children was not recognized in the first half of the twentieth century. This issue diminished with an increased following of the DSM criteria in the last part of the twentieth century. The diagnosis of childhood bipolar disorder, while formerly controversial, has gained greater acceptance among childhood and adolescent psychiatrists. American children and adolescents diagnosed with bipolar disorder in community hospitals increased 4-fold reaching rates of up to 40% in 10 years around the beginning of the 21st century, while in outpatient clinics it doubled reaching 6%. Studies using DSM criteria show that up to 1% of youth may have bipolar disorder. The DSM-5 has established a diagnosis—disruptive mood dysregulation disorder—that covers children with long-term, persistent irritability that had at times been misdiagnosed as having bipolar disorder, distinct from irritability in bipolar disorder that is restricted to discrete mood episodes. Adults. Bipolar on average, starts during adulthood. Bipolar 1, on average, starts at the age of 18 years old, and Bipolar 2 starts at age 22 years old on average. However, most delay seeking treatment for an average of 8 years after symptoms start. Bipolar is often misdiagnosed with other psychiatric disorders. There is no definitive association between race, ethnicity, or Socioeconomic status (SES). Adults with Bipolar report having a lower quality of life, even outside of a manic or depressive episode. Bipolar can put strain on marriage and other relationships, having a job, and everyday functioning. Bipolar is associated with having higher rates of unemployment. Most have trouble keeping a job, leading to trouble with healthcare access, leading to more decline in their mental health due to not receiving treatment such as medicine and therapy. Elderly. Bipolar disorder is uncommon in older patients, with a measured lifetime prevalence of 1% in over 60s and a 12-month prevalence of 0.10.5% in people over 65. Despite this, it is overrepresented in psychiatric admissions, making up 48% of inpatient admission to aged care psychiatry units, and the incidence of mood disorders is increasing overall with the aging population. Depressive episodes more commonly present with sleep disturbance, fatigue, hopelessness about the future, slowed thinking, and poor concentration and memory; the last three symptoms are seen in what is known as pseudodementia. Clinical features also differ between those with late-onset bipolar disorder and those who developed it early in life; the former group present with milder manic episodes, more prominent cognitive changes and have a background of worse psychosocial functioning, while the latter present more commonly with mixed affective episodes, and have a stronger family history of illness. Older people with bipolar disorder experience cognitive changes, particularly in executive functions such as abstract thinking and switching cognitive sets, as well as concentrating for long periods and decision-making. Prevention. Attempts at prevention of bipolar disorder have focused on stress (such as childhood adversity or highly conflictual families) which, although not a diagnostically specific causal agent for bipolar, does place genetically and biologically vulnerable individuals at risk for a more severe course of illness. Longitudinal studies have indicated that full-blown manic stages are often preceded by a variety of prodromal clinical features, providing support for the occurrence of an at-risk state of the disorder when an early intervention might prevent its further development and/or improve its outcome. Management. The aim of management is to treat acute episodes safely with medication and work with the patient in long-term maintenance to prevent further episodes and optimise function using a combination of pharmacological and psychotherapeutic techniques. Hospitalization may be required especially with the manic episodes present in bipolar I. This can be voluntary or (local legislation permitting) involuntary. Long-term inpatient stays are now less common due to deinstitutionalization, although these can still occur. Following (or in lieu of) a hospital admission, support services available can include drop-in centers, visits from members of a community mental health team or an Assertive Community Treatment team, supported employment, patient-led support groups, and intensive outpatient programs. These are sometimes referred to as partial-inpatient programs. Compared to the general population, people with bipolar disorder are less likely to frequently engage in physical exercise. Exercise may have physical and mental benefits for people with bipolar disorder, but there is a lack of research. Psychosocial. Psychotherapy aims to assist a person with bipolar disorder in accepting and understanding their diagnosis, coping with various types of stress, improving their interpersonal relationships, and recognizing prodromal symptoms before full-blown recurrence. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), family-focused therapy, and psychoeducation have the most evidence for efficacy in regard to relapse prevention, while interpersonal and social rhythm therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy appear the most effective in regard to residual depressive symptoms. Most studies have been based only on bipolar I, however, and treatment during the acute phase can be a particular challenge. Some clinicians emphasize the need to talk with individuals experiencing mania, to develop a therapeutic alliance in support of recovery. Medication. Medications are often prescribed to help improve symptoms of bipolar disorder. Medications approved for treating bipolar disorder including mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and certain antidepressants. Sometimes a combination of medications may also be suggested. The choice of medications may differ depending on the bipolar disorder episode type or if the person is experiencing unipolar or bipolar depression. Other factors to consider when deciding on an appropriate treatment approach includes if the person has any comorbidities, their response to previous therapies, adverse effects, and the desire of the person to be treated. Mood stabilizers. Lithium and the anticonvulsants carbamazepine, lamotrigine, and valproic acid are classed as mood stabilizers due to their effect on the mood states in bipolar disorder. Valproate and carbamazepine are teratogenic and should be avoided as a treatment in women of childbearing age, but discontinuation of these medications during pregnancy is associated with a high risk of relapse. Lithium is also tetratogenic in the first trimester, though it can be acceptable during this period after careful weighing of benefits and risks. The effectiveness of topiramate is unknown. Mood stabilizers are used for long-term maintenance but have not demonstrated the ability to quickly treat acute bipolar depression. Antipsychotics. Antipsychotic medications are effective for short-term treatment of bipolar manic episodes and appear to be superior to lithium and anticonvulsants for this purpose. Atypical antipsychotics such as lurasidone and clozapine are also indicated for bipolar depression refractory to treatment with mood stabilizers. Olanzapine is effective in preventing relapses, although the supporting evidence is weaker than the evidence for lithium. A 2006 review found that haloperidol was an effective treatment for acute mania, limited data supported no difference in overall efficacy between haloperidol, olanzapine or risperidone, and that it could be less effective than aripiprazole. Antidepressants. Antidepressant monotherapy is not recommended in the treatment of bipolar disorder and does not provide any benefit over mood stabilizers. Atypical antipsychotic medications (e.g., aripiprazole) are preferred over antidepressants to augment the effects of mood stabilizers due to the lack of efficacy of antidepressants in bipolar disorder. Treatment of bipolar disorder using antidepressants may carry a risk of affective switches where a person switches from depression to manic or hypomanic phases or mixed states. There may also be a risk of accelerating cycling between phases when antidepressants are used in bipolar disorder. The risk of affective switches is higher in bipolar I depression; antidepressants are generally avoided in bipolar I disorder or only used with mood stabilizers when they are deemed necessary. Whether modern antidepressants cause mania or cycle acceleration in bipolar disorder is highly controversial, as is whether antidepressants provide any benefit over mood stabilizers alone. Combined treatment approaches. Antipsychotics and mood stabilizers used together are quicker and more effective at treating mania than either class of drug used alone. Some analyses indicate antipsychotics alone are also more effective at treating acute mania. A first-line treatment for depression in bipolar disorder is a combination of olanzapine and fluoxetine. Other drugs. Short courses of benzodiazepines are used in addition to other medications for calming effect until mood stabilizing become effective. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective form of treatment for acute mood disturbances in those with bipolar disorder, especially when psychotic or catatonic features are displayed. ECT is also recommended for use in pregnant women with bipolar disorder. It is unclear if ketamine (a common general dissociative anesthetic used in surgery) is useful in bipolar disorder. Gabapentin and pregabalin are not proven to be effective for treating bipolar disorder. Children. Treating bipolar disorder in children involves medication and psychotherapy. The literature and research on the effects of psychosocial therapy on bipolar spectrum disorders are scarce, making it difficult to determine the efficacy of various therapies. Mood stabilizers and atypical antipsychotics are commonly prescribed. Among the former, lithium is the only compound approved by the FDA for children. Psychological treatment combines normally education on the disease, group therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy. Long-term medication is often needed. Resistance to treatment. The poor response from some bipolar patients to treatment has given evidence to the concept of treatment-resistant bipolar disorder. Guidelines to the definition of treatment-resistant bipolar disorder and evidence-based options for its management were reviewed in 2020. Management of obesity. A large proportion (approximately 68%) of people who seek treatment for bipolar disorder are obese or overweight and managing obesity is important for reducing the risk of other health conditions that are associated with obesity. Management approaches include non-pharmacological, pharmacological, and surgical. Examples of non-pharmacological include dietary interventions, exercise, behavioral therapies, or combined approaches. Pharmacological approaches include weight-loss medications or changing medications already being prescribed. Some people with bipolar disorder who have obesity may also be eligible for bariatric surgery. The effectiveness of these various approaches to improving or managing obesity in people with bipolar disorder is not clear. Prognosis. A lifelong condition with periods of partial or full recovery in between recurrent episodes of relapse, bipolar disorder is considered to be a major health problem worldwide because of the increased rates of disability and premature mortality. It is also associated with co-occurring psychiatric and medical problems, higher rates of death from natural causes (e.g., cardiovascular disease), and high rates of initial under- or misdiagnosis, causing a delay in appropriate treatment and contributing to poorer prognoses. When compared to the general population, people with bipolar disorder also have higher rates of other serious medical comorbidities including diabetes mellitus, respiratory diseases, HIV, and hepatitis C virus infection. After a diagnosis is made, it remains difficult to achieve complete remission of all symptoms with the currently available psychiatric medications and symptoms often become progressively more severe over time. Compliance with medications is one of the most significant factors that can decrease the rate and severity of relapse and have a positive impact on overall prognosis. However, the types of medications used in treating BD commonly cause side effects and more than 75% of individuals with BD inconsistently take their medications for various reasons. Of the various types of the disorder, rapid cycling (four or more episodes in one year) is associated with the worst prognosis due to higher rates of self-harm and suicide. Individuals diagnosed with bipolar who have a family history of bipolar disorder are at a greater risk for more frequent manic/hypomanic episodes. Early onset and psychotic features are also associated with worse outcomes, as well as subtypes that are nonresponsive to lithium. Early recognition and intervention also improve prognosis as the symptoms in earlier stages are less severe and more responsive to treatment. Onset after adolescence is connected to better prognoses for both genders, and being male is a protective factor against higher levels of depression. For women, better social functioning before developing bipolar disorder and being a parent are protective towards suicide attempts. Functioning. Changes in cognitive processes and abilities are seen in mood disorders, with those of bipolar disorder being greater than those in major depressive disorder. These include reduced attentional and executive capabilities and impaired memory. People with bipolar disorder often experience a decline in cognitive functioning during (or possibly before) their first episode, after which a certain degree of cognitive dysfunction typically becomes permanent, with more severe impairment during acute phases and moderate impairment during periods of remission. As a result, two-thirds of people with BD continue to experience impaired psychosocial functioning in between episodes even when their mood symptoms are in full remission. A similar pattern is seen in both BD-I and BD-II, but people with BD-II experience a lesser degree of impairment. When bipolar disorder occurs in children, it severely and adversely affects their psychosocial development. Children and adolescents with bipolar disorder have higher rates of significant difficulties with substance use disorders, psychosis, academic difficulties, behavioral problems, social difficulties, and legal problems. Cognitive deficits typically increase over the course of the illness. Higher degrees of impairment correlate with the number of previous manic episodes and hospitalizations, and with the presence of psychotic symptoms. Early intervention can slow the progression of cognitive impairment, while treatment at later stages can help reduce distress and negative consequences related to cognitive dysfunction. Despite the overly ambitious goals that are frequently part of manic episodes, symptoms of mania undermine the ability to achieve these goals and often interfere with an individual's social and occupational functioning. One-third of people with BD remain unemployed for one year following a hospitalization for mania. Depressive symptoms during and between episodes, which occur much more frequently for most people than hypomanic or manic symptoms over the course of illness, are associated with lower functional recovery in between episodes, including unemployment or underemployment for both BD-I and BD-II. However, the course of illness (duration, age of onset, number of hospitalizations, and the presence or not of rapid cycling) and cognitive performance are the best predictors of employment outcomes in individuals with bipolar disorder, followed by symptoms of depression and years of education. Recovery and recurrence. A naturalistic study in 2003 by Tohen and coworkers from the first admission for mania or mixed episode (representing the hospitalized and therefore most severe cases) found that 50% achieved syndromal recovery (no longer meeting criteria for the diagnosis) within six weeks and 98% within two years. Within two years, 72% achieved symptomatic recovery (no symptoms at all) and 43% achieved functional recovery (regaining of prior occupational and residential status). However, 40% went on to experience a new episode of mania or depression within 2 years of syndromal recovery, and 19% switched phases without recovery. Symptoms preceding a relapse (prodromal), especially those related to mania, can be reliably identified by people with bipolar disorder. There have been intents to teach patients coping strategies when noticing such symptoms with encouraging results. Suicide. Bipolar disorder can cause suicidal ideation that leads to suicide attempts. Individuals whose bipolar disorder begins with a depressive or mixed affective episode seem to have a poorer prognosis and an increased risk of suicide. One out of two people with bipolar disorder attempt suicide at least once during their lifetime and many attempts are successfully completed. The annual average suicide rate is 0.4–1.4%, which is 30 to 60 times greater than that of the general population. The number of deaths from suicide in bipolar disorder is between 18 and 25 times higher than would be expected in similarly aged people without bipolar disorder. The lifetime risk of suicide is much higher in those with bipolar disorder, with an estimated 34% of people attempting suicide and 15–20% dying by suicide. Risk factors for suicide attempts and death from suicide in people with bipolar disorder include older age, prior suicide attempts, a depressive or mixed index episode (first episode), a manic index episode with psychotic symptoms, hopelessness or psychomotor agitation present during the episodes, co-existing anxiety disorder, a first degree relative with a mood disorder or suicide, interpersonal conflicts, occupational problems, bereavement or social isolation. Epidemiology. Bipolar disorder is the sixth leading cause of disability worldwide and has a lifetime prevalence of about 1 to 3% in the general population. However, a reanalysis of data from the National Epidemiological Catchment Area survey in the United States suggested that 0.8% of the population experience a manic episode at least once (the diagnostic threshold for bipolar I) and a further 0.5% have a hypomanic episode (the diagnostic threshold for bipolar II or cyclothymia). Including sub-threshold diagnostic criteria, such as one or two symptoms over a short time-period, an additional 5.1% of the population, adding up to a total of 6.4%, were classified as having a bipolar spectrum disorder. A more recent analysis of data from a second US National Comorbidity Survey found that 1% met lifetime prevalence criteria for bipolar I, 1.1% for bipolar II, and 2.4% for subthreshold symptoms. Estimates vary about how many children and young adults have bipolar disorder. These estimates range from 0.6 to 15% depending on differing settings, methods, and referral settings, raising suspicions of overdiagnosis. One meta-analysis of bipolar disorder in young people worldwide estimated that about 1.8% of people between the ages of seven and 21 have bipolar disorder. Similar to adults, bipolar disorder in children and adolescents is thought to occur at a similar frequency in boys and girls. There are conceptual and methodological limitations and variations in the findings. Prevalence studies of bipolar disorder are typically carried out by lay interviewers who follow fully structured/fixed interview schemes; responses to single items from such interviews may have limited validity. In addition, diagnoses (and therefore estimates of prevalence) vary depending on whether a categorical or spectrum approach is used. This consideration has led to concerns about the potential for both underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis. The incidence of bipolar disorder is similar in men and women as well as across different cultures and ethnic groups. A 2000 study by the World Health Organization found that prevalence and incidence of bipolar disorder are very similar across the world. Age-standardized prevalence per 100,000 ranged from 421.0 in South Asia to 481.7 in Africa and Europe for men and from 450.3 in Africa and Europe to 491.6 in Oceania for women. However, severity may differ widely across the globe. Disability-adjusted life year rates, for example, appear to be higher in developing countries, where medical coverage may be poorer and medication less available. Within the United States, Asian Americans have significantly lower rates than their African American and European American counterparts. In 2017, the Global Burden of Disease Study estimated there were 4.5 million new cases and a total of 45.5 million cases globally. History. In the early 1800s, French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol's lypemania, one of his affective monomanias, was the first elaboration on what was to become modern depression. The basis of the current conceptualization of bipolar illness can be traced back to the 1850s. In 1850, Jean-Pierre Falret described "circular insanity" (', ); the lecture was summarized in 1851 in the ' ("Hospital Gazette"). Three years later, in 1854, Jules-Gabriel-François Baillarger (1809–1890) described to the French Imperial Académie Nationale de Médecine a biphasic mental illness causing recurrent oscillations between mania and melancholia, which he termed (, "madness in double form"). Baillarger's original paper, "", appeared in the medical journal "Annales médico-psychologiques" ("Medico-psychological annals") in 1854. These concepts were developed by the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926), who, using Kahlbaum's concept of cyclothymia, categorized and studied the natural course of untreated bipolar patients. He coined the term "manic depressive psychosis", after noting that periods of acute illness, manic or depressive, were generally punctuated by relatively symptom-free intervals where the patient was able to function normally. The term "manic–depressive "reaction"" appeared in the first version of the DSM in 1952, influenced by the legacy of Adolf Meyer. Subtyping into "unipolar" depressive disorders and bipolar disorders has its origin in Karl Kleist's concept – since 1911 – of unipolar and bipolar affective disorders, which was used by Karl Leonhard in 1957 to differentiate between unipolar and bipolar disorder in depression. These subtypes have been regarded as separate conditions since publication of the DSM-III. The subtypes bipolar II and rapid cycling have been included since the DSM-IV, based on work from the 1970s by David Dunner, Elliot Gershon, Frederick Goodwin, Ronald Fieve, and Joseph Fleiss. Society and culture. Cost. The United States spent approximately $202.1 billion on people diagnosed with bipolar I disorder (excluding other subtypes of bipolar disorder and undiagnosed people) in 2015. One analysis estimated that the United Kingdom spent approximately £5.2 billion on the disorder in 2007. In addition to the economic costs, bipolar disorder is a leading cause of disability and lost productivity worldwide. People with bipolar disorder are generally more disabled, have a lower level of functioning, longer duration of illness, and increased rates of work absenteeism and decreased productivity when compared to people experiencing other mental health disorders. The decrease in the productivity seen in those who care for people with bipolar disorder also significantly contributes to these costs. Advocacy. There are widespread issues with social stigma, stereotypes, and prejudice against individuals with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. In 2000, actress Carrie Fisher went public with her bipolar disorder diagnosis. She became one of the most well-recognized advocates for people with bipolar disorder in the public eye and fiercely advocated to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder. Stephen Fried, who has written extensively on the topic, noted that Fisher helped to draw attention to the disorder's chronicity, relapsing nature, and that bipolar disorder relapses do not indicate a lack of discipline or moral shortcomings. Since being diagnosed at age 37, actor Stephen Fry has pushed to raise awareness of the condition, with his 2006 documentary "". In an effort to ease the social stigma associated with bipolar disorder, the orchestra conductor Ronald Braunstein cofounded the ME/2 Orchestra with his wife Caroline Whiddon in 2011. Braunstein was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1985 and his concerts with the ME/2 Orchestra were conceived in order to create a welcoming performance environment for his musical colleagues, while also raising public awareness about mental illness. Notable cases. Numerous authors have written about bipolar disorder and many successful people have openly discussed their experience with it. Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, profiled her own bipolar disorder in her memoir "An Unquiet Mind" (1995). It is likely that Grigory Potemkin, Russian statesman and alleged husband of Catherine the Great, suffered from some kind of bipolar disorder. Several celebrities have also publicly shared that they have bipolar disorder; in addition to Carrie Fisher and Stephen Fry these include Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mariah Carey, Kanye West, Jane Pauley, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, and Russell Brand. Media portrayals. Several dramatic works have portrayed characters with traits suggestive of the diagnosis which have been the subject of discussion by psychiatrists and film experts alike. In "Mr. Jones" (1993), (Richard Gere) swings from a manic episode into a depressive phase and back again, spending time in a psychiatric hospital and displaying many of the features of the syndrome. In "The Mosquito Coast" (1986), Allie Fox (Harrison Ford) displays some features including recklessness, grandiosity, increased goal-directed activity and mood lability, as well as some paranoia. Psychiatrists have suggested that Willy Loman, the main character in Arthur Miller's classic play "Death of a Salesman", has bipolar disorder. The 2009 drama "90210" featured a character, Silver, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Stacey Slater, a character from the BBC soap "EastEnders", has been diagnosed with the disorder. The storyline was developed as part of the BBC's Headroom campaign. The Channel 4 soap "Brookside" had earlier featured a story about bipolar disorder when the character Jimmy Corkhill was diagnosed with the condition. 2011 Showtime's political thriller drama "Homeland" protagonist Carrie Mathison has bipolar disorder, which she has kept secret since her school days. The 2014 ABC medical drama, "Black Box", featured a world-renowned neuroscientist with bipolar disorder. In the TV series "Dave", the eponymous main character, played by Lil Dicky as a fictionalized version of himself, is an aspiring rapper. Lil Dicky's real-life hype man GaTa also plays himself. In one episode, after being off his medication and having an episode, GaTa tearfully confesses to having bipolar disorder. GaTa has bipolar disorder in real life but, like his character in the show, he is able to manage it with medication. Since 2024, Nicola Coughlan, has co-starred alongside Lydia West, in the British Channel 4 dark television comedy-drama "Big Mood. "Coughlan portrays the leading role of Maggie who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In a series about two best friends navigating friendship amidst a mental health crisis. Creativity. A link between mental illness and professional success or creativity has been suggested, including in accounts by Socrates, Seneca the Younger, and Cesare Lombroso. Despite prominence in popular culture, the link between creativity and bipolar has not been rigorously studied. This area of study also is likely affected by confirmation bias. Some evidence suggests that some heritable component of bipolar disorder overlaps with heritable components of creativity. Probands of people with bipolar disorder are more likely to be professionally successful, as well as to demonstrate temperamental traits similar to bipolar disorder. Furthermore, while studies of the frequency of bipolar disorder in creative population samples have been conflicting, full-blown bipolar disorder in creative samples is rare. Research. Research directions for bipolar disorder in children include optimizing treatments, increasing the knowledge of the genetic and neurobiological basis of the pediatric disorder and improving diagnostic criteria. Some treatment research suggests that psychosocial interventions that involve the family, psychoeducation, and skills building (through therapies such as CBT, DBT, and IPSRT) can benefit in addition to pharmacotherapy. Sleep disturbances. Sleep disturbances are some of the main signs and symptoms of bipolar disorder. Alterations in sleep duration occur in every of its phases, including both insomnia and hypersomnia. They are associated with a few circadian genes.
4537	18872885	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4537	Burt Lancaster	Burton Stephen Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American actor. Initially known for playing tough characters with tender hearts, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series. Lancaster was a four-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actor (winning once), and he also won two BAFTA Awards and one Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor. The American Film Institute ranks Lancaster as of the greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Lancaster performed as a circus acrobat in the 1930s. At the age of 32 and after serving in World War II, he landed a role in a Broadway play and drew the attention of a Hollywood agent. His appearance in film noir "The Killers" in 1946 with Ava Gardner was a critical success and launched both of their careers. In 1948, Lancaster starred alongside Barbara Stanwyck in the commercially and critically acclaimed film "Sorry, Wrong Number", where he portrayed the husband to her bedridden invalid character. In 1953, Lancaster played the illicit lover of Deborah Kerr in the military drama "From Here to Eternity". A box office smash, it won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and landed a Best Actor nomination for Lancaster. Later in the 1950s, he starred in "The Rainmaker" (1956) with Katharine Hepburn, earning a Best Actor Golden Globe nomination, and in 1957 he starred in "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957) with frequent co-star Kirk Douglas. During the 1950s, his production company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster was highly successful, with Lancaster acting in films such as: "Trapeze" (1956), a box office smash in which he used his acrobatic skills and for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor; "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957), a dark drama now considered a classic; "Run Silent, Run Deep" (1958), a World War II submarine drama with Clark Gable; and "Separate Tables" (1958), a hotel-set drama which received seven Oscar nominations. In the early 1960s, Lancaster starred in a string of critically successful films, each in very disparate roles. Playing a charismatic con-man religious revivalist in "Elmer Gantry" in 1960 won him the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actor. Lancaster played a Nazi war criminal in 1961 in the all-star war crimes trial film "Judgment at Nuremberg". Playing a bird expert prisoner in "Birdman of Alcatraz" in 1962, he earned the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor and his third Oscar nomination. In 1963, Lancaster traveled to Italy to star as an Italian prince in Visconti's epic period drama "The Leopard". In 1964, he played a US Air Force general who, opposed by a colonel played by Douglas, tries to overthrow the President in "Seven Days in May". Then, in 1966, he played an explosives expert in the western "The Professionals". Although the reception of his 1968 film "The Swimmer" was initially lackluster upon release, in the years after it has grown in stature critically and attained a cult following. In 1970, Lancaster starred in the box-office hit, air-disaster drama "Airport". In 1974, he starred in another Visconti film, "Conversation Piece". He experienced a career resurgence in 1980 with the crime-romance "Atlantic City", winning the BAFTA for Best Actor and landing his fourth Oscar nomination. Starting in the late 1970s, he also appeared in television mini-series, including the award-winning "Separate but Equal" with Sidney Poitier. He continued acting into his late 70s, until a stroke in 1990 forced him to retire; four years later he died from a heart attack. His final film role was as Moonlight Graham in "Field of Dreams" (1989). Early life. Lancaster was born on November 2, 1913, in New York City, at his parents' home at 209 East 106th Street, the son of Elizabeth ("née" Roberts) and mailman James Lancaster. Both of his parents were Protestants of working-class background. All four of his grandparents were Scots-Irish immigrants from the province of Ulster, Ireland. His maternal side was from Belfast, the descendants of English dissenters who had colonized Ireland as part of the Plantation of Ulster. Lancaster grew up in East Harlem, New York City. He developed a great interest and skill in gymnastics while attending DeWitt Clinton High School, where he was a basketball star. Before he graduated from DeWitt Clinton, his mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Lancaster was accepted by New York University with an athletic scholarship, but dropped out. Circus career. At the age of 9, Lancaster met Nick Cravat with whom he developed a lifelong partnership. Together, they learned to act in local theatre productions and circus arts at Union Settlement, one of the city's oldest settlement houses. In the 1930s, they formed the acrobat duo "Lang and Cravat" and soon joined the Kay Brothers circus. However, in 1939, an injury forced Lancaster to give up the profession, with great regret. He then found temporary work, first as a salesman for Marshall Fields and then as a singing waiter in various restaurants. World War II service. After the United States entered World War II, Lancaster joined the United States Army in January 1943 and performed with the Army's 21st Special Services Division, one of the military units organized to follow the troops on the ground and provide USO entertainment to maintain morale. He served in the Fifth Army in Italy under General Mark Clark from 1943 to 1945. He was discharged in October 1945 as an entertainment specialist with the rank of technician fifth grade. Acting career. Broadway. Lancaster returned to New York after his Army service. Although initially unenthusiastic about acting, Lancaster was encouraged to audition for a Broadway play by a producer who saw him in an elevator while he was visiting his then-girlfriend at work. The audition was successful and Lancaster was cast in Harry Brown's "A Sound of Hunting" (1945). The show ran for only three weeks, but his performance attracted the interest of a Hollywood agent, Harold Hecht. Lancaster had other offers but Hecht promised him the opportunity to produce their own movies within five years of hitting Hollywood. Through Hecht, Lancaster was brought to the attention of producer Hal B. Wallis. Lancaster left New York and moved to Los Angeles. Wallis signed him to a non-exclusive eight-movie contract. Hal Wallis. Lancaster's first filmed movie was "Desert Fury" for Wallis in 1947, where Lancaster was billed after John Hodiak and Lizabeth Scott. It was directed by Lewis Allen. Then producer Mark Hellinger approached him to star in 1946's "The Killers", which was completed and released prior to "Desert Fury". Directed by Robert Siodmak, it was a great commercial and critical success and launched Lancaster and his co-star Ava Gardner to stardom. It has since come to be regarded as a classic. Hellinger used Lancaster again on "Brute Force" in 1947, a prison drama written by Richard Brooks and directed by Jules Dassin. It was also well received. Wallis released his films through Paramount, and so Lancaster and other Wallis contractees made cameos in "Variety Girl" in 1947. Lancaster's next film was a thriller for Wallis in 1947, "I Walk Alone", co-starring Lizabeth Scott and a young Kirk Douglas, who was also under contract to Wallis. "Variety" listed it as one of the top grossers of the year, taking in more than $2 million. In 1948, Lancaster had a change of pace with the film adaptation of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons", made at Universal Pictures with Edward G. Robinson. His third film for Wallis was an adaptation of "Sorry, Wrong Number" in 1948, with Barbara Stanwyck. Norma Productions. Hecht kept to his promise to Lancaster to turn producer. The two of them formed a company, Norma Productions, and did a deal with Universal to make a thriller about a disturbed G.I. in London, "Kiss the Blood Off My Hands" in 1948, with Joan Fontaine and directed by Norman Foster. It made a profit of only $50,000, but was critically acclaimed. Back in Hollywood, Lancaster made another film noir with Siodmak, "Criss Cross", in 1949. It was originally going to be produced by Hellinger and when Hellinger died, another took over. Tony Curtis made an early appearance. Lancaster appeared in a fourth picture for Wallis, "Rope of Sand", in 1949. Norma Productions signed a three-picture deal with Warner Bros. The first was 1950's "The Flame and the Arrow", a swashbuckler movie, in which Lancaster drew on his circus skills. Nick Cravat had a supporting role and the film was a huge commercial success, making $6 million. It was Warners' most popular film of the year and established an entirely new image for Lancaster. Lancaster was borrowed by 20th Century Fox for "Mister 880" in 1950, a comedy crime romance film with Edmund Gwenn. MGM put him in a popular Western, "Vengeance Valley" in 1951, then he went to Warners to play the title role in the biopic "Jim Thorpe – All-American", also in 1951. Halburt. Norma signed a deal with Columbia Pictures to make two films through a Norma subsidiary, Halburt. The first film was 1951's "Ten Tall Men", where Lancaster was a member of the French Foreign Legion. Robert Aldrich worked on the movie as a production manager. The second was 1952's "The First Time", a comedy which was the directorial debut of Frank Tashlin. It was meant to star Lancaster but he wound up not appearing in the filmthe first of their productions in which he did not act. Hecht-Lancaster Productions. In 1951, the actor/producer duo changed the company's name to Hecht-Lancaster Productions. The first film under the new name was another swashbuckler: 1952's "The Crimson Pirate", directed by Siodmak. Again, co-starring Nick Cravat, it was extremely popular. Taking the premise of The Flame and the Arrow a step further, it allowed the pair to, not only emphasise the absurdity of the story with more spectacle and comical situations but to demonstrate they were able to perform their own circus skills-based stunts without relying on stuntmen quite as much a most Hollywood stars. As if to down play this, Lancaster himself speaks to the audience in the opening scene over footage of Lancaster performing a dangerous rope swing from one of his pirate ship's masts to the other. "…in a pirate world, believe only what you see." The footage is then reversed to show a near impossible backwards swing to the first mast again, from which he proclaims "No, believe HALF of what you see." Lancaster changed pace once more by doing a straight dramatic part in 1952's "Come Back, Little Sheba", based on a Broadway hit, with Shirley Booth, produced by Wallis and directed by Daniel Mann. Alternating with adventure films, he went into "South Sea Woman" in 1952 at Warners. Part of the Norma-Warners contract was that Lancaster had to appear in some non-Norma films, of which this was one. In 1954, for his own company, Lancaster produced and starred in "His Majesty O'Keefe", a South Sea island tale shot in Fiji. It was co-written by James Hill, who would soon become a part of the Hecht-Lancaster partnership. United Artists. Hecht and Lancaster left Warners for United Artists, for what began as a two-picture deal, the first of which was to be 1954's "Apache", starring Lancaster as a Native American. They followed it with another Western in 1954, "Vera Cruz", co-starring Gary Cooper and produced by Hill. Both films were directed by Robert Aldrich and were hugely popular. United Artists signed Hecht-Lancaster to a multi-picture contract, to make seven films over two years. These included films in which Lancaster did not act. Their first was "Marty" in 1955, based on Paddy Chayefsky's TV play starring Ernest Borgnine and directed by Delbert Mann. It won both the Best Picture Oscar and the Palme d'Or award at Cannes and Borgnine an Best Actor Oscar. It also earned $2 million on a budget of $350,000. "Vera Cruz" had been a huge success, but "Marty" secured Hecht-Lancaster as one of the most successful independent production companies in Hollywood at the time. "Marty" star Borgnine was under contract to Hecht-Lancaster and was unhappy about his lack of upcoming roles, especially after only receiving some seven lines in 1957's "Sweet Smell of Success" and half of his normal pay for "Marty". He eventually sued for breach of contract to gain back some of this money in 1957. Without Hill, Hecht and Lancaster produced "The Kentuckian" in 1955. It was directed by Lancaster in his directorial debut, and he also played a lead role. Lancaster disliked directing and only did it once more, on 1974's "The Midnight Man". Lancaster still had commitments with Wallis, and made "The Rose Tattoo" for him in 1955, starring with Anna Magnani and Daniel Mann directing. It was very popular at the box office and critically acclaimed, winning Magnani an Oscar. Hecht-Hill-Lancaster. In 1955, Hill was made an equal partner in Hecht-Lancaster, with his name added to the production company. Hecht-Hill-Lancaster (HHL) released their first film "Trapeze" in 1956, with Lancaster performing many of his own stunts. The film, co-starring Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida, went on to become the production company's top box office success, and United Artists expanded its deal with HHL. In 1956, Lancaster and Hecht partnered with Loring Buzzell and entered the music industry with the music publishing companies Leigh Music, Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music, Calyork Music and Colby Music and the record labels Calyork Records and Maine Records. The HHL team impressed Hollywood with its success; as "Life" wrote in 1957, "[a]fter the independent production of a baker's dozen of pictures, it has yet to have its first flop ... (They were also good pictures.)." In late 1957, they announced they would make ten films worth $14 million in 1958. Lancaster made two films for Wallis to complete his eight-film commitment for that contract: "The Rainmaker" (1956) with Katharine Hepburn, which earned Lancaster a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor; and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957) with Kirk Douglas, which was a huge commercial hit directed by John Sturges. Lancaster re-teamed with Tony Curtis in 1957 for "Sweet Smell of Success", a co-production between Hecht-Hill-Lancaster and Curtis' own company with wife Janet Leigh, Curtleigh Productions. The movie, directed by Alexander Mackendrick, was a critical success but a commercial disappointment. Over the years it has come to be regarded as one of Lancaster's greatest films. HHL produced seven additional films in the late 1950s. Four starred Lancaster: "Run Silent, Run Deep" (1958), a Robert Wise directed war film with Clark Gable, which was mildly popular; "Separate Tables" (1958) a hotel-set drama with Kerr and Rita Hayworth (who married James Hill), which received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and Oscar awards for lead actor David Niven and supporting actress Wendy Hiller, and was both a critical and commercial success; "The Devil's Disciple" (1959), with Douglas and Laurence Olivier, which lost money (and saw Lancaster fire Mackendrick during shooting); and the Western "The Unforgiven" (1960), with Audrey Hepburn, which was a critical and commercial disappointment. Three were made without Lancaster, all of which lost money: "The Bachelor Party" (1957), from another TV play by Chayefsky, and directed by Delbert Mann; "Take a Giant Step" (1959), about a black student; and "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" (1960), from an Australian play, shot on location in Australia and Britain. Lancaster was originally announced as the lead for "Doll" but did not appear in the final film. The Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions company dissolved in 1960 after Hill ruptured his relationship with both Hecht and Lancaster. Hill went on to produce a single additional film, "The Happy Thieves", in a new production company, Hillworth Productions, co-owned with his wife Rita Hayworth. Hecht and Lancaster. Lancaster played the title role in "Elmer Gantry" (1960), written and directed by Richard Brooks for United Artists. The film received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Lancaster won the 1960 Academy Award for Best Actor, a Golden Globe Award, and the New York Film Critics Award for his performance. Hecht and Lancaster worked together on "The Young Savages" (1961), directed by John Frankenheimer and produced by Hecht. Sydney Pollack worked as a dialogue coach. Lancaster starred in "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961) for Stanley Kramer, alongside Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark and a number of other stars. The film was both a commercial and critical success, receiving eleven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. He then did another film with Hecht and Frankenheimer (replacing Charles Crichton), "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962), a largely fictionalized biography. In it he plays Robert Stroud, a federal prisoner incarcerated for life for two murders, who begins to collect birds and over time becomes an expert in bird diseases, even publishing a book. The film shows Stroud transferred to the maximum security Alcatraz prison where he is not allowed to keep birds and as he ages he gets married, markets bird remedies, helps stop a prison rebellion, and writes a book on the history of the U.S. penal system, but never gets paroled. The sympathetic performance earned Lancaster a Best Actor Oscar nomination, a BAFTA Award for Best Actor, and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Dramatic Role. Hecht went on to produce five films without Lancaster's assistance, through his company Harold Hecht Films Productions between 1961 and 1967, including another Academy Award winner, "Cat Ballou", starring Lee Marvin and Jane Fonda. Collaborations with younger filmmakers. Lancaster made "A Child Is Waiting" (1963) with Judy Garland. It was produced by Kramer and directed by John Cassavetes. He went to Italy to star in "The Leopard" (1963) for Luchino Visconti, co-starring Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. It was one of Lancaster's favorite films and was a big hit in France but failed in the US (though the version released was much truncated). He had a small role in "The List of Adrian Messenger" (1963) for producer/star Kirk Douglas, and then did two for Frankenheimer: "Seven Days in May" (1964), a political thriller with Douglas, and "The Train" (1964), a World War Two action film (Lancaster had Frankenheimer replace Arthur Penn several days into filming). Lancaster starred in "The Hallelujah Trail" (1965), a comic Western produced and directed by John Sturges which failed to recoup its large cost. He had a big hit with "The Professionals" (1966), a Western directed by Brooks and also starring Lee Marvin. In 1966, at the age of 52, Lancaster appeared nude in director Frank Perry's film "The Swimmer" (1968), in what the critic Roger Ebert called "his finest performance". Prior to working on "The Swimmer", Lancaster was terrified of the water because he did not know how to swim. In preparation for the film, he took swimming lessons from UCLA swim coach Bob Horn. Filming was difficult and clashes between Lancaster and Perry led to Sydney Pollack coming in to do some filming. The film was not released until 1968, when it proved to be a commercial failure, though Lancaster remained proud of the movie and his performance. Norlan Productions. In 1967, Lancaster formed a new partnership with Roland Kibbee, who had already worked as a writer on five Lancaster projects: "Ten Tall Men", "The Crimson Pirate", "Three Sailors and a Girl" (in which Lancaster made a cameo appearance), "Vera Cruz", and "The Devil's Disciple". Through Norlan Productions, Lancaster and Kibbee produced "The Scalphunters" in 1968, directed by Sydney Pollack. Lancaster followed it with another film from Pollack, "Castle Keep" in 1969, which was a big flop. So was "The Gypsy Moths", for Frankenheimer, also in 1969. 1970s. Lancaster had one of the biggest successes of his career with "Airport" in 1970, starring alongside Dean Martin, George Kennedy, Van Heflin, Helen Hayes, Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Hale, Jean Seberg, and Jacqueline Bisset. The Ross Hunter film received nine Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. It became one of the biggest box-office hits of 1970 and, at that time, reportedly the highest-grossing film in the history of Universal Pictures. He then went into a series of Westerns: "Lawman" in 1971, directed by Michael Winner; "Valdez Is Coming" in 1971, for Norlan; and "Ulzana's Raid" in 1972, directed by Aldrich and produced by himself and Hecht. None were particularly popular but "Ulzana's Raid" has become a cult film. Lancaster did two thrillers, both 1973: "Scorpio" with Winner and "Executive Action". Lancaster returned to directing in 1974 with "The Midnight Man", which he also wrote and produced with Kibee. He made a second film with Visconti, "Conversation Piece" in 1974 and played the title role in the TV series "Moses the Lawgiver", also in 1974. Lancaster was one of many names in 1975's "1900", directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, and he had a cameo in 1976's "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson" for Robert Altman. He played Shimon Peres in the TV movie "Victory at Entebbe" in 1977 and had a supporting role in "The Cassandra Crossing" in 1976. He made a fourth and final film with Aldrich, "Twilight's Last Gleaming" in 1977, and had the title role in 1977's "The Island of Dr. Moreau". Lancaster was top-billed in "Go Tell the Spartans" in 1978, a Vietnam War film; Lancaster admired the script so much that he took a reduced fee and donated money to help the movie to be completed. He was in "Zulu Dawn" in 1979. 1980s. Lancaster began the 1980s with a highly acclaimed performance alongside Susan Sarandon in "Atlantic City" in 1980, directed by Louis Malle. The film received five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and a Best Actor nomination for Lancaster. He had key roles in "Cattle Annie and Little Britches" in 1981, "The Skin" in 1982 with Cardinale, "Marco Polo", also in 1982, and "Local Hero" in 1983. By now, Lancaster was mostly a character actor in features, as in "The Osterman Weekend" in 1983, but he was the lead in the TV movie "Scandal Sheet" in 1985. He was in "Little Treasure" in 1985, directed by Alan Sharp, who had written "Ulzana's Raid"; "On Wings of Eagles" for TV in 1986, as Bull Simons; 1986's made for TV "Barnum" starred him in the title role; "Tough Guys" reunited him on the big screen with Kirk Douglas in 1986; "" (in German Väter und Söhne – Eine deutsche Tragödie) in 1986 for German TV; 1987's "Control" made in Italy; "Rocket Gibraltar" in 1988, and "The Jeweller's Shop" in 1989. His first critical success in a while was "Field of Dreams" in 1989, in which he played a supporting role as Moonlight Graham. He was also in the miniseries "The Betrothed" in 1989. Later career. Lancaster's final performances included TV miniseries "The Phantom of the Opera" (1990); "" (1990) as Leon Klinghoffer based on the 1985 hijacking incident; and "Separate But Equal" (1991) with Sidney Poitier. Frequent collaborators. Lancaster appeared in a total of seventeen films produced by his agent, Harold Hecht. Eight of these were co-produced by James Hill. He also appeared in eight films produced by Hal B. Wallis and two with producer Mark Hellinger. Although Lancaster's work alongside Kirk Douglas was known as that of a successful pair of actors, Douglas, in fact, produced four films for the pair, through his production companies Bryna Productions and Joel Productions. Roland Kibbee also produced three Lancaster films, and Lancaster was also cast in two Stanley Kramer productions. Kirk Douglas. Kirk Douglas starred in seven films across the decades with Burt Lancaster: "I Walk Alone" (1948), "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957), "The Devil's Disciple" (1959), "The List of Adrian Messenger" (1963), "Seven Days in May" (1964), "Victory at Entebbe" (1976) and "Tough Guys" (1986), which fixed the notion of the pair as something of a team in the public imagination. Douglas was always billed under Lancaster in these movies but, with the exception of "I Walk Alone", in which Douglas played a villain, their roles were usually more or less the same size. Both actors arrived in Hollywood at about the same time, and first appeared together in the fourth film for each, albeit with Douglas in a supporting role. They both became actor-producers who sought out independent Hollywood careers. John Frankenheimer. John Frankenheimer directed five films with Lancaster: "The Young Savages" (1961), "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962), "Seven Days in May" (1964), "The Train" (1964), and "The Gypsy Moths" (1969). Other repeat collaborators. He was directed four times by Robert Aldrich, three times each by Robert Siodmak and Sydney Pollack, and twice each by Byron Haskin, Daniel Mann, John Sturges, John Huston, Richard Brooks, Alexander Mackendrick, Luchino Visconti, and Michael Winner. Roland Kibbee wrote for seven Lancaster films. Lancaster used makeup veteran Robert Schiffer in twenty credited films, hiring Schiffer on nearly all of the films he produced. Political activism. Lancaster was a vocal supporter of progressive and liberal political causes. He frequently spoke out in support of racial and other minorities. As a result, he was often a target of FBI investigations. He was named in President Richard Nixon's 1973 "Enemies List". A vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, he helped pay for the successful defense of a soldier accused of "fragging" (i.e., murdering) another soldier during war-time. In 1968, Lancaster actively supported the presidential candidacy of anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and frequently spoke on his behalf during the Democratic primaries. Lancaster was also active in anti-death penalty activism. He campaigned heavily for George McGovern in the 1972 United States presidential election. In 1985, Lancaster joined the fight against AIDS after fellow movie star Rock Hudson contracted the disease. Lancaster delivered Hudson's last words at the Commitment to Life fundraiser at a time when the stigma surrounding AIDS was at its height. Of his political opinions, frequent co-star Tony Curtis said: "Here's this great big aggressive guy that looks like a ding-dong athlete playing these big tough guys and he has the soul of—who were those first philosophers of equality?—Socrates, Plato. He was a Greek philosopher with a sense that everybody was equal." Actor and SAG president Ed Asner said he showed everybody in Hollywood "how to be a liberal with balls". Hollywood Ten. In 1947, Lancaster reportedly signed a statement release by the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions (NCASP) asking Congress to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He was also a member of the short-lived Committee for the First Amendment, formed in support of the Hollywood Ten. He was one of 26 movie stars who flew to Washington in October 1947 to protest against the HUAC hearings. The committee's "Hollywood Fights Back" broadcasts on ABC Radio Network were two 30-minute programs that took place on October 27 and November 2, 1947, during which committee members voiced their opposition to the HUAC hearings. Many members faced blacklisting and backlash due to their involvement in the committee. Lancaster was listed in anti-communist literature as a fellow traveler. Civil rights movement. He and his second wife, Norma, hosted a fundraiser for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) ahead of the historic March on Washington in 1963. He attended the march, where he was one of the speakers. He flew in from France for the event, where he was shooting "The Train", and flew back again the next day, despite a reported fear of flying. On August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington Lancaster "read the speech that James Baldwin was supposed to make," because (as Malcolm X said in a speech delivered in Detroit at the King Solomon Baptist Church in late 1963) "they wouldn't let Baldwin get up there because they know Baldwin is liable to say anything." ACLU. In 1968, Lancaster was elected to serve as chairman of the Roger Baldwin Foundation, a newly formed fund-raising arm of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. His co-chairs were Frank Sinatra and Irving L. Lichtenstein. In October 1968, he hosted a party at his home to raise money for the ACLU to use for the defense of the more than four hundred people arrested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Throughout the years, he remained an ardent supporter and a fundraiser for the organization. While serving as a member of the five-person ACLU Foundation executive committee, he cast the key vote to retain Ramona Ripston as executive director of the Southern California affiliate, a position she would build into a powerful advocacy force in Los Angeles politics. Ripston later recalled: "There was a feeling that a woman couldn't run the ACLU foundation, nor have access to the books. The vote finally came down to two 'yes' and two 'no.' Who had the deciding vote? Burt. He had a scotch or two and finally he said, 'I think she should be executive director.' I always loved him for that." When President George H. W. Bush derided Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU", Lancaster was one of the supporters featured in the organization's first television advertising campaign stating: "I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU" and "No one agrees with every single thing they've done. But no one can disagree with the guiding principle—with liberty and justice for all.'" He also campaigned for Michael Dukakis in the 1988 United States presidential election. Personal life. Marriages and relationships. Lancaster guarded his personal life and attempted to keep it private despite his stardom. He was married three times and had five children. His first marriage was to June Ernst, a trapeze acrobat. Ernst was the daughter of a renowned female aerialist and an accomplished acrobat herself. After they were married, he performed with her family and her until their separation in the late 1930s. When they divorced is unclear. Contemporary reports listed 1940, but subsequent biographers have suggested dates as late as 1946, delaying his marriage to his second wife. He met second wife Norma Anderson (1917–1988) when the stenographer substituted for an ill actress in a USO production for the troops in Italy. Reportedly, on seeing Lancaster in the crowd on her way to town from the airport, she turned to an officer and asked, "Who is that good-looking officer and is he married?" The officer set up a blind date between the two for that evening. They married in 1946. Norma was active in political causes with an entire room in their Bel Air home devoted to her major interest, the League of Woman Voters, crammed with printing presses and all the necessary supplies for mass mailings. She was a life-long member of the NAACP. The couple held a fundraiser for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ahead of the 1963 March on Washington. All five of his children were with Anderson: Bill (who became an actor and screenwriter), James, Susan, Joanna (who worked as a film producer), and Sighle (pronounced "Sheila"). It was a troubled marriage. The pair separated in 1966, and divorced in 1969. In 1966, Lancaster began a long-term relationship with hairdresser Jackie Bone, who worked on "The Professionals". The relationship was tempestuous, with Bone once smashing a wine bottle over Lancaster's head at a dinner with Sydney Pollack and Peter Falk. Reportedly, they eventually split up after her religious conversion, which Lancaster believed he could not share with her. His third marriage, to Susan Martin, lasted from September 1990 until his death in 1994. According to biographer Kate Buford in "", Lancaster was devotedly loyal to his friends and family. Old friends from his childhood remained his friends for life. Possible affairs. Some media outlets and authors have written that Lancaster was bisexual, and had relationships with both men and women. Friends said he claimed he was romantically involved with Deborah Kerr during the filming of "From Here to Eternity" in 1953. However, Kerr stated that while there was a spark of attraction, nothing ever happened. He reportedly had an affair with Joan Blondell. In her 1980 autobiography, Shelley Winters claimed to have had a two-year affair with him, during which time he was considering separation from his wife. In his Hollywood memoirs, friend Farley Granger recalled an incident when Lancaster and he had to come to Winters' rescue one evening when she had inadvertently overdosed on alcohol and sleeping pills. She broke up with him for "cheating on her with his wife" after she heard reports of his wife's third or fourth pregnancy. Religion. Despite his Protestant background and upbringing, Lancaster identified as an atheist later in life. Later years. As Lancaster reached his 60s, he began to be affected by cardiovascular disease. In January 1980, he had complications from a routine gall bladder operation (that he barely survived). In 1983, following two minor heart attacks, he underwent an emergency quadruple coronary bypass. He continued to act, however, and to engage in public activism. In 1988, he attended a congressional hearing in Washington, DC, with former colleagues who included James Stewart and Ginger Rogers to protest against media magnate Ted Turner's plan to colorize various black-and-white films from the 1930s and 1940s. On November 30, 1990, when he was 77, a stroke left him partially paralyzed and largely unable to speak, ending his acting career. Death. Lancaster died at his apartment in Century City, Los Angeles, after having a third heart attack at 4:50 am on October 20, 1994, age 80. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered under a large oak tree in Westwood Memorial Park, which is located in Westwood Village, California. A small, square ground plaque amid several others, inscribed "Burt Lancaster 1913–1994", marks the location. As he had requested, no memorial or funeral service was held for him. Legacy. The centennial of Lancaster's birth was honored at New York City's Film Society of Lincoln Center in May 2013 with the screening of 12 of the actor's best-known films, from "The Killers" to "Atlantic City". Lancaster has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard. Filmography and awards. Lancaster was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1954 for "From Here to Eternity", in 1961 for "Elmer Gantry", in 1964 for "Birdman of Alcatraz", and in 1982 for "Atlantic City". He won the Oscar in 1961. Lancaster's leading role in Luchino Visconti's 1963 canonical "The Leopard" began a series of roles with important European art film directors that included roles in Bernardo Bertolucci's "1900" and Louis Malle's "Atlantic City" as well as Visconti's "Conversation Piece". Box office ranking. For a number of years exhibitors voted Lancaster among the most popular stars: In other media. Spanish music group Hombres G released an album named "La cagaste, Burt Lancaster" ("You messed up, Burt Lancaster") in 1986. Thomas Hart Benton painted a scene from "The Kentuckian" as part of the film's marketing. Lancaster posed for the painting, also known as "The Kentuckian".
4540	19992876	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4540	Balts	The Balts or Baltic peoples (, ) are a group of peoples inhabiting the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea who speak Baltic languages. Among the Baltic peoples are modern-day Lithuanians (including Samogitians) and Latvians (including Latgalians) — all East Balts — as well as the Old Prussians, Curonians, Sudovians, Skalvians, Yotvingians and Galindians — the West Balts — whose languages and cultures are now extinct, but made a large influence on the living branches, especially on literary Lithuanian language. The Balts are descended from a group of Proto-Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the lower Vistula and southeast shore of the Baltic Sea and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers, and which over time became differentiated into West and East Balts. In the fifth century CE, parts of the eastern Baltic coast began to be settled by the ancestors of the Western Balts, whereas the East Balts lived in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. In the first millennium CE, large migrations of the Balts occurred. By the 13th and 14th centuries, the East Balts shrank to the general area that the present-day Balts and Belarusians inhabit. Baltic languages belong to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. One of the features of Baltic languages is the number of conservative or archaic features retained. Etymology. Medieval German chronicler Adam of Bremen in the latter part of the 11th century AD was the first writer to use the term "Baltic" in reference to the sea of that name. Before him various ancient places names, such as Balcia, were used in reference to a supposed island in the Baltic Sea. In Germanic languages there was some form of the toponym East Sea until after about the year 1600, when maps in English began to label it as the Baltic Sea. By 1840, German nobles of the Governorate of Livonia adopted the term "Balts" to distinguish themselves from Germans of Germany. They spoke an exclusive dialect, Baltic German, which was regarded by many as the language of the Balts until 1919. In 1845, Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann proposed a distinct language group for Latvian, Lithuanian, and Old Prussian, which he termed Baltic. The term became prevalent after Latvia and Lithuania gained independence in 1918. Up until the early 20th century, either "Latvian" or "Lithuanian" could be used to mean the entire language family. History. Origins. The Balts or Baltic peoples, defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the lower Vistula and southeast shore of the Baltic Sea and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers. The Baltic languages, especially Lithuanian, retain a number of conservative or archaic features, perhaps because the areas in which they are spoken are geographically consolidated and have low rates of immigration. Some of the major authorities on Balts, such as Kazimieras Būga, Max Vasmer, Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov, in conducting etymological studies of eastern European river names, were able to identify in certain regions names of specifically Baltic provenance, which most likely indicate where the Balts lived in prehistoric times. According to Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov, the eastern boundary of the Balts in the prehistoric times were the upper reaches of the Volga, Moskva, and Oka rivers, while the southern border was the Seym river. This information is summarized and synthesized by Marija Gimbutas in "The Balts" (1963) to obtain a likely proto-Baltic homeland. Its borders are approximately: from a line on the Pomeranian coast eastward to include or nearly include the present-day sites of Berlin, Warsaw, Kyiv, and Kursk, northward through Moscow to the River Berzha, westward in an irregular line to the coast of the Gulf of Riga, north of Riga. However, other scholars such as Endre Bojt (1999) reject the presumption that there ever was such a thing as a clear, single "Baltic "Urheimat"": 'The references to the Balts at various "Urheimat" locations across the centuries are often of doubtful authenticity, those concerning the Balts furthest to the West are the more trustworthy among them. (...) It is wise to group the particulars of Baltic history according to the interests that moved the pens of the authors of our sources.' Proto-history. The area of Baltic habitation shrank due to assimilation by other groups, and invasions. According to one of the theories which has gained considerable traction over the years, one of the western Baltic tribes, the Galindians, Galindae, or Goliad, migrated to the area around modern-day Moscow, Russia around the fourth century AD. Over time the Balts became differentiated into West and East Balts. In the fifth century AD parts of the eastern Baltic coast began to be settled by the ancestors of the Western Balts: Brus/Prūsa ("Old Prussians"), Sudovians/Jotvingians, Scalvians, Nadruvians, and Curonians. The East Balts, including the hypothesised Dniepr Balts, were living in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Germanic peoples lived to the west of the Baltic homelands; by the first century AD, the Goths had stabilized their kingdom from the mouth of the Vistula, south to Dacia. As Roman domination collapsed in the first half of the first millennium CE in Northern and Eastern Europe, large migrations of the Balts occurred — first, the Galindae or Galindians towards the east, and later, East Balts towards the west. In the eighth century, Slavic tribes from the Volga regions appeared. By the 13th and 14th centuries, they reached the general area that the present-day Balts and Belarusians inhabit. Many other Eastern and Southern Balts either assimilated with other Balts, or Slavs in the fourth–seventh centuries and were gradually slavicized. Middle Ages. In the 12th and 13th centuries, internal struggles and invasions by Ruthenians and Poles, and later the expansion of the Teutonic Order, resulted in an almost complete annihilation of the Galindians, Curonians, and Yotvingians. Gradually, Old Prussians became Germanized or Lithuanized between the 15th and 17th centuries, especially after the Reformation in Prussia. The cultures of the Lithuanians and Latgalians/Latvians survived and became the ancestors of the populations of the modern-day countries of Latvia and Lithuania. Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct Western Baltic languages, Curonian, Galindian and Sudovian. It is more distantly related to the surviving Eastern Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian. Compare the Prussian word "seme" ("zemē"), Latvian "zeme", the Lithuanian "žemė" ("land" in English). Modern era. In the modern era, the Balts — primarily Lithuanians and Latvians — have sustained a unique cultural and linguistic identity along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, speaking the only surviving East Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian, which are among the most conservative Indo‑European tongues and retain archaic features from their Proto‑Indo‑European roots. Following nearly five decades of Soviet rule, Lithuania and Latvia restored their independence in 1990–1991 and subsequently pursued integration with Western institutions, culminating in accession to both the European Union and NATO in 2004. In the 21st century, these two Baltic nations have established stable democracies with parliamentary systems, preserved local languages and traditions, and address common economic, political and cultural priorities. Culture. The Balts originally practiced Baltic religion. They were gradually Christianized as a result of the Northern Crusades of the Middle Ages. Baltic peoples such as the Latvians, Lithuanians and Old Prussians had their distinct mythologies. The Lithuanians have close historic ties to Poland, and many of them are Roman Catholic. The Latvians have close historic ties to Northern Germany and Scandinavia, and many of them are irreligious. In recent times, the Baltic religion has been revived in Baltic neopaganism. Genetics. The Balts are included in the "North European" gene cluster together with the Germanic peoples, some Slavic groups (the Poles and Northern Russians) and Baltic Finnic peoples. Saag et a. (2017) detected that the eastern Baltic in the Mesolithic was inhabited primarily by Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs). Their paternal haplogroups were mostly types of I2a and R1b, while their maternal haplogroups were mostly types of U5, U4 and U2. These people carried a high frequency of the derived HERC2 allele which codes for light eye color and possess an increased frequency of the derived alleles for SLC45A2 and SLC24A5, coding for lighter skin color. Baltic hunter-gatherers still displayed a slightly larger amount of WHG ancestry than Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers (SHGs). WHG ancestry in the Baltic was particularly high among hunter-gatherers in Latvia and Lithuania. Unlike other parts of Europe, the hunter-gatherers of the eastern Baltic do not appear to have mixed much with Early European Farmers (EEFs) arriving from Anatolia. During the Neolithic, increasing admixture from Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHGs) is detected. The paternal haplogroups of EHGs was mostly types of R1a, while their maternal haplogroups appears to have been almost exclusively types of U5, U4, and U2. The rise of the Corded Ware culture in the eastern Baltic in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age is accompanied by a significant infusion of steppe ancestry and EEF ancestry into the eastern Baltic gene pool. In the aftermath of the Corded Ware expansion, local hunter-gatherer ancestry experienced a resurgence. Haplogroup N reached the eastern Baltic only in the Late Bronze Age, probably with the speakers of the Uralic languages. Modern-day Balts have a lower amount of EEF ancestry, and a higher amount of WHG ancestry, than any other population in Europe. List of Baltic peoples. Modern-day Baltic peoples
4541	17618788	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4541	Burnt-in timecode	Burnt-in timecode (often abbreviated to BITC by analogy to VITC) is a human-readable on-screen version of the timecode information for a piece of material superimposed on a video image. BITC is sometimes used in conjunction with "real" machine-readable timecode but more often used in copies of original material onto a nonbroadcast format such as VHS so that the VHS copies can be traced back to their master tape and the original timecodes easily located. Many professional VTRs can "burn" (overlay) the tape timecode onto one of their outputs. This output (which usually also displays the setup menu or on-screen display) is known as the "super out" or "monitor out". The "character" switch or menu item turns this behaviour on or off. The "character" function also displays the timecode on the preview monitors in linear editing suites. Videotapes that are recorded with timecode numbers overlaid on the video are referred to as "window dubs", named after the "window" that displays the burnt-in timecode on-screen. When editing was done using magnetic tapes that were subject to damage from excessive wear, it was common to use a window dub as a working copy for the majority of the editing process. Editing decisions would be made using a window dub, and no specialized equipment was needed to write down an edit decision list, which would then be replicated from the high-quality masters. Timecode can also be superimposed on video using a dedicated overlay device, often called a "window dub inserter". This inputs a video signal and its separate timecode audio signal, reads the timecode, superimposes the timecode display over the video, and outputs the combined display (usually via composite), all in real time. Stand-alone timecode generators/readers often have the window dub function built in. Some consumer cameras, in particular DV cameras, can "burn" (overlay) the tape timecode onto the composite output. This output is typically semitransparent and may include other tape information. It is usually activated by turning on the "display" info in one of the camera's submenus. While not as "professional" as an overlay created by a professional VCR, it is a cheap alternative that is just as accurate. Timecode is stored in the metadata areas of captured DV AVI files, and some software is able to "burn" (overlay) this into the video frames. For example, DVMP Pro is able to "burn" timecode or other items of DV metadata (such as date and time, iris, shutter speed, gain, white balance mode, etc.) into DV AVI files. OCR techniques can be used to read BITC in situations where other forms of timecode are not available.
4542	1289704087	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4542	Bra–ket notation	Bra–ket notation, also called Dirac notation, is a notation for linear algebra and linear operators on complex vector spaces together with their dual space both in the finite-dimensional and infinite-dimensional case. It is specifically designed to ease the types of calculations that frequently come up in quantum mechanics. Its use in quantum mechanics is quite widespread. Bra–ket notation was created by Paul Dirac in his 1939 publication "A New Notation for Quantum Mechanics". The notation was introduced as an easier way to write quantum mechanical expressions. The name comes from the English word "bracket". Quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics and quantum computing, bra–ket notation is used ubiquitously to denote quantum states. The notation uses angle brackets, and , and a vertical bar , to construct "bras" and "kets". A ket is of the form formula_1. Mathematically it denotes a vector, formula_2, in an abstract (complex) vector space formula_3, and physically it represents a state of some quantum system. A bra is of the form formula_4. Mathematically it denotes a linear form formula_5, i.e. a linear map that maps each vector in formula_3 to a number in the complex plane formula_7. Letting the linear functional formula_8 act on a vector formula_9 is written as formula_10. Assume that on formula_3 there exists an inner product formula_12 with antilinear first argument, which makes formula_3 an inner product space. Then with this inner product each vector formula_14 can be identified with a corresponding linear form, by placing the vector in the anti-linear first slot of the inner product: formula_15. The correspondence between these notations is then formula_16. The linear form formula_17 is a covector to formula_18, and the set of all covectors forms a subspace of the dual vector space formula_19, to the initial vector space formula_3. The purpose of this linear form formula_17 can now be understood in terms of making projections onto the state formula_22 to find how linearly dependent two states are, etc. For the vector space formula_23, kets can be identified with column vectors, and bras with row vectors. Combinations of bras, kets, and linear operators are interpreted using matrix multiplication. If formula_23 has the standard Hermitian inner product formula_25, under this identification, the identification of kets and bras and vice versa provided by the inner product is taking the Hermitian conjugate (denoted formula_26). It is common to suppress the vector or linear form from the bra–ket notation and only use a label inside the typography for the bra or ket. For example, the spin operator formula_27 on a two-dimensional space formula_28 of spinors has eigenvalues formula_29 with eigenspinors formula_30. In bra–ket notation, this is typically denoted as formula_31, and formula_32. As above, kets and bras with the same label are interpreted as kets and bras corresponding to each other using the inner product. In particular, when also identified with row and column vectors, kets and bras with the same label are identified with Hermitian conjugate column and row vectors. Bra–ket notation was effectively established in 1939 by Paul Dirac; it is thus also known as Dirac notation, despite the notation having a precursor in Hermann Grassmann's use of formula_33 for inner products nearly 100 years earlier. Vector spaces. Vectors vs kets. In mathematics, the term "vector" is used for an element of any vector space. In physics, however, the term "vector" tends to refer almost exclusively to quantities like displacement or velocity, which have components that relate directly to the three dimensions of space, or relativistically, to the four of spacetime. Such vectors are typically denoted with over arrows (formula_34), boldface (formula_35) or indices (formula_36). In quantum mechanics, a quantum state is typically represented as an element of a complex Hilbert space, for example, the infinite-dimensional vector space of all possible wavefunctions (square integrable functions mapping each point of 3D space to a complex number) or some more abstract Hilbert space constructed more algebraically. To distinguish this type of vector from those described above, it is common and useful in physics to denote an element formula_37 of an abstract complex vector space as a ket formula_18, to refer to it as a "ket" rather than as a vector, and to pronounce it "ket-formula_37" or "ket-A" for . Symbols, letters, numbers, or even words—whatever serves as a convenient label—can be used as the label inside a ket, with the formula_40 making clear that the label indicates a vector in vector space. In other words, the symbol " has a recognizable mathematical meaning as to the kind of variable being represented, while just the " by itself does not. For example, is not necessarily equal to . Nevertheless, for convenience, there is usually some logical scheme behind the labels inside kets, such as the common practice of labeling energy eigenkets in quantum mechanics through a listing of their quantum numbers. At its simplest, the label inside the ket is the eigenvalue of a physical operator, such as formula_41, formula_42, formula_43, etc. Notation. Since kets are just vectors in a Hermitian vector space, they can be manipulated using the usual rules of linear algebra. For example: formula_44 Note how the last line above involves infinitely many different kets, one for each real number . Since the ket is an element of a vector space, a bra formula_45 is an element of its dual space, i.e. a bra is a linear functional which is a linear map from the vector space to the complex numbers. Thus, it is useful to think of kets and bras as being elements of different vector spaces (see below however) with both being different useful concepts. A bra formula_17 and a ket formula_47 (i.e. a functional and a vector), can be combined to an operator formula_48 of rank one with outer product formula_49 Inner product and bra–ket identification on Hilbert space. The bra–ket notation is particularly useful in Hilbert spaces which have an inner product that allows Hermitian conjugation and identifying a vector with a continuous linear functional, i.e. a ket with a bra, and vice versa (see Riesz representation theorem). The inner product on Hilbert space formula_50 (with the first argument anti linear as preferred by physicists) is fully equivalent to an (anti-linear) identification between the space of kets and that of bras in the bra–ket notation: for a vector ket formula_51 define a functional (i.e. bra) formula_52 by formula_53 Bras and kets as row and column vectors. In the simple case where we consider the vector space formula_23, a ket can be identified with a column vector, and a bra as a row vector. If, moreover, we use the standard Hermitian inner product on formula_23, the bra corresponding to a ket, in particular a bra and a ket with the same label are conjugate transpose. Moreover, conventions are set up in such a way that writing bras, kets, and linear operators next to each other simply imply matrix multiplication. In particular the outer product formula_56 of a column and a row vector ket and bra can be identified with matrix multiplication (column vector times row vector equals matrix). For a finite-dimensional vector space, using a fixed orthonormal basis, the inner product can be written as a matrix multiplication of a row vector with a column vector: formula_57 Based on this, the bras and kets can be defined as: formula_58 and then it is understood that a bra next to a ket implies matrix multiplication. The conjugate transpose (also called "Hermitian conjugate") of a bra is the corresponding ket and vice versa: formula_59 because if one starts with the bra formula_60 then performs a complex conjugation, and then a matrix transpose, one ends up with the ket formula_61 Writing elements of a finite dimensional (or mutatis mutandis, countably infinite) vector space as a column vector of numbers requires picking a basis. Picking a basis is not always helpful because quantum mechanics calculations involve frequently switching between different bases (e.g. position basis, momentum basis, energy eigenbasis), and one can write something like " without committing to any particular basis. In situations involving two different important basis vectors, the basis vectors can be taken in the notation explicitly and here will be referred simply as " and "". Non-normalizable states and non-Hilbert spaces. Bra–ket notation can be used even if the vector space is not a Hilbert space. In quantum mechanics, it is common practice to write down kets which have infinite norm, i.e. non-normalizable wavefunctions. Examples include states whose wavefunctions are Dirac delta functions or infinite plane waves. These do not, technically, belong to the Hilbert space itself. However, the definition of "Hilbert space" can be broadened to accommodate these states (see the Gelfand–Naimark–Segal construction or rigged Hilbert spaces). The bra–ket notation continues to work in an analogous way in this more general context. Banach spaces are a different generalization of Hilbert spaces. In a Banach space , the vectors may be notated by kets and the continuous linear functionals by bras. Over any vector space without a given topology, we may still notate the vectors by kets and the linear functionals by bras. In these more general contexts, the bracket does not have the meaning of an inner product, because the Riesz representation theorem does not apply. Usage in quantum mechanics. The mathematical structure of quantum mechanics is based in large part on linear algebra: Since virtually every calculation in quantum mechanics involves vectors and linear operators, it can involve, and often does involve, bra–ket notation. A few examples follow: Spinless position–space wave function. The Hilbert space of a spin-0 point particle can be represented in terms of a "position basis" , where the label extends over the set of all points in position space. These states satisfy the eigenvalue equation for the position operator: formula_62 The position states are "generalized eigenvectors", not elements of the Hilbert space itself, and do not form a countable orthonormal basis. However, as the Hilbert space is separable, it does admit a countable dense subset within the domain of definition of its wavefunctions. That is, starting from any ket in this Hilbert space, one may "define" a complex scalar function of , known as a wavefunction, formula_63 On the left-hand side, is a function mapping any point in space to a complex number; on the right-hand side, formula_64 is a ket consisting of a superposition of kets with relative coefficients specified by that function. It is then customary to define linear operators acting on wavefunctions in terms of linear operators acting on kets, by formula_65 For instance, the momentum operator formula_66 has the following coordinate representation, formula_67 One occasionally even encounters an expression such as formula_68, though this is something of an abuse of notation. The differential operator must be understood to be an abstract operator, acting on kets, that has the effect of differentiating wavefunctions once the expression is projected onto the position basis, formula_69 even though, in the momentum basis, this operator amounts to a mere multiplication operator (by ). That is, to say, formula_70 or formula_71 Overlap of states. In quantum mechanics the expression is typically interpreted as the probability amplitude for the state to collapse into the state . Mathematically, this means the coefficient for the projection of onto . It is also described as the projection of state onto state . Changing basis for a spin-1/2 particle. A stationary spin- particle has a two-dimensional Hilbert space. One orthonormal basis is: formula_72 where is the state with a definite value of the spin operator equal to + and is the state with a definite value of the spin operator equal to −. Since these are a basis, "any" quantum state of the particle can be expressed as a linear combination (i.e., quantum superposition) of these two states: formula_73 where and are complex numbers. A "different" basis for the same Hilbert space is: formula_74 defined in terms of rather than . Again, "any" state of the particle can be expressed as a linear combination of these two: formula_75 In vector form, you might write formula_76 depending on which basis you are using. In other words, the "coordinates" of a vector depend on the basis used. There is a mathematical relationship between formula_77, formula_78, formula_79 and formula_80; see change of basis. Pitfalls and ambiguous uses. There are some conventions and uses of notation that may be confusing or ambiguous for the non-initiated or early student. Separation of inner product and vectors. A cause for confusion is that the notation does not separate the inner-product operation from the notation for a (bra) vector. If a (dual space) bra-vector is constructed as a linear combination of other bra-vectors (for instance when expressing it in some basis) the notation creates some ambiguity and hides mathematical details. We can compare bra–ket notation to using bold for vectors, such as formula_81, and formula_12 for the inner product. Consider the following dual space bra-vector in the basis formula_83, where formula_84 are the complex number coefficients of formula_85: formula_86 It has to be determined by convention if the complex numbers formula_84 are inside or outside of the inner product, and each convention gives different results. formula_88 formula_89 Reuse of symbols. It is common to use the same symbol for "labels" and "constants". For example, formula_90, where the symbol formula_91 is used simultaneously as the "name of the operator" formula_92, its "eigenvector" formula_93 and the associated "eigenvalue" formula_91. Sometimes the "hat" is also dropped for operators, and one can see notation such as formula_95. Hermitian conjugate of kets. It is common to see the usage formula_96, where the dagger (formula_97) corresponds to the Hermitian conjugate. This is however not correct in a technical sense, since the ket, formula_98, represents a vector in a complex Hilbert-space formula_99, and the bra, formula_100, is a linear functional on vectors in formula_99. In other words, formula_98 is just a vector, while formula_100 is the combination of a vector and an inner product. Operations inside bras and kets. This is done for a fast notation of scaling vectors. For instance, if the vector formula_104 is scaled by formula_105, it may be denoted formula_106. This can be ambiguous since formula_91 is simply a label for a state, and not a mathematical object on which operations can be performed. This usage is more common when denoting vectors as tensor products, where part of the labels are moved outside the designed slot, e.g. formula_108. Linear operators. Linear operators acting on kets. A linear operator is a map that inputs a ket and outputs a ket. (In order to be called "linear", it is required to have certain properties.) In other words, if formula_109 is a linear operator and formula_98 is a ket-vector, then formula_111 is another ket-vector. In an formula_112-dimensional Hilbert space, we can impose a basis on the space and represent formula_98 in terms of its coordinates as a formula_114 column vector. Using the same basis for formula_109, it is represented by an formula_116 complex matrix. The ket-vector formula_111 can now be computed by matrix multiplication. Linear operators are ubiquitous in the theory of quantum mechanics. For example, observable physical quantities are represented by self-adjoint operators, such as energy or momentum, whereas transformative processes are represented by unitary linear operators such as rotation or the progression of time. Linear operators acting on bras. Operators can also be viewed as acting on bras "from the right hand side". Specifically, if is a linear operator and is a bra, then is another bra defined by the rule formula_118 formula_119 In an -dimensional Hilbert space, can be written as a row vector, and (as in the previous section) is an matrix. Then the bra can be computed by normal matrix multiplication. If the same state vector appears on both bra and ket side, formula_120 then this expression gives the expectation value, or mean or average value, of the observable represented by operator for the physical system in the state . Outer products. A convenient way to define linear operators on a Hilbert space is given by the outer product: if is a bra and is a ket, the outer product formula_121 denotes the rank-one operator with the rule formula_122 For a finite-dimensional vector space, the outer product can be understood as simple matrix multiplication: formula_123 The outer product is an matrix, as expected for a linear operator. One of the uses of the outer product is to construct projection operators. Given a ket of norm 1, the orthogonal projection onto the subspace spanned by is formula_124 This is an idempotent in the algebra of observables that acts on the Hilbert space. Hermitian conjugate operator. Just as kets and bras can be transformed into each other (making into ), the element from the dual space corresponding to is , where denotes the Hermitian conjugate (or adjoint) of the operator . In other words, formula_125 If is expressed as an matrix, then is its conjugate transpose. Properties. Bra–ket notation was designed to facilitate the formal manipulation of linear-algebraic expressions. Some of the properties that allow this manipulation are listed herein. In what follows, and denote arbitrary complex numbers, denotes the complex conjugate of , and denote arbitrary linear operators, and these properties are to hold for any choice of bras and kets. Associativity. Given any expression involving complex numbers, bras, kets, inner products, outer products, and/or linear operators (but not addition), written in bra–ket notation, the parenthetical groupings do not matter (i.e., the associative property holds). For example: formula_128 and so forth. The expressions on the right (with no parentheses whatsoever) are allowed to be written unambiguously "because" of the equalities on the left. Note that the associative property does "not" hold for expressions that include nonlinear operators, such as the antilinear time reversal operator in physics. Hermitian conjugation. Bra–ket notation makes it particularly easy to compute the Hermitian conjugate (also called "dagger", and denoted ) of expressions. The formal rules are: These rules are sufficient to formally write the Hermitian conjugate of any such expression; some examples are as follows: Composite bras and kets. Two Hilbert spaces and may form a third space by a tensor product. In quantum mechanics, this is used for describing composite systems. If a system is composed of two subsystems described in and respectively, then the Hilbert space of the entire system is the tensor product of the two spaces. (The exception to this is if the subsystems are actually identical particles. In that case, the situation is a little more complicated.) If is a ket in and is a ket in , the tensor product of the two kets is a ket in . This is written in various notations: formula_135 See quantum entanglement and the EPR paradox for applications of this product. The unit operator. Consider a complete orthonormal system ("basis"), formula_136 for a Hilbert space , with respect to the norm from an inner product . From basic functional analysis, it is known that any ket formula_137 can also be written as formula_138 with the inner product on the Hilbert space. From the commutativity of kets with (complex) scalars, it follows that formula_139 must be the "identity operator", which sends each vector to itself. This, then, can be inserted in any expression without affecting its value; for example formula_140 where, in the last line, the Einstein summation convention has been used to avoid clutter. In quantum mechanics, it often occurs that little or no information about the inner product of two arbitrary (state) kets is present, while it is still possible to say something about the expansion coefficients and of those vectors with respect to a specific (orthonormalized) basis. In this case, it is particularly useful to insert the unit operator into the bracket one time or more. For more information, see Resolution of the identity, formula_141 where formula_142 Since , plane waves follow, formula_143 In his book (1958), Ch. III.20, Dirac defines the "standard ket" which, up to a normalization, is the translationally invariant momentum eigenstate formula_144 in the momentum representation, i.e., formula_145. Consequently, the corresponding wavefunction is a constant, formula_146, and formula_147 as well as formula_148 Typically, when all matrix elements of an operator such as formula_149 are available, this resolution serves to reconstitute the full operator, formula_150 Notation used by mathematicians. The object physicists are considering when using bra–ket notation is a Hilbert space (a complete inner product space). Let formula_151 be a Hilbert space and a vector in . What physicists would denote by is the vector itself. That is, formula_152 Let be the dual space of . This is the space of linear functionals on . The embedding formula_153 is defined by formula_154, where for every the linear functional formula_155 satisfies for every the functional equation formula_156. Notational confusion arises when identifying and with and respectively. This is because of literal symbolic substitutions. Let formula_157 and let . This gives formula_158 One ignores the parentheses and removes the double bars. Moreover, mathematicians usually write the dual entity not at the first place, as the physicists do, but at the second one, and they usually use not an asterisk but an overline (which the physicists reserve for averages and the Dirac spinor adjoint) to denote complex conjugate numbers; i.e., for scalar products mathematicians usually write formula_159 whereas physicists would write for the same quantity formula_160
4543	40903419	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4543	Blue	Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RGB (additive) colour model, as well as in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory). It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The term "blue" generally describes colours perceived by humans observing light with a dominant wavelength that's between approximately 450 and 495 nanometres. The clear daytime sky and the deep sea appear blue because of an optical effect known as Rayleigh scattering. An optical effect called the Tyndall effect explains blue eyes. Distant objects appear more blue because of another optical effect called aerial perspective. Blue has been an important colour in art and decoration since ancient times. The semi-precious stone lapis lazuli was used in ancient Egypt for jewellery and ornament and later, in the Renaissance, to make the pigment ultramarine, the most expensive of all pigments. In the eighth century Chinese artists used cobalt blue to colour fine blue and white porcelain. In the Middle Ages, European artists used it in the windows of cathedrals. Europeans wore clothing coloured with the vegetable dye woad until it was replaced by the finer indigo from America. In the 19th century, synthetic blue dyes and pigments gradually replaced organic dyes and mineral pigments. Dark blue became a common colour for military uniforms and later, in the late 20th century, for business suits. Because blue has commonly been associated with harmony, it was chosen as the colour of the flags of the United Nations and the European Union. In the United States and Europe, blue is the colour that both men and women are most likely to choose as their favourite, with at least one recent survey showing the same across several other countries, including China, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Past surveys in the US and Europe have found that blue is the colour most commonly associated with harmony, confidence, masculinity, knowledge, intelligence, calmness, distance, infinity, the imagination, cold, and sadness. Etymology and linguistics. The modern English word "blue" comes from Middle English or , from the Old French , a word of Germanic origin, related to the Old High German word (meaning 'shimmering, lustrous'). In heraldry, the word "azure" is used for "blue". In Russian, Mongolian, Irish, and some other languages, there is no single word for blue, but rather different words for light blue (Russian: , ) and dark blue (Russian: , ) (see Colour term). Several languages, including Japanese and Lakota Sioux, use the same word to describe blue and green. For example, in Vietnamese, the colour of both tree leaves and the sky is . In Japanese, the word for blue (, ) is often used for colours that English speakers would refer to as green, such as the colour of a traffic signal meaning "go". In Lakota, the word is used for both blue and green, the two colours not being distinguished in older Lakota (for more on this subject, see Blue–green distinction in language). Linguistic research indicates that languages do not begin by having a word for the colour blue. Colour names often developed individually in natural languages, typically beginning with black and white (or dark and light), and then adding red, and only much later – usually as the last main category of colour accepted in a language – adding the colour blue, probably when blue pigments could be manufactured reliably in the culture using that language. Optics and colour theory. The term "blue" generally describes colours perceived by humans observing light with a dominant wavelength between approximately 450 and 495 nanometres. Blues with a higher frequency and thus a shorter wavelength gradually look more violet, while those with a lower frequency and a longer wavelength gradually appear more cyan. Purer blues are in the middle of this range, e.g., around 470 nanometres. Isaac Newton included blue as one of the seven colours in his first description of the visible spectrum. He chose seven colours because that was the number of notes in the musical scale, which he believed was related to the optical spectrum. He included indigo, the hue between blue and violet, as one of the separate colours, though today it would be categorized as blue. In painting and traditional colour theory, blue is one of the three primary colours (red, yellow, blue), which can be mixed to form a wide gamut of colours (although the modern CMY model is able to achieve a much wider gamut). Red and blue mixed together form violet, blue and yellow together form green. Mixing all three primary colours together produces a dark brown. From the Renaissance onward, painters used this system to create their colours (see RYB colour model). The RYB model was used for colour printing by Jacob Christoph Le Blon as early as 1725. Later, printers discovered that more accurate colours could be created by using combinations of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink, put onto separate inked plates and then overlaid one at a time onto paper. This method could produce almost all the colours in the spectrum with reasonable accuracy. On the HSV colour wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal mixture of red and green light. On a colour wheel based on traditional colour theory (RYB) where blue was considered a primary colour, its complementary colour is considered to be orange. LED. In 1993, high-brightness blue LEDs were demonstrated by Shuji Nakamura of Nichia Corporation. In parallel, Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University were working on a new development which revolutionized LED lighting. Nakamura was awarded the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize for his invention. Nakamura, Hiroshi Amano and Isamu Akasaki were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014 for the invention of an efficient blue LED. Lasers. Lasers emitting in the blue region of the spectrum became widely available to the public in 2010 with the release of inexpensive high-powered 445–447 nm laser diode technology. Previously the blue wavelengths were accessible only through DPSS which are comparatively expensive and inefficient, but still widely used by scientists for applications including optogenetics, Raman spectroscopy, and particle image velocimetry, due to their superior beam quality. Blue gas lasers are also still commonly used for holography, DNA sequencing, optical pumping, among other scientific and medical applications. Shades and variations. Blue is the colour of light between violet and cyan on the visible spectrum. Hues of blue include indigo and ultramarine, closer to violet; pure blue, without any mixture of other colours; Azure, which is a lighter shade of blue, similar to the colour of the sky; Cyan, which is midway in the spectrum between blue and green, and the other blue-greens such as turquoise, teal, and aquamarine. Blue also varies in shade or tint; darker shades of blue contain black or grey, while lighter tints contain white. Darker shades of blue include ultramarine, cobalt blue, navy blue, and Prussian blue; while lighter tints include sky blue, azure, and Egyptian blue (for a more complete list see the List of colours). As a structural colour. In nature, many blue phenomena arise from structural colouration, the result of interference between reflections from two or more surfaces of thin films, combined with refraction as light enters and exits such films. The geometry then determines that at certain angles, the light reflected from both surfaces interferes constructively, while at other angles, the light interferes destructively. Diverse colours therefore appear despite the absence of colourants. Colourants. Artificial blues. Egyptian blue, the first artificial pigment, was produced in the third millennium BC in Ancient Egypt. It is produced by heating pulverized sand, copper, and natron. It was used in tomb paintings and funereal objects to protect the dead in their afterlife. Prior to the 1700s, blue colourants for artwork were mainly based on lapis lazuli and the related mineral ultramarine. A breakthrough occurred in 1709 when German druggist and pigment maker Johann Jacob Diesbach discovered Prussian blue. The new blue arose from experiments involving heating dried blood with iron sulphides and was initially called Berliner Blau. By 1710 it was being used by the French painter Antoine Watteau, and later his successor Nicolas Lancret. It became immensely popular for the manufacture of wallpaper, and in the 19th century was widely used by French impressionist painters. Beginning in the 1820s, Prussian blue was imported into Japan through the port of Nagasaki. It was called "bero-ai", or Berlin blue, and it became popular because it did not fade like traditional Japanese blue pigment, "ai-gami", made from the dayflower. Prussian blue was used by both Hokusai, in his wave paintings, and Hiroshige. In 1799 a French chemist, Louis Jacques Thénard, made a synthetic cobalt blue pigment which became immensely popular with painters. In 1824 the Societé pour l'Encouragement d'Industrie in France offered a prize for the invention of an artificial ultramarine which could rival the natural colour made from lapis lazuli. The prize was won in 1826 by a chemist named Jean Baptiste Guimet, but he refused to reveal the formula of his colour. In 1828, another scientist, Christian Gmelin then a professor of chemistry in Tübingen, found the process and published his formula. This was the beginning of new industry to manufacture artificial ultramarine, which eventually almost completely replaced the natural product. In 1878 German chemists synthesized indigo. This product rapidly replaced natural indigo, wiping out vast farms growing indigo. It is now the blue of blue jeans. As the pace of organic chemistry accelerated, a succession of synthetic blue dyes were discovered including Indanthrone blue, which had even greater resistance to fading during washing or in the sun, and copper phthalocyanine. Dyes for textiles and food. Woad and true indigo were once used but since the early 1900s, all indigo is synthetic. Produced on an industrial scale, indigo is the blue of blue jeans. Blue dyes are organic compounds, both synthetic and natural. For food, the triarylmethane dye Brilliant blue FCF is used for candies. The search continues for stable, natural blue dyes suitable for the food industry. Various raspberry-flavoured foods are dyed blue. This was done to distinguish strawberry, watermelon and raspberry-flavoured foods. The company ICEE used Blue No. 1 for their blue raspberry ICEEs. Pigments for painting and glass. Blue pigments were once produced from minerals, especially lapis lazuli and its close relative ultramarine. These minerals were crushed, ground into powder, and then mixed with a quick-drying binding agent, such as egg yolk (tempera painting); or with a slow-drying oil, such as linseed oil, for oil painting. Two inorganic but synthetic blue pigments are cerulean blue (primarily cobalt(II) stanate: ) and Prussian blue (milori blue: primarily ). The chromophore in blue glass and glazes is cobalt(II). Diverse cobalt(II) salts such as cobalt carbonate or cobalt(II) aluminate are mixed with the silica prior to firing. The cobalt occupies sites otherwise filled with silicon. Inks. Methyl blue is the dominant blue pigment in inks used in pens. Blueprinting involves the production of Prussian blue in situ. Inorganic compounds. Certain metal ions characteristically form blue solutions or blue salts. Of some practical importance, cobalt is used to make the deep blue glazes and glasses. It substitutes for silicon or aluminum ions in these materials. Cobalt is the blue chromophore in stained glass windows, such as those in Gothic cathedrals and in Chinese porcelain beginning in the Tang dynasty. Copper(II) (Cu2+) also produces many blue compounds, including the commercial algicide copper(II) sulfate (CuSO4.5H2O). Similarly, vanadyl salts and solutions are often blue, e.g. vanadyl sulfate. In nature. Sky and sea. When sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the blue wavelengths are scattered more widely by the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and more blue comes to our eyes. This effect is called Rayleigh scattering, after Lord Rayleigh and confirmed by Albert Einstein in 1911. The sea is seen as blue for largely the same reason: the water absorbs the longer wavelengths of red and reflects and scatters the blue, which comes to the eye of the viewer. The deeper the observer goes, the darker the blue becomes. In the open sea, only about 1% of light penetrates to a depth of 200 metres (see underwater and euphotic depth). The colour of the sea is also affected by the colour of the sky, reflected by particles in the water; and by algae and plant life in the water, which can make it look green; or by sediment, which can make it look brown. The farther away an object is, the more blue it often appears to the eye. For example, mountains in the distance often appear blue. This is the effect of atmospheric perspective; the farther an object is away from the viewer, the less contrast there is between the object and its background colour, which is usually blue. In a painting where different parts of the composition are blue, green and red, the blue will appear to be more distant, and the red closer to the viewer. The cooler a colour is, the more distant it seems. Blue light is scattered more than other wavelengths by the gases in the atmosphere, hence our "blue planet". Minerals. Some of the most desirable gems are blue, including sapphire and tanzanite. Compounds of copper(II) are characteristically blue and so are many copper-containing minerals. Azurite (, with a deep blue colour, was once employed in medieval years, but it is unstable pigment, losing its colour especially under dry conditions. Lapis lazuli, mined in Afghanistan for more than three thousand years, was used for jewelry and ornaments, and later was crushed and powdered and used as a pigment. The more it was ground, the lighter the blue colour became. Natural ultramarine, made by grinding lapis lazuli into a fine powder, was the finest available blue pigment in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It was extremely expensive, and in Italian Renaissance art, it was often reserved for the robes of the Virgin Mary. Plants and fungi. Intense efforts have focused on blue flowers and the possibility that natural blue colourants could be used as food dyes. Commonly, blue colours in plants are anthocyanins: "the largest group of water-soluble pigments found widespread in the plant kingdom". In the few plants that exploit structural colouration, brilliant colours are produced by structures within cells. The most brilliant blue colouration known in any living tissue is found in the marble berries of "Pollia condensata", where a spiral structure of cellulose fibrils scattering blue light. The fruit of quandong ("Santalum acuminatum") can appear blue owing to the same effect. Animals. Blue-pigmented animals are relatively rare. Examples of which include butterflies of the genus "Nessaea", where blue is created by pterobilin. Other blue pigments of animal origin include phorcabilin, used by other butterflies in "Graphium" and "Papilio" (specifically "P. phorcas" and "P. weiskei"), and sarpedobilin, which is used by "Graphium sarpedon". Blue-pigmented organelles, known as "cyanosomes", exist in the chromatophores of at least two fish species, the mandarin fish and the picturesque dragonet. More commonly, blueness in animals is a structural colouration; an optical interference effect induced by organized nanometre-sized scales or fibres. Examples include the plumage of several birds like the blue jay and indigo bunting, the scales of butterflies like the morpho butterfly, collagen fibres in the skin of some species of monkey and opossum, and the iridophore cells in some fish and frogs. Eyes. Blue eyes do not actually contain any blue pigment. Eye colour is determined by two factors: the pigmentation of the eye's iris and the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris. In humans, the pigmentation of the iris varies from light brown to black. The appearance of blue, green, and hazel eyes results from the Tyndall scattering of light in the stroma, an optical effect similar to what accounts for the blueness of the sky. The irises of the eyes of people with blue eyes contain less dark melanin than those of people with brown eyes, which means that they absorb less short-wavelength blue light, which is instead reflected out to the viewer. Eye colour also varies depending on the lighting conditions, especially for lighter-coloured eyes. Blue eyes are most common in Ireland, the Baltic Sea area and Northern Europe, and are also found in Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe. Blue eyes are also found in parts of Western Asia, most notably in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. In Estonia, 99% of people have blue eyes. In Denmark in 1978, only 8% of the population had brown eyes, though through immigration, today that number is about 11%. In Germany, about 75% have blue eyes. In the United States, as of 2006, 1 out of every 6 people, or 16.6% of the total population, and 22.3% of the white population, have blue eyes, compared with about half of Americans born in 1900, and a third of Americans born in 1950. Blue eyes are becoming less common among American children. In the US, males are 3–5% more likely to have blue eyes than females. History. In the ancient world. As early as the 7th millennium BC, lapis lazuli was mined in the Sar-i Sang mines, in Shortugai, and in other mines in Badakhshan province in northeast Afghanistan. Lapis lazuli artifacts, dated to 7570 BC, have been found at Bhirrana, which is the oldest site of Indus Valley civilisation. Lapis was highly valued by the Indus Valley Civilisation (7570–1900 BC). Lapis beads have been found at Neolithic burials in Mehrgarh, the Caucasus, and as far away as Mauritania. It was used in the funeral mask of Tutankhamun (1341–1323 BC). A term for Blue was relatively rare in many forms of ancient art and decoration, and even in ancient literature. The Ancient Greek poets described the sea as green, brown or "the colour of wine". The colour is mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible as 'tekhelet'. Reds, blacks, browns, and ochres are found in cave paintings from the Upper Paleolithic period, but not blue. Blue was also not used for dyeing fabric until long after red, ochre, pink, and purple. This is probably due to the perennial difficulty of making blue dyes and pigments. On the other hand, the rarity of blue pigment made it even more valuable. The earliest known blue dyes were made from plants – woad in Europe, indigo in Asia and Africa, while blue pigments were made from minerals, usually either lapis lazuli or azurite, and required more. Blue glazes posed still another challenge since the early blue dyes and pigments were not thermally robust. In , the blue glaze Egyptian blue was introduced for ceramics, as well as many other objects. The Greeks imported indigo dye from India, calling it indikon, and they painted with Egyptian blue. Blue was not one of the four primary colours for Greek painting described by Pliny the Elder (red, yellow, black, and white). For the Romans, blue was the colour of mourning, as well as the colour of barbarians. The Celts and Germans reportedly dyed their faces blue to frighten their enemies, and tinted their hair blue when they grew old. The Romans made extensive use of indigo and Egyptian blue pigment, as evidenced, in part, by frescos in Pompeii. The Romans had many words for varieties of blue, including , , , , , , , and , but two words, both of foreign origin, became the most enduring; , from the Germanic word "blau", which eventually became "bleu" or blue; and , from the Arabic word , which became azure. Blue was widely used in the decoration of churches in the Byzantine Empire. By contrast, in the Islamic world, blue was of secondary to green, believed to be the favourite colour of the Prophet Mohammed. At certain times in Moorish Spain and other parts of the Islamic world, blue was the colour worn by Christians and Jews, because only Muslims were allowed to wear white and green. In the Middle Ages. In the art and life of Europe during the early Middle Ages, blue played a minor role. This changed dramatically between 1130 and 1140 in Paris, when the Abbe Suger rebuilt the Saint Denis Basilica. Suger considered that light was the visible manifestation of the Holy Spirit. He installed stained glass windows coloured with cobalt, which, combined with the light from the red glass, filled the church with a bluish violet light. The church became the marvel of the Christian world, and the colour became known as the . In the years that followed even more elegant blue stained glass windows were installed in other churches, including at Chartres Cathedral and Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. In the 12th century the Roman Catholic Church dictated that painters in Italy (and the rest of Europe consequently) to paint the Virgin Mary with blue, which became associated with holiness, humility and virtue. In medieval paintings, blue was used to attract the attention of the viewer to the Virgin Mary. Paintings of the mythical King Arthur began to show him dressed in blue. The coat of arms of the kings of France became an azure or light blue shield, sprinkled with golden fleur-de-lis or lilies. Blue had come from obscurity to become the royal colour. Renaissance through 18th century. Blue came into wider use beginning in the Renaissance, when artists began to paint the world with perspective, depth, shadows, and light from a single source. In Renaissance paintings, artists tried to create harmonies between blue and red, lightening the blue with lead white paint and adding shadows and highlights. Raphael was a master of this technique, carefully balancing the reds and the blues so no one colour dominated the picture. Ultramarine was the most prestigious blue of the Renaissance, being more expensive than gold. Wealthy art patrons commissioned works with the most expensive blues possible. In 1616 Richard Sackville commissioned a portrait of himself by Isaac Oliver with three different blues, including ultramarine pigment for his stockings. An industry for the manufacture of fine blue and white pottery began in the 14th century in Jingdezhen, China, using white Chinese porcelain decorated with patterns of cobalt blue, imported from Persia. It was first made for the family of the Emperor of China, then was exported around the world, with designs for export adapted to European subjects and tastes. The Chinese blue style was also adapted by Dutch craftsmen in Delft and English craftsmen in Staffordshire in the 17th-18th centuries. in the 18th century, blue and white porcelains were produced by Josiah Wedgwood and other British craftsmen. 19th-20th century. The early 19th century saw the ancestor of the modern blue business suit, created by Beau Brummel (1776–1840), who set fashion at the London Court. It also saw the invention of blue jeans, a highly popular form of workers's costume, invented in 1853 by Jacob W. Davis who used metal rivets to strengthen blue denim work clothing in the California gold fields. The invention was funded by San Francisco entrepreneur Levi Strauss, and spread around the world. Recognizing the emotional power of blue, many artists made it the central element of paintings in the 19th and 20th centuries. They included Pablo Picasso, Pavel Kuznetsov and the Blue Rose art group, and Kandinsky and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) school. Henri Matisse expressed deep emotions with blue, "A certain blue penetrates your soul." In the second half of the 20th century, painters of the abstract expressionist movement use blues to inspire ideas and emotions. Painter Mark Rothko observed that colour was "only an instrument;" his interest was "in expressing human emotions tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on". In society and culture. Uniforms. In the 17th century. The Prince-Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William I of Prussia, chose Prussian blue as the new colour of Prussian military uniforms, because it was made with Woad, a local crop, rather than Indigo, which was produced by the colonies of Brandenburg's rival, England. It was worn by the German army until World War I, with the exception of the soldiers of Bavaria, who wore sky-blue. In 1748, the Royal Navy adopted a dark shade of blue for the uniform of officers. It was first known as marine blue, now known as navy blue. The militia organized by George Washington selected blue and buff, the colours of the British Whig Party. Blue continued to be the colour of the field uniform of the US Army until 1902, and is still the colour of the dress uniform. In the 19th century, police in the United Kingdom, including the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police also adopted a navy blue uniform. Similar traditions were embraced in France and Austria. It was also adopted at about the same time for the uniforms of the officers of the New York City Police Department. Gender. Blue is used to represent males. Beginning as a trend the mid-19th century and applying primarily to clothing, gendered associations with blue became more widespread from the 1950s. The colour became associated with males after World War II. Sports. In sports, blue is widely represented in uniforms in part because the majority of national teams wear the colours of their national flag. For example, the national men's football team of France are known as "Les Bleus" (the Blues). Similarly, Argentina, Italy, and Uruguay wear blue shirts. The Asian Football Confederation and the Oceania Football Confederation use blue text on their logos. Blue is well represented in baseball (Blue Jays), basketball, and American football, and Ice hockey. The Indian national cricket team wears blue uniform during One day international matches, as such the team is also referred to as "Men in Blue". Politics. Unlike red or green, blue was not strongly associated with any particular country, religion or political movement. As the colour of harmony, it was chosen as the colour for the flags of the United Nations, the European Union, and NATO. In politics, blue is often used as the colour of conservative parties, contrasting with the red associated with left-wing parties. Some conservative parties that use the colour blue include the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party of Canada, Liberal Party of Australia, Liberal Party of Brazil, and Likud of Israel. However, in some countries, blue is not associated main conservative party. In the United States, the liberal Democratic Party is associated with blue, while the conservative Republican Party is associated with red. US states which have been won by the Democratic Party in four consecutive presidential elections are termed "blue states", while those that have been won by the Republican Party are termed "red states". South Korea also uses this colour model, with the Democratic Party on the left using blue and the People Power Party on the right using red.
4544	7436027	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4544	Blind Willie McTell	Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier; May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959) was an American Piedmont blues and ragtime singer, songwriter and guitarist. He played in a fluid, syncopated finger picking guitar style common among many East Coast, Piedmont blues players. Like his Atlanta contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also adept at slide guitar, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. He sang in a smooth and often laid-back tenor which differed greatly from the harsher voices of many Delta bluesmen such as Charley Patton. He performed in various musical styles including blues, ragtime, religious music, and hokum and recorded more than 120 titles during fourteen recording sessions. He was born William Samuel McTier in the Happy Valley community outside Thomson, Georgia. In his recordings of "Lay Some Flowers on My Grave", "Lord, Send Me an Angel" and "Statesboro Blues", he pronounces his surname "MacTell" with the stress on the first syllable. He learned to play the guitar in his early teens from his mother and from relatives and neighbors in Statesboro where his family had moved. He was a popular performer on the streets of several Georgia cities, including Augusta and Atlanta where he made his first recordings, eight songs, for Victor Records in 1927 including "Statesboro Blues." . He never had a major hit record but he had a prolific recording career with different labels and under different names in the 1920s and '30s. McTell was active in the 1940s and '50s playing at house rent parties, on street corners, at fish fries, on the medicine and tent show circuit, playing on the streets of Atlanta, often with his longtime friend, Curley Weaver as well as hoboing through the South and East. He made his last recordings in 1956 at an impromptu session recorded by an Atlanta record store owner. He died three years later, having lived for years with diabetes and alcoholism. Despite his lack of commercial success, he was one of the few blues musicians of his generation who continued to actively play and record during the 1940s and '50s. He did not live to see the American folk music revival when many other bluesmen were rediscovered. Biography. Most sources give the date of his birth as 1898 but researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest 1903 on the basis of his entry in the 1910 census. McTell was born blind in one eye and lost his remaining vision by late childhood. He attended schools for the blind in Georgia, New York and Michigan and showed proficiency in music from an early age, learning to read and write music in braille, first playing the harmonica and accordion and turning to the six-string guitar in his early teens. His family was rich in music; both of his parents and an uncle played the guitar and he and bluesman and gospel pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey were cousins. McTell's father left the family when Willie was young. After his mother died, in the 1920s, he left his hometown and became an itinerant songster. Like Lead Belly, another songster who began his career on the streets, McTell favored the twelve-string guitar whose greater volume made it suitable for outdoor playing. In the years before World War II, McTell traveled and performed widely, recording for several labels under different names: Blind Willie McTell for Victor and Decca, Blind Sammie for Columbia, Georgia Bill for Okeh, Hot Shot Willie for Victor, Blind Willie for Vocalion and Bluebird, Barrelhouse Sammie for Atlantic, and Pig & Whistle Red for Regal Records. The name "Pig & Whistle" was a reference to a chain of barbecue restaurants in Atlanta; McTell often played for tips in the parking lot of a Pig 'n Whistle restaurant. He also played behind a nearby building that later became Ray Lee's Blue Lantern Lounge. McTell married Ruth Kate Williams, now better known as Kate McTell, in 1934. She accompanied him on stage and on several recordings before becoming a nurse in 1939. For most of their marriage, from 1942 until his death, they lived apart, she in Fort Gordon, near Augusta, and he working around Atlanta. In 1940, John Lomax, a Classics professor at the University of Texas at Austin and his wife, Ruby Terrill Lomax, interviewed and recorded McTell for the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress in a two-hour session held in their hotel room in Atlanta. These recordings captured McTell's distinctive musical style which bridges the gap between the country blues of the early part of the 20th century and the more conventionally melodious, ragtime-influenced East Coast, Piedmont blues sound. The Lomaxes also elicited from him traditional songs (such as "The Boll Weevil" and "John Henry") and spirituals (such as "Amazing Grace"), which were not part of his usual repertoire. In the interview, John Lomax is heard asking if McTell knows any "complaining" songs (an earlier term for protest songs), to which he replies somewhat uncomfortably and evasively that he does not. The Library of Congress paid McTell $10, the equivalent of $154.56 in 2011, for this two-hour session. The material from this 1940 session was issued in 1960 as an LP and later as a CD under the somewhat misleading title "The Complete Library of Congress Recordings" notwithstanding the fact that it omitted some of Lomax's interactions showing kindness to him and entirely omitting the contributions of Ruby Terrill Lomax. Ahmet Ertegun visited Atlanta in 1949 in search of blues artists for this new Atlantic Records label and after finding McTell playing on the street, arranged a recording session. Some of the songs were released on 78 rpm discs but sold poorly. The complete session was released in 1972 as "Atlanta Twelve-String". McTell recorded for Regal Records in 1949 but these recordings also met with less commercial success than his previous works. He continued to perform around Atlanta but his career was cut short by ill health, mostly due to diabetes and alcoholism. In 1956, an Atlanta record store owner, Edward Rhodes, discovered McTell playing in the street for quarters and enticed him into his store with a bottle of bourbon where he captured 13 songs on a tape recorder which Prestige Records/Bluesville Records posthumously released as his "Last Session". From 1957 to 1959, McTell was a preacher at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Atlanta. Blind Willie McTell died of a stroke in Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1959, at the age of 61. He was buried at Jones Grove Church, near Thomson, Georgia, his birthplace. Author David Fulmer, who in 1992 was working on "Blind Willie's Blues", a documentary about McTell, arranged to have a blue marble gravestone erected on his resting place. McTell was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame in 1981 and the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1990. Influence. McTell's influence extended over a wide variety of artists. His most famous song, "Statesboro Blues" was adapted by Taj Mahal with Jesse Ed Davis on slide guitar, then covered and frequently performed by the Allman Brothers Band. It also shows up on Canned Heat's "Goin' Up the Country" album. A short list of some of the artists who have performed the song includes David Bromberg, Dave Van Ronk, The Devil Makes Three, Chris Smither and Ralph McTell, who changed his name because he liked the song. Ry Cooder covered McTell's "Married Man's a Fool" on his 1973 album, "Paradise and Lunch". Jack White, of the White Stripes, considers McTell an influence; the White Stripes album "De Stijl" (2000) is dedicated to him and features a cover of his song "Southern Can Is Mine". The White Stripes also covered McTell's "Lord, Send Me an Angel", releasing it as a single in 2000. In 2013, Jack White's Third Man Records teamed up with Document Records to issue "The Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order of Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell and the Mississippi Sheiks". Bob Dylan paid tribute to McTell on at least four occasions. In his 1965 song "Highway 61 Revisited", the second verse begins, "Georgia Sam, he had a bloody nose", an allusion to one of McTell's many recording names (Note: there is no evidence that he used this name on any recordings). Dylan's song "Blind Willie McTell" was recorded in 1983 and released in 1991 on "The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3". Dylan also recorded covers of McTell's "Broke Down Engine" and "Delia" on his 1993 album, "World Gone Wrong"; Dylan's song "Po' Boy", on the album "Love and Theft" (2001), contains the lyric "had to go to Florida dodging them Georgia laws", which comes from McTell's "Kill It Kid". The Bath-based band Kill It Kid is named after the song of the same title. A billiards bar and concert venue in Statesboro, Georgia, was named Blind Willie's in the 1990s. The venue is now closed but remains a fond memory for Georgia Southern University students at the time. Another Blind Willie's bar in the Virginia-Highlands neighborhood of Atlanta named after McTell that features blues musicians and bands. The Blind Willie McTell Blues Festival is held annually in Thomson, Georgia. In 1996, the novelist and former music journalist David Fulmer released "Blind Willie's Blues", a 53-minute documentary about McTell’s life, times, and music, with interviews with African-American history professor Daphne Duval Harrison, blues musician Taj Mahal, guitarist Stefan Grossman, Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, McTell's former brother-in-law Rev. A.J. Williams, and Edward Rhodes, who produced McTell's "Last Sessions" recording. In late 2023, the film was remastered by the Southeastern Folklife Collection at Valdosta State University and is currently streaming on YouTube.
4545	7903804	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4545	BDSM	BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged in by people who do not consider themselves to be practising BDSM, inclusion in the BDSM community or subculture often is said to depend on self-identification and shared experience. The initialism "BDSM" is first recorded in a Usenet post from 1991, and is interpreted as a combination of the abbreviations B/D (Bondage and Discipline), D/s (Dominance and submission), and S/M (Sadism and Masochism). "BDSM" is used as a catch-all phrase covering a wide range of activities, forms of interpersonal relationships, and distinct subcultures. BDSM communities generally welcome anyone with a non-normative streak who identifies with the community; this may include cross-dressers, body modification enthusiasts, animal roleplayers, rubber fetishists, and others. Activities and relationships in BDSM are typically characterized by the participants' taking on roles that are complementary and involve inequality of power; thus, the idea of informed consent of both the partners is essential. The terms "submissive" and "dominant" are usually used to distinguish these roles: the dominant partner ("dom") takes psychological control over the submissive ("sub"). The terms "top" and "bottom" are also used; the top is the instigator of an action while the bottom is the receiver of the action. The two sets of terms are subtly different: for example, someone may choose to act as bottom to another person, for example, by being whipped, purely recreationally, without any implication of being psychologically dominated, and submissives may be ordered to massage their dominant partners. Although the bottom carries out the action and the top receives it, they have not necessarily switched roles. The abbreviations "sub" and "dom" are frequently used instead of "submissive" and "dominant". Sometimes the female-specific terms "mistress", "domme", and "dominatrix" are used to describe a dominant woman, instead of the sometimes gender-neutral term "dom". Individuals who change between top/dominant and bottom/submissive roles—whether from relationship to relationship or within a given relationship—are called "switches". The precise definition of roles and self-identification is a common subject of debate among BDSM participants. Fundamentals. "BDSM" is an umbrella term for certain kinds of erotic behaviour between consenting adults, encompassing various subcultures. Terms for roles vary widely among the subcultures. "Top" and "dominant" are widely used for those partner(s) in the relationship or activity who are, respectively, the physically active or controlling participants. "Bottom" and "submissive" are widely used for those partner(s) in the relationship or activity who are, respectively, the physically receptive or controlled participants. The interaction between tops and bottoms—where physical or mental control of the bottom is surrendered to the top—is sometimes known as "power exchange", whether in the context of an encounter or a relationship. BDSM actions can often take place during a specific period of time agreed to by both parties, referred to as "play", a "scene", or a "session". Participants usually derive pleasure from this, even though many of the practices—such as inflicting pain or humiliation or being restrained—would be unpleasant under other circumstances. Explicit sexual activity, such as sexual penetration, may occur within a session, but is not essential. For legal reasons, such explicit sexual interaction is seen only rarely in public play spaces and is sometimes banned by the rules of a party or playspace. Whether it is a public "playspace"—ranging from a party at an established community dungeon to a hosted play "zone" at a nightclub or social event—the parameters of allowance can vary. Some have a policy of panties/nipple sticker for women (underwear for men) and some allow full nudity with explicit sexual acts. The fundamental principles for the exercise of BDSM require that it be performed with the informed consent of all parties. Since the 1980s, many practitioners and organizations have adopted the motto (originally from the statement of purpose of GMSMA—a gay SM activist organization) "safe, sane and consensual" ("SSC"), which means that everything is based on safe activities, that all participants are of sufficiently sound mind to consent, and that all participants do consent. Mutual consent makes a clear legal and ethical distinction between BDSM and such crimes as sexual assault and domestic violence. Some BDSM practitioners prefer a code of behaviour that differs from SSC. Described as "risk-aware consensual kink" (RACK), this code shows a preference for a style in which the "individual" responsibility of the involved parties is emphasized more strongly, with each participant being responsible for their own well-being. Advocates of RACK argue that SSC can hamper discussion of risk because no activity is truly "safe", and that discussion of even low-risk possibilities is necessary for truly informed consent. They further argue that setting a discrete line between "safe" and "not-safe" activities ideologically denies consenting adults the right to evaluate risks versus rewards for themselves; that some adults will be drawn to certain activities regardless of the risk; and that BDSM play—particularly higher-risk play or edgeplay—should be treated with the same regard as extreme sports, with both respect and the demand that practitioners educate themselves and practice the higher-risk activities to decrease risk. RACK may be seen as focusing primarily upon awareness and informed consent, rather than accepted safe practices. Consent is the most important criterion. The consent and compliance for a sadomasochistic situation can be granted only by people who can judge the potential results. For their consent, they must have relevant information (the extent to which the scene will go, potential risks, if a safeword will be used, what that is, and so on) at hand and the necessary mental capacity to judge. The resulting consent and understanding is occasionally summarized in a written "contract", which is an agreement of what can and cannot take place. BDSM play is usually structured such that it is possible for the consenting partner to withdraw their consent at any point during a scene; for example, by using a safeword that was agreed on in advance. Use of the agreed safeword (or occasionally a "safe symbol" such as dropping a ball or ringing a bell, especially when speech is restricted) is seen by some as an explicit withdrawal of consent. Failure to honor a safeword is considered serious misconduct and could constitute a crime, depending on the relevant law, since the bottom or top has explicitly revoked their consent to any actions that follow the use of the safeword. For other scenes, particularly in established relationships, a safeword may be agreed to signify a warning ("this is getting too intense") rather than explicit withdrawal of consent; and a few choose not to use a safeword at all. Terminology and subtypes. The initialism "BDSM" appeared for the first time in 1983 in the scientific paper "S and M: Studies in Dominance and Submission" by Thomas Weinberg. It was later popularized in a list of frequent questions for the site alt.sex.bondageFAQ and reposted between 1995 and 1997 in the forum soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm. It stands for: These terms replaced "sadomasochism", as they more broadly cover BDSM activities and focus on the submissive roles instead of psychological pain. The model is only an attempt at phenomenological differentiation. Individual tastes and preferences in the area of human sexuality may overlap among these areas. Under the initialism BDSM, these psychological and physiological facets are also included: The term "bondage" describes the practice of physical restraint. Bondage is usually, but not always, a sexual practice. While bondage is a very popular variation within the larger field of BDSM, it is nevertheless sometimes differentiated from the rest of this field. A 2015 study of over 1,000 Canadians showed that about half of all men held fantasies of bondage, and almost half of all women did as well. In a strict sense, bondage means binding the partner by tying their appendages together; for example, by the use of handcuffs or ropes, or by lashing their arms to an object. Bondage can also be achieved by spreading the appendages and fastening them with chains or ropes to a St. Andrew's cross or spreader bars. The term "discipline" describes the use of rules and punishment to control overt behaviour. Punishment can be pain caused physically (such as caning), humiliation caused psychologically (such as a public flagellation) or loss of freedom caused physically (for example, chaining the submissive partner to the foot of a bed). Another aspect is the structured training of the bottom. Dominance and submission (also known as "D&s", "Ds" or "D/s") is a set of behaviours, customs and rituals relating to the giving and accepting of control of one individual over another in an erotic or lifestyle context. It explores the more mental aspect of BDSM. This is also the case in many relationships not considering themselves as sadomasochistic; it is considered to be a part of BDSM if it is practiced purposefully. The range of its individual characteristics is thereby wide. Often, BDSM contracts are set out in writing to record the formal consent of the parties to the power exchange, stating their common vision of the relationship dynamic. The purpose of this kind of agreement is primarily to encourage discussion and negotiation in advance and then to document that understanding for the benefit of all parties. Such documents have not been recognized as being legally binding, nor are they intended to be. These agreements are binding in the sense that the parties have the expectation that the negotiated rules will be followed. Often other friends and community members may witness the signing of such a document in a ceremony, and so parties violating their agreement can result in loss of face, respect or status with their friends in the community. In general, as compared to conventional relationships, BDSM participants go to greater lengths to negotiate the important aspects of their relationships in advance, and to contribute significant effort toward learning about and following safe practices. In D/s, the dominant is the top and the submissive is the bottom. In S/M, the sadist is usually the top and the masochist the bottom, but these roles are frequently more complicated or jumbled (as in the case of being dominant, masochists who may arrange for their submissive to carry out S/M activities on them). As in B/D, the declaration of the top/bottom may be required, though sadomasochists may also play without any power exchange at all, with both partners equally in control of the play. Etymology. The term "sadomasochism" is derived from the words "sadism" and "masochism". These terms differ somewhat from the same terms used in psychology since those require that the sadism or masochism cause significant distress or involve non-consenting partners. "Sadomasochism" refers to the aspects of BDSM surrounding the exchange of physical or emotional pain. Sadism describes sexual pleasure derived by inflicting pain, degradation, humiliation on another person or causing another person to suffer. On the other hand, the masochist enjoys being hurt, humiliated, or suffering within the consensual scenario. Sadomasochistic scenes sometimes reach a level that appears more extreme or cruel than other forms of BDSM—for example, when a masochist is brought to tears or is severely bruised—and is occasionally unwelcome at BDSM events or parties. Sadomasochism does not imply enjoyment through causing or receiving pain in other situations (for example, accidental injury, medical procedures). The terms "sadism" and "masochism" are derived from the names of the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, based on the content of the authors' works. Although the names of de Sade and Sacher-Masoch are attached to the terms sadism and masochism respectively, the scenes described in de Sade's works do not meet modern BDSM standards of informed consent. BDSM is solely based on consensual activities, and based on its system and laws. The concepts presented by de Sade are not in accordance with the BDSM culture, even though they are sadistic in nature. In 1843, the Ruthenian physician Heinrich Kaan published ' ("Psychopathy of Sex"), a writing in which he converts the sin conceptions of Christianity into medical diagnoses. With his work, the originally theological terms "perversion", "aberration" and "deviation" became part of the scientific terminology for the first time. The German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing introduced the terms "sadism" and "masochism" to the medical community in his work ' ("New research in the area of Psychopathy of Sex") in 1890. In 1905, Sigmund Freud described sadism and masochism in his "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" as diseases developing from an incorrect development of the child psyche and laid the groundwork for the scientific perspective on the subject in the following decades. This led to the first time use of the compound term "sado-masochism" (German ") by the Viennese psychoanalytic Isidor Isaak Sadger in their work, " ("Regarding the sadomasochistic complex") in 1913. In the later 20th century, BDSM activists have protested against these conceptual models, as they were derived from the philosophies of two singular historical figures. Both Freud and Krafft-Ebing were psychiatrists; their observations on sadism and masochism were dependent on psychiatric patients, and their models were built on the assumption of psychopathology. BDSM activists argue that it is illogical to attribute human behavioural phenomena as complex as sadism and masochism to the "inventions" of two historic individuals. Advocates of BDSM have sought to distinguish themselves from widely held notions of antiquated psychiatric theory by the adoption of the term "BDSM" as a distinction from the now common usage of those psychological terms, abbreviated as "S&M". Behavioural and physiological aspects. BDSM is commonly mistaken as being "all about pain". Freud was confounded by the complexity and counterintuitiveness of practitioners' doing things that are self-destructive and painful. Rather than pain, BDSM practitioners are primarily concerned with power, humiliation, and pleasure. The aspects of D/s and B/D may not include physical suffering at all, but include the sensations experienced by different emotions of the mind. Of the three categories of BDSM, only sadomasochism specifically requires pain, but this is typically a means to an end, as a vehicle for feelings of humiliation, dominance, etc. In psychology, this aspect becomes a deviant behaviour once the act of inflicting or experiencing pain becomes a substitute for or the main source of sexual pleasure. In its most extreme, the preoccupation on this kind of pleasure can lead participants to view humans as insensate means of sexual gratification. Dominance and submission of power are an entirely different experience, and are not always psychologically associated with physical pain. Many BDSM activities involve no pain or humiliation, but just the exchange of power and control. During the activities, the participants may feel endorphin effects comparable to "runner's high" and to the afterglow of orgasm. The corresponding trance-like mental state is also called "subspace", for the submissive, and "domspace", for the dominant. Some use "body stress" to describe this physiological sensation. The experience of algolagnia is important, but is not the only motivation for many BDSM practitioners. The philosopher Edmund Burke called the sensation of pleasure derived from pain "sublime". Couples engaging in consensual BDSM tend to show hormonal changes that indicate decreases in stress and increases in emotional bonding. There is an array of BDSM practitioners who take part in sessions in which they do not receive any personal gratification. They enter such situations solely with the intention to allow their partners to indulge their own needs or fetishes. Professional dominants do this in exchange for money, but non-professionals do it for the sake of their partners. In some BDSM sessions, the top exposes the bottom to a range of sensual experiences, such as pinching; biting; scratching with fingernails; erotic spanking; erotic electrostimulation; and the use of crops, whips, liquid wax, ice cubes, and Wartenberg wheels. Fixation by handcuffs, ropes, or chains may occur. The repertoire of possible "toys" is limited only by the imagination of both partners. To some extent, everyday items, such as clothespins, wooden spoons, and plastic wrap, are used in sex play. It is commonly considered that a pleasurable BDSM experience during a session depends strongly on the top's competence and experience and the bottom's physical and mental state. Trust and sexual arousal help the partners enter a shared mindset. Types of play. Following are some of the types of BDSM play: Safety. Besides safe sex, BDSM sessions often require a wider array of safety precautions than vanilla sex (sexual behaviour without BDSM elements). To ensure consent related to BDSM activity, pre-play negotiations are commonplace, especially among partners who do not know each other very well. In practice, pick-up scenes at clubs or parties may sometimes be low in negotiation (much as pick-up sex from singles bars may not involve much negotiation or disclosure). These negotiations concern the interests and fantasies of each partner and establish a framework of both acceptable and unacceptable activities. This kind of discussion is a typical "unique selling proposition" of BDSM sessions and quite commonplace. Additionally, safewords are often arranged to provide for an immediate stop of any activity if any participant should so desire. Safewords are words or phrases that are called out when things are either not going as planned or have crossed a threshold one cannot handle. They are something both parties can remember and recognize and are, by definition, not words commonly used playfully during any kind of scene. Words such as "no", "stop", and "don't", are often inappropriate as a safeword if the roleplaying aspect includes the illusion of non-consent. "The traffic light system" (TLS) is the most commonly used set of safewords. At most clubs and group-organized BDSM parties and events, dungeon monitors (DMs) provide an additional safety net for the people playing there, ensuring that house rules are followed and safewords respected. BDSM participants are expected to understand practical safety aspects, such as the potential for harm to body parts. Contusion or scarring of the skin can be a concern. Using crops, whips, or floggers, the top's fine motor skills and anatomical knowledge can make the difference between a satisfying session for the bottom and a highly unpleasant experience that may even entail severe physical harm. The very broad range of BDSM "toys" and physical and psychological control techniques often requires a far-reaching knowledge of details related to the requirements of the individual session, such as anatomy, physics, and psychology. Despite these risks, BDSM activities usually result in far less severe injuries than sports like boxing and football, and BDSM practitioners do not visit emergency rooms any more often than the general population. It is necessary to be able to identify each person's psychological "squicks" or triggers in advance to avoid them. Such losses of emotional balance due to sensory or emotional overload are a fairly commonly discussed issue. It is important to follow participants' reactions empathetically and continue or stop accordingly. For some players, sparking "freakouts" or deliberately using triggers may be the desired outcome. Safewords are one way for BDSM practices to protect both parties. However, partners should be aware of each other's psychological states and behaviours to prevent instances where the "freakouts" prevent the use of safewords. After any BDSM activities, it is important that the participants go through sexual aftercare, to process and calm down from the activity. After the sessions, participants can need aftercare because their bodies have experienced trauma and they need to mentally come out of the role play. Social aspects. Types of relationships. A 2003 study, the first to look at these relationships, fully demonstrated that "quality long-term functioning relationships" exist among practitioners of BDSM, with either sex being the top or bottom (the study was based on 17 heterosexual couples). Respondents in the study expressed their BDSM orientation to be built into who they are, but considered exploring their BDSM interests an ongoing task, and showed flexibility and adaptability in order to match their interests with their partners. The "perfect match" where both in the relationship shared the same tastes and desires was rare, and most relationships required both partners to take up or put away some of their desires. The BDSM activities that the couples partook in varied in sexual to nonsexual significance for the partners who reported doing certain BDSM activities for "couple bonding, stress release, and spiritual quests". The most reported issue amongst respondents was not finding enough time to be in role with most adopting a lifestyle wherein both partners maintain their dominant or submissive role throughout the day. Amongst the respondents, it was typically the bottoms who wanted to play harder, and be more restricted into their roles when there was a difference in desire to play in the relationship. The author of the study, Bert Cutler, speculated that tops may be less often in the mood to play due to the increased demand for responsibility on their part: being aware of the safety of the situation and prepared to remove the bottom from a dangerous scenario, being conscious of the desires and limits of the bottom, and so on. The author of the study stressed that successful long-term BDSM relationships came after "early and thorough disclosure" from both parties of their BDSM interests. Many of those engaged in long-term BDSM relationships learned their skills from larger BDSM organizations and communities. There was a lot of discussion by the respondents on the amount of control the top possessed in the relationships but "no discussion of being better, or smarter, or of more value" than the bottom. Couples were generally of the same mind of whether or not they were in an ongoing relationship, but in such cases, the bottom was not locked up constantly, but that their role in the context of the relationship was always present, even when the top was doing non-dominant activities such as household chores, or the bottom being in a more dominant position. In its conclusion the study states: The study further goes on to list three aspects that made the successful relationships work: early disclosure of interests and continued transparency, a commitment to personal growth, and the use of the dominant/submissive roles as a tool to maintain the relationship. In closing remarks, the author of the study theorizes that due to the serious potential for harm, couples in BDSM relationships develop increased communication that may be higher than in mainstream relationships. A professional dominatrix or professional dominant, often referred to within the culture as a "pro-dom(me)", offers services encompassing the range of bondage, discipline, and dominance in exchange for money. The term "dominatrix" is little-used within the non-professional BDSM scene. A non-professional dominant woman is more commonly referred to simply as a "domme", "dominant", or "femdom" (short for female dominance). Professional submissives ("pro-subs"), although far more rare, do exist. Scenes. In BDSM, a "scene" is the stage or setting where BDSM activity takes place, as well as the activity itself. The physical place where a BDSM activity takes place is usually called a dungeon, though some prefer less dramatic terms, including "playspace" or "club". A BDSM activity can, but need not, involve sexual activity or sexual roleplay. A characteristic of many BDSM relationships is the power exchange from the bottom to the dominant partner, and bondage features prominently in BDSM scenes and sexual roleplay. "The Scene" (including use of the definite article "the") is also used in the BDSM community to refer to the BDSM community as a whole. Thus someone who is on "the Scene", and prepared to play in public, might take part in "a scene" at a public play party. A scene can take place in private between two or more people and can involve a domestic arrangement, such as servitude or a casual or committed lifestyle master/slave relationship. BDSM elements may involve settings of slave training or punishment for breaches of instructions. A scene can also take place in a club, where the play can be viewed by others. When a scene takes place in a public setting, it may be because the participants enjoy being watched by others, or because of the equipment available, or because having third parties present adds safety for play partners who have only recently met. Etiquette. Most standard social etiquette rules still apply when at a BDSM event, such as not intimately touching someone you do not know, not touching someone else's belongings (including toys), and abiding by dress codes. Many events open to the public also have rules addressing alcohol consumption, recreational drugs, cell phones, and photography. A specific scene takes place within the general conventions and etiquette of BDSM, such as requirements for mutual consent and agreement as to the limits of any BDSM activity. This agreement can be incorporated into a formal contract. In addition, most clubs have additional rules which regulate how onlookers may interact with the actual participants in a scene. As is common in BDSM, these are founded on the catchphrase "safe, sane, and consensual". Parties and clubs. BDSM play parties are events in which BDSM practitioners and other similarly interested people meet in order to communicate, share experiences and knowledge, and to "play" in an erotic atmosphere. BDSM parties show similarities to ones in the dark culture, being based on a more or less strictly enforced dress code; often clothing made of latex, leather or vinyl/PVC, lycra and so on, emphasizing the body's shape and the primary and secondary sexual characteristics. The requirement for such dress codes differ. While some events have none, others have a policy in order to create a more coherent atmosphere and to prevent outsiders from taking part. At these parties, BDSM can be publicly performed on a stage, or more privately in separate "dungeons". A reason for the relatively fast spread of this kind of event is the opportunity to use a wide range of "playing equipment", which in most apartments or houses is unavailable. Slings, St. Andrew's crosses (or similar restraining constructs), spanking benches, and punishing supports or cages are often made available. The problem of noise disturbance is also lessened at these events, while in the home setting many BDSM activities can be limited by this factor. In addition, such parties offer both exhibitionists and voyeurs a forum to indulge their inclinations without social criticism. Sexual intercourse is not permitted within most public BDSM play spaces or not often seen in others, because it is not the emphasis of this kind of play. In order to ensure the maximum safety and comfort for the participants, certain standards of behaviour have evolved; these include aspects of courtesy, privacy, respect and safewords. Today BDSM parties are taking place in most of the larger cities in the Western world. This scene appears particularly on the Internet, in publications, and in meetings such as at fetish clubs (like Torture Garden), SM parties, gatherings called munches, and erotic fairs like Venus Berlin. The annual Folsom Street Fair held in San Francisco is the world's largest BDSM event. It has its roots in the gay leather movement. The weekend-long festivities include a wide range of sadomasochistic erotica in a public clothing optional space between 8th and 13th streets with nightly parties associated with the organization. There are also conventions such as Living in Leather and Black Rose. Psychology. Research indicates that there is no evidence that a preference for BDSM is a consequence of childhood abuse. Some reports suggest that people abused as children may have more BDSM injuries and have difficulty with safe words being recognized as meaning stop the previously consensual behaviour; thus, it is possible that people choosing BDSM as part of their lifestyle, who also were previously abused, may have had more police or hospital reports of injuries. In one study of three online surveys, many transgender adults remarked that BDSM influenced their individual experience of gender. Joseph Merlino, author and psychiatry adviser to the "New York Daily News", said in an interview that a sadomasochistic relationship, as long as it is consensual, is not a psychological problem: Some psychologists agree that experiences during early sexual development can have a profound effect on the character of sexuality later in life. Sadomasochistic desires, however, seem to form at a variety of ages. Some individuals report having had them before puberty, while others do not discover them until well into adulthood. According to one study, the majority of male sadomasochists (53%) developed their interest before the age of 15, while the majority of females (78%) developed their interest afterward (Breslow, Evans, and Langley 1985). The prevalence of sadomasochism within the general population is unknown. Despite female sadists being less visible than males, some surveys have resulted in comparable amounts of sadistic fantasies between females and males. The results of such studies demonstrate that one's sex does not determine preference for sadism. Following a phenomenological study of nine individuals involved in sexual masochistic sessions who regarded pain as central to their experience, sexual masochism was described as an addiction-like tendency, with several features resembling that of drug addiction: craving, intoxication, tolerance and withdrawal. It was also demonstrated how the first masochistic experience is placed on a pedestal, with subsequent use aiming at retrieving this lost sensation, much as described in the descriptive literature on addiction. Prevalence. BDSM occurs among people of all genders and sexual orientations, and in varied occurrences and intensities. The spectrum ranges from couples with no connections to the subculture outside of their bedrooms or homes, without any awareness of the concept of BDSM, playing "tie-me-up-games", to public scenes on St. Andrew's crosses at large events such as the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. Estimation on the overall percentage of BDSM-related sexual behaviour varies. Alfred Kinsey stated in his 1953 nonfiction book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" that 12% of females and 22% of males reported having an erotic response to a sadomasochistic story. In that book erotic responses to being bitten were given as: A non-representative survey on the sexual behaviour of American students published in 1997 and based on questionnaires had a response rate of about 8–9%. Its results showed 15% of homosexual and bisexual males, 21% of lesbian and female bisexual students, 11% of heterosexual males and 9% of female heterosexual students committed to BDSM related fantasies. In all groups the level of practical BDSM experiences were around 6%. Within the group of openly lesbian and bisexual females, the quote was significantly higher, at 21%. Independent of their sexual orientation, about 12% of all questioned students, 16% of lesbians and female bisexuals and 8% of heterosexual males articulated an interest in spanking. Experience with this sexual behaviour was indicated by 30% of male heterosexuals, 33% of female bisexuals and lesbians, and 24% of the male gay and bisexual men and female heterosexual women. Even though this study was not considered representative, other surveys indicate similar dimensions in differing target groups. A representative study done from 2001 to 2002 in Australia found that 1.8% of sexually active people (2.2% men, 1.3% women but no significant sex difference) had engaged in BDSM activity in the previous year. Of the entire sample, 1.8% of men and 1.3% of women had been involved in BDSM. BDSM activity was significantly more likely among bisexuals and homosexuals of both sexes. But among men in general, there was no relationship effect of age, education, language spoken at home or relationship status. Among women, in this study, activity was most common for those between 16 and 19 years of age and least likely for females over 50 years. Activity was also significantly more likely for women who had a regular partner they did not live with, but was not significantly related with speaking a language other than English or education. Another representative study, published in 1999 by the German Institut für rationale Psychologie, found that about 2/3 of the interviewed women stated a desire to be at the mercy of their sexual partners from time to time. 69% admitted to fantasies dealing with sexual submissiveness, 42% stated interest in explicit BDSM techniques, 25% in bondage. A 1976 study in the general US population suggests three per cent have had positive experiences with Bondage or master-slave roleplaying. Overall 12% of the interviewed females and 18% of the males were willing to try it. A 1990 Kinsey Institute report stated that 5% to 10% of Americans occasionally engage in sexual activities related to BDSM, 11% of men and 17% of women reported trying bondage. Some elements of BDSM have been popularized through increased media coverage since the middle 1990s. Thus both black leather clothing, sexual jewelry such as chains and dominance roleplay appear increasingly outside of BDSM contexts. According to yet another survey of 317,000 people in 41 countries, about 20% of the surveyed have at least used masks, blindfolds or other bondage utilities once, and 5% explicitly connected themselves with BDSM. In 2004, 19% mentioned spanking as one of their practices and 22% confirmed the use of blindfolds or handcuffs. A 1985 study found 52 out of 182 female respondents (28%) were involved in sadomasochistic activities. A 2009 study on two separate samples of male undergraduate students in Canada found that 62 to 65%, depending on the sample, had entertained sadistic fantasies, and 22 to 39% engaged in sadistic behaviours during sex. The figures were 62 and 52% for bondage fantasies, and 14 to 23% for bondage behaviours. A 2014 study involving a mixed sample of Canadian college students and online volunteers, both male and female, reported that 19% of male samples and 10% of female samples rated the sadistic scenarios described in a questionnaire as being at least "slightly arousing" on a scale that ranged from "very repulsive" to "very arousing"; the difference was statistically significant. The corresponding figures for the masochistic scenarios were 15% for male students and 17% for female students, a non-significant difference. In a 2011 study on 367 middle-aged and elderly men recruited from the broader community in Berlin, 21.8% of the men self-reported sadistic fantasies and 15.5% sadistic behaviors; 24.8% self-reported any such fantasy and/or behavior. The corresponding figures for self-reported masochism were 15.8% for fantasy, 12.3% for behaviour, and 18.5% for fantasy and/or behaviour. In a 2008 study on gay men in Puerto Rico, 14.8% of the over 425 community volunteers reported any sadistic fantasy, desire or behaviour in their lifetime; the corresponding figure for masochism was 15.7%. A 2017 cross-sectional representative survey among the general Belgian population demonstrated a substantial prevalence of BDSM fantasies and activities; 12.5% of the population performed one of more BDSM-practices on a regular basis. Recent surveys on the spread of BDSM fantasies and practices show strong variations in the range of their results. Researchers believe that 5 to 25 per cent of the population practices sexual behaviour related to pain or dominance and submission. The population with related fantasies is believed to be even larger. Medical categorization. Reflecting changes in social norms, modern medical opinion is now moving away from regarding BDSM activities as medical disorders, unless they are nonconsensual or involve significant distress or harm. In 1995, Denmark became the first European Union country to have completely removed sadomasochism from its national classification of diseases. This was followed by Sweden in 2009, Norway in 2010, Finland in 2011, and Iceland in 2015. DSM. In the past, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the American Psychiatric Association's manual, defined some BDSM activities as sexual disorders. Following campaigns from advocacy organizations including the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, the current version of the DSM, DSM-5, excludes consensual BDSM from diagnosis when the sexual interests cause no harm or distress. ICD. The World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (ICD) has changed in regard to BDSM in recent years. In Europe, an organization called worked to remove sadomasochism from the ICD. On 18 June 2018, the WHO (World Health Organization) published ICD-11, in which sadomasochism, together with fetishism and fetishistic transvestism (cross-dressing for sexual pleasure) are now removed as psychiatric diagnoses. Moreover, discrimination against fetish-having and BDSM individuals is considered inconsistent with human rights principles endorsed by the United Nations and The World Health Organization. The classifications of sexual disorders reflect contemporary sexual norms and have moved from a model of pathologization or criminalization of non-reproductive sexual behaviors to a model that reflects sexual well-being and pathologizes the absence or limitation of consent in sexual relations. Visibility. Some people who are interested in or curious about BDSM decide to tell others. Depending upon a survey's participants, about 5 to 25 per cent of the US population show affinity to the subject. Other than a few artists and writers, practically no celebrities are publicly known as sadomasochists. Public knowledge of one's BDSM lifestyle can have detrimental vocational and social effects for sadomasochists. Many face severe professional consequences or social rejection if they are exposed, either voluntarily or involuntarily, as sadomasochists. Within feminist circles, the discussion is split roughly into two camps: some who see BDSM as an aspect or reflection of oppression (for example, Alice Schwarzer) and, on the other side, pro-BDSM feminists, often grouped under the banner of sex-positive feminism (see Samois); both of them can be traced back to the 1970s. Some feminists have criticized BDSM for eroticizing power and violence and reinforcing misogyny. They argue that women who engage in BDSM are making a choice that is ultimately bad for women. Feminist defenders of BDSM argue that consensual BDSM activities are enjoyed by many women and validate the sexual inclinations of these women. They argue that there is no connection between consensual kinky activities and sex crimes, and that feminists should not attack other women's sexual desires as being "anti-feminist". They also state that the main point of feminism is to give an individual woman free choices in her life; which includes her sexual desire. While some feminists suggest connections between consensual BDSM scenes and non-consensual rape and sexual assault, other sex-positive ones find the notion insulting to women. Roles are not fixed to gender, but personal preferences. The dominant partner in a heterosexual relationship may be the woman rather than the man, or BDSM may be part of male/male or female/female sexual relationships. Finally, some people switch, taking either a dominant or submissive role on different occasions. Several studies investigating the possibility of a correlation between BDSM pornography and the violence against women also indicate a lack of correlation. In 1991, a lateral survey came to the conclusion that between 1964 and 1984, despite the increase in amount and availability of sadomasochistic pornography in the U.S., Germany, Denmark and Sweden, there is no correlation with the national number of rapes to be found. Operation Spanner in the U.K. proves that BDSM practitioners still run the risk of being stigmatized as criminals. In 2003, the media coverage of Jack McGeorge showed that simply participating and working in BDSM support groups poses risks to one's job, even in countries where no law restricts it. Here a clear difference can be seen to the situation of homosexuality. The psychological strain appearing in some individual cases is normally neither articulated nor acknowledged in public. Nevertheless, it leads to a difficult psychological situation in which the person concerned can be exposed to high levels of emotional stress. In the stages of "self-awareness", he or she realizes their desires related to BDSM scenarios or decides to be open for such. Some authors call this "internal coming-out". Two separate surveys on this topic independently came to the conclusion that 58 per cent and 67 per cent of the sample respectively, had realized their disposition before their 19th birthday. Other surveys on this topic show comparable results. Independent of age, coming-out can potentially result in a difficult life crisis, sometimes leading to thoughts or acts of suicide. While homosexuals have created support networks in the last decades, sadomasochistic support networks are just starting to develop in most countries. In German-speaking countries they are only moderately more developed. The Internet is the prime contact point for support groups today, allowing for local and international networking. In the U.S., Kink Aware Professionals (KAP) a privately funded, non-profit service provides the community with referrals to psychotherapeutic, medical, and legal professionals who are knowledgeable about and sensitive to the BDSM, fetish, and leather community. In the U.S. and the U.K., the Woodhull Freedom Foundation & Federation, National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) and Sexual Freedom Coalition (SFC) have emerged to represent the interests of sadomasochists. The German Bundesvereinigung Sadomasochismus is committed to the same aim of providing information and driving press relations. In 1996, the website and mailing list Datenschlag went online in German and English providing the largest bibliography, as well as one of the most extensive historical collections of sources related to BDSM. Social (non-medical) research. Richters et al. (2008) found that people who engaged in BDSM were more likely to have experienced a wider range of sexual practices (e.g., oral or anal sex, more than one partner, group sex, phone sex, viewed pornography, used a sex toy, fisting, etc.). They were, however, not any more likely to have been coerced, unhappy, anxious, or experiencing sexual difficulties. On the contrary, men who had engaged in BDSM scored lower on a psychological distress scale than men who did not. There have been few studies on the psychological aspects of BDSM using modern scientific standards. Psychotherapist Charles Moser has said there is no evidence for the theory that BDSM has common symptoms or any common psychopathology, emphasizing that there is no evidence that BDSM practitioners have any special psychiatric other problems based on their sexual preferences. Problems sometimes occur with self-classification. During the phase of the "coming-out", self-questioning related to one's own "normality" is common. According to Moser, the discovery of BDSM preferences "can" result in fear of the current non-BDSM relationship's destruction. This, combined with the fear of discrimination in everyday life, leads in some cases to a double life which can be highly burdensome. At the same time, the denial of BDSM preferences can induce stress and dissatisfaction with one's own "vanilla"-lifestyle, feeding the apprehension of finding no partner. Moser states that BDSM practitioners having problems finding BDSM partners would probably have problems in finding a non-BDSM partner as well. The wish to remove BDSM preferences is another possible reason for psychological problems since it is not possible in most cases. Finally, the scientist states that BDSM practitioners seldom commit violent crimes. From his point of view, crimes of BDSM practitioners usually have no connection with the BDSM components existing in their life. Moser's study comes to the conclusion that there is no scientific evidence, which could give reason to refuse members of this group work- or safety certificates, adoption possibilities, custody or other social rights or privileges. The Swiss psychoanalyst Fritz Morgenthaler shares a similar perspective in his book, "Homosexuality, Heterosexuality, Perversion" (1988). He states that possible problems result not necessarily from the non-normative behavior, but in most cases primarily from the real or feared reactions of the social environment towards their own preferences. In 1940 psychoanalyst Theodor Reik reached implicitly the same conclusion in his standard work "Aus Leiden Freuden. Masochismus und Gesellschaft". Moser's results are further supported by a 2008 Australian study by Richters "et al." on the demographic and psychosocial features of BDSM participants. The study found that BDSM practitioners were no more likely to have experienced sexual assault than the control group, and were not more likely to feel unhappy or anxious. The BDSM males reported higher levels of psychological well-being than the controls. It was concluded that "BDSM is simply a sexual interest or subculture attractive to a minority, not a pathological symptom of past abuse or difficulty with 'normal' sex." Gender differences in research. Several recent studies have been conducted on the gender differences and personality traits of BDSM practitioners. Wismeijer and van Assen (2013) found that "the association of BDSM role and gender was strong and significant" with only 8% of women in the study being dominant compared to 75% being submissive.; Hébert and Weaver (2014) found that 9% of women in their study were dominant compared to 88% submissive; Weierstall1 and Giebel (2017) likewise found a significant difference, with 19% of women in the study as dominant compared to 74% as submissive, and a study from Andrea Duarte Silva (2015) indicated that 61.7% of females who are active in BDSM expressed a preference for a submissive role, 25.7% consider themselves a switch, while 12.6% prefer the dominant role. In contrast, 46.6% of men prefer the submissive role, 24% consider themselves to be switches and 29.5% prefer the dominant role. They concluded that "men more often display an engagement in dominant practices, whereas females take on the submissive part. This result is inline with a recent study about mate preferences that has shown that women have a generally higher preference for a dominant partner than men do (Giebel, Moran, Schawohl, & Weierstall, 2015). Women also prefer dominant men, and even men who are aggressive, for a short-term relationship and for the purpose of sexual intercourse (Giebel, Weierstall, Schauer, & Elbert, 2013)". Similarly, studies on sexual fantasy differences between men and women show the latter prefer submissive and passive fantasies over dominant and active ones, with rape and force being common. Gender differences in masochistic scripts. One common belief of BDSM and kink is that women are more likely to take on masochistic roles than men. Roy Baumeister (2010) had more male masochists in his study than female, and fewer male dominants than female. The lack of statistical significance in these gender differences suggests that no assumptions should be made regarding gender and masochistic roles in BDSM. One explanation why we might think otherwise lies in our social and cultural ideals about femininity; masochism may emphasize certain stereotypically feminine elements through activities like feminization of men and ultra-feminine clothing for women. But such tendencies of the submissive masochistic role should not be interpreted as a connection between it and the stereotypical female role—many masochistic scripts do not include any of these tendencies. Baumeister found that masochistic males experienced greater: severity of pain, frequency of humiliation (status-loss, degrading, oral), partner infidelity, active participation by other persons, and cross-dressing. Trends also suggested that male masochism included more bondage and oral sex than female (though the data was not significant). Female masochists, on the other hand, experienced greater: frequency in pain, pain as punishment for 'misdeeds' in the relationship context, display humiliation, genital intercourse, and presence of non-participating audiences. The exclusiveness of dominant males in a heterosexual relationship happens because, historically, men in power preferred multiple partners. Finally, Baumeister observes a contrast between the 'intense sensation' focus of male masochism to a more 'meaning and emotion' centred female masochistic script. Prior argues that although some of these women may appear to be engaging in traditional subordinate or submissive roles, BDSM allows women in both dominant and submissive roles to express and experience personal power through their sexual identities. In a study that she conducted in 2013, she found that the majority of the women she interviewed identified as bottom, submissive, captive, or slave/sex slave. In turn, Prior was able to answer whether or not these women found an incongruity between their sexual identities and feminist identity. Her research found that these women saw little to no incongruity, and in fact felt that their feminist identity supported identities of submissive and slave. For them, these are sexually and emotionally fulfilling roles and identities that, in some cases, feed other aspects of their lives. Prior contends that third wave feminism provides a space for women in BDSM communities to express their sexual identities fully, even when those identities seem counter-intuitive to the ideals of feminism. Furthermore, women who do identify as submissive, sexually or otherwise, find a space within BDSM where they can fully express themselves as integrated, well-balanced, and powerful women. Women in S/M culture. Levitt, Moser, and Jamison's 1994 study provides a general, if outdated, description of characteristics of women in the sadomasochistic (S/M) subculture. They state that women in S/M tend to have higher education, become more aware of their desires as young adults, are less likely to be married than the general population. The researchers found the majority of females identified as heterosexual and submissive, a substantial minority were versatile—able to switch between dominant and submissive roles—and a smaller minority identified with the dominant role exclusively. Oral sex, bondage and master-slave script were among the most popular activities, while feces/watersports were the least popular. Orientation observances in research. BDSM is considered by some of its practitioners to be a sexual orientation. The BDSM and kink scene is more often seen as a diverse pansexual community. Often this is a non-judgmental community where gender, sexuality, orientation, preferences are accepted as is or worked at to become something a person can be happy with. In research, studies have focused on bisexuality and its parallels with BDSM, as well as gay-straight differences between practitioners. Asexuality. It has been suggested that some asexual people have found a language for navigating relationships through BDSM. Bisexuality. In Steve Lenius' original 2001 paper, he explored the acceptance of bisexuality in a supposedly pansexual BDSM community. The reasoning behind this is that 'coming-out' had become primarily the territory of the gay and lesbian, with bisexuals feeling the push to be one or the other (and being right only half the time either way). What he found in 2001, was that people in BDSM were open to discussion about the topic of bisexuality and pansexuality and all controversies they bring to the table, but personal biases and issues stood in the way of actively using such labels. A decade later, Lenius (2011) looks back on his study and considers if anything has changed. He concluded that the standing of bisexuals in the BDSM and kink community was unchanged, and believed that positive shifts in attitude were moderated by society's changing views towards different sexualities and orientations. But Lenius (2011) does emphasize that the pansexual promoting BDSM community helped advance greater acceptance of alternative sexualities. Brandy Lin Simula (2012), on the other hand, argues that BDSM actively resists gender-conforming and identified three different types of BDSM bisexuality: gender-switching, gender-based styles (taking on a different gendered style depending on the gender of partner when playing), and rejection of gender (resisting the idea that gender matters in their play partners). Simula (2012) explains that practitioners of BDSM routinely challenge our concepts of sexuality by pushing the limits on pre-existing ideas of sexual orientation and gender norms. For some, BDSM and kink provides a platform in creating identities that are fluid, ever-changing. Comparison between gay and straight men in S/M. Demographically, Nordling et al.'s (2006) study found no differences in age, but 43% of gay male respondents compared to 29% of straight males had university-level education. The gay men also had higher incomes than the general population and tended to work in white-collar jobs while straight men tended toward blue-collar ones. Because there were not enough female respondents (22), no conclusions could be drawn from them. Sexually speaking, the same 2006 study by Nordling et al. found that gay males were aware of their S/M preferences and took part in them at an earlier age, preferring leather, anal sex, rimming, dildos and special equipment or uniform scenes. In contrast, straight men preferred verbal humiliation, mask and blindfolds, gags, rubber/latex outfits, caning, vaginal sex, straitjackets, and cross-dressing among other activities. From the questionnaire, researchers were able to identify four separate sexual themes: hyper-masculinity, giving and receiving pain, physical restriction (i.e. bondage), and psychological humiliation. Gay men preferred activities that tended towards hyper-masculinity while straight men showed greater preference for humiliation, significantly higher master/madame-slave role play at ≈84%. Though there were not enough female respondents to draw a similar conclusion with, the fact that there is a difference in gay and straight men suggests strongly that S/M (and BDSM in general) can not be considered a homogenous phenomenon. As Nordling et al. (2006) puts it, "People who identify as sadomasochists mean different things by these identifications." (54) History of psychotherapy and current recommendations. Psychiatry has an insensitive history in the area of BDSM. There have been many involvements by institutions of political power to marginalize subgroups and sexual minorities. Mental health professionals have a long history of holding negative assumptions and stereotypes about the BDSM community. Beginning with the DSM-II, Sexual Sadism and Sexual Masochism were listed as sexually deviant behaviours. Sadism and masochism were also found in the personality disorder section. This negative assumption has not changed significantly which is evident in the continued inclusion of Sexual Sadism and Sexual Masochism as paraphilias in the DSM-IV-TR. The DSM-V, however, has depathologized the language around paraphilias in a way that signifies "the APA’s intent to not demand treatment for healthy consenting adult sexual expression". Still, biases and misinformation can result in pathologizing and unintentional harm to clients who identify as sadists and/or masochists and medical professionals who have been trained under older editions of the DSM can be slow to change in their ways of clinical practice. According to Kolmes et al. (2006), major themes of biased and inadequate care to BDSM clients are: These same researchers suggested that therapists should be open to learning more about BDSM, to show comfort in talking about BDSM issues, and to understand and promote "safe, sane, consensual" BDSM. There has also been research which suggests BDSM can be a beneficial way for victims of sexual assault to deal with their trauma, most notably by Corie Hammers, but this work is limited in scope and, to date, has not undergone empirical testing as a treatment. Clinical issues. Nichols (2006) compiled some common clinical issues: countertransference, non-disclosure, coming out, partner/families, and bleed-through. Countertransference is a common problem in clinical settings. Despite having no evidence, therapists may find themselves believing that their client's pathology is "self-evident". Therapists may feel intense disgust and aversive reactions. Feelings of countertransference can interfere with therapy. Another common problem is when clients conceal their sexual preferences from their therapists. This can compromise any therapy. To avoid non-disclosure, therapists are encouraged to communicate their openness in indirect ways with literature and artworks in the waiting room. Therapists can also deliberately bring up BDSM topics during the course of therapy. With less informed therapists, sometimes they over-focus on clients' sexuality which detracts from original issues such as family relationships, depression, etc. A special subgroup that needs counselling is the "newbie". Individuals just coming out might have internalized shame, fear, and self-hatred about their sexual preferences. Therapists need to provide acceptance, care, and model positive attitude; providing reassurance, psychoeducation, and bibliotherapy for these clients is crucial. The average age when BDSM individuals realize their sexual preference is around 26 years. Many people hide their sexuality until they can no longer contain their desires. However, they may have married or had children by this point. History. Origins. Practices of BDSM survive from some of the oldest textual records in the world, associated with rituals to the goddess Inanna (Ishtar in Akkadian). Cuneiform texts dedicated to Inanna which incorporate domination rituals. In particular, she points to ancient writings such as Inanna and Ebih (in which the goddess dominates Ebih), and Hymn to Inanna describing cross-dressing transformations and rituals "imbued with pain and ecstasy, bringing about initiation and journeys of altered states of consciousness; punishment, moaning, ecstasy, lament and song, participants exhausting themselves in weeping and grief." During the 9th century BC, ritual flagellations were performed in Artemis Orthia, one of the most important religious areas of ancient Sparta, where the Cult of Orthia, a pre-Olympic religion, was practiced. Here, ritual flagellation called "diamastigosis" took place, in which young adolescent men were whipped in a ceremony overseen by the priestess. These are referred to by a number of ancient authors, including Pausanius (III, 16: 10–11). One of the oldest graphical proofs of sadomasochistic activities is found in the Etruscan Tomb of the Whipping near Tarquinia, which dates to the 5th century BC. Inside the tomb, there is a fresco which portrays two men who flagellate a woman with a cane and a hand during an erotic situation. Another reference related to flagellation is to be found in the sixth book of the "Satires" of the ancient Roman Poet Juvenal (1st–2nd century A.D.), further reference can be found in Petronius's "Satyricon" where a delinquent is whipped for sexual arousal. Anecdotal narratives related to humans who have had themselves voluntary bound, flagellated or whipped as a substitute for sex or as part of foreplay reach back to the 3rd and 4th century BC. In Pompeii, a whip-mistress figure with wings is depicted on the wall of the Villa of Mysteries, as part of an initiation of a young woman into the Mysteries. The whip-mistress role drove the sacred initiation of ceremonial death and rebirth. The archaic Greek Aphrodite may too once have been armed with an implement, with archaeological evidence of armed Aphrodites known from a number of locations in Cythera, Acrocorinth and Sparta, and which may have been a whip. The "Kama Sutra" of India describes four different kinds of hitting during lovemaking, the allowed regions of the human body to target and different kinds of joyful "cries of pain" practiced by bottoms. The collection of historic texts related to sensuous experiences explicitly emphasizes that impact play, biting and pinching during sexual activities should only be performed consensually since only some women consider such behavior to be joyful. From this perspective, the Kama Sutra can be considered one of the first written resources dealing with sadomasochistic activities and safety rules. Further texts with sadomasochistic connotation appear worldwide during the following centuries on a regular basis. There are anecdotal reports of people willingly being bound or whipped, as a prelude to or substitute for sex, during the 14th century. The medieval phenomenon of courtly love in all of its slavish devotion and ambivalence has been suggested by some writers to be a precursor of BDSM. Some sources claim that BDSM as a distinct form of sexual behavior originated at the beginning of the 18th century when Western civilization began medically and legally categorizing sexual behavior (see Etymology). Flagellation practiced within an erotic setting has been recorded from at least the 1590s evidenced by a John Davies epigram, and references to "flogging schools" in Thomas Shadwell's "The Virtuoso" (1676) and Tim Tell-Troth's "Knavery of Astrology" (1680). Visual evidence such as mezzotints and print media is also identified revealing scenes of flagellation, such as "The Cully Flaug'd" from the British Museum collection. John Cleland's novel "Fanny Hill", published in 1749, incorporates a flagellation scene between the character's protagonist Fanny Hill and Mr Barville. A large number of flagellation publications followed, including "" (), promoting the names of women offering the service in a lecture room with rods and cat o' nine tails. Other sources give a broader definition, citing BDSM-like behavior in earlier times and other cultures, such as the medieval flagellates and the physical ordeal rituals of some Native American societies. BDSM ideas and imagery have existed on the fringes of Western culture throughout the 20th century. Robert Bienvenu attributes the origins of modern BDSM to three sources, which he names as "European Fetish" (from 1928), "American Fetish" (from 1934), and "Gay Leather" (from 1950). Another source are the sexual games played in brothels, which go back to the 19th century, if not earlier. Charles Guyette was the first American to produce and distribute fetish related material (costumes, footwear, photography, props and accessories) in the U.S. His successor, Irving Klaw, produced commercial sexploitation film and photography with a BDSM theme (most notably with Bettie Page) and issued fetish comics (known then as "chapter serials") by the now-iconic artists John Willie, Gene Bilbrew, and Eric Stanton. Stanton's model Bettie Page became at the same time one of the first successful models in the area of fetish photography and one of the most famous pin-up girls of American mainstream culture. Italian author and designer Guido Crepax was deeply influenced by him, coining the style and development of European adult comics in the second half of the 20th century. The artists Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe are the most prominent examples of the increasing use of BDSM-related motives in modern photography and the public discussions still resulting from this. Alfred Binet first coined the term "erotic fetishism" in his 1887 book, "Du fétichisme dans l'amour" Richard von Krafft-Ebing saw BDSM interests as the end of a continuum. Leather movement. Leather has been a predominantly gay male term to refer to one fetish, but it can stand for many more. Members of the gay male leather community may wear leathers such as motorcycle leathers, or may be attracted to men wearing leather. Leather and BDSM are seen as two parts of one whole. Much of the BDSM culture can be traced back to the gay male leather culture, which formalized itself out of the group of men who were soldiers returning home after World War II (1939–1945). World War II was the setting where countless homosexual men and women tasted the life among homosexual peers. Post-war, homosexual individuals congregated in larger cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They formed leather clubs and bike clubs; some were fraternal services. The establishment of Mr. Leather Contest and Mr. Drummer Contest were made around this time. This was the genesis of the gay male leather community. Many of the members were attracted to extreme forms of sexuality, for which peak expression was in the pre-AIDS 1970s. This subculture is epitomized by the "Leatherman's Handbook" by Larry Townsend, published in 1972, which describes in detail the practices and culture of gay male sadomasochists in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the early 1980s, lesbians also joined the leathermen as a recognizable element of the gay leather community. They also formed leather clubs, but there were some gender differences, such as the absence of leatherwomen's bars. In 1981, the publication of "Coming to Power" by lesbian-feminist group Samois led to a greater knowledge and acceptance of BDSM in the lesbian community. By the 1990s, the gay men's and women's leather communities were no longer underground and played an important role in the kink community. Today, the leather movement is generally seen as a part of the BDSM-culture instead of as a development deriving from gay subculture, even if a huge part of the BDSM-subculture was gay in the past. In the 1990s, the so-called New Guard leather subculture evolved. This new orientation started to integrate psychological aspects into their play. The Leather Archives and Museum (LA&M) in Chicago was founded in 1991 by Chuck Renslow and Tony DeBlase as a “community archives, library, and museum of leather, kink, fetish, and BDSM history and culture.” The LA&M has an extensive collection of leather- and BDSM-related artifacts, including one of three original leather pride flags. The San Francisco South of Market Leather History Alley consists of four works of art along Ringold Alley honoring leather culture; it opened in 2017. One of the works of art is metal bootprints along the curb which honor 28 people (including Steve McEachern, owner of the Catacombs, a gay and lesbian S/M fisting club, and Cynthia Slater, a founder of the Society of Janus, the second oldest BDSM organization in the United States) who were an important part of the leather communities of San Francisco. Internet. In the late 1980s, the Internet provided a way of finding people with specialized interests around the world as well as on a local level, and communicating with them anonymously. This brought about an explosion of interest and knowledge of BDSM, particularly on the usenet group alt.sex.bondage. When that group became too cluttered with spam, the focus moved to soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm. With an increased focus on forms of social media, FetLife was formed, which advertises itself as "a social network for the BDSM and fetish community". It operates similarly to other social media sites, with the ability to make friends with other users, events, and pages of shared interests. In addition to traditional sex shops, which sell sex paraphernalia, there has also been an explosive growth of online adult toy companies that specialize in leather/latex gear and BDSM toys. Once a very niche market, there are now very few sex toy companies that do not offer some sort of BDSM or fetish gear in their catalog. Kinky elements seem to have worked their way into "vanilla" markets. The former niche expanded to an important pillar of the business with adult accessories. Today practically all suppliers of sex toys do offer items which originally found usage in the BDSM subculture. Padded handcuffs, latex and leather garments, as well as more exotic items like soft whips for fondling and TENS for erotic electro stimulation, can be found in catalogs aiming at classical vanilla target groups, indicating that former boundaries increasingly seem to shift. During the last years, the Internet also provides a central platform for networking among individuals who are interested in the subject. Besides countless private and commercial choices, there is an increasing number of local networks and support groups emerging. These groups often offer comprehensive background and health-related information for people who have been unwillingly outed as well as contact lists with information on psychologists, physicians and lawyers who are familiar with BDSM-related topics. Legal status. Austria. Section 90 of the Austrian criminal code declares bodily injury (Sections 83–84) or the endangerment of physical security (Section 89) to not be subject to penalty in cases in which the victim has consented and the injury or endangerment does not offend moral sensibilities. Case law from the Austrian Supreme Court has consistently shown that bodily injury is only offensive to moral sensibilities, thus it is only punishable when a "serious injury" (damage to health or an employment disability lasting more than 24 days) or the death of the "victim" results. A "light injury" is generally considered "permissible" when the "victim" has consented to it. In cases of threats to bodily well-being, the standard depends on the probability that an injury will occur. If serious injury or even death would be a likely result of a threat being carried out, then even the threat itself is considered punishable. Canada. In 2004, a judge in Canada ruled that videos seized by the police featuring BDSM activities were not obscene and did not constitute violence, but a "normal and acceptable" sexual activity between two consenting adults. In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in "R. v. J.A." that a person must have an active mind during the specific sexual activity in order to legally consent. The Court ruled that it is a criminal offence to perform a sexual act on an unconscious person—whether or not that person consented in advance. Germany. According to Section 194 of the German criminal code, the charge of insult (slander) can only be prosecuted if the defamed person chooses to press charges. False imprisonment can be charged if the victim—when applying an objective view—can be considered to be impaired in their rights of free movement. According to Section 228, a person inflicting a bodily injury on another person with that person's permission violates the law only in cases where the act can be considered to have violated good morals in spite of permission having been given. On 26 May 2004, the Criminal Panel No. 2 of the Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court) ruled that sado-masochistically motivated physical injuries are not per se indecent and thus subject to Section 228. Following cases in which sado-masochistic practices had been repeatedly used as pressure tactics against former partners in custody cases, the Appeals Court of Hamm ruled in February 2006 that sexual inclinations toward sado-masochism are no indication of a lack of capabilities for successful child-raising. Italy. In Italian law, BDSM is right on the border between crime and legality, and everything lies in the interpretation of the legal code by the judge. This concept is that anyone willingly causing "injury" to another person is to be punished. In this context, though, "injury" is legally defined as "anything causing a condition of illness", and "illness" is ill-defined itself in two different legal ways. The first is "any anatomical or functional alteration of the organism" (thus technically including little scratches and bruises too); the second is "a significant worsening of a previous condition relevant to organic and relational processes, requiring any kind of therapy". This could make it somewhat risky to play with someone, as later the "victim" may call foul play citing even an insignificant mark as evidence against the partner. Also, any injury requiring over 20 days of medical care must be denounced by the professional medic who discovers it, leading to automatic indictment of the person who caused it. Nordic countries. In September 2010, a Swedish court acquitted a 32-year-old man of assault for engaging in consensual BDSM play with a 16-year-old girl (the age of consent in Sweden is 15). Norway's legal system has likewise taken a similar position, that safe and consensual BDSM play should not be subject to criminal prosecution. This parallels the stance of the mental health professions in the Nordic countries which have removed sadomasochism from their respective lists of psychiatric illnesses. Switzerland. The age of consent in Switzerland is 16 years, which also applies to BDSM play. Minors (i.e., those under 16) are not subject to punishment for BDSM play as long as the age difference between them is less than three years. Certain practices, however, require granting consent for light injuries, with only those over 18 permitted to give consent. On 1 April 2002, Articles 135 and 197 of the Swiss Criminal Code were tightened to make ownership of "objects or demonstrations [...] which depict sexual acts with violent content" a punishable offense. This law amounts to a general criminalization of sado-masochism since nearly every sado-masochist will have some kind of media that fulfills this criterion. Critics also object to the wording of the law which puts sado-masochists in the same category as pedophiles and pederasts. United Kingdom. In British law, consent is an absolute defense to common assault, but not necessarily to actual bodily harm, where courts may decide that consent is not valid, as occurred in the case of "R v Brown". Accordingly, consensual activities in the U.K. may not constitute "assault occasioning actual or grievous bodily harm" in law. The Spanner Trust states that this is defined as activities which have caused injury "of a lasting nature" but that only a slight duration or injury might be considered "lasting" in law. The decision contrasts with the later case of "R v Wilson" in which conviction for non-sexual consensual branding within a marriage was overturned, the appeal court ruling that "R v Brown" was not an authority in all cases of consensual injury and criticizing the decision to prosecute. Following Operation Spanner, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in January 1999 in "Laskey, Jaggard and Brown v. United Kingdom" that no violation of Article 8 occurred because the amount of physical or psychological harm that the law allows between any two people, even consenting adults, is to be determined by the jurisdiction the individuals live in, as it is the State's responsibility to balance the concerns of public health and well-being with the amount of control a State should be allowed to exercise over its citizens. In the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2007, the British Government cited the Spanner case as justification for criminalizing images of consensual acts, as part of its proposed criminalization of possession of "extreme pornography". Another contrasting case was that of Stephen Lock in 2013, who was cleared of actual bodily harm on the grounds that the woman consented. In this case, the act was deemed to be sexual. United States. The United States Federal law does not list a specific criminal determination for consensual BDSM acts. Many BDSM practitioners cite the legal decision of "People v. Jovanovic", 95 N.Y.2d 846 (2000), or the "Cybersex Torture Case", which was the first U.S. appellate decision to hold (in effect) that one does not commit assault if the victim consents. However, many individual states do criminalize specific BDSM actions within their state borders. Some states specifically address the idea of "consent to BDSM acts" within their assault laws, such as the state of New Jersey, which defines "simple assault" to be "a disorderly persons offense unless committed in a fight or scuffle "entered into by mutual consent", in which case it is a petty disorderly persons offense". Oregon Ballot Measure 9 was a ballot measure in the U.S. state of Oregon in 1992, concerning sadism, masochism, gay rights, pedophilia, and public education, that drew widespread national attention. It would have added the following text to the Oregon Constitution: It was defeated in the 3 November 1992 general election with 638,527 votes in favor, 828,290 votes against. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom collects reports about punishment for sexual activities engaged in by consenting adults, and about its use in child custody cases. Cultural aspects. Today, the BDSM culture exists in most Western countries. This offers BDSM practitioners the opportunity to discuss BDSM relevant topics and problems with like-minded people. This culture is often viewed as a subculture, mainly because BDSM is often still regarded as "unusual" by some of the public. Many people hide their leaning from society since they are afraid of the incomprehension and of social exclusion. In contrast to frameworks seeking to explain sadomasochism through psychological, psychoanalytic, medical or forensic approaches, which seek to categorize behaviour and desires and find a root "cause", Romana Byrne suggests that such practices can be seen as examples of "aesthetic sexuality", in which a founding physiological or psychological impulse is irrelevant. Rather, sadism and masochism may be practiced through choice and deliberation, driven by certain aesthetic goals tied to style, pleasure, and identity. These practices, in certain circumstances and contexts, can be compared with the creation of art. Symbols. One of the most commonly used symbols of the BDSM community is a derivation of a triskelion shape within a circle. Various forms of triskele have had many uses and many meanings in many cultures; its BDSM usage derives from the "Ring of O" in the classic book "Story of O". The BDSM Emblem Project claims copyright over one particular specified form of the triskelion symbol; other variants of the triskelion are free from such copyright claims. The triskelion as a BDSM symbol can easily be perceived as the three separate parts of the acronym BDSM; which are BD, DS, and SM (Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, Sadism & Masochism). They are three separate items, that are normally associated together. The leather pride flag, shown to the right, is a symbol for the leather subculture and also widely used within BDSM. In continental Europe, the "Ring of O" is widespread among BDSM practitioners. The BDSM rights flag, shown to the right, was designed by Tanos, a Master from the United Kingdom. It is partially loosely based on the design of the leather pride flag, and also includes a version of the BDSM Emblem (but not similar enough to fall within Steve Quagmyr's specific copyright claims for the Emblem). The BDSM rights flag is intended to represent the belief that people whose sexuality or relationship preferences include BDSM practices deserve the same human rights as everyone else, and should not be discriminated against for pursuing BDSM with consenting adults. The flag is inspired by the leather pride flag and BDSM emblem but is specifically intended to represent the concept of BDSM rights and to be without the other symbols' restrictions against commercial use. It is designed to be recognizable by people familiar with either the leather pride flag or BDSM triskelion (or triskele) as "something to do with BDSM"; and to be distinctive whether reproduced in full colour, or in black and white (or another pair of colours). BDSM and fetish items and styles have been spread widely in Western societies' everyday life by different factors, such as avant-garde fashion, heavy metal, goth subculture, and science fiction TV series, and are often not consciously connected with their BDSM roots by many people. While it was mainly confined to the punk and BDSM subcultures in the 1990s, it has since spread into wider parts of Western societies. Theater. Although it would be possible to establish certain elements related to BDSM in classical theater, not until the emergence of contemporary theater would some plays have BDSM as the main theme. Exemplifying this are two works: one Austrian, one German, in which BDSM is not only incorporated but integral to the storyline of the play. Literature. Although examples of literature catering to BDSM and fetishistic tastes were created in earlier periods, BDSM literature as it exists today cannot be found much earlier than World War II. The word "sadism" originates from the works of Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, and the word "masochism" originates from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the author of "Venus in Furs". However, it is worth noting that the Marquis de Sade describes non-consensual abuse in his works, such as in "Justine". "Venus in Furs" describes a consensual dom-sub relationship. A central work in modern BDSM literature is undoubtedly "Story of O" (1954) by Anne Desclos under the pseudonym Pauline Réage. Other notable works include "9½ Weeks" (1978) by Elizabeth McNeill, some works of the writer Anne Rice ("Exit to Eden", and her "Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" series of books), Jeanne de Berg ("L'Image" (1956) dedicated to Pauline Réage), the Gor series by John Norman, and naturally all the works of Patrick Califia, Gloria Brame, the group Samois and many of the writer Georges Bataille ("Histoire de l'oeil-Story of the Eye", Madame Edwarda, 1937), as well as those of Bob Flanagan ("Slave Sonnets" (1986), "Fuck Journal" (1987), "A Taste of Honey" (1990)). A common part of many of the poems of Pablo Neruda is a reflection on feelings and sensations arising from the relations of EPE or erotic exchange of power. The "Fifty Shades" trilogy is a series of very popular erotic romance novels by E. L. James which involves BDSM; however, the novels have been criticized for their inaccurate and harmful depiction of BDSM. In the 21st century, a number of prestigious university presses, such as Duke University, Indiana University and University of Chicago, have published books on BDSM written by professors, thereby lending academic legitimacy to this once taboo topic.
4547	1301236165	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4547	Bash (Unix shell)	In computing, Bash (short for "Bourne Again Shell") is an interactive command interpreter and command programming language developed for Unix-like operating systems. Created in 1989 by Brian Fox for the GNU Project, it is supported by the Free Software Foundation and designed as a 100% free alternative for the Bourne shell (codice_1) and other proprietary Unix shells. Since its inception, Bash has gained widespread adoption and is commonly used as the default login shell for numerous Linux distributions. It holds historical significance as one of the earliest programs ported to Linux by Linus Torvalds, alongside the GNU Compiler (GCC). It is available on nearly all modern operating systems, making it a versatile tool in various computing environments. As a command-line interface (CLI), Bash operates within a terminal emulator, or text window, where users input commands to execute various tasks. It also supports the execution of commands from files, known as shell scripts, facilitating automation. In keeping with Unix shell conventions, Bash incorporates a rich set of features. The keywords, syntax, dynamically scoped variables, and other basic features of the language are all copied from the Bourne shell, (codice_1). Other features, e.g., history, are copied from the C shell, (codice_3), and the Korn Shell, (codice_4). It is a POSIX-compliant shell with extensions. History. While Bash was developed for UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, such as GNU/Linux, it is also available on Android, macOS, Windows, and numerous other current and historical operating systems. "Although there have been attempts to create specialized shells, the Bourne shell derivatives continue to be the primary shells in use." The term "shell" was coined by Louis Pouzin in 1964 or 1965, and appeared in his 1965 paper, "The SHELL, A Global Tool for Calling and Chaining Procedures in the System." This paper describes many features later found in Bash. Features. List of short descriptions. Bash incorporates a rich set of features. A user manual for Bash is provided by the GNU Project, and the most recent technical manual, or 'man page', is considered to be the authoritative technical document. On GNU/Linux systems, versions of these documents which are relevant for your installation will available through the codice_5 and codice_6 programs at codice_7 and codice_8. As a command processor, Bash can operate in two modes: interactive or non-interactive. In interactive mode commands are usually read from a terminal emulator, prompting the user to enter commands at a keyboard. In non-interactive mode, which facilitates automation, commands are usually read from named files known today as shell scripts. Such functionality originated with files called "runcoms" in reference to the 1963 macro processor of the same name. When executed as a standalone command at the CLI, by default Bash opens a new shell in interactive mode, codice_9, and the codice_10 (ie, "shell level") parameter is incremented by one. Bash can also be executed as a login shell, or "session leader," in either interactive or non-interactive modes: codice_11. In GNU/Linux, a user's login shell is identified in the /etc/passwd file and valid system login shells are listed in the /etc/shells file. One means of altering a login shell is with the system command codice_12. When bash executes commands, exit status codes, also called "return codes," are produced which can offer some insight into the manner in which a program ceased running. The value of the most recently captured exit code is held within the shell parameter "question mark:" codice_13. In non-arithmetic contexts, (ie, most of the time) the numerical or "Boolean" value of "true" is zero (0), and the value of "false" is one (1). When a system command has executed, the intended meaning of its exit status can most often be found in its man page; usually a zero (0) indicates success and a nonzero exit status indicates some kind of failure condition or partial success. In Bash, within arithmetic contexts, the numerical truth values are reversed: "true" is one (1) and "false" is zero (0); an arithmetic context can usually be identified by the syntax codice_14 or codice_15. Not all Linux/UNIX commands provide meaningful exit codes beyond zero and one, and there is no standard system for definitions of exit codes in Linux. $ true; echo "$?" 0 $ false; echo "$?"; echo 1 $ bash -c 'exit 99'; printf 'exit-code: %d\n\n' "$?" exit-code: 99 $ (( 1 + 1 )); printf 'exit-code: %d\n' "$?" exit-code: 0 $ (( 1 - 1 )); printf 'exit-code: %d\n' "$?" exit-code: 1 Bash also offers... General discussion. The Bash command syntax is a superset of the Bourne shell command syntax. Bash supports brace expansion, command line completion (Programmable Completion), basic debugging and signal handling (using codice_39) since bash 2.05a among other features. Bash can execute the vast majority of Bourne shell scripts without modification, with the exception of Bourne shell scripts stumbling into fringe syntax behavior interpreted differently in Bash or attempting to run a system command matching a newer Bash builtin, etc. Bash command syntax includes ideas drawn from the Korn Shell (ksh) and the C shell (csh) such as command line editing, command history (codice_88 command), the directory stack, the codice_89 and codice_90 variables, and POSIX command substitution syntax codice_91. When a user presses the tab key within an interactive command-shell, Bash automatically uses command line completion, since beta version 2.04, to match partly typed program names, filenames and variable names. The Bash command-line completion system is very flexible and customizable, and is often packaged with functions that complete arguments and filenames for specific programs and tasks. Bash's syntax has many extensions lacking in the Bourne shell. Bash can perform integer calculations ("arithmetic evaluation") without spawning external processes. It uses the codice_14 command and the codice_15 variable syntax for this purpose. Its syntax simplifies I/O redirection. For example, it can redirect standard output (stdout) and standard error (stderr) at the same time using the codice_94 operator. This is simpler to type than the Bourne shell equivalent 'codice_95'. Bash supports process substitution using the codice_96 and codice_97syntax, which substitutes the output of (or input to) a command where a filename is normally used. (This is implemented through "/proc/fd/" unnamed pipes on systems that support that, or via temporary named pipes where necessary). When using the 'function' keyword, Bash function declarations are not compatible with Bourne/Korn/POSIX scripts (the KornShell has the same problem when using 'function'), but Bash accepts the same function declaration syntax as the Bourne and Korn shells, and is POSIX-conformant. Because of these and other differences, Bash shell scripts are rarely runnable under the Bourne or Korn shell interpreters unless deliberately written with that compatibility in mind, which is becoming less common as Linux becomes more widespread. But in POSIX mode, Bash conforms with POSIX more closely. Bash supports here documents. Since version 2.05b Bash can redirect standard input (stdin) from a "here string" using the codice_73 operator. Bash 3.0 supports in-process regular expression matching using a syntax reminiscent of Perl. In February 2009, Bash 4.0 introduced support for associative arrays. Associative array indices are strings, in a manner similar to AWK or Tcl. They can be used to emulate multidimensional arrays. Bash 4 also switches its license to GPL-3.0-or-later. Bash supplies "conditional execution" command separators that make execution of a command contingent on the exit code set by a precedent command. For example: cd "$SOMEWHERE" && ./do_something \|\| echo "An error occurred" >&2 Where is only executed if the (change directory) command was "successful" (returned an exit status of zero) and the command would only be executed if either the or the command return an "error" (non-zero exit status). For all commands the exit status is stored in the special variable codice_13. Bash also supports and forms of conditional command evaluation. Process management (a.k.a., "job control"). The Bash shell has two modes of execution for commands: batch (asynchronous), and concurrent (synchronous). To execute commands in batch mode (i.e., in sequence) they must be separated by the character ";", or on separate lines: command1; command2 command3 In this example, when command1 is finished, command2 is executed, and when command2 has completed, command3 will execute. A background execution of command1 can occur using (symbol &) at the end of an execution command, and process will be executed in background while immediately returning control to the shell and allowing continued execution of commands. command1 & Or to have a concurrent execution of command1 and command2, they must be executed in the Bash shell in the following way: command1 & command2 In this case command1 is executed in the background "&" symbol, returning immediately control to the shell that executes command2 in the foreground. A process can be stopped and control returned to bash by typing while the process is running in the foreground. A list of all processes, both in the background and stopped, can be achieved by running codice_100: $ jobs [1]- Running command1 & [2]+ Stopped command2 In the output, the number in brackets refers to the job id. The plus sign signifies the default process for codice_101 and codice_102. The text "Running" and "Stopped" refer to the process state. The last string is the command that started the process. The state of a process can be changed using various commands. The codice_102 command brings a process to the foreground, while codice_101 sets a stopped process running in the background. codice_101 and codice_102 can take a job id as their first argument, to specify the process to act on. Without one, they use the default process, identified by a plus sign in the output of codice_100. The codice_108 command can be used to end a process prematurely, by sending it a signal. The job id must be specified after a percent sign: kill %1 Portability with POSIX. Invoking Bash with the codice_109 option or stating codice_110 in a script causes Bash to conform very closely with the POSIX 1003.2 standard. Bash shell scripts intended for portability should take into account at least the POSIX shell standard. Some bash features not found in POSIX are: If a piece of code uses such a feature, it is called a "bashism" – a problem for portable use. Debian's and Vidar Holen's can be used to make sure that a script does not contain these parts. The list varies depending on the actual target shell: Debian's policy allows some extensions in their scripts (as they are in the dash shell), while a script intending to support pre-POSIX Bourne shells, like autoconf's , are even more limited in the features they can use. Brace expansion. Brace expansion, also called alternation, is a feature copied from the C shell. It generates a set of alternative combinations. Generated results need not exist as files. The results of each expanded string are not sorted and left to right order is preserved: $ echo a{p,c,d,b}e ape ace ade abe ad ae af bd be bf cd ce cf Users should not use brace expansions in portable shell scripts, because the Bourne shell does not produce the same output. $ # bash shell $/bin/bash -c 'echo a{p,c,d,b}e' ape ace ade abe $ # A traditional shell does not produce the same output $ /bin/sh -c 'echo a{p,c,d,b}e' a{p,c,d,b}e When brace expansion is combined with wildcards, the braces are expanded first, and then the resulting wildcards are substituted normally. Hence, a listing of JPEG and PNG images in the current directory could be obtained using: ls .{jpg,jpeg,png} # expands to .jpg .jpeg .png – after which, # the wildcards are processed echo *.{png,jp{e,}g} # echo just shows the expansions – # and braces in braces are possible. In addition to alternation, brace expansion can be used for sequential ranges between two integers or characters separated by double dots. Newer versions of Bash allow a third integer to specify the increment. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 $ echo file{1..4}.txt file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt file4.txt a b c d e 1 4 7 10 a d g j When brace expansion is combined with variable expansion (A.K.A. "parameter expansion" and "parameter substitution") the variable expansion is performed "after" the brace expansion, which in some cases may necessitate the use of the codice_111 built-in, thus: $ start=1; end=10 $ echo {$start..$end} # fails to expand due to the evaluation order $ eval echo {$start..$end} # variable expansion occurs then resulting string is evaluated 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Configurable execution environment(s). Shell and session startup Files (a.k.a., "dot files"). When Bash starts, it executes the commands in a variety of dot files. Unlike Bash shell scripts, dot files do typically have neither the execute permission enabled nor an interpreter directive like codice_112. Legacy-compatible Bash startup example. The example codice_113 below is compatible with the Bourne shell and gives semantics similar to csh for the codice_78 and codice_115. The codice_116 is a short-circuit evaluation that tests if "filename" exists and is readable, skipping the part after the codice_16 if it is not. [ -r ~/.profile ] &&. ~/.profile # set up environment, once, Bourne-sh syntax only if [ -n "$PS1" ]; then # are we interactive? [ -r ~/.bashrc ] &&. ~/.bashrc # tty/prompt/function setup for interactive shells [ -r ~/.bash_login ] &&. ~/.bash_login # any at-login tasks for login shell only fi # End of "if" block Operating system issues in Bash startup. Some versions of Unix and Linux contain Bash system startup scripts, generally under the codice_118 directory. Bash executes these files as part of its standard initialization, but other startup files can read them in a different order than the documented Bash startup sequence. The default content of the root user's files may also have issues, as well as the skeleton files the system provides to new user accounts upon setup. The startup scripts that launch the X window system may also do surprising things with the user's Bash startup scripts in an attempt to set up user-environment variables before launching the window manager. These issues can often be addressed using a codice_119 or codice_120 file to read the codice_79 — which provides the environment variables that Bash shell windows spawned from the window manager need, such as xterm or Gnome Terminal. Settings and shell options. The codice_80 built-in. The shell's primary means of debugging. Both xtrace and verbose can be turned off at the same time with the command codice_125. Prints a command to the terminal as Bash reads it. Bash reads constructs all at once, such as compound commands which include if-fi and case-esac blocks. If a codice_126 is included within a compound command, then "verbose" will be enabled the next time Bash reads code as input, i.e., after the end of the currently executing construct. Both xtrace and verbose can be turned off at the same time with the command codice_125. The codice_81 built-in. On by default in interactive shells. Some developers discourage its use in scripts. Programmable completion. Bash supports programmable completion via built-in codice_131, , and codice_132 commands. The feature has been available since the beta version of 2.04 released in 2000. These commands enable complex and intelligent completion specification for commands (i.e. installed programs), functions, variables, and filenames. The codice_131 and two commands specify how arguments of some available commands or options are going to be listed in the readline input. As of version 5.1 completion of the command or the option is usually activated by the keystroke after typing its name. Keyboard shortcuts with Readline. Bash uses GNU Readline to provide keyboard shortcuts for command line editing using the default (Emacs) key bindings. Vi-bindings can be enabled by running codice_134. Documentation. As the standard upon which bash is based, the POSIX Standard, or IEEE Std 1003.1, et seq, is especially informative. The Linux "man page" is intended to be the authoritative explanatory technical document for the understanding of how codice_135 operates. It is usually available by running codice_8. The GNU manual is sometimes considered more user-friendly for reading. "You may also find information about Bash by running codice_7 ... or by looking at codice_138, codice_139, or similar directories on your system. A brief summary is available by running codice_140. " If a user invoke RUNCOM without any arguments it prints some instructions on how to use it and stops, returning the user to the supervisor's (system's) command line.(RUNCOM)" On modern Linuxes, information on shell built-in commands can be found by executing codice_86, codice_142 or codice_143 at a terminal prompt where bash is installed. Some commands, such as codice_144, codice_145, codice_108, codice_147, codice_29 or codice_149, depending on your system and on your locally installed version of bash, can refer to either a shell built-in or a system binary executable file. When one of these command name collisions occurs, bash will by default execute a given command line using the shell built-in. Specifying a binary executable's absolute path (i.e., codice_150) is one way of ensuring that the shell uses a system binary. This name collision issue also effects any "help summaries" viewed with codice_151 and codice_152. Shell built-ins and system binary executable files of the same name often have differing options. "The project maintainer also has a Bash page which includes Frequently Asked Questions", this FAQ is current as of bash version 5.1 and is no longer updated. Security and vulnerabilities. Root scripts. Running any shell scripts as the root user has, for years, been widely criticized as poor security practice. One commonly given reason is that, when a script is executed as root, the negative effects of any bugs in a script would be magnified by root's elevated privileges. One common example: a script contains the command, codice_153, but the variable codice_154 is left undefined. In Linux, if the script was executed by a regular user, the shell would attempt to execute the command codice_155 as a regular user, and the command would fail. However, if the script was executed by the root user, then the command would likely succeed and the filesystem would be erased. It is recommended to use codice_156 on a per-command basis instead. Debugging. Examples. With the parameter expansion, an unset or null variable can halt a script. bar="foo is not defined" echo "${foo:?$bar}" echo this message doesn't print $ ./ex.sh ./ex.sh: line 3: foo: foo is not defined Reliably printing the contents of an array that contains spaces and newlines first in a portable syntax, and then the same thing in Bash. Note that POSIX doesn't have named array, only the list of arguments, codice_157, which can be re-set by the codice_80 builtin. $ # In POSIX shell: $ set -- "a" " b" " > c " $ printf ',%s,\n' "$@" ,a, , b, c, Note that in Bash, the number of spaces before the newline is made clear. $ # In Bash: $ array=( "a" " b" " > c " ) $ declare -p array declare -a array=([0]="a" [1]=" b" [2]=$' \n c ') Printing an error message when there's a problem. if ! lsblk \| grep sdb then echo Error, line $LINENO fi $ ./error.sh Error, line 130 Using xtrace. If errexit had been enabled, then would not have been executed. set -x foo=bar; echo $foo false echo quux $ ./test.sh + foo=bar + echo bar bar + false + echo quux quux Shellshock. In September 2014, a [[security bug]] was discovered in the program. It was dubbed "[[Shellshock (software bug)\|Shellshock]]." Public disclosure quickly led to a range of [[Attack (computing)\|attacks]] across the [[Internet]]. Exploitation of the vulnerability could enable [[arbitrary code execution]] in [[Common Gateway Interface\|CGI]] scripts executable by certain versions of Bash. The bug involved how Bash passed function definitions to subshells through [[environment variable]]s. The bug had been present in the [[source code]] since August 1989 (version 1.03) and was patched in September 2014 (version 4.3). Patches to fix the bugs were made available soon after the bugs were identified. Upgrading to a current version is strongly advised. It was assigned the [[Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures\|Common Vulnerability]] identifiers , among others. Under CVSS Metrics 2.x and 3.x, the bug is regarded as "high" and "critical", respectively. Bug reporting. An external command called "bashbug" reports Bash shell bugs. When the command is invoked, it brings up the user's default editor with a form to fill in. The form is mailed to the Bash maintainers (or optionally to other email addresses). References. [[Category:1989 software]] [[Category:Cross-platform free software]] [[Category:Domain-specific programming languages]] [[Category:Dynamically scoped programming languages]] [[Category:Free software programmed in C]] [[Category:GNU Project software]] [[Category:Scripting languages]] [[Category:Text-oriented programming languages]] [[Category:Unix shells]]
4548	27823944	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4548	Blizzard	A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong sustained winds and low visibility, lasting for a prolonged period of time—typically at least three or four hours. A ground blizzard is a weather condition where snow that has already fallen is being blown by wind. Blizzards can have an immense size and usually stretch to hundreds or thousands of kilometres. Definition and etymology. In the United States, the National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a severe snow storm characterized by strong winds causing blowing snow that results in low visibilities. The difference between a blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind, not the amount of snow. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have sustained winds or frequent gusts that are greater than or equal to with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to or less and must last for a prolonged period of time—typically three hours or more. Environment Canada defines a blizzard as a storm with wind speeds exceeding accompanied by visibility of or less, resulting from snowfall, blowing snow, or a combination of the two. These conditions must persist for a period of at least four hours for the storm to be classified as a blizzard, except north of the arctic tree line, where that threshold is raised to six hours. The Australia Bureau of Meteorology describes a blizzard as, "Violent and very cold wind which is laden with snow, some part, at least, of which has been raised from snow covered ground." While severe cold and large amounts of drifting snow may accompany blizzards, they are not required. Blizzards can bring whiteout conditions, and can paralyze regions for days at a time, particularly where snowfall is unusual or rare. A severe blizzard has winds over , near zero visibility, and temperatures of or lower. In Antarctica, blizzards are associated with winds spilling over the edge of the ice plateau at an average velocity of . Ground blizzard refers to a weather condition where loose snow or ice on the ground is lifted and blown by strong winds. The primary difference between a ground blizzard as opposed to a regular blizzard is that in a ground blizzard no precipitation is produced at the time, but rather all the precipitation is already present in the form of snow or ice at the surface. The "Oxford English Dictionary" concludes the term "blizzard" is likely onomatopoeic, derived from the same sense as "blow, blast, blister, and bluster"; the first recorded use of it for weather dates to 1829, when it was defined as a "violent blow". It achieved its modern definition by 1859, when it was in use in the western United States. The term became common in the press during the harsh winter of 1880–81. United States storm systems. In the United States, storm systems powerful enough to cause blizzards usually form when the jet stream dips far to the south, allowing cold, dry polar air from the north to clash with warm, humid air moving up from the south. When cold, moist air from the Pacific Ocean moves eastward to the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, and warmer, moist air moves north from the Gulf of Mexico, all that is needed is a movement of cold polar air moving south to form potential blizzard conditions that may extend from the Texas Panhandle to the Great Lakes and Midwest. A blizzard also may be formed when a cold front and warm front mix together and a blizzard forms at the border line. Another storm system occurs when a cold core low over the Hudson Bay area in Canada is displaced southward over southeastern Canada, the Great Lakes, and New England. When the rapidly moving cold front collides with warmer air coming north from the Gulf of Mexico, strong surface winds, significant cold air advection, and extensive wintry precipitation occur. Low pressure systems moving out of the Rocky Mountains onto the Great Plains, a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, can cause thunderstorms and rain to the south and heavy snows and strong winds to the north. With few trees or other obstructions to reduce wind and blowing, this part of the country is particularly vulnerable to blizzards with very low temperatures and whiteout conditions. In a true whiteout, there is no visible horizon. People can become lost in their own front yards, when the door is only away, and they would have to feel their way back. Motorists have to stop their cars where they are, as the road is impossible to see. Nor'easter blizzards. A nor'easter is a macro-scale storm that occurs off the New England and Atlantic Canada coastlines. It gets its name from the direction the wind is coming from. The usage of the term in North America comes from the wind associated with many different types of storms, some of which can form in the North Atlantic Ocean and some of which form as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. The term is most often used in the coastal areas of New England and Atlantic Canada. This type of storm has characteristics similar to a hurricane. More specifically, it describes a low-pressure area whose center of rotation is just off the coast and whose leading winds in the left-forward quadrant rotate onto land from the northeast. High storm waves may sink ships at sea and cause coastal flooding and beach erosion. Notable nor'easters include The Great Blizzard of 1888, one of the worst blizzards in U.S. history. It dropped of snow and had sustained winds of more than that produced snowdrifts in excess of . Railroads were shut down and people were confined to their houses for up to a week. It killed 400 people, mostly in New York. Historic events. 1972 Iran blizzard. The 1972 Iran blizzard, which caused 4,000 reported deaths, was the deadliest blizzard in recorded history. Dropping as much as of snow, it completely covered 200 villages. After a snowfall lasting nearly a week, an area the size of Wisconsin was entirely buried in snow. 2008 Afghanistan blizzard. The 2008 Afghanistan blizzard, was a fierce blizzard that struck Afghanistan on 10 January 2008. Temperatures fell to a low of , with up to of snow in the more mountainous regions, killing at least 926 people. The weather also claimed more than 100,000 sheep and goats, and nearly 315,000 cattle died. The Snow Winter of 1880–1881. The winter of 1880–1881 is widely considered the most severe winter ever known in many parts of the United States. The initial blizzard in October 1880 brought snowfalls so deep that two-story homes experienced "accumulations", as opposed to drifts, up to their second-floor windows. No one was prepared for deep snow so early in the winter. Farmers from North Dakota to Virginia were caught flat with fields unharvested, what grain that had been harvested unmilled, and their suddenly all-important winter stocks of wood fuel only partially collected. By January train service was almost entirely suspended from the region. Railroads hired scores of men to dig out the tracks but as soon as they had finished shoveling a stretch of line a new storm arrived, burying it again. There were no winter thaws and on February 2, 1881, a second massive blizzard struck that lasted for nine days. In towns the streets were filled with solid drifts to the tops of the buildings and tunneling was necessary to move about. Homes and barns were completely covered, compelling farmers to construct fragile tunnels in order to feed their stock. When the snow finally melted in late spring of 1881, huge sections of the plains experienced flooding. Massive ice jams clogged the Missouri River, and when they broke the downstream areas were inundated. Most of the town of Yankton, in what is now South Dakota, was washed away when the river overflowed its banks after the thaw. Novelization. Many children—and their parents—learned of "The Snow Winter" through the children's book "The Long Winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, in which the author tells of her family's efforts to survive. The snow arrived in October 1880 and blizzard followed blizzard throughout the winter and into March 1881, leaving many areas snowbound throughout the winter. Accurate details in Wilder's novel include the blizzards' frequency and the deep cold, the Chicago and North Western Railway stopping trains until the spring thaw because the snow made the tracks impassable, the near-starvation of the townspeople, and the courage of her future husband Almanzo and another man, Cap Garland, who ventured out on the open prairie in search of a cache of wheat that no one was even sure existed. The Storm of the Century. The Storm of the Century, also known as the Great Blizzard of 1993, was a large cyclonic storm that formed over the Gulf of Mexico on March 12, 1993, and dissipated in the North Atlantic Ocean on March 15. It is unique for its intensity, massive size and wide-reaching effect. At its height, the storm stretched from Canada towards Central America, but its main impact was on the United States and Cuba. The cyclone moved through the Gulf of Mexico, and then through the Eastern United States before moving into Canada. Areas as far south as northern Alabama and Georgia received a dusting of snow and areas such as Birmingham, Alabama, received up to with hurricane-force wind gusts and record low barometric pressures. Between Louisiana and Cuba, hurricane-force winds produced high storm surges across northwestern Florida, which along with scattered tornadoes killed dozens of people. In the United States, the storm was responsible for the loss of electric power to over 10 million customers. It is purported to have been directly experienced by nearly 40 percent of the country's population at that time. A total of 310 people, including 10 from Cuba, perished during this storm. The storm cost $6 to $10 billion in damages.
4550	6908984	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4550	Bikini	A bikini is a two-piece swimsuit primarily worn by women that features one piece on top that covers the breasts, and a second piece on the bottom: the front covering the pelvis but usually exposing the navel, and the back generally covering the intergluteal cleft and some or all of the buttocks. The size of the top and bottom can vary, from bikinis that offer full coverage of the breasts, pelvis, and buttocks, to more revealing designs with a thong or G-string bottom that covers only the mons pubis, but exposes the buttocks, and a top that covers only the areolae. Bikini bottoms covering about half the buttocks may be described as "Brazilian-cut". The modern bikini swimsuit was introduced by French clothing designer Louis Réard in July 1946, and was named after the Bikini Atoll, where the first public test of a nuclear bomb had taken place four days before. Due to its revealing design, the bikini was once considered controversial, facing opposition from a number of groups and being accepted only very slowly by the general public. In many countries, the design was banned from beaches and other public places: in 1949, France banned the bikini from being worn on its coastlines; Germany banned the bikini from public swimming pools until the 1970s, and some communist groups condemned the bikini as a "capitalist decadence". The bikini also faced criticism from some feminists, who reviled it as a garment designed to suit men's tastes, and not those of women. Despite this backlash, however, the bikini still sold well throughout the mid to late 20th century. The bikini gained increased exposure and acceptance as film stars like Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, and Ursula Andress wore it and were photographed on public beaches and seen in film. The minimalist bikini design became common in most Western countries by the mid-1960s as both swimwear and underwear. By the late 20th century, it was widely used as sportswear in beach volleyball and bodybuilding. There are a number of modern stylistic variations of the design used for marketing purposes and as industry classifications, including monokini, microkini, tankini, trikini, pubikini, skirtini, thong, and g-string. A man's single piece brief swimsuit may also be called a bikini or "bikini brief", particularly if it has slimmer sides. Similarly, a variety of men's and women's underwear types are described as bikini underwear. The bikini has gradually gained wide acceptance in Western society. By the early 2000s, bikinis had become a US$811 million business annually, and boosted spin off services such as bikini waxing and sun tanning. Etymology and terminology. While the two-piece swimsuit as a design existed in classical antiquity, the modern design first attracted public notice in Paris on July 5, 1946. In May 1946, Parisian fashion designer Jacques Heim released a two-piece swimsuit design that he named the ('Atom') and advertised as "the smallest swimsuit in the world". Like swimsuits of the era, it covered the wearer's belly button, and it failed to attract much attention. French automotive engineer Louis Réard introduced a design he named the "Bikini", adopting the name from the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, which was the colonial name the Germans gave to the atoll, borrowed from the Marshallese name for the island, . Four days earlier, on 1 July 1946, the United States had initiated its first peacetime nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads. Unlike the prior Trinity test, or most subsequent nuclear test series, the United States allowed both international observers and the global press to observe Crossroads, creating an intense international interest in the new weapon and its testing. Réard never explained why he chose the name "Bikini" for the swimsuit. Various motivations have been attributed to his choosing of the name, including the idea that he hoped it would create "explosive commercial and cultural reaction" similar to the explosion at Bikini Atoll, that it was meant to be associated with the "exotic allure of the tropical Pacific", from the "comparison of the effects of a scantily clad woman to the atomic bomb," and the idea that Reard's design had out-done Heim's design and "split the "atome"". Réard's advertising slogan was that the Bikini was "smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world." The swimsuit's name was typically capitalized for several years after its coining. It has been frequently cited as a major example of a "psychological link between atomic destruction and sexuality" in popular culture, which includes the stenciling of Rita Hayworth onto one of the bombs detonated at Crossroads, and its persistence in language has been argued as having "trivialized and downplayed the reality of nuclear testing," given the contamination done by especially later US thermonuclear tests at Bikini and other Marshallese atolls. By making an analogy with words like "bilingual" and "bilateral" containing the Latin prefix "bi-" (meaning "two" in Latin), the word "bikini" was first back-derived as consisting of two parts, ["bi" + "kini"] by Rudi Gernreich, who introduced the monokini in 1964. Later swimsuit designs like the tankini and trikini further cemented this derivation. Over time the ""–kini" family" (as dubbed by author William Safire), including the ""–ini" sisters" (as dubbed by designer Anne Cole), expanded into a variety of swimwear including the monokini (also known as a numokini or unikini), seekini, tankini, camikini, (also hipkini), minikini, face-kini, burkini, and microkini. The "Language Report", compiled by lexicographer Susie Dent and published by the Oxford University Press (OUP) in 2003, considers lexicographic inventions like bandeaukini and camkini, two variants of the tankini, important to observe. Although "bikini" was originally a registered trademark of Réard, it has since become genericized. Variations of the term are used to describe stylistic variations for promotional purposes and industry classifications, including monokini, microkini, tankini, trikini, pubikini, bandeaukini and skirtini. A man's brief swimsuit may also be referred to as a bikini. Similarly, a variety of men's and women's underwear types are described as bikini underwear. History. In antiquity. According to archaeologist James Mellaart, a mural from the Chalcolithic era (around 5600 BCE) in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia depicts a mother goddess astride two leopards wearing a costume somewhat like a bikini. The two-piece swimsuit can be traced back to the Greco-Roman world, where bikini-like garments worn by women athletes are depicted on urns and paintings dating back to 1400 BCE. In "Coronation of the Winner", a mosaic in the floor of a Roman villa in Sicily that dates from the Diocletian period (286–305 CE), young women participate in weightlifting, discus throwing, and running ball games dressed in bikini-like garments (technically bandeaukinis in modern lexicon). The mosaic, found in the Sicilian Villa Romana del Casale, features ten maidens who have been anachronistically dubbed the "Bikini Girls". Other Roman archaeological finds depict the goddess Venus in a similar garment. In Pompeii, depictions of Venus wearing a bikini were discovered in the Casa della Venere, in the "tablinum" of the House of Julia Felix, and in an atrium garden of Via Dell'Abbondanza. Precursors in the West. Swimming or bathing outdoors was discouraged in the Christian West, so there was little demand or need for swimming or bathing costumes until the 18th century. The bathing gown of the 18th century was a loose ankle-length full-sleeve chemise-type gown made of wool or flannel that retained coverage and modesty. In 1907, Australian swimmer and performer Annette Kellermann was arrested on a Boston beach for wearing form-fitting sleeveless one-piece knitted swimming tights that covered her from neck to toe, a costume she adopted from England, although it became accepted swimsuit attire for women in parts of Europe by 1910. In 1913, designer Carl Jantzen made the first functional two-piece swimwear. Inspired by the introduction of females into Olympic swimming he designed a close-fitting costume with shorts for the bottom and short sleeves for the top. During the 1920s and 1930s, people began to shift from "taking in the water" to "taking in the sun", at bathhouses and spas, and swimsuit designs shifted from functional considerations to incorporate more decorative features. Rayon was used in the 1920s in the manufacture of tight-fitting swimsuits, but durability issues, especially when wet, proved problematic. Jersey and silk were also sometimes used. By the 1930s, manufacturers had lowered necklines in the back, removed sleeves, and tightened the sides. With the development of new clothing materials, particularly latex and nylon, swimsuits gradually began hugging the body through the 1930s, with shoulder straps that could be lowered for tanning. Women's swimwear of the 1930s and 1940s incorporated increasing degrees of midriff exposure. The 1932 Hollywood film "Three on a Match" featured a midriff-baring two-piece bathing suit. Actress Dolores del Río was the first major star to wear a two-piece women's bathing suit onscreen in "Flying Down to Rio" (1933). Teen magazines of late 1940s and 1950s featured similar designs of midriff-baring suits and tops. However, midriff fashion was stated as only for beaches and informal events and considered indecent to be worn in public. Hollywood endorsed the new glamor in films like 1949's "Neptune's Daughter" in which Esther Williams wore provocatively named costumes such as "Double Entendre" and "Honey Child". Wartime production during World War II required vast amounts of cotton, silk, nylon, wool, leather, and rubber. In 1942, the United States War Production Board issued Regulation L-85, cutting the use of natural fibers in clothing and mandating a 10% reduction in the amount of fabric in women's beachwear. To comply with the regulations, swimsuit manufacturers removed skirt panels and other attachments, while increasing production of the two-piece swimsuit with bare midriffs. At the same time, demand for all swimwear declined as there was not much interest in going to the beach, especially in Europe. Modern bikini. In the summer of 1946, Western Europeans enjoyed their first war-free summer in many years. French designers sought to deliver fashions that matched the liberated mood of the people. Fabric was still in short supply, and in an endeavor to resurrect swimwear sales, two French designers – Jacques Heim and Louis Réard – almost simultaneously launched new two-piece swimsuit designs in 1946. Heim launched a two-piece swimsuit design in Paris that he called the "atome", after the smallest known particle of matter. He announced that it was the "world's smallest bathing suit." Although briefer than the two-piece swimsuits of the 1930s, the bottom of Heim's new two-piece beach costume still covered the wearer's navel. Soon after, Louis Réard created a competing two-piece swimsuit design, which he called the "bikini". He noticed that women at the beach rolled up the edges of their swimsuit bottoms and tops to improve their tan. On 5 July, Réard introduced his design at a swimsuit review held at a popular Paris public pool, Piscine Molitor, four days after the first test of a US nuclear weapon at the Bikini Atoll. The newspapers were full of news about it and Réard hoped for the same with his design. Réard's "bikini" undercut Heim's "atome" in its brevity. His design consisted of two side-by-side triangles of fabric forming a bra, and two front-and-back triangular pieces of fabric covering the mons pubis and the buttocks, respectively, connected by string. When he was unable to find a fashion model willing to showcase his revealing design, Réard hired Micheline Bernardini, an 18-year old nude dancer from the Casino de Paris. He announced that his swimsuit, was "smaller than the world's smallest bathing suit". Réard said that "like the [atom] bomb, the bikini is small and devastating". Fashion writer Diana Vreeland described the bikini as the "atom bomb of fashion". Bernardini received 50,000 fan letters, many of them from men. Photographs of Bernardini and articles about the event were widely carried by the press. The "International Herald Tribune" alone ran nine stories on the event. French newspaper "Le Figaro" wrote, "People were craving the simple pleasures of the sea and the sun. For women, wearing a bikini signaled a kind of second liberation. There was really nothing sexual about this. It was instead a celebration of freedom and a return to the joys in life." Heim's "atome" was more in keeping with the sense of propriety of the 1940s, but Réard's design won the public's attention. Although Heim's design was the first worn on the beach and initially sold more swimsuits, it was Réard's description of the two-piece swimsuit as a "bikini" that stuck. As competing designs emerged, he declared in advertisements that a swimsuit could not be a genuine bikini "unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring." Modern bikinis were first made of cotton and jersey. Social resistance. Despite the garment's initial success in France, women worldwide continued to wear traditional one-piece swimsuits. When his sales stalled, Réard went back to designing and selling orthodox knickers. In 1950, American swimsuit mogul Fred Cole, owner of mass market swimwear firm Cole of California, told "Time" that he had "little but scorn for France's famed Bikinis." Réard himself would later describe it as a "two-piece bathing suit which reveals everything about a girl except for her mother's maiden name." Fashion magazine "Modern Girl Magazine" in 1957 stated that "it is hardly necessary to waste words over the so-called bikini since it is inconceivable that any girl with tact and decency would ever wear such a thing". In 1951, Eric Morley organized the "Festival Bikini Contest", a beauty contest and swimwear advertising opportunity at that year's Festival of Britain. The press, welcoming the spectacle, referred to it as "Miss World", a name Morley registered as a trademark. The winner was Kiki Håkansson of Sweden, who was crowned in a bikini. After the crowning, Håkansson was condemned by Pope Pius XII, while Spain and Ireland threatened to withdraw from the pageant. In 1952, bikinis were banned from the pageant and replaced by evening gowns. As a result of the controversy, the bikini was explicitly banned from many other beauty pageants worldwide. Although some regarded the bikini and beauty contests as bringing freedom to women, they were opposed by some feminists as well as religious and cultural groups who objected to the degree of exposure of the female body. Paula Stafford was an Australian fashion designer credited with introducing the bikini to Australia; in a famous incident in 1952, model Ann Ferguson was asked to leave a beach in Surfers Paradise because her Paula Stafford bikini was too revealing. The bikini was banned in Australia, on the French Atlantic coastline, in Spain, in Italy, and in Portugal, and was prohibited or discouraged in a number of US states. The United States Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, enforced from 1934, allowed two-piece gowns but prohibited the display of navels in Hollywood films. The National Legion of Decency, a Roman Catholic body overseeing American media content, also pressured Hollywood and foreign film producers to keep bikinis from being featured in Hollywood movies. As late as 1959 one of the United States' largest swimsuit designers, Anne Cole of the Anne Cole brand, said, "It's nothing more than a G-string. It's at the razor's edge of decency." The Hays Code was abandoned by the mid-1960s, and with it the prohibition of female navel exposure, as well as other restrictions. The influence of the National Legion of Decency also waned by the 1960s. Rise to popularity. Increasingly common glamour shots of popular actresses and models on either side of the Atlantic played a large part in bringing the bikini into the mainstream. During the 1950s, Hollywood stars such as Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, Tina Louise, Marilyn Monroe, Esther Williams, and Betty Grable took advantage of the risqué publicity associated with the bikini by posing for photographs wearing them—pin-ups of Hayworth and Williams in costume were especially widely distributed in the United States. In 1950, Elvira Pagã walked at the Rio Carnival, Brazil in a golden bikini, starting the bikini tradition of the carnival. In Europe, 17-year-old Brigitte Bardot wore scanty bikinis (by contemporary standards) in the French film "Manina, la fille sans voiles" ("Manina, the girl unveiled"). The promotion for the film, released in France in March 1953, drew more attention to Bardot's bikinis than to the film itself. By the time the film was released in the United States in 1958, it was re-titled "Manina, the Girl in the Bikini". Bardot was also photographed wearing a bikini on the beach during the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. Working with her husband and agent Roger Vadim, she garnered significant attention with photographs of her wearing a bikini on every beach in the south of France. Similar photographs were taken of Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren, among others. According to "The Guardian", Bardot's photographs in particular turned Saint-Tropez into the beachwear capital of the world, with Bardot identified as the original Cannes bathing beauty. Bardot's photography helped to enhance the public profile of the festival, and Cannes in turn played a crucial role in her career. Brian Hyland's novelty-song hit "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" became a "Billboard" No. 1 hit during the summer of 1960: the song tells a story about a young girl who is too shy to wear her new bikini on the beach, thinking it too risqué. "Playboy" first featured a bikini on its cover in 1962; the "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue" debut two years later featured Babette March in a white bikini on the cover. This has been credited with making the bikini a legitimate piece of clothing. Ursula Andress, appearing as Honey Ryder in the 1962 British James Bond film, "Dr. No", wore a white bikini, which became known as the "Dr. No bikini". It became one of the most famous bikinis of all time and an iconic moment in cinematic and fashion history. Andress said that she owed her career to that white bikini, remarking, "This bikini made me into a success. As a result of starring in "Dr. No" as the first Bond girl, I was given the freedom to take my pick of future roles and to become financially independent." The bikini finally caught on, and in 1963, the movie "Beach Party", starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, led a wave of films that made the bikini a pop-culture symbol, though Funicello was barred from wearing Réard's bikini unlike the other young women in the films. In 1965, a woman told "Time" that it was "almost square" not to wear a bikini; the magazine wrote two years later that "65% of the young set had already gone over". Raquel Welch's fur bikini in "One Million Years B.C." (1966) gave the world the most iconic bikini shot of all time and the poster image became an iconic moment in cinema history. Her deer skin bikini in "One Million Years B.C.", advertised as "mankind's first bikini", (1966) was later described as a "definitive look of the 1960s". Her role wearing the leather bikini made Welch a fashion icon and the photo of her in the bikini became a best-selling pinup poster. Stretch nylon bikini briefs and bras complemented the adolescent boutique fashions of the 1960s, allowing those to be minimal. DuPont introduced lycra (DuPont's name for spandex) in the same decade. Spandex expanded the range of novelty fabrics available to designers which meant suits could be made to fit like a second skin without heavy linings. "The advent of Lycra allowed more women to wear a bikini," wrote Kelly Killoren Bensimon, a former model and author of "The Bikini Book", "It didn't sag, it didn't bag, and it concealed and revealed. It wasn't so much like lingerie anymore." Increased reliance on stretch fabric led to simplified construction. This fabric allowed designers to create the string bikini, and allowed Rudi Gernreich to create the topless monokini. Alternative swimwear fabrics such as velvet, leather, and crocheted squares surfaced in the early '70s. Mass acceptance. Réard's company folded in 1988, four years after his death. Meanwhile, the bikini had become the most popular beachwear around the globe. According to French fashion historian Olivier Saillard, this was due to "the power of women, and not the power of fashion". By 1988 the bikini made up nearly 20% of swimsuit sales, more than any other model in the US, though one-piece suits made a comeback during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1997, Miss Maryland Jamie Fox became the first contestant in 50 years to compete in a two-piece swimsuit at the Miss America Pageant. Actresses in action films like "Blue Crush" (2002) and "" (2003) made the two-piece "the millennial equivalent of the power suit", according to Gina Bellafonte of "The New York Times."According to Beth Dincuff Charleston, research associate at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "The bikini represents a social leap involving body consciousness, moral concerns, and sexual attitudes." By the early 2000s, bikinis had become a $811 million business annually, according to the NPD Group, a consumer and retail information company, and had boosted spin-off services like bikini waxing and the sun tanning industries. The first bikini museum in the world is being built in Bad Rappenau in Germany. The development of swimwear from 1880 to the present is presented on 2,000 square metres of exhibition space. By 2017, the global swimwear market was valued at US$18,5 billion with a compound annual growth rate of 6.2%. Part of the increased consumption of bikinis and swimwears can be attributed to influencers who promote and endorse various brands around the year. Soccer player and best selling author Mo Isom describes it as, "We're flooded with Instagram bikini pics." It was estimated in 2016 that in 2019 the USA would be the largest swimwear market (US$10 billion), followed by Europe (US$5 billion), Asia–Pacific (US$4 billion) and Middle East and Africa (about 1 billion). Outside the Western world. South Asia. The 1967 Bollywood film "An Evening in Paris" is mostly remembered because it featured actress Sharmila Tagore as the first Indian actress to wear a bikini on film. She also posed in a bikini for the glossy "Filmfare" magazine. The costume shocked a conservative Indian audience, but it also set in motion a trend carried forward by Zeenat Aman in "Heera Panna" (1973) and "Qurbani" (1980), Dimple Kapadia in "Bobby" (1973), and Parveen Babi in "Yeh Nazdeekiyan" (1982). Indonesian actress Nurnaningsih's bikini clad photos were widely distributed in early 1950s, though she was banned in Kalimantan. Indian women generally wear bikinis when they vacation abroad or in Goa without the family. But, despite the conservative ideas prevalent in India, bikinis also become more popular in summer when women, from Bollywood stars to the middle class, take up swimming, often in a public space. A lot of tankinis, shorts and single-piece swimsuits are sold in the summer, along with real bikinis and bandeaukinis. The maximum sales for bikinis happen in the winter, the honeymoon season. For more coverage, designers Shivan Bhatiya and Narresh Kukreja invented the bikini-saree popularised by TV anchor Mandira Bedi. East Asia. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the Chinese bikini industry became a serious international threat for the Brazilian bikini industry. Huludao, Liaoning, China set the world record for the largest bikini parade in 2012, with 1,085 participants and a photo shoot involving 3,090 women. "Beijing bikini" refers to the Chinese urban practice of men rolling up their shirts to expose their midriff to cool off in public in the summer. In Japan, wearing a bikini is common on the beach and at baths or pools. But, according to a 2013 study, 94% women are not body confident enough to wear a bikini in public without resorting to sarongs, zip-up sweatshirts, T-shirts, or shorts. Japanese women also often wear a "facekini" to protect their face from sunburns. Middle East. In most parts of the Middle East, bikinis are either banned or are highly controversial. On March 18, 1973, when Lebanese magazine "Ash-Shabaka" printed a bikini-clad woman on the cover, they had to make a second version with only the face of the model. In 2011, when Huda Naccache (Miss Earth 2011) posed for the cover of "Lilac" (based in Israel), she became the first bikini-clad Arab model on the cover of an Arabic magazine. Lebanese-Australian fashion designer Aheda Zanetti created the "burkini" as a modest option to the bikini, which has become very popular among Muslims. Rehab Shaaban, an Egyptian designer, tried an even more abaya-like design, but her design was banned due to safety reasons. Variants. While the name "bikini" was at first applied only to beachwear that revealed the wearer's navel, today the fashion industry considers any two-piece swimsuit a bikini. Modern bikini fashions are characterized by a simple, brief design: two triangles of fabric that form a bra and cover the woman's breasts and a third that forms a panty cut below the navel that covers the groin and the intergluteal cleft. Bikinis can and have been made out of almost every possible clothing material, and the fabrics and other materials used to make bikinis are an essential element of their design. Modern bikinis were first made of cotton and jersey, but in the 1960s, Lycra became the common material. Alternative swimwear fabrics such as velvet, leather, and crocheted squares surfaced in the early 1970s. In a single fashion show in 1985, there were two-piece suits with cropped tank tops instead of the usual skimpy bandeaux, suits that resembled bikinis from the front and one-pieces from the back, suspender straps, ruffles, and deep navel-baring cutouts. Metal and stone jewelry pieces are now often used to dress up look and style according to tastes. To meet the fast pace of demands, some manufacturers now offer made-to-order bikinis ready in as few as seven minutes. The world's most expensive bikini was designed in February 2006 by Susan Rosen; containing of diamond, it was valued at £20 million. Major styles. There is a range of distinct bikini styles available — string/tie-side bikinis, monokinis (topless or top and bottom connected), trikinis (three pieces instead of two), tankinis (tank top, bikini bottom), camikinis (camisole top, bikini bottom), bandeaukinis (bandeau top, bikini bottom), skirtinis (bikini top, skirt bottom), microkinis, sling bikinis (or suspender bikinis), thong and g-string bikinis, and teardrop bikinis. In sport. Bikinis have become a major component of marketing various women's sports. It is an official uniform for beach volleyball and is widely worn in athletics and other sports. Sports bikinis have gained popularity since the 1990s. However, the trend has raised significant criticism in recent years among people who view it as an attempt to sell sex. Female swimmers do not commonly wear bikinis in competitive swimming. The International Swimming Federation (FINA) voted to prohibit female swimmers from racing in bikinis in its meeting at Rome in 1960. Beach volleyball. In 1994, the bikini became the official uniform of women's Olympic beach volleyball. In 1999, the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) standardized beach volleyball uniforms, with the bikini becoming the required uniform for women. That regulation bottom is called a "bun-hugger", and players names are often written on the back of the bottom. The uniform made its Olympic debut at Bondi Beach, Sydney during the 2000 Summer Olympics amid some criticism. It was the fifth-largest television audience of all the sports at the 2000 Games. Much of the interest was attributed to the sex appeal of bikini-clad players, along with their athletic ability. Bikini-clad dancers and cheerleaders entertain the audience during match breaks in many beach volleyball tournaments, including the Olympics. Indoor volleyball costumes followed suit, becoming smaller and tighter. Some sports officials criticized the FIVB uniform as exploitative and impractical in colder weather. It also drew the ire of some athletes. At the 2006 Asian Games at Doha, Qatar, only one Muslim country – Iraq – fielded a team in the beach volleyball competition because of concerns that the uniform was inappropriate. They refused to wear bikinis. The weather during the evening games in 2012 London Olympics was so cold that some players wore shirts and leggings. Earlier in 2012, FIVB had announced it would allow shorts (maximum length above the knee) and sleeved tops at games. Richard Baker, the federation spokesperson, said that "many of these countries have religious and cultural requirements so the uniform needed to be more flexible". The bikini remains preferred by most players and corporate sponsors. The US women's team has cited several advantages of bikini uniforms, such as comfort while playing on sand during hot weather. Competitors Natalie Cook and Holly McPeak support the bikini as a practical uniform for a sport played on sand during the heat of summer. Olympic gold medal winner Kerry Walsh said, "I love our uniforms." According to fellow gold medalist Misty May-Treanor and Walsh, it does not restrict movement. One feminist viewpoint sees the bikini uniform as objectification of women athletes. US beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece described the bikini bottoms as uncomfortable with constant "yanking and fiddling." Many female beach volleyball players have sustained injuries by over-training the abdominal muscles while many others have gone through augmentation mammoplasty to look appealing in their uniforms. Australian competitor Nicole Sanderson said about match break entertainment that "it's kind of disrespectful to the female players. I'm sure the male spectators love it, but I find it a little bit offensive." Sports journalism expert Kimberly Bissell conducted a study on the camera angles used during the 2004 Summer Olympics beach volleyball games. Bissell found that 20% of the camera angles were focused on the women's chests, and 17% on their buttocks. Bissell theorized that the appearance of the players draws fans attention more than their actual athleticism. Sports commentator Jeanne Moos commented, "Beach volleyball has now joined go-go girl dancing as perhaps the only two professions where a bikini is the required uniform." British Olympian Denise Johns argues that the regulation uniform is intended to be "sexy" and to attract attention. Rubén Acosta, president of the FIVB, says that it makes the game more appealing to spectators. Bodybuilding. From the 1950s to mid-1970s, men's bodybuilding contest formats were often supplemented with women's beauty contests or bikini shows. The winners earned titles like Miss Body Beautiful, Miss Physical Fitness and Miss Americana, and also presented trophies to the winners of the men's contest. In the 1980s, the Ms Olympia competition started in the US and in the UK the NABBA (National Amateur Body Building Association) renamed Miss Bikini International to Ms Universe. In 1986, the Ms Universe competition was divided into two sections – "physique" (for a more muscular physique) and "figure" (traditional feminine presentation in high heels). In November 2010 the IFBBF (International Federation of BodyBuilding & Fitness) introduced a women's bikini contest for women who do not wish to build their muscles to figure competition levels. Costumes are regulation "posing trunks" (bikini briefs) for both men and women. Female bodybuilders in America are prohibited from wearing thongs or T-back swimsuits in contests filmed for television, though they are allowed to do so by certain fitness organizations in closed events. For men, the dress code specifies "swim trunks only (no shorts, cut-off pants, or Speedos)." Sports. Women in athletics often wear bikinis of similar size as those worn in beach volleyball. Amy Acuff, a US high-jumper, wore a black leather bikini instead of a track suit at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Runner Florence Griffith-Joyner mixed bikini bottoms with one-legged tights at the 1988 Summer Olympics, earning her more attention than her record-breaking performance in the women's 200 meters event. In the 2007 South Pacific Games, the rules were adjusted to allow players to wear less revealing shorts and cropped sports tops instead of bikinis. At the 2006 Asian Games, organizers banned bikini-bottoms for female athletes and asked them to wear long shorts. String bikinis and other revealing clothes are common in surfing, though most surfing bikinis are more robust with more coverage than sunning bikinis. "Surfing Magazine" printed a pictorial of Kymberly Herrin, "Playboy" Playmate March 1981, surfing in a revealing bikini, and eventually started an annual bikini issue. The Association of Surfing Professionals often pairs female surf meets with bikini contests, an issue that divides the female pro-surfing community into two parts. It has often been more profitable to win the bikini contest than the female surfing event. In 2021, the Norway women's national beach handball team was fined €1500 for being improperly dressed after the women wore bike shorts instead of bikini bottoms at a European championship match in Bulgaria. Critics derided the fine and the underlying rule. Norway's minister for culture and sport Abid Raja described the fine as being "completely ridiculous". Former tennis champion Billie Jean King supported the team tweeting "The sexualisation of women athletes must stop". Although the Norwegian Handball Federation announced they would pay the fines, pop singer Pink offered to pay for them. Later, in November 2021, the International Handball Federation changed their dress rules to allow female players to wear some kinds of shorts, specifying "Female athletes must wear short tight pants with a close fit". Body ideals. In 1950, American swimsuit mogul Fred Cole, owner of Cole of California, told "Time" that bikinis were designed for "diminutive Gallic women", as because "French girls have short legs... swimsuits have to be hiked up at the sides to make their legs look longer." In 1961, "The New York Times" reported the opinion that the bikini is permissible for people who are not "too fat or too thin". In the 1960s etiquette writer Emily Post decreed that "[A bikini] is for perfect figures only, and for the very young." In "The Bikini Book" by Kelly Killoren Bensimon, swimwear designer Norma Kamali says, "Anyone with a tummy" should not wear a bikini. Since then, a number of bikini designers including Malia Mills have encouraged women of all ages and body types to take up the style. The 1970s saw the rise of the lean ideal of female body and figures like Cheryl Tiegs. Her figure remained in vogue in the 21st century. The fitness boom of the 1980s led to one of the biggest leaps in the evolution of the bikini. According to Mills, "The leg line became superhigh, the front was superlow, and the straps were superthin." Women's magazines used terms like "Bikini Belly", and workout programs were launched to develop a "bikini-worthy body". The tiny "fitness-bikinis" made of lycra were launched to cater to this hardbodied ideal. Movies like "Blue Crush" and TV reality shows like "Surf Girls" merged the concepts of bikini models and athletes together, further accentuating the toned body ideal. Motivated by yearly Spring Break festivities that mark the start of the bikini season in North America, many women diet in an attempt to achieve the ideal bikini body; some take this to extremes including self-starvation, leading to eating disorders. In 1993, Suzy Menkes, then Fashion Editor of the "International Herald Tribune", suggested that women had begun to "revolt" against the "body ideal" and bikini "exposure." She wrote, "Significantly, on the beaches as on the streets, some of the youngest and prettiest women (who were once the only ones who dared to bare) seem to have decided that exposure is over." Nevertheless, former professional beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece, who competed in a bikini, claimed that "confidence" alone can make a bikini sexy. One survey commissioned by Diet Chef, a UK home delivery service, reported by "The Today Show" and ridiculed by "More" magazine, showed that women should stop wearing bikinis by the age of 47. Bikini underwear. Certain types of underwear are described as bikini underwear and are designed for men and women. For women, bikini or bikini-style underwear is underwear that is similar in size and form to a regular bikini. It can refer to virtually any undergarment that provides less coverage to the midriff than lingerie, panties or knickers, especially suited to clothing such as crop tops. For men, bikini briefs are underpants that resemble women's bikini bottoms, being smaller and more revealing than men's classic briefs. Men's bikini briefs can be low- or high-side that are usually lower than the true waist, often at hips, and usually have no access pouch or flap, nor leg bands at tops of thighs. String bikini briefs have front and rear sections that meet in the crotch but not at the waistband, with no fabric on the side of the legs. Swimwear and underwear have similar design considerations, both being form-fitting garments. The main difference is that, unlike underwear, swimwear is open to public view. The swimsuit was, and is, following underwear styles, and at about the same time that attitudes towards the bikini began to change, underwear underwent a redesign towards a minimal, unboned design that emphasized comfort first. History. As the swimsuit was evolving, underwear also started to change. Between 1900 and 1940, swimsuit lengths followed the changes in underwear designs. In the 1920s women started discarding the corset, while the Cadole company of Paris started developing something they called the "breast girdle". During the Great Depression, panties and bras became softly constructed and were made of various elasticized yarns making underwear fit like a second skin. By the 1930s underwear styles for both women and men were influenced by the new brief models of swimwear from Europe. Although the waistband was still above the navel, the leg openings of the panty brief were cut in an arc to rise from the crotch to the hip joint. The brief served as a template for most variations of panties for the rest of the century. Warner standardized the concept of Cup size in 1935. The first underwire bra was developed in 1938. Beginning in the late thirties, , a type of men's briefs, were introduced, featuring very high-cut leg openings and a lower rise to the waistband. Howard Hughes designed a push-up bra to be worn by Jane Russell in "The Outlaw" in 1943, although Russell stated in interviews that she never wore the 'contraption'. In 1950 Maidenform introduced the first official bust enhancing bra. By the 1960s, the bikini swimsuit influenced panty styles and coincided with the cut of the new lower rise jeans and pants. In the seventies, with the emergence of skintight jeans, thong versions of the panty became mainstream, since the open, stringed back eliminated any tell-tale panty lines across the rear and hips. By the 1980s the design of the French-cut panty pushed the waistband back up to the natural waistline and the rise of the leg openings was nearly as high (French Cut panties come up to the waist, has a high cut leg, and usually are full in the rear). As with the bra and other type of lingerie, manufacturers of the last quarter of the century marketed panty styles that were designed primarily for their sexual allure. From this decade sexualization and eroticization of the male body was on the rise. The male body was celebrated through advertising campaigns for brands such as Calvin Klein, particularly by photographers Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts. Male bodies and men's undergarments were commodified and packaged for mass consumption, and swimwear and sportswear were influenced by sports photography and fitness. Over time, swimwear evolved from weighty wool to high-tech skin-tight garments, eventually cross-breeding with sportswear, underwear and exercise wear, resulting in the interchangeable fashions of the 1990s. Bikini waxing. Bikini waxing is the epilation of pubic hair beyond the bikini line by use of waxing. The bikini line delineates the part of a woman's pubic area to be covered by the bottom part of a bikini, which means any pubic hair visible beyond the boundaries of a swimsuit. Visible pubic hair is widely culturally disapproved, considered to be embarrassing, and often removed. As popularity of bikinis grew, the acceptability of pubic hair diminished. But, with certain styles of women's swimwear, pubic hair may become visible around the crotch area of a swimsuit. With the reduction in the size of swimsuits, especially since the advent of the bikini after 1945, the practice of bikini waxing has also become popular. The Brazilian style which became popular with the rise of thong bottoms. Depending on the style of bikini-bottom and the amount of skin visible outside the bikini, pubic hair may be styled into several styles: American waxing (removal of pubic hair from the sides, top of the thighs, and under the navel), French waxing (leaving only a vertical strip in front), or Brazilian waxing (removal of all hair in the pelvic area, particularly suitable for thong bottoms). Bikini tan. The tan lines created by the wearing of a bikini while tanning are known as a bikini tan. These tan lines separate pale breasts, crotch, and buttocks from otherwise tanned skin. Prominent bikini tan lines were popular in the 1990s, and a spa in Brazil started offering perfect bikini tan lines using masking tapes in 2016. As bikini-style swimsuits leave most of the body exposed to potentially dangerous UV radiation, overexposure can cause sunburn, skin cancer, as well as other acute and chronic health effects on the skin, eyes, and immune system. As a result, medical organizations recommend that bikini wearers protect themselves from UV radiation by using broad-spectrum sunscreen, which has been shown to protect against sunburn, skin cancer, wrinkling and sagging skin. A 1969 innovation of tan-through swimwear uses fabric which is perforated with thousands of micro holes that are nearly invisible to the naked eye, but which let enough sunlight through to produce a line-free tan.
4551	196446	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4551	Babur	Babur (; 14 February 148326 December 1530; born Zahīr ud-Dīn Muhammad) was the founder of the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent. He was a descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan through his father and mother respectively. He was also given the posthumous name of "Firdaws Makani" ('Dwelling in Paradise'). Born in Andijan in the Fergana Valley (now in Uzbekistan), Babur was the eldest son of Umar Shaikh Mirza II (1456–1494, Timurid governor of Fergana from 1469 to 1494) and a great-great-great-grandson of Timur (1336–1405). Babur ascended the throne of Fergana in its capital Akhsikath in 1494 at the age of twelve and faced rebellion. He conquered Samarkand two years later, only to lose Fergana soon after. In his attempt to reconquer Fergana, he lost control of Samarkand. In 1501, his attempt to recapture both the regions failed when the Uzbek prince Muhammad Shaybani defeated him and founded the Khanate of Bukhara. In 1504, he conquered Kabul, which was under the putative rule of Abdur Razaq Mirza, the infant heir of Ulugh Beg II. Babur formed a partnership with the Safavid emperor Ismail I and reconquered parts of Turkestan, including Samarkand, only to again lose it and the other newly conquered lands to the Shaybanids. After losing Samarkand for the third time, Babur turned his attention to India and employed aid from the neighbouring Safavid and Ottoman empires. He defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the Sultan of Delhi, at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526 and founded the Mughal Empire. Before the defeat of Lodi at Delhi, the Sultanate of Delhi had been a spent force, long in a state of decline. The rival adjacent Kingdom of Mewar under the rule of Rana Sanga had become one of the most powerful states in North India. Sanga unified several Rajput clans for the first time since Prithviraj Chauhan and advanced on Babur with a grand coalition of 80,000-100,000 Rajputs, engaging Babur in the Battle of Khanwa. Babur arrived at Khanwa with 40,000-50,000 soldiers. Nonetheless, Sanga suffered a major defeat due to Babur's skillful troop positioning and use of gunpowder, specifically matchlocks and small cannons. The battle was one of the most decisive events in Indian history, more so than the First Battle of Panipat, as the defeat of Rana Sanga was a watershed event in the Mughal conquest of North India. Religiously, Babur started his life as a staunch Sunni Muslim, but he underwent significant evolution. Babur became more tolerant as he conquered new territories and grew older, allowing other religions to peacefully coexist in his empire and at his court. He also displayed a certain attraction to theology, poetry, geography, history, and biology—disciplines he promoted at his court—earning him a frequent association with representatives of the Timurid Renaissance. His religious and philosophical stances are characterized as humanistic. Babur married several times. Notable among his children were Humayun, Kamran Mirza, Hindal Mirza, Masuma Sultan Begum, and the author Gulbadan Begum. Babur died in 1530 in Agra and Humayun succeeded him. Babur was first buried in Agra but, as per his wishes, his remains were moved to Kabul and reburied. He ranks as a national hero in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Many of his poems have become popular folk songs. He wrote the "Baburnama" in Chaghatai Turkic; it was translated into Persian during the reign (1556–1605) of his grandson, the emperor Akbar. Name. "Ẓahīr-ud-Dīn" is Arabic for "Defender of the Faith" (of Islam), and "Muhammad" honours the Islamic prophet. The name was chosen for Babur by the Sufi saint Khwaja Ahrar, who was the spiritual master of his father. The difficulty of pronouncing the name for his Central Asian Turco-Mongol army may have been responsible for the greater popularity of his nickname Babur, also variously spelled Baber, Babar, and Bābor. The name is generally taken in reference to the Persian word "babur" (), meaning "tiger" or "panther". The word repeatedly appears in Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh" and was borrowed into the Turkic languages of Central Asia. Background. Babur's memoirs form the main source for details of his life. They are known as the "Baburnama" and were written in Chagatai, his first language, though, according to Dale, "his Turkic prose is highly Persianized in its sentence structure, morphology or word formation and vocabulary." "Baburnama" was translated into Persian during the rule of Babur's grandson Akbar. Babur was born on 14 February 1483 in the city of Andijan, Fergana Valley, contemporary Uzbekistan. He was the eldest son of Umar Shaikh Mirza II, ruler of the Fergana Valley, the son of Abū Saʿīd Mirza (and grandson of Miran Shah, who was himself son of Timur) and his wife Qutlugh Nigar Khanum, daughter of Yunus Khan, the ruler of Moghulistan (a descendant of Genghis Khan). Babur hailed from the Turkic Barlas tribe, which was of Mongol origin and had embraced the Turco-Persian tradition They had also converted to Islam centuries earlier and resided in Turkestan and Khorasan. Aside from the Chaghatai Turkic, Babur was equally fluent in Classical Persian, the lingua franca of the Timurid elite. Some of Babur's relatives, such as his uncles Mahmud Khan (Moghul Khan) and Ahmad Khan, continued to identify as Mongols, and allowed him to use their Mongol troops to help recover his fortunes in the turbulent years that followed. Hence, Babur, though nominally a Mongol (or "Moghul" in Persian language), drew much of his support from the local Turkic and Iranian people of Central Asia, and his army was diverse in its ethnic makeup. It included Sarts, Tajiks, ethnic Afghans, Arabs, as well as Barlas and Chaghatayid Turko-Mongols from Central Asia. Ruler of Central Asia. As Timurid ruler of Fergana. In 1494, eleven-year-old Babur became the Timurid ruler of Fergana, in present-day Uzbekistan, after his father Umar Sheikh Mirza died "while tending pigeons in an ill-constructed dovecote that toppled into the ravine below the palace". During this time, two of his uncles from the neighbouring kingdoms, who were hostile to his father, and a group of nobles who wanted his younger brother Jahangir to be the ruler, threatened his succession to the throne. His uncles were relentless in their attempts to dislodge him from this position as well as from many of his other territorial possessions to come. Babur was able to secure his throne mainly because of help from his maternal grandmother, Aisan Daulat Begum, although there was also some luck involved. Most territories around his kingdom were ruled by his relatives, who were descendants of either Timur or Genghis Khan, and were constantly in conflict. At that time, rival princes were fighting over the city of Samarkand to the west, which was ruled by his paternal cousin. Babur had a great ambition to capture the city. In 1497, he besieged Samarkand for seven months before eventually gaining control over it. He was fifteen years old and for him the campaign was a huge achievement. Babur was able to hold the city despite desertions in his army, but he later fell seriously ill. Meanwhile, a rebellion back home, approximately away, amongst nobles who favoured his brother, robbed him of Fergana. As he was marching to recover it, he left Samarkand to Sultan Mahmud Mirza, leaving him with neither territory in his possession. He had held Samarkand for 100 days, and he considered this defeat as his biggest loss, obsessing over it even later in his life after his conquests in India. For three years, Babur concentrated on building a strong army, recruiting widely amongst the Tajiks of Badakhshan in particular. In 1500–1501, he again laid siege to Samarkand, and indeed he took the city briefly, but he was in turn besieged by his most formidable rival, Muhammad Shaybani, Khan of the Uzbeks. The situation became such that Babar was compelled to give his sister, Khanzada, to Shaybani in marriage as part of the peace settlement. Only after this were Babur and his troops allowed to depart the city in safety. Samarkand, his lifelong obsession, was thus lost again. He then tried to reclaim Fergana, but lost the battle there also and, escaping with a small band of followers, he wandered the mountains of central Asia and took refuge with hill tribes. By 1502, he had resigned all hopes of recovering Fergana; he was left with nothing and was forced to try his luck elsewhere. He finally went to Tashkent, which was ruled by his maternal uncle, but he found himself less than welcome there. Babur wrote, "During my stay in Tashkent, I endured much poverty and humiliation. No country, or hope of one!" Thus, during the ten years since becoming the ruler of Fergana, Babur suffered many short-lived victories and was without shelter and in exile, aided by friends and peasants. At Kabul. Kabul was ruled by Babur's paternal uncle Ulugh Beg II, who died leaving only an infant as heir. The city was then claimed by Mukin Begh, who was considered to be a usurper and was opposed by the local populace. In 1504, Babur was able to cross the snowy Hindu Kush mountains and capture Kabul from the remaining Arghunids, who were forced to retreat to Kandahar. With this move, he gained a new kingdom, re-established his fortunes and would remain its ruler until 1526. In 1505, because of the low revenue generated by his new mountain kingdom, Babur began his first expedition to India; in his memoirs, he wrote, "My desire for Hindustan had been constant. It was in the month of Shaban, the Sun being in Aquarius, that we rode out of Kabul for Hindustan". It was a brief raid across the Khyber Pass. In the same year, Babur united with Sultan Husayn Mirza Bayqarah of Herat, a fellow Timurid and distant relative, against their common enemy, the Uzbek Shaybani. However, this venture did not take place because Husayn Mirza died in 1506 and his two sons were reluctant to go to war. Babur instead stayed at Herat after being invited by the two Mirza brothers. It was then the cultural capital of the eastern Muslim world. Though he was disgusted by the vices and luxuries of the city, he marvelled at the intellectual abundance there, which he stated was "filled with learned and matched men". He became acquainted with the work of the Chagatai poet Mir Ali Shir Nava'i, who encouraged the use of Chagatai as a literary language. Nava'i's proficiency with the language, which he is credited with founding, may have influenced Babur in his decision to use it for his memoirs. He spent two months there before being forced to leave because of diminishing resources; it later was overrun by Shaybani and the Mirzas fled. Babur became the only reigning ruler of the Timurid dynasty after the loss of Herat, and many princes sought refuge with him at Kabul because of Shaybani's invasion in the west. He thus assumed the title of "Padshah" (emperor) among the Timurids—though this title was insignificant since most of his ancestral lands were taken, Kabul itself was in danger and Shaybani continued to be a threat. Babur prevailed during a potential rebellion in Kabul, but two years later a revolt among some of his leading generals drove him out of Kabul. Escaping with very few companions, Babur soon returned to the city, capturing Kabul again and regaining the allegiance of the rebels. Meanwhile, Shaybani was defeated and killed by Ismail I, Shah of Shia Safavid Persia, in 1510. Babur and the remaining Timurids used this opportunity to reconquer their ancestral territories. Over the following few years, Babur and Shah Ismail formed a partnership in an attempt to take over parts of Central Asia. In return for Ismail's assistance, Babur permitted the Safavids to act as a suzerain over him and his followers. Thus, in 1513, after leaving his brother Nasir Mirza to rule Kabul, he managed to take Samarkand for the third time; he also took Bokhara but lost both again to the Uzbeks. Shah Ismail reunited Babur with his sister Khānzāda, who had been imprisoned by and forced to marry the recently deceased Shaybani. Babur returned to Kabul after three years in 1514. The following 11 years of his rule mainly involved dealing with relatively insignificant rebellions from Afghan tribes, his nobles and relatives, in addition to conducting raids across the eastern mountains. Babur began to modernise and train his army despite it being, for him, relatively peaceful times. Foreign relations. Determined to conquer the Uzbeks and recapture his ancestral homeland, Babur was wary of their allies the Ottomans, and made no attempt to establish formal diplomatic relations with them. He did, however, employ the matchlock commander Mustafa Rumi and several other Ottomans. From them, he adopted the tactic of using matchlocks and cannons in the field (rather than only in sieges), which gave him an important advantage in India. Formation of the Mughal Empire. Babur still wanted to escape from the Uzbeks, and he chose India as a refuge instead of Badakhshan, which was to the north of Kabul. He wrote, "In the presence of such power and potency, we had to think of some place for ourselves and, at this crisis and in the crack of time there was, put a wider space between us and the strong foeman." After his third loss of Samarkand, Babur gave full attention to the conquest of North India, launching a campaign; he reached the Chenab River, now in Pakistan, in 1519. Until 1524, his aim was to only expand his rule to Punjab, mainly to fulfill the legacy of his ancestor Timur, since it used to be part of his empire. At the time parts of North India were part of the Delhi Sultanate, ruled by Ibrahim Lodi of the Lodi dynasty, but the sultanate was crumbling and there were many defectors. Babur received invitations from Daulat Khan Lodi, Governor of Punjab and Ala-ud-Din, uncle of Ibrahim. He sent an ambassador to Ibrahim, claiming himself the rightful heir to the throne, but the ambassador was detained at Lahore, Punjab, and released months later. Babur started for Lahore in 1524 but found that Daulat Khan Lodi had been driven out by forces sent by Ibrahim Lodi. When Babur arrived at Lahore, the Lodi army marched out and his army was routed. In response, Babur burned Lahore for two days, then marched to Dibalpur, placing Alam Khan, another rebel uncle of Lodi, as governor. Alam Khan was quickly overthrown and fled to Kabul. In response, Babur supplied Alam Khan with troops who later joined up with Daulat Khan Lodi, and together with about 30,000 troops, they besieged Ibrahim Lodi at Delhi. The sultan easily defeated and drove off Alam's army, and Babur realised that he would not allow him to occupy the Punjab. First Battle of Panipat. In November 1525, Babur got news at Peshawar that Daulat Khan Lodi had switched sides, and Babur drove out Ala-ud-Din. Babur then marched onto Lahore to confront Daulat Khan Lodi, only to see Daulat's army melt away at their approach. Daulat surrendered and was pardoned. Thus within three weeks of crossing the Indus River Babur had become the master of Punjab. Babur marched on to Delhi via Sirhind. He reached Panipat on 20 April 1526 and there met Ibrahim Lodi's numerically superior army of about 100,000 soldiers and 100 elephants. In the battle that began on the following day, Babur used the tactic of "Tulugma", encircling Ibrahim Lodi's army and forcing it to face artillery fire directly, as well as frightening its war elephants. Ibrahim Lodi died during the battle, thus ending the Lodi dynasty. Babur wrote in his memoirs about his victory: After the battle, Babur occupied Delhi, Gwalior and Agra, took the throne of Lodi, and laid the foundation for the eventual rise of Mughal rule in India. However, before he became North India's ruler, he had to fend off challengers, such as Rana Sanga. Many of Babur's men allegedly wanted to leave India due to its warm climate, but Babur motivated them to stay and expand his empire. Battle of Khanwa. The Battle of Khanwa was fought between Babur and the Rajput ruler of Mewar, Rana Sanga on 16 March 1527. Rana Sanga wanted to overthrow Babur, whom he considered to be a foreigner ruling in India, and also to extend the Rajput territories by annexing Delhi and Agra. He was supported by Afghan chiefs who felt Babur had been deceptive by refusing to fulfil promises made to them. Upon receiving news of Rana Sangha's advance towards Agra, Babur after annexing Gwalior and Bayana took a defensive position at Khanwa (currently in the Indian state of Rajasthan), from where he hoped to launch a counterattack later. According to K.V. Krishna Rao, Babur won the battle because of his "superior generalship" and modern tactics; the battle was one of the first in India that featured cannons and muskets. Rao also notes that Rana Sanga faced "treachery" when the Hindu chief Silhadi joined Babur's army with a garrison of 6,000 soldiers. Battle of Chanderi. The Battle of Chanderi took place the year after the Battle of Khanwa. On receiving news that Rana Sanga had made preparations to renew the conflict with him, Babur decided to isolate the Rana by defeating one of his staunchest allies, Medini Rai, who was the ruler of Malwa. Upon reaching Chanderi, on 20 January 1528, Babur offered Shamsabad to Medini Rao in exchange for Chanderi as a peace overture, but the offer was rejected. The outer fortress of Chanderi was taken by Babur's army at night, and the next morning the upper fort was captured. Babur himself expressed surprise that the upper fort had fallen within an hour of the final assault. Seeing no hope of victory, Medini Rai organized a "jauhar", during which women and children within the fortress immolated themselves. A small number of soldiers also collected in Medini Rao's house and killed each other in collective suicide. This sacrifice does not seem to have impressed Babur, who did not express a word of admiration for the enemy in his autobiography. Religious policy. Babur defeated and killed Ibrahim Lodi, the last Sultan of the Lodi dynasty, in 1526. Babur ruled for 4 years and was succeeded by his son Humayun whose reign was temporarily usurped by the Suri dynasty. During their 30-year rule, religious violence continued in India. Records of the violence and trauma, from Sikh-Muslim perspective, include those recorded in Sikh literature of the 16th century. The violence of Babur in the 1520s was witnessed by Guru Nanak, who commented upon it in four hymns. Historians suggest the early Mughal period of religious violence contributed to introspection and then the transformation in Sikhism from pacifism to militancy for self-defense. According to Babur's autobiography, "Baburnama", his campaign in northwest India targeted Hindus and Sikhs as well as apostates (non-Sunni sects of Islam), and an immense number were killed, with Muslim camps building "towers of skulls of the infidels" on hillocks. In Babur's secret will, in the year 935AH, 1529 AD, to Humayun, Babur advises Humayun to administer justice according to the ways of every religion, avoid sacrifice of the cow, not to ruin the temples and shrines of any law obeying community, overlook the dissensions of the Shias and the Sunnis. Personal life and relationships. There are no descriptions about Babur's physical appearance, except from the paintings in the translation of the "Baburnama" prepared during the reign of Akbar. In his autobiography, Babur claimed to be strong and physically fit, and that he had swum across every major river he encountered, including twice across the Ganges River in North India. Babur did not initially know Old Hindi; however, his Turkic poetry indicates that he picked up some of its vocabulary later in life. Unlike his father, he had ascetic tendencies and did not have any great interest in women. In his first marriage, he was "bashful" towards Aisha Sultan Begum, later losing his affection for her. Babur showed similar shyness in his interactions with Baburi, a boy in his camp with whom he had an infatuation around this time, recounting that: However, Babur acquired several more wives and concubines over the years, and as required for a prince, he was able to ensure the continuity of his line. Babur's first wife, Aisha Sultan Begum, was his paternal cousin, the daughter of Sultan Ahmad Mirza, his father's brother. She was an infant when betrothed to Babur, who was himself five years old. They married eleven years later, . The couple had one daughter, Fakhr-un-Nissa, who died within a year in 1500. Three years later, after Babur's first defeat at Fergana, Aisha left him and returned to her father's household. In 1504, Babur married Zaynab Sultan Begum, who died childless within two years. In the period 1506–08, Babur married four women, Maham Begum (in 1506), Masuma Sultan Begum, Gulrukh Begum and Dildar Begum. Babur had four children by Maham Begum, of whom only one survived infancy. This was his eldest son and heir, Humayun. Masuma Sultan Begum died during childbirth; the year of her death is disputed (either 1508 or 1519). Gulrukh bore Babur two sons, Kamran and Askari, and Dildar Begum was the mother of Babur's youngest son, Hindal. Babur later married Mubaraka Yusufzai, a Pashtun woman of the Yusufzai tribe. Gulnar Aghacha and Nargul Aghacha were two Circassian slaves given to Babur as gifts by Tahmasp Shah Safavi, the Shah of Persia. They became "recognized ladies of the royal household." During his rule in Kabul, when there was a time of relative peace, Babur pursued his interests in literature, art, music and gardening. Previously, he never drank alcohol and avoided it when he was in Herat. In Kabul, he first tasted it at the age of thirty. He then began to drink regularly, host wine parties and consume preparations made from opium. Though religion had a central place in his life, Babur also approvingly quoted a line of poetry by one of his contemporaries: "I am drunk, officer. Punish me when I am sober". He quit drinking for health reasons before the Battle of Khanwa, just two years before his death, and demanded that his court do the same. But he did not stop chewing narcotic preparations, and did not lose his sense of irony. He wrote, "Everyone regrets drinking and swears an oath (of abstinence); I swore the oath and regret that." Babur was opposed to the blind obedience towards the Chinggisid laws and customs that were influential in Turco-Mongol society:"Previously our ancestors had shown unusual respect for the Chingizid code (). They did not violate this code sitting and rising at councils and court, at feasts and dinners. [However] Chingez Khan's code is not a "nass qati" (categorical text) that a person must follow. Whenever one leaves a good custom, it should be followed. If ancestors leave a bad custom, however it is necessary to substitute a good one."Making clear that to him, the categorical text (i.e. the Quran) had displaced Genghis Khan's "Yassa" in moral and legal matters. Poetry. Babur was an acclaimed writer, who had a profound love for literature. His library was one of his most beloved possessions that he always carried around with him, and books were one of the treasures he searched for in new conquered lands. In his memoirs, when he listed sovereigns and nobles of a conquered land, he also mentioned poets, musicians and other educated people. Even though he died aged 47, Babur left a rich literary and scientific heritage. He authored his famous memoir the Bāburnāma, as well as beautiful lyrical works or "ghazals", treatises on Muslim jurisprudence (Mubayyin), poetics (Aruz risolasi), music, and a special calligraphy, known as "khatt-i Baburi". Babur's Bāburnāma is a collection of memoirs, written in the Chagatai language and later translated into Persian, the usual literary language of the Mughal court, during the rule of emperor Akbar. However, Babur's Turkic prose in Bāburnāma is already highly Persianized in its sentence structure, vocabulary, and morphology, and also consists of several phrases and minor poems in Persian. Babur wrote most of his poems in Chagatai Turkic, known to him as "Türki", but he also composed in Persian. However, he was mostly praised for his literary works written in Turkic, which drew comparison with the poetry of Ali-Shir Nava'i. The following ruba'i is an example of Babur's poetry written in Turkic, composed in the aftermath of his famous victory in North India to celebrate his ghazi status. <poem> </poem> <poem> For Islam's sake I wandered barren wastes; Against unbelievers and the land of Hind I mustered force. Having vowed to make myself a martyr, By God's leave I took up the sword as a ghazi.</poem> Family. Consorts. The identity of the mother of one of Babur's daughters, Gulrukh Begum is disputed. Gulrukh's mother may have been the daughter of Sultan Mahmud Mirza by his wife Pasha Begum who is referred to as Saliha Sultan Begum in certain secondary sources, however this name is not mentioned in the Baburnama or the works of Gulbadan Begum, which casts doubt on her existence. This woman may never have existed at all or she may even be the same woman as Dildar Begum. Issue. The sons of Babur were: The daughters of Babur were: Death and legacy. Babur died in Agra on and was succeeded by his eldest son, Humayun. He was first buried in Chauburji, Agra. Later, as per his wishes, his mortal remains were moved to Kabul and reburied in Bagh-e Babur in Kabul sometime between 1539 and 1544. It is generally agreed that, as a Timurid, Babur was not only significantly influenced by the Persian culture, but also that his empire gave rise to the expansion of the Persianate ethos in the Indian subcontinent. He emerged in his own telling as a Timurid Renaissance inheritor, leaving signs of Islamic, artistic literary, and social aspects in India. F. Lehmann states in the "Encyclopædia Iranica": Although all applications of modern Central Asian ethnicities to people of Babur's time are anachronistic, Soviet and Uzbek sources regard Babur as an ethnic Uzbek. At the same time, during the Soviet Union Uzbek scholars were censored for idealising and praising Babur and other historical figures such as Ali-Shir Nava'i. Babur is considered a national hero in Uzbekistan. On 14 February 2008, stamps in his name were issued in the country to commemorate his 525th birth anniversary. Many of Babur's poems have become popular Uzbek folk songs, especially by Sherali Joʻrayev. Some sources claim that Babur is a national hero in Kyrgyzstan too. In October 2005, Pakistan developed the Babur Cruise Missile, named in his honour. "Shahenshah Babar", an Indian film about the emperor directed by Wajahat Mirza was released in 1944. The 1960 Indian biographical film "Babar" by Hemen Gupta covered the emperor's life with Gajanan Jagirdar in the lead role. One of the enduring features of Babur's life was that he left behind the lively and well-written autobiography known as "Baburnama". Quoting Henry Beveridge, Stanley Lane-Poole writes: In his own words, "The cream of my testimony is this, do nothing against your brothers even though they may deserve it." Also, "The new year, the spring, the wine and the beloved are joyful. Babur make merry, for the world will not be there for you a second time."
4552	3366403	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4552	Bernard of Clairvaux	Bernard of Clairvaux, O.Cist. (; 109020 August 1153), venerated as Saint Bernard, was an abbot, mystic, co-founder of the Knights Templar, and a major leader in the reform of the Benedictines through the nascent Cistercian Order. Bernard was sent to found Clairvaux Abbey only a few years after becoming a monk at Cîteaux. In the year 1128, Bernard attended the Council of Troyes, at which he traced the outlines of the Rule of the Knights Templar, which soon became an ideal of Christian nobility. On the death of Pope Honorius II in 1130, a schism arose in the church. Bernard was a major proponent of Pope Innocent II, arguing effectively for his legitimacy over the Antipope Anacletus II. The eloquent abbot advocated crusades in general and convinced many to participate in the unsuccessful Second Crusade, notably through a famous sermon at Vézelay (1146). Bernard was canonized just 21 years after his death by Pope Alexander III. In 1830 Pope Pius VIII declared him a Doctor of the Church. Early life (1090–1113). Bernard's parents were Tescelin de Fontaine, lord of Fontaine-lès-Dijon, and Alèthe de Montbard, both members of the highest nobility of Burgundy. Bernard was the third of seven children, six of whom were sons. Aged nine, he was sent to a school at Châtillon-sur-Seine run by the secular canons of Saint-Vorles. Bernard had an interest in literature and rhetoric. Bernard's mother died when he was a youth. During his education with priests, he often thought of becoming one. In 1098, a group led by Robert of Molesme had founded Cîteaux Abbey, near Dijon, with the purpose of living according to a literal interpretation of the Rule of St. Benedict. They established new administrative structures among their monasteries, effectively creating a new order, known, after the first abbey, as the Order of Cistercians. After his mother died, Bernard decided to go to Cîteaux. In 1113 he and thirty other young noblemen of Burgundy, many of whom were his relatives, sought and gained admission to the new monastery. Bernard's example was so convincing that scores (among them his own father) followed him into the monastic life. As a result, he is considered the patron of religious vocations. Abbot of Clairvaux. The little community of reformed Benedictines at Cîteaux grew rapidly. Three years after entering, Bernard was sent with a group of twelve monks to found a new house at Vallée d'Absinthe, in the Diocese of Langres. This Bernard named "Claire Vallée", or "Clairvaux", on 25 June 1115, and the names of Bernard and Clairvaux soon became inseparable. Bernard was made abbot by William of Champeaux, Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne. From then on a strong friendship grew between the abbot and the bishop, who was professor of theology at Notre Dame of Paris and the founder of St. Victor Abbey in Paris. The beginnings of Clairvaux Abbey were austere and Bernard even more so. He had often been ill since his noviciate, due to extreme fasting. Nonetheless, candidates for the monastic life flocked to him in great numbers. Clairvaux soon started founding new communities. In 1118 Trois-Fontaines Abbey was founded in the diocese of Châlons; in 1119 Fontenay Abbey in the Diocese of Autun; and in 1121 Foigny Abbey near Vervins. In Bernard's lifetime, more than sixty abbeys followed, though some were not new foundations but transferrals to the Cistercians. Bernard spent extended time outside of the abbey as a preacher and a diplomat in the service of the pope. Described by Jean-Baptiste Chautard as "the most contemplative and yet at the same time the most active man of his age," Bernard described the disparate parts of his personality when he called himself the "chimera of his age." In addition to successes, Bernard also had his trials. Once, when he was absent from Clairvaux, the prior of the rival Abbey of Cluny went to Clairvaux and convinced Bernard's cousin, Robert of Châtillon, to become a Benedictine. This was the occasion of the longest and most emotional of Bernard's letters. When his brother Gerard died, Bernard was devastated, and his deep mourning was the inspiration for one of his most moving sermons. The Cluny Benedictines were unhappy to see Cîteaux gain such prominence so quickly, particularly since many Benedictines were becoming Cistercians. They criticized the Cistercian way of life. At the solicitation of William of St.-Thierry, Bernard defended the Cistercians with his "Apology". Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, answered Bernard and assured him of his admiration and friendship. In the meantime, Cluny launched a reform and Bernard befriended Abbot Suger. Doctor of the Church. Although acknowledged as "a difficult saint," Bernard has remained influential in the centuries since his death and was named a Doctor of the Church in 1830. In 1953, on the 800th anniversary of his death, Pope Pius XII devoted the encyclical "Doctor Mellifluus" to him. He labeled the abbot "the last of the Fathers." In opposition to the rational approach to understanding God used by the scholastics, Bernard preached in a poetic manner, using appeals to affect and conversion to nurture a more immediate faith experience. He is considered to be a master of Christian rhetoric: "His use of language remains perhaps his most universal legacy." He contributed lyrics to the Cistercian Hymnal. As a master of prayer, the abbot emphasized the value of personal, experiential friendship with Christ. Mariology. As a mariologist, Bernard was not original but exceptionally effective in spreading devotions to the Mother of God since his preaching found such a large audience. He emphasized Mary's humility and insisted on her central role in Christian theology. He developed the theology of her role as Co-Redemptrix and mediator. He famously called Mary an "aquaeduct of grace." Dante has Bernard speak a profound Marian prayer at the beginning of the thirty-third canto of the "Paradiso". In Goethe's "Faust", Bernard appears as a "Doctor Marianus," a committed devoté of the Virgin Mary. Schism. Bernard made a self-confident impression and had an undeniable charisma in the eyes of his contemporaries; "his first and greatest miracle," wrote the historian Holdsworth, "was himself." He defended the rights of the church against the encroachments of kings and princes, and recalled to their duty Henri Sanglier, archbishop of Sens and Stephen of Senlis, bishop of Paris. When Honorius II died in 1130, a schism broke out in the Church by the election of two popes, Pope Innocent II and Antipope Anacletus II. Innocent, having been banished from Rome by Anacletus, took refuge in France. King Louis VI convened a national council of the French bishops at Étampes and Bernard, summoned there by the bishops, was chosen to judge between the rival popes. He decided in favour of Innocent. Bernard travelled on to Italy and reconciled Pisa with Genoa, and Milan with the pope. The same year Bernard was again at the Council of Reims at the side of Innocent II. He then went to Aquitaine where he succeeded for the time in detaching William X, Duke of Aquitaine, from the cause of Anacletus. Germany had decided to support Innocent through Norbert of Xanten, who was a friend of Bernard's. Pope Innocent, however, insisted on Bernard's company when he met with Lothair II, Holy Roman Emperor. Lothair II became Innocent's strongest ally among the nobility. Although the councils of Étampes, Würzburg, Clermont, and Rheims all supported Innocent, large portions of the Christian world still supported Anacletus. In a letter by Bernard to German Emperor Lothair regarding Antipope Anacletus, Bernard wrote, "It is a disgrace for Christ that a Jew sits on the throne of St. Peter's" and "Anacletus has not even a good reputation with his friends, while Innocent is illustrious beyond all doubt." (One of Anacletus' great-great-grandparents, Benedictus, maybe Baruch in Hebrew, was a Jew who had converted to Christianity - but Anacletus himself was not a Jew, and his family had been Christians for three generations). Bernard wrote to Gerard of Angoulême (a letter known as Letter 126), which questioned Gerard's reasons for supporting Anacletus. Bernard later commented that Gerard was his most formidable opponent during the whole schism. After persuading Gerard, Bernard travelled to visit William X, Duke of Aquitaine. He was the hardest for Bernard to convince. He did not pledge allegiance to Innocent until 1135. After that, Bernard spent most of his time in Italy persuading the Italians to pledge allegiance to Innocent. In 1132, Bernard accompanied Innocent II into Italy, and at Cluny, the pope abolished the dues which Clairvaux used to pay to that abbey. This action gave rise to a quarrel between the White Monks and the Black Monks which lasted 20 years. In May of that year, the pope, supported by the army of Lothair III, entered Rome, but Lothair III, feeling himself too weak to resist the partisans of Anacletus, retired beyond the Alps, and Innocent sought refuge in Pisa in September 1133. Bernard had returned to France in June and was continuing the work of peacemaking which he had commenced in 1130. Towards the end of 1134, he made a second journey into Aquitaine, where William X had relapsed into schism. Bernard invited William to the Mass which he celebrated in the Church of La Couldre. At the Eucharist, he "admonished the Duke not to despise God as he did His servants". William yielded and the schism ended. Bernard went again to Italy, where Roger II of Sicily was endeavouring to withdraw the Pisans from their allegiance to Innocent. He recalled the city of Milan to obedience to the pope as they had followed the deposed Anselm V, Archbishop of Milan. For this, he was offered, and he refused, the see of Milan. He then returned to Clairvaux. Believing himself at last secure in his cloister, Bernard devoted himself to the composition of the works which won him the title of "Doctor of the Church". He wrote at this time his sermons on the Song of Songs. In 1137, he was again forced to leave the abbey by order of the pope to put an end to the quarrel between Lothair and Roger of Sicily. At the conference held at Palermo, Bernard succeeded in convincing Roger of the rights of Innocent II. He also silenced the final supporters who sustained the schism. Anacletus died of "grief and disappointment" in 1138, and with him, the schism ended. In 1139, Bernard assisted at the Second Council of the Lateran, in which the surviving adherents of the schism were definitively condemned. About the same time, Bernard was visited at Clairvaux by Malachy, Primate of All Ireland, and a very close friendship formed between them. Malachy wanted to become a Cistercian, but the pope would not give his permission. Malachy died at Clairvaux in 1148. Conflict with Abelard. Towards the close of the 11th century, a spirit of independence flourished within schools of philosophy and theology. The movement found an ardent and powerful advocate in Peter Abelard. Abelard's treatise on the Trinity had been condemned as heretical in 1121, and he was compelled to throw his own book into a fire. However, Abelard continued to develop his controversial teachings. Bernard is said to have held a meeting with Abelard intending to persuade him to amend his writings, during which Abelard repented and promised to do so. But once out of Bernard's presence, he reneged. Bernard then denounced Abelard to the pope and cardinals of the Curia. Abelard sought a debate with Bernard, but Bernard initially declined, saying he did not feel matters of such importance should be settled by logical analyses. Bernard's letters to William of St-Thierry also express his apprehension about confronting the preeminent logician. Abelard continued to press for a public debate, and made his challenge widely known, making it hard for Bernard to decline. In 1141, at the urgings of Abelard, the archbishop of Sens called a council of bishops, where Abelard and Bernard were to put their respective cases so Abelard would have a chance to clear his name. Bernard lobbied the prelates on the evening before the debate, swaying many of them to his view. The next day, after Bernard made his opening statement, Abelard decided to retire without attempting to answer. The council found in favour of Bernard and their judgment was confirmed by the pope. Abelard submitted without resistance, and he retired to Cluny to live under the protection of Peter the Venerable, where he died in 1142. The challenge of heresy. Bernard had occupied himself in sending bands of monks from his overcrowded monastery into Germany, Sweden, England, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland, and Italy. Some of these, at the command of Innocent II, took possession of Tre Fontane Abbey, from which Eugene III was chosen in 1145. Pope Innocent II died in the year 1143. His two successors, Pope Celestine II and Pope Lucius II, reigned only a short time, and then Bernard saw one of his disciples, Bernard of Pisa, known thereafter as Eugene III, raised to the Chair of Saint Peter. Bernard sent him, at the pope's own request, various instructions which comprise the often-quoted "De consideratione." Its main argument is that church reform ought to start with the pope. Temporal matters are merely accessories; Bernard insists that piety and meditation were to precede action. Having previously helped end the schism within the Church, Bernard was now called upon to combat heresy. Henry of Lausanne, a former Cluniac monk, had adopted the teachings of the Petrobrusians, followers of Peter of Bruys and spread them in a modified form after Peter's death. Henry of Lausanne's followers became known as Henricians. In June 1145, at the invitation of Cardinal Alberic of Ostia, Bernard travelled in southern France. His preaching, aided by his ascetic looks and simple attire, helped doom the new sects. Both the Henrician and the Petrobrusian faiths began to die out by the end of that year. Soon afterwards, Henry of Lausanne was arrested, brought before the bishop of Toulouse, and probably imprisoned for life. In a letter to the people of Toulouse, undoubtedly written at the end of 1146, Bernard calls upon them to extirpate the last remnants of the heresy. He also preached against Catharism. Prior to the second hearing of Gilbert of Poitiers at the Council of Reims 1148, Bernard held a private meeting with a number of the attendees, attempting to pressure them to condemn Gilbert. This offended the various cardinals in attendance, who then proceeded to insist that they were the only persons who could judge the case, and no verdict of heresy was placed against Gilbert. Monastic and clerical preaching. As abbot, Bernard often addressed his community, but he also spoke to other monastics and, in one particularly famous case, to students of theology in Paris. He gave the sermon "Ad clericos de conversione" (to clerics on conversion) in 1139 or early 1140, to a group of scholars and student clerics. His many sermons on the Song of Songs belong to the often-studied sermons he addressed to the monks at Clairvaux. Crusade preaching. Second Crusade (1146–1149). News came at this time from the Holy Land that alarmed Christendom. Christians had been defeated at the Siege of Edessa and most of the county had fallen into the hands of the Seljuk Turks. The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Crusader states were threatened with similar disaster. Deputations of the bishops of Armenia solicited aid from the pope, and the King of France also sent ambassadors. In 1144 Eugene III commissioned Bernard to preach the Second Crusade and granted the same indulgences for it which Pope Urban II had accorded to the First Crusade. There was at first virtually no popular enthusiasm for the crusade as there had been in 1095. Bernard found it expedient to dwell upon taking the cross as a potent means of gaining absolution for sin and attaining grace. On 31 March, with King Louis VII of France present, he preached to an enormous crowd in a field at Vézelay, making "the speech of his life". When he had finished, many of his listeners enlisted; they supposedly ran out of the cloth used to make crosses for the new recruits. Unlike the First Crusade, the new venture attracted royalty, such as the French queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and scores of high aristocrats and bishops. But an even greater show of support came from the common people. Bernard wrote Pope Eugene a few days afterwards, "Cities and castles are now empty. There is not left one man to seven women, and everywhere there are widows to still-living husbands." Bernard then passed into Germany, with reported miracles contributing to the success of his mission. King Conrad III of Germany and his nephew Frederick Barbarossa, received the cross from the hand of Bernard. Pope Eugenius came in person to France to encourage the enterprise. As in the First Crusade, the preaching led to attacks on Jews; a fanatical French monk named Radulf was apparently inspiring massacres of Jews in the Rhineland, Cologne, Mainz, Worms, and Speyer, with Radulf claiming Jews were not contributing financially to the rescue of the Holy Land. The archbishop of Cologne and the archbishop of Mainz were vehemently opposed to these attacks and asked Bernard to denounce them. This he did, but when the campaign continued, Bernard travelled from Flanders to Germany to deal with the problems in person. He then found Radulf in Mainz and was able to silence him, returning him to his monastery. The last years of Bernard's life were saddened by the failure of the Second Crusade he had preached, and the entire responsibility which was thrown upon him. Bernard sent an apology to the Pope and it is inserted in the second part of his ""Book of Considerations"." There he explains how the sins of the crusaders were the cause of their misfortune and failures. Wendish Crusade (1147). Bernard did not actually preach the Wendish Crusade, but he did write a letter that advocated subduing this group of Western Slavs so that they should not be an obstacle to the Second Crusade. He was for battling them "until such a time as, by God's help, they shall either be converted or deleted". A decree issued in Frankfurt stated that the letter should be proclaimed widely and read aloud, so that "the letter functioned as a sermon." Final years (1149–1153). The death of his contemporaries served as a warning to Bernard of his own approaching end. The first to die was Suger in 1152, of whom Bernard wrote to Eugene III, "If there is any precious vase adorning the palace of the King of Kings it is the soul of the venerable Suger." Conrad III and his son Henry died the same year. Bernard died at age sixty-three on 20 August 1153, after forty years of monastic life. He was buried at Clairvaux Abbey. After its destruction in 1792 by the French Revolutionary government his remains were transferred to Troyes Cathedral. Legacy. Bernard helped found 163 monasteries in different parts of Europe. Cistercians honour him as one of the greatest early Cistercians. His feast day is 20 August. Bernard is Dante Alighieri's last guide, in "Divine Comedy", as he travels through the Empyrean. John Calvin and Martin Luther quoted Bernard several times in support of the doctrine of "Sola Fide." Calvin also quotes him in setting forth his doctrine of forensic alien righteousness, or as it is commonly called imputed righteousness. Bernard introduced a major shift, a "fundamental reorientation" into medieval theology. The Couvent et Basilique Saint-Bernard, a collection of buildings dating from the 12th, 17th, and 19th centuries, is dedicated to Bernard and stands in his birthplace of Fontaine-lès-Dijon. Countless churches and chapels have St. Bernard as their patron saint. Works. The modern critical edition is "" (1957–1977), edited by Jean Leclercq. Bernard's works include: His sermons are also numerous: Misattributions. Numerous letters, treatises, and other works were falsely attributed to him. These include:
4554	17241157	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4554	Bishkek	Bishkek, formerly known as Pishpek (until 1926), and then Frunze (1926–1991), is the capital and largest city of Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek is also the administrative centre of the Chüy Region. Bishkek is situated near the border with Kazakhstan and has a population of 1,074,075, as of 2021. The Khanate of Kokand established the fortress of Pishpek in 1825 to control local caravan routes and to collect tribute from Kyrgyz tribes. On 4 September 1860, with the approval of the Kyrgyz, Russian forces led by Colonel Apollon Zimmermann destroyed the fortress. In the present day, the fortress ruins can be found just north of Jibek Jolu Street, near the new main mosque. A Russian settlement was established in 1868 on the site of the fortress under its original name, Pishpek. It lay within the General Governorship of Russian Turkestan and its Semirechye Oblast. The Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast was established in 1925 in Russian Turkestan, promoting Pishpek to its capital. In 1926, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union renamed the city "Frunze", after Bolshevik military leader Mikhail Frunze (1885–1925), who was born there. Frunze became the capital of the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936, during the final stages of national delimitation in the Soviet Union. In 1991, the Kyrgyz parliament changed the capital's name to a modified original name of Pishpek as Bishkek. Bishkek is situated at an altitude of about , just off the northern fringe of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too Range, an extension of the Tian Shan mountain range. These mountains rise to a height of . North of the city, a fertile and gently undulating steppe extends far north into neighboring Kazakhstan. The river Chüy drains most of the area. Bishkek is connected to the Turkestan–Siberia Railway by a spur line. Bishkek is a city of wide boulevards and marble-faced public buildings combined with numerous Soviet-style apartment blocks surrounding interior courtyards. There are also thousands of smaller, privately built houses, mostly outside the city centre. Streets follow a grid pattern, with most flanked on both sides by narrow irrigation channels, which provide water to trees which provide shade during the hot summers. Etymology. Bishkek is supposedly named after the paddle used to churn fermenting milk. The official website of the Bishkek's city hall provides the following etymological justification for the name of the city: the pregnant wife of a hero lost a paddle used to churn kumis. While looking for it, she suddenly gave birth to a boy, who she named Bishkek. Bishkek would grow up to be a noble figure and after his death, was buried on a mound near the banks of the Alamüdün. There, a tombstone was erected. The building was seen and described by travelers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Under Soviet rule, from 1926 to 1991, the city was named "Frunze" in honor of Bolshevik Mikhail Frunze. History. Based on DNA evidence, the area near Bishkek is considered one of the possible origins of the Black Death between AD 1346 and 1353. Kokhand rule. Originally a caravan rest stop, possibly founded by the Sogdians, on one of the branches of the Silk Road through the Tian Shan range, the location was fortified in 1825 by the khan of Kokand with a mud fort. In the last years of Kokhand rule, the Pishpek fortress was led by Atabek, the Datka. In 1844, the forces of Ormon Khan, the leader of the , briefly captured the fortress. Tsarist era. In 1860, Imperial Russia annexed the area, and the military forces of Colonel Apollon Zimmerman took and razed the fort. Colonel Zimmermann rebuilt the town over the destroyed fort and appointed field-Poruchik Titov as head of a new Russian garrison. The Imperial Russian government redeveloped the site from 1877 onward, encouraging the settlement of Russian peasants by giving them fertile land to develop. Soviet era. In 1926, the city became the capital of the newly established Kirghiz ASSR and was renamed Frunze after Mikhail Frunze, Lenin's close associate who was born in Bishkek and played key roles during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and during the Russian Civil War of the early 1920s. Independence era. The early 1990s were a tumultuous time for Bishkek. In June 1990, a state of emergency was declared following severe ethnic riots in southern Kyrgyzstan that threatened to spread to the capital. The city was renamed Bishkek on 5 February 1991, and Kyrgyzstan achieved independence later that year during the breakup of the Soviet Union. Before independence, the majority of Bishkek's population were ethnic Russians. In 2004, Russians made up approximately 20% of the city's population, and about in 2011. Bishkek is Kyrgyzstan's financial centre, with all of the country's 21 commercial banks headquartered there. During the Soviet era, the city was home to many industrial plants, but most have been shut down since 1991 or now operate on a much-reduced scale. One of Bishkek's largest employment centres today is the Dordoy Bazaar open market, where many of the Chinese goods imported to CIS countries are sold. Geography. Orientation. Although Bishkek itself is relatively young, its surrounding area has some sites of interest dating to prehistoric times. There are also sites from the Greco-Buddhist period, the period of Nestorian influence, the era of the Central Asian "khanates", and the Soviet period. The central part of the city is laid out on a rectangular grid plan. The city's main street is the east-west Chüy Avenue (Chüy Prospekti), named after the region's main river. In the Soviet era, it was called Lenin Avenue. Along or near it are many important government buildings and universities. These include the Academy of Sciences compound. The westernmost section of the avenue is known as Deng Xiaoping Avenue. Sovietskaya Street forms the primary north–south corridor through Bishkek. Officially, Sovietskaya Street has been renamed Yusup Abdrakhmanov Street, but it is still commonly referred to by its original name. Its northern and southern sections are called, respectively, Yelebesov and Baityk Batyr Streets. Several major shopping centres are located along with it, and in the north, it provides access to Dordoy Bazaar. Erkindik ("Freedom") Boulevard runs from north to south, from the main railroad station (Bishkek II) south of Chüy Avenue to the museum quarter and sculpture park just north of Chüy Avenue, and further north toward the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the past, it was called Dzerzhinsky Boulevard, named after a Communist revolutionary, Felix Dzerzhinsky, and its northern continuation is still called Dzerzhinsky Street. An important east–west street is Jibek Jolu ('Silk Road'). It runs parallel to Chüy Avenue about north of it and is part of the main east–west road of Chüy Region. Both the eastern and western bus terminals are located along Jibek Jolu. There is a Roman Catholic church located at ul. Vasiljeva 197 (near Rynok Bayat). It is the only Catholic cathedral in Kyrgyzstan. A stadium named in honour of Dolon Omurzakov is located near the centre of Bishkek. This is the largest stadium in the Kyrgyz Republic. Outer neighbourhoods. The Dordoy Bazaar, just inside the bypass highway on the north-eastern edge of the city, is a major retail and wholesale market. Outside the city. The Kyrgyz Ala-Too mountain range, some away, provides a spectacular backdrop to the city; the Ala Archa National Park is only a 30- to 45-minute drive away. Distances. Bishkek is about 300 km away directly from the country's second largest city Osh. However, its nearest large city is Almaty of Kazakhstan, which is 190 km to the east. Furthermore, it is 470 km from Tashkent (Uzbekistan), 680 km from Dushanbe (Tajikistan), and about 1,000 km each from Astana (Kazakhstan), Ürümqi (China), Islamabad (Pakistan), and Kabul (Afghanistan). Climate. Bishkek has a Mediterranean-influenced humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification "Dsa"), as the average mean temperature in the winter is below . Average precipitation is around per year. Average daily high temperatures range from in January to about during July. The summer months are dominated by dry periods, punctuated by the occasional thunderstorm, which produces strong gusty winds and rare dust storms. The mountains to the south provide a natural boundary and protection from damaging weather, as does the smaller mountain chain that runs north-west to south-east. In the winter months, sparse snow storms and frequent heavy fog are the dominating features. There are sometimes temperature inversions, during which the fog can last for days at a time. Demographics. Bishkek is the most populated city in Kyrgyzstan. Its population, estimated in 2021, was 1,074,075. From the foundation of the city to the mid-1990s, ethnic Russians and other peoples of European descent (Ukrainians, Germans) comprised the majority of the city's population. According to the 1970 census, the ethnic Kyrgyz were only 12.3%, while Europeans comprised more than 80% of the Frunze population. Now Bishkek is a predominantly Kyrgyz city, with 75% of its residents Kyrgyz, while European peoples make up around 15% of the population. Despite this fact, Russian is the main language while Kyrgyz continues losing ground, especially among the younger generations. Ecology and environment. Air quality. Emissions of air pollutants in Bishkek amounted to 14,400 tons in 2010. Among all cities in Kyrgyzstan, the level of air pollution in Bishkek is the highest, occasionally exceeding maximum allowable concentrations by several times, especially in the city centre. For example, concentrations of formaldehyde occasionally exceed maximum allowable limits by a factor of four. The hydrogeologist Zheenbek Kulbekov identifies coal-heating mainly in informal settlements ("samozakhvat"), the exhaust from private vehicles and the lack of air circulation as the three main factors for the grave air pollution in Kyrgyzstan's capital. The latter is mainly due to the haphazard construction of private multi-story buildings - in contradiction to former city plans developed up until the end of the USSR - which prompted discussion on a moratorium on the further construction of high-rise buildings. Responsibility for ambient air quality monitoring in Bishkek lies with the Kyrgyz State Agency of Hydrometeorology. There are seven air-quality monitoring stations in Bishkek, measuring levels of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, and ammonia. Economy. Bishkek uses the Kyrgyzstan currency, the som. The som's value fluctuates regularly but averaged around 86 som per U.S. dollar as of November 2024. The economy in Bishkek is primarily agricultural, and agricultural products are sometimes bartered in the outlying regions. The streets of Bishkek are regularly lined with produce vendors in a market-style venue. In most of the downtown area there is a more urban cityscape with banks, stores, markets, and malls. Sought-after goods include hand-crafted artisan pieces, such as statues, carvings, paintings, and many nature-based sculptures. Housing. As with many cities in post-Soviet states, housing in Bishkek has undergone extensive changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While housing was formerly distributed to citizens in the Soviet era, housing in Bishkek has since become privatised. Though single-family houses are slowly becoming more popular, the majority of the residents live in Soviet-era apartments. Despite the Kyrgyz economy experiencing growth, increases in available housing have been slow with very little new construction and a doubling of prices from 2001 to 2002. This changed by the 2010s when an unprecedented housing boom has transformed the city. By 2021, over 246 construction firms were active in Kyrgyzstan, primarily focusing on upscale residences, often marketed as 'business class' or 'premium class' accommodations. The southern part of the city, where a significant portion of new constructions is concentrated, faces a critical concern due to its proximity to the Issyk-Ata fault line. Compounded by the inadequately seismic-proof architecture of most of these buildings, this situation poses a serious threat to the safety of residents and has sparked criticism. Limited land availability propels private developers to encroach into socialist-era residential zones, resulting in the loss of green spaces and vital social infrastructure, including sports fields and playgrounds. Those unable to afford the high housing price within Bishkek, notably internal migrants from rural villages and small provincial towns, often have to resort to informal squatter settlements on the city's outskirts such as Ak Jar, Ak Jol, Ak Örgö, Altyn Kazyk, Archa Beshik, Kalys-Ordo, Kayndy-2, Kelechek, Muras-Ordo and TETS-2 Yntymak. These urban settlements are estimated to house 400,000 people or about 30 percent of Bishkek's population. While many of the settlements have lacked basic necessities such as electricity and running water, recently, the local government has pushed to provide these services. Government. Local government is administered by the Bishkek Mayor's Office. Askarbek Salymbekov was mayor until his resignation in August 2005, after which his deputy, Arstanbek Nogoev, took over the mayorship. Nogoev was in turn removed from his position in October 2007 through a decree of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and replaced by businessman and former first deputy prime minister Daniar Usenov. In July 2008 former head of the Kyrgyz Railways Nariman Tuleyev was appointed mayor, who was dismissed by the interim government after 7 April 2010. From April 2010 to February 2011 Isa Omurkulov, also a former head of the Kyrgyz Railways, was an interim mayor, and from 4 February 2011 to 14 December 2013 he was re-elected the mayor of Bishkek. Kubanychbek Kulmatov was nominated for election by parliamentary group of Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan in city kenesh, and he was elected as a new mayor on 15 January 2014, and stepped down on 9 February 2016. The next mayor, Albek Sabirbekovich Ibraimov, was also nominated for election by parliamentary group of Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan in city kenesh, and Bishkek City Kenesh elected him on 27 February 2016. The current mayor is Emil Abdykadyrov, who was elected on 24 February 2022. Administrative divisions. Bishkek city covers and is administered separately and not part of any region. Besides the city proper, one urban-type settlement and one village are administered by the city: Chong-Aryk and Orto-Say. The city is divided into 4 districts: Birinchi May, Lenin, Oktyabr and Sverdlov. Chong-Aryk and Orto-Say are part of Lenin District. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been discussion of replacing the Soviet era district names with ones that reflect Kyrgyz identity and history. Other former Soviet republics have widely replaced Soviet era place names; despite renaming the capital in 1991, Kyrgyzstan is the only nation in Central Asia to retain Soviet era names for districts in its capital. Culture. Bishkek is culturally the country's most important city. It is home to the National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic as well as a number of museums, e.g. the Kyrgyz State Historical Museum or the M. V. Frunze Museum. The national public broadcasting service KTRK or Kyrgyz Television is based in Bishkek. Newspapers in Bishkek include the English-language Bishkek Observer, the world's only dungan-language newspaper called Huimin bao and the Russian-language Vecherniy Bishkek newspaper. Religion. The largest religion is Sunni Islam, but since many Russians live in Kyrgyzstan, there is also a large Russian Orthodox community. The Bishkek Central Mosque is one of the largest in Central Asia. Bishkek is home to the Roman Catholic Apostolic Administration of Kyrgyzstan. Sports. Bishkek is home to Dolen Omurzakov Stadium, the largest football stadium in Kyrgyzstan and the only one eligible to host international matches. Several Bishkek-based football teams play on this pitch, including six-time Kyrgyzstan League champions, Dordoi Bishkek. Others include Alga Bishkek, Ilbirs Bishkek, and RUOR-Guardia Bishkek. Bishkek hosted the 2014 IIHF Challenge Cup of Asia – Division I. Education. Educational institutions in Bishkek include: In addition, the following international schools serve the expatriate community in Bishkek: Transportation. Mass public transport. Public transportation includes buses, electric trolleybuses, and public vans (alternatively known as minibuses or known in Russian as "marshrutka"). The first bus and trolley bus services in Bishkek were introduced in 1934 and 1951, respectively. Taxi cabs can be found throughout the city. The city is considering designing and building a light rail system. Commuter and long-distance buses. There are two main bus stations in Bishkek. The smaller old Eastern Bus Station is primarily the terminal for minibusses to various destinations within or just beyond the eastern suburbs, such as Kant, Tokmok, Kemin, Issyk Ata, or the Korday border crossing. Long-distance regular bus and minibus services to all parts of the country, as well as to Almaty (the largest city in neighbouring Kazakhstan) and Kashgar, China, run mostly from the newer grand Western Bus Station; only a smaller number run from the Eastern Station. The Dordoy Bazaar on the north-eastern outskirts of the city also contains makeshift terminals for frequent minibusses to suburban towns in all directions (from Sokuluk in the west to Tokmak in the east) and to some buses taking traders to Kazakhstan and Siberia. Rail. , the Bishkek-2 railway station sees only a few trains a day. It offers a popular three-day train service from Bishkek to Moscow. There are also long-distance trains that leave for Siberia (Novosibirsk and Novokuznetsk), via Almaty, over the TurkSib route, and to Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) in the Urals, via Astana. These services are remarkably slow (over 48 hours to Yekaterinburg), due to long stops at the border and the indirect route (the trains first have to go west for more than a before they enter the main TurkSib line and can continue to the east or north). For example, as of the fall of 2008, train No. 305 Bishkek-Yekaterinburg was scheduled to take 11 hours to reach the Shu junction—a distance of some by rail, and less than half of that by road. Air. The city is served by Manas International Airport (IATA code FRU), located approximately north-west of the city centre. In 2001, the United States obtained the right to use Manas International Airport as an air base for its military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia subsequently (2003) established an airbase of its own (Kant Air Base) near Kant, some east of Bishkek. It is based at a facility that used to be home to a major Soviet military pilot training school; one of its students, Hosni Mubarak, later became president of Egypt. Twin towns – sister cities. Bishkek is twinned with:
4560	19543030	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4560	Braveheart	Braveheart is a 1995 American epic historical war drama film directed and produced by Mel Gibson, who portrays Scottish warrior William Wallace in the First War of Scottish Independence against King Edward I of England. The film also stars Sophie Marceau, Patrick McGoohan, Catherine McCormack and Angus Macfadyen. The story is inspired by Blind Harry's 15th century epic poem "The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace" and was adapted for the screen by Randall Wallace. Development on the film initially started at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) when producer Alan Ladd Jr. picked up the project from Wallace, but when MGM was going through new management, Ladd left the studio and took the project with him. Despite initially declining, Gibson eventually decided to direct the film and to star as Wallace. The film, which was produced by Gibson's Icon Productions and The Ladd Company, was distributed by Paramount Pictures in the United States and Canada and by 20th Century Fox in other countries. Released on May 24, 1995, "Braveheart" was a critical and commercial success, receiving praise for its battle scenes, production design, musical score, and acting performances, though it received some criticism for its historical inaccuracies. The film also garnered numerous awards including the Academy Award for Best Picture. A legacy sequel, "Robert the Bruce", was released in 2019. Plot. In 1280, Edward I of England, known as "Longshanks", conquers Scotland following the death of the Scots' king, who left no heir. Young William Wallace witnesses the aftermath of Longshanks' execution of several Scottish nobles, then loses his father and brother when they resist the English. He leaves home to be raised by his uncle, Argyle. Years later, Longshanks grants his noblemen land and privileges in Scotland, including "jus primae noctis", while his son marries French princess Isabelle. Meanwhile, a grown Wallace returns home and secretly marries his childhood friend Murron MacClannough. Soon after, Wallace rescues Murron from a soldier, but Murron is subsequently captured and executed. In retribution, Wallace and the locals overthrow the garrison, beginning a rebellion that soon spreads. Longshanks orders his son to stop Wallace while he campaigns in France. Wallace defeats an army sent by the prince at Stirling, then invades England by sacking York. He also meets Robert the Bruce, a contender for the Scottish crown. After returning to England, Longshanks sends Isabelle to negotiate with Wallace as a distraction from the movement of Longshanks' forces. Meeting Wallace, Isabelle becomes enamored with him and warns him of Longshanks' plans. Wallace faces Longshanks at Falkirk. During the battle, nobles Mornay and Lochlan withdraw, having been bribed by Longshanks, resulting in Wallace's army being overwhelmed. Wallace also discovers Robert the Bruce had joined Longshanks. After helping Wallace escape, Robert vows to not be on the wrong side again. Wallace kills Mornay and Lochlan for their betrayal and foils an assassination plot with Isabelle's help. Wallace and Isabelle spend the following night together, while Longshanks' health declines. At a meeting in Edinburgh, Wallace is captured. Realizing his father's role in Wallace's betrayal, Robert disowns his father. In England, Wallace is condemned to execution. After a final meeting with Wallace, Isabelle tells Longshanks, who can no longer speak, that his bloodline will end upon his death as she is pregnant with Wallace's child and will ensure that Longshanks' son spends as short a time as possible as monarch. At his execution, Wallace refuses to submit, even while being disemboweled. The magistrate encourages Wallace to seek mercy and be granted a quick death. Wallace instead shouts, "Freedom!", while Longshanks dies. Before being beheaded, Wallace sees a vision of Murron in the crowd. In 1314, Robert, now Scotland's king, faces the English at Bannockburn, and implores his men to fight with him as they did with Wallace. After Wallace's sword is thrown to land point-down in the ground, Robert leads the Scots to a final victory. Production. Development. Producer Alan Ladd Jr. initially had the project at MGM-Pathé Communications when he picked up the script from Randall Wallace. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) was going through new management in 1993, Ladd left the studio and took some of its top properties, including "Braveheart". Mel Gibson came across the script and even though he liked it, he initially passed on it. However, the thought of it kept coming back to him, and he ultimately decided to take on the project. Terry Gilliam was offered to direct the film, but he declined. Gibson was initially interested in directing only and considered Brad Pitt in the role of Sir William Wallace, but later reluctantly agreed to play Wallace as well. He also considered Jason Patric for the role. Sean Connery was approached to play King Edward, but he declined due to other commitments. Gibson said that Connery's pronunciation of "Goulash" helped him for the Scottish accent for the film. Gibson and his production company, Icon Productions, had difficulty raising enough money for the film. Warner Bros. was willing to fund the project on the condition that Gibson sign for another "Lethal Weapon" sequel, which he refused. Gibson eventually gained enough financing for the film, with Paramount Pictures financing a third of the budget in exchange for North American distribution rights to the film, and 20th Century Fox putting up the other two-thirds in exchange for foreign distribution rights. Filming. Filming was initially due to take place fully in the United Kingdom, but most of the shoot was moved to Ireland at late notice after lobbying from the Irish government and their offer to supply 1,600 members of the Irish Army Reserve as extras. Shooting was planned to take 12 weeks on location in Ireland and at Ardmore Studios, plus five weeks on location in Scotland. Principal photography on the film took place between June 6, 1994, and October 28, 1994. To lower costs, Gibson had the same extras portray both armies. The reservists had been given permission to grow beards and swapped their military uniforms for medieval garb. The film was shot in the anamorphic format with Panavision C- and E-Series lenses. Gibson also later said that while filming a battle scene a horse nearly "killed him" but his stunt double was able to save him as the horse fell. Gibson had to tone down the film's battle scenes to avoid an NC-17 rating from the MPAA; the final version was rated R for "brutal medieval warfare". Gibson and editor Steven Rosenblum initially had a film at 195 minutes, but Sherry Lansing, who was the head of Paramount at the time, requested Gibson and Rosenblum to cut the film down to 177 minutes. According to Gibson in a 2016 interview with "Collider", there is a four-hour version of the film, and he expressed interest in reassembling it if both Paramount and Fox were interested. Soundtrack. The score was composed and conducted by James Horner and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. It is Horner's second of three collaborations with Mel Gibson as director. The score has gone on to be one of the most commercially successful soundtracks of all time. It received considerable acclaim from film critics and audiences and was nominated for a number of awards, including the Academy Award, Saturn Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award. Release. "Braveheart" premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 18, 1995, and received its wide release in U.S. cinemas six days later. Home media. "Braveheart" was released on LaserDisc in both pan and scan and widescreen on March 12, 1996. That same day, it also was made available on VHS in pan and scan only and was re-issued in widescreen on August 27. The film was released on DVD on August 29, 2000. This edition included the film only in widescreen, a commentary track by Gibson, a behind-the-scenes featurette, along the trailers. It was released on Blu-ray as part of the "Paramount Sapphire Series" on September 1, 2009. It included the DVD features along with new bonus material. It was released on 4K UHD Blu-ray as part of the 4K upgrade of the "Paramount Sapphire Series" on May 15, 2018. Reception. Box office. "Braveheart" grossed $75.5million in the United States and Canada and $133.5million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $209.0million, against a budget of $53–$72million. It spent nine non-consecutive weeks in the Top 10 at the US box officeits first seven weeks, then two more weeks during its fifth month in theatres. Critical response. Caryn James of "The New York Times" praised the film, calling it "one of the most spectacular entertainments in years." Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four stars, calling it "An action epic with the spirit of the Hollywood swordplay classics and the grungy ferocity of "The Road Warrior"." In a positive review, Gene Siskel wrote that "in addition to staging battle scenes well, Gibson also manages to recreate the filth and mood of 700 years ago." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" felt that "though the film dawdles a bit with the shimmery, dappled love stuff involving Wallace with a Scottish peasant and a French princess, the action will pin you to your seat." The depiction of the Battle of Stirling was listed by CNN as one of the best battles in cinema history. Not all reviews were positive. Richard Schickel of "Time" magazine argued that "everybody knows that a non-blubbering clause is standard in all movie stars' contracts. Too bad there isn't one banning self-indulgence when they direct." Peter Stack of the "San Francisco Chronicle" felt "at times the film seems an obsessive ode to Mel Gibson machismo." In a 2005 poll by British film magazine "Empire", "Braveheart" was No. 1 on their list of "The Top 10 Worst Pictures to Win Best Picture Oscar". "Empire" readers had previously voted "Braveheart" the best film of 1995. Alex von Tunzelmann of "The Guardian" gave the film a grade of C−, saying: "Seemingly intended as a piece of anti-English propaganda, "Braveheart" offers an even greater insult to Scotland by making a total pig's ear of its heritage. "Historians from England will say I am a liar," intones the voiceover, "but history is written by those who have hanged heroes." Well, that's me told: but, regardless of whether you read English or Scottish historians on the matter, "Braveheart" still serves up a great big steaming haggis of lies." In a 2012 article, Nathan Kamal called the film "hugely overrated", criticizing the characters as one-dimensional. Effect on tourism. The European premiere was on September 3, 1995, in Stirling. In 1996, the year after the film was released, the annual three-day "Braveheart Conference" at Stirling Castle attracted fans of "Braveheart", increasing the conference's attendance to 167,000 from 66,000 in the previous year. In the following year, research on visitors to the Stirling area indicated that 55% of the visitors had seen "Braveheart". Of visitors from outside Scotland, 15% of those who saw "Braveheart" said it influenced their decision to visit the country. Of all visitors who saw "Braveheart", 39% said the film influenced in part their decision to visit Stirling, and 19% said the film was one of the main reasons for their visit. In the same year, a tourism report said that the ""Braveheart" effect" earned Scotland £7 million to £15 million in tourist revenue, and the report led to various national organizations encouraging international film productions to take place in Scotland. The film generated huge interest in Scotland and in Scottish history, not only around the world, but also in Scotland itself. At a "Braveheart" Convention in 1997, held in Stirling the day after the Scottish Devolution vote and attended by 200 delegates from around the world, "Braveheart" author Randall Wallace, Seoras Wallace of the Wallace Clan, Scottish historian David Ross and Bláithín FitzGerald from Ireland gave lectures on various aspects of the film. Several of the actors also attended including James Robinson (Young William), Andrew Weir (Young Hamish), Julie Austin (the young bride) and Mhairi Calvey (Young Murron). Awards and honors. "Braveheart" was nominated for many awards during the 1995 awards season, though it was not viewed by many as a major competitor to films such as "Apollo 13", "", "Leaving Las Vegas", "Sense and Sensibility", and "The Usual Suspects". It wasn't until after the film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director at the 53rd Golden Globe Awards that it was viewed as a serious Oscar contender. When the nominations were announced for the 68th Academy Awards, "Braveheart" received ten Academy Award nominations, and a month later, won five including Best Picture, Best Director for Gibson, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Effects Editing, and Best Makeup. "Braveheart" became the ninth film to win Best Picture with no acting nominations and is one of only four films to win Best Picture without being nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, the others being "The Shape of Water" in 2017, "Green Book" in 2018, and "Nomadland" in 2020. The film also won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2010, the Independent Film & Television Alliance selected the film as one of the 30 Most Significant Independent Films of the last 30 years. Cultural effects and accusations of Anglophobia. Lin Anderson, author of "Braveheart: From Hollywood To Holyrood", credits the film with playing a significant role in affecting the Scottish political landscape in the mid- to late 1990s. Peter Jackson cited "Braveheart" as an influence in making the "Lord of the Ring"s film trilogy. However noted medieval historian Robert Bartlett was certain that “The portrayal of the English who appear in the film does indeed support the view that Braveheart is Anglophobic.” Sections of the English media accused the film of harbouring Anti-English sentiment. "The Economist" called it "xenophobic", and John Sutherland writing in "The Guardian" stated that: ""Braveheart" gave full rein to a toxic Anglophobia". In "The Times", Colin McArthur said "the political effects are truly pernicious. It's a xenophobic film." Ian Burrell of "The Independent" has said, "The "Braveheart" phenomenon, a Hollywood-inspired rise in Scottish nationalism, has been linked to a rise in anti-English prejudice". Wallace Monument. In 1997, a , sandstone statue depicting Mel Gibson as William Wallace in "Braveheart" was placed in the car park of the Wallace Monument near Stirling, Scotland. The statue, which was the work of Tom Church, a monumental mason from Brechin, included the word 'Braveheart' on Wallace's shield. The installation became the cause of much controversy; one local resident stated that it was wrong to "desecrate the main memorial to Wallace with a lump of crap". In 1998, someone wielding a hammer vandalized the statue's face. After repairs were made, the statue was encased in a cage every night to prevent further vandalism. This only incited more calls for the statue to be removed, as it then appeared that the Gibson/Wallace figure was imprisoned. The statue was described as "among the most loathed pieces of public art in Scotland". In 2008, the statue was returned to its sculptor to make room for a new visitor centre being built at the foot of the Wallace Monument. Historical inaccuracy. Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay, has acknowledged Blind Harry's 15th-century epic poem "The Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace, Knight of Elderslie" as a major inspiration for the film. In defending his script, Randall Wallace has said, "Is Blind Harry true? I don't know. I know that it spoke to my heart and that's what matters to me, that it spoke to my heart." Blind Harry's poem is not regarded as historically accurate, and although some incidents in the film that are not historically accurate are taken from Blind Harry (e.g. the hanging of Scottish nobles at the start), there are large parts that are based neither on history nor Blind Harry (e.g. Wallace's affair with Princess Isabella). The reign of King Edward I of England is one of the most well documented by contemporary chroniclers in the Middle Ages, but these sources were entirely ignored by the screenwriter in favour of the non contemporary source written more than two centuries after the events it pretends to portray. Elizabeth Ewan describes "Braveheart" as a film that "almost totally sacrifices historical accuracy for epic adventure". It has been described as one of the most historically inaccurate modern films. Sharon Krossa noted that the film contains numerous historical inaccuracies, beginning with the wearing of belted plaid ("feileadh mór léine"), which was not introduced until the 16th century, by Wallace and his men. In that period "no Scots [...] wore belted plaids (let alone kilts of any kind)." Moreover, when Highlanders finally did begin wearing the belted plaid, it was not "in the rather bizarre style depicted in the film". She compares the inaccuracy to "a film about Colonial America showing the colonial men wearing 20th-century business suits, but with the jackets worn back-to-front instead of the right way around." In a previous essay about the film, she wrote, "The events aren't accurate, the dates aren't accurate, the characters aren't accurate, the names aren't accurate, the clothes aren't accurate—in short, just about nothing is accurate." Peter Traquair has referred to Wallace's "farcical representation as a wild and hairy highlander painted with woad (1,000 years too late) running amok in a tartan kilt (500 years too early)." Caroline White of "The Times "described the film as being made up of a "litany of fibs." Irish historian Seán Duffy remarked that "the battle of Stirling Bridge could have done with a bridge." In 2009, the film was second on a list of "most historically inaccurate movies" in "The Times". In the humorous non-fictional historiography "An Utterly Impartial History of Britain" (2007), author John O'Farrell claims that "Braveheart" could not have been more historically inaccurate, even if a Plasticine dog had been inserted in the film and the title changed to "William Wallace and Gromit". In the DVD audio commentary of "Braveheart", Mel Gibson acknowledged the historical inaccuracies but defended his choices as director, noting that the way events were portrayed in the film was much more "cinematically compelling" than the historical fact or conventional mythos. "Jus primae noctis". Edward Longshanks is shown invoking "Jus primae noctis" in the film, allowing the lord of a medieval estate to take the virginity of his serfs' maiden daughters on their wedding nights. Critical medieval scholarship regards this supposed right as a myth: "the simple reason why we are dealing with a myth here rests in the surprising fact that practically all writers who make any such claims have never been able or willing to cite any trustworthy source, if they have any." Occupation and independence. The film suggests Scotland had been under English occupation for some time, at least during Wallace's childhood, and in the run-up to the Battle of Falkirk Wallace says to the younger Bruce, "[W]e'll have what none of us have ever had before, a country of our own." In fact, Scotland had been invaded by England only the year before Wallace's rebellion; before the death of King Alexander III it had been a fully separate kingdom. Scriptwriter Randall Wallace puts the words “hundred years of theft, rape, and murder” into the mouth of William Wallace which entirely misunderstands the relationship between England and Scotland in the thirteenth century. The sister of King Edward I of England, Margaret of England was married to Alexander III of Scotland. They had been married at York Minster in 1251 amidst friendly relations between the two royal families. As Robert Bartlett wrote “ In fact, in the hundred years before 1297, the year of that battle [of Dunbar], the king of England had led an army into Scotland only once, for ten days in January 1216.” Portrayal of William Wallace. As John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett writes, "Because [William] Wallace is one of Scotland's most important national heroes and because he lived in the very distant past, much that is believed about him is probably the stuff of legend. But there is a factual strand that historians agree to", summarized from Scots scholar Matt Ewart: A. E. Christa Canitz writes about the historical William Wallace further: "[He] was a younger son of the Scottish gentry, usually accompanied by his own chaplain, well-educated, and eventually, having been appointed Guardian of the Kingdom of Scotland, engaged in diplomatic correspondence with the Hanseatic cities of Lübeck and Hamburg". She finds that in "Braveheart", "any hint of his descent from the lowland gentry (i.e., the lesser nobility) is erased, and he is presented as an economically and politically marginalized Highlander and 'a farmer'—as one with the common peasant, and with a strong spiritual connection to the land which he is destined to liberate." Colin McArthur writes that "Braveheart" "constructs Wallace as a kind of modern, nationalist guerrilla leader in a period half a millennium before the appearance of nationalism on the historical stage as a concept under which disparate classes and interests might be mobilised within a nation state." Writing about "Braveheart"s "omissions of verified historical facts", McArthur notes that Wallace made "overtures to Edward I seeking less severe treatment after his defeat at Falkirk", as well as "the well-documented fact of Wallace's having resorted to conscription and his willingness to hang those who refused to serve." Canitz posits that depicting "such lack of class solidarity" as the conscriptions and related hangings "would contaminate the movie's image of Wallace as the morally irreproachable "primus inter pares" among his peasant fighters." Portrayal of Isabella of France. Isabella of France is shown spending a night with Wallace after the Battle of Falkirk. She later tells Edward I she is pregnant with Wallace's child, implied to be Edward III. In reality, Isabella was a child and living in France at the time of the Battle of Falkirk, was not married to Edward II until he was already king, and Edward III was born seven years after Wallace's execution in 1305. The breakdown of the couple's relationship over his liaisons, and the menacing suggestion to a dying Longshanks that she would overthrow and destroy Edward II mirror and foreshadow actual facts; although not until 1326, over 20 years after Wallace's death, Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer would depose – and later allegedly murder – Edward II. Portrayal of Robert the Bruce. Robert the Bruce did change sides between the Scots loyalists and the English more than once in the earlier stages of the Wars of Scottish Independence, but he probably did not fight on the English side at the Battle of Falkirk (although this claim does appear in a few medieval sources). Later, the Battle of Bannockburn was not a spontaneous battle soon after Wallace's execution; he had already been fighting a guerrilla campaign against the English for eight years. His title before becoming king was Earl of Carrick, not Earl of Bruce. Bruce's father is portrayed as an infirm leper, although it was Bruce himself who allegedly suffered from leprosy in later life. The actual Bruce's machinations around Wallace, rather than the meek idealist in the film, suggests the father–son relationship represent different aspects of the historical Bruce's character. In the film, Bruce's father betrays Wallace to his son's disgust, calling it the price of his son's crown, when in real life Wallace was betrayed by the nobleman John de Menteith. Portrayal of Longshanks and Prince Edward. The actual Edward I was ruthless and temperamental, but the film exaggerates his negative aspects for effect. Edward enjoyed poetry and harp music, was a devoted and loving husband to his wife Eleanor of Castile, and as a religious man, he gave generously to charity; the film's scene where he scoffs cynically at Isabella for distributing gold to the poor after Wallace refuses it as a bribe would have been unlikely. Furthermore, Edward died almost two years after Wallace's execution, not on the same day. The depiction of the future Edward II as an effeminate homosexual drew accusations of homophobia against Gibson. Gibson defended his depiction of Prince Edward as weak and ineffectual, saying: In response to Longshanks's murder of the prince's lover, Phillip, Gibson replied: "The fact that King Edward throws this character out a window has nothing to do with him being gay ... He's terrible to his son, to everybody." Gibson asserted, without evidence, that the reason Longshanks kills his son's lover is that the king is a "psychopath". Wallace's military campaign. "MacGregors from the next glen" joining Wallace shortly after the action at Lanark is dubious, since it is questionable whether Clan Gregor existed at that stage, and when they did emerge their traditional home was Glen Orchy, some distance from Lanark. Wallace did win an important victory at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, but the version in "Braveheart" is highly inaccurate, as it has no bridge (or Andrew Moray, joint commander of the Scots army, who was fatally injured in the battle). Later, Wallace did carry out a large-scale raid into the north of England, but he did not get as far south as York, nor did he kill Edward I's nephew. The "Irish conscripts" at the Battle of Falkirk are unhistorical; there were no Irish troops at Falkirk (although many of the English army were, in fact, Welsh). The two-handed long swords used by Gibson in the film were not in wide use in the period. A one-handed sword and shield would have been more accurate and more efficient, since in the enemy army there were a lot of archers. Sequel. A sequel, "Robert the Bruce" (2019), continues directly on from "Braveheart" and features Robert the Bruce, with Angus Macfadyen reprising his role from "Braveheart".
4561	1663062	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4561	Brian Aldiss	Brian Wilson Aldiss (; 18 August 1925 – 19 August 2017) was an English writer, artist and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss was a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society. He was co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group with Harry Harrison. Aldiss was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1999 and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. He received two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award and one John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He wrote the short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" (1969), the basis for the Stanley Kubrick-developed Steven Spielberg film "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (2001). Aldiss was associated with the British New Wave of science fiction. Life and career. Early life, education and military service. Brian Wilson Aldiss was born on 18 August 1925, above his paternal grandfather's draper's shop in Dereham, Norfolk. When Aldiss's grandfather died, his father, Bill (the younger of two sons), sold his share in the shop and the family left Dereham. Aldiss's mother, Dot, was the daughter of a builder. He had an older sister who was stillborn and a younger sister. As a three-year-old, Aldiss started to write stories which his mother would bind and put on a shelf. At the age of 6, Aldiss went to Framlingham College, but moved to Devon and was sent to board at West Buckland School in 1939 after the outbreak of World War II. As a child, he discovered the pulp magazine "Astounding Science Fiction". He eventually read all the novels by H. G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick. In 1943, he joined the Royal Signals and saw military action in Burma. Writing and publishing. His army experience inspired the novel "Hothouse" and the Horatio Stubbs second and third books, "A Soldier Erect" and "A Rude Awakening", respectively. After the war, he worked as a bookseller in Oxford. He also wrote a number of short pieces for a booksellers' trade journal about life in a fictitious bookshop, which attracted the attention of Charles Monteith, an editor at the publisher Faber and Faber. As a result, Faber and Faber published Aldiss's first book, "The Brightfount Diaries" (1955), a 200-page novel in diary form about the life of a sales assistant in a bookshop. About this time he also began to write science fiction for various magazines. According to ISFDB, his first speculative fiction in print was the short story "Criminal Record", published by John Carnell in the July 1954 issue of "Science Fantasy". Several of his stories appeared in 1955, including three in monthly issues of "New Worlds", also edited by Carnell. In 1954, "The Observer" newspaper ran a competition for a short story set in the year 2500. Aldiss's story "Not For An Age" was ranked third following a reader vote. "The Brightfount Diaries" had been a minor success, and Faber asked Aldiss if he had any more writing they could look at with a view to publishing. Aldiss confessed to being a science fiction author, to the delight of the publishers, who had a number of science fiction fans in high places, and so his first science fiction book was published, a collection of short stories entitled "Space, Time and Nathaniel" (Faber, 1957). By this time, his earnings from writing matched his wages in the bookshop, and he made the decision to become a full-time writer. Aldiss led the voting for Most Promising New Author of 1958 at the next year's Worldcon, but finished behind "no award". He was elected president of the British Science Fiction Association in 1960. He was the literary editor of the "Oxford Mail" newspaper from 1958 to 1969. Around 1964, he and long-time collaborator Harry Harrison started the first ever journal of science fiction criticism, "Science Fiction Horizons", which during its brief span of two issues published articles and reviews by such authors as James Blish, and featured a discussion among Aldiss, C. S. Lewis, and Kingsley Amis in the first issue and an interview with William S. Burroughs in the second. In 1967 Algis Budrys listed Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Roger Zelazny and Samuel R. Delany as "an earthshaking new kind of" writers, and leaders of the New Wave. Aldiss supported the New Wave movement, helping the magazine New Worlds to get financial backing from a 1967 Arts Council grant and publishing some of his more experimental work in the magazine. Besides his own writings, he edited a number of anthologies. For Faber he edited "Introducing SF", a collection of stories typifying various themes of science fiction, and "Best Fantasy Stories". In 1961, he edited an anthology of reprinted short science fiction for the British paperback publisher Penguin Books under the title "Penguin Science Fiction". This was remarkably successful, went into numerous reprints, and was followed up by two further anthologies: "More Penguin Science Fiction" (1963) and "Yet More Penguin Science Fiction" (1964). The later anthologies enjoyed the same success as the first, and all three were eventually published together as "The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus" (1973), which also went into a number of reprints. In the 1970s, he produced several large collections of classic grand-scale science fiction, under the titles "Space Opera" (1974), "Space Odysseys" (1975), "Galactic Empires" (1976), "Evil Earths" (1976) and "Perilous Planets" (1978). Around this time, he edited a large-format volume "Science Fiction Art" (1975), with selections of artwork from the magazines and pulps. In response to the results from the planetary probes of the 1960s and 1970s, which showed that Venus was completely unlike the hot, tropical jungle usually depicted in science fiction, Aldiss and Harrison edited an anthology "Farewell, Fantastic Venus", reprinting stories based on the pre-probe ideas of Venus. He also edited, with Harrison, a series of anthologies "The Year's Best Science Fiction" (Nos. 1–9, 1968–1976). Aldiss invented a form of extremely short story called the "mini-saga". "The Daily Telegraph" hosted a competition for the best mini-saga for several years, and Aldiss was the judge. He edited several anthologies of the best mini-sagas. Aldiss travelled to Yugoslavia, where he met fans in Ljubljana, Slovenia and published a travel book about Yugoslavia entitled "Cities and Stones" (1966), his only work in the genre. He published an alternative-history fantasy story, "The Day of the Doomed King" (1968), about Serbian kings in the Middle Ages, and wrote a novel called "The Malacia Tapestry", about an alternative Dalmatia. Art. In addition to a highly successful career as a writer, Aldiss was an accomplished artist. His first solo exhibition, "The Other Hemisphere", was held in Oxford, August–September 2010, and the exhibition's centrepiece "Metropolis" (see figure) has since been released as a limited edition fine art print. (The exhibition title denotes the writer/artist's notion, "words streaming from one side of his brain inspiring images in what he calls 'the other hemisphere'".) Personal life. In 1948, Aldiss married Olive Fortescue, secretary to the owner of Sanders' bookseller's in Oxford, where he had worked since 1947. He had two children from his first marriage: Clive in 1955 and Caroline Wendy in 1959, but the marriage "finally collapsed" in 1959 and dissolved in 1965. In 1965, he married his second wife, Margaret Christie Manson (daughter of John Alexander Christie Manson, an aeronautical engineer), a Scot and secretary to the editor of the "Oxford Mail"; Aldiss was 40, and she 31. They lived in Oxford and had two children together, Tim and Charlotte. She died in 1997. Death. Aldiss died at his home in Headington, Oxford, on 19 August 2017, the day after his 92nd birthday. Awards and honours. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1990. Aldiss was the "Permanent Special Guest" at the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) from 1989 through 2008. He was also the Guest of Honor at the conventions in 1986 and 1999. The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its 18th SFWA Grand Master in 1999 and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2004. He was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature in the 2005 Birthday Honours list. In January 2007 he appeared on "Desert Island Discs". His choice of record to 'save' was "Old Rivers" sung by Walter Brennan, his choice of book was John Heilpern's biography of John Osborne, and his luxury a banjo. The full selection of eight favourite records is on the BBC website. On 1 July 2008 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Liverpool in recognition of his contribution to literature. The Brian W Aldiss Archive at the university holds manuscripts from the period 1943–1995. In 2013, Aldiss received the World Fantasy Convention Award at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, England. Aldiss sat on the Council of the Society of Authors. He won two Hugo awards: in 1962 for the "Hothouse" series; and in 1987 for "". Aldiss also won a Nebula award in 1965 for "The Saliva Tree". Works. Aldiss was the author of over 80 books and 300 short stories, as well as several volumes of poetry. Short stories. Collections: Uncollected short stories: Poems. Collections: Uncollected poems:
4563	4015130	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4563	Battle of Jutland	The Battle of Jutland () was a naval battle between Britain's Royal Navy Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet, under Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, during the First World War. The battle unfolded in extensive manoeuvring and three main engagements from 31 May to 1 June 1916, off the North Sea coast of Denmark's Jutland Peninsula. It was the largest naval battle and only full-scale clash of battleships of the war, and the outcome ensured that the Royal Navy denied the German surface fleet access to the North Sea and the Atlantic for the remainder of the war. Germany avoided all fleet-to-fleet contact thereafter. Jutland was also the last major naval battle, in any war, fought primarily by battleships. Germany's High Seas Fleet intended to lure out, trap, and destroy a portion of the British Grand Fleet. The German naval force was insufficient to openly engage the British fleet. This was part of a larger strategy to break the British blockade of Germany and allow German naval vessels access to the Atlantic. Britain's Royal Navy pursued a strategy of engaging and destroying the High Seas Fleet, thereby keeping German naval forces contained and away from Britain and her shipping lanes. The Germans planned to use Vice-Admiral Franz Hipper's fast scouting group of five modern battlecruisers to lure Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty's battlecruiser squadrons into the path of the main German fleet. They stationed submarines across the likely routes of the British ships. However, the British learned from signal intercepts that a major fleet operation was likely, so on 30 May, Jellicoe sailed with the Grand Fleet to rendezvous with Beatty, passing over the German submarine picket lines while they were unprepared. The German plan had been delayed, causing further problems for their submarines, which had reached the limit of their endurance at sea. On the afternoon of 31 May, Beatty encountered Hipper's battlecruiser force earlier than the Germans had expected. Hipper successfully drew the British vanguard into the path of the High Seas Fleet. By the time Beatty sighted the larger force and turned back towards the British main fleet, he had lost two battlecruisers, from a force of six battlecruisers and four battleships. Beatty's withdrawal at the sight of the High Seas Fleet, which the British had not known was in the open sea, reversed the battle by drawing the Germans towards the British Grand Fleet. Between 18:30, when the sun was lowering, back-lighting the German forces, and nightfall at 20:30, the two fleets—totalling 250 ships—directly engaged twice. Fourteen British and eleven German ships sank, with a total of 9,823 casualties. After sunset Jellicoe manoeuvred to cut the Germans off from their base, hoping to continue the battle the next morning, but under the cover of darkness Scheer broke through the British light forces forming the rearguard of the Grand Fleet and returned to port. Both sides claimed victory. The British lost more ships and over twice as many sailors but succeeded in containing the German fleet. The British press criticised the Grand Fleet's failure to force a decisive outcome, while Scheer's plan of destroying a substantial portion of the British fleet failed. The British long-term strategy of denying Germany access to the United Kingdom and Atlantic succeeded. The Germans' "fleet in being" continued to pose a threat, requiring the British to keep their battleships concentrated in the North Sea, but the battle reinforced the German policy of avoiding all fleet-to-fleet contact. At the end of 1916, after further unsuccessful attempts to reduce the Royal Navy's numerical advantage, the German Navy accepted its surface ships had been successfully contained, turning its resources to unrestricted submarine warfare for the second time (the first attempt of the war having ended with the controversy following the sinking of the RMS "Lusitania" by ) and destruction of Allied and neutral shipping, which—with the Zimmermann Telegram—by April 1917 triggered the United States of America's declaration of war on Germany. Reviews by the Royal Navy generated disagreement between supporters of Jellicoe and Beatty concerning their performance in battle; debate over this and the significance of the battle continues. Background and planning. German planning. With 16 dreadnought-type battleships, compared with the Royal Navy's 28, the German High Seas Fleet stood little chance of winning a head-to-head clash. The Germans therefore adopted a divide-and-conquer strategy. They would stage raids into the North Sea and bombard the English coast, with the aim of luring out small British squadrons and pickets, which could then be destroyed by superior forces or submarines. In January 1916, Admiral von Pohl, commander of the German fleet, fell ill. He was replaced by Scheer, who believed that the fleet had been used too defensively, had better ships and men than the British, and ought to take the war to them.According to Scheer, the German naval strategy should be: On 25 April 1916, a decision was made by the German Imperial Admiralty to halt indiscriminate attacks by submarines on merchant shipping. This followed protests from neutral countries, notably the United States, that their nationals had been the victims of attacks. Germany agreed that future attacks would only take place in accord with internationally agreed prize rules, which required an attacker to give a warning and allow the crews of vessels time to escape, and not to attack neutral vessels at all. Scheer believed that it would not be possible to continue attacks on these terms, which took away the advantage of secret approach by submarines and left them vulnerable to even relatively small guns on the target ships. Instead, he set about deploying the submarine fleet against military vessels. It was hoped that, following a successful German submarine attack, fast British escorts, such as destroyers, would be tied down by anti-submarine operations. If the Germans could catch the British in the expected locations, good prospects were thought to exist of at least partially redressing the balance of forces between the fleets. "After the British sortied in response to the raiding attack force", the Royal Navy's centuries-old instincts for aggressive action could be exploited to draw its weakened units towards the main German fleet under Scheer. The hope was that Scheer would thus be able to ambush a section of the British fleet and destroy it. Submarine deployments. A plan was devised to station submarines offshore from British naval bases, and then stage some action that would draw out the British ships to the waiting submarines. The battlecruiser had been damaged in a previous engagement, but was due to be repaired by mid-May, so an operation was scheduled for 17 May 1916. At the start of May, difficulties with condensers were discovered on ships of the third battleship squadron, so the operation was put back to 23 May. Ten submarines—, , , , , , , , , and —were given orders first to patrol in the central North Sea between 17 and 22 May, and then to take up waiting positions. "U-43" and "U-44" were stationed in the Pentland Firth, which the Grand Fleet was likely to cross when leaving Scapa Flow, while the remainder proceeded to the Firth of Forth, awaiting battlecruisers departing Rosyth. Each boat had an allocated area, within which it could move around as necessary to avoid detection, but was instructed to keep within it. During the initial North Sea patrol the boats were instructed to sail only north–south so that any enemy who chanced to encounter one would believe it was departing or returning from operations on the west coast (which required them to pass around the north of Britain). Once at their final positions, the boats were under strict orders to avoid premature detection that might give away the operation. It was arranged that a coded signal would be transmitted to alert the submarines exactly when the operation commenced: "Take into account the enemy's forces may be putting to sea". Additionally, "UB-27" was sent out on 20 May with instructions to work its way into the Firth of Forth past May Island. "U-46" was ordered to patrol the coast of Sunderland, which had been chosen for the diversionary attack, but because of engine problems it was unable to leave port and "U-47" was diverted to this task. On 13 May, "U-72" was sent to lay mines in the Firth of Forth; on the 23rd, "U-74" departed to lay mines in the Moray Firth; and on the 24th, "U-75" was dispatched similarly west of the Orkney Islands. "UB-21" and "UB-22" were sent to patrol the Humber, where (incorrect) reports had suggested the presence of British warships. "U-22", "U-46" and "U-67" were positioned north of Terschelling to protect against intervention by British light forces stationed at Harwich. On 22 May 1916, it was discovered that "Seydlitz" was still not watertight after repairs and would not now be ready until the 29th. The ambush submarines were now on station and experiencing difficulties of their own: visibility near the coast was frequently poor due to fog, and sea conditions were either so calm the slightest ripple, as from the periscope, could give away their position, or so rough as to make it very hard to keep the vessel at a steady depth. The British had become aware of unusual submarine activity, and had begun counter-patrols that forced the submarines out of position. "UB-27" passed Bell Rock on the night of 23 May on its way into the Firth of Forth as planned, but was halted by engine trouble. After repairs it continued to approach, following behind merchant vessels, and reached Largo Bay on 25 May. There the boat became entangled in nets that fouled one of the propellers, forcing it to abandon the operation and return home. "U-74" was detected by four armed trawlers on 27 May and sunk south-east of Peterhead. "U-75" laid its mines off the Orkney Islands, which, although they played no part in the battle, were responsible later for sinking the cruiser carrying Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War on 5 June, killing him and all but 12 of the crew. "U-72" was forced to abandon its mission without laying any mines when an oil leak meant it was leaving a visible surface trail astern. Zeppelins. The Germans maintained a fleet of Zeppelins that they used for aerial reconnaissance and occasional bombing raids. The planned raid on Sunderland intended to use Zeppelins to watch out for the British fleet approaching from the north, which might otherwise surprise the raiders. By 28 May, strong north-easterly winds meant that it would not be possible to send out the Zeppelins, so the raid again had to be postponed. The submarines could only stay on station until 1 June before their supplies would be exhausted and they had to return, so a decision had to be made quickly about the raid. It was decided to use an alternative plan, abandoning the attack on Sunderland but instead sending a patrol of battlecruisers to the Skagerrak, where it was likely they would encounter merchant ships carrying British cargo and British cruiser patrols. It was felt this could be done without air support, because the action would now be much closer to Germany, relying instead on cruiser and torpedo boat patrols for reconnaissance. Orders for the alternative plan were issued on 28 May, although it was still hoped that last-minute improvements in the weather would allow the original plan to go ahead. The German fleet assembled in the Jade River and at Wilhelmshaven and was instructed to raise steam and be ready for action from midnight on 28 May. By 14:00 on 30 May, the wind was still too strong and the final decision was made to use the alternative plan. The coded signal "31 May G.G.2490" was transmitted to the ships of the fleet to inform them the Skagerrak attack would start on 31 May. The pre-arranged signal to the waiting submarines was transmitted throughout the day from the E-Dienst radio station at Bruges, and the U-boat tender "Arcona" anchored at Emden. Only two of the waiting submarines, "U-66" and "U-32", received the order. British response. Unfortunately for the German plan, the British had obtained a copy of the main German codebook from the light cruiser , which had been boarded by the Russian Navy after the ship ran aground in Russian territorial waters in 1914. German naval radio communications could therefore often be quickly deciphered, and the British Admiralty usually knew about German activities. The British Admiralty's Room 40 maintained direction finding and interception of German naval signals. It had intercepted and decrypted a German signal on 28 May that provided "ample evidence that the German fleet was stirring in the North Sea". Further signals were intercepted, and although they were not decrypted it was clear that a major operation was likely. At 11:00 on 30 May, Jellicoe was warned that the German fleet seemed prepared to sail the following morning. By 17:00, the Admiralty had intercepted the signal from Scheer, "31 May G.G.2490", making it clear something significant was imminent. Not knowing the Germans' objective, Jellicoe and his staff decided to position the fleet to head off any attempt by the Germans to enter the North Atlantic or the Baltic through the Skagerrak, by taking up a position off Norway where they could potentially cut off any German raid into the shipping lanes of the Atlantic or prevent the Germans from heading into the Baltic. A position further west was unnecessary, as that area of the North Sea could be patrolled by air. Consequently, Admiral Jellicoe led the sixteen dreadnought battleships of the 1st and 4th Battle Squadrons of the Grand Fleet and three battlecruisers of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron eastwards out of Scapa Flow at 22:30 on 30 May. He was to meet the 2nd Battle Squadron of eight dreadnought battleships commanded by Vice-Admiral Martyn Jerram coming from Cromarty. Beatty's force of six ships of the 1st and 2nd Battlecruiser Squadrons plus the 5th Battle Squadron of four fast battleships left the Firth of Forth at around the same time; Jellicoe intended to rendezvous with him west of the mouth of the Skagerrak off the coast of Jutland and wait for the Germans to appear or for their intentions to become clear. The planned position would give him the widest range of responses to likely German moves. Hipper's raiding force did not leave the Outer Jade Roads until 01:00 on 31 May, heading west of Heligoland Island following a cleared channel through the minefields, heading north at . The main German fleet of sixteen dreadnought battleships of 1st and 3rd Battle Squadrons left the Jade at 02:30, being joined off Heligoland at 04:00 by the six pre-dreadnoughts of the 2nd Battle Squadron coming from the Elbe River. Naval tactics in 1916. The principle of concentration of force was fundamental to the fleet tactics of this time. As outlined by Captain Reginald Hall in 1914, tactical doctrine called for a fleet approaching battle to be in a compact formation of parallel columns, allowing relatively easy manoeuvring, and giving shortened sight lines within the formation, which simplified the passing of the signals necessary for command and control. A fleet formed in several short columns could change its heading faster than one formed in a single long column. Since most command signals were made with flags or signal lamps between ships, the flagship was usually placed at the head of the centre column so that its signals might be more easily seen by the many ships of the formation. Wireless telegraphy was in use, though security (radio direction finding), encryption, and the limitation of the radio sets made their extensive use more problematic. Command and control of such huge fleets remained difficult. Thus, it might take a very long time for a signal from the flagship to be relayed to the entire formation. It was usually necessary for a signal to be confirmed by each ship before it could be relayed to other ships, and an order for a fleet movement would have to be received and acknowledged by every ship before it could be executed. In a large single-column formation, a signal could take 10 minutes or more to be passed from one end of the line to the other, whereas in a formation of parallel columns, visibility across the diagonals was often better (and always shorter) than in a single long column, and the diagonals gave signal "redundancy", increasing the probability that a message would be quickly seen and correctly interpreted. However, before battle was joined the heavy units of the fleet would, if possible, deploy into a single column. To form the battle line in the correct orientation relative to the enemy, the commanding admiral had to know the enemy fleet's distance, bearing, heading, and speed. It was the task of the scouting forces, consisting primarily of battlecruisers and cruisers, to find the enemy and report this information in sufficient time, and, if possible, to deny the enemy's scouting forces the opportunity of obtaining the equivalent information. Ideally, the battle line would cross the intended path of the enemy column so that the maximum number of guns could be brought to bear, while the enemy could fire only with the forward guns of the leading ships, a manoeuvre known as "crossing the T". Admiral Tōgō, commander of the Japanese battleship fleet, had achieved this against Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky's Russian battleships in 1905 at the Battle of Tsushima, with devastating results. Jellicoe achieved this twice in one hour against the High Seas Fleet at Jutland, but on both occasions, Scheer managed to turn away and disengage, thereby avoiding a decisive action. Ship design. Within the existing technological limits, a trade-off had to be made between the weight and size of guns, the weight of armour protecting the ship, and the maximum speed. Battleships sacrificed speed for armour and heavy naval guns ( or larger). British battlecruisers sacrificed weight of armour for greater speed (their purpose being to catch and destroy cruisers while avoiding battleships), while their German counterparts were armed with lighter guns and heavier armour. These weight savings allowed them to escape danger or catch other ships. Generally, the larger guns mounted on British ships allowed an engagement at greater range. In theory, a lightly armoured ship could stay out of range of a slower opponent while still scoring hits. The fast pace of development in the pre-war years meant that every few years, a new generation of ships rendered its predecessors obsolete. Thus, fairly young ships could still be obsolete compared with the newest ships, and fare badly in an engagement against them. Some research has also shown that the chemicals used in British naval ammunition increased the chances of internal explosions. Admiral John Fisher, responsible for reconstruction of the British fleet in the pre-war period, favoured large guns, fuel oil (rather than coal), and speed. Admiral Tirpitz, responsible for the German fleet, favoured ship survivability and chose to sacrifice some gun size for improved armour. The German battlecruiser had belt armour equivalent in thickness—though not as comprehensive—to the British battleship , significantly better than on the British battlecruisers such as "Tiger". German ships had better internal subdivision and had fewer doors and other weak points in their bulkheads, but with the disadvantage that space for crew was greatly reduced. As they were designed only for sorties in the North Sea they did not need to be as habitable as the British vessels and their crews could live in barracks ashore when in harbour. Order of battle. Warships of the period were armed with guns firing projectiles of varying weights, bearing high explosive warheads. The sum total of weight of all the projectiles fired by all the ship's broadside guns is referred to as "weight of broadside". At Jutland, the total of the British ships' weight of broadside was , while the German fleet's total was . This does not take into consideration the ability of some ships and their crews to fire more or less rapidly than others, which would increase or decrease amount of fire that one combatant was able to bring to bear on their opponent for any length of time. Jellicoe's Grand Fleet was split into two sections. The dreadnought Battle Fleet, with which he sailed, formed the main force and was composed of 24 battleships and three battlecruisers. The battleships were formed into three squadrons of eight ships, further subdivided into divisions of four, each led by a flag officer. Accompanying them were eight armoured cruisers (classified by the Royal Navy since 1913 as "cruisers"), eight light cruisers, four scout cruisers, 51 destroyers, and one destroyer-minelayer. British reconnaissance was provided by the Battlecruiser Fleet under David Beatty: six battlecruisers, four fast s, 14 light cruisers and 27 destroyers. Air scouting was provided by the attachment of the seaplane tender , one of the first aircraft carriers in history to participate in a naval engagement. The German High Seas Fleet under Scheer was also split into a main force and a separate reconnaissance force. Scheer's main battle fleet was composed of 16 battleships and six pre-dreadnought battleships arranged in an identical manner to the British. With them were six light cruisers and 31 torpedo-boats, (the latter being roughly equivalent to a British destroyer). The only German battleship missing was . The German scouting force, commanded by Franz Hipper, consisted of five battlecruisers, five light cruisers and 30 torpedo-boats. The Germans had no equivalent to "Engadine" and no heavier-than-air aircraft to operate with the fleet but had the Imperial German Naval Airship Service's force of rigid airships available to patrol the North Sea. All of the battleships and battlecruisers on both sides carried torpedoes of various sizes, as did the lighter craft. The British battleships carried three or four underwater torpedo tubes. The battlecruisers carried from two to five. All were either 18-inch or 21-inch diameter. The German battleships carried five or six underwater torpedo tubes in three sizes from 18- to 21-inch, and the battlecruisers carried four or five tubes.The German battle fleet was hampered by the slow speed and relatively poor armament of the six pre-dreadnoughts of II Squadron, which limited maximum fleet speed to , compared to maximum British fleet speed of .On the British side, the eight armoured cruisers were deficient in both speed and armour protection. Battlecruiser action. The route of the British battlecruiser fleet took it through the patrol sector allocated to "U-32". After receiving the order to commence the operation, the U-boat moved to a position east of the Isle of May at dawn on 31 May. At 03:40, it sighted the cruisers and leaving the Forth at . It launched one torpedo at the leading cruiser at a range of , but its periscope jammed 'up', giving away the position of the submarine as it manoeuvred to fire a second. The lead cruiser turned away to dodge the torpedo, while the second turned towards the submarine, attempting to ram. "U-32" crash dived, and on raising its periscope at 04:10 saw two battlecruisers (the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron) heading south-east. They were too far away to attack, but "Kapitänleutnant" von Spiegel reported the sighting of two battleships and two cruisers to Germany. "U-66" was also supposed to be patrolling off the Firth of Forth but had been forced north to a position off Peterhead by patrolling British vessels. This now brought it into contact with the 2nd Battle Squadron, coming from the Moray Firth. At 05:00, it had to crash dive when the cruiser appeared from the mist heading toward it. It was followed by another cruiser, , and eight battleships. "U-66" got within of the battleships preparing to fire, but was forced to dive by an approaching destroyer and missed the opportunity. At 06:35, it reported eight battleships and cruisers heading north. The courses reported by both submarines were incorrect, because they reflected one leg of a zigzag being used by British ships to avoid submarines. Taken with a wireless intercept of more ships leaving Scapa Flow earlier in the night, they created the impression in the German High Command that the British fleet, whatever it was doing, was split into separate sections moving apart, which was precisely as the Germans wished to meet it. Jellicoe's ships proceeded to their rendezvous undamaged and undiscovered. However, he was now misled by an Admiralty intelligence report advising that the German main battle fleet was still in port. The Director of Operations Division, Rear Admiral Thomas Jackson, had asked the intelligence division, Room 40, for the current location of German call sign DK, used by Admiral Scheer. They had replied that it was currently transmitting from Wilhelmshaven. It was known to the intelligence staff that Scheer deliberately used a different call sign when at sea, but no one asked for this information or explained the reason behind the query—to locate the German fleet. The German battlecruisers cleared the minefields surrounding the Amrum swept channel by 09:00. They then proceeded north-west, passing west of the Horn's Reef lightship heading for the Little Fisher Bank at the mouth of the Skagerrak. The High Seas Fleet followed some behind. The battlecruisers were in line ahead, with the four cruisers of the II scouting group plus supporting torpedo boats ranged in an arc ahead and to either side. The IX torpedo boat flotilla formed close support immediately surrounding the battlecruisers. The High Seas Fleet similarly adopted a line-ahead formation, with close screening by torpedo boats to either side and a further screen of five cruisers surrounding the column away. The wind had finally moderated so that Zeppelins could be used, and by 11:30 five had been sent out: "L14" to the Skagerrak, "L23" east of Noss Head in the Pentland Firth, "L21" off Peterhead, "L9" off Sunderland, and "L16" east of Flamborough Head. Visibility, however, was still bad, with clouds down to . Contact. By around 14:00, Beatty's ships were proceeding eastward at roughly the same latitude as Hipper's squadron, which was heading north. Had the courses remained unchanged, Beatty would have passed between the two German fleets, south of the battlecruisers and north of the High Seas Fleet at around 16:30, possibly trapping his ships just as the German plan envisioned. His orders were to stop his scouting patrol when he reached a point east of Britain and then turn north to meet Jellicoe, which he did at this time. Beatty's ships were divided into three columns, with the two battlecruiser squadrons leading in parallel lines apart. The 5th Battle Squadron was stationed to the north-west, on the side furthest away from any expected enemy contact, while a screen of cruisers and destroyers was spread south-east of the battlecruisers. After the turn, the 5th Battle Squadron was now leading the British ships in the westernmost column, and Beatty's squadron was centre and rearmost, with the 2nd BCS to the west. At 14:20 on 31 May, despite heavy haze and scuds of fog giving poor visibility, scouts from Beatty's force reported enemy ships to the south-east; the British light units, investigating a neutral Danish steamer ("N J Fjord"), which was stopped between the two fleets, had found two German destroyers engaged on the same mission ( and ). The first shots of the battle were fired at 14:28 when "Galatea" and "Phaeton" of the British 1st Light Cruiser Squadron opened on the German torpedo boats, which withdrew toward their approaching light cruisers. At 14:36, the Germans scored the first hit of the battle when , of Rear-Admiral Friedrich Boedicker's Scouting Group II, hit her British counterpart "Galatea" at extreme range. Beatty began to move his battlecruisers and supporting forces south-eastwards and then east to cut the German ships off from their base and ordered "Engadine" to launch a seaplane to try to get more information about the size and location of the German forces. This was the first time in history that a carrier-based aeroplane was used for reconnaissance in naval combat. "Engadine"s aircraft did locate and report some German light cruisers just before 15:30 and came under anti-aircraft gunfire but attempts to relay reports from the aeroplane failed. Unfortunately for Beatty, his initial course changes at 14:32 were not received by Sir Hugh Evan-Thomas's 5th Battle Squadron (the distance being too great to read his flags), because the battlecruiser —the last ship in his column—was no longer in a position where she could relay signals by searchlight to Evan-Thomas, as she had previously been ordered to do. Whereas before the north turn, "Tiger" had been the closest ship to Evan-Thomas, she was now further away than Beatty in "Lion". Matters were aggravated because Evan-Thomas had not been briefed regarding standing orders within Beatty's squadron, as his squadron normally operated with the Grand Fleet. Fleet ships were expected to obey movement orders precisely and not deviate from them. Beatty's standing instructions expected his officers to use their initiative and keep station with the flagship. As a result, the four "Queen Elizabeth"-class battleships—which were the fastest and most heavily armed in the world at that time—remained on the previous course for several minutes, ending up behind rather than five. Beatty also had the opportunity during the previous hours to concentrate his forces, and no reason not to do so, whereas he steamed ahead at full speed, faster than the battleships could manage. Dividing the force had serious consequences for the British, costing them what would have been an overwhelming advantage in ships and firepower during the first half-hour of the coming battle. With visibility favouring the Germans, Hipper's battlecruisers at 15:22, steaming approximately north-west, sighted Beatty's squadron at a range of about , while Beatty's forces did not identify Hipper's battlecruisers until 15:30 (position 1 on map). At 15:45, Hipper turned south-east to lead Beatty toward Scheer, who was south-east with the main force of the High Seas Fleet. Run to the south. Beatty's conduct during the next 15 minutes has received a great deal of criticism, as his ships out-ranged and outnumbered the German squadron, yet he held his fire for over 10 minutes with the German ships in range. He also failed to use the time available to rearrange his battlecruisers into a fighting formation, with the result that they were still manoeuvring when the battle started. At 15:48, with the opposing forces roughly parallel at , with the British to the south-west of the Germans (i.e., on the right side), Hipper opened fire, followed by the British ships as their guns came to bear upon targets (position 2). Thus began the opening phase of the battlecruiser action, known as the "Run to the South", in which the British chased the Germans, and Hipper intentionally led Beatty toward Scheer. During the first minutes of the ensuing battle, all the British ships except "Princess Royal" fired far over their German opponents, due to adverse visibility conditions, before finally getting the range. Only "Lion" and "Princess Royal" had settled into formation, so the other four ships were hampered in aiming by their own turning. Beatty was to windward of Hipper, and therefore funnel and gun smoke from his own ships tended to obscure his targets, while Hipper's smoke blew clear. Also, the eastern sky was overcast and the grey German ships were indistinct and difficult to range. Beatty had ordered his ships to engage in a line, one British ship engaging with one German and his flagship doubling on the German flagship . However, due to another mistake with signalling by flag, and possibly because "Queen Mary" and "Tiger" were unable to see the German lead ship because of smoke, the second German ship, "Derfflinger", was left un-engaged and free to fire without disruption. drew fire from two of Beatty's battlecruisers, but still fired with great accuracy during this time, hitting "Tiger" 9 times in the first 12 minutes. The Germans drew first blood. Aided by superior visibility, Hipper's five battlecruisers quickly registered hits on three of the six British battlecruisers. Seven minutes passed before the British managed to score their first hit. The first near-kill of the Run to the South occurred at 16:00, when a shell from "Lützow" wrecked the "Q" turret amidships on Beatty's flagship "Lion". Dozens of crewmen were instantly killed, but far larger destruction was averted when the mortally wounded turret commander—Major Francis Harvey of the Royal Marines—promptly ordered the magazine doors shut and the magazine flooded. This prevented a magazine explosion at 16:28, when a flash fire ignited ready cordite charges beneath the turret and killed everyone in the chambers outside "Q" magazine. "Lion" was saved. was not so lucky; at 16:02, just 14 minutes into the gunnery exchange, she was hit aft by three shells from , causing damage sufficient to knock her out of line and detonating "X" magazine aft. Soon after, despite the near-maximum range, "Von der Tann" put another shell on "Indefatigable"s "A" turret forward. The plunging shells probably pierced the thin upper armour, and seconds later "Indefatigable" was ripped apart by another magazine explosion, sinking immediately and leaving only two survivors from her crew of 1,019 officers and men. (position 3). Hipper's position deteriorated somewhat by 16:15 as the 5th Battle Squadron finally came into range, so that he had to contend with gunfire from the four battleships astern as well as Beatty's five remaining battlecruisers to starboard. But he knew his baiting mission was close to completion, as his force was rapidly closing with Scheer's main body. At 16:08, the lead battleship of the 5th Battle Squadron, , caught up with Hipper and opened fire at extreme range, scoring a hit on "Von der Tann" within 60 seconds. Still, it was 16:15 before all the battleships of the 5th were able to fully engage at long range. At 16:25, the battlecruiser action intensified again when was hit by what may have been a combined salvo from "Derfflinger" and "Seydlitz"; she disintegrated when both forward magazines exploded, sinking with all but nine of her 1,275 man crew lost. (position 4). Commander von Hase, the first gunnery officer aboard "Derfflinger", noted: During the Run to the South, from 15:48 to 16:54, the German battlecruisers made an estimated total of forty-two hits on the British battlecruisers (nine on "Lion", six on "Princess Royal", seven on "Queen Mary", 14 on "Tiger", one on "New Zealand", five on "Indefatigable"), and two more on the battleship "Barham", compared with only eleven hits by the British battlecruisers (four on "Lützow", four on "Seydlitz", two on "Moltke", one on "von der Tann"), and six hits by the battleships (one on "Seydlitz", four on "Moltke", one on "von der Tann"). Shortly after 16:26, a salvo struck on or around , which was obscured by spray and smoke from shell bursts. A signalman promptly leapt on to the bridge of "Lion" and announced ""Princess Royal"s blown up, Sir." Beatty famously turned to his flag captain, saying "Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today." (In popular legend, Beatty also immediately ordered his ships to "turn two points to port", i.e., two points nearer the enemy, but there is no official record of any such command or course change.) "Princess Royal", as it turned out, was still afloat after the spray cleared. At 16:30, Scheer's leading battleships sighted the distant battlecruiser action; soon after, of Beatty's 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron led by Commodore William Goodenough sighted the main body of Scheer's High Seas Fleet, dodging numerous heavy-calibre salvos to report in detail the German strength: 16 dreadnoughts with six older battleships. This was the first news that Beatty and Jellicoe had that Scheer and his battle fleet were even at sea. Simultaneously, an all-out destroyer action raged in the space between the opposing battlecruiser forces, as British and German destroyers fought with each other and attempted to torpedo the larger enemy ships. Each side fired many torpedoes, but both battlecruiser forces turned away from the attacks and all escaped harm except "Seydlitz", which was hit forward at 16:57 by a torpedo fired by the British destroyer . Though taking on water, "Seydlitz" maintained speed. The destroyer , under the command of Captain Barry Bingham, led the British attacks. The British disabled the German torpedo boat , which the Germans soon abandoned and sank, and "Petard" then torpedoed and sank , her second score of the day. and rescued the crews of their sunken sister ships. But "Nestor" and another British destroyer——were immobilised by shell hits, and were later sunk by Scheer's passing dreadnoughts. Bingham was rescued, and awarded the Victoria Cross for his leadership in the destroyer action. Run to the north. As soon as he himself sighted the vanguard of Scheer's distant battleship line away, at 16:40, Beatty turned his battlecruiser force 180°, heading north to draw the Germans toward Jellicoe.(position 5). Beatty's withdrawal toward Jellicoe is called the "Run to the North", in which the tables turned and the Germans chased the British. Because Beatty once again failed to signal his intentions adequately, the battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron—which were too far behind to read his flags—found themselves passing the battlecruisers on an opposing course and heading directly toward the approaching main body of the High Seas Fleet. At 16:48, at extreme range, Scheer's leading battleships opened fire. Meanwhile, at 16:47, having received Goodenough's signal and knowing that Beatty was now leading the German battle fleet north to him, Jellicoe signalled to his own forces that the fleet action they had waited so long for was finally imminent; at 16:51, by radio, he informed the Admiralty so in London. The difficulties of the 5th Battle Squadron were compounded when Beatty gave the order to Evan-Thomas to "turn in succession" (rather than "turn together") at 16:48 as the battleships passed him. Evan-Thomas acknowledged the signal, but Lieutenant-Commander Ralph Seymour, Beatty's flag lieutenant, aggravated the situation when he did not haul down the flags (to execute the signal) for some minutes. At 16:55, when the 5BS had moved within range of the enemy battleships, Evan-Thomas issued his own flag command warning his squadron to expect sudden manoeuvres and to follow his lead, before starting to turn on his own initiative. The order to turn in succession would have resulted in all four ships turning in the same patch of sea as they reached it one by one, giving the High Seas Fleet repeated opportunity with ample time to find the proper range. However, the captain of the trailing ship () turned early, mitigating the adverse results. For the next hour, the 5th Battle Squadron acted as Beatty's rearguard, drawing fire from all the German ships within range, while by 17:10 Beatty had deliberately eased his own squadron out of range of Hipper's now-superior battlecruiser force. Since visibility and firepower now favoured the Germans, there was no incentive for Beatty to risk further battlecruiser losses when his own gunnery could not be effective. Illustrating the imbalance, Beatty's battlecruisers did not score any hits on the Germans in this phase until 17:45, but they had rapidly received five more before he opened the range (four on "Lion", of which three were by "Lützow", and one on "Tiger" by "Seydlitz"). Now the only targets the Germans could reach, the ships of the 5th Battle Squadron, received simultaneous fire from Hipper's battlecruisers to the east (which HMS "Barham" and engaged) and Scheer's leading battleships to the south-east (which and "Malaya" engaged).Three took hits: "Barham" (four by "Derfflinger"), "Warspite" (two by "Seydlitz"), and "Malaya" (seven by the German battleships). Only "Valiant" was unscathed. The four battleships were far better suited to take this sort of pounding than the battlecruisers, and none were lost, though "Malaya" suffered heavy damage, an ammunition fire, and heavy crew casualties. At the same time, the fire of the four British ships was accurate and effective. As the two British squadrons headed north at top speed, eagerly chased by the entire German fleet, the 5th Battle Squadron scored 13 hits on the enemy battlecruisers (four on "Lützow", three on "Derfflinger", six on "Seydlitz") and five on battleships (although only one, on , did any serious damage). (position 6). The fleets converge. Jellicoe was now aware that full fleet engagement was nearing, but had insufficient information on the position and course of the Germans. To assist Beatty, early in the battle at about 16:05, Jellicoe had ordered Rear-Admiral Horace Hood's 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron to speed ahead to find and support Beatty's force, and Hood was now racing SSE well in advance of Jellicoe's northern force. Rear-Admiral Arbuthnot's 1st Cruiser Squadron patrolled the van of Jellicoe's main battleship force as it advanced steadily to the south-east. At 17:33, the armoured cruiser of Arbuthnot's squadron, on the far southwest flank of Jellicoe's force, came within view of , which was about ahead of Beatty with the 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron, establishing the first visual link between the converging bodies of the Grand Fleet. At 17:38, the scout cruiser , screening Hood's oncoming battlecruisers, was intercepted by the van of the German scouting forces under Rear-Admiral Boedicker. Heavily outnumbered by Boedicker's four light cruisers, "Chester" was pounded before being relieved by Hood's heavy units, which swung westward for that purpose. Hood's flagship disabled the light cruiser shortly after 17:56. "Wiesbaden" became a sitting target for most of the British fleet during the next hour, but remained afloat and fired some torpedoes at the passing enemy battleships from long range. Meanwhile, Boedicker's other ships turned toward Hipper and Scheer in the mistaken belief that Hood was leading a larger force of British capital ships from the north and east. A chaotic destroyer action in mist and smoke ensued as German torpedo boats attempted to blunt the arrival of this new formation, but Hood's battlecruisers dodged all the torpedoes fired at them. In this action, after leading a torpedo counter-attack, the British destroyer was disabled, but continued to return fire at numerous passing enemy ships for the next hour. Fleet action. Deployment. In the meantime, Beatty and Evan-Thomas had resumed their engagement with Hipper's battlecruisers, this time with the visual conditions to their advantage. With several of his ships damaged, Hipper turned back toward Scheer at around 18:00, just as Beatty's flagship "Lion" was finally sighted from Jellicoe's flagship "Iron Duke". Jellicoe twice demanded the latest position of the German battlefleet from Beatty, who could not see the German battleships and failed to respond to the question until 18:14. Meanwhile, Jellicoe received confused sighting reports of varying accuracy and limited usefulness from light cruisers and battleships on the starboard (southern) flank of his force. Jellicoe was in a worrying position. He needed to know the location of the German fleet to judge when and how to deploy his battleships from their cruising formation (six columns of four ships each) into a single battle line. The deployment could be on either the westernmost or the easternmost column, and had to be carried out before the Germans arrived; but early deployment could mean losing any chance of a decisive encounter. Deploying to the west would bring his fleet closer to Scheer, gaining valuable time as dusk approached, but the Germans might arrive before the manoeuvre was complete. Deploying to the east would take the force away from Scheer, but Jellicoe's ships might be able to cross the "T", and visibility would strongly favour British gunnery—Scheer's forces would be silhouetted against the setting sun to the west, while the Grand Fleet would be indistinct against the dark skies to the north and east, and would be hidden by reflection of the low sunlight off intervening haze and smoke. Deployment would take twenty irreplaceable minutes, and the fleets were closing at full speed. In one of the most critical and difficult tactical command decisions of the entire war, Jellicoe ordered deployment to the east at 18:15. Windy Corner. Meanwhile, Hipper had rejoined Scheer, and the combined High Seas Fleet was heading north, directly toward Jellicoe. Scheer had no indication that Jellicoe was at sea, let alone that he was bearing down from the north-west, and was distracted by the intervention of Hood's ships to his north and east. Beatty's four surviving battlecruisers were now crossing the van of the British dreadnoughts to join Hood's three battlecruisers; at this time, Arbuthnot's flagship, the armoured cruiser , and her squadron-mate both charged across Beatty's bows, and "Lion" narrowly avoided a collision with "Warrior". Nearby, numerous British light cruisers and destroyers on the south-western flank of the deploying battleships were also crossing each other's courses in attempts to reach their proper stations, often barely escaping collisions, and under fire from some of the approaching German ships. This period of peril and heavy traffic attending the merger and deployment of the British forces later became known as "Windy Corner". Arbuthnot was attracted by the drifting hull of the crippled "Wiesbaden". With "Warrior", "Defence" closed in for the kill, only to blunder right into the gun sights of Hipper's and Scheer's oncoming capital ships. "Defence" was deluged by heavy-calibre gunfire from many German battleships, which detonated her magazines in a spectacular explosion viewed by most of the deploying Grand Fleet. She sank with all hands (903 officers and men). "Warrior" was also hit badly, but was spared destruction by a mishap to the nearby battleship "Warspite". "Warspite" had her steering gear overheat and jam under heavy load at high speed as the 5th Battle Squadron made a turn to the north at 18:19. Steaming at top speed in wide circles, "Warspite" attracted the attention of German dreadnoughts and took 13 hits, inadvertently drawing fire away from the hapless "Warrior". "Warspite" was brought back under control and survived the onslaught, but was badly damaged, had to reduce speed, and withdrew northward; later (at 21:07), she was ordered back to port by Evan-Thomas. "Warspite" went on to a long and illustrious career, serving also in World War II. "Warrior", on the other hand, was abandoned and sank the next day after her crew was taken off at 08:25 on 1 June by "Engadine", which towed the sinking armoured cruiser during the night. As "Defence" sank and "Warspite" circled, at about 18:19, Hipper moved within range of Hood's 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron, but was still also within range of Beatty's ships. At first, visibility favoured the British: hit "Derfflinger" three times and "Seydlitz" once, while "Lützow" quickly took 10 hits from "Lion", and "Invincible", including two below-waterline hits forward by "Invincible" that would ultimately doom Hipper's flagship. But at 18:30, "Invincible" abruptly appeared as a clear target before "Lützow" and "Derfflinger". The two German ships then fired three salvoes each at "Invincible", and sank her in 90 seconds. A shell from the third salvo struck "Invincible"s Q-turret amidships, detonating the magazines below and causing her to blow up and sink. All but six of her crew of 1,032 officers and men, including Rear-Admiral Hood, were killed. Of the remaining British battlecruisers, only "Princess Royal" received heavy-calibre hits at this time (two by the battleship "Markgraf"). "Lützow", flooding forward and unable to communicate by radio, was now out of action and began to attempt to withdraw; therefore Hipper left his flagship and transferred to the torpedo boat , hoping to board one of the other battlecruisers later. Crossing the T. By 18:30, the main battle fleet action was joined for the first time, with Jellicoe effectively "crossing Scheer's T". The officers on the lead German battleships, and Scheer himself, were taken completely by surprise when they emerged from drifting clouds of smoky mist to suddenly find themselves facing the massed firepower of the entire Grand Fleet main battle line, which they did not know was even at sea. Jellicoe's flagship "Iron Duke" quickly scored seven hits on the lead German dreadnought, , but in this brief exchange, which lasted only minutes, as few as 10 of the Grand Fleet's 24 dreadnoughts actually opened fire. The Germans were hampered by poor visibility, in addition to being in an unfavourable tactical position, just as Jellicoe had intended. Realising he was heading into a death trap, Scheer ordered his fleet to turn and disengage at 18:33. Under a pall of smoke and mist, Scheer's forces succeeded in disengaging by an expertly executed 180° turn in unison ("battle about turn to starboard", German "Gefechtskehrtwendung nach Steuerbord"), which was a well-practised emergency manoeuvre of the High Seas Fleet. Scheer declared: Conscious of the risks to his capital ships posed by torpedoes, Jellicoe did not chase directly but headed south, determined to keep the High Seas Fleet west of him. Starting at 18:40, battleships at the rear of Jellicoe's line were in fact sighting and avoiding torpedoes, and at 18:54 was hit by a torpedo (probably from the disabled "Wiesbaden"), which reduced her speed to . Meanwhile, Scheer, knowing that it was not yet dark enough to escape and that his fleet would suffer terribly in a stern chase, doubled back to the east at 18:55. In his memoirs he wrote, "the manoeuvre would be bound to surprise the enemy, to upset his plans for the rest of the day, and if the blow fell heavily it would facilitate the breaking loose at night." But the turn to the east took his ships, again, directly towards Jellicoe's fully deployed battle line. Simultaneously, the disabled British destroyer HMS "Shark" fought desperately against a group of four German torpedo boats and disabled with gunfire, but was eventually torpedoed and sunk at 19:02 by the German destroyer . "Shark"s captain, Commander Loftus Jones was awarded the Victoria Cross for his heroism in continuing to fight against all odds. Death Ride. Commodore Goodenough's 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron dodged the fire of German battleships for a second time to re-establish contact with the High Seas Fleet shortly after 19:00. By 19:15, Jellicoe had crossed Scheer's "T" again. This time his arc of fire was tighter and deadlier, causing severe damage to the German battleships, particularly Rear-Admiral Behncke's leading 3rd Squadron (SMS "König", , "Markgraf", and all being hit, along with of the 1st Squadron), while on the British side, only the battleship was hit (twice, by "Seydlitz" but with little damage done). At 19:17, for the second time in less than an hour, Scheer turned his outnumbered and out-gunned fleet to the west using the "battle about turn" (German: "Gefechtskehrtwendung"), but this time it was executed only with difficulty, as the High Seas Fleet's lead squadrons began to lose formation under concentrated gunfire. To deter a British chase, Scheer ordered a major torpedo attack by his destroyers and a potentially sacrificial charge by Scouting Group I's four remaining battlecruisers. Hipper was still aboard the torpedo boat "G39" and was unable to command his squadron for this attack. Therefore, "Derfflinger", under Captain Hartog, led the already badly damaged German battlecruisers directly into "the greatest concentration of naval gunfire any fleet commander had ever faced", at ranges down to . In what became known as the "death ride", all the battlecruisers except "Moltke" were hit and further damaged, as 18 of the British battleships fired at them simultaneously. "Derfflinger" had two main gun turrets destroyed. The crews of Scouting Group I suffered heavy casualties, but the ships survived the pounding and veered away once Scheer was out of trouble and the German destroyers were moving in to attack. In this brief but intense portion of the engagement, from about 19:05 to about 19:30, the Germans sustained a total of 37 heavy hits while inflicting only two; "Derfflinger" alone received 14. While his battlecruisers drew the fire of the British fleet, Scheer slipped away, laying smoke screens. Meanwhile, from about 19:16 to about 19:40, the British battleships were also engaging Scheer's torpedo boats, which executed several waves of torpedo attacks to cover his withdrawal. Jellicoe's ships turned away from the attacks and successfully evaded all 31 of the torpedoes launched at them—though, in several cases, only barely—and sank the German destroyer "S35", attributed to a salvo from "Iron Duke". British light forces also sank "V48", which had previously been disabled by HMS "Shark". This action, and the turn away, cost the British critical time and range in the last hour of daylight—as Scheer intended, allowing him to get his heavy ships out of immediate danger. The last major exchanges between capital ships in this battle—and in the war—took place just after sunset, from about 20:19 to about 20:35, as the surviving British battlecruisers caught up with their German counterparts, which were briefly relieved by Rear-Admiral Mauve's obsolete pre-dreadnoughts (the German 2nd Squadron). The British received one heavy hit on "Princess Royal" but scored five more on "Seydlitz" and three on other German ships. Night action and German withdrawal. At 21:00, Jellicoe, conscious of the Grand Fleet's deficiencies in night fighting, decided to try to avoid a major engagement until early dawn. He placed a screen of cruisers and destroyers behind his battle fleet to patrol the rear as he headed south to guard Scheer's expected escape route. In reality, Scheer opted to cross Jellicoe's wake and escape via Horns Reef. Luckily for Scheer, most of the light forces in Jellicoe's rearguard failed to report the seven separate encounters with the German fleet during the night; the very few radio reports that were sent to the British flagship were never received, possibly because the Germans were jamming British frequencies. Many of the destroyers failed to make the most of their opportunities to attack discovered ships, despite Jellicoe's expectations that the destroyer forces would, if necessary, be able to block the path of the German fleet. Jellicoe and his commanders did not understand that the furious gunfire and explosions to the north (seen and heard for hours by all the British battleships) indicated that the German heavy ships were breaking through the screen astern of the British fleet. Instead, it was believed that the fighting was the result of night attacks by German destroyers. The most powerful British ships of all (the 15-inch-guns of the 5th Battle Squadron) directly observed German battleships crossing astern of them in action with British light forces, at ranges of or less, and gunners on HMS "Malaya" made ready to fire, but her captain declined,deferring to the authority of Rear-Admiral Evan-Thomas—and neither commander reported the sightings to Jellicoe, assuming that he could see for himself and that revealing the fleet's position by radio signals or gunfire was unwise. While the nature of Scheer's escape, and Jellicoe's inaction, indicate the overall German superiority in night fighting, the results of the night action were no more clear-cut than were those of the battle as a whole. In the first of many surprise encounters by darkened ships at point-blank range, "Southampton", Commodore Goodenough's flagship, which had scouted so proficiently, was heavily damaged in action with a German Scouting Group composed of light cruisers, but managed to torpedo , which went down at 22:23 with all but 9 hands (320 officers and men). From 23:20 to approximately 02:15, several British destroyer flotillas launched torpedo attacks on the German battle fleet in a series of violent and chaotic engagements at extremely short range (often under ). At the cost of five destroyers sunk and some others damaged, they managed to torpedo the light cruiser , which sank several hours later, and the pre-dreadnought , which blew up and sank with all hands (839 officers and men) at 03:10 during the last wave of attacks before dawn. Three of the British destroyers collided in the chaos, and the German battleship rammed the British destroyer , blowing away most of the British ship's superstructure merely with the muzzle blast of its big guns, which could not be aimed low enough to hit the ship. "Nassau" was left with an hole in her side, reducing her maximum speed to , while the removed plating was left lying on "Spitfire"s deck. "Spitfire" survived and made it back to port. Another German cruiser, "Elbing", was accidentally rammed by the dreadnought and abandoned, sinking early the next day. Of the British destroyers, , , , and were lost during the night fighting. Just after midnight on 1 June, and other German battleships sank "Black Prince" of the ill-fated 1st Cruiser Squadron, which had blundered into the German battle line. Deployed as part of a screening force several miles ahead of the main force of the Grand Fleet, "Black Prince" had lost contact in the darkness and took a position near what she thought was the British line. The Germans soon identified the new addition to their line and opened fire. Overwhelmed by point-blank gunfire, "Black Prince" blew up (all 857 officers and men were lost), as her squadron leader "Defence" had done hours earlier. Lost in the darkness, the battlecruisers "Moltke" and "Seydlitz" had similar point-blank encounters with the British battle line and were recognised, but were spared the fate of "Black Prince" when the captains of the British ships, again, declined to open fire, reluctant to reveal their fleet's position. At 01:45, the sinking battlecruiser "Lützow" – fatally damaged by "Invincible" during the main action – was torpedoed by the destroyer on orders of "Lützow"s Captain Viktor von Harder after the surviving crew of 1,150 transferred to destroyers that came alongside. At 02:15, the German torpedo boat suddenly had its bow blown off; "V2" and "V6" came alongside and took off the remaining crew, and the "V2" then sank the hulk. Since there was no enemy nearby, it was assumed that she had hit a mine or had been torpedoed by a submarine. At 02:15, five British ships of the 13th Destroyer Flotilla under Captain James Uchtred Farie regrouped and headed south. At 02:25, they sighted the rear of the German line. inquired of the leader as to whether he thought they were British or German ships. Answering that he thought they were German, Farie then veered off to the east and away from the German line. All but "Moresby" in the rear followed, as through the gloom she sighted what she thought were four pre-dreadnought battleships away. She hoisted a flag signal indicating that the enemy was to the west and then closed to firing range, letting off a torpedo set for high running at 02:37, then veering off to rejoin her flotilla. The four pre-dreadnought battleships were in fact two pre-dreadnoughts, "Schleswig-Holstein" and , and the battlecruisers "Von der Tann" and "Derfflinger". "Von der Tann" sighted the torpedo and was forced to steer sharply to starboard to avoid it as it passed close to her bows. "Moresby" rejoined "Champion" convinced she had scored a hit. Finally, at 05:20, as Scheer's fleet was safely on its way home, the battleship struck a British mine on her starboard side, killing one man and wounding ten, but was able to make port. "Seydlitz", critically damaged and very nearly sinking, barely survived the return voyage: after grounding and taking on even more water on the evening of 1 June, she had to be assisted stern first into port, where she dropped anchor at 07:30 on the morning of 2 June. The Germans were helped in their escape by the failure of the British Admiralty in London to pass on seven critical radio intercepts obtained by naval intelligence indicating the true position, course and intentions of the High Seas Fleet during the night. One message was transmitted to Jellicoe at 23:15 that accurately reported the German fleet's course and speed as of 21:14. However, the erroneous signal from earlier in the day that reported the German fleet still in port, and an intelligence signal received at 22:45 giving another unlikely position for the German fleet, had reduced his confidence in intelligence reports. Had the other messages been forwarded, which confirmed the information received at 23:15, or had British ships reported accurately sightings and engagements with German destroyers, cruisers and battleships, then Jellicoe could have altered course to intercept Scheer at the Horns Reef. The unsent intercepted messages had been duly filed by the junior officer left on duty that night, who failed to appreciate their significance. By the time Jellicoe finally learned of Scheer's whereabouts at 04:15, the German fleet was too far away to catch and it was clear that the battle could no longer be resumed. Outcome. As both the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet could claim to have at least partially satisfied their objectives, both Britain and Germany have at various points claimed victory in the Battle of Jutland. There is no consensus over which nation was victorious, or if there was a victor at all. Reporting. At midday on 2 June, German authorities released a press statement claiming a victory, including the destruction of a battleship, two battlecruisers, two armoured cruisers, a light cruiser, a submarine and several destroyers, for the loss of "Pommern" and "Wiesbaden". News that "Lützow", "Elbing" and "Rostock" had been scuttled was withheld, on the grounds this information would not be known to the enemy. The victory of the Skagerrak was celebrated in the press, children were given a holiday and the nation celebrated. The Kaiser announced a new chapter in world history. After the war, the official German history hailed the battle as a victory, and it continued to be celebrated until after the Second World War. In Britain, the first official news came from German wireless broadcasts. Ships began to arrive in port, their crews sending messages to friends and relatives both of their survival and the loss of some 6,000 others. The authorities considered suppressing the news, but it had already spread widely. Some crews coming ashore found rumours had already reported them dead to relatives, while others were jeered for the defeat they had suffered. At 19:00 on 2 June, the Admiralty released a statement based on information from Jellicoe containing the bare news of losses on each side. The following day British newspapers reported a German victory. The "Daily Mirror" described the German Director of the Naval Department telling the Reichstag: "The result of the fighting is a significant success for our forces against a much stronger adversary". The British population was shocked that the long-anticipated battle had been a victory for Germany. On 3 June, the Admiralty issued a further statement expanding on German losses, and another the following day with exaggerated claims. However, on 7 June the German admission of the losses of "Lützow" and "Rostock" started to redress the sense of the battle as a loss. International perception of the battle began to change towards a qualified British victory, the German attempt to change the balance of power in the North Sea having been repulsed. In July, bad news from the Somme campaign swept concern over Jutland from the British consciousness. Assessments. Jutland was the third fleet action between steel battleships, following the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904. The Russians and Japanese opened up on each other with 12-inch guns at the unheard range of over "14,200 yards (13,000 meters)", at a time when the world's navies were "...struggling to extend normal gunnery range to 6,000 yards." The Russians turned back into Port Arthur to remain bottled up, after a 12-inch shell killed Admiral Vitgeft in his flagship, the battleship "Tzesarevich". The new anticipated plan would be to re-enter the Yellow Sea from Port Arthur to reinforce the pending arrival of the Russian Baltic Fleet, expected sometime in 1905. The Battle of the Yellow Sea is known as the "Battle of August 10" in Russia, and the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, "So was consummated perhaps the most decisive and complete naval victory in history", during the Russo-Japanese War. At Jutland, the Germans, with a 99-strong fleet, sank of British ships, while a 151-strong British fleet sank of German ships. The British lost 6,094 seamen; the Germans 2,551. Several other ships were badly damaged, such as "Lion" and "Seydlitz". As of the summer of 1916, the High Seas Fleet's strategy was to whittle away the numerical advantage of the Royal Navy by bringing its full strength to bear against isolated squadrons of enemy capital ships whilst declining to be drawn into a general fleet battle until it had achieved something resembling parity in heavy ships. In tactical terms, the High Seas Fleet had clearly inflicted significantly greater losses on the Grand Fleet than it had suffered itself at Jutland, and the Germans never had any intention of attempting to hold the site of the battle, so some historians support the German claim of victory at Jutland. The Germans declared a great victory immediately afterwards, while the British by contrast had only reported short and simple results. In response to public outrage, the First Lord of the Admiralty Arthur Balfour asked Winston Churchill to write a second report that was more positive and detailed. However, Scheer seems to have quickly realised that further battles with a similar rate of attrition would exhaust the High Seas Fleet long before they reduced the Grand Fleet. Further, after the 19 August advance was nearly intercepted by the Grand Fleet, he no longer believed that it would be possible to trap a single squadron of Royal Navy warships without having the Grand Fleet intervene before he could return to port. Therefore, the High Seas Fleet abandoned its forays into the North Sea and turned its attention to the Baltic for most of 1917 whilst Scheer switched tactics against Britain to unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic. At a strategic level, the outcome has been the subject of a huge amount of literature with no clear consensus. The battle was widely viewed as indecisive in the immediate aftermath, and this view remains influential. Despite numerical superiority, the British had been disappointed in their hopes for a decisive battle comparable to Trafalgar and the objective of the influential strategic doctrines of Alfred Mahan. The High Seas Fleet survived as a fleet in being. Most of its losses were made good within a month—even "Seydlitz", the most badly damaged ship to survive the battle, was repaired by October and officially back in service by November. However, the Germans had failed in their objective of destroying a substantial portion of the British Fleet, and no progress had been made towards the goal of allowing the High Seas Fleet to operate in the Atlantic Ocean. Subsequently, there has been considerable support for the view of Jutland as a strategic victory for the British. While the British had not destroyed the German fleet and had lost more ships and lives than their enemy, the Germans had retreated to harbour; at the end of the battle, the British were in command of the area. Britain enforced the blockade, reducing Germany's vital imports to 55%, affecting the ability of Germany to fight the war. The German fleet would only sortie into the North Sea thrice more, with a raid on 19 August, one in October 1916, and another in April 1918. All three were unopposed by capital ships and quickly aborted as neither side was prepared to take the risks of mines and submarines. Apart from these three abortive operations the High Seas Fleet—unwilling to risk another encounter with the British fleet—confined its activities to the Baltic Sea for the remainder of the war. Jellicoe issued an order prohibiting the Grand Fleet from steaming south of the line of Horns Reef owing to the threat of mines and U-boats. A German naval expert, writing publicly about Jutland in November 1918, commented, "Our Fleet losses were severe. On 1 June 1916, it was clear to every thinking person that this battle must, and would be, the last one". At the end of the battle, the British had maintained their numerical superiority and had 23 dreadnoughts ready and four battlecruisers still able to fight, while the Germans had only 10 dreadnoughts. One month after the battle, the Grand Fleet was stronger than it had been before sailing to Jutland."Warspite" was dry-docked at Rosyth, returning to the fleet on 22 July, while "Malaya" was repaired in the floating dock at Invergordon, returning to duty on 11 July. "Barham" was docked for a month at Devonport before undergoing speed trials and returning to Scapa Flow on 8 July. "Princess Royal" stayed initially at Rosyth but transferred to dry dock at Portsmouth before returning to duty at Rosyth 21 July. "Tiger" was dry-docked at Rosyth and ready for service 2 July. "Queen Elizabeth", "Emperor of India" and , which had been undergoing maintenance at the time of the battle, returned to the fleet immediately, followed shortly after by "Resolution" and "Ramillies". "Lion" initially remained ready for sea duty despite the damaged turret, then underwent a month's repairs in July when Q turret was removed temporarily and replaced in September. A third view, presented in a number of recent evaluations, is that Jutland, the last major fleet action between battleships, illustrated the irrelevance of battleship fleets following the development of the submarine, mine and torpedo. In this view, the most important consequence of Jutland was the decision of the Germans to engage in unrestricted submarine warfare. Although large numbers of battleships were constructed in the decades between the wars, it has been argued that this outcome reflected the social dominance among naval decision-makers of battleship advocates who constrained technological choices to fit traditional paradigms of fleet action. Battleships played a relatively minor role in World War II, in which the submarine and aircraft carrier emerged as the dominant offensive weapons of naval warfare. British self-critique. The official British Admiralty examination of the Grand Fleet's performance recognised two main problems: Shell performance. German armour-piercing shells were far more effective than the British ones, which often failed to penetrate heavy armour. The issue particularly concerned shells striking at oblique angles, which became increasingly the case at long range.Germany had adopted trinitrotoluene (TNT) as the explosive filler for artillery shells in 1902, while the United Kingdom was still using a picric acid mixture (Lyddite). The shock of impact of a shell against armour often prematurely detonated Lyddite in advance of fuze function while TNT detonation could be delayed until after the shell had penetrated and the fuze had functioned in the vulnerable area behind the armour plate. Some 17 British shells hit the side armour of the German dreadnoughts or battlecruisers. Of these, four would not have penetrated under any circumstances. Of the remaining 13, one penetrated the armour and exploded inside. This showed a 7.5% chance of proper shell function on the British side, a result of overly brittle shells and Lyddite exploding too soon. The issue of poorly performing shells had been known to Jellicoe, who as Third Sea Lord from 1908 to 1910 had ordered new shells to be designed. However, the matter had not been followed through after his posting to sea and new shells had never been thoroughly tested. Beatty discovered the problem at a party aboard "Lion" a short time after the battle, when a Swedish Naval officer was present. He had recently visited Berlin, where the German navy had scoffed at how British shells had broken up on their ships' armour. The question of shell effectiveness had also been raised after the Battle of Dogger Bank, but no action had been taken. Hipper later commented, "It was nothing but the poor quality of their bursting charges which saved us from disaster." Admiral Dreyer, writing later about the battle, during which he had been captain of the British flagship "Iron Duke", estimated that effective shells as later introduced would have led to the sinking of six more German capital ships, based upon the actual number of hits achieved in the battle. The system of testing shells, which remained in use up to 1944, meant that, statistically, a batch of shells of which 70% were faulty stood an even chance of being accepted. Indeed, even shells that failed this relatively mild test had still been issued to ships. Analysis of the test results afterwards by the Ordnance Board suggested the likelihood that 30–70% of shells would not have passed the standard penetration test specified by the Admiralty. Efforts to replace the shells were initially resisted by the Admiralty, and action was not taken until Jellicoe became First Sea Lord in December 1916. As an initial response, the worst of the existing shells were withdrawn from ships in early 1917 and replaced from reserve supplies. New shells were designed, but did not arrive until April 1918, and were never used in action. Battlecruiser losses. British battlecruisers were designed to chase and destroy enemy cruisers from out of the range of those ships. They were not designed to be ships of the line and exchange broadsides with the enemy. One German and three British battlecruisers were sunk—but none were destroyed by enemy shells penetrating the belt armour and detonating the magazines. Each of the British battlecruisers was penetrated through a turret roof and their magazines ignited by flash fires passing through the turret and shell-handling rooms."Lützow" sustained 24 hits and her flooding could not be contained. She was eventually sunk by her escorts' torpedoes after most of her crew had been safely removed (though six trapped stokers died when the ship was scuttled. "Derfflinger" and "Seydlitz" sustained 22 hits each but reached port (although in "Seydlitz"'s case only just). Jellicoe and Beatty, as well as other senior officers, gave an impression that the loss of the battlecruisers was caused by weak armour, despite reports by two committees and earlier statements by Jellicoe and other senior officers that Cordite and its management were to blame. This led to calls for armour to be increased, and an additional was placed over the relatively thin decks above magazines. To compensate for the increase in weight, ships had to carry correspondingly less fuel, water and other supplies. Whether or not thin deck armour was a potential weakness of British ships, the battle provided no evidence that it was the case. At least amongst the surviving ships, no enemy shell was found to have penetrated deck armour anywhere. The design of the new battlecruiser (which was being built at the time of the battle) was altered to give her of additional armour. Ammunition handling. British and German propellant charges differed in packaging, handling, and chemistry. The British propellant was of two types, MK1 and MD. The Mark 1 cordite had a formula of 37% nitrocellulose, 58% nitroglycerine, and 5% petroleum jelly. It was a good propellant but burned hot and caused an erosion problem in gun barrels. The petroleum jelly served as both a lubricant and a stabiliser. Cordite MD was developed to reduce barrel wear, its formula being 65% nitrocellulose, 30% nitroglycerine, and 5% petroleum jelly. While cordite MD solved the gun-barrel erosion issue, it did nothing to improve its storage properties, which were poor. Cordite was very sensitive to variations of temperature, and acid propagation/cordite deterioration would take place at a very rapid rate. Cordite MD also shed micro-dust particles of nitrocellulose and iron pyrite. While cordite propellant was manageable, it required a vigilant gunnery officer, strict cordite lot control, and frequent testing of the cordite lots in the ships' magazines. British cordite propellant (when uncased and exposed in the silk bag) tended to burn violently, causing uncontrollable "flash fires" when ignited by nearby shell hits. In 1945, a test was conducted by the U.S.N. Bureau of Ordnance (Bulletin of Ordnance Information, No. 245, pp. 54–60) testing the sensitivity of cordite to then-current U.S. Naval propellant powders against a measurable and repeatable flash source. It found that cordite would ignite at from the flash, the current U.S. powder at , and the U.S. flashless powder at . This meant that about 75 times the propellant would immediately ignite when exposed to flash, as compared to the U.S. powder. British ships had inadequate protection against these flash fires. German propellant ("RP C/12", handled in brass cartridge cases and used in German artillery because their sliding wedge breeches were hard to obturate with smokeless powder,) was less vulnerable and less volatile in composition. German propellants were not that different in composition from cordite—with one major exception: centralite. This was symmetrical diethyl diphenyl urea, which served as a stabiliser that was superior to the petroleum jelly used in British practice. It stored better and burned but did not explode. Stored and used in brass cases, it proved much less sensitive to flash. RP C/12 was composed of 64.13% nitrocellulose, 29.77% nitroglycerine, 5.75% centralite, 0.25% magnesium oxide and 0.10% graphite. The Royal Navy Battle Cruiser Fleet had also emphasised speed in ammunition handling over established safety protocol. In practice drills, cordite could not be supplied to the guns rapidly enough through the hoists and hatches. To bring up the propellant in good time to load for the next broadside, many safety doors were kept open that should have been shut to safeguard against flash fires. Bags of cordite were also stocked and kept locally, creating a total breakdown of safety design features. By staging charges in the chambers between the gun turret and magazine, the Royal Navy enhanced their rate of fire but left their ships vulnerable to chain reaction ammunition fires and magazine explosions. This 'bad safety habit' carried over into real battle practices. Furthermore, the doctrine of a high rate of fire also led to the decision in 1913 to increase the supply of shells and cordite held on the British ships by 50%, for fear of running out of ammunition. When this exceeded the capacity of the ships' magazines, cordite was stored in insecure places. The British cordite charges were stored two silk bags to a metal cylindrical container, with a 16-oz gunpowder igniter charge, which was covered with a thick paper wad, four charges being used on each projectile. The gun crews were removing the charges from their containers and removing the paper covering over the gunpowder igniter charges. The effect of having eight loads at the ready was to have of exposed explosive, with each charge leaking small amounts of gunpowder from the igniter bags. In effect, the gun crews had laid an explosive train from the turret to the magazines, and one shell hit to a battlecruiser turret was enough to end a ship. A diving expedition during the summer of 2003 provided corroboration of this practice. It examined the wrecks of "Invincible", "Queen Mary", "Defence", and "Lützow" to investigate the cause of the British ships' tendency to suffer from internal explosions. From this evidence, a major part of the blame may be laid on lax handling of the cordite propellant for the shells of the main guns. The wreck of the "Queen Mary" revealed cordite containers stacked in the working chamber of the X turret instead of the magazine. There was a further difference in the propellant itself. While the German "RP C/12" burned when exposed to fire, it did not explode, as opposed to cordite. "RP C/12" was extensively studied by the British and, after World War I, would form the basis of the later Cordite SC. The memoirs of Alexander Grant, Gunner on "Lion", suggest that some British officers were aware of the dangers of careless handling of cordite: Grant had already introduced measures onboard "Lion" to limit the number of cartridges kept outside the magazine and to ensure doors were kept closed, probably contributing to her survival. On 5 June 1916, the First Lord of the Admiralty advised Cabinet Members that the three battlecruisers had been lost due to unsafe cordite management. After the battle, the B.C.F. Gunnery Committee issued a report (at the command of Admiral David Beatty) advocating immediate changes in flash protection and charge handling. It reported, among other things, that: Gunnery. British gunnery control systems, based on Dreyer tables, were well in advance of the German ones, as demonstrated by the proportion of main calibre hits made on the German fleet. Because of its demonstrated advantages, it was installed on ships progressively as the war went on, had been fitted to a majority of British capital ships by May 1916, and had been installed on the main guns of all but two of the Grand Fleet's capital ships. The Royal Navy used centralised fire-control systems on their capital ships, directed from a point high up on the ship where the fall of shells could best be seen, utilising a director sight for both training and elevating the guns. In contrast, the German battlecruisers controlled the fire of turrets using a training-only director, which also did not fire the guns at once. The rest of the German capital ships were without even this innovation. German range-finding equipment was generally superior to the British FT24, as its operators were trained to a higher standard due to the complexity of the Zeiss range finders. Their stereoscopic design meant that in certain conditions they could range on a target enshrouded by smoke. The German equipment was not superior in range to the British Barr & Stroud rangefinder found in the newest British capital ships, and, unlike the British range finders, the German range takers had to be replaced as often as every thirty minutes, as their eyesight became impaired, affecting the ranges provided to their gunnery equipment. The results of the battle confirmed the value of firing guns by centralised director. The battle prompted the Royal Navy to install director firing systems in cruisers and destroyers, where it had not thus far been used, and for secondary armament on battleships German ships were considered to have been quicker in determining the correct range to targets, thus obtaining an early advantage. The British used a 'bracket system', whereby a salvo was fired at the best-guess range and, depending where it landed, the range was progressively corrected up or down until successive shots were landing in front of and behind the enemy. The Germans used a 'ladder system', whereby an initial volley of three shots at different ranges was used, with the centre shot at the best-guess range. The ladder system allowed the gunners to get ranging information from the three shots more quickly than the bracket system, which required waiting between shots to see how the last had landed. British ships adopted the German system. It was determined that range finders of the sort issued to most British ships were not adequate at long range and did not perform as well as the range finders on some of the most modern ships. In 1917, range finders of base lengths of were introduced on the battleships to improve accuracy. Signalling. Throughout the battle, British ships experienced difficulties with communications, whereas the Germans did not suffer such problems. The British preferred signalling using ship-to-ship flag and lamp signals, avoiding wireless, whereas the Germans used wireless successfully. One conclusion drawn was that flag signals were not a satisfactory way to control the fleet. Experience using lamps, particularly at night when issuing challenges to other ships, demonstrated this was an excellent way to advertise your precise location to an enemy, inviting a reply by gunfire. Recognition signals by lamp, once seen, could also easily be copied in future engagements British ships both failed to report engagements with the enemy but also, in the case of cruisers and destroyers, failed to actively seek out the enemy. A culture had arisen within the fleet of not acting without orders, which could prove fatal when any circumstances prevented orders being sent or received. Commanders failed to engage the enemy because they believed other, more senior officers must also be aware of the enemy nearby, and would have given orders to act if this was expected. Wireless, the most direct way to pass messages across the fleet (although it was being jammed by German ships), was avoided either for perceived reasons of not giving away the presence of ships or for fear of cluttering up the airwaves with unnecessary reports. Fleet Standing Orders. Naval operations were governed by standing orders issued to all the ships. These attempted to set out what ships should do in all circumstances, particularly in situations where ships would have to react without referring to higher authority, or when communications failed. A number of changes were introduced as a result of experience gained in the battle. A new signal was introduced instructing squadron commanders to act independently as they thought best while still supporting the main fleet, particularly for use when circumstances would make it difficult to send detailed orders. The description stressed that this was not intended to be the only time commanders might take independent action, but was intended to make plain times when they definitely should. Similarly, instructions on what to do if the fleet was instructed to take evasive action against torpedoes were amended. Commanders were given discretion that if their part of the fleet was not under immediate attack, they should continue engaging the enemy rather than turning away with the rest of the fleet. In this battle, when the fleet turned away from Scheer's destroyer attack covering his retreat, not all the British ships had been affected, and could have continued to engage the enemy. A number of opportunities to attack enemy ships by torpedo had presented themselves but had been missed. All ships, not just the destroyers armed principally with torpedoes but also battleships, were reminded that they carried torpedoes intended to be used whenever an opportunity arose. Destroyers were instructed to close the enemy fleet to fire torpedoes as soon as engagements between the main ships on either side would keep enemy guns busy directed at larger targets. Destroyers should also be ready to immediately engage enemy destroyers if they should launch an attack, endeavouring to disrupt their chances of launching torpedoes and keep them away from the main fleet. To add some flexibility when deploying for attack, a new signal was provided for deploying the fleet to the centre, rather than as previously only either to left or right of the standard closed-up formation for travelling. The fast and powerful 5th Battle Squadron was moved to the front of the cruising formation so it would have the option of deploying left or right depending upon the enemy position. In the event of engagements at night, although the fleet still preferred to avoid night fighting, a destroyer and cruiser squadron would be specifically detailed to seek out the enemy and launch destroyer attacks. Controversy. At the time, Jellicoe was criticised for his caution and allowing Scheer to escape as the British had hoped for another Trafalgar. Jellicoe was promoted away from active command to become First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Royal Navy, while Beatty replaced him as commander of the Grand Fleet. The controversy raged within the navy and in public for about a decade after the war. Criticism focused on Jellicoe's decision at 19:15. Scheer had ordered his cruisers and destroyers forward in a torpedo attack to cover the turning away of his battleships. Jellicoe chose to turn to the south-east, and so keep out of range of the torpedoes. Supporters of Jellicoe, including the historian Cyril Falls, pointed to the folly of risking defeat in battle when one already has command of the sea. Jellicoe himself, in a letter to the Admiralty seventeen months before the battle, said that he intended to turn his fleet away from any mass torpedo attack . He said that, in the event of a fleet engagement in which the enemy turned away, he would assume they intended to draw him over mines or submarines, and he would decline to be so drawn. The Admiralty approved this plan and expressed full confidence in Jellicoe at the time (October 1914). The stakes were high, the pressure on Jellicoe immense, and his caution it may be argued was understandable. Jellicoe had not only the responsibility of immediate command of the Grand Fleet, the defence of the British waters and British trade; but also of the maintenance of the blockade of Germany which hinged on the continuing presence and superiority of the Grand Fleet. Therefore, Jellicoe had to consider the wider strategic consequences of his actions and results of the battle; which outweighed the short term benefits of a more outright victory. Churchill said of the battle that Jellicoe "was the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon."The criticism of Jellicoe also fails to sufficiently credit Scheer, who was determined to preserve his fleet by avoiding the full British battle line, and who showed great skill in effecting his escape. Beatty's actions. On the other hand, some of Jellicoe's supporters condemned the actions of Beatty for the British failure to achieve a complete victory. Although Beatty was undeniably brave, his mismanagement of the initial encounter with Hipper's squadron and the High Seas Fleet cost him a considerable advantage in the first hours of the battle. His most glaring failure was in not providing Jellicoe with periodic information on the position, course, and speed of the High Seas Fleet. Beatty, aboard the battlecruiser "Lion", left behind the four fast battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron—the most powerful warships in the world at the time—engaging with six ships when better control would have given him 10 against Hipper's five. Though Beatty's larger guns out-ranged Hipper's guns by thousands of yards, Beatty held his fire for 10 minutes and closed the German squadron until within range of the Germans' superior gunnery, under lighting conditions that favoured the Germans. Most of the British losses in tonnage occurred in Beatty's force. Death toll. The total loss of life on both sides was 9,823 personnel: the British losses numbered 6,784 and the German 3,039. Counted among the British losses were two members of the Royal Australian Navy and one member of the Royal Canadian Navy. Six Australian nationals serving in the Royal Navy were also killed. British. 113,300 tons sunk: ฿ indicates ships in Beatty's Battle Cruiser Fleet. German. 62,300 tons sunk: Status of the survivors and wrecks. In the years following the battle the wrecks were slowly discovered. "Invincible" was found by the Royal Navy minesweeper in 1919. After the Second World War some of the wrecks seem to have been commercially salvaged. For instance, the Hydrographic Office record for SMS "Lützow" (No. 32344) shows that salvage operations were taking place on the wreck in 1960. During 2000–2016 a series of diving and marine survey expeditions involving veteran shipwreck historian and archaeologist Innes McCartney located all of the wrecks sunk in the battle. It was discovered that over 60 per cent of them had suffered from metal theft. In 2003 McCartney led a detailed survey of the wrecks for the Channel 4 documentary "Clash of the Dreadnoughts". The film examined the last minutes of the lost ships and revealed for the first time how both 'P' and 'Q' turrets of "Invincible" had been blasted out of the ship and tossed into the sea before she broke in half. This was followed by the Channel 4 documentary "Jutland: WWI's Greatest Sea Battle", broadcast in May 2016, which showed how several of the major losses at Jutland had actually occurred and just how accurate the "Harper Record" actually was. On the 90th anniversary of the battle, in 2006, the UK Ministry of Defence belatedly announced that the 14 British vessels lost in the battle were being designated as "protected places" under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986. This legislation only affects British ships and citizens and in practical terms offers no real protection from non-British salvors of the wreck sites. In May 2016 a number of British newspapers named the Dutch salvage company "Friendship Offshore" as one of the main salvors of the Jutland wrecks in recent years and depicted leaked photographs revealing the extent of their activities on the wreck of "Queen Mary". The last surviving veteran of the battle, Henry Allingham, a British RAF (originally RNAS) airman, died on 18 July 2009, aged 113, by which time he was the oldest documented man in the world and one of the last surviving veterans of the whole war. Also among the combatants was the then 20-year-old Prince Albert, serving as a junior officer aboard . He was second-in-line to the throne, and would become king as George VI following his brother Edward's abdication in 1936. One ship from the battle survives and is still (in 2024) afloat: the light cruiser . Decommissioned in 2011, she is docked at the Alexandra Graving Dock in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and is a museum ship. Remembrance. The Battle of Jutland was annually celebrated as a great victory by the right wing in Weimar Germany. This victory was used to repress the memory that the Kiel sailors' mutiny initiated the German Revolution of 1918–1919, as well as the memory of the defeat in World War I in general. (The celebrations of the Battle of Tannenberg played a similar role.) This is especially true for the city of Wilhelmshaven, where wreath-laying ceremonies and torch-lit parades were performed until the end of the 1960s. In 1916 Contreadmiral Friedrich von Kühlwetter (1865–1931) wrote a detailed analysis of the battle and published it in a book under the title "Skagerrak" (first anonymously published), which was reprinted in large numbers until after World War II and had a huge influence in keeping the battle in public memory amongst Germans as it was not tainted by the ideology of the Third Reich. Kühlwetter built the School for Naval Officers at Mürwik near Flensburg, where he is still remembered. May 2016 marked the 100th-anniversary of the Battle of Jutland. On 29 May, a commemorative service was held at St Mary's Church, Wimbledon, where the ensign from HMS "Inflexible" is on permanent display. On 31 May, the main service was held at St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney, attended by the British prime minister, David Cameron, and the German president, Joachim Gauck, along with Princess Anne and Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence. Another service was held on board , attended by both British and German sailors, while the laid a flower wreath at the site of the sinking of HMS "Invincible". A centennial exposition was held at the Deutsches Marinemuseum in Wilhemshaven from 29 May 2016 to 28 February 2017. (Note: Due to the time difference, entries in some of the German accounts are one hour ahead of the times in this article.)
4565	18872885	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4565	Bambara language	Bambara, also known as Bamana (N'Ko script: ) or Bamanankan (N'Ko script: ; Arabic script: ), is a lingua franca and national language of Mali spoken by perhaps 14 million people, natively by 4.2 million Bambara people and about 10 million second-language users. It is estimated that about 80 percent of the population of Mali speak Bambara as a first or second language. It has a subject–object–verb clause structure and two lexical tones. Classification. Bambara is a variety of a group of closely related languages called Manding, whose native speakers trace their cultural history to the medieval Mali Empire. Varieties of Manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible – dependent on exposure or familiarity with dialects between speakers – and spoken by 9.1 million people in the countries Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and the Gambia. Manding is part of the larger Mandé family of languages. Geographical distribution. Bambara is spoken throughout Mali as a lingua franca. The language is most widely spoken in the areas east, south, and north of Bamako, where native speakers and/or those that identify as members of the Bambara ethnic group are most densely populated. These regions are also usually considered to be the historical geographical origin of Bambara people, particularly Ségou, after diverging from other Manding groups. Dialects. The main dialect is Standard Bamara, which has significant influence from Maninkakan. Bambara has many local dialects: Kaarta, Tambacounda (west); Beledugu, Bananba, Mesekele (north); Jitumu, Jamaladugu, Segu (center); Cakadugu, Keleyadugu, Jalakadougu, Kurulamini, Banimɔncɛ, Cɛmala, Cɛndugu, Baninkɔ, Shɛndugu, Ganadugu (south); Kala, Kuruma, Saro, dialects to the northeast of Mopti (especially Bɔrɛ); Zegedugu, Bɛndugu, Bakɔkan, Jɔnka (southeast). Phonology. Consonants. Each consonant represents a single sound with some exceptions: Tone. The language has two (mid/standard and high) tones; e.g. "sa" 'die' vs. "sá" 'snake.' Writing. Since 1967, Bambara has mostly been written in the Latin script, using some additional phonetic characters from the Africa Alphabet. The vowels are "a, e, ɛ" (formerly "è"), "i, o, ɔ" (formerly "ò"), "u"; accents can be used to indicate tonality. The former digraph "ny" is now written "ɲ" when it designates a palatal nasal; the "ny" spelling is kept for the combination of a nasal vowel with a subsequent oral palatal glide. Following the 1966 Bamako spelling conventions, a velar nasal "ŋ" is written as "ŋ", although in early publications it was often transcribed as "ng" or "nk". The N'Ko () alphabet is a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Manding languages of West Africa; N’Ko means 'I say' in all Manding languages. Kante created N’Ko in response to what he felt were beliefs that Africans were a "cultureless people" since prior to this time there had been no indigenous African writing system for his language. N'ko first gained a strong user base around the Maninka-speaking area of Kante's hometown of Kankan, Guinea and disseminated from there into other Manding-speaking parts of West Africa. N'ko, and the Arabic script, also known as the Ajami script, are still in use for Bambara, although only the Latin-based orthography is officially recognized in Mali. Additionally, a script known as Masaba or Ma-sa-ba was developed for the language beginning in 1930 by Woyo Couloubayi (-1982) of Assatiémala. Named for the first characters in Couloubayi's preferred collation order, Masaba is a syllabary which uses diacritics to indicate vowel qualities such as tone, length, and nasalization. Though not conclusively demonstrated to be related to other writing systems, Masaba appears to draw on traditional Bambara iconography and shares some similarities with the Vai syllabary of Liberia and with Arabic-derived secret alphabets used in Hodh (now Hodh El Gharbi and Hodh Ech Chargui Regions of Mauritania). As of 1978, Masaba was in limited use in several communities in Nioro Cercle for accounting, personal correspondence, and the recording of Muslim prayers; the script's current status and prevalence is unknown. Latin orthography. It uses seven vowels a, e, ɛ, i, o, ɔ and u, each of which can be nasalized, pharyngealized and murmured, giving a total number of 21 vowels (the letters approximate their equivalents). Writing with the Latin alphabet began during the French colonization, and the first orthography was introduced in 1967. Literacy is limited, especially in rural areas. Although written literature is only slowly evolving (due to the predominance of French as the "language of the educated"), there exists a wealth of oral literature, which is often tales of kings and heroes. This oral literature is mainly passed on by the griots ("Jeliw" in Bambara) who are a mixture of storytellers, praise singers, and human history books who have studied the trade of singing and reciting for many years. Many of their songs are very old and are said to date back to the old empire of Mali. Grammar. The basic sentence structure is subject–object–verb (SOV). Take the phrase, "n t'a lon" (I don't know [it]). "n" is the subject (I), "a" is the object (it), and "[ta] lon" is the verb ([to] know). The "t' " is from the negative present tense marker "té", "bé" being the affirmative present tense marker ("n b'a don" would mean "I know it"). Like many SOV languages, Bambara uses postpositions rather than prepositions - their role being similar to English prepositions but placed after the noun. The typical argument structure of the language consists of a subject, followed by an aspectival auxiliary, followed by the direct object, and finally a transitive verb. Bambara does not inflect for gender. Gender for a noun can be specified by adding a suffix, "-cɛ" or "-kɛ" for male and "-muso" for female. The plural is formed by attaching a vocalic suffix "-u", most often with a low tone (in the orthography, "-w") to nouns or adjectives. Loan words. In urban areas, many Bamanankan conjunctions have been replaced in everyday use by French borrowings that often mark code-switches. The Bamako dialect makes use of sentences like: "N taara Kita mais il n'y avait personne là-bas." : "I went to Kita [Bamanankan ] but there was no one there [French]." The sentence in Bamanankan alone would be "Ń taara Kita nka mɔkɔ si tun tɛ yen." The French proposition "est-ce que" is also used in Bamanankan ; however, it is pronounced more slowly and as three syllables, . Bamanankan uses many French loan words. For example, some people might say: "I ka kurusi ye nere ye": "Your skirt is yellow" (using a derivation of "jaune", the French word for yellow, they often use "joni".) However, one could also say: "I ka kulosi ye nɛrɛmukuman ye", also meaning "your skirt is yellow." The original Bamanankan word for yellow comes from ""nɛrɛmuku"," being flour ("muku") made from néré (locust bean), a seed from a long seed pod. Nɛrɛmuku is often used in sauces in Southern Mali. Most French loan words are suffixed with the sound 'i'; this is particularly common when using French words which have a meaning not traditionally found in Mali. For example, the Bamanankan word for snow is "niegei", based on the French word for snow "neige". As there has never been snow in Mali, there was no unique word in Bamanankan to describe it. Music. Malian artists such as Oumou Sangaré, Sidiki Diabaté, Fatoumata Diawara, Rokia Traoré, Ali Farka Touré, Habib Koité and the married duo Amadou & Mariam often sing in Bambara. Lyrics in Bambara occur on "Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants"." In 2010, Spanish rock group Dover released its 7th studio album "I Ka Kené" with the majority of lyrics in Bambara, Spanish, English and French. American rapper Nas also released a track titled "Patience" in 2010, which featured Damian Marley and extensively sampled the Amadou & Mariam song "Sabali", as "sabali" is a Bambara word meaning patience. Legal status. Bambara was until 2023 one of several languages designated by Mali as a national language. In 2023, after a new constitution was approved by a majority of voters, Bambara became co-official, together with 12 other languages spoken in the country. French was removed as the official language and was kept only as a working language.
4566	2304267	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4566	Baku	Baku (, ; ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world and also the largest city in the world below sea level. Baku lies on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, on the Bay of Baku. Baku's urban population was estimated at two million people as of 2009. Baku is the primate city of Azerbaijan—it is the sole metropolis in the country, and about 25% of all inhabitants of the country live in Baku's metropolitan area. Baku is divided into twelve administrative raions and 48 townships. Among these are the townships on the islands of the Baku Archipelago, as well as the industrial settlement of Neft Daşları built on oil rigs away from Baku city in the Caspian Sea. The Old City, containing the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and the Maiden Tower, was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. The city is the scientific, cultural, and industrial centre of Azerbaijan. Many sizeable Azerbaijani institutions have their headquarters there. In the 2010s, Baku became a venue for major international events. It hosted the 57th Eurovision Song Contest in 2012, the 2015 European Games, 4th Islamic Solidarity Games, the European Grand Prix in 2016, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix since 2017, the final of the 2018–19 UEFA Europa League, UEFA Euro 2020 and 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference. The Baku International Sea Trade Port is capable of handling two million tonnes of general and dry bulk cargoes per year. Baku is renowned for its harsh winds, reflected in its nickname, the "City of Winds". Etymology. Baku is long attested under the Perso-Arabic name باکو ("Bākū"). Early Arabic sources also refer to the city as "Bākuh" and "Bākuya", all of which seem to come from a Persian name. The further etymology is unclear. A popular etymology in the 19th century considered it to be derived from Persian بادکوبه ("Bâd-kube", meaning "wind-pounded city", a compound of "bād", "wind", and "kube", which is rooted in the verb کوبیدن "kubidan", "to pound", thus referring to a place where wind would be strong and pounding, as is the case of Baku, which is known to experience fierce winter snow storms and harsh winds). This popular name ("Badkubə" in modern Azerbaijani script) gained currency as a nickname for the city by the 19th century (e.g., it is used in "Akinchi", volume 1, issue 1, p. 1), and is also reflected in the city's modern nickname as the "City of Winds" (). Another and even less probable folk etymology explains the name as deriving from "Baghkuy", meaning "God's town". "Baga" (now "بغ" "bagh") and "kuy" are the Old Persian words for "god" and "town" respectively; the name "Baghkuy" may be compared with "Baghdād" ("God-given") in which "dād" is the Old Persian word for "give". During Soviet rule, the city was spelled in Cyrillic as "Бакы" in Azerbaijani (while the Russian spelling was and still is "Баку", ""). The modern Azerbaijani spelling, which has been using the Latin alphabet since 1991, is ; the shift from the Perso-Arabic letter و ("ū") to Cyrillic "ы" and, later, Latin "ı" may be compared to that in other Azerbaijani words (e.g. compare "qāpū" in old Perso-Arabic spelling with modern Azerbaijani , "door") or in suffixes, as و was often used to transcribe the vowel harmony in Azerbaijani (which was also the practice in Ottoman Turkish). (See also Azerbaijani alphabet.) History. Antiquity. Traces of human settlement in the region of present-day Baku date back to the Stone Age. Bronze Age rock carvings have been discovered near Bayil, and a bronze figure of a small fish in the territory of the Old City. These have led some to suggest the existence of a Bronze-Age settlement within the city's territory. Near Nardaran, a place called Umid Gaya features a prehistoric observatory, where images of the sun and of various constellations are carved into rock together with a primitive astronomic table. Further archeological excavations have revealed various prehistoric settlements, native temples, statues and other artifacts within the territory of the modern city and around it. In the 1st century AD, the Romans organised two Caucasian campaigns and reached what is today Baku. Near the city, in what is today Gobustan, Roman inscriptions dating from AD 84 to 96 survive – some of the earliest written evidences for a city there. According to the 6th-century archbishop and historian St. Sophronius of Cyprus, in 71, St. Bartholomew the Apostle was preaching Christianity in the city of Albana or Albanopolis, associated with present-day Baku or Derbent, both located by the Caspian Sea. St. Bartholomew managed to convert even members of the local royal family who had worshipped the idol Astaroth, but was later martyred by being flayed alive and crucified head down on orders from the pagan king Astyages. The remains of St. Bartholomew were secretly transferred to Mesopotamia. Rise of the Shirvanshahs and the Safavid era. Baku was the realm of the Shirvanshahs during the 8th century AD. The city frequently came under assault from the Khazars and (starting from the 10th century) from the Rus'. Akhsitan I built a navy in Baku and successfully repelled a Rus' assault in 1170. After a devastating earthquake struck Shamakhi, the capital of Shirvan, Shirvanshah's court moved to Baku in 1191. The Shirvan era greatly influenced Baku and the remainder of present-day Azerbaijan. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, massive fortifications were built in Baku and the surrounding towns. The Maiden Tower, the Ramana Tower, the Nardaran Fortress, the Shagan Castle, the Mardakan Castle, the Round Castle and also the Sabayil Castle on the island of the Bay of Baku date from this period. The city walls of Baku were also rebuilt and strengthened. By the early 16th century, Baku's wealth and strategic position attracted the attention of its larger neighbours; in the previous two centuries, it was under the rule of the Iran-centred Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu. The fall of the Ak Koyunlu brought the city immediately into the sphere of the newly formed Iranian Safavid dynasty, led by king ("shah") Ismail I (). Ismail I laid siege to Baku in 1501 and captured it; he allowed the Shirvanshahs to remain in power, under Safavid suzerainty. His successor, king Tahmasp I (), completely removed the Shirvanshahs from power and made Baku a part of the Shirvan province. Baku remained as an integral part of his empire and of successive Iranian dynasties for the next centuries, until ceded to the Russian Empire through the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan. The House of Shirvan, which had ruled Baku since the 9th century, was extinguished in the course of Safavid rule. At this time, the city was enclosed within lines of strong walls, which were washed by the sea on one side and protected by a wide trench on land. The Ottomans briefly gained control over Baku as a result of the Ottoman-Safavid War of 1578–1590; by 1607, it came under Iranian control again. In 1604 Shah Abbas I () destroyed Baku fortress. Baku had a reputation as a focal point for traders from across the world during the Early modern period; commerce was active and the area prospered. Notably, traders from the Indian subcontinent established themselves in the region. These Indian traders built the Ateshgah of Baku during 17th–18th centuries; the temple was used as a Hindu, Sikh, and Zoroastrian place of worship. Downfall of the Safavids and the Khanate of Baku. The Safavids temporarily lost power in Iran in 1722; Emperor Peter the Great of Russia took advantage of the situation and invaded. As a result of the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723, the Safavids were forced to cede Baku to Russia. By 1730 the situation had deteriorated for the Russians; the successes of Nader Shah () led them to sign the Treaty of Ganja near Ganja on 10 March 1735, ceding the city and all other conquered territories in the Caucasus back to Iran. The eruption of instability following Nader Shah's death in 1747 gave rise to the various Caucasian khanates. The semi-autonomous Persian-ruled Russo-Persian Wars and Iran's cession. From the late 18th century, Imperial Russia switched to a more aggressive geopolitical stance towards its two neighbours and rivals to the south, namely Iran and the Ottoman Empire. In the spring of 1796, by Catherine II's order, General Valerian Zubov's troops started a large campaign against Qajar Persia. Zubov had sent 13,000 men to capture Baku, and it was overrun subsequently without any resistance. On 13 June 1796, a Russian flotilla entered Baku Bay, and a garrison of Russian troops was stationed inside the city. Later, however, Emperor Paul I of Russia ordered the cessation of the campaign and the withdrawal of Russian forces following the death of his predecessor, Catherine the Great. In March 1797 the tsarist troops left Baku and the city became part of Qajar Iran again. In 1813, following the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813, Qajar Iran had to sign the Treaty of Gulistan with Russia this provided for the cession of Baku and of most of Iran's territories in the North Caucasus and South Caucasus to Russia. During the next and final bout of hostilities between the two, the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, the Iranians briefly recaptured Baku. However, the militarily superior Russians ended this war with a victory as well, and the resulting Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) made Baku's inclusion in the Russian Empire definite. When Baku was occupied by the Russian troops during the war of 1804–13, nearly the entire population of some 8,000 people was ethnic Tat. Baku within Russia was the administrative center of the Baku Uyezd, Baku Governorate, and the Baku Gradonachalstvo. Discovery of oil. The Russians built the first oil-distilling factory in Balaxani in 1837. The first person to drill oil in Baku was an ethnic Armenian Ivan Mirzoev, who is also known as a 'founding father of Baku's oil industry.' Digging for oil began in the 1840s, with the first oil well drilled in the Bibi-Heybat suburb of Baku in 1846. Large-scale oil exploration started in 1872 when the Russian imperial authorities auctioned parcels of oil-rich land around Baku to private investors. The pioneer of oil extracting from the bottom of the sea was the Polish geologist Witold Zglenicki. Soon after, investors appeared in Baku, including the Nobel Brothers in 1873 and the Rothschilds in 1882. An industrial area of oil refineries, better known as Black Town (), developed near Baku by the early 1880s. Professor A. V. Williams Jackson of Columbia University wrote in his work "From Constantinople to the Home of Omar Khayyam" (1911): By the beginning of the 20th century, half of the oil sold in international markets was extracted in Baku. The oil boom contributed to the massive growth of Baku. Between 1856 and 1910 Baku's population grew at a faster rate than that of London, Paris, New York, or Tokyo. World War I. In 1917, after the October Revolution and amidst the turmoil of World War I and the Russian Revolution, Baku came under the control of the Baku Commune, led by the veteran Bolshevik Stepan Shahumyan. Seeking to capitalize on the existing ethnic conflicts, by spring 1918, Bolsheviks inspired and condoned civil war in and around Baku. During the March Days of 1918, Bolsheviks and Dashnaks, seeking to establish control over Baku streets, faced armed Azerbaijani groups. The Azerbaijanis suffered defeat from the united forces of the Baku Soviet and were massacred by Dashnak teams in what was called the March Days. An estimated 3,000–12,000 Azerbaijanis were killed in their own capital. After the massacre, on 28 May 1918, the Azerbaijani faction of the Transcaucasian Sejm proclaimed the independence of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) in Ganja, thereby founding the first Muslim-majority democratic and secular republic. The newly independent Azerbaijani republic, being unable to defend the independence of the country on their own, asked the Ottoman Empire for military support in accordance with clause 4 of the treaty between the two countries. Shortly after, Azerbaijani forces, with support of the Ottoman Army of Islam led by Nuru Pasha, started their advance on Baku, eventually capturing the city from the loose coalition of Bolsheviks, SRs, Dashnaks, Mensheviks and British forces under the command of General Lionel Dunsterville on 15 September 1918. After the Battle of Baku of August–September 1918, the Azerbaijani irregular troops, with the tacit support of the Turkish command, conducted four days of pillaging and killing 10,000–30,000 Armenians of Baku. This pogrom became known as the "September Days". Shortly after this, Baku was proclaimed the new capital of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. The Ottoman Empire, recognising defeat in World War I by October 1918, signed the Armistice of Mudros with the British (30 October 1918); this meant the evacuation of Turkish forces from Baku. Headed by General William Thomson, some 5,000 British troops, including parts of the former Dunsterforce, arrived in Baku on 17 November. Thomson declared himself military governor of Baku and implemented martial law in the city until "the civil power would be strong enough to release the forces from the responsibility to maintain the public order". British forces left before the end of 1919. Soviet period. The independence of the Azerbaijani republic was a significant but short-lived chapter in Baku's history. On 28 April 1920, the 11th Red Army invaded Baku and reinstalled the Bolsheviks, making Baku the capital of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic within Soviet Russia. The city underwent many major changes. As a result, Baku played a great role in many branches of Soviet life. Baku was the major oil city of the Soviet Union. From about 1921 the city was headed by the Baku City Executive Committee, commonly known in Russian as "Bakgorispolkom". Together with Baku Party Committee (known as the "Baksovet"), it developed the economic significance of the Caspian metropolis. From 1922 to 1930 Baku became the venue for one of the major trade fairs of the Soviet Union, serving as a commercial bridgehead to Iran and the Middle East. World War II. The major powers continued to note Baku's growing importance as a major energy hub. During World War II (1939–1945) and particularly during the 1942 Nazi German invasion of the southwestern Soviet Union, Baku became of vital strategic importance to the Axis powers. In fact, capturing the oil fields of Baku was a primary goal of the Wehrmacht's Operation Edelweiss, carried out between May and November 1942. However, the German Army reached only a point some northwest of Baku in November 1942, falling far short of the city's capture before being driven back during the Soviet Operation Little Saturn in mid-December 1942. Fall of the Soviet Union and later. After the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, Baku embarked on a process of restructuring on a scale unseen in its history. Thousands of panel buildings from the Soviet period were demolished to make way for a green belt on its shores; parks and gardens were built on the land reclaimed by filling up the beaches of the Baku Bay. Improvements were made in general cleaning, maintenance, and garbage collection to bring these services up to Western European standards. The city is growing dynamically and developing at pace on an east–west axis along the shores of the Caspian Sea. Sustainability has become a key factor in future urban development. Geography. Baku is situated on the western coast of the Caspian Sea. In the vicinity of the city there are a number of mud volcanoes (Keyraki, Bogkh-bogkha, Lokbatan and others) and salt lakes (Boyukshor, Khodasan, etc.). Climate. Baku has a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification: "BSk") with hot and humid summers, cool and occasionally wet winters, and strong winds all year long. However, unlike many other cities with such climate features, Baku does not see extremely hot summers and substantial sunshine hours. This is largely because of its northerly latitude and the fact that it is located on a peninsula on the shore of the Caspian Sea. Baku, and the Absheron Peninsula on which it is situated, is the most arid part of Azerbaijan (precipitation here is around or less than a year). This is largely due to the rain shadow effect from the Caucasus Mountains, with corresponding latitudes on the Black Sea on average receiving or more. The majority of the light annual precipitation occurs in seasons other than summer, but none of these seasons is particularly wet. During Soviet times, Baku, with its long hours of sunshine and dry healthy climate, was a vacation destination where citizens could enjoy beaches or relax in now-dilapidated spa complexes overlooking the Caspian Sea. The city's past as a Soviet industrial centre left it one of the most polluted cities in the world, . At the same time, Baku is noted as a very windy city throughout the year, hence the city's nickname the "City of Winds", and gale-force winds, the cold northern wind "khazri" and the warm southern wind "gilavar" are typical here in all seasons. Indeed, the city is renowned for its fierce winter snow storms and harsh winds. The speed of the "khazri" sometimes reaches , which can cause damage to crops, trees and roof tiles. The daily mean temperature in July and August averages , and there is very little rainfall during that season. During summer, the "khazri" sweeps through, bringing desired coolness. Winter is cool and occasionally wet, with the daily mean temperature in January and February averaging . During winter, the "khazri" sweeps through, driven by polar air masses; temperatures on the coast frequently drop below freezing and make it feel bitterly cold. Winter snow storms are occasional; snow usually melts within a few days after each snowfall. Administrative divisions. Baku is divided into 12 "rayonlar (sub-rayons)" (administrative districts) and 5 settlements of city type. Demographics. Until 1988, Baku had very large Russian, Armenian, and Jewish populations which contributed to cultural diversity and added in various ways (music, literature, architecture and progressive outlook) to Baku's history. With the onset of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War and the pogrom against Armenians starting in January 1990, the city's large Armenian population was expelled. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev returned several synagogues and a Jewish college, nationalised by the Soviets, to the Jewish community; he encouraged the restoration of these buildings. Seven of the original 11 synagogues, including the Gilah synagogue, built in 1896, and the large Kruei Synagogue, were renovated. Ethnic groups. Today, the vast majority of Baku's population is made up of ethnic Azerbaijanis, and the rest are Talysh, Russians, Lezgi and others. The intensive growth of the population started in the middle of the 19th century when Baku was a small town with a population of about 7,000 people. The population increased again from about 13,000 in the 1860s to 112,000 in 1897 and 215,000 in 1913, making Baku the largest city in the Caucasus region. Baku has been a cosmopolitan city at certain times during its history, meaning ethnic Azerbaijanis did not constitute the majority of population. It was only in the 1970s that ethnic Azerbaijanis achieved demographic dominance in Baku. In 2003 Baku additionally had 153,400 internally displaced persons and 93,400 refugees. Religion. The religion with the largest community of followers is Islam. The majority of the Muslims are Shia Muslims, and the Republic of Azerbaijan has the second-highest Shia population percentage in the world, after Iran. The city's notable mosques include Juma Mosque, Bibi-Heybat Mosque, Muhammad Mosque and Taza Pir Mosque. There are some other faiths practised among the different ethnic groups within the country. By article 48 of its Constitution, Azerbaijan is a secular state and ensures religious freedom. Religious minorities include Russian Orthodox Christians, Catholic Levantines, Georgian Orthodox Christians, Albanian-Udi Apostolic Christians, Lutherans, Ashkenazi Jews, Molokans, and Sufi Muslims. Baku is the seat of the Catholic Apostolic Prefecture of Azerbaijan. Zoroastrianism, although extinct in the city as well as in the rest of the country by the present time, had a long history in Azerbaijan and the Zoroastrian New Year (Nowruz) continues to be the main holiday in the city as well as in the rest of Azerbaijan. Economy. Baku is the economic hub of Azerbaijan, hosting many of the country's major companies and serving as the center for key industries such as oil and gas, finance, trade, and technology. The city is home to major financial institutions, multinational corporations, and various businesses that contribute to the country's economy. Baku accounts for approximately 65% of Azerbaijan's total GDP. Azerbaijani conglomerates such as PASHA Holding which is headquartered in Baku, and AF Holding, operate in the city. Baku also attracts a significant portion of the country's workforce, with many people relocating for job opportunities and business prospects. As of the end of the first quarter of 2023, 52% of hired workers in Azerbaijan were employed in Baku. In addition to its role as the economic hub, Baku is home to the largest port in the Caspian Sea, the Baku International Sea Trade Port, more commonly known as Port of Baku. It handles a wide range of cargo, including containers, bulk goods, and liquid cargo, with an annual capacity of 15 million tons of cargo. The port also plays an essential role in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, facilitating trade between East Asia, Central Asia, Europe, and the Caucasus through integrated sea, rail, and road transport. Baku's largest industry is petroleum, and its petroleum exports make it a large contributor to Azerbaijan's balance of payments. The existence of petroleum has been known since the 8th century. In the 10th century, the Arabian traveler, Marudee, reported that both white and black oil were being extracted naturally from Baku. By the 15th century, oil for lamps was obtained from hand-dug surface wells. Commercial exploitation began in 1872, and by the beginning of the 20th century the Baku oil fields were the largest in the world. Towards the end of the 20th century, much of the onshore petroleum had been exhausted, and drilling had extended into the sea offshore. By the end of the 19th century skilled workers and specialists flocked to Baku. By 1900 the city had more than 3,000 oil wells, of which 2,000 were producing oil at industrial levels. Baku ranked as one of the largest centres for the production of oil industry equipment before World War II. The World War II Battle of Stalingrad was fought to determine who would have control of Baku oil fields. Fifty years before the battle, Baku produced half of the world's oil supply. The oil economy of Baku is undergoing a resurgence, with the development of the massive Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field (Shallow water Gunashli by SOCAR, deeper areas by a consortium led by BP), development of the Shah Deniz gas field, the expansion of the Sangachal Terminal and the construction of the BTC Pipeline. The South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), also known as the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum Pipeline, transports natural gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas field to Turkey, with further connections to Europe. Spanning over 690 kilometers, the pipeline has been operational since 2007 and plays a central role in the Southern Gas Corridor, which aims to diversify Europe's energy sources with an annual export capacity of up to 25 billion cubic metres of gas. The Baku Stock Exchange is Azerbaijan's largest stock exchange, and largest in the Caucasian region by market capitalization. A relatively large number of transnational companies are headquartered in Baku. One of the more prominent institutions headquartered in Baku is the International Bank of Azerbaijan, which employs over 1,000 people. International banks with branches in Baku include HSBC, Société Générale and Credit Suisse. Tourism and shopping. Baku is one of the most important tourist destinations in the Caucasus, with hotels in the city earning 7 million euros in 2009. Many sizable world hotel chains have a presence in the city. Baku has many popular tourist and entertainment spots, such as the downtown Fountains Square, the One and Thousand Nights Beach, Shikhov Beach and Oil Rocks. Baku's vicinities feature Yanar Dag, an ever-blazing spot of natural gas. On 2 September 2010 with the inauguration of National Flag Square, Baku set the world record for tallest flagpole; on 24 May 2011, the city of Dushanbe in Tajikistan set a new record with a -higher flagpole. A few years later, the Flag Pole was dismantled and the National Flag Square was closed off with fences. It was opened once again after years of repair on November 8, 2024, to commemorate the Victory Day over Armenia's forces in Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The National Flag Square features a museum, with a collection of about 400 items, along with flags of Khanates and Empires that have been prevalent in the region. Baku has several shopping malls, including Ganjlik Mall, Deniz Mall, Crescent Mall, Port Baku Mall, 28 Mall, Park Bulvar, City Park and Metro Park. The retail areas contain shops from chain stores up to high-end boutiques. Ganjlik Mall particularly stands out, as it is the largest mall in the city of Baku. Crescent Mall is the newest shopping center in Baku, opening on May 28, 2024. It adds to the city's growing collection of malls, bringing a variety of stores, restaurants, and entertainment options to the area. The city is listed 48th in the 2011 list of the most expensive cities in the world conducted by the Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Nizami Street, also known as Targovaya, and the Neftchilar Avenue, a street known for being home to many luxury and high fashion shops such as Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford, Burberry, Celine, are among the most expensive streets in the world. Monthly expenses for a single person in Baku are estimated to be around 945 manat without rent (US$555), which is significantly lower in comparison to other countries. For example, average cost of living for a person in Los Angeles, California, is about US$1308, while in Seoul, South Korea, its US$1074. Living costs in Baku per person are below average when comparing to other developed countries, however, average reported salary of a Bakuvian sits at 997 manat, or about US$586. Culture. Baku, often referred to as the "Paris of the East," is a city where Eastern and Western cultural traditions coexist. The city's core is the historic center, known as Icheri Sheher or the Inner City, commonly referred to as the Old City, which contains various landmarks dating back to at least the 12th century. Among these are the Maiden Tower and the Shirvanshahs' Palace. These buildings reflect the city's history and the Asian architectural styles that have influenced Baku's development. The city's skyline showcases a blend of traditional and contemporary architecture, with places like Baku Boulevard and Fountains Square presenting a harmonious mix of historic and modern design elements. The urban landscape of Baku is characterized by a diverse range of buildings that combine the charm of the past with the innovation of the present. Baku also has a variety of museums and galleries, including the National Art Museum of Azerbaijan and the National Museum of History of Azerbaijan, which display both traditional Azerbaijani and contemporary art. The city maintains certain traditional crafts such as carpet-weaving and pottery, of which majority are displayed in Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, with older techniques still practiced. Baku's theater scene includes institutions like the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater and the Azerbaijan State Academic National Drama Theatre, which host both local and international performances. Music is an important part of Baku's cultural landscape, with mugham being a traditional genre of music that has been recognized by UNESCO as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which was proclaimed to be a "Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity." The city also has a diverse music scene, with genres such as pop, rock, and jazz being represented. Additionally, Baku hosts events like the Baku International Jazz Festival and the Baku International Film Festival. In 2007, the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid, was opened. Baku also has many museums such as Baku Museum of Modern Art and National Museum of History, most notably featuring historical artifacts and art. Many of the city's cultural sites were celebrated in 2009 when Baku was designated an Islamic Culture Capital. Baku was chosen to host the Eurovision Dance Contest 2010. It has also become the first city to host the first European Games in 2015. Theatres. Among Baku's cultural venues are Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Hall, Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre. The main movie theater is Azerbaijan Cinema. Festivals include Baku International Film Festival, Baku International Jazz Festival, Novruz Festival, "Gül Bayramı" (Flower Festival) and the National Theater Festival. International and local exhibitions are presented at the Baku Expo Centre. Museums. Absheron Museum of History and Local Studies. The Absheron Museum of History and Local Studies() started its activities on 21 November 1983. The area of the museum, which was thoroughly renovated in 2015, is 296 square meters and consists of 5 halls. Currently, about 3000 exhibits are preserved in the museum and 1800 items are displayed in the exposition. Exhibits reflecting the history, geography, nature, everyday life and culture of Absheron region are preserved in the museum. The museum consists of 4 halls, 1 fund room and 1 room for employees. The exhibition area is 250 square meters, the manager's room is 1 square meter, the fund room is 10 square meters, and the staff room is 25 square meters. In 2018, the number of visitors to the museum was 1,932. Architecture. Baku has wildly varying architecture, ranging from the Old City core to modern buildings and the spacious layout of Baku port. Many of the city's landmarks were built during the early 20th century, when architectural elements of the European styles were combined in eclectic style. Baku has an original and unique appearance, earning it a reputation as the "Paris of the East". Baku joined UNESCO's Network of Creative Cities as a Design City on 31 October 2019 on the occasion of World Cities' Day. Hamams. There are a number of ancient hamams in Baku dating back to the 12th, 14th and 18th centuries. Hamams play a very important role in the architectural appearance of Baku. Teze Bey Hamam. Teze Bey is the most popular hamam (traditional Islamic bath) in Baku. It was built in 1886 in the centre of Baku, and in 2003 it was fully restored and modernised. Along with its modern amenities, Teze Bey features a swimming pool and architectural details inspired by Oriental, Russian and Finnish baths. Gum Hamam. Gum Hamam was discovered during archaeological excavations underneath the sand; hence the name: Gum hamam (sand bath). It was built sometime during the 12th–14th centuries. Bairamali hamam. In ancient times, Bairamali Hamam was called "Bey Hamam". The original structure was built sometime during the 12th–14th centuries and was reconstructed in 1881. Agha Mikayil Hamam. Agha Mikayil Hamam was constructed in the 18th century by Haji Agha Mikayil on Kichik Gala Street in the Old City (Icherisheher). It is still operating in its ancient setting. The Hamam is open to women on Mondays and Fridays and to men on the other days of the week. Modern architecture. Late modern and postmodern architecture began to appear in the early 2000s. With economic development, old buildings such as Atlant House were razed to make way for new ones. Buildings with all-glass shells have appeared around the city, the most prominent examples being the International Mugham Center, Azerbaijan Tower, Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre, Flame Towers, Baku Crystal Hall, Baku White City, SOCAR Tower and DENIZ Mall. These projects also caught the attention of international media as notable programmes such as Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering did pieces focusing in on changes to the city. The Old City of Baku, also known as the Walled City of Baku, refers to the ancient Baku settlement. Most of the walls and towers, strengthened after the Russian conquest in 1806, survived. This section is picturesque, with its maze of narrow alleys and ancient buildings: the cobbled streets past the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, two caravansaries, the baths and the Juma Mosque (which used to house the Azerbaijan National Carpet and Arts Museum but is now a mosque again). The old town core also has dozens of small mosques, often without any particular sign to distinguish them as such. In 2003, UNESCO placed the Inner City on the List of World Heritage in Danger, citing damage from a November 2000 earthquake, poor conservation as well as "dubious" restoration efforts. In 2009 the Inner City was removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger. Visual arts. The three main institutions for exhibiting modern and contemporary art in Baku are: Music and media. The music scene in Baku can be traced back to ancient times and villages of Baku, generally revered as the fountainhead of meykhana and mugham in the Azerbaijan. Recently, the success of Azerbaijani performers such as AySel, Farid Mammadov, Sabina Babayeva, Safura and Elnur Hüseynov in the Eurovision Song Contest has boosted the profile of Baku's music scene, prompting international attention. Following the victory of Azerbaijan's representative Eldar & Nigar at the Eurovision Song Contest 2011, Baku hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2012. 2005 was a landmark in the development of Azerbaijani jazz in the city. It has been home to legendary jazz musicians like Vagif Mustafazadeh, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, Rafig Babayev and Rain Sultanov. Among Baku's prominent annual fairs and festivals is Baku International Jazz Festival, which features some of the world's most identifiable jazz names. Baku also has a thriving International Centre of Mugham, which is located in Baku Boulevard, Gulustan Palace and Buta Palace, one of the principal performing arts centres and music venues in the city. The majority of Azerbaijan's media companies (including television, newspaper and radio, such as, Azad Azerbaijan TV, Ictimai TV, Lider TV and Region TV) are headquartered in Baku. The films "The World Is Not Enough" and "The Diamond Arm", among others, are set in the city, while "Amphibian Man" includes several scenes filmed in Old City. The city's radio stations include: "Ictimai Radio", "Radio Antenn", "Burc FM", "Avto FM", "ASAN Radio" and "Lider FM Jazz" Some of Baku's newspapers include the daily "Azadliq", "Zaman" (The Time), "Bakinskiy Rabochiy" (Baku Worker), "Echo" and the English-language "Baku Today". Baku is also featured in the video game "Battlefield 4". Nightlife. Many clubs that are open until dawn can be found throughout the city. Clubs with an eastern flavour provide special treats from the cuisine of Azerbaijan along with local music. Western-style clubs target younger, more energetic crowds. Most of the public houses and bars are located near Fountains Square and are usually open until the early hours of the morning. Parks and gardens. Baku has large sections of greenery, either preserved by the National Government or designated as green zones. The city, however, continues to lack a green belt development as economic activity pours into the capital, resulting in massive housing projects along the suburbs. Baku Boulevard is a pedestrian promenade that runs parallel to Baku's seafront. The boulevard contains an amusement park, yacht club, musical fountain, statues and monuments. The park is popular with dog-walkers and joggers and is convenient for tourists. It is adjacent to the newly built International Centre of Mugham and the musical fountain. Other parks and gardens include Heydar Aliyev Park, Samad Vurgun Park, Narimanov Park, Alley of Honor and the Fountains Square. The Martyrs' Lane, formerly the Kirov Park, is dedicated to the memory of those who died during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and also to the 137 people killed on Black January. Sports. Baku hosts a Formula One race on the Baku City Circuit. The first was the 2016 European Grand Prix, with the track going around the old city. The track measures , and it has been on the Formula One calendar since its 2016 debut. The city also hosted three group games and one quarter-final of the UEFA Euro 2020 European Football Championship. Since 2002, Baku has hosted 36 major sporting events and selected to host the 2015 European Games. Baku is also to host the fourth edition of the Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017. Baku is also one of world's leading chess centres, having produced grandmasters like Teimour Radjabov, Vugar Gashimov, Garry Kasparov, Shahriyar Mammadyarov and Rauf Mammadov, as well as the arbiter Faik Hasanov. The city also annually hosts the international tournaments such as Baku Chess Grand Prix, President's Cup, Baku Open and bidding to host 42nd Chess Olympiad in 2014. First class sporting facilities were built for the indoor games, including the Palace of Hand Games and Heydar Aliyev Sports and Exhibition Complex. It hosted many sporting events, including FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup, Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championships in 2007 and 2009, 2005 World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships, 2007 FILA Wrestling World Championships and 2010 European Wrestling Championships, 2011 World Amateur Boxing Championships, 2009 Women's Challenge Cup and European Taekwondo Championships in 2007. Since 2011 the city annually hosts WTA tennis event called Baku Cup. The Synergy Baku Cycling Project participates in the Tour d'Azerbaïdjan a 2.2 multi-stage bicycle race on the UCI Europe Tour. Baku made a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2020 Summer Olympics, but failed to become a Candidate City both times. The largest sports hub in the city is Baku Olympic Stadium with 69,870 seating capacity, whose construction was completed in 2015. UEFA Europa League Final 2019 was played at the Olympic Stadium in Baku on 29 May 2019 between English sides Chelsea and Arsenal. The city's main football clubs is Neftçi Baku of who first has nine Premier League titles, making Neftchi the most successful Azerbaijani football club. Baku also has several football clubs in the premier and regional leagues, including AZAL and Ravan in Premier League. The city's second-largest stadium, Tofiq Bahramov Stadium hosts a number of domestic and international competitions and was the main sports centre of the city for a long period until the construction of Baku Olympic Stadium. In the Azerbaijan Women's Volleyball Super League, Baku is represented by Rabita Baku, Azerrail Baku, Lokomotiv Baku and Azeryol Baku. Transport. Throughout history, the transport system of Baku used the now-defunct horsecars, trams and narrow gauge railways. , 1,000 black cabs are ordered by Baku Taxi Company, and as part of a programme originally announced by the Transport Ministry of Azerbaijan, there is a plan to introduce London cabs into Baku. The move was part of £16 million agreement between Manganese Bronze subsidiary LTI Limited and Baku Taxi Company. Local rail transport includes the Baku Funicular and the Baku Metro, a rapid-transit system notable for its art, murals, mosaics and ornate chandeliers. Baku Metro was opened in November 1967 and includes 3 lines and 25 stations at present; 170 million people used Baku Metro over the past five years. In 2008, the Chief of Baku Metro, Taghi Ahmadov, announced plans to construct 41 new stations over the next 17 years. These will serve the new bus complex as well as the international airport. In 2019, the Baku suburban railway opened. BakuCard is a single Smart Card for payment on all types of city transport. The intercity buses and metro use this type of card-based fare-payment system. Baku Railway Station is the terminus for national and international rail links to the city. The Kars–Tbilisi–Baku railway, which directly connects Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan, began to be constructed in 2007 and opened in 2017. The completed branch will connect Baku with Tbilisi in Georgia, and from there trains will continue to Akhalkalaki, and Kars in Turkey. Sea transport is vital for Baku, as the city is practically surrounded by the Caspian Sea to the east. Shipping services operate regularly from Baku across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk) in Turkmenistan and to Bandar Anzali and Bandar Nowshar in Iran. The commuter ferries, along with the high-speed catamaran "Seabus" ("Deniz Avtobusu"), also form the main connection between the city and the Absheron peninsula. Baku Port was founded in 1902 and claims to be the largest Caspian Sea port. It has six facilities: the main cargo terminal, the container terminal, the ferry terminal, the oil terminal, the passenger terminal and the port fleet terminal. The port's throughput capacity reaches 15 million tonnes of liquid bulk and up to 10 million tons of dry cargoes. In 2010, the Baku International Sea Trade Port began to be reconstructed. The construction was planned to take place in three stages and to be completed by 2016. The estimated costs were US$400 million. From April to November, Baku Port is accessible to ships loading cargoes for direct voyages from Western European and Mediterranean ports. The State Road M-1 and the European route E60 are the two main motorway connections between Europe and Azerbaijan. The motorway network around Baku is well-developed and is constantly being extended. The Heydar Aliyev International Airport is the only commercial airport serving Baku. The new Baku Cargo Terminal was officially opened in March 2005. It was constructed to be a major cargo hub in the CIS countries, and is actually now one of the biggest and most technically advanced in the region. There are also several smaller military airbases near Baku, such as Baku Kala Air Base, intended for private aircraft, helicopters and charters. Health care. According to the Ministry of Healthcare, healthcare facilities in Baku are "highly developed compared with the regions and doctors are waiting to work there. The regions, meanwhile, lack both doctors and clinics providing specialized medical treatment." Resulting in citizens travelling for many hours to Baku to receive adequate medical treatment. International relations. Twin towns and sister cities. Baku is twinned with:[in chronological order]
4567	30552921	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4567	Balalaika	The balalaika (, ) is a Russian stringed musical instrument with a characteristic triangular wooden, hollow body, fretted neck, and three strings. Two strings are usually tuned to the same note and the third string is a perfect fourth higher. The higher-pitched balalaikas are used to play melodies and chords. The instrument generally has a short sustain, necessitating rapid strumming or plucking when it is used to play melodies. Balalaikas are often used for Russian folk music and dancing. The balalaika "family of instruments" includes instruments of various sizes, from the highest-pitched to the lowest: the piccolo balalaika, prima balalaika, secunda balalaika, alto balalaika, bass balalaika, and contrabass balalaika. There are balalaika orchestras which consist solely of different balalaikas; these ensembles typically play Classical music that has been arranged for balalaikas. The prima balalaika is the most common; the piccolo is rare. There have also been "descant" and "tenor" balalaikas, but these are considered obsolete. All have three-sided bodies; spruce, evergreen, or fir tops; and backs made of three to nine wooden sections (usually maple). The prima, secunda, and alto balalaikas are played either with the fingers or a plectrum (pick), depending on the music being played, and the bass and contrabass (equipped with extension legs that rest on the floor) are played with leather plectra. The rare piccolo instrument is usually played with a pick. Etymology. The earliest mention of the term "balalaika" dates back to a 1688 arrest document. Another appearance of the word is found in a claim dated October 1700 in what is now the Verkhotursky district of Russia. Peter the Great requested balalaika performers to play at the wedding celebrations of N.M. Zotov in Saint Petersburg. In the Ukrainian language, the word was first documented in the 18th century as "balabaika"; this form is also present in South Russian dialects and the Belarusian language, as well as in Siberian Russia. Types. The most common solo instrument is the prima, which is tuned E4–E4–A4 (thus the two lower strings are tuned to the same pitch). Sometimes the balalaika is tuned "guitar style" by folk musicians to G3–B3–D4 (mimicking the three highest strings of the Russian guitar), whereby it is easier to play for Russian guitar players, although classically trained balalaika purists avoid this tuning. It can also be tuned to E4–A4–D5, like its cousin, the domra, to make it easier for those trained on the domra to play the instrument, and still have a balalaika sound. The folk (pre-Andreev) tunings D4–F4–A4 and C4–E4–G4 were very popular, as this makes it easier to play certain riffs. Balalaikas have been made in the following sizes: Factory-made six-string prima balalaikas with three sets of double courses are also common. These have three double courses similar to the stringing of the mandolin and often use a "guitar" tuning. Four-string alto balalaikas are also encountered and are used in the orchestra of the Piatnistky Folk Choir. The piccolo, prima, and secunda balalaikas were originally strung with gut with the thinnest melody string made of stainless steel. Today, nylon strings are commonly used in place of gut. Amateur and/or souvenir-style prima balalaikas usually have a total of 16 frets, while in professional orchestra-like ones that number raises to 24. Technique. An important part of balalaika technique is the use of the left thumb to fret notes on the lower string, particularly on the prima, where it is used to form chords. Traditionally, the side of the index finger of the right hand is used to sound notes on the prima, while a plectrum is used on the larger sizes. Because of the large size of the contrabass's strings, it is not uncommon to see players using a plectrum made from a leather shoe or boot heel. Bass and contrabass balalaikas rest on the ground, on a wooden or metal pin that is drilled into one of its corners. History. Some theories say that the instrument is descended from the domra, an instrument from the East Slavs. In the Caucasus, similar instruments such as the Mongolian topshur, used in Kalmykia, and the Panduri used in Georgia are played. It is also similar to the Kazakh dombra, which has two strings. The pre-Andreyev period. Early representations of the balalaika show it with anywhere from two to six strings. Similarly, frets on earlier balalaikas were made of animal gut and tied to the neck so that they could be moved around by the player at will (as is the case with the modern saz, which allows for the playing distinctive to Turkish and Central Asian music). The first known document mentioning the instrument dates back to 1688. A guard's logbook from the Moscow Kremlin records that two commoners were stopped from playing the Balalaika whilst drunk. Further documents from 1700 and 1714 also mention the instrument. In the early 18th century the term appeared in Ukrainian documents, where it sounded like "Balabaika". Balalaika appeared in "Elysei", a 1771 poem by V. Maikov. In the 19th century, the balalaika evolved into a triangular instrument with a neck that was substantially shorter than that of its Asian counterparts. It was popular as a village instrument for centuries, particularly with the "skomorokhs", sort of free-lance musical jesters whose tunes ridiculed the Tsar, the Russian Orthodox Church, and Russian society in general. The Andreyev period. In the 1880s, Vasily Vasilievich Andreyev, who was then a professional violinist in the music salons of St Petersburg, developed what became the standardized balalaika, with the assistance of violin maker V. Ivanov. The instrument began to be used in his concert performances. A few years later, St. Petersburg craftsman Paserbsky further refined the instruments by adding a fully chromatic set of frets and also a number of balalaikas in orchestral sizes with the tunings now found in modern instruments. One of the reasons why the instruments were not standardised, was because people in the outlying areas built their own instruments because there was so little communication for them. There were no roads and weather conditions were generally bad. Andreyev patented the design and arranged numerous traditional Russian folk melodies for the orchestra. He also composed a body of concert pieces for the instrument. Balalaika orchestra. The result of Andreyev's labours was the establishment of an orchestral folk tradition in Tsarist Russia, which later grew into a movement within the Soviet Union. The balalaika orchestra in its full form consists of balalaikas, domras, gusli, bayan, Vladimir Shepherd's Horns, garmoshkas, and several types of percussion instruments. With the establishment of the Soviet system and the entrenchment of a proletarian cultural direction, the culture of the working classes (which included that of village labourers) was actively supported by the Soviet establishment. The concept of the balalaika orchestra was adopted wholeheartedly by the Soviet government as something distinctively proletarian (that is, from the working classes) and was also deemed progressive. Significant amounts of energy and time were devoted to support and foster the formal study of the balalaika, from which highly skilled ensemble groups such as the Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra emerged. Balalaika virtuosi such as Boris Feoktistov and Pavel Necheporenko became stars both inside and outside the Soviet Union. The movement was so powerful that even the renowned Red Army Choir, which initially used a normal symphonic orchestra, changed its instrumentation, replacing violins, violas, and violoncellos with orchestral balalaikas and domras. Solo instrument. Often musicians perform solo on the balalaika. In particular, Alexey Arkhipovsky is well known for his solo performances. In particular, he was invited to play at the opening ceremony of the second semi final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 in Moscow because the organizers wanted to give a "more Russian appearance" to the contest. Notable players. See Category: Russian balalaika players (English Wikipedia) and a larger one in Russian In popular culture. Through the 20th century, interest in Russian folk instruments grew outside of Russia, likely as a result of western tours by Andreyev and other balalaika virtuosi early in the century. Significant balalaika associations are found in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and Seattle.
4568	10896994	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4568	Bank of China Tower (Hong Kong)	The Bank of China Tower (BOC Tower) is a skyscraper located in Central, Hong Kong. Located at 1 Garden Road on Hong Kong Island, the tower houses the headquarters of the Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited. One of the most recognisable landmarks in Hong Kong, the building is notable for its distinct shape and design, consisting of triangular frameworks covered by glass curtain walls. The building was designed by Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei and L. C. Pei of I. M. Pei and Partners. At a height of , reaching high including a spire, the building is the fourth tallest skyscraper in Hong Kong, after International Commerce Centre, Two International Finance Centre (2 IFC) and Central Plaza. It was the tallest building in Hong Kong and Asia from 1990 to 1992, and it was the first supertall skyscraper outside the United States, the first to break the 305 m (1,000 ft) mark. It was surpassed by Central Plaza on the same island in 1992. Construction began on 18 April 1985 on the former site of Murray House, and was completed five years later in 1990. Sporting a steel-column design, the building is accessible from the MTR's Central station. The building lies between Cotton Tree Drive and Garden Road. History. Site. The site on which the building is constructed was formerly the location of Murray House. After its brick-by-brick relocation to Stanley, the site was sold by the Government for "only HK$1 billion" in August 1982 amidst growing concern over the future of Hong Kong in the run-up to the transfer of sovereignty. The building was initially built by the Hong Kong Branch of the Bank of China; its Garden Road entrance continues to display the name "Bank of China", rather than BOCHK. The top four and the bottom 19 stories are used by the Bank, while the other floors are leased out. Ownership has since been transferred to BOCHK, although the Bank of China has leased back several floors for use by its own operations in Hong Kong. Favouritism controversy. The Government had apparently given preferential treatment to Chinese companies, and was again criticised for the apparent preferential treatment to the BOCHK. The price paid was half the amount of the Admiralty II plot, for which the MTR Corporation paid HK$1.82 billion in cash. The BOC would make initial payment of $60 million, with the rest payable over 13 years at 6% interest. The announcement of the sale was also poorly handled, and a dive in business confidence ensued. The Hang Seng Index fell 80 points, and the HK$ lost 1.5% of its value the next day. Construction. The tower was built by Japanese contractor Kumagai Gumi. Superstructure work began in May 1986. The tower is a steel-frame structure. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 interrupted publicity surrounding the building's design and construction. A press conference scheduled for 24 May 1989, two weeks before the incident, was intended to show off the building's "designer socialist furnishings", but was called off as the student demonstrations in Beijing escalated. The public relations firm that organised the conference explained to the "South China Morning Post" that "under the circumstances, it has been decided to stop any publicity to do with the Bank of China." Once developed, gross floor area was expected to be . The original project was intended for completion on the auspicious date of 8 August 1988. However, owing to project delays, groundbreaking took place in March 1985, almost two years late, with the completion also facing a nearly two-year delay. It was topped out in 1989, and occupied on 15 June 1990. Architecture. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect I. M. Pei, the building is high with two masts reaching high. The 72-storey building is located near Central MTR station. This was the tallest building in Hong Kong and Asia from 1990 to 1992, the first building outside the United States to break the 305 m (1,000 ft) mark, and the first composite space frame high-rise building. That also means it was the tallest outside the United States from its completion year, 1990. It is now the fourth tallest skyscraper in Hong Kong, after International Commerce Centre, Two International Finance Centre and Central Plaza. A small observation deck on the 43rd floor of the building was once open to the public, but is now closed. The whole structure is supported by the four steel columns at the corners of the building, with the triangular frameworks transferring the weight of the structure onto these four columns. It is covered with glass curtain walls. Structural engineer Leslie E. Robertson, best known for his work on the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center, provided the structural engineering design, while Jaros, Baum & Bolles was the mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer. While its distinctive look makes it one of Hong Kong's most identifiable landmarks today, it was the source of some controversy at one time, as the bank is the only major building in Hong Kong to have bypassed the convention of consulting with feng shui masters on matters of design prior to construction. The building has been criticised by some practitioners of feng shui for its sharp edges and its negative symbolism by the numerous 'X' shapes in its original design, though Pei modified the design to some degree before construction following this feedback. The building's profile from some angles resembles that of a meat cleaver and it is sometimes referred to as a "vertical knife". This earned it the nickname () in Cantonese, literally meaning 'one knife'. Transport. The Bank of China Tower can be accessed by the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) by walking through Chater Garden from Central station Exit J2.
4569	7436027	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4569	Blind Lemon Jefferson	Lemon Henry "Blind Lemon" Jefferson (September 24, 1893 – December 19, 1929) was an American blues and gospel singer-songwriter and musician. He was one of the most popular and successful blues singers of the 1920s and has been called the "Father of the Texas Blues". Due mainly to his high-pitched voice and the originality of his guitar playing, Jefferson's performances were distinctive. His recordings sold well, but he was not a strong influence on younger blues singers of his generation, who could not imitate him as easily as they could other commercially successful artists. Later blues and rock and roll musicians, however, did attempt to imitate both his songs and his musical style. Jefferson had an intricate and fast style of guitar playing and a particularly high-pitched voice. He was a founder of the Texas blues sound and an important influence on other blues singers and guitarists, including Lead Belly and Lightnin' Hopkins. He was the author of many songs covered by later musicians, including the classic "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean". Another of his songs, "Matchbox Blues", was recorded more than 30 years later by the Beatles, in a rockabilly version credited to Carl Perkins, who did not credit Jefferson on his 1955 recording. Fellow blues artist B.B. King credited Jefferson as one of his biggest musical influences, next to Lonnie Johnson, Louis Jordan and T-Bone Walker. Biography. Early life. Jefferson was born blind, near Coutchman, Texas. He was the youngest of seven (or possibly eight) children born to Clarissa and Alex Jefferson, who were African-American sharecroppers. Disputes regarding the date of his birth derive from the fact that census records and his draft registration show different dates. By 1900, the family was farming southeast of Streetman, Texas. Jefferson's birth date was recorded as September 1893 in the 1900 census. The 1910 census, taken in May, before his birthday, confirms his year of birth as 1893 and indicated that the family was farming northwest of Wortham, near his birthplace. In his 1917 draft registration, Jefferson gave his birthday as October 26, 1894, stating that he lived in Dallas, Texas, and had been blind since birth. In the 1920 census, he is recorded as having returned to Freestone County and was living with his half-brother, Kit Banks, on a farm between Wortham and Streetman. Jefferson began playing the guitar in his early teens and soon after he began performing at picnics and parties. He became a street musician, playing in East Texas towns in front of barbershops and on street corners. According to his cousin Alec Jefferson, quoted in the notes for the compilation album "The Complete 94 Classic Sides: Remastered": One of Jefferson's first appearances was at the General Association of Baptist Churches in Buffalo, Texas. There he would perform classic gospel music which would later lead to his first album release in 1926 containing two hit gospel songs, "I Want to Be Like Jesus in My Heart" and "All I Want Is That Pure Religion". According to his friend, the folk musician Lead Belly, in 1917, Jefferson was commonly found on the corner of Elm and Central Tracks in a part of Dallas called Deep Ellum. Jefferson was restricted in many parts of Dallas by the white population, leaving his only option to play the African-American neighborhood that made up Deep Ellum. In 1912, Jefferson began traveling frequently to Dallas, where he played with Lead Belly. Jefferson was one of the earliest and most prominent figures in the blues movement developing in Deep Ellum. It is probable that he moved to Deep Ellum on a more permanent basis by 1917, where he met Aaron Thibeaux Walker, also known as T-Bone Walker. Jefferson taught Walker the basics of playing blues guitar in exchange for Walker's occasional services as a guide. By the early 1920s, Jefferson was earning enough money for his musical performances to support a wife and, possibly, a child. However, firm evidence of his marriage and children has not been found. Beginning of recording career. Prior to Jefferson, few artists had recorded solo voice and blues guitar, the first of which were the vocalist Sara Martin and the guitarist Sylvester Weaver, who recorded "Longing for Daddy Blues", probably on October 24, 1923. The first self-accompanied solo performer of a self-composed blues song was Lee Morse, whose "Mail Man Blues" was recorded on October 7, 1924. Jefferson's music is uninhibited and represented the classic sounds of everyday life, from a honky-tonk to a country picnic, to street corner blues, to work in the burgeoning oil fields (a reflection of his interest in mechanical objects and processes). Jefferson did what few had ever done before him – he became a successful solo guitarist and male vocalist in the commercial recording world. Unlike many artists who were "discovered" and recorded in their normal venues, Jefferson was taken to Chicago in December 1925 or January 1926 to record his first tracks. Uncharacteristically for him, the first two recordings on this session were gospel songs ("I Want to Be Like Jesus in My Heart" and "All I Want Is That Pure Religion"), and they were released under the name Deacon L. J. Bates. A second recording session was held in March 1926. His first releases under his own name, "Booster Blues" and "Dry Southern Blues", were hits. Their popularity led to the release of the other two songs from that session, "Got the Blues" and "Long Lonesome Blues", which became a runaway success, with sales in six figures. He recorded about a hundred tracks between 1926 and 1929; forty-three records were issued, all but one of them on Paramount Records. Almost all of his recordings for Paramount had poor sound quality because Paramount's studio techniques and production were poor during that time. In May 1926, Paramount re-recorded Jefferson performing his hits "Got the Blues" and "Long Lonesome Blues" in the superior facilities at Marsh Laboratories, and their subsequent releases used these newer versions. Both the original and re-recorded versions appear on modern compilation albums. Success with Paramount Records. Largely because of the popularity of artists such as Jefferson and his contemporaries Blind Blake and Ma Rainey, Paramount became the leading recording company for the blues in the 1920s. Jefferson's earnings reputedly enabled him to buy a car and employ chauffeurs (this information has been disputed); he was given a Ford car "worth over $700" by Mayo Williams, Paramount's connection with the black community. This was a common compensation for recording rights in that market. Jefferson is known to have done an unusual amount of traveling for the time in the American South, which is reflected in the difficulty of placing his music in a single regional category. Jefferson's "old-fashioned" sound and confident musicianship made it easy to market him. His skillful guitar playing and impressive vocal range opened the door for a new generation of male solo blues performers, such as Furry Lewis, Charlie Patton, and Barbecue Bob. He stuck to no musical conventions, varying his riffs and rhythm and singing complex and expressive lyrics in a manner exceptional at the time for a "simple country blues singer." According to the North Carolina musician Walter Davis, Jefferson played on the streets in Johnson City, Tennessee, during the early 1920s, at which time Davis and the entertainer Clarence Greene learned the art of blues guitar. Jefferson was reputedly unhappy with his royalties (although Williams said that Jefferson had a bank account containing as much as $1,500). In 1927, when Williams moved to Okeh Records, he took Jefferson with him, and Okeh quickly recorded and released Jefferson's "Matchbox Blues", backed with "Black Snake Moan". It was his only Okeh recording, probably because of contractual obligations with Paramount. Jefferson's two songs released on Okeh have considerably better sound quality than his Paramount records at the time. When he returned to Paramount a few months later, "Matchbox Blues" had already become such a hit that Paramount re-recorded and released two new versions, with the producer Arthur Laibly. In 1927, Jefferson recorded another of his classic songs, the haunting "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" (again using the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates), and two other uncharacteristically spiritual songs, "He Arose from the Dead" and "Where Shall I Be". "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" was so successful that it was re-recorded and re-released in 1928. Death and grave. Jefferson died in Chicago at 10:00 a.m. on December 19, 1929, of what his death certificate said was "probably acute myocarditis". For many years, rumors circulated that a jealous lover had poisoned his coffee, but a more likely explanation is that he died of a heart attack after becoming disoriented during a snowstorm. Some have said that he died of a heart attack after being attacked by a dog in the middle of the night. In his 1983 book "Tolbert's Texas", Frank X. Tolbert claims that he was killed while being robbed of a large royalty payment by a guide escorting him to Chicago Union Station to catch a train home to Texas. Paramount Records paid for the return of his body to Texas by train, accompanied by the pianist William Ezell. Jefferson was buried at Wortham Negro Cemetery (later Wortham Black Cemetery) in Wortham, Freestone County, Texas. His grave was unmarked until 1967, when a Texas historical marker was erected in the general area of his plot; however, the precise location of the grave is still unknown. By 1996, the cemetery and marker were in poor condition, and a new granite headstone was erected in 1997. The inscription reads: "Lord, it's one kind favor I'll ask of you, see that my grave is kept clean." In 2007, the cemetery's name was changed to Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery, and his gravesite is kept clean by a cemetery committee in Wortham. Discography and awards. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame selected Jefferson's 1927 recording of "Matchbox Blues" as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock and roll. Jefferson was among the inaugural class of blues musicians inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980.
4571	32251677	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4571	Baku (mythology)	are Japanese supernatural beings that are said to devour nightmares. They originate from the Chinese Mo. According to legend, they were created by the spare pieces that were left over when the gods finished creating all other animals. They have a long history in Japanese folklore and art, and more recently have appeared in manga and anime. The Japanese term "baku" has two current meanings, referring to both the traditional dream-devouring creature and to the Malayan tapir. In recent years, there have been changes in how the "baku" is depicted. History and description. The traditional Japanese nightmare-devouring "baku" originates in Chinese folklore from the "mo" (giant panda) and was familiar in Japan as early as the Muromachi period (14th–15th century). Hori Tadao has described the dream-eating abilities attributed to the traditional "baku" and relates them to other preventatives against nightmare such as amulets. Kaii-Yōkai Denshō Database, citing a 1957 paper, and Mizuki also describe the dream-devouring capacities of the traditional "baku". Before its adaptation to the Japanese dream-caretaker myth creature, an early 17th-century Japanese manuscript, the "Sankai Ibutsu" (), describes the "baku" as a shy, Chinese mythical chimera with the trunk and tusks of an elephant, the ears of a rhinoceros, the tail of a cow, the body of a bear and the paws of a tiger, which protected against pestilence and evil, although eating nightmares was not included among its abilities. However, in a 1791 Japanese wood-block illustration, a specifically dream-destroying "baku" is depicted with an elephant's head, tusks, and trunk, with horns and tiger's claws. The elephant's head, trunk, and tusks are characteristic of "baku" portrayed in classical era (pre-Meiji) Japanese wood-block prints (see illustration) and in shrine, temple, and netsuke carvings. Writing in the Meiji period, Lafcadio Hearn (1902) described a "baku" with very similar attributes that was also able to devour nightmares. Legend has it that a person who wakes up from a bad dream can call out to "baku". A child having a nightmare in Japan will wake up and repeat three times, "Baku-san, come eat my dream." Legends say that the "baku" will come into the child's room and devour the bad dream, allowing the child to go back to sleep peacefully. However, calling to the "baku" must be done sparingly, because if he remains hungry after eating one's nightmare, he may also devour their hopes and desires as well, leaving them to live an empty life. The "baku" can also be summoned for protection from bad dreams prior to falling asleep at night. In the 1910s, it was common for Japanese children to keep a "baku" talisman at their bedside.
4572	194203	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4572	Blackbeard	Edward Teach (or Thatch; – 22 November 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain's North American colonies. Little is known about his early life, but he may have been a sailor on privateer ships during Queen Anne's War before he settled on the Bahamian island of New Providence, a base for Captain Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew Teach joined around 1716. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop that he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Their numbers were boosted by the addition to their fleet of two more ships, one of which was commanded by Stede Bonnet, but Hornigold retired from piracy toward the end of 1717, taking two vessels with him. Teach captured a French slave ship known as , renamed her "Queen Anne's Revenge," equipped her with 40 guns, and crewed her with over 300 men. He became a renowned pirate. His nickname derived from his thick black beard and fearsome appearance. He was reported to have tied lit fuses (slow matches) under his hat to frighten his enemies. He formed an alliance of pirates and blockaded the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, ransoming the port's inhabitants. He then ran "Queen Anne's Revenge" aground on a sandbar near Beaufort, North Carolina. He parted company with Stede Bonnet and settled in Bath, North Carolina, also known as Bath Town, where he accepted a royal pardon. However, he was soon back at sea, where he attracted the attention of Alexander Spotswood, the governor of Virginia. Spotswood arranged for a party of soldiers and sailors to capture him. On 22 November 1718, following a ferocious battle, Teach and several of his crew were killed by a small force of sailors led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard. Teach was a shrewd and calculating leader who spurned the use of violence, relying instead on his fearsome image to elicit the response that he desired from those whom he robbed. He was romanticised after his death and became the inspiration for an archetypal pirate in works of fiction across many genres. Early life. Little is known about Blackbeard's early life. It is commonly believed that at the time of his death he was between 35 and 40 years old and thus born around 1680. In contemporary records his name is most often given as Blackbeard, Edward Thatch or Edward Teach. The latter is most often used because it is the form used in the dispatches of North America's only newspaper at the time, the Boston News-Letter, but primary sources written by people who had actually met the pirate all refer to him as "Thatch" or variations thereof. Several spellings of his surname exist: Thatch, Thach, Thache, Thack, Tack, Thatche, and Theach. One source claims that his surname was Drummond, but the lack of any supporting documentation makes this unlikely. Pirates habitually used fictitious surnames while engaged in piracy so as not to tarnish the family name, which makes it unlikely that Teach's real name will ever be known. The 17th-century rise of Britain's American colonies and the rapid 18th-century expansion of the Atlantic slave trade had made Bristol an important international sea port, and Teach was most likely raised in what was then the second-largest city in England. He could almost certainly read and write. He communicated with merchants and, upon his death, had in his possession a letter addressed to him by the Chief Justice and Secretary of the Province of Carolina, Tobias Knight. Author Robert Lee speculated that Teach may therefore have been born into a respectable, wealthy family. He may have arrived in the Caribbean in the last years of the 17th century, on a merchant vessel (possibly a slave ship). The 18th-century author Charles Johnson claimed that Teach was for some time a sailor operating from Jamaica on privateer ships during the War of the Spanish Succession, and that "he had often distinguished himself for his uncommon boldness and personal courage." It is unknown at what point during the war Teach joined the fighting, as with the record of most of his life before he became a pirate. Life as a pirate. New Providence. With its history of colonialism, trade and piracy, the West Indies was the setting for many 17th- and 18th-century maritime incidents. The privateer-turned-pirate Henry Jennings and his followers decided, early in the 18th century, to use the uninhabited island of New Providence as a base for their operations since it was within easy reach of the Florida Strait and its busy shipping lanes, which were filled with European vessels crossing the Atlantic. New Providence's harbour could easily accommodate hundreds of ships but was too shallow for the Royal Navy's larger vessels. The author George Woodbury described New Providence as "no city of homes. It was a place of temporary sojourn and refreshment for a literally floating population," continuing, "The only permanent residents were the piratical camp followers, the traders, and the hangers-on. All others were transient." In New Providence, pirates found a welcome respite from the law. Teach was one of those who came to enjoy the island's benefits. Probably shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, he moved there from Jamaica, and, along with most privateers once involved in the war, became involved in piracy. Possibly about 1716, he joined the crew of Captain Benjamin Hornigold, a renowned pirate who operated from New Providence's safe waters. In 1716, Hornigold placed Teach in charge of a sloop he had taken as a prize. In early 1717, Hornigold and Teach, each captaining a sloop, set out for the mainland. They captured a boat carrying 120 barrels of flour out of Havana, and shortly thereafter took 100 barrels of wine from a sloop out of Bermuda. A few days later they stopped a vessel sailing from Madeira to Charles Town, South Carolina. Teach and his quartermaster, William Howard, may at this time have struggled to control their crews. By then they had probably developed a taste for Madeira wine, and on 29 September near Cape Charles all they took from the "Betty" of Virginia was her cargo of Madeira, before they scuttled her with the remaining cargo. It was during this cruise with Hornigold that the earliest known report of Teach was made, in which he is recorded as a pirate in his own right, in command of a large crew. In a report made by a Captain Mathew Munthe on an anti-piracy patrol for North Carolina, "Thatch" was described as operating "a sloop 6 and about 70 men." In September, Teach and Hornigold encountered Stede Bonnet, a landowner and military officer from a wealthy family who had turned to piracy earlier that year. Bonnet's crew of about 70 were reportedly dissatisfied with his command, so with Bonnet's permission, Teach took control of his ship, "Revenge." The pirates' flotilla now consisted of three ships: Teach on "Revenge," Teach's old sloop, and Hornigold's "Ranger." By October, another vessel had been captured and added to the small fleet. The sloops "Robert" of Philadelphia and "Good Intent" of Dublin were stopped on 22 October 1717 and their cargo holds emptied. As a former British privateer, Hornigold attacked only his old enemies, but for his crew, the sight of British vessels filled with valuable cargo passing by unharmed became too much, and at some point toward the end of 1717 he was demoted. Whether Teach had any involvement in this decision is unknown, but Hornigold quickly retired from piracy. He took "Ranger" and one of the sloops, leaving Teach with "Revenge" and the remaining sloop. The two never met again and, as did many other occupants of New Providence, Hornigold accepted the King's pardon. Blackbeard. On 28 November 1717 Teach's two ships attacked a French merchant vessel off the coast of Saint Vincent. They each fired a broadside across its bulwarks, killing several of its crew, and forcing its captain to surrender. The ship was , a large French Guineaman registered in Saint-Malo and carrying a cargo of slaves. This ship had originally been the English merchantman "Concord", captured in 1711 by a French squadron, and then changed hands several times by 1717. Teach and his crews sailed the vessel south along Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to Bequia, where they disembarked her crew and cargo, and converted the ship for their own use. The crew of were given the smaller of Teach's two sloops, which they renamed ("Bad Meeting"), and sailed for Martinique. Teach may have recruited some of their slaves, but the remainder were left on the island and were later recaptured by the returning crew of . Teach immediately renamed as "Queen Anne's Revenge" and equipped her with 40 guns. By this time Teach had placed his lieutenant Richards in command of Bonnet's "Revenge". In late November the same year, near Saint Vincent, he attacked the "Great Allen". After a lengthy engagement, he forced the large and well-armed merchant ship to surrender. He ordered her to move closer to the shore, disembarked her crew and emptied her cargo holds, and then burned and sank the vessel. The incident was chronicled in the "Boston News-Letter", which called Teach the commander of a "French ship of 32 Guns, a Briganteen of 10 guns and a Sloop of 12 guns." It is not known when or where Teach collected the ten-gun briganteen, but by that time he may have been in command of at least 150 men split among three vessels. On 5 December 1717 Teach stopped the merchant sloop "Margaret" off the coast of Crab Island, near Anguilla. Her captain, Henry Bostock, and crew, remained Teach's prisoners for about eight hours, and were forced to watch as their sloop was ransacked. Bostock, who had been held aboard "Queen Anne's Revenge", was returned unharmed to "Margaret" and was allowed to leave with his crew. He returned to his base of operations on Saint Christopher Island and reported the matter to Governor Walter Hamilton, who requested that he sign an affidavit about the encounter. Bostock's deposition details Teach's command of two vessels: a sloop and a large French guineaman, Dutch-built, with 36 cannons and a crew of 300 men. The captain believed that the larger ship carried valuable gold dust, silver plate, and "a very fine cup" supposedly taken from the commander of "Great Allen". Teach's crew had apparently informed Bostock that they had destroyed several other vessels, and that they intended to sail to Hispaniola and lie in wait for an expected Spanish armada, supposedly laden with money to pay the garrisons. Bostock also claimed that Teach had questioned him about the movements of local ships, but also that he had seemed unsurprised when Bostock told him of an expected royal pardon from London for all pirates. Bostock's deposition describes Teach as a "tall spare man with a very black beard which he wore very long". It is the first recorded account of Teach's appearance and is the source of his nickname Blackbeard. Later descriptions mention that his thick black beard was braided into pigtails, sometimes tied in with small coloured ribbons. Johnson (1724) described him as "such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful." Whether Johnson's description was entirely truthful or embellished is unclear, but it seems likely that Teach understood the value of appearances; better to strike fear into the heart of one's enemies than rely on bluster alone. Teach was tall, with broad shoulders. He wore knee-length boots and dark clothing, topped with a wide hat and sometimes a long coat of brightly coloured silk or velvet. Johnson also described Teach in times of battle as wearing "a sling over his shoulders, with three brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like bandoliers; and stuck lighted slow matches under his hat", the latter apparently to emphasise the fearsome appearance he wished to present to his enemies. Despite his ferocious reputation, there are no verified accounts of his ever having murdered or harmed those he held captive. Teach may have used other aliases; on 30 November, the "Monserrat Merchant" encountered two ships and a sloop, commanded by a Captain Kentish and Captain Edwards (the latter a known alias of Stede Bonnet). Enlargement of Teach's fleet. Teach's movements between late 1717 and early 1718 are not known. He and Bonnet were probably responsible for an attack off Sint Eustatius in December 1717. Henry Bostock claimed to have heard the pirates say they would head toward the Spanish-controlled Samaná Bay in Hispaniola, but a cursory search revealed no pirate activity. Captain Hume of reported on 6 February that a "Pyrate Ship of 36 Guns and 250 men, and a Sloop of 10 Guns and 100 men were Said to be Cruizing amongst the Leeward Islands". Hume reinforced his crew with soldiers armed with muskets, and joined up with to track the two ships, to no avail, though they discovered that the two ships had sunk a French vessel off St Christopher Island, and reported also that they had last been seen "gone down the North side of Hispaniola". Although no confirmation exists that these two ships were controlled by Teach and Bonnet, author Angus Konstam believes it very likely they were. In March 1718, while taking on water at Turneffe Island east of Belize, both ships spotted the Jamaican logwood-cutting sloop "Adventure" making for the harbour. She was stopped and her captain, Harriot, invited to join the pirates. Harriot and his crew accepted the invitation, and Teach sent over a crew to sail "Adventure" making Israel Hands the captain. They sailed for the Bay of Honduras, where they added another ship and four sloops to their flotilla. On 9 April Teach's enlarged fleet of ships looted and burnt "Protestant Caesar". His fleet then sailed to Grand Cayman where they captured a "small turtler". Teach probably sailed toward Havana, where he may have captured a small Spanish vessel that had left the Cuban port. They then sailed to the wrecks of the 1715 Spanish fleet, off the eastern coast of Florida. There Teach disembarked the crew of the captured Spanish sloop, before proceeding north to the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, attacking three vessels along the way. Blockade of Charles Town. By May 1718, Teach had awarded himself the rank of Commodore and was at the height of his power. Late that month his flotilla blockaded the port of Charles Town in the Province of South Carolina. All vessels entering or leaving the port were stopped, and as the town had no guard ship, its pilot boat was the first to be captured. Over the next five or six days about nine vessels were stopped and ransacked as they attempted to sail past Charles Town Bar, where Teach's fleet was anchored. One such ship, headed for London with a group of prominent Charles Town citizens which included Samuel Wragg (a member of the Council of the province of Carolina), was the "Crowley". Her passengers were questioned about the vessels still in port and then locked below decks for about half a day. Teach informed the prisoners that his fleet required medical supplies from the colonial government of South Carolina, and that if none were forthcoming, all prisoners would be executed, their heads sent to the Governor and all captured ships burnt. Wragg agreed to Teach's demands, and a Mr. Marks and two pirates were given two days to collect the drugs. Teach moved his fleet, and the captured ships, to within about five or six leagues from land. Three days later a messenger, sent by Marks, returned to the fleet; Marks's boat had capsized and delayed their arrival in Charles Town. Teach granted a reprieve of two days, but still the party did not return. He then called a meeting of his fellow sailors and moved eight ships into the harbour, causing panic within the town. When Marks finally returned to the fleet, he explained what had happened. On his arrival he had presented the pirates' demands to the Governor and the drugs had been quickly gathered, but the two pirates sent to escort him had proved difficult to find; they had been busy drinking with friends and were finally discovered, drunk. Teach kept to his side of the bargain and released the captured ships and his prisoners—albeit relieved of their valuables, including the fine clothing some had worn. Beaufort Inlet. Whilst at Charles Town, Teach learned that Woodes Rogers had left England with several men-of-war, with orders to purge the West Indies of pirates. Teach's flotilla sailed northward along the Atlantic coast and into Topsail Inlet (commonly known as Beaufort Inlet), off the coast of North Carolina. There they intended to careen their ships to scrape their hulls, but on 10 June 1718 the "Queen Anne's Revenge" ran aground on a sandbar, cracking her main-mast and severely damaging many of her timbers. Teach ordered several sloops to throw ropes across the flagship in an attempt to free her. A sloop commanded by Israel Hands of "Adventure" also ran aground, and both vessels appeared to be damaged beyond repair, leaving only "Revenge" and the captured Spanish sloop. Pardon. Teach had at some stage learnt of the offer of a royal pardon and probably confided in Bonnet his willingness to accept it. The pardon was open to all pirates who surrendered on or before 5 September 1718, but contained a caveat stipulating that immunity was offered only against crimes committed before 5 January. Although in theory this left Bonnet and Teach at risk of being hanged for their actions at Charles Town Bar, most authorities could waive such conditions. Teach thought that Governor Charles Eden was a man he could trust, but to make sure, he waited to see what would happen to another captain. Bonnet left immediately on a small sailing boat for Bath Town, where he surrendered to Governor Eden, and received his pardon. He then travelled back to Beaufort Inlet to collect the "Revenge" and the remainder of his crew, intending to sail to Saint Thomas Island to receive a commission. Unfortunately for him, Teach had stripped the vessel of its valuables and provisions, and had marooned its crew; Bonnet set out for revenge, but was unable to find him. He and his crew returned to piracy and were captured on 27 September 1718 at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. All but four were tried and hanged in Charles Town. The author Robert Lee surmised that Teach and Hands intentionally ran the ships aground to reduce the fleet's crew complement, increasing their share of the spoils. During the trial of Bonnet's crew, "Revenge"s boatswain Ignatius Pell testified that "the ship was run ashore and lost, which Thatch [Teach] caused to be done." Lee considers it plausible that Teach let Bonnet in on his plan to accept a pardon from Governor Eden. He suggested that Bonnet do the same, and as war between the Quadruple Alliance of 1718 and Spain was threatening, to consider taking a privateer's commission from England. Lee suggests that Teach also offered Bonnet the return of his ship "Revenge". Konstam (2007) proposes a similar idea, explaining that Teach began to see "Queen Anne's Revenge" as something of a liability; while a pirate fleet was anchored, news of this was sent to neighbouring towns and colonies, and any vessels nearby would delay sailing. It was prudent therefore for Teach not to linger for too long, although wrecking the ship was an extreme measure. Before sailing northward on his remaining sloop to Ocracoke Inlet, Teach marooned about 25 men on a small sandy island about 5 km from the mainland. He may have done this to stifle any protest they made, if they guessed their captain's plans. Bonnet rescued them two days later. Teach continued on to Bath, where in June 1718—only days after Bonnet had departed with his pardon—he and his much-reduced crew received their pardon from Governor Eden. He settled in Bath, on the eastern side of Bath Creek at Plum Point, near Eden's home. During July and August he travelled between his base in the town and his sloop off Ocracoke. Johnson's account states that he married the daughter of a local plantation owner, although there is no supporting evidence for this. Eden gave Teach permission to sail to St Thomas to seek a commission as a privateer (a useful way of removing bored and troublesome pirates from the small settlement), and Teach was given official title to his remaining sloop, which he renamed "Adventure". By the end of August he had returned to piracy, and in the same month the governor of Pennsylvania issued a warrant for his arrest, but by then Teach was probably operating in Delaware Bay, some distance away. He took two French ships leaving the Caribbean, moved one crew across to the other, and sailed the remaining ship back to Ocracoke. In September he told Eden that he had found the French ship at sea, deserted. A Vice Admiralty Court was quickly convened, presided over by Tobias Knight and the Collector of Customs. The ship was judged as a derelict found at sea, and of its cargo twenty hogsheads of sugar were awarded to Knight and sixty to Eden; Teach and his crew were given what remained in the vessel's hold. Ocracoke Inlet was Teach's favourite anchorage. It was a perfect vantage point from which to view ships travelling between the various settlements of northeast Carolina, and it was from there that Teach first spotted the approaching ship of Charles Vane, another English pirate. Several months earlier Vane had rejected the pardon brought by Woodes Rogers and escaped the men-of-war the English captain brought with him to Nassau. He had also been pursued by Teach's old commander, Benjamin Hornigold, who was by then a pirate hunter. Teach and Vane spent several nights on the southern tip of Ocracoke Island, accompanied by such notorious figures as Israel Hands, and Robert Deal. Alexander Spotswood. As it spread throughout the neighbouring colonies, the news of Teach and Vane's impromptu party worried the governor of Pennsylvania enough to send out two sloops to capture the pirates. They were unsuccessful, but Governor of Virginia Alexander Spotswood was also concerned that the supposedly retired freebooter and his crew were living in nearby North Carolina. Some of Teach's former crew had already moved into several Virginian seaport towns, prompting Spotswood to issue a proclamation on 10 July, requiring all former pirates to make themselves known to the authorities, to give up their arms and to not travel in groups larger than three. As head of a Crown colony, Spotswood viewed the proprietary colony of North Carolina with contempt; he had little faith in the ability of the Carolinians to control the pirates, who he suspected would be back to their old ways, disrupting Virginian commerce, as soon as their money ran out. Spotswood learned that William Howard, the former quartermaster of "Queen Anne's Revenge", was in the area, and believing that he might know of Teach's whereabouts had him and his two slaves arrested. Spotswood had no legal authority to have pirates tried, and as a result, Howard's attorney, John Holloway, brought charges against Captain Brand of , where Howard was imprisoned. He also sued on Howard's behalf for damages of £500, claiming wrongful arrest. Spotswood's council claimed that under a statute of William III the governor was entitled to try pirates without a jury in times of crisis and that Teach's presence was a crisis. The charges against Howard referred to several acts of piracy supposedly committed after the pardon's cut-off date, in "a sloop belonging to ye subjects of the King of Spain", but ignored the fact that they took place outside Spotswood's jurisdiction and in a vessel then legally owned. Another charge cited two attacks, one of which was the capture of a slave ship off Charles Town Bar, from which one of Howard's slaves was presumed to have come. Howard was sent to await trial before a Court of Vice-Admiralty, on the charge of piracy, but Brand and his colleague, Captain Gordon (of ) refused to serve with Holloway present. Incensed, Holloway had no option but to stand down, and was replaced by the Attorney General of Virginia, John Clayton, whom Spotswood described as "an honester man [than Holloway]". Howard was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but was saved by a commission from London, which directed Spotswood to pardon all acts of piracy committed by surrendering pirates before 18 August 1718. Spotswood had obtained from Howard valuable information on Teach's whereabouts, and he planned to send his forces across the border into North Carolina to capture him. He gained the support of two men keen to discredit North Carolina's governor—Edward Moseley and Colonel Maurice Moore. He also wrote to the Lords of Trade, suggesting that the Crown might benefit financially from Teach's capture. Spotswood personally financed the operation, possibly believing that Teach had fabulous treasures hidden away. He ordered Captains Gordon and Brand of HMS "Pearl" and HMS "Lyme" to travel overland to Bath. Lieutenant Robert Maynard of HMS "Pearl" was given command of two commandeered sloops, to approach the town from the sea. An extra incentive for Teach's capture was the offer of a reward from the Assembly of Virginia, over and above any that might be received from the Crown. Maynard took command of the two armed sloops on 17 November. He was given 57 men—33 from HMS "Pearl" and 24 from HMS "Lyme". Maynard and the detachment from HMS "Pearl" took the larger of the two vessels and named her "Jane"; the rest took "Ranger", commanded by one of Maynard's officers, a Mister Hyde. Some from the two ships' civilian crews remained aboard. They sailed from Kecoughtan, along the James River, on 17 November. The two sloops moved slowly, giving Brand's force time to reach Bath. Brand set out for North Carolina six days later, arriving within three miles of Bath on 23 November. Included in Brand's force were several North Carolinians, including Colonel Moore and Captain Jeremiah Vail, sent to counter any local objection to the presence of foreign soldiers. Moore went into the town to see if Teach was there, reporting back that he was not, but that he was expected at "every minute." Brand then went to Governor Eden's home and informed him of his purpose. The next day, Brand sent two canoes down Pamlico River to Ocracoke Inlet, to see if Teach could be seen. They returned two days later and reported on what eventually transpired. Last battle. Maynard found the pirates anchored on the inner side of Ocracoke Island, on the evening of 21 November. He had ascertained their position from ships he had stopped along his journey, but being unfamiliar with the local channels and shoals he decided to wait until the following morning to make his attack. He stopped all traffic from entering the inlet—preventing any warning of his presence—and posted a lookout on both sloops to ensure that Teach could not escape to sea. On the other side of the island, Teach was busy entertaining guests and had not set a lookout. With Israel Hands ashore in Bath with about 24 of "Adventure"s sailors, he also had a much-reduced crew. Johnson (1724) reported Teach had "no more than twenty-five men on board" and that he "gave out to all the vessels that he spoke with that he had forty". "Thirteen white and six Negroes", was the number later reported by Brand to the Admiralty. At daybreak, preceded by a small boat taking soundings, Maynard's two sloops entered the channel. The small craft was quickly spotted by "Adventure" and fired at as soon as it was within range of her guns. While the boat made a quick retreat to the "Jane", Teach cut the "Adventure"s anchor cable. His crew hoisted the sails and the "Adventure" manoeuvred to point her starboard guns toward Maynard's sloops, which were slowly closing the gap. Hyde moved "Ranger" to the port side of "Jane" and the Union flag was unfurled on each ship. "Adventure" then turned toward the beach of Ocracoke Island, heading for a narrow channel. What happened next is uncertain. Johnson claimed that there was an exchange of small arms fire following which "Adventure" ran aground on a sandbar, and Maynard anchored and then lightened his ship to pass over the obstacle. Another version claimed that "Jane" and "Ranger" ran aground, although Maynard made no mention of this in his log. The "Adventure" eventually turned her guns on the two ships and fired. The broadside was devastating; in an instant, Maynard had lost as much as a third of his forces. About 20 on "Jane" were either wounded or killed and 9 on "Ranger". Hyde was dead and his second and third officers either dead or seriously injured. His sloop was so badly damaged that it played no further role in the attack. Contemporary accounts of what happened next are confused, but small-arms fire from "Jane" may have cut "Adventure"s jib sheet, causing her to lose control and run onto the sandbar. In the aftermath of Teach's overwhelming attack, "Jane" and "Ranger" may also have been grounded; the battle would have become a race to see who could float their ship first. Maynard had kept many of his men below deck, and in anticipation of being boarded told them to prepare for close fighting. Teach watched as the gap between the vessels closed, and ordered his men to be ready. The two vessels contacted one another as the "Adventure"s grappling hooks hit their target and several grenades, made from powder and shot-filled bottles and ignited by fuses, broke across the sloop's deck. As the smoke cleared, Teach led his men aboard, buoyant at the sight of Maynard's apparently empty ship, his men firing at the small group of men with Maynard at the stern. The rest of Maynard's men then burst from the hold, shouting and firing. The plan to surprise Teach and his crew worked; the pirates were apparently taken aback at the assault. Teach rallied his men and the two groups fought across the deck, which was already slick with blood from those killed or injured by Teach's broadside. Maynard and Teach fired their flintlocks at each other. Maynard managed to hit Teach, while Teach missed. Both then threw their flintlocks away and drew their cutlasses. Teach broke Maynard's cutlass at the hilt. Against superior training and a slight advantage in numbers, the pirates were pushed back toward the bow, allowing the "Jane"s crew to surround Maynard and Teach, who was by then completely isolated. Teach pressed onward and was about to deliver a killing blow, but was slashed across the neck by one of Maynard's men. This redirected Teach's cutlass to strike Maynard's knuckles instead of killing him. Badly wounded, Teach was then attacked and killed by several more of Maynard's crew. The remaining pirates quickly surrendered. Those left on the "Adventure" were captured by the "Ranger"s crew, including one who planned to set fire to the powder room and blow up the ship. Varying accounts exist of the battle's list of casualties; Maynard reported that 8 of his men and 12 pirates were killed. Brand reported that 10 pirates and 11 of Maynard's men were killed. Spotswood claimed ten pirates and ten of the King's men dead. Maynard later examined Teach's body, noting that it had been shot five times and cut about twenty. He also found several items of correspondence, including a letter from Tobias Knight. Teach's corpse was thrown into the inlet and his head was suspended from the bowsprit of Maynard's sloop so that the reward could be collected. On their return to Virginia, Teach's head was placed on a pole at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay as a warning to other pirates and a greeting to other ships, and it stood there for several years. Legacy. Lieutenant Maynard remained at Ocracoke for several more days, making repairs and burying the dead. Teach's loot—sugar, cocoa, indigo and cotton—found "in pirate sloops and ashore in a tent where the sloops lay", was sold at auction along with sugar and cotton found in Tobias Knight's barn, for £2,238. Governor Spotswood used a portion of this to pay for the entire operation. The prize money for capturing Teach was to have been about £400 (£ in ), but it was split between the crews of HMS "Lyme" and HMS "Pearl". As Captain Brand and his troops had not been the ones fighting for their lives, Maynard thought this extremely unfair. He lost much of any support he might have had though when it was discovered that he and his crew had helped themselves to about £90 of Teach's booty. The two companies did not receive their prize money for another four years, and despite his bravery Maynard was not promoted, and faded into obscurity. The remainder of Teach's crew and former associates were found by Brand, in Bath, and were transported to Williamsburg, Virginia, where they were jailed on charges of piracy. Several were black, prompting Spotswood to ask his council what could be done about "the Circumstances of these Negroes to exempt them from undergoing the same Tryal as other pirates." Regardless, the men were tried with their comrades in Williamsburg's Capitol building, under admiralty law, on 12 March 1719. No records of the day's proceedings remain, but 14 of the 16 accused were found guilty. Of the remaining two, one proved that he had partaken of the fight out of necessity, having been on Teach's ship only as a guest at a drinking party the night before, and not as a pirate. The other, Israel Hands, was not present at the fight. He claimed that during a drinking session Teach had shot him in the knee, and that he was still covered by the royal pardon. The remaining pirates were hanged, then left to rot in gibbets along Williamsburg's Capitol Landing Road (known for some time after as "Gallows Road"). Governor Eden was certainly embarrassed by Spotswood's invasion of North Carolina, and Spotswood disavowed himself of any part of the seizure. He defended his actions, writing to Lord Carteret, a shareholder of the province of Carolina, that he might benefit from the sale of the seized property and reminding the Earl of the number of Virginians who had died to protect his interests. He argued for the secrecy of the operation by suggesting that Eden "could contribute nothing to the Success of the Design", and told Eden that his authority to capture the pirates came from the king. Eden was heavily criticised for his involvement with Teach and was accused of being his accomplice. By criticising Eden, Spotswood intended to bolster the legitimacy of his invasion. Lee (1974) concludes that although Spotswood may have thought that the ends justified the means, he had no legal authority to invade North Carolina, to capture the pirates and to seize and auction their goods. Eden doubtless shared the same view. As Spotswood had also accused Tobias Knight of being in league with Teach, on 4 April 1719, Eden had Knight brought in for questioning. Israel Hands had, weeks earlier, testified that Knight had been on board the "Adventure" in August 1718, shortly after Teach had brought a French ship to North Carolina as a prize. Four pirates had testified that with Teach they had visited Knight's home to give him presents. This testimony and the letter found on Teach's body by Maynard appeared compelling, but Knight conducted his defence with competence. Despite being very sick and close to death, he questioned the reliability of Spotswood's witnesses. He claimed that Israel Hands had talked under duress, and that under North Carolinian law the other witness, an African, was unable to testify. The sugar, he argued, was stored at his house legally, and Teach had visited him only on business, in his official capacity. The board found Knight innocent of all charges. He died later that year. Eden was annoyed that the accusations against Knight arose during a trial in which he played no part. The goods which Brand seized were officially North Carolinian property and Eden considered him a thief. The argument raged back and forth between the colonies until Eden's death on 17 March 1722. His will named one of Spotswood's opponents, John Holloway, a beneficiary. In the same year, Spotswood, who for years had fought his enemies in the House of Burgesses and the council, was replaced by Hugh Drysdale, once Robert Walpole was convinced to act. Modern view. Official views on pirates were sometimes quite different from those held by contemporary authors, who often described their subjects as despicable rogues of the sea. Privateers who became pirates were generally considered by the English government to be reserve naval forces, and were sometimes given active encouragement; as far back as 1581 Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, when he returned to England from a round-the-world expedition with plunder worth an estimated £1,500,000. Royal pardons were regularly issued, usually when England was on the verge of war, and the public's opinion of pirates was often favourable, some considering them akin to patrons. Economist Peter Leeson believes that pirates were generally shrewd businessmen, far removed from the modern, romanticised view of them as barbarians. After Woodes Rogers' 1718 landing at New Providence and his ending of the pirate republic, piracy in the West Indies fell into terminal decline. With no easily accessible outlet to fence their stolen goods, pirates were reduced to a subsistence livelihood, and following almost a century of naval warfare between the British, French and Spanish—during which sailors could find easy employment—lone privateers found themselves outnumbered by the powerful ships employed by the British Empire to defend its merchant fleets. The popularity of the slave trade helped bring to an end the frontier condition of the West Indies, and in these circumstances, piracy was no longer able to flourish as it once did. Since the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, Teach and his exploits have become the stuff of lore, inspiring books, films and even amusement park rides. Much of what is known about him can be sourced to Charles Johnson's "A General Historie of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates", published in Britain in 1724. A recognised authority on the pirates of his time, Johnson's descriptions of such figures as Anne Bonny and Mary Read were for years required reading for those interested in the subject. Readers were titillated by his stories and a second edition was quickly published, though author Angus Konstam suspects that Johnson's entry on Blackbeard was "coloured a little to make a more sensational story." "A General Historie", though, is generally considered to be a reliable source. Johnson may have been an assumed alias. As Johnson's accounts have been corroborated in personal and official dispatches, Lee (1974) considers that whoever he was, he had some access to official correspondence. Konstam speculates further, suggesting that Johnson may have been the English playwright Charles Johnson, the British publisher Charles Rivington, or the writer Daniel Defoe. In his 1951 work "The Great Days of Piracy", author George Woodbury wrote that Johnson is "obviously a pseudonym", continuing "one cannot help suspecting that he may have been a pirate himself." Despite his infamy, Teach was not the most successful of pirates. Henry Every retired a rich man, and Bartholomew Roberts took an estimated five times the amount Teach stole. Treasure hunters have long busied themselves searching for any trace of his rumoured hoard of gold and silver, but nothing found in the numerous sites explored along the east coast of the US has ever been connected to him. Some tales suggest that pirates often killed a prisoner on the spot where they buried their loot, and Teach is no exception in these stories, but that no finds have come to light is not exceptional; buried pirate treasure is often considered a modern myth for which almost no supporting evidence exists. The available records include nothing to suggest that the burial of treasure was a common practice, except in the imaginations of the writers of fictional accounts such as "Treasure Island". Such hoards would necessitate a wealthy owner, and their supposed existence ignores the command structure of a pirate vessel, in which the crew served for a share of the profit. The only pirate ever known to bury treasure was William Kidd. The only treasure so far recovered from Teach's exploits is that taken from the wreckage of what is presumed to be the "Queen Anne's Revenge", which was found in 1996 by Intersal Inc., a private research firm. As of 2013 around 280,000 artefacts had been recovered from the wreck site, a selection of which is on public display at the North Carolina Maritime Museum. Various superstitious tales exist of Teach's ghost. Unexplained lights at sea are often referred to as "Teach's light", and some recitals claim that the notorious pirate now roams the afterlife searching for his head, for fear that his friends, and the Devil, will not recognise him. A North Carolinian tale holds that Teach's skull was used as the basis for a silver drinking chalice; a local judge even claimed to have drunk from it one night in the 1930s. The name of Blackbeard has been attached to many local attractions, such as Charleston's Blackbeard's Cove. His name and persona have also featured heavily in literature. He is the main subject of Matilda Douglas's fictional 1835 work "Blackbeard: A page from the colonial history of Philadelphia". Film renditions of his life include "Blackbeard the Pirate" (1952) starring West Country native Robert Newton whose exaggerated West Country accent is credited with popularising the stereotypical "pirate voice", "Blackbeard's Ghost" (1968), "Blackbeard: Terror at Sea" (2005) and the 2006 Hallmark Channel miniseries "Blackbeard". Parallels have also been drawn between Johnson's Blackbeard and the character of Captain Jack Sparrow in the 2003 adventure film "". Blackbeard is also portrayed as a central character in three TV series: by John Malkovich in "Crossbones" (2014), by Ray Stevenson in seasons three and four of "Black Sails" (2016–2017), and by Taika Waititi in "Our Flag Means Death" (2022). In 2013 and 2015, the state government of North Carolina uploaded Nautilus Productions videos of the wreck of the "Queen Anne's Revenge" to its website without permission. As a result, Nautilus Productions, the company documenting the recovery since 1998, filed suit in federal court over copyright violations and the passage of "Blackbeard's Law" by the North Carolina General Assembly. Before posting the videos the General Assembly passed "Blackbeard's Law", N.C. Gen Stat §121-25(b), which stated, "All photographs, video recordings, or other documentary materials of a derelict vessel or shipwreck or its contents, relics, artifacts, or historic materials in the custody of any agency of North Carolina government or its subdivisions shall be a public record pursuant to Chapter 132 of the General Statutes." On 5 November 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in "Allen v. Cooper". The Supreme Court subsequently ruled in the state's favor, and struck down the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, which Congress passed in 1989 to attempt to curb such infringements of copyright by states. As a result of the ruling Nautilus filed a motion for reconsideration in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. On 18 August 2021 Judge Terrence Boyle granted the motion for reconsideration which North Carolina promptly appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The 4th Circuit denied the state's motion on 14 October 2022. Nautilus then filed their second amended complaint on 8 February 2023 alleging 5th and 14th Amendment violations of Nautilus' constitutional rights, additional copyright violations, and claiming that North Carolina's "Blackbeard's Law" represents a Bill of Attainder. Eight years after the passage of Blackbeard's Law, on 30 June 2023, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper signed a bill repealing the law. References. Notes Citations Bibliography
4573	38198	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4573	Bugzilla	Bugzilla is a web-based general-purpose bug tracking system and testing tool originally developed and used by the Mozilla project, and licensed under the Mozilla Public License. Released as open-source software by Netscape Communications in 1998, it has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open-source software and proprietary projects and products. Bugzilla is used, among others, by the Mozilla Foundation, WebKit, Linux kernel, FreeBSD, KDE, Apache, Eclipse and LibreOffice. Red Hat uses it, but is gradually migrating its product to use Jira. It is also self-hosting. History. Bugzilla was originally devised by Terry Weissman in 1998 for the nascent Mozilla.org project, as an open source application to replace the in-house system then in use at Netscape Communications for tracking defects in the Netscape Communicator suite. Bugzilla was originally written in Tcl, but Weissman decided to port it to Perl before its release as part of Netscape's early open-source code drops, in the hope that more people would be able to contribute to it, given that Perl seemed to be a more popular language at the time. Bugzilla 2.0 was the result of that port to Perl, and the first version was released to the public via anonymous CVS. In April 2000, Weissman handed over control of the Bugzilla project to Tara Hernandez. Under her leadership, some of the regular contributors were coerced into taking more responsibility, and Bugzilla development became more community-driven. In July 2001, facing distraction from her other responsibilities in Netscape, Hernandez handed control to Dave Miller, who was still in charge . Bugzilla 3.0 was released on May 10, 2007, and brought a refreshed UI, an XML-RPC interface, custom fields and resolutions, mod_perl support, shared saved searches, and improved UTF-8 support, along with other changes. Bugzilla 4.0 was released on February 15, 2011, and Bugzilla 5.0 was released in July 2015. Timeline. Bugzilla's release timeline: Requirements. Bugzilla's system requirements include: Currently supported database systems are MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQLite. Bugzilla is usually installed on Linux using the Apache HTTP Server, but any web server that supports CGI such as Lighttpd, Hiawatha, Cherokee can be used. Bugzilla's installation process is command line driven and runs through a series of stages where system requirements and software capabilities are checked. Design. While the potential exists in the code to turn Bugzilla into a technical support ticket system, task management tool, or project management tool, Bugzilla's developers have chosen to focus on the task of designing a system to track software defects. Zarro Boogs. Bugzilla returns the string "zarro boogs found" instead of "0 bugs found" when a search for bugs returns no results. "Zarro Boogs" is intended as a 'buggy' statement itself (a misspelling of "zero bugs") and is thus a meta-statement about the nature of software debugging, implying that even when no bugs have been identified, some may exist. The following comment is provided in the Bugzilla source code to developers who may be confused by this behaviour: Zarro Boogs Found This is just a goofy way of saying that there were no bugs found matching your query. When asked to explain this message, Terry Weissman had the following to say: I've been asked to explain this ... way back when, when Netscape released version 4.0 of its browser, we had a release party. Naturally, there had been a big push to try and fix every known bug before the release. Naturally, that hadn't actually happened. (This is not unique to Netscape or to 4.0; the same thing has happened with every software project I've ever seen.) Anyway, at the release party, T-shirts were handed out that said something like "Netscape 4.0: Zarro Boogs". Just like the software, the T-shirt had no known bugs. Uh-huh. So, when you query for a list of bugs, and it gets no results, you can think of this as a friendly reminder. Of course there are bugs matching your query, they just aren't in the bugsystem yet... — Terry Weissman "From The Bugzilla Guide – 2.16.10 Release: Glossary" WONTFIX. WONTFIX is used as a label on issues in Bugzilla and other systems. It indicates that a verified issue will not be resolved for one of several possible reasons including fixing would be too expensive, complicated or risky.
4575	47081136	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4575	Ballad	A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America. While ballads have no prescribed structure and may vary in their number of lines and stanzas, many ballads employ quatrains with formula_1 or formula_2 rhyme schemes, the key being a rhymed second and fourth line. Contrary to a popular conception, it is rare if not unheard-of for a ballad to contain exactly 13 lines. Additionally, couplets rarely appear in ballads. Many ballads were written and sold as single-sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century, the term took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and is often used for any love song, particularly the sentimental ballad of pop or rock music, although the term is also associated with the concept of a stylized storytelling song or poem, particularly when used as a title for other media such as a film. Origins. A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French "chanson balladée" or "ballade", which were originally "dancing songs" (L: "ballare", to dance), yet becoming "stylized forms of solo song" before being adopted in England. As a narrative song, their theme and function may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as "Beowulf". Musically they were influenced by the Minnelieder of the Minnesang tradition. The earliest example of a recognizable ballad in form in England is "Judas" in a 13th-century manuscript. Ballad form. Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in couplets with refrains in alternate lines. These refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance. Most northern and west European ballads are written in ballad stanzas or quatrains (four-line stanzas) of alternating lines of iambic (an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable) tetrameter (eight syllables) and iambic trimeter (six syllables), known as ballad meter. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed (in the scheme formula_3), which has been taken to suggest that, originally, ballads consisted of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. This can be seen in this stanza from "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet": The horse \| fair Ann \| et rode \| upon \| He amb \| led like \| the wind \|, With sil \| ver he \| was shod \| before, With burn \| ing gold \| behind \|. There is considerable variation on this pattern in almost every respect, including length, number of lines and rhyming scheme, making the strict definition of a ballad extremely difficult. In southern and eastern Europe, and in countries that derive their tradition from them, ballad structure differs significantly, like Spanish "romances", which are octosyllabic and use assonance rather than rhyme. Ballads usually are heavily influenced by the regions in which they originate and use the common dialect of the people. Scotland's ballads in particular, both in theme and language, are strongly characterised by their distinctive tradition, even exhibiting some pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of supernatural elements such as travel to the Fairy Kingdom in the Scots ballad "Tam Lin". The ballads do not have any known author or correct version; instead, having been passed down mainly by oral tradition since the Middle Ages, there are many variations of each. The ballads remained an oral tradition until the increased interest in folk songs in the 18th century led collectors such as Bishop Thomas Percy (1729–1811) to publish volumes of popular ballads. In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a self-contained story, often concise, and rely on imagery, rather than description, which can be tragic, historical, romantic or comic. Themes concerning rural labourers and their sexuality are common, and there are many ballads based on the Robin Hood legend. Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas. Composition. Scholars of ballads have been divided into "communalists", such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and the Brothers Grimm, who argue that ballads are originally communal compositions, and "individualists" such as Cecil Sharp, who assert that there was one single original author. Communalists tend to see more recent, particularly printed, broadside ballads of known authorship as a debased form of the genre, while individualists see variants as corruptions of an original text. More recently scholars have pointed to the interchange of oral and written forms of the ballad. Transmission. The transmission of ballads comprises a key stage in their re-composition. In romantic terms this process is often dramatized as a narrative of degeneration away from the pure 'folk memory' or 'immemorial tradition'. In the introduction to "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border" (1802) the romantic poet and historical novelist Walter Scott argued a need to 'remove obvious corruptions' in order to attempt to restore a supposed original. For Scott, the process of multiple recitations 'incurs the risk of impertinent interpolations from the conceit of one rehearser, unintelligible blunders from the stupidity of another, and omissions equally to be regretted, from the want of memory of a third.' Similarly, John Robert Moore noted 'a natural tendency to oblivescence'. Classification. European Ballads have been generally classified into three major groups: traditional, broadside and literary. In America a distinction is drawn between ballads that are versions of European, particularly British and Irish songs, and 'Native American ballads', developed without reference to earlier songs. A further development was the evolution of the blues ballad, which mixed the genre with Afro-American music. For the late 20th century the music publishing industry found a market for what are often termed sentimental ballads, and these are the origin of the modern use of the term 'ballad' to mean a slow love song. Traditional ballads. The traditional, classical or popular (meaning of the people) ballad has been seen as beginning with the wandering minstrels of late medieval Europe. From the end of the 15th century there are printed ballads that suggest a rich tradition of popular music. A reference in William Langland's "Piers Plowman" indicates that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495. Early collections of English ballads were made by Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and in the Roxburghe Ballads collected by Robert Harley, (1661–1724), which paralleled the work in Scotland by Walter Scott and Robert Burns. Inspired by his reading as a teenager of "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" by Thomas Percy, Scott began collecting ballads while he attended Edinburgh University in the 1790s. He published his research from 1802 to 1803 in a three-volume work, "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border". Burns collaborated with James Johnson on the multi-volume "Scots Musical Museum", a miscellany of folk songs and poetry with original work by Burns. Around the same time, he worked with George Thompson on "A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice". Both Northern English and Southern Scots shared in the identified tradition of Border ballads, particularly evinced by the cross-border narrative in versions of "The Ballad of Chevy Chase" sometimes associated with the Lancashire-born sixteenth-century minstrel Richard Sheale. It has been suggested that the increasing interest in traditional popular ballads during the eighteenth century was prompted by social issues such as the enclosure movement as many of the ballads deal with themes concerning rural laborers. James Davey has suggested that the common themes of sailing and naval battles may also have prompted the use (at least in England) of popular ballads as naval recruitment tools. Key work on the traditional ballad was undertaken in the late 19th century in Denmark by Svend Grundtvig and for England and Scotland by the Harvard professor Francis James Child. They attempted to record and classify all the known ballads and variants in their chosen regions. Since Child died before writing a commentary on his work it is uncertain exactly how and why he differentiated the 305 ballads printed that would be published as "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads". There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme, but commonly identified types are the religious, supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic, legendary and humorous. The traditional form and content of the ballad were modified to form the basis for twenty-three bawdy pornographic ballads that appeared in the underground Victorian magazine "The Pearl", which ran for eighteen issues between 1879 and 1880. Unlike the traditional ballad, these obscene ballads aggressively mocked sentimental nostalgia and local lore. Broadsides. Broadside ballads (also known as 'broadsheet', 'stall', 'vulgar' or 'come all ye' ballads) were a product of the development of cheap print in the 16th century. They were generally printed on one side of a medium to large sheet of poor quality paper. In the first half of the 17th century, they were printed in black-letter or gothic type and included multiple, eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune title, as well as an alluring poem. By the 18th century, they were printed in white letter or roman type and often without much decoration (as well as tune title). These later sheets could include many individual songs, which would be cut apart and sold individually as "slip songs." Alternatively, they might be folded to make small cheap books or "chapbooks" which often drew on ballad stories. They were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s. Tessa Watt estimates the number of copies sold may have been in the millions. Many were sold by travelling chapmen in city streets or at fairs. The subject matter varied from what has been defined as the traditional ballad, although many traditional ballads were printed as broadsides. Among the topics were love, marriage, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies. Literary ballads. Literary or lyrical ballads grew out of an increasing interest in the ballad form among social elites and intellectuals, particularly in the Romantic movement from the later 18th century. Respected literary figures Robert Burns and Walter Scott in Scotland collected and wrote their own ballads. Similarly in England William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced a collection of "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798 that included Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats were attracted to the simple and natural style of these folk ballads and tried to imitate it. At the same time in Germany Goethe cooperated with Schiller on a series of ballads, some of which were later set to music by Schubert. Later important examples of the poetic form included Rudyard Kipling's "Barrack-Room Ballads" (1892–6) and Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1897). Ballad operas. In the 18th century ballad operas developed as a form of English stage entertainment, partly in opposition to the Italian domination of the London operatic scene. It consisted of racy and often satirical spoken (English) dialogue, interspersed with songs that are deliberately kept very short to minimize disruptions to the flow of the story. Rather than the more aristocratic themes and music of the Italian opera, the ballad operas were set to the music of popular folk songs and dealt with lower-class characters. Subject matter involved the lower, often criminal, orders, and typically showed a suspension (or inversion) of the high moral values of the Italian opera of the period. The first, most important and successful was "The Beggar's Opera" of 1728, with a libretto by John Gay and music arranged by John Christopher Pepusch, both of whom probably influenced by Parisian vaudeville and the burlesques and musical plays of Thomas d'Urfey (1653–1723), a number of whose collected ballads they used in their work. Gay produced further works in this style, including a sequel under the title "Polly". Henry Fielding, Colley Cibber, Arne, Dibdin, Arnold, Shield, Jackson of Exeter, Hook and many others produced ballad operas that enjoyed great popularity. Ballad opera was attempted in America and Prussia. Later it moved into a more pastoral form, like Isaac Bickerstaffe's "Love in a Village" (1763) and Shield's "Rosina" (1781), using more original music that imitated, rather than reproduced, existing ballads. Although the form declined in popularity towards the end of the 18th century its influence can be seen in light operas like that of Gilbert and Sullivan's early works like "The Sorcerer" as well as in the modern musical. In the 20th century, one of the most influential plays, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's (1928) "The Threepenny Opera" was a reworking of "The Beggar's Opera", setting a similar story with the same characters, and containing much of the same satirical bite, but only using one tune from the original. The term ballad opera has also been used to describe musicals using folk music, such as "The Martins and the Coys" in 1944, and Peter Bellamy's "The Transports" in 1977. The satiric elements of ballad opera can be seen in some modern musicals such as "Chicago" and "Cabaret". Beyond Europe. American ballads. Some 300 ballads sung in North America have been identified as having origins in Scottish traditional or broadside ballads. Examples include 'The Streets of Laredo', which was found in Great Britain and Ireland as 'The Unfortunate Rake'; however, a further 400 have been identified as originating in America, including among the best known, 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett' and 'Jesse James'. They became an increasing area of interest for scholars in the 19th century and most were recorded or catalogued by George Malcolm Laws, although some have since been found to have British origins and additional songs have since been collected. They are usually considered closest in form to British broadside ballads and in terms of style are largely indistinguishable, however, they demonstrate a particular concern with occupations, journalistic style and often lack the ribaldry of British broadside ballads. Blues ballads. The blues ballad has been seen as a fusion of Anglo-American and Afro-American styles of music from the 19th century. Blues ballads tend to deal with active protagonists, often anti-heroes, resisting adversity and authority, but frequently lacking a strong narrative and emphasizing character instead. They were often accompanied by banjo and guitar which followed the blues musical format. The most famous blues ballads include those about John Henry and Casey Jones. Bush ballads. The ballad was taken to Australia by early settlers from Great Britain and Ireland and gained particular foothold in the rural outback. The rhyming songs, poems and tales written in the form of ballads often relate to the itinerant and rebellious spirit of Australia in The Bush, and the authors and performers are often referred to as bush bards. The 19th century was the golden age of bush ballads. Several collectors have catalogued the songs including John Meredith whose recording in the 1950s became the basis of the collection in the National Library of Australia. The songs tell personal stories of life in the wide open country of Australia. Typical subjects include mining, raising and droving cattle, sheep shearing, wanderings, war stories, the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, class conflicts between the landless working class and the squatters (landowners), and outlaws such as Ned Kelly, as well as love interests and more modern fare such as trucking. The most famous bush ballad is "Waltzing Matilda", which has been called "the unofficial national anthem of Australia". Sentimental ballads. Sentimental ballads, sometimes called "tear-jerkers" or "drawing-room ballads" owing to their popularity with the middle classes, had their origins in the early "Tin Pan Alley" music industry of the later 19th century. They were generally sentimental, narrative, strophic songs published separately or as part of an opera (descendants perhaps of broadside ballads, but with printed music, and usually newly composed). Such songs include "Little Rosewood Casket" (1870), "After the Ball" (1892) and "Danny Boy". The association with sentimentality led to the term "ballad" being used for slow love songs from the 1950s onwards. Modern variations include "jazz ballads", "pop ballads", "rock ballads", "R&B ballads" and "power ballads". Many ballads are included in 20th and 21st century modern music, such as "Swear It Again" (1998) by "Westlife".
4579	27015025	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4579	Blue Öyster Cult	Blue Öyster Cult ( ; sometimes abbreviated BÖC or BOC) is an American rock band formed on Long Island, New York, in the hamlet of Stony Brook, in 1967. They have sold 25 million records worldwide, including 7 million in the United States. Their fusion of hard rock with psychedelia and penchant for occult, fantastical and tongue-in-cheek lyrics had a major influence on heavy metal music. They developed a cult following and enjoyed mainstream success with "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (1976), "Godzilla" (1977), and "Burnin' for You" (1981), which remain classic rock radio staples. They were early adopters of the music video format, and their videos were in heavy rotation on MTV in its early period. Blue Öyster Cult continued making studio albums and touring throughout the 1980s, although their popularity had declined such that they were dropped from their longtime label CBS/Columbia Records, following the commercial failure of their 11th studio album "Imaginos" (1988). Other than contributing to the soundtrack of the 1992 film "Bad Channels" and an album of re-recorded material, "Cult Classic", in 1994, the band continued as a live act until releasing its first studio album of original material in 10 years, "Heaven Forbid" (1998). The lackluster sales of its follow-up "Curse of the Hidden Mirror" (2001) led to another hiatus from studio recording, but they continued performing live. Two more studio albums were released in the 2020s, "The Symbol Remains" (2020) and "Ghost Stories" (2024), the latter of which is said to be the band's last. Blue Öyster Cult's longest-lasting and most commercially successful lineup included Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser (lead guitar, vocals), Eric Bloom (lead vocals, "stun guitar", keyboards, synthesizer), Allen Lanier (keyboards, rhythm guitar), Joe Bouchard (bass, vocals, keyboards), and Albert Bouchard (drums, percussion, vocals, miscellaneous instruments). The band's current lineup still includes Bloom and Roeser, in addition to Danny Miranda (bass, backing vocals), Richie Castellano (keyboards, rhythm guitar, backing vocals), and Jules Radino (drums, percussion). The duo of the band's manager Sandy Pearlman and rock critic Richard Meltzer, who also met at Stony Brook University, played a key role in writing many of the band's lyrics. History. Early years as Soft White Underbelly (1967–1971). Blue Öyster Cult was formed in 1967 as Soft White Underbelly (a name the group would occasionally use in the 1970s and 1980s to play small club gigs around the United States and UK) in a communal house at Stony Brook University on Long Island when rock critic Sandy Pearlman overheard a jam session consisting of fellow Stony Brook classmate Donald Roeser and his friends. Pearlman offered to become the band's manager and creative partner, to which the band agreed. The band's original lineup consisted of guitarist Roeser, drummer Albert Bouchard - following the departure of original drummer Joe Dick, keyboardist Allen Lanier, Les Braunstein and bassist Andrew Winters. In October 1967, the band made its debut performance as Steve Noonan's backing band at the Stony Brook University Gymnasium, a gig booked by Pearlman. The band's name came from Winston Churchill's description of Italy as "the soft underbelly of the Axis." Pearlman was important to the band – he was able to get them gigs and recording contracts with Elektra and Columbia, and he provided them with his poetry for use as lyrics for many of their songs, including "Astronomy." Writer Richard Meltzer, also a Stony Brook University student, provided the band with lyrics from their early days up through their most recent studio album. In 1968, the band moved in together at their first house in the Thomaston area of Great Neck, New York. The band recorded an album's worth of material for Elektra Records in 1968. Braunstein played his final show as Soft White Underbelly's lead singer in the spring of 1969. His departure led Elektra to shelve the album recorded with him on vocals. Eric Bloom was hired by the band as their acoustic engineer. He eventually replaced Braunstein as lead singer through a series of unlikely coincidences, one being Lanier deciding to join Bloom on a drive to an upstate gig, where he spent the night with Bloom's old college bandmates and got to hear old tapes of Bloom's talent as lead vocalist. Because of this, Bloom was offered the job of lead singer for Soft White Underbelly. However, a bad review of a 1969 Fillmore East show caused Pearlman to change the name of the band – first to Oaxaca, then to the Stalk-Forrest Group. Pearlman also gave stage names to each of the band members (Jesse Python for Eric Bloom, Buck Dharma for Donald Roeser, Andy Panda for Andy Winters, Prince Omega for Albert Bouchard, La Verne for Allen Lanier) but only Buck Dharma kept his. The band recorded yet another album's worth of material for Elektra, but only one single ("What Is Quicksand?" b/w "Arthur Comics") was released (and only in a promo edition of 300 copies) on Elektra Records (this album was eventually released, with additional outtakes, by Rhino Handmade Records as "" in 2001). The album featured Bloom as their main lead singer, but Roeser also sang lead on a few songs, a pattern of sharing lead vocals that has continued throughout the band's career. With Bloom, Soft White Underbelly/Stalk-Forrest Group became one of Stony Brook University's "house bands," popular on campus. After a few more temporary band names, including the Santos Sisters, the band settled on Blue Öyster Cult in 1971 (see below for its origin). New York City producer/composer and jingle writer David Lucas saw the band perform and took them into his Warehouse Recording Studio and produced four demos, with which Pearlman was able to get the renamed band another audition with Columbia Records. Clive Davis liked what he heard, and signed the band to the label. The first album was subsequently produced and recorded by Lucas on eight-track at Lucas' studio. Winters would leave the band and be replaced by Bouchard's brother, Joe Bouchard. Black-and-white years (1971–1975). Their debut album "Blue Öyster Cult" was released in January 1972, with a black-and-white cover designed by artist Bill Gawlik. The album featured the songs "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll", "Stairway to the Stars", and "Then Came the Last Days of May". By this time, the band's sound had become more oriented toward hard rock, but songs like "She's As Beautiful As a Foot" and "Redeemed" also showed a strong element of the band's psychedelic roots. Pearlman wanted the group to be the American answer to Black Sabbath. All of the band members except for Allen Lanier sang lead, a pattern that would continue on many subsequent albums, although lead singer Eric Bloom sang the majority of the songs. The album sold well, and Blue Öyster Cult toured with artists such as the Byrds, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Alice Cooper. As the band toured, its sound became heavier and more direct. Their second album "Tyranny and Mutation", released in 1973, was written while the band was on tour for their first album. It contained songs such as "The Red and the Black" (an ode to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a rewrite of "I'm on the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" from their debut album, and also a reference to the novel of the same name by Stendhal), "Hot Rails to Hell" and "Baby Ice Dog", the first of the band's many collaborations with Patti Smith. It featured a harder-rocking approach than before, although the band's songs were also growing more complex. The album outsold its predecessor, a trend that would continue with their next few albums. The band's third album, "Secret Treaties" (1974), received positive reviews, featuring songs such as "Career of Evil" (co-written by Patti Smith), "Dominance and Submission" and "Astronomy". As a result of constant touring, the band was now capable of headlining shows. The album continued their upward sales trend, and would eventually go gold. As the three albums during this formative period all had black-and-white covers, the period of their career has been dubbed the "black and white years" by fans and critics. Commercial success (1975–1981). The band's first live album "On Your Feet or on Your Knees" (1975) achieved greater success and went gold. Its success gave the band more time to work on a follow-up. The band members were able to purchase home recording equipment to record demos for their next album. Their next studio album, "Agents of Fortune" (1976), was their first to go platinum and was again produced by David Lucas. It contained the hit single "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", which reached number 12 on the Billboard charts and has become a classic of the hard rock genre. Other major songs on the album were "(This Ain't) The Summer of Love", "E.T.I. (Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)" and "The Revenge of Vera Gemini". Having recorded demos of the songs at home before recording the album, the band's songwriting process had become more individual, with none of the songs featuring the collaborative writing between the band members that had been common on their earlier albums. Although the album still featured their trademark hard rock with sinister lyrics, the songs had become more conventional in structure, and the production was more polished. For the first and only time, the album featured lead vocals from all five band members, with Allen Lanier singing lead on the song "True Confessions." With Albert Bouchard singing lead on three songs and Joe Bouchard and Donald Roeser singing lead on one each, Eric Bloom ended up taking the lead on only four of the album's ten songs. For the tour, the band added lasers to their light show, for which they became known. They were among the first acts to use lasers in performance. Their next album, "Spectres" (1977), had the FM radio hit "Godzilla," and would become one of the band's better-selling albums, with other well-known songs like "I Love the Night" and "Goin' Through the Motions". However, its sales were not as strong as those for the previous album, going gold but not platinum, becoming their first album to sell less than its predecessor. It featured even more polished production, and continued the trend of the lead vocals extensively shared between members, although Allen Lanier did not sing lead. As with the previous album, Eric Bloom sang lead on fewer than half the songs. The band then released another live album, "Some Enchanted Evening" (1978). Although it was intended as another double-live album in the vein of "On Your Feet or on Your Knees", Columbia insisted that it be edited down to single-album length. It was a resounding commercial success, becoming Blue Öyster Cult's most popular album and eventually selling over two million copies. It also revealed that while the band's studio work was becoming increasingly well-produced, they were still very much a hard rock band on stage. It was followed by the studio album "Mirrors" (1979). For "Mirrors", instead of working with previous producers Sandy Pearlman (who instead went on to manage Black Sabbath) and Murray Krugman, Blue Öyster Cult chose Tom Werman, who had worked with acts such as Cheap Trick and Ted Nugent. It featured the band's glossiest production to date. It also gave Roeser, the lead vocalist on the band's biggest hits, bigger prominence as a vocalist, singing lead on four of the nine songs. However, the resulting album sales were disappointing. Pearlman's association with Black Sabbath led to Sabbath's "Heaven and Hell" producer Martin Birch being hired for the next Blue Öyster Cult record. The album found the band returning to their hard rock roots, and although both of the Bouchard brothers and guitarist Roeser all got lead vocal turns, Bloom would sing the majority of the tracks. The result was positive, with "Cultösaurus Erectus" (1980) receiving good reviews. The album went to number 12 in the United Kingdom, but did not do as well in the United States. The song "Black Blade", which was written by Bloom with lyrics by science fiction and fantasy author Michael Moorcock, is a kind of retelling of Moorcock's epic Elric of Melniboné saga. The band also did a co-headlining tour with Black Sabbath in support of the album, calling the tour "Black and Blue". Birch produced the band's next album as well, "Fire of Unknown Origin" (1981), which peaked at number 24 on the "Billboard" 200, becoming the band's highest-charting album. The biggest hit on this album was the Top 40 hit "Burnin' for You," a song Roeser had written with a Richard Meltzer lyric. He had intended to use it on his solo album, "Flat Out" (1982), but he was convinced to use it on the Blue Öyster Cult album instead. The revival of the band's heavier sound continued, albeit with fairly heavy use of synthesizers and some noticeable New Wave influence on a few tracks. It contained other fan favorites such as "Joan Crawford" (inspired by the book and film "Mommie Dearest") and "Veteran of the Psychic Wars", another song co-written by Moorcock. Several of the songs had been written for the animated film "Heavy Metal", but only "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" (which had not been written for "Heavy Metal") was actually used in the movie. The album marked a strong commercial resurgence for the band and achieved gold status, their first studio album since "Spectres" to do so. During the tour for "Fire of Unknown Origin", Albert Bouchard had a falling out with the others and left the band, and Rick Downey (formerly the band's lighting designer) replaced him on drums. This marked the end of the band's original and best-known lineup. Declining popularity (1982–1989). After leaving the band, Albert Bouchard spent five years working on a solo album based on Sandy Pearlman's poem "Imaginos". Blue Öyster Cult also released their third live album, "Extraterrestrial Live", in 1982. The band then went to the studio for the next album, "The Revölution by Night" (1983), with Bruce Fairbairn as producer. After two albums of a return to a harder rocking sound, the band adopted a more radio-friendly, AOR-oriented sound with Fairbairn providing a 1980s-style production. This approach met with some success, especially on its highest-charting single, Roeser's "Shooting Shark", co-written by Patti Smith and featuring Randy Jackson on bass, which reached number 83 on the charts. Bloom's "Take Me Away" achieved some FM radio play. However, the album didn't match sales of its predecessor, failed to achieve gold status, and marked the beginning of the band's second commercial decline. After touring for "Revölution", Rick Downey left, leaving Blue Öyster Cult without a drummer. Blue Öyster Cult re-united with Albert Bouchard for a California tour in February 1985, infamously known as the 'Albert Returns' Tour. This arrangement was only temporary and caused more tensions between the band and Bouchard, since he had thought he would be staying on permanently, which was not the case. The band had intended to use him only as a fill-in until another drummer could come on board, which resulted in Bouchard's leaving after the tour. Allen Lanier also quit the band shortly thereafter, leaving them without a keyboardist and with only three remaining original members. This incarnation of the band would sometimes be referred to as '3ÖC' by fans, which is a pun on the number of original members left. Blue Öyster Cult hired drummer Jimmy Wilcox and keyboardist Tommy Zvoncheck to finish the album "Club Ninja", which was poorly received, with only "Dancin' in the Ruins," one of several songs on the record written entirely by outside songwriters, enjoying minimal success on radio and MTV. The best-known original on the album is "Perfect Water" written by Dharma and Jim Carroll (noted author of "The Basketball Diaries"). While the band members have generally been disparaging about the album in retrospect, Joe Bouchard has stated that "Perfect Water" is "perfect genius". The band toured in Germany, after which bassist Bouchard left, leaving only two members of the classic lineup: Eric Bloom and Donald Roeser. Some people referred to the band as "Two Öyster Cult" during this period. Jon Rogers was hired to replace Joe and this version of the band finished out the 1986 tour. After it wound up that year, the band took a temporary break from recording and touring. When Blue Öyster Cult received an offer to tour in Greece in the early summer of 1987, the band reformed. Wilcox quit while Zvoncheck was fired for making excessive financial demands. Allen Lanier then was offered to rejoin and agreed, so the new line-up now featured three founding members, along with Jon Rogers returning on bass and Ron Riddle as their newest drummer. Columbia Records was not interested in releasing the "Imaginos" project as an Albert Bouchard solo album so it was arranged for the record to be released in 1988 by Columbia as a Blue Öyster Cult album, with some new lead vocal overdubs from Bloom and Roeser and lead guitar overdubs from Roeser. These replaced most of Albert Bouchard's lead vocals, as well as many lead guitar parts that had been recorded by session musicians. Joe Bouchard and Allen Lanier had earlier contributed some minor keyboard and backing vocal parts to the album, allowing all five original members to be credited. The album did not sell well (despite a positive review in "Rolling Stone" magazine) and although the then-current Blue Öyster Cult lineup (minus both Bouchard brothers) toured to promote "Imaginos", promotion by the label was virtually non-existent. Most songs from the album have not been performed live by the band since at least 1989. When Columbia Records' parent company CBS Records was purchased by Sony and became Sony Music Entertainment, Blue Öyster Cult were dropped from the label. First studio hiatus, "Heaven Forbid" and "Curse of the Hidden Mirror" (1990–2003). The band spent most of the 1990s touring without releasing an album of new material, although they did contribute two new songs to the "Bad Channels" movie soundtrack, released in 1992, and also released an album of re-recorded songs from the band's original lineup, called "Cult Classic", in 1994. During these years, while the three original members remained constant, there were several changes in the band's rhythm section. Ron Riddle quit in 1991 and was followed by a series of other drummers including Chuck Burgi (1991–1992, 1992–1995, 1996–1997), John Miceli (1992, 1995), John O'Reilly (1995–1996) and Bobby Rondinelli (1997–2004). As for the bass position, Rogers left in 1995, and was replaced by Danny Miranda. In the late 1990s, Blue Öyster Cult secured a recording contract with CMC Records (later purchased by Sanctuary Records), and continued to tour frequently. Two studio albums were released, "Heaven Forbid" (1998) and "Curse of the Hidden Mirror" (2001). Both albums featured songs co-written by cyberpunk/horror novelist John Shirley. The first mostly featured Miranda on bass and Burgi on drums, although a few tracks feature earlier bassist Jon Rogers and one track features Rondinelli on drums, who had joined the band near the end of the recording. "Curse of the Hidden Mirror" features Miranda and Rondinelli as the rhythm section, and the pair contributed to the songwriting as well. Neither album sold well. In 2001, Sony/Columbia's reissue arm, Legacy Records issued expanded versions of the first four Blue Öyster Cult studio albums, including some previously unreleased demos and outtakes from album sessions, live recordings (from the "Live 72" EP), and post-"St. Cecilia" tunes from the Stalk-Forrest Group era. Another live record and DVD "A Long Day's Night" followed in 2002, both drawn from one concert in Chicago. This album also featured the Bloom, Roeser, Lanier, Miranda, Rondinelli lineup. Live-only activities (2004–2016). Although the band's lineup had remained stable from 1997 to 2004, they began to experience personnel changes again in 2004. Rondinelli left in 2004, and was replaced by Jules Radino. Miranda left during the same year to become the bassist for Queen + Paul Rodgers in place of the retired John Deacon. He was replaced by Richie Castellano, who would also take occasional turns as a lead vocalist onstage. Allen Lanier retired from live performances in 2007 after not appearing with the band since late 2006. Castellano switched to rhythm guitar and keyboards (Castellano also filled in on lead guitar and vocals for an ailing Buck Dharma in two shows in 2005), and the position of bassist was taken up by Rudy Sarzo (previously a member of Quiet Riot, Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne and Dio), with the band employing Danny Miranda and Jon Rogers as guest bassists to fill in when Sarzo was unavailable. Sarzo then joined as an official member of the band, although Rogers continued to occasionally fill in when Sarzo was busy. In February 2007, the Sony Legacy remaster series continued, releasing expanded versions of studio album "Spectres" and live album "Some Enchanted Evening". In June 2012, the band announced that bassist Rudy Sarzo was leaving the band and was being replaced by former Utopia bassist Kasim Sulton. In August of the same year, it was announced that Sony Legacy would be releasing a 17-disc boxed set entitled "The Complete Columbia Albums Collection" on October 30, 2012. The set includes the first round of the remastered series plus the long-awaited remastered versions of "On Your Feet or on Your Knees", "Mirrors", "Cultösaurus Erectus", "Fire Of Unknown Origin", "Extraterrestrial Live", "The Revölution by Night", "Club Ninja" and "Imaginos". Also exclusive to this set are two discs of rare and unreleased B-sides, demos and radio broadcasts. Also in 2012, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Blue Öyster Cult, the then-current incarnation of the band reunited for the first time in 25 years with other original members Joe and Albert Bouchard and Allen Lanier as guests for a special event in New York. Founding keyboardist/guitarist Allen Lanier died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on August 14, 2013. In 2016, Albert Bouchard played again as guest with the then-current line-up of the band, playing at shows in New York, Los Angeles, Dublin and London, where Blue Öyster Cult played the album "Agents of Fortune" in its entirety. The shows featured songs from "Agents of Fortune" that had either not been played live before ("True Confessions", "The Revenge of Vera Gemini", "Sinful Love", "Tenderloin", "Debbie Denise"), songs that had not been played since the album's debut tour ("Morning Final"), and songs that were no longer/never played frequently ("This Ain't the Summer of Love", "Tattoo Vampire"), as well as the fan favorite "Five Guitars", which had not been played since Albert initially left the band in 1981. Albert played in the following songs at the show: "The Revenge of Vera Gemini" (vocals, guitar), "Sinful Love" (vocals, guitar), "Tattoo Vampire" (guitar), "Morning Final" (guitar), "Tenderloin" (cymbals), "Debbie Denise" (vocals, acoustic guitar), "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll" (vocals, drums), and "Five Guitars" (guitar). "The Symbol Remains" and "Ghost Stories" (2017–present). In a May 2017 appearance on Castellano's "Band Geek" podcast, Bloom confirmed that there were tentative plans to release a new album in 2018 and that the band was currently considering offers from multiple record labels. He also stated that former bassist Danny Miranda would be playing with the band for the remainder of the year due to Sulton's prior touring commitments with Todd Rundgren. During the same year, the band's official website started to list Miranda as an official member, stating that Miranda had "returned to BÖC" in early 2017. Buck Dharma stated in February 2019 that the band would be recording a new album to be released by fall. On July 10, 2019, it was announced that the band had signed to Frontiers Music, and would in fact be releasing the new album in 2020. "It's been a long time since BÖC's last studio album. Recording with Danny, Richie and Jules should be a great experience as we've been touring together for years, and Buck and I look forward to including them in the creative and recording process," said Bloom. "The current band is GREAT and has never been recorded other than live, so we feel now's the time for new songs to be written and recorded. About half of the songs for the new record exist and the rest will be finished during the process," added Buck Dharma. In February 2020, Richie Castellano posted a short video to Facebook featuring himself and Eric Bloom, stating that the band were working on the new Blue Öyster Cult record remotely by using ConnectionOpen online audio collaboration tool. In August 2020, the band announced on their website that their fifteenth studio album "The Symbol Remains" would be released on October 9, 2020. The span of nineteen years between "Curse of the Hidden Mirror" and "The Symbol Remains" marks the longest gap between studio albums in Blue Öyster Cult's career. The album was released to a positive critical reception, with tracks such as "Box In My Head" and "The Alchemist" receiving high praise. In October 2022, during their European headlining tour, Blue Öyster Cult supported Deep Purple at five arena shows in the United Kingdom. On April 12, 2024, Blue Öyster Cult released their sixteenth and final studio album "Ghost Stories", which includes both reimagined tracks and "lost gems" from between 1978 and 2016, as well as studio versions of their covers of MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" and The Animals' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place.". On May 24th, 2025, Blue Öyster Cult performed under their former name Soft White Underbelly at Islington Assembly Hall in London Musical style. Blue Öyster Cult is usually described as a hard rock band, albeit one with their own tongue-in-cheek style. Their music has also been described as heavy metal, psychedelic rock, occult rock, acid rock, and progressive rock. They have also been recognized for helping pioneer genres such as stoner metal. The band has also experimented with additional genres on specific albums, such as on "Mirrors". They have acknowledged the influence of artists such as Alice Cooper, Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, MC5, The Blues Project, Jimi Hendrix, and Black Sabbath. Lyrics. The band have frequently collaborated with outside lyricists, although all of the original members wrote lyrics at some point, most notably Donald Roeser. The principal lyricists in the early days were manager Sandy Pearlman and fellow rock critic Richard Meltzer. Key members of the New York punk scene Patti Smith, Helen "Wheels" Robbins and Jim Carroll - all friends of the band - contributed from the mid-1970s. Later in the decade frontman Eric Bloom, a science fiction fan, recruited English author Michael Moorcock to write for the band, and later did the same with Eric Van Lustbader and John Shirley. In order to add to their mystique the band would often use out-of-context fragments of Pearlman's unpublished sci-fi poetry cycle "The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos" as lyrics, rendering their meaning obscure. Additionally, they kept a folder of Pearlman's and Meltzer's word associations to insert into their songs. Band name and logo. The name "Blue Öyster Cult" also came from Pearlman's "Imaginos" cycle, explored most extensively on the 1988 album of the same name. Pearlman had also come up with the band's earlier name, "Soft White Underbelly", from a phrase used by Winston Churchill in describing Italy during World War II. In Pearlman's poetry, the "Blue Oyster Cult" is a group of aliens who had assembled secretly to guide Earth's history. "Initially, the band was not happy with the name, but settled for it, and went to work preparing to record their first release..." In a 1976 interview published in the U.K. music magazine "ZigZag", Pearlman claimed the origin of the band's name was as an anagram of "Cully Stout Beer". The addition of an umlaut was suggested by Allen Lanier, but Richard Meltzer claims to have suggested it just after Pearlman came up with the name, reportedly "because of the Wagnerian aspect of Metal". Other bands later copied the practice of using umlauts or diacritic marks in their own band names, such as Motörhead, Mötley Crüe, Queensrÿche and parodied by Spın̈al Tap. The hook-and-cross logo was designed by fellow Stony Brook student Bill Gawlik for his master's thesis in January 1972, and appears on all of the band's albums. In Greek mythology, "... the hook-and-cross symbol is that of Kronos (Cronus), the king of the Titans and father of Zeus ... and is the alchemical symbol for lead (a heavy metal), one of the heaviest of metals." Sandy Pearlman considered this, along with the "heavy" distorted guitar sound of the band, meant that the description "heavy metal" would be apt for the band's sound. The hook-and-cross symbol also resembled the astrological symbol for Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture, and the sickle, which is associated with both Kronos (Cronus) and Saturn (both the planet and the Roman god). The symbol also closely resembles the astrological symbol for Ceres, which is also a sickle. The logo's "... metaphysical, alchemical and mythological connotations, combined with its similarity to some religious symbols gave it a flair of decadence and mystery ..." The band was billed, for the only time, as ""The" Blue Öyster Cult" on the cover and label of their second album, "Tyranny and Mutation". Legacy and influence. Blue Öyster Cult have been influential to the realm of hard rock and heavy metal, leading them to being referred to as "the thinking man's heavy metal band" due to their often cryptic lyrics, literate songwriting, and links to famous authors. They have influenced many acts including Iron Maiden, Metallica, Fates Warning, Iced Earth, Cirith Ungol, Alice in Chains, Twisted Sister, Ratt, Steel Panther, Green River (and later Mudhoney), Body Count, Possessed, Candlemass, Saint Vitus, Trouble, Opeth, White Zombie, Kvelertak, HIM, Turbonegro, Radio Birdman, The Cult, The Minutemen, Firehose, Hoodoo Gurus, Widespread Panic, Queens of the Stone Age, Umphrey's McGee, Stabbing Westward, Royal Trux, and Moe. The band's influence has extended beyond the musical sphere. The lyrics of "Astronomy" have been named by author Shawn St. Jean as inspirational to the later chapters of his fantasy novel "Clotho's Loom", wherein Sandy Pearlman's "Four Winds Bar" provides the setting for a portion of the action. Titles and lines from the band's songs provided structure and narrative for the third book in Robert Galbraith's (a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling), series of Cormoran Strike novels, "Career of Evil". Their hit single "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was featured in the famous "Saturday Night Live" sketch "More Cowbell". The original recording was produced at The Record Plant in New York by David Lucas, who sang background vocals with Roeser, and introduced the now-famous cowbell part, which may have been played by himself, Albert Bouchard, or Eric Bloom. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was also used in writer/director John Carpenter's horror film classic, "Halloween" (1978). The opening sequence of the miniseries adaptation of "The Stand" (1994) by Stephen King, and covered by The Mutton Birds for Peter Jackson's horror-comedy film "The Frighteners" (1996). "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was also used throughout the comedy film "The Stoned Age" (1994) and plays a role in its storyline. In the film "Gone Girl" (2014), the song plays on the radio during a car driving scene with actor Ben Affleck. The song was also used as the opening theme and main story element in the 1996 FMV computer game "Ripper", by Take Two Interactive, and was also featured in the 2006 game "Prey" and the 2021 game "Returnal". The lyrics for "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" are featured in the introduction of Stephen King's book "The Stand". The song was also used in Orange Is the New Black's season 2 finale. Members. Current members
4580	20888637	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4580	Battery Park City	Battery Park City is a mainly residential planned community and neighborhood on the west side of the southern tip of the island of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by the Hudson River on the west, the Hudson River shoreline on the north and south, and the West Side Highway on the east. The neighborhood is named for the Battery, formerly known as Battery Park, located directly to the south. More than one-third of the development is parkland. The land upon which it is built was created in the 1970s by land reclamation on the Hudson River using over of soil and rock excavated during the construction of the World Trade Center, the New York City Water Tunnel, and certain other construction projects, as well as from sand dredged from New York Harbor off Staten Island. The neighborhood includes Brookfield Place (formerly the World Financial Center), along with numerous buildings designed for housing, commercial, and retail. Battery Park City is part of Manhattan Community District 1. It is patrolled by the 1st Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Geography. Battery Park City is bounded on the east by West Street, which separates the area from the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. To the west, north, and south, the area is surrounded by the Hudson River. The development consists of roughly five major sections. Traveling north to south, the first neighborhood has high-rise residential buildings, the Stuyvesant High School, a Regal Entertainment Group movie theater, and the Battery Park City branch of the New York Public Library. It is also the site of the 463-suite Conrad New York luxury hotel, which has a ballroom and a conference center. Other restaurants located in that hotel, as well as a DSW store and a New York Sports Club branch, were closed in 2009 after the takeover of the property by Goldman Sachs. Former undeveloped lots in the area have been developed into high-rise buildings; for example, Goldman Sachs built a new headquarters at 200 West Street. Nearby is Brookfield Place, a complex of several commercial buildings formerly known as the World Financial Center. Current residential neighborhoods of Battery Park City are divided into northern and southern sections, separated by Brookfield Place. The northern section consists entirely of large, 20–45-story buildings, all various shades of orange brick. The southern section, extending down from the Winter Garden, which is located in Brookfield Place, contains residential apartment buildings such as Gateway Plaza and the Rector Place apartment buildings. In this section lies the majority of Battery Park City's residential areas, in three sections: Gateway Plaza, a high-rise building complex; the "Rector Place Residential Neighborhood"; and the" Battery Place Residential Neighborhood". These subsections contain most of the area's residential buildings, along with park space, supermarkets, restaurants, and movie theaters. Construction of residential buildings began north of the World Financial Center in the late 1990s, and completion of the final lots took place in early 2011. Additionally, a park restoration was completed in 2013. History. Site and formation. Throughout the 19th century and early-20th century, the area adjoining today's Battery Park City was known as Little Syria with Lebanese, Greeks, Armenians, and other ethnic groups. In 1929, the land was the proposed site of a $50 million (equivalent to $ million in ) residential development that would have served workers in the Wall Street area. The Battery Tower project was left unfinished after workers digging the foundation ran into forty feet of old bulkheads, sunken docks, and ships. By the late-1950s, the once-prosperous port area of downtown Manhattan was occupied by a number of dilapidated shipping piers, casualties of the rise of container shipping which drove sea traffic to Port Elizabeth, New Jersey. The initial proposal to reclaim this area through landfill was offered in the early-1960s by private firms and supported by the mayor, part of a long history of Lower Manhattan expansion. That plan became complicated when Governor Nelson Rockefeller announced his desire to redevelop a part of the area as a separate project. The various groups reached a compromise, and in 1966 the governor unveiled the proposal for what would become Battery Park City. The creation of architect Wallace K. Harrison, the proposal called for a 'comprehensive community' consisting of housing, social infrastructure and light industry. In 1968, the New York State Legislature created the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) to oversee development. Rockefeller named Charles J. Urstadt as the first chairman of the authority's board that year. He then served as the chief executive officer from 1973 to 1978. Urstadt later served as the authority's vice chair from 1996 to 2010. The New York State Urban Development Corporation and ten other public agencies were also involved in the development project. For the next several years, the BPCA made slow progress. In April 1969, it unveiled a master plan for the area, which was approved in October. In early-1972, the BPCA issued $200 million in bonds to fund construction efforts, with Harry B. Helmsley designated as the developer. That same year, the city approved plans to alter the number of apartments designated for lower, middle and upper income renters. Urstadt said the changes were needed to make the financing for the project viable. In addition to the change in the mix of units, the city approved adding nine acres, which extended the northern boundary from Reade Street to Duane Street. Landfill material from construction of the World Trade Center and other buildings in Lower Manhattan was used to add fill for the southern portion. Cellular cofferdams were constructed to retain the material. After removal of the piers, wooden piles and overburden of silt, the northern portion (north of, and including the marina) was filled with sand dredged from areas adjacent to Ambrose Channel in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as stone from the construction of Water Tunnel #3. By 1976, the landfill was completed. Seating stands for viewing the American Bicentennial "Operation Sail" flotilla parade were set up on the completed landfill in July 1976. Construction efforts ground to a halt in 1977, as a result of the city's fiscal crisis. That year, the presidential administration of Jimmy Carter approved mortgage insurance for 1,600 of the development's proposed units. In 1979, the title to the landfill was transferred from the city to the Battery Park City Authority, which financially restructured itself and created a new, more viable master plan, designed by Alex Cooper of Cooper, Robertson & Partners and Stanton Eckstut. By that time, only two of the proposed development's buildings had been built, and the $200 million bond issue was supposed to have been paid off the next year. The design of BPC to some degree reflects the values of vibrant city neighborhoods championed by Jane Jacobs. The Urban Land Institute (ULI) awarded the Battery Park City Master Plan its 2010 Heritage Award, for having "facilitated the private development of of commercial space, of residential space, and nearly of open space in lower Manhattan, becoming a model for successful large-scale planning efforts and marking a positive shift away from the urban renewal mindset of the time." Construction and early development. During the late-1970s and early-1980s, the site hosted Creative Time's landmark Art on the Beach sculpture exhibitions. On September 23, 1979, the landfill was the site of an anti-nuclear rally attended by 200,000 people. In 1978, a temporary heliport operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey opened at the southern end of the landfill and was initially used by New York Airways helicopters providing scheduled service to Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports. The helicopter landing pad later accommodated flights diverted from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport while that facility was closed for reconstruction from 1983 to 1987. The Battery Park City Heliport was located on the south side of the future site of the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Construction began on the first residential building in June 1980. In April 1981, the New York State Urban Development Corporation (now the Empire State Development Corporation) issued a request for proposal, ultimately selecting six real-estate companies to develop over 1,800 residential units. The same year, the World Financial Center started construction; Olympia and York of Toronto was named as the developer for the World Financial Center, who then hired Cesar Pelli as the lead architect. By 1985, construction was completed and the World Financial Center (later renamed Brookfield Place New York) saw its first tenants. The newly completed development was lauded by "The New York Times" as "a triumph of urban design", with the World Financial Center being deemed "a symbol of change". During early construction, two acres of land in the southern section of the Battery Park landfill was used by artist Agnes Denes to plant wheat in an exhibition titled "Wheatfield – A Confrontation". The project was a visual contradiction: a golden field of wheat set among the steel skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan. It was created during a six-month period in the spring, summer, and fall of 1982 when Denes, with the support of the Public Art Fund, planted the field of wheat on rubble-strewn land near Wall Street and the World Trade Center site. Denes stated that her "decision to plant a wheatfield in Manhattan, instead of designing just another public sculpture, grew out of a long-standing concern and need to call attention to our misplaced priorities and deteriorating human values." Throughout the 1980s, the BPCA oversaw a great deal of construction, including the entire Rector Place neighborhood and the river esplanade. It was during that period that Amanda Burden, later City Planning Department Director in the Bloomberg administration, worked on Battery Park City. During the 1980s, a total of 13 buildings were constructed. The Vietnam Veterans Plaza was established by Edward I. Koch in 1985. Constructed at a cost of $150 million (equivalent to $ million in ) and with a capacity for 2,700 students, Battery Park City became the new home of the Stuyvesant High School in 1992. During the 1990s, an additional six buildings were added to the neighborhood. By the turn of the 21st century, Battery Park City was mostly completed, with the exception of some ongoing construction on West Street. Initially, in the 1980s, 23 buildings were built in the area. By the 1990s, 9 more buildings were built, followed by the construction of 11 buildings in the 2000s and 3 buildings in the 2010s. The Battery Park City Authority, wishing to attract more middle-class residents, started providing subsidies in 1998 to households whose annual incomes were $108,000 or less. By the end of the decade, nearly the entire landfill had been developed. Early 21st century. The September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 had a major impact on Battery Park City. The residents of Lower Manhattan and particularly of Battery Park City were displaced for an extended period of time. Parts of the community were an official crime scene and therefore residents were unable to return to live or even collect property. Many of the displaced residents were not allowed to return to the area for months and none were given government guidance of where to live temporarily on the already-crowded island of Manhattan. With most hotel rooms booked, residents, including young children and the elderly, were forced to fend for themselves. When they were finally allowed to return to Battery Park City, some found that their homes had been looted. Upon residents' return, the air in the area was still filled with toxic smoke from the World Trade Center fires that persisted until December 2001. More than half of the area's residents moved away permanently from the community after the adjacent World Trade Center towers collapsed and spread toxic dust, debris, and smoke. Gateway Plaza's 600 building, Hudson View East, and Parc Place (now Rector Square) were punctured by airplane parts. The Winter Garden and other portions of the World Financial Center were severely damaged. Environmental concerns regarding dust from the Trade Center are a continuing source of concern for many residents, scientists, and elected officials. Since the attacks, the damage has been repaired. Temporarily reduced rents and government subsidies helped restore residential occupancy in the years following the attacks. After September 11, 2001, residents of Battery Park City and Tribeca formed the TriBattery Pops Tom Goodkind Conductor in response to the events of the attacks. The "Pops" have been Grammy-nominated and are the first lower Manhattan all-volunteer community band in a century. Since then, real estate development in the area has continued robustly. Commercial development includes the 200 West Street, the Goldman Sachs global headquarters, which began construction in 2005 and opened for occupancy in October 2009. 200 West Street received in 2010 gold-level certification under the United States Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program by incorporating various water and energy conservation features. As of 2018, there is no new construction planned. Ownership and maintenance. Battery Park City is owned and managed by the Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), a Class A New York State public-benefit corporation created by New York State in 1968 to redevelop outmoded and deteriorated piers, a project that has involved reclaiming the land, replanning the area and facilitating new construction of a mixed commercial and residential community. It has operated under the authority of the Urban Development Corporation. Its mission is "to plan, create, coordinate and sustain a balanced community of commercial, residential, retail, and park space within its designated 92-acre site on the lower west side of Manhattan". The authority's board is composed of seven uncompensated members who are appointed by the governor and who serve six-year terms. Raju Mann is the president and chief executive officer. The BPCA is invested with substantial powers: it can acquire, hold and dispose of real property, enter into lease agreements, borrow money and issue debt, and manage the project. Like other public benefit corporations, the BPCA is exempt from property taxes and has the ability to issue tax exempt bonds. In 2021, the BPCA has operating expenses of $69.1 million as well as an outstanding debt of $875.09 million, and it employed 200 people. Under the 1989 agreement between the BPCA and the City of New York, $600 million was transferred by the BPCA to the city. Charles J. Urstadt, the first chairman and CEO of the BPCA, noted in an August 19, 2007, op-ed piece in the "New York Post" that the aggregate figure of funds transferred to the City of New York is above $1.4 billion, with the BPCA continuing to contribute $200 million a year. The Independent Budget Office of the City of New York also recommended the city take over Battery Park City in a report published in February 2020. The report echoed Urstadt's proposal as a way to increase revenue to the city. An article published by "The Broadsheet Daily" described the complex shared ownership structure of Battery Park City between the city and state that was set up by Urstadt. Excess revenue from the area was to be contributed to other housing efforts, typically low-income projects in the Bronx and Harlem. Much of this funding has historically been diverted to general city expenses, under section 3.d of the 1989 agreement. However, in July 2006, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor George Pataki, and Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. announced the final approval for the New York City Housing Trust Fund derived from $130 million in Battery Park City revenues. The fund aimed to preserve or create 4,300 units of low- and moderate-income housing by 2009. It also provided seed financing for the New York Acquisition Fund, a $230 million initiative that aims to serve as a catalyst for the construction and preservation of more than 30,000 units of affordable housing citywide by 2016. The Acquisition Fund has since established itself as a model for similar funds in cities and states across the country. By 2018, thirty residential buildings had been built in Battery Park City and no new construction was planned. The Battery Park City Authority's main focus turned to maintenance of existing infrastructure, security and conservancy of the public spaces. The authority was creating over 1,000 free activities per year. Condo owners in Battery Park City pay higher monthly charges than owners of comparable apartments elsewhere in New York City because residents pay their building's common charges in addition to PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes). The PILOT payments replace real estate taxes and the land lease. The cumulative effect is lower property values for homeowners. Because none of the properties in Battery Park City own the land they are built on, many banks have refused to write loans when those ground leases are periodically up for renewal. This has been a regular source of anger and frustration for owners in Battery Park City who are looking to sell. Demographics. For census purposes, the New York City government classifies Battery Park City as part of a larger neighborhood tabulation area called Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan. Based on data from the 2010 United States census, the population of Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan was 39,699, an increase of 19,611 (97.6%) from the 20,088 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of . The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 65.4% (25,965) White, 3.2% (1,288) African American, 0.1% (35) Native American, 20.2% (8,016) Asian, 0.0% (17) Pacific Islander, 0.4% (153) from other races, and 3.0% (1,170) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 7.7% (3,055) of the population. The entirety of Community District 1, which comprises Battery Park City and other Lower Manhattan neighborhoods, had 63,383 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 85.8 years. This is higher than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are young to middle-aged adults: half (50%) are between the ages of 25 and 44, while 14% are between 0 and 17, and 18% between 45 and 64. The ratio of college-aged and elderly residents was lower, at 11% and 7% respectively. As of 2017, the median household income in Community Districts 1 and 2 (including Greenwich Village and SoHo) was $144,878, though the median income in Battery Park City individually was $126,771. In 2018, an estimated 9% of Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan residents lived in poverty, compared to 14% in all of Manhattan and 20% in all of New York City. One in twenty-five residents (4%) were unemployed, compared to 7% in Manhattan and 9% in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 38% in Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan, compared to the boroughwide and citywide rates of 45% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, , Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan are considered high-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying. , about 10,000 people live in Battery Park City, most of whom are upper middle class and upper class (54.0% of households have incomes over $100,000). When fully built out, the neighborhood is projected to have 14,000 residents. Census. Based on the 2020 census, the racial makeup of Northern Battery Park City (10282) was 66% White, 2% Black, 0% Native American, 16% Asian, 0% Islander, 0% from other races, and 5% from two or more races. Hispanic of Latino of any race were 11% of the population. The racial makeup of South Battery Park City (10280) was 69% White, 1% Black, 0% Native, 17% Asian, 0% Islander, 0% from other races, 3% from two or more races, and 11% Hispanic. As of 2020, the population of the area was 16,169. Buildings. Residential. The first residential building in Battery Park City, Gateway Plaza, was completed in 1983. , the population of the area was 13,386. Some of the more prominent residential buildings include: Other residential condominiums include: Other residential apartments include: Office. Battery Park City, which is mainly residential, also has a few office buildings. The seven buildings including the Brookfield Place complex, as well as 200 West Street, are the neighborhood's only office buildings. Brookfield Place complex. Located in the middle of Battery Park City and overlooking the Hudson River, Brookfield Place, designed by César Pelli and owned mostly by Toronto-based Brookfield Properties, has been home to offices of various major companies, including Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital Markets, Nomura Group, American Express and Brookfield Asset Management, among others. Brookfield Place also serves as the United States headquarters for Brookfield Properties, which has its headquarters located in 200 Vesey Street. Brookfield Place also has its own zip code, 10281. Brookfield Place's ground floor and portions of the second floor are occupied by a mall; its center point is a steel-and-glass atrium known as the Winter Garden. Outside of the Winter Garden lies a sizeable yacht harbor on the Hudson known as North Cove. The building's original developer was Olympia and York of Toronto, Ontario. It used to be named the World Financial Center, but in 2014, the complex was given its current name following the completion of extensive renovations. The World Financial Center complex was built by Olympia and York between 1982 and 1988; it was damaged in the September 11 attacks but later repaired. It has six constituent buildings – 200 Liberty Street, 225 Liberty Street, 200 Vesey Street, 250 Vesey Street, the Winter Garden Atrium, and One North End Avenue (a.k.a. the New York Mercantile Exchange building). 200 West Street. 200 West Street is the location of the global headquarters of Goldman Sachs, an investment banking firm. A , 44-story building located on the west side of West Street between Vesey and Murray Streets, it is north of Brookfield Place and the Conrad Hotels, across the street from the Verizon Building, and diagonally opposite the World Trade Center. It is distinctive for being the only office building in the northern section of Battery Park City. It started construction in 2005 and opened in 2009. Police and crime. Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan are patrolled by the 1st Precinct of the NYPD, located at 16 Ericsson Place. The 1st Precinct ranked 63rd safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010. Though the number of crimes is low compared to other NYPD precincts, the residential population is also much lower. , with a non-fatal assault rate of 24 per 100,000 people, Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan's rate of violent crimes per capita is less than that of the city as a whole. The incarceration rate of 152 per 100,000 people is lower than that of the city as a whole. The 1st Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 86.3% between 1990 and 2018. The 1st precinct reported 2 murders, 15 rapes, 135 robberies, 121 felony assaults, 191 burglaries, 848 grand larcenies, and 68 grand larcenies auto in 2021. Fire safety. Battery Park City is served by the New York City Fire Department (FDNY)'s Engine Co. 10/Ladder Co. 10 fire station, located at 124 Liberty Street. Health. , preterm births and births to teenage mothers are less common in Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan than in other places citywide. In Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan, there were 77 preterm births per 1,000 live births (compared to 87 per 1,000 citywide), and 2.2 teenage births per 1,000 live births (compared to 19.3 per 1,000 citywide), though the teenage birth rate is based on a small sample size. Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan have a low population of residents who are uninsured. In 2018, this population of uninsured residents was estimated to be 4%, less than the citywide rate of 12%, though this was based on a small sample size. The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan is , more than the city average. Sixteen percent of Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan residents are smokers, which is more than the city average of 14% of residents being smokers. In Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan, 4% of residents are obese, 3% are diabetic, and 15% have high blood pressure, the lowest rates in the city—compared to the citywide averages of 24%, 11%, and 28% respectively. In addition, 5% of children are obese, the lowest rate in the city, compared to the citywide average of 20%. Ninety-six percent of residents eat some fruits and vegetables every day, which is more than the city's average of 87%. In 2018, 88% of residents described their health as "good", "very good", or "excellent", more than the city's average of 78%. For every supermarket in Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan, there are 6 bodegas. The nearest major hospital is NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital in the Civic Center area. Post office and ZIP Codes. Battery Park City is located within two ZIP Codes. The neighborhood north of Brookfield Place is covered by 10282, while much of the neighborhood south of Brookfield Place is covered by 10280. Brookfield Place is part of 10281, and the southernmost tip is part of 10004. The United States Postal Service does not operate any post offices in Battery Park City. The nearest post office is the Church Street Station at 90 Church Street in the Financial District. Education. Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan generally have a higher rate of college-educated residents than the rest of the city . The vast majority of residents age 25 and older (84%) have a college education or higher, while 4% have less than a high school education and 12% are high school graduates or have some college education. By contrast, 64% of Manhattan residents and 43% of city residents have a college education or higher. The percentage of Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan students excelling in math rose from 61% in 2000 to 80% in 2011, and reading achievement increased from 66% to 68% during the same time period. Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan's rate of elementary school student absenteeism is lower than the rest of New York City. In Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan, 6% of elementary school students missed twenty or more days per school year, less than the citywide average of 20%. Additionally, 96% of high school students in Battery Park City and Lower Manhattan graduate on time, more than the citywide average of 75%. Schools. The New York City Department of Education operates the following public schools in Battery Park City: Library. Battery Park City has a New York Public Library branch at 175 North End Avenue, designed by 1100 Architect and completed in 2010. A , two-story library on the street level of a high-rise residential building, it utilizes several sustainable design features, earning it LEED Gold certification. Sustainability was a driving factor in the design of the library including use of an energy-efficient lighting system, maximization of natural lighting, and use of recycled materials. 1100 Architect, in collaboration with Atelier Ten, an international team of environmental design consultants and building services engineers, designed the library's energy-efficient lighting system. The open plan layout and large use of glass allow for ample natural daylight year-round and low-energy LED light illuminates communal spaces. Recycled materials are incorporated into the design including carpet made from re-purposed truck tires, floors made from reclaimed window frame wood, and furniture made from FSC-certified plywood and recycled steel. Design features include a seemingly "floating" origami-style ceiling made up of triangular panels hung at varying angles and a padded reading nook fitted into the library's terrazzo-finished steel and concrete staircase. The interior uses an easy-to-navigate layout with its three distinct spatial areas of entry area, first floor space, and mezzanine visually unified through the ceiling. The building also won the "Interior Design", Best of Year Merit Award in 2011, followed by "The National Terrazzo and Mosaic Association", Port Morris Tile and Marble Corporation Craftsmanship Award in 2011 and the "Contract", Public Space Interiors Award in 2012. Transportation. Currently, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority provides bus service to the area. , the bus lines service parts of Battery Park City, with the nearby at Battery Park. Additionally, the Downtown Alliance provides a free bus service that runs along North End Avenue and South End Avenue, connecting the various residential complexes with subway stations on the other side of West Street. There is currently no New York City Subway access in Battery Park City proper; however, the West Street pedestrian bridges, as well as crosswalks across West Street, connect Battery Park City to subway stations and the PATH station in the nearby Financial District. The West Concourse, a tunnel from Brookfield Place passing under West Street, also provides access from Battery Park City to the World Trade Center PATH station, the WTC Cortlandt station, and the Fulton Street station (New York City Subway). The Battery Park City Ferry Terminal is at the foot of Vesey Street opposite the New York Mercantile Exchange and provides ferry transportation to various points in New Jersey via NY Waterway, Seastreak, and Liberty Water Taxi routes. NYC Ferry's St. George route, to West Midtown Ferry Terminal and St. George Terminal, stops at Battery Park City Ferry Terminal. The West Thames Street Bridge, one of the West Street pedestrian bridges connecting Battery Park City to the Financial District, was completed in 2019, replacing the older Rector Street Bridge. On June 11, 2021, it was dedicated as the Robert F. Douglass Bridge. Its namesake, who died in 2016, was an early advocate for lower Manhattan as a senior advisor to Governor Nelson Rockefeller and later as a founding member and chairman of the Downtown Alliance and board member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Parks and open spaces. More than one-third of the neighborhood is parkland. Some large open spaces and parks include: In addition, there are: Notable residents. Notable residents include: References. Notes Further reading
4581	49991027	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4581	Bacterial vaginosis	Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is an infection of the vagina caused by excessive growth of bacteria. Common symptoms include increased vaginal discharge that often smells like fish. The discharge is usually white or gray in color. Burning with urination may occur. Itching is uncommon. Occasionally, there may be no symptoms. Having BV approximately doubles the risk of infection by a number of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. It also increases the risk of early delivery among pregnant women. BV is caused by an imbalance of the naturally occurring bacteria in the vagina. There is a change in the most common type of bacteria and a hundred to thousandfold increase in total numbers of bacteria present. Typically, bacteria other than "Lactobacilli" become more common. Risk factors include douching, new or multiple sex partners, antibiotics, and using an intrauterine device, among others. However, it is not considered a sexually transmitted infection and, unlike gonorrhoea and chlamydia, sexual partners are not treated. Diagnosis is suspected based on the symptoms, and may be verified by testing the vaginal discharge and finding a higher than normal vaginal pH, and large numbers of bacteria. BV is often confused with a vaginal yeast infection or infection with "Trichomonas". Usually treatment is with an antibiotic, such as clindamycin or metronidazole. These medications may also be used in the second or third trimesters of pregnancy. The antiseptic boric acid can also be effective. BV often recurs following treatment. Probiotics may help prevent re-occurrence. It is unclear if the use of probiotics or antibiotics affects pregnancy outcomes. BV is the most common vaginal infection in women of reproductive age. Prevalence differs by countries and demographics, with a systematic review and meta-analysis finding global prevalence in reproductive aged women ranges from 23 to 29%. While BV-like symptoms have been described for much of recorded history, the first clearly documented case occurred in 1894. Signs and symptoms. Although about 50% of women with BV are asymptomatic, common symptoms include increased vaginal discharge that usually smells like fish. The discharge is often white or gray in color. There may be burning with urination. The discharge coats the walls of the vagina, and is usually without significant irritation, pain or erythema, although mild itching can sometimes occur. By contrast, the normal vaginal discharge will vary in consistency and amount throughout the menstrual cycle and is at its clearest at ovulation—about two weeks before the period starts. Some practitioners claim that BV can be asymptomatic in almost half of affected women, though others argue that this is often a misdiagnosis. Complications. Although previously considered a mere nuisance infection, untreated bacterial vaginosis may cause increased susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and pregnancy complications. It has been shown that HIV-infected women with bacterial vaginosis (BV) are more likely to transmit HIV to their sexual partners than those without BV. There is evidence of an association between BV and increased rates of sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS. BV is associated with up to a six-fold increase in HIV shedding. BV is a risk factor for viral shedding and herpes simplex virus type 2 infection. BV may increase the risk of infection with or reactivation of human papillomavirus (HPV). In addition, bacterial vaginosis as either pre-existing, or acquired, may increase the risk of pregnancy complications, most notably premature birth or miscarriage. Pregnant women with BV have a higher risk of chorioamnionitis, miscarriage, preterm birth, premature rupture of membranes, and postpartum endometritis. Women with BV who are treated with in vitro fertilization have a lower implantation rate and higher rates of early pregnancy loss. Causes. Healthy vaginal microbiota consists of species that neither cause symptoms or infections, nor negatively affect pregnancy. It is dominated mainly by Lactobacillus species. BV is defined by the disequilibrium in the vaginal microbiota, with decline in the number of lactobacilli. While the infection involves a number of bacteria, it is believed that most infections start with "Gardnerella vaginalis" creating a biofilm, which allows other opportunistic bacteria, such as "Prevotella" and "Bacteroides", to thrive. One of the main risks for developing BV is douching, which alters the vaginal microbiota and predisposes women to developing BV. Douching is strongly discouraged by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and various medical authorities, for this and other reasons. BV is a risk factor for pelvic inflammatory disease, HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), endometriosis, and reproductive and obstetric disorders or negative outcomes. Although BV can be associated with sexual activity, there is no clear evidence of sexual transmission. It is possible for sexually inactive persons to develop bacterial vaginosis. Also, subclinical iron deficiency may correlate with bacterial vaginosis in early pregnancy. A longitudinal study published in February 2006, in the "American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology", showed a link between psychosocial stress and bacterial vaginosis persisted even when other risk factors were taken into account. Exposure to the spermicide nonoxynol-9 does not affect the risk of developing bacterial vaginosis. The cause of the fishy smell of BV is mainly due to reduction of trimethylamine oxide (TMAO) to trimethylamine (TMA) by bacteria in vaginal secretion. TMA is the same compound that is predominantly responsible for the smell of decomposing fish. The diamines putrescine and cadaverine, which are the decarboxylation products of arginine and lysine amino acid metabolism, respectively, are also present in BV and may contribute to the fishy smell of the condition as well. Diagnosis. To make a diagnosis of bacterial vaginosis, a swab from inside the vagina should be obtained. These swabs can be tested for: Differential diagnosis for bacterial vaginosis includes the following: The Center for Disease Control (CDC) defines STIs as "a variety of clinical syndromes and infections caused by pathogens that can be acquired and transmitted through sexual activity." But the CDC does not specifically identify BV as sexually transmitted infection. Amsel criteria. In clinical practice BV can be diagnosed using the Amsel criteria: At least three of the four criteria should be present for a confirmed diagnosis. A modification of the Amsel criteria accepts the presence of two instead of three factors and is considered equally diagnostic. Gram stain. An alternative is to use a Gram-stained vaginal smear, with the Hay/Ison criteria or the Nugent criteria. The Hay/Ison criteria are defined as follows: "Gardnerella vaginalis" is the main culprit in BV. "Gardnerella vaginalis" is a short, Gram-variable rod (coccobacillus). Hence, the presence of clue cells and gram variable coccobacilli are indicative or diagnostic of bacterial vaginosis. Nugent score. The Nugent score is now rarely used by physicians due to the time it takes to read the slides and requires the use of a trained microscopist. A score of 0–10 is generated from combining three other scores. The scores are as follows: At least 10–20 high power (1000× oil immersion) fields are counted and an average determined. DNA hybridization testing with Affirm VPIII was compared to the Gram stain using the Nugent criteria. The Affirm VPIII test may be used for the rapid diagnosis of BV in symptomatic women but uses expensive proprietary equipment to read results, and does not detect other pathogens that cause BV, including "Prevotella" spp, "Bacteroides" spp, and "Mobiluncus" spp. The cervicovaginal microbiome measured using 16S rRNA sequencing has the capacity to increase throughput of the Nugent Score and has demonstrate to be directly comparable to clinical Nugent Score measurement. Screening. Screening during pregnancy is not recommended in the United States as of 2020, because "the US Preventive Services Task Force concludes that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for bacterial vaginosis in pregnant persons at increased risk for preterm delivery". Prevention. Some steps suggested to lower the risk include not douching, not using perfumed soaps and limiting the number of sex partners. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses from 2022 to 2023 have concluded that probiotics may help prevent re-occurrence. Early evidence suggested that antibiotic treatment of male partners could re-establish the normal microbiota of the male urogenital tract and prevent the recurrence of infection. However, a 2016 Cochrane review found high-quality evidence that treating the sexual partners of women with bacterial vaginosis had no effect on symptoms, clinical outcomes, or recurrence in the affected women. It also found that such treatment may lead treated sexual partners to report increased adverse events. Treatment. Antibiotics. Treatment is typically with the antibiotics metronidazole or clindamycin. They can be either given by mouth or applied inside the vagina with similar efficacy. Other antibiotics related to metronidazole, including tinidazole and the newer secnidazole, are also approved and used to treat BV. When clindamycin is given to pregnant women symptomatic with BV before 22 weeks of gestation the risk of pre-term birth before 37 weeks of gestation is lower. Additional antibiotics that are not approved for treatment of BV but might work include macrolides, lincosamides, and penicillins. Although antibiotics are effective, about 10% to 15% of people do not improve with the first course of antibiotics and recurrence rates of up to 80% have been documented. Recurrence rates are increased with sexual activity with the same pre-/post-treatment partner and inconsistent condom use. BV is not considered a sexually transmitted infection, and antibiotic treatment of a male sexual partner of a woman with BV is not recommended. Antiseptics. Topical antiseptics, for example dequalinium chloride, policresulen, hexetidine, povidone-iodine, or boric acid vaginal suppositories may be applied, if the risk of ascending infections is low (outside of pregnancy and in immunocompetent people without histories of upper genital tract infections). Dequalinium chloride is available as a prescription vaginal tablet, for instance in Europe and Canada, is given as a 6-day course, and is non-inferior to metronidazole in the treatment of bacterial vaginosis. Povidone-iodine is approved as a vaginal gel to treat bacterial vaginosis under the brand name Astrodimer, among others. One study found that vaginal irrigations with hydrogen peroxide (3%) resulted in a slight improvement, but this was much less than with the use of oral metronidazole. Dequalinium chloride and povidone-iodine (as Astrodimer) have the best evidence of effectiveness. Neither of these are available in the United States, though they are available in other countries. Intravaginal boric acid, alone or in conjunction with other medications, may be helpful in the treatment of recurrent BV. TOL-463, an experimental formulation of boric acid enhanced with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), is under development as an intravaginal medication for the treatment of BV and has shown preliminary effectiveness in clinical trials. Probiotics. A 2009 Cochrane review found tentative but insufficient evidence for probiotics as a treatment for BV. A 2014 review reached the same conclusion. A 2013 review found some evidence supporting the use of probiotics during pregnancy. The preferred probiotics for BV are those containing high doses of lactobacilli (around 109 ) given in the vagina. Intravaginal administration is preferred to taking them by mouth. Prolonged repetitive courses of treatment appear to be more promising than short courses. The lack of effectiveness of commercially available "Lactobacillus" probiotics may be because most do not actually contain vaginal lactobacilli strains. LACTIN-V is a live biopharmaceutical medication containing the vaginally important "Lactobacillus crispatus" which is under development for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis and recurrent urinary tract infections. It has shown initial effectiveness in considerably reducing recurrence of bacterial vaginosis following antibiotic treatment. LACTIN-V is not yet Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved or commercially available. Miscellaneous. Estrogen-containing contraceptives have been found to decrease recurrence of BV. Epidemiology. BV is the most common infection of the vagina in women of reproductive age. The percentage of women affected at any given time varies between 5% and 70%. BV is most common in parts of Africa, and least common in Asia and Europe. In the United States, about 30% of those between the ages of 14 and 49 are affected. Rates vary considerably between ethnic groups within a country.
4582	48035214	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4582	Bud Selig	Allan Huber "Bud" Selig (; born July 30, 1934) is an American baseball executive who currently serves as the commissioner emeritus of baseball. Previously, he served as the ninth commissioner of baseball from 1998 to 2015. He initially served as de facto acting commissioner beginning in 1992 in his capacity as chairman of the Major League Baseball (MLB) Executive Committee before being named the official commissioner in 1998. Selig oversaw baseball through the 1994 strike, the introduction of the wild card, interleague play, and the de facto merging of the National and American Leagues under the Office of the Commissioner. He was instrumental in organizing the World Baseball Classic in 2006. Selig also introduced revenue sharing. He is credited for the financial turnaround of baseball during his tenure with a 400 percent increase in the revenue of MLB and annual record breaking attendance. During Selig's term of service, the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs became a public issue. The Mitchell Report, commissioned by Selig, concluded that the MLB commissioners, club officials, the Players Association, and the players all share "to some extent in the responsibility for the steroid era." Following the release of the Mitchell Report, Congressman Cliff Stearns called publicly for Selig to step down as commissioner, citing his "glacial response" to the "growing stain on baseball." Selig has pledged on numerous occasions to rid baseball of performance-enhancing drugs, and has overseen and instituted many rule changes and penalties to that end. A Milwaukee native, Selig was previously the owner and team president of the Milwaukee Brewers. The franchise, originally known as the Seattle Pilots, was acquired by Selig in bankruptcy court in 1970, and renamed after the minor league team of the same name that he had watched in his youth and had existed until the arrival of the Braves in Milwaukee in 1953. Selig was credited with keeping baseball in Milwaukee. The Brewers went to the 1982 World Series (but were defeated in seven games by the St. Louis Cardinals), and Selig won seven Organization of the Year awards during his tenure. Selig remains a resident of Milwaukee. On January 17, 2008, Selig's contract was extended through 2012, after which he planned to retire, but he then decided to stay as commissioner until the end of the 2014 season, a move approved by the owners on January 12, 2012, which would take his leadership past his 80th birthday. Selig made $14.5 million in the 12-month period ending October 31, 2005. Selig announced on September 26, 2013, that he would retire in January 2015. On January 22, 2015, MLB announced that Selig would formally step down from the office when his current term expired on January 24, 2015. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017. Early life. Selig was born in Milwaukee, and grew up in a Jewish family. His father, Ben Selig, had come to the United States from Romania with his family when he was four years old. Selig graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a B.A. in American history and political science in 1956. He served two years in the U.S. Army before working with his father who owned a car leasing business in Milwaukee. Selig continues to be involved in the automotive industry, serving as president of the Selig Executive Lease Company. Selig's interest in baseball came from his mother. An immigrant from Ukraine, Marie Selig attended college, a rare accomplishment for a woman in the early 20th century, and became a school teacher. When Selig was only three, Marie began taking him and his older brother, Jerry, to Borchert Field, where the minor league Milwaukee Brewers played. When the Boston Braves relocated to Milwaukee in 1953, Selig switched allegiances, and eventually became the team's largest public stockholder. Selig was devastated when he learned that the Braves were going to leave Milwaukee in favor of Atlanta. In 1965, when the Braves left Milwaukee, he divested his stock in the team. As a youngster, Selig's favorite player was Hershel Martin. He developed a friendship with Hank Aaron, when the young player joined the Braves. The elder Selig's company provided loaner cars to Braves players, which gave the family access to the clubhouse and players. Selig and Aaron attended Green Bay Packers games together and sat together on the Brave's plane. Milwaukee Brewers owner. As a minority owner of the Milwaukee Braves, Selig founded the organization Teams, Inc., in an attempt to prevent the majority owners (based out of Chicago) from moving the club to a larger television market. This was challenged legally on the basis that no prior team relocations (in the modern era) left a city without a team. Prior movements had all originated in cities that were home to at least two teams. When his quest to keep the team in Milwaukee finally failed after the 1965 season, he changed the group's name to Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc., after the minor league baseball team he grew up watching, and devoted himself to returning Major League Baseball to Milwaukee. Selig arranged for major league games to be played at Milwaukee County Stadium. The first, a pre-season match-up between the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins, drew more than 51,000 spectators. Selig followed this up by hosting nine White Sox regular-season games in 1968 and eleven in 1969. One of the games played in Milwaukee that year was against the expansion Seattle Pilots, the team that would become the Brewers. Those Milwaukee "home" games were phenomenally successful, with the handful of games accounting for about "one-third" of total White Sox home attendance. To satisfy that fan base, Selig decided to purchase the White Sox (with the intention of moving them to Milwaukee) in 1969. He entered into an agreement to buy the club, but the American League vetoed the sale, preferring to keep an American League team in Chicago, which at the time was still America's second-largest city. Selig turned his attention to other franchises. In 1970, he purchased the bankrupt Seattle Pilots franchise, moving them to his hometown and officially renaming the team the "Brewers". During Selig's tenure as club president, the Brewers participated in postseason play in 1981, when the team finished first in the American League East during the second half of the season, and in 1982, when the team made it to the World Series, under the leadership of future Hall of Famers Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. Under Selig's watch, the Brewers also won seven Organization of the Year awards. Selig was part of the owners' collusion in 1985–1987, resulting in the owners paying US$280 million in damages to the players. Upon his assumption of the commissioner's role, Selig transferred his ownership interest in the Brewers to his daughter Wendy Selig-Prieb in order to remove any technical conflicts of interest, though it was widely presumed he maintained some hand in team operations. Although the team was sold to Los Angeles investor Mark Attanasio in 2005, questions remain regarding Selig's past involvement. Selig's defenders point to the poor management of the team after Selig-Prieb took control as proof that Selig was not working behind the scenes. Selig was elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001. On August 24, 2010, a statue of Selig, the "Selig Monument", commissioned by Brewers owner Mark Attanasio and designed by artist Brian Maughan, was unveiled outside Miller Park in Milwaukee. Acting Commissioner (1992–1998). Selig became an increasingly vocal opponent of Commissioner Fay Vincent, and soon became the leader of a group of owners seeking his removal. Selig has never stated that the owners colluded, while Vincent has: Following an 18-9 no-confidence vote, Vincent resigned. Selig had by this time become chairman of the Executive Council of Major League Baseball, and as such became de facto acting commissioner. His first major act was to institute the Wild Card and divisional playoff play, which has created much controversy amongst baseball fans. Those against the Wild Card see it as diminishing the importance of the pennant race and the regular season, with the true race often being for second rather than first place, while those in favor of it view it as an opportunity for teams to have a shot at the playoffs even when they have no chance of a first-place finish in their division, thus maintaining fan interest later in the season. Selig suspended Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott for a year in 1993 for repeated racially insensitive and prejudicial remarks and actions. The same year, Selig reinstated New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner from a lifelong suspension that was instituted by Selig's predecessor Fay Vincent. Pete Rose has claimed that he applied for reinstatement over the years and received no such consideration. Rose, along with his close friend and former teammate Mike Schmidt (who is a strong supporter of Rose's reinstatement into baseball), met with Selig in 2002, where Rose privately admitted to Selig (two years before going public with his admission) about betting on baseball. Bud Selig was a close friend of the late Bart Giamatti, who was the commissioner when Rose was first banned from the sport in 1989. As acting commissioner, Selig represented MLB owners during the 1994 strike. On September 15, he cancelled the World Series, marking the first time the annual event had not been staged since 1904. While serving as acting commissioner, MLB also implemented interleague play in 1997. Commissioner (1998–2015). After a six-year search for a new commissioner, the owners voted to give Selig the title on a permanent basis on July 9, 1998. During his tenure, MLB avoided additional work stoppages by adopting collective bargaining agreements with its players in 2002 and 2006. Whereas in the past, the National and American leagues had separate administrative organizations (which, for example, allowed for the introduction of different rules such as the designated hitter), under Selig, Major League Baseball consolidated the administrative functions of both leagues into the Commissioner's Office in 2000. The last official presidents of the NL and AL were Leonard S. Coleman Jr. and Dr. Gene Budig respectively. Reaction after September 11, 2001. On September 11, 2001, Selig ordered all baseball games postponed for a week because of the terror attacks on New York and Washington. The games were postponed not only out of respect and mourning for the victims, but also out of concern for the safety and security of fans and players. 2001 contraction attempt. After the conclusion of the 2001 World Series, Selig held a vote on contracting two teams, reportedly the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos. This action led to Selig (along with former Expos owner Jeffrey Loria) being sued for racketeering and conspiring with Loria to deliberately defraud the Expos minority owners. If found liable, the league could have been ordered to pay as much as $500 million in total damages. The judge ruled that the Expos could not be moved or contracted until the case was over. The case eventually went to arbitration and was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. A week after Selig's announcement, Hennepin County Judge Harry Seymour Crump issued a temporary restraining order that forced the Twins to honor their lease and play the 2002 season at the Metrodome. In August 2002, the effort to contract the Twins officially fizzled as players and owners reached a consensus on a new labor agreement which extended the team's Metrodome lease. Changes to the MLB All-Star Game. The 2002 All-Star Game, played in Selig's hometown of Milwaukee, was tied 7–7 after nine innings, and remained tied after the bottom of the 11th inning. Due to the recent managerial trend of granting playing time to as many available players as possible within the regulation nine innings, both managers had used their entire roster. Concerned for the arms of the pitchers currently on the mound, Selig made the controversial decision to declare the game a tie, to the dissatisfaction of the Milwaukee fans. Selig later said that this call was "embarrassing" and that he was "tremendously saddened" by the outcome of the game. Selig subsequently tried to reinvigorate the All-Star Game by awarding the winning league home-field advantage in the World Series; that practice was initiated in 2003 and continued through 2016. The 2003 All-Star Game had the same U.S. viewership as 2002 (9.5 rating; 17 share) and the ratings declined in 2004 (8.8 rating; 15 share) and 2005 (8.1 rating; 14 share). The American television audience increased in 2006 (9.3 rating; 16 share). Disciplinary actions. On July 1, 2005, Selig suspended Texas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers for 20 games and fined him US$50,000. The punishment stemmed from an incident on June 29, 2005, during a Rangers pre-game warmup session, where Rogers had shoved two local news reporters and knocked one camera to the ground. One of the reporters resumed filming after picking up said camera, which angered Rogers into shoving him again, after grabbing and throwing the camera to the ground, kicking it. He was then led away by a teammate and later sent home by the club. While an appeal of his suspension was pending, Rogers appeared at the 2005 All-Star Game in Detroit, where fans loudly booed him. On July 22, 2005, Selig heard Rogers' appeal of his suspension. Selig decided to uphold the 20 games, however, an independent arbitrator ruled that Selig had exceeded his authority and reduced it to 13 games, but upheld the fine. Performance-enhancing drugs. In 2005, Selig faced Congress on the issue of steroids. After the Congressional hearings in early 2005, and with the scrutiny of the sports and national media upon this issue, Selig put forth a proposal for a stricter performance-enhancing drug testing regime to replace the current system. This proposal also included the banning of amphetamines, a first for the major North American sports leagues. The MLB Players Association and MLB reached an agreement in November on the new policy. Selig's testimony on the subject has been contradictory. In 2005, Selig told reporters, "I never even heard about them [steroids] until 1998 or 1999. I ran a team and nobody was closer to their players and I never heard any comment from them. It wasn't until 1998 or '99 that I heard the discussion." But a year later, testifying to Congress in 2006, Selig claimed personal credit for spotting the problem early: "In 1994, before anybody was really talking about steroids in baseball, we proposed a program of testing for such substances to the MLBPA. As early as 1998, I began formulating a strategic plan to eliminate the use of performance-enhancing substances from the game." During the 1988 ALCS, Oakland's Jose Canseco had been repeatedly taunted by Boston fans with a chant of "ster-oids, ster-oids, ster-oids." Speaking at the 2013 All-Star Game, Selig complained, "People say, 'Well, you were slow to react.' We were not slow to react. In fact, I heard that this morning, and it aggravated me all over again." By early 2006, Selig was forced to deal with the issue of steroid use. On March 30, 2006, as a response to the controversy of the use of performance-enhancing drugs and the anticipated career home run record to be set by Barry Bonds, Selig asked former U.S. Senator George J. Mitchell to lead an independent investigation into the use of steroids in baseball's recent past. Joe Sheehan from "Baseball Prospectus" wrote that the commission has been focusing "blame for the era exclusively on uniformed personnel", and failing to investigate any role played by team ownership and management. Much controversy surrounded Selig and his involvement in Bonds' all-time home run record chase. For months, speculation surrounded Selig and the possibility that he and Henry Aaron would not attend Bonds' games as he closed in on the record. Selig announced in July 2007 when Bonds was near 755 home runs that he would attend the games. Selig was in attendance for Bonds' record-tying home run against the San Diego Padres, sitting in Padres owner John Moores' private suite. When Bonds hit his 755th home run, Selig refused to applaud Bonds' accomplishment, instead choosing to keep his hands in his pockets and have a look of disdain on his face. Bud Selig also did not attend the San Francisco Giants' game on August 7 when Barry Bonds hit his record-breaking 756th home run against the Washington Nationals; after the event, Selig released a statement congratulating Bonds. On December 13, 2007, former senator Mitchell released his report on the use of performance-enhancing substances by MLB players. The report names many current and former players who allegedly used performance-enhancing drugs during their careers. Selig has been widely criticized for not taking an active enough role to stem the tide of steroid use in baseball until it had blossomed into a debilitating problem for the industry. "Chicago Sun-Times" columnist Jay Mariotti called Selig the "Steroids Commissioner." Selig has been called to Congress several times to testify on performance-enhancing drug use. Congressman Cliff Stearns said in December 2007 that Selig should resign because of use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball during his tenure. Post-season schedule. Selig's decision to extend the traditional post-season schedule into November in an attempt to increase Nielsen ratings was met with widespread disdain, both inside and outside the baseball community. Mike Scioscia, manager of the American League West Division Champion Los Angeles Angels, dismissed the decision as "Ridiculous. I don't know. Can I say it any clearer than that? We should have never had a day off last Wednesday. We should never have three days off after the season. You shouldn't even have two days off after the season." Controversies. Selig has been embroiled in a number of controversial decisions during his tenure as commissioner. Notably, he has been accused of favoring the Milwaukee Brewers, his former team, such as he was during the 2001 contraction controversy when it was suggested the Minnesota Twins be one of two teams (the other being the Montreal Expos) to be contracted for economic reasons. Sportswriter Rob Dibble posted an open letter to Bud Selig, criticizing the plan for benefiting only the Brewers, noting that the contraction of the Twins would benefit the Brewers, as they would potentially claim the Twins' share of the upper Midwest market. During the 2011 Los Angeles Dodgers ownership dispute, he was accused of not acting in good faith towards and treating the Dodgers differently from other teams when he rejected the television deal that Frank McCourt negotiated that intended to bring the franchise out of bankruptcy, claiming McCourt violated the Baseball Agreement. In comparison, no action was taken against New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon despite being in a similar position. United States bankruptcy judge Kevin Gross rendered a stern warning to Selig, stating: "Should the Commissioner falter in proving alleged wrongdoing, the Court may allow LAD (Los Angeles Dodgers) to take further, limited discovery." Some critics have used Selig's handling of the Dodgers to point out a double standard in treatment of MLB owners. More specifically in regards to the Mets, critics have accused Selig of favoritism towards the Mets due to Selig's personal relationship with Wilpon, claiming that it motivated him to stall any possible removal of Wilpon as that club's principal owner. Selig also notably failed to resolve a 6-year conflict between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics regarding the Athletics' proposed move to San Jose. Selig established a blue-ribbon panel in 2009 to resolve the dispute; however, despite years to find a resolution, the blue-ribbon panel completely failed to make any progress toward resolving the issue, leading San Jose to sue MLB. The lawsuit, which is currently ongoing, questions the league's anti-trust exemption and its ability to enforce particular clubs' geographic territories. In addition, he blocked the sale of the Athletics in 1999 to an ownership group led by Bob Piccinini, then the CEO of Save Mart Supermarkets, and Joe Lacob, who would later purchase Golden State Warriors, from purchasing the Athletics in 2005. Both potential ownership groups were committed to keeping the team in Oakland that would render this territorial dispute meaningless. Instead, Selig permitted only Lew Wolff, his fraternity brother from college, and John J. Fisher to buy the team. The latter has since initiated the process to move the Athletics from Oakland to Las Vegas. Term of service. On December 1, 2006, Selig announced that he would be retiring as commissioner of baseball upon the expiration of his contract in 2009. Selig earned $14.5 million from MLB over the timespan October 31, 2005 to October 31, 2006. However, in January 2008, Selig agreed to a three-year contract extension, announcing he planned to retire after the 2012 season. He further decided against retirement, and after a two-year extension for the previous deal was agreed to on January 12, 2012, it was announced that Selig would remain commissioner until the end of the 2014 season. Post-Commissioner Activities. In 2021, Selig was appointed as "non-voting co-Chair" (with Jane Forbes Clark) for the December 2021 Early Baseball Era Committee meeting, to consider candidates for election to the Hall of Fame whose major contributions to the game took place prior to 1950. The committee elected Bud Fowler and Buck O'Neil. Notable changes to Major League Baseball. Bud Selig has overseen the following changes in Major League Baseball: During Selig's terms as executive council chairman (from 1992 to 1998) and commissioner, new stadiums opened in Arizona, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Colorado, Detroit, Houston, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York City (Flushing, Queens and the Bronx), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Arlington, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Israel Baseball League. Selig and his family served a supportive role on the advisory board of the Israel Baseball League during its inaugural season in 2007. In response to issues with the league's financial management, after the season, the Selig family requested that their names be removed from the list of board members. "Selig Experience". In May 2015, the Milwaukee Brewers honored Bud Selig with the unveiling of the "Selig Experience" exhibit at American Family Field (formerly Miller Park.) The "Selig Experience" is a fifteen-minute documentary showing Bud Selig's life and work for the Milwaukee Brewers. Personal life. Selig has been married twice. He married his first wife, Donna Chaimson, in the 1950s, and they had two daughters: Sari (born 1957) and Wendy (born 1960). The couple divorced in 1976 after 19 years of marriage on the grounds that Selig had been "unduly absenting yourself from the home of the parties and isolating yourself ... in pursuit of your baseball interests to the detriment of your marriage." Chaimson later stated that the marriage ended because her husband "divorced me and married baseball." Since 1977, Selig has been married to the former Suzanne Steinman, who has a daughter from a previous marriage. Teaching. In 2009, Selig began teaching as an adjunct professor of sports law and policy at Marquette University Law School. His classes have covered numerous topics, including "the history of collective bargaining and free agency, baseball's antitrust exemption, revenue sharing – as well as finer points of sports law like intellectual property rights, ambush marketing, and why baseball does not allow game footage on YouTube." In 2010, Selig endowed the Allan H. Selig Chair in the History of Sport and Society in the United States, as well as a Distinguished Lecture Series in Sport and Society at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. The inaugural lecture was given by Adrian Burgos. Selig has since endowed two more chairs in the university's history department. In February 2016, Selig began teaching at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. His title at the law school is distinguished professor of sports in America. He is also a lecturer at UW–Madison and Marquette. Honors. Selig was awarded the U.S. Department of the Army Outstanding Civilian Service Award in April 2015 for supporting soldiers, veterans, and their families through his work in Major League Baseball. On April 6, 2015, the Milwaukee Brewers retired uniform number 1 in his honor. In 2014, Selig was inducted onto the inaugural Milwaukee Brewers Wall of Honor. On December 4, 2016, it was announced Selig was elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2017. He was formally inducted on July 30, 2017. In 2016, Selig was honored with the "Lombardi Award of Excellence" from the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation. The award was created to honor Coach Lombardi's legacy, and is awarded annually to an individual who exemplifies the spirit of the Coach.
4583	980331	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4583	Bison	A bison (: bison) is a large bovine in the genus Bison (from Greek, meaning 'wild ox') within the tribe Bovini. Two extant and numerous extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American bison, "B. bison", found only in North America, is the more numerous. Although colloquially referred to as a buffalo in the United States and Canada, it is only distantly related to the true buffalo. The North American species is composed of two subspecies, the Plains bison, "B. b. bison", and the generally more northern wood bison, "B. b. athabascae". A third subspecies, the eastern bison ("B. b. pennsylvanicus") is no longer considered a valid taxon, being a junior synonym of "B. b. bison". Historical references to "woods bison" or "wood bison" from the Eastern United States refer to this synonym animal (and to their eastern woodland habitat), not to "B. b. athabascae", which was not found in the region. Its European kind "B. bonasus" or wisent —also 'zubr' or colloquially 'European buffalo'— is found in Europe and the Caucasus, reintroduced after being extinct in the wild. While bison species have been traditionally classified in their own genus, modern genetics indicates that they are nested within the genus "Bos," which includes, among others, cattle, yaks and gaur, being most closely related to yaks. Description. The American bison and the European bison (wisent) are the largest surviving terrestrial animals in North America and Europe. They are typical artiodactyl (cloven hooved) ungulates, and are similar in appearance to other bovines such as cattle and true buffalo. They are broad and muscular with shaggy coats of long hair. Adults grow up to in height and in length for American bison and up to in height and in length for European bison. American bison can weigh from around and European bison can weigh from . European bison tend to be taller than American bison. Bison are nomadic grazers and travel in herds. The bulls leave the herds of females at two or three years of age, and join a herd of males, which usually are smaller than female herds. Mature bulls rarely travel alone. Towards the end of the summer, for the reproductive season, the sexes necessarily commingle. American bison are known for living in the Great Plains, but formerly had a much larger range, including much of the eastern United States and parts of Mexico. Both species were hunted close to extinction during the 19th and 20th centuries, but have since rebounded. The wisent in part owes its survival to the Chernobyl disaster, as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a kind of wildlife preserve for wisent and other rare megafauna such as the Przewalski's horse, though poaching has become a threat in the 21st century. The American Plains bison is no longer listed as endangered, but this does not mean the species is secure. Genetically pure "B. b. bison" currently number only about 20,000, separated into fragmented herds—all of which require active conservation measures. The wood bison is on the endangered species list in Canada and is listed as threatened in the United States, though numerous attempts have been made by beefalo ranchers to have it entirely removed from the Endangered Species List. Although superficially similar, physical and behavioural differences exist between the American and European bison. The American species has 15 ribs, while the European bison has 14. The American bison has four lumbar vertebrae, while the European has five. (The difference in this case is that what would be the first lumbar vertebra has ribs attached to it in American bison and is thus counted as the 15th thoracic vertebra, compared to 14 thoracic vertebrae in wisent.) Adult American bison are less slim in build and have shorter legs. American bison tend to graze more, and browse less than their European relatives. Their anatomies reflect this behavioural difference; the American bison's head hangs lower than the European's. The body of the American bison is typically hairier, though its tail has less hair than that of the European bison. The horns of the European bison point through the plane of their faces, making them more adept at fighting through the interlocking of horns in the same manner as domestic cattle, unlike the American bison, which favours butting. American bison are more easily tamed than their European cousins, and breed with domestic cattle more readily. Evolution and genetic history. The bovine tribe (Bovini) split about 5 to 10 million years ago into the buffalos ("Bubalus" and "Syncerus") and a group leading to bison and taurine cattle. Genetic evidence from nuclear DNA indicates that the closest living relatives of bison are yaks, with bison being nested within the genus "Bos," rendering "Bos" without including bison paraphyletic. While nuclear DNA indicates that both extant bison species are each other's closest living relatives, the mitochondrial DNA of European bison is more closely related to that of domestic cattle and aurochs (while the mitochondrial DNA of American bison is closely related to that of yaks). This discrepancy is either suggested to be the result of incomplete lineage sorting or ancient introgression. Bison are widely believed to have evolved from a lineage belonging to the extinct genus "Leptobos" during the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene in Asia. The earliest members of the bison lineage, known from the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene of the Indian Subcontinent ("Bison sivalensis") and China ("Bison palaeosinensis"), approximately 3.4-2.6 million years ago (Ma) are placed in the subgenus "Bison" ("Eobison")"." The oldest remains of "Eobison" in Europe are those "Bison georgicus" found in Dmanisi, Georgia, dated to around 1.76 Ma. More derived members of the genus are placed in the subgenus "Bison" ("Bison"), which first appeared towards the end of the Early Pleistocene, around 1.2 Ma, with early members of the subgenus including the widespread "Bison schoetensacki". The steppe bison ("Bison priscus") first appeared during the mid-Middle Pleistocene in eastern Eurasia, and subsequently became widely distributed across Eurasia. During the late Middle Pleistocene, around 195,000-135,000 years ago, the steppe bison migrated across the Bering land bridge into North America, becoming ancestral to North American bison species, including the large "Bison latifrons," and the smaller "Bison antiquus," which became extinct at the end of the Late Pleistocene. Modern American bison are thought to have evolved from "B. antiquus" during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition via the intermediate form "Bison occidentalis". The European bison, "Bison bonasus," first appeared in Europe during the late Middle Pleistocene, where it existed in sympatry with the steppe bison. Its relationship with other extinct bison species is unclear, though it appears to be only distantly related to the steppe and American bisons, with possibly some interbreeding between the two lineages during the Middle Pleistocene. The steppe bison survived into the early-mid Holocene in Alaska-Yukon and eastern Siberia, before becoming extinct. Prior to the late 19th century, the population of American bison likely numbered in the tens of millions, perhaps as many as 60 million. During the population bottleneck caused by the great slaughter of American bison during the 19th century, the number of bison remaining alive in North America declined to as low as 541. During that period, a handful of ranchers gathered remnants of the existing herds to save the species from extinction. These ranchers bred some of the bison with cattle in an effort to produce "cattleo" (today called "beefalo"). Accidental crossings were also known to occur. Generally, male domestic bulls were crossed with bison cows, producing offspring of which only the females were fertile. The crossbred animals did not demonstrate any form of hybrid vigor, so the practice was abandoned. Wisent-American bison hybrids were briefly experimented with in Germany (and found to be fully fertile) and a herd of such animals is maintained in Russia. First-generation crosses do not occur naturally, requiring caesarean delivery. First-generation males are infertile. The U.S. National Bison Association has adopted a code of ethics that prohibits its members from deliberately crossbreeding bison with any other species. In the United States, many ranchers are now using DNA testing to cull the residual cattle genetics from their bison herds. The proportion of cattle DNA that has been measured in introgressed individuals and bison herds today is typically quite low, ranging from 0.56 to 1.8%. There are also remnant purebred American bison herds on public lands in North America. Two subspecies of bison exist in North America: the "plains bison" and the "wood bison". Herds of importance are found in Yellowstone National Park, Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, Blue Mounds State Park in Minnesota, Elk Island National Park in Alberta, and Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan. In 2015, a purebred herd of 350 individuals was identified on public lands in the Henry Mountains of southern Utah via genetic testing of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. This study, published in 2015, also showed the Henry Mountains bison herd to be free of brucellosis, a bacterial disease that was imported with non-native domestic cattle to North America. In 2021, the American Society of Mammalogists considered "Bison" to be a subgenus, and placed both bison species back into "Bos". Relationships of bovines based on nuclear DNA, after Sinding, et al. 2021. Behavior. Wallowing is a common behavior of bison. A "bison wallow" is a shallow depression in the soil, either wet or dry. Bison roll in these depressions, covering themselves with mud or dust. Possible explanations suggested for wallowing behavior include grooming behavior associated with moulting, male-male interaction (typically rutting behavior), social behavior for group cohesion, play behavior, relief from skin irritation due to biting insects, reduction of ectoparasite load (ticks and lice), and thermoregulation. In the process of wallowing, bison may become infected by the fatal disease anthrax, which may occur naturally in the soil. Bison temperament is often unpredictable. They usually appear peaceful, unconcerned, or even lazy, but they may attack without warning or apparent reason. They can move at speeds up to and cover long distances at a lumbering gallop. Their most obvious weapons are the horns borne by both males and females, but their massive heads can be used as battering rams, effectively using the momentum produced by what is a typical weight of moving at . The hind legs can also be used to kill or maim with devastating effect. In the words of early naturalists, they were dangerous, savage animals that feared no other animal and in prime condition could best any foe except for a brown bear or a pack of wolves. The rutting, or mating, season lasts from June through September, with peak activity in July and August. At this time, the older bulls rejoin the herd, and fights often take place between bulls. The herd exhibits much restlessness during breeding season. The animals are belligerent, unpredictable, and most dangerous. Habitat. American bison live in river valleys and on prairies and plains. Typical habitat is open or semiopen grasslands, as well as sagebrush, semiarid lands, and scrublands. Some lightly wooded areas are also known historically to have supported bison. They also graze in hilly or mountainous areas where the slopes are not steep. Although not particularly known as high-altitude animals, bison in the Yellowstone Park bison herd are frequently found at elevations above . The Henry Mountains bison herd is found on the plains around the Henry Mountains, Utah, as well as in mountain valleys of the Henry Mountains to an altitude of . European bison most commonly live in lightly wooded to fully wooded areas as well as areas with increased shrubs and bushes. European bison can sometimes be found living on grasslands and plains as well. A herd of cattle-wisent crossbreeds (zubron) is maintained in Poland and Slovakia, specifically in the Carpathian Mountains within Poloniny National Park. Restrictions. Throughout most of their historical range, landowners have sought restrictions on free-ranging bison. Herds on private land are required to be fenced in. In the state of Montana, free-ranging bison on public land are legally shot, due to transmission of disease to cattle and damage to public property. In 2013, Montana legislative measures concerning the bison were proposed and passed, but opposed by Native American tribes as they impinged on sovereign tribal rights. Three such bills were vetoed by Steve Bullock, the governor of Montana. The bison's circumstances remain an issue of contention between Native American tribes and private landowners. Diet. Bison are ruminants, able to ferment cellulose in a specialized stomach prior to digestion. Bison were once thought to almost exclusively consume grasses and sedges, but are now known to consume a wide-variety of plants including woody plants and herbaceous eudicots. Over the course of the year, bison shift which plants they select in their diet based on which plants have the highest protein or energy concentrations at a given time and will reliably consume the same species of plants across years. Protein concentrations of the plants they eat tend to be highest in the spring and decline thereafter, reaching their lowest in the winter. In Yellowstone National Park, bison browsed willows and cottonwoods, not only in the winter when few other plants are available, but also in the summer. Bison are thought to migrate to optimize their diet, and will concentrate their feeding on recently burned areas due to the higher quality forage that regrows after the burn. Wisent tend to browse on shrubs and low-hanging trees more often than do the American bison, which prefer grass to shrubbery and trees. Reproduction. Female bison ("cows") typically reproduce after three years of age and can continue beyond 19 years of age. Cows produce calves annually as long as their nutrition is sufficient, but not after years when weight gain is low. Reproduction is dependent on a cow's mass and age. Heavier cows produce heavier calves (weighed in the fall at weaning), and weights of calves are lower for older cows (after age 8). Predators. Owing to their size, bison have few predators. Five exceptions are humans, grey wolves, cougars, grizzly bears, and coyotes. Wolves generally take down a bison while in a pack, but cases of a single wolf killing bison have been reported. Grizzly bears also consume bison, often by driving off the pack and consuming the wolves' kill. Grizzly bears and coyotes also prey on bison calves. Historically and prehistorically, lions, cave lions, tigers, dire wolves, "Smilodon", "Homotherium", cave hyenas, and Neanderthals posed threats to bison. Infections and illness. For American bison, a main illness is malignant catarrhal fever, though brucellosis is a serious concern in the Yellowstone Park bison herd.<ref name="billingsgazette/carcasses-yellowstone"></ref> Bison in the Antelope Island bison herd are regularly inoculated against brucellosis, parasites, "Clostridium" infection, infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, and bovine vibriosis. The major illnesses in European bison are foot-and-mouth disease and balanoposthitis. Inbreeding of a small population plays a role in a number of genetic defects and lowers immunity to disease; that poses greater risk to the population. Name. The name 'bison' was first used for the European species— ancient Greek authors Pausanias and Oppian in 2nd-century AD wrote about them in Greek as "bisōn"; so did Roman authors Pliny the Elder and Gaius Julius Solinus (as Latin ). The Germanic name 'wisent' is a cognate, meaning that the two words share a common origin. The Latin was made into a genus name by Charles Hamilton Smith in 1827. Although called "buffalo" in American English, they are only distantly related to two "true buffalo", the Asian water buffalo and the African buffalo. Samuel de Champlain applied the French term "buffle" to the bison in 1616 (published 1619), after seeing skins and a drawing shown to him by members of the Nipissing First Nation, who said they travelled 40 days (from east of Lake Huron) to trade with another nation who hunted the animals. Though "bison" might be considered more scientifically correct, "buffalo" is also considered correct as a result of standard usage in American English, and is listed in many dictionaries as an acceptable name for American buffalo or bison. "Buffalo" has a much longer history than "bison", which was first recorded in 1774. Bison and human culture. Bison was a significant resource for indigenous peoples of North America for food and raw materials until near extinction in the late 19th century. For the indigenous peoples of the Plains, it was their principal food source. Native Americans highly valued their relationship with the bison and saw them as sacred, treating them respectfully to ensure their abundance and longevity. In his biography, Lakota teacher and elder John Fire Lame Deer describes the relationship as such: European colonials were almost exclusively accountable for the near-extinction of the American bison in the 1800s. At the beginning of the century, tens of millions of bison roamed North America. Colonists slaughtered an estimated 50 million bison during the 19th century, although the causes of decline and the numbers killed are disputed and debated. Railroads were advertising "hunting by rail", where trains encountered large herds alongside or crossing the tracks. Men aboard fired from the train's roof or windows, leaving countless animals to rot where they died. This overhunting was in part motivated by the U.S. government's desire to limit the range and power of indigenous plains Indians whose diets and cultures depended on the buffalo herds. The overhunting of the bison reduced their population to hundreds. The American bison's nadir came in 1889, with an estimated population of only 1,091 animals (both wild and captive). Repopulation attempts via enforced protection of government herds and extensive ranching began in 1910 and have continued (with excellent success) to the present day, with some caveats. Extensive farming has increased the bison's population to nearly 150,000, and it is officially no longer considered an endangered species. However, from a genetic standpoint, most of these animals are actually hybrids with domestic cattle and only two populations in Yellowstone National Park in the United States and Elk Island National Park in Canada remain as genetically pure bison. These genetically pure animals account for only ~5% of the currently extant American bison population, reflecting the loss of most of the species' genetic diversity. As of July 2015, an estimated 4,900 bison lived in Yellowstone National Park, the largest U.S. bison population on public land. During 1983–1985 visitors experienced 33 bison-related injuries (range = 10–13/year), so the park implemented education campaigns. After years of success, five injuries associated with bison encounters occurred in 2015, because visitors did not maintain the required distance of 75 ft (23 m) from bison while hiking or taking pictures. Livestock. The earliest plausible accounts of captive bison are those of the zoo at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, which held an animal the Spaniards called "the Mexican bull". In 1552, Francisco Lopez de Gomara described Plains Indians herding and leading bison like cattle in his controversial book, "Historia general de las Indias". Gomara, having never visited the Americas himself, likely misinterpreted early ethnographic accounts as the more familiar pastoralist relationship of the Old World. Today, bison are increasingly raised for meat, hides, and wool products. The majority of bison in the world are raised for human consumption or fur clothing. Bison meat is generally considered to taste very similar to beef, but is lower in fat and cholesterol, yet higher in protein than beef. A market even exists for kosher bison meat; these bison are slaughtered at one of the few kosher mammal slaughterhouses in the U.S. and Canada, and the meat is then distributed worldwide. Beefalo have been advertised as a hybrid breed between bison and cattle, but many beefalo, including the original pedigree founding herd of the breed, have no detectable bison ancestry. In America, the commercial industry for bison has been slow to develop despite individuals, such as Ted Turner, who have long marketed bison meat. In the 1990s, Turner found limited success with restaurants for high-quality cuts of meat, which include bison steaks and tenderloin. Lower-quality cuts suitable for hamburger and hot dogs have been described as "almost nonexistent". This created a marketing problem for commercial farming because the majority of usable meat, about 400 pounds for each bison, is suitable for these products. In 2003, the United States Department of Agriculture purchased $10 million worth of frozen overstock to save the industry, which would later recover through better use of consumer marketing. Restaurants have played a role in popularizing bison meat, like Ted's Montana Grill, which added bison to their menus. Ruby Tuesday first offered bison on their menus in 2005. In Canada, commercial bison farming began in the mid-1980s, concerning an unknown number of animals then. The first census of the bison occurred in 1996, which recorded 45,235 bison on 745 farms, and grew to 195,728 bison on 1,898 farms for the 2006 census. Several pet food companies use bison as a red meat alternative in dog foods. The companies producing these formulas include Natural Balance Pet Foods, Freshpet, the Blue Buffalo Company, Solid Gold, Canidae, and Taste of the Wild (made by Diamond Pet Foods, Inc., owned by Schell and Kampeter, Inc.).
4584	3632083	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4584	Baryon	In particle physics, a baryon is a type of composite subatomic particle that contains an odd number of valence quarks, conventionally three. Protons and neutrons are examples of baryons; because baryons are composed of quarks, they belong to the hadron family of particles. Baryons are also classified as fermions because they have half-integer spin. The name "baryon", introduced by Abraham Pais, comes from the Greek word for "heavy" (βαρύς, "barýs"), because, at the time of their naming, most known elementary particles had lower masses than the baryons. Each baryon has a corresponding antiparticle (antibaryon) where their corresponding antiquarks replace quarks. For example, a proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark; and its corresponding antiparticle, the antiproton, is made of two up antiquarks and one down antiquark. Baryons participate in the residual strong force, which is mediated by particles known as mesons. The most familiar baryons are protons and neutrons, both of which contain three quarks, and for this reason they are sometimes called "triquarks". These particles make up most of the mass of the visible matter in the universe and compose the nucleus of every atom (electrons, the other major component of the atom, are members of a different family of particles called leptons; leptons do not interact via the strong force). Exotic baryons containing five quarks, called pentaquarks, have also been discovered and studied. A census of the Universe's baryons indicates that 10% of them could be found inside galaxies, 50 to 60% in the circumgalactic medium, and the remaining 30 to 40% could be located in the warm–hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). Background. Baryons are strongly interacting fermions; that is, they are acted on by the strong nuclear force and are described by Fermi–Dirac statistics, which apply to all particles obeying the Pauli exclusion principle. This is in contrast to the bosons, which do not obey the exclusion principle. Baryons, alongside mesons, are hadrons, composite particles composed of quarks. Quarks have baryon numbers of "B" = and antiquarks have baryon numbers of "B" = −. The term "baryon" usually refers to "triquarks"—baryons made of three quarks ("B" = + + = 1). Other exotic baryons have been proposed, such as pentaquarks—baryons made of four quarks and one antiquark ("B" = + + + − = 1), but their existence is not generally accepted. The particle physics community as a whole did not view their existence as likely in 2006, and in 2008, considered evidence to be overwhelmingly against the existence of the reported pentaquarks. However, in July 2015, the LHCb experiment observed two resonances consistent with pentaquark states in the Λ → J/ψKp decay, with a combined statistical significance of 15σ. In theory, heptaquarks (5 quarks, 2 antiquarks), nonaquarks (6 quarks, 3 antiquarks), etc. could also exist. Baryonic matter. Nearly all matter that may be encountered or experienced in everyday life is baryonic matter, which includes atoms of any sort, and provides them with the property of mass. Non-baryonic matter, as implied by the name, is any sort of matter that is not composed primarily of baryons. This might include neutrinos and free electrons, dark matter, supersymmetric particles, axions, and black holes. The very existence of baryons is also a significant issue in cosmology because it is assumed that the Big Bang produced a state with equal amounts of baryons and antibaryons. The process by which baryons came to outnumber their antiparticles is called baryogenesis. Baryogenesis. Experiments are consistent with the number of quarks in the universe being conserved alongside the total baryon number, with antibaryons being counted as negative quantities. Within the prevailing Standard Model of particle physics, the number of baryons may change in multiples of three due to the action of sphalerons, although this is rare and has not been observed under experiment. Some grand unified theories of particle physics also predict that a single proton can decay, changing the baryon number by one; however, this has not yet been observed under experiment. The excess of baryons over antibaryons in the present universe is thought to be due to non-conservation of baryon number in the very early universe, though this is not well understood. Properties. Isospin and charge. The concept of isospin was first proposed by Werner Heisenberg in 1932 to explain the similarities between protons and neutrons under the strong interaction. Although they had different electric charges, their masses were so similar that physicists believed they were the same particle. The different electric charges were explained as being the result of some unknown excitation similar to spin. This unknown excitation was later dubbed "isospin" by Eugene Wigner in 1937. This belief lasted until Murray Gell-Mann proposed the quark model in 1964 (containing originally only the u, d, and s quarks). The success of the isospin model is now understood to be the result of the similar masses of u and d quarks. Since u and d quarks have similar masses, particles made of the same number then also have similar masses. The exact specific u and d quark composition determines the charge, as u quarks carry charge + while d quarks carry charge −. For example, the four Deltas all have different charges ( (uuu), (uud), (udd), (ddd)), but have similar masses (~1,232 MeV/c2) as they are each made of a combination of three u or d quarks. Under the isospin model, they were considered to be a single particle in different charged states. The mathematics of isospin was modeled after that of spin. Isospin projections varied in increments of 1 just like those of spin, and to each projection was associated a "charged state". Since the "Delta particle" had four "charged states", it was said to be of isospin "I" = . Its "charged states" , , , and , corresponded to the isospin projections "I"3 = +, "I"3 = +, "I"3 = −, and "I"3 = −, respectively. Another example is the "nucleon particle". As there were two nucleon "charged states", it was said to be of isospin . The positive nucleon (proton) was identified with "I"3 = + and the neutral nucleon (neutron) with "I"3 = −. It was later noted that the isospin projections were related to the up and down quark content of particles by the relation: formula_1 where the "n"'s are the number of up and down quarks and antiquarks. In the "isospin picture", the four Deltas and the two nucleons were thought to be the different states of two particles. However, in the quark model, Deltas are different states of nucleons (the N++ or N− are forbidden by Pauli's exclusion principle). Isospin, although conveying an inaccurate picture of things, is still used to classify baryons, leading to unnatural and often confusing nomenclature. Flavour quantum numbers. The strangeness flavour quantum number "S" (not to be confused with spin) was noticed to go up and down along with particle mass. The higher the mass, the lower the strangeness (the more s quarks). Particles could be described with isospin projections (related to charge) and strangeness (mass) (see the uds octet and decuplet figures on the right). As other quarks were discovered, new quantum numbers were made to have similar description of udc and udb octets and decuplets. Since only the u and d mass are similar, this description of particle mass and charge in terms of isospin and flavour quantum numbers works well only for octet and decuplet made of one u, one d, and one other quark, and breaks down for the other octets and decuplets (for example, ucb octet and decuplet). If the quarks all had the same mass, their behaviour would be called "symmetric", as they would all behave in the same way to the strong interaction. Since quarks do not have the same mass, they do not interact in the same way (exactly like an electron placed in an electric field will accelerate more than a proton placed in the same field because of its lighter mass), and the symmetry is said to be broken. It was noted that charge ("Q") was related to the isospin projection ("I"3), the baryon number ("B") and flavour quantum numbers ("S", "C", "B"′, "T") by the Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula: formula_2 where "S", "C", "B"′, and "T" represent the strangeness, charm, bottomness and topness flavour quantum numbers, respectively. They are related to the number of strange, charm, bottom, and top quarks and antiquark according to the relations: formula_3 meaning that the Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula is equivalent to the expression of charge in terms of quark content: formula_4 Spin, orbital angular momentum, and total angular momentum. Spin (quantum number "S") is a vector quantity that represents the "intrinsic" angular momentum of a particle. It comes in increments of ħ (pronounced "h-bar"). The ħ is often dropped because it is the "fundamental" unit of spin, and it is implied that "spin 1" means "spin 1 ħ". In some systems of natural units, ħ is chosen to be 1, and therefore does not appear anywhere. Quarks are fermionic particles of spin ("S" = ). Because spin projections vary in increments of 1 (that is 1 ħ), a single quark has a spin vector of length , and has two spin projections ("S"z = + and "S"z = −). Two quarks can have their spins aligned, in which case the two spin vectors add to make a vector of length "S" = 1 and three spin projections ("S"z = +1, "S"z = 0, and "S"z = −1). If two quarks have unaligned spins, the spin vectors add up to make a vector of length "S" = 0 and has only one spin projection ("S"z = 0), etc. Since baryons are made of three quarks, their spin vectors can add to make a vector of length "S" = , which has four spin projections ("S"z = +, "S"z = +, "S"z = −, and "S"z = −), or a vector of length "S" = with two spin projections ("S"z = +, and "S"z = −). There is another quantity of angular momentum, called the orbital angular momentum (azimuthal quantum number "L"), that comes in increments of 1 ħ, which represent the angular moment due to quarks orbiting around each other. The total angular momentum (total angular momentum quantum number "J") of a particle is therefore the combination of intrinsic angular momentum (spin) and orbital angular momentum. It can take any value from to , in increments of 1. Particle physicists are most interested in baryons with no orbital angular momentum ("L" = 0), as they correspond to ground states—states of minimal energy. Therefore, the two groups of baryons most studied are the "S" = ; "L" = 0 and "S" = ; "L" = 0, which corresponds to "J" = + and "J" = +, respectively, although they are not the only ones. It is also possible to obtain "J" = + particles from "S" = and "L" = 2, as well as "S" = and "L" = 2. This phenomenon of having multiple particles in the same total angular momentum configuration is called "degeneracy". How to distinguish between these degenerate baryons is an active area of research in baryon spectroscopy. Parity. If the universe were reflected in a mirror, most of the laws of physics would be identical—things would behave the same way regardless of what we call "left" and what we call "right". This concept of mirror reflection is called "intrinsic parity" or simply "parity" ("P"). Gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the strong interaction all behave in the same way regardless of whether or not the universe is reflected in a mirror, and thus are said to conserve parity (P-symmetry). However, the weak interaction does distinguish "left" from "right", a phenomenon called parity violation (P-violation). Based on this, if the wavefunction for each particle (in more precise terms, the quantum field for each particle type) were simultaneously mirror-reversed, then the new set of wavefunctions would perfectly satisfy the laws of physics (apart from the weak interaction). It turns out that this is not quite true: for the equations to be satisfied, the wavefunctions of certain types of particles have to be multiplied by −1, in addition to being mirror-reversed. Such particle types are said to have negative or odd parity ("P" = −1, or alternatively "P" = –), while the other particles are said to have positive or even parity ("P" = +1, or alternatively "P" = +). For baryons, the parity is related to the orbital angular momentum by the relation: formula_5 As a consequence, baryons with no orbital angular momentum ("L" = 0) all have even parity ("P" = +). Nomenclature. Baryons are classified into groups according to their isospin ("I") values and quark ("q") content. There are six groups of baryons: nucleon (), Delta (), Lambda (), Sigma (), Xi (), and Omega (). The rules for classification are defined by the Particle Data Group. These rules consider the up (), down () and strange () quarks to be "light" and the charm (), bottom (), and top () quarks to be "heavy". The rules cover all the particles that can be made from three of each of the six quarks, even though baryons made of top quarks are not expected to exist because of the top quark's short lifetime. The rules do not cover pentaquarks. It is also a widespread (but not universal) practice to follow some additional rules when distinguishing between some states that would otherwise have the same symbol. Quarks carry a charge, so knowing the charge of a particle indirectly gives the quark content. For example, the rules above say that a contains a c quark and some combination of two u and/or d quarks. The c quark has a charge of ("Q" = +), therefore the other two must be a u quark ("Q" = +), and a d quark ("Q" = −) to have the correct total charge ("Q" = +1).
4589	47459449	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4589	Braille embosser	A braille embosser is an impact printer that renders text as tactile braille cells. Using braille translation software, a document or digital text can be embossed with relative ease. This makes braille production efficient and cost-effective. Braille translation software may be free and open-sourced or paid. Braille embossers can emboss single-sided or double-sided (called interpoint) and can produce 6- or 8-dot braille. Blind users tend to call other printers "ink printers," to distinguish them from their braille counterparts. This is often the case regardless of the type of printer being discussed (e.g., thermal printers being called "ink printers" even though they use no ink). As with ink printers and presses, embossers range from those intended for consumers to those used by large publishers. The price of embossers increase with the volume of braille it produces . Types. The fastest industrial braille embosser is probably the $92,000 Belgian-made NV Interpoint 55, first produced in 1991, which uses a separate air compressor to drive the embossing head and can output up to 800 braille characters per second. Adoption was slow at first; in 2000 the National Federation of the Blind said there were only three of these in the US, one owned by the NFB itself and the other two by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. As of 2008, there are more than 60 in use across the world. Smaller desktop braille embossers are more common and can be found in libraries, universities, and specialist education centers, as well as being privately owned by blind individuals. It may be necessary to use an acoustic cabinet or hood to dampen the noise level. Braille embossers usually need special braille paper which is thicker and more expensive than normal paper. Some high-end embossers are capable of printing on normal paper. Embossers can be either one-sided or two-sided. Two-sided embossing requires lining up the dots so they do not overlap (called "interpoint" because the points on the other side are placed in between the points on the first side). Two-sided embossing uses less paper and reduces the size of the output. Once one copy of a document has been produced, printing further copies is often quicker by means of a device called a thermoform, which produces copies on soft plastic. However, the resulting braille is not as easily readable as braille that has been freshly embossed, in much the same way that a poor-quality photocopy is not as readable as the original. Hence large publishers do not generally use thermoforms. Some embossers can produce "dotty Moon", i.e., Moon type shapes formed by dots.
4592	5229428	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4592	Basic Role-Playing	Basic Role-Playing (BRP) is a tabletop role-playing game which originated in the "RuneQuest" fantasy role-playing game. Chaosium released the "BRP" standalone booklet in 1980 in the boxed set release of the second edition of "RuneQuest". Greg Stafford and Lynn Willis are credited as the authors. Chaosium used the percentile skill-based system as the basis for most of their games, including "Call of Cthulhu", "Stormbringer", and "Elfquest". History. The core rules were written by Steve Perrin as part of his game "RuneQuest". It was Greg Stafford's idea to simplify the rules (eliminating such mechanics as Strike Ranks and Hit Locations) and issue them in a 16-page booklet called "Basic Role-Playing". Since the first "BRP" release, designers including Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis, and Steve Henderson, have contributed to the system. The system was notable for being the first role-playing game system to introduce a full skill system to characters regardless of their profession. This was developed in "RuneQuest" but was also later adopted by the more skill-oriented "Call of Cthulhu" RPG. "BRP" was conceived of as a generic system. Specific rule systems for support differing genres could be added to the core rules in a modular fashion. In order to underscore this, in 1982 Chaosium released the "Worlds of Wonder" box set, which contained a revised main booklet and several booklets providing the additional rules for playing in specific genres. The superhero-themed "Superworld" originated as part of this set. A third edition of the core booklet, now entitled "Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium System", was released in 2002. In 2004, Chaosium began publishing the "Basic Roleplaying" monographs, a series of paperback booklets. The first four monographs ("Players Book", "Magic Book", "Creatures Book", and "Gamemaster Book") was the same as "RuneQuest" third Edition, but with trademarked elements removed, as Chaosium had lost the rights to the name but retained copyright to the rules text. Additional monographs allowing for new mechanics, thereby extending the system to other genres, were released in the following years. Many of these monographs reproduced rules from other Chaosium-published "BRP" games that had gone out of print. Jason Durall and Sam Johnson gathered up previous works and updated them to a new edition. published in 2008. This comprehensive book, "Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium System" was nicknamed the "Big Gold Book". It allowed game masters to build their own game out of the included subsystems. A quickstart booklet for new players accompanied it. In 2011, it was updated to a second edition. In 2020, Chaosium released "Basic Roleplaying" in abbreviated form (vs. the 2008 edition) as a System Reference Document (SRD). A new edition, updating the 2008/2011 editions and titled "Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine", appeared in 2023, initially as a PDF, later as a hardbound book, and later still as a standalone SRD under the "ORC License" (Open RPG Creative) and has since spun off a market of multiple commercial products, both standalone BRP adventures and full-fledged RPG's, published under the terms of the ORC license. The full text (not the art, trade dress, etc.) of the PDF and print version was also ORC-licensed as a SRD. Licensed adaptations. Preexisting RPG and fiction settings converted to the system by Chaosium using the "BRP" ruleset include "Ringworld", "Hawkmoon", and an adaptation of the French RPG "Nephilim". Rules system. "BRP" is similar to other generic systems such as "GURPS", "Hero System", or "Savage Worlds" in that it uses a simple resolution method which can be broadly applied. It uses a core set of seven characteristics: Size, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Power, and Appearance or Charisma. From these, a character derives scores in various skills, expressed as percentages. These skill scores are the basis of play. When attempting an action, the player rolls percentile dice to attempt to get a result equal to or lower than the character's skill score. Each incarnation of the "BRP" rules changed or added to the core ideas and mechanics, so that games are not identical. For example, in "Call of Cthulhu", skills may never be over 100%, while in "Stormbringer" skills in excess of 100% are within reach for all characters. Scores can increase through experience checks, the mechanics of which vary in an individual game. The system treats armor and defense as separate: the act of parrying is a defensive skill that reduces an opponent's chance to successfully land an attack, and the purpose of armor is to absorb damage. In most "BRP" games there is no difference between the player character race systems and that of monsters or other opponents. By varying ability scores, the same system is used for a human hero as a troll villain. This approach allows for players to play a variety of nonhuman species. Adaptations of the system. Chaosium was an early adopter of licensing out its "BRP" system to other companies, something that was unique at the time they began but commonplace now thanks to the d20 licenses. This places "BRP" in the notable position of being one of the first products to allow other game companies to develop games or game aids for their work. For example, "Other Suns", published by Fantasy Games Unlimited, used them under license. "BRP" was also used as the base for the Swedish game "Drakar och Demoner" from Target Games. Reception. In the July 1981 edition of "The Space Gamer" (Issue No. 41), Ronald Pehr commented that ""Basic Role-Playing" is too little too late. "RuneQuest" is long established, does an adequate job of teaching role-playing, and there are now even more games to choose from. If you want to teach role-playing to a very young, but literate, child, "Basic Role-Playing" is excellent. Otherwise, for all its charm, it's not much use.". In the August 1981 edition of "Dragon" (Issue 52), John Sapienza noted that "Basic Roleplaying" was "not a fantasy role-playing game as such, but a handbook on how to role-play and a simple combat system to help the beginner get into the act." Despite this, Sapienza called it "one of the best introductions to the practical social interactions in gaming that I have read, and will give beginning gamers the kind of guidance they typically do not get in the full-scale games they will graduate to, since game writers usually spend their time on mechanics instead of on the proper relationships between player and player, player and referee, or player and character." He concluded, ""Basic Role-Playing" is a truly universal introduction to the hobby — highly recommended." Awards. The "BRP" itself has been the recipient, via its games, of many awards. Most notable was the 1981 Origins Award for "Best Roleplaying Rules of 1981" for "Call of Cthulhu". Other editions of "Call of Cthulhu" have also won Origins Awards including the Hall of Fame award. The "BRP" Character Generation software has also won awards for its design.
4594	34372233	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4594	Block cipher	In cryptography, a block cipher is a deterministic algorithm that operates on fixed-length groups of bits, called "blocks". Block ciphers are the elementary building blocks of many cryptographic protocols. They are ubiquitous in the storage and exchange of data, where such data is secured and authenticated via encryption. A block cipher uses blocks as an unvarying transformation. Even a secure block cipher is suitable for the encryption of only a single block of data at a time, using a fixed key. A multitude of modes of operation have been designed to allow their repeated use in a secure way to achieve the security goals of confidentiality and authenticity. However, block ciphers may also feature as building blocks in other cryptographic protocols, such as universal hash functions and pseudorandom number generators. Definition. A block cipher consists of two paired algorithms, one for encryption, , and the other for decryption, . Both algorithms accept two inputs: an input block of size bits and a key of size bits; and both yield an -bit output block. The decryption algorithm is defined to be the inverse function of encryption, i.e., . More formally, a block cipher is specified by an encryption function formula_1 which takes as input a key , of bit length (called the "key size"), and a bit string , of length (called the "block size"), and returns a string of bits. is called the plaintext, and is termed the ciphertext. For each , the function () is required to be an invertible mapping on . The inverse for is defined as a function formula_2 taking a key and a ciphertext to return a plaintext value , such that formula_3 For example, a block cipher encryption algorithm might take a 128-bit block of plaintext as input, and output a corresponding 128-bit block of ciphertext. The exact transformation is controlled using a second input – the secret key. Decryption is similar: the decryption algorithm takes, in this example, a 128-bit block of ciphertext together with the secret key, and yields the original 128-bit block of plain text. For each key "K", "EK" is a permutation (a bijective mapping) over the set of input blocks. Each key selects one permutation from the set of formula_4 possible permutations. History. The modern design of block ciphers is based on the concept of an iterated product cipher. In his seminal 1949 publication, "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems", Claude Shannon analyzed product ciphers and suggested them as a means of effectively improving security by combining simple operations such as substitutions and permutations. Iterated product ciphers carry out encryption in multiple rounds, each of which uses a different subkey derived from the original key. One widespread implementation of such ciphers named a Feistel network after Horst Feistel is notably implemented in the DES cipher. Many other realizations of block ciphers, such as the AES, are classified as substitution–permutation networks. The root of all cryptographic block formats used within the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards lies with the Atalla Key Block (AKB), which was a key innovation of the Atalla Box, the first hardware security module (HSM). It was developed in 1972 by Mohamed M. Atalla, founder of Atalla Corporation (now Utimaco Atalla), and released in 1973. The AKB was a key block, which is required to securely interchange symmetric keys or PINs with other actors in the banking industry. This secure interchange is performed using the AKB format. The Atalla Box protected over 90% of all ATM networks in operation as of 1998, and Atalla products still secure the majority of the world's ATM transactions as of 2014. The publication of the DES cipher by the United States National Bureau of Standards (subsequently the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST) in 1977 was fundamental in the public understanding of modern block cipher design. It also influenced the academic development of cryptanalytic attacks. Both differential and linear cryptanalysis arose out of studies on DES design. , there is a palette of attack techniques against which a block cipher must be secure, in addition to being robust against brute-force attacks. Design. Iterated block ciphers. Most block cipher algorithms are classified as "iterated block ciphers" which means that they transform fixed-size blocks of plaintext into identically sized blocks of ciphertext, via the repeated application of an invertible transformation known as the "round function", with each iteration referred to as a "round". Usually, the round function "R" takes different "round keys" "Ki" as a second input, which is derived from the original key: formula_5 where formula_6 is the plaintext and formula_7 the ciphertext, with "r" being the number of rounds. Frequently, key whitening is used in addition to this. At the beginning and the end, the data is modified with key material (often with XOR): formula_8 formula_9 formula_10 Given one of the standard iterated block cipher design schemes, it is fairly easy to construct a block cipher that is cryptographically secure, simply by using a large number of rounds. However, this will make the cipher inefficient. Thus, efficiency is the most important additional design criterion for professional ciphers. Further, a good block cipher is designed to avoid side-channel attacks, such as branch prediction and input-dependent memory accesses that might leak secret data via the cache state or the execution time. In addition, the cipher should be concise, for small hardware and software implementations. Substitution–permutation networks. One important type of iterated block cipher known as a "substitution–permutation network (SPN)" takes a block of the plaintext and the key as inputs and applies several alternating rounds consisting of a substitution stage followed by a permutation stage—to produce each block of ciphertext output. The non-linear substitution stage mixes the key bits with those of the plaintext, creating Shannon's "confusion". The linear permutation stage then dissipates redundancies, creating "diffusion". A "substitution box (S-box)" substitutes a small block of input bits with another block of output bits. This substitution must be one-to-one, to ensure invertibility (hence decryption). A secure S-box will have the property that changing one input bit will change about half of the output bits on average, exhibiting what is known as the avalanche effect—i.e. it has the property that each output bit will depend on every input bit. A "permutation box (P-box)" is a permutation of all the bits: it takes the outputs of all the S-boxes of one round, permutes the bits, and feeds them into the S-boxes of the next round. A good P-box has the property that the output bits of any S-box are distributed to as many S-box inputs as possible. At each round, the round key (obtained from the key with some simple operations, for instance, using S-boxes and P-boxes) is combined using some group operation, typically XOR. Decryption is done by simply reversing the process (using the inverses of the S-boxes and P-boxes and applying the round keys in reversed order). Feistel ciphers. In a "Feistel cipher", the block of plain text to be encrypted is split into two equal-sized halves. The round function is applied to one half, using a subkey, and then the output is XORed with the other half. The two halves are then swapped. Let formula_11 be the round function and let formula_12 be the sub-keys for the rounds formula_13 respectively. Then the basic operation is as follows: Split the plaintext block into two equal pieces, (formula_14, formula_15) For each round formula_16, compute formula_17 formula_18. Then the ciphertext is formula_19. The decryption of a ciphertext formula_19 is accomplished by computing for formula_21 formula_22 formula_23. Then formula_24 is the plaintext again. One advantage of the Feistel model compared to a substitution–permutation network is that the round function formula_11 does not have to be invertible. Lai–Massey ciphers. The Lai–Massey scheme offers security properties similar to those of the Feistel structure. It also shares the advantage that the round function formula_26 does not have to be invertible. Another similarity is that it also splits the input block into two equal pieces. However, the round function is applied to the difference between the two, and the result is then added to both half blocks. Let formula_26 be the round function and formula_28 a half-round function and let formula_29 be the sub-keys for the rounds formula_13 respectively. Then the basic operation is as follows: Split the plaintext block into two equal pieces, (formula_14, formula_15) For each round formula_16, compute formula_34 where formula_35 and formula_36 Then the ciphertext is formula_37. The decryption of a ciphertext formula_38 is accomplished by computing for formula_21 formula_40 where formula_41 and formula_42 Then formula_43 is the plaintext again. Operations. ARX (add–rotate–XOR). Many modern block ciphers and hashes are ARX algorithms—their round function involves only three operations: (A) modular addition, (R) rotation with fixed rotation amounts, and (X) XOR. Examples include ChaCha20, Speck, XXTEA, and BLAKE. Many authors draw an ARX network, a kind of data flow diagram, to illustrate such a round function. These ARX operations are popular because they are relatively fast and cheap in hardware and software, their implementation can be made extremely simple, and also because they run in constant time, and therefore are immune to timing attacks. The rotational cryptanalysis technique attempts to attack such round functions. Other operations. Other operations often used in block ciphers include data-dependent rotations as in RC5 and RC6, a substitution box implemented as a lookup table as in Data Encryption Standard and Advanced Encryption Standard, a permutation box, and multiplication as in IDEA. Modes of operation. A block cipher by itself allows encryption only of a single data block of the cipher's block length. For a variable-length message, the data must first be partitioned into separate cipher blocks. In the simplest case, known as electronic codebook (ECB) mode, a message is first split into separate blocks of the cipher's block size (possibly extending the last block with padding bits), and then each block is encrypted and decrypted independently. However, such a naive method is generally insecure because equal plaintext blocks will always generate equal ciphertext blocks (for the same key), so patterns in the plaintext message become evident in the ciphertext output. To overcome this limitation, several so-called block cipher modes of operation have been designed and specified in national recommendations such as NIST 800-38A and BSI TR-02102 and international standards such as ISO/IEC 10116. The general concept is to use randomization of the plaintext data based on an additional input value, frequently called an initialization vector, to create what is termed probabilistic encryption. In the popular cipher block chaining (CBC) mode, for encryption to be secure the initialization vector passed along with the plaintext message must be a random or pseudo-random value, which is added in an exclusive-or manner to the first plaintext block before it is encrypted. The resultant ciphertext block is then used as the new initialization vector for the next plaintext block. In the cipher feedback (CFB) mode, which emulates a self-synchronizing stream cipher, the initialization vector is first encrypted and then added to the plaintext block. The output feedback (OFB) mode repeatedly encrypts the initialization vector to create a key stream for the emulation of a synchronous stream cipher. The newer counter (CTR) mode similarly creates a key stream, but has the advantage of only needing unique and not (pseudo-)random values as initialization vectors; the needed randomness is derived internally by using the initialization vector as a block counter and encrypting this counter for each block. From a security-theoretic point of view, modes of operation must provide what is known as semantic security. Informally, it means that given some ciphertext under an unknown key one cannot practically derive any information from the ciphertext (other than the length of the message) over what one would have known without seeing the ciphertext. It has been shown that all of the modes discussed above, with the exception of the ECB mode, provide this property under so-called chosen plaintext attacks. Padding. Some modes such as the CBC mode only operate on complete plaintext blocks. Simply extending the last block of a message with zero bits is insufficient since it does not allow a receiver to easily distinguish messages that differ only in the number of padding bits. More importantly, such a simple solution gives rise to very efficient padding oracle attacks. A suitable padding scheme is therefore needed to extend the last plaintext block to the cipher's block size. While many popular schemes described in standards and in the literature have been shown to be vulnerable to padding oracle attacks, a solution that adds a one-bit and then extends the last block with zero-bits, standardized as "padding method 2" in ISO/IEC 9797-1, has been proven secure against these attacks. Cryptanalysis. Brute-force attacks. This property results in the cipher's security degrading quadratically, and needs to be taken into account when selecting a block size. There is a trade-off though as large block sizes can result in the algorithm becoming inefficient to operate. Earlier block ciphers such as the DES have typically selected a 64-bit block size, while newer designs such as the AES support block sizes of 128 bits or more, with some ciphers supporting a range of different block sizes. Linear cryptanalysis. "A linear cryptanalysis" is a form of cryptanalysis based on finding affine approximations to the action of a cipher. Linear cryptanalysis is one of the two most widely used attacks on block ciphers; the other being differential cryptanalysis. The discovery is attributed to Mitsuru Matsui, who first applied the technique to the FEAL cipher (Matsui and Yamagishi, 1992). Integral cryptanalysis. "Integral cryptanalysis" is a cryptanalytic attack that is particularly applicable to block ciphers based on substitution–permutation networks. Unlike differential cryptanalysis, which uses pairs of chosen plaintexts with a fixed XOR difference, integral cryptanalysis uses sets or even multisets of chosen plaintexts of which part is held constant and another part varies through all possibilities. For example, an attack might use 256 chosen plaintexts that have all but 8 of their bits the same, but all differ in those 8 bits. Such a set necessarily has an XOR sum of 0, and the XOR sums of the corresponding sets of ciphertexts provide information about the cipher's operation. This contrast between the differences between pairs of texts and the sums of larger sets of texts inspired the name "integral cryptanalysis", borrowing the terminology of calculus. Other techniques. In addition to linear and differential cryptanalysis, there is a growing catalog of attacks: truncated differential cryptanalysis, partial differential cryptanalysis, integral cryptanalysis, which encompasses square and integral attacks, slide attacks, boomerang attacks, the XSL attack, impossible differential cryptanalysis, and algebraic attacks. For a new block cipher design to have any credibility, it must demonstrate evidence of security against known attacks. Provable security. When a block cipher is used in a given mode of operation, the resulting algorithm should ideally be about as secure as the block cipher itself. ECB (discussed above) emphatically lacks this property: regardless of how secure the underlying block cipher is, ECB mode can easily be attacked. On the other hand, CBC mode can be proven to be secure under the assumption that the underlying block cipher is likewise secure. Note, however, that making statements like this requires formal mathematical definitions for what it means for an encryption algorithm or a block cipher to "be secure". This section describes two common notions for what properties a block cipher should have. Each corresponds to a mathematical model that can be used to prove properties of higher-level algorithms, such as CBC. This general approach to cryptography – proving higher-level algorithms (such as CBC) are secure under explicitly stated assumptions regarding their components (such as a block cipher) – is known as "provable security". Standard model. Informally, a block cipher is secure in the standard model if an attacker cannot tell the difference between the block cipher (equipped with a random key) and a random permutation. To be a bit more precise, let "E" be an "n"-bit block cipher. We imagine the following game: The attacker, which we can model as an algorithm, is called an "adversary". The function "f" (which the adversary was able to query) is called an "oracle". Note that an adversary can trivially ensure a 50% chance of winning simply by guessing at random (or even by, for example, always guessing "heads"). Therefore, let "P""E"("A") denote the probability that adversary "A" wins this game against "E", and define the "advantage" of "A" as 2("P""E"("A") − 1/2). It follows that if "A" guesses randomly, its advantage will be 0; on the other hand, if "A" always wins, then its advantage is 1. The block cipher "E" is a "pseudo-random permutation" (PRP) if no adversary has an advantage significantly greater than 0, given specified restrictions on "q" and the adversary's running time. If in Step 2 above adversaries have the option of learning "f"−1("X") instead of "f"("X") (but still have only small advantages) then "E" is a "strong" PRP (SPRP). An adversary is "non-adaptive" if it chooses all "q" values for "X" before the game begins (that is, it does not use any information gleaned from previous queries to choose each "X" as it goes). These definitions have proven useful for analyzing various modes of operation. For example, one can define a similar game for measuring the security of a block cipher-based encryption algorithm, and then try to show (through a reduction argument) that the probability of an adversary winning this new game is not much more than "P""E"("A") for some "A". (The reduction typically provides limits on "q" and the running time of "A".) Equivalently, if "P""E"("A") is small for all relevant "A", then no attacker has a significant probability of winning the new game. This formalizes the idea that the higher-level algorithm inherits the block cipher's security. Practical evaluation. Block ciphers may be evaluated according to multiple criteria in practice. Common factors include: Notable block ciphers. Lucifer / DES. Lucifer is generally considered to be the first civilian block cipher, developed at IBM in the 1970s based on work done by Horst Feistel. A revised version of the algorithm was adopted as a U.S. government Federal Information Processing Standard: FIPS PUB 46 Data Encryption Standard (DES). It was chosen by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (NBS) after a public invitation for submissions and some internal changes by NBS (and, potentially, the NSA). DES was publicly released in 1976 and has been widely used. DES was designed to, among other things, resist a certain cryptanalytic attack known to the NSA and rediscovered by IBM, though unknown publicly until rediscovered again and published by Eli Biham and Adi Shamir in the late 1980s. The technique is called differential cryptanalysis and remains one of the few general attacks against block ciphers; linear cryptanalysis is another but may have been unknown even to the NSA, prior to its publication by Mitsuru Matsui. DES prompted a large amount of other work and publications in cryptography and cryptanalysis in the open community and it inspired many new cipher designs. DES has a block size of 64 bits and a key size of 56 bits. 64-bit blocks became common in block cipher designs after DES. Key length depended on several factors, including government regulation. Many observers in the 1970s commented that the 56-bit key length used for DES was too short. As time went on, its inadequacy became apparent, especially after a special-purpose machine designed to break DES was demonstrated in 1998 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. An extension to DES, Triple DES, triple-encrypts each block with either two independent keys (112-bit key and 80-bit security) or three independent keys (168-bit key and 112-bit security). It was widely adopted as a replacement. As of 2011, the three-key version is still considered secure, though the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards no longer permit the use of the two-key version in new applications, due to its 80-bit security level. IDEA. The "International Data Encryption Algorithm" ("IDEA") is a block cipher designed by James Massey of ETH Zurich and Xuejia Lai; it was first described in 1991, as an intended replacement for DES. IDEA operates on 64-bit blocks using a 128-bit key and consists of a series of eight identical transformations (a "round") and an output transformation (the "half-round"). The processes for encryption and decryption are similar. IDEA derives much of its security by interleaving operations from different groups – modular addition and multiplication, and bitwise "exclusive or (XOR)" – which are algebraically "incompatible" in some sense. The designers analysed IDEA to measure its strength against differential cryptanalysis and concluded that it is immune under certain assumptions. No successful linear or algebraic weaknesses have been reported. , the best attack which applies to all keys can break a full 8.5-round IDEA using a narrow-bicliques attack about four times faster than brute force. RC5. RC5 is a block cipher designed by Ronald Rivest in 1994 which, unlike many other ciphers, has a variable block size (32, 64, or 128 bits), key size (0 to 2040 bits), and a number of rounds (0 to 255). The original suggested choice of parameters was a block size of 64 bits, a 128-bit key, and 12 rounds. A key feature of RC5 is the use of data-dependent rotations; one of the goals of RC5 was to prompt the study and evaluation of such operations as a cryptographic primitive. RC5 also consists of a number of modular additions and XORs. The general structure of the algorithm is a Feistel-like a network. The encryption and decryption routines can be specified in a few lines of code. The key schedule, however, is more complex, expanding the key using an essentially one-way function with the binary expansions of both e and the golden ratio as sources of "nothing up my sleeve numbers". The tantalizing simplicity of the algorithm together with the novelty of the data-dependent rotations has made RC5 an attractive object of study for cryptanalysts. 12-round RC5 (with 64-bit blocks) is susceptible to a differential attack using 244 chosen plaintexts. 18–20 rounds are suggested as sufficient protection. Rijndael / AES. The "Rijndael" cipher developed by Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen was one of the competing designs to replace DES. It won the 5-year public competition to become the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). Adopted by NIST in 2001, AES has a fixed block size of 128 bits and a key size of 128, 192, or 256 bits, whereas Rijndael can be specified with block and key sizes in any multiple of 32 bits, with a minimum of 128 bits. The block size has a maximum of 256 bits, but the key size has no theoretical maximum. AES operates on a 4×4 column-major order matrix of bytes, termed the "state" (versions of Rijndael with a larger block size have additional columns in the state). Blowfish. "Blowfish" is a block cipher, designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier and included in a large number of cipher suites and encryption products. Blowfish has a 64-bit block size and a variable key length from 1 bit up to 448 bits. It is a 16-round Feistel cipher and uses large key-dependent S-boxes. Notable features of the design include the key-dependent S-boxes and a highly complex key schedule. It was designed as a general-purpose algorithm, intended as an alternative to the aging DES and free of the problems and constraints associated with other algorithms. At the time Blowfish was released, many other designs were proprietary, encumbered by patents, or were commercial/government secrets. Schneier has stated that "Blowfish is unpatented, and will remain so in all countries. The algorithm is hereby placed in the public domain, and can be freely used by anyone." The same applies to Twofish, a successor algorithm from Schneier. Generalizations. Tweakable block ciphers. M. Liskov, R. Rivest, and D. Wagner have described a generalized version of block ciphers called "tweakable" block ciphers. A tweakable block cipher accepts a second input called the "tweak" along with its usual plaintext or ciphertext input. The tweak, along with the key, selects the permutation computed by the cipher. If changing tweaks is sufficiently lightweight (compared with a usually fairly expensive key setup operation), then some interesting new operation modes become possible. The disk encryption theory article describes some of these modes. Format-preserving encryption. Block ciphers traditionally work over a binary alphabet. That is, both the input and the output are binary strings, consisting of "n" zeroes and ones. In some situations, however, one may wish to have a block cipher that works over some other alphabet; for example, encrypting 16-digit credit card numbers in such a way that the ciphertext is also a 16-digit number might facilitate adding an encryption layer to legacy software. This is an example of "format-preserving encryption". More generally, format-preserving encryption requires a keyed permutation on some finite language. This makes format-preserving encryption schemes a natural generalization of (tweakable) block ciphers. In contrast, traditional encryption schemes, such as CBC, are not permutations because the same plaintext can encrypt multiple different ciphertexts, even when using a fixed key. Relation to other cryptographic primitives. Block ciphers can be used to build other cryptographic primitives, such as those below. For these other primitives to be cryptographically secure, care has to be taken to build them the right way. Just as block ciphers can be used to build hash functions, like SHA-1 and SHA-2 are based on block ciphers which are also used independently as SHACAL, hash functions can be used to build block ciphers. Examples of such block ciphers are BEAR and LION.
4595	40906635	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4595	Wireless broadband	Wireless broadband is a telecommunications technology that provides high-speed wireless Internet access or computer networking access over a wide area. The term encompasses both fixed and mobile broadband. The term broadband. Originally the word "broadband" had a technical meaning, but became a marketing term for any kind of relatively high-speed computer network or Internet access technology. According to the 802.16-2004 standard, broadband means "having instantaneous bandwidths greater than 1 MHz and supporting data rates greater than about 1.5 Mbit/s." The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently re-defined the word to mean download speeds of at least 25 Mbit/s and upload speeds of at least 3 Mbit/s. Technology and speeds. A wireless broadband network is an outdoor fixed and/or mobile wireless network providing point-to-multipoint or point-to-point terrestrial wireless links for broadband services. Wireless networks can feature data rates exceeding 1 Gbit/s. Many fixed wireless networks are exclusively half-duplex (HDX), however, some licensed and unlicensed systems can also operate at full-duplex (FDX) allowing communication in both directions simultaneously. Outdoor fixed wireless broadband networks commonly use a priority TDMA based protocol in order to divide communication into timeslots. This timeslot technique eliminates many of the issues common to 802.11 Wi-Fi protocol in outdoor networks such as the hidden node problem. Few wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) provide download speeds of over 100 Mbit/s; most broadband wireless access (BWA) services are estimated to have a range of from a tower. Technologies used include Local Multipoint Distribution Service (LMDS) and Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS), as well as heavy use of the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio bands and one particular access technology was standardized by IEEE 802.16, with products known as WiMAX. WiMAX is highly popular in Europe but has not been fully accepted in the United States because cost of deployment. In 2005 the Federal Communications Commission adopted a Report and Order that revised the FCC's rules to open the 3650 MHz band for terrestrial wireless broadband operations. Another system that is popular with cable internet service providers uses point-to-multipoint wireless links that extend the existing wired network using a transparent radio connection. This allows the same DOCSIS modems to be used for both wired and wireless customers. Development in the United States. On November 14, 2007, the Commission released Public Notice DA 07–4605 in which the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau announced the start date for licensing and registration process for the 3650–3700 MHz band. In 2010 the FCC adopted the TV White Space Rules (TVWS) and allowed some of the better no line of sight frequency (700 MHz) into the FCC Part-15 Rules. The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, a national association of WISPs, petitioned the FCC and won. Initially, WISPs were found only in rural areas not covered by cable or DSL. These early WISPs would employ a high-capacity T-carrier, such as a T1 or DS3 connection, and then broadcast the signal from a high elevation, such as at the top of a water tower. To receive this type of Internet connection, consumers mount a small dish to the roof of their home or office and point it to the transmitter. Line of sight is usually necessary for WISPs operating in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands with 900 MHz offering better NLOS (non-line-of-sight) performance. Residential Wireless Internet. Providers of fixed wireless broadband services typically provide equipment to customers and install a small antenna or dish somewhere on the roof. This equipment is usually deployed as a service and maintained by the company providing that service. Fixed wireless services have become particularly popular in many rural areas where cable, DSL or other typical home internet services are not available. Business Wireless Internet. Many companies in the US and worldwide have started using wireless alternatives to incumbent and local providers for internet and voice service. These providers tend to offer competitive services and options in areas where there is a difficulty getting affordable Ethernet connections from terrestrial providers such as ATT, Comcast, Verizon and others. Also, companies looking for full diversity between carriers for critical uptime requirements may seek wireless alternatives to local options. Demand for spectrum. To cope with increased demand for wireless broadband, increased spectrum would be needed. Studies began in 2009, and while some unused spectrum was available, it appeared broadcasters would have to give up at least some spectrum. This led to strong objections from the broadcasting community. In 2013, auctions were planned, and for now any action by broadcasters is voluntary. Mobile wireless broadband. In the United States, mobile broadband technologies include services from providers such as Verizon, AT&T Mobility, and T-Mobile which allow a more mobile version of Internet access. Consumers can purchase a PC card, laptop card, USB equipment, or mobile broadband modem, to connect their PC or laptop to the Internet via cell phone towers. This type of connection would be stable in almost any area that could also receive a strong cell phone connection. These connections can cost more for portable convenience as well as having speed limitations in all but urban environments. On June 2, 2010, after months of discussion, AT&T became the first wireless Internet provider in the US to announce plans to charge according to usage. As the only iPhone service in the United States, AT&T experienced the problem of heavy Internet use more than other providers. About 3 percent of AT&T smart phone customers account for 40 percent of the technology's use. 98 percent of the company's customers use less than 2 gigabytes (4000 page views, 10,000 emails or 200 minutes of streaming video), the limit under the $25 monthly plan, and 65 percent use less than 200 megabytes, the limit for the $15 plan. For each gigabyte in excess of the limit, customers would be charged $10 a month starting June 7, 2010, though existing customers would not be required to change from the $30 a month unlimited service plan. The new plan would become a requirement for those upgrading to the new iPhone technology later in the summer. Licensing. A wireless connection can be either licensed or unlicensed. In the US, licensed connections use a private spectrum the user has secured rights to from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The unlicensed mobile wireless broadband, in US operates on CBRS Which has three tiers. Tier 1 – Incumbent Access, reserved for US Federals Government, Tier 2 – Priority Access, a paid access with priority on the spectrum, Tier 3 – General Authorized Access (GAA), a shared spectrum. In other countries, spectrum is licensed from the country's national radio communications authority (such as the ACMA in Australia or Nigerian Communications Commission in Nigeria (NCC)). Licensing is usually expensive and often reserved for large companies who wish to guarantee private access to spectrum for use in point to point communication. Because of this, most wireless ISP's use unlicensed spectrum which is publicly shared. External links.
4601	41906662	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4601	Björn Borg	Björn Rune Borg (; born 6 June 1956) is a Swedish former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the world No. 1 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 109 weeks. Borg won 66 singles titles during his career, including eleven majors: six at the French Open and five consecutively at Wimbledon. Borg was ATP Player of the Year from 1976 to 1980, the year-end No. 1 in the ATP rankings in 1979 and 1980, and the ITF World Champion from 1978 to 1980. A teenage sensation at the start of his career, Borg experienced unprecedented stardom and consistent success that helped propel the rising popularity of tennis during the 1970s. Between 1974 and 1981, Borg claimed 11 major singles titles, the most by any man in the Open Era up to that point. His rivalries with Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe became cultural touchstones beyond the world of tennis, with the latter rivalry peaking at the 1980 Wimbledon final, considered one of the greatest matches ever played. Following defeats to McEnroe in the 1981 Wimbledon and US Open finals, Borg unexpectedly retired from tennis at the age of 25. He made a brief and unsuccessful comeback in 1991. Borg won four consecutive French Open titles (1978–81) and was undefeated in six French Open finals. He is the only man to achieve the Channel Slam three times. He won three major titles without losing a set during those tournaments. However, he never won the US Open despite four runner-up finishes. Borg also won three year-end championships and 16 Grand Prix Super Series titles. In 1979, Borg became the first player to earn more than US$1 million in prize money in a single season. Overall, he set numerous records, some of which still stand. Borg is widely considered one of the all-time greats of the sport, and was ranked by "Tennis" magazine as the sixth-greatest male player of the Open Era. Early life. Björn Borg was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on 6 June 1956, the only child of Rune (1932–2008), an electrician, and Margaretha Borg (b. 1934). He grew up in nearby Södertälje. As a child, Borg became fascinated with a golden tennis racket that his father won at a table-tennis tournament. His father gave him the racket, beginning his tennis career. A player of great athleticism and endurance, he had a distinctive style and appearance—bowlegged and very fast. His muscularity allowed him to put heavy topspin on both his forehand and two-handed backhand. He followed Jimmy Connors in using the two-handed backhand. By the time he was 13, he was beating the best of Sweden's under-18 players, and Davis Cup captain Lennart Bergelin (who served as Borg's primary coach throughout his professional career) cautioned against anyone trying to change Borg's rough-looking, jerky strokes. Career. 1972–73 – Davis Cup debut and first year on the tour. At the age of 15, Borg represented Sweden in the 1972 Davis Cup and won his debut singles rubber in five sets against veteran Onny Parun of New Zealand. Later that year, he won the Wimbledon junior singles title, recovering from a 5–2 deficit in the final set to overcome Britain's Buster Mottram. Then in December, he won the Orange Bowl Junior Championship for boys 18 and under after a straight-sets victory in the final over Vitas Gerulaitis. Borg joined the professional circuit in 1973, and reached his first singles final in April at the Monte Carlo Open, which he lost to Ilie Năstase. He was unseeded at his first French Open and reached the fourth round where he lost in four sets to eighth-seeded Adriano Panatta. Borg was seeded sixth at his first Wimbledon Championships, in large part due to a boycott by the ATP, and reached the quarterfinal, where he was defeated in a five-set match by Roger Taylor. In the second half of 1973, he was runner-up in San Francisco, Stockholm and Buenos Aires and finished the year ranked No. 18. 1974 – First French Open title. Borg made his only appearance at the Australian Open at the age of 17, and reached the third round, where he lost in straight sets to eventual finalist Phil Dent. In January, he won his first career singles title at the New Zealand Open, followed by titles in London and São Paulo in February and March respectively. Just before his 18th birthday in June 1974, Borg won his first top-level singles title at the Italian Open, defeating defending champion and top-seeded Ilie Năstase in the final and becoming its youngest winner. Two weeks later, he won the singles title at the French Open, his first Grand Slam tournament title, defeating Manuel Orantes in the final in five sets. Barely 18, Borg was the youngest-ever male French Open champion up to that point. 1975 – Retained French Open title. In early 1975, Borg defeated Rod Laver, then 36 years old, in a semifinal of the World Championship Tennis (WCT) finals in Dallas, Texas, in five sets. Borg subsequently lost to Arthur Ashe in the final. Borg retained his French Open title in 1975, beating Guillermo Vilas in the final in straight sets. Borg then reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals, where he lost to eventual champion Ashe. Borg did not lose another match at Wimbledon until 1981. Borg won two singles and one doubles rubber in the 1975 Davis Cup final, as Sweden beat Czechoslovakia 3–2. With these singles wins, Borg had won 19 consecutive Davis Cup singles rubbers since 1973. That was already a record at the time. However, Borg never lost another Davis Cup singles rubber, and, by the end of his career, he had stretched that winning streak to 33. 1976 – First Wimbledon title. In early 1976, Borg won the World Championship Tennis year-end WCT Finals in Dallas, Texas, with a four-set victory over Guillermo Vilas in the final. At the 1976 French Open, Borg lost to the Italian Adriano Panatta, who remains the only player to defeat Borg at this tournament. Panatta did it twice: in the fourth round in 1973, and in the 1976 quarterfinals. Borg won Wimbledon in 1976 without losing a set, defeating the favored Ilie Năstase in the final. Borg became the youngest male Wimbledon singles champion since Sidney Wood in 1931 at 20 years and 1 month (a record subsequently broken by Boris Becker, who won Wimbledon aged 17 in 1985). Năstase later said, "We're playing tennis and he's playing something else." Borg also reached the final of the 1976 U.S. Open, which was then being played on clay courts. Borg lost in four sets to world no. 1 Jimmy Connors. Borg was awarded the ATP Player of the Year award and ranked world No. 1 by "Tennis Magazine" (France). 1977 – Second Wimbledon title and world No.1 ranking. In February 1977 World Championship Tennis (WCT) sued Borg and his management company IMG claiming that Borg had committed a breach of contract by electing to participate in the competing 1977 Grand Prix circuit instead of the WCT circuit. Borg eventually played, and won, a single WCT event, the Monte Carlo WCT. An out-of-court settlement was reached whereby Borg committed to play six or eight WCT events in 1978 which were then part of the Grand Prix circuit. Borg skipped the French Open in 1977 because he was under contract with WTT, but he repeated his Wimbledon triumph, although this time he was pushed much harder. He defeated his good friend Vitas Gerulaitis in a semifinal in five sets. His match with Gerulaitis was deemed by Wimbledon itself as "probably the greatest gentlemen's singles match played at Wimbledon". In the 1977 final Borg was pushed to five sets for the third time in the tournament, this time by Connors. The win propelled Borg to the No. 1 ranking in the ATP point system, albeit for just one week in August. Prior to the 1977 US Open, Borg aggravated a shoulder injury while waterskiing with Vitas Gerulaitis. This injury ultimately forced him to retire from the Open during a Round of 16 match vs Dick Stockton. Borg was rated number one for 1977 by "Tennis Magazine" (France), "Tennis Magazine" (U.S.), Barry Lorge, Lance Tingay, Rino Tommasi, Judith Elian and Rod Laver. Borg was also named "ATP Player of the Year". Through 1977, he had never lost to a player younger than himself. 1978 – French and Wimbledon titles. Borg was at the height of his career from 1978 through 1980, completing the French Open-Wimbledon double all three years. In 1978, Borg won the French Open with a win over Vilas in the final. Borg did not drop a set during the tournament, a feat only he, Năstase (in 1973), and Rafael Nadal (in 2008, 2010, 2017 and 2020) have accomplished at the French Open during the open era. Borg defeated Connors in straight sets in the 1978 Wimbledon final. At the 1978 US Open, now held on hard courts in Flushing Meadow, New York, he lost the final in straight sets to Connors. Borg was suffering from a bad blister on his thumb that required pre-match injections. That autumn, Borg faced John McEnroe for the first time in a semifinal of the Stockholm Open, and lost. Borg was named ATP Player of the Year and was the first ITF World Champion. 1979 – French and Wimbledon titles and year-end No. 1 ranking. Borg lost to McEnroe again in four sets in the final of the 1979 WCT Finals but was now overtaking Connors for the top ranking. Borg established himself firmly in the top spot with his fourth French Open singles title and fourth straight Wimbledon singles title, defeating Connors in a straight-set semifinal at the latter tournament. At the 1979 French Open, Borg defeated big-serving Víctor Pecci in a four-set final, and in the 1979 Wimbledon final Borg came from behind to overcome an even bigger server, Roscoe Tanner. Borg was upset by Tanner at the US Open, in a four-set quarterfinal played under the lights. At the season-ending Masters tournament in January 1980, Borg survived a close semifinal against McEnroe. He then beat Gerulaitis in straight sets, winning his first Masters and first title in New York. Borg finished the year at No. 1 in the ATP Point rankings and was considered the No. 1 player in the world by most authorities. 1980 – French and fifth consecutive Wimbledon title. In June, Borg overcame Gerulaitis, again in straight sets, for his fifth French Open title. Again, he did not drop a set during the tournament. Borg then won his fifth consecutive Wimbledon singles title, defeating McEnroe in a five-set final, often cited as the best Wimbledon final ever played. Having lost the opening set to an all-out McEnroe assault, Borg took the next two and had two championship points at 5–4 in the fourth. However, McEnroe averted disaster and went on to level the match in Wimbledon's most memorable tiebreaker, which McEnroe won 18–16. In the fourth-set tiebreak, McEnroe saved five match points, and Borg six set points, before McEnroe won the set. Björn served first to begin the 5th set and fell behind 0–30. Borg then won 19 straight points on serve in the deciding set and prevailed after 3 hours, 53 minutes. Borg himself commented years later that this was the first time that he was afraid that he would lose, as well as feeling that it was the beginning of the end of his dominance. In September, 1980 Borg reached the final of the U.S. Open for the third time, losing to John McEnroe in five sets in a match that cemented what had become the greatest contemporary rivalry, albeit short-lived, in men's tennis. He defeated McEnroe in the final of the 1980 Stockholm Open, and faced him one more time that year, in the round-robin portion of the year-end Masters, actually played in January 1981. With 19,103 fans in attendance, Borg won a deciding third-set tie-break for the second year in a row. Borg then defeated Ivan Lendl for his second Masters title. Borg again finished the year at No. 1 in the ATP Point Rankings and was considered the No. 1 player in the world by most tennis authorities. 1981 – Sixth and final French Open title. Borg won his last Grand Slam title at the French Open in 1981, defeating Lendl in a five-set final. Borg's six French Open Grand Slam titles was a record bettered only by Rafael Nadal in 2012. In reaching the Wimbledon final in 1981, Borg stretched his winning streak at the All England Club to a record 41 matches. In a semifinal, Borg was down to Connors by two sets to love, before coming back to win the match. However, Borg's streak was brought to an end by McEnroe, who defeated him in four sets. Years afterward, Borg remarked "And when I lost what shocked me was I wasn't even upset. That was not me: losing a Wimbledon final and not upset. I hate to lose." Borg around that time felt that his desire to play was gone, despite McEnroe's desperate efforts to persuade him not to retire and continue their rivalry. Borg went on to lose to McEnroe at the 1981 US Open. After that defeat, Borg walked off the court and out of the stadium before the ceremonies and press conference had begun, and headed straight for the airport. There are reports that Borg received threats after his semifinal win over Connors. In later years, Borg apologized to McEnroe. The 1981 US Open would be the Swede's last Grand Slam final. Major tournaments and tour organizers were enforcing a new rule; by 1982, that players had to play at least 10 official tournaments per year. However, Borg wanted to curtail his schedule after many years of winning so often. Although he felt in good condition physically, he recognized that the relentless drive to win and defy tour organizers had begun to fade. Borg failed to win the US Open in nine tries, losing four finals, 1976 (the surface was clay that year) and 1978 to Jimmy Connors, and 1980 and 1981 to John McEnroe. The surface was hard court from 1978 onward and Borg reached the final there on hard court on three occasions, in 1978, 1980 and 1981. He led 3–2 in the fifth set of the 1980 final, before losing. That match followed Borg's classic encounter with McEnroe at the 1980 Wimbledon. In 1978, 1979 and 1980, Borg was halfway to a Grand Slam after victories at the French and Wimbledon (the Australian Open being the last Grand Slam tournament of each year at the time) only to falter at Flushing Meadows, the left-handed Roscoe Tanner being his conqueror in 1979. 1982–91: Retirement. In 1982, Borg played only two tournaments. He lost to Yannick Noah in the quarterfinals of Monte Carlo in April and in the same month he lost to Dick Stockton in the second round of qualifying at the Alan King Tennis Classic in Las Vegas. Nevertheless, Borg's announcement in January 1983 that he was retiring from the game at the age of 26 was a shock to the tennis world. McEnroe tried unsuccessfully to persuade Borg to continue. He did, however, play Monte Carlo again in March 1983, reaching the second round, and Stuttgart in July 1984, losing to Henri Leconte on both occasions. Upon retirement, Borg had three residences: a penthouse in Monte Carlo, not far from his pro shop; a mansion on Long Island, New York and a small island off the Swedish coast. Borg later bounced back as the owner of the Björn Borg fashion label. In Sweden, his label has become very successful, second only to Calvin Klein. Attempted comeback. In 1991–1993, Borg attempted a comeback on the men's professional tennis tour, coached by Welsh karate expert Ron Thatcher. Before his 1991 return, Borg grew his hair out as it had been during his previous professional tennis career and he returned to using a wooden racket; he had kept his hair cut and used modern graphite rackets in exhibitions he played during the late 1980s. Borg, however, failed to win a single match. He faced Jordi Arrese in his first match back, again at Monte Carlo but without practising or playing any exhibition matches and lost in two sets. In his first nine matches, played in 1991 and 1992, Borg failed to win a single set. He fared slightly better in 1993, taking a set off his opponent in each of the three matches he played. He came closest to getting a win in what turned out to be his final tour match, falling to second seed Alexander Volkov 6–4, 3–6, 6–7(7–9) at the 1993 Kremlin Cup in Moscow. In 1992 Borg, aged 35, using a graphite racket, defeated John Lloyd, 37, at the Inglewood Forum Tennis Challenge. Borg later joined the Champions tour, using modern rackets. Playing style. Borg had one of the most distinctive playing styles in the Open Era. He played from the baseline, with powerful ground-strokes. His highly unorthodox backhand involved taking his racket back with both hands but actually generating his power with his dominant right hand, letting go of the grip with his left hand around point of contact, and following through with his swing as a one-hander. He hit the ball hard and high from the back of the court and brought it down with considerable topspin, which made his ground strokes very consistent. There had been other players, particularly Rod Laver and Arthur Ashe, who played with topspin on both the forehand and backhand, yet Laver and Ashe used topspin only as a way to mix up their shots to pass their opponents at the net easily. Borg was one of the first top players to use heavy topspin on his shots consistently. Complementing his consistent ground-strokes was his fitness. Both of these factors allowed Borg to be dominant at the French Open. One of the factors that made Borg unique was his dominance on the grass courts of Wimbledon, where, since World War II, baseliners did not usually succeed. Some experts attributed his dominance on this surface to his consistency, an underrated serve, equally underrated volleys, and his adaptation to grass courts. Against the best players, he almost always served-and-volleyed on his first serves, while he naturally played from the baseline after his second serves. Another trait usually associated with Borg was his grace under pressure. His calm court demeanor earned him the nickname of the "Ice Man" or "Ice-Borg". Borg's physical conditioning was unrivalled by contemporaries. He could outlast most of his opponents under the most grueling conditions. Contrary to popular belief, however, this was not due to his exceptionally low resting heart rate, often reported to be near 35 beats per minute. In his introduction to Borg's autobiography "My Life and Game", Eugene Scott relates that this rumor arose from a medical exam the 18-year-old Borg once took for military service, where his pulse was recorded as 38. Scott goes on to reveal Borg's true pulse rate as "about 50 when he wakes up and around 60 in the afternoon". Borg is credited with helping to develop the style of play that has come to dominate the game today. Mental approach. Borg's first wife has said that he was "always very placid and calm, except if he lost a match – he wouldn't talk for at least three days. He couldn't stand losing." This mental approach changed by 1981, when he has said that when he lost the Wimbledon final "what shocked me was I wasn't even upset". Personal life. Borg and Romanian tennis pro Mariana Simionescu began their relationship in 1976 and married in Bucharest on 24 July 1980. The marriage ended in divorce in 1984. He fathered a son named Robin in 1985 with the Swedish model ; Robin had a daughter in 2014. Borg was married to the Italian singer Loredana Bertè from 1989 to 1993. On 8 June 2002, he married his third wife, Patricia Östfeld. Together they have a son, Leo, born in 2003, who is also a professional tennis player. He narrowly avoided personal bankruptcy when business ventures failed. After selling his mansion Astaholm at Ingarö in the Stockholm archipelago in 2019, Borg moved to an apartment in Norrmalm, central Stockholm. Film. In 2017, "Borg vs McEnroe", a biographical film focusing on the rivalry between Borg and McEnroe and the 1980 Wimbledon final, was released. In 2022, interviews about this friendship and rivalry were also featured in "McEnroe", a Showtime documentary. Memorabilia preserved. In March 2006, Bonhams Auction House in London announced that it would auction Borg's Wimbledon trophies and two of his winning rackets on 21 June 2006. Several players then called Borg in an attempt to make him reconsider, including Jimmy Connors and Andre Agassi, who volunteered to buy them to keep them together. According to – who had talked to Borg – McEnroe called Borg from New York and asked, "What's up? Have you gone mad?" and said "What the hell are you doing?" The conversation with McEnroe, paired with pleas from Connors and Agassi, eventually persuaded Borg to buy out the trophies from Bonhams for an undisclosed amount. Recognition. With 11 Grand Slam titles, Borg ranks sixth in the list of male tennis players who have won the most Grand Slam singles titles behind Novak Djokovic (24), Rafael Nadal (22), Roger Federer (20), Pete Sampras (14) and Roy Emerson (12). The French Open—Wimbledon double he achieved three times consecutively was described by Wimbledon officials as "the most difficult double in tennis". Only Nadal (in 2008 and 2010), Federer (in 2009), Djokovic (in 2021) and Alcaraz (in 2024) have managed to achieve this double since, and Agassi, Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz are the only male players since Borg to have won the French Open and Wimbledon men's singles titles over their career. Ilie Năstase once said about Borg, "We're playing tennis, and he's playing something else". Borg is widely considered to be one of the greatest players in the history of the sport. In his 1979 autobiography, Jack Kramer had already included Borg in his list of the 21 greatest players of all time. And in 2003, Bud Collins chose Borg as one of his top-five male players of all time. In 1983 Fred Perry listed his greatest male players of all time and listed them in two categories, before World War 2 and after. Perry's modern best behind Laver: "Borg, McEnroe, Connors, Hoad, Jack Kramer, John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, Manuel Santana". In 1988, a panel consisting of Bud Collins, Cliff Drysdale, and Butch Buchholz ranked their top five male tennis players of all time. Buchholz and Drysdale both listed Borg number two on their lists, behind Rod Laver. Collins listed Borg number five behind Laver, McEnroe, Rosewall and Gonzales. In 2008, ESPN.com asked tennis analysts, writers, and former players to build the perfect open-era player. Borg was the only player mentioned in four categories: defense, footwork, intangibles, and mental toughness—with his mental game and footwork singled out as the best in open-era history. Borg never won the US Open, losing in the final four times. Borg also did not win the Australian Open, which he only played once in 1974 as a 17-year-old. The only players to defeat Borg in a Grand Slam final were fellow World No. 1 tennis players John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. Even though it was then played on grass, a surface where he enjoyed much success, Borg chose to play the Australian Open only once, in 1974, where he lost in the third round. Phil Dent, a contemporary of Borg, has pointed out that skipping Grand Slam tournaments—especially the Australian Open—was not unusual then, before counting Grand Slam titles became the norm. Additionally, another contemporary Arthur Ashe told "Sports Illustrated", "I think Bjorn could have won the US Open. I think he could have won the Grand Slam, but by the time he left, the historical challenge didn't mean anything. He was bigger than the game. He was like Elvis or Liz Taylor or somebody." Laver Cup. From 22 to 24 September 2017, Borg was the victorious captain of Team Europe in the first-ever edition of the Laver Cup, held in Prague, Czech Republic. Borg's Team Europe defeated a rest of the world team, known as Team World, who were coached by John McEnroe. Europe won the contest 15 points to 9, with Roger Federer achieving a narrow vital victory over Nick Kyrgios in the last match played. Borg returned as the coach of Team Europe for the second edition in Chicago, Illinois from 21 to 23 September 2018. McEnroe also returned as the coach for Team World. Borg again led Europe to victory as Alexander Zverev defeated Kevin Anderson to secure the title 13–8, after trailing Anderson in the match tiebreak until the last few points. In the tournament's third edition, held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 20 to 22 September 2019, Borg captained Team Europe to a third consecutive victory, defeating McEnroe's Team World 13 points to 11, with Zverev again winning the deciding match. The fourth edition was held in Boston from 24 to 26 September 2021, having had its original September 2020 date postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Borg once again returned as captain of Team Europe, which had a resounding win over Team World, defeating McEnroe's players 14 to 1.
4606	40781349	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4606	Battle of the Nile	The Battle of the Nile (also known as the Battle of Aboukir Bay; ) was fought between the Royal Navy and the French Navy at Aboukir Bay in Egypt between 1–3 August 1798. It was the climax of the Mediterranean campaign of 1798, which had started three months earlier after a large French fleet sailed from Toulon to Alexandria carrying an expeditionary force under Napoleon. A British fleet, led by Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, decisively defeated a French fleet under Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys d'Aigalliers, which had escorted Napoleon's army to Egypt. Napoleon sought to invade Egypt as the first step in a campaign against British India, as part of a greater effort to drive Britain out of the French Revolutionary Wars. As Napoleon's expeditionary force crossed the Mediterranean, it was pursued by a British fleet under Nelson who had been sent from a larger fleet in the Tagus to learn the purpose of the French expedition and to defeat it. He chased the French for more than two months, on several occasions missing them only by a matter of hours. Napoleon was aware of Nelson's pursuit and enforced absolute secrecy about his destination. He was able to capture Malta and then land in Egypt without being intercepted by the British navy. With the French army ashore, Brueys' fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay, northeast of Alexandria. Brueys believed that he had established a formidable defensive position. The British fleet arrived off Egypt on 1 August and discovered Brueys' dispositions, and Nelson ordered an immediate attack. His ships advanced on the French line and split into two divisions as they approached. One cut across the head of the line and passed between the anchored French and the shore, while the other engaged the seaward side of the French fleet. Trapped in a crossfire, the leading French warships were battered into surrender during a fierce three-hour battle, although the centre of the line held out for a while until more British ships were able to join the attack. At 22:00, the French flagship exploded which prompted the rear division of the French fleet to attempt to break out of the bay. With Brueys dead and his vanguard and centre defeated, only two French ships of the line and two frigates escaped from a total of 17 ships engaged. The battle reversed the strategic situation between the two nations' forces in the Mediterranean and entrenched the Royal Navy in the dominant position that it retained for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars. It also encouraged other European countries to turn against France, and was a factor in the outbreak of the War of the Second Coalition. Napoleon's army was trapped in Egypt, and Royal Navy dominance off the Syrian coast contributed significantly to the French defeat at the siege of Acre in 1799 which preceded Napoleon's abandonment of Egypt and return to Europe. Nelson was wounded in the battle, and he was proclaimed a hero across Europe and was subsequently made Baron Nelson—although he was privately dissatisfied with his rewards. His captains were also highly praised and went on to form the nucleus of the legendary Nelson's band of brothers. The legend of the battle has remained prominent in the popular consciousness, with perhaps the best-known representation being Felicia Hemans' 1826 poem "Casabianca". Background. Napoleon Bonaparte's victories in northern Italy over the Austrian Empire helped secure victory for the French in the War of the First Coalition in 1797, and Great Britain remained the only major European power still at war with the French Republic. The French Directory investigated a number of strategic options to counter British opposition, including projected invasions of Ireland and Britain and the expansion of the French Navy to challenge the Royal Navy at sea. Despite significant efforts, British control of Northern European waters rendered these ambitions impractical in the short term, and the Royal Navy remained firmly in control of the Atlantic Ocean. However, the French navy was dominant in the Mediterranean, following the withdrawal of the British fleet after the outbreak of war between Britain and Spain in 1796. This allowed Bonaparte to propose an invasion of Egypt as an alternative to confronting Britain directly, believing that the British would be too distracted by an imminent Irish uprising to intervene in the Mediterranean. Bonaparte believed that, by establishing a permanent presence in Egypt (nominally part of the neutral Ottoman Empire), the French would obtain a staging point for future operations against British India, possibly by means of an alliance with the Tipu Sultan of Seringapatam, that might successfully drive the British out of the war. The campaign would sever the chain of communication that connected Britain with India, an essential part of the British Empire whose trade generated the wealth that Britain required to prosecute the war successfully. The French Directory agreed with Bonaparte's plans, although a major factor in their decision was a desire to see the politically ambitious Bonaparte and the fiercely loyal veterans of his Italian campaigns travel as far from France as possible. During the spring of 1798, Bonaparte assembled more than 35,000 soldiers in Mediterranean France and Italy and developed a powerful fleet at Toulon. He also formed the "Commission des Sciences et des Arts", a body of scientists and engineers intended to establish a French colony in Egypt. Napoleon kept the destination of the expedition top secret—most of the army's officers did not know of its target, and Bonaparte did not publicly reveal his goal until the first stage of the expedition was complete. Mediterranean campaign. Bonaparte's armada sailed from Toulon on 19 May, making rapid progress through the Ligurian Sea and collecting more ships at Genoa, before sailing southwards along the Sardinian coast and passing Sicily on 7 June. On 9 June, the fleet arrived off Malta, then under the ownership of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, ruled by Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim. Bonaparte demanded that his fleet be permitted entry to the fortified harbour of Valletta. When the Knights refused, the French general responded by ordering a large scale invasion of the Maltese Islands, overrunning the defenders after 24 hours of skirmishing. The Knights formally surrendered on 12 June and, in exchange for substantial financial compensation, handed the islands and all of their resources over to Bonaparte, including the extensive property of the Roman Catholic Church on Malta. Within a week, Bonaparte had resupplied his ships, and on 19 June, his fleet departed for Alexandria in the direction of Crete, leaving 4,000 men at Valletta under General Claude-Henri Vaubois to ensure French control of the islands. While Bonaparte was sailing to Malta, the Royal Navy re-entered the Mediterranean for the first time in more than a year. Alarmed by reports of French preparations on the Mediterranean coast, Lord Spencer at the Admiralty sent a message to Vice-Admiral Earl St. Vincent, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet based in the Tagus, to despatch a squadron to investigate. This squadron, consisting of three ships of the line and three frigates, was entrusted to Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson. Nelson was a highly experienced officer who had been blinded in one eye during fighting in Corsica in 1794 and subsequently commended for his capture of two Spanish ships of the line at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in February 1797. In July 1797, he lost an arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and had been forced to return to Britain to recuperate. Returning to the fleet at the Tagus in late April 1798, he was ordered to collect the squadron stationed at Gibraltar and sail for the Ligurian Sea. On 21 May, as Nelson's squadron approached Toulon, it was struck by a fierce gale and Nelson's flagship, , lost its topmasts and was almost wrecked on the Corsican coast. The remainder of the squadron was scattered. The ships of the line sheltered at San Pietro Island off Sardinia; the frigates were blown to the west and failed to return. On 7 June, following hasty repairs to his flagship, a fleet consisting of ten ships of the line and a fourth-rate joined Nelson off Toulon. The fleet, under the command of Captain Thomas Troubridge, had been sent by Earl St. Vincent to reinforce Nelson, with orders that he was to pursue and intercept the Toulon convoy. Although he now had enough ships to challenge the French fleet, Nelson suffered two great disadvantages: He had no intelligence regarding the destination of the French, and no frigates to scout ahead of his force. Striking southwards in the hope of collecting information about French movements, Nelson's ships stopped at Elba and Naples, where the British ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, reported that the French fleet had passed Sicily headed in the direction of Malta. Despite pleas from Nelson and Hamilton, King Ferdinand of Naples refused to lend his frigates to the British fleet, fearing French reprisals. On 22 June, a brig sailing from Ragusa brought Nelson the news that the French had sailed eastwards from Malta on 16 June. After conferring with his captains, the admiral decided that the French target must be Egypt and set off in pursuit. Incorrectly believing the French to be five days ahead rather than two, Nelson insisted on a direct route to Alexandria without deviation. On the evening of 22 June, Nelson's fleet passed the French in the darkness, overtaking the slow invasion convoy without realising how close they were to their target. Making rapid time on a direct route, Nelson reached Alexandria on 28 June and discovered that the French were not there. After a meeting with the suspicious Ottoman commander, Sayyid Muhammad Kurayyim, Nelson ordered the British fleet northwards, reaching the coast of Anatolia on 4 July and turning westwards back towards Sicily. Nelson had missed the French by less than a day—the scouts of the French fleet arrived off Alexandria in the evening of 29 June. Concerned by his near encounter with Nelson, Bonaparte ordered an immediate invasion, his troops coming ashore in a poorly managed amphibious operation in which at least 20 drowned. Marching along the coast, the French army stormed Alexandria and captured the city, after which Bonaparte led the main force of his army inland. He instructed his naval commander, Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys D'Aigalliers, to anchor in Alexandria harbour, but naval surveyors reported that the channel into the harbour was too shallow and narrow for the larger ships of the French fleet. As a result, the French selected an alternative anchorage at Aboukir Bay, northeast of Alexandria. Nelson's fleet reached Syracuse in Sicily on 19 July and took on essential supplies. There the admiral wrote letters describing the events of the previous months: "It is an old saying, 'the Devil's children have the Devil's luck.' I cannot find, or at this moment learn, beyond vague conjecture where the French fleet are gone to. All my ill fortune, hitherto, has proceeded from want of frigates." Meanwhile, the French were securing Egypt by the Battle of the Pyramids. By 24 July, the British fleet was resupplied and, having determined that the French must be somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, Nelson sailed again in the direction of the Morea. On 28 July, at Coron, Nelson finally obtained intelligence describing the French attack on Egypt and turned south across the Mediterranean. His scouts, and , sighted the French transport fleet at Alexandria on the afternoon of 1 August. Aboukir Bay. When Alexandria harbour had proved inadequate for his fleet, Brueys had gathered his captains and discussed their options. Bonaparte had ordered the fleet to anchor in Aboukir Bay, a shallow and exposed anchorage, but had supplemented the orders with the suggestion that, if Aboukir Bay was too dangerous, Brueys could sail north to Corfu, leaving only the transports and a handful of lighter warships at Alexandria. Brueys refused, in the belief that his squadron could provide essential support to the French army on shore, and called his captains aboard his 120-gun flagship to discuss their response should Nelson discover the fleet in its anchorage. Despite vocal opposition from Contre-amiral Armand Blanquet, who insisted that the fleet would be best able to respond in open water, the rest of the captains agreed that anchoring in a line of battle inside the bay presented the strongest tactic for confronting Nelson. It is possible that Bonaparte envisaged Aboukir Bay as a temporary anchorage: on 27 July, he expressed the expectation that Brueys had already transferred his ships to Alexandria, and three days later, he issued orders for the fleet to make for Corfu in preparation for naval operations against the Ottoman territories in the Balkans, although Bedouin partisans intercepted and killed the courier carrying the instructions. Aboukir Bay is a coastal indentation across, stretching from the village of Abu Qir in the west to the town of Rosetta to the east, where one of the mouths of the River Nile empties into the Mediterranean. In 1798, the bay was protected at its western end by extensive rocky shoals which ran into the bay from a promontory guarded by Aboukir Castle. A small fort situated on an island among the rocks protected the shoals. The fort was garrisoned by French soldiers and armed with at least four cannon and two heavy mortars. Brueys had augmented the fort with his bomb vessels and gunboats, anchored among the rocks to the west of the island in a position to give support to the head of the French line. Further shoals ran unevenly to the south of the island and extended across the bay in a rough semicircle approximately from the shore. These shoals were too shallow to permit the passage of larger warships, and so Brueys ordered his thirteen ships of the line to form up in a line of battle following the northeastern edge of the shoals to the south of the island, a position that allowed the ships to disembark supplies from their port sides while covering the landings with their starboard batteries. Orders were issued for each ship to attach strong cables to the bow and stern of their neighbours, which would effectively turn the line into a long battery forming a theoretically impregnable barrier. Brueys positioned a second, inner line of four frigates approximately west of the main line, roughly halfway between the line and the shoal. The van of the French line was led by , positioned southeast of Aboukir Island and about from the edge of the shoals that surrounded the island. The line stretched southeast, with the centre bowed seawards away from the shoal. The French ships were spaced at intervals of and the whole line was long, with the flagship "Orient" at the centre and two large 80-gun ships anchored on either side. The rear division of the line was under the command of Contre-amiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve in . In deploying his ships in this way, Brueys hoped that the British would be forced by the shoals to attack his strong centre and rear, allowing his van to use the prevailing northeasterly wind to counterattack the British once they were engaged. However, he had made a serious misjudgement: he had left enough room between "Guerrier" and the shoals for an enemy ship to cut across the head of the French line and proceed between the shoals and the French ships, allowing the unsupported vanguard to be caught in a crossfire by two divisions of enemy ships. Compounding this error, the French only prepared their ships for battle on their starboard (seaward) sides, from which they expected the attack would have to come; their landward port sides were unprepared. The port side gun ports were closed, and the decks on that side were uncleared, with various stored items blocking access to the guns. Brueys' dispositions had a second significant flaw: The 160-yard gaps between ships were large enough for a British ship to push through and break the French line. Furthermore, not all of the French captains had followed Brueys' orders to attach cables to their neighbours' bow and stern, which would have prevented such a manoeuvre. The problem was exacerbated by orders to only anchor at the bow, which allowed the ships to swing with the wind and widened the gaps. It also created areas within the French line not covered by the broadside of any ship. British vessels could anchor in those spaces and engage the French without reply. In addition, the deployment of Brueys' fleet prevented the rear from effectively supporting the van due to the prevailing winds. A more pressing problem for Brueys was a lack of food and water for the fleet: Bonaparte had unloaded almost all of the provisions carried aboard and no supplies were reaching the ships from the shore. To remedy this, Brueys sent foraging parties of 25 men from each ship along the coast to requisition food, dig wells, and collect water. Constant attacks by Bedouin partisans, however, required escorts of heavily armed guards for each party. Hence, up to a third of the fleet's sailors were away from their ships at any one time. Brueys wrote a letter describing the situation to Minister of Marine Étienne Eustache Bruix, reporting that "Our crews are weak, both in number and quality. Our rigging, in general, out of repair, and I am sure it requires no little courage to undertake the management of a fleet furnished with such tools." Battle. Nelson's arrival. Although initially disappointed that the main French fleet was not at Alexandria, Nelson knew from the presence of the transports that they must be nearby. At 14:00 on 1 August, lookouts on reported the French anchored in Aboukir Bay, its signal lieutenant just beating the lieutenant on with the signal, but inaccurately describing 16 French ships of the line instead of 13. At the same time, French lookouts on , the ninth ship in the French line, sighted the British fleet approximately nine nautical miles off the mouth of Aboukir Bay. The French initially reported just 11 British ships – "Swiftsure" and "Alexander" were still returning from their scouting operations at Alexandria, and so were to the west of the main fleet, out of sight. Troubridge's ship, , was also some distance from the main body, towing a captured merchant ship. At the sight of the French, Troubridge abandoned the vessel and made strenuous efforts to rejoin Nelson. Due to the need for so many sailors to work onshore, Brueys had not deployed any of his lighter warships as scouts, which left him unable to react swiftly to the sudden appearance of the British. As his ships readied for action, Brueys ordered his captains to gather for a conference on "Orient" and hastily recalled his shore parties, although most had still not returned by the start of the battle. To replace them, large numbers of men were taken out of the frigates and distributed among the ships of the line. Brueys also hoped to lure the British fleet onto the shoals at Aboukir Island, sending the brigs and "Railleur" to act as decoys in the shallow waters. By 16:00, "Alexander" and "Swiftsure" were also in sight, although some distance from the main British fleet. Brueys gave orders to abandon the plan to remain at anchor and instead for his line to set sail. Blanquet protested the order on the grounds that there were not enough men aboard the French ships to both sail the ships and man the guns. Nelson gave orders for his leading ships to slow down, to allow the British fleet to approach in a more organised formation. This convinced Brueys that rather than risk an evening battle in confined waters, the British were planning to wait for the following day. He rescinded his earlier order to sail. Brueys may have been hoping that the delay would allow him to slip past the British during the night and thus follow Bonaparte's orders not to engage the British fleet directly if he could avoid it. Nelson ordered the fleet to slow down at 16:00 to allow his ships to rig "springs" on their anchor cables, a system of attaching the bow anchor that increased stability and allowed his ships to swing their broadsides to face an enemy while stationary. It also increased manoeuvrability and therefore reduced the risk of coming under raking fire. Nelson's plan, shaped through discussion with his senior captains during the return voyage to Alexandria, was to advance on the French and pass down the seaward side of the van and centre of the French line, so that each French ship would face two British ships and the massive "Orient" would be fighting against three. The direction of the wind meant that the French rear division would be unable to join the battle easily and would be cut off from the front portions of the line. To ensure that in the smoke and confusion of a night battle his ships would not accidentally open fire on one another, Nelson ordered that each ship prepare four horizontal lights at the head of their mizzen mast and hoist an illuminated White Ensign, which was different enough from the French tricolour that it would not be mistaken in poor visibility, reducing the risk that British ships might fire on one another in the darkness. As his ship was readied for battle, Nelson held a final dinner with "Vanguard"s officers, announcing as he rose: "Before this time tomorrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey," in reference to the rewards of victory or the traditional burial place of British military heroes. Shortly after the French order to set sail was abandoned, the British fleet began rapidly approaching once more. Brueys, now expecting to come under attack that night, ordered each of his ships to place springs on their anchor cables and prepare for action. He sent the "Alerte" ahead, which passed close to the leading British ships and then steered sharply to the west over the shoal, in the hope that the ships of the line might follow and become grounded. None of Nelson's captains fell for the ruse and the British fleet continued undeterred. At 17:30, Nelson hailed one of his two leading ships, HMS "Zealous" under Captain Samuel Hood, which had been racing "Goliath" to be the first to fire on the French. The admiral ordered Hood to establish the safest course into the harbour. The British had no charts of the depth or shape of the bay, except a rough sketch map "Swiftsure" had obtained from a merchant captain, an inaccurate British atlas on "Zealous", and a 35-year-old French map aboard "Goliath". Hood replied that he would take careful soundings as he advanced to test the depth of the water, and that, "If you will allow the honour of leading you into battle, I will keep the lead going." Shortly afterwards, Nelson paused to speak with the brig , whose commander, Lieutenant Thomas Hardy, had seized some maritime pilots from a small Alexandrine vessel. As "Vanguard" came to a stop, the following ships slowed. This caused a gap to open up between "Zealous" and "Goliath" and the rest of the fleet. To counter this effect, Nelson ordered under Captain Ralph Miller to pass his flagship and join "Zealous" and "Goliath" in the vanguard. By 18:00, the British fleet was again under full sail, "Vanguard" sixth in the line of ten ships as "Culloden" trailed behind to the north and "Alexander" and "Swiftsure" hastened to catch up to the west. Following the rapid change from a loose formation to a rigid line of battle, both fleets raised their colours; each British ship hoisted additional Union Flags in its rigging in case its main flag was shot away. At 18:20, as "Goliath" and "Zealous" rapidly bore down on them, the leading French ships "Guerrier" and opened fire. Ten minutes after the French opened fire, "Goliath", ignoring fire from the fort to starboard and from "Guerrier" to port, most of which was too high to trouble the ship, crossed the head of the French line. Captain Thomas Foley had noticed as he approached that there was an unexpected gap between "Guerrier" and the shallow water of the shoal. On his own initiative, Foley decided to exploit this tactical error and changed his angle of approach to sail through the gap. As the bow of "Guerrier" came within range, "Goliath" opened fire, inflicting severe damage with a double-shotted raking broadside as the British ship turned to port and passed down the unprepared port side of "Guerrier." Foley's Royal Marines and a company of Austrian grenadiers joined the attack, firing their muskets. Foley had intended to anchor alongside the French ship and engage it closely, but his anchor took too long to descend and his ship passed "Guerrier" entirely. "Goliath" eventually stopped close to the bow of "Conquérant", opening fire on the new opponent and using the unengaged starboard guns to exchange occasional shots with the frigate and bomb vessel "Hercule", which were anchored inshore of the battle line. Foley's attack was followed by Hood in "Zealous", who also crossed the French line and successfully anchored next to "Guerrier" in the space Foley had intended, engaging the lead ship's bow from close range. Within five minutes "Guerrier"s foremast had fallen, to cheers from the crews of the approaching British ships. The speed of the British advance took the French captains by surprise; they were still aboard "Orient" in conference with the admiral when the firing started. Hastily launching their boats, they returned to their vessels. Captain Jean-François-Timothée Trullet of "Guerrier" shouted orders from his barge for his men to return fire on "Zealous". The third British ship into action was under Captain Sir James Saumarez, which rounded the engagement at the head of the battle line and passed between the French main line and the frigates that lay closer inshore. As he did so, the frigate "Sérieuse" opened fire on "Orion", wounding two men. The convention in naval warfare of the time was that ships of the line did not attack frigates when there were ships of equal size to engage, but in firing first French Captain Claude-Jean Martin had negated the rule. Saumarez waited until the frigate was at close range before replying. "Orion" needed just one broadside to reduce the frigate to a wreck, and Martin's disabled ship drifted away over the shoal. During the delay this detour caused, two other British ships joined the battle: "Theseus", which had been disguised as a first-rate ship, followed Foley's track across "Guerrier"s bow. Miller steered his ship through the middle of the melee between the anchored British and French ships until he encountered the third French ship, . Anchoring to port, Miller's ship opened fire at close range. under Captain Davidge Gould crossed the French line between "Guerrier" and "Conquérant", anchoring between the ships and raking them both. "Orion" then rejoined the action further south than intended, firing on the fifth French ship, "Peuple Souverain", and Admiral Blanquet's flagship, . The next three British ships, "Vanguard" in the lead followed by and , remained in line of battle formation and anchored on the starboard side of the French line at 18:40. Nelson focused his flagship's fire on "Spartiate", while Captain Thomas Louis in "Minotaur" attacked the unengaged and Captain John Peyton in "Defence" joined the attack on "Peuple Souverain". With the French vanguard now heavily outnumbered, the following British ships, and , passed by the melee and advanced on the so far unengaged French centre. Both ships were soon fighting enemies much more powerful than they and began to take severe damage. Captain Henry Darby on "Bellerophon" missed his intended anchor near "Franklin" and instead found his ship underneath the main battery of the French flagship. Captain George Blagdon Westcott on "Majestic" also missed his station and almost collided with "Heureux", coming under heavy fire from . Unable to stop in time, Westcott's jib boom became entangled with "Tonnant"s shroud. The French suffered too, Admiral Brueys on "Orient" was severely wounded in the face and hand by flying debris during the opening exchange of fire with "Bellerophon". The final ship of the British line, "Culloden" under Troubridge, sailed too close to Aboukir Island in the growing darkness and became stuck fast on the shoal. Despite strenuous efforts from the "Culloden"s boats, the brig "Mutine" and the 50-gun under Captain Thomas Thompson, the ship of the line could not be moved, and the waves drove "Culloden" further onto the shoal, inflicting severe damage to the ship's hull. Surrender of the French vanguard. At 19:00 the identifying lights in the mizzenmasts of the British fleet were lit. By this time, "Guerrier" had been completely dismasted and heavily battered. "Zealous" by contrast was barely touched: Hood had situated "Zealous" outside the arc of most of the French ship's broadsides, and in any case "Guerrier" was not prepared for an engagement on both sides simultaneously, with its port guns blocked by stores. Although their ship was a wreck, the crew of "Guerrier" refused to surrender, continuing to fire the few functional guns whenever possible despite heavy answering fire from "Zealous". In addition to his cannon fire, Hood called up his marines and ordered them to fire volleys of musket shot at the deck of the French ship, driving the crew out of sight but still failing to secure the surrender from Captain Trullet. It was not until 21:00, when Hood sent a small boat to "Guerrier" with a boarding party, that the French ship finally surrendered. "Conquérant" was defeated more rapidly, after heavy broadsides from passing British ships and the close attentions of "Audacious" and "Goliath" brought down all three masts before 19:00. With his ship immobile and badly damaged, the mortally wounded Captain Etienne Dalbarade struck his colours and a boarding party seized control. Unlike "Zealous", these British ships suffered relatively severe damage in the engagement. "Goliath" lost most of its rigging, suffered damage to all three masts and suffered more than 60 casualties. With his opponents defeated, Captain Gould on "Audacious" used the spring on his cable to transfer fire to "Spartiate", the next French ship in line. To the west of the battle the battered "Sérieuse" sank over the shoal. Her masts protruded from the water as survivors scrambled into boats and rowed for the shore. The transfer of "Audacious"s broadside to "Spartiate" meant that Captain Maurice-Julien Emeriau now faced three opponents. Within minutes all three of his ship's masts had fallen, but the battle around "Spartiate" continued until 21:00, when the badly wounded Emeriau ordered his colours struck. Although "Spartiate" was outnumbered, it had been supported by the next in line, "Aquilon", which was the only ship of the French van squadron fighting a single opponent, "Minotaur". Captain Antoine René Thévenard used the spring on his anchor cable to angle his broadside into a raking position across the bow of Nelson's flagship, which consequently suffered more than 100 casualties, including the admiral. At approximately 20:30, an iron splinter fired in a langrage shot from "Spartiate "struck Nelson over his blinded right eye. The wound caused a flap of skin to fall across his face, rendering him temporarily completely blind. Nelson collapsed into the arms of Captain Edward Berry and was carried below. Certain that his wound was fatal, he cried out "I am killed, remember me to my wife", and called for his chaplain, Stephen Comyn. The wound was immediately inspected by "Vanguard"s surgeon Michael Jefferson, who informed the admiral that it was a simple flesh wound and stitched the skin together. Nelson subsequently ignored Jefferson's instructions to remain inactive, returning to the quarterdeck shortly before the explosion on "Orient" to oversee the closing stages of the battle. Although Thévenard's manoeuvre was successful, it placed his own bow under "Minotaur"s guns and by 21:25 the French ship was dismasted and battered, Captain Thévenard killed and his junior officers forced to surrender. With his opponent defeated, Captain Thomas Louis then took "Minotaur" south to join the attack on "Franklin". "Defence" and "Orion "attacked the fifth French ship, "Peuple Souverain", from either side and the ship rapidly lost the fore and main masts. Aboard the "Orion", a wooden block was smashed off one of the ship's masts, killing two men before wounding Captain Saumarez in the thigh. On "Peuple Souverain", Captain Pierre-Paul Raccord was badly wounded and ordered his ship's anchor cable cut in an effort to escape the bombardment. "Peuple Souverain" drifted south towards the flagship "Orient", which mistakenly opened fire on the darkened vessel. "Orion" and "Defence" were unable to immediately pursue. "Defence" had lost its fore topmast and an improvised fireship that drifted through the battle narrowly missed "Orion". The origin of this vessel, an abandoned and burning ship's boat laden with highly flammable material, is uncertain, but it may have been launched from "Guerrier" as the battle began. "Peuple Souverain" anchored not far from "Orient", but took no further part in the fighting. The wrecked ship surrendered during the night. "Franklin" remained in combat, but Blanquet had suffered a severe head wound and Captain Gillet had been carried below unconscious with severe wounds. Shortly afterwards, a fire broke out on the quarterdeck after an arms locker exploded, which was eventually extinguished with difficulty by the crew. To the south, HMS "Bellerophon" was in serious trouble as the huge broadside of "Orient" pounded the ship. At 19:50 the mizzenmast and main mast both collapsed and fires broke out simultaneously at several points. Although the blazes were extinguished, the ship had suffered more than 200 casualties. Captain Darby recognised that his position was untenable and ordered the anchor cables cut at 20:20. The battered ship drifted away from the battle under continued fire from "Tonnant" as the foremast collapsed as well. "Orient" had also suffered significant damage and Admiral Brueys had been struck in the midriff by a cannonball that almost cut him in half. He died fifteen minutes later, remaining on deck and refusing to be carried below. "Orient"s captain, Luc-Julien-Joseph Casabianca, was also wounded, struck in the face by flying debris and knocked unconscious, while his twelve-year-old son had a leg torn off by a cannonball as he stood beside his father. The most southerly British ship, "Majestic", had become briefly entangled with the 80-gun "Tonnant", and in the resulting battle, suffered heavy casualties. Captain George Blagdon Westcott was among the dead, killed by French musket fire. Lieutenant Robert Cuthbert assumed command and successfully disentangled his ship, allowing the badly damaged "Majestic" to drift further southwards so that by 20:30 it was stationed between "Tonnant" and the next in line, "Heureux", engaging both. To support the centre, Captain Thompson of "Leander" abandoned the futile efforts to drag the stranded "Culloden" off the shoal and sailed down the embattled French line, entering the gap created by the drifting "Peuple Souverain" and opening a fierce raking fire on "Franklin" and "Orient". While the battle raged in the bay, the two straggling British ships made strenuous efforts to join the engagement, focusing on the flashes of gunfire in the darkness. Warned away from the Aboukir shoals by the grounded "Culloden", Captain Benjamin Hallowell in "Swiftsure" passed the melee at the head of the line and aimed his ship at the French centre. Shortly after 20:00, a dismasted hulk was spotted drifting in front of "Swiftsure" and Hallowell initially ordered his men to fire before rescinding the order, concerned for the identity of the strange vessel. Hailing the battered ship, Hallowell received the reply ""Bellerophon", going out of action disabled." Relieved that he had not accidentally attacked one of his own ships in the darkness, Hallowell pulled up between "Orient" and "Franklin" and opened fire on them both. "Alexander", the final unengaged British ship, which had followed "Swiftsure", pulled up close to "Tonnant", which had begun to drift away from the embattled French flagship. Captain Alexander Ball then joined the attack on "Orient". Destruction of "L'Orient". At 21:00, the British observed a fire on the lower decks of the "Orient", the French flagship. Identifying the danger this posed to the "Orient", Captain Hallowell directed his gun crews to fire their guns directly into the blaze. Sustained British gun fire spread the flames throughout the ship's stern and prevented all efforts to extinguish them. Within minutes the fire had ascended the rigging and set the vast sails alight. The nearest British ships, "Swiftsure", "Alexander", and "Orion", all stopped firing, closed their gunports, and began edging away from the burning ship in anticipation of the detonation of the enormous ammunition supplies stored on board. In addition, they took crews away from the guns to form fire parties and to soak the sails and decks in seawater to help contain any resulting fires. Likewise the French ships "Tonnant", "Heureux", and all cut their anchor cables and drifted southwards away from the burning ship. At 22:00 the fire reached the magazines, and the "Orient" was destroyed by a massive explosion. The concussion of the blast was powerful enough to rip open the seams of the nearest ships, and flaming wreckage landed in a huge circle, much of it flying directly over the surrounding ships into the sea beyond. Falling wreckage started fires on "Swiftsure", "Alexander", and "Franklin", although in each case teams of sailors with water buckets succeeded in extinguishing the flames, despite a secondary explosion on "Franklin". It has never been firmly established how the fire on "Orient" broke out, but one common account is that jars of oil and paint had been left on the poop deck, instead of being properly stowed after painting of the ship's hull had been completed shortly before the battle. Burning wadding from one of the British ships is believed to have floated onto the poop deck and ignited the paint. The fire rapidly spread through the admiral's cabin and into a ready magazine that stored carcass ammunition, which was designed to burn more fiercely in water than in air. Alternatively, Fleet Captain Honoré Ganteaume later reported the cause as an explosion on the quarterdeck, preceded by a series of minor fires on the main deck among the ship's boats. Whatever its origin, the fire spread rapidly through the ship's rigging, unchecked by the fire pumps aboard, which had been smashed by British shot. A second blaze then began at the bow, trapping hundreds of sailors in the ship's waist. Subsequent archaeological investigation found debris scattered over of seabed and evidence that the ship was wracked by two explosions. Hundreds of men dived into the sea to escape the flames, but fewer than 100 survived the blast. British boats picked up approximately 70 survivors, including the wounded staff officer Léonard-Bernard Motard. A few others, including Ganteaume, managed to reach the shore on rafts. The remainder of the crew, numbering more than 1,000 men, were killed, including Captain Casabianca and his son, Giocante. For ten minutes after the explosion there was no firing; sailors from both sides were either too shocked by the blast or desperately extinguishing fires aboard their own ships to continue the fight. During the lull, Nelson gave orders that boats be sent to pull survivors from the water around the remains of "Orient". At 22:10, "Franklin" restarted the engagement by firing on "Swiftsure". Isolated and battered, Blanquet's ship was soon dismasted and the admiral, suffering a severe head wound, was forced to surrender by the combined firepower of "Swiftsure" and "Defence". More than half of "Franklin"s crew had been killed or wounded. By midnight only "Tonnant" remained engaged, as Commodore Aristide Aubert Du Petit Thouars continued his fight with "Majestic" and fired on "Swiftsure" when the British ship moved within range. By 03:00, after more than three hours of close quarter combat, "Majestic" had lost its main and mizzen masts while "Tonnant" was a dismasted hulk. Although Captain Du Petit Thouars had lost both legs and an arm he remained in command, insisting on having the tricolour nailed to the mast to prevent it from being struck and giving orders from his position propped up on deck in a bucket of wheat. Under his guidance, the battered "Tonnant" gradually drifted southwards away from the action to join the southern division under Villeneuve, who failed to bring these ships into effective action. Throughout the engagement the French rear had kept up an arbitrary fire on the battling ships ahead. The only noticeable effect was the smashing of s rudder by misdirected fire from the neighbouring . Morning. As the sun rose at 04:00 on 2 August, firing broke out once again between the French southern division of "Guillaume Tell", "Tonnant", "Généreux" and "Timoléon" and the battered "Alexander" and "Majestic". Although briefly outmatched, the British ships were soon joined by "Goliath" and "Theseus". As Captain Miller manoeuvred his ship into position, "Theseus" briefly came under fire from the frigate . Miller turned his ship towards "Artémise", but Captain Pierre-Jean Standelet struck his flag and ordered his men to abandon the frigate. Miller sent a boat under Lieutenant William Hoste to take possession of the empty vessel, but Standelet had set fire to his ship as he left and "Artémise" blew up shortly afterwards. The surviving French ships of the line, covering their retreat with gunfire, gradually pulled to the east away from the shore at 06:00. "Zealous" pursued, and was able to prevent the frigate from boarding "Bellerophon", which was anchored at the southern point of the bay undergoing hasty repairs. Two other French ships still flew the tricolour, but neither was in a position to either retreat or fight. When "Heureux" and "Mercure" had cut their anchor cables to escape the exploding "Orient", their crews had panicked and neither captain (both of whom were wounded) had managed to regain control of his ship. As a result, both vessels had drifted onto the shoal. "Alexander", "Goliath", "Theseus" and "Leander" attacked the stranded and defenceless ships, and both surrendered within minutes. The distractions provided by "Heureux", "Mercure" and "Justice" allowed Villeneuve to bring most of the surviving French ships to the mouth of the bay at 11:00. On the dismasted "Tonnant", Commodore Du Petit Thouars was now dead from his wounds and thrown overboard at his own request. As the ship was unable to make the required speed it was driven ashore by its crew. "Timoléon" was too far south to escape with Villeneuve and, in attempting to join the survivors, had also grounded on the shoal. The force of the impact dislodged the ship's foremast. The remaining French vessels—the ships of the line "Guillaume Tell" and "Généreux" and the frigates "Justice" and —formed up and stood out to sea, pursued by "Zealous". Despite strenuous efforts, Captain Hood's isolated ship came under heavy fire and was unable to cut off the trailing "Justice" as the French survivors escaped seawards. "Zealous" was struck by a number of French shot and lost one man killed. For the remainder of 2 August Nelson's ships made improvised repairs and boarded and consolidated their prizes. "Culloden" especially required assistance. Troubridge, having finally dragged his ship off the shoal at 02:00, found that he had lost his rudder and was taking on more than of water an hour. Emergency repairs to the hull and fashioning a replacement rudder from a spare topmast took most of the next two days. On the morning of 3 August, Nelson sent "Theseus" and "Leander" to force the surrender of the grounded "Tonnant" and "Timoléon". The "Tonnant", its decks crowded with 1,600 survivors from other French vessels, surrendered as the British ships approached while "Timoléon" was set on fire by its remaining crew who then escaped to the shore in small boats. "Timoléon" exploded shortly after midday, the eleventh and final French ship of the line destroyed or captured during the battle. Aftermath. British casualties in the battle were recorded with some accuracy in the immediate aftermath as 218 killed and approximately 677 wounded, although the number of wounded who subsequently died is not known. The ships that suffered most were "Bellerophon" with 201 casualties and "Majestic" with 193. Other than "Culloden" the lightest loss was on "Zealous", which had one man killed and seven wounded. The casualty list included Captain Westcott, five lieutenants and ten junior officers among the dead, and Admiral Nelson, Captains Saumarez, Ball and Darby, and six lieutenants wounded. Other than "Culloden", the only British ships seriously damaged in their hulls were "Bellerophon", "Majestic," and "Vanguard". "Bellerophon" and "Majestic" were the only ships to lose masts: "Majestic" the main and mizzen and "Bellerophon" all three. French casualties are harder to calculate but were significantly higher. Estimates of French losses range from 2,000 to 5,000, with a suggested median point of 3,500, which includes more than 1,000 captured wounded and nearly 2,000 killed, half of whom died on "Orient". In addition to Admiral Brueys killed and Admiral Blanquet wounded, four captains died and seven others were seriously wounded. The French ships suffered severe damage: Two ships of the line and two frigates were destroyed (as well as a bomb vessel scuttled by its crew), and three other captured ships were too battered ever to sail again. Of the remaining prizes, only three were ever sufficiently repaired for frontline service. For weeks after the battle, bodies washed up along the Egyptian coast, decaying slowly in the intense, dry heat. Nelson, who on surveying the bay on the morning of 2 August said, "Victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene", remained at anchor in Aboukir Bay for the next two weeks, preoccupied with recovering from his wound, writing dispatches, and assessing the military situation in Egypt using documents captured on board one of the prizes. Nelson's head wound was recorded as being "three inches long" with "the cranium exposed for one inch". He suffered pain from the injury for the rest of his life and was badly scarred, styling his hair to disguise it as much as possible. As their commander recovered, his men stripped the wrecks of useful supplies and made repairs to their ships and prizes. Throughout the week, Aboukir Bay was surrounded by bonfires lit by Bedouin tribesmen in celebration of the British victory. On 5 August, "Leander" was despatched to Cadiz with messages for Earl St. Vincent carried by Captain Edward Berry. Over the next few days the British landed all but 200 of the captured prisoners on shore under strict terms of parole, although Bonaparte later ordered them to be formed into an infantry unit and added to his army. The wounded officers taken prisoner were held on board "Vanguard", where Nelson regularly entertained them at dinner. Historian Joseph Allen recounts that on one occasion Nelson, whose eyesight was still suffering following his wound, offered toothpicks to an officer who had lost his teeth and then passed a snuff-box to an officer whose nose had been torn off, causing much embarrassment. On 8 August the fleet's boats stormed Aboukir Island, which surrendered without a fight. The landing party removed four of the guns and destroyed the rest along with the fort they were mounted in, renaming the island "Nelson's Island". On 10 August, Nelson sent Lieutenant Thomas Duval from "Zealous" with messages to the government in India. Duval travelled across the Middle East overland via camel train to Aleppo and took the East India Company ship "Fly" from Basra to Bombay, acquainting Governor-General of India Viscount Wellesley with the situation in Egypt. On 12 August the frigates under Captain Thomas Moutray Waller and under Captain George Johnstone Hope, and the sloop under Captain Robert Retalick, arrived off Alexandria. Initially the British mistook the frigate squadron for French warships and "Swiftsure" chased them away. They returned the following day once the error had been realised. The same day as the frigates arrived, Nelson sent "Mutine" to Britain with dispatches, under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Bladen Capel, who had replaced Hardy after the latter's promotion to captain of "Vanguard". On 14 August, Nelson sent "Orion", "Majestic", "Bellerophon", "Minotaur", "Defence", "Audacious", "Theseus", "Franklin", "Tonnant", "Aquilon", "Conquérant", "Peuple Souverain," and "Spartiate" to sea under the command of Saumarez. Many ships had only jury masts and it took a full day for the convoy to reach the mouth of the bay, finally sailing into open water on 15 August. On 16 August the British burned and destroyed the grounded prize "Heureux" as no longer fit for service and on 18 August also burned "Guerrier" and "Mercure". On 19 August, Nelson sailed for Naples with "Vanguard", "Culloden," and "Alexander", leaving Hood in command of "Zealous", "Goliath", "Swiftsure," and the recently joined frigates to watch over French activities at Alexandria. The first message to reach Bonaparte regarding the disaster that had overtaken his fleet arrived on 14 August at his camp on the road between Salahieh and Cairo. The messenger was a staff officer sent by the Governor of Alexandria General Jean Baptiste Kléber, and the report had been hastily written by Admiral Ganteaume, who had subsequently rejoined Villeneuve's ships at sea. One account reports that when he was handed the message, Bonaparte read it without emotion before calling the messenger to him and demanding further details. When the messenger had finished, the French general reportedly announced "Nous n'avons plus de flotte: eh bien. Il faut rester en ces contrées, ou en sortir grands comme les anciens" ("We no longer have a fleet: well, we must either remain in this country or quit it as great as the ancients"). Another story, as told by the general's secretary, Bourienne, claims that Bonaparte was almost overcome by the news and exclaimed "Unfortunate Brueys, what have you done!" Bonaparte later placed much of the blame for the defeat on the wounded Admiral Blanquet, falsely accusing him of surrendering "Franklin" while his ship was undamaged. Protestations from Ganteaume and Minister Étienne Eustache Bruix later reduced the degree of criticism Blanquet faced, but he never again served in a command capacity. Bonaparte's most immediate concern however was with his own officers, who began to question the wisdom of the entire expedition. Inviting his most senior officers to dinner, Bonaparte asked them how they were. When they replied that they were "marvellous," Bonaparte responded that it was just as well, since he would have them shot if they continued "fostering mutinies and preaching revolt." To quell any uprising among the native inhabitants, Egyptians overheard discussing the battle were threatened with having their tongues cut out. Reaction. Nelson's first set of dispatches were captured when "Leander" was intercepted and defeated by "Généreux" in a fierce engagement off the western shore of Crete on 18 August 1798. As a result, reports of the battle did not reach Britain until Capel arrived in "Mutine" on 2 October, entering the Admiralty at 11:15 and personally delivering the news to Lord Spencer, who collapsed unconscious when he heard the report. Although Nelson had previously been castigated in the press for failing to intercept the French fleet, rumours of the battle had begun to arrive in Britain from the continent in late September and the news Capel brought was greeted with celebrations right across the country. Within four days Nelson had been elevated to Baron Nelson of the Nile and Burnham Thorpe, a title with which he was privately dissatisfied, believing his actions deserved better reward. King George III addressed the Houses of Parliament on 20 November with the words: Saumarez's convoy of prizes stopped first at Malta, where Saumarez provided assistance to a rebellion on the island among the Maltese population. It then sailed to Gibraltar, arriving on 18 October to the cheers of the garrison. Saumarez wrote that, "We can never do justice to the warmth of their applause, and the praises they all bestowed on our squadron." On 23 October, following the transfer of the wounded to the military hospital and provision of basic supplies, the convoy sailed on towards Lisbon, leaving "Bellerophon" and "Majestic" behind for more extensive repairs. "Peuple Souverain" also remained at Gibraltar: The ship was deemed too badly damaged for the Atlantic voyage to Britain and so was converted to a guardship under the name of HMS "Guerrier". The remaining prizes underwent basic repairs and then sailed for Britain, spending some months at the Tagus and joining with the annual merchant convoy from Portugal in June 1799 under the escort of a squadron commanded by Admiral Sir Alan Gardner, before eventually arriving at Plymouth. Their age and battered state meant that neither "Conquérant" nor "Aquilon" were considered fit for active service in the Royal Navy and both were subsequently hulked, although they had been bought into the service for £20,000 (equivalent to £ in ) each as HMS "Conquerant" and HMS "Aboukir" to provide a financial reward to the crews that had captured them. Similar sums were also paid out for "Guerrier", "Mercure", "Heureux" and "Peuple Souverain", while the other captured ships were worth considerably more. Constructed of Adriatic oak, "Tonnant" had been built in 1792 and "Franklin" and "Spartiate" were less than a year old. "Tonnant" and "Spartiate", both of which later fought at the Battle of Trafalgar, joined the Royal Navy under their old names while "Franklin", considered to be "the finest two-decked ship in the world", was renamed HMS "Canopus". The total value of the prizes captured at the Nile and subsequently bought into the Royal Navy was estimated at just over £130,000 (equivalent to £ in ). Additional awards were presented to the British fleet: Nelson was awarded £2,000 (£ in ) a year for life by the Parliament of Great Britain and £1,000 per annum by the Parliament of Ireland, although the latter was inadvertently discontinued after the Act of Union dissolved the Irish Parliament. Both parliaments gave unanimous votes of thanks, each captain who served in the battle was presented with a specially minted gold medal and the first lieutenant of every ship engaged in the battle was promoted to commander. Troubridge and his men, initially excluded, received equal shares in the awards after Nelson personally interceded for the crew of the stranded "Culloden, "even though they did not directly participate in the engagement. The Honourable East India Company presented Nelson with £10,000 (£ in ) in recognition of the benefit his action had on their holdings and the cities of London, Liverpool and other municipal and corporate bodies made similar awards. Nelson's own captains presented him with a sword and a portrait as "proof of their esteem." Nelson publicly encouraged this close bond with his officers and on 29 September 1798 described them as "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers", echoing William Shakespeare's play "Henry V". From this grew the notion of the Nelsonic Band of Brothers, a cadre of high-quality naval officers that served with Nelson for the remainder of his life. Nearly five decades later the battle was among the actions recognised by a clasp attached to the Naval General Service Medal, awarded upon application to all British participants still living in 1847. Other rewards were bestowed by foreign states, particularly the Ottoman Emperor Selim III, who made Nelson the first Knight Commander of the newly created Order of the Crescent, and presented him with a chelengk, a diamond studded rose, a sable fur and numerous other valuable presents. Tsar Paul I of Russia sent, among other rewards, a gold box studded with diamonds, and similar gifts in silver arrived from other European rulers. On his return to Naples, Nelson was greeted with a triumphal procession led by King Ferdinand IV and Sir William Hamilton and was introduced for only the third time to Sir William's wife Emma, Lady Hamilton, who fainted violently at the meeting, and apparently took several weeks to recover from her injuries. Lauded as a hero by the Neapolitan court, Nelson was later to dabble in Neapolitan politics and become the Duke of Bronté, actions for which he was criticised by his superiors and his reputation suffered. British general John Moore, who met Nelson in Naples at this time, described him as "covered with stars, medals and ribbons, more like a Prince of Opera than the Conqueror of the Nile." Rumours of a battle first appeared in the French press as early as 7 August, although credible reports did not arrive until 26 August, and even these claimed that Nelson was dead and Bonaparte a British prisoner. When the news became certain, the French press insisted that the defeat was the result both of an overwhelmingly large British force and unspecified "traitors." Among the anti-government journals in France, the defeat was blamed on the incompetence of the French Directory and on supposed lingering Royalist sentiments in the Navy. Villeneuve came under scathing attack on his return to France for his failure to support Brueys during the battle. In his defence, he pleaded that the wind had been against him and that Brueys had not issued orders for him to counterattack the British fleet. Writing many years later, Bonaparte commented that if the French Navy had adopted the same tactical principles as the British: By contrast, the British press were jubilant; many newspapers sought to portray the battle as a victory for Britain over anarchy, and the success was used to attack the supposedly pro-republican Whig politicians Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In the United States, the outcome of the battle led President John Adams to pursue diplomacy with France to end the Quasi-War, as the French naval defeat rendered the prospect of an invasion of the United States less likely. There has been extensive historiographical debate over the comparative strengths of the fleets, although they were ostensibly evenly matched in size, each containing 13 ships of the line. However, the loss of "Culloden", the relative sizes of "Orient" and "Leander" and the participation in the action by two of the French frigates and several smaller vessels, as well as the theoretical strength of the French position, leads most historians to the conclusion that the French were marginally more powerful. This is accentuated by the weight of broadside of several of the French ships: "Spartiate", "Franklin", "Orient", "Tonnant" and "Guillaume Tell" were each significantly larger than any individual British ship in the battle. However inadequate deployment, reduced crews, and the failure of the rear division under Villeneuve to meaningfully participate, all contributed to the French defeat. Effects. The Battle of the Nile has been called "arguably, the most decisive naval engagement of the great age of sail", and "the most splendid and glorious success which the British Navy gained." Historian and novelist C. S. Forester, writing in 1929, compared the Nile to the great naval actions in history and concluded that "it still only stands rivalled by Tsu-Shima as an example of the annihilation of one fleet by another of approximately equal material force". The effect on the strategic situation in the Mediterranean was immediate, reversing the balance of the conflict and giving the British control at sea that they maintained for the remainder of the war. The destruction of the French Mediterranean fleet allowed the Royal Navy to return to the sea in force, as British squadrons set up blockades off French and allied ports. In particular, British ships cut Malta off from France, aided by the rebellion among the native Maltese population that forced the French garrison to retreat to Valletta and shut the gates. The ensuing siege of Malta lasted for two years before the defenders were finally starved into surrender. In 1799, British ships harassed Bonaparte's army as it marched east and north through Palestine, and played a crucial part in Bonaparte's defeat at the siege of Acre, when the barges carrying the siege train were captured and the French storming parties were bombarded by British ships anchored offshore. It was during one of these latter engagements that Captain Miller of "Theseus" was killed in an ammunition explosion. The defeat at Acre forced Bonaparte to retreat to Egypt and effectively ended his efforts to carve an empire in the Middle East. The French general returned to France without his army late in the year, leaving Kléber in command of Egypt. The Ottoman Empire, with whom Bonaparte had hoped to conduct an alliance once his control of Egypt was complete, was encouraged by the Battle of the Nile to go to war against France. This led to a series of campaigns that slowly sapped the strength from the French army trapped in Egypt. The British victory also encouraged the Austrian Empire and the Russian Empire, both of whom were mustering armies as part of a Second Coalition, which declared war on France in 1799. With the Mediterranean undefended, an Imperial Russian Navy fleet entered the Ionian Sea, while Austrian armies recaptured much of the Italian territory lost to Bonaparte in the previous war. Without their best general and his veterans, the French suffered a series of defeats and it was not until Bonaparte returned to become First Consul that France once again held a position of strength on Continental Europe. In 1801 a British Expeditionary Force defeated the demoralised remains of the French army in Egypt. The Royal Navy used its dominance in the Mediterranean to invade Egypt without the fear of ambush while anchored off the Egyptian coast. In spite of the overwhelming British victory in the climactic battle, the campaign has sometimes been considered a strategic success for France. Historian Edward Ingram noted that if Nelson had successfully intercepted Bonaparte at sea as ordered, the ensuing battle could have annihilated both the French fleet and the transports. As it was, Bonaparte was free to continue the war in the Middle East and later to return to Europe personally unscathed. The potential of a successful engagement at sea to change the course of history is underscored by the list of French army officers carried aboard the convoy who later formed the core of the generals and marshals under Emperor Napoleon. In addition to Bonaparte himself, Louis-Alexandre Berthier, Auguste de Marmont, Jean Lannes, Joachim Murat, Louis Desaix, Jean Reynier, Antoine-François Andréossy, Jean-Andoche Junot, Louis-Nicolas Davout and Dumas were all passengers on the cramped Mediterranean crossing. Legacy. The Battle of the Nile remains one of the Royal Navy's most famous victories, and has remained prominent in the British popular imagination, sustained by its depiction in a large number of cartoons, paintings, poems, and plays. One of the best known poems about the battle is "Casabianca", which was written by Felicia Dorothea Hemans in 1826 and gives a fictional account of the actual death of the French Captain Casabianca's son on "Orient", i.e. the boy who famously "stood on the burning deck" was French. Monuments were raised, including Cleopatra's Needle in London. Muhammad Ali of Egypt gave the monument in 1819 in recognition of the battle of 1798 and the campaign of 1801 but Great Britain did not erect it on the Victoria Embankment until 1878. Another memorial, the Nile Clumps near Amesbury, consists of stands of beech trees purportedly planted by Lord Queensbury at the behest of Lady Hamilton and Thomas Hardy after Nelson's death. The trees form a plan of the battle; each clump represents the position of a British or French ship. On the Hall Place estate, Burchetts Green, Berkshire (now Berkshire College of Agriculture), a double line of oak trees, each tree representing a ship of the opposing fleets, was planted by William East, Baronet, in celebration of the victory. He also constructed a scale-sized pyramid and a life-sized statue of Nelson on the highest point of the estate. The composer Joseph Haydn had just completed the Missa in Angustiis (mass for troubled times) after Napoleon Bonaparte had defeated the Austrian army in four major battles. The well received news of France's defeat at the Nile however resulted in the mass gradually acquiring the nickname "Lord Nelson Mass". The title became indelible when, in 1800, Nelson himself visited the Palais Esterházy, accompanied by his mistress, Lady Hamilton, and may have heard the mass performed. The Royal Navy commemorated the battle with the ship names , and , and in 1998 commemorated the 200th anniversary of the battle with a visit to Aboukir Bay by the modern frigate , whose crew laid wreaths in memory of those who lost their lives in the battle. In John le Carré's novel Smiley's People there is mention of a bar on Battle of the Nile Street named 'The Defeated Frog'. Archaeology. Although Nelson biographer Ernle Bradford assumed in 1977 that the remains of "Orient" "are almost certainly unrecoverable," the first archaeological investigation into the battle began in 1983, when a French survey team under Jacques Dumas discovered the wreck of the French flagship. Franck Goddio later took over the work, leading a major project to explore the bay in 1998. He found that material was scattered over an area in diameter. In addition to military and nautical equipment, Goddio recovered a large number of gold and silver coins from countries across the Mediterranean, some from the 17th century. It is likely that these were part of the treasure taken from Malta that was lost in the explosion aboard "Orient". In 2000, Italian archaeologist Paolo Gallo led an excavation focusing on ancient ruins on Nelson's Island. It uncovered a number of graves that date from the battle, as well as others buried there during the 1801 invasion. These graves, which included a woman and three children, were relocated in 2005 to a cemetery at Shatby in Alexandria. The reburial was attended by sailors from the modern frigate and a band from the Egyptian Navy, as well as a descendant of the only identified burial, Commander James Russell.
4607	41491302	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4607	Barnabas	Barnabas (; ; ), born Joseph () or Joses (), was according to tradition an early Christian, one of the prominent Christian disciples in Jerusalem. According to , Barnabas was a Cypriot Levite. Identified as an apostle in Acts 14:14, he and Paul the Apostle undertook missionary journeys together and defended Gentile converts against the Judaizers. They traveled together making more converts ( AD), and participated in the Council of Jerusalem ( AD). Barnabas and Paul successfully evangelized among the "God-fearing" Gentiles who attended synagogues in various Hellenized cities of Anatolia. Barnabas' story appears in the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul mentions him in some of his epistles. Tertullian named him as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but this and other attributions are conjecture. The Epistle of Barnabas was ascribed to him by Clement of Alexandria and others in the early church and the epistle is included under his name in Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest extant manuscript of the complete New Testament. A few modern scholars concur with this traditional attribution but it is presently a minority view. Although the date, place, and circumstances of his death are historically unverifiable, Christian tradition holds that Barnabas was martyred at Salamis, Cyprus. He is traditionally identified as the founder of the Cypriot Orthodox Church. The feast day of Barnabas is celebrated on 11 June. Barnabas is usually identified as the cousin of Mark the Evangelist on the basis of the term used in Colossians 4, which carries the connotation of "cousin". Orthodox tradition holds that Aristobulus of Britannia, one of the Seventy Disciples, was the brother of Barnabas. Name and etymologies. His Hellenic Jewish parents called him Joseph (although the Byzantine text-type calls him , , 'Joses', a Greek variant of 'Joseph'), but when recounting the story of how he sold his land and gave the money to the apostles in Jerusalem, the Book of Acts says the apostles called him Barnabas. (The "s" at the end is the Greek nominative case ending, and it is not present in the Aramaic form.) The Greek text of explains the name as , , meaning "son of encouragement" or "son of comforter". One theory is that this is from the Aramaic , , meaning 'son (of) consolation'. Another theory derives the name from Aramaic , , meaning "son of the prophet". In the Syriac Bible, the explanation of Barnabus's name in Acts 4:36 is translated "son of consolation." Biblical narrative. Barnabas appears mainly in Acts, a history of the early Christian church. He also appears in several of Paul's epistles. Barnabas, a native of Cyprus and a Levite, is first mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as a member of the early Christian community in Jerusalem, who sold the land that he owned and gave the proceeds to the community. When the future Paul the Apostle returned to Jerusalem after his conversion, Barnabas introduced him to the apostles. Easton, in his Bible Dictionary, supposes that they had been fellow students in the school of Gamaliel. The successful preaching of Christianity at Antioch to non-Jews led the church at Jerusalem to send Barnabas there to oversee the movement. He found the work so extensive and weighty that he went to Tarsus in search of Paul (still referred to as Saul), "an admirable colleague", to assist him. Paul returned with him to Antioch and labored with him for a whole year. At the end of this period, the two were sent up to Jerusalem (44 AD) with contributions from the church at Antioch for the relief of the poorer Christians in Judea. They returned to Antioch taking John Mark with them, the cousin or nephew of Barnabas. Later, they went to Cyprus and some of the principal cities of Pamphylia, Pisidia, and Lycaonia. After recounting what the governor of Cyprus Sergius Paulus believed, Acts 13:9 speaks of Barnabas's spiritual brother no longer as Saul, but as Paul, his Roman name. From that point forward, when Acts refers to the two as a pair, it generally no longer uses "Barnabas and Saul", but "Paul and Barnabas". Only in Acts 14:14 and Acts 15:12,25 does Barnabas again occupy the first place; in Acts 14:14 with reference to Barnabas being mentioned first two verses earlier in Acts 14:12, and in Acts 15:12,25, because Barnabas stood in closer relation to the Jerusalem church than Paul. Paul appears as the more eloquent missionary, whence the Lystrans regarded him as Hermes and Barnabas as Zeus. Acts 14:14 is also the only biblical verse where Barnabas is referred to using the Greek word for Apostle. Returning from this first missionary journey to Antioch, they were again sent up to Jerusalem to consult with the church there regarding the relation of Gentiles to the church. According to Galatians 2:9–10, Barnabas was included with Paul in the agreement made between them, on the one hand, and James, Peter, and John, on the other, that the two former should in the future preach to the pagans, not forgetting the poor at Jerusalem. This matter having been settled, they returned again to Antioch, bringing the agreement of the council that Gentiles were to be admitted into the church without having to adopt Jewish practices. After Paul and Barnabas returned from the Jerusalem council to Antioch, Peter also came to Antioch. Peter associated freely with the Gentiles there, including eating with them, until he was criticized for this by some disciples of James, as doing so was contrary to Mosaic law. Peter then refused to eat any longer with the Gentiles, apparently through fear of displeasing these disciples, and Barnabas followed his example. Paul then stated that Peter and Barnabas "walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel" (Galatians 2:14) and upbraided them before the whole church. In Galatians 2:11–13, Paul says, "And when Kephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong. For, until some people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to draw back and separated himself, because he was afraid of the circumcised. And the rest of the Jews (also) acted hypocritically along with him, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy." Paul then asked Barnabas to accompany him on another journey. Barnabas wished to take John Mark along, but Paul did not, as John Mark had left them on the earlier journey. The dispute ended by Paul and Barnabas taking separate routes. Paul took Silas as his companion, and journeyed through Syria and Cilicia; while Barnabas took John Mark to visit Cyprus. Little is known of the subsequent career of Barnabas. He was still living and labouring as an Apostle in 56 or 57 AD, when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians (1 Corinthians 9:5–6), in which it is stated that he, too, like Paul, earned his own living. The reference indicates also that the friendship between the two was unimpaired. A few years later, when Paul was a prisoner in Rome (61–63 AD), John Mark was attached to him as a disciple, which is regarded as an indication that Barnabas was no longer living (Colossians 4:10). Barnabas and Antioch. Antioch, the third-most important city of the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria, then the capital city of Syria province, today Antakya, Turkey, was where Christians were first called thus. Some of those who had been scattered by the persecution that arose because of Stephen went to Antioch, which became the site of an early Christian community. A considerable minority of the Antioch church of Barnabas's time belonged to the merchant class, and they provided support to the poorer Jerusalem church. Martyrdom. Church tradition developed outside of the canon of the New Testament describes the martyrdom of many saints, including the legend of the martyrdom of Barnabas. It relates that certain Jews coming to Syria and Salamis, where Barnabas was then preaching the gospel, being highly exasperated at his extraordinary success, fell upon him as he was disputing in the synagogue, dragged him out, and stoned him to death. His kinsman, John Mark, privately interred his body. Although it is believed he was martyred by being stoned, the apocryphal Acts of Barnabas states that he was bound with a rope by the neck, and then being dragged only to the site where he would be burned to death. According to the "History of the Cyprus Church", in 478 Barnabas appeared in a dream to the Archbishop Anthemios of Cyprus and revealed to him the place of his sepulchre beneath a carob-tree. The following day Anthemios found the tomb and inside it the remains of Barnabas with a manuscript of Matthew's Gospel on his breast. Anthemios presented the Gospel to Emperor Zeno at Constantinople and received from him the privileges of the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus, that is, the purple cloak which the Greek Archbishop of Cyprus wears at festivals of the church, the imperial sceptre and the red ink with which he affixes his signature. Anthemios then placed the venerable remains of Barnabas in a church which he founded near the tomb. Excavations near the site of a present-day church and monastery, have revealed an early church with two empty tombs, believed to be that of St. Barnabas and Anthemios. St. Barnabas is venerated as the patron saint of Cyprus. He is also considered a patron saint in many other places in the world, including Milan in Italy. On the island of Tenerife (Spain), St. Barnabas was invoked in historical times as patron saint and protector of the island's fields against drought, together with St. Benedict of Nursia. Barnabas the Apostle is remembered in the Church of England with a festival on 11 June. Other sources. Although many assume that the biblical Mark the cousin of Barnabas is the same as John Mark and Mark the Evangelist, the traditionally believed author of the Gospel of Mark, they are listed as three distinct people in Pseudo-Hippolytus' "On the Seventy Apostles of Christ," which includes Barnabas himself as one of the Seventy-Two Disciples. There are two people named Barnabas among Hippolytus' list of Seventy Disciples, One (#13) became the bishop of Milan, the other (#25) the bishop of Heraclea. Most likely one of these two is the biblical Barnabas; the first one is more likely, because the numbering by Hippolytus seems to indicate a level of significance, and Barnabas is traditionally credited with founding the See of Milan. Clement of Alexandria also makes Barnabas one of the Seventy Disciples that are mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Other sources bring Barnabas to Rome and Alexandria. In the "Clementine Recognitions" (i, 7) he is depicted as preaching in Rome even during Christ's lifetime. Cypriots developed the tradition of his later activity and martyrdom no earlier than the 3rd century. The question whether Barnabas was an apostle was often discussed during the Middle Ages. Alleged writings. Tertullian and other Western writers regard Barnabas as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews. This may have been the Roman tradition—which Tertullian usually follows—and it may have been in Rome that the epistle had its first readers. Modern biblical scholarship considers its authorship unknown, though Barnabas is one of those who has been proposed as a possible author. "Photius of the ninth century, refers to some in his day who were uncertain whether the Acts was written by Clement of Rome, Barnabas, or Luke. Yet Photius is certain that the work must be ascribed to Luke." He is also traditionally associated with the Epistle of Barnabas, although some modern scholars think it more likely that the epistle was written in Alexandria in the 130s. The 5th century "Decretum Gelasianum" includes a "Gospel of Barnabas" amongst works condemned as apocryphal; but no certain text or quotation from this work has been identified. Another book using that same title, the Gospel of Barnabas, survives in two post-medieval manuscripts in Italian from the 16th century and Spanish from the 17th century as well as a manuscript in Aramaic found in a cave in Turkey during the anti-smuggling operation and the manuscript was examined by experts to be at least 1,500 years old. Contrary to the canonical Christian Gospels, and in accordance with the Islamic view of Jesus, this later Gospel of Barnabas states that Jesus was not God or the son of God, but a prophet and messenger and that he was not killed or crucified but that Judas Iscariot by God’s miracle was transformed to look like Jesus and was crucified in his place as a divine punishment from God for his betrayal of Jesus and describes Paul as a false prophet who was deceived and deceived others into making others believe that the law was abrogated, permitting every unclean meat, abrogating circumcision laws and deifying Jesus. It also states that Jesus explicitly gave the good news of Prophet Muhammad to come after him by name. The Barnabites. In 1538, the Catholic religious order officially known as "Clerics Regular of St. Paul" ("Clerici Regulares Sancti Pauli"), acquired as their main seat the monastery of Saint Barnabas by the city wall of Milan. The Order was thenceforth known by the popular name of "Barnabites". References. Attribution
4608	7903804	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4608	Birka	Birka ("Birca" in medieval sources), on the island of Björkö (lit. "Birch Island") in present-day Sweden, was an important Viking Age trading center which handled goods from Scandinavia as well as many parts of Continental Europe and the Orient. Björkö is located in Lake Mälaren, 30 kilometers west of contemporary Stockholm, in the municipality of Ekerö. Birka was founded around AD 750 and it flourished for more than 200 years. It was abandoned c. AD 975, around the same time Sigtuna was founded as a Christian town some 35 km to the northeast. It has been estimated that the population in Viking Age Birka was between 500 and 1000 people. The archaeological sites of Birka and Hovgården, on the neighbouring island of Adelsö, make up an archaeological complex which illustrates the elaborate trading networks of Viking Scandinavia and their influence on the subsequent history of Europe. Generally regarded as Sweden's oldest town, Birka (along with Hovgården) has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993. Many burial sites have been uncovered at Birka, leading to the finding of many objects including jewelry and many textile fragments. In recent years, objects from Birka have been in the public eye due to ongoing academic research connection Birka to evidence of trade with the Middle East. History. Birka was founded around 750 AD as a trading port by a king or merchants trying to control trade. It is one of the earliest urban settlements in Scandinavia. Birka was the Baltic link in the Dnieper Trade Route through Ladoga ("Aldeigja") and Novgorod ("Holmsgard") to the Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate. Birka is the site of the first known Christian in Sweden, founded in 831 by Saint Ansgar. As a trading center, Birka most likely offered furs, iron goods, and craft products, in exchange for various materials from much of Europe and Western Asia. Furs were obtained from the Sami people, the Finns, and people in Northwestern Russia, as well as from local trappers. Furs included bear, fox, marten, otter, beaver, and other species. Reindeer antlers and objects carved from reindeer antlers like combs were important items of trade. The trade of walrus tusks, amber, and honey is also documented. Foreign goods found from the graves of Birka include glass and metalware, pottery from the Rhineland, clothing and textiles including Chinese silk, Byzantine embroidery with extremely fine gold thread, brocades with gold passementerie, and plaited cords of high quality. From the ninth century onwards coins minted at Haithabu in Northern Germany and elsewhere in Scandinavia start to appear. However, the vast majority of the coins found at Birka are silver dirhams from the Middle East while English and Carolingian coins are rare. Written accounts. Sources from Birka are mainly archaeological remains. No texts survive from this area, though the written text "Vita Ansgari" ("The Life of Ansgar") by Rimbert (c. 865) describes the missionary work of Ansgar around 830 at Birka, and "Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum" (Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church) by Adam of Bremen in 1075 describes the Archbishop Unni, who died at Birka in 936. Saint Ansgar's work was the first attempt to convert the people of Birka from the Norse religion to Christianity. It was unsuccessful. Both Rimbert and Adam were German clergymen writing in Latin. There are no known Norse sources mentioning the name of the settlement, or even the settlement itself, and the original Norse name of Birka is unknown. "Birca" is the Latinised form given in the written sources by Rimbert and Adam; and "Birka" is the contemporary, unhistorical Swedish form. The Latin name is probably derived from an Old Norse word "birk" which probably means a market place. Related to this was the "Bjärköa law" (bjärköarätt) which regulated the life of market places in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Birka and similar spellings are very common in Scandinavian place names still today leading to speculation that all references to Birka, especially those by Adam of Bremen, were not about the same location. Both publications are silent on Birka's size, layout, and appearance. Based on Rimbert's account, Birka was significant because it had a port and it was the location of the regional ting. Adam only mentions the port, but otherwise, Birka seems to have been significant to him because it was the start of Ansgar's Christian mission and because Archbishop Unni was buried there. "Vita Ansgari" and "Gesta" are sometimes ambiguous, which has caused some controversy as to whether Birka and the Björkö settlement are the same location. Many other locations have been suggested through the years. However, Björkö is the only location that shows remains of a town of Birka's significance, which is why the vast majority of scholars regard Björkö as the location of Birka. Birka was abandoned during the latter half of the 10th century. Based on the dating of the coins, the city seems to have died out around 960. Roughly around the same time, the nearby settlement of Sigtuna supplanted Birka as the main trading center in the Mälaren area. The reasons for Birka's decline are disputed. The Baltic island of Gotland was also in a better strategic position for Rus'-Byzantine trade and was gaining eminence as a mercantile stronghold. Historian Neil Kent has speculated that the area may have been the victim of an enemy assault. The Varangian trade stations in Russia suffered a serious decline at roughly the same date. Rimbert's description. In "Vita Ansgari" ("The life of Ansgar") monk and later archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen Rimbert gives the first known description of Birka. The town was the center of Catholic missionary activities in the 9th century Sweden. Rimbert's interests were in the Christian faith, not so much in the Swedish geopolicy, so his descriptions of Birka remain approximate at best. Bridgehead of Christian missionaries. This is how it all started in 829: Meanwhile it happened that Swedish ambassadors had come to the Emperor Louis the Pious, and, amongst other matters which they had been ordered to bring to the attention of the emperor, they informed him that there were many belonging to their nation who desired to embrace the Christian religion, and that their king so far favoured this suggestion that he would permit God's priests to reside there, provided that they might be deemed worthy of such a favour and that the emperor would send them suitable preachers. (Chapter IX) Ansgar then undertook the mission committed to him by the emperor, who desired that he should go to the Swedes and discover whether this people was prepared to accept the faith as their messengers had declared. (Chapter X) Ansgar was already experienced in the missionary work in Denmark, and set forth to Sweden. Rimbert describes the trip very generally: It may suffice for me to say that while they were in the midst of their journey they fell into the hands of pirates. The merchants with whom they were travelling, defended themselves vigorously and for a time successfully, but eventually they were conquered and overcome by the pirates, who took from them their ships and all that they possessed, whilst they themselves barely escaped on. foot to land. —With great difficulty they accomplished their long journey on foot, traversing also the intervening seas (maria), where it was possible, by ship, and eventually arrived at the Swedish port called Birka. (Chapters X and XI) Rimbert does not say where Ansgar sailed off or where he landed. Noteworthy is just his note about several "seas" that they had to cross to get to Birka from the place they had landed to. Since Rimbert mentions them to have crossed the seas by ship "where it was possible" they clearly had the alternative of going around them as well, meaning that the seas were probably the numerous lakes in southern Sweden. When Ansgar again travelled to Birka from Germany about 852, it went easier: Ansgar accomplished the journey on which he had set out, and after spending nearly twenty days in a ship, he arrived at Birka (Chapter XXVI) This might mean that he sailed off from Hamburg or Bremen instead of some port in Baltic Sea, since the later account by Adam of Bremen gives the distance of Scania and Birka to be only five days at sea. Kings. Several Swedish kings of the 9th century, Björn, Anund and Olof, are all mentioned in "Vita" to have spent time in Birka. None of them is however said to have had his residence there, as the Swedish king and his retinue periodically moved between the Husbys, parts of the network of royal estates called Uppsala öd. King Björn met Ansgar in Birka when he arrived there in 829 (Chapter XI). Later King Olof met him there as well during his last trip in 852 (Chapter XXVI). Church. Ansgar's missionary work resulted in first churches to be built in Sweden. Talking about Herigar, the prefect of Birka: A little later he built a church on his own ancestral property and served God with the utmost devotion. (Chapter XI) Herigar's church was not far from the place where tings were held: On one occasion he himself was sitting in an assembly of people, a stage having been arranged for a council on an open plain. He then summoned his servants and told them to carry him to his church. (Chapter XIX) Another church was also built in Sweden, however location is left open: This Gautbert, who at his consecration received the honoured name of the apostle Simeon, went to Sweden, and was honourably received by the king and the people; and he began, amidst general goodwill and approval, to build a church there (Chapter XIV) The exiled Swedish King Anund Uppsale confirms that either one of the churches was in Birka itself when he ponders if Birka should be plundered: "There are there," he said, "many great and powerful gods, and in former time a church was built there, and there are many Christians there who worship Christ" (Chapter XIX) Probable fortress. Danes attacked Birka, accompanied with the deposed king Anund, which caused great distress in the town. Being in great difficulty they fled to a neighbouring city (ad civitatem, quæ iuxta erat, confugerunt) and began to promise and offer to their gods—But inasmuch as the city was not strong and there were few to offer resistance, they sent messengers to the Danes and asked for friendship and alliance. —Hergeir, the faithful servant of the Lord, was angry with them and said, "They will lead away your wives and sons as captives, they will burn our city (urbs) and town (vicus)" and will destroy you with the sword (Chapter XIX) As the neighbouring "city" is not mentioned in any other context than during the Danish attack as a place where people took refuge, it probably meant a nearby fortress. Eventually Danes left, sparing Birka from destruction. "Ting" assembly. When Ansgar asked if King Olof would permit him to establish the Christian religion in the kingdom during his second visit in 852, the king said to him: On this account I have not the power, nor do I dare, to approve the objects of your mission until I can consult our gods by the casting of lots and until I can enquire the will of the people in regard to this matter. Let your messenger attend with me the next assembly (Chapter XXVI) When the day for the assembly which was held in the town of Birka drew near, in accordance with their national custom the king caused a proclamation to be made to the people by the voice of a herald, in order that they might be informed concerning the object of their mission. —The king then rose up from amongst the assembly and forthwith directed one of his own messengers to accompany the bishop's messenger, and to tell him that the people were unanimously inclined to accept his proposal and at the same time to tell him that, whilst their action was entirely agreeable to him, he could not give his full consent until, in another assembly, which was to be held in another part of his kingdom, he could announce this resolution to the people who lived in that district. (Chapter XXVII) Tings were huge open-air events, which required plenty of space. The more important ting that king Olof talked about was probably the "Ting of all Swedes", which was held at the end of February in Uppsala, during the Disting. The king was obliged to obey the common decisions made at this ting, and the most powerful man at this assembly was not the king, but the lawspeaker of Tiundaland. Locally important tings were the Westrogothic "Ting of all Geats" in Skara and the Ostrogothic "Lionga ting" in the vicinity of today's Linköping. Adam of Bremen's description. In "Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum" (Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church), Adam of Bremen mentions Birka many times, and the book is the main source of information on the city. After its initial release in 1075–6, "Gesta" was complemented with supplementary "Scholias" until the death of Adam in the 1080s. Birca is described as an existing city in the original version, but then as destroyed in "Scholia 138". One of Adam's main sources had been the German bishop Adalvard the Younger of Sigtuna and later of Skara as hinted in "Scholia 119". He was also very familiar with Rimbert's work. Adam himself never visited Birka. Location and port. Adam described Birka as a Geatish port town and had gathered many details about it. Birka is the main Geatish town (oppidum Gothorum), situated in the middle of Sweden (Suevoniae), not far (non longe) from the temple called Uppsala (Ubsola) which the Swedes (Sueones) held in the highest esteem when it comes to the worship of the gods; here forms an inlet of the Baltic or the Barbaric Sea a port facing north which welcomes all the wild peoples all around this sea but which is risky for those who are careless or ignorant of such places ... they have therefore blocked this inlet of the troubled sea with hidden masses of rocks along more than 100 stadions (18 km). On this anchorage, being the best sheltered within the maritime region of Sweden (Suevoniae), all the ships belonging to Danes (Danorum) known as Norwegians (Nortmannorum) as well as to Slavs (Sclavorum), Sembrians (Semborum) and other Scythian (Scithiae) peoples use to convene every year for sundry necessary commerce. (I 62) Turning from the northern parts to the mouth of the Baltic Sea we first meet the Norwegians (Nortmanni), then the Danish region of Skåne (Sconia) stands out, and beyond these live the Geats (Gothi) for a long stretch all the way to Birka. (IV 14) Having described Västergötland and Skara, Adam writes: Beyond it Östergötland (Ostrogothia) extends along the sea, that is called the Baltic Sea, all the way to Birka. (IV 23) Noteworthy in the following statement is the usage of the term "not far" (non longe) which was also used to describe the distance between Birka and the Uppsala temple: Furthermore we have been told that there are many more islands in that sea, one of which is called the Great Estland (Aestland) – And this island is told to be quite close to the Woman Land (terrae feminarum), which is not far (non longe) away from Birka of the Swedes. (IV 17) Adam also had travel instructions from Skåne to Sigtuna: From Skåne (Sconia) of the Danes one reaches Sigtuna (Sictonam) or Birka after five days at sea, for they are indeed alike. But by land from Skåne across the Geatish people (Gothorum populos) and cities Skara (Scaranem), Telgas and Birka, one reaches Sigtuna only after a full month. (IV 28) "Telgas" is not mentioned anywhere else, and it remains as speculative as Birka. The most popular identification among many telge names in Sweden is Södertälje. "Scholia 121" of IV 20 tells also: For those who sail from Skåne (Sconia) of the Danes to Birka, the journey takes five days, from Birka to Russia (Ruzziam) likewise five days at sea. (Scholia 121) The following definition remains even more mysterious: In pity of their errors, our archbishop ordained as their diocesan capital Birka, which is in the middle of Sweden (Sueoniae) facing Jumne (Iumnem), the capital of the Slavs, and equally distant from all the coasts of the surrounding sea. (IV 20) Since it is physically impossible for any Swedish town to face Jumne, the latter being situated along River Oder, Adam's statement is probably a misunderstanding. No place having a similar name to Birka is known to have situated on the opposite shore of Oder, so it may be possible that something similar to Jumne was located opposite to Birka. Bishop. Archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen that oversaw the missionary work in Scandinavia until 1103, had appointed bishops to Sweden at least from 1014 onwards, the first see being in Skara. Several bishops were appointed for Sweden in 1060s, one also for Birka. For Sweden, six were consecrated: Adalvard the Elder (Adalwardum) and Acilinum, also Adalvard the Younger (Adalwardum) and Tadicum, and furthermore Simeon (Symeonem) and the monk John (Iohannem). (III 70) "Scholia 94" appends this as follows: Adalvard the Elder (Adalwardus senior) was to superintend both lands of the Geats (uterque praefectus est Gothiae), Adalvard the Younger Sigtuna (Sictunam) and Uppsala (Ubsalam), Simeon (Symon) the Sami people (Scritefingos), John (Iohannes) the islands of the Baltic Sea. (Scholia 94) Furthermore, the following was said about John's location after talking about Birka: For this city he ordained, as the first among our people, the abbot Hiltin, whom he wanted to call John. (IV 20) John seems to have been situated in Birka in order to prepare for the missionary work among the many heathen people that flooded to Birca from around the Baltic coasts. This was a logical continuation to Birka's position as the first missionary town in Sweden. Noteworthy here is that the biggest islands in the Baltic Sea, Öland and Gotland, were part of the diocese of Linköping in the Middle Ages, covering also Östergötland and eastern Småland. Location of Unni's tomb. "Scholia 122" of IV 20 locates the tomb of Hamburg's archbishop Unni in Birka: There is the port of Saint Ansgar and the tomb of the holy Archbishop Unni, and a familiar haven, it is said, for the holy confessors of our diocese. (Scholia 122) According to "Gesta", Unni had died in 936 (I 64). Destruction. After having consistently described Birka as an existing city, "Scholia 138" of IV 29 describes Birka's sudden demise. Talking about Adalvard the Younger, the bishop of Sigtuna and later that of Skara, Adam or a later copyist has written: During his journey he seized the opportunity to make a detour to Birka, which is now reduced to loneliness so that one can hardly find vestiges of the city; therefore impossible to come upon the tomb of the holy Archbishop Unni. (Scholia 138) The remark does not make it clear if Adalvard found the city destroyed or if that had happened after his visit and the later remark was just to warn the future pilgrims not to go there anymore in vain. As Adalvard was back in Bremen already by 1069 and is mentioned as one of Adam's sources of information, it would have been expected that word about Birka's destruction had reached also Adam before he published his work half a decade later. Björkö archaeological site. The exact location of Birka was also lost during the centuries, leading to speculation from Swedish historians. In 1450, the island of Björkö was first claimed to be Birka by the "Chronicle of Sweden" ("Prosaiska krönikan"). In search of Birka, National Antiquarian Johan Hadorph was the first to attempt excavations on Björkö in the late 17th century. In the late 19th century, Hjalmar Stolpe, an entomologist by education, arrived on Björkö to study fossilized insects found in amber on the island. Stolpe found very large amounts of amber, which is unusual since amber is not normally found in lake Mälaren. Stolpe speculated that the island may have been an important trading post, prompting him to conduct a series of archeological excavations between 1871 and 1895. The excavations soon indicated that a major settlement had been located on the island and eventually Stolpe spent two decades excavating the island. After Björkö came to be identified with ancient Birka, it has been assumed that the original name of Birka was simply "Bierkø" (sometimes spelled "Bjärkö"), an earlier form of "Björkö". A significant collection of textiles fragments were retrieved during excavations, mostly from chamber graves. Agnes Geijer published the most detailed analysis of this collection in 1938, although her study was based upon only around 5% of the 4800 textile fragments preserved from the site. The collection represents a usual variety of different types of textiles showing high quality textiles manufactured by different techniques like tabby and twill. Mostly made from wool and flax, the quality of the textiles studied by Geijer ranged from very coarse to fine fabrics with high thread counts that required complicated techniques to create. The variety of materials and techniques to make the tablet woven textiles led Geijer to theorize that some of the textiles were imported. Geijer also found remains of the three-end twill textile that has not been found anywhere else in Northern Europe. Geijer theorized that some of the fragments came from the East, possibly China, due the use of gold and silver wire as well as silk. Ownership of Björkö is today mainly in private hands and is used for farming and management also benefits biodiversity. The archaeological remains are located in the north part of Björkö and span an area of about 7 hectares (17 acres). The remains are both burial-sites and buildings, and in the south part of this area, there is also a hill fort called "Borgen" ("The Fortress"). The construction technique of the buildings is still unknown, but the main material was wood. An adjacent island holds the remains of Hovgården, an estate that housed the King's retinue during visits. Approximately 700 people lived at Birka when it was at its largest, and about 3,000 graves have been found. Its administrative center was supposedly located outside of the settlement itself, on the nearby island of Adelsö. The most recent large excavation was undertaken between 1990 and 1995 in a region of dark earth, believed to be the site of the main settlement. Shipyard. On 15 June 2022, it was announced that archaeologists from Stockholm University's Archaeological Research Laboratory had found a Viking Age shipyard in Lake Mälaren. It was the first time a site like the shipyard had been found. "The site found consisted of a stone-lined depression in the Viking Age shore zone with a wooden boat slip at the bottom. The finds at the site consist of large quantities of both unused and used boat rivets, whetstones made from slate and woodworking tools." Björkö objects. "Allah" textile controversy. In 2017, Annika Larsson, a textile researcher, claimed in a press release by Uppsala University to have discovered a textile among the finds from Birka that bore the Arabic words "Allah" and "Ali". She theorized that some of the Vikings could have been influenced by Islam, leading to widespread media coverage. Stephennie Mulder, a professor of Islamic art at the University of Texas at Austin, replied to Larsson's findings in a Twitter thread. Based on the epigraphy, Mulder argued that the textile bore a simple geometric pattern and not Arabic writing because the dating of the textile was from the 10th century and the style of writing Larsson claimed was on the textile, square Kufic, is not seen until the 15th century. Larsson had also proposed extensions to the tablet weaving that expanded beyond the original drawing by Agnes Geijer in 1938. Textile specialist Carolyn Priest-Dorman argued that the expansions are impossible because the fragment has finished edges called selvages and the band would have shown cut weft threads if the fragment had been narrowed at some point. Larsson's drawings were speculative and not based on evidence that an expansion existed. The backlash following these criticisms led the press release on the Uppsala University website to include a note that Larsson's research was preliminary and a comment regarding the criticisms. In 2020, Larsson published an article reiterating her claim that the textile bore Arabic writing, without addressing these criticisms. "Allah" ring controversy. A ring was found during the archeological excavations at Birka between 1872 and 1895, when archeologist Hjalmar Stolpe discovered it in a 9th-century Viking woman's burial. It is made of high-quality silver alloy and is set with a pink-violet oval glass. The ring, preserved at the Swedish history museum, became known as the "Allah ring" because of the pseudo-Kufic inscription found on the ring's glass that resembles the word Allah (Arabic: الله). While other rings were found at the Birka excavations, the "Allah ring" was the only one that had this type of inscription. The Arabic historical linguist Marijn van Putten argued that the inscription on the ring was an example of pseudo-Kufic and that it has no meaning in Arabic. Nevertheless, other analysts extrapolated that the pseudo-Kufic engraving was indeed Arabic and that this was sufficient evidence to directly link Vikings to Islamic civilization. In her Twitter thread on the "Allah” textile, Stephennie Mulder drew on the work of van Putten to argue that like the textile, the ring had been similarly misunderstood. However, she acknowledged that the Arabic language—found on the ring and other objects from Birka—was appreciated by the Vikings as a sign of social status. The inscription could suggest that the ring's owner might have been one of the Viking elites who were in contact with the Islamic world via trade or travel. Dragonhead. The Birka dragonhead is a 45mm long decorative object made from a tin alloy. Sven Kalmring and Lena Holmquist maintain that the dragonhead was cast from a soapstone mold due to the presence of casting burs on the object and the fact that similar casting molds of dragons have been found in Birka. Stylistically similar dragonheads have been discovered around the Baltic, and scholars like Anne-Sofie Gräslund believe they likely functioned as dress pins. Wearable accessories. 10 small silver crosses were found in graves at Birka. Missionaries, brought by Rimbert and others, led to some converts to Christianity. 27 graves contained small pendants of Thor's hammer from around the 10th century. Both traditional Viking religious beliefs and Christianity were present at Birka. Many Birka grave excavations produced a number of funerary findings unique to the deceased and the region of the grave. In the excavation of grave Bj 463, a small copper alloy brooch with animal motifs was found alongside the skeletal remains of a young girl from Birka, and similar ones appeared in other excavations around Birka. The brooch is understood to be typically related to female burials and also female jewelry of the Viking period. The surrounding fragments of textiles attached to these brooches, scattered around various graves across Sweden, also give an understanding of what the typical womenswear of the Viking age may have been in the 9th and 10th centuries. Dirham coins. Dirham coins have been located all around Scandinavian countries and suggest strong trade relations existed between the medieval Middle East and Northern Europe. A dirham coin was found in the excavation of grave sites in Birka, with Arabic writing and an absence of imagery that would date the coin sometime after the 7th century. Other writing on the coin indicates the location of the mint as well as the names of a caliph and an Amir, which place the coin's origins in al-Shah, modern day Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The coin's inscription in Arabic translates into English:There is no deity but Allah alone he has no equal For God Muhammad is the messenger of God. Birka burial sites. Over 3,000 grave sites are located in Birka, including both cremations and inhumations in coffins or chamber graves. Skeletal analysis and the presence of gender-specific jewelry and objects in graves has shown that the majority of the deceased are female. Scholar Nancy L. Wicker suggests that the disproportionate number of female graves is due to the fact that female grave goods are easily identifiable, but male graves without objects are difficult to identify. Many graves contain objects such as coins, glass, and textiles that originated in foreign countries as far as the Middle East and Eastern Asia. According to Nancy L. Wicker, these objects were either imported to Birka as luxury trade goods, or they belonged to foreign individuals who were buried at Birka. Grave Bj 463 contained the skeleton of a girl from the mid-10th century. She was buried in a coffin with grave goods associated with high-status women, including a round brooch, glass beads, and a needle case. By the condition of her teeth, she was 5–6 years old at the time of her death, and further analysis determined that her diet was similar to that of male warriors instead of a typical child's diet. Scholar Marianne Hem Eriksen maintains that this girl is an unusual case of a high-status child burial, as children were seldom buried with identifiable grave goods.
4609	43744280	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4609	Beta-lactamase	Beta-lactamases (β-lactamases) are enzymes () produced by bacteria that provide multi-resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics such as penicillins, cephalosporins, cephamycins, monobactams and carbapenems (ertapenem), although carbapenems are relatively resistant to beta-lactamase. Beta-lactamase provides antibiotic resistance by breaking the antibiotics' structure. These antibiotics all have a common element in their molecular structure: a four-atom ring known as a beta-lactam (β-lactam) ring. Through hydrolysis, the enzyme lactamase breaks the β-lactam ring open, deactivating the molecule's antibacterial properties. Beta-lactamases produced by gram-negative bacteria are usually secreted, especially when antibiotics are present in the environment. Structure. The structure of a "Streptomyces" serine β-lactamase (SBLs) is given by . The alpha-beta fold () resembles that of a -transpeptidase, from which the enzyme is thought to have evolved. β-lactam antibiotics bind to -transpeptidases to inhibit bacterial cell wall biosynthesis. Serine β-lactamases are grouped by sequence similarity into types A, C, and D. The other type of beta-lactamase is of the metallo type ("type B"). Metallo-beta-lactamases (MBLs) need metal ion(s) (1 or 2 Zn2+ ions) on their active site for their catalytic activities. The structure of the New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1 is given by . It resembles a RNase Z, from which it is thought to have evolved. Mechanism of action. The two types of beta-lactamases work on the basis of the two basic mechanisms of opening the β-lactam ring. The SBLs are similar in structure and mechanistically to the β-lactam target penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) which are necessary for cell wall building and modifying. SBLs and PBPs both covalently change an active site serine residue. The difference between the PBPs and SBLs is that the latter generates free enzyme and inactive antibiotic by the very quick hydrolysis of the acyl-enzyme intermediate. The MBLs use the Zn2+ ions to activate a binding site water molecule for the hydrolysis of the β-lactam ring. Zinc chelators have recently been investigated as metallo-β-lactamase inhibitors, as they are often able to restore carbapenem susceptibility. Penicillinase. Penicillinase is a specific type of β-lactamase, showing specificity for penicillins, again by hydrolysing the β-lactam ring. Molecular weights of the various penicillinases tend to cluster near 50 kilodaltons. Penicillinase was the first β-lactamase to be identified. It was first isolated by Abraham and Chain in 1940 from "E. coli" (which are gram-negative) even before penicillin entered clinical use, but penicillinase production quickly spread to bacteria that previously did not produce it or produced it only rarely. Penicillinase-resistant beta-lactams such as methicillin were developed, but there is now widespread resistance to even these. Resistance in gram-negative bacteria. Among gram-negative bacteria, the emergence of resistance to extended-spectrum cephalosporins has been a major concern. It appeared initially in a limited number of bacterial species ("E. cloacae", "C. freundii", "S. marcescens", and "P. aeruginosa") that could mutate to hyperproduce their chromosomal class C β-lactamase. A few years later, resistance appeared in bacterial species not naturally producing AmpC enzymes ("K. pneumoniae", "Salmonella" spp., "P. mirabilis") due to the production of TEM- or SHV-type ESBLs (extended spectrum beta lactamases). Characteristically, such resistance has included oxyimino- (for example ceftizoxime, cefotaxime, ceftriaxone, and ceftazidime, as well as the oxyimino-monobactam aztreonam), but not 7-alpha-methoxy-cephalosporins (cephamycins; in other words, cefoxitin and cefotetan); has been blocked by inhibitors such as clavulanate, sulbactam or tazobactam and did not involve carbapenems and temocillin. Chromosomal-mediated AmpC β-lactamases represent a new threat, since they confer resistance to 7-alpha-methoxy-cephalosporins (cephamycins) such as cefoxitin or cefotetan but are not affected by commercially available β-lactamase inhibitors, and can, in strains with loss of outer membrane porins, provide resistance to carbapenems. Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL). Members of this family commonly express β-lactamases (e.g., TEM-3, TEM-4, and SHV-2 ) which confer resistance to expanded-spectrum (extended-spectrum) cephalosporins. In the mid-1980s, this new group of enzymes, the extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs), was detected (first detected in 1979). The prevalence of ESBL-producing bacteria have been gradually increasing in acute care hospitals. The prevalence in the general population varies between countries, e.g. approximately 6% in Germany and France, 13% in Saudi Arabia, and 63% in Egypt. ESBLs are beta-lactamases that hydrolyze extended-spectrum cephalosporins with an oxyimino side chain. These cephalosporins include cefotaxime, ceftriaxone, and ceftazidime, as well as the oxyimino-monobactam aztreonam. Thus ESBLs confer multi-resistance to these antibiotics and related oxyimino-beta lactams. In typical circumstances, they derive from genes for TEM-1, TEM-2, or SHV-1 by mutations that alter the amino acid configuration around the active site of these β-lactamases. A broader set of β-lactam antibiotics are susceptible to hydrolysis by these enzymes. An increasing number of ESBLs not of TEM or SHV lineage have recently been described. The ESBLs are frequently plasmid encoded. Plasmids responsible for ESBL production frequently carry genes encoding resistance to other drug classes (for example, aminoglycosides). Therefore, antibiotic options in the treatment of ESBL-producing organisms are extremely limited. Carbapenems are the treatment of choice for serious infections due to ESBL-producing organisms, yet carbapenem-resistant (primarily ertapenem-resistant) isolates have recently been reported. ESBL-producing organisms may appear susceptible to some extended-spectrum cephalosporins. However, treatment with such antibiotics has been associated with high failure rates. Types. TEM beta-lactamases (class A). TEM-1 is the most commonly encountered beta-lactamase in gram-negative bacteria. Up to 90% of ampicillin resistance in "E. coli" is due to the production of TEM-1. Also responsible for the ampicillin and penicillin resistance that is seen in "H. influenzae" and "N. gonorrhoeae" in increasing numbers. Although TEM-type beta-lactamases are most often found in "E. coli" and "K. pneumoniae", they are also found in other species of gram-negative bacteria with increasing frequency. The amino acid substitutions responsible for the extended-spectrum beta lactamase (ESBL) phenotype cluster around the active site of the enzyme and change its configuration, allowing access to oxyimino-beta-lactam substrates. Opening the active site to beta-lactam substrates also typically enhances the susceptibility of the enzyme to β-lactamase inhibitors, such as clavulanic acid. Single amino acid substitutions at positions 104, 164, 238, and 240 produce the ESBL phenotype, but ESBLs with the broadest spectrum usually have more than a single amino acid substitution. Based upon different combinations of changes, currently 140 TEM-type enzymes have been described. TEM-10, TEM-12, and TEM-26 are among the most common in the United States. The term TEM comes from the name of the Athenian patient (Temoniera) from which the isolate was recovered in 1963. SHV beta-lactamases (class A). SHV-1 shares 68 percent of its amino acids with TEM-1 and has a similar overall structure. The SHV-1 beta-lactamase is most commonly found in "K. pneumoniae" and is responsible for up to 20% of the plasmid-mediated ampicillin resistance in this species. ESBLs in this family also have amino acid changes around the active site, most commonly at positions 238 or 238 and 240. More than 60 SHV varieties are known. SHV-5 and SHV-12 are among the most common. The initials stand for "sulfhydryl reagent variable". CTX-M beta-lactamases (class A). These enzymes were named for their greater activity against cefotaxime than other oxyimino-beta-lactam substrates (e.g., ceftazidime, ceftriaxone, or cefepime). Rather than arising by mutation, they represent examples of plasmid acquisition of beta-lactamase genes normally found on the chromosome of "Kluyvera" species, a group of rarely pathogenic commensal organisms. These enzymes are not very closely related to TEM or SHV beta-lactamases in that they show only approximately 40% identity with these two commonly isolated beta-lactamases. More than 172 CTX-M enzymes are currently known. Despite their name, a few are more active on ceftazidime than cefotaxime. They are widely described among species of Enterobacteriaceae, mainly "E. coli" and "K. pneumoniae". Detected in the 1980s they have since the early 2000s spread and are the now the predominant ESBL type in the world. They are generally clustred into five groups based on sequencing homologies; CTX-M-1, CTX-M-2, CTX-M-8, CTX-M-9 and CTX-M-25. CTX-M-15 (belonging to the CTX-M-1 cluster) is the most prevalent CTX-M-gene. An example of beta-lactamase CTX-M-15, along with IS"Ecp1", has been found to have transposed onto the chromosome of "Klebsiella pneumoniae" ATCC BAA-2146. The initials stand for "Cefotaxime-Munich". OXA beta-lactamases (class D). OXA beta-lactamases were long recognized as a less common but also plasmid-mediated beta-lactamase variety that could hydrolyze oxacillin and related anti-staphylococcal penicillins. These beta-lactamases differ from the TEM and SHV enzymes in that they belong to molecular class D and functional group 2d. The OXA-type beta-lactamases confer resistance to ampicillin and cephalothin and are characterized by their high hydrolytic activity against oxacillin and cloxacillin and the fact that they are poorly inhibited by clavulanic acid. Amino acid substitutions in OXA enzymes can also give the ESBL phenotype. While most ESBLs have been found in "E. coli", "K. pneumoniae", and other Enterobacteriaceae, the OXA-type ESBLs have been found mainly in "P. aeruginosa". OXA-type ESBLs have been found mainly in "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" isolates from Turkey and France. The OXA beta-lactamase family was originally created as a phenotypic rather than a genotypic group for a few beta-lactamases that had a specific hydrolysis profile. Therefore, there is as little as 20% sequence homology among some of the members of this family. However, recent additions to this family show some degree of homology to one or more of the existing members of the OXA beta-lactamase family. Some confer resistance predominantly to ceftazidime, but OXA-17 confers greater resistance to cefotaxime and cefepime than it does resistance to ceftazidime. Others. Other plasmid-mediated ESBLs, such as PER, VEB, GES, and IBC beta-lactamases, have been described but are uncommon and have been found mainly in "P. aeruginosa" and at a limited number of geographic sites. PER-1 in isolates in Turkey, France, and Italy; VEB-1 and VEB-2 in strains from Southeast Asia; and GES-1, GES-2, and IBC-2 in isolates from South Africa, France, and Greece. PER-1 is also common in multiresistant acinetobacter species in Korea and Turkey. Some of these enzymes are found in Enterobacteriaceae as well, whereas other uncommon ESBLs (such as BES-1, IBC-1, SFO-1, and TLA-1) have been found only in Enterobacteriaceae. Treatment. While ESBL-producing organisms were previously associated with hospitals and institutional care, these organisms are now increasingly found in the community. CTX-M-15-positive E. coli are a cause of community-acquired urinary infections in the UK, and tend to be resistant to all oral β-lactam antibiotics, as well as quinolones and sulfonamides. Treatment options may include nitrofurantoin, fosfomycin, mecillinam and chloramphenicol. In desperation, once-daily ertapenem or gentamicin injections may also be used. Inhibitor-resistant β-lactamases. Although the inhibitor-resistant β-lactamases are not ESBLs, they are often discussed with ESBLs because they are also derivatives of the classical TEM- or SHV-type enzymes. These enzymes were at first given the designation IRT for inhibitor-resistant TEM β-lactamase; however, all have subsequently been renamed with numerical TEM designations. There are at least 19 distinct inhibitor-resistant TEM β-lactamases. Inhibitor-resistant TEM β-lactamases have been found mainly in clinical isolates of "E. coli", but also some strains of "K. pneumoniae", "Klebsiella oxytoca", "P. mirabilis", and "Citrobacter freundii". Although the inhibitor-resistant TEM variants are resistant to inhibition by clavulanic acid and sulbactam, thereby showing clinical resistance to the beta-lactam—lactamase inhibitor combinations of amoxicillin-clavulanate (co-amoxiclav), ticarcillin-clavulanate (co-ticarclav), and ampicillin/sulbactam, they normally remain susceptible to inhibition by tazobactam and subsequently the combination of piperacillin/tazobactam, although resistance has been described. This is no longer a primarily European epidemiology, it is found in northern parts of America often and should be tested for with complex UTI's. AmpC-type β-lactamases (class C). AmpC type β-lactamases are commonly isolated from extended-spectrum cephalosporin-resistant gram-negative bacteria. AmpC β-lactamases (also termed class C or group 1) are typically encoded on the chromosome of many gram-negative bacteria including "Citrobacter", "Serratia" and "Enterobacter" species where its expression is usually inducible; it may also occur on "Escherichia coli" but is not usually inducible, although it can be hyperexpressed. AmpC type β-lactamases may also be carried on plasmids. AmpC β-lactamases, in contrast to ESBLs, hydrolyse broad and extended-spectrum cephalosporins (cephamycins as well as to oxyimino-β-lactams) but are not typically inhibited by the β-lactamase inhibitors clavulanic acid and tazobactam, whereas avibactam can maintain inhibitory activity against this class of β-lactamases. AmpC-type β-lactamase organisms are often clinically grouped through the acronym, "SPACE": "Serratia, Pseudomonas" or "Proteus, Acinetobacter, Citrobacter", and "Enterobacter". Carbapenemases. Carbapenems are famously stable to AmpC β-lactamases and extended-spectrum-β-lactamases. Carbapenemases are a diverse group of β-lactamases that are active not only against the oxyimino-cephalosporins and cephamycins but also against the carbapenems. Aztreonam is stable to the metallo-β-lactamases, but many IMP and VIM producers are resistant, owing to other mechanisms. Carbapenemases were formerly believed to derive only from classes A, B, and D, but a class C carbapenemase has been described. IMP-type carbapenemases (metallo-β-lactamases) (class B). Plasmid-mediated IMP-type carbapenemases (IMP stands for active-on-imipenem), 19 varieties of which are currently known, became established in Japan in the 1990s both in enteric gram-negative organisms and in "Pseudomonas" and "Acinetobacter" species. IMP enzymes spread slowly to other countries in the Far East, were reported from Europe in 1997, and have been found in Canada and Brazil. VIM (Verona integron-encoded metallo-β-lactamase) (Class B). A second growing family of carbapenemases, the VIM family, was reported from Italy in 1999 and now includes 10 members, which have a wide geographic distribution in Europe, South America, and the Far East and have been found in the United States. VIM-1 was discovered in "P. aeruginosa" in Italy in 1996; since then, VIM-2 - now the predominant variant - was found repeatedly in Europe and the Far East; VIM-3 and -4 are minor variants of VIM-2 and -1, respectively. Amino acid sequence diversity is up to 10% in the VIM family, 15% in the IMP family, and 70% between VIM and IMP. Enzymes of both the families, nevertheless, are similar. Both are integron-associated, sometimes within plasmids. Both hydrolyse all β-lactams except monobactams, and evade all β-lactam inhibitors. The VIM enzymes are among the most widely distributed MBLs, with >40 VIM variants having been reported. Biochemical and biophysical studies revealed that VIM variants have only small variations in their kinetic parameters but substantial differences in their thermal stabilities and inhibition profiles. OXA (oxacillinase) group of β-lactamases (class D). The OXA group of β-lactamases occur mainly in Acinetobacter species and are divided into two clusters. OXA carbapenemases hydrolyse carbapenems very slowly "in vitro", and the high MICs seen for some Acinetobacter hosts (>64 mg/L) may reflect secondary mechanisms. They are sometimes augmented in clinical isolates by additional resistance mechanisms, such as impermeability or efflux. OXA carbapenemases also tend to have a reduced hydrolytic efficiency towards penicillins and cephalosporins. KPC ("K. pneumoniae" carbapenemase) (class A). A few class A enzymes, most noted the plasmid-mediated KPC enzymes, are effective carbapenemases as well. Ten variants, KPC-2 through KPC-11 are known, and they are distinguished by one or two amino acid substitutions (KPC-1 was re-sequenced in 2008 and found to be 100% homologous to published sequences of KPC-2). KPC-1 was found in North Carolina, KPC-2 in Baltimore and KPC-3 in New York. They have only 45% homology with SME and NMC/IMI enzymes and, unlike them, can be encoded by self-transmissible plasmids. , the class A "Klebsiella pneumoniae" carbapenemase (KPC) globally has been the most common carbapenemase, and was first detected in 1996 in North Carolina, USA. A 2010 publication indicated that KPC producing Enterobacteriaceae were becoming common in the United States. CMY (class C). The first class C carbapenemase was described in 2006 and was isolated from a virulent strain of "Enterobacter aerogenes". It is carried on a plasmid, pYMG-1, and is therefore transmissible to other bacterial strains. SME (Serratia marcescens enzymes), IMI (IMIpenem-hydrolysing β-lactamase), NMC and CcrA. In general, these are of little clinical significance. CcrA (CfiA). Its gene occurs in ca. 1–3% of "B. fragilis" isolates, but fewer produce the enzyme since expression demands appropriate migration of an insertion sequence. CcrA was known before imipenem was introduced, and producers have shown little subsequent increase. NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase) (class B). Originally described from New Delhi in 2009, this gene is now widespread in "Escherichia coli" and "Klebsiella pneumoniae" from India and Pakistan. As of mid-2010, NDM-1 carrying bacteria have been introduced to other countries (including the United States and UK), most probably due to the large number of tourists travelling the globe, who may have picked up the strain from the environment, as strains containing the NDM-1 gene have been found in environmental samples in India. NDM have several variants which share different properties. Treatment of ESBL/AmpC/carbapenemases. General overview. In general, an isolate is suspected to be an ESBL producer when it shows "in vitro" susceptibility to the cephamycins (cefoxitin, cefotetan) but resistance to the third-generation cephalosporins and to aztreonam. Moreover, one should suspect these strains when treatment with these agents for gram-negative infections fails despite reported "in vitro" susceptibility. Once an ESBL-producing strain is detected, the laboratory should report it as "resistant" to all penicillins, cephalosporins, and aztreonam, even if it is tested (in vitro) as susceptible. Associated resistance to aminoglycosides and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, as well as high frequency of co-existence of fluoroquinolone resistance, creates problems. Beta-lactamase inhibitors such as clavulanate, sulbactam, and tazobactam "in vitro" inhibit most ESBLs, but the clinical effectiveness of beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor combinations cannot be relied on consistently for therapy. Cephamycins (cefoxitin and cefotetan) are not hydrolyzed by majority of ESBLs, but are hydrolyzed by associated AmpC-type β-lactamase. Also, β-lactam/β-lactamase inhibitor combinations may not be effective against organisms that produce AmpC-type β-lactamase. Sometimes these strains decrease the expression of outer membrane proteins, rendering them resistant to cephamycins. "In vivo" studies have yielded mixed results against ESBL-producing "K. pneumoniae". (Cefepime, a fourth-generation cephalosporin, has demonstrated "in vitro" stability in the presence of many ESBL/AmpC strains.) Currently, carbapenems are, in general, regarded as the preferred agent for treatment of infections due to ESBL-producing organisms. Carbapenems are resistant to ESBL-mediated hydrolysis and exhibit excellent "in vitro" activity against strains of Enterobacteriaceae expressing ESBLs. According to genes. ESBLs. Strains producing only ESBLs are susceptible to cephamycins and carbapenems "in vitro" and show little if any inoculum effect with these agents. For organisms producing TEM and SHV type ESBLs, apparent "in vitro" sensitivity to cefepime and to piperacillin/tazobactam is common, but both drugs show an inoculum effect, with diminished susceptibility as the size of the inoculum is increased from 105 to 107 organisms. Strains with some CTX-M–type and OXA-type ESBLs are resistant to cefepime on testing, despite the use of a standard inoculum. Inhibitor-resistant β-lactamases. Although the inhibitor-resistant TEM variants are resistant to inhibition by clavulanic acid and sulbactam, thereby showing clinical resistance to the beta-lactam—beta lactamase inhibitor combinations of amoxicillin-clavulanate (Co-amoxiclav), ticarcillin-clavulanate, and ampicillin/sulbactam, they remain susceptible to inhibition by tazobactam and subsequently the combination of piperacillin/tazobactam. AmpC. AmpC-producing strains are typically resistant to oxyimino-beta lactams and to cephamycins and are susceptible to carbapenems; however, diminished porin expression can make such a strain carbapenem-resistant as well. Carbapenemases. Strains with IMP-, VIM-, and OXA-type carbapenemases usually remain susceptible. Resistance to non-beta-lactam antibiotics is common in strains making any of these enzymes, such that alternative options for non-beta-lactam therapy need to be determined by direct susceptibility testing. Resistance to fluoroquinolones and aminoglycosides is especially high. According to species. "Escherichia coli" or "Klebsiella". For infections caused by ESBL-producing "Escherichia coli" or "Klebsiella" species, treatment with imipenem or meropenem has been associated with the best outcomes in terms of survival and bacteriologic clearance. Cefepime and piperacillin/tazobactam have been less successful. Ceftriaxone, cefotaxime, and ceftazidime have failed even more often, despite the organism's susceptibility to the antibiotic "in vitro". Several reports have documented failure of cephamycin therapy as a result of resistance due to porin loss. Some patients have responded to aminoglycoside or quinolone therapy, but, in a recent comparison of ciprofloxacin and imipenem for bacteremia involving an ESBL-producing "K. pneumoniae", imipenem produced the better outcome "Pseudomonas aeruginosa". There have been few clinical studies to define the optimal therapy for infections caused by ESBL producing "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" strains. Use as a pharmaceutical. In 1957, amid concern about allergic reactions to penicillin-containing antibiotics, a beta-lactamase was sold as an antidote under the brand name neutrapen. It was theorized that the breakdown of penicillin by the enzyme would treat the allergic reaction. While it was not useful in acute anaphylactic shock, it showed positive results in cases of urticaria and joint pain suspected to be caused by penicillin allergy. Its use was proposed in pediatric cases where penicillin allergy was discovered upon administration of the polio vaccine, which used penicillin as a preservative. However, some patients developed allergies to neutrapen. The Albany Hospital removed it from its formulary in 1960, only two years after adding it, citing lack of use. Some researchers continued to use it in experiments on penicillin resistance as late as 1972. It was voluntarily withdrawn from the American market by 3M Pharmaceuticals in 1997. Detection. Beta-lactamase enzymatic activity can be detected using nitrocefin, a chromogenic cephalosporin substrate which changes color from yellow to red upon beta-lactamase mediated hydrolysis. Extended spectrum beta lactamase (ESBL) screening can be performed using disk-diffusion. Cefpodoxime, ceftazidime, aztreonam, cefotaxime, and/or ceftriaxone discs are used. Evolution. Beta-lactamases are ancient bacterial enzymes. Metallo β-lactamases ("class B") are all structurally similar to RNase Z and may have evolved from it. Of the three subclasses B1, B2, and B3, B1 and B2 are theorized to have evolved about one billion years ago, while B3 seems to have arisen independently, possibly before the divergence of the gram-positive and gram-negative eubacteria about two billion years ago. PNGM-1 (Papua New Guinea Metallo-β-lactamase-1) has both metallo-β-lactamase (MBL) and tRNase Z activities, suggesting that PNGM-1 is thought to have evolved from a tRNase Z, and that the B3 MBL activity of PNGM-1 is a promiscuous activity and subclass B3 MBLs are thought to have evolved through PNGM-1 activity. Subclasses B1 and B3 has been further subdivided. Serine beta-lactamases (classes A, C, and D) appear to have evolved from -transpeptidases, which are penicillin-binding proteins involved in cell wall biosynthesis, and as such are one of the main targets of beta-lactam antibiotics. These three classes show undetectable sequence similarity with each other, but can still be compared using structural homology. Groups A and D are sister taxa and group C diverged before A and D. These serine-based enzymes, like the group B betalactamases, are of ancient origin and are theorized to have evolved about two billion years ago. The OXA group (in class D) in particular is theorized to have evolved on chromosomes and moved to plasmids on at least two separate occasions. Etymology. The "β" (beta) refers to the nitrogen's position on the second carbon in the ring. "Lactam" is a blend of "lactone" (from the Latin "lactis", "milk", since lactic acid was isolated from soured milk) and "amide". The suffix "-ase", indicating an enzyme, is derived from "diastase" (from the Greek "diastasis", "separation"), the first enzyme discovered in 1833 by Payen and Persoz.
4611	49905838	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4611	Burhanuddin Rabbani	Burhānuddīn Rabbānī ( 20 September 1940 – 20 September 2011) was an Afghan politician and teacher who served as the sixth president of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996, and again from November to December 2001 (in exile from 1996 to 2001). Born in the Badakhshan Province, Rabbani studied at Kabul University and worked there as a professor of Islamic theology. He formed the Jamiat-e Islami ("Islamic Society") at the university which attracted then-students Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud, both would eventually become the two leading commanders of the Afghan mujahideen in the Soviet–Afghan War from 1979. Rabbani was chosen to be the President of Afghanistan after the end of the former communist regime in 1992. Rabbani and his Islamic State of Afghanistan government was later forced into exile by the Taliban, and he then served as the political head of the Northern Alliance, an alliance of various political groups who fought against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. During his time in the office, there were a lot of internal clashes between different fighting groups. After the Taliban government was toppled during Operation Enduring Freedom, Rabbani returned to Kabul and served briefly as president from 13 November to 22 December 2001, when Hamid Karzai was chosen as his succeeding interim leader at the Bonn International Conference. In later years he became head of Afghanistan National Front (known in the media as United National Front), the largest political opposition to Karzai's government. On 20 September 2011, Rabbani was assassinated by a suicide bomber entering his home in Kabul. As suggested by the Afghan parliament, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai gave him the title of "Martyr of Peace". His son Salahuddin Rabbani was chosen in April 2012 to lead efforts to forge peace in Afghanistan with the Taliban. Early life and education. Rabbani, son of Muhammed Yousuf, was born on 20 September 1940 in the northern province of Badakhshan. He was a Persian-speaking ethnic Tajik. After finishing school in his native province, he went to Darul-uloom-e-Sharia (Abu-Hanifa), a religious school in Kabul. When he graduated from Abu-Hanifa, he attended Kabul University to study Islamic Law and Theology, graduating in 1963. Soon after his graduation in 1963, he was hired as a professor at Kabul University. In order to enhance himself, Rabbani went to Egypt in 1966, and he entered the Al-Azhar University in Cairo where he developed close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood leadership. In two years, he received his master's degree in Islamic Philosophy. He resumed his position at the university and became closely associated with his fellow professor, Gholam Mohammad Niazi, whom he served as secretary in 1969 and 1970. Rabbani was one of the first Afghans to translate the works of Sayyid Qutb into Persian. Later he returned to Egypt to complete his PhD in Islamic philosophy and his thesis was titled "The Philosophy and Teachings of Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Jami." In 2004 he received Afghanistan's highest academic and scientific title "Academician" from the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan. Political career. Rabbani returned to Afghanistan in 1968, where the High Council of Jamiat-e Islami gave him the duty of organizing the university students. Due to his knowledge, reputation, and active support for the cause of Islam, in 1972, a 15-member council selected him as head of Jamiat-e Islami of Afghanistan; the founder of Jamiat-e Islami of Afghanistan, Gholam Mohammad Niazi was also present. Jamiat-e Islami was primarily composed of Tajiks. In the spring of 1974, the police came to Kabul University to arrest Rabbani for his pro-Islamic stance, but with the help of his students the police were unable to capture him, and he managed to escape to the countryside. In Pakistan, Rabbani gathered important people and established the party. Sayed Noorullah Emad, who was then a young Muslim in the University of Kabul, became the General Secretary of the party and, later, its deputy chief. Rabbani alongside Ahmad Shah Massoud and others planned to take action either against the Daoud government or people who they deemed communist in 1975, but failed. When the Soviets intervened in 1979, Rabbani helped lead Jamiat-e Islami in resistance to the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan regime. Rabbani's forces were the first Mujahideen elements to enter Kabul in 1992 when the PDPA government fell from power. He took over as president from 1992 in accordance to the Peshawar Accords. Rabbani was the third ethnic Tajik leader of modern Afghanistan after Habibullah Kalakani in 1929 and Abdul Qadir in 1978 (and possibly including Babrak Karmal, whose ethnicity was disputed). His rule was limited since the country was fractured by civil war between different sides. Rabbani was forced to flee following the Taliban's conquest of Kabul in 1996. Rabbani operated his government in exile, following the establishment of the Taliban rule of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In this period between 1996 and 2001, the Rabbani government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan remained the internationally recognized government, despite only controlling about 10% of Afghan territory. For the next five years, he and the Northern Alliance, commanded by Ahmad Shah Massoud and others, were fighting the Taliban until the 2001 US-led Operation Enduring Freedom toppled the Taliban government. Rabbani was head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which had been formed in 2010 to initiate peace talks with the Taliban and other groups in the insurgency, until his death. Assassination. Rabbani was killed in a suicide bombing at his home in Kabul on 20 September 2011, his 71st birthday. Two men posing as Taliban representatives approached him to offer a hug and detonated their explosives. At least one of them had hidden the explosives in his turban. The suicide bomber claimed to be a Taliban commander, said he bore a "very important and positive message" from Taliban leaders in Pakistan, and said he wanted to "discuss peace" with Rabbani. Four other members of Afghanistan's High Peace Council were also killed in the blast. Rabbani was buried in the Wazir Akbar Khan cemetery. Afghan officials blamed the Quetta Shura, which was the leadership of the Afghan Taliban allegedly hiding in the affluent Satellite Town of Quetta in Pakistan. The Pakistani government confirmed that Rabbani's assassination was linked to Afghan refugees in Pakistan. A senior Pakistani official stated that over 90% of terrorist attacks in Pakistan were traced back to Afghan elements and that their presence in the country was "an important issue for [peace in] Pakistan" and "a problem for Afghanistan". Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar stated that Pakistan was "not responsible if Afghan refugees crossed the border and entered Kabul, stayed in a guest house and attacked Professor Rabbani". In 2011, just days before he died, Rabbani was trying to persuade Islamic scholars to issue a religious edict denouncing suicide bombings. The former president's 28-year-old daughter said in an interview that her father died shortly after he spoke at a conference on "Islamic Awakening" in Tehran. "Right before he was assassinated, he talked about the suicide bombing issue," Fatima Rabbani told Reuters. "He called on all Islamic scholars in the conference to release a fatwa" against the tactic. Government minister Nematullah Shahrani said Rabbani is irreplaceable because "he had relations with all these tribes." United States President Barack Obama and several NATO military leaders condemned the assassination. Japan also offered its condolences at the Sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly. Afghan President Hamid Karzai cut short his trip for the General debate of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly following Rabbani's assassination. Rabbani's son Salahuddin then took over chairmanship of the High Peace Council from his father.
4614	2387872	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4614	Boeing 747	The Boeing 747 is a long-range wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States between 1968 and 2023. After the introduction of the 707 in October 1958, Pan Am wanted a jet times its size, to reduce its seat cost by 30%. In 1965, Joe Sutter left the 737 development program to design the 747. In April 1966, Pan Am ordered 25 Boeing 747-100 aircraft, and in late 1966, Pratt & Whitney agreed to develop the JT9D engine, a high-bypass turbofan. On September 30, 1968, the first 747 was rolled out of the custom-built Everett Plant, the world's largest building by volume. The 747's first flight took place on February 9, 1969, and the 747 was certified in December of that year. It entered service with Pan Am on January 22, 1970. The 747 was the first airplane called a "Jumbo Jet" as the first wide-body airliner. The 747 is a four-engined jet aircraft, initially powered by Pratt & Whitney JT9D turbofan engines, then General Electric CF6 and Rolls-Royce RB211 engines for the original variants. With a ten-abreast economy seating, it typically accommodates 366 passengers in three travel classes. It has a pronounced 37.5° wing sweep, allowing a cruise speed, and its heavy weight is supported by four main landing gear legs, each with a four-wheel bogie. The partial double-deck aircraft was designed with a raised cockpit so it could be converted to a freighter airplane by installing a front cargo door, as it was initially thought that it would eventually be superseded by supersonic transports. Boeing introduced the -200 in 1971, with uprated engines for a heavier maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of from the initial , increasing the maximum range from . It was shortened for the longer-range 747SP in 1976, and the 747-300 followed in 1983 with a stretched upper deck for up to 400 seats in three classes. The heavier 747-400 with improved RB211 and CF6 engines or the new PW4000 engine (the JT9D successor), and a two-crew glass cockpit, was introduced in 1989 and is the most common variant. After several studies, the stretched 747-8 was launched on November 14, 2005, using the General Electric GEnx engine first developed for the 787 Dreamliner (the inspiration for the -8 in the name), and was first delivered in October 2011. The 747 is the basis for several government and military variants, such as the VC-25 (Air Force One), E-4 Emergency Airborne Command Post, Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, and some experimental test aircraft such as the YAL-1 and SOFIA airborne observatory. Initial competition came from the smaller trijet widebodies: the Lockheed L-1011 (introduced in 1972), McDonnell Douglas DC-10 (1971) and later MD-11 (1990). Airbus competed with later variants with the heaviest versions of the A340 until surpassing the 747 in size with the A380, delivered between 2007 and 2021. Freighter variants of the 747 remain popular with cargo airlines. The final 747 was delivered to Atlas Air in January 2023 after a 54-year production run, with 1,574 aircraft built. , 64 Boeing 747s (%) have been lost in accidents and incidents, in which a total of 3,746 people have died. Development. Background. In 1963, the United States Air Force began a series of study projects on a very large strategic transport aircraft. Although the C-141 Starlifter was being introduced, officials believed that a much larger and more capable aircraft was needed, especially to carry cargo that would not fit in any existing aircraft. These studies led to initial requirements for the CX-Heavy Logistics System (CX-HLS) in March 1964 for an aircraft with a load capacity of and a speed of Mach 0.75 (), and an unrefueled range of with a payload of . The payload bay had to be wide by high and long with access through doors at the front and rear. The desire to keep the number of engines to four required new engine designs with greatly increased power and better fuel economy. In May 1964, airframe proposals arrived from Boeing, Douglas, General Dynamics, Lockheed, and Martin Marietta; engine proposals were submitted by General Electric, Curtiss-Wright, and Pratt & Whitney. Boeing, Douglas, and Lockheed were given additional study contracts for the airframe, along with General Electric and Pratt & Whitney for the engines. The airframe proposals shared several features. As the CX-HLS needed to be able to be loaded from the front, a door had to be included where the cockpit usually was. All of the companies solved this problem by moving the cockpit above the cargo area; Douglas had a small "pod" just forward and above the wing, Lockheed used a long "spine" running the length of the aircraft with the wing spar passing through it, while Boeing blended the two, with a longer pod that ran from just behind the nose to just behind the wing. In 1965, Lockheed's aircraft design and General Electric's engine design were selected for the new C-5 Galaxy transport, which was the largest military aircraft in the world at the time. Boeing carried the nose door and raised cockpit concepts over to the design of the 747. Airliner proposal. The 747 was conceived while air travel was increasing in the 1960s. The era of commercial jet transportation, led by the enormous popularity of the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8, had revolutionized long-distance travel. In this growing jet age, Juan Trippe, president of Pan American Airways (Pan Am), one of Boeing's most important airline customers, asked for a new jet airliner times size of the 707, with a 30% lower cost per unit of passenger-distance and the capability to offer mass air travel on international routes. Trippe also thought that airport congestion could be addressed by a larger new aircraft. In 1965, Joe Sutter was transferred from Boeing's 737 development team to manage the design studies for the new airliner, already assigned the model number 747. Sutter began a design study with Pan Am and other airlines to better understand their requirements. At the time, many thought that long-range subsonic airliners would eventually be superseded by supersonic transport aircraft. Boeing responded by designing the 747 so it could be adapted easily to carry freight and remain in production even if sales of the passenger version declined. In April 1966, Pan Am ordered 25 Boeing 747-100 aircraft for US$525 million (equivalent to $ billion in dollars). During the ceremonial 747 contract-signing banquet in Seattle on Boeing's 50th Anniversary, Juan Trippe predicted that the 747 would be "…a great weapon for peace, competing with intercontinental missiles for mankind's destiny". As launch customer, and because of its early involvement before placing a formal order, Pan Am was able to influence the design and development of the 747 to an extent unmatched by a single airline before or since. Design effort. Ultimately, the high-winged CX-HLS Boeing design was not used for the 747, although technologies developed for their bid had an influence. The original design included a full-length double-deck fuselage with eight-across seating and two aisles on the lower deck and seven-across seating and two aisles on the upper deck. However, concern over evacuation routes and limited cargo-carrying capability caused this idea to be scrapped in early 1966 in favor of a wider single deck design. The cockpit was therefore placed on a shortened upper deck so that a freight-loading door could be included in the nose cone; this design feature produced the 747's distinctive "hump". In early models, what to do with the small space in the pod behind the cockpit was not clear, and this was initially specified as a "lounge" area with no permanent seating. (A different configuration that had been considered to keep the flight deck out of the way for freight loading had the pilots below the passengers, and was dubbed the "anteater".) One of the principal technologies that enabled an aircraft as large as the 747 to be drawn up was the high-bypass turbofan engine. This engine technology was thought to be capable of delivering double the power of the earlier turbojets while consuming one-third less fuel. General Electric had pioneered the concept but was committed to developing the engine for the C-5 Galaxy and did not enter the commercial market until later. Pratt & Whitney was also working on the same principle and, by late 1966, Boeing, Pan Am and Pratt & Whitney agreed to develop a new engine, designated the JT9D to power the 747. The project was designed with a new methodology called fault tree analysis, which allowed the effects of a failure of a single part to be studied to determine its impact on other systems. To address concerns about safety and flyability, the 747's design included structural redundancy, redundant hydraulic systems, quadruple main landing gear and dual control surfaces. Additionally, some of the most advanced high-lift devices used in the industry were included in the new design, to allow it to operate from existing airports. These included Krueger flaps running almost the entire length of the wing's leading edge, as well as complex three-part slotted flaps along the trailing edge of the wing. The wing's complex three-part flaps increase wing area by 21% and lift by 90% when fully deployed compared to their non-deployed configuration. Boeing agreed to deliver the first 747 to Pan Am by the end of 1969. The delivery date left 28 months to design the aircraft, which was two-thirds of the normal time. The schedule was so fast-paced that the people who worked on it were given the nickname "The Incredibles". Developing the aircraft was such a technical and financial challenge that management was said to have "bet the company" when it started the project. Due to its massive size, Boeing subcontracted the assembly of subcomponents to other manufacturers, most notably Northrop and Grumman (later merged into Northrop Grumman in 1994) for fuselage parts and trailing edge flaps respectively, Fairchild for tailplane ailerons, and Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) for the empennage. Production plant. As Boeing did not have a plant large enough to assemble the giant airliner, they chose to build a new plant. The company considered locations in about 50 cities, and eventually decided to build the new plant some north of Seattle on a site adjoining a military base at Paine Field near Everett, Washington. It bought the site in June 1966. Developing the 747 had been a major challenge, and building its assembly plant was also a huge undertaking. Boeing president William M. Allen asked Malcolm T. Stamper, then head of the company's turbine division, to oversee construction of the Everett factory and to start production of the 747. To level the site, more than of earth had to be moved. Time was so short that the 747's full-scale mock-up was built before the factory roof above it was finished. The plant is the largest building by volume ever built, and has been substantially expanded several times to permit construction of other models of Boeing wide-body commercial jets. Flight testing. Before the first 747 was fully assembled, testing began on many components and systems. One important test involved the evacuation of 560 volunteers from a cabin mock-up via the aircraft's emergency chutes. The first full-scale evacuation took two and a half minutes instead of the maximum of 90 seconds mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and several volunteers were injured. Subsequent test evacuations achieved the 90-second goal but caused more injuries. Most problematic was evacuation from the aircraft's upper deck; instead of using a conventional slide, volunteer passengers escaped by using a harness attached to a reel. Tests also involved taxiing such a large aircraft. Boeing built an unusual training device known as "Waddell's Wagon" (named for a 747 test pilot, Jack Waddell) that consisted of a mock-up cockpit mounted on the roof of a truck. While the first 747s were still being built, the device allowed pilots to practice taxi maneuvers from a high upper-deck position. In 1968, the program cost was US$1 billion (equivalent to $ billion in dollars). On September 30, 1968, the first 747 was rolled out of the Everett assembly building before the world's press and representatives of the 26 airlines that had ordered the airliner. Over the following months, preparations were made for the first flight, which took place on February 9, 1969, with test pilots Jack Waddell and Brien Wygle at the controls and Jess Wallick at the flight engineer's station. Despite a minor problem with one of the flaps, the flight confirmed that the 747 handled extremely well. The 747 was found to be largely immune to "Dutch roll", a phenomenon that had been a major hazard to the early swept-wing jets. Issues, delays and certification. During later stages of the flight test program, flutter testing showed that the wings suffered oscillation under certain conditions. This difficulty was partly solved by reducing the stiffness of some wing components. However, a particularly severe high-speed flutter problem was solved only by inserting depleted uranium counterweights as ballast in the outboard engine nacelles of the early 747s. This measure caused some concern when these aircraft crashed, for example El Al Flight 1862 at Amsterdam in 1992 with of uranium in the tailplane (horizontal stabilizer); detailed investigations showed, however, that the best estimate of the exposure to depleted uranium was ".. several orders of magnitude less than the workers' limit for chronic exposure." The flight test program was hampered by problems with the 747's JT9D engines. Difficulties included engine stalls caused by rapid throttle movements and distortion of the turbine casings after a short period of service. The problems delayed 747 deliveries for several months; up to 20 aircraft at the Everett plant were stranded while awaiting engine installation. The program was further delayed when one of the five test aircraft suffered serious damage during a landing attempt at Renton Municipal Airport, the site of Boeing's Renton factory. The incident happened on December 13, 1969, when a test aircraft was flown to Renton to have test equipment removed and a cabin installed. Pilot Ralph C. Cokely undershot the airport's short runway and the 747's right, outer landing gear was torn off and two engine nacelles were damaged. However, these difficulties did not prevent Boeing from taking a test aircraft to the 28th Paris Air Show in mid-1969, where it was displayed to the public for the first time. Finally, in December 1969, the 747 received its FAA airworthiness certificate, clearing it for introduction into service. The huge cost of developing the 747 and building the Everett factory meant that Boeing had to borrow heavily from a banking syndicate. During the final months before delivery of the first aircraft, the company had to repeatedly request additional funding to complete the project. Had this been refused, Boeing's survival would have been threatened. The firm's debt exceeded $2 billion, with the $1.2 billion owed to the banks setting a record for all companies. Allen later said, "It was really too large a project for us." Ultimately, the gamble succeeded, and Boeing held a monopoly in very large passenger aircraft production for many years. Entry into service. On January 15, 1970, First Lady Pat Nixon christened Pan Am's first 747 at Dulles International Airport in the presence of Pan Am chairman Najeeb Halaby. Instead of champagne, red, white, and blue water was sprayed on the aircraft. The 747 entered service on January 22, 1970, on Pan Am's New York–London route; the flight had been planned for the evening of January 21, but engine overheating made the original aircraft (Clipper Young America, registration N735PA) unusable. Finding a substitute delayed the flight by more than six hours to the following day when Clipper Victor (registration N736PA) was used. The 747 enjoyed a fairly smooth introduction into service, overcoming concerns that some airports would not be able to accommodate an aircraft that large. Although technical problems occurred, they were relatively minor and quickly solved. Improved 747 versions. After the initial , Boeing developed the , a higher maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) variant, and the (Short Range), with higher passenger capacity. Increased maximum takeoff weight allows aircraft to carry more fuel and have longer range. The model followed in 1971, featuring more powerful engines and a higher MTOW. Passenger, freighter and combination passenger-freighter versions of the were produced. The shortened 747SP (special performance) with a longer range was also developed, and entered service in 1976. The 747 line was further developed with the launch of the on June 11, 1980, followed by interest from Swissair a month later and the go-ahead for the project. The 300 series resulted from Boeing studies to increase the seating capacity of the 747, during which modifications such as fuselage plugs and extending the upper deck over the entire length of the fuselage were rejected. The first , completed in 1983, included a stretched upper deck, increased cruise speed, and increased seating capacity. The -300 variant was previously designated 747SUD for stretched upper deck, then 747-200 SUD, followed by 747EUD, before the 747-300 designation was used. Passenger, short range and combination freighter-passenger versions of the 300 series were produced. In 1985, development of the longer range 747-400 began. The variant had a new glass cockpit, which allowed for a cockpit crew of two instead of three, new engines, lighter construction materials, and a redesigned interior. Development costs soared, and production delays occurred as new technologies were incorporated at the request of airlines. Insufficient workforce experience and reliance on overtime contributed to early production problems on the . The -400 entered service in 1989. In 1991, a record-breaking 1,087 passengers were flown in a 747 during a covert operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Generally, the 747-400 held between 416 and 524 passengers. The 747 remained the heaviest commercial aircraft in regular service until the debut of the Antonov An-124 Ruslan in 1982; variants of the 747-400 surpassed the An-124's weight in 2000. The Antonov An-225 "Mriya" cargo transport, which debuted in 1988, remains the world's largest aircraft by several measures (including the most accepted measures of maximum takeoff weight and length); one aircraft has been completed and was in service until 2022. The Scaled Composites Stratolaunch is currently the largest aircraft by wingspan. Further developments. After the arrival of the , several stretching schemes for the 747 were proposed. Boeing announced the larger 747-500X and preliminary designs in 1996. The new variants would have cost more than US$5 billion to develop, and interest was not sufficient to launch the program. In 2000, Boeing offered the more modest 747X and 747X stretch derivatives as alternatives to the Airbus A38X. However, the 747X family was unable to attract enough interest to enter production. A year later, Boeing switched from the 747X studies to pursue the Sonic Cruiser, and after the Sonic Cruiser program was put on hold, the 787 Dreamliner. Some of the ideas developed for the 747X were used on the 747-400ER, a longer range variant of the . After several variants were proposed but later abandoned, some industry observers became skeptical of new aircraft proposals from Boeing. However, in early 2004, Boeing announced tentative plans for the 747 Advanced that were eventually adopted. Similar in nature to the 747-X, the stretched 747 Advanced used technology from the 787 to modernize the design and its systems. The 747 remained the largest passenger airliner in service until the Airbus A380 began airline service in 2007. On November 14, 2005, Boeing announced it was launching the 747 Advanced as the Boeing 747-8. The last 747-400s were completed in 2009. , most orders of the 747-8 were for the freighter variant. On February 8, 2010, the 747-8 Freighter made its maiden flight. The first delivery of the 747-8 went to Cargolux in 2011. The first 747-8 Intercontinental passenger variant was delivered to Lufthansa on May 5, 2012. The 1,500th Boeing 747 was delivered in June 2014 to Lufthansa. In January 2016, Boeing stated it was reducing 747-8 production to six per year beginning in September 2016, incurring a $569 million post-tax charge against its fourth-quarter 2015 profits. At the end of 2015, the company had 20 orders outstanding. On January 29, 2016, Boeing announced that it had begun the preliminary work on the modifications to a commercial 747-8 for the next Air Force One presidential aircraft, then expected to be operational by 2020. On July 12, 2016, Boeing announced that it had finalized an order from Volga-Dnepr Group for 20 747-8 freighters, valued at $7.58 billion (~$ in ) at list prices. Four aircraft were delivered beginning in 2012. Volga-Dnepr Group is the parent of three major Russian air-freight carriers – Volga-Dnepr Airlines, AirBridgeCargo Airlines and Atran Airlines. The new 747-8 freighters would replace AirBridgeCargo's current 747-400 aircraft and expand the airline's fleet and will be acquired through a mix of direct purchases and leasing over the next six years, Boeing said. End of production. On July 27, 2016, in its quarterly report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Boeing discussed the potential termination of 747 production due to insufficient demand and market for the aircraft. With a firm order backlog of 21 aircraft and a production rate of six per year, program accounting had been reduced to 1,555 aircraft. In October 2016, UPS Airlines ordered 14 -8Fs to add capacity, along with 14 options, which it took in February 2018 to increase the total to 28 -8Fs on order. The backlog then stood at 25 aircraft, though several of these were orders from airlines that no longer intended to take delivery. On July 2, 2020, it was reported that Boeing planned to end 747 production in 2022 upon delivery of the remaining jets on order to UPS and the Volga-Dnepr Group due to low demand. On July 29, 2020, Boeing confirmed that the final 747 would be delivered in 2022 as a result of "current market dynamics and outlook" stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to CEO David Calhoun. The last aircraft, a 747-8F for Atlas Air registered N863GT, rolled off the production line on December 6, 2022, and was delivered on January 31, 2023. Boeing hosted an event at the Everett factory for thousands of workers as well as industry executives to commemorate the delivery. Design. The Boeing 747 is a large, wide-body (two-aisle) airliner with four wing-mounted engines. Its wings have a high sweep angle of 37.5° for a fast, efficient cruise speed of Mach 0.84 to 0.88, depending on the variant. The sweep also reduces the wingspan, allowing the 747 to use existing hangars. Its seating capacity is over 366 with a 3–4–3 seat arrangement (a cross section of three seats, an aisle, four seats, another aisle, and three seats) in economy class and a 2–3–2 layout in first class on the main deck. The upper deck has a 3–3 seat arrangement in economy class and a 2–2 layout in first class. Raised above the main deck, the cockpit creates a hump. This raised cockpit allows front loading of cargo on freight variants. The upper deck behind the cockpit provides space for a lounge and/or extra seating. The "stretched upper deck" became available as an alternative on the variant and later as standard beginning on the 747-300. The upper deck was stretched more on the 747-8. The 747 cockpit roof section also has an escape hatch from which crew can exit during the events of an emergency if they cannot do so through the cabin. The 747's maximum takeoff weight ranges from for the -100 to for the -8. Its range has increased from on the -100 to on the -8I. The 747 has redundant structures along with four redundant hydraulic systems and four main landing gears each with four wheels; these provide a good spread of support on the ground and safety in case of tire blow-outs. The main gear are redundant so that landing can be performed on two opposing landing gears if the others are not functioning properly. The 747 also has split control surfaces and was designed with sophisticated triple-slotted flaps that minimize landing speeds and allow the 747 to use standard-length runways. For transportation of spare engines, the 747 can accommodate a non-functioning fifth-pod engine under the aircraft's port wing between the inner functioning engine and the fuselage. The fifth engine mount point was also used by Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne program to carry an orbital-class rocket to cruise altitude where it was deployed. Operational history. After the aircraft's introduction with Pan Am in 1970, other airlines that had bought the 747 to stay competitive began to put their own 747s into service. Boeing estimated that half of the early 747 sales were to airlines desiring the aircraft's long range rather than its payload capacity. While the 747 had the lowest potential operating cost per seat, this could only be achieved when the aircraft was fully loaded; costs per seat increased rapidly as occupancy declined. A moderately loaded 747, one with only 70 percent of its seats occupied, used more than 95 percent of the fuel needed by a fully occupied 747. Nonetheless, many flag-carriers purchased the 747 due to its prestige "even if it made no sense economically" to operate. During the 1970s and 1980s, over 30 regularly scheduled 747s could often be seen at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The recession of 1969–1970, despite having been characterized as relatively mild, greatly affected Boeing. For the year and a half after September 1970, it only sold two 747s in the world, both to Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus. No 747s were sold to any American carrier for almost three years. When economic problems in the US and other countries after the 1973 oil crisis led to reduced passenger traffic, several airlines found they did not have enough passengers to fly the 747 economically, and they replaced them with the smaller and recently introduced McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and Lockheed L-1011 TriStar trijet wide bodies (and later the 767 and Airbus A300/A310 twinjets). Having tried replacing coach seats on its 747s with piano bars in an attempt to attract more customers, American Airlines eventually relegated its 747s to cargo service and in 1983 exchanged them with Pan Am for smaller aircraft; Delta Air Lines also removed its 747s from service after several years. Later, Delta acquired 747s again in 2008 as part of its merger with Northwest Airlines, although it retired the Boeing 747-400 fleet in December 2017. International flights bypassing traditional hub airports and landing at smaller cities became more common throughout the 1980s, thus eroding the 747's original market. Many international carriers continued to use the 747 on Pacific routes. In Japan, 747s on domestic routes were configured to carry nearly the maximum passenger capacity. Variants. The 747-100 with a range of 4,620 nautical miles (8,556 km), was the original variant launched in 1966. The 747-200 soon followed, with its launch in 1968 and the shorter 747SP launched in 1973. The 747-300 was launched in 1980 and was followed by the in 1985. Ultimately, the 747-8 was announced in 2005. Several versions of each variant have been produced, and many of the early variants were in production simultaneously. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) classifies variants using a shortened code formed by combining the model number and the variant designator (e.g. "B741" for all -100 models). 747-100. The first 747-100s were built with six upper deck windows (three per side) to accommodate upstairs lounge areas. Later, as airlines began to use the upper deck for premium passenger seating instead of lounge space, Boeing offered an upper deck with ten windows on either side as an option. Some early -100s were retrofitted with the new configuration. The -100 was equipped with Pratt & Whitney JT9D-3A engines. No freighter version of this model was developed, but many 747-100s were converted into freighters as 747-100(SF). The first 747-100(SF) was delivered to Flying Tiger Line in 1974. A total of 168 747-100s were built; 167 were delivered to customers, while Boeing kept the prototype, "City of Everett". In 1972, its unit cost was US$24M (M today). 747SR. Responding to requests from Japanese airlines for a high-capacity aircraft to serve domestic routes between major cities, Boeing developed the 747SR as a short-range version of the with lower fuel capacity and greater payload capability. With increased economy class seating, up to 498 passengers could be carried in early versions and up to 550 in later models. Intended for shorter routes and thus more turn arounds, the 747SR had an economic design life objective of 52,000 flights during 20 years of operation, compared to 24,600 flights in 20 years for the standard 747. The initial 747SR model, the -100SR, had a strengthened body structure and landing gear to accommodate the added stress accumulated from a greater number of takeoffs and landings. Extra structural support was built into the wings, fuselage, and the landing gear along with a 20% reduction in fuel capacity. The initial order for the -100SR – four aircraft for Japan Air Lines (JAL, later Japan Airlines) – was announced on October 30, 1972; rollout occurred on August 3, 1973, and the first flight took place on August 31, 1973. The type was certified by the FAA on September 26, 1973, with the first delivery on the same day. The -100SR entered service with JAL, the type's sole customer, on October 7, 1973, and typically operated flights within Japan. Seven -100SRs were built between 1973 and 1975, each with a MTOW and Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7A engines derated to of thrust. Following the -100SR, Boeing produced the -100BSR, a 747SR variant with increased takeoff weight capability. Debuting in 1978, the -100BSR also incorporated structural modifications for a high cycle-to-flying hour ratio; a related standard -100B model debuted in 1979. The -100BSR first flew on November 3, 1978, with first delivery to All Nippon Airways (ANA) on December 21, 1978. A total of 20 -100BSRs were produced for ANA and JAL. The -100BSR had a MTOW and was powered by the same JT9D-7A or General Electric CF6-45 engines used on the -100SR. ANA operated this variant on domestic Japanese routes with 455 or 456 seats until retiring its last aircraft in March 2006. In 1986, two -100BSR SUD models, featuring the stretched upper deck (SUD) of the -300, were produced for JAL. The type's maiden flight occurred on February 26, 1986, with FAA certification and first delivery on March 24, 1986. JAL operated the -100BSR SUD with 563 seats on domestic routes until their retirement in the third quarter of 2006. While only two -100BSR SUDs were produced, in theory, standard -100Bs can be modified to the SUD certification. Overall, 29 Boeing 747SRs were built. 747-100B. The 747-100B model was developed from the -100SR, using its stronger airframe and landing gear design. The type had an increased fuel capacity of , allowing for a range with a typical 452-passenger payload, and an increased MTOW of was offered. The first -100B order, one aircraft for Iran Air, was announced on June 1, 1978. This version first flew on June 20, 1979, received FAA certification on August 1, 1979, and was delivered the next day. Nine -100Bs were built, one for Iran Air and eight for Saudi Arabian Airlines. Unlike the original -100, the -100B was offered with Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7A, CF6-50, or Rolls-Royce RB211-524 engines. However, only RB211-524 (Saudia) and JT9D-7A (Iran Air) engines were ordered. The last 747-100B, EP-IAM was retired by Iran Air in 2014, the last commercial operator of the 747-100 and -100B. 747SP. The development of the 747SP stemmed from a joint request between Pan American World Airways and Iran Air, who were looking for a high-capacity airliner with enough range to cover Pan Am's New York–Middle Eastern routes and Iran Air's planned Tehran–New York route. The Tehran–New York route, when launched, was the longest non-stop commercial flight in the world. The 747SP is shorter than the . Fuselage sections were eliminated fore and aft of the wing, and the center section of the fuselage was redesigned to fit mating fuselage sections. The SP's flaps used a simplified single-slotted configuration. The 747SP, compared to earlier variants, had a tapering of the aft upper fuselage into the empennage, a double-hinged rudder, and longer vertical and horizontal stabilizers. Power was provided by Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7(A/F/J/FW) or Rolls-Royce RB211-524 engines. The 747SP was granted a type certificate on February 4, 1976, and entered service with launch customers Pan Am and Iran Air that same year. The aircraft was chosen by airlines wishing to serve major airports with short runways. A total of 45 747SPs were built, with the 44th 747SP delivered on August 30, 1982. In 1987, Boeing re-opened the 747SP production line after five years to build one last 747SP for an order by the United Arab Emirates government. In addition to airline use, one 747SP was modified for the NASA/German Aerospace Center SOFIA experiment. Iran Air, the last civil operator of the type, retired its final 747-SP (EP-IAC) in June 2016. 747-200. While the 747-100 powered by Pratt & Whitney JT9D-3A engines offered enough payload and range for medium-haul operations, it was marginal for long-haul route sectors. The demand for longer range aircraft with increased payload quickly led to the improved -200, which featured more powerful engines, increased MTOW, and greater range than the -100. A few early -200s retained the three-window configuration of the -100 on the upper deck, but most were built with a ten-window configuration on each side. The 747-200 was produced in passenger (-200B), freighter (-200F), convertible (-200C), and combi (-200M) versions. The 747-200B was the basic passenger version, with increased fuel capacity and more powerful engines; it entered service in February 1971. In its first three years of production, the -200 was equipped with Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7 engines (initially the only engine available). Range with a full passenger load started at over and increased to with later engines. Most -200Bs had an internally stretched upper deck, allowing for up to 16 passenger seats. The freighter model, the 747-200F, had a hinged nose cargo door and could be fitted with an optional side cargo door, and had a capacity of 105 tons (95.3 tonnes) and an MTOW of up to . It entered service in 1972 with Lufthansa. The convertible version, the 747-200C, could be converted between a passenger and a freighter or used in mixed configurations, and featured removable seats and a nose cargo door. The -200C could also be outfitted with an optional side cargo door on the main deck. The combi aircraft model, the 747-200M (originally designated 747-200BC), could carry freight in the rear section of the main deck via a side cargo door. A removable partition on the main deck separated the cargo area at the rear from the passengers at the front. The -200M could carry up to 238 passengers in a three-class configuration with cargo carried on the main deck. The model was also known as the 747-200 Combi. As on the -100, a stretched upper deck (SUD) modification was later offered. A total of ten 747-200s operated by KLM were converted. After launching the -200 with Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7 engines, on August 1, 1972, Boeing announced that it had reached an agreement with General Electric to certify the 747 with CF6-50 series engines to increase the aircraft's market potential. Rolls-Royce followed 747 engine production with a launch order from British Airways for four aircraft. The option of RB211-524B engines was announced on June 17, 1975. The -200 was the first 747 to provide a choice of powerplant from the three major engine manufacturers. In 1976, its unit cost was US$39M (M today). A total of 393 of the 747-200 versions had been built when production ended in 1991. Of these, 225 were -200B, 73 were -200F, 13 were -200C, 78 were -200M, and 4 were military. Iran Air retired the last passenger in May 2016, 36 years after it was delivered. , five 747-200s remain in service as freighters. 747-300. The 747-300 features a upper deck than the -200. The stretched upper deck (SUD) has two emergency exit doors and is the most visible difference between the -300 and previous models. After being made standard on the 747-300, the SUD was offered as a retrofit, and as an option to earlier variants still in-production. An example for a retrofit were two UTA -200 Combis being converted in 1986, and an example for the option were two brand-new JAL -100 aircraft (designated -100BSR SUD), the first of which was delivered on March 24, 1986. The 747-300 introduced a new straight stairway to the upper deck, instead of a spiral staircase on earlier variants, which creates room above and below for more seats. Minor aerodynamic changes allowed the -300's cruise speed to reach Mach 0.85 compared with Mach 0.84 on the -200 and -100 models, while retaining the same takeoff weight. The -300 could be equipped with the same Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce powerplants as on the -200, as well as updated General Electric CF6-80C2B1 engines. Swissair placed the first order for the on June 11, 1980. The variant revived the 747-300 designation, which had been previously used on a design study that did not reach production. The 747-300 first flew on October 5, 1982, and the type's first delivery went to Swissair on March 23, 1983. In 1982, its unit cost was US$83M (M today). Besides the passenger model, two other versions (-300M, -300SR) were produced. The 747-300M features cargo capacity on the rear portion of the main deck, similar to the -200M, but with the stretched upper deck it can carry more passengers. The 747-300SR, a short range, high-capacity domestic model, was produced for Japanese markets with a maximum seating for 584. No production freighter version of the 747-300 was built, but Boeing began modifications of used passenger -300 models into freighters in 2000. A total of 81 series aircraft were delivered, 56 for passenger use, 21 -300M and 4 -300SR versions. In 1985, just two years after the -300 entered service, the type was superseded by the announcement of the more advanced 747-400. The last 747-300 was delivered in September 1990 to Sabena. While some -300 customers continued operating the type, several large carriers replaced their 747-300s with 747-400s. Air France, Air India, Japan Airlines, Pakistan International Airlines, and Qantas were some of the last major carriers to operate the . On December 29, 2008, Qantas flew its last scheduled 747-300 service, operating from Melbourne to Los Angeles via Auckland. In July 2015, Pakistan International Airlines retired their final 747-300 after 30 years of service. Mahan Air was the last passenger operator of the Boeing 747-300. In 2022, their last 747-300M was leased by Emtrasur Cargo. The 747-300M was later seized by the US Department of Justice in 2024. 747-400. The 747-400 is an improved model with increased range. It has wingtip extensions of and winglets of , which improve the type's fuel efficiency by four percent compared to previous 747 versions. The 747-400 introduced a new glass cockpit designed for a flight crew of two instead of three, with a reduction in the number of dials, gauges and knobs from 971 to 365 through the use of electronics. The type also features tail fuel tanks, revised engines, and a new interior. The longer range has been used by some airlines to bypass traditional fuel stops, such as Anchorage. A 747-400 loaded with of fuel flying consumes an average of . Powerplants include the Pratt & Whitney PW4062, General Electric CF6-80C2, and Rolls-Royce RB211-524. As a result of the Boeing 767 development overlapping with the 747-400's development, both aircraft can use the same three powerplants and are even interchangeable between the two aircraft models. The was offered in passenger (-400), freighter (-400F), combi (-400M), domestic (-400D), extended range passenger (-400ER), and extended range freighter (-400ERF) versions. Passenger versions retain the same upper deck as the , while the freighter version does not have an extended upper deck. The 747-400D was designed for short-range operations with maximum seating for 624. So winglets were not included though they can be retrofitted. Cruising speed is up to Mach 0.855 on different versions of the . The passenger version first entered service in February 1989 with launch customer Northwest Airlines on the Minneapolis to Phoenix route. The combi version entered service in September 1989 with KLM, while the freighter version entered service in November 1993 with Cargolux. The 747-400ERF entered service with Air France in October 2002, while the 747-400ER entered service with Qantas, its sole customer, in November 2002. In January 2004, Boeing and Cathay Pacific launched the Boeing 747-400 Special Freighter program, later referred to as the Boeing Converted Freighter (BCF), to modify passenger 747-400s for cargo use. The first 747-400BCF was redelivered in December 2005. In March 2007, Boeing announced that it had no plans to produce further passenger versions of the -400. However, orders for 36 -400F and -400ERF freighters were already in place at the time of the announcement. The last passenger version of the 747-400 was delivered in April 2005 to China Airlines. Some of the last built 747-400s were delivered with Dreamliner livery along with the modern Signature interior from the Boeing 777. A total of 694 of the series aircraft were delivered. At various times, the largest 747-400 operator has included Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, and British Airways. , 331 Boeing 747-400s were in service; there were only 10 Boeing 747-400s in passenger service as of September 2021. 747 LCF Dreamlifter. The 747-400 Dreamlifter (originally called the 747 Large Cargo Freighter or LCF) is a Boeing-designed modification of existing 747-400s into a larger outsize cargo freighter configuration to ferry 787 Dreamliner sub-assemblies. Evergreen Aviation Technologies Corporation of Taiwan was contracted to complete modifications of 747-400s into Dreamlifters in Taoyuan. The aircraft flew for the first time on September 9, 2006, in a test flight. Modification of four aircraft was completed by February 2010. The Dreamlifters have been placed into service transporting sub-assemblies for the 787 program to the Boeing plant in Everett, Washington, for final assembly. The aircraft is certified to carry only essential crew with no passengers. 747-8. Boeing announced a new 747 variant, the , on November 14, 2005. Referred to as the "747 Advanced" prior to its launch, Boeing selected the designation 747-8 to show the connection with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, as the aircraft would use technology and the General Electric GEnx engines from the 787 to modernize the design and its systems. The variant is designed to be quieter, more economical, and more environmentally friendly. The 747-8's fuselage is lengthened from to , marking the first stretch variant of the aircraft. The 747-8 Freighter, or 747-8F, has 16% more payload capacity than its predecessor, allowing it to carry seven more standard air cargo containers, with a maximum payload capacity of of cargo. As on previous 747 freighters, the 747-8F features a flip up nose-door, a side-door on the main deck, and a side-door on the lower deck ("belly") to aid loading and unloading. The 747-8F made its maiden flight on February 8, 2010. The variant received its amended type certificate jointly from the FAA and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) on August 19, 2011. The -8F was first delivered to Cargolux on October 12, 2011. The passenger version, named 747-8 Intercontinental or 747-8I, is designed to carry up to 467 passengers in a 3-class configuration and fly more than at Mach 0.855. As a derivative of the already common , the 747-8I has the economic benefit of similar training and interchangeable parts. The type's first test flight occurred on March 20, 2011. The 747-8 has surpassed the Airbus A340-600 as the world's longest airliner, a record it would hold until the 777X, which first flew in 2020. The first -8I was delivered in May 2012 to Lufthansa. The 747-8 received 155 total orders, including 106 for the -8F and 47 for the -8I . The final 747-8F was delivered to Atlas Air on January 31, 2023, marking the end of the production of the Boeing 747 series. The final aircraft was registered as N863GT. Proposed variants. Boeing studied a number of 747 variants that did not advance beyond the concept stage. 747 trijet. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Boeing studied the development of a shorter 747 with three engines, to compete with the smaller Lockheed L-1011 TriStar and McDonnell Douglas DC-10. The center engine would have been fitted in the tail with an S-duct intake similar to the L-1011's. Overall, the 747 trijet would have had more payload, range, and passenger capacity than either of the two other aircraft. However, engineering studies showed that a major redesign of the 747 wing would be necessary. Maintaining the same 747 handling characteristics would be important to minimize pilot retraining. Boeing decided instead to pursue a shortened four-engine 747, resulting in the 747SP. 747-500. In January 1986, Boeing outlined preliminary studies to build a larger, ultra-long haul version named the , which would enter service in the mid- to late-1990s. The aircraft derivative would use engines evolved from unducted fan (UDF) (propfan) technology by General Electric, but the engines would have shrouds, sport a bypass ratio of 15–20, and have a propfan diameter of . The aircraft would be stretched (including the upper deck section) to a capacity of 500 seats, have a new wing to reduce drag, cruise at a faster speed to reduce flight times, and have a range of at least , which would allow airlines to fly nonstop between London, UK and Sydney, Australia. 747 ASB. Boeing announced the 747 ASB ("Advanced Short Body") in 1986 as a response to the Airbus A340 and the McDonnell Douglas MD-11. This aircraft design would have combined the advanced technology used on the 747-400 with the foreshortened 747SP fuselage. The aircraft was to carry 295 passengers over a range of . However, airlines were not interested in the project and it was canceled later that year. 747-500X, -600X, and -700X. Boeing announced the 747-500X and -600X at the 1996 Farnborough Airshow. The proposed models would have combined the 747's fuselage with a new wing spanning derived from the 777. Other changes included adding more powerful engines and increasing the number of tires from two to four on the nose landing gear and from 16 to 20 on the main landing gear. The 747-500X concept featured a fuselage length increased by to , and the aircraft was to carry 462 passengers over a range up to , with a gross weight of over 1.0 Mlb (450 tonnes). The 747-600X concept featured a greater stretch to with seating for 548 passengers, a range of up to , and a gross weight of 1.2 Mlb (540 tonnes). A third study concept, the 747-700X, would have combined the wing of the 747-600X with a widened fuselage, allowing it to carry 650 passengers over the same range as a . The cost of the changes from previous 747 models, in particular the new wing for the 747-500X and -600X, was estimated to be more than US$5 billion. Boeing was not able to attract enough interest to launch the aircraft. 747X and 747X Stretch. As Airbus progressed with its A3XX study, Boeing offered a 747 derivative as an alternative in 2000; a more modest proposal than the previous -500X and -600X with the 747's overall wing design and a new segment at the root, increasing the span to . Power would have been supplied by either the Engine Alliance GP7172 or the Rolls-Royce Trent 600, which were also proposed for the 767-400ERX. A new flight deck based on the 777's would be used. The 747X aircraft was to carry 430 passengers over ranges of up to . The 747X Stretch would be extended to long, allowing it to carry 500 passengers over ranges of up to . Both would feature an interior based on the 777. Freighter versions of the 747X and 747X Stretch were also studied. Like its predecessor, the 747X family was unable to garner enough interest to justify production, and it was shelved along with the 767-400ERX in March 2001, when Boeing announced the Sonic Cruiser concept. Though the 747X design was less costly than the 747-500X and -600X, it was criticized for not offering a sufficient advance from the existing . The 747X did not make it beyond the drawing board, but the 747-400X being developed concurrently moved into production to become the 747-400ER. 747-400XQLR. After the end of the 747X program, Boeing continued to study improvements that could be made to the 747. The 747-400XQLR (Quiet Long Range) was meant to have an increased range of , with improvements to boost efficiency and reduce noise. Improvements studied included raked wingtips similar to those used on the 767-400ER and a sawtooth engine nacelle for noise reduction. Although the 747-400XQLR did not move to production, many of its features were used for the 747 Advanced, which was launched as the 747-8 in 2005. Operators. In 1979, Qantas became the first airline in the world to operate an all Boeing 747 fleet, with seventeen aircraft. , there were 462 Boeing 747s in airline service, with Atlas Air and British Airways being the largest operators with 33 747-400s each. The last US passenger Boeing 747 was retired from Delta Air Lines in December 2017. The model flew for almost every American major carrier since its 1970 introduction. Delta flew three of its last four aircraft on a farewell tour, from Seattle to Atlanta on December 19 then to Los Angeles and Minneapolis/St Paul on December 20. As the IATA forecast an increase in air freight from 4% to 5% in 2018 fueled by booming trade for time-sensitive goods, from smartphones to fresh flowers, demand for freighters is strong while passenger 747s are phased out. Of the 1,574 produced, 890 are retired; , a small subset of those which were intended to be parted-out got $3 million D-checks before flying again. Young -400s were sold for 320 million yuan ($50 million) and Boeing stopped converting freighters, which used to cost nearly $30 million. This comeback helped the airframer financing arm Boeing Capital to shrink its exposure to the 747-8 from $1.07 billion in 2017 to $481 million in 2018. In July 2020, British Airways announced that it was retiring its 747 fleet. The final British Airways 747 flights departed London Heathrow on October 8, 2020. Orders and deliveries. Boeing 747 orders and deliveries (cumulative, by year): Accidents and incidents. , the 747 has been involved in 173 aviation accidents and incidents, including 64 hull losses (52 in-flight accidents), causing fatalities. There have been several hijackings of Boeing 747s, such as Pan Am Flight 73, a 747-100 hijacked by four terrorists, resulting in 20 deaths. The 747 also fell victim to several mid-air bombings, two of which resulted in major fatalities and hull losses, Air India Flight 182 in 1985, and Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. The deadliest aviation accident, the Tenerife airport disaster, resulted from pilot error and communications failure, while the Japan Air Lines Flight 123 and China Airlines Flight 611 crashes stemmed from improper aircraft repair due to a tail-strike. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet Su-15TM interceptor in 1983 after it had violated Soviet airspace for over 12 minutes, causing US President Ronald Reagan to authorize the then-strictly-military global positioning system (GPS) for civilian use. South African Airways Flight 295, a 747-200M Combi, which crashed on 28 November 1987 due to an inflight fire, led to the mandate of adding fire-suppression systems on board Combi variants. A handful of crashes have been attributed to 747 design flaws, mainly older 747 classic (100/200/300/SP) variants. United Airlines Flight 811, which suffered an explosive decompression mid-flight on February 24, 1989, led the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to issue a recommendation that the Boeing 747-100 and 747-200 cargo doors similar to those on the Flight 811 aircraft be modified to those featured on the Boeing . TWA Flight 800, a 747-100 that exploded in mid-air on July 17, 1996 due to sparking from the old and cracked electrical wires inside the fuel tank, where voltage levels exceeded the maximum limit, causing ignition of the fuel vapors inside the tank. This finding led the FAA to adopt a rule in July 2008 requiring installation of an inerting system in the center fuel tank of most large aircraft, after years of research into solutions. At the time, the new safety system was expected to cost US$100,000 to $450,000 per aircraft and weigh approximately . Two 747-200F freighters - China Airlines Flight 358 in December 1991 and El Al Flight 1862 in October 1992, crashed after the fuse pins for an engine (no. 3) broke off shortly after take-off due to metal fatigue, and instead of simply dropping away from the wing, the engine knocked off the adjacent engine and damaged the wing. Following these crashes, Boeing issued a directive to examine and replace all fuse pins found to be cracked. The lack of adequate warning systems combined with flight crew error led to a preventable crash of Lufthansa Flight 540 in November 1974, which was the first fatal crash of a 747, while an instrument malfunction leading to crew disorientation caused the crash of Air India Flight 855 on New Years Day in 1978. Other incidents did not result in any hull losses, but the planes suffered certain damages and were put back into service after repair. On July 30, 1971, Pan Am Flight 845 struck approach lighting system structures while taking off from San Francisco for Tokyo, Japan; the plane dumped fuel and landed back. The cause was pilot error with improper calculations, and the plane was repaired and returned to service. On June 24, 1982, British Airways Flight 9, a Boeing 747-200, registration "G-BDXH", flew through a cloud of volcanic ash and dust from the eruption of Mount Galunggung, suffering an all engine flameout; the crew restarted the engines and successfully landed at Jakarta. The volcanic ash caused windscreens to be sandblasted along with engine damage and paint rip-off; the plane was repaired with engines replaced and returned to service. On December 11, 1994, on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434 from Manila to Tokyo via Cebu, a bomb exploded under a seat, killing one passenger; the plane landed safely at Okinawa despite damage to the plane's controls. The bomber, Ramzi Yousef, was caught on 7 February 1995 in Islamabad, Pakistan, and the plane was repaired, but converted for cargo use. Preserved aircraft. Aircraft on display. As increasing numbers of "classic" 747-100 and series aircraft have been retired, some have been used for other uses such as museum displays. Some older 747-300s and 747-400s were later added to museum collections. Other uses. Upon its retirement from service, the 747 which was number two in the production line was dismantled and shipped to Hopyeong, Namyangju, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea where it was re-assembled, repainted in a livery similar to that of Air Force One and converted into a restaurant. Originally flown commercially by Pan Am as N747PA, "Clipper Juan T. Trippe", and repaired for service following a tailstrike, it stayed with the airline until its bankruptcy. The restaurant closed by 2009, and the aircraft was scrapped in 2010. A former British Airways 747-200B, G-BDXJ, is parked at the Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey, England and has been used as a movie set for productions such as the 2006 James Bond film, "Casino Royale" using the fictional registration N88892 and N9747P. The airplane also appears frequently in the television series "Top Gear", which is filmed at Dunsfold. The "Jumbo Stay" hostel, using a converted 747-200 formerly operated by Singapore Airlines and registered as 9V-SQE, opened at Arlanda Airport, Stockholm in January 2009. It closed in March 2025 after the owner declared bankruptcy. A former Pakistan International Airlines 747-300 was converted into a restaurant by Pakistan's Airports Security Force in 2017. It is located at Jinnah International Airport, Karachi. The wings of a 747 have been repurposed as roofs of a house in Malibu, California. In 2023, a Boeing 747-412, retired from Lion Air, was turned into a steak restaurant in Bekasi, Indonesia. The aircraft had been sitting since 2018 but the construction of the restaurant was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two used 747-400s were cannibalized to build the Scaled Composites Stratolaunch aircraft. Cultural impact. Following its debut, the 747 rapidly achieved iconic status. The aircraft entered the cultural lexicon as the original "Jumbo Jet", a term coined by the aviation media to describe its size, and was also nicknamed "Queen of the Skies". Test pilot David P. Davies described it as "a most impressive aeroplane with a number of exceptionally fine qualities", and praised its flight control system as "truly outstanding" because of its redundancy. Appearing in over 300 film productions, the 747 is one of the most widely depicted civilian aircraft and is considered by many as one of the most iconic in film history. It has appeared in film productions such as the disaster films "Airport 1975" and "Airport '77", as well as "Air Force One", "Die Hard 2", and "Executive Decision".
4615	2731577	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4615	Battle of Agincourt	The Battle of Agincourt ( ; ) was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War. It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. The unexpected victory of the vastly outnumbered English troops against the numerically superior French army boosted English morale and prestige, crippled France, and started a new period of English dominance in the war that would last for 14 years until England was defeated by France in 1429 during the Siege of Orléans. After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. In the ensuing campaign, many soldiers died from disease, and the English numbers dwindled; they tried to withdraw to English-held Calais but found their path blocked by a considerably larger French army. Despite the numerical disadvantage, the battle ended in an overwhelming victory for the English. King Henry V of England led his troops into battle and participated in hand-to-hand fighting. King Charles VI of France did not command the French army as he suffered from psychotic illnesses and associated mental incapacity. The French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party. This battle is notable for the use of the English longbow in very large numbers, with the English and Welsh archers comprising nearly 80 percent of Henry's army. The Battle of Agincourt is one of England's most celebrated victories and was one of the most important English triumphs in the Hundred Years' War, along with the Battle of Crécy (1346) and Battle of Poitiers (1356). The battle continues to fascinate scholars and the general public into the modern day. It forms the backdrop to notable works such as William Shakespeare's play "Henry V", written in 1599. Contemporary accounts. The Battle of Agincourt is well documented by at least seven contemporary accounts, three from eyewitnesses. The general location of the battle is not disputed and the site remains relatively unaltered after 600 years. A paucity of archeological evidence, though, has led to a debate as to the exact location of the battlefield. Immediately after the battle, Henry summoned the heralds of the two armies who had watched the battle together with principal French herald Montjoie, and they settled on the name of the battle as "Azincourt", after the nearest fortified place. Two of the most frequently cited accounts come from Burgundian sources, one from Jean Le Fèvre de Saint-Remy who was present at the battle, and the other from Enguerrand de Monstrelet. The English eyewitness account comes from the anonymous author of the "Gesta Henrici Quinti", believed to have been written by a chaplain in the King's household who would have been in the baggage train at the battle. A recent re-appraisal of Henry's strategy of the Agincourt campaign incorporates these three accounts and argues that war was seen as a legal due process for solving the disagreement over claims to the French throne. Background. Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. He claimed the title of King of France through his great-grandfather Edward III of England, although in practice the English kings were generally prepared to renounce this claim if the French would acknowledge the English claim on Aquitaine and other French lands (the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny). He initially called a Great Council in the spring of 1414 to discuss going to war with France, but the lords insisted that he should negotiate further and moderate his claims. In the ensuing negotiations Henry said that he would give up his claim to the French throne if the French would pay the 1.6 million crowns outstanding from the ransom of John II (who had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356), and concede English ownership of the lands of Anjou, Brittany, Flanders, Normandy, and Touraine, as well as Aquitaine. Henry would marry Catherine, Charles VI's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2 million crowns. The French responded with what they considered the generous terms of marriage with Catherine, a dowry of 600,000 crowns, and an enlarged Aquitaine. In December 1414, the English parliament was persuaded to grant Henry a "double subsidy", a tax at twice the traditional rate, to recover his inheritance from the French. By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself. On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed. Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415, carried by a vast fleet. It was often reported to comprise 1,500 ships, but was probably far smaller. Theodore Beck also suggests that among Henry's army was "the king's physician and a little band of surgeons". Thomas Morstede, Henry V's royal surgeon, had previously been contracted by the king to supply a team of surgeons and makers of surgical instruments to take part in the Agincourt campaign. The army of about 12,000 men and up to 20,000 horses besieged the port of Harfleur. The siege took longer than expected. The town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. Rather than retire directly to England for the winter, with his costly expedition resulting in the capture of only one town, Henry decided to march most of his army (roughly 9,000) through Normandy to the port of Calais, the English stronghold in northern France, to demonstrate by his presence in the territory at the head of an army that his right to rule in the duchy was more than a mere abstract legal and historical claim. He also intended the manoeuvre as a deliberate provocation to battle aimed at the dauphin, who had failed to respond to Henry's personal challenge to combat at Harfleur. During the siege, the French had raised an army which assembled around Rouen. This was not strictly a feudal army, but an army paid through a system similar to that of the English. The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur. After Henry V marched to the north, the French moved to block them along the River Somme. They were successful for a time, forcing Henry to move south, away from Calais, to find a ford. The English finally crossed the Somme south of Péronne, at Béthencourt and Voyennes and resumed marching north. Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle. They shadowed Henry's army while calling a "semonce des nobles", calling on local nobles to join the army. By 24 October, both armies faced each other for battle, but the French declined, hoping for the arrival of more troops. The two armies spent the night of 24 October on open ground. The next day the French initiated negotiations as a delaying tactic, but Henry ordered his army to advance and to start a battle that, given the state of his army, he would have preferred to avoid, or to fight defensively: that was how Crécy and the other famous longbow victories had been won. The English had very little food, had marched in two and a half weeks, were suffering from sickness such as dysentery, and were greatly outnumbered by well-equipped French men-at-arms. The French army blocked Henry's way to the safety of Calais, and delaying battle would only further weaken his tired army and allow more French troops to arrive. Setting. Battlefield. The precise location of the battle is not known. It may be in the narrow strip of open land formed between the woods of Tramecourt and Azincourt (close to the modern village of Azincourt). The lack of archaeological evidence at this traditional site has led to suggestions it was fought to the west of Azincourt. In 2019, the historian Michael Livingston also made the case for a site west of Azincourt, based on a review of sources and early maps. English deployment. Early on the 25th, Henry deployed his army (approximately 1,500 men-at-arms and 7,000 longbowmen) across a part of the defile. The army was divided into three groups, with the right wing led by Edward, Duke of York, the centre led by the king himself, and the left wing under the old and experienced Baron Thomas Camoys. The archers were commanded by Sir Thomas Erpingham, another elderly veteran. It is likely that the English adopted their usual battle line of longbowmen on either flank, with men-at-arms and knights in the centre. They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. The English and Welsh archers on the flanks drove pointed wooden stakes, or palings, into the ground at an angle to force cavalry to veer off. This use of stakes could have been inspired by the Battle of Nicopolis of 1396, where forces of the Ottoman Empire used the tactic against French cavalry. The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. Henry, worried about the enemy launching surprise raids, and wanting his troops to remain focused, ordered all his men to spend the night before the battle in silence, on pain of having an ear cut off. He told his men that he would rather die in the coming battle than be captured and ransomed. Henry made a speech emphasising the justness of his cause, and reminding his army of previous great defeats the kings of England had inflicted on the French. The Burgundian sources have him concluding the speech by telling his men that the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every archer, so that he could never draw a longbow again. Whether this was true is open to question and continues to be debated to this day; however, it seems likely that death was the normal fate of any soldier who could not be ransomed. French deployment. The French army had 10,000 men-at arms plus some 4,000–5,000 miscellaneous footmen () including archers, crossbowmen () and shield-bearers (), totaling 14,000–15,000 men. Probably each man-at-arms would be accompanied by a "gros valet" (or varlet), an armed servant, adding up to another 10,000 potential fighting men, though some historians omit them from the number of combatants. The French were organized into two main groups (or battles), a vanguard up front and a main battle behind, both composed principally of men-at-arms fighting on foot and flanked by more of the same in each wing. There was a special, elite cavalry force whose purpose was to break the formation of the English archers and thus clear the way for the infantry to advance. A second, smaller mounted force was to attack the rear of the English army, along with its baggage and servants. Many lords and gentlemen demanded and received position in the front lines, where they would have a higher chance to acquire glory and valuable ransoms; this resulted in the bulk of the men-at-arms being massed in the front lines and the other troops, for which there was no remaining space, to be placed behind. Although it had been planned for the archers and crossbowmen to be placed with the infantry wings, they were now regarded as unnecessary and placed behind them instead. On account of the lack of space, the French drew up a third battle, the rearguard, which was on horseback and mainly comprised the valets mounted on the horses belonging to the men fighting on foot ahead. The French vanguard and main battle numbered respectively 4,800 and 3,000 men-at-arms. Both lines were arrayed in tight, dense formations of about 16 ranks each, and were positioned a bowshot length from each other. Albret, Boucicaut and almost all the leading noblemen were assigned stations in the vanguard. The dukes of Alençon and Bar led the main battle. A further 600 dismounted men-at-arms stood in each wing, with the left under the Count of Vendôme and the right under the Count of Richemont. To disperse the enemy archers, a cavalry force of 800–1,200 picked men-at-arms, led by Clignet de Bréban and Louis de Bosredon, was distributed evenly between both flanks of the vanguard (standing slightly forward, like horns). Some 200 mounted men-at-arms would attack the English rear. The French apparently had no clear plan for deploying the rest of the army. The rearguard, leaderless, would serve as a "dumping ground" for the surplus troops. Terrain. The field of battle was arguably the most significant factor in deciding the outcome. The recently ploughed land hemmed in by dense woodland favoured the English, both because of its narrowness, and because of the thick mud through which the French knights had to walk. Accounts of the battle describe the French engaging the English men-at-arms before being rushed from the sides by the longbowmen as the melee developed. The English account in the "Gesta Henrici" says: "For when some of them, killed when battle was first joined, fall at the front, so great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men behind them that the living fell on top of the dead, and others falling on top of the living were killed as well." Although the French initially pushed the English back, they became so closely packed that they were described as having trouble using their weapons properly. The French monk of St. Denis says: "Their vanguard, composed of about 5,000 men, found itself at first so tightly packed that those who were in the third rank could scarcely use their swords," and the Burgundian sources have a similar passage. Recent heavy rain had made the battle field very muddy, proving very tiring to walk through in full plate armour. The French monk of St. Denis describes the French troops as "marching through the middle of the mud where they sank up to their knees. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". The deep, soft mud particularly favoured the English force because, once knocked to the ground, the heavily armoured French knights had a hard time getting back up to fight in the melee. Barker states that some knights, encumbered by their armour, actually drowned in their helmets. Fighting. Opening moves. On the morning of 25 October, the French were still waiting for additional troops to arrive. The Duke of Brabant (about 2,000 men), the Duke of Anjou (about 600 men), and the Duke of Brittany (6,000 men, according to Monstrelet), were all marching to join the army. For three hours after sunrise there was no fighting. Military textbooks of the time stated: "Everywhere and on all occasions that foot soldiers march against their enemy face to face, those who march lose and those who remain standing still and holding firm win." On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. They were blocking Henry's retreat, and were willing to wait for as long as it took. There had been a suggestion that the English would run away rather than give battle when they saw that they would be fighting so many French princes. Henry's men were already weary from hunger and illness and from their ongoing retreat. Apparently Henry believed his fleeing army would perform better on the defensive, but had to halt the retreat and somehow engage the French before a defensive battle was possible. This entailed abandoning his chosen position, in which the longbowmen were defended from cavalry charges by long sharpened wooden stakes set in the ground and pointed towards the French lines. These stakes had to be pulled out of the ground, carried to the army's new position, and reinstalled to defend the English lines. The use of stakes was an innovation for the English: during the Battle of Crécy, for example, the archers had been instead protected by pits and other obstacles. The tightness of the terrain also seems to have restricted the planned deployment of the French forces. The French had originally drawn up a battle plan that had archers and crossbowmen in front of their men-at-arms, with a cavalry force at the rear specifically designed to "fall upon the archers, and use their force to break them," but in the event, the French archers and crossbowmen were deployed "behind" and to the sides of the men-at-arms. The French archers seem to have played almost no part, except possibly for an initial volley of arrows at the start of the battle. The cavalry force, which could have devastated the English line if it had attacked while they moved their stakes, charged only "after" the initial volley of arrows from the English. It is unclear whether the delay occurred because the French were hoping the English would launch a frontal assault and were surprised when the English instead started shooting from their new defensive position, or whether the French mounted knights instead did not react quickly enough to the English advance. French chroniclers agree that when the mounted charge did come, it did not contain as many men as it should have; Gilles le Bouvier states that some had wandered off to warm themselves and others were walking or feeding their horses. French cavalry attack. The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen because of the encroaching woodland; they were also unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started. The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from Saint Denis Basilica who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield. Main French assault. Despite advancing through what the French monk of Saint Denis described as "a terrifying hail of arrow shot", the plate armour of the French men-at-arms allowed them to close the distance to the English lines after the English longbowmen started shooting from extreme longbow range (approximately ). A complete coat of plate was considered such good protection that shields were generally not used, although the Burgundian contemporary sources distinguish between Frenchmen who used shields and those who did not, and Rogers has suggested that the front elements of the French force used axes and shields. Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. Modern test and contemporary accounts conclude that arrows could not penetrate the better quality steel armour, which became available to knights and men-at-arms of fairly modest means by the middle of the 14th century, but could penetrate the poorer quality wrought iron armour. Rogers suggested that the longbow could penetrate a wrought iron breastplate at short range and penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs even at . He considered a knight in the best-quality steel armour invulnerable to an arrow on the breastplate or top of the helmet, but vulnerable to shots hitting the limbs, particularly at close range. In any case, to protect themselves as much as possible from the arrows, the French had to lower their visors and bend their helmeted heads to avoid being shot in the face, as the eye- and air-holes in their helmets were among the weakest points in the armour. This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. Then they had to walk a few hundred yards (metres) through thick mud and a press of comrades while wearing armour weighing , gathering sticky clay all the way. Increasingly, they had to walk around or over fallen comrades. The surviving French men-at-arms reached the front of the English line and pushed it back, with the longbowmen on the flanks continuing to shoot at point-blank range. When the archers ran out of arrows, they dropped their bows and, using hatchets, swords, and the mallets they had used to drive their stakes in, attacked the now disordered, fatigued and wounded French men-at-arms massed in front of them. The French could not cope with the thousands of lightly armoured longbowmen assailants, who were much less hindered by the mud and weight of their armour, combined with the English men-at-arms. The impact of thousands of arrows, combined with the slog in heavy armour through the mud, the heat and difficulty breathing in plate armour with the visor down, and the crush of their numbers, meant the French men-at-arms could "scarcely lift their weapons" when they finally engaged the English line. The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. As the melee developed, the French second line also joined the attack, but they too were swallowed up, with the narrow terrain meaning the extra numbers could not be used effectively. Rogers suggested that the French at the back of their deep formation would have been attempting to literally add their weight to the advance, without realising that they were hindering the ability of those at the front to manoeuvre and fight by pushing them into the English formation of lancepoints. After the initial wave, the French would have had to fight over and on the bodies of those who had fallen before them. In such a "press" of thousands of men, Rogers suggested that many could have suffocated in their armour, as was described by several sources, and which was also known to have happened in other battles. The French men-at-arms were taken prisoner or killed in the thousands. The fighting lasted about three hours, but eventually the leaders of the second line were killed or captured, as those of the first line had been. The English "Gesta Henrici" described three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards. According to contemporary English accounts, Henry fought hand to hand. Upon hearing that his youngest brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester had been wounded in the groin, Henry took his household guard and stood over his brother, in the front rank of the fighting, until Humphrey could be dragged to safety. The king received an axe blow to the head, which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet. Attack on the English baggage train. The only French success was an attack on the lightly protected English baggage train, with Ysembart d'Azincourt (leading a small number of men-at-arms and varlets plus about 600 peasants) seizing some of Henry's personal treasures, including a crown. Whether this was part of a deliberate French plan or an act of local brigandage is unclear from the sources. Certainly, d'Azincourt was a local knight but he might have been chosen to lead the attack because of his local knowledge and the lack of availability of a more senior soldier. In some accounts the attack happened towards the end of the battle, and led the English to think they were being attacked from the rear. Barker, following the "Gesta Henrici", believed to have been written by an English chaplain who was actually in the baggage train, concluded that the attack happened at the "start" of the battle. Henry executes French prisoners. Regardless of when the baggage assault happened, at some point after the initial English victory, Henry became alarmed that the French were regrouping for another attack. The "Gesta Henrici" places this after the English had overcome the onslaught of the French men-at-arms and the weary English troops were eyeing the French rearguard ("in incomparable number and still fresh"). Le Fèvre and Wavrin similarly say that it was signs of the French rearguard regrouping and "marching forward in battle order" which made the English think they were still in danger. Henry ordered the slaughter of most of the French prisoners, possibly numbering in the thousands. He ordered only the highest-ranked prisoners to be spared, presumably because they were the most likely to fetch a large ransom under the chivalric system of warfare. The prisoners outnumbered their captors; according to most chroniclers, Henry feared that the prisoners would realise their advantage in numbers, rearm themselves with the weapons strewn about the field, and overwhelm the exhausted English forces. Contemporary chroniclers did not criticise Henry for ordering the killing. In his study of the battle John Keegan argued that the main aim was not to actually kill the French prisoners but rather to terrorise them into submission and quell any possibility they might resume the fight, which would probably have caused the uncommitted French reserve forces to join the fray, as well. Such an event would have posed a risk to the still-outnumbered English and could have easily turned their victory into a mutually destructive defeat, as the English forces were now largely intermingled with the French and would have suffered grievously from the arrows of their own longbowmen had they needed to resume fighting. The English knights refused to assist in the killing of these prisoners due to their belief that it was unchivalrous. Keegan, estimating that only around 200 archers were involved in the task and recognizing the difficulty of killing thousands of prisoners quickly, speculates that relatively few prisoners were actually killed before the French reserves fled the field and Henry rescinded the order. Aftermath. The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men were killed. The list of casualties, one historian has noted, "read like a roll call of the military and political leaders of the past generation". Among them were 90–120 great lords and bannerets killed, including three dukes (Alençon, Bar and Brabant), nine counts (Blâmont, Dreux, Fauquembergue, Grandpré, Marle, Nevers, Roucy, Vaucourt, Vaudémont) and one viscount (Puisaye), also an archbishop. Of the great royal office holders, France lost its constable (Albret), an admiral (the lord of Dampierre), the Master of Crossbowmen (David de Rambures, dead along with three sons), Master of the Royal Household (Guichard Dauphin) and "prévôt" of the marshals. According to the heralds, 3,069 knights and squires were killed, while at least 2,600 more corpses were found without coats of arms to identify them. Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility was annihilated. The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle "cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society in Artois, Ponthieu, Normandy, Picardy." Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, the counts of Eu, Vendôme, Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany and stepbrother of Henry V) and Harcourt, and marshal Jean Le Maingre. While numerous English sources give the English casualties in double figures, record evidence identifies at least 112 Englishmen killed in the fighting, while Monstrelet reported 600 English dead. These included the Duke of York, the young Earl of Suffolk and the Welsh esquire Dafydd ("Davy") Gam. Jean de Wavrin, a knight on the French side, wrote that English fatalities were 1,600 "men of all ranks". Although the victory had been militarily decisive, its impact was complex. It did not lead to further English conquests immediately as Henry's priority was to return to England, which he did on 16 November, to be received in triumph in London on the 23rd. Henry returned a conquering hero, seen as blessed by God in the eyes of his subjects and European powers outside France. It established the legitimacy of the Lancastrian monarchy and the future campaigns of Henry to pursue his "rights and privileges" in France. Other benefits to the English were longer term. Very quickly after the battle, the fragile truce between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions broke down. The brunt of the battle had fallen on the Armagnacs and it was they who suffered the majority of senior casualties and carried the blame for the defeat. The Burgundians seized on the opportunity and within 10 days of the battle had mustered their armies and marched on Paris. This lack of unity in France allowed Henry eighteen months to prepare militarily and politically for a renewed campaign. When that campaign took place, it was made easier by the damage done to the political and military structures of Normandy by the battle. Numbers at Agincourt. Most primary sources which describe the battle have the English outnumbered by several times. By contrast, Anne Curry in her 2005 book "Agincourt: A New History" argued, based on research into the surviving administrative records, that the French army was 12,000 strong, and the English army 9,000, proportions of four to three. While not necessarily agreeing with the exact numbers Curry uses, Bertrand Schnerb, a professor of medieval history at the University of Lille, states the French probably had 12,000–15,000 troops. Juliet Barker, Jonathan Sumption and Clifford J. Rogers criticized Curry's reliance on administrative records, arguing that they are incomplete and that several of the available primary sources already offer a credible assessment of the numbers involved. Ian Mortimer endorsed Curry's methodology, though applied it more liberally, noting how she "minimises French numbers (by limiting her figures to those in the basic army and a few specific additional companies) and maximises English numbers (by assuming the numbers sent home from Harfleur were no greater than sick lists)", and concluded that "the most extreme imbalance which is credible" is 15,000 French against 8,000–9,000 English. Barker opined that "if the differential really was as low as three to four then this makes a nonsense of the course of the battle as described by eyewitnesses and contemporaries". Barker, Sumption and Rogers all wrote that the English probably had 6,000 men, these being 5,000 archers and 900–1,000 men-at-arms. These numbers are based on the "Gesta Henrici Quinti" and the chronicle of Jean Le Fèvre, the only two eyewitness accounts on the English camp. Curry and Mortimer questioned the reliability of the "Gesta", as there have been doubts as to how much it was written as propaganda for Henry V. Both note that the "Gesta" vastly overestimates the number of French in the battle; its proportions of English archers to men-at-arms at the battle are also different from those of the English army before the siege of Harfleur. Mortimer also considers that the "Gesta" vastly inflates the English casualties – 5,000 – at Harfleur, and that "despite the trials of the march, Henry had lost very few men to illness or death; and we have independent testimony that no more than 160 had been captured on the way". Rogers, on the other hand, finds the number 5,000 plausible, giving several analogous historical events to support his case, and Barker considers that the fragmentary pay records which Curry relies on actually support the lower estimates. Historians disagree less about the French numbers. Rogers, Mortimer and Sumption all give more or less 10,000 men-at-arms for the French, using as a source the herald of the Duke of Berry, an eyewitness. The number is supported by many other contemporary accounts. Curry, Rogers and Mortimer all agree the French had 4 to 5 thousand missile troops. Sumption, thus, concludes that the French had 14,000 men, basing himself on the monk of St. Denis; Mortimer gives 14 or 15 thousand fighting men. One particular cause of confusion may have been the number of servants on both sides, or whether they should at all be counted as combatants. Since the French had many more men-at-arms than the English, they would accordingly be accompanied by a far greater number of servants. Rogers says each of the 10,000 men-at-arms would be accompanied by a "gros valet" (an armed, armoured and mounted military servant) and a noncombatant page, counts the former as fighting men, and concludes thus that the French in fact numbered 24,000. Barker, who believes the English were outnumbered by at least four to one, says that the armed servants formed the rearguard in the battle. Mortimer notes the presence of noncombatant pages only, indicating that they would ride the spare horses during the battle and be mistakenly thought of as combatants by the English. Popular representations. The battle remains an important symbol in popular culture. Some notable examples are listed below. Music. Soon after the victory at Agincourt, a number of popular folk songs were created about the battle, the most famous being the "Agincourt Carol", produced in the first half of the 15th century. Other ballads followed, including "King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France", raising the popular prominence of particular events mentioned only in passing by the original chroniclers, such as the gift of tennis balls before the campaign. Literature. The most famous cultural depiction of the battle today is in Act IV of William Shakespeare's "Henry V", written in 1599. The play focuses on the pressures of kingship, the tensions between how a king should "appear" – chivalric, honest, and just – and how a king must sometimes "act" – Machiavellian and ruthless. Shakespeare illustrates these tensions by depicting Henry's decision to kill some of the French prisoners, whilst attempting to justify it and distance himself from the event. This moment of the battle is portrayed both as a break with the traditions of chivalry and as a key example of the paradox of kingship. Shakespeare's depiction of the battle also plays on the theme of modernity. He contrasts the modern, English king and his army with the medieval, chivalric, older model of the French. Shakespeare's play presented Henry as leading a truly English force into battle, playing on the importance of the link between the monarch and the common soldiers in the fight. The original play does not, however, feature any scenes of the actual battle itself, leading critic Rose Zimbardo to characterise it as "full of warfare, yet empty of conflict." The play introduced the famous St Crispin's Day Speech, considered one of Shakespeare's most heroic speeches, which Henry delivers movingly to his soldiers just before the battle, urging his "band of brothers" to stand together in the forthcoming fight. Critic David Margolies describes how it "oozes honour, military glory, love of country and self-sacrifice", and forms one of the first instances of English literature linking solidarity and comradeship to success in battle. Partially as a result, the battle was used as a metaphor at the beginning of the First World War, when the British Expeditionary Force's attempts to stop the German advances were widely likened to it. Shakespeare's portrayal of the casualty loss is ahistorical in that the French are stated to have lost 10,000 and the English 'less than' thirty men, prompting Henry's remark, "O God, thy arm was here". In 2008, English-American author Bernard Cornwell released a retelling of both the events leading up the battle and the battle itself, titled "Azincourt". The story is told predominantly through the eyes of an English longbowman named Nicholas Hook. Films. Shakespeare's version of the battle of Agincourt has been turned into several minor and two major films. The latter, each titled "Henry V", star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. Made just prior to the invasion of Normandy, Olivier's rendition gives the battle what Sarah Hatchuel has termed an "exhilarating and heroic" tone, with an artificial, cinematic look to the battle scenes. Branagh's version gives a longer, more realist portrayal of the battle itself, drawing on both historical sources and images from the Vietnam and Falkland Wars. In his 2007 film adaptation, director Peter Babakitis uses digital effects to exaggerate realist features during the battle scenes, producing a more "avant-garde" interpretation of the fighting at Agincourt. The battle also forms a central component of the 2019 Netflix film "The King", which stars Timothée Chalamet as Henry V and Robert Pattinson as the Dauphin of Viennois. The film takes inspiration from Shakespeare's Henriad plays"." Mock trial. In March 2010, a mock trial of Henry V for the crimes associated with the slaughter of the prisoners was held in Washington, D.C., drawing from both the historical record and Shakespeare's play. Participating as judges were Justices Samuel Alito and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The trial ranged widely over whether there was just cause for war and not simply the prisoner issue. Although an audience vote was "too close to call", Henry was unanimously found guilty by the court on the basis of "evolving standards of civil society". Agincourt today. There is a modern museum in Azincourt village dedicated to the battle. The museum lists the names of combatants of both sides who died in the battle.
4620	48932100	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4620	Bronze Age	The Bronze Age is an archaeological term defining a phase in the development of material culture among ancient societies in Asia, the Near East and Europe. An ancient civilisation is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age if it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from producing areas elsewhere. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of the three-age system, following the Stone Age and preceding the Iron Age. Conceived as a global era, the Bronze Age follows the Neolithic ("New Stone") period, with a transition period between the two known as the Chalcolithic ("Copper-Stone") Age. These technical developments took place at different times in different places, and therefore each region's history is framed by a different chronological system. Bronze Age cultures were the first to develop writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia, which used cuneiform script, and Egypt, which used hieroglyphs, developed the earliest practical writing systems. In the Archaeology of the Americas, a five-period system is conventionally used instead, which does not include a Bronze Age, though some cultures there did smelt copper and bronze. There was no metalworking on the Australian continent prior to the establishment of European settlements in 1788. In many areas bronze continued to be rare and expensive, mainly because of difficulties in obtaining enough tin, which occurs in relatively few places, unlike the very common copper. Some societies appear to have gone through much of the Bronze Age using bronze only for weapons or elite art, such as Chinese ritual bronzes, with ordinary farmers largely still using stone tools. However, this is hard to assess as the rarity of bronze meant it was keenly recycled. Metal use. Bronze Age civilisations gained a technological advantage due to bronze's harder and more durable properties than other metals available at the time. While terrestrial iron is naturally abundant, the higher temperature required for smelting, , in addition to the greater difficulty of working with it, placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Tin's lower melting point of and copper's moderate melting point of placed both these metals within the capabilities of Neolithic pottery kilns, which date to 6000 BC and were able to produce temperatures of at least . The Bronze Age is characterised by the widespread use of bronze, though the introduction and development of bronze technology were not universally synchronous. Bronze was independently discovered in the Maykop culture of the North Caucasus as early as the mid-4th millennium BC, which makes them the producers of the oldest-known bronze. However, the Maykop culture only had arsenical bronze. Other regions developed bronze and its associated technology at different periods. Tin bronze technology requires systematic techniques: tin must be mined (mainly as the tin ore cassiterite) and smelted separately, then added to hot copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of extensive use of metals and the development of trade networks. A 2013 report suggests that the earliest tin-alloy bronze was a foil dated to the mid-5th millennium BC from a Vinča culture site in Pločnik, Serbia, although this culture is not conventionally considered part of the Bronze Age; however, the dating of the foil has been disputed. Near East. West Asia and the Near East were the first regions to enter the Bronze Age, beginning with the rise of the Mesopotamian civilisation of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. Cultures in the ancient Near East practised intensive year-round agriculture; developed writing systems; invented the potter's wheel, created centralised governments (usually in the form of hereditary monarchies), formulated written law codes, developed city-states, nation-states and empires; embarked on advanced architectural projects; and introduced social stratification, economic and civil administration, slavery, and practised organised warfare, medicine, and religion. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy, mathematics, and astrology. The following dates are approximate. Near East Bronze Age divisions. The Bronze Age in the Near East can be divided into Early, Middle and Late periods. The dates and phases below apply solely to the Near East, not universally. However, some archaeologists propose a "high chronology", which extends periods such as the Intermediate Bronze Age by 300 to 500–600 years, based on material analysis of the southern Levant in cities such as Hazor, Jericho, and Beit She'an. Anatolia. The Hittite Empire was established during the 18th century BC in Hattusa, northern Anatolia. At its height in the 14th century BC, the Hittite Kingdom encompassed central Anatolia, southwestern Syria as far as Ugarit, and upper Mesopotamia. After 1180 BC, amid general turmoil in the Levant, which is conjectured to have been associated with the sudden arrival of the Sea Peoples, the kingdom disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived into the 8th century BC. Arzawa, in Western Anatolia, during the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, likely extended along southern Anatolia in a belt from near the Turkish Lakes region to the Aegean coast. Arzawa was the western neighbour of the Middle and New Hittite Kingdoms, at times a rival and, at other times, a vassal. The Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatolia defeated by the Hittites under the earlier Tudhaliya I . Arzawa has been associated with the more obscure Assuwa generally located to its north. It probably bordered it, and may have been an alternative term for it during some periods. Egypt. Early Bronze dynasties. In Ancient Egypt, the Bronze Age began in the Protodynastic Period . The archaic "Early Bronze Age of Egypt", known as the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt, immediately followed the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt, . It is generally taken to include the First and Second dynasties, lasting from the Protodynastic Period until , or the beginning of the Old Kingdom. With the First Dynasty, the capital moved from Abydos to Memphis with a unified Egypt ruled by an Egyptian god-king. Abydos remained the major holy land in the south. The hallmarks of ancient Egyptian civilisation, such as art, architecture and religion, took shape in the Early Dynastic Period. Memphis, in the Early Bronze Age, was the largest city of the time. The Old Kingdom of the regional Bronze Age is the name given to the period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egyptian civilisation attained its first continuous peak of complexity and achievement—the first of three "Kingdom" periods which marked the high points of civilisation in the lower Nile Valley (the others being the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom). The First Intermediate Period of Egypt, often described as a "dark period" in ancient Egyptian history, spanned about 100 years after the end of the Old Kingdom from about 2181 to 2055 BC. Very little monumental evidence survives from this period, especially from the early part of it. The First Intermediate Period was a dynamic time when the rule of Egypt was roughly divided between two areas: Heracleopolis in Lower Egypt and Thebes in Upper Egypt. These two kingdoms eventually came into conflict, and the Theban kings conquered the north, reunifying Egypt under a single ruler during the second part of the Eleventh Dynasty. Nubia. The Bronze Age in Nubia started as early as 2300 BC. Egyptians introduced copper smelting to the Nubian city of Meroë in present-day Sudan E. A furnace for bronze casting found in Kerma has been dated to 2300–1900 BC. Middle Bronze dynasties. The Middle Kingdom of Egypt spanned between 2055 and 1650 BC. During this period, the Osiris funerary cult rose to dominate popular Ancient Egyptian religion. The period comprises two phases: the Eleventh Dynasty, which ruled from Thebes, and the Twelfth and Thirteenth dynasties, centred on el-Lisht. The unified kingdom was previously considered to comprise the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties, but historians now consider part of the Thirteenth Dynasty to have belonged to the Middle Kingdom. During the Second Intermediate Period, Ancient Egypt fell into disarray a second time between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom, best known for the Hyksos, whose reign comprised the Fifteenth and Sixteenth dynasties. The Hyksos first appeared in Egypt during the Eleventh Dynasty, began their climb to power in the Thirteenth Dynasty, and emerged from the Second Intermediate Period in control of Avaris and the Nile Delta. By the Fifteenth Dynasty, they ruled lower Egypt. They were expelled at the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty. Late Bronze dynasties. The New Kingdom of Egypt, also referred to as the Egyptian Empire, existed during the 16th–11th centuries BC. The New Kingdom followed the Second Intermediate Period and was succeeded by the Third Intermediate Period. It was Egypt's most prosperous time and marked the peak of Egypt's power. The later New Kingdom, comprising the Nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties (1292–1069 BC), is also known as the Ramesside period, after the eleven pharaohs who took the name of Ramesses. Iranian plateau. Elam was a pre-Iranian ancient civilisation located east of Mesopotamia. In the Middle Bronze Age, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centred in Anshan. From the mid-2nd millennium BC, Elam was centred in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a crucial role in both the Gutian Empire and the Iranian Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it. The Oxus civilisation was a Bronze Age Central Asian culture dated and centred on the upper Amu Darya (). In the Early Bronze Age, the culture of the Kopet Dag oases and Altyndepe developed a proto-urban society. This corresponds to level IV at Namazga-Tepe. Altyndepe was a major centre even then. Pottery was wheel-turned. Grapes were grown. The height of this urban development was reached in the Middle Bronze Age , corresponding to level V at Namazga-Depe. This Bronze Age culture is called the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex. The Kulli culture, similar to that of the Indus Valley Civilisation, was located in southern Balochistan (Gedrosia) . The economy was agricultural. Dams were found in several places, providing evidence for a highly developed water management system. Konar Sandal is associated with the hypothesized Jiroft culture, a 3rd-millennium BC culture postulated based on a collection of artefacts confiscated in 2001. Levant. In modern scholarship, the chronology of the Bronze Age Levant is divided into: The term "Neo-Syria" is used to designate the early Iron Age. The old Syrian period was dominated by the Eblaite first kingdom, Nagar and the Mariote second kingdom. The Akkadians conquered large areas of the Levant and were followed by the Amorite kingdoms, , which arose in Mari, Yamhad, Qatna, and Assyria. From the 15th century BC onward, the term Amurru is usually applied to the region extending north of Canaan as far as Kadesh on the Orontes River. The earliest-known contact of Ugarit with Egypt (and the first exact dating of Ugaritic civilisation) comes from a carnelian bead identified with the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Senusret I, whose reign is dated to 1971–1926 BC. A stela and a statuette of the Egyptian pharaohs Senusret III and Amenemhet III have also been found. However, it is unclear when they first arrived at Ugarit. In the Amarna letters, messages from Ugarit written by Ammittamru I, Niqmaddu II, and his queen have been discovered. From the 16th to the 13th century BC, Ugarit remained in constant contact with Egypt and Cyprus (Alashiya). Mitanni was a loosely organised state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia, emerging . Founded by an Indo-Aryan ruling class that governed a predominantly Hurrian population, Mitanni came to be a regional power after the Hittite destruction of Kassite Babylon created a power vacuum in Mesopotamia. At its beginning, Mitanni's major rival was Egypt under the Thutmosids. However, with the ascent of the Hittite empire, Mitanni and Egypt allied to protect their mutual interests from the threat of Hittite domination. At the height of its power during the 14th century BC, Mitanni had outposts centred on its capital, Washukanni, which archaeologists have located on the headwaters of the Khabur River. Eventually, Mitanni succumbed to the Hittites and later Assyrian attacks, eventually being reduced to a province of the Middle Assyrian Empire. The Israelites were an ancient Semitic-speaking people of the Ancient Near East who inhabited part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods (15th–6th centuries BC), and lived in the region in smaller numbers after the fall of the monarchy. The name "Israel" first appears E, at the end of the Late Bronze Age and the very beginning of the Iron Age, on the Merneptah Stele raised by the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah. The Arameans were a Northwest Semitic semi-nomadic pastoral people who originated in what is now modern Syria (Biblical Aram) during the Late Bronze and early Iron Age. Large groups migrated to Mesopotamia, where they intermingled with the native Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian) population. The Aramaeans never had a unified empire; they were divided into independent kingdoms all across the Near East. After the Bronze Age collapse, their political influence was confined to Syro-Hittite states, which were entirely absorbed into the Neo-Assyrian Empire by the 8th century BC. Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamian Bronze Age began E and ended with the Kassite period ). The usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used in the context of Mesopotamia. Instead, a division primarily based on art and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people. Ur, Kish, Isin, Larsa, and Nippur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon, Calah, and Assur in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC) became the dominant power in the region. After its fall, the Sumerians enjoyed a renaissance with the Neo-Sumerian Empire. Assyria, along with the Old Assyrian Empire (), became a regional power under the Amorite king Shamshi-Adad I. The earliest mention of Babylon (then a small administrative town) appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC. The Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over a century later, it briefly took over the other city-states and formed the short-lived First Babylonian Empire during what is also called the Old Babylonian Period. Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia used the written East Semitic Akkadian language for official use and as a spoken language. By that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use in Assyria and Babylonia, and would remain so until the 1st century AD. The Akkadian and Sumerian traditions played a major role in later Assyrian and Babylonian culture. Despite this, Babylonia, unlike the more militarily powerful Assyria, was founded by non-native Amorites and often ruled by other non-indigenous peoples such as the Kassites, Aramaeans and Chaldeans, as well as by its Assyrian neighbours. Asia. Central Asia. Agropastoralism. For many decades, scholars made superficial reference to Central Asia as the "pastoral realm" or alternatively, the "nomadic world", in what researchers call the "Central Asian void": a 5,000-year span that was neglected in studies of the origins of agriculture. Foothill regions and glacial melt streams supported Bronze Age agro-pastoralists who developed complex east–west trade routes between Central Asia and China that introduced wheat and barley to China and millet to Central Asia. Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex. The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), also known as the Oxus civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in Central Asia, dated , located in present-day northern Afghanistan, eastern Turkmenistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centred on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River). Its sites were discovered and named by the Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi (1976). Bactria was the Greek name for the area of Bactra (modern Balkh), in what is now northern Afghanistan, and Margiana was the Greek name for the Persian satrapy of Marguš, the capital of which was Merv in present-day Turkmenistan. A wealth of information indicates that the BMAC had close international relations with the Indus Valley, the Iranian plateau, and possibly even indirectly with Mesopotamia. All civilisations were familiar with lost wax casting. According to a 2019 study, the BMAC was not a primary contributor to later South-Asian genetics. Seima-Turbino phenomenon. The Altai Mountains, in what is now southern Russia and central Mongolia, have been identified as the point of origin of a cultural enigma termed the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon. It is conjectured that changes in climate in this region , and the ensuing ecological, economic, and political changes, triggered a rapid and massive migration westward into northeast Europe, eastward into China, and southward into Vietnam and Thailand across a frontier of some . This migration took place in just five to six generations and led to peoples from Finland in the west to Thailand in the east employing the same metalworking technology and, in some areas, horse breeding and riding. However, recent genetic testings of sites in south Siberia and Kazakhstan (Andronovo horizon) would rather support spreading of the bronze technology via Indo-European migrations eastwards, as this technology had been well known for quite a while in western regions. It is further conjectured that the same migrations spread the Uralic group of languages across Europe and Asia, with extant members of the family including Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian. East Asia. China. In China, the earliest bronze artefacts have been found in the Majiayao culture site (3100–2700 BC). The term "Bronze Age" has been transferred to the archaeology of China from that of Western Eurasia, and there is no consensus or universally used convention delimiting the "Bronze Age" in the context of Chinese prehistory. The "Early Bronze Age" in China is sometimes taken to be coterminous with the reign of the Shang dynasty (16th–11th centuries BC), and the Later Bronze Age with the subsequent Zhou dynasty (11th–3rd centuries BC), from the 5th century, called Iron Age China although there is an argument to be made that the Bronze Age never properly ended in China, as there is no recognisable transition to an Iron Age. Together with the jade art that precedes it, bronze was seen as a fine material for ritual art when compared with iron or stone. Bronze metallurgy in China originated in what is referred to as the Erlitou period, which some historians argue places it within the Shang. Others believe the Erlitou sites belong to the preceding Xia dynasty. The United States National Gallery of Art defines the Chinese Bronze Age as , a period that begins with the Erlitou culture and ends abruptly with the disintegration of Western Zhou rule. There is reason to believe that bronze work developed inside of China apart from outside influence. However, the discovery of the Europoid Tarim mummies in Xinjiang has caused some archaeologists such as Johan Gunnar Andersson, Jan Romgard, and An Zhimin to suggest a possible route of transmission from the West eastwards. According to An Zhimin, "It can be imagined that initially, bronze and iron technology took its rise in West Asia, first influenced the Xinjiang region, and then reached the Yellow River valley, providing external impetus for the rise of the Shang and Zhou civilizations." According to Jan Romgard, "bronze and iron tools seem to have traveled from west to east as well as the use of wheeled wagons and the domestication of the horse." There are also possible links to Seima-Turbino culture, "a transcultural complex across northern Eurasia", the Eurasian steppe, and the Urals. However, the oldest bronze objects found in China so far were discovered at the Majiayao site in Gansu rather than at Xinjiang. The production of Erlitou represents the earliest large-scale metallurgy industry in the Central Plains of China. The influence of the Seima-Turbino metalworking tradition from the north is supported by a series of recent discoveries in China of many unique perforated spearheads with downward hooks and small loops on the same or opposite side of the socket, which could be associated with the Seima-Turbino visual vocabulary of southern Siberia. The metallurgical centres of northwestern China, especially the Qijia culture in Gansu and Longshan culture in Shaanxi, played an intermediary role in this process. Iron use in China dates as early as the Zhou dynasty (256 BC), but remained minimal. Chinese literature authored during the 6th century BC attests to knowledge of iron smelting, yet bronze continues to occupy the seat of significance in the archaeological and historical record for some time after this. W. C. White argues that iron did not supplant bronze "at any period before the end of the Zhou dynasty (256 BC)" and that bronze vessels make up the majority of metal vessels through the Eastern Han period, or to 221 BC. The Chinese bronze artefacts generally are either utilitarian, like spear points or adze heads, or "ritual bronzes", which are more elaborate versions in precious materials of everyday vessels, as well as tools and weapons. Examples are the numerous large sacrificial tripods known as "dings"; there are many other distinct shapes. Surviving identified Chinese ritual bronzes tend to be highly decorated, often with the "taotie" motif, which involves stylised animal faces. These appear in three main motif types: those of demons, symbolic animals, and abstract symbols. Many large bronzes also bear cast inscriptions that are the bulk of the surviving body of early Chinese writing and have helped historians and archaeologists piece together the history of China, especially during the Zhou dynasty. The bronzes of the Western Zhou document large portions of history not found in the extant texts that were often composed by persons of varying rank and possibly even social class. Further, the medium of cast bronze lends the record they preserve a permanence not enjoyed by manuscripts. These inscriptions can commonly be subdivided into four parts: a reference to the date and place, the naming of the event commemorated, the list of gifts given to the artisan in exchange for the bronze, and a dedication. The relative points of reference these vessels provide have enabled historians to place most of the vessels within a certain time frame of the Western Zhou period, allowing them to trace the evolution of the vessels and the events they record. Japan. The Japanese archipelago saw the introduction of bronze during the early Yayoi period (), which saw the introduction of metalworking and agricultural practices brought by settlers arriving from the continent. Bronze and iron smelting spread to the Japanese archipelago through contact with other ancient East Asian civilisations, particularly immigration and trade from the ancient Korean peninsula, and ancient mainland China. Iron was mainly used for agricultural and other tools, whereas ritual and ceremonial artefacts were mainly made of bronze. Korea. On the Korean Peninsula, the Bronze Age began . Initially centred around Liaoning and southern Manchuria, Korean Bronze Age culture exhibits unique typology and styles, especially in ritual objects. The Mumun pottery period is named after the Korean name for undecorated or plain cooking and storage vessels that form a large part of the pottery assemblage over the entire length of the period, but especially between 850 and 550 BC. The Mumun period is known for the origins of intensive agriculture and complex societies in both the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago. The Middle Mumun pottery period culture of the southern Korean Peninsula gradually adopted bronze production ( after a period when Liaoning-style bronze daggers and other bronze artefacts were exchanged as far as the interior part of the Southern Peninsula (). The bronze daggers lent prestige and authority to the personages who wielded and were buried with them in high-status megalithic burials at south-coastal centres such as the Igeum-dong site. Bronze was an important element in ceremonies and for mortuary offerings until 100 BC. South Asia. Indus Valley. The Bronze Age on the Indian subcontinent began with the beginning of the Indus Valley Civilization. Inhabitants of the Indus Valley, the Harappans, developed new techniques in metallurgy and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin. The Late Harappan culture (1900–1400 BC), overlapped the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age; thus it is difficult to date this transition accurately. It has been claimed that a 6,000-year-old copper amulet manufactured in Mehrgarh in the shape of a wheel spoke is the earliest example of lost-wax casting in the world. The civilisation's cities were noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and new techniques in handicraft (carnelian products, seal carving) and metallurgy (copper, bronze, lead, and tin). The large cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa likely grew to contain between 30,000 and 60,000 people, and the civilisation during its florescence may have contained between one and five million people. Southeast Asia. The Vilabouly Complex in Laos is a significant archaeological site for dating the origin of bronze metallurgy in Southeast Asia. Thailand. In Ban Chiang, Thailand, bronze artefacts have been discovered that date to 2100 BC. However, according to the radiocarbon dating on the human and pig bones in Ban Chiang, some scholars propose that the initial Bronze Age in Ban Chiang was in the late 2nd millennium. In Nyaung-gan, Myanmar, bronze tools have been excavated along with ceramics and stone artefacts. Dating is still currently broad (2300–500 BC). Ban Non Wat, excavated by Charles Higham, was a rich site with over 640 graves excavated that gleaned many complex bronze items that may have had social value connected to them. Ban Chiang, however, is the most thoroughly documented site and has the clearest evidence of metallurgy when in Southeast Asia. With a rough date range from the late 3rd millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD, this site has artefacts such as burial pottery (dated 2100–1700 BC) and fragments of bronze and copper-base bangles. This technology suggested on-site casting from the beginning. The on-site casting supports the theory that bronze was first introduced in Southeast Asia from a different country. Some scholars believe that copper-based metallurgy was disseminated from northwest and central China south and southwest via areas such as Guangdong and Yunnan and finally into southeast Asia . Archaeology also suggests that Bronze Age metallurgy may not have been as significant a catalyst in social stratification and warfare in Southeast Asia as in other regions, and that social distribution shifted away from chiefdoms to a heterarchical network. Data analyses of sites such as Ban Lum Khao, Ban Na Di, Non-Nok Tha, Khok Phanom Di, and Nong Nor have consistently led researchers to conclude that there was no entrenched hierarchy. Vietnam. Dating to the Neolithic, the first bronze drums, called the Dong Son drums, were uncovered in and around the Red River Delta regions of northern Vietnam and Southern China. These relate to the Dong Son culture of Vietnam. Archaeological research in Northern Vietnam indicates an increase in rates of infectious disease following the advent of metallurgy; skeletal fragments in sites dating to the early and mid-Bronze Age evidence a greater proportion of lesions than in sites of earlier periods. There are a few possible implications of this. One is the increased contact with bacterial and/or fungal pathogens due to increased population density and land clearing/cultivation. Another implication is decreased levels of immunocompetence in the Metal Age due to changes in diet caused by agriculture. The last implication is that there may have been an emergence of infectious diseases that evolved into a more virulent form in the metal period. Europe. A few examples of named Bronze Age cultures in Europe roughly in relative order—dates are approximate. The chosen cultures overlapped in time and the indicated periods do not fully correspond to their estimated extents. Southeast Europe. Radivojevic et al. (2013) reported the discovery of a tin bronze foil from the Pločnik archaeological site dated to as well as 14 other artefacts from Serbia and Bulgaria dated before 4000 BC, showing that early tin bronze was more common than previously thought and developed independently in Europe 1500 years before the first tin bronze alloys in the Near East. The production of complex tin bronzes lasted for about 500 years in the Balkans. The authors reported that evidence for the production of such complex bronzes disappears at the end of the 5th millennium BC, coinciding with the "collapse of large cultural complexes in north-eastern Bulgaria and Thrace". Tin bronzes using cassiterite tin were reintroduced to the area some 1500 years later. The oldest golden artefacts in the world are dated between 4600 and 4200 BC, and were found in the Necropolis of Varna. These artefacts are on display in the Varna Archaeological Museum. The Dabene Treasure was unearthed from 2004 to 2007 near Karlovo in central Bulgaria. The treasure consists of 20,000 gold jewellery items from 18 to 23 carats. The most important of them was a dagger made of gold and platinum with an unusual edge. The treasure was dated to the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Scientists suggest that the Karlovo valley used to be a major crafts centre that exported golden jewellery across Europe. It is considered one of the largest prehistoric golden treasures in the world. Aegean. The Aegean Bronze Age began , when civilisations first established a far-ranging trade network. This network imported tin and charcoal to Cyprus, where copper was mined and alloyed with tin to produce bronze. Bronze objects were then exported far and wide. Isotopic analysis of tin in some Mediterranean bronze artefacts suggests that they may have originated from Bronze Age Britain. Knowledge of navigation was well-developed by this time and reached a peak of skill not exceeded (except perhaps by Polynesian sailors) until 1730 when the invention of the chronometer enabled the precise determination of longitude. The Minoan civilisation based in Knossos on the island of Crete appears to have coordinated and defended its Bronze Age trade. Ancient empires valued luxury goods in contrast to staple foods, leading to famine. Aegean collapse. Bronze Age collapse theories have described aspects of the end of the Bronze Age in this region. At the end of the Bronze Age in the Aegean region, the Mycenaean administration of the regional trade empire followed the decline of Minoan primacy. Several Minoan client states lost much of their population to famine and pestilence. This would indicate that the trade network may have failed, preventing the trade that would previously have relieved such famines and prevented illness caused by malnutrition. It is also known that in this era, the breadbasket of the Minoan empire—the area north of the Black Sea—also suddenly lost much of its population and thus probably some capacity to cultivate crops. Drought and famine in Anatolia may have also led to the Aegean collapse by disrupting trade networks, therefore preventing the Aegean from accessing bronze and luxury goods. The Aegean collapse has been attributed to the exhaustion of the Cypriot forests causing the end of the bronze trade. These forests are known to have existed in later times, and experiments have shown that charcoal production on the scale necessary for the bronze production of the late Bronze Age would have exhausted them in less than 50 years. The Aegean collapse has also been attributed to the fact that as iron tools became more common, the main justification for the tin trade ended, and that trade network ceased to function as it did formerly. The colonies of the Minoan empire then suffered drought, famine, war, or some combination of the three, and had no access to the distant resources of an empire by which they could easily recover. The Thera eruption occurred , north of Crete. Speculation includes that a tsunami from Thera (more commonly known today as Santorini) destroyed Cretan cities. A tsunami may have destroyed the Cretan navy in its home harbour, which then lost crucial naval battles; so that in the LMIB/LMII event () the cities of Crete burned and the Mycenaean civilisation conquered Knossos. If the eruption occurred in the late 17th century BC as most chronologists believe, then its immediate effects belong to the Middle to Late Bronze Age transition, and not to the end of the Late Bronze Age, but it could have triggered the instability that led to the collapse first of Knossos and then of Bronze Age society overall. One such theory highlights the role of Cretan expertise in administering the empire, post-Thera. If this expertise was concentrated in Crete, then the Mycenaeans may have made political and commercial mistakes in administering the Cretan empire. Archaeological findings, including some on the island of Thera, suggest that the centre of the Minoan civilisation at the time of the eruption was actually on Thera rather than on Crete. According to this theory, the catastrophic loss of the political, administrative and economic centre due to the eruption, as well as the damage wrought by the tsunami to the coastal towns and villages of Crete, precipitated the decline of the Minoans. A weakened political entity with a reduced economic and military capability and fabled riches would have then been more vulnerable to conquest. Indeed, the Santorini eruption is usually dated to , while the Mycenaean Greeks first enter the historical record a few decades later, . The later Mycenaean assaults on Crete () and Troy () would have been a continuation of the steady encroachment of the Greeks upon the weakened Minoan world. Central Europe. In Central Europe, the Early Bronze Age Unetice culture (2300–1600 BC) includes numerous smaller groups like the Straubing, Adlerberg and Hatvan cultures. Some very rich burials, such as the one located at Leubingen with grave gifts crafted from gold, point to an increase of social stratification already present in the Unetice culture. Cemeteries of this period are small and rare. The Unetice culture was followed by the Middle Bronze Age (1600–1200 BC) tumulus culture, characterised by inhumation burials in tumuli barrows. In the eastern Hungarian Körös tributaries, the early Bronze Age first saw the introduction of the Mako culture, followed by the Otomani and Gyulavarsand cultures. The late Bronze Age Urnfield culture (1300–700 BC) was characterised by cremation burials. It included the Lusatian culture in eastern Germany and Poland (1300–500 BC) that continues into the Iron Age. The Central European Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (700–450 BC). Important sites include Biskupin in Poland, Nebra in Germany, Vráble in Slovakia, and Zug-Sumpf in Switzerland. German prehistorian Paul Reinecke described Bronze A1 (Bz A1) period (2300–2000 BC: triangular daggers, flat axes, stone wrist-guards, flint arrowheads) and Bronze A2 (Bz A2) period (1950–1700 BC: daggers with metal hilt, flanged axes, halberds, pins with perforated spherical heads, solid bracelets) and phases Hallstatt A and B (Ha A and B). Southern Europe. The Apennine culture was a technology complex in central and southern Italy spanning both the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age proper. The Camuni were an ancient people of uncertain origin who lived in Val Camonica, in present-day Lombardy, during the Iron Age, although groups of hunters, shepherds, and farmers are known to have lived in the area since the Neolithic. Located in Sardinia and Corsica, the Nuragic civilisation lasted from the early Bronze Age (18th century BC) to the 2nd century AD, when the islands were already Romanised. They take their name from the characteristic Nuragic towers, which evolved from the pre-existing megalithic culture, which built dolmens and menhirs. The towers are unanimously considered the best-preserved and largest megalithic remains in Europe. Their purpose is still debated: some scholars consider them monumental tombs, others as Houses of the Giants, other as fortresses, ovens for metal fusion, prisons, or finally temples for a solar cult. Near the end of the 3rd millennium BC, Sardinia exported to Sicily a culture that built small dolmens, trilithic or polygonal shaped, that served as tombs, as in the Sicilian dolmen of "Cava dei Servi". From this region, they reached Malta and other countries of Mediterranean basin. The Terramare was an early Indo-European civilisation in the area of what is now Pianura Padana in northern Italy, before the arrival of the Celts, and in other parts of Europe. They lived in square villages of wooden stilt houses. These villages were built on land, but generally near a stream, with roads forming a grid plan. The whole complex was of the nature of a fortified settlement. The Terramare culture was widespread in the Pianura Padana, especially along the Panaro river, between Modena and Bologna, and in the rest of Europe. The civilisation developed in the Middle and Late Bronze Age during the 17th–13th centuries BC. The Castellieri culture developed in Istria during the Middle Bronze Age. It lasted for more than a millennium, from the 15th century BC until the Roman conquest in the 3rd century BC. It takes its name from the fortified boroughs ("Castellieri", ) that characterised the culture. The Canegrate culture developed from the mid-Bronze Age (13th century BC) until the Iron Age in the Pianura Padana, in what are now western Lombardy, eastern Piedmont, and Ticino. It takes its name from the township of Canegrate, where, in the 20th century, some fifty tombs with ceramics and metal objects were found. The Canegrate culture migrated from the northwest part of the Alps and descended to Pianura Padana from the Swiss Alps passes and the Ticino. The Golasecca culture developed starting from the late Bronze Age in the Po plain. It takes its name from Golasecca, a locality next to the Ticino, where in the early 19th century abbot excavated its first findings comprising some 50 tombs with ceramics and metal objects. Remains of the Golasecca culture span an area of about south to the Alps, between the Po, Sesia, and Serio rivers, dating to the 9th–4th centuries BC. Western Europe. Great Britain. In Great Britain, the Bronze Age is considered to have been the period from to 750 BC. Migration brought new people to the islands from the continent. Tooth enamel isotope research on bodies found in early Bronze Age graves around Stonehenge indicates that at least some of the migrants came from the area of present-day Switzerland. Another example site is Must Farm near Whittlesey, host to the most complete Bronze Age wheel ever to be found. The Beaker culture displayed different behaviours from earlier Neolithic people, and cultural change was significant. Integration is thought to have been peaceful, as many of the early henge sites were seemingly adopted by the newcomers. The rich Wessex culture developed in southern Britain at this time. Additionally, the climate was deteriorating; where once the weather was warm and dry it became much wetter as the Bronze Age continued, forcing the population away from easily defended sites in the hills and into the fertile valleys. Large livestock farms developed in the lowlands and appear to have contributed to economic growth and inspired increasing forest clearances. The Deverel-Rimbury culture began to emerge in the second half of the Middle Bronze Age () to exploit these conditions. Devon and Cornwall were major sources of tin for much of western Europe and copper was extracted from sites such as the Great Orme mine in northern Wales. Social groups appear to have been tribal but with growing complexity and hierarchies becoming apparent. The burials, which until this period had usually been communal, became more individual. For example, whereas in the Neolithic a large chambered cairn or long barrow housed the dead, Early Bronze Age people buried their dead in individual barrows (commonly known and marked on modern British Ordnance Survey maps as tumuli), or sometimes in cists covered with cairns. The greatest quantities of bronze objects in England were discovered in East Cambridgeshire, with the most important finds being the 6,500-piece Isleham Hoard. Alloying of copper with tin to make bronze was practiced soon after the discovery of copper. The techniques needed to deliberately alloy copper with zinc to form brass first arrived in Great Britain late in the first millennium BC. One copper mine at Great Orme in North Wales, reached a depth of 70 metres. At Alderley Edge in Cheshire, carbon dating has established mining at around 2280 to 1890 BC with a 95% probability. The earliest identified metalworking site (Sigwells, Somerset) came much later, dated by globular urn-style pottery to . The identifiable sherds from over 500 mould fragments included a perfect fit of the hilt of a sword in the Wilburton style held in Somerset County Museum. Atlantic Bronze Age. The Atlantic Bronze Age as cultural geographic region is a cultural complex () that includes different cultures in the context of the Atlantic Iberian Peninsula (Portugal, Andalucía, Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, País Vasco, Navarra and Castilla and León), the Atlantic France, Britain and Ireland, while the Atlantic Bronze Age as cultural complex of the final phase of the Bronze Age period is dated between and 700 BC. It is marked by economic and cultural exchange. Commercial contacts extend to Denmark and the Mediterranean. The Atlantic Bronze Age was defined by many distinct regional centres of metal production, unified by a regular maritime exchange of products. Ireland. The Bronze Age in Ireland began when copper was alloyed with tin and used to manufacture Ballybeg type flat axes and associated metalwork. The preceding period is known as the Copper Age and is characterised by the production of flat axes, daggers, halberds and awls in copper. The period is divided into three phases: Early Bronze Age (2000–1500 BC), Middle Bronze Age (1500–1200 BC), and Late Bronze Age (1200). Ireland is known for a relatively large number of Early Bronze Age burials. The country's stone circles and stone rows were built during this period. One of the characteristic types of artefacts of the Early Bronze Age in Ireland is the flat axe. There are five main types of flat axes: Lough Ravel crannog (), Ballybeg (), Killaha (), Ballyvalley (), Derryniggin (), and a number of metal ingots in the shape of axes. Northern Europe. The Bronze Age in Northern Europe spans the 2nd millennium BC, (Unetice culture, Urnfield culture, Tumulus culture, Terramare culture and Lusatian culture) lasting until . The Northern Bronze Age was both a period and a Bronze Age culture in Scandinavian pre-history, , with sites as far east as Estonia. Succeeding the Late Neolithic culture, its ethnic and linguistic affinities are unknown in the absence of written sources. It was followed by the Pre-Roman Iron Age. Even though Northern European Bronze Age cultures came relatively late, and came into existence via trade, sites present rich and well-preserved objects made of wool, wood and imported Central European bronze and gold. Many rock carvings depict ships, and the large stone burial monuments known as stone ships suggest that shipping played an important role. Thousands of rock carvings depict ships, most probably representing sewn plank-built canoes for warfare, fishing, and trade. These may have a history as far back as the neolithic period and continue into the Pre-Roman Iron Age, as shown by the Hjortspring boat. There are many mounds and rock carving sites from the period. Numerous artefacts of bronze and gold are found. No written language existed in the Nordic countries during the Bronze Age. The rock carvings have been dated through comparison with depicted artefacts. Eastern Europe. The Yamnaya culture () was a Late Copper Age/Early Bronze Age culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe associated with early Indo-Europeans. It was followed on the steppe by the Catacomb culture () and the Poltavka culture (). The closely related Corded Ware culture in the forest-steppe region to the north () spread eastwards with the Fatyanovo culture (), which subsequently developed into the Abashevo culture () and the Sintashta culture (). The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials and there is earlier evidence for chariot use in the Abashevo culture. The Sintashta culture expanded further eastwards into central Asia becoming the Andronovo culture, while the Srubnaya culture () continued the use of chariots in eastern Europe. Caucasus. Arsenical bronze artefacts of the Maykop culture in the North Caucasus have been dated to around the 4th millennium BC. This innovation resulted in the circulation of arsenical bronze technology through southern and eastern Europe. Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa. Iron and copper smelting appeared around the same time in most parts of Africa. As such, most Classical African civilisations outside Egypt did not experience a distinct Bronze Age. Evidence for iron smelting appears earlier or at the same time as copper smelting in Nigeria , Rwanda and Burundi and Tanzania . There is a longstanding debate about whether copper and iron metallurgy were independently developed in sub-Saharan Africa or introduced from the outside across the Sahara from North Africa or the Indian Ocean. Evidence for theories of independent development and outside introduction are scarce and the subject of active scholarly debate. Scholars have suggested that both the relative dearth of archaeological research in sub-Saharan Africa as well as long-standing prejudices have limited or biased our understanding of pre-historic metallurgy on the continent. One scholar characterised the state of historical knowledge: "To say that the history of metallurgy in sub-Saharan Africa is complicated is perhaps an understatement." West Africa. Copper smelting took place in West Africa prior to the appearance of iron smelting in the region. Evidence for copper smelting furnaces was found near Agadez, Niger that has been dated as early as 2200 BC. However, evidence for copper production in this region before 1000 BC is debated. Evidence of copper mining and smelting has been found at Akjoujt, Mauretania that suggests small scale production . Americas. The Moche culture of South America independently discovered and developed bronze smelting. Bronze technology was developed further by the Inca and widely used for utilitarian objects and for sculpture. A later appearance of limited bronze smelting in western Mexico suggests either contact of that region with Andean civilisations or separate discovery of the technology. The Calchaquí people of northwestern Argentina had bronze technology. Trade. Trade and industry played a major role in the development of Bronze Age civilisations. With artefacts of the Indus Valley Civilisation found in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, it is clear that these civilisations were not only in touch with one another, but also trading. Early long-distance trade was limited almost exclusively to luxury goods like spices, textiles, and precious metals. Not only did this make cities with ample amounts of these products rich, but it also led to an intermingling of cultures for the first time in history. Trade routes were not just on land. The first and most extensive trade routes were along rivers such as the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates, which led to the growth of cities on the banks of these rivers. The later domestication of camels also helped encourage trade routes overland, linking the Indus Valley with the Mediterranean. This further led to towns appearing where there was a pit-stop or caravan-to-ship port.
4621	6056090	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4621	BBC News (British TV channel)	The BBC News channel is a British free-to-air public broadcast television news channel owned and operated by the BBC. The channel is based at and broadcasts from Broadcasting House in the West End of London from which it is anchored during British daytime, with overnight broadcasts anchored from Washington, D.C. and Singapore. It was launched as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 17:30, as part of the BBC's foray into digital domestic television channels, becoming the first competitor to Sky News, which had been running since 1989. On 22 February 2006, the channel was named "News Channel of the Year" at the Royal Television Society Television Journalism Awards for the first time in its history. The judges remarked that this was the year that the channel had The channel won the accolade for a second time in 2017. From May 2007, viewers in the UK could watch the channel via the BBC News website. In April 2008, the channel was renamed "BBC News" as part of a £550,000 rebranding of the BBC's news output, complete with a new studio and presentation. The channel's international counterpart, formerly known as BBC World News, initially operated as a counterpart carrying international news, as well as selected programmes from the domestic service. Unlike BBC News in the UK, which is a free-to-air channel funded by the licence fee, the world feed is a pay television service distributed by BBC Studios and funded by advertising. Some of its programmes had been simulcast by the domestic BBC News channel, especially in the overnight hours. In 2022, the BBC announced that it would further consolidate the programming and talent of the BBC News and World News channels as a cost-cutting move; these changes took place on 3 April 2023, with BBC World News being renamed "BBC News", and both channels restructured to use a common schedule with domestic opt-outs for UK-specific news coverage and programmes. History. Rolling news began in the UK on 5 February 1989 when Sky News was launched and on 16 January 1995, the BBC launched an international news channel BBC World. However it was meant for global audiences and normally wasn't available to viewers in the UK. In May 1996, the BBC announced that it was to launch a UK rolling news service as part of its move into digital broadcasting. BBC News 24 went on air on 9 November 1997, nearly a year before digital television was launched in the UK and due to a lack of space on satellite, the channel was only available on cable, with an overnight shop window on BBC One when that channel was not on air. However, Sky News had complained about the costs associated with running a channel that only a minority could view from the licence fee. Sky News claimed that a number of British cable operators had been incentivised to carry News 24 (which, as a licence-fee funded channel was made available to such operators for free) in preference to the commercial Sky News. However, in September 1999 the European Commission ruled against a complaint made by Sky News that the publicly funded channel was unfair and illegal under EU law. The Commission ruled that the licence fee should be considered state aid but that such aid was justified due to the public service remit of the BBC and that it did not exceed actual costs. The advent of digital television in the United Kingdom in autumn 1998 saw the channel launch on Sky's new digital satellite service and a month later it started to broadcast via digital terrestrial television. Initially it was difficult to obtain a digital satellite or terrestrial receiver without a subscription to Sky or ONdigital respectively, but following the demise of ITV Digital in 2002 and the subsequent launch of Freeview, the channel started to become much more widely available and the BBC Governors' annual report for 2005/2006 reported that average audience figures for fifteen-minute periods had reached 8.6% in multichannel homes. The 2004 report also claimed that the channel outperformed Sky News in both weekly and monthly reach in multichannel homes for the January 2004 period, and for the first time in two years moved ahead of Sky News in being perceived as the channel best for news. In 2005, the Head of television news Peter Horrocks outlined plans to provide more funding and resources for the channel and shift the corporation's emphasis regarding news away from the traditional BBC One bulletins and across to the rolling news channel. The introduction of simulcasts of the main bulletins on the channel was to allow the news bulletins to pool resources rather than work against each other at key times in the face of competition particularly from Sky News. 2008 rebranding. On 21 April 2008, BBC News 24 was renamed BBC News" on the channel itself, and referred to as the "BBC News Channel" on other BBC services. This was part of the Creative Futures plan, launched in 2006, to bring all BBC News output under the single brand name. The BBC News Channel moved from the Studio N8 set, which became home to BBC World News, to what was the home of the national news in Studio N6, allowing the channel to share its set with the "BBC News at One" and the "BBC News at Ten" – with other bulletins moving to Studio TC7. Move to Broadcasting House. The channel relocated, along with the remaining BBC News services at Television Centre, to the newly refurbished Broadcasting House on 18 March 2013 at 13:00 GMT. Presentation and on-screen graphics were refreshed, with new full HD studios and a live newsroom backdrop. Moving cameras in the newsroom form part of the top of the hour title sequence and are used at the start of weather bulletins. Consolidation with BBC World News. On 26 May 2022, as part of planned cuts and streamlining across the broadcaster, the BBC announced plans for consolidation of the domestic BBC News channel in the UK with BBC World News. The domestic and international versions would share content, while maintaining the ability to opt out from the shared feed for domestic coverage if warranted. The BBC promoted that the service would offer . The BBC announced a new presenter line-up for the merged service in February 2023, led by Matthew Amroliwala, Christian Fraser, Yalda Hakim, Lucy Hockings, and Maryam Moshiri. On 3 April 2023, the BBC World News channel rebranded as BBC News, formally marking the implementation of the unified service with the UK feed opting out for UK-specific programming, such as BBC television newscasts and "Newsnight", and coverage of UK-specific news not judged to be significant enough to warrant rolling coverage globally. Overall, the changes resulted in the layoffs of about 50 employees, including presenters David Eades, Joanna Gosling, and Tim Willcox. Yalda Hakim left the channel to join Sky News in September 2023, meaning that Maryam Moshiri could have her own programme in the slot of Hakim's former Daily Global programme. In February 2024, Ben Brown, Geeta Guru-Murthy, and Anita McVeigh rejoined the news channel after a year off air as chief presenters. During the 2024 general election campaign, BBC News temporarily unwound the unified service, and reverted to broadcasting a domestic feed of rolling coverage from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, as well as an additional UK-specific bulletin at 11 p.m. following "Newsnight". This continued through the State Opening of Parliament, after which the prior schedule was reinstated beginning 18 July. The 11 p.m. bulletin remained until October 2024, when it was replaced with "World News America". In January 2025, the UK feed dropped its simulcast of "BBC Breakfast" as a pilot, with world feed programming now carried in its timeslot; executive news editor Paul Royall considered the simulcast redundant, citing that the majority of its viewership came from BBC One and iPlayer. BBC News HD. On 16 July 2013, the BBC announced that a high-definition (HD) simulcast of BBC News would be launched by early 2014. HD output from BBC News has been simulcast on BBC One HD and BBC Two HD since the move to Broadcasting House in March 2013. The channel launched on 10December 2013 (at an earlier date than originally planned) and rolled out nationwide over the next six months (as did BBC Four HD, CBBC HD and CBeebies HD). BBC News HD was removed from Freeview on 30 June 2022 due to the closure of the COM7 multiplex. There are HD versions of BBC News on BBC iPlayer, Freesat channel 200, Sky channel 503, and Virgin Media channel 601. Programming. Breaking news. The BBC maintains guidelines for procedures to be taken for breaking news. With domestic news, the correspondent first recorded a "generic minute" summary (for use by all stations and channels) and then priority was to report on BBC Radio 5 Live, then on the BBC News channel and any other programmes that are on air. Since 5 Live's move to Manchester, this has been reversed. For foreign news, first a "generic minute" is recorded, then reports are to World Service radio, then the reporter talks to any other programmes that are on air. A key claim made by Lord Lambert in his report had been that the channel was slower to react to breaking news compared with its main rival Sky News. To counteract this, a new feature introduced with the 2003 relaunch was a "breaking news sting": a globe shown briefly onscreen to direct a viewer's attention to the breaking news. The graphics relaunch in January 2007 saw the globe sting replaced by a red strapline to highlight the breaking story immediately. To complement this, a permanent live news ticker had earlier been introduced in 2006: this had previously been in use only sporadically. News statements are shown as continuously scrolling upper-case text located at the bottom of the screen; some past ambiguities noted have included spelling the plural of MPs as "MPS", together with other occasional spelling and grammatical errors. The design of this ticker was slightly altered with the 2007 graphics redesign and from June turned red to indicate breaking news, as "Newswatch" reported viewers' confusion. The ticker was removed during trails and weather forecasts. A new set of graphics, including a change to font style, was officially launched in July 2019 although it was broadcast in error up to a couple of months before. The news ticker, which had been a long-running feature of the Channel, was replaced by a flipper as stories no longer scroll across the screen. The headlines now have a limited length and appear in full in turn. The word "BREAKING" may appear on screen and flash to indicate breaking news. Occasionally a breaking news sting may appear on the Channel to call attention to breaking news. This sting gained some notoriety in June 2017 when a technical error caused it to appear several times in a row, delaying the start of the "BBC News at Ten". Usually the BBC News Channel crosses over to live events, such as press conferences, without using the sting and the presenter on air introduces what viewers are seeing. BBC World News simulcasts. The BBC began simulcasting the channel overnight on terrestrial channel BBC One with the launch of the channel, ending the tradition of a closedown but at the same time effectively making the service available to many more viewers. In the early 2000s, BBC Two also started simulcasting the channel, although the weekend morning show "Weekend 24" had been simulcast on the channel in the early days. During major breaking news events, the BBC News Channel has been broadcast on BBC One; examples of special broadcasts include the 11 September 2001 attacks, 7 July 2005 London bombings, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the death of Osama bin Laden and the death and funerals of Prince Philip and Elizabeth II. In 2020, shared programming between BBC One and the News Channel often included the UK Government's Coronavirus Daily Update. This was usually broadcast during late afternoons when the Government made announcements. Coverage of major events has also been simulcast on BBC World News. Currently, overnight viewers receive 25-minute editions of BBC News every hour, and on weekdays 23:00–02:00 receive "Newsday", live from Singapore and from London which also includes "Business Today" and "Sportsday" between 00:30 and 01:00 and also between 01:30 and 02:00. From 02:00 to 05:00 (00:00–06:00 on weekends) receive "BBC World News". "The Briefing" airs between 05:00 and 06:00 on weekdays. These simulcasts were expanded as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The BBC introduced a streamlined schedule and the News Channel and BBC World News now share major parts of evening and weekend coverage. From August 2020 this was changed and made permanent to 10:00 to 12:00 and on weekdays 19:00 to 06:00, with opt-outs for "BBC News at Ten" and half an hour at 20:30, weekends 21:00 to 06:00, apart from the evening BBC One bulletin. World News is no longer simulcasted, given that the channel has been merged with the domestic provision, thereby any programming on the News Channel is broadcast as the channel says . BBC One, BBC Two and BBC World News simulcasts. "BBC Breakfast" has been simulcast since its launch in 2000 on BBC One and BBC News, replacing the individual breakfast shows that had run on both channels. Since May 2006 until 17 March 2020, the simulcast generally ran from 06:00 until 08:30 during the week. "Breakfast" on BBC One continued from MediaCityUK until 09:15 with entertainment and features, whilst BBC News usually went to Business Live until 09:00 and reverted to its traditional format from 09:00. Since 18 March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes to these arrangements. "Business Live", which had become "Worklife", is no longer on air. Weekdays, "BBC Breakfast" ran runs until 09:00 on both BBC One and the BBC News Channel and there is then an hour of news, which was called the "BBC News at Nine", on both channels. This continued as the first half of two hours of programming on the BBC News Channel, the second hour was usually taken by BBC Two presented by Victoria Derbyshire on Mondays to Wednesdays and was generally by Annita McVeigh on the other two days of the week. BBC Two simulcasts the News Channel on weekday mornings from 09:00 until 12:15 or 13:00. Coverage switches to BBC One in the form of the simulcast "BBC News at One". The "BBC News at One" may be broadcast on BBC One only however during periods of breaking news or major announcements in the House of Commons carried only on the News Channel, if it's an international story coverage will switch for the hour to simulcast with BBC World News. A similar arrangement applies for the "BBC News at Six", generally simulcast on both BBC One and the News Channel but, as ever, subject to change for breaking news for the News Channel. The "BBC News at Ten" began simulcasting on the channel on 30 January 2006 as part of the "Ten O'Clock Newshour", followed by extended sport and business news updates. The bulletin was joined in being simulcast on 10 April 2006 when the "BBC News at One" (with British Sign Language in-vision signing) and "BBC News at Six" bulletins were added to the schedule following a similar format to the "News at Ten" in terms of content on the channel once each simulcast ends. During the summer, the hour-long programme "News 24 Sunday" was broadcast both on BBC One and the BBC News Channel at 09:00, to replace "The Andrew Marr Show", which is off air. It was presented by a news presenter, and came from the main News channel studio. The programme was made up mostly of interviews focusing on current affairs, and included a full paper review, a weather summary, and a news update at 09:00, 09:30 and 10:00. "Sunday Morning Live" and alternative programming now fill this slot. From 2013, a new programme was created for BBC Two for 11:00–12:00 weekdays, consisting of 30 minutes of domestic news and 30 minutes of BBC World News. On Wednesdays, when parliament is sitting the latter is replaced by the "Daily Politics" for coverage of Prime Minister's Questions (PMQ). In March 2016 the channel started showing "Newsnight" at 23:15. The coverage from 10:00 to 13:00 on BBC Two and the News Channel is part of three-hour block of "BBC World News" simulcast due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. However, by the end of 2021 the simulcast had been cut back to a single hour on weekdays, between 10:00 and 11:00 with all-morning simulcasts continuing at the weekend. BBC World News produces the three-hour BBC News / BBC World News simulcast between 19:00 to 22:00 and 23:00 to 06:00, including one edition of "The Papers". From August 2020 this was changed and made permanent to 10:00 to 12:00 and on weekdays 19:00 to 06:00, with opt-outs for BBC News at Ten and half an hour at 20:30, weekends 21:00 to 06:00, these exclude BBC One bulletin. Current situation. BBC News currently simulcasts all of BBC Television's main BBC One news bulletins – BBC News at One, BBC News at Six and BBC News at Ten. On Wednesdays BBC News, simulcasts much of "Politics Live" which is broadcast on BBC Two to provide coverage of Prime Minister's Questions. After the News at 10, "Newsnight" is also aired on the BBC News Channel. All network simulcasts are broadcast on the domestic frequency only. At the weekend, the channel simulcasts most of "Breakfast", but does not broadcast the BBC One news bulletins, but does carry "Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg". Exclusive programmes. Previous programming. Other programmes previous broadcast on BBC News Channel included "Head 2 Head", "E24", "The Record Europe", "Politics Europe" and "News 24 Tonight", a weekday evening programme which ran from 2005 to 2008, providing a round up of the day's news. 2015 schedule changes. As part of budget cuts, major changes to the channel were announced in late 2014 / early 2015. This included axing some bulletins and replacing them with "Victoria Derbyshire" and "BBC Business Live" with Sally Bundock and Ben Thompson in the morning. "Outside Source with Ros Atkins" – an "interactive" show already broadcast on BBC World News – aired Mondays-Thursday at (during major stories at 18:00) and 21:00 and a new edition of "World News Today" Friday-Sunday at 21:00 (during major stories at 19:00/20:00 Monday-Friday) adding to the 19:00 edition on BBC Four. "HARDtalk" was moved to 20:30 in May. The 00:00 edition was replaced on Sundays–Thursday with "Newsday" and on Friday-Saturday a standard edition of "BBC World News". BBC World News shared programming history. On 1 October 2007, BBC World News started broadcasting "BBC World News America" and "World News Today" at 00:00 and 03:00 GMT respectively. "World News Today" was simulcast on the BBC News channel at 03:00 GMT. "BBC World News America" used to be aired as a reduced length, time-delayed version at 00:30 GMT, with "ABC World News Tonight with David Muir" also being shown at 01:30 every Tuesday-Friday. From 13 June 2011, the weekday editions of BBC News at 01:00, 02:00, 03:00 and 04:00 were replaced with "Newsday". The programme acts as a morning news bulletin for the Asia-Pacific region and is broadcast as a double-headed news bulletin with Rico Hizon in Singapore and Babita Sharma in London. "Asia Business Report" and "Sport Today" are aired at the back of the first three hours of "Newsday". But Newsday changed to 23:00–02:00 on BBC News a year later meaning Mike Embley presents Tuesday-Friday "BBC World News" 23:00–02:00 with Kasia Madera on Saturdays and Daniela Ritorto 00:00–06:00 Sunday, 02:00–05:00 Friday/Monday. "BBC World News" and "World Business Report" air at 05:00. This was previously known as "The World Today", However, since November 2017 this was rebranded as "The Briefing" and "Business Briefing" on both channels and in lieu of commercials seen on the international broadcasts, the presenters gave a brief update on UK news for domestic audiences. In June 2015, BBC News began simulcasting "Outside Source with Ros Atkins" on Mondays-Thursday at (during major stories 18:00) / at 21:00 and a new edition of "World News Today" Friday-Sunday at (during major stories Monday-Friday 19:00) 21:00. Since January 2017, they began simulcasting "Beyond 100 Days" (previously '100 Days" and "100 Days +) Monday to Thursday at 19:00, presented from London and Washington. During August, "Beyond 100 Days" is replaced by another edition of "World News Today". On 26 May 2022, as part of planned cuts and streamlining to create a "digital first" broadcaster, the BBC announced plans to consolidate the BBC News and BBC World News networks into a single service under the "BBC News" name. The merged service was slated to launch in April 2023, with the BBC stating that it would offer . The international version of the BBC News channel remains an advertising-supported service distributed by the corporation's commercial arm, BBC Studios. The domestic channel may opt out from the shared schedule to provide coverage of UK-specific breaking news, and would continue to carry UK-specific programmes (such as simulcasts of BBC One bulletins and "Newsnight") that are not cleared by the international channel. By the end of 2022, sharing had extended to 23:00–06:00 UK time, BBC News and BBC World News simulcast for the first 25 minutes of each hour with world news shown all through the simulcasts. In addition, the 10:00 hour on weekdays was simulcast and at the weekend, simulcasts run throughout the morning UK-time. The two channels also simulcast between 19:00 and 22:00. UK-specific rolling coverage had, by now, been restricted to daytime hours. As of Wednesday 15 January 2025, The UK feed has begun to simulcast the international feed from the hours of 05:00 to 13:00 BST until it breaks away for BBC News at One and the 13:30 Sportsday edition. UK Viewers are now able to watch the 06:30 and 07:30 editions of Business Today which were formally shown on the international feed only. The international feed breaks away at 10:30 BST to show HardTalk. At 17:30 BST Focus on Africa is shown whilst the UK feed stays with Verified Live. On occasions where there is a significant global story or if there is a delay to the network bulletin, the channel simulcasts the 18:00 editions of The World Today and the 22:00 editions of World News America, instead of BBC News at Ten and BBC News at Six. It is mentioned that in the case of major UK breaking news BBC Breakfast would be simulcast. Sports. Since 5 March 2012, sports bulletins come from the "BBC Sport Centre" in MediaCityUK in Salford Quays, where the sports network BBC Radio 5 Live is also based. Headlines are usually provided at 15 minutes past the hour with a full bulletin after the bottom-of-the-hour headlines. There are also extended sports bulletins per day, entitled "Sportsday" or "Sport Today" (when simulcasting with BBC World News) broadcast at 00:45, 01:45, 02:45, 03:45, 13:30, 18:30, 19:30 (weekends only), 22:30 (weekdays only). Each bulletin is read by a single sports presenter, with the exception of Saturday "Sportsday", which is double headed. The channel's sports bulletins (internally known as Sport 24) have always had a separate, dedicated production gallery, which is also responsible for the graphics. Bulletins during "BBC Breakfast" are presented by Sally Nugent or Mike Bushell, with the latter also appearing on other sports bulletins on the channel. the main sports presenters on the channel are Olly Foster, Gavin Ramjaun, Katie Gornall, Chetan Pathak, Katherine Downes, Tulsen Tollett, Lizzie Greenwood-Hughes and John Watson. Until March 2012, bulletins came from the News Channel studio at the quarter to the hour. Presenters for bulletins on the channel have included: Reshmin Chowdhury, Amanda Davies, Sean Fletcher, Matt Gooderick, Celina Hinchcliffe, Rachael Hodges, Damian Johnson, Adnan Nawaz and Olympic gold medallist turned journalist Matthew Pinsent. Business. Before BBC News moved to Broadcasting House, an hourly business update was included during the weekday schedule from the BBC Business Unit. There were two shifts, from 08:30 to 14:00 and 14:00 to 23:00, presented by Penny Haslam, Maryam Moshiri, Ben Thompson, Adam Parsons, Susannah Streeter, Joe Lynam, Sara Coburn or Sally Eden. News Channel updates were usually broadcast at 40 minutes past the hour between 08:00 and 23:00. The 21:40 round-up was often earlier and the 22:40 bulletin is an extended round-up of the day's business news. Until May 2009, the business updates on the BBC News Channel were broadcast from one of the London Stock Exchange's studios in central London. From then until March 2013 the bulletins were provided from the channel's studio at BBC Television Centre. The business updates were axed in March 2013 as part of the BBC's Delivering Quality First plan. But after complaints returned in November 2013. Stock market updates now only appear during the quarter-to-the-hour headlines. Rachel Horne is the main presenter from 13:30 to 18:00, with Vishala Sri-Pathma, Alice Baxter, Jamie Robertson, Aaron Heslehurst and Sally Bundock. There is normally an extended bulletin at 16:45 when the main business stories of the day are discussed on "Afternoon Live". Bundock and Thompson present "Business Live" on weekdays at 08:30. Declan Curry presented "Your Money", a weekly round-up on a Saturday morning. Alice Baxter and Sally Bundock presented "World Business Report". Presentation. Graphics. The channel was criticised at launch for its style of presentation, with accusations of it being less authoritative than the BBC One news bulletins, with presenters appearing on-screen without jackets. Jenny Abramsky had originally planned to have a television version of the informal news radio channel BBC Radio 5 Live, or a TV version of Radio 4 News FM both of which she had run. The bright design of the set was also blamed for this – one insider reportedly described it as a – and was subject to the network relaunch on 25 October 1999. The channel swapped studios with sister channel BBC World, moving to studio N8 within the newsroom, where it remained until 2008. New music and title sequences accompanied this set change, following the look of newly relaunched BBC One bulletins. Graphics and titles were developed by the Lambie-Nairn design agency and were gradually rolled out across the whole of BBC News, including a similar design for regional news starting with "Newsroom South East" and the three 'BBC Nations' – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The similarity of main BBC News output was intended to increase the credibility of the channel as well as aiding cross-channel promotion. A graphics relaunch in January 2007 saw the channel updated, with redesigned headline straplines, a redesigned 'digital on-screen graphic' and repositioned clock. The clock was originally placed to the left hand side of the channel name though following complaints that this could only be viewed in widescreen, it was moved to the right in February 2007. Bulletins on BBC World News and BBC One also introduced similar graphics and title sequences on the same day. In 2008, the graphics were again relaunched, using the style introduced in 2007 and a new colour scheme. The typeface of the on-screen text was changed from Helvetica to Gill Sans. In 2013 the graphics were changed again, to coincide with the move to New Broadcasting House. The typeface was changed back to Helvetica. These were updated again in July 2019 when the BBC redesigned its on-air look with the growth of television viewing on smartphones and tablets. These included again redesigned, larger headline straplines sharply contrasting with the background (drawing criticism for obscuring content) using the BBC Reith typeface with larger text. Despite this, the 2008 titles and music continue to be used for the updated local titles. The Lambert Report. The Lambert Report into the channel's performance in 2002 called upon News 24 to develop a better brand of its own, to allow viewers to differentiate between itself and similar channels such as Sky News. As a direct result of this, a brand new style across all presentation for the channel launched on 8 December 2003 at 09:00. Philip Hayton and Anna Jones were the first two presenters on the set, the relaunch of which had been put back a week due to previous power disruptions at Television Centre where the channel was based. The new designs also featured a dynamic set of titles for the channel; the globe would begin spinning from where the main story was taking place, while the headline scrolled around in a ribbon; this was occasionally replaced by the BBC News logo. The titles concluded with a red globe surrounded by a red stylised clamshell and BBC News ribbons forming above the BBC News logo. Bulletins on BBC One moved into a new set in January 2003 although retained the previous ivory Lambie-Nairn titles until February 2004. News 24 updated the title colours slightly to match those of BBC One bulletins in time for the 50th anniversary of BBC television news on 5 July 2004. Countdown sequence. An important part of the channel's presentation since launch has been the top of the hour countdown sequence, since there is no presentation system with continuity announcers so the countdown provides a link to the beginning of the next hour. A similar musical device is used on BBC Radio 5 Live, and mirrors the pips on BBC Radio 4. Previous styles have included a series of fictional flags set to music between 1997 and 1999 before the major relaunch, incorporating the new contemporary music composed by David Lowe, and graphics developed by Lambie-Nairn. Various images, originally ivory numbers fully animated against a deep red background, were designed to fit the pace of the channel, and the music soon gained notoriety, and was often satirised and parodied in popular culture. Images of life around the UK were added in replacement later with the same music, together with footage of the newsroom and exterior of Television Centre. The 2003 relaunch saw a small change to this style with less of a metropolitan feel to the footage. A new sequence was introduced on 28 March 2005, designed and created by Red Bee Media and directed by Mark Chaudoir. The full version ran for 60 seconds, though only around 30 seconds were usually shown on air. The music was revised completely but the biggest change came in the footage used – reflecting the methods and nature of newsgathering, while a strong emphasis was placed on the BBC logo itself. Satellite dishes are shown transmitting and receiving red "data streams". In production of the countdown sequence, Clive Norman filmed images around the United Kingdom, Richard Jopson in the United States, while BBC News camerapeople filmed images from Iraq, Beijing (Tiananmen Square), Bund of Shanghai, Africa, as well as areas affected by the 2004 Asian tsunami and others. The sequence has since seen several remixes to the music and a change in visuals to focus more on the well-known journalists, with less footage of camera crews and production teams. Changes have also seen the channel logo included during the sequences and at the end, as well as the fonts used for the time. The conclusion of the countdown was altered in 2008 to feature the new presentation style, rather than a data stream moving in towards the camera. Also in 2008, the graphic for the countdown changed, resembling the BBC One Rhythm and Movement idents, due to the logo being in a red square in the bottom left corner. To coincide with the move of BBC News to Broadcasting House, on 18 March 2013 the countdown was updated again along with several other presentation elements. Three of the most striking features of the new countdown include music performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra, a redesign of the "data streams" and the ending of the sequence no longer fading to the BBC News globe and logo, but instead stopping with a time-lapse shot outside the corporation's headquarters. The countdown was also extended to 87 seconds, which was fully shown before the first hour from Broadcasting House. In 2019, the countdown started using the BBC's new Reith font but otherwise retained the same style. A full three-minute version of the countdown music was made available on BBC News Online and David Lowe's own website after a remix on 16May 2006. An international version of the countdown was launched on BBC World News on 5 September 2005 featuring more international content and similar music. Various changes have been made to the music and visuals since then, with presentation following the style of BBC News. The visuals in the sequence were updated on 10 May 2010. In June 2011, further imagery was added relating to recent events, including the conflict in Libya and views of outside 10 Downing Street. In January 2013, as part of the relocation of BBC News to Broadcasting House in Central London, BBC World News received a new countdown in the same style as the BBC News Channel's updated countdown, with some minor differences. In April 2021, a new "sombre" version of the countdown was played, with no "data streams" and slower shots of places within the UK, or in the case of the international version, timelapse shots across the world. Both were introduced to run up to programmes immediately following the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and were used again following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. To coincide with the integration of BBC World News into BBC News, the countdown sequence was slightly refreshed in April 2023 to follow the new "Chameleon" branding scheme used by BBC television since October 2021, with the countdown now centred between the BBC and "News" wordmarks at the top- and bottom-centre of the screen respectively. Viewing audience figures. The Daily Telegraph reported in November 2021, .
4622	1299968678	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4622	Bill Oddie	William Edgar Oddie (born 7 July 1941) is an English actor, artist, birder, comedian, conservationist, musician, songwriter, television presenter and writer. He was a member of comedy trio The Goodies. A birder since his childhood in Quinton, Birmingham, Oddie has established a reputation as a naturalist, conservationist, and television presenter on wildlife issues. Some of his books are illustrated with his own paintings and drawings. His wildlife programmes for the BBC include "Springwatch" and "Autumnwatch", "How to Watch Wildlife", "Wild in Your Garden", "Birding with Bill Oddie", "Britain Goes Wild with Bill Oddie" and "Bill Oddie Goes Wild". Early life. Oddie was born on 7 July 1941 in Rochdale, Lancashire, but moved to Birmingham at a young age. He was raised by his father, Harry Oddie, and grandmother, Emily. His father was assistant chief accountant at the Midlands Electricity Board. His mother, Lilian, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and, during most of his youth, was hospitalised at the Barnsley Hall Hospital psychiatric facility. He was educated at Lapal Primary School, Halesowen Grammar School (now The Earls High School, Halesowen) and King Edward's School, Birmingham, an all-boys direct grant school, where he captained the school's rugby union team. He then studied English literature at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Career. Comedy. Whilst at Cambridge University Oddie appeared in several Footlights Club productions. One of these, a revue called "A Clump of Plinths", was so successful at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that it was renamed "Cambridge Circus" and transferred to the West End in London, then to New Zealand, and to Broadway in September 1964. Meanwhile, still at Cambridge, Oddie wrote scripts for and appeared briefly in TV's "That Was the Week That Was". He appeared in Bernard Braden's television series "On The Braden Beat" in 1964. Subsequently, he was a key member of the performers in the BBC radio series "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again", where many of his musical compositions were featured. Some were released on the album "Distinctly Oddie" (Polydor, 1967). He was one of the first performers to parody a rock song, arranging the traditional Yorkshire folk song "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at" in the style of Joe Cocker's hit rendition of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" (released on John Peel's Dandelion Records in 1970 and featured in Peel's special box of most-treasured singles), and singing "Andy Pandy" in the style of a brassy soul number such as Wilson Pickett or Geno Washington might perform. In many shows he would do short impressions of Hughie Green. On television Oddie was co-writer and performer in the comedy series "Twice a Fortnight" with Graeme Garden, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Jonathan Lynn. Later he was co-writer and performer in the comedy series "Broaden Your Mind" with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden, for which he became a cast member for the second series. Oddie, Brooke-Taylor and Garden then co-wrote and appeared in their television comedy series "The Goodies" (1970–1982). The Goodies also released records, including "Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me"/"The In-Betweenies", "The Funky Gibbon" (co-written by Oddie with Dave MacRae) and "Black Pudding Bertha", which were hit singles in 1974–75. They reformed, briefly, in 2005 for a successful 13-date tour of Australia. Oddie, Brooke-Taylor and Garden voiced characters on the 1983 animated children's programme "Bananaman". In the Amnesty International show "A Poke in the Eye (With a Sharp Stick)", Oddie, Brooke-Taylor and Garden sang their hit song "Funky Gibbon". They also appeared on "Top of the Pops" with the song. Together with Garden (who is a qualified medical doctor), Oddie co-wrote many episodes of the television comedy series "Doctor in the House", including most of the first season and all of the second season. He has occasionally appeared on the BBC Radio 4 panel game "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue", on which Garden is and Brooke-Taylor was a regular panellist. In 1982 Garden and Oddie wrote, but did not perform in, a six-part science-fiction sitcom called "Astronauts" for Central and ITV. The show was set in an international space station in the near future. Natural history. Oddie's first published work was an article about the birdlife of Birmingham's Bartley Reservoir in the West Midland Bird Club's 1962 Annual Report. (He is first credited in the 1956 report, in which reports of his bird observations are tagged with his initials "WEO".) He has since written a number of books about birds and birdwatching as well as articles for many specialist publications including "British Birds", "Birdwatching Magazine" and "Birdwatch". He discussed bird-song recordings with Derek Jones in an August 1973 BBC Radio 4 programme called "Sounds Natural". In the autumn of 1976, Oddie was involved in the successful identification of Britain's first-ever recorded Pallas's reed bunting on Fair Isle, Shetland. One of Oddie's first forays into the world of television natural history was as a guest on "Animal Magic" in December 1977. Another early natural history radio appearance was in October 1978, as the guest on Radio 4's "Through My Window", discussing the birds of Hampstead Heath. On 30 July 1985, he was the subject of a 50-minute "Nature Watch Special: Bill Oddie – Bird Watcher", in which he was interviewed by Julian Pettifer at places where he had spent time birding, including Bartley Reservoir, the Christopher Cadbury Wetland Reserve at Upton Warren, RSPB Titchwell Marsh and Blakeney Point. Oddie has since that time hosted a number of successful nature programmes for the BBC, many produced by Stephen Moss, including: The first broadcast, in 2004, of "Britain Goes Wild" set a record for its timeslot of 8 pm on BBC Two of 3.4 million viewers, one million more than the Channel 4 programme showing at that time. "Britain Goes Wild", renamed "Springwatch" the following year, became a wildlife broadcasting phenomenon, attracting over 4 million viewers. He became president of the West Midland Bird Club in 1999, having been vice-president since 1991, and is a former member of the council of the RSPB. Oddie is also a President of the League Against Cruel Sports and a vice-president of the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers. He practised as a bird ringer but allowed his licence to lapse. In 2003, Oddie set up a half-marathon to raise money for various wildlife charities in his birth town of Rochdale. In 2011, Oddie featured as an investigator in "Snares Uncovered: killers in the countryside". The film was an exposé of snaring in Scotland and was commissioned by the animal protection charity OneKind. Music. Oddie wrote original music at Cambridge University for the Footlights and later wrote comic songs for "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again". He also wrote a number of comic songs for The Goodies, most of which he also performed. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Oddie released a number of singles and at least one album. One of the former, issued in 1970 on John Peel's Dandelion Records label (Catalogue No: 4786), was "On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at", performed in the style of Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help from My Friends". The B-side, "Harry Krishna", featured the Hare Krishna chant, substituting the names of contemporary famous people called Harry, including Harry Secombe, Harry Worth, Harry Lauder and Harry Corbett, as well as puns such as "Harry [Hurry] along now" and "Harrystotle [Aristotle]" and ending with "Harry-ly [I really] must go now". Both tracks appear on the compilation CD "Life Too, Has Surface Noise: The Complete Dandelion Records Singles Collection 1969–1972" (2007). In 1966 he was credited as the vocalist with Spencer's Washboard Kings on "Five Feet Two" (Rayrick LCR1001a). The vocalist on the B-side of this 45rpm single, "If You Knew Susie", was Jean Hart, Oddie's future wife. He played the drums and saxophone and appeared as Cousin Kevin in a production of The Who's rock opera "Tommy" by London Symphonic Orchestra and English Chamber Choir at the Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park, London, on 13 and 14 December 1973. He has also contributed vocals to a Rick Wakeman album, "Criminal Record". He recorded a single, "Superspike", with John Cleese and a group of UK athletes, billed the "Superspike Squad", to fund the latter's attendance at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He co-produced the record with Stephen Shane. In 1986 Oddie took part in the English National Opera production of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera "The Mikado", in which he appeared in the role of the Lord High Executioner, taking over the role from Eric Idle. During the early 1990s Oddie was a DJ for London-based jazz radio station 102.2 Jazz FM. In 2007, Oddie appeared on the BBC series "Play It Again". In the episode he attempts to realise his dream of becoming a rock guitarist. Initially teacher Bridget Mermikides tries to teach him using traditional methods but he rebels: instead he turns to old friends Albert Lee, Dave Davies (of The Kinks) and Mark Knopfler for advice and strikes out on his own. He succeeds in the target of playing lead guitar for his daughter Rosie's band at her 21st birthday party and even manages to impress his erstwhile teacher. In November 2010, he agreed, along with fellow members of The Goodies, to rerelease their 1970s hit "The Funky Gibbon" to raise funds for the International Primate Protection League's Save the Gibbon appeal. Other television and voice work. Oddie appeared as the hapless window cleaner in the Eric Sykes' comedy story "The Plank" in 1967. He also presented the live children's Saturday morning entertainment show "Saturday Banana" (ITV/Southern Television) during the late 1970s. In the late 1980s he was a presenter of the BBC TV show "Fax" (a show about 'facts'). In 1981, he appeared as a Telethon celebrity in New Zealand, hosted by TV1. He voices Asterix in the UK dub of the 1989 animated film "Asterix and the Big Fight" (an animated adaptation of the books "Asterix and the Big Fight" and "Asterix and the Soothsayer", novelized as "Operation Getafix"). In 1992, he was a guest star in the US comedy television series "Married... with Children" for a three-part episode set in England. He voiced the chimney sweep in the 1996 film "The Willows in Winter". In 1997 and 1998, he appeared on the Channel 4 archaeological programme "Time Team", as the team excavated a Roman villa site in Turkdean, Gloucestershire. He was the compère of a daytime BBC gameshow "History Hunt" (in 2003); and has appeared in the "Doctor Who" audio drama "Doctor Who and the Pirates". In 2004, he appeared on the first ever episode of the BBC series "Who Do You Think You Are?", in which he looked into his ancestry: he was visibly moved by its revelations. In 2005, he took part in "Rolf on Art – the big event at Trafalgar Square" and in September that year was also a celebrity guest along with Lynda Bellingham on the ITV1 programme "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire". He also gave opinions on 100 greatest cartoons on Channel 4 that year, talking about "Tom and Jerry" and cartoon incidents such as the "Asses of Fire skit" in "". In 2006, Oddie appeared in the BBC show "Never Mind the Buzzcocks", and also appeared on the topical quiz show "8 out of 10 Cats". He was also the voice behind many B&Q adverts throughout 2006/2007. On 25 May 2007, Oddie made a cameo appearance on Ronni Ancona's new comedy sketch show, "Ronni Ancona & Co". Also in 2007, three artists each painted a portrait of Oddie, as part of the BBC programme "Star Portraits with Rolf Harris". One of the artists, Mark Roscoe, later revealed a dislike of Oddie, claiming to have included hidden insults in his work. He hosted the genealogy-based series "My Famous Family", broadcast on UKTV History in 2007. In 2008, Oddie was a guest on Jamie Oliver's television special "Jamie's Fowl Dinners", talking about free-range chickens. He also appeared on "Would I Lie To You?" in 2011, where he revealed that he was saved from drowning by Freddy from popular children's series "Rainbow" and "Rod, Jane and Freddy" while on holiday in the Seychelles. In February 2015, Oddie appeared in "The Keith Lemon Sketch Show" as the narrator of the sketch "Ed Sheeran Watch". He appeared as a contestant on a celebrity edition of "Fifteen to One" in August 2015 and the following month he appeared on "Through the Keyhole". He has appeared three times on the programme "Pointless Celebrities", the most recent appearance being in 2016. In 2017, he appeared in three episodes of "The Real Marigold Hotel". In 2018, he featured on the programme "The Two Ronnies: In Their Own Words". In 2019, he appeared on the show "". In 2020, Oddie appeared in the documentary "Celebrity Britain by Barge: Then & Now". 2013 Australian tour. Oddie undertook an Australian tour during June 2013 in all of the mainland states capital cities – Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth – in a series of one-off shows, "An Oldie but a Goodie". A video message from Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden was shown during the performances. Oddie made personal appearances on both "The Project" and "Adam Hills Tonight" TV shows during the tour; he also filmed a guest-programming spot for the ABC-TV's all-night music video show "Rage". Personal life. Family. In 1966, Oddie married Jeanne Hart, and from this marriage he has two daughters, one of whom is the actress Kate Hardie. The couple later divorced. In 1983, Oddie married Laura Beaumont-Giles. The couple have worked on a variety of projects for children, including film scripts, drama and comedy series, puppet shows and books. They have a daughter, Rosie, born in October 1985, and live in Hampstead, North West London. Rosie Oddie is a musician, also using the name Rosie Bones. Mental health. Oddie had experienced depression for most of his life before being diagnosed with clinical depression in 2001. In March 2009 he was reportedly admitted to Capio Nightingale psychiatric hospital in Marylebone for treatment. His then agent, David Foster, said: "Bill gets these bouts every two or three years where he gets down for about two weeks and recovers. He sometimes goes into hospital or takes a break or has a change of scenery to recharge his batteries." In January 2010 Oddie spoke to the media, revealing that he had two separate stays in different hospitals, only being discharged "in time for Christmas". He said that he was dealing with depression and bipolar disorder, describing the period as "probably the worst 12 months of my life". Oddie stated that he was planning to meet BBC executives to discuss his return to television work. His illness meant that Oddie did not appear in the 2009 and 2010 series of "Springwatch", although he made a guest appearance in the penultimate episode of the latter. He subsequently said he was dismissed from "Springwatch" and that this had caused the depressive illness. Oddie presented the BBC Radio 4 Appeal programme on 10 August 2014 on behalf of the charity Bipolar UK. He revealed that as a consequence of his bipolar disorder he had attempted suicide during one of his depressive episodes. On the UK TV programme "Who Do You Think You Are?" he attributed his depression and bipolar disorder as an adult to his minimal and painful relationship with his mother. Political views. Oddie supports the Green Party. In October 2014, on the BBC's "Sunday Morning Live", he stated that he wanted a limit on the number of children that British families can have, saying that he was "very often ashamed" to be British, calling them "a terrible race". Honours. In 2002, Oddie became the third person to decline to appear on "This Is Your Life" but changed his mind a few hours later. On 16 October 2003 Oddie was made an OBE for his service to wildlife conservation in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. He wore a camouflage shirt and crumpled jacket to receive his medal. In June 2004 Oddie and Johnny Morris were jointly profiled in the first of a three-part BBC Two series "The Way We Went Wild", about television wildlife presenters. In May 2005 he received the British Naturalists' Association's Peter Scott Memorial Award, from BNA president David Bellamy, "in recognition of his great contribution to our understanding of natural history and conservation." He is a recipient of the RSPB Medal. On 30 June 2009, he was proposed for inclusion in the Birmingham Walk of Stars, with the public invited to vote. Bibliography. Bill Oddie also co-wrote the Springwatch & Autumnwatch book with Kate Humble and Simon King. Co-written with the other members of The Goodies: Co-written with Laura Beaumont: In popular culture. In the fictional world of comedy character Alan Partridge, Oddie is an unseen presence in Alan's life, buying him dressing gowns for Christmas and being part of a radicalised RSPB. He has also been referenced, often humorously, by the hosts of "Top Gear".
4626	1298643965	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4626	Broadway (Manhattan)	Broadway () is a street and major thoroughfare in the U.S. state of New York. The street runs from Battery Place at Bowling Green in the south of Manhattan for through the borough, over the Broadway Bridge, and through the Bronx, exiting north from New York City to run an additional through the Westchester County municipalities of Yonkers, Hastings-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Tarrytown, and Sleepy Hollow, after which the road continues, but is no longer called "Broadway". The latter portion of Broadway north of the George Washington Bridge/I-95 underpass comprises a portion of U.S. Route 9. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in New York City, with much of the current street said to have begun as the Wickquasgeck trail before the arrival of Europeans. This then formed the basis for one of the primary thoroughfares of the Dutch New Amsterdam colony, which continued under British rule, although most of it did not bear its current name until the late 19th century. Some portions of Broadway in Manhattan are interrupted for continuous vehicle traffic, including Times Square, Herald Square, and Union Square, and instead used as pedestrian-only plazas. South of Columbus Circle, the road is one-way going southbound. Broadway in Manhattan is known widely as the heart of the American commercial theatrical industry, and is used as a metonym for it, as well as in the names of alternative theatrical ventures such as Off-Broadway and Off-off-Broadway. History. Colonial history. Broadway was originally the Wickquasgeck trail, carved into the brush of Manhattan by its Native American inhabitants. This trail originally snaked through swamps and rocks along the length of Manhattan Island. Upon the arrival of the Dutch, the trail was widened and soon became the main road through the island from "Nieuw Amsterdam" at the southern tip. The Dutch explorer and entrepreneur David Pietersz. de Vries gives the first mention of it in his journal for the year 1642 ("the Wickquasgeck Road over which the Indians passed daily"). The Dutch called it the "Heeren Wegh" or "Heeren Straat", meaning "Gentlemen's Way" or "Gentlemen's Street" – echoing the name of a similar street in Amsterdam – or "High Street" or "the Highway"; it was renamed "Broadway" after the British took over the city, because of its unusual width. Although currently the name of the street is simply "Broadway", in a 1776 map of New York City, it is labeled as "Broadway Street". 18th century. In the 18th century, Broadway ended at the town commons north of Wall Street. The part of Broadway in what is now Lower Manhattan was initially known as Great George Street. Traffic continued up the East Side of the island via Eastern Post Road and the West Side via Bloomingdale Road, which opened in 1703, continued up to 117th Street and contributed to the development of the modern Upper West Side into an upscale area with mansions. In her 1832 book "Domestic Manners of the Americans", Fanny Trollope wrote of her impressions of New York City in general and of Broadway in particular: 19th century. In 1868, Bloomingdale Road between 59th Street (at the Grand Circle, now Columbus Circle) and 155th Streets would be paved and widened, becoming an avenue with landscaped medians. It was called "Western Boulevard" or "The Boulevard". An 1897 official map of the city shows a segment of what is now Broadway as "Kingsbridge Road" in the vicinity of Washington Heights. On February 14, 1899, the name "Broadway" was extended to the entire Broadway / Bloomingdale / Boulevard / Kingsbridge complex. 20th century. In the 20th century, a 30-block stretch of Broadway, extending mainly between Times Square at 42nd Street and Sherman Square at 72nd Street, formed part of Manhattan's "Automobile Row". Before the first decade of the 20th century, the area was occupied mostly by equestrian industries and was "thoroughly lifeless", but by 1907, "The New York Times" characterized this section of Broadway as having "almost a solid line of motor vehicle signs all the way from Times Square to Sherman Square". In the late 1900s and early 1910s, several large automobile showrooms, stores, and garages were built on Broadway, including the U.S. Rubber Company Building at 58th Street, the B.F. Goodrich showroom at 1780 Broadway (between 58th and 57th Streets), the Fisk Building at 250 West 57th Street, and the Demarest and Peerless Buildings at 224 West 57th Street. Broadway once was a two-way street for its entire length. The present status, in which it runs one-way southbound south of Columbus Circle (59th Street), came about in several stages. On June 6, 1954, Seventh Avenue became southbound and Eighth Avenue became northbound south of Broadway. None of Broadway became one-way, but the increased southbound traffic between Columbus Circle (Eighth Avenue) and Times Square (Seventh Avenue) caused the city to re-stripe that section of Broadway for four southbound and two northbound lanes. Broadway became one-way from Columbus Circle south to Herald Square (34th Street) on March 10, 1957, in conjunction with Sixth Avenue becoming one-way from Herald Square north to 59th Street and Seventh Avenue becoming one-way from 59th Street south to Times Square (where it crosses Broadway). On June 3, 1962, Broadway became one-way south of Canal Street, with Trinity Place and Church Street carrying northbound traffic. Another change was made on November 10, 1963, when Broadway became one-way southbound from Herald Square to Madison Square (23rd Street) and Union Square (14th Street) to Canal Street, and two routes – Sixth Avenue south of Herald Square and Centre Street, Lafayette Street, and Fourth Avenue south of Union Square – became one-way northbound. Finally, at the same time as Madison Avenue became one-way northbound and Fifth Avenue became one-way southbound, Broadway was made one-way southbound between Madison Square (where Fifth Avenue crosses) and Union Square on January 14, 1966, completing its conversion south of Columbus Circle. 21st century. In 2001, a one-block section of Broadway between 72nd Street and 73rd Street at Verdi Square was reconfigured. Its easternmost lanes, which formerly hosted northbound traffic, were turned into a public park when a new subway entrance for the 72nd Street station was built in the exact location of these lanes. Northbound traffic on Broadway is now channeled onto Amsterdam Avenue to 73rd Street, makes a left turn on the three-lane 73rd Street, and then a right turn on Broadway shortly afterward. In August 2008, two traffic lanes from 42nd to 35th Streets were taken out of service and converted to public plazas. Bike lanes were added on Broadway from 42nd Street to Union Square. Since May 2009, the portions of Broadway through Duffy Square, Times Square, and Herald Square have been closed entirely to automobile traffic, except for cross traffic on the Streets and Avenues, as part of a traffic and pedestrianization experiment, with the pavement reserved exclusively for walkers, cyclists, and those lounging in temporary seating placed by the city. The city decided that the experiment was successful, and decided to make the change permanent in February 2010. Though the anticipated benefits to traffic flow were not as large as hoped, pedestrian injuries dropped dramatically and foot traffic increased in the designated areas; the project was popular with both residents and businesses. The current portions converted into pedestrian plazas are between West 47th and 42nd Streets within Times and Duffy Squares, and between West 35th and 33rd Streets in the Herald Square area. Additionally, portions of Broadway in Madison Square and Union Square have been dramatically narrowed, allowing ample pedestrian plazas to exist along the side of the road. 2010s. A terrorist attempted to set off a bomb on Broadway in Times Square on May 1, 2010. The attempted bomber was sentenced to life in prison. In May 2013, the NYCDOT decided to redesign Broadway between 35th and 42nd Streets for the second time in five years, owing to poor connections between pedestrian plazas and decreased vehicular traffic. With the new redesign, the bike lane is now on the right side of the street; it was formerly on the left side adjacent to the pedestrian plazas, causing conflicts between pedestrian and bicycle traffic. In spring 2017, as part of a capital reconstruction of Worth Square, Broadway between 24th and 25th Streets was converted to a shared street, where through vehicles are banned and delivery vehicles are restricted to . Delivery vehicles go northbound from Fifth Avenue to 25th Street for that one block, reversing the direction of traffic and preventing vehicles from going south on Broadway south of 25th Street. The capital project expands on a 2008 initiative where part of the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue was repurposed into a public plaza, simplifying that intersection. As part of the 2017 project, Worth Square was expanded, converting the adjoining block of Broadway into a "shared street". In September 2019, the pedestrian space in the Herald Square area was expanded between 33rd and 32nd Streets alongside Greeley Square. Five blocks of Broadway—from 50th to 48th, 39th to 39th, and 23rd to 21st Street—were converted into shared streets in late 2021. The block between 40th and 39th Streets, known as Golda Meir Square, was closed to vehicular traffic at that time. 2020s. During 2020, the section from 31st to 25th Street was converted to a temporary pedestrian-only street called NoMad Piazza as part of the New York City Department of Transportation's Open Streets program. Following the success of the pedestrian-only street, the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership BID closed the section between 25th and 27th Streets to vehicular traffic again during 2021 and 2022. City officials announced in March 2023 that the section of Broadway between 32nd and 21st Streets would be redesigned as part of a project called Broadway Vision. The section between 32nd and 25th Streets would receive a bidirectional bike lane and would be converted to a shared street. Cars would be banned permanently from 27th to 25th Street. That work was finished the same July. In March 2024, the DOT announced plans to convert the section between 17th and 21st Streets into a shared street. Route description. Broadway runs the length of Manhattan Island, roughly parallel to the North River (the portion of the Hudson River bordering Manhattan), from Bowling Green at the south to Inwood at the northern tip of the island. South of Columbus Circle, it is a one-way southbound street. Since 2009, vehicular traffic has been banned at Times Square between 47th and 42nd Streets, and at Herald Square between 35th and 33rd Streets as part of a pilot program; the right-of-way is intact and reserved for cyclists and pedestrians. From the northern shore of Manhattan, Broadway crosses Spuyten Duyvil Creek via the Broadway Bridge and continues through Marble Hill (a discontiguous portion of the borough of Manhattan) and the Bronx into Westchester County. U.S. 9 continues to be known as Broadway until its junction with NY 117. Lower Manhattan. The section of lower Broadway from its origin at Bowling Green to City Hall Park is the historical location for the city's ticker-tape parades, and is sometimes called the "Canyon of Heroes" during such events. West of Broadway, as far as Canal Street, was the city's fashionable residential area until ; landfill has more than tripled the area, and the Hudson River shore now lies far to the west, beyond Tribeca and Battery Park City. Broadway marks the boundary between Greenwich Village to the west and the East Village to the east, passing Astor Place. It is a short walk from there to New York University near Washington Square Park, which is at the foot of Fifth Avenue. A bend in front of Grace Church allegedly avoids an earlier tavern; from 10th Street it begins its long diagonal course across Manhattan, headed almost due north. Midtown Manhattan. Because Broadway preceded the grid that the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 imposed on the island, Broadway crosses midtown Manhattan diagonally, intersecting with both the east–west streets and north–south avenues. Broadway's intersections with avenues, marked by "squares" (some merely triangular slivers of open space), have induced some interesting architecture, such as the Flatiron Building. At Union Square, Broadway crosses 14th Street, merges with Fourth Avenue, and continues its diagonal uptown course from the Square's northwest corner; Union Square is the only location wherein the physical section of Broadway is discontinuous in Manhattan (other portions of Broadway in Manhattan are pedestrian-only plazas). At Madison Square, the location of the Flatiron Building, Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street, thereby moving from the east side of Manhattan to the west, and is discontinuous to vehicles for a one-block stretch between 24th and 25th Streets. At Greeley Square (West 32nd Street), Broadway crosses Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas), and is discontinuous to vehicles until West 35th Street. Macy's Herald Square department store, one block north of the vehicular discontinuity, is located on the northwest corner of Broadway and West 34th Street and southwest corner of Broadway and West 35th Street; it is one of the largest department stores in the world. One famous stretch near Times Square, where Broadway crosses Seventh Avenue in midtown Manhattan, is the home of many Broadway theatres, housing an ever-changing array of commercial, large-scale plays, particularly musicals. This area of Manhattan is often called the Theater District or the Great White Way, a nickname originating in the headline "Found on the Great White Way" in the February 3, 1902, edition of the "New York Evening Telegram". The journalistic nickname was inspired by the millions of lights on theater marquees and billboard advertisements that illuminate the area. After becoming the city's de facto red-light district in the 1960s and 1970s (as can be seen in the films "Taxi Driver" and "Midnight Cowboy"), since the late 1980s Times Square has emerged as a family tourist center, in effect being Disneyfied following the company's purchase and renovation of the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street in 1993. "The New York Times", from which the Square gets its name, was published at offices at 239 West 43rd Street; the paper stopped printing papers there on June 15, 2007. Upper West Side. At the southwest corner of Central Park, Broadway crosses Eighth Avenue (called Central Park West north of 59th Street) at West 59th Street and Columbus Circle; on the site of the former New York Coliseum convention center is the new shopping center at the foot of the Time Warner Center, headquarters of Time Warner. From Columbus Circle northward, Broadway becomes a wide boulevard to 169th Street; it retains landscaped center islands that separate northbound from southbound traffic. The medians are a vestige of the central mall of "The Boulevard" that had become the spine of the Upper West Side, and many of these contain public seating. Broadway intersects with Columbus Avenue (known as Ninth Avenue south of West 59th Street) at West 65th and 66th Streets where the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center, both well-known performing arts landmarks, as well as the Manhattan New York Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are located. Between West 70th and 73rd Streets, Broadway intersects with Amsterdam Avenue (known as 10th Avenue south of West 59th Street). The wide intersection of the two thoroughfares has historically been the site of numerous traffic accidents and pedestrian casualties, partly due to the long crosswalks. Two small triangular plots of land were created at points where Broadway slices through Amsterdam Avenue. One is a tiny fenced-in patch of shrubbery and plants at West 70th Street called Sherman Square (although it and the surrounding intersection have also been known collectively as Sherman Square), and the other triangle is a lush tree-filled garden bordering Amsterdam Avenue from just above West 72nd Street to West 73rd Street. Named Verdi Square in 1921 for its monument to Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, which was erected in 1909, this triangular sliver of public space was designated a Scenic Landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1974, one of nine city parks that have received the designation. In the 1960s and 1970s, the area surrounding both Verdi Square and Sherman Square was known by local drug users and dealers as "Needle Park", and was featured prominently in the gritty 1971 dramatic film "The Panic in Needle Park", directed by Jerry Schatzberg and starring Al Pacino in his second onscreen role. The original brick and stone shelter leading to the entrance of the 72nd Street subway station, one of the first 28 subway stations in Manhattan, remains located on one of the wide islands in the center of Broadway, on the south side of West 72nd Street. For many years, all traffic on Broadway flowed on either side of this median and its subway entrance, and its uptown lanes went past it along the western edge of triangular Verdi Square. In 2001 and 2002, renovation of the historic 72nd Street station and the addition of a second subway control house and passenger shelter on an adjacent center median just north of 72nd Street, across from the original building, resulted in the creation of a public plaza with stone pavers and extensive seating, connecting the newer building with Verdi Square, and making it necessary to divert northbound traffic to Amsterdam Avenue for one block. While Broadway's southbound lanes at this intersection were unaffected by the new construction, its northbound lanes are no longer contiguous at this intersection. Drivers can either continue along Amsterdam Avenue to head uptown or turn left on West 73rd Street to resume traveling on Broadway. Several notable apartment buildings are in close proximity to this intersection, including The Ansonia, its ornate architecture dominating the cityscape here. After the Ansonia first opened as a hotel, live seals were kept in indoor fountains inside its lobby. Later, it was home to the infamous Plato's Retreat nightclub. Immediately north of Verdi Square is the Apple Bank Building, formerly the Central Savings Bank, which was built in 1926 and designed to resemble the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Broadway is also home to the Beacon Theatre at West 74th Street, designated a national landmark in 1979 and still in operation as a concert venue after its establishment in 1929 as a vaudeville and music hall, and "sister" venue to Radio City Music Hall. At its intersection with West 78th Street, Broadway shifts direction and continues directly uptown and aligned approximately with the Commissioners' grid. Past the bend are the historic Apthorp apartment building, built in 1908, and the First Baptist Church in the City of New York, incorporated in New York in 1762, its current building on Broadway erected in 1891. The road heads north and passes historically important apartment houses such as the Belnord, the Astor Court Building, and the Art Nouveau Cornwall. At Broadway and 95th Street is Symphony Space, established in 1978 as home to avant-garde and classical music and dance performances in the former Symphony Theatre, which was originally built in 1918 as a premier "music and motion-picture house". At 99th Street, Broadway passes between the controversial skyscrapers of the Ariel East and West. At 107th Street, Broadway merges with West End Avenue, with the intersection forming Straus Park with its Titanic Memorial by Augustus Lukeman. Northern Manhattan and the Bronx. Broadway then passes the campus of Columbia University at 116th Street in Morningside Heights, in part on the tract that housed the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum from 1808 until it moved to Westchester County in 1894. Still in Morningside Heights, Broadway passes the park-like campus of Barnard College. Next, the Gothic quadrangle of Union Theological Seminary, and the brick buildings of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America with their landscaped interior courtyards, face one another across Broadway. On the next block is the Manhattan School of Music. Broadway then runs past the Manhattanville campus of Columbia University, and the main campus of CUNY–City College near 135th Street; the Gothic buildings of the original City College campus are out of sight, a block to the east. Also to the east are the brownstones of Hamilton Heights. Hamilton Place is a surviving section of Bloomingdale Road, and originally the address of Alexander Hamilton's house, The Grange, which has been moved. Broadway achieves a verdant, park-like effect, particularly in the spring, when it runs between the uptown Trinity Church Cemetery and the former Trinity Chapel, now the Church of the Intercession near 155th Street. NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital lies on Broadway near 166th, 167th, and 168th Streets in Washington Heights. The intersection with St. Nicholas Avenue at 167th Street forms Mitchell Square Park. At 178th Street, US 9 becomes concurrent with Broadway. Broadway crosses the Harlem River on the Broadway Bridge to Marble Hill. Afterward, it then enters the Bronx, where it is the eastern border of Riverdale and the western border of Van Cortlandt Park. At 253rd Street, NY 9A joins with US 9 and Broadway. (NY 9A splits off Broadway at Ashburton Avenue in Yonkers.) Westchester County. The northwestern corner of the park marks the New York City limit and Broadway enters Westchester County in Yonkers, where it is now known as South Broadway. It trends ever westward, closer to the Hudson River, remaining a busy urban commercial street. In downtown Yonkers, it drops close to the river, becomes North Broadway and 9A leaves via Ashburton Avenue. Broadway climbs to the nearby ridgetop runs parallel to the river and the railroad, a few blocks east of both as it passes St. John's Riverside Hospital. The neighborhoods become more residential and the road gently undulates along the ridgetop. In Yonkers, Broadway passes the historic Philipse Manor house, which dates back to colonial times. It remains Broadway as it leaves Yonkers for Hastings-on-Hudson, where it splits into separate north and south routes for . The trees become taller and the houses, many separated from the road by stone fences, become larger. Another National Historic Landmark, the John William Draper House, was the site of the first astrophotograph of the Moon. In the next village, Dobbs Ferry, Broadway has various views of the Hudson River while passing through the residential section. Broadway passes by the Old Croton Aqueduct and nearby the shopping district of the village. After intersecting with Ashford Avenue, Broadway passes Mercy University, then turns left again at the center of town just past South Presbyterian Church, headed for equally comfortable Ardsley-on-Hudson and Irvington. Villa Lewaro, the home of Madam C. J. Walker, the first African-American millionaire, is along the highway here. At the north end of the village of Irvington, a memorial to writer Washington Irving, after whom the village was renamed, marks the turnoff to his home at Sunnyside. Entering into the southern portion of Tarrytown, Broadway passes by historic Lyndhurst mansion, a massive mansion built along the Hudson River built in the early 1800s. North of here, at the Kraft Foods technical center, the Tappan Zee Bridge becomes visible. After crossing under the Thruway and I-87 again, here concurrent with I-287, and then intersecting with the four-lane NY 119, where 119 splits off to the east, Broadway becomes the busy main street of Tarrytown. Christ Episcopal Church, where Irving worshiped, is along the street. Many high-quality restaurants and shops are along this main road. This downtown ends at the eastern terminus of NY 448, where Broadway slopes off to the left, downhill, and four signs indicate that Broadway turns left, passing the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, another NHL. The road then enters Sleepy Hollow (formerly North Tarrytown), and forks: To the right is Bedford Road which traverses the hills up to Pocantico Hills and Kykuit, the National Historic Landmark that was (and partially still is) the Rockefeller family's estate. To the left of the fork, Broadway passes down hill to pass the visitors' center for Philipsburg Manor. Broadway then crosses the Headless Horseman Bridge and then passes the historic Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which includes the resting place of Washington Irving and the setting for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Broadway expands to four lanes at the trumpet intersection with NY 117, where it finally ends and U.S. 9 becomes Albany Post Road (and Highland Avenue) at the northern border of Sleepy Hollow, New York. Nicknamed sections. Canyon of Heroes. "Canyon of Heroes" is occasionally used to refer to the section of lower Broadway in the Financial District that is the location of the city's ticker-tape parades. The traditional route of the parade is northward from Bowling Green to City Hall Park. Most of the route is lined with tall office buildings along both sides, affording a view of the parade for thousands of office workers who create the snowstorm-like jettison of shredded paper products that characterize the parade. While typical sports championship parades have been showered with some 50 tons of confetti and shredded paper, the V-J Day parade on August 14–15, 1945 – marking the end of World War II – was covered with 5,438 tons of paper, based on estimates provided by the New York City Department of Sanitation. More than 200 black granite strips embedded in the sidewalks along the Canyon of Heroes list honorees of past ticker-tape parades. Great White Way. "The Great White Way" is a nickname for a section of Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, specifically the portion that encompasses the Theater District, between 42nd and 53rd Streets, and encompassing Times Square. In 1880, a stretch of Broadway between Union Square and Madison Square was illuminated by Brush arc lamps, making it among the first electrically lighted streets in the United States. By the 1890s, the portion from 23rd Street to 34th Street was so brightly illuminated by electrical advertising signs, that people began calling it "The Great White Way". When the theater district moved uptown, the name was transferred to the Times Square area. The phrase "Great White Way" has been attributed to Shep Friedman, columnist for the "New York Morning Telegraph" in 1901, who lifted the term from the title of a book about the Arctic by Albert Paine. The headline "Found on the Great White Way" appeared in the February 3, 1902, edition of the "New York Evening Telegram". A portrait of Broadway in the early part of the 20th century and "The Great White Way" late at night appeared in "Artist In Manhattan" (1940) written by the artist-historian Jerome Myers: Transportation. From south to north, Broadway at one point or another runs over or under various New York City Subway lines, including the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, the BMT Broadway Line, IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, and IND Eighth Avenue Line (the IND Sixth Avenue Line is the only north–south trunk line in Manhattan that does not run along Broadway). Early street railways on Broadway included the Broadway and Seventh Avenue Railroad's Broadway and University Place Line (1864?) between Union Square (14th Street) and Times Square (42nd Street), the Ninth Avenue Railroad's Ninth and Amsterdam Avenues Line (1884) between 65th Street and 71st Street, the Forty-second Street, Manhattanville and St. Nicholas Avenue Railway's Broadway Branch Line (1885?) between Times Square and 125th Street, and the Kingsbridge Railway's Kingsbridge Line north of 169th Street. The Broadway Surface Railroad's Broadway Line, a cable car line, opened on lower Broadway (below Times Square) in 1893, and soon became the core of the Metropolitan Street Railway, with two cable branches: the Broadway and Lexington Avenue Line and Broadway and Columbus Avenue Line. These streetcar lines were replaced with bus routes in the 1930s and 1940s. Before Broadway became one-way, the main bus routes along it were the New York City Omnibus Company's (NYCO) 6 (Broadway below Times Square), 7 (Broadway and Columbus Avenue), and 11 (Ninth and Amsterdam Avenues), and the Surface Transportation Corporation's M100 (Kingsbridge) and M104 (Broadway Branch). Additionally, the Fifth Avenue Coach Company's (FACCo) 4 and 5 used Broadway from 135th Street north to Washington Heights, and their 5 and 6 used Broadway between 57th Street and 72nd Street. With the implementation of one-way traffic, the northbound 6 and 7 were moved to Sixth Avenue. , Broadway is served by: Other routes that use part of Broadway include: Express service is provided by the between Dyckman Street in Manhattan and West 230th Street in the Bronx, and the between Van Cortlandt Park South in the Bronx and Main Street in Yonkers, using South Broadway to terminate. Bee-Line buses also serve Broadway within Riverdale and Westchester County. Routes 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 13, and several others run on a portion of Broadway. Notable buildings. Broadway is lined with many famous and otherwise noted and historic buildings, such as: Historic buildings on Broadway that are now demolished include: References. Notes Citations Bibliography
4628	37569883	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4628	Bilinear transform	The bilinear transform (also known as Tustin's method, after Arnold Tustin) is used in digital signal processing and discrete-time control theory to transform continuous-time system representations to discrete-time and vice versa. The bilinear transform is a special case of a conformal mapping (namely, a Möbius transformation), often used for converting a transfer function formula_1 of a linear, time-invariant (LTI) filter in the continuous-time domain (often named an analog filter) to a transfer function formula_2 of a linear, shift-invariant filter in the discrete-time domain (often named a digital filter although there are analog filters constructed with switched capacitors that are discrete-time filters). It maps positions on the formula_3 axis, formula_4, in the s-plane to the unit circle, formula_5, in the z-plane. Other bilinear transforms can be used for warping the frequency response of any discrete-time linear system (for example to approximate the non-linear frequency resolution of the human auditory system) and are implementable in the discrete domain by replacing a system's unit delays formula_6 with first order all-pass filters. The transform preserves stability and maps every point of the frequency response of the continuous-time filter, formula_7 to a corresponding point in the frequency response of the discrete-time filter, formula_8 although to a somewhat different frequency, as shown in the Frequency warping section below. This means that for every feature that one sees in the frequency response of the analog filter, there is a corresponding feature, with identical gain and phase shift, in the frequency response of the digital filter but, perhaps, at a somewhat different frequency. The change in frequency is barely noticeable at low frequencies but is quite evident at frequencies close to the Nyquist frequency. Discrete-time approximation. The bilinear transform is a first-order Padé approximant of the natural logarithm function that is an exact mapping of the "z"-plane to the "s"-plane. When the Laplace transform is performed on a discrete-time signal (with each element of the discrete-time sequence attached to a correspondingly delayed unit impulse), the result is precisely the Z transform of the discrete-time sequence with the substitution of formula_9 where formula_10 is the numerical integration step size of the trapezoidal rule used in the bilinear transform derivation; or, in other words, the sampling period. The above bilinear approximation can be solved for formula_11 or a similar approximation for formula_12 can be performed. The inverse of this mapping (and its first-order bilinear approximation) is formula_13 The bilinear transform essentially uses this first order approximation and substitutes into the continuous-time transfer function, formula_1 formula_15 That is formula_16 Stability and minimum-phase property preserved. A continuous-time causal filter is stable if the poles of its transfer function fall in the left half of the complex s-plane. A discrete-time causal filter is stable if the poles of its transfer function fall inside the unit circle in the complex z-plane. The bilinear transform maps the left half of the complex s-plane to the interior of the unit circle in the z-plane. Thus, filters designed in the continuous-time domain that are stable are converted to filters in the discrete-time domain that preserve that stability. Likewise, a continuous-time filter is minimum-phase if the zeros of its transfer function fall in the left half of the complex s-plane. A discrete-time filter is minimum-phase if the zeros of its transfer function fall inside the unit circle in the complex z-plane. Then the same mapping property assures that continuous-time filters that are minimum-phase are converted to discrete-time filters that preserve that property of being minimum-phase. Transformation of a General LTI System. A general LTI system has the transfer function formula_17 The order of the transfer function is the greater of and (in practice this is most likely as the transfer function must be proper for the system to be stable). Applying the bilinear transform formula_18 where is defined as either or otherwise if using frequency warping, gives formula_19 Multiplying the numerator and denominator by the largest power of present, , gives formula_20 It can be seen here that after the transformation, the degree of the numerator and denominator are both . Consider then the pole-zero form of the continuous-time transfer function formula_21 The roots of the numerator and denominator polynomials, and , are the zeros and poles of the system. The bilinear transform is a one-to-one mapping, hence these can be transformed to the z-domain using formula_22 yielding some of the discretized transfer function's zeros and poles and formula_23 As described above, the degree of the numerator and denominator are now both , in other words there is now an equal number of zeros and poles. The multiplication by means the additional zeros or poles are formula_24 Given the full set of zeros and poles, the z-domain transfer function is then formula_25 Example. As an example take a simple low-pass RC filter. This continuous-time filter has a transfer function formula_26 If we wish to implement this filter as a digital filter, we can apply the bilinear transform by substituting for formula_27 the formula above; after some reworking, we get the following filter representation: The coefficients of the denominator are the 'feed-backward' coefficients and the coefficients of the numerator are the 'feed-forward' coefficients used for implementing a real-time digital filter. Transformation for a general first-order continuous-time filter. It is possible to relate the coefficients of a continuous-time, analog filter with those of a similar discrete-time digital filter created through the bilinear transform process. Transforming a general, first-order continuous-time filter with the given transfer function formula_28 using the bilinear transform (without prewarping any frequency specification) requires the substitution of formula_29 where formula_30. However, if the frequency warping compensation as described below is used in the bilinear transform, so that both analog and digital filter gain and phase agree at frequency formula_31, then formula_32. This results in a discrete-time digital filter with coefficients expressed in terms of the coefficients of the original continuous time filter: formula_33 Normally the constant term in the denominator must be normalized to 1 before deriving the corresponding difference equation. This results in formula_34 The difference equation (using the Direct form I) is formula_35 General second-order biquad transformation. A similar process can be used for a general second-order filter with the given transfer function formula_36 This results in a discrete-time digital biquad filter with coefficients expressed in terms of the coefficients of the original continuous time filter: formula_37 Again, the constant term in the denominator is generally normalized to 1 before deriving the corresponding difference equation. This results in formula_38 The difference equation (using the Direct form I) is formula_39 Frequency warping. To determine the frequency response of a continuous-time filter, the transfer function formula_1 is evaluated at formula_41 which is on the formula_3 axis. Likewise, to determine the frequency response of a discrete-time filter, the transfer function formula_43 is evaluated at formula_44 which is on the unit circle, formula_5. The bilinear transform maps the formula_3 axis of the "s"-plane (which is the domain of formula_1) to the unit circle of the "z"-plane, formula_5 (which is the domain of formula_43), but it is not the same mapping formula_50 which also maps the formula_3 axis to the unit circle. When the actual frequency of formula_52 is input to the discrete-time filter designed by use of the bilinear transform, then it is desired to know at what frequency, formula_53, for the continuous-time filter that this formula_52 is mapped to. formula_55 This shows that every point on the unit circle in the discrete-time filter z-plane, formula_56 is mapped to a point on the formula_57 axis on the continuous-time filter s-plane, formula_58. That is, the discrete-time to continuous-time frequency mapping of the bilinear transform is formula_59 and the inverse mapping is formula_60 The discrete-time filter behaves at frequency formula_61 the same way that the continuous-time filter behaves at frequency formula_62. Specifically, the gain and phase shift that the discrete-time filter has at frequency formula_61 is the same gain and phase shift that the continuous-time filter has at frequency formula_64. This means that every feature, every "bump" that is visible in the frequency response of the continuous-time filter is also visible in the discrete-time filter, but at a different frequency. For low frequencies (that is, when formula_65 or formula_66), then the features are mapped to a "slightly" different frequency; formula_67. One can see that the entire continuous frequency range formula_68 is mapped onto the fundamental frequency interval formula_69 The continuous-time filter frequency formula_70 corresponds to the discrete-time filter frequency formula_71 and the continuous-time filter frequency formula_72 correspond to the discrete-time filter frequency formula_73 One can also see that there is a nonlinear relationship between formula_53 and formula_75 This effect of the bilinear transform is called frequency warping. The continuous-time filter can be designed to compensate for this frequency warping by setting formula_59 for every frequency specification that the designer has control over (such as corner frequency or center frequency). This is called pre-warping the filter design. It is possible, however, to compensate for the frequency warping by pre-warping a frequency specification formula_77 (usually a resonant frequency or the frequency of the most significant feature of the frequency response) of the continuous-time system. These pre-warped specifications may then be used in the bilinear transform to obtain the desired discrete-time system. When designing a digital filter as an approximation of a continuous time filter, the frequency response (both amplitude and phase) of the digital filter can be made to match the frequency response of the continuous filter at a specified frequency formula_77, as well as matching at DC, if the following transform is substituted into the continuous filter transfer function. This is a modified version of Tustin's transform shown above. formula_79 However, note that this transform becomes the original transform formula_80 as formula_81. The main advantage of the warping phenomenon is the absence of aliasing distortion of the frequency response characteristic, such as observed with Impulse invariance.
4631	49285382	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4631	Brian Boitano	Brian Anthony Boitano (born October 22, 1963) is an American figure skater from Sunnyvale, California. He is the 1988 Olympic champion, the 1986 and 1988 World Champion, and the 1985–1988 U.S. National Champion. Boitano turned professional following the 1988 season. Under new rules by the ISU, he returned to competition in 1993 and competed at the 1994 Winter Olympics, where he placed sixth. In 1996, he was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame and the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Early life. Brian Boitano was born in 1963 and raised in Mountain View, California. Boitano is a graduate of Marian A. Peterson High School in Sunnyvale, California. He is of Italian American descent, with family from northern Italy. As an adult, he has lived in San Francisco. Figure skating career. Early career. Beginning skating as a child, Brian Boitano won a gold medal at the Junior U.S. Championships in 1978 and first made his mark on the international scene when he won the bronze medal at the 1978 World Junior Figure Skating Championships, beating future rival Brian Orser for that medal. Early in his career, Boitano was known primarily for his jumping. He, along with several other skaters, helped push the technical envelope of men's skating. In 1982, Boitano became the first American to land a triple Axel. In 1987, he introduced his signature jump, the 'Boitano triple Lutz', in which the skater raises his left arm above his head. He attempted a quadruple jump throughout the 1986–87 season and at the 1988 World Figure Skating Championships, but did not cleanly land the jump; he double-footed the landing on two occasions. At the 1983 World Championships, he became the first skater to ever land all six triple jumps in competition. He would eventually include and successfully land eight triple jumps in his free skate program, the maximum number possible (see Zayak rule). He would jump two flip jumps and two triple Axels to compete with his rival, Brian Orser, who jumped one triple flip and one triple Axel. It was not until failing to defend his World title in 1987 that Boitano focused specifically on improving his artistry. Toward this end, he worked with renowned choreographer Sandra Bezic. Boitano placed second at the 1984 United States Figure Skating Championships, earning a place in the 1984 Winter Olympics. He placed 5th at the Olympics, setting the stage for his success over the next four years. World Champion. Following the 1984 Olympics, several skaters emerged as likely medal hopes following the retirement of Scott Hamilton. Boitano won the 1985 United States Figure Skating Championships, the first of his four titles. At the first World Championships of the post-Hamilton era in 1985, Alexander Fadeev won, with Brian Orser finishing in second place and Boitano in third place. He had injured tendons in his right ankle a few weeks before the 1986 U.S. Championships but went on to win his second national title. At the 1986 World Championships, Boitano took the title, while Fadeev had a disastrous free skate despite having been in an excellent position to win; Orser finished in second place once again. During the 1986–87 season, Boitano had introduced three new elements to his programs: the 'Tano triple lutz and a quadruple toe loop, as well as wearing a blindfold, although he never succeeded in landing a clean quadruple jump in competition. The 1987 World Championships were held in Cincinnati, giving the defending world champion a home-field advantage. The outcome of the event would set the tone for the 1988 Olympics. He fell on his quadruple toe loop attempt and placed second. After losing the world title to Orser at home, Boitano and his coach Linda Leaver decided that some changes needed to be made if he was to become the Olympic champion. He had always been good at the technical requirements ("The first mark"), but he was weak on the artistic ("the second mark"). He was a self-described "jumping robot." In order to help his growth as an artist, he hired choreographer Sandra Bezic to choreograph his programs for the 1987–1988 Olympic season. Bezic choreographed two programs that featured clean lines and accentuated the skating abilities of the 5' 11" Boitano. The short program was based on Giacomo Meyerbeer's ballet "Les Patineurs", in which he plays a cocky young man showing off his tricks, using movements dating to the 19th century. In one moment, he wipes ice shavings, also called snow, off his skate blade and tosses it over his shoulder after landing a triple Axel combination. The free skating program was based on the film score, "Napoleon", detailing various phases of a soldier's life. Boitano debuted his new programs at 1987 Skate Canada, held in the Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This was where he would compete against Brian Orser for the Olympic title three months later. His new programs were received with standing ovations by the audience. Although Orser won the competition, Boitano skated clean, landing seven triple jumps, including a footwork section into a jump, but popped his planned second triple Axel. The team was so confident about the strength of his new programs that they omitted the quadruple toe loop which, if landed, could have put him a shoulder above Orser in technical merit. The short program at the 1988 United States Figure Skating Championships proved to be a highlight. Boitano received marks of 6.0 from eight of the nine judges for presentation, the second mark. His free skate was flawed. Due to delays, he did not skate until after midnight. Still, he won the competition, and went into the Olympics as the national champion (U.S.), as did Orser (representing Canada). 1988 Olympics: Battle of the Brians. Going into the Olympics, Boitano and Brian Orser each had won a world title and each had an excellent, balanced repertoire. Boitano was known as the slightly better technician and Orser as the better artist. Adding to the rivalry, Boitano and Orser were both performing military-themed programs. Boitano's free skate was set to music from "", the television miniseries. For his free skate, Boitano wore a blue stretch suit with red braids and epaulets, and used military gestures and postures as much as his music allowed. The Battle of the Brians at the 1988 Winter Olympics was the highlight of Boitano's amateur career. Boitano and Orser were effectively tied going into the free skating portion of the event and whoever won that portion would win the event. Alexander Fadeev had won the compulsory figures section of the competition, with Boitano second and Orser third. In the short program, Orser placed first and Boitano second. The free skating was, at the time, worth 50% of the score, and so Boitano's lead would not be enough to hold him in first place if he lost the free skate. Boitano skated a clean, technically excellent long program, with eight triple jumps, including two axels, and a triple flip-triple toe loop combination. Landing his second triple axel jump cleanly was probably a critical factor in the battle. Orser made one small mistake on a jump and omitted his planned second triple axel. Boitano won the battle in a 5–4 split. It was later discovered that the Canadian Figure Skating Association had engaged in "vote trading" with several countries on the judging panel, particularly East Germany and the USSR. This ultimately backfired, as the Soviet judge refused to follow this agreement and voting "with his conscience," placing Boitano first. Had he followed his federation's directive, Boitano would have lost the gold medal. The judge was promptly suspended by his federation. Experts questioned why the scores were so close between the two skaters because Boitano had two triple axels, two triple flips and a triple triple combination, elements that were not included in Orser's program. With his win, Boitano became the first Olympic champion to land the full complement of six types of triple jumps. Boitano won the gold medal, wearing skates with American flag appliqués. These are now part of the collections of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. Following the Olympics, both Orser and Boitano went to the 1988 World Championships, which Boitano won. Boitano turned professional soon after. Professional career and return to amateur standing. Following the Olympics, Boitano went on to dominate competitions in the professional ranks, winning ten straight professional competitions, including five consecutive World Professional Championship titles and four consecutive wins at the Challenge of Champions. Boitano also appeared in "Carmen on Ice", for which he won an Emmy. He performed with Champions on Ice for many years. He wanted to return to amateur competition and make another run at the Olympics. In June 1993, the International Skating Union (ISU) introduced a clause, commonly known as the "Boitano rule," which allowed professionals to reinstate as "amateur" or "eligible" skaters. Many others joined Boitano, including Ukrainian Viktor Petrenko, 1988 bronze medalist and 1992 gold medalist. The ISU decision was the result of Boitano's active involvement during the early 1990s, when the International Olympic Committee lifted the remaining limits on athletes' remuneration. Previously, the committee had been accused of rejecting Western professionals, while allowing Eastern Bloc state-sponsored "amateurs" to compete. Boitano reinstated as an amateur to compete in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Boitano competed at the 1994 United States Figure Skating Championships, led after the short program, but lost to Scott Davis in the long program in a 6–3 split decision. Boitano was named to the Olympic team. Going into the Olympics as a medal favorite in a strong field, Boitano missed his triple Axel combination during the short program for the first time in his career. This mistake proved extremely costly, and knocked Boitano out of medal contention. He skated a good long program and finished 6th. Boitano returned to the professional ranks afterward. In 1996 he was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame and the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Personal life. In December 2013, Boitano was named to the United States delegation to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. In conjunction with that appointment, Boitano publicly came out as gay. The Sochi games and Russia were the targets of criticism and LGBT activism because of a Russian anti-gay "propaganda" law passed in June 2013. In January 2014, Boitano told the Associated Press that he had never wanted to come out until he was named to the delegation. Boitano's older brother, Mark Boitano, is a real estate agent and former politician. He served as a member of the New Mexico Senate from 1997 to 2013. Celebrity and popular culture career. "South Park" song. A caricature of Boitano as a superhero appears as a semi-recurring character in the cartoon series "South Park". The film "" (1999) features a musical number titled "What Would Brian Boitano Do?". He was also featured in "Jesus vs. Santa". Food Network show. On August 23, 2009, Food Network debuted a new series entitled "What Would Brian Boitano Make?", which borrows both its name and opening musical theme from the "" song. The show features Boitano preparing meals for his friends. The series was picked up for a ten-episode second season.
4633	1292560758	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4633	List of political scandals in the United Kingdom	This is a list of political scandals in the United Kingdom in chronological order. Scandals implicating political figures or governments of the UK, often reported in the mass media, have long had repercussions for their popularity. Issues in political scandals have included alleged or proven financial and sexual matters, or various other allegations or actions taken by politicians that led to controversy. In British media and political discourse, such scandals have sometimes been referred to as political sleaze since the 1990s. Notable scandals include the Marconi scandal, Profumo affair and the 2009 expenses scandal.
4635	1298346336	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4635	Bombardier Inc.	Bombardier Inc. () is a Canadian aerospace manufacturer which produces business jets. Headquartered in Montreal, the company was founded in 1942 in Valcourt by Joseph-Armand Bombardier to market his snowmobiles; it later became one of the world's biggest producers of aircraft and trains. During the 1970s and 1980s, the company diversified into public transport vehicles and commercial jets, and it became a multinational corporation. Bombardier grew particularly fast at the end of the 1980s, when the turnover multiplied sixfold within six years. At that time, it was North America's most important producer of railway vehicles, Canada's most important aerospace manufacturer and the worldwide leading snowmobile maker. The growth came mainly from buying failing government-owned companies at a low price and orchestrating a turnaround. However, the launch of the CSeries aircraft sent Bombardier into deep debt, pushing it to the brink of bankruptcy by 2015. As a result, the company sold nearly all of its operations except business jet manufacturing. Bombardier manufactures two families of corporate jets, the Global series and the Challenger series. On May 18, 2021, the Global 7500/8000 series during testing became the first business jet to break the sound barrier and the fastest civil aircraft since the Concorde. With deliveries of 138 business jets in 2023, Bombardier was the number one manufacturer of business jets in the world. Corporate affairs. The key trends of Bombardier are (as at the financial year ending December 31): Divested lines of business. Commercial aviation. In 1986, Bombardier acquired Canadair for C$120 million from the Government of Canada after it recorded the largest corporate loss in Canadian history. In 1989, the company acquired Short Brothers. By 1990, the first product of the company, the Ski-Doo snowmobile, had become its weakest part gaging up deficits and high inventories. In 1990, it acquired Learjet. In 1992, the company acquired de Havilland Canada from Boeing. In 1995, the company founded Flexjet. In December 2013, the division was sold for $195 million. On June 29, 2016, Bombardier delivered the first CSeries CS100 aircraft (now called the Airbus A220) to Swiss International Air Lines. Air Canada placed an order for the aircraft one day earlier. In April 2016, Delta Air Lines placed an order for the aircraft. On September 26, 2017, after Boeing complained that Bombardier was selling the CS100 to Delta Air Lines below cost due to subsidies from the governments of Canada and Quebec, the United States Department of Commerce proposed a 219% tariff on the aircraft. Boeing's complaint stated that the CS100 planes were being sold at US$19.6 million each, below the US$33.2 million production cost. The governments of Canada and the United Kingdom threatened to stop ordering Boeing aircraft since the company was putting aerospace jobs at risk. On January 26, 2018, the United States International Trade Commission overturned the tariffs. Boeing did not appeal. In July 2018, Airbus acquired a 50.01% stake in the CSeries for one Canadian dollar, with an option to acquire the remaining interest by 2024. Airbus built a second CSeries assembly line at its A320 assembly facility in Mobile, Alabama. In November 2018, the company announced the sale of its turboprop passenger aircraft unit to an affiliate of Viking Air. It also announced 5,000 layoffs. In March 2019, the company sold its Business Aircraft Training business to CAE Inc. for $645 million. The business included flight simulators and training devices for the Bombardier Learjet, Challenger, and Global product lines. On June 25, 2019, Bombardier agreed with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to sell the CRJ programme, a deal was expected to close in early 2020 subject to regulatory approval. Bombardier will retain the Mirabel assembly facility and produce the CRJ on behalf of Mitsubishi until the current order backlog is complete. In October 2019, Bombardier announced the sale agreement of its remaining aerostructure division to US company Spirit AeroSystems. The division at time of sale involved component manufacture for new and after-market Bombardier group and Airbus group aircraft models, and also operated in aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul. Due to how the 2020 pandemic affected the industry, the agreement was renegotiated with the sale to Spirit concluded finally in October 2020. Bombardier's former aerostructures division purchased by Spirit consisted at time of sale of operations in Belfast, UK; Casablanca, Morocco; and Dallas, USA. The 2019 to 2020 aerostructures division sell-off was described at the time as supporting Bombardier's "strategic decision to reposition itself as a pure-play business aircraft company". In February 2020, Airbus acquired an additional 25% stake in the A220 for US$591 million. This transaction was the final step to get Bombardier Aviation out of the commercial jet industry. Bombardier Capital. Bombardier Capital (BC), a subsidiary of Bombardier Inc., was formed during 1973 in Colchester, Vermont. BC was involved in the secured financing of dealer inventories purchased from manufacturers and distributors of recreational and consumer products, especially Bombardier Recreational Products, in the United States, Canada and Europe. Their clients consisted of Sea-Doo and Ski-Doo dealers, as well as retailers in multiple industries, primarily manufactured housing, recreational boating and specialty and recreational vehicles. BC also provided a wide variety of domestic/international loans, asset management and leasing services for business aircraft and commercial/industrial products, including technology and telecommunication equipment. In August 1997 CGI Inc. and BC announced a strategic agreement to offer their clients value-added services. CGI would offer information technology to BC's clients, and BC would provide project financing to CGI's clients. That same year, BC began transitioning loan origination and servicing to Jacksonville, Florida. BC ceased loan originations in 2001, then in 2005, BC sold their Inventory Finance Division to GE Commercial Finance before shutting down operations. Military. The company acquired the rights to the Volkswagen Iltis in 1981. Production ceased in 1989. When UTDC was acquired by Bombardier in 1991 several military products were added: UTDC 24M32 - HLVW military trucks based on the Steyr 91 (Percheron) In 2003, the company sold its arms industry division in Canada. Military Aviation Services was sold to SPAR Aerospace. Land-based arms industry products made by Urban Transportation Development Corporation ceased operations. Public transport bus in Ireland. In the late 1970s, in the Republic of Ireland, CIÉ (now Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus) commissioned a range of single and double-decker buses to be designed and produced. CIÉ looked for partners to build these buses in Ireland, eventually finding two: Bombardier, and the United States–based General Automotive Corporation (GAC) from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The two companies formed a new company Bombardier Ireland Limited, 51% owned by Bombardier and 49% owned by GAC. In August 1983, Bombardier sold its shares to GAC, with the company renamed GAC Ireland Limited. The prototypes were devised in Germany and production of 51 express coaches (KE type) and 366 double-decker buses (KD type) were assembled between 1980 and 1983 at a facility in Shannon, County Clare. They remained in service until 1997 and 2000, respectively. Some surviving examples are now exhibited at the National Transport Museum of Ireland at Howth Castle. Rail equipment. The company diversified into rail transport after the 1970s energy crisis reduced demand for snowmobiles. In 1974, the company received its first order – to build MR-73 trains for Société de transport de Montréal for use on the Montreal Metro. In 1975, the company acquired Montreal Locomotive Works. It was sold to General Electric in 1988. In 1982, the company won a contract from New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build 825 R62A cars for the New York City Subway for $663 million. In 1985, the company ceased manufacturing locomotives and concentrated on producing passenger train rolling stock. It acquired a 45% stake in La Brugeoise et Nivelles (formerly BN Constructions Ferroviaires et Métalliques) based in Bruges in 1986, the assets of U.S. railcar manufacturers Budd Company and Pullman Company in 1987, and ANF Industrie based in Crespin, Nord, France in 1989. A series of acquisitions in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Mexico further increased operations. In 1996, the company was selected as the lead developer for the Acela Express trains, the fastest trains in North America, in a $710 million contract. Problems with the trains resulted in lawsuits between the company and Amtrak. In 2001, Bombardier acquired Adtranz (DaimlerChrysler Rail Systems), a manufacturer of trains which were widely used throughout Germany and Great Britain, becoming one of the largest manufacturers of railway rolling stock in the world. This division produced the Bombardier Turbostar. In 2005, it launched the Bombardier Zefiro high-speed rail, with speeds of 200–380 kilometres per hour, for the Ministry of Railways (China). On February 13, 2020, Alstom agreed to buy the Bombardier Transportation division for €7 billion. The acquisition deal was completed on January 29, 2021. Bombardier Recreational Products. In January 1934, a blizzard prevented Joseph-Armand Bombardier from reaching the nearest hospital in time to save his two-year-old son, Yvon, who died from appendicitis complicated by peritonitis. Bombardier was a mechanic who dreamed of building a vehicle that could "float on snow". In 1935, in a repair shop in Valcourt, Quebec, he designed and produced the first snowmobile using a drive system he developed that revolutionized travel in snow and swampy conditions. In 1937, he patented and sold 12 of the 7-passenger "B7" snow coaches. They were used in rural Quebec to take children to school, carry freight, deliver mail, and as ambulances. In 1941, Bombardier opened a factory in Valcourt. In 1942, "L'Auto-Neige Bombardier Limitée" ("Bombardier Snow Car Limited") was founded in Valcourt. During World War II, the Government of Canada issued wartime rationing regulations. Bombardier customers had to prove that snowmobiles were essential to their livelihood in order to buy one. The company then shifted its focus to the arms industry. In 1947, during a blizzard in Saskatchewan, the company received positive press coverage when army snowmobiles resupplied isolated radio communication towers. In 1948, the Government of Quebec passed a law requiring all roads to be cleared of snow; Bombardier's sales fell by nearly half in one year. Armand Bombardier therefore decided to diversify his business, first by producing tracked snowplows sized specifically for use on municipal sidewalks, replacing horse-drawn vehicles, then by making all-terrain vehicles for the mining, petroleum, and forestry industries. The machines had removable front skis that could be replaced with front wheels for use on paved or hard surfaces, thus providing greater utility to his large snowmobiles. In 1951, the wooden bodies were replaced with sheet steel, and these vehicles were powered by Chrysler flathead six-cylinder engines and 3-speed manual transmissions. In the early 1950s, Bombardier focused on developing a snowmobile for 1 or 2 passengers. A breakthrough occurred in 1957 when Bombardier developed a one-piece molded rubber continuous track with enough durability to provide snow-gripping traction for lightweight vehicles. The vehicle was called the "Ski-Dog" because it was meant to replace the dog sled for hunters and trappers. However, in 1958, "Ski-Doo" was accidentally painted on the first prototype, and immediately became the popular name. The public soon discovered the great fun of speedy vehicles zooming over snow, and a new winter sport was born, centered in Quebec. In the first year, Bombardier sold 225 Ski-Doos; four years later, 8,210 were sold. Bombardier slowed promotion of the Ski-Doo line to prevent it from crowding out other company products, while still dominating the snowmobile industry against competitors Polaris Industries and Arctic Cat. In 1963, Roski was created in Roxton Falls, Quebec as a manufacturer of composite parts for the Ski-Doo. In the 1960s, V-8 engines were added. On February 18, 1964, J. Armand Bombardier died of cancer at age 56. Until then, he oversaw all areas of operation and controlled the research department, making all the drawings himself. The younger generation took over, led by Armand's sons and sons-in-law, reorganizing and decentralizing the company. The company adopted computer inventory, accounting, and billing. Distribution networks were improved and increased, and an incentive program was developed for sales staff. That year, a survey was mailed to Ski-Doo owners to find out how the product was being used. Germain Bombardier, who had been groomed by his father, took over the company upon his father's death in 1964. However, he quit and sold his shares in 1966 after a disagreement with other family members. Laurent Beaudoin, the son-in-law of the founder, then became president, a position he held until 1999. He had joined the company as controller in 1963 and was president for 25 years. In 1967, the company was renamed "Bombardier Limited". By that time, the snowmobiles were very useful for the Inuit. In 1968, Clayton Jacobson II invented the jet ski and the company licensed his patents to create the Sea-Doo personal watercraft. On January 23, 1969, the company became a public company, listing on the Montreal Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange. In 1969 to 1970, the standard round windows reminiscent of portholes were replaced with larger rectangular windows that provided more interior light. A change was made to the Chrysler Industrial 318 engines with the automatic Loadflite transmissions. In 1970, the company acquired Rotax, an engine manufacturer based in Gunskirchen, Austria. In 1971, Bombardier acquired Moto-Ski. Also in 1971, Bombardier launched Operation SnoPlan, a program to promote snowmobile safety after a mounting death toll due to snowmobile accidents. In the 1970s, the company began producing Can-Am motorcycles, which included Rotax engines. In 2003, the company sold Bombardier Recreational Products to a group of investors: Bain Capital (50%), Bombardier Family (35%) and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (15%) for $875 million.
4636	7903804	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4636	Break key	The Break key (or the symbol ⎊) of a computer keyboard refers to breaking a telegraph circuit and originated with 19th century practice. In modern usage, the key has no well-defined purpose, but while this is the case, it can be used by software for miscellaneous tasks, such as to switch between multiple login sessions, to terminate a program, or to interrupt a modem connection. Because the break function is usually combined with the pause function on one key since the introduction of the IBM Model M 101-key keyboard in 1985, the Break key is also called the Pause key. It can be used to pause some computer games. History. A standard telegraph circuit connects all the keys, sounders and batteries in a single series loop. Thus the sounders actuate only when both keys are down (closed, also known as "marking" — after the ink marks made on paper tape by early printing telegraphs). So the receiving operator has to hold their key down or close a built-in shorting switch in order to let the other operator send. As a consequence, the receiving operator could interrupt the sending operator by opening their key, breaking the circuit and forcing it into a "spacing" condition. Both sounders stop responding to the sender's keying, alerting the sender (a physical break in the telegraph line would have the same effect). The teleprinter operated in a very similar fashion except that the sending station kept the loop closed (logic 1, or "marking") even during short pauses between characters. Holding down a special "break" key opened the loop, forcing it into a continuous logic 0, or "spacing", condition. When this occurred, the teleprinter mechanisms continually actuated without printing anything, as the all-0s character is the non-printing "NUL" in both Baudot and ASCII. The resulting noise got the sending operator's attention. This practice carried over to teleprinter use as a terminal on time-sharing computers. A continuous spacing (logical 0) condition violates the rule that every valid character has to end with one or more logic 1 (marking) "stop" bits. The computer (specifically the UART) recognized this as a special "break" condition and generated an interrupt that typically stopped a running program or forced the operating system to prompt for a login. Similarly to teleprinters, video terminals kept the key which put transmission line to zero state. With its function of interrupting terminal communication, the key was adopted by software terminal emulators and in applications which use serial protocols such as RS-232. This concept of interruption also extends to the boot process of computers, network devices and to halting operations in computer applications like command-line interfaces, debuggers and spreadsheets. Sinclair. On the ZX80 and ZX81 computers, the Break is accessed by pressing . On the ZX Spectrum it is accessed by . The Spectrum+ and later computers have a dedicated key. It does not trigger an interrupt but will halt any running BASIC program, or terminate the loading or saving of data to cassette tape. An interrupted BASIC program can usually be resumed with the codice_1 command. The Sinclair QL computer, without a key, maps the function to . BBC Micro. On a BBC Micro computer, the key generates a hardware reset which would normally cause a warm restart of the computer. A cold restart is triggered by pressing . If a filing system is installed, will cause the computer to search for and load or run a file called codice_2 on the filing system's default device (e.g. floppy disk 0, network user BOOT). The latter two behaviours were inherited by the successor to Acorn MOS, RISC OS. These behaviours could be changed or exchanged in software, and were often used in rudimentary anti-piracy techniques. Because of the BBC Micro's near universal usage in British schools, later versions of the machine incorporated a physical lock on the Break key to stop children from intentionally resetting the computer. Modern keyboards. On many modern PCs, interrupts screen output by BIOS until another key is pressed. This is effective during boot in text mode and in a DOS box in Windows safe mode with 50 lines. On early keyboards without a key (before the introduction of 101/102-key keyboards) the Pause function was assigned to , and the Break function to ; these key-combinations still work with most programs, even on modern PCs with modern keyboards. Pressing the dedicated key on 101/102-key keyboards sends the same scancodes as pressing , then , then releasing them in the reverse order would do; additionally, an E1hex prefix is sent, which enables 101/102-key-aware software to discern the two situations, while older software usually just ignores the prefix. The key is different from all other keys in that it sends no scancodes at all on release in PS/2 modes 1 or 2, so it is impossible to determine whether this key is being held down with older devices. Also, it's not "typematic", that is, unlike the other keys, it doesn't send repeat scancodes while being held. In PS/2 mode 3 or USB HID mode, there is a release scancode, so it is possible to determine whether this key is being held down on modern computers. On modern keyboards, the key is usually labeled "Pause" with "Break" below, sometimes separated by a line: , or "Pause" on the top of the keycap and "Break" on the front, or only "Pause" without "Break" at all. Keyboards with ISO/IEC 9995-7 markings including Canadian CSA keyboard use ⎊ symbol for "Break" and ⎉ for "Pause". In most Windows environments, the key combination brings up the system properties. Keyboards without Break key. Compact and notebook keyboards often do not have a dedicated key. Substitutes for : Substitutes for : For some Dell laptops, without a key, press the and select "Interrupt". Usage for breaking the program's execution. While both and combination are commonly implemented as a way of breaking the execution of a console application, they are also used for similar effect in integrated development environments. Although these two are often considered interchangeable, compilers and execution environments usually assign different signals to these. Additionally, in some kernels (e.g. miscellaneous DOS variants) is detected only at the time OS tries reading from a keyboard buffer and only if it's the only key sequence in the buffer, while is often translated instantly (e.g. by INT 1Bh under DOS). Because of this, is usually a more effective choice under these operating systems; sensitivity for these two combinations can be enhanced by the codice_3 CONFIG.SYS statement.
4640	1299687497	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4640	Bogie	A bogie ( ) (or truck in North American English) comprises two or more wheelsets (two wheels on an axle), in a frame, attached under a vehicle by a pivot. Bogies take various forms in various modes of transport. A bogie may remain normally attached (as on many railroad cars and semi-trailers) or be quickly detachable (as for a dolly in a road train or in railway bogie exchange). It may include suspension components within it (as most rail and trucking bogies do), or be solid and in turn be suspended (as are most bogies of tracked vehicles). It may be mounted on a swivel, as traditionally on a railway carriage or locomotive, additionally jointed and sprung (as in the landing gear of an airliner), or held in place by other means (centreless bogies). Although "bogie" is the preferred spelling and first-listed variant in various dictionaries, bogey and bogy are also used. Railway. A "bogie" in the UK, or a "railroad truck", "wheel truck", or simply "truck" in North America, is a structure underneath a railway vehicle (wagon, coach or locomotive) to which axles (hence, wheels) are attached through bearings. In Indian English, "bogie" may also refer to an entire railway carriage. In South Africa, the term "bogie" is often alternatively used to refer to a freight or goods wagon (shortened from "bogie wagon"). A locomotive with a bogie was built by engineer William Chapman in 1812. It hauled itself along by chains and was not successful, but Chapman built a more successful locomotive with two gear-driven bogies in 1814. The bogie was first used in America for wagons on the Quincy Granite Railroad in 1829. The first successful locomotive with a bogie to guide the locomotive into curves while also supporting the smokebox was built by John B. Jervis in 1831. The concept took decades before it was widely accepted but eventually became a component of the vast majority of mainline locomotive designs. The first use of bogie coaches in Britain was in 1872 by the Festiniog Railway. The first standard gauge British railway to build coaches with bogies, instead of rigidly mounted axles, was the Midland Railway in 1874. Purpose. Bogies serve a number of purposes: Instability can occur when a combination of bogie design, springing, vehicle and bogie wheelbase, and track dynamics, cause the bogie to oscillate at high speed – a phenomenon known as "hunting". If unchecked, derailment can occur. Cars experiencing hunting are removed immediately once the defect is discovered. A tendency for more than one vehicle to hunt will result in investigations with a view to re-designing. Usually, two bogies are fitted to each carriage, wagon or locomotive, one at each end. Another configuration is often used in articulated vehicles, which places the bogies (often Jacobs bogies) under the connection between the carriages or wagons. Most bogies have two axles, but some cars designed for superior riding qualities or heavy loads have more axles per bogie. Heavy-duty cars may have more than two bogies using span bolsters to equalize the load and connect the bogies to the cars. Usually, the train floor is at a level above the bogies, but the floor of the area between the bogies may be lowered to increase interior space while staying within height restrictions. Examples are container well cars, bi-level passenger cars or stepless-entry, low-floor cars on railways with near-ground-level platforms. Components. Key components of a bogie include: The connections of the bogie with the rail vehicle allow a certain degree of rotational movement around a vertical axis pivot (bolster), with side bearers preventing excessive movement. More modern, bolsterless bogie designs omit these features, instead taking advantage of the sideways movement of the suspension to permit rotational movement. Locomotives. Diesel and electric. Modern diesel and electric locomotives are mounted on bogies. Those commonly used in North America include Type A, Blomberg, HT-C and Flexicoil trucks. Steam. On a steam locomotive, the leading and trailing wheels may be mounted on bogies like Bissel trucks (also known as "pony trucks"). Articulated locomotives (e.g. Fairlie, Garratt or Mallet locomotives) have power bogies similar to those on diesel and electric locomotives. Rollbock. A rollbock is a specialized type of bogie that is inserted under the wheels of a rail wagon/car, usually to convert for another track gauge. Transporter wagons carry the same concept to the level of a flatcar specialized to take other cars as its load. Archbar bogies. In archbar or diamond frame bogies, the side frames are fabricated rather than cast. Tramway. Modern. Tram bogies are much simpler in design because of their axle load, and the tighter curves found on tramways mean tram bogies almost never have more than two axles. Furthermore, some tramways have steeper gradients and vertical as well as horizontal curves, which means tram bogies often need to pivot on the horizontal axis, as well. Some articulated trams have bogies located under articulations, a setup referred to as a Jacobs bogie. Often, low-floor trams are fitted with nonpivoting bogies; many tramway enthusiasts see this as a retrograde step, as it leads to more wear of both track and wheels and also significantly reduces the speed at which a tram can round a curve. Historic. In the past, many different types of bogie (truck) have been used under tramcars (e.g. Brill, Peckham, maximum traction). A maximum traction truck has one driving axle with large wheels and one nondriving axle with smaller wheels. The bogie pivot is located off-centre, so more than half the weight rests on the driving axle. Hybrid systems. The retractable stadium roof on Toronto's Rogers Centre used modified off-the-shelf train bogies on a circular rail. The system was chosen for its proven reliability. Rubber-tyred metro trains use a specialised version of railway bogies. Special flanged steel wheels are behind the rubber-tired running wheels, with additional horizontal guide wheels in front of and behind the running wheels, as well. The unusually large flanges on the steel wheels guide the bogie through standard railroad switches, and in addition keep the train from derailing in case the tires deflate. Variable gauge axles. To overcome breaks of gauge some bogies are being fitted with variable gauge axles (VGA) so that they can operate on two different gauges. These include the SUW 2000 system from ZNTK Poznań. Radial steering truck. Radial-steering trucks, also known as radial bogies, allow the individual axles to align with curves in addition to the bogie frame as a whole pivoting. For non-radial bogies, the more axles in the assembly, the more difficulty it has negotiating curves, due to wheel flange to rail friction. For radial bogies, the wheel sets actively steer through curves, thus reducing wear at the wheel's flange-to-rail interface and improving adhesion. In the US, radial steering has been implemented in EMD and GE locomotives. The EMD version, designated HTCR, was made standard equipment for the SD70 series, first sold in 1993. The HTCR in operation had mixed results and relatively high purchase and maintenance costs. EMD subsequently introduced the HTSC truck, essentially the HTCR stripped of radial components. GE introduced their version in 1995 as a buyer option for the AC4400CW and later Evolution Series locomotives. However, it also met with limited acceptance because of its relatively high purchase and maintenance costs, and customers have generally chosen GE Hi-Ad standard trucks for newer and rebuilt locomotives. A 19th century configuration of self-steering axles on rolling stock established the principle of radial steering. The Cleminson system involved three axles, each mounted on a frame that had a central pivot; the central axle could slide transversely. The three axles were connected by linkages that kept them parallel on the straight and moved the end ones radially on a curve, so that all three axles were continually at right angles to the rails. The configuration, invented by British engineer John James Davidge Cleminson, was first granted a patent in the UK in 1883. The system was widely used on British narrow-gauge rolling stock, such as on the Isle of Man and Manx Northern Railways. The Holdfast Bay Railway Company in South Australia, which later became the Glenelg Railway Company, purchased Cleminson-configured carriages in 1880 from the American Gilbert & Bush Company for its broad-gauge line. Articulated bogie. An articulated bogie (aka Jakob-type) is any one of a number of bogie designs that reduce weight, increase passenger comfort, and allow railway equipment to safely turn sharp corners, while reducing or eliminating the "screeching" normally associated with metal wheels rounding a bend in the rails. There are a number of such designs, and the term is also applied to train sets that incorporate articulation in the vehicle, as opposed to the bogies themselves. If one considers a single bogie "up close", it resembles a small rail car with axles at either end. The same effect that causes the bogies to rub against the rails at longer radius causes each of the pairs of wheels to rub on the rails and cause the screeching. Articulated bogies add a second pivot point between the two axles (wheelsets) to allow them to rotate to the correct angle even in these cases. Articulated lorries (tractor-trailers). In trucking, a bogie is the subassembly of axles and wheels that supports a semi-trailer, whether permanently attached to the frame (as on a single trailer) or making up the dolly that can be hitched and unhitched as needed when hitching up a second or third semi-trailer (as when pulling doubles or triples). Tracked vehicles. Some tanks and other tracked vehicles have bogies as external suspension components (see armoured fighting vehicle suspension). This type of bogie usually has two or more road wheels and some type of sprung suspension to smooth the ride across rough terrain. Bogie suspensions keep much of their components on the outside of the vehicle, saving internal space. Although vulnerable to antitank fire, they can often be repaired or replaced in the field.
4641	5229428	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4641	British Steel (1967–1999)	British Steel was a major British steel producer. It originated from the nationalised British Steel Corporation (BSC), formed in 1967, which was privatised as a public limited company, British Steel plc, in 1988. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The company merged with Koninklijke Hoogovens to form Corus Group in 1999. History. The Labour Party came to power at the 1945 general election, pledging to bring several industries into state ownership. In 1946, it put the first steel development plan into practice with the aim of increasing capacity. It passed the Iron and Steel Act 1949, which meant nationalisation of the industry, as the government bought out the shareholders, and created the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain. American Marshall Plan aid in 1948–50 reinforced modernisation efforts and provided funding for them. However, the nationalisation was reversed by the Conservative government after 1952. The industry was re-nationalised in 1967 under another Labour government, becoming British Steel Corporation (BSC). But by then, 20 years of political manipulation had left companies, such as British Steel, with serious problems: a complacency with existing equipment, plants operating below full capacity (hence the low efficiency), poor-quality assets, outdated technology, government price controls, higher coal and oil costs, lack of funds for capital improvement, and increasing competition on the world market. By the 1970s, the Labour government's main goal for the declining industry was to keep employment high. Since British Steel was a major employer in depressed regions, it was decided to keep many mills and facilities operating at a loss. In the 1980s, Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher re-privatised BSC as British Steel. Under private control, the company dramatically cut its workforce and underwent a radical reorganisation and massive capital investment to again become competitive in the world marketplace. Alasdair M. Blair (1997), Professor of International Relations and Head of the Department of Politics and Public Policy at De Montfort University, has explored the history of British Steel since the Second World War to evaluate the impact of government intervention in a market economy. He suggests that entrepreneurship was lacking in the 1940s; the government could not persuade the industry to upgrade its plants. For generations, the industry had followed a piecemeal growth pattern that proved relatively inefficient in the face of world competition. Nationalisation. BSC was formed from the assets of former private companies which had been nationalised, largely under the Labour government of Harold Wilson, on 28 July 1967. Wilson's was the second attempt at nationalisation; the post-war government of Clement Attlee had created the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain in 1951 taking public ownership of 80 companies but this had been largely reversed by the following Conservative governments of the 1950s with only Britain's largest steel company, Richard Thomas and Baldwins, remaining in public ownership. BSC was established under the Iron and Steel Act 1967, which vested in the corporation the shares of the fourteen major UK-based steel companies then in operation, being: At the time of its formation, BSC comprised around ninety per cent of the UK's steelmaking capacity; it had around 268,500 employees and around 200 wholly or partly-owned subsidiaries based in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Africa, South Asia, and South America. Dorman Long, South Durham and Stewarts and Lloyds had merged as British Steel and Tube Ltd before vesting took place. BSC later arranged an exchange deal with Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds Ltd (GKN), the parent company of GKN Steel, under which BSC acquired Dowlais Ironworks at Merthyr Tydfil and GKN took over BSC's Brymbo Steelworks near Wrexham. Restructuring. According to Blair (1997), British Steel faced serious problems at the time of its formation, including obsolescent plants; plants operating under capacity and thus at low efficiency; outdated technology; price controls that reduced marketing flexibility; soaring coal and oil costs; lack of capital investment funds; and increasing competition on the world market. By the 1970s, the government adopted a policy of keeping employment high in the declining industry. This especially impacted BSC since it was a major employer in a number of depressed regions. One of the arguments made in favour of nationalisation was that it would enable steel production to be rationalised. This involved concentrating investment on major integrated plants, placed near the coast for ease of access by sea, and closing older, smaller plants, especially those that had been located inland for proximity to coal supplies. From the mid-1970s, British Steel pursued a strategy of concentrating steelmaking in five areas: South Wales, South Yorkshire, Scunthorpe, Teesside and Scotland. This policy continued following the Conservative victory at the 1979 general election. Other traditional steelmaking areas faced cutbacks. Under the Labour government of James Callaghan, a review by Lord Beswick had led to the reprieve of the so-called 'Beswick plants', for social reasons, but subsequent governments were obliged under EU rules to withdraw subsidies. Major changes resulted across Europe, including in the UK: Privatisation. The Conservative manifesto for the 1987 general election noted that "British Steel has more than doubled its productivity since 1979 and made a profit last year for the first time in over ten years." Following Margaret Thatcher's re-election, on 3 December 1987 the Conservative government formally announced in a statement by Kenneth Clarke, Minister of State for Trade and Industry, that it intended to privatise the British Steel Corporation. On 5 September 1988 the assets, rights and liabilities of British Steel Corporation were transferred to British Steel plc, registered under the Companies Act as company number 2280000, by the British Steel Act 1988. The government retained a special share which carried no voting rights but until 31 December 1993, permitted the government to stop any one party controlling more than 15% of the shares. British Steel employees were given a free allocation of shares, and offered two free shares for each they purchased up to £165, discounted shares up to £2,200, and priority on applying for shares up to £10,000. Dealing in shares opened on the London Stock Exchange on 5 December 1988. Post-privatisation. The privatised company later merged with the Dutch steel producer Koninklijke Hoogovens to form Corus Group on 6 October 1999. Corus itself was taken over in March 2007 by the Indian steel operator Tata Steel. Chairmen. Ian MacGregor later became famous for his role as Chairman of the National Coal Board during the UK miners' strike (1984–1985). During the strike the "Battle of Orgreave" took place at British Steel's coking plant. Sponsorships. In 1971 British Steel sponsored Sir Chay Blyth in his record-making non-stop circumnavigation against the winds and currents, known as 'The Impossible Voyage'. In 1992 they sponsored the British Steel Challenge, the first of a series of 'wrong way' races for amateur crews. British Steel had agreed a sponsorship deal with Middlesbrough Football Club during the 1994–95 season, with a view to British Steel-sponsored Middlesbrough shirts making their appearance the following season. But the sponsorship deal was terminated before it commenced after it was revealed that British steel only made up a tiny fraction of steel used in construction of the stadium, and that the bulk of the steel had been imported from Germany. In popular culture. The English rock band XTC mentioned British Steel in their 1979 song Making Plans for Nigel. The heavy metal band Judas Priest named their 1980 album "British Steel" after the British Steel Corporation. Lead singer Rob Halford explained in an interview that the 'sounds of heavy metal' have been with him since childhood, due to the close proximity of the BSC plant where he grew up.
4642	3306290	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4642	BT Group	BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broadband and mobile services in the UK, and also provides subscription television and IT services. BT's origins date back to the founding in 1846 of the Electric Telegraph Company, the world's first public telegraph company, which developed a nationwide communications network. BT Group as it came to be started in 1912, when the General Post Office, a government department, took over the system of the National Telephone Company becoming the monopoly telecoms supplier in the United Kingdom. The Post Office Act of 1969 led to the GPO becoming a public corporation, Post Office Telecommunications. The "British Telecom" brand was introduced in 1980, and became independent of the Post Office in 1981, officially trading under the name. British Telecom was privatised in 1984, becoming "British Telecommunications plc", with some 50 percent of its shares sold to investors. The Government sold its remaining stake in further share sales in 1991 and 1993. BT holds a royal warrant and has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. BT controls a number of large subsidiaries. Its BT Enterprise division supplies telecoms services to corporate and government customers worldwide, and its BT Consumer division supplies telephony, broadband, and subscription television services in the United Kingdom to around 18 million customers. History. Electrical telegraphy. A number of privately owned electrical telegraph companies operated in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1846 onwards. Among them were: General Post Office. The Telegraph Act 1868 passed the control of all these to the Postal Telegraphs Department of the newly formed General Post Office (GPO). The Telegraph Act 1869 granted the GPO a monopoly over communications. With the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 the GPO began to provide telephone services from some of its telegraph exchanges. It was confirmed in 1880 that the 1869 Act included telephony even though the telephone had not been invented when the Act was first conceived. In 1882, the Postmaster-General, Henry Fawcett started to issue licences to operate a telephone service to private businesses and the telephone system grew under the GPO in some areas and private ownership in others. The GPO's main competitor, the National Telephone Company (NTC), emerged in this market by absorbing other private telephone companies. It controlled most of telephony in Britain before the 1880 ruling on the Telegraph Act 1869 mandated a nationalised service – which was instated in 1911 prior to the absorption of the NTC into the GPO in 1912. The trunk network was unified under GPO control in 1896 and the local distribution network in 1912. A few municipally owned services remained outside of GPO control. These were Kingston upon Hull, Portsmouth and Guernsey. Hull still retains an independent operator, Kingston Communications, though it is no longer municipally controlled. The assets of the National Telephone Company were acquired by the UK Government to form Post Office Telephones in late 1911. Post Office engineers in the inter-war period had considerable expertise in both telecommunications and hearing assistive devices. Transistors were invented by Bell Telephone Laboratories in the US in 1948, however it was not until the mid-1960s that a transistorised oscillator was introduced to make the calling sound on a telephone in the UK. Post Office Telecommunications. In 1969 the GPO, a government department, became the Post Office, a nationalised industry separate from government. Post Office Telecommunications was set up as a division of the Post Office, in October 1969. The Post Office Act 1969 was passed to provide for greater efficiency in post and telephone services; rather than run a range of services, each organisation would be able to focus on their respective service, with dedicated management. By law, the Post Office retained the exclusive right to operate the UK national telecom network, (although since 1914 had licensed Hull City Council to operate its own local telephone network, Kingston Communications). The 1970s was a period of great expansion for the Post Office. Most exchanges were modernised and expanded, and many services, such as STD and international dialling were extended. By the early 1970s, subscribers in most cities could dial direct to Western Europe, the US, and Canada; by the end of the decade, most of the world could be dialled direct. The System X digital switching platform was developed, and the first digital exchanges began to be installed. The Post Office also procured their own fleet of vans, based on the Commer FC model. Post Office Telecommunications researched and implemented data communications using packet switching in the 1970s, resulting in the EPSS, International Packet Switched Service, and Packet Switch Stream. British Telecom. In 1979 the Conservatives decided that telecommunications should be fully separated from the Post Office. The "British Telecom" brand was introduced in 1980. On 1 October 1981, this became the official name of Post Office Telecommunications, which became a state-owned corporation independent of the Post Office under the provisions of the British Telecommunications Act 1981. In 1982 BT's monopoly on telecommunications was broken with the granting of a licence to Mercury Communications. Privatisation. On 19 July 1982, the Government announced its intention to sell shares in British Telecom to the public. On 1 April 1984, British Telecommunications was incorporated as a public limited company (plc) in anticipation of the passing of the Telecommunications Bill. This Bill received royal assent on 12 April as the Telecommunications Act 1984, and the transfer to British Telecommunications plc from British Telecom as a statutory corporation of its business, its property, its rights and liabilities took place on 6 August 1984. The remainder of the statutory corporation British Telecom was dissolved in 1994. Initially all shares in the new plc were owned by the Government. In November 1984, 50.2% of the new company was offered for sale to the public and employees. Shares were listed in London, New York, and Toronto and the first day of trading on was 3 December 1984. The Government sold half its remaining interest in December 1991 and the other half in July 1993. In July 1997, the new Labour Government relinquished its Special Share ("Golden Share"), retained at the time of the flotation, which had effectively given it the power to block a takeover of the company, and to appoint two non-executive directors to the Board. The company changed its trading name to "BT" on 2 April 1991. In 1996 Peter Bonfield was appointed CEO and chairman of the executive committee, promising a "rollercoaster ride". Diversification. In the early 1980s, BT Merlin was established as a business unit of British Telecom, at first to sell products such as phone systems to small businesses. In 1983, the growing "office automation" market was addressed through Merlin-branded desktop computers made by ICL, with built-in modems to communicate over the phone network. Later products included the Merlin Tonto – developed by ICL from the Sinclair QL home computer – and the Merlin M4000, a rebadged Logica computer. In the 1990s, BT entered the Irish telecommunications market through a joint venture with the Electricity Supply Board, the Irish state owned power provider. This venture, entitled Ocean, found its main success through the launch of Ireland's first subscription-free dial-up ISP, oceanfree.net. As a telecoms company it found much less success, mainly targeting corporate customers. BT acquired 100% of this venture in 1999. Over the period 1980 to 2000, BT and other providers adopted Internet product strategies when it became commercially advantageous. Attempted global alliances. MCI. In June 1994 BT and MCI Communications launched Concert Communications Services which was a $1 billion joint venture between the two companies. Its aim was to build a network which would provide easy global connectivity to multinational corporations. This alliance progressed further on 3 November 1996 when the two companies announced that they had agreed to a merger, creating a global telecommunications company called Concert plc. The proposal gained approval from the European Commission, the US Department of Justice, and the US Federal Communications Commission and looked set to proceed. However, in light of pressure from investors reacting to the slide in BT's share price on the London Stock Exchange, BT reduced its bid price for MCI, releasing MCI from its exclusivity clause and allowing it to speak to other interested parties. On 1 October 1997, Worldcom made a rival bid for MCI which was followed by a counter-bid from GTE. BT sold its stake in MCI to Worldcom in 1998 for £4,159 million. As part of the deal, BT also bought out from MCI its 24.9% interest in Concert Communications, thereby making Concert a wholly owned part of BT. The reaction to the failure of the deal in the City of London was critical of then Chairman Iain Vallance and CEO Peter Bonfield, and the lack of confidence from the failed merger led to their removal. AT&T. As BT owned Concert in 1994, and still wanted access to the North American market, it needed a new partner. An AT&T/BT option had been mooted in the past, but stopped on regulatory grounds due to their individual virtual monopolies in their home markets. By 1996, this had receded to the point where a deal was possible, and a deal was consummated in 1998. At its height, the Concert managed network was extensive. Although Concert continued signing customers, its rate of revenue growth slowed, so that in 1999 David Dorman was made CEO with a brief to revive it. In late 2000, the BT and AT&T boards fell-out, partly due to each partner's excess debt and the resulting board room clear-outs, partly due to Concert's extensive annual losses. AT&T recognized that Concert was a threat to its ambitions if left intact, and so negotiated a deal where Concert was split in two in 2001: North America and Eastern Asia went to AT&T, the rest of the world and $400M to BT. BT's remaining Concert assets were merged into its BT Ignite, later BT Global Services group. BT Ireland. In 2000, BT acquired Esat Telecom Group plc, and all its subsidiary companies, and Ireland On Line. It also purchased Telenor's minority shareholding in Esat Digifone. The Esat Telecom Group was split in two with the landline and internet operations were combining with Ocean to become part of BT Ignite. Esat Group was renamed Esat BT in July 2002, and eventually BT Ireland in April 2005. Esat Digifone became part of BT Wireless, before being spun off into a separate independent company mmo2 plc (now Telefónica Europe). EsatBT installed the first DSL lines in Ireland, to try and compete heavily with former state telecoms company Eircom and operate one exchange, in Limerick. 2001 debt crisis and sale, demerger. By 2001, BT had a debt of £30 billion, much of which was acquired during the bidding round for the 3rd generation mobile telephony (commonly known as 3G) licences. It had also failed in its series of proposed global mergers, and the funds flowing from its then virtual monopoly of the UK market place had been largely removed. It was also headed by two executives who had little support from the London Stock Exchange, particularly in light of a 60% drop in share price in sixteen months. Philip Hampton joined as CFO, and in April 2001 Sir Iain Vallance was replaced as chairman by recognised turn around expert Sir Christopher Bland. In May 2001, BT carried out corporate Europe's largest ever rights issue, allowing it to raise £5.9 billion. A few days before, it sold stakes in Japan Telecom, in mobile operator J-Phone Communications, and in Airtel of India to Vodafone. In June 2001, BT's directory business was sold as Yell Group to a combination of private equity firms Apax Partners and Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst for £2.1 billion. A demerger followed in November 2001, when the former mobile telecommunications business of BT, BT Cellnet, was hived off as a separate business named "mmO2". This included BT owned or operated networks in other countries, including BT Cellnet (UK), Esat Digifone (Ireland), and Viag Interkom (Germany). All networks now owned or operated by mmO2 (except Manx Telecom) were renamed as O2. The de-merger was accomplished via a share-swap, all British Telecommunications plc shareholders received one mmO2 plc and one BT Group plc (of which British Telecommunications is now a wholly owned subsidiary) share for each share they owned. British Telecommunications plc was de-listed on 16 November, and the two new companies started trading on 19 November. Aftermath, 2001 to 2006. At the end of the series of sales, Sir Peter Bonfield resigned in October 2001. Bonfield was replaced by former Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen. During Bonfield's tenure the share price went from £4 to £15, and back again to £5. Bonfield's salary to 31 March 2001 was a basic of £780,000 (increasing to £820,000) plus a £481,000 bonus and £50,000 of other benefits including pension. He also received a deferred bonus, payable in shares three years' later, of £481,000, and additional bonuses of £3.3 million. mmO2 plc was replaced by O2 plc in a further share-swap in 2005, and subsequently bought in an agreed takeover by Telefónica for £18 billion and delisted. In 2004, BT launched Consult 21, a consultation organisation that was to aid BT 21CN in the eventual conversion to digital telephony. In 2004, BT was awarded the contract to deliver and manage N3, a secure and fast broadband network for the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) program, on behalf of the English National Health Service (NHS). In 2005, BT made a number of acquisitions. In February 2005, BT acquired Infonet (now re-branded BT Infonet), a large telecoms company based in El Segundo, California, giving BT access to new geographies. It also acquired the Italian company Albacom. Then in April 2005, it bought Radianz from Reuters (now rebranded as BT Radianz), which expanded BT's coverage and provided BT with more buying power in certain countries. In August 2006, BT acquired online electrical retailer Dabs.com for £30.6 million. The BT Home Hub manufactured by Inventel was also launched in June 2006. In October 2006, BT confirmed that it would be investing 75% of its total capital spending, put at £10 billion over five years, in its new Internet Protocol (IP) based 21st century network (21CN). Annual savings of £1 billion per annum were expected when the transition to the new network was to have been completed in 2010, with over 50% of its customers to have been transferred by 2008. That month the first customers on to 21CN was successfully tested at Adastral Park in Suffolk. 2007 to 2012. In January 2007, BT acquired Sheffield-based ISP, PlusNet plc, adding 200,000 customers. BT stated that PlusNet will continue to operate separately out of its Sheffield head-office. On 1 February 2007, BT announced agreed terms to acquire International Network Services Inc. (INS), an international provider of IT consultancy and software. In February 2007, Sir Michael Rake succeeded Sir Christopher Bland. In April that year, they acquired COMSAT International, followed in October by the acquisition of Lynx Technology. BT acquired Wire One Communications in June 2008 and folded the company into "BT Conferencing", its existing conferencing unit, as a new video business unit In July 2008, BT acquired the online business directory firm Ufindus for £20 million in order to expand its position in the local information market in GB. On 28 July 2008, BT acquired Ribbit, of Mountain View, California, "Silicon Valley's First Phone Company". Ribbit provides Adobe Flash/Flex APIs, allowing web developers to incorporate telephony features into their software as a service (SaaS) applications. In the early days of its fibre broadband rollout, BT said it would deliver fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) to around 25% of the Country, with the rest catered for by the slower fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), which uses copper wiring to deliver the final stretch of the connection. In 2014, with less than 0.7% of the company's fibre network being FTTP, BT dropped the 25% target, saying that it was "far less relevant today" because of improvements made to the headline speed of FTTC, which had doubled to 80 Mbit/s since its fibre broadband rollout was first announced. To supplement FTTC, BT offered an 'FTTP on Demand' product. In January 2015, BT stopped taking orders for the on-demand product. On 1 April 2009, BT Engage IT was created from the merger of two previous BT acquisitions, Lynx Technology and Basilica. Apart from the name change not much else changed in operations for another 12 months. On 14 May 2009, BT said it was cutting up to 15,000 jobs in the coming year after it announced its results for the year to 31 March 2009. Then in July 2009, BT offered workers a long holiday for an up front sum of 25% of their annual wage or a one-off payment of £1000 if they agree to go part-time. On 6 April 2011, BT launched the first online not-for-profit fundraising service for UK charities called BT MyDonate as part of its investment to the community. The service will pass on 100% of all donations made through the site to the charity, and unlike other services which take a proportion as commission and charge charities for using their services, BT will only pass on credit/debit card charges for each donation. The service allows people to register to give money to charity or collect fundraising donations. BT developed MyDonate with the support of Cancer Research UK, Changing Faces, KidsOut, NSPCC and Women's Aid. 2013 to 2020. In March 2013, BT was allocated 4G spectrum in the UK following an auction and assignment by Ofcom, after paying £201.5m. On 1 August 2013, BT launched its first television channels, BT Sport, to compete with rival broadcaster Sky Sports. Plans for the channels' launch came about when it was announced in June 2012 that BT had been awarded a package of broadcast rights for the Premier League from the 2013–14 to 2015–16 season, broadcasting 38 matches from each season. In February 2013, BT acquired ESPN Inc.'s UK and Ireland TV channels, continuing its expansion into sports broadcasting. ESPN America and ESPN Classic were both closed, while ESPN continued to be operated by BT. On 9 November 2013, BT announced it had acquired exclusive rights to the Champions League and Europa League for £897m, from the 2015 season, with some free games remaining including both finals. On 1 November 2014, BT created a new central business services organisation to provide customer services and improve operational efficiency. On 24 November 2014, shares in BT rose considerably on the announcement that the company was in talks to buy back O2, while at the same time confirmed it was also in talks to acquire EE. BT subsequently entered into exclusive talks to buy EE for £12.5 billion on 15 December 2014 and confirmed on 5 February 2015, subject to regulatory approval. The deal combined BT's 10 million retail customers and EE's 24.5 million direct mobile subscribers. Deutsche Telekom would own 12% of BT, while Orange S.A. would own 4%. In March 2015, BT launched a 4G service as BT Mobile BT Group CEO Gavin Patterson announced that BT plans to migrate all of its customers onto the IP network by 2025, switching off the company's ISDN network. On 15 January 2016, BT received approval by the Competition and Markets Authority to acquire EE. The deal was officially completed on 29 January 2016 with Deutsche Telekom then owning 12% of BT, while Orange S.A. owned 4%. On 1 February 2016, BT announced a new organisational structure to take effect from April 2016 after acquiring EE. The EE brand, network and high street stores became a second consumer division, operating alongside BT Consumer to serve customers with mobile services, broadband and TV and continued to deliver the Emergency Services Network contract awarded to EE in late 2015. There was to be a new BT Business and Public Sector division with around £5bn of revenues to serve small and large businesses as well as the public sector in the UK and Ireland. It was to comprise the existing BT Business division along with EE's business division and those parts of BT Global Services that are UK focused. There will also be another new division; BT Wholesale and Ventures that will comprise the existing BT Wholesale division along with EE's MVNO business as well as some specialist businesses such as Fleet, Payphones and Directories. Gerry McQuade, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Business at EE, was to be its CEO. The June 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum set off the Brexit process. On 8 June 2017, BT appointed KPMG as its new auditor to replace PwC in the wake of a fraud scandal in Italy that triggered a major profit warning earlier that year. Also in of that year, KPMG fired six US employees over a scandal that calls into question efforts to ensure that public company accounts are being properly scrutinised. On 8 July 2017, "The Daily Telegraph" reported that BT "has called in consultants from McKinsey to conduct a review of its businesses in the hope of saving hundreds of millions of pounds per year. The work, dubbed 'Project Novator', is understood to include a potential merger of BT's struggling global services corporate networking and IT unit with its business and public sector division". On 28 July 2017, BT again announced organisational changes to "simplify its operating model, strengthen accountabilities and accelerate its transformation" to bring together its BT Consumer and EE divisions into a new unified BT Consumer division to operate across three brands – BT, EE and Plusnet. It was to take effect from 1 April 2018. On 18 April 2018, BT announced further organisational changes after unification of BT Consumer and EE divisions, bringing together its BT Business and Public Sector and BT Wholesale and Ventures divisions into a new unified division known as "BT Enterprise". It was to include BT's Ventures business which "acts as an incubator for potential new growth areas of the company" and to report as a single unit from 1 October 2018. 2021 to present. In February 2021, BT and EE launched a fixed-line home broadband service that can also use the mobile network. With the introduction of the Hybrid Connect device, customers who lost connection through their Smart Hub 2 would automatically be connected to EE's mobile network, giving them an uninterrupted connection that BT described as "unbreakable". In June 2021, French telecommunications company Altice acquired a 12% stake in BT, increasing to 18% in December 2021 and 24.5% in May 2023. Patrick Drahi's purchase of 650 million shares cost about £960 million. Altice's increasing stake in BT Group posed questions around the national security of the United Kingdom's infrastructure, and the UK government opened an investigation in May 2022 to look into possible security implications. In August 2022, the government completed its investigation and ruled that Drahi would not be required to cut his stake in BT, concluding that the investment did not pose any national security risks. In July 2023, BT announced the appointment of businesswoman Allison Kirkby as its chief executive, replacing Philip Jansen in February 2024. In June 2024, Carlos Slim acquired a 3.2% equity stake in the group. Two months later, Sunil Mittal's Bharti Enterprises paid around £3.2bn for Drahi's 24.5% stake. Operations. BT Group is a holding company; the majority of its businesses and assets are held by its wholly owned subsidiary British Telecommunications plc. BT's businesses are operated under special government regulation by the British telecoms regulator Ofcom (formerly Oftel). BT has been found to have significant market power in some markets following market reviews by Ofcom. In these markets, BT is required to comply with additional obligations such as meeting reasonable requests to supply services and not to discriminate. BT runs the telephone exchanges, trunk network and local loop connections for the vast majority of British fixed-line telephones. Apart from KCOM Group, which serves Kingston upon Hull, BT is the only UK telecoms operator to have a universal service obligation which means it must provide a fixed telephone line to any address in the UK, at a uniform price throughout the country. This requirement was introduced by the Electronic Communications (Universal Service) Order 2003, which also covers provision of directories, a directory enquiry service, and public call boxes. Legislation in 2018 added a minimum standard of fixed broadband service, subject to a cap on the cost of provision, which Ofcom implemented as a set of conditions applying to BT and KCOM in 2020. Reduced usage of public phone boxes led Ofcom to vary the conditions relating to them in 2022. As well as continuing to provide service in those traditional areas in which BT has an obligation to provide services or is closely regulated, BT has expanded into more profitable products and services where there is less regulation. These are, principally, broadband internet service and bespoke solutions in telecommunications and information technology. Branding. In 2019, a simplified BT logo and brand was launched to replace the previous multi-coloured globe logo. In April 2022, BT announced its intentions to focus on the EE brand for consumer products. Corporate affairs. Buildings and facilities. As BT operates in around 180 countries, it owns and leases a range of buildings and facilities in the UK and around the world. In 2001, it sold some of its UK property portfolio for £2.38 billion to Telereal Trillium in a 30-year leaseback. The deal included 6,700 properties and contributed towards alleviating its debt at the time, with the main advantage being flexibility as it allows BT to vacate property over time, so as to adapt to changing operational requirements. Headquarters. Until December 2021, BT Group's world headquarters and registered office was the BT Centre, a 10-storey office building at 81 Newgate Street in the City of London, opposite St Paul's tube station. In November 2021, BT relocated to new headquarters at One Braham, a brand new 18-storey building completed earlier in 2021. In March 2024, BT Group opened a new multi-million-pound hub and Welsh headquarters in Cardiff for 1,000 BT Group employees. Buildings and stations. Some of its UK buildings and stations are: Telecommunications towers. BT remains one of the largest owners of telecommunications towers in the UK and were a major node in its microwave network. Its BT Tower in London is notable for numerous reasons such as being the tallest building in the UK from its construction in the 1960s until the early 1980s, its revolving restaurant at the top known as 'Top of the Tower' in operation through the late 1960s and 1970s, and remains one of the UK's most important communications nerve centres, the heart of a vast broadcasting and communications network. It carries approximately 95% of the UK's TV content, including live broadcasts and 99% of all live football games as well as pioneering the first international HD, 3D and 4K television transmissions. It serves media production and distribution customers around the world and as part of the Things Connected Network launched in London, it became the highest building in the world to host an Internet of things (IoT) base station in September 2016. Some of its towers are: Other. Some of its other UK facilities are: Divisions. BT Group is organised into the following divisions: Corporate governance. BT's board of directors as of November 2021: BT's executive committee as of March 2018: Pension fund. BT has the second largest defined benefit pension plan of any UK public company. The trustees valued the scheme at £36.7 billion at the end of 2010; an actuarial valuation valued the deficit of the scheme at £9.043 billion as of 31 December 2008. Following a change in the regulations governing inflation index linking, the deficit was estimated at £5.2 billion in November 2010. The BT Pension Scheme manages the defined benefit pension scheme. The scheme closed to new members in 2001 and closed to future accrual for almost all members in 2018. As at 30 June 2025, the scheme had £35.7bn of assets under management, of which 49% was in government and corporate bonds. The scheme had 212,468 pensioner members receiving a pension, 46,108 deferred members no longer accruing extra benefits and 12 active members remaining accruing extra benefits. Sponsorships. BT sponsored Scotland's domestic rugby union championship and cup competitions between 1999 and 2006. On 31 July 2012, it was announced that BT agreed a three-year sponsorship deal with Ulster Rugby and sees BT become the Official Communications Partner. BT's logo will appear on the Ulster Rugby shirt sleeve for all friendlies, Heineken Cup and RaboDirect Pro12 matches as well as a significant brand presence at their home ground; Ravenhill Stadium. On 29 July 2013, it was announced that BT had partnered up with Scottish Rugby Union in a four-year sponsorship deal with its two professional clubs; Edinburgh Rugby and Glasgow Warriors that will commence from August 2013. The deal involves BT Sport becoming the new shirt sponsor for both clubs as well as being promoted with BT Group at their respective home grounds; Scotstoun Stadium and Murrayfield Stadium. On 13 May 2014, BT joined Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media as founding partners of Internet Matters, a not-for-profit organisation that provides online safety advice for parents and their children. On 28 May 2014, it was announced that BT agreed a £20 million four-year sponsorship deal with Scottish Rugby Union which includes BT securing the naming rights for Murrayfield Stadium which becomes BT Murrayfield Stadium, become sponsor of the Scotland sevens team, become principal and exclusive sponsor of Scotland's domestic league and cup competitions from next season, taking over the role from The Royal Bank of Scotland and become sponsor of Scottish Rugby's four new academies that aims to drive forward standards for young players who have aspirations to play professionally. On 14 April 2015, it was announced that as part of BT's current £20 million four-year sponsorship deal with Scottish Rugby Union that was announced in May 2014, BT has completed its sponsorship portfolio following an additional investment of £3.6 million for the 3 years remaining of its sponsorship deal, to become the new shirt sponsor for the Scotland national teams. On 27 January 2016, it was announced that BT, alongside YouTube will be the new joint headline sponsors in a three-year deal with Edinburgh International Television Festival. The two companies will "share prominence across all branding of the 41st TV Festival, including the famous MacTaggart Lecture and will work closely with the festival organisers in their bid to reflect new trends in a rapidly transforming industry, from new ways of distributing content to technical innovations such as virtual reality". BT is the founding and principal partner of the Wayne Rooney Foundation, which was established to improve the lives of children and young people. The Foundation will run events "to raise vital funds to support the work of key organisations dedicated to supporting disadvantaged and vulnerable children and young people". These organisations are four chosen charities which are, Manchester United Foundation, NSPCC, Claire House Children's Hospice and Alder Hey Children's Hospital. The first of these events was Wayne's testimonial match in August 2016 between Manchester United F.C. and Everton F.C. which raised £1.2 million. The match was screened live through BT Sport with BT MyDonate being the official fundraising platform for the testimonial, with both online and text options for donations promoted during the match. On 26 May 2017, it was announced that BT is to sponsor the 2017 British Urban Film Festival (BUFF) and sees BT host every event of the film festival, including the Awards at the BT Tower. BT will also broadcast the awards ceremony on BT.com and will have the opportunity to screen films acquired from the festival on its BT TV store platform. On 6 September 2017, it was announced that BT had extended its current £20 million four-year sponsorship deal with Scottish Rugby Union that was announced in May 2014, for a further three years beginning from June 2018. The new deal sees BT retain the naming rights to BT Murrayfield Stadium, alongside its role as principal partner of the Scotland national team and Scotland 7s. BT's logo will continue to be displayed on the front of Scotland rugby shirts across the world, in the Six Nations Championship, as well as the summer and autumn test matches. BT will also continue to be promoted at Edinburgh Rugby and Scotstoun Stadium in Glasgow. Historical financial performance. BT's financial results have been as follows: Controversies. World Wide Web hyperlink patent. In 2001, BT discovered it owned a patent () which it believed gave it patent rights on the use of hyperlink technology on the World Wide Web. The corresponding UK patent had already expired, but the US patent was valid until 2006. On 11 February 2002, BT began a court case relating to its claims in a US federal court against the internet service provider Prodigy Communications Corporation. In the case "British Telecommunications plc v. Prodigy", the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled on 22 August 2002 that the BT patent was not applicable to web technology and granted Prodigy's request for summary judgment of non-infringement. Behavioural targeting. In early 2008 it was announced that BT had entered into a contract (along with Virgin Media and TalkTalk) with the spyware company Phorm (responsible under their 121Media guise for the Apropos rootkit) to intercept and analyse their users' click-stream data and sell the anonymised aggregate information as part of Phorm's OIX advertising service. The practice, known as "behavioural targeting" and condemned by critics as "data pimping", came under intense fire from various internet communities and other interested-parties who believe that the interception of data without the consent of users and web site owners is illegal under UK law (RIPA). At a more fundamental level, many have argued that the ISPs and Phorm have no right to sell a commodity (a user's data, and the copyrighted content of web sites) to which they have no claim of ownership. In response to questions about Phorm and the interception of data by the Webwise system Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, indicated his disapproval of the concept and is quoted as saying of his data and web history: Huawei infrastructure access. Beginning in 2010 the UK intelligence community investigated Huawei, the Chinese supplier of BT's new fibre infrastructure with increasing urgency after the United States, Canada and Australia prevented the company from operating in their countries. Although BT had notified the UK government in 2003 of Huawei's interest in their £10bn network upgrade contract, they did not raise the security implications as BT failed to explain that the Chinese company would have unfettered access to critical infrastructure. On 16 December 2012 the then prime minister David Cameron was supplied with an in-depth report indicating that the intelligence services had very grave doubts regarding Huawei, and that UK governmental, military, and civilian privacy may have been under serious threat. On 7 June 2013, British lawmakers concluded that BT should not have allowed Huawei access to the UK's communications network without ministerial oversight, saying they were 'deeply shocked' that BT did not inform government that they were allowing Huawei and ZTE, both with ties to the Chinese military, unfettered access to critical national systems. Furthermore, ministers discovered that the agency with the responsibility to ensure Chinese equipment and code was threat-free was entirely staffed by Huawei employees. Subsequently, parliamentarians confirmed that in case of an attack on the UK there was nothing that could be done to stop Chinese infiltration. By 2016 Huawei had put measures in place to ensure the integrity of UK national security. Specifically their UK work is now overseen by a board that includes directors from GCHQ, the Cabinet Office and the Home Office. ZTE, another Chinese company that supplies extensive network equipment and subscriber hardware used with BT 'Infinity', was also under scrutiny by parliament's intelligence and security committee after the US, Canada, Australia and the European Union declared the company a security risk. In 2020 following a government ruling, BT began removing Huawei equipment from its broadband and mobile networks in order to comply with new restrictions on the usage of Huawei equipment. As of 2023, the process is still ongoing. Alleged complicity with drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia. In September 2012, BT entered into a $23 million deal with the US military to provide a key communications cable connecting RAF Croughton, a US military base on UK soil, with Camp Lemonnier, a large US base in Djibouti. Camp Lemonnier is used as a base for American drone attacks in Yemen and Somalia, and has been described by "The Economist" as "the most important base for drone operations outside the war zone of Afghanistan." Human rights groups including Reprieve and Amnesty International have criticised the use of armed drones outside declared war zones. Evidence produced by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Stanford University's International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic suggest that drone strikes have caused substantial civilian casualties, and may be illegal under international law. In 2013, BT was the subject of a complaint by Reprieve to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, following their refusal to explain whether or not their infrastructure was used to facilitate drone strikes. The subsequent refusal of this complaint was appealed in May 2014, on the basis that the UK National Contact Point's decision did not follow the OECD Guidelines. The issue of bias was also raised, due to the appointment of Lord Ian Livingston as government minister for the department which was processing the complaint: Livingston had occupied a senior position at BT when the cable between RAF Croughton and Camp Lemonnier was originally built. Overcharging. In February 2017, a review of the telecoms market by Ofcom found that BT's landline only contracts provided poor value to customers. Ofcom ordered BT to reduce their prices but stopped short of demanding that customers were compensated. In January 2021, Law firm Mishcon de Reya filed a claim with the Competition Appeal Tribunal against BT worth £600 million, accusing them of historic overcharging on landlines. The class action lawsuit claims BT have increased their prices for line-only services every year since 2009, whilst the wholesale cost for delivering these services has reduced. The claimants suggest that customers could be entitled to compensation of up to £500 each. Bidding rules violation. In 2020, BT was fined £6.3m by the telecoms regulator Ofcom for violating the law on a large public sector deal in Northern Ireland. Under Ofcom's regulations, the BT network shall handle all wholesale customers similarly. In its report, Ofcom found that BT's network violated the rules by failing to supply Eir with the same details on its on-demand fiber-to-the-premises offering as its own rival team. OFCOM fines for non-functioning 999 calls. On 25 June 2023, a "catastrophic failure" in BT's network resulted in nearly 14,000 attempted 999 emergency calls not being connected. Ofcom fined BT £17.5 million, citing the telecom giant's lack of preparedness and poorly documented backup procedures. Historical documents. Records of the Post Office Corporation (Telecommunications division) 19691981 and its predecessors (including Post Office Telegraph and Telephone Service 18641969 and some private telegraph and telephone companies) are Public Records, and are held by BT Archives.
4644	27015025	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4644	Balmoral Castle	Balmoral Castle () is a large estate house in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and a residence of the British royal family. It is near the village of Crathie, west of Ballater and west of Aberdeen. The estate and its original castle were bought from the Farquharson family in 1852 by Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria. Soon afterwards the house was found to be too small and the current Balmoral Castle was commissioned. The architect was William Smith of Aberdeen, and his designs were amended by Prince Albert. Balmoral remains the private property of the monarch and is not part of the Crown Estate. It was the summer residence of Queen Elizabeth II, who died there on 8 September 2022. The castle is an example of Scottish baronial architecture, and is classified by Historic Environment Scotland as a category A listed building. The new castle was completed in 1856 and the old castle demolished shortly thereafter. The Balmoral Estate has been added to by successive members of the royal family, and now covers an area of 21,725 hectares (53,684 acres) of land. It is a working estate, including grouse moors, forestry and farmland, as well as managed herds of deer, Highland cattle, sheep and ponies. Etymology. Balmoral is pronounced or sometimes locally . It was first recorded as 'Bouchmorale' in 1451, and it was pronounced by local Scottish Gaelic speakers. The first element in the name is thought to be the Gaelic "both", meaning "a hut", but the second part is uncertain. Adam Watson and Elizabeth Allan wrote in "The Place Names of Upper Deeside" that the second part meant "big spot (of ground)". Alexander MacBain suggested this was originally the Pictish "*mor-ial", "big clearing" (cf. Welsh "mawr-ial"). Alternatively, the second part could be a saint's name. History. King Robert II of Scotland (1316–1390) had a hunting lodge in the area. Historical records also indicate that a house at Balmoral was built by Sir William Drummond in 1390. The estate was later tenanted by Alexander Gordon, second son of the 1st Earl of Huntly. A tower house was built on the estate by the Gordons. In 1662, the estate passed to Charles Farquharson of Inverey, brother of John Farquharson, the "Black Colonel". The Farquharsons were Jacobite sympathisers and James Farquharson of Balmoral was involved in both the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite risings. He was wounded at the Battle of Falkirk (1746). The Farquharson estates were forfeited, and passed to the Farquharsons of Auchendryne. In 1798, James Duff, 2nd Earl Fife, acquired Balmoral and leased the castle. Sir Robert Gordon, a younger brother of George Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, acquired the lease in 1830. He made major alterations to the original castle at Balmoral, including baronial-style extensions that were designed by John Smith of Aberdeen. Royal acquisition. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert first visited Scotland in 1842, five years after she acceded to the throne and two years after their marriage. During this first visit they stayed at Edinburgh, and at Taymouth Castle in Perthshire, the home of John Campbell, 2nd Marquess of Breadalbane. They returned in 1844 to stay at Blair Castle, and in 1847, when they rented Ardverikie House by Loch Laggan. Frequent rain during the last trip led Sir James Clark, the queen's doctor, to recommend Deeside instead, for its healthier climate. Sir Robert Gordon died in 1847 and his lease on Balmoral reverted to Lord Aberdeen. In February 1848 an arrangement was made that Prince Albert would acquire the remaining part of the lease on Balmoral, together with its furniture and staff, without having seen the property first. The royal couple arrived for their first visit on 8 September 1848. Victoria found the house "small but pretty", and recorded in her diary that: "All seemed to breathe freedom and peace, and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils". The surrounding hilly landscape reminded them of Thuringia, Albert's homeland in Germany. The house was soon confirmed to be too small, and in 1848, John and William Smith were commissioned to design new offices, cottages, and other ancillary buildings. Improvements to the woodlands, gardens and estate buildings were also being made, with the assistance of the landscape gardener James Beattie, and possibly the painter James Giles. Major additions to the old house were considered in 1849, but by then negotiations were under way to purchase the estate from James Duff, 4th Earl Fife. After seeing a corrugated iron cottage at the Great Exhibition of 1851, Prince Albert ordered a prefabricated iron building for Balmoral from E. T. Bellhouse & Co., to serve as a temporary ballroom and dining room. It was in use by 1 October 1851, and would serve as a ballroom until 1856. The sale was completed in June 1852, the price being £32,000 () and Prince Albert formally took possession that autumn. The neighbouring estate of Birkhall was bought at the same time, and the lease on Abergeldie Castle secured as well. To mark the occasion, the "Purchase Cairn" was erected in the hills overlooking the castle, the first of many cairns on the estate. Construction of the new house. Space was needed for the growing family of Victoria and Albert, for additional staff, and for accommodation for visiting friends and official visitors such as cabinet members. Thus extension of the existing structure would not provide enough space, and a larger house needed to be built. In early 1852, this was commissioned from William Smith. The son of John Smith (who designed the 1830 alterations of the original castle), William Smith, was the city architect of Aberdeen from 1852. On learning of the commission, William Burn sought an interview with the prince, apparently to complain that Smith previously had plagiarised his work, however, Burn was unsuccessful in depriving Smith of the appointment. William Smith's designs were amended by Prince Albert, who took a close interest in details such as turrets and windows. Construction began in mid-1853, on a site some northwest of the original building that was considered to have a better vista. Another consideration was that during construction the family would still be able to use the old house. Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone on 28 September 1853, during her annual autumn visit. By the autumn of 1855, the royal apartments were ready for occupancy, although the tower was still under construction and the servants had to be lodged in the old house. By coincidence, shortly after their arrival at the estate that autumn, news circulated about the fall of Sevastopol, ending the Crimean War, resulting in wild celebrations by royalty and locals alike. While visiting the estate soon afterwards, Prince Frederick of Prussia asked for the hand of Victoria, Princess Royal. The new house was completed in 1856, and the old castle was later demolished. By autumn 1857, a new bridge across the Dee, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel linking Crathie and Balmoral was finished. Balmoral Castle is built from granite quarried at Invergelder on the estate. It consists of two main blocks, each arranged around a courtyard. The southwestern block contains the main rooms, while the northeastern contains the service wings. At the southeast is an clock tower topped with turrets, one of which has a balustrade similar to a feature at Castle Fraser. Being similar in style to the demolished castle of the 1830s, the architecture of the new house is considered to be somewhat dated for its time when contrasted with the richer forms of Scots baronial being developed by William Burn and others during the 1850s. As an exercise in Scots baronial, it is sometimes described as too ordered, pedantic, and even Germanic as a consequence of Prince Albert's influence on the design. However, the purchase of a Scottish estate by Victoria and Albert and their adoption of a Scottish architectural style were influential for the ongoing revival of Highland culture. They decorated Balmoral with tartans and attended highland games at Braemar. Queen Victoria expressed an affinity for Scotland, even professing herself to be a Jacobite. Added to the work of Sir Walter Scott, this became a major factor in promoting the adoption of Highland culture by Lowland Scots. Historian Michael Lynch comments that "the Scottishness of Balmoral helped to give the monarchy a truly British dimension for the first time". Victoria and Albert at Balmoral. Even before the completion of the new house, the pattern of the life of the royal couple in the Highlands was soon established. Victoria took long walks of up to four hours daily and Albert spent many days hunting deer and game. In 1849, diarist Charles Greville described their life at Balmoral as resembling that of gentry rather than royalty. Victoria began a policy of commissioning artists to record Balmoral, its surroundings, and its staff. Over the years, numerous painters were employed at Balmoral, including Edwin and Charles Landseer, and Carl Haag. During the 1850s, new plantations were established near the house and exotic conifers were planted on the grounds. Prince Albert had an active role in these improvements, overseeing the design of parterres, the diversion of the main road north of the river via a new bridge, and plans for farm buildings. These buildings included a model dairy that he developed in 1861, the year of his death. The dairy was completed by Victoria. Subsequently, she also built several monuments to her husband on the estate. These include a pyramid-shaped cairn built a year after Albert's death, on top of "Craig Lurachain". A large statue of Albert with a dog and a gun by William Theed, was inaugurated on 15 October 1867, the twenty-eighth anniversary of their engagement. Following Albert's death, Victoria spent increasing periods at Balmoral, staying for as long as four months a year during early summer and autumn. She placed numerous mementos of Albert on display. Few further changes were made to the grounds, with the exception of some alterations to mountain paths, the erection of various cairns and monuments, and the addition of some cottages ("Karim Cottage" and "Baile na Coille") built for senior staff. It was during this period that Victoria began to depend on her servant, John Brown. He was a local ghillie from Crathie, who became one of her closest companions during her long mourning. In 1887, Balmoral Castle was the birthplace of Victoria Eugenie, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She was born to Princess Beatrice, the fifth daughter of Victoria and Albert. Victoria Eugenie became queen of Spain when she married King Alfonso XIII in 1906. In September 1896, Victoria welcomed Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and Empress Alexandra, a granddaughter of Victoria, to Balmoral. Four years later Victoria made her last visit to the estate, three months before her death on 22 January 1901. After Victoria. After Victoria's death, the royal family continued to use Balmoral during annual autumn visits. George V had substantial improvements made during the 1910s and 1920s, including formal gardens to the south of the castle. During the Second World War, royal visits to Balmoral ceased. In addition, due to the conflict with Germany, "Danzig Shiel", a lodge built by Victoria in Ballochbuie, was renamed "Garbh Allt Shiel" and the "King of Prussia's Fountain" was removed from the grounds. In the 1950s, Prince Philip added herbaceous borders and a water garden. During the 1980s, new staff buildings were built close to the castle. Death of Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Elizabeth II had been at the castle since July 2022 for her annual summer holiday and had been receiving medical care there. In a break with tradition, Balmoral Castle, rather than Buckingham Palace, was the location of the appointment of British Prime Minister Liz Truss on 6 September 2022, due to concerns regarding the Queen's mobility issues. Elizabeth died at Balmoral two days later at the age of 96. She was the first monarch to die at Balmoral, and this was the first time a monarch had died in Scotland since James V died in 1542 at Falkland Palace. The Queen's coffin lay in repose in the ballroom of the castle for three days, to allow the Royal Family, estate staff and neighbours to pay their respects. On 11 September, the coffin was transported to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh for the start of the state funeral proceedings. Architecture. Though called a castle, Balmoral's primary function is that of a country house. It is a "typical and rather ordinary" country house from the Victorian period. The tower and "pepper pot turrets" are characteristic features of the residence's Scottish baronial style. The seven-storey tower is an architectural feature borrowed from medieval defensive tower houses. The "pepper pot" turrets were influenced by the style of 16th-century French châteaux. Other features of the Scottish baronial style are the crow-stepped gables, dormer windows, and battlemented porte-cochère. Ownership. Balmoral is private property and, unlike the monarch's official residences, is not the property of the Crown. It was originally purchased privately by Prince Albert, for Queen Victoria, meaning that no revenues from the estate go to Parliament or the public purse, as would otherwise be the case for property owned outright by the monarch by the Civil List Act 1760. Along with Sandringham House in Norfolk, ownership of Balmoral was inherited by Edward VIII on his accession in 1936. When he abdicated later the same year, however, he retained ownership of them. A financial settlement was devised, under which Balmoral and Sandringham were purchased by Edward's brother and successor to the Crown, George VI. Elizabeth II inherited the Balmoral estate from her father, and then after her death, ownership passed to her eldest son King Charles III, but the estate is managed by trustees under Deeds of Nomination and Appointment. Estate. Extent and operation. Balmoral Estate is within the Cairngorms National Park and is partly within the Deeside and Lochnagar National Scenic Area. The estate contains a wide variety of landscapes, from the Dee river valley to open mountains. There are seven Munros (hills in Scotland over ) within the estate, the highest being Lochnagar at . This mountain was the setting for a children's story, "The Old Man of Lochnagar", told originally by Charles III to his younger brothers, Andrew and Edward. The story was published in 1980, with royalties accruing to the Prince's Trust (now the King's Trust). The estate also incorporates the Delnadamph Lodge estate, bought by Elizabeth II in 1978. The estate extends to Loch Muick in the southeast where an old boat house and the Royal Bothy (hunting lodge) now named "Glas-allt-Shiel", built by Victoria, are located. The working estate includes grouse moors, forestry, and farmland, as well as managed herds of deer, Highland cattle, and ponies. It also offers access to the public for fishing (paid) and hiking during certain seasons. Approximately of the estate are covered by trees, with almost used for forestry that yields nearly 10,000 tonnes of wood per year. "Ballochbuie Forest", one of the largest remaining areas of old Caledonian pine growth in Scotland, consists of approximately . It is managed with only minimal or no intervention. The principal mammal on the estate is the red deer with a population of 2,000 to 2,500 head. The areas of Lochnagar and Ballochbuie were designated in 1998 by the Secretary of State for Scotland as Special Protection Areas (SPA) under the European Union (EU) Birds Directive. Bird species inhabiting the moorlands include red grouse, black grouse, ptarmigan, and the capercaillie. Ballochbuie is also protected as a Special Area of Conservation by the EU Habitats Directive, as "one of the largest remaining continuous areas of native Caledonian Forest". In addition, there are four sites of special scientific interest on the estate. The royal family employs approximately 50 full-time and 50–100 part-time staff to maintain the working estate. There are approximately 150 buildings on the estate, including Birkhall, formerly home to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, where King Charles III and Queen Camilla spent their honeymoon in 2005. Craigowan Lodge is regularly used by the family and friends of the royal family and has also been used while Balmoral Castle was being prepared for a royal visit. Six smaller buildings on the estate are let as holiday cottages. The hunting lodge of Inchnabobart has also been used by the royal family. Public access to gardens and castle grounds. In 1931, the gardens and castle grounds were opened to the public for the first time. They are now open daily between April and the end of July, after which royal family members arrive at the castle for their annual stay. The ballroom was the only room in the castle that could be viewed by the public until 2024. In 2024, limited numbers of the public were able to view the interior and several rooms used by members of the royal family during a month-long summer tour programme. This was the first time since the castle was completed in 1855 that it was open to the public. In addition, the gift shop, restaurant and café were redesigned and renovated, prioritising local Scottish craftsmanship and premium textiles. Craigowan Lodge. Craigowan Lodge is a seven-bedroom stone house approximately from the main castle in Balmoral. More rustic than the castle, the lodge was often used by Prince Charles and Princess Diana when they visited. In May 1981 Charles and Diana posed for a photo at the lodge before their July 1981 wedding. In the obituary of Prince Michael Andreevich of Russia in 2008, it was noted that his family spent most of World War II at Craigowan Lodge. The lodge has been in the news periodically since 2005 because Elizabeth II and Prince Philip often spent the first few days of their summer holiday there. During the summer, the castle is a lucrative source of income from tourists. Sometimes, the Queen arrived at Balmoral before the tourist season was over. In popular culture. Parts of the films "Mrs Brown" (1997) and "The Queen" (2006) were based on events at Balmoral. In both films, substitute locations were used: Blairquhan Castle in "The Queen" and Duns Castle in "Mrs Brown". In the Netflix series "The Crown", Ardverikie House was used as a stand-in. In the sci-fi film "The Day After Tomorrow" (2004), three helicopters of the Royal Air Force crash in Scotland during an attempt to evacuate the Royal Family from Balmoral Castle. An illustration of the castle features on the reverse of £100 notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland.
4647	18872885	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4647	Breton language	Breton (, , ; ) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language group spoken in Brittany, part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still widely in use on the European mainland, albeit as a member of the insular branch instead of the extinct continental grouping. Breton was brought from Great Britain to Armorica (the ancient name for the coastal region that includes the Brittany peninsula) by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages, making it an Insular Celtic language. Breton is most closely related to Cornish, another Southwestern Brittonic language. Welsh and the extinct Cumbric, both Western Brittonic languages, are more distantly related, and the Goidelic languages (Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic) have a slight connection due to both of their origins being from Insular Celtic. Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to 107,000 in 2024, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO "Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger". However, the number of children attending bilingual classes rose 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709. History and status. Breton is spoken in Lower Brittany (), roughly to the west of a line linking Plouha (west of Saint-Brieuc) and La Roche-Bernard (east of Vannes). It comes from a Brittonic language community that once extended from Great Britain to Armorica (present-day Brittany) and had even established a toehold in Galicia (in present-day Spain). Old Breton is attested from the 9th century. It was the language of the upper classes until the 12th century, after which it became the language of commoners in Lower Brittany. The nobility, followed by the bourgeoisie, adopted French. The written language of the Duchy of Brittany was Latin, switching to French in the 15th century. There exists a limited tradition of Breton literature. Some philosophical and scientific terms in Modern Breton come from Old Breton. The recognized stages of the Breton language are: Old Breton – to , Middle Breton – to , Modern Breton – to present. The French monarchy was not concerned with the minority languages of France, spoken by the lower classes, and required the use of French for government business as part of its policy of national unity. During the French Revolution, the government introduced policies favouring French over the regional languages, which it pejoratively referred to as . The revolutionaries assumed that reactionary and monarchist forces preferred regional languages to try to keep the peasant masses under-informed. In 1794, Bertrand Barère submitted his "report on the " to the Committee of Public Safety in which he said that "federalism and superstition speak Breton". Since the 19th century, under the Third, Fourth and now Fifth Republics, the French government has attempted to stamp out minority languages—including Breton—in state schools, in an effort to build a national culture. Teachers humiliated students for using their regional languages, and such practices prevailed until the late 1960s. In the early 21st century, due to the political centralization of France, the influence of the media, and the increasing mobility of people, only about 200,000 people are active speakers of Breton, a dramatic decline from more than 1 million in 1950. The majority of today's speakers are more than 60 years old, and Breton is now classified as an endangered language. At the beginning of the 20th century, half of the population of Lower Brittany knew only Breton; the other half were bilingual. By 1950, there were only 100,000 monolingual Bretons, and this rapid decline has continued, with likely no monolingual speakers left today. A statistical survey in 1997 found around 300,000 speakers in Lower Brittany, of whom about 190,000 were aged 60 or older. Few 15- to 19-year-olds spoke Breton. In 1993, parents were finally legally allowed to give their children Breton names. Revival efforts. In 1925, Professor Roparz Hemon founded the Breton-language review . During its 19-year run, tried to raise the language to the level of a great international language. Its publication encouraged the creation of original literature in all genres, and proposed Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, replaced . Other Breton-language periodicals have been published, which established a fairly large body of literature for a minority language. In 1977, Diwan schools were founded to teach Breton by immersion. Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully immersive primary school and partially immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to the growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton. The "Asterix" comic series has been translated into Breton. According to the comic, the Gaulish village where Asterix lives is in the Armorica peninsula, which is now Brittany. Some other popular comics have also been translated into Breton, including "The Adventures of Tintin", , "Titeuf", "Hägar the Horrible", "Peanuts" and "Yakari". Some original media are created in Breton. The sitcom, , is in Breton. Radio Kerne, broadcasting from Finistère, has exclusively Breton programming. Some movies ("Lancelot du Lac", "Shakespeare in Love", "Marion du Faouet", "Sezneg") and TV series ("Columbo", "Perry Mason") have also been translated and broadcast in Breton. Poets, singers, linguists, and writers who have written in Breton, including Yann-Ber Kallocʼh, Roparz Hemon, Añjela Duval, Xavier de Langlais, Pêr-Jakez Helias, Youenn Gwernig, Glenmor, Vefa de Saint-Pierre and Alan Stivell are now known internationally. Today, Breton is the only living Celtic language that is not recognized by a national government as an official or regional language. The first Breton dictionary, the "Catholicon", was also the first French dictionary. Edited by Jehan Lagadec in 1464, it was a trilingual work containing Breton, French and Latin. Today bilingual dictionaries have been published for Breton and languages including English, Dutch, German, Spanish and Welsh. A monolingual dictionary, was published in 1995. The first edition contained about 10,000 words, and the second edition of 2001 contains 20,000 words. In the early 21st century, the ("Public Office for the Breton language") began a campaign to encourage daily use of Breton in the region by both businesses and local communes. Efforts include installing bilingual signs and posters for regional events, as well as encouraging the use of the Spilhennig to let speakers identify each other. The office also started an Internationalization and localization policy asking Google, Firefox and SPIP to develop their interfaces in Breton. In 2004, the Breton Wikipedia started, which counts more than 85,000 articles as of August 2024. In March 2007, the signed a tripartite agreement with Regional Council of Brittany and Microsoft for the consideration of the Breton language in Microsoft products. In October 2014, Facebook added Breton as one of its 121 languages after three years of talks between the and Facebook. France has twice chosen to enter the Eurovision Song Contest with songs in Breton; once in 1996 in Oslo with " by Dan Ar Braz and the fifty piece band Héritage des Celtes, and most recently in 2022 in Turin with " by Alvan Morvan Rosius and vocal trio Ahez. These are two of five times France has chosen songs in one of its minority languages for the contest, the others being in 1992 (bilingual French and Antillean Creole), 1993 (bilingual French and Corsican), and 2011 (Corsican). Geographic distribution and dialects. Breton is spoken mainly in Lower Brittany, but also in a more dispersed way in Upper Brittany (where it is spoken alongside Gallo and French), and in areas around the world that have Breton emigrants. The four traditional dialects of Breton correspond to medieval bishoprics rather than to linguistic divisions. They are (, of the county of Léon), (, of Trégor), (, of ), and (, of Vannes). was spoken up to the beginning of the 20th century in the region of Guérande and Batz-sur-Mer. There are no clear boundaries between the dialects because they form a dialect continuum, varying only slightly from one village to the next. , however, requires a little study to be intelligible with most of the other dialects. Due to this difficulty in intelligibility, the Glottolog project split the Gwenedeg dialects into a separate language entry from the KLT Breton dialects in v5.2 under the name Vannetais. Official status. Nation. French is the sole official language of France. Supporters of Breton and other minority languages continue to argue for their recognition, and for their place in education, public schools, and public life. Constitution. In July 2008, the legislature amended the French Constitution, adding article 75-1: (the regional languages belong to the heritage of France). The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which obliges signatory states to recognize minority and regional languages, was signed by France in 1999 but has not been ratified. On 27 October 2015, the Senate rejected a draft constitutional law ratifying the charter. Region. Regional and departmental authorities use Breton to a very limited extent. Some bilingual signage has also been installed, such as street name signs in Breton towns. Under the Toubon Law, it is illegal for commercial signage to be in Breton alone. Signs must be bilingual or French only. Since commercial signage usually has limited physical space, most businesses have signs only in French. , the Breton language agency, was set up in 1999 by the Brittany region to promote and develop the daily use of Breton. It helped to create the campaign, to encourage enterprises, organisations and communes to promote the use of Breton, for example by installing bilingual signage or translating their websites into Breton. Education. In the late 20th century, the French government considered incorporating the independent Breton-language immersion schools (called ) into the state education system. This action was blocked by the French Constitutional Council based on the 1994 amendment to the Constitution that establishes French as the language of the republic. Therefore, no other language may be used as a language of instruction in state schools. The Toubon Law implemented the amendment, asserting that French is the language of public education. The Diwan schools were founded in Brittany in 1977 to teach Breton by immersion. Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully immersive primary school and partially immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to the growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton. The schools have also gained fame from their high level of results in school exams, including those on French language and literature. Breton-language schools do not receive funding from the national government, though the Brittany Region may fund them. Another teaching method is a bilingual approach by ("Two Languages") in the State schools, created in 1979. ("Awakening") was created in 1990 for bilingual education in the Catholic schools. Statistics. In 2018, 18,337 pupils (about 2% of all students in Brittany) attended , and schools, and their number has increased yearly. This was short of the goal of Jean-Yves Le Drian (president of the Regional Council), who aimed to have 20,000 students in bilingual schools by 2010, and of "their recognition" for "their place in education, public schools, and public life"; nevertheless he describes being encouraged by the growth of the movement. In 2007, some 4,500 to 5,000 adults followed an evening or correspondence one Breton-language course. The transmission of Breton in 1999 was estimated to be 3 percent. Other forms of education. In addition to bilingual education (including Breton-medium education) the region has introduced the Breton language in primary education, mainly in the department of Finistère. These "initiation" sessions are generally one to three hours per week, and consist of songs and games. Schools in secondary education ( and ) offer some courses in Breton. In 2010, nearly 5,000 students in Brittany were reported to be taking this option. Additionally, the University of Rennes 2 has a Breton language department offering courses in the language along with a master's degree in Breton and Celtic Studies. Phonology. Vowels. Vowels in Breton may be short or long. All unstressed vowels are short; stressed vowels can be short or long (vowel lengths are not noted in usual orthographies as they are implicit in the phonology of particular dialects, and not all dialects pronounce stressed vowels as long). An emergence of a schwa sound occurs as a result of vowel neutralization in post-tonic position, among different dialects. All vowels can also be nasalized, which is noted by appending an 'n' letter after the base vowel, or by adding a combining tilde above the vowel (most commonly and easily done for "a" and "o" due to the Portuguese letters), or more commonly by non-ambiguously appending an letter after the base vowel (this depends on the orthographic variant). Diphthongs are . Grammar. Nouns. Breton nouns are marked for gender and number. While Breton gender is fairly typical of gender systems across western Europe (with the exception of Basque and modern English), Breton number markers demonstrate rarer behaviors. Gender. Breton has two genders: masculine () and feminine (), having largely lost its historic neuter () as has also occurred in the other Celtic languages as well as across the Romance languages. Certain suffixes ("-ach/-aj, -(a)dur, -er, -lecʼh, -our, -ti, -va") are masculine, while others ("-enti, -er, -ez, -ezh, -ezon, -i", "-eg", "-ell", and the singulative "-enn") are feminine. The suffix "-eg" can be masculine or feminine. There are certain non-determinant factors that influence gender assignment. Biological sex is applied for animate referents. Metals, time divisions (except for "hour", "night" and "week") and mountains tend to be masculine, while rivers, cities and countries tend to be feminine. However, gender assignment to certain words often varies between dialects. Number. Number in Breton is primarily based on an opposition between singular and plural. However, the system is full of complexities in how this distinction is realized. Although modern Breton has lost its ancestral dual number marker, relics of its use are preserved in various nouns pertaining to body parts, including the words for eyes, ears, cheeks, legs, armpits, arms, hands, knees, thighs, and wings. This is seen in a prefix (formed in , or ) that is etymologically derived from the prefixation of the number two. The dual is no longer productive, and has merely been lexicalized in these cases rather than remaining a part of Breton grammar. The (etymologically) already dual words for eyes () and ears () can be pluralized "again" to form and . Like other Brythonic languages, Breton has a singulative suffix that is used to form singulars out of collective nouns, for which the morphologically less complex form is the plural. Thus, the singulative of the collective "mice" is "mouse". However, Breton goes beyond Welsh in the complications of this system. Collectives can be pluralized to make forms which are different in meaning from the normal collective-- "fish" (singular) is pluralized to , singulativized to , referring to a single fish out of a school of fish, and this singulative of the plural can then be pluralized again to make "fishes". On top of this, the formation of plurals is complicated by two different pluralizing functions. The "default" plural formation is contrasted with another formation which is said to "emphasize variety or diversity" – thus two semantically different plurals can be formed out of : "parks" and "various different parks". Ball reports that the latter pluralizer is used only for inanimate nouns. Certain formations have been lexicalized to have meanings other than that which might be predicted solely from the morphology: "water" pluralized forms which means not "waters" but instead "rivers", while now has come to mean "running waters after a storm". Certain forms have lost the singular from their paradigm: means "news" and is not used, while has become the regular plural, 'different news items'. Meanwhile, certain nouns can form doubly marked plurals with lexicalized meanings – "child" is pluralized once into "children" and then pluralized a second time to make "groups of children". The diminutive suffix also has the somewhat unusual property of triggering double marking of the plural: means "little child", but the doubly pluralized means "little children"; boat has a singular diminutive and a simple plural , thus its diminutive plural is the doubly pluralized . As seen elsewhere in many Celtic languages, the formation of the plural can be hard to predict, being determined by a mix of semantic, morphological and lexical factors. The most common plural marker is , with its variant ; most nouns that use this marker are inanimates but collectives of both inanimate and animate nouns always use it as well. Most animate nouns, including trees, take a plural in . However, in some dialects the use of this affix has become rare. Various masculine nouns including occupations as well as the word ("Englishman", plural ) take the suffix , with a range of variants including , , and . The rare pluralizing suffixes / and are used for a few nouns. When they are appended, they also trigger a change in the vowel of the root: triggers a vowel harmony effect whereby some or all preceding vowels are changed to ( "cousin" → "cousins"; "crow" → "crows"; "partridge" → "partridges"); the changes associated with / are less predictable. Various nouns instead form their plural merely with ablaut: or in the stem being changed to : "wing" → "wings"; "tooth" → "teeth"; "rope" → "ropes". Another set of nouns have lexicalized plurals that bear little if any resemblance to their singulars. These include "girl" → , "pig" → , "cow" → , and "dog" → . In compound nouns, the head noun, which usually comes first, is pluralized. Verbal aspect. As in other Celtic languages as well as English, a variety of verbal constructions is available to express grammatical aspect, for example: showing a distinction between progressive and habitual actions: Inflected prepositions. As in other modern Celtic languages, Breton pronouns are fused into preceding prepositions to produce a sort of inflected preposition. Below are some examples in Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx, along with English translations. In the examples above the Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx) use the preposition meaning "at" to show possession, whereas the Brittonic languages use "with". The Goidelic languages, however, do use the preposition "with" to express "belong to" (Irish , Scottish , Manx , The book belongs to me). The Welsh examples are in literary Welsh. The order and preposition may differ slightly in colloquial Welsh (Formal , North Wales , South Wales ). Initial consonant mutations. Breton has four initial consonant mutations: though modern Breton lost the nasal mutation of Welsh (but for rare words such the word "door": "dor" "an nor"), it also has a "hard" mutation, in which voiced stops become voiceless, and a "mixed" mutation, which is a mixture of hard and soft mutations. Word order. Normal word order, like the other Insular Celtic languages, is at its core VSO (verb-subject-object), which is most apparent in embedded clauses. However, Breton finite verbs in main clauses are additionally subject to V2 word order in which the finite main clause verb is typically the second element in the sentence. That makes it perfectly possible to put the subject or the object at the beginning of the sentence, largely depending on the focus of the speaker. The following options are possible (all with a little difference in meaning): Vocabulary. Breton uses much more borrowed vocabulary than its relatives further north; by some estimates a full 40% of its core vocabulary consists of loans from French. Orthography. The first extant Breton texts, contained in the Leyde manuscript, were written at the end of the 8th century: 50 years prior to the Strasbourg Oaths, considered to be the earliest example of French. Like many medieval orthographies, Old- and Middle Breton orthography was at first not standardised, and the spelling of a particular word varied at authors' discretion. In 1499, however, the "Catholicon", was published; as the first dictionary written for both French and Breton, it became a point of reference on how to transcribe the language. The orthography presented in the "Catholicon" was largely similar to that of French, in particular with respect to the representation of vowels, as well as the use of both the Latinate digraph —a remnant of the sound change > in Latin—and Brittonic or to represent before front vowels. As phonetic and phonological differences between the dialects began to magnify, many regions, particularly the Vannes country, began to devise their own orthographies. Many of these orthographies were more closely related to the French model, albeit with some modifications. Examples of these modifications include the replacement of Old Breton - with - to denote word-final (an evolution of Old Breton in the Vannes dialect) and use of - to denote the initial mutation of (today this mutation is written ). and thus needed another transcription. In the 1830s Jean-François Le Gonidec created a modern phonetic system for the language. During the early years of the 20th century, a group of writers known as elaborated and reformed Le Gonidec's system. They made it more suitable as a super-dialectal representation of the dialects of Cornouaille, Leon and Trégor (known as from , and in Breton). This KLT orthography was established in 1911. At the same time writers of the more divergent Vannetais dialect developed a phonetic system also based on that of Le Gonidec. Following proposals made during the 1920s, the KLT and Vannetais orthographies were merged in 1941 to create an orthographic system to represent all four dialects. This ("wholly unified") orthography was significant for the inclusion of the digraph , which represents a in Vannetais and corresponds to a in the KLT dialects. In 1955 François Falcʼhun and the group proposed a new orthography. It was designed to use a set of graphemes closer to the conventions of French. This ("University Orthography", known in Breton as ) was given official recognition by the French authorities as the "official orthography of Breton in French education." It was opposed in the region and today is used only by the magazine and the publishing house Emgléo Breiz. In the 1970s, a new standard orthography was devised – the or . This system is based on the derivation of the words. Today the majority of writers continue to use the "Peurunvan orthography", and it is the version taught in most Breton-language schools. Alphabet. Breton is written in the Latin script. "Peurunvan", the most commonly used orthography, consists of the following letters: a, b, ch, cʼh, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, w, y, z The circumflex, grave accent, trema and tilde appear on some letters. These diacritics are used in the following way: â, ê, î, ô, û, ù, ü, ñ Differences between and. Both orthographies use the above alphabet, although is used only in . Differences between the two systems are particularly noticeable in word endings. In Peurunvan, final obstruents, which are devoiced in absolute final position and voiced in sandhi before voiced sounds, are represented by a grapheme that indicates a voiceless sound. In OU they are written as voiced but represented as voiceless before suffixes: "big", "bigger". In addition, Peurunvan maintains the KLT convention, which distinguishes noun/adjective pairs by nouns written with a final voiced consonant and adjectives with a voiceless one. No distinction is made in pronunciation, e.g. "Breton language" vs. "Breton (adj)". Pronunciation of the Breton alphabet. Notes: Sample texts. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "Hon Tad," "cʼhwi hag a zo en Neñv," "ra vo santelaet hocʼh anv." "Ra zeuio ho Rouantelezh." "Ra vo graet ho youl war an douar evel en neñv." "Roit dimp hiziv bara hor bevañs." "Distaolit dimp hon dleoù" "evel m'hor bo ivez distaolet d'hon dleourion." "Ha n'hon lezit ket da vont gant an temptadur," "met hon dieubit eus an Droug." Words and phrases in Breton. Visitors to Brittany may encounter words and phrases (especially on signs and posters) such as the following: Borrowing from Breton by other languages. The English words and have been borrowed from French, which took them from Breton. However, this is uncertain: for instance, is or ("long stone"), ("straight stone") (two words: noun + adjective) in Breton. "Dolmen" is a misconstructed word (it should be ). Some studies state that these words were borrowed from Cornish. can be directly translated from Welsh as "long stone" (which is exactly what a or is). The Cornish surnames Mennear, Minear and Manhire all derive from the Cornish ("long stone"), as does "settlement by the long stone". The French word ("to jabber in a foreign language") is derived from Breton ("bread") and ("wine"). The French word ("large seagull") is derived from Breton , which shares the same root as English "gull" (Welsh , Cornish ). .bzh. .bzh is an approved Internet generic top-level domains intended for Brittany and the Breton culture and languages. In 2023, the Breton internet extension .bzh had more than 12,000 registrations. Alongside the promotion of the .bzh internet extension, the www.bzh association promotes other services to develop Brittany's image on the web: campaign for a Breton flag emoji (), and email service. References. Notes Further reading External links. Dictionaries Learning
4648	23420386	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4648	Broch	In archaeology, a broch is an Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structure found in Scotland. Brochs belong to the classification "complex Atlantic roundhouse" devised by Scottish archaeologists in the 1980s. Brochs are roundhouse buildings found throughout Atlantic Scotland. The word broch is derived from the Lowland Scots 'brough', meaning fort. In the mid-19th century, Scottish antiquaries called brochs 'burgs', after Old Norse borg, with the same meaning. Brochs are often referred to as dùns in the west, and they are the most spectacular of a complex class of buildings found in northern Scotland. There are approximately 571 candidate broch sites throughout the country, according to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. The origin of brochs is still subject to ongoing research. While most archaeologists believed 80 years ago that brochs were built by immigrants, there is now little doubt that the hollow-walled broch tower was an invention in what is now Scotland. The first brochs may have been built circa 300 BCE, and there is evidence to suggest that they were used primarily for defensive or offensive purposes. The distribution of brochs is centred on northern Scotland, with the densest concentrations found in Caithness, Sutherland, and the Northern Isles. A few examples occur in the Scottish Borders and on the west coast of Dumfries and Galloway, and near Stirling. The original interpretation of brochs was that they were defensive structures, places of refuge for the community and their livestock. They were sometimes regarded as the work of Danes or Picts, and from the 1930s to the 1960s, archaeologists regarded them as castles where local landowners held sway over a subject population. However, the castle theory fell from favour among Scottish archaeologists in the 1980s, due to a lack of supporting archaeological evidence. These archaeologists suggested defensibility was never a major concern in the siting of a broch, and argued that they may have been the "stately homes" of their time, objects of prestige and very visible demonstrations of superiority for important families. Once again, however, there is a lack of archaeological proof for this reconstruction, and the sheer number of brochs makes it problematic. The article concludes by stating that the purpose of brochs may have been a combination of defensive, offensive, and symbolic functions. Origin and definition. The word "broch" is derived from Lowland Scots 'brough', meaning (among other things) fort. In the mid-19th century Scottish antiquaries called brochs 'burgs', after Old Norse ', with the same meaning. Place names in Scandinavian Scotland such as Burgawater and Burgan show that Old Norse ' is the older word used for these structures in the north. Brochs are often referred to as "dùn" in the west. Antiquarians began to use the spelling "broch" in the 1870s. A precise definition for the word has proved elusive. Brochs are the most spectacular of a complex class of roundhouse buildings found throughout Atlantic Scotland. The Shetland Amenity Trust lists about 120 sites in Shetland as candidate brochs, while the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) identifies a total of 571 candidate broch sites throughout the country. Researcher Euan MacKie, using a restricted definition, has proposed a much smaller total for Scotland of 104. The origin of brochs is a subject of continuing research. Eighty years ago most archaeologists believed that brochs, usually regarded as the 'castles' of Iron Age chieftains, were built by immigrants who had been pushed northward after being displaced first by the intrusions of Belgic tribes into what is now southeast England at the end of the 2nd century BC and later by the Roman invasion of southern Britain beginning in AD 43. Yet there is now little doubt that the hollow-walled broch tower was an invention in what is now Scotland; even the kinds of pottery found inside them that most resembled south British styles were local hybrid forms. The first of the modern review articles on the subject (MacKie 1965) did not, as is commonly believed, propose that brochs were built by immigrants, but rather that a hybrid culture formed from the blending of a small number of immigrants with the native population of the Hebrides produced them in the 1st century BC, basing them on earlier, simpler, promontory forts. This view contrasted, for example, with that of Sir W. Lindsay Scott, who argued, following V. Gordon Childe (1935), for a wholesale migration into Atlantic Scotland of people from southwest England. MacKie's theory has fallen from favour too, mainly because starting in the 1970s there was a general move in archaeology away from 'diffusionist' explanations towards those pointing to exclusively indigenous development. Meanwhile, the increasing number – albeit still pitifully few – of radiocarbon dates for the primary use of brochs (as opposed to their later, secondary use) still suggests that most of the towers were built in the 1st centuries BC and AD. A few may be earlier, notably the one proposed for Old Scatness Broch in Shetland, where a sheep bone dating to between 390 and 200 BC has been reported. The other broch claimed to be substantially older than the 1st century BC is Crosskirk in Caithness, but a recent review of the evidence suggests that it cannot plausibly be assigned a date earlier than the 1st centuries BC/AD. Distribution. The distribution of brochs is centred on northern Scotland. Caithness, Sutherland and the Northern Isles have the densest concentrations, but there are many examples in the west of Scotland and the Hebrides. Although mainly concentrated in the northern Highlands and the Islands, a few examples occur in the Borders (for example Edin's Hall Broch and Bow Castle Broch), on the west coast of Dumfries and Galloway, and near Stirling. In a sketch there appears to be a broch by the river next to Annan Castle in Dumfries and Galloway. This small group of southern brochs has never been satisfactorily explained. Purposes. The original interpretation of brochs, favoured by 19th-century antiquarians, was that they were defensive structures, places of refuge for the community and their livestock. They were sometimes regarded as the work of Danes or Picts. From the 1930s to the 1960s, archaeologists such as V. Gordon Childe and later John Hamilton regarded them as castles where local landowners held sway over a subject population. The castle theory fell from favour among Scottish archaeologists in the 1980s, due to a lack of supporting archaeological evidence. These archaeologists suggested defensibility was never a major concern in the siting of a broch, and argued that they may have been the "stately homes" of their time, objects of prestige and very visible demonstrations of superiority for important families (Armit 2003). Once again, however, there is a lack of archaeological proof for this reconstruction, and the sheer number of brochs, sometimes in places with a lack of good land, makes it problematic. Brochs' close groupings and profusion in many areas may indeed suggest that they had a primarily defensive or even offensive function. Some of them were sited beside precipitous cliffs and were protected by large ramparts, artificial or natural: a good example is at Burland near Gulberwick in Shetland, on a clifftop and cut off from the mainland by huge ditches. Often they are at key strategic points. In Shetland they sometimes cluster on each side of narrow stretches of water: the Broch of Mousa, for instance, is directly opposite another at Burraland in Sandwick. In Orkney there are more than a dozen on the facing shores of Eynhallow Sound, and many at the exits and entrances of the great harbour of Scapa Flow. In Sutherland quite a few are placed along the sides and at the mouths of deep valleys. Writing in 1956 John Stewart suggested that brochs in Shetland were forts put up by a military society to scan and protect the countryside and seas. Finally, some archaeologists consider broch sites individually, doubting that there ever was a single common purpose for which every broch was constructed. There are differences in the positions, dimensions and likely status of broch in the various areas in which brochs are found. For example, the broch "villages" which occur at a few places in Orkney have no parallel in the Western Isles. Structures. Generally, brochs have a single entrance with bar-holes, door-checks and lintels. There are mural cells and there is a scarcement (ledge), perhaps for timber-framed lean-to dwellings lining the inner face of the wall. Also there is a spiral staircase winding upwards between the inner and outer wall and connecting the galleries. Brochs vary from in internal diameter, with walls. On average, the walls only survive to a few metres in height. There are five extant examples of towers with significantly higher walls: Dun Carloway on Lewis, Dun Telve and Dun Troddan in Glenelg, Mousa in Shetland and Dun Dornaigil in Sutherland, all of whose walls exceed in height. Mousa's walls are the best preserved and are still tall; it is not clear how many brochs originally stood so high. A frequent characteristic is that the walls are galleried: with an open space between, the outer and inner wall skins are separate but tied together with linking stone slabs; these linking slabs may in some cases have served as steps to higher floors. It is normal for there to be a cell breaking off from the passage beside the door; this is known as the guard cell. It has been found in some Shetland brochs that guard cells in entrance passageways are close to large door-check stones. Although there was much argument in the past, it is now generally accepted among some archaeologists that brochs were roofed, perhaps with a conical timber framed roof covered with a locally sourced thatch. The evidence for this assertion is still very scanty, although excavations at Dun Bharabhat, Lewis, may support it. The main difficulty with the interpretation continues to be identifying potential sources of structural timber, though bog and driftwood may have been sources. Very few of the brochs on the islands of Orkney and Shetland have cells on the ground floor. Most brochs have scarcements (ledges) which may have allowed the construction of a wooden first floor (spotted by the antiquary George Low in Shetland in 1774), and excavations at Loch na Berie on the Isle of Lewis may show signs of a further, second floor (e.g. stairs on the first floor, which head upwards). Some brochs such as Dun Dornaigil and Culswick in Shetland have unusual triangular lintels above the entrance door. As in the case of Old Scatness in Shetland (near Jarlshof) and Burroughston on Shapinsay, brochs were sometimes located close to arable land and a source of water (some have wells or natural springs rising within their central space). Sometimes, on the other hand, they were sited in wilderness areas (e.g. Levenwick and Culswick in Shetland, Castle Cole in Sutherland). Brochs are often built beside the sea (Carn Liath, Sutherland); sometimes they are on islands in lochs (e.g. Clickimin in Shetland). About 20 Orcadian broch sites include small settlements of stone buildings surrounding the main tower. Examples include Howe, near Stromness, Gurness Broch in the north west of Mainland, Orkney, Midhowe on Rousay and Lingro near Kirkwall (destroyed by a farmer in the 1980s). There are "broch village" sites in Caithness, but elsewhere they are unknown. Most brochs are unexcavated. The end of the broch building period seems to have come around AD 100–200. Those that have been properly examined show that they continued to be in use for many centuries, with the interiors often modified and changed, and that they underwent many phases of habitation and abandonment. Heritage status. The Crucible of Iron Age Shetland's Mousa, Old Scatness and Jarlshof sites are on the United Kingdom "Tentative List" of possible nominations for the UNESCO World Heritage Programme list of sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humankind. This list, published in July 2010, includes sites that may be nominated for inscription over the next 5–10 years. New broch planned. The Caithness Broch Project was set up in 2013 as a project in experimental archaeology to build a broch using traditional techniques such as drystone walling. Purposes of the project include possible insights into the purpose of brochs, preservation of local skills in techniques such as drystone wall building, and to attract tourists. a site had not been acquired, and the funding required, estimated at £1m–£3m, had not yet been arranged.
4649	35671212	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4649	Billy Crystal	William Edward Crystal (born March 14, 1948) is an American comedian, actor, and filmmaker. He is known as a standup comedian and for his film and stage roles. Crystal has received numerous accolades, including six Primetime Emmy Awards and a Tony Award as well as nominations for three Grammy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1991, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2007, the Critics' Choice Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2023. Crystal gained prominence for television roles as Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom "Soap" from 1977 to 1981 and as a cast member and frequent host of "Saturday Night Live" from 1984 to 1985. Crystal then became known for his roles in films such as "Running Scared" (1986), "Throw Momma from the Train" (1987), "Memories of Me" (1988), "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989), "City Slickers" (1991), "Mr. Saturday Night" (1992), "Forget Paris" (1995), "Father's Day" (1997), "America's Sweethearts" (2001), and "Parental Guidance" (2012). Crystal is the voice of Mike Wazowski in Pixar's "Monsters, Inc." franchise. He has hosted the Academy Awards 9 times, beginning in 1990 and most recently in 2012. Crystal made his Broadway debut in his one man show "700 Sundays" in 2004, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event. Crystal returned to the show again in 2014 which was filmed by HBO and received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special nomination. He wrote and starred in the Broadway musical "Mr. Saturday Night" based on his film in 2022, for which he was Tony–nominated for Best Actor in a Musical and Best Book of a Musical. He has written five books including his memoir "Still Foolin' Em" (2013). Early life and education. William Edward Crystal was born at Doctors Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and initially raised in the Bronx. As a toddler, he moved with his family to 549 East Park Avenue in Long Beach, New York, on Long Island. Crystal and his older brothers Joel, who later became an art teacher, and Richard, nicknamed Rip, were the sons of Helen ("née" Gabler), a housewife, and Jack Crystal, who owned and operated the Commodore Music Store, founded by Crystal's grandfather, Julius Gabler. Crystal's father was also a jazz promoter, a producer, and an executive for an affiliated jazz record label, Commodore Records, founded by Crystal's uncle, musician and songwriter Milt Gabler. Crystal is Jewish (his ancestors emigrated from Austria, Russia, and Lithuania), and he grew up attending Temple Emanu-El (Long Beach, New York) where he had his bar mitzvah. The three young brothers would entertain by reprising comedy routines from the likes of Bob Newhart, Rich Little and Sid Caesar records their father would bring home. Jazz artists such as Arvell Shaw, Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, and Billie Holiday were often guests in the home. With the decline of Dixieland jazz and the rise of discount record stores, in 1963, Crystal's father lost his business and died later that year at the age of 54 after having a heart attack. His mother died in 2001. After graduating from Long Beach High School in 1965, Crystal attended Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, on a baseball scholarship. Crystal never played baseball at Marshall because the program was suspended during his first year. Crystal did not return to Marshall as a sophomore, instead deciding to stay in New York to be close to his future wife. He studied acting at HB Studio. Crystal attended Nassau Community College with her and later transferred to New York University, where he was a film and television directing major. Crystal graduated from NYU in 1970 with a BFA from its then School of Fine Arts. One of his instructors was Martin Scorsese, while Oliver Stone and Christopher Guest were among his classmates. Career. 1976–1985: Stand-up, "Soap", and "SNL". Crystal spent four years in a comedy improv group with two friends. They played colleges and coffee houses and Crystal worked as a substitute teacher on Long Island. Crystal later became a solo act and performed regularly at "The Improv" and "Catch a Rising Star". In 1976, he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and on an episode of "All in the Family". Crystal was on the dais for the Dean Martin celebrity roast of Muhammad Ali on February 19, 1976, where he performed impressions of both Ali and sportscaster Howard Cosell. This began a lifelong friendship between Ali and Crystal. Crystal was scheduled to appear on the first episode of "NBC Saturday Night" on October 11, 1975 (the show was later renamed "Saturday Night Live" on March 26, 1977), but his sketch was cut. Crystal did perform on episode 17 of that first season, doing a monologue of an old jazz man capped by the line "Can you dig it? I knew that you could." Host Ron Nessen introduced him as "Bill Crystal." Crystal made a guest appearance on "The Love Boat" Season 2 Episode 5, which aired on October 20, 1978. He also made game show appearances such as "The Hollywood Squares," "All Star Secrets" and "The $20,000 Pyramid." To this day, Crystal holds the Pyramid franchise's record for getting his contestant partner to the top of the pyramid in the winner's circle in the fastest time: 26 seconds. Crystal's earliest prominent role was as Jodie Dallas on "Soap," one of the first unambiguously gay characters in the cast of an American television series. He continued in the role during the series's entire 1977–1981 run. In 1982, Crystal hosted his own variety show, "The Billy Crystal Comedy Hour" on NBC. When Crystal arrived to shoot the fifth episode, he learned it had been canceled after only the first two aired. After hosting "Saturday Night Live" twice, on March 17, 1984, and the show's ninth season finale on May 5, Crystal joined the regular cast for the 1984–85 season. His most famous recurring sketch was his parody of Fernando Lamas, a smarmy talk-show host whose catchphrase, "You look... mahvelous!", became a media sensation, including ads for Diet Pepsi. Also in the 1980s, Crystal starred in an episode of Shelley Duvall's "Faerie Tale Theatre" as the smartest of the three little pigs. Crystal's first film role was in Joan Rivers' 1978 film "Rabbit Test", the story of the "world's first pregnant man." Crystal appeared briefly in the Rob Reiner "rockumentary" "This Is Spinal Tap" (1984) as Morty The Mime, a waiter dressed as a mime at one of Spinal Tap's parties. He shared the scene with a then-unknown, non-speaking Dana Carvey, stating famously that "Mime is money." 1986–1999: Oscar host and leading man status. Due to the success of Crystal's standup and "SNL" career, in 1985, he released an album of his stand-up material titled "Mahvelous!". The title track "You Look Marvelous", written by Crystal and Paul Shaffer, had an accompanying music video that debuted on MTV. Both the song and video features Crystal in character as his SNL persona of talk show host Fernando Lamas. The video features Lamas cruising around in what was at the time the world's longest stretch limousine, built by custom-coach designer and builder Vini Bergeman, surrounded by models in bikinis. The single peaked at No. 58 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the US and No. 17 in Canada. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Recording at the 1986 Grammy Awards. He later starred in the action comedy "Running Scared" (1986) opposite Gregory Hines. Film critic of the "Chicago Sun-Times" Roger Ebert praised the two for their on-screen chemistry writing, "But Crystal and Hines...don't need a plot because they have so much good dialogue and such a great screen relationship." During this time, Crystal hosted the Academy Awards broadcast a total of nine times, from 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004 and 2012. His hosting was critically praised, resulting in two Primetime Emmy Award wins for hosting and writing the 63rd Academy Awards and an Emmy win for writing the 64th Academy Awards. "San Francisco Chronicle" columnist John Carman raved about Crystal's performance for the 70th Academy Awards writing, "It was the best Oscar show in two decades...Crystal was back in razor form." "The Seattle Times" television editor Kay McFadden praised Crystal commenting that "he possesses nearly impeccable timing and judgment." Crystal reunited with director Rob Reiner in "The Princess Bride" (1987), in a comedic supporting role as "Miracle Max." Reiner got Crystal to accept the part by saying, "How would you like to play Mel Brooks?" Reiner also allowed Crystal to ad-lib, and his parting shot, "Have fun storming the castle!" is a frequently quoted line. Critic Roger Ebert described Crystal as a highlight of the film writing "the funniest sequences in the film stars Billy Crystal and Carol Kane, both unrecogizable behind makeup, as an ancient wizard and crone who specialize in bringing the dead back to life." Reiner directed Crystal for a third time in the romantic comedy "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989). Crystal starred alongside Meg Ryan, Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher in a script written by Nora Ephron. "The Hollywood Reporter" praised the film and Crystal's performance writing, "Crystal's lustrous, deeply-shaded performance is certain to win him legions of new fans; indeed, his prowess as a comic reaches its deepest human dimension here." Crystal was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy losing to Morgan Freeman in "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989). The film has since become an iconic classic for the genre and is Crystal's most celebrated film. In 2019, the BBC named the film the greatest romantic comedy of all time. In 1991, Crystal created and produced the HBO six-part comedy miniseries "Sessions" starring Michael McKean and Elliott Gould. The "Los Angeles Times" praised the project describing it as "swankily written, elegantly staged and perfectly cast." Crystal then starred in the award-winning buddy comedy "City Slickers" (1991), which proved very successful both commercially and critically and for which Crystal was nominated for his second Golden Globe. The film was followed by a sequel, which was less successful. The name of his company is Face Productions. "Entertainment Weekly" praised Crystal's performance writing, "It's also the first movie ever to do the talented Billy Crystal justice...he's far more pleasureful to watch in this sort of dramatic-comedy role than, say, Robin Williams, because his comfy, urban-shlemiel personality helps ground the jokes." Following the significant success of these films, Crystal wrote, directed, and starred in "Mr. Saturday Night" (1992) and "Forget Paris" (1995). In the former, Crystal played a serious role in aging makeup, as an egotistical comedian who reflects back on his career. In 1992, Crystal narrated "Dr. Seuss Video Classics: Horton Hatches the Egg". He was originally asked to voice Buzz Lightyear in "Toy Story" (1995) but turned it down, a decision he later regretted due to the popularity of the series. Crystal later films include a supporting roles in Kenneth Branagh's William Shakespeare epic "Hamlet" (1996), and Woody Allen's critically acclaimed comedy ensemble film "Deconstructing Harry" (1997). Crystal had starred opposite Robin Williams in "Father's Day" (1997) and had success alongside Robert De Niro in Harold Ramis' mobster comedy "Analyze This" (1999). In 1996, Crystal was the guest star of the third episode of "Muppets Tonight" and hosted three Grammy Awards Telecasts: the 29th Grammys; the 30th Grammys; and the 31st Grammys. Crystal was a guest on the first and the last episode of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," which concluded February 6, 2014, after 22 seasons on the air. 2000–2014: Later film work and Broadway debut. Crystal directed the made-for-television movie "61*" (2001) based on Roger Maris's and Mickey Mantle's race to break Babe Ruth's single-season home run record in 1961. This earned Crystal an Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special. More recent performances include roles in "America's Sweethearts" (2001), the sequel "Analyze That" (2002), and "Parental Guidance" (2012). Crystal later went on to provide the voice of Mike Wazowski in the blockbuster Pixar film "Monsters, Inc." (2001), "Cars" (2006), during the epilogue in the end credits, and to reprise his voice role in the prequel, "Monsters University" (2013). Crystal also provided the voice of Calcifer in the English version of Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle" (2004). He won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event for "700 Sundays", a two-act, one-man play, which Crystal conceived and wrote about his parents and his childhood growing up on Long Island. Crystal toured throughout the US with the show in 2006 and then Australia in 2007. Following the initial success of the play, he wrote the book "700 Sundays" for Warner Books, which was published on October 31, 2005. In conjunction with the book and the play that also paid tribute to his uncle Milt Gabler, Crystal produced two CD compilations: "Billy Crystal Presents: The Milt Gabler Story", which featured his uncle's most influential recordings from Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" to "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets; and "Billy Remembers Billie" featuring Crystal's favorite Holiday recordings. Crystal returned as the host for the 2012 Oscar ceremony, after Eddie Murphy resigned from hosting. His nine times is second only to Bob Hope's 19 in most ceremonies hosted. At the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony in 2011, Crystal appeared as a presenter for a digitally inserted Bob Hope and before doing so was given a standing ovation. The ceremony's hosts were James Franco and Anne Hathaway who received largely negative reviews, with Film critic Roger Ebert writing that "when Crystal came onstage about two hours into the show, he got the first laughs of the broadcast". Crystal's hosting gigs have regularly included an introductory video segment in which he comedically inserts himself into scenes of that year's nominees in addition to a song following his opening monologue. In 2013, Crystal released his autobiographical memoir "Still Foolin' Em". The audiobook version was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album at the 2014 Grammy Awards. In the fall of 2013, Crystal brought the show, "700 Sundays" back to Broadway for a two-month run at the Imperial Theatre. HBO filmed the January 3–4, 2014 performances for a special, which debuted on their network on April 19, 2014, entitled "Billy Crystal: 700 Sundays". The televised special received three Primetime Emmy Award nominations including Outstanding Variety Special, and Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special. In 2014, Crystal paid tribute to his close friend Robin Williams at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards. In his tribute, Crystal talked about their friendship, saying, "As genius as he was on stage, he was the greatest friend you could ever imagine. Supportive. Protective. Loving. It's very hard to talk about him in the past because he was so present in all of our lives. For almost 40 years, he was the brightest star in the comedy galaxy… [His] beautiful light will continue to shine on us forever. And the glow will be so bright, it'll warm your heart. It'll make your eyes glisten. And you'll think to yourselves: Robin Williams. What a concept." Crystal stated that paying tribute to Williams so publicly and so soon after Williams had died was one of "the hardest things I've had to do" and that "I was really worried that I wasn't going to get through it." Crystal soon after appeared on "The View" where he and Whoopi Goldberg shared stories about Williams, reminiscing about their friendship, and their collaborations together on "Comic Relief". 2015–present: Return to Broadway. In 2015, Crystal co-starred alongside Josh Gad on the FX comedy series "The Comedians", which ran for just one season before being canceled. His series received mixed reviews with many critics noting the chemistry developed further as the series went on. The series was compared to backstage shows such as "The Larry Sanders Show" and "30 Rock". Kate Kulzick of "The A.V. Club" wrote "The odd-couple pairing of Crystal and Gad works well, with their generational divide providing many of the show's early highlights...The friendly rapport that develops between the fictionalized Billy and Josh allows them to relax a bit and get to know each other better". In 2016, Crystal gave one of the eulogies for Muhammad Ali at his funeral. In his remembrance of Ali, Crystal talked about his admiration for Ali as a boxer, and humanitarian. He also shared stories of their unlikely friendship after Crystal did a series of impersonations of him. Crystal stated of Ali's legacy, "Only once in a thousand years or so, do we get to hear a Mozart, or see a Picasso, or read a Shakespeare. Ali was one of them. And yet, at his heart, he was still a kid from Louisville who ran with the gods and walked with the crippled and smiled at the foolishness of it all." In the fall of 2021, Crystal reprised the role of Buddy Young Jr., in a theatrical musical staging of "Mr. Saturday Night" at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, MA. In 2022, Crystal adapted his 1992 movie "Mr. Saturday Night" into a Broadway musical with the same name. Crystal stars in the musical reprising his role from the film alongside David Paymer. The production began previews on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre on March 29, 2022, prior to officially opening on April 27. Crystal earned the Drama League Award for Contribution to the Theater Award for "his extraordinary work on stages across the country and commitment to mentorship in the field." Crystal performed a number with the ensemble from his musical at the 75th Tony Awards. Crystal also performed what he described as Yiddish scat singing. Crystal went into the crowd teaching Lin-Manuel Miranda and Samuel L. Jackson as well as the rest of the audience. "The New York Times" praised Crystal on his bit, describing it as a highlight of the telecast writing, "one of the few moments that broke through...is when [Crystal] brought it out into the audience, and threw it up to the balcony, he showed how precision, delivery and command of a room can make even the oldest, silliest material impossibly compelling." In 2023, Crystal was celebrated by the Kennedy Center Honors. Tributes came from Rob Reiner, Meg Ryan, Whoopi Goldberg, Robert De Niro, Jay Leno, and Bob Costas. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Marc Shaiman did a tribute to Crystal's "Oscar Medleys" to the tunes of "Too Marvelous for Words", "It Had to Be You" (the theme from "When Harry Met Sally..."), and "My Favorite Things" from "The Sound of Music". Crystal attended the 97th Academy Awards where he served as a presenter for Best Picture with his "When Harry met Sally..." co-star Meg Ryan. Acting credits and accolades. Crystal has received numerous accolades including six Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program as the host of the "31st Annual Grammy Awards" (1989), "63rd Academy Awards" (1991), and "70th Academy Awards" (1998) and the Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for writing his comedy special "Midnight Train to Moscow" (1990), and the "63rd Academy Awards" and "64th Academy Awards" (1992). For his Broadway debut, his one man show "700 Sundays" (2005), Crystal won the Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event, and the Drama Desk Award. He received further Tony nominations for Best Actor in a Musical and Best Book of a Musical for "Mr. Saturday Night" (2022). Crystal received nominations for three Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album for "You Look Marvelous" (1986), Best Spoken Word Album for "Still Foolin' Em" (2014), and Best Musical Theatre Album for "Mr. Saturday Night" (2023). He also received three Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performances in the romantic comedy "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989), the western comedy "City Slickers" (1991), and Crystal's directorial debut "Mr. Saturday Night" (1992). Crystal has also received numerous honors including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1991, and was awarded with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2007 where he was honored by Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Robert De Niro, Martin Short, and Rob Reiner at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. Crystal was made one of the Disney Legends in 2013 and also received the Critics' Choice Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2023. Personal life. On June 4, 1970, Crystal married his high school sweetheart, Janice Goldfinger. Crystal has long credited his parents, "who always looked like they loved being together," with setting an example for his own marriage. They have two daughters: actress Jennifer and Lindsay, a producer, and are grandparents. They lived in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. In January 2025, their home was destroyed in the Palisades Fire. Crystal received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from New York University in 2016 and spoke at the commencement at Yankee Stadium. Philanthropy. In 1986, Crystal started hosting "Comic Relief" on HBO with Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg. Founded by Bob Zmuda, Comic Relief raises money for homeless people in the United States. On September 6, 2005, on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", Crystal and Jay Leno were the first celebrities to sign a Harley-Davidson motorcycle to be auctioned off for Gulf Coast relief. Crystal has participated in the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. His personal history is featured in the "Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves" exhibit in the genealogy wing of the museum. Political views. Crystal is a supporter of the Democratic Party and has appeared in advertisements on behalf of the party. Crystal was an outspoken critic of Donald Trump during the latter’s 2016 presidential campaign. Crystal supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Sports. On March 12, 2008, Crystal signed a one-day minor league contract to play with the New York Yankees, and he was invited to the team's major league spring training. Crystal wore uniform number 60 in honor of his upcoming 60th birthday. On March 13, in a spring training game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Crystal led off as the designated hitter. He managed to make contact, fouling a fastball up the first base line, but was eventually struck out by Pirates pitcher Paul Maholm on six pitches and was later replaced in the batting order by Johnny Damon. Crystal was released on March 14, his 60th birthday. Crystal's boyhood idol was Yankee Hall of Fame legend Mickey Mantle, who had signed a program for him when Crystal attended a game where Mantle had hit a home run. Years later on "The Dinah Shore Show", in one of his first television appearances, Crystal met Mantle in person and had Mantle re-sign the same program. Crystal would be good friends with Mantle until Mantle's death in 1995. He and Bob Costas together wrote the eulogy Costas read at Mantle's funeral, and George Steinbrenner then invited Crystal to emcee the unveiling of Mantle's monument at Yankee Stadium. In his 2013 memoir "Still Foolin' 'Em", Crystal said that after the ceremony, near the Yankees clubhouse, he was punched in the stomach by Joe DiMaggio, who was angry at Crystal for not having introduced him to the crowd as the "Greatest living player." Crystal also was well known for his impressions of Yankees Hall of Famer turned broadcaster Phil Rizzuto. Rizzuto, known for his quirks calling games, did not travel to Anaheim, California in 1996 to call the game for WPIX. Instead, Crystal joined the broadcasters in the booth and pretended to be Rizzuto for a few minutes during the August 31 game. Although a lifelong Yankees fan, he is a part-owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, even earning a World Series ring in 2001 when the Diamondbacks beat his beloved Yankees. In "City Slickers", Crystal wore a New York Mets baseball cap. In the 1986 film "Running Scared", his character is an avid Chicago Cubs fan, wearing a Cubs' jersey in several scenes. In the 2012 film "Parental Guidance", Crystal's character is the announcer for the Fresno Grizzlies, a Minor League Baseball team, who aspires to announce for their Major League affiliate, the San Francisco Giants. Crystal appeared in Ken Burns's 1994 documentary "Baseball", telling personal stories about his life-long love of baseball, including meeting Casey Stengel as a child and Ted Williams as an adult. Crystal is also a longtime Los Angeles Clippers fan and season ticket holder.
4650	12530063	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4650	Black hole	A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. A black hole has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, but has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is of the order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly. Objects whose gravitational fields are too strong for light to escape were first considered in the 18th century by John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace. In 1916, Karl Schwarzschild found the first modern solution of general relativity that would characterise a black hole. Due to his influential research, the Schwarzschild metric is named after him. David Finkelstein, in 1958, first published the interpretation of "black hole" as a region of space from which nothing can escape. Black holes were long considered a mathematical curiosity; it was not until the 1960s that theoretical work showed they were a generic prediction of general relativity. The first black hole known was Cygnus X-1, identified by several researchers independently in 1971. Black holes typically form when massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed, it can grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings. Supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses may form by absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes, or via direct collapse of gas clouds. There is consensus that supermassive black holes exist in the centres of most galaxies. The presence of a black hole can be inferred through its interaction with other matter and with electromagnetic radiation such as visible light. Matter falling toward a black hole can form an accretion disk of infalling plasma, heated by friction and emitting light. In extreme cases, this creates a quasar, some of the brightest objects in the universe. Stars passing too close to a supermassive black hole can be shredded into streamers that shine very brightly before being "swallowed." If other stars are orbiting a black hole, their orbits can be used to determine the black hole's mass and location. Such observations can be used to exclude possible alternatives such as neutron stars. In this way, astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates in binary systems and established that the radio source known as Sagittarius A, at the core of the Milky Way galaxy, contains a supermassive black hole of about 4.3 million solar masses. History. The idea of a body so big that even light could not escape was briefly proposed by English astronomical pioneer and clergyman John Michell and independently by French scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace. Both scholars proposed very large stars rather than the modern model of stars with extraordinary density. Michell's idea, in a short part of a letter published in 1784, calculated that a star with the same density but 500 times the radius of the sun would not let any emitted light escape; the surface escape velocity would exceed the speed of light. Michell correctly noted that such supermassive but non-radiating bodies might be detectable through their gravitational effects on nearby visible bodies. In 1796, Laplace mentioned that a star could be invisible if it were sufficiently large while speculating on the origin of the Solar System in his book "Exposition du Système du Monde." Franz Xaver von Zach asked Laplace for a mathematical analysis, which Laplace provided and published in journal edited by von Zach. Scholars of the time were initially excited by the proposal that giant but invisible 'dark stars' might be hiding in plain view, but enthusiasm dampened when the wavelike nature of light became apparent in the early nineteenth century, since light was understood as a wave rather than a particle, it was unclear what, if any, influence gravity would have on escaping light waves. General relativity. In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, having earlier shown that gravity does influence light's motion. Only a few months later, Karl Schwarzschild found a solution to the Einstein field equations that describes the gravitational field of a point mass and a spherical mass. A few months after Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, a student of Hendrik Lorentz, independently gave the same solution for the point mass and wrote more extensively about its properties. This solution had a peculiar behaviour at what is now called the Schwarzschild radius, where it became singular, meaning that some of the terms in the Einstein equations became infinite. The nature of this surface was not quite understood at the time. In 1924, Arthur Eddington showed that the singularity disappeared after a change of coordinates. In 1933, Georges Lemaître realised that this meant the singularity at the Schwarzschild radius was a non-physical coordinate singularity. Arthur Eddington commented on the possibility of a star with mass compressed to the Schwarzschild radius in a 1926 book, noting that Einstein's theory allows us to rule out overly large densities for visible stars like Betelgeuse because "a star of 250 million km radius could not possibly have so high a density as the Sun. Firstly, the force of gravitation would be so great that light would be unable to escape from it, the rays falling back to the star like a stone to the earth. Secondly, the red shift of the spectral lines would be so great that the spectrum would be shifted out of existence. Thirdly, the mass would produce so much curvature of the spacetime metric that space would close up around the star, leaving us outside (i.e., nowhere)." In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using special relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above a certain limiting mass (now called the Chandrasekhar limit at ) has no stable solutions. His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse. They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star, which is itself stable. In 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and George Volkoff predicted that neutron stars above another limit, the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit, would collapse further for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes. Their original calculations, based on the Pauli exclusion principle, gave it as . Subsequent consideration of neutron-neutron repulsion mediated by the strong force raised the estimate to approximately to . Observations of the neutron star merger GW170817, which is thought to have generated a black hole shortly afterward, have refined the TOV limit estimate to ~. Oppenheimer and his co-authors interpreted the singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating that this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped. This is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. The hypothetical collapsed stars were called "frozen stars", because an outside observer would see the surface of the star frozen in time at the instant where its collapse takes it to the Schwarzschild radius. Also in 1939, Einstein attempted to prove that black holes were impossible in his publication "On a Stationary System with Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses", using his theory of general relativity to defend his argument. Months later, Oppenheimer and his student Hartland Snyder provided the Oppenheimer–Snyder model in their paper "On Continued Gravitational Contraction", which predicted the existence of black holes. In the paper, which made no reference to Einstein's recent publication, Oppenheimer and Snyder used Einstein's own theory of general relativity to show the conditions on how a black hole could develop, for the first time in contemporary physics. In 1958, David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface as an event horizon, "a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it in only one direction". Finkelstein created a new reference frame to include the point of view of infalling observers. Finkelstein's solution extended the Schwarzschild solution for the future of observers falling into a black hole. A similar concept had already been found by Martin Kruskal but Wheeler had not understood its significance. Eventually the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates helped physics understand black holes from multiple perspectives. Golden age. The era from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s was the "golden age of black hole research", when general relativity and black holes became mainstream subjects of research. In this period more general black hole solutions were found. In 1963, Roy Kerr found the exact solution for a rotating black hole. Two years later, Ezra Newman found the axisymmetric solution for a black hole that is both rotating and electrically charged. Through the work of Werner Israel, Brandon Carter, and David Robinson the no-hair theorem emerged, stating that a stationary black hole solution is completely described by the three parameters of the Kerr–Newman metric: mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. At first, it was suspected that the strange features of the black hole solutions were pathological artefacts from the symmetry conditions imposed, and that the singularities would not appear in generic situations. This view was held in particular by Vladimir Belinsky, Isaak Khalatnikov, and Evgeny Lifshitz, who tried to prove that no singularities appear in generic solutions. However, in the late 1960s Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking used global techniques to prove that singularities appear generically. For this work, Penrose received half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, Hawking having died in 2018. Astronomical observations also made great strides during this era. In 1967 Antony Hewish and Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars and by 1969, these were shown to be rapidly rotating neutron stars. Until that time, neutron stars, like black holes, were regarded as just theoretical curiosities; but the discovery of pulsars showed their physical relevance and spurred a further interest in all types of compact objects that might be formed by gravitational collapse. Based on observations in Greenwich and Toronto in the early 1970s, Cygnus X-1, a galactic X-ray source discovered in 1964, became the first astronomical object commonly accepted to be a black hole. Work by James Bardeen, Jacob Bekenstein, Carter, and Hawking in the early 1970s led to the formulation of black hole thermodynamics. These laws describe the behaviour of a black hole in close analogy to the laws of thermodynamics by relating mass to energy, area to entropy, and surface gravity to temperature. The analogy was completed when Hawking, in 1974, showed that quantum field theory implies that black holes should radiate like a black body with a temperature proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole, predicting the effect now known as Hawking radiation. Observation. On 11 February 2016, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves, representing the first observation of a black hole merger. On 10 April 2019, the first direct image of a black hole and its vicinity was published, following observations made by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in 2017 of the supermassive black hole in Messier 87's galactic centre. Gaia mission observations have found evidence of a Sun-like star orbiting a black hole named Gaia BH1 around away; evidence suggests a brown dwarf star orbits Gaia BH2. Though only a couple dozen black holes have been found so far in the Milky Way, there are thought to be hundreds of millions, most of which are solitary and do not cause emission of radiation. Therefore, they would only be detectable by gravitational lensing. Etymology. In December 1967, a student reportedly suggested the phrase "black hole" at a lecture by John Wheeler; Wheeler adopted the term for its brevity and "advertising value", and Wheeler's stature in the field ensured it quickly caught on. leading some to credit Wheeler with coining the phrase. However the term was used by others around that time. Science writer Marcia Bartusiak traces the term "black hole" to physicist Robert H. Dicke, who in the early 1960s reportedly compared the phenomenon to the Black Hole of Calcutta, notorious as a prison where people entered but never left alive. The term "black hole" was used in print by "Life" and "Science News" magazines in 1963, and by science journalist Ann Ewing in her article Black Holes' in Space", dated 18 January 1964, which was a report on a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Cleveland, Ohio. Properties and structure. The escape velocity from a black hole exceeds the speed of light. The formula for escape velocity is formula_1 for an object at radius from a spherical mass , with being the gravitational constant. When the velocity is the speed of light, , the radius, formula_2 is called the Schwarzschild radius. A technical definition of a black hole is any object whose mass is contained in a radius smaller than its Schwarzschild radius, a limit derived from one solution to the equations of general relativity. The no-hair theorem postulates that, once it achieves a stable condition after formation, a black hole has only three independent physical properties: mass, electric charge, and angular momentum; the black hole is otherwise featureless. If the conjecture is true, any two black holes that share the same values for these properties, or parameters, are indistinguishable from one another. The degree to which the conjecture is true for real black holes under the laws of modern physics is currently an unsolved problem. These properties are special because they are visible from outside a black hole. For example, a charged black hole repels other like charges just like any other charged object. Similarly, the total mass inside a sphere containing a black hole can be found by using the gravitational analogue of Gauss's law (through the ADM mass), far away from the black hole. Likewise, the angular momentum (or spin) can be measured from far away using frame dragging by the gravitomagnetic field, through for example the Lense–Thirring effect. When an object falls into a black hole, any information about the shape of the object or distribution of charge on it is evenly distributed along the horizon of the black hole, and is lost to outside observers. The behaviour of the horizon in this situation is a dissipative system that is closely analogous to that of a conductive stretchy membrane with friction and electrical resistance—the membrane paradigm. This is different from other field theories such as electromagnetism, which do not have any friction or resistivity at the microscopic level, because they are time-reversible. Because a black hole eventually achieves a stable state with only three parameters, there is no way to avoid losing information about the initial conditions: the gravitational and electric fields of a black hole give very little information about what went in. The information that is lost includes every quantity that cannot be measured far away from the black hole horizon, including approximately conserved quantum numbers such as the total baryon number and lepton number. This behaviour is so puzzling that it has been called the black hole information loss paradox. Physical properties. The simplest static black holes have mass but neither electric charge nor angular momentum. These black holes are often referred to as Schwarzschild black holes after Karl Schwarzschild who discovered this solution in 1916. According to Birkhoff's theorem, it is the only vacuum solution that is spherically symmetric. This means there is no observable difference at a distance between the gravitational field of such a black hole and that of any other spherical object of the same mass. The popular notion of a black hole "sucking in everything" in its surroundings is therefore correct only near a black hole's horizon; far away, the external gravitational field is identical to that of any other body of the same mass. Solutions describing more general black holes also exist. Non-rotating charged black holes are described by the Reissner–Nordström metric, while the Kerr metric describes a non-charged rotating black hole. The most general stationary black hole solution known is the Kerr–Newman metric, which describes a black hole with both charge and angular momentum. While the mass of a black hole can take any positive value, the charge and angular momentum are constrained by the mass. The total electric charge "Q" and the total angular momentum "J" are expected to satisfy the inequality formula_3 for a black hole of mass "M". Black holes with the minimum possible mass satisfying this inequality are called extremal. Solutions of Einstein's equations that violate this inequality exist, but they do not possess an event horizon. These solutions have so-called naked singularities that can be observed from the outside, and hence are deemed "unphysical". The cosmic censorship hypothesis rules out the formation of such singularities, when they are created through the gravitational collapse of realistic matter. This is supported by numerical simulations. Due to the relatively large strength of the electromagnetic force, black holes forming from the collapse of stars are expected to retain the nearly neutral charge of the star. Rotation, however, is expected to be a universal feature of compact astrophysical objects. The black-hole candidate binary X-ray source GRS 1915+105 appears to have an angular momentum near the maximum allowed value. That uncharged limit is formula_4 allowing definition of a dimensionless spin parameter such that formula_5 Black holes are commonly classified according to their mass, independent of angular momentum, "J". The size of a black hole, as determined by the radius of the event horizon, or Schwarzschild radius, is proportional to the mass, "M", through formula_6 where "r" is the Schwarzschild radius and is the mass of the Sun. For a black hole with nonzero spin or electric charge, the radius is smaller, until an extremal black hole could have an event horizon close to formula_7 Event horizon. The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon—a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can pass only inward towards the mass of the black hole. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine whether such an event occurred. As predicted by general relativity, the presence of a mass deforms spacetime in such a way that the paths taken by particles bend towards the mass. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deformation becomes so strong that there are no paths that lead away from the black hole. In a thought experiment, a distant observer can imagine clocks near a black hole which would appear to tick more slowly than those farther away from the black hole. This effect, known as gravitational time dilation, would also cause an object falling into a black hole to appear to slow as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite amount of time to reach it. All processes on this object would appear to slow down, from the viewpoint of a fixed outside observer, and any light emitted by the object to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift. Eventually, the falling object fades away until it can no longer be seen. Typically this process happens very rapidly with an object disappearing from view within less than a second. On the other hand, imaginary, indestructible observers falling into a black hole would not notice any of these effects as they cross the event horizon. Their own clocks appear to them to tick normally, they cross the event horizon after a finite time without noting any singular behaviour. In general relativity, it is impossible to determine the location of the event horizon from local observations, due to Einstein's equivalence principle. The topology of the event horizon of a black hole at equilibrium is always spherical. For non-rotating (static) black holes the geometry of the event horizon is precisely spherical, while for rotating black holes the event horizon is oblate. Singularity. At the centre of the unrealistically simple Schwarzschild model of a black hole is a gravitational singularity a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite. For a non-rotating black hole, this region takes the shape of a single point; for a rotating black hole it is smeared out to form a ring singularity that lies in the plane of rotation. In both cases, the singular region has zero volume. It can also be shown that the singular region contains all the mass of the black hole solution. The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density. Even though the Schwarzschild model is not valid at the singularity, observers falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (i.e., non-rotating and not charged) cannot avoid being carried into the singularity once they cross the event horizon. They can prolong the experience by accelerating away to slow their descent, but only up to a limit. When they reach the singularity, they are crushed to infinite density and their mass is added to the total of the black hole. Before that happens, they will have been torn apart by the growing tidal forces in a process sometimes referred to as spaghettification or the "noodle effect". In the case of a charged (Reissner–Nordström) or rotating (Kerr) black hole, it is possible to avoid the singularity. Extending these solutions as far as possible reveals the hypothetical possibility of exiting the black hole into a different spacetime with the black hole acting as a wormhole. The possibility of travelling to another universe is, however, only theoretical since any perturbation would destroy this possibility. It also appears to be possible to follow closed timelike curves (returning to one's own past) around the Kerr singularity, which leads to problems with causality like the grandfather paradox. It is expected that none of these peculiar effects would survive in a proper quantum treatment of rotating and charged black holes. The appearance of singularities in general relativity signals the breakdown of the theory. This breakdown occurs where quantum effects should describe these actions, due to the extremely high density and therefore particle interactions. To date, it has not been possible to combine quantum and gravitational effects into a single theory, although there exist attempts to formulate such a theory of quantum gravity. It is generally expected that such a theory will not feature singularities. Photon sphere. The photon sphere is a spherical boundary where photons that move on tangents to that sphere would be trapped in a non-stable but circular orbit around the black hole. For non-rotating black holes, the photon sphere has a radius 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius. Their orbits would be dynamically unstable, hence any small perturbation, such as a particle of infalling matter, would cause an instability that would grow over time, either setting the photon on an outward trajectory causing it to escape the black hole, or on an inward spiral where it would eventually cross the event horizon. While light can still escape from the photon sphere, any light that crosses the photon sphere on an inbound trajectory will be captured by the black hole. Hence any light that reaches an outside observer from the photon sphere must have been emitted by objects between the photon sphere and the event horizon. For a Kerr black hole the radius of the photon sphere depends on the spin parameter and on the details of the photon orbit, which can be prograde (the photon rotates in the same sense of the black hole spin) or retrograde. Ergosphere. Rotating black holes are surrounded by a region of spacetime in which it is impossible to stand still, called the ergosphere. This is the result of a process known as frame-dragging; general relativity predicts that any rotating mass will tend to slightly "drag" along the spacetime immediately surrounding it. Any object near the rotating mass will tend to start moving in the direction of rotation. For a rotating black hole, this effect is so strong near the event horizon that an object would have to move faster than the speed of light in the opposite direction to just stand still. The ergosphere of a black hole is a volume bounded by the black hole's event horizon and the "ergosurface", which coincides with the event horizon at the poles but is at a much greater distance around the equator. Objects and radiation can escape normally from the ergosphere. Through the Penrose process, objects can emerge from the ergosphere with more energy than they entered with. The extra energy is taken from the rotational energy of the black hole. Thereby the rotation of the black hole slows down. A variation of the Penrose process in the presence of strong magnetic fields, the Blandford–Znajek process is considered a likely mechanism for the enormous luminosity and relativistic jets of quasars and other active galactic nuclei. Innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO). In Newtonian gravity, test particles can stably orbit at arbitrary distances from a central object. In general relativity, however, there exists an innermost stable circular orbit (often called the ISCO), for which any infinitesimal inward perturbations to a circular orbit will lead to spiraling into the black hole, and any outward perturbations will, depending on the energy, result in spiraling in, stably orbiting between apastron and periastron, or escaping to infinity. The location of the ISCO depends on the spin of the black hole, in the case of a Schwarzschild black hole (spin zero) is: formula_8 and decreases with increasing black hole spin for particles orbiting in the same direction as the spin. Plunging region. The final observable region of spacetime around a black hole is called the plunging region. In this area it is no longer possible for matter to follow circular orbits or to stop a final descent into the black hole. Instead it will rapidly plunge toward the black hole close to the speed of light. Formation and evolution. Given the bizarre character of black holes, it was long questioned whether such objects could actually exist in nature or whether they were merely pathological solutions to Einstein's equations. Einstein himself wrongly thought black holes would not form, because he held that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilise their motion at some radius. This led the general relativity community to dismiss all results to the contrary for many years. However, a minority of relativists continued to contend that black holes were physical objects, and by the end of the 1960s, they had persuaded the majority of researchers in the field that there is no obstacle to the formation of an event horizon. Penrose demonstrated that once an event horizon forms, general relativity without quantum mechanics requires that a singularity will form within. Shortly afterwards, Hawking showed that many cosmological solutions that describe the Big Bang have singularities without scalar fields or other exotic matter. The Kerr solution, the no-hair theorem, and the laws of black hole thermodynamics showed that the physical properties of black holes were simple and comprehensible, making them respectable subjects for research. Conventional black holes are formed by gravitational collapse of heavy objects such as stars, but they can also in theory be formed by other processes. Gravitational collapse. Gravitational collapse occurs when an object's internal pressure is insufficient to resist the object's own gravity. For stars this usually occurs either because a star has too little "fuel" left to maintain its temperature through stellar nucleosynthesis, or because a star that would have been stable receives extra matter in a way that does not raise its core temperature. In either case the star's temperature is no longer high enough to prevent it from collapsing under its own weight. The collapse may be stopped by the degeneracy pressure of the star's constituents, allowing the condensation of matter into an exotic denser state. The result is one of the various types of compact star. Which type forms depends on the mass of the remnant of the original star left if the outer layers have been blown away (for example, in a Type II supernova). The mass of the remnant, the collapsed object that survives the explosion, can be substantially less than that of the original star. Remnants exceeding are produced by stars that were over before the collapse. If the mass of the remnant exceeds about (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit), either because the original star was very heavy or because the remnant collected additional mass through accretion of matter, even the degeneracy pressure of neutrons is insufficient to stop the collapse. No known mechanism (except possibly quark degeneracy pressure) is powerful enough to stop the implosion and the object will inevitably collapse to form a black hole. The gravitational collapse of heavy stars is assumed to be responsible for the formation of stellar mass black holes. Star formation in the early universe may have resulted in very massive stars, which upon their collapse would have produced black holes of up to . These black holes could be the seeds of the supermassive black holes found in the centres of most galaxies. It has further been suggested that massive black holes with typical masses of ~ could have formed from the direct collapse of gas clouds in the young universe. These massive objects have been proposed as the seeds that eventually formed the earliest quasars observed already at redshift formula_9. Some candidates for such objects have been found in observations of the young universe. While most of the energy released during gravitational collapse is emitted very quickly, an outside observer does not actually see the end of this process. Even though the collapse takes a finite amount of time from the reference frame of infalling matter, a distant observer would see the infalling material slow and halt just above the event horizon, due to gravitational time dilation. Light from the collapsing material takes longer and longer to reach the observer, with the light emitted just before the event horizon forms delayed an infinite amount of time. Thus the external observer never sees the formation of the event horizon; instead, the collapsing material seems to become dimmer and increasingly red-shifted, eventually fading away. Primordial black holes and the Big Bang. Gravitational collapse requires great density. In the current epoch of the universe these high densities are found only in stars, but in the early universe shortly after the Big Bang densities were much greater, possibly allowing for the creation of black holes. High density alone is not enough to allow black hole formation since a uniform mass distribution will not allow the mass to bunch up. In order for primordial black holes to have formed in such a dense medium, there must have been initial density perturbations that could then grow under their own gravity. Different models for the early universe vary widely in their predictions of the scale of these fluctuations. Various models predict the creation of primordial black holes ranging in size from a Planck mass (formula_10 ≈ ≈ ) to hundreds of thousands of solar masses. Despite the early universe being extremely dense, it did not re-collapse into a black hole during the Big Bang, since the expansion rate was greater than the attraction. Following inflation theory, general relativity predicts that the gravitational field slows the expansion of the universe.The negative pressure overcomes the positive energy density to produce a net repulsive gravitational field. Models for the gravitational collapse of objects of relatively constant size, such as stars, do not necessarily apply in the same way to rapidly expanding space such as the Big Bang. High-energy collisions. Gravitational collapse is not the only process that could create black holes. In principle, black holes could be formed in high-energy collisions that achieve sufficient density. As of 2002, no such events have been detected, either directly or indirectly as a deficiency of the mass balance in particle accelerator experiments. This suggests that there must be a lower limit for the mass of black holes. Theoretically, this boundary is expected to lie around the Planck mass, where quantum effects are expected to invalidate the predictions of general relativity. This would put the creation of black holes firmly out of reach of any high-energy process occurring on or near the Earth. However, certain developments in quantum gravity suggest that the minimum black hole mass could be much lower: some braneworld scenarios for example put the boundary as low as . This would make it conceivable for micro black holes to be created in the high-energy collisions that occur when cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, or possibly in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These theories are very speculative, and the creation of black holes in these processes is deemed unlikely by many specialists. Even if micro black holes could be formed, it is expected that they would evaporate in about 10 seconds, posing no threat to the Earth. Growth. Once a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing additional matter. Any black hole will continually absorb gas and interstellar dust from its surroundings. This growth process is one possible way through which some supermassive black holes may have been formed, although the formation of supermassive black holes is still an open field of research. A similar process has been suggested for the formation of intermediate-mass black holes found in globular clusters. Black holes can also merge with other objects such as stars or even other black holes. This is thought to have been important, especially in the early growth of supermassive black holes, which could have formed from the aggregation of many smaller objects. The process has also been proposed as the origin of some intermediate-mass black holes. Evaporation. In 1974, Hawking predicted that black holes are not entirely black but emit small amounts of thermal radiation at a temperature "ħc"/(8"πGM""k"); this effect has become known as Hawking radiation. By applying quantum field theory to a static black hole background, he determined that a black hole should emit particles that display a perfect black body spectrum. Since Hawking's publication, many others have verified the result through various approaches. If Hawking's theory of black hole radiation is correct, then black holes are expected to shrink and evaporate over time as they lose mass by the emission of photons and other particles. The temperature of this thermal spectrum (Hawking temperature) is proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole, which, for a Schwarzschild black hole, is inversely proportional to the mass. Hence, large black holes emit less radiation than small black holes. A stellar black hole of has a Hawking temperature of 62 nanokelvins. This is far less than the 2.7 K temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Stellar-mass or larger black holes receive more mass from the cosmic microwave background than they emit through Hawking radiation and thus will grow instead of shrinking. To have a Hawking temperature larger than 2.7 K (and be able to evaporate), a black hole would need a mass less than the Moon. Such a black hole would have a diameter of less than a tenth of a millimetre. If a black hole is very small, the radiation effects are expected to become very strong. A black hole with the mass of a car would have a diameter of about 10 m and take a nanosecond to evaporate, during which time it would briefly have a luminosity of more than 200 times that of the Sun. Lower-mass black holes are expected to evaporate even faster; for example, a black hole of mass 1 TeV/"c" would take less than 10 seconds to evaporate completely. For such a small black hole, quantum gravity effects are expected to play an important role and could hypothetically make such a small black hole stable, although current developments in quantum gravity do not indicate this is the case. The Hawking radiation for an astrophysical black hole is predicted to be very weak and would thus be exceedingly difficult to detect from Earth. A possible exception, however, is the burst of gamma rays emitted in the last stage of the evaporation of primordial black holes. Searches for such flashes have proven unsuccessful and provide stringent limits on the possibility of existence of low mass primordial black holes. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008 will continue the search for these flashes. If black holes evaporate via Hawking radiation, a solar mass black hole will evaporate (beginning once the temperature of the cosmic microwave background drops below that of the black hole) over a period of 10 years. A supermassive black hole with a mass of will evaporate in around 2×10 years. During the collapse of a supercluster of galaxies, supermassive black holes are predicted to grow to perhaps . Even these would evaporate over a timescale of up to 10 years. Observational evidence. By nature, black holes do not themselves emit any electromagnetic radiation other than the hypothetical Hawking radiation, so astrophysicists searching for black holes must generally rely on indirect observations. For example, a black hole's existence can sometimes be inferred by observing its gravitational influence on its surroundings. Direct interferometry. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is an active program that directly observes the immediate environment of black holes' event horizons, such as the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. In April 2017, EHT began observing the black hole at the centre of Messier 87. "In all, eight radio observatories on six mountains and four continents observed the galaxy in Virgo on and off for 10 days in April 2017" to provide the data yielding the image in April 2019. After two years of data processing, EHT released its first image of a black hole, at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy. What is visible is not the black hole—which shows as black because of the loss of all light within this dark region. Instead, it is the gases at the edge of the event horizon, displayed as orange or red, that define the black hole. On 12 May 2022, the EHT released the first image of Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. The published image displayed the same ring-like structure and "shadow" seen in the M87* black hole. The boundary of the shadow or area of less brightness matches the predicted gravitationally lensed photon orbits. The image was created using the same techniques as for the M87 black hole. The imaging process for Sagittarius A, which is more than a thousand times smaller and less massive than M87, was significantly more complex because of the instability of its surroundings. The image of Sagittarius A* was partially blurred by turbulent plasma on the way to the galactic centre, an effect which prevents resolution of the image at longer wavelengths. The brightening of this material in the 'bottom' half of the processed EHT image is thought to be caused by Doppler beaming, whereby material approaching the viewer at relativistic speeds is perceived as brighter than material moving away. In the case of a black hole, this phenomenon implies that the visible material is rotating at relativistic speeds (>), the only speeds at which it is possible to centrifugally balance the immense gravitational attraction of the singularity, and thereby remain in orbit above the event horizon. This configuration of bright material implies that the EHT observed M87* from a perspective catching the black hole's accretion disc nearly edge-on, as the whole system rotated clockwise. The extreme gravitational lensing associated with black holes produces the illusion of a perspective that sees the accretion disc from above. In reality, most of the ring in the EHT image was created when the light emitted by the far side of the accretion disc bent around the black hole's gravity well and escaped, meaning that most of the possible perspectives on M87* can see the entire disc, even that directly behind the "shadow". In 2015, the EHT detected magnetic fields just outside the event horizon of Sagittarius A* and even discerned some of their properties. The field lines that pass through the accretion disc were a complex mixture of ordered and tangled. Theoretical studies of black holes had predicted the existence of magnetic fields. In April 2023, an image of the shadow of the Messier 87 black hole and the related high-energy jet, viewed together for the first time, was presented. Detection of gravitational waves from merging black holes. On 14 September 2015, the LIGO gravitational wave observatory made the first-ever successful direct observation of gravitational waves. The signal was consistent with theoretical predictions for the gravitational waves produced by the merger of two black holes: one with about 36 solar masses, and the other around 29 solar masses. This observation provides the most concrete evidence for the existence of black holes to date. For instance, the gravitational wave signal suggests that the separation of the two objects before the merger was just 350 km, or roughly four times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to the inferred masses. The objects must therefore have been extremely compact, leaving black holes as the most plausible interpretation. More importantly, the signal observed by LIGO also included the start of the post-merger ringdown, the signal produced as the newly formed compact object settles down to a stationary state. Arguably, the ringdown is the most direct way of observing a black hole. From the LIGO signal, it is possible to extract the frequency and damping time of the dominant mode of the ringdown. From these, it is possible to infer the mass and angular momentum of the final object, which match independent predictions from numerical simulations of the merger. The frequency and decay time of the dominant mode are determined by the geometry of the photon sphere. Hence, observation of this mode confirms the presence of a photon sphere; however, it cannot exclude possible exotic alternatives to black holes that are compact enough to have a photon sphere. The observation also provides the first observational evidence for the existence of stellar-mass black hole binaries. Furthermore, it is the first observational evidence of stellar-mass black holes weighing 25 solar masses or more. Since then, many more gravitational wave events have been observed. Stars orbiting Sagittarius A. The proper motions of stars near the centre of our own Milky Way provide strong observational evidence that these stars are orbiting a supermassive black hole. Since 1995, astronomers have tracked the motions of 90 stars orbiting an invisible object coincident with the radio source Sagittarius A. By fitting their motions to Keplerian orbits, the astronomers were able to infer, in 1998, that a object must be contained in a volume with a radius of 0.02 light-years to cause the motions of those stars. Since then, one of the stars—called S2—has completed a full orbit. From the orbital data, astronomers were able to refine the calculations of the mass to and a radius of less than 0.002 light-years for the object causing the orbital motion of those stars. The upper limit on the object's size is still too large to test whether it is smaller than its Schwarzschild radius. Nevertheless, these observations strongly suggest that the central object is a supermassive black hole as there are no other plausible scenarios for confining so much invisible mass into such a small volume. Additionally, there is some observational evidence that this object might possess an event horizon, a feature unique to black holes. Accretion of matter. Due to conservation of angular momentum, gas falling into the gravitational well created by a massive object will typically form a disk-like structure around the object. Artists' impressions such as the accompanying representation of a black hole with corona commonly depict the black hole as if it were a flat-space body hiding the part of the disk just behind it, but in reality gravitational lensing would greatly distort the image of the accretion disk. Within such a disk, friction would cause angular momentum to be transported outward, allowing matter to fall farther inward, thus releasing potential energy and increasing the temperature of the gas. When the accreting object is a neutron star or a black hole, the gas in the inner accretion disk orbits at very high speeds because of its proximity to the compact object. The resulting friction is so significant that it heats the inner disk to temperatures at which it emits vast amounts of electromagnetic radiation (mainly X-rays). These bright X-ray sources may be detected by telescopes. This process of accretion is one of the most efficient energy-producing processes known. Up to 40% of the rest mass of the accreted material can be emitted as radiation. In nuclear fusion only about 0.7% of the rest mass will be emitted as energy. In many cases, accretion disks are accompanied by relativistic jets that are emitted along the poles, which carry away much of the energy. The mechanism for the creation of these jets is currently not well understood, in part due to insufficient data. As such, many of the universe's more energetic phenomena have been attributed to the accretion of matter on black holes. In particular, active galactic nuclei and quasars are believed to be the accretion disks of supermassive black holes. Similarly, X-ray binaries are generally accepted to be binary star systems in which one of the two stars is a compact object accreting matter from its companion. It has also been suggested that some ultraluminous X-ray sources may be the accretion disks of intermediate-mass black holes. Stars have been observed to get torn apart by tidal forces in the immediate vicinity of supermassive black holes in galaxy nuclei, in what is known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). Some of the material from the disrupted star forms an accretion disk around the black hole, which emits observable electromagnetic radiation. In November 2011 the first direct observation of a quasar accretion disk around a supermassive black hole was reported. X-ray binaries. X-ray binaries are binary star systems that emit a majority of their radiation in the X-ray part of the spectrum. These X-ray emissions are generally thought to result when one of the stars (compact object) accretes matter from another (regular) star. The presence of an ordinary star in such a system provides an opportunity for studying the central object and to determine if it might be a black hole. If such a system emits signals that can be directly traced back to the compact object, it cannot be a black hole. The absence of such a signal does, however, not exclude the possibility that the compact object is a neutron star. By studying the companion star it is often possible to obtain the orbital parameters of the system and to obtain an estimate for the mass of the compact object. If this is much larger than the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (the maximum mass a star can have without collapsing) then the object cannot be a neutron star and is generally expected to be a black hole. The first strong candidate for a black hole, Cygnus X-1, was discovered in this way by Charles Thomas Bolton, Louise Webster, and Paul Murdin in 1972. Some doubt remained, due to the uncertainties that result from the companion star being much heavier than the candidate black hole. Currently, better candidates for black holes are found in a class of X-ray binaries called soft X-ray transients. In this class of system, the companion star is of relatively low mass allowing for more accurate estimates of the black hole mass. These systems actively emit X-rays for only several months once every 10–50 years. During the period of low X-ray emission, called quiescence, the accretion disk is extremely faint, allowing detailed observation of the companion star during this period. One of the best such candidates is V404 Cygni. Quasi-periodic oscillations. The X-ray emissions from accretion disks sometimes flicker at certain frequencies. These signals are called quasi-periodic oscillations and are thought to be caused by material moving along the inner edge of the accretion disk (the innermost stable circular orbit). As such their frequency is linked to the mass of the compact object. They can thus be used as an alternative way to determine the mass of candidate black holes. Galactic nuclei. Astronomers use the term "active galaxy" to describe galaxies with unusual characteristics, such as unusual spectral line emission and very strong radio emission. Theoretical and observational studies have shown that the activity in these active galactic nuclei (AGN) may be explained by the presence of supermassive black holes, which can be millions of times more massive than stellar ones. The models of these AGN consist of a central black hole that may be millions or billions of times more massive than the Sun; a disk of interstellar gas and dust called an accretion disk; and two jets perpendicular to the accretion disk. Although supermassive black holes are expected to be found in most AGN, only some galaxies' nuclei have been more carefully studied in attempts to both identify and measure the actual masses of the central supermassive black hole candidates. Some of the most notable galaxies with supermassive black hole candidates include the Andromeda Galaxy, M32, M87, NGC 3115, NGC 3377, NGC 4258, NGC 4889, NGC 1277, OJ 287, APM 08279+5255 and the Sombrero Galaxy. It is now widely accepted that the centre of nearly every galaxy, not just active ones, contains a supermassive black hole. The close observational correlation between the mass of this hole and the velocity dispersion of the host galaxy's bulge, known as the M–sigma relation, strongly suggests a connection between the formation of the black hole and that of the galaxy itself. Microlensing. Another way the black hole nature of an object may be tested is through observation of effects caused by a strong gravitational field in their vicinity. One such effect is gravitational lensing: The deformation of spacetime around a massive object causes light rays to be deflected, such as light passing through an optic lens. Observations have been made of weak gravitational lensing, in which light rays are deflected by only a few arcseconds. Microlensing occurs when the sources are unresolved and the observer sees a small brightening. The turn of the millennium saw the first 3 candidate detections of black holes in this way, and in January 2022, astronomers reported the first confirmed detection of a microlensing event from an isolated black hole. Another possibility for observing gravitational lensing by a black hole would be to observe stars orbiting the black hole. There are several candidates for such an observation in orbit around Sagittarius A*. Alternatives. The evidence for stellar black holes strongly relies on the existence of an upper limit for the mass of a neutron star. The size of this limit heavily depends on the assumptions made about the properties of dense matter. New exotic phases of matter could push up this bound. A phase of free quarks at high density might allow the existence of dense quark stars, and some supersymmetric models predict the existence of Q stars. Some extensions of the standard model posit the existence of preons as fundamental building blocks of quarks and leptons, which could hypothetically form preon stars. These hypothetical models could potentially explain a number of observations of stellar black hole candidates. However, it can be shown from arguments in general relativity that any such object will have a maximum mass. Since the average density of a black hole inside its Schwarzschild radius is inversely proportional to the square of its mass, supermassive black holes are much less dense than stellar black holes. The average density of a black hole is comparable to that of water. Consequently, the physics of matter forming a supermassive black hole is much better understood and the possible alternative explanations for supermassive black hole observations are much more mundane. For example, a supermassive black hole could be modelled by a large cluster of very dark objects. However, such alternatives are typically not stable enough to explain the supermassive black hole candidates. The evidence for the existence of stellar and supermassive black holes implies that in order for black holes not to form, general relativity must fail as a theory of gravity, perhaps due to the onset of quantum mechanical corrections. A much anticipated feature of a theory of quantum gravity is that it will not feature singularities or event horizons and thus black holes would not be real artefacts. For example, in the fuzzball model based on string theory, the individual states of a black hole solution do not generally have an event horizon or singularity, but for a classical/semiclassical observer the statistical average of such states appears just as an ordinary black hole as deduced from general relativity. A few theoretical objects have been conjectured to match observations of astronomical black hole candidates identically or near-identically, but which function via a different mechanism. These include the gravastar, the black star, related nestar and the dark-energy star. Open questions. Entropy and thermodynamics. In 1971, Hawking showed under general conditions that the total area of the event horizons of any collection of classical black holes can never decrease, even if they collide and merge. This result, now known as the second law of black hole mechanics, is remarkably similar to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease. As with classical objects at absolute zero temperature, it was assumed that black holes had zero entropy. If this were the case, the second law of thermodynamics would be violated by entropy-laden matter entering a black hole, resulting in a decrease in the total entropy of the universe. Therefore, Bekenstein proposed that a black hole should have an entropy, and that it should be proportional to its horizon area. The link with the laws of thermodynamics was further strengthened by Hawking's discovery in 1974 that quantum field theory predicts that a black hole radiates blackbody radiation at a constant temperature. This seemingly causes a violation of the second law of black hole mechanics, since the radiation will carry away energy from the black hole causing it to shrink. The radiation also carries away entropy, and it can be proven under general assumptions that the sum of the entropy of the matter surrounding a black hole and one quarter of the area of the horizon as measured in Planck units is in fact always increasing. This allows the formulation of the first law of black hole mechanics as an analogue of the first law of thermodynamics, with the mass acting as energy, the surface gravity as temperature and the area as entropy. One puzzling feature is that the entropy of a black hole scales with its area rather than with its volume, since entropy is normally an extensive quantity that scales linearly with the volume of the system. This odd property led Gerard 't Hooft and Leonard Susskind to propose the holographic principle, which suggests that anything that happens in a volume of spacetime can be described by data on the boundary of that volume. Although general relativity can be used to perform a semiclassical calculation of black hole entropy, this situation is theoretically unsatisfying. In statistical mechanics, entropy is understood as counting the number of microscopic configurations of a system that have the same macroscopic qualities, such as mass, charge, pressure, etc. Without a satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, one cannot perform such a computation for black holes. Some progress has been made in various approaches to quantum gravity. In 1995, Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa showed that counting the microstates of a specific supersymmetric black hole in string theory reproduced the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy. Since then, similar results have been reported for different black holes both in string theory and in other approaches to quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity. Information loss paradox. Because a black hole has only a few internal parameters, most of the information about the matter that went into forming the black hole is lost. Regardless of the type of matter which goes into a black hole, it appears that only information concerning the total mass, charge, and angular momentum are conserved. As long as black holes were thought to persist forever this information loss is not that problematic, as the information can be thought of as existing inside the black hole, inaccessible from the outside, but represented on the event horizon in accordance with the holographic principle. However, black holes slowly evaporate by emitting Hawking radiation. This radiation does not appear to carry any additional information about the matter that formed the black hole, meaning that this information appears to be gone forever. The question whether information is truly lost in black holes (the black hole information paradox) has divided the theoretical physics community. In quantum mechanics, loss of information corresponds to the violation of a property called unitarity, and it has been argued that loss of unitarity would also imply violation of conservation of energy, though this has also been disputed. Over recent years evidence has been building that indeed information and unitarity are preserved in a full quantum gravitational treatment of the problem. One attempt to resolve the black hole information paradox is known as black hole complementarity. In 2012, the "firewall paradox" was introduced with the goal of demonstrating that black hole complementarity fails to solve the information paradox. According to quantum field theory in curved spacetime, a single emission of Hawking radiation involves two mutually entangled particles. The outgoing particle escapes and is emitted as a quantum of Hawking radiation; the infalling particle is swallowed by the black hole. Assume a black hole formed a finite time in the past and will fully evaporate away in some finite time in the future. Then, it will emit only a finite amount of information encoded within its Hawking radiation. According to research by physicists like Don Page and Leonard Susskind, there will eventually be a time by which an outgoing particle must be entangled with all the Hawking radiation the black hole has previously emitted. This seemingly creates a paradox: a principle called "monogamy of entanglement" requires that, like any quantum system, the outgoing particle cannot be fully entangled with two other systems at the same time; yet here the outgoing particle appears to be entangled both with the infalling particle and, independently, with past Hawking radiation. In order to resolve this contradiction, physicists may eventually be forced to give up one of three time-tested principles: Einstein's equivalence principle, unitarity, or local quantum field theory. One possible solution, which violates the equivalence principle, is that a "firewall" destroys incoming particles at the event horizon. In general, which—if any—of these assumptions should be abandoned remains a topic of debate. In science fiction. Christopher Nolan's 2014 science fiction epic "Interstellar" features a black hole known as Gargantua, which is the central object of a planetary system in a distant galaxy. Humanity accessed this system via a wormhole in the outer solar system, near Saturn. External links. Videos. [[Category:Black holes\| ]] [[Category:Articles containing video clips]] [[Category:Concepts in astronomy]] [[Category:Galaxies]] [[Category:Theory of relativity]] [[Category:Gravitational singularities]]
4651	28481209	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4651	Beta decay	In nuclear physics, beta decay (β-decay) is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits a beta particle (fast energetic electron or positron), transforming into an isobar of that nuclide. For example, beta decay of a neutron transforms it into a proton by the emission of an electron accompanied by an antineutrino; or, conversely a proton is converted into a neutron by the emission of a positron with a neutrino in what is called "positron emission". Neither the beta particle nor its associated (anti-)neutrino exist within the nucleus prior to beta decay, but are created in the decay process. By this process, unstable atoms obtain a more stable ratio of protons to neutrons. The probability of a nuclide decaying due to beta and other forms of decay is determined by its nuclear binding energy. The binding energies of all existing nuclides form what is called the nuclear band or valley of stability. For either electron or positron emission to be energetically possible, the energy release (see below) or "Q" value must be positive. Beta decay is a consequence of the weak force, which is characterized by relatively long decay times. Nucleons are composed of up quarks and down quarks, and the weak force allows a quark to change its flavour by means of a virtual W boson leading to creation of an electron/antineutrino or positron/neutrino pair. For example, a neutron, composed of two down quarks and an up quark, decays to a proton composed of a down quark and two up quarks. Electron capture is sometimes included as a type of beta decay, because the basic nuclear process, mediated by the weak force, is the same. In electron capture, an inner atomic electron is captured by a proton in the nucleus, transforming it into a neutron, and an electron neutrino is released. Description. The two types of beta decay are known as "beta minus" and "beta plus". In beta minus (β−) decay, a neutron is converted to a proton, and the process creates an electron and an electron antineutrino; while in beta plus (β+) decay, a proton is converted to a neutron and the process creates a positron and an electron neutrino. β+ decay is also known as positron emission. Beta decay conserves a quantum number known as the lepton number, or the number of electrons and their associated neutrinos (other leptons are the muon and tau particles). These particles have lepton number +1, while their antiparticles have lepton number −1. Since a proton or neutron has lepton number zero, β+ decay (a positron, or antielectron) must be accompanied with an electron neutrino, while β− decay (an electron) must be accompanied by an electron antineutrino. An example of electron emission (β− decay) is the decay of carbon-14 into nitrogen-14 with a half-life of about 5,700 years: In this form of decay, the original element becomes a new chemical element in a process known as nuclear transmutation. This new element has an unchanged mass number , but an atomic number that is increased by one. As in all nuclear decays, the decaying element (in this case ) is known as the "parent nuclide" while the resulting element (in this case ) is known as the "daughter nuclide". Another example is the decay of hydrogen-3 (tritium) into helium-3 with a half-life of about 12.3 years: An example of positron emission (β+ decay) is the decay of magnesium-23 into sodium-23 with a half-life of about 11.3 s: β+ decay also results in nuclear transmutation, with the daughter element having an atomic number that is decreased by one. The beta spectrum, or distribution of energy values for the beta particles, is continuous. The total energy of the decay process is divided between the electron, the antineutrino, and the recoiling nuclide. In the figure to the right, an example of an electron with 0.40 MeV energy from the beta decay of 210Bi is shown. In this example, the total decay energy is 1.16 MeV, so the antineutrino has the remaining energy: . An electron at the far right of the curve would have the maximum possible kinetic energy, leaving the energy of the neutrino to be only its small rest mass. History. Discovery and initial characterization. Radioactivity was discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel in uranium, and subsequently observed by Marie and Pierre Curie in thorium and in the newly discovered elements polonium and radium. In 1899, Ernest Rutherford separated radioactive emissions into two types: alpha and beta (now beta minus), based on penetration of objects and ability to cause ionization. Alpha rays could be stopped by thin sheets of paper or aluminium, whereas beta rays could penetrate several millimetres of aluminium. In 1900, Paul Villard identified a still more penetrating type of radiation, which Rutherford identified as a fundamentally new type in 1903 and termed gamma rays. Alpha, beta, and gamma are the first three letters of the Greek alphabet. In 1900, Becquerel measured the mass-to-charge ratio () for beta particles by the method of J.J. Thomson used to study cathode rays and identify the electron. He found that for a beta particle is the same as for Thomson's electron, and therefore suggested that the beta particle is in fact an electron. In 1901, Rutherford and Frederick Soddy showed that alpha and beta radioactivity involves the transmutation of atoms into atoms of other chemical elements. In 1913, after the products of more radioactive decays were known, Soddy and Kazimierz Fajans independently proposed their radioactive displacement law, which states that beta (i.e., ) emission from one element produces another element one place to the right in the periodic table, while alpha emission produces an element two places to the left. Neutrinos. The study of beta decay provided the first physical evidence for the existence of the neutrino. In both alpha and gamma decay, the resulting alpha or gamma particle has a narrow energy distribution, since the particle carries the energy from the difference between the initial and final nuclear states. However, the kinetic energy distribution, or spectrum, of beta particles measured by Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn in 1911 and by Jean Danysz in 1913 showed multiple lines on a diffuse background. These measurements offered the first hint that beta particles have a continuous spectrum. In 1914, James Chadwick used a magnetic spectrometer with one of Hans Geiger's new counters to make more accurate measurements which showed that the spectrum was continuous. The results, which appeared to be in contradiction to the law of conservation of energy, were validated by means of calorimetric measurements in 1929 by Lise Meitner and Wilhelm Orthmann. If beta decay were simply electron emission as assumed at the time, then the energy of the emitted electron should have a particular, well-defined value. For beta decay, however, the observed broad distribution of energies suggested that energy is lost in the beta decay process. This spectrum was puzzling for many years. A second problem is related to the conservation of angular momentum. Molecular band spectra showed that the nuclear spin of nitrogen-14 is 1 (i.e., equal to the reduced Planck constant) and more generally that the spin is integral for nuclei of even mass number and half-integral for nuclei of odd mass number. This was later explained by the proton-neutron model of the nucleus. Beta decay leaves the mass number unchanged, so the change of nuclear spin must be an integer. However, the electron spin is 1/2, hence angular momentum would not be conserved if beta decay were simply electron emission. From 1920 to 1927, Charles Drummond Ellis (along with Chadwick and colleagues) further established that the beta decay spectrum is continuous. In 1933, Ellis and Nevill Mott obtained strong evidence that the beta spectrum has an effective upper bound in energy. Niels Bohr had suggested that the beta spectrum could be explained if conservation of energy was true only in a statistical sense, thus this principle might be violated in any given decay. However, the upper bound in beta energies determined by Ellis and Mott ruled out that notion. Now, the problem of how to account for the variability of energy in known beta decay products, as well as for conservation of momentum and angular momentum in the process, became acute. In a famous letter written in 1930, Wolfgang Pauli attempted to resolve the beta-particle energy conundrum by suggesting that, in addition to electrons and protons, atomic nuclei also contained an extremely light neutral particle, which he called the neutron. He suggested that this "neutron" was also emitted during beta decay (thus accounting for the known missing energy, momentum, and angular momentum), but it had simply not yet been observed. In 1931, Enrico Fermi renamed Pauli's "neutron" the "neutrino" ('little neutral one' in Italian). In 1933, Fermi published his landmark theory for beta decay, where he applied the principles of quantum mechanics to matter particles, supposing that they can be created and annihilated, just as the light quanta in atomic transitions. Thus, according to Fermi, neutrinos are created in the beta-decay process, rather than contained in the nucleus; the same happens to electrons. The neutrino interaction with matter was so weak that detecting it proved a severe experimental challenge. Further indirect evidence of the existence of the neutrino was obtained by observing the recoil of nuclei that emitted such a particle after absorbing an electron. Neutrinos were finally detected directly in 1956 by the American physicists Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines in the Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment. The properties of neutrinos were (with a few minor modifications) as predicted by Pauli and Fermi. decay and electron capture. In 1934, Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie bombarded aluminium with alpha particles to effect the nuclear reaction + → + , and observed that the product isotope emits a positron identical to those found in cosmic rays (discovered by Carl David Anderson in 1932). This was the first example of decay (positron emission), which they termed artificial radioactivity since is a short-lived nuclide which does not exist in nature. In recognition of their discovery, the couple were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. The theory of electron capture was first discussed by Gian-Carlo Wick in a 1934 paper, and then developed by Hideki Yukawa and others. K-electron capture was first observed in 1937 by Luis Alvarez, in the nuclide 48V. Alvarez went on to study electron capture in 67Ga and other nuclides. Non-conservation of parity. In 1956, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang noticed that there was no evidence that parity was conserved in weak interactions, and so they postulated that this symmetry may not be preserved by the weak force. They sketched the design for an experiment for testing conservation of parity in the laboratory. Later that year, Chien-Shiung Wu and coworkers showed experimentally that an asymmetrical beta emission from proved that parity is not conserved in beta decay. This surprising result overturned long-held assumptions about parity and the weak force. In recognition of their theoretical work, Lee and Yang were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957. However Wu, who was female, was not awarded the Nobel prize. β− decay. In decay, the weak interaction converts an atomic nucleus into a nucleus with atomic number increased by one, while emitting an electron () and an electron antineutrino (). decay generally occurs in neutron-rich nuclei. The generic equation is: where and are the mass number and atomic number of the decaying nucleus, and X and X′ are the initial and final elements, respectively. Another example is when the free neutron () decays by decay into a proton (): At the fundamental level (as depicted in the Feynman diagram on the right), this is caused by the conversion of the negatively charged () down quark to the positively charged () up quark, which is promoted by a virtual boson; the boson subsequently decays into an electron and an electron antineutrino: β+ decay. In decay, or positron emission, the weak interaction converts an atomic nucleus into a nucleus with atomic number decreased by one, while emitting a positron () and an electron neutrino (). decay generally occurs in proton-rich nuclei. The generic equation is: This may be considered as the decay of a proton inside the nucleus to a neutron: p → n + + However, decay cannot occur in an isolated proton because it requires energy, due to the mass of the neutron being greater than the mass of the proton. decay can only happen inside nuclei when the daughter nucleus has a greater binding energy (and therefore a lower total energy) than the mother nucleus. The difference between these energies goes into the reaction of converting a proton into a neutron, a positron, and a neutrino and into the kinetic energy of these particles. This process is opposite to negative beta decay, in that the weak interaction converts a proton into a neutron by converting an up quark into a down quark resulting in the emission of a or the absorption of a . When a boson is emitted, it decays into a positron and an electron neutrino: Electron capture (K-capture/L-capture). In all cases where decay (positron emission) of a nucleus is allowed energetically, so too is electron capture allowed. This is a process during which a nucleus captures one of its atomic electrons, resulting in the emission of a neutrino: An example of electron capture is one of the decay modes of krypton-81 into bromine-81: All emitted neutrinos are of the same energy. In proton-rich nuclei where the energy difference between the initial and final states is less than 2, decay is not energetically possible, and electron capture is the sole decay mode. If the captured electron comes from the innermost shell of the atom, the K-shell, which has the highest probability to interact with the nucleus, the process is called K-capture. If it comes from the L-shell, the process is called L-capture, etc. Electron capture is a competing (simultaneous) decay process for all nuclei that can undergo β+ decay. The converse, however, is not true: electron capture is the "only" type of decay that is allowed in proton-rich nuclides that do not have sufficient energy to emit a positron and neutrino. Nuclear transmutation. If the proton and neutron are part of an atomic nucleus, the above described decay processes transmute one chemical element into another. For example: Beta decay does not change the number () of nucleons in the nucleus, but changes only its charge . Thus the set of all nuclides with the same can be introduced; these "isobaric" nuclides may turn into each other via beta decay. For a given there is one that is most stable. It is said to be beta stable, because it presents a local minimum of the mass excess: if such a nucleus has numbers, the neighbour nuclei and have higher mass excess and can beta decay into , but not vice versa. For all odd mass numbers , there is only one known beta-stable isobar. For even , there are up to three different beta-stable isobars experimentally known; for example, , , and are all beta-stable. There are about 350 known beta-decay stable nuclides. Competition of beta decay types. Usually unstable nuclides are clearly either "neutron rich" or "proton rich", with the former undergoing beta decay and the latter undergoing electron capture (or more rarely, due to the higher energy requirements, positron decay). However, in a few cases of odd-proton, odd-neutron radionuclides, it may be energetically favorable for the radionuclide to decay to an even-proton, even-neutron isobar either by undergoing beta-positive or beta-negative decay. Three types of beta decay in competition are illustrated by the single isotope (29 protons, 35 neutrons), which has a half-life of about 12.7 hours. This isotope has one unpaired proton and one unpaired neutron, so either the proton or the neutron can decay. This particular nuclide is almost equally likely to undergo proton decay (by positron emission, 18% or by electron capture, 43%; both forming ) or neutron decay (by electron emission, 39%; forming ). Stability of naturally occurring nuclides. Most naturally occurring nuclides on earth are beta stable. Nuclides that are not beta stable have half-lives ranging from under a second to periods of time significantly greater than the age of the universe. One common example of a long-lived isotope is the odd-proton odd-neutron nuclide , which undergoes all three types of beta decay (, and electron capture) with a half-life of . Conservation rules for beta decay. Baryon number is conserved. formula_1 where Beta decay just changes neutron to proton or, in the case of positive beta decay (electron capture) proton to neutron so the number of individual quarks doesn't change. It is only the baryon flavor that changes, here labelled as the isospin. Up and down quarks have total isospin formula_4 and isospin projections formula_5 All other quarks have . In general formula_6 Lepton number is conserved. formula_7 so all leptons have assigned a value of +1, antileptons −1, and non-leptonic particles 0. formula_8 Angular momentum. For allowed decays, the net orbital angular momentum is zero, hence only spin quantum numbers are considered. The electron and antineutrino are fermions, spin-1/2 objects, therefore they may couple to total formula_9 (parallel) or formula_10 (anti-parallel). For forbidden decays, orbital angular momentum must also be taken into consideration. Energy release. The value is defined as the total energy released in a given nuclear decay. In beta decay, is therefore also the sum of the kinetic energies of the emitted beta particle, neutrino, and recoiling nucleus. (Because of the large mass of the nucleus compared to that of the beta particle and neutrino, the kinetic energy of the recoiling nucleus can generally be neglected.) Beta particles can therefore be emitted with any kinetic energy ranging from 0 to . A typical is around 1 MeV, but can range from a few keV to a few tens of MeV. Since the rest mass of the electron is 511 keV, the most energetic beta particles are ultrarelativistic, with speeds very close to the speed of light. In the case of Re, the maximum speed of the beta particle is only 9.8% of the speed of light. The following table gives some examples: Tritium β− decay being used in the KATRIN experimental search for sterile neutrinos. β− decay. Consider the generic equation for beta decay The value for this decay is formula_11, where formula_12 is the mass of the nucleus of the atom, formula_13 is the mass of the electron, and formula_14 is the mass of the electron antineutrino. In other words, the total energy released is the mass energy of the initial nucleus, minus the mass energy of the final nucleus, electron, and antineutrino. The mass of the nucleus is related to the standard atomic mass by formula_15 That is, the total atomic mass is the mass of the nucleus, plus the mass of the electrons, minus the sum of all "electron" binding energies for the atom. This equation is rearranged to find formula_12, and formula_17 is found similarly. Substituting these nuclear masses into the -value equation, while neglecting the nearly zero antineutrino mass and the difference in electron binding energies, which is very small for high- atoms, we have formula_18 This energy is carried away as kinetic energy by the electron and antineutrino. Because the reaction will proceed only when the value is positive, β− decay can occur when the mass of atom is greater than the mass of atom . β+ decay. The equations for β+ decay are similar, with the generic equation giving formula_19 However, in this equation, the electron masses do not cancel, and we are left with formula_20 Because the reaction will proceed only when the value is positive, β+ decay can occur when the mass of atom exceeds that of by at least twice the mass of the electron. Electron capture. The analogous calculation for electron capture must take into account the binding energy of the electrons. This is because the atom will be left in an excited state after capturing the electron, and the binding energy of the captured innermost electron is significant. Using the generic equation for electron capture we have formula_21 which simplifies to formula_22 where is the binding energy of the captured electron. Because the binding energy of the electron is much less than the mass of the electron, nuclei that can undergo β+ decay can always also undergo electron capture, but the reverse is not true. Beta emission spectrum. Beta decay can be considered as a perturbation as described in quantum mechanics, and thus Fermi's Golden Rule can be applied. This leads to an expression for the kinetic energy spectrum of emitted betas as follows: formula_23 where is the kinetic energy, is a shape function that depends on the forbiddenness of the decay (it is constant for allowed decays), is the Fermi Function (see below) with "Z" the charge of the final-state nucleus, is the total energy, formula_24 is the momentum, and is the "Q" value of the decay. The kinetic energy of the emitted neutrino is given approximately by minus the kinetic energy of the beta. As an example, the beta decay spectrum of 210Bi (originally called RaE) is shown to the right. Fermi function. The Fermi function that appears in the beta spectrum formula accounts for the Coulomb attraction / repulsion between the emitted beta and the final state nucleus. Approximating the associated wavefunctions to be spherically symmetric, the Fermi function can be analytically calculated to be: formula_25 where is the final momentum, Γ the Gamma function, and (if is the fine-structure constant and the radius of the final state nucleus) , formula_26 (+ for electrons, − for positrons), and . For non-relativistic betas (), this expression can be approximated by: formula_27 Other approximations can be found in the literature. Kurie plot. A Kurie plot (also known as a Fermi–Kurie plot) is a graph used in studying beta decay developed by Franz N. D. Kurie, in which the square root of the number of beta particles whose momentum (or energy) lies within a certain narrow range, divided by the Fermi function, is plotted against beta-particle energy. It is a straight line for allowed transitions and some forbidden transitions, in accord with the Fermi beta-decay theory. The energy-axis (x-axis) intercept of a Kurie plot corresponds to the maximum energy imparted to the electron/positron (the decay's value). With a Kurie plot one can find the limit on the effective mass of a neutrino. Helicity (polarization) of neutrinos, electrons and positrons emitted in beta decay. After the discovery of parity non-conservation (see "§ History"), it was found that, in beta decay, electrons are emitted mostly with negative helicity, i.e., they move, naively speaking, like left-handed screws driven into a material (they have negative longitudinal polarization). Conversely, positrons have mostly positive helicity, i.e., they move like right-handed screws. Neutrinos (emitted in positron decay) have negative helicity, while antineutrinos (emitted in electron decay) have positive helicity. The higher the energy of the particles, the higher their polarization. Types of beta decay transitions. Beta decays can be classified according to the angular momentum ( value) and total spin ( value) of the emitted radiation. Since total angular momentum must be conserved, including orbital and spin angular momentum, beta decay occurs by a variety of quantum state transitions to various nuclear angular momentum or spin states, known as "Fermi" or "Gamow–Teller" transitions. When beta decay particles carry no angular momentum (), the decay is referred to as "allowed", otherwise it is "forbidden". Other decay modes, which are rare, are known as bound state decay and double beta decay. Fermi transitions. A Fermi transition is a beta decay in which the spins of the emitted electron (positron) and anti-neutrino (neutrino) couple to total spin , leading to an angular momentum change formula_28 between the initial and final states of the nucleus (assuming an allowed transition). In the non-relativistic limit, the nuclear part of the operator for a Fermi transition is given by formula_29 with formula_30 the weak vector coupling constant, formula_31 the isospin raising and lowering operators, and formula_32 running over all protons and neutrons in the nucleus. Gamow–Teller transitions. A Gamow–Teller transition is a beta decay in which the spins of the emitted electron (positron) and anti-neutrino (neutrino) couple to total spin , leading to an angular momentum change formula_33 between the initial and final states of the nucleus (assuming an allowed transition). In this case, the nuclear part of the operator is given by formula_34 with formula_35 the weak axial-vector coupling constant, and formula_36 the spin Pauli matrices, which can produce a spin-flip in the decaying nucleon. Forbidden transitions. When , the decay is referred to as "forbidden". Nuclear selection rules require high values to be accompanied by changes in nuclear spin () and parity (). The selection rules for the th forbidden transitions are: formula_37 where corresponds to no parity change or parity change, respectively. The special case of a transition between isobaric analogue states, where the structure of the final state is very similar to the structure of the initial state, is referred to as "superallowed" for beta decay, and proceeds very quickly. The following table lists the Δ and Δ values for the first few values of : Rare decay modes. Bound-state β decay. A very small minority of free neutron decays (about four per million) are "two-body decays": the proton, electron and antineutrino are produced, but the electron fails to gain the 13.6 eV energy necessary to escape the proton, and therefore simply remains bound to it, as a neutral hydrogen atom. In this type of beta decay, in essence all of the neutron decay energy is carried off by the antineutrino. For fully ionized atoms (bare nuclei), it is possible in likewise manner for electrons to fail to escape the atom, and to be emitted from the nucleus into low-lying atomic bound states (orbitals). This cannot occur for neutral atoms with low-lying bound states which are already filled by electrons. Bound-state β decays were predicted by Daudel, Jean, and Lecoin in 1947, and the phenomenon in fully ionized atoms was first observed for Dy in 1992 by Jung et al. of the Darmstadt Heavy-Ion Research Center. Though neutral Dy is stable, fully ionized Dy undergoes β decay into the K and L shells with a half-life of 47 days. The resulting nucleus – Ho – is stable only in this almost fully ionized state and will decay via electron capture into Dy in the neutral state. Likewise, while being stable in the neutral state, the fully ionized Tl undergoes bound-state β decay to Pb with a half-life of days. The half-lives of neutral Ho and Pb are respectively 4570 years and years. In addition, it is estimated that β decay is energetically impossible for natural atoms but theoretically possible when fully ionized also for 193Ir, 194Au, 202Tl, 215At, 243Am, and 246Bk. Another possibility is that a fully ionized atom undergoes greatly accelerated β decay, as observed for Re by Bosch et al., also at Darmstadt. Neutral Re does undergo β decay, with half-life years, but for fully ionized Re this is shortened to only 32.9 years. This is because Re is energetically allowed to undergo β decay to the first-excited state in Os, a process energetically disallowed for natural Re. Similarly, neutral Pu undergoes β decay with a half-life of 14.3 years, but in its fully ionized state the beta-decay half-life of Pu decreases to 4.2 days. For comparison, the variation of decay rates of other nuclear processes due to chemical environment is less than 1%. Moreover, current mass determinations cannot decisively determine whether Rn is energetically possible to undergo β decay (the decay energy given in AME2020 is (−6 ± 8) keV), but in either case it is predicted that β will be greatly accelerated for fully ionized Rn. Double beta decay. Some nuclei can undergo double beta decay (2β) where the charge of the nucleus changes by two units. Double beta decay is difficult to study, as it has an extremely long half-life. In nuclei for which both β decay and 2β are possible, the rarer 2β process is effectively impossible to observe. However, in nuclei where β decay is forbidden but 2β is allowed, the process can be seen and a half-life measured. Thus, 2β is usually studied only for beta stable nuclei. Like single beta decay, double beta decay does not change ; thus, at least one of the nuclides with some given has to be stable with regard to both single and double beta decay. "Ordinary" 2β results in the emission of two electrons and two antineutrinos. If neutrinos are Majorana particles (i.e., they are their own antiparticles), then a decay known as neutrinoless double beta decay will occur. Most neutrino physicists believe that neutrinoless 2β has never been observed.
4652	525927	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4652	Blitzkrieg	Blitzkrieg"(Lightning/Flash Warfare)" is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack, using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations, together with artillery, air assault, and close air support. The intent is to break through an opponent's lines of defense, dislocate the defenders, confuse the enemy by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive : a battle of annihilation. During the interwar period, aircraft and tank technologies matured and were combined with the systematic application of the traditional German tactic of (maneuver warfare), involving the deep penetrations and the bypassing of enemy strong points to encircle and destroy opposing forces in a (cauldron battle/battle of encirclement). During the invasion of Poland, Western journalists adopted the term "blitzkrieg" to describe that form of armored warfare. The term had appeared in 1935, in the German military periodical ("German Defence"), in connection to quick or lightning warfare. German maneuver operations were successful during the campaigns of 1939–1941, involving the invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France and, by 1940, the term "blitzkrieg" was being extensively used in Western media. Blitzkrieg operations capitalised on surprise penetrations, such as that in the Ardennes forest, the Allies' general lack of preparedness, and their inability to match the pace of the German attack. During the Battle of France, the French made attempts to reform defensive lines along rivers but were frustrated when German forces arrived first and pressed on. Despite being common in German and English-language journalism during World War II, the word was never used as an official military term by the Wehrmacht, except for propaganda, and it was never officially adopted as a concept or doctrine. According to David Reynolds, "Hitler himself called the term Blitzkrieg 'a completely idiotic word' ()". Some senior German officers, including Kurt Student, Franz Halder, and Johann Adolf von Kielmansegg, even disputed the idea that it was a military concept. Kielmansegg asserted that what many regarded as blitzkrieg was nothing more than "ad hoc solutions that simply popped out of the prevailing situation". Kurt Student described it as ideas that "naturally emerged from the existing circumstances" as a response to operational challenges. In 2005, the historian Karl-Heinz Frieser summarized blitzkrieg as the result of German commanders using the latest technology in the most advantageous way, according to traditional military principles, and employing "the right units in the right place at the right time". Modern historians now understand blitzkrieg as the combination of traditional German military principles, methods and doctrines of the 19th century with the military technology of the interwar period. Modern historians use the term casually as a generic description for the style of maneuver warfare practised by Germany during the early part of World War II, rather than as an explanation. According to Frieser, in the context of the thinking of Heinz Guderian on mobile combined arms formations, blitzkrieg can be used as a synonym for modern maneuver warfare on the operational level. Definition. Common interpretation. The traditional meaning of "blitzkrieg" is that of German tactical and operational methodology during the first half of the Second World War that is often hailed as a new method of warfare. The word, meaning "lightning war" or "lightning attack" in its strategic sense describes a series of quick and decisive short battles to deliver a knockout blow to an enemy state before it can fully mobilize. Tactically, blitzkrieg is a coordinated military effort by tanks, motorized infantry, artillery and aircraft, to create an overwhelming local superiority in combat power, to defeat the opponent and break through its defences. "Blitzkrieg" as used by Germany had considerable psychological or "terror" elements, such as the "Jericho Trompete", a noise-making siren on the Junkers Ju 87 dive bomber, to affect the morale of enemy forces. The devices were largely removed when the enemy became used to the noise after the Battle of France in 1940, and instead, bombs sometimes had whistles attached. It is also common for historians and writers to include psychological warfare by using fifth columnists to spread rumours and lies among the civilian population in the theatre of operations. Origin of term. The origin of the term "blitzkrieg" is obscure. It was never used in the title of a military doctrine or handbook of the German Army or Air Force, and no "coherent doctrine" or "unifying concept of blitzkrieg" existed; German High Command mostly referred to the group of tactics as "Bewegungskrieg" (Maneuver Warfare). The term seems to have been rarely used in the German military press before 1939, and recent research at the German "Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt", at Potsdam, found it in only two military articles from the 1930s. Both used the term to mean a swift strategic knockout, rather than a radically new military doctrine or approach to war. The first article (1935) dealt primarily with supplies of food and materiel in wartime. The term "blitzkrieg" was used in reference to German efforts to win a quick victory in the First World War but was not associated with the use of armored, mechanized or air forces. It argued that Germany must develop self-sufficiency in food because it might again prove impossible to deal a swift knockout to its enemies, which would lead to a long war. In the second article (1938), launching a swift strategic knockout was described as an attractive idea for Germany but difficult to achieve on land under modern conditions (especially against systems of fortification like the Maginot Line) unless an exceptionally high degree of surprise could be achieved. The author vaguely suggested that a massive strategic air attack might hold out better prospects, but the topic was not explored in detail. A third relatively early use of the term in German occurred in "Die Deutsche Kriegsstärke" (German War Strength) by Fritz Sternberg, a Jewish Marxist political economist and refugee from Nazi Germany, published in 1938 in Paris and in London as "Germany and a Lightning War". Sternberg wrote that Germany was not prepared economically for a long war but might win a quick war ("Blitzkrieg"). He did not go into detail about tactics or suggest that the German armed forces had evolved a radically new operational method. His book offered scant clues as to how German lightning victories might be won. In English and other languages, the term had been used since the 1920s. The term was first used in the publications of Ferdinand Otto Miksche, first in the magazine "Army Quarterly", and in his 1941 book "Blitzkrieg", in which he defined the concept. In September 1939, "Time" magazine termed the German military action as a "war of quick penetration and obliteration – "Blitzkrieg", lightning war". After the invasion of Poland, the British press commonly used the term to describe German successes in that campaign. J. P. Harris called the term "a piece of journalistic sensationalism – a buzz-word with which to label the spectacular early successes of the Germans in the Second World War". The word was later applied to the bombing of Britain, particularly London, hence "The Blitz". The German popular press followed suit nine months later, after the Fall of France in 1940; thus, although the word had first been used in Germany, it was popularized by British journalism. Heinz Guderian referred to it as a word coined by the Allies: "as a result of the successes of our rapid campaigns our enemies ... coined the word "Blitzkrieg"". After the German failure in the Soviet Union in 1941, the use of the term began to be frowned upon in Nazi Germany, and Hitler then denied ever using the term and said in a speech in November 1941, "I have never used the word "Blitzkrieg", because it is a very silly word". In early January 1942, Hitler dismissed it as "Italian phraseology". Military evolution, 1919–1939. Germany. In 1914, German strategic thinking derived from the writings of Carl von Clausewitz (1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831), Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (26 October 1800 – 24 April 1891) and Alfred von Schlieffen (28 February 1833 – 4 January 1913), who advocated maneuver, mass and envelopment to create the conditions for a decisive battle (). During the war, officers such as Willy Rohr developed tactics to restore maneuver on the battlefield. Specialist light infantry ("Stosstruppen", "storm troops") were to exploit weak spots to make gaps for larger infantry units to advance with heavier weapons, exploit the success and leave isolated strong points to the troops that were following up. Infiltration tactics were combined with short hurricane artillery bombardments, which used massed artillery. Devised by Colonel Georg Bruchmüller, the attacks relied on speed and surprise, rather than on weight of numbers. The tactics met with great success in Operation Michael, the German spring offensive of 1918 and restored temporarily the war of movement once the Allied trench system had been overrun. The German armies pushed on towards Amiens and then Paris and came within before supply deficiencies and Allied reinforcements halted the advance. The historian James Corum criticised the German leadership for failing to understand the technical advances of the First World War, conducting no studies of the machine gun prior to the war and giving tank production the lowest priority during the war. After Germany's defeat, the Treaty of Versailles limited the Reichswehr to a maximum of 100,000 men, which prevented the deployment of mass armies. The German General Staff was abolished by the treaty but continued covertly as the "Truppenamt" (Troop Office) and was disguised as an administrative body. Committees of veteran staff officers were formed within the "Truppenamt" to evaluate 57 issues of the war to revise German operational theories. By the time of the Second World War, their reports had led to doctrinal and training publications, including H. Dv. 487, "Führung und Gefecht der verbundenen Waffen" ("Command and Battle of the Combined Arms)", known as "Das Fug" (1921–1923) and "Truppenführung" (1933–1934), containing standard procedures for combined-arms warfare. The "Reichswehr" was influenced by its analysis of pre-war German military thought, particularly infiltration tactics since at the end of the war, they had seen some breakthroughs on the Western Front and the maneuver warfare which dominated the Eastern Front. On the Eastern Front, the war did not bog down into trench warfare since the German and the Russian Armies fought a war of maneuver over thousands of miles, which gave the German leadership unique experience that was unavailable to the trench-bound Western Allies. Studies of operations in the East led to the conclusion that small and coordinated forces possessed more combat power than large uncoordinated forces. After the war, the "Reichswehr" expanded and improved infiltration tactics. The commander in chief, Hans von Seeckt, argued that there had been an excessive focus on encirclement and emphasised speed instead. Seeckt inspired a revision of "Bewegungskrieg" (maneuver warfare) thinking and its associated "Auftragstaktik" in which the commander expressed his goals to subordinates and gave them discretion in how to achieve them. The governing principle was "the higher the authority, the more general the orders were"; it was the responsibility of the lower echelons to fill in the details. Implementation of higher orders remained within limits that were determined by the training doctrine of an elite officer corps. Delegation of authority to local commanders increased the tempo of operations, which had great influence on the success of German armies in the early war period. Seeckt, who believed in the Prussian tradition of mobility, developed the German army into a mobile force and advocated technical advances that would lead to a qualitative improvement of its forces and better coordination between motorized infantry, tanks, and planes. Britain. The British Army took lessons from the successful infantry and artillery offensives on the Western Front in late 1918. To obtain the best co-operation between all arms, emphasis was placed on detailed planning, rigid control and adherence to orders. Mechanization of the army, as part of a combined-arms theory of war, was considered a means to avoid mass casualties and the indecisive nature of offensives. The four editions of "Field Service Regulations" that were published after 1918 held that only combined-arms operations could create enough fire power to enable mobility on a battlefield. That theory of war also emphasised consolidation and recommended caution against overconfidence and ruthless exploitation. During the Sinai and Palestine campaign, operations involved some aspects of what would later be called blitzkrieg. The decisive Battle of Megiddo included concentration, surprise and speed. Success depended on attacking only in terrain favouring the movement of large formations around the battlefield and tactical improvements in the British artillery and infantry attack. General Edmund Allenby used infantry to attack the strong Ottoman front line in co-operation with supporting artillery, augmented by the guns of two destroyers. Through constant pressure by infantry and cavalry, two Ottoman armies in the Judean Hills were kept off-balance and virtually encircled during the Battles of Sharon and Nablus (Battle of Megiddo). The British methods induced "strategic paralysis" among the Ottomans and led to their rapid and complete collapse. In an advance of , captures were estimated to be "at least prisoners and 260 guns". Liddell Hart considered that important aspects of the operation had been the extent to which Ottoman commanders were denied intelligence on the British preparations for the attack through British air superiority and air attacks on their headquarters and telephone exchanges, which paralyzed attempts to react to the rapidly-deteriorating situation. France. Norman Stone detects early blitzkrieg operations in offensives by French Generals Charles Mangin and Marie-Eugène Debeney in 1918. However, French doctrine in the interwar years became defence-oriented. Colonel Charles de Gaulle advocated concentration of armor and airplanes. His opinions appeared in his 1934 book "Vers l'Armée de métier" ("Towards the Professional Army"). Like von Seeckt, de Gaulle concluded that France could no longer maintain the huge armies of conscripts and reservists that had fought the First World War, and he sought to use tanks, mechanized forces and aircraft to allow a smaller number of highly trained soldiers to have greater impact in battle. His views endeared him little to the French high command, but, according to historian Henrik Bering, were studied with great interest by Heinz Guderian. Russia and Soviet Union. In 1916, General Alexei Brusilov had used surprise and infiltration tactics during the Brusilov Offensive. Later, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky (1893–1937), (1898–1976) and other members of the Red Army developed a concept of deep battle from the experience of the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1920. Those concepts would guide the Red Army doctrine throughout the Second World War. Realising the limitations of infantry and cavalry, Tukhachevsky advocated mechanized formations and the large-scale industrialisation that they required. Robert Watt (2008) wrote that blitzkrieg has little in common with Soviet deep battle. In 2002, H. P. Willmott had noted that deep battle contained two important differences from blitzkrieg by being a doctrine of total war, not of limited operations, and rejecting decisive battle in favour of several large simultaneous offensives. The "Reichswehr" and the Red Army began a secret collaboration in the Soviet Union to evade the Treaty of Versailles occupational agent, the Inter-Allied Commission. In 1926 war games and tests began at Kazan and Lipetsk, in the Soviet Russia. The centers served to field-test aircraft and armored vehicles up to the battalion level and housed aerial- and armoured-warfare schools through which officers rotated. Nazi Germany. After becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Adolf Hitler ignored the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Within the Wehrmacht, which was established in 1935, the command for motorized armored forces was named the "Panzerwaffe" in 1936. The "Luftwaffe", the German air force, was officially established in February 1935, and development began on ground-attack aircraft and doctrines. Hitler strongly supported the new strategy. He read Guderian's 1937 book "Achtung – Panzer!" and upon observing armored field exercises at Kummersdorf, he remarked, "That is what I want – and that is what I will have". Guderian. Guderian summarized combined-arms tactics as the way to get the mobile and motorized armored divisions to work together and support each other to achieve decisive success. In his 1950 book, "Panzer Leader", he wrote: Guderian believed that developments in technology were required to support the theory, especially by equipping armored divisions, tanks foremost, with wireless communications. Guderian insisted in 1933 to the high command that every tank in the German armored force must be equipped with a radio. At the start of World War II, only the German Army was thus prepared with all tanks being "radio-equipped". That proved critical in early tank battles in which German tank commanders exploited the organizational advantage over the Allies that radio communication gave them. All Allied armies would later copy that innovation. During the Polish campaign, the performance of armored troops, under the influence of Guderian's ideas, won over a number of skeptics who had initially expressed doubt about armored warfare, such as von Rundstedt and Rommel. Rommel. According to David A. Grossman, by the Twelfth Battle of Isonzo (October–November 1917), while he was conducting a light-infantry operation, Rommel had perfected his maneuver-warfare principles, which were the very same ones that were applied during the blitzkrieg against France in 1940 and were repeated in the Coalition ground offensive against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. During the Battle of France and against his staff advisor's advice, Hitler ordered that everything should be completed in a few weeks. Fortunately for the Germans, Rommel and Guderian disobeyed the General Staff's orders (particularly those of General Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist) and forged ahead making quicker progress than anyone had expected, on the way "inventing the idea of Blitzkrieg". It was Rommel who created the new archetype of Blitzkrieg by leading his division far ahead of flanking divisions. MacGregor and Williamson remark that Rommel's version of blitzkrieg displayed a significantly better understanding of combined-arms warfare than that of Guderian. General Hermann Hoth submitted an official report in July 1940 which declared that Rommel had "explored new paths in the command of Panzer divisions". Methods of operations. "Schwerpunkt". "Schwerpunktprinzip" was a heuristic device (conceptual tool or thinking formula) that was used in the German Army from the nineteenth century to make decisions from tactics to strategy about priority. "Schwerpunkt" has been translated as "center of gravity", "crucial", "focal point" and "point of main effort". None of those forms is sufficient to describe the universal importance of the term and the concept of "Schwerpunktprinzip". Every unit in the army, from the company to the supreme command, decided on a "Schwerpunkt" by "schwerpunktbildung", as did the support services, which meant that commanders always knew what was the most important and why. The German army was trained to support the "Schwerpunkt" even when risks had to be taken elsewhere to support the point of main effort and to attack with overwhelming firepower. "Schwerpunktbildung" allowed the German Army to achieve superiority at the "Schwerpunkt", whether attacking or defending, to turn local success at the "Schwerpunkt" into the progressive disorganisation of the opposing force and to create more opportunities to exploit that advantage even if the Germans were numerically and strategically inferior in general. In the 1930s, Guderian summarized that as "Klotzen, nicht kleckern!" (roughly "splash, don't spill") Pursuit. Having achieved a breakthrough of the enemy's line, units comprising the "Schwerpunkt" were not supposed to become decisively engaged with enemy front line units to the right and the left of the breakthrough area. Units pouring through the hole were to drive upon set objectives behind the enemy front line. During the Second World War, German Panzer forces used their motorized mobility to paralyze the opponent's ability to react. Fast-moving mobile forces seized the initiative, exploited weaknesses and acted before the opposing forces could respond. Central to that was the decision cycle (tempo). Through superior mobility and faster decision-making cycles, mobile forces could act faster than the forces opposing them. Directive control was a fast and flexible method of command. Rather than receiving an explicit order, a commander would be told of his superior's intent and the role that his unit was to fill in that concept. The method of execution was then a matter for the discretion of the subordinate commander. The staff burden was reduced at the top and spread among tiers of command with knowledge about their situation. Delegation and the encouragement of initiative aided implementation, and important decisions could be taken quickly and communicated verbally or with only brief written orders. Mopping-up. The last part of an offensive operation was the destruction of unsubdued pockets of resistance, which had been enveloped earlier and bypassed by the fast-moving armored and motorized spearheads. The "Kesselschlacht" ("cauldron battle") was a concentric attack on such pockets. It was there that most losses were inflicted upon the enemy, primarily through the mass capture of prisoners and weapons. During Operation Barbarossa, huge encirclements in 1941 produced nearly 3.5 million Soviet prisoners, along with masses of equipment. Air power. Close air support was provided in the form of the dive bomber and medium bomber, which would support the focal point of attack from the air. German successes are closely related to the extent to which the German "Luftwaffe" could control the air war in early campaigns in Western and Central Europe and in the Soviet Union. However, the "Luftwaffe" was a broadly based force with no constricting central doctrine other than its resources should be used generally to support national strategy. It was flexible and could carry out both operational-tactical, and strategic bombing. Flexibility was the strength of the "Luftwaffe" in 1939 to 1941. Paradoxically, that became its weakness. While Allied Air Forces were tied to the support of the Army, the "Luftwaffe" deployed its resources in a more general operational way. It switched from air superiority missions to medium-range interdiction, to strategic strikes to close support duties, depending on the need of the ground forces. In fact, far from it being a specialist panzer spearhead arm, less than 15 percent of the "Luftwaffe" was intended for close support of the army in 1939. Stimulants. Methamphetamine use among troops, especially Temmler's 3 mg Pervitin tablets, likely contributed to the Wehrmacht's "blitzkrieg" success by enabling synchronized, high-endurance operations with minimal rest. Limitations and countermeasures. Environment. The concepts associated with the term "blitzkrieg" (deep penetrations by armor, large encirclements, and combined arms attacks) were largely dependent upon terrain and weather conditions. Wherever the ability for rapid movement across "tank country" was not possible, armored penetrations often were avoided or resulted in failure. The terrain would ideally be flat, firm, unobstructed by natural barriers or fortifications, and interspersed with roads and railways. If it were instead hilly, wooded, marshy, or urban, armor would be vulnerable to infantry in close-quarters combat and unable to break out at full speed. Additionally, units could be halted by mud (thawing along the Eastern Front regularly slowed both sides) or extreme snow. Operation Barbarossa helped confirm that armor effectiveness and the requisite aerial support depended on weather and terrain. The disadvantages of terrain could be nullified if surprise was achieved over the enemy by an attack in areas that had been considered natural obstacles, as occurred during the Battle of France in which the main German offensive went through the Ardennes. Since the French thought that the Ardennes unsuitable for massive troop movement, particularly for tanks, the area was left with only light defences, which were quickly overrun by the "Wehrmacht". The Germans quickly advanced through the forest and knocked down the trees that the French had thought would impede them. Air superiority. The influence of air forces over forces on the ground changed significantly over the course of the Second World War. Early German successes were conducted when Allied aircraft could not make a significant impact on the battlefield. In May 1940, there was near parity in numbers of aircraft between the "Luftwaffe" and the Allies, but the "Luftwaffe" had been developed to support Germany's ground forces, had liaison officers with the mobile formations and operated a higher number of sorties per aircraft. In addition, the Germans' air parity or superiority allowed the unencumbered movement of ground forces, their unhindered assembly into concentrated attack formations, aerial reconnaissance, aerial resupply of fast moving formations and close air support at the point of attack. The Allied air forces had no close air support aircraft, training or doctrine. The Allies flew 434 French and 160 British sorties a day but methods of attacking ground targets had yet to be developed and so Allied aircraft caused negligible damage. Against the Allies' 600 sorties, the "Luftwaffe" on average flew 1,500 sorties a day. On 13 May, "Fliegerkorps" VIII flew 1,000 sorties in support of the crossing of the Meuse. The following day the Allies made repeated attempts to destroy the German pontoon bridges, but German fighter aircraft, ground fire and "Luftwaffe" flak batteries with the panzer forces destroyed 56 percent of the attacking Allied aircraft, and the bridges remained intact. Allied air superiority became a significant hindrance to German operations during the later years of the war. By June 1944, the Western Allies had the complete control of the air over the battlefield, and their fighter-bomber aircraft were very effective at attacking ground forces. On D-Day, the Allies flew 14,500 sorties over the battlefield area alone, not including sorties flown over Northwestern Europe. Against them the "Luftwaffe" flew some 300 sorties on 6 June. Though German fighter presence over Normandy increased over the next days and weeks, it never approached the numbers that the Allies commanded. Fighter-bomber attacks on German formations made movement during daylight almost impossible. Subsequently, shortages soon developed in food, fuel and ammunition and severely hampered the German defenders. German vehicle crews and even flak units experienced great difficulty moving during daylight. Indeed, the final German offensive operation in the west, Operation Wacht am Rhein, was planned to take place during poor weather to minimise interference by Allied aircraft. Under those conditions, it was difficult for German commanders to employ the "armored idea", if at all. Counter-tactics. Blitzkrieg is vulnerable to an enemy that is robust enough to weather the shock of the attack and does not panic at the idea of enemy formations in its rear area. That is especially true if the attacking formation lacks the reserve to keep funnelling forces into the spearhead or the mobility to provide infantry, artillery and supplies into the attack. If the defender can hold the shoulders of the breach, it has the opportunity to counter-attack into the flank of the attacker and potentially to cut it off the van, as what happened to Kampfgruppe Peiper in the Ardennes. During the Battle of France in 1940, the 4th Armoured Division (Major-General Charles de Gaulle) and elements of the 1st Army Tank Brigade (British Expeditionary Force) made probing attacks on the German flank and pushed into the rear of the advancing armored columns at times. That may have been a reason for Hitler to call a halt to the German advance. Those attacks combined with Maxime Weygand's hedgehog tactic would become the major basis for responding to blitzkrieg attacks in the future. Deployment in depth, or permitting enemy or "shoulders" of a penetration, was essential to channelling the enemy attack; artillery, properly employed at the shoulders, could take a heavy toll on attackers. Allied forces in 1940 lacked the experience to develop those strategies successfully, which resulted in the French armistice with heavy losses, but those strategies characterized later Allied operations. At the Battle of Kursk, the Red Army used a combination of defence in great depth, extensive minefields and tenacious defense of breakthrough shoulders. In that way, they depleted German combat power even as German forces advanced. The reverse can be seen in the Russian summer offensive of 1944, Operation Bagration, which resulted in the destruction of Army Group Center. German attempts to weather the storm and fight out of encirclements failed because of the Soviets' ability to continue to feed armored units into the attack, maintain the mobility and strength of the offensive and arrive in force deep in the rear areas faster than the Germans could regroup. Logistics. Although effective in quick campaigns against Poland and France, mobile operations could not be sustained by Germany in later years. Strategies based on maneuver have the inherent danger of the attacking force overextending its supply lines and can be defeated by a determined foe who is willing and able to sacrifice territory for time in which to regroup and rearm, as the Soviets did on the Eastern Front, as opposed to, for example, the Dutch, who had no territory to sacrifice. Tank and vehicle production was a constant problem for Germany. Indeed, late in the war, many panzer "divisions" had no more than a few dozen tanks. As the end of the war approached, Germany also experienced critical shortages in fuel and ammunition stocks as a result of Anglo-American strategic bombing and blockade. Although the production of "Luftwaffe" fighter aircraft continued, they could not fly because of lack of fuel. What fuel there was went to panzer divisions, and even then, they could not operate normally. Of the Tiger tanks lost against the US Army, nearly half of them were abandoned for lack of fuel. History of military operations. Spanish Civil War. German volunteers first used armor in live field-conditions during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Armor commitment consisted of Panzer Battalion 88, a force built around three companies of Panzer I tanks that functioned as a training cadre for Spain's Nationalists. The Luftwaffe deployed squadrons of fighters, dive-bombers and transport aircraft as the "Condor Legion". Guderian said that the tank deployment was "on too small a scale to allow accurate assessments to be made". (The true test of his "armored idea" would have to wait for the Second World War.) However, the "Luftwaffe" also provided volunteers to Spain to test both tactics and aircraft in combat, including the first combat use of the "Stuka". During the war, the "Condor Legion" undertook the 1937 bombing of Guernica, which had a tremendous psychological effect on the populations of Europe. The results were exaggerated, and the Western Allies concluded that the "city-busting" techniques were now part of the German way in war. The targets of the German aircraft were actually the rail lines and bridges, but lacking the ability to hit them with accuracy (only three or four Ju 87s saw action in Spain), the "Luftwaffe" chose a method of carpet bombing, resulting in heavy civilian casualties. World War II. Poland, 1939. Although journalists popularized the term "Blitzkrieg" during the September 1939 invasion of Poland, the historians Matthew Cooper and J. P. Harris have written that German operations during the campaign were consistent with traditional methods. The Wehrmacht strategy was more in line with "Vernichtungsgedanke", a focus on envelopment to create pockets in broad-front annihilation. The German generals dispersed Panzer forces among the three German concentrations with little emphasis on independent use. They deployed tanks to create or destroy close pockets of Polish forces and to seize operational-depth terrain in support of the largely unmotorized infantry, which followed. The Wehrmacht used available models of tanks, Stuka dive-bombers and concentrated forces in the Polish campaign, but the majority of the fighting involved conventional infantry and artillery warfare, and most Luftwaffe action was independent of the ground campaign. Matthew Cooper wrote: John Ellis wrote that "there is considerable justice in Matthew Cooper's assertion that the panzer divisions were not given the kind of "strategic" mission that was to characterize authentic armored blitzkrieg, and were almost always closely subordinated to the various mass infantry armies". Steven Zaloga wrote, "Whilst Western accounts of the September campaign have stressed the shock value of the panzer and Stuka attacks, they have tended to underestimate the punishing effect of German artillery on Polish units. Mobile and available in significant quantity, artillery shattered as many units as any other branch of the Wehrmacht." Low Countries and France, 1940. The German invasion of France, with subsidiary attacks on Belgium and the Netherlands, consisted of two phases, Operation Yellow ("Fall Gelb") and Operation Red ("Fall Rot"). Yellow opened with a feint conducted against the Netherlands and Belgium by two armored corps and paratroopers. Most of the German armored forces were placed in Panzer Group Kleist, which attacked through the Ardennes, a lightly defended sector that the French planned to reinforce if necessary before the Germans could bring up heavy and siege artillery. There was no time for the French to send such reinforcement, as the Germans did not wait for siege artillery but reached the Meuse and achieved a breakthrough at the Battle of Sedan in three days. Panzer Group Kleist raced to the English Channel, reached the coast at Abbeville and cut off the BEF, the Belgian Army and some of the best-equipped divisions of the French Army in northern France. Armored and motorized units under Guderian, Rommel and others advanced far beyond the marching and horse-drawn infantry divisions and far in excess of what Hitler and the German high command had expected or wished. When the Allies counter-attacked at Arras by using the heavily armored British Matilda I and Matilda II tanks, a brief panic ensued in the German High Command. Hitler halted his armored and motorized forces outside the port of Dunkirk, which the Royal Navy had started using to evacuate the Allied forces. Hermann Göring promised that the Luftwaffe would complete the destruction of the encircled armies, but aerial operations failed to prevent the evacuation of the majority of the Allied troops. In Operation Dynamo, some French and British troops escaped. Case Yellow surprised everyone by overcoming the Allies' 4,000 armored vehicles, many of which were better than their German equivalents in armor and gunpower. The French and British frequently used their tanks in the dispersed role of infantry support, rather than by concentrating force at the point of attack, to create overwhelming firepower. The French armies were much reduced in strength and the confidence of their commanders shaken. With much of their own armor and heavy equipment lost in Northern France, they lacked the means to fight a mobile war. The Germans followed their initial success with Operation Red, a triple-pronged offensive. The XV Panzer Corps attacked towards Brest, XIV Panzer Corps attacked east of Paris, towards Lyon and the XIX Panzer Corps encircled the Maginot Line. The French, hard pressed to organise any sort of counter-attack, were continually ordered to form new defensive lines and found that German forces had already bypassed them and moved on. An armored counter-attack, organized by Colonel Charles de Gaulle, could not be sustained, and he had to retreat. Prior to the German offensive in May, Winston Churchill had said, "Thank God for the French Army". The same French Army collapsed after barely two months of fighting. That was in shocking contrast to the four years of trench warfare on which French forces had engaged during the First World War. French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, analyzed the collapse in a speech on 21 May 1940: The Germans had not used paratroopry attacks in France and made only one large drop in the Netherlands to capture three bridges; some small glider-landings were conducted in Belgium to take bottlenecks on routes of advance before the arrival of the main force (the most renowned being the landing on Fort Eben-Emael in Belgium). Eastern Front, 1941–1944. Use of armored forces was crucial for both sides on the Eastern Front. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, involved a number of breakthroughs and encirclements by motorized forces. Its goal, according to Führer Directive 21 (18 December 1940), was "to destroy the Russian forces deployed in the West and to prevent their escape into the wide-open spaces of Russia". The Red Army was to be destroyed west of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers, which were about east of the Soviet border, to be followed by a mopping-up operation. The surprise attack resulted in the near annihilation of the Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS, Soviet Air Force) by simultaneous attacks on airfields, allowing the Luftwaffe to achieve total air supremacy over all the battlefields within the first week. On the ground, four German panzer groups outflanked and encircled disorganized Red Army units, and the marching infantry completed the encirclements and defeated the trapped forces. In late July, after 2nd Panzer Group (commanded by Guderian) captured the watersheds of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers near Smolensk, the panzers had to defend the encirclement, because the marching infantry divisions remained hundreds of kilometers to the west. The Germans conquered large areas of the Soviet Union, but their failure to destroy the Red Army before the winter of 1941-1942 was a strategic failure and made German tactical superiority and territorial gains irrelevant. The Red Army had survived enormous losses and regrouped with new formations far to the rear of the front line. During the Battle of Moscow (October 1941 to January 1942), the Red Army defeated the German Army Group Center and for the first time in the war seized the strategic initiative. In the summer of 1942, Germany launched another offensive and this time focusing on Stalingrad and the Caucasus in the southern Soviet Union. The Soviets again lost tremendous amounts of territory, only to counter-attack once more during winter. The German gains were ultimately limited because Hitler diverted forces from the attack on Stalingrad and drove towards the Caucasus oilfields simultaneously. The "Wehrmacht" became overstretched. Although it won operationally, it could not inflict a decisive defeat as the durability of the Soviet Union's manpower, resources, industrial base and aid from the Western Allies began to take effect. In July 1943, the "Wehrmacht" conducted Operation Zitadelle (Citadel) against a salient at Kursk, which Soviet troop heavily defended. Soviet defensive tactics had by now hugely improved, particularly in the use of artillery and air support. By April 1943, the Stavka had learned of German intentions through intelligence supplied by front-line reconnaissance and Ultra intercepts. In the following months, the Red Army constructed deep defensive belts along the paths of the planned German attack. The Soviets made a concerted effort to disguise their knowledge of German plans and the extent of their own defensive preparations, and the German commanders still hoped to achieve operational surprise when the attack commenced. The Germans did not achieve surprise and could not outflank or break through into enemy rear areas during the operation. Several historians assert that Operation Citadel was planned and intended to be a blitzkrieg operation. Many of the German participants who wrote about the operation after the war, including Erich von Manstein, make no mention of blitzkrieg in their accounts. In 2000, Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson characterised only the southern pincer of the German offensive as a "classical blitzkrieg attack". Pier Battistelli wrote that the operational planning marked a change in German offensive thinking away from blitzkrieg and that more priority was given to brute force and fire power than to speed and maneuver. In 1995, David Glantz stated that blitzkrieg was at Kursk for the first time defeated in summer, and the opposing Soviet forces mounted a successful counter-offensive. The Battle of Kursk ended with two Soviet counter-offensives and the revival of deep operations. In the summer of 1944, the Red Army destroyed Army Group Centre in Operation Bagration by using combined-arms tactics for armor, infantry and air power in a coordinated strategic assault, known as deep operations, which led to an advance of in six weeks. Western Front, 1944–1945. Allied armies began using combined-arms formations and deep-penetration strategies that Germany had used in the opening years of the war. Many Allied operations in the Western Desert and on the Eastern Front, relied on firepower to establish breakthroughs by fast-moving armored units. The artillery-based tactics were also decisive in Western Front operations after 1944's Operation Overlord, and the British Commonwealth and American armies developed flexible and powerful systems for using artillery support. What the Soviets lacked in flexibility, they made up for in number of rocket launchers, guns and mortars. The Germans never achieved the kind of fire concentrations that their enemies were achieving 1944. After the Allied landings in Normandy (June 1944), the Germans began a counter-offensive to overwhelm the landing force with armored attacks, but they failed because of a lack of co-ordination and to Allied superiority in anti-tank defense and in the air. The most notable attempt to use deep-penetration operations in Normandy was Operation Luttich at Mortain, which only hastened the Falaise Pocket and the destruction of German forces in Normandy. The Mortain counter-attack was defeated by the American 12th Army Group with little effect on its own offensive operations. The last German offensive on the Western front, the Battle of the Bulge (Operation Wacht am Rhein), was an offensive launched towards the port of Antwerp in December 1944. Launched in poor weather against a thinly-held Allied sector, it achieved surprise and initial success as Allied air-power was grounded due to cloud cover. Determined defense by American troops in places throughout the Ardennes, the lack of good roads and German supply shortages caused delays. Allied forces deployed to the flanks of the German penetration, and as soon as the skies cleared, Allied aircraft returned to the battlefield. Allied counter-attacks soon forced back the Germans, who abandoned much equipment for lack of fuel. Post-war controversy. Blitzkrieg had been called a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), but many writers and historians have concluded that the Germans did not invent a new form of warfare but applied new technologies to traditional ideas of "Bewegungskrieg" (maneuver warfare) to achieve decisive victory. Strategy. In 1965, Captain Robert O'Neill, Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford produced an example of the popular view. In "Doctrine and Training in the German Army 1919–1939", O'Neill wrote: Other historians wrote that blitzkrieg was an operational doctrine of the German armed forces and a strategic concept on which the leadership of Nazi Germany based its strategic and economic planning. Military planners and bureaucrats in the war economy appear rarely, if ever, to have employed the term "blitzkrieg" in official documents. That the German army had a "blitzkrieg doctrine" was rejected in the late 1970s by Matthew Cooper. The concept of a blitzkrieg "Luftwaffe" was challenged by Richard Overy in the late 1970s and by Williamson Murray in the mid-1980s. That Nazi Germany went to war on the basis of "blitzkrieg economics" was criticized by Richard Overy in the 1980s, and George Raudzens described the contradictory senses in which historians have used the word. The notion of a German blitzkrieg concept or doctrine survives in popular history and many historians still support the thesis. Frieser wrote that after the failure of the Schlieffen Plan in 1914, the German army concluded that decisive battles were no longer possible in the changed conditions of the twentieth century. Frieser wrote that the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), which was created in 1938 had intended to avoid the decisive battle concepts of its predecessors and planned for a long war of exhaustion ("Ermattungskrieg"). It was only after the improvised plan for the Battle of France in 1940 was unexpectedly successful that the German General Staff came to believe that "Vernichtungskrieg" was still feasible. German thinking reverted to the possibility of a quick and decisive war for the Balkan campaign and Operation Barbarossa. Doctrine. Most academic historians regard the notion of blitzkrieg as military doctrine to be a myth. Shimon Naveh wrote, "The striking feature of the blitzkrieg concept is the complete absence of a coherent theory which should have served as the general cognitive basis for the actual conduct of operations". Naveh described it as an "ad hoc solution" to operational dangers, thrown together at the last moment. Overy disagreed with the idea that Hitler and the Nazi regime ever intended a blitzkrieg war because the once-popular belief that the Nazi state organized its economy to carry out its grand strategy in short campaigns was false. Hitler had intended for a rapid unlimited war to occur much later than 1939, but Germany's aggressive foreign policy forced the state into war before it was ready. The planning of Hitler and the "Wehrmacht" in the 1930s did not reflect a blitzkrieg method but the opposite. J. P. Harris wrote that the Wehrmacht never used the word, and it did not appear in German army or air force field manuals. The word was coined in September 1939 by a "Times" newspaper reporter. Harris also found no evidence that German military thinking developed a blitzkrieg mentality. Karl-Heinz Frieser and Adam Tooze reached similar conclusions to Overy and Naveh that the notions of blitzkrieg economy and strategy are myths. Frieser wrote that surviving German economists and General Staff officers denied that Germany went to war with a blitzkrieg strategy. Robert M. Citino argues: Historian Victor Davis Hanson states that "Blitzkrieg" "played on the myth of German technological superiority and industrial dominance" and adds that German successes, particularly that of its Panzer divisions were "instead predicated on the poor preparation and morale of Germany's enemies". Hanson also reports that at a Munich public address in November 1941, Hitler had "disowned" the concept of "Blitzkrieg" by calling it an "idiotic word". Further, successful "Blitzkrieg" operations were predicated on superior numbers, air support and were possible for only short periods of time without sufficient supply lines. For all intents and purposes, "Blitzkrieg" ended at the Eastern Front once the German forces had given up Stalingrad, after they faced hundreds of new T-34 tanks, when the Luftwaffe became unable to assure air dominance, and after the stalemate at Kursk. To that end, Hanson concludes that German military success was not accompanied by the adequate provisioning of its troops with food and materiel far from the source of supply, which contributed to its ultimate failure. Despite its later disappointments as German troops extended their lines at too great a distance, the very specter of armored "Blitzkrieg" forces initially proved victorious against the Polish, Dutch, Belgian and French Armies early in the war. Economics. In the 1960s, Alan Milward developed a theory of blitzkrieg economics: Germany could not fight a long war and chose to avoid comprehensive rearmament and armed in breadth to win quick victories. Milward described an economy positioned between a full war economy and a peacetime economy. The purpose of the blitzkrieg economy was to allow the German people to enjoy high living standards in the event of hostilities and avoid the economic hardships of the First World War. Overy wrote that blitzkrieg as a "coherent military and economic concept has proven a difficult strategy to defend in light of the evidence". Milward's theory was contrary to Hitler's and German planners' intentions. The Germans, aware of the errors of the First World War, rejected the concept of organizing its economy to fight only a short war. Therefore, focus was given to the development of armament in depth for a long war, instead of armament in breadth for a short war. Hitler claimed that relying on surprise alone was "criminal" and that "we have to prepare for a long war along with surprise attack". During the winter of 1939–1940, Hitler demobilized many troops from the army to return as skilled workers to factories because the war would be decided by production, not a quick "Panzer operation". In the 1930s, Hitler had ordered rearmament programs that cannot be considered limited. In November 1937, he had indicated that most of the armament projects would be completed by 1943–1945. The rearmament of the "Kriegsmarine" was to have been completed in 1949 and the "Luftwaffe" rearmament program was to have matured in 1942, with a force capable of strategic bombing with heavy bombers. The construction and the training of motorized forces and a full mobilization of the rail networks would not begin until 1943 and 1944, respectively. Hitler needed to avoid war until these projects were complete but his misjudgements in 1939 forced Germany into war before rearmament was complete. After the war, Albert Speer claimed that the German economy achieved greater armaments output not because of diversions of capacity from civilian to military industry but by streamlining of the economy. Overy pointed out some 23 percent of German output was military by 1939. Between 1937 and 1939, 70 percent of investment capital went into the rubber, synthetic fuel, aircraft and shipbuilding industries. Hermann Göring had consistently stated that the task of the Four Year Plan was to rearm Germany for total war. Hitler's correspondence with his economists also reveals that his intent was to wage war in 1943–1945, when the resources of central Europe had been absorbed into Nazi Germany. Living standards were not high in the late 1930s. Consumption of consumer goods had fallen from 71 percent in 1928 to 59 percent in 1938. The demands of the war economy reduced the amount of spending in non-military sectors to satisfy the demand for the armed forces. On 9 September, Göring, as Head of the "Reich Defense Council", called for complete "employment" of living and fighting power of the national economy for the duration of the war. Overy presents that as evidence that a "blitzkrieg economy" did not exist. Adam Tooze wrote that the German economy was being prepared for a long war. The expenditure for the war was extensive and put the economy under severe strain. The German leadership were concerned less with how to balance the civilian economy and the needs of civilian consumption but to figure out how to best prepare the economy for total war. Once war had begun, Hitler urged his economic experts to abandon caution and expend all available resources on the war effort, but the expansion plans only gradually gained momentum in 1941. Tooze wrote that the huge armament plans in the pre-war period did not indicate any clear-sighted blitzkrieg economy or strategy. "Heer". Frieser wrote that the () was not ready for blitzkrieg at the start of the war. A blitzkrieg method called for a young, highly skilled mechanized army. In 1939–1940, 45 percent of the army was 40 years old and 50 percent of the soldiers had only a few weeks' training. The German Army, contrary to the blitzkrieg legend, was not fully motorized and had only 120,000 vehicles, compared to the 300,000 of the French Army. The British also had an "enviable" contingent of motorized forces. Thus, "the image of the German 'Blitzkrieg' army is a figment of propaganda imagination". During the First World War, the German army used 1.4 million horses for transport and in the Second World War 2.7 million horses. Only ten percent of the army was motorized in 1940. Half of the German divisions available in 1940 were combat ready, but they were less well-equipped than the British and French or the Imperial German Army of 1914. In the spring of 1940, the German army was semi-modern in which a small number of well-equipped and "elite" divisions were offset by many second and third rate divisions". In 2003, John Mosier wrote that while the French soldiers in 1940 were better trained than German soldiers, as were the Americans later and that the German Army was the least mechanized of the major armies, its leadership cadres were larger and better and that the high standard of leadership was the main reason for the successes of the German army in World War II, as it had been in World War I. "Luftwaffe". James Corum wrote that it was a myth that the "Luftwaffe" had a doctrine of terror bombing in which civilians were attacked to break the will or aid the collapse of an enemy by the "Luftwaffe" in "blitzkrieg" operations. After the bombing of Guernica in 1937 and the Rotterdam Blitz in 1940, it was commonly assumed that terror bombing was a part of "Luftwaffe" doctrine. During the interwar period, the "Luftwaffe" leadership rejected the concept of terror bombing in favour of battlefield support and interdiction operations: Corum continued: General Walther Wever compiled a doctrine known as "The Conduct of the Aerial War". This document, which the "Luftwaffe" adopted, rejected Giulio Douhet's theory of terror bombing. Terror bombing was deemed to be "counter-productive", increasing rather than destroying the enemy's will to resist. Such bombing campaigns were regarded as diversion from the "Luftwaffe's" main operations; destruction of the enemy armed forces. The bombings of Guernica, Rotterdam and Warsaw were tactical missions in support of military operations and were not intended as strategic terror attacks. J. P. Harris wrote that most Luftwaffe leaders from Goering through the general staff believed, as did their counterparts in Britain and the United States, that strategic bombing was the chief mission of the air force and that given such a role, the Luftwaffe would win the next war and that The Luftwaffe ended up with an air force consisting mainly of relatively short-range aircraft, but that does not prove that the German air force was solely interested in "tactical" bombing. It happened because the German aircraft industry lacked the experience to build a long-range bomber fleet quickly and because Hitler was insistent on the very rapid creation of a numerically large force. It is also significant that Germany's position in the centre of Europe to a large extent obviated the need to make a clear distinction between bombers suitable only for "tactical" purposes and those necessary for strategic purposes in the early stages of a likely future war. Fuller and Liddell Hart. The British theorists John Frederick Charles Fuller and Captain Basil Henry Liddell Hart have often been associated with the development of blitzkrieg, but that is a matter of controversy. In recent years historians have uncovered that Liddell Hart distorted and falsified facts to make it appear as if his ideas has been adopted. After the war Liddell Hart imposed his own perceptions after the event by claiming that the mobile tank warfare has been practiced by the "Wehrmacht" was a result of his influence. By manipulation and contrivance, Liddell Hart distorted the actual circumstances of the blitzkrieg formation, and he obscured its origins. By his indoctrinated idealization of an ostentatious concept, he reinforced the myth of blitzkrieg. Imposing retrospectively his own perceptions of mobile warfare upon the shallow concept of blitzkrieg, he "created a theoretical imbroglio that has taken 40 years to unravel". Blitzkrieg was not an official doctrine, and historians in recent times have come to the conclusion that it did not exist as such: The early 1950s literature transformed blitzkrieg into a historical military doctrine, which carried the signature of Liddell Hart and Guderian. The main evidence of Liddell Hart's deceit and "tendentious" report of history can be found in his letters to Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian, and the relatives and associates of Erwin Rommel. Liddell Hart, in letters to Guderian, "imposed his own fabricated version of blitzkrieg on the latter and compelled him to proclaim it as original formula". Kenneth Macksey found Liddell Hart's original letters to Guderian in the latter's papers. Liddell Hart requested Guderian to give him credit for "impressing him" with his ideas of armored warfare. When Liddell Hart was questioned about this in 1968 and the discrepancy between the English and German editions of Guderian's memoirs, "he gave a conveniently unhelpful though strictly truthful reply. ('There is nothing about the matter in my file of correspondence with Guderian himself except... that I thanked him... for what he said in that additional paragraph'.)". During the First World War, Fuller had been a staff officer attached to the new tank corps. He developed Plan 1919 for massive independent tank operations, which he claimed were subsequently studied by the German military. It is variously argued that Fuller's wartime plans and post-war writings were inspirations or that his readership was low and German experiences during the war received more attention. The German view of themselves as the losers of the war may be linked to the senior and experienced officers' undertaking a thorough review in studying and rewriting of all of their Army doctrine and training manuals. Fuller and Liddell Hart were "outsiders". Liddell Hart was unable to serve as a soldier after 1916 after being gassed on the Somme, and Fuller's abrasive personality resulted in his premature retirement in 1933. Their views had limited impact in the British army; the War Office permitted the formation of an Experimental Mechanized Force on 1 May 1927, composed of tanks, motorized infantry, self-propelled artillery and motorized engineers but the force was disbanded in 1928 on the grounds that it had served its purpose. A new experimental brigade was intended for the next year and became a permanent formation in 1933, during the cuts of the financial years. Continuity. It has been argued that blitzkrieg was not new, and that the Germans did not invent something called blitzkrieg in the 1920s and 1930s. Rather, the German concept of wars of movement and concentrated force were seen in wars of Prussia and the German Wars of Unification. The first European general to introduce rapid movement, concentrated power and integrated military effort was Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus during the Thirty Years' War. The appearance of the aircraft and tank in the First World War, called an RMA, offered the German military a chance to get back to the traditional war of movement as practiced by Moltke the Elder. The so-called "blitzkrieg campaigns" of 1939 to around 1942 were well within that operational context. At the outbreak of war, the German army had no radically new theory of war. The operational thinking of the German army had not changed significantly since the First World War or since the late 19th century. J. P. Harris and Robert M. Citino point out that the Germans had always had a marked preference for short decisive campaigns but were unable to achieve short-order victories in First World War conditions. The transformation from the stalemate of the First World War into tremendous initial operational and strategic success in the Second World War was partly the employment of a relatively-small number of mechanized divisions, most importantly the Panzer divisions, and the support of an exceptionally powerful air force. Guderian. Heinz Guderian is widely regarded as being highly influential in developing the military methods of warfare used by Germany's tank men at the start of the Second World War. That style of warfare brought the maneuver back to the fore and placed an emphasis on the offensive. Along with the shockingly-rapid collapse in the armies that opposed it, that came to be branded as blitzkrieg warfare. After Germany's military reforms of the Guderian emerged as a strong proponent of mechanized forces. Within the Inspectorate of Transport Troops, Guderian and colleagues performed theoretical and field exercise work. Guderian met with opposition from some in the General Staff, who were distrustful of the new weapons and who continued to view the infantry as the primary weapon of the army. Among them, Guderian claimed, was Chief of the General Staff Ludwig Beck (1935–1938), who he alleged was skeptical that armored forces could be decisive. That claim has been disputed by later historians. James Corum wrote: By Guderian's account, he single-handedly created the German tactical and operational methodology. Between 1922 and 1928 Guderian wrote a number of articles concerning military movement. As the ideas of making use of the combustible engine in a protected encasement to bring mobility back to warfare developed in the German army, Guderian was a leading proponent of the formations that would be used for this purpose. He was later asked to write an explanatory book, which was titled "Achtung Panzer!" (1937) in which he explained the theories of the tank men and defended them. Guderian argued that the tank would be the decisive weapon of the next war. "If the tanks succeed, then victory follows", he wrote. In an article addressed to critics of tank warfare, he wrote that "until our critics can produce some new and better method of making a successful land attack other than self-massacre, we shall continue to maintain our beliefs that tanks—properly employed, needless to say—are today the best means available for land attack". Addressing the faster rate at which defenders could reinforce an area than attackers could penetrate it during the First World War, Guderian wrote that "since reserve forces will now be motorized, the building up of new defensive fronts is easier than it used to be; the chances of an offensive based on the timetable of artillery and infantry co-operation are, as a result, even slighter today than they were in the last war." He continued, "We believe that by attacking with tanks we can achieve a higher rate of movement than has been hitherto obtainable, and—what is perhaps even more important—that we can keep moving once a breakthrough has been made". Guderian additionally required for tactical radios to be widely used to facilitate coordination and command by having one installed in all tanks. Guderian's leadership was supported, fostered and institutionalized by his supporters in the Reichswehr General Staff system, which worked the Army to greater and greater levels of capability through massive and systematic Movement Warfare war games in the 1930s. Guderian's book incorporated the work of theorists such as Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsberger, whose book, "The Tank War" ("Der Kampfwagenkrieg") (1934) gained a wide audience in the German Army. Another German theorist, Ernst Volckheim, wrote a huge amount on tank and combined arms tactics and was influential to German thinking on the use of armored formations, but his work was not acknowledged in Guderian's writings.
4653	1295534883	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4653	The Beano	The Beano (formerly The Beano Comic) is a British anthology comic magazine created by Scottish publishing company DC Thomson. Its first issue was published on 30 July 1938, and it published its 4000th issue in August 2019. Popular and well-known comic strips and characters include "Dennis the Menace", "Minnie the Minx", "The Bash Street Kids", "Roger the Dodger", "Billy Whizz", "Lord Snooty and His Pals", "Ivy the Terrible", "General Jumbo", "Jonah", and "Biffo the Bear". "The Beano" was planned as a pioneering children's magazine that contained mostly comic strips, in the style of American newspaper gag-a-days, as opposed to the more text-based story papers that were immensely popular before the Second World War. In the present, its legacy is its misbehaving characters, escapist tales and anarchic humour with an audience of all ages. "Beano" is a multimedia franchise with spin-off books and Christmas annuals, a website, theme park rides, games, cartoon adaptations, and a production company. "The Beano" is the best-selling comic magazine outside Japan, having sold over 2 billion copies since its inception, and is the world’s longest-running comic magazine, having been run on a weekly basis since 1938, alongside its sister comic "The Dandy" until 2012. It has had three characters as the mascot throughout the years: Big Eggo (1938–1948), Biffo the Bear (1948–1974), and the current, Dennis the Menace and Gnasher (1974–present). History. Creation (1920s–1939). Throughout the 1920s, DC Thomson dominated the British comics industry. Dubbed "the big five", the publisher's most successful comics were "Adventure" (1921), "The Rover" and "The Wizard" (1922), "The Skipper" (1930) and "The Hotspur" (1933). These were weekly issued boys' magazines for preteen males, containing anthologies by DC Thomson's creator staff designed in various formats and genres. They became popular throughout the United Kingdom, notably in English industrial cities, helped through the company's ability to view sales and promotions in the areas much more easily than the rival publishers in London. Although many were about "super men" the young readers could idolise, the rest of the stories would be comic strips inspired by the gag-a-day strips in American newspapers full of stylised characters, slapstick and puns. Overseeing the magazines was the Managing Editor of Children's Publications, R. D. Low, who first joined the company in 1913. Almost a decade into the big five's success, the stories shifted to comedic and included more comic strips, which gave Low an idea of creating a new "big five" which focused on the funnies more than drama. The suggestion was approved; editors Bill Blain and (sub-editor) Albert Barnes of "The Wizard" and "The Hotspur", respectively, joined Low's project. The new team placed a newspaper advertisement into "The Daily Telegraph" asking for artists and/or comic ideas. With the help of the advertisement responses and employed artists at DC Thomson, "The Dandy" was published in 1937, the New Big Five's first member. For "The Beano" (initially called "The Beano Comic" until issue 412), Low received comic strip suggestions by Reg Carter, an English illustrator in Sussex who had created funnies for several British comics and designed humorous postcards. After an in-person interview, Low and Carter planned the front cover for "The Beano" first issue, eventually creating the character Big Eggo (originally named Oswald the Ostrich). It would be in colour whilst the inside of the magazine would be black and white, a tactic used for "The Dandy" first issue (black and white stories inside, colourful Korky the Cat strip on the front). Joining the "Big Eggo" strip would be many funnies, such as Hugh McNeill's "Ping the Elastic Man", James Jewell's "Wee Peem", Allan Morley's "Big Fat Joe", Eric Roberts' "Rip Van Wink", Dudley D. Watkins' "Lord Snooty and His Pals", and Roland Davies' "Contrary Mary". Despite the aim to make a new comic series full of American-inspired comic strips, "The Beano" also contained short stories, serial fiction and adventure stories similar to the Big Five's magazines; "Morgyn the Mighty" was previously in "The Rover". "Tin-Can Tommy" and "Brave Captain Kipper" were reprints, co-produced by the Italian art agency Torelli Bros. Worth 2d with a free prize of a "whoopee mask", issue 1 of "The Beano" was released on 26 July 1938 for the 30th, selling roughly 443,000 copies. Like "The Dandy", its name is from a Low-led DC Thomson office party called The DB Club (The Dandy Beano Club). DC Thomson had several office party clubs that hosted different types of staff gatherings to choose from (e.g. The Prancers would hike hills), but Low's DB Club preferred playing golf and dining throughout Dundee. The two magazines also followed the one-word titles of other comics by rival companies, such as Amalgamated Press' "Crackers", "Sparkler", "Puck" and some books from its "Union Jack" series ("The Marvel", "The Magnet" and "The Gem"); and Target Publications' "Chuckler", "Rattler" and "Dazzler". "Beano" editor-in-chief was George Moonie, former sub-editor of "The Wizard", who would be editor until the summer of 1959. He later explained DC Thomson was a competitive company that wanted to make the best children's literature in the United Kingdom, but there was also competition within itself as "Beano" offices was determined to beat "The Dandy" popularity. World War Two, reaching million sales (1939–1945). Drastic changes occurred behind the scenes of "The Beano" during the Second World War: George Moonie and editing partner Ron Fraser left to join the Royal Marines and Air Force respectively, both not returning until c. 1946. Stuart Gilchrist became sole editor-in-chief after Moonie's other sub-editor Freddie Simpson became ill and resigned. Contact was also lost with Torelli Bros. so in-house creations of "Tin-Can Tommy" began from issue 69 by Sam Fair. Paper rationing caused the rest of Low's New Big Five to be cancelled (it stopped at three published, the third member being "The Magic Comic" (1939), which ended with 80 issues in 1941), and "The Beano" to fluctuate its page count instead of its usual 28. Eventually, "The Beano" became a fortnightly magazine (alternating with The Dandy comic) until 23 July 1949. Comic strips would encourage readers to help their parents and other adults with the war effort, and to be optimistic about the war's outcome. New comic strips mocked Mussolini and propagandist William Joyce, "Lord Snooty and His Pals" stories would be about the protagonists outsmarting the Axis leaders, and other stories would be about characters recycling paper. "Big Eggo" front covers were often about Eggo pranking servicemen during the Blitz, and Pansy Potter received a medal for single-handedly capturing a Nazi U-boat. Issue 192 would debut a 16-part prose story about a boy and his mother being evacuated to the United States and becoming the enemy of a Chicago gangster's widow. Issues published weekly every Tuesday in 1938, and when the magazine changed distribution to every two weeks, the day remained unchanged. From issue 366, the day changed to Friday until issue 375 which began the Thursday publication day schedule. Post-war changes (1945–1988). December 1945 marked a milestone: issue 272 became the first "Beano" issue to sell over a million copies. The end of the war also ushered in a new era for the comic, debuting superhero Jack Flash, the debut of Biffo the Bear as new cover star and a new generation of trouble-making kids: Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, The Bash Street Kids, and Roger the Dodger. DC Thomson also introduced new comic magazines like "The Beezer" and "The Topper" that a few "Beano" artists also created characters and stories for. After the war saw a drift away from text stories and adventure comics, with the last text story published in 1955; adventure comics lasted longer with 1975 being the last year to feature them as "General Jumbo" eighth series drew to a close in issue 1734. George Moonie resigned as editor-in-chief in 1959 to develop comics for girls. Sub-editor of "The Beezer" Harry Cramond succeeded Moonie until retiring in 1984, described as the most influential editor in "The Beano" history. He oversaw new merchandising, high sales, and the thousandth and two thousandth issues. DC Thomson's "Beano" offices featured on documentary television and Cramond's successor Euan Kerr guest-starred on television for the magazine's 50th anniversary. Move to full colour (1988–present). "The Beano" began to advertise outside of DC Thomson's products in 1988 in order to keep both it and "The Dandy" "pocket money" cheap, beginning with issue 2407. Issue 2674 in 1993 was the first issue to feature every page in colour. A notable revamp was the 50th birthday issue, which had an abnormally larger page count with more coloured sections and printed on wider sheets. A decade later, issues gained eight extra pages with computer-based art. In the 21st century, there were seven changes within a five-year span: logo updates, fonts assigned for certain design roles, and the magazine started using glossy paper. From issue 3442 in 2008 (and as of 2020), the day the comic was released was changed to Wednesday. Outside of the magazine, "Beano"s brand expanded into a multimedia franchise. Theme park tie-ins, a website, spin-off magazines, and animated television programmes starring the popular comic characters (several for Dennis the Menace) became common, keeping "The Beano" in popular culture. The turn of the millennium began a sales decline and led to friendly rival "The Dandy" being discontinued in 2012. Eventually, "The Beano" recovered after the creation of its magazine subscription service, which also shipped internationally. Stories. Plots and dialogue are written into a script by an (often) uncredited DC Thomson writer, a formerly common practice for DC Thomson magazines. Uncredited artists assigned to a strip(s) will design all its stories into a "series" that the chief editor will arrange into an order to publish for each issue. Strips are sometimes ghostwritten by other artists who imitate the original designer's style, which is helpful if artists retire or die unexpectedly, otherwise the strip is discontinued. "When I started I was drawing two pages a week and thinking 'Phew, that's quite a lot'. Now I do 10 or 12 pages a week. You have to do more all the time to stay where you are," explained Nigel Parkinson. From March 2016, authors and illustrators are now credited in issues. There have been over a thousand stories throughout the magazine's history told through various ways. Since November 1975, the magazine has contained only comic strips in the style of American newspaper "funnies", but it began with other genres. The last genre to leave "Beano" was adventure stories: short tales eleven-pictures long in text comics format. The stories were either dramatic or dramedies, but heavily featured hobbies and interests young boys had (war and the military, hunting, sailing, jungle men). They also stood out because the illustrations of backgrounds, animals and human characters were photorealistic. Although artists like Dudley D. Watkins drew for a few series, the most prolific illustrator was Irish artist Paddy Brennan, who notably drew for "The Daring Deeds of Sinbad the Sailor", "Red Rory of the Eagles" and "General Jumbo" in the 1950s. Comic adventure stories were a hybrid: adventure stories presented as a comic strip. Prose stories were a page of text with an illustration at the top. Some stories were about animals with artwork by former Big Five illustrator Richard "Toby" Baines, but the longest-running prose character in the magazine's history was Prince Ivor, who first starred in "Follow the Secret Hand". The last prose story to appear was "Ace From Space" in 1955. Although comic strips have featured in "The Beano" since issue 1, their contents has changed throughout. Anthropomorphic animals were common stars that would partake in human activities, and the punchlines occurred from the failures to do so. Misbehaving children showed most popular with "Lord Snooty and His Pals" becoming the first longest-running strip when it concluded in 1991, but the most well known that continue to appear in issues are "Dennis the Menace", "Minnie the Minx", "The Bash Street Kids", and "Roger the Dodger". Some adult-starring characters also misbehaved but they were usually portrayed as incompetent, notably Jonah. In the late 20th century, merging comic strip characters in the same vicinity became common in the franchise, such as the video game "Beanotown Racing", but characters living together in "Beanotown" became a prominent feature of comic strips into the present. Due to the initial target audience of "The Beano" being schoolboys, masculine interests, hobbies, and values dominated issues constantly. Aside from aforementioned adventure stories and comedic characters, there were cowboys, aliens, kings, the supernatural, fantasy creatures (and talking animals), and men whose lifestyle or jobs require physical strength (despite the story making their careers incidental). "The Beano" alternated between mocking or idolising these characters through story formats; wealthy characters causing mischief, caring about their families or being shown underprivileged lives made the working-class audience relate and sympathise with them. Female characters were usually supporting a male character, joint protagonist with a male character, or the antagonist. Prose stories starring girls and women were about the protagonist searching out the truth to a secret, usually over a friend's/family disappearance, or they were witches cursing or tormenting the male protagonists. Female comic characters were also in supporting roles with or join-protagonist with a male character, but the starring characters notably had binary stereotypical traits: drawn as tall and flowy, "Swanky, Lanky Liz" is obsessed with fashion and makeup and acts vain and snobbish, whereas Pansy Potter, Minnie the Minx and Toots from "The Bash Street Kids" share the round-faced and snub-nosed art style of the boys in their stories and are unruly tomboys (in Pansy Potter's case, showcases the strength she inherited from her father). Non-White characters starred in their stories either set in Africa, Asia, or South America, or were about the character adapting to a new life in the United Kingdom. Stories used to vary in length and layout, but in 2012, "The Beano" debuted a chapter called Funsize Funnies where shorter comic strips shared some pages. In some instances, these extremely short strips were brand new ("Stunt Gran", "BamBeanos", "BSK CCTV", "Gnash Gnews", "Winston"), but others were tiny reboots of older comic strips that the new audience could not recall reading before. Quiet reboots included "Simply Smiffy" (cancelled 1987), "Rasher" (cancelled 1995), "Little Plum" (cancelled 2007), "Les Pretend" (cancelled 2007), "Baby Face Finlayson" (cancelled 2005), "Biffo the Bear" (cancelled 1999), "Pansy Potter" (cancelled 1993), and "Lord Snooty" (cancelled 1991). Crossovers. "The Beano" allows its characters from different strips to interact with each other. Reprinting old stories or redistributing characters into other magazines is common throughout DC Thomson's history, as if the stories are set in the same universe. The "Lord Snooty" series discontinued old characters and replaced them with "Beano" strip characters of the past; "Dennis the Menace" featured in DC Thomson's "Champ" magazine in the mid-1980s and "The Weekly News" tabloid-magazine for four years in the 1950s. "Morgyn the Mighty", "Tricky Dicky", "Bananaman" and "Corporal Clott" were stories previously from "The Rover", "The Topper", "Nutty" and "The Dandy", respectively, whereas one of Gnasher's puppies had her own strip in "The Beezer and Topper" and "Jackie" magazine. Anniversary issues. Along with guest editors, anniversary issues are frequently contained with crossovers. The 2000th issue had the "Hall of Fame" strip which showed framed portraits of characters from the past, and issue 3443's "Fred's Bed" featured Fred crawling under his bed and time travelling through the magazine's comic strips. For the 80th anniversary, issue 3945 was guest edited by actor-turned children's author David Walliams and had a large crossover story about Bash Street School opening the Beanotown's 1938 time capsule and discovering a map, which leads to robots and a giant tentacle monster breaking out to attack the residents. There was also a flashback panel of the time capsule being sealed which featured a handful of comic strip characters from the first issue, later helping the present day characters discover how to defeat the tentacle monster, named Simon. Issue 4000's crossover was a time travel story where the Beanotown characters of the present helped their future selves save the world. Creators. Chief Editor history. As of 2020, there have been seven official chief editors: Temporary chief editors: Merchandise. From the first issue, readers have received free gifts from "The Beano": toy masks, sweets, posters, and toys. Originally, free gifts would be attached inside the cover or strategically on the front so that it could distract the buyer from other comics next to "The Beano" on the shelves, hopefully excited for the next issue after reading it and eating/playing with the toys. Gifts were intentionally sporadic, especially during the Christmas period when families' money would be saved for food and presents. Issue 90 would be the last issue with a gift (licorice "black eye") due to rationing, the next free gift being the Flying Snorter Balloon in issue 953. The most popular free gift was issue 2201's Gnasher Snapper, a prank toy that would make a bang sound when unfolded, and was re-gifted occasionally in later issues, as well as the 60th anniversary. During the 25th anniversary of "Dennis the Menace", The Dennis the Menace Fan Club was formed. The fan club was instantly popular, recalls Euan Kerr in 1984; "The club enrolled over 2000 new members every week, well into the 90s[.]" Membership was 30p, and new members received a membership card full of classified communication tactics and two badges: a red one with Dennis' face on the front and a furry one of a googly-eyed Gnasher face—the latter was the most sought-after badge in the club's history. For two years, there was a tie-in agony aunt page called "Dear Dennis" (issue 1679–1767) where fan club members sent Dennis their problems that Dennis would reply to in the following issue; thousands of letters would arrive at DC Thomson per week and the authors of the messages would receive prizes. The club would be renamed The Beano Club, which ended in 2010, but had over 1.5 million members. A spin-off was introduced called Gnasher's Fang Club, and Gnasher would ask readers to send him stories about their pets' adventures which could be printed into the next issue. "The mailbag of little drawings of pets was several thousand per week," remembers sub-editor Morris Heggie. "And the popularity lasted and lasted." The 21st century celebrated anniversaries with more memorabilia. For "The Beano" 70th birthday, DC Thomson published "The Beano Special Collectors Edition: 70 Years of Fun" (2008), and "The History of The Beano" (2008) was published by Waverly Books, both documenting the magazine's history; two exhibitions at the University of Dundee ("Happy Birthday, Beano!") and The Cartoon Museum ("Beano and Dandy Birthday Bash!") showed the public private DC Thomson artwork and the history of the magazine. For 2018, readers could buy a box for the 80th anniversary containing posters, reprints of selected older issues, and two books updating the previous documentation of the magazine's history, as well as "Minnie the Minx" origins. Both anniversaries had tie-in museum exhibitions that also told their audiences the magazine's history. Limited-edition figurines from Robert Harrop were available to buy from their official website in late 2008. The 21st century also began "Beano" branching into different mediums: their first website, Beanotown.com, formed in 2000, and Chessington World of Adventures opened Beanoland in the same year. Both would later discontinue but Beanotown.com would be revamped as beano.com, a website full of games, "Beano" secrets and other activities for children. Gulliver's Travels opened the Beano 6 Super Ride in May 2021. "The Beano" was also the face of the United Kingdom's 2018 Summer Reading Challenge, called Mischief Makers, which included a special Dennis the Menace novel tie-in called "Dennis the Menace and the Chamber of Mischief" by Beano artist Nigel Auchterlounie. The Dennis the Menace Fan Club was re-launched as a phone app, rebranded as The Dennis and Gnasher Fan Club, and allowed readers free membership, printable badges, and pranks. On television, the Sky Kids show "SO Beano!" aired; a TV show with special guests, children presenters, and fun and games, in a similar style to "Friday Download" and "Scrambled!" Annuals. The first Beano annual hardcover book was published as far back as 1939, a year after the first weekly comic was published. In 2018, it was estimated that an original first issue Beano annual in relatively good condition could fetch between £1,200 to £1,500. Spin-off comics. Comic libraries. Since 1982 the comic, along with "The Dandy", has also run "Comic Library" titles. Released monthly, these titles are a feature-length (usually about 64-page) adventure, featuring a character from the comic itself. They are available in A5 size only. In 1998, these were replaced by the "Fun Size Beano". Fun Size Comics were discontinued in late 2010. "Beano Specials". The comic also ran A4-sized "Beano Specials" in 1987 with full coloured pages, which later were replaced by "Beano Superstars" which ran for 121 issues from 1992 to 2002. These were similar to the Comic Library series. Some of the last issues were printed versions of episodes from the 1996–1998 "Dennis and Gnasher" animated TV series. A "Beano Poster Comic" series was also printed in the early 1990s. The Beano Specials returned in 2003, and are now published seasonally. The issues were numbered, and the first one was a Dennis and Friends special, the last a Christmas reprint special. These were replaced by BeanoMAX in early 2007. BeanoMAX. On 15 February 2007, the first issue of a monthly comic entitled "BeanoMAX" was published. The sister comic features many of the same characters; however, the stories in "BeanoMAX" are written in a longer format meant for 10- to 13-year-olds. The first issue was a Comic Relief special featuring assorted celebrity guests. The magazine has been rebranded several times since 2013, and is currently known as "EPIC Magazine". "Plug". "Plug" was a comic based on the eponymous character from "The Bash Street Kids" that began with issue dated 24 September 1977, and is notable for being the first comic to make use of rotogravure printing. The magazine similar in style to I.P.C's "Krazy" which had started the previous year. It contained uncharacteristically outlandish material for D C. Thomson, as well as later including celebrity appearances in the comic. The comic revealed Plug's full name to be Percival Proudfoot Plugsley and also gave him a pet monkey by the name of Chumkee. Plug's strip was mostly drawn by Vic Neill but other artists, including Dave Gudgeon drew some later strips. Other strips included "Antchester United", "Violent Elizabeth", "Eebagoom", "Hugh's Zoo" and "D'ye Ken John Squeal and his Hopeless Hounds". The venture was unsuccessful, in part because the comic cost 9p, with the "Beano" at the time only costing 4p and most of its rivals priced similarly. It merged with "The Beezer" on 24 February 1979. "Dennis and Gnasher". The brand new "Dennis and Gnasher" was launched separately from "The Beano" in September 2009. It coincided with their new cartoon on CBBC of the same name. "BeanOLD". 44-page special issue 4062, with cover date 21 November 2020, during a lockdown in the COVID-19 pandemic had an eight-page adult pullout named "BeanOLD", with cartoons poking fun at British politicians such as Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, and with appearances by Greta Thunberg, Captain Tom, and footballer Marcus Rashford. The slogan was "2020 has been tough. So tough that even grown-ups need "Beano"". Beano Studios. In June 2016, DC Thomson launched Beano Studios, a spin-off media studio based in London and Dundee, to create media for children and expand The Beano franchise. The launch was marked in The Beano issue 3854, featuring a new cover design, updated logo, and the introduction of the website beano.com. Michael Stirling, former chief editor, returned as head of the Dundee studio, with Jodie Morris, James Neal, Nigel Pickard, and Emma Scott joining in key roles. The website beano.com offers games, news, videos, and content that appeals to children and nostalgic parents alike, drawing over two million annual visitors. This online presence contributed to a 10% rise in comic sales by 2018. Beano Studios quickly expanded its reach with the popular CBBC series Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed! in 2017, which aired in over 90 countries and earned an International Emmy nomination. Building on this success, Beano Studios pursued new projects including a live-action Minnie the Minx show, another Dennis the Menace adaptation, and a Bananaman cartoon in collaboration with Fox Entertainment. Reception and legacy. "The Beano" was an instant success upon release, and became the longest-running, weekly-issued comic of all time in 2018. Although interest in comic magazines dwindled, it survived surrounding setbacks. In the 1950s, it (and "The Dandy") were unaffected by DC Thomson's magazine cancellations (selling over 100 million per year) that were caused by both paper rationing and public lack of interest. Alan Digby's attempt to boost sales with the 8-week "Missing Gnasher" plot in "Dennis the Menace" failed, but the story featured in newspapers and on radio broadcasts, causing people of all ages to contact "Beano" offices to voice their concerns. Roughly 31,000–41,000 copies are sold per week in the present day, but an estimated 2 billion "Beano" comic magazines have been sold in its lifetime. A 1997 television poll by the National Comics Awards selected it for the Best British Comic Ever award. Dennis the Menace would represent the comic when Royal Mail launched a special stamp collection in 2012, celebrating Britain's rich comic book history. "The Dandy", "Eagle", "The Topper", "Roy of the Rovers", "Bunty", "Buster", "Valiant", "Twinkle" and "2000 AD" were also featured. Like "The Dandy", "The Beano" is a definitive part of British pop culture. "It's refreshing to see how the [zany] principles that made it such a hit all those years ago have remained to this day." writes "Coventry Evening Telegraph". "Beano" annuals are the most popular Christmas annual sold, and old issues sell for thousands at auctions. Lord Snooty is often used as a pejorative in British politics. DC Thomson considers the 1950s "Beano" golden age possibly because of many commemorations based on the strips that first appeared from that decade: Dennis became the literal and metaphorical mascot of the magazine, his increasing popularity making him the last consistent cover star and his strips spawning three BBC animated adaptations; Minnie and the Bash Street Kids have a statue and a street named after the strip, respectively. The "anarchic" humour is credited as the key to the magazine's longevity, as well as its refusal to be condescending to its readers: ""The Beano" may have changed since the '30s but has always maintained its anti-authoritarian stance and steadfast refusal to treat children like idiots," theorised Morris Heggie. The magazine is cited as an inspiration to many readers. "Beano" artists Emily McGorman-Bruce, Zoom Rockman, Jess Bradley, and Barrie Appleby were avid readers of the magazine and/or its annuals before they became creators of its new strips. Meanwhile, "The Beano" inspired comic artists Jay Stephens, Carolyn Edwards (Titan Comics) and webcomic creator Sarah Millman ("NPC Tea", "The Heart of Time") to either work in the creative industry or create their own stories. Alan Moore theorised the magazine influenced numerous British comic artists into reimagining American comics in the 1980s by pioneering the Dark Age. Guest chief-editors Nick Park, David Walliams, Joe Sugg, and Harry Hill are also fans of "The Beano", with Park admitting "My dream job was always to work on "The Beano" and it's such an honour for me to be Guest Editor[.]" Notable famous members of the old Dennis the Menace/Beano Club include Auberon Waugh, Mike Read, and Mark Hamill, as well as honorary members Paul Gascoigne, and Princes William and Harry. Chris Tarrant cited Dennis as his role model when he was a child, and Paul Rudd revealed "Roger the Dodger" was his favourite strip. Stella McCartney created tribute fashion to both "The Beano" and "The Dandy", explaining they were "a huge part of my childhood" and wanted to celebrate "the next generation of "Beano" fans with a sustainable and practical range for kids who still share that ‘Beano’ spirit of these iconic characters". In music pop culture, the album "Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton" is nicknamed "The Beano Album" because Eric Clapton is holding issue 1242 on its cover. Audience participation. Interaction with the audience is a historic practice in "The Beano" history. Excluding fan clubs and merchandise, "Comic Idol" is a sporadic election in which readers vote for their favourite strips to keep in the magazine. Cancelled strips with the least votes include "Little Plum", "Baby Face Finlayson", "Les Pretend", "Calamity James", "Crazy for Daisy", and "Lord Snooty". "Super School" and "Meebo and Zuky" were nominees who won polls and became official strips in the following issues. Readers would find a voting slip covered with the candidates printed in an issue that they would fill out and mail to DC Thomson, but the creation of "Beano" websites would allow real-time opinions from readers. "Pets' Picture Gallery" invited readers to send drawings of their pets to feature in the following issue. Readers participated in the magazine's record-breaking stunts. In 1988, 100 children helped Euan Kerr and "Beano" scriptwriter Al Bernard recreate the front cover of issue 2396 on Scarborough Beach with Hann-Made Productions. It was awarded the Largest Comic Strip at 39950 square feet. "Beano" 2018 comic competition to celebrate the opening of V&A Dundee was awarded the biggest competition to finish a comic strip with 650 participants. Along with Nick Park's guest editor issue, the 70th anniversary coincided with Gnashional Menace Day, a CLIC Sargent-partnered event where readers could be sponsored "behaving like Dennis" for charity. Controversy. "The Beano" has had a few controversies throughout its lifetime, but aspects have either been discontinued, phased out or changed to not cause offence. Its infamous changes are the removal of corporal punishment (e.g. Dennis the Menace often depicted receiving bottom spanks with a slipper by his furious father) and misbehaving characters abandoning slingshots—the latter irritating former readers for being a "politically correct" notion, usually highlighted with claim "Dennis has lost his menace". Racist depictions and terminology have been removed through the years as well. "Little Plum" sub-title "Your redskin chum" was not included in its 2002 revival. The first masthead character was a caricatured design of a black boy named Peanut, mascot of the "Little Peanut's Page of Fun" joke page (appeared from issues 1 to 112), usually eating watermelon. His last masthead feature was in December 1947, but subsequent reprints of the first issues have removed him. "Hard-Nut the Nigger" and "Musso the Wop" have not had reprints since their last appearances, the latter being printed during World War II when Britain was at war with Fascist Italy. Some changes were to not convince readers bullying was acceptable. Dennis and Gnasher's constant targeting of passive, diligent Walter "the Softy" (who was also a knitting and flower-picking hobbyist) was accused of encouraging playground homophobia, so it was toned down. Walter was also rewritten to be a bit less soft, becoming more antagonistic and stood up to Dennis sometimes, eventually having his first girlfriend. Fatty from the Bash Street Kids was renamed Freddy (his real name) in 2021, causing backlash from former readers, including then government minister Jacob Rees-Mogg who accused the change of being "publicity-seeking". Former chief-editor Mike Stirling explained it was due to fan letters from young readers asking why he was nicknamed so: "although it's always been used affectionately, and never pejoratively, we agreed it's time it changed." A "News of the World" report contained accusations of "Uh Oh, Si Co!" encouraging readers to mock children with anger issues or mental illness, which caused the strip to be cancelled.
4654	2587909	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4654	Bee	Bees are winged insects that form a monophyletic clade Anthophila within the superfamily Apoidea of the order Hymenoptera, with over 20,000 known species in seven recognized families. Some speciesincluding honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees are social insects living in highly hierarchical colonies, while most species (>90%)including mason bees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, and sweat beesare solitary. Members of the most well-known bee genus, "Apis" (i.e. honey bees), are known to construct hexagonally celled waxy nests called hives. Unlike the closely related wasps and ants, who are carnivorous/omnivorous, bees are herbivores that specifically feed on nectar (nectarivory) and pollen (palynivory), the former primarily as a carbohydrate source for metabolic energy, and the latter primarily for protein and other nutrients for their larvae. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, and in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants. The most common bees in the Northern Hemisphere are the Halictidae, or sweat bees, but they are small and often mistaken for wasps or flies. Bees range in size from tiny stingless bee species, whose workers are less than long, to the leafcutter bee "Megachile pluto", the largest species of bee, whose females can attain a length of . Vertebrate predators of bees include primates and birds such as bee-eaters; insect predators include beewolves and dragonflies. Bees are best known to humans for their ecological roles as pollinators and, in the case of the best-known species, the western honey bee, for producing honey, a regurgitated viscous mixture of digested monosaccharides kept as food storage of the bee colony. Pollination management via bees is important both ecologically and agriculturally, and the decline in wild bee populations has increased the demand and value of domesticated pollination by commercially managed hives of honey bees. The analysis of 353 wild bee and hoverfly species across Britain from 1980 to 2013 found the insects have been lost from a quarter of the places they inhabited in 1980. Human beekeeping or apiculture (meliponiculture for stingless bees) has been practiced as a discipline of animal husbandry for millennia, since at least the times of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Bees have appeared in mythology and folklore, through all phases of art and literature from ancient times to the present day, although primarily focused in the Northern Hemisphere where beekeeping is far more common. In Mesoamerica, the Maya have practiced large-scale intensive meliponiculture since pre-Columbian times. Evolution. The immediate ancestors of bees were stinging wasps in the family Ammoplanidae, which were predators of other insects. The switch from insect prey to pollen may have resulted from the consumption of prey insects which were flower visitors and were partially covered with pollen when they were fed to the wasp larvae. This same evolutionary scenario may have occurred within the vespoid wasps, where the pollen wasps evolved from predatory ancestors. Based on phylogenetic analysis, bees are thought to have originated during the Early Cretaceous (about 124 million years ago) on the supercontinent of West Gondwana, just prior to its breakup into South America and Africa. The supercontinent is thought to have been a largely xeric environment at this time; modern bee diversity hotspots are also in xeric and seasonal temperate environments, suggesting strong niche conservatism among bees ever since their origins. Genomic analysis indicates that despite only appearing much later in the fossil record, all modern bee families had already diverged from one another by the end of the Cretaceous. The Melittidae, Apidae, and Megachilidae had already evolved on the supercontinent prior to its fragmentation. Further divergences were facilitated by West Gondwana's breakup around 100 million years ago, leading to a deep Africa-South America split within both the Apidae and Megachilidae, the isolation of the Melittidae in Africa, and the origins of the Colletidae, Andrenidae and Halictidae in South America. The rapid radiation of the South American bee families is thought to have followed the concurrent radiation of flowering plants in the same region. Later in the Cretaceous (80 million years ago), colletid bees colonized Australia from South America (with an offshoot lineage evolving into the Stenotritidae), and by the end of the Cretaceous, South American bees had also colonized North America. The North American fossil taxon "Cretotrigona" belongs to a group that is no longer found in North America, suggesting that many bee lineages went extinct during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Following the K-Pg extinction, surviving bee lineages continued to spread into the Northern Hemisphere, colonizing Europe from Africa by the Paleocene, and then spreading east to Asia. This was facilitated by the warming climate around the same time, allowing bees to move to higher latitudes following the spread of tropical and subtropical habitats. By the Eocene (~45 mya) there was already considerable diversity among eusocial bee lineages. A second extinction event among bees is thought to have occurred due to rapid climatic cooling around the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, leading to the extinction of some bee lineages such as the tribe Melikertini. Over the Paleogene and Neogene, different bee lineages continued to spread all over the world, and the shifting habitats and connectedness of continents led to the isolation and evolution of many new bee tribes. Fossils. The oldest non-compression bee fossil is "Cretotrigona prisca", a corbiculate bee of Late Cretaceous age (~70 mya) found in New Jersey amber. A fossil from the early Cretaceous (~100 mya), "Melittosphex burmensis", was initially considered "an extinct lineage of pollen-collecting Apoidea sister to the modern bees", but subsequent research has rejected the claim that "Melittosphex" is a bee, or even a member of the superfamily Apoidea to which bees belong, instead treating the lineage as "incertae sedis" within the Aculeata. The Allodapini (within the Apidae) appeared around 53 Mya. The Colletidae appear as fossils only from the late Oligocene (~25 Mya) to early Miocene. The Melittidae are known from "Palaeomacropis eocenicus" in the Early Eocene. The Megachilidae are known from trace fossils (characteristic leaf cuttings) from the Middle Eocene. The Andrenidae are known from the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, around 34 Mya, of the Florissant shale. The Halictidae first appear in the Early Eocene with species found in amber. The Stenotritidae are known from fossil brood cells of Pleistocene age. Coevolution. The earliest animal-pollinated flowers were shallow, cup-shaped blooms pollinated by insects such as beetles, so the syndrome of insect pollination was well established before the first appearance of bees. The novelty is that bees are specialized as pollination agents, with behavioral and physical modifications that specifically enhance pollination, and are the most efficient pollinating insects. In a process of coevolution, flowers developed floral rewards such as nectar and longer tubes, and bees developed longer tongues to extract the nectar. Bees also developed structures known as scopal hairs and pollen baskets to collect and carry pollen. The location and type differ among and between groups of bees. Most species have scopal hairs on their hind legs or on the underside of their abdomens. Some species in the family Apidae have pollen baskets on their hind legs, while very few lack these and instead collect pollen in their crops. The appearance of these structures drove the adaptive radiation of the angiosperms, and, in turn, bees themselves. Bees coevolved not only with flowers but it is believed that some species coevolved with mites. Some provide tufts of hairs called acarinaria that appear to provide lodgings for mites; in return, it is believed that mites eat fungi that attack pollen, so the relationship in this case may be mutualistic. Phylogeny. External. Molecular phylogeny was used by Debevic "et al", 2012, to demonstrate that the bees (Anthophila) arose from deep within the Crabronidae "sensu lato", which was thus rendered paraphyletic. In their study, the placement of the monogeneric Heterogynaidae was uncertain. The small family Mellinidae was not included in this analysis. Further studies by Sann "et al.", 2018, elevated the subfamilies (plus one tribe and one subtribe) of Crabronidae "sensu lato" to family status. They also recovered the placement of "Heterogyna" within Nyssonini and sunk Heterogynaidae. The newly erected family, Ammoplanidae, formerly a subtribe of Pemphredoninae, was recovered as the most sister family to bees. Internal. This cladogram of the bee families is based on Hedtke et al., 2013, which places the former families Dasypodaidae and Meganomiidae as subfamilies inside the Melittidae. English names, where available, are given in parentheses. Characteristics. Bees differ from closely related groups such as wasps by having branched or plume-like setae (hairs), combs on the forelimbs for cleaning their antennae, small anatomical differences in limb structure, and the venation of the hind wings; and in females, by having the seventh dorsal abdominal plate divided into two half-plates. Bees have the following characteristics: The largest species of bee is thought to be Wallace's giant bee "Megachile pluto", whose females can attain a length of . The smallest species may be dwarf stingless bees in the tribe Meliponini whose workers are less than in length. Sociality. Haplodiploid breeding system. According to inclusive fitness theory, organisms can gain fitness not just through increasing their own reproductive output, but also that of close relatives. In evolutionary terms, individuals should help relatives when "Cost < Relatedness * Benefit". The requirements for eusociality are more easily fulfilled by haplodiploid species such as bees because of their unusual relatedness structure. In haplodiploid species, females develop from fertilized eggs and males from unfertilized eggs. Because a male is haploid (has only one copy of each gene), his daughters (which are diploid, with two copies of each gene) share 100% of his genes and 50% of their mother's. Therefore, they share 75% of their genes with each other. This mechanism of sex determination gives rise to what W. D. Hamilton termed "supersisters", more closely related to their sisters than they would be to their own offspring. Workers often do not reproduce, but they can pass on more of their genes by helping to raise their sisters (as queens) than they would by having their own offspring (each of which would only have 50% of their genes), assuming they would produce similar numbers. This unusual situation has been proposed as an explanation of the multiple (at least nine) evolutions of eusociality within Hymenoptera. Haplodiploidy is neither necessary nor sufficient for eusociality. Some eusocial species such as termites are not haplodiploid. Conversely, all bees are haplodiploid but not all are eusocial, and among eusocial species many queens mate with multiple males, creating half-sisters that share only 25% of each other's genes. But, monogamy (queens mating singly) is the ancestral state for all eusocial species so far investigated, so it is likely that haplodiploidy contributed to the evolution of eusociality in bees. Eusociality. Bees may be solitary or may live in various types of communities. Eusociality appears to have originated from at least three independent origins in halictid bees. The most advanced of these are species with eusocial colonies; these are characterized by cooperative brood care and a division of labour into reproductive and non-reproductive adults, plus overlapping generations. This division of labour creates specialized groups within eusocial societies which are called castes. In some species, groups of cohabiting females may be sisters, and if there is a division of labour within the group, they are considered semisocial. The group is called eusocial if, in addition, the group consists of a mother (the queen) and her daughters (workers). When the castes are purely behavioural alternatives, with no morphological differentiation other than size, the system is considered primitively eusocial, as in many paper wasps; when the castes are morphologically discrete, the system is considered highly eusocial. True honey bees (genus "Apis", of which eight species are currently recognized) are highly eusocial, and are among the best known insects. Their colonies are established by swarms, consisting of a queen and several thousand workers. There are 29 subspecies of one of these species, "Apis mellifera", native to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Africanized bees are a hybrid strain of "A. mellifera" that escaped from experiments involving crossing European and African subspecies; they are extremely defensive. Stingless bees are also highly eusocial. They practice mass provisioning, with complex nest architecture and perennial colonies also established via swarming. Many bumblebees are eusocial, similar to the eusocial Vespidae such as hornets in that the queen initiates a nest on her own rather than by swarming. Bumblebee colonies typically have from 50 to 200 bees at peak population, which occurs in mid to late summer. Nest architecture is simple, limited by the size of the pre-existing nest cavity, and colonies rarely last more than a year. In 2011, the International Union for Conservation of Nature set up the Bumblebee Specialist Group to review the threat status of all bumblebee species worldwide using the IUCN Red List criteria. There are many more species of primitively eusocial than highly eusocial bees, but they have been studied less often. Most are in the family Halictidae, or "sweat bees". Colonies are typically small, with a dozen or fewer workers, on average. Queens and workers differ only in size, if at all. Most species have a single season colony cycle, even in the tropics, and only mated females hibernate. A few species have long active seasons and attain colony sizes in the hundreds, such as "Halictus hesperus". Some species are eusocial in parts of their range and solitary in others, or have a mix of eusocial and solitary nests in the same population. The orchid bees (Apidae) include some primitively eusocial species with similar biology. Some allodapine bees (Apidae) form primitively eusocial colonies, with progressive provisioning: a larva's food is supplied gradually as it develops, as is the case in honey bees and some bumblebees. Solitary and communal bees. Most other bees, including familiar insects such as carpenter bees, leafcutter bees and mason bees are solitary in the sense that every female is fertile, and typically inhabits a nest she constructs herself. There is no division of labor so these nests lack queens and "worker" bees for these species. Solitary bees typically produce neither honey nor beeswax. Bees collect pollen to feed their young, and have the necessary adaptations to do this. However, certain wasp species such as pollen wasps have similar behaviours, and a few species of bee scavenge from carcases to feed their offspring. Solitary bees are important pollinators; they gather pollen to provision their nests with food for their brood. Often it is mixed with nectar to form a paste-like consistency. Some solitary bees have advanced types of pollen-carrying structures on their bodies. Very few species of solitary bee are being cultured for commercial pollination. Most of these species belong to a distinct set of genera which are commonly known by their nesting behavior or preferences, namely: carpenter bees, sweat bees, mason bees, plasterer bees, squash bees, dwarf carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, alkali bees and digger bees. Most solitary bees are fossorial, digging nests in the ground in a variety of soil textures and conditions, while others create nests in hollow reeds or twigs, or holes in wood. The female typically creates a compartment (a "cell") with an egg and some provisions for the resulting larva, then seals it off. A nest may consist of numerous cells. When the nest is in wood, usually the last (those closer to the entrance) contain eggs that will become males. The adult does not provide care for the brood once the egg is laid, and usually dies after making one or more nests. The males typically emerge first and are ready for mating when the females emerge. Solitary bees are very unlikely to sting (only in self-defense, if ever), and some (esp. in the family Andrenidae) are stingless. While solitary, females each make individual nests. Some species, such as the European mason bee "Hoplitis anthocopoides", and the Dawson's Burrowing bee, "Amegilla dawsoni," are gregarious, preferring to make nests near others of the same species, and giving the appearance of being social. Large groups of solitary bee nests are called "aggregations", to distinguish them from colonies. In some species, multiple females share a common nest, but each makes and provisions her own cells independently. This type of group is called "communal" and is not uncommon. The primary advantage appears to be that a nest entrance is easier to defend from predators and parasites when multiple females use that same entrance regularly. Biology. Life cycle. The life cycle of a bee, be it a solitary or social species, involves the laying of an egg, the development through several moults of a legless larva, a pupation stage during which the insect undergoes complete metamorphosis, followed by the emergence of a winged adult. The number of eggs laid by a female during her lifetime can vary from eight or less in some solitary bees, to more than a million in highly social species. Most solitary bees and bumble bees in temperate climates overwinter as adults or pupae and emerge in spring when increasing numbers of flowering plants come into bloom. The males usually emerge first and search for females with which to mate. Like the other members of Hymenoptera bees are haplodiploid; the sex of a bee is determined by whether or not the egg is fertilized. After mating, a female stores the sperm, and determines which sex is required at the time each individual egg is laid, fertilized eggs producing female offspring and unfertilized eggs, males. Tropical bees may have several generations in a year and no diapause stage. The egg is generally oblong, slightly curved and tapering at one end. Solitary bees, lay each egg in a separate cell with a supply of mixed pollen and nectar next to it. This may be rolled into a pellet or placed in a pile and is known as mass provisioning. Social bee species provision progressively, that is, they feed the larva regularly while it grows. The nest varies from a hole in the ground or in wood, in solitary bees, to a substantial structure with wax combs in bumblebees and honey bees. In most species, larvae are whitish grubs, roughly oval and bluntly-pointed at both ends. They have 15 segments and spiracles in each segment for breathing. They have no legs but move within the cell, helped by tubercles on their sides. They have short horns on the head, jaws for chewing food and an appendage on either side of the mouth tipped with a bristle. There is a gland under the mouth that secretes a viscous liquid which solidifies into the silk they use to produce a cocoon. The cocoon is semi-transparent and the pupa can be seen through it. Over the course of a few days, the larva undergoes metamorphosis into a winged adult. When ready to emerge, the adult splits its skin dorsally and climbs out of the exuviae and breaks out of the cell. Flight. Antoine Magnan's 1934 book says that he and André Sainte-Laguë had applied the equations of air resistance to insects and found that their flight could not be explained by fixed-wing calculations, but that "One shouldn't be surprised that the results of the calculations don't square with reality". This has led to a common misconception that bees "violate aerodynamic theory". In fact it merely confirms that bees do not engage in fixed-wing flight, and that their flight is explained by other mechanics, such as those used by helicopters. In 1996 it was shown that vortices created by many insects' wings helped to provide lift. High-speed cinematography and robotic mock-up of a bee wing showed that lift was generated by "the unconventional combination of short, choppy wing strokes, a rapid rotation of the wing as it flops over and reverses direction, and a very fast wing-beat frequency". Wing-beat frequency normally increases as size decreases, but as the bee's wing beat covers such a small arc, it flaps approximately 230 times per second, faster than a fruitfly (200 times per second) which is 80 times smaller. Navigation, communication, and finding food. The ethologist Karl von Frisch studied navigation in the honey bee. He showed that honey bees communicate by the waggle dance, in which a worker indicates the location of a food source to other workers in the hive. He demonstrated that bees can recognize a desired compass direction in three different ways: by the Sun, by the polarization pattern of the blue sky, and by the Earth's magnetic field. He showed that the Sun is the preferred or main compass; the other mechanisms are used under cloudy skies or inside a dark beehive. Bees navigate using spatial memory with a "rich, map-like organization". Digestion. The gut of bees is relatively simple, but multiple metabolic strategies exist in the gut microbiota. Pollinating bees consume nectar and pollen, which require different digestion strategies by somewhat specialized bacteria. While nectar is a liquid of mostly monosaccharide sugars and so easily absorbed, pollen contains complex polysaccharides: branching pectin and hemicellulose. Approximately five groups of bacteria are involved in digestion. Three groups specialize in simple sugars ("Snodgrassella" and two groups of "Lactobacillus"), and two other groups in complex sugars ("Gilliamella" and "Bifidobacterium"). Digestion of pectin and hemicellulose is dominated by bacterial clades "Gilliamella" and "Bifidobacterium" respectively. Bacteria that cannot digest polysaccharides obtain enzymes from their neighbors, and bacteria that lack certain amino acids do the same, creating multiple ecological niches. Although most bee species are nectarivorous and palynivorous, some are not. Particularly unusual are vulture bees in the genus "Trigona," which consume carrion and wasp brood, turning meat into a honey-like substance. Drinking guttation drops from leaves is also a source of energy and nutrients. Ecology. Floral relationships. Most bees are polylectic (generalist) meaning they collect pollen from a range of flowering plants, but some are oligoleges (specialists), in that they only gather pollen from one or a few species or genera of closely related plants. In Melittidae and Apidae we also find a few genera that are highly specialized for collecting plant oils both in addition to, and instead of, nectar, which is mixed with pollen as larval food. Male orchid bees in some species gather aromatic compounds from orchids, which is one of the few cases where male bees are effective pollinators. Bees are able to sense the presence of desirable flowers through ultraviolet patterning on flowers, floral odors, and even electromagnetic fields. Once landed, a bee then uses nectar quality and pollen taste to determine whether to continue visiting similar flowers. In rare cases, a plant species may only be effectively pollinated by a single bee species, and some plants are endangered at least in part because their pollinator is also threatened. But, there is a pronounced tendency for oligolectic bees to be associated with common, widespread plants visited by multiple pollinator species. For example, the creosote bush in the arid parts of the United States southwest is associated with some 40 oligoleges. As mimics and models. Many bees are aposematically colored, typically orange and black, warning of their ability to defend themselves with a powerful sting. As such they are models for Batesian mimicry by non-stinging insects such as bee-flies, robber flies and hoverflies, all of which gain a measure of protection by superficially looking and behaving like bees. Bees are themselves Müllerian mimics of other aposematic insects with the same color scheme, including wasps, lycid and other beetles, and many butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) which are themselves distasteful, often through acquiring bitter and poisonous chemicals from their plant food. All the Müllerian mimics, including bees, benefit from the reduced risk of predation that results from their easily recognized warning coloration. Bees are also mimicked by plants such as the bee orchid which imitates both the appearance and the scent of a female bee; male bees attempt to mate (pseudocopulation) with the furry lip of the flower, thus pollinating it. As brood parasites. Brood parasites occur in several bee families including the apid subfamily Nomadinae. Females of these species lack pollen collecting structures (the scopa) and do not construct their own nests. They typically enter the nests of pollen collecting species, and lay their eggs in cells provisioned by the host bee. When the "cuckoo" bee larva hatches, it consumes the host larva's pollen ball, and often the host egg also. In particular, the Arctic bee species, "Bombus hyperboreus" is an aggressive species that attacks and enslaves other bees of the same subgenus. However, unlike many other bee brood parasites, they have pollen baskets and often collect pollen. In Southern Africa, hives of African honeybees ("A. mellifera scutellata") are being destroyed by parasitic workers of the Cape honeybee, "A. m. capensis". These lay diploid eggs ("thelytoky"), escaping normal worker policing, leading to the colony's destruction; the parasites can then move to other hives. The cuckoo bees in the "Bombus" subgenus "Psithyrus" are closely related to, and resemble, their hosts in looks and size. This common pattern gave rise to the ecological principle "Emery's rule". Others parasitize bees in different families, like "Townsendiella", a nomadine apid, two species of which are cleptoparasites of the dasypodaid genus "Hesperapis", while the other species in the same genus attacks halictid bees. Nocturnal bees. Four bee families (Andrenidae, Colletidae, Halictidae, and Apidae) contain some species that are crepuscular. Most are tropical or subtropical, but some live in arid regions at higher latitudes. These bees have greatly enlarged ocelli, which are extremely sensitive to light and dark, though incapable of forming images. Some have refracting superposition compound eyes: these combine the output of many elements of their compound eyes to provide enough light for each retinal photoreceptor. Their ability to fly by night enables them to avoid many predators, and to exploit flowers that produce nectar only or also at night. Predators, parasites and pathogens. Vertebrate predators of bees include bee-eaters, shrikes and flycatchers, which make short sallies to catch insects in flight. Swifts and swallows fly almost continually, catching insects as they go. The honey buzzard attacks bees' nests and eats the larvae. The greater honeyguide interacts with humans by guiding them to the nests of wild bees. The humans break open the nests and take the honey and the bird feeds on the larvae and the wax. Among mammals, predators such as the badger dig up bumblebee nests and eat both the larvae and any stored food. Specialist ambush predators of visitors to flowers include crab spiders, which wait on flowering plants for pollinating insects; predatory bugs, and praying mantises, some of which (the flower mantises of the tropics) wait motionless, aggressive mimics camouflaged as flowers. Beewolves are large wasps that habitually attack bees; the ethologist Niko Tinbergen estimated that a single colony of the beewolf "Philanthus triangulum" might kill several thousand honeybees in a day: all the prey he observed were honeybees. Other predatory insects that sometimes catch bees include robber flies and dragonflies. Honey bees are affected by parasites including tracheal and "Varroa" mites. However, some bees are believed to have a mutualistic relationship with mites. Some mites of genus "Tarsonemus" are associated with bees. They live in bee nests and ride on adult bees for dispersal. They are presumed to feed on fungi, nest materials or pollen. However, the impact they have on bees remains uncertain. Relationship with humans. In mythology and folklore. Homer's "Hymn to Hermes" describes three bee-maidens with the power of divination and thus speaking truth, and identifies the food of the gods as honey. Sources associated the bee maidens with Apollo and, until the 1980s, scholars followed Gottfried Hermann (1806) in incorrectly identifying the bee-maidens with the Thriae. Honey, according to a Greek myth, was discovered by a nymph called Melissa ("Bee"); and honey was offered to the Greek gods from Mycenean times. Bees were also associated with the Delphic oracle and the prophetess was sometimes called a bee. The image of a community of honey bees has been used from ancient to modern times, in Aristotle and Plato; in Virgil and Seneca; in Erasmus and Shakespeare; Tolstoy, and by political and social theorists such as Bernard Mandeville and Karl Marx as a model for human society. In English folklore, bees would be told of important events in the household, in a custom known as "Telling the bees". Honey bees, signifying immortality and resurrection, were royal heraldic emblems of the Merovingians, revived by Napoleon. In art and literature. Some of the oldest examples of bees in art are rock paintings in Spain which have been dated to 15,000 BC. W. B. Yeats's poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1888) contains the couplet "Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, / And live alone in the bee loud glade." At the time he was living in Bedford Park in the West of London. Beatrix Potter's illustrated book "The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse" (1910) features Babbity Bumble and her brood "(pictured)". Kit Williams' treasure hunt book "The Bee on the Comb" (1984) uses bees and beekeeping as part of its story and puzzle. Sue Monk Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees" (2004), and the 2009 film starring Dakota Fanning, tells the story of a girl who escapes her abusive home and finds her way to live with a family of beekeepers, the Boatwrights. Bees have appeared in films such as Jerry Seinfeld's animated "Bee Movie", or Eugene Schlusser's "A Sting in the Tale" (2014). The playwright Laline Paull's fantasy "The Bees" (2015) tells the tale of a hive bee named Flora 717 from hatching onwards. Beekeeping. Humans have kept honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, for millennia. Depictions of humans collecting honey from wild bees date to 15,000 years ago; efforts to domesticate them are shown in Egyptian art around 4,500 years ago. Simple hives and smoke were used. Among Classical Era authors, beekeeping with the use of smoke is described in Aristotle's "History of Animals" Book 9. The account mentions that bees die after stinging; that workers remove corpses from the hive, and guard it; castes including workers and non-working drones, but "kings" rather than queens; predators including toads and bee-eaters; and the waggle dance, with the "irresistible suggestion" of (", it waggles) and (", they watch). Beekeeping is described in detail by Virgil in his "Georgics"; it is mentioned in his "Aeneid", and in Pliny's "Natural History". From the 18th century, European understanding of the colonies and biology of bees allowed the construction of the moveable comb hive so that honey could be harvested without destroying the colony. As commercial pollinators. Bees play an important role in pollinating flowering plants, and are the major type of pollinator in many ecosystems that contain flowering plants. It is estimated that one third of the human food supply depends on pollination by insects, birds and bats, most of which is accomplished by bees, whether wild or domesticated. Since the 1970s, there has been a general decline in the species richness of wild bees and other pollinators, probably attributable to stress from increased parasites and disease, the use of pesticides, and a decrease in the number of wild flowers. Climate change probably exacerbates the problem. This is a major cause of concern, as it can cause biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation as well as increase climate change. Contract pollination has overtaken the role of honey production for beekeepers in many countries. After the introduction of Varroa mites, feral honey bees declined dramatically in the US, though their numbers have since recovered. The number of colonies kept by beekeepers declined slightly, through urbanization, systematic pesticide use, tracheal and "Varroa" mites, and the closure of beekeeping businesses. In 2006 and 2007 the rate of attrition increased, and was described as colony collapse disorder. In 2010 invertebrate iridescent virus and the fungus "Nosema ceranae" were shown to be in every killed colony, and deadly in combination. Winter losses increased to about 1/3. "Varroa" mites were thought to be responsible for about half the losses. Apart from colony collapse disorder, losses outside the US have been attributed to causes including pesticide seed dressings, using neonicotinoids such as clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam. From 2013 the European Union restricted some pesticides to stop bee populations from declining further. In 2014 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warned that bees faced increased risk of extinction because of global warming. In 2018 the European Union decided to ban field use of all three major neonicotinoids; they remain permitted in veterinary, greenhouse, and vehicle transport usage. Farmers have focused on alternative solutions to mitigate these problems. By raising native plants, they provide food for native bee pollinators like "Lasioglossum vierecki" and "L. leucozonium", leading to less reliance on honey bee populations. As food producers. Honey is a natural product produced by bees and stored for their own use, but its sweetness has always appealed to humans. Before domestication of bees was even attempted, humans were raiding their nests for their honey. Smoke was often used to subdue the bees and such activities are depicted in rock paintings in Spain dated to 15,000 BC. Honey bees are used commercially to produce honey. As food. Bees are considered edible insects. People in some countries eat insects, including the larvae and pupae of bees, mostly stingless species. They also gather larvae, pupae and surrounding cells, known as bee brood, for consumption. In the Indonesian dish "botok tawon" from Central and East Java, bee larvae are eaten as a companion to rice, after being mixed with shredded coconut, wrapped in banana leaves, and steamed. Bee brood (pupae and larvae) although low in calcium, has been found to be high in protein and carbohydrate, and a useful source of phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, and trace minerals iron, zinc, copper, and selenium. In addition, while bee brood was high in fat, it contained no fat soluble vitamins (such as A, D, and E) but it was a good source of most of the water-soluble B vitamins including choline as well as vitamin C. The fat was composed mostly of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids with 2.0% being polyunsaturated fatty acids. As alternative medicine. Apitherapy is a branch of alternative medicine that uses honey bee products, including raw honey, royal jelly, pollen, propolis, beeswax and apitoxin (Bee venom). The claim that apitherapy treats cancer, which some proponents of apitherapy make, remains unsupported by evidence-based medicine. Stings. The painful stings of bees are mostly associated with the poison gland and the Dufour's gland which are abdominal exocrine glands containing various chemicals. In "Lasioglossum leucozonium", the Dufour's Gland mostly contains octadecanolide as well as some eicosanolide. There is also evidence of n-triscosane, n-heptacosane, and 22-docosanolide.
4660	49913564	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4660	Basques	The Basques ( or ; ; ; ) are a Southwestern European ethnic group, characterised by the Basque language, a common culture, shared genetic ancestry to the ancient Vascones and Aquitanians, and are considered among the last remaining Paleo-European populations in Europe. Basques are indigenous to, and primarily inhabit, an area traditionally known as the Basque Country ()—a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France. Etymology. The English word "Basque" may be pronounced or and derives from the French "Basque" (), itself derived from Gascon "Basco" (pronounced ), cognate with Spanish "Vasco "(pronounced ). Those, in turn, come from Latin "Vascō" (pronounced ; plural "Vascōnēs"—see history section below). The Latin generally evolved into the bilabials and in Gascon and Spanish, probably under the influence of Basque and the related Aquitanian (the Latin /w/ instead evolved into in French, Italian and other Romance languages). Several coins from the 2nd and the 1st centuries BC found in the Basque Country bear the inscription "barscunes". The place in which they were minted is not certain but is thought to be somewhere near Pamplona, in the heartland of the area that historians believe was inhabited by the "Vascones". Some scholars have suggested a Celtic etymology based on "bhar-s-", meaning "summit", "point" or "leaves", according to which "barscunes" may have meant "the mountain people", "the tall ones" or "the proud ones", and others have posited a relationship to a Proto-Indo-European root "*bar-" meaning "border", "frontier", "march". In Basque, people call themselves the "euskaldunak", singular "euskaldun", formed from "euskal-" (i.e. "Basque (language)") and "-dun" (i.e. "one who has"); "euskaldun" literally means a Basque-speaker. Not all Basques are Basque-speakers. Therefore, the neologism "euskotar", plural "euskotarrak", was coined in the 19th century to mean a Basque person, whether Basque-speaking or not. Alfonso Irigoyen posits that the word "euskara" is derived from an ancient Basque verb "enautsi" "to say" (compare modern Basque "esan") and the suffix "-(k)ara" ("way (of doing something)"). Thus, "euskara" would mean literally "way of saying" or "way of speaking". One item of evidence in favour of that hypothesis is found in the Spanish book "Compendio Historial", written in 1571 by the Basque writer Esteban de Garibay. He records the name of the Basque language as "enusquera". That may, however, be a writing mistake. In the 19th century, the Basque nationalist activist Sabino Arana posited an original root "euzko", which he thought came from "eguzkiko" ("of the sun", related to the assumption of an original solar religion). On the basis of that putative root, Arana proposed the name Euzkadi for an independent Basque nation, composed of seven Basque historical territories. Arana's neologism "Euzkadi" (in the regularized spelling "Euskadi") is still widely used in both Basque and Spanish since it is now the official name of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country. Genetic origins. The distinctiveness noted by studies of classical genetic markers (such as blood groups) and the pre-Indo-European of the Basque language has resulted in a popular and long-held view that Basques are "living fossils" of the earliest modern humans who colonised Europe. Partly for these reasons, anthropological and genetic studies from the beginning and the end of the 20th century theorized that the Basques are the descendants of the original Cro-Magnons. But although they are genetically distinctive in some ways due to isolation, the Basques are still very typically European in their Y-DNA and mtDNA sequences, and in some other genetic loci. These same sequences are widespread throughout the Western half of Europe, especially along the Western fringe of the continent. History. Basque tribes were mentioned in Roman times by Strabo and Pliny, including the Vascones, Aquitani, and others. There is enough evidence to support the hypothesis that at that time and later they spoke old varieties of the Basque language (see: Aquitanian language). In the Early Middle Ages, the territory between the Ebro and Garonne rivers was known as Vasconia, a vaguely defined ethnic area and political entity struggling to fend off pressure from the Iberian Visigothic kingdom and Arab rule to the south, as well as the Frankish push from the north. By the turn of the first millennium, the territory of Vasconia had fragmented into different feudal regions, such as Soule and Labourd, while south of the Pyrenees the Castile, Pamplona and the Pyrenean counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe, Ribagorça (later Kingdom of Aragon), and Pallars emerged as the main regional entities with Basque population in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Kingdom of Pamplona, a central Basque realm, later known as Navarre, underwent a process of feudalization and was subject to the influence of its much larger Aragonese, Castilian and French neighbours. Castile deprived Navarre of its coastline by conquering key western territories (1199–1201), leaving the kingdom landlocked. The Basques were ravaged by the War of the Bands, bitter partisan wars between local ruling families. Weakened by the Navarrese civil war, the bulk of the realm eventually fell before the onslaught of the Spanish armies (1512–1524). However, the Navarrese territory north of the Pyrenees remained beyond the reach of an increasingly powerful Spain. Lower Navarre became a province of France in 1620. Nevertheless, the Basques enjoyed a great deal of self-government until the French Revolution (1790) and the Carlist Wars (1839, 1876), when the Basques supported heir apparent Carlos V and his descendants. On either side of the Pyrenees, the Basques lost their native institutions and laws held during the "Ancien régime". Since then, despite the current limited self-governing status of the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre as settled by the Spanish Constitution, many Basques have attempted higher degrees of self-empowerment (see Basque nationalism), sometimes by acts of violence. Labourd, Lower Navarre, and Soule were integrated into the French department system (starting 1790), with Basque efforts to establish a region-specific political-administrative entity failing to take off to date. However, in January 2017, a single agglomeration community was established for the Basque Country in France. Geography. Political and administrative divisions. The Basque region is divided into at least three administrative units, namely the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre in Spain, and the arrondissement of Bayonne and the cantons of Mauléon-Licharre and Tardets-Sorholus in the "département" of Pyrénées Atlantiques, France. The autonomous community (a concept established in the Spanish Constitution of 1978) known as "Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoa" or EAE in Basque and as "Comunidad Autónoma Vasca" or CAV in Spanish (in English: "Basque Autonomous Community" or BAC), is made up of the three Spanish provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa. The corresponding Basque names of these territories are "Araba", "Bizkaia" and "Gipuzkoa", and their Spanish names are "Álava", "Vizcaya" and "Guipúzcoa". The BAC only includes three of the seven provinces of the currently called historical territories. It is sometimes referred to simply as "the Basque Country" (or "Euskadi") by writers and public agencies only considering those three western provinces, but also on occasions merely as a convenient abbreviation when this does not lead to confusion in the context. Others reject this usage as inaccurate and are careful to specify the BAC (or an equivalent expression such as "the three provinces", up to 1978 referred to as "Provincias Vascongadas" in Spanish) when referring to this entity or region. Likewise, terms such as "the Basque Government" for "the government of the BAC" are commonly though not universally employed. In particular in common usage the French term "Pays Basque" ("Basque Country"), in the absence of further qualification, refers either to the whole Basque Country ("Euskal Herria" in Basque), or not infrequently to the northern (or "French") Basque Country specifically. Under Spain's present constitution, Navarre ("Nafarroa" in present-day Basque, "Navarra" historically in Spanish) constitutes a separate entity, called in present-day Basque "Nafarroako Foru Erkidegoa", in Spanish "Comunidad Foral de Navarra" (the autonomous community of Navarre). The government of this autonomous community is the Government of Navarre. In historical contexts Navarre may refer to a wider area, and that the present-day northern Basque province of Lower Navarre may also be referred to as (part of) "Nafarroa", while the term "High Navarre" ("Nafarroa Garaia" in Basque, "Alta Navarra" in Spanish) is also encountered as a way of referring to the territory of the present-day autonomous community. There are three other historic provinces parts of the Basque Country: Labourd, Lower Navarre and Soule ("Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea" and "Zuberoa" in Basque; "Labourd, Basse-Navarre" and "Soule" in French), devoid of official status within France's present-day political and administrative territorial organization, and only minor political support to the Basque nationalists. A large number of regional and local nationalist and non-nationalist representatives have waged a campaign for years advocating for the creation of a separate Basque département, while these demands have gone unheard by the French administration. Population, main cities, and languages. There are 2,123,000 people living in the Basque Autonomous Community (279,000 in Alava, 1,160,000 in Biscay and 684,000 in Gipuzkoa). The most important cities in this region, which serve as the provinces' administrative centers, are Bilbao (in Biscay), San Sebastián (in Gipuzkoa), and Vitoria-Gasteiz (in Álava). The official languages are Basque and Spanish. Knowledge of Spanish is compulsory under the Spanish constitution (article no. 3), and knowledge and usage of Basque is a right under the Statute of Autonomy (article no. 6), so only knowledge of Spanish is virtually universal. Knowledge of Basque, after declining for many years during Franco's dictatorship owing to official persecution, is again on the rise due to favorable official language policies and popular support. Currently about 33 percent of the population in the Basque Autonomous Community speaks Basque. Navarre has a population of 601,000; its administrative capital and main city, also regarded by many nationalist Basques as the Basques' historical capital, is Pamplona ("Iruñea" in modern Basque). Only Spanish is an official language of Navarre, and the Basque language is only co-official in the province's northern region, where most Basque-speaking Navarrese are concentrated. About a quarter of a million people live in the French Basque Country. Nowadays Basque-speakers refer to this region as "Iparralde" (Basque for North), and to the Spanish provinces as "Hegoalde" (South). Much of this population lives in or near the Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz (BAB) urban belt on the coast (in Basque these are "Baiona", "Angelu" and "Miarritze"). The Basque language, which was traditionally spoken by most of the region's population outside the BAB urban zone, is today rapidly losing ground to French. The French Basque Country's lack of self-government within the French state is coupled with the absence of official status for the Basque language in the region. Attempts to introduce bilingualism in local administration have so far met direct refusal from French officials. Basque diaspora. Large numbers of Basques have left the Basque Country to settle in the rest of Spain, France or other parts of the world in different historical periods, often for economic or political reasons. Historically the Basques abroad were often employed in shepherding and ranching and by maritime fisheries and merchants. Millions of Basque descendants (see Basque American and Basque Canadian) live in North America (the United States; Canada, mainly in the provinces of Newfoundland and Quebec), all over Latin America, South Africa, and Australia. Latin America. Spanish author Miguel de Unamuno said: "There are at least two things that clearly can be attributed to Basques: the Society of Jesus and the Republic of Chile." Chilean historian Luis Thayer Ojeda estimated that 48 percent of immigrants to Chile in the 17th and 18th centuries were Basque. Estimates for the number of Basque descendants living in Chile range between 2.5 and 5 million; the Basque have been a major, if not the strongest, influence in the country's cultural and economic development. In Bolivia, the War of the Vicuñas and Basques (Spanish: Guerra de Vicuñas y Vascongados), was an armed conflict in Charcas Province that lasted between June 1622 and March 1625, fought between Basques and "Vicuñas" (an informal term for non-Basque Spaniards in Upper Peru, a name obtained through the habit of wearing hats made of vicuña skins). Competition over the control of the silver mines in Potosí, Lípez and Chichas surged in the early 17th century, pitting Basques and Vicuñas against each other.The Vicuñas had initially employed legal and political measures attempting to block the Basque attempts to monopolize control over the cabildo (municipal government) of Potosí and the silver mining sector. The war pitted different sectors of the viceregal administration against each other, as some supported the Basque claims for hegemony whilst others had a conciliatory approach to the Vicuña rebels. Personalities involved in the conflict included the president and oidores of the Royal Audiencia of Charcas, treasury officials and the corregidor of Potosí and the visitador (sent to the area in order to audit fiscal accounts). Basque place names are to be found in the Americas, such as Nueva Vizcaya (now Chihuahua and Durango, Mexico), New Navarre (now Sonora and Sinaloa, Mexico), Biscayne Bay (United States), and Aguereberry Point (United States). Nueva Vizcaya was the first province in the north of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico) to be explored and settled by the Spanish. It consisted mostly of the area which is today the states of Chihuahua and Durango (the original Durango is a known city in Biscay). In Mexico most descendants of Basque émigrés are concentrated in the cities of Monterrey, Saltillo, Reynosa, Camargo, and the states of Jalisco, Durango, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Sonora. The Basques were important in the mining industry; many were ranchers and vaqueros (cowboys), and the rest opened small shops in major cities such as Mexico City, Guadalajara and Puebla. In Guatemala, most Basques have been concentrated in Sacatepequez Department, Antigua Guatemala, Jalapa for six generations now, while some have migrated to Guatemala City. In Colombia, a large number of Basques settled mainly in Antioquia and the Coffee Axis. In 1955, Joaquín Ospina said: "Is there something more similar to the Basque people than the ""antioqueños". Also, writer Arturo Escobar Uribe said in his book "Mitos de Antioquia"" (Myths of Antioquia) (1950): "Antioquia, which in its clean ascendance predominates the peninsular farmer of the Basque provinces, inherited the virtues of its ancestors. ... Despite the predominance of the white race, its extension in the mountains ... has projected over Colombia's map the prototype of its race; in Medellín with the industrial paisa, entrepreneur, strong and steady ... in its towns, the adventurer, arrogant, world-explorer. ... Its myths, which are an evidence of their deep credulity and an indubitable proof of their Iberian ancestor, are the sequel of the conqueror's blood which runs through their veins". Bambuco, a Colombian folk music, has Basque roots. United States. The largest of several important Basque communities in the United States is in the area around Boise, Idaho, home to the Basque Museum and Cultural Center, host to an annual Basque festival, as well as a festival for the Basque diaspora every five years. Reno, Nevada, where the Center for Basque Studies and the Basque Studies Library are located at the University of Nevada, is another significant nucleus of Basque population. Elko, Nevada, sponsors an annual Basque festival that celebrates the dance, cuisine and cultures of the Basque peoples of Spanish, French and Mexican nationalities who have arrived in Nevada since the late 19th century. Texas has a large percentage of Hispanics descended from Basques who participated in the conquest of New Spain. Many of the original Tejanos had Basque blood, including those who fought in the Battle of the Alamo alongside many of the other Texans. Along the Mexican/Texan border, many Basque surnames can be found. The largest concentration of Basques who settled on Mexico's north-eastern "frontera", including the states of Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas, also settled along Texas' Rio Grande from South Texas to West Texas. Many of the historic "hidalgos", or noble families from this area, had gained their titles and land grants from Spain and Mexico; they still value their land. Some of North America's largest ranches, which were founded under these colonial land grants, can be found in this region. California has a major concentration of Basques, most notably in the San Joaquin Valley between Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield. The city of Bakersfield has a large Basque community and the city has several Basque restaurants, including Noriega's which won the 2011 James Beard Foundation America's Classic Award. There is a history of Basque culture in Chino, California. In Chino, two annual Basque festivals celebrate the dance, cuisine, and culture of the peoples. The surrounding area of San Bernardino County has many Basque descendants as residents. They are mostly descendants of settlers from Spain and Mexico. These Basques in California are grouped in the group known as "Californios". Basques of European Spanish-French and Latin American nationalities also settled throughout the western U.S. in states like Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Culture. Language. The identifying language of the Basques is called Basque or "Euskara", spoken today by 25%-30% of the region's population. An idea of the central place the language has in cultural terms is given by the fact that Basques identify themselves by the term "euskaldun" and their country as "Euskal Herria", literally "Basque speaker" and "Country of the Basque Language" respectively. The language has been made a political issue by official Spanish and French policies restricting its use either historically or currently; however, this has not stopped the teaching, speaking, writing, and cultivating of this increasingly vibrant minority language. This sense of Basque identity tied to the local language does not only exist in isolation. For many Basques, it is juxtaposed with a sense of either Spanish or French identity tied with the use of the Spanish and French languages among other Basques, especially in the French Basque Country. Regarding the Spanish Basque Country, Basques that don't have a sense of Spanish identity make up an important part of the population. As with many European states, a regional identity, be it linguistically derived or otherwise, is not mutually exclusive with the broader national one. For example, Basque rugby union player for France, Imanol Harinordoquy, has said about his national identity:"I am French and Basque. There is no conflict, I am proud of both. ... I have friends who are involved in the political side of things but that is not for me. My only interest is the culture, the Euskera language, the people, our history and ways." As a result of state language promotion, school policies, the effects of mass media and migration, today virtually all Basques (except for some children below school age) speak the official language of their state (Spanish or French). There are extremely few Basque monolingual speakers: essentially all Basque speakers are bilingual on both sides of the border. Spanish or French is typically the first language of citizens from other regions (who often feel no need to learn Basque), and Spanish or French is also the first language of many Basques, all of which maintains the dominance of the state tongues of both France and Spain. Recent Basque Government policies aim to change this pattern, as they are viewed as potential threats against mainstream usage of the minority tongue. The Basque language is thought to be a genetic language isolate in contrast with other European languages, vast majority of which belong to the broad Indo-European language family. Another peculiarity of Basque is that it has probably been spoken continuously "in situ", in and around its present territorial location, for longer than most other modern European languages, which are typically thought to have been introduced in historic or prehistoric times through population migrations or other processes of cultural transmission. However, popular stereotypes characterizing Basque as "the oldest language in Europe" and "unique among the world's languages" may be misunderstood and lead to erroneous assumptions. Over the centuries, Basque has remained in continuous contact with neighboring western European languages with which it has come to share numerous lexical properties and typological features; it is therefore misleading to exaggerate the "outlandish" character of Basque. Basque is also a modern language, and is established as a written and printed one used in present-day forms of publication and communication, as well as a language spoken and used in a very wide range of social and cultural contexts, styles, and registers. Land and inheritance. Basques have a close attachment to their home ("etxe(a)" 'house, home'), especially when this consists of the traditional self-sufficient, family-run farm or "baserri(a)". Home in this context is synonymous with family roots. Some Basque surnames were adapted from old "baserri" or habitation names. They typically related to a geographical orientation or other locally meaningful identifying features. Such surnames provide even those Basques whose families may have left the land generations ago with an important link to their rural family origins: "Bengoetxea" "the house of further down", "Goikoetxea" "the house above", "Landaburu" "top of the field", "Errekondo" "next to the stream", "Elizalde" "by the church", "Mendizabal" "wide hill", "Usetxe" "house of birds" "Ibarretxe" "house in the valley", "Etxeberria" "the new house", and so on. In contrast to surrounding regions, ancient Basque inheritance patterns, recognised in the "fueros," favoured survival of the unity of inherited land holdings. In a kind of primogeniture, these usually were inherited by the eldest male or female child. As in other cultures, the fate of other family members depended on the assets of a family: wealthy Basque families tended to provide for all children in some way, while less-affluent families may have had only one asset to provide to one child. However, this heir often provided for the rest of the family (unlike in England, with strict primogeniture, where the eldest son inherited everything and often did not provide for others). Even though they were provided for in some way, younger siblings had to make much of their living by other means. Mostly after the advent of industrialisation, this system resulted in the emigration of many rural Basques to Spain, France or the Americas. Harsh by modern standards, this custom resulted in a great many enterprising figures of Basque origin who went into the world to earn their way, from Spanish conquistadors such as Lope de Aguirre and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, to explorers, missionaries and saints of the Catholic Church, such as Francis Xavier. A widespread belief that Basque society was originally matriarchal is at odds with the current, clearly patrilineal kinship system and inheritance structures. Some scholars and commentators have attempted to reconcile these points by assuming that patrilineal kinship represents an innovation. In any case, the social position of women in both traditional and modern Basque society is somewhat better than in neighbouring cultures, and women have a substantial influence in decisions about the domestic economy. In the past, some women participated in collective magical ceremonies. They were key participants in a rich folklore, today largely forgotten. Cuisine. Basque cuisine is at the heart of Basque culture, influenced by the neighboring communities and produce from the sea and the land. A 20th-century feature of Basque culture is the phenomenon of gastronomical societies (called "txoko" in Basque), food clubs where men gather to cook and enjoy their own food. Until recently, women were allowed entry only one day in the year. Cider houses (Sagardotegiak) are popular restaurants in Gipuzkoa open for a few months while the cider is in season. Cultural production. At the end of the 20th century, despite ETA violence (ended in 2010) and the crisis of heavy industries, the Basque economic condition recovered remarkably. They emerged from the Franco regime with a revitalized language and culture. The Basque language expanded geographically led by large increases in the major urban centers of Pamplona, Bilbao, and Bayonne, where only a few decades ago the Basque language had all but disappeared. Nowadays, the number of Basque speakers is maintaining its level or increasing slightly. Religion. Traditionally Basques have been mostly Catholics. In the 19th century and well into the 20th, Basques as a group remained notably devout and churchgoing. In recent years church attendance has fallen off, as in most of Western Europe. The region has been a source of missionaries like Francis Xavier and Michel Garicoïts. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, was a Basque. California Franciscan Fermín Lasuén was born in Vitoria. Lasuén was the successor to Franciscan Padre Junípero Serra and founded 9 of the 21 extant California Missions along the coast. A sprout of Protestantism in the continental Basque Country produced the first translation of the new Testament into Basque by Joanes Leizarraga. Queen Jeanne III of Navarre, a devout Huguenot, commissioned the translation of the New Testament into Basque and Béarnese for the benefit of her subjects. By the time Henry III of Navarre converted to Catholicism in order to become king of France, Protestantism virtually disappeared from the Basque community. Bayonne held a Jewish community composed mainly of Sephardi Jews fleeing from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. There were also important Jewish and Muslim communities in Navarre before the Castilian invasion of 1512–21. Nowadays, according to one single opinion poll, only slightly more than 50% of Basques profess some kind of belief in God, while the rest are either agnostic or atheist. The number of religious skeptics increases noticeably for the younger generations, while the older ones are more religious. Catholicism is, by far, the largest religion in Basque Country. In 2019, the proportion of Basques that identify themselves as Roman Catholic was 60%, while it is one of the most secularized communities of Spain: 24.6% were non-religious and 12.3% of Basques were atheist. Pre-Christian religion and mythology. The Christianisation of the Basque Country has been the topic of some discussion. There are, broadly speaking, two views. According to one, Christianity arrived in the Basque Country during the 4th and 5th centuries but according to the other, it did not take place until the 12th and 13th centuries. The "Encyclopaedia Britannica" says that the Basques were not Christianized until the tenth century, however, and that their earlier animism survives in their folklore. The main issue lies in the different interpretations of what is considered Christianisation. Early traces of Christianity can be found in the major urban areas from the 4th century onwards, a bishopric from 589 in Pamplona and three hermit cave concentrations (two in Álava, one in Navarre) that were in use from the 6th century onwards. In this sense, Christianity arrived "early". Pre-Christian belief seems to have focused on a goddess called Mari. A number of place-names contain her name, which would suggest these places were related to worship of her such as "Anbotoko Mari" who appears to have been related to the weather. According to one tradition, she travelled every seven years between a cave on Mount Anboto and one on another mountain (the stories vary); the weather would be wet when she was in Anboto, dry when she was in Aloña, or Supelegor, or Gorbea. One of her names, "Mari Urraca" possibly ties her to an historical Navarrese princess of the 11th and 12th century, with other legends giving her a brother or cousin who was a Roman Catholic priest. So far the discussions about whether the name Mari is original and just happened to coincide closely with the Christian name María or if Mari is an early Basque attempt to give a Christian veneer to pagan worship have remained speculative. At any rate, Mari (Andramari) is one of the oldest worshipped Christian icons in Basque territories. Mari's consort is Sugaar. This chthonic couple seems to bear the superior ethical power and the power of creation and destruction. It's said that when they gathered in the high caves of the sacred peaks, they engendered the storms. These meetings typically happened on Friday nights, the day of historical akelarre or coven. Mari was said to reside in Mount Anboto; periodically she crossed the skies as a bright light to reach her other home at Mount Txindoki. Legends also speak of many and abundant genies, like "jentilak" (equivalent to giants), "lamiak" (equivalent to nymphs), "mairuak" (builders of the cromlechs or stone circles, literally Moors), "iratxoak" (imps), "sorginak" (witches, priestess of Mari), and so on. Basajaun is a Basque version of the Woodwose. There is a trickster named "San Martin Txiki" ("St Martin the Lesser"). It is unclear whether Neolithic stone structures called dolmens have a religious significance or were built to house animals or resting shepherds. Some of the dolmens and cromlechs are burial sites serving also as border markers. The "jentilak" ('Giants'), on the other hand, are a legendary people which explains the disappearance of a people of Stone Age culture that used to live in the high lands and with no knowledge of iron. Many legends about them tell that they were bigger and taller, with a great force, but were displaced by the "ferrons", or workers of ironworks foundries, until their total fade-out. They were pagans, but one of them, Olentzero, accepted Christianity and became a sort of Basque Santa Claus. They gave name to several toponyms, as "Jentilbaratza". Society. Historically, Basque society can be described as being somewhat at odds with Roman and later European societal norms. Strabo's account of the north of Spain in his "Geographica" (written between approximately 20 BC and 20 AD) makes a mention of "a sort of woman-rule—not at all a mark of civilization" (Hadington 1992), a first mention of the—for the period—unusual position of women: "Women could inherit and control property as well as officiate in churches." The evidence for this assertion is rather sparse however. This preference for female dominance existed well into the 20th century: ... matrilineal inheritance laws, and agricultural work performed by women continued in Basque country until the early twentieth century. For more than a century, scholars have widely discussed the high status of Basque women in law codes, as well as their positions as judges, inheritors, and arbitrators through ante-Roman, medieval, and modern times. The system of laws governing succession in the French Basque region reflected total equality between the sexes. Up until the eve of the French Revolution, the Basque woman was truly 'the mistress of the house', hereditary guardian, and head of the lineage. While women continued to have a higher position in Basque than other western European societies, it is highly unlikely that any point the society was 'matriarchal', as is often falsely claimed about pre-Indo-European peoples in general. The 'Basque matriarchy' argument is typically tied to 20th century nationalism and is at odds with earlier accounts of the society. Although the Kingdom of Navarre did adopt feudalism, most Basques also possessed unusual social institutions different from those of the rest of feudal Europe. Some aspects of this include the elizate tradition where local house-owners met in front of the church to elect a representative to send to the "juntas" and "Juntas Generales" (such as the "Juntas Generales de Vizcaya" or "Guipúzcoa") which administered much larger areas. Another example was that in the medieval period most land was owned by the farmers, not the Church or a king. Sports in the Basque Country. Pelota. The great family of ball games has its unique offspring among Basque ball games, known generically as pilota (Spanish: "pelota"). Some variants have been exported to the United States and Macau under the name of Jai Alai. Rural sports. There are several sports derived by Basques from everyday chores. Heavy workers were challenged and bets placed upon them. Examples are: Bull runs and bullock games. The encierro (bull run) in Pamplona's fiestas "Sanfermines" started as a transport of bulls to the ring. These encierros, as well as other bull and bullock related activities are not exclusive to Pamplona but are traditional in many towns and villages of the Basque country. Football. There are several clubs within the Basque Country, such as Athletic Bilbao, Real Sociedad, Deportivo Alavés, SD Eibar and, as Navarre club, the CA Osasuna (the only club in La Liga that has a Basque name—"osasuna" means "health"). In the 2016–17 season these five clubs played together in La Liga, the first instance where five Basque clubs have reached that level at the same time. Athletic's recruitment policy has meant the club refuses to sign any non-Basque players, with "Basque" currently defined to include either ethnic Basques or players of any ethnicity trained by a Basque club. Real Sociedad also previously employed such a policy. Basketball. The Basque Country also features several professional basketball teams, the most notable of which is Saski Baskonia from Vitoria-Gasteiz, one of the 11 clubs that own stakes in Euroleague Basketball, the company that operates the continent-wide EuroLeague and EuroCup. They are currently joined in the Spanish top flight, Liga ACB, by Bilbao Basket, with the two clubs involved in a longstanding rivalry. Another club from the Basque Country, Gipuzkoa Basket from Donostia, currently plays in the second-level LEB Oro. Rugby union. Rugby union is a popular sport among French Basques, with major clubs Biarritz Olympique and Aviron Bayonnais traditional powerhouses in the premier division of French Rugby (the Top 14). Biarritz regularly play Champions Cup matches, especially knockout matches, at Estadio Anoeta in San Sebastian. Games between the Basque clubs and Catalan club USA Perpignan are always hard fought. Professional cycling. Cycling is popular and the professional cycling team, partly sponsored by the Basque Government participated in the UCI World Tour division until 2014. Known for their orange tops and hill-climbing ability, their fans were famous for lining the famous Pyrenean climbs in the Tour de France, in support of their compatriots. Each April the week-long Tour of the Basque Country showcases the beautiful rolling Basque countryside. Miguel Indurain, born in Villava is one of the most celebrated cyclists in the world having won 5 consecutive Tours de France. Politics. While there is no independent Basque state, Spain's autonomous community of the Basque Country, made up of the provinces of Álava (Araba), Biscay (Bizkaia) and Gipuzkoa, is primarily a historical consequence and an answer to the wide autonomy claim of its population. Navarre has a separate statute of autonomy, a contentious arrangement designed during Spanish transition to democracy (the "Amejoramiento", an 'upgrade' of its previous status during dictatorship). It refers back to the kingdom status of Navarre (up to 1841) and their traditional institutional and legal framework (charters). Basque, the original and main language of Navarre up to the late 18th century, has kept family transmission especially in the northern part of Navarre and central areas to a lesser extent, designated as Basque speaking or mixed area in Navarrese law. Questions of political, linguistic and cultural allegiance and identity are highly complex in Navarre. Politically some Basque nationalists would like to integrate with the Basque Autonomous Community. The French Basque Country today does not exist as a formal political entity and is officially simply part of the French department of Pyrénées Atlantiques, centered in Béarn. In recent years the number of mayors of the region supporting the creation of a separate Basque department has grown to 63.87%. So far, their attempts have been unsuccessful. Political conflicts. Language. Both the Spanish and French governments have, at times, suppressed Basque linguistic and cultural identity. The French Republics, the epitome of the nation-state, have a long history of attempting the complete cultural absorption of cultural minority groups. Spain has, at most points in its history, granted some degree of linguistic, cultural, and even political autonomy to its Basques, but under the regime of Francisco Franco, the Spanish government reversed the advances of Basque nationalism, as it had fought in the opposite side of the Spanish Civil War: cultural activity in Basque was limited to folkloric issues and the Catholic Church. Today, the Southern Basque Country within Spain enjoys an extensive cultural and political autonomy. The majority of schools under the jurisdiction of the Basque education system use Basque as the primary medium of teaching. However, the situation is more delicate in the Northern Basque Country within France, where Basque is not officially recognized, and where lack of autonomy and monolingual public schooling in French exert great pressure on the Basque language. In Navarre, Basque has been declared an endangered language, since the anti-Basque and conservative government of Navarrese People's Union opposes the symbols of Basque culture, highlighting a Spanish identity for Navarre. Basque is also spoken by immigrants in the major cities of Spain and France, in Australia, in many parts of Latin America, and in the United States, especially in Nevada, Idaho, and California. Political status and violence. Since its articulation by Sabino Arana in the late 19th century, the more radical currents of Basque nationalism have demanded the right of self-determination and even independence. Within the Basque country, this element of Basque politics is often in balance with the conception of the Basque Country as just another part of the Spanish state, a view more commonly espoused on the right of the political spectrum. In contrast, the desire for greater autonomy or independence is particularly common among leftist Basque nationalists. The right of self-determination was asserted by the Basque Parliament in 2002 and 2006. Since self-determination is not recognized in the Spanish Constitution of 1978, a wide majority of Basques abstained (55%) and some even voted against it (23.5%) in the ratification referendum of 6 December that year. However, it was approved by clear majority overall in Spain (87%). The autonomous regime for the Basque Country was approved in a 1979 referendum but the autonomy of Navarre ("Amejoramiento del Fuero": "improvement of the charter") was never subject to a referendum but only approved by the Navarrese Cortes (parliament). Classification. As with their language, the Basques are clearly a distinct cultural group in their region. They regard themselves as culturally and especially linguistically distinct from their surrounding neighbours. Some Basques identify themselves as Basques only whereas others identify themselves both as Basque and Spanish. Many Basques regard the designation as a "cultural minority" as incomplete, favouring instead the definition as a nation, the commonly accepted designation for the Basque people up to the rise of the nation-states and the definition imposed by the 1812 Spanish Constitution. In modern times, as a European people living in a highly industrialized area, cultural differences from the rest of Europe are inevitably blurred, although a conscious cultural identity as a people or nation remains very strong, as does an identification with their homeland, even among many Basques who have emigrated to other parts of Spain or France, or to other parts of the world. The strongest distinction between the Basques and their traditional neighbours is linguistic. Surrounded by Romance-language speakers, the Basques traditionally spoke (and many still speak) a language that was not only non-Romance but non-Indo-European. The prevailing belief amongst Basques, and forming part of their national identity, is that their language has continuity with the people who were in this region since not only pre-Roman and pre-Celtic times, but since the Stone Age. Notable Basques. Among the most notable Basque people are Juan Sebastián Elcano (who led the first successful expedition to circumnavigate the globe after Ferdinand Magellan died mid-journey); Sancho III of Navarre; and Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, founders of the Society of Jesus. Don Diego María de Gardoqui y Arriquibar (1735–1798) was also a Basque, who became Spain's first Ambassador to the United States, and Miguel de Unamuno was a noted novelist and philosopher of the late 19th and the 20th century, was also a Basque. Another well-known Basque was Father Alberto Hurtado, S.J. (1901–1952), a Jesuit priest who founded the charitable housing system Hogar de Cristo, meaning hearth, or home, of Christ, in Chile. El Hogar provided a home-like milieu for the homeless. Hurtado also founded the Chilean Trade Union Association to promote a union movement based on the social teachings of the Catholic Church. He was a friend and savior to all the poor and homeless, and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 16 October 1994. He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 23 October 2005.
4662	49117425	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4662	Bookkeeping	Bookkeeping is the recording of financial transactions, and is part of the process of accounting in business and other organizations. It involves preparing source documents for all transactions, operations, and other events of a business. Transactions include purchases, sales, receipts and payments by an individual person, organization or corporation. There are several standard methods of bookkeeping, including the single-entry and double-entry bookkeeping systems. While these may be viewed as "real" bookkeeping, any process for recording financial transactions is a bookkeeping process. The person in an organisation who is employed to perform bookkeeping functions is usually called the bookkeeper (or book-keeper). They usually write the "daybooks" (which contain records of sales, purchases, receipts, and payments), and document each financial transaction, whether cash or credit, into the correct daybook—that is, petty cash book, suppliers ledger, customer ledger, etc.—and the general ledger. Thereafter, an accountant can create financial reports from the information recorded by the bookkeeper. The bookkeeper brings the books to the trial balance stage, from which an accountant may prepare financial reports for the organisation, such as the income statement and balance sheet. History. The origin of book-keeping is lost in obscurity, but recent research indicates that methods of keeping accounts have existed from the remotest times of human life in cities. Babylonian records written with styli on small slabs of clay have been found dating to 2600 BC. Mesopotamian bookkeepers kept records on clay tablets that may date back as far as 7,000 years. Use of the modern double entry bookkeeping system was described by Luca Pacioli in 1494. The term "waste book" was used in colonial America, referring to the documenting of daily transactions of receipts and expenditures. Records were made in chronological order, and for temporary use only. Daily records were then transferred to a daybook or account ledger to balance the accounts and to create a permanent journal; then the waste book could be discarded, hence the name. Process. The primary purpose of bookkeeping is to record the "financial effects" of transactions. An important difference between a manual and an electronic accounting system is the former's latency between the recording of a financial transaction and its posting in the relevant account. This delay, which is absent in electronic accounting systems due to nearly instantaneous posting to relevant accounts, is characteristic of manual systems, and gave rise to the primary books of accounts—cash book, purchase book, sales book, etc.—for immediately documenting a financial transaction. In the normal course of business, a document is produced each time a transaction occurs. Sales and purchases usually have invoices or receipts. Historically, deposit slips were produced when lodgements (deposits) were made to a bank account; and checks (spelled "cheques" in the UK and several other countries) were written to pay money out of the account. Nowadays such transactions are mostly made electronically. Bookkeeping first involves recording the details of all of these "source documents" into multi-column "journals" (also known as "books of first entry" or "daybooks"). For example, all credit sales are recorded in the sales journal; all cash payments are recorded in the cash payments journal. Each column in a journal normally corresponds to an account. In the single entry system, each transaction is recorded only once. Most individuals who balance their check-book each month are using such a system, and most personal-finance software follows this approach. After a certain period, typically a month, each column in each journal is totalled to give a summary for that period. Using the rules of double-entry, these journal summaries are then transferred to their respective accounts in the ledger, or "account book". For example, the entries in the Sales Journal are taken and a debit entry is made in each customer's account (showing that the customer now owes us money), and a credit entry might be made in the account for "Sale of class 2 widgets" (showing that this activity has generated revenue for us). This process of transferring summaries or individual transactions to the ledger is called "posting". Once the posting process is complete, accounts kept using the "T" format (debits on the left side of the "T" and credits on the right side) undergo "balancing", which is simply a process to arrive at the balance of the account. As a partial check that the posting process was done correctly, a working document called an "unadjusted trial balance" is created. In its simplest form, this is a three-column list. Column One contains the names of those accounts in the ledger which have a non-zero balance. If an account has a "debit" balance, the balance amount is copied into Column Two (the "debit column"); if an account has a "credit" balance, the amount is copied into Column Three (the "credit column"). The debit column is then totalled, and then the credit column is totalled. The two totals must agree—which is not by chance—because under the double-entry rules, whenever there is a posting, the debits of the posting equal the credits of the posting. If the two totals do not agree, an error has been made, either in the journals or during the posting process. The error must be located and rectified, and the totals of the debit column and the credit column recalculated to check for agreement before any further processing can take place. Once the accounts balance, the accountant makes a number of adjustments and changes the balance amounts of some of the accounts. These adjustments must still obey the double-entry rule: for example, the "inventory" account and asset account might be changed to bring them into line with the actual numbers counted during a stocktake. At the same time, the "expense" account associated with use of inventory is adjusted by an equal and opposite amount. Other adjustments such as posting depreciation and prepayments are also done at this time. This results in a listing called the "adjusted trial balance". It is the accounts in this list, and their corresponding debit or credit balances, that are used to prepare the financial statements. Finally financial statements are drawn from the trial balance, which may include: Single-entry system. The primary bookkeeping record in single-entry bookkeeping is the "cash book", which is similar to a checking account register (in UK: cheque account, current account), except all entries are allocated among several categories of income and expense accounts. Separate account records are maintained for petty cash, accounts payable and accounts receivable, and other relevant transactions such as inventory and travel expenses. To save time and avoid the errors of manual calculations, single-entry bookkeeping can be done today with do-it-yourself bookkeeping software. Double-entry system. A "double-entry bookkeeping system" is a set of rules for recording financial information in a financial accounting system in which every transaction or event changes at least two different ledger accounts. Daybooks. A "daybook" is a descriptive and chronological (diary-like) record of day-to-day financial transactions; it is also called a "book of original entry". The daybook's details must be transcribed formally into journals to enable posting to ledgers. Daybooks include: Petty cash book. A "petty cash" book is a record of small-value purchases before they are later transferred to the ledger and final accounts; it is maintained by a petty or junior cashier. This type of cash book usually uses the imprest system: a certain amount of money is provided to the petty cashier by the senior cashier. This money is to cater for minor expenditures (hospitality, minor stationery, casual postage, and so on) and is reimbursed periodically on satisfactory explanation of how it was spent. The balance of petty cash book is Asset. Journals. "Journals" are recorded in the general journal daybook. A journal is a formal and chronological record of financial transactions before their values are accounted for in the general ledger as debits and credits. A company can maintain one journal for all transactions, or keep several journals based on similar activity (e.g., sales, cash receipts, revenue, etc.), making transactions easier to summarize and reference later. For every debit journal entry recorded, there must be an equivalent credit journal entry to maintain a balanced accounting equation. Ledgers. A "ledger" is a record of accounts. The ledger is a permanent summary of all amounts entered in supporting Journals which list individual transactions by date. These accounts are recorded separately, showing their beginning/ending balance. A journal lists financial transactions in chronological order, without showing their balance but showing how much is going to be entered in each account. A ledger takes each financial transaction from the journal and records it into the corresponding accounts. The ledger also determines the balance of every account, which is transferred into the balance sheet or the income statement. There are three different kinds of ledgers that deal with book-keeping: Chart of accounts. A chart of accounts is a list of the accounts codes that can be identified with numeric, alphabetical, or alphanumeric codes allowing the account to be located in the general ledger. The equity section of the chart of accounts is based on the fact that the legal structure of the entity is of a particular legal type. Possibilities include "sole trader", "partnership", "trust", and "company". Computerized bookkeeping. Computerized bookkeeping removes many of the paper "books" that are used to record the financial transactions of a business entity; instead, relational databases are used today, but typically, these still enforce the norms of bookkeeping including the single-entry and double-entry bookkeeping systems. Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) supervise the internal controls for computerized bookkeeping systems, which serve to minimize errors in documenting the numerous activities a business entity may initiate or complete over an accounting period.
4664	28481209	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4664	Bézier curve	A Bézier curve ( , ) is a parametric curve used in computer graphics and related fields. A set of discrete "control points" defines a smooth, continuous curve by means of a formula. Usually the curve is intended to approximate a real-world shape that otherwise has no mathematical representation or whose representation is unknown or too complicated. The Bézier curve is named after French engineer Pierre Bézier (1910–1999), who used it in the 1960s for designing curves for the bodywork of Renault cars. Other uses include the design of computer fonts and animation. Bézier curves can be combined to form a Bézier spline, or generalized to higher dimensions to form Bézier surfaces. The Bézier triangle is a special case of the latter. In vector graphics, Bézier curves are used to model smooth curves that can be scaled indefinitely. "Paths", as they are commonly referred to in image manipulation programs, are combinations of linked Bézier curves. Paths are not bound by the limits of rasterized images and are intuitive to modify. Bézier curves are also used in the time domain, particularly in animation, user interface design and smoothing cursor trajectory in eye gaze controlled interfaces. For example, a Bézier curve can be used to specify the velocity over time of an object such as an icon moving from A to B, rather than simply moving at a fixed number of pixels per step. When animators or interface designers talk about the "physics" or "feel" of an operation, they may be referring to the particular Bézier curve used to control the velocity over time of the move in question. This also applies to robotics where the motion of a welding arm, for example, should be smooth to avoid unnecessary wear. Invention. The mathematical basis for Bézier curves—the Bernstein polynomials—was established in 1912, but the polynomials were not applied to graphics until some 50 years later when mathematician Paul de Casteljau in 1959 developed de Casteljau's algorithm, a numerically stable method for evaluating the curves, and became the first to apply them to computer-aided design at French automaker Citroën. De Casteljau's method was patented in France but not published until the 1980s while the Bézier polynomials were widely publicised in the 1960s by the French engineer Pierre Bézier, who discovered them independently and used them to design automobile bodies at Renault. Specific cases. A Bézier curve is defined by a set of "control points" P0 through P"n", where "n" is called the order of the curve ("n" = 1 for linear, 2 for quadratic, 3 for cubic, etc.). The first and last control points are always the endpoints of the curve; however, the intermediate control points generally do not lie on the curve. The sums in the following sections are to be understood as affine combinations – that is, the coefficients sum to 1. Linear Bézier curves. Given distinct points P0 and P1, a linear Bézier curve is simply a line between those two points. The curve is given by formula_1 This is the simplest and is equivalent to linear interpolation. The quantity formula_2 represents the displacement vector from the start point to the end point. Quadratic Bézier curves. A quadratic Bézier curve is the path traced by the function B("t"), given points P0, P1, and P2, formula_3, which can be interpreted as the linear interpolant of corresponding points on the linear Bézier curves from P0 to P1 and from P1 to P2 respectively. Rearranging the preceding equation yields: formula_4 This can be written in a way that highlights the symmetry with respect to P1: formula_5 Which immediately gives the derivative of the Bézier curve with respect to "t": formula_6 from which it can be concluded that the tangents to the curve at P0 and P2 intersect at P1. As "t" increases from 0 to 1, the curve departs from P0 in the direction of P1, then bends to arrive at P2 from the direction of P1. The second derivative of the Bézier curve with respect to "t" is formula_7 Cubic Bézier curves. Four points P0, P1, P2 and P3 in the plane or in higher-dimensional space define a cubic Bézier curve. The curve starts at P0 going toward P1 and arrives at P3 coming from the direction of P2. Usually, it will not pass through P1 or P2; these points are only there to provide directional information. The distance between P1 and P2 determines "how far" and "how fast" the curve moves towards P1 before turning towards P2. Writing BP"i",P"j",P"k"("t") for the quadratic Bézier curve defined by points P"i", P"j", and P"k", the cubic Bézier curve can be defined as an affine combination of two quadratic Bézier curves: formula_8 The explicit form of the curve is: formula_9 For some choices of P1 and P2 the curve may intersect itself, or contain a cusp. Any series of 4 distinct points can be converted to a cubic Bézier curve that goes through all 4 points in order. Given the starting and ending point of some cubic Bézier curve, and the points along the curve corresponding to "t" = 1/3 and "t" = 2/3, the control points for the original Bézier curve can be recovered. The derivative of the cubic Bézier curve with respect to "t" is formula_10 The second derivative of the Bézier curve with respect to "t" is formula_11 General definition. Bézier curves can be defined for any degree "n". Recursive definition. A recursive definition for the Bézier curve of degree "n" expresses it as a point-to-point linear combination (linear interpolation) of a pair of corresponding points in two Bézier curves of degree "n" − 1. Let formula_12 denote the Bézier curve determined by any selection of points P0, P1, ..., P"k". Then to start, formula_13 formula_14 This recursion is elucidated in the animations below. Explicit definition. The formula can be expressed explicitly as follows (where t0 and (1-t)0 are extended continuously to be 1 throughout [0,1]): formula_15 where formula_16 are the binomial coefficients. For example, when "n" = 5: formula_17 Terminology. Some terminology is associated with these parametric curves. We have formula_18 where the polynomials formula_19 are known as Bernstein basis polynomials of degree "n". "t"0 = 1, (1 − "t")0 = 1, and the binomial coefficient, formula_16, is: formula_21 The points P"i" are called "control points" for the Bézier curve. The polygon formed by connecting the Bézier points with lines, starting with P0 and finishing with P"n", is called the "Bézier polygon" (or "control polygon"). The convex hull of the Bézier polygon contains the Bézier curve. Polynomial form. Sometimes it is desirable to express the Bézier curve as a polynomial instead of a sum of less straightforward Bernstein polynomials. Application of the binomial theorem to the definition of the curve followed by some rearrangement will yield formula_22 where formula_23 This could be practical if formula_24 can be computed prior to many evaluations of formula_25; however one should use caution as high order curves may lack numeric stability (de Casteljau's algorithm should be used if this occurs). Note that the empty product is 1. Second-order curve is a parabolic segment. A quadratic Bézier curve is also a segment of a parabola. As a parabola is a conic section, some sources refer to quadratic Béziers as "conic arcs". With reference to the figure on the right, the important features of the parabola can be derived as follows: Derivative. The derivative for a curve of order "n" is formula_39 Constructing Bézier curves. Linear curves. Let "t" denote the fraction of progress (from 0 to 1) the point B("t") has made along its traversal from P0 to P1. For example, when "t"=0.25, B("t") is one quarter of the way from point P0 to P1. As "t" varies from 0 to 1, B("t") draws a line from P0 to P1. Quadratic curves. For quadratic Bézier curves one can construct intermediate points Q0 and Q1 such that as "t" varies from 0 to 1: Higher-order curves. For higher-order curves one needs correspondingly more intermediate points. For cubic curves one can construct intermediate points Q0, Q1, and Q2 that describe linear Bézier curves, and points R0 and R1 that describe quadratic Bézier curves: For fourth-order curves one can construct intermediate points Q0, Q1, Q2 and Q3 that describe linear Bézier curves, points R0, R1 and R2 that describe quadratic Bézier curves, and points S0 and S1 that describe cubic Bézier curves: For fifth-order curves, one can construct similar intermediate points. These representations rest on the process used in De Casteljau's algorithm to calculate Bézier curves. Offsets (or stroking) of Bézier curves. The curve at a fixed offset from a given Bézier curve, called an offset or parallel curve in mathematics (lying "parallel" to the original curve, like the offset between rails in a railroad track), cannot be exactly formed by a Bézier curve (except in some trivial cases). In general, the two-sided offset curve of a cubic Bézier is a 10th-order algebraic curve and more generally for a Bézier of degree "n" the two-sided offset curve is an algebraic curve of degree 4"n" − 2. However, there are heuristic methods that usually give an adequate approximation for practical purposes. In the field of vector graphics, painting two symmetrically distanced offset curves is called "stroking" (the Bézier curve or in general a path of several Bézier segments). The conversion from offset curves to filled Bézier contours is of practical importance in converting fonts defined in Metafont, which require stroking of Bézier curves, to the more widely used PostScript type 1 fonts, which only require (for efficiency purposes) the mathematically simpler operation of filling a contour defined by (non-self-intersecting) Bézier curves. Degree elevation. A Bézier curve of degree "n" can be converted into a Bézier curve of degree "n" + 1 "with the same shape". This is useful if software supports Bézier curves only of specific degree. For example, systems that can only work with cubic Bézier curves can implicitly work with quadratic curves by using their equivalent cubic representation. To do degree elevation, we use the equality formula_40 Each component formula_41 is multiplied by (1 − "t") and "t", thus increasing a degree by one, without changing the value. Here is the example of increasing degree from 2 to 3. formula_42 In other words, the original start and end points are unchanged. The new control points are formula_43 and formula_44. For arbitrary "n" we use equalities formula_45 Therefore: formula_46 introducing arbitrary formula_47 and formula_48. Therefore, new control points are formula_49 Repeated degree elevation. The concept of degree elevation can be repeated on a control polygon R to get a sequence of control polygons R, R1, R2, and so on. After "r" degree elevations, the polygon R"r" has the vertices P0,"r", P1,"r", P2,"r", ..., P"n"+"r","r" given by formula_50 It can also be shown that for the underlying Bézier curve "B", formula_51 Degree reduction. Degree reduction can only be done exactly when the curve in question is originally elevated from a lower degree. A number of approximation algorithms have been proposed and used in practice. Rational Bézier curves. The rational Bézier curve adds adjustable weights to provide closer approximations to arbitrary shapes. The numerator is a weighted Bernstein-form Bézier curve and the denominator is a weighted sum of Bernstein polynomials. Rational Bézier curves can, among other uses, be used to represent segments of conic sections exactly, including circular arcs. Given "n" + 1 control points P0, ..., P"n", the rational Bézier curve can be described by formula_52 or simply formula_53 The expression can be extended by using number systems besides reals for the weights. In the complex plane the points {1}, {-1}, and {1} with weights {formula_54}, {1}, and {formula_55} generate a full circle with radius one. For curves with points and weights on a circle, the weights can be scaled without changing the curve's shape. Scaling the central weight of the above curve by 1.35508 gives a more uniform parameterization. Applications. Computer graphics. Bézier curves are widely used in computer graphics to model smooth curves. As the curve is completely contained in the convex hull of its control points, the points can be graphically displayed and used to manipulate the curve intuitively. Affine transformations such as translation and rotation can be applied on the curve by applying the respective transform on the control points of the curve. Quadratic and cubic Bézier curves are most common. Higher degree curves are more computationally expensive to evaluate. When more complex shapes are needed, low order Bézier curves are patched together, producing a composite Bézier curve. A composite Bézier curve is commonly referred to as a "path" in vector graphics languages (like PostScript), vector graphics standards (like SVG) and vector graphics programs (like Artline, Timeworks Publisher, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Inkscape, and Allegro). In order to join Bézier curves into a composite Bézier curve without kinks, a property called "G1 continuity" suffices to force the control point at which two constituent Bézier curves meet to lie on the line defined by the two control points on either side. The simplest method for scan converting (rasterizing) a Bézier curve is to evaluate it at many closely spaced points and scan convert the approximating sequence of line segments. However, this does not guarantee that the rasterized output looks sufficiently smooth, because the points may be spaced too far apart. Conversely it may generate too many points in areas where the curve is close to linear. A common adaptive method is recursive subdivision, in which a curve's control points are checked to see if the curve approximates a line to within a small tolerance. If not, the curve is subdivided parametrically into two segments, 0 ≤ "t" ≤ 0.5 and 0.5 ≤ "t" ≤ 1, and the same procedure is applied recursively to each half. There are also forward differencing methods, but great care must be taken to analyse error propagation. Analytical methods where a Bézier is intersected with each scan line involve finding roots of cubic polynomials (for cubic Béziers) and dealing with multiple roots, so they are not often used in practice. The rasterisation algorithm used in Metafont is based on discretising the curve, so that it is approximated by a sequence of "rook moves" that are purely vertical or purely horizontal, along the pixel boundaries. To that end, the plane is first split into eight 45° sectors (by the coordinate axes and the two lines formula_56), then the curve is decomposed into smaller segments such that the "direction" of a curve segment stays within one sector; since the curve velocity is a second degree polynomial, finding the formula_57 values where it is parallel to one of these lines can be done by solving quadratic equations. Within each segment, either horizontal or vertical movement dominates, and the total number of steps in either direction can be read off from the endpoint coordinates; in for example the 0–45° sector horizontal movement to the right dominates, so it only remains to decide between which steps to the right the curve should make a step up. There is also a modified curve form of Bresenham's line drawing algorithm by Zingl that performs this rasterization by subdividing the curve into rational pieces and calculating the error at each pixel location such that it either travels at a 45° angle or straight depending on compounding error as it iterates through the curve. This reduces the next step calculation to a series of integer additions and subtractions. Animation. In animation applications, such as Adobe Flash and Synfig, Bézier curves are used to outline, for example, movement. Users outline the wanted path in Bézier curves, and the application creates the needed frames for the object to move along the path. In 3D animation, Bézier curves are often used to define 3D paths as well as 2D curves for keyframe interpolation. Bézier curves are now very frequently used to control the animation easing in CSS, JavaScript, JavaFx and Flutter SDK. Fonts. TrueType fonts use composite Bézier curves composed of quadratic Bézier curves. Other languages and imaging tools (such as PostScript, Asymptote, Metafont, and SVG) use composite Béziers composed of cubic Bézier curves for drawing curved shapes. OpenType fonts can use either kind of curve, depending on which font technology underlies the OpenType wrapper. Font engines, like FreeType, draw the font's curves (and lines) on a pixellated surface using a process known as font rasterization. Typically font engines and vector graphics engines render Bézier curves by splitting them recursively up to the point where the curve is flat enough to be drawn as a series of linear or circular segments. The exact splitting algorithm is implementation dependent, only the flatness criteria must be respected to reach the necessary precision and to avoid non-monotonic local changes of curvature. The "smooth curve" feature of charts in Microsoft Excel also uses this algorithm. Because arcs of circles and ellipses cannot be exactly represented by Bézier curves, they are first approximated by Bézier curves, which are in turn approximated by arcs of circles. This is inefficient as there exists also approximations of all Bézier curves using arcs of circles or ellipses, which can be rendered incrementally with arbitrary precision. Another approach, used by modern hardware graphics adapters with accelerated geometry, can convert exactly all Bézier and conic curves (or surfaces) into NURBS, that can be rendered incrementally without first splitting the curve recursively to reach the necessary flatness condition. This approach also preserves the curve definition under all linear or perspective 2D and 3D transforms and projections. Robotics. Because the control polygon allows to tell whether or not the path collides with any obstacles, Bézier curves are used in producing trajectories of the end effectors. Furthermore, joint space trajectories can be accurately differentiated using Bézier curves. Consequently, the derivatives of joint space trajectories are used in the calculation of the dynamics and control effort (torque profiles) of the robotic manipulator.
4665	28481209	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4665	Banach algebra	In mathematics, especially functional analysis, a Banach algebra, named after Stefan Banach, is an associative algebra formula_1 over the real or complex numbers (or over a non-Archimedean complete normed field) that at the same time is also a Banach space, that is, a normed space that is complete in the metric induced by the norm. The norm is required to satisfy formula_2 This ensures that the multiplication operation is continuous with respect to the metric topology. A Banach algebra is called "unital" if it has an identity element for the multiplication whose norm is formula_3 and "commutative" if its multiplication is commutative. Any Banach algebra formula_1 (whether it is unital or not) can be embedded isometrically into a unital Banach algebra formula_5 so as to form a closed ideal of formula_5. Often one assumes "a priori" that the algebra under consideration is unital because one can develop much of the theory by considering formula_5 and then applying the outcome in the original algebra. However, this is not the case all the time. For example, one cannot define all the trigonometric functions in a Banach algebra without identity. The theory of real Banach algebras can be very different from the theory of complex Banach algebras. For example, the spectrum of an element of a nontrivial complex Banach algebra can never be empty, whereas in a real Banach algebra it could be empty for some elements. Banach algebras can also be defined over fields of formula_8-adic numbers. This is part of formula_8-adic analysis. Examples. The prototypical example of a Banach algebra is formula_10, the space of (complex-valued) continuous functions, defined on a locally compact Hausdorff space formula_11, that vanish at infinity. formula_10 is unital if and only if formula_11 is compact. The complex conjugation being an involution, formula_10 is in fact a C-algebra. More generally, every C-algebra is a Banach algebra by definition. Properties. Several elementary functions that are defined via power series may be defined in any unital Banach algebra; examples include the exponential function and the trigonometric functions, and more generally any entire function. (In particular, the exponential map can be used to define abstract index groups.) The formula for the geometric series remains valid in general unital Banach algebras. The binomial theorem also holds for two commuting elements of a Banach algebra. The set of invertible elements in any unital Banach algebra is an open set, and the inversion operation on this set is continuous (and hence is a homeomorphism), so that it forms a topological group under multiplication. If a Banach algebra has unit formula_35 then formula_36 cannot be a commutator; that is, formula_37 for any formula_38 This is because formula_39 and formula_40 have the same spectrum except possibly formula_41 The various algebras of functions given in the examples above have very different properties from standard examples of algebras such as the reals. For example: Spectral theory. Unital Banach algebras over the complex field provide a general setting to develop spectral theory. The "spectrum" of an element formula_49 denoted by formula_50, consists of all those complex scalars formula_51 such that formula_52 is not invertible in formula_48 The spectrum of any element formula_54 is a closed subset of the closed disc in formula_55 with radius formula_56 and center formula_57 and thus is compact. Moreover, the spectrum formula_50 of an element formula_54 is non-empty and satisfies the spectral radius formula: formula_60 Given formula_49 the holomorphic functional calculus allows to define formula_62 for any function formula_63 holomorphic in a neighborhood of formula_64 Furthermore, the spectral mapping theorem holds: formula_65 When the Banach algebra formula_1 is the algebra formula_67 of bounded linear operators on a complex Banach space formula_11 (for example, the algebra of square matrices), the notion of the spectrum in formula_1 coincides with the usual one in operator theory. For formula_70 (with a compact Hausdorff space formula_11), one sees that: formula_72 The norm of a normal element formula_54 of a C-algebra coincides with its spectral radius. This generalizes an analogous fact for normal operators. Let formula_1 be a complex unital Banach algebra in which every non-zero element formula_54 is invertible (a division algebra). For every formula_76 there is formula_77 such that formula_78 is not invertible (because the spectrum of formula_79 is not empty) hence formula_80 this algebra formula_1 is naturally isomorphic to formula_55 (the complex case of the Gelfand–Mazur theorem). Ideals and characters. Let formula_1 be a unital "commutative" Banach algebra over formula_84 Since formula_1 is then a commutative ring with unit, every non-invertible element of formula_1 belongs to some maximal ideal of formula_48 Since a maximal ideal formula_88 in formula_1 is closed, formula_90 is a Banach algebra that is a field, and it follows from the Gelfand–Mazur theorem that there is a bijection between the set of all maximal ideals of formula_1 and the set formula_92 of all nonzero homomorphisms from formula_1 to formula_84 The set formula_92 is called the "structure space" or "character space" of formula_96 and its members "characters". A character formula_97 is a linear functional on formula_1 that is at the same time multiplicative, formula_99 and satisfies formula_100 Every character is automatically continuous from formula_1 to formula_102 since the kernel of a character is a maximal ideal, which is closed. Moreover, the norm (that is, operator norm) of a character is one. Equipped with the topology of pointwise convergence on formula_1 (that is, the topology induced by the weak- topology of formula_104), the character space, formula_105 is a Hausdorff compact space. For any formula_49 formula_107 where formula_108 is the Gelfand representation of formula_54 defined as follows: formula_108 is the continuous function from formula_92 to formula_55 given by formula_113 The spectrum of formula_114 in the formula above, is the spectrum as element of the algebra formula_115 of complex continuous functions on the compact space formula_116 Explicitly, formula_117 As an algebra, a unital commutative Banach algebra is semisimple (that is, its Jacobson radical is zero) if and only if its Gelfand representation has trivial kernel. An important example of such an algebra is a commutative C-algebra. In fact, when formula_1 is a commutative unital C-algebra, the Gelfand representation is then an isometric -isomorphism between formula_1 and formula_120 Banach -algebras. A Banach -algebra formula_1 is a Banach algebra over the field of complex numbers, together with a map formula_122 that has the following properties: In other words, a Banach -algebra is a Banach algebra over formula_55 that is also a -algebra. In most natural examples, one also has that the involution is isometric, that is, formula_135 Some authors include this isometric property in the definition of a Banach -algebra. A Banach -algebra satisfying formula_136 is a C-algebra.
4667	35930533	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4667	Boris Pasternak	Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, "My Sister, Life", was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an important collection in the Russian language. Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderón de la Barca and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences. Pasternak was the author of "Doctor Zhivago" (1957), a novel that takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. "Doctor Zhivago" was rejected for publication in the USSR, but the manuscript was smuggled to Italy and was first published there in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, an event that enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which forced him to decline the prize. In 1989, Pasternak's son Yevgeny finally accepted the award on his father's behalf. "Doctor Zhivago" has been part of the main Russian school curriculum since 2003. Early life. Pasternak was born in Moscow on into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family. His father was the post-Impressionist painter Leonid Pasternak, who taught as a professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. His mother was Rosa Kaufman, a concert pianist and the daughter of Odessa industrialist Isadore Kaufman and his wife. Pasternak had a younger brother, Alex, and two sisters, Lydia and Josephine. The family claimed descent on the paternal line from Isaac Abarbanel, the famous 15th-century Sephardic Jewish philosopher, Bible commentator, and treasurer of Portugal. Early education. From 1904 to 1907, Boris Pasternak was the cloister-mate of Peter Minchakievich (1890–1963) in Holy Dormition Pochayev Lavra (now in Ukraine). Minchakievich came from an Orthodox Ukrainian family and Pasternak came from a Jewish family. Some confusion has arisen as to Pasternak attending a military academy in his boyhood years. The uniforms of their monastery Cadet Corp were only similar to those of The Czar Alexander the Third Military Academy, as Pasternak and Minchakievich never attended any military academy. Most schools used a distinctive military-looking uniform particular to them as was the custom of the time in Eastern Europe and Russia. Boyhood friends, they parted in 1908, friendly but with different politics, never to see each other again. Pasternak went to the Moscow Conservatory to study music (and later to Germany to study philosophy), and Minchakievich went to Lvov University to study history and philosophy. The good dimension of the character Strelnikov in "Dr. Zhivago" is based upon Peter Minchakievich. Several of Pasternak's characters are composites. After World War One and the Revolution, fighting for the Provisional or Republican government under Kerensky, and then escaping a Communist jail and execution, Minchakievich trekked across Siberia in 1917 and became an American citizen. Pasternak stayed in Russia. In a 1959 letter to Jacqueline de Proyart, Pasternak recalled: Shortly after his birth, Pasternak's parents had joined the Tolstoyan Movement. Novelist Leo Tolstoy was a close family friend, as Pasternak recalled, In a 1956 essay, Pasternak recalled his father's feverish work creating illustrations for Tolstoy's novel "Resurrection". The novel was serialized in the journal "Niva" by the publisher Fyodor Marx, based in St Petersburg. The sketches were drawn from observations in such places as courtrooms, prisons and on trains, in a spirit of realism. To ensure that the sketches met the journal deadline, train conductors were enlisted to personally collect the illustrations. Pasternak wrote, According to Max Hayward, Regular visitors to the Pasternaks' home also included Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Scriabin, Lev Shestov, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Pasternak aspired first to be a musician. Inspired by Scriabin, Pasternak briefly was a student at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1910, he abruptly left for the University of Marburg in Germany, where he studied under neo-Kantian philosophers Hermann Cohen, Nicolai Hartmann, and Paul Natorp. Life and career. Olga Freidenberg. In 1910 Pasternak was reunited with his cousin Olga Freidenberg (1890–1955). They had shared the same nursery but had been separated when the Freidenberg family moved to Saint Petersburg. They fell in love immediately but were never lovers. The romance, however, is made clear from their letters, Pasternak writing: The cousins' initial passion developed into a lifelong close friendship. From 1910 Pasternak and Freidenberg exchanged frequent letters, and their correspondence lasted over 40 years until 1954. The cousins last met in 1936. Ida Wissotzkaya. Pasternak fell in love with Ida Wissotzkaya, a girl from a notable Moscow Jewish , whose company Wissotzky Tea was the largest tea company in the world. Pasternak had tutored her in the final class of high school. He helped her prepare for finals. They met in Marburg during the summer of 1912 when Boris' father, Leonid Pasternak, painted her portrait. Although Professor Cohen encouraged him to remain in Germany and to pursue a Philosophy doctorate, Pasternak decided against it. He returned to Moscow around the time of the outbreak of the First World War. In the aftermath of events, Pasternak proposed marriage to Ida. However, the Wissotzky family was disturbed by Pasternak's poor prospects and persuaded Ida to refuse him. She turned him down and he told of his love and rejection in the poem "Marburg" (1917): <poem>I quivered. I flared up, and then was extinguished. I shook. I had made a proposal—but late, Too late. I was scared, and she had refused me. I pity her tears, am more blessed than a saint.</poem> Around this time, when he was back in Russia, he joined the Russian Futurist group Centrifuge (Tsentrifuga) as a pianist; poetry was still only a hobby for him at that time. It was in their group journal, "Lirika", where some of his earliest poems were published. His involvement with the Futurist movement as a whole reached its peak when, in 1914, he published a satirical article in "Rukonog", which attacked the jealous leader of the "Mezzanine of Poetry", Vadim Shershenevich, who was criticizing "Lirika" and the Ego-Futurists because Shershenevich himself was barred from collaborating with Centrifuge, the reason being that he was such a talentless poet. The action eventually caused a verbal battle amongst several members of the groups, fighting for recognition as the first, truest Russian Futurists; these included the Cubo-Futurists, who were by that time already notorious for their scandalous behaviour. Pasternak's first and second books of poetry were published shortly after these events. Another failed love affair in 1917 inspired the poems in his third and first major book, "My Sister, Life". His early verse cleverly dissimulates his preoccupation with Immanuel Kant's philosophy. Its fabric includes striking alliterations, wild rhythmic combinations, day-to-day vocabulary, and hidden allusions to his favourite poets such as Rilke, Lermontov, Pushkin and German-language Romantic poets. During World War I, Pasternak taught and worked at a chemical factory in Vsevolodo-Vilva near Perm, which undoubtedly provided him with material for "Dr. Zhivago" many years later. Unlike the rest of his family and many of his closest friends, Pasternak chose not to leave Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. According to Max Hayward, When it finally was published in 1922, Pasternak's "My Sister, Life" revolutionised Russian poetry. It made Pasternak the model for younger poets, and decisively changed the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetayeva and others. Following "My Sister, Life", Pasternak produced some hermetic pieces of uneven quality, including his masterpiece, the lyric cycle "Rupture" (1921). Both Pro-Soviet writers and their White émigré equivalents applauded Pasternak's poetry as pure, unbridled inspiration. In the late 1920s, he also participated in the much celebrated tripartite correspondence with Rilke and Tsvetayeva. As the 1920s wore on, however, Pasternak increasingly felt that his colourful style was at odds with a less educated readership. He attempted to make his poetry more comprehensible by reworking his earlier pieces and starting two lengthy poems on the Russian Revolution of 1905. He also turned to prose and wrote several autobiographical stories, notably "The Childhood of Luvers" and "Safe Conduct". (The collection "Zhenia's Childhood and Other Stories" would be published in 1982.) In 1922 Pasternak married Evgeniya Lurye (Евгения Лурье), a student at the Art Institute. The following year their son Yevgeny was born. Evidence of Pasternak's support of still-revolutionary members of the leadership of the Communist Party as late as 1926 is indicated by his poem "In Memory of Reissner" presumably written upon the premature death from typhus of Bolshevik leader Larissa Reissner aged 30 in February of that year. By 1927, Pasternak's close friends Vladimir Mayakovsky and Nikolai Aseyev were advocating the complete subordination of the arts to the needs of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In a letter to his sister Josephine, Pasternak wrote of his intentions to "break off relations" with both of them. Although he expressed that it would be deeply painful, Pasternak explained that it could not be prevented. He explained: By 1932, Pasternak had strikingly reshaped his style to make it more understandable to the general public and printed the new collection of poems, aptly titled "The Second Birth". Although its Caucasian pieces were as brilliant as the earlier efforts, the book alienated the core of Pasternak's refined audience abroad, which was largely composed of anti-communist émigrés. In 1932, Pasternak fell in love with Zinaida Neuhaus, the wife of the Russian pianist Heinrich Neuhaus. They both got divorces and married two years later. Pasternak continued to change his poetry, simplifying his style and language through the years, as expressed in his next book, "Early Trains" (1943). Stalin Epigram. In April 1934 Osip Mandelstam recited his "Stalin Epigram" to Pasternak. After listening, Pasternak told Mandelstam: On the night of 14 May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested at his home based on a warrant signed by NKVD boss Genrikh Yagoda. Devastated, Pasternak went immediately to the offices of "Izvestia" and begged Nikolai Bukharin to intercede on Mandelstam's behalf. Soon after his meeting with Bukharin, the telephone rang in Pasternak's Moscow apartment. A voice from the Kremlin said, According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak was struck dumb. Flustered, Pasternak denied that there was any discussion or that there were any literary circles left in Soviet Russia. Stalin went on to ask him for his own opinion of Mandelstam. In an "eager fumbling manner" Pasternak explained that he and Mandelstam each had a completely different philosophy about poetry. Stalin finally said, in a mocking tone of voice: , and put down the receiver. Great Purge. According to Pasternak, during the 1937 trial of General Iona Yakir and Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the Union of Soviet Writers requested all members to add their names to a statement supporting the death penalty for the defendants. Pasternak refused to sign, even after leadership of the Union visited him. Soon after, Pasternak appealed directly to Stalin, describing his family's strong Tolstoyan convictions and putting his own life at Stalin's disposal; he said that he could not stand as a self-appointed judge of life and death. Pasternak was certain that he would be arrested, but instead Stalin is said to have crossed Pasternak's name off an execution list, reportedly declaring, (or, in another version, ). Pasternak's close friend Titsian Tabidze did fall victim to the Great Purge. In an autobiographical essay published in the 1950s, Pasternak described the execution of Tabidze and the suicides of Marina Tsvetaeva and Paolo Iashvili. Ivinskaya wrote, World War II. When the Luftwaffe began bombing Moscow, Pasternak immediately began to serve as a fire warden on the roof of the writer's building on Lavrushinski Street. According to Ivinskaya, he repeatedly helped to dispose of German bombs which fell on it. In 1943, Pasternak was finally granted permission to visit the soldiers at the front. He bore it well, considering the hardships of the journey (he had a weak leg from an old injury), and he wanted to go to the most dangerous places. He read his poetry and talked extensively with the active and injured troops. Pasternak later said, Olga Ivinskaya. In October 1946, the twice-married Pasternak met Olga Ivinskaya, a 34 year old single mother employed by "Novy Mir". Deeply moved by her resemblance to his first love Ida Vysotskaya, Pasternak gave Ivinskaya several volumes of his poetry and literary translations. Although Pasternak never left his wife Zinaida, he started an extramarital relationship with Ivinskaya that would last for the remainder of Pasternak's life. Ivinskaya later recalled, She gave him the phone number of her neighbour Olga Volkova who resided below. In the evenings, Pasternak would phone and Volkova would signal by Olga banging on the water pipe which connected their apartments. When they first met, Pasternak was translating the verse of the Hungarian national poet, Sándor Petőfi. Pasternak gave his lover a book of Petőfi with the inscription, Pasternak later noted on a photograph of himself: Ivinskaya would later describe the Petőfi translations as "a first declaration of love". According to Ivinskaya, Zinaida Pasternak was infuriated by her husband's infidelity. Once, when his younger son Leonid fell seriously ill, Zinaida extracted a promise from her husband, as they stood by the boy's sickbed, that he would end his affair with Ivinskaya. Pasternak asked Luisa Popova, a mutual friend, to tell Ivinskaya about his promise. Popova told him that he must do it himself. Soon after, Ivinskaya happened to be ill at Popova's apartment, when suddenly Zinaida Pasternak arrived and confronted her. Ivinskaya later recalled, In 1948, Pasternak advised Ivinskaya to resign her job at "Novy Mir", which was becoming extremely difficult due to their relationship. In the aftermath, Pasternak began to instruct her in translating poetry. In time, they began to refer to her apartment on Potapov Street as, "Our Shop". On the evening of 6 October 1949, Ivinskaya was arrested at her apartment by the KGB. Ivinskaya relates in her memoirs that, when the agents burst into her apartment, she was at her typewriter working on translations of the Korean poet Won Tu-Son. Her apartment was ransacked and all items connected with Pasternak were piled up in her presence. Ivinskaya was taken to the Lubyanka Prison and repeatedly interrogated, where she refused to say anything incriminating about Pasternak. At the time, she was pregnant with Pasternak's child and had a miscarriage early in her ten-year sentence in the GULAG. Upon learning of his mistress' arrest, Pasternak telephoned Luisa Popova and asked her to come at once to Gogol Boulevard. She found him sitting on a bench near the Palace of Soviets Metro Station. Weeping, Pasternak told her, According to Ivinskaya, In a 1958 letter to a friend in West Germany, Pasternak wrote, Translating Goethe. Pasternak's translation of the of "Faust" led him to be attacked in the August 1950 edition of "Novy Mir". The critic accused Pasternak of distorting Goethe's "progressive" meanings to support , as well as introducing aesthetic and individualist values. In a subsequent letter to the daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva, Pasternak explained that the attack was motivated by the fact that the supernatural elements of the play, which "Novy Mir" considered, "irrational", had been translated as Goethe had written them. Pasternak further declared that, despite the attacks on his translation, his contract for the had not been revoked. Khrushchev thaw. When Stalin died of a stroke on 5 March 1953, Ivinskaya was still imprisoned in the Gulag, and Pasternak was in Moscow. Across the nation, there were waves of panic, confusion, and public displays of grief. Pasternak wrote, After her release, Pasternak's relationship with Ivinskaya picked up where it had left off. Soon after he confided in her, During this period, Pasternak delighted in reading a clandestine copy of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" in English. In conversation with Ivinskaya, Pasternak explained that the pig dictator Napoleon, in the novel, "vividly reminded" him of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. "Doctor Zhivago". Although it contains passages written in the 1910s and 1920s, "Doctor Zhivago" was not completed until 1955. Pasternak submitted the novel to "Novy Mir" in 1956, which refused publication due to its rejection of socialist realism. The author, like his protagonist Yuri Zhivago, showed more concern for the welfare of individual characters than for the "progress" of society. Censors also regarded some passages as anti-Soviet, especially the novel's criticisms of Stalinism, Collectivisation, the Great Purge, and the Gulag. Pasternak's fortunes were soon to change, however. In March 1956, the Italian Communist Party sent a journalist, Sergio D'Angelo, to work in the Soviet Union, and his status as a journalist as well as his membership in the Italian Communist Party allowed him to have access to various aspects of the cultural life in Moscow at the time. A Milan publisher, the communist Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, had also given him a commission to find new works of Soviet literature that would be appealing to Western audiences, and upon learning of "Doctor Zhivago"s existence, D'Angelo travelled immediately to Peredelkino and offered to submit Pasternak's novel to Feltrinelli's company for publication. At first Pasternak was stunned. Then he brought the manuscript from his study and told D'Angelo with a laugh, According to Lazar Fleishman, Pasternak was aware that he was taking a huge risk. No Soviet author had attempted to deal with Western publishers since the 1920s, when such behavior led the Soviet State to declare war on Boris Pilnyak and Evgeny Zamyatin. Pasternak, however, believed that Feltrinelli's Communist affiliation would not only guarantee publication, but might even force the Soviet State to publish the novel in Russia. In a rare moment of agreement, both Olga Ivinskaya and Zinaida Pasternak were horrified by the submission of "Doctor Zhivago" to a Western publishing house. Pasternak, however, refused to change his mind and informed an emissary from Feltrinelli that he was prepared to undergo any sacrifice in order to see "Doctor Zhivago" published. In 1957, Feltrinelli announced that the novel would be published by his company. Despite repeated demands from visiting Soviet emissaries, Feltrinelli refused to cancel or delay publication. According to Ivinskaya, The Soviet government forced Pasternak to cable the publisher to withdraw the manuscript, but he sent separate, secret letters advising Feltrinelli to ignore the telegrams. Helped considerably by the Soviet campaign against the novel (as well as by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's secret purchase of hundreds of copies of the book as it came off the presses around the world – see "Nobel Prize" section below), "Doctor Zhivago" became an instant sensation throughout the non-Communist world upon its release in November 1957. In the State of Israel, however, Pasternak's novel was sharply criticized for its assimilationist views towards the Jewish people. When informed of this, Pasternak responded, According to Lazar Fleishman, Pasternak had written the disputed passages prior to Israeli independence. At the time, Pasternak had also been regularly attending Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy. Therefore, he believed that Soviet Jews converting to Christianity was preferable to assimilating into atheism and Stalinism. The first English translation of "Doctor Zhivago" was hastily produced by Max Hayward and Manya Harari in order to coincide with overwhelming public demand. It was released in August 1958, and remained the only edition available for more than fifty years. Between 1958 and 1959, the English language edition spent 26 weeks at the top of "The New York Times"' bestseller list. Ivinskaya's daughter Irina circulated typed copies of the novel in Samizdat. Although no Soviet critics had read the banned novel, "Doctor Zhivago" was pilloried in the State-owned press. Similar attacks led to a humorous Russian saying, "I haven't read Pasternak, but I condemn him". During the aftermath of the Second World War, Pasternak had composed a series of poems on Gospel themes. According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak had regarded Stalin as a Therefore, Pasternak's decision to write Christian poetry was . On 9 September 1958, the "Literary Gazette" critic Viktor Pertsov retaliated by denouncing Furthermore, the author received much hate mail from Communists both at home and abroad. According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak continued to receive such letters for the remainder of his life. In a letter written to his sister Josephine, however, Pasternak recalled the words of his friend Ekaterina Krashennikova upon reading "Doctor Zhivago". She had said, Nobel Prize. According to Yevgeni Borisovich Pasternak, According to the former Nobel Committee head Lars Gyllensten, his nomination was discussed every year from 1946 to 1950, then again in 1957 (it was finally awarded in 1958). Pasternak guessed at this from the growing waves of criticism in USSR. Sometimes he had to justify his European fame: 'According to the Union of Soviet Writers, some literature circles of the West see unusual importance in my work, not matching its modesty and low productivity...' Meanwhile, Pasternak wrote to Renate Schweitzer and his sister, Lydia Pasternak Slater. In both letters, the author expressed hope that he would be passed over by the Nobel Committee in favour of Alberto Moravia. Pasternak wrote that he was wracked with torments and anxieties at the thought of placing his loved ones in danger. On 23 October 1958, Boris Pasternak was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize. The citation credited Pasternak's contribution to Russian lyric poetry and for his role in On 25 October, Pasternak sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy: That same day, the Literary Institute in Moscow demanded that all its students sign a petition denouncing Pasternak and his novel. They were further ordered to join a "spontaneous" demonstration demanding Pasternak's exile from the Soviet Union. Also on that day, the "Literary Gazette" published a letter which was sent to B. Pasternak in September 1956 by the editors of the Soviet literary journal Novy Mir to justify their rejection of Doctor Zhivago. In publishing this letter the Soviet authorities wished to justify the measures they had taken against the author and his work. On 26 October, the "Literary Gazette" ran an article by David Zaslavski entitled, "Reactionary Propaganda Uproar over a Literary Weed". According to Solomon Volkov: Furthermore, Pasternak was informed that, if he traveled to Stockholm to collect his Nobel Medal, he would be refused re-entry to the Soviet Union. As a result, on 29 October Pasternak sent a second telegram to the Nobel Committee: The Swedish Academy announced: According to Yevgenii Pasternak, Deportation plans. Despite his decision to decline the award, the Union of Soviet Writers continued to demonise Pasternak in the State-owned press. Furthermore, he was threatened at the very least with formal exile to the West. In response, Pasternak wrote directly to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, In "The Oak and the Calf", Alexander Solzhenitsyn sharply criticized Pasternak, both for declining the Nobel Prize and for sending such a letter to Khrushchev. In her own memoirs, Olga Ivinskaya blames herself for pressuring her lover into making both decisions. According to Yevgenii Pasternak, On 31 October 1958, the Union of Soviet Writers held a trial behind closed doors. According to the meeting minutes, Pasternak was denounced as an internal émigré and a Fascist fifth columnist. Afterwards, the attendees announced that Pasternak had been expelled from the Union. They further signed a petition to the Politburo, demanding that Pasternak be stripped of his Soviet citizenship and exiled to According to Yevgenii Pasternak, however, author Konstantin Paustovsky refused to attend the meeting. Yevgeny Yevtushenko did attend, but walked out in disgust. According to Yevgenii Pasternak, his father would have been exiled had it not been for Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who telephoned Khrushchev and threatened to organize a Committee for Pasternak's protection. It is possible that the 1958 Nobel Prize prevented Pasternak's imprisonment due to the Soviet State's fear of international protests. Yevgenii Pasternak believes, however, that the resulting persecution fatally weakened his father's health. Meanwhile, Bill Mauldin produced that won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. The cartoon depicts Pasternak as a GULAG inmate splitting trees in the snow, saying to another inmate: Last years. Pasternak's post-"Zhivago" poetry probes the universal questions of love, immortality, and reconciliation with God. Boris Pasternak wrote his last complete book, "When the Weather Clears", in 1959. According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak continued to stick to his daily writing schedule even during the controversy over "Doctor Zhivago". He also continued translating the writings of Juliusz Słowacki and Pedro Calderón de la Barca. In his work on Calderon, Pasternak received the discreet support of Nikolai Mikhailovich Liubimov, a senior figure in the Party's literary apparatus. Ivinskaya describes Liubimov as, "a shrewd and enlightened person who understood very well that all the mudslinging and commotion over the novel would be forgotten, but that there would always be a Pasternak." In a letter to his sisters in Oxford, England, Pasternak claimed to have finished translating one of Calderon's plays in less than a week. During the summer of 1959, Pasternak began writing "The Blind Beauty", a trilogy of stage plays set before and after Alexander II's abolition of serfdom in Russia. In an interview with Olga Carlisle from "The Paris Review", Pasternak enthusiastically described the play's plot and characters. He informed Olga Carlisle that, at the end of "The Blind Beauty", he wished to depict "the birth of an enlightened and affluent middle class, open to occidental influences, progressive, intelligent, artistic". However, Pasternak fell ill with terminal lung cancer before he could complete the first play of the trilogy. Death. Boris Pasternak died of lung cancer in his dacha in Peredelkino on the evening of 30 May 1960. He first summoned his sons, and in their presence said, Pasternak's last words were, Funeral demonstration. Despite only a small notice appearing in the "Literary Gazette", handwritten notices carrying the date and time of the funeral were posted throughout the Moscow subway system. As a result, thousands of admirers braved Militia and KGB surveillance to attend Pasternak's funeral in Peredelkino. Before Pasternak's civil funeral, Ivinskaya had a conversation with Konstantin Paustovsky. According to her, Then, in the presence of a large number of foreign journalists, the body of Pasternak was removed to the cemetery. According to Ivinskaya, To the horror of the assembled Party officials, however, someone with "a young and deeply anguished voice" began reciting Pasternak's banned poem "Hamlet". According to Ivinskaya, The final speaker at the graveside service said, As the spectators cheered, the bells of Peredelkino's Church of the Transfiguration began to toll. Written prayers for the dead were then placed upon Pasternak's forehead and the coffin was closed and buried. Pasternak's gravesite would go on to become a major shrine for members of the Soviet dissident movement. Legacy. After Pasternak's death, Ivinskaya was arrested for the second time, with her daughter, Irina Emelyanova. Both were accused of being Pasternak's link with Western publishers and of dealing in hard currency for "Doctor Zhivago". All of Pasternak's letters to Ivinskaya, as well as many other manuscripts and documents, were seized by the KGB. The KGB quietly released them, Irina after one year, in 1962, and Olga in 1964. By this time, Ivinskaya had served four years of an eight-year sentence, in retaliation for her role in "Doctor Zhivago"'s publication. In 1978, her memoirs were smuggled abroad and published in Paris. An English translation by Max Hayward was published the same year under the title "A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak". Ivinskaya was rehabilitated only in 1988. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ivinskaya sued for the return of the letters and documents seized by the KGB in 1961. The Russian Supreme Court ultimately ruled against her, stating that "there was no proof of ownership" and that the "papers should remain in the state archive". Ivinskaya died of cancer on 8 September 1995. A reporter on NTV compared her role to that of other famous muses for Russian poets: "As Pushkin would not be complete without Anna Kern, and Yesenin would be nothing without Isadora, so Pasternak would not be Pasternak without Olga Ivinskaya, who was his inspiration for "Doctor Zhivago".". Meanwhile, Boris Pasternak continued to be pilloried by the Soviet State until Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed Perestroika during the 1980s. In 1980, an asteroid was named 3508 Pasternak after Boris Pasternak. In 1988, after decades of circulating in Samizdat, "Doctor Zhivago" was serialized in the literary journal "Novy Mir". In December 1989, Yevgenii Borisovich Pasternak was permitted to travel to Stockholm in order to collect his father's Nobel Medal. At the ceremony, acclaimed cellist and Soviet dissident Mstislav Rostropovich performed a Bach serenade in honor of his deceased countryman. The Pasternak family papers are stored at the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. They contain correspondence, drafts of "Doctor Zhivago" and other writings, photographs, and other material, of Boris Pasternak and other family members. Since 2003, during the first presidency of Vladimir Putin, the novel "Doctor Zhivago" has entered the Russian school curriculum, where it is read in the 11th grade of secondary school. Commemoration. In October 1984 by decision of a court, Pasternak's dacha in Peredelkino was taken from the writer's relatives and transferred to state ownership. Two years later, in 1986, the House-Museum of Boris Pasternak was founded (the first house-museum in the USSR). In 1990, the year of the poet's 100th anniversary, the Pasternak Museum opened its doors in Chistopol, in the house where the poet evacuated to during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1943), and in Peredelkino, where he lived for many years until his death. The head of the poet's house-museum is Natalia Pasternak, his daughter-in-law (widow of the youngest son Leonid). In 2008 a museum was opened in Vsevolodo-Vilva in the house where the budding poet lived from January to June 1916. In 2009 on the City Day in Perm the first Russian monument to Pasternak was erected in the square near the Opera Theater (sculptor: Elena Munc). A memorial plaque was installed on the house where Pasternak was born. In memory of the poet's three-time stay in Tula, on 27 May 2005 a marble memorial plaque to Pasternak was installed on the Wörmann hotel's wall, as Pasternak was a Nobel laureate and dedicated several of his works to Tula. On 20 February 2008, in Kyiv, a memorial plaque was put up on the house No.9 on Lipinsky Street, but seven years later it was stolen by vandals. In 2012 a monument to Boris Pasternak was erected in the district center of Muchkapsky by Z. Tsereteli. In 1990, as part of the series "Nobel Prize Winners", the USSR and Sweden ("Nobel Prize Winners – Literature") issued stamps depicting Boris Pasternak. In 2015, as part of the series "125th Annive. of the Birth of Boris Pasternak, 1890–1960", Mozambique issued a miniature sheet depicting Boris Pasternak. Although this issue was acknowledged by the postal administration of Mozambique, the issue was not placed on sale in Mozambique, and was only distributed to the new issue trade by Mozambique's philatelic agent. In 2015, as part of the series "125th Birth Anniversary of Boris Pasternak", Maldives issued a miniature sheet depicting Boris Pasternak. The issue was acknowledged by the Maldive postal authorities, but only distributed by the Maldive philatelic agent for collecting purposes. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of B. Pasternak's Nobel Prize, the Principality of Monaco issued a postage stamp in his memory. On 27 January 2015, in honor of the poet's 125th birthday, the Russian Post issued an envelope with the original stamp. On 1 October 2015, a monument to Pasternak was erected in Chistopol. On 10 February 2020, a celebration of the 130th birthday anniversary was held at Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy in Moscow. On 10 February 2021, Google celebrated his 131st birthday with a Google Doodle. The Doodle was displayed in Russia, Sweden, some Middle Eastern countries and some Mediterranean countries. Adaptations. The first screen adaptation of "Doctor Zhivago", adapted by Robert Bolt and directed by David Lean, appeared in 1965. The film, which toured in the roadshow tradition, starred Omar Sharif, Geraldine Chaplin, and Julie Christie. Concentrating on the love triangle aspects of the novel, the film became a worldwide blockbuster, but was unavailable in Russia until perestroika. In 2002, the novel was adapted as a television miniseries. Directed by Giacomo Campiotti, the serial starred Hans Matheson, Alexandra Maria Lara, Keira Knightley, and Sam Neill. The Russian TV version of 2006, directed by Aleksandr Proshkin and starring Oleg Menshikov as Zhivago, is considered more faithful to Pasternak's novel than David Lean's 1965 film. Work. Poetry. Thoughts on poetry. According to Olga Ivinskaya: For this reason, Pasternak avoided literary cafes where young poets regularly invited them to read their verse. According to Ivinskaya, Also according to Ivinskaya, Translation. Reluctant to conform to socialist realism, Pasternak turned to translation in order to provide for his family. He soon produced acclaimed translations of Sándor Petőfi, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Verlaine, Taras Shevchenko, and Nikoloz Baratashvili. Osip Mandelstam, however, privately warned him, In a 1942 letter, Pasternak declared, According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak believed in not being too literal in his translations, which he felt could confuse the meaning of the text. He instead advocated observing each poem from afar to plumb its true depths. Pasternak's translations of William Shakespeare ("Romeo and Juliet", "Antony and Cleopatra", "Othello", "King Henry IV" (Part I) and (Part II), "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "King Lear") remain deeply popular with Russian audiences because of their colloquial, modernised dialogues. Pasternak's critics, however, accused him of "pasternakizing" Shakespeare. In a 1956 essay, Pasternak wrote: According to Ivinskaya: While they were both collaborating on translating Rabindranath Tagore from Bengali into Russian, Pasternak advised Ivinskaya: "1) Bring out the theme of the poem, its subject matter, as clearly as possible; 2) tighten up the fluid, non-European form by rhyming internally, not at the end of the lines; 3) use loose, irregular meters, mostly ternary ones. You may allow yourself to use assonances." Later, while she was collaborating with him on a translation of Vítězslav Nezval, Pasternak told Ivinskaya: According to Ivinskaya, however, translation was not a genuine vocation for Pasternak. She later recalled: Music. Boris Pasternak was also a composer, and had a promising musical career as a musician ahead of him, had he chosen to pursue it. He came from a musical family: his mother was a concert pianist and a student of Anton Rubinstein and Theodor Leschetizky, and Pasternak's early impressions were of hearing piano trios in the home. The family had a dacha (country house) close to one occupied by Alexander Scriabin. Sergei Rachmaninoff, Rainer Maria Rilke and Leo Tolstoy were all visitors to the family home. His father Leonid was a painter who produced one of the most important portraits of Scriabin, and Pasternak wrote many years later of witnessing with great excitement the creation of Scriabin's Symphony No. 3 ("The Divine Poem"), in 1903. Pasternak began to compose at the age of 13. The high achievements of his mother discouraged him from becoming a pianist, but – inspired by Scriabin – he entered the Moscow Conservatory, but left abruptly in 1910 at the age of twenty, to study philosophy in Marburg University. Four years later he returned to Moscow, having finally decided on a career in literature, publishing his first book of poems, influenced by Aleksandr Blok and the Russian Futurists, the same year. Pasternak's early compositions show the clear influence of Scriabin. His single-movement Piano Sonata of 1909 shows a more mature and individual voice. Nominally in B minor, it moves freely from key to key with frequent changes of key-signature and a chromatic dissonant style that defies easy analysis. Although composed during his time at the Conservatory, the Sonata was composed at Rayki, some 40km north-east of Moscow, where Leonid Pasternak had his painting studio and taught his students.
4668	1299453197	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4668	Binomial coefficient	In mathematics, the binomial coefficients are the positive integers that occur as coefficients in the binomial theorem. Commonly, a binomial coefficient is indexed by a pair of integers and is written formula_1 It is the coefficient of the term in the polynomial expansion of the binomial power ; this coefficient can be computed by the multiplicative formula formula_2 which using factorial notation can be compactly expressed as formula_3 For example, the fourth power of is formula_4 and the binomial coefficient formula_5 is the coefficient of the term. Arranging the numbers formula_6 in successive rows for gives a triangular array called Pascal's triangle, satisfying the recurrence relation formula_7 The binomial coefficients occur in many areas of mathematics, and especially in combinatorics. In combinatorics the symbol formula_8 is usually read as " choose " because there are formula_8 ways to choose an (unordered) subset of elements from a fixed set of elements. For example, there are formula_10 ways to choose elements from , namely , , , , and . The first form of the binomial coefficients can be generalized to formula_11 for any complex number and integer , and many of their properties continue to hold in this more general form. History and notation. Andreas von Ettingshausen introduced the notation formula_12 in 1826, although the numbers were known centuries earlier (see Pascal's triangle). In about 1150, the Indian mathematician Bhaskaracharya gave an exposition of binomial coefficients in his book "Līlāvatī". Alternative notations include , , , , , and , in all of which the stands for "combinations" or "choices"; the notation means the number of ways to choose "k" out of "n" objects. Many calculators use variants of the because they can represent it on a single-line display. In this form the binomial coefficients are easily compared to the numbers of -permutations of, written as , etc. Definition and interpretations. For natural numbers (taken to include 0) and , the binomial coefficient formula_12 can be defined as the coefficient of the monomial in the expansion of . The same coefficient also occurs (if ) in the binomial formula (valid for any elements , of a commutative ring), which explains the name "binomial coefficient". Another occurrence of this number is in combinatorics, where it gives the number of ways, disregarding order, that objects can be chosen from among objects; more formally, the number of -element subsets (or -combinations) of an -element set. This number can be seen as equal to that of the first definition, independently of any of the formulas below to compute it: if in each of the factors of the power one temporarily labels the term with an index (running from to ), then each subset of indices gives after expansion a contribution , and the coefficient of that monomial in the result will be the number of such subsets. This shows in particular that formula_12 is a natural number for any natural numbers and . There are many other combinatorial interpretations of binomial coefficients (counting problems for which the answer is given by a binomial coefficient expression), for instance the number of words formed of bits (digits 0 or 1) whose sum is is given by formula_12, while the number of ways to write formula_16 where every is a nonnegative integer is given by . Most of these interpretations can be shown to be equivalent to counting -combinations. Computing the value of binomial coefficients. Several methods exist to compute the value of formula_8 without actually expanding a binomial power or counting -combinations. Recursive formula. One method uses the recursive, purely additive formula formula_18 for all integers formula_19 such that formula_20 with boundary values formula_21 for all integers . The formula follows from considering the set and counting separately (a) the -element groupings that include a particular set element, say ", in every group (since " is already chosen to fill one spot in every group, we need only choose from the remaining ) and (b) all the "k"-groupings that don't include ""; this enumerates all the possible -combinations of elements. It also follows from tracing the contributions to "X""k" in . As there is zero or in , one might extend the definition beyond the above boundaries to include formula_22 when either or . This recursive formula then allows the construction of Pascal's triangle, surrounded by white spaces where the zeros, or the trivial coefficients, would be. Multiplicative formula. A more efficient method to compute individual binomial coefficients is given by the formula formula_23 where the numerator of the first fraction, formula_24, is a falling factorial. This formula is easiest to understand for the combinatorial interpretation of binomial coefficients. The numerator gives the number of ways to select a sequence of distinct objects, retaining the order of selection, from a set of objects. The denominator counts the number of distinct sequences that define the same -combination when order is disregarded. This formula can also be stated in a recursive form. Using the "C" notation from above, formula_25, where formula_26. It is readily derived by evaluating formula_27 and can intuitively be understood as starting at the leftmost coefficient of the formula_28-th row of Pascal's triangle, whose value is always formula_29, and recursively computing the next coefficient to its right until the formula_30-th one is reached. Due to the symmetry of the binomial coefficients with regard to and , calculation of the above product, as well as the recursive relation, may be optimised by setting its upper limit to the smaller of and . Factorial formula. Finally, though computationally unsuitable, there is the compact form, often used in proofs and derivations, which makes repeated use of the familiar factorial function: formula_31 where denotes the factorial of . This formula follows from the multiplicative formula above by multiplying numerator and denominator by ; as a consequence it involves many factors common to numerator and denominator. It is less practical for explicit computation (in the case that is small and is large) unless common factors are first cancelled (in particular since factorial values grow very rapidly). The formula does exhibit a symmetry that is less evident from the multiplicative formula (though it is from the definitions) which leads to a more efficient multiplicative computational routine. Using the falling factorial notation, formula_32 Generalization and connection to the binomial series. The multiplicative formula allows the definition of binomial coefficients to be extended by replacing "n" by an arbitrary number "α" (negative, real, complex) or even an element of any commutative ring in which all positive integers are invertible: formula_33 With this definition one has a generalization of the binomial formula (with one of the variables set to 1), which justifies still calling the formula_34 binomial coefficients: This formula is valid for all complex numbers "α" and "X" with \|"X"\| < 1. It can also be interpreted as an identity of formal power series in "X", where it actually can serve as definition of arbitrary powers of power series with constant coefficient equal to 1; the point is that with this definition all identities hold that one expects for exponentiation, notably formula_35 If "α" is a nonnegative integer "n", then all terms with are zero, and the infinite series becomes a finite sum, thereby recovering the binomial formula. However, for other values of "α", including negative integers and rational numbers, the series is really infinite. Pascal's triangle. Pascal's rule is the important recurrence relation which can be used to prove by mathematical induction that formula_36 is a natural number for all integer "n" ≥ 0 and all integer "k", a fact that is not immediately obvious from formula (1). To the left and right of Pascal's triangle, the entries (shown as blanks) are all zero. Pascal's rule also gives rise to Pascal's triangle: Row number contains the numbers formula_8 for . It is constructed by first placing 1s in the outermost positions, and then filling each inner position with the sum of the two numbers directly above. This method allows the quick calculation of binomial coefficients without the need for fractions or multiplications. For instance, by looking at row number 5 of the triangle, one can quickly read off that formula_38 Combinatorics and statistics. Binomial coefficients are of importance in combinatorics because they provide ready formulas for certain frequent counting problems: Binomial coefficients as polynomials. For any nonnegative integer "k", the expression formula_45 can be written as a polynomial with denominator : formula_46 this presents a polynomial in "t" with rational coefficients. As such, it can be evaluated at any real or complex number "t" to define binomial coefficients with such first arguments. These "generalized binomial coefficients" appear in Newton's generalized binomial theorem. For each "k", the polynomial formula_47 can be characterized as the unique degree "k" polynomial satisfying and . Its coefficients are expressible in terms of Stirling numbers of the first kind: formula_48 The derivative of formula_47 can be calculated by logarithmic differentiation: formula_50 This can cause a problem when evaluated at integers from formula_51 to formula_52, but using identities below we can compute the derivative as: formula_53 Binomial coefficients as a basis for the space of polynomials. Over any field of characteristic 0 (that is, any field that contains the rational numbers), each polynomial "p"("t") of degree at most "d" is uniquely expressible as a linear combination formula_54 of binomial coefficients, because the binomial coefficients consist of one polynomial of each degree. The coefficient "a""k" is the "k"th difference of the sequence "p"(0), "p"(1), ..., "p"("k"). Explicitly, Integer-valued polynomials. Each polynomial formula_47 is integer-valued: it has an integer value at all integer inputs formula_56. (One way to prove this is by induction on "k" using Pascal's identity.) Therefore, any integer linear combination of binomial coefficient polynomials is integer-valued too. Conversely, () shows that any integer-valued polynomial is an integer linear combination of these binomial coefficient polynomials. More generally, for any subring "R" of a characteristic 0 field "K", a polynomial in "K"["t"] takes values in "R" at all integers if and only if it is an "R"-linear combination of binomial coefficient polynomials. Example. The integer-valued polynomial can be rewritten as formula_57 Identities involving binomial coefficients. The factorial formula facilitates relating nearby binomial coefficients. For instance, if "k" is a positive integer and "n" is arbitrary, then and, with a little more work, formula_58 We can also get formula_59 Moreover, the following may be useful: formula_60 For constant "n", we have the following recurrence: formula_61 To sum up, we have formula_62 formula_63 Sums of the binomial coefficients. The formula says that the elements in the th row of Pascal's triangle always add up to 2 raised to the th power. This is obtained from the binomial theorem () by setting and . The formula also has a natural combinatorial interpretation: the left side sums the number of subsets of {1, ..., "n"} of sizes "k" = 0, 1, ..., "n", giving the total number of subsets. (That is, the left side counts the power set of {1, ..., "n"}.) However, these subsets can also be generated by successively choosing or excluding each element 1, ..., "n"; the "n" independent binary choices (bit-strings) allow a total of formula_64 choices. The left and right sides are two ways to count the same collection of subsets, so they are equal. The formulas and formula_65 follow from the binomial theorem after differentiating with respect to (twice for the latter) and then substituting . The Chu–Vandermonde identity, which holds for any complex values "m" and "n" and any non-negative integer "k", is and can be found by examination of the coefficient of formula_66 in the expansion of using equation (). When , equation () reduces to equation (). In the special case , using (), the expansion () becomes (as seen in Pascal's triangle at right) where the term on the right side is a central binomial coefficient. Another form of the Chu–Vandermonde identity, which applies for any integers "j", "k", and "n" satisfying , is The proof is similar, but uses the binomial series expansion () with negative integer exponents. When , equation () gives the hockey-stick identity formula_67 and its relative formula_68 Let "F"("n") denote the "n"-th Fibonacci number. Then formula_69 This can be proved by induction using () or by Zeckendorf's representation. A combinatorial proof is given below. Multisections of sums. For integers "s" and "t" such that formula_70 series multisection gives the following identity for the sum of binomial coefficients: formula_71 For small , these series have particularly nice forms; for example, formula_72 formula_73 formula_74 formula_75 formula_76 formula_77 formula_78 Partial sums. Although there is no closed formula for partial sums formula_79 of binomial coefficients, one can again use () and induction to show that for , formula_80 with special case formula_81 for . This latter result is also a special case of the result from the theory of finite differences that for any polynomial "P"("x") of degree less than "n", formula_82 Differentiating () "k" times and setting "x" = −1 yields this for formula_83, when 0 ≤ "k" < "n", and the general case follows by taking linear combinations of these. When "P"("x") is of degree less than or equal to "n", where formula_84 is the coefficient of degree "n" in "P"("x"). More generally for (), formula_85 where "m" and "d" are complex numbers. This follows immediately applying () to the polynomial instead of , and observing that still has degree less than or equal to "n", and that its coefficient of degree "n" is "dnan". The series formula_86 is convergent for "k" ≥ 2. This formula is used in the analysis of the German tank problem. It follows from formula_87 which is proved by induction on "M". Identities with combinatorial proofs. Many identities involving binomial coefficients can be proved by combinatorial means. For example, for nonnegative integers formula_88, the identity formula_89 (which reduces to () when "q" = 1) can be given a double counting proof, as follows. The left side counts the number of ways of selecting a subset of ["n"] = {1, 2, ..., "n"} with at least "q" elements, and marking "q" elements among those selected. The right side counts the same thing, because there are formula_90 ways of choosing a set of "q" elements to mark, and formula_91 to choose which of the remaining elements of ["n"] also belong to the subset. In Pascal's identity formula_92 both sides count the number of "k"-element subsets of ["n"]: the two terms on the right side group them into those that contain element "n" and those that do not. The identity () also has a combinatorial proof. The identity reads formula_93 Suppose you have formula_94 empty squares arranged in a row and you want to mark (select) "n" of them. There are formula_95 ways to do this. On the other hand, you may select your "n" squares by selecting "k" squares from among the first "n" and formula_96 squares from the remaining "n" squares; any "k" from 0 to "n" will work. This gives formula_97 Now apply () to get the result. If one denotes by the sequence of Fibonacci numbers, indexed so that , then the identity formula_98 has the following combinatorial proof. One may show by induction that counts the number of ways that a strip of squares may be covered by and tiles. On the other hand, if such a tiling uses exactly of the tiles, then it uses of the tiles, and so uses tiles total. There are formula_99 ways to order these tiles, and so summing this coefficient over all possible values of gives the identity. Sum of coefficients row. The number of "k"-combinations for all "k", formula_100, is the sum of the "n"th row (counting from 0) of the binomial coefficients. These combinations are enumerated by the 1 digits of the set of base 2 numbers counting from 0 to formula_101, where each digit position is an item from the set of "n". Dixon's identity. Dixon's identity is formula_102 or, more generally, formula_103 where "a", "b", and "c" are non-negative integers. Continuous identities. Certain trigonometric integrals have values expressible in terms of binomial coefficients: For any formula_104 formula_105 formula_106 formula_107 These can be proved by using Euler's formula to convert trigonometric functions to complex exponentials, expanding using the binomial theorem, and integrating term by term. Congruences. If "n" is prime, then formula_108 for every "k" with formula_109 More generally, this remains true if "n" is any number and "k" is such that all the numbers between 1 and "k" are coprime to "n". Indeed, we have formula_110 Generating functions. Ordinary generating functions. For a fixed , the ordinary generating function of the sequence formula_111 is formula_112 For a fixed , the ordinary generating function of the sequence formula_113 is formula_114 The bivariate generating function of the binomial coefficients is formula_115 A symmetric bivariate generating function of the binomial coefficients is formula_116 which is the same as the previous generating function after the substitution formula_117. Exponential generating function. A symmetric exponential bivariate generating function of the binomial coefficients is: formula_118 Divisibility properties. In 1852, Kummer proved that if "m" and "n" are nonnegative integers and "p" is a prime number, then the largest power of "p" dividing formula_119 equals "p""c", where "c" is the number of carries when "m" and "n" are added in base "p". Equivalently, the exponent of a prime "p" in formula_39 equals the number of nonnegative integers "j" such that the fractional part of "k"/"p""j" is greater than the fractional part of "n"/"p""j". It can be deduced from this that formula_39 is divisible by "n"/gcd("n","k"). In particular therefore it follows that "p" divides formula_122 for all positive integers "r" and "s" such that . However this is not true of higher powers of "p": for example 9 does not divide formula_123. A somewhat surprising result by David Singmaster (1974) is that any integer divides almost all binomial coefficients. More precisely, fix an integer "d" and let "f"("N") denote the number of binomial coefficients formula_39 with formula_125 such that "d" divides formula_39. Then formula_127 Since the number of binomial coefficients formula_39 with "n" < "N" is "N"("N" + 1) / 2, this implies that the density of binomial coefficients divisible by "d" goes to 1. Binomial coefficients have divisibility properties related to least common multiples of consecutive integers. For example: formula_129 divides formula_130. formula_129 is a multiple of formula_132. Another fact: An integer is prime if and only if all the intermediate binomial coefficients formula_133 are divisible by "n". Proof: When "p" is prime, "p" divides formula_134 for all because formula_135 is a natural number and "p" divides the numerator but not the denominator. When "n" is composite, let "p" be the smallest prime factor of "n" and let . Then and formula_136 otherwise the numerator has to be divisible by , this can only be the case when is divisible by "p". But "n" is divisible by "p", so "p" does not divide and because "p" is prime, we know that "p" does not divide and so the numerator cannot be divisible by "n". Bounds and asymptotic formulas. The following bounds for formula_39 hold for all values of "n" and "k" such that : formula_138 The first inequality follows from the fact that formula_139 and each of these formula_140 terms in this product is formula_141. A similar argument can be made to show the second inequality. The final strict inequality is equivalent to formula_142, that is clear since the RHS is a term of the exponential series formula_143. From the divisibility properties we can infer that formula_144 where both equalities can be achieved. The following bounds are useful in information theory: formula_145 where formula_146 is the binary entropy function. It can be further tightened to formula_147 for all formula_148. Both "n" and "k" large. Stirling's approximation yields the following approximation, valid when formula_149 both tend to infinity: formula_150 Because the inequality forms of Stirling's formula also bound the factorials, slight variants on the above asymptotic approximation give exact bounds. In particular, when formula_28 is sufficiently large, one has formula_152 and formula_153. More generally, for and (again, by applying Stirling's formula to the factorials in the binomial coefficient), formula_154 If "n" is large and "k" is linear in "n", various precise asymptotic estimates exist for the binomial coefficient formula_155. For example, if formula_156 then formula_157 where "d" = "n" − 2"k". much larger than. If is large and is (that is, if ), then formula_158 where again is the little o notation. Sums of binomial coefficients. A simple and rough upper bound for the sum of binomial coefficients can be obtained using the binomial theorem: formula_159 More precise bounds are given by formula_160 valid for all integers formula_161 with formula_162. Generalized binomial coefficients. The infinite product formula for the gamma function also gives an expression for binomial coefficients formula_163 which yields the asymptotic formulas formula_164 as formula_165. This asymptotic behaviour is contained in the approximation formula_166 as well. (Here formula_167 is the "k"-th harmonic number and formula_168 is the Euler–Mascheroni constant.) Further, the asymptotic formula formula_169 hold true, whenever formula_170 and formula_171 for some complex number formula_172. Generalizations. Generalization to multinomials. Binomial coefficients can be generalized to multinomial coefficients defined to be the number: formula_173 where formula_174 While the binomial coefficients represent the coefficients of , the multinomial coefficients represent the coefficients of the polynomial formula_175 The case "r" = 2 gives binomial coefficients: formula_176 The combinatorial interpretation of multinomial coefficients is distribution of "n" distinguishable elements over "r" (distinguishable) containers, each containing exactly "ki" elements, where "i" is the index of the container. Multinomial coefficients have many properties similar to those of binomial coefficients, for example the recurrence relation: formula_177 and symmetry: formula_178 where formula_179 is a permutation of (1, 2, ..., "r"). Taylor series. Using Stirling numbers of the first kind the series expansion around any arbitrarily chosen point formula_180 is formula_181 Binomial coefficient with. The definition of the binomial coefficients can be extended to the case where formula_28 is real and formula_30 is integer. In particular, the following identity holds for any non-negative integer formula_30: formula_185 This shows up when expanding formula_186 into a power series using the Newton binomial series : formula_187 Products of binomial coefficients. One can express the product of two binomial coefficients as a linear combination of binomial coefficients: formula_188 where the connection coefficients are multinomial coefficients. In terms of labelled combinatorial objects, the connection coefficients represent the number of ways to assign labels to a pair of labelled combinatorial objects—of weight "m" and "n" respectively—that have had their first "k" labels identified, or glued together to get a new labelled combinatorial object of weight . (That is, to separate the labels into three portions to apply to the glued part, the unglued part of the first object, and the unglued part of the second object.) In this regard, binomial coefficients are to exponential generating series what falling factorials are to ordinary generating series. The product of all binomial coefficients in the "n"th row of the Pascal triangle is given by the formula: formula_189 Partial fraction decomposition. The partial fraction decomposition of the reciprocal is given by formula_190 Newton's binomial series. Newton's binomial series, named after Sir Isaac Newton, is a generalization of the binomial theorem to infinite series: formula_191 The identity can be obtained by showing that both sides satisfy the differential equation . The radius of convergence of this series is 1. An alternative expression is formula_192 where the identity formula_193 is applied. Multiset (rising) binomial coefficient. Binomial coefficients count subsets of prescribed size from a given set. A related combinatorial problem is to count multisets of prescribed size with elements drawn from a given set, that is, to count the number of ways to select a certain number of elements from a given set with the possibility of selecting the same element repeatedly. The resulting numbers are called "multiset coefficients"; the number of ways to "multichoose" (i.e., choose with replacement) "k" items from an "n" element set is denoted formula_194. To avoid ambiguity and confusion with "n"'s main denotation in this article, let and . Multiset coefficients may be expressed in terms of binomial coefficients by the rule formula_195 One possible alternative characterization of this identity is as follows: We may define the falling factorial as formula_196 and the corresponding rising factorial as formula_197 so, for example, formula_198 Then the binomial coefficients may be written as formula_199 while the corresponding multiset coefficient is defined by replacing the falling with the rising factorial: formula_200 Generalization to negative integers "n". For any "n", formula_201 In particular, binomial coefficients evaluated at negative integers "n" are given by signed multiset coefficients. In the special case formula_202, this reduces to formula_203 For example, if "n" = −4 and "k" = 7, then "r" = 4 and "f" = 10: formula_204 Two real or complex valued arguments. The binomial coefficient is generalized to two real or complex valued arguments using the gamma function or beta function via formula_205 This definition inherits these following additional properties from formula_206: formula_207 moreover, formula_208 The resulting function has been little-studied, apparently first being graphed in . Notably, many binomial identities fail: formula_209 but formula_210 for "n" positive (so formula_211 negative). The behavior is quite complex, and markedly different in various octants (that is, with respect to the "x" and "y" axes and the line formula_212), with the behavior for negative "x" having singularities at negative integer values and a checkerboard of positive and negative regions: Generalization to "q"-series. The binomial coefficient has a "q"-analog generalization known as the Gaussian binomial coefficient. These coefficients are polynomials in an indeterminate (traditionally denoted "q") and have applications to many enumerative problems in combinatorics, such as counting the number of linear subspaces of a vector space over a finite field and counting the number of subsets of {1, 2, ..., "n"} with certain symmetries (an instance of the cyclic sieving phenomenon). Generalization to infinite cardinals. The definition of the binomial coefficient can be generalized to infinite cardinals by defining: formula_220 where is some set with cardinality formula_221. One can show that the generalized binomial coefficient is well-defined, in the sense that no matter what set we choose to represent the cardinal number formula_221, formula_223 will remain the same. For finite cardinals, this definition coincides with the standard definition of the binomial coefficient. Assuming the Axiom of Choice, one can show that formula_224 for any infinite cardinal formula_221.
4669	27015025	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4669	Bill Holbrook	Bill Holbrook (born 1958) is an American cartoonist and webcomic writer and artist, best known for his syndicated comic strip "On the Fastrack". Born in Los Angeles, Holbrook grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and began drawing at an early age. While majoring in illustration and visual design at Auburn University, Holbrook served as art director of the student newspaper, doing editorial cartoons and a weekly comic strip. At the same time, his work was being published in the "Huntsville Times" and the "Monroe Journal". After graduation in 1980, he joined the "Atlanta Constitution" as an editorial staff artist. During a 1982 visit to relatives on the West Coast, Holbrook met "Peanuts" creator, Charles Schulz. Following his advice and encouragement, Holbrook created a strip in the fall of that year about a college graduate working in a rundown diner. It did not stir syndicate interest, but what he learned on the strip helped him when he created "On the Fastrack". Eleven days before "On the Fastrack" made its syndicated debut (March 19, 1984), Holbrook met Teri Peitso on a blind date. They were married on Pearl Harbor Day, 1985. They have two daughters, Chandler and Haviland. Peitso-Holbrook's novels have been nominated for both Edgar Awards and Agatha Awards. She is currently an assistant professor in literacy education at Georgia State University. The family lives in the Atlanta area. On October 3, 1988, Holbrook began his second strip, "Safe Havens", and his third strip, "Kevin and Kell" was launched in September 1995. Comic strips. Every week Holbrook writes the story line for the next three weeks for one of his strips and draws the next three weeks' worth of strips for another. In 2010, characters from "On the Fastrack" and "Safe Havens" began appearing in both strips.
4670	1299725766	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4670	Bruce Campbell	Bruce Lorne Campbell (born June 22, 1958) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known best for his role as Ash Williams in Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" horror series, beginning with the short movie "Within the Woods" (1978). He has also featured in many low-budget cult movies, such as "Crimewave" (1985), "Maniac Cop" (1988), "" (1989), and "Bubba Ho-Tep" (2002). Campbell had the main roles of the television series "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." (1993–1994) and "Jack of All Trades" (2000), and a recurring role as in ' (1995–1999) and ' (1995–1999). He played Sam Axe on the USA Network series "Burn Notice" (2007–2013) and reprised his role as Ash for the Starz series "Ash vs. Evil Dead" (2015–2018). He also appeared in "The Escort" (2015). Campbell directed, produced, and featured in the documentaries "Fanalysis" (2002) and "A Community Speaks" (2004); co-wrote, directed, produced, and featured in the movie "Man with the Screaming Brain" (2005); and directed, produced, and featured in a parody of his career "My Name Is Bruce" (2007). Campbell is known for frequent collaborations with the aforementioned Raimi, his brother Ted, Josh Becker, and Scott Spiegel. Early life. Bruce Lorne Campbell was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, on June 22, 1958, the son of advertising executive and college professor Charles Newton Campbell and homemaker Joanne Louise (née Pickens). He is of English and Scottish ancestry, and has an older brother named Don and an older half-brother named Michael. His father was also an actor and director for local theater. Campbell began acting and making short Super 8 movies with friends as a teenager. After meeting future moviemaker Sam Raimi while the two attended Wylie E. Groves High School, they became good friends and collaborators. Campbell attended Western Michigan University and continued to pursue an acting career. Career. Film. Campbell and Raimi collaborated with a 30-minute Super 8 version of the first "Evil Dead" movie, titled "Within the Woods" (1978), which was initially used to attract investors. He and Raimi got together with family and friends to begin working on "The Evil Dead" (1981). While featuring as the protagonist, Campbell also had participation with the production of the movie, receiving a co-executive producer credit. Raimi wrote, directed, and edited the movie, while Rob Tapert produced. After an endorsement by horror author Stephen King, the movie slowly began to receive attention and offers for distribution. Four years after its original release, it became the most popular movie in the UK. It was then distributed in the United States, resulting in the sequels "Evil Dead II" (1987) and "Army of Darkness" (1992). Campbell was also drawn in the Marvel Zombie comics as his character, Ash Williams. He is featured in five comics, all in the series "Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness". In them, he fights alongside the Marvel heroes against the heroes and people who have become zombies (deadites) while in search of the Necronomicon (Book of the Names of the Dead). Campbell also played as Coach Boomer in the movie “Sky High”. He has appeared in several of Raimi's movies other than the "Evil Dead" series, notably having cameo appearances in the director's "Spider-Man" film series. Campbell also joined the cast of Raimi's movie "Darkman" and "The Quick and the Dead", though having no actual screen time in the latter movie's theatrical version. In March 2022, Campbell was announced to have a cameo in Raimi's Marvel Cinematic Universe film "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness". Campbell often performs quirky roles, such as Elvis Presley for the movie "Bubba Ho-Tep". Along with "Bubba Ho-Tep", he played a supporting role in "Maniac Cop" and "Maniac Cop 2", and spoofed his career in the self-directed "My Name is Bruce." Other mainstream movies for Campbell include supporting or featured roles in the Coen Brothers movie "The Hudsucker Proxy", the Michael Crichton adaptation "Congo", the movie version of "McHale's Navy", "Escape from L.A." (the sequel to John Carpenter's "Escape from New York"), the Jim Carrey drama "The Majestic" and the 2005 Disney movie "Sky High". Campbell had a major voice role for the 2009 animated adaptation of the children's book "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", and a supporting voice role for Pixar's "Cars 2". Campbell produced the 2013 remake of "The Evil Dead", along with Raimi and Rob Tapert, appearing in the movie's post-credits scene in a cameo role with the expectation he would reprise that role in "Army of Darkness 2". The next year, the comedy metal band Psychostick released a song titled "Bruce Campbell" on their album "" that pays a comedic tribute to his past roles. Campbell worked as an executive producer for the 2023 movie "Evil Dead Rise". Television. Other than cinema, Campbell has appeared in a number of television series. He featured in "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." a boisterous science fiction comedy western created by Jeffrey Boam and Carlton Cuse that played for one season. He played a lawyer turned bounty hunter who was trying to hunt down John Bly, the man who killed his father. He featured in the television series "Jack of All Trades", set on a fictional island occupied by the French in 1801. Campbell was also credited as co-executive producer, among others. The show was directed by Eric Gruendemann, and was produced by various people, including Sam Raimi. The show was broadcast for two seasons, from 2000 to 2001. He had a recurring role as "Bill Church Jr." based upon the character of Morgan Edge from the Superman comics on "". From 1996 to 1997, Campbell was a recurring guest actor of the television series "Ellen" as Ed Billik, who becomes Ellen's boss when she sells her bookstore in season four. He is also known for his supporting role as the recurring character Autolycus ("King of Thieves") on both ' and ', which reunited him with producer Rob Tapert. Campbell played "Hercules"/"Xena" series producer Tapert in two episodes of "Hercules" set in the present. He directed a number of episodes of "Hercules" and "Xena", including the "Hercules" series finale. Campbell also obtained the main role of race car driver Hank Cooper for the Disney made-for-television remake of "The Love Bug". Campbell had a critically acclaimed dramatic guest role as a grief-stricken detective seeking revenge for his father's murder in a two-part episode of the fourth season of "". Campbell later played the part of a bigamous demon in "The X-Files" episode "Terms of Endearment". He also featured as Agent Jackman in the episode "Witch Way Now?" of the WB series "Charmed", as well as playing a state police officer in an episode of the short-lived series "American Gothic" titled "Meet The Beetles". Campbell co-featured in the television series "Burn Notice", which was broadcast from 2007 to 2013 by USA Network. He portrayed Sam Axe, a beer-chugging, former Navy SEAL now working as an unlicensed private investigator and occasional mercenary with his old friend Michael Westen, the show's main character. When working undercover, his character frequently used the alias Chuck Finley, which Bruce later revealed was the name of one of his father's old co-workers. Campbell was the star of a 2011 "Burn Notice" made-for-television prequel focusing on Sam's Navy SEAL career, titled "". In 2014, Campbell played Santa Claus for an episode of "The Librarians". Campbell played Ronald Reagan in season 2 of the FX original series "Fargo". More recently Campbell reprised his role as Ashley "Ash" Williams in "Ash vs Evil Dead", a series based upon the "Evil Dead" series that began his career. "Ash vs Evil Dead" began airing on Starz on October 31, 2015, and was renewed by the cable channel for second and third seasons, before being cancelled. In January 2019, Travel Channel announced a new version of the "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" reality series, with Campbell serving as host and executive producer. The 10-episode season debuted on June 9, 2019. Voice acting. Campbell is featured as a voice actor for several video games. He provides the voice of Ash in the four games based on the "Evil Dead" movies series: ', ', ' and '. He has expressed his intent to return to the role in an upcoming "Evil Dead" animated series. He also provided the voice of Ash in "Dead by Daylight". Despite the inclusion of his character "Ash Williams" in Telltale Games' "Poker Night 2", Danny Webber voices the character in the game, instead of Bruce Campbell. Campbell also provided voice talent in other titles such as "", "Spider-Man", "Spider-Man 2", "Spider-Man 3", and "The Amazing Spider-Man". He provided the voice of main character Jake Logan for the PC game, ', the voice of main character Jake Burton for the PlayStation game "Broken Helix" and the voice of Magnanimous for "Megas XLR". Campbell voiced the pulp adventurer Lobster Johnson in ' and has done voice-over work for the Codemaster's game "Hei$t", a game which was announced on January 28, 2010, to have been "terminated". He also provided the voice of The Mayor for the 2009 movie "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs", the voice of Rod "Torque" Redline in "Cars 2", the voice of Himcules in the 2003 Nickelodeon TV series "My Life as a Teenage Robot", and the voice of Fugax in the 2006 movie "The Ant Bully". He has a voice in the online MOBA game, "Tome: Immortal Arena" in 2014. Campbell also provided voice-over and motion capture for Sgt. Lennox in the Exo Zombies mode of "". Writing. In addition to acting and occasionally directing, Campbell has become a writer, starting with an autobiography, "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor", published in June 2001. The autobiography was a successful "New York Times" Best Seller. It describes Campbell's career to date as an actor in low-budget movies and television, providing his insight into "Blue-Collar Hollywood". The paperback version of the book adds details about the reactions of fans during book signings: "Whenever I do mainstream stuff, I think they're pseudo-interested, but they're still interested in seeing weirdo, offbeat stuff, and that's what I'm attracted to". Campbell's next book "Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way" was published on May 26, 2005. The book's plot involves him (depicted in a comical way) as the main character struggling to make it into the world of A-list movies. He later recorded an audio play adaptation of "Make Love" with fellow Michigan actors, including longtime collaborator Ted Raimi. This radio drama was released by the independent label Rykodisc and spans six discs with a six-hour running time. In addition to his books, Campbell also wrote a column for "X-Ray Magazine" in 2001, an issue of the popular comic series "The Hire", and comic book adaptations of his "Man with the Screaming Brain". Most recently he wrote the introduction to Josh Becker's "The Complete Guide to Low-Budget Feature Filmmaking". In late 2016, Campbell announced that he would be releasing a third book, "Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor," which will detail his life from where "If Chins Could Kill" ended. "Hail to the Chin" was released in August 2017, and accompanied by a book tour across the United States and Europe. Campbell maintained a weblog on his official website, where he posted mainly about politics and the movie industry. However, the website has since been deleted. Bruce Campbell Horror Film Festival. Since 2014, the Bruce Campbell Horror Film Festival, narrated and organized by Campbell, was held in the Muvico Theater in Rosemont, Illinois. The first festival was originally from August 21 to 25, 2014, presented by Wizard World, as part of the Chicago Comicon. The second festival was from August 20 to 23, 2015, with guests Tom Holland and Eli Roth. The third festival took place over four days in August 2016. Guests of the event were Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert and Doug Benson. Personal life. Campbell married Christine Deveau in 1983; they had two children before divorcing in 1989. He met costume designer Ida Gearon while working on "Mindwarp." They married in 1991. They reside in Jacksonville, Oregon. Campbell is also an ordained minister, and has performed marriage ceremonies. Campbell is a Kentucky Colonel. Filmography. Video games. 2024- Spooky Pinball's-Evil Dead Callouts
4671	29463730	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4671	Baron Aberdare	Baron Aberdare, of Duffryn in the County of Glamorgan, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 23 August 1873 for the Liberal politician Henry Bruce. He served as Home Secretary from 1868 to 1873. His grandson, the third Baron, was a soldier, cricketer and tennis player and a member of the International Olympic Committee. His son, the fourth Baron, held office in the Conservative administration of Edward Heath and was later a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords. Lord Aberdare was one of the ninety-two elected hereditary peers that were allowed to remain in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999. , the title is held by his son, the fifth Baron, who succeeded in 2005 and was elected to the House of Lords in 2009. Lineage. Henry Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare, was the son of John Bruce-Pryce (born John Bruce Knight in Barnstaple, Devon), the eldest son of John Knight (died 1799) and Margaret Bruce (died 1809), daughter and heir of William Bruce of Llanblethian, Glamorgan. He descends from the Welsh Bruces, a branch of Bruce of Kennet of Clackmannan that dates to the 14th century. In 1805, Lord Aberdare's father changed his surname from Knight to Bruce when he reached the age of majority and inherited the Bruce estates in Llanblethian, as per his grandfather's will. His younger brothers were Rev. William Bruce Knight (1785–1845) and Sir James Knight-Bruce (1791–1866). In 1837, he changed his name again to Bruce-Pryce when he inherited Duffryn and the Monknash estates from a distant cousin, Frances Anne Grey ("née" Pryce), the daughter and heiress of Thomas Pryce, who had married Hon. William Booth Grey (1773–1852; the second son of the 5th Earl of Stamford). Lord Aberdare's great-grandmother, Jane Lewis, was the daughter of MP Gabriel Lewis, of Llanishen House. The Lewis family of Van Castle, Glamorgan, had been prominent in politics since the 16th century. Coat of arms. The heraldic blazon for the coat of arms of the family is: "Or, a saltire gules, on a chief of the last a martlet of the field". Baron Aberdare (1873). The heir apparent is the present holder's son, the Hon. Hector Morys Napier Bruce (born 1974).
4673	26110720	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4673	Boy band	A boy band is a vocal group consisting of young male singers, usually in their teenage years or in their twenties at the time of formation. Generally, boy bands perform love songs marketed towards girls and young women. Many boy bands dance as well as sing, usually giving highly choreographed performances. South Korean boy bands usually also have designated rappers. Most boy band members do not play musical instruments, either in recording sessions or on stage. They are similar in concept to their counterparts known as girl groups. Some boy bands are formed on their own, but most are created by talent managers or record producers who hold auditions. The popularity of boy bands has peaked three times: first in the 1960s to '70s, with e.g. the Jackson 5, the Bay City Rollers, and the Osmonds; the second time during the late 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s, when acts such as New Kids on the Block, Take That, Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, NSYNC, Five, Westlife and Blue dominated global pop charts; and the latest time in the 2010s up to the present, with the emergence of groups such as Big Time Rush, the Wanted, One Direction, and K-pop acts such as BTS and Seventeen. History. The term was not established until the late 1980s when Lou Pearlman decided to form a record company to promote a new singing and dancing group after becoming fascinated with the success of New Kids on the Block. Although generally described as a rock band, the highest-selling band in history – the Beatles – have been described by several journalists as "the first" or "the original" boy band, "before anyone had thought of the term", exclusively due to the enthusiastic response they received from their young female audience. Other critics, however, have pointed out that this assessment of the Beatles as a "boy band" could be applied to all other bands of the 1960s, saying, "if they were a (boy band), so was everyone else" and is countered by others, including Ringo Starr, who point out that, from the beginning, the Beatles wrote and exercised creative control over their own music, played their own instruments, were not manufactured by a record label, and did not feature the choreographed dance moves that later came to be associated with boy bands. The Beatles did, however, inspire the production of the 1966 television series "The Monkees", which featured a music group of the same name, created for the show, that consisted of the four starring actors. The Monkees had a career as a rock and pop band after their songs from the TV series were released as successful records. Late 1960s and 1970s: The Jackson 5 and the Osmonds. Although the term "boy band" was not commonly used then, the earliest predecessors of this format were groups such as the Jackson 5 and the Osmonds which helped form the template for boy bands. The Jackson 5 were a sibling group that established many musical conventions that boy bands follow. For instance, their music featured close harmonies from soul music and catchy pop hooks influenced as much as they were by Motown and acts like the Supremes. The group also incorporated choreographed dance moves to their performances. All members of the band sang, which is a common convention of a boy band, as opposed to having a front man and the rest on instruments; thus, no one person dominated the stage. Also a sibling group, The Osmonds first started singing barbershop music for local audiences, before being hired to perform at Disneyland early in their career. Their appearance in a televised Disney special earned them additional TV spots, such as "The Andy Williams Show" and "The Jerry Lewis Show". Scottish rock boy band, the Bay City Rollers, achieved considerable success commercially worldwide during the 1970s, becoming "the first of many acts heralded as the 'biggest group since the Beatles' and one of the most screamed-at teeny-bopper acts of the 1970s". They have sold an estimated 120 million records worldwide, however some claim their record sales could be as high as 300 million. Their debut studio album, "Rollin"' (1974) achieved considerable commercial success internationally, debuting atop the albums charts in the United Kingdom, as well as the top ten in Australia. It also reached the top forty of the albums charts in Canada, Japan and New Zealand, and finished 1975 as the 16th best selling album of the year in the United Kingdom. In May 1975, they released their second album, "Once Upon a Star", which continued their commercial success, again topping the albums charts in the United Kingdom and reaching the top ten in Finland and Australia. It spawned the successful single "Bye, Bye Baby" which reached number one on the singles charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, and became the best–selling single of 1975 in the United Kingdom. Their first full length album to be released in the United States and Canada, "Bay City Rollers", was released in September 1975, topping the albums charts in Canada and peaking at number twenty on the US "Billboard" 200. Late 1970s and 1980s: Menudo, New Edition, and New Kids on the Block. The Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, appealing to young Latina audiences, was founded in 1977. Menudo had a convention unique among boy bands: when a member turned 16, became too tall, or their voice changed, they were replaced. The members of Menudo were generally aged 12–16. Menudo had a large impact in Latin America and in Asia; Menudo fever there was compared to Beatlemania and it was nicknamed "Menudomania". Boston group New Edition was formed in 1978 and reached their height of popularity in the 1980s, meaning they are often credited for starting the boy-band trend, even though the term "boy band" did not exist until the 1990s. Maurice Starr was influenced by New Edition and popularized it with his protégé New Kids on the Block (NKOTB), the first commercially successful modern boy band, which formed in 1984 and found international success in 1988. Starr's idea was to take the traditional template from the R&B genre (in this case his teenage band New Edition) and apply it to a pop genre. Bros (abbreviation of the word "brothers") were a British boy band active in the late 1980s and early 1990s, consisting of twin brothers Matt and Luke Goss along with Craig Logan. Formed in 1986, they scored multiple top 10 hits between 1987 and 1989 and in 1988 became the first modern era–style boy band to have a multiple platinum-selling album in the UK, with "Push", still one of the most successful boy-band albums in the UK. Other big boy bands in Britain during the late 1980s were Big Fun and Brother Beyond. 1990s: Boyz II Men, Take That, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Westlife, Seo Taiji and Boys and the birth of modern K-pop. The ongoing international success of New Kids on the Block inspired music managers in Europe to create their own acts, beginning with Nigel Martin-Smith's Take That in the UK (formed in 1990) and followed by Tom Watkins, who had success with Bros in the late 1980s and formed East 17 in 1991. East 17 were marketed and pitted against Take That as "rivals" with a rougher or harsher attitude, style and sound. Take That reformed in 2006 after a decade-long hiatus and became one of the most successful groups in British music chart history, with renewed chart success internationally, especially in Europe. Irish music manager Louis Walsh, who had witnessed the impact of these British boy bands, put out an advert for an "Irish Take That", thereby creating Boyzone in 1993. MN8 (formed in 1992), Let Loose (formed in 1993), and Damage and 911 (formed in 1995) were also successful boy bands in Britain; however, by the late 1990s all these bands had split up. All these artists were very successful on both the singles and albums charts domestically and internationally; however, with the emergence of Britpop and the commercial co-option of indie rock, many boy bands were ridiculed by the British music press as having no artistic credibility, although some, such as East 17 and Take That, did write most of their own material. The media attention was then placed on the "Battle of Britpop", and the bands Oasis and Blur replaced the importance and rivalry of Take That and East 17 as the two new biggest bands in Britain. However, boy bands continued to find success in the late 1990s, such as Five, Another Level, Point Break and Westlife. In 1995 successful German music manager Frank Farian, who had been manager of Boney M and Milli Vanilli, put together Latin American band No Mercy who scored a few worldwide hits during the mid-90s. Although being American and the sons of Tito Jackson, a member of the Jackson 5, 3T had several hits singles across Europe in the mid-1990s, despite limited success in the US, and finished the second biggest selling act of 1996 in Europe behind the Spice Girls. With the success of North American boy bands like New Kids on the Block in East Asia, Japanese entertainment company Johnny & Associates formed SMAP in 1992. The group enjoyed tremendous success, selling over 35 million records. In 1992, after the disbandment of the heavy metal band Sinawe, in which he had a brief stint, Seo Taiji formed the boy band Seo Taiji and Boys (Korean: 서태지와 아이들) together with dancers Lee Juno and Yang Hyun-suk, which went on to become highly successful and created a craze at the time. Seo Taiji and Boys is credited with changing the South Korean music industry by pioneering the incorporation of rap and breakdance as well as the fusion of Korean music and various popular Western music genres in Korean popular music, and in turn creating the prototype for the modern hybrid K-pop genre or "rap-dance", as it was called at the time, and K-pop groups. They also left a lasting impact by explicitly putting social criticism at the forefront of their music, as well as paving the way for artistic freedom in South Korea by challenging censorship laws and the television networks hegemony over the music market. In 1995 the Korean Broadband is not 6 ft to a particular location casting Ethics Committee demanded that Seo Taiji and Boys change the lyrics for "Regret of the Times". As a result, Seo decided to release the song as a purely instrumental track. This incited protests and resulted in the abolishment of music pre-censorship in Korea. Seo Taiji also did not have to rely on television networks due to the fact that he owned his own studio. This autonomy allowed Seo to bring subcultures in Korea, such as heavy metal, to the forefront of popular culture and challenge pervasive social norms. The band's independent success diminished the power of the television networks to dictate which artists appeared on shows, and gave rise to the influence of record labels and talent agencies. In 1996, Seo Taiji and Boys disbanded. In April 1996, Billboard reported that the band's first three albums had each sold over 1.6 million copies, with the fourth nearing two million, making all four some of the best-selling albums of all time in South Korea to this day. Lee Juno became a record producer, and Yang Hyun-suk was successful in founding YG Entertainment, one of the three biggest record companies in the country. Seo Taiji returned to music two years later with a successful solo career as a rock artist; he rose to become one of the most prominent and influential cultural icons in South Korea and was dubbed "the President of culture". In 2017, Seo Taiji released a 25th Anniversary album with his greatest hits and remakes by prominent Korean artists, including the group BTS. He also held a joint celebratory concert with the latter, in which he acknowledged them as his spiritual successors in K-pop due to the socially conscious thematic similarities in their music as well their shared hip hop leanings, and metaphorically passed the torch, saying "This is your generation now". In the early 1990s in North America, with New Kids on the Block's continued success and Color Me Badd also having success, boy bands became a continued staple of the Billboard charts. Continuing this success in the mid-1990s, most prominent boy bands were African American and had R&B and gospel elements, such as the groups All-4-One (formed in 1993) and Boyz II Men (formed in 1988). Boyz II Men are also the most successful boy band act on the U.S. Hot 100 as well as the Australian Singles Chart. Although they had success on the Billboard charts, they were not marketed towards youth but more towards adults. It was not until 1997 and the change to pop-oriented groups such as Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, NSYNC, the Moffatts, and Hanson that boy bands exploded commercially and dominated the market in the United States. This late 1990s marked the height of boy band popularity in North America, which has not been seen since. Arguably the most successful boy band manager from the U.S. was Lou Pearlman, who founded commercially successful acts such as the Backstreet Boys in 1993, NSYNC and LFO in 1995, O-Town in 2000, and US5 in 2005. Backstreet Boys and NSYNC became the two biggest boy bands in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, and Backstreet Boys went on to become the best-selling boy band in history with over 100 million records sold. In the late 1990s in the UK, producer Simon Cowell (noted in the U.S. for the "American Idol/The X Factor" franchise) is also known for having managed British boyband Five (formed in 1997) and Irish boyband Westlife (formed in 1998). Westlife was created by Irishman Louis Walsh as a replacement for Boyzone and was initially managed by a former member of the band Ronan Keating. Westlife would eventually overtake Take That in number one's tally in the UK although Take That's overall UK sales are still higher. In 2012, the Official Charts Company revealed the biggest selling singles artists in British music chart history with Take That placed 15th overall and the highest selling boyband act (9.3 million), followed by Boyzone at 29 (7.1 million) and Westlife at 34 (6.8 million). Even though Cowell is known to have managed several successful boy bands, he is also infamous for passing on signing two of the biggest boybands to emerge from the 1990s and 2000s, Take That and Busted. 2000s: Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Westlife and Jonas Brothers. With the continued success of Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, American and British groups like 98 Degrees, Westlife, O-Town, A1, Blue, and Busted gained quick popularity both domestically and internationally. International boy bands would also occasionally spring up, such as the Moldovan band O-Zone, and Overground. American Christian boy band Plus One also enjoyed brief remarkable success during this time. At the height of boy band popularity in North America, MTV created their own parody boyband, 2gether. Like the Monkees in the 1960s, they were a manufactured act composed of actors. 2gether played off of the idea that every successful boy band must have five distinct personality types: the bad boy, the shy one, the young one, the older brother type, and a heart throb. Since 2001, the dominance of traditional boy bands on pop charts began to fade in the western hemisphere, although Gil Kaufman of MTV has described "new boy bands" that are "more likely to resemble My Chemical Romance, Sum 41, and Simple Plan. In 2001, Taiwanese boy band F4 (called JVKV since 2007) blew up big as a result of the success of their TV drama "Meteor Garden". According to "Forbes", F4 has sold 3.5 million copies of their first two albums all over Asia as of July 2003. With their success, many other Taiwanese boy bands emerged around this time, such as 5566 and Fahrenheit. In South Korea, Shinhwa also spread hallyu wave throughout Asia such as Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Also in 2001, a new all-male pop band and dance group boyband hailing from Japan called Exile debuted under Avex Group's label Rhythm Zone with 14 members, putting them on par with Super Junior, a South Korean boy band, who at the time, had had 13 members at its peak. Japanese boy band Arashi has sold over 30 million copies of their records since their first release in 1999. They had the yearly best-selling single in Japan in 2008 and 2009. In 2003 SMAP released the single "Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana" that has become the third best-selling single ever in Japan, with over three million copies sold. In North America, the Jonas Brothers rose to fame from promotion on the Disney Channel in 2008. Other boy bands like JLS and Mindless Behavior also emerged and experienced remarkable success around this time. However, apart from them, boy bands have not seen the commercial boom experienced in the genre from the mid to late nineties in North America. The mid 2000s, especially the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, saw the continued longevity of nineties boy bands such as Backstreet Boys and Westlife (before they disbanded in 2012), and the successful comeback of Take That in 2005, Boyzone in 2007, and New Kids on the Block in 2008. Some sections of the press have referred to these acts, particularly those who have reformed after a previous split, such as Take That, Boyzone, and 98 Degrees, as 'man bands'. 2010s and 2020s: Big Time Rush, One Direction and rise of K-pop. In the early 2010s, there was somewhat of a resurgence of boy band popularity in countries where the trend had not maintained, with the emergence of new boy bands like Big Time Rush, the Wanted, and One Direction and the formation of supergroup NKOTBSB which comprised members of New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys. NKOTBSB's success inspired boy bands who were fairly popular during the 1990s and 2000s to make a comeback, such as A1, Blue, 98 Degrees, Five, 911, and O-Town. Like 2gether and the Monkees, Big Time Rush was a manufactured act created for a television show. One Direction were often credited as sparking a resurgence in the popularity and interest boy bands alongside being credited with forming part of a new "British Invasion" in the United States. Their Where We Are Tour was the highest-grossing tour by a vocal group in history and after the release of their fourth album, "Four", they became the only group in the 58-year history of the "Billboard" 200 to have their first four albums debut at number one. In Southeast Asia, local boy bands also emerged as a result of the continued success of Korean and Japanese boy bands. After the debut of the Philippines supergroup SB19 in 2018, the group appeared at number six on Billboard Year-End Social 50 chart, making them the first Southeast Asian act to reach the top 10 of the magazine's annual chart. In South Korea, boy bands have been commercially successful. On the Circle Chart year-end albums chart of 2022, 7 of the top 10 and 13 of the top 20 albums are by boy bands or by subunits/members of boy bands. Seventeen's "FML" is the best-selling album of all time in South Korea, with more than 6.2 million copies sold, and BTS's "" became the first album released since 2001 to sell more than 1 million copies. In 2013, Billboard started covering music releases in K-pop, though K-pop had been entering the charts as early as 2009. By 2017, BTS crossed into the international music market, furthering the Korean Wave in the United States and becoming the first Korean group to receive a certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with their single "Mic Drop". The band is the first Korean act to top the U.S. "Billboard" 200 with their studio album ' (2018) and have since hit the top of the U.S. charts with their albums ' (2018), ' (2019), ' (2020), "Be" (2020) and "Proof". "Love Yourself: Answer" also broke South Korea's Gaon Album Chart's all-time monthly record previously set by "Love Yourself: Tear" and became the first Korean album certified Gold in the United States. SuperM later became the first K-pop group to debut at No. 1 in the U.S. "Billboard" 200. In 2020, BTS "Dynamite" debuted atop the "Billboard" Hot 100, making them the first all-South Korean act in Hot 100 history to debut at number one. It garnered the band their first Grammy nomination, for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, making them the first K-pop act to be nominated for one. On 12 December 2024, South Korean boy group Stray Kids become the first act ever to debut at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart with their first six charting albums Oddinary (2022), Maxident (2022), 5-Star (2023), Rock-Star (2023), Ate (2024) and Hop (2024). In Japan, Arashi was the best-selling music artist in Japan from 2013 through 2017 by value of sales and also having the yearly best-selling album in the country in 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016. Other successful Japanese boy bands in this decade include Sandaime J Soul Brothers, the second best-selling music artist of 2016 in the country and Kanjani Eight, the fifth best-selling music artist of that year in Japan. In Norway, the boy band Ballinciaga gained commercial success in 2022 with dance and party songs like "Dans På Bordet" and "Beklager (Guttaklubben)". The group is also known for keeping their identities anonymous by wearing pink-colored masks in the public. Other Norwegian boy bands that gained commercial success in the country in 2020s are Undergrunn and in 2022 and 2024 respectively. Key factors of the concept. Seen as important to a "boy band" group's commercial success is the group's image, carefully controlled by managing all aspects of the group's attire, promotional materials (which are frequently supplied to teen magazines), and music videos. The key factor of a boy band is being trendy. This means that the band conforms to the most recent fashion and musical trends in the popular music scene. Typically, each member of the group will have some distinguishing feature and be portrayed as having a particular personality stereotype, such as "the baby", "the bad boy", or "the shy one". While managing the portrayal of popular musicians is as old as popular music, the particular pigeonholing of band members is a defining characteristic of boy and girl bands. In K-pop, officially designated positions within the group are common, such as "leader", "maknae" (Korean: 막내, English: "the youngest"), "visual", "center" "vocalist", "rapper" and "dancer". The latter three are based on the members' specialized skills and are further divided into "main-", "lead-" and "sub-" (vocalist/rapper/dancer) positions, with the members occupying the "main" positions often being considered the most skilled and having the most parts in songs or being highlighted during solo dance parts. The "leader" is the spokesperson who represents the group in public, and is in charge of mediating between group members, as well as between the group and the label. In most cases, their music is written, arranged and produced by a producer who works with the band at all times and controls the group's sound – if necessary, to the point of hiring session singers to record guide vocals for each member of the group to sing individually if the members cannot harmonize well together. However, for clarity of each voice, recording each voice individually is most commonly the norm with most modern vocal groups. In recent years, auto-tune has become a popular tool in vocal producing, some boy bands have come under fire for that reason. Some have also come under fire for lip syncing in their performances as well, for example New Kids on the Block. A typical boy band performance features elaborately choreographed dancing, with the members taking turns singing and/or rapping. Boy bands generally do not compose or produce their own material, unless the members lobby hard enough for creative control. However, some bands were created around the talent of a songwriter within the group like Gary Barlow of Take That or Tony Mortimer of East 17. It is not uncommon to find extra songs on an album written by one or more of the band members; however, their producers rarely use these as singles. Since the 21st century, however, boy bands have been expected to write or at least contribute in some part lyrically to songs. Apart from the groups mentioned above who all had at least one primary songwriter from their beginning, other groups soon caught up. At the close of the nineties, groups like Backstreet Boys and NSYNC who had previously used writers like Max Martin during their early albums began writing their own songs. Newer groups from late 2000s such as JLS have all made a point from early interviews that they write their own songs and hold their own image as this is an important part of marketing. Some bands like The Wanted have even spent time learning the craft of songwriting. There has also been a rising trend of so-called "songwriter-" or "producer idols" (Korean: "Hangul" 작곡돌, "rev. Rom." jakgok-dol) in K-pop since the early 2000s. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for groups to have at least one member who is heavily involved in the songwriting and producing of the groups' music. In many cases, these members are the rappers in the group, who have often gained songwriting and producing experience while being active as amateur or underground rappers before joining the group. There is also a higher expectation for rappers to write their own lyrics due to self-expression being a core value of the hip-hop genre. There are cases of "producer idols" writing or producing for other artists outside of their solo or respective group work as well, such as BTS' RM and Suga. Individuals can also go on to achieve greater success as a solo artist coming out of a boy band having used the groups popularity to build on. Usually this signals the end of the group until potential future reunions. Examples of this include Justin Timberlake from NSYNC, and Robbie Williams from Take That. Some boy band members have gone on to successful careers elsewhere in the media. In K-pop, it is expected and common practice for members to embark on solo endeavors as musical artists or in other entertainment sectors, such as acting, or as variety personalities, alongside their group career after a few years. At the latest, this happens around the time the eldest member reaches the age of 28 (in exceptional cases 30) and is drafted for mandatory military service, forcing the group into a temporary hiatus of at least 18 months. The other members then often go on to pursue solo endeavors and reconvene as a group while no member is serving, or after all members have completed their service. Music genres. Although most boy bands consist of R&B or pop influences, other music genres, most notably country music and folk music, are also represented. South 65 and Marshall Dyllon, for example, were both country music boy bands. Il Divo, created by Simon Cowell in 2004, are a vocal group that performs operatic pop in several (mainly Italian) languages. Since then operatic/classical boy bands have become quite popular and common, especially in the UK. Since 2001, there has been some crossover with power pop and pop punk from bands that play live instruments. Just recently some boy bands decided to go back to their original doo-wop roots, most notably, The Overtones. Controversy. Since the 2000s, groups such as Backstreet Boys and LFO have disliked the term "boy band" and have preferred to be known as a "male vocal group". Being categorized among boy bands was also the main reason the Moffatts split up. Boy bands have been accused by the music press of emphasizing the appearance and marketing of the group above the quality of music, deliberately trying to appeal to a preteen audience and for conforming to trends instead of being original. Such criticisms can become extremely scathing. Boy bands are often seen as being short-lived, although some acts such as the Jackson 5, Backstreet Boys, Human Nature, New Edition, SMAP, Shinhwa, Take That and Westlife have sustained lasting careers.
4674	8183	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4674	B-tree	In computer science, a B-tree is a self-balancing tree data structure that maintains sorted data and allows searches, sequential access, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic time. The B-tree generalizes the binary search tree, allowing for nodes with more than two children. By allowing more children under one node than a regular self-balancing binary search tree, the B-tree reduces the height of the tree, hence putting the data in fewer separate blocks. This is especially important for trees stored in secondary storage (e.g. disk drives), as these systems have relatively high latency and work with relatively large blocks of data, hence the B-tree's use in databases and file systems. This remains a major benefit when the tree is stored in memory, as modern computer systems heavily rely on CPU caches: compared to reading from the cache, reading from memory in the event of a cache miss also takes a long time. History. While working at Boeing Research Labs, Rudolf Bayer and Edward M. McCreight invented B-trees to efficiently manage index pages for large random-access files. The basic assumption was that indices would be so voluminous that only small chunks of the tree could fit in the main memory. Bayer and McCreight's paper "Organization and maintenance of large ordered indices" was first circulated in July 1970 and later published in "Acta Informatica". Bayer and McCreight never explained what, if anything, the "B" stands for; "Boeing", "balanced", "between", "broad", "bushy", and "Bayer" have been suggested. When asked "I want to know what B in B-Tree stands for," McCreight answered:"Everybody does!" "So you just have no idea what a lunchtime conversation can turn into. So there we were, Rudy and I, at lunch. We had to give the thing a name... We were working for Boeing at the time, but we couldn't use the name without talking to the lawyers. So there's a B." "It has to do with Balance. There's another B." "Rudy was the senior author. Rudy (Bayer) was several years older than I am, and had ... many more publications than I did. So there's another B." "And so at the lunch table, we never did resolve whether there was one of those that made more sense than the rest." "What Rudy likes to say is, the more you think about what the B in B-Tree means, the better you understand B-Trees!" Definition. According to Knuth's definition, a B-tree of order "m" is a tree that satisfies the following properties: Each internal node's keys act as separation values that divide its subtrees. For example, if an internal node has 3 child nodes (or subtrees), then it must have 2 keys: "a"1 and "a"2. All values in the leftmost subtree will be less than "a"1, all values in the middle subtree will be between "a"1 and "a"2, and all values in the rightmost subtree will be greater than "a"2. Internal nodes (also known as inner nodes) are all nodes except for leaf nodes and the root node. They are usually represented as an ordered set of elements and child pointers. Every internal node contains a maximum of "U" children and a minimum of "L" children. Thus, the number of elements is always 1 less than the number of child pointers (the number of elements is between "L"−1 and "U"−1). "U" must be either 2"L" or 2"L"−1; therefore each internal node is at least half full. The relationship between "U" and "L" implies that two half-full nodes can be joined to make a legal node, and one full node can be split into two legal nodes (if there's room to push one element up into the parent). These properties make it possible to delete and insert new values into a B-tree while also adjusting the tree to preserve its properties. The root node's number of children has the same upper limit as internal nodes but has no lower limit. For example, when there are fewer than "L"−1 elements in the entire tree, the root will be the only node in the tree with no children at all. In Knuth's terminology, the "leaf" nodes are the actual data objects/chunks. The internal nodes that are one level above these leaves are what would be called the "leaves" by other authors: these nodes only store keys (at most "m"-1, and at least "m"/2-1 if they are not the root) and pointers (one for each key) to nodes carrying the data objects/chunks. A B-tree of depth "n"+1 can hold about "U" times as many items as a B-tree of depth "n", but the cost of search, insert, and delete operations grows with the depth of the tree. As with any balanced tree, the cost grows much more slowly than the number of elements. Some balanced trees store values only at leaf nodes and use different kinds of nodes for leaf nodes and internal nodes. B-trees keep values in every node in the tree except leaf nodes. Differences in terminology. The literature on B-trees is not uniform in its terminology. Bayer and McCreight (1972), Comer (1979), and others define the order of B-tree as the minimum number of keys in a non-root node. Folk and Zoellick point out that terminology is ambiguous because the maximum number of keys is unclear. An order 3 B-tree might hold a maximum of 6 keys or a maximum of 7 keys. Knuth (1998) avoids the problem by defining the order to be the maximum number of children (which is one more than the maximum number of keys). The term leaf is also inconsistent. Bayer and McCreight (1972) considered the leaf level to be the lowest level of keys, but Knuth considered the leaf level to be one level below the lowest keys. There are many possible implementation choices. In some designs, the leaves may hold the entire data record; in other designs, the leaves may only hold pointers to the data record. Those choices are not fundamental to the idea of a B-tree. For simplicity, most authors assume there are a fixed number of keys that fit in a node. The basic assumption is that the key size and node size are both fixed. In practice, variable-length keys may be employed. Informal description. Node structure. As with other trees, B-trees can be represented as a collection of three types of nodes: "root", "internal" (a.k.a. interior), and "leaf". Note the following variable definitions: In B-trees, the following properties are maintained for these nodes: Each internal node in a B-tree has the following format: Each leaf node in a B-tree has the following format: The node bounds are summarized in the table below: Insertion and deletion. To maintain the predefined range of child nodes, internal nodes may be joined or split. Usually, the number of keys is chosen to vary between and formula_2, where is the minimum number of keys, and formula_3 is the minimum degree or branching factor of the tree. The factor of 2 will guarantee that nodes can be split or combined. If an internal node has formula_2 keys, then adding a key to that node can be accomplished by splitting the hypothetical formula_5 key node into two key nodes and moving the key that would have been in the middle to the parent node. Each split node has the required minimum number of keys. Similarly, if an internal node and its neighbor each have keys, then a key may be deleted from the internal node by combining it with its neighbor. Deleting the key would make the internal node have formula_6 keys; joining the neighbor would add keys plus one more key brought down from the neighbor's parent. The result is an entirely full node of formula_2 keys. A B-tree is kept balanced after insertion by splitting a would-be overfilled node, of formula_5 keys, into two -key siblings and inserting the mid-value key into the parent. Depth only increases when the root is split, maintaining balance. Similarly, a B-tree is kept balanced after deletion by merging or redistributing keys among siblings to maintain the -key minimum for non-root nodes. A merger reduces the number of keys in the parent potentially forcing it to merge or redistribute keys with its siblings, and so on. The only change in depth occurs when the root has two children, of and (transitionally) formula_6 keys, in which case the two siblings and parent are merged, reducing the depth by one. This depth will increase slowly as elements are added to the tree, but an increase in the overall depth is infrequent, and results in all leaf nodes being one more node farther away from the root. Comparison to other trees. Because a range of child nodes is permitted, B-trees do not need re-balancing as frequently as other self-balancing search trees but may waste some space since nodes are not entirely full. B-trees have substantial advantages over alternative implementations when the time to access the data of a node greatly exceeds the time spent processing that data, because the cost of accessing the node may then be amortized over multiple operations within the node. This usually occurs when the node data are stored in secondary storage, such as disk drives. By maximizing the number of keys within each internal node, the height of the tree decreases and the number of expensive node accesses is reduced. In addition, rebalancing of the tree occurs less frequently. The maximum number of child nodes depends on the information that must be stored for each child node and the size of a full disk block or an analogous size in secondary storage. While 2–3 B-trees are easier to explain, practical B-trees using secondary storage need a large number of child nodes to improve performance. Variants. The term B-tree may refer to a specific design or a general class of designs. In the narrow sense, a B-tree stores keys in its internal nodes but need not store those keys in the records at the leaves. The general class includes variations such as the B+ tree, the B* tree and the B+ tree. B-tree usage in databases. Sorted file search time. Sorting and searching algorithms can be characterized by the number of comparison operations that must be performed using order notation. A binary search of a sorted table with records, for example, can be done in roughly comparisons. If the table had 1,000,000 records, then a specific record could be located with at most 20 comparisons: . Large databases have historically been kept on disk drives. The time required to read a record on a disk drive far exceeds the time needed to compare keys once the record is available due to seek time and rotational delay. The seek time may be 0 to 20 or more milliseconds, and the rotational delay averages about half the rotation period. For a 7200 RPM drive, the rotation period is 8.33 milliseconds. For a drive such as the Seagate ST3500320NS, the track-to-track seek time is 0.8 milliseconds and the average reading seek time is 8.5 milliseconds. For simplicity, assume reading from disk takes about 10 milliseconds. The time required to locate one record out of a million in the example above would be 20 disk reads, each taking 10 milliseconds, which equals 0.2 seconds. The search time is reduced because individual records are grouped together in a disk block. A disk block might be 16 kilobytes in size. If each record is 160 bytes, then 100 records could be stored in each block. The disk read time above was actually for an entire block. Once the disk head is in position, one or more disk blocks can be read with little delay. With 100 records per block, the last 6 or so comparisons don't need to do any disk reads—the comparisons are all within the last disk block read. To speed up the search further, the time to do the first 13 to 14 comparisons (which each required disk access) must be reduced. Index performance. A B-tree index can be used to improve performance. A B-tree index creates a multi-level tree structure that breaks a database down into fixed-size blocks or pages. Each level of this tree can be used to link those pages via an address location, allowing one page (known as a node, or internal page) to refer to another with leaf pages at the lowest level. One page is typically the starting point of the tree, or the "root". This is where the search for a particular key would begin, traversing a path that terminates in a leaf. Most pages in this structure will be leaf pages which refer to specific table rows. Because each node (or internal page) can have more than two children, a B-tree index will usually have a shorter height (the distance from the root to the farthest leaf) than a Binary Search Tree. In the example above, initial disk reads narrowed the search range by a factor of two. That can be improved by creating an auxiliary index that contains the first record in each disk block (sometimes called a sparse index). This auxiliary index would be 1% of the size of the original database, but it can be searched quickly. Finding an entry in the auxiliary index would tell us which block to search in the main database; after searching the auxiliary index, we would have to search only that one block of the main database—at a cost of one more disk read. In the above example, the index would hold 10,000 entries and would take at most 14 comparisons to return a result. Like the main database, the last six or so comparisons in the auxiliary index would be on the same disk block. The index could be searched in about eight disk reads, and the desired record could be accessed in 9 disk reads. Creating an auxiliary index can be repeated to make an auxiliary index to the auxiliary index. That would create an aux-aux index that would need only 100 entries and would fit in one disk block. Instead of reading 14 disk blocks to find the desired record, we only need to read 3 blocks. This blocking is the core idea behind the creation of the B-tree, where disk blocks form a hierarchy of levels to make up the index. Reading and searching the first (and only) block of the aux-aux index, which is the root of the tree, identifies the relevant block in aux-index in the level below. Reading and searching that aux-index block identifies the relevant block to read until the final level, known as the leaf level, identifies a record in the main database. Instead of 150 milliseconds, we need only 30 milliseconds to get the record. The auxiliary indices have turned the search problem from a binary search requiring roughly disk reads to one requiring only disk reads where is the blocking factor (the number of entries per block: entries per block in our example; reads). In practice, if the main database is being frequently searched, the aux-aux index and much of the aux index may reside in a disk cache, so they would not incur a disk read. The B-tree remains the standard index implementation in almost all relational databases, and many nonrelational databases use it as well. Insertions and deletions. If the database does not change, then compiling the index is simple to do, and the index need never be changed. If there are changes, managing the database and its index requires additional computation. Deleting records from a database is relatively easy. The index can stay the same, and the record can just be marked as deleted. The database remains in sorted order. If there are a large number of lazy deletions, then searching and storage become less efficient. Insertions can be very slow in a sorted sequential file because room for the inserted record must be made. Inserting a record before the first record requires shifting all of the records down one. Such an operation is just too expensive to be practical. One solution is to leave some spaces. Instead of densely packing all the records in a block, the block can have some free space to allow for subsequent insertions. Those spaces would be marked as if they were "deleted" records. Both insertions and deletions are fast as long as space is available on a block. If an insertion won't fit on the block, then some free space on some nearby block must be found and the auxiliary indices adjusted. The best case is that enough space is available nearby so that the amount of block reorganization can be minimized. Alternatively, some out-of-sequence disk blocks may be used. Usage in databases. The B-tree uses all of the ideas described above. In particular, a B-tree: In addition, a B-tree minimizes waste by making sure the interior nodes are at least half full. A B-tree can handle an arbitrary number of insertions and deletions. Best case and worst case heights. Let be the height of the classic B-tree (see for the tree height definition). Let be the number of entries in the tree. Let "m" be the maximum number of children a node can have. Each node can have at most keys. It can be shown (by induction for example) that a B-tree of height "h" with all its nodes completely filled has entries. Hence, the best case height (i.e. the minimum height) of a B-tree is: formula_10 Let formula_11 be the minimum number of children an internal (non-root) node must have. For an ordinary B-tree, formula_12 Comer (1979) and Cormen et al. (2001) give the worst case height (the maximum height) of a B-tree as: formula_13 Algorithms. Search. Searching is similar to searching a binary search tree. Starting at the root, the tree is recursively traversed from top to bottom. At each level, the search reduces its field of view to the child pointer (subtree) whose range includes the search value. A subtree's range is defined by the values, or keys, contained in its parent node. These limiting values are also known as separation values. Binary search is typically (but not necessarily) used within nodes to find the separation values and child tree of interest. Insertion. All insertions start at a leaf node. To insert a new element, search the tree to find the leaf node where the new element should be added. Insert the new element into that node with the following steps: If the splitting goes all the way up to the root, it creates a new root with a single separator value and two children, which is why the lower bound on the size of internal nodes does not apply to the root. The maximum number of elements per node is "U"−1. When a node is split, one element moves to the parent, but one element is added. So, it must be possible to divide the maximum number "U"−1 of elements into two legal nodes. If this number is odd, then "U"=2"L" and one of the new nodes contains ("U"−2)/2 = "L"−1 elements, and hence is a legal node, and the other contains one more element, and hence it is legal too. If "U"−1 is even, then "U"=2"L"−1, so there are 2"L"−2 elements in the node. Half of this number is "L"−1, which is the minimum number of elements allowed per node. An alternative algorithm supports a single pass down the tree from the root to the node where the insertion will take place, splitting any full nodes encountered on the way pre-emptively. This prevents the need to recall the parent nodes into memory, which may be expensive if the nodes are on secondary storage. However, to use this algorithm, we must be able to send one element to the parent and split the remaining "U"−2 elements into two legal nodes, without adding a new element. This requires "U" = 2"L" rather than "U" = 2"L"−1, which accounts for why some textbooks impose this requirement in defining B-trees. Deletion. There are two popular strategies for deletion from a B-tree. The algorithm below uses the former strategy. There are two special cases to consider when deleting an element: The procedures for these cases are in order below. Deletion from an internal node. Each element in an internal node acts as a separation value for two subtrees, therefore we need to find a replacement for separation. Note that the largest element in the left subtree is still less than the separator. Likewise, the smallest element in the right subtree is still greater than the separator. Both of those elements are in leaf nodes, and either one can be the new separator for the two subtrees. Algorithmically described below: Rebalancing after deletion. Rebalancing starts from a leaf and proceeds toward the root until the tree is balanced. If deleting an element from a node has brought it under the minimum size, then some elements must be redistributed to bring all nodes up to the minimum. Usually, the redistribution involves moving an element from a sibling node that has more than the minimum number of nodes. That redistribution operation is called a rotation. If no sibling can spare an element, then the deficient node must be merged with a sibling. The merge causes the parent to lose a separator element, so the parent may become deficient and need rebalancing. The merging and rebalancing may continue all the way to the root. Since the minimum element count doesn't apply to the root, making the root be the only deficient node is not a problem. The algorithm to rebalance the tree is as follows: Sequential access. While freshly loaded databases tend to have good sequential behaviour, this behaviour becomes increasingly difficult to maintain as a database grows, resulting in more random I/O and performance challenges. Initial construction. A common special case is adding a large amount of "pre-sorted" data into an initially empty B-tree. While it is quite possible to simply perform a series of successive inserts, inserting sorted data results in a tree composed almost entirely of half-full nodes. Instead, a special "bulk loading" algorithm can be used to produce a more efficient tree with a higher branching factor. When the input is sorted, all insertions are at the rightmost edge of the tree, and in particular any time a node is split, we are guaranteed that no more insertions will take place in the left half. When bulk loading, we take advantage of this, and instead of splitting overfull nodes evenly, split them as "unevenly" as possible: leave the left node completely full and create a right node with zero keys and one child (in violation of the usual B-tree rules). At the end of bulk loading, the tree is composed almost entirely of completely full nodes; only the rightmost node on each level may be less than full. Because those nodes may also be less than "half" full, to re-establish the normal B-tree rules, combine such nodes with their (guaranteed full) left siblings and divide the keys to produce two nodes at least half full. The only node which lacks a full left sibling is the root, which is permitted to be less than half full. In filesystems. In addition to its use in databases, the B-tree (or ) is also used in filesystems to allow quick random access to an arbitrary block in a particular file. The basic problem is turning the file block formula_14 address into a disk block address. Some early operating systems, such as the IBM 360's, or highly specialized ones, required the application to allocate the maximum size of a file when the file was created. The file can then be allocated as contiguous disk blocks. In that case, to convert the file block address formula_14 into a disk block address, the operating system simply adds the file block address formula_14 to the address of the first disk block constituting the file. The scheme is simple, but the file cannot exceed its created size. All modern, mainstream operating systems allow a file to grow. The resulting disk blocks may not be contiguous, so mapping logical blocks to physical blocks is more involved. MS-DOS, for example, used a simple File Allocation Table (FAT). The FAT has an entry for each disk block, and that entry identifies whether its block is used by a file and if so, which block (if any) is the next disk block of the same file. So, the allocation of each file is represented as a linked list in the table. In order to find the disk address of file block formula_14, the operating system (or disk utility) must sequentially follow the file's linked list in the FAT. Worse, to find a free disk block, it must sequentially scan the FAT. For MS-DOS, that was not a huge penalty because the disks and files were small and the FAT had few entries and relatively short file chains. In the FAT12 filesystem (used on floppy disks and early hard disks), there were no more than 4,080 entries, and the FAT would usually be resident in memory. As disks got bigger, the FAT architecture began to confront penalties. On a large disk using FAT, it may be necessary to perform disk reads to learn the disk location of a file block to be read or written. TOPS-20 (and possibly TENEX) used a 0 to 2 level tree that has similarities to a B-tree. A disk block was 512 36-bit words. If the file fit in a 512 (29) word block, then the file directory would point to that physical disk block. If the file fit in 218 words, then the directory would point to an aux index; the 512 words of that index would either be NULL (the block isn't allocated) or point to the physical address of the block. If the file fit in 227 words, then the directory would point to a block holding an aux-aux index; each entry would either be NULL or point to an aux index. Consequently, the physical disk block for a 227 word file could be located in two disk reads and read on the third. Apple's filesystem HFS+ and APFS, Microsoft's NTFS, AIX (jfs2) and some Linux filesystems, such as Bcachefs, Btrfs and ext4, use B-trees. B-trees are used in the HFS and Reiser4 file systems. DragonFly BSD's HAMMER file system uses a modified B+-tree. Performance. A B-tree grows slower with growing data amount, than the linearity of a linked list. Compared to a skip list, both structures have the same performance, but the B-tree scales better for growing "n". A T-tree, for main memory database systems, is similar but more compact. Variations. Access concurrency. Lehman and Yao showed that all the read locks could be avoided (and thus concurrent access greatly improved) by linking the tree blocks at each level together with a "next" pointer. This results in a tree structure where both insertion and search operations descend from the root to the leaf. Write locks are only required as a tree block is modified. This maximizes access concurrency by multiple users, an important consideration for databases and/or other B-tree-based ISAM storage methods. The cost associated with this improvement is that empty pages cannot be removed from the btree during normal operations. (See reference 18 for various strategies to implement node merging, and reference 19 for source code strategies). United States Patent 5283894, granted in 1994, appears to show a way to use a 'Meta Access Method' to allow concurrent B+ tree access and modification without locks. The technique accesses the tree 'upwards' for both searches and updates by means of additional in-memory indexes that point at the blocks in each level in the block cache. No reorganization for deletes is needed and there are no 'next' pointers in each block as in Lehman and Yao. Parallel algorithms. Since B-trees are similar in structure to red-black trees, parallel algorithms for red-black trees can be applied to B-trees as well. Maple tree. A Maple tree is a B-tree developed for use in the Linux kernel to reduce lock contention in virtual memory management. (a,b)-tree. (a,b)-trees are generalizations of B-trees. B-trees require that each internal node have a minimum of formula_18 children and a maximum of formula_19 children, for some preset value of formula_19. In contrast, an (a,b)-tree allows the minimum number of children for an internal node to be set arbitrarily low. In an (a,b)-tree, each internal node has between and children, for some preset values of and . External links. Bulk loading
4675	45310094	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4675	British Museum	The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. Established in 1753, the British Museum was the first public national museum. In 2023, the museum received 5,820,860 visitors, 42% more than the previous year. At least one group rated it the most popular attraction in the United Kingdom. At its beginning, the museum was largely based on the collections of the Anglo-Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. The museum's expansion over the following 250 years was largely a result of British colonisation and resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, or independent spin-offs, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881. Some of its best-known acquisitions, such as the Greek Elgin Marbles and the Egyptian Rosetta Stone, are subject to long-term disputes and repatriation claims. In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Like all UK national museums, it charges no admission fee except for loan exhibitions. History. Sir Hans Sloane. Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". Its foundations lie in the will of the Anglo-Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster. During the course of his lifetime, and particularly after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter, Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities, and not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II, for the nation, for a sum of £20,000 () to be paid to his heirs by Parliament—intentionally far less than the estimated value of the artefacts, contemporarily estimated at £50,000 () or more according to some sources, and up to £80,000 () or more by others. At that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71,000 objects of all kinds including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Sudan, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas. Foundation (1753). On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his royal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 also added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs. Together these four "foundation collections" included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving manuscript of "Beowulf". The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element, and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library. Cabinet of curiosities (1753–1778). The body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The trustees rejected Buckingham House, which was later converted into the present day Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost and the unsuitability of its location. With the acquisition of Montagu House, the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. At this time, the largest parts of collection were the library, which took up the majority of the rooms on the ground floor and the natural history objects, which took up an entire wing on the first floor. In 1763, the trustees of the British Museum, under the influence of Peter Collinson and William Watson, employed the former student of Carl Linnaeus, Daniel Solander, to reclassify the natural history collection according to the Linnaean system, thereby making the museum a public centre of learning accessible to the full range of European natural historians. In 1823, George IV gave the King's Library assembled by George III, and Parliament gave the right to a copy of every book published in the country, thereby ensuring that the museum's library would expand indefinitely. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several further gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts and David Garrick's library of 1,000 printed plays. The predominance of natural history, books and manuscripts began to lessen when in 1772 the museum acquired for £8,410 its first significant antiquities in Sir William Hamilton's "first" collection of Greek vases. Indolence and energy (1778–1800). From 1778, a display of objects from the South Seas brought back from the round-the-world voyages of Captain James Cook and the travels of other explorers fascinated visitors with a glimpse of previously unknown lands. The bequest of a collection of books, engraved gems, coins, prints and drawings by Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode in 1800 did much to raise the museum's reputation; but Montagu House became increasingly crowded and decrepit and it was apparent that it would be unable to cope with further expansion. The museum's first notable addition towards its collection of antiquities, since its foundation, was by Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803), British Ambassador to Naples, who sold his collection of Greek and Roman artefacts to the museum in 1784 together with a number of other antiquities and natural history specimens. A list of donations to the museum, dated 31 January 1784, refers to the Hamilton bequest of a "Colossal Foot of an Apollo in Marble". It was one of two antiquities of Hamilton's collection drawn for him by Francesco Progenie, a pupil of Pietro Fabris, who also contributed a number of drawings of Mount Vesuvius sent by Hamilton to the Royal Society in London. Growth and change (1800–1825). In the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated the antiquities displays. After the defeat of the French campaign in the Battle of the Nile, in 1801, the British Museum acquired more Egyptian sculptures and in 1802 King George III presented the Rosetta Stone – key to the deciphering of hieroglyphs. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, laid the foundations of the collection of Egyptian Monumental Sculpture. Many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman sculpture, in 1805. In 1806, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803 removed the large collection of marble sculptures from the Parthenon, on the Acropolis in Athens and transferred them to the UK. In 1816 these masterpieces of western art were acquired by the British Museum by Act of Parliament and deposited in the museum thereafter. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815. The Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from Mary Mackintosh Rich, the widow of Assyriologist Claudius James Rich. In 1802 a buildings committee was set up to plan for expansion of the museum, and further highlighted by the donation in 1822 of the King's Library, personal library of King George III's, comprising 65,000 volumes, 19,000 pamphlets, maps, charts and topographical drawings. The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an eastern extension to the museum "... for the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it ..." and put forward plans for today's quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the King's Library Gallery began in 1823. The extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. However, following the founding of the National Gallery, London in 1824, the proposed Picture Gallery was no longer needed, and the space on the upper floor was given over to the Natural history collections. The first Synopsis of the British Museum was published in 1808. This described the contents of the museum, and the display of objects room by room, and updated editions were published every few years. The largest building site in Europe (1825–1850). As Sir Robert Smirke's grand neo-classical building gradually arose, the museum became a construction site. The King's Library, on the ground floor of the East Wing, was handed over in 1827, and was described as one of the finest rooms in London. Although it was not fully open to the general public until 1857, special openings were arranged during The Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1840, the museum became involved in its first overseas excavations, Charles Fellows's expedition to Xanthos, in Asia Minor, whence came remains of the tombs of the rulers of ancient Lycia, among them the Nereid and Payava monuments. In 1857, Charles Newton was to discover the 4th-century BC Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In the 1840s and 1850s the museum supported excavations in Assyria by A.H. Layard and others at sites such as Nimrud and Nineveh. Of particular interest to curators was the eventual discovery of Ashurbanipal's great library of cuneiform tablets, which helped to make the museum a focus for Assyrian studies. Sir Thomas Grenville (1755–1846), a trustee of the British Museum from 1830, assembled a library of 20,240 volumes, which he left to the museum in his will. The books arrived in January 1847 in twenty-one horse-drawn vans. The only vacant space for this large library was a room originally intended for manuscripts, between the Front Entrance Hall and the Manuscript Saloon. The books remained here until the British Library moved to St Pancras in 1998. Collecting from the wider world (1850–1875). The opening of the forecourt in 1852 marked the completion of Robert Smirke's 1823 plan, but already adjustments were having to be made to cope with the unforeseen growth of the collections. Infill galleries were constructed for Assyrian sculptures and Sydney Smirke's Round Reading Room, with space for a million books, opened in 1857. Because of continued pressure on space the decision was taken to move natural history to a new building in South Kensington, which would later become the British Museum of Natural History. Roughly contemporary with the construction of the new building was the career of a man sometimes called the "second founder" of the British Museum, the Italian librarian Anthony Panizzi. Under his supervision, the British Museum Library (now part of the British Library) quintupled in size and became a well-organised institution worthy of being called a national library, the largest library in the world after the National Library of Paris. The quadrangle at the centre of Smirke's design proved to be a waste of valuable space and was filled at Panizzi's request by a circular Reading Room of cast iron, designed by Smirke's brother, Sydney Smirke. Until the mid-19th century, the museum's collections were relatively circumscribed but, in 1851, with the appointment to the staff of Augustus Wollaston Franks to curate the collections, the museum began for the first time to collect British and European medieval antiquities, prehistory, branching out into Asia and diversifying its holdings of ethnography. A real coup for the museum was the purchase in 1867, over French objections, of the Duke of Blacas's wide-ranging and valuable collection of antiquities. Overseas excavations continued and John Turtle Wood discovered the remains of the 4th century BC Temple of Artemis at Ephesos, another Wonder of the Ancient World. Scholarship and legacies (1875–1900). The natural history collections were an integral part of the British Museum until their removal to the new British Museum of Natural History in 1887, nowadays the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. With the departure and the completion of the new White Wing (fronting Montague Street) in 1884, more space was available for antiquities and ethnography and the library could further expand. This was a time of innovation as electric lighting was introduced in the Reading Room and exhibition galleries. The William Burges collection of armoury was bequeathed to the museum in 1881. In 1882, the museum was involved in the establishment of the independent Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) the first British body to carry out research in Egypt. A bequest from Miss Emma Turner in 1892 financed excavations in Cyprus. In 1897 the death of the great collector and curator, A. W. Franks, was followed by an immense bequest of 3,300 finger rings, 153 drinking vessels, 512 pieces of continental porcelain, 1,500 netsuke, 850 inro, over 30,000 bookplates and miscellaneous items of jewellery and plate, among them the Oxus Treasure. In 1898 Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild bequeathed the Waddesdon Bequest, the glittering contents from his New Smoking Room at Waddesdon Manor. This consisted of almost 300 pieces of "objets d'art et de vertu" which included exquisite examples of jewellery, plate, enamel, carvings, glass and maiolica, among them the Holy Thorn Reliquary, probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry. The collection was in the tradition of a "Schatzkammer" such as those formed by the Renaissance princes of Europe. Baron Ferdinand's will was most specific, and failure to observe the terms would make it void, the collection should be These terms are still observed, and the collection occupies room 2a. New century, new building (1900–1925). By the last years of the 19th century, The British Museum's collections had increased to the extent that its building was no longer large enough. In 1895 the trustees purchased the 69 houses surrounding the museum with the intention of demolishing them and building around the west, north and east sides of the museum. The first stage was the construction of the northern wing beginning 1906. All the while, the collections kept growing. Emil Torday collected in Central Africa, Aurel Stein in Central Asia, D. G. Hogarth, Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence excavated at Carchemish. Around this time, the American collector and philanthropist J. Pierpont Morgan donated a substantial number of objects to the museum, including William Greenwell's collection of prehistoric artefacts from across Europe which he had purchased for £10,000 in 1908. Morgan had also acquired a major part of Sir John Evans's coin collection, which was later sold to the museum by his son J. P. Morgan Jr. in 1915. In 1918, because of the threat of wartime bombing, some objects were evacuated via the London Post Office Railway to Holborn, the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth) and a country house near Malvern. On the return of antiquities from wartime storage in 1919 some objects were found to have deteriorated. A conservation laboratory was set up in May 1920 and became a permanent department in 1931. It is today the oldest in continuous existence. In 1923, the British Museum welcomed over one million visitors. Disruption and reconstruction (1925–1950). New mezzanine floors were constructed and book stacks rebuilt in an attempt to cope with the flood of books. In 1931, the art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen offered funds to build a gallery for the Parthenon sculptures. Designed by the American architect John Russell Pope, it was completed in 1938. The appearance of the exhibition galleries began to change as dark Victorian reds gave way to modern pastel shades. Following the retirement of George Francis Hill as Director and Principal Librarian in 1936, he was succeeded by John Forsdyke. As tensions with Nazi Germany developed and it appeared that war may be imminent Forsdyke came to the view that with the likelihood of far worse air-raids than that experienced in World War I that the museum had to make preparations to remove its most valuable items to secure locations. Following the Munich crisis Forsdyke ordered 3,300 No-Nail Boxes and stored them in the basement of Duveen Gallery. At the same time he began identifying and securing suitable locations. As a result, the museum was able to quickly commence relocating selected items on 24 August 1939, (a mere day after the Home Secretary advised them to do so), to secure basements, country houses, Aldwych Underground station and the National Library of Wales. Many items were relocated in early 1942 from their initial dispersal locations to a newly developed facility at Westwood Quarry in Wiltshire. The evacuation was timely, for in 1940 the Duveen Gallery was severely damaged by bombing. Meanwhile, prior to the war, the Nazis had sent a researcher to the British Museum for several years with the aim of "compiling an anti-Semitic history of Anglo-Jewry". After the war, the museum continued to collect from all countries and all centuries: among the most spectacular additions were the 2600 BC Mesopotamian treasure from Ur, discovered during Leonard Woolley's 1922–34 excavations. Gold, silver and garnet grave goods from the Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo (1939) and late Roman silver tableware from Mildenhall, Suffolk (1946). The immediate post-war years were taken up with the return of the collections from protection and the restoration of the museum after the Blitz. Work also began on restoring the damaged Duveen Gallery. A new public face (1950–1975). In 1953, the museum celebrated its bicentenary. Many changes followed: the first full-time in-house designer and publications officer were appointed in 1964, the Friends organisation was set up in 1968, an Education Service established in 1970 and publishing house in 1973. In 1963, a new Act of Parliament introduced administrative reforms. It became easier to lend objects, the constitution of the board of trustees changed and the Natural History Museum became fully independent. By 1959 the Coins and Medals office suite, completely destroyed during the war, was rebuilt and re-opened, attention turned towards the gallery work with new tastes in design leading to the remodelling of Robert Smirke's Classical and Near Eastern galleries. In 1962 the Duveen Gallery was finally restored and the Parthenon Sculptures were moved back into it, once again at the heart of the museum. By the 1970s, the museum was again expanding. More services for the public were introduced; visitor numbers soared, with the temporary exhibition "Treasures of Tutankhamun" in 1972, attracting 1,694,117 visitors, the most successful in British history. In the same year the Act of Parliament establishing the British Library was passed, separating the collection of manuscripts and printed books from the British Museum. This left the museum with antiquities; coins, medals and paper money; prints and drawings; and ethnography. A pressing problem was finding space for additions to the library which now required an extra of shelving each year. The Government suggested a site at St Pancras for the new British Library but the books did not leave the museum until 1997. The Great Court emerges (1975–2000). The departure of the British Library to a new site at St Pancras, finally achieved in 1998, provided the space needed for the books. It also created the opportunity to redevelop the vacant space in Robert Smirke's 19th-century central quadrangle into the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court – the largest covered square in Europe – which opened in 2000. The ethnography collections, which had been housed in the short-lived Museum of Mankind at 6 Burlington Gardens from 1970, were returned to new purpose-built galleries in the museum in 2000. The museum again readjusted its collecting policies as interest in "modern" objects: prints, drawings, medals and the decorative arts reawakened. Ethnographical fieldwork was carried out in places as diverse as New Guinea, Madagascar, Romania, Guatemala and Indonesia and there were excavations in the Near East, Egypt, Sudan and the UK. The Weston Gallery of Roman Britain, opened in 1997, displayed a number of recently discovered hoards which demonstrated the richness of what had been considered an unimportant part of the Roman Empire. The museum turned increasingly towards private funds for buildings, acquisitions and other purposes. In 2000, the British Museum was awarded National Heritage Museum of the Year. The British Museum today. Today the museum no longer houses collections of natural history, and the books and manuscripts it once held now form part of the independent British Library. The museum nevertheless preserves its universality in its collections of artefacts representing the cultures of the world, ancient and modern. The original 1753 collection has grown to over 13 million objects at the British Museum, 70 million at the Natural History Museum and 150 million at the British Library. The Round Reading Room, which was designed by the architect Sydney Smirke, opened in 1857. For almost 150 years researchers came here to consult the museum's vast library. The Reading Room closed in 1997 when the national library (the British Library) moved to a new building at St Pancras. Today it has been transformed into the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre. With the bookstacks in the central courtyard of the museum empty, the demolition for Lord Foster's glass-roofed Great Court could begin. The Great Court, opened in 2000, while undoubtedly improving circulation around the museum, was criticised for having a lack of exhibition space at a time when the museum was in serious financial difficulties and many galleries were closed to the public. At the same time the African collections that had been temporarily housed in 6 Burlington Gardens were given a new gallery in the North Wing funded by the Sainsbury family – with the donation valued at £25 million. The museum's online database had nearly 4,500,000 individual object entries in 2,000,000 records at the start of 2023. In 2022–23 there were 27 million visits to the website. This compares with 19.5 millions website visits in 2013. There were 5,820,860 visits to the museum in 2023, a 42% increase on 2022. The museum was the most visited tourist attraction in Britain in 2023. The number of visits, however, has not recovered to the level reached before the Covid pandemic. A number of films have been shot at the British Museum. Governance. Director. The British Museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport through a three-year funding agreement. Its head is the Director of the British Museum. The British Museum was run from its inception by a 'principal librarian' (when the book collections were still part of the museum), a role that was renamed 'director and principal librarian' in 1898, and 'director' in 1973 (on the separation of the British Library). Trustees. A board of 25 trustees (with the director as their accounting officer for the purposes of reporting to Government) is responsible for the general management and control of the museum, in accordance with the British Museum Act 1963 and the Museums and Galleries Act 1992. Prior to the 1963 Act, it was chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons. Of the 25 trustees, 15 are appointed by the Prime Minister, one by the Crown, four by relevant industry bodies, with the remaining five appointed by other trustees. The board was formed on the museum's inception to hold its collections in trust for the nation without actually owning them themselves, and now fulfil a mainly advisory role. Trustee appointments are governed by the regulatory framework set out in the code of practice on public appointments issued by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. Building. The Greek Revival facade facing Great Russell Street is a characteristic building of Sir Robert Smirke, with 44 columns in the Ionic order high, closely based on those of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene in Asia Minor. The pediment over the main entrance is decorated by sculptures by Sir Richard Westmacott depicting "The Progress of Civilisation", consisting of fifteen allegorical figures, installed in 1852. The construction commenced around the courtyard with the East Wing (The King's Library) in 1823–1828, followed by the North Wing in 1833–1838, which originally housed among other galleries a reading room, now the Wellcome Gallery. Work was also progressing on the northern half of the West Wing (The Egyptian Sculpture Gallery) 1826–1831, with Montagu House demolished in 1842 to make room for the final part of the West Wing, completed in 1846, and the South Wing with its great colonnade, initiated in 1843 and completed in 1847, when the Front Hall and Great Staircase were opened to the public. The museum is faced with Portland stone, but the perimeter walls and other parts of the building were built using Haytor granite from Dartmoor in South Devon, transported via the unique Haytor Granite Tramway. In 1846 Robert Smirke was replaced as the museum's architect by his brother Sydney Smirke, whose major addition was the Round Reading Room 1854–1857; at in diameter it was then the second widest dome in the world, the Pantheon in Rome being slightly wider. The next major addition was the White Wing 1882–1884 added behind the eastern end of the South Front, the architect being Sir John Taylor. In 1895, Parliament gave the museum trustees a loan of £200,000 to purchase from the Duke of Bedford all 69 houses which backed onto the museum building in the five surrounding streets – Great Russell Street, Montague Street, Montague Place, Bedford Square and Bloomsbury Street. The trustees planned to demolish these houses and to build around the west, north and east sides of the museum new galleries that would completely fill the block on which the museum stands. The architect Sir John James Burnet was petitioned to put forward ambitious long-term plans to extend the building on all three sides. Most of the houses in Montague Place were knocked down a few years after the sale. Of this grand plan only the Edward VII galleries in the centre of the North Front were ever constructed, these were built 1906–14 to the design by J.J. Burnet, and opened by King George V and Queen Mary in 1914. They now house the museum's collections of Prints and Drawings and Oriental Antiquities. There was not enough money to put up more new buildings, and so the houses in the other streets are nearly all still standing. The Duveen Gallery, sited to the west of the Egyptian, Greek & Assyrian sculpture galleries, was designed to house the Elgin Marbles by the American Beaux-Arts architect John Russell Pope. Although completed in 1938, it was hit by a bomb in 1940 and remained semi-derelict for 22 years, before reopening in 1962. Other areas damaged during World War II bombing included: in September 1940 two unexploded bombs hit the Edward VII galleries, the King's Library received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb, incendiaries fell on the dome of the Round Reading Room but did little damage; on the night of 10 to 11 May 1941 several incendiaries fell on the south-west corner of the museum, destroying the book stack and 150,000 books in the courtyard and the galleries around the top of the Great Staircase – this damage was not fully repaired until the early 1960s. The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court is a covered square at the centre of the British Museum designed by the engineers Buro Happold and the architects Foster and Partners. The Great Court opened in December 2000 and is the largest covered square in Europe. The roof is a glass and steel construction, built by an Austrian steelwork company, with 1,656 uniquely shaped panes of glass. At the centre of the Great Court is the Reading Room vacated by the British Library, its functions now moved to St Pancras. Today, the British Museum has grown to become one of the largest museums in the world, covering an area of over 92,000 m2 (990,000 sq. ft). In addition to 21,600 m2 (232,000 sq. ft) of on-site storage space, and 9,400 m2 (101,000 sq. ft) of external storage space. Altogether, the British Museum showcases on public display less than 1% of its entire collection, approximately 50,000 items. There are nearly one hundred galleries open to the public, representing of exhibition space, although the less popular ones have restricted opening times. However, the lack of a large temporary exhibition space led to the £135 million World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre to provide one and to concentrate all the museum's conservation facilities into one centre. This project was announced in July 2007, with the architects Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners. It was granted planning permission in December 2009 and was completed in time for the Viking exhibition in March 2014. In 2017, the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture. Blythe House in West Kensington was used by the museum for off-site storage of small and medium-sized artefacts until the British Museum Archeological Collection, a purpose-built storage facility near Reading, was opened in 2024. Another site Franks House in East London is used for storage and work on the "Early Prehistory" – Palaeolithic and Mesolithic – and some other collections. Departments. Department of Egypt and Sudan. The British Museum houses the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Egyptian antiquities (with over 100,000 pieces) outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. A collection of immense importance for its range and quality, it includes objects of all periods from virtually every site of importance in Egypt and the Sudan. Together, they illustrate every aspect of the cultures of the Nile Valley (including Nubia), from the Predynastic Neolithic period () through Coptic (Christian) times (12th century AD), and up to the present day, a time-span over 11,000 years. Egyptian antiquities have formed part of the British Museum collection ever since its foundation in 1753 after receiving 160 Egyptian objects from Sir Hans Sloane. After the defeat of the French forces under Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in 1801, the Egyptian antiquities collected were confiscated by the British army and presented to the British Museum in 1803. These works, which included the famed Rosetta Stone, were the first important group of large sculptures to be acquired by the museum. Thereafter, the UK appointed Henry Salt as consul in Egypt who amassed a huge collection of antiquities, some of which were assembled and transported with great ingenuity by the famous Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni. Most of the antiquities Salt collected were purchased by the British Museum and the Musée du Louvre. By 1866 the collection consisted of some 10,000 objects. Antiquities from excavations started to come to the museum in the latter part of the 19th century as a result of the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund under the efforts of E.A. Wallis Budge. Over the years more than 11,000 objects came from this source, including pieces from Amarna, Bubastis and Deir el-Bahari. Other organisations and individuals also excavated and donated objects to the British Museum, including Flinders Petrie's Egypt Research Account and the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, as well as the University of Oxford Expedition to Kawa and Faras in Sudan. Active support by the museum for excavations in Egypt continued to result in important acquisitions throughout the 20th century until changes in antiquities laws in Egypt led to the suspension of policies allowing finds to be exported, although divisions still continue in Sudan. The British Museum conducted its own excavations in Egypt where it received divisions of finds, including Asyut (1907), Mostagedda and Matmar (1920s), Ashmunein (1980s) and sites in Sudan such as Soba, Kawa and the Northern Dongola Reach (1990s). The size of the Egyptian collections now stand at over 110,000 objects. In autumn 2001 the eight million objects forming the museum's permanent collection were further expanded by the addition of six million objects from the Wendorf Collection of Egyptian and Sudanese Prehistory. These were donated by Professor Fred Wendorf of Southern Methodist University in Texas, and comprise the entire collection of artefacts and environmental remains from his excavations at Prehistoric sites in the Sahara Desert between 1963 and 1997. Other fieldwork collections have recently come from Dietrich and Rosemarie Klemm (University of Munich) and William Adams (University of Kentucky). The seven permanent Egyptian galleries at the British Museum, which include its largest exhibition space (Room 4, for monumental sculpture), can display only 4% of its Egyptian holdings. The second-floor galleries have a selection of the museum's collection of 140 mummies and coffins, the largest outside Cairo. A high proportion of the collection comes from tombs or contexts associated with the cult of the dead, and it is these pieces, in particular the mummies, that remain among the most eagerly sought-after exhibits by visitors to the museum. Highlights of the collections include: Predynastic and Early Dynastic period () Old Kingdom (2690–2181 BC) Middle Kingdom (2134–1690 BC) Second Intermediate Period (1650–1550 BC) New Kingdom (1549–1069 BC) Third Intermediate Period (1069–664 BC) Late Period (664–332 BC) Ptolemaic dynasty (305–30 BC) Roman Period (30 BC – 641 AD) Department of Greece and Rome. The British Museum has one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world, with over 100,000 objects. These mostly range in date from the beginning of the Greek Bronze Age (about 3200 BC) to the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, with the Edict of Milan under the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine I in 313 AD. Archaeology was in its infancy during the nineteenth century and many pioneering individuals began excavating sites across the Classical world, chief among them for the museum were Charles Newton, John Turtle Wood, Robert Murdoch Smith and Charles Fellows. The Greek objects originate from across the Ancient Greek world, from the mainland of Greece and the Aegean Islands, to neighbouring lands in Asia Minor and Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean and as far as the western lands of Magna Graecia that include Sicily and southern Italy. The Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean cultures are represented, and the Greek collection includes important sculpture from the Parthenon in Athens, as well as elements of two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. Beginning from the early Bronze Age, the department also houses one of the widest-ranging collections of Italic and Etruscan antiquities outside Italy, as well as extensive groups of material from Cyprus and non-Greek colonies in Lycia and Caria on Asia Minor. There is some material from the Roman Republic, but the collection's strength is in its comprehensive array of objects from across the Roman Empire, with the exception of Britain (which is the mainstay of the Department of Prehistory and Europe). The collections of ancient jewellery and bronzes, Greek vases (many from graves in southern Italy that were once part of Sir William Hamilton's and Chevalier Durand's collections), Roman glass including the famous Cameo glass Portland Vase, Roman gold glass (the second largest collection after the Vatican Museums), Roman mosaics from Carthage and Utica in North Africa that were excavated by Nathan Davis, and silver hoards from Roman Gaul (some of which were bequeathed by the philanthropist and museum trustee Richard Payne Knight), are particularly important. Cypriot antiquities are strong too and have benefited from the purchase of Sir Robert Hamilton Lang's collection as well as the bequest of Emma Turner in 1892, which funded many excavations on the island. Roman sculptures (many of which are copies of Greek originals) are particularly well represented by the Townley collection as well as residual sculptures from the famous Farnese collection. Objects from the Department of Greece and Rome are located throughout the museum, although many of the architectural monuments are to be found on the ground floor, with connecting galleries from Gallery 5 to Gallery 23. On the upper floor, there are galleries devoted to smaller material from ancient Italy, Greece, Cyprus and the Roman Empire. The current collection includes: Temple of Hephaestus Parthenon Propylaea Erechtheion Temple of Athena Nike Choragic Monument of Thrasyllos Tower of the Winds Temple of Poseidon, Sounion Temple of Nemesis, Rhamnus Temple of Bassae Sanctuary of Apollo at Daphni Temple of Athena Polias, Priene Mausoleum at Halicarnassus Temple of Artemis in Ephesus Knidos in Asia Minor Xanthos in Asia Minor Temple of Zeus, Salamis in Cyprus Wider collection Prehistoric Greece and Italy (3300 BC – 8th century BC) Etruscan (8th century BC – 1st century BC) Ancient Greece (8th century BC – 4th century AD) Ancient Rome (1st century BC – 4th century AD) The collection encompasses architectural, sculptural and epigraphic items from many other sites across the classical world including Amathus, Atripalda, Aphrodisias, Delos, Iasos, Idalion, Lindus, Kalymnos, Kerch, Rhamnous, Salamis, Sestos, Sounion, Tomis and Thessaloniki. Department of the Middle East. With a collection numbering some 330,000 works, the British Museum possesses the world's largest and most important collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. A collection of immense importance, the holdings of Assyrian sculpture, Babylonian and Sumerian antiquities are among the most comprehensive in the world with entire suites of rooms panelled in alabaster Assyrian palace reliefs from Nimrud, Nineveh and Khorsabad. The collections represent the civilisations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas. These cover Mesopotamia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia, Syria, the Holy Land and Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean from the prehistoric period and include objects from the 7th century. The first significant addition of Mesopotamian objects was from the collection of Claudius James Rich in 1825. The collection was later dramatically enlarged by the excavations of A. H. Layard at the Assyrian sites of Nimrud and Nineveh between 1845 and 1851. At Nimrud, Layard discovered the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, as well as three other palaces and various temples. He later uncovered the Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh with 'no less than seventy-one halls'. As a result, a large numbers of Lamassus, palace reliefs, stelae, including the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, were brought to the British Museum. Layard's work was continued by his assistant, Hormuzd Rassam and in 1852–1854 he went on to discover the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh with many magnificent reliefs, including the famous Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal and Lachish reliefs. He also discovered the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, a large collection of cuneiform tablets of enormous importance that today number around 130,000 pieces. W. K. Loftus excavated in Nimrud between 1850 and 1855 and found a remarkable hoard of ivories in the Burnt Palace. Between 1878 and 1882 Rassam greatly improved the museum's holdings with exquisite objects including the Cyrus Cylinder from Babylon, the bronze gates from Balawat, important objects from Sippar, and a fine collection of Urartian bronzes from Toprakkale including a copper figurine of a winged, human-headed bull. In the early 20th century excavations were carried out at Carchemish, Turkey by D. G. Hogarth and Leonard Woolley, the latter assisted by T. E. Lawrence. The Mesopotamian collections were greatly augmented by excavations in southern Iraq after World War I. From Tell al-Ubaid came the bronze furnishings of a Sumerian temple, including life-sized lions and a panel featuring the lion-headed eagle Indugud found by H. R. Hall in 1919–24. Woolley went on to excavate Ur between 1922 and 1934, discovering the Royal Cemeteries of the 3rd millennium BC. Some of the masterpieces include the Standard of Ur, the Ram in a Thicket, the Royal Game of Ur, and two bull-headed lyres. The department also has three diorite statues of the ruler Gudea from the ancient state of Lagash and a series of limestone kudurru or boundary stones from different locations across ancient Mesopotamia. Although the collections centre on Mesopotamia, most of the surrounding areas are well represented. The Achaemenid collection was enhanced with the addition of the Oxus Treasure in 1897 and objects excavated by the German scholar Ernst Herzfeld and the Hungarian-British explorer Sir Aurel Stein. Reliefs and sculptures from the site of Persepolis were donated by Sir Gore Ouseley in 1825 and the 5th Earl of Aberdeen in 1861 and the museum received part of a pot-hoard of jewellery from Pasargadae as the division of finds in 1963 and part of the Ziwiye hoard in 1971. A large column base from the One Hundred Column Hall at Persepolis was acquired in exchange from the Oriental Institute, Chicago. Moreover, the museum has been able to acquire one of the greatest assemblages of Achaemenid silverware in the world. The later Sasanian Empire is also well represented by ornate silver plates and cups, many representing ruling monarchs hunting lions and deer. Phoenician antiquities come from across the region, but the Tharros collection from Sardinia, the hoard of about 150 metal bowls and hundreds of ivories from Nimrud, Phœnician inscriptions from Carthage including the Son of Baalshillek marble base, the Carthage Tariff and the Carthage tower model and the many punic stelae from Carthage and Maghrawa in Tunisia (such as the ) are outstanding. The number of Phoenician inscriptions from sites across Cyprus is also considerable, and include artefacts found at the Kition necropolis (with the two Kition Tariffs having the longest Phoenician inscription discovered on the island), the Idalion temple site and two bilingual pedestals found at Tamassos. Another often overlooked highlight is Yemeni antiquities, the finest collection outside that country. Furthermore, the museum has a representative collection of Dilmun and Parthian material excavated from various burial mounds at the ancient sites of A'ali and Shakhura (that included a Roman ribbed glass bowl) in Bahrain. From the modern state of Syria come almost forty funerary busts from Palmyra and a group of stone reliefs from the excavations of Max von Oppenheim at Tell Halaf that was purchased in 1920. More material followed from the excavations of Max Mallowan at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak in 1935–1938 and from Woolley at Alalakh in the years just before and after World War II. Mallowan returned with his wife Agatha Christie to carry out further digs at Nimrud in the postwar period which secured many important artefacts, such as the Nimrud Ivories, for the museum. The collection of Palestinian material was strengthened by the work of Kathleen Kenyon at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) in the 1950s and the acquisition in 1980 of around 17,000 objects found at Lachish by the Wellcome-Marston expedition of 1932–1938. Archaeological digs are still taking place where permitted in the Middle East, and, depending on the country, the museum continues to receive a share of the finds from sites such as in Jordan. The museum's collection of Islamic art, including archaeological material, numbers about 40,000 objects, one of the largest of its kind in the world. As such, it contains a broad range of pottery, paintings, tiles, metalwork, glass, seals, and inscriptions from across the Islamic world, from Spain in the west to India in the east. It is particularly famous for its collection of Iznik ceramics (the largest in the world), its large number of mosque lamps including one from the Dome of the Rock, mediaeval metalwork such as the Vaso Vescovali with its depictions of the Zodiac, a fine selection of astrolabes, and Mughal paintings and precious artwork including a large jade terrapin made for the emperor Jahangir. Thousands of objects were excavated after the war by professional archaeologists at Iranian sites such as Siraf by David Whitehouse and Alamut Castle by Peter Willey. The collection was augmented in 1983 by the Godman bequest of Iznik, Hispano-Moresque and early Iranian pottery. Artefacts from the Islamic world are on display in Gallery 34 of the museum. A representative selection from the Department of Middle East, including the most important pieces, are on display in 13 galleries throughout the museum and total some 4,500 objects. A whole suite of rooms on the ground floor display the sculptured reliefs from the Assyrian palaces at Nineveh, Nimrud and Khorsabad, while 8 galleries on the upper floor hold smaller material from ancient sites across the Middle East. The remainder form the study collection which ranges in size from beads to large sculptures. They include approximately 130,000 cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia. Highlights of the collections include: Nimrud: Assyrian palace reliefs from: Sculptures and inscriptions: Assyrian palace reliefs and sculptures from: Royal Library of Ashurbanipal: Khorsabad and Balawat: Department of Prints and Drawings. The Department of Prints and Drawings holds the national collection of Western prints and drawings. It ranks as one of the largest and best print room collections in existence alongside the Albertina in Vienna, the Paris collections and the Hermitage. The holdings are easily accessible to the general public in the Study Room, unlike many such collections. The department also has its own exhibition gallery in Room 90, where the displays and exhibitions change several times a year. Since its foundation in 1808, the prints and drawings collection has grown to international renown as one of the richest and most representative collections in the world. There are approximately 50,000 drawings and over two million prints. The collection of drawings covers the period from the 14th century to the present, and includes many works of the highest quality by the leading artists of the European schools. The collection of prints covers the tradition of fine printmaking from its beginnings in the 15th century up to the present, with near complete holdings of most of the great names before the 19th century. Key benefactors to the department have been Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, Richard Payne Knight, John Malcolm, Campbell Dodgson, César Mange de Hauke and Tomás Harris. Writer and author Louis Alexander Fagan, who worked in the department 1869–1894 made significant contributions to the department in form of his "Handbook to the Department", as well as various other books about the museum in general. There are groups of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, (including his only surviving full-scale cartoon), Dürer (a collection of 138 drawings is one of the finest in existence), Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude and Watteau, and largely complete collections of the works of all the great printmakers including Dürer (99 engravings, 6 etchings and most of his 346 woodcuts), Rembrandt and Goya. More than 30,000 British drawings and watercolours include important examples of work by Hogarth, Sandby, Turner, Girtin, Constable, Cotman, Cox, Gillray, Rowlandson, Towne and Cruikshank, as well as all the great Victorians. The collection contains the unique set of watercolours by the pioneering colonist John White, the first British artist in America and first European to paint Native Americans. There are about a million British prints including more than 20,000 satires and outstanding collections of works by William Blake and Thomas Bewick.. The great eleven volume Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum compiled between 1870 and 1954 is the definitive reference work for the study of British Satirical prints. Over 500,000 objects from the department are now on the online collection database, many with high-quality images. A 2011 donation of £1 million enabled the museum to acquire a complete set of Pablo Picasso's "Vollard Suite". Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory. The Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory is responsible for collections that cover a vast expanse of time and geography. It includes some of the earliest objects made by humans in east Africa over 2 million years ago, as well as Prehistoric and neolithic objects from other parts of the world; and the art and archaeology of Europe from the earliest times to the present day. Archeological excavation of prehistoric material took off and expanded considerably in the twentieth century and the department now has literally millions of objects from the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods throughout the world, as well as from the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age in Europe. Stone Age material from Africa has been donated by famous archaeologists such as Louis and Mary Leakey, and Gertrude Caton–Thompson. Paleolithic objects from the Sturge, Christy and Lartet collections include some of the earliest works of art from Europe. Many Bronze Age objects from across Europe were added during the nineteenth century, often from large collections built up by excavators and scholars such as Greenwell in Britain, Tobin and Cooke in Ireland, Lukis and de la Grancière in Brittany, Worsaae in Denmark, Siret at El Argar in Spain, and Klemm and Edelmann in Germany. A representative selection of Iron Age artefacts from Hallstatt were acquired as a result of the Evans/Lubbock excavations and from Giubiasco in Ticino through the Swiss National Museum. In addition, the British Museum's collections covering the period AD 300 to 1100 are among the largest and most comprehensive in the world, extending from Spain to the Black Sea and from North Africa to Scandinavia; a representative selection of these has recently been redisplayed in a newly refurbished gallery. Important collections include Latvian, Norwegian, Gotlandic and Merovingian material from Johann Karl Bähr, Alfred Heneage Cocks, Sir James Curle and Philippe Delamain respectively. However, the undoubted highlight from the early mediaeval period is the magnificent items from the Sutton Hoo royal grave, generously donated to the nation by the landowner Edith Pretty. The late mediaeval collection includes a large number of seal-dies from across Europe, the most famous of which include those from the Town of Boppard in Germany, Isabella of Hainault from her tomb in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, Inchaffray Abbey in Scotland and Robert Fitzwalter, one of the Barons who led the revolt against King John in England. There is also a large collection of medieval signet rings, prominent among them is the gold signet ring belonging to Jean III de Grailly who fought in the Hundred Years' War, as well as those of Mary, Queen of Scots and Richard I of England. Other groups of artefacts represented in the department include the national collection of (c.100) icon paintings, most of which originate from the Byzantine Empire and Russia, and over 40 mediaeval astrolabes from across Europe and the Middle East. The department also includes the national collection of horology with one of the most wide-ranging assemblage of clocks, watches and other timepieces in Europe, with masterpieces from every period in the development of time-keeping. Choice horological pieces came from the Morgan and Ilbert collections. The department is also responsible for the curation of Romano-British objects – the museum has by far the most extensive such collection in Britain and one of the most representative regional collections in Europe outside Italy. It is particularly famous for the large number of late Roman silver treasures, many of which were found in East Anglia, the most important of which is the Mildenhall Treasure. The museum purchased many Roman-British objects from the antiquarian Charles Roach Smith in 1856. These quickly formed the nucleus of the collection. The department also includes ethnographic material from across Europe including a collection of Bulgarian costumes and shadow puppets from Greece and Turkey. A particular highlight are the three Sámi drums from northern Sweden of which only about 70 are extant. Objects from the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory are mostly found on the upper floor of the museum, with a suite of galleries numbered from 38 to 51. Most of the collection is stored in its archive facilities, where it is available for research and study. Highlights of the collections include: Stone Age (c. 3.4 million years BC – c. 2000 BC) Bronze Age () Iron Age () Romano-British (43 AD – 410 AD) Early Mediaeval () Mediaeval () Renaissance to Modern ( – present) The many hoards of treasure include those of Esquiline, Carthage, First Cyprus, Hockwold, Hoxne, Lampsacus, Mildenhall, Vale of York and Water Newton, (4th–10th centuries AD) Department of Asia. The scope of the Department of Asia is extremely broad; its collections of over 75,000 objects cover the material culture of the whole Asian continent and from the Neolithic up to the present day. Until recently, this department concentrated on collecting Oriental antiquities from urban or semi-urban societies across the Asian continent. Many of those objects were collected by colonial officers and explorers in former parts of the British Empire, especially the Indian subcontinent. Examples include the collections made by individuals such as James Wilkinson Breeks, Sir Alexander Cunningham, Sir Harold Deane, Sir Walter Elliot, James Prinsep, Charles Masson, Sir John Marshall and Charles Stuart. A large number of Chinese antiquities were purchased from the Anglo-Greek banker George Eumorfopoulos in the 1930s. The large collection of some 1800 Japanese prints and paintings owned by Arthur Morrison was acquired in the early twentieth century. In the second half of the twentieth century, the museum greatly benefited from the bequest of the philanthropist PT Brooke Sewell, which allowed the department to purchase many objects and fill in gaps in the collection. In 2004, the ethnographic collections from Asia were transferred to the department. These reflect the diverse environment of the largest continent in the world and range from India to China, the Middle East to Japan. Much of the ethnographic material comes from objects originally owned by tribal cultures and hunter-gatherers, many of whose way of life has disappeared in the last century. Particularly valuable collections are from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (much assembled by the British naval officer Maurice Portman), Sri Lanka (especially through the colonial administrator Hugh Nevill), Northern Thailand, south-west China, the Ainu of Hokkaido in Japan (chief among them the collection of the Scottish zoologist John Anderson), Siberia (with artefacts collected by the explorer Kate Marsden and Bassett Digby and is notable for its Sakha pieces, especially the ivory model of a summer festival at Yakutsk) and the islands of South-East Asia, especially Borneo. The latter benefited from the purchase in 1905 of the Sarawak collection put together by Dr Charles Hose, as well as from other colonial officers such as Edward A Jeffreys. In addition, a unique and valuable group of objects from Java, including shadow puppets and a gamelan musical set, was assembled by Sir Stamford Raffles. The principal gallery devoted to Asian art in the museum is Gallery 33 with its comprehensive display of Chinese, Indian subcontinent and South-east Asian objects. An adjacent gallery showcases the Amaravati sculptures and monuments. Other galleries on the upper floors are devoted to its Japanese, Korean, painting and calligraphy, and Chinese ceramics collections. Highlights of the collections include: East Asia South Asia Southeast Asia Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. The British Museum houses one of the world's most comprehensive collections of ethnographic material from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, representing the cultures of indigenous peoples throughout the world. Over 350,000 objects spanning thousands of years tells the history of mankind from three major continents and many rich and diverse cultures; the collecting of modern artefacts is ongoing. Many individuals have added to the department's collection over the years but those assembled by Henry Christy, Harry Beasley and William Oldman are outstanding. Objects from this department are mostly on display in several galleries on the ground and lower floors. Gallery 24 displays ethnographic from every continent while adjacent galleries focus on North America and Mexico. A long suite of rooms (Gallery 25) on the lower floor display African art. There are plans in place to develop permanent galleries for displaying art from Oceania and South America. Africa The Sainsbury African Galleries display 600 objects from the greatest permanent collection of African arts and culture in the world. The three permanent galleries provide a substantial exhibition space for the museum's African collection comprising over 200,000 objects. A curatorial scope that encompasses both archaeological and contemporary material, including both unique masterpieces of artistry and objects of everyday life. A great addition was material amassed by Sir Henry Wellcome, which was donated by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in 1954. Highlights of the African collection include objects found at megalithic circles in The Gambia, a dozen exquisite Afro-Portuguese ivories, a series of soapstone figures from the Kissi people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, hoard of bronze Kru currency rings from the Sinoe River in Liberia, Asante goldwork and regalia from Ghana including the Bowdich collection, the rare Akan Drum from the same region in west Africa, pair of door panels and lintel from the palace at Ikere-Ekiti in Yorubaland, the Benin and Igbo-Ukwu bronze sculptures, the beautiful Bronze Head of Queen Idia, a magnificent brass head of a Yoruba ruler and quartz throne from Ife, a similar terracotta head from Iwinrin Grove near Ife, the Apapa Hoard from Lagos and other mediaeval bronze hoards from Allabia and the Forçados River in southern Nigeria. Included is an Ikom monolith from Cross River State, several ancestral screens from the Kalabari tribe in the Niger Delta, the Torday collection of central African sculpture, textiles and weaponry from the Kuba Kingdom including three royal figures, the unique Luzira Head from Uganda, processional crosses and other ecclesiastical and royal material from Gondar and Magdala, Ethiopia following the British Expedition to Abyssinia, excavated objects from Great Zimbabwe (that includes a unique soapstone, anthropomorphic figure) and satellite towns such as Mutare including a large hoard of Iron Age soapstone figures, a rare divining bowl from the Venda peoples and cave paintings and petroglyphs from South Africa. Oceania The British Museum's Oceanic collections originate from the vast area of the Pacific Ocean, stretching from Papua New Guinea to Easter Island, from New Zealand to Hawaii. The three main anthropological groups represented in the collection are Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia – Aboriginal art from Australia is considered separately in its own right. Metal working was not indigenous to Oceania before Europeans arrived, so many of the artefacts from the collection are made from stone, shell, bone and bamboo. Prehistoric objects from the region include a bird-shaped pestle and a group of stone mortars from Papua New Guinea. The British Museum is fortunate in having some of the earliest Oceanic and Pacific collections, many of which were put together by members of Cook's and Vancouver's expeditions or by colonial administrators and explorers such as Sir George Grey, Sir Frederick Broome, Joseph Bradshaw, Robert Christison, Gregory Mathews, Frederick Meinertzhagen, Thomas Mitchell and Arthur Gordon, before Western culture significantly impacted on indigenous cultures. The department has also benefited greatly from the legacy of pioneering anthropologists such as AC Haddon, Bronisław Malinowski and Katherine Routledge. An artefact is a wooden Aboriginal shield, probably dating from the late eighteenth century. There is some debate as to whether this shield was found at Botany Bay or, given the nature of the wood being red mangrove which grows abundantly only 500 km north of Botany Bay, possibly obtained through trade networks or at an entirely different location. The Wilson cabinet of curiosities from Palau is an example of pre-contact ware. Another outstanding exemplar is the mourner's dress from Tahiti given to Cook on his second voyage, one of only ten in existence. In the collection is a large war canoe from the island of Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands, one of the last ever to be built in the archipelago. The Māori collection is the finest outside New Zealand with many intricately carved wooden and jade objects and the Aboriginal art collection is distinguished by its wide range of bark paintings, including two very early bark etchings collected by John Hunter Kerr. A particularly important group of objects was purchased from the London Missionary Society in 1911, that includes the unique statue of A'a from Rurutu Island, the rare idol from the isle of Mangareva and the Cook Islands deity figure. Other highlights include the huge Hawaiian statue of Kū-ka-ili-moku or god of war (one of three extant in the world) and the famous Easter Island statues Hoa Hakananai'a and Moai Hava. Americas The Americas collection mainly consists of 19th and 20th century items although the Paracas, Moche, Inca, Maya, Aztec, Taino and other early cultures are well represented. The Kayung totem pole, which was made in the late nineteenth century on Haida Gwaii, dominates the Great Court and provides a fitting introduction to this very wide-ranging collection that stretches from the very north of the North American continent where the Inuit population has lived for centuries, to the tip of South America where indigenous tribes have long thrived in Patagonia. Highlights of the collection include Aboriginal Canadian and Native American objects from North America collected by the 5th Earl of Lonsdale, the Marquis of Lorne, the explorer David Haig-Thomas and Bryan Mullanphy, Mayor of St. Louis, the Squier and Davis collection of prehistoric mound relics from North America, two carved stone bowls in the form of a seated human figure made by ancient North West Coast peoples from British Columbia, the headdress of Chief Yellow Calf from the Arapaho tribe in Wyoming, a lidded rivercane basket from South Carolina and the earliest historic example of Cherokee basketry, a selection of pottery vessels found in prehistoric dwellings at Mesa Verde and Casas Grandes, one of the enigmatic crystal skulls of unknown origin, a collection of nine turquoise Aztec mosaics from Mexico (the largest in Europe), important artefacts from Teotihuacan and Isla de Sacrificios. There are several rare pre-Columbian manuscripts including the Codex Zouche-Nuttall and Codex Waecker-Gotter and post-colonial ones such as the Codex Aubin and Codex Kingsborough, a spectacular series of Mayan lintels from Yaxchilan excavated by the British Mayanist Alfred Maudslay, a very high quality Mayan collection that includes sculptures from Copan, Tikal, Tulum, Pusilha, Naranjo and Nebaj (including the celebrated Fenton Vase), an ornate calcite vase with jaguar handles from the Ulua Valley in Honduras, the Lord Moyne collection from the Bay Islands, Honduras and Boyle collection from Nicaragua, over 20 stone metates with zoomorphic and anthropomorphic ornamentation from Costa Rica, a group of Zemi Figures from Vere, Jamaica, and wooden duhos from the Dominican Republic and The Bahamas. There are a collection of Pre-Columbian human mummies from sites across South America including Ancon, Acari, Arica and Leyva, a number of prestigious pre-Columbian gold and votive objects from Colombia, three axe-shaped gold diadems found near Camaná from the Siguas culture in Peru, unique collection of Moche wooden figures and staffs from the off Peru, ethnographic objects from across the Amazon region including the Schomburgk and Maybury Lewis collections and part of the von Martius and von Spix collection, two rare Tiwanaku pottery vessels from Lake Titicaca and important items from Tierra del Fuego donated by Commander Phillip Parker King. Department of Money and Medals. The British Museum is home to one of the world's finest numismatic collections, comprising about a million objects, including coins, medals, tokens and paper money. The collection spans the entire history of coinage from its origins in the 7th century BC to the present day and is representative of both the East and West. The Department of Coins and Medals was created in 1861 and celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2011. Department of Conservation and Scientific Research. This department was founded in 1920. Conservation has six specialist areas: ceramics & glass; metals; organic material (including textiles); stone, wall paintings and mosaics; Eastern pictorial art and Western pictorial art. The science department has and continues to develop techniques to date artefacts, analyse and identify the materials used in their manufacture, to identify the place an artefact originated and the techniques used in their creation. The department also publishes its findings and discoveries. Libraries and archives. This department covers all levels of education, from casual visitors, schools, degree level and beyond. The museum's various libraries hold in excess of 350,000 books, journals and pamphlets covering all areas of the museum's collection. Also the general museum archives which date from its foundation in 1753 are overseen by this department; the individual departments have their own separate archives and libraries covering their various areas of responsibility, which can be consulted by the public on application. The Anthropology Library is especially large, with 120,000 volumes. However, the Paul Hamlyn Library, which had become the central reference library of the British Museum and the only library there freely open to the general public, closed permanently in August 2011. The website and online database of the collection also provide increasing amounts of information. British Museum Press. The British Museum Press (BMP) is the publishing business and a division of the British Museum Company Ltd., a company and a charity (established in 1973) wholly owned by the trustees of the British Museum. The BMP publishes both popular and scholarly illustrated books to accompany the exhibition programme and explore aspects of the general collection. Profits from their sales goes to support the British Museum. Scholarly titles are published in the Research Publications series, all of which are peer-reviewed. This series was started in 1978 and was originally called Occasional Papers. The series is designed to disseminate research on items in the collection. To date, over 200 books have been published in this series. Between six and eight titles are published each year in this series. They can be found on the British Museum Research Repository. Controversies and criticism. Contested artefacts. It is a point of controversy whether museums should possess artefacts illegally taken from other countries, and the British Museum is a notable target for criticism. The Elgin Marbles, the Benin Bronzes, Ethiopian Tabots and the Rosetta Stone are among the most disputed objects in its collections, and organisations have been formed demanding the return of these artefacts to their native countries. The Elgin Marbles or Parthenon Marbles claimed by Greece have been cited by UNESCO, among others, for restitution. From 1801 to 1812, Lord Elgin's agents removed about half of the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon, as well as sculptures from the Propylaea and Erechtheum. The former director of the museum has stated, "We are indebted to Elgin for having rescued the Parthenon sculptures and others from the Acropolis from the destruction they were suffering, as well as from the damage that the Acropolis monuments, including the sculptures that he did not remove, have suffered since." The British Museum itself damaged some of the artefacts during restoration in the 1930s. In late 2022, the British Museum had entered into preliminary negotiations with the Greek government about the future of the sculptures. There is also controversy over artefacts taken during the destruction of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing by an Anglo-French expeditionary force during the Second Opium War in 1860, an event which drew protest from Victor Hugo. The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others, have been asked since 2009 to open their archives for investigation by a team of Chinese investigators as a part of an international mission to document Chinese national treasures in foreign collections. In 2010 Neil MacGregor, the former Director of the British Museum, said he hoped that both British and Chinese investigators would work together on the controversial collection. In 2020 the museum appointed a curator to research the history of its collections, including disputed items. The British Museum has stated that the "restitutionist premise, that whatever was made in a country must return to an original geographical site, would empty both the British Museum and the other great museums of the world". The museum has also argued that the British Museum Act of 1963 prevents any object from leaving its collection once it has entered it. "The Museum owns its collections, but its Trustees are not empowered to dispose of them". Nevertheless, it has returned items such as Tasmanian Aboriginal burial remains when this was consistent with legislation regarding the disposal of items in the collections. Nazi-looted art. In 2002 the heirs of Arthur Feldmann, an art collector murdered in the Holocaust, requested that four old master drawings stolen by the Gestapo in 1939 be returned to the family. A UK High Court judge ruled in 2005 that it would be illegal for the British Museum to return artworks looted by the Nazis to a Jewish family, despite its willingness and moral obligation to do so. The law was changed in 2009, and again in 2022 giving museums additional powers to return looted art or provide compensation. Feldmann's heirs accepted a compensation payment for a looted drawing and stated that they were happy the drawing would remain in the British Museum collection. According to the British Museum Spoliation report published by the Collections Trust in 2017, "Around 30% of some 21,350 continental and British drawings acquired since 1933 have an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the 1933–1945 period". The museum lists these works on its website and investigates claims for restitution. BP sponsorship. Since 2016, there have been a number of protests by activist groups, trade unions and the public against the British Museum's relationship with the oil company BP which the protesters believe implicates the museum in global warming. In July 2019, Ahdaf Soueif resigned from the British Museum's board of trustees in protest against the sponsorship. In February 2020, 1,500 demonstrators, including British Museum staff, took part in a day of protest over the issue. In December 2023, it was announced that the British Museum had agreed to a new £50 million sponsorship deal with BP. Chairman's Advisory Group. The Chairman's Advisory Group is an informal group of business leaders who provide advice to the chairman on various issues including the museum's relationship with the British government and policy on the museum's collections. Its existence was made public after a freedom of information request by a group campaigning against the museum's links with the fossil fuel industry. The museum has declined to name the members of the advisory group as they are acting in their personal capacity. Thefts. Thefts from the museum include: several historic coins and medals in the 1970s; a 17th-century Japanese Kakiemon figure in 1990; two Meiji figurines and a fragment of a gold ring in 1991; fifteen Roman coins and jewellery worth £250,000 in 1993; and a Japanese chest and two Persian books in 1996. In July 2002 a marble head, valued at £50,000, was stolen from the Archaic Greek gallery. In 2004, 15 Chinese artefacts including jewels, ornate hairpins and fingernail guards were stolen. In 2017, it was revealed that a Cartier diamond had been missing since 2011. In August 2023, a staff member was fired after it emerged that items including gold, jewellery and gems had been stolen over a "significant" period of time. The incident led to an investigation by the Metropolitan Police and an independent review by the museum. Some of the missing artefacts were later found to have been sold on eBay for considerably less than their estimated value. The museum had been warned of the thefts as early as 2021. The museum's director, Hartwig Fischer, resigned because of the museum's inadequate response to the warnings of theft. The number of artefacts stolen was estimated to be about 2,000. As a consequence of the thefts, the museum announced a five-year plan to digitise the complete collection and make it available to view online. By May 2024, 626 of the missing items had been recovered. Copyright settlement. In August 2023, the British Museum reached a settlement with the translator Yilin Wang over her translations of poetry by Qiu Jin. The museum had used her work without credit or permission in their exhibition "China's Hidden Century" which ran between May 2023 and October 2023. Tibet naming conventions. In January 2025, the British Museum was criticized by Tibetan human rights groups for referring to Tibet as "Xizang," the current preferred term of the government of the People's Republic of China. Galleries. "Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan" "Department of the Middle East" "Department of Greece and Rome" Digital and online. The museum has a collaboration with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the collection online. Exhibitions. "Forgotten Empire Exhibition" (October 2005 – January 2006) From January to April 2012 the museum presented "", the first major exhibition on the topic of the Hajj, the pilgrimage that is one of the five pillars of Islam.
4677	28481209	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4677	Binomial theorem	In elementary algebra, the binomial theorem (or binomial expansion) describes the algebraic expansion of powers of a binomial. According to the theorem, the power expands into a polynomial with terms of the form , where the exponents and are nonnegative integers satisfying and the coefficient of each term is a specific positive integer depending on and . For example, for , formula_1 The coefficient in each term is known as the binomial coefficient or (the two have the same value). These coefficients for varying and can be arranged to form Pascal's triangle. These numbers also occur in combinatorics, where gives the number of different combinations (i.e. subsets) of elements that can be chosen from an -element set. Therefore is usually pronounced as " choose ". Statement. According to the theorem, the expansion of any nonnegative integer power of the binomial is a sum of the form formula_2 where each formula_3 is a positive integer known as a binomial coefficient, defined as formula_4 This formula is also referred to as the binomial formula or the binomial identity. Using summation notation, it can be written more concisely as formula_5 The final expression follows from the previous one by the symmetry of and in the first expression, and by comparison it follows that the sequence of binomial coefficients in the formula is symmetrical, formula_6 A simple variant of the binomial formula is obtained by substituting for , so that it involves only a single variable. In this form, the formula reads formula_7 Examples. The first few cases of the binomial theorem are: formula_8 In general, for the expansion of on the right side in the th row (numbered so that the top row is the 0th row): An example illustrating the last two points: formula_9 with formula_10. A simple example with a specific positive value of : formula_11 A simple example with a specific negative value of : formula_12 Geometric explanation. For positive values of and , the binomial theorem with is the geometrically evident fact that a square of side can be cut into a square of side , a square of side , and two rectangles with sides and . With , the theorem states that a cube of side can be cut into a cube of side , a cube of side , three rectangular boxes, and three rectangular boxes. In calculus, this picture also gives a geometric proof of the derivative formula_13 if one sets formula_14 and formula_15 interpreting as an infinitesimal change in , then this picture shows the infinitesimal change in the volume of an -dimensional hypercube, formula_16 where the coefficient of the linear term (in formula_17) is formula_18 the area of the faces, each of dimension : formula_19 Substituting this into the definition of the derivative via a difference quotient and taking limits means that the higher order terms, formula_20 and higher, become negligible, and yields the formula formula_21 interpreted as "the infinitesimal rate of change in volume of an -cube as side length varies is the area of of its -dimensional faces". If one integrates this picture, which corresponds to applying the fundamental theorem of calculus, one obtains Cavalieri's quadrature formula, the integral formula_22 – see proof of Cavalieri's quadrature formula for details. Binomial coefficients. The coefficients that appear in the binomial expansion are called binomial coefficients. These are usually written formula_23 and pronounced " choose ". Formulas. The coefficient of is given by the formula formula_24 which is defined in terms of the factorial function . Equivalently, this formula can be written formula_25 with factors in both the numerator and denominator of the fraction. Although this formula involves a fraction, the binomial coefficient formula_26 is actually an integer. Combinatorial interpretation. The binomial coefficient formula_3 can be interpreted as the number of ways to choose elements from an -element set (a combination). This is related to binomials for the following reason: if we write as a product formula_28 then, according to the distributive law, there will be one term in the expansion for each choice of either or from each of the binomials of the product. For example, there will only be one term , corresponding to choosing from each binomial. However, there will be several terms of the form , one for each way of choosing exactly two binomials to contribute a . Therefore, after combining like terms, the coefficient of will be equal to the number of ways to choose exactly elements from an -element set. Proofs. Combinatorial proof. Expanding yields the sum of the products of the form where each is or . Rearranging factors shows that each product equals for some between and . For a given , the following are proved equal in succession: This proves the binomial theorem. Example. The coefficient of in formula_32 equals formula_33 because there are three strings of length 3 with exactly two 's, namely, formula_34 corresponding to the three 2-element subsets of , namely, formula_35 where each subset specifies the positions of the in a corresponding string. Inductive proof. Induction yields another proof of the binomial theorem. When , both sides equal , since and formula_36 Now suppose that the equality holds for a given ; we will prove it for . For , let denote the coefficient of in the polynomial . By the inductive hypothesis, is a polynomial in and such that is formula_26 if , and otherwise. The identity formula_38 shows that is also a polynomial in and , and formula_39 since if , then and . Now, the right hand side is formula_40 by Pascal's identity. On the other hand, if , then and , so we get . Thus formula_41 which is the inductive hypothesis with substituted for and so completes the inductive step. Generalizations. Newton's generalized binomial theorem. Around 1665, Isaac Newton generalized the binomial theorem to allow real exponents other than nonnegative integers. (The same generalization also applies to complex exponents.) In this generalization, the finite sum is replaced by an infinite series. In order to do this, one needs to give meaning to binomial coefficients with an arbitrary upper index, which cannot be done using the usual formula with factorials. However, for an arbitrary number , one can define formula_42 where formula_43 is the Pochhammer symbol, here standing for a falling factorial. This agrees with the usual definitions when is a nonnegative integer. Then, if and are real numbers with , and is any complex number, one has formula_44 When is a nonnegative integer, the binomial coefficients for are zero, so this equation reduces to the usual binomial theorem, and there are at most nonzero terms. For other values of , the series typically has infinitely many nonzero terms. For example, gives the following series for the square root: formula_45 Taking , the generalized binomial series gives the geometric series formula, valid for : formula_46 More generally, with , we have for : formula_47 So, for instance, when , formula_48 Replacing with yields: formula_49 So, for instance, when , we have for : formula_50 Further generalizations. The generalized binomial theorem can be extended to the case where and are complex numbers. For this version, one should again assume and define the powers of and using a holomorphic branch of log defined on an open disk of radius centered at . The generalized binomial theorem is valid also for elements and of a Banach algebra as long as , and is invertible, and . A version of the binomial theorem is valid for the following Pochhammer symbol-like family of polynomials: for a given real constant , define formula_51 and formula_52 for formula_53 Then formula_54 The case recovers the usual binomial theorem. More generally, a sequence formula_55 of polynomials is said to be of binomial type if An operator formula_63 on the space of polynomials is said to be the "basis operator" of the sequence formula_55 if formula_65 and formula_66 for all formula_67. A sequence formula_55 is binomial if and only if its basis operator is a Delta operator. Writing formula_69 for the shift by formula_70 operator, the Delta operators corresponding to the above "Pochhammer" families of polynomials are the backward difference formula_71 for formula_72, the ordinary derivative for formula_73, and the forward difference formula_74 for formula_75. Multinomial theorem. The binomial theorem can be generalized to include powers of sums with more than two terms. The general version is formula_76 where the summation is taken over all sequences of nonnegative integer indices through such that the sum of all is . (For each term in the expansion, the exponents must add up to ). The coefficients formula_77 are known as multinomial coefficients, and can be computed by the formula formula_78 Combinatorially, the multinomial coefficient formula_79 counts the number of different ways to partition an -element set into disjoint subsets of sizes . Multi-binomial theorem. When working in more dimensions, it is often useful to deal with products of binomial expressions. By the binomial theorem this is equal to formula_80 This may be written more concisely, by multi-index notation, as formula_81 General Leibniz rule. The general Leibniz rule gives the th derivative of a product of two functions in a form similar to that of the binomial theorem: formula_82 Here, the superscript indicates the th derivative of a function, formula_83. If one sets and , cancelling the common factor of from each term gives the ordinary binomial theorem. History. Special cases of the binomial theorem were known since at least the 4th century BC when Greek mathematician Euclid mentioned the special case of the binomial theorem for exponent formula_84. Greek mathematician Diophantus cubed various binomials, including formula_85. Indian mathematician Aryabhata's method for finding cube roots, from around 510 AD, suggests that he knew the binomial formula for exponent formula_86. Binomial coefficients, as combinatorial quantities expressing the number of ways of selecting objects out of without replacement (combinations), were of interest to ancient Indian mathematicians. The Jain "Bhagavati Sutra" (c. 300 BC) describes the number of combinations of philosophical categories, senses, or other things, with correct results up through (probably obtained by listing all possibilities and counting them) and a suggestion that higher combinations could likewise be found. The "Chandaḥśāstra" by the Indian lyricist Piṅgala (3rd or 2nd century BC) somewhat cryptically describes a method of arranging two types of syllables to form metres of various lengths and counting them; as interpreted and elaborated by Piṅgala's 10th-century commentator Halāyudha his "method of pyramidal expansion" ("meru-prastāra") for counting metres is equivalent to Pascal's triangle. Varāhamihira (6th century AD) describes another method for computing combination counts by adding numbers in columns. By the 9th century at latest Indian mathematicians learned to express this as a product of fractions , and clear statements of this rule can be found in Śrīdhara's "Pāṭīgaṇita" (8th–9th century), Mahāvīra's "Gaṇita-sāra-saṅgraha" (c. 850), and Bhāskara II's "Līlāvatī" (12th century). The Persian mathematician al-Karajī (953–1029) wrote a now-lost book containing the binomial theorem and a table of binomial coefficients, often credited as their first appearance. An explicit statement of the binomial theorem appears in al-Samawʾal's "al-Bāhir" (12th century), there credited to al-Karajī. Al-Samawʾal algebraically expanded the square, cube, and fourth power of a binomial, each in terms of the previous power, and noted that similar proofs could be provided for higher powers, an early form of mathematical induction. He then provided al-Karajī's table of binomial coefficients (Pascal's triangle turned on its side) up to and a rule for generating them equivalent to the recurrence relation . The Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam was probably familiar with the formula to higher orders, although many of his mathematical works are lost. The binomial expansions of small degrees were known in the 13th century mathematical works of Yang Hui and also Chu Shih-Chieh. Yang Hui attributes the method to a much earlier 11th century text of Jia Xian, although those writings are now also lost. In Europe, descriptions of the construction of Pascal's triangle can be found as early as Jordanus de Nemore's "De arithmetica" (13th century). In 1544, Michael Stifel introduced the term "binomial coefficient" and showed how to use them to express formula_87 in terms of formula_88, via "Pascal's triangle". Other 16th century mathematicians including Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia and Simon Stevin also knew of it. 17th-century mathematician Blaise Pascal studied the eponymous triangle comprehensively in his "Traité du triangle arithmétique". By the early 17th century, some specific cases of the generalized binomial theorem, such as for formula_89, can be found in the work of Henry Briggs' "Arithmetica Logarithmica" (1624). Isaac Newton is generally credited with discovering the generalized binomial theorem, valid for any real exponent, in 1665, inspired by the work of John Wallis's "Arithmetic Infinitorum" and his method of interpolation. A logarithmic version of the theorem for fractional exponents was discovered independently by James Gregory who wrote down his formula in 1670. Applications. Multiple-angle identities. For the complex numbers the binomial theorem can be combined with de Moivre's formula to yield multiple-angle formulas for the sine and cosine. According to De Moivre's formula, formula_90 Using the binomial theorem, the expression on the right can be expanded, and then the real and imaginary parts can be taken to yield formulas for and . For example, since formula_91 But De Moivre's formula identifies the left side with formula_92, so formula_93 which are the usual double-angle identities. Similarly, since formula_94 De Moivre's formula yields formula_95 In general, formula_96 and formula_97There are also similar formulas using Chebyshev polynomials. Series for "e". The number is often defined by the formula formula_98 Applying the binomial theorem to this expression yields the usual infinite series for . In particular: formula_99 The th term of this sum is formula_100 As , the rational expression on the right approaches , and therefore formula_101 This indicates that can be written as a series: formula_102 Indeed, since each term of the binomial expansion is an increasing function of , it follows from the monotone convergence theorem for series that the sum of this infinite series is equal to . Probability. The binomial theorem is closely related to the probability mass function of the negative binomial distribution. The probability of a (countable) collection of independent Bernoulli trials formula_103 with probability of success formula_104 all not happening is formula_105 In abstract algebra. The binomial theorem is valid more generally for two elements and in a ring, or even a semiring, provided that . For example, it holds for two matrices, provided that those matrices commute; this is useful in computing powers of a matrix. The binomial theorem can be stated by saying that the polynomial sequence is of binomial type.
4681	36336112	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4681	Boxing Day	Boxing Day, also called as Offering Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide (26 December). Boxing Day was once a day to donate gifts to those in need, but it has evolved to become a part of Christmas festivities, with many people choosing to shop for deals on Boxing Day. It originated in the United Kingdom and is celebrated in several Commonwealth nations. The attached bank holiday or public holiday may take place on 27 or 28 December if necessary to ensure it falls on a weekday. Boxing Day is also concurrent with the Christian festival Saint Stephen's Day. In parts of Europe, such as east Spain, (Catalonia,Valencia and the Balearic Islands), the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Romania, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Latvia and Ireland, 26 December is Saint Stephen's Day, which is considered the second day of Christmas. Etymology. There are competing theories for the origins of the term, none of which are definitive. The European tradition of giving money and other gifts to those in need, or in service positions, has been dated to the Middle Ages, but the exact origin is unknown; it may refer to the alms box placed in the narthex of Christian churches to collect donations for the poor. The tradition may come from a custom in the late Roman and early Christian era, wherein alms boxes placed in churches were used to collect special offerings tied to the Feast of Saint Stephen, which, in the Western Christian Churches, falls on the same day as Boxing Day, the second day of Christmastide. On this day, it is customary in some localities for the alms boxes to be opened and distributed to the poor. The "Oxford English Dictionary" gives the earliest attestation from Britain in 1743, defining it as "the day after Christmas day", and saying "traditionally on this day tradespeople, employees, etc., would receive presents or gratuities (a "Christmas box") from their customers or employers." The term "Christmas box" dates back to the 17th century, and among other things meant: A present or gratuity given at Christmas: In Great Britain, usually confined to gratuities given to those who are supposed to have a vague claim upon the donor for services rendered to him as one of the general public by whom they are employed and paid, or as a customer of their legal employer; the undefined theory being that as they have done offices for this person, for which he has not directly paid them, some direct acknowledgement is becoming at Christmas. In Britain, it was a custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year. This is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 19 December 1663. This custom is linked to an older British tradition in which the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families since they would have had to serve their masters on Christmas Day. The employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts, bonuses, and sometimes leftover food. Until the late 20th century, there continued to be a tradition among many in the UK to give a Christmas gift, usually cash, to vendors, although not on Boxing Day, as many would not work on that day. Date. Saint Stephen's Day, a religious holiday, also falls on 26 December. In the United Kingdom, Boxing Day could not fall on Sunday 26 December. Instead, Boxing Day would be celebrated on Monday 27 December, with the preceding Sunday called Christmas Sunday. This rule was independent of the rule of bank holidays being taken in lieu. Over time Sunday 26 December increasingly became referred to as Boxing Day. Unlike the contemporary understanding of Boxing Day itself, the associated bank holiday or public holiday always falls on a weekday. When 25 December falls on a Saturday and 26 December falls on a Sunday, the Christmas Day substitute holiday is observed on Monday 27 December, with the Boxing Day substitute holiday observed on Tuesday 28 December. When Christmas Day is a Sunday, the Boxing Day holiday is still observed on Monday 26 December, with the substitute holiday for Christmas Day observed on Tuesday 27 December. The Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, which regulates UK bank holidays, does not officially name the 26 December bank holiday as Boxing Day, but states that it falls on "26th December, if it be not a Sunday." Shopping. In the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Trinidad and Tobago, Boxing Day is primarily known as a shopping holiday. Boxing Day sales are common, and shops often allow dramatic price reductions. For many merchants, Boxing Day has become the day of the year with the greatest revenue. In the UK, it was estimated in 2009 that up to 12 million shoppers appeared at the sales (a rise of almost 20% compared to 2008, although this was also affected by the fact that the VAT was about to revert to 17.5% from 1 January, following the temporary reduction to 15%). Many retailers open very early (typically 5 am or even earlier) and offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. It is not uncommon for long queues to form early in the morning of 26 December, hours before the opening of shops holding the big sales, especially at big-box consumer electronics retailers. Many stores have a limited quantity of big draw or deeply discounted items. Because of the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, many choose to stay at home and avoid the hectic shopping experience. Local media often covers the event, mentioning how early the shoppers began queuing up and showing videos of shoppers queuing and later leaving with their purchased items. Many retailers have implemented practices aimed at managing large numbers of shoppers. They may limit entrances, restrict the number of patrons in a store at a time, provide tickets to people at the head of the queue to guarantee them a hot ticket item, or canvass queued-up shoppers to inform them of inventory limitations. In some areas of Canada, particularly in Atlantic Canada and parts of Northern Ontario, most retailers are prohibited from opening on Boxing Day, either by provincial law or by municipal bylaw, or by informal agreement among major retailers, to provide a day of relaxation following Christmas Day. In these areas, sales otherwise scheduled for 26 December are moved to the 27th. The city council of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, which was the largest city in Canada to maintain this restriction as of the early 2010s, formally repealed its store hours bylaw on 9 December 2014. While Boxing Day is 26 December, many retailers run the sales for several days before or after 26 December, often up to New Year's Eve, branding it as "Boxing Week". Notably, in the recession of late 2008, a record number of retailers held early promotions because of the weak economy. In 2009, many retailers with both online and High Street stores launched their online sales on Christmas Eve and their High Street sales on Boxing Day. Comparisons to Black Friday. In terms of seasonal or holiday shopping traditions, Boxing Day sales have been compared to the US phenomenon of Black Friday salesBlack Friday being the Friday following the American Thanksgiving holiday in late November. In the late 2000s, when the Canadian and United States dollars were near parity, many Canadian retailers began to hold Black Friday promotions in an effort to discourage shoppers from crossing the border to visit United States stores. This may have been a contributory factor, since 2013, in a relative decline of traditional Canadian Boxing Day sales, when compared to sales on Black Friday. The traditional Boxing Day sales in the United Kingdom were never as large an event as the Black Friday sales are in the United States. However, many British retailers began to see an opportunity to import the Black Friday tradition into the UK, not to replace Boxing Day sales, but as an addition to their overall seasonal promotions. However, Black Friday and Boxing Day are close enough together that spending on one sale was likely to affect spending on the other. Ultimately, the result was a marked decline in traditional Boxing Day sales in the UK. The change was initially facilitated, although not necessarily by design, by U.S.-owned retailers such as Amazon, and Asda (then a subsidiary of US-based Walmart). This phenomenon was furthered by a general decline in traditional high-street shopping and a growing online marketplace, which is more international by nature. This led, in 2015, to greater November retail sales in the UK than in December for the first time. In 2019, a retail analysis firm estimated that there was a 9.8% drop in British store traffic on Boxing Day in comparison to 2018 (the largest year-over-year drop since 2010), citing several factors, such as the weather, the increased prominence of online shopping, uncertainties in the wake of the general election, and the growing prominence of Black Friday sales. Boxing Day sales are not a prominent tradition in the United States, although many retailers often begin after-Christmas sales that day. It is typically the earliest starting day after Christmas for people to return unwanted gifts for exchanges or refunds and to redeem gift cards. Sport. In the United Kingdom, it is traditional for the Home Nations' major football leagues (including, most prominently, the Premier League, Scottish Premiership, and NIFL Premiership) to hold a full programme of fixtures on Boxing Day. Originally, matches on Boxing Day were played against local rivals so that teams and their fans would not have to travel long distances to away games on the day after Christmas. The 2022 Premier League Boxing Day fixtures saw the return of domestic top flight football for the 2022–23 Premier League season, following the six-week break for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. In Italy, Boxing Day football was played for the first time in the 2018–19 Serie A season. The experiment was successful, with Italian stadiums 69% full on average – more than any other match day in December 2018. In rugby league, festive fixtures were a staple of the traditional winter season. Since the transition to a summer season in the 1990s, no formal fixtures are now arranged on Boxing Day but some clubs, such as Wakefield Trinity, arrange a traditional local derby friendly fixture instead. Since 1980, the Australian cricket team has traditionally opened one of the test matches of its summer season on Boxing Day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. While several test matches had occasionally been held at the MCG around Boxing Day, it was not until 1980 that the concept was formalized by the Australian Cricket Board. The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race is also traditionally held on Boxing Day. In horse racing, there is the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park Racecourse in Surrey, England. It is the second most prestigious chase in Britain, after the Cheltenham Gold Cup. In addition to the prestigious race at Kempton, in Britain, it is usually the day with the most racing meetings of the year, with eight in 2016, in addition to three more in Ireland. In Barbados, the final day of horse racing is held on Boxing Day at The Historic Garrison Savannah, a UNESCO world heritage site. This tradition has been going on for decades in this former British colony. Boxing Day is one of the main days in the hunting calendar for hunts in the UK and US, with most hunts (both mounted foxhound or harrier packs and foot packs of beagles or bassets) holding meets, often in town or village centres. Several ice hockey contests are associated with the day. The IIHF World Junior Championship typically begins on 26 December, while the Spengler Cup also begins on 23 December in Davos, Switzerland; the Spengler Cup competition includes HC Davos, Team Canada, and other top European hockey teams. The National Hockey League traditionally had close to a full slate of games (10 were played in 2011), following the league-wide days off given for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. However, the 2013 collective bargaining agreement (which followed a lock-out) extended the league mandate of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off to include Boxing Day, except when it falls on a Saturday, in which case the league can choose to make 23 December a league-wide off day instead for that year. In Sweden, the related sport of bandy is also associated with the day, with Saint Stephen's Day bandy games having become an established tradition. In some African Commonwealth nations, particularly Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, professional boxing contests are held on Boxing Day. This practice has also been followed for decades in Guyana and Italy. Food. In the UK it is common to eat leftovers from the previous day's Christmas dinner, with turkey often being used in a Boxing Day sandwich or curry. Boxing Day Tsunami. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami occurred on 26 December and thus has been referred to as "the Boxing Day Tsunami".
4687	33447305	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4687	Balochistan, Pakistan	Balochistan (; ; , ) is a province of Pakistan. Located in the southwestern region of the country, Balochistan is the largest province of Pakistan by land area but is the least populated one. It is bordered by the Pakistani provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the north-east, Punjab to the east and Sindh to the south-east; shares international borders with Iran to the west and Afghanistan to the north; and is bound by the Arabian Sea to the south. Balochistan is an extensive plateau of rough terrain divided into basins by ranges of sufficient heights and ruggedness. It has a large deep sea port, the Port of Gwadar lying in the Arabian Sea. Although it makes up about 44% of the land area of Pakistan, only 5% of it is arable and it is noted for an extremely dry desert climate. Despite this, agriculture and livestock make up about 47% of Balochistan's economy. The name "Balochistan" means "the land of the Baloch people". Largely underdeveloped, its economy is also dominated by natural resources, especially its natural gas fields. Aside from Quetta, the second-largest city of the province is Turbat in the south, while another area of major economic importance is the port city of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, an emerging future business hub. History. Early history. Balochistan occupies the very southeasternmost portion of the Iranian plateau, the setting for the earliest known farming settlements in the pre-Indus Valley civilisation era, the earliest of which was Mehrgarh, dated at 7000 BCE, within the province. Balochistan marked the westernmost extent of civilisation. Centuries before the arrival of Islam in the seventh century, parts of Balochistan were ruled by the Paratarajas, an Indo-Scythian dynasty. At certain times, the Kushans also held political sway in parts of Balochistan. The Hindu Sewa Dynasty ruled parts of Balochistan, chiefly Kalat. The Sibi Division, which was carved out of Quetta Division and Kalat Division in 1974, derives its name from Rani Sewi, the queen of the Sewa dynasty. The region came under rule during the reign of King Kay Khosrow of Iran of Kayanian dynasty. The Baloch, under the command of Ashkash, conquered this land, which Makran was a part of Balochistan. The remnants of the earliest people in Balochistan were the Brahui people, a Dravidian speaking people. The Brahuis retained the Dravidian language throughout the millennias. Although during the Stone and Bronze Age and Alexander the Great's empire an indigenous population existed, the Baloch people themselves did not enter the region until the 14th century CE. A theory of the origin of the Baloch people, the largest ethnic group in the region, is that they are of Median descent. Arrival of Islam. In 654, Abdulrehman ibn Samrah, governor of Sistan and the newly emerged Rashidun caliphate at the expense of Sassanid Persia and the Byzantine Empire, sent an Islamic army to crush a revolt in Zaranj, which is now in southern Afghanistan. After conquering Zaranj, a column of the army pushed north, conquering Kabul and Ghazni, in the Hindu Kush mountain range, while another column moved through Quetta District in north-western Balochistan and conquered the area up to the ancient cities of "Dawar" and "Qandabil" (Bolan). It is documented that the major settlements, falling within today's province, became in 654 controlled by the Rashidun caliphate, except for the well-defended mountain town of "QaiQan" which is now Kalat. During the caliphate of Ali, a revolt broke out in southern Balochistan's Makran region. In 663, during the reign of Umayyad Caliph Muawiyah I, his Muslim rule lost control of north-eastern Balochistan and Kalat when Haris ibn Marah and a large part of his army died in battle against a revolt in Kalat. Pre-modern era. In the 15th century, Mir Chakar Khan Rind became the first Sirdar of Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani Balochistan. He was a close aide of the Timurid ruler Humayun, and was succeeded by the Khanate of Kalat, which owed allegiance to the Mughal Empire. Later, Nader Shah won the allegiance of the rulers of eastern Balochistan. He ceded Kalhora, one of the Sindh territories of Sibi-Kachi, to the Khanate of Kalat. Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Afghan Empire, also won the allegiance of that area's rulers, and many Baloch fought under him during the Third Battle of Panipat. Most of the area would eventually revert to local Baloch control after Afghan rule. Colonial era. In 1876, northern Baluchistan became one of the presidencies and provinces of British India in colonial India. During this time from the fall of the Durrani Empire in 1823, four princely states were recognised and reinforced in Balochistan: Makran, Kharan, Las Bela and Kalat. In 1876, Robert Sandeman negotiated the Treaty of Kalat, which brought the Khan's territories, including Kharan, Makran, and Las Bela, under British protection, even though they remained independent princely states. After the Second Afghan War was ended by the Treaty of Gandamak in May 1879, the Afghan Emir ceded the districts of Quetta, Pishin, Harnai, Sibi and Thal Chotiali to British control. On 1 April 1883, the British took control of the Bolan Pass, south-east of Quetta, from the Khan of Kalat. In 1887, small additional areas of Balochistan were declared British territory. In 1893, Sir Mortimer Durand negotiated an agreement with the Amir of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, to fix the Durand Line running from Chitral to Balochistan as the boundary between the Emirate of Afghanistan and British-controlled areas. Two devastating earthquakes occurred in Balochistan during British colonial rule: the 1935 Quetta earthquake, which devastated Quetta, and the 1945 Balochistan earthquake with its epicentre in the Makran region. During the time of the Indian independence movement, "three pro-Congress parties were still active in Balochistan's politics apart from Balochistan's Muslim League", such as the Anjuman-i-Watan Baluchistan, which favoured a united India and opposed its partition. After independence. In British-ruled Colonial India, Baluchistan contained a Chief Commissioner's province and princely states (including Kalat, Makran, Las Bela and Kharan) that became a part of Pakistan. The province's Shahi Jirga (the grand council of tribal elders) and the non-official members of the Quetta Municipality, according to the Pakistani narrative, agreed to join Pakistan unanimously on 29 June 1947; however, the Shahi Jirga was stripped of its members from the Kalat State prior to the vote. The then-president of the Baluchistan Muslim League, Qazi Muhammad Isa, informed Muhammad Ali Jinnah that "Shahi Jirga in no way represents the popular wishes of the masses" and that members of the Kalat State were "excluded from voting; only representatives from the British part of the province voted and the British part included the leased areas of Quetta, Nasirabad Tehsil, Nushki and Bolan Agency." Following the referendum, on 22 June 1947 the Khan of Kalat received a letter from members of the Shahi Jirga, as well as sardars from the leased areas of Baluchistan, stating that they, "as a part of the Baloch nation, were a part of the Kalat state too" and that if the question of Baluchistan's accession to Pakistan arise, "they should be deemed part of the Kalat state rather than (British) Balochistan". This has brought into question whether an actual vote took place. Political scientist Salman Rafi Sheikh, in locating the origins of the insurgency in Balochistan, says "that Balochistan's accession to Pakistan was, as against the officially projected narrative, not based upon consensus, nor was support for Pakistan overwhelming. What this manipulation indicates is that even before formally becoming a part of Pakistan, Balochistan had fallen a prey to political victimization." Initially aspiring for independence, the Khan of Kalat finally acceded to Pakistan on 27 March 1948 after period of negotiations with Pakistan. The signing of the Instrument of Accession by Ahmad Yar Khan led his brother, Prince Abdul Karim, to revolt against his brother's decision due to their family rift. in July 1948. Princes Agha Abdul Karim Baloch and Muhammad Rahim refused to lay down arms, leading the Dosht-e Jhalawan in unconventional attacks on the army until 1950. The Prince indulged in Terror activities without any assistance from others. Jinnah and his successors allowed Yar Khan to retain his title until the province's dissolution in 1955. Insurgencies by Baloch nationalists took place in 1948, 1958–59, 1962–63 and 1973–77, with a new ongoing insurgency by autonomy-seeking Baloch groups since 2003. While many Baloch support the demand for autonomy, the majority are not interested in seceding from Pakistan. At a press conference on 8 June 2015 in Quetta, Balochistan's Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti accused India's prime minister Narendra Modi of openly supporting terrorism. Bugti implicated India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of being responsible for recent attacks at military bases in Smangli and Khalid, and for subverting the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) agreement. Gwadar, a region of Balochistan, was a colony of Oman for more than a century, and in the 1960s Pakistan took over the land. Many people in this region are therefore Omani. Geography. Balochistan is situated in the southwest of Pakistan and covers an area of . It is Pakistan's largest province by area, constituting 44% of Pakistan's total landmass. The province is bordered by Afghanistan to the north and north-west, Iran to the south-west, Punjab and Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to the north-east. To the south lies the Arabian Sea. Balochistan is located on the south-eastern part of the Iranian plateau. It borders the geopolitical regions of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. Balochistan lies at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz and provides the shortest route from seaports to Central Asia. Its geographical location has placed the otherwise desolate region in the scope of competing for global interests for all of recorded history. The capital city Quetta is located in a densely populated portion of the Sulaiman Mountains in the northeast of the province. It is situated in a river valley near the Bolan Pass, which has been used as the route of choice from the coast to Central Asia, entering through Afghanistan's Kandahar region. The British and other historic empires have crossed the region to invade Afghanistan by this route. Balochistan is rich in exhaustible and renewable resources; it is the second major supplier of natural gas in Pakistan. The province's renewable and human resource potential has not been systematically measured or exploited. Local inhabitants have chosen to live in towns and have relied on sustainable water sources for thousands of years. Climate. The climate of the upper highlands is characterised by very cold winters and hot summers. In the lower highlands, winters vary from extremely cold in northern districts Ziarat, Quetta, Kalat, Muslim Baagh and Khanozai, where temperatures can drop to , to milder conditions closer to the Makran coast. Winters are mild on the plains, with temperatures never falling below freezing point. Summers are hot and dry, especially in the arid zones of Chagai and Kharan districts. The plains are also very hot in summer, with temperatures reaching . The record highest temperature, , was recorded in Sibi on 26 May 2010, exceeding the previous record, . Other hot areas include Turbat and Dalbandin. The desert climate is characterised by hot and very arid conditions. Occasionally, strong windstorms make these areas very inhospitable. Government and politics. In common with the other provinces of Pakistan, Balochistan has a parliamentary form of government. The ceremonial head of the province is the Governor, who is appointed by the President of Pakistan on the advice of the provincial Chief Minister. The Chief Minister, the province's chief executive, is normally the leader of the largest political party or alliance of parties in the provincial assembly. The unicameral Provincial Assembly of Balochistan comprises 65 seats of which 11 are reserved for women and 3 reserved for non-Muslims. The judicial branch of government is carried out by the Balochistan High Court, which is based in Quetta and headed by a Chief Justice. Besides dominant Pakistan-wide political parties (such as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Pakistan Muslim League (N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party), Balochistan nationalist parties (such as the National Party and the Balochistan National Party (Mengal)) have been prominent in the province. Administrative divisions. For administrative purposes, the province is divided into seven divisions: Kalat, Makran, Nasirabad, Quetta, Sibi, Zhob and Rakhshan. This divisional level was abolished in 2000, but restored after the 2008 election. Each division is under an appointed commissioner. The seven divisions are further subdivided into 36 districts: As of June 2021, there are eight divisions. The eighth division, Loralai Division was created by bifurcating Zhob Division. Demographics. Balochistan's population density is low due to the mountainous terrain and scarcity of water. In March 2012, preliminary census figures showed that the population of Balochistan, not including the districts of Khuzdar, Kech and Panjgur, had reached 13,162,222, an increase of 139.3% from 5,501,164 in 1998. The population constituted 6.85% of Pakistan's total population. This was the largest increase in population in any province of Pakistan during that time period, almost thrice the national increase of 46.9%. Official estimates of Balochistan's population grew from approximately 7.45 million in 2003 to 7.8 million in 2005. The 2023 Census enumerated a population of 14,894,402. Languages and ethnicities. According to the preliminary results of the 2023 census, the languages with the most native speakers in the province are Balochi, spoken by 39.91% of the population (an increase of 4% compared to the 2017 census), and Pashto whose share is at 34.34%. The Pashtuns mainly inhabit the north of Balochistan and form the majority in Quetta. Baloch on the other hand are found throughout Balochistan, but most highly concentrated in the west and south of the province. Brahui is spoken by 17.22% mainly in the central part of Balochistan. Other languages include Sindhi (3.81%), Saraiki (2.19%), Punjabi (0.59%), Urdu (0.53%) and others at (1.5%). Balochi forms the majority in 21 districts and Pashto forms majority in 9 districts of Balochistan. Brahui has majority in 4 districts. In the Lasbela, Hub districts and in Kachhi plain region a large minority of the population speaks Lasi and Siraiki, which are dialects of Sindhi. According to the Ethnologue, households speaking Balochi, whose primary dialect is Makrani constitutes 13%, Rukhshani 10%, Sulemani 7%, and Khetrani 3% of the population. Other languages spoken are Lasi, Urdu, Punjabi, Hazargi, Sindhi, Saraiki, Dehvari, Dari, Tajik, Hindko, Uzbek, and Hindki. The 2005 census concerning Afghans in Pakistan showed that a total of 769,268 Afghan refugees were temporarily staying in Balochistan. However, there are probably fewer Afghans living in Balochistan today as many refugees repatriated in 2013. As of 2015, there are only 327,778 registered Afghan refugees according to the UNHCR. Religion. According to the 2017 Census, nearly all of the population of Balochistan were Muslims. There were also Hindu and Christian minorities in the province. The Hindu population in the province was approximately 49,133 (including the Scheduled Castes). The Shri Hinglaj Mata mandir which is the largest Hindu pilgrimage centre in Pakistan is situated in Balochistan. There was also a Christian minority of 26,462 individuals in the province. Education. The literacy rate of the province in 2017 was 43.6%, an increase from 24.8% in 1998. Economy. The economy of Balochistan is largely based upon agriculture, livestock, fisheries, production of natural gas, coal and other minerals. Though agriculture and livestock play a dominant role in the provincial economy by contributing 47% of its GDP, it faced intense damages due to the 2022 Pakistan floods. The floods killed around 500,000 of Balochistan's livestock and damaged cultivation and agricultural output in 32 out of 35 districts of the province. The Lasbela district was the worst hit as the floods washed away fourt-fifth's of the homes, crops and livestock. Due to the floods and severe drought conditions, the province faces food insecurity and is 85% dependent on the Sindh and Punjab provinces for the supply of wheat. Furthermore, with the exception of Quetta, Balochistan has been called a "neglected province where a majority of population lacks amenities". Although the province is rich in natural resources capable of uplifting its economy, most of them have not been fully utilised for the welfare of the population and are yet to be explored or developed. Since the mid-1970s, the province's contribution to Pakistan's GDP has dropped from 4.9 to 3.7%, and as of 2007 it had the highest poverty rate and infant and maternal mortality rate, and the lowest literacy rate in comparison to other provinces, factors some allege have contributed to the insurgency. However, in seventh NFC awards, Punjab province and Federal contributed to increase Baluchistan share more than its entitled population based share. In Balochistan poverty is increasing. In 2001–2002 poverty incidences were at 48% and by 2005–2006 these were at 50.9%. According to a report on Dawn, the rate of multidimensional poverty in Balochistan had risen to 71% by 2016. Several major development projects, including the construction of a new deep sea port at the strategically important town of Gwadar, are in progress in Balochistan. The port is projected to be the hub of an energy and trade corridor to and from China, Middle East and the Central Asian republics. The Mirani Dam on the Dasht River, west of Turbat in the Makran Division, is being built to provide water to expand agricultural land use by where it would otherwise be unsustainable. In the district Lasbela, there is an oil refinery owned by Byco International Incorporated (BII), which is capable of processing 120,000 barrels of oil per day. A power station is located adjacent to the refinery. Several cement plants and a marble factory are also located there. One of the world's largest ship breaking yards is located on the coast. Natural resource extraction. Balochistan's share of Pakistan's national income has historically ranged between 3.7% to 4.9%. Since 1972, Balochistan's gross income has grown in size by 2.7 times. Outside Quetta, the resource extraction infrastructure of the province is gradually developing but still lags far behind other parts of Pakistan. The agreements for royalty rights and ownership of mineral rights were reached during a period of unprecedented natural disasters, economic, social, political, and cultural unrest in Pakistan. The negotiations were widely considered to be insufficiently transparent. Tourism. Following is a list of a few tourist attractions and places of interest in Balochistan:
4688	32691084	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4688	William M. Tweed	William Magear "Boss" Tweed (April 3, 1823 – April 12, 1878) was an American politician most notable for being the political boss of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party's political machine that played a major role in the politics of 19th-century New York City and State. At the height of his influence, Tweed was the third-largest landowner in New York City, a director of the Erie Railroad, a director of the Tenth National Bank, a director of the New-York Printing Company, the proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel, a significant stockholder in iron mines and gas companies, a board member of the Harlem Gas Light Company, a board member of the Third Avenue Railway Company, a board member of the Brooklyn Bridge Company, and the president of the Guardian Savings Bank. Tweed was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1852 and the New York County Board of Supervisors in 1858, the year that he became the head of the Tammany Hall political machine. He was also elected to the New York State Senate in 1867. However, Tweed's greatest influence came from being an appointed member of a number of boards and commissions, his control over political patronage in New York City through Tammany, and his ability to ensure the loyalty of voters through jobs he could create and dispense on city-related projects. Boss Tweed was convicted for stealing an amount estimated by an aldermen's committee in 1877 at between $25 million and $45 million from New York City taxpayers by political corruption, but later estimates ranged as high as $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ). Unable to make bail, he escaped from jail once but was returned to custody. He died in the Ludlow Street Jail. Early life and education. Tweed was born April 3, 1823, at 1 Cherry Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The son of a third-generation Scottish chair-maker, Tweed grew up on Cherry Street. His grandfather arrived in the United States from a town near the River Tweed close to Edinburgh. Tweed's religious affiliation was not widely known in his lifetime, but at the time of his funeral "The New York Times", quoting a family friend, reported that his parents had been Quakers and "members of the old Rose Street Meeting house". At the age of 11, he left school to learn his father's trade, and then became an apprentice to a saddler. He also studied to be a bookkeeper and worked as a brushmaker for a company he had invested in, before eventually joining in the family business in 1852. On September 29, 1844, he married Mary Jane C. Skaden and lived with her family on Madison Street for two years. Early career. Tweed became a member of the Odd Fellows and the Masons, and joined a volunteer fire company, Engine No. 12. In 1848, at the invitation of state assemblyman John J. Reilly, he and some friends organized the Americus Fire Company No. 6, also known as the "Big Six", as a volunteer fire company, which took as its symbol a snarling red Bengal tiger from a French lithograph, a symbol which remained associated with Tweed and Tammany Hall for many years. At the time, volunteer fire companies competed vigorously with each other; some were connected with street gangs and had strong ethnic ties to various immigrant communities. The competition could become so fierce, that burning buildings would sometimes be ignored as the fire companies fought each other. Tweed became known for his ax-wielding violence, and was soon elected the Big Six foreman. Pressure from Alfred Carlson, the chief engineer, got him thrown out of the crew. However, fire companies were also recruiting grounds for political parties at the time, thus Tweed's exploits came to the attention of the Democratic politicians who ran the Seventh Ward. The Seventh Ward put him up for Alderman in 1850, when Tweed was 26. He lost that election to the Whig candidate Morgan Morgans, but ran again the next year and won, garnering his first political position. Tweed then became associated with the "Forty Thieves", the group of aldermen and assistant aldermen who, up to that point, were known as some of the most corrupt politicians in the city's history. Tweed was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1852, but his two-year term was undistinguished. In an attempt by Republican reformers in Albany, the state capital, to control the Democratic-dominated New York City government, the power of the New York County Board of Supervisors was beefed up. The board had 12 members, six appointed by the mayor and six elected, and in 1858 Tweed was appointed to the board, which became his first vehicle for large-scale graft; Tweed and other supervisors forced vendors to pay a 15% overcharge to their "ring" in order to do business with the city. By 1853, Tweed was running the seventh ward for Tammany. The board also had six Democrats and six Republicans, but Tweed often just bought off one Republican to sway the board. One such Republican board member was Peter P. Voorhis, a coal dealer by profession who absented himself from a board meeting in exchange for $2,500 so that the board could appoint city inspectors. Henry Smith was another Republican that was a part of the Tweed ring. Although he was not trained as a lawyer, Tweed's friend, Judge George G. Barnard, certified him as an attorney, and Tweed opened a law office on Duane Street. He ran for sheriff in 1861 and was defeated, but became the chairman of the Democratic General Committee shortly after the election, and was then chosen to be the head of Tammany's general committee in January 1863. Several months later, in April, he became "Grand Sachem", and began to be referred to as "Boss", especially after he tightened his hold on power by creating a small executive committee to run the club. Tweed then took steps to increase his income: he used his law firm to extort money, which was then disguised as legal services; he had himself appointed deputy street commissioner – a position with considerable access to city contractors and funding; he bought the New-York Printing Company, which became the city's official printer, and the city's stationery supplier, the Manufacturing Stationers' Company, and had both companies begin to overcharge the city government for their goods and services. Among other legal services he provided, he accepted almost $100,000 from the Erie Railroad in return for favors. He also became one of the largest owners of real estate in the city. He also started to form what became known as the "Tweed Ring", by having his friends elected to office: George G. Barnard was elected Recorder of New York City; Peter B. Sweeny was elected New York County District Attorney; and Richard B. Connolly was elected City Comptroller. Other judicial members of the Tweed ring included Albert Cardozo, John McCunn, and John K. Hackett. When Grand Sachem Isaac Fowler, who had produced the $2,500 to buy off the Republican Voorhis on the Board of Supervisors, was found to have stolen $150,000 in post office receipts, the responsibility for Fowler's arrest was given to Isaiah Rynders, another Tammany operative who was serving as a United States marshal at the time. Rynders made enough ruckus upon entering the hotel where Fowler was staying that Fowler was able to escape to Mexico. With his new position and wealth came a change in style: Tweed began to favor wearing a large diamond in his shirtfront – a habit that Thomas Nast used to great effect in his attacks on Tweed in "Harper's Weekly" beginning in 1869 – and he bought a brownstone to live in at 41 West 36th Street, then a very fashionable area. He invested his now considerable illegal income in real estate, so that by the late 1860s he ranked among the biggest landowners in New York City. Tweed became involved in the operation of the New York Mutuals, an early professional baseball club, in the 1860s. He brought in thousands of dollars per home game by dramatically increasing the cost of admission and gambling on the team. He has been credited with originating the practice of spring training in 1869 by sending the club south to New Orleans to prepare for the season. Tweed was a member of the New York State Senate (4th D.) from 1868 to 1873, sitting in the 91st, 92nd, 93rd, and 94th New York State Legislatures, but not taking his seat in the 95th and 96th New York State Legislatures. While serving in the State Senate, he split his time between Albany, New York and New York City. While in Albany, he stayed in a suite of seven rooms in Delevan House. Accompanying him in his rooms were his favorite canaries. Guests are presumed to have included members of the Black Horse Cavalry, thirty state legislators whose votes were up for sale. In the Senate he helped financiers Jay Gould and Big Jim Fisk to take control of the Erie Railroad from Cornelius Vanderbilt by arranging for legislation that legitimized fake Erie stock certificates that Gould and Fisk had issued. In return, Tweed received a large block of stock and was made a director of the company. Tweed was also subsequently elected to the board of the Gould-controlled Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad (future Pennsylvania Railroad) in January 1870. Corruption. After the election of 1869, Tweed took control of the New York City government. His protégé, John T. Hoffman, the former mayor of the city, won election as governor, and Tweed garnered the support of good-government reformers like Peter Cooper and the Union League Club, by proposing a new city charter which returned power to City Hall at the expense of the Republican-inspired state commissions. The new charter passed, thanks in part to $600,000 in bribes Tweed paid to Republicans, and was signed into law by Hoffman in 1870. Mandated new elections allowed Tammany to take over the city's Common Council when they won all fifteen aldermanic contests. The new charter put control of the city's finances in the hands of a Board of Audit, which consisted of Tweed, who was Commissioner of Public Works, Mayor A. Oakey Hall and Comptroller Richard "Slippery Dick" Connolly, both Tammany men. Hall also appointed other Tweed associates to high offices – such as Peter B. Sweeny, who took over the Department of Public Parks – providing what became known as the Tweed Ring with even firmer control of the New York City government and enabling them to defraud the taxpayers of many more millions of dollars. In the words of Albert Bigelow Paine, "their methods were curiously simple and primitive. There were no skilful manipulations of figures, making detection difficult ... Connolly, as Controller, had charge of the books, and declined to show them. With his fellows, he also 'controlled' the courts and most of the bar." Crucially, the new city charter allowed the Board of Audit to issue bonds for debt in order to finance opportunistic capital expenditures the city otherwise could not afford. This ability to float debt was enabled by Tweed's guidance and passage of the Adjusted Claims Act in 1868. Contractors working for the city – "Ring favorites, most of them – were told to multiply the amount of each bill by five, or ten, or a hundred, after which, with Mayor Hall's 'O. K.' and Connolly's endorsement, it was paid ... through a go-between, who cashed the check, settled the original bill and divided the remainder ... between Tweed, Sweeny, Connolly and Hall". For example, the construction cost of the New York County Courthouse, begun in 1861, grew to nearly $13 million—about $ in dollars, and nearly twice the cost of the Alaska Purchase in 1867. "A carpenter was paid $360,751 (roughly $ in ) for one month's labor in a building with very little woodwork ... a plasterer got $133,187 ($) for two days' work". Tweed bought a marble quarry in Sheffield, Massachusetts, to provide much of the marble for the courthouse at great profit to himself. After the Tweed Charter to reorganize the city's government was passed in 1870, four commissioners for the construction of the New York County Courthouse were appointed. The commission never held a meeting, though each commissioner received a 20% kickback from the bills for the supplies. Tweed and his friends also garnered huge profits from the development of the Upper East Side, especially Yorkville and Harlem. They would buy up undeveloped property, then use the resources of the city to improve the area – for instance by installing pipes to bring in water from the Croton Aqueduct – thus increasing the value of the land, after which they sold and took their profits. The focus on the east side also slowed down the development of the west side, the topography of which made it more expensive to improve. The ring also took their usual percentage of padded contracts, as well as raking off money from property taxes. Despite the corruption of Tweed and Tammany Hall, they did accomplish the development of upper Manhattan, though at the cost of tripling the city's bond debt to almost $90 million. During the Tweed era, the proposal to build a suspension bridge between New York and Brooklyn, then an independent city, was floated by Brooklyn-boosters, who saw the ferry connections as a bottleneck to Brooklyn's further development. In order to ensure that the Brooklyn Bridge project would go forward, State Senator Henry Cruse Murphy approached Tweed to find out whether New York's aldermen would approve the proposal. Tweed's response was that $60,000 for the aldermen would close the deal, and contractor William C. Kingsley put up the cash, which was delivered in a carpet bag. Tweed and two others from Tammany also received over half the private stock of the Bridge Company, the charter of which specified that only private stockholders had voting rights, so that even though the cities of Brooklyn and Manhattan put up most of the money, they essentially had no control over the project. Tweed bought a mansion on Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street, and stabled his horses, carriages and sleighs on 40th Street. By 1871, he was a member of the board of directors of not only the Erie Railroad and the Brooklyn Bridge Company, but also the Third Avenue Railway Company and the Harlem Gas Light Company. He was president of the Guardian Savings Banks and he and his confederates set up the Tenth National Bank to better control their fortunes. Scandal. Tweed's downfall began in 1871. James Watson, who was a county auditor in Comptroller Dick Connolly's office and who also held and recorded the ring's books, died a week after his head was smashed by a horse in a sleigh accident on January 24, 1871. Although Tweed guarded Watson's estate in the week prior to Watson's death, and although another ring member attempted to destroy Watson's records, a replacement auditor, Matthew O'Rourke, associated with former sheriff James O'Brien, provided city accounts to O'Brien. The Orange riot of 1871 in the summer of that year did not help the ring's popularity. The riot was prompted after Tammany Hall banned a parade of Irish Protestants celebrating a historical victory against Catholicism, namely the Battle of the Boyne. The parade was banned because of a riot the previous year in which eight people died when a crowd of Irish Catholic laborers attacked the paraders. Under strong pressure from the newspapers and the Protestant elite of the city, Tammany reversed course, and the march was allowed to proceed, with protection from city policemen and state militia. The result was an even larger riot in which over 60 people were killed and more than 150 injured. Although Tammany's electoral power base was largely centered in the Irish immigrant population, it also needed both the city's general population and elite to acquiesce in its rule, and this was conditional on the machine's ability to control the actions of its people. The July riot showed that this capability was not nearly as strong as had been supposed. Tweed had for months been under attack from "The New York Times" and Thomas Nast, the cartoonist from "Harper's Weekly" – regarding Nast's cartoons, Tweed reportedly said, "Stop them damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures!" – but their campaign had only limited success in gaining traction. They were able to force an examination of the city's books, but the blue-ribbon commission of six businessmen appointed by Mayor A. Oakey Hall, a Tammany man, which included John Jacob Astor III, banker Moses Taylor and others who benefited from Tammany's actions, found that the books had been "faithfully kept", letting the air out of the effort to dethrone Tweed. The response to the Orange riot changed everything, and only days afterwards the "Times"/Nast campaign began to garner popular support. More important, the "Times" started to receive inside information from County Sheriff James O'Brien, whose support for Tweed had fluctuated during Tammany's reign. O'Brien had tried to blackmail Tammany by threatening to expose the ring's embezzlement to the press, and when this failed he provided the evidence he had collected to the "Times". Shortly afterward, county auditor Matthew J. O'Rourke supplied additional details to the "Times", which was reportedly offered $5 million to not publish the evidence. The "Times" also obtained the accounts of the recently deceased James Watson, who was the Tweed Ring's bookkeeper, and these were published daily, culminating in a special four-page supplement on July 29 headlined "Gigantic Frauds of the Ring Exposed". In August, Tweed began to transfer ownership in his real-estate empire and other investments to his family members. The exposé provoked an international crisis of confidence in New York City's finances, and, in particular, in its ability to repay its debts. European investors were heavily positioned in the city's bonds and were already nervous about its management – only the reputations of the underwriters were preventing a run on the city's securities. New York's financial and business community knew that if the city's credit were to collapse, it could potentially bring down every bank in the city with it. Thus, the city's elite met at Cooper Union in September to discuss political reform: but for the first time, the conversation included not only the usual reformers, but also Democratic bigwigs such as Samuel J. Tilden, who had been thrust aside by Tammany. The consensus was that the "wisest and best citizens" should take over the governance of the city and attempt to restore investor confidence. The result was the formation of the executive committee of Citizens and Taxpayers for Financial Reform of the city (also known as "the Committee of Seventy"), which attacked Tammany by cutting off the city's funding. Property owners refused to pay their municipal taxes, and a judge—Tweed's old friend George Barnard—enjoined the city Comptroller from issuing bonds or spending money. Unpaid workers turned against Tweed, marching to City Hall demanding to be paid. Tweed doled out some funds from his own purse—$50,000—but it was not sufficient to end the crisis, and Tammany began to lose its essential base. Shortly thereafter, the Comptroller resigned, appointing Andrew Haswell Green, an associate of Tilden, as his replacement. Green loosened the purse strings again, allowing city departments not under Tammany control to borrow money to operate. Green and Tilden had the city's records closely examined, and discovered money that went directly from city contractors into Tweed's pocket. The following day, they had Tweed arrested. Imprisonment, escape, and death. Tweed was released on $1 million bail, and Tammany set to work to recover its position through the ballot box. Tweed was re-elected to the state senate in November 1871, due to his personal popularity and largesse in his district, but in general Tammany did not do well, and the members of the Tweed Ring began to flee the jurisdiction, many going overseas. Tweed was re-arrested, forced to resign his city positions, and was replaced as Tammany's leader. Once again, he was released on bail—$8 million this time—but Tweed's supporters, such as Jay Gould, felt the repercussions of his fall from power. Tweed's first trial before Judge Noah Davis, in January 1873, ended when the jury was unable to deliver a verdict. Tweed's defense counsel included David Dudley Field II and Elihu Root. His retrial, again before Judge Noah Davis in November resulted in convictions on 204 of 220 counts, a fine of $12,750 (the equivalent of $ today) and a prison sentence of 12 years; a higher court, however, reduced Tweed's sentence to one year. After his release from The Tombs prison, New York State filed a civil suit against Tweed, attempting to recover $6 million in embezzled funds. Unable to put up the $3 million bail, Tweed was locked up in the Ludlow Street Jail, although he was allowed home visits. During one of these on December 4, 1875, Tweed escaped and fled to Spain, where he worked as a common seaman on a Spanish ship. The U.S. government discovered his whereabouts and arranged for his arrest once he reached the Spanish border, where he was recognized from Nast's political cartoons. He was turned over to an American warship, the , which delivered him to authorities in New York City on November 23, 1876, and he was returned to prison. Desperate and broken, Tweed now agreed to testify about the inner workings of the Tweed Ring to a special committee set up by the Board of Aldermen in return for his release. However, after he did so, Tilden, now governor of New York, refused to abide by the agreement, and Tweed remained incarcerated. Death and burial. He died in the Ludlow Street Jail on April 12, 1878, from severe pneumonia, and was buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Mayor Smith Ely Jr. would not allow the flag at City Hall to be flown at half staff. Evaluations. According to Tweed biographer Kenneth D. Ackerman:It's hard not to admire the skill behind Tweed's system ... The Tweed ring at its height was an engineering marvel, strong and solid, strategically deployed to control key power points: the courts, the legislature, the treasury and the ballot box. Its frauds had a grandeur of scale and an elegance of structure: money-laundering, profit sharing and organization. A minority view that Tweed was mostly innocent is presented in a scholarly biography by history professor Leo Hershkowitz. He states:Except for Tweed's own very questionable "confession," there really was no evidence of a "Tweed Ring," no direct evidence of Tweed's thievery, no evidence, excepting the testimony of the informer contractors, of "wholesale" plunder by Tweed...[Instead there was] a conspiracy of self-justification of the corruption of the law by the upholders of that law, of a venal irresponsible press and a citizenry delighting in the exorcism of witchery. In depictions of Tweed and the Tammany Hall organization, most historians have emphasized the thievery and conspiratorial nature of Boss Tweed, along with lining his own pockets and those of his friends and allies. The theme is that the sins of corruption so violated American standards of political rectitude that they far overshadow Tweed's positive contributions to New York City. Although he held numerous important public offices and was one of a handful of senior leaders of Tammany Hall, as well as the state legislature and the state Democratic Party, Tweed was never the sole "boss" of New York City. He shared control of the city with numerous less famous people, such as the villains depicted in Nast's famous circle of guilt cartoon shown above. Seymour J. Mandelbaum has argued that, apart from the corruption he engaged in, Tweed was a modernizer who prefigured certain elements of the Progressive Era in terms of more efficient city management. Much of the money he siphoned off from the city treasury went to needy constituents who appreciated the free food at Christmas time and remembered it at the next election, and to precinct workers who provided the muscle of his machine. As a legislator he worked to expand and strengthen welfare programs, especially those by private charities, schools, and hospitals. With a base in the Irish Catholic community, he opposed efforts of Protestants to require the reading of the King James Bible in public schools, which was done deliberately to keep out Catholics. He facilitated the founding of the New York Public Library, even though one of its founders, Samuel Tilden, was Tweed's sworn enemy in the Democratic Party. Tweed recognized that the support of his constituency was necessary for him to remain in power, and as a consequence he used the machinery of the city's government to provide numerous social services, including building more orphanages, almshouses and public baths. Tweed also fought for the New York State Legislature to donate to private charities of all religious denominations, and subsidize Catholic schools and hospitals. From 1869 to 1871, under Tweed's influence, the state of New York spent more on charities than for the entire time period from 1852 to 1868 combined. During Tweed's regime, the main business thoroughfare Broadway was widened between 34th Street and 59th Street, land was secured for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Upper East Side and Upper West Side were developed and provided the necessary infrastructure – all to the benefit of the purses of the Tweed Ring. Hershkowitz blames the implications of Thomas Nast in "Harper's Weekly" and the editors of "The New York Times", which both had ties to the Republican party. In part, the campaign against Tweed diverted public attention from Republican scandals such as the Whiskey Ring. Tweed himself wanted no particular recognition of his achievements, such as they were. When it was proposed, in March 1871, when he was at the height of his power, that a statue be erected in his honor, he declared: "Statues are not erected to living men ... I claim to be a live man, and hope (Divine Providence permitting) to survive in all my vigor, politically and physically, some years to come." One of Tweed's unwanted legacies is that he has become "the archetype of the bloated, rapacious, corrupt city boss". Middle name. Tweed never signed his middle name with anything other than a plain "M.", and his middle name is often mistakenly listed as "Marcy". His actual middle name was Magear, his mother's maiden name. Confusion derived from a Nast cartoon with a picture of Tweed supplemented with a quote from William L. Marcy, the former governor of New York. References. Notes Citations Bibliography
4689	34532625	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4689	Balsall Heath	Balsall Heath is an inner-city area of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. It has a diverse cultural mix of people and is the location of the Balti Triangle. History. The name is first found as Bordeshale in 1275, which is derived from the Old English words "Bord's healh" meaning 'Bord's heath' or 'Bord's nook' implying a corner or small area of land, perhaps a sheltered hollow in the landscape, protected by trees, possibly within a river-bend. The name stems from the Anglian personal name of one "Bord", who held property in the area, and in this way shares its origin with that of neighbouring Bordesley, first record as Bordesleie or Bordeslea meaning 'Bord's clearing'. Balsall Heath was largely agricultural and park land between Moseley village and the city of Birmingham until the 1850s when expansion along Moseley Road joined the two. Balsall Heath was formerly a chapelry in the parish of King's Norton, in Worcestershire, it was added to the county borough of Birmingham in Warwickshire on 1 October 1891. On 31 December 1894 Balsall Heath became a separate civil parish being formed from the part of King's Norton in the County Borough of Birmingham, on 1 April 1912 the parish was abolished and merged with Birmingham. In 1911 the parish had a population of 39,884. During negotiations in the previous year it had been promised a public baths and a free library. In 1895, the library was opened on Moseley Road and, in 1907, Balsall Heath Baths were opened in an adjoining building. In 1900, the city's College of Art was also opened on Moseley Road. By this time the small lake ("Lady Pool" on old maps) at the end of Ladypool Road had been filled in to create a park. Balsall Heath initially had a reasonably affluent population, which can still be seen in the dilapidated grandeur of some of the larger houses. Brighton Road railway station led to further expansion, and the end of the 19th century saw a proliferation of high-density small terraced houses. A Muslim community was started in June 1940 when two Yemenis purchased an artisan cottage on Mary Street. With the mosque being located in the area, more Muslim immigrants began to move into private lodgings in Balsall Heath. Today, Balsall Heath has one of the largest Muslim communities in Birmingham. It is also home to diverse communities from across the Commonwealth. By the 1980s, many of Balsall Heath's houses were in a dilapidated condition; some still lacked bathrooms or indoor toilets. The local council considered demolishing these properties but chose to refurbish them as part of an urban renewal scheme. Most of these Victorian terraces still exist and, along with more modern social housing, characterise the area today. The area's traditional 'brick' pavements were replaced at this time by the more modern and conventional paving slabs. Balsall Heath's low rents also attracted a bohemian student population. Its proximity to the University of Birmingham, the city centre and the "trendy" area of Moseley were all contributing factors. There was little conflict between the students and locals despite their vastly differing lifestyles. However, a knife-incident in 1991 led to an article in "Redbrick" warning students not to live in the area. In July 2005, Balsall Heath was hit by a tornado, which devastated many buildings around Church Road and Ladypool Road. Birmingham City Council offered loans to those who would otherwise be unable to repair their properties, and the area has now made a full recovery. Red light era. Street prostitution first appeared in Balsall Heath during the 1950s. Property values fell, attracting Birmingham's poorer migrants. By the 1970s, the area was notorious for street robberies and drug dealing. Cheddar Road was the centre of a red-light district worked by 450 women. About half of the 50 houses on this road had prostitutes advertising themselves in the windows, similar to Amsterdam. It was labelled Britain's busiest cul-de-sac. This period of the area's history is depicted in the 1980 film "Prostitute". In 1986, an organisation called ANAWIM was formed by the Sisters of Charity to provide outreach support to the prostitutes. In September 1992, a report was published encouraging the formation of a zone of tolerance towards prostitution in Balsall Heath. This was opposed by residents and a local police inspector. In the following year Samo Paull, a woman working as a prostitute, was abducted from Balsall Heath and murdered. In 1994, residents began to organise street patrols forcing the prostitutes and street criminals out of the area. These patrols had the qualified support of the police but were regarded as vigilantes by some. There was an immediate two-thirds reduction in street and window prostitution. By November 1995, they had been almost eliminated. The area has enjoyed a slow revival. House prices are now similar to those in other inner-city areas, while the crime rate is among the lowest. Politics and governance. Balsall Heath is divided by two wards for elections to Birmingham City Council; Balsall Heath West and Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath East. Balsall Heath West is part of the Birmingham Ladywood constituency for general elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, whereas Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath East is Part of the Birmingham Hall Green Constituency.
4690	49546765	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4690	Bunge & Born	Bunge & Born was a multinational corporation based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, whose diverse interests included food processing and international trade in grains and oilseeds. It is now known as Bunge Limited. History. Bunge & Born was founded in 1883 by Ernesto Bunge, a German Argentine whose uncle, Karl Bunge, had been Consul General in Argentina for both the Netherlands and Prussia, and his brother-in-law, Jorge Born, who had recently arrived from Antwerp. The company superseded the Bunge Company founded in Amsterdam by Johan Bunge, in 1817. Following the purchase of of prime pampas wheat fields, Bunge & Born established "Centenera", their first food processing plant, in 1898. They had one of the largest wheat mills in the country built on a Puerto Madero lot in 1901, and with it, established "Molinos Río de la Plata" (later a leader in the local retail foods market). The company started Argentina's first burlap bag manufacturer, following which they successfully lobbied government policy makers for protective tariffs on the then-critical commercial staple. They established a mortgage bank, the "Banco Hipotecario Franco Argentino", and a subsidiary in Brazil in 1904, and by 1911, they reportedly controlled 79% of Argentine cereal exports (Argentina was, by then, the world's third-largest grain exporter). They later established paint manufacturer "Alba" (1925), chemical and fertilizer maker "Compañía Química", and textile maker "Grafa" (1932), among others; by the late 1920s, the company's annual export receipts alone reached US$300 million. The company inaugurated its neo-Gothic Buenos Aires headquarters on Leandro Alem Avenue, designed by local architect Pablo Naeff, in 1926. Bunge & Born's near-monopoly on cereal and flour exports ended with populist President Juan Perón's 1946 establishment of the IAPI, a state agricultural purchasing and export agent. The company responded by extending its reach into the country fast-growing retail processed foods market, and though its prominence as the nation's chief exporter was partly restored by Perón's 1955 ousting and the IAPI's liquidation, its focus remained domestic over the next three decades. A privately held company, Bunge & Born did not release periodical financial statements, though it did report US$2bn in gross receipts in 1962; by then it had become an agribusiness leader, operating 110 offices worldwide. The Bunge, Born, Hirsch, Engels and De La Tour families remained the company's chief stockholders, and by extension, leaders in the domestic textile, paint, chemical, fertilizer, and food processing industries. On September 19, 1974, however, the consortium was shaken by the kidnapping of siblings Jorge and Juan Born by the far-left terrorist group, Montoneros. Freed for a US$60 million ransom (the largest on record at that time), the ordeal triggered the company headquarters' relocation to São Paulo, Brazil, and contributed to the March 1976 coup. Retaining their Argentine interests (44 companies, by the 1980s), the families continued to suffer from ongoing disputes, and in 1988, CEO Mario Hirsch died from tripping. The election of Carlos Menem to the Argentine Presidency in May 1988, however, resulted in an agreement between the President-elect and Jorge Born that gave the company partial control over national economic policy. Bunge & Born provided the Menem government with its first two economy ministers, and the combination of large rate increases on public services (around 500%), a simplified exchange rate and a massive, mandatory wage hike led to a sharp economic turnaround between July and November 1989. This foray into government policy making, however, ended in a new currency crisis that December and the failure (compounded by the company's lackluster business performance) resulted in Born's 1991 ouster from the board; he was replaced by Chief Operations Officer Octavio Caraballo. Beset by the rift between Jorge Born and his brother, Juan, the prior unity between the shareholders disintegrated as Caraballo struggled to modernize the company. Family frictions intensified when Jorge Born formed a business partnership with one of his former kidnappers, erstwhile Montonero strategist Rodolfo Galimberti. Bunge International. The company was converted into the Bermuda-registered Bunge International in 1994, retaining the Bunge y Born name only in Argentina. Bunge remained a privately held company of 180 shareholders (including the longtime controlling family interests) and divested itself in 1998, of almost all its retail foods interests in favor of a greater role in international agribusiness and commodity markets; by then the company's gross annual turnover had reached US$13 billion. Bunge ultimately went public on the NYSE in 2001, becoming "Bunge Limited".
4691	1294464412	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4691	Big Apple	"The Big Apple" is a nickname for New York City. It was first popularized in the 1920s by John J. Fitz Gerald, a sportswriter for the "New York Morning Telegraph". Its popularity since the 1970s is due in part to a promotional campaign by the New York tourist authorities. Origin. Although the history of "Big Apple" was once thought a mystery, a clearer picture of the term's history has emerged due to the work of historian Barry Popik, and Gerald Cohen of the Missouri University of Science and Technology. A number of false theories had previously existed, including a claim that the term derived from a woman named Eve who ran a brothel in the city. This was subsequently exposed as a hoax. The earliest known usage of "big apple" appears in the book "The Wayfarer in New York" (1909), in which Edward Sandford Martin writes: Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city ... It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap. William Safire considered this the coinage, but because the phrase is not quoted in the text, it is likely that it was used as a metaphor, and not as a nickname for the city. Horse racing origin. "The Big Apple" was popularized as a name for New York City by John J. Fitz Gerald in a number of horse-racing articles for the "New York Morning Telegraph" in the 1920s. The earliest of these was a casual reference on 3 May 1921: Fitz Gerald referred to the "big apple" frequently thereafter. He explained his use in a column dated February 18, 1924, under the headline "Around the Big Apple": Fitz Gerald reportedly first heard "The Big Apple" used to describe New York's racetracks by two African American stable hands at the New Orleans Fair Grounds. Using racing records, Popik traced that conversation to January 1920. In recognition of Fitz Gerald's role in promulgating "The Big Apple" as a nickname for New York City, in 1997 Mayor Rudy Giuliani signed legislation designating as "Big Apple Corner" the southwest corner of West 54th Street and Broadway, the corner on which John J. Fitz Gerald lived from 1934 to 1963. The Hotel Ameritania also once had a plaque which was installed in 1996, according to Popik, but it was removed during renovations to the building and was lost. Evidence can also be found in the "Chicago Defender", an African-American newspaper that had a national circulation. Writing for the "Defender" on September 16, 1922, "Ragtime" Billy Tucker used the name "big apple" to refer to New York in a non-horse-racing context: Tucker had also earlier used "big apple" as a reference to Los Angeles. It is possible that he simply used "big apple" as a nickname for any large city: Popularity. By the late 1920s, New York writers other than Fitz Gerald were starting to use "Big Apple", and were using it in contexts other than horse racing. "The Big Apple" was a popular song and dance in the 1930s. Jazz musicians in the 1930s also contributed to the use of the phrase to refer to New York City, specifically to the city and Harlem as the jazz capital of the world. Beside the song and the dance, two nightclubs in the city used "Big Apple" in their names. Walter Winchell and other writers continued to use the term in the 1940s and early 1950s, but by the late 1950s, if it was known at all, it had come to be considered an outdated nickname for New York. In the early 1970s, however, during the city's fiscal crisis, "People were looking around desperately and some of them seized that old phrase the Big Apple to remind people of when New York had been a strong and powerful city and might become that again," according to the official Manhattan Borough Historian, Dr. Robert Snyder. It was then that the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau – now "NYC Tourism + Conventions", New York City's official marketing and tourism organization – with the help of the Ogilvy & Mather advertising firm, began to promote the city's "Big Apple" nickname to tourists, under the leadership of its president, Charles Gillett. The campaign was a success, and the nickname has remained popular since then. Today, the name is used exclusively to refer to New York City, and is used with regularity by journalists and news headline writers across the English-speaking world.
4692	1301021832	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4692	Boston Corbett	Thomas H. "Boston" Corbett (January 29, 1832 – disappeared ) was an English-born American soldier and milliner who, on April 26, 1865, killed John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. He shot and mortally wounded Booth when his regiment surrounded the barn that Booth was hiding in on the Garrett Farm in Port Royal, Virginia. The American media and public largely considered Corbett a hero for his actions. Known for his devout religious beliefs and eccentric behavior, Corbett was reportedly a good soldier and had been a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison. Corbett drifted around the United States before he was committed to Topeka Asylum for the Insane after being declared insane in 1887. In 1888, he escaped and disappeared from history. Early life and education. Corbett was born in London, England, on January 29, 1832, and immigrated with his family to the US in 1840 when he was seven or eight. The Corbetts moved frequently before settling in Troy, New York. As a teenager, he began apprenticing as a milliner, a profession Corbett would practice intermittently throughout his life. As a result, he was regularly exposed to the mercury(II) nitrate fumes, used at the time to treat fur in order to produce felt used on hats. Excessive exposure to the compound can lead to hallucinations, psychosis and erethism. Historians have theorized that the mental issues Corbett exhibited before and after the Civil War were caused by his exposure to mercury(II) nitrate. Family and religion. After working as a milliner in Troy, Corbett returned to New York City. In the early 1850s, Corbett met and married Susan Rebecca, thirteen years his senior. He became an American citizen on June 9, 1855, taking the oath in a Troy courthouse, and then the couple then moved to Richmond, Virginia. Corbett had a hard time finding and keeping work in the Antebellum South in large part because of his vociferous opposition to slavery. The couple decided to return to New York City by ship, but Susan became ill and died at sea on August 18, 1856. In New York her death was recorded and she was laid to rest. Following Susan's death, Corbett moved to Boston. Grief stricken, he became despondent and, according to friends, began drinking heavily. He could not hold a job and eventually became homeless. After a night of heavy drinking, a street preacher confronted Corbett and persuaded him to join the Methodist Episcopal Church. Reportedly, some evangelical temperance Christians encountered and detained Corbett until he sobered up, undergoing a religious epiphany in the process. In 1857, Corbett began working at a hat manufacturer's shop on Washington Street in downtown Boston. He was reported to be a proficient milliner but was known to proselytize frequently and stop work to pray and sing for co-workers who used profanity in his presence. He also began working as a street preacher and would sermonize and distribute religious literature in North Square. Corbett soon earned a reputation around Boston for being a "local eccentric" and religious fanatic. By the summer of 1858, Corbett fell in with members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, becoming a proselytizer and street preacher. On July 16, 1858, Corbett, while trying to remain chaste, struggled against sexual urges and began reading the Gospel of Matthew, specifically ("And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell.") and ("For there are eunuchs, that were so born from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, that were made eunuchs by men: and there are eunuchs, that made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."). Years later, a friend recounted Corbett saying "that the Lord directed him, in a vision or in some way, to castrate himself," which he did with a pair of scissors. He then ate a meal and attended a prayer meeting before someone was sent for medical treatment. Corbett was released on August 15, and a friend recorded that "he was very much gratified with the result as his passion was not trouble any more...his object was that he might preach the gospel without being tormented by his passions." After being baptized on August 29, Corbett subsequently changed his first name from Thomas to Boston, the city of his conversion. He regularly attended meetings at the Fulton and Bromfield Street churches where his enthusiastic behavior earned him the nickname "The Glory to God man". In an attempt to imitate Jesus, Corbett began to wear his hair very long, but the Union Army forced him to cut it upon enlisting. Corbett was described as friendly and open, helpful to those he saw in need but also quick to condemn those he thought were out of step with God. He routinely gathered up drunken sinners from the streets of New York and took them to his room, where he would sober them up, feed them and restore their health. He also tried to help them find work. Corbett routinely spent all his own money and frequently borrowed from friends. When his milliner boss asked him about his lack of decent clothes, Corbett always said he was "doing the Lord's work." His boss later described him as "a good man, for all of his faults were of the head, and not of the heart." Military career. Enlistment in the Union Army. On April 19, 1861, early in the American Civil War, Corbett, who was anti-slavery, enlisted as a private in Company I of the Union Army's 12th New York State Militia. His eccentric behavior quickly got him into trouble, however; he always carried a Bible and regularly read passages aloud, held unauthorized prayer meetings, and argued with his superior officers. Corbett also castigated them for what he perceived as violations of God's word. He once reprimanded Col. Daniel Butterfield for cursing and taking the Lord's name in vain. Butterfield, in turn, sent Corbett to the guardhouse for several days for insubordination, yet he refused to apologize. Due to his continued disruptive behavior and refusal to take orders, the Army court-martialed Corbett and sentenced him to be shot. However, his sentence was eventually reduced and he was discharged in August 1863. Yet he re-enlisted later that month in Company L, 16th New York Cavalry Regiment. On February 26, 1864, he was demoted to private as punishment for an unknown incident. Andersonville. Despite his religious-oriented eccentricities, Corbett reportedly was a good soldier. On June 24, 1864, after Confederate States Army troops led by John S. Mosby in Culpeper, Virginia had captured a good number of Corbett's comrades, Corbett continued to fire at the enemy from behind a persimmon tree and in a ditch with a seven-shooter repeating rifle. The Confederate Army only succeeded in capturing him on their third attempt after Corbett ran out of ammo. Once he was in custody, a junior officer was so enraged at Corbett's persistence that he leaped from his saddle, knocked the Spencer rifle from Corbett's hand and aimed a pistol at his head. Captain Chapman objected: "Don’t shoot that man! He has a right to defend himself to the last!" Corbett later related to friends that the man who saved his life was Mosby, though this is dubious. Corbett was to be a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison. A fellow prisoner named William Collins later relayed the following incident that happened while en route to the now infamous prison: Fellow POW Richard Thatcher described Corbett as having "qualities that challenged my admiration, even more than the heroism he was capable of displaying in the battlefield. He read passages from the Scriptures to me, and spoke words of sound and wholesome advice, from which I began to learn that he was one who had the courage of his convictions." Corbett, among others, led prayer meetings and patriotic rallies to boost morale, according to John McElroy's eyewitness account in his 1879 memoir "Andersonville". Five months later, in November 1864, the prison released Corbett in a prisoner exchange and he was admitted to a military hospital in Annapolis, Maryland where doctors treated him for scurvy, malnutrition and exposure. Upon Corbett's return to his company, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He later testified for the prosecution in the trial of the commandant of Andersonville Prison, Captain Henry Wirz. Pursuit and death of John Wilkes Booth. John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln, on April 14, 1865. The President died the next day. On the night Booth shot Lincoln, Good Friday, Corbett's regiment was based around the Potomac in Vienna, Virginia. On Saturday morning they searched for signs of the assassins and learned that Booth was the gunman who'd shot the President. Lincoln's funeral included a two-hour procession on Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol Building. Corbett and the rest of the Cavalry joined other regiments leading the hearse, a large wagon drawn by six white horses and draped in black cloth. Corbett's regiment had barely left the Capitol after the funeral parade when orders caught up with Canadian-born Lt. Edward P. Doherty to pursue a lead about Booth. Corbett requested permission to attend night meetings at McKendree Chapel, and was allowed to lead a prayer over the President's death. Corbett was among the first to volunteer when, on Monday, April 24, his regiment was sent to capture Booth. On Wednesday, on April 26, the regiment surrounded Booth and one of his accomplices, David Herold, in a tobacco barn on the Virginia farm of Richard Garrett. Doherty asked Corbett "to deploy the men right and left" to surround the farm. Corbett and other soldiers arrayed themselves around the barn to prevent the men from escaping. Herold surrendered, but Booth refused, crying out, "I will not be taken alive!". The regiment set the barn on fire in an attempt to force Booth out into the open, but he remained inside. Corbett was positioned near a large crack in the barn wall. He requested permission from Doherty to enter the barn alone and try to subdue Booth by himself, reasoning that that if Booth shot him, the other soldiers could overwhelm the assassin before he could reload (Corbett was unaware that Booth had a Spencer carbine and several revolvers.) Doherty denied the request and Corbett moved back to his position. Lt. Colonel Everton Conger ignited clumps of hay and slipped them in the cracks in the wall near Corbett, hoping to burn out the murderer. Booth walked to the flames to assess whether he could extinguish them. Corbett claimed that he saw Booth aim his carbine at him, prompting him to shoot Booth through the crack with his Colt revolver, mortally wounding him. Booth screamed in pain and fell to the ground. Doherty, Conger, and several soldiers rushed into the burning barn and carried Booth out. Assessing his condition, Corbett and others felt a cosmic justice had been served; Booth's entry wound was in the same spot where he'd shot Lincoln. The bullet struck Booth in the back of the head behind his left ear and passed through his neck. Three of Booth's vertebrae were pierced and his spinal cord was partially severed, leaving him completely paralyzed. As Mary Clemmer Ames would later put it, "The balls entered the skull of each at nearly the same spot, but the trifling difference made an immeasurable difference ... Mr. Lincoln was unconscious ... Booth suffered as exquisite agony as if he had been broken on a wheel." Conger initially thought Booth had shot himself, though Colonel Lafayette C. Baker was certain he had not. Corbett stepped forward and admitted he shot Booth before handing his gun over to Doherty. During questioning by Doherty, Baker and Conger, Corbett said he had intended to merely wound Booth in the shoulder, but either his aim slipped or Booth moved when Corbett fired. Initial statements by Doherty and others made no mention of Corbett having violated any orders, nor did they suggest that he would face disciplinary action for shooting Booth. According to later sources, when asked why he had violated orders, Corbett replied, "Providence directed me." Author Scott Martelle disputes this, noting "his initial statement, and those by Baker, Conger, and Doherty don't mention Providence ... those details came long after the shooting itself, amid the swirl of rumor and conjecture and considerable lobbying over the reward money." (Corbett received $1,653.85, his 16th NY Cavalry comrades each received $1,000, Conger $15,000, Doherty $5,250, and Baker $3,750, though the initial amounts for the three officers was far greater.) The soldiers dragged Booth onto the porch of the Garrett farmhouse where he asked for water. Conger and Baker poured some into his mouth, which he immediately spat out, unable to swallow. Booth asked to be rolled over and turned facedown; Conger rejected the idea. "Then at least turn me on my side," Booth pleaded; the move did not relieve Booth's suffering. Baker said, "He seemed to suffer extreme pain whenever he was moved...and would several times repeat, 'Kill me!'" At sunrise, Booth remained in agony, and his breathing became more labored and irregular. Unable to move his limbs, he asked a soldier to lift his hands to his face and uttered his last words as he gazed at them: "Useless ... useless." Booth then began gasping for air as his throat continued to swell, and he made a gurgling sound before he died from asphyxia, approximately two to three hours after Corbett shot him. Doherty told Corbett to ride to neighboring farms to find breakfast for the men. Corbett did so, but first "rode off to a spot when I could be alone and pray, and when I had gone through my usual morning prayer, I asked the Lord in regard to the shooting. At once, I was filled with praise, for I felt a clear consciousness that it was an act of duty in the sight of God." Corbett found supplies for half the men, and they finished their meal before Booth died. Conger and Corbett rode off to Washington. Fame. According to Johnson, Corbett was accompanied by Lt. Doherty to the War Department in Washington, D.C. to meet Secretary Edwin Stanton about Booth's shooting. Edward Steers writes that it was "not against orders. Conger (said)..."They had no orders either to fire or not to fire." Corbett maintained that he believed Booth had intended to shoot his way out of the barn and that he acted in self-defense. He told Stanton, "...Booth would have killed me if I had not shot first. I think I did right." Corbett maintained that he did not intend to kill Booth but merely wanted to inflict a disabling wound, but either his aim slipped or Booth moved at the moment Corbett pulled the trigger. Stanton paused and then stated, "The rebel is dead. The patriot lives; he has spared the country expense, continued excitement and trouble. Discharge the patriot." Martelle says that "no other source mentions such a meeting...Johnson's memoir, which came out a half-century later, is just another part of the lore." Corbett was greeted by a cheering crowd. As he made his way to Mathew Brady's studio to have his official portrait taken, the crowd followed him, asking for autographs and requesting that he tell them about shooting Booth. Corbett told the crowd: Corbett testified in the trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, testifying on May 17, 1865. Corbett was largely considered a hero by the public and press. Initial newspaper reporters described him as a simple and humble man devoted, possibly excessively, to his faith; he had eccentricities but also did his duty well. One newspaper editor declared that Corbett would "live as one of the World's great avengers." For his part in Booth's capture, Corbett received a portion of the $100,000 reward money, amounting to $1,653.84 (). His annual salary as a U.S. sergeant was $204 (). Corbett received offers to purchase the gun he used to shoot Booth. He refused, stating, "That is not mine—it belongs to the Government, and I would not sell it for any price." Corbett also declined an offer for one of Booth's pistols as he did not want a reminder of shooting Booth. Negative responses. Later, newspaper accounts began to offer some criticism of Corbett's actions, that he had acted wilfully and against orders when he shot Booth (no orders were issued on whether Booth should be taken alive). Richard Garrett, the owner of the farm on which Booth died, and his 12-year-old son Robert said years later that Booth had never reached for his gun. Steers disputes this, noting that this contradicts original accounts. Post-war life. Southern sympathizers sent letters threatening to kill Corbett, so he kept a gun nearby at all times to defend himself. After his discharge from the army in August 1865, Corbett returned to work as a milliner in Boston and frequently attended the Bromfield Street Church. When the hatting business in Boston slowed, Corbett moved to Danbury, Connecticut, to continue his work and also "preached in the country round about." By 1870, he had relocated once again to Camden, New Jersey, where he was known as a "Methodist lay preacher" while also continuing to be a milliner. Corbett's inability to hold a job was attributed to his fanatical behavior; he was routinely fired after continuing his habit of stopping work to pray for his co-workers. To earn money, Corbett capitalized on his role as "Lincoln's Avenger". He gave lectures about the shooting of Booth accompanied by illustrated lantern slides at Sunday schools, women's groups and tent meetings. Corbett was never asked back due to his increasingly erratic behavior and incoherent speeches. R. B. Hoover, a man who later befriended Corbett, recalled that Corbett believed "men who were high in authority at Washington at the time of the assassination" were hounding him. Corbett said the men were angry because he had deprived them of prosecuting and executing John Wilkes Booth themselves. He also believed the same men had gotten him fired from various jobs. Corbett's paranoia was furthered by hate mail he received for killing Booth. He became fearful that "Booth's Avengers" or organizations like the "Secret Order" were planning to seek revenge upon him and took to carrying a pistol with him at all times. As his paranoia increased, Corbett began brandishing his pistol at friends or strangers he deemed suspicious. While attending the Soldiers' Reunion of the Blue and Gray in Caldwell, Ohio, in 1875, Corbett got into an argument with several men over the death of John Wilkes Booth. The men questioned if Booth had been killed at all, which enraged Corbett. He then drew his pistol on the men but was removed from the reunion before he could fire it. In 1878, Corbett moved to Concordia, Kansas, where he acquired a plot of land through homesteading upon which he constructed a dugout home. He continued working as a preacher and attended revival meetings frequently. Throughout the rest of his life, he began to become paranoid that Booth's family or friends would come and kill him, causing him to go insane. Disappearance. Due to his fame as "Lincoln's Avenger", Corbett was appointed assistant doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka in January 1887. On February 15, he became convinced that officers of the House were discriminating against him. He jumped to his feet, brandished a revolver, and began chasing the officers out of the building. No one was hurt, and Corbett was arrested. The following day, a judge declared Corbett insane and sent him to the Topeka Asylum for the Insane. On May 26, 1888, he escaped from the asylum on horseback. He then rode to Neodesha, Kansas, where he briefly stayed with Richard Thatcher, "an old comrade". When Corbett left, he told Thatcher he was going to Mexico. Conjecture arose that rather than going to Mexico, Corbett may have settled in a cabin he built in the forests near Hinckley, in Pine County in eastern Minnesota and that he died in the Great Hinckley Fire on September 1, 1894. This conjecture was based on speculation about the name "Thomas Corbett" appearing on the list of dead and a secondhand account by someone who said the fire victim had claimed to be Boston Corbett. Scott Martelle cited it as "too tenuous a connection to credit". In September 2024, a presentation given to the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences, showed that the man who died in the Hinckley fire was Thomas Gilbert Corbitt, originally from Steuben County, New York, and not Boston Corbett. Proofs included the Civil War "invalid" filing by Thomas G. Corbitt, dated September 19, 1890, in Minnesota and on the same document, the widow's filing on August 9, 1895. Another proof included a newspaper article from the September 24, 1894, edition of the Steuben Farmers Advocate, announcing that Thomas Corbitt, formerly of Thurston, Steuben County, New York, had perished in the Hinckley fire. Impostors. Several men claimed to be him in the years following Corbett's disappearance. A few years after Corbett was last seen in Neodesha, Kansas, a patent medicine salesman in Enid, Oklahoma, filed an application using Corbett's name to receive pension benefits. After an investigation proved that the man was not Boston Corbett, he was imprisoned. In September 1905, a man arrested in Dallas also claimed to be Corbett. He, too, was proven to be an impostor and was sent to prison for perjury and then to the Government Hospital for the Insane. Legacy. Scott Martelle, who wrote the 2015 biography "The Madman and the Assassin: The Strange Life of Boston Corbett, the Man Who Killed John Wilkes Booth", called Corbett "the closest to an average, everyday person...a regular, run-of-the-mill American—albeit a strange one—who did his job as a hatter, and then as a soldier". Memorials. In 1958, Boy Scout Troop 31 of Concordia, Kansas, built a roadside monument to Corbett on Key Road. A small sign was also placed to mark the dugout where Corbett had lived. Portrayals. A fictional version of Corbett appears in the novel "Andersonville" (1955). Dabbs Greer played a fictitious version of Corbett in the "Lawman" episode "The Unmasked" (1962), in which Corbett is living under the name "Joe Brockway" as a Wyoming hotel owner, being searched for by two former vengeful Confederate soldiers (although he gives his name as "Bill Corbett"). Corbett is portrayed by William Mark McCullough in the series "Manhunt" (2024).
4693	7903804	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4693	Berber languages	The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berber communities, who are indigenous to North Africa. The languages are primarily spoken and not typically written. Historically, they have been written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the form of Tifinagh. Today, they may also be written in the Berber Latin alphabet or the Arabic script, with Latin being the most pervasive. The Berber languages have a level of variety similar to the Romance languages, although they are sometimes referred to as a single collective language, often as "Berber", "Tamazight", or "Amazigh". The languages, with a few exceptions, form a dialect continuum. There is a debate as to how to best sub-categorize languages within the Berber branch. Berber languages typically follow verb–subject–object word order. Their phonological inventories are diverse. Millions of people in Morocco and Algeria natively speak a Berber language, as do smaller populations of Libya, Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania and the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. There are also probably a few million speakers of Berber languages in Western Europe. Tashlhiyt, Kabyle, Central Atlas Tamazight, Tarifit, and Shawiya are some of the most commonly spoken Berber languages. Exact numbers are impossible to ascertain as there are few modern North African censuses that include questions on language use, and what censuses do exist have known flaws. Following independence in the 20th century, the Berber languages have been suppressed and suffered from low prestige in North Africa. Recognition of the Berber languages has been growing in the 21st century, with Morocco and Algeria adding Tamazight as an official language to their constitutions in 2011 and 2016 respectively. Most Berber languages have a high percentage of borrowing and influence from the Arabic language, as well as from other languages. For example, Arabic loanwords represent 35% to 46% of the total vocabulary of the Kabyle language and represent 44.9% of the total vocabulary of Tarifit. Almost all Berber languages took from Arabic the pharyngeal fricatives /ʕ/ and /ħ/, the (nongeminated) uvular stop /q/, and the voiceless pharyngealized consonant /ṣ/. Unlike the Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic languages of the Afro-Asiatic phylum, Berber languages are not tonal languages. Terminology. "Tamazight" and "Berber languages" are often used interchangeably. However, "Tamazight" is sometimes used to refer to a specific subset of Berber languages, such as Central Tashlhiyt. "Tamazight" can also be used to refer to Standard Moroccan Tamazight or Standard Algerian Tamazight, as in the Moroccan and Algerian constitutions respectively. In Morocco, besides referring to all Berber languages or to Standard Moroccan Tamazight, "Tamazight" is often used in contrast to Tashelhit and Tarifit to refer to Central Atlas Tamazight. The use of "Berber" has been the subject of debate due to its historical background as an exonym and present equivalence with the Arabic word for "barbarian." One group, the Linguasphere Observatory, has attempted to introduce the neologism "Tamazic languages" to refer to the Berber languages. Amazigh people typically use "Tamazight" when speaking English. Historically, some Berber groups have used this endonym since Antiquity (such as the Mazices) or continue to do so, although others had their own terms to refer to themselves. For example, the Kabyles use the term "Leqbayel" to refer to their own people, while the Chaouis identified themselves as "Ishawiyen". Origin. Since modern Berber languages are relatively homogeneous, the date of the Proto-Berber language from which the modern group is derived was probably comparatively recent, comparable to the age of the Germanic or Romance subfamilies of the Indo-European family. In contrast, the split of the group from the other Afroasiatic sub-phyla is much earlier, and is therefore sometimes associated with the local Mesolithic Capsian culture. A number of extinct populations are believed to have spoken Afroasiatic languages of the Berber branch. The earliest example of a text possibly written in Berber or Proto-Berber is a single Egyptian papyrus written in the extinct Kehek language originating in the New Kingdom era of Egypt. According to Peter Behrens and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst, linguistic evidence suggests that the peoples of the C-Group culture in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan spoke Berber languages. The Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key loanwords related to pastoralism that are of Berber origin, including the terms for sheep and water/Nile. This in turn suggests that the C-Group population—which, along with the Kerma culture, inhabited the Nile valley immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers—spoke Afroasiatic languages. Orthography. Berber languages are primarily oral languages without a major written component. The first example of writing in a language that was possibly related to Berber was a papyrus written by the Egyptians in Hieratic, transliterating a snake chant in Kehek. Historically, Berber languages were written with the Libyco-Berber script. Early uses of the script have been found on rock art and in various sepulchres; the oldest known variations of the script originating from around 600 BC. Usage of this script, in the form of Tifinagh, has continued into the present day among the Tuareg people. Following the spread of Islam, some Berber scholars also utilized the Arabic script. The Berber Latin alphabet was developed following the introduction of the Latin script in the nineteenth century by the West. The nineteenth century also saw the development of Neo-Tifinagh, an adaptation of Tuareg Tifinagh for use with other Berber languages. There are now three writing systems in use for Berber languages: Tifinagh, the Arabic script, and the Berber Latin alphabet, with the Latin alphabet being the most widely used today. Subclassification. With the exception of Zenaga, Tetserret, and Tuareg, the Berber languages form a dialect continuum. Different linguists take different approaches towards drawing boundaries between languages in this continuum. Maarten Kossmann notes that it is difficult to apply the classic tree model of historical linguistics towards the Berber languages:[The Berber language family]'s continuous history of convergence and differentiation along new lines makes any definition of branches arbitrary. Moreover, mutual intelligibility and mutual influence render notions such as "split" or "branching" rather difficult to apply except, maybe, in the case of Zenaga and Tuareg.Kossmann roughly groups the Berber languages into seven blocks: The Zenatic block is typically divided into the Zenati and Eastern Berber branches, due to the marked difference in features at each end of the continuum. Otherwise, subclassifications by different linguists typically combine various blocks into different branches. Western Moroccan languages, Zenati languages, Kabyle, and Ghadames may be grouped under Northern Berber; Awjila is often included as an Eastern Berber language alongside Siwa, Sokna, and El Foqaha. These approaches divide the Berber languages into Northern, Southern (Tuareg), Eastern, and Western varieties. Population. The vast majority of speakers of Berber languages are concentrated in Morocco and Algeria. The exact population of speakers has been historically difficult to ascertain due to lack of official recognition. Morocco. Morocco is the country with the greatest number of speakers of Berber languages. As of 2022, Ethnologue estimates there to be 13.8 million speakers of Berber languages in Morocco, based on figures from 2016 and 2017. At the beginning of colonialism in Morocco, Berber speakers were estimated at 40-45% of the Moroccan population. In 1960, the first census after Moroccan independence was held. It claimed that 32 percent of Moroccans spoke a Berber language, including bi-, tri- and quadrilingual people. The 2004 census found that 3,894,805 Moroccans over five years of age spoke Tashelhit, 2,343,937 spoke Central Atlas Tamazight, and 1,270,986 spoke Tarifit, representing 14.6%, 8.8%, and 4.8% respectively of the surveyed population, or roughly 28.2% of the surveyed population combined. The 2014 census found that 14.1% of the population spoke Tashelhit, 7.9% spoke Central Atlas Tamazight, and 4% spoke Tarifit, or about 26% of the population combined. The 2024 census found that 14.2% of the population spoke Tashelhit, 7.4% spoke Central Atlas Tamazight, and 3.2% spoke Tarifit, which represents 24.8% of the population. These estimates, as well as the estimates from various academic sources, are summarized as follows: Algeria. Algeria is the country with the second greatest number of speakers of Berber languages. In 1906, the total population speaking Berber languages in Algeria, excluding the thinly populated Sahara region, was estimated at 1,305,730 out of 4,447,149, or 29%. Secondary sources disagree on the percentage of self-declared native Berber speakers in the 1966 census, the last Algerian census containing a question about the mother tongue. Some give 17.9% while other report 19%. Kabyle speakers account for the vast majority of speakers of Berber languages in Algeria. Shawiya is the second most commonly spoken Berber language in Algeria. Other Berber languages spoken in Algeria include: Shenwa, with 76,300 speakers; Tashelhit, with 6,000 speakers; Ouargli, with 20,000 speakers; Tamahaq, with 71,400 speakers; Tugurt, with 8,100 speakers; Tidikelt, with 1,000 speakers; Gurara, with 11,000 speakers; and Mozabite, with 150,000 speakers. Population estimates are summarized as follows: Other countries. As of 1998, there were an estimated 450,000 Tawellemmet speakers, 250,000 Air Tamajeq speakers, and 20,000 Tamahaq speakers in Niger. As of 2018 and 2014 respectively, there were an estimated 420,000 speakers of Tawellemmet and 378,000 of Tamasheq in Mali. As of 2022, based on figures from 2020, Ethnologue estimates there to be 285,890 speakers of Berber languages in Libya: 247,000 speakers of Nafusi, 22,800 speakers of Tamahaq, 13,400 speakers of Ghadamés, and 2,690 speakers of Awjila. The number of Siwi speakers in Libya is listed as negligible, and the last Sokna speaker is thought to have died in the 1950s. There are an estimated 50,000 Djerbi speakers in Tunisia, based on figures from 2004. Sened is likely extinct, with the last speaker having died in the 1970s. Ghadamés, though not indigenous to Tunisia, is estimated to have 3,100 speakers throughout the country. Chenini is one of the rare remaining Berber-speaking villages in Tunisia. There are an estimated 20,000 Siwi speakers in Egypt, based on figures from 2013. As of 2018 and 2017 respectively, there were an estimated 200 speakers of Zenaga and 117,000 of Tamasheq in Mauritania. As of 2009, there were an estimated 122,000 Tamasheq speakers in Burkina Faso. There are an estimated 1.5 million speakers of various Berber languages in France. A small number of Tawellemmet speakers live in Nigeria. In total, there are an estimated 3.6 million speakers of Berber languages in countries outside of Morocco and Algeria, summarized as follows: Status. After independence, all the Maghreb countries to varying degrees pursued a policy of Arabisation, aimed partly at displacing French from its colonial position as the dominant language of education and literacy. Under this policy the use of the Berber languages was suppressed or even banned. This state of affairs has been contested by Berbers in Morocco and Algeria—especially Kabylie—and was addressed in both countries by affording the language official status and introducing it in some schools. Morocco. After gaining independence from France in 1956, Morocco began a period of Arabisation through 1981, with primary and secondary school education gradually being changed to Arabic instruction, and with the aim of having administration done in Arabic, rather than French. During this time, there were riots amongst the Amazigh population, which called for the inclusion of Tamazight as an official language. The 2000 Charter for Education Reform marked a change in policy, with its statement of "openness to Tamazight." Planning for a public Tamazight-language TV network began in 2006; in 2010, the Moroccan government launched Tamazight TV. On July 29, 2011, Tamazight was added as an official language to the Moroccan constitution. Algeria. After gaining independence from France in 1962, Algeria committed to a policy of Arabisation, which, after the imposition of the Circular of July 1976, encompassed the spheres of education, public administration, public signage, print publication, and the judiciary. While primarily directed towards the erasure of French in Algerian society, these policies also targeted Berber languages, leading to dissatisfaction and unrest amongst speakers of Berber languages, who made up about one quarter of the population. After the 1994-1995 general school boycott in Kabylia, Tamazight was recognized for the first time as a national language. In 2002, following the riots of the Black Spring, Tamazight was recognized for the second time as a national language, though not as an official one. This was done on April 8, 2003. Tamazight has been taught for three hours a week through the first three years of Algerian middle schools since 2005. On January 5, 2016, it was announced that Tamazight had been added as a national and official language in a draft amendment to the Algerian constitution; it was added to the constitution as a national and official language on February 7, 2016. Libya. Although regional councils in Libya's Nafusa Mountains affiliated with the National Transitional Council reportedly use the Berber language of Nafusi and have called for it to be granted co-official status with Arabic in a prospective new constitution, it does not have official status in Libya as in Morocco and Algeria. As areas of Libya south and west of Tripoli such as the Nafusa Mountains were taken from the control of Gaddafi government forces in early summer 2011, Berber workshops and exhibitions sprang up to share and spread the Berber culture and language. Other countries. In Mali and Niger, some Tuareg languages have been recognized as national languages and have been part of school curriculums since the 1960s. Phonology. Notation. In linguistics, the phonology of Berber languages is written with the International Phonetic Alphabet, with the following exceptions: Consonants. The influence of Arabic, the process of spirantization, and the absence of labialization have caused the consonant systems of Berber languages to differ significantly by region. Berber languages found north of, and in the northern half of, the Sahara have greater influence from Arabic, including that of loaned phonemes, than those in more southern regions, like Tuareg. Most Berber languages in northern regions have additionally undergone spirantization, in which historical short stops have changed into fricatives. Northern Berber languages (which is a subset of but not identical to Berber languages in geographically northern regions) commonly have labialized velars and uvulars, unlike other Berber languages.Two languages that illustrate the resulting range in consonant inventory across Berber languages are Ahaggar Tuareg and Kabyle; Kabyle has two more places of articulation and three more manners of articulation than Ahaggar Tuareg. There is still, however, common consonant features observed across Berber languages. Almost all Berber languages have bilabial, dental, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and laryngeal consonants, and almost all consonants have a long counterpart. All Berber languages, as is common in Afroasiatic languages, have pharyngealized consonants and phonemic gemination. The consonants which may undergo gemination, and the positions in a word where gemination may occur, differ by language. They have also been observed to have tense and lax consonants, although the status of tense consonants has been the subject of "considerable discussion" by linguists. Three (Kabyle, Tarifit and Shawiya) of the most spoken five Tamazight languages have the interdental consonants and which are considered rare cross-linguistically. Vowels. The vowel systems of Berber languages also vary widely, with inventories ranging from three phonemic vowels in most Northern Berber languages, to seven in some Eastern Berber and Tuareg languages. For example, Taselhiyt has the vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/, while Ayer Tuareg has the vowels /i/, /ə/, /u/, /e/, /ɐ/, /o/, and /a/. Contrastive vowel length is rare in Berber languages. Tuareg languages had previously been reported to have contrastive vowel length, but this is no longer the leading analysis. A complex feature of Berber vowel systems is the role of central vowels, which vary in occurrence and function across languages; there is a debate as to whether schwa is a proper phoneme of Northern Berber languages. Suprasegmentals. Most Berber languages: Phonetic correspondences. Phonetic correspondences between Berber languages are fairly regular. Some examples, of varying importance and regularity, include ["g/ž/y"]; ["k/š"]; ["l/ř/r"]; ["l/ž, ll/ddž"]; [trill/ vocalized r]; ["šš/ttš"]; ["ss/ttš"]; ["w/g/b"]; ["q"/"ɣ"]; ["h"/Ø]; and ["s-š-ž/h"]. Words in various Berber languages are shown to demonstrate these phonetic correspondences as follows: Grammar. Berber languages characteristically make frequent use of apophony in the form of ablaut. Berber apophony has been historically analyzed as functioning similarly to the Semitic root, but this analysis has fallen out of favor due to the lexical significance of vowels in Berber languages, as opposed to their primarily grammatical significance in Semitic languages. The lexical categories of all Berber languages are nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, and prepositions. With the exception of a handful of Arabic loanwords in most languages, Berber languages do not have proper adjectives. In Northern and Eastern Berber languages, adjectives are a subcategory of nouns; in Tuareg, relative clauses and stative verb forms are used to modify nouns instead. The gender, number, and case of nouns, as well as the gender, number, and person of verbs, are typically distinguished through affixes. Arguments are described with word order and clitics. When sentences have a verb, they essentially follow verb–subject–object word order, although some linguists believe alternate descriptors would better categorize certain languages, such as Taqbaylit. Pronouns. Berber languages have both independent and dependent pronouns, both of which distinguish between person and number. Gender is also typically distinguished in the second and third person, and sometimes in first person plural. Linguist Maarten Kossmann divides pronouns in Berber languages into three morphological groups: When clitics precede or follow a verb, they are almost always ordered with the indirect object first, direct object second, and andative-venitive deictic clitic last. An example in Tarifit is shown as follows: The allowed positioning of different kinds of clitics varies by language. Nouns. Nouns are distinguished by gender, number, and case in most Berber languages, with gender being feminine or masculine, number being singular or plural, and case being in the construct or free state. Some Arabic borrowings in Northern and Eastern Berber languages do not accept these affixes; they instead retain the Arabic article regardless of case, and follow Arabic patterns to express number and gender. Gender can be feminine or masculine, and can be lexically determined, or can be used to distinguish qualities of the noun. For humans and "higher" animals (such as mammals and large birds), gender distinguishes sex, whereas for objects and "lesser" animals (such as insects and lizards), it distinguishes size. For some nouns, often fruits and vegetables, gender can also distinguish the specificity of the noun. The ways in which gender is used to distinguish nouns is shown in as follows, with examples from Figuig: An example of nouns with lexically determined gender are the feminine "t-lussi" ("butter") and masculine "a-ɣi" ("buttermilk") in Figuig. Mass nouns have lexically determined gender across Berber languages. Most Berber languages have two cases, which distinguish the construct state from the free state. The construct state is also called the "construct case, "relative case," "annexed state" ("état d'annexion")"," or the "nominative case"; the free state ("état libre") is also called the "direct case" or "accusative case." When present, case is always expressed through nominal prefixes and initial-vowel reduction. The use of the marked nominative system and constructions similar to Split-S alignment varies by language. Eastern Berber languages do not have case. Number can be singular or plural, which is marked with prefixation, suffixation, and sometimes apophony. Nouns usually are made plural by one of either suffixation or apophony, with prefixation applied independently. Specifics vary by language, but prefixation typically changes singular "a-" and "ta-" to plural "i-" and "ti-" respectively. The number of mass nouns are lexically determined. For example, in multiple Berber languages, such as Figuig, "a-ɣi" ("buttermilk") is singular while "am-an" ("water") is plural. Nouns or pronouns—optionally extended with genitival pronominal affixes, demonstrative clitics, or pre-nominal elements, and then further modified by numerals, adjectives, possessive phrases, or relative clauses—can be built into noun phrases. Possessive phrases in noun phrases must have a genitive proposition. There are a limited number of pre-nominal elements, which function similarly to pronoun syntactic heads of the noun phrase, and which can be categorized into three types as follows: Verbs. Verb bases are formed by stems that are optionally extended by prefixes, with mood, aspect, and negation applied with a vocalic scheme. This form can then be conjugated with affixes to agree with person, number, and gender, which produces a word. Different linguists analyze and label aspects in the Berber languages vary differently. Kossman roughly summarizes the basic stems which denote aspect as follows: Different languages may have more stems and aspects, or may distinguish within the above categories. Stem formation can be very complex, with Tuareg by some measures having over two hundred identified conjugation subtypes. The aspectual stems of some classes of verbs in various Berber languages are shown as follows: Verb phrases are built with verb morphology, pronominal and deictic clitics, pre-verbal particles, and auxiliary elements. The pre-verbal particles are "ad", "wər," and their variants, which correspond to the meanings of "non-realized" and "negative" respectively. Numerals. Many Berber languages have lost use of their original numerals from three onwards due to the influence of Arabic; Tarifit has lost all except one. Languages that may retain all their original numerals include Tashelhiyt, Tuareg, Ghadames, Ouargla, and Zenaga. Original Berber numerals agree in gender with the noun they describe, whereas the borrowed Arabic forms do not. The numerals 1–10 in Tashelhiyt and Mali Tuareg are as follows: Sentence structure. Sentences in Berber languages can be divided into verbal and non-verbal sentences. The topic, which has a unique intonation in the sentence, precedes all other arguments in both types. Verbal sentences have a finite verb, and are commonly understood to follow verb–subject–object word order (VSO). Some linguists have proposed opposing analyses of the word order patterns in Berber languages, and there has been some support for characterizing Taqbaylit as discourse-configurational. Existential, attributive, and locational sentences in most Berber languages are expressed with non-verbal sentences, which have no finite verb. In these sentences, the predicate follows the noun, with the predicative particle "d" sometimes in between. Two examples, one without and one with a subject, are given from Kabyle as follows: Non-verbal sentences may use the verb meaning "to be," which exists in all Berber languages. An example from Tarifit is given as follows: Lexicon. Above all in the area of basic lexicon, the Berber languages are very similar. However, the household-related vocabulary in sedentary tribes is especially different from the one found in nomadic ones: whereas Tahaggart has only two or three designations for species of palm tree, other languages may have as many as 200 similar words. In contrast, Tahaggart has a rich vocabulary for the description of camels. Some loanwords in the Berber languages can be traced to pre-Roman times. The Berber words "te-ḇăyne" "date" and "a-sḇan" "loose woody tissue around the palm tree stem" originate from Ancient Egyptian, likely due to the introduction of date palm cultivation into North Africa from Egypt. Around a dozen Berber words are probable Phoenician-Punic loanwords, although the overall influence of Phoenician-Punic on Berber languages is negligible. A number of loanwords could be attributed to Phoenician-Punic, Hebrew, or Aramaic. The similar vocabulary between these Semitic languages, as well as Arabic, is a complicating factor in tracing the etymology of certain words. Words of Latin origin have been introduced into Berber languages over time. Maarten Kossman separates Latin loanwords in Berber languages into those from during the Roman empire ("Latin loans"), from after the fall of the Roman empire ("African Romance loans"), precolonial non-African Romance loans, and colonial and post-colonial Romance loans. It can be difficult to distinguish Latin from African Romance loans. There are about 40 likely Latin or African Romance loanwords in Berber languages, which tend to be agricultural terms, religious terms, terms related to learning, or words for plants or useful objects. Use of these terms varies by language. For example, Tuareg does not retain the Latin agricultural terms, which relate to a form of agriculture not practiced by the Tuareg people. There are some Latin loans that are only known to be used in Shawiya. The Berber calendar uses month names derived from the Julian calendar. Not every language uses every month. For example, Figuig appears to use only eight of the months. These names may be precolonial non-African Romance loans, adopted into Berber languages through Arabic, rather than from Latin directly. The most influential external language on the lexicon of Berber languages is Arabic. Maarten Kossmann calculates that 0-5% of Ghadames and Awdjila's core vocabularies, and over 15% of Ghomara, Siwa, and Senhadja de Sraïr's core vocabularies, are loans from Arabic. Most other Berber languages loan from 6–15% of their core vocabulary from Arabic. Salem Chaker estimates that Arabic loanwords represent 38% of Kabyle vocabulary, 25% of Tashelhiyt vocabulary, and 5% of Tuareg vocabulary, including non-core words. On the one hand, the words and expressions connected to Islam were borrowed, e.g. Tashlhiyt "bismillah" "in the name of Allah" < Classical Arabic "bi-smi-llāhi", Tuareg "ta-mejjīda" "mosque" (Arabic "masjid"); on the other, Berber adopted cultural concepts such as Kabyle "ssuq" "market" from Arabic "as-sūq", "tamdint" "town" < Arabic "madīna". Even expressions such as the Arabic greeting "as-salāmu ʿalaikum" "Peace be upon you!" were adopted (Tuareg "salāmu ɣlīkum"). Influence on other languages. The Berber languages have influenced local Arabic dialects in the Maghreb. Although Maghrebi Arabic has a predominantly Semitic and Arabic vocabulary, it contains a few Berber loanwords which represent 2–3% of the vocabulary of Libyan Arabic, 8–9% of Algerian Arabic and Tunisian Arabic, and 10–15% of Moroccan Arabic. Their influence is also seen in some languages in West Africa. F. W. H. Migeod pointed to strong resemblances between Berber and Hausa in such words and phrases as these: In addition he notes that the genitive in both languages is formed with n = "of" (though likely a common inheritance from Proto-Afro-Asiatic; cf. A.Eg genitive "n"). Extinct languages. A number of extinct populations are believed to have spoken Afro-Asiatic languages of the Berber branch. According to Peter Behrens (1981) and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst (2000), linguistic evidence suggests that the peoples of the C-Group culture in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan spoke Berber languages. The Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key pastoralism related loanwords that are of Berber origin, including the terms for sheep and water/Nile. This in turn suggests that the C-Group population—which, along with the Kerma culture, inhabited the Nile valley immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers—spoke Afro-Asiatic languages. Additionally, historical linguistics indicate that the Guanche language, which was spoken on the Canary Islands by the ancient Guanches, likely belonged to the Berber branch of the Afro-Asiatic family.
4695	27556023	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4695	Bankruptcy	Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor. Bankrupt is not the only legal status that an insolvent person may have, meaning the term "bankruptcy" is not a synonym for insolvency. Etymology. The word "bankruptcy" is derived from Italian , literally meaning . The term is often described as having originated in Renaissance Italy, where there allegedly existed the tradition of smashing a banker's bench if he defaulted on payment. However, the existence of such a ritual is doubted. History. In Ancient Greece, bankruptcy did not exist. If a man owed and he could not pay, he and his wife, children or servants were forced into "debt slavery" until the creditor recouped losses through their physical labour. Many city-states in ancient Greece limited debt slavery to a period of five years; debt slaves had protection of life and limb, which regular slaves did not have. However, servants of the debtor could be retained beyond that deadline by the creditor and were often forced to serve their new lord for a lifetime, usually under significantly harsher conditions. An exception to this rule was Athens, which by the laws of Solon forbade enslavement for debt; as a consequence, most Athenian slaves were foreigners (Greek or otherwise). The Statute of Bankrupts of 1542 was the first statute under English law dealing with bankruptcy or insolvency. Bankruptcy is also documented in East Asia. According to al-Maqrizi, the Yassa of Genghis Khan contained a provision that mandated the death penalty for anyone who became bankrupt three times. A failure of a nation to meet bond repayments has been seen on many occasions. In a similar way, Philip II of Spain had to declare four state bankruptcies in 1557, 1560, 1575 and 1596. According to Kenneth S. Rogoff, "Although the development of international capital markets was quite limited prior to 1800, we nevertheless catalog the various defaults of France, Portugal, Prussia, Spain, and the early Italian city-states. At the edge of Europe, Egypt, Russia, and Turkey have histories of chronic default as well." Modern law and debt restructuring. The principal focus of modern insolvency legislation and business debt restructuring practices no longer rests on the elimination of insolvent entities, but on the remodeling of the financial and organizational structure of debtors experiencing financial distress so as to permit the rehabilitation and continuation of the business. For private households, it is important to assess the underlying problems and to minimize the risk of financial distress to recur. It has been stressed that debt advice, a supervised rehabilitation period, financial education and social help to find sources of income and to improve the management of household expenditures must be equally provided during this period of rehabilitation (Refiner "et al.", 2003; Gerhardt, 2009; Frade, 2010). In most EU member states, debt discharge is conditioned by a partial payment obligation and by a number of requirements concerning the debtor's behavior. In the United States (US), discharge is conditioned to a lesser extent. The spectrum is broad in the EU, with the UK coming closest to the US system (Reifner et al., 2003; Gerhardt, 2009; Frade, 2010). The other member states do not provide the option of a debt discharge. Spain, for example, passed a bankruptcy law () in 2003 which provides for debt settlement plans that can result in a reduction of the debt (maximally half of the amount) or an extension of the payment period of maximally five years (Gerhardt, 2009), but it does not foresee debt discharge. In the US, it is very difficult to discharge federal or federally guaranteed student loan debt by filing bankruptcy. Unlike most other debts, those student loans may be discharged only if the person seeking discharge establishes specific grounds for discharge under the "Brunner" test under which a court evaluates three factors: Even if a debtor proves all three elements, a court may permit only a partial discharge of the student loan. Student loan borrowers may benefit from restructuring their payments through a Chapter 13 bankruptcy repayment plan, but few qualify for discharge of part or all of their student loan debt. Fraud. Bankruptcy fraud is a white-collar crime most typically involving concealment of assets by a debtor to avoid liquidation in bankruptcy proceedings. It may include filing of false information, multiple filings in different jurisdictions, bribery, and other acts. While difficult to generalize across jurisdictions, common criminal acts under bankruptcy statutes typically involve concealment of assets, concealment or destruction of documents, conflicts of interest, fraudulent claims, false statements or declarations, and fee fixing or redistribution arrangements. Falsifications on bankruptcy forms often constitute perjury. Multiple filings are not in and of themselves criminal, but they may violate provisions of bankruptcy law. In the U.S., bankruptcy fraud statutes are particularly focused on the mental state of particular actions. Bankruptcy fraud is a federal crime in the United States. Bankruptcy fraud should be distinguished from "strategic bankruptcy", which is not a criminal act since it creates a real (not a fake) bankruptcy state. However, it may still work against the filer. All assets must be disclosed in bankruptcy schedules whether or not the debtor believes the asset has a net value. This is because once a bankruptcy petition is filed, it is for the creditors, not the debtor, to decide whether a particular asset has value. The future ramifications of omitting assets from schedules can be quite serious for the offending debtor. In the United States, a closed bankruptcy may be reopened by motion of a creditor or the U.S. trustee if a debtor attempts to later assert ownership of such an "unscheduled asset" after being discharged of all debt in the bankruptcy. The trustee may then seize the asset and liquidate it to benefit the (formerly discharged) creditors. Whether or not a concealment of such an asset should also be considered for prosecution as fraud or perjury would then be at the discretion of the judge or U.S. Trustee. By country. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, bankruptcy is limited to individuals; other forms of insolvency proceedings (such as liquidation and administration) are applied to companies. In the United States, "bankruptcy" is applied more broadly to formal insolvency proceedings. In some countries, such as in Finland, bankruptcy is limited only to companies and individuals who are insolvent are condemned to de facto indentured servitude or minimum social benefits until their debts are paid in full, with accrued interest except when the court decides to show rare clemency by accepting a debtors application for debt restructuring, in which case an individual may have the amount of remaining debt reduced or be released from the debt. Argentina. In Argentina, the national Act "24.522 de Concursos y Quiebras" regulates Bankruptcy and Reorganization of individuals and companies; public entities are not included. Armenia. A person may be declared bankrupt with an application submitted to the court by the creditor or with an application to recognize his own bankruptcy. Legal and natural persons, including individual entrepreneurs, who have an indisputable payment obligation exceeding 60 days and amounting to more than one million AMD can be declared bankrupt. All creditors, including the state and municipalities, to whom the person has an obligation that meets the above-mentioned minimum criteria can submit an application to declare a person bankrupt by compulsory procedure. Basically, these obligations are derived from the legal acts of the court, transactions, the obligation of the debtor to pay taxes, duties, and other fees defined by law. At the same time, when being declared bankrupt with a voluntary bankruptcy application, the applicant bears the obligation to prove the fact that the value of his assets is less than his assets by one million AMD or more. Australia. In Australia, bankruptcy is a status which applies to individuals and is governed by the federal "Bankruptcy Act 1966". Companies do not go bankrupt but rather go into liquidation or administration, which is governed by the federal "Corporations Act 2001". If a person commits an act of bankruptcy, then a creditor can apply to the Federal Circuit Court or the Federal Court for a sequestration order. Acts of bankruptcy are defined in the legislation, and include the failure to comply with a bankruptcy notice. A bankruptcy notice can be issued where, among other cases, a person fails to pay a judgment debt of at least $5,000. A person can also seek to have themselves declared bankrupt for any amount of debt by lodging a debtor's petition with the "Official Receiver", which is the Australian Financial Security Authority (AFSA). All bankrupts must lodge a Statement of Affairs document, also known as a Bankruptcy Form, with AFSA, which includes important information about their assets and liabilities. A bankruptcy cannot be discharged until this document has been lodged. Ordinarily, a bankruptcy lasts three years from the filing of the Statement of Affairs with AFSA. A Bankruptcy Trustee (in most cases, the Official Trustee at AFSA) is appointed to deal with all matters regarding the administration of the bankrupt estate. The Trustee's job includes notifying creditors of the estate and dealing with creditor inquiries; ensuring that the bankrupt complies with their obligations under the Bankruptcy Act; investigating the bankrupt's financial affairs; realising funds to which the estate is entitled under the Bankruptcy Act and distributing dividends to creditors if sufficient funds become available. For the duration of their bankruptcy, all bankrupts have certain restrictions placed upon them. For example, a bankrupt must obtain the permission of their trustee to travel overseas. Failure to do so may result in the bankrupt being stopped at the airport by the Australian Federal Police. Additionally, a bankrupt is required to provide their trustee with details of income and assets. If the bankrupt does not comply with the Trustee's request to provide details of income, the trustee may have grounds to lodge an Objection to Discharge, which has the effect of extending the bankruptcy for a further three or five years depending on the type of Objection. The realisation of funds usually comes from two main sources: the bankrupt's assets and the bankrupt's wages. There are certain assets that are protected, referred to as "protected assets". These include household furniture and appliances, tools of the trade and vehicles up to a certain value. All other assets of value can be sold. If a house, including the main residence, or car is above a certain value, a third party can buy the interest from the estate in order for the bankrupt to utilise the asset. If this is not done, the interest vests in the estate and the trustee is able to take possession of the asset and sell it. The bankrupt must pay income contributions if their income is above a certain threshold. If the bankrupt fails to pay, the trustee can ask the Official Receiver to issue a notice to garnishee the bankrupt's wages. If that is not possible, the Trustee may seek to extend the bankruptcy for a further three or five years. Bankruptcies can be annulled, and the bankrupt released from bankruptcy, prior to the expiration of the normal three-year period if all debts are paid out in full. Sometimes a bankrupt may be able to raise enough funds to make an Offer of Composition to creditors, which would have the effect of paying the creditors some of the money they are owed. If the creditors accept the offer, the bankruptcy can be annulled after the funds are received. After the bankruptcy is annulled or the bankrupt has been automatically discharged, the bankrupt's credit report status is shown as "discharged bankrupt" for some years. The maximum number of years this information can be held is subject to the retention limits under the Privacy Act. How long such information is on a credit report may be shorter, depending on the issuing company, but the report must cease to record that information based on the criteria in the Privacy Act. Brazil. In Brazil, the Bankruptcy Law (11.101/05) governs court-ordered or out-of-court receivership and bankruptcy and only applies to public companies (publicly traded companies) with the exception of financial institutions, credit cooperatives, consortia, supplementary scheme entities, companies administering health care plans, equity companies and a few other legal entities. It does not apply to state-run companies. Current law covers three legal proceedings. The first one is bankruptcy itself ("Falência"). Bankruptcy is a court-ordered liquidation procedure for an insolvent business. The final goal of bankruptcy is to liquidate company assets and pay its creditors. The second one is Court-ordered Restructuring ("Recuperação Judicial"). The goal is to overcome the business crisis situation of the debtor in order to allow the continuation of the producer, the employment of workers and the interests of creditors, leading, thus, to preserving company, its corporate function and develop economic activity. It is a court procedure required by the debtor which has been in business for more than two years and requires approval by a judge. The Extrajudicial Restructuring ("Recuperação Extrajudicial") is a private negotiation that involves creditors and debtors and, as with court-ordered restructuring, also must be approved by courts. Canada. Bankruptcy, also referred to as insolvency in Canada, is governed by the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and is applicable to businesses and individuals. For example, Target Canada, the Canadian subsidiary of the Target Corporation, the second-largest discount retailer in the United States filed for bankruptcy on 15 January 2015, and closed all of its stores by 12 April. The office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, a federal agency, is responsible for ensuring that bankruptcies are administered in a fair and orderly manner by all licensed Trustees in Canada. Trustees in bankruptcy, 1041 individuals licensed to administer insolvencies, bankruptcy and proposal estates are governed by the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act of Canada. Bankruptcy is filed when a person or a company becomes insolvent and cannot pay their debts as they become due and if they have at least $1,000 in debt. In 2011, the Superintendent of Bankruptcy reported that trustees in Canada filed 127,774 insolvent estates. Consumer estates were the vast majority, with 122,999 estates. The consumer portion of the 2011 volume is divided into 77,993 bankruptcies and 45,006 consumer proposals. This represented a reduction of 8.9% from 2010. Commercial estates filed by Canadian trustees in 2011 4,775 estates, 3,643 bankruptcies and 1,132 Division 1 proposals. This represents a reduction of 8.6% over 2010. Duties of trustees. Some of the duties of the trustee in bankruptcy are to: Creditors' meetings. Creditors become involved by attending creditors' meetings. The trustee calls the first meeting of creditors for the following purposes: Consumer proposals. In Canada, a person can file a consumer proposal as an alternative to bankruptcy. A consumer proposal is a negotiated settlement between a debtor and their creditors. A typical proposal would involve a debtor making monthly payments for a maximum of five years, with the funds distributed to their creditors. Even though most proposals call for payments of less than the full amount of the debt owing, in most cases, the creditors accept the deal—because if they do not, the next alternative may be personal bankruptcy, in which the creditors get even less money. The creditors have 45 days to accept or reject the consumer proposal. Once the proposal is accepted by both the creditors and the Court, the debtor makes the payments to the Proposal Administrator each month (or as otherwise stipulated in their proposal), and the general creditors are prevented from taking any further legal or collection action. If the proposal is rejected, the debtor is returned to his prior insolvent state and may have no alternative but to declare personal bankruptcy. A consumer proposal can only be made by a debtor with debts to a maximum of $250,000 (not including the mortgage on their principal residence). If debts are greater than $250,000, the proposal must be filed under Division 1 of Part III of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. An Administrator is required in the Consumer Proposal, and a Trustee in the Division I Proposal (these are virtually the same although the terms are not interchangeable). A Proposal Administrator is almost always a licensed trustee in bankruptcy, although the Superintendent of Bankruptcy may appoint other people to serve as administrators. In 2006, there were 98,450 personal insolvency filings in Canada: 79,218 bankruptcies and 19,232 consumer proposals. Commercial restructuring. In Canada, bankruptcy always means liquidation. There is no way for a company to emerge from bankruptcy after restructuring, as is the case in the United States with a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Canada does, however, have laws that allow for businesses to restructure and emerge later with a smaller debt load and a more positive financial future. While not technically a form of bankruptcy, businesses with $5M or more in debt may make use of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act to halt all debt recovery efforts against the company while they formulate a plan to restructure. China. The People's Republic of China legalized bankruptcy in 1986, and a revised law that was more expansive and complete was enacted in 2007. Ireland. Bankruptcy in Ireland applies only to natural persons. Other insolvency processes including liquidation and examinership are used to deal with corporate insolvency. Irish bankruptcy law has been the subject of significant comment, from both government sources and the media, as being in need of reform. Part 7 of the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2011 has started this process and the government has committed to further reform. Israel. Bankruptcy in Israel is governed by the Insolvency and Rehabilitation Law, 2018. Insolvency proceedings below ₪150,000 will be administered entirely by the Enforcement and Collection Authority. Insolvency proceedings above ₪150,000 individual debtors file the documents will be conducted before the official receiver (the Insolvency Commissioner) and, if a creditor want to file against a debtor, he needs to open process, before the magistrate's court that hears in the district. Company bankruptcy will be conducted before District Court. Simultaneously, with the issue of the order for the commencement of insolvency proceedings, the Insolvency Commissioner shall appoint a trustee for the debtor and an audit will be carried out, in which the debtor's economic capability and his conduct will be examined (lasting approximately 12 months). At the end of this audit a payment plan is established, at the end of which the debtor will receive a discharge. The default scenario is a payment period of three years; however, the court reserves the right to increase or decrease the period depending upon the circumstances of the case. If the debtor has no proven financial ability to pay the creditors, he may be granted an immediate discharge. Since 1996, Israeli personal bankruptcy law has shifted to a relatively debtor-friendly regime, not unlike the American model. India. In May 2016, the Parliament of India passed the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), updating outdated corporate insolvency laws. The IBC streamlined the process, reducing delays from a decade to 180 days, and replaced the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) with a market-driven approach. The Netherlands. Dutch bankruptcy law is governed by the Dutch Bankruptcy Code (). The code covers three separate legal proceedings: Russia. Federal Law No. 127-FZ "On Insolvency (Bankruptcy)" dated 26 October 2002 (as amended) (the "Bankruptcy Act"), replacing the previous law in 1998, to better address the above problems and a broader failure of the action. Russian insolvency law is intended for a wide range of borrowers: individuals and companies of all sizes, with the exception of state-owned enterprises, government agencies, political parties and religious organizations. There are also special rules for insurance companies, professional participants of the securities market, agricultural organizations and other special laws for financial institutions and companies in the natural monopolies in the energy industry. Federal Law No. 40-FZ "On Insolvency (Bankruptcy)" dated 25 February 1999 (as amended) (the "Insolvency Law of Credit Institutions") contains special provisions in relation to the opening of insolvency proceedings in relation to the credit company. Insolvency Provisions Act, credit organizations used in conjunction with the provisions of the Bankruptcy Act. Bankruptcy law provides for the following stages of insolvency proceedings: The main face of the bankruptcy process is the insolvency officer (trustee in bankruptcy, bankruptcy manager). At various stages of bankruptcy, he must be determined: the temporary officer in monitoring procedure, external manager in external control, the receiver or administrative officer in the economic recovery, the liquidator. During the bankruptcy trustee in bankruptcy (insolvency officer) has a decisive influence on the movement of assets (property) of the debtor – the debtor and has a key influence on the economic and legal aspects of its operations. Spain. In Spain, people who cannot repay their home mortgages may declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy and foreclosure discharges the obligation to pay mortgage interest, but not mortgage principal. If mortgage principal is not paid, the debtor is placed on a list of untrustworthy people. Switzerland. Under Swiss law, bankruptcy can be a consequence of insolvency. It is a court-ordered form of debt enforcement proceedings that applies, in general, to registered commercial entities only. In a bankruptcy, all assets of the debtor are liquidated under the administration of the creditors, although the law provides for debt restructuring options similar to those under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy code. Sweden. In Sweden, bankruptcy () is a formal process that may involve a company or individual. A creditor or the company itself can apply for bankruptcy. An external bankruptcy manager takes over the company or the assets of the person, and tries to sell as much as possible. A person or a company in bankruptcy cannot access its assets (with some exceptions). The formal bankruptcy process is rarely carried out for individuals. Creditors can claim money through the Enforcement Administration anyway, and creditors do not usually benefit from the bankruptcy of individuals because there are costs of a bankruptcy manager which has priority. Unpaid debts remain after bankruptcy for individuals. People who are deeply in debt can obtain a debt arrangement procedure (). On application, they obtain a payment plan under which they pay as much as they can for five years, and then all remaining debts are cancelled. Debts that derive from a ban on business operations (issued by court, commonly for tax fraud or fraudulent business practices) or owed to a crime victim as compensation for damages, are exempted from this—and, as before this process was introduced in 2006, remain lifelong. Debts that have not been claimed during a 3–10 year period are cancelled. Often crime victims stop their claims after a few years since criminals often do not have job incomes and might be hard to locate, while banks make sure their claims are not cancelled. The most common reasons for personal insolvency in Sweden are illness, unemployment, divorce or company bankruptcy. For companies, formal bankruptcy is a normal effect of insolvency, even if there is a reconstruction mechanism where the company can be given time to solve its situation, e.g. by finding an investor. The government can pay salaries to employees in insolvent companies which do not pay them, but only if the company is declared bankrupt. Therefore, it is normal that trade union do the application for bankruptcy if a supplier has not already done so. The formal bankruptcy involves contracting a bankruptcy manager, who makes certain that assets are sold and money divided by the priority the law claims, and no other way. Banks have such a priority. After a finished bankruptcy for a company, it is terminated. The activities might continue in a new company which has bought important assets from the bankrupted company. United Arab Emirates. The United Arab Emirates Bankruptcy Law came into force on 29 December 2016, and created a single law governing bankruptcy procedures, which had previously been spread across multiple sources. There are two court procedures: first, a procedure for a company that is not yet insolvent, known as a protective composition, and second, a formal bankruptcy that is split into a rescue process (similar to protective composition) or liquidation. Directors of a company can be held personally liable for its debts. The Bankruptcy Law does not apply to government bodies, or to companies trading in free zones such as the Dubai International Financial Centre or the Abu Dhabi Global Market, which have their own insolvency laws. United Kingdom. Bankruptcy in the United Kingdom (in a strict legal sense) relates only to individuals (including sole proprietors) and partnerships. Companies and other corporations enter into differently named legal insolvency procedures: liquidation and administration (administration order and administrative receivership). However, the term 'bankruptcy' is often used when referring to companies in the media and in general conversation. Bankruptcy in Scotland is referred to as sequestration. To apply for bankruptcy in Scotland, an individual must have more than £1,500 of debt. A trustee in bankruptcy must be either an Official Receiver (a civil servant) or a licensed insolvency practitioner. Current law in England and Wales derives in large part from the Insolvency Act 1986. Following the introduction of the Enterprise Act 2002, bankruptcy in England and Wales now normally lasts no longer than 12 months, and may be less if the Official Receiver files in court a certificate that investigations are complete. It was expected that the UK Government's liberalisation of the bankruptcy regime would increase the number of bankruptcy cases; initially, cases increased, as the Insolvency Service statistics appear to bear out. Since 2009, the introduction of the Debt Relief Order has resulted in a dramatic fall in bankruptcies, the latest estimates for year 2014/15 being significantly less than 30,000 cases. Pensions. The UK bankruptcy law was changed in May 2000, effective from 29 May 2000. Debtors may now retain occupational pensions while in bankruptcy, except in rare cases. United States. Bankruptcy in the United States is a matter placed under federal jurisdiction by the United States Constitution (in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4), which empowers Congress to enact "uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States". Congress has enacted statutes governing bankruptcy, primarily in the form of the Bankruptcy Code, located at Title 11 of the United States Code. A debtor declares bankruptcy to obtain relief from debt, and this is normally accomplished either through a discharge of the debt or through a restructuring of the debt. When a debtor files a voluntary petition, their bankruptcy case commences. Debts and exemptions. While bankruptcy cases are always filed in United States Bankruptcy Court (an adjunct to the U.S. District Courts), bankruptcy cases, particularly with respect to the validity of claims and exemptions, are often dependent upon State law. A Bankruptcy Exemption defines the property a debtor may retain and preserve through bankruptcy. Certain real and personal property can be exempted on "Schedule C" of a debtor's bankruptcy forms, and effectively be taken outside the debtor's bankruptcy estate. Bankruptcy exemptions are available only to individuals filing bankruptcy. There are two alternative systems that can be used to exempt property from a bankruptcy estate, federal exemptions (available in some states but not all), and state exemptions (which vary widely between states). For example, Maryland and Virginia, which are adjoining states, have different personal exemption amounts that cannot be seized for payment of debts. This amount is the first $6,000 in property or cash in Maryland, but normally only the first $5,000 in Virginia. State law therefore plays a major role in many bankruptcy cases, such that there may be significant differences in the outcome of a bankruptcy case depending upon the state in which it is filed. After a bankruptcy petition is filed, the court schedules a hearing called a "341 meeting" or "meeting of creditors", at which the bankruptcy trustee and creditors review the petitioner's petition and supporting schedules, question the petitioner, and can challenge exemptions they believe are improper. Chapters. There are six types of bankruptcy under the Bankruptcy Code, located at Title 11 of the United States Code: An important feature applicable to all types of bankruptcy filings is the automatic stay. The automatic stay means that the mere request for bankruptcy protection automatically halts most lawsuits, repossessions, foreclosures, evictions, garnishments, attachments, utility shut-offs, and debt collection activity. The most common types of personal bankruptcy for individuals are Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. Chapter 7, known as a "straight bankruptcy", involves the discharge of certain debts without repayment. Chapter 13 involves a plan of repayment of debts over a period of years. Whether a person qualifies for Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 is in part determined by income. As many as 65% of all US consumer bankruptcy filings are Chapter 7 cases. Before a consumer may obtain bankruptcy relief under either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13, the debtor is to undertake credit counseling with approved counseling agencies prior to filing a bankruptcy petition and to undertake education in personal financial management from approved agencies prior to being granted a discharge of debts under either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13. Some studies of the operation of the credit counseling requirement suggest that it provides little benefit to debtors who receive the counseling because the only realistic option for many is to seek relief under the Bankruptcy Code. Corporations and other business forms normally file under Chapters 7 or 11. Chapter 7. Often called "straight bankruptcy" or "simple bankruptcy", a Chapter 7 bankruptcy potentially allows debtors to eliminate most or all of their debts over a period of as little as three or four months. In a typical consumer bankruptcy, the only debts that survive a Chapter 7 are student loans, child support obligations, some tax bills, and criminal fines. Credit cards, pay day loans, personal loans, medical bills, and just about all other bills are discharged. In Chapter 7, a debtor surrenders non-exempt property to a bankruptcy trustee, who then liquidates the property and distributes the proceeds to the debtor's unsecured creditors. In exchange, the debtor is entitled to a discharge of some debt. However, the debtor is not granted a discharge if guilty of certain types of inappropriate behavior (e.g., concealing records relating to financial condition) and certain debts (e.g., spousal and child support and most student loans). Some taxes are not discharged even though the debtor is generally discharged from debt. Many individuals in financial distress own only exempt property (e.g., clothes, household goods, an older car, or the tools of their trade or profession) and do not have to surrender any property to the trustee. The amount of property that a debtor may exempt varies from state to state (as noted above, Virginia and Maryland have a $1,000 difference). Chapter 7 relief is available only once in any eight-year period. Generally, the rights of secured creditors to their collateral continues, even though their debt is discharged. For example, absent some arrangement by a debtor to surrender a car or "reaffirm" a debt, the creditor with a security interest in the debtor's car may repossess the car even if the debt to the creditor is discharged. Ninety-one percent of US individuals who petition for relief under Chapter 7 hire an attorney to file their petitions. The typical cost of an attorney is $1,170.00. Alternatives to filing with an attorney are: filing pro se, hiring a non-lawyer petition preparer, or using online software to generate the petition. To be eligible to file a consumer bankruptcy under Chapter 7, a debtor must qualify under a statutory means test. The means test was intended to make it more difficult for a significant number of financially distressed individual debtors whose debts are primarily consumer debts to qualify for relief under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code. The "means test" is employed in cases where an individual with primarily consumer debts has more than the average annual income for a household of equivalent size, computed over a 180-day period prior to filing. If the individual must take the means test, their average monthly income over this 180-day period is reduced by a series of allowances for living expenses and secured debt payments in a very complex calculation that may or may not accurately reflect that individual's actual monthly budget. If the results of the means test show no disposable income (or in some cases a very small amount) then the individual qualifies for Chapter 7 relief. An individual who fails the means test will have their Chapter 7 case dismissed, or may have to convert the case to a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. If a debtor does not qualify for relief under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code, either because of the Means Test or because Chapter 7 does not provide a permanent solution to delinquent payments for secured debts, such as mortgages or vehicle loans, the debtor may still seek relief under Chapter 13 of the Code. Generally, a trustee sells most of the debtor's assets to pay off creditors. However, certain debtor assets will be protected to some extent by bankruptcy exemptions. These include Social Security payments, unemployment compensation, limited equity in a home, car, or truck, household goods and appliances, trade tools, and books. However, these exemptions vary from state to state. Chapter 11. In Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the debtor retains ownership and control of assets and is re-termed a debtor in possession (DIP). The debtor in possession runs the day-to-day operations of the business while creditors and the debtor work with the Bankruptcy Court in order to negotiate and complete a plan. Upon meeting certain requirements (e.g., fairness among creditors, priority of certain creditors) creditors are permitted to vote on the proposed plan. If a plan is confirmed, the debtor continues to operate and pay debts under the terms of the confirmed plan. If a specified majority of creditors do not vote to confirm a plan, additional requirements may be imposed by the court in order to confirm the plan. Debtors filing for Chapter 11 protection a second time are known informally as "Chapter 22" filers. In a corporate or business bankruptcy, an indebted company is typically recapitalized so that it emerges from bankruptcy with more equity and less debt, with potential for dispute over the valuation of the reorganized business. Chapter 13. In Chapter 13, debtors retain ownership and possession of all their assets but must devote some portion of future income to repaying creditors, generally over three to five years. The amount of payment and period of the repayment plan depend upon a variety of factors, including the value of the debtor's property and the amount of a debtor's income and expenses. Under this chapter, the debtor can propose a repayment plan in which to pay creditors over three to five years. If the monthly income is less than the state's median income, the plan is for three years, unless the court finds just cause to extend the plan for a longer period. If the debtor's monthly income is greater than the median income for individuals in the debtor's state, the plan must generally be for five years. A plan cannot exceed the five-year limit. Relief under Chapter 13 is available only to individuals with regular income whose debts do not exceed prescribed limits. If the debtor is an individual or a sole proprietor, the debtor is allowed to file for a Chapter 13 bankruptcy to repay all or part of the debts. Secured creditors may be entitled to greater payment than unsecured creditors. In contrast to Chapter 7, the debtor in Chapter 13 may keep all property, whether or not exempt. If the plan appears feasible and if the debtor complies with all the other requirements, the bankruptcy court typically confirms the plan and the debtor and creditors are bound by its terms. Creditors have no say in the formulation of the plan, other than to object to it, if appropriate, on the grounds that it does not comply with one of the Code's statutory requirements. Generally, the debtor makes payments to a trustee who disburses the funds in accordance with the terms of the confirmed plan. When the debtor completes payments pursuant to the terms of the plan, the court formally grant the debtor a discharge of the debts provided for in the plan. However, if the debtor fails to make the agreed upon payments or fails to seek or gain court approval of a modified plan, a bankruptcy court will normally dismiss the case on the motion of the trustee. After a dismissal, creditors may resume pursuit of state law remedies to recover the unpaid debt. European Union. In 2004, the number of insolvencies reached record highs in many European countries. In France, company insolvencies rose by more than 4%, in Austria by more than 10%, and in Greece by more than 20%. The increase in the number of insolvencies, however, does not indicate the total financial impact of insolvencies in each country because there is no indication of the size of each case. An increase in the number of bankruptcy cases does not necessarily entail an increase in bad debt write-off rates for the economy as a whole. Bankruptcy statistics are also a trailing indicator. There is a time delay between financial difficulties and bankruptcy. In most cases, several months or even years pass between the financial problems and the start of bankruptcy proceedings. Legal, tax, and cultural issues may further distort bankruptcy figures, especially when comparing on an international basis. Two examples: The insolvency numbers for private individuals also do not show the whole picture. Only a fraction of heavily indebted households file for insolvency. Two of the main reasons for this are the stigma of declaring themselves insolvent and the potential business disadvantage. Following the soar in insolvencies in the previous decade, a number of European countries, such as France, Germany, Spain and Italy, began to revamp their bankruptcy laws in 2013. They modelled these new laws on Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Currently, the majority of insolvency cases have ended in liquidation in Europe rather than the businesses surviving the crisis. These new law models are meant to change this; lawmakers are hoping to turn bankruptcy into a chance for restructuring rather than a death sentence for the companies. EU policy aims to ensure that "honest entrepreneurs" are afforded a second chance at business development. A faster start-up programme for people affected by bankruptcy operating in Denmark and a scheme to support Belgian business owners and self-employed persons were highlighted in a 2008 European Commission "Communication" as good practice examples in this field. Effective sovereign bankruptcy. Technically, states do not collapse directly due to a sovereign default event itself. However, the tumultuous events that follow may bring down the state, so in common language, states would be described as being bankrupted. An example of this is when the Goguryeo–Sui War in 614 A.D. ended in the disintegration of Sui dynasty China within 4 years, although their enemy Goguryeo (occupying modern Korea) also seemingly entered into decline and fell some 56 years later.
4699	137417	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4699	Blissymbols	Blissymbols or Blissymbolics is a constructed language conceived as an ideographic writing system called Semantography consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symbols that represent new concepts. Blissymbols differ from most of the world's major writing systems in that the characters do not correspond at all to the sounds of any spoken language. "Semantography" was published by Charles K. Bliss in 1949 and found use in the education of people with communication difficulties. History. Semantography was invented by Charles K. Bliss (1897–1985), born Karl Kasiel Blitz to a Jewish family in Chernivtsi (then Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary), which had a mixture of different nationalities that "hated each other, mainly because they spoke and thought in different languages." Bliss graduated as a chemical engineer at the Vienna University of Technology, and joined an electronics company. After the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, Bliss was sent to concentration camps but his German wife Claire managed to get him released, and they finally became exiles in Shanghai, where Bliss had a cousin. Bliss devised the symbols while a refugee at the Shanghai Ghetto and Sydney, from 1942 to 1949. He wanted to create an easy-to-learn international auxiliary language to allow communication between different linguistic communities. He was inspired by Chinese characters, with which he became familiar at Shanghai. Bliss published his system in "Semantography" (1949, exp. 2nd ed. 1965, 3rd ed. 1978.) It had several names: As the "tourist explosion" took place in the 1960s, a number of researchers were looking for new standard symbols to be used at roads, stations, airports, etc. Bliss then adopted the name "Blissymbolics" in order that no researcher could plagiarize his system of symbols. Since the 1960s/1970s, Blissymbols have become popular as a method to teach disabled people to communicate. In 1971, Shirley McNaughton started a pioneer program at the Ontario Crippled Children's Centre (OCCC), aimed at children with cerebral palsy, from the approach of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). According to Arika Okrent, Bliss used to complain about the way the teachers at the OCCC were using the symbols, in relation with the proportions of the symbols and other questions: for example, they used "fancy" terms like "nouns" and "verbs", to describe what Bliss called "things" and "actions". (2009, p. 173-4). The ultimate objective of the OCCC program was to use Blissymbols as a practical way to teach the children to express themselves in their mother tongue, since the Blissymbols provided visual keys to understand the meaning of the English words, especially the abstract words. In "Semantography," Bliss had not provided a systematic set of definitions for his symbols (there was a provisional vocabulary index instead (1965, pp. 827–67)), so McNaughton's team might often interpret a certain symbol in a way that Bliss would later criticize as a "misinterpretation". For example, they might interpret a tomato as a vegetable —according to the English definition of tomato— even though the ideal Blissymbol of vegetable was restricted by Bliss to just vegetables growing underground. Eventually the OCCC staff modified and adapted Bliss's system in order to make it serve as a bridge to English. (2009, p. 189) Bliss' complaints about his symbols "being abused" by the OCCC became so intense that the director of the OCCC told Bliss, on his 1974 visit, never to come back. In spite of this, in 1975, Bliss granted an exclusive world license, for use with disabled children, to the new Blissymbolics Communication Foundation directed by Shirley McNaughton (later called Blissymbolics Communication International, BCI). Nevertheless, in 1977, Bliss claimed that this agreement was violated so that he was deprived of effective control of his symbol system. According to Okrent (2009, p. 190), there was a final period of conflict, as Bliss would make continuous criticisms to McNaughton often followed by apologies. Bliss finally brought his lawyers back to the OCCC, reaching a settlement: Blissymbolic Communication International now claims an exclusive license from Bliss, for the use and publication of Blissymbols for persons with communication, language, and learning difficulties. The Blissymbol method has been used in Canada, Sweden, and a few other countries. Practitioners of Blissymbolics (that is, speech and language therapists and users) maintain that some users who have learned to communicate with Blissymbolics find it easier to learn to read and write traditional orthography in the local spoken language than do users who did not know Blissymbolics. The speech question. Unlike similar constructed languages like aUI, Blissymbolics was conceived as a written language with no phonology, on the premise that "interlinguistic communication is mainly carried on by reading and writing". Nevertheless, Bliss suggested that a set of international words could be adopted, so that "a kind of spoken language could be established – as a travelling aid only". (1965, p. 89–90). Whether Blissymbolics constitutes an unspoken language is a controversial question, whatever its practical utility may be. Some linguists, such as John DeFrancis and J. Marshall Unger have argued that genuine ideographic writing systems with the same capacities as natural languages do not exist. Semantics. Bliss' concern about semantics finds an early referent in John Locke, whose "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" prevented people from those "vague and insignificant forms of speech" that may give the impression of being deep learning. Another vital referent is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's project of an ideographic language "characteristica universalis", based on the principles of Chinese characters. It would contain small figures representing "visible things by their lines, and the invisible, by the visible which accompany them", adding "certain additional marks, suitable to make understood the flexions and the particles." Bliss stated that his own work was an attempt to take up the thread of Leibniz's project. Finally there is a strong influence by "The Meaning of Meaning" (1923) by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, which was considered a standard work on semantics. Bliss found especially useful their "triangle of reference": the physical thing or "referent" that we perceive would be represented at the right vertex; the meaning that we know by experience (our implicit definition of the thing), at the top vertex; and the physical word that we speak or symbol we write, at the left vertex. The reversed process would happen when we read or listen to words: from the words, we recall meanings, related to referents which may be real things or unreal "fictions". Bliss was particularly concerned with political propaganda, whose discourses would tend to contain words that correspond to unreal or ambiguous referents. Grammar. The grammar of Blissymbols is based on a certain interpretation of nature, dividing it into matter (material things), energy (actions), and human values (mental evaluations). In a natural language, these would give place respectively to nouns, verbs, and adjectives. In Blissymbols, they are marked respectively by a small square symbol, a small cone symbol, and a small V or inverted cone. These symbols may be placed above any other symbol, turning it respectively into a "thing", an "action", and an "evaluation": When a symbol is not marked by any of the three grammar symbols (square, cone, inverted cone), it may refer to a non-material thing, a grammatical particle, etc. Examples. The symbol represents the expression "world language", which was a first tentative name for Blissymbols. It combines the symbol for "writing tool" or "pen" (a line inclined, as a pen being used) with the symbol for "world", which in its turn combines "ground" or "earth" (a horizontal line below) and its counterpart derivate "sky" (a horizontal line above). Thus the world would be seen as "what is among the ground and the sky", and "Blissymbols" would be seen as "the writing tool to express the world". This is clearly distinct from the symbol of "language", which is a combination of "mouth" and "ear". Thus natural languages are mainly oral, while Blissymbols is just a writing system dealing with semantics, not phonetics. Abstract concepts. The 900 individual symbols of the system are called "Bliss-characters"; these may be "ideographic" – representing abstract concepts, "pictographic" – a direct representation of objects, or "composite" – in which two or more existing Bliss-characters are superimposed to represent a new meaning. Size, orientation and relation to the "skyline" and "earthline" affects the meaning of each symbol. A single concept is called a "Bliss-word", which can consist of one or more Bliss-characters. In multiple-character Bliss-words, the main character is called the "classifier" which "indicates the semantic or grammatical category to which the Bliss-word belongs". To this can be added Bliss-characters as prefixes or suffixes called "modifiers" which amend the meaning of the first symbol. A further symbol called an "indicator" can be added above one of the characters in the Bliss-word (typically the classifier); these are used as "grammatical and/or semantic markers." The sentence "I want to go to the airport." shows several features of Blissymbolics: Towards the international standardization of the script. Blissymbolics was used in 1971 to help children at the Ontario Crippled Children's Centre (OCCC, now the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Since it was important that the children see consistent pictures, OCCC had a draftsman named Jim Grice draw the symbols. Both Charles K. Bliss and Margrit Beesley at the OCCC worked with Grice to ensure consistency. In 1975, a new organization named Blissymbolics Communication Foundation directed by Shirley McNaughton led this effort. Over the years, this organization changed its name to Blissymbolics Communication Institute, Easter Seal Communication Institute, and ultimately to Blissymbolics Communication International (BCI). BCI is an international group of people who act as an authority regarding the standardization of the Blissymbolics language. It has taken responsibility for any extensions of the Blissymbolics language as well as any maintenance needed for the language. BCI has coordinated usage of the language since 1971 for augmentative and alternative communication. BCI received a licence and copyright through legal agreements with Charles K. Bliss in 1975 and 1982. Limiting the count of Bliss-characters (there are currently about 900) is very useful in order to help the user community. It also helps when implementing Blissymbolics using technology such as computers. In 1991, BCI published a reference guide containing 2300 vocabulary items and detailed rules for the graphic design of additional characters, so they settled a first set of approved "Bliss-words" for general use. The Standards Council of Canada then sponsored, on January 21, 1993, the registration of an encoded character set for use in ISO/IEC 2022, in the ISO-IR international registry of coded character sets. After many years of requests, the Blissymbolic language was finally approved as an encoded language, with code , into the ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 standards. A proposal was posted by Michael Everson for the Blissymbolics script to be included in the Universal Character Set (UCS) and encoded for use with the ISO/IEC 10646 and Unicode standards. BCI would cooperate with the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) and the ISO Working Group. The proposed encoding does not use the lexical encoding model used in the existing ISO-IR/169 registered character set, but instead applies the Unicode and ISO character-glyph model to the "Bliss-character" model already adopted by BCI, since this would significantly reduce the number of needed characters. Bliss-characters can now be used in a creative way to create many new arbitrary concepts, by surrounding the invented words with special Bliss indicators (similar to punctuation), something which was not possible in the ISO-IR/169 encoding. However, by the end of 2009, the Blissymbolic script was not encoded in the UCS. Some questions are still unanswered, such as the inclusion in the BCI repertoire of some characters (currently about 24) that are already encoded in the UCS (like digits, punctuation signs, spaces and some markers), but whose unification may cause problems due to the very strict graphical layouts required by the published Bliss reference guides. In addition, the character metrics use a specific layout where the usual baseline is not used, and the ideographic em-square is not relevant for Bliss character designs that use additional "earth line" and "sky line" to define the composition square. Some fonts supporting the BCI repertoire are available and usable with texts encoded with private-use assignments (PUA) within the UCS. But only the private BCI encoding based on ISO-IR/169 registration is available for text interchange.
4700	26016504	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4700	Bessel function	Bessel functions, named after Friedrich Bessel who was the first to systematically study them in 1824, are canonical solutions of Bessel's differential equation formula_1 for an arbitrary complex number formula_2, which represents the "order" of the Bessel function. Although formula_2 and formula_4 produce the same differential equation, it is conventional to define different Bessel functions for these two values in such a way that the Bessel functions are mostly smooth functions of formula_2. The most important cases are when formula_2 is an integer or half-integer. Bessel functions for integer formula_2 are also known as cylinder functions or the cylindrical harmonics because they appear in the solution to Laplace's equation in cylindrical coordinates. Spherical Bessel functions with half-integer formula_2 are obtained when solving the Helmholtz equation in spherical coordinates. Applications. Bessel's equation arises when finding separable solutions to Laplace's equation and the Helmholtz equation in cylindrical or spherical coordinates. Bessel functions are therefore especially important for many problems of wave propagation and static potentials. In solving problems in cylindrical coordinate systems, one obtains Bessel functions of integer order (); in spherical problems, one obtains half-integer orders (). For example: Bessel functions also appear in other problems, such as signal processing (e.g., see FM audio synthesis, Kaiser window, or Bessel filter). Definitions. Because this is a linear differential equation, solutions can be scaled to any amplitude. The amplitudes chosen for the functions originate from the early work in which the functions appeared as solutions to definite integrals rather than solutions to differential equations. Because the differential equation is second-order, there must be two linearly independent solutions: one of the first kind and one of the second kind. Depending upon the circumstances, however, various formulations of these solutions are convenient. Different variations are summarized in the table below and described in the following sections.The subscript "n" is typically used in place of formula_2 when formula_2 is known to be an integer. Bessel functions of the second kind and the spherical Bessel functions of the second kind are sometimes denoted by and , respectively, rather than and . Bessel functions of the first kind: "Jα". Bessel functions of the first kind, denoted as , are solutions of Bessel's differential equation. For integer or positive , Bessel functions of the first kind are finite at the origin (); while for negative non-integer , Bessel functions of the first kind diverge as approaches zero. It is possible to define the function by formula_11 times a Maclaurin series (note that need not be an integer, and non-integer powers are not permitted in a Taylor series), which can be found by applying the Frobenius method to Bessel's equation: formula_12 where is the gamma function, a shifted generalization of the factorial function to non-integer values. Some earlier authors define the Bessel function of the first kind differently, essentially without the division by formula_13 in formula_14; this definition is not used in this article. The Bessel function of the first kind is an entire function if is an integer, otherwise it is a multivalued function with singularity at zero. The graphs of Bessel functions look roughly like oscillating sine or cosine functions that decay proportionally to formula_15 (see also their asymptotic forms below), although their roots are not generally periodic, except asymptotically for large . (The series indicates that is the derivative of , much like is the derivative of ; more generally, the derivative of can be expressed in terms of by the identities below.) For non-integer , the functions and are linearly independent, and are therefore the two solutions of the differential equation. On the other hand, for integer order , the following relationship is valid (the gamma function has simple poles at each of the non-positive integers): formula_16 This means that the two solutions are no longer linearly independent. In this case, the second linearly independent solution is then found to be the Bessel function of the second kind, as discussed below. Bessel's integrals. Another definition of the Bessel function, for integer values of , is possible using an integral representation: formula_17 which is also called Hansen-Bessel formula. This was the approach that Bessel used, and from this definition he derived several properties of the function. The definition may be extended to non-integer orders by one of Schläfli's integrals, for : formula_18 Relation to hypergeometric series. The Bessel functions can be expressed in terms of the generalized hypergeometric series as formula_19 This expression is related to the development of Bessel functions in terms of the Bessel–Clifford function. Relation to Laguerre polynomials. In terms of the Laguerre polynomials and arbitrarily chosen parameter , the Bessel function can be expressed as formula_20 Bessel functions of the second kind: "Yα". The Bessel functions of the second kind, denoted by , occasionally denoted instead by , are solutions of the Bessel differential equation that have a singularity at the origin () and are multivalued. These are sometimes called Weber functions, as they were introduced by , and also Neumann functions after Carl Neumann. For non-integer , is related to by formula_21 In the case of integer order , the function is defined by taking the limit as a non-integer tends to : formula_22 If is a nonnegative integer, we have the series formula_23 where formula_24 is the digamma function, the logarithmic derivative of the gamma function. There is also a corresponding integral formula (for ): formula_25 In the case where : (with formula_26 being Euler's constant)formula_27 is necessary as the second linearly independent solution of the Bessel's equation when is an integer. But has more meaning than that. It can be considered as a "natural" partner of . See also the subsection on Hankel functions below. When is an integer, moreover, as was similarly the case for the functions of the first kind, the following relationship is valid: formula_28 Both and are holomorphic functions of on the complex plane cut along the negative real axis. When is an integer, the Bessel functions are entire functions of . If is held fixed at a non-zero value, then the Bessel functions are entire functions of . The Bessel functions of the second kind when is an integer is an example of the second kind of solution in Fuchs's theorem. Hankel functions: "H", "H". Another important formulation of the two linearly independent solutions to Bessel's equation are the Hankel functions of the first and second kind, and , defined as formula_29 where is the imaginary unit. These linear combinations are also known as Bessel functions of the third kind; they are two linearly independent solutions of Bessel's differential equation. They are named after Hermann Hankel. These forms of linear combination satisfy numerous simple-looking properties, like asymptotic formulae or integral representations. Here, "simple" means an appearance of a factor of the form . For real formula_30 where formula_31, formula_32 are real-valued, the Bessel functions of the first and second kind are the real and imaginary parts, respectively, of the first Hankel function and the real and negative imaginary parts of the second Hankel function. Thus, the above formulae are analogs of Euler's formula, substituting , for formula_33 and formula_31, formula_32 for formula_36, formula_37, as explicitly shown in the asymptotic expansion. The Hankel functions are used to express outward- and inward-propagating cylindrical-wave solutions of the cylindrical wave equation, respectively (or vice versa, depending on the sign convention for the frequency). Using the previous relationships, they can be expressed as formula_38 If is an integer, the limit has to be calculated. The following relationships are valid, whether is an integer or not: formula_39 In particular, if with a nonnegative integer, the above relations imply directly that formula_40 These are useful in developing the spherical Bessel functions (see below). The Hankel functions admit the following integral representations for : formula_41 where the integration limits indicate integration along a contour that can be chosen as follows: from to 0 along the negative real axis, from 0 to along the imaginary axis, and from to along a contour parallel to the real axis. Modified Bessel functions: "Iα", "Kα". The Bessel functions are valid even for complex arguments , and an important special case is that of a purely imaginary argument. In this case, the solutions to the Bessel equation are called the modified Bessel functions (or occasionally the hyperbolic Bessel functions) of the first and second kind and are defined as formula_42 when is not an integer. When is an integer, then the limit is used. These are chosen to be real-valued for real and positive arguments . The series expansion for is thus similar to that for , but without the alternating factor. formula_43 can be expressed in terms of Hankel functions: formula_44 Using these two formulae the result to formula_45+formula_46, commonly known as Nicholson's integral or Nicholson's formula, can be obtained to give the following formula_47 given that the condition is met. It can also be shown that formula_48 only when and but not when . We can express the first and second Bessel functions in terms of the modified Bessel functions (these are valid if ): formula_49 and are the two linearly independent solutions to the modified Bessel's equation: formula_50 Unlike the ordinary Bessel functions, which are oscillating as functions of a real argument, and are exponentially growing and decaying functions respectively. Like the ordinary Bessel function , the function goes to zero at for and is finite at for . Analogously, diverges at with the singularity being of logarithmic type for , and otherwise. Two integral formulas for the modified Bessel functions are (for ): formula_51 Bessel functions can be described as Fourier transforms of powers of quadratic functions. For example (for ): formula_52 It can be proven by showing equality to the above integral definition for . This is done by integrating a closed curve in the first quadrant of the complex plane. Modified Bessel functions of the second kind may be represented with Bassett's integral formula_53 Modified Bessel functions and can be represented in terms of rapidly convergent integrals formula_54 The modified Bessel function formula_55 is useful to represent the Laplace distribution as an Exponential-scale mixture of normal distributions. The modified Bessel function of the second kind has also been called by the following names (now rare): Spherical Bessel functions: "jn", "yn". When solving the Helmholtz equation in spherical coordinates by separation of variables, the radial equation has the form formula_56 The two linearly independent solutions to this equation are called the spherical Bessel functions and , and are related to the ordinary Bessel functions and by formula_57 is also denoted or ; some authors call these functions the spherical Neumann functions. From the relations to the ordinary Bessel functions it is directly seen that: formula_58 The spherical Bessel functions can also be written as () formula_59 The zeroth spherical Bessel function is also known as the (unnormalized) sinc function. The first few spherical Bessel functions are: formula_60 and formula_61 The first few non-zero roots of the first few spherical Bessel functions are: Generating function. The spherical Bessel functions have the generating functions formula_62 Finite series expansions. In contrast to the whole integer Bessel functions , the spherical Bessel functions have a finite series expression: formula_63 Differential relations. In the following, is any of , , , for formula_64 Spherical Hankel functions: "h", "h". There are also spherical analogues of the Hankel functions: formula_65 There are simple closed-form expressions for the Bessel functions of half-integer order in terms of the standard trigonometric functions, and therefore for the spherical Bessel functions. In particular, for non-negative integers : formula_66 and is the complex-conjugate of this (for real ). It follows, for example, that and , and so on. The spherical Hankel functions appear in problems involving spherical wave propagation, for example in the multipole expansion of the electromagnetic field. Riccati–Bessel functions: "Sn", "Cn", "ξn", "ζn". Riccati–Bessel functions only slightly differ from spherical Bessel functions: formula_67 They satisfy the differential equation formula_68 For example, this kind of differential equation appears in quantum mechanics while solving the radial component of the Schrödinger equation with hypothetical cylindrical infinite potential barrier. This differential equation, and the Riccati–Bessel solutions, also arises in the problem of scattering of electromagnetic waves by a sphere, known as Mie scattering after the first published solution by Mie (1908). See e.g., Du (2004) for recent developments and references. Following Debye (1909), the notation , is sometimes used instead of , . Asymptotic forms. The Bessel functions have the following asymptotic forms. For small arguments formula_69, one obtains, when formula_2 is not a negative integer: formula_71 When is a negative integer, we have formula_72 For the Bessel function of the second kind we have three cases: formula_73 where is the Euler–Mascheroni constant (0.5772...). For large real arguments , one cannot write a true asymptotic form for Bessel functions of the first and second kind (unless is half-integer) because they have zeros all the way out to infinity, which would have to be matched exactly by any asymptotic expansion. However, for a given value of one can write an equation containing a term of order : formula_74 The asymptotic forms for the Hankel functions are: formula_75 These can be extended to other values of using equations relating and to and . It is interesting that although the Bessel function of the first kind is the average of the two Hankel functions, is not asymptotic to the average of these two asymptotic forms when is negative (because one or the other will not be correct there, depending on the used). But the asymptotic forms for the Hankel functions permit us to write asymptotic forms for the Bessel functions of first and second kinds for "complex" (non-real) so long as goes to infinity at a constant phase angle (using the square root having positive real part): formula_76 For the modified Bessel functions, Hankel developed asymptotic expansions as well: formula_77 There is also the asymptotic form (for large real formula_78) formula_79 When , all the terms except the first vanish, and we have formula_80 For small arguments formula_81, we have formula_82 Properties. For integer order , is often defined via a Laurent series for a generating function: formula_83 an approach used by P. A. Hansen in 1843. (This can be generalized to non-integer order by contour integration or other methods.) Infinite series of Bessel functions in the form formula_84 where formula_85 arise in many physical systems and are defined in closed form by the Sung series. For example, when N = 3: formula_86. More generally, the Sung series and the alternating Sung series are written as: formula_87 formula_88 A series expansion using Bessel functions (Kapteyn series) is formula_89 Another important relation for integer orders is the "Jacobi–Anger expansion": formula_90 and formula_91 which is used to expand a plane wave as a sum of cylindrical waves, or to find the Fourier series of a tone-modulated FM signal. More generally, a series formula_92 is called Neumann expansion of . The coefficients for have the explicit form formula_93 where is Neumann's polynomial. Selected functions admit the special representation formula_94 with formula_95 due to the orthogonality relation formula_96 More generally, if has a branch-point near the origin of such a nature that formula_97 then formula_98 or formula_99 where formula_100 is the Laplace transform of . Another way to define the Bessel functions is the Poisson representation formula and the Mehler-Sonine formula: formula_101 where and . This formula is useful especially when working with Fourier transforms. Because Bessel's equation becomes Hermitian (self-adjoint) if it is divided by , the solutions must satisfy an orthogonality relationship for appropriate boundary conditions. In particular, it follows that: formula_102 where , is the Kronecker delta, and is the th zero of . This orthogonality relation can then be used to extract the coefficients in the Fourier–Bessel series, where a function is expanded in the basis of the functions for fixed and varying . An analogous relationship for the spherical Bessel functions follows immediately: formula_103 If one defines a boxcar function of that depends on a small parameter as: formula_104 (where is the rectangle function) then the Hankel transform of it (of any given order ), , approaches as approaches zero, for any given . Conversely, the Hankel transform (of the same order) of is : formula_105 which is zero everywhere except near 1. As approaches zero, the right-hand side approaches , where is the Dirac delta function. This admits the limit (in the distributional sense): formula_106 A change of variables then yields the "closure equation": formula_107 for . The Hankel transform can express a fairly arbitrary function as an integral of Bessel functions of different scales. For the spherical Bessel functions the orthogonality relation is: formula_108 for . Another important property of Bessel's equations, which follows from Abel's identity, involves the Wronskian of the solutions: formula_109 where and are any two solutions of Bessel's equation, and is a constant independent of (which depends on α and on the particular Bessel functions considered). In particular, formula_110 and formula_111 for . For , the even entire function of genus 1, , has only real zeros. Let formula_112 be all its positive zeros, then formula_113 Recurrence relations. The functions , , , and all satisfy the recurrence relations formula_114 and formula_115 where denotes , , , or . These two identities are often combined, e.g. added or subtracted, to yield various other relations. In this way, for example, one can compute Bessel functions of higher orders (or higher derivatives) given the values at lower orders (or lower derivatives). In particular, it follows that formula_116 Using the previous relations one can arrive to similar relations for the "Spherical" Bessel functions: formula_117 and formula_118 "Modified" Bessel functions follow similar relations: formula_119 and formula_120 and formula_121 The recurrence relation reads formula_122 where denotes or . These recurrence relations are useful for discrete diffusion problems. Transcendence. In 1929, Carl Ludwig Siegel proved that , , and the logarithmic derivative are transcendental numbers when "ν" is rational and "x" is algebraic and nonzero. The same proof also implies that formula_123 is transcendental under the same assumptions. Sums with Bessel functions. The product of two Bessel functions admits the following sum: formula_124 formula_125 From these equalities it follows that formula_126 and as a consequence formula_127 These sums can be extended to include a term multiplier that is a polynomial function of the index. For example, formula_128 formula_129 formula_130 formula_131 Multiplication theorem. The Bessel functions obey a multiplication theorem formula_132 where and may be taken as arbitrary complex numbers. For , the above expression also holds if is replaced by . The analogous identities for modified Bessel functions and are formula_133 and formula_134 Zeros of the Bessel function. Bourget's hypothesis. Bessel himself originally proved that for nonnegative integers , the equation has an infinite number of solutions in . When the functions are plotted on the same graph, though, none of the zeros seem to coincide for different values of except for the zero at . This phenomenon is known as Bourget's hypothesis after the 19th-century French mathematician who studied Bessel functions. Specifically it states that for any integers and , the functions and have no common zeros other than the one at . The hypothesis was proved by Carl Ludwig Siegel in 1929. Transcendence. Siegel proved in 1929 that when "ν" is rational, all nonzero roots of and are transcendental, as are all the roots of . It is also known that all roots of the higher derivatives formula_135 for are transcendental, except for the special values formula_136 and formula_137. Numerical approaches. For numerical studies about the zeros of the Bessel function, see , and . Numerical values. The first zeros in J0 (i.e., j0,1, j0,2 and j0,3) occur at arguments of approximately 2.40483, 5.52008 and 8.65373, respectively. History. Waves and elasticity problems. The first appearance of a Bessel function appears in the work of Daniel Bernoulli in 1732, while working on the analysis of a vibrating string, a problem that was tackled before by his father Johann Bernoulli. Daniel considered a flexible chain suspended from a fixed point above and free at its lower end. The solution of the differential equation led to the introduction of a function that is now considered formula_138. Bernoulli also developed a method to find the zeros of the function. Leonhard Euler in 1736, found a link between other functions (now known as Laguerre polynomials) and Bernoulli's solution. Euler also introduced a non-uniform chain that lead to the introduction of functions now related to modified Bessel functions formula_139. In the middle of the eighteen century, Jean le Rond d'Alembert had found a formula to solve the wave equation. By 1771 there was dispute between Bernoulli, Euler, d'Alembert and Joseph-Louis Lagrange on the nature of the solutions of vibrating strings. Euler worked in 1778 on buckling, introducing the concept of Euler's critical load. To solve the problem he introduced the series for formula_140. Euler also worked out the solutions of vibrating 2D membranes in cylindrical coordinates in 1780. In order to solve his differential equation he introduced a power series associated to formula_141, for integer "n". During the end of the 19th century Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace and Marc-Antoine Parseval also found equivalents to the Bessel functions. Parseval for example found an integral representation of formula_138 using cosine. At the beginning of the 1800s, Joseph Fourier used formula_138 to solve the heat equation in a problem with cylindrical symmetry. Fourier won a prize of the French Academy of Sciences for this work in 1811. But most of the details of his work, including the use of a Fourier series, remained unpublished until 1822. Poisson in rivalry with Fourier, extended Fourier's work in 1823, introducing new properties of Bessel functions including Bessel functions of half-integer order (now known as spherical Bessel functions). Astronomical problems. In 1770, Lagrange introduced the series expansion of Bessel functions to solve Kepler's equation, a transcendental equation in astronomy. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel had seen Lagrange's solution but found it difficult to handle. In 1813 in a letter to Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bessel simplified the calculation using trigonometric functions. Bessel published his work in 1819, independently introducing the method of Fourier series unaware of the work of Fourier which was published later. In 1824, Bessel carried out a systematic investigation of the functions, which earned the functions his name. In older literature the functions were called cylindrical functions or even Bessel–Fourier functions.

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